Your liver is snugged up under your ribs on the right side. It needs to be protected because it's essential to your well being.
This organ stores vitamins and minerals. It creates bile to help digest your food. It stores glucose (sugar) for energy. It's essential for cholesterol balance.
It processes red blood cells. It breaks down alcohol and medications. It kills germs.
Your liver filters out toxins. Lots of toxins.
Many of the foods you eat may contain additives, artificial coloring and preservatives that can create a toxic layer in the wall of your liver. Then there are the drugs, germs, and parasites that must be jettisoned.
You might want to help your liver out with all that. You can do this by paying attention to what you eat.
Sulfurous foods like onions, garlic and eggs are great. They help the liver detoxify prescription drugs, pesticides and other toxins. Cruciferous vegetables like broccoli, cauliflower and cabbage, also contain sulfur compounds.
Fruit like grapefruit, apples, lemons and limes, and vegetables like beets, carrots and leafy greens offer many important nutrients. Organic foods ease the burden on your liver, since they contain fewer toxins and impurities.
Make use of the spices cinnamon, licorice and turmeric for their benefits to your liver. And drink green tea for its catechins, which are antioxidants that aid the liver.
Olive oil, hemp and flax cold-pressed oils help dispatch toxins. This helps keep your liver from being overtaxed.
Staying with a healthy regime on a regular basis is the best way to maintain liver health. Many people also find benefit in an occasional liver detoxification.
A liver detoxification diet, or liver detox, excludes some types of foods, like processed and refined foods, coffee and other stimulants. Drinking at least eight glasses of filtered water, or water with lemon juice, each day is essential. Berries, cruciferous and dark green leafy vegetables, onions and seeds are good mainstays.
Many herbs aid liver detoxification, like angelica root, birch leaves, black cohosh, blessed thistle and chamomile. Dandelion, gentian, goldenrod, horsetail and red beet root are other good detoxifying herbs. These protect liver cells, provide antioxidants and support the gastrointestinal tract.
Protein is downplayed in a liver detox, so only follow such a program for a short time. This will prevent the risk of any protein deficiency.
A little care goes a long way in support of a highly functional liver. Eat to its health.
Resources:
14 Foods that Cleanse the Liver
http://www.globalhealingcenter.com/natural-health/liver-cleanse-foods
Keep Your Liver Healthy By Eating Right Food
http://www.goodeveningworld.com/keep-your-liver-healthy-by-eating-right-food
What foods can improve liver health?
http://www.whfoods.com/genpage.php?tname=fightdz&dbid=11
Liver Detox
http://www.detoxyourbodytoday.com/Liver-Detox.html
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