Metabolae ad: Ceylon Cinnamon 7200mg Equivalent with MCT Oil

I was diagnosed with fatty liver 18 months ago. Here's everything my colleagues told me to take, ranked out of 10. But first, some context. Because without the context, the rankings don't mean anything. I'm 58. Type 2 diabetic for four years. Managed. A1C sitting at 6.3. Metformin twice a day. I thought I was covered. My doctor ordered a routine panel last March. She called two days later. Not her usual tone. Your ALT came back at 74. Normal is under 33. I want to order an ultrasound. The ultrasound showed fatty infiltration across my liver. She said the words I've since learned every fatty liver patient hears: Lose some weight. Cut back on sugar. We'll recheck in six months. I sat in the car for ten minutes before I drove home. I didn't know what to do with the information. My diabetes was managed. My A1C was fine. And behind both of those numbers, apparently, my liver had been filling with fat the whole time and nobody had checked. My uncle Ray was the first person I thought of. He was diagnosed with fatty liver at 61. The same conversation. Lose weight. Cut back. We'll watch it. They watched it for nine years. Fatty liver became inflammation. Inflammation became scarring. Scarring became cirrhosis. The last time I saw him, he was in a hospital bed with a needle in his abdomen, draining the fluid that his liver could no longer process. His skin was yellow. He didn't always recognize his own daughter. He was 70. I'm 58. That's what the ranked list is really about. Everything I tried, I tried because I was not going to sit in that car again in six months and hear the number went up while I waited. So here's the list. Milk thistle. Four out of ten. Milk thistle is the one everyone reaches for. My colleague Sarah bought me a bottle the week I told her. It's the liver supplement, she said. Like there was only one. I took it for six months. 450 milligrams a day, standardized to 80 percent silymarin. I was consistent. At my six-month recheck, my ALT was 71. Down from 74. My AST went from 41 to 39. Both within normal fluctuation range. My doctor didn't even mention the change. Here's what I've since learned about milk thistle: silymarin is a hepatoprotectant. It supports the liver cells that are already there. It does not stop the fat from arriving. For someone whose liver is filling up because insulin resistance is driving the fat production, protecting the cells while the fat continues arriving is half a job. That half didn't show up in my labs. I'm not saying it's worthless. I'm saying it was the wrong tool for my problem. And nobody told me that, because nobody explained what my problem actually was. Four. Liver detox tea. Zero. My colleague James swore by this. Green box. Words like cleanse and purify and flush toxins. He said he felt amazing after two weeks. I bought it. Drank it every morning for three weeks. Within two days my digestion was different. Within a week I'd lost two pounds. My stomach looked flatter. It was a laxative with herbs on the label. My liver hadn't noticed. My ALT at the next check was 73. The weight came back the following week. The only thing that got flushed was my confidence in James's supplement opinions. Zero. And I'm being generous. Turmeric. Three out of ten. Another colleague, Linda, takes turmeric for everything. Joint pain. Inflammation. General wellness. She said it would bring my liver enzymes right down. I bought a high-dose curcumin supplement with black pepper extract. 1,500 milligrams a day for eight weeks. Then I found something that stopped me cold. The American College of Gastroenterology published a paper showing turmeric and curcumin supplements are now one of the leading causes of supplement-induced liver injury. Cases have increased significantly since 2020. The very organ I was trying to protect. I stopped taking it that afternoon. My ALT hadn't moved anyway. Three, and only because it probably wasn't the turmeric's fault that my numbers didn't budge. It was the wrong mechanism. But the safety signal made it a no for me. Cutting the alcohol. Six out of ten. I'm not a heavy drinker. A glass of wine with dinner most nights. Sometimes two on weekends. My doctor mentioned it at the diagnosis. Not as an order. As a suggestion. It wouldn't hurt to cut back. I stopped completely for eight weeks. My ALT dropped to 64. First real movement I'd seen. Then I went to my niece's wedding. Then a work dinner. Then a Friday where I was tired and the wine was already open. Within a month I was back to a glass most nights and my ALT was back at 72. Here's the honest truth about cutting alcohol for fatty liver: it works while you're doing it. And for someone with discipline, it's a legitimate strategy. I don't have that discipline permanently. And my doctor told me something that stuck: Even if you never drink