Fix Your LIVER and Fix Your Health with Sinclair Kennally

Today on Midlife Conversations, I've got one of my very favorite people, my friend Sinclair Canali. And if you've heard her name before, it's because you might have heard our sales podcast at one time together. She's a good friend of mine. She is wicked smart in the health space. She's trained traditionally as a naturopath, but she has become a extremely well known expert in the space of liver and toxicity. Things that are going in our bodies that are causing root cause of other things. She, she is fascinating. I have learned so much from her. So today we are going to be talking all about liver. And don't jump off because liver is important. This is determining so much about our health. You are going to have a lot of awareness with this conversation today. I can't wait to dive in with her. Hi Sinclair, thanks for being here.

Hi honey. It is my pleasure. I can't wait to do this with you.

Ok, first, how does one get so interested in the liver? Where does that even come from? How did you become an expert of liver? Like, right, it's so random sounding, very random.

No, the short answer is the hard way. Like my liver was a huge issue and I didn't understand that that's what was keeping me from getting well from all these other exposures. I've been exposed to mold as a kid and as a teenager and in my 20s repeatedly and it had totally tanked my health. It had shut down my liver. It left me open to Lyme disease and co infections and you know, I got diagnosed with fibromyalgia. A ton of mental health diagnoses that were wrong. You know, lots of misdiagnoses along way. And the truth was my liver was just totally overloaded from what I'd been exposed to. And as soon as I figured out how to deal with that, that's when my life got better.

Okay, so most of us don't really hear about liver until you've got a red flag on your blood work, right? You do, you have blood work and your doctor says you've got elevated liver enzymes or you've got elevated liver numbers. And we don't traditionally know what that means. And what many doctors will just say is, oh, well, number one, are you drinking? And if you're drinking, stop. And, and if you're not drinking, what are your supplements? What medications are you taking? They could be hard on your liver. That's about the scope of what I've known about liver.

So, yeah.

What got me more interested?

Oh, go ahead.

So what got me more Interested was I all of a sudden had these high elevated liver numbers and I didn't understand why.

Yeah, yeah. And here's two statistics that are going to blow your mind. Okay. The first is your liver can be down to 60% efficiency before it ever tells you that it's struggling on your traditional.

Whoa, whoa.

So you can be down to almost half of your functioning, which is really important to understand because your liver is actually doing over 500 jobs for your body. It's not just processing alcohol and whatever toxins you're dealing with every day. It also is playing a health in your digestion. It's crucial for digesting sugar, any kind of carbohydrate, actually. Your proteins, your fats, your skin health, your immune system, hormones and reproductive health all rely on the liver to convert your hormones. Get out old hormones and process those out. If you can't, if you don't have a well functioning liver, you could have estrogen dominance.

Wow.

Weight gain, your metabolism can be in the toilet. And.

Okay, I'm going to ask some really basic questions now because I know people listening are not going to know this because not everybody got an A in biology. And I want to make sure anatomy and I want to make sure we're all understanding the same things. Okay. Sometimes people get liver and kidneys confused. Let's start with that. What's, what does a liver do that other organs do not?

Oh, it's a great question. So your liver is, let's start with where it is. It's on the upper right side of your torso. So like for women, it's right under your right breast and it's a big boy, it's a big triangle. It comes, you know, the, the point of it is all the way over across your midline. Then it wraps around the body. It's the biggest traditional organ in your body.

Okay.

And at any given point, it has 13% of your blood for your entire body in the liver. Getting processed right now.

Wow.

It's working so hard for you and it's really smart. It actually does up to 200 jobs at one time for you. And it really what I have come to understand more and more over the years, it's so fascinating to me. Your liver is actually one of the biggest factors in determining how fast you age.

Really?

Oh, yeah. So the healthier your liver and the more you work to like release its burden, the more it can keep up with processing your proteins. And with all this anti aging work that your body's trying to do system wide, not to mention maintaining A healthy metabolism, maintaining your energy and supporting and protecting your immune system. So this is crucial. And one of the earliest signs of being, of having a liver overloaded is brain fog and fatigue and irritability, stability. So wait a minute, it's also affecting your emotions, your temperament, and even your mental state.

