How to reverse a fatty liver?

now I might get in trouble for saying this but fatty liver is something I've seen be dramatically improved with the combination of lifestyle and certain traditional Chinese medicine formulas if you catch it early enough now I'll never forget the moment when a young woman walked in with a daughter who was only 15 or 16 years old and she said that my daughter had just been diagnosed with non-alcoholic fatty liver how is it possible that a child could develop fatty liver and that was just the beginning of me starting to see this quite a lot which has now become an epidemic in many parts of the US so let's discuss what it is how we view it in traditional Chinese medicine and some of the treatment approaches we have for it hey guys I'm Dr Alex hin board licensed acupuncturist and doctor of traditional Chinese medicine and author of the health book master of the day let's jump in so something that I've seen increasingly in my practice and something that I've been having conversations with other people about is that there's been a large increase in the number of people with non-alcoholic fatty liver that are even children and if you think you can develop non-alcoholic fatty liver just from diet alone right too many calories that kind of thing but to see a child come with that because it normally takes decades to accumulate and deposit so how is it possible that a 15-year-old 16-year-old is coming in with non-alcoholic fatty liver I mean that does not bode well that is a pretty Advanced condition relative to what you might have seen historically and lately I've been seeing on the news that this is becoming an epidemic especially in the lower socioeconomic classes throughout the US now when I looked into it deeper a lot of what I'm uncovering is that it's typically children raised in families without a lot of money that consume lots of soda processed food and really high calorie and low nutrition foods but really the big one that I'm seeing is excessive soda consumption soda in a lot of ways is like beer but worse for example if you take soda and you have a mango let's just say they both have 30 gr of sugar I don't actually know the actual numbers here but let's say have the same amount soda doesn't have any fiber to buffer that blood sugar Spike while the mango has a relative amount even though mango is still as high in sugar lots of fruits like apples they have a lot of fiber they have a lot of water content and that slows down basically the blood sugar Spike that you might get when people are drinking 1 2 3 lers of soda a day your body is basically accumulating this kind of garbage in the liver for many of us now the liver is just one of those areas of the body that accumulates this garbage right obviously the arteries can too the digestive system can too the intestines can too whether it's inflammation or fat deposits but there's a whole little quiz I've put together to figure out where you might be accumulating some of these issues and I just call this this is likely the root cause of your symptoms according to traditional Chinese medicine if you're curious where some of your symptoms are coming from Go download that it's the first link below this video and it's a great 10 to 12 point checklist for this is related to the pancreas this is related to the kidneys to the heart very very useful to go through and understand from a holistic traditional Chinese medicine point of view where are all these various symptoms coming from and what are they most likely related to so check it out what is fatty liver in this case non-alcoholic fatty liver and what causes it here's the easiest way to think about it fatty liver basically comes from eating excess calories causing fat to build up in the liver now when the liver does not process and break down the fats as normally too much will accumulate people also tend to accumulate or develop fatty liver if they have other conditions you see alongside like diabetes high triglycerides and just generally being overweight or severely obese it tends to be strongly correlated with a lot of the same diet and lifestyle factors that relate to gaining a lot of body fat in general but I want to point out what I see as the most common correlation of non-alcoholic fatty liver there's a great research paper here literally just called fatty liver and it mentions primary factor that I see most often clinically which is that obesity is a well-known risk factor for non-alcoholic fatty liver in patients with severe obesity undergoing bariatric surgery up to 90% are found to have non-alcoholic fatty liver and some even have curosis the same study concluded that insulin resistance was the main predictor for non-alcoholic fatty liver they're saying I've even seen people with severe liver ceros turning into liver failure being on the organ transplant list from diet alone now let's talk about this from a traditional Chinese medicine point of view you see fatty liver as one of many signs and symptoms as part of what we call a pattern a traditional pattern diagnosis the number one is that you can think of fatty liver almost like it is the Overflow or the accumulation of garbage from the digestive system one of my mentors use this analogy or metaphor in the sense that let's say you're constantly overeating overeating overeating your body can't get rid of it fast enough very commonly people get acid reflux they get indigestion they get gallbladder issues or even they get a gallbladder removal by the time they're 30 or 35 but you can conceptualize it in the way that he told me that you can visualize fatty liver as the garbage from what we call the