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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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-1 as an extension of growth hormone. It performs very similar functions. It has everything to do with helping you burn fat. It's an 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 classify it as a vitamin. 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% 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 wild guess what material it makes cholesterol from. If you guessed 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 and 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. Number one, cruciferous vegetables. 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 sulforaphane 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, 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 sulforaphane unless you at the same time add 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, 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 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 antibacterial, antifungal, antiviral, 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. Now the active phytonutrient in turmeric is curcumin. Curcumin is just a powerhouse in reducing inflammation. There was someone recently who had lifelong headaches, 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 their 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. Turmeric helps stabilize the mitochondria, which is why it's very anti-cancer because the origin of cancer happens with damaged mitochondria. Turmeric 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 are 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 in 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 the 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, it 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, 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. 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.