The Connection Between Liver-Gallbladder And Hormones

Introduction and guest welcome 0:00

Hi, ladies. Welcome back to Mastering Your Menopause Transition Summit 2.0. I'm your host Dr. Sharon Stills,as always, a pleasure to be here with you and spend some time educating you about this very important time of your hormonal journey. And today, we are going to talk about something very important that I'm very passionate about, your liver and your gall bladder and why they are so intimately involved with your health and your hormones. And I've got a very special treat because I've got Dr. David Jockers here with me.

I'm like a fan girl myself, so I'm super excited. He runs one of the most popularnatural health websites, drjockers.com I'm sure many of you know who he is. He's a bestselling author. He's an expert in ketosis and brain health and inflammation and functional nutrition. He's got adorable children and a beautiful family, and he's been gracious enough to come spend some of his time with us today in his very busy schedule and help educate you on what you need to know about your gallbladder and your liver.

So thank you for being here. Welcome to the summit. Thanks so much, Dr. Stills. Great to be on with you here. Yes. Yes. So I guess first question is justhow did you become doctor Jockers? Like what's your journey? How did you get into natural health and healing and become so passionate about it? Well, you know, growing up, my mom actually was studying to become a naturopath. She was a nurse first. Then she studied to become a massage therapist and a midwife and eventually a natural path. And so she was experimenting with her kids, of course, with all different types of diets.

And, you know, in the nineties, macrobiotic diet was was a popular one. So she had us on that and it was like lima beans and kale and things like that. And I always I rebelled, all of us, all my brothers, sisters, we rebelled against it. But my mom really linked my appearance in my performance to the food that I ate. So I was an athlete growing up. So she said, you know, you need to eat this kale because it's going to help you have more energy. And she would say things like, my older brother had a lot of acne.

She said that's because she's eating too much sugar. And so I started realizing, okay, sugar, he's eating these processed chocolate bars. Oh, I don't want acne. So I'm not going to eat so much of those. Or maybe not.

Dr. Jockers' health journey 2:25

Maybe I'll avoid them and I'll eat more of this kale because I want to be better as an athlete. And so it was just kind of built into my, you know, my upbringing. And then I became actually became a personal trainer in my early twenties. I was really into fitness and I developed irritable bowel syndrome and I was eating like six meals a day, 5000 calories to try to bulk up. Right. And have the look that I wanted. And I've always been a thinner individual. And so I thought I needed to do that. And that put just so much stress on my gut that I developed irritable bowel and I had, you know, tremendous cramping, bloating, pain in my gut.

I ended up losing £20 over about a six month period of time that I was I was really dealing with that. And that was when I discovered more nutrition changes. You know, I thought I was living a healthy lifestyle. I was eating better than most of the people that I knew. But I realized, wow, I'm eating too much and I'm eating all of these chemicals. And chemically laden and processed foods and things like that. And so I started making diet changes and took out grains, went on a lower carbohydrate style diet, more of like a real food diet. And, you know, and then I also noticed that I had natural satiety and I had started graduate school and I had 7 a.m.

classes and I wasn't hungry in the morning. And I realized if I just hydrate, well, I'm not hungry until probably 2:00 in the afternoon. And I had never heard the term intermittent fasting, but this is what I was doing. I ended up gaining, getting the weight back, having better energy, mental clarity than I had ever had. And I went to the top of my class in graduate school and I, you know, graduate school. I went to that because I ran into some chiropractors at the gym that I was a personal trainer at.

And they said, you know, you'd be really interested. You you should look into this. And it made a lot of sense. And so that's when I started going. I made plans to go into chiropractic school and I was able to overcome my own health issues, go to the top of my class and, you know, just really loved fell in love with learning, anatomy, physiology, biochemistry. I later opened a clinic, but, you know, my passion has really been creating content and education. And so I started doing this sort of early, you know, pretty early, I guess you could say probably 2008, 2009.

And it took on a life of its own. And, you know, now, at this point, I sold my clinic years ago, and I'm just really focusing on creating the world's best natural health content to help people overcome, you know, every kind of health condition and empower people to take back control of their health. And I love that. And you're doing an amazing job. I have patients who come and they are finding all sorts of stuff on the web. And it's nice when they say, like, I saw this on Dr. Jackass site and I can go, Oh, good.

