The Hidden Toxins Behind Your Gut Issues (Food Isn’t the Root Cause) | Sinclair Kennally

Today on Everyday Ancestral, we're talking about why so many people feel trapped in food fear, gut reactions, and constant healing, and why the problem might not be their gut at all. See, Claire, thank you so much for joining us. Why do you think digestive issues have become almost universal?

Well, we're living in a world that we actually didn't consent to, honestly. Like nobody said, hey, Here's what herbicides and pesticides are going to do to your gut microbiome and to the soil health and to your gut lining. Sign on the dotted line. They don't have to do that. We've been in decades-long experiments now, and we are the experiment. So we're now reaping the rewards of that in the sense that, you know, the bill is coming due for all of us health-wise. But we didn't know that. Like, I grew up on Costco snacks. I grew up on McDonald's. I grew up on Sbarro's and Domino's and, you know, all that was part of our American lifestyle. And honestly, we thought of it as like our right to eat whatever we want and have somebody else think about what got that food onto our plate and whether or not that was gonna actually work out for our bodies. So now we're just having to reeducate ourselves and catch up with what ancestral healing really looks like in a modern era.

That is such a good point though, because I feel like that's the battlefield we're in right now is you have a generation that's like, well, this is what I ate growing up. And then you have our current population or our current kind of digestible information through socials and all this stuff, which is obviously new, but where you're being bombarded with, well, this stuff is bad for you. So the stuff we grew up with is bad for you. You still have a generation of people who are like, well, why can't I eat it? You ate it. I want to eat it. And so it almost feels like we're literally butting heads. It begs the question of like, you know, is, is our gut, you know, this battleground where modern life, food trends, trauma, toxins, and control just kind of collide?

I think that's really well said, you know, but I also think about my 2 grandmothers. One grandma was the fun grandma, and she took me to Dunkin' Donuts, and her favorite coffee was McDonald's coffee, and she loved it in the Styrofoam cup, and she cooked with Crisco. She was a lot of fun. But she also ended up in the last 2 decades of her life in a tremendous amount of pain. And she had over 22 surgeries and was bedridden. And I watched this amazing woman full of life really, really suffer at the end compared to my hippie grandma who was making my dad eat calf tongue and calf brains as a kid. He was that weirdo. He was the original hippie. She had a fanny pack that said Vitamin Lady on it. You know, she was handing out vitamin C. Her cookies tasted terrible. They tasted like sawdust. You know, she thought popcorn was fast food. But she got to die peacefully. She had 3 days of, you know, feeling really uncomfortable and a few weeks before that of feeling tired. And she got to die with a lot of dignity. And before that, she was traveling the world and going to China and she was singing in choirs all the way up until the end. So her food choices really bought her her freedom, even in those earlier decades, compared to my other fun grandma who didn't want to have to think about all that, who outsourced all of her power and her freedom to the, you know, the medical system.

Really then what we're talking about is that, that, that kind of saying that maybe someone's heard or not. I know I've talked about a lot, which is you're paying the piper now in quality food and the choices you're making, or you're paying in hospital bills later.

Yeah, I think that's a really great way to say it. And, you know, some of us have to figure that out sooner than others. Some of us are the canaries in the coal mine, like me. I didn't want to have to learn about any of this stuff, but I'm so grateful that I did and that I have total control over the quality of my life now. You know, I dug in and I did a lot of research, and then I figured out how to incorporate it into my home and then in our practice.

All right. So I want to try something new that I've never done. I want to do like a quickfire questions and then a quickfire answer back for some very common gut-related questions that, and/or misconceptions that people might have. Are you game to do that? So here we go. Will drinking a probiotic soda like Poppi actually heal someone's gut?

No, absolutely not.

Kefir water or kombucha or neither?

Neither if you have histamine issues.

Probiotic foods or probiotic pills?

Probiotic foods ideally, but again, not if you have histamine issues.

What's more important, pre or probiotics or both or neither?

Neither.

Do most people actually have parasites?

Absolutely.

Does doing a parasite cleanse during a full moon actually matter?

I have to give you a longer answer for that. So the full moon thing is not hippie-dippy weirdo stuff. Um, your parasites evolved with you, remember, over the ages. And when you are going through a full moon, the days leading up to a full moon and the days after, you make a little bit less melatonin and your immune system is a little bit less strong. At the same time, you're making more serotonin, which is the, you know, your happy, good feelings. That's a yummy neurotransmitter. Guess who wants to eat that and steal it from you? Your parasites. So they have a lot more activity during a full moon. Some species do. And so it is great to go after them during the full moon, but that's not the only time you work on parasites.

Okay. That's good though. Probiotics, prebiotics, do they really help most people or are they making gut symptoms worse?

It's like trying to change the paint color of your walls when the house is on fire.

Okay. That's great. I can't wait to— so we're going to dive into all these. So this is great. If someone reacts to everything they eat, is it food or the gut?

It's not the food. The food is the thing that throws the inflammation bucket over the top. It's the state of your gut and the state of your immune system.

Can restricting foods long-term actually make the gut more sensitive?

Potentially, yeah.

Are people trying to heal their gut too aggressively?

I think they're just pointing at the wrong factors and spending money on the wrong things. Okay.

That's going to be fun to dive into. Vegetables or no vegetables?

Oh, come on. I love my veggies. Don't take them away.

Supplement with fiber or just eat more fibrous foods? No, no, no.

Eat more, eat more fibrous foods. If your gut can tolerate it, remember SIBO, not so much.

