The liver, the organ of harmony, is ceaselessly filtering, nourishing, monitoring, metabolising, cleansing and storing nutrients for us all so that our whole body; all of our organ systems can flow with health. It has such a huge role – receiving the first flush of nutrient rich or toxic rich blood from the digestive system.
But alas, WE LOVE TO BASH OUR LIVERS, abuse them, make them work way harder than they have to and Christmas and New Year’s is a time when we typically go even harder on our liver.
Interestingly when we go hard on our liver we can also have a lot of emotions come up especially anger, not to mention all the physical symptoms that the body is communicating like headaches, bad breath, chemical sensitivities, skin issues, digestive issues, feeling ‘toxic’, needing stimulants, nausea and the good old fashion feeling of biliousness.
Feeling grumpy and ‘sick’ is not a great way to start the new year…so let’s take some time to LOVE OUR LIVERS and support this awesome organ of harmony.
THE LIVER LOVES
- Flow and harmony and simply connecting with nature going outside and feeling the flow and the harmony and nature can be very restorative.
- Greens spaces – greens on the outside (nature) and on the greens on the inside – the liver loves dark leafy greens full of nutrients that support its detoxification pathways.It particularly loves:
- Bitter flavours – dandelion leaves, radicchio lettuce, chicory and endive leaves – help to stimulate bile flow to improve fat digestion.
- Brassica vegetables – the cabbage family – broccoli, kale, collard greens, Asian greens, rocket and kohlrabi.
- Turmeric – stimulates detoxification, is antioxidant and antinflammatory
- Sulphur rich foods – garlic, onion, brassica veg, eggs
- Amino acid and protein rich foods – especially taurine, glycine, cysteine and methionine found in animal foods
- Lowering your toxic load
- No alcohol
- Healthy gut biome – a leaky gut will bring all sorts of toxins into the blood that the liver has to deal with
- Health bowel motion – constipation leads to toxin over load
- Water – the best from of hydration
- Fasting – give the digestive system a rest and allow the liver to do some ‘housekeeping’
WHAT THE LIVER DOESN’T LOVE:
- Foods wrapped in plastics
- Vegetable oils and trans fats
- Excess sugars and allergenic foods
- Drugs, medications, smoking, environmental pollution
- Unresolved emotions – sadness that can lead to hardness and anger
The choice is ours!