Think your liver is clean? Well, if you eat food, drink water, breathe air and live on planet Earth in the 21st century, then sorry but you have been exposed to toxins of all kinds. The world we live in become polluted and even if you don’t think so, we inadvertently ingest them into our bodies, making the liver overwork and have its work cut out for it and it sadly it gets tired.
Importance Of Your Liver
The human body cannot function without the liver, and as the largest gland in the body, it plays many vital roles:
Detoxifying the blood and body of harmful toxins
Storing the vital vitamins and minerals
Giving us energy by converting the body’s stored sugar to usable sugar
Producing bile to help digest our food and drinks
Facilitating and breaking down hemoglobin, insulin, hormones, and old red blood cells in the body
To keep your liver healthy, you need to get a regular detox done, on a daily basis. A naturopathic doctor and liver cleansing specialist, Dr. LePore, explained that liver detoxification happens in two phases.
Phase 1
The liver first dissolves the body’s fat soluble toxins
Phase 2
The liver absorbs the body’s toxins and then eliminates them from the body.
Although you could do one of those occasional detox diets and use cleansing supplements to remove the toxins in one go, having an everyday diet with detoxifying foods helps keep your organs clean and at optimum function. So, besides the cliché detoxing foods, here are some unique and possibly lesser heard food choices, that can detox your liver, kidneys, bladder, blood, and body.
1. Apples
As the popular saying goes, ‘an apple a day keeps the doctor away’, especially in terms of liver issues. With its rich pectin and other chemical components, it helps cleanse the liver and digestive system of nasty toxins.
2. Artichokes
Optimizing liver functions, it also improves the liver’s production of bile, which aids breaking down of foods and removing toxins.
3. Asparagus
One of the best diuretics to help your body release toxins by boosting liver drainage, make you pee more, and in the process draining out toxins and other waste materials from the liver.
4. Avocados
This butter-fruit is lusciously rich in naturally healthy plant-sourced fats, and helps the body produce glutathione, an enzyme which helps naturally detox the liver.
5. Basil
This lovely Italian herb is an amazing diuretic which effectively flushes out the liver’s terrible toxins.
6. Berries
Schisandra berry is a little, red berry which supports the liver detoxing process in 3 ways. First, it protects the liver from toxins. Second, it helps produce antioxidants and third, it even helps the liver regenerate any tissues which have been damaged by habits such as alcohol or diseases such as, hepatitis. Goji berries are also potent liver cleaners thanks to its powerhouse of vitamin C and beta-carotene, which removes waste from your body and boosts the liver’s performance.
7. Broccoli
This cruciferous green works in cleaning your liver through two stages. First it enhances the body’s ability to clean up all the pollutants by increasing the production of glutathione, and second, it protects the liver by preventing any toxins from entering or staying.
8. Brussels Sprouts
With high levels of sulfur, it causes the liver to release enzymes which naturally stop any damage from occurring because of toxins found in our water, food, air, etc.
9. Cabbage
Containing high liver detoxing enzymes, it reduces the toxins to smaller particles that can be easily flushed out of the liver. It is also an excellent source of fiber that facilitates the detox process.
10. Carrots
Detoxes and improves the liver’s functions overall thanks to its rich in flavonoids, beta carotene, and glutathione.
11. Cauliflower
This white cruciferous vegetable betters the functions of the liver and protects it from any further or future damage which occurs from an over-accumulation of toxins.
12. Cilantro
Packed with anti-oxidants, this herb helps detox, protect, and remove heavy metals from the liver and body such as lead, mercury, and aluminum.
13. Citrus Fruits
Lemon juice can help activate the enzymes in your liver needed for a natural detoxification, starting with releasing toxins. Lemon juice also helps promote better digestion and cleanse your intestines. Other citrus fruits like grapefruits, also do the trick as they are packed with glutathione, vitamin C, and antioxidants that cleanse and protect the liver. So, try adding the juice of these fruits to your daily drinking water for automatic detoxing.
14. Dandelion
A commonly plucked out weed, but a natural super-food too, as it provides the liver all the detoxing powers it needs. The roots of dandelions boiled into a tea helps filter out the toxins and waste materials of the liver and blood.
15. Lemon Grass
A herb commonly found in Thai food is not just versatile, but also helps detox the liver, kidneys, bladder, and digestive tracts of damaging toxins.
16. Onions
With sulfur-rich amino acids, it works to detox the liver naturally and quickly.
17. Walnuts
These hard-shelled nits naturally clean the liver, thanks to its rich omega-3 fatty acids and the amino acid, arginine.
18. Watercress
This aquatic plant is as nutritionally rich as leafy greens, helps cool the body down and even helps the body release enzymes in the liver that help flush out toxins.
19. Wheat-grass
As a top alkaline rich super-food, it reduces the body’s acidity levels and helps protect and detox the liver.
Many of these super-foods may already be in your diet, but to effectively flush them out, try drinking lots of water and doing some exercise, so it helps it work better. This will make you sweat and pee more thereby remove the toxins from your blood and organs and keep you hydrated.
