Happy Liver Report

According to MedicineNet.com, normal values for liver enzymes are as follows:

AST: 5 to 40 units per liter of blood serum.
ALT: 7 to 56 units per liter of blood serum.

I know that before I began the liquid low-calorie diet plan my levels for both of these fell into the “normal” range. I also now know that only five weeks into the program, I had shot up to around 450 AST and 270 ALT. No, those are not typos – so you can see why my family Doctor was both concerned and emphatic that I quit the program immediately.

As of today, I am back down to around 50 AST and 70 ALT respectively, so in the three and a half weeks I’ve been working on my own to heal through healthy eating (and many prayers from many people) my liver has managed to heal most of the way, which is super good news! I’ll have one more test in another month just to be sure.

I have also, as of today, lost another ten pounds on my own since quitting my previous program.

The Endocrinologist who was administrating my liquid diet program (not to be confused with my family Doctor) insisted up to the day that I quit that what was happening was not the fault of their products, but was instead the result of my having fatty liver disease because I was a fat woman.

My family Doctor found this claim to be suspect considering the very sharp numeric rise while I was solely consuming their food substitutes and also based on the fact that in the ten years she’s been caring for my health I have never once shown a single sign or symptom of fatty liver disease. She believes I was having a vitamin toxicity reaction to the extremely high levels of artificial vitamins in the products I was solely consuming as food. Also their refusal to acknowledge even the possibility that I was having a bad reaction to the products convinced her that I should, under no circumstances, return to their care.

So here I am. Returning to health and hopefully the wiser for my experience as I continue on this very long road.

My family Doctor (to whom I will be sending a thank you card for possibly saving my liver) told me that she wants me to take one very important thing away from this whole experience: that I should listen to my body, know it, and trust what it’s telling me.

There are no easy answers, no magic pills (or protein shakes) and no quick solutions. Every day of my life that remains I will fight this fight and walk this path.  Even once the numbers on the scale read exactly what I want them to read.

I should send one of these to my family Doctor