It’s being called the “dash to NASH.”

No, it’s not a tour bus to see the Grand Ol’ Opry… but the frantic search for a drug that can stop the epidemic of deadly liver damage called non-alcoholic steatohepatitis, or NASH.

Now, NASH — and the condition that can lead up to it, called non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) — is striking men, women and children of all ages. It’s estimated that up to 100 million in the U.S. alone suffer from NAFLD.

Certainly, whenever there’s a disease without a drug, you can bet Big Pharma is in hot pursuit of one, with an experimental med from Bristol-Myers leading the pack.

But the real way to beat this “silent epidemic,” as it’s called, is to do whatever it takes to steer clear of it in the first place.

And you can do that by going into your kitchen right now and tossing out anything that contains a lethal liver poison — one that you, your kids and grandkids are probably consuming every single day without realizing the danger.

Putting the cart before the horse
Coming up with a potential blockbuster med to treat NASH is looking like a modern-day gold rush for Big Pharma. And why not? The potential patients are in the millions, and the returns would be in the billions.

NASH is when NAFLD progresses from a buildup of fat in your liver to inflammation and damage to liver cells and eventually to cirrhosis. And it has nothing to do with alcohol consumption.

At the advanced stage of the illness, you have one choice — a liver transplant.

But you also have another choice, one that can make all the difference in the world when it comes to this stealth disease: Immediately reduce your consumption of fructose, especially in the form of high fructose corn syrup.

If you look at the statistics, the rates of fatty liver disease started climbing not long after HFCS was sneaked into beverages, starting with sodas. Now, it’s said to have doubled in the last two decades, and where kids are concerned it has increased a whopping 174 percent!

If HFCS had simply stayed in soft drinks, that would be easy enough to curtail. But, as you know, this cheap sugar substitute has by now made its way into every food imaginable — including supposedly “healthy” products, like yogurt, high-fiber cereals and teas.

HFCS has even been found in baby teething biscuits!

And you know how researchers have induced fatty liver disease in lab rats so new drugs for the disease could be tested on them? By pumping them full of fructose!

To get a good idea of how dangerous HFCS is, one group of doctors in Italy and Turkey have called fructose “a weapon of mass destruction.” And their clinical trials have confirmed that consuming HFCS can promote the development of NAFLD — in humans.

So, even though there are reams of research linking fructose to liver damage, instead of attacking the problem at the source, big bucks are being spent to develop drugs to treat the disease.

The best way to avoid becoming another statistic in this epidemic is simple, but it will take some label-reading. Here are the top three things you need to do:

#1: Make sure you’re not buying any foods or drinks that contain HFCS. That can run the gamut from beverages to condiments to sauces and frozen dinners. And read the ingredient label, not the Nutrition Facts panel!

#2: Also watch out for the ingredients crystalline fructose, fruit sugar and agave syrup. Those can be even higher in deadly fructose than HFCS is.

#3: And last, but certainly not least, avoid the sweetener simply called fructose. While it may sound like something healthy derived from fruit, it almost always comes from genetically-modified corn. It’s also used to try and trick consumers like us who are reading labels and dodging HFCS.

But, on the other hand, fruit — real fruit — is good for you, so don’t stop eating it. The fructose it contains is bound with other nutrients and metabolized slowly and naturally.

“Bristol-Myers NASH drug hits primary endpoint in phase 2” Nick Paul Taylor, April 24, 2017, FierceBiotech, fiercebiotech.com