40% of people have this, and most don't even know it.

This is a fatty liver, and you can have it even if you're skinny.

If you do nothing about it, it can kill you.

Here's how it happens, and what to do to fix it:

The liver is the body's central hub for metabolism, including that of fat.

The problems arise when the liver has more fat than it can deal with.

There are 3 sources of fat the liver deals with:

1. Fat from the diet
2. Fat it makes from carbs
3. Free fatty acids from the fat tissue

There are 2 ways the liver can get rid of fat:

1. Burn it for energy
2. Send it back into the blood for other organs

If you have more of the first 3 than the second 2, you get a fatty liver. Pretty simple - it's an imbalance of fat metabolism in the liver.

But what actually causes this imbalance?

The VAST MAJORITY of fat in fatty liver disease is FREE FATTY ACIDS (or non-esterified fatty acids, NEFA).

These fatty acids are released from the fat tissue during:

◇ Stress
◇ Infection
◇ Insulin resistance
◇ Low carb intake

and get taken up by the liver.

Since most liver fat comes from the fat tissue, and that gets released during stress,

lowering stress is absolutely vital for solving fatty liver disease.

Below is my masterclass on reducing stress.

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Inflammation drives liver fat production.

Your liver does make fat from carbs, but:

1. This is normally a negligible portion (5-10%) of the fat in the liver
2. Inflammation is what causes MORE fat to be produced from carbs.

Specifically, inflammation from bacteria in the gut.

Probiotics reverse fatty liver disease in 50% of people.

Because the gut is such a key chronic source of inflammation, using Lacto/Bifido probiotics can actually reduce liver fat.

Probiotics can reduce the systemic inflammation ("leaky gut") from gut bacteria.

Optimizing gut function is also a top priority when it comes to fixing fatty liver.

If you haven't checked out our master gut thread below, you ought to.

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Serotonin causes fatty liver disease.

Serotonin is produced in the gut in response to inflammatory / irritating stimuli.

It gets released into the blood where it drives:

◈ Obesity
◈ Insulin resistance
◈ Inflammation
◈ Fatty liver

A lot of fatty liver starts in the gut.

More on serotonin and the gut here:

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Cortisol drives liver fat production.

Once again we see that dietary carbs are not necessarily the enemy,

but the underlying state of the body can start turning carbs into fat more.

There's actually a condition called glucocorticoid induced fatty liver for this reason.

Oxidative stress is a primary cause of fatty liver disease.

The liver cannot export fat properly with sufficient oxidative stress.

This keeps fat in the liver.

Here, the enzyme superoxide dismutase (SOD) is shown to play an indispensable role in fat secretion from the liver.

Superoxide dismutase is dependent on both copper and zinc.

Most of us are OK on copper, but low on zinc, which can lead to oxidative stress and thus fatty liver.

I've written at length about the importance of zinc here, as well as how to get enough:

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Autophagy protects against fatty liver.

Superoxide dismutase was also shown to be vital for lipophagy - the process by which cells degrade fat properly so they can burn it.

Without lipophagy, the liver's capacity to burn fat is impaired.

Caffeine reverses fatty liver disease... by inducing autophagy.

Caffeine is probably the most protective thing for your liver imaginable.

It helps the liver shed its fat very effectively, and this is partially because it helps induce lipophagy.

Coffee is literally known as the magic bean for liver diseases for this reason.

Drinking more coffee is incredibly protective against every liver disease you can think of.

More on that here:

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SEED OILS are REQUIRED for fatty liver disease - even with alcohol.

In fact, fatty liver disease wasn't discovered until a few decades ago, as we started eating more seed oils.

The oxidative damage of the fats in seed oils are what damages the liver and impairs fat export.

Beef tallow prevents alcoholic fatty liver disease.

Corn oil destroys the liver.

In fact, supplementing pure saturated fat can reverse liver disease in animals.

Remove seed oils - fatty liver is reversed.

Reducing linoleic acid, the main fat in seed oils, to 4% of the diet literally cured every single patient of their fatty liver here.

The metabolites of linoleic acid are markers of liver disease.

Seed oils cause fatty liver - vitamin E reverses it.

Vitamin E is essentially the antidote to seed oils.

In this study, we showed that a high linoleic acid (LA, the main fat in seed oils) diet induced obesity and fatty liver.

Adding in vitamin E stopped both.

More on the importance + benefits and how to use vitamin E here:

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