Okay, so what damages our liver?

A lot of things. So really when you think about it. So the liver's job is to process out waste. Okay, so if your circulatory system, your blood is the faucets of the body, I'm going to send out nutrients, I'm going to send out minerals, you know, I'm going to send out everything into the body that needs to. Then your lymph is going to collect the waste and it's like the drains of the body. Okay, so it gets rid of the metabolic waste, the toxins that have built up in the tissues, all the yucky microbes that need to be flushed out that are pathogenic, and then those have to get dumped and into the liver to get processed. So your liver is cleaning your blood, but your liver is cleaning out all the waste from the lymphatic system. So that means the liver is the one that's deciding should the waste go out through the kidneys or the waste go out through the bowel bowels.

Okay, so, okay, so basically, are you going to pee it out or are you going to poop it out or are you going to sweat it out? I would imagine too, like there's a lot of ways we can get rid of things.

Exactly.

So it's deciding, but the liver is.

Working the hardest to do that job. And the liver also knows, hey, the kidneys are not as resilient as the bowels are. So we need to protect the kidneys at all costs and only send certain toxins through the kidneys at certain levels as much as possible should be going out through the bile, which is a gross sounding word, I know, but if that's really is your liquid gold detergent from your body body and your liver makes it, and then it goes into your gallbladder that holds it like a purse. And then every time you eat, your gallbladder lets go out of the purse, some of this bile in to meet the stomach acid and the food from the stomach to alkalize all that stomach acid to protect your small intestine and then send toxins out through your poop.

Got it. So if it's not working correctly, you're not going to produce the right bile and then it's not going to your. The whole waste problem breaks down everything.

Exactly it. And I call bile your liquid gold detergent because it's super expensive for your body to make. So your liver wants to keep recycling bile salts. It actually wants to recycle over 95% of your bile salts because it costs so much energy. The problem is we're now exposed to toxins all the time. Toxins are synthetic. They're industrial chemicals, or they're heavy metals from deep within the earth's crust that we didn't evolve with, you know, like aluminum, mercury from your fillings or in fish, you know, all these things. Moms grew up with lead, you know, all these things. So we. We expose, especially here in Southern California, a lot of cadmium, you know, from gas and air pollution. So all of this builds up and bile salts are suspended very delicately in chem, like, liquid form. Very delicate chemistry. So as soon as a synthetic chemical comes in and goes, oh, wait a minute, I'm going to come into contact with this bile, and the liver is like, oh, great, I'm going to try to send these toxic metabolites out through the b. Bile. But so many of those can actually drop bile out of liquid form into solid form. So you actually get toxic, sluggish, viscous, sticky bile in the 2000 miles of bile ducts in the liver. So start visualizing, like a healthy liver is this really big triangle, right? And it's got a biliary tree in it and actually has really delicate branches at the top, and it all drains out through this big trunk. But if those really delicate branches are full of sticky bile and it's not flowing correctly because of toxins, oh, my gosh, what else is happening? Well, it means that you're not cleaning your blood efficiently. It means that estrogen and other hormones are building up. You're not converting T4 to T3 correctly for your thyroid, which is supposed to happen in the liver, right? So everything backs up, okay? Excess weight, you slow down, you have no energy, you get cranky, all the things.

And then.

So.

And then what happens is you have all these things going on, and then you go to the doctor and they give you a pill for it, which then further affects your liver.

That's right, yeah. Drugs are super hard on the liver.

So let's talk about that. Like, what are. So let's start with alcohol. What is alcohol doing to our liver when we drink that?

Okay, so there's a couple of things. Like, first of all, the alcohol itself is hard for the liver to process. And also the Sugar in alcohol is super hard for the liver to process.

Not just the alcohol, it's the sugar and the alcohol in it.

Okay, right, exactly.

Sugar in general, hard to process by Liverpool.

Yeah, this is really interesting. So the fructose is actually harder for the liver to process because fructose can only be processed in the liver. So we think it's healthier, but it's.

