Posts Tagged ‘detox’

By Daniel Stern,
Licensed practitioner of Chinese Herbal Medicine

One question on everyone’s mind, almost without exception, is “how can I stay healthy, fit and full of life?” The liver, among its other duties, digests fat and filters poisons out of our system. A healthy liver is vital to the body. What can we do to keep it that way?

What are the things that injure the liver? Many people are already familiar with some of them: excessive animal fat including butter, ice cream and cheese, saturated fats like chocolate or coconut, trans-fats like margarine, deep-fried food, unspecified “vegetable fat”, and dietary contaminants foreign to the body’s ecology like artificial sweeteners, preservatives, food coloring and flavors.

Also foreign to the body, which filters all poisons through the liver, are synthetic medicines of any kind, including prescription drugs and over the counter medications. A few of these are natural and are tolerated (and not even processed by the liver), but many, if not most, are problematic and are contra-indicated for people with liver problems.

While you must heed your doctor’s advice, in my opinion it’s necessary to weigh the benefits and the costs and look for a natural substitute if possible. There are physicians in many cities who are also naturopaths or herbalists, and who would make a good choice for a personal health practitioner.

Less well-known is the danger of synthetic vapors, which are filtered by the liver as well. People in fires often die of liver failure from the smoke, and not the flames. Of particular danger are manufactured cleansers, paint solvents, aromatic additives to detergent, soap and perfume, newly bought rugs and cheap electronic devices made with plastic. If you air them out for a day to a week, the odor will often leave, but with other items like cheap shoes and luggage, it will almost never go away. If you can smell it, and it didn’t come from a tree, I recommend caution.

What occurs for many people with compromised livers, even young people, is an excess of cholesterol in the blood. Many, if not most, people over a certain age test high for it. This can lead to gallstones, arteriosclerosis , heart attacks, and strokes. Dietary cholesterol from meat and eggs accounts for a small fraction of our cholesterol. Most of it is produced by the body’s own liver, which is responsible for its balance in the body.

An excess of meat is considered a problem not because of the small amount of cholesterol present, but because the hard fats in it are difficult for the liver to process. When the liver is stressed, it does not metabolize its own cholesterol correctly, leading to gallstones and arteriosclerotic plaque.

A cholesterol test is a good informal way to measure the health of your liver, even though a liver panel is more thorough. Drugstore test kits work fine if used correctly, and can test for both total cholesterol and HDL cholesterol. However if you take vitamin C, or get more than 500 mg of it in your diet, the HDL test can give you a false result and can appear dangerously low. On the other hand, total cholesterol is often thought to be a sufficient measure of it in your blood. Some authorities consider a reading of less than 200 a good result for a test, but the graph actually starts at 125, which is considered by many to be ideal.

Open for question are other products that have not been investigated thoroughly, like canola oil ( a genetically modified oil ) GMO’s in general, carbohydrates that have been heated over 350 degrees and contain acrylamides, also a possible carcinogen, e.g. potato chips, coffee, dark toast, or anything burnt in a fire or an oven. There is also a question about dairy in general, to which many people are sensitive. If you want to be diligent about this, eat a particular food for a week, and then test yourself with a drugstore cholesterol kit. You will be amazed at what you find out.

Candida infection can also invade the liver. This is not widely known or accepted in this country, but Russian venerealogists and textbooks outline this danger of the strain present in America, listed in their books as Candida Albicans Northamericansis.

Candidiasis of the liver cause it to swell up to twice its size, and can cause it to metabolize cholesterol incorrectly. Topical treatments for Candida do not address the full invasion of the body, and systemic anti-fungal treatment is required. In addition, both partners in a relationship need to be treated to avoid re-infection, whether the man is overtly symptomatic or not.

There are dozens of herbs recommended for the liver, and I have personally tested quite a few. While many seem to help in the short run, the problems always seem to re-emerge. What does work, in my experience, is eliminating all offending items from the diet and environment, not as easy as a “magic bullet”, but very effective, and good for the general health as well.

Fortunately the liver has a miraculous power to heal quickly, in as little as a day or two, or several weeks in more serious cases. You can measure your progress with a drugstore kit, or with a more formal blood or liver panel.

DISCLAIMER
This commentary is the personal opinion of the writer, not a substitute for professional medical prevention, diagnosis, or treatment. Please consult with your physician, pharmacist, or health care provider before taking any home remedies or supplements or following any treatment.  Only your health care provider, personal physician, or pharmacist can provide you with advice on what is safe and effective for your unique needs or diagnose your particular medical history.

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