Hey, guys. Dr Axe here, Doctor of Functional Medicine and founder of Drxe. com.
Today I wanted to talk about how to cleanse your liver and the top ways to detox your liver. Your liver is your second largest organ, and it is so important for detoxification, for cleansing, for your overall health. So I'm going to go over my five top ways that you can detox your liver on a regular basis.
And number one is start by removing all the toxic stuff in your diet. Listen, you can take all the pills, all the supplements, all the potions. And you know what?
They will not do any good until you start getting the junk out of your diet. So step number one in doing a liver cleanse is to remove the processed grains and sugars and fast foods and packaged foods. Get rid of it all and just eat real food.
Fruit it in its whole form, vegetables in its whole form, organic grass-fed meats, sprouted whole ancient grains, stick with those types of foods if you want to naturally cleanse your liver, and stay away from packaged, processed foods, especially conventional meat and dairy. Conventional meat and dairy are loaded with pesticides, herbicides, GMO residue, antibiotic drugs, steroids, hormones, other medication residue. Those are all stuck in those meat products that you consume.
So again, stop consuming conventional meat and dairy is the number one step to detox your liver for good. Step number two is start consuming liver-detoxifying herbs. There's three specifically -- milk thistle, turmeric, and dandelion.
Now, milk thistle is known as the king of detoxifying herbs, and it's been shown to specifically boost an antioxidant in your body called glutathione, which helps detox your liver and your cells. So milk thistle, again, the number one herb, typically 150 milligrams twice daily of milk thistle will play a huge role in supporting liver detoxification. The second herb is turmeric.
Turmeric has been shown to be very high in antioxidants that helps both the liver and the gallbladder. So turmeric, you typically want to do about a tablespoon daily in your food or supplementing with two capsules daily of about 1000 milligrams. That's also going to help.
The other great thing about turmeric is it reduces liver inflammation. So it reduces inflammation of your GI tract, so your colon as well as of your liver. So again, 1000 milligrams of turmeric daily, great for reducing liver inflammation and cleansing the liver.
The third herb is dandelion. Dandelion is packed with potassium and other herbal compounds that have been shown to act as a diuretic and causing your liver to release toxins and also support the gallbladder in releasing bile. That's really what's going to cause that liver to dump the toxins.
So there's a great benefit of taking milk thistle, turmeric, and dandelion in a combination in a cell detox or a liver detox supplement. But again, those three herbal extracts are the most effective herbs at naturally detoxifying the liver. Not to say there's not others, like bupleurum and a few others that are great for the liver.
But those are some of my favorites. The third thing you need to do to detox your liver is to work on your body emotionally and detox your emotions. According to ancient Chinese medicine, the emotions you experience directly affect certain organs.
When it comes to your liver and cleansing your liver, there are specific emotions of number one would be frustration. The other one is resentment, unforgiveness, and anger. Those are the four emotions that directly affect your liver.
So if you know you struggle with frustration, if you tend to get frustrated easily, if you have anyone in your life, including your spouse or coworkers that you tend to have resentment towards them, know that you're not hurting them, you're hurting yourself. You're hurting your liver. Those toxic emotions are literally shutting down your liver and your body, creating disease in your system.
And what I'd recommend you to do is get out a sheet of paper, write down all the people you haven't forgiven, all the people you feel any ounce of resentment towards, your parents, spouses, coworkers, and really work to absolutely forgive and forget. I also just recommend as you do that, you may want to work with a counselor on this. You may want to work with a dear friend that's close to you.
But listen, those toxic emotions aren't hurting them, they are hurting you. So you really want to make sure that you work on healing and detoxing those emotions. Another great way to do that is practice gratitude.
One of the things I do every morning is I get up and say what I'm grateful for. But practicing gratitude, forgiveness, building joy into your life, reading personal growth books, reading your Bible and reading scripture and memorizing verses, those types of things really will help you become free. But listen, don't keep it inside.
You really have to talk and work with somebody on this as well. So again, a best friend, a counselor, a church, those things can all help. But again, if you truly want to detox your entire system and liver, you've got to work on that emotional aspect as well.
Step number four, eat real liver. That's right. I'm telling you to eat liver, like chicken liver or beef liver.
In fact, ancient practitioners or practitioners from the past 100 years really used liver supplementation to help overcome liver toxicity and other diseases. If you look at men like Weston A. Price, the famous dentist who traveled the world and found what really caused disease, gum disease and liver disease and disease in the body.
He recommended liver supplementation. Dr Royal Lee, who started the company Standard Process, recommended raw liver supplementation and liver capsules and had great results with patients. Dr Gerson, who started Gerson therapy, recommended beef liver in overcoming cancer.
So you can see here real liver is great. So what I do is I do a chicken liver. You can make a chicken liver p�t�.
I'll do a chicken liver Crock-Pot, where I'll do two-thirds chicken, two pounds of chicken and maybe one pound of chicken liver I pick up at my farmer's market or health food store. Do that with celery and onions and carrots and make it into a big Crock-Pot. That's another way to do it.
Or hey, if you just can't eat liver, you can buy desiccated liver tablets online. Another easy way to do it is getting liver in your diet. And then step number five for a natural liver cleanse is consume foods that cleanse the liver and specifically think spring.
Think sprouts, salads, sour foods. In fact, sour foods, according to ancient Chinese medicine, are the foods that are most nourishing to the liver. So think about this, again, a big spinach salad with sprouts, maybe some tomatoes, some cucumber and then sprinkle a little bit of olive oil.
Then along with that, some apple cider vinegar. Again, you've got the sourness, you've got the fresh sprouts. But again, apple cider vinegar, sprouts, vegetables, vegetable juices, all of those foods are very cleansing to the liver along with sour foods, including most probiotic-rich foods, things like kefir.
Also, sauerkraut, kimchi, beets, artichokes, dandelion greens, all of those are fantastic for naturally cleansing the liver. So guys, I hope you've learned a lot. This has been my five tips for naturally cleansing and detoxifying the liver.
Hey, if you've liked what you've learned, make sure to subscribe here to the YouTube channel. I've got a lot more great information coming out on how to cleanse other organs in your body. Also I recently wrote an article on my six-step liver cleanse.
If you want to learn what the sixth one is, you can go online, search "Drxe. com" and find out what my number six tip is to cleanse the liver. Hey, guys, hope you've enjoyed this video on natural ways to detox the liver.
