59. Why Most "Healthy" People Still Have Fatty Liver with Siggi Clavien

Why is the liver so important? Why is the liver the masterpiece? How the body works?

The liver is the master organ. When I say master, I mean it has an inherent intelligence in it. In Eastern medicine, it's called the general of the body because it controls so many other organs. So besides, it's one of the primary things of detoxification. It's also the mastermind and the control mechanism of vitamins, nutrients, minerals, proteins, wheat, small intestine starts pulling out the vitamins and the nutrients. Those then go directly in the blood to the liver. But the liver is storing those and then distributing those throughout the body as it needs. It's also a gland, so it also produces hormones for women's health and hormone health. It's probably the most important organ because it is eliminating, conjugating, processing, getting rid of bad hormones.

Incredible. And isn't it funny that ancient wisdom has known this all along and yet we're still so early. I think a lot of people, maybe even our listeners, we associate liver health with just detoxification of, oh, alcohol. Before we dive into today's episode, I wanted to say that wellness was never meant to be a solo journey. My name is Mona Sharma, celebrity nutritionist. And that's why I created the Rooted Academy, a space where we can cut through the noise and bring together real conversations, real support, and real healing. If you're ready to be part of a wellness movement that actually guides you towards tangible changes, that last chance, join us inside rooted by visiting monasharma.com Siggy welcome to Rooted in Wellness. I am so excited to have you here. I have these moments when I show up to podcast where it's like a pinch me moment because I'm so excited to meet the people on the other end. Before we dive in, we're going to talk about the liver scan that I just did that I'm just so happy about. I'll tell you a little bit about this podcast. So Rooted in Wellness is ultimately merging the worlds of Eastern medicine with Western medicine, but also showing everyone how we can become more rooted. Yeah, rooted in our health and our happiness and also our inner knowingness to. To heal. I think that the world of health and wellness is also getting incredibly complicated and becoming a little bit of the wild West. So I'd love to know from someone who has the knowledge that you do on healing in the body, what supports you in feeling more rooted in your health and your happiness.

I think probably the biggest foundation is just being present. Yeah, being present. Living in the now, you know, kind of Buddhist saying is you know, anxiety comes from worrying about tomorrow. Depression comes from worrying about the past. So a lot of actual illness, and I think bad health can be from people worrying about it or stressing it about it, or, you know, you're A lot of cancer patients we deal with always say that the. The most important thing in your health is going to be your mindset. You know, are you a victim or are you, you know, a survivor? Are you a winner? And that is first and foremost. Second one is, would be like sleep. Right. Most important thing you do for your health. Third would be no stress. Then we get into the modalities of medicine and nutrition and science and all that. But you have to start with being. Being present.

Oh, my gosh.

Zoe's joke. You've. I've never met a hypochondriac that doesn't get sick a lot.

So true.

Yeah. Rachel. Yeah.

The power of presence is so essential.

Absolutely.

Funny enough, when I meet with my clients on any type of healing journey, everyone wants to know the supplement protocol. What do they do, what do they take, how do they exercise? And 90% of the time, I'm often met with tears because they're talking about sadness that lives within them. And I'm sharing that story over and over again because how can you heal a body that's stuck in sadness or fear or worry about the future or the past? So I love that you brought that up. It's so important. Yeah.

And a lot of illnesses and stuff manifest from. It can be something deep seated emotionally that we're holding on to. Like grief can affect your lungs. The liver, which you obviously were experts in, is anger.

Yeah.

If you hold a lot of anger, you'll have liver issues. If you have a lot of liver issues, you'll be more angry. You know, betrayal, like adultery is in the womb. You'll see a lot of, maybe women that have had cervical cancer. A lot of that will come through some type of betrayal in the system. Yeah, yeah. The emotive and the spiritual side behind it kind of manifest physically and it can exasperate it. Or the flip side is with a positive attitude and a positive mentality and visualizing health and wellness, you can actually heal yourself. Well, so it's not. It's two sides. Right. It's like the circle of life, you know, positive and negative.

You're cultivating the environment for your body to heal.

Absolutely.

I think acknowledging the stress and the emotional side of the liver, which we're going to dive more into, is essential. And my hope is that it's the future of healing. Instead of looking for so many things to think throw at the body that are causing so much stress. On the flip side, do you notice when things are causing you to feel uprooted? Are you traveling too much? Are you A practice that comes up.

I think when you. Yeah, when you travel a lot, you know, on the go, besides the, the physical toll of, you know, the radiation from the flights and all the germs, when you're traveling with other people and energetically, what you're picking up and doing that as well, you know, take doing breathing exercises or box. Breathing is really important when you get somewhere just taking your shoes and socks off and grounding and picking up that resonance from the planet. It's very good anti inflammatory. It's a good way to ground. You can always ground, I guess spiritually by just going within and just being present or wrote a poem about it, but also spiritually just kind of doing make you know you're being present and your senses aware. Because any of us can stop at any moment and it takes seconds to do is just do a quick breathing exercise. And then I always close your eyes and say, okay, what am I smelling? Right. What am I tasting? What am I hearing and what am I feeling? You know, like I could right now by just doing that. I could feel a little breeze coming from this side of the room. Must be from the ventilation. I could hear some frequency from the lights in the back. And that shocks you into presence immediately. And anybody can do that anywhere.

So you're talking about frequency and we're only 10 minutes in.

Yeah, yeah.

The liver has to digest everything, right?

The liver is the. Is the master organ now. The liver does so many things and it's so misunderstood. At least in western medicine, Eastern medicine understands that, that it's the general of the body where western doesn't really. Most people don't. You know, I give talks all the time and we speak to thousands and thousands of people and most people don't really know where it is, what it does, or how incredibly important it is.

How to care for it every day. Yeah, yeah. I was sharing a bit about my mother's story and growing up and she was very aware of her liver and also her. Her gut and digestion. And after my heart surgeries, meeting with an ayurvedic doctor, she didn't look at my heart first. She was looking at the quality of my digestion, my emotions and my liver. And she gave me tools to support my liver as kind of like the primary step to Ensure that all these, you know, essential functional detoxification organs are primed and working really, really well. And my concern was, you know, maybe you can share a little bit about this, but I was on antibiotics every single year growing up, sometimes two, three, four times a year. And my mom thinking about the number of corticosteroids or the people listening if they know somebody, God forbid, if they're sick and they have to take all these medications that the liver is processing. But doctors aren't recommending the balancing aspect of supporting the liver at the same time. We're going to talk about non alcoholic fatty liver liver disease. But let's just start by maybe painting a picture for our listeners on why is the liver so important? Why is the liver the master behind how the body works?

So let me start, I'll start with the heart. So the heart for instance, while it is complex, it is essentially a pump and it can be replicated with technology. The liver is so complex that it's one of the only organs that we can't replicate with technology. And it's because it's consistently generating and regenerating billions and billions of cells. I love to point out to people to where when you're 38 years old or 85 years old or 5 years old, the average age of your liver is only about 3. So your liver is constantly regenerating. Older cells in the liver will be about 10 years old and your newest cells will be seconds old. So we go through the livers constantly, constant regenerating. You can lose up to 90% of it and it will go back.

You can lose up to 90% of your liver.

It can be damaged. Yeah. And it could grow back. You take up to 90% and we the technology. Now my cousin's actually one of the pioneers of this University of Zurich in Switzerland where I'm from. He did this actually at University of Toronto. He was head of hematology and he was a duke. But it's called a liver live liver transplant. And because about 50% of people that need a liver transplant don't make it because you can't survive without one to even get to where you need one. They do what's called a live liver transplant and it has to be a genetic match. So if your mother, for instance, needed a new liver, we would do what's called a live liver transplant. We would take a third of your liver off. We would take your mother's old liver out, put that little third into her and that will grow to a double lobed, fully sized organ. In as short, sometimes as seven weeks, definitely within six months and probably within 30 days, yours will grow back. I mean, so no organ does that. It's so complex. And the reason being is it's. In Eastern medicine, it's called the general of the body because it controls so many other organs. So besides, it's one of the primary things of detoxification. It's also the mastermind and the control mechanism of vitamins, nutrients, minerals, proteins. We eat. So if you have a, you know, you eat a lovely meal, you have a smoothie or supplement, stomach breaks it down, goes through the small intestine, small intestine starts pulling out the vitamins and the nutrients. Those then go directly in the blood to the liver. But the liver is storing those and then distributing those throughout the body as it needs. So it is, when I say master, I mean it has an inherent intelligence and it decides what to do with those. It's also a gland. So it also produces hormones for women's health and hormone health. It's probably the most important organ because it is eliminating, conjugating, processing, getting rid of bad hormones. It's controlling all of those hormones that the thyroids and stuff produce, converting T4 to T3s for longevity, for your immune system, the strength of your immune system is dictated by the health of your liver. So it's in charge of that as well, you know, and you go, it has 500 vital functions, thousands of functions overall. And we're discovering more about the liver as, I mean every day, not just me and the entire medical community globally.