Okay, so I know you got good information we can trust and we don't have to go around what you just read. And I was laughing when you're talking about your mom because I was that mom to my kids, making them try everything and go through everything. And I'm sure some of you listening have done the same to your kids. And there's always that rebellion stage and then you kind of are grateful you had that upbringing come back around. So thanks for sharing that with us. And so let's just jump in the liver and the gallbladder.

I think we talk a lot about the liver and I wanted to include the gallbladder because I feel like it's one of those organs that is so important and doesn't get enough airtime. And so I guess just for starters, what do you see as the major roles like why is the liver so important? Why is the gallbladder so important? And how does that tie back to women's health for sure? Well, you know, the liver, I think most people know it as major organ system that deactivates toxins. And one of the common fallacies a lot of people think we store toxins in our liver.

We don't we store toxins in our fat cells. The liver is what deactivates toxins takes it from a form that's potentially dangerous for our body. And eventually the goal is to turn into a form that we can excrete through, you know, the lower weight molecules most acute well will release typically through our sweat or through respiration or through urination, whereas a larger molecules we're going to put into our bile oil and release through our bile. And I'll come back to the point of bile, but that's really one of the main things that the liver does.

But it really works a lot with blood sugar stability. You know, it releases sugar at times when we need more sugar, it creates ketones which are these water soluble molecules from fat that can cross the blood brain barrier because we can actually burn fatty acids for fuel in our brains. So in times of famine, like if we're fasting, if we just don't have enough food, the liver will create these ketones which can cross the blood brain barrier and fuel the brain. It also helps to activate certain hormones like thyroid hormone, takes the inactive form, helps form it into the active form of thyroid hormone.

So so many different things produces a lot of different proteins that help run and regulate our body. So, so many different functions, critically vital organ. And for having dysfunction in our liver, it's going to affect all different systems of our body. And, you know, it's it's one of the major factors we see in our society today. It's something that, you know, I know, you know, as natural passed, if we're dealing with people with autoimmune conditions, chronic inflammatory conditions, neurodegenerative conditions, we always have to look at the liver because if the liver is not doing its job well, then all the systems of the body are going to start to break down.

So liver supercritical coming back to this idea of bile, which is really the connection between the liver and the gallbladder, because the gallbladder is really a storage. It's a it's like a pouch of the liver. It's an it's it's almost like a a the same organ in a sense. Right? But the liver is what actually produces bile.

Why the liver and gallbladder matter 8:12

So livers, the liver cells are parasites are creating the bile. The gall bladder is storing the bile in most people. When we think about bile, the main function of bile though has multiple is to a more suffi fat. So when we consume food, let's say we consume an avocado. There's a lot of fat in there. We've got to a more severe meaning break it into smaller components and kind of surround it with in a sense, bile is kind of like soap, right? So if we're trying to get grease off a pan, we got to use the soap to get in there right and start to break it down to get around all of those little grease particles to get it off.

It's kind of the same thing because basically like a soap in our system that that helps to modify the fats so and break it into smaller components that we can then absorb and utilize for energy and also obviously critical for fat soluble nutrients like vitamin A, D, vitamin E, vitamin K, all those are fat soluble nutrients. We need good bile flow in order to break down the fats and absorb these critical fat soluble nutrients. But on top of that bile, which again is produced by the liver. But but and secreted by the liver on a continual basis, rates continually being secreted, but in small amounts in the bar and then the gallbladder has is where we store it.

So when we take in the large bolus of fat from our diet, it's releasing, it's triggering the release of that bile into the small intestine and the dynamics there are important because normally when we eat food, we produce stomach acid. So in our stomach we want it to be very, very acidic. When we're eating meals at rest, the piece of our stomach is roughly 3 to 3.5, which is very acidic. If you remember back to chemistry class neutral is seven and then anything below that is acidic, anything above seven is alkaline.

And so the stomach, the environment is always acidic. But in order to break down particularly like hard proteins, like, let's say a steak, we really need to produce a lot of stomach acid. We need to get that at that down a roughly around 1.5 to 2.2 in that range, which is very energy demanding. So it takes energy. This is why we need to be we should be in a relaxed state. Right. As as a is a helpful strategy. We want to be in a relaxed state in order to eat because we need to really be able to produce.

