Sunday, April 24, 2016

Alcohol and fructose are the same to your liver

From Liz Miller via Facebook.

Alcoholic Liver Disease: Update on the Role of Dietary Fat

"The protective effects of dietary saturated fat (SF) and deleterious effects of dietary unsaturated fat (USF) on alcohol-induced liver pathology are well recognized and documented in experimental animal models of ALD. Moreover, it has been demonstrated in an epidemiological study of alcoholic cirrhosis that dietary intake of SF was associated with a lower mortality rates, whereas dietary intake of USF was associated with a higher mortality".

My italics.

Brief note to Saturophiles and Cholesterophiles:

I think we can say that we have won.

Peter

5 comments:

GK said...

Ah, this is precisely why I temper my penchant for port wine with a good serving of triple-cream Brie.

Puddleg said...

Indeed, the whole tone of this review is pro-SFA.
In 1995, when Samuel french first proposed a human protocol for the use of SFA in alcoholic liver disease, he had to end it with this disclaimer:
"Of course, there is a danger in extrapolating animal data to humans. For instance, a diet rich in saturated fat may have negative side effects such as worsening cardiovascular disease in humans. Because of this potential danger, caution should be exercised if the animal data are to be used as rationales for the treatment of patients with alcoholic hepatitis."

http://www.gastrojournal.org/article/0016-5085(95)90354-2/pdf

There seems to be nothing like that in the new paper - instead it concludes

"Given that there is no FDA-approved therapy for any stage of ALD, dietary fat may play an important role in the management of ALD."

Ash Simmonds said...

Been reading up on as much of this stuff as I can over the years, and one thing that comes up over and over with both major forms of liver disease (alcoholic and non-alcoholic) is that it seems to require abundance of PUFA/seed oils.

With a high PUFA/low sat fat diet the amount of alcohol OR fructose required to induce massive damage in short order is pretty small, but when the diet is almost completely devoid of PUFA the upper limit for ethanol administration required to inflict liver damage doesn't seem to have been found. That, and it appears much of the damage can be reversed with strict beef fat administration.

Would love to see a trial where they used the 90% tallow/10% casein KD and just kept upping the ethanol (additive, not displacement) until establishing a baseline where destruction reliably occurs. In rats - of course.

In the mean time, join me in a tallowtini.

Ash Simmonds said...

Oh, and I'd add to that tallow KD an abundance of egg-yolks - choline is important here.

Peter said...

I've been back through a reasonable amount of the alcohol literature over the years. You usually end up at a dead end in terms of what they actually fed, even if you have the full text... Nothing changes.

Peter