Your Skin and Your Liver: The Signs Dr. Jarod Watches For, and What the Research Shows

Your skin is the one organ everyone can see, and the one people spend the most money trying to fix from the outside. Dr. Jarod Ward looks at it differently. When he hears about breakouts, dull skin or dark circles, he thinks about the liver first. Here's what he looks for, and what the research shows about the connection.

Dr. Jarod reads the skin as a liver clue

In his liver episode, Dr. Jarod runs through the problems that send him straight to the liver, and skin is right in the middle of the list:

"If your joints hurt, if your skin sucks, if you have acne on your face, think about the liver. Always think about the liver."

When he lists the specific signs he connects to a liver that's struggling, the skin shows up again and again: "acne on the face, acne on the back," "dark circles under the eyes," "dry skin, oily skin." He also describes the person who comes in feeling like a dimmer version of themselves: "Their skin seems lifeless. Maybe they got a little bit of acne, maybe dry skin."

His explanation uses the same picture he uses for everything the liver does. The liver is the filter of your fish tank body, and when it's overloaded, the whole tank shows it:

"When you clean a dirty fish tank, right, it feels less dirty, it feels less sludgy, it feels less inflamed. Your skin looks better."

The one skin sign every doctor ties to the liver is yellow

Medicine already has a textbook example of the liver showing up on the skin. MedlinePlus explains that jaundice "causes your skin and the whites of your eyes to turn yellow." It happens when bilirubin, a yellow chemical released as old red blood cells break down, isn't cleared fast enough: "The old ones are processed by the liver. If the liver cannot handle the blood cells as they break down, bilirubin builds up in the body and your skin may look yellow."

Jaundice is a sign doctors take seriously, and it shows the basic principle. The liver clears things your skin would otherwise show. The everyday skin concerns Dr. Jarod talks about are a much earlier, subtler question, and the research there looks at blood sugar and inflammation.

Acne tracked with blood sugar in a randomized trial

Researchers in Australia tested whether diet could change acne. Forty-three young men with acne, ages 15 to 25, were split into two groups for 12 weeks. One ate a low-glycemic-load diet, with 25% of energy from protein and carbohydrates chosen to raise blood sugar slowly. The other group ate carbohydrate-dense foods with no attention to glycemic index. Dermatologists who counted the acne didn't know who was in which group.

At 12 weeks, total acne lesions had dropped by an average of 23.5 in the low-glycemic-load group, compared with 12.0 in the control group. The low-glycemic group also lost more weight and improved their insulin sensitivity. The authors wrote that "nutrition-related lifestyle factors may play a role in the pathogenesis of acne," and noted that more studies are needed to separate the diet from the weight loss.

That lines up with where Dr. Jarod starts. He describes the liver as helping to "calm down" blood sugar swings along with the pancreas, and quick sugar is one of the first things he takes away. More on that is in Sugar and Your Liver.

Psoriasis and fatty liver show up together more often than chance

The link between skin and liver also shows up in the research on psoriasis. A 2024 meta-analysis pooled 41 studies covering 607,781 people. About 29.5% of adults with psoriasis had nonalcoholic fatty liver disease, and their odds of having it were about 1.7 times higher than people without psoriasis. The authors called it "a significant link between psoriasis and NAFLD."

That is an association, which means the two travel together. It doesn't show that one causes the other. It does mean the skin and the liver are worth looking at side by side, which is how Dr. Jarod already works.

Dark circles have their own causes in the research

Dark circles under the eyes are on Dr. Jarod's list, and the research there is thinner. Dermatology reviews sort dark circles by cause: shadowing from the shape of the face, visible blood vessels, pigmentation, pigment left after inflammation, and inherited traits. None of those categories in the review involve the liver. Dr. Jarod's connection comes from what he sees in practice, alongside other signs like fatigue and sleep that he looks at together.

The gut is part of this picture too. How the gut and liver work as a team is covered in The Gut-Liver Axis, and what people tend to notice in week three, skin included, is in Signs Your Liver Cleanse Is Working. For how the first days can feel, read Liver Detox Symptoms.

The full plan comes with the cleanse

Love Your Liver is Dr. Jarod's 21-day guided liver cleanse, and it's self-paced. The full meal plan, supplement schedule, shopping list and daily texts come with the cleanse. Your supplements ship to your door, and Day 1 starts the moment you tap start.

Prefer to start with a conversation? Dr. Jarod runs functional medicine and lab testing at Crown Chiropractic in Fort Myers. Call (239) 441-2275 to book a consultation.

Sources

• Dr. Jarod Ward, Crown Chiropractic. Liver episode on YouTube.
• MedlinePlus, National Library of Medicine. Jaundice.
• Smith RN, et al. A low-glycemic-load diet improves symptoms in acne vulgaris patients: a randomized controlled trial. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 2007;86(1):107-115.
• Hu J, et al. Prevalence and risk of nonalcoholic fatty liver disease among adult psoriatic patients: a systematic review, meta-analysis, and trial sequential analysis. Medicine 2024;103(18):e38007.
• Pissaridou MK, Ghanem A, Lowe N. Periorbital discoloration diagnosis and treatment: evidence-based review. Journal of Cosmetic and Laser Therapy 2020;22(6-8):217-225.