Fatty liver disease
Fatty liver means too much fat in the liver, usually caused by excess weight, a lot of sugar or alcohol. It doesn't hurt and often reverses with weight loss.
Ausführlich erklärt
A liver is described as fatty when more than 5% of its cells have stored fat. For a long time, people thought only of alcohol – today, non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (in the new medical terminology “MASLD”, metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease) is the most common liver disease of all: estimates suggest it affects around one in four adults in Germany and about one in three children who are severely overweight.
The liver is the body's metabolic hub. If it constantly receives more energy than it can process – especially fructose from sugary drinks and sweets, as well as excess calories of any kind – it converts the surplus into fat and initially stores it in its own cells. Insulin resistance speeds this up. Alcohol adds to the effect, even in “normal” amounts.
The tricky part: a fatty liver doesn't hurt. It's often discovered by chance during an ultrasound or through a slightly raised liver value (ALT, also known as GPT) in a blood test. In some people it becomes inflamed (steatohepatitis) and can scar over the years. It's also closely linked to type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease – here, the liver acts as an early warning system.
The good news really is good: the liver regenerates like hardly any other organ. Losing 5% of your body weight already reduces liver fat significantly, and from 7 to 10%, studies show the inflammation also subsides in many people. What helps in practice: cut out sugary drinks, take a break from alcohol, eat a Mediterranean diet (vegetables, pulses, olive oil, fish), get 150 minutes of exercise a week and do strength training – muscles take the strain off the liver because they use sugar directly.
Especially important for families: children's livers are sensitive to fructose from juice, fizzy drinks and smoothies. Water as the default drink is the simplest protection – and an example that children pick up without even noticing.