How To Care For Your Liver: Debunking The Popular & Harmful Liver Myths
In Brief
- The Facts:Your liver
is #1 protector. There are many myths surrounding the liver that impede
its ability to do its job. These myths include taking ox bile, doing
liver flushes, doing coffee enemas,
avoiding fructose, drinking apple cider vinegar, and more. - Reflect On:Besides avoiding the popular liver myths listed in this article, avoid eating too many fats, processed or raw, and increase your uptake of nutrient-dense, antioxidant-rich foods like fruit, vegetables, and herbs.
If
you haven’t picked up a copy of Medical Medium’s new book, “Liver
Rescue,” do yourself a favour today and get one. The book is a
four-hundred page encyclopedia of in-depth knowledge regarding our
liver, knowledge which has yet to be discovered by medical research,
knowledge which could save you and your family’s and friends’ lives.
If you think that your liver is in
pristine shape, you’re about to learn otherwise—in this day and age our
livers are under tremendous pressure from the onslaught of pathogens and
environmental toxins in our food, air, water, hygiene products,
clothing, and households. And even if you grew up eating ‘clean,’
drinking clean water and living in a natural environment, your liver
could be holding poisons (like toxic heavy metals) from many generations
before you, passed down from your mother and grandmother.
What drove me to want to learn more
about my liver came out of two factors. One, I grew up with a mouth full
of amalgam (mercury) fillings, and two, in 2014 I had a severe mono and
hepatitis A infection which nearly caused my liver to fail. So I knew
that there was deep damage that had occurred from these two factors
alone, not to mention that I grew up on a standard American diet (SAD)
full of processed junk and void of fresh fruits and vegetables. Not to
mention all of those years of binge drinking alcohol in my teens and
early twenties (dare I say more).
Your liver is your number one protector
What I love most about Anthony
William’s books is that they give us a unique understanding of the
processes happening within the body. He humanizes our livers and helps
us see how hard this organ is working for us at all times.
Our livers have been our number one
protectors from the time we were in our mother’s wombs. That is its sole
job—to protect us from the unfathomable amount of toxins in our
environment. This protection code was passed down from your mother’s
liver, to never give up on you, to take on the brunt of every pathogen,
every toxin, and excess adrenaline that you come into contact with. It
will do so with unwavering loyalty and commitment, even until its own
demise. But we must not let this happen. At some point we must give back
to this precious organ, we must swoop in and say enough is enough, it’s
time to heal our livers.
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Cleansing the liver cleans your blood and lymphatic system, loosens fat cells in the liver, and soothes the adrenal glands.
But cleansing the liver works best in
baby steps; think about your lifetime accumulation of toxic heavy
metals, viruses, and chemicals. To super-punch your liver all at once is
a sure-fire way to cause too many toxins to release into the body
without the chance of being properly eliminated. Then guess what happens
to all of those excess toxins? They get reabsorbed by the liver.
But if we can learn to work with the
liver, especially avoiding the damaging fads covered later in this
article, we are that much closer to a life of peace. William says it
perfectly,
“Imagine a world without chronic anger, without the suffering of babies and children, without aches and pains, without sleepless nights, without uncontrollable weight gain, without gnawing hunger, without out-of-rhythm hearts, without hot flashes and night sweats, without mood swings, without raging rashes, without roiling intestines, without back-up bowels, without blood sugar spikes and drops, without strokes, without heart attacks, without cancer. That’s a world of peaceful livers. Imagine how much kinder we would all be to each other and ourselves if we didn’t feel awful, or frightened of feeling awful, all the time.” Medical Medium: Liver Rescue, p. 256
How long does it take the liver to regenerate?
While there is no exact science that
will tell us how long it takes for all of our cells to fully renew and
regenerate, in the case of the liver, its peacekeeping job is so
pertinent that it must run on a strict renewal clock. As William says,
that number is nine.
The liver regenerates itself in cycles of three, a third every three years for a total nine year cycle.
The liver renews itself in thirds over
nine year cycles. Usually, three months before a three-year mark is when
renewal will pick up speed, and the liver will work on a fast, serious
cell overhaul. Within just those few months, the liver can regenerate a
third of its working cells. The same thing will happen again at the next
three-year mark, renewing another third, and so on for the next three
year cycle. It’s the same time table for everyone.
