10 Warning Signs That Your Liver Is Toxic

Hello Health Champions. To say that the liver  is important to your health is an understatement  

the liver is basically involved in every  metabolic process that takes place in your body  

so make sure you watch this video from beginning  to end because as we start talking about the  

most common signs and symptoms of liver stress  the whole point is to understand the mechanism  

so you can fit the pieces together and really  start impacting your health coming right up  

hey I'm Dr. Ekberg I'm a holistic doctor and  a former Olympic decathlete and if you want to  

truly master health by understanding how the body  really works make sure you subscribe hit that bell  

and turn on all the notifications so you never  miss any life-saving videos. The liver is directly  

responsible for some five to six hundred different  reactions in the body and they include things like  

manufacturing hormones activating and modifying  hormones degrading hormones making glycogen from  

excess glucose for future storage and use as blood  sugar and when we run out of that then the liver  

can make glucose from scratch gluconeogenesis from  glycerin and amino acids and the ketones that fuel  

the brain when we're really low on carbs that's  the liver that makes those ketones the liver makes  

various proteins most proteins in the body are  made in the liver tens of thousands of proteins  

and two of the most common ones are called  albumin and globulin these are blood proteins  

that help maintain the properties of blood  the blood pressure and we'll talk more about  

the osmotic pressure of albumin globulins are  carrier proteins and if you recognize the word  

immunoglobulin or antibody that's what those  are as well the liver manufactures cholesterol  

and it modifies and packages and maintains the  proper balance it recycles cholesterol as needed  

and maintains the optimum balance of ldl and hdl  that the body needs depending on the circumstances  

the liver is also of course the main  detoxification plant in the body it  

is the only organ that can take really  toxic things like chemical poisons and  

pesticides and things like that and turn them  from fat soluble potent poisons into water soluble  

by-products and metabolites that we can safely  get rid of through the bowel and then indirectly  

we could argue that the liver is involved  in one way or another with every chemical  

reaction that takes place in the body so i've  underlined the first four letters in the world  

liver and they spell live and that should give you  an idea of how important the liver is when we talk  

about liver disease we often hear words like fatty  liver and toxic liver and cirrhosis and so forth  

and they're all kind of different sides of the  same thing the most common form of liver disease  

is fatty liver which is also going to be a toxic  liver because when we have insulin resistance then  

things start accumulating fats and toxins and  metabolic byproducts start accumulating in the  

liver causing congestion of fat but also of toxins  and they're different stages of liver disease and  

liver failure so in the early stages there's no  real damage but there's inflammation and there's  

severe irritation hepatitis going on at two  different degrees then that can proceed if  

we get more accumulation we get fatty liver  with insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes  

but then if we really start damaging the liver if  we take it further we break it down to where there  

is scarring and fibrosis now we're really starting  to do damage and if this damage gets so widespread  

that a major portion of the function of the  liver is lacking then we have cirrhosis which  

is basically just severe scarring of the liver  and then of course if this proceeds then we can  

also end up with end-stage liver disease with  liver failure and cancer first sign of liver  

stress is called bronze diabetes and this isn't  really diabetes but it can be associated with  

that and it can contribute to diabetes it's  really something called hemochromatosis which  

simply means a whole lot of color in the blood  and this is from iron overload when we absorb  

too much too high a percentage of the iron in the  diet is absorbed and not enough of it is excreted  

we get iron overload and if some of this iron  gets trapped in the sweat glands of the skin  

now we can get a bronze appearance of the skin one  way to think of this iron overload is rust just  

like your car can get rusty it doesn't happen the  exact same way but you could think of it that way  

and this rust the least of your problems is that  the skin changes appearance because what it really  

does is create organ damage and the most commonly  damaged organs are liver pancreas and heart and  

this is why this is such a strong contributor to  liver disease to type 2 diabetes of course liver  

pancreas that's about diabetes and heart is about  cardiovascular disease so this is a very important  

thing to understand and check for because it is  very very common and it's very simple to manage it  

contributes to insulin resistance type 2 diabetes  and here's why it's so often missed because  

most times they do a blood test for you  they test something called serum iron  

well that's like measuring your wealth by how  much money you happen to have in your wallet  

at any given time because the serum iron is  less than one percent of the iron in your body  

if we really want to get an idea of how much iron  load you have we want to test something called  

ferritin so ask your doctor for the ferritin  test because it's so inexpensive it add like  

five bucks to the blood test and you will find out  and you get really valuable information because  

this is like measuring your savings your equity  your house worth this will give you an idea of  

how much iron is really in there that's the  best measurement there is also a genetic test  

the true definitive test for if you have the  hemochromatosis if they want to slap a label  

on you you need the genetic test but in reality  you don't need the genetic test because the only  

treatment for this is to give blood if there's  a whole lot of stuff wrong with your blood then  

