Assessing Your Liver Status to Lowering Your Toxic Burden

Assessing Your Liver Status to Lowering Your Toxic Burden

Your health care practitioner can tell a great deal about your liver health by looking
at some basic blood work. For example, if your liver cells have been damaged by
disease, alcohol, or other toxins, levels of certain enzymes in your blood will be high.

What your blood work won’t tell you is exactly how well your liver is carrying
out its detoxification duties. A comprehensive metabolic profile test (CMP) that
measures all the by-products of your liver’s several detoxification “pathways” can
give you and your health care practitioner a better idea of exactly how well your
liver is functioning (see appendix B for details).

50 (or So) Ways to Love Your Liver

Vitamins and minerals, especially the B vitamins, play starring roles in activating
the enzymes involved in liver detoxification. Healthy whole grains supply plentiful
amounts of B vitamins, which assist the liver with its many detoxification tasks.

We can shore up our liver health by eating clean food and by drinking plenty of
nourishing beverages, such as purified water, herbal teas, green tea, fresh juices,
and mineral broths found on the Eating for Health food model. Excessive coffee,
black tea, soft drinks, diet drinks, sport drinks, and alcohol, especially when
combined with environmental chemicals and medications, can harm the liver and
interfere with its ability to function.

Support the health of your liver by eating green, yellow, orange, and purple
foods from plant sources. Antioxidant vitamins and minerals, such as vitamins A, C,
and E; zinc; and selenium are also very helpful. And, the sulfur found in eggs,
broccoli, and cabbage—along with the amino acids glycine, cysteine, and glutamine
mentioned earlier—help the liver make glutathione.