#1 FASTEST Way to Reverse FATTY LIVER Naturally

Hello, Health Champions! Today, we're going to  talk about the absolute fastest way to reverse a fatty liver. This is such an important topic  because 35 to 40% of the world's population has fatty liver today—that's several billion people. 

There are two classifications of fatty liver. The first is called alcoholic fatty liver, and the  second is non-alcoholic fatty liver. It used to be that alcohol was basically the only reason someone  had a fatty liver, so fatty liver was simply an alcoholic fatty liver.

Today, however, the vast  majority of fatty livers are non-alcoholic. As I was prepping for this video, I came  across some questions where people were asking, "Can you have both an alcoholic and  a non-alcoholic fatty liver? " Online, the answer was "yes," but we need to  understand that a fatty liver is just a fatty liver—you can't have two kinds,  but you can have two causes.

Those causes would be sugar and alcohol. Some people  may have alcohol as the primary cause, some may have sugar, and some may have both,  but in the end, all you have is a fatty liver. One of the fastest ways to reverse a fatty liver  is fasting.

If you did an extended fast, say, for a few months, that would probably  take care of the fatty liver. However, I would never recommend such a long fast,  especially if it's not supervised. There are people who have fasted for that length of time  under medical supervision, but I still don't feel that's the optimal way to do it.

Instead,  I recommend some form of intermittent fasting. When you do intermittent fasting, keep  changing it up. Don't just stick to one pattern.

For example, you could do OMAD  (one meal a day) for a while, then switch to a 42-hour fast occasionally, and perhaps do  16:8 fasting most of the time. Some people may prefer to base it on OMAD, while others may prefer  16:8. Find what you feel best with, but even so, change it up a bit.

This way, you keep your  body adapting, which is always a good thing. When we talk about fatty liver, we need to  understand that there are different degrees of severity. We can talk about fat in the liver,  where there is some degree of fatty infiltration, but you could also reach a more severe  state where you have inflammation and, eventually, some actual tissue damage and reduced  functionality of the liver's functional tissue.

In grade one, which is what most people have,  there is mild to moderate infiltration of fat in the liver, but there is no inflammation and  no damage. The fat itself, early on, is not damaging—it’s just there, starting to infiltrate  the liver. Therefore, if you run some blood work and get liver enzymes such as ALT, AST, and GGT,  which are classically considered liver enzymes, you probably wouldn’t see a change in those  unless there was some damage or inflammation.

In grade two, there is a bit more fatty  infiltration, along with some inflammation and possibly some tissue damage. Here is where  you might start seeing the liver enzymes go up. In grade three of fatty liver,  there is severe infiltration, severe inflammation, and probable tissue damage.

If fatty liver progresses further, it can turn  into NASH, which is non-alcoholic steatohepatitis. The “-itis” at the end indicates inflammation,  so now we definitely have inflammation, and this is where tissue damage begins  to appear. If this continues to progress, it can lead to cirrhosis and even cancer.

This  is why we want to catch it at an early stage. It’s an incredibly common condition, but it is  reversible and very closely related to insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes. In fact, it  is almost synonymous with type 2 diabetes.

The next thing you want to do is stop  drinking alcohol, and we're going to go through some reasons that most people probably  don’t think about. First of all, alcohol turns into fat. When the liver metabolizes alcohol, the  excess energy turns into fat.

In the process of metabolizing alcohol—breaking it down and  turning it into fat, which is a less harmful substance than alcohol—the liver uses up certain  nutrients. So, the more alcohol we consume, the more these nutrients are depleted, which  predisposes us to a deficiency. The liver needs these resources to perform its usual functions,  but when more alcohol and sugar are present, more nutrients are used up for the wrong purposes. 

Some of the main nutrients affected are vitamins B2, B3, vitamin C, and glutathione, which is  the body's primary intracellular antioxidant. Glutathione keeps the body clean by breaking  down free radicals and reducing oxidative stress. Alcohol is also a diuretic, affecting the brain  and pituitary by blocking a hormone called antidiuretic hormone (ADH), which helps balance  fluid levels in the body.

When the pituitary releases ADH, the kidneys reabsorb more fluid  and sodium. However, if alcohol suppresses ADH, the kidneys reabsorb less fluid, resulting  in a diuretic effect, which makes you go to the bathroom more often. Anyone who’s had a  drink or two knows that you end up going to the bathroom a lot more.