they're just do bloodletting and throw it away  but if there's nothing majorly wrong you just  

have a lot of iron then go to the red cross and  donate some blood and they'll love you for it  

sign number two is called xanthelasma and that's  a fancy word for yellow and plaquing and if this  

shows up on the inside corner of the eye that's  the label they give it and these are cholesterol  

deposits so normally the liver produces bile  and bile is like a detergent it's breaking up  

grease just like your detergent an emulsifier  does so when you have a fatty meal the liver  

has made the bile and the gall bladder stores  the bile and the gall bladder squirts out  

some bile that breaks up the fat but if the  liver is stressed if you have liver disease  

you're not going to make as much bile and now you  also don't have the proper fat metabolism and part  

of fat metabolism is cholesterol metabolism and  cholesterol breakdown so if you don't produce  

enough bile then some of this cholesterol can end  up in the wrong places number three is jaundice  

and that basically is just a condition of being  yellow and you could have the yellow on the skin  

or you can have it even in the earlier stages  and the sclera on the white portion of the eye  

and this color comes from red blood cells when red  blood cells are broken down and recycled then one  

of the end products that the liver is responsible  for is called bilirubin this bilirubin is then  

discarded in the bile and that's what provides the  brown color of your stool now if the liver can't  

finish this process properly and put it in the  bile then this bilirubin starts spreading it's not  

being discarded properly and it ends up in other  tissues and now the color appears as yellow on  

the skin and the eye number four thing to look for  is changes in bowel habits one of the most common  

signs of liver disease is diarrhea especially  chronic diarrhea and it's very poorly understood  

they don't really understand why but it's one  of the strongest associations to liver disease  

another thing is called steaturia which  means fatty stool and this one is very  

plain and simple because again it comes from  the liver not making enough bile if we don't  

break down and digest the fat then it's going to  stay in the digestive tract as part of the stool  

it's going to be pale because of the extra fat  and also from the lack of bilirubin that we're  

not getting from the bile and it's going to float  because fat is lighter so again less bile less  

fat digestion creates all kinds of problems  sign number five is itching and burning and  

this happens because of bile retention the bile  is supposed to contain toxins to be discarded  

but if we can't get rid of the bile if it's stuck  if it's not flowing properly then these toxins end  

up stuck in the body and one of the most common  places is feet and hands and why is that because  

it has to do with circulation circulation is  what brings things to the tissues and it's what  

removes toxins and junk and debris from the  tissues and you could have this because of  

liver congestion and it could be made worse by  type 2 diabetes and the reason we so often see  

this in the feet and the hands a lot of problems  happen there is because they are the furthest from  

the heart so because of lack of circulation the  further it is from the heart the harder it is  

to bring nutrients there and to remove toxins from  there number six thing that you might notice is  

poor vision there is a vitamin associated with  eyesight called vitamin a and this is a fat  

soluble vitamin so when the liver and the bile  isn't working now we can't digest and absorb  

and utilize the fat soluble vitamins a d e and  k so without the vitamin a we're going to have  

disturbances possible degeneration of general  vision but especially of night vision so if you  

have poor vision at night called night blindness  that could very well be some liver stress number  

seven is a really big one that a lot of people  don't realize and that's allergies whether it's  

food sensitivities or environmental reactions  may maybe it seems like you're reacting to  

just about everything that you eat there's so many  different foods that you get a reaction to well  

that could be liver congestion liver toxicity same  thing with environmental reactions if you have  

hay fever if you're reactive to pollen and ragweed  and things like that or even pets that could be  

a toxic liver because the less power the liver  has the less function in the liver the more junk  

accumulates in the rest of the body and the more  junk there is the more reactions the more tendency  

for the immune system to overreact to be  hypersensitive to various different things  

sign number eight is called ascites which is  a special form of edema and what are these  

things they're fluid accumulations and basically  it's a form of leakage where the water leaks out  

of the vascular system and into the surrounding  tissues and this is caused by something called  

hypoalbuminemia if you recall on the earlier  slides we talked about albumin as being a sponge  

that's why we have these things up here think  sponge because these little proteins they're  

very tiny particles and they hold water to them  they create an osmotic pressure and why is that  

so important because think blood pressure when  the heart squeezes really hard and the pressure  

inside the blood in the arteries is so much higher  than the surrounding tissues what is it that keeps  

the water from just leaking out from the blood  pressure squeezing the water the fluid out into  

the surrounding tissues and the answer is that  the albumin acts as a sponge if the liver is  

suffering if the liver is underperforming and it  can't make enough albumin that's a really big deal  

because now we have less albumin means  less sponge activity less osmotic pressure  

more leakage so what can that look like well  here is one example called pitting edema  

so if you push into the tissues it's sort of like  one of these memory foam mattresses you push and  

