Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease is Linked to Brain Shrinkage

Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD), where too much fat accumulates in the liver without alcohol, has now been linked to greater than normal age-related brain shrinkage by a study published in JAMA Neurology. In the study, people with NAFLD from age 60 to 70 saw a reduction of brain volume equivalent to 4.2 years of aging, and patients under 60 averaged a brain volume reduction equivalent to 7.3 years of aging. The connection was notable even after other factors related to brain aging like heart disease, diabetes, blood fat levels, smoking, alcohol consumption, overweight, lack of exercise and menopausal status were accounted for in the study.

The Liver Brain Connection

When the liver isn’t able to properly filter the blood, toxins left behind can accumulate in the brain, causing memory loss, sleep disturbances, and trouble concentrating. The recently published study that found a link between a clearly unhealthy liver and higher levels of brain degeneration measured the overall brain volume of 766 middle-aged men and women with MRI scans and used abdominal CT scans to examine their livers. Nearly twenty percent of those examined had NAFLD. Even after other dementia risk factors were accounted for, research subjects of all ages experienced increased brain aging equivalent to at least a year. Lead author Galit Weinstein from School of Public Health at the University of Haifa concludes, “In turn, if one retains a healthy liver, his/her risk for other diseases, such as diabetes and heart diseases, is also reduced. In this study, we show that keeping a healthy liver may also be linked with a healthier brain.”

How to Support Your Liver

Experts agree that the best way to manage NAFLD is through diet and lifestyle, but what does that mean? This is good news because this means you can do something about it. Not all diets and lifestyles are the same, and recent science has found that environmental factors can also play a role in the development of NAFLD. Yet there are some simple steps and changes you can implement immediately that will decrease your risk of NAFLD and elevate your overall level of health.

Related: How To Reverse Fatty Liver Disease (Diet Plan Included)

Diet And…

First and foremost, when you have or are at risk of developing, NAFLD, sugar is not your friend. Sugar helps fat build up in the liver, and it aggravates a multitude of other problems in the body. It tastes really good. We’re biologically programmed to crave it. It’s probably one of the worst things you can have, especially if you’re at risk for a serious health condition. Consume your sugar in fruit form as the fiber slows the absorption of the sugar, but too much of any one kind of fruit can still lead to issues.

Next, rally your beneficial bacteria. Produce is the best way to give those helpers the fuel they need. That bacteria can then focus on properly digesting fat in the gut, keeping large fat molecules from overwhelming the liver. The key word here is produce. Among other things, fresh, raw vegetables and fruits have fiber, reducing the absorption of harmful lipopolysaccharides and sugars. Organic is also important, as NAFLD and brain cancer have both been linked to glyphosate. While it’s no longer possible to avoid the herbicide completely, organic produce gives you the least amount of exposure. Other liver boosting foods oily fish, avocado, olive oil, and nuts.

Related: Start Eating Like That and Start Eating Like This – Your Guide to Homeostasis Through Diet

Up next? Vitamin c. The liver benefits greatly from vitamin c and its antioxidant properties. A dose as small as 500 mg of the vitamin can help prevent fatty buildup and other liver diseases, like cirrhosis. Turn that dose up to 5,000 mg and the vitamin c begins to flush fat from the liver. If you can get a nutrient from whole food sources, you should, and there are numerous fruits and vegetable rich in vitamin c. Load up on those, or if you prefer to drink your vitamins, check out this super simple lemonade with bonus cranberry action.

Exercise!

Finally, like any good healthy lifestyle advice article says, exercise. The good news here? It doesn’t matter what kind of exercise you chose. Previous studies found that both aerobic and resistance training-based exercise regimens reduce fat in the liver effectively. They also suggest that the intensity and amount of exercise makes a difference, but the best exercise is the one you do and do regularly.

Connections Are Crucial

Everything in life is about connections, yet it can be difficult to fathom just how connected the body really is. Your brain health absolutely depends on your gut. Now we find that your brain health, especially as you age, depends on your liver. And the liver depends on the gut, and how well the microbes there are able to do their job. A healthy gut makes all the other organs and systems it connects to healthier. Fix your gut, fix your health.

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Monsanto’s Glyphosate, Fatty Liver Disease Link Proven – Published, Peer-reviewed, Scrutinized Study

Glyphosate. The world’s most popular herbicide. An alleged cause of cancer. Available in supermarkets across the nation, whether you want it or not. So what is the latest accomplishment for Monsanto’s golden child? Fatty liver disease!

Dr. Michael Antoniou from King’s College in London has found a link between the herbicide and non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, a condition whose symptoms include fatigue, nausea, jaundice, cirrhosis, and abdominal pain, among others. It is found primarily in overweight and obese people, people with diabetes, and those with high cholesterol. According to Dr. Robin Mesnage, another author of the study,

The concentration of glyphosate that was added to the drinking water of the rats corresponds to a concentration found in tap water for human consumption. It is also lower than the contamination of some foodstuffs.”

