The BEST Foods to Clean Out Your Liver

today we're going to talk about the best foods to clean out your liver your liver is not necessarily dirty okay it doesn't accumulate toxins in fact its main function is to detoxify toxins and poisons and chemicals but it's not a storage facility for poisons and chemicals unless you have a fatty liver because these toxins are stored in your fat cells now when your liver gets inflamed it heals with scar tissue and you can develop cirrhosis and you can lose function and create all sorts of issues but the liver itself is not a reservoir for toxins

so i want to shift my talk into the best foods to reestablish the full function of your liver to get your liver able to detoxify at the highest level and you can totally do this with foods so we're going to cover all those but i want to first talk about the different functions of the liver okay it has the ability to detoxify it makes bile bile is a detergent to help you break down fats and extract certain nutrients from fat your liver is a main producer of hormones that's right one being igf-1 insulin-like growth factor

number one now what is that that is a very similar hormone to growth hormone growth hormone is made by your pituitary gland it's sent to the liver it works through the liver and you can kind of consider igf number one as an extension of growth hormone it performs very similar functions so it has everything to do with helping you burn fat it's a anabolic hormone so it helps you build muscle it has everything to do with building proteins and it also can help tap into your fat reserves and your stored sugar reserves for fuel now

your liver also makes steroid hormones okay like estrogen progesterone testosterone vitamin d3 which by the way acts like a hormone in the body in fact it probably is a hormone but we classified it as a vitamin and the other sex hormone is cortisol the main anti-inflammatory hormone in the body the main hormone that helps you adapt to stress so without cortisol your body can't adapt to stress and you're going to get really stressed out in fact 80 percent of the cortisol floating through your bloodstream originates from your liver so all these steroid hormones come from

this one thing cholesterol and so the liver is part of the building block of not just cholesterol but a real key part in the creation of those hormones and what's interesting is that people take certain drugs to block cholesterol like statins well guess what's going to happen to these hormones you're not going to be able to make them efficiently you're going to have all sorts of issues and your liver makes a good portion of the cholesterol in your body and take a while guess what material it makes cholesterol from if you guess dietary sugars you

are correct so cholesterol is made from carbs and cholesterol also makes certain proteins certain proteins that transport things in the body like cholesterol like estrogen like testosterone different hormones because these hormones made from cholesterol can't travel that well through the blood your liver packages them in protein so they can be transported so your liver has a post office function in that it is able to package certain things and send them throughout the body now these proteins just don't transport certain things they also buffer or regulate certain hormones so if there's too much estrogen for example

or too much cortisol your liver will buffer that with these proteins to make sure that things are in balance all right so those are just some of the many functions of the liver your liver actually has 500 different functions now before i get to the food i just want to briefly mention the different symptoms that occur when you have damage to the liver one would be itchiness in the body another one would be that your skin in the whites of the eyes turn yellow it's called jaundice the next one is lethargy and then you have

achy joints so many people who are stiff and have inflammation in the joints really have a liver problem feeling nauseous is a big symptom of the liver having a lowered cognitive function could be liver related and if you have gallstones there's definitely a problem with the liver simply because the liver makes bile and it's a deficiency of bile and a high level of cholesterol that makes you end up with gallstones all right so now let's dive into the best foods for your liver okay number one cruciferous vegetables okay talking about kale broccoli brussels sprouts radish

arugula wasabi mustard mustard greens they are all cruciferous vegetables they are very high in a natural phytonutrient called sulforaphane and sulforaphane helps to detoxify the liver it helps the liver to get rid of inflammation and inflammation leads to insulin resistance it leads to high insulin it leads to diabetes and it can even lead to cancer so sulfurophane is a really important liver protective compound and it can also help if there's fat in the liver and with enough sulforaphane let's say for example if you drank too much coffee sulforaphane helps to quickly detoxify things like caffeine

drugs chemicals and even poisons eating cruciferous vegetables with sulforaphane can even enhance the liver to the point of having an enhanced function of the liver even two weeks after where you stopped eating cruciferous vegetables so some of the effects from eating cruciferous vegetables extend into the future even if you don't eat them that's pretty cool now if you consume cruciferous sprouts okay you get a major enhancement in sulforaphane especially when we're talking about broccoli sprouts radish sprouts and even mustard seed sprouts so sprouting is a very very smart thing to do because all you need

