The liver is one of the most essential and delicate organs in your body. It produces bile, filters toxins, transforms proteins, carbohydrates, vitamins and minerals.
But do you know if you are taking care of you liver properly? Sometimes, without your knowledge, you have lifestyle habits that are not good for your body’s health. Why not learn how to take care of your liver a little better?
What Can Damage Your Liver?
Let us take a look at the habits that damage your liver. Let’s see below.
1. Heavy Alcohol Consumption
Excessive alcohol consumption is the most common cause of liver damage. Excessive amount of alcohol decreases your liver’s ability to remove toxins from the body.
This is because your liver gets diverted from its other functions and mainly focuses on converting alcohol to a less toxic form, and this causes inflammation and fatty liver disease.
When the liver breaks down the alcohol, the chemical reaction can damage the liver cells, and after a long time of consuming excessive amount of alcohol, the damage can become permanent and cause cirrhosis or scarring of the liver, which leads to loss of liver function.
2. Loading Up On Salt
Experts recommend consuming no more than 2,000 to 2,400 milligrams of salt daily. People tend to consume 5,000, 6,000, or even up to 10,000 milligrams daily, due to packaged foods and fast foods that use salt as preservative.
For individuals who have pre-existing liver problems, excess sodium can cause inflammation in the abdomen and water retention. Both of these can overwork the liver.
3. Loading Up on Processed Foods
The fat buildup in your liver which is induced by a sugar overload can lead to the formation of scar tissue, which is one of the causes of cirrhosis.
The natural sugars present in vegetables and fruits are fine because they come with dietary fiber and metabolize slowly.
But unnaturally processed and sweetened foods, however, are full of sugar and with almost no dietary fiber, which is not good for your liver and should be avoided as often as possible.
4. Skipping Breakfast
Skipping breakfast is bad for your health. This practice is known to cause weight gain in the long-run. As you all know, weight gain, is not good for your liver.
Also, another reason in eating a hearty breakfastevery morning is to make sure you set a non-processed, non-toxic, nutrient rich standard for the rest of your day.
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