The Shocking Link Between Your Liver and Your Feet: 12 Things Your Feet Can Tell You

So today we're going to talk about how to diagnose your liver from your foot now we're not actually giving you an actual diagnosis we're just using the foot to look at indicators that you may have a liver problem and I think one big problem medicine is that everything is so specialized you know you have just one doctor that studies just the foot and then you have another doctor that just studies the liver a hepatologist and sometimes if you just focus on one area you're not looking at the big picture and you might not be able to associate different relationships So today we're going to do that and the more you understand about things like this and the different associations the more appreciation you're going to have for your body especially your liver and I think the better you're going to take care of yourself I did another video on this topic a while ago and I read one of the comments that just prompted me to do this updated video one lady mentioned she drank a lot of alcohol and because of that video she actually stopped drinking so that's incredible so let's Dive Right In and go to my whiteboard to explain this next part all right let's start with these purple brown red dots on the lower part of the legs what's going on here is we have leaky blood vessels okay now there's a medical term which I'm going to introduce you to okay so it's a big word but I'll Define it it's called thrombocytopenia okay this condition usually occurs with a liver problem all right let's break it down what is a thrombocyte well it's a platelet okay what are platelets they're cells that help clot okay in fact the Greek word for thrombo means clot and then cyto means cell and then pinia means low so we have low platelets so thrombocytopenia is basically you are not going to be able to clot and so you're going to have leaky blood vessels and you're going to see this right here now you do see this Advanced liver disease and you also see it in diabetes which by the way the liver can actually create diabetes so you might see them in both conditions all right the next thing is spider angioma it's a spider-like presentation of red blood vessels on certain parts of your body and they can show up in your ankles your foot your lower legs other parts of the body this is an estrogen problem because estrogen dilates the blood vessels and that's why you see this in pregnancy because pregnant women are high in estrogen also as a side effect from taking birth control pills hormone replacement therapy as well as in liver conditions because the liver helps to buffer estrogen and if there's damage in the liver you're going to have higher levels of estrogen in men and women all right the next one is cracked heels so sometimes you get this cracked dry bleeding skin around your heels that's usually a vitamin B3 deficiency now a B3 deficiency a real severe deficiency in B3 would be pellegra but you can have a subclinical pellagra which is not a full-blown plega with all the different symptoms but some of the symptoms which involve the skin and so a B3 deficiency affects areas of the body where you have this higher rate of sell turnover like the skin has to constantly replace itself well when you're deficient in B3 now you're not going to be able to replace these cells efficiently and it's going to show up in cracked skin now what can cause that well liver problems which can come from drinking too much alcohol it can also come from consuming too much corn and I'll talk a little bit about that in a bit okay so then we have dry scaly skin so maybe a certain part of your foot has this really roughened dry scaly skin situation that's usually low omega-3 fatty acids and that can come from a lack of bile because let's say part of the liver is fatty and it can't produce the bile to extract these fat soluble nutrients one being omega-3 fatty acids now this can also be from consuming too many omega-6 fatty acids and that would be like the corn oil the soy oil the canola even peanut oil safflower sunflower oil all right the next one is itchy skin this usually is a condition where the bile is backing up because there's some type of sludge in the bile ducts and the term for that is called choleostasis so we're having this backup of bile that backs up in the liver it backs up into the blood and into the skin and if there's bile in the skin you are going to experience itchiness and many times it's in the foot the bottom part of the foot maybe this area of the foot right through here you probably will also see your urine is darker your skin might be a bit on the yellow side especially the whites of the eyes and your stool might be on the lighter side as far as the color and then we have bad odor I mean one of the purposes of liver is to detoxify the body and so if the liver can't detoxify the toxins come out through the skin I remember in practice I learned a technique that really helped people with low back pain by working on their feet okay okay and so people would come in and I'd be working on their feet and different types of manipulation and in massaging to the bottom of the foot until some people came in with bad livers I said after that you know I'm going to refer these people out to work on their feet because some bad odor because certain people even if they wash their feet on a regular basis still will have this bad odor if the liver is toxic all right the other thing about the bottom of the foot if the person has pain numbness like a