Do You Know The 2 Kinds of People Highly Prone To Liver Damage?
The development of tough scar tissue in the liver can be a sign that liver failure may lie ahead. For heavy alcohol consumers, an alcoholic bender can cause scarring, or fibrosis, and lead to trouble. That’s why those with signs of alcoholic fatty liver are urged to stop drinking alcohol.
Cirrhosis Isn’t Just for Alcoholics
But cirrhosis isn’t just for alcoholics anymore. A study at Duke University Medical Center has found that consuming immoderate amounts of beverages sweetened with high fructose corn syrup can cause scarring and hardening of the liver. In other words, drinking soft drinks such as Coke and Pepsi on a daily basis can damage your liver as much as if you were getting looped every day.
The Pause that Doesn’t Refresh
The study, published in the journal Hepatology, tracked 427 patients with fatty liver disease to see whether consumption of fructose made a difference in the progression of fatty liver to the organ’s failure. The Duke University researchers asked subjects how many fructose-sweetened beverages a week they drank, including fruit juices and soft drinks sweetened with high-fructose corn syrup. While only 19% of the fatty liver patients consumed few or no fructose sweetened beverages, 28% drank at least one a day.
Compared to subjects who drank the least fructose beverages, those who drank the most were significantly more likely to have the hepatic scarring that will more often progress to cirrhosis or liver cancer. The researchers also found that the heavy fructose drinkers also have lower levels of HDL (or “good”) cholesterol.
Another Study
Other researchers conducted a study using a new mouse model of obesity and liver disease that closely models human disease, according to Rohit Kohli, M.D., a gastroenterologist at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center and the study’s main author.
“Fructose consumption accounts for approximately 10.2 percent of calories in the average diet in the United States and has been linked to many health problems, including obesity, cardiovascular disease and liver disease,” says Dr. Kohli. “We’ve developed a mouse model that is very close to human disease, allowing us to better understand the process involved in the development and progression of obesity-related fatty liver disease.”
The study was conducted in mice, some of which were fed a normal diet of rodent chow and some a 16-week diet of fructose and sucrose-enriched drinking water and trans-fat solids. Their liver tissue was then analyzed for fat content, scar tissue formation (fibrosis), and the biological mechanism of damage. The investigators found that mice fed the normal calorie chow diet remained lean and did not have fatty liver disease. Mice fed high calorie diets (trans-fat alone or a combination of trans-fat and high fructose) became obese and had fatty liver disease.
High Fructose Corn Syrup is “Not Benign”
Duke University hepatologist Dr. Manal Abdelmalek said in a news release that high-fructose corn syrup, which was first introduced into the human diet in the 1970s and has accounted for an average of 10% of Americans’ caloric intake over the last decade, “may not be as benign as we previously thought.”
August 6th, 2010 at 3:33 am
Thanks so much for the article on liver damage from high fructose corn syrup. Sure didn’t see that info in the commercal about how nothing is wrong with it. Too bad all we hear on the media is corporate propaganda. But I do have a question about glycerine. The last things I read that Dr. Clark published said she could not find a pure source and recommended we only use stevia. Has that changed?
August 14th, 2010 at 2:18 am
Since the study used fructose to sweeten the water, and not high fructose corn syrup, then is the culprit fructose itself and not just the fructose in the corn syrup? In this case, would drinking quantities of naturally sweet fruit juices or juices sweetened with grape juice (fructose) also be damaging? I would consider this an important point to clarify in an article such as this.
August 20th, 2010 at 5:53 pm
Good article! We don’t hear about it because no one wants it to become well known. I am not a doctor, but to reply to Ken…fructose has to be broken down by the liver (unlike plain glucose which does not need to be processed by the liver to be used by all cells.) So Yes, all types of fructose can be an issue…but fructose from natural whole fruits is less of a problem than pure fruit juice, which is in turn way better than High Fructose Corn Syrup. It is my understanding that the processing of fructose in the liver, aside from just being a burden on the liver itself, throws off the bad type of LDL (there is more than one type of LDL) as a byproduct…do you see where this is going? So watch all fructose, but really avoid HFCS.
October 20th, 2010 at 8:30 pm
the great thing about stevia is that it is also tooth friendly like xylitol sweeteners-;`