Well it looks like I have non alcoholic cirrhosis of the liver. I can’t blame no one but myself. Horrible eating habits and no exercise. My gastrointerologist ordered a fibroscan and my CAP was 400 and kPa was 16.1. She has referred me to a liver specialist. I also have type 2 diabetes.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: techguy,

Hopeful to you and the specialist outcome.

Sorry to hear. I've read tgat liver disease is very common and under diagnosed. Hopefully you can heal with a low carb diet & some exercise. There is so much sugar in processed foods it's scary.

Don't blame yourself. Change your diet and do some research on your liver.
When you see the specialist ask very pointed questions and try to get straight
answers. I've read that the liver is one organ that can partially regenerate.
I've asked my Liver Doc ten times how long I have to live, He just says it's
stable now.
I hope you win the battle.

Best of luck with your treatment. Thoughts and prayers!

I too wish you well. I do not know much about your situation. Wonder if drinking more water would be beneficial? Prayers sent.

quote:

Originally posted by techguy:
She has referred me to a liver specialist. I also have type 2 diabetes.

Yeah, been there. The good news in your case is you just have to stay away from shit food, salt and sugar. The bad news is you have to stay away from shit food, salt and sugar. The really bad news is, everything is processed and has more salt and sugar than we need, thus how you got here. Learn to love fresh vegetables and fruits - you basically can't eat too much of them. Avoid red meat, learn to love chicken and yogurt. Eat lots of clean, lean protein so your liver doesn't start consuming itself. There's salt in everything, you're going to want to start cooking all your own stuff. Eventually most processed or prepared foods are going to start tasting too salty for you, that's how you know you're doing it right.

Once you become... not diabetic for lack of a better way to phrase it, life becomes a lot easier. Metformin sucks, you won't like the first couple weeks on that. I wouldn't stray too far from home for a while lol.

They're going to put you on furosemide and spironolactone. I lost a hundred pounds in my first month on the diuretics, about seventy in the first two weeks. Part of that was also undiagnosed Grave's disease, but still. You'll be pissing every five minutes, and that's preferable to getting hooked up to a bag. So far, I've managed to avoid it, but I have a number of friends and an in-law who've had many, many liters drained out of them, and I understand it's not a fun experience. Maybe you don't have ascites, but probably, you do.

Furosemide can be hell on the kidneys, but watch that spiro - it isn't considered the premier way to do it, but it is part of one course of transgender medication for guys "transitioning" to women. It's an androgen blocker and can have some pretty horrible side effects for some guys. If you notice those changes, ask about getting put on amiloride instead, it'll fix that.

Oh, this part is important. Lactulose. This... is vile stuff. Some of us, they just put on it, and some of us, they wait until we get deep into the high protein diet and start getting hepatic encephalopathy and then they subject us to this stuff. Lactulose and Metformin combined... you'll hate life and your wife will hate you as much or more. It's... I'm not even going to elaborate. It's truly vile. Xifaxin doesn't work quite as well at clearing up the brain fog, I'd say it's probably 85-90% as effective, but I have quality of life on this stuff. It's far preferable. If you smell like ammonia or your socks smell like cat piss, you need to be on either one of the two of these. I have a whole case of ten of the half liter bottles of the lactulose sitting under my desk because the pharmacy got really overzealous and I hope my wife ends up throwing this stuff in a dumpster when I die, all of it unopened. I could die happy never having to take another teaspoon of it.

If you start getting unbearable itching, ask about Ursodiol. It fixed that for me.

I think that's about it for the drugs you're likely to have to deal with as a beginner. Have you had an endoscopy yet?

It really isn't the end of the world. Trust me. Don't handle toxic shit, do your bi-annual imaging and cancer screens, become active, and look at it as a new phase in life. It can be a major blow at first, but it's truly not the end of the world. If you have any questions or need to vent, shoot me an email and I'll give you my number. You can call or text any time.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: P220 Smudge,

Very sorry to hear this. I’m hoping your specialist has suggestions that may help improve things for you.
Sounds like it’s time for some new foods and more exercise. Probably something I should do as well.