One of the biggest  reasons people get a hangover is that they lose so much fluid and so many electrolytes.  This is why margaritas are served with salt on the rim—the salt helps compensate for  the loss of sodium due to reduced ADH. Alcohol also affects nutrient regulation in the  body.

It decreases the absorption of certain nutrients and increases the excretion of others,  leading to lower levels of vitamins A, B1, B6, B9, and B12, as well as minerals like magnesium,  zinc, sodium, and potassium. However, alcohol increases the absorption rate of iron, which  can be problematic for most people, especially if they are insulin resistant. Excess iron can  lead to a condition called hemochromatosis, or iron overload, which can mimic insulin resistance  and make it harder to reverse.

Iron overload is also harsh on the pancreas and liver, which are  crucial organs in managing insulin resistance. Lastly, alcohol interferes with choline,  a nutrient incredibly important for liver function, fat metabolism,  and reversing fatty liver. Next, you’ll want to eliminate sugar.

When we  talk about sugar, we’re usually referring to table sugar, added white sugar, high-fructose  corn syrup, or similar substances, which are roughly 50% glucose and 50% fructose.  High-fructose corn syrup is closer to 45-55, but the principle is the same. The reason to avoid  these sugars is that they contain two molecules: glucose and fructose.

Fructose, which makes  up about 50% of table sugar by weight, is almost as damaging to the liver as alcohol.  Only the liver can break down fructose, and it imposes a similar level of stress  and nutrient depletion on the liver. Everything we discussed about alcohol—how it  depletes nutrients and stresses the liver—applies similarly to fructose.

The big picture effects are  devastating, especially when it comes to children, who often consume far too much of this sugar.  If you had to choose between giving your kids vodka or fructose—like a sugary cereal and orange  juice versus a shot of vodka or two—it’s almost a toss-up in terms of the harm it can cause. So let's talk about moderation because that means different things to different  people.

That's a very popular saying, "All things in moderation," and yes, I agree, but what does  that mean? So I think with alcohol it should be one to two drinks per day, but not every day,  and typically it's going to depend on body size. But typically they talk about one drink a day for  women and up to two drinks a day for men.

And then when it comes to sugar, the recommendations are  that we should eat no more than 50 grams per day or 10% of calories, but in reality, most countries  today eat more than 100 grams of added sugar per day. And it's not just the United States, and the  United States isn't even in the top. There are a lot of countries eating over 100 grams of sugar a  day.

But in my opinion and my experience, I think moderation when it comes to sugar is something  somewhere between 10 to 20 grams per day, and that's for someone who is healthy, not someone  who's trying to reverse a condition. That's someone who's trying to maintain and also someone  who does not have such strong addictive tendencies that they fall off the wagon, that if they have  10 to 20 grams, then they start sugar binging. But if you're watching this video, chances are  that you are trying to reverse a fatty liver disease and/or type 2 diabetes, and again, most  of the time these two are synonymous because they coincide most of the time.

And in those cases,  I think that you should have zero added sugar. There's really no reason to add that extra load  if you're trying to clean up that liver and give it the best possible chance. And then we also want  to reduce carbohydrates overall, and the heaviest sources of carbohydrates, the densest sources, are  things like rice, grain, bread, and pasta because they are anywhere from 60 to 80% pure glucose.

So  unlike table sugar, which has about half glucose, half fructose, starch doesn't have any fructose,  and that's why table sugar is so much worse, but starch still raises blood sugar because it  is 100% of these glucose molecules, and they are strung together in very, very long chains of  hundreds or thousands of molecules, and they get broken down very, very quickly. We have enzymes in  the mouth called amylase that start chopping off these glucose molecules very, very quickly, and  glucose has a high glycemic index, so starches, most of these starches, actually have a higher  glycemic index than sugar. So that means when we eat a starch, it raises blood sugar faster, blood  glucose goes up faster if we eat bread than if we eat sugar, and anytime blood glucose goes up,  now we're going to have high insulin.

If we do this frequently, now we get insulin resistance.  But as you probably know, lots of human cultures have eaten rice and grain and bread and  pasta for thousands or hundreds of years, and they don't develop metabolic diseases until  they add both of these together. When you have the starch and the sugar, now you start creating  problems.

But if you're trying to reverse it, once you've established the problem and you're  trying to reverse it, now you need to try to remove both of them as much as possible. So if  you're healthy and just maintaining your metabolic health and you're insulin sensitive, I think  that your carbohydrate intake should probably be somewhere between 30 and 100 grams per day, and  most of that should be high-fiber vegetables. But if you're trying to reverse a condition like  fatty liver or type 2 diabetes, now I think you need to go down from there and come down maybe  to somewhere between zero and 50 grams a day.

