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by Sharon McQueen (Author)
Fatty liver disease means you have extra fat in your liver. You might hear your doctor call it hepatic steatosis.Heavy drinking makes you more likely to get it. Over time, too much alcohol leads to a buildup of fat inside your liver cells. This makes it harder for your liver to work.But you can get fatty liver disease even if you don't drink a lot of alcohol.Fatty liver is the accumulation of triglycerides and other fats in the liver cells. The amount of fatty acid in the liver depends on the balance between the processes of delivery and removal. In some patients, fatty liver may be accompanied by hepatic inflammation and liver cell death (steatohepatitis).Fat in the liver typically develops when a person consumes more fat and sugars than his or her body can handle. This is more common in people who are overweight or obese but can also occur in adults with healthy body weights. If fat builds up to more than 5% of the liver, then the liver is considered to be a fatty liver. Although having this condition may not cause any immediate harm, there is a concern that extra fat in the liver might make the liver vulnerable to further injury such as inflammation and scarring.Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) is a liver disease affecting people who drink little to no alcohol. As the name implies, the main characteristics of NAFLD is too much fat stored in liver cells. NAFLD is the most common liver disease in Canada affecting about 20% of Canadians.It tends to develop in people who are overweight or obese, particularly if they have lot of fat around the middle of their body (waist). It can also develop in a person whose body weight is in the healthy weight range, but who typically eats a lot of sugary and fatty foods and who has extra fat around the waist. NAFLD has shown to be strongly associated with metabolic syndrome-a health disorder characterized by a group of risk factors (large waist circumference, high blood pressure, high blood sugar levels, high cholesterol, and abnormal amounts of lipids in the blood) that greatly increase the risk of many chronic illnesses.
