Why You Should Love Your Liver! The Unsung Hero of Your Health, By Mrs Vera West

When was the last time you thanked your liver?
Probably never, which is odd, because this one humble organ quietly saves your life about 24 hours a day. While your heart gets all the Valentine's cards, and your brain gets the glory for "who you are," your liver is the backstage crew that keeps the entire show running. Without it, nothing else works.

Your liver is the ultimate multitasker, a metabolic mastermind performing more than 500 essential functions at any given time. It filters your blood, breaks down toxins, balances hormones, digests fat, regulates blood sugar, makes proteins, and stores vitamins and minerals for when you need them most.

Think of it as the body's command-and-control centre for everything that comes in and everything that goes out.

Eat a meal? The liver decides what to store and what to burn.

Take a medication? The liver modifies and neutralises it.

Drink a glass of wine? The liver detoxifies it, if it can keep up.

Encounter pollution or pesticides? The liver takes the hit and does the cleanup.

It's a hard-working organ with no ego, until it's overburdened, undernourished, or ignored.

By your 50s and beyond, your liver has processed tens of thousands of meals, countless chemicals, a few too many drinks, and perhaps a fair bit of stress.
That's a long résumé, and the regeneration rate that once kept it resilient begins to slow.
You might notice subtle shifts:

A sense of sluggishness that coffee can't fix.

Digestive changes, bloating, fat intolerance, or nausea after rich meals.

Brain fog or mood dips.

Lab results showing "slightly elevated liver enzymes."

The problem is that liver disease is a silent one. You can lose 70% of liver function before clear symptoms appear. By then, damage can be difficult to reverse.

The good news? Your liver is still the most forgiving organ in your body. It wants to heal, you just have to give it a reason to.

The biggest culprits in modern liver strain aren't just alcohol or sugar, they're industrial seed oils (soy, corn, canola, sunflower, and "vegetable oil"). These highly processed oils are packed with linoleic acid (LA), an unstable omega-6 fat that oxidises easily. Once oxidised, it forms toxic aldehydes that damage liver cells, create inflammation, and accelerate fat buildup.

In other words: it's not the butter, it's the bottled "health oils" doing the damage.

Add to that the usual suspects, ultra-processed foods, refined carbs, chronic stress, sleep deprivation, and a sedentary lifestyle, and you've got a recipe for what doctors now call metabolic-associated fatty liver disease (MAFLD), which affects about one in three adults.

Fortunately, the liver responds dramatically to lifestyle change. Within weeks of removing toxic inputs and adding supportive nutrients, liver enzymes drop, fat accumulation reverses, and energy returns. Here's how to show your liver some affection:

1. Quit the Oils That Cook You from the Inside

Ditch the industrial seed oils, the main source of dietary linoleic acid. Use butter, ghee, tallow, or coconut oil instead. They're stable, natural fats your body actually recognizes.

2. Skip the Empty Drinks

Your liver has no sense of humour about alcohol. Even moderate drinking can create fat deposits and oxidative stress. If you're over 50, your detox pathways are already slower, consider giving your liver a proper sabbatical.

3. Feed It Choline

Choline helps the liver package fat for export. Without it, fat gets trapped and turns into inflammation.
Sources: egg yolks, grass-fed beef liver, and wild-caught fish.

4. Sleep Like Your Liver Depends on It (It Does)

Liver detoxification happens mostly at night, especially between midnight and 3 a.m. Skimping on sleep interferes with that process. Keep a steady bedtime, cut late-night blue light, and let your liver clock reset.

5. Move to Improve

Even light exercise, a 15-minute walk after meals, helps regulate blood sugar and reduces fat in the liver. Movement keeps the metabolic flow steady, preventing fat and toxins from stagnating.

6. Detox Your Environment

Your liver already deals with enough. Reduce your exposure to plastics, pesticides, and heavy metals, filter your water, use glass containers, and go organic where possible.

7. Top Up the Liver's Allies

Certain supplements offer solid support:

NAC (N-acetylcysteine) → restores glutathione, your liver's master antioxidant.

Milk thistle (silymarin) → protects liver cells and aids regeneration.

Vitamin D3 + K2 → improves insulin sensitivity and reduces inflammation.

Krill oil → provides anti-inflammatory omega-3s that counteract excess LA.

In traditional medicine systems, from Chinese to Ayurvedic, the liver is also the seat of emotion, particularly anger and frustration. While modern science might frame it differently, there's truth here: chronic stress floods the body with cortisol and adrenaline, hormones your liver must break down. Managing stress isn't just about feeling calm, it's biochemical housekeeping.

A few minutes of deep breathing, time in nature, or simply saying "no" more often can give your liver less emotional clutter to process.

The liver is not just a detox organ, it's a living library of your life. Every meal, drink, and stress leaves an entry. Every healthy choice helps it rewrite the story.

So, if you do one thing this year for your health, make it this:
Love your liver. Feed it real food, give it rest, move your body, and lighten its load.

It's the best return on investment your biology can offer, a little care for the organ that never stops caring for you.

https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2025/09/24/liver-health-after-50.aspx