again, the metabolic process filling your liver with fat will continue. The alcohol is additional. It is not the cause. Six. It works. But it's treating a symptom, not the engine. Black coffee. Seven out of ten. This one surprised me. And it surprised me even more that not a single doctor mentioned it. The research is solid. Multiple studies show regular coffee consumption is associated with lower liver enzyme levels, reduced risk of fibrosis progression, and a protective effect on the liver across various stages of disease. I was already a coffee drinker. Two cups in the morning. I added a third after lunch. My ALT didn't move much. Maybe a point or two. Hard to isolate. But the research is strong enough that I'd tell anyone with a fatty liver to keep drinking it. The problem: the 2 PM crash got worse. The anxiety increased. I was wired until 4 PM and then hit a wall so hard I couldn't think. For someone whose liver is already struggling to regulate energy, adding more stimulant is covering a symptom with another symptom. Seven. Real evidence. Real effect. But it didn't touch the underlying problem, and the crash it created was telling me something I wasn't listening to yet. Vitamin E. Five out of ten. My gastroenterologist mentioned this one. There's some evidence for vitamin E in non-alcoholic fatty liver. You could try 800 IU daily. I tried it for three months. My ALT came down to 66. Real movement. Not dramatic, but real. Then I read deeper. The PIVENS trial, which is the main evidence, showed benefit in non-diabetic patients specifically. In diabetics, the results were less clear. The American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases guidelines note that vitamin E is not recommended for diabetic patients with fatty liver. I'm diabetic. My gastroenterologist either forgot or didn't consider the distinction. I stopped after three months. The ALT drifted back up within six weeks. Five. It probably does something. But for me, a type 2 diabetic, the evidence said I wasn't the right patient for it. So that's the list. Eighteen months. Six different things. Hundreds of dollars. Hours of research. And the best I managed was a temporary dip from cutting wine and a modest movement from vitamin E that my own condition disqualified me from continuing. My ALT was still sitting at 71. The ultrasound at my twelve-month check still showed fatty infiltration. My doctor used the phrase we should discuss next steps at your next visit and I heard my uncle Ray's doctor saying the same thing to him fifteen years ago. I drove home and didn't turn the radio on. My husband David was in the kitchen when I walked in. He looked at my face and didn't ask about the appointment. That night, at 1:30 in the morning, I was sitting at the kitchen table with my laptop. Couldn't sleep. The kind of awake where your ribs feel tight and your thoughts won't stop sequencing. I wasn't searching for another supplement. I was searching for why none of them had worked. And I found the answer. One article led to another, and within an hour, every failed product on my list made sense. They were all doing the same thing. Every single one. Milk thistle, turmeric, vitamin E, the detox tea. They were all trying to protect or support the liver. Mop up the damage. Reduce the inflammation. Shield the cells. None of them addressed why the fat was arriving in the first place. Here's what I learned that night. When insulin resistance develops, the cells in your muscles and tissue stop responding properly to insulin. Glucose stays in the blood longer than it should. The pancreas compensates by producing more insulin. The liver has a quirk. When insulin resistance occurs, the liver stops obeying insulin's signal to stop producing glucose. But it keeps obeying insulin's instruction to build fat. More insulin means more fat being manufactured. Not eaten. Manufactured. By the liver itself. Out of sugar. In people with fatty liver, 38 percent of the fat in the liver was built there, out of sugar. Not consumed through food. Constructed internally. In lean, healthy individuals, that number is 11 percent. This is why it's called de novo lipogenesis. The liver is building new fat. Continuously. As long as insulin resistance is running. Every supplement I tried was mopping the floor with the faucet still running. Milk thistle? Protects the cells. Doesn't touch the faucet. Turmeric? Anti-inflammatory. Doesn't touch the faucet. Vitamin E? Antioxidant. Doesn't touch the faucet. Cutting wine? Removes one source of liver burden. Doesn't touch the faucet. Coffee? Protective. Doesn't touch the faucet. None of them were designed to address insulin resistance at the liver. I sat at that kitchen table until 3 AM. And by the time I closed my laptop, I understood something else. Something that explained why even the supplements that did try to address insulin resistance