burning sensation this is usually peripheral neuropathy many times it's diagnosed as a plantar fasciitis but here's the interesting thing about that insulin resistance which eventually turns into pre-diabetes and then diabetes originates in the liver so anyone with insulin resistance pre-diabetes or diabetes is going to have a liver problem and the more fat and inflammation that the liver starts to develop the more insulin resistance they're going to have which aggravates the condition aggravates the blood sugar situation and then we have this thing called gout now normally when you think about gout you think of the kidney right because the kidney filters the blood and it's getting rid of this uric acid but you have something called the urea cycle okay which involves the breakdown of protein and also involves uric acid and so as you fix the liver and work on the liver you're going to find your gout attacks your gout symptoms are going to be much better but the main gout symptom is pain in this big toe and this joint right through here there's inflammation right there all right now we have toenail fungus which usually is an imbalance of microbes in your gut you normally should have these Diversified microbes to actually protect against the overgrowth of fungus and so this is associated with an imbalance in your microflora and this is also associated with the liver because the liver and the bowel work very very closely and one of the things that happens when the liver is not working it's not able to produce the bile that's supposed to keep the small intestine clean of bacteria and prevent an overgrowth so a healthy liver can help prevent something called sibo small intestinal bacterial overgrowth and to keep these microbes in check so you don't have this overgrowth of one bacteria or a fungus versus another alright the next thing you can have is these corns on your toes usually they grow on the inside of the toe it can be very irritating and a corn is really a vitamin A deficiency vitamin M A is involved in the differentiation of certain cells so anytime you're deficient vitamin A you'll have all sorts of skin issues maybe certain weird growths that occur or dryness or roughness so in addition to the omega-3 fatty acid deficiency you can also have a vitamin A deficiency which comes from the same thing low bile salts bile salts help you break down the fat soluble nutrients vitamin A d e k and a fatty liver can prevent the production of bile another symptom of a bad liver is when your feet becomes very very hot so a dysfunction with the liver will alter the temperature of your feet and the last symptom related to the liver is this pitting edema so you press on your lower leg and it leaves a little dent in there that is a liver problem the liver is normally supposed to make certain proteins that keep this balance of fluid in your body when you're deficient in these proteins you start backing up with fluids and it starts to show up in between the cells it's called interstitial spaces also in the spaces around the abdomen usually you see this with men who have cirrhosis they have these like a pot belly there's fluid inside it's called ascites or edema in the lower part of your body usually in your lower legs or feet which starts out showing up more on the right side because the liver is on the right side and you have a lot of lymphatics that can be backed up through that side if you have a demon on both sides that could affect the heart all right now let's go back to my office all right we're back and there's two things I want to mention okay real simply we're going to talk about what to avoid and then what to do if you have a liver problem okay so number one um one of the biggest problems with liver issues is taking a lot of medications and of course I'm not going to tell you to avoid your medications but you might want to get with your doctor to find some alternatives to certain medications because if you're on quite a few medications that is going to create a lot of damage to the liver because medications have toxic effects and the liver is all about detoxification so reducing the load is going to be probably one of the most important things all right number two reducing the amount of sugar in refined carbohydrates it's going to make a huge change to your liver the more sugar the more refined carbohydrates the more fat you're going to generate on your liver and I think some people are not aware of the fact that the cholesterol in their bloodstream and the fat on their liver most likely came from carbohydrates or sugar and not the dietary fat or cholesterol they're consuming so sugar gets converted to cholesterol and fat in the body there's a whole pathway that does this and it ends up in your liver all right number three the worse off your liver is the less you need to consume cooked Foods so if you're eating all these cooked Foods you're basically killing off the enzymes that the liver needs to help with digestion foods that can sit on the shelf life for a long time are really hard on the liver all right number four this thing called alcohol okay alcohol as you already know is a huge burden on the liver and many other parts of the body as well if you're drinking alcohol for health reasons they've recently found out that there is no health benefits to alcohol your body has to detoxify it alcohol creates a lot of deficiencies especially vitamin B3 which relates to a kind of a pellegral like symptoms which is like dermatitis a lot of skin issues not to mention B1 deficiencies