Your Liver Filters, Stores and Builds All Day. A Cleanse Diet Lightens Its Load.

A liver cleanse diet removes the foods that keep your liver busiest for a set stretch of time, so it can catch up on its own work. Dr. Jarod Ward's Love Your Liver cleanse runs three weeks.

To know why that helps, it's worth knowing what your liver does all day, what the diet takes off its plate, and what people commonly notice once they start.

Your liver is the filter for your whole body

Dr. Jarod puts it simply: "the liver is the fish tank filter of your fish tank body." It filters your blood and pulls out what shouldn't stay.

It does more than catch things. It changes them.

"It will literally take a toxin, a dangerous one, and it'll unpack it, reformulate it, and now it's actually neutral and doesn't hurt you."

Your liver also digests, stores and builds

• It makes bile. The liver makes bile and sends it to the gallbladder for storage. Bile is released to help you process and absorb food. When the liver gets backed up, Dr. Jarod says, the bile gets "sludgy" and doesn't flow as well, which affects how well you absorb your food.
• It stores nutrients. The liver holds onto vitamins, which is why liver is such a nutrient-dense food and a traditional one in many cultures.
• It builds hormones. In his words, it's "taking a fat and turning it into a hormone, taking cholesterol and turning it into testosterone or another hormone."
• It clears histamine. The liver filters histamine out of the blood and neutralizes it.
• It steadies blood sugar. When sugar makes your blood sugar bounce, the liver works with your pancreas to calm it down.
• It talks to your immune system. Dr. Jarod describes the liver as having "little detectors that feel inside the gut," so it's the organ that alerts the rest of the immune system when something is going on there.

A busy liver handles threats first and repairs later

Your liver has a to-do list, and the urgent items always jump the line. Dr. Jarod compares it to a house:

"If you're in a house and a ton of angry people come in and want to beat you up, are you gonna focus on them or are you gonna sweep the floor?"

Every day, those angry guests show up as pesticides on food, preservatives, alcohol, caffeine and sugar spikes. So the liver keeps neutralizing them, "rather than its basic hygiene, cleanliness, rebuilding, repair functions."

A liver cleanse diet cuts what keeps the liver busiest

For three weeks, the Love Your Liver plan cuts sugar, grains, processed food, alcohol and caffeine, and builds meals around organic produce and quality protein. You still eat full meals. The point is to send in less work.

Sugar is a big part of that work. Dr. Jarod explains that "sugar burns quick, fat burns slow," so a steady supply of quick fuel tells your body to store the extra:

"If you keep eating those quick burning calories, your body's like, I have too much quick, let's put some in reserve."

Processed food, alcohol and caffeine each add their own load. Dr. Jarod walks through all three, with video, in Why Is a Liver Cleanse So Strict?

Dr. Jarod thinks about the liver when he hears these

When patients describe certain everyday patterns, his advice is to "think about the liver, always think about the liver." The ones he lists include:

• Low energy, or feeling like you run at a fraction of what you used to
• Achy joints and stiffness in the morning
• Headaches
• Skin changes: acne on the face or back, dry or oily skin, dark circles under the eyes
• Bloating after meals, constipation or loose stools
• Waking up between 1 and 3 a.m. most nights
• Hormonal shifts like hot flashes, night sweats, painful periods or irregular cycles
• Body fat that won't budge

Many things can sit behind these, and lab testing gives a clearer picture of what's going on.

The first days of a liver cleanse bring a few common changes

• Day one usually feels fine, even a little exciting.
• A caffeine headache can show up early. If your last coffee was the morning before, a dull headache could show up by that night or the next day as the caffeine leaves.
• Cravings are normal in week one. Sugar, bread and your usual snack tend to call loudest.
• More trips to the bathroom.
• Headaches, aches, itchy skin or tiredness are common in the first few days and usually pass. Call us at (239) 441-2275 if they last longer.

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.