Dr. Ibrahim Hanouneh
Appearances
Dhru Purohit Show
The Biggest Warning Signs That You Have Fatty Liver and What To Do About It
Dr. Ibrahim, I'll let you, you'll say it absolutely correctly. I'll have a word off.
Dhru Purohit Show
The Biggest Warning Signs That You Have Fatty Liver and What To Do About It
Yeah, you know, the metabolic associated fatty liver disease. They're trying to find a new name. The new name actually fits diagnosis of inclusion. It's associated with metabolic syndrome, other than a name of exclusion.
Dhru Purohit Show
The Biggest Warning Signs That You Have Fatty Liver and What To Do About It
non-alcoholic it's something else so it's metabolic associated fatty liver disease it's fatty liver associated with metabolic syndrome or metabolic risk factors okay so for the purpose of this interview i might still refer to it as non-alcoholic fatty liver disease
Dhru Purohit Show
The Biggest Warning Signs That You Have Fatty Liver and What To Do About It
Yeah. You know, to start, I guess, the conversation there, the most common cause of problems of death, if you will, in people with fatty liver is not liver disease, believe it or not. It's cardiovascular disease. events, meaning heart attack and stroke.
Dhru Purohit Show
The Biggest Warning Signs That You Have Fatty Liver and What To Do About It
Meaning, unfortunately, we lose most patients with fatty liver disease, not because of their liver disease, but because they get heart attack and stroke. And the reason why, because it turns out fatty liver is a risk factors to get heart disease and, you know, heart attack and stroke. So it's not just a liver disease. It's a multi-system disease. It affects other organs.
Dhru Purohit Show
The Biggest Warning Signs That You Have Fatty Liver and What To Do About It
Another important point here, fatty liver is associated with increased risk of cancer. Certainly liver cancer, but also other kinds of cancer outside the liver. You know, recent studies from Europe show that patients with fatty liver disease are associated with increased risk of colon cancer, breast cancer, for example.
Dhru Purohit Show
The Biggest Warning Signs That You Have Fatty Liver and What To Do About It
And so that's what stressed the point that it's not just a liver disease, it's really a multi-system problem.
Dhru Purohit Show
The Biggest Warning Signs That You Have Fatty Liver and What To Do About It
Yeah, thank you very much for having us. Fatty liver disease, like you indicated, it's epidemic. You know, it's very common. You look around you, you look at your family members, one out of four people have fatty liver disease. Just think about that for a second. One out of four people you're going to meet today have fatty liver disease. This is very common.
Dhru Purohit Show
The Biggest Warning Signs That You Have Fatty Liver and What To Do About It
The problem, this is a silent disease until too late in the game, until you have, God forbid, liver cirrhosis or liver cancer, or there is need for liver transplantation. We don't want to wait, obviously, that long. The key is to detect fatty liver disease early on and reverse it before it's too late in the game. And because it's silent disease early on, because it doesn't have symptoms,
Dhru Purohit Show
The Biggest Warning Signs That You Have Fatty Liver and What To Do About It
And the key is screening. And on that note, I would say if you do have metabolic risk factors, specifically type 2 diabetes, you need to be screened for fatty liver. You need to ask your doctor, do I have fatty liver?
Dhru Purohit Show
The Biggest Warning Signs That You Have Fatty Liver and What To Do About It
If you have high blood pressure, if you have high cholesterol, if you are overweight, if you have family history of fatty liver disease, if you have sleep apnea, polycystic ovarian syndrome, very common disease, You know, those are the signs in my mind to get screened for fatty liver disease early on, you know, before it's too late in the game.
Dhru Purohit Show
The Biggest Warning Signs That You Have Fatty Liver and What To Do About It
Because when it's too late in the game, you know, it's difficult to reverse it, quite frankly, and it will lead to significant symptoms such as jaundice, yellow eyes, sometimes distension in the abdomen, occasionally bleeding from the GI tract. affect mental status, et cetera. We don't want to wait that long. We want to find it early on.
Dhru Purohit Show
The Biggest Warning Signs That You Have Fatty Liver and What To Do About It
I actually, if I may add, there is another analogy which I use with my patient I call the liver TSA gate. You go to the airport, you got to stop by the TSA, you know, before he gets in. Same with the liver. Anything comes to your body has to stop filtered by the liver before it gets in. You know, the bad, the bad guys out, the good guys in.
Dhru Purohit Show
The Biggest Warning Signs That You Have Fatty Liver and What To Do About It
And, and what happened when you have fatty liver disease, your liver is overwhelmed. There's so much fat inflammation, et cetera. So some of the bad guys going to get in and, and that's going to affect your body. That's going to lead to fatigue. you know, sometimes pain in the right upper side of your belly, and then eventually, obviously, liver damage, liver cirrhosis.
Dhru Purohit Show
The Biggest Warning Signs That You Have Fatty Liver and What To Do About It
Yeah, I can take that one. And just to make it simple, fatty liver is, as the name implies, it's fat in the liver. If I show you a picture of fatty liver, you will see literally a whitish kind of liver with a lot of fat in it. And what happens if you have fat in the liver for a long period of time, that fat will break down. And when the fat breaks down, it causes inflammation.
Dhru Purohit Show
The Biggest Warning Signs That You Have Fatty Liver and What To Do About It
The inflammatory cells will come in. and get excited, and that's going to cause inflammation in the liver. And when you have inflammation over a long period of time, that will leave some damage, some scarring tissue. We call it the medical term fibrosis.
Dhru Purohit Show
The Biggest Warning Signs That You Have Fatty Liver and What To Do About It
And when the scarring tissue, when fibrosis builds up, that will eventually lead to cirrhosis of the liver, which obviously can affect the function, the engine inside the liver, which leads to liver failure and need for liver transplantation.
Dhru Purohit Show
The Biggest Warning Signs That You Have Fatty Liver and What To Do About It
Yeah, I mean, I see it in my practice all the time. You know, there is a stigma with liver disease. When somebody has liver disease, it's like, like Kristen said, well, wait a second, I've never had, you know, significant alcohol. How come? You know, when you say liver disease, people think alcohol.
Dhru Purohit Show
The Biggest Warning Signs That You Have Fatty Liver and What To Do About It
But really now the most common cause of liver disease is by far fatty liver associated with metabolic risk factor, diabetes, you know, overweight, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, you know, those kind of things. Yeah. And on the note of the name fatty liver, I agree. It's a really good point. It's misleading. You know, people think if I eat fat, I'm going to get fatty liver. Makes sense.
Dhru Purohit Show
The Biggest Warning Signs That You Have Fatty Liver and What To Do About It
Well, it's wrong. If you eat carbs, you will get fatty liver. If you eat too much sugar, you will get fatty liver. The problem is with sugar, not with fat. And true.