The 7 Day Diet That Shrinks a Fatty Liver (Dr. Cywes Explains)
In a Nutshell
Sugar—not fat—makes the liver swell up to six times its normal size; a 7-10 day zero-sugar, zero-starch diet (animal or plant fats allowed, 1–2 meals daily, no snacks) drains glycogen and water and shrinks the liver dramatically. The liver needs daily ebb-and-flow cycles of feeding and fasting, not constant grazing; chronic high-carb intake drives insulin resistance, fatty liver, and fibrosis, while true liver “detox” products are useless. Real, minimally processed food plus intermittent fasting lets the liver do its job and reverses the damage.
These notes were generated by AI and may contain inaccuracies.
The liver can enlarge to six times its normal size with a high-carbohydrate diet. When talking about fatty liver, this is actually an inaccurate term. Sugar is what causes the liver to enlarge. We live in an age where the majority of people on Earth have amazing and constant access to food around the clock, and we see this in children under the age of five who are weaned on a diet based primarily on carbohydrates, seed oils, and processed foods. It is absurd what we do to our children by constantly feeding them.
The liver is eternal. The liver does not die. You could take cells from your liver and transplant them into other people and they would live, and the liver would continually regenerate forever. He does not die. You can kill him, but he doesn't die. When you become an old man, they can remove part of your liver and transplant it into someone else who needs a new liver, and you will be perfectly fine.
Dr. Rob Cywes has more than 35 years in surgery. More than 10,000 surgical procedures. He holds dual board certification in pediatric surgery and general surgery. PhD in Liver Metabolism. Former professor of pediatric and fetal surgery at Vanderbilt University. A surgeon and metabolic practitioner.
The liver has countless functions. With regard to metabolic health, the liver is the center of metabolic health and energy flow. The liver is located at the very top of the entire intestine. Almost everything good or bad that passes through the intestines and is absorbed into the human body goes through a single blood vessel called the portal vein, which passes through the liver.
Fatty liver is something to be concerned about, but it has become relatively normal because it is so common. What "normal" means is that if you see this spreading, it may be normal, but it is a spread of a disease. Fatty liver is the liver's attempt to defend itself against an incoming tsunami of macronutrients. The human liver is not supposed to contain a lot of fat inside it. Shark livers, on the other hand, are supposed to be fatty. This is what causes the shark's liver to float. But we are not sharks, most of us at least.
When you add an inflammatory component to fatty liver, and the inflammatory component comes from sugar, then you start to get inflammatory damage to the liver. The cells that line the blood vessels of the liver, the sinus cells, which was the subject of Dr. Cywes' PhD, are damaged. Those blood vessels become blocked, and now inflammation occurs in the liver. The cells become damaged, die, and develop fibrosis to replace the normal liver cells. We see this in children under the age of five who are weaned on a diet based primarily on carbohydrates, seed oils and processed foods.
We now live in an era where the majority of people on Earth have enormous access to food in abundance around the clock, and most of this food has been modified by humans, which we call processed foods. Therefore, it is not a natural food that came directly from the earth or from an animal to our plates. Processed foods are primarily responsible for this. When we concentrate and combine seed oils, which cause severe inflammation, with high levels of carbohydrates, it overburdens the liver's protective system and causes damage.
While most of our experiences as a human species have been in an age of scarcity, our bodies have adapted greatly towards conserving and recycling resources because we have always suffered from scarcity. He cannot cope with the large surplus. Therefore, it lacks defense mechanisms against this chronic and persistent excess.
In unhealthy people, the liver is the main producer of cholesterol. In a healthy person, the good source of cholesterol is primarily the intestines, and the liver only supplements cholesterol production periodically. However, if you consume too much sugar and starch, that changes things, and if you suffer from insulin resistance, it stimulates cholesterol production in the liver. This process of cholesterol production by the liver is what ultimately leads to heart disease. It's not about cholesterol itself. The problem is insulin resistance, and the flow of insulin and glucagon in the liver.
In 1977, the McGovern Commission made a mandatory change to demonize fat. It was the tobacco companies who blamed fats instead of nicotine to absolve themselves of responsibility for nicotine. People who were born or became conscious humans after 1977 do not understand that fiber is not necessarily good for you, and that fat is not necessarily bad for you.
Liver cleansing and detoxification programs are not effective. The liver's function is to remove toxins. That's what he does. To cleanse the colon, the colon is supposed to cleanse itself. That's what he does. The liver cleans itself. It is damaged by what you impose on it, but you cannot cleanse the liver. This is a marketing ploy by people trying to sell you a product. How did we live before 1977 without liver cleansing operations? Most people can't remember life before 1977.
The entire philosophy as a clinically practicing physician is to allow the liver to do its job by not harming it with what you eat and drink. But detoxification or liver cleansing is not actually effective. Many of the things they sell online as miraculous products are really just sales tactics because those things don't reach their destination due to the liver. Therefore, the liver is forced to trap and break down the toxins of those very things that you use to cleanse the liver. This makes no sense whatsoever.
