Uncover Your Solution To Your Energy Crisis

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Thank you so much, Sinclair. This is definitely a passionate topic for me because I spent a lot of years in the Western world getting it wrong before I figured out how to get it right. I even spent years in the functional space getting it wrong until I got it right. It is a journey to really learn how to help people heal their bodies. Talking about the gut and mitochondria, one of my favorite topics. Thank you so much for having me here and trusting me to support your audience and be aligned with them. I know the really important message that you have to give the world. Thank you for having me here.

Sinclair Kennally, CNHP, CNC

But well, let’s dive right in. I know that you have been on a journey yourself with your own health, exploring different health paradigms and the limitations of each of them. I would love to hear you speak about that today because, of course, we have newbies in the audience and we also have what I lovingly call my summit junkies. People have heard every interview, and they have read all the books and all the things, and they are just looking for, like, Why haven’t I healed, yet I am doing all the right things? Why is it taking so long for me? Let us speak to both of those beautiful audiences today as we talk about what you think the missing first step is to restoring people’s energy when they have not been well for quite some time.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Yes, well, before we get into the missing step, because that is kind of like a scientific answer, can we first prepare this talk by talking about the causes, the underlying causes? Because if we talk about the underlying cause, then the missing first step really makes sense, and speaking to your question about what is missing, what practitioners missed, and what does the Western world miss? That is part of the underlying cause of the issue.

Back when I worked in Western medicine, I worked for one of the largest HMOs in America, Kaiser Permanente. It is the wealthiest and largest health insurance company. It is a really reactive system where people are coming in with massive health problems and we are slapping Band-Aid solutions on them. But we are not actually fixing the underlying issue. That is what kind of drove me into the functional medicine space. When I first entered that arena, I studied with the Institute of Functional Medicine. I hired some of the world’s greatest thought leaders in functional medicine to mentor me. I learned what most functional medicine experts teach and what most of our viewers here today think is the underlying cause of their health problems. So most people viewing this think it’s inflammation; they think it’s adrenal fatigue; they think it’s a hormone imbalance, a thyroid dysregulation, or a blood sugar spike problem. Or they think the root of my problem is my food intolerances. Or I would dare say they even think the root of the problem is leaky gut. Right now, I may even be shocking practitioners who are saying she knows what she’s talking about. That’s crazy. Those are all the root causes of problems. Right, Sinclair?

Sinclair Kennally, CNHP, CNC

Absolutely. I love that you are bringing this up and really highlighting it. Again, because we hear in our practice all the time, Oh yes, my root cause is leaky gut, or my root cause is Candida, or, actually, I’ve been diagnosed with both. Now, I know my root cause; those are not root causes.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

No. Aging in genetics is another one of my favorites. It is your genetics. Honestly, right now in today’s world, we are hearing that a lot in Western medicine. I mean, people are dropping dead of all kinds of mysterious things right now. The thing that our doctors are saying is that it must be your genetics. Oh, you are a 24-year-old who needs a pacemaker? It must be your genetics. I mean, this is what we are hearing a lot. Genetics is a big crapshoot for blaming problems. I am going to get into what the underlying problems really are. But before I go there, I know I am speaking your language because a lot of this I actually learned from you. After I realized that I was not getting the results that I really wanted from my functional medicine protocols that I was running, that I had learned from the IFM, how to run the traditional five-hour gut protocol, and all of that. Some people got better, and a lot of people did not get the results that we were hoping for. Those are the people that doctors keep shocked constantly. They keep going, looking for the next thing. In my journey of becoming a functional medicine practitioner, you were one of the people that I ran into along the way. You told me, Laura, there are some things that are missing here. There are some deeper root causes. I am grateful to you for my journey as well as for helping mentor me into the practitioner that I am today. What I want all of this audience to understand is that you are watching a summit produced by one of the leading practitioners in the world. Remember that, when you are wrapping this up and deciding, I have met a lot of practitioners here. I am going to figure out who’s going to help me solve my problems. I am going to highly encourage you to stick with Sinclair, because she can solve your problems, and not only that, she teaches practitioners how to solve problems too. All that aside, what are the true root problems if they are not inflammation, adrenal fatigue, hormone imbalances, or leaky gut? It’s really three buckets of problems. Underneath what you would think of as the root cause, it would be environmental toxins. There are a whole bunch of those that we could unpack. But I bet you have lots of talks on this topic at this summit about toxins. 

