The choices you make on household product purchases, food consumption and daily activity can have positive or negative effects on your liver. To safeguard your healthy liver, it is important that you understand the critical roles the liver plays in maintaining your overall health and how activities that you may take for granted can help or hurt this vital organ. By learning more about your liver and how you can keep it healthy, you may actually help reduce your risk of developing not only liver disease but also other health conditions including diabetes and heart disease.
Click the icons below to learn about different risks and what you can do to keep your liver safe. Many chemicals that are intentionally or accidentally inhaled or consumed can have toxic effects on the liver. Among these chemicals are drugs both prescription and over-the-counter , industrial solvents and pollutants.
The following are some tips to help safeguard your liver health and ensure the medications and remedies you need to take to achieve their desired effect:. Over-the-Counter Pain Killers. It is used in a variety of conditions to relieve headaches, muscle and joint pain, pain during menstruation, and to reduce fever.
All drugs, even over-the-counter ones, have potentially harmful side effects. Since many drugs medications, including acetaminophen, have to be processed by the liver, people with liver disease have to be especially careful about what and how much medication they take. Accidental acetaminophen overdoses are responsible for many hospital admissions, and overdose can lead to death both in children and adults. It is therefore vital that you take whatever steps possible to reduce this risk.
Here is some valuable advice:. It is very important to speak to your doctor about the risks and benefits of all medications before making the decision to take them. Alcohol Consumption. When you have a glass of wine, beer, or other liquor, your liver is responsible for processing this alcohol and detoxifying your blood. Breaking down alcohol is only one of more than vital functions performed by your liver.
This means it can only handle so much alcohol at once. The consequences of this abuse may be the destruction of liver cells, a build-up of fat deposits in your liver fatty liver , or more seriously, liver inflammation alcoholic hepatitis , permanent scarring cirrhosis and even liver cancer. The following are some tips to consider when deciding whether you should have that first drink or order the next round:.
Body Beautification. Body art, piercings, painted nails and toes are all forms of self-expression. They may serve as a memento to mark a special occasion, a way of symbolizing what you value or just a spontaneous self-indulgent splurge. Whatever the motivation behind them, these body beautification rituals all carry a degree of risk if not done correctly.
Inadequately sterilized tools, reused needles or contaminated inks could expose you to hepatitis B or C — two blood-borne viruses that can cause severe and potentially fatal liver disease. To help ensure that a decorated body is the only thing you walk away with, here are a few simple steps you can take:.
Here are some additional points to inquire about before and during your visit to a spa, tattoo shop, or other location that provides body beautification services. Protecting your liver while travelling can be as easy as taking some preventative steps before you leave home and following a few simple precautions while you are away. Before your trip 3 months prior to departure.
Before you get involved in any kind of sexual activity, it is important to know the risks and how to protect both you and your partner. Hepatitis is a liver disease that can be transmitted sexually. The most common forms are hepatitis A, B and C. Hepatitis A.
How can it be transmitted sexually? Hepatitis A is not usually transmitted through sexual activity. How can I protect myself and my partner? Hepatitis B. Hepatitis B is significantly more infectious than AIDS and carries a high risk of sexual transmission. Exposure to blood, semen, vaginal discharge or other bodily fluids during sex can put you at risk of contracting hepatitis B. Hepatitis B vaccines are available and are given in three doses over a period of six months.
Hepatitis C. The risk of contracting hepatitis C through sex is very low. There is no vaccine for hepatitis C so the best approach is to adopt safer sex practices and take precautions to avoid any accidental contact with blood. Chemicals in the Home. Not only does your liver metabolize what goes in your body, but it also metabolizes what goes on your body.
This includes inhaling, ingesting, or simply coming into physical contact with chemical cleaning agents. Today, it is the key ingredient of many alternative cleaning recipes. Soap biodegrades safely and completely, and is non-toxic.
Make sure that you use soap without synthetic scents, colours or other additives. Washing soda should not be used on aluminum. Want your home to smell clean and fresh?
Try the all-natural air purifiers — house plants. Or try these natural solutions to diminish odour and add a fragrant smell to your house:. References: Basic Ingredients for Green Cleaning. Greenpeace Canada. Greening up your spring cleaning. Simple Earth Media. Food and Drink. It helps power your body by storing and releasing energy when you need it. Your liver plays a key role in converting food into the chemicals essential for life and it is therefore important to make food choices that optimize liver health.
Your liver cares about everything you eat and drink, every single day. Too much sugar and saturated fat in your diet can have a similar effect as too much alcohol — fat build-up in the liver. When it is full of fat, the liver cannot perform all of its functions, and it can become progressively more damaged to the point of developing cirrhosis and even cancer. If you want a healthy liver, the best strategy is to make healthier choices on a daily basis.
This is exciting news for Canadians. Emerging as important concepts within the new food Guidelines are a renewed focus on plant-based foods, lower intakes of processed foods that contain higher levels of sugar, a background on saturated fat intake, and a less direct emphasis on dairy products.
