Lowering ALT Levels

Address Underlying Health Issues

If your ALT levels are elevated, the most important thing is to work with your doctor to find out what’s causing your high ALT and to treat any underlying conditions!

Elevated ALT levels are most often due to underlying conditions, such as liver disease, muscle disease, or heart attack, that can not be improved by lifestyle or dietary modifications.

Lifestyle changes listed below are other things you may want to discuss with your doctor. None of these strategies should ever be done in place of what your doctor recommends or prescribes!

1) Moderate Exercise

Exercise significantly decreased ALT levels in 1787 participants (meta-analysis and 2 other studies) with liver disease. Individuals with high starting BMI were particularly likely to see a major decline in ALT [R, R, R].

Exercise most likely reduces ALT levels in children and teens as well. In a study of 2,844 adolescents, those with “low” fitness had higher ALT levels than those with “adequate” fitness, suggesting that improving fitness with exercise could decrease ALT levels [R].

Intense exercise, on the other hand, increased ALT levels in studies on boxers, hockey players, and ultra-marathon runners [R, R, R]. This is likely associated with increased muscle damage in these types of sports.

2) Losing Weight

ALT is often elevated in people who are obese. If you are overweight, losing weight may improve your liver health and help reduce ALT [R, R, R].

In a 15-month study with 31 overweight patients, exercise and diet led to weight loss, which was directly correlated to decreases in ALT [R].

In a study of 2,153 healthy participants, treatment with the diabetes drug metformin for 3 years lowered ALT levels. This effect was dependent on weight loss, indicating that metformin stimulated weight loss, which in turn lowered ALT levels [R].

3) Low-Carb Diet

While a low-calorie diet likely reduces ALT through weight loss, low-carb diets lower ALT levels independent of weight loss [R].

For example, in a study of 259 overweight diabetic patients, those who ate a modified Mediterranean diet (35% carbs, 45% fat) had lower ALT levels after 6 months than those on the American

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What Does Low ALT mean?

Alanine aminotransferase or ALT (also known as SGPT) is an enzyme your body needs to break down proteins into energy. Most of it is found in the liver [R, R].

ALT blood levels are a marker of liver health: low levels typically indicate a healthy liver, while high levels suggest liver damage [R].

The normal range is around 7-35 U/L in women and 7-40 U/L in men. There may be some lab-to-lab variability in ranges due to differences in equipment, techniques, and chemicals used.

ALT levels under 7 U/L are considered to be low.

Low ALT levels are expected and normal – they are just uncommon in the general population. That’s because, reference ranges are based on where 95% of the healthy population falls into, which means that there are 5% of the people who are healthy and not within the reference range!

Potential Causes of Low ALT

A low ALT without any other signs or symptoms or abnormal test results is usually considered normal. Talk to your doctor for more information. Your doctor will always interpret this test in light of your medical history, signs and symptoms, and other test results.

While low levels are usually not a cause for concern, there are some conditions and factors that may decrease ALT.

1) Vitamin B6 Deficiency

ALT enzyme requires active vitamin B6 to function. Vitamin B6 deficiency is uncommon, but it’s more likely to occur in the elderly, alcoholics, and people with underlying health conditions such as liver, kidney, or inflammatory diseases [R, R].

In a 5-week study of 52 hemodialysis patients, low ALT levels were associated with vitamin B6 deficiency. ALT levels improved with daily B6 supplementation [R].

Alcoholics with low vitamin B6 levels also have low ALT levels. After one month of abstinence and vitamin B6 supplementation, ALT levels increased [R].

2) Smoking

People who smoked had lower levels of ALT in 2 studies with over 23k healthy participants [R, R].

However, a study with 500 participants found the opposite trend: smokers had slightly higher ALT levels [R].

Smoking by itself may lower ALT levels while elevating ALT in people who already have

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What Does it Mean When Your ALT is High?

Alanine aminotransferase or ALT (also known as SGPT) is an enzyme your body needs to break down food into energy [R, R].

Healthy liver cells store most of your ALT, but small amounts are also found in the muscles and blood. When liver cells are damaged due to illness, injury, or medication, they release ALT, increasing its blood levels [R].

Therefore, ALT blood levels are a marker of liver health: low levels typically indicate a healthy liver, while high levels suggest liver damage [R].

However, a result that’s higher than normal, doesn’t necessarily mean that you have a health condition that needs treatment. If your blood tests reveal you have elevated ALT levels, speak with your doctor about what the results might mean. Your doctor might recommend further testing to determine what the underlying cause of the elevated ALT is.

What is Considered a High Level?

The normal range is around 7-35 U/L in women and 7-40 U/L in men. There may be some lab-to-lab variability in ranges due to differences in equipment, techniques, and chemicals used.

Causes of High ALT Levels

Causes listed below are commonly associated with high ALT. Work with your doctor or other health care professional for an accurate diagnosis. Your doctor will interpret your ALT result, taking into account your medical history, signs and symptoms, and other test results.

1) Liver Disease

ALT levels increase in response to liver diseases, such as [R]:

• Fatty liver or non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD). Fatty liver affects approximately 35% of the US population and often occurs alongside diabetes and obesity [R].
• Viral hepatitis. Usually results in extremely high ALT levels [R, R, R, R].
• Autoimmune hepatitis [R, R]
• Liver cancer

However, not all people with liver disease will have high ALT (e.g. fatty liver, autoimmune hepatitis), nor can ALT levels be used to predict disease severity [R, R, R].

