In Brief

• The Facts:

  Your liver is #1 protector. There are many myths surrounding the liver that impede its ability to do its job. These myths include taking ox bile, doing liver flushes, doing coffee enemas, avoiding fructose, drinking apple cider vinegar, and more.

• Reflect On:

  Besides avoiding the popular liver myths listed in this article, avoid eating too many fats, processed or raw, and increase your uptake of nutrient-dense, antioxidant-rich foods like fruit, vegetables, and herbs.

If you haven’t picked up a copy of Medical Medium’s new book, “Liver Rescue,” do yourself a favour today and get one. The book is a four-hundred page encyclopedia of in-depth knowledge regarding our liver, knowledge which has yet to be discovered by medical research, knowledge which could save you and your family’s and friends’ lives.

If you think that your liver is in pristine shape, you’re about to learn otherwise—in this day and age our livers are under tremendous pressure from the onslaught of pathogens and environmental toxins in our food, air, water, hygiene products, clothing, and households. And even if you grew up eating ‘clean,’ drinking clean water and living in a natural environment, your liver could be holding poisons (like toxic heavy metals) from many generations before you, passed down from your mother and grandmother.

What drove me to want to learn more about my liver came out of two factors. One, I grew up with a mouth full of amalgam (mercury) fillings, and two, in 2014 I had a severe mono and hepatitis A infection which nearly caused my liver to fail. So I knew that there was deep damage that had occurred from these two factors alone, not to mention that I grew up on a standard American diet (SAD) full of processed junk and void of fresh fruits and vegetables. Not to mention all of those years of binge drinking alcohol in my teens and early twenties (dare I say more).

Your liver is your number one protector

What I love most about Anthony William’s books is that they give us a unique understanding of the processes happening within the body. He humanizes our livers and helps us see how hard this organ is working for us at all times.

Our livers have been our number one protectors from the time we were in our mother’s wombs. That is its sole job—to protect us from the unfathomable amount of toxins in our environment. This protection code was passed down from your mother’s liver, to never give up on you, to take on the brunt of every pathogen, every toxin, and excess adrenaline that you come into contact with. It will do so with unwavering loyalty and commitment, even until its own demise. But we must not let this happen. At some point we must give back to this precious organ, we must swoop in and say enough is enough, it’s time to heal our livers.

Cleansing the liver cleans your blood and lymphatic system, loosens fat cells in the liver, and soothes the adrenal glands.

But cleansing the liver works best in baby steps; think about your lifetime accumulation of toxic heavy metals, viruses, and chemicals. To super-punch your liver all at once is a sure-fire way to cause too many toxins to release into the body without the chance of being properly eliminated. Then guess what happens to all of those excess toxins? They get reabsorbed by the liver.

But if we can learn to work with the liver, especially avoiding the damaging fads covered later in this article, we are that much closer to a life of peace. William says it perfectly,

“Imagine a world without chronic anger, without the suffering of babies and children, without aches and pains, without sleepless nights, without uncontrollable weight gain, without gnawing hunger, without out-of-rhythm hearts, without hot flashes and night sweats, without mood swings, without raging rashes, without roiling intestines, without back-up bowels, without blood sugar spikes and drops, without strokes, without heart attacks, without cancer. That’s a world of peaceful livers. Imagine how much kinder we would all be to each other and ourselves if we didn’t feel awful, or frightened of feeling awful, all the time.” Medical Medium: Liver Rescue, p. 256

How long does it take the liver to regenerate?

While there is no exact science that will tell us how long it takes for all of our cells to fully renew and regenerate, in the case of the liver, its peacekeeping job is so pertinent that it must run on a strict renewal clock. As William says, that number is nine.

The liver regenerates itself in cycles of three, a third every three years for a total nine year cycle.

The liver renews itself in thirds over nine year cycles. Usually, three months before a three-year mark is when renewal will pick up speed, and the liver will work on a fast, serious cell overhaul. Within just those few months, the liver can regenerate a third of its working cells. The same thing will happen again at the next three-year mark, renewing another third, and so on for the next three year cycle. It’s the same time table for everyone.

