Loving Your Liver for Hormone Health

Though you might not have considered it, you may be currently dealing with a sluggish liver.  Awareness of how to give your liver a little love will help you to naturally balance your hormones as well.

Over 500 vital functions rely on the liver, which is the largest organ of the body. The liver is an organ that you don’t want doing a second-rate job!  It produces bile that aids your small intestine in breaking down fats. It also absorbs vitamins to do the blood-balancing magic that keeps your body strong.

A sluggish liver can compound the problems created by hormonal imbalance.  When both problems exist, common symptoms like mental issues, depression, sensitivity to medications, menstrual difficulties, issues with the reproductive system, and mood issues rear their ugly heads.  This is because the liver’s big job is to break down and filter out excess hormones from your body. And if it can’t do its job effectively, your hormones can quickly go out of balance.

Now, time to dig a little deeper into your personal liver-status quotient and see if yours is crying out for some love…

• When you try to lose weight, do you find yourself more tired and stressed than normal?
• Do you find yourself ravenous by mid-afternoon or not able to go to bed without a nighttime snack fest?
• Has insomnia has taken hold of any chance you have at overcoming that daily fatigue? 
• Are you also dealing with anxiety and/or depression, a caffeine dependency due to your unending exhaustion and fatigue, and constant inflammation and pain? 
• Are you trying hard to conceal an undying muffin top that won’t seem to vanish no matter what weight-loss trick you try?

Now some truth: a single hormone is responsible for these and a whole laundry list of related symptoms.  Cortisol, your survival hormone, is the culprit. Elevated cortisol causes all the other hormones to compensate in order to keep your body running. But, unfortunately, chronic high cortisol causes those exhausting symptoms that I already mentioned.

What does it do specifically to your liver?  High cortisol enables high blood sugar in the body, which, over time, leads to a fatty, sluggish liver.

Many of us have been there, dieting and trying and doing all the right things only to look down and still see that ring around the waistline. 

Regulating cortisol alone can allow the body shed extra pounds that it’s been hanging onto for the sake of survival. It also helps bring your focus back, allows your body to rest at night, and gets rid of other pesky symptoms.

How do you regulate cortisol?  Stress Management and Self-Care!  If you haven’t checked out my earlier blog on loving your liver, it’s time to learn some self-care techniques for liver love.

The Best Essential Oils for Loving Your Liver

And in case you’re looking for some details on the science behind the liver and hormones, I’ve got you covered.

There is a two-phase detox process that happens in the liver.  Phase One, Oxidation, gets rid of the toxins by making them more soluble, or easier to urinate out of the body.  Environmental toxins begin as fat-soluble, making them dependent on the liver to get filtered out of the body. 

The shocking part is that, in the middle of this process, toxic chemicals are produced in the body that needs to be excreted. Unfortunately, they often often aren’t due to things like nutritional deficiencies including low-protein issues, alcohol usage, and OTC med usage. 

Phase Two, Conjugation, is the liver’s response to this issue. The oxidized chemicals get combined with sulfur and certain amino or organic acids before being excreted into the bile and urine.  Each of six unique pathways converts a different set of substances to keep your body balanced and your hormones happy.

Giving yourself some self-care and loving your liver should be a priority. It may even be a missing component of your current self-care healthcare plan.

If you weren’t thinking about your liver before this blog, you definitely are now!

Learn My Top 5 Oils for Creating Hormonal Synergy: