Signs Your Liver Cleanse Is Working: What Dr. Jarod's Patients Notice by Week Three

By week three of Dr. Jarod Ward's Love Your Liver cleanse, people start comparing notes. The signs he hears about most are practical ones: more energy, calmer digestion, better sleep, clearer skin and joints that move easier in the morning. Here's his list, the research behind why the liver connects to each one, and a simple way to track your own.

Energy is the first thing people mention

Dr. Jarod describes a lot of people as running at what feels like 60 or 80 percent of what they could be. "They don't feel like they have as much energy as they used to," he says. Asked what changes once people finish, he starts with the same thing:

"Usually after someone does a parasite cleanse or even my liver cleanse, they feel a ton more energy. They're like, oh my gosh, my stomach feels flatter. I feel less bloated. I feel less inflamed. My joint pain doesn't hurt anymore. I'm going to the bathroom at a normal time every day."

Research backs up the connection between tiredness and the liver. In a study of 156 people with biopsy-confirmed fatty liver, fatigue scores averaged 51, against 8 in people without it. The NIH lists feeling tired as one of the few symptoms fatty liver shows when it shows any.

A regular bathroom schedule is a sign, not a small one

Before the cleanse, the pattern Dr. Jarod hears is this: "They feel bloated after they eat. They don't have a bowel movement every day, or when they do, it's loose or way too difficult to pass." By the end, the comments he gets are about a flatter stomach and going "at a normal time every day."

The liver's link here is bile, which it makes to help digest and absorb food. How the liver and the gut work as a pair is in The Gut-Liver Axis.

Sleep is the change people don't expect

Sleep is on his list too: "Even sleep, like people wake up a lot during the night or they don't feel like they're well rested." Dr. Jarod pays special attention to waking between 1 and 3 a.m., night after night, which he connects to the liver in his practice. More on that in how the liver works overnight.

Skin and morning stiffness round out the list

The before picture he describes: "Their joints kind of hurt a little bit. They're stiff in the morning. Their skin seems lifeless, maybe they got a little bit of acne, maybe dry skin." And the after, in his fish tank picture of the body:

"When you clean a dirty fish tank, right, it feels less dirty, it feels less sludgy, it feels less inflamed. Your skin looks better."

What Dr. Jarod connects to the skin, and what research does and doesn't show, is in our post on the liver and skin.

Track five areas, not just how you feel today

Memory is a poor judge of change. By week three, most people have forgotten how they felt on a Tuesday in week one. A short weekly note solves that. Pick the same day each week and answer five questions in a sentence each:

• Energy: How did the middle of the afternoon feel this week?
• Digestion: Bloated after meals? How regular were you?
• Sleep: Did you wake up in the night? Did you feel rested?
• Skin: Breakouts, dryness, oiliness, dark circles?
• Joints: How stiff were you getting out of bed?

Read the notes side by side at the end. The change is often clearer on paper than it feels day to day. If the first days felt rough, Liver Detox Symptoms covers why.

Lab numbers are Dr. Jarod's second scoreboard

How you feel is one measure. Lab work is another, and Dr. Jarod uses his cleanse as a test for patients whose cholesterol runs high in the family:

"I actually use my liver cleanse as kind of a litmus test for this. If the numbers come down, okay, it's probably lifestyle and the liver needed a good cleaning. If it doesn't budge at all, all right, fair enough, probably genetic."

Three weeks is enough time for the liver to respond in research too. In one study, swapping added sugar for starch, with the same calories, cut liver fat in children from 7.2 percent to 3.8 percent in nine days. In a six-week trial, a Mediterranean diet cut liver fat 39 percent, against 7 percent on a low-fat diet, "even without weight loss."

One caution on reading labs: a "normal" ALT, a common liver enzyme, may not mean much on its own. A gastroenterology guideline puts a truly healthy ALT for women at 19 to 25 IU/L, and a study of healthy blood donors set the upper limit for women at 19 U/L, against an older lab cutoff of 30. Dr. Jarod runs lab testing at Crown if you want numbers before and after.

The full plan comes with the cleanse

Love Your Liver is Dr. Jarod's 21-day guided liver cleanse, and it's self-paced. The full meal plan, supplement schedule, shopping list and daily texts come with the cleanse. Your supplements ship to your door, and Day 1 starts the moment you tap start.

Prefer to start with a conversation? Dr. Jarod runs functional medicine and lab testing at Crown Chiropractic in Fort Myers. Call (239) 441-2275 to book a consultation.

Sources

• Dr. Jarod Ward, Crown Chiropractic. Liver episode on YouTube.
• Newton JL, Jones DE, Henderson E, et al. Fatigue in non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) is significant and associates with inactivity and excessive daytime sleepiness but not with liver disease severity or insulin resistance. Gut 2008;57(6):807-813.
• National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases. Symptoms & Causes of NAFLD & NASH.
• Schwarz JM, Noworolski SM, Erkin-Cakmak A, et al. Effects of dietary fructose restriction on liver fat, de novo lipogenesis, and insulin kinetics in children with obesity. Gastroenterology 2017;153(3):743-752.
• Ryan MC, Itsiopoulos C, Thodis T, et al. The Mediterranean diet improves hepatic steatosis and insulin sensitivity in individuals with non-alcoholic fatty liver disease. Journal of Hepatology 2013;59(1):138-143.
• Prati D, Taioli E, Zanella A, et al. Updated definitions of healthy ranges for serum alanine aminotransferase levels. Annals of Internal Medicine 2002;137(1):1-10.
• Kwo PY, Cohen SM, Lim JK. ACG clinical guideline: evaluation of abnormal liver chemistries. American Journal of Gastroenterology 2017;112(1):18-35.