Tums or no Tums, those antacid kind of thing in the top.

Never, never take a Tums, please, please never take a Tums.

Which feeds into, is low hydrochloric acid a chronic condition for most people?

Most people have less hydrochloric acid than they need. Yes. And we could talk about how to fix that today on your own.

Yes. Are elimination diets meant to be long-term?

No.

Can someone heal their gut without supporting their liver?

No.

Is eating clean always better for gut health? Yeah.

Well, by eating clean, I think we just mean eating real food. Versus Frankenfood.

Well, you know, some people are like, well, it's important to keep your, you know, your body guessing. So sometimes, you know, having those cheat days is important. Are you a fan of cheat days?

I wouldn't think about it like cheating or not cheating. I think that's a weird route to go down for you mentally, emotionally, physically. Do you have to be perfect? No. But, um, it depends on the intensity and severity of your symptoms. We can talk about factors today. When to cheat.

Are symptoms during a cleanse always a die-off?

No.

Can someone fully heal their gut while living in constant stress?

No.

And then are people over-controlling their diets in the name of healing?

Yeah. People are putting way too much emphasis on food. Food is one layer of inputs for the body when you're trying to heal from chronic frustrating symptoms. So yeah, they're putting way too much emphasis on just that piece.

Let's dive into the prebiotic probiotic conversation, because I feel what shocks me, if you go into a CVS or go into really almost any kind of medicinal sort of store, whatever store that sells pharma stuff, they will have probiotic sodas in the digestible area. So they're treating it like this is a medicine or this is a support food. I cannot believe that to be true. Are these— all these fortified foods that have all these probiotics, are they really moving the needle? Are they necessary? What— how should we be thinking?

I personally cannot think of a single person in my practice where I would think that is a good idea. And I want to give the makers of those beverages the benefit of the doubt. If they're passionate about their products, I really invite them to learn more about gut health and to moderate their claims and stop leaning so heavily on some very distorted pieces of information that have been cherry-picked, because I think you're misleading the consumer. And whether you know that or not, that's, you know, that's between you and your own integrity. But I don't want anybody drinking those.

Yeah. So how should we be thinking differently?

Well, I think that we have to ask ourselves smarter questions about why we have symptoms in the first place. We know that food is not as nutritionally dense as it used to be. Just because of our soil health and the trickle-down effect. That's been happening since the end of World War II. So now we're multiple generations into this experiment, but it really picked up steam in 1996 when glyphosate was allowed to get sprayed on food crops. So that's when we really took a turn for the worse, where we depleted our soil of active, healthy organisms, and we depleted our plants of the minerals that we and the animals we eat need to be really strong and healthy. Our bodies are already on the back foot. They're a little bit vulnerable to lots of different health issues just because we don't have enough of those core nutrients without thinking about it and planning for it. Like without adding a little bit of pluck in onto our meals, you gotta get proactive in this day and age. So we're already nutrient-dense, Or to nutrient deficiency. We're already nutrient deficient.

Right. Yeah.

Yeah. We're already nutrient deficient. And that makes us really vulnerable to dysbiosis in the gut when something like herbicides and pesticides comes in. And spoiler alert, that's leaking in on almost every food you eat way more than you think. Even organic food, it's just less, but it's not gone because of crop drift, because of cross-contamination. There's a lot of reasons why. Organic is really, really important. Sourcing clean food is really important, but Please know you still have exposures going on that you're not consenting to in your food, your air, your water, and your personal care. Those tiny exposures are what push the microbiome into distortions. So your body doesn't make mistakes. It's really smart. And it's using overgrowths of certain bacteria and fungi and pathogens to actually try to mop up that mess. And create some stability. H. pylori often flourishes in the presence of chemicals commonly found in tap water. And if you try to kill the H. pylori too early in your journey, you can get an increase in symptoms instead of supporting the body to excrete the toxins, get your energy back, and allow your gut microbiome to rebalance itself. Maybe with some targeted support, maybe with some antiparasitics as part of a bigger plan. But we are not trying to carpet bomb the bad guys here because the bad guys are actually here to do a job. Candida is another one. We talk about Candida like it's really bad and it can be super frustrating. Skin stuff, depression, you know, lack of energy, you know, frustrating, you know, embarrassing bloating and digestive issues. They're not for the faint of heart. They really suck. But Your Candida is there to hold onto, for example, heavy metals, birth control residues, antibiotic leftovers. Like, it's not an accident. Your body's using that as a tool and it's allowing Candida to bloom into its pathogenic form to do that for you. So do we wanna just let Candida run wild? No, we wanna have good boundaries. We wanna take away the reasons for Candida, which starts with detox. It starts with cleaning up your plate and starts with gentle release. stuff that you can do at home. It's not about huge clinical inventions for most people. It's about gentle little steps you can fold into your day.

Because that is very American, right? Go big, go home. You know, it's like, it's like, it's all about going, going big. But the reality is, is when we look at humanity, nothing that we do in an extreme ever lasts very long. There's nothing extreme that becomes lifestyle because you burn out, you, you let go of it. I mean, You know, the start of the new year with New Year's resolutions is a perfect example. Most resolutions are done within a week or two because people can't keep them going. This is a fascinating way that you're talking about though. I don't know if I've ever heard it talked about this way where you almost want to have a balanced relationship with the Candida, with these kinds of things that we are being, that are really more like, are playing the bad guy roles these days, right? Everyone's talking about these things and they're saying, oh, we got to get rid of them and all these things. But You're really coming at it in a different way. Can you elaborate more on like not only how we should be looking at these things, but then what we should be kind of— what are first steps?

