Obeisty's effect on the Liver?

Most of the effects of obeisty are pretty well known, like diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, and arthritis.  I've seen several posts on the message boards about liver issues related to obesity.  I need an education about the effects on the liver. My liver enzymes have been moderately elevated at each physical I've had over the last 3 years.  My doctor doesn't seem too concerned about it, but I am wondering what type of damage I've done to my liver? I am a complete non-drinker and non-smoker, so everything which could have happened to my liver can come from only a few things, overeating, genetics, or environmental exposure to chemicals.  In my live, overeating is the big thing, although I have had some workplace exposure to chemicals (pesticides and solvents).  I have always been a binge eater.  Do all of the sugars, salts, and chemical food additives poison the liver just like alcohol would?  How about the sugar alcohols in "sugar free" foods? I hope to have a Roux-En-Y gastic bypass later this year.  Will going to a healthier weight and changing my diet help my liver?  I know the surgeon I saw wants his patients to lose weight and go on a liquid diet before surgery to shrink the liver.  

I can tell you from experience that if the Doc asks you to do the liquid diet before - the DO IT.  It is hard but it makes all the difference.  I had to do it and did it.  I lost 20 lbs in the 8 days I did it before my surgery (6-25-07).  After the surgery my Doc told me that if I would not have done it, he would not have done the surgery.  Also a friend of mine was told to be on the liquid diet 1 week before and waited until 1 day to do it.  The Doc - the same as mine - said the surgery took 4 hours instead od 2.5 hours.  He alsmost had to open him up.   Moral - your liver will shrink once the diet and weight changes.  I would ASSUME the enzymes would be decreased.  I would check with ur Doc. Good luck and keep us posted.

I was told that my liver enzymes were out of whack after my first blood test after RNY. It was at about three or four months. My PCP told me to come back in two weeks. In two weeks they said it had improved a little, to have it done in one month, after that test they had improved a litle more. I called my Surgeons office and he told me not to worry that they were a little elevated but when he took out my galbladder a week prior to RNY he had taken a biopsy and it was fine.  My surgeon had me to do a low fat diet for two weeks prior to RNY. He said it made his job much easier. It only took him 45 minutes to do my surgery.  pan head

OK.  Calling all you "Gurus of the Gut".  What's the deal with the pre-op liquid diet, the liver, and the effect on the surgery difficulty?  I mean, is my liver 'fat' along with the rest of me?  (Not that that would be surprising.)  Does the liquid diet put the liver through some kind of crash weight-loss, like a 'grapefruit diet' just for your liver? I can see my surgeon wanting it to be less crowded in there when she does her thing, but does the size of the liver really have that much effect, compared to everything else in there that's over-sized? Enquiring minds want to know!     

So, I did some on-line research.  Apparently, I've turned my liver into foie gras, which is so cruel it's been banned in Wisconsin, and some European countries -- it's big, fat, pale, full of lipid globules, and probably more than half way to where it would be if I drank a quart of vodka every day.  Who knew?   I honestly didn't, although I guess I should have, since essentially, when overeating, which during my lifetime has been the bulk of my days by number, I wake up the next morning with a classic "hangover" -- dry mouth, headache, etc.. The good news is, it is one of the more forgiving systems in the body, and should be good as new now that I've stopped torturing it -- I'm trying to stick to about 1200 calories a day with NO refined sugar, no salt, and only healthy fats, in order to lose weight prior to my hoped-for surgery either in late summer or in the fall/early winter. Danny

the pre-op liquid diet is for the live to shrink down some,so the dr.can have a little play room

I can't tell you why in a perfectly technial way, but I will do my best... When you eat your body converts the food into energy in a form it can use - glucose - which it distributes through the bloodstream to all of your cells to fuel them. Your liver stores extra glucose as a substance glycogen which the body can convert back to glucose if it needs some and there isn't already enough in the blood from what you have been eating.  When you eat more than you need to, there is so much extra glucose around that your stores of glycogen in your liver increase and increase. So the idea is that by putting you on a low calorie, low-carb diet for a week or more (depending on your surgeon - mine was only a week, but some are up to a month) your body will go to the glycogen stored in your liver for energy, thus "shrinking" the liver. So when you go on the pre-surgery diet alot of the weight you lose is being lost directly from your liver. The smaller you can get your liver before the surgery, the easier it is for the surgeon to operate on you laproscopically. If you watch a video of the actual surgery (many are available on google video and youtube) you will see that the area where the pouch is formed and the roux limb is connected is in very close proximity to the liver. The surgeon will actually use a special tool called a liver retractor to hold the liver out of the way while he is working. If the surgeon begins the surgery and finds the liver too large to move out of the way, then he may have to convert the surgery to an oopen type surgery. Imagine waking up thinking you only were supposed to have five or six small holes and finding out that in addition they had to do a breastbone to belly-button incision along with all the extra recovery time and complication rates that go along with that. That was all the motivation I needed to stick to my pre-op diet. I lost 11 lbs. during those six days and the surgeon said due in large part to how great my liver looked that my surgery was his easiest of the five he did that day! Hope this answers your question.

Very well said Michael. Have you been studing under Dx. pan head