In the industrial era, one organ that’s been under serious siege is the liver. It was never designed for the way we eat or the massive number of strange new toxins in the world – things that simply didn’t exist before humans started mining and smelting metals on a massive scale, manufacturing chemicals, burning fossil fuels, and all the rest.
The liver is tasked with a number of jobs including clearing the body of toxins. And it’s being overwhelmed. One result is that we’ve seen a staggering increase in various liver pathologies, including liver cancer and fatty liver disease. And the increase has come on fast.
This is what’s causing it. . .
Newsletter #658
Lee Euler, Editor
Lee Euler, Editor
20 November 2016
The rate of liver cancer is alarming enough to call it an epidemic. Contributing to this rise is the epidemic of expanding waistlines, outright obesity, and type 2 diabetes.
“Liver cancer rates have approximately tripled in the United States since the mid-1970s and the prognosis for patients diagnosed with this type of cancer is especially grim,” says researcher Peter Campbell, the strategic director of Digestive System Cancer Research at the American Cancer Society.
It’s mostly about our bellies. . .
In Campbell’s study, which involved more than a million US citizens, he and his colleagues found that if you are overweight, your risk of liver cancer climbs significantly. For every two-inch increase in your waistline, your risk grows by eight percent. Plus, having type 2 diabetes increases your chance of getting liver cancer by more than two-and-a-half times.1
In the past, liver cancer was thought to be linked mainly to drinking too much alcohol or suffering a hepatitis infection. But this study now confirms what many researchers have believed: Our weight gain, particularly those pounds around the middle, are ruining our livers.
Fat tissue causes inflammation
A big problem is that the weight so many of us carry around our middles increases inflammation in our bodies and contributes to what’s called non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD), an illness that can lead to liver cancer.
As fat tissue collects in the liver it can permanently scar this organ – a condition called cirrhosis. Cirrhosis seriously compromises the liver’s ability to cope with its necessary functions.
About four of five people who are obese suffer some degree of NAFLD. And these days even about one in six people who are of normal weight have NAFLD. “While NAFLD is commonly associated with obesity, research has highlighted that a percentage of patients are not actually obese,” says Italian researcher Rosa Lombardi.
The problem is that even if you are not technically overweight, carrying extra stomach fat around the middle puts you at greater risk of NAFLD.
“… the severity of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease is not necessarily linked to how obese an individual is, but instead how much fat build-up they have around the waist,” says Frank Tacke, governing board member of the European Association for the Study of the Liver.
How to reduce your risk
Fortunately, there are several natural – and fairly easy – ways you can protect your liver and lower your risk of liver complications and cancer.
Perhaps the simplest is to drink coffee. Yes, that’s right, merely drinking coffee every day can help the liver stay healthier, lower the chances of NAFLD and shrink the odds of eventually developing tumors.
I wouldn’t say it’s a first-line defense. Eating right would be a better choice. But it’s better than nothing.
This was revealed in a study in Italy that shows that consuming coffee can actually help reverse NAFLD by changing what happens to your food after you eat.
According to this lab research, if a person weighing about 155 pounds drinks about six cups of espresso coffee daily, changes in the digestive tract protect the liver.2 It does this by increasing the production of a protein called zonulin that tightens up the walls of the intestines, closes the spaces between cells (the tight junctions) and decreases the permeability of the intestinal walls.
Otherwise, when the intestines are more permeable, it can lead to a condition called leaky gut that allows large fragments of protein from food to enter the body and increase inflammation.
If I drank the amount of coffee shown to be effective in this study, I’d be up for two days. But there seems to be little question that it’s good medicine.
“Previous studies have confirmed how coffee can reverse the damage of NAFLD but (ours) is the first to demonstrate that it can influence the permeability of the intestine,” says researcher Vincenzo Lembo, “The results also show that coffee can reverse NAFLD-related problems such as ballooning degeneration, a form of liver cell degeneration.”
The study showed that compounds in coffee also reduce levels of alanine aminotransferase in the blood – an enzyme that increases as a result of liver damage. At the same time, the substances in coffee contribute to a drop in the level of harmful fat in liver cells.
A better idea if you really want a healthy liver
Another pretty simple – but more strenuous – way to help out your liver is to exercise. Coach was right when he told you to do more crunches. (For those who have never been inside a gym, crunches are an exercise to build abdominal muscles and take off abdominal fat.)
A study in Australia demonstrates that aerobic exercise (running, swimming, walking, etc.) can cut back on fat in the liver as well as on visceral fat around your middle – even if your exercise program doesn’t result in lost pounds.3
“The results from our study show that all exercise doses, irrespective of volume or intensity, were efficacious in reducing liver fat and visceral fat by an amount that was clinically significant, in previously inactive, overweight, or obese adults compared with placebo,” says researcher Nathan Johnson, who is with the University of Sydney. “These changes were observed without clinically significant weight loss.”
But even if you don’t want to engage in an aerobic workout, the researchers also point out that resistance exercises (lifting weights) have also been shown to shrink fat deposits in the liver.
The vitamin that can ward off cancer
If you’ve been reading Cancer Defeated for a while, you won’t be surprised when I reveal the under-appreciated vitamin can help keep the liver safer: vitamin D.
Research at the Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute in La Jolla, California shows that, for the liver to optimally benefit from vitamin D, it has to interact with a protein in the liver known as p62.4 But while p62 is produced by liver cells called stellate cells – cells that also store vitamin A and help the liver regenerate and repair itself – people with liver cancer may be lacking in adequate p62. (However, no one knows if this deficiency in p62 starts before the cancer develops or is a result.)
The scientists in California also found that when p62 latches on to vitamin D, the stellate cells can store more vitamin A, which reduces inflammation and helps limit liver damage.
So if you’re looking to avoid liver cancer, vitamin D is a crucial nutrient you should be consuming – and you can also help your body make vitamin D by getting adequate sunshine.
In addition to exercise, coffee and vitamin D, cruciferous vegetables like broccoli, cauliflower and Brussel’s sprouts have also been shown to significantly cut down the chances of liver cancer.
And a study at the University of Illinois shows that broccoli not only defends against liver cancer but also helps prevent NAFLD. While other lab studies have shown that cruciferous vegetables protect against the deposit of fat in the liver, the Illinois study, which focused on broccoli, found that it can both stop the collection of fat in the liver and, when cancer is present, may decrease the size of tumors.5
The researchers advise against eating fast food – with its collection of liver-challenging, low quality fats – but if you do eat fast food, they encourage you to have a side order of broccoli with it.
And one last tip – if you’re worried about your liver, you also need to limit your sugar intake. An ideal level would be no sugar at all. Sugar is poison for the liver, according to researchers at Oregon State University. Even if you exercise, lose weight and adopt other healthy lifestyle habits, eating a lot of sugary foods can still sabotage your liver.6
http://www.cancerdefeated.com/liver-cancer-rates-triple-heres-why-and-what-you-can-do/3889/
