#1 The liver is a big bloody organ!
Take a guess at how big your liver is. If you’re thinking the size of a golf ball, or the size of a grapefruit, you’re incorrect!
#2 The liver is a serious multi-tasker, carrying out over 500 different roles.
Have you ever wondered how the food we eat gives us energy? Guess what! Our old friend the liver has a major role in this!
The carbohydrates we eat, found in foods such as bread and potatoes, are broken down into glucose by the liver, and are also stored here as glycogen.
Not only that but in a glucose emergency, the liver can rapidly convert its store of glycogen back into glucose ready for us to use.
It acts as a filter to remove toxins such as alcohol from our blood and plays a key part in fighting infection.
The liver contains over half of the body’s macrophages – white blood cells that work by destroying any bacteria or other unfriendly foreign bodies in our blood that could make us unwell.
It also breaks down and removes old cells of the body, produces the proteins for blood clotting, and stores various vitamins and minerals.
Unlike many other organs in our body, such as the heart, lungs and kidneys, scientists have not yet been able to design a machine that can artificially carry out all the functions of the liver.
So look after your livers kids!
#3 Bile is produced and secreted by the liver.
You know that yellow-brown fluid that comes up when you have a particularly nasty stomach bug or hangover?
That stuff is bile, and up to a liter of it is produced by an adult human liver every day.
Although it’s not a particularly pleasant liquid to have to deal with outside the body, it has a very important role inside the body in breaking down and absorbing fats.
After you eat, bile which has been formed in the liver and collected in little ducts passes to the main bile duct and is then discharged into the duodenum of the small intestine.
It works by emulsifying any fat molecules, stopping them from re-aggregating back into big fat clumps.
The dispersion of the fat molecules due to this emulsification also gives an increased surface area for quicker absorption by the gut.
#4 The liver leads a double life; it’s an organ and a gland!
Glands are a group of cells with the specialized job of producing and releasing substances that perform a specific function in the body.
The production of bile falls very much into this category, technically making the liver a gland as well as an organ!
#5 The liver is the brain’s best friend.
You might be asking, what’s the big deal with glucose?
Well, it’s the main source of energy for the cells of our brain, and without it our brain would quickly stop functioning properly, and eventually die.
So in times where we have a lack of glucose in our systems, for example between meals or during periods of exercise, it’s a jolly good thing we’ve got our livers to convert some of their stores for us!
Without a healthy, functioning liver filtering our blood, we could also develop a brain condition called hepatic encephalopathy, which is where toxins in the bloodstream enter the brain.
This condition can cause a number of unpleasant symptoms such as seizures, slurred speech, confusion and forgetfulness, and possibly even coma.
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