The human liver

By Al Lowe
Contributor

This is by far the biggest gland you have. It weighs 2.5-3.5lbs. Perhaps it is so large because it does so many things for you.
Your liver is mostly at your back, just below your diaphragm, at the upper right. It is made up of four lobes, two quite large ones and two smaller ones. You probably know what animal liver looks like at the butcher shop or at home. Well, your liver looks just like that, dark red, soft and floppy tissue.
One of the major things your liver does is act as a storage warehouse. Carbohydrates, the main food stored there, is in the form of glycogen. Your blood always has some sugar in it (about 0.1%), which is the source of energy for your muscles. This sugar (glucose) is regulated by your liver.
Suppose you become very frightened, or very angry, or you have some other reason to be very roused up, then your liver will very quickly convert some glycogen into glucose, which then floods your blood stream.
This gives you all that extra energy when you are in “fight or flight” mode. People can sometimes perform prodigious feats of strength when they have to because of this extra rush of sugar into your blood. Under normal conditions, glucose is passed into your blood at just the right rate to keep it normal.
That’s not all your liver stores away from you. It also stores iron. In the old days when I was young, one of the things we did to increase our iron levels was to eat some raw liver every day.
Several vitamins are stored in this marvellous organ as well. Vitamin A, which is essential to your eyesight, and your inner and outer skin cells, is also stashed here in quite large amounts.
Another is Vitamin D, which governs the development of teeth and bones, and the absorption of calcium and phosphorus. Once more in my childhood during the winter we had to take a spoonful of cod-liver oil. Just like people Vit. D is stored in the livers of many salt water fish.
And still a third vitamin is tucked away in that old liver of yours. That is Vit. B Complex. This a large group of vitamins which is largely known as preventing the so called deficiency diseases, nervous disorders, beri-beri, some retardation of growth, dry skin and quite a number of others.
Your liver helps keep your supply of these extremely important vitamins up to scratch. Without them you could get very sick in some very unpleasant ways.
Watch next week’s column for more things your liver does.