Essay About Liver

954 Words4 Pages
ABOUT LIVER What is the liver? Liver is the most amazing and the largest organ inside a human body. It is reddish-brown in color and consists of 96% water (water in blood and inside the cells). It has two different parts (lobes) of different sizes. The right lobe is bigger than the left lobe. Situated on the right hand side of the abdominal cavity behind the ribs and underneath the diaphragm, the liver weighs approximately 1.4 kg in a fully grown individual. IMAGE (Cross Section of Liver) Large blood vessels called the portal vein and the hepatic artery carry blood to the liver. While the hepatic artery brings blood that is rich in oxygen straight from the heart, the portal vein brings blood that carries digested food from small intestine.…show more content…
While the liver performs more than 500 different functions, we will look at the main things that the liver does. • Liver acts as a chemical processing plant that converts most of the food consumed into stuff that the body can use, while getting rid of the things that are either toxic (harmful to the body) or are of no use. • Liver makes and stores fuel by converting carbohydrates we eat (e.g. bread, fruit and dairy products) to glucose. Glucose travels in the blood throughout the body where it is used for energy. Liver also helps in keeping the blood glucose at the right levels. • Liver cleans blood by taking toxins out of it. These toxins may either have been made by the body or have been brought into the body through ingesting something like drugs, alcohol, or other harmful stuff. Excessive consumption of alcohol for a long time damages the liver so badly that it cannot perform its job. This condition is called cirrhosis. • Liver makes bile and stores it in the gall bladder until the body needs it to digest fats. Bile is a digestive juice (thick, yellow-green substance) that helps the body absorb fat from the gut into the bloodstream which in turn, travels from the liver into the small

More about Essay About Liver

Open Document