The congress of liver specialists reminded us of this a few days ago. An epidemic of a silent liver disease would affect up to 10% of French people: it is NASH, which was formerly called fatty cirrhosis, in opposition to that of alcoholic origin. With the same symptoms and the same prognosis: bad if left unchecked. However, it is reversible.
It has been called soda disease, fatty liver disease, “junk food” disease. It has obtained its letters of nobility and the discovery, by millions of French, of this name, NASH, when Pierre Ménes, the sports columnist, has widely recounted his ordeal. A hellish descent of his vitality, until the liver transplant which saved his life, last year.
NASH, it means in medical jargon and in English, “nonalcoholic cirrhosis”. To fix the origin, because it is the excessive consumption of fat and especially sugar that is involved. The new sanction of obesity, from which, it seems, one in three French people.
NASH is a silent, symptomless disease that insidiously breaks down the liver. This form of hepatitis, in the absence of virus and any alcoholism, linked only to food, causes cirrhosis and liver cancer, with the only outcome being transplant since there is currently no drug.
“He was a liver” that never made people talk about him.
The one that the doctors nickname the “prince of the organism” is able to withstand the worst torments. Schematically, we can say that a liver destroyed at 80%, continues to perform almost all of its work. But, 81% sick, the whole body dies.
This shadow worker has another amazing property: he is able to regenerate himself. Transplant half a liver and, a few months later, you can count on a whole liver. And it is rather good news in a country where precisely one does not spare its liver. Because the role of this most voluminous organ of our body, if not the heaviest, is a real chemical factory which guarantees the functioning of all the other organs. Hence the verdict of death when it no longer works.
Who says “factory” first means treatment of waste and, in particular, toxics. This is why in the event of drug or food poisoning, it is first of all the liver which “clinks”. For example death, when we consume poisonous mushrooms, occurs by a brutal and massive destruction of the liver. It is moreover an absolute indication of the liver transplant in emergency, which makes pass these patients in front of all the future transplant recipients waiting.
Speaking of toasting, the main enemy of the liver has long been alcohol.
Alcohol, as a liver poison, was joined and overtaken on the podium by sugar and fat. Because the liver is also a high place of storage … of essential elements such as sugar, iron or mineral salts and for the production of products such as cholesterol.
Storage in the liver … it is in the extreme what is called, in duck or goose, fatty liver, or steatosis which is nothing other than a species of liver overloaded with fat artificially induced in animals by force-feeding. In humans, an excessive diet that is too rich in fat, but sometimes simply in sugar (soda disease), first of all causes this famous overload of liver fat, steatosis, which persists will ignite and get a little bit fibrous, NASH, and then if the fibrosis continues and gets organized, it’s all going to end up in cirrhosis. Steatosis and NASH are reversible, not cirrhosis.
Jaundice is not always there
Tradition associates liver disease with jaundice. And this is true in case of disease on the excretory tract of the liver. The explanation is simple. Our blood, like everything else in the body, ages. Red blood cells do not last forever and it is the liver that has to get rid of them. This is done through the bile. If the purification is done badly or the bile ducts are blocked, the level of these degradation substances contained in our blood, increases which colors our skin in yellow.
Fortunately, nature almost always takes over. And year after year, it is two liters of bile that we secrete every day so that at each meal our digestion, in particular that of fats, is harmonious. In practice, therefore, there is no jaundice during steatosis or NASH, and it only appears in very advanced cirrhses. NASH is therefore really silent!
Preserving your liver means less sugar and a little bit of walking
So, even if our liver is almost eternal, this is no reason not to respect it and in the same way that we protect our heart, that we warm our joints or that we exercise our memory, going on a diet is not only to improve your figure but to let the “little prince” breathe a little bit. You have to lose belly fat and, for that, you have to reduce your sugar intake and do some physical exercise.
For several years, unbeknownst to the general public, doctors and health authorities in Western countries have not hesitated to qualify NASH as “the scourge of the century”. An epidemic all the more worrying as it spreads discreetly through the contents of our plates.
Late breakers time at # ILC2018! Naga Chalasani presenting the multicenter randomized dbl blind PBL-control trial of Galectin-3 inhibitor in patients w #NASH #Cirrhosis and portal hypertension # ILC2018 pic.twitter.com/1fpenGhBC3
– EASL Education (@EASLedu) April 14, 2018
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