By Gary M., Maintenance Supervisor | Last updated {{ 'now' | date: '%B %d, %Y' }}
I sat on a fatty liver diagnosis for four months before I told my wife about it.
After my physical I drove home and sat in our driveway with the engine off for about twenty minutes. I'm 58. My older brother Wendell died at 61 from complications that started the same way my doctor had just described my situation. I knew where the road went. I had stood at the end of it at his funeral.
I looked at Tina through the kitchen window and decided I wasn't going to say anything until I had something better to tell her than "doc said the same thing they probably said to my brother."
"It took me six months to have something better to tell her."
Four months in, here's what my effort actually looked like: I lost six pounds and gained four back over the Fourth of July weekend. Cut weekday beers but still had four or five Bud Lights on Saturday. Started walking after dinner, held it three weeks until my knee gave out. Bought milk thistle my daughter had sent me the Christmas before. Took it for a month. Didn't feel a thing.
Four months in I was scared. Waking at 4am thinking about Wendell and the funeral and Tina and the grandkids. The youngest one's three. I want to walk him to his first day of kindergarten.
"That's the math I was doing at 4am and not telling anyone about."
So one Tuesday I talked to Mike — the pharmacist who's been at our hospital for 19 years. Quiet guy. Doesn't push anything on anybody. I told him about the diagnosis, the four months, the Saturday beers, the milk thistle that did nothing. I told him I was scared. Don't think I'd said that word to another grown man in twenty years.
He said: "Come with me for a minute." He took me onto the ER floor and pulled an IV bag from the medication cabinet.
[ IMAGE — 3D liver scan or hospital setting — 1080×1080px ]
He said: "This is NAC. When somebody comes through that door with a Tylenol overdose and their liver is dying, this is what we hook them up to. FDA-approved since 1985. Inside 8 hours, saves about 99 out of 100. Same molecule you can take orally. Doctors don't tell patients because doctors don't prescribe supplements. That's the system."
He explained how it works slowly, the way a man explains something to another man who didn't go to college for it. Your liver has a compound called glutathione — your body's master detoxifier. It cleans up everything that comes through: alcohol, Tylenol, processed food. Glutathione runs low after 30–40 years of living. When it runs low, liver cells get damaged. That's why my enzymes were up. That's why Wendell's were probably up ten years before anybody told him anything.
He said: "Your body can't absorb glutathione if you swallow it — stomach breaks it down. So you take the precursor. The amino acid your liver uses to build glutathione. That's NAC. If you have a Saturday with four Bud Lights, your liver has more of what it needs to deal with them."
I went home and ordered it. Got the one in MCT oil — Mike said dry powder causes sulfur burps. Got the one with NAD+ added because Mike said that's what longevity researchers pair it with. Two softgels with breakfast. Every day.
I didn't tell Tina for two more months. I wanted to see the retest first. My ALT had been 64 in February. In August it was 38. Reference range tops at 41.
My doctor pulled up the panel and asked what I'd been doing. I told him about the NAC. He wrote it on the chart. Didn't say much. Doctors don't, when they're surprised.
I told Tina that weekend. She cried. Then she went to the cabinet and took two softgels with her coffee the next morning. Hasn't missed one since. Here are the 9 things Mike told me.