The Liver

The largest of your internal organs, the gland-like liver is located under the front ribs on your right side. It weighs about three pounds, more in larger and less in smaller people. It performs thousands of important jobs for the body’s metabolism. It maintains blood sugar during the night (by storing glycogen that converts to glucose), makes bile for digestion of fats, and even produces the hormone somatomedin for building muscle and cartilage. All these actions significantly affect your training, racing, and overall health. One of the liver’s most important tasks is removing toxins.

The liver filters the blood, and by doing so it breaks down and eliminates an untold number of chemical compounds. Some of these are normally produced within the body during metabolism, while others are consumed even in a healthy diet (with many more toxins in bad foods). In doing its job, the liver regulates hormones, cholesterol, fats, proteins, caffeine, sulfur (from cruciferous vegetables like broccoli and cabbage), various phytonutrients, iron, and many other compounds. Even healthy substances, such as hormones and nutrients, when completing their tasks in the body, are disposed of by the liver. But if this does not happen, the continuous actions of hormones causes an imbalance—just as if there was too much of that hormone. The brain also plays an important role in this regulation process by helping the liver decide how to regulate the breakdown of various substances.

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Just as important, toxins that enter the body through food and our environment are filtered out and eliminated in the liver. These include pesticides and other toxic chemicals that find their way into our food and water, chemicals from air pollution (auto exhaust, cleaning products, perfumes, and toiletries), medications, and others. The liver accomplishes this through a complex process called detoxification. Once filtered, the liver disposes of all these substances, via the gall bladder, into the gut for removal from the body. Thus, optimal gut function also plays an important role in this process.