Are you giving your liver enough love?

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single liver in possession of a unique, cosmically amazing human, must be in want of some alcohol.

Right?

How do I know this?

I used to be a rugby mum, surrounded by hard-working, hard-playing medics, who knew all about how important their liver was, but would regularly spend all of Sunday afternoon and evening drinking. Beer to start, fizz, or wine of any colour – all worked – and as long as they did their big run the next day, everything was going to be ok.

And if that’s what the doctors did, well, that means it’s probably fine – everyone can do it, right?

Ahem. Maybe not, actually. You can’t outrun a bad diet. Fact.

One doctor’s just diagnosed a buddy of mine with type 2 diabetes. My buddy’s got a prescription for Metformin and statins. Has anything else been discussed, like nutrition? Does that GP even have a clue that this is a reversible disease?

I like to try and stay on top of this stuff, and there are so many books, podcasts, and scientific articles shouting about all the new, it’s quite a feat.

But this isn’t new.

So, here’s the word on the street for anyone looking for more wellness.

Sadly, the people who run the businesses that give out medical degrees (yes, there’s a free-market economy involved in the training of the medical profession. Always helpful…) are joined at the hip to the people who make the drugs the doctors prescribe.

It has ALWAYS been that way. Med schools were created to SUPPORT the science behind medicine.

Can you, therefore, really assume that the medical profession is unbiased, and totally objective? I think not.

The wonderful NHS is now a sickness service, rather than a health service. I’ve had occasion to use it over the last couple of years and I was hella impressed with the experience, overall, although it wasn’t perfect. If you’re in panic mode, with an ‘acute’ issue, it’s bloody good. If your issue’s more ‘chronic’, not so much, sadly.

Like education, it’s a public service that’s massively overstretched, with huge amounts of unpaid overtime and lashings of goodwill keeping it going. It’s also like multiple joined-up octopi, cumbersome and unwieldy, and not great at connecting with its long tentacles. There’s a lot of waste, a lot of slow, outdated processes that its members have to wade through, and a lot of box-ticking.

What does this mean for its users?

It means you have to know as much as you can about health, and get into the habit of challenging what you’re being told, in order to get the best outcomes.

Get EDUCATED.

Find out about your disease. What numbers do you need to know? What does ‘normal’ mean? Has ‘normal’ changed in the last 50 years? Why?

Don’t just assume that because your doctor is qualified, that they know everything. They patently don’t – and they’ve generally spent a meagre 10 minutes with you in their consulting room.

Medicine was created by men, for men; so, if you’re a woman, you need to make doubly certain you know what you’re talking about before you walk into your GP/consultant appointment. The patriarchy and paternalism are alive and well, sadly. (I’d tick the box to give both these a DNR, personally…)

Know what’s got me really riled?

The fact that the doctor in question in my friend’s case is a colleague of the guy who created the extremely popular and successful 5:2 Diet, or Fast 800, or the Fast 800 Keto, Michael Mosley. (This was based on the work of Professor Roy Taylor in Newcastle, piloted in the north east and was highly successful in helping people with type 2 diabetes get into remission.) Dr Mosley’s been on telly multiple times. He has a podcast. His diet plan’s been the focus of many a newspaper pull-out. It’s a simple internet search for anyone even vaguely interested to find out about the stats – but this GP seems not to know anything about it, or hasn’t bothered to mention it to my buddy.

Taking charge of your own wellness is something I’m passionate about helping people to do. Right now, I’m doing that for myself by giving my liver some love (and I’m writing this, for you!). I’m making life easier for it – this is day 80 of no alcohol.

(I’m not good at blowing my own trumpet, but I did #Uplift Live, a weekend in London with uni friends, and a lovely evening out with John, and Kevin and Dana Turner, with no alcohol in sight. I am impressed with me! And, full disclosure, there’s going to be no more alcohol in my life. Because I’ve done 50+ years not really ‘getting’ how important my liver is to my metabolism, and, now that I know better, for the next 50 years, I want to do better.)

I’ll be showing up next week with a video review of the book ‘Metabolical’ by Dr Robert Lustig, which explores this issue in great depth and with real personality (and, be warned, a skipload of deep science…) but if you want wellness, look after your mitochondria – your amazing, incredible battery packs. (You have TRILLIONS of them, every single one completely genius.)

How do you look after them?

Love your liver; feed your GutBugs.

Simple.

The gut talks to the liver; the liver talks right back to the gut. Symbiosis. The entire engine room of everything that is you, right there.

Alcohol and the liver? They don’t love each other. Alcohol and GutBugs, ditto.

I’m not medically trained, but I’m more and more medically educated. It’s a scary, amazing, and wonderful world, the study of the human body’s systems.

Want to join me on a wellness journey, and show yourself some love?

I have a 10-week programme that is designed to change outcomes through education and action. (It’s called #Replenish. It costs ￡900, and you can pay in 3 chunks if that makes life easier; it’s an hour on Zoom to get started, plus 10 x 30-minute slots, also on Zoom, on a weekly basis, with check-ins on WhatsApp as needed.)

????? Permission to love yourself, maybe for the first time ever.

?? ? Accountability that’s just right for you.

?? ? New knowledge that helps you make sense of the roar of wellness information you don't have time to wade through.

?? ?? Time for yourself. For breathing, and reflecting. For becoming the person you were always meant to be. Not some rat on a treadmill doing the bidding of Big Food and Big Business.

It’s a hybrid of coaching, teaching, mentoring – and it’s fully adjustable to each unique human being I spend time with.

It’s helping livers around the world to get more love, which means that their owners live longer, happier, healthier lives.

Everybody wins. Especially YOU. You start to BLOOM.

DM me to get the show on the road. ??

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