Now comes the post I had promised about the liver. Your liver. My liver. Whoever's liver!
I'm going to now cut and paste from a few websites that show deeper how the liver works and why keeping it healthy is so important. I'm certainly no expert on the subject, but hopefully this will give enough information to delve deeper for yourself if need be. Any deep issues should be addressed by a Naturopathic Doctor or Functional Medicine Doctor. There are dozens of ways to address liver health, and they each work in a somewhat different way. The main thing you want is to get your liver (your big huge blood filter) to be working properly. Red letters indicate links for more information or links where to buy products (in case you didn't know!)
What does your liver do?
The liver performs hundreds of important tasks. Here are just a few:
- Toxin Removal: During digestion, blood from the stomach and bowel filters up through the liver. This is where toxins, drugs, alcohol, bacteria, and other poisons are cleared to the best of your liver’s ability.
- Fat Digestion: Bile is formed in the liver then stored in the gallbladder to break down fat molecules. This also helps you digest fat-soluble vitamins A, D, E, and K. Your liver is key to burning fat and maintaining a healthy weight.
- Carbohydrate Metabolism: The liver helps insure steady energy levels by producing and storing glucose to regulate blood sugar. Liver problems can be the hidden cause of blood sugar issues and fatigue.
- Blood Regulation: The liver creates proteins for blood clotting and blood volume. Because every cell in your body is nourished by blood passing through the liver, a disabled liver clogged by stones makes your whole body a toxic breeding ground for disease.
- Hormone Balance: Estrogen, testosterone, and insulin are just a few of the hormones the liver helps regulate. Poor liver function and hormone imbalance often go hand in hand.
- See more at: (source)
*This is a good analogy of what the liver does:
Have you ever changed the oil in a car? What does the oil look like when you drain it out? It is black and gritty. When you put fresh new oil into the engine, what does it look like? It is clear, smooth (no grit) and amber colored. As this new oil circulates through the engine, it picks up carbon and dirt. The oil is keeping the engine toxin-free so that it can run at optimum capacity. If we allowed the same oil to continue to circulate through the engine for a long time—say years—what would eventually happen to the engine? It would lock-up. It would cease to function. Everyone who deals with machinery knows the importance of changing the oil in an engine. It is the same with the human body. The bile is the oil. It is responsible for carrying out waste. However, if we never change the oil, and the old oil continues to circulate over and over again, eventually that oil will lock up the engine. In this case, the engine is the gall bladder that becomes blocked with debris—the debris is the old bile or oil that is so nasty by now, that the gall bladder is no longer able to function properly. What is the answer? Change the oil. The new oil (bile) will clean out all the old bile deposits and the gall bladder will be restored to health. - See more at: (source)
*A bit on the gall bladder and how it relates to your liver.
Nasty Toxins Are Filtered From The Blood, Now What?
Once the liver has filtered these toxins and waste from the bloodstream, it is necessary to find a pathway out of the body for this “garbage.” The liver has no access to the urinary tract, so it cannot send its trash away through that system. However, the liver does make bile, and this bile goes to the gall bladder. The gall bladder stores the bile and then releases it at the appropriate time into the duodenum (first part of the small intestine where most digestion takes place). If the bile can travel the length of the intestinal tract and be expelled from the body in a bowel movement, then the liver will have been successful in ridding the body of those toxins and wastes that were placed in the bile.- See more at: (source)
*This is a fascinating article on Why Beans DON'T Cause Gas. "Beans are a bile magnet. Bile and beans have an incredible affinity or liking for one another. They make a sort of chemical bond that is almost impossible to break. Most of the other foods with which bile binds in the intestinal tract are foods with which the bile makes temporary bonds. But when the bean enters, the bile leaves all other foods behind and rushes to make a permanent bond with the bean.
Now you must know something else about bile. This digestive fluid that the liver makes is released into the duodenum (the first part of the small intestine). It travels to the last part of the small intestine, doing its digestive work, and when it reaches the terminal part of the ileum, bile is reabsorbed and returns to the liver! How much bile returns? Ninety to ninety-five percent!" Read the article to see how to get this nasty bile out of your system so that your body can make new, fresh bile.
