Liver issues

If I say liver what do you think of,  fried onions or the seat of the soul?  I was one of those weird kids who loved my mother’s fried liver and onions.  But it was only much later in my life that are really started loving the liver.  Not on my plate but because of all the amazing things it does in our body.  I was sitting in an Ayurvedic workshop with one of the wisest men I had ever met.  He was kind, funny, and carried the wisdom of the Shaka Vansya Ayurved lineage that dated back 5000 years.  They even say that his ancestors were the wise men that arrived with gifts for the baby Jesus.  I was fortunate to be sitting listening when Vaidya (wise man/healer) said that all the dumb food we eat, the liver has the big job of turning it into intelligent blood. That was the start of a long journey understanding digestion and all it various components.  Starting with the 6 tastes of the foods as they are chewed and blended on their way to the stomach to the final destination in our colon where decisions are make as to what gets absorbed back into the body and what gets eliminated.

He said that Ayurved teaches that the liver has 5 burners. In modern scientific language they would be called enzymatic pathways.  If you look up liver enzymes you will come across something called P450. These are the enzymes that metabolize drugs and other chemicals that enter our body.  But the ancients called these burners.  These burners must be kept clean and then each of the 5 would be able to transform the 5 elements: earth, water, fires, air and ether.  It was 15 years later that this wisdom became important in my own healing journey and that brings me to the real reason I am writing this story.  It is a selfish reason. 

 I had been struggling with dizzy/woozy spells for about 2 years.  I had all the tests that modern medicine provides. They found no heart problems, no ear problems and still there it was.  After carefully observing when they came I finally realized that these spells came after I ate certain foods, heavy meals, or if I ate too fast.  That was about 6 months ago.  My aging liver was being overtaxed.  It was no longer able to process the dumb food I was throwing at it. It was rebelling.  Now the story gets a bit complicated.  The liver produces bile that is stored in the gall bladder which is then released into the intestinal tract.  Bile is essential for peristalsis or the rhythmic constriction of the intestines that keep the food moving along its journey.  We need enough fluids and also certain foods and herbs to help with the production of bile, otherwise, the bile becomes sluggish or even turns into stones, gallstones.  Now if you have gallstones usually they remove your gall bladder because those stones can get stuck in the bile ducts and cause a lot of pain.  However, the ancients would have used foods and herbs to produce thinner bile and help the liver do its job. The sluggish bile and stones could then be eliminated.

So how is it that these ancient sage-healers knew that the liver was able to transform various substances by burners or enzymes.  Apparently they just “saw” or “knew” things from a place of deep intuition.  I often explain it using the story of Isaac Newton - who saw the apple fall from the tree and he not only saw the apple falling but he saw gravity and all its implications. So not only did the Ayurvedic sage/healers, understand and “Know” with a capital K, that the liver was important in transforming or metabolizing the food we eat but they also know what plants and foods were best to keep the liver healthy.

With a bit of knowledge, I started searching for a solution. The first piece of the puzzle came in the form of eating stewed apples with cloves first thing in the morning.  That helped a bit as apples are high in malic acid which helps the liver enzymes and cloves ignite the digestive fire but not too much which sometimes can cause stomach acidity.  Next, I called an Ayurvedic physician who confirmed that my dizzy spells were connected to digestion. She said that this was a common symptom of sluggish bile since the meridian for the gall bladder runs through the brain. She suggested herbs and dietary changes to make my bile more liquid. Then a few months later I came across a woman who runs an Ayurvedic restaurant in New York City and she posted a recipe on her blog about a smoothie that improved bile liquidity and flow.  It included beets.  I already knew that beets were good for liver and bile function and had been trying to eat them 2-3 times a week.  However according to this blog a woman who had been having digestive issues, heaviness and bloating was able to turn that around in just a few days.  The recipe included cooked beets, apples, fennel seeds, ginger, raisins, fenugreek, and several other spices.  I know that fenugreek was good for digesting fats.  The pieces were coming together.  ( please send a request to my email and I will send a link to complete recipe)

Another big piece of the puzzle was that if I listened to the intelligence of my body/mind I would start to align it with the laws of Mother Nature.  Eat my biggest meal when the sun is highest in the sky - noon. That is the recommendation of Ayurved.  That was tough. Most of my friends and the people in my family ate dinner in the evening.  I started inviting people over for lunch and told them that it was going to be their big meal of the day.  Even my partner agreed that he would try it and slowly we were able to adjust.  When we went out for dinner we would order 1 meal and split it, making it less of a burden on our digestion in the evening.  Slowly my body started to respond.  

Then I added the herb Triphala which is a combination of 3 fruits Tri-phala - This is usually used in Ayurved for constipation but it is also great for getting the bile flowing.  So putting all these parts of the puzzle together I have started to address a problem that had no answers from the modern day medical sages but that ancient Vaidyas or wise men had the answers.