Liver health

Posted by Mark Chapman on August 12th, 2010 at 4:40 am

Car­olyn Schoner

By Car­olyn Schoner

Doc­tor of Ori­en­tal Medicine

Accord­ing to Chi­nese med­i­cine, the liver is the most aggres­sive of all the organs in our body. Anger is attrib­uted to the liver. Any food that taste sour is sooth­ing to the liver.

The spring of the year is the time for the liver; liver cleanses are most effec­tive when taken in the spring, but that doesn’t mean that you can­not do a liver cleanse the rest of year. The Chi­nese believe that spring is the time of renewal, there­fore, why not imi­tate Mother Nature by cleans­ing the most impor­tant organ in our body.

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The liver weighs about four pounds and it is the largest organ of the body and the only inter­nal organ that can regen­er­ate itself. Twenty-five per­cent of the liver can be removed, and, within a short period of time, it will grow back to its orig­i­nal shape and size.

The Liver has many func­tions. Per­haps the most impor­tant is the secre­tion of bile. This fluid in stored in the gall­blad­der and released as needed for diges­tion. The gall­blad­der is a pair organ to the liver and has one of the longest merid­i­ans in Chi­nese Med­i­cine. The gall­blad­der in an inter­est­ing organ and we some­times take its importance’s lightly. We will dis­cuss the gall­blad­der at future date.

After nutri­ents are absorbed into the blood­stream through the intes­tine wall, they are trans­ported by way of the hepatic por­tal sys­tem to the liver. Nutri­ents such as iron and vit­a­mins A, B12, and D are extracted from the blood­stream and stored for future use. These stored vit­a­mins are used for every­day activ­i­ties and in times of phys­i­cal stress. The liver plays an impor­tant role in fat metab­o­lism: in the syn­the­sis of fatty acids from amino acids and sug­ars in the pro­duc­tion of lipopro­teins, cho­les­terol and phos­pho­lipids, and in the oxi­da­tion of fat to pro­duce energy. The liver is very impor­tant for the pro­duc­tion and the reg­u­la­tion of cho­les­terol and triglyc­erides in the blood.

The liver cre­ates a sub­stance called glu­cose tol­er­ance fac­tor from chromium and glu­tathione. GTF works with insulin to reg­u­late blood sugar lev­els. Sug­ars that are not required for energy pro­duc­tion are con­verted into glyco­gen in the liver. Glyco­gen is stored in the liver and gets con­verted back to sugar when needed. Excess food is con­verted into fat in the liver, and the fat is then trans­ported to the fatty tis­sues of the body for storage.

Besides its func­tion in diges­tion and energy pro­duc­tion, the liver plays an impor­tant role in detox­i­fy­ing the body. Pro­tein diges­tion and bac­te­r­ial fer­men­ta­tion of food in the intestines pro­duce ammo­nia as a byprod­uct; this ammo­nia is detox­i­fied in the liver. The liver will take toxic sub­stances such as meta­bolic waste, drugs, alco­hol, nico­tine, harm­ful chem­i­cals, pre­scrip­tions drug residues and com­bine them with a less toxic sub­stance and excrete them via the kid­neys and the bow­els. In order to have good liver func­tion, you also need to have proper kid­ney and bowel function.

The liver is also respon­si­ble for reg­u­lat­ing the thy­roid by con­vert­ing thy­roxin (T4), a thy­roid hor­mone, into its more active form tri­iodothy­ro­nine (T3). Inad­e­quate con­ver­sion of T4 to T3 by the liver can cause hypothy­roidism. The liver also breaks down hor­mones such as adren­a­line, aldos­terone, estro­gen, and insulin after thy have per­formed their needed functions.

This is a very sim­plis­tic view of the liver and its’ func­tions, but an unhappy liver plays havoc with the whole body, espe­cially the heart. There are many ill­ness that have their begin­nings in the liver: high blood pres­sure, high cho­les­terol and clogged arter­ies, dia­betes and diges­tive dis­or­ders, just to name a few.

In my next arti­cles I will dis­cuss a fatty liver, cir­rho­sis of the liver, and hepati­tis C virus (HCV), and what food, nutri­ents, herbs, home­o­pathic med­i­cine, and nat­ural reme­dies we can use to aid with the recov­ery of these very dan­ger­ous illnesses.

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You may e-mail me with your com­ments and ques­tions at food_as_medicine@yahoo.com

Car­olyn Schoner is a doc­tor of Ori­en­tal Med­i­cine. Her prac­tice encom­passes the use of  Her­bol­ogy, Home­opa­thy, Cran­ioSacral Ther­apy, Vis­ceral Manip­u­la­tion Tui Na Mas­sage, Mox­a­bus­tion, heat ther­apy, Qua Sha, Gi Gong, vit­a­mins and min­er­als, essen­tial oils,  Bach Flower Reme­dies, diet coun­sel­ing, energy work, non-surgical face lifts and tummy tuck and acupunc­ture. She has been in prac­tice for 10 years. She con­ducted under­grad­u­ate stud­ies at Ohio State Uni­ver­sity, grad­u­ate stud­ies at Uni­ver­sity or Ari­zona, Ori­en­tal Med­i­cine at East West Col­lege, Cran­ioSacral and Vis­ceral Manip­u­la­tion at Upledger Insti­tute, blood chem­istry and med­ical imag­ing at the Uni­ver­sity of Miami and Home­opa­thy and Homotoxicology/Women’s Health at the Inter­na­tional Soci­ety for Homotoxicology.

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