Liver Diet

Which is the right diet when you have Hepatitis C?

Eat natural foods

What I mean by this is: cook from scratch. Processed food will have some added unwanted additives: colour, flavour and others. Also a process sometimes means stripping some of the nutrient value of the food and also, the use of solvents or others for processing and refining, changes the food further detrimentally.

There are two types of fruit and veg area in a shop: the normal and the organic. The organic is as nature intended, what you see is what you get. With the normal fruit and veg there are a lot of invisibles added: pesticide, fungicide etc. There is a layer of chemicals on the surface of the veg. If you put a grain of normal wheat under a microscope the layers of pesticide become visible.

So if you can, buy organic, or soak your fruits and veg out in a cleaning solution for 5 minutes to remove the chemicals. Your liver will thank you for it as it won’t have to remove the unnecessary toxins from your body.

Eat less to help your liver

Eating three meals a day is actually keeping the digestive system busy most of the time. Eating less give me more energy because there is less digestion to do and it releases the work of the liver. I eat two meals a day: I eat in the middle of the day and in the evening. Nothing in the morning. Or I swap and have a morning meal and a lunchtime meal and nothing in the evening depending on my schedule.

This time schedule gives my digestive system 16 hours of rest, a short fast everyday.

Intermittent fasting: a break for the liver

When I fast for 16 hours a day, my body, and especially my liver, gets to do other things than digest. The liver having more than 200 functions, it is freed up to get on with other things. For example, autophagy happens more: it is a renewing process for the cells when old parts of individual cells are recycled. Like changing parts on a car. This has a positive effects on general body health.

With intermittent fasting the liver has more time to manage cholesterol, distribute fats, detoxify the body and move bile. So the liver takes advantage of the break from digestion to concentrate on other things, therefore improving the general state of the body.

Another role the liver take is the transformation of sugars and all carbohydrates into glycogen for storage. Later on when the body needs sugar the liver breaks the glycogen store in the liver and muscles back to sugars. The liver uses a lot of energy dealing with the sugar and carbohydrates processes.

This is why I eat a minimum amount of carbohydrates if any at all. I have opted for a keto diet (ketonic or ketogenic).

A keto diet for your liver

I do long stretches of time being strictly keto, as much as I can. It is difficult ,when invited around for a meal, to keep it going because a keto diet requires not eating:

• sugar
• fruits
• grains – wheat, oats, barley etc
• starchy vegetables – potatoes carrots etc
• sweet drinks
• beans or lentils

The most important is what to eat and actually there is a lot of choice:

• meat
• fish
• cheese
• green vegetable and salads
• cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, celeriac etc
• fats
• proteins

The body can survive without eating sugar: it can make sugar itself from protein. What the body cannot do without, is fats. Not having fats the body deteriorate rapidly.

Fats for your liver

So the body absolutely needs fat from an outside source. Again there is a lot of information out there that is very misleading when it comes to fat. You can see it in the way a lot of produces are marketed.

The perfect example is the low fat yogurt: 0% fat written in big letters on the pot when it is riddled with sugar. Both fats and sugars are calories at the end of the day and the sugar eventually turns into fat in the body when we eat too much. So the person buying the yogurt thinks she will not get fat, that’s the suggestion. Not true, a lot of sugar will get you fat, a lot of carbohydrate will get you fat. Carbohydrate turns into sugar so eating grain or bread and cereals is really the same as eating sugar in the end.

When on a keto diet the body, not having sugar anymore to rely on, turn to fat as a source of energy. The breakdown of fats create ketones which becomes the new energy currency for the body and brain replacing the glycogen or sugar.

And having created a ketogenic process in the body by removing the sugar, the body’s chemistry changes. To rely on fats only for its energy source we can now, if we wanted, loose weight. Being lighter in weight is a plus for the body and the liver. But also something happens: the brain start to operate differently and actually functions better running on ketogens than sugar.

Burning fats instead of sugar

I personally think better when burning ketogens, also I feel better generally, physically and there is another plus: I don’t get hungry.