My encouragement to you, if you have active digestive symptoms and if you're not happy with your level of energy, is to first look at what's on your plate and simplify and take out the fake foods. Get down to single ingredient foods. And you can bolster that with bioavailable minerals and things like organ seasonings, like what James makes with Pluck, just so that you're getting some new Nutrients back in. And we wanna get out of our diet accidental exposures. So we wanna stop microwaving foods in plastic and wondering why we don't feel good and why we have difficult periods and low sperm motility. Like, this is not a secret. There's thousands and thousands of studies done now about how we really cannot tolerate even low exposures of plastics in our foods. So we wanna, yeah, store things in glass containers, heat them up in glass or stainless steel. It's just be smart. Let's not spend so much in the doctor's office later. Let's just make these little shifts now. It's not about doing it all in one day or feeling bad that you haven't done it yet. Think about it more like a win every time you take a step in the right direction, because momentum begets more momentum. And you may wanna add in some mitochondrial supports in the meantime, just so you have enough get-up-and-go to make good choices in the moment. 'Cause guess who makes bad choices about food and starts using, you know, wine and substances as crutches? exhausted, stressed out people, you know, and you're just doing what you can in the moment to soothe your nervous system and come back into a state of trying to feel some safety and some comfort. And you are totally allowed to have that. It's just the direction you get it from determines how good you feel tomorrow or, you know, a year from now or 10 years from now. So I like adding in mitochondrial support early so that you have the energy to make good choices and you're not just feeling super depleted.

What does mitochondrial support look like?

Remember from 9th grade science, mitochondria, like the little power, you know, Duracell Energizer bunnies or whatever they are. They turn our nutrients, as long as you took some in, that arrive into the cell into ATP. That's the body's energy currency. Energy in the body just means the capacity to do work. Do I have enough energy on board to do the work I'm supposed to do today? Yes, that means my to-do list and show up at my job and take care of the kids and, you know, try to be there for my community. But really, energy means tissue repair. It means detox and drainage. It means digestion. You actually need to have enough energy to digest well. And when you don't have enough energy, when you don't already have enough nutrients to have a healthy enough microbiome to absorb your food, You could be making really expensive food choices and not being able to absorb them. And that's super frustrating because right when you need them the most, you have the least access to them. So I like doing nervous system support for mitochondria, and I like micronutrient support for the mitochondria. So when I say nervous system support, what do I mean? I mean helping the body get back quickly into a state of safety. So that's when we go into parasympathetic dominance. So you feel calm and safe in your body, but you also feel alert. You're not in a state of collapse. You're not doom scrolling, you know, that's the opposite of, you know, parasympathetic dominance. So when you have safety in the body like that, then you actually are telling the body from the nervous system down into the digestive tract, down into your immune system, down into your liver. Hey, guess what, guys? We're safe. All systems go. Let's digest. I'm gonna send you all the resources and oxygen and blood flow you need to detox and process toxins in the liver. It's okay to repair right now because we're safe enough. You know, let's get all that work done because there's no tiger chasing us. Our boss isn't yelling. Our kids aren't losing their minds. You know, It's safe to just do the housekeeping right now. So you can do simple at-home exercises just to help with that.

Do you think though that we're inundated with information these days, right? Because so many, we have so much access, but it's not all necessarily grounded, you know, support. It's more just talk, it's talking, it's trending, it's, you know, it's just soundbites, right? And to a degree, That idea of there's too many cooks in the kitchen if you're a chef, or there's too many doctors in the room, that we're kind of living that right now where we're— we have so many voices in our head of, do I eat this? Do I eat that? Do I live like this? Do I live like that? Do you think there's almost value in really just picking some foundational things? And you've already mentioned some like, okay, I'm only going to eat Food that is an ingredient versus has ingredients. I'm just talking stages, right? Steps. So I'm not going to worry about organic or not organic. I'm just going to do one step at a time, which is just eat real food first. And then I'm going to make sure that I'm sitting down when I'm eating. I'm not eating when I'm driving, like picking some very simple foundational things and putting all the emphasis on de-stressing from this situation. Do you think that it's the stress around getting healthy that is actually Keeping us from getting healthy?

I think it feels that way in the moment, but as someone who is extremely chronically ill, I think that for most of us, by the time our health really has our attention, the stress around getting well is not your biggest problem. You actually have such a dysregulated nervous system, a paperclip is going to annoy the crud out of you. You know, every, everything is going to feel like too much. So that includes the topic of what to do right, you know, for your health. But it's not limited to that. Most of us silently have our whole lives shrink down to the size and shape of our symptoms. Until that point, our health doesn't have our attention. But when we finally get there, then we're like, oh shoot, this has gone too far. Now I need to do something about it. 'Cause it's not in our culture yet. It's coming back into our culture to take care of ourselves and each other, but it's not there yet. So I think you can stress yourself out about anything when you feel sick.

Yeah.

And I really encourage you to stay calm in the process. And even if you only get one gem out of this interview, that's enough. And just become an expert sorter, become a detective of your own health, and accept that that is part of the process. No one is coming to save you. In fact, you wouldn't want them to. You wanna have an experience of your own personal power because there's nothing more thrilling than realizing I did that. I got my life back. I got my health back myself.

And that's the medical sovereignty you've spoken about in other interviews, correct?

Yeah.

Can you share a bit about your own journey for medical sovereignty? You have quite, quite the health journey that obviously brought you to this path of wanting to help people, but I'd love you to share that.