And I don't think that zero is a great idea all the  time. I think that even if you're trying to be in ketosis some of the time, then you don't have to  be at zero. You can still eat a lot of non-starchy vegetables because you need that fiber; you  need that variety of plant food to maintain your gut health.

The next thing you want to do to  reverse a fatty liver is to increase healthy fats, and this doesn't mean that you go on a fat binge  or you go crazy, but you also can't be afraid of fats because the things that damage the liver  are sugar and carbohydrates, and if you're going to drop those down, you need to get some other  source of energy. You can't just eat protein, and that's the problem with a lot of people. When  they go from a traditional or a high-carbohydrate, high-processed food diet, now they just try to eat  less sugar and less carbs, but you have to fill in something else.

Otherwise, you're going to starve.  So healthy fats come from things like avocado, from nuts and seeds; it comes from wild fish, from  grass-fed meat; there is healthy fat in pastured eggs and chickens. And then you want to cook with  things like extra virgin olive oil, grass-fed butter, and coconut oil.

So ideally, if you get  the really high quality of wild fish and grass-fed meat, now you don't have to go for the low-fat  varieties. It's okay if it has a little fat in it. But if you can't find those good sources all  the time, then try to get the lean version, and then instead you want to add in some cooking fat  of a good quality.

And next, you want to reduce your toxic load, and this is something that a lot  of people miss. They've heard of organic food, and they know that's a little bit better because  they spray stuff on food, but we really need to understand how much of a burden this is for  the body. Because when they test chemicals, they test them one at a time, and they test them  on some animals, and they raise the dose until the animal dies, and then they reduce the level, and  they say maybe 1% of that is safe.

And this is how we get chemicals that are generally regarded as  safe, or GRAS. But they don't test these chemicals together, and in our environment, we have 3,000  to 5,000 chemicals in our immediate environment, in our air, food, and water every day. So even  tiny, tiny, tiny amounts add up because there are so many of them, and this is why it's something  that we need to start paying attention to.

And one thing that you can do is to eat organic. I don't  eat 100% organic, but I eat most things organic, and I have learned sort of which ones really  matter. So I would never buy berries or apples or something like that that are not organic because  I know they are on the dirty dozen list.

And this dirty dozen list changes from time to time, so  you want to go and look up what the most sprayed plants are in your area, and whatever food they  use the most pesticides and chemicals on, you either buy organic or you don't eat it; you eat  something else. Next thing a lot of people miss are things like natural cleaning products. All  these things that you spray and you wipe and you put on things, they are actually chemicals  that once you get in the body, the liver has to break them down, those toxins.

Same thing with  personal care hygiene products and cosmetics. Try to do the natural as possible. Also, use glass and  stainless steel for your cooking.

Don't store food in plastic; never heat things in plastic. I think  it's okay to keep some dry goods maybe in plastic, but never heat them, never keep liquid, and  especially not acidic liquids with any type of acidity like tomatoes or lemon juice or  something like that in plastic because it is going to leach plastic into the liquid. Also, when  it comes to cookware, you want to make sure you don't use Teflon or aluminum cookware or  aluminum foil or anything like that.

And then it's probably a good idea to get a water  filter. If you're in a house and you know you're going to be there for a while, it's probably  worth investing in a house-wide water filter because you can't drink the tap water, and you  don't want to drink water from plastic bottles. So either you buy things in glass bottles,  which gets very expensive, or you get some kind of water filter.

And you can put one on the  tap; that's okay, but again, if you're in a house, it might be worth getting a house-wide system. And to reverse your fatty liver as fast as possible, it's a good idea to exercise,  to increase your exercise, but you want to increase the aerobic exercise. Aerobic means  "with air," which means that you don't exercise to the point of muscle burn or heavy huffing and  puffing, because then you are not aerobic anymore.

The advantage of aerobic exercise is that you  can do it for a long time. Aerobic exercise uses mostly fat, and it is also low-stress on the body.  These are all good things because it's low stress, you can do it for a long time, and it uses  almost exclusively fat.

If you have time, I would suggest doing this for 30 minutes or  more; you can do it for several hours if you like. Then there's anaerobic exercise. A lot of people,  when they go to the gym, join a spin class, or go to some sort of organized aerobics, are actually  doing anaerobic exercise because they drive the heart rate so high that you get muscle burn and  start huffing and puffing.