hadn't worked for me. Two problems. Not one. Problem one: species. I had tried a cinnamon supplement eight months earlier. A colleague mentioned studies showing cinnamon improved insulin sensitivity and might benefit fatty liver. I bought a bottle. Cinnamon, 1,000mg on the label. Took it for six weeks. Nothing. What I didn't know then: there are two primary species of cinnamon sold as supplements. Cassia and Ceylon. They are as different as a wolf and a golden retriever. Similar name. Different animal. Cassia contains high levels of a compound called coumarin. At daily supplement doses, coumarin's primary toxicity target is the liver. The European Food Safety Authority has set strict daily limits on coumarin intake specifically because of liver damage risk. The studies showing insulin-sensitizing effects used Ceylon. Most supplements sold as cinnamon contain Cassia. The label rarely says which. I had been taking a cinnamon supplement that may have been adding stress to the exact organ I was trying to protect. For six weeks. While tracking my ALT and wondering why it wasn't moving. Problem two: delivery. Even genuine Ceylon cinnamon, ground into powder and packed into a capsule, faces an absorption problem. The active compounds in cinnamon are fat-soluble. Without a lipid carrier, they pass through the gut largely unabsorbed. Dry powder in a capsule. No fat to carry it. Most of what I swallowed may never have reached my bloodstream. And here's what made this worse for the liver angle specifically: medium-chain triglycerides, the fat used in MCT oil, are absorbed through the hepatic portal vein. They go directly to the liver as the first-pass organ. For every other organ in the body, the liver is the last stop. For MCT, the liver is the first. A Ceylon cinnamon extract suspended in MCT oil wouldn't just absorb better. It would be delivered directly to the organ that needed it. I went back through every supplement I'd tried. Not one of them addressed the faucet. The one that could have, the cinnamon, was likely the wrong species in the wrong delivery form. I made a checklist the next morning. Three requirements. No exceptions. One: verified Ceylon identity. Not a label claim. A published Certificate of Analysis from an independent lab confirming the species as Cinnamomum verum. And verified low coumarin, because for someone with liver numbers already elevated, coumarin exposure is the first thing to rule out, not the last. Two: MCT oil delivery. A concentrated extract suspended in MCT oil, not dry powder in a capsule. The active compounds need a lipid carrier to absorb, and MCT delivers through the hepatic portal vein directly to the liver. Three: third-party tested. Species, coumarin levels, and potency confirmed batch by batch. Published. Not a marketing graphic. I searched for three days. Most brands failed at the first requirement. Some claimed Ceylon on the label but published no COA. Some had a COA but no coumarin testing. Some had testing but used dry powder. One product met all three. Metabolae Ceylon Cinnamon. Concentrated 12:1 extract. 7,200 milligram equivalent per softgel. DNA-verified Cinnamomum verum from Sri Lanka's Central Province. Certified low coumarin with the COA published. Suspended in MCT oil. One softgel daily. Third-party tested. GMP certified. I checked the COA myself before I ordered. It matched the format of legitimate third-party certifications. Not a label graphic. Actual lab documentation. For the first time in eighteen months, I ordered a supplement and felt something besides hope. I felt the same thing I feel when the data supports the conclusion and the methodology is clean. Confidence. The bag arrived on a Wednesday. I added a new section to my tracking notes. Clean start. First softgel with breakfast Thursday morning. By Friday afternoon, something was different. The crash. The one I've described to three different doctors. The wall that hits at 2 PM and doesn't lift until I force myself through it. It was still there, but softer. I was still thinking clearly at 3:30. I wrote it down but didn't trust it. One day means nothing. End of week one: the crash had moved. Not gone. But its edges were blunter. I was getting to 4 PM without the fog settling in. Week two: the bloating after dinner was less. I'd accepted that swollen, full feeling after every evening meal as part of my life for two years. It was quieter. David noticed before I mentioned it. You're not holding your stomach tonight. Week three: the dull pressure under my right ribs. The one I noticed when I bent over to tie my shoes or leaned forward at my desk. I realized I hadn't noticed it in three days. And the night bathroom trips dropped from three to one. Week four: I had my fasting glucose checked at a walk-in lab. I wasn't willing to wait for the scheduled panel. 