Struggling with Fatigue, Brain Fog, or Acne? Your Liver Might Be to Blame!

Introduction to Liver Health Symptoms 0:00

Do you just always feel tired? Is your brain full of fog? Do you have acne or struggling to get rid of it or a weight that you just simply can't lose? There's a reason I can tell you which cells are telling you they need help. Let's go do this together. All of these symptoms actually have something in common and you may not know what that is. These all have to do with your liver. You know, when I've talked with people and said, let's talk about liver health, they kind of look cross-eyed at me because honestly, do any of us really understand what our liver does for us?

Well, today we're going to talk about that. What does your liver do and how do you help it to be well? And why does that matter? The liver is the detox powerhouse of your body. That is where every single cell works to dump things that we don't need but also process things that we do. So I like to think of this kind of like the Amazon clearing house. You know we stamp it with things and this is going to go on this truck and this is going to go this truck. And if that liver is not functioning properly, it can do a few things.

It can hold on to toxins, to things that we're supposed to get rid of and not get rid of them properly, or it can underutilize the things that we do need to use well in our bodies.

Annau2019s Story and Liver Support 1:32

So the liver is absolutely essential for good overall wellness and health. So today we're going to dive into how do we keep our liver well. We're going to go to the kitchen, the garden, we're going to talk about stories. So glad you're here with me today. I need to tell you Anna's story. Anna worked in a hospital in a really busy ward. She was a nurse and she was feeling like she wasn't going to be able to do her job anymore. She had these kind of symptoms. She had fatigue, brain fog. She felt like her head was just underwater.

Her skin just looked really dull. She was starting to get acne. She had weight gain and she started just contributing all these things to stress. And that's what we do. We just say, well, I'm just stressed out. That's why I can't lose weight or I'm eating at the hospital cafeteria a lot. So that's why I'm getting weight. She also had a lot of pain underneath her right rib right here. So she was visiting chiropractors. She was getting massages and the pain was not going away. In fact, it was getting worse.

Finally, she came to see me. We did a seasons assessment and we found that it was her liver that was struggling. So We started looking at liver. What does liver do? Well liver detoxes things. That's the main purpose of the liver is to process things and detox it. So we started looking at her lifestyle. She was eating a lot of food from that cafeteria and while it was really almost her only choice, it was really poor choices. There were foods that were fatty. She was choosing them because she was tired and didn't feel good.

And it was almost like a reward to go get this fatty food that kind of tasted great, but made her feel worse at the end. So she was eating a lot of fatty foods. She also was exposed to a lot of chemicals between radiation around her and chemicals and medications and things that were all in her environment. Just because of where she worked, her body was just overburdened with all of this and the pain here. Showed her that that's what was going on. So what did we do? We started doing all the things that I'm going to share with you today.

Started really directing her diet toward bitter greens and citrus foods. Started talking to her about doing some herbal teas. And you're going to learn soon from the kitchen in the garden which herbs to use and why. She started doing all of these things supporting her liver. And guess what happened? All of a sudden, she started feeling less bloaty after eating, started feeling like things were moving through better. She started just feeling better overall. Fatigue lifted, brain fog lifted, her skin cleared.

Didn't happen overnight. None of this happens overnight, but it was honestly only about 60 days before she really noticed a pretty significant change. and none of the things that she did were major steps but they were all steps in the right direction and all steps intended to support her liver cells. That is the key. First of all figuring out which cells are struggling and then number two giving those cells exactly what those cells need.

How the Liver Detoxifies and Regenerates 4:42

So if you're struggling with things, go do the Seasons Assessment. That is going to be your starting point as well. Go find out, is your liver the starting point? Are your liver cells the ones that are struggling? And if so, then continue on with Living Well with Dr. Michelle Book and find out, what do liver cells need? There is a way to get your personalized answers for what your body and your cells are telling you right now. For Anna, it was all about her liver. So let's go learn some important things that you need to know about your liver, as well as jumping into the kitchen and the garden.

