Yikes.
I just got off the phone with my gastroenterologist's office nurse. Seems I have a condition called "fatty liver". Here is what I was able to find online about this condition:
Merck.com
CNN.com (reprint from Mayo Clinic article)
Now I know I've had the risk elements in place for this for a long time, namely high serum cholesterol and high triglycerides. Thank heaven, I don't drink anymore (rarely).
I'm happy to note from several sites that a high fat diet isn't responsible for the formation of this problem. The treatment IS losing weight and getting blood lipids under control - EXACTLY what I am trying to do by following a low carb diet!
I also have what they say is a small lesion on my liver. Now that I hope turns out to be nothing serious. Time will tell.
I'm feeling those same goose-bumpy feelings about all this that I got when they discovered my cancer. I was already determined to lose weight, have been low-carb eating since June, and then I find out I'm already doing the very thing they recommend to reverse fatty liver.
God is so good to tell us things we need, even when we think we *thought of it* ourselves ;-D
4 comments:
Low carb will definitely help you in teh long term. a few months after i started low carbing (feb 2003) my cholesterol was 218 and my good cholesterol was 40. which means my bad cholesterol must have been really high. in may a full cholesterol profile showed my total cholesterol at 200. but good cholesterol (HDL) was 75. Bad Cholesterol was 116. Still higher than the recommended but with a Hdl/ldl ratio of 1.5 The Doctor was pretty pleased. triglycerides were 75 but I have no idea what they were before. I hope your results are as good or better! Hope that liver lesion is better soon.
Rob
p.s. I take milk thistle every once in a while to combat fatty liver. Just in case. It's abvailable in vitamin sections everywhere.
Low carb will definitely help you in teh long term. a few months after i started low carbing (feb 2003) my cholesterol was 218 and my good cholesterol was 40. which means my bad cholesterol must have been really high. in may a full cholesterol profile showed my total cholesterol at 200. but good cholesterol (HDL) was 75. Bad Cholesterol was 116. Still higher than the recommended but with a Hdl/ldl ratio of 1.5 The Doctor was pretty pleased. triglycerides were 75 but I have no idea what they were before. I hope your results are as good or better! Hope that liver lesion is better soon.
Rob
p.s. I take milk thistle every once in a while to combat fatty liver. Just in case. It's abvailable in vitamin sections everywhere.
Thanks for the encouragement, Rob! I'm having the blood lipids checked again in early Sept and I'm sure hoping for some good news.
WTG on your own victory over high cholesterol and triglycerides.
"Now I know I've had the risk elements in place for this for a long time, namely high serum cholesterol and high triglycerides."
It's more likely that high cholesterol (a meaningless number BTW) and high triglycerides are not a risk factor, but an effect of fatty liver!
Just like a lot of other things, over recent years known effects have been given the label of being a "risk factor". Another example is weight and diabetes. Weight gain is an effect of diabetes (or impending diabetes, insulin resistance), not the cause!
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