Incredible. And isn't it funny that ancient wisdom has known this all along and yet we're still so early. I say this about the gut microbiome too. We're so early in understanding the complexity of these organs. And you know something, I was listening to something that you had shared and I think a lot of people, maybe even our listeners, we associate liver health with just detoxification of, oh, alcohol. Well, I don't drink alcohol, so my liver must be okay. And I would say in the past four or five years, more than the past decade of the nutrition work that I do, have I seen my clients come back with elevated liver enzymes, who don't drink, who are pretty healthy, they're exercising, they're practicing yoga and stuff like that. Why are we seeing the rise of liver issues today?

So 70% of liver disease globally now is non alcohol related. And a great example of this and that, probably one of the biggest misnomers people have is, oh, I don't drink so my liver should be fine.

Yeah.

And that couldn't be further from the truth. Great example. Two countries with the highest percentage of fatty liver disease and liver disease in the world. One is iran, which is 0.00 alcohol, and India, which is incredibly low. So we're seeing this huge rise in why liver disease is up 400% in the last 50 years. I mean, all the other diseases were kind of there with population growth and we're keeping under control. Liver disease is like an outlier. It looks, I mean, you look at a World Health Organization's chart and it's accelerating. So even with modern medicine, and that is if you put 100 to 150,000 chemicals and foreign synthetic substances into the human body through diet and breathing and foods and preservatives and insecticides and pesticides and all. And I mean, then topically, right, we're getting toxins from deodorants and shampoos and parabens and microplastics and yada, yada. It just goes on and on. The body has not adjusted to that. So the liver is being overwhelmed, it's being swamped and it's just, it's fighting this, this battle and unfortunately it's losing it. So that's why you're seeing this huge increase of it. I mean, cirrhosis when I was a kid was, you know, less than 6% of people were non drinkers. Now the majority of people with cirrhosis don't drink.

Right.

I don't know how many, you know, amazing older people we've tried to treat and they've got cirrhosis or they've got liver cancer. Never drank a day in their life. You know, we're seeing a big correlation between having your gallbladder removed and 10 to 20 years down the road, you're starting to see lumbar liver cancers develop. Diet sodas, pharmaceuticals also. And you know, you brought up a good point. When your gut biome, the gut biome, liver axis is incredibly important. They both, you know, a bad gut can affect the liver and the liver's not working, it affect the gut biome. The liver also produces the bio acids that break fatty down, that break fatty acids down.

Right.

So the liver is also incredibly important there. But if your gut microbiome is out of whack when like antibiotics are too much, you know, Purell or those.

You'Re.

Killing all the good as well.

Yeah.

You've got to have a balance between the two. And Eastern Europeans and certain Asian cultures are very adapted. They give you probiotics and kefirs and yogurts.

It's part of the diet.

It's part of it too. And certainly if you're going to be taking an antibiotic, you have to balance it out or you're just wiping out all, all of your, you know, your gut microbiome. I mean the best, the healthiest people in the world and the healthiest children in the world from an allergy and immune system are children that grew up on farms.

Oh, of course.

Because they're all the microbiome from the plants. The playing in dirt, like playing in dirt is actually really good for a child.

Absolutely.

It's incredible for the immune system.

They're outside, they're getting fresh air.

Fresh air. They're on animals. That's how they develop great immune systems. That's why during some of the, I think the overzealous lockdowns that they were doing, they were seeing, we were seeing children's immune systems crash because in childhood is when the immune system for the rest of your life is developed and by them being deprived of other children and fresh air and outside their immune systems are actually getting weaker.

I want to take a quick break from today's episode to ask if you knew your stress response is unique to you. Your hormones, your genetics, your lifestyle all play a role in how stress affects your body. My name is Mona Sharma, celebrity nutritionist and that's why I created the Stress Personality Quiz, a simple science backed tool to help you understand your stress type and how to manage it. Go ahead and take the quiz now@monasharma.com quiz. Okay, so you mentioned the genetic aspect. You had mentioned the environmental toxins, you'd mentioned emotions. And yet I find that a lot of doctors, if they assume that you're healthy, they're not really checking your liver or a lot of the times they're, they're only looking for, you know, what do I alt. AST is just like primary markers. Right. I know you're going to tell me that those markers can come back normal and you can still suffer from liver damage. So can you tell us a little bit about the liver clinic and your inspiration behind that and you know, is, is access to liver testing going to become, you know, something that's available and accessible to most people?

Absolutely. I do want to get one point that we didn't bring up genetic propensities for race have a lot to do with the chance of liver disease.

I was going to go back to the Indian portion.

We'll come back to that later if you want. We should cover that because that's important. And also Native American and different ethnicities. Your Danish side, for instance, have a higher chance of strokes, whereas your Indian heritage has a higher chance of fatty liver, whereas somebody in African has a higher chance of heart disease. But sorry, jump around.

I'm so excited that I'm trying to keep track of everything that I want to ask you.

Back to your question about. So when you get a blood test done, you know, you go once a year, you should, and you get your standard panels done.

Yeah.

We look at lipids, which are cholesterol, basically fats in the blood, and we look at kidney function. And there's a thing called a liver panel. We look at about eight biomarkers there, bilirubin and albumurin. And three of the really relevant ones or signs of liver damage are alt, AST or gamma gts. Those at the end of the day, those are lagging indicators. So if those are off, that means something has already happened. And the enzyme that is dealing with those is what you're seeing in a blood test. So you're not really seeing a live snapshot. You're seeing a lagging indicator of something that happened. And that could be the liver could be inflamed, it could be an infection, it could be some type of liver damage. They could be out of sync. So that's not a great indicator. And generally, if those are coming up bad, you've got a more serious problem. And we've been doing liver research for the last 20 something years, and I've been in phytomedicine development for 29 years. But when we're doing clinical studies on deliverance, we do a lot during lockdown, actually, we use the time well. Spend a lot of time in the labs is good timing. We realize that a lot of people with fatty liver disease, which is 38% of the Western world, United States now, 130 million Americans, India, they think it could be as high as 50%. Is not showing up on bloods. So on a blood test, and we have this all the time, the blood test is perfect. So they don't think anything's wrong.

Yeah.

But you know, if you get a really good intuitive doctor and he takes the time and he practices root cause medicine, which is we practice or functional medicine is, you can say, well, do you have a lot of brain fog? That's an indicator of fatty liver. How's your sleep? Bad sleep is an indicator of fatty liver. Ooh, the cholesterol is high. If they're obese, they have a 90% chance of having fatty liver disease.

Right.

If they're type 2 diabetic or pre diabetic. So you can kind of triangulate.

Yeah.

Based off of other factors. But we needed to know more and be more precise. So, you know, we do. We deliver clinics to everything from biopsies to MRIs to ultrasounds to fibro scans to blood tests. We found that this French technology called its shear wave elastography is the technology. One of the companies that we like makes a machine called a fibroscan. And that is incredibly accurate because it can tell you exactly what percentage of fatty liver the person has, how much of the liver has fatty change. We can also see scarring and fibrosis and start to see if the liver starts to get stiff. So it's kind of like just a person. If things start to get stiff, they're not functioning as well and it's creating stress. And that can be indicative of inflammation or of sluggishness. And I love that technology because on a traditional ultrasound, it'll just say fatty or not fatty. We don't know how much. Right. It's not that accurate. MRI is good if we're looking for a tumor or looking for biopsy. And it'll say fatty ish, but still not a precise. And those are Both expensive technologies. MRIs. Right. They take a long time, they're claustrophobic, and it's not really scalable. So the fibroscan technology existed. We have it in most universities. Most hepatologists will have it. And it's been around for 20 years. It's a gold standard. But it's sitting in these labs for people that are sick.

Right. At hospitals.

Yeah. So we realized, we're doing these studies that 90% of the people with fatty livers wasn't showing up on blood tests.

Wow.

So we're like, okay. And we specialize in getting rid of fatty liver. Because when we'll get into fatty liver disease is a root cause of many, many, many things. We said, okay, we need to get more people fibroscanned. And in the UK where we're based, it's about a one to two year wait list to get one done.

Oh, my gosh.

Even though the procedure takes 10 to 15 minutes, super quick, it's so safe. You can do it if you're pregnant, if you have a pacemaker, whatever. It's just, it's thumps of vibration and frequency and sound going into the liver causes reverberation. And then we can tell doing a mathematical equation with the Ultrasound behind it. Exactly what percentage of liver fat do you have? It's a hundred times more surface area than a biopsy. And biopsies are fraught with damage. And I also think, you know, in a cancer discussion, a biopsy on a tumor can sometimes open a tumor up and can spread more cancer around the body. Some. And also a biopsy of a liver can cause bleeds and secondary infections. So we try to avoid a biopsy in all cases, but the fibers get super quick. So we said, okay, we can't rely on the government to scan people in the uk and then we started, well, let's go to the private sector. And we went around to what doctors that do have them would be hepatologists, some GI guys, maybe some endocrinologists, but not very much. And we said we'd like to start sending our patients here to get screening because we want to get in front of it. Good thing about fatty liver disease, type 2 diabetes, metabolic syndrome. Right. The silver lining in all this is it's reversible. Yes. We can turn it around, we can save it, but we have to let people know. You have to know where you're at, right?

Yeah. Yeah.

It's like anything in life, you have to know where you are.

And anything that you detect on time early enough, too. Right. Your chances of shifting things around are so much easier than the long haul.

