What's worse for your Liver: Fat or Acohol?

from Leanbodylaunchpad.com

Fat?

Or Alcohol?

Which is more hepatotoxic?

Kind of a trick question.

In an article entitled "Obesity Trumps Alcohol in Liver Damage" (Oops, gave it away), in terms of liver-related morbidity and mortality, it seems that obesity was even more dangerous than alcohol consumption.

The study involved 100,000 women in London. The author and his team studied the interaction between BMI and alcohol consumption for 'liver related events', in women middle aged and older.

'Liver-related events' (illness or death related to alcoholic liver disease, NASH, cirrhosis, or decompensation of cirrhosis) were measured, and calibrated for those who were both heavy drinkers or not, and those with a BMI of less than or greater than 30.

Clearly, as expected, for those that drank heavily, the risk of liver events increased irrespective of BMI.

The other findings were a little more surprising, when obesity gets into the mix.

In heavy drinkers that were overweight (BMI <30), the event rate was notably higher than those who drank heavily but were not overweight.

Events were also higher in patients who were overweight, but did not drink heavily. The combined risk was additive.

An effect described as "super additive" was noted with obesity and heavy drinking.

There was a difference between overweight drinkers and obese drinkers, in that more damage was demonstrated with increasing weight. More event were tallied in the obese group (BMI >30) that drank heavily, vs. the dame rate of alcohol ingestion and "just" overweight status.

Interestingly, this study has more public health implications than you might think for the UK and Europe.

Europe has the heaviest alcohol consumption in the world, and consequently alcohol consumption is the third leading cause of death and illness there, only after tobacco and hypertension.