1. People and the decisions they make are healthy, not food itself
Dr Libby points out food (whole, real food that is) is just food, it's your choices that determine health. She's also keen to remind everyone that junk food isn't food. It's just junk.
2. Nutrition is vital for the biochemical reactions that drive everything in your body
To convert one chemical into another, which the body can use, we need nutrients. Nutrients are what we get from real food. Take broccoli for example: Broccoli is broken down into a special kind of medium, which also helps your liver process oestrogen. Without broccoli, this reaction is stalled. Why don't you want to much oestrogen? Read on....
3. Your liver needs a cleanse. Trust me.
Liver cleansing and beetroot juices have been around for ages, but apart from helping recover from a champagne binge, no one is really sure why livers need cleansing.
Alcohol isn't the main reason your liver needs cleansing. Fat and oestrogen is.
In the old days, alcohol was the main reason livers developed fatty liver disease. Now though, it's occurring in many women, even children. What does this mean?
It means there is less viable liver able to process the incoming fats, cholesterol, oestrogen and alcohol, so it's working at lower capacity and is overloaded. Uh oh...
What happens when you liver is overloaded?
First up, think of the liver as a 2-phase funnel. Dr Libby uses her arm to depict a liver. Imagine your forearm is the input, where trans-fats, alcohol, cholesterol and oestrogen come in. At the wrist is phase one, where every substance undergoes a change, call it A1. After A1, imagine your palm is phase 2, where the changed substance A1 chooses a pathway down one of your fingertips, one of 5 different pathways.
Nodding our heads at the workshop, Dr Libby went on, explaining what happens when the liver is backed up. After a substance comes into the liver and undergoes a change (becomes A1) sometimes there's too much traffic for it to filter down one of the five pathways. So! It sneaks out a trap door and gets back into the blood stream.
Our body isn't skilled at processing these altered substances (A1) and a good example is oestrogen. After it become altered, if it is forced to sneak out the trapdoor, the altered oestrogen enters the blood stream. Unfortunately it can't be processed, and has been linked to oestrogen-dominant cancers like some breast cancers. Not good.
How do you cleanse the liver?
You need to free up the traffic that's blocking those five pathways.
1. Decrease cholesterol, alcohol and trans fats to slow down the flow of substances coming into the liver.
2. Decrease your oestrogen levels. How? Decrease your stress levels; this helps increase your progesterone levels which is your body's anti-anxiety hormone. When progesterone levels increase, oestrogen decreases and they level out. This means there's less oestrogen flooding into the liver, and none has to sneak out the trap door!