I have a lot of experience in this because I destroyed my liver with all the bad habits you can possibly imagine.

So let's go to the first bad habit.

And this is over-the-counter medication.

Now this goes beyond medication and I'm not telling you not to take your medication, but all medication, especially over-the-counter medication can really do some serious damage to your liver.

And at the top of the list, we have Tylenol.

Tylenol is very unique in that it's the number one cause of acute liver failure out of all these other medications.

So it's something to be aware of and some people don't realize that and they're taking it routinely and it's really bad.

If you're on any over-the-counter medication or even medication in general, you should be taking something to protect your liver.

And one thing that I recommend would be milk thistle.

It has very unique properties to add protection and increase regeneration of liver.

The other protector for the liver, especially for Tylenol is something called NAC, but milk thistle will also work.

And also the question to ask is, why am I on this medication in the first place?

Well, some of the other bad habits that we're gonna cover will probably solve the problem of being on this medication in the first place.

All right, number two is a sedentary lifestyle.

And it's kind of strange because like, why would not exercising or being active harm your liver versus other things that you do, or let's say you're drinking alcohol, right?

That's something that definitely destroys liver, but if you're sedentary, your diet might not be that great, okay?

So you're eating a lot of maybe junk foods or more calories and you're probably not burning them off.

And so if we just look at the cells, the input of fuel and then the burning that fuel up, if you're inputting too much fuel and you're not burning that off, there's a lot of damage that's created at the cell level.

This is called oxidative stress.

You can just think about this as rust.

You can rusting out your body.

And exercise burns off a lot of that fuel.

That's like a buffering system for a lot of things, like disease.

Exercise greatly strengthens the immune system.

Exercise increases more oxygen throughout the body.

Exercise also directly reduces stress.

That builds up, you can't avoid stress.

So all day long, you accumulate stress.

How are you gonna get that stress out of your body?

Well, exercise can do it.

Create a habit of regular exercise or physical work.

All right, next one, number three, not really eating for health or nutrition.

Now this can get you into trouble because the primary ingredient that people eat for pleasure is seed oil, vegetable oils, which are really bad.

The combination of starch or sugar and seed oils is basically the anatomy of what makes up junk food.

And the combination of sweet, starch, and seed oils together, it's highly addictive.

It's highly damaging.

But it can give us a sense of a decreased stress for a second, well, actually about 30 seconds, until your blood sugars that were high start coming down.

And now we actually need more to create that same sensation.

So most people actually eat for some type of sensation.

This is kind of a mindless thing that we just do as a routine habit.

It has taken me years before I finally decided to create a new thing for myself, where I'm now gonna start eating for health.

And I really had to hit bottom and really feel terrible for many years before I changed.

I didn't just switch overnight.

I literally had to be so sick and be in so much pain before I said, that's it.

And now all I have to do is think about what I would feel like if I ate this thing to get me to say, no, thank you.

So the comfort foods that people like would be like fried chicken, right?

Deep fried in vegetable oils.

French fries with ketchup, pastries, donuts.

You realize that at one time I ate in one sitting 12 donuts.

I mean, I can't even imagine eating that now.

The heck was I thinking?

And then when you go to a fast food place, you literally drink this sugar as high fructose corn syrup.

Just think about what that does to your liver.

So all of these carbs combined with the seed oils are going to create a situation in the liver called insulin resistance.

This is a situation where you're forcing your body to work so hard at removing this junk out of the system, all the sugar out of the system.

And it creates this protective mechanism where it's gonna start to block sugar, okay?

And because sugar needs insulin to go into the cells and it all starts in the liver.

It's at the root of obesity, belly fat, a fatty liver and high blood pressure.

All of that is directly caused from insulin resistance.

But a lot of times they confuse people and they say, well, each thing is associated with each other.

They're not really showing you cause and effect relationship but eating for pleasure, eating for the wrong purpose, which is the bad habit, directly destroys the liver because it creates insulin resistance.

And then from that point on, it's all downhill.

All right, the next one, number four, is also eating for the wrong purpose, eating for convenience, okay?

I talk to a lot of people that don't have a lot of time and so they're on the run.

And so they have to quickly eat something.

And this usually always involves something pretty crappy, low quality food and not very good protein.

Like a protein bar, for example, it doesn't have high quality protein, which is gonna mess with your liver because it's filled with this solvent called hexane.

And then they're gonna add also on top of that, all these other hidden sugars and starches and chemicals.

