Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease & fructose

Seems lately that I’m learning something new every day, and I love it. It’s also funny how, after a few years of reading & absorbing health info, I can easily think I understand stuff. Then I read some more, little nuggets of wisdom start popping up, and light bulbs—ok, make those compact fluorescent light blubs—come on over my head. I love it when that happens.

It happened today.

I’ve been reading all sorts of wonderful real food & health blogs for the past few weeks (links coming soon!), and have been getting loads of information from them. Today I learned that agave nectar is not a natural sweetener, and reading a wonderful post by Food Renegade made even more lights come on when she got to talking about fructose.

BTW, agave nectar is a highly processed sweetener and contains MORE fructose than high fructose corn syrup! I’d been thinking of trying it, but not now.

I know that fructose, and any excess sugars for that matter, are the real evils in the food supply. Too much sugar (actual sugar as well as the kind from carbs) is behind so many of our health problems (and political food issues). But I’d never really gotten my head around the nitty-gritty specifics of why fructose is bad; I mean I understand in a general sense, but I did not know this:

“The sugar that occurs in nature is called “levulose,” sometimes called “L-fructose.” Fructose, on the other hand, is a man-made sugar created by the refining process.

‘…Refined fructose is processed in the body through the liver, rather than digested in the intestine. Levulose [fructose from fruit] is digested in the intestine. (source)’

I want you to pay special attention to those last two sentences, for they are a huge key that will help unlock the mystery of why fructose is bad for you.

Because fructose is digested in your liver, it is immediately turned into triglycerides or stored body fat. Since it doesn’t get converted to blood glucose like other sugars, it doesn’t raise or crash your blood sugar levels. Hence the claim that it is safe for diabetics.

But it isn’t.

That’s because fructose inhibits leptin levels — the hormone your body uses to tell you that you’re full. In other words, fructose makes you want to eat more. Besides contributing to weight gain, it also makes you gain the most dangerous kind of fat.” (Read the entire post at Food Renegade here)

This clicked in so many ways, such as why processed foods rarely fill you up and make you want more (I’d always joked that they put crack cocaine in it) and why there are so many problems with eating it in general. Mess with how your body regulates its sugar, and you mess with fire. This also clicked with something else I read yesterday about how a regular body with normal blood sugars only contains a tablespoon of sugar…and most people consume something like 1.5-2 cups of sugar a day.

All this also jelled with yet another article I’d read recently* about non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) and that it’s becoming a new problem. This is when excess fat accumulates in your liver, and if it gets bad enough, can cause liver failure. According to mayoclinic.com, it is “thought to be very common.” Hrm. I kept reading at that site…they list the following as risk factors: “certain medications, gastric bypass surgery, high cholesterol, high levels of triglycerides in the blood, malnutrition, metabolic syndrome, obesity, rapid weight loss, toxins and chemicals, such as pesticides, type 2 diabetes, Wilson’s disease.” Now, I obviously do not have a medical degree, but what I see listed here are many conditions that are caused or exacerbated by eating the Standard American Diet, which means mostly processed food loaded with HFCS and other sugars. Such a diet will obviously overload your liver with fructose, and hence the “common” development of at least a mild form of NAFLD. And then the Mayo Clinic site says, “Nonalcoholic fatty liver disease occurs when your liver has trouble breaking down fats, causing fat to build up in your liver tissue. Doctors aren’t sure what causes this. The wide range of diseases and conditions linked to nonalcoholic fatty liver disease is so diverse that it’s difficult to pinpoint any one cause.”

Uh. Hello? I see a fairly obvious cause, myself.

Ok, ok, I’ll let them off the hook. There are lots of reasons why that website has to toe the line of medical-political-correctness. And once I started searching for NAFLD and fructose, lots and lots of sites came up. So many, in fact, that I am sitting here feeling sheepish, as if I should have know all this already, but yet happy that I’m getting enough facts straight in my head to start making sense of all the food info I’m taking in. Here are a few of them:

• “How to fatten your liver” – Whole Health Source
• “Foie gras, c’est moi?” – Dr. Eades (from 2005! I’m sooo late to the party)
• “Missing link between fructose, insulin resistance found” – sciencedaily.com
• “Consuming fructose-sweetened, not glucose-sweetened, beverages increases visceral adiposity and lipids and decreases insulin sensitivity in overweight/obese humans” – Journal of Clinical Investigation

There is lots more out there. I love the internet.

The good news is that the liver can heal itself, and once we stop force-feeding it fructose, it can repair the damage done. The body really is amazing.

*Yes, I’ve been doing a LOT of reading lately in & among my other things to do. This means I tend to stay up way too late at night. I think the crack is in the internet…