Foods For Liver Health
– By Shannon Clark
If you’re looking to improve your liver health, it’s important that you start to pay closer attention to the diet that you’re eating on a daily basis. The foods that you put into your body are either going to help or hinder your liver health, so by eating properly, you can improve your overall function and the way you feel.
Eat improperly however and the opposite will occur.
Let’s look at some of the top foods for liver health that you need to know about.
Broccoli
The first good food to be eating not only for proper liver health, but also to enhance your overall health in other areas of the body as well is broccoli.
Broccoli helps with liver health because it’s rich in sulfur, which is required in order for the liver to be able to properly detoxify various substances.
Other foods that are rich in sulfur that should be considered include onions, garlic, as well as cauliflower, collard greens, and cabbage.
Eating a varied diet that contains these in abundance will go a long way towards providing enough sulfur, along with helping you meet your requirements for a number of other vitamins along with dietary fiber.
Whole Grains
Next, you’ll also want to switch over from eating any sort of processed grains to eating the whole grain variety instead. Whole grains, which are higher in dietary fiber, are going to help to cleanse the liver as well, while also reducing the amount of build-up that they need to deal with.
Grapefruit
The next food that’s good to eat for keeping your liver healthy is grapefruit. This fruit is a smart selection because it’s rich in vitamin C content and will also provide a high dose of antioxidants as well.
Antioxidants are critical for helping to detoxify the liver, while also helping to fend off other free radical damage in the body as well.
Green Tea
Rather than going in for your morning cup of coffee, try opting for Green Tea instead. Green tea is a very rich source of antioxidants as well and provides cleansing effects to the body.
In addition to boosting your health, green tea will also assist with making sure your metabolic rate stays healthy as well, so is a great option for those aiming to maintain a lean body composition.
Avocados
Moving along, avocado’s are also great for boosting liver health as well. This healthy-fat containing fruit is also going to assist with the production of glutathione in the body, which is a contributor to maintaining good liver health.
Having a high concentration of glutathione can help to reduce the risk of Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, liver disease, cancer, heart attack, as well as stroke, so as you can see, is a powerful food to add to your menu.
It is higher in calories than other fruits however, so just do be sure that you are incorporating the calories into your daily totals.
Apples
Finally, the last food to make sure that you are adding to your diet on a regular basis to enhance your liver health is apples.
Apples along with their peels, have been reported to help provide additional antioxidant activity and reduce the growth of liver cancer in the body.
It’s interesting to note that Red Delicious apples have the most powerful influence on the liver health and can reduce cancer cell proliferation by as much as 57%. Contrast this to apples such as Fuji apples, which came in at just 39%, according to a review put on by the Nutrition Journal.
So there you have some of the best foods to be consuming to help improve the health of your liver. Remember that in addition to consuming more of these healthy foods, you should also be striving to reduce your consumption of liver health-impairing foods such as alcoholic beverages, fried and other very fatty foods, as well as those that are extremely high in salt.
The more you can focus your diet around fresh produce such as vegetables and fruits along with lean proteins and healthy fats like nuts and oils, the better success you’ll have at keeping your liver in top shape.