We do not even need to go into heavy metals. The toxins you are getting from your skin products—the mold and mycotoxins—I know you have experts talking about that. It is a toxin bucket. Then you have these chronic, smoldering, hidden infections. That is the second thing. That is everything from parasites to bacteria to fungi. Of course, they can be anywhere in your body, not just your gut. Your guts are kind of a launching pad for all of these infections to move to all of your organs, including your brain, your lungs, your bladder, your pancreas, and all the other places that you do not think about. Then the third bucket would really be nutrient deficiencies. I would say that bucket is tied to the first two because nutrient deficiencies occur because our immune system and our detox systems are overwhelmed trying to deal with all these toxins and infections. It requires extra nutrients beyond what we could ever get from food. I just want to get on my soapbox for a second about food. I am so sick of hearing, Let your food be my medicine. I can’t; I just can’t. I am probably making enemies right now. We are beyond that, everyone. You cannot eat your way out of this. Yes, food is important. Hear me. You should not eat crap. But you cannot solve this with just a healthy diet. It is beyond that. If you have been trying to do this with Let Food Be Thy Medicine, you need some more support. Okay, so I am going to pause there. Tell me your thoughts on this, Sinclair. Let’s hear what you have to say.

Sinclair Kennally, CNHP, CNC

I really appreciate you highlighting some of these issues because I think even practitioners who get it and have finally arrived at these conclusions often only give lip service to them and don’t explain why this is so essential. They are still running an outdated model, and I totally understand where this came from. I am not knocking anybody, and I appreciate the earnest attempt, but if you are running $5,000 worth of functional labs, and that is a substantial investment for somebody, and then you come out and say, Oh, you are low in these 37 markers, here are 37 different supplements to boost those minerals, to boost whatever else is missing, without asking, What is the hidden reason behind the nutrient deficiencies? It is like, Yes, you will not be able to heal if you are not. If you don’t have the building blocks to heal, period. End of story. But you don’t have the building blocks to heal because you have these toxins and these hidden infections that are actually actively blocking absorption, or they are costing you so many resources to just try to tread water.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

I just want to add on to what you just said. I mentioned earlier that I have studied with some of the best and most respected people in the functional medicine space. I learned organic acid interpretation—deep organic acid interpretation—which most practitioners cannot interpret. They just rely on the kind of report that the lab gives because it’s such a complex test. But the point I want to make here is that I was taught to do all those things first, and now I do not touch that until I do. I tell people, and people come to me saying, I want an organic acid test now.  I say, Great, but let’s not throw your money away. Let’s not just burn money; let’s not light money on fire. Let us hold off on that until we solve some of these bigger issues that are affecting those nutrient deficiencies, then let us run that test and see what else we need to do to support you so you can get to an even higher level of healing. But unless you do that foundational work first on your infections and toxins, you are just going to be taking many supplements, spinning your wheels, and frustrated that you are not getting better.

Sinclair Kennally, CNHP, CNC

I totally agree, which is why I have you on here, so let us help the audience understand. How would they know some of the symptomology if they are struggling with infections, toxin overload, and nutrient deficiencies? What might be some of the signs and symptoms?

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Well, are you fatigued and low on energy all the time? Like this brain fog and inability to put complex concepts together. Are you finding yourself playing life smaller than you used to? Did you stop your hobbies? Did you stop doing fun things in the evenings with friends and family? Did you, or are you now saving your weekends for recovery? How you are living your life is a clue. Then there are all these symptoms, and all of the reasons you are living your life that way are because you are foggy, exhausted, your digestive system is out of control, and you need to be near a toilet. You are achy. Your joints hurt. You’ve got migraine headaches that come out of nowhere. Your skin looks bad, and you don’t want to go out because it’s inflamed and you are puffy everywhere. I mean, these are Hallmark signs. Your hair is falling out. You just do not feel great anymore. You just start getting smaller and smaller in how you are showing up in your life. That is what I would say, are the hallmark symptoms. You cannot eat anything without a reaction.

Sinclair Kennally, CNHP, CNC

You are always worried about my family gatