{"id":202922,"date":"2020-07-22T16:00:24","date_gmt":"2020-07-22T15:00:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.factstoryhub.com\/?p=202922"},"modified":"2023-02-01T17:23:42","modified_gmt":"2023-02-01T17:23:42","slug":"liver-facts","status":"publish","type":[],"link":"https:\/\/www.factstoryhub.com\/liver-facts\/","title":{"rendered":"8 Interesting Facts About Your Liver"},"content":{"rendered":"
If I asked you to name an organ in your body, what would be the first one to pop into your head?\n
The heart, ceaselessly pumping blood around our bodies and a symbol of love across the world? Or maybe the lungs, allowing us to breathe wonderful fresh air when we step outside our front doors?\n
But probably not the poor liver. It’s high time we showed a little appreciation for the unsung hero of the human body with this list of fascinating facts!\n
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Take a guess at how big your liver is. If you\u2019re thinking the size of a golf ball, or the size of a grapefruit, you\u2019re incorrect!\n
In a fully-grown man, it\u2019s actually the size of a football.\n
Located just below your ribs on the right-hand side of your body, the liver weighs 3 lbs (1.5kg) on average, making it the second biggest organ next to the skin.\n
It\u2019s wedge-shaped, formed of four lobes, red-brown in color, and would be rubbery to the touch.\n
At any given point, the liver contains 10% of all the blood in your body and filters it at a rate of around 1.4 liters per minute.\n
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Have you ever wondered how the food we eat gives us energy? Guess what! Our old friend, the liver, has a major role in this!\n
The carbohydrates we eat, found in foods such as bread and potatoes, are broken down into glucose by the liver and are also stored here as glycogen.\n Not only that but in a glucose emergency, the liver can rapidly convert its store of glycogen back into glucose ready for us to use.\n It acts as a filter to remove toxins such as alcohol from our blood and plays a key part in fighting infection.\n The liver contains over half of the body\u2019s macrophages – white blood cells that work by destroying any bacteria or other unfriendly foreign bodies in our blood that could make us unwell.\n It also breaks down and removes old cells of the body, produces the proteins for blood clotting, and stores various vitamins and minerals.\n Unlike many other organs in our body, such as the heart, lungs, and kidneys, scientists have not yet been able to design a machine that can artificially carry out all the functions of the liver.\n So look after your livers, kids!\nBile is produced and secreted by the liver.\n
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