Your liver processes toxins, which come from chemical processes in your body and from foods, drugs, alcohol, pesticides, and other environmental toxins. Your liver removes these toxins from your body by producing bile, which releases into your intestines and into your blood for excretion through your kidneys. The bile in your intestines mixes with your feces and leaves your body along with any other undigested material. Bile is also like a lubricant and helps your feces move easily out of your body, preventing constipation.   

Most people today have a sluggish liver due to improper diets and environmental toxins. These people detoxify less, produce less bile, are more constipated, have poor digestion and therefore have increased intestinal damage and leaky gut syndrome. The cycle becomes more vicious as intestinal damage and leaky gut syndrome allow more toxins to enter the body, increasing damage to the liver and chronic inflammation, which increases toxicity and chronic disease even further.

As your body becomes more toxic, your cells experience more mitochondrial and DNA damage, making you more prone to certain types of cancers and organ failure. Increased inflammation is also seen to contribute to increased risk of cancer.

Your liver also controls the production and balance of cholesterol and hormones. We often see progesterone deficiencies, estrogen dominance and other hormonal imbalances in people who have suboptimal liver function. Estrogen dominance and hormonal imbalance is often seen in many forms of cancer. 

As your blood becomes more toxic, your lymphatic system has a harder time to detoxify and becomes more toxic as well. This affects all your immune cells in your lymph nodes, making you immune compromised. Cancer cure is dependent on a healthy immune system, so please consider reducing inflammation, toxicity and improving liver function when trying to improve your immune system.

As your lymphatic system becomes more clogged up, many of your cells will not be able to release their own toxins into the lymph system, and will likely drown, mutate or die in toxicity. Such stagnation also prevents adequate amounts of oxygen reaching your cells. It is well known that cancer cells thrive in an anaerobic (low oxygen) environment. Therefore, when your liver is not healthy and your lymphatic system clogged up, cancer treatment and recovery becomes much harder.

As your body becomes more toxic, it often becomes more acidic. Acidity in your blood causes your red blood cells to clump together – medically termed as Rouleaux formation. Your red blood cells are responsible for delivering oxygen to all your tissues. When your red blood cells clump together, less of their surface area is exposed to the rest of your body, meaning less oxygen is delivered to your cells, creating an anaerobic environment, which, as you saw earlier, might contribute to an increased risk of cancer.

It is also hypothesized that cancer proliferates in an acidic environment, which is why many people try and alkalinize the body during cancer treatment. Improving liver health and detoxifying your body could help in maintaining a healthy acid-base balance.

Your liver is in charge of cholesterol metabolism and the excretion of cholesterol and bile into your intestines using what are known as Liver X receptors. With impaired liver function, cholesterol excretion is impaired, leading to increased levels of LDL cholesterol  and unhealthy triglycerides in your blood – common factors in heart disease. 

Additionally, with increased levels of inflammation from liver toxicity, there will be more oxidative damage to your blood vessels, meaning, more plaque build-up and hardening of the arteries in your heart, a leading cause of heart disease.

Plaque build-up and hardening of your arteries in your kidneys leads to what we call renal artery stenosis, a narrowing of the arteries feeding blood to your kidneys. This makes your kidneys feel as if there is not enough blood flowing in the body. As a response to low blood flow, your kidneys release a hormone called renin, which then causes a release of two hormones:

• Angiotensin, which causes your blood vessels to constrict or narrow in size (vasoconstriction).
• Aldosterone, which causes your body to reabsorb more salt and keep more water in your body, which increases the amount of fluid in your blood.

The combined effect of vasoconstriction and increased blood volume increases your blood pressure, leading to hypertension, a common cause of heart disease and strokes.

Additionally, with rouleaux formation (red blood cells clumping together, described in earlier sections of this article), your body receives less oxygen from your red blood cells. This lack of oxygen also causes your body to increase your blood pressure as it attempts to increase oxygen delivery to all your cells.

As inflammation increases in your body, your adrenal glands are forced to produce more cortisol to control the inflammation. Continuous inflammation due to food intolerances and liver toxicity eventually causes a cortisol imbalance in your body. Imbalanced levels of cortisol suppress brain chemicals (neurotransmitters) such as serotonin, dopamine, GABA and melatonin.

Low levels of serotonin and dopamine are connected to depression and lack of motivation. Low levels of GABA are correlated to increased levels of anxiety. And low levels of melatonin contribute towards insomnia. 

Additionally, new studies show that most of your neurotransmitters are actually produced by good bacteria (probiotics) in your intestines. Probiotics depend on a healthy gut environment to thrive. If your liver is toxic and does not release healthy amounts of bile and enzymes into your intestines, the environment in your intestines becomes unhealthy and your probiotics will not thrive – leading to lower levels of neurotransmitter production.

As discussed earlier, your liver has a profound effect on your hormones. With impaired liver function, we typically see imbalanced levels of progesterone and estrogen. Progesterone improves your brain’s ability to process GABA (the anti-anxiety neurotransmitter), so low levels of progesterone have been linked to higher levels of anxiety, poor sleep and less positive emotions. Low testosterone has also been linked to depression.

About 60% of inactive thyroid hormone (T4) is converted into active thyroid hormone (T3) by your liver. Almost every cell in your body needs T3 to work properly. Impaired liver function reduces the amount of active T3 in your body. Low levels of T3 have been linked to multiple diseases, including cancer and depression.

T3 also affects the way your liver cells function. If you have low thyroid hormone levels (hypothyroidism), your liver cells will not work properly – you will detoxify less, produce less bile and likely have more constipation.

Hormonally and sexually speaking, low levels of testosterone cause lower libido and poorer erections. Estrogen and progesterone imbalance have been linked to vaginal dryness, PMS, breast tenderness, frequent infections and painful sex. The chronic use of hormonal drugs such as the birth control pill depletes vital nutrients such as your B vitamins (especially vitamin B6), folate, magnesium, selenium, zinc, vitamin C, and vitamin E, increasing your risk of emotional issues as well.