How To Make Your Own Liver Capsules (And Why You Need It)

Liver: Nature's A-Z Multivitamin

If I'm the first person you're hearing this from, I'll eat my hat! But honestly, no one could overstate the benefits of adding pasture raised ruminant liver to your diet. If you are one those people who have been told that liver stores toxins, let me be the one to set this straight for you. Liver stores the vitamins, minerals and cofactors needed to neutralise and excrete toxins, not the toxins themselves. This is why liver is such a potent source of beneficial nutrients. It's been one of the most revered organ meats throughout human history, often prized heavily over other organs and especially over muscle meat (which was often left on the animal or fed to pets). Muscle meats are what we consume on a day by day basis in our Westernised lives. So, what's wrong with that, you wonder? 

Muscle Meats Contain Less Nutrients Than Organ Meats

+Chris Kresser, L.Ac talks about the difference in value of the nutrients in beef liver compared to that of beef muscle meat, carrots and apples. Here's the table he provides that shows the stark contrast, and led me to creating my own liver capsules so that I can be sure to improve my nutritional intake during this stressful time in my life. He also links to another page on the Weston Price website but it's no longer there, however this is the post I believe he was referring to (and covers concerns about Vitamin A overdose as well). By the way, you should definitely download and read all Chris' free PDFs which are pure gold. 

Lean muscle meats also don't contain much gelatine or fat, both of which work to balance the proteins in the muscle meat and the by products of eating a lot of it, such as excess methionine. This increases our need for other proteins such as glycine found in the skin, bones and hooves of animals (what gelatine is derived from). If you don't like bone broths or gelatine then you can get some of the glycine you need to counteract a diet high in muscle meats by eating both liver (which is high is folate) and spinach (which is high in betaine), as these two nutrients are used by the body to generate glycine. Folks like me on an autoimmune paleo diet who have fosaken sources of folate such as beans and eggs, and sources of betaine such as wheat and eggs again, have extra need for the balancing properties of gelatine and liver (and that's without even considering the benefit of these on joints - which can suffer in a person dealing with autoimmunity - and the benefit to the digestive tract, the seat of all the issues).

Now if all this has your stomach turning because you believe that meat will kill you, cause a heart attack or give you cancer, here's another quick post by Chris Kresser that gives you links to a couple of fantastic articles from a few years ago. It's worth the two minute read just for the amusing "not this s&*^ again..." tone of his writing ;-) If you want to jump straight to the articles, here's the one by +Robb Wolf Paleo Diet which is brilliant (and you should definitely read his book!) and here's the one +Mark Sisson put up on the subject which is equally valuable. 

Liver Contains Bioavailable Nutrients In The Right Ratios To Each Other 

This is important for the reasons stated above, but also because very often store-bought supplements and multivitamins contain synthetic vitamins and minerals that can actually block the receptors in your body that would otherwise make use of the real vitamins in your food. For instance it's now known that the common form of vitamin C found in supplements such as vitamin C powders and in multivitamins (aka ascorbic acid) is an incomplete form of vitamin C. In other words, there are more elements to real vitamin C that your body needs in order to use it properly. 

But this isolated form of vitamin C fills up your vitamin C receptor sites (the little holes that the vitamin C keys fit into on your cells) and then your body can't utilise the vitamin C in that orange you ate or from the rosehip extract you spent all that time making. Essentially it then causes vitamin C deficiency. Unfortunately I cannot find the study I originally read, but here is an article by Lauren of +Empowered Sustenance which discusses this problem with supplements in general, and here is another article that, while it is a little over-the-top and very American, does bring many truths to bear. Liver contains the vitamins and minerals your body needs for optimum function in a form that the body can recognise and use. 

So now you know why you need to eat a natural, whole-food multivitamin to improve your overall health, but for most of us who weren't raised eating organ meats it can be hard to overcome the strong taste. I can eat chicken liver as a pate made with onions and balsamic vinegar (delicious with some plantain crisps) but I cannot stomach either pork liver or beef liver (or any other organ meat come to that, especially kidney). So I started making my own liver capsules, and with the small outlay initially to get the capsule making machine and the shells, it really is much more cost effective than buying dessicated grass-fed liver capsules. So without further ado...

How To Make Your Own Liver Capsules

First of all you will need the freshest grass fed liver you can find. I really don't advocate buying conventional liver, but if that is all you can get, try to at least buy Red Tractor marked liver if you're in the UK. Any liver is going to be better than no liver, in my humble opinion, but do the very best you can, even if it means driving to a few butchers. There are differences between chicken liver, pork liver and beef liver, so a variety of them all is best, but if this is your first time making them, start with just beef liver as it is easier to slice and dry. I have to apologise in advance for the photography - I'm still getting to grips with my husband's camera and it was a terribly dull English day so the lighting isn't great. Sorry! Hopefully the pictures are good enough that you can at least work out what I'm talking about.

