Most people don’t know this one fact about their liver — but understanding it is the key to understanding how to fix fatty liver disease.
Every nutrient absorbed in your gut — from the stomach, small intestine, and large intestine — passes through the portal vein into the liver first. The liver processes and detoxifies everything before it’s sent throughout the rest of the body.
This means when you consistently take in refined, calorie-dense foods — added sugar, added oils, fried food, alcohol, and white flour — all of that gets funneled directly into the liver first. Over time, the liver becomes overloaded. Unable to process and clear all of those excess calories, it starts storing them as fat cells within the liver itself. That’s how fatty liver disease develops.
Understanding this mechanism reframes the whole approach to fixing fatty liver disease: it’s not just about “eating healthier” in a general sense — it’s about reducing the specific load of refined, concentrated calories that the liver has to process every single day.
For a full 7-step process on clearing fatty liver naturally, download the free eBook Health Secrets at peacediet.org.
About Dr. Terry Shintani, MD, JD, MPH
Dr. Terry Shintani is a Harvard-trained physician and nutritionist, named a Living Treasure of Hawai’i and recipient of the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Award for Excellence. He is the creator of the Peace Diet and the landmark Waianae Diet — published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition and cited over 137 times — and the author of 16 books on natural health and nutrition, drawing on more than 35 years of clinical practice in Honolulu, Hawaii.
Learn more about Dr. Shintani’s work and recognition: NLM Native Voices
Sources:
- NIH/NIDDK — Definition & Facts of NAFLD
- NIH/PubMed — Portal Vein Nutrient Delivery and Hepatic Lipid Metabolism
- CDC — Liver Disease Basics