Foods to avoid and foods to consume to take care of your lovely liver

Let’s cut through the nonsense about liver detox. Your liver isn’t a sponge full of toxins—it’s an organ that detoxifies and handles waste unless you’ve got a fatty liver, inflammation, or worse. A damaged liver can lead to scar tissue, which may even result in cirrhosis. Here’s what you need to know about keeping your liver in top shape.

What the Liver Actually Does

It handles more than 500 functions, but I’ll stick to the important stuff:

  • Ammonia Detox: The liver turns ammonia (from protein breakdown) into urea, making it harmless. If it doesn’t work properly, the ammonia backs up, even affecting the brain. That’s bad news.
  • Hormone Buffering: Too much or too little of a hormone? Your liver helps regulate that. If it’s out of whack, you’ll feel it—high estrogen, low testosterone, stress from cortisol imbalances, and a whole lot more.
  • Thyroid Hormones: Your liver converts inactive thyroid hormone (T4) into the active version (T3). A poorly functioning liver can lead to hypothyroidism.
  • Growth Hormone: The liver helps with the activation of growth hormone, essential for anti-aging, muscle building, and recovery. If your liver’s not pulling its weight, growth hormone doesn’t work properly.
  • Vitamin D Activation: It’s the liver that activates Vitamin D. If the liver’s damaged, your Vitamin D blood tests may not tell the whole story because the inactive form is what’s usually measured.
  • Toxin Removal: This one’s critical. Your liver processes pesticides, heavy metals, and poisons from alcohol, cigarettes, and processed foods into harmless, water-soluble particles.
  • Bile Production: The liver creates bile, allowing you to absorb fat-soluble nutrients like omega-3s and vitamins A, D, E, and K. Without bile, these nutrients don’t make it into your system properly.
  • Glycogen Storage: Your liver stores glycogen (sugar), the fuel your brain and body use between meals. Without that, your brain function drops.

What Destroys Your Liver?

You might already avoid alcohol and sugar, but here’s the hidden crap wrecking your liver:

  • Soy Protein Isolates: Found in weight-loss products and “health foods.” These highly refined proteins don’t resemble real soybeans and have been linked to liver problems, gallbladder issues, and even the need for gallbladder removal. Stick to real foods.
  • Seed Oils: Processed oils (like canola, sunflower, and soybean oil) are loaded with omega-6 fatty acids and processed with chemicals like hexane. This creates oxidative stress and inflammation, replacing healthy cells with junk.
  • High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS): They use inedible field corn (not sweet corn) to make this garbage. HFCS hammers your liver, leading to insulin resistance, inflammation, and fatty liver. It’s not the same as natural fructose from fruit. HFCS is highly processed and wreaks havoc on your system.
  • Refined Starches: Corn starch, glucose syrup, and modified food starch are fillers, not food. They offer zero nutritional value, cause inflammation, and overload the liver with toxins.
  • Alcohol and Smoking: Both are detrimental to liver health. Alcohol consumption leads to inflammation and can contribute to fatty liver. Smoking introduces toxins that burden the liver.

What Can You Eat to Support Your Liver?

Now that you know what’s harming your liver, let’s talk about what’ll help it thrive:

  1. Olive Oil: Use extra virgin high-quality olive oil for cooking and salads. Avoid seed oils.
  2. Wild Caught Fish: Preferably high in omega-3 fatty acids for anti-inflammatory benefits and liver protection.
  3. Organic Pasture Raised Eggs: Egg yolks are high in choline, essential for fatty liver prevention and contain quality protein.
  4. Supplements:  Vitamin C, folate, magnesium, potassium, and phytonutrients.
  5. Probiotic Foods: Foods like raw sauerkraut, kimchi, and organic unsweetened kefir support liver health by maintaining gut flora. (I’m still unsure about this part due to the bioavailability of these foods, but I’ve added them in case you need to build up the flora naturally.)
  6. Grass-Fed Meat: Choose lamb, goat, beef, or deer meat, preferably grass-fed and finished, to support liver health.

These foods are integral to maintaining liver health and facilitating the body’s natural detoxification processes.

To sum it up, ditch the processed junk, avoid refined soy and seed oils, steer clear of alcohol and smoking, and load up on real, whole foods. Your liver will thank you.

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