July 2025

The Liver

• Meet The Liver – What Does It Do For You? And Why Is It Important??
• Liver Imbalanc – What Can Go Wrong?
• “Detox is a Lifestyle: How to Support Your Natural Liver Detox
• Herbal Support For The Liver

What prompted me to write about the liver this month is a question that one of my newletter readers, asked me. To understand what can go wrong with liver function and how to fix it, you first need to understand what the liver is and how it serves your body. 

Meet The Liver – What Does It Do For You? And Why Is It Important?

Two blood vessels shuttle blood into the liver:

• The hepatic portal vein carries deoxygenated blood, high in nutrients, vitamins, and toxins, from the small intestines to the liver.
• The hepatic artery carries oxygenated blood from the heart to the liver.

The hepatic portal vein

Once you digest your food, all the blood from the digestive tract is sent to the liver through the hepatic portal vein. We are talking about a liter of blood shuttled to the liver every minute. As soon as blood enters the liver, the vessels that carry it begin to divide into finer vessels until they become thin capillaries that leak blood into the hepatic cells, where metabolism of the compounds that are dissolved in the blood begins.

Blood carried to the liver contains all the nutrients from your food, including the cup of latte you ordered on your way to work or the glass of red wine you ordered on your date.

Signs of sluggish liver

By the way, are you one of these people who, immediately after drinking a cup of coffee, feel the effect of caffeine or feel woozy after only one glass of wine? That’s how I react to coffee and alcohol, which tells me I should stay away from them. My liver is sluggish, meaning it takes some time for it to process alcohol and caffeine. Therefore, caffeine and alcohol stay longer in my system, leading to their woozy effect.

If you are not drinking alcohol or wine frequently but one day you decide to indulge in a large latte or a bottle of beer, you might not have the enzyme in your gut to break down said drinks. The saying “you don’t use it, you lose it” totally applies here.

On the other hand, if you drink alcohol or caffeine on a regular basis and still feel their effect, then your liver is sluggish. Your ability to metabolize coffee and alcohol in the liver is largely determined by genetics. You are either born with an efficient liver metabolism or a sluggish liver. However, you can support your liver with diet and herbs to improve its metabolic capacity.

Alongside the nutrients from your food and drink, the blood from the small intestine also carries toxins. That includes exotoxins, such as herbicides, pesticides, and pharmaceuticals, as well as endotoxins, including hormones that your body produces, waste products from metabolic processes, dead cells, viruses, and bacteria.

The hepatic artery

The hepatic artery carries oxygenated blood from the heart to the liver.

The liver, being a large organ containing many cells and performing about 500 different functions, requires plenty of energy. Liver cells contain between 1000 and 2000 mitochondria organelles, which is significantly higher than most other cell types in the body. Higher energy needs mean that more nutrients and oxygen are required to fuel the fire that keeps the liver going.

About 25% of the blood that leaves your heart with each heartbeat is going to the liver. That is about half a liter of oxygenated blood every minute.

What the liver does for you and why you want to keep it happy

You can sum up the liver’s function in three words: Production, Storage, and detoxification.

Production

The liver produces several compounds that are essential for the body.

Bile

Bile produced by the liver emulsifies fats and supports fat absorption. It works like dish soap to break fats into small droplets that can bind to fiber and eliminated from the body. Bile gives your poop its color. If your poop is pale, your liver doesn’t produce enough bile. Another sign of low bile production is feeling nauseated after eating fats.

Cholesterol

Cholesterol produced by the liver is essential for forming healthy cell membranes throughout the body and producing steroid hormones. The liver packs the cholesterol in LDL “packages” and sends it all over the body. In insulin resistance, the liver increases LDL production. Higher LDL levels in circulation increase the risk of LDL oxidation and inflammation in blood vessels, which can lead to heart disease.

Another compound the liver produces is blood clotting factors. Vitamin K plays a vital role in synthesizing blood clotting factors; fortunately, vitamin K is stored in the liver.

Although we absorb vitamin D through the skin, the vitamin D we absorb needs to be activated by the liver and kidneys to be ready for use by the body.

Storage

The liver is a storage site for macronutrients from the food we eat as well as for vitamins, specifically fat soluble vitamins such as A, E, D, and K, as well as some B vitamins, iron, and copper.

As the body’s energy storage fuel tanks, the liver and skeletal muscles are the storage units for glucose. When these storage units are full, glucose will convert into fat. Additionally, the liver stores the fat from your food; that avocado you ate found its way to the liver.

The liver serves as one of the body’s primary blood reservoirs, which can store 10-15% of the body’s total blood volume, thus playing a crucial role in regulating blood volume and maintaining circulatory homeostasis. 

Metabolic detox

Detox is the most known function of the liver. It happens during the night and is dependent on a deep sleep. The liver removes all toxins from the bloodstream, including those ingested, absorbed through the skin, and waste products from the body’s everyday functions.

The liver detox through a couple of channels:

•  By mixing everything toxins with the bile and sending the blend through the small intestines to the colon. For example that is how the liver detox antibiotics, specifically penicillin.
• Everything else, including bilirubin, endogenous toxins, exogenous toxins, xenotoxins, and steroids, must be chemically converted into water soluble compounds that the kidneys can eliminate. For example, the liver converts the waste product from protein breakdown into urea that can be eliminated in the urine.

The liver detox is a two-phase process:

Phase one

Phase #1 – typically involves bombarding the toxins with enzymes and adding an ion to them, which makes them unstable. The result is a free radical, an electron that spins around the cell. Free radicals are dangerous because they have the potential to damage DNA and cause cancer.

Some plants have learned how to “tame” the “wild” electron by binding it to their structures. We call these plants antioxidants. Fruits and vegetables are antioxidants. Adding fruits and vegetables in as many colors as possible to your diet is the best strategy for reducing the risk associated with free radicals.

Some foods and herbs can alter the phase 1 detox:

Even half a cup of grape juice can decrease the phase 1 metabolism of certain medications, allowing them to remain in the body longer. These medicines include blood thinners (such as warfarin) and blood pressure medications, especially calcium channel blockers like verapamil. Statins meds that reduce cholesterol and, certain psychiatric antidepressants, and anti-anxiety drugs.

St. John’s Wort increases the metabolism of certain medications, which can cause them to be removed from circulation before they achieve their intended effect. The most famous one is birth control. There are many stories about women who were recommended St John’s Wort by their herbalist for depression or nerve pain and found themselves pregnant a couple of months later, even though they were on the pill.

The intermediate compounds produced by phase one detoxification are often more toxic than the original toxin, so you really want phase two to occur.

Phase two

Phase two depends on the nutrients you get from your food. Some foods that enhance phase two detox are vegetables from the Cruciferous family, such as broccoli, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, and kale, as well as vegetables from the Liliaceae family, including garlic and onion, which are rich in sulfur.

The second phase of liver detox results in water soluble compounds that the kidneys can eliminate.

I hope I have convinced you how crucial the liver is for your health. There is no need for a specific detox protocol to support a healthy liver; instead, stick to the strategic plan of growing your health from the roots.

• Eat a nutrient dense diet – A lot of fruits and vegetables.
• Reduce your exposure to toxins – Such as additives and chemicals in processed foods.
• Align yourself with the liver’s circadian cycle – Eat light meals in the evening and get a good night’s sleep.