it just keeps going for a long time and then  you remove your finger and the indentation is  

still there and it stays there for several minutes  that's because of tissue fluid leakage and ascites  

is the exact same thing but now the leakage  happens in the abdominal cavity so these people  

might have a distended stomach that kind of  looks like a big belly with fatty liver but it's  

actually just fluid that's ascites number nine is  shoulder pain and how does that come about well  

whenever we have some stress in an internal organ  that can manifest as a referred pain there are  

referral patterns of pain so for example if you  have heart trouble if you have angina or a heart  

attack many people will report severe pain in  the left shoulder radiating out into the left arm  

the heart itself doesn't necessarily have any  pain but there's a referred pain same thing  

with the liver and the gallbladder that when the  liver gallbladder has stress you're going to find  

a referral pane pattern into the right shoulder  blade into the right shoulder and even up into  

the right side of the neck so if you recall some  earlier time when you might have been drinking and  

you had a really bad stiff neck the day after  that could very well have been the mechanism  

and the tenth sign of liver stress is fatigue  and this is actually the most common complaint  

and even though it's the most common  complaint they don't really understand  

why this is happening they have a number of  different theories but they have understood and  

observed they don't understand it necessarily  but they have observed that there's a change  

in the neural transmission so the brain and the  body always talks back and forth back and forth  

and whenever the liver has stress this changes the  signals in the body and the in the nervous system  

and they don't really understand why but if we  just sort of use a little bit of logic we might  

think that because the liver is so critical to  every form of metabolic process in the body and  

it is so critical to the energy production of the  body of maintaining ketones and blood sugar and  

so forth then if the liver is really stressed  then it's not so strange that it wouldn't be  

able to produce the proper energy and the proper  blood sugar and so forth another way we can think  

about this is that when you're sick your body  likes to allocate the resources differently it  

doesn't want to fight a war it wants to heal the  inside organs it wants to fight off if you have  

an infection or if you need to heal something so  being in a healing state will very often produce  

tremendous fatigue now if you have a fatty liver  or a toxic liver or liver disease whatever you  

want to call it what do you do about it there's  a lot of talk about liver detox and you can buy  

these packages called liver cleanses or liver  flushes and what they do is they just basically  

get the bowel moving they stimulate some things  and they flush things out and that's not a bad  

idea because the liver dumps all of the toxins all  the byproducts of its activity it dumps into the  

bowel that's the natural evacuation route and if  your bowel isn't moving then the stuff just sits  

there and it has a tendency to be reabsorbed the  longer it sits so moving the bowel is a great idea  

but there is so much more that's just a short  term step one then you want to focus on eating  

real food and you want to understand that plants  and animal products are both great that plants  

have more of a cleansing function and animal  products have more of a rebuilding function  

the amino acid profile and animal products which  the body makes tissues from is much more complete  

it is much more utilizable by the body from  animal but plants have a great way of cleansing  

and we're not talking about bread and donuts we're  talking about non-starchy vegetables leafy greens  

cruciferous vegetables things like that a lot of  the damage in the liver is from oxidative stress  

and to combat that we need antioxidants but it  doesn't mean that we need to go and buy a bunch of  

supplements or products that have antioxidants it  means we need to understand sulfur and glutathione  

and cysteine and methionine so what does that mean  glutathione is the antioxidant that really matters  

it's the one that the body makes itself inside  the cells and it makes it from two amino acids  

called cysteine and methionine that contain sulfur  so you want to try to find foods that contain  

a lot of sulfur whether they are from animal  products or plants it's a good idea to select  

plant and animal products that have a lot of  sulfur because then you get these two amino acids  

and you can make a ton of glutathione which  again is the only antioxidant that really matters  

in your body and then of course you want to stop  putting in the garbage that caused the problem  

in the first place and there's three things we  want to understand sugar and alcohol sugar is 50  

fructose which is a liver poison high fructose  corn syrup is more than 50 percent and alcohol  

is an even more potent liver poison so these  have to go next however we want to understand  

that medication is also a potent liver toxin  that the reason you have to take more medication  

all the time is that the liver does its very  best to clean it out the liver gets the first  

shot at everything you put in your body whether  it's food or drink or medication it all comes  

flowing from the digestive tract in through the  portal vein into the liver and it tries to get rid  

of the alcohol and the medications that's why you  have to get more medication all the time it's a  

toxin and of course you want to avoid processed  foods because they have a lot of sugar they have  

a lot of chemical additives they have a lot  of preservatives and artificial colorings  

they have a lot of chemicals that is a  burden on the liver and the processed foods  

basically don't have anything of the stuff  that you need if you enjoyed this video and  

you'd like to learn more about how the body  works and how to get truly healthy i think  

you should check out that video next thank you  so much for watching i'll see you next time