Liver Health

What is the role of your Liver?

Your liver is essential to your life. It is the largest organ in your body and is responsible for many different functions. It performs up to 500 tasks by itself and in connection to other bodily systems. These range from filtering toxins from the blood to helping with energy metabolism and digestion.

Sometimes these processes can be interrupted or even stop all together. There are many different reasons why this might happen eg sickness or virus, a reaction to a medication, your diet and lifestyle as well as other lifestyle habits such as smoking, alcohol and recreational drug use.

Unlike when you have problems with the functioning of your heart of lungs, you do not get any symptoms when your liver is not working optimally because there are no nerve endings in the liver so it can’t send any messages to your brain to let you know something is wrong.

With the liver being such a multi-functioning organ, there are many different ways liver health can be affected. These might include steatosis (or fat deposits in and around the liver), a form of hepatitis (or inflammation of the liver) or fibrosis (scarring of the liver) and sometimes cirrhosis (severe scarring of the liver)

Finding out from your doctor after a blood test might be the only sign you get that your liver is struggling.

Therefore looking after your liver is very important

Ways to promote Liver Health

Whilst there are no medications that can treat the liver , diet and lifestyle have been shown to play a big part in the promoting liver health.

If detected early enough, modification in lifestyle has been show to reverse any ill effects in the functioning of the liver. In fact liver regeneration has occurred.

Different lifestyle approaches may include:-

• Foods to limit or avoid
• An assessment of your alcohol intake
• An understanding of the role of vegetables and grains in liver health
• How fibre interacts with your liver
• The role of hydration and salt

These approaches will vary depending on whether we are addressing issues arising from bile duct abdomalities, liver cirrhosis, steatotic liver disease (previously known as ‘fatty liver’), haemachromatosis, Wilson Liver Disease or a form of hepatitis. Liver health may also be impacted by cholesterol and triglyceride levels as well as blood sugar levels.

The good news is that Jennifer has many years of experience working in these areas, and enjoys partnering with you to create a long lasting lifestyle approaches that modify these risk factors.

Treatment for liver disease needs to be tailored to the individual. At Wahroonga Dietitian, Jennifer is experienced in assessing the different types of liver abnormalities and working with you to minimise side effects and ultimately improve the functioning of your liver.

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