But don’t get too excited. Just because
they are new cells does not mean they are clean. If you aren’t actively
doing the work to cleanse the liver throughout your life, the new cells
can get contaminated by toxic cells from the past. However, if you do
the work to support your liver through a healthy lifestyle, you have
hope of regenerating even the most damaged cells. As he states, make a
point to eat clean in the months leading up to your 27th, 36th, 45th,
60th birthday; this means more antioxidant-rich foods like fruit and
green juices, while minimizing fat. This will give a great boost during
your regeneration cycles.
Common liver detox myths – What to avoid
Ox bile
While taking ox bile seems like a
fail-proof method to increase bile production to breakdown fats, William
states that our livers simply don’t like it. “[Ox bile] doesn’t fix the
problem of weak digestion. It doesn’t fix the problem of your liver
being stagnant or sluggish or underproducing its own bile.”
Apparently, ox bile is like an alien
creature to our liver, and that it contains hundreds of undiscovered
chemical compounds that are foreign to our stomach. These foreign
enzymes are disruptive to the endocrine system, immune system, and
nervous system. He says that medical science will never have the money
or time to invest in the proper research that is needed to discover all
of these qualities. When we take ox bile its like a shock to an already
over-burdened liver.
The logic behind eating ox bile is
similar to the age-old logic that eating liver will help regenerate your
liver, or eating kidney will help regenerate your kidneys. Instead of
ox bile, William suggests drinking celery juice. The mineral salts in
celery juice will provide the liver with the proper tools to help build
bile levels naturally.
Eating liver
When we understand the true function of
our livers, it is then easy to understand why eating an animal’s liver
makes no sense. The liver is a toxic reservoir, which means consuming
liver is consuming poison. Even wild animals living in a pristine
environment have livers ridden with adrenaline due to their fight or
flight lifestyle. And while the liver does hold nutrients deep within
its tissues, to get there you must pass layers of toxic waste. On the
same note as the ox bile, animal livers contain compounds incompatible
to the human body. And don’t even think about human livers, they are
cesspools of toxins like plastics, radiation, DDT, viruses, bacteria,
heavy metals, and the list goes on.
Liver flushes
The liver does not respond well to
rigorous cleansing. If you push, it pushes back. If you push more it
performs less, and it may even go into shutdown mode while doing a more
aggressive cleanse.
When a liver flush is done wrong against
the liver’s will, the bloodstream is where those toxins end up. This
puts the brain and heart under direct attack by toxic sludge, which can
cause erratic heartbeats, stress on the heart, inflammation, elevated
adrenaline, and electrical confusion of the heart, all while you are
busy looking for stones in the toilet.
William makes another controversial
claim—those liver stones aren’t stones at all. They’re fatty globules
formed by the ingestion of olive oil which coagulate in the colon and
are then expelled. While Gallstones are a thing, they too are
not what is passed during a gallbladder flush. Drinking a heaping
amount of oil is a shock to the liver and gallbladder; it shuts down its
many important functions to deal with the megadose of fat. The liver is
then forced to produce an emergency level of bile to protect the
pancreas, and those who already have a weak pancreas become high risk
for developing pancreatitis.
Instead of stressing the liver and
gallbladder through a flush, William suggests reducing fat and protein
intake while increasing your intake of greens (spinach, kale, radishes,
mustard greens, celery, and asparagus) and fruits like cherries,
berries, melons, lemons, limes, oranges, grapefruit, tomatoes, and
pineapple. Doing this will help dissolve the stones over time.
Fructose intolerance
Fructose intolerance is perhaps one of
the most dangerous myths out there, because if you avoid fruit sugars,
your liver will never heal, says William. Fructose often gets lumped in
with lactose (dairy sugar) and gluten in naming which foods feed viruses
and other pathogens.
Furthermore, William says that “it’s
impossible for any test in any lab or clinic to separate out fructose
and know what it specifically does inside the body.” It is part of the
anti-healthy carb/anti-fruit movement that robs people of the very foods
that heal their chronic conditions. The liver especially needs fructose
to restore and defend itself. The issue is completely
misunderstood—when people experience negative symptoms from eating fruit
what they’re really facing are detox symptoms brought on by the fruits
cleansing properties.
Anti-fruit practitioners almost always
are high-fat advocates, which only promotes keeping the blood and liver
toxic. William also makes a distinction for those diagnosed with
hereditary fructose intolerance (HFI). He says that no one with HFI is
completely missing specific enzymes, but rather all of their enzyme
levels and chemical functions are low due to having a degenerate liver.
