Men's Health: The Liver Guide

It cleans the blood. It burns fat. And it tastes pretty good fried.

Your liver receives 25 percent of the blood your heart pumps - more than two quarts a minute. It can crank out two cups of fat-dissolving bile per day. Without it, you'd be unable to digest a meal or process fat.

Your blood would run thick with sewage, and your cholesterol reading would break sensitive laboratory measurement devices. And yet your liver grabs none of the recognition that big-name organs just inches away enjoy — until something goes wrong.

Yours may already be in trouble. Like most men, you probably damage your liver almost daily and don't even realize it. Knock back a few too many on the weekends? Pop acetaminophen for every ache and pain?

Keep it up and you could find yourself in a new battle — with liver disease, a condition that affects twice as many men as women and is more likely to kill us than high blood pressure.

You can do something now to take care of the one you already have. Here's a plan to protect it from its scariest natural enemy — you.

Stop at Six Drinks

You're trying to avoid "fatty liver," a condition that occurs when you flood your liver with more alcohol than it can process. First, your body's beer filter swells with fat globules, and then it turns a sickly yellow.

Let your liver rehab for a few days and it'll usually recover, but keep bingeing and scar tissue will develop, which could lead to cirrhosis.

"A man's liver has an alcohol threshold of about 70 to 80 grams, or about a six-pack of beer," says Dr. Koff. "Drink less than that at one sitting and it's very unlikely that you'll get fatty liver."

Lose 10 Pounds

That cummerbund of fat you're wearing may be squeezing your intestines in such a way that you aren't able to digest everything you eat. When this happens, bacteria will cause the leftovers to ferment, creating a homemade still in your colon, which can result in fatty liver.

"Eating a daily cup of yogurt has been shown to have an antibacterial effect in animals, and it could minimize humans' chances of developing fatty-liver disease," says Mae Diehl, M.D., a professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.

Watch Your Acetaminophen Intake

Every time you pop acetaminophen — the active ingredient in Tylenol — a harmful by-product is released. Your body can handle small amounts of the stuff, but large quantities all at once start destroying liver cells.

"The problem with acetaminophen is that the toxic dose level is very close to the therapeutic dose level," says William M. Lee, M.D., a hepatologist at the University of Texas Southwestern.

Dr. Lee recommends that men take no more than 2 grams per day.

Check Your Medicines

If Tylenol can eat away at your liver, just imagine what a prescription medication can do. Depending on the drug, the by-products can be relatively harmless — or violently toxic, says Adrian Di Bisceglie, M.D., medical director of the American Liver Foundation.

A few to watch out for: The antibiotic erythromycin, the antifungal ketoconazole (sometimes used to treat prostate cancer), and the high-blood-pressure drug Aldomet.

If you're taking any of these or have been on any other prescription drug for an extended period of time, ask your doctor about scheduling a liver-function test.

Keep Clean

There's pretty much only one way for hepatitis A to infect your liver: You have to eat crap — literally. Performing oral sex can also put you at risk.

"Sex is a very intimate activity, and it's not unusual for fecal-oral exposure to occur," says Miriam Alter, M.D., of the division of viral hepatitis at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention . Minimize your risk by showering together first.

Think Before You Ink

If you're sober and still want a tattoo, then consider this: the University of Texas Southwestern researchers found that patronizing a tattoo parlor makes you nine times more likely to contract the devastating liver disease Hepatitis C.

"Hepatitis C is going to cause more American deaths in this century than AIDS," says Robert W. Haley, M.D., the study author.

You may find that some tattoo parlors claim to sterilize all their equipment in a device called an autoclave. Doesn't matter. There's still a chance that the needle will become re-infected by the time the artiste is ready to begin mutilating your body.

The Three-Step Overhaul

Your liver may be the picture of health (which is still pretty disgusting). Or it may look like Keith Richards'. Either way, giving it this makeover won't hurt, and it may heal.

Take alpha-lipoic acid, an antioxidant that turns up the production of glutathione, your liver's head janitor. Glutathione latches on to toxic gunk and makes it water-soluble enough to be flushed out through your kidneys. For maximum liver scrubbing, take a 50 milligram alpha-lipoic acid tablet (sold in drugstores) twice a day.

Swallow some milk thistle. The herb milk thistle is loaded with the compound silymarin. One research review published in the American Journal of Gastroenterology concluded that silymarin may help heal liver damage caused by excessive alcohol consumption, infection with viral hepatitis, or exposure to certain toxic chemicals.

Down a protein shake. Muscleheads know that guzzling protein drinks may help build bigger biceps. But how about building a really buff liver? According to a study review published in Nutrition , when rats were given a protein supplement, their damaged livers started regenerating faster than those of rats not given the supplement. Look for powders that get their protein from whey (not soy) and that list the essential amino acid glutamine as one of the ingredients.