magnesium deficiencies zinc deficiencies all sorts of nutrient deficiencies so if you can't completely give up alcohol reduce it as much as you can all right number five and this is obvious you already know this junk food fast food the food from fast food restaurants are pretty deadly to the liver of course I remember in college living off different specials they had at Burger King and McDonald's and uh I paid the price and of course I Justified it by saying I'll eat healthy when I graduate and then when I graduated I said I'll eat healthy when I get older and that just kept going on and on all right number six you want to avoid porn okay now why am I saying corn because there's something very specific about corn corn has extremely low vitamin B3 and extremely low tryptophan that turns into vitamin B3 and I already mentioned this condition called pellegra which is a vitamin B3 deficiency and you can also have a subclinical pellagra type situation where you're very very low in vitamin B3 as well as tryptophan that won't turn into B3 and you can have various symptoms that relate to your skin like dermatitis but also like diarrhea and even dementia but it creates all sorts of problems with your like your heel cracking the skin being very dry and Flaky and you might say well well I don't really consume any corn do you realize the average person in America consumes 1 540 pounds or 700 kilograms of corn every single year now to be totally transparent I think some of that consumption and I'm not 100 sure could include ethanol like buying ethanol in your gasoline so I'm not exactly sure if it's 1500 pounds I mean it could be a lot less but it's definitely at least 350 pounds but we have corn flour in different products I mean there's literally hundreds of foods that have corn in them grits corn chips high fructose corn syrup kids are just drinking tons of corn a certain alcoholic beverages are made from corn you have corn oil that's in a lot of different foods as well as your salad dressing maltodextrin which is a synthetic sugar is you usually from corn you have popcorn you have dextrose which is another synthetic sugar which is on a lot of different foods modified corn starch and then you also have 60 percent of the feeds to livestock are made from corn I'm talking about the beef Pig chicken okay so all this corn goes into the animal and you're basically eating corn indirectly so like I said before corn can create a B3 deficiency and a tryptophan deficiency if you're not also consuming other things that are high in B3 and tryptophan like animal products eggs dairy Etc all right so let's talk about what's good for the liver okay well if you have any problem with the gallbladder you need something called Tad cut okay Tad cut is a type of bile salt that is wonderful for the liver it'll help to thin the bile and drain all the the pipes of the liver and allow toxins to freely float through these little pipes into your small intestine number two one of the best herbs actually the best herbs actually the best herb for the liver is milk thistle okay and you might even have it in your backyard but milk thistle has special properties to protect the liver it's used if someone has some type of poisoning either from a mushroom or maybe a snake or maybe medication in fact if you do take medications you should at the same time be taking milk thistle to protect the liver and milk thistle as well as that tatka can help reduce fat on your liver and number three we have can start consuming more cruciferous vegetables the kale the broccoli the Brussels sprouts the cabbage those vegetables are high in Sulfur which are really important in the detoxification process of the liver as well as the detoxification of excess amount of estrogen that builds up in the liver all right number four fasting and I'm talking regular daily fasting like if you can do one meal a day that would be awesome because the more fasting you can do the more good you're going to do for your liver at the very minimum do two meals no snacks all right number five healthy keto doing the healthy version of the ketogenic diet using high quality foods that will greatly take the stress off the liver you can actually decrease the fat off the liver even within two weeks of doing the ketogenic diet wow you just have something very effective to do with that liver and number six cod liver oil what's unique about cod liver oil is that it's high in omega-3 fatty acids which is going to help the fat on the liver to reduce inflammation help break down scar tissue of the liver but also you have vitamin A and vitamin D which is also great for your skin and some of the other symptoms that you might have on your foot now a really important next video for you to watch would be the best seven foods to clean out your liver and this gives you much better detail on what you need to be eating and I put that video right here check it out

Channel: Dr. Eric Berg DC

Views: 4,306,603

Keywords: liver, liver health, liver and foot connection, liver problem, foot condition, healthy liver, purple dots, red dots on feet, spider angioma, cracked heels, dry and scaly skin, dry skin, itchiness, foot itchiness, itchy foot, bad odor feet, feet numbness, foot pain, gout, hot feet, pitting edema, liver disease, liver problems, liver disease symptoms, liver damage, fatty liver, symptoms, signs, itchy feet, liver problems dr berg, dr berg, eric berg, dr. eric berg, berg

Id: 2qGeR0TX2-I

Length: 17min 33sec (1053 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 09 2022