Have you thanked your liver today?

Our livers are pretty amazing organs. One of their many roles is to metabolize compounds that can have toxic effects and convert them into a form that can be easily excreted from the body. Back in preindustrial days, these toxins mainly consisted of the breakdown products of hormones and neurotransmitters as well as naturally occurring toxic compounds in the foods that we ingest. Over the past 100 years they have had to rapidly adapt as our modern industrial society exposes us to more and more toxic compounds. The word “toxin” itself does not describe a specific class of compounds, but rather something that can cause harm to the body. More specifically, a toxin or toxic substance is a chemical or mixture that may injure or present an unreasonable risk of injury to the health of an exposed organism. Some examples of toxins include industrial chemicals and combustion pollutants, pesticides, toxic elements, food additives, plastic byproducts, metabolites of our own hormones and neurotransmitters, and pharmaceutical medications.

 To give the liver an even greater challenge, most toxins are fat soluble, which makes it harder for them to be excreted in the urine, sweat, and feces. It also makes it easier for them to find their way into our cells. In order to try to get rid of them, the liver (primarily) has a complex system of enzymes that help convert these fat-soluble compounds into water soluble compounds that can more easily be excreted. There is a great deal of genetic variability in how this system works. In some people this process occurs more slowly while in others it happens more quickly. This partially explains why one person can drink a cup of coffee in the morning and be up all night while the next person is not affected.

Most toxins have to go through a two-step process in order to be able to be excreted from the body. Our nutrition can have a big effect on how well this two-step process works. Certain foods and compounds slow parts of it down while others speed it up. When things are out of balance the process can go awry and even more damaging compounds can be produced.

By supporting the detoxification pathways with proper nutrition and focused nutritional supplementation, we can help to increase the efficiency and safety of how the body detoxifies compounds, helping to lower our overall toxic load and decreasing the potential damage to our health.