January is "Love Your Liver" awareness month
Love your liver month is a campaign led by the British Liver Trust Organisation, and focuses on the best way for us to keep our livers in tip-top condition!
The liver is the largest solid organ in our bodies, and it’s importance is often underrated! It is just as important as our heart and lungs, and even multi-tasks - doing over 500 vital jobs to keep us alive.
Liver disease is on the rise in the UK, with 1 in 3 of us at risk of getting it - and it is actually pretty simple to prevent with lifestyle changes.
The liver can repair itself when damaged, to a point. Unfortunately, symptoms of liver disease may not appear until it is too late for treatment - making it even more important to keep your liver happy and healthy!
2 of the most preventable causes of liver disease include:
Alcohol - the liver processes all of the alcohol we drink. The more we drink, the harder our liver has to work to process it fast enough, which leads to damaged cells. This is why it is advised that alcohol intake is limited to 14 units per week, and to have 3 days off drinking per week, to give our ultra-important liver time to recover.
Obesity - if it wasn’t busy enough, our livers also process most of the nutrients and fats from the foods we eat. Simply enough, the more we eat, the more our liver has to process! If we are overweight, the risk of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease is increased - this can cause permanent damage. To help our livers out and stay healthy; we should eat a healthy diet, drink plenty of water, and exercise for at least 30 minutes every day.
The British Liver Trust is helping us show our livers some love by doing something healthy. Visit Love Your Liver awareness month - British Liver Trust to “take a pledge" to love our livers and make a change that will benefit our liver health!
Pledge options include:
Complete a fitness challenge
Give up alcohol for a month
Eat your 5-a-day every day
Cut down on sugar
Ditch processed food and takeaways