middle burner like the soup pot that's overflowing but it's overflowing into your body right because it's this organic system so this excess is getting shunted and deposited in the liver there the second thing is that the most common organ networks that we see related to fatty liver development are what we call the liver and the gallbladder for example we say that the liver and gallbladder are very intimately related but the formulas that treat liver and gallbladder issues like people who have a lot of acid reflux we often treat the stomach pancreas and gallbladder those same formulas will often treat fatty liver so for example one formula we'll talk about here in a minute called sisan has well documented ability to potentially even prevent fatty liver development in mice no surprise it's really high in an herb called juer which is immature Orange Peel which is very effective for treating liver issues gallbladder issues acid reflux issues high blood sugar of various kinds this pattern is all related now we often treat the liver and the gallbladder so when it comes to us treating it clinically there are two things I recommend in my practice one is we get you on a traditional herbal formula because people don't really come in with non-alcoholic fatty liver to me and that's their only digestive symptom they're having when you ask them more you can tell they've been having lots of problems from time to time and most come in with a gallbladder issue or acid reflux those are typically the precursors to this fatty liver that I see the illness has to enter the digestive system in this way most of the time for this kind of non-alcoholic fatty liver but let's jump into this one research paper here this one research paper is called freeze-dried San powder can ameliorate High fat diet induced non-alcoholic fatty liver disease I know that's a mouthful but check out what they did on rats here because it's super interesting to see they took 24 male mice divided into three groups of eight the control group was allowed to basically have access to a normal Chow diet the high fat diet group and the San The herbal formula group were allowed also access to a high fat diet the formula group they were given that formula they were basically administered this formula 5 G per kilog body weight once a day and the other groups were basically administered just distilled water to test the effect of just doing nothing versus administering this formula as a preventative now what they found was that after 12 weeks they measured the body weight the liver index visceral fat index and various kinds of for example liver enzymes they measur the gut microbiome as well to see if there were changes so what they found after 12 weeks was very interesting though they found that compared with the fat group funny acronym they used the sunis sand group that were given the traditional herbal formula exhibited decreased body weight liver index visceral body fat liver enzymes and Al liver triglycerides this was rats eating the high fat diet as much as they wanted given this formula as a preventative and they sure enough they showed preventative changes in terms of liver function and some other function including microbiome versus the rats that didn't take it not only is there evidence that this can potentially help can't really use the word prevent but pretty interesting the effect it had on rats here now when it comes to diet and lifestyle really it's the opposite of what typically got people in my office in the first place I strongly recommend the diet you know very aligned with the Mediterranean diet whole grains nothing refined no processed foods staying away from liquid carbohydrates in any way shape or form in addition if they have really severe fatty liver to go on a very low carb diet sometimes what that looks like is no carbs for breakfast carbs for lunch no carbs for dinner so they're eating sort of like a strict paleo diet where for breakfast maybe it's like eggs with avocado and then lunch they can have a regular meal with rice or bread or pasta whatever it is and then for dinner is like salmon with sauteed vegetables there's no starches potatoes rice pasta nothing in general very low carb diet tends to help sometimes fasting can help and resistance training like going to the gym four or 5 days a week you can see really really good improvements in the digestive system and the liver in that way as well but primarily when they come in we're using those traditional herbal formulas because they're very very effective and also very few people come in and they don't have other symptoms typically of the digestive system that we're also trying to treat upper GI issues like reflux gallbladder issues bowel issues high blood pressure high blood sugar we can also make big improvements on those with the formulas as well so very important concept to be familiar with because we are seeing it more and more and in younger and younger and younger people I think it's purely because of processed food soda just the abundance of high calorie low nutrition food that we're seeing that's only gotten worse I think in American culture but these are some things that you can do that have real evidence behind them from a integrative alternative point of view now don't forget guys I also see a limited number of new patients every month in my private practice in Los Angeles or virtually via tele medicine if you want to reach out and book with me just call my clinic go to Dr alex.com clinic or look at the info Below in the description of this video and just email or call us to reach out and again before you go I have a related video for you right there