The Most Effective NAFLD Treatment Revealed

The American Gastroenterological Association (AGA) has just published its clinical practice update for treating nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) in the journal Gastroenterology.

According to the AGA, approximately 25% of people in the United States suffer from some level of NAFLD. This means that not everyone can be treated with potentially harmful medications or surgeries.

Fortunately, the AGA also revealed what they consider to be the single most effective way to reverse NAFLD naturally. And it’s actually very simple.

The researchers at the AGA believe that lifestyle interventions are the most important approach to treating this serious form of liver disease. And the most important lifestyle change is weight loss, through diet and exercise.

When you lose weight, you lose fat not only from your abdomen, but also from your liver. This causes NAFLD to reverse and allows your liver to rebuild itself with healthy cells.

They recommend a calorie-restricted diet for weight loss.

This means that you should eat between 1,200 and 1,500 calories per day. Alternatively, you should reduce your current daily intake by between 500 and 1,000 calories.

They recommend a Mediterranean diet consisting of fresh vegetables, fruits, legumes, whole grains, fish, olive oil, nuts, and seeds, because this diet has plenty of ingredients with antioxidant and anti-inflammatory effects that can slow the progression of NAFLD and even help reverse it.

With this diet, you should seriously reduce or completely eliminate red and processed meats, refined grains, and sugary treats and beverages.

The biggest enemy is commercially prepared fructose because—while research has not linked the fructose in fruit to NAFLD—the commercially prepared syrups most certainly lead to the production of excessive liver fat, together with other conditions that contribute to NAFLD, like diabetes and obesity.

So how much weight should you lose, according to research?

1. You should lose at least 5% of your body weight to decrease the infiltration of fat around liver cells. This is called hepatic steatosis.
2. You should lose at least 7% of your body weight to reduce non-alcoholic steatohepatitis, a term that scientists use to describe a fatty liver that is also inflamed.
3. You must lose at least 10% of your body weight to reduce hepatic fibrosis, which refers to a serious stage of NAFLD in which scar tissue replaces healthy liver tissue.
4. If your NAFLD is accompanied by obesity, you should lose 10% of your weight.

Aerobic exercise and healthy dieting use different mechanisms to reduce weight, so one cannot replace the other—you must do both.

Accordingly, the AGA recommends 150–300 weekly minutes of moderate exercise or 75–150 weekly minutes of vigorous exercise.

Moreover, people with NAFLD should reduce alcohol intake, and people whose livers are already scarred by fat tissue should eliminate it completely.

Now, if this all sounds like an awful lot of effort, I don’t blame you. Plus, it’s not the most effective way to lose liver fat. Here are the simple steps thousands of readers have used to clear their liver of excess fat and reverse NAFLD…