Fatty Liver Disease: How to Avoid Possibly the Biggest Threat to Your Health
Hearing the words “fatty liver” may immediately conjure up thoughts of alcoholics, and the damage to your liver that occurs after years of excessive drinking.
But the truth is 1 out of 4 Americans is at risk for fatty liver disease — more specifically non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) and it currently affects nearly 100 million people, including children, in the United States alone. The number one risk factor currently is obesity.
Fatty liver is often accompanied by an elevation in liver enzymes—a sign of liver inflammation that if left unchecked, will cause irreversible liver damage.
Even scarier, NAFLD is a silent disease, so you might not even know if you have it until it’s too late, and you find yourself on the transplant list. NAFLD is rapidly becoming the number one reason to end up needing a liver transplant. So, if your doctor has told you that you have a fatty liver, it’s time to stop brushing it off as something that’s not important or that doesn’t have a natural solution.
