When I first started learning about my nutrition and trying to help myself feel better, I really didn’t think too much about my liver. I was never a big drinker of alcohol, not much of a partier, didn’t smoke cigarettes, etc. I was that cool kid that loved a good night’s sleep so I could wake up early the next day–realllllllly cool kid! So while initially teaching myself about wellness, it didn’t occur to me that perhaps some of the difficulties I was experiencing could actually be tied to a liver that needed a helping hand.
All of that changed a few years ago, when I started experiencing a new onset of skin eruptions! While I had struggled with childhood eczema, I had pretty quickly figured out the food and chemical triggers that caused those flares by the time I was a teenager and enjoyed mostly clear and happy skin. These new skin issues were a brand new bag, baby! Luckily, or perhaps ironically, they came about as I was finishing up my nutritional therapy practitioner training. I was in class, learning about the signs of a burdened liver… and showing many of them! How is that possible? Turns out that even while I was mostly abstaining from alcohol, wasn’t choosing smoking (those two biggies we hear about when it comes to the liver!) I was most definitely encountering the following:
- Processed sugars (hello, sweet tooth)
- Low thyroid function (hello, Hashimoto’s)
- Heavy metals (hello, unfiltered water)
- Stress (hello, environmental toxins, poor relationship dynamics and double school workloads)
…all of these can majorly impact the function of our livers!
Well! Holy smokes. I took a deeper dive into how I could support my whole body after learning about those factors, and since then I’ve noticed some really great connections between what our skin is showing us–and what our livers are telling us. If we can love up on our livers, more times than not I see a major reduction in the skin eruptions someone may be presenting with. The next time you or someone you know is trying to figure out what’s going on with your skin, I highly encourage you to give a little thought to the liver!
Let’s dive in!
Four Ways Our Liver Health Affects Our Skin Health
Decreased Phase Two Liver Detoxification
When our livers are overburdened by toxins, this often means that the phase two pathway for detoxification is occurring less readily. What are the phases of liver detoxification, you ask? Ah, good question!
- Phase one eliminates water soluble toxins. These are primarily excreted by sweat, stools and urine. We don’t detoxify as well if we have any barriers up against these, such as chronic under-hydration, constipation, poor circulation or pores that are not open and ready to sweat. Low thyroid function also can impact one’s ability to sweat.
- Phase two eliminates fat soluble toxins. These toxins must go through a process of conjugation, meaning they are in essence turned into water sobule toxins by the process of being bound to another molecule, and then are able to be excreted by the same pathways as phase one (again, only if those means of excretion are working in full swing!). Conjugation occurs on a few different pathways, including glutathione, sulphate, glycine and glucuronide conjugations.
What is special about the phase two detoxification process is those different pathways! We need adequate supply of foods and inputs that provide us with glutathione, sulphur, glycine and glucarate. When these levels are low, our body will be less able to adequately detoxify and we may start to see either sluggish detoxification and a reuptake of toxins via the bowel–getting those toxins again? Yikes. Over time this can lead to those skin irritations and inflammation, increase histamine reactions and generally make us feel more sensitive and backed up on all fronts–including our skin!
What do we do, then?
What to do to increase phase two liver detoxification? First step is to bump up those pathway cofactors! My biggest tip to start this immediately (since I recommend taking supplements while working with a knowledgeable practitioner) is to cook up those smelly, sulpher-y veggies and foods in the kitchen! You know the ones–cruciferous vegetables! Broccoli, kale, Brussels sprouts, cauliflower and if you tolerate them, some glorious free-range and pasture-raised chicken or duck eggs. Smell like eggs in the kitchen? Perfect!
Overflowing Liver Glycogen Stores
Having liver glycogen stores that are replete isn’t quite the problem itself–our liver stores carbohydrates in their usable form (glycogen) for good reason! It releases that glycogen when we need it, such as between meals or during exercise for energy. Problems arise when we have full liver glycogen stores and keep bringing in the foods that add to the glycogen stores (i.e. by grazing throughout the day, eating a high sugar diet and not engaging in exercise) without ever using them up–now we’ve got an overflow effect occurring!
This inability for the liver to use enough of its liver glycogen stores means that it is constantly trying to figure out what to do with the extra carbohydrates (especially fructose, which in general makes up 50% of processed sugars [glucose makes up the other 50%]) since it can’t store them in the liver. While this is happening, our body has the potential to become less sensitive to the increased and constant insulin levels within our systems. Insulin is a hormone, and imbalanced hormonal levels play a huge role in the development of skin eruptions, especially acne, due to the hormones being our master regulators within our bodies that signal how, when and why different functions should occur.
What do we do, then?
Working on choosing an eating style that allows blood sugar levels to come into balance, and liver glycogen levels to be used efficiently via breaks between meals and exercise are two major, major steps to take to reduce the load on our livers immediately. This alone is a big reason why many people experience clearer and more hydrated-looking skin while shifting to more real food styles of eating that emphasize the inclusion of natural fats for that satisfying feeling between meals.
Stagnant Bile, Poor Fatty Acid Absorption
Our livers make bile, give that bile to the gallbladder, and the gallbladder releases the bile into our small intestines when we eat foods, especially fatty foods. Bile acts as a detergent, and when it’s in contact with fats with help emulsify and break those fats down into their small fatty acids. When this process is working well, this means we’re both eating quality fats (and staying away from rancid and highly processed vegetable and grain oils) as well as absorbing those fats since they’ve been broken down into small enough molecules that we can take them into our systems with ease.