We need to put our energy, divert our energy into into a production of these digestive juices so the stomach acid gets in there, helps to break down the proteins, helps to allow us to absorb certain nutrients. And then the partially digested food from the stomach moves into the small intestine that partially digested food we call a bolus. Since the bolus as it starts to move into the small intestine, it hits certain receptors in the small intestine that trigger the release of bile from the gallbladder.

So now the bile comes out and the bio's very alkalis. So we have this acidic bolus, the stomach needs to be acidic, the small intestine needs to be alkaline in the small intestine. So the bile comes out to help alkalis the environment and to help a more supply the fats bile also has a very important role in blood sugar stabilization, believe or not, to help stabilize blood sugar as well. And when it gets in there, that's important because there are certain bacteria, for example, that we might have in our mouth or that we get from the food that we're consuming that don't they die in the in the acid?

So the acid kills off a lot of them. But some of them actually love acid, but they don't like an alkaline environment. So the ones that love acid are survived, but they get into the small intestine. Now the bile helps reduce those. And that's important because we really want the majority of the bacteria that are in our microbiome, that are in our intestines, which are very important to be mostly in the large intestine. Right. So that it's it's the distal part of our intestines or, you know, in a sense, you get the small intestine first, then later in the in large intestine.

But if we don't produce enough stomach acid and enough bile, then we end up not being able to sterilize the food properly. And that can lead to an overgrowth of bacteria and other microbes in the small intestine, which can start to purify, which basically could start to ferment food earlier than they than it should be, which can cause toxic byproducts, cause nutrient malabsorption issues, a lot of bloating, gas, constipation, diarrhea, all the different components that go along with dysbiosis and digestive health disorders.

You know, one of the conditions that we call we without that that is associated with that is called small intestinal bacterial overgrowth SIBO. There's also another one called small intestinal fungal overgrowth. We shouldn't have an overgrowth of these microbes in the small intestine and being able to produce and release enough bile plays a big role with keeping that small intestine really healthy and obviously being able to absorb the key nutrients that we need. So, you know, supercritical, liver, gallbladder, very, very important.

And we're also releasing in that bile, we're also releasing a lot of the larger toxins that we're trying to get rid of. Again, small, lightweight toxins that are deactivated by the liver. We're usually releasing through respiration, perspiration or urination. And then the larger molecules that are maybe more fat soluble, we're releasing those through the bile and into the feces and piles. What gives your stool the brown color? So we're releasing that, you know, bowels coming out and, and toxins are being released through that. Mm.

I love they, it tied it together with the stomach acid because that's a soap box. I always stand upon so many issues that you're experiencing, like you were saying, nausea, constipation, diarrhea. If you just get the bile flowing in the acid, we're always about being alkaline, which is important, but we need to be acidic in the right places. And the stomach acidity, which I find in practice, is almost always diminished. And it used to be like over 30 over 40, but now I see it younger and younger and younger that we just are not producing stomach acid like we need to be so severe.

And if we don't produce enough acid from the stomach, then we're not going to get the right bile release. We're also not not going to get the right bicarbonate and digestive enzyme release from the pancreas because the bicarbonate and the bile work together to bring the patch up to help alkalis that small intestinal environment. But it's like, you know, it's almost like a slinky. You have to prime the slinky, right? You got to push it down real good in order for it to propel itself. You know, if you're trying to get it up to the next step, if you only, you know, slightly prime it, it's not going to have enough strength to move up.

Well, it's kind of the same thing. If we don't produce enough acid, we're not going to get the bile and the pancreatic enzyme release to really be able to digest our food effectively. Exactly. You have to you have to have the acidity to get the alkalinity. It's like slinky. I like that. I remember the slinky set. So for the women listening. Anything else you'd like to add in? Like how they would know that their liver or their bile production is is low or congested and signs and symptoms they can look for to say, aha, that's me for sure.

Well, you know, you mention a few of them. Nausea would be one if your stools are floating. So if you're noticing light color, pale colored stools that are floating, that can become an issue. If you're noticing pain in your upper right quadrant of your abdomen, that's kind of that liver gallbladder area. And a referral point would be between your shoulder blades or right under your right shoulder blade. Those are common referral points. So those regions, even IT band syndrome, which is your Ilio tibial band, even that area has been shown to be a referral point.