Actually because we think it's further down. It's, it's slowing down because it goes through your liver, but it's actually creating a bigger issue. So that's where fruit becomes an issue there.

Yeah. So we want to be, pay attention to our glycemic index for fruit, you know, be, you know, leaning on those berries, those lower sugar fruits, or just be conscious of your portion size, you know, because fructose is actually the most aging of all sugars. And a big part of that is because it's so hard on the liver.

So that's. Okay, so help me with this one because my next question then is, well, like, I eat a lot of fruit. I believe in low glycemic fruit. But now you said fructose is aging, so explain that because there's also antioxidants and amazing nutrients and fruit. So where's the fine line there?

Totally. It just costs the liver a lot of energy and there are inflammatory aspects. So a healthy liver, say you've done a liver cleanse, okay. So you do them a couple of times a year, or people who have been really sick, you know, with chronic conditions, chronic gut issues, chronic fatigue issues. I say think about liver cleanses in terms of a series and to help your liver catch up. Once you're healthy, fruit is fantastic. You can just use that as maintenance. But you might actually not be somebody that does so well with fruit. If you're already chronically fatigued, if your liver is already overloaded, if you're already struggling with weight, et cetera, et cetera.

So the reason alcohol is not advised for liver is it's just, it's hard for the liver to process. So, like, I know when you, when somebody has hepatitis, for example, and a lot of times that comes from alcohol, what is actually happening there? What is it doing?

Well, just think about it. Like, I, I want to keep this, like, really simple in terms of, like, practical application here. So basically, hepatitis is like asking your liver to function with one hand behind its back.

Okay.

And it's already overloaded in a day and age where every air freshener, every laundry, you know, bounce, she, every, you know, all the Toxins in your tap water, in your Starbucks coffee are already asking your liver to work hard, and you have a backlog of toxins. And then you add hepatitis, which is already lowering your functionality.

I see.

And your liver is not able to really tell you on traditional labs just how hard it's working.

Okay.

You don't actually even realize how impaired it is until it's too late.

So then let's talk about like, NSAIDs, because they always say, like, NSAIDs are terrible for your liver. What's happening there?

Yeah. So NSAIDs are really interesting to me. How do I say this in a way where we don't go down too big a rabbit hole here? I was thinking about it like this. So non steroidal anti inflammatory Drugs, that's what NSAIDs are, are really hard on the liver because they actually can create acute hepatitis, like within one to three months. Months. The medication. Yeah. So liver injury caused by typical NSAIDs is, you know, people say that it's statistically insignificant, but actually when you look at the data, it's affecting a far bigger part of the population.

This is what, this is my whole issue right now with, with the way that so much medicine is positioned to us. Okay. So, like, I'm 51 years old and I'm. I'm for the first time understanding from what you're explaining what our liver is actually truly doing. What I've heard before from a doctor is here's a prescription for a strong nsaid. It's hard on your liver. That's all we hear. It's hard on your liver. I don't know what that means. But if they were to say, here's a prescription for NSAIDs, if you take. Could create an issue with your liver and your liver, if there's an issue with your liver will not be able to clear out other toxins, therefore you will rapidly age. Like that to me is like, I don't want pensads now. Like, but that's not how it's being explained to us. We're just told it's hard on our liver. And I think a lot of people didn't understand or I didn't understand what that fully meant.

Yeah. So what they're looking at is like an extreme range of like, hepatotoxicity, which just means, hey, my liver's really in danger here. And they're looking like, oh, your liver shut down enough because of NSAIDs that you ended up in the hospital. But there's so many shades of gray to this before that. That actually can destroy somebody's. Quality of life. Okay, not the least of which is fatigue. Your, you know, your brain stopping functioning correctly. Your, your digestion is not correctly functioning because it needs bile flow moving with ease. So you're constipated, you're overloaded, you're bloated, you don't feel like yourself. And they're like, well, yeah, your NSAIDs are hard on your liver, but you didn't end up in the hospital. But wait a minute, your entire quality of life is affected. So so many cases with western medicine are frustrating for me because it's almost like they're waiting for you to get sick enough to finally apply a label to you. But your quality of life has been gone for quite some time before you finally arrive at that. So NSAIDs to me rarely have an, an easy to justify trade off. Some of us have to take them for short periods of time.