Well, I actually started out in mental health, so I thought everything was about trauma release and, you know, these personal development processes. And I was a deep believer in that, and that absolutely has its place. But I was not a good candidate for healing myself. I kind of sucked at self-care. You know, I was inherently lazy about doing the right basic things just to take care of this body. I didn't want to. I was like very childish and resistant about that. And so when I got sick, I was expecting a white coat to save me. You know, and it really took ending up in the hospital for my body to get my full attention. 'Cause I'm a 4th generation entrepreneur and I learned early on, just like any good American, rest when you're dead. You know, just push through. Anything less than that means you're not tough enough. So toughen up, buttercup. And that can only get you so far. It's really good in the moment, but if, you know, for like 5 minutes at a time, Not a good strategy for years at a time. So by the time I finally ended up in the hospital where I thought I was dying, I had Lyme, advanced chronic Lyme. I had Hashimoto's and fibromyalgia and rheumatoid arthritis and GERD and SIBO. And I was down to 3 foods. I couldn't read an email or write a sentence for years because I didn't have the cognitive wherewithal to do either one. And I couldn't hold a pen. It took me hours every day to unclench my hands so that I could hold anything in them. I couldn't raise my arms up enough to wash my own hair. But it took getting that bad for me to notice, which is just crazy. And I think that's what's happening to a lot of Americans right now. Like, wait a minute, everybody's sick, but this is a bigger problem than just, hey, things get harder as you get older. We've actually stolen our own— healthy lifespan away from ourselves.

It is really amazing to me that people, it has to get that bad for us to finally respond, to finally listen. Why do you think that is?

I think we grew up in a culture where if it's on the shelf, someone else has thought through whether or not it's allowed to be on the shelf. Like we're, we're in a developed country where everything should just work. The roads, the lights, you know, the outlets at home, the food on the shelf, it should all just work. And someone else has thought it through for us. Lucky us. And I think that works as long as you have somebody in your community that is doing each of those roles and you trust them. But we have outsourced all of our power about how to take care of our health to really big companies who have endless pressure on themselves to perform, perform, perform, and show you why they're making even more money than they were last month, last quarter, last year, or they quickly lose value. So it's not a system that is human first, it's actually human last.

Well, which is clearly making people feel powerless within this system. So how do we take back that power? Because sometimes taking back that power feels very expensive. And that's one of the issues is a lot of people are like, I can't, I don't have time. I can't afford this. I don't even know where to start. These are the hurdles.

The most expensive thing you can do in this process is outsource your power and your decision-making to someone else. And to have an emotional response where you're wasting your precious energy on irritation about this. It's 'cause this is me, right? Ugh, I can't believe I have to learn about all this stuff. Ugh, I can't believe I can't get away with what other people can eat. Ugh. When will the government just figure this out for me? You know, or why don't they just protect us? And you can certainly use your voice as a citizen, but do you really wanna wait for the wheels of government to change, to catch up, to finally protect you? Please don't. You matter so much more than that. Please start now.

We're also dealing with 2 big heavy hitters and you had one of them. I imagine you also had the second one, but you just haven't mentioned yet. One is Lyme and the other is parasites. And I would say the third one is mold, right? Those, those 3 are just showing up from my perspective everywhere. And it's typically an underlying chronic issue that most Doctors are not identifying early on. So then people spin their wheels, they spend all this money for years and years, they're still sick, and then suddenly it's revealed, oh no, you have Lyme, or, oh, you have mold.

Remember what we talked about with the balance of the microbiome and the bad bugs are there to do a job. They act as toxin sponges for us. So that's why we're allowed to let our bugs run rampant. You know, our immune system is not in a position to fight back when we're living in an era of toxins. Those toxins create stagnation, they suppress the immune system. And they shut down your energy production. So you're not— your body knows the bugs are in there. Your body knows the parasites are in there. Your body can see the Lyme, even though they all have their little strategies like biofilms to hide behind and trick you. Your body still knows. It's just not in a position to fight back without some strategic support because again, you're deficient. So what with just our basic nutrients, and until we flush out those toxins at a very gentle pace, This is gonna get hard. So what would be the very first step that you could take for yourself and your family? It would be to filter your water. Some of us, you know, an underwater or whole house filter is like way outta price range, right? The good news is you can distill your water for less than $100. I see them for $60 on Amazon. You can get a distiller that sits on your countertop that can clean the water for your whole family. The whole myth about distilled water being unsafe for you has been debunked. It actually helps your body to let go of those toxic inorganic minerals, the ones that your body can't actually break down and use. You're not getting healthy minerals from your filtered water right now. You're gonna have to supplement with bioavailable minerals anyway. So if you were gonna do 2 things to change your whole trajectory of your life, it would be to clean up your water and distill it and add in some bioavailable trace minerals. What does that do? It helps your body get faster at detoxing the junk that's already in storage because you're not continuing to poison yourself on a daily basis. Most people don't like drinking water because their body instinctively knows that's full of poison. In fact, show me your toxin labs and I'll show you based on your zip code that you've lived in decade by decade where you picked those up. Most of it was in your water. Or your food. And I can print you this little map journey of how you got to your symptoms. And next comes the bargaining conversation. Well, what about my Brita? What about my ZeroFilter? What about my Berkey? What about this? What about that? Pay attention to the lawsuits that are happening right now with those filtration companies. Their claims are not holding up. And even the stuff that they do claim to filter out, it doesn't capture radioactive elements, which are devastating to your energy. Most of us are getting exposures to radioactive elements In the water. We don't live next to Fukushima or Chernobyl. We're getting it from the water. Like where I live right now here in San Diego, the radioactive elements have 10x'd in the last 2 years in our municipal water. There is no way I would drink this water, even filtered. I require myself to distill it so that I know I'm not robbing my body of energy over the next 2 years.

