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Love Your Liver with These Nutrients

Love Your Liver with These Nutrients

By Andrea Bartels CNP NNCP RNT
Registered Nutritional Therapist

24 Jan 2025

Love Your Liver with These Nutrients

Did your festive season include indulgent meals, late nights, or a few too many celebratory drinks? If so, your liver could use some TLC. The liver is an essential organ that works tirelessly to detoxify our bodies, regulate metabolism, and store nutrients. If you’re not consuming enough of the nutritional building blocks needed for liver functions to occur at a healthy rate, you may experience symptoms like fatigue, headaches, joint pain, bloating or other symptoms. Learn about your liver and how to support it after a season of indulgence with these actionable tips.

Why Care About Your Liver?

The liver is a talented organ, performing an astounding number of chemical reactions for us each minute of every day to keep us alive and healthy. These activities can be grouped into building and cleansing. You’re probably already aware that the liver works as a blood cleanser, processing everything we eat, drink, breathe and produce from our bloodstream. But what it does with them next is key.  The liver transforms these substances into less harmful ones that we can excrete from the kidneys and bowel so they don’t pollute our bodies.

But the liver is also a vital producer of important building blocks that repair and maintain our bodies: it makes bile for fat digestion; it makes new proteins and hormones for proper growth and reproduction. It also stores glycogen—a stored carbohydrate that can be broken down for energy or converted into fat. Plus, the liver can stockpile certain nutrients like vitamin A, iron and B12 for later use. How handy is that?

Prioritize a Liver-Friendly Diet with Antioxidant-Rich Foods

Certain foods supply the nutrients your liver uses to create the enzymes that perform its multitude of tasks. Incorporate these into your meals:

Cruciferous Vegetables: These include broccoli, brussels sprouts, cauliflower, kale, kohlrabi, rapini, bok choy and a few other Chinese greens. They boost the liver’s ability to detoxify hormones by donating sulfurous compounds like sulforaphanes—which are powerful antioxidants (cell protectors).

Citrus Fruits: Oranges, lemons, and grapefruits are high in antioxidants d-limonene and vitamin C, aiding liver functions. Just make sure to check with your pharmacist before consuming grapefruit if you’re taking any prescription medications.

Spice it up with Turmeric: Turmeric, the spice that contains the antioxidant compound curcumin, has anti-inflammatory properties while supporting the liver’s everyday detoxification work. But the absorption potential of curcumin from kitchen-cupboard turmeric is naturally quite low. There’s an easy hack for that, though: simply consume turmeric with healthy fats (such as olive oil, coconut oil or avocado) and a pinch of black pepper to improve the absorption of curcumin.

Supplements

Fulfiling the necessary quantities of liver-friendly nutrients on a consistent basis can be challenging without nutritional supplements. Here are a few that can make it easier for you:

NAC:  NAC is also known as n-acetyl-l-cysteine, an antioxidant rich in sulfur---a nutrient used by many of the liver’s detoxification processes such as sulfation and glutathione conjugation. NAC donates sulfur to these important processes. Sulfation is important to the detoxification of hormones (like estrogen), certain drugs, neurotransmitters and environmental toxins. Meanwhile, glutathione conjugation is important for protecting the liver and other tissues from the damaging effects of toxins, like bacteria, viruses, heavy metals and other harmful compounds. Pure Lab’s NAC is a source of sulfur that provides 600 mg of NAC per capsule, for antioxidant protection. If you’ve been overindulging on food and alcohol, your work involves exposure to chemicals on a regular basis (such as aestheticians, hair stylists, artists and mechanics) then you may benefit from taking Pure Lab’s NAC daily.

Zinc: Zinc is just one of many minerals involved in the liver’s building and cleansing activities, such as detoxifying heavy metals and providing antioxidant protection. Yet insufficiency is fairly common. Top zinc-rich foods include oysters, nuts and seeds. But since soil content of zinc has waned with intensive farming processes, and zinc is harder to absorb from plant-based foods, vegetarians are especially vulnerable to deficiency. Pure Lab’s Zinc Glycinate contains 23 milligrams of highly bioavailable zinc per capsule. Taken daily you can ensure you’re getting the zinc you need to support your liver’s work.

AlkaPure pH: The liver’s detoxification activities only work when the right pH is present. That’s because the enzymes that do this detox work depend on proper pH to function. Excess acidity can slow down and even inhibit enzyme function. This is why maintaining potassium, sodium and magnesium are important. These are alkaline minerals that assist in maintaining acid-base balance, or pH. Pure Lab’s AlkaPure pH is a sodium-potassium balanced formulation that combines alkaline minerals in the same forms that the body uses to neutralize acids.  Taken between meals twice daily, AlkaPure pH helps create the ideal environment for the liver’s building and cleansing processes to occur.

Here are some other liver-friendly nutritional basics to aspire to:

Eat protein at every meal. If you aren’t consuming enough protein, your body will break down muscle to get amino acids critical for building new tissues and detoxifying the blood. Did you miss out at meal time? Make it up during snack time with protein-dense foods like dried and seasoned chickpeas or fava beans, cheese, nuts and seeds. 

Hydrate, Hydrate, Hydrate: Water is another of your liver’s best friends. Staying hydrated helps flush toxins out of your system and supports overall liver function. Aim for at least 8-10 glasses of water daily, and consider starting your day with warm lemon water to stimulate the stomach and gall bladder for optimal digestion.

Avoid Excess. Overconsumption is the liver’s #1 enemy.  Avoid alcohol, processed foods, added sugars, and trans fats, which can increase fat accumulation and liver inflammation. To best nourish the liver so it can fulfil all of its jobs on a timely basis, focus on fresh foods that don’t have long ingredient lists.

Final Thoughts

Your liver is resilient and capable of healing itself, but it needs your support to function optimally. By making these lifestyle changes, you can give your liver the care it deserves and ensure it continues to keep you healthy in the long run. The rewards? You’ll feel better rested and energetic for work and play.  Start small, stay consistent, and your liver will thank you!

 

References

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Canadian Liver Foundation. “Your Liver”. Accessed online December 24, 2024.

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Goodson, Amy. “What are the Health Benefits of NAC (N-acetyl Cysteine)?” Healthline January 12, 2024.

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Jarhahzadeh M, Alavinejad P, Farsi F, Husain D, Rezazadeh A. The effect of turmeric on lipid profile, malondialdehyde, liver echogenicity and enzymes among patients with nonalcoholic fatty liver disease: a randomized double blind clinical trial. Diabetol Metab Syndr. 2021;13(1):112. Published 2021 Oct 18.

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Khoshbaten M, Aliasgarzadeh A, Masnadi K, et al. N-acetylcysteine improves liver function in patients with non-alcoholic Fatty liver disease.?Hepat Mon. 2010;10(1):12-16. 

Murray, Michael T. and Joseph Pizzorno. Encyclopedia of Natural Medicine Rev. 2nd ed. Prima Publishing 1998.

Office of Dietary Supplements. “Zinc: Health Professional Fact Sheet.” National Institutes of Health. Accessed online Dec 24, 2024.

Skalny AV, Skalnaya MG, Grabeklis AR, Skalnaya AA, Tinkov AA. Zinc deficiency as a mediator of toxic effects of alcohol abuse. Eur J Nutr. 2018 Oct;57(7):2313-2322. 

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