But don’t get too excited. Just because they are new cells does not mean they are clean. If you aren’t actively doing the work to cleanse the liver throughout your life, the new cells can get contaminated by toxic cells from the past. However, if you do the work to support your liver through a healthy lifestyle, you have hope of regenerating even the most damaged cells. As he states, make a point to eat clean in the months leading up to your 27th, 36th, 45th, 60th birthday; this means more antioxidant-rich foods like fruit and green juices, while minimizing fat. This will give a great boost during your regeneration cycles.

Common liver detox myths – What to avoid

Ox bile

While taking ox bile seems like a fail-proof method to increase bile production to breakdown fats, William states that our livers simply don’t like it. “[Ox bile] doesn’t fix the problem of weak digestion. It doesn’t fix the problem of your liver being stagnant or sluggish or underproducing its own bile.”

Apparently, ox bile is like an alien creature to our liver, and that it contains hundreds of undiscovered chemical compounds that are foreign to our stomach. These foreign enzymes are disruptive to the endocrine system, immune system, and nervous system. He says that medical science will never have the money or time to invest in the proper research that is needed to discover all of these qualities. When we take ox bile its like a shock to an already over-burdened liver.

The logic behind eating ox bile is similar to the age-old logic that eating liver will help regenerate your liver, or eating kidney will help regenerate your kidneys. Instead of ox bile, William suggests drinking celery juice. The mineral salts in celery juice will provide the liver with the proper tools to help build bile levels naturally.

Eating liver

When we understand the true function of our livers, it is then easy to understand why eating an animal’s liver makes no sense. The liver is a toxic reservoir, which means consuming liver is consuming poison. Even wild animals living in a pristine environment have livers ridden with adrenaline due to their fight or flight lifestyle. And while the liver does hold nutrients deep within its tissues, to get there you must pass layers of toxic waste. On the same note as the ox bile, animal livers contain compounds incompatible to the human body. And don’t even think about human livers, they are cesspools of toxins like plastics, radiation, DDT, viruses, bacteria, heavy metals, and the list goes on.

Liver flushes

The liver does not respond well to rigorous cleansing. If you push, it pushes back. If you push more it performs less, and it may even go into shutdown mode while doing a more aggressive cleanse.

When a liver flush is done wrong against the liver’s will, the bloodstream is where those toxins end up. This puts the brain and heart under direct attack by toxic sludge, which can cause erratic heartbeats, stress on the heart, inflammation, elevated adrenaline, and electrical confusion of the heart, all while you are busy looking for stones in the toilet.

William makes another controversial claim—those liver stones aren’t stones at all. They’re fatty globules formed by the ingestion of olive oil which coagulate in the colon and are then expelled. While Gallstones are a thing, they too are not what is passed during a gallbladder flush.  Drinking a heaping amount of oil is a shock to the liver and gallbladder; it shuts down its many important functions to deal with the megadose of fat. The liver is then forced to produce an emergency level of bile to protect the pancreas, and those who already have a weak pancreas become high risk for developing pancreatitis.

Instead of stressing the liver and gallbladder through a flush, William suggests reducing fat and protein intake while increasing your intake of greens (spinach, kale, radishes, mustard greens, celery, and asparagus) and fruits like cherries, berries, melons, lemons, limes, oranges, grapefruit, tomatoes, and pineapple. Doing this will help dissolve the stones over time.

Fructose intolerance

Fructose intolerance is perhaps one of the most dangerous myths out there, because if you avoid fruit sugars, your liver will never heal, says William. Fructose often gets lumped in with lactose (dairy sugar) and gluten in naming which foods feed viruses and other pathogens.

Furthermore, William says that “it’s impossible for any test in any lab or clinic to separate out fructose and know what it specifically does inside the body.” It is part of the anti-healthy carb/anti-fruit movement that robs people of the very foods that heal their chronic conditions. The liver especially needs fructose to restore and defend itself. The issue is completely misunderstood—when people experience negative symptoms from eating fruit what they’re really facing are detox symptoms brought on by the fruits cleansing properties.

Anti-fruit practitioners almost always are high-fat advocates, which only promotes keeping the blood and liver toxic. William also makes a distinction for those diagnosed with hereditary fructose intolerance (HFI). He says that no one with HFI is completely missing specific enzymes, but rather all of their enzyme levels and chemical functions are low due to having a degenerate liver.

