Thursday 23rd December

Check out my article in today's Cork Indo and find out you can look after yourself over the party season:

http://www.corkindependent.com/lifestyle/lifestyle/looking-after-your-liver/

With the Christmas social season in full swing, this is the time of year that people tend to be a little excessive! There are numerous Christmas catch ups and the usual Monday to Friday routine of eating gets thrown out the window. Also, with all of these social gatherings usually comes more and more alcohol. So how do we keep our livers going through all of this?

The liver is one of the main detox organs in the body, and so having a healthy liver is essential during December. The liver helps to break down alcohol to prevent it becoming too toxic for the body to cope with. Remember as well that the liver has many other jobs to do, so having a liver that is not functioning properly can also affect our overall health.

Not getting too technical, the liver actually has two main phases on detoxification and we need to support both phases to ensure toxins are being removed from the body. The food we eat over the next few weeks can actually assist the liver and support it in doing its job. Food that are good for liver detox include (I’m giving you just a few) green leafy vegetables such as broccoli, kale, Brussels sprouts or cabbage, herbs and spices such as garlic, rosemary, cumin, coriander, caraway, dill, fennel and turmeric, as well as green tea and watercress.

I talked about protein last week and the amino acids that make up protein are essential for liver detox. In addition to this, B vitamins ,along with filling the diet with fibre and anti-oxidants in the form of fresh fruit and vegetables, will also help.

Kale is a great vegetable for the liver so keep eating plenty over the Christmas period.