Living Liver

Welcome back The liver is the only organ in the human body that can completely regenerate when damaged or lost, as long as about 25% of tissue remains. - medicalnewstoday.com

You read it first in this week’s The Factory in Guide magazine.

Our bodies are amazing! The fact that you were able to get up this morning and go to school is a miracle of phenomenal proportion! If you are about 10 years old, your body used all of its approximately 17,000,000,000,000 (17 trillion) cells, to accomplish this feat.

Did you know that the body has about 78 organs that help keep you functioning? There are five, however, that are an absolute must to survive. These are the heart, brain, kidneys, liver and lungs. Today we are going to take a look at the liver.

The liver is a filtering organ, which means it helps take all the toxins, poisons and bad things out of your body and blood. The toxins and poisons can be a product of your food when it is being broken down in digestion, or sometimes if garden produce isn’t washed well enough before eating, we can swallow some chemicals like pesticides.  If we didn’t have our liver doing this, we wouldn’t be able to survive for very long - which means not even a week! 

Our liver actually cleans our blood. So all the germs and harmful bacteria that can make us sick are dealt with partly through our liver. Our liver also makes bile which is big in helping to break down our food for digestion. Lastly, it turns glucose (our blood sugar) into glycogen and holds it like reserve stores of energy when we need it.

But the most amazing thing about the liver is that it can actually grow back if it is damaged! That’s right! As long as there is about 25% of the liver tissue still remaining, the liver will actually grow back completely. And it can function normally while it is growing. 

The average adult liver is as big as a football, and weighs about three pounds. Your liver sits just under your lower ribs on the right hand side. If you could see your liver, it would look as if it was divided into two pieces. These pieces are called lobes.

Well, our liver is definitely an amazing organ that does a lot to help our body stay alive and well. Let’s try to take the best care we can of our bodies. Because we certainly are fearfully and wonderfully made!

This reminds me of “I will praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made…” Ps 139:14 NKJV

Scripture taken from the New King James Version, Copyright 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.