There is a strong connection between how your skin presents, and how your liver is performing.
Interestingly enough, your liver is the second largest organ in your body, with your skin being the first.
The liver is essentially a filter, working to clean your blood of toxins. It gives you energy and spurs good digestion. Its job is to process what you consume (which can be through eating, drinking, skin absorption and also what you breathe) into nutrients for your body.
How Your Liver Impacts Your Skin
Consuming an abundance of toxins innately increases the workload for your liver.
When the liver is stressed it slows in its duties and becomes less able to break down the fast-moving toxins being sent to the organ. Naturally they build-up and the body is forced to send them elsewhere to be released.
Our skin is one way these toxins are released, yet this process can also cause stress within the skin.
Inflammatory skin reactions and conditions can present as a result of toxins becoming trapped in the layers of the skin.
We can see this reaction present on the skin as:
- Acne and breakouts
- Wrinkles and premature aging
- Skin conditions such as rosacea, eczema, psoriasis and dermatitis
- Rashes and brown liver spots.
The good news is, we can care for our liver, to help our skin thrive.
We’ve asked our contributing naturopath and nutritionist, Simone Laubscher, her wisdom on how to boost liver health—to ultimately care for our skin.
Your liver is a magnificent forgiving organ and one of the fastest organs to regenerate and heal. If you get your liver in order, it will considerably impact your health.
Your liver has many vital functions, such as:
- Filtering your blood to reduce infections
- Creating ketones to help fat burning and produce energy at a cellular level
- Supporting thyroid function
- Producing bile and works with the gallbladder to help the body digest fats
- Metabolising fats, proteins, and carbohydrates
- Converting toxins from the things we eat, drink, breathe or put on our skin so our body can expel them through our sweat, urine and stools.
My Top 5 Liver Health Tips
1. Drink Detox Water
Start your day with Rejuv Wellness Water a kick to clean your liver by having a pint of water plus the juice of 1/4 a lemon, half teaspoon of grated ginger, 1-2 pinches of cayenne pepper, a pinch of Celtic sea salt and one teaspoon of fresh aloe vera inner leaf or 30ml aloe vera juice.
Drink 2-3 litres of the water per day to hydrate your 50 trillion cells, keeping them like big fat healthy grapes instead of dried-up raisins, allowing goodness to flow in and remove junk. Doing this takes the pressure off all body systems and detoxes the liver, thus boosting your metabolism.
2. Eat Clean & Increase Greens
Eat more plants (especially green veggies). Add a wild protein such as line-caught fish (the smaller, the better). Ensure you include good fats such as avocado, olives and coconut oil to balance your blood sugar, support fat burning and reduce appetite.
Keep your treats to one meal a week; this will keep your metabolism in check but also allow you to psychologically stay strong during the week knowing that you will have your reward on the weekend. Since we win the game in the mind, balance over abstinence is the best.
Your liver, metabolism and overall health love veggie juices, too, and as part of my daily routine, I have a pint of green juice each morning with celery, romaine lettuce, lemon, lime, and ginger. I rotate in grapefruit, beetroot, blueberries, bitter melon, prickly pear, and bitter melon for your liver loves these foods, and they are great for fat burning too.
Your body also needs a good daily dose of chlorophyll, the green photosynthetic pigment found in green plants, to reduce acidic wastes and inflammation, which clog up your liver and can cause weight gain.
3. Add Thermogenic Herbs
Thermogenic herbs warm your system up and therefore boost your metabolism by eating more chilli, cayenne pepper, garlic, turmeric, ginger and green tea.
Add garlic and onions to at least one meal per day. Choose cloudy apple cider vinegar or lemon juice over regular vinegar to support your liver and gallbladder function and, therefore, fat-burning.
4. Increase Fibre to Flush Your Liver
Fibre will keep you feeling full and feed your good bacteria by providing prebiotics for your gut.
The more good bacteria you have, the more healthy foods you crave and vice versa, so this is key in any long-term metabolic reset success.
Fibre also creates faecal bulk in your intestines, helping to draw out toxic waste in your liver and colon so you can expel them in your stool. Eat lots of veggies and add milled flaxseeds, sauerkraut, chia seeds and psyllium husks.
5. Reduce Stress For Your Liver Health
Living in a stressed state puts your body into emergency mode (fight or flight), which exhausts your adrenals, prevents your body from healing and produces more cortisol. Stress hormones significantly reduce overall liver health.
Staying present today and not stressing about yesterday or tomorrow is critical. Stay in gratitude and spend 5-10 minutes feeling in your nervous system what it is like to be in optimum health; mind, body and spirit.
Like all organs, the liver will also thrive if your 7 Pillars of Wellness are balanced, nutrition, sleep, mindfulness, supplementation, movement, body balance and environment.
Complete our Free Wellness Quiz twice a year to fine-tune what you need to focus on in your Wellness Profile.
Simone
Simone Laubscher has a BSc MSc PhD in Science and nutrition and has treated patients for over 20 years.
After struggling with health issues relating to obesity (metabolic, thyroid, adrenal, blood sugar and eating disorders), Simoné treated herself successfully 22 years ago, following her graduation from university with her B.Sc.-Nutrition, from the UNSW, Sydney, Australia.
Simoné then went on to do an M.Sc in Naturopathy and Nutrition and a PhD in human nutrition. She is very passionate about setting both adults and children free of disease and debilitating conditions. Simoné specialises in obesity, long-term weight loss, metabolic reset, eating disorders, diabetes, IBS / gut disorders, depression, stress/adrenal fatigue, hormonal regulation and immune-related illnesses such as cancer.
Due to her own health issues and observations with her clients Simoné became increasingly frustrated with the vitamin industry using synthetic ingredients, so as a result 15 years ago started to formulate her own whole food organic supplement line called Rejuv Wellness. Simoné also went on to formulate the whole food supplement line for Welleco, born out of her client Elle Macpherson’s own personal journey for optimum wellness.