Just a note to those who don't have a capsule filling machine but still want to take liver without the gross-factor; you can freeze liver into small cubes and drink them with some water just like normal tablets, but I haven't actually tried this method and so cannot attest as to whether or not you definitely can't taste the liver before you get it down, or how well it'll go down. But still a great and simple option if hiding blitzed up liver in your bolognaise won't work and you can't afford a capsule filling machine just yet.

1. Slice your liver as thinly as possible - I managed to get mine about 3mm thick with a (very) sharp knife. Arrange it carefully on something that will allow air to circulate freely. I used a drying rack on some baking paper on a cookie sheet. It will shrink a fair bit so feel free to pack them quite close together. I had some little bits left over that would have just fallen though the holes in my rack so I chopped them up finer and put them in an ice cube tray and froze them for doggie treats.

2. Put it in the oven. I set my fan oven to the plate warm setting; if you don't have a fan oven, I'd recommend the lowest temperature it does with the door propped ajar just a crack. They'll need to be in there at least overnight, so plan not to need your oven during this time! If you have a dehydrator all the better. Unfortunately I forgot to get a picture when I took them out, but you'll know they're done when they're fully adhered to the rack (no way around this one! Just pop them off with your fingers) and snap easily under pressure.

3. Grind up the liver chunks. Break them up into smaller pieces and then grind them up in a coffee grinder or blender with a coffee/nut grinding capability. Sieve each batch to catch the bigger particles and add them back into the grinder with the next batch.

4. Set up your capsule filling machine. Once you have your liver powder, set up your capsule machine according to the instructions. This one I bought on Amazon for about £25 and the bag of 1000 capsules for £10. It's important to remember to check the sizes of the capsules and make sure you order the same size capsules as the filling machine. I bought size 0 capsules which are about 2cm in length, but you can get both bigger and smaller capsules depending on what you're comfortable with.

Now make sure your hands are clean and VERY dry. If you have any moisture on your hands the capsules will stick to you. As it goes, having very dry hands makes it hard to grip the little buggers, but hey, it's all part of the fun! 

Kind of hard to see the capsules because they're clear - left is the short top part of the capsule and right is the narrow end.

You need to make sure you put the correct part of the capsule into the right side of the filling machine; so for mine, the short fat end of the capsule goes in the top, and the narrow end goes into the base. Be sure to press them down well enough so that the ones in the base are flush with the surface and cannot be felt when you run your fingers over them, and the ones in the top are sturdily secured (they may not fit in completely as the bottoms do in the base, which is fine as long as they're not going to fall out when you turn it over.) Ethan discovered a quick way to do this - use the spreader card to flatten them all at once!

Place the requisite part of the capsule into the machine

Push them in till flush 

Use the spreader card to press them all in at once!

5. Fill your capsules. Start by fitting the base of the machine with the stand so that the base cannot be pushed down. This provides structure for when you use the tamping tool to compact the powder and fill your capsules with more than you would be able to otherwise. This means less work for you and fewer caps to swallow! Place the base and stand into a bowl or on a plate to catch what you scrape off.

Add stand to bottom of base

Spoon some powder over the holes and use the spreader card to evenly fill the capsules and scrape off the rest. Use the tamping tool to firmly compact the powder and then spread a second layer over to fill them again. Scrape off the excess and remove the base from the bowl or plate.

Spoon powder over holes

Scrape off excess and compact with tamping tool, then add more powder and scrape excess off again.

Remove from bowl/plate and turn stand over or remove it completely

6. Join your capsules together. Either remove the stand from the bottom of the base or turn it over so that the springs in the base will move. Place the top onto the base and push down firmly on the edges. I couldn't photograph this bit as it is a two-handed job! Take the top off the base and the capsules should be there, filled and joined like magical little bullets. Press the top firmly to eject the capsules. Voilà! And now do it about 20 more times.... It is a bit of a long ting, but you get into a rhythm and before you know it you have 430 capsules! 

Magic!

Everybody loves helpers...

Luckily for me, Ethan has a bit of thing for making capsules (until he bores of it or something else takes his fancy) and I managed to snap a photo of him ejecting the capsules.

Making your own capsules is one of those pleasant chores that, with the help of good company, or a book or podcast to listen to, is therapeutic and quite fun. 

So, now that you have them, what are you going to do with them? Well, take them, of course ;-) My capsules weigh about 500mg each and I take 4 with breakfast and 4 with dinner, daily. I have noticed since I started taking the beef liver capsules that I feel a bit better - energy is better than I felt while taking the chicken liver caps I made last time, but then again, I was only taking 4 per day. It's one of those things, take as many as you feel comfortable with and see how you feel. No difference after a couple of weeks? Take a couple more per day and so on until you're feeling better. There is very little danger of consuming too much vitamin A this way; you're only really in danger of that if you take retinoic acid-containing supplements as well as these babies. If you are concerned however, the link above to the Weston Price article covers it in detail.

Happy Capsule Making!