And if it's showing up in the bloods, like you mentioned, it's a bigger problem that might be harder to reverse or harder to change or more severe or more indicative of something much more sinister. So we could not get those scans done. And I remember we started. We will start our own clinics, and we will start our own clinics, and we will also go to existing clinics and we will put. Partner with them and put a liver clinic in and we'll train their staff, we'll put the machines in. And we want to make it. We want to democratize it. Because if you go to the Mayo Clinic and get a fibroscan, it's $1,400.

Oh, yeah, cash pay.

And they will not take you unless you're a patient.

You have to do the assessment and.

Go on the trial. Can we send you a couple hundred patients a month? They said, no, that's crazy. Yeah. So we're like, no, we're going to bring this to the public. So we take all that noise out, all those people, all those barriers, all that, you know, that confusion because, you know, medicine can be scary to people or diagnostics can be scary to people. Is let's take all that out. Let's bring it straight to the consumer, to the public, put it out front. And you know, we do outreach programs. We go into, we go into businesses and do it. We do pop ups at shows. You know, we came into your, your studio and did one and we're trying to make it really accessible. And it's interesting the one, one of the reactions you get when we ask somebody if they want to scan is a lot of people say, I'm afraid to know. And so we, I immediately fire back when they say, well, no, there's nothing to be afraid of. You're gonna have two outcomes, both will be positive. One, there's nothing wrong with your liver. You're really happy, it's healthy, you're good, you're going to leave her happy. Secondary. If there is something wrong, we have found it, you know, and now we're going to put a plan together to fix it.

Yeah.

So either way you'll have a positive outcome. Not knowing is where the risk is. Yeah.

This fiber scan, so that took maybe five minutes. I'm so grateful for that. And it's funny to your point about, you know, the, in terms of healthcare and the fear around knowing. Right. And also how challenging it is to get these tests and the accessibility and availability took five minutes. It was painless. I got my results pretty, pretty instantly. But I also felt fear. Oh my God. What if they find something right? And you know, in Ayurveda we say our body accumulates everything from the time that we're born. We'll get into the genetic side of things too. But for a lot of people out there, genetically, can you be a poor liver detoxifier?

Absolutely. I mean, you can have poor genetics or something wrong with your liver. You could have had, you know, we've got patients with severe liver damage. And then one springs to mind, was a child. I'm sorry, he's an adult. But as a child he got exposed to heavy metals and paint. He had like fallen like a paint bucket.

That was my mom, she was exposed to a paint bucket.

And that can cause it. So that you can have. And you can also have epigenetic switches.

Right.

You could be exposed to something. And genetically an epigenetic switch could have gone on and that could then lead to certain things down the road. For maybe sluggish liver, the pathways aren't working as well because there's three phases of detoxification and those could be interrupted. You could have a genetic abnormality. You could also not be taking care of Your liver. But the biggest reason that livers do not function properly is fatty liver. Because as it gets fattier, its ability to get rid of that fat diminishes. So it can't even self repair as well.

Right.

It becomes sluggish, it affects blood flow, its ability to deal with hormones, especially in women. Because if you don't get rid of the old hormones and the hormone cycle of women, that's where those gather up, they start to stagnate. And that's breast cancer comes from that. So you have to get rid of it. So if the liver's sluggish, not functioning well, because if it's fatty, it's just not functioning. I mean, think about it like a thin, thin dog versus a really fat dog. The thin dog is going to run and be more aerobic.

Yeah.

So it does affect it. And also the surface area of the liver deals with insulin. Right. Insulin resistance and reactivity and how it deals with that. And the more fat on it, the less surface area. So its ability to regulate insulin goes down. Then you become, you get insulin resistance. Then you're pre diabetic. Next thing you know, you're type 2 diabetic. Right. And you know, type 2 diabetes can be returned around. The only time you can have a big problem with type 2 diabetes is, you know, and it's, it's such a travesty. But western medicine is so indoctrinated, destroy you on insulin.

Yeah.

If you had too much insulin because your pancreas creates insulin, but if you keep taking too much synthetic exterior insulin, after a while your pancreas could shut down and say, well, I don't, I don't need to create insulin anymore. There's no need for me. And it shuts that switch off. And then you could actually be addicted. You'll have to have extra insulin the rest of your life or you'll go into insulin shock and die. So you can actually. It can cause a huge problem.

This is the pro. The bigger problem, Siggy, is like how many people, you know, if God forbid, it's been you or someone that you know who's been diagnosed with something. Did that come with a recommendation? Oh, you know what, we better do some investigating to your liver. How's your liver functioning? Do we need to do any healing there? And hearing you just. But I'm thinking of like aging fascia. Right. It goes from being soft and supple to kind of more of a dense mattress. Right. And how on earth could it function if it's becoming more dense and there's less circulation and detox toxins. Have to move.

Yeah. Have to move. Yeah. Have to get. You have to be probably hydrated. You have to have water to help them move. You have to physically move to do them. Yeah. Like they turn in like grumpy old men. They don't move and they're achy and they're bent over and they're not just. That's a good metaphor for it, probably.

Yeah, that's great.

Ye.

All right, so for listeners who are now curious, what are some of the more subtle symptoms then a fatty liver? A fatty liver or a liver brain.

Fog is the first one. And that can be missed for a lot of reasons. People think, oh, I'm too stressed or I haven't got enough sleep or, you know, I'm preoccupied with something else. So that can be overlooked. And you can also deal with it with maybe excessive caffeine or a lot of coffee. So you're not really dealing with. It's a symptom. Like a headache is generally a symptom for dehydration. And it's your body trying to tell you, hey, you're dehydrated. You know, you're 70% water, the brain's 80% if you're dehydrated. That's usually where headaches come from. So your body is constantly speaking to you and talking to you in different ways. Brain fog is one. Your sleep pattern gets disrupted a lot. You don't sleep as well. That's another sign of fatty liver. And the reason being is that whilst we sleep, the two biggest physiological things that happen. One is your brain starts storing and caching all the memories for the day and everything you've done, learned or ready. If you're studying or teaching or something, you have to get sleep. It's like you don't need to turn your computer off. You turn that computer up, it'll be the hard drive still going. Brain works the same principle. The liver does all of its regeneration between about 1 to 3am so if you. If the liver is under a lot of stress and working, working really, really hard and you're waking up at that time, that could be indicative of a liver problem because your liver is overheating or functioning so much that your sleep gets disrupted and your HIV will change and things like that. Thirdly is weight gain and then getting rid of weight. Those are like the three kind of. First biggest symptoms you have if you've got something more severe is when you start to get maybe yellowing of the skin, bloated tummy Your feet start swelling because of circulation and you know, God forbid, like yellow eyes. That's like usually see somebody with, if I see somebody with yellow eyes, I, I immediately, even though I don't know, I'll grab a chat with them. Tracy, listen, there's something severely going on here with your liver. We, you know, we need to, we need to look at some things or can I help you? Or here's some recommendations.

Okay.

Yeah.

So don't ignore the symptoms. Don't look at the whites of your eyes as an eastern medicine doctor would do every day.

Yeah.

And we were even taught in nutrition school that if we were to notice any imbalances of the skin, I'd always say that it was an issue with the liver.

Of course. Yeah, yeah, Very, very good point. I didn't bring that up. But the liver's in charge of your skin and your hair, so. Interesting. A lot of people that use deliverance use it for skin and hair. Maybe once we've got them healthy, they stay on it for that. And a bad liver can manifest in the skin, liver spots. That's why if you've got high toxicity, might break out more.

Yeah.

If your liver's out of whack or hormonally acne. So especially like that's why teenagers get a lot of broken acne and stuff is because the hormone imbalances within the liver and especially teenagers, if they're, you know, drinking a lot of diet soda or Red Bull or processed foods right then and there, their liver's not functioning very well. So they're going to be more prone to, to hormone imbalances that will manifest on the skin. Yeah.

You mentioned hormones a few times there. And I really wish that this was being talked about as much as hormones. I've had so many hormone experts sit in that chair and I don't think anyone's really mentioned taking care of your liver at the exact same time.

They should be co factors paramount. Yeah. I mean I tell any physicians or doctors or clinics we work with, especially if they're working with hormone replacement therapy for women.

Yes.

First of all, go, go bioidentical plant based. But secondary, you've got to check the status of the liver because if the patient or the person's liver is not functioning optimally and you put them under hrt, you can actually cause some damage.

Right.

And you can throw them even more out of whack and then they've got more, more night sweats or they're getting more agita or anxiety or their hair and all that as well, or weight gain. So it's paramount that you get the liver and optimal function if you're going to be dealing with hormones.

Yeah, xenoestrogens for women. Right. When estrogen becomes toxic within the body, clean your liver first before any hormone protocol whatsoever.

I mean, estrogen is there to protect you. Estrogen is your woman's main defense against cancer and cancers. And you have to have an imbalance. You know, too much can be bad. Too much old is very bad because you've got to get it out. You've got to get out the fresh and the new. It's kind of like something like you got like old dishes you leave in the corner of your kitchen. Right. It's going to cause mold, it's going to cause damage. And just the old hormones do that internally. So you've got to keep those processes out. Hydration is important. There's a really interesting study which, coincidentally was in Denmark, I just read, because we've always known that women between the ages of 20 and 45, so pre menopause, if they drink alcohol three times a week, socially or more. This is a Harvard study, actually. They're 33% higher chances of breast cancer. And that's because your liver is dealing with the alcohol, so it's not functioning as well. It's not getting rid of the old hormones. Those are building up the metastasizing, causing breast cancer. So we were looking this study up the other day. I was with Dr. Gareth and I were going over some research and then we came across this study that was in Denmark. It was done on 5,000 women over 10 years. And this is really shocking. A postmenopausal woman that is on hormone therapy. If they drink alcohol twice a day, their chance of breast cancer goes up by 300%.