If I break my diet and eat some carbs, the morning after I will get some hunger pangs. I will feel hungry in the morning meanwhile when on my strict keto diet I don’t feel hungry until lunch time even I have fasted 16 hours. It is said that the bacteria in the gut loves sugar and when it is fed sugar it is always calling out for more, hence the strong unnecessary hunger call. We are being duped by the bacteria who’s hungry when the body is actually happy as it is.

I have more energy on a keto diet even though I eat less and less often, that’s very clear to me and I am less prone to getting angry. Ask my wife and friends!

Fats and carbs for your liver

One of the thing that is not understood is that when we mix fats and carbohydrate we give the liver a lot of work to do. If we ate fats only with no carbs then it would ease the pressure on the liver to digest two food groups. So also in that sense eating fat only is good for the liver. Eating carbohydrates only and no fat, the body would get into trouble very quickly.

There is fat and fat

When it comes to fat, most of the research out there has not been done fairly I would say because the carbohydrates ingested by the participant is overlooked. A lot of the work done in this way fail to eventually see that fats are very good and that the carbs have a lot more to answer for when it come to making the body unhealthy and putting weight on.

We’ve all heard the saturated versus the unsaturated fats stories. And the message is that saturated fats are the bad one but it is no longer found true. Regulation and policy making should be giving less weight to food industry-funded studies, industries wanting to sell their products:

• vegetable oil (it sounds so healthy, it comes from vegetables, no, it is seed oil),
• cereals (they are so good for you to have in the morning, so wholesome they are, unfortunately they are full of sugar),
• margarine (butter is bad for you, again seed oil or trans-fat are found in most margarine).

With the internet we now have access to more independent research and other people’s experiences of various diets and it points to the opposite orthodox view, that eating a varied amount of fat and cutting down bread cereal etc and sugar gives a more efficient body and most importantly for us a healthier liver, important when we have hepatitis C.

I personally eat a lot of fat and my body weight is stable. I eat a lot of saturated fat: butter, goose fat, duck fat, beef tally, olive oil. That’s my fat cupboard, I have removed vegetable oil, which is actually seed oil, which too much of the body doesn’t like.

My head is clearer, everything I do takes less effort overall. I am less angry which is a sign of a better liver.

The chemistry of a cell asks for a mixture of saturated and unsaturated fats for its membrane. The saturated fat gives strength to the wall membrane making it important to include in my diet.

One truth out there: no one knows the real reasons for heart disease, they are numerous and to blame one thing like the wrong fats is not valid.

Also so much research about fat is done when the participants are eating carbohydrates and sugars. Research done without the ingestion of sugars and carbohydrates is a lot different.

The mainstream medical advice to eat a low fat diet with more vegetables and grain is seen by independent researcher as just the wrong advice given the current independent researches. We need to wake up to the industries’s manipulation that has been going on since the 50s.

A good reference page regarding a keto diet being healthy for the liver, although I know it feels counter-intuitive, is to be found here

Recap of a good liver diet

1- Wash out chemicals from vegetables or buy organic if you can

2- Eat less (twice a day max in an eight hour window or only once a day)

2- Go keto – give up carbs and sugars (or limit to a strict minimum – less than 50 grams)

3- Choose your fats: go saturated

4- Learn the foods to concentrate on: protein, fats, vegetables

Overall benefits

• Not feeling tired after lunch
• Sleeping well
• Less effort required to do things
• Not feeling unnecessarily hungry
• Thinking better
• Less anger
• General levels of energy are up

Extras non-food related that are good for your liver

I have done those with hepatitis c and post treatment also:

Wake up early in the morning: see it for yourself. Check your energy levels when waking up early versus waking up late

Easy on the alcohol: Have only a small amount at the time if any at all

Take herbs: Dandelion, Burdock, Milk thistle, Swedish bitters. I have managed no scarring of the liver for 22 years of hepatitis c taking all of those.

Move your body: a sedentary lifestyle will bung up energy in your body and your liver, move physically on a regular basis