“Eating Guidelines” To Avoid Holiday “fatty liver”
Here is a republish of a post I shared with my membership group a few years ago at Thanksgiving. Still applicable this Hanukkah, Christmas, and New Year's celebration week.
“Eating Guidelines” To Avoid Holiday “fatty liver”
After eating you need periods of “not eating” to keep your fat cells smaller, healthier behaving, and your liver less fatty. Especially during holidays like Thanksgiving.
After eating, the pancreas produces insulin. Insulin triggers the liver to convert digested foods into fat for storage in a process known as “lipogenesis”.
A few hours later, when the body begins the transition to “fasting mode”, the liver slows fat production.
While the insulin pathway has been thoroughly studied, the pathway by which lipogenesis is turned “off” has largely remained a mystery.
In a new study, a team found that the gut hormone FGF15 in mice and its human counterpart “the FGF19 human gut hormone” turns “off” fat-producing genes in the liver.
This hormone is released a few hours after eating when the body transitions from ‘feeding to fasting’. This happens only if you had stopped eating after your meal.
FGF15/19 activates regulatory molecules to enter the nucleus, the center of the cell where DNA is stored and inhibits gene expression.
This gut hormone actually acts as a “breaker of insulin action”, and specifically inhibits lipogenesis in the liver. It’s tightly regulated.
For example, with the holidays coming up if you keep snacking on dessert and cookies... you keep nibbling.... the body keeps releasing more and more insulin, which promotes more and more lipogenesis. If you continue to nibble here and there — lipogenesis is not reduced later as the body does not enter a fasting state.
Thus... excess fat accumulates in the liver.
Excess fat in the liver makes it almost impossible for you to lose weight! It promotes hormonal imbalance. It reduces production of the healthy ‘good cholesterol’. And, on and on.
If you stopped eating for a few hours after your meal - then the FGF19 hormone puts the brakes on fat production. And your body stays more in harmony.
Moral of this story.
Eat and enjoy. And, then.... stop eating for a few hours.
Use the other critical Vitamin D = discipline!
Happy Holidays!
Dr. B
You can learn more about my membership groups here. They make a terrific gift that keeps giving!
References:
Intestinal FGF15/19 physiologically repress hepatic lipogenesis in the late fed-state by activating SHP and DNMT3A. Nature Communications, 2020; 11 (1) DOI: 10.1038/s41467-020-19803-9