*Here's one last interesting article on how a clogged/congested/sluggish liver relates to eyesight. Yes, eyesight. Most of us would never connect the two, but it makes a whole lot of sense~
"Blurry vision, Myopia (nearsightedness), floaters in the eyes, dry eyes, or color blindness have been linked to liver blood deficiencies. Liver blood deficiency can be caused by scarring of the liver or anemia. Both of these problems prevent the flow of blood through the liver. Blood from the liver is believed to moisten and nourish the eyes. Bloodshot eyes, pain, and burning sensations in the eyes are linked to liver heat. Liver heat is usually associated with an inflammation in the liver.Your eyeball turning upwards or moving involuntarily has been linked with internal liver wind. Internal liver wind is normally associated with extreme heat in the liver. This can be caused by extreme high blood pressure or emotional stress. Strange as it may seem, your liver and your eyes really are linked in many ways. The head bone’s connected to the neck bone!" (more information/source)
Now here is a few bits and pieces about common complaints in relation to your liver~
*How the liver works in relation to hormones. Although hormones aren't produced in the liver, the liver regulates their release. Mainly sex hormones and insulin, but others as well. This next one is lengthy but also worth the read. Especially when so many people are experiencing various hormone imbalances these days.
More information/source: http://drritamarie.com/blog/2013/06/04/the-role-of-liver-detoxification-in-hormonal-imbalance/
The liver and allergies
"As histamine is also asasociated with allergy, allergy itself indictes a sluggish liver. I don't believe in allergy. I believe allergy is merely a symptom of an underlying cause, notably a sluggish liver. A good naturopath should always treat the causes. Complete avoidance of wheat and milk may alleviate symptoms but is it also important to improve the breakdown of histamine in the body. I believe that people should be able to handle normal amounts of the top 8 allergens (the most common food allergies are to dairy, egg, wheat, soy, peanuts, tree nuts, fish and shellfish) without developing symptoms of allergy. It is not necessary for total elimination of suspect allergens. It should be enough to reduce and rotate whilst treating the “cause” of the allergy which is not wheat etc. per se, however excess histamine resulting from poor methylation by the liver. As naturopaths we should always treat the cause. In TCM also, there is also no such thing as allergy. Allergy symptoms such as itching and rash, are seen are a Liver pathology."
*What a fatty liver is and what to do about it.
"Around one in five persons in the general population, in the USA and Australia has a fatty liver. Fatty liver is usually associated with abdominal obesity and insulin resistance and is more common in people with type 2 diabetes." (source for more information)
This link is just a good all around one for liver health. Lots of good information.
So now that you know all of this, what can you do? There are many heavy duty cleanses out there that work really well, but for most of us, a gentler, calmer method works better. Slowly add in more good things, and slowly flush out more bad things. To start, here's some ideas to incorporate into your diet: 19 foods that naturally cleanse your liver. Finding out how toxic you are is also a good thing to figure out. Here's a quick toxins quiz. A digestive bitter will help with digestion if yours is poor. Urban Moonshine and Mountain Meadow Herbs Liver Glow (or Liver Glow II if pregnant or nursing) have some good ones for starters.
Wikihow Liver Cleanse has a great article on daily things you can add in to gently cleanse your liver. Easy things like adding lemon to your water, adding more garlic, and the like. To quote from their website, "The liver is the second largest organ in the human body and one of the most important, because it's responsible for filtering harmful toxins out of the bloodstream. There are medical programs to detoxify the liver, but there are also several natural, simple lifestyle changes you can make that will result in a clean, healthy liver."
Interestingly, cardamom is a great spice to be using too. You can add it to your tea or coffee, to change it from acid to alkaline. Either sprinkle some in with the grounds while brewing, or add a peeled pod to your coffee cup. "Cardamom is also alkaline, making it a natural antidote to acid. As a member of the ginger family, cardamom has been used to make heavy and acidic foods easier to digest for more than 5,000 years. Throughout the Middle East even coffee is brewed with ground cardamom seeds, reducing its acid and neutralizing the stimulating effects of caffeine (plus, it tastes good!). Cardamom is also one of the richest sources of the phytochemical cineole, a potent antiseptic for bad breath, gum disease, sore throats, and respiratory conditions." (source)
There you have it. Liver Health 101 from my perspective.
I also read "Toxic Relief" by Dr. Don Colbert who promotes juicing and fasting as a way to detoxify. He also goes into the spiritual aspect of fasting, which I haven't really looked into much before. I'm going to ponder that subject for a while as it seems fascinating. I am reading "Healing Fatty Liver Disease" and "Fatty Liver Disease, You Can Reverse It" also. Can you tell I just ordered whatever liver subject books the library had? Yep. That's what I did.
