So what's all this talk about liver, this liver thing is it that important do we really need a liver ,yes!!you need a healthy liver and the problem is the majority of population has a fatty liver and a lot of people don't even know that they have fat in the liver until they get an ultrasound or, they get a cat scan and then they're and they're shocked, so i think it's number one important understand about the liver and the importances as well as how to get the fat out of the liver.
There's a great simple thing that you can do which i'm going to talk about and there's also a drink that you can make every day to reduce fat on your liver and with some good proof science of it. With each of the ingredient that i'm going to talk about the first thing I want to mention about the liver is that people don't realize that bile is made by the liver.
They think it's made by the gallbladder, now the gallbladder is just a sac that holds the bile but I want to talk about the importance of bile for a second, because the liver makes the bile and the more you understand about what bile does, you'll appreciate the liver much much more now bile is a detergent that helps you break down fat, but exactly what does that mean break down fat let's say for example this is some fat okay and this is traveling through the stomach, you just ate some fat and it's going to be now going down into the small intestine so the stomach will kind of break it down to a certain level.
But then we need help from the gallbladder releasing bile to act on this this big clump of fat right, so the problem is that um bile needs help to break this thing down and it uses help from the pancrease, there's an enzyme and the pancreas called lip base okay lipid meaning fat ace meaning enzyme the problem is that in order for lipase to do its job it needs the bile's help and what the bile is going to do it's going to break down this significantly, so there's more surface area for the enzyme to act on so this is what bile does so the file starts to break this down into small little pieces here so let me just kind of break all that down right here.
All right so now we have a much greater surface area of fat for the enzyme lipase to do its job okay, so simply bile increases the surface area of fat so you can get more of a complete digestion of that fat in the extraction into the small intestine, that's where it gets absorbed so without enough bile then the enzyme can't do its job and now you don't get enough vitamin a the first symptom of a vitamin a deficiency is like night blindness so you're you're driving at night it's raining and you just can't quite see it's hard to see at night okay, night vision that's vitamin a I mean vitamin a also counters bad sinus problems.
If you have an immune system issue so if you have really bad sinuses chances are you could be deficient in vitamin a but vitamin a does a lot of other things as well then we have a lack of vitamin E. Well that could show up in your heart so maybe you get more inflammation in the heart in the coronary arteries which shows up as calcification higher levels of cholesterol plaque things like that, other than that it probably won't do anything else I'm being very sarcastic.
Then we have vitamin D let's say you can't absorb vitamin D, well that's a big problem because you need it for getting rid of pain you need it for decreasing blood pressure you need it for the formation of calcium in your bones and as well as the absorption of calcium in the small intestine, so if you don't have vitamin D the rate of absorption of calcium is like way way lower with vitamin D.
You absorb 20 times as much calcium as if you didn't have it, so now you have all sorts of calcium problems like bone loss and problem sleeping at night and you name it then we have vitamin K with vitamin K1 and vitamin K2, if you're deficient in vitamin K1 then you get bruising easily you bleed easily you can't clot as well and with vitamin K2 a deficiency of that you have a calcium building up in the arteries as well as the joints then.
We have other fats like omega-3 fatty acids you need that to keep your inflammation really low and without enough omega-3 fatty acids, you have all sorts of inflammatory conditions arthritis heart problems even dementia because of the involvement in your brain, your brain apparently needs a lot of omega-3 fatty acids.
Now the other thing that bile does is it helps get rid of the excess amount of cholesterol let's say for example you decide you're going to lose weight and you get on the ketogenic diet and now all this fat cell is releasing its triglyceride and its cholesterol, that's what's in a fat cell the combination of triglycerides which is can be used for energy and also cholesterol which can't be used as energy, so we need bile to help eliminate that excess amount of cholesterol so if you don't have enough bile because you don't have enough capacity of liver function, then you end up with gallstones gallstones are created by a super concentrated cholesterol situation, because there's not enough bile to emulsify and break it down.
So we get this crystallization of cholesterol so when people have gallstones they actually need more bile, they don't need necessarily less cholesterol and then you also have people that are on statin drugs which basically block the production of cholesterol, and guess what! bile is made out of cholesterol this is why the risk goes way up in getting gallstones and all these other issues.
If someone's on a statin and then the other big important purpose of bile salts is to help eliminate toxins and now your body becomes instantly more toxic, because you don't you can't get rid of the toxins that are floating to the liver because the purpose of the liver is not to store toxins, it's to break down toxins into harmless particles.
If you can't break them down then and you're taking medication and you're being exposed to planet earth you get a lot of extra poisonous things that are flooding through the bloodstream and through your body. So we really need this liver to work correctly. another symptom of a fatty liver is that you start getting a heavier liver it becomes enlarged and that pressure doesn't fit in the cavity anymore on the right side, so it backs up and it puts pressure into the right side of your neck up to here to the shoulder so you get shoulder pain.