So when you're distilling the water, that removes everything? I mean, even the If there's fluoride, does it do all that?

Correct. And that's a really good example. Fluoride is a very teeny tiny toxin, and most filters are not good at getting out fluoride. Even fluoride-specific filters only reduce the parts per million. They can't take it all the way out because it's so teeny tiny. So distillation is a great way to do it. Don't believe me? Take your filtered water right now that you're— whatever you're currently filtering it Put it into your distiller for a week and then look at the bottom of that distiller and tell me if you wanna drink the sludge at the bottom. And if you don't like this experiment, send the distiller back to Amazon. They have a 30-day return policy. I will go even further and say the people that are like, well, I have fancy reverse osmosis and we really saved up for that. And I feel great about that. I wish I felt great about it for you too, but Unfortunately, reverse osmosis filters mold and your tanks can become contaminated with bacteria and there is no way to clean that up. So it's a very expensive health mistake to make. So again, distillation filters out mold too.

So water, where would you move next? What would be the next focus?

I would make your bedroom EMF-free so that your body can Sleep deeply and heal and detox and drain while you're unconscious, 'cause that's what you're supposed to do. I wanna get back to ancestral ways of being, you know, healing while using the benefits of modern tech. I'm on a laptop right now. I have a cell phone, but I don't let them anywhere near me while I'm sleeping because I need that time to heal. So get the electronics out of the bedroom, You can get EMF meters so that you can see where your exposures are coming from. They're coming from you, sweetheart. Unplug your smart TV. Even when it's turned off, it will continue to radiate a very strong Wi-Fi signal at you unless you unplug it. So stick it on a power strip, hit that power strip, you know, power button on the way to bed, like reduce the stress on your body and you will heal faster. And by the way, people start kicking out parasites on parasite cleanses a whole lot faster Faster when they DEMF their bedrooms.

Yeah, I've heard you talk about how there's your body voltage, which I had never heard, you know, used before. And we're bioelectrical beings. Most of the biohacking community is about measuring all these biological, you know, points, but they're all using something that's electrical to do it, right? Whether it's sleep, you know, beds that make themselves colder or beds that have sleep numbers or devices you wear from rings to pendants that are tracking you through, you know, but they're all electrical.

It's very frustrating. But if you want to use something like an Oura Ring, for example, you can turn off the Bluetooth. So it's still capturing data for you, and then you can hook it up and download that information. When you don't feel good, it's really hard to understand your body's own signals because there's so much just background noise and your brain's moving slow and you get overwhelmed and irritated easily. So I get it. It's really helpful to see your data reflected back to you. I just want to make sure that you're not frying yourself alive while you're gathering that data.

Let's just say you're waking up at 2 in the morning, which I think a lot of people in their 50s and beyond, this happens to you, you know, whereas you used to sleep through the night, suddenly you now just No matter what happens, you keep waking up at 2 in the morning. You're trying to do all the things, you know, you darkened your room, you're trying to be mindful of waking up early, getting some sun, you're, you're checking your hormone levels. But ultimately it's like, you just feel like you're constantly up against the wall because you just need sleep. And of course there's also the monkey brain, you know, that starts spinning out. You find that thing that works, which is maybe listening to a podcast because then it finally puts you to sleep. So how do we like navigate this kind of laziness slash kind of like, I'm just overwhelmed. I don't know where to go with this to like, I also just need the bare essentials. I just need to sleep.

I totally get that. When you have the bandwidth, I want you to ask yourself deeper questions. Why am I not sleeping through the night? Because one of the most common things I see that goes undiagnosed is low ADH. So that's your antidiuretic hormone. So you think, oh, I have to get up to pee. That's why I'm not sleeping through the night. But why do you have to get up to pee? That didn't used to be a problem when you were younger. When you've been exposed to mold, that naturally suppresses your body's ability to make ADH. So have you been exposed to mold recently or in the past? And is that finally coming due because of other factors? Would you benefit from a mold detox? Should you do an ERMI test and check on the health of your house? You know, those might be worth deeper looks for you. But other reasons might be just, you know, going back to what's on your plate, like what we were talking about earlier. We accidentally eat too late, so we haven't let our body finish digesting by the time we try to go to sleep. And that's really tough because your body doesn't wanna be digesting when you're asleep. It wants to be detoxing and repairing. So we need to make sure we're not eating at least 2, 3 hours before we go to bed. And that we're using our nighttime routine to restore our circadian rhythm. And for people who, you know, like to think of themselves as biohackers, even baby biohackers, you might like, you know, blue light blockers, like those red glasses that are so cool. My favorites are Ra Optics because I know that they're made to really filter out the right frequencies. Or you might put f.lux on your computer so that you can watch something at night And relax, but not pay the price for it with your sleep later. Flux is a free download, you know, and it will sync your computer's appearance, its colors and wavelengths to your zip code and the time of year and the time of day that your sun is supposed to be going down and shifting your brain. So these are simple things you can do to set up your nighttime routine to really protect a deeper quality of sleep. And then, yeah, I'm not against melatonin to support you because we're not making enough of it right now. I'm not concerned about you having a melatonin dependency over time, especially in this day and age with all these circadian disruptors. What I want is for you to reclaim deep sleep as fast as possible so that your body can catch up and use all these smart choices that you're trying to make, all these, you know, hard changes for yourself during the day, use them more efficiently at night. So you can heal faster starting right away. And then you probably won't need the melatonin later. Honestly.

