Non Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease (NAFLD) and Non Alcoholis Steatohepatitis (NASH):
These disease’s (NASH being the more advanced version of NAFLD) are becoming increasingly diagnosed in North America and eventually lead to liver failure. The current treatment is the typical recommendation to “lose weight” and put people on Metformin. Metformin is a diabetes drug not intended for NAFLD or NASH and has many complications such as muscle fatigue, lactic acidosis and causing a B12 deficiency. Many people on Metformin have been shown to become dependent and need to increase their dosages for it to have any effect. A small handful of studies were performed (most by its pharmaceutical manufacturer) trying to find a benefit of Metformin in patients with NAFLD or NASH. May of the studies methods were very questionable, but the majority of them actually shows no significant benefit. Metformin however, is now being prescribes by DR’s to treat these two diseases. Basically there was a sharp increase in NASH and NAFLD and no medication to manage it so a big push was made so that something could be made available on the market for people suffering from the 2 liver diseases. Unfortunately Metformin is not very effective and will not stop the cause of the problem. The root of the problem needs to be looked at to stop the issue from progressing or coming back. In this case one of the major factors or issues is Fructose, more specifically High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS). If you actually look at the pathways of certain nutrients in the human body you would notice that the liver is responsible for metabolising 100% of fructose. This means that people who are ingesting pop and drinks loaded with HFCS are putting an immense strain on their liver. This is why many young children are now being diagnosed with NAFLD; they aren’t drinking alcohol, however they are showing the same liver issues as a heavy alcoholic. To me it’s very clear as to what the cause is, there has been a sharp increase in non alcohol related liver disease that correlates with a sharp increase in highly processed fructose consumption. Since fructose can only be metabolised by the liver, the liver becomes extremely stresses (just like in an alcoholic). Losing weight may help a person, but the weight gain is not the issue, it is the excess fructose consumption.
Here’s my take:
If you are trying to get very lean or are trying to stay very lean, then avoid fructose (except from veggies). Just ensure that you are using complex (wheat free) starch based carbs to supplement the fructose you are taking out of your diet. You do not want to starve your body of what you need, just give it an optimal amount of nutrients that it needs. If you are already at a healthy BF% and are not looking to stay very lean and want to just be healthy, then go ahead and have 1-2 whole fruit a day. I never recommend drinking fruit juices; if you are going to ingest fruit then eat it whole so that you are ingesting all of the enzymes and fibre. Fruit juices, even ones with no added sugar and not from concentrate are pasteurized voiding all of the enzymes and getting rid of the fibre. It is essentially concentrating all of the fruit sugars. If you do eat fruit, stick with the most potent nutrient dense ones and ingest it upon waking up or in the middle of the day.
I hope this article offered you some insight into the different effect that two different sugars have on the body and will help you make certain nutritional decisions down the road.
Hipfit 