How Drinks and Foods with Added Sugar Cause a Fatty Liver ?
The highest rises in blood sugar come from sugared drinks. This includes fruit juices and milk as well as sugared soft drinks and coffee or tea with sugar. Foods made with added sugars also cause high blood sugar levels. When blood sugar levels rise, sugar is used for energy and a small amount is stored in your muscles and your liver. After that, excess sugar in your bloodstream is immediately converted to a type of fat called triglycerides. Just minutes after taking a sugared drink your blood triglycerides rise. The triglycerides are then stored in fat cells, muscles and in the liver itself.
Your doctor can order a picture of your liver called a liver sonogram. If it shows fat in your liver, you probably already have pre-diabetes or diabetes. As fat accumulates in your liver, you can develop a condition called a fatty liver. Excess fat in your liver causes far more than just diabetes. Fat in liver cells destroys liver cells to replace them with scar tissue. When this happens, doctors call it NASH (Non-Alcoholic Steato Hepatitis). Because NASH can destroy the liver, patients may require a liver transplant to keep them alive. Alcohol can also destroy liver cells and fill them with fat, so alcohol also causes a fatty liver.