Your doctor may have told you to reduce your alcohol consumption to support liver health.
But what many don’t realize, and what is perhaps most important for improving overall health when over 50 years old, is to support the natural cleansing of your liver to reduce the buildup of toxins in your fat cells.
The liver is a vital organ responsible for detoxifying the body, producing hormones and enzymes, and storing energy.
It filters toxins from the blood, helps break down fats and proteins, and regulates blood sugar levels.
But as we age, our liver enzymes become less efficient at performing functions due to factors such as poor diet and lifestyle habits.
With that, to promote liver health, reducing alcohol intake will help, but for an effective liver cleanse, it fundamentally comes down to reducing exposure to toxins on a daily basis.
From air pollution that we inhale every day to the refined sugar processed foods we eat, alongside contaminants that can get into our bodies via skin care products, these all contribute significantly towards the serious consequences of developing liver damage.
Your liver health is the root cause behind most major health concerns and risk factors for nonalcoholic fatty liver disease.
Some people may opt for a more intensive approach, such as a liver detox or natural cleanse program, while others may prefer incorporating small lifestyle changes into their daily routine.
Whatever your path, the ultimate goal is to decrease the exposure to environmental toxins in your liver and promote its natural detoxification process.
In this lesson, you will learn the importance and role of a healthy liver in cleansing toxins and how this influences your metabolic health.
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The benefits of cleansing your liver are more than just reducing the amount of alcohol in the week and grabbing a green smoothie on the way out of the gym.
Cleansing your liver is vital for maintaining hormonal balance, especially during menopause, and is essential to your skin health and losing weightAMP.
With a healthy liver, your body can efficiently regulate hormones, helping to reduce symptoms such as hot flashes, mood swings and anxiety.
The consequence of poor liver function is a fatty liver, and when not addressed as we age, it can lead to non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD), cirrhosis or liver failure.
Combined with poor blood sugar levels, a fatty liver can lead to a variety of metabolic issues, including insulin resistance, type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease.
This is why keeping your liver healthy and naturally cleansing harmful toxins with a healthy lifestyle is crucial. Choose a Mediterranean diet containing oily fish, fruits and vegetables, and whole grains.
However, to detox or naturally cleanse the liver, you must first understand where the toxins come from.
It is essential to reduce the environmental toxins in your body before you can improve the clearance of these toxins with a healthy diet.
The liver is the largest internal organ in our body.
It has many functions and is essential in metabolising your nutrition (everything you put into your body),
This includes macronutrients such as carbohydrates, proteins and fats, micronutrients such as vitamins and minerals, medications and supplements.
Also, the air you breathe and the products you put on your skin!
The liver is part of digestion and acts like a manufacturing plant to convert the food you eat into useful products that your body needs to function.
It creates bile to help digest and absorb fats and stores glucose for energy delivery.
It produces essential proteins that regulate hormone production, enzymes and neurotransmitters for communication between the various systems in the body.
However, the liver’s primary role is to filter toxins from the blood before it can circulate through the rest of your body.
These toxins come from various sources such as alcohol, fried foods, medications, environmental pollutants and even your face cream.
As mentioned, the liver is critical in delivering energy into the cells to create mitochondria.
When blood glucose levels are constantly high, and the pancreas struggles to produce sufficient insulin to deliver the energy into cells, the liver will remove the glucose from the blood, as it filters through, and converts the glucose energy into fat for storage for later.
However, when this consistency happens, the liver becomes overwhelmed, and instead of sending the fat to be stored in the fat cells in the body or muscles, it stores the fat inside the liver cells instead.
The long-term consequence is a fatty liver.
A fatty liver is when the liver fat has accumulated more than 5-10% of fat in its cells.
When left untreated, it can lead to nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD), which is one of the leading causes of chronic liver diseases such as cirrhosis and, eventually, failure.
Furthermore, fat in the liver also affects blood sugar levels.
This contributes to a wide range of metabolic health issues, including insulin resistance, type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease.
Moreover, when the liver becomes overwhelmed by unhealthy fats, it cannot effectively perform its essential environmental toxins clearance function.
Toxins can then circulate through the bloodstream, causing harm to other organs and systems in the body, such as increasing cholesterol levels and causing high blood pressure.
Therefore, reducing the toxic load on this vital organcan improve blood sugar regulation, prevent chronic diseases and maintain overall metabolic health.