Yeah, and I took into methacin for my back and I, and I, I always heard that it's hard on your liver. I didn't fully, until this conversation, I really don't, did not understand exactly what that meant, like hard on my liver. But that makes me really wish I never had taken them at all because who knows what else that contributes to.

Well, there's more factors to consider about this too. So as women, this is much more complex for us because of our reproductive hormones. And if your liver gets slowed down even a little bit by nsaids, suddenly you have really dysregulated estrogen. And what your body decides to do to compensate for that is anybody's guess based on a number of other factors that are very specific to you. So that can be a really a big issue as well. And also liver issues are driving most skin issues and people don't realize it.

Like, what kind of skin issues? Tell me more.

Psoriasis, eczema, aging too quickly. People blame, you know, their cycle and hormones for acne. Like, oh, you know, I have cystic acne. It's driven by hormones at any stage of a woman's life. But what you don't understand is your hormone dysregulation is most likely driven by, and in part, if not completely by your liver issues.

Wow, okay. How do you start to. Well, actually, before I ask this question, this might be a completely random, weird question, but right now it's super popular. People doing carnivore diet, needing organs, and everyone's eating liver. Is there any correlation there? Like, why do people, why is it being said to eat liver that that's healthy? Does that have Anything to do with how liver function is in our body or completely unrelated.

You know, I, I think the carnivore diet's really interesting. One of the reasons why it's working so well for people is it's removing irritants and things that ferment easily in a highly dysregulated gut. And if you prepare, you know, pro animal based protein correctly, it'll be very low histamine. So people who have histamine sensitivities can also get some serious relief from it. So for many people they're finding like major relief because that makes sense with.

The eating more protein. But why are they eating liver? They're eating raw liver.

Yeah, they're really. Well, I mean the liver king also really popularized that. That guy is a great salesman. He had to build a brand. And so that's, that's part of what's going on there. I don't actually recommend eating large amounts of organs. It should be like a small part of your diet. And I think people overemphasizing that can get into some dangerous territory with vitamin A toxicity and some other issues. So I would say in moderation, guys.

But eating liver doesn't actually improve your liver function, if that's what I guess what I'm asking there.

Okay, that's a great question. So yes, it actually can in moderation. So in general you could think about the, the principle from this, you know, ancestral way of eating is like supports like, so if you have, if your kidneys are struggling, you could eat kidneys. If you have thyroid issues, you could eat desiccated thyroid. If you have liver issues, you could eat. As long as it's grass fed, grass finish, you could eat, you know, grasso aggressive.

Is that kind of like the homeopathic route? Like if you think about how you would take a little bit of something to help that get better.

And it's also literally the components of the tissues themselves helps the body to rebuild faster.

Okay, got it.

You know, we're not that dissimilar to the animals that we eat.

So how do we, if it's not showing up in a blood test until it's already 60% and you don't already know, how do we make sure we have good liver? I mean, obviously you could say we won't drink alcohol, we won't take NSAIDs, but do all supplements affect our liver? Like we know fructose does, like what, how should we be eating to manage this? And what do we need to be looking for?

Yeah, so I think that some of this can be done through diet and just being thoughtful about your sugar intake and thoughtful about your alcohol intake. But really most of us actually need to offload our, our toxic body burden to give the liver a chance. Like the whole point. If you can cleanse your liver and do some deep work there and really support the live and doing what it wants to do anyway, like we're never going to outsmart the body. This is not about overriding the body. Of course your liver already knows how to desox or you'd be dead. This is about doing the catch up work because 80% of women over 40 have toxic sluggish bile. Gosh, 80% of women over 40 are struggling with an underperforming liver.

Okay, so what happens? Okay, I'm going to go to my.

There's a stage. Yeah, so there's a stage, just to answer your question of catch up that we need to do.

Right.

And then after that we think about, you know, just ongoing maintenance.