Wow.

If they drink three to four times a day, it goes up by 500%. So if a woman is post menopausal and they are on hormones, whatever they do, they should not drink. And the scary thing there as well, which I had already known, is the highest demograph of female binge drinkers or postmenopausal women, of course.

Yeah, yeah.

Because that's when, like. So the one, the one group of women that drink the most are the most at risk for all these other things.

Incredible. Yeah.

That's important, I think, to bring up. Yeah. And the Danish, you know, pretty. Pretty advanced.

They like their beer too.

They like their beer.

Yeah. Yeah. I have to tell you about my latest obsession. Im 8. This is not your average supplement company Ima was born from a collaboration from top scientists, medical experts and even David Beckham. They created a line of products that take a holistic, science backed approach to health and I am hooked. Let's start with their daily essentials drink. This supplement is packed with 92 premium ingredients including clinical doses of things like CoQ10 for heart health, MSM for joints and muscles. It's basically like getting all of your daily nutrition in one delicious scoop. I love mixing it into a smoothie. It has this great chocolatey berry flavor that I look forward to every day. Plus it gives me sustained energy without any jitters or crash. They also have a daily longevity capsule that supports healthy aging at the cellular level. It has ingredients that help with DNA repair, clearing out damaged cells and it boosts mitochondrial function as well. I've been taking it consistently and I can definitely feel a difference in my mental sharpness and my overall vitality. What I love about im8 is their commitment to quality. Every ingredient is meticulously sourced, non GMO and free from any harmful additives. They use advanced technologies like liposomal delivery to make sure that your body is actually absorbing the nutrients. And as a pending B corp, they prioritize sustainability and ethical practices. I can't recommend IMATE enough. It has simplified my supplement routine without compromising on effectiveness. Head over to im8health.com and use code monasharma10 for 10% off your first order. That's im8health.com code monasharma10. Trust me, your cells will thank you again. More awareness that needs to get out to the world because we'll talk about how we can take care of our liver. But let's go back to that genetic piece, right? You mentioned India. 1 in 3Americans have non alcoholic fatty livers. 40% now, 40% now, different cultures that have it. When you said India, I immediately thought okay, well what's happening there? Rise of ultra processed foods, metabolic dysfunction. That's happening with the rise of processed foods. You know, the amount of toxic fats that are going into their foods now instead of just, you know, pure unrefined seed oils which can be therapeutic. But tell us about the genetic component then.

And it's really south. It's South Asia. It's interesting. So people of Arab genetics get type 2 diabetes much quicker. So do Native Americans, aborigines. Yeah, Africans get heart disease, as I was saying, much quicker. And you take this crescent, it starts really in eastern Iran and obviously you go through Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Dravidians, also the southern Indian population that goes into Sri Lanka, genetic group, they, as a baseline, get fatty liver much quicker than other ethnicities. So right off the bat, if you take that racial group and you took like maybe Eastern Asians, Oriental and Caucasian and black, and put them all on the same crap diet you just mentioned with the seed oils and the processed foods and the high fructose corn syrups, yada, yada, those South Asians will get it twice as fast because they have a genetic predisposition to accumulating liver fat. And now I've. The chairman of my medical board is one of the top hepatologists in the world. He's from India, my chief science officer, Sri Lankan, another Indian. So I have a lot of South Asians in my medical board and I interact with doctors all over the world. And the consensus, and I've learned this from them and we've discussed it many times, is that genetic group, because you have monsoon area times of the year and you have times of either low food or potentially famines or what have you, and they don't know when their next meal, maybe always is, is they will store sugar or, I'm sorry, fat on their liver for when they don't have food. So they're storing it, but then you then put them on, maybe you move them to London, right? And then they're on a consistent diet, they'll start to get fatty liver much quicker because their liver, that epigenetic switch, hasn't been turned off.

Right?

Because you can have a genetic change eight generations, but epigenetics could be two generations. So they're storing fat a lot quicker. And then you compound that by putting in cheap calories and processed foods and preservatives and GMOs and all of these, and they get it really, really quick. That's why you've had this phenomenon which is horrific, which is babies born in India now born with fatty liver disease.

Come on.

Yeah. That's never been seen before. So that's the calories that the mothers are taking are developing in the fatty liver that's getting into the baby's liver. Babies born with fatty liver.

Oh, my God.

And then you've got. Also children have some of the formulas that are being given.

Oh, yeah.

Have cheap calories and sugar and that's doing it as well, too. This is affecting globally. It's not just South Asians, but just South Asians. It's having a more dire effect on, you know, just like the diabetes in the Arab community. They don't really drink, but they eat Junk food like nobody's business and cakes and pastries and they don't process sugar as much. So it's just, you know, there's just, and it's, it's just genetics and you know, people are different and different ethnicities have different things and you know, some have more prone to, to, to certain things as well.

I really, it's something I say all the time is if you want to heal the body, eat more like your ancestors.

Oh yeah.

But I wonder in the future, unless we're proactive now, are we going to be able to do that? Because I think that even with the Indian culture in the way that they used to spend a lot more time cooking foods and preparing foods and stuff like that, everything now is fast food. We live in this fast food nation. And when we think about how our body now digests things that used to have all this fiber in it is void of that fiber, which is leading to additional sugar. Because people might think, think, oh, I'm not eating the cakes or the candy. But they are eating the refined rices that are, you know, fast acting sugars that are sitting in the gmo, you know, slots that are sprayed with the pesticides and the glyphosate and stuff like that that's accumulating with. So you've got this, you know, this modern world problem of the way that we're preparing things and the toxins that we're growing our food in, but also the change in the food itself when it's becoming genetically modified.

It's genetically modified. And then your liver's having more time dealing with that genetic modification, trying to figure out what it is. So it starts, that's why diet people drink diet Coke. We see getting fatty liver quicker than somebody drinking high fructose coke. Because the body understands sugar and the liver understands sugar and fat more than it understands these chemicals. So you're, you know, you're compounding the problem and you're also at the same time handicapping your master organ that's breaking those down, which is your liver.

Yeah.

Ability to do that. So you're getting a, you're getting a double whammy. And as you rightly pointed out, lack of fiber, maybe not as many fresh vegetables, you know, washing your vegetables, just soaking them in water and some salt is one of the best things you can do to get those out, to at least clean those because they're just saturated with them. And then gmo, you know this, I mean, nobody was allergic to gluten 25 years ago, right. So this Is obviously a new phenomenon, and it seems to be much, much, much more prevalent.

Yeah.

In the United States, what, North America or countries that get wheat from here. And there's two. There's two components to that. One is. I think it's glyphosate. I think it has a lot to do with it.

Absolutely.

And the other is also. It's genetically modified. So this is not the wheat of our ancestors.

Yeah.

And the body hasn't figured those out as well. And so it's a different type of gluten. So, you know, people just develop gluten, you know, intolerances. Last 20 years.

We were in Copenhagen last summer, and there was a waitress who found out I was a nutritionist. She said, what is this infatuation, this fear of, like, bread that you have over there? We eat bread for breakfast, for lunch, and then for dinner again. And she was, you know, tall, beautiful, Scandinavian looking. And I said, well, your bread has three or four ingredients. Ours has about 14 or 15 ingredients. Yes.

And it's genetically modified.

You got it.

And it's sprayed with glyphosate, which is banned in Europe.

You got it. Yeah, yeah. Access to cleaner food. All right. So don't ignore the symptoms that you're suffering from always. You know, consider your liver. Consider where you come from, maybe even your mother's health. If we're considering epigenetics. Also look at the back of a.

Packet of anything you're going to. If you buy something that's packaged.

Yeah.

Turn it around. I mean, that's one of the best things we can all do or should do.

That's maybe a good call to action. So, yeah. Not only looking at the back of the ingredient label, but in the way that you started this conversation, I loved the concept of thinking about, what are you digesting, what are you putting on your skin, what are you watching, what are you smelling, what are you listening to and thinking about? Your liver, this master organ within you that really has to metabolize and digest all of that. And maybe now giving it a little bit of support before you look for the next protocol or diet or fad that you can start. Or maybe even ozempic, you can start thinking about the basic things.

Yeah. It's also dealing, remember, because toxicity comes in all forms. It's not just material. There's energetic detoxification, there's stress, there's negativity, there's drama. If you have a lot of stress, that's going to affect your cortisol levels in your liver. So your liver can get toxic by what we're dealing with. If you're around a lot of dramatic people or toxic people energetically that can transmute into a physiological effect on your liver. Can affect cortisol levels, which can affect serotonin levels, which can affect dopamine levels, which can mess you up physically. Even though. So not just what we're eating.

Right.

Yeah.

Consider your stress.

The energy around.

That's why I was scared to do the scan. I'm in this season of elevated stress and I thought, oh my God, what if my liver is going to be stressed out? What if they're going to pick up on this.

