7 Foods That Naturally Cleanse Your Liver

Our livers work extremely hard every day to protect us from adverse effects from toxins and often it is easy for our lives to become overworked compromising our health significantly. 

 The primary way in which your body expels toxins is via the liver, which detoxifies and cleanses your body by continuously filtering the blood of poisons that enter it through the digestive tract, the skin, and the respiratory system. But when your liver becomes overworked as a result of stress or excessive exposure to toxins, your entire system can be thrown off balance, and your health severely compromised.

Since the liver is also responsible for producing bile, another form of detoxification that is metabolically necessary for the breakdown and assimilation of fats and proteins from your food, it is exceedingly important that your liver is properly maintained. Without a well-functioning liver, your body will be unable to cleanse itself and absorb nutrients, which is a recipe for a health disaster.

 "The thousands of enzyme systems that are responsible for virtually every body activity are constructed in the liver," writes Dr. Karl Maret, M.D., about the importance of vibrant liver function. "The proper functioning of the eyes, the heart, the brain, the gonads, the joints, and the kidneys, are all dependent on good liver activity."

"If the liver is impaired from constructing even one of the thousands of enzyme systems the body requires, there is an impairment in overall body function and a resultant greater metabolic stress on the individual."

 

 So here are seven important foods you may want to begin incorporating into your diet in order to maintain a healthy liver.

 

1. Garlic

Garlic contains numerous sulfur-containing compounds that activate the liver enzymes responsible for flushing out toxins from the body. This bulbous relative of the onion also contains allicin and selenium, two powerful nutrients proven to help protect the liver from toxic damage, and aid it in the detoxification process.

2. Grapefruit

Grapefruit is rich in natural vitamin C and antioxidants, two powerful liver cleansers. Like garlic, grapefruit contains compounds that boost the production of liver detoxification enzymes. It also contains a flavonoid compound known as naringenin that causes the liver to burn fat rather than store it.

3. Green Tea

Green tea is loaded with catechins, a type of plant antioxidant that has been shown in studies to eliminate liver fat accumulation and promote proper liver function. This powerful herbal beverage also protects the liver against toxins that would otherwise accumulate and cause serious damage.

4. Green Vegetables

Leafy green vegetables such as bitter gourd, arugula, dandelion greens, spinach, mustard greens, and chicory also contain numerous cleansing compounds that neutralize heavy metals, which can bear heavily on the liver. Leafy greens also eliminate pesticides and herbicides from the body and spur the creation and flow of cleansing bile.
 

5. Avocado

Rich in glutathione-producing compounds, avocados actively promote liver health by protecting it against toxic overload and boosting its cleansing power. Some research has shown that eating one or two avocados a week for as little as 30 days can repair a damaged liver.

6. Walnuts

Walnuts, which contain high levels of l-arginine, an amino acid, glutathione, and omega-3 fatty acids, also help detoxify the liver of disease-causing ammonia. Walnuts also help oxygenate the blood, and extracts from their hulls are often used in liver-cleansing formulas.

7. Turmeric

Turmeric, one of the most powerful foods for maintaining a healthy liver, has been shown to actively protect the liver against toxic damage and even regenerate damaged liver cells. Turmeric also boosts the natural production of bile, shrinks engorged hepatic ducts, and improves overall function of the gallbladder, another body-purifying organ.

What Are You Doing To Naturally Cleanse Your Liver?

 

 

Article c/o Food Matters

 

 

 

 

 

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Why We Crave The Food We Crave

 

Cravings and Mineral Deficiency

Understanding What You’re Body Is “Really” Asking For

By Natural News

 

 

 

INTRODUCTION

 

Most of us have, at one point in our lives, experienced intense cravings for unhealthy foods. Whether it be for chocolate, donuts, salty snacks or refined carbs, our bodies appear to want them — and we’re often all too happy to submit. There’s just one problem: Eating these foods doesn’t seem to end the cravings.
 
Indeed, only by acquiring minerals from natural sources, in which all nutrients are optimized for superior absorption, can we hope to finally end the cravings that plague our lives.
 
What is going on here? Are our bodies playing a cruel joke on us? Well, not quite.
 
Science now understands that these cravings are a sign that your body needs certain minerals that can be found in unhealthy foods but are best acquired from whole foods.
 
 
CHOCOLATE: MAGNESIUM
 

Chocolate is the most commonly-reported craving in the Western world, so it shouldn’t surprise us that it is linked to a nutrient in which a huge number of us are unknowingly deficient: magnesium.
According to recent statistics, up to 80 percent of Americans are lacking in this essential macromineral, which is needed for over 300 biochemical reactions in the body, including reactions that relate to relaxation.

In fact, magnesium is nicknamed the “relaxation mineral,” since anxiety, irritability, insomnia and high blood pressure are its main deficiency symptoms. This is the reason why magnesium-deficient people temporarily feel better after eating a chocolate bar: the small amounts of magnesium in it (derived from its cacao content) relaxes them.
But, of course, there are far healthier sources of magnesium than processed chocolate. Dark leafy greens, seeds and nuts, fish, beans and blackstrap molasses are all excellent sources of magnesium and will help end chocolate cravings. 


