The liver is a crucial organ that performs a wide variety of functions, including regulating blood chemistry, producing bile, metabolizing food, storing glycogen, vitamins, and minerals, and processing and excreting medications. These are only few of the liver’s many important roles, and all of them may be jeopardized if the liver were not in good condition. The liver’s ability to repair itself after injury is remarkable, especially when compared to that of other organs. Despite this good news, it’s not a good idea to put off taking care of your liver until it stops working properly because of its remarkable regenerating ability.
It’s crucial to make decisions that benefit your liver and overall health, since your diet and alcohol use may have far-reaching effects on liver function. To assist you stay in tip-top shape, we’ve compiled a list of the four worst things you can do for your liver when it comes to what you consume.
- Sugar
If you’ve done any research at all, you already know that eating too much-processed sugar or drinking too many sugary beverages may have detrimental effects on your health. According to Harvard Health, the use of added sugar is associated with an elevated risk for cardiovascular illness such as heart attack and stroke via increasing blood pressure, chronic inflammation, and the development of obesity, diabetes, and fatty liver disease. What may come as a surprise is that the increased sugar in your diet may cause your liver to produce more fat, which in turn can cause fatty liver disease and perhaps type 2 diabetes.
It is vital to distinguish the sugar present naturally in fruits and vegetables, which has not shown to harm liver function, from the added sugar utilized in many processed meals and beverages.
- Processed food
Many different types of packaged, shelf-stable, frozen, and refrigerated foods and drinks fall under this umbrella term. We know that added sugar, which is included in many of these drinks and foods, is harmful to liver function. Common meals like bread, pastries, cereal, and sweets, as well as processed meats such as hot dogs, pepperoni, and cured meats, might include chemicals that can be harmful.
- Fried food
Many of your favorite meals probably fall into this category, but they may be causing your liver to work too hard due to their high fat content. Low-quality fats like maize oil, which undergoes considerable processing and has high levels of omega-6 fat, are often used to produce fried dishes. This kind of fat is known to cause inflammation in the body when ingested in excess and in imbalance with omega-3 consumption.
