Love Your Liver, Part 2

Last posting, we were talking about your hard-working liver and its many contributions to your health and longevity. Take cancer, for example. Many forms of cancer have an environmental component — in other words, they’re caused, in whole or in part, by toxins. That means a functioning liver is an essential part of our built-in cancer-prevention package.

One cancer study, published in Nature (Number 369, 1994), leads us to Turin, Italy, site of the upcoming Winter Olympics. Seriously, I am not making this up. Researchers studied workers in a Turin chemical plant, and found that those with the poorest functioning liver enzyme systems had a higher rate of bladder cancer. So, it behooves us to keep this vital drain-and filter-organ at peak performance.

When it comes to home maintenance, we all want clean water flowing through our pipes, a functioning garbage disposal, and open drainpipes to eliminate the wastes. We have to demand the same for our bodies. And, once again, that pesky diet is crucial to keeping it all working at peak efficiency.

So, you know the drill: fruits, veggies, fiber, water, lean protein, the right oils, and — when called for — some targeted supplements, to tune the liver and assist its many ongoing detoxification projects. And, if you’re among the growing throngs of Americans struggling to lose weight, your liver may need some extra help to reconnect with its inherent loveliness.

How’s your liver lookin’? Let’s talk.

Love Your Liver, Part 1

Ah, the liver. The lovely liver. The lovely, hard-working liver. The lovely, hard-working, large liver.

How large? Well, the functional unit of the liver is a 1-2 millimeter lobule, and each human liver contains 50,000 to 100,000 individual lobules.

How hard working? Well, aside from filtering 1000 milliliters of blood every minute, the liver plays a key role in carbohydrate metabolism, fat metabolism, protein metabolism, and vitamin storage. And — if that isn’t enough multitasking — the liver also does a lot of our detox heavy lifting, extracting and excreting not only any drugs we take into our bodies, but also the many natural substances produced by our bodies that must be excreted to avoid toxic accumulation.

How lovely? Well...OK, OK. Don’t gag. I’m NOT going there. But I do want you to take just a moment to appreciate your liver. It’s down there on the right side, by the way, tucked up under the ribcage. And while it may not meet everyone’s idea of beauty, there’s no doubt about its value.

Are you sure your liver is up to its many tasks? It’s a question that deserves serious attention, so…stay tuned.

Plumbing and Drainage

With all this water falling out of the sky, sewers backing up, and gutters overflowing into inappropriate areas, I can’t help but mull over some wellness-oriented plumbing and drainage metaphors. I find myself remembering how much of our health is just a matter of keeping the drains open.

Whenever I assess a patient’s total health, it’s essential to find out how well the “plumbing” is working. For example, let’s start today with a look at one of the major components of our digestive system, the large and small intestines. Together, these flexible, serpentining pipelines comprise one of our major organs of nutrient absorption and toxin elimination. But, all too often, I discover a compromised intestinal system.

That, of course, both prevents proper absorption of nutrients and produces toxic build-up. It’s two-faceted recipe for trouble. And, it doesn’t just create the conditions for illness, it also compromises the body’s ability to respond. Because — and I find that many of my patients are unaware of this — the mucosa of our gut is home to key battalions of our immune defense army. When compromised by poor digestion, these minions are disarmed and can’t fight the ongoing battles with the countless xenobiotics we encounter and send their way each and every day.

Now for the good news. There are some great ways of improving gut function. These include specifically targeted digestive enzymes, high-potency digestive bacteria (good bacteria, also called probiotics), and GreensFirst or Red Alert (natural nutraceutical supplements). We can also repair the gut when leaky gut syndrome is the culprit.

Getting the intestines back in tune — extracting those nutirients and eliminating those toxins — is a major step on the pathway to Total Wellness. Next time, we’ll move down the pipeline and look at another essential and little-understood component of our marvelous human plumbing system — the liver.

What's All the Fizz About?

There’s been a lot of media buzz lately about fruit. Not just plain old fruit, of course, far from it. Now, with help from Oregon State University food scientists — you know, the folks that years ago brought us the maraschino cherry — we’re blessed with another innovation in American food lore: fizzy fruit.

What’s up? Basically, a Texas food scientist found a way to insert carbonation into fruit. He then worked with OSU’s Food Innovation Center to commercialize the process. The result is that eating a fizzified grape is more like drinking a grape soda. And all without compromising the nutrient value of that grape.

