#154: What is Fatty Liver Disease?

Hey beautiful, it's Dr. Tabatha.

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I can't wait to see you in there. Hi, I'm Dr. Tabatha, the Gutsy Gynecologist. I'm a triple board-certified OB-GYN and functional medicine physician. I've embraced the world of functional medicine and wellness through my own personal health journey, and I'm super excited to share my wisdom and unique perspective as it pertains to women's health. After caring for thousands of women, I've come to realize that your gut health determines your gyn health and your overall And it's a super gutsy thing for me to go against conventional gynecology practice to bring you the truth. No more Band-Aid medicine, ladies. We're talking root cause resolution on this show. So if you're struggling with hormone imbalance, weight gain, period issues, anxiety, insomnia, you name it, then you've come to the right place. And I want to be your gutsy gynecologist. So welcome. Hi ladies. Okay, so I wanted to jump on here and talk about auto-brewery syndrome. So this is the real deal, and it is associated with fatty liver disease. I am seeing more and more patients every day diagnosed with fatty liver disease, and their doctors are telling them, we don't know why. You have it. We'll just keep an eye on it and pretty much good luck. And that's not okay. The liver is responsible for over 500 processes in the body. It's super important to be functioning well. You know, for us women, it metabolizes our hormones. It gets rid of xenoestrogens and all kinds of toxins in the body. It metabolizes all the medications you take. It produces some of your much-needed proteins and enzymes and clotting factors for your blood. It helps make vitamins. I could go on and on all day. So it's really important what the liver is doing. The other big thing is it converts T4 into T3, your thyroid hormone, or if you're taking it, your thyroid medication, and you need that active T3 to have good functioning metabolism. So the liver is super important for women, yet more and more women are being told they have fatty liver. Oftentimes this is found accidentally during a CT scan or an MRI or an ultrasound of the gallbladder. Some women will present with right upper quadrant pain, little discomfort with eating, but most of the time there are no symptoms. And what's happening is you're storing excess fat in your liver. And so unfortunately, for a long time, we thought eating fat made us fat. And we've come to understand and learn that that is absolutely not the case. When we are storing fat in our liver or in our adipose tissue or around our other major organs, It's from sugar. So when we eat simple carbohydrates, we eat straight-up sugar, we drink sugar, you know, just having the standard American diet of bread, pastas, crackers, cookies, baked goods, bagels. Oh my goodness, pop, sodas, you know, different beverage drinks, alcohol, all of those things. All of those sugars have to get stored somewhere because we don't typically go run a marathon and burn it all off. And what your body does is it takes those sugars and it converts it into fat and stores it in your liver, hoping that you will use it right away the next time you go out to do something, the next time you're going to run or fight. Or do whatever that your archaic self thinks you're going to do. But most of the time, we live in this comfortable society where we don't move our bodies. We don't do a lot of physical activity. We don't run from tigers. We don't run long distances. We don't hunt and forage for food. And so that fat stays there, and it just— we add more and more. And so we now have this phenomenon that's very common throughout the world called non-alcoholic fatty liver disease. So for a long time, alcohol was the number one killer of the liver. Like, we knew you drank too much, you could end up with cirrhosis. Then for a while it was Tylenol. People were overdosing on Tylenol, taking it too much. It was in so many cold and flu products and every product under the sun, and Tylenol is very hard on the liver. And so once we figured all those pieces out, you would assume that fatty liver disease or liver issues in general would decrease. But they've actually increased over time, and they continue to increase. Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, meaning it's not from alcohol, it's excessive fat buildup in your liver. There's 2 stages that they're now identifying. There's this fatty liver where you've stored fat, but you don't have a lot of inflammation going on, and your liver is still functioning. Okay, your liver might just look enlarged or show up on, like I said, CT scan or ultrasound. NASH, nonalcoholic steatohepatitis, or fatty liver disease, is when you add inflammation to the picture, and that can start to cause fibrosis and scarring. The liver isn't functioning well, and it can even lead to cirrhosis, Which means your liver can no longer do its processes because it's so scarred down. That can also lead to liver cancer. So this used to be really uncommon, but like I said, the statistics just continue to rise and rise and rise. And so the NIH, the National Institutes of Health in the United States, are saying that About 24% of US adults have non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, and up to 6.5% have NASH, where they have that scarring or that fibrosis, which can lead to cirrhosis and liver failure. So it's a big deal. And more importantly, it's associated with obesity, type 2 diabetes, So why is that? If you talk to a conventional doctor, we say we don't really understand the process fully. We just know that if you have blood sugar issues or