#1 Absolute Worst Way You Destroy Your Liver (It's Not Food Or Alcohol)

Hello Health Champions. Today we're going to  talk about the number one way that you destroy  

your liver every day and a lot of people don't  know that they're doing it and if you look at  

the first four letters in the word liver it spells  out live so this really is an organ that you want  

to pay attention to and take good care of if you  want to live. And liver disease and acute liver  

failure causes a number of fatalities every year  in the United United States it's 50,000 people a  

year die from acute liver failure and around  the world it's 2 million people now when we  

talk about the causes there are some diseases  that can cause or contribute to liver failure  

so viral hepatitis for example it's an viral  infection of the liver that causes a chronic  

inflammation that's what the word itis means  inflammation and this is a huge stress huge  

burden on the liver other diseases that can cause  this are scarring of the bile ducts you could have  

autoimmune hepatitis again an autoimmune disease  that attacks the liver and causes inflammation  

and besides viral infections you could also  have parasitic infections and of course no  

list is complete without cardiovascular disease  and type 2 diabetes it's a metabolic disease that  

clogs up the liver that causes inflammation and  contributes to most kinds of disease actually now  

some of these you're sort of mostly unlucky if  you get exposed to it if you're in a unfortunate  

circumstances where you get some viral hepatitis  or some autoimmune disease now you can do a lot in  

terms of Lifestyle just eating good food reducing  stress taking the best care of yourself and these  

may not go away but you will manage them much  much better but then there are others and we'll  

talk a little bit more later about cardiovascular  disease and type 2 diabetes where this is almost  

entirely up to you that you can do a lot about  this whereas with cardiovascular disease there  

are some genetic factors that predispose you for a  small percentage of people for most people people  

it is entirely about lifestyle and type 2 diabetes  is entirely about lifestyle so the other factors  

we want to talk about obviously our lifestyle  choices so these are further causes but these  

are something that you can do a lot about alcohol  abuse used to be by far it used to be almost the  

only thing that caused cirrhosis of the liver and  liver failure today it is just one among many so  

we have sugar for example and in the sugar there  is the fructose component when we're talking about  

uh white crystal sugar table sugar or any of the  derivatives of syrup or agave or corn syrup etc.  

50% of that is fructose which is very different  from rice or bread not that those are great but  

the really devastating component is the fructose  another big factor is drug abuse heavy drug use  

is tremendously stressful on the liver because  anything foreign that you put into the body has  

to be biotransformed it has to be changed and  processed and detoxified by the liver another  

one that is getting more and more attention is  processed omega-6 seed oils the things we eat  

and consume as vegetable oils like corn oil and  soybean oil and safflower oil etc. when we have  

a very large amount of oil which soybean oil we  consume over 40 liters per year per person in the  

United States that's an enormous amount when we  eat a lot of these and they're highly processed  

and they're high in omega-6 now we unbalance the  ratio of fatty acids in the body we put the body  

in inflammatory State and again this affects the  liver and I want to put cardiovascular disease and  

type two diabetes on here again under lifestyle  choices even though we often consider them as  

diseases disease States we want to understand  how much control we have over these that they're  

almost purely lifestyle choices another thing you  want to avoid obviously is smoking because it robs  

the body of oxygen it blocks the red blood cells  that carry oxygen to all the cells and in doing  

that it reduces the utilization of oxygen in every  cell of the body and therefore it interferes with  

the function of every cell in the body and then I  want to bring a lot of attention to medication as  

causes of liver failure because a lot of people  think that the only ones you have to be careful  

with are the prescription medication that they  are more safeguarded because they have more side  

effects and therefore they think that the over  the counter the OTC that there's nothing really  

to worry about if they sell them everywhere how  bad can it be and that's something that we really  

need to watch for now to really understand what  causes liver failure we need to also understand  

what does the liver do what's its daily job so  it participates in digestion with making bile  

to emulsify and break down fats and then the main  thing that people think about is biotransformation  

or detox it takes some really harmful compounds  and it attaches things to them in several  

different steps to make them water soluble and  less harmful so we can flush them out and this bio  

transformation is super important you would not  live many hours or many days if this didn't happen  

and there's internal and there are external toxins  so some of them are part just of a natural form of  

metabolism but then we have to add to that all of  the pesticides and the environmental pollutants  

that we've added in the least last several decades  it also breaks down cholesterol it regulates  

cholesterol it gets rid of old bad cholesterol  and it makes new cholesterol any hormone that your  

body produces the liver has to break that down and  get rid of it because everything is supposed to  

exist exist and do its thing for a specific time  it also has to break down all the metabolic waste  

that we generate through our chemical processes  in the body as well as from all the drugs and  

other chemicals that we add Del liver is also  the main organ that breaks down and processes  

and metabolizes all the macronutrients that you  eat the fat the protein and the carbohydrates it  

also serves as a reservoir are for glycogen to  replenish blood sugar between meals and in doing  

that it helps to balance out our fuel and energy  levels so all in all the liver performs all of  

this and there's a total of over 500 different  chemical reactions that the liver is responsible  

for and here's the key thing that we need to  understand about that so often in medicine and  

in science we try to isolate things and we look  at one specific thing at a time one process one  

pathway as if it happened in isolation but that  is the key to understand that the liver does  

all of this but it doesn't do one at a time it  does all of this all the time so I want to show  

you one of the most helpful concept that I have  seen I didn't come up with this but I've used it  

for years and years in explaining health and is  called body burden that when you have different  

things going on they accumulate they pile on top  of each other so we have down at the bottom is  

the metabolic waste that's unavoidable once you  metabolize food and things from the environment  

you put things in on one end different things come  out on the other end you make tissues etc. that  

produces waste so there's no way around that and  the liver has to do do that then on top of that  

we have the hormones that the body produces that  have to be broken down I call them Endo hormones  

for endogenous hormones coming from the inside but  then now we have to add to that EXO hormones or  

exogenous things that are added from the outside  in animal feed and we get it through drinking  

water etc. and then the body has to break down all  the Environmental toxins whether it's industrial  

pollution and heavy metals or something that we  spray on Foods or household cleaners it is all  

foreign chemicals that the body has to get rid  of and the liver is the one who does it alcohol  

of course is a burden it is something relatively  natural in very small amounts but large amounts  

frequently now become a huge burden on the liver  and like we talked about fructose the component of  

sugar that only the liver can metabolize becomes  a huge burden so as these things accumulate and  

the liver only has so much capacity only so much  resources only so many cells only so much ATP or  

cellular energy available we eventually get to a  threshold and the liver can work up to this point  

but if we exceed that now we're in trouble now  the liver falls behind and some of the cells can  

actually get damaged and now we can have liver  failure so now if we ADD medication if we take  

something on top now that could push us over the  threshold over the limit but then we also have to  

realize that not everyone is the same that this  could be a 30-year-old young person what if we're  

a little older what if we have other comorbidities  what if we have a less favorable genetic makeup  

then maybe our 100% would fall a lot lower and  now we see these pieces it doesn't take nearly  

as many pieces to reach that threshold and then if  we start adding more now we're going to reach that  

liver failure or that liver disease or compromise  much sooner and the reason that I put medication  

at the top here is not that it's the only cause  because everything here contributes and I'm not  

claiming that these would be to scale that they  would be proportional to their size or anything  

like that they're purely examples of different  things that the body have to deal with to give  

you an idea but if we're going to talk about the  number one cause of liver failure then it is very  

very often quoted as being acetaminophen and that  is of course the ingredient in Tylenol so we know  

that acetaminophen is a problem for the liver  and we know that Tylenol is often called out  

to be the number one cause of liver failure so a  lot of people would avoid that but what a lot of  

people don't realize is that there's many many  things that contain acetaminophen like NyQuil  

DayQuil are some examples Excedrin, Alka Seltzer  plus and Mucinex as well as Robitussin and these  

are just some examples so you may be very cautious  about Tylenol you might try to take just when it's  

absolutely necessary but then you may not think  about the others or you might take one of them  

and not realize that when you combine it with  something else now you're adding it a cumulates  

now what about the others if they don't contain  acetaminophen well there is ibuprofen is another  

active ingredient which we find in Advil and  in dozens of other things we have a Naproxen  

which we find in Aleve and then there's good old  aspirin and all of these are very much associated  

with stomach distress causing leaky gut stomach  inflammation all sorts of upset intestinal tract  

but just because they're Associated mostly with  stomach doesn't mean that they're not harmful to  

the liver they are less harmful than acetaminophen  but they also are very stressful they put a severe  

burden significant burden on the liver as well and  this is especially if you use them in combination  

with something so if you're using ibuprofen along  with something else from that other list now that  

combination is always a bigger burden than one  thing by itself and this is especially true if  

you already have some kind of compromise if you're  already getting closer to that 100% line then you  

need to be very careful with these as well so  here's a couple of facts for you if they're  

too shocking to believe then just go look them up  and verify them for yourself acetaminophen is the  

most common cause of acute liver failure in the  United States and number two is an overdose of  

acetaminophen can destroy half of a person's liver  cells in less than a week so we need to understand  

that even though they're over-the-counter drugs  even though they're so sold to anybody for a few  

dollars without a prescription it doesn't mean  that they're harmless these are things that we  

need to take very seriously and if you use them at  all you use them when they're absolutely necessary  

now on the bright side the liver is probably the  organ in the body that has the best regenerative  

capacity of any organ so even if you kill off  half of the liver cells the liver can regenerate  

so as long as we don't have a bunch of those other  conditions other other stressors present and the  

person is generally fairly healthy then in about  a month's time the liver can regenerate itself  

and after that if there no other complications  we may not see any damage at all but I want to  

bring you back to this graph really quickly and  help you understand the number one way to destroy  

your liver and to destroy your health overall  is to not understand that out of all of these  

things that I have listed and this is just for  the liver they're slightly different for your  

overall health but not really very much that  the first two here the metabolic waste and the  

endogenous hormones those are the only ones that  our ancestors had those are the only ones that are  

supposed to be in the body every everything  else in this red rectangle are things that  

we have added these are man-made they are the  result of civilization of industrialization of  

the willingness or incentive to use chemicals and  artificial things and put them in our bodies and  

our ancestors didn't have any of these because  the world has changed more in the last 50 years  

than it has in the previous 50,000 and if we  don't understand that and if we don't start  

cleaning up our lifestyle and eliminating some  of these man-made things that is the number one  

way that we hurt ourselves if you enjoyed this  video you're going to love that one and if you  

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