Your Liver And Your Immune System

From the video series “All About The Liver”

PART 4 (Duration 3:58 mins)

 

Hello. This is Dr Sandra Cabot. It’s a great pleasure to be with you today, talking about some of the amazing functions of your liver. There’s just so many. Your liver is working 24/7 to protect you. We’re going to talk about your liver and its relationship to your immune system.

Now, the liver is actually part of your immune system and the liver contains many immune cells. And the liver protects the other parts of your immune system from overload. So many people who have an immune system that’s breaking down or they’re experiencing a lot of inflammation, really have an underlying liver problem and that’s what has caused their immune system to be overloaded.

Now, you can see the immune system really is all over your body. It’s a very, very extensive system and it’s there to protect us against infections, cancer and inflammation. And yet a lot of people suffer with a weak immune system.

Let’s look at some of the parts of the immune system. Well, first of all, we’ve got the liver. You can see the liver sitting there and it definitely is a strategic part of the immune system – “the protector of the immune system”. We’ve also got the spleen, a very important part of the immune system. We’ve got the lymph nodes, which filter the lymphatic fluid and that is present in the gut and the appendix. In the gut, it’s called the Peyer’s patches and these are very, very important to reduce gut infections. And we’ve also got the thymus gland and that produces immune cells, which are very, very important. We’ve also got the bone marrow, which produces our white blood cells. And we’ve also got lymphatic tissue in the back of our throat, the tonsils and adenoids.

So, you can see the immune system is everywhere. But the thing that’s often forgotten is the liver is not only part of this immune system, it’s also the protector of the immune system. Because if your liver filter and detox pathways are not working efficiently, you will get a build-up of unhealthy cells and inflammatory chemicals in your blood and your immune system will become overloaded. This can manifest as increasing allergies, chemical and food sensitivities, increased inflammation, increased infections and more severe infections, swollen glands, fatigue and autoimmune diseases. In any autoimmune disease, very important to improve the liver function.

And we know that people who have a fatty liver, often have more severe infections. And we know that COVID, in particular, can be 7 times more fatal in people who have a fatty liver.

So, I hope you’ve enjoyed that, learning about your liver and your immune system, how they are really dependent upon each other and both need to work well.

If you want more information, feel free to email us from liverdoctor.com or sandracabot.com. We love to hear from you and thanks for listening.