At first glance, it sounds like a winner. Or at least like fun. The developers’ thought is that fizzy fruit will encourage kids to make healthier choices from school-lunch offerings. And maybe it will.

My hope is that the fizzy fruit discussion will help raise awareness about the crap that we have been offering our children. Too often, when it comes to feeding our kids, we take the line of least resistance; we opt for the easy, cheap, heavily advertised path. And worse, in recent years, we’ve sometimes been driven by our desperation to supplement school budgets, in this case through sales of really unhealthy foods to our own kids.

We need to educate children and parents about good nutrition and the dangers of white flour and sugar, in all their guises. When 10-year-old children are developing adult-onset diabetes and heart disease, we are in serious trouble as a nation.

Is fizzy fruit the answer? Well, the likeliest candidates for fizzification are grapes, apples, cherries, and strawberries. Sounds great. Of course, these guys happen to be among the crops ranked highest in pesticide use (or is that abuse)?

So, we have to ask ourselves: Will encouraging consumption of more sugar — albeit fruit sugar — accompanied by carbonated pesticides yield a great health benefit? Maybe, if the fizzy fruit replaces a big gulp or white bread or a Snickers.

But we can certainly do much, much more. And there are plenty of examples to draw from. I once read about Corvallis’s sister city in Uzhgorod, where the kids all have homemade dark bread and bean soup for lunch — a far cry from what we serve in our schools in the name of food.

Of course, we can’t lay it all off on the schools. We have to begin at home, by feeding our children and ourselves better. My first rule is: If you don’t want your kids to eat it, don’t bring it home. The same should go for school lunches. Is it good for children and other living things? How good? As my wise old father always says, in another context: “When in doubt, throw it out!” Sound advice. We’ll all be healthier — and, believe it or not, happier — if we throw the junk out of our diets. Starting now.

Bon appétit!

The New Year

Yes, once again, the inevitable New Year’s resolutions are upon us. For many of us, this involves a resolve to take better care of ourselves. And this often involves a vow to increase our exercise regimen. While exercise is by far one of the most important things we can do for our current and future health, there is the tendency to overdo. Sometimes we overdo simply because we forget how long it’s been since we exercised so vigorously or used specific muscle groups. Sometimes just it’s our emotions over-riding our common sense. Sound familiar? Well, I plead guilty to this tendency, too.

Take my Atlantic Ocean boogie boarding adventures this past August. Post-hurricane waves were rolling in…well, in waves. But, no fear. I was boldly banging my way in and out of the surf, one arm or the other leashed to the board and thrashing wildly. Exciting. Exhilarating. Exultant. I loved it.

Next day, of course, I could hardly lift my arms. Excruciating. Exhausting. Exasperating. It was more than a week before they felt even close to normal. What? You think I overdid it?

And then there was the recent bowling-alley incident with my son, Julian. He bowled six games; I bowled one. Next day, Julian’s unfazed, but I’m thinking, “What have I done to my right arm?”

My point here is not that I’m out of shape. (Though I have to admit that being — shall we say? — “not as young as I once was” may be involved.) It’s that each activity we do puts different muscles and combinations of muscles into play. So, we need to take things slowly. Establish our own pace and not try to keep up with the next guy. Or with the twenty-something Olympics coxswain in our head. It means listening to our bodies very carefully. If we do, we’ll usually get some indication when we’re overdoing it. Unfortunately, we’re quite skilled at ignoring or rationalizing these helpful messages.

Sure, sometimes we’ll have to “work through” the pain. But, more often, we need to listen to the pain, and work with it not through it. That can mean a variety of things. Like stretching. Yes, stretching our imaginations, our comfort zones, and our bodies. We can benefit from stretching in more ways and places than any of us realize. Each time I return to my twice-a-week yoga sessions, I’m amazed at how tight I’ve become again.

Let’s face it — keeping healthy and fit requires a fair amount of effort, but it sure beats the alternative. It means getting the right amounts and kinds of exercise for your body type. Stretching and warming up. Staying hydrated. Maintaining a diet that truly feeds your body type and chemistry. Taking supplements targeted to your unique needs. Keeping a positive attitude.

And, need I say, the right chiropractic physician can work with you to design a plan and tune your body. (For example, when increasing your exercise regimen to get into shape, musculoskeletal adjustments can keep you out of trouble and on track.)

Total Wellness. It’s the pathway to achieving all your resolutions for the New Year.