A bad diagnosis but with a potentially positive outcome.

Good luck

I'm sorry, techguy! Best of luck with your treatment.

Smudge seems to offer some pretty good advice.

Religiously stay away from high fructose corn syrup. It has to be processed by the liver before being sent to the cells of the body. It is in a lot of products even some lunch meat, sausages, and breads. And alcohol is now a big no no.

Look into milk thistle supplements and also a supplement called NAC.

Years ago there was a book called "The Liver Cleansing Diet" Pretty strict but a lot of people got results following it, even people without liver disease.

N-Acetylcysteine Improves Liver Function in Patients with Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3270338/


Avoid the Hidden Dangers of High Fructose Corn Syrup

https://health.clevelandclinic...ose-corn-syrup-video

High fructose corn syrup has crept into more of our foods over the last few decades. Compared with regular sugar, it’s cheaper and sweeter, and is more quickly absorbed into your body. But eating too much high fructose corn syrup can lead to insulin resistance, obesity, Type 2 diabetes and high blood pressure.

Functional medicine expert Mark Hyman, MD, explains the many ill effects of high fructose corn syrup, and offers strategies to avoid it.

Fat production factory for your body
Fructose was initially thought to be a better choice for people with diabetes due to its low glycemic index. But only your liver cells can process fructose, and that’s where the problems begin.

“Fructose goes straight to your liver and starts a fat production factory,” Dr. Hyman says. “It triggers the production of triglycerides and cholesterol.” He explains that it’s actually the sugar — not the fat — that causes the most trouble for your cholesterol.

What’s even worse, Dr. Hyman notes, is high doses of fructose “punch little holes in your intestinal lining, causing what we call a leaky gut.” He explains that this allows foreign food proteins and bacterial proteins to enter into your bloodstream, which triggers inflammation, makes you gain weight and causes Type 2 diabetes.

Increases appetite, promotes obesity
Studies show that high fructose corn syrup increases your appetite and promotes obesity more than regular sugar. “High fructose corn syrup also contributes to diabetes, inflammation, high triglycerides and something we call non-alcoholic fatty liver disease,” says Dr. Hyman, adding that it increases all the fat in the liver, which now affects over 90 million Americans.

“It can even cause fibrosis or what we call cirrhosis. In fact, sugar in our diet is now the major cause of liver failure and that makes sugar the leading cause of liver transplants,” he continues.

Alternative options
So, should you stay away from everything fructose?

Well, you should as much as possible, says Dr. Hyman, but fruit is the exception.

Fruit has fructose, but it’s naturally occurring and it doesn’t have the same effects as high fructose corn syrup. Additionally, fruit is packaged with fiber, vitamins, minerals and all sorts of healing nutrients. So, unless you eat massive amounts of fruit, fructose shouldn’t be a problem.

High-fructose corn syrup represents more than 40% of the caloric sweeteners that are added to our foods and beverages. If you find the words “high-fructose corn syrup” or the new term “corn sugar” on a label, stay away if you want to be healthy. “These are signs of very poor quality foods,” states Dr. Hyman. He adds that the easiest way to completely avoid high-fructose corn syrup is to eat real, whole, unprocessed foods.

But if you must buy packaged foods, he advises reading the labels carefully to identify sugar in other disguises.

“Sugar is hidden in over 80% of the 600,000 processed foods on the market,” he says. But beware: It’s disguised with over 200 different names — things like maltodextrin and other additives you wouldn’t necessarily recognize.

As a general rule of thumb. Dr. Hyman advises, “If you can’t pronounce it, or you don’t recognize the ingredients, or you wouldn’t add it to food you cooked in your own kitchen, then don’t eat it!”

More at link

quote:

Originally posted by wcb6092:
Look into milk thistle[...]

So, for four years now, this has been the first thing everyone has told me to try once I told them I have cirrhosis. Both my gastroenterologist and my hepatologist at Mayo Clinic have both told me it isn't going to cure cirrhosis and that it's one more thing for the liver to remove from the body. One of them does nothing but liver transplants all day, every day, so everyone's welcome to draw their own conclusions, but I decided that was good enough for me.

