The liver is a wedge-shaped organ located on the right side, just under the rib cage, extending just across the midline to the heart.  The liver is the largest organ besides the skin, and weighs around 3 pounds. The liver has over 5000 jobs including, cleansing the blood of toxins and producing bile- a liquid that helps digest food. The liver takes what we eat and drink and turns it into energy and nutrients. The liver also helps the body use carbs, helps the blood clot, and is the hub of all emotions.

Livers have the ability to grow back, to an extent, when damaged or parts are removed. When stress is taken off the liver, and it gets all its nutritional needs met, the liver can be totally restored in as little as 90 days.

Nearly 3 pints of blood are filtered through the liver every 60 seconds, so it works HARD. Flooding the liver with more toxins than it can process can lead to liver damage. Fats and bile within the liver may easily become oversaturated with oil-soluble toxins, synthetic chemicals, and heavy metals. Alcohol can be damaging to the liver. So can Acetaminophen (aspirin), which is found in over 600 prescription and OTC drugs, including cold and cough medicines and pain relievers, and can cause serious liver damage. In fact, acetaminophen is the #1 cause of acute liver failure and contributes to 70% of liver related deaths in the U.S.

An unhealthy liver is oftentimes undetected. As many as HALF of people with liver disease don’t have any symptoms. If you do experience symptoms, they are often overlooked because they include common things like achy muscles, being very tired all the time, and itchy irritated skin, which are all very vague symptoms. More symptoms include swelling in the belly, dark urine, confusion, or yellowing of the eyes or skin. Liver spots, or dark spots on the skin, are also a sign that the liver is overflowing with toxins and needs a break.

Since the liver is such a VITAL organ and a foundational cornerstone to our general health, it deserves a lot of love.

There are many small things that we can avoid using in our day-to-day that have huge positive impact on the health of our liver.

The first step to improving any health-related issue is to stop poisoning yourself. This means reducing your exposure to toxins where ever possible. This is no small task, but it’s not hard either. I have an “easy button” for living this way, and it’s called Young Living®. Statistically, we are exposed to more toxins in one day than our grandparents were exposed to in their entire lifetime. That is putting a lot of added workload on our liver, so all my household cleaning items, personal care products, cosmetics, and many of our OTC needs are met with Young Living®, and I don’t have to worry about label reading because everything they make is high quality and uses the cleanest, healthiest ingredients possible. I’m not big on DIY things, mostly because I don’t have time, but also because nothing I make is going to be tested for effectiveness and quality like something I buy, so if Young Living® sells it, I buy it from them; with a few exceptions.

The next step to improving heath is reducing stress to the area. In this case we’re talking about the liver, so reduce stress on the liver. Well, if you follow step 1 then you will already take a huge burden off your liver. But the liver handles a lot of our emotional load as well, so reducing emotional stress is important too. This is such an elaborate topic that I’ve given it its own spotlight here.

The third step to any health regimen is to feed the body. That is, give it all the tools it needs to heal itself. That is what we are going to talk about here.

There are many foods that support liver function, but a person has to eat such high volumes of healthy stuff that most of us fall EXTREMELY short. I am a major supporter of nutritional supplements, but not all supplements are created equal. Most of them contain the cheapest, most readily available synthetic form of nutrient that the body does not utilize the same as a whole-food sourced, real synergy of nutrition. Many nutritional supplements are just plain phony. My trusted source for nutritional supplements is Young Living®. Gary Young spent his life studying herbs and essential oils, and if you never had the privilege of hearing him speak and getting to know him as a person, you really missed out.  

One of my favorite ways to feed the liver is with JuvaPower™. JuvaPower is a whole-food, super-food powder that we use to season things like eggs, potatoes, soups, or whatever. The ingredients in this supplement are some of the most powerful acid-binding foods to remove acids from the liver. Not only does it fortify with optimum nutrition, but it acts as a liver and colon cleanse.

Ingredients include: Rice seed, Spinach leaf, Tomato flakes, beet root, flax seed, oat seed bran, broccoli, cucumber, dill seed, sprouted barley seed, ginger root, psyllium seed husk,  anise seed,  fennel seed, anise seed, aloe vera, and essential oils. All these are nutrient-dense, antioxidative, and cleansing to the organs.