Anything about. You were stressing about something that was fantasy.

I was stressed about the stress.

Things that don't exist. We used to get scared of things. The unknown.

I was living in the future.

Yeah.

I wasn't being present. Yeah.

So which we all intend to do, we just got to be conscious to not do. I mean, even as much as I say not to do it, I still have to catch myself. You've got to be. You got to be present and you have to. You like your spirit has to check your ego.

You got it.

And your ego. It's like with instinct. Right. I had this great chat with. It's a little off topic, but it is on topic. We were at this Mastermind last week and Cali Beans was there. Dave Asprey and Mark hyman. There's like 70 of us. It was just awesome. Stuck in this room for two days having these really awesome chats. And you know, with instinct. So important. And when you get an instinct to something, the very first thing that comes into your head is actually the correct one.

Absolutely.

Immediately after your brain will start trying to rationalize it or make up for it. Or maybe it's this, maybe I'm tired, et cetera, et cetera. And that initial signal was your mitochondria. Because we do have a split second delay between reality and what by the time we. Instinct.

Yeah.

And that's your mitochondria. Your mitochondria is your energy within your body and it's repowers the cells, but it's alive and it's cruising around and doing this thing. It's incredibly important. And I've always been a firm believer in the women's intuition is superior to that of a man's and that it's very important. And if I need to run something by I'll have my wife give her opinion or my coos of my company is a woman. And I always look to women around me for women's instinct. And they brought up a really interesting point the other day, which was women have twice as much mitochondria as men do.

Yeah, especially.

Yeah. And the reason is because all this extra mitochondria has to be there constantly looking at which are the best eggs so that for procreation. And so they're. They're constantly instinctually looking at. That is. So a woman has twice as much mitochondria, hence their mitochondrial and energetic ability to suss something out is far superior. So I've never, until last weekend, heard it explained physiologically with something we've known inherently for thousands of years. And I thought that was really. I wanted to share that. It was awesome.

Yeah. I think that the body holds an incredible amount of intelligence and wisdom. But for far too long, for generations now, we've lived in societies where we're taught not to listen to it. We're constantly looking for solutions outside of ourselves. When we know within. If I have a client, you know, if I give them two choices on what the better option is, that first reaction of, oh, I know she's going to want me to say this. It's not me. It's not. They're not making the answer for me. They know intuitively what the better option is for their body. And I think that that comes with anything. And this is maybe a good call out to listeners. Also, when you're questioning whether eating a certain type of food or eating a certain way is good for you or not, if there's an ounce of doubt, it probably is the wrong thing for you. Right. You know, we talked about the protein thing before we started recording. I had a client trying to do like 120 grams of protein a day every time she would eat. I brought this up on Dave's podcast actually recently. Every time she would sit down to eat, she would get sad because she would think about the animal dying before consuming it. So I said to her, well, you're consuming the sadness. And now you're consuming the thought about the death of the animal into your body, which you also have to digest and metabolize. So again, trust your body. Start awakening that intuition. And yes, call out to women also.

And they're. They're almost creating it too. That that energy may not have been there.

You got it.

But if you really feel that strongly about it, you need a different type of protein.

You got it. I mean, yeah, there's so many. Absolutely.

We have so many choices, we have so many options.

Yeah.

And a good amount of protein is super important. Which if we get into GLP1, that's a whole other discussion. And the protein level and osteoporosis risks and all that.

Yeah, yeah. No GLP1s.

Yeah.

Let's help the body function at its best first. And chances are you might not even.

And listen to your body. Benjamin Franklin is one of my heroes. I think he's one of the sm. Smartest people that's ever lived. You know, he's one of those like Newton, you know, Galileo. Incredible, obviously. Da Vinci. Right. He's like super, almost like angelic, alien level intelligence. And one of the things Franklin said, which I loved, was you never learn anything with your mouth open.

Yeah, yeah.

So listen, listen and listen to your own body. Like we started off, listen to your body first. Listen to other people and sometimes listen to yourself. Like you with your client, you were saying, you know, sometimes when we're saying things, it's actually we're saying it to ourselves.

You got it?

We don't know that, but subconsciously it's like, wow, maybe I'm actually saying this because I'm hearing myself talking and.

Yeah, yeah, I do that a lot on my client calls. Yeah, yeah. Receiving a lot of it.

Yeah.

All right. So we've mentioned some things that the liver loves. Let's go through them. And I think intuitively also people probably know this. So being outside in nature, bringing more calm and relaxation to the body, hydration, supporting your body that way, eliminating the food ingredients that are made in a factory and eating more of the ingredients that come from the earth. But someone like you, who's an expert, what are you doing to love your liver? We're going to talk about deliverance in a few. In a few minutes. But what are some other modalities that people can consider?

So not being angry is probably a very good one too. Trying to. That causes so many health problems, hydration, you know, the more water that you're drinking, the better hydrated you are. Most people are chronically dehydrated. Affects the liver dramatically.

Can you cover on the water thing?

Yeah.

Are you specific with the type of water and how you hydrate?

I try to drink spring water if I can, you know, ideally in a glass because of microplastics, but it's not always possible. But I try to always do that. I like alkaline water, alkalized water, hydrated water is really good. I mean, generally, you know, everybody. You should be able to find spring water. Yeah, really good. Here's an interesting thing to do with. With Hormones we were actually discussing earlier. So you've got all these hormone irregularities happening. You're getting, you know, children are getting. Little girls are getting periods earlier. You're getting a lot of weird endocrine disruptions as well. And one of the things that's actually causing that, especially in cities that uses a lot of recycled water, like la, like London, like Phoenix, is when all the water that's used and whether it goes down the toilet and goes back in, it gets clean and reverses osmosis and goes back into the drinking water. It doesn't filter out birth control hormones. So there's hormones, incredible amounts of hormones in drinking water also. If you're taking a bath and you're soaking in it as well. So that's important. Cooking pasta. Right. So that is something that I know we did a hormone thing. We talk about water.

Yeah, Water.

Yeah. Spring water is very good. You know, alkaline waters. Really important. I think one of the best things you can do when you wake up is do a lemon water. So a nice glass of spring water with half a lemon to a lemon in it. And even though it, you would think, oh, it's acidic with its citric acid, but it's actually alkaline. So it starts your body's natural kind of detoxification going really good in the morning. That's a really good thing to do. Yeah. Apple cider vinegar before a meal really, really helps. If you don't like the flavor, you can mix it a little bit with honey.

Yeah.

We call it honey gar in London or in England is. Is really good as well. Getting a good balance, not eating right before bed. Thanks for talking about food, I guess.

Yeah.

Getting a lot of fiber, vegetables, fruit juice, for instance. If you're going to have fruit juice, make sure and have the pulp because the enzymes that breaks the sugars down is in the pulp. And if you don't have the pulp, then you're just getting a lot of sugar as well.

Sugar water.

Yeah, yeah. Basically diabetes water.

Yeah.

As well. So those are dietary things. You know, spiritually, emotionally. We discuss, you know, low stress, taking time to breathe fresh air, moving after you eat. Very, very important. Get everything moving right. Because, you know, exercise, even if it's just a good walk, gets the liver moving. And because the blood flow, I mean, a tremendous amount of blood goes through the liver. So more blood flow, more water, less stress, better diet and being conscious, you know, loving yourself. There's a great. He was a great scientist called Dr. Moto. And it's a miracle of water.

Yeah.

And actually, so I have a tattoo in my arm. It says love and gratitude.

Beautiful.

And I did that for myself. A. I look at it all the time and it remembers me, but I'm also telling my body I love it.

Oh, yeah.

And I'm being grateful for what I have. Practicing Gratitude. Right. Is a huge, huge component of happiness and good health and peace as well. Because even when we pray, so many people pray, depending on regardless of what religion you are, we're always praying, asking for something. Right. I really try to be mindful to when I pray. I'm thanking for what I do have.

Yeah.

It's just such an awesome paradigm shift.

Oh, my gosh.

And more abundance comes to you when you're grateful for what you have, as opposed to constantly asking for something.

For sure. I think often when I'm making dinner for my family, I'll try to bless the food or at the ashram, I'll always have Indian know, kirtan or bhajans playing in the background to also bless the food. And with my water. I noticed with my kids, I would set an intention with their water bottles every single day, but I wasn't doing the same for myself. And it's that gratitude that needs to come full circle. Because if you're so grateful for your body, and my audience knows that I've shared, I unfortunately have been through a situation where I've learned very quickly, nothing matters if you don't have your health. Seeing my mom with rheumatoid arthritis, nothing matters when somebody you love is sick. Time stops. The world stops. Nothing matters. And it's only in those moments you're like, oh, shit, I get one of these vessels in this lifetime. Just one. So I can choose to give it what it needs. I can choose to love it, or I can choose to constantly criticize it and abuse it and put things into it. You know, just hoping that my liver and all my organs just deal with it instead of the opposite. Right. I think everything that we do now, even everything that we've mentioned in this conversation, if we had healthy livers when we're 80, 90, 100 years old, we probably live a lot longer.

Yeah. And better, too. Not just lifespan. Healthspan as well.

You got it.

No, we don't want to spend the last 20 in diapers.

Yeah.

Right.

Yeah.