Not always. You know, sometimes it can be a sports injury or something like that, but oftentimes there's issues liver, gallbladder that are related to that. It bands, even the kind of web in between your thumb and your first finger. That also can be a referral point. So if you're noticing if you kind of massage in there, right, the web in between your thumb and your first finger nursing just wow, that's really painful. That right there can be a sign that that potentially you have an issue there and then, you know, other symptoms you might notice like a yellowing of your skin that would be associated with bile that's not being metabolized properly.

We call that condition jaundice. Some people notice yellowing in their eyes. So that can be an issue. A lot of skin issues, acne, rosacea, eczema can be associated with liver gallbladder issues. So that's another one constipation, diarrhea, bloating, all the different digestive issues. We definitely want to look at liver, gallbladder. Usually there's a component of that. If it's not the main driver of it, it's still being affected and need some support. So those are probably the most common things that you'll see.

And pretty much scans the whole arena of things that you go to see your doctor for. And you were reminding that I remember I was in traffic medical school many, many years ago and they said whenever anyone comes in, they just fix the liver. And 80 to 90% of the time you're going to fix their their problems. And it sort of has held true after all these years. So so we can look for signs and symptoms. But what about lab testing? Like what should the listeners? Because a lot of people go to the doctor and they just get a comprehensive metabolic panel and they're told their liver enzymes are fine and they think their livers of their liver is fine.

So what else could they be jotting down to ask their doctor so they can know better what's going on with their lives? Yeah. Any time that you get lab work done, always make sure that they're testing your liver enzymes. And the key liver enzymes are there's four key ones that you want to get tested. A lot of times only test two of them, two or three of them. One of them is AZT, the other is a RLT. Then the two other are alkaline phosphatase or ALK p. Sometimes it can be, you know, kind of shortened to alkaline phosphatase and then g g t all right.

So those are the key for a T alkaline phosphatase and T and so normally for a T, a, a, l, t and GTI,

Signs of liver and bile dysfunction 18:38

you want the range to be roughly between ten and 25, somewhere in that range. So if it's under ten, if you see all of them under ten, then that's an indication oftentimes of ab6 deficiency because you need B six to produce these liver enzymes. In some cases, you know, you might be protein deficient, you might have silica. You know, for some people, celiac disease is not not breaking down on protein. That can be a player there. But sometimes there's magnesium issues. But most of the time, especially of liver issues, you're going to notice higher liver enzymes up over 25.

And so that's a sign that there's stress on the liver and then you can look at different patterns. So if a l t let's say, you know, here's a, here's a case study. For example, let's say you're AZT is 22, so it's within range and then Alt is 35, right? It's way higher than than range K not high enough to where they're going to say, oh, your fatty liver. Yeah, you know you have a hepatitis kind of issue and they'll just be like, Oh, we should watch that. While when Alt is much higher than AZT, it's a sign that there's there's pretty significant inflammation and it's affecting the liver if alt is within range, but AZT is high.

So if you if you're seeing both of them high, typically it's associated with liver issues. If you're seeing just Asti and not alt, then usually it's a sign of inflammation oftentimes in the heart. So sometimes muscles, kidneys could be another area of the body. All right. And then g g t really plays a role. So GTI is higher than alt and asti. So oftentimes telling us that there's an issue going on in the biliary tree. And what that means is you have your bile ducts, right? So you have in a sense kind of like a tubing system within your liver and your gallbladder that helps drive the bile around.

And so what your bile ducts can get congested and when the bile is not moving well, when it's really, really sluggish, that can congest the bile ducts. They can also become scarred and inflamed as well. And so almost like blacking out the arteries, they can get plaque in the bile ducts and then you can also have stones where they there's actual stone formation with the with the gallbladder or I'm sorry, with the bile. We call that gallstones. And so all of those can cause a lot of issues in that biliary tree.

And typically what we'll see is alt behind or B beer or high with that. And also alkaline phosphatase oftentimes will be high when we're seeing stones as well. The alkaline phosphatase, if that's low, oftentimes related to zinc, not producing enough zinc or not getting enough zinc. And then if it's high again, that's oftentimes associated with issues going on with bile flow, right? So biliary tree gallbladder, right, that region. So that's kind of what we're looking at with those, you know, you can have liver issues and have all your liver enzymes normal.

