Liver - Keep it healthy!

Liver is said to be one of the most important organs in our body. I partly agree with this, because I believe all parts of our body is extremely important. But being the place where all the toxins accumulate, it is true that we have to take care of this one organ; the liver.

Why? Liver acts like a filter. It helps to filter out toxins from our blood system before blood is being pumped to the whole body. Toxins are from the food we ate, drinks we drank, air we breathed ...

How often do you change your water filter at home? It only does water filteration, but still, we need to cleanse it once in a while. And that's only the tap water, which seems to be colourless with our naked eye. What about Teh Tarik, air Sirap, and Coke that we drank? Not only that, the food we ate; Nasi Lemak, Roti Canai, fast food with all the variety names and colours. Poluted air that we breathe, smokers, 2nd-hand smokers ... All of these are filtered by our liver, and after that goes to the kidneys for the next filteration process. Our body systems are truly amazing. There has not been a man-made machine which can operate 24 hours a day, every single day till the day it stops working. It may be 10, 20 or even 100 years, but it will continue working till the day it stops forever.

So when our body starts to give signs or symptoms of failure in certain parts, do not ignore these signs. Pay attention to it. Your body does not need a mechanic to repair its parts, it is self-healed. (Remember Claire Bennett?) Yes, we too have the ability to heal. Only that, we don't grow back our toes once we cut it off. The only question is, how good can we heal?

To determine how good can we heal, one of the important factorsto have a healthy liver. Healthy liver will make our immune system be in a good condition, and everything else will come after. Immune system is like a line of defense ready to go for war. Once we have a very good and competent line of soldiers, we could fight any enemies who try entering our body such as viruses, bad bacterias, including SARS, H1N1, etc.

When toxins are not cleansed out from the liver, liver will shrink and harden with scarring. This condition is called cirrhosis. When this happened, the liver slowly loses its functions which includes to cleanse the toxins and wastes in our blood, and manufacture vital nutrients. Causes of liver cirrhosis are from chronic alcohol abuse, drugs usage (including prescribed medicine), and virus infection.

Sounds scary? You better be. But fret-not. If you can't avoid from such kind of lifestyle, there are ways found to prevent liver disease from occuring. Heard of the phrase 'prevention is better than cure'? I would like to highlight here that prevention is CHEAPER than cure. How?

Well, good news to coffee lovers out there. Researchers in the United States have found that several cups of coffee a day could stop the progression of liver disease, according to studies. Sufferers of chronic hepatitis C and advanced liver disease who drank three or more cups of coffee per day slashed their risk of the disease progressing by 53% compared to patients who drank no coffee. This study was lead by Neal Freedman of the US National Cancer Institute (NCI) .

The researchers put forward several ways in which coffee intake might protect against liver disease, including by reducing the risk of type 2 diabetes, which has been associated with liver illness, or by reducing inflammation, which is thought to cause fibrosis and chirossis of the liver.

Even caffeine, the chemical that gives a cup of coffee its oomph, came under the spotlight, having been found in previous studies to inhibit liver cancer in rats. But drinking black or green tea, which also contain caffeine, had little impact on the progression of liver disease, although there were few tea drinkers in the study.

Interesting? Indeed!

Please beware that 'coffee' in the context means REAL coffee. Yes, freshly brewed coffees from your nearest Starbucks store is considered as real (Coffee Frappuccino is not counted). Most ground coffee in the local stores do not provide us 100% real coffee. So, please be wise when choosing the right item.

If you're still thinking of which coffee to buy, apart from Star(cough)bucks, you might want to try CEO Cafe from Shuang Hor which obviously have the good grade of coffee in it, plus, it has extract of YungKien Ganoderma, which has been certified to regulate immune system and liver protection. From where I can see, if you're opting for an affordable liver protection, CEO Cafe is worth trying and of course it is value for your money!

Let's detoxify our liver today!

Source from TheSun, Wednesday, October 28th 2009 & AFP-RelaxNews