No, you want to, like, you know, go out on the golf course or having a walk or sleep or.

Yeah.

You know, be unhealthy. Yeah. Loving your lip. Well, loving yourself. I very much professors the Most important person in the world that you couldn't love should love is yourself. And we're kind of been programmed to think that's selfish. It's not selfish at all. Because our ability to love others is, is maximized or restricted by how much we love ourselves. By loving ourselves first. It makes our heart grow to where you can love more. It's like when you have children. It's like you always try to explain to people that don't have children. Your heart grows. Your ability to love is greater than it was prior because it's grown.

Yeah.

And loving yourself is really key to that. And it's, it's a great analogy. It's like when you're the plane, you know, the oxygen masks fall if in case of an emergency they would say put it on yourself first. So then you could put it on the children and people next to you. So we have to do that to ourselves with love to then. And then that transmutes and it compounds to how much we give to other people. And loving your organs. That's why we call it love your liver. That's why we did that. I just thought it was a very apropos. Apropos name.

I have to pause this episode to share something that's completely transformed how I feel every single day. And it all starts in my gut. I'm talking about Pendulums, Metabolic Daily and I'm genuinely obsessed. 88% of Americans are metabolically unhealthy. And so much of that comes down to our gut microbiome. If you're constantly battling afternoon energy crashes, sugar cravings, and that sluggish feeling after meals, Metabolic Daily can change everything. This isn't your typical probiotic. It contains live Akkermansia municiphila. It's an incredible next generation strain that most of us are deficient in. It literally strengthens your gut lining and helps your body metabolize sugars and carbs so much more efficiently. What I love most is how it makes me feel. My energy is sustained throughout the day. I'm not constantly thinking about my next snack. And I actually feel a little bit more full faster. It's like my body finally learned how to work with the food instead of against it. Plus my digestion has never been better. What sets Pendulum apart is the science. They were founded by PhD scientists and doctors with the Mayo Clinic as their first investor. They're the first company in the US to bring live Akkermansia to market using DNA sequencing in an oxygen free facility. I'm so selective about supplements that I recommend and Metabolic Daily has earned a permanent spot in my routine and recommendation to my clients. Go to pendulumlife.com and use code MONA. M O N A for 20 off all Pendulum membership first orders. That's pendulumlife.com with code MONA. Your gut and your energy levels will thank you if you think about healing. So, you know, if you know somebody who's been diagnosed with an illness, chances are their body won't heal in that state of stress. But now studies are showing over and over again that if you cultivate that environment of feeling a sense of peace or happiness or joy, it's almost turning on the mechanisms within your body to function at its best too. Right? All right. Self love. We're loving ourselves. We're blessing our food. We're very conscious about what we're putting into our body. Let's talk about some of the things from Eastern medicine that we know to be true and how that ties into this amazing, delicious product. Bitters, herbs, things that come from roots from nature that naturally support our liver. Yeah, yeah. We're. For my clients, I'm always asking them to throw on lots of fresh cut herbs, things that are bitter and astringent. Mustard grains, milk thistle, tea. Every single day. Talk to us about the power from nature.

So nature gives us most of the medicines and solutions that we have. And we've, you know, for thousands of years of culture, we've survived off of the using nature for the remedies that we have. And they all exist. I mean, all, even the most sophisticated medicines in the world, pharmaceuticals, come from a plant and pharmaceuticals get hold of it and then they. How do we make it cheaper? And they synthesize it and then the efficacy goes down. But it does everything. Roots in nature. So our company's called Equilibrium Labs because we're about bringing balance into the body. But my division, I have the division that's the liver clinic, because that's what we do, but we have roots to healing healthcare, and that's it. And because we practice roots to healing medicine or functional medicine or getting to the root cause. But it's also a play on words because most of the great molecules and substances within plants and the medicines are in the roots of the plant.

Yeah.

And it's interesting because a lot of plants, the roots are usually larger than what's on the surface. It's like an iceberg.

Right.

What's under the ground than what's above. And in those roots. And in Eastern medicine, whether it be an Ayurvedic, Chinese medicine, Korean medicine, you have 5,000 years of Kapiah. So we've got thousands of thousands of years of written knowledge. Medicine and, and I used to formulate, you know, I've done formulations for nutraceuticals and phyto medicines. 29 years, the first 10 years I just used western medicine and it was, you know, minerals, vitamins, nutrients and enzymes. But when I started to get into Eastern medicine and really look into it, I'm like, this is incredible. There's just so much knowledge here and so much wisdom and, you know, what works and what doesn't work. And just the principle of proactive medicine, of, of giving somebody herbs and proper diet and nutrition to preventing getting them from ill is just such a better way. And I think that's how the word developed. And humans are designed to nurture yourselves to prevent getting sick. And using natural medicine is much better at preventing you from getting ill, whereas it's not as meant to be, as reactive because we're not meant to, you know, we're trying to, you know, the old. When did Noah build the ark? When a lot of people go like, before, you know, before the flood. Well, no, it was actually before the rain.

Yeah, that's right.

Really, really before to do it. But, you know, milk thistle, I think is a very good basic herb to use for liver health. I used to use it. I don't use it in deliverance. And the reason is.

That's my question. Why didn't you put it in there?

Well, it doesn't play well with other plants.

Okay.

And there's actually a lot of countries in Europe where you're not allowed to mix it.

Okay.

You can buy milk thistle individually, but you can. And because you can actually have toxic mixes with other plants and certain plants play well with others because, remember, plants also produce poisons. So there's good and bad from plants and finding the best aspects of it and how they work together. And I've had Chinese medicine doctors and great herbalists. So you'd be like, well, why is this ingredient in here? It doesn't really have to do with liver health. I said, well, because I'm not thinking at it singularly. I'm not interested in a singular mechanism of action. I'm not looking at one molecule. I'm looking at the body. And like we should look at the body or that nature looks at the body or nature looks at the planet is. It's the culmination of everything and the synchronization of it as well.

You got it?

It's, you know, I'm working on oxygen in the blood, I'm working at the spleen, I'm working on the kidney. And maybe one plus one isn't always two, sometimes one plus seven might be 36.

You got it.

So the compounds and the alkalines and the molecules working together can produce totally different results. Like some of the stuff we're looking at with chemo you might have a chemotherapy that's meant for breast cancer but for this particular patient because of their genetics is really effective at bone marrow cancer.

Yeah.

So it combining those two. So deliverance is 17 ingredients and it's a combination of different things. We've got some things that are anti parasitic so we're look you have to treat the body as a symphony just like with nutrients as well. And what we're doing, you can't just have all protein or all. You have to have a combination of all these things together because that's what a human being is. So complex and so amazing.

Yeah, let's hover on that for a second because I think a lot of people will assume oh but it comes from nature, it's an herb, it's gotta be good for me. If you work with an eastern medicine doctor they're not, they're never putting you on a singular herb. It's a symphony within you know, a herbal formula or something that they know that's specific for your constitution because they know that it works together. So just a call out on that because I think a lot of people are going and picking up these supplements when you don't know that it's good for you. You don't know that there's studies behind it like you have and you don't know about the synergistic aspect of it which is so important for supplements and.

How they play with each other too. I mean can you imagine you're nutritious if somebody just ate broccoli all the time? No. Nutrient deficient they'd be.

No, it's a mono diet.

Yeah. You have to, you have to combine everything together. That's why you know, whilst there is advantages to a carnivore diet there's also some big negatives as well. You have to supplement like if you're vegan you've got to supplement these. If you're a carnivore you need to like I think keto ish, like kind of grass fed natural proteins with a great assortment of vegetables and fruits and there's a lot to be said for seasonally eating as well, you know, fall vegetables and root vegetables in the fall and spring vegetables and you go with the cycles. Makes a lot more sense.

Absolutely. All right. So I was actually holding. I've. I've started about just a few days of deliverance and there's that fear again. Out of fear that I needed to go on a protocol and look at the scores again afterwards. And this is extremely easy to take. There's a sweetness to it. I actually don't need to have a chaser afterwards or I don't need to mix it with anyone, anything. If people listening are curious about this, you know, the antioxidant in this and the way that it can support your body. How do we go on a protocol where you've seen results based on the studies that you've done?

So the. Just as the product, very complex for the 17 ingredients, it's 100% natural. It took us three years, took 18 years to formulate the product. It took me three years to figure out a natural preservative mix without using a preservative because a lot of products that are natural that end up using preservatives aren't really in there. So we use even, even the preservatives we use are natural. The sweetness you get is from. We use mesquite honey.

Yeah.

And I used, I like mesquite honey because it's like Manuka honey of North America. Very high polyphenols, antioxidants and it grows. It's obviously the flowering of mesquite trees which are out of nature, so they're not exposed to pesticides or herbicides. And it was the tree of life in Native American culture. So all kinds of medicines you get out of a mesquite tree. It's one of those kind of like aloe vera, cannabis plants, avocados. There's moringa, there's incredible plants that have all these great qualities. And mesquite trees are one of those. So we use that a. It speeds up the body and the metabolism, which is good, speeds up the activity in which the deliverance works. High in polyphenols, it's antifungal, it's anti parasitic. It's got so many great properties. Honey is amazing. Honey never spoils.

Right.