So that is also possible. But if you're looking at those liver enzymes, you can also see certain patterns just by looking at those for KI enzymes, you know, if you didn't get that, just just rewind because I just went through it. But I know it's a lot of information there, but those are things that you can look at. There's other tests, too. You can look at a stool analysis. For example, there's stool analysis. You can look at your theater crit like for example, a GI map stool analysis still adequate is a marker that you might look at.

That's kind of how well you're breaking down fat. If it's up over 15% to sign, you're not metabolizing fat. Well, so you're probably not producing enough bile or you might just be overeating fat in some cases, right? So overwhelming your system. So you got to look at that. And then there's also a marker, beta glucan, a disease which is an enzyme that's produced by gut bacteria and beta glucan. Today's basically it breaks the attachment between glucose, chronic acid and different toxins. And so one of the ways that we get rid of toxins again is we're binding them, right?

Kind of putting them in the bile beta glucan a when that enzyme's high it's it's breaking the attachment and allowing the toxins to get back into circulation particularly it's particularly associated with reducing our ability to

Lab testing for liver and gallbladder health 22:48

metabolize estrogens and I know that's a big function. You know, we're talking about menopause, right? So it can contribute to estrogen dominance because we're not breaking down and eliminating the estrogens effectively. So that's a good one to look at. And then going back to bloodwork, you know, another one I forgot is that I always look at is albumin. So albumin is a carrier protein, right? So it carries thyroid hormone, it carries, you know, a lot of different hormones, you know, different sex hormones, electrolytes, different things like that around the body.

And we really need albumin and so it should be between four and five. So if it's under four, it's produced by the liver. So if it's under four, that's a problem and that's a sign that the liver is not producing that that that protein effectively. And that can cause a lot of issues, cause more swelling in the system, you know, edema, for example. It's another sign and symptom of possible liver issues oftentimes associated with with albumin dysregulation. So so that's another marker that you can look at that's going to be on your stamp.

So so again markers look at their yeah. Excellent and get, you know, you probably have to push your doctor for it because in medical school we're taught you only need to check that to see if someone's an alcoholic. And that's kind of, you know, it can be high like Dr. Jockers were saying, and it can bea sign of free radical activity. So you have to you may have to push your doctor for that one. And to be aware, all of these levels, like he was saying, we we don't want them to be elevated with inflammation, but low levels also can then clue us into nutritional deficiencies.

And low albumin is something I see chronically with a lot of the patients I deal with who have cancer. So that's something. And also I just want to throw in globulin is a good one. I see it all the time. If it's too low or it's too high, it's a sign of hydrochloric acid deficiency often. And like he was saying, you know, you want to do it all. Like you want to get your blood looked at, you want to get your stool looked at because your liver enzymes can look good in your blood and then in your stool, I'll often see that you're deficient in bile acids and you're not digesting your fats.

And so like we just gave you a really good like you can look at signs and symptoms, you can look at bloodwork, you have to do extra testing. So there's lots, lots of ways to know. And this is so crucial for how your body is functioning and how your hormones are being processed, whether you're perimenopausal or menopausal. So what do I know? Like, the question on everyone's mind now is like, so what do I do to cleanse? Like we've all heard of liver cleanses and drink some olive oil? And so what are your thoughts on strategies that can be shared with people who are listening?

What kind of guidance can you give them? Yeah, for sure. So, you know, obviously one big thing would be diet change. So things that really stress the liver are going to be processed foods, you know, and anything processed, obviously, high glycemic processed foods are definitely going to cause problems. Chips, crackers, things like that. Processed seed oils. So your corn oil, soybean safflower, cottonseed oil, peanut oil, canola oil, all of those things really damaging the liver, high fructose corn sirup or things that are very, very high in fructose can be can be a major issue.

Corn, starches, things like that. And then, you know, so you obviously want to avoid those. And in general, your nutrition habits should should focus on I want to get the maximal nutrients and the minimal amount of toxins when I'm eating food. So as much as possible, trying to go organic because organic foods are going to have more to transport, less toxins when we're not eating organic foods, we're going to get a higher toxic load that puts more work and more stress on the liver. And so obviously we want to reduce that stress.

