Love Your Liver



Dr. Heidi Rootes

You walk into any health food store and you can find a vast array of liver cleanses ranging from basic beginner detoxes to month long, heavy duty cleansing systems.  What you might not know is that using simple foods every day can help decrease the burden on your liver and facilitate the natural cleansing process:

Dietary principles for healing the liver:

  1. Dietary strategies for stagnant liver:
    1.  
      • saturated fats: lard, mammal meats, cream, cheese, eggs
      • hydrogenated fats: shortening, margarine, refined oils
      • excesses of nuts, seeds
      • chemicals in food and water
      • prescription drugs
    • eat less
    • eliminate foods that obstruct the liver:
  2. Foods which harmonize the liver:
    • Often sweet in nature:  grains, vegetables, legumes, complex carbohydrates
    • Barley, malt, date sugar, molasses and rice syrup are warming and stimulate flow of qi (do not use for stagnation with heat)
    • During times of depression or acute liver imbalance often concentrated sweets are craved…honey (sparingly) is a good food as it also detoxifies
      • Mixed with apple cider vinegar it is even more effective (one teaspoon of each mixed with water)
  3. Bitter and sour foods reduce excesses of the liver:
    • Vinegar: removes liver stagnation and accompanying depression and indigestion.  Use unrefined apple-cider, brown-rice, rice-wine or other quality vinegar 
    • Note:  vinegar should not be relied on for a long period of time, but the basic diet must be improved for long term improvement
    • Note:  since vinegar is warming, if the condition is with heat, substitute lemon, lime or grapefruit (bitter and sour but cooling)
    • Other bitter foods:  rye, romaine lettuce, asparagus, amaranth, quinoa, alfalfa, radish leaves, citrus peel.
  4. Foods to stimulate liver out of stagnancy:
    • spices:  watercress, onion (all), mustard greens, turmeric, basil, bay leaf, cardamom, marjoram, cumin, fennel, dill, ginger, black pepper, horseradish, rosemary, mint, lemon balm,
    • Note:  too much pungent food (hot peppers) damages those with liver stagnation and especially those with heat signs.  Anti-stagnant, non-pungent foods include: beets, taro root, sweet rice, amasake, strawberry, peach, chestnut, pine nut, brassica vegetables (cabbage, turnip, kohlrabi, cauliflower, broccoli, brussel sprouts)
    • Note:  raw foods (sprouted grains, beans, seeds and fresh fruit and veggies) also stimulate liver energy flow.
  5. Foods for building liver yin and blood:
    • These foods include: mung beans, chlorophyll-rich foods, cucumber, tofu, millet
    • Also, cold pressed flax oil, borage oil, evening primrose oil, black current seeds.  
    • Water, in sufficient amounts (2 L/day)
    • Improving kidney yin is also beneficial for improving liver yin:  aloe vera gel
    • For deficient liver blood:  spirulina and other chlorophyll rich foods, dark grapes, blackberries, huckleberries, raspberries, blackstrap molasses