Fatty Liver Symptoms and Diet (Regenerate your Liver Naturally)
This post is about Fatty Liver Symptoms and Diet
- The weight of a healthy liver is 1.5 kg and considered as one of the hefty organs in our body.
- Accumulation of fats in the liver cells (hepatocytes) increases 5 to 10 percent weight of this organ. Medically this condition is termed as fatty liver.
- Excessive alcohol drinking is one of the primary reason for fatty liver. However, across the globe 2.8-24% people have non- alcoholic fatty liver disease. It has estimated 9 to 32 % of Indian population have non-alcoholic fatty liver disease.
- Fatty liver does not provide any symptom and physical examination is usually unremarkable at the initial stage. It can only identified when liver failure occurs at the advance stage.
- On 28th October 2017, The newspaper Hindustan Times reported fatty liver is one of the primary cause of the increasing trend of diabetes in India.
- Diet and lifestyle measure is one of the most convenient way to reduce the risk of fatty liver condition.
Significance Of Liver For Our Healthy Living
The liver is one of the vital organs of our body. This organ performs a number of important functions to keep ourselves healthy. The liver is present on the right side of the upper abdomen and takes most of the space under the ribcage. The liver is also little extended to the left side of the upper abdomen also to adjust its bulky size. There are multiple blood vessels and bile canals pass through liver cells present in each liver lobules.
Thus, the liver continuously interacts with food materials, drugs, the medicine we eat every day. Therefore, the diet has a direct role in liver health. The liver helps in the following ways: Liver processed, alters and stores the all the nutrients, medicines we intake every day It helps to detoxify our body It helps to eliminate consumed toxic substances like alcohol and by-product of synthetic drugs and processed foods from body It produces energy by breaking down the fats.
It helps to maintain blood sugar level in the blood It supplies stored vitamins and minerals whenever our body requires them It helps in blood clotting
Types Of Fatty Liver
There are two types of fatty liver conditions - alcoholic fatty liver, and non-alcoholic fatty liver. Excessive alcohol consumption is the main culprit for alcoholic fatty liver progression. The byproducts of alcohol are harmful to the liver. The liver tries to eliminate all the alcohol from the body system and continuously expose to harmful toxins obtained from alcohol metabolism.
Whereas, non-alcoholic fatty liver can further divide into two categories simple non-alcoholic fatty liver (NAFL) and nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH). Simple NAFL is not a complicated liver disease and can easily manage by following a healthy diet and lifestyle. But, NASH is a complicated liver condition and requires medical treatment.
Symptoms Of Fatty Liver
Both alcoholic fatty liver and non-alcoholic fatty liver conditions are symptom free at the initial phase, but later you may feel some discomfort at the right side of the upper abdomen and tiredness.
What Dietary Measures Should You Follow To Treat Fatty Liver
Here are some simple tips to recover fatty liver
- A randomized double-blind placebo-controlled human trial showed turmeric containing curcumin has a great role in improving non-alcoholic fatty liver conditions. Different human research studies recommended 600 mg/ day or 0.6 ml thrice a day turmeric oil is safe and effective to provide medicinal value. Therefore, you can add raw turmeric juice in your fruit juice and get its benefit.
- Avoid excess intake of sugar-containing food items including fruits also. Sugar or simple carbohydrates like glucose, fructose stimulate fat production (lipogenesis) the liver and blocks β-fatty acid oxidation. These underlying changes in the liver trigger fatty liver symptom. Therefore, avoid to intake added sugar containing foods, soft drinks and an excess amount of fruits.
- Don't worry about fat intake. All fatty substances are not harmful. For example, polyunsaturated fatty acids containing nutrients like omega-3 fatty acids are good for the liver. But you should avoid fried foods and processed foods, which contain triglycerides and harmful for your liver.
- Some specific antioxidants naturally present in our dietary nutrients are effective to reduce the free radicals load from the liver. Following are the specific antioxidants and their sources, which you can easily add to your regular diet to keep your liver free from fat buildup.
- The antioxidants, glucosinolates specifically present in Broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, and some other cruciferous vegetables and onions, garlic are good to scavenge harmful radicals from liver and stimulate detoxification process.
- Tomatoes, red grapefruit, watermelon, and apricots are rich sources of lycopene. Lycopene is an antioxidant effective to reduce non-alcoholic fatty liver complications and prevent nonalcoholic steatohepatitis.
- Nuts, berries, grapes, and red wine contain resveratrol, the antioxidant effective to reduce oxidative damage in the liver.
