Fatty liver disease often goes unnoticed until it’s advanced. Here’s what you can do now to protect your metabolic health.
Most people think of “detox” when they think of their liver. However, this powerful organ also serves as the command center of your metabolism—regulating blood sugar, processing fats, and storing essential nutrients.
When too much fat builds up in liver cells, fatty liver disease and metabolic dysfunction ensue. A fatty liver disrupts the liver’s ability to respond to insulin. This insulin resistance, in turn, fuels further fat accumulation and creates a harmful cycle at the core of poor metabolic health.
Yet about one in three U.S. adults may have a fatty liver—and most don’t know it.
With insulin resistance and fatty liver disease rates steadily climbing, understanding how the liver works, how and why it becomes overburdened, and what you can do to support it is no longer optional—it’s imperative.
“When we think about the liver as a metabolic central organ, the liver plays a central role in essentially keeping you alive every day. You can’t really get away with a liver that is either removed or dysfunctional. It is so essential to life,” Andrew Koutnik, a scientist specializing in metabolic health who holds a doctorate in molecular pharmacology, told The Epoch Times.
Fatty liver and insulin resistance are closely linked in a two-way dynamic. First, insulin resistance causes fat to build up in the liver by boosting fat production and delivery to the liver. Second, fatty liver increases insulin resistance by disrupting insulin signaling, causing inflammation, and releasing toxic fat byproducts. This cycle plays a role in Type 2 diabetes, obesity, and metabolic syndrome, making both conditions important targets for prevention and treatment.
The Liver’s Core Metabolic Responsibilities
Your liver has more than 500 critical jobs to perform daily, but when it comes to metabolic health, it’s at the helm of a few key ones:
- Regulating blood sugar: Storing excess glucose as glycogen and releasing it when needed—especially between meals—to maintain stable energy levels. This role in glucose management also makes the liver central to insulin sensitivity.
- Metabolizing fats and proteins: Converting dietary fats, producing cholesterol, managing triglycerides, and processing proteins by converting amino acids into usable forms and removing waste products.
- Detoxifying the body: Filtering everything from alcohol to endocrine disruptors to help protect the body from harmful substances.
- Balancing hormones: Metabolizing hormones such as estrogen to help maintain hormonal balance throughout the body.
With all of its jobs, it’s no surprise that when such a hard-working player takes a hit, the detrimental effects ripple throughout the body. Excess fat in the liver, in particular, is now considered both a driver and a consequence of broader metabolic dysfunction. So, how does the liver become fatty?
