Bodybuilders, they love their bodies, people love their bodies. But what they don’t realize is: their bodies mostly hate them. If you are a bodybuilder then your heart, liver, kidney, testicles, brain, joints are some of parts that hate you.

In this article I will discuss why your liver hates you, and how to make it hate you less.

The Liver:

The liver is one of the most important organs in the human body. It is the body main detoxifier, all the foods, liquids and drugs pass through the liver on their way from the intestine to the bloodstream. Its plays a key role in metabolism, and has many other functions important to the body. The human being actually can’t survive more than two days if the liver is shut down.

• Functions of the liver:
  
• Body main detoxifier.
• Plays a key role in Metabolism.
• Important for digestion as it helps in the production of biochemical necessary for digestion.
• Body storage organ: its stores various nutrient to be used later, it stores sugars, vitamins and minerals.

As a bodybuilders, your liver works harder than an average person, its already one of the hardest working organs in the body, so you put even more stress on it.
Large amount of food intake, supplements, steroids, and heavy training are part of bodybuilders lifestyle, so of course your liver will hate you!
Your body is a factory, and your liver is an underpaid worker.
Not only underpaid, but he also is working his ass off to many extra hours!! so our goal here, to make this worker less mad at you, by  giving him better work conditions, less working hours, and some assistance.

Things Affecting your Liver Health

Anabolic Steroids:
Since this article mainly directed for bodybuilders. We will start with steroids and their effect on your liver.
All steroids affect the liver to some degree since everything goes through the liver at one point, but when we talk about steroids and liver damage, we concentrate on the oral type of steroids.
Oral steroids go through some chemical alteration so that it can pass the liver without being destroyed, adding c-17-alpha alkylated to the steroids allows a large part of the steroid to avoid the first pass metabolism and degradation in the liver and reach the blood stream.
However prolonged use of c-17-alpha alkylated drugs puts serious strain on the liver and can cause serious damage. That’s why oral steroids are advised for no longer than 6-8 week in the cycles.

it’s always better to cycle steroids and preferably use injection instead of oral, may people mistaken that injection are worse, while in fact it’s much safer than oral steroids.
Dianabol and Anadrol are the most common drugs affecting the liver and most common steroids used, users mostly take dianabol as their start courses, they don’t realize that it’s as bad as and even worse than injecting testosterone for example. Just because the cute little pink shape or heart of the tablet, doesn’t mean its child things
if you made a mistake and didn’t cycle steroids, first you have to stop any further damage now, stop taking steroids for some time, and rest your body and liver, liver is have a great ability to regenerate itself and build new liver tissue if it’s given a good rest with no pressure.
But it you still stubborn and think you can go with steroids without a break, eventually you will get caught up with some liver problem.

Alcohol
Taking steroids while using alcohol is very risky, alcohols disables the liver ability to do its job right, which can lead to serious liver problems together.
Alcohol itself is dangerous in large amount, drinking too much alcohol can lead to three types of liver conditions - fatty liver, hepatitis, and cirrhosis. They can also occur all in one time in the same person.
So better lay off alcohol especially when taking steroids cycles.
 

Smoking:
we all know that smoking is bad for health, we all aware of its effect on the heart and lungs, but did you know that smoking severely affects the liver. The liver is the detoxifier organ of the body, and numerous toxins are found in cigarettes, which can lead to problem in the liver such as chronic inflammation and scarring, which will lead to even more serious diseases such as liver fibrosis, liver cancer, and hepatitis B and C.

Fructose:
recent studies shows that high consumption of fructose appeared to be correlated to increased liver fibrosis.
Sugar is the major source of fructose, so consuming more soft drinks and processed food containing fructose may have negative effect on your liver.

Other factors:
The liver is affected from many things. Diet, polluted water and medications are some of the things affecting the liver.
 

How to Keep your Liver Healthy?

Prevention is better than cure. You should avoid the things that affect the liver negatively.
Diet modification is also very helpful to improve you liver health, concentrating especially on food that are rich in antioxidants and fibers would improve your liver and overall health.
Many natural supplements also aid the health and recovery of the liver.

