Love Your Liver

FitSugar — Mon, 04 Dec 2006 10:45:00 PST

There must be 50 ways to love your liver, but to truly love something you have to know what it is all about. Right?

Well, what impresses me most about the liver is not that it is the largest internal organ of the body, but that it performs over 5,000 functions. A small list includes balancing your cholesterol, storing vitamins, activating hormones, and metabolizing fat into glucose to give your body energy. It also acts as a filter to remove toxins (harmful substances) and waste products from the blood. Check this out - a healthy liver filters blood at a rate of about 1.5 quarts per minute. That's 540 gallons of blood a day and more than 13 million gallons over a lifetime! Wow.

The liver continues to function even with considerable damage, but that doesn't mean it is doing all of its jobs well. Signs of poor function include: tiredness, dark circles under the eyes, poor digestion and dull skin.

If your holiday season started out with a partying bang and lots of alcohol and fatty foods, you might want to do something nice for your largest organ. Want to know what foods help your liver out, then

Bitter food like broccoli, dandelion greens, cabbage and brussels sprouts have a cleansing effect on the liver.
In multiple studies, artichokes have been proven to promote liver health.
The spices turmeric, cinnamon and licorice are beneficial to the liver.

Of course it helps to avoid: saturated fats, refined sugar and alcohol (limit yourself to two drinks a day). Drinking plenty of water is always a good idea.

Eye on IRON

FitSugar — Thu, 09 Nov 2006 03:00:00 PST

Spinach went from being one of ‘the healthiest foods you could eat’ to ‘the throw it all out as fast as you can’ foods. In case another media crazed E-Coli outbreak surfaces, we're going to have to find other ways to get that iron, as spinach was (and still is) one of the best plant sources of getting this mineral.

For further ideas on how to get your iron,

read more Eat more foods rich in Iron, such as:

Meat, such as Beef, Pork or Lamb
Liver, if you can stomach it
Cereals, such as Total and Cream of Wheat
Potatos, with the skin still on
Beans, such as Garbanzo Beans

Fit's Tip: To further enhance your absorption of Iron, pair foods high in Iron with foods high in Vitamin C, like bell peppers--the Vitamin C helps absorb more Iron into your body. An easy and yummy way to get your Iron on: Try dipping Vitamin C-rich bell peppers into a garbanzo bean made hummus. Source