Actionable Knowledge

• Our answer to how to address metabolic syndrome, obesity, and metabolic disease would be: It's the liver, stupid. Given our focus on the bioreactor and microbiome, this answer might surprise you. However, reduced to its most essential functions, it is explained as follows: The bioreactor and microbes produce the body's chemistry, and the liver controls it. We now understand that the liver reacts to alcohol, fructose, and complex sugars in pretty much the same way. Therefore, Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease and Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease are distinctions without a difference.
• The deep understanding resulting from the billions spent on LDL research is why we support the insight that the bioreactor creates the body's biochemistry, and the liver regulates it. It's unlikely many other molecules will get this level of research. Still, there is no reason not to believe the liver uses this exact regulating filament mechanism to precisely control the body's chemistry. Of course, if a liver cell is harmed or crowded out by fat cells, the filaments of liver cells will not regulate the body's chemistry at all. It's also possible that many other chemicals in factory food act on liver filaments of other critical molecules.
• Since one "healthy" yogurt, sports drink, or fruit smoothie can easily have 14 grams of sugar before all those healthy veggies are converted to sugar and a couple of alcoholic drinks, you can see the problem. As far as the liver is concerned, there is little difference between a pint of craft brew, a shot of liquor, a glass of wine, and a glass 1/3 full of sucrose sugar.
• Nevertheless, the issue differs from how much you consume in a day. It's how much reaches the hepatic portal, which requires a different approach. For example, the same 14 grams of sugar in a fast-moving liquid smoothie are far more likely to reach the portal than 14 grams buried deep in a slow-moving food bolus.