Love your liver
To be honest I never really thought about my liver… until I was a student at the Nutritional Therapy Association. We learned so many great things, but learning about ALL our livers do each and every day, all day, was eye opening.
Did you know your liver performs over 500+ different tasks. The lymphatic system is a pre-filter for the liver and helps to prevent liver overload. We need all of our body systems and organs to be working optimally in order to have great health. Many systems work together to perform multiple functions in order for us to live.
Choosing to eat a nutrient dense diet and focus on proper lifestyle and mindset helps to achieve the end goal: a healthy body.
Your liver filters out toxins from your blood and simultaneously neutralizes these toxins in preparation for elimination. These now neutralized toxins are then passed to your gallbladder (another underappreciated organ) where they become part of the bile and will eventually be excreted from your body.
Just a few reasons to Love Your Liver
Detoxes toxins in your blood
Activates enzymes
Supports immune factors by helping remove bacteria from the blood
Regulates blood sugar
Regulates blood clotting
Regulates blood amino acids
Works in conjunction with steroid hormones
Converts T4 to T3 in your thyroid
Stores various vitamins and minerals
Stores excess glucose for later use
Produces cholesterol
Produces bile for digestion and removal of waste
We can develop what is called a non-alcoholic fatty liver. This has nothing to do with liver damage caused by drinking too much alcohol. This issue typically occurs in people that consume far too much sugar, eat a mostly processed food diet, and can present in people that have high body mass index, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and are diabetic.
Foods and Lifestyle choices that negatively affect your liver function
Standard American Diet
Lack of exercise/movement
Excessive sugar intake (especially high fructose corn syrup and all refined granulated sugars)
Glyphosate
Mold
Chemicals in personal care products, clothing, cleaning products, etc
Excess hormones
Consuming highly processed oils (canola, sunflower, safflower, and soybean)
So What can I do? Here are some of the best foods for liver health
Start your morning with room temperature filtered water with fresh lemon juice and 1/4 tsp of unrefined sea salt
Eat your greens - spinach, collard greens, kale, chard
Consume beets - if you hate beets like me then drink unsweetened organic beet juice. I start the morning with 1/2 cup and drink it like a shot then follow up with the lemon water
Eat your bitters - arugula, fennel, radicchio, grapefruit, brussel sprouts, cranberry, pomegranate seeds, dill, dark chocolate, ginger, and mint
Berries - eat any and all berries for a happy liver
I’ll write a separate post about the phases of detoxification so stay tuned…
