Liver Love
The liver is the second largest organ of the body that is constantly performing 500+ tasks to help keep you feeling your best and working in harmony. Some of her roles include: detoxing toxins (toxins from outside exposure and byproducts of other enzymatic processes in the body [exogenous & endogenous]), processing macro and micronutrients into usable energy, and filtering 1500 ml of blood per minute. Her presence is felt by every cell in the body and when she is feeling sluggish, she will make it known. If you are trying to put your best foot forward, you’re going to want to keep her in tip-top shape.
How do you know if your liver needs some extra loving? If you are currently experiencing brain fog, low energy, chronic stress, irregular menstrual cycles, and compromised digestion, then you’ll want to continue reading. Here is your Soulful guide to showing your liver some love.
Examine Your Nutrition
First things first, you’re going to want to look at your nutrition. Reducing processed foods, refined sugar, inflammatory oils, and alcohol is a great place to start when looking to relieve some of the burden on your liver. Focus on cooking more homemade meals, replacing copious amounts of refined sugar with smaller amounts of unrefined sugar (maple syrup and honey are our faves). As for alcohol, try exploring some non-alcoholic spirits, a mocktail, or aim to reduce overall intake altogether. Next, you’ll want to incorporate more colorful vegetables (red and purple varieties specifically, berries and beets), fiber (think avocados, nuts, seeds), herbs, spices, and cruciferous vegetables.
Incorporate Bitter Foods and Teas
Incorporating a serving of bitter foods into your meals is our recommendation and it can be easier than you think. Dandelion greens, arugula, nettle, the cruciferous vegetable family (Brussel sprouts, broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, kale, radishes, etc.), cranberries, spinach, and collard greens are all liver-loving foods. Here is a tasty breakfast recipe that includes some of your liver’s favorite foods.
Moving onto teas, our bread and butter also happens to be one of the easiest ways you can help support your liver multiple times a day. Some of our favorite liver-supportive herbs for liver health are milk thistle, chamomile, and dandelion, all of which are found in the Soulful Tea Blends. Milk thistle is found in the Refresh tea. Chamomile is found in our flow tea, balance tea, and digest teas. Dandelion can be found in our cult favorite Flow tea blend. All of these blends are caffeine-free and can be sipped on throughout the day.
Support Sleep Hygiene
Sleep is something we always want to examine when it comes to any health-related symptom. The correlation between sleep and liver health is significant. As per Traditional Chinese Medicine expert recommendations, during the hours of 11 p.m. and 3 a.m., the liver is working hard to regenerate new cells, filter out toxins, and help your body repair tissues. This means you’ll want to catch those zzz’s before 11 p.m. in hopes of giving your liver the time it needs to practice some much-needed self-care.
Reduce over-the-counter pain medication
Even though you’ve been told to take pain medication when you are not feeling well, ironically enough, pain medication creates an extra burden on the liver. Specifically, we want to single out acetaminophen. Acetaminophen is found, most notably in Tylenol, although it's also included in other prescription drugs. Acetaminophen can overwhelm the glutathione pathway causing an inability to detox some metabolites. More simply put, overuse of pain medication can cause liver damage. It’s best to focus on holistic modalities for pain management before taking some of these over-the-counter medications.
We suggest starting with these three buckets when focusing on liver support. However, for the advanced students, here are some other lifestyle/nutrition tools to optimize…
Hydration levels
Water is Queen. You can get it through non-caffeinated tea, filtered water, fruits, and vegetables and you are going to want to get a lot of it. On average for a moderately active person, you will want to aim for half an ounce of water per one pound of body weight… at least. This translates to 2.2L or 9.5 250 ml glasses of water per day. Water quality is also important here. You will want to drink filtered water to decrease some contaminants that are found in tap water that your liver works hard to filter every day.
Chemicals in personal care products
Certain chemicals in personal care products (skincare, hair care, cleaning products) contain chemicals that expose you to extra estrogens - xenoestrogens. Exposure to extra estrogens means more work for your liver. In addition to personal care products, xenoestrogens are in plastic compounds, chemicals, pesticides, and in the air we breathe. If you are looking to dive deep into what’s in your most frequently used products around the house, we suggest looking at the EWG website or the app called Yuka, to give you some information about the ingredients listed in your products.
Other lifestyle practices that we love for the liver at The Soulful Sprout include castor oil packs, stress management techniques such as breathwork, daily activity (preferably out in nature), and Epsom salt baths.
These are great lifestyle hacks you can incorporate weekly and they also happen to be amazing self-care practices that reduce overall stress for the mind and body, which is definitely something your liver will appreciate.
IN NEED OF EXTRA SUPPORT?
Have you been dealing with symptoms for so long that you’ve adapted to this being your new normal?
We’re here to tell you that digestive distress is not something you need to live with and that it is possible to address the root cause.
You deserve to feel your best.
You can heal.
If you’re interested in further investigating your gut health with functional testing and a 1:1 personalized approach you can learn about our services & programs here.