Then there is JuvaTone™  which is a super-food capsule designed to feed the liver and support elimination. It is important to focus on colon cleansing alongside liver support because the liver empties its toxic load into the intestines for elimination. Keeping the downstream flow moving efficiently will prevent the toxins from being redistributed into the organs for storage if things get backed up.

JuvaTone™ is rich in amino acids and trace minerals coming from its whole-food ingredients of:

Choline Bitartrate which is brain food, but it has been used with many liver disorders, including elevated cholesterol levels.

DL-methionine is one of the most powerful antioxidants and plays an important role of protecting the liver

Beet Root cleans and nourishes the liver and purifies the blood.

Inositol is a vitamin B-like compound shown to help improve insulin sensitivity, reduce triglyceride levels, and supports reproductive processes. It helps the liver rid itself of fat and bile.

Di-calcium Phosphate (Calcium) has too many health benefits to mention here, but its use in JuvaTone™ is to aid the assimilation of the other ingredients.

L-cysteine promotes production of glutathione, which is a powerful antioxidant for protecting the liver.

Alfalfa Sprouts are loaded with nutrients and are a natural source for the enzyme amylase that digests proteins.

Oregon Grape Root contains berberine which has been studied as a liver detoxifier and improves fat digestion, which likely will lead to a clear complexion as a nice little bonus.

Parsley is widely known for its cleansing properties.

Bee Propolis is a sticky “bee glue” that holds the hive together. Like honey and royal jelly, propolis has many health benefits including supporting liver detox. If you are allergic to bees, you will want to skip JuvaTone™.

Copper Citrate is used by the body to manufacture enzymes, many of which work as antioxidants.

Echinacea is supportive of the digestive system, stimulates the immune system, and absorbs toxins in the colon.

JuvaTone™ contains many of the same essential oils that make up JuvaFlex™ essential oil blend, which makes JuvaFlex™ the perfect companion to JuvaTone for topical application to the liver.

The essential oils of fennel, geranium, rosemary, roman chamomile, blue tansy, and helichrysum are all supportive of bile flow, oxygenation, digesting toxins, and generally oxidative.

JuvaFlex Vitality™ is the same exact oil blend, but it is labeled for internal use. Add 3-6 drops to an empty veggie capsule topped off with coconut or olive oil, 1-2 times per day.

Detoxzyme™ is an enzyme complex that will provide the liver all the enzymes it needs to perform its nightly emptying out into the intestines. Read more on this here.

Drink 2-6 ounces of Ningxia Red™ juice every single day. The information on this incredible drink is abundant, so no need to get into here, but if you want to love on your liver, Ningxia Red™ needs to be on your supplement list. Ningxia Red™ is unlike any other antioxidant drink of its kind with the highest antioxidant rating of 36,300 on the ORAC scale, miles ahead of its closest competitor. If you do nothing else for your general health, at least drink Ningxia Red™!

The liver is the body’s major detoxifier. Everything from the air we breathe, the toxins in our household products, and the food we eat all get filtered through the liver. While reducing your exposure to these things by the tiniest amount will have a great impact on the liver’s work load, eventually the filter will just need a good cleaning. This is where JuvaCleanse Vitality™ essential oil blend shines.

JuvaCleanse™ is made up of 3 single oils:

Helichrysum regenerates tissue and improves circulation. It stimulates liver cell function and removes plaque from veins.

Celery Seed is a powerful detoxifier.

Ledum has been shown in clinical studies to protect the liver and increase bile flow, as well as detoxifying fat from the liver.

In 2003 a study conducted by Roger Lewis, MD, at the Young Life Research Clinic in Springville, Utah, evaluated the efficacy of helichrysum, ledum, and celery seed in treating cases of hepatis C.

In one case a 20-year-old male diagnosed with Hepatitis C had a viral count of 13,200. After taking 2 capsules (approx 750 mg each) of JuvaCleanse™ per day for one month with no other intervention, the patient’s viral count dropped more than 80% to 2,580. (Essential Oil Desk Reference: Sixth Edition)

So, 3 ways to love your liver;

1. Reduce physical and emotional stress. 
2. Give the liver all the tools it needs to thrive. Feed that liver with good quality whole-food supplements so it has the building blocks to regenerate and repair for daily maintenance.
3. Help it stay clean using essential oils and Ningxia Red™ to help protect the cells and digest some of the toxins for the liver.

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