The liver, anger and Traditional Chinese Medicine

The liver is one of the organs in the body that fulfills a lot of functions and is the largest gland in the body.  One of the primary tasks of this important organ is to store, preserve, and regulate blood amounts that the body requires for various activities.  It is an organ that plans and administrates different body tasks and plays a large role in the state of the immune system.  It metabolizes sweet foods and fats, it cleanses the blood that comes from the intestines and powerfully influences emotions.  The liver gives life and has the ability to regenerate its own tissue.

The liver in Traditional Chinese Medicine

The liver is related to various bodily and emotional functions and manifestations:

Muscles

The liver distributes stores blood during intense muscle activity.  When this doesn’t happen, one becomes tired, has muscle cramps, short or absent menstruation in women (amenorrhea).

Muscle spasms, tics, and shakes:

If the liver is intoxicated or altered, one experiences shakes, muscle spasms, tic, joint and muscle pain, etc.

Vision and eyes:

A weak liver provokes ocular malnutrition which causes dry eyes, blurry vision, myopathy, hypermetropia, etc.

Weak and brittle nails:

If the liver is weak or intoxicated, it will be evident by your nails.  They will become deformed and they will easily break.

Imagination and unconscious memory

The liver is the great strategist, and is related to initiative, ambition, and desire.  If its energy is weak, you will experience a lack of imagination, poor idea coordination, poor initiative and states of anxiety.

Anger, rage, violence, pessimism:

…frustration, desperation, etc., are related to lazy or weak liver functioning.  The liver is the seat of anger, when it is intoxicated and poorly cleansed, it creates this type of emotions.  When it is well cleansed and functions correctly, it provides opposite emotions like kindness, understanding, energy for one’s life purpose, and finding a constructive or brilliant side of situations.  It gives you firm and flexible character, like bamboo wood.

• Addictions: food, alcohol and drugs are symptoms of a poorly functioning liver.
• Gallbladder: the liver works in conjunction with the gallbladder.  The liver plans and the final decision corresponds with the gallbladder.
• Fatty liver: symptoms of a fatty liver do not cause pain, but rather anxiety, generally during the afternoon, fibromyalgia, uric acid, triglycerides, fatty abdomen, acne, small warts in the neck or armpits, hair loss, snoring, etc.

The importance of liver cleanliness

Because some of the most important liver functions consist of processing, converting, distributing, and maintaining food or vital energy provisions in the body, any sort of interference with these functions causes a strong effect in the deterioration of liver health and the health of the entire body.  One example would be the formation of gallstones, which, although a lot of people believe they only form in the gallbladder, the majority of them are formed in the liver, which obstructs the vast majority of the livers’s tasks.

Curing the liver

Curing the liver depends of several factors.  No medicine will substitute a health life, a healthy diet, and emotional understanding.  In diet, for example, it is recommendable to avoid all sorts of junk food, eliminate harmful fats like fried foods and cow’s milk, as well as packaged foods, white or refined flour and sugar, etc.

Eating habits during mealtime, for example, are also basics for good liver function.  Because the liver is in charge of food transport, we must respect mealtime.

Every time that you ingest foods, the liver stores sugar.  After 2 hours of not eating, it decides to release stored sugar, and once 4 hours have passed without eating, it demands that fat be brought for creating more sugar (energy).

If the liver becomes stuck in this last step, if the individual goes a long time without eating, the liver ends up accumulating fats, causing fatty liver disease over time.  This also occurs by ingesting inordinate amounts of any of the aforementioned harmful foods.

Additionally, you must consider an individual’s emotional life, give yourself time to learn ways of emotional understanding and stress and anxiety management, as well as taking certain dietary supplements and infusions for cleansing the liver and keeping it healthy.

Revised by: Dra. Loredana Lunadei on 05/18/2018

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