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What is the liver?

The liver is the largest organ inside your body.

It looks like a reddish brown wedge with 2 different parts, or lobes, of different sizes. The right lobe is a lot bigger than the left lobe.
It weighs about 1.4 kg when you are fully grown.
It lies on the right hand side of your abdominal cavity (say: ab-dom-in-al kav-it-ee) underneath the diaphragm (say: dye-a –fram) and behind the ribs.

What does the liver do?

The liver performs over 500 different functions! In fact it is so important that we cannot live without our liver. Maybe if you become a medical doctor you will learn all about them but right now we are going to look at the main things that the liver does.

Let's look at the main three functions

Your liver acts as a chemical processing factory to change most of the food that you eat into stuff that your body can use.  It gets rid of the things that are no use or are toxic (this word which means harmful to your body.)

1. Your liver makes bile which travels from the liver into the small intestine
   
   Bile is a digestive juice which helps the body absorb fat from the gut into the bloodstream. The liver makes this thick, yellow-green substance then stores it in the gall bladder until the body needs some to digest fats.
    
2. Your liver cleans your blood
   
   Your liver takes toxins (waste) out of your blood. These may have been made by your body when breaking down proteins, or been brought into your body through breathing or eating/drinking.
   
    
3. Your liver makes and stores fuel
   
   Your liver makes glucose from carbohydrates (say: car-bo-hi-drates) that you eat, such as ones in bread, fruit and dairy products. Some of this glucose travels in blood to the rest of the body where it is used for energy.
   
   
   The liver also helps to keep blood sugar at the right levels.

What does the gall bladder do?

The gall bladder stores bile that is produced in the liver.  When food leaves the stomach the bile is released to help digestion.  The bile is used to break down fats.

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