is just a little bit of those sprouts on your salad to create a huge effect you see one of the key enzymes to activate sulforaphane is destroyed with heat so if you overcook broccoli or especially cauliflower you're not going to be able to get this full magnitude of sulfurophane unless you at the same time add a little sprouts to your salad or a little bit of raw cruciferous or if you added a little bit of mustard to your meal because mustard has a lot of that enzyme because it's a cruciferous that will help activate sulforaphane

in the food that is cooked so this is just another reason why when you have a salad um you want to add different things to it like sprouts and there's many other phytonutrients in cruciferous vegetables that support the liver function which also have a lot to do with decreasing um complications from diabetes and free radical damage and improving sensitivity to insulin and improving insulin resistance and just supporting your blood sugars personally i consume a lot of arugula in my salads so that is just loaded with those enzymes to activate sulforaphane i also do a lot

of raw cabbage like coleslaw for example and sauerkraut which is just loaded with the enzymes to activate sulforaphane so out of all the things you can eat cruciferous is at the top of the list now the number two item is garlic now garlic is something that is loaded with sulfur and sulfur is a wonderful thing to detoxify the liver and also act as a natural antibiotic so it's very very anti-bacterial anti-fungal anti-viral and garlic is really good for stripping off fat from your liver and garlic also has a lot of vitamin b1 as well i

mean garlic is just one of those superfoods it's anti-inflammatory it's a very powerful antioxidant and it has huge anti-cancer properties all right the next one for the liver is turmeric okay now the active phytonutrient in turmeric is curcumin curcumin is just a powerhouse in reducing inflammation there is someone recently who had lifelong headaches okay and they had to take copious amounts of tylenol for years and years and years and their liver has been going downhill and so one of the key things that she did is started taking turmeric on a daily basis and so not

only did her headaches go away but now going in the future not having to take tylenol her liver is going to do much much better now one thing i want to say about the liver is that the liver is rugged it's tough it can bounce back unless it's completely destroyed it only needs a little bit of itself to function and a lot of people have destroyed a good portion of the livers and they're able to exist and survive which is quite amazing but out of all the organs the liver is the most robust it can

take a beating and it can bounce back now turmeric can also detoxify heavy metals like lead mercury cadmium and even arsenic turmeric helps to repair and regenerate liver function tumeric helps stabilize the mitochondria which is why it's very anti-cancer because the origin of cancer happens with damaged mitochondria tumeric is very heavily studied especially in its ability to decrease fat on your liver so if you combine a ketogenic diet low carb with intermittent fasting and turmeric and some of these other compounds you're going to be in really good shape as far as having a healthy liver

now the next one on the list is beets beets have always been known to help detox the liver they can help reduce liver enzymes if the liver enzymes are high they can help reduce them the phytonutrients in the pigments and beets can help activate the release of bile salts and that can help decrease the fat in your liver but beets are hepatoprotective which means they protect the liver cells and they can significantly reduce inflammation in the liver and if they can reduce inflammation in liver they can slow down the process of fibrosis and scar tissue

and cirrhosis now a question that people might have is what about beets and being keto friendly is it going to spike my blood sugars well if you don't juice beets and you have them steamed there is some carbohydrates in there but if you add the fiber in there that will buffer the insulin response and so in a half a cup of beets you're looking at about only 6.7 grams of carbs not terribly high now the next food i want to talk about is mushrooms now what's so important about mushrooms with the liver well mushrooms are

the food that has some of the highest amount of glutathione and glutathione is the main antioxidant for the liver especially if you do turkey tail mushroom and oyster mushrooms and other mushrooms as well mushrooms are hepatoprotective that means they protect the cells of the liver all right now we get to avocados avocados are a great thing to consume to help repair and stabilize the liver avocados too are high in glutathione that support the liver and but the main thing about avocados is all you have to do is consume one avocado a week to see significant

improvements in your liver function avocados are very very anti-inflammatory and inflammation in the liver leads to so many issues including hepatitis including fatty liver as well as cirrhosis so anything that can lower inflammation would be very good for the liver and the last thing i'm going to recommend for the liver is extra virgin olive oil just a very small amount in fact just one little teaspoon in your salad dressing can create significant improvements in liver enzymes extra virgin olive oil decreases fat on your liver it improves insulin sensitivity it reduces insulin resistance and it's a

very powerful anti-inflammatory so there you have it the best foods to help support a healthy liver and if you haven't seen some of my other videos on the liver i created a playlist for you right here check it out