HH311: Your Liver-Why It Deserves More Respect & Care

Welcome back to another episode of health hack as I start a whole new series this month, talking about your organs and giving you some tips about why the organs are so vital in your health, some little loan things that you may not even realize about them, and then how to care for the organs that I've selected to talk about. And so today and this week, I am talking about your liver. And I want to talk to you about what it does. And this isn't everything that it does the liver is in fact, a vital organ performing over 500 essential functions necessary for maintaining overall health. And I'm only going to talk about five of them today. The first one is detoxification. It is one of our key detoxification organs along with the kidneys. And with all of the toxins that we have in our world today, it is getting overwhelmed. And so it's really important to be supporting our liver and keeping it in optimal health, so that it can do its job of detoxifying well and get those toxins out of your body. It also supports your metabolism. It plays a central role in metabolizing, carbohydrates, fats, proteins, and converting these nutrients into energy and other necessary substances. And anybody who is struggling with weight management needs their metabolism to be functioning optimally and therefore, you need your liver to be functioning optimally. Your liver is also involved in immune function because it contains immune cells called Cooper cells that helped to remove bacteria, old red blood cells and other debris from the blood, which play a role not only in detoxification, but also in immune defense. And the liver is involved in bile production. And it is producing bile which is essential for digestion and absorption of fats and fat soluble vitamins such as a vitamin A, vitamin D, vitamin E and vitamin K, in the small intestine, so that these vital nutrients can get to the cells that need them in your body. And it's also really important for cholesterol synthesis and regulation. It is both synthesizing and regulating cholesterol cholesterol levels in the blood converting excess cholesterol into bile acids for excretion. And again, many people are struggling with high cholesterol is that because the liver isn't able to function at an optimal level and therefore isn't able to synthesize and regulate cholesterol levels in the body as well. And if we can support our liver, then our liver can function at a more optimal level for not only these five different performances that I've talked about here or functions, but all of the 500 more than 500 that it is responsible for. So you can see that the liver plays a critical role in maintaining the body's internal environment and supporting overall health. And join me next time as I talk about three things that you may not know about your liver. So keep tuning in, throughout the month. And as I continue to share tidbits not only about your liver, I'll be talking about your kidneys, your heart, as well as your digestive or other digestive organs in your overall digestive system.