Enjoy the Liver!
Detoxing is a 24/7 Job
You’re at a nice, fancy restaurant (a real treat since you normally eat fast food on the go) and the waiter sets down a dish of complementary liver pate. “Enjoy the liver!” he says with a genuine smile. You look at it. It looks at you. This is no Happy Meal. You decide to pass.
When it comes to the liver in your body, DON’T pass. Your liver is an integral organ whose primary job is to sift out the good and the bad, and keep everything in check. In short, your liver is a giant filter that regulates your body. This is called detoxification, and it’s 100% natural.
What does it filter? EVERYTHING. Everything from hormones to toxins, and wouldn’t you know, these are directly related to each other! Who’d have thought?!
If you asked your liver what its ideal day looked like, it would say it loves to clean out blood coming from your digestive tract, get rid of used up hormones, and beef up your body with some important proteins. If you asked your liver what it actually does, it would give you a much different answer that most likely starts with, “I work way too hard!” And it’s probably not being facetious.
Your liver wants to filter hormones, but it often gets bogged down trying to get rid of a bunch of other junk while trying to keep its head above water. Whether we are aware of it or not, we ingest toxins and chemicals from our food and environment that the liver has to work extra hard to detox. Some of the culprits we knowingly ingest include prescription drugs, excessive alcohol, pesticides in food, and chemical and environmental pollution. Your liver will first work on shooing these toxins away and put hormone regulation on the back burner.
This is not so great for your estrogen level. Nicole Jardim, a Certified Women’s Health and Functional Nutrition Coach (who self-admittedly proclaims that she “knows her sh*t”) describes the process this way:
Once estrogen has done its job in the body, it is sent to the liver so it can be broken down and removed through the colon. Unfortunately, if your liver is all gunked up from the excess toxins it is exposed to, then it is unable to function optimally and thus cannot remove estrogen at its normal rate. Estrogen is not metabolized properly and can be reabsorbed back into the body. [1]
If this happens once, or maybe twice, probably not a big deal—your liver is an expert at healing your body. But if it happens again and again and again? Big deal.
A buildup of estrogen in the bloodstream can result in estrogen dominance, creating a hormonal imbalance. When estrogen is the dominant hormone, progesterone really takes a back seat. And then you become susceptible to a bunch of different issues including [2]:
- Autoimmune diseases - Hashimoto’s, MS, rheumatoid arthritis, etc.
- Thyroid dysfunction
- Fibrocystic breasts
- Gallbladder disease
- Leaky gut
- Weight gain
- PMS
- PCOS (Polycystic Ovary Syndrome)
- Endometriosis
- Uterine fibroids
- Infertility
Sounds like it affects women more than men? In some ways it does, but men are not off the hook. Ever seen a dude with “man-boobs” and you know he drinks a lot? Too much estrogen [2].
Don’t want this to be you? Or maybe you’re already feeling like it is you? Your liver is probably having a tough go and you need to make some changes. You need to detox.
Where to start:
- Eat better – go organic as much as possible, eat 5 servings of fruit and vegetables per day (especially the greens!), and amp up the proteins
- Exercise regularly
- Minimize stress
- Drink more water
Then what?
Dr. Mark Hyman, director of Cleveland Clinic’s Center for Functional Medicine, says you should friend-power vs. willpower. He says studies show obesity is contagious, and if you have obese friends, you are at a higher risk of becoming obese. Hyman performed a large social experiment and discovered health is contagious too. If you have healthy friends, you are more likely to be healthy as well [3].
I want to be your healthy friend. If you are experiencing any of the above symptoms, you might benefit from a detox. But health is often not something we can, or should do alone. I will come alongside you and walk you through this journey to balance your hormones and balance your life. I will help you heal.
1. https://nicolejardim.com/hormone-balance-your-liver-function/
2. https://www.holtorfmed.com/estrogen-balance-hormone-imbalance-and-the-liver/
3. https://drhyman.com/blog/2015/03/12/7-reasons-you-need-to-detox/
Don't Miss Out!
Heidi Toy Functional Medicine Blog
Did you know most people didn’t have refrigerators in their homes until well into the 1900’s? It wasn’t even invented for large scale commercial use until the mid 1800’s [1]. So how did people keep their milk cold and make their food last longer? Fermentation. It sounds like a gross concept, because we often associate fermentation with a bad odor, but foods like cheese, yogurt, sauerkraut and pickles are all fermented foods. And those aren’t gross, are they? Well, some might disagree with me about sauerkraut, but that’s beside the point. Fermented foods are digestive aids. Microscopic living organisms in fermented foods help extend the food’s shelf life, enhance flavor, and help the body absorb minerals. These organisms pre-digest the food, getting rid of harmful components, and create more vitamins and enzymes than the food began with. Enzyme-rich foods have many benefits including [2]: Increase digestibility of food we eat Boost immune system Increase alkalinity; neutralizing pH levels Provide a healthy balance of friendly flora in the gut (Learn more about your microbiome in my other blog posts ) Tone the colon and help with elimination Control cravings for unhealthier foods Eliminate toxins and undigested wastes in the body In the “old days,” people use to ferment all kinds of foods through pickling, canning, pasteurization and added salt. Nowadays, however, large scale fermentation has lost many of its nutritious benefits due to the need for speed to get the product on the shelf as fast as possible and as cheap as possible. The only true fermented foods you will find are sauerkraut, kombucha, yogurt and kefir, beans, wine and beer, some meats (such as salami and pastrami), legumes and nuts (such as tofu, soy sauce and miso), sourdough bread, and various kinds of vegetables [3]. Fun facts about sauerkraut: The Germans “stole” it from the Chinese! Sauerkraut (probably not labeled as such for the Chinese, but the same recipe) was one of the main foods for those who built the Great Wall of China. Genghis Khan brought it to Eastern Europe during an invasion. It also contains high levels of vitamin C, and sailors often took it on long journeys to prevent scurvy.
How can we best keep blood sugar stable? Do what our body is designed to do – use fat for energy. Our species did not survive the Ice Age because of vanilla coffee lattes and cheesecake. Throughout most of our history, we ate a diet that was likely 50-70 percent fat. Look at the old family photo albums, specifically pictures of people in the first half of the 1900s, before we had so many processed foods. You won’t see many fat people--in fact, most look darn skinny. If they lived on the farm, they ate lots of eggs, meat, milk, and vegetables out of their own backyards. “Diet foods” were non-existent. Heart disease was almost non-existent. Our metabolism is designed to work much better with fats better than with sugar. Fats provide the slow and steady fuel our body likes to use for energy. Think of fats as a slow-burning log on the fire. One log (i.e. one meal containing fats) lasts for hours. Starchy carbs, on the flip side, are like kindling. You constantly have to throw more twigs (chips, pasta, bagels) to keep the fire burning. The first step is to know your sugars by reading the labels, and then avoid said sugars as much as possible.
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Omega-3 and Omega-6 are considered “essential” fatty acids because they cannot be produced by the body--we get them from the food we eat. They are biologically active upon ingestion, which means the body utilizes them right away and cannot store them up for later. They are essential because they help with both inflammatory and anti-inflammatory responses.
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