Kristin Kirkpatrick - Skinny Liver: Lose the fat and lose the toxins for increased energy, health and longevity

33% of the UK population have Non-alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease (NAFLD), and many of them dont even know they have it.

Feeling tired even after sleeping well?
Are you bloated for no reason?
Is your skin dry and itchy?

Skinny Liver will show you how to harness the power of your liver and its 300+ functions to revolutionise your mind, body and reverse non-alcoholic fatty liver disease. The four-week programme shares the steps you can take to get your liver health back on track, with everything from exercise to healthy eating and other simple lifestyle changes along with delicious liver-friendly recipes.

Award-winning dietitian Kristin Kirkpatrick and hepatologist Dr Ibrahim Hanouneh have created a life-changing plan that will help you achieve optimal health. Their authoritative, easy-to-follow guide is not just for your most essential organ, but for your whole body.

Kristin Kirkpatrick, MS, RD, LD, is the manager of Wellness Nutrition Services at the Cleveland Clinic Wellness Institute in Cleveland, Ohio. She is a regular guest on national television shows, including The Dr Oz Show, NBC Nightly News, and the Today Show.

Ibrahim Hanouneh, MD, Dr Hanouneh currently works with Minnesota Gastroenterology, specializing in the diagnosis and treatment of adult and paediatric digestive system and liver disorders.

FOR JAKE & BODEN

every word I write, every breath I breathe, and every action I take is for you.

Michael F. Roizen, MD ,

Professor and Chief Wellness Officer, Cleveland Clinic

This book has changed how I think. Its made me realize how important and how easy it is to keep my liver younger so it can keep me younger.

And it has changed how I advise patients. Before 1990, most docs not specializing in liver diseases assumed that the liver was pretty resilient: if stressed by a one-night alcohol excess, it will recover, assuming its no longer abused with alcohol or hasnt been attacked by a virus. The popular view was that liver diseases only affected people who abused their liver with alcohol or that the diseases were largely preventable. And after all, your liver would regenerate. If you allow me a quick diversion from medicine before 1990 to mythology, I want to quickly tell the story of Prometheus.

Prometheus gave fire to the humans. His punishment from the gods for committing such a crime: the poor fellow was chained to a rock, where a vulture would peck out his liver. Amazingly, his liver would regenerate overnight. Were not sure how the Greeks knew of the livers power, though it may be because they survived injuries to the organ in battle. While the Greeks were on to something, were pretty certain that they didnt have as much insight into the liver as the scientific world did in 1990and does today. The good news is that this myth was largely right. But doctors have also needed to learn a thing or two in the last thirty years.

Up until about 1990 only 1 percent of us suffered loss of energy and vitality due to what we did to our liver with food and other lifestyle and toxin challenges. But that has changed: now 30 percent of Americans are afflicted with fatty liver diseaseand with that, a lack of energy and a host of other problems. Remember Morgan Spurlock? In his film Super Size Me, he documented a month of eating nothing but fast food. The consequences? His weight and LDL cholesterol zoomed up, he felt lethargic and depressed, and, said one of his doctors, his liver turned into pt. Now, that might not be the standard definition of nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD), but it sure paints a vividand accuratepicture of a condition that afflicts a third of all Americans.

In of this book, Kristin Kirkpatrick and Ibrahim Hanouneh summarize the full picture of liver diseases and especially fatty liver disease. NAFLD is the infusion of liver cells with fat, caused by insulin resistance, obesity, diabetes, elevated triglycerides, and poor nutrition. As they explain, as you put on weight, your body becomes insulin resistant. When that happens, you cant use insulin efficiently to shuttle sugar into your cells for energy. Instead, sugar gets stored in your liver as fatand soon youve got NAFLD. And then you are at risk for some major conditions, such as cirrhosis or liver cancer.

Making the lifestyle changes that appear in the plan in . Youll learn the basics to make and keep your liver skinnyand give you more energy every day.

Kristin Kirkpatrick with Ibrahim Hanouneh have taught me how to treasure my liver, why that is so important, and what to do to keep it young. This is great news for all of us, since what keeps your liver young keeps your brain, heart, eyes, and even sex organs functioning better. This book gives you the plan for a life filled with energy. Im sharing this plan with my own patients. In the endif you understand their principles and follow their plan, tooyou will be well on your way to making your liver skinny and your life longer and filled with much more energy and fun.

Indifference and neglect often do much more damage than outright dislike.

J. K. Rowling

If I asked you to pause for a moment to think about the organs that are vital to your survival, your heart, lungs, and brain would probably come to mind. Thats as it should be, because without these organs, you simply wouldnt be alive. But theres a key player missing from that essential list: the liver, which is often overlooked in importance, even though it is among the hardest working organs in our body. Many of us dont have a clue where our liver is, let alone what it does. In a way, the liver is like the late comedian Rodney Dangerfield, who frequently complained, I dont get no respect! The liver generally doesnt get the respect or attention it deserves until something goes wrong.

Yet the liver is also like the great and powerful Oz, in that it makes magic happen from behind the curtain. If you were to picture what happens in your body as a Hollywood movie, your heart and brain would be among the lead actors but the liver would be the director. Its a silent player behind the scenes, but a powerful one that orchestrates a variety of critical body functions. Located on the right side of the upper abdomen, just below the diaphragm, the liver is one of the largest organs in the body (an adult liver weighs about 3 pounds). It performs more than three hundred tasks, including playing a role in such crucial metabolic processes as converting the nutrients in our diet into substances our body can use and store for energy and removing harmful substances from our blood.

While the liver is tough and resilient, the punishment of our modern lifestyle can wreak havoc on this precious organand we may not even realize its happening! Symptoms of liver disease may be subtle to nonexistent until the condition has reached a severe stage, by which point it may be too late to reverse it. Because mild liver dysfunction is often discovered incidentally through elevated liver enzyme levels on a blood test, and because it doesnt cause alarming symptoms the way heart disease does, most of us dont give a second thought to our livers well-being or give our liver the TLC it deserves. Many people think of liver disease as related to consuming too much alcoholbut thats only part of the story.