Hidden Signs Your Liver Is Sluggish (And What To Do Before It Becomes Serious)

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Right now, there are millions of Americans that are stressing out their livers to the absolute max with their daily drinking habits. And no, I'm actually not talking about drinking alcohol. That's a common misconception when it comes to liver issues. Now, it's not that alcohol doesn't cause problems, but there is a bigger culprit today.

And a sluggish liver is usually a combination of issues related to Insulin resistance, ultra-processed foods, and sugar, and also issues connected to low fiber, leaky gut, and excess estrogen in the body. Also, here's a surprising one: medication burden. That's right, the right medications that you're taking right now, they can absolutely cause liver toxicity.

And chronic stress, poor sleep, these things add up, all burdening the liver. And the liver does so much more than we think. In fact, if you're watching this or listening to this, and you have a condition like PCOS or low testosterone or fatigue or any type of hormone imbalance, it can be connected to the liver. And since 1990, non-alcoholic fatty liver disease has increased by 125%.

Again, that's non-alcoholic. So liver disease can go way, way up and be a major issue without drinking any alcohol whatsoever. In fact, The drinking I was talking about earlier wasn't alcohol. It was things like fruit juice and soda being a bigger culprit of fatty liver issues and liver problems.

And it's important to note that in most cases, liver dysfunction usually develops from liver overload, but liver fat can accumulate over 10 to 15 years before it actually shows up in your labs. And so I see this all the time in my practice.

Patients come in and they're dealing with an issue that's actually liver-related, and it will not show up on their blood work until they've had a problem there for 15 years. And because of it, they've been dealing with hormone imbalance and fatigue issues and brain fog and feeling sluggish because they never got to the root of the issue.

So what I want to do today is work through together and help you recognize the warning signs of poor liver function and walk through exactly how to detoxify your liver. And there are actually 3 main pathways you need to support to detoxify the liver properly.

And what happens oftentimes, I see people doing a lot of, of these fad detoxes and cleanses for the liver or parasites or mold, and they're missing one of those stages. And so it actually makes them worse. They feel worse, they get more sick because maybe they didn't bind to it or they didn't support bile flow. Something wasn't done. A step was skipped. So their liver stays toxic.

And on today's episode, I'm going to walk you through the exact foods, herbs, vitamins, minerals, and advanced therapies that can help detoxify your liver and get to the root of your problems. Welcome to the Dr. Josh Axe Show. And hey, before I dive fully in, I want to encourage you to subscribe. By the way, it's the number one thing you could do to support the show.

It allows me to bring on higher-profile guests, put out more content, and help you heal naturally with foods, herbs, lifestyle medicine, and functional medicine, and so much more. So thanks for subscribing and sharing this episode. So as I mentioned previously, there are so many people today with these symptoms, and we're blaming the wrong organ.

It could be waking up between 1:00 and 3:00 AM in the morning. And let me ask, does that ever happen to you? You, you can fall asleep, but you can't stay asleep. That can be a liver issue. Stubborn belly fat, major hormone imbalance, especially related to insulin, thyroid hormones, and estrogen, skin issues, or even bloating after meals or constipation.

These digestive issues, those specifically are all tied to the liver. And if that's you, You're going to want to really lean into this episode because this is something I see all the time. And here's the good news. It's very fixable if you follow the right protocol.

You know, your liver performs over 500 functions, like how your body handles blood sugar, how it clears hormones, how it processes the— our different foods and chemicals we're exposed to every day, and around 497 other things according to Columbia University. And there are 4 main jobs your liver has. Number 1, filtering blood.

So basically, when you are exposed to toxins and even a lot of, uh, food-based chemicals and hormones, when those are in your blood, they eventually go to your liver and your liver neutralizes and gets rid of any substances that could harm your body. That's number one job of your liver is filtering your blood. Number 2, clearing hormones.

The liver clears out old hormones or hormones that are in excess to keep your body from getting too many signals or not having enough. Of course, of course, estrogen is a big one. It does that. That with, but it also impacts insulin and thyroid hormones and testosterone as well. And number 3, it regulates blood sugar.

It helps your body in deciding where to store energy and when to release it so your body doesn't swing between highs and lows. And so it does this process where it takes excess sugar, it will store some of it into something called glycogen to where you can actually use it as fuel later. And the 4th thing it does is produce bile.

Now, your gallbladder stores the bile, And your liver produces the bile. Okay? And what bile is, this whole bile system between your liver and gallbladder and your lymphatic system, it acts as a disposal system, especially for fat-soluble waste. Okay? So you have water-soluble waste, which your things like your kidneys will get rid of, right?

So in your urine, you'll excrete and get rid of toxins that way, or those toxin byproducts. But then your liver and gallbladder, are dealing with, and specifically through bile, dealing with a lot of the fat-soluble waste, which then goes through your— into your digestive tract, which is excreted out in that way.

Now, when that system is under stress, one of the first places it can show up is in the whites of your eyes. And this is where I'm going to walk you through a few of these warning signs to know for certain if it is a toxic illness. Now, this one is really severe. But I started seeing this with, you know, I, I grew up in the '90s and I was a huge fan of Michael Jordan.

I grew up playing basketball and I loved watching Michael Jordan. I still like watching him and listening to his interviews today. And one of the things you'll notice with Michael Jordan's eyes is where the whites of his eyes are, they tend to be yellow oftentimes.

You know, if you watch one of those famous documentaries that he recorded quite a few years ago called The Last Dance, um, you'll notice his eyes are yellow.

And what's happening there, it's a form of jaundice where where your body breaks down red blood cells, but if your liver and gallbladder are overstressed, okay, your body creates these byproducts from breaking down red blood cells, uh, and then that starts to show up in the yellow of the eyes when there's too many toxins there.

