Liver, Why it’s so important?
The liver is the largest organ in our bodies, weighing 1.5kg in an adult male, 1.3kg in an adult female, and containing around 250 billion liver cells. It has powerful regenerative abilities, to the extent that even if 60 or 70% of the liver is removed, the remaining 30% will grow back and return it to its original state.
The liver is the detoxification center
The liver controls most chemical levels in the blood. More than 500 vital functions have been identified with the liver. It also secretes a clear yellow or orange fluid called bile. Bile helps to break down fats, preparing them for further digestion and absorption. All of the blood leaving the stomach and intestines passes through the liver. The liver processes this blood and breaks down chemicals, and creates nutrients for the body to use. It also breaks down (metabolizes) medicines in the blood into forms that are easier for the body to use. [1]
Causes of liver damage
Infection: Parasites and viruses can infect the liver, causing inflammation that reduces liver function. The viruses that cause liver damage such as Hepatitis A, Hepatitis B, Hepatitis C
Immune system abnormality: Diseases in which your immune system attacks certain parts of your body (autoimmune) can affect your liver. Examples of autoimmune liver diseases include: Autoimmune hepatitis, primary biliary cirrhosis, primary sclerosing cholangitis
Genetics: An abnormal gene inherited from one or both of your parents can cause various substances to build up in your liver, resulting in liver damage. Genetic liver diseases include: Hemochromatosis, Hyperoxaluria, and oxalosis
Chronic alcohol abuse
Fat accumulating in the liver (nonalcoholic fatty liver disease)
Medications, herbal supplements, chemicals, solvents are all possible causes of hepatotoxicity.[3]
Risk factors of liver damage
Factors that may increase your risk of liver damage include:
Heavy alcohol use
Injecting drugs using shared needles
Tattoos or body piercings
Blood transfusion before 1992
Exposure to other people's blood and body fluids
Unprotected sex
Exposure to certain chemicals or toxins
Diabetes
Obesity
What can happens when your liver is damaged?
Hepatitis => Cirrhosis of the Liver => Liver Cancer
Liver cancer doesn’t happen overnight — chronic liver damage and inflammation-causing liver fibrosis or called cirrhosis which increases the risk of liver cancer.
Complications of liver disease vary, depending on the cause of your liver problems. Untreated liver disease may progress to liver failure, a life-threatening condition.
Liver disease symptoms
Signs and symptoms of liver disease include:
Skin and eyes that appear yellowish (jaundice)
Abdominal pain and swelling
Swelling in the legs and ankles
Itchy skin
Dark urine color
Pale stool color, or bloody or tar-colored stool
Chronic fatigue
Nausea or vomiting
Loss of appetite
A tendency to bruise easily [2]
How do you keep your liver healthy?
Here’s a list of ways to avoid liver disease. Some of them are healthy behaviors you might do anyway. Others may never have occurred to you.
Be careful about alcohol consumption If you think only lifelong, falling-down drunks get cirrhosis of the liver — you’re mistaken. Just four ounces a day of hard liquor for men (two for women) can begin to scar your liver.
Wash produce and steer clear of toxins Pesticides and other toxins can damage your liver. Read warning labels on the chemicals you use.
Prevent hepatitis A, B, and C Get vaccinated: Hepatitis A and B are viral diseases of the liver. While many children have now been immunized, many adults have not. Ask your doctor if you are at risk. Practice safe sex: Hepatitis B and C can develop into chronic conditions that may eventually destroy your liver. They are transmitted by blood and other bodily fluids. Wash your hands: Hepatitis A is spread through contact with contaminated food or water.
Watch out for medications and herbs “The number one reason clinical [medicine] trials are stopped, or drugs removed from the market is the liver,” “20 percent of liver injury in the U.S. is caused by supplements.” The National Institutes of Health has a database of substances known to be toxic to your liver.
Exercise and eat right: Avoid fatty liver disease by avoiding obesity.[4]
Vitamin Drip Ingredients used help detoxify the body and promote excretion and liver recovery. As this therapy will help stimulate the functioning of the liver.
