The content of this podcast is provided for general informational purposes only and is not intended as,

nor should it be considered a substitute for professional medical advice.

Hello again, this is Karen Nichol, Family Nurse Practitioner, and you are listening to Itchy and Bicci,

a podcast that provides answers to your many health questions. I have more and more patients

who are diagnosed with non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, and most, if not all, the patients who get

this diagnosis have no idea what it is or what it means or what to do about it. So I thought I

could talk to you today about this increasingly common problem and what you can do to avoid it

and to address it. In a healthy body, the liver removes toxins and produces bile, which is

a protein that breaks down fat into fatty acids so that they can be digested. It's a very important

organ, as you can imagine, and fatty liver disease damages the liver and prevents it from working

as well as it should, but lifestyle changes can prevent it and keep it from getting worse.

I'm going to talk to you today about non-alcoholic fatty liver versus alcoholic fatty liver.

There are two types of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, which we abbreviate in AFLD for short,

but that's not a lot shorter, but there it is. Non-alcoholic fatty liver is generally a benign

condition in which there is fatty infiltration, but no inflammation. That is the official

definition, and it is true that inflammatory changes may not be measurable in AFLD,

but it is an inflammatory process, so it is important to work to correct it.

The other type is non-alcoholic stiato hepatitis, and this is also referred to as Nash

N-A-S-H, in which there is fatty infiltration along with liver inflammation.

Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease is seen worldwide and is the most common liver disorder

in Western countries, where the major risk factors for NAFLD include central obesity,

type 2 diabetes, high cholesterol, and metabolic syndrome is common. So in these Western countries,

...