Your poor liver. Also, my poor liver.
But mostly, Archer’s and Malory’s poor respective livers.
They have all been through more than any liver ever should.
Malory actually drank isopropyl alcohol on the space station, which would have been fatal to most humans. She is also unphased by tranquilizer darts and vast quantities of scotch, bourbon, rye, brandy, cognac, gin, vodka, rum and any other drink you could potentially put in front of her.
Malory’s liver has had a rough run.
The good news is that the liver is actually quite resilient. No matter what kind of brutality it has endured, a change in diet can radically improve liver function and overall health. (Except in the case of liver disease in it’s many forms. You’re kind of hosed once that happens).
Betaine. Pronounced BEET-uh-een.
That might be confusing at first, since the word looks like it has a latin origin, beta.
Not the case, though. The name comes from the fact that this chemical compound was first found while researching sugar beets. Now that you look at the pronunciation, that seems to be obvious.
Betaine is a pretty cool little compound. One cool thing is that it’s an osmolyte, which means it aids in maintaining fluid balance. This is super important for liver function since osmosis is used to help keep the mix of water, glucose, and salt in our body well balanced. Drinking alcohol causes stress in your liver in many ways, affecting the balance of salts and water in your body. You’ve probably heard about drinking electrolytes as a hangover cure. Electrolytes are salts. They help you retain water. Alcohol tends to make you lose water. Hense, “breaking the seal”, which happens because your body is purging water like crazy.
I’ve covered this before.
I’m rambling.
What was I talking about?
Betaine! Right!
So, you can obviously get betaine from beets, as the name suggests, but dark leafy greens also can be good sources of it as well.
Spinach in particular is high in betaine.
If you were going to increase your spinach and beet intake, you could eat plenty of salads, but honestly, you’d also like to get some more fluids in you as well, since what we’re dealing with here is water retention and balance.
This week, our unconventional drink is:
LEAFY GREEN SMOOTHIE
The diet of our San Marcos gang is typically different than I would suggest for your average human, and this week is no exception. I cannot actually recommend the real recipe, so I am offering a hopefully reasonable alternative. You’ll understand after tonight.
- 1 banana, frozen, peel removed
- 1 large or 2 small golden beets, peeled
- 1 cup tightly packed spinach leaves
- 1 cup coconut milk
- 1 T ground flax seeds
- 1 T almond butter
- 1/2 tsp cinnamon
- about 3-5 ice cubes
INSTRUCTIONS: Add all ingredients to blender, and puree until smooth. Scrape sides as needed. When it’s done, there should be no little pieces of leaves floating around- it will be completely smooth.
ALTERNATE
A fine VSOP brandy, in a snifter.
FOOD
Half a roasted chicken and some arepas.