You have 3, 500 year old honey from the pyramids. It's still good, maybe a little dry, but it's still totally safe to eat. It will never spoil. It's one of those amazing things nature gives us.

You got it.

So honey's a key component for it. And also coincidentally, mesquite Has a cool aftertaste. Like a spice in the back.

Yeah.

Some people think it tastes like cinnamon or, you know, it's interesting. Barbecue sauce is made from mesquite bark.

Yeah.

That's what has that cool spice. So I like the flavor of it, too. So the peppermint oil that you taste, that's organic peppermint oil that I have made in France. And I do that because it helps for the spleen, it helps clean out your bile ducts, and it balances out your stomach acids. So there's like four things happening just for that. But. So those are the flavors that you really get right. And then the rest of the flavors are all, you know, they're herbal, they're earthy as well. And it's. But we. We've taken the best of Eats Meats West. I've taken all this incredible ancient wisdom and ancient knowledge and Ayurvedic influence and traditional Korean medicine, traditional Chinese medicine, my knowledge of Western herbalism. And then we combine it, though, with Western technology. So how do I make it more bioavailable? How do I get it into the bloodstream? How do I, you know, why are we invigorating the liver to produce more natural glutathione? So I don't just add glutathione into it. We're invigorating the body to produce more glutathione.

Yeah.

And to keep it more bioavailable, you know, we use spring water as part of it as well. And the different components kind of make the magic to do it. And it's how they're working synergistically together. And that's why I took 18 years to formulate.

Wow.

Yeah.

Incredible. Yeah. The second I started learning about you, as an instant. Yes. Because I think it's really going to take companies like you, people like you who are backing the product with science in order for people to be like, huh, maybe there's something to this ancient wisdom that we need to start looking into. There's so much there. Right. And it's also really subtle. So I think a lot of people, when they think, I'm going to go on a detox, I'm going to cleanse my liver, I need to go on a harsh protocol of restriction and products that don't taste good when. No, the body actually doesn't want that at all.

Yeah.

And you mentioned glutathione. I'm often concerned that when people are taking so many supplements, you're telling your body not to make what it should be. Producing on its own.

Kind of like the insulin scenario with your pancreas. Too much.

Yeah, yeah. So why not just optimize how your body functions again?

Absolutely, yeah. And how it produce and give it what it needs. So I, as somebody that's produced detox programs for 29 years, and originally most of them were for drug rehab clinics or to prevent overdoses. And in that scenario, we are actively trying to put somebody into detoxification because you're trying to get the toxins out because of a toxic overload and drug interaction, shock and death, and all things can happen with it. That's a different scenario, but I was trained to do that. But with this product, it's completely opposite of what I've always done. We don't put you in detoxification. The liver will detoxify you as it sees fit. So in this whole story of the liver clinic and deliverance and all this, the liver's the hero. We are just giving the hero everything it needs. I think we're giving it a light to see with, like, the scanning and the diagnostics and the blood testing and all that. And then we're giving it, you know, a shield and a sword and, you know, a cape with deliverance, and it will do its thing when it wants to. So if you go into detoxification, it's. Your body's got into it at that point. So it's a totally different yang approach as opposed to a yin, like a passive versus an active. And I practice more impact passive medicine, preventative, but also passive. Let the body. The body's the hero here. And the liver, let it do its thing. Let's help it do its thing and give it what it needs to do that. And that's a combination of good food, good nutrition, love, respect, insight, supplements, herbs, all these things you can do.

Look at the big picture, of course, so are people. Do you advise one a day?

1 a day for general health. Keeps your cholesterol imbalance, which is really good, especially for cholesterolemic, keeps triglycerides and HDL up, LDL down into balance. It metabolizes liver fat. It optimizes liver function. Your skin and your hair are very good. The three legs that the product stands on is. It also has a very powerful nootropic. So when you take it and use a glass of water, you actually start to get mental clarity in minutes. And that is because we use nanoparticles and liposomes, goes right into the bloodstream. And this molecule that we get from this special magical sea Kelp crosses the blood brain barrier from sea kelp. There's this one type of sea kelp that exists only in there's 10,000 sea kelps in the world. There's one particular strain or genus that grows off of Jeju island in South Korea. And there's like sometimes 300 foot high kelp forests. And in chosen medicine or traditional Korean medicine, they've made a tea out of it for thousands of years for mental clarity. And another phenomenon is the fish that live in these kelp forests are like super healthy. They're really vibrant, they're incredible. Some of those prized fish and that's because they eat this all the time. So my colleague and business partner, Dr. Lee has been about 15 years isolating. There's a molecule that exists in this kelp that doesn't exist anywhere else in the world that is 150 times stronger than any land based antioxidant.

No way.

So it's super high in antioxidants. Molecularly it's on three planes, eight structures. So it's even molecularly very complex. And that not only is a super antioxidant, but it also increases neurotransmission. And the reason when you take Deliverance, you start to get mental clarity right away is because we're increasing the neurotransmission in the brain. So there's an immediate effect. So we have, I've got stockbrokers, guys in the military, surgeons that take it just for that aspect. We always say for women the best time to take deliverance is a woman's circadian clock is different. So women tend to get fatigued in the afternoon. I think it's because being mothers, they're up and going in the morning and then they tend to have an energetic dip between 2 and 5 in the afternoon. That's the best time I think to take it because then you get the mental clarity. So that's the immediate effect. The midterm is energy levels, sleep, brain fog, skin and hair, that's within weeks. And then long term is you see improvement in biomarkers and how. And another reason that we're very different is in an ideal scenario is we look at our customers or patients, we look at your bloods, we look at your scan, you take Deliverance and we check it again as soon as 90 days. So we prove the results of the product through biomarkers. So we're evidence based, we're data driven. So if you're left brained, you could see all like your doctor will see these numbers like oh My God, this is so good. Or we're reducing toxicity load for maybe chemo and you could see it in data. But right brain is also anecdotal, which is, well, I'm feeling better. I've got more energy. I got more mental clarity. I'm sleeping better. Some people are left brain. Some people are right. Some people could care less about the data. They just want to know how they feel. Some people that are left brain don't care how they feel. They want to see the data. The best is to be balanced of both.

Absolutely. Notice how you feel.

So we were very much. That's another way that we're different is we. Like I mentioned Dave Aspy, like, that's when I was podcast. We had scanned him, he'd taken the product. We scanned him again, and his. His liver was the healthiest we've ever. We've ever seen. But what he loved was two of his employees that had liver disease we cured. One had it for mole damage and mold toxicity. That was a. That was a complicated scenario, but a very common one.

Mold damage is actually my next question.

Yeah, yeah. And the other had fatty liver disease, which is, you know, very prevalent as well. Both of them we fix. So we've been very blessed that a lot of amazing people and knowledgeable people and skeptical people, our skeptics are all turned out to be our biggest evangelists.

Right.

Because of the proofs in the pudding.

Yeah. And then they.

Because we're so natural and high quality, we have these great results. The further we get away from nature, the more side effects you have. And this is drugs or herbs or food, you have more problems.

Yeah.

So once you start. Start toying with nature, you get more problems and, you know, things. We stick very close to nature.

I'm such a fan of the brand and the transparency behind it. I think that that says a lot when you're willing to show everything, put all the cards out for people. That's something that we need more of also.

Yeah.

We have to talk quickly about coffee and mold. So a lot of the people I work with, myself included, had mold exposure about two years ago, and it completely took me out. All my hair was just falling out everywhere. Definitely impacted my cognitive health and brain function. Recently had a client, she did a total toxic burden test, and she came back positive with high levels of every single mold on the test. And it's no wonder she's just feeling so terrible. So let's talk about mold exposure, since that's a really hot topic today. And the liver and the things I think that what's happening, from what I'm experiencing, people who learn, they, they do have mold exposure, they're going on these intense harsh protocols, like really harsh protocols that are completely wiping everything out, including, you know, the gut microbiome. The good, the bad, the ugly, they're wiping everything out and they're not restoring properly.

No. Yeah, I think it, you know, it takes dedication, time and a proper balance or proper equilibrium because too much you can end up causing more damage. Also, certain detox protocols, so if you go into detoxification, it's very energy intensive, so it's caloric intensive. And a big mistake people make. And I think sometimes irresponsible detoxification programs is they're not giving the patient enough calories. And if you're not getting enough calories and your body's in detoxification, it's kind of like running a car engine with no oil. You can cause more damage than good. You know, a really good proper, balanced diet. Lots of water, lots of water, lots of sweating. If you have a sweat problem, sauna, make sure your gut biome is in whack because then you could have leaky gut and you're, you're, you know, you're not really getting ahead of it. You're getting toxins back into the blood.

Yeah.

Zeolite is a great natural mineral you can use to pull activated charcoal is fantastic. Glutathione, liposomal glutathione. So you're absorbing it is good because that'll that glute in the, the detoxification process. Glutathione binds to toxins. Obviously you got through conjugation and then through elimination will help get them out. These are all things we can do. Find out the source of the mold because.

Yeah, get rid of the Source.

And there's Dr. Kim, who's a great mold doctor, has got a good Instagram. He's really good. I've got a friend of mine locally who's a doctor, he had terrible mold exposure and I'm trying to help him find other protocols to do it. You know, deliverance can really help and having your liver in shape can really help. But sometimes some of these cases are beyond that and you've got to bring in all these other modalities. I think magnetic resonance has a, has a place infrared does for sure.

