Speaker (Dr. Tabatha Barber) describes a less-discussed contributor to non-alcoholic fatty liver disease: overgrowth of gut yeast and certain bacteria (notably Candida species) that ferment dietary sugars to ethanol. The transcript explains how high-sugar diets promote yeast overgrowth, producing endogenous alcohol (auto-brewery syndrome) which may chronically expose the liver to ethanol and contribute to fatty liver even without ingested alcoholic beverages.
Chapters
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. Here's a really cool thing that has been studied and researched a lot in the past couple 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. 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.