Okay, this is our something you should know section. And the thing that I want you to know about your liver is that it actually regenerates itself within a year's time. So this is true. Your entire liver is brand new this year. Literally every single cell is new within a year. So the cool thing about that is that gives you the opportunity to change every single liver cell. If you're having liver issues, if you have liver problems, which, like we've learned, show up not necessarily as liver, but not able to digest well, feeling brain foggy, fatigued, those kinds of things, you can change it all within a year's time.

So that's pretty amazing. Let's talk about how we support the liver. First of all, though, I want to talk about what in the world does the liver even do and how does it work? I like to think of the liver as kind of like Amazon's sorting center. All of these orders come in, all this stuff comes into the liver, and then the liver has to direct it where to go next. So it might be that it's a toxin. It's something that your body can't use and doesn't want to use, and it's going to discard it, and it's going to dump it.

It'll make it water soluble so that you can get rid of it through your urine. It might be that it's a nutrient that we want. It also makes it water-soluble so it can be taken up through the bloodstream and taken where it needs to go. So the liver is the sorting center. There are a lot of liver enzymes. People hear this, liver enzymes. Liver enzymes are the things that do the job. They're what break down the food, the toxins, the nutrients, the everything. into either the discardable pieces or the usable pieces.

So if your liver enzymes are elevated or low, you'll hear both of those things. It means that your liver is struggling and it's not able to do its job, which is your sorting center. There's been a lot of talk lately about red dye, right? This has now been banned. Red dye 3 has been banned. What does red dye do? Red dye affects that liver enzyme, basically a liver enzyme and a liver enzyme pathway. So your body cannot dump toxins the way it's intended to do. So when you have this dye, it will lead to toxic load buildup.

And that toxic load buildup leads to all sorts of symptoms that we identify as sometimes allergic reactions, but also just that fatigue, you run down sluggish, gaining weight, can't lose weight, all of those things. related to things that inactivate liver enzymes, which is exactly what red dye 3 does. So what can you do? There's some things you can do to help support your liver. We are going to talk about a lot of things next in the kitchen goodness section where we learn about how to feed your liver the right things, but there are also things that your liver needs to help move those toxins through and get rid of them.

One is to hydrate. Now, I know a lot of people will hear this rule of thumb that you need, you know, eight ounces or the same number of ounces as you are, body weight, all of these rules. Honestly, your thirst will usually tell you it's time to drink. But it's not a bad idea to drink even a little bit more than that when you're trying to detoxify, when you want to get things moving. They need water because that's what carries it out of your system, right, through the urine. That's what carries it out is the water.

So you need a lot of water. Along with hydration, there's something you can actually do even every single day that helps to move things out of the body,

Hydration and Dry Brushing for Detox Support 8:50

helps the liver do its job. And that's something called dry brushing. I actually have a couple of types of dry brushes. One is a full body one, looks like this. Another is for my face, it's very soft. And another is for my feet. Let me show you some tips and tricks with this. First thing we need to understand is the lymphatic system. It's actually the waste system of the body. And there are literally lymphatic lines going throughout our entire body. But it doesn't have a pump, so it can't move without us helping it.

The first thing we can do is dry brush to move it. The other thing we can do to help move our lymph is move, actually move our bodies. That also helps to move our lymph. When you're using the dry brush, you want to move things towards the drain. So there's two main drains in the body. One is right here underneath the armpits and the other is right here in that groin area. So everything is going to be moved towards the drains. So if I'm doing it up here on this section, I'm going to move it this direction.

I'm going to move it from my head down, from my shoulders down. If I'm doing it from the lower part of my body, I'll move it up to that groin area. That's the key with dry brushing. You're going to do it gently and like the name implies, it's going to be dry. So you can do it. Typically I do this before a shower. I'm going to brush. I'm going to follow instructions. You can also look on livingwellwithdrmichelle.com and I have a dry brush tutorial on there for how to do this. So the key with what you need to know about the liver is you can regenerate it.

