Liver
Whilst I’m not into detoxing, supporting your liver daily is such an important way we can help to balance our hormones and feel better. The liver is where hormones are metabolised, nutrients from food are made usable & toxins are made harmless. The liver is also where our oestrogen is made inactive, before it makes its way to the gut and passes out of our bodies. But if it has to focus on other toxins, there can be an increase in oestrogen travelling around our bodies, which has been linked to insulin resistance (precursor to type 2 diabetes), strokes, CVD, and certain cancers (Baker et al 2017). So thinking about supporting our liver through nutrition, exercise, and lifestyle is a great way to be kind to yourself. Some ideas include:
Nutrition – include magnesium. The most lacking mineral in the western world after vitamin D. Found in green leafy veg and nuts it also helps make serotonin which helps stabilise our mood and is linked to feelings of wellbeing
Exercise – get moving! Shown to improve insulin resistance (cardio and resistance), improve liver fat (irrespective of losing body weight) and is a proven therapeutic strategy to improve fatty liver disease
Lifestyle – Stress and certain chemicals found in day to day products can increase the load on our livers. Starting to think about how to process stress as well as using some natural products from companies such as Tropic is worth considering