So trying to go as organic as possible is key with animal products, grass fed, organic pasture raised. That's super important. And then when it comes to foods, we want to make sure that we're including a lot of bitter types of foods. We say bitter is good for your liver. So what are these kind of bitter foods that are very good for helping stimulate the liver? They help stimulate bile flow. They help thin the bile because that's an issue with bile is when it gets real sick and sluggish. So we actually want bile to be thinner.

So it flows more effectively. So bitter foods, we're thinking about things like radishes, artichokes, cilantro, parsley, ginger. Right. Ginger is fantastic. You know, these things that kind of have a natural bitterness, those are really, really helpful. Also kind of an astringent flavor as well. You're going to find berries, for example, cranberries that are astringent and that astringency is something called ellagic acid, which is really good for the liver, also really good for the intestinal cells as well.

Help stimulate intestinal cell and liver cell mitophagy where the actual liver cells in the and the intestinal cells break down old damaged mitochondria and create new healthy mitochondria that are more stress resilient. So you get things. So again, things like like cranberries, Muscat, wine, grapes, pomegranate, right? All all really, really good there. What else am I missing? Arugula. Arugula is a great bitter herb lower in oxalate and a lot of these compounds that are very supportive of the liver.

So those are all really, really helpful. There's different supplements.

Diet, supplements, and castor oil support 28:28

Supplementation can be like things like bile salts, for example, taurine, choline. You know, a lot of times if you find like a bile flow support type supplement, it will have things like choline, dandelion. I didn't even mention that with the bitter herbs. That's really good. Dandelion Maybe it might have artichoke in it. You'll find some kind of exotic herbs like glucose, sterols and stuff like that. Sometimes that are in there. But dandelions are really common and one that will be in some of these supplements milk thistle, another another great herb that helps regenerate hepatic or liver cells.

So that's really fantastic. There's also a really powerful bile salt, right. And really with bile, it's cholesterol, bilirubin, which is a breakdown product of hemoglobin. So hemoglobin is the main protein that carries oxygen in our red blood cells. But we turn over the hemoglobin, right? Those things don't have you. They only have like a three month lifespan, the red blood cells. And so then they break down, we get rid of we excrete that bilirubin in the bile and it combines with cholesterol and with salts.

And so with a lot of people, because they have insulin resistance or hypothyroidism, we get too much cholesterol, not enough salt. Right. So we're adding in the bile salts to create the ratio to have the right ratio. So it flows well. And so so that one powerful bile salt is something called tadka, right? Tide goes pretty well. Research showing great results with thinning the bile helps regenerate liver cells so that can be a really great supplement. And acetyl cysteine also or other things help boost glutathione on which is a key part of phase two liver detoxification that's really, really super important.

So so those are be the best strategies from a nutritional perspective. And then there's other things like, for example, castor oil packs, castor oil is really great at dilating the bile ducts. So opening up the bile ducts, remember how I talked about how inflammation can create parking right? Or damage to those bile ducts and then also the sluggishness of the bile. That combination is really, really, really bad for obviously good bio flow. So we want to we want to thin the bile, but also we want to open those bile ducts.

Right, and dilate them. And so that's what the castor oil will help to do is kind of open the bile ducts. So now we thin it and we open the bile ducts and we're going to get the bile flowing. Well, so you can just do castor oil, castor oil pack over your right upper quadrant of your abdomen, region and do it at night. Right. Put it on right before you go to bed and just kind of sleep with it. And that's a great strategy. I mean, really only need it for when you put it on the casserole should absorb it in the first hour.

So if you want to just put it on for an hour while you're, you know, sitting around reading a book at night, great. You can do that. Do it like that. Most people find it more compliant. Doing it at night are you just sleep with it with it on. And so that's a great strategy. I'm sure you've got other people probably talking about castor oil packs. Just a really great strategy for helping support good bile flow. So those would be, you know, some of the top strategies, top things that they could be doing.

And just sitting here thinking, if you just think about your hydrochloric acid, you just castor oil packs and take some tadka like your 80% and. Get more of those bitter herbs. Yeah, more of those bitter eggs in your diet. I think this salad and with some pomegranate sprinkled on top of these really are these are things I see over and over and over again in my practice and really are, you know, sort of just simple to really get under control once you understand and can see that they're all connected.

