• Question: how does the liver help the human body

    Asked by anon-202830 to Rebecca, Raashid, Matthew, Marie, Hanna, Gareth on 4 Mar 2019.
    • Photo: Gareth Nye

      Gareth Nye answered on 4 Mar 2019:

      The liver is a really important organ! it does three main things – cleans up your blood from anything that might be harmful like fats and poisons, it produces a liquid called bile which helps us breakdown our food and it stores sugars to be used for energy when we need it.

      As a side note – its also the reason drugs like headaches tablets can work because the liver helps break it down to be active

    • Photo: Rebecca Gosling

      Rebecca Gosling answered on 4 Mar 2019:

      The liver does lots of things! It helps us to break down food and it cleans our blood, by taking out toxins (substances that are like poison!). It is the largest solid organ. By the time you are fully grown up it will be about the size of a football!

    • Photo: Marie Cameron

      Marie Cameron answered on 4 Mar 2019:

      The liver does more individual things than possibly any other organ! Unlike the heart or the kidneys, no artifical device can adequately carry out all of the functions of the liver (although liver dialysis can do some of these things). Did you know that you can donate part of your liver to someone else to help them live if they have a damaged liver? Your own liver can regrow if part of it is cut off!

    • Photo: Hanna Jeffery

      Hanna Jeffery answered on 4 Mar 2019:

      I’ll let the medics answer this one…

    • Photo: Matthew Smith

      Matthew Smith answered on 5 Mar 2019:

      everyone has answered this really well above but the liver acts like a sieve. It filters out all the bad things from the blood that can make us sick and keeps us safe. It is also really good at processing chemicals and drugs.

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