5 Signs Your Liver Might Be Failing

Hucksters selling bogus health products (like juice cleanses) love to talk about all the "toxins" in your body—toxins their products will supposedly remove. But sit down with a doctor, and she'll tell you your body already has a built-in, ultra-effective toxin remover: your liver.

Your liver not only acts as a filter for your blood, but it also produces hormones, stores energy, and makes compounds that allow your gut to digest food. And those are just a few of its many essential duties.

Considering your liver's outsize role in keeping you hale and healthy, you'd think even small problems with it would stand out. But that's not the case, says Bruce Bacon, MD, a professor of internal medicine and chair of gastroenterology at the St. Louis University School of Medicine.