Some common toxins that can harm the liver come from the air you breathe and food you consume that contains pesticides, heavy metals and artificial sweeteners.
Plus, alcohol, medications and skin care products.
By limiting exposure to these toxins, we can decrease the burden on the liver and allow it to perform its detoxification function efficiently.
These toxins can cause inflammation, further damaging the liver cells and making it more difficult for the organ to perform metabolic functions.
Therefore, it becomes crucial to limit your exposure to these toxins as much as possible and support your liver’s natural detoxification process through regular cleansing or detoxification.
Any chemicals or toxins that enter the body will attach to receptors on the cell membrane and alter the lock and key system.
This system is vital for hormones and neurotransmitters to interact with the cells, thus changing cellular function.
One example of this is the estrogen receptors on cells in the body.
When this receptor is already occupied with a toxin, the estrogen hormone cannot attach and perform its functions correctly.
This can lead to hormonal imbalances, which can cause a wide range of symptoms such as hot flashes, mood swings and changes in skin health.
The concern is these toxins are in almost every manufactured food you eat or product you put on your skin and contain various organic chemicals to protect against bacteria, destroying the product.
The most common ones are called phalates, which are organic chemicals often called plasticizers.
They are found in plastic bottles, food packaging and cosmetics.
They provide strength or flexibility to the packaging and put them in the food.
You will also find Phalates, dairy products, meats, fish, baked goods, and sweets and cereals.
Mainly anything processed or manufactured because the Phalates contain potent antioxidant properties, protect the food or product from the effects of oxygen and decay and give the product self-life.
This is also true for organic food because they are also in the packaging.
Toxins can also impact the gut microbiome, which is crucial to metabolic health.
Which you can learn more about in the following article – click here
When toxins enter the gut, they can disrupt the balance of good and bad bacteria, leading to inflammation and other health issues.
This further highlights the importance of reducing exposure to toxins and supporting natural detoxification processes.
Known as PFAs, they have adverse health effects on the human body.
These chemicals can disrupt hormones and cause immune system dysfunction, resulting in chronic diseases such as heart disease, cancers, thyroid disorders, obesity and diabetes.
They’re also in the aftershave, the perfume that deodorants the makeup and your nail varnish.
As endocrine disruptors, they play havoc with your hormones.
They have been linked to reproductive disorders, birth defects, and certain types of cancer.
Combined with blood sugar regulation issues, these endocrine disruptors play a role in your menopause symptoms because they can destabilize the functioning of estrogen receptors in cells.
They can also reduce the production of essential hormones such as serotonin, leading to mood disorders and sleep disruptions.
Along with thyroid conversions, this is another essential process impacted by liver damage.
Thyroid hormones impact every cell and organ in the body, including metabolism, digestion and energy levels.
So, looking for remedies for fatty liver is crucial to maintaining a healthy thyroid gland and metabolic function.
They’re also in your skincare; you’ll know them as parabens.
Parabens keep your skin serums and creams free from bacteria.
You’ve got formaldehyde often in those as well.
They keep the bacteria out of your face cream, Sodium lauryl sulphate.
This is an emulsifier. This helps create the foam in your products. And then petroleum, often found in lipsticks, lip balms, is designed to lock moisture in for your skin.
Now, we are all biochemically unique, and our ability to detox varies depending on various SNPs in our DNA.
Some people have a gene to detox more efficiently than others.
This is why some people seem able to use any skin product, and others may respond with an inflammatory or immune skin reaction such as pimples, eczema or psoriasis.
If you want to learn more about your unique genetic makeup and how it can impact your health, consider exploring nutrigenomics testing.
These tests analyze your DNA to identify potential risk factors for certain diseases or conditions and provide personalized dietary recommendations.
When looking for advice to address any health issue or symptom, toxic exposure is rarely discussed by your doctor or even considered as a contributory factor to any health condition.
And yet, these industrial chemicals will alter the essential functions and activations of the enzymes such as:-
Your liver will try to cope, but as we age, these toxins will accumulate, and we eventually succumb to the toxicity.
Therefore, educating ourselves on the sources of toxins and taking proactive steps to limit our exposure as much as possible is crucial.
Our body’s primary detoxification organ is the liver.
It plays a vital role in breaking down and eliminating toxins from our bodies.
However, when continually exposed to toxins, our liver becomes overburdened, leading to a buildup of these harmful substances in our body.
The role of the liver is that when these toxins enter the body via the bloodstream.
They have passed through the main portal vein, which travels from the gut to the liver.