Okay, so for the catch up, what else is affecting? Because I know like with, with me that the conversation that you and I have had is here I went through this whole series of a gut health problem and actually learning that I had parasites. How is that also affecting your liver? Is it because your liver is trying to clean that stuff out?

Yeah. So think about it this way. Where there's toxins, there's parasites. And so if your liver is overloaded, guaranteed you have parasites. So yeah. And where. So and if your liver is overloaded, chances are not only do you have toxic sluggish bio, but you have cholesterol based stones forming that are not dense enough to show up in imaging.

Is that cholesterol based stones? Is that affecting your actual cholesterols or something different?

Yeah, so you would see elevated cholesterol with that, but it's really more like, you know, a sign that there's a fire. It's not the fire itself. It's like the fireman coming to put out the fire, you know, so where there's toxins, there's parasites and where there's toxins, there's stagnation and you know, a sluggish, overloaded liver. So it all fits together in a very cranky nest.

So should everybody be doing a liver cleanse? Like how do we know? How do we know? Like that is. How do you even test for that? Should everybody be doing that? What do you actually. What should people be doing?

It's a great question. So rather than waiting for traditional labs to catch up for you, I always go to the symptomology first and let that decide. So based on your health goals and how you feel, would you benefit from a liver cleanse? Because the labs are just not going to give you all the information that you want. I would love for them to, and I actually think that soon that they will. You know, we're progressing so quickly in terms of, you know, consumer available health tech. I'm very optimistic about that. It's just not there yet. So the where I would go to is the symptomology. Do you have gas? Do you have bloating? Do you have skin blemishes? Do you feel like you're aging too quickly? I knew I was aging and fast forward and I was watching people around me age too fast too, but I knew at a gut level, like, something is wrong, you know? Do you tend towards excess weight? Do you have belly bloat? Do you tend towards what we call cortisol belly? It's not just about the stress hormone cortisol. It's also about liver function. Do you have lymph buildup? Do you have an armpit puff instead of an armpit? Does that make sense? Yeah.

Instead of an armpit.

Yeah. Do you have excess fluid? And you're like, is this fat? Is it fluid? It feels like I have both. That's a huge sign because your body will add more lymph fluid into the system to try to dilute the toxins and try to encourage flushing out when your liver isn't functioning well. For example, if someone actually has something as advanced as cirrhosis of the liver, you can have up to 30 times the healthy amount of lymph fluid in your body.

Wow.

For many of us, it's not. It's not that extreme. It's more shades of gray, like, oh, I just puff. I've got, you know that bra strap puff in the back? Yeah, that's another one.

Oh, wow. Okay. So this is where it gets a little confusing. So. And I want to. And I'm guilty of confusing people probably on my podcast here, because I. I bring in so many different topics and it gets hard to know where to start. So, for instance, so for most people listening, we're in midlife life, right? And we have majority women listening right now. Men, too, but mostly women listening. So we've. We've kind of. We've learned that just because we feel tired or low energy or foggy head or whatever, it's not just our age. It's not just perimenopause or menopause, we have all these different layers. Like, okay, is it our hormones? But now we learned there was all these other layers. Like, is it our gut health? Is it mold poisoning? Is it heavy metals? Is it our liver? Like, how do you know where to start? Like, it gets confusing. Like, which things should we be checking first?

Yeah, it's frustrating, isn't it? So it's a great question because a lot of these symptoms do overlap. So let's finish the list of liver symptoms, because to me, one or two symptoms, not a red flag. You know, if you have several symptoms now I'm paying much closer attention. You know, so difficulty sleeping, especially if you wake up between 1 and 3am, compromised immune system. You get sick often. Difficulty digesting fats, huge red flag.

Wait, talk about that. Say what that means. How do you know you have difficulty digesting fats if you don't do well.

With, like, fatty cuts of meat? They just feel like they sit or, you know, even like salad dressing. Like, oh, I don't want too much on there because I just won't feel well afterwards. People who have difficulty digesting fats know exactly what I'm talking about. Like, oh, not too much cheese or not too much butter because I won't feel well afterwards. Okay? They think of themselves like, oh, I just need to eat light. But what you're really expressing is the fact that your bile is not moving.

