Fatty liver is striking early, but there are ways to beat it

Every third Indian has fatty liver, said Union minister Dr Jitendra Singh recently. If you’re quietly thinking that fatty liver disease, which causes the liver to swell with dangerous levels of fat, is not going to happen to you because you don’t drink, you’re wrong. Even a teenager can get it, and it can progress to a more severe condition called non-alcoholic steatohepatitis, or NASH, which is a leading cause of liver cancer, cirrhosis and liver transplants. But there’s a silver lining — it can be reversed in the early stages.

Like 23-year-old Sunil Kumar did. “I had been struggling with obesity for years, but Grade 2 fatty liver was a wake-up call I never expected at my age,” says the Mumbai-based Kumar, who was 143 kg when diagnosed. A low-carb diet and intermittent fasting helped him shed significant weight and reverse his liver disease.