Hi @NeptuneJ,
I wrote in HBlist a while ago something about some of the supplements that go into some of these protein powders/shakes: some people have had very bad reactions to supplements (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22809474/, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4848993/), even cumulating to liver or kidney failure (https://www.abc.net.au/triplej/programs/hack/how-getting-shredded-on-protein-shakes-can-risk-your-health/8879360). Some can cause HBV to replicate even better (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31204557/). The Hep B foundation also has a page on this (https://www.hepb.org/blog/protein-myths-and-your-liver/).
However, I can’t see anything just looking at high protein itself and liver injury, so it may be fine if it’s just clean protein. A caveat though: many of these products are not well-regulated, so there could be things that affect you and your liver health.
Too much of anything is going to be problematic. For nutritional studies in particular, you can almost always find studies that support your case and go against your case. The issue is that people are complex, what we eat is complex, and what we do is complex. Each needs to be suited for your particular circumstance, and there’s no magic bullet or rule (e.g. just eating green things) that will automatically speed up your health.
What the scientific studies have shown most robustly (i.e. over many independent studies) is that 1) exercising; and 2) limiting (though not necessarily eliminating) consumption of trans-fats, simple sugars, and salt will probably help most people. I would take the advice of the WHO for this: https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/healthy-diet
Relatedly, I recently started doing some intense 6am boxing and bootcamp classes, and had a blood test (LFTs) directly after a class once. My ALTs were up around 300, which was weird because this was a repeat of a test I had 2 weeks earlier that was normal (they had collected the wrong tubes for one of the tests).
Anyway, I called up my hepatologist and she said that intense exercise can also increase ALTs. This is because when you exercise, you make micro-tears in your muscle and ALT can leak out into the blood and affect the readings. She caught it because there were so many people doing exercise as a New Year’s resolution that she was seeing a spike with all of her other patients as well.
What this means is that increased exercise can 1) give a false reading of liver damage; and 2) mask actual liver damage, if you’re not careful in interpreting the results for a person. A couple of the clinicians I talked to were also surprised to hear of this phenomenon, so don’t assume that this is common knowledge.
The solution is to get a blood test as far away from your last workout as possible (rule of thumb: if your muscles still ache, you should still probably wait). I repeated mine 3 days after my last workout and my ALTs were normal again.
Hope this helps,
Thomas