Overview of the Liver The liver is a vital organ located in the upper right-hand side of the abdomen. Somewhat larger than the size of a football and weighing about 2-3 pounds, it performs numerous functions for the body: converting nutrients derived from food into essential blood components, storing vitamins and minerals, regulating blood clotting, producing proteins and enzymes, maintaining hormone balances, and metabolizing and detoxifying substances that would otherwise be harmful to the body. The liver also makes factors that help the human immune system fight infection, removes bacteria from the blood, and makes bile, which is essential for digestion.
Bile, a greenish-yellow fluid consisting of bile acids (or salts) and waste products, such as bile pigments, flows through small bile ducts inside the liver. The bile moves from these small ducts into larger ones, like streams into a river, eventually traveling into the common bile duct and out of the liver. Some of the bile flows directly to the duodenum; the rest is stored and concentrated in the gallbladder. After a person eats, the gallbladder, a fist-sized organ that sits next to the liver, releases some of the stored bile into the small intestine, where it helps to digest fats.
This article was last reviewed on February 24, 2006.
This article was last modified on April 8, 2009.
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