It's a vital organ, one that detoxifies your blood and even helps it clot. Your liver can take a beating as Dr. William Pfau sees regularly. He is a gastroenterologist with Digestive Health Associates which treats a number of liver diseases. "From Hepatitis C to Fatty Liver," he says. It's estimated tens of millions of Americans have fatty liver – or too much fat in their liver cells – and most likely don not even know it. "Most of the patients will be completely asymptomatic or will have no idea they have any fat in their liver or that they're even at risk for fibrosis or cirrhosis." If left untreated, cirrhosis could even lead to cancer.
Dr. Pfau says a number of people are at greater risk of getting FLD like, "Patients with diabetes, obese patients and patients with cholesterol problems."
Now there is a brand new, non-invasive way to determine your liver's health. It is called the FibroScan and it uses ultrasound-based technology to identify patients in need of treatment. "In the past, what we've had to do is a liver biopsy to obtain the information that the FibroScan provides for us." The FibroScan measures two things. "One is the amount of fat that's present in the liver and it also measures the amount of scarring that's present in the liver as well." The machine sends sound waves into the liver. "And when that wave comes back it allows us to measure the elasticity of the liver which tells us how much scarring is present in the liver." There is no pain, no downtime and doctors can read the results right away which means no delay in treatment to reverse fatty liver. "If we treat the underlying cause, whether its diabetes, cholesterol, improve their obesity or reduce their alcohol consumption - we will see a reduction in the amount of fat that's present in the liver."
WAYS TO HELP PREVENT Fatty liver INCLUDE MAINTAINING A HEALTHY WEIGHT, LIMITing HIGH FAT, HIGH SUGAR FOODS AND GETting AT LEAST 150 MINUTES OF EXERCISE A WEEK. aLSO, Dr. PFAU RECOMMENDS QUITTING SMOKING AND LIMITing YOUR ALCOHOL.
To learn more about FibroScan at Digestive Health Associates, log on to https://www.digestivehealthreno.com/