Yeah, yeah.

You know, to a degree in the right protocol, you know, like a cryo or cold plunge, because you're shocking the body, getting lymphatic system moving. You've got to kind of work on everything but mold exposure. So huge fall into. I mean, think about it. Ten years ago, nobody really talked about it.

Not at all. Now, well, now people are checking for it. I think we're also exposed to so much more, especially from the foods that we're eating.

Yeah.

So, yeah. Understanding, removing, going on a protocol that suits you. Do it with supervision.

Yeah.

Like have someone really just have their eyes on you and really looking at your biomarkers at the same time to make sure that you're on the right protocol. Because I think that's fantastic.

I mean, that's super important to have a counselor for.

Sure. Yeah. Lymphatic drainage. Right. And you know, in ayurvedic culture, you're resting while someone's working on your detox pathways. Like the way that we need to take the time to do so again.

Exactly.

Do you drink coffee?

I do, yeah. Coffee's great for your liver.

You got it. It's bitter.

Yeah, yeah.

High quality coffee.

Bitter. It's got antioxidants, mold free coffee. It increases blood flow into the liver. So when you do a fibro scan, the only thing you have to do is we say don't eat or drink coffee for three hours before.

Yeah.

And specifically coffee because it brings so much blood into the liver, which is good for the liver. But we can't get a proper read.

Right. That makes sense.

And there's a great NIH study. There's a bunch of studies on it. But if you drink coffee two times a day, you have a 44% less chance of getting liver disease if it's. I think it's, yeah, four cups a day at 66%.

Really?

Yeah. Yeah. So very good for you. There is, there is some talk about different molds in coffee beans, but drinking coffee is incredibly good for your liver. It's probably one of the best things you can do. And it's an antioxidant.

It's the one thing that I don't take away from people.

Yeah. Coffee. Yeah. But what you put in your coffee.

Is where you got it. No sugary treats and no microplastic. Clever.

I like those fake creamers and like those just like chemical shit stores.

Yeah. You know it's in them. You got it.

Yeah.

Beautiful.

Yeah.

You know, I want people to learn more about deliverance. How can we stay kind of in sync with you and your incredible massive scientific team so that we're aware of when, you know, more testing becomes available and accessible? Where can people find you?

So we've got loveyouriver.com is our main website. We're going to be adding a lot more content to it as well. I'm very blessed to be invited onto podcasts such as this, which is great. I've never done with a live audience. That's pretty cool.

Yeah.

I think that going. We go to a lot of the shows, the health optimization shows, the biohacking shows, health shows. We're trying to get the word out to the make deliver famous because, you know, that's the most important. Make deliver famous so that people can really, really understand it. And I would say the first step to being healthy is being conscious.

Yes.

It's instant, it's free, you can all do it. And probably. Yeah, we're writing a book.

Beautiful.

It's called Fatty Liver the Missing Link, that I should have that the publisher in about 90 days. And what we're showing in there is because, I mean, fatty liver disease is driving type 2 diabetes, it's driving metabolic syndrome, it's driving prostate cancer, it's driving hormone function. So it's this missing link. And I have all these chats and, you know, we're very much in partners with Maha and Making American Healthy Again and this incredible movement that's happening in the country. And, you know, it's about insulin sensitivity and type 2 diabetes. And I'm. I'm like, guys, this starts with fatty liver. If you want to get to the root cause of type 2 diabetes, start with the liver.

Yeah, yeah.

Cardiovascular disease. Right.

Start with the liver. Yeah, yeah.

Because every. And I was with the head of cardiology. Brilliant cardiologist, absolutely brilliant. But kind of with that Western medicine, they can't see the trees from the forest.

Oh, for sure.

I said. I said, were you scanning them for fatty liver? He goes, no. He goes, there's no connection. I go, yes, there is. He goes, no, there isn't. And from a scientific paper, right. Directly, no. But what is the number one cause of type 2 diabetes? I'm sorry? Of cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes and metabolic syndrome. Is that correct? Okay. What's the foundation of both of those? Yeah, fatty liver. So it's there. They're just not looking back enough. What's causing metabolic syndrome? Well, crap diet, processed foods, blah, blah, which is causing fatty liver, which is throwing off the physical system, which is then leading to those irregularities and dysfunction.

You got it, yeah.

The liver's your first defense. You have to, you know, the best is to prevent what's coming in is what CALI means is so much on the food thing, what's coming in and you know what, some of the stuff we're looking at with Maha right now, I had a great fireside with Dr. Phil and Del Big Tree a couple weeks ago is we got to get into the schools and what the children get rid of the processed foods and the sodas and the Cokes and the packages and all this. But the bureaucracy to go through into the public school system is mind boggling. Some of them have contracts with Pepsi to have all these junk foods in the schools and in the vending machines. So we're like, while we're well, let's start that battle. But that's going to take a couple of years. But in the meantime, let's start going to charter schools and private schools where the parents are in or have a say.

Yeah.

And you know, 17% of teenagers have fatty liver disease now. 10% of children in the United States have diabetes. Yeah, we have this. We have the 50% of children in this country have a chronic illness by the time they're 18.

The amount of children that are given prescription drugs, drugs for ADD and ADHD also, we're not treating their body and their liver, their body's ability to heal from those medications. So yeah, it's such a big picture and I am so here, trust me. It's been, you know, years since I've been getting so angry at our school system and the foods that we're giving our kids. I think that while we're focusing on the toxicity of all of these ingredients and of course if you follow the money to who owns all of these companies that we see at our school, including Doritos, which are at my kids school, we have to focus on educating on how the body functions because I think that parents will be empowered if they understand how those ingredients are impacting their child's health instead of just saying that it's toxic and painting the picture of, for example, how your liver is connected to dysfunction and metabolic dysfunction and disease in the future, I think that that will also be a great driver for change instead of just saying, you know, this is my lesson to. And the hate mail that I get when I post about these processed foods. It's not a problem of privilege, it's a problem of miseducation and willingness to not just take a stand and ownership for the things, the people that you're paying. The more that we pay those companies money, the more they're going to make foods that are going to contribute to the problem.

So absolutely. And I mean think about what you just said there. So child has ADD or Hyperactivity. Then they're taking a drug to do it. The drug's causing liver damage. But it was probably the processed food that causes. Because a lot of times it can be food intolerances or sugars that get those foods are causing the add.

Yeah.

And then you're correcting the add with something that's even. You're making the circle even worse.

You got it.

Go back to what the children are taking in, you know, besides the screens and too much, you know. Yeah. But you then with the food system as well. And I mean, let's just not forget that when the cigarette tobacco companies got out of the. Had to get out of the game. Were getting pushed out. You know, they own most of the snack food companies in the world. So they made the snack foods as addictive as cigarettes were. I mean they used to program the tobacco when once they knew they couldn't put more nicotine into the cigarettes. It's a great movie with Russell Crowe on the Insider. They actually modified a chemical in the cigarette that would modify your brain chemistry to where you would be more susceptible. So, okay, we're not putting more nicotine in, but we've re engineered the people that smoke its brains so that they get more high from nicotine. They've taken that exact technology and all the money they made from cigarettes and they've gone into the food industry.

Yeah.

And they're doing that with the, the Doritos and the chips and the candy and the soda that your child's drinking. They're rewiring their brains and their biochemistry to become more addictive. It's the same thing. They just changed the, the widget went from a cigarette to a crisp or to a snack.

It's a drug. It's a full on drug. And I think a lot of parents, it takes time to detox drugs from your body. And often you're met with, you know, a reaction from your child that seems like they're really stressed or uncomfortable or sad or angry. You have to help them detox at the same time. So.

And you have also ignorant. Some people are purposely being ignorant of parents. And this, this great Mark Twain quote, and it was very true with the whole COVID vaccine jab whole fiasco, saying it lightly, but it's. It's easier to trick somebody.

Yeah.

Than it is to convince them they've been tricked.

You got it? Yeah.

So some parents might not want to face up to the fact that maybe I've been duped by the food industry or the pharmaceutical industry. So Mark Twain said And that was what, 150 years ago?

You got it. Yeah. We have to recognize we're in a for profit world. Right. So.

But we are having great shifts.

Yeah, we are. It's.

Look what happened to the pharmaceutical industry this week.

You got it. And look at. We're just having this conversation.

Bobby Kennedy is, is, is accelerating what we thought would take 30 years, we've done in months. He's, he's. It's incredible what's happening. It's a nonpartisan issue. People need to remember that it's about children's health, not politics.

You got it. More education will drive change. Absolutely.

Yeah.

Tell us something that you're excited about for the future.

I think I just did.

You did, yeah.

I'm super excited. What's happening? You know, we're getting into the schools. We're trying to change that. We're getting rid of fluoride out of the water for the kids. We're getting food dyes out. We're changing preservatives. We're trying to restructure the food and pharmaceutical industry. Yeah.

Thank you for merging ancient wisdom with modern medicine, for being such an incredible advocate and voice in this industry, for making such a great product. And I'm excited to have you back.

Yeah, absolutely. That's what I'm doing. This carnation is what I'm dedicated to doing.

Beautiful. Thank you, Siggy.

Yeah, thank you.