Good Food, Good Health – Liver

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We are all guilty of taking our body for granted and especially our vital organs including the liver our largest internal organ. We all seem far too engrossed in our 'looks' nowdays and spend far too much precious time and money on this through creams, pills and fad diets, but by keeping good health of the whole body and organs helping to keep the ravages of time at bay.

As you know our motto is 'good food good health' and we believe that maintaining your well being through a varied nutritional diet should be everyone's goal- you are what you eat after all.

How well you eat can also affect how well your liver performances, therefore it is important to eat good food to support it, as good nutrition helps form new liver cells and can help rebuild some damaged cells enabling good health.

The liver is the great detoxifier of the body. Our bodies are subjected to toxic substances everywhere, not only from food and drink that we consume but also from the air that we breathe and from chemicals that we use daily around our homes and come into contact with at work.

When toxins build up and accumulate overloading the detoxification system, we can become progressively more sensitive and suffer illness.

The liver consists of four unequal lobes is sited under your diaphragm slightly to the right side of your body and generally weighs about 1.36 kg

The main function of the liver is to get rid of toxins and produce bile but it completes a whole host more – converting glucose to glycogen, producing substances that break down fats, making certain amino acids that are building blocks of proteins, producing urea the main substance in urine, filtering harmful substances from the blood, storing minerals and vitamins, maintaining the level of glucose in the blood and producing about 80% of your cholesterol.

As you can see the liver, a very important organ is essential for life and death generally occurs within 24 hours if it stops working, so by adopting a healthy lifestyle and eating good food for good health helps maintain an efficient function.

60% of you liver is made up of hepatic cells – the basic metabolic cells – and these specialized cells carry out more chemical processes than any other in your body, changing the nutrients from food you eat into forms your body's cells can read use.

The Kupffer cells are the second most important group of liver cells and remove damaged blood cells and destroy microbes and cell debris.

Blood is transported to the liver by two vessels – the hepatic artery carries oxygen rich blood from the aorta and the portal vein carries blood containing digested food from the small intestine. These blood vessels repeatedly subdivide in the liver and end up being small capillaries, each leading to a lobule. Thousand of lobules make up the liver tissue and each lobule is made up of hepatic cells.

To support your liver and enable proper detoxification we all need to eat a healthy diet of good food including fresh fruit and vegetables, nuts, seeds and a healthy intake of protein.

Liver complaints are higher now than ever before due to the lifestyle many have adopted. Fast foods that are high in saturated fats are too readily available, and eaten on a regular basis can cause problems.

Alcohol consumed in large amounts can lead to damage and suppress immunity through stressing the process of detoxification. Bingeing and heavy alcohol consumption can lead to cirrhosis of the liver, today cases are continuing to rise and it is specifically worried in the female population, with numbers spiraling up over the past five years

Consuming too much iron in your diet – mostly through high intake of supplements – this has been shown to be prominent in body builders, is stored in the liver making it much harder to work and increases risk of iron toxicity.

So remember we have to look after the whole body and feed it nutritionally, all our organs are essential for a healthy working body, and the healthier we are on the inside shows on the outside.

Glossy hair and great skin comes from eating a balanced varied diet of good food for good health and keeps our immune system and all our body working at its potential. When we look great we feel great.

So next time you go grocery shopping why not try adding a few different healthy foods you would not normally buy, to keep meal times tasty and exciting especially for children.

Look after yourself so you can look after others

Sandra & Ted

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