Where is the Science?

Glyphosate has been on the market since 1974 and since the advent of genetically-modified, Roundup ready crops in 1996, more than 18 billion tons of the stuff has been used worldwide (nearly a fifth of that was in the U.S. alone). It’s been linked to environmental degradation, and the number of studies linking glyphosate to health issues are growing. The work from King’s College is the first to definitively identify a real risk glyphosate poses to human health. Dr. Antoniou says,

The findings of our study are very worrying as they demonstrate for the first time a causative link between an environmentally relevant level of Roundup consumption over the long-term and a serious disease.”

Long-term studies on the impact of glyphosate are few and subject to huge amounts of scrutiny. A previous two-year study, the Seralini study in 2012, tested rats for long-term toxicity and found that the rats developed tumors and had shorter life spans. The study was heavily criticized, and the publisher retracted it in 2013 despite protests from the authors.

The recently discovered link between glyphosate and fatty liver disease is peer-reviewed, scrutinized, published in Scientific Reports, and from a prestigious university. But it has only now been released. One of the authors on the paper is Gilles-Eric Seralini (he of the previously retracted study), and this study uses the same, roundly criticized breed of rat from the previous study. The Crop Protection Association has already called the validity of this study into question saying, “Glyphosate is amongst the most thoroughly tested herbicides on the market, and those studies by expert regulators have consistently concluded that glyphosate does not pose a risk to public health.”

Americans Enjoy a More Substantial Glyphosate Allowance

The Crop Protection Association is correct. Glyphosate is one of the most tested herbicides on the market (although generally for 90 days, not 730). From this testing, the government has decided that there is a safe amount of glyphosate that can be ingested. That amount, the allowable daily intake (ADI), is 1.75 mg per kg of body weight in the United States. In Europe, the ADI is much lower at 0.3 mg per kg of bodyweight. Immediately, this discrepancy calls to mind a certain stereotype, that of the overweight American tourist bobbing merrily through a sea of slim and sneering Europeans. With the link between non-alcoholic fatty liver disease and glyphosate, is it too much of a leap to think that the rise of obesity in America could be caused by our lax attitude towards the omnipresent herbicide?

What is Non-Alcoholic Liver Disease?

Basically, fat accumulates in the liver when the liver cannot break it down or process it fast enough. The liver normally stores some fat, but when the liver builds up more than 5 – 10 percent of its weight in fat, it’s called fatty liver disease. In alcoholic fatty liver disease, the liver can break down if it is unable to process the amount of alcohol ingested. Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease follows the same model, only without the alcohol. This problem, like so many health problems, starts in the gut.

Bacteria in the large and small intestine like Lactobacillus and Bifidobacterium are responsible for breaking down fats in the body. The liver helps with this, sending bile into the small intestine to help with turning the food into smaller molecules. But a digestive system without enough beneficial bacteria to properly digest food is left with something closer to the original fat molecules. Unabsorbed fats should stay in the intestine, but the bile from the liver is responsible for cleaning the intestine. Almost all of that bile is recycled back to the liver, potentially carrying the less digested fats with it. From there, the liver can be overwhelmed by the accumulated fats that it can’t clear out, much like its response to alcohol in alcoholic fatty liver disease.

And the Glyphosate Is…?

Much of the blame for non-alcoholic liver disease can be placed squarely on the diet of those who have it. Processed sugars and refined foods feed opportunistic, less helpful microbes in the gut like Candida, that in turn crowd out beneficial bacteria and place more stress on the liver. It’s all about the processed foods – the foods likely to have the highest concentration of glyphosate. And the glyphosate is everywhere.

The Detox Project at the University of California San Francisco found glyphosate in 93% of the urine samples from their early tests. This is the glyphosate that was processed out of the body. Meanwhile, the poor liver chugs along like some cliche of an overworked housewife, left with the overload of improperly digested food molecules, toxic food additives, and who knows exactly how much herbicide piled on top of it.

Research Matters. So Where’s the Rest of It?

Lack of research is the biggest issue with current government attitudes towards glyphosate and why this study matters. The authors of this study saw the connection between non-alcoholic fatty liver disease and glyphosate with a regular dose 75,000 times below the European limit and over 400,000 times below the U.S. limit. There is no way to measure how much glyphosate people are being exposed to through proximity to agriculture, their food, and even their tap water. Glyphosate is everywhere, and we barely even know the results of long-term, repeated exposure to it.

Imagine a study, much in the vein of this one, where scientists gave test subjects the full U.S. government allowable daily intake of glyphosate regularly for two years. Do you even want to see those results?

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