Greetings my esteemed Steemians,
Image Source
Introduction
Do you know that liver is the largest internal organ and also the heaviest with an average weight of 1.6kg?
Before we know how to get a healthy liver, it is important to know what makes it unhealthy.
Before you know what makes liver unhealthy, you need to know what is the function of our liver.
What are the functions of your liver?
Image source
The liver is the first organ of everything that we eat or drinks pass through before it goes to the rest of your body. So it acts as a filter.
Your liver is also an important source of an essential enzyme to help you digest your food.
Your liver makes important proteins that help your blood to clot normally.
Just to name a few.
Can you imagine, if your liver is not healthy, everything that you ate may not be properly processed?
Can you imagine, an essential enzyme that needed for normal digestion process may not be made available?
Can you imagine, bleeding to death because your liver could not produce the important protein for blood to clot normally.
What could potentially damage your liver?
The most important and talked about is alcohol of any forms.
Alcohol
Before alcohol enters into our bloodstreams, it must pass through the liver. The alcohol will then be broken down or metabolised by an enzyme called Acetaldehyde.
This enzyme is toxic to the body and the toxicity is directly proportional to the volume of enzymes.
The more alcohol you drink, the more toxic enzyme will be produced to damage the liver cells.
If consumed repeatedly for a longer period, may cause a permanent scarring to the liver.
A scarred liver cannot function well. Therefore unhealthy liver.
About half the men who drink more than 8 ounces of alcohol a day for 20 years develop cirrhosis. Generally, the more and the longer people drink, the greater their risk of alcoholic liver disease. However, liver disease does not develop in every person who drinks heavily for a long time.
Source
Hepatitis virus.
There are Hepatitis A, B, C, D and E
These viruses cause scarring of the liver cells. Similar to what happens with consuming alcohol excessively, scarred liver cells are useless which render it unhealthy. Most will eventually develop into cancer.
Poor diet
The liver needs essential vitamins to function normally.
Poor diet may lead to poor essential vitamins supply such as Vitamin A, D, E, B12 and Iron.
Do you know that exercise is good for the liver?
Toxin.
This is very straightforward.
But there is a common potential toxin that can make the liver unhealthy. That is acetaminophen, an active ingredient in paracetamol.
If taken correctly, it may not cause any problem. If abused, it may lead to liver failure.
How do we get a healthy liver?
For alcohol. One should not drink more than 14 units of alcohol in a week.
How much is 14 units of alcohol?
One unit is 10ml of pure alcohol. Because alcoholic drinks come in different strengths and sizes units are a good way of telling how strong your drink is. It’s not as simple as one drink, one unit.
Source
I remember my medical student day. We were lectured about the safe amount of alcohol that can be consumed. 14 units per week were the answer. They were a smart kid in the class asking if he can save all the 14 units for the weekend.
Don't binge-drink alcohol on regular basis. You cannot keep the 14 units alcohol for your weekend occasion. It must be equally divided into 2 units every day. If you want to drink your 2 units alcohol allocation, drink on that particular day, because you cannot carry it forward for the weekend party.
Consult your family GP and request for Hepatitis screening. If you neither have the virus nor antibody, your GP will schedule a vaccination for you.
Currently, they are only two vaccines available are for hepatitis. A and B.
Good diet.
Any foods that provide the essential vitamins for the liver are considered as good.
| Vitamins | Source |
|---|---|
| A | sweet potatoes, carrots, dark leafy greens, winter squashes, lettuce, dried apricots, cantaloupe, bell peppers, fish, liver, and tropical fruits. |
| B12 | Formed in the gut by good bacterias activities. |
| D | From direct sunlight or kinds of seafood such as Tuna, Salmon, Mackerel and Fish Liver Oil |
| E | Any form or nuts or oil. Eg. Almonds, hazelnuts, peanuts, sunflower seeds, sunflower oils |
| Iron | Liver, lean red meat, egg yolks, salmon, tuna, oyster and most beans. |
Toxin
Avoid at all cost.
Only consume medicines that are given by your family doctor or a GP.
Conclusion
At the end of the day, a trip to your clinic to consult your trusted doctor would be a good practice.
All the measures above are the only guideline to guide you to a better and healthy liver.
Whatever you do, make sure you are genuinely happy doing it. That is what I would normally advise my patient.
As usual, I wanted to keep it as simple as possible for easy reading. I hope that you will get some idea of how to get a healthy liver.
Thank you for reading and please do leave a comment or share your experience about how to get a healthy liver.
Cheers.
.
@papanog is a General Practitioner who loves to talk about health. In his spare times, he will cook for his family. A new passion is to learn more about how to be a good steemit blogger and promoting steemit.com. Making sure that all contents are well written to add value to whoever visits and reads this blog post.
Papanog, I'm as curious about this organ. The weight of this organ 1.6 kg. Is that average weight for Asian ?where will be the tunnel to drain the filtered waste. How are we to know if this organ not healthy.? I hope papanog to continue such important info.my vote is not that big and I have upvote as my appreciation to your article.
Thank you for the comment. I will continue to post about this important organ of ours. It doesnt matter if your upvote is not much. What matters is that you acknowledged the content.
Thank you very much
1.6kg is the average of a human. Caucasians or Asians.
All wastes will be filtered and drained out into gallbladder to small intestine and finally the kidney.
Now I can live peacefully to know this riddle. Hope to know other parts of organ our how it function. We can find all sort information from the web but how true is uncertain until it clarify by some one like you.
Thank you. Will write more about our organs and their function.
Cheers
You’ve been upvoted by TeamMalaysia Community :-
To support the growth of TeamMalaysia Follow our upvotes by using steemauto.com and follow trail of @myach
Vote TeamMalaysia witness bitrocker2020 using this link vote for witness
Follow @myach and appointed @bitrocker2020 as my proxy to vote witness.
Thanks
Congratulations @papanog! You have completed some achievement on Steemit and have been rewarded with new badge(s) :
Click on any badge to view your own Board of Honor on SteemitBoard.
For more information about SteemitBoard, click here
If you no longer want to receive notifications, reply to this comment with the word
STOPHi @papanog! I think this is a good post on liver. Wanted to get an opinion. In the case that you are on antibiotics and mild steroids for ezcema prescribed by a dermatologist. Which is to be taken for a month plus. How do i recover my liver? Is it possible?
Hi @rubinamary. As long as your liver functions are ok, your liver will recover by itself. It becomes an issue if your liver fails to function properly.
Most of the dose prescribed by your dermatologist is within therapeutic range. Meaning it safe for the liver.
I hope that is the answer you are looking for.
Thanks again @rubinamary.
Cheers