However, if the liver is overburdened, or we’ve chosen to eat too few fats either in quality or quantity, our bile status can start to falter. Bile can become too viscous and be difficult for the gallbladder to excrete. This is doubly unfortunate because the bile is where toxins from the liver go as they’re excreted! A backed up gallbladder means more toxins hanging in our system, and like we learned above, more toxins in our systems can increase our inflammatory process, which our skin will show as it tries desperately to eliminate those toxins (to no great avail).
Finally, when the bile is not free flowing and when we’re consuming too few quality oils (quality oils can include options like extra virgin olive oil, butter and/or ghee for those who tolerate, fats from happy and healthy animals like pastured bacon fat or lard, virgin coconut oil and fats in their whole forms from avocados, nuts, seeds, eggs and beyond) and too many grain oils (canola, soy, vegetable, corn and rice bran oil are a few names to look for), we’re also very likely exposing ourselves to too many omega-6 essential fatty acids and too few omega-3 essential fatty acids, since those grain oils are naturally high in the omega-6 essential fatty acids, and those omega-6 essential fatty acids are some of the most delicately structured fats around! This means they’re most susceptible to being rancid from processing techniques that use heavy force, high heat and chemicals to extract.
Why we can about those processed omega-6 essential fatty acids coming in levels that are higher than what our bodies are used to from a historical standpoint is that those omega-6s play a large role in pro-inflammatory prostaglandin formation. Our bodies are trying to do their jobs using these malformed omega-6 molecules, and one of the main influences omega-6s have in our bodies is helping us to get inflamed! Normally, this is a great option, since just like we need anti-inflammatory pathways (hint: omega-3s!), we also need pro-inflammatory pathways (acute inflammation, like what happens when we skin our knees or scrape our arms accidently, is an adaptive and healthy process). However, the point to be made today with our skin is that if we have an overabundance of omega-6 fatty acids, not enough omega-3 fatty acids, and they’re all coming from processed and rancid grain oils, our skin will reflect the heightened state of inflammatory pathways within our systems–especially when the gallbladder is having a difficult time even sending out quality bile to process all of these.
What do we do, then?
Opt for those sources of lipids that are unprocessed or very minimally processed, at home and in restaurants. Encouraging a quality balance of omega-3 to omega-6 essential fatty acids will also encourage our bodies to return to a more natural level of appropriate inflammation regulation, which our skin will reflect. Consuming quality fats that we can digest by appropriate bile flow will also mean that those fats can zoom along to our brains, which can have an anti-stress effect, and the fats will be more highly digestible, meaning our skin will have better building blocks to be able to create supple, strong and healthy skin. I suggest making and consuming beet kvass to support bile flow.
Overexposure to Exogenous Toxins
Our final party animal today in talking about how the liver really influences what our skin reflects is the fact that these days, in our modern world, we are exposed to, and choose to expose ourselves to, a plethora of chemicals, physical stresses and exogenous toxins that our bodies likely simply never encountered historically. Plastics? Didn’t have them. Windex? Never needed it. 40 hour work weeks? Those probably looked a bit different. Air travel? Likely fewer airplanes and more climbing trees.
I’ll be writing a series soon that will include a huge outline about all the different areas of life in which we authentically can have autonomy to drastically lower our exposure to chemicals and toxins that are knowingly being added to products we choose or be exposed to use every day. When we think about the connection between liver and skin health, it’s a two-way street regarding what we put in our bodies. If the products are high in chemicals and endocrine (hormone) disruptors, you can bet that this will put an additional burden right back on our livers! All the while, perhaps we’re using these products to try to minimize the signs of a stressed liver! Woof!
What do we do, then?
Luckily, it’s a cycle we can break out of, either by replacing products with those that we can feel comfortable eating (have you heard of the 75+ uses for coconut oil and apple cider vinegar?), or from companies that are only using ingredients that have been tested for safety. While this trend is growing in the wellness and beauty industry, it’s still a fairly alternative practice, and it’s not widely accepted yet in mainstream U.S. dialogue that there are hundreds of chemicals and toxins knowingly being added to skincare products that, in essence, put the burden on our livers and continue this cycle of misinformation.
Actions steps I recommend to people are to tally up the brands and types of personal care products used on the daily. Which are the options you’re choosing to put on your skin? These are a great place to start, because it can be easy to control which ones you’d like to opt to instead! Once you have your tally, go ahead and take 10 minutes entering the brands into the Environmental Working Group’s’ Skin Deep Database, and see how (and why) they rank in terms of safety. Once you have this knowledge, I hope it feels incredibly reassuring to know that you have both every right to a) continue to use the products you love, and b) choose products that you feel safe using on yourself and loved ones. Companies I trust are:
While there are more companies that seek out safe active and inactive ingredients, I personally don’t use a ton of products, so I stick to the above brands since they do me well!
The above considerations have been personally useful for me as I started to really hone in on what was making my skin show me that it was unhappy. Considering the impact on my liver and how it can best function helped beyond my skin, but that’s a story for another day. I hope this post is informative, educational and also not fear-mongering. We simply have choices to make, and that’s such a good thing! There are more choices than meet the eye, and when those choices start to align with what our bodies need–they’ll show us. They always do!
