What the liver does
Your liver, which is the largest solid organ in your body, plays a vital role in regulating life processes. This complex organ performs many functions essential to life. In fact, you cannot live without it.
The liver, located behind the lower ribs on the right side of your abdomen, weighs about three pounds and in the adult, is roughly the size of a football.
The liver performs many complex functions. Some of these are:
- To convert food into chemicals necessary for life and growth.
- To manufacture and export important substances used by the rest of the body.
- To process drugs absorbed from the digestive tract into forms that are easier for the body to use.
- To detoxify and excrete substances that would otherwise be poisonous.
- To regulate cholesterol.
Your liver helps you by:
- Producing quick energy when it is needed
- Manufacturing new body proteins
- Preventing shortages in body fuel by storing certain vitamins, minerals and sugars.
- Regulating transport of fat stores
- Regulating blood clotting
- Aiding in the digestive process by producing bile
- Controlling the production and excretion of cholesterol
- Neutralizing and destroying poisonous substances
- Metabolizing alcohol
- Monitoring and maintaining the proper level of many chemicals and drugs in the blood
- Cleansing the blood and discharging waste products into bile
- Maintaining hormone balance
- Serving as the main organ of blood formation before birth
- Helping the body resist infection by producing immune factors and by removing bacteria from the bloodstream
- Regenerating its own damaged tissue
- Storing iron