And Michael Jordan, if you know a little bit of some of his habits, it's drinking, uh, specifically whiskey and bourbon, it's smoking cigars, okay? And I'm sure he's also dealing with a lot of stress. And when those things add up, it can start affecting the eyes, causing redness, causing a Yellowish color there. And we saw this with Michael Jordan, see it today with these liver issues.

Now, there are many other warning signs that are less obvious when it comes to the liver being overwhelmed. And some of those can include, as I mentioned earlier, one of the biggest ones is constipation. When somebody is dealing with constipation, we tend to think of this as a colon issue or a gut issue. It's definitely more on the side of a liver issue. If you're dealing with constipation.

Again, if you're dealing with estrogen dominance, we tend to think of that as an ovary issue or a general hormonal system issue. It really is more connected to the liver. If you're dealing with insulin issues, okay, we know that's a liver problem. Brain fog, that's a liver problem. And so those are some of the biggest warning signs.

And the things that most overwhelm the liver include, number one, I think this is even more than alcohol, is excess sugar. Number 2 is alcohol. Number 3 is ultra-processed foods. And it's not just ultra-processed foods, it's, it's not eating the right diet for your body type. Some people do not process saturated fats as well as others.

So if you're a person and you're doing a lot of saturated fats, a lot of butter, a lot of beef tallow, a lot of animal fats, that can actually slow down the liver. And then of course, uh, ultra-processed seed oils, but a lot of these fats that are either inflammatory, highly processed fats, or saturated fats can slow down the liver. And then, of course, chemical exposure, right?

That could be everything from the glyphosate and chemicals sprayed on your food supply. It could be environmental toxins like heavy metals. It could also be your medications that your doctor prescribed you. Those can all overwhelm the liver. Now, here are other 5 signs I want to mention that are surprising for a lot of people. Digestive issues.

If you have bloating, reflux, or ever nausea after a meal, that tends to be a liver gallbladder issue. Number 2, stubborn belly fat or difficulty losing weight. Okay, that's a big warning sign, and it has to do with the connection between your liver and how it supports insulin in the body. And if insulin gets too high— we know this, right?

Insulin gets high, that affects your hunger hormones, it also affects your metabolism— you will start to store body fat. Number 3, skin issues like acne, rosacea, or eczema. In fact, Chinese medicine, there's actually a specific diagnosis for this. It's called liver qi stagnation. That means liver stagnation. Stagnation means there's not enough movement. The liver is sluggish.

That's the diagnosis in Chinese medicine that actually causes acne, rosacea, and eczema. There's a dampness, there's a stagnation, there's a lack of energy and movement there. In the liver, it's not detoxifying well. So when we think of our skin issues, oftentimes we think this is just a topical thing.

No, this is your liver and sometimes your gut, or both together, that tend to cause those types of skin issues. Number 4, hormone imbalance, especially conditions like PCOS, but in addition, PMS symptoms, heavy periods, mood swings are major drivers connected to Liver. And number 5, brain fog, fatigue, and waking up between 1:00 AM and 3:00 AM.

So again, if you can fall asleep but you cannot stay asleep or you wake up really early and you can't fall back asleep, that's typically connected to liver issues. If you're taking handfuls of supplements but still feeling exhausted, it means your nutrients aren't getting where they need to go. And unfortunately, conventional blood work will never catch this issue.

I'm currently offering a simple at-home blood test that actually tests for the right things. Targeted biomarkers that reveal how well you're absorbing and utilizing your nutrients, along with key markers for hormones, thyroid, inflammation, and metabolism.

You'll also get a full hour with one of my senior health advisors to review your results and discover how you can work with the Health Institute to finally feel like yourself again. If you want to check it out and grab one before they're gone, just go to mybloodwork.com now. I can't wait to help you heal. Now, I mentioned earlier that alcohol is not the only culprit of a sluggish liver.

And contrary to popular belief, alcohol, again, is not the main driver. Now, again, I do want to say this. There's no doubt looking at clinical studies, drinking excess alcohol Is a major problem for the liver. So it's very, very high up on the list.

And I would say it's, it's, it's number 2 slightly, but sugar now, excess consumption of sugar, refined grains, excess carbohydrates now, I believe, is the single biggest driver of liver fat accumulation. And of course, one of the biggest drivers today of this excess sugar consumption is us drinking soda.

You know, high fructose intake from things like high fructose corn syrup, which again is the main sweetener found in almost every conventional beverage today, the, the intake of that has increased 100-fold in the past century. And what this does is it increases liver fat production by around 30 to 100%, according to Penn Medicine.

Now, in other words, you know, that Coca-Cola you're drinking or Pepsi, that intake may be harder on your liver than a glass of wine. And why is that? Well, here's the reason why. Number 1, fructose is processed in the liver. Most soda sugar is high fructose corn syrup, and fructose is metabolized almost entirely in the liver, similar to alcohol. Number 2 is glycogen storage can overflow.

Again, here's what the— here's what happens. The liver first stores incoming glucose, right? Glucose sugar or fructose. It stores it as glycogen. Okay. And what glycogen is, it's, it's an extra fuel source. So let's say you've got your main tank of fuel your body's using, and that tends to be any carbohydrates you had during the day.

And then what it does, it has a backup fuel tank, and that's glycogen. It's smaller, but it's there. So when you run out of that first thing of, of glucose, now it moves on to glycogen. Now that second fuel tank, if it becomes full, what it does is now, now your body takes that excess sugar.

Mm-hmm.

And converts it into body fat. Okay? This is where you start storing fat around your liver, around your heart, around your organs. It's called visceral fat, and it's one of the single greatest drivers of mortality. So body fat generally is bad. The worst type of body fat is body fat that is stored around your vital organs like your liver.

And so the pathway that starts to happen here is it's very similar with alcohol and excess sugar. Is alcohol and excess sugar cause liver fat accumulation that causes oxidative stress, by the way, that's very stressful to the organs. It's like, you know, oxidative stress is like when you take a bite of an apple and that red part where all those antioxidants are is gone.