101. It had been sitting between 118 and 124 for two years. I sat in the car and checked the number twice. Week six: I could feel the difference in my energy by evening. I was awake at 9 PM. Not wired. Present. Reading. Walking the dog after dinner instead of sitting on the sofa calculating how many weeks until my next appointment. Week eight: blood panel. ALT: 48. Down from 71. AST: 31. Down from 41. Fasting glucose: 98. I printed the results and put them next to the results from twelve months earlier. I stared at them for a long time. Week twelve: ALT: 38. AST: 27. Both approaching normal range. My fasting glucose was 96. At my next appointment, my doctor pulled up the full history. Three years of panels on one screen. Then the new numbers. She studied them without speaking. Then she looked at me. What changed? I told her everything. The list. The research. The faucet. The species problem. The delivery. What I'd been taking for the last twelve weeks and why. She looked at the ALT and AST columns again. Then looked at the tracking notes I'd brought. These numbers are heading the right direction. Your enzymes have improved meaningfully. Continue what you're doing. This is not the conversation I expected to be having today. I called David from the parking lot. ALT 38. AST 27. She said continue. Quiet for a moment. Then: So no next steps conversation? No next steps conversation. I went home and wrote one final note in my tracking file: The supplements weren't broken because cinnamon doesn't work. They were broken because they were the wrong species, in the wrong form, treating the wrong part of the problem. The faucet was always the answer. My ALT this morning: 34. My AST: 24. Both normal. My fasting glucose: 94. Stable. Moving in the right direction. Last weekend David and I drove to Montreal to see our son and his family. First time in two years I didn't spend the drive thinking about my liver. Didn't check my eyes in the bathroom mirror at the restaurant. Didn't press under my ribs when I bent down to pick up my granddaughter. David took a photo of me on the ground with her, both of us laughing. He made it his lock screen. Told me later it was the first picture in two years where I looked like I wasn't worried about something. Metabolae Ceylon Cinnamon. Ten out of ten. The only product on my list that addressed the actual mechanism filling my liver with fat. The only one with verified species, verified low coumarin, MCT oil delivery through the hepatic portal vein, and a published COA I could check before I ordered. If you've been trying supplements for fatty liver and your ALT or AST hasn't moved, here's what my eighteen months taught me: Every supplement I tried was mopping the floor while the faucet ran. Protecting the liver cells. Reducing some inflammation. Shielding against some damage. None of them addressed insulin resistance at the liver, which is the process manufacturing the fat in the first place. Here's what my checklist required. And what Metabolae was the only product to confirm. Verified Ceylon Identity: A published Certificate of Analysis. Species confirmed as Cinnamomum verum by an independent lab. Verified low coumarin. For someone with liver enzymes already elevated, uncontrolled coumarin exposure is the first thing to rule out. It is a liver safety question before it is anything else. MCT Oil Delivery: Concentrated 12:1 extract in MCT oil, not dry powder. The active compounds are fat-soluble. They need a lipid carrier. MCT is absorbed through the hepatic portal vein and delivered to the liver as the first-pass organ. The carrier's destination and the target are the same place. Third-Party Tested: Species, coumarin levels, and potency confirmed batch by batch. Published and verifiable. Try Metabolae Ceylon Cinnamon for 90 days. Track your ALT and AST. If you're not satisfied for any reason, full refund. No questions asked. You risk nothing. If any of this sounds like you: The fullness under your right ribs that nobody explains. The wall at 2 PM that coffee stopped fixing six months ago. The brain fog that settles at 4 and doesn't lift. The bloating after every dinner. The nurse asking how much you drink, again. The lab result you refresh in the patient portal before your doctor calls. Track your numbers. Try the one supplement formulated to address the faucet, not the floor. Let the data speak. Caroline Moore P.S. I felt the energy shift in the first week. The bloating eased by week two. My fasting glucose dropped by week four. ALT and AST were moving by week eight. By week twelve my doctor said to continue. Your results may differ. But you won't know unless you track them. P.P.S. Every week your liver enzymes trend the wrong direction is another week of fat accumulating, inflammation building, and scar tissue forming behind a number your doctor is quietly watching. I wasted eighteen months mopping the floor. You don't have to.