You get a lot of tension in your right trap and that can create a fullness underneath the right rib cage is one of the symptoms and you know people say well I need to flush out my gallbladder, well you know you need to get rid of the fat in the liver it's a little bit different than fleshing out anything which i'm going to explain. The other important part about the liver is its conversion function from t4 to t3 your thyroid. Without a good liver you can't convert the thyroid hormones so you might have hormones there but they're not activated because they can't be converted 80% of all the active form of t3. The thyroid hormone works through the liver, so without that liver fully functioning maybe you get 70 or 60 or 50 of it being converted and here you are wondering why do I have a thyroid problem.
There's no reason to have a thyroid problem the problem is not the thyroid it's your liver it's the conversions okay very important the other very important function of the liver is to buffer certain excesses of sex hormones. Like estrogen and testosterone it's not good to have too much testosterone or too much estrogen. So without the liver working right you cannot form the proteins to buffer those hormones and so then we have issues like polycystic ovarian syndrome in women. Which is too much androgen and we also have too much estrogen and even men they start getting all sorts of problems with breast tissue, low testosterone, The list goes on and on and on, now because I talked a bit more on bile I do want to mention some other symptoms to try to identify.
If you have low bile, number one do you have and intolerance to digesting fat when you eat fat, do you find that you get more bloating. That would be an indication that you need more bile do you find that your stool is light colored like pale or even gray or does it float or does it leave skid marks. That could mean that you're low in bile do you find that after you eat you're just not satisfied well maybe because you're not extracting the fats to be absorbed, to then tell the brain like okay i'm done eating. That could be a sign that you need more bile, if you have nausea or you have indigestion or bloating, those can be signs.
Bloating burping belching are classic signs of low bile as well, all right so now that you have some basics on the liver and the importance of bile. Bile is really important into keeping the fat out of the liver so anything you can do to increase bile reserves is going to help you get rid of a fatty liver, so some people even take purified bile salts.
I want to talk about a a really simple shake you can make too, to help reduce fat on your liver. Now I just want to let you know that being on the ketogenic diet as well as doing intermittent fasting together can reduce the fat on your liver by 50% in just 14 days. That is the foundation first because it's essential to go on keto and doing intermittent fasting, if you have a fatty liver, but this shake i'm going to talk about next is a really simple thing everyone can do to keep fat off your liver, and it's backed by some pretty good science. The ingredients are simple; you going to use kale you're going to us kefir you're going to use kale, use organic cal and organic blueberries, and I would keep them in the freezer.
Keep them in the freezer they're much easier to blend so you just take your blender out and you take two cups of kale frozen, you can break it up into little chunks, just put two cups of kale in there because it blends really nicely when it's cold and it tastes better too, then you put one cup of blueberries, blueberries not only have curicin but so does kale kirsoten is the ultimate weapon against the fatty liver. Not to mention its involvement in many other aspects of your health including having a stronger immune system, but kercetin is a is a fabulous vital nutrient to target a fatty liver.
But there's many other things in kale and blueberries that also help you with fatty liver and liver function in general.
So we take two cups of frozen kale okay put in a blender we take one cup of frozen blueberries, we put a cup of water and we also put one cup of plain whole fat kefir, don't get the flavored kind don't get the sweetened kind get the organic if possible grass-fed. If possible whole milk plain kefir that's going to give you the probiotics that you need to reduce fat on your liver, so we have the water the kefir the kale and the blueberries and then you're going to simply blend this up for a couple minutes blend it up really nicely and then chug it down. It tastes really good and it's extremely effective in reducing fat on your liver and do that every single day in combination with a healthy keto diet as well as intermittent fasting.
A few main functions of the liver:
• It can detoxify
• It makes bile
• It produces hormones
Symptoms of a damaged liver:
• Itchiness
• Jaundice
• Lethargy
• Achy joints
• Nausea
• Lowered cognitive function
• Gallstones
The best foods for the liver:
1. Cruciferous vegetables (sulforaphane)
• Help detoxify the liver
• Help the liver get rid of inflammation
• Help to quickly detoxify things like caffeine, drugs, chemicals, and poisons
• Can help enhance liver function
• Can help decrease complications from diabetes
• Can help decrease free radical damage
• Can help improve sensitivity to insulin
• Can help improve insulin resistance
• Help support blood sugars
2. Garlic (sulfur)
• Helps detoxify the liver
• Acts as a natural antibiotic
• Is antibacterial, anti-fungal, and anti-viral
• Helps strip off fat from the liver
• Is high in vitamin B1
• Is anti-inflammatory
• Is a powerful antioxidant
• Has anti-cancer properties
3. Turmeric (curcumin)
• Helps reduce inflammation
• Helps detoxify heavy metals
• Helps repair and regenerate liver function
• Helps stabilize the mitochondria (it’s anti-cancer)
• It can help decrease fat on the liver
4. Beets
• Help detox the liver
• Help reduce liver enzymes
• Help activate the release of bile salts (decrease fat in the liver)
• Help protect liver cells
• Help reduce inflammation in the liver
5. Mushrooms
• Are high in glutathione (supports the liver)
• Help protect liver cells
6. Avocados
• Help repair and stabilize the liver
• Are high in glutathione (supports the liver)
• Are anti-inflammatory