Love Your Liver

What the Liver Does & Why You Should Care.

Ancient Babylonians considered the liver the seat of the soul. Even today, in Traditional Chinese Medicine, the Liver is said to house the Ethereal Soul.

In modern physiology, it is more appropriate to say the liver is the center of your metabolism. The liver also plays a key role in digestion and in detoxification. It deserves a little appreciation.
The liver has a unique relationship to the other organs in the digestive system. Whereas other organs in the body receive oxygen-rich blood from the heart and return oxygen-poor blood directly back to it, blood from the stomach, spleen, pancreas, large and small intestines makes an extra stop at the liver before returning to the heart. This gives the liver, your body's primary organ of detoxification, a chance to separate out and neutralize toxins from the nutrition absorbed from food you've eaten. This is a very intelligent design and allows your liver to protect more vulnerable organs, such as your brain or heart, from an overload of toxicity.

After being neutralized by the liver, toxins are secreted out of the liver with the bile, while nutrients are processed and stored or released into the general circulation to be used by the cells of the body. The liver is constantly producing bile, about a liter per day, but it is only used during digestion. What does bile do? It plays a role in neutralizing stomach acid and deterring microbes that have been ingested, but its major function is to digest fats so they can be absorbed.

So you see that your liver is central to digestion and detoxification, but that is not all. The liver plays an important role in blood sugar control: when blood sugar is high after a meal the liver stores the excess or converts it to fat, and when you haven't eaten for a while and blood sugar is low the liver releases stored sugar and can even convert fats and proteins into available energy.

The liver is like a chemical factory, producing a variety of important biochemicals including blood constituents and immune system components. The liver produces a large part of the cholesterol your body makes. After they are released, it is the liver's job to dispose of these hormones, including insulin, before they build up to unhealthy levels.

So why is this important to you?

Because the liver plays an important role in so many physiological processes, it also plays an important role when those processes become imbalanced and we become ill. Surely the liver needs to be addressed in liver diseases such as hepatitis, but due to its role in blood sugar metabolism it is also important to address the liver in type II diabetes. Due to the liver's role in hormone metabolism, treatment for hormone-related conditions, such as PMS, fibroids or acne must in part be directed at the liver. Because the liver is so important in cholesterol balance, as well as other cardiovascular disease markers, such as fibrinogen or triglycerides, the liver must be attended to when cholesterol is high, artherosclerosis is present, or there is a history of heart disease. If you are regularly exposed to toxins at work or recreationally, or if you are taking pharmaceutical drugs, you need to take care of your liver as it is the liver that protects you from being damaged by these chemicals.
So, if you suffer from chronic illness, or if you'd like to avoid chronic illness, it pays to give your liver a little love.

What are some steps we can take?
Certain foods are known to improve liver health. Beets, radishes, bitter leafy greens (dandelion greens, broccoli rabe), and artichokes are all great liver foods.