The problem now is that you’re not just burning fat but a mixture of fat  and carbohydrates. When you use those up, you tend to want to compensate by eating more carbohydrates  afterward. It is also much harder and places much more stress on the body, so especially if you're  not very fit or young, your body may tend to break down more with anaerobic exercise.

It's not that  you can't do it at all—just don't overdo it. If you enjoy it, do it once or twice a week, but  do the bulk of your exercise as purely aerobic. There’s also a special category called HIIT,  or high-intensity interval training.

This is where you do something super intense  for a very short time. Now, again, you're using fat and carbohydrates, but I still  recommend this, even though it's very high-stress, because it challenges the body. When  you challenge the body, it has to adapt, get better, and release a lot of growth  hormone, which is fat-burning.

So even if you just do your high-intensity training for a  few minutes, you still release growth hormone, which increases your metabolism and fat burning  for hours or even days afterward. The key is not to overdo it. For example, if you're running  or sprinting up a hill, you might sprint for 15 to 30 seconds, then take a break for 30 seconds  to a minute.

Do this maybe three to five times, but no more. The total intense time might be no  more than three minutes for the entire workout, and you don’t do that more than two to three  times a week because it can become too much and start breaking down the body. But if you do it  just right, it can be incredibly beneficial.

So, you do a lot of aerobic exercise, some  anaerobic if you enjoy it, and very little HIIT. The next step to reverse fatty liver  is to add in some liver-friendly foods. These would be things like leafy greens  and cruciferous vegetables.

They contain compounds that are very beneficial and assist  the liver in breaking down toxins and reversing fatty liver. Some examples are broccoli,  cauliflower, arugula, and Brussels sprouts. Then you want to add in some omega-3-rich  foods.

Omega-3 fatty acids are found in foods like salmon and sardines, but eggs can also be  hugely beneficial, specifically the egg yolk, not the white, as it’s the yolk that  contains these nutrients. Make sure it’s a high-quality, pasture-raised  egg, as mass-produced eggs don’t have good omega-3 ratios. A mass-produced egg  could have a 20:1 omega-6 to omega-3 ratio, while pasture-raised eggs would be closer to 1:1,  so quality is critical.

You also want to add seeds like flax, chia, and hemp, which are rich in  omega-3. However, don’t rely solely on these, as depending on your genetics, stress  level, and health, you may not convert much or any of the omega-3s in flax and chia into the  essential fish-oil-type fatty acids EPA and DHA. Also, include garlic and turmeric;  I would throw in ginger as well, as they contain compounds  that can assist the liver.

There are also supplements you can take. It’s  best to get most of your nutrients from food, but if your liver is stressed or  you live in a toxic environment, you might need some extra help. Vitamin E  is beneficial, and the supplement I use in the clinic is called Cataplex E because it’s a  pure food-based source.

I often use fish oil, such as Super Omega or cod liver oil. You want  a fish oil with high dosages of EPA and DHA so you’re not taking a dozen capsules for minimal  benefit. Then there are supplements that directly support the liver; my favorite is Livaplex  from Standard Process, and they also have a product called choline, a nutrient that  helps the liver.

Choline is found in egg yolk, but adding a bit extra might be a good idea.  I'll include some links to good sources below. There are several things you can do to  increase how fast you reverse fatty liver, but the number one fastest way is to combine  all of them.

Don't try to fix it overnight or go crazy with one thing—just do all of them.  A little progress in many different areas will make a big difference quickly. So, do some  intermittent fasting, stop alcohol and sugar, increase your exercise the way we discussed,  reduce your carbohydrate intake to a level your body can tolerate without slowing down fat  burning in your liver, and increase healthy fats.

For every decrease in carbs, increase  fats. Then reduce toxins and support your liver with good food and some supplements. And,  of course, losing weight is always beneficial.

There is something called a fatty liver  index, which is a formula that predicts if you have fatty liver. It considers your  body mass index (BMI), waist circumference, blood triglyceride levels, and a liver enzyme  called GGT. Of these factors, BMI and waist circumference are the most significant,  while triglycerides and GGT matter less.

Most people with large bellies likely have  fatty liver. Not all, because it is possible to be overweight and metabolically healthy, but  most of them do. Losing weight is important, and everything we’ve discussed here is the fastest,  safest, and most stable way to lose weight.

Losing weight, in this case, would simply be a side  effect or a bonus from doing all these things. If you enjoyed this video, you're going  to love that one! And if you truly want to master health by understanding how the  body really works, make sure you subscribe, hit that bell, and turn on all notifications  so you never miss a life-saving video!