Excerpt from Australian Natural Health Magazine

Australia’s liver guru, Dr Sandra Cabot is best known for her blockbuster health title, The Liver Cleansing Diet. Now, she’s back on the liver crusade with a new title and a new message.

Fatty liver is a condition that’s becoming an all-too common curse on Australians. Here, Dr Cabot shares her tips on how to recognise it and how to reverse it.

Do you think fatty liver is a largely ignored disease in comparison to heart disease and other illnesses?

Dr Sandra Cabot: Oh definitely. Fatty liver is totally underestimated in prevalence and significance. It’s almost always associated with being overweight and diabetes and it’s often the cause of high cholesterol and high blood sugar and the things that lead to heart disease.

Why do you think it has been so underestimated?

I don’t think people have really understood the liver in the past. Medicine is very specialised, so you can get endocrinologists and heart specialists and gastroenterologists, neurologists, rheumatologists, all that, but the fact the liver is one of the most important organs in the whole body in relation to its relationship to other systems and organs hasn’t been recognised, so it really is a new discovery in a way. There’s an article that’s just come out in the journals that diabetics must have their livers checked every 12 months because they’re at great risk of severe fatty liver disease, which will cause liver failure. In the past they’ve only had their eyes checked and their kidneys checked and their nervous system checked – the liver has historically been very neglected.