Now that the flesh of the apple, the white part starts to age and turn brown. That's actually what happens to your organs. Have you seen this where your or— if your liver is healthy, it's, it's a vibrant red color. There is blood, there's little damage happening there. Your liver will actually turn brown, just like an apple will turn brown when there's oxidative stress.

Your liver will turn brown with oxidative stress, and that causes major inflammation. And what that does over time is that starts to cause insulin resistance, can eventually lead to issues like diabetes. And this is also why your energy would be up and down, why you have sleep issues, is, is that it impacts all of these hormones in a negative way.

And as we talked about this, one of the other key drivers more directly of a sluggish liver is insulin resistance. And research now shows, according to the Journal of Molecular Biology, that the liver is often the first organ to become insulin resistant, oftentimes years before a diabetes diagnosis or even prediabetes.

And insulin resistance is one of the leading contributors to liver problems, as we've talked about. Uh, and actually vice versa, due to the fat accumulation of the liver, liver problems can also worsen your insulin resistance. And that's because the fat in your body doesn't sit idly in just one place. Um, you know, your fat cells actually act as organs.

So most of the time when we think of organ systems, we think, okay, my liver's an organ, my pancreas, my ovaries, my testes, my heart. Those are organs. Those are organs. Your muscle and your fat, those are actually organs as well.

And when you have a lot of this bad visceral fat, like non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, when you have that excess fat around the liver, it actually will release different hormones that cause insulin resistance, that will cause estrogen dominance, that will lower and tank testosterone levels in men. That's what happens when you have that excess liver fat.

And as I mentioned, it is a key driver of excess estrogen. You know, I've treated thousands of women with PCOS and infertility, and when I treat those women, the number one thing I do to improve and reverse PCOS, uh, PMS, and any type of these hormonal issues is we fix insulin and we fix the liver clearing excess estrogen. And the liver clears excess estrogen.

It actually also clears excess cortisol. So it's important for lowering stress. It's also important for thyroid hormones. So if you are having issues with hormone clearance, again, it can cause much more severe PMS symptoms. It can cause estrogen dominance and estrogen-based breast cancers. Okay.

Also, breast tenderness is one of those kind of early signs that, hey, there's too much estrogen dominance right now. Can cause heavy periods, stubborn weight gain, can cause stronger perimenopausal symptoms. So a lot of women, if you all of a sudden, let's say you just hit your early 40s and boom, All of a sudden now you can start to tell that you're going through perimenopause.

Like, it hits you like a ton of bricks. That tends to be tied to liver function. You know, maintaining a healthy weight, it's important there. And also, just as I mentioned, PCOS.

Now, the, the way that estrogen tends to work is this, is that your ovaries will produce estrogen, okay, predominantly, and then that will be dispersed throughout your body, and then your liver is responsible for taking any excess estrogen. Now, here's actually what tends to happen when you have an estrogen problem. It is almost never a problem with your own body producing enough estrogen, okay?

In terms of, um, PCOS and infertility, okay? Typically your— or it's typically— it's never a problem that your body produces too much estrogen, okay? But your body will start producing estrogen. What tends to happen then is we have these outside estrogen sources that we have, maybe it's too much in our diet. Like we're eating, you're eating, drinking soy milk, right?

You're doing processed soy, or you're, you're eating out of plastic bottles, or there's chemicals in your drinking water cuz you don't have filtered water, right? All of these chemicals will actually then, some of them act as what we call xeno or phytoestrogens. Those xenoestrogens come in.

So not only do you have your own estrogen, now you have all of this other excess estrogen that comes in from the outside as a toxin. And your liver has to deal with it all. And if your liver is already overwhelmed, it can't clear all the excess estrogen. Or if it doesn't have enough help, if it's deficient in certain vitamins and minerals, um, like B vitamins, um, it can't do it.

Now, here's the next thing that happens, and this is really important that you understand the detoxification pathways. Your liver is really important. And let's say you get your liver really healthy and your liver is able to get rid of Um, and break down a lot of these excess estrogens. Okay. And then it, it at least can filter them to the gut.

Now, if your gut microbiome isn't healthy and you don't have enough fiber, which is actually what binds to estrogen, pulling it outta the body, and enough good bacteria, it will go into your gut and then it will actually go back from your gut. It will then not be fully removed. It will leak back into the bloodstream and recirculate.

And this is where sometimes taking the proper types of binders and really gentle binders like fiber can actually really support your estrogen levels and your liver health. And so it's really important that we look at supporting all of these organs from your reproductive organs, like your ovaries and your liver and your gut microbiome to properly get rid of any excess estrogen.

And so when we talk about detoxification, it's important to understand It's almost never one organ. It's a combination of organs or systems working together with your liver, especially partnered with your gallbladder, and then your lymphatic system, and then your gut microbiome, and how those are interacting and working together to get rid of excess toxins out of your body.

But if you're dealing with a condition like PCOS, you really have to care for the liver. It's very important, and focus on balancing insulin. Now, I mentioned the importance of supporting these different systems working together for detoxification. And this happens at the level of body, mind, and spirit.

And you know, for thousands of years, traditional Chinese medicine has taught that the liver is responsible for the smooth flow of energy and blood throughout the body. In fact, they have a condition they would diagnose people with, and it's called liver qi stagnation. And that just means there's not enough energy. Energy could be vitamins and minerals, blood flow. There's not enough happening.

For the liver to be able to detoxify properly. And so they would recommend certain foods for supporting liver detoxification, certain practices and movements in order to support the liver. In fact, I think this is interesting. One of the things that they would pinpoint is really important for liver health is your emotional health.

They would say if you're storing up anger or resentment or unforgiveness, that would actually cause liver toxicity.

Wow.

And so, uh, and, and we know, and even think about this, if somebody— we would call somebody oftentimes like an angry drunk. Um, if somebody drinks a lot of alcohol, sometimes it can make them angry or, or vice versa. And so there's definitely a connection there between excess alcohol abuse or liver issues and emotional outbursts and, uh, and anger issues. And here's another one.

