Scientists have found that a special kind of starch could make a big difference for people living with non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, or NAFLD. This condition is very common, affecting about 30% of people worldwide.
It happens when too much fat builds up in the liver, even though the person doesn’t drink much alcohol. Over time, NAFLD can lead to more serious health problems, including liver damage, type 2 diabetes, and heart disease.
In a new study, researchers showed that resistant starch can help lower harmful fat levels in the liver. Resistant starch is a kind of carbohydrate that acts more like fiber than regular starch.
Instead of being digested in the stomach and small intestine, it travels to the large intestine, where it feeds the good bacteria in our gut. Foods like green bananas, oats, beans, and some types of maize (corn) are naturally high in resistant starch.
The study was led by Huating Li at Shanghai Sixth People’s Hospital and published in Cell Metabolism. It included 200 people who had NAFLD. The participants were divided into two groups. One group received resistant starch powder made from maize.
The other group received a similar-looking powder made from regular corn starch, which doesn’t have the same benefits. Both groups were asked to mix 20 grams of their powder with water and drink it before meals, twice a day, for four months.
The results were impressive. After four months, the group taking resistant starch had almost 40% lower liver triglyceride levels compared to the control group. Triglycerides are a type of fat, and high levels in the liver can cause serious health problems.
The people who took resistant starch also had lower levels of liver enzymes and inflammatory markers, which are signs of liver damage and stress. These improvements were seen even when the researchers took weight loss into account, meaning the benefits were not just because people lost weight during the study.
Another exciting finding came from studying the participants’ gut bacteria. People who took resistant starch had healthier gut microbiomes.
In particular, they had lower levels of a type of bacteria called Bacteroides stercoris, which has been linked to poor fat metabolism in the liver. This suggests that changing the bacteria in the gut might be one reason why resistant starch helps the liver.
The researchers believe this is very good news. Adding resistant starch to the diet is much easier for people than trying to make big lifestyle changes like losing a lot of weight or doing intense exercise, which are often hard to stick with.
It is an affordable, simple, and sustainable way to help manage NAFLD. Huating Li pointed out that focusing on gut bacteria could also open the door to other new treatments for fatty liver disease in the future.
The research team plans to continue studying resistant starch to better understand exactly how it works and to explore how it could be used as part of everyday treatment for NAFLD.
For now, this study offers hope that a simple change—adding more resistant starch to your diet—could help protect the liver and prevent serious health problems down the road. The study was published in Cell Metabolism.
If you care about liver health, please read studies that refined fiber is link to liver cancer, and the best and worst foods for liver health.
For more health information, please see recent studies about how to boost your liver naturally, and simple ways to detox your liver.
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