2) Alcoholism

Excessive alcohol consumption is the most common cause of liver disease in the Western Hemisphere [R].

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What is ALT?

Definition

Alanine aminotransferase or ALT (also known as SGPT) is an enzyme your body needs to break down proteins into energy [R, R].

Healthy liver cells store most of ALT, but small amounts are also found in the kidneys, heart, muscles, fat tissue, intestines, and pancreas [R].

Normally, blood ALT levels are low. However, when liver cells are damaged due to illness, injury, or medication, they release ALT, increasing its blood levels [R].

Therefore, ALT blood levels are a marker of liver health: low levels typically indicate a healthy liver, while high levels suggest liver damage [R].

Before we talk about the ALT blood test, let’s take a look at what ALT normally does in the body.

Function

ALT helps turn L-alanine and alpha-ketoglutarate into glucose that can be used for energy (via pyruvate) and L-glutamate which can be eliminated as waste or used to build new proteins [R, R, R, R].

ALT Blood Test

An ALT blood test may be ordered to [R, R, R, R]:

• Assess liver health
• Investigate symptoms of liver disease, such as abnormally yellow skin or eyes (jaundice), or pain in the upper-right section of the abdomen
• Monitor progression of a liver disease
• Evaluate the effectiveness of a treatment for liver disease
• Determine if the liver is involved in or damaged by a health condition, such as diabetes or heart disease

Since ALT is an enzyme, its levels are typically determined by measuring its activity (the rate at which ALT transforms L-alanine and α-ketoglutarate into pyruvate and L-glutamate) [R].

ALT levels are often measured together with the liver enzyme aspartate transaminase (AST). The ratio of AST/ALT is also sometimes used as a marker of liver health.

While ALT levels can signal the presence of liver damage, they cannot determine the type of damage, such as scarring, infection, or inflammation [R].

Normal Range

ALT is measured in units per liter of blood or U/L.

The normal range is around 7-35 U/L in women and 7-40 U/L

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What Is Blue Light?

Light is electromagnetic radiation of a variety of wavelengths within the electromagnetic spectrum.

There is both visible and non-visible light. Non-visible light includes ultraviolet (UV) and infrared light, while visible light includes the whole spectrum of the rainbow, including blue light. Within the visible light spectrum, each wavelength is represented by a color [R, R, R].

Of all the colors of the visible light spectrum, blue light (wavelength 446 – 477 nm) has the strongest impact on our physiology and circadian rhythm because the pigments in the skin and retina react to this wavelength [R, R, R].

How Does Blue Light Therapy Work?

A SelfHacked previous post describes in detail what blue light is and its effects on our body. This article focuses on how to take advantage of them to improve our health.

There are two main ways through which blue light affects our body: our eyes and skin.

Light exposure anchors human body functions to the rise and fall of the sun.

Blue Light and Our Eyes

When light hits the eye, it hits light-sensitive cells. These cells contribute to circadian rhythm entrainment by sending messages to the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN) in the hypothalamus. This brain region coordinates light exposure with bodily functions through hormonal, involuntary nerve impulses, and feeding-related cues [R, R].

We can take advantage of these responses by controlling the time and kind of exposure to light, an approach called phototherapy. By looking at an adequate blue light source, we stimulate photoreceptor cells and generate a response in the hypothalamus. This helps with sleep disorders, depression, dementia, and sleepiness during night shifts [R, R].

Blue Light and the Skin

In other parts of the body, like the skin, blue light activates proteins that contain light-sensitive molecules (porphyrins and flavones), increasing mitochondrial activity. This, in turn, increases oxidative stress [R, R, R].

Skin cells respond by releasing molecules that promote inflammation and control skin growth. Lesions caused by

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Disclaimer: We highly recommend against using this drug since its effects and safety are completely unknown. No human data on it have been published so far. Therefore, we are presenting the available information from the scientific literature with the aim of helping readers understand the dangers involved.

About SR9009 (Stenabolic)

What is it exactly?

Stenabolic or SR9009 is a research chemical. To date, no human studies on the use of SR9009 have been published. 

Thus, we don’t know how dangerous this substance may be. Its effectiveness in humans is also unknown. This means it has a high potential for harm and should be avoided at all costs.

Our bodies function in a coordinated manner, in 24-hour cycles that are adjusted to the rise and fall of the sun. This pattern is called the circadian rhythm.

The circadian rhythm is maintained through a loop mechanism that turns genes on and off (when CLOCK and BMAL1 genes are turned on, they turn on PER and CRY. Then, PER/CRY turn BMAL1/CLOCK off and the 24-hour cycle resets) [R].

The REV-ERBs are a pair of proteins that stabilize our internal clock by turning BMAL1 off. They are, in turn, activated by the heme group. Heme is a small iron-containing compound found all throughout our body, for example, in red blood cells [R, R].

SR9009 is a compound that enhances REV-ERB activity (known as agonists) and has good bioavailability [R].

Because of the many positive effects seen in animals, SR9009 found its way online and is being sold and used as a supplement, mainly within the bodybuilding community. It has been referred to as “exercise in a bottle.” However, there are still a lot of things we don’t know about this drug, including its side effects.

Mechanism of Action

All the effects observed for SR9009 derive from REV-ERB (NR1D1, NR1D2) activation in the body.

REV-ERB affects the circadian behavior of mice, altering their activity and sleep patterns [R].

Besides its effect on the circadian rhythm (suppression of BMAL1 production), REV-ERB affects many other functions related

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