They say it's also tied to the vision of your future and your purpose in life. So if you don't feel like you have a clear vision or something you're moving forward to, if you're not growing, according to Chinese medicine, is that's going to block your liver health. Okay? The liver's all about movement and growth. It's connected to the color green.

A lot of the foods that support liver health, like broccoli sprouts and Granny Smith apples and chlorophyll, right? These things tend to be green in nature. They move and support the liver. Doing a lot of steamed vegetables is great for the liver. But also there's a sense of if you don't have a clear vision for your life and if you're not growing, it leads to frustration.

So if you are dealing with the emotions of any type of— and this, this is not all together, just separately— anger, resentment, unforgiveness. And here's the single biggest one, frustration. You're frustrated about where you're at in life. You're frustrated about a situation. You feel like more should be happening more quickly. That will actually back up the liver. And cause more liver issues.

And different organ systems store different emotions, and those act as toxins to those organs. So if you're dealing with a lot of impatience and frustration and maybe even anger issues at a situation or person or unforgiveness, those will store up causing liver toxicity.

So in Chinese medicine, the recommendation is there is to go and work on those emotions, work on releasing those in healthy ways.

In fact, they actually recommend hitting things like doing tennis or pickleball or getting a, a boxing bag, uh, those sort of things in order to actually release any pent-up and stored-up emotions and actually speaking them out and expressing them to somebody and confession. Those things actually help release stored-up emotions, and that's important for liver function in Chinese medicine.

And I think this really also aligns with the Bible. You know, when you look at the biblical connection here, the Bible talks a lot about Uh, fostering healthy emotions. And, you know, I think about Jeremiah 29:11 where it says, you know, God has a plan and purpose for your life. Or Proverbs 14:30, it says this, a heart at peace gives life to the body, but envy rots the bones.

Think about what envy is. Envy is looking at what someone else has, and not only do you want something similar, no, you want exactly what they have. It's almost a form of, resentment towards that person for what they have, and you feel like, I should have what they have. Okay? That is going to damage the liver. And so the Bible talks about this.

A heart at peace, or even a liver at peace, gives life to the body, but envy rots the bones. It causes disease.

Now, when you address these emotional issues alongside the physical support we're about to dive into with the right vitamins and supplementation and foods to heal the liver, That will lead you to the highest level of healing, especially as we're talking about liver health and detoxification.

And something else I want to mention that is so just, uh, incredible about the liver is its ability to heal and regenerate. I mean, the liver is probably your body's most powerful organ from the standpoint of it is very resilient. Think about what it has to deal with. I mean, it has to deal with heavy metals, toxins, hormones, blood filtration. I mean, so many different things it's connected to.

And there was a study done on this where if your liver is damaged, it can fully regenerate. Not one piece of your liver, literally your entire liver as an organ can almost fully regenerate in 150 days. Every year, for the most part, your liver is completely new. And so it's, it's pretty, it's pretty incredible when you look at how resilient that organ is.

So I wanna walk you through the steps right now to really optimize your liver function, which of course is also gonna help. Lose body fat, support hormonal health, brain fog, and a number of other issues. So the first thing is this, eliminate your toxin exposure. Okay? Eat organic, get a good water filtration system, whether it's just a simple reverse osmosis filter at your sink.

I mean, listen, whole body or, or whole house filters are wonderful, but they're often not necessary, even though I do like them. We have one at home, but definitely at least your drinking water, having that filtered because there's a lot of chemicals in there. Uh, that, that your body has to deal with. Avoiding eating out of plastic containers. Make the simple switch to glass and stainless steel.

Also, here's a big one. If you are taking medications, working with a doctor who wants to help you get off them, listen, he, this is a big problem today in the, in the medical field. Doctors wanna just put you on medications and keep you on them the rest of your life. Every good doctor out there, which is only about 20% or less of them, here's what they do. Here's what they should be doing.

If they have to, first thing they should do is deal with— recommend a very specific diet and supplementation program and lifestyle habits to help you reverse your condition. If that doesn't work, maybe they get you on a medication for a period of time, all while trying to get you off it as quick as possible, because every drug damages your liver and organs.

And I want to walk you through the medications that are the most toxic to your liver According to medical studies. Number 1 is acetaminophen or Tylenol. This is a medication that stresses the liver. What happens is it's converted in the liver to a toxic metabolite called NAPQI, and that damages liver cells, especially when glutathione is depleted.

Now, I want you to remember, remember back of something that happened just this, uh, this last year. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Our HHS secretary said this. He said, we now know that there is a connection between autism and Tylenol.

If a mother takes Tylenol or acetaminophen during pregnancy, while she's pregnant, there is a greater increased risk of autism by about 20 to 30%, and there's a greater increased risk of ADHD. And this was published in a meta-analysis in 2021 in the European Journal of Epidemiology.

And And the other thing we saw here, by the way, there was another study published in the Journal of American Medical Association, and they found that when somebody had a high acetaminophen exposure, a mother, okay, they had nearly a 3 times higher risk of ADHD, a 3.6 times higher risk of autism. Okay? And there was another study done on over 100,000 children in Norway.

So remember, this isn't one study. This is multiple studies, many long-term studies. And they saw that women who took acetaminophen while pregnant had a— their kids had a 2 times increased risk of neurodevelopmental disorders. And here's why this happens. Tylenol or acetaminophen, that drug, that medication over the counter, you can just walk into any store and get it. It depletes glutathione.

This is your body's master antioxidant. When glutathione drops down, now your body isn't as protected. Remember I talked about this earlier? When we take a bite of an apple and that flesh starts to turn brown, that's oxidative stress. That's oxidative damage. Your liver is, should be kind of this bright red color. It can turn brown. That's oxidative damage.

