Good evening dear family and friends. I have missed providing you a blog last week due to an unexpected and untimely death of a dear family member on my mom’s side. I had to fly out of state for a brief timeframe and the sadness and overwhelm caught up with me. I will miss my cousin immensely, but I know her children will miss her more than words can ever say. So, thank you for your understanding on missing last week. Unfortunately for me, I do not recall the women in my mom’s family living into their eighties, but short of this age range. I especially remember when my mom explained how her mother died at the tender age of 58 and my mom passed at age 74. These reasons have caused me to value health more and seek to know more about healthy human matters and share that with others.
One of the three major metabolic functions in our body involve the Liver, the other 2 metabolic functions involve the pancreas and the other one involves the heart organs. The liver is the 2nd largest organ in the human body (2nd to the skin organ); therefore, it may be worth take a little time to discuss a bit more about its function and ways to keep it healthy! Some of these things may sound familiar and some not so much, but here are but just a few:
When functioning at optimal levels, our liver:
Filters blood before entering the rest of the body
Stores in itself about 450ml-10% of our blood
Stores up to 65g of glycogen per 1Kg of liver tissue! And if it hits this limit then excess glucose converts to fat
Regulates adipose tissue’s (fatty tissue) ability to release glycerol and fatty acids
Takes fatty acids and glycerol and turns them into triglycerides
Releases glucose (through glycogenolysis or gluconeogenesis)
Plays a role in our bodies’ metabolism (by these very functions)
Important in detoxing toxic substances, foreign particles that enter our body (a process called xenobiotic metabolism)
Converts proteins to amino acids
Aids in the digestion by helping the other organs of the digestive system
References: Barron’s E-Z Anatomy & Physiology (2010) p. 438-440; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2GlWMvFvyU8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wpxx_TCaqQ4; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0IKeGo10lms; https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4093435/
I had to provide 50 functions of the liver as homework in my clinical herbalist coursework and it took me a while! As I began to be curious about the names of substances/processes that I didn’t know it caused me to look deeper and took more time. In today’s society stressful events, life and work balance needs and the need to mitigate “competing priorities,” as one of my old commanding officeruse to say to me, take up a lot of our time and desire to do more an learn more. Not to mention the food industry providing so many appealing sources of products to consume, easy and tasty, it is no wonder that fatty liver disease is on the rise and it has caused for many Americans to suffer from this disease that I thought it worth peaking your curiosity on this subject a bit. To become more aware of the complexities of the function of our liver and to love it a little more than usual. Taking time to make a consistent movement practice (exercise program); take care in breathing in cleaner air whenever possible and of course eating foods and medicine from the plant kingdom that will serve your body vice foods and medicine that do not fuel nor heal, hopefully doing the former brings us closer no road to our best health!
To Your Best Health!
Dr. Tee
May 2023
Ref:
References:
Barron’s E-Z Anatomy & Physiology (2010) p. 438-440
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2GlWMvFvyU8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wpxx_TCaqQ4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0IKeGo10lms
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4093435/
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