Treat the liver properly. Give it a balance between the flow of incoming food and the processing of stored food. Feed it real food that avoids human intervention such as genetic modification or artificial modification. Eat food that comes from the earth or from an animal. The liver will be happy and healthy. The only products you really need—and most people do—besides food are supplements for what's slightly lacking in your diet. All other products are deceptive sales tactics.
Dr. Cywes' professional background is general surgery for children and adults, certified by the Medical Council. His specialty is upper gastrointestinal surgery and liver and biliary tract surgery. During his work as a surgeon, he took biopsies from several thousand livers. He became very involved in obesity surgeries at one point and performed many of them. He has performed over 10,000 bariatric surgeries during his career, in addition to other surgeries in the upper digestive tract.
One of the things commonly seen in people who undergo bariatric surgery is two things about obesity: First, you cannot be obese without being insulin resistant. You cannot become obese without having a fatty liver. By definition, the people who have had bariatric surgery have, or have had at some point, fatty liver. You can look at blood tests and liver scans and find out.
One of the principles followed was to put patients on what was called a liver shrinkage diet before surgery. Within 7 to 10 days, you can shrink the liver, and that was vital for surgery, because the liver is located above the stomach. During laparoscopic surgery, the liver must be lifted to reach the stomach. There were patients who underwent surgery where there was no physical space to lift the liver because the liver was very swollen.
When talking about fatty liver, this is actually an inaccurate term. Sugar is what makes the liver swell. Sugar absorbs water. One large, carbohydrate-rich meal can cause your liver to swell considerably. The liver then tries in every way to protect itself by converting that sugar into fat. We see a combination in people who eat a lot of carbohydrates at surgery: huge, swollen, fatty livers containing fat in the liver cells, as well as huge amounts of glycogen, glucose, and lots of water.
The first step when eliminating carbohydrates from your diet, within two or three days, is to drastically reduce the volume of water and glycogen, which is stored sugar, from the liver. Since there are fewer sugars flowing through the liver, this means less fat is formed. So, the paradox is that when you put the patient on a very high-fat diet, his liver shrinks dramatically, and he does not suffer from fatty liver disease. This has been proven through biopsies from thousands of livers.
The liver can swell to six times its normal size with a high-carbohydrate diet. At the same time, we can reduce it and get rid of sugar, swelling and fat in just a few days. What you can't get rid of that quickly is fibrosis. The scars. The liver will heal itself and regenerate, but those scars will take much longer to get rid of. And inflammation, if you have inflammation of the liver, takes longer to get rid of.
The 7-10 day diet is very simple. It relied on eating what he wanted once or twice a day. Quantities don't matter. The quantities are not important, just don't eat carbohydrates. No sugar or starches. Whether you lean towards the vegetarian side or the animal products side, it doesn't matter. If you want to eat as much fat and meat as you like, do as you please. But try to eat two meals a day, and don't snack constantly, and you'll be fine.
The beauty of eating this way is that when you eat this way, a subjective feeling of satiety occurs when you consume a reasonable amount of fat. The only other condition set was fasting for 24 hours before surgery, and only drinking clear, sugar-free liquids to allow for this final, simple contraction. And that was it. And it worked every time people complied with it.
This is the basic idea of intermittent fasting. Then if you give him a break, even within a single day, he will change course. At that point, the liver transforms from being a net producer and distributor of energy and nutrients to a net receiver of them. Vital balance is a state of ebb and flow. The problem for most people is that we snack all the time. When older, people used to eat two or three meals a day and didn't have snacks. Now, the children go to school. They have breakfast, their first snack, then the second, then lunch, and by then it is eleven o'clock. It is ridiculous what we do to our children by constantly feeding them.
We never allow this daily ebb and flow of the liver. Historically, many animals including humans, have habitually induced a degree of insulin resistance or partial fatty liver. We would intentionally induce a degree of insulin resistance or partial fatty liver for a month or two before winter. In order to be able to store additional provisions in the body. That's how we managed to survive. Squirrels, for example, deliberately induce fatty liver and insulin resistance a few months before hibernation, in order to be able to produce that type of fat.
This route is useful when used for a short period for storage in preparation for winter. So, there is a historical advantage, but if you do this 24/7, 365 days a year, the winter you're waiting for never comes. We have exploited and abused what the liver so brilliantly did to keep us alive as a species during difficult times. This is why sugar is considered toxic as a drug, because there is a large endorphin reward when consuming sugar. Because it plays a role in survival. Why do you think sex is so enjoyable? Sex is great because the species needs to reproduce. If sex were something "normal", but we would have already gone extinct a long time ago.
These are the principles of biology that make us continue to do what we do because there is a reward. But if you get that reward 24/7, we didn't just give you that reward, we set it on fire by taking a small apple that was sour when you were growing up, genetically modifying it in the lab to be this big, live forever, and be full of sugar. We have created an industry that exploits our endorphins to make people overconsume food from a financial and political perspective, not a health perspective. We are sacrificing health for the economic gains we generate through our food industry.
Dr. Cywes has a YouTube channel named "carbaddictiondoc". He is a clinically practicing physician. The way to contact him via any means, WhatsApp, text message, or call, is through the dedicated phone number 0642-517-561. This is the entrance to the office worldwide. Patients from all over the world are welcome. The practice operates outside the constraints of the current healthcare system.
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