The liver’s needed to keep you alive,
It’s a vital organ without which you won’t survive,
It can fully do its job with just a third of its cell squad!
Over five hundred vital tasks are done,
By the human body’s second heaviest organ!
The liver’s four lobes contain lobules, which its function sustain!

The liver filters blood and contains 13 percent of your blood volume,
Freshly oxygenated blood comes down from the heart’s aorta, then ZOOM!
Up into the left and into the right,
Hepatic arteries to supply the liver, tight!
Blood leaves the liver by the hepatic vein and goes through,
The inferior vena cava back to the heart, circulation starts anew!
The liver also receives blood through, the portal vein from the GI tract,
Which is filtered just in case it is packed,
With toxins like alcohol and drugs – it’s detox time!
Now blood leaving the hepatic vein is clean and sublime!

The liver filters more than toxins, it kills old red blood cells!
They live for 120 days then say farewells!
In the liver these senescent cells, with Kupffer cells engage,
They’re a style, of immune cell called a tissue macrophage!

Kupffer cells also attack pathogens!
Entering by portal vein, their filtering begins!
When they sense endotoxins or bacteria, attack begins!
The Kupffer cells then begin to release,
Cytokines, nitric oxide, and oxygen species!
Also thank your liver when you get a papercut again!

The reason you don’t bleed to death is because clotting factors seal the wound,
Without the liver, many of these clotting factors would not be around!
Hemostasis stops your bleeding and it,
Is activated right when a blood vessel is split!
Yet another role the liver plays is in digestion!
It helps digest fats by making bile and helps with vitamin absorption!
Bile gets produced by hepatocytes within liver lobules then it’s stored,
In the gallbladder, until it gets poured,
In the duodenum, to digest and absorb fat,
As well as fatsoluble vitamins, how about that?

The liver and the pancreas blood glucose levels control,
When it’s low, the pancreas sends out glucagon whose role,
Is to break liver glycogen down to glucose. When it’s high,
The pancreas sends insulin, cells accept glucose, in reply!

Visuals, Lyrics, Audio copyright of Neural Academy

Music from "Rondo Alla Turca (Turkish March)" Mozart