One of the things I think people run up against is timeline. Like, I think we clearly live in a world now where we expect things to happen faster. I mean, even on a certain level, I think this is so funny. And I think we're both old enough to remember this is that back in the day when your plane would land, people would clap. Like it was a cool thing. Like, oh my God, we just flew across the US. This is still a big deal. And now it's like there's nothing. You and I right now are talking, you know, we are thousands of miles away from each other and I can see you, you can see me, and it's within seconds, you know, the responses, right? There's hardly any delay. And yet this was unheard of back in the day, right? So we expect things to happen immediately. Obviously everybody is different. I know we can't, you know, have a blanket timeline, but is there a general timeline that you can you've seen in your practice that can support people in having, you know, just expectations around, hey, if I go down this path, you gotta be in it for minimum 6 months, or what would you say is this, the timeline?

For real health issues, we have to remember we lived our way into them and the bill is coming due now. We're going to live our way out of them. You can try to suppress, you know, a migraine with migraine medication, but you cannot eradicate the reason for the migraine that fast. You know, and reasons for migraines are like mold, just to pick on it one more time, you know. Migraines are often drainage-driven. Let's give ourselves 6 months to make some serious progress. And for people who have been ill for decades, you're going to need 2 years to get all the way back to feeling really, really good. And I think if someone had told me that and had given me the right steps in the right order, I could have withstood it. But because I was This one session with some functional medicine celebrity only to feel not heard by them. You know, I'd have to wait 6 months to get in, or these 7-day gut cleanses and then feel like a total failure 'cause I didn't feel good afterwards, or 30 whole days on something. You have to get smarter as a consumer than that and realize that what you wanna be doing is learning tools that you can fold into your day, whether it's a quick switch, fast fix. Now I've switched from this thing to this thing, from a Teflon pan to a stainless steel or something like that. It's just a one-time thought process, but now I'm speeding up my body's healing. And then these little habits that we fold in. I want 6 months with you to make some serious progress on your health if you have a very real health issue. But the good news is you can learn all the health factors that speed up healing or slow it down. And you are actually in charge of all of them. You can ignore me about the EMF stuff, but you'll heal slower. If you want to speed things up, dive into the EMF piece, make yourself a— your bedroom an EMF sanctuary. You can change what's on your plate, or you can ignore it because you have a history of eating disorders like I do, and you don't want to be told what to do.

Fine.

But you're going to heal slower. That's okay though. It's your choice. It's your body, your sovereignty.

That's such a powerful point. You've been talking about detox and you've really been coming at it from a very consistent language, which is Do it slowly like that. It doesn't, it's not about quick, quick detox. It's not about that. I'd love to dive into what we talked about earlier, which was around the liver and detoxification. There's a lot of emphasis within your practice on the liver. So can you talk about that?

Yeah. I think it's important that we remember that the liver plays a central role in every aspect of digestion, or every macro needs the liver's help. To digest proteins, fats, and carbs. So your liver is inextricably like fit into your digestion. There's no way to separate it out. We think about gut problems and energy problems and like, oh, it all starts in the gut. Well, the liver's a part of the gut. It's crazy to think that it's separate. So I want everybody to remember that. And yeah, the liver is best known for detox. And yeah, we're living in a weird day and age where we're getting exposures to a lot of things we didn't consent to. And so yes, your body might still— your liver might still be working on that Accutane you took as a teenager, but it's not because your liver is not efficient. It is, and it's super regenerative. Like, it's so good at healing itself. It's just, it didn't get enough targeted support. To finish that process and catch up. We have to acknowledge there's a bunch of different inputs that would slow down the liver's amazing ability to heal itself, but that doesn't mean you're fragile. That doesn't mean it's too late. So I really dislike the way people are talking about detox in this day and age because they're talking about it like, one, like you don't know how to do it. Yes, you do. You're an amazing detoxer. So is your liver, or you'd already be dead. You know, this is just about providing strategic support to help your body catch up to the backlog. And that self-talk really matters. Please stop, you know, spending money on the DNA companies. They're just selling you something and giving yourself more laundry lists of reasons to be afraid of your own body. You are alive for a reason. Your body's really, really smart. It's on your side. It wants to feel good. And it's not too late. I love working on the liver because it's so responsive. If you're impatient or brain foggy or you have sensitivity to fats or a little bit more histamine sensitive than you used to be, or you wake up in the middle of the night, or your skin is acting as a second liver, you know, because you're rashy and aging. Fast forward, you might have adult acne. It might be super frustrating, right? Bloating, constipation. These are all signs that You might need some liver support, but we're not going to milk thistle our way out of this toxic problem. We want to be a little bit smarter than that. That the era of milk thistle is over, much as I loved it as an herbalist.

So how would you recommend if someone wants to start going down the path of detoxification? What are some first steps in that realm?

Good news is we already covered one of them, distilled water. Second thing I would think about is making sure that you're pooping every day.

Balloons. Well, that is true though. When you poop daily, you know, you should be celebrating.

