Name: 【TED-Ed】What does the liver do? - Emma Bryce
Uploaded: 2014-11-30T12:53:55.000Z
Duration: 3 min 25 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

There's a factory inside you  that weighs about 1.4 kilograms

This is your liver, the heaviest organ in your body,

This industrious structure  simultaneously acts as a storehouse,

And each of these functions involve  so many important subtasks

that without the liver,  our bodies would simply stop working.

One of the liver's main functions  is to filter the body's blood,

which it receives in regular shipments  from two sources:

the hepatic artery  delivers blood from the heart,

while the hepatic portal vein  brings it from the intestine.

This double delivery  fills the liver with nutrients,

with the help of thousands  of tiny internal processing plants,

Both blood flows also deliver the oxygen  that the liver needs to function.

The blood that is received  from the intestine

and vitamins and other nutrients  dissolved in it

These must be processed in different ways.

the liver breaks them down  and converts them into sugars

for the body to use as energy  when the filtered blood is sent back out.

Sometimes the body  has leftovers of nutrients

When that happens,  the liver holds some back,

for future cases when the body  might be in need of nutrients.

But the blood flowing into the liver isn't always full of good things.

It also contains toxins and byproducts that the body can't use.

When it spots a useless or toxic substance,

it either converts it into a product  that can't hurt the body

channeling it through  the kidneys and intestine to be excreted.

Of course, we wouldn't consider  the liver a factory

This organ makes everything  from various blood plasma proteins

that transport fatty acids  and help form blood clots,

to the cholesterol  that helps the body create hormones.

It also makes vitamin D and substances that help digestion.

But one of its most vital products  is bile.

to convert toxic waste products  into this bitter greenish liquid.

As it's produced, bile is funneled  into a small container below the liver,

to help break down fats, destroy microbes, and neutralize extra stomach acid.

Bile also helps carry other toxins  and byproducts from the liver

the liver is an extremely efficient  industrial site,

performing multiple tasks  that support each other.

But such a complex system  needs to be kept running smoothly

and not overloading it  with more toxins than it can handle.

This is one factory  we simply can't afford to shut down.