Wow. Okay, so difficulty sleeping, compromised immune, difficulty adjusting fats. What else?

Histamine sensitivities. So that could be seasonal allergies. It could be sensitivity to mold. It could be, you know, like high histamine foods, like citrus. Oh, I'll, I'll flush if I eat a lot of citrus or peppers or things like that. Skin irritation, chemical sensitivities. That's a big one. Quick to anger, easily irritated or overwhelmed. PMS and menstrual issues, major.

Well, this is all me. I mean, now I'm like, do I need a liver? I guess I need a liver cleanse like you just described me.

I know, constipation or diarrhea, indigestion, feeling sluggish, dark circles under the eyes. That's a huge one. And yes, yellow tinged skin, that's also a huge thing.

Okay, okay, so check, check, check. Other than like four of those, maybe, but still a lot of them. So again, I would have said okay, gut. Like, so. So how do you know is it a liver thing or gut? Because you could say the same thing about gut health. Right? Like that you would. This could be lead. All that too.

That's True. So if you have a liver issue, you have a gut issue.

So they go together. You have to do. How do you know what to treat first? Or can you do them both at the same time?

That's a great question. People ask me that all the time. The truth is, whatever you're willing to start with is a great start. So people often come into, like, our rapid liver reset course because they find us that way. And then they'll go do deeper gut work afterwards because the liver is finally functioning enough that. Because the liver is up to. Upstream of the small intestine.

Okay.

Bloating, constipation, you know, sibo overgrowth, things like that, you need to work on your liver so that you can finally resolve this stuff.

Okay. So if you. But you can. If you. If you've already. If you're listening to this and you've started on gut first, for example, like, for me, right now, I'm obviously doing a whole gut protocol, so I would do a liver after that. Then if you've started there, because there's no right or wrong, or could you do them at the same time?

Yeah, it's a great question. So if people come to us for gut health issues, we'll get them started with. With, you know, calming down the gut. We'll get into the parasite work, and then we'll slide in a liver cleanse and then maybe more parasite work and then another liver cleanse and then another liver cleanse.

Makes sense.

Okay. Kind of tag team. Okay.

So there's no.

There's not taking off layers of stagnation in each area, but it sounds like.

A liver cleanse might even be easier than going after all the parasites and stuff, because that's much more. Or is it the same difference?

Well, it will also. Yeah. So if you're stuck in on a parasite journey and you're like, when is. Will this be over? You need to do some liver work because it will help you break through that plateau and finish it up.

Okay, that makes sense.

Awesome question. This is.

This is fascinating. I honestly never understood. I mean, the most I knew about liver was that people are eating it now. I didn't really fully understand how and what. So what's interesting about Sinclair, she really does deal with chronic illness, and it's. It's interesting that she's really doubled down on liver function because she's realized that so many roots of all these chronic illnesses have been the liver. So I love that you've sort of crossed over into the aging realm and prevention. Because if we can tackle this and get this healthy first, we might not have all these other problems.

That's exactly it. And, and I really want to emphasize your body knows how to do this. You know, your liver is so smart and capable and extremely resilient. So it's just living in a very strange day and age where our food, air and water is loaded with the stuff that the liver didn't evolve to deal with. So we just need to do some catch up work, that's all. And we're going to always work with the body, not override the body. And you will feel the benefits of that. So be really discerning about who you work with to support the liver. Because we never want to ignore what the liver knows how to do. We just want to support it to do what it already knows how to do.

So I know that my listeners are going to have a lot of questions. I'm sure I'm gonna have a million more this afternoon as I'm like processing what we just talked about. So we might have to do a little live masterclass. Are you game? So we can get everybody?

Yeah, totally. Absolutely.

Q and A. Okay, so if you have questions, stand by. We're going to figure out a way to get you on to listen to by the time this airs. We're going to have an actual place for you to go listen in and actually get your questions answered here. So thank you so much, Sinclair, for being here today. This was great. Thank you.

Oh, so much fun. Thank you for being such an advocate for women. I really love that about you.