Your liver is the largest single internal organ in your body. In an adult, it weighs about three pounds, filters over a liter of blood each minute and is roughly the size of a football. Your liver has more than 200 jobs and plays a central role in nearly all of your body’s functions. There are over 100 types of liver diseases, and because of the liver’s crucial functions, many can be life-threatening.

The liver is your body’s detox agent. Environmental and chemical toxins are introduced into your bloodstream when you breathe, eat, drink, and even when you take medication. Your liver helps get rid of these toxins by converting them into products that may be eliminated from the body naturally. It also helps with hormonal balance, fat regulation and digestion.

Because your liver plays such a critical role in determining your overall well being, keeping your liver healthy is key to keeping your whole body healthy. Understanding some of the functions your liver is responsible for helps make it easier to realize the importance of making the right lifestyle and dietary choices that have shown to keep the liver strong.

Here are just a few of your livers’ functions:

Converting food into the chemicals the body needs to grow and remain healthy.
Eliminating ingested, and internally produced, toxic substances from the blood.
Producing bile, a liquid that is essential for digestion.

Storing certain vitamins, minerals, and sugars and producing quick energy when it is needed.
Controls the production and excretion of cholesterol.

Monitors and maintains the proper levels of chemicals and drugs in the blood.
Produces immune factors than help the body fight off infection.

Sadly, once your body starts to show signs that your liver is not functioning at its best, it’s often quite late in the game. Your liver does not have a single nerve in it, so there’s no way for it to send out a ‘pain’ signal early on in its misery. Therefore,, prevention is the best approach.

By taking some common sense approaches to caring for your liver and making some lifestyle choices that have proven beneficial you can prolong the health of your liver and quite possibly avoid liver damage or disease. Below is a compiled list of tips from experts in the health industry to help you keep your liver healthy and happy.

Things your liver loathes:

Avoid alcohol if possible. If you must drink, do so in moderation. This seems to be more important for women than men.

Avoid over-the-counter and prescription medications unless necessary. Medications stress the liver to the max.

Don’t smoke. The liver is responsible for breaking down the nicotine in cigarettes and it puts unnecessary stress on the liver.

Watch the caffeine intake, and keep the water intake high.
Avoid undercooked seafood. The bacteria that can be found in this type of food just isn’t worth the risk.

Things your liver loves:

Eat lots of fruits and veggies. Your liver loves their high concentration of selenium, vitamin C and vitamin E. Also throw in cooked tomatoes whenever possible. Their high concentration of lycopene is a delight to the liver.

Look to foods rich in B vitamins. Whole grains, nuts, lean poultry – your liver can hardly get enough of the B vitamins.

Think antioxidants. With your liver working like a detoxification machine, antioxidants are some of its best friends. Flavonoids and resveratrol found in red grapes, vitamins C and E, and omega-3’s.
Your liver also loves zinc. Foods high in zinc include oysters, turkey, pumpkin seeds and chick peas.
Specific herbs have also shown to help the liver. #1-Milk Thistle.