SUGARY FOODS: CHROMIUM, CARDON, PHOSPHORUS, SULFUR AND/OR TRYTOPHAN

The second most commonly reported craving in the West is high-sugar foods.
This is the most complex craving to pin down, since deficiencies in no less than five nutrients could be causing it:

• chromium (helps to regulate blood sugar levels)
• carbon (one of the elements from which sugar is made)
• phosphorus (helps the body produce energy)
• sulfur (helps remove toxins)
• tryptophan (a serotonin regulator)

Therefore, the best way to end incessant sugar cravings is to simply improve your diet, which will help remineralize your body in all areas.


REFINED CARBOHYDRATES: NITROGEN

A craving for refined carbs like pasta and bread signals a deficiency in nitrogen.

Nitrogen compounds are an essential component of nucleic acids and protein, and deficiencies in them can result in malnutrition due to a related protein deficiency. Therefore, if you find that you’re craving a lot of refined carbohydrates, add more nitrogen-rich foods to your diet.

Most foods contain nitrogen in organic or non-organic form, but fruits and vegetables are especially rich in it.

OTHER CRAVINGS

The following cravings are less common than those detailed above, but are still regularly reported in today’s society:
Oily and fatty foods: You are deficient in calcium. Good sources of calcium include raw milk, cheese, turnip greens and broccoli.
Ice: You are deficient in iron. Eat more iron-rich foods like leafy greens, meat, blackstrap molasses and sea vegetables.
Salty foods: You are deficient in chloride and/or silicon. Try adding more fish, nuts and seeds to your diet.

 

 

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A Genius Way to Overcome Fear

 

“If you don’t do what I tell you, I have no power.” ~ Pema Chödrön

I’m a question-asker, without a doubt. The trickier, the more seemingly unanswerable the question, the more I like digging into it.

Some questions are great riddles to be solved, and some are just huge fans of trapping you in a cycle of re-questioning that can drive you mad.

I’ve tried doodling a visualization of this: I drew two concentric circles, side by side. I was in one of them with my various layers of thought processes, and my questions, with their myriad layers, were in the other.

 

I was trying to get to the “essence” of me and of my questions, and failed. There also appeared to be no way to get these two circles to overlap.

How could I possibly answer the questions from within my own little cage-circle, when the objects of my questions existed in another? I could not for the life of me find a way to build a bridge from one to the other. Yet they were both coming from “me!” Oh, the riddle.

It took me a long time to begin realizing that some questions aren’t meant to be answered, at least in the ways we are accustomed to, that you can’t get at the meaning of life the way you can add two and two and that our minds (and egos) specialize in the art of confusing us. Thus began a long journey to climb out of this system of closed circles, and into a practice that helps you shift focus. (Hint: get out of your head! Find your way through the heart!)

Still, the questions come back, so recently, I sat down to engage with them more closely for the first time in awhile. I wrote down the ones that plague me the most or the most often, because I can’t seem to shake them, or find answers to them, or know how to stop thinking about them.

Sometimes I don’t have these questions, and these are great, if transient moments of peace and contentment.

Then the questions come back:

 

1:  Why am I always seeking—why are we driven to seek rather than just be content with what we have?

2: Why do I often feel I am falling?

3. Why am I afraid of falling (what’s the worst that can happen)?

4: Why do I always feel there must be something more to all of this?

5: Why do I feel that happiness can only be found elsewhere?

6: Why do I have so many questions that seem to have no answers, and where do they come from?

7: What is the nature of nostalgia, that floods me with feelings that have no object?

       8: Why do things feel more broken than whole?

9: Why do I feel lonely?

10: Why do familiar things feel strange after some time?

 

Pema Chödrön reminds us that so many of our questions can be traced to fear. Fears can be intentional (they can be of or about something), of course, but fear can also be nebulous, formless and all-pervasive.

I love the idea that she alludes to so brilliantly here, that we can’t and shouldn’t stop ourselves from having questions (can we stop being human?), but that we can make decisions not to engage with what lies behind them.

Fear keeps us from connecting with others, and keeps us from our own happiness.

When I feel fear creeping in, and dragging my questions along with it, I found these words of Pema Chödrön’s so inspiring, and would like to share them in the hope that they can be of benefit:

“Once there was a young warrior. Her teacher told her that she had to do battle with fear. She didn’t want to do that. It seemed too aggressive; it was scary; it seemed unfriendly. But the teacher said she had to do it and gave her the instructions for the battle. The day arrived. The student warrior stood on one side, and fear stood on the other. The warrior was feeling very small, and fear was looking big and wrathful. They both had their weapons. The young warrior roused herself and went toward fear, prostrated three times, and asked, “May I have permission to go into battle with you?” Fear said, “Thank you for showing me so much respect that you ask permission.” Then the young warrior said, “How can I defeat you?” Fear replied, “My weapons are that I talk fast, and I get very close to your face. Then you get completely unnerved, and you do whatever I say. If you don’t do what I tell you, I have no power. You can listen to me, and you can have respect for me. You can even be convinced by me. But if you don’t do what I say, I have no power.” In that way, the student warrior learned how to defeat fear. ”

 

        ~ When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times

 

 

 

 

 

via Tammy T. Stone

for elephant journal