Some of the best things you can do to maintain a healthy liver are not being overweight, not smoking, and watching your diet. The liver is a vital organ that plays the role of many functions, including detoxification and the production of biochemicals necessary for digestion. The best medicine for the liver is for all of us to take a preventative approach to maintaining a healthy liver before problems strike. I say this because, once the liver is damaged, not much can be done to repair it.

One of the first things one can address in an attempt to maintain a healthy liver is to maintain a normal body weight for your height and build. Running is by far one of the best forms of exercise to burn calories. You can safely lose up to three pounds a week by running four or five days. In fact, that’s how I started about twenty years ago. The great thing about running is that it costs you nothing more than a pair of running shoes and shorts.

If you have been sedentary for many years, no problem. A daily plan for running and walking can become a good health habit for life, no matter how old you are. Just start by jogging past some of the next door neighbors’ houses. As soon as you start to get out of breath, slow down and walk. Go ahead and continue walking past a house or two, then pick up the pace once more and jog slowly. Continue this same process around the block. Continue this same process every day after work for the entire first month.

Every month your distance increases. Sometime in the second month, your fitness should reach a point where walking breaks can be phased out. Once you can jog a couple of miles every other day, the pounds will start to come off. This not only maintains the weight lost for maximum health of the liver, but also for the entire body.

Now let’s get to the other part of the equation of maintaining a beneficial good nutrition program to give yourself the best chance of a lifetime of trouble-free liver…as well as every other organ in your body. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: “Preventive medicine is always much cheaper than after effects.” Once your health is gone, it’s gone, especially a liver! They can’t make you a new one. That is why I insist on what to eat.

All your fruits and vegetables, nuts and seeds is a diet that you must get used to in order to have a healthy body throughout life well into old age. Avoid alcohol and tobacco. The most helpful for your liver health are the cabbage family, especially Brussels sprouts, cabbage, and broccoli. Water-soluble fibers like apples, vegetables, pears, and oat bran.

Continue to embrace this healthy lifestyle with mineral supplements and a daily high-potency multivitamin. Add some high-sculpting foods like eggs, onions, and garlic. Don’t forget beets, carrots, turmeric, artichokes, cinnamon, and dandelion. My favorite drinks are lots of water, mixing all fruit juices, especially cranberry and pomegranate juice with green tea. If you must eat some meats, stick with fish, such as salmon, tuna, sardines, and rainbow trout. Turkey and chicken are good to go.

Stay away from refined sugar, butters, and saturated fats. This will be cookies, cakes, sweets and tarts. Basically the whole group of baking products. Fair warning, this type of diet takes some getting used to, but the rewards are your ticket to a lifetime of fitness excellence of maintaining a healthy liver and whole body as well.