Ok, so here’s the back story. I’ve had high liver enzymes (ALT) for years. They were always around 100 (normal is like 15-55) until they started climbing last year. When they got to about 150, I had a liver ultrasound. My liver looked fine with maybe just a tiny bit of fatty liver. My doc decided to watch it for a bit longer. Once my ALT reached 200, I was sent to a gastroenterologist.
I saw him last week. He was pretty knowledgeable about PCOS and basically said he wasn’t going to tell me anything that I didn’t already know. PCOSers are metabolically predisposed to NAFLD (non-alcoholic fatty liver disease). He did say though that of his last 100 patients, including those with Hep, I have the highest ALT level. At least I excel at something, right?
He’s also testing me for lots of other things just to rule them out. I had 11 vials of blood taken in one sitting!
Anyways, he said that my Endo is doing everything right and that I should just keep focusing on getting these extra 40 pounds off. He also said something that was fairly shocking to me. If my enzymes were to stay elevated like they are for an extended period of time, I have an 8-20% chance of having serious liver disease as I age. That was pretty scary. He said that taking a high dose of vitamin D (like twice the RDA) might help a bit. I also asked about taking Metformin, Actos or Avandia and if they are safe to take with such high ALT. He said they were fine and even though they are metabolized to some extent in the liver, don’t give it a second though.
Here’s the shocker though. I just got back my latest ALT numbers. They were 200 in January and by the end of February were 90! I’ve been on a low fat diet for about the last 6 weeks and although I’m not losing any weight, my liver apparently loves it.
I know there have been a lot of questions about this issue so I hope this helps someone.