This vitamin is the key to protecting your liver and overall health
Our secret disease
It might be me. It might be you. Or your sister. Or your son.
Nearly one in every four Americans has a disease we don’t know about.
It’s called a “silent epidemic” because there are literally no symptoms in the early stages. But as it progresses, patients — who don’t even realize they’re patients yet — develop sharply increased risk of type 2 diabetes, liver cancer, and heart disease.
Either of us (or any of the other 70 million Americans I’m talking about) could easily be among the millions who have this disease. But we can also avoid it (or reverse its progression) by doing two simple things: 1) Make a slight alteration in our diet, and 2) increase our intake of just one vitamin.
The true epidemic
The disease is nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD).
It begins slowly, as fat accumulation in the liver. Then it becomes complicated by inflammation. Then liver scar tissue develops. Beyond that, the disease can play out in a number of different ways, as I mentioned above–all of them potentially deadly.
Fatty liver disease was thought to be strictly a disease of alcoholism for most of the 20th century. But when obesity was first recognized as a mounting problem in the 1970s, doctors began to make the obesity/FLD connection and eventually added the designation of “nonalcoholic.”
This is the true epidemic behind the obesity “epidemic.”
In a recent study, researchers tested vitamin E and metformin (a diabetes drug) on patients with NAFLD. Neither the drug nor the vitamin supplement had much effect.
Dr. Spreen sent me that study along with this note: “The nutrient CURE for non-alcoholic fatty liver has been known for over 80 years, and it was discovered during conventional diabetes research! So, anyone wanting to study something really legitimate along this line could have done a 10-second Medline search and come up with the prime nutrient candidate (which is a member of the B-complex family, not E).”
That B-family “prime nutrient candidate” is choline.
One of the best sources of choline is egg yolks. And, of course, for many years, mainstream nutritionists went mad and foolishly equated eggs with poison because they contained cholesterol. So while millions of people avoided eggs for a couple of decades, quite a few people became obese–ironically avoiding the very food that could help curb obesity-driven NAFLD.
Along with that vitamin E study, Dr. Spreen included a recent article published by the Weston A. Price Foundation. In the article, Chris Masterjohn calls NAFLD an epidemic of nutritional imbalance.
He writes: “It is likely caused by the overabundance of calorie-rich, nutrient-poor refined foods and the banishment of traditional sources of choline like liver and egg yolks from the modern American menu.”
In addition to reducing NAFLD risk, choline also checks the rise of homocysteine (the amino acid that promotes artery plaque buildup), facilitates memory storage, muscle control, and kidney function, prevents fatigue and insomnia, and helps maintain healthy cell membranes.
In the opening of today’s e-Alert, I told you there were two simple things you can do to avoid NAFLD. Well…that was half right.
Increasing your intake of choline is simple. Much less simple, but just as important, is the required change in eating habits. For millions of Americans, cutting back on calorie-rich, nutrient-poor refined foods will be one of the hardest things they’ve ever done.
But here’s a simple first step: Increase intake of foods that contain choline. In addition to eggs and liver, choline is also found in wheat germ, cod, salmon, broccoli, bacon, shrimp, pistachios, Brussels sprouts, and flaxseed.
Your multivitamin may contain choline–many do–but chances are the dose doesn’t approach the recommended adequate intake of 425 mg per day for women and 550 mg per day for men.
Sources:
“Effect of Vitamin E or Metformin for Treatment of Nonalcoholic Fatty Liver Disease in Children and Adolescents” Journal of the American Medical Association, Vol. 305, No. 16, 4/27/11, jama.ama-assn.org
“A Silent Epidemic of Nutritional Imbalance” Chris Masterjohn, Weston A. Price Foundation, 4/1/11, westonaprice.org