Glutathione is the main antioxidant that protects your liver from that oxidative stress and protects your cells, every tissue in your body from oxidative stress. Glutathione is the number one antioxidant. That's why it's so critically important. When glutathione drops, now your body isn't protected. And so now there can be damage to the fetus, that neurodevelopment impact.

It can start to damage areas of development of the child. That's why there's an increased risk. By the way, there's also genetic factors. And I do want to say this too. When they went back and looked at some of these studies, they also found that genetic factors also increased the risk. So it wasn't just acetaminophen by itself. Okay? That was one factor.

Another major fa— major factor was genetic factors, such as if somebody had, uh, there, there are 2 or 3 in particular I wanna mention here. One is called GST. Um, that's really, GST is really the glutathione, uh, variant that can impact, um, your overall health. And so if you've heard of MTHFR, this is a gene variant that can sometimes slow down your methylation pathways. Okay?

Methylation's also important for especially phase 2 of liver detoxification. Now, there's also a glutathione variant that can impact how much your body can produce glutathione. And so, and for those people, so like if you have MTHFR, most people know this, you need to take certain types of methylated B vitamins, okay? Or at least that's very helpful for that pathway.

In a very similar way, if you have an issue with low glutathione, you really want to be taking certain supplements that You want to support glutathione production like selenium, like N-acetylcysteine, or take liposomal glutathione. But you want to take some things there to support glycine. You want to support glutathione production. Okay?

But the moral of the story is this, that there are certain medications that damage the liver and lower glutathione, putting your body more at risk of numerous health conditions. And of course, if you're pregnant, also putting kids at risk. Now, here is another medication that can greatly damage your liver, and it is amoxicillin.

Okay, this can trigger immune-mediated liver inflammation and cholestatic hepatitis, according to medical studies. So a lot of different types of antibiotics actually are, especially if they're done as an IV, very hard and damaging to the liver and your mitochondria.

Statin drugs, Okay, if you are on a statin drug, what these do is these damage the liver and increase liver enzymes through a mitochondrial pathway. So again, statin drugs damage your liver. NSAID drugs, many NSAIDs, those damage the liver. And listen, almost every medication to some degree has at least a small degree of liver damage, but those are the biggest.

The number 2 exposures that are really damaging our liver, we talked about this earlier, Uh, alcohol, right? Excess alcohol. If you know you have a liver issue, you really want to avoid alcohol altogether. Eliminate sugar, especially sweetened drinks that can spike blood sugar.

Avoid fried foods, highly processed seed oils, but also be careful of excess saturated fat consumption from things like butter and animal fats. Now, I do want to say this. Listen, for some people, you do— you'll do just fine with, uh, you know, a certain amount of animal fats and, and things like grass-fed butter. Especially if you don't have any liver issues.

And if you're on a lower calorie diet, your body will tolerate that better. And if your liver is underburdened, if you have very little stress, okay, everything is flowing well, your body can handle more. But if you're under a state where your liver is already stressed, the food group where your body has to work, your liver has to work the hardest to break it down, it's saturated fats. Okay?

That's the reality. And these highly processed seed oils, that, that's going to stress the liver. You also want to cut— we talked, of course, any fast food, ultra-processed snack. And here's another one, late-night snacking. Your liver detoxifies really from around 11:00 PM to 3:00 AM. And if you're eating at night, your liver is now working rather than detoxing, healing, and regenerating.

That's very hard on the liver. So really eating an early dinner and not eating again until morning is essential for liver health. And of course, smoking or tobacco uses are also very hard on the liver.

Yeah.

In terms of food. Now, here's the next step. We want to get rid of those foods and we want to start eating foods that support bile flow. Okay? So your liver produces bile, it's then stored in the gallbladder, it's then released. And what bile does is bile helps break down fat-soluble vitamins. It helps and supports detoxification. Uh, it, it, it's, uh, it's part of that waste management system.

So we want to support bile flow. Some of the best things for that are Sour foods, especially doing a little lemon juice in your water, doing apple cider vinegar. These are very supportive for the liver, gallbladder, and bile. Cruciferous vegetables, especially steamed.

If you can buy bok choy and broccoli and cauliflower and cabbage and kale and Brussels sprouts and do a lot of those cruciferous vegetables, it is absolutely incredible for liver health, especially if they're just steamed. That's sort of the cleanest version of them.

Now, if you want to bake them, I would do that in a little bit of extra virgin olive oil, avocado oil, or a little coconut oil, something like that with some sea salt. But steaming would be the best there for the liver. And remember what we talked about earlier, especially if you're dealing with estrogen dominance or PCOS or PMS or any type of hormonal issue related to women.

And actually, this is true for men too, because one of the things that causes testosterone to deplete is excess estrogen or your testosterone turning into estrogen. All that being said, cruciferous vegetables contain a compound called indole-3-carbinol, which takes this ex— it supports the liver in breaking down and getting rid of the excess estrogen.

So cruciferous vegetables are one of those hero foods for your liver. Now, the another food is bitter greens, spinach, arugula, dandelion greens, um, any of those green leafy vegetables. Are amazing for the liver. Watercress. They are bitter foods, support bile production. So the more bitter you have, the more it actually supports bile flow and production there as well.

I also want to mention just sort of a really hero superfood here we don't eat very much of, and that is sprouts. If you ever see in the grocery store, there's little sprouts like broccoli sprouts or alfalfa sprouts. Those contain sulforaphane.

Okay.

That actually helps release and get rid of excess estrogen as well, but also it helps the liver get rid of different chemicals that cause cancer. So they have really strong anti-cancer properties if you add those sprouts.

What I like to do is I'll make a salad at home in the spring and summer, and I will add on some apple cider vinegar, and I will add in some sprouts there, and I might have some hummus with it or Again, olive oil, balsamic vinegar, or something like that as a dressing. But sprouts are a great superfood for the liver. Beets boost nitric oxide. They also support liver detoxification.