You can strengthen it. Literally every single liver cell is going to become new within a year's time, which means you can take care of it and turn around any of those symptoms you might be experiencing. Hydration, making sure you have enough water to keep things moving, and dry brushing to move the lymph are so important. Now let's go jump into the kitchen and find out how to eat for liver health. I'm so excited to be in the kitchen now. Let's talk about my favorite kind of medicine, which is food.

And there are a lot of foods that are very beneficial for liver health. The first is bitter greens. What are bitter greens? Arugula, dandelion greens, endive, even romaine lettuce can be bitter at times. And why is that beneficial? These bitter greens are very alkalizing, first of all, and they have something called chlorophyll in them, which is very good for our cells. In fact, interestingly enough, when you look at blood cells and The things that come in plants like this, they're very close to one another.

The only difference is the blood has iron and greens have chlorophyll. So it's something that our bodies recognize as part of us and we want more of this. But how do you eat bitter greens? People may not love them. You may love them, but some people don't love them. So I'm going to show you a real quick and easy recipe for how to eat an arugula salad.

Liver-Friendly Foods in the Kitchen 11:54

So you're going to use half a lemon. You're just going to squeeze that on top of these greens right on top. Now this lemon does a couple of things. It's also alkalizing to the body and it provides a whole bunch of vitamin C, which is fabulous for providing electrons and energy. We're going to add a little bit of good olive oil. This is extra virgin, which means it has not been processed. All of these good fats are going to be available for your body when it's an unprocessed extra virgin oil. Remember it's a dark bottle and you keep this out of the sunlight to make sure that it's going to stay good for you and not rancid.

I'm going to add just a tiny bit of salt to the top of this just to give it a little kick and that's it. So I'm going to toss this Remember all it is is lemon juice, olive oil, and a little bit of salt. We're going to have that tossed salad over here. We're now going to add to that just a minute, a little bit. The other thing we're going to add is a little bit of microgreens. These are a potent medicinal plant. All sorts of good things inside of those microgreens. So a few little microgreens on top.

Now we're going to talk about citrus foods. These citrus foods are full of vitamin C. They're very good at helping the body to detox, but there's one thing to be aware of. Grapefruit actually has a component in it that neutralizes a liver enzyme that processes medicine. What does this mean for you? It means if you're on a high cholesterol medication, if you're on a high blood pressure medication, you're not going to eat grapefruit. So in those situations you're going to use an orange instead, you still get a lot of the alkalizing effect, but grapefruit is particularly good for detoxing.

How do you use it? You may have heard of something called supreming, so I'm going to walk through how to do that. What you're going to do is remove the top and the bottom of this grapefruit, then you're going to remove the outside of it all the way around, and the idea is that you're getting rid of all of the skin and all of the pith, but leaving the good grapefruit intact. A lot of times people really struggle to know how to use grapefruit and get the most out of them. So there's a couple of ways that we can cut this grapefruit.

The first is called supreming, which is the one you may have seen before. The way we do this is we just find one of those membranes, work our way down it, go down the other side, and move that piece out. If you don't want to supreme all the way around, what you can also do Cut the grapefruit in half and I use my knife and just remove that center portion where all the membranes and all the seeds are. That's honestly part, mostly what you don't like to eat. Then I flip this over and I just make some small little slices.

This is actually the faster way to prepare a grapefruit for this salad. So now we put that on the side. I'm going to also show you the same thing with this orange. You can do the same thing with the orange that has seeds in it. You're going to remove that center portion that has all of those seeds. We're not going to take the outside off. Usually I would. We're just going to remove that center portion with all of the seeds in it like this. That way we can use a seeded orange and it gives you the beautiful flesh without having to worry about all those seeds.

