Interesting diet study for NASH and Fibrosis.

[Clock01]

"A clinical trial, led by a team at NDPCHS, has shown that a three-month rapid weight loss programme was not only safe but also effective in reducing the severity of a liver disease non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) with liver fibrosis."

phc.ox.ac.uk/news/rapid-wei...

[mickeymouse42]

The article is a bit misleading. It's perfectly possible to have NASH or NAFLD as it's more commonly called without having cirrhosis. NAFLD is commonly associated with bile acid disorders which tend to make you fat and the bile acid binder drugs used in treatment make you even fatter. Losing weight is important and there's a current trend in research looking at using semaglutide weight loss (and diabetes) drugs (like wegovy and saxenda) to do this. It's early days for this research.

A low fat diet and as much exercise as possible is a good starting point. If you're overweight, swimming is really good way to get exercise without putting too much strain on your joints.

[Clock01 in reply to mickeymouse42]

Well, it's a summary of the results of a small research study rather than an article. Definitely agree about exercise.

But I feel there has been very little modern research on diet and weightloss with regards to liver problems.

And, I'm no expert, but I find it odd that recent research into diets and reversing diabetes and helping heart disease all find that the low fat 40 year fad has led to more obesity and more metabolic problems. Whereas sugar and UPF and processed carbs are the real problem - but that was hidden for political reasons in the US to protect the sugar industry in 1960s.

Dietary advce around liver problems seems not to have changed much in that period and I cannot understand why diets now known and proved to be good for diabetes (T2) and the gut and the heart would be so much at odds with advice given for liver problems, unless the advice for liver is perhaps lagging behind?

I'm not surprised to read that semaglutide is currently undergoing trials. But saddened by it tbh. It's currently got so much being invested in it and is being associated with all sorts of health benefits. But I think we should ask, is it the drug (that I believe you take for life?) or the weightloss that is having all these good effects? Semaglutide is given and you are supposed to make lifestyle changes too. It seems to make lifestyle changes easier to make I agree, but it is the weightloss and lifestly changes that do the good,

I have been offered it and, I suspect I would be a good candidate for it to help my diabetes - I definitely , definitely need to lose weight and it is indeed not easy, butI just don't trust it. So much hype, so many profits to be made. coupled with what I have learned in the last few years about the misleading way research results are presented and the powerful but distorting role pharmaceuticals have got into by funding most western countries' drug watchdog bodies and the most influential medical journals.

While feeling this, I would, of course, happily be treated if I became very ill, but because there is no choice at that point. But there is no money in teaching and helping people to eat better so it is largely not done. Remember how the Atkins diet was ridiculed when it obviously worked?

I feel we have to acknowledge that our food, many drugs and, in farming, (for example, the way F1 seeds are sold) all all produced for profits by very large corporations, not, mainly for the good health of people.

Sorry! Bit of a rant you probably were not expecting!

But best wishes! 😀

[mickeymouse42 in reply to Clock01]

No problem 😃

Professor Spector's ZOE initiative is. very good. Gathering large data sets and making observations on this is entirely sensible.

It's a tragedy that the NHS doesn't have a national patient records system so medical research is incredibly expensive and typically based on tiny data sets.

[Clock01 in reply to mickeymouse42]

Yes! 😀

Securely kept anonymous and truly independently analysed NHS data would be an extraordinary resource.

There is of course all the insurance company data - but integrity and helpfulness when profits are involved? 🤔 Rare things!

[mickeymouse42 in reply to Clock01]

I would want the NHS to sell the data to big pharma for lots of money that could be used to fix social care.