Garlic and onions, artichokes, really good for bile and gallbladder flow. Doing berries, high-fiber foods. Fiber is really, really good for the liver and the gut. To get rid of any excess estrogen in the body as well, or chemicals.

So doing, you know, berries, doing flaxseeds, doing chia seeds, those types of foods, really great for liver, gallbladder, extra virgin olive oil, and bone broth and soups. Bone broth contains the amino acid glycine, which is also critical for liver function. So those are some of the absolute best.

Now, I also want to mention, in terms of your macronutrients, you really want to focus on High protein, high fiber, and then a lot of nutrients via things like, you know, vegetables, berries, pomegranate, apples, and seeds like flax and chia. Okay, that's sort of the ideal diet for the liver. According to a study published in Oxford Medicine, here's what they say.

Adequate dietary protein plays a crucial part in diminishing the risk of nonalcoholic fatty liver disease. Dietary protein has been shown to reduce fat accumulation in the liver. By increasing liver metabolism, eliciting— really being helpful for not having those food cravings and supporting insulin sensitivity. And the more muscle mass you have, the more that supports insulin as well.

So getting more protein, around 30 to 40 grams per meal, is sort of ideal when it comes to supporting your liver health as well. And the last step here I want to talk about, and this is really important, is elimination. Okay? Supporting your liver in elimination. And this is where I mentioned fiber early.

Okay.

Earlier, you want to get around 30 to 40 grams of fiber daily, and this is going to lower liver fat. It's going to bind to excess toxins and get them out in your body, because if that doesn't happen, those toxins can recirculate from your gut, get back in the bloodstream, and then your liver has to deal with them again.

And so making sure you're not having constipation, making sure you're having regular bowel movements is really important for liver function. So high fiber. Doing magnesium glycinate at night or some form of magnesium is fantastic, around 300 to 600 milligrams in the evening. So let's dive into now the top 8 supplements that support liver detoxification.

And there's probably a few of these that you maybe haven't heard of or didn't realize are really important for liver function. The first one here is, is really consuming the right herbals. Milk thistle is my favorite, typically around 200 to 400 milligrams a day. This helps actually protect liver cells.

In fact, there's a great study on people that have gone through chemotherapy and radiation treatments and milk thistle supporting Liver regeneration and protecting the liver while going through those treatments. But milk thistle protects your liver from damage, and so it's probably my number one favorite herb for overall liver health. Now listen, there's many others I'm a big fan of.

Artichoke is great for gallbladder. Dandelion is also wonderful. Schisandra is a berry used in Chinese medicine that protects the liver and supports it as well. But getting those right herbals are really, really great for overall liver function. Number 2, N-acetylcysteine.

One of those key amino acids needed for liver function, we talked about glycine earlier, but cysteine is really important for liver function. And N-acetylcysteine is a key precursor to glutathione, which again, as I talked about, it's the liver's most important internal antioxidant and detoxification compound.

So making sure you're getting, and I would say you want to be doing at least 600 milligrams daily. For some people, though, you want to take up to 2,400 milligrams daily or more if you're dealing with major toxicity issues or you're doing a detox or cleanse. I personally take around 1,200 to 1,800 milligrams a day. Another one here is glycine. Glycine, taking about 3 grams at night.

This supports phase 2 liver detoxification. Again, when we talk about glutathione, Glutathione is known as a tripeptide. Okay? It's a peptide. And 2 of those most important amino acids are glycine and cysteine. Glutamate is the other one, but really the biggest ones people are missing today, especially as you age, glycine's the biggest one and then cysteine.

And a lot of times we don't have the nutrients or the amino acids our body needs in order to create enough glutathione. So doing about 3 grams of glycine at night is tremendously beneficial. By the way, I mentioned this earlier.

If you wake up in the middle of the night, let's say it's between especially 1:00 and 3:00 AM, that's a sign that the liver is overburdened or doesn't have what it needs to detoxify. And consuming glycine has shown in a few studies to help keep you from waking up at 3:00 AM, cuz now the body has what it needs.

So taking glycine before bed, and I really love pairing glycine with N-acetylcysteine and with magnesium glycinate. It'll help you sleep deeper, it'll help you sleep longer and not wake up at night because of that. So if you want to improve your sleep quality, and that's one of those symptoms you have related to liver issues, glycine is amazing.

Now, I want to mention there is a new supplement out there that a lot of people are taking today where they're combining glycine and N-acetylcysteine, giving your body really what it needs. To create glutathione. And the supplement tends to be called GlyNAC. And there are some great studies on this.

In fact, there was a study where people supplemented with GlyNAC for 16 weeks and it reduced insulin resistance by 64%, lowered fasting insulin by 65%, and improved actually longevity markers like gait speed and grip strength by around 14%. It also corrected Many of the hallmarks of aging, including oxidative stress, mitochondrial dysfunction, and inflammation.

There was an animal study where people took GlyNAC, which is again glycine plus N-acetylcysteine, and it increased the lifespan in mice by 24%. So many, many benefits there. And if you're wanting to take a great detoxification supplement that's also great for longevity, then taking GlyNAC would be, would be a great option.

There's also another protective compound along with glutathione I really like called alpha-lipoic acid. You can take Around 300 to 600 milligrams of that. This helps reduce oxidative stress on the liver as well. Choline or phosphatidylcholine, this supports bile production and fat transport. So this is also really important for your cell membrane.

So it's important for the liver, but also the cells of your liver and your cell membrane. So it's going to support that detoxification at the cellular level as well. Magnesium glycinate, I mentioned this earlier. This is one, especially if you're having issues with sleep or relaxation or not having enough healthy bowel movements, that's the supplement you'd want to take.

And then a couple others, TUDCA. TUDCA is essentially taurine combined with ox bile or bile. And this has been used for— it's naturally found, actually, I think, in the liver and gallbladder of bears. It's a great product and supplement for improving bile flow. You know, one of the conditions I've seen people come in with over the years oftentimes is vitamin D deficiency.

