If you’re tired, foggy, or just don’t feel like yourself lately, I want to tell you about one of the only supplements I keep stocked in my office. It’s not fancy. It’s not trendy. It’s beef liver.

Yes, really. Let me explain why.

The Label Won’t Tell You Everything, and That’s Actually a Good Sign

If you pick up a bottle of beef liver capsules and read the label, you’ll notice something. It doesn’t list exact amounts for every vitamin inside. It just says something like “Beef Liver, 3,000 mg.”

That might seem odd for something I call a powerhouse supplement. But here’s the simple reason, and it’s actually a good thing.

Most supplements are made in a lab. A company measures out each vitamin, a little vitamin C here, a little B12 there, and mixes them together. Because they measured it themselves, they can print an exact number on the label.

Beef liver capsules are different. Nothing is added. It’s just real beef liver, gently dried and put into a capsule. Nobody measured out the vitamin A and dropped it in. It’s already there, the way nature made it. Because the nutrients come from a whole food instead of being added one at a time, the label isn’t required to spell out an exact number for each one the way a lab-made vitamin does.

That’s not the company hiding anything. That’s just what real food looks like on a label.

So What’s Actually Inside?

A lot. Beef liver is one of the most nutrient-packed foods you can eat. A small amount gives you:

• Vitamin A: supports your eyes, skin, and immune system
• Vitamin B12: your body’s energy vitamin, helps with fatigue and brain fog
• Iron and copper: help your blood carry oxygen, so you feel less drained
• Choline: supports your brain and hormone balance
• Folate and B vitamins: support mood and energy

No pill made in a lab replicates all of that, in the ratios your body actually recognizes.

Why It Works Better Than a Regular Multivitamin

Here’s the part I really want you to understand. It’s not just what’s in liver, it’s the form it comes in.

The iron in liver is a type your body absorbs easily, much more easily than the iron in most multivitamins. The vitamin A in liver is already in the active form your cells can use right away, unlike the vitamin A in carrots or sweet potatoes, which your body has to convert first (and not everyone converts it well). And the B12, copper, and other nutrients come bundled together the way nature paired them, which helps your body use them the way it’s supposed to.

A multivitamin can fill some gaps. It’s just not the same as a nutrient your body already knows exactly what to do with.

A Few Things Women Ask Me

“Isn’t too much vitamin A dangerous?”

Good question, and I want to be honest with you. Yes, you can get too much vitamin A, but the cases where that actually happens involve people taking very high doses of lab-made vitamin A supplements every day for months, or certain prescription medications. It’s not something that happens from taking a reasonable daily amount of beef liver capsules. That’s exactly why choosing a brand with a specific, tested dose matters, instead of assuming more is better.

“Doesn’t the liver store toxins? Isn’t that gross?”

I hear this a lot, and it’s simply not how the liver works. Your liver’s job is to clean your blood and send waste out of your body. It doesn’t store toxins like a sponge. That job belongs more to fat tissue. Choosing liver from healthy, grass-fed cows (which is what I stock) makes this an even smaller concern.

“Why haven’t I heard about this before?”

Honestly? Organ meats used to be a normal part of eating well, and somewhere along the way we stopped eating them. There’s also no big marketing budget behind beef liver the way there is for flashy supplement brands. But the nutrition never went anywhere.

What About the People Online Who Say Beef Liver Is Dangerous?

You may have seen posts from health influencers, or even other practitioners, warning that beef liver is risky or that no one should take it. I want to talk about this honestly, because part of what they say is true, just not the whole picture.

Here’s the true part: beef liver is very high in vitamin A, and if you are pregnant, that actually matters. Too much vitamin A early in pregnancy has been linked to birth defects. It’s also true that liver, by itself, is missing a few things a good prenatal vitamin provides, like enough folate, vitamin D, and calcium for pregnancy. So let me be really clear: beef liver capsules aren’t a replacement for a high-quality prenatal vitamin.

What they can be is a pairing. In my book, Birth Ready & Beyond, I include organic beef liver capsules as one of my top whole-food-based picks to add alongside a high-quality prenatal during pregnancy and postpartum, right up there with omega-3s and magnesium. The reason is simple: beef liver offers highly bioavailable copper and retinol (vitamin A) that most prenatal formulas either skip or don’t include in a form your body uses well. Pair, don’t replace, is the rule.

And I mean pair it with both your prenatal and a healthy, balanced diet, not just one or the other. In a perfect world, you’d get everything you need from food alone. But most women find that hard to do every single day, especially when you’re pregnant, exhausted, or just trying to get through the day. On top of that, the soil our food is grown in today has fewer minerals in it than it did generations ago, so even a great diet often comes up short on things like iron, copper, and B vitamins. That gap is exactly why supplements exist in the first place, not to replace real food, but to fill in what real food and modern soil can’t fully provide anymore.

Since both your prenatal and your beef liver capsules may contain vitamin A, it’s worth knowing how much your prenatal already provides so you’re adding to your nutrition, not stacking past what you need. If you’re pregnant, trying to conceive, or breastfeeding, this is a great thing to research on your own and bring questions about to your provider.

For most other women, taken at a normal, tested daily dose, beef liver capsules aren’t the danger some people make them out to be. The extreme claim you sometimes hear, that you should eat liver instead of taking any other supplement including a prenatal, isn’t something I’m telling you either. That’s not what I’m suggesting, and it’s not what the research supports.

One more honest note, because I think you deserve to know it: some of the loudest voices online telling you beef liver is dangerous also happen to sell their own supplement lines, including prenatal vitamins. That doesn’t automatically make them wrong. But it’s worth knowing who benefits from a message before you decide how much to trust it.

What I Personally Take, and Carry in the Clinic

I don’t like recommending anything I wouldn’t put in my own body, so I’ll tell you straight: I take beef liver capsules myself, every day. It’s part of why I feel good pointing you toward it.

My aim here isn’t to tell you exactly what to take. It’s to give you real information so you can research it, talk with your own provider, and make the choice that’s right for you. That said, I know most women aren’t going to cook and eat beef liver every week (the taste and texture are a real barrier, even when you know it’s good for you), so I do keep a high-quality capsule version available in my office for anyone who wants to try it.

The one I take, and the one I carry, is Enviromedica’s Pastured Beef Liver. It’s made from grass-fed, pasture-raised cows in New Zealand, gently dried to protect the nutrients, and every batch is tested by an outside lab so you know what you’re getting is clean and real. The label’s suggested serving is 6 capsules a day.

It won’t feel like eating a steak dinner. But it quietly gives your body nutrients most women are missing, the kind that support real, lasting energy, not a caffeine crash-and-burn.

If you want to learn more or see whether it’s a good fit for you, I’m always happy to talk it through at your next visit.