Mental illness doesn’t just start in the mind, it may also start in the liver. A healthy liver is closely associated with a healthy mind.

When we think of anxiety, depression, mood swings, memory loss, sleep impairment, personality changes, we often intuitively assume them as “mental illness”, but we may be overlooking a potential cause now affecting billions of adults in the world: fatty liver disease. This once-rare condition results primarily from factors such as excess body fat, poor dietary practices, and alcohol and substance abuse.

According to a new article written by psychologist Thomas Rutledge, a diseased liver cannot protect the body and brain from accumulating toxins that cause symptoms of physical and mental illness.

He believes that the liver is the ultimate domestic engineer, working 24-7 to chemically neuter toxins in our blood before they infect our bodies. The organ functions as a nutritional warehouse for many essential vitamins and minerals and metabolizes medicines, alcohol, and other substances that would otherwise quickly jeopardize our existence.

But even the marvelous liver has limits. Too much insulin, too much alcohol, or too much fructose, for example, and even the normally indomitable liver can no longer keep pace and begins to develop invasive fat within the liver tissue itself.

The liver disease can be a direct cause of mental health symptoms because a compromised liver cannot prevent toxins in the blood from reaching the brain. Concentration, memory, mood stability, and the ability to tolerate and respond to stress are just a few of the potential mental capacities that can be impaired when toxins begin accumulating in the brain.

This psychologist’s research articles provide the strong explanation how the traditional Chinese medicine can have an effective treatment for mental illness.

Based on theories of the Traditional Chinese medicine, the human body is an open and holistic system, mind and body are integrated as a whole and can not be separated. The physiological and pathological signs of Zang-fu organs are closely related to natural and human factors. The occurrence of mental illness results from the disturbance of inner homeostasis.

Therefore, the treatment of some mental illness need to find the root cause from the liver, seek the balance of Yin and Yang inside the viscera, to reconstruct the overall balance of our mind and body. In this regard, acupuncture and the traditional medicine can be a helpful approach to protect you from suffering.