And I just had a patient here this week, and I was reviewing their blood work, and one of the things I noticed was, and, and they had it in their history, that they'd been doing— taking a vitamin D supplement for years, and their vitamin D levels were still low. There, it was around like 31.

And one of the things that when I sit down with this patient, I'll walk through with them, is, is that the reason why their vitamin D is still low— What's right, your vitamin D should be at least 50 or above, right? 50 To 80 is optimal range. Now, a lot of doctors want it in the 20 to 30 range. That's normal. That's not optimal. But so it was low for them.

But one of the reasons why people have low vitamin D is that their body isn't absorbing vitamin D, right? So sometimes the body has enough, but it's not absorbing or utilizing enough in the body, or it's not converting it well enough. Which, did you know, in order to make vitamin D, the process partly it goes through is there's cholesterol on your skin.

And the UV light from the sun hits your skin, and then it takes some of this type, this specific type of cholesterol, and it will then go to the liver, which then your liver takes it and creates the vitamin D that your body stores and utilizes. But if your liver isn't healthy, it cannot turn enough of that type of cholesterol into vitamin D. Okay?

And so TUDCA, as a supplement can help create enough bile then and support your liver to create vitamin D and for your body to utilize vitamin D as well. But anyways, if you're dealing with gallbladder issues, especially if you've had your gallbladder removed or had gallstones or gallbladder stress, TUDCA is one of those absolutely must-have supplements.

Typically around 500 milligrams with meals that have any type of fat in them would be kind of ideal for taking TUDCA. And then also, if you had your gallbladder removed, ox bile or taking lipase enzymes is also a good idea. Last supplement here is fiber. Getting about 5 to 10 grams, this can help with digestion, elimination, binding. I really like, of course, getting it from your food.

Apples are an amazing form of fiber, pomegranates, blackberries, blueberries. So getting it in that form, doing a little chia and flax, that's great as well. But I also really like fiber as a supplement and taking something like modified citrus pectin. This is a great form of fiber that is a gentle binder.

Now, typically people take modified citrus pectin for cancer, has anti-cancer properties, but I recommend it for people with liver issues and a lot of my patients that have heart health issues. This type of fiber binds to those toxins and excess hormones, getting rid of them out of the body. And typically you'd want to do about 5 grams daily or so of MCP, that's modified citrus pectin.

And other fiber is great as well for liver health. Psyllium husk, acacia fiber, a lot of the plant-based types of fiber as well. But that would be the next supplement that has tremendous benefits for liver detoxification. Are you interested in functional nutrition tips to burn fat, reduce inflammation, improve your brain and energy levels, and heal naturally?

Then I want to encourage you to listen to my friend, Dr. Dave Jocker's podcast, The Functional Nutrition Podcast. This podcast is designed to help you with easy actionable steps to improve your nutrition and lifestyle, understand your lab work, and address the root cause factors that may be driving up inflammation in your body.

Now, I've been friends with Dr. David Jockers for 20 years, and he's truly a world expert in functional nutrition, cellular healing, and so much more. If you want to learn the best nutrition and natural healing tips, tune into the Dr. Jockers Functional Nutrition Podcast on Apple iTunes, Spotify, YouTube, And wherever you can listen to podcasts worldwide.

Now, I want to talk about a few therapies that can be greatly beneficial for detoxifying your liver, and one of those is infrared sauna. Simply sweating and heating your body, that's going to help move blood. It's going to support those liver detoxification pathways. So infrared sauna, 3 to 5 days a week, 20 to 40 minutes, ideal for liver health. Just exercise, especially outside.

Going for a jog, going for a bike ride, going for a walk outside, these sort of things where you're just kind of moving and carefree, very, very good for liver detoxification.

Almost any type of exercise, but really cardio and being outside while working out, probably even more beneficial than weight training, though weight training does have even more indirect benefits because when you build muscle mass, supports insulin, that takes stress off the liver.

Another favorite detox protocol I have for the liver and gallbladder and the gut is doing castor oil packs over the liver. This helps with bile flow and lymphatic drainage, all while calming local inflammation, promoting relaxation. So, and this is really easy. What you do is you buy castor oil.

By the way, you don't want to do castor oil internally because it tends to— your body starts to rely on it, and then it can cause constipation later. I mean, if somebody has major constipation, as one-time use, it's fine, but for the most part, it's not what I recommend internally. Um, But doing it topically is great. So what you do is you buy what you call a liver pack, which really isn't a pack.

It's sort of this piece of cloth, and you put about a tablespoon of castor oil on this castor oil pack. Okay? And then what you'll do is you'll put it in a space that's about the size of 2 tennis balls next to each other, and you'll kind of evenly distribute some of that tablespoon of castor oil there. You'll then wrap it right over your liver.

And so that's going to be kind of that lower part of your right rib cage, and you'll put it over that area. Now, what I like to do before that though is I like to take an infrared heating pad and put that directly over that liver area, warming it up for about 20 minutes or so. And then I'll put the castor oil pack on for about 40 minutes.

So it's about an hour protocol, 20 minutes of an infrared heating pad, About 40 minutes of the castor oil pack, and then you can remove it.

But it's amazing the testimonials I've seen and success stories of people dealing with chronic constipation and liver issues that did a castor oil pack and followed that protocol I just shared with you and saw amazing results for lymphatic system and liver and gallbladder health. It really is an amazing therapy for overall liver health.

And what it does is that castor oil just stimulates the liver. Uh, liver to flow and, and for bile release. And I've seen, you know, some of my friends, my, for instance, Barbara O'Neill, a friend of mine, you know, she talks about it.

A lot of others that are into ancient natural forms of medicine who have talked about the great benefits of doing that castor oil pack for supporting liver function. Now, the last thing I want to dive into before I go through the final protocol is blood work and why this matters.

Did you know up to 80% of people with fatty liver disease have normal ALT and AST levels on their blood work according to the NIH? And here's the thing, having normal lab values does not reflect true liver health. I mean, liver enzymes may remain normal even when there's a major issue.

