Posts Tagged ‘fatty liver’

…..SuperFoods Rx by Steven Pratt, MD and Kathy Matthews, and Fat Flush Plan by Ann Louise Gittleman, PhD.  I don’t consider myself to be wacky about healthy eating, nor do I consider myself to be a dieter.  I know how to eat well to stay slim and healthy, but I also know how to eat in order to cure a raging hangover or comfort a broken heart.  And, let’s face it, it’s not a road trip until you’ve had a large DQ dipped cone.  So let’s just say I’m well-rounded.

This week bears the burden of the one year marker from when my husband became suddenly ill with severe, acute pancreatitis.  In a matter of just three hours, he went from normal, functioning man driving his family home from a weekend in San Antonio, to very sick man curled up in a ball in the back of our Suburban, whimpering in pain as my daughter kept telling me to drive faster.  One year later, I feel like I am starting to show some cracks.  We all are.  I don’t know if you would call it post traumatic stress disorder or what.  All I know is that all of us now have the luxury of collapsing - with my husband nearly better and the normalcy of life resumed - we appear to be doing just that.

I don’t want to write about the details of my husband’s illness - the pain he suffered, the complications he endured, the numerous times he nearly died, the disturbing pictures my daughter drew that indicated panic and confusion, the guilt and grief and inadequacy I felt.  None of it.  I list those things only to set a stage for my choice in books.  I mean, who reads multiple nutrition books at the same time?  Well, I do.  At least, now I do.

My husband’s pancreatitis was caused by a gallstone - a small bead of cholesterol that couldn’t quite fit through his bile duct.  That’s it.  Simple enough.  Who knew that just one little gallstone could manifest into a deadly condition that would take up to a year in treatment and recovery?

Now that we’re out of the woods and back to normal, I have found myself asking questions about gallstones and the gallbladder and the pancreas.  In the age of the Internet, a question is answered in seconds, and that is where I began.  I back-tracked from the pancreatitis to the gallstone to the gallbladder, then finally to the liver.  The pancreatitis was caused by a gallstone.  The gallstone was probably caused by a condition known as fatty liver disease.  Fatty liver disease is reversible through diet changes.  Hmmm.

Four years ago one of our dear friends died of liver cancer, of all things.  His death was horrible, and he left behind a devastated wife and three young boys, the youngest of whom was also seriously ill.  His terrible death spurred my husband and me to get life insurance.  We each had the requisite physicals, but my husband kept flunking his liver function blood tests.  At the time, we were both hypersensitive about the liver in particular since our friend Stephen had just died of liver cancer.  I remember making a fuss about it and demanding that the doctor do more tests, etc.  My husband was a little more lackadaisical and followed his doctor’s advice of simply avoiding any consumption of alcohol and/or Tylenol for six weeks and repeating the test.  One repeated test turned to two, turned to three, turned to four.  Finally, we got a test that put his liver function within the normal range and, hurrah!, he got life insurance.  Those liver function tests always bothered me.  My husband was not a huge drinker at that time.  He enjoyed a cocktail in the evening after work, but just one, if that even.  Why were his liver enzymes elevated?  After much nagging, I was finally informed by my dear husband that I was apparently the only one worrying about it.  My husband and his doctor checked it off their lists and it was never mentioned again.  It tugged at me, though.  I wish I had acted on that more assertively.

Now I find myself thinking about that a lot.  If we had been made aware of this condition called fatty liver disease, could we have changed his diet then to stem off the gallstone that caused the pancreatitis that nearly killed him?  Maybe.  Probably.

Fast forward to my recommended books.  Fat Flush Plan is a diet that stems from liver health.  If your liver is not healthy, your body cannot and will not burn fat normally.  Cleansing your liver - interesting.  I’ll take that.  SuperFoods Rx is an all-around list of foods that are good for you in countless ways and address nearly every nutritional need.  No weird rules.  No extremes.  No weird foods.  I’ll take that as well.  Simple changes made now can alter your future.  This, I know now.

As I said earlier, I don’t want to get goofy about things.  I’m a moderation girl.  Now, though, I am an aging moderation girl that has seen the slippery slope that runs between life and death.  As I have read these books, I have redefined “moderation” in several areas, most notably with my alcohol consumption.  My husband may not have been a drunk but I sure was!  Both my books are very clear on the definition of moderate drinking.  One or two supersized glasses of wine most evenings, you say?  Uhhhh, no.  One to three small glasses of wine per week for women, actually, if at all.  Yikes!  As our good friend Oprah often says, “Once you know better, you must do better.”

Buy SuperFoods Rx and Fat Flush Plan and give them a glance.  You have nothing to lose …except liver fat.  I’ll be referencing each of them in some of the recipes I post.  Empower yourself and protect those you love.