And so, you know, we talk a lot about hormones for menopause. Yes. Bioidentical hormone replacement. You know, I'm a fan and I love it. And I'd do it with all my patients. But these hormones need to be put into a body that is functioning, that has bile flow and has a liver that's not inflamed, that has a stomach acid that is acidic. And so that's why I was so important that we have this conversation today, because I really want you to start thinking like, not only is menopause a time about hormones, but it's also a time about just checking in, pausing and seeing how your body's functioning.

And just because you have always dealt with nausea or bowels or that aren't flowing or flowing too much or constipation or bloating like these are not these might become things, but they're not normal things. And the things that we discussed here today are not extremely expensive. They're not extremely complicated. And with the right guidance, you can really get balance in your body. And then when you have the hormones replaces, you're just going to have an overall health that's just going to be so much more res than if you're not addressing these things.

And that's why we're going to have this conversation. And so you can. Is there anything else you want to add? Anything you know, just something you may think of. Yeah. Yeah. A few quick, quick things too as well that I didn't mention, but green apples getting the kind of tart green apples, you know, Granny Smith type apples. It's really good as well. And, you know, I think probably the best benefit of fruit. You know, we talk about different antioxidants. Polyphenols can be very beneficial. But what fruit has and vegetable, some vegetables are like this, like celery, things like that.

They have a structured form of water, more of a coherent type of water that really helps drive information into cells, improves cellular dynamics, and also very good for, again, moving bile through the system. So I think green apples, you know, if you're getting super high sugar fruit, you want to limit that. You can still eat it, but just, you know, limit it and, you know, maintaining good activity, just activity in general movement, getting a lot of movement and exercise is very, very important for liver, gallbladder health as well.

And then one other great strategy is lemon water. So warm lemon water. Or you could do like like for example, a lemon dandelion tea in the morning when you get started with your day, warm water helps stimulate the liver, helps thin the bile. And then you add in the lemon, you've got vitamin C bio flavonoids in there, citric acid, which all have a very beneficial effect on all of our digestive juices, including the, you know, bile flow. Very helpful. Help stimulate the vagus nerve. Helps you poop early in the day.

Right. Helps stimulate more peristalsis. So moving your bowels, you should be moving, particularly between the hours of 6 a.m. and 9 a.m.. It's a great times when your colon is most active, so if you don't move your bowels regularly, you should be moving your bowels at least once or twice a day at least. And ideally between those hours seems to be most. Then if you're not moving your bowels, you are recycling toxins. That's minimal. More stress on the liver, so the warm lemon water can be really helpful.

Taking a morning walk can be helpful. Finding a comfortable position that works for you to, you know, help, help get your body to release and move your bowels can be super helpful as well. So definitely those things would be be great.

Daily habits and closing takeaways 35:48

You know, you can find some organic herbal teas as well that are kind of marketed for liver. A lot of times they've got dandelion and they've got licorice root and burdock and a bunch of these herbs that are supportive for your liver as well. So herbal teas or warm lemon water can be really helpful. Mm. All right, so now you got your book and you're going to start your day with warm lemon water. You're going to enter your cast, or you're going to eat a regular in between. And yeah, those are all, you know, again, sometimes health can be very complicated and profound and sometimes just the simple things, starting with a glass of warm water and yes, structured water, filtered water, organic food.

You know, we still have glyphosate even in our organic food, but it's a lower percentage. And so it is important to eat organic. It's important to request fed and finished. It's important to think about what you're nurturing yourself and the foods that you're eating. And so you want to eat healthy food and then you want to going back to what we spend time talking about, make sure your hydrochloric acid in optimize so you're actually absorbing your food and you're actually triggering the production by on the production of pancreatic enzymes.

So it's all connected. So thank you so much for it. You're like the the living version encyclopedia of your website. So for those who want to check you out,who don't know who you are, it's drjockers.com, correct? Yeah. drjockers.com. You can see his books in the background. Check those out and you know, check out his website. It is a it's just a living encyclopedia of everything you want to know about your health. So thank you again for being here and for sharing and keeping it A to Z on your liver and things.

You can do the tests and what you can do. I think this was very I like to have useful information. This is very, very useful for those listening. So thank you. Thank you, everyone for being here. And like Dr. Jockers said,you're probably going to want to rewind, get your pen and paper out and take notes because there's like a whole map in here that you can just start instituting that's going to change your health for the better. So take advantage of that and listen and write. Let me know if you have any questions.

I got another interview and I thank you, as always, for being here.