Protect and Repair your Liver with IV therapy
Our Liver Protection Contains:
IV Fluids: A sterile saline solution that delivers nutrients directly into your bloodstream, rehydrates your body, and ensures 100% absorption.
Glutathione: A highly concentrated dose of glutathione, a powerful antioxidant that provides immune system support, detoxifies your body, removes free radicals, boosts energy levels, and improves neurodegenerative diseases.
Amino Acids: Amino acids are a group of organic compounds that form the building blocks of proteins that make up 75% of the body. They are involved in almost everybody's functions, including growth and development, healing and repair, healthy digestion, and providing energy for your body.
Vitamin C: Vitamin C is one of the biggest immune system boosters of all. A lack of vitamin C can even make you more prone to getting sick. And also, Vitamin C plays many essential roles throughout your body, helping to maintain systems such as muscles, bones, immune support, and your circulatory system.
Multivitamins: Multivitamins help maintain your health and ensure that your body is getting the vitamins and minerals it needs to be working as it should.
Placenta Extract: Repair and Protect your liver
Human placental extract has been used for decades in China and Japan as a therapeutic agent for liver regeneration and endocrine abnormalities. Placenta extract has been shown to have anti-inflammatory, wound-healing, and antioxidant effects in the clinical setting [6].
Placenta Extract increases natural healing through hormonal regulation, nervous regulation, and immune- regulation, giving the body resistance against disease. We often hear that free radicals cause many modern diseases. It is surprising to learn that the placenta has been confirmed to remove free radicals, adding another form of attack to its ability to strengthen the body. In addition to these functions, the placenta acts to improve basic metabolism, strengthen the liver and counteract toxins, counter inflammation, accelerate the recovery of wounds, accelerate muscle formation, promote circulation, promote blood production, combat allergens, regulate the body, and improve the constitution.
MAJOR NUTRIENTS IN THE PLACENTA:
Amino acids such as leucine, lysine, valine, threonine, isoleucine, glycine, alanine, and arginine.
Active peptides: a key to pharmacological activity.
Proteins such as albumin and globulin.
Mucopolysaccharides such as hyaluronic acid, and chondroitin.
Vitamins such as vitamin B1, B2, B6, B12, C, D, E, and niacin.
Minerals such as calcium, sodium, potassium, phosphorus, magnesium, zinc, and iron.
Nucleic Acids such as DNA, RNA, and metabolic products.
Enzymes: Close to 100 varieties have been found including alkaline and acidic phosphatizing agents.
The abundant resource of growth factors
Growth Factor has a regenerative effect on cells and organs. The growth factor regenerative effect on the liver was first verified in 1984 by a research team led by Dr. Toshikazu Nakamura at the Osaka University. Later research revealed the effect was not restricted to liver cells and that it prevents necrosis and regenerates almost all organs.
A growth factor is a naturally occurring substance capable of stimulating cellular growth, proliferation, healing, and cellular differentiation.
Hepatocyte Growth Factor (HGF): Promotes growth of liver parenchymal cells and various tissues.
Nerve Growth Factor (NGF): Promotes growth of nerve cells (sensory and sympathetic ganglionic cells).
Epidermal Growth Factor (EGF): Promotes growth of skin, lungs, cornea, and tracheal epithelial cells.
Fibroblast Growth Factor (FGF): Promotes growth of human fibroblasts, glial cells, and vascular endothelial cells.
Insulin-like Growth Factor (IGF): Promotes growth of cartilage cells and smooth muscle cells.
Platelet-derived growth factor (PDGF): Promote Wound Healing
Growth Factors which Increase Immune Strength - Colony-Stimulating Factor (CSF): Promotes growth of stem cells such as immuno-competent cell granulocytes and macrophages. - Interleukin-1 (IL-1): Promotes production of immune-competent cells (T-cells, B-cells, and NK-cells), thymus cells, and WBC
Placenta has a “Hepatocyte Growth Factor,” which acts as a cell and organ regenerator and is considered to be excellent at healing damaged liver cells. The reason that a liver has the miraculous power to grow back even if 70% is removed is because of this Hepatocyte Growth Factor, which protects, repairs, and regenerates liver cells from damage such as inflammation. This is why the placenta is so effective in the treatment of cirrhosis of the liver. The placenta is currently the only medical product approved by the Japanese government for the treatment of cirrhosis.