Phase one of the detoxification process in the liver is to turn these fat-soluble toxins into water-soluble substances.
Mainly medications, drugs, caffeine, alcohol, and some metabolic waste from gut bacteria.
This is to make it easier for the body to excrete them.
This process is called oxidation and occurs in the liver’s smooth endoplasmic reticulum.
The endoplasmic reticulum is a network of membranes in the cell that aids in producing proteins, lipids and steroids.
It also acts as a storage site for calcium ions, which play important roles in cell signalling metabolic pathways.
Oxidation is carried out by enzymes called cytochrome P450 (CYP) enzymes.
These enzymes use oxygen and other substances to convert toxins into reactive intermediates, which are then easily eliminated from the body.
However, this process produces reactive oxygen species (ROS) as a byproduct, which can harm our cellular function. .
These reactive intermediates can damage proteins and DNA if they are not quickly removed from the body.
Therefore, it is essential to support phase one detoxification by ensuring a healthy intake of nutrient dense foods, green tea extract, and nutrients such as vitamin B complex, magnesium, and primary antioxidants, such as vitamin C, Vitamin A and glutathione.
Phase two occurs after phase one, when the liver combines these converted toxins with other substances, making them easier to excrete.
This process is known as conjugation and involves enzymes called transferases.
Examples of conjugation include methylation and glucuronidation.
During this phase, these detoxified toxins are transported to the bile or urine for elimination from the body.
However, if there is an excess build-up of toxins or insufficient nutrients to support the liver’s detoxification processes, these toxins can re-enter circulation and cause harm.
This is where supporting your liver health becomes crucial in avoiding chronic health issues and maintaining overall well-being.
By reducing exposure to toxins, providing essential nutrients for optimal detoxification, and taking steps to support liver function, we can protect ourselves from the damaging effects of these harmful substances.
So next time you reach for that pizza box or put on your favourite lip balm, remember to check the ingredients and make informed decisions to benefit your metabolic health.
It is fundamentally the reduction of exposure to toxins from the air you breathe, the food you eat, and what you put on your skin; the state of your liver function is the root cause of every hormone or symptom you have.
• Supporting liver function is critical for improved metabolic health, especially when over 50 years old.
• It is essential to reducing the toxic load on your liver and promoting its natural detoxification process is essential.
• Toxins accumulate in the liver from various sources such as air pollution, processed food, medications, and skincare products.
• These toxins cause inflammation and can interfere with hormones and their ability to communicate with cells.
• They are also endocrine disruptors, which can lead to hormone imbalances, menopause symptoms, mood disorders, and certain types of cancers and other chronic diseases.
• To improve metabolic health through the cleansing of the liver, it is important first to reduce exposure to these toxins and support your body’s natural detoxification processes before focusing on regular cleansing or detoxification protocols.
To conclude
It is imperative to understand the depth of damage that can be done to your metabolic health due to an accumulation of toxins in the liver.
By reducing our exposure to these hazardous contaminants and supporting our body’s natural detoxification processes, we will lay a strong foundation for improved metabolic health.
Supported by regular cleansing or detoxification protocols can also help with this process.
Everyone first benefits from reducing their toxic load to pave the way for improved overall metabolic health and head toward optimal wellness and longevity.
To learn more about how you can improve your metabolic health and combat toxin overload, read the following article on the pH levels in your gut microbiome and how they may disrupt the absorption of key nutrients necessary to slow down the effects of ageing.
Share the secret to enhancing your liver health. Reduce what goes in rather than trying to clear it out.
Educating yourself about what goes into your body is an important step towards making better food choices.
Learn the basics about nutrition – CLICK HERE
Take the Healthy Eating Quiz to discover your knowledge of nutrition – CLICK HERE
What’s next? What is your metabolic health age – use the online Metabolic Age Calculator and answer a few simple health and lifestyle questions. It takes a few minutes, but it could help you change how you manage your energy levels forever.
If your Metabolic Health Age is equivalent to or lower than your actual age, then that is great news! This means your blood sugar levels, triglycerides, high-density lipoprotein, (HDL) cholesterol, blood pressure and waist circumference are potentially all within an ideal range.
However if your Metabolic Health Age is more than 10 years of your actual age, and you are struggling with low energy and fatigue you could be prone to some or all of these conditions as these are all markers that directly relate to your risk of insulin resistance, fatty liver, dysbiosis, high cholesterol and blood pressure.