In health, all roads lead to the liver.
Your monthly cycle (duration, symptoms) is a report card for your liver.
Pregnancy is a stress test on your liver.
The health of your gut reflects the health of your liver.
So if you feel like your liver is struggling to do its job, you’re probably right.
If you’re still not sure, here are a few more clues:
- History of alcohol/drug use or hepatitis
- Long-term use of prescription drugs
- Sensitive to chemicals (cigarette smoke, fumes, perfumes, cleaners, etc.)
- Pain between shoulder blades
- Stomach disorders from fatty foods
- Greasy or shiny stools
- History of nausea, motion sickness, or morning sickness
- Light-colored or light-colored stools
- Headache over eyes
- Gallbladder attacks
- Bitter taste in the mouth (especially after meals)
- Get sick or get drunk easily if you drink wine
- Easy to hang
- Pain under the right side of the chest
- Hemorrhoids or varicose veins
- Consuming NutraSweet (aspartame).
- Chronic fatigue or fibromyalgia
If your liver is talking to you, what do you do next?
The liver detoxifies and cleanses
Most people’s next step is to search the internet for the best 7-10 day liver detox or cleanse, and this is where the approach really starts to go sideways.
Detoxes and liver cleanses don’t work.
It’s like saving money for a week but spending money every other day and expecting to get rich.
A liver detox is like a “get rich quick scheme” that only drains your wallet.
Liver problems are the result of decades of mild abuse and recovery that requires a steady change in habits.
You don’t need to do a liver detox. it just needs to give your liver less work.
Giving your liver less work
Here are some of the most basic jobs your liver does — are you giving it extra?
- regular metabolic waste (think normal bodily function)
- you used hormones that have served their purpose and need to be detoxed or flushed out of your system (think of your hormones at different points in your menstrual cycle)
- Pesticides
- alcohol
- Rx + over the counter drugs (these can hurt your liver too)
- heavy metals
- plant toxins from too much “health food” (think nightshades, high oxalic acid foods, and caffeine for starters)
- extra supplements you don’t really need (these can also injure your liver)
- excess vitamin A (from too much dairy and high vitamin A health foods/supplements, topical retinoid skin creams, etc. here)
- excess copper (think supplements, nuts and dark chocolate, try here)
- excess iron
- too much fat
- herbal pills
- And the list goes on!
If you want to see a change in your liver, you just have to constantly give it less work than you did yesterday.
It is so simple.
Now what this looks like will vary greatly from person to person. It doesn’t mean you have to follow a super restricted diet, you just have to do LESS of certain things during the week, month and year. Having some data on what from the list above is a problem for you certainly helps narrow your focus and simplify your approach.
Nutrient deficiencies and other issues
In addition to giving your liver too much work to do, you can also have nutrient deficiencies that prevent your liver from doing its best work and doing it efficiently.
This might look like:
In addition to deficiency, nutrient excess is extremely common due to “wellness cultivation,” leading to liver overloaded with the following nutrients:
This is why I always do one hair tissue metal analysis test (tests for 35 different minerals and available to clients worldwide) to my clients along with some blood nutrient labs (whole blood zinc, copper, iron, vitamin A and histamine, available to US clients only) to identify any weak points in their body that could be slowing down the liver’s detoxification work.
Liver problems today are often due to a combination of overwork (especially Rx, over the counter drugs and alcohol), nutrient deficiency and nutrient excess.
The good news is that all of this can change when you change your approach to health.
I hope this empowers you to reach your health goals by getting to the root of the problem (hint: your liver) and always giving your body what it needs.
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