What does this mean for Canadians living with liver disease? Click here to read more. What is sodium? Sodium is a mineral that is required for maintaining blood pressure and a normal fluid balance in the body and transmitting nerve impulses. Is sodium the same as salt?
Table salt sodium chloride is the most common form of sodium. Others include sodium bicarbonate baking soda , sodium benzoate preservative , sodium cyclamate sweetener and sodium nitrate preservative. How much sodium is in table salt? Table salt is about 40 per cent sodium. One teaspoon of salt contains approximately milligrams mg of sodium. Most Canadians consume far more sodium than is needed. The recommended amount per day is between mg considered adequate intake and mg upper amount for people 9 years of age.
For people over 50 years of age, an adequate intake drops to mg per day until 70 and then mg over 70 years of age. However, the average daily intake in the Canadian diet is about mg of sodium, although many Canadians eat well in excess of mg per day. Can I get too much sodium? The higher your sodium intake, the greater risk you are at for high blood pressure and stroke.
If high blood pressure is already present, a high sodium intake may make it worse. High blood pressure is a health risk associated with heart and kidney disease. It is a good idea to have your blood pressure checked regularly by a health care provider.
Often an individual can be unaware of having high blood pressure. How does sodium relate to my liver disease? As the function of the liver deteriorates, fewer proteins such as albumin are produced, resulting in an accumulation of fluid in the abdominal cavity known as ascites and in the legs and feet, known as edema.
Both conditions result from an abnormal accumulation of sodium associated with portal hypertension and liver disease. Patients with ascites should restrict their sodium intake to no more than mg per day. Do I have to avoid all salty foods? Not necessarily all the time. However, if you want to lower your sodium intake to meet current recommendations, you should avoid eating salty foods on a daily basis.
Your physician will advise you as to whether or not you need to restrict your sodium intake. Learning to read food labels to check the sodium level per serving will help you to compare foods for sodium content and to make food choices with lower sodium content.
Always taste before salting! After you've eaten something, the vitamins, minerals, and other nutrients from the food pass from the intestine into the blood. Before going out to the rest of the body, the nutrient-rich blood makes a stop at the liver. The liver processes the good stuff into forms that the rest of the body can use.
Waste or stuff your body doesn't need can be carried by bile back into the intestine and out of the body when you poop. Other waste processed by the liver goes through your blood to your kidneys and out in your pee. And, if you ever accidentally ate something that was harmful, your liver would try to break it down and clear it out of your system. But don't put your liver to the test! Steer clear of poisons and other harmful stuff. As you probably know, the digestive system does more than just move food through your body until it's time for a trip to the bathroom.
During digestion, your body takes everything your body needs from the food you eat. Fat is one of the things the body gets from food.
Bile, a digestive juice produced by the liver, helps the body absorb fat into the bloodstream. The liver consists of four lobes, which are each made up of eight sections and thousands of lobules or small lobes. Functions of the Liver The liver is an essential organ of the body that performs over vital functions. Here are some of its most important functions: Albumin Production : Albumin is a protein that keeps fluids in the bloodstream from leaking into surrounding tissue.
It also carries hormones, vitamins, and enzymes through the body. Bile Production : Bile is a fluid that is critical to the digestion and absorption of fats in the small intestine.
Filters Blood : All the blood leaving the stomach and intestines passes through the liver, which removes toxins, byproducts, and other harmful substances. Regulates Amino Acids : The production of proteins depend on amino acids. The liver makes sure amino acid levels in the bloodstream remain healthy. Regulates Blood Clotting : Blood clotting coagulants are created using vitamin K, which can only be absorbed with the help of bile, a fluid the liver produces.
Resists Infections : As part of the filtering process, the liver also removes bacteria from the bloodstream. Processes Glucose : The liver removes excess glucose sugar from the bloodstream and stores it as glycogen. As needed, it can convert glycogen back into glucose. The rest will be used to make other important chemicals the body needs. When the liver is severely damaged, such as in liver failure , it can't continue to process nutrients from the blood that the body must have.
Without aggressive medical care, the absence of these essential liver functions can result in signs of serious illness like brain damage and coma. Bile is a thick, green-yellow fluid that the liver produces to help digest food, especially fat, as it passes from the stomach to the intestines. This fluid is made in the liver but is stored in a nearby sac called the gallbladder. When a person eats a meal heavy in fat, like a juicy steak, the body will use its store of bile to help break down the fats in the steak for digestion.
All of the blood in the body will eventually pass through the liver. This is important because the liver needs to pull out any bad things in the blood, such as toxins, and remove them from the body. It metabolizes many drugs and alcohol and helps remove other toxins such as damaged cells, proteins and old hormones. The liver prepares all of these types of toxins to be removed from the body.
However, when the liver is damaged, these toxins can't be removed and they start to accumulate creating problems. A protein is a complex chemical that is essential to living things, like plants, animals, and people. Proteins are everywhere in the body and need to be constantly produced. The liver is in charge of building many kinds of proteins that the body uses every day. For instance, there are many proteins produced by the liver that is responsible for blood clotting. When the liver is damaged, sometimes the body isn't able to clot blood effectively.
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