It's totally celebratory worthy. This is probably TMI, but because I had gut issues for so many years and such, so much bad negative self-talk, I had to redo that whole thing. So now I talk to my body like it's an innocent animal. Because it is one. And I tell my body, good job. Every time I have a bowel movement, I'm like, good job, bud. You know, you did it. I think that's important. Like, it's absolutely celebratory worthy. Why would you not be eliminating fully daily? Because your bile isn't moving fast enough. You're not releasing enough bile into the small intestine. You're not getting enough support for that migrating motor complex. In the gut itself, in the small intestine, your food is fermenting, parasites are slowing it down 'cause they want more time to feed. These are all really good reasons to have trouble pooping. So you don't wanna add in liver support and try to speed up the liver if the pathway to the exits is blocked. That's not gonna feel good for you. If anybody ever, ever crashed on something that was supposed to be liver supportive, and you're like, I thought I was doing something good, but I felt bad. That's really normal. Really normal because you didn't know to do these other pieces first. So I like to make sure you're eliminating daily. You can do that with some simple magnesium. You know, I like ozone magnesium because something like Oxy-Powder, you know, something like that, because it's going to help your colon to get energized enough to release old pockets of junk. And that's going to help you just in and of itself. Just one bottle of that. You know, it's not something to stay dependent on. You can't, you can't get form of dependence on it, which is nice. So move your bowels daily. And then I like to add in bile builders and bile movers because bile is, you know, it sounds so gross, but it is so magical. It's your liquid gold detergent for your body. Your body wants to reuse it over and over again to flush out toxins and to clean things up. And to help you absorb your fats, which are crucial for your brain and your hormone health.

How would someone know if they need that? Would they be like, 'cause I always tell people like one of the best things we can do is go to the bathroom and then turn around and look at it, you know, and actually see what, what's coming outta your body.

So if you have gray or floating stool, or if you strain at all, or if you feel like you do a bowel movement, but it's not complete, or if you're not eliminating daily and feeling complete, Those are all really good reasons to not just do bowel support, but add in a bile mover. And, you know, you talked about HCl at the beginning and just basics of digestion. If we're depleted in nutrients and our bile isn't moving fast enough, then we're going to have not enough stomach acid and we're not going to have enough of those micronutrients that we have to have to build healthy bile. So it would make sense that just for a period of time, While you're helping your body catch up, you need to add those back in in an intentional way. So I like TUDCA for that, if you can tolerate it, because it is the king of bile movers and bile builders. But if you want to just start with some bitters, some herbal bitters before a meal, it helps your body by telling your body, hey, guess what? We're going to be eating soon. So we want to get our gastric juices flowing, bile you need to get ready to move. We're going to do a full meal. We're gonna really break it down. We're gonna do a good job. Let's get ready, guys. And we've lost those signals in this modern era 'cause we don't have, we're not smelling our food as we cook it and thinking about it and salivating and getting everything moving. We're just pulling something outta the fridge or it's coming on DoorDash, heating up really fast, and we start, and there's no warning for the body. So of course digestion isn't gonna be able to use its ancestral strategies. So bitters is a great way to start reclaiming that.

What's an example of some bitters? Like you're just talking about whether, where they put them in the water, correct?

Yeah. I, you can find, you know, bitters in your organic grocery store, you know, in the supplement aisle. I like Bitterdex from Quicksilver. That's my favorite. Just put a little squirt under the tongue 20 minutes before you eat. But if you forget and then do it halfway through a meal, it'll still work. It'll still really, really help.

What about apple cider vinegar?

I have a hard time with apple cider vinegar because it's not good for everybody with gut issues. So I wouldn't do like a blanket statement about it. You know, what's great about apple cider vinegar is it contains natural compounds that break down glyphosate. And it is naturally restorative to somebody who already has a mostly healthy gut. But if you don't feel good on it, it's not your fault. And it doesn't mean the apple cider vinegar is bad. It's just wrong tool for the chapter that you're in.

We're running close to time. And I, I, this is all bringing up one myth that we actually haven't talked about, which is like the alkaline water movement, you know, those waters they're selling about alkalinity and then acidity that just in general, the topic around that. And I think there's a lot of misunderstanding as well. Would you dive into that briefly and just kind of share your perspective on Do these alkaline waters, are they worth anything? Should we be worried about acidity or alkalinity with the foods we eat or the state of our body?

I think it's a total scam and a total waste of money. And I'm really bummed out that it's still a trend. We want enough stomach acid in the stomach to actually ward off pathogens and help break down your food. If you don't have Enough acid in your stomach, so a low enough pH, your food will arrive in your small intestine ready to rot, and bugs will have escaped into a very delicate environment. That's not okay. You want your body managing your pH. That is not something you will win at micromanaging for your body. So your body uses acidity as a tool at the cellular level and Every part of your body has a different pH requirement for itself depending on the state of health that it's in. Your body will actually create acidity, manufacture it in certain parts of the body, in your tissues to help detox and use it as a solvent to flush out bad stuff. You are not gonna win at micromanaging that.

What about electrolytes? Uh-oh.

Do you like alkaline water? Did I just hurt your feelings?

Oh, no, no, not at all. I'm not an alkaline guy, but I definitely— I— my thing is I don't absorb water. I— no matter what blood tests historically I've taken, I'm always showing up dehydrated, even though I carry around a huge bottle of water. So I'm clearly not absorbing the water very well that I drink, which actually makes me wonder about the whole distill water.

Can I give you some tips about that?

Of course.