Important Supplement for The Liver Health

Milk Thistle Silymarin:
Extracted from the plant Silybum marianum, milk thistle is one of the best natural herbal to support the liver, it has great impact on improving the liver health and general health.
Benefits of Milk thistle:

Improves appetite and helps with digestion.
It’s used in the treatment of gallstones; disorder of the liver, spleen and gallbladder, for indigestion and digestion disorder, lack of appetite, peritonitis, coughs, bronchitis, uterine congestion and varicose veins.
Help protect the liver from all problems, and improves its regeneration.
Very powerful anti oxidant.

Very good additive to any bodybuilder diet.

Vitamin C
studies have shown the vitamin C intake helps protect the liver from many diseases, such as fatty buildup and cirrhosis. And 5000mg daily actually helps clean the fat from the liver.
Its shows the extremely large dosages of vitamin C can even cure hepatitis and eliminate jaundice.
You should increase your intake of vitamin C to at least 2000 mg during cycles.

Vitamin B's
Especially B12, showed very much improvement in Jaundice, anorexia and serum Bilirubin.
Vitamin B12 injected is very effective in treatment of hepatitis.

LIV52
A Natural supplement especially designed to promote the livers and protect it against harmful toxins from drugs, alcohol, water and food.
It regulates enzymes level and optimizes liver functions and regeneration. It’s also has many benefit as maintaining serums cholesterol, lipoprotein, phospholipids and triglycerides.
Very good product for any bodybuilder especially during cycles.

 
Essentiale
Natural supplement containing essential phospholipids. It has many good effects on functions of the liver. Improves detoxification, normalize the metabolism of the protein and lipids, and helps with the treatment of various liver diseases.
These are the most important supplements when it comes to liver health, now as a bodybuilder, there is no escape overstressing you liver at sometimes, whether from the diet or steroids cycles, even training itself also put some stress on the liver.
But your goal should be decreasing all the things that affect the liver badly and increasing the liver health support things.

 
Liver Test for Bodybuilders

Periodical liver testing is very important for any bodybuilder,  pre, during and post steroids cycles tests are a must. Test result reflect the health of your liver and it gives you a good idea of the effect of what your taking on you liver, so you can continue or stop before it’s too late.

Liver blood work - What to test?
For our purpose in assessing the liver health, we would be the most interested in the following markers:
ALT, AST, ALP, GGT and Bilirubin.
Let’s take a closer look on each of these indicators:


ALT alanine aminotransferase:
When liver is subject to any damages, ALT leaks into the blood stream, and is an indicator for the liver toxicity. The higher the ALT in the blood, the bigger the damage to the liver, and you should stop anything your taking if it’s very elevated.
Reference range:
ALT (SGPT): 0-55 iu/l
 

AST aspartateis aminotransferese:
Same as ALT, When the liver is damaged this leaks in blood, and the higher it is, the more damage to the liver from what you taking.
Reference range:
AST (SGOT): 0-40 iu/l
 

ALP alkaline phosphatase and GGT gamma-glutamyl-transpeptidase:
Elevation in both ALP and GGT are indicative of bile duct obstruction, which indicate a steroids induced liver toxicity.
Reference ranges for ALP and GGT are:
ALP: 25-150 iu/l
GGT: <50 mol/l
 

Bilirubin:
Bilirubin is a yellow fluid found in the bile that is responsible of the yellowing of the skin and eyes associated with bile duct obstruction. Its level can be a good indicator for the damage as well.
Reference ranges:
Bilirubin: 0.1-1.2 mg/dl

Conclusion

Liver is one of the most important organs in us, it need special care especially for bodybuilders, so do the tests, take the pro liver health supplement and tips, avoid things the affect it negatively and it may stop hating you, but don’t expect it to love you.
Good luck, and stay healthy.
 

Shady Eid is a certified Personal Trainer, writer and competitive bodybuilders based in UAE, for questions and comments you can contact him at: Shady@arabianmuscles.com