So that's what you're exchanging for this convenience.

I was in that state for so many years, even after a seminar that I did, that I told all these people to eat healthy.

I'm driving home hungry cause I didn't prepare and I drive past KFC, okay?

Kentucky Fried Chicken.

And I'm thinking twice and I pull right in there, okay?

Hey, Dr. Berg.

And I'm like, oh no, no, no, no, no.

I felt very embarrassed.

My face was red.

I quickly got my crispy fried chicken and left and hope I would never run into that person ever again.

Of course I sat in my car and I ate this chicken.

It was delicious.

It was amazing.

All that MSG in there.

To go home, I take a nap.

I wake up three hours later with my eyes bloodshot, like feeling disgusted.

Now, if I even drive past a KFC, just the smell of it makes me disgusted.

So what you want to do is you want to prepare your meals.

You want to plan out what you're going to eat and just do a little preparation.

My wife and I, a lot of times eat at different times.

And so I'm cooking my own meals and I'm not doing this long recipe thing.

I might just combine meat, vegetables, eggs, cheese.

And I might have tomato with it.

I might have a salad, some olive oil and maybe balsamic vinaigrette.

And now I have my meal.

Took me a few minutes.

But all this packaged food out of convenience has a lot of seed oils.

There's a lot of starch, a lot of sugar.

You just want to avoid all that.

And you want to start adding in a healthier habit.

All right, we're at number five, stress.

And it not only creates a lot of problems for your sleep, which then will cause your blood sugars to crash, which will then cause you to go off the plan and eat things that you normally wouldn't do.

Chronic stress brings out dormant viruses out of remission that can affect the liver.

Establishing new healthy habits, it's very, very important to have enough sleep.

And this all revolves around doing things to strip off the stress.

Vitamin B1 before you go to bed.

Vitamin D helps reduce stress.

Exercise, long walks, all of these things reduce stress.

There's a fantastic acupressure and stretching technique that I do every night before I go to bed that works on the fascia.

I will put that link down below so you can check that out.

But I also want to mention something else.

A lot of people are in a stress state because they're not really facing the real cause of their stress.

So I think it's a really important question to ask like, okay, what's at the root of the stress?

How can I face it straight on, deal with it so it's no longer a stress?

All right, number six, alcohol.

Now, when you drink alcohol, it goes right to the liver and then the liver turns it into something else, which is actually more poisonous.

And now your body has to get rid of that.

And so that creates liver damage.

Now, there are levels of things that will be worse than other things, like the mixed drinks, margaritas, the pina coladas, where you have not just alcohol, but you have sugar.

Really bad combination.

But then you have beer, which is less alcohol, more carbohydrate, but then people consume more of that.

In college, a friend and I went to the bar on a regular basis, on a daily basis.

We would play pool and we would drink.

But another time, my wife and I found this little place, this little shop that sold margaritas.

Yeah, and for a whole year, we would stop off after work and get a margarita.

And it was one of those things where I realized, am I an alcoholic?

I'm drinking every single day, a couple margaritas.

And I felt great in the beginning, but then I started to feel more tired, more blood sugar issues.

And that's when I said, that's it, I'm done.

But then you also have wine, right?

At least with wine, you have phytonutrients in there, or at least some.

That's gonna create a little bit of lessening of the damage of the alcohol.

And it really depends on how much that you consume.

But if you're drinking for health reasons, just realize there is no such thing.

I'm not telling you not to drink.

I'm just saying that if it's a regular routine, you might wanna just do something to lessen that routine, to be more in control of when you consume it.

You can also take vitamin B1, natural B1.

That will help you prevent a hangover.

All right, and number seven, vitamin deficiencies.

So it's basically getting the key factors to help support the liver and help the liver work.

We're talking about phytonutrients.

And there's several foods that will give you more of that than others.

Cruciferous vegetables, arugula, broccoli, all filled with phytonutrients that specifically help the liver detoxify.

And I think you should consume those on a regular basis.

Other things like salad with added garlic and onion are also really good for the liver because what all that does is it helps give you antioxidants to protect the liver against all the inflammation going on.

But also don't forget red meat, or even like I like hamburger from grass-fed cows, or you can even do wild-caught fish, super healthy for your liver.

All right, so now that you know about these habits,

I think it'd be really helpful for you to get the basics on exactly what diet you should consume.

And for that information, I put it up right here.

Check it out.