The key is to do the opposite of
avoiding fruit: eat lots of it, which restores a stagnant liver and
brings back all of the missing enzymes and chemical functions. The same
goes for people diagnosed with fructose malabsorption; excess fructose
is being picked up in the blood because the intestinal tract is filled
with rancid fats which are not being broken down due to a sluggish
liver. The solution is simple: reduce fats, which in turn keeps the
blood-fat ratio balanced, reducing any of the aforementioned symptoms
when consuming fructose.
Apple cider vinegar (ACV)
ACV is thought to create alkalinity and
improve digestion. While apples themselves are miracle cures, William
says that ACV has more bad than good properties. The good comes from
ACV’s host of minerals, amino acids, phytochemicals and other nutrients
from the apples themselves and the microorganisms from fermentation.
ACV is the best vinegar to use if you
are going to use vinegar; however, our livers do not like vinegar in the
same way they despise alcohol. When we consume vinegar, it mixes with
the natural salts in your blood stream and creates a pickling effect in
the body. While this may not cause negative symptoms from eating a salad
here and there, consuming ACV daily in flushes or shots will eventually
add up.
ACV comes into the stomach extremely
acidic, which causes the liver to try to alkalize or neutralize it. This
weakens the hydrochloric acid and breaks down the gastric juices, and
as the ACV continues to the liver it gives the liver a shot of acidosis.
Again, it’s not the worst thing for the liver, but it’s far from
cleansing.
Coffee enemas
Coffee enemas are gaining popularity in
the treatment of chronic diseases like colon cancer, and while the aim
of coffee enemas are admirable (detoxing the liver), the truth is that
coffee is an acidic, dehydrating, and stimulating liquid.
As Anthony explains, drinking coffee is
much different than inserting it rectally. This is because our stomachs
have built-in protective measures to safe-guard you against coffee’s
effects. When coffee enters the stomach, alarm bells ring in the
pancreas, liver, and intestinal tract. It is dispersed and diffused
properly by the time it enters the bloodstream.
When coffee enters the rectum, it enters
the blood directly and its stimulating effect shocks the nervous system
and the adrenals release adrenaline. The liver despises adrenaline,
claims Anthony, and it then has to soak it all up to protect your heart.
Caffeine creates a constant adrenaline surge, but this is especially
the case when caffeine is administered through the rectum.
Also important to note: some of the
toxins purged from the liver by the caffeine end up being reabsorbed by
the liver because they cannot all be properly eliminated from the body.
Anthony suggests that enemas can be extremely beneficial in detoxing the
liver, but to use filtered lemon water instead, which cleanses the
liver without the added adrenaline rush.
Beets
Beets are often hailed as the liver
detox go-to food, and while they do have blood-cleansing abilities, the
issue, William says, is that organic, non-GMO beets are difficult to
come by these days due to cross-pollination. Cross-pollination is
becoming such an issue that even organic beets can be tainted at the
seed.
It may not be the greatest reason to
stop eating beets altogether, however there are many other
liver-cleansing fruit that do the job much more effectively. For
example, red pitaya (dragon fruit), or wild blueberries pack a far more
powerful detoxing punch.
Highly alkaline water
When asking the question, ‘do we need to
drink alkaline water?’, Anthony brings it back to the liver. He says
that a higher pH water will not further cleanse the liver, and that when
highly alkaline water hits the stomach, the stomach must compensate and
try to bring that pH down. The same goes for drinking acidic water, but
in this case the stomach must bring the pH up. This uses the stomach’s
reserves, energy, and seven-acid blend, as well as pancreatic strength
and enzymes, to change the water’s structure so that it is safe to
release into the intestinal tract.
When a large amount of alkaline or
acidic water is consumed at once, the stomach must pass the
neutralization job to the liver. The liver uses a special bile store
that traps the water until it is at an acceptable pH. This special bile
is made up of enzymes, minerals, and hormones that the liver stores
long-term, and using this store slows down the liver’s main functions
quite substantially. William states that the key is to avoid drinking
large amounts of alkaline water at once, or to try drinking a water with
a pH of 7.5-8 instead.
Protect your liver
With over 2,000 chemical functions, your
liver is a busy bee. Avoiding the aforementioned fads will ensure that
your liver can do its many important jobs without distraction. At the
end of the day, what is most important for healing your liver is that
you are flooding your body with nutrient-dense, anti-oxidant rich foods
like fruit, vegetables, and herbs, while avoiding too many fats
(processed or raw). It is especially important to eat fruit alone, as
eating fruit with fat will prevent our cells from absorbing all of the
important nutrients.
For much more information regarding the liver, get yourself a copy of Liver Rescue today!
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