Thank all of you for the advice and well wishes, it’s greatly appreciated.

quote:

Originally posted by P220 Smudge:

I'll back Smudge here, Milk Thistle is weak sauce. I use Choline/Inositol and L-Methionine per Dr Rand Mcclain on Youtube, high dose for a month or so and lower maintenance all year, considering I'm still a degenerate beer drinker.

I also take NAC and Glycine/ TMG daily.

There's a new player in town Tudca that I'm not sure about. The bodybuilders like it, I'm on the fence. Have tried it, and I take it here and there. Felt what I believe was some positive effect but still learning and not all in.

NAC and Choline/ Inositol - L-Methionine are proven. No downside I'm aware of. Docs won't bring it up.

Most importantly in general, hammer water down and don't eat bullshit man. I know I know, not easy. I had biscuits and gravy this morning cause the wife wanted to go to bfast. (always her fault, From the guy who clears 30 Miller Lites every weekend.) But my diet is good and I don't miss workouts and run.

I'm no doctor so take it as you want, but I wouldn't be throwing in the towel. I'd rebirth myself doing all good things getting strong. The liver can regenerate 100% in 6 weeks last I heard, not that your's will or can but dam who cares about the details. What else are you gonna do?

Sack up, get mean, eat lean, clean and pump the iron (or walk or whatever exercise.) If you go down go down swinging dammit.

Some factual current data, my mom who doesn't do anything fitness wise and is mid 60s had liver values AST 51 amd ALT 118. She finally listened to me and took Choline and stuff for 1 month and those values went to AST 22 and ALT 28. She works with one of the highest level brain docs daily who wasn't fixing this stuff!

Again I won't stand here and tell you this will fix you. But why not? It's cheap. B Vitamins and Amino Acids. Said to be more powerful than any drug for the liver. Gallon of water a day at least. If you are sandbagging calories YOU DON"T NEED CARBOHYDRATE. Coffee is good unless Smudge says no. I don't know Cirrhosis I just know general liver crap.

Metabolize the fat and feed the body nutrients and agua.


And all the best sir. Doctors aren't in control and the Author of all things calls the shots. Nothing that can't be done with him in your corner.

Uhh, I'm just going to say this: Under absolutely no circumstances should the OP start taking a bunch of supplements based on the advice of anyone here on the forum, regardless of where we got that information. We have no idea the rest of his overall health, and our best intentions could very well kill him.

I'm not trying to be an asshole, and I know we're all trying to be helpful, but that was the advice I got from my doctors. We have some fibrosis numbers, but he didn't post a liver panel and I doubt anyone but a few of the forum docs would know exactly what we're looking at if he did. I wouldn't.

I gave the safest advice I knew to give. And as for the two posters that recommended lots of water: a cirrhotic, by definition, has problems with water retention. The liver cannot filter correctly, and so it doesn't, and water builds up in the body. This is called ascites and edema. Too much of this, and excess fluid could pool around his heart and lead to heart failure. Well-meaning advice that makes great sense for most people, and it could actually finish the man off.

This is a condition I've had to learn a lot about. The best, safest things the OP can do as far as altering his health and diet are the things I've related so far. Cut out salt over 1,000mg a day, cut out all processed sugar and carbs and eat tons of fresh fruits and vegetables, eat lots of lean proteins. Outside of that, I strongly suggest doing nothing that hasn't been advised by a doctor.

Happy to subordinate to that advice. As said I'm ignorant about Cirrhosis.

What about coffee? Seems like that would help drop some water? And keep up Morale?

Again, I don’t know his exact health, but if he’s a coffee drinker, I’ve never come across anything that says to not drink coffee. I enjoy some on occasion, and it’s a mild diuretic, so it might be just fine for him.

Right on sir.

OP All the best in your fight.

Very sorry to hear about your health issues.

PLEASE TAKE GOOD CARE OF YOURSELF.

We just buried our building ‘s Super. He was under 50YO. Not very smart.
He was diagnosed a year or so sgo and ignored all the warnings and health advise.
We are still horrified. It was way too soon.

Sad way to go. Avoidable.

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