The Nutrient's Crusade

When a doctor tells you that you have deficiencies in certain vitamins and minerals, what she or he should really be saying is, “Your liver has some problems.” Just as your liver is meant to store glucose, it’s also meant to stow away every single vitamin and mineral, as well as other nutrients, so that even if you’re not getting enough of a certain nutrient in your current diet, your body can draw on the reserves that your liver held on to from an earlier time. If you’re running low on vitamin D or B12 or deficient in any other vitamin or mineral, it means your liver carried you for quite a while, and now its life-giving well of vitality and prosperity is finally running dry.

Mainly, the liver stores nutrients that the stomach and intestines have converted during digestion into forms your body can use. It’s far more involved than a chemical process that turns A into B; it’s a process that takes a given nutrient, alters it for a specific use in the body, and adds to it—brings life to it—so that, when the time is right for your liver to receive the nutrients through the bloodstream, it can take on those nutrients. Then, they must be altered once again, this time by the liver, through a chemical process that prepares the nutrients for their crusade with a protective shield and armor that the liver produces from specific antioxidants gleaned from certain healing fruits. This way, as they travel on their journey, they’re not destroyed by toxins or held up too long by an overabundance of fat in the bloodstream. Finally, nutrients are ready for the liver to release them into the bloodstream so they can be delivered as precious, vital resources to organs and tissue throughout your body in forms they can easily accept.

Normally, the liver holds on to upgraded nutrients as the gut provides them, and then the liver re-dispenses them as needed, acting as a backup conversion tool. To keep you alive, your liver overuses its conversion method, methylation.

Even with an intestinal tract that’s really struggling, your liver will overcompensate so much that you don’t discover your irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), small intestinal bacterial overgrowth (SIBO), Candida overgrowth, gas, or bloating, and they’re not even on your doctor’s radar, because your liver is masking the situation with its assistance. When the liver is pushed too far along the way and becomes stagnant, sluggish, or fatty—too weakened to be a backup tool—then the digestive problem or nutrient deficiency starts to reveal itself.

A strong liver is critical to gut health for reasons beyond nutrient conversion. It’s also about storage—because the more the liver’s storage banks are saturated and overcrowded with toxins that the liver has collected to save you, the less room the liver has for vitamin and mineral storage. The organ is faced with a decision: to keep the “nuclear waste” containment system in place to protect the body, or to let out the poisons so it can store more vitamins, minerals, and other valuable materials that can help repair the gut and the rest of the body. As vital as nutrient storage is, saving you from toxic matter wins out. It’s a critical, lifesaving function of your liver.

This dilemma is another reason why taking care of our livers is one of our highest callings: because saving our livers saves them from this nearly impossible choice. If we’re helping our livers cleanse troublemakers (those rascally toxins, poisons, and pathogens) as well as protecting them from avoidable troublemakers in the first place, the liver has the room it needs to fully support us with both its medicine chest of nutrient storage and its masterful waste containment. The liver gets everything it needs—and that means that we get everything we need.

For in-depth protocols and information about saving your liver, check out the Medical Medium book Liver Rescue.

This item posted: 19-Feb-2024

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