The key is to do the opposite of avoiding fruit: eat lots of it, which restores a stagnant liver and brings back all of the missing enzymes and chemical functions. The same goes for people diagnosed with fructose malabsorption; excess fructose is being picked up in the blood because the intestinal tract is filled with rancid fats which are not being broken down due to a sluggish liver. The solution is simple: reduce fats, which in turn keeps the blood-fat ratio balanced, reducing any of the aforementioned symptoms when consuming fructose.

Apple cider vinegar (ACV)

ACV is thought to create alkalinity and improve digestion. While apples themselves are miracle cures, William says that ACV has more bad than good properties. The good comes from ACV’s host of minerals, amino acids, phytochemicals and other nutrients from the apples themselves and the microorganisms from fermentation.

ACV is the best vinegar to use if you are going to use vinegar; however, our livers do not like vinegar in the same way they despise alcohol. When we consume vinegar, it mixes with the natural salts in your blood stream and creates a pickling effect in the body. While this may not cause negative symptoms from eating a salad here and there, consuming ACV daily in flushes or shots will eventually add up.

ACV comes into the stomach extremely acidic, which causes the liver to try to alkalize or neutralize it. This weakens the hydrochloric acid and breaks down the gastric juices, and as the ACV continues to the liver it gives the liver a shot of acidosis. Again, it’s not the worst thing for the liver, but it’s far from cleansing.

Coffee enemas

Coffee enemas are gaining popularity in the treatment of chronic diseases like colon cancer, and while the aim of coffee enemas are admirable (detoxing the liver), the truth is that coffee is an acidic, dehydrating, and stimulating liquid.

As Anthony explains, drinking coffee is much different than inserting it rectally. This is because our stomachs have built-in protective measures to safe-guard you against coffee’s effects. When coffee enters the stomach, alarm bells ring in the pancreas, liver, and intestinal tract. It is dispersed and diffused properly by the time it enters the bloodstream.

When coffee enters the rectum, it enters the blood directly and its stimulating effect shocks the nervous system and the adrenals release adrenaline. The liver despises adrenaline, claims Anthony, and it then has to soak it all up to protect your heart. Caffeine creates a constant adrenaline surge, but this is especially the case when caffeine is administered through the rectum.

Also important to note: some of the toxins purged from the liver by the caffeine end up being reabsorbed by the liver because they cannot all be properly eliminated from the body. Anthony suggests that enemas can be extremely beneficial in detoxing the liver, but to use filtered lemon water instead, which cleanses the liver without the added adrenaline rush.

Beets

Beets are often hailed as the liver detox go-to food, and while they do have blood-cleansing abilities, the issue, William says, is that organic, non-GMO beets are difficult to come by these days due to cross-pollination. Cross-pollination is becoming such an issue that even organic beets can be tainted at the seed.

It may not be the greatest reason to stop eating beets altogether, however there are many other liver-cleansing fruit that do the job much more effectively. For example, red pitaya (dragon fruit), or wild blueberries pack a far more powerful detoxing punch.

Highly alkaline water

When asking the question, ‘do we need to drink alkaline water?’, Anthony brings it back to the liver. He says that a higher pH water will not further cleanse the liver, and that when highly alkaline water hits the stomach, the stomach must compensate and try to bring that pH down. The same goes for drinking acidic water, but in this case the stomach must bring the pH up. This uses the stomach’s reserves, energy, and seven-acid blend, as well as pancreatic strength and enzymes, to change the water’s structure so that it is safe to release into the intestinal tract.

When a large amount of alkaline or acidic water is consumed at once, the stomach must pass the neutralization job to the liver. The liver uses a special bile store that traps the water until it is at an acceptable pH. This special bile is made up of enzymes, minerals, and hormones that the liver stores long-term, and using this store slows down the liver’s main functions quite substantially. William states that the key is to avoid drinking large amounts of alkaline water at once, or to try drinking a water with a pH of 7.5-8 instead.

Protect your liver

With over 2,000 chemical functions, your liver is a busy bee. Avoiding the aforementioned fads will ensure that your liver can do its many important jobs without distraction. At the end of the day, what is most important for healing your liver is that you are flooding your body with nutrient-dense, anti-oxidant rich foods like fruit, vegetables, and herbs, while avoiding too many fats (processed or raw). It is especially important to eat fruit alone, as eating fruit with fat will prevent our cells from absorbing all of the important nutrients.

For much more information regarding the liver, get yourself a copy of Liver Rescue today!