With more than 10,000 deaths due to liver disease in the U.K. each year, the liver is one major organ of yours that you should not neglect.
It’s one organ that supports many other bodily functions, helping your metabolism, immunity, digestion, detoxification and storage of vitamins and nutrients.
Due to its multifunctional role, it’s important you keep your liver operating in peak condition. But to know how to do so involves exploring the topic of liver health in greater detail; keep on reading to know more.
How liver health impacts the body
Your liver supports multiple functions within your body; if it’s compromised due to bad health or disease, it can cause a lot of issues. To give you an idea of just how important your liver is, here are the main functions it supports:
Digestion
For your body to digest food efficiently, it needs to produce bile to help fats be absorbed in the small intestine. The liver produces bile to help you easily absorb fats and vitamins, purifying your blood and reducing the risk of fatty acids clogging up.
Metabolism
Your liver helps you metabolise carbohydrates easily, allowing you to have healthy and consistent blood sugar levels within your body. It also helps you store dietary fats in your body, turning them into fatty acids and glycerol to be used as energy at a later period.
Protein synthesis
Your liver creates proteins that can help blood clotting factors and albumin. Having good liver health prevents you from facing the risk of bleeding disorders and oedema.
Immune system
The liver plays a crucial role in your immune response. It can easily identify and detect pathogens that enter your body through your gut. It can also capture and clear bacteria and viruses due to the large amount of phagocytic cells it contains.
Detoxification
This organ also plays an essential role in filtering out toxic and destructive substances that can damage your body. Your liver contains a group of cells called phagocytes that capture and digest bad bacteria.
Hormones
Hormone regulation is one function that the liver supports. It does this by controlling the levels in your bloodstream, removing any excess hormones, and reducing the risk of imbalance.
Causes of bad liver health
Your liver can easily become damaged from the following:
- Too much alcohol
- Exposure to toxins
- Being overweight
- Lack of exercise
- Unhealthy diet
How to improve liver health
Your liver is an organ you’ll want to protect and keep in good condition for as long as you live. It’s best to start looking after it now, instead of later, where you could be at risk of more health-related issues. To get you started, here are some simple tips to follow to improve your liver health:
Stay at a healthy weight
Always stay within a healthy weight, as being overweight can put you at risk of having fatty liver, contributing to non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, one of the fastest forms of liver disease. It can also cause heart disease, type 2 diabetes, certain cancers and arthritis. There’s even research which shows that if you lose 10% of your bodyweight, you could reduce the likelihood of inflammation, reduce liver fat and improve scarring.
Top Tip: To maintain a healthy weight, increase your fruit and vegetable intake, cut out sugar and reduce calories.
Restrict alcohol
How often do you drink alcohol? With over 55% of the British population drinking alcohol at least once a week, you could be putting your liver at risk. Depending on how frequently you consume it, your liver function may break down, causing your cells to become damaged.
As a result, alcohol consumption can increase the risk of fatty liver, fibrosis and even cirrhosis. In other words, it damages liver cells and causes scarring.
Top Tip: Don’t drink more than 14 units of alcohol each week, and try to spread it out across 3 or more days if you drink regularly.
Exercise regularly
Exercise is so powerful it can quickly decrease the stress and load on your liver if you do at least 30 minutes a day. Consistent, moderate exercise each day can aid blood flow to your liver, change the bacteria composition, decrease inflammation, reduce fat and more.
Eat a balanced diet
Eat a balanced diet full of fibre as it helps your liver work at peak function. Aim to integrate fruits, vegetables, whole grains, cereals and rice to get sufficient fibre in your diet. Limit your saturated fats, and refined carbohydrates and sugars. Ensure you have sufficient protein consumption, but reduce the amount of red meat, dairy and saturated fats.
Wash your hands
This may sound like a basic rule, but many people fail to wash their hands regularly. Washing your hands frequently is one of the best ways to keep germs from entering your body and infecting your liver.
Final thoughts
To summarise, your liver is a key player in keeping you alive. While factors like age, diet, exercise and alcohol can influence the health of your liver, they’re also something you can control.
After all, your liver supports your metabolism, immune system, hormone regulation, detoxification, digestion and protein synthesis.
So why should you neglect it?