Your Liver and Your Hormones
Guess what! Your liver has a big influence on your hormone system. Your liver is like the gas filter in your car. It filters your blood and keeps it clean. It clears out substances that are normally made in your body like hormones, brain chemicals, and red blood cells that are past their age, as well as toxins from outside your body including alcohol, environmental pollutants, and toxins in your air and food. If you are exposed to a high level of toxins, or if your liver isn’t up to snuff with its cleaning activity, you are likely to be tired and sore and at greater risk for neurological disease, autoimmune disease, adverse drug reactions, and all types of hormone problems.
Your liver has the job of clearing hormones from your blood stream, and disposing of them into your intestines for elimination from your body. If it isn’t clearing a hormone well, then the hormone can build to an unhealthy level in your body. Your liver has to change a hormone before it can be eliminated from your body. Sometimes it doesn’t complete the job. The hormone is only partially changed and the partially changed hormone causes problems.
When the liver has filtered the blood it dumps its catch into the bile. Bile is a fluid that is stored in the gall bladder until it is released into the intestines. Bile has two important functions. It is a route for the elimination of toxins that have been filtered from the blood, and it aids in the digestion of fat. If bile is not being made in the liver, or not being released adequately into the small intestine, the following symptoms are likely to occur:
· intolerance to fried or fatty foods,
· excessive burping soon after meals
· bitter metallic taste in the mouth, especially in the morning,
· itchy or dry skin or hair
· stool color alternates from clay colored to brown
· history of gallstones or gallbladder surgery
Treatment to Improve Liver Function
The first step for improving liver function is to stop stressing your liver with unnecessary toxins like alcohol and cigarette smoke. It is important to deal with intestinal problems because these put a toxic load on your liver (read Your Colon and Your Health), eat a healthy diet as described in Basics of Healthy Eating, and take nutritional supplements to help your liver do its filtering job. I will coach you about which nutritional supplements will be helpful for your condition. It is important to improve the nerve supply to the liver and gallbladder. Read Chiropractic Neurology for more information.