Okay, so distill your water because toxins are super dehydrating. And it's really hard to absorb water that has toxins in it, even a small amount. So then what I would do is add in a few Double Helix drops for you because it will help organize the water clusters. I want you to read, 'cause you're nerdy, so I know you can do this, The Fourth State of Water by Gerald Pollack, right? Learn about the exclusion zone water 'cause your body wants water to already be coherent enough by the time it gets into you. That it, it can actually go to use and your body will actually turn water into a gel. That's the 4th state of water. I want you to add in a couple of things. Try Ormus Minerals from Global Healing Center. That's a fun one. And I also want you to get a mold test because it's very hard for you to absorb water if you have any mold body burden.

Yeah. We were exposed to mold when we first moved to Massachusetts. We already know that.

That's right. I remember that. Yeah. So those are some things to consider. And you can also use an Analemma One or some structuring device. Look on the Analemma website on the studies they've done about structured water. That's really interesting.

These are all really good tips, but most people are focusing and being told to do electrolytes for absorption. What's your thought on that?

I like electrolytes a lot. I think it, they are really important. Most of them out there are junk. They're poorly made. So some of the more popular companies, I invite you all to take a fresh look at the labels and make sure you're comfortable and understand what they're putting in there. So I'd rather you use real electrolytes, like Optimal Electrolytes is a good one. And if all you can afford is just a pinch of salt in your water, that's a great place to start. I like Jacobsen Salt from Oregon because it is the lowest in heavy metals. That has been tested. So that's something to consider as well.

And we've covered so much. And I know there's so much more we could cover, but is there something that you're very passionate about that you want to make sure that the listener leaves with from this interview? Or have you said everything you would hope to say?

What I want to do is recap for everybody, because it can feel like a lot, but you're the CEO of your own health and you get to decide whether or not you're overwhelmed by this conversation or empowered by it. I want you to feel really good about the decisions you make for your own body because you are worth it. You are not— you don't have to earn taking care of yourself and being good to yourself. And it's totally okay if you've been living on junk food until now. Like, it's never too late to turn this around. Like, I am not the food police. I'm the person that should never have been able to heal myself. So don't ever feel bad hanging out with me. Because I did all kinds of dumb stuff to my body and just expected to get away with it. You know, I had, you know, a drinking problem and I lived on carbs and, you know, I just didn't want to have to take any responsibility for this. But I have to tell you, it feels so, so good to feel at home in your own body. And you deserve that. It feels so good to feel like yourself again.

Your process, how long did that end up being? Was that, I mean, you went from the bottom Of the barrel there, right? You didn't even go into as much intensity that you went through, of course, but do you feel like, no, I really am better, or are you still— is it still a journey?

Oh, I think as long as we have bodies, we have to take care of them. Like, I was totally symptom-free, and then I got long COVID and accidentally lived in black mold again, and I lost a lot of family members all in a row. And the combination of that trauma and those toxins, I gained a lot of weight. And, you know, I still was really in my body, you know, and I was able to make good decisions for myself, but I had to work hard to come back from that, you know? So will I ever, will I be symptom-free forever? Well, hopefully as long as I do my work, right? Um, but I don't have to think about it and I'm not worried about it. I'm not afraid.

I think too, the power of, of this conversation, uh, and particularly this piece is also that it's not a destination. It's not like you just, you're going to end up somewhere and then you're done. It's like, it's, you're always evolving. There's always new tools, but the key is you're empowered. You're in control of your health and you're not outsourcing it to someone else. And I think you really encapsulated that beautifully. I have a final question that I, I ask everyone. If you could wave a magic wand, bring back one ancestral practice, what would it be and why?

Seeing everything around us as alive. Every tree, every plant, every animal, every blade of grass, the clouds, the rivers, the oceans, everything has energy and aliveness to it. And I think we knew that when we spent more time outside, and we never felt alone or isolated. And our default state was one of being present and reverent of all of this magic around us. And I think that's what we're hardwired to be, is present and reverent of our own bodies and of all the aliveness around us. And you would never feel alone if you remember that that is your true nature.

I really appreciate your time, Sinclair, and I just love talking to you. I I genuinely could have a whole series just talking to you about this stuff, but luckily you already created a series. Can you talk about how people can work with you or what kind of steps they can take to gain even more knowledge from, from you?

Yeah, you can come hang out with us at detoxnation.com. It's a whole movement. Um, you know, we've got almost 200,000 people now, which is so amazing, keeping each other company on this health journey and can hang out with me on Instagram, Sinclair Cannelli. And you can hang out with us on YouTube for more Detox Nation content, and we'd love to have you. I like to break this stuff down, but I also want to give you the depth that it takes for you to feel totally in control of your future. And James, I just adore you. I really appreciate any manufacturer that helps ancestral practices come into the modern era, and I know how hard you have to work behind the scenes. to make really tough choices to protect the quality of your food and to support all these hardworking families out there that just need a little bit of help reclaiming who they really are. So I really appreciate you.

Thank you. And thank you all for joining us today. If you're enjoying the podcast, please share, support us, talk to a family friend, Whoever it is, just say, hey, check out this podcast because I really love the content. Leave a message, leave a review, check out Sinclair's stuff, check out a guest, what they're doing, check out our sponsors. Anything you could do to just contribute and communicate how we are affecting you. My hope is that you are living and thriving and doing well and being kind to yourself. But most of all, let's all commit to staying curious and asking questions. Thank you all. Thank you so much for joining me on Everyday Ancestral. If you enjoyed this episode, hit subscribe so you don't miss the next one. You can find the show notes, links, and resources mentioned at eatpluck.com. That's E-A-T-P-L-U-C-K.com. And hey, if you know someone who'd get something out of this, share it with them too. Stay curious, live well, and keep it ancestral.