A Healthy Liver is Key to Effective Aging!

When people want to slow down the aging process maintaining a healthy liver is not something they think about. Usually they think about the health of their heart, skin, and brain. Maybe their lungs or kidneys might come up for discussion.

But how often have you ever thought about your liver!

A couple of weeks ago I was at the Roundhouse in Aurora, IL. This building is the first one like it in America. Built in 1856 to service trains it was abandoned in the 70s. Bought by Walter Payton and a group of investors in 1995 for $10. It was renovated and opened up in 1996.

So what does this have to do with a healthy liver?

Because in 1999, just 3 years later Walter Payton died of liver disease.  And being at this facility reminded me of how important a healthy liver is to effective aging.

What Does a Healthy Liver Do?

In researching this article my appreciation and respect for the liver grew exponentially. Your liver is critical to how well you age. It’s an amazing organ. Located in the upper right quadrant of the abdomen, the liver is the largest and most complex organ of the body. It’s responsible for:

• Cleansing and filtering the blood stream.

• The production of bile which is stored in the gallbladder. When released, bile aids in the digestion of fats while helping to rid the body of harmful substances.

• Producing other important chemical compounds such as albumin, blood clotting factors, cholesterol, and Vitamin E.

• Converting amino acids and lipids into glucose a simple sugar. This requires a complex process catalyzed by a series of enzymes.

• Storing glucose in the form of glycogen. This process plays a critical role in maintaining normal blood sugar levels.

• Proper metabolism of proteins and fats.

• Metabolizing many medications, alcohol, and other ingested chemicals such as caffeine.

• The storage of vitamins A, B12, D, several of the other B vitamins, and minerals like copper and iron.

• Detoxifying the body from numerous substances like ammonia and metabolic wastes.

All in all over 500 chemical and metabolic functions take place in a healthy liver. It filters about 2 quarts of blood per minute making it the “garbage disposal” of the body.

And, if you review the bullet points from above, you can see how a healthy liver is involved in diet, metabolism, blood sugar control, digestion, detoxification, and elimination. It is critically important to understand how the liver works and what you can do to support the liver properly. Your overall health and wellness, as well as how you age and fight disease, will be impacted by a healthy liver.

In Our Overly Medicated and Chemical World!

We live in an environment that has seen an increased use of chemicals and medication to process foods and treat symptoms. It’s estimated that 80 percent of U.S. livestock and poultry receive some form of drugs/hormones/antibiotics during their lifetime. Pesticides, herbicides, and other chemical storage methods are commonly used in food production. Add environmental toxins, chemical additives, certain processing and refining practices, coupled with substance abuse and you can see why today’s liver is under so much stress.

Additionally, the typical American diet creates an acidic environment. This acidic environment stresses a healthy liver, as well as other systems in the body. Is it any wonder why we are seeing so many people living lives compromised by degenerative diseases?

A Healthy Liver is Your Detoxification Center!

Your blood flows through the liver in a unique way so that it can filter out toxic matter such as dead cells, chemicals, drugs, and particulate debris. This liver filter is called the sinusoidal system. It has specialized cells known as Kupffer cells that ingest and breakdown toxic matter.

A healthy liver also removes a wide range of microorganisms such as bacteria, fungi, viruses, and parasites that might be in your blood stream. When properly working, a healthy liver will clear 99% of the bacteria and other toxins during this filtering process!

A Healthy Liver is One Giant Self-Storage Facility!

Many of the toxic chemicals that enter your body are fat-soluble. That presents a problem since they will only dissolve in fatty or oily solutions and not water. These fat soluble chemicals are difficult for the body to excrete. If not handled by the liver they will be stored in fat tissue and cell membranes, which are made of fatty substances. These toxins can be stored for years.

A healthy liver has two primary mechanisms for converting fat-soluble chemicals into water soluble chemicals. This allows your body to easily excrete them through its two main pathways which are bile and urine. These two primary mechanisms are:

• Phase One – Detoxification Pathway

• Phase Two – Detoxification Pathway

Simply put, the phase one pathway converts a toxic chemical into a less harmful chemical through various chemical reactions. That’s the good news. The bad news is that these chemical reactions produce high levels of free radicals.

To counter this damage, your body needs antioxidants to absorb their destructive energy and return the free radical to a stable molecule. Antioxidants like vitamin C and E and natural carotenoids protect the liver cells from free radical damage. But, far and away the most important antioxidant for neutralizing the free radicals produced in Phase One detoxification is glutathione.

In the phase two pathway a healthy liver adds another substance to the chemical or drug toxins to render them less harmful and water-soluble. By making fat-soluble toxins water-soluble your body can now eliminate them through watery fluids such as bile or urine.

To summarize the detoxification process into a simple flow sheet it would look something like this:

• Toxins enter your system >

• Liver filters out toxins >

• Step One Detoxification Pathways >

• Step Two Detoxification Pathways >

• Toxins converted to water soluble waste products >

• Waste products eliminated from your body via >

• Gall Bladder as Bile released into your intestines to be eliminated through bowel movements or >

• Kidneys eliminated through your urine.

As you can see, a healthy liver as well as your gall bladder, intestines, and kidneys are extremely important in this detoxification process.

I’ve given you a lot of information. Hidden within this information are keys to maintaining a healthy liver. Some are quite obvious and some need additional exposure to see the relationship. My next blog post “10 Steps for Liver Support and Cleansing!” will put this information into a working plan that you can use to help improve your liver’s function and health.

Blessing Lives Through Nitric Oxide Therapy!

Dan Hammer