Your Liver and Its Functions

In this chemical age, thousands of chemicals are added to the food we consume everyday. It is a fact that pesticides, herbicides and hormones are used in food production. For example, the use of drugs to control animal disease and to promote faster and more efficient growth of livestock is a common practice in the poultry and livestock industry. Plants are sprayed with toxic chemicals like pesticides and herbicides. Increasing amounts of our food are processed, refined, frozen and cooked. All these contribute to the destruction of delicate vitamins and minerals in food. Researches have shown that harm is caused to the body, especially the liver through the exposure to pesticides, herbicides, air fresheners, preservatives, antibiotic, bleaching agents, dry cleaning agents, paint, etc (Lai 2006). See Lai, C.N. (2006). “Caring for your liver: protecting your environment”, Lapis News, 3rd Issue, June-August 2006.

Pesticides and herbicides are the main culprits to our health and the environment. They are complex chemical compounds not easily broken down. They are passed down to the surface and ground water and into the water body. They pollute the water we drink. Being at the top of the food chain, man is the most efficient accumulator of desirable and undesirable elements which include minerals, toxins and heavy metals.

The liver acts as a filter for your blood and lymph fluids. The junk food you consume has to be processed or else it would circulate and accumulate in your body. The liver processes and breaks them down for excretion. The liver also processes ingested toxins from cigarettes and alcohol.

The liver is our body’s largest internal organ and chemical factory. Its weight is between 1.2 and 1.6 kg for adults. A major function of the liver is to detoxify the toxins in the body. The liver is the body’s main defence against metabolic poisoning, breaks down toxic substances such as chemical additives, drugs, pesticide and hormones into less harmful substances, stores them or eliminates them. Many of these toxic chemicals that enter the body are fat-soluble. They dissolve only in fatty or oily solutions and not in water. It is thus difficult for the body to excrete. These fat soluble chemicals have a high affinity for fat tissues and cell membranes which are made of fatty substance. Toxins may thus be stored in these fatty parts of the body for a long time and they are released during exercise, stress or fasting. The liver converts the fat-soluble chemicals into water soluble chemicals to enable their excretion from the body through watery fluids such as bile and urine. If the detoxification pathways of the liver become overloaded, there will be a build up of toxins in the body.

When too much food is consumed, the work loads of the liver increases and bottlenecking occurs in the liver too. If the liver has to store too much unusable toxins, then liver damage may occur. Hence it is easier for you to have diseases. For example, if there is too much nutrients accumulated in the liver, they will damage its cells. If you take too much sugar and meat, there will be too much fat in the liver, leading to liver hardening and liver cancer. This is because too much protein would lead to toxin accumulation. Normally, the liver contains 4 to 7% of fats. Once the fat content in the liver exceeds the wet weight of 10%, the problem of fatty liver arises. If the liver is busy processing toxic materials, its function in releasing energy is neglected.

Essential fatty acids are needed for the body’s nervous system to function, for cells to be built and repaired, for blood to clot and the brain to perform properly. To facilitate fat digestion, bile is secreted by the liver. Bile is stored in the gall bladder from which it is released and used in fat digestion and the absorption of nutrients. Bile breaks down oils and fats into droplets or fatty acids in a process called lipolysis. This eases extraction of nutrients by gut bacteria before the fat leaves the digestive system and is excreted. The bile also aids in digestion and the lack of it causes the symptoms of indigestion such as nausea, bloating, flatulence and wind would occur.

Similarly, your liver is important for protein digestion. When protein is broken down in the gut into amino acids (the end products of protein digestion), ammonia, a highly toxic substance, is released. The liver extracts ammonia from the blood and converts it into much less toxic urea (containing nitrogen). Urea is then transported in the blood to the kidneys where it is eliminated.

When you eat sugary food, the level of glucose in your blood rises. Some of the sugar is used by the body for energy. Your pancreas produces insulin to help reduce the glucose (the end product of carbohydrate digestion) level while the rest is converted into glycogen (a more complex molecule, also called animal starch) and stored in the liver and muscles for future use if the blood sugar level in the blood falls.

Other important functions of the liver include manufacturing blood clotting substances, processing worn-out red blood cells, removing haemoglobin and storing it as iron for future use. The liver also stores vitamins A, B12, D, E and K. It is also a major contributor of heat to the body.

The liver is connected to your digestive and eliminative systems. If your liver is not healthy, fat digestion and waste excretion will be difficult resulting in diseases in the long run. So, let’s take care of our liver. Do not over burden it with unhealthy food. A failing liver could bring heart problems. Before many cancers happen, normally the liver is the first to get sick. If your liver cannot digest fat properly, the result is too much fat in your blood. This means more work for the heart, possibly causing it to be overloaded. Give the liver a proper rest. The liver’s repair time is effective from 11 p.m. till 3 a.m. Avoid sleeping after 11 p.m. and has supper two hours before sleeping to ensure that your liver has enough time to rest and regenerate.