Karen Hoyt is a blogger who has a story about hepatitis C, cirrhosis, end-stage liver disease, liver cancer, and liver transplantation. This excerpt first appeared on Karen’s I Help C blog.

You need knowledge about how your liver works, so you can give it lots of support, and live longer, even with end stage disease. A lot of liver disease is caused from inflammation. Your liver is the target for celiac, Hepatitis, and many other diseases like Crohn’s, Nash, NAFLD, and fatty liver. They can choke and block the liver from doing its job. I learned how to be in a good relationship with my liver, and it has helped me make good choices, and kept me alive. Now I’ll share what I learned about how your liver works. It is like an oil filter, a warehouse, a transformer, and also a recycling station.


Filter
The liver is basically like an oil filter. It is tucked right under our ribs on the right side, and is the largest organ in our body. It’s a 24/7 filter. Everything we eat, drink, inhale, or put on our skin is filtered by the liver. When an oil filter in a car has been ignored, it creates engine sludge, increased engine wear, burns oil, and finally has engine seizure. The same is true of your liver. The longer you ignore the warning symptoms, the more accelerated liver disease becomes.

Transform Foods
The liver is like a transformer. It removes sugars from our intestines and stores them as glycogen. When we need some energy, it shows up and meeds our demands. if the liver is impaired, blood sugar regulation gets out of kilter. It can be a cause of diabetes.

The liver transforms animo acids into protein. It takes protein to produce the food, healing, and energy your body needs. You don’t even have to think about it. Just give it good sources of protein and carbohydrates, in the right amounts, and at the right time. If you’re not sure what to eat, read here and here or go the recipe drop down messages.

Warehouse
The liver is also like a warehouse that stores vitamins, sugars, fats, nutrients, and more. It converts all of these things into something our body can use. The liver then releases them into the bloodstream as the body needs them. It can actually take the right amount of fats and proteins and turn them into usable glucose. It is a silent partner that keeps us stocked up on what we need to stay active and healthy.

Recycling
Finally, the liver is like a recycling station that breaks down everything in our bodies that can’t be used. It discards toxins from the environment, and from our lifestyle, and creates bile. This toxin filled bile contains some extra fats, sugars and everything your body doesn’t need. It takes any poison we throw at it, and then turns it into water, or bile that can be eliminated through our urine or intestines!

It makes this liquid or bile from everything you eat, drink, inhale, or put on your skin. We need to be aware of our lifestyle because that includes food, drinks, work environment, hobbies, skin care products and a host of other factors. The less recycling the liver has to do, the better we feel daily, and also the less damage we create in the long run.

Click here to learn more about how the liver works, including some remarkable facts.