Look carefully at this chart.  You may think that liver disease is just for old people, but that would be wrong.  It is the 4th leading cause of death for the 45-54 age group.  That means that they were getting sick in their 30's.  Many of these people still have children at home. Since most of these diseases are preventable, that is truly a tragedy.  When I interact with people going through this, it breaks my heart.

When you get to my age, 82, you do develop a different perspective on mortality. We all know, all our lives, that no one can avoid dying.  For most of our life, however, it is a mostly theoretical notion that we know but don't concern ourselves with.  For those of us who are lucky enough to get old we can be a bit philosophical about it after a long life, but imagine the sense of loss and betrayal to be 30 something facing a terminal illness.

In our work with our peer groups, the saddest interactions are those young people wondering what will happen to their kids.  The reality of what those people face is what drives us to annoy people who are not ill with messages about what can happen if they don't change their ways.  Among the most important challenges we face in America is how do we change our systems so that we don't make most of our people sick from food driven metabolic harm and toxic damage from alcohol.  As a society, we are awash in cheap, poor - quality calories and constant access to alcohol.  The combination is making most of our society ill with chronic disease, resulting in very difficult years of ill health and early death.

We can't rely on our political and mercantile systems to solve these problems.  It really is a time for personal responsibility.  For our part, we hope to be able to help educate people about how to manage these very difficult situations.

The Foundation is sponsoring a new webinar series called MORE TOMORROWS.  The first in the series will be on March 18th with the Fatty Liver Foundation's Chief Medical Officer, Neeraj Mistry, and Dr. Naim Alkhouri from Arizona Liver Health in a fireside chat on the future of MASH Treatments and FDA-approved Therapy.  I invite you to attend.  Just click the image or the link.  If you can't attend but would like to get a link to the recording just go ahead and register.

REGISTRATION LINK FOR THE LIV WEBINAR

For those who haven't seen it yet, the 2024 edition of our Care Survey is ready.  It gives a view of how patients experience liver disease over time, and how contact with medical care evolves.  We are beginning to see changes in patient care that are encouraging as the education efforts of patients and physicians begin to show results. I invite you to click on the image below and take a look at the report.

Many people don't know what services are available to them in their local area. Finding those local resources in their local zip code is often a challenge. We are developing a tool to help with that. Just click on the link below: enter your local zip-code in the form: to explore the services available to you in your area.

The Wellness League Local Search Tool