FOODS THAT MAY SAVE YOUR LIVER

As the few readers on this blog must have noticed, whatever I write regarding living through an acute infection of the hepatitis B virus is always through my personal experience. Which is the basis of the blog in the first place, use my experience as a survivor to educate and inform others especially in Sub-Saharan Africa.

One major factor that helped me beat the virus in record time was the strict diet I adhered to, I was sternly warned to stay away from high protein foods and oils. The funny thing was that while I was under observation before my lab report came out (it took about seven days) the doctor said he suspected I had contracted the virus but he needed to be sure, hence the test. And at that time, the only thing I had appetite for was beans and oatmeal, not knowing I wasn’t even supposed to be eating any proteins or oils. I got weaker and weaker and became jaundiced, my skin was yellow and my eyes were a mixture of orange and yellow. Mind you staying away from beans was a big problem for me, because even at good times I ate a lot of beans and meat. 

So I began to eat little proteins and no oil, I say little because there is no way one can totally eradicate proteins from meals, so I took milk and ate lots of vegetables. I got a little of stick for my menu, as all I ate was bread, lettuces, cabbages, broccoli, aloe Vera, spinach. I ate these with white rice and sometimes grilled fish, just when the longing for meat was too great for me to ignore, I went for fish, grilled to almost crunchy taste so oils from the fish will be dried up.

So basically my menu looked essentially like this

BREAKFAST

Vegetable sandwich with a glass skimmed milk

Or

Plain bread and tea ( with milk)

LUNCH

White Rice with carrots and cabbage

Or

White rice with lettuce, grilled fish

Or spaghetti with vegetable sauce

DINNER

Anything from eba (Nigerian meal made out of gritty flour from cassava) to semolina, amala or pounded yam. All these were eaten with vegetable soup prepared specially with only water and no oils at all. I also had a special stew invented by a friend; it was made out of tomatoes, pepper, carrots and water.

I need to warn that these meals were not always as enjoyable as I may be painting them to be, at various times during my convalescence I fought the temptation to eat meat, chips and plantains but the thought of permanent damage to my liver kept me in check.

There are no hard and fast rules to what you can eat though, just make sure you avoid alcohol, oils and foods with high proteins, also research for various traditional meals and drinks that are known to boost the recovery of the liver.