Placenta Extract possesses the following range of functions, which help to prevent liver damage and promote a healthy liver.
Boosts the function of the whole liver
Improves the liver’s ability to detoxify
Increases immune resistance to overcome the Hepatitis virus
Strengthens the ability to detoxify alcohol and drugs
Promotes self-production of interferons
Suppresses alcoholic and viral Hepatitis
Supports repair of tissues damaged by Hepatitis, etc
Accelerates new cell formation [5]
The key to treating liver diseases is to prevent inflammation from manifesting. In order to understand how to live without triggering inflammation, firstly, we need to take a closer look at how liver cells reach an inflamed state. Let’s take viral hepatitis such as Hepatitis B and C as an example.
When a virus enters our body, our body’s defense system, or immune system, acts to exterminate the virus. The immune system starts a battle between the immune cells and the viruses, but the primary weapon used by the immune cells is something of a “double-edged sword.” They use active oxygen. While in proper quantities, active oxygen destroys invading viruses, if it is over-produced, it will also destroy the body’s cells. When active oxygen is over-produced in order to combat an unusually active viral infection, it is not the viruses alone but also the surrounding cells and organs which are damaged (oxidized). It is this which produces the inflammation. In other words, Viral Hepatitis is the inflammation of liver cells caused by active oxygen being used by immune cells as a weapon against Hepatitis B and C viruses. If the immune system is in a weakened state, active oxygen is produced in even larger quantities, leaving the body very susceptible to inflammation.
Therefore, a robust immune system and the removal of active oxygen are central to the prevention of Viral Hepatitis.
One role of the placenta is to protect the fetus from oxidation stress; therefore, it is likely that there is a powerful anti-active oxygen component within the placenta tissue with active oxygen and free radical removal function.
After Placenta extract treatment, patients with liver damage regularly see their GOT, GPT values reduced in just one or two months.
Placental extract Treatment for fatty liver [7]
For more than 40 years, human placental extract (HPE) has been prescribed clinically to treat chronic hepatitis, liver cirrhosis, and other hepatic diseases. In an experimental animal model of hepatitis, HPE reportedly ameliorates hepatic injury through liver regeneration and inhibition of inflammatory reactions and hepatocyte apoptosis. Moreover, recently reported that HPE is effective in NASH patients who were unresponsive to lifestyle.
HPE mechanism of treatment
HPE treatment enhances endothelial cell survival by increasing anti-apoptotic gene expression
HPE treatment ameliorates liver injury
HPE treatment damages chronic liver injury
In summary, HPE ameliorates the pathology of non-alcoholic steatohepatitis by suppressing inflammation, oxidative stress, and fibrosis. Furthermore, we found that HPE directly contains endothelial cell damage. HPE could thus be an active therapeutic agent with which to suppress progression from simple fatty liver to non-alcoholic steatohepatitis.
References:
1. John Hopkins Medicine. https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/ Liver anatomy and function
2. Mayo clinic staff. Mayoclinic.org “liver disease “
3. Medically reviewed by Saurabh Sethi, MD, MPH on May 30, 2019 — Written by the Healthline Editorial Team and Heather Cruickshank. Healthline. Everything you need to know about fatty liver
4. John Hopkins Medicine. https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/ . 5 ways to be kind to your liver
5. Kentaro Yoshida, Placenta Power: For Health and Beauty A useful guide for those seeking placenta-based remedies
6. Regenerative Medicine Approaches for Engineering a Human Hair Follicle Gail K. Naughton, in Principles of Regenerative Medicine (Third Edition), 2019
7. Akihiro Yamauchi ,Placental extract ameliorates non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) by exerting protective effects on endothelial cells
Comments