Hey People,
Here is something I want to share.
I got a call from my cousin yesterday. He was worried. ‘I went for a regular check up, and the blood report is screwed up. Looks like my liver is damaged.’, he was worried. That sure sounded scary. Apparently, all the parameters of liver enzymes he got tested were on higher side.Thankfully after 2 years of monthly doctor visits and regular blood test, I understand the medical terms used in blood report. I saw that his ALP (Alkaline Phosphate) and ALT (Alanine Aminotransferase) enzymes were high. (These are Liver Enzymes used to test the functioning of Liver.)
I assured him that things are not bad as he thinks but can go bad if he doesn’t get up and do something!
‘What does it mean?’, He was still confused.
‘It is not a good sign for sure and you need to take care of your liver if you want to prevent yourself from disease further. But, it’s not a liver damage! Eat healthy, and move your body.’, I replied. After we finished our discussion I started looking for ways to help him, and here I found a good amount of information about a miracle organ we have that is our Liver.
Liver is the largest and most complex organ for our body. If our brain processes the information, its the liver which performs physiological task.
If we start to list down the ways liver helps us to remain up to the mark it will fill pages, however there are few things worth mentioning.
- It processes fat and regulate protein metabolism. Therefore it indirectly produces protein that transport substances like fat and hormones.
- Liver is the organ responsible to store nutrients converted by stomach and intestine during digestion.
- It is responsible for converting thyroid hormones( T4 to T3). (Now you know why do you have thyroid hormone imbalance!)
- Liver is responsible for screening and filtering blood. So, if it is not working properly, it means your skin is not more prone to acne. Also, number of skin diseases are the result of sluggish liver.
- It is responsible for burning fat into fuel. Therefore, before you complain that you are not loosing weight how hard you try, make sure that your liver is working properly.
Now, if we want to keep it healthy ( and we should!), here are the few easy ways you can do it.
- Drink bottle gourd juice :- Bottle guard or Lauki (Indian name) can be really helpful to reduce inflammation of your liver. Try drinking it empty stomach in the morning. If you are living in a country where celery is readily available, use celery instead of bottle guard. (Medical Medium‘s Anthony William suggests that celery is the most powerful herb to heal your liver).
- Dandelion root tea :- Replace your morning tea with Dandelion root tea. Dandelion root detoxifies the liver, and promotes liver health. Research says that the compounds in this plant promote better health overall by reducing inflammation.
- Apples :- Eat Apples as your evening snacks. Apples provide water to support liver hydration capacity. It also starves bacteria, and yeast from your liver. (An apple a day keeps the bacteria away!)
- Garlic:- Do you hate it smell? Doesn’t matter! The benefits it provides will make you fall in love with this wonder food. The sulfur compound found in garlic hit a variety of pathogens in the liver forcing them to back off. Onion proves the same benefits if you don’t like garlic. (I try to eat 6-9 garlic cloves everyday, but you can start small.)
- Spirulina :- It provides an abundance of vitamins and minerals to reestablish liver normal functioning. It also acts as a wonderful detox agent and pulls out toxins and poisons by binding them and carrying them out. You can buy these algae from Amazon and if you do not like it’s taste, you can see my post regarding how you can make it taste good.
Love your liver, love your life…..
Love and health always..
Ankita
You are into meditation, but garlic inhibits the process of mediation due to its nature(according to Ayurveda). Many gurus have advised against consuming it daily as it should be treated as medicine and not food. it would be great if you share your experience of whether it has affected your meditation and what would dose do you recommend a healthy person.
Yes, a healthy person shouldn’t eat garlic that much. I mean not daily since we consume it in food too as it creates heat in the body. But if someone is having any health issue, it’s good to add RAW garlic in diet for few days so that it prevents the body from pathogens and support in liver in body detox.