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Fatty liver

Fatty liver disease is when your liver has increased and you have abnormal amounts of fat. When there is too much fat, it makes it difficult for the liver to work properly. The main cause of this is heavy drinking but you can still suffer with this even if you are not a drinker. Fatty liver disease can be prevented and improves if you do not drink alcohol but if you continue to, it can result in more serious issues, such as alcoholic hepatitis (swelling of the liver that brings on nausea and vomiting as well as jaundice) and alcoholic cirrhosis (a build up of scar tissue that can bring on high blood pressure, internal bleeding, enlarged spleen and liver failure). If you are not a drinker, fatty liver disease can be brought on by type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol levels or metabolic syndrome.

SYMPTOMS OF FATTY LIVER DISEASE

Initially, fatty liver disease doesn’t have very noticeable symptoms and the only way you can really tell at the start if you have an enlarged liver is during a physical examination at the doctors. However, if it progresses and the liver becomes inflamed, it can cause stomach pains, general weakness, loss of appetite, confusion and tiredness.

Treatments

Treatment for a fatty liver involves changing your lifestyle and diet. In worse cases you may be given medication or recommended for surgery.

Healthy Diet and Lifestyle

This is the usual way of managing a fatter liver. You can follow some steps to adopt a healthier lifestyle:

  • Healthy diet — having a balanced diet of fruits, vegetables, carbohydrates, and protein but which is also low in sugar, fat, and salt. It could be recommended for you to try having smaller portions of food which can also help. If you struggle to change your diet, a dietitian can help come up with a plan for your new healthy diet and give you suggestions and recommendation on what you can and cannot eat.
  • Lose weight — it shown that losing more than ten percent of your body weight can also remove fat from the liver as well. Aim for a BMI of 18.5 to 24.9.
  • Exercise often — Try some moderate-intense activity such as biking or walking or swimming. Any exercise can help with your fatty liver, even if you don’t lose weight.

Medication

Various different medications can help with a fatty liver as none specifically for it has been made yet. Rather than cure the fatty liver, medications can be used to treat the symptoms that come with it. Your doctor might recommend medication to treat:

  • High cholesterol — such as statins like atorvastatin, simvastatin, rosuvastatin to stop the procedure of making cholesterol, or aspirin to prevent blood clots, or ezetimibe to avoid absorbing cholesterol.
  • High blood pressure — such as angiotensin- converting enzymes like perindopril, lisinopril, enalapril to relax blood vessel to reduce blood pressure, or angiotensin-2 blockers like losartan, valsartan, candesartan which also widen blood vessel and relieve blood pressure.
  • Type 2 diabetes — such as metformin to lower blood sugar.
  • Obesity — such as orlistat which can help you avoid gaining more weight.

Surgery

If your symptoms worsen to the point of severe cirrhosis or your liver stops working then you might have to have a liver transplant. This is where your diseased liver will be removed and replaced with a healthy liver from a deceased donor. There is also the option of having part of the liver removed and replaced by a living donor. Due to the fact that the liver can regenerate itself, the transplanted part inside you and remaining parts of liver inside the donor can grow back to a normal size.

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