So to recap here, what do we have? Bitter greens tossed with some electron bringing vitamin C, great for your cells, great for you. A little bit of salt, which is real salt, always also brings those minerals, and some good fats. Interestingly enough, if you don't have these fats here, you're not going to be able to absorb the fat soluble vitamins that are in this food. Arugula, a little bit of microgreens on top to give it another push of that chlorophyll, the bitterness, and really a punch of nutrients, and then that cut citrus.

This is a beautiful salad. This is fabulous for your liver to support your liver health, liver strength, help your liver to do its job, which is to detoxify you. What can we learn about the liver standing here in the garden? Well, as you have learned in the book Living Well with Dr. Michelle, the liver is all about the season of spring. And in the season of spring, the first thing that happens is things start to come up. And these plants that come up, we often call them weeds, but I like to call them pioneer plants.

Why? Well, these pioneer plants are the first ones that show up, so they are strong, they're resilient, they're hardy, and often the things that they bring to our bodies are the things that they're bringing deep from in the earth, but they're also bringing that resilience, that strength, that hardiness with them. So when we eat these pioneer plants, either in a salad or in a tea, what we're doing is bringing those properties that they got from the earth to our bodies. And they're really helping to strengthen our body's ability to get rid of things.

Because that's what the spring is all about. It's about getting rid of the old, all of the things that we, you know, finished harvesting and the waste from last fall. The ground's been regenerating. It's been feeding all of these good nutrients into these first pioneer plants. And then when we eat them, we get all of that. So it regenerates the body. It helps the body to detox as well. What are some of these plants? Dandelion leaves. Now my husband's a little particular about this. He doesn't like me intentionally planting dandelions.

Spring Plants and Herbal Liver Remedies 17:18

I don't know why, but so thankfully dandelions come up on their own whether you plant them or not. So occasionally we'll have some dandelions around and I make sure to go and harvest them because they are fabulous for liver health. Another plant that comes up in the spring is milk thistle. Again, one that my husband will not allow me to grow intentionally because milk thistle spreads with seeds and it's really, we call it a noxious weed, you know, it's not one that we want to grow. The milk thistle is also incredible for liver health.

So we can learn from the garden. We can say, okay, which plants are coming up right now early in the spring? Those are the plants that are going to be great for liver health. We don't have to grow them though. We don't have to grow a field full of dandelions or a field full of milk thistle to get the benefits from either of those plants. A great way to do it is with dandelion leaves you can actually get them and use them as a salad. So go to your health food store. You can find them there. An even easier way to do this is using dandelion root.

Now why would you use the root but dandelion root tea? You're going to use the root because the root is where all of those good nutrients from the soil soaked in basically. You're going to have a lot more nutrients that are good for liver in the root. So you're going to do a dandelion root tea. You also can do a milk thistle tea. Milk thistle doesn't taste bad. You can add it to a smoothie. You can throw it in there. These are things that I really encourage when you are working on your liver health, which is going to show up as brain fog, sluggishness, fatigue, acne, weight gain, things that we've talked about.

Basically, it's you not being able to dump toxins. So when you're feeling like that, go get some dandelion root tea, some milk thistle that you can throw in a smoothie, and see if you can't learn what the garden is showing us that these pioneer plants are so good for regenerating and just replenishing your body and giving it the ability to dump toxins. Thank you so much. Let's do a wrap up. Thanks for joining me today. You know, the liver honestly is one of the unsung heroes of the body. As you've learned, it's so important.

And a lot of the things that we hear on headlines like red dye have everything to do with the liver. So you've learned that there are things that you can do to support liver function, whether it is foods, you eat foods, you don't eat timing of when you

Wrap-Up and Key Takeaways 19:48

take care of your liver and how to really support its function. These are all such crucial needs for wellness. And hopefully you have some small doable things that you can now take home and do today. to encourage your liver because when your liver is well, you're well. Thanks for joining me today.