And we've seen it happen to where somebody's had completely normal blood work, and yet when we went and did a, a type of a liver scan, they saw fat accumulation around the liver, inflammation, fibrosis starting to develop. And so just because your liver markers on those conventional panels are normal does not mean your liver healthy.

Now, I do more advanced blood work in my clinic where I'm looking at more of the markers that are actually truly connected to liver issues before they show up on more of those conventional markers. And it's really helpful to know, you know, some of the markers like even ApoB or, or high-sensitivity C-reactive protein, or taking some of these markers together and looking at them.

Oftentimes I can tell if there's a liver issue far before the conventional blood work on the more advanced blood work. We're looking at these cellular markers, you know, even more than liver markers. Oftentimes looking at metabolic markers can tell us more about fatty liver disease. Looking at, you know, triglycerides, fasting insulin or glucose, hemoglobin A1c levels, HDL cholesterol.

These can tell us a lot about fatty liver function before some of the even liver markers or what we think of as primary liver markers will tell us. Now, what I like to do oftentimes is look at B vitamins. This is also going to tell me a lot about the liver, what it needs, how it's functioning. Looking at nutrients such as vitamin B6, B9, and B12, This is great for liver function.

Looking at somebody's genetics, if somebody has MTHFR, that's very revealing and can tell me if they need specific things for liver health as well. One of the things that I really like to look at in blood work as well is, is what are some of the vitamins and minerals your body's depleted in?

Because if you're depleted in just one nutrient, it can greatly impact your liver, gallbladder, and detoxification channels. One of the most important is magnesium. I mean, looking at your magnesium levels is incredibly helpful to know. It's so important for so many liver liver reactions and functions. B vitamins are crucial for liver function, especially B6, B9, which is folate, vitamin B12.

That's really important as well. Your genetics can matter. I mentioned earlier your MTHFR, looking at that specifically, or GST, to see if that— if you have any of those genetic markers. Those can also be really helpful when we're looking at your blood work. Now, I want to break this down before we close up on exactly what you need to do for liver detoxification in terms of the pathways.

Now, I walked through so much today when it comes to liver health and detoxification, uh, but I want to break it down in 3 simple things just for you to remember moving forward, to make sure that if you know you need to heal your liver and detox better, that you make sure you hit all these 3 steps.

Number one thing we need to do to support the liver is support liver processing, the main liver pathway. There's 2 things you want to do there. One, reduce your exposure to toxins. Okay, that, that's number one.

If you are eating a lot of food that's not organic, especially meat, and you're being exposed to glyphosate, and you're eating out of plastic containers and doing this all the time, and doing a lot of excess sugar and alcohol, that's going to overwhelm the liver. Okay.

And the next is the way the liver processes that liver pathway, making sure that the liver in phase 1 detoxification that you've got B vitamins and some of those things. It's really important for the liver to function properly. That's step number 1, is we want to reduce the toxin exposure and just make sure your liver has a lot of what it needs to function properly.

The second thing is we need to support bile flow. This is connected to the liver and gallbladder, especially in the lymphatic system. With that, eating more bitter herbs, eating a lot of the foods we talked about that are liver-friendly. Sour foods, bitter foods, Granny Smith apples, artichokes, green leafy vegetables, steamed cruciferous vegetables. These things are going to help.

And taking some of the right supplements for bile— we talked about TUDCA, um, you know, glycine, magnesium glycinate— a lot of these are going to support bile in a really powerful way as well. And the last one is this: it's actually not treating the liver, it's treating the gut microbiome. But remember, If you— let's say, let's say you do this.

Let's say you start taking N-acetylcysteine and glycine and TUDCA and doing all the things, and now your liver is really dumping and getting released the toxins. The liver's working well, but your bowels and your gut microbiome aren't healthy. There's not enough good bacteria and there's not enough fiber to bind to the toxins to pull them out of the body.

Then they're going to recirculate, and those will start to overwhelm your liver over time. So getting good bacteria in your gut, like doing some coconut yogurt, um, or a probiotic supplement and taking some good fiber, getting good fiber in your food and maybe taking a supplement, that's gonna help bind to those toxins and excess estrogen metabolites and now clear it out of your system.

So to optimize detoxification, we need to support and strengthen the liver and processing. We need to support bile flow to make things are moving through the body. And we need to support the gut microbiome and colon in getting rid of any of those excess toxins out of your body. So remember some of these key takeaways. If you have a sluggish liver, oftentimes there's warning signs.

There's insulin resistance, right? There's excess estrogen. You can have skin issues, hormone issues, fatigue, a number of those problems, right? So look out for those warning signs that we talked about. Remember, Alcohol isn't the main driver. It is a driver. It's a big driver. But sugar, especially processed sugar, is just as big of a driver, if not a bigger driver, of liver issues today.

Also remember, there's an emotional tie-in there, right? If you're dealing with frustration, impatience, resentment, envy, uh, unforgiveness, those act as a toxin. They overwhelm the liver and cause issues. Spending time creating a vision board, spending more time outside, forgiving others, reading your Bible, doing things, having a personal growth plan.

Remember, the liver is responsible for numerous things. We want to take care of this incredible organ. So I want to say, hey, thanks so much for tuning in here to the Dr. Josh Axe Show. Remember, every week we're diving deep into the science and principles of how you can heal physically, mentally, and spiritually. Hey, do me a favor.

The number one thing you could do to support the show is subscribe. And also be on mission with me. There are millions of people today that don't know how to take care of their liver. And by listening to this episode, they're now going to know. I mean, I believe that this show, we're able to save lives, transform lives, help people reach their optimal level of health.

So just know it means so much to me when you subscribe and also when you share this episode. I'm so grateful for all of you being part here of the community. And I just love that we're locking arms together. We're making a big impact together. So thanks so much for subscribing, for sharing, and I can't wait to see you on the next episode.