Things You Don’t Know About Your Liver – But Should!
Carrying on my fascinating conversation with Dr. Alan Christianson, I learned more about the inner workings of the human body. For instance, I learned that with intermittent fasting, studies show that it isn’t so much the timing as much as how much we eat that actually makes the difference. Dr. Christianson had more important information to share about why we get sick and why we don’t even know the actual reasons for our sickness. So much of what goes on inside us has to do with the macronutrients we consume – or don’t. And so much dysfunction can be traced back to how well or poorly the liver functions.
How the liver determines health.
The liver is where a lot of macronutrients are stored. A healthy liver releases as much of what we need, when we need it. If the liver is functioning properly we have energy and are able to function optimally. However, oftentimes the liver stores what it cannot release. The result is what we know as fatty liver syndrome. This may be affecting far more of the population than we realize. This makes it difficult to lose weight and exhausts people while they try to accomplish this.
In a sense, modern conveniences and our lifestyles may be responsible for this. Much of what we eat has low nutritional value. Pollution, the plastic derivatives that surround us, and exposure to toxic metals exacerbates the problem. Chronic stress is a huge problem. Our irregular sleep cycles, getting insufficient sleep, or poor quality sleep all contribute to the stress we experience. According to the doctor, a significant change that upped stress levels started somewhere around the 1980s. Working on time zones and doing shift work saw a sharp uptick. All these contributed to stress and also to obesity rates shooting up all over the world.
What can you do to fix things?
Dr. Christianson uses the Humpty Dumpty metaphor to explain health. While a seatbelt may have prevented Humpty from falling, that seatbelt cannot help to“put Humpty together again” if he has already fallen and cracked. In other words, we cannot reverse health problems that have deteriorated too far. If we catch those health issues in time, we may still be able to use that“seatbelt” to save ourselves and to reverse those issues. Fortunately, the liver is a very resilient organ and has the ability to repair itself. The doctor explains more about this in detail in the interview.
It is true that we tend to slow down as we age. We lose muscle mass, and some health challenges can and do crop up simply because we are a little longer in the tooth than we used to be. However, not all our health problems can be blamed on the march of time. There are corrective steps we can take to restore good health and remove disease and it can be done just by changing what and how much you eat.
Check out my podcast where we speak about his work, the cortisol slope, popular diets, metabolic changes, protein needs as we age, and more. Don’t miss this episode of my conversation with Dr. Alan Christianson.