insulin issues, you tend to store more fat in your liver. So here's a really cool thing that has been studied and researched a lot in the past couple of years. Over in Asia, and in Europe, and other parts of the world. But it's really not being talked about as much in the United States as of yet. If you talk to your average doctor around the United States, they haven't heard of this issue where there are certain yeast. Most of it is a Candida species. So Candida albicans is the most common form of yeast. That lives on our skin, in our gut, in our vagina, all over our body. There's multiple types of yeast, but that's the most common one. And then there's also certain bacteria in our gut. And when we eat sugar, whether it's straight-up sugar or in the form of simple carbohydrates or even some complex carbohydrates like healthy vegetables, Those yeast and bacteria that are supposed to live in little small amounts, that's what they feed on. And when they eat those sugars, which is essentially carbohydrates broken down, their byproduct, like their poop, if you will, their metabolites that they make are ethanol alcohol. So if you start to live on the standard American diet and have a high sugar diet, over time you start to have yeast overgrowth in your gut. And for some of us, we get yeast overgrowth in the vagina and have recurrent vaginal infections. We get overgrowth of yeast on the skin, and we can get a yeast rash, especially people who have had surgery and they have any kind of yeast overgrowth that really Flares up big time after surgery. It's like a red, itchy rash. It has a distinct smell to it. Some of you probably have had it after a C-section or something in your incision area. So what's happening is these yeast and these bad bacteria that are eating the sugar that you're giving them, they produce ethanol alcohol, which is kind of the same thing as we drink in. cocktails and stuff, and it causes this auto-brewery syndrome. And so there have been case reports of people having elevated blood alcohol levels to the point where they're impaired when this is extreme. So that's not common, but what's common is for that small amount of alcohol being produced by yeast overgrowth all of the time, To be the contributing factor for this non-alcoholic fatty liver disease. So in a sense, in a roundabout way, it can be from alcohol; it's just not from the alcohol we're ingesting. So I just find this so fascinating, and I went to PubMed.com, which is where most physicians pull up their research studies that are being done around the world. Just for the latest research. And I typed in yeast, gut, alcohol, and I got almost 100 articles and research papers on this topic. And unfortunately, most of it, like I said, is coming out of Asia and other countries. But there are people in the United States who are now studying this and understanding this a little better. And I would love for us to get to a point where conventional medicine acknowledges the fact that our standard American diet is causing all of these chronic conditions and killing us. So this fatty liver disease is actually a big deal. If you have been told you have fatty liver, you have to break up with sugar. Like, literally, you have got to get it out of your diet. You have To stop eating all of those grains all the time, all those bagels, breads, pastas, all of it's got to go because you need your liver to function for all the things I mentioned earlier. And this is a— it's actually a big deal. And for some of you, you might need to kill off the yeast in your gut or the bad bacteria proactively. Sometimes it's not just enough to cut out the sugar. But you actually have to kill off the yeast. Sometimes we'll use caprylic acid or oil of oregano and thyme and different herbs. Sometimes we'll use medications like nystatin. Nystatin does a good job of staying in the gut and not going through the rest of the body. Sometimes we use Diflucan or fluconazole, but that does have to be metabolized through the liver. And so if your liver's struggling, it's not good to use a lot of doses. of that. So obviously you need to talk to your own doctor. I'm not your doctor. I'm not giving you medical advice, but I am explaining what could potentially be, you know, contributing to your issues if you're struggling with fatty liver or if your husband is or someone you know. So this is fascinating stuff. I hope this is helpful. The other big piece of it is killing off those bad bacteria, but also supporting the good. And so there's a probiotic that I have called Biome Lift, and it has Saccharomyces boulardii in it. And that is actually a yeast byproduct that does an amazing job of keeping bad yeast under control. So that's why I like Biome Lift so much for my female patients. It helps for your vaginal health, your gut health, and your liver health. So. I would urge you to check that out if you have been told you have fatty liver or anything like that. So I hope you found this super exciting the way I did. I'm just nerding out. Thank you for letting me do that. But I'm just noticing it more and more in my patients, and so I'm guessing you guys are struggling with it as well. So if you enjoyed that, I'd be so appreciative if you would leave me a 5-star review. Let me know what else you want to hear about, or if you have questions about this, hit me up on Instagram at the gutsy gynecologist or on Facebook at Dr. Tabatha, and yeah, hopefully that helps. Hopefully you got one little golden nugget out of that for the day. Go have an amazing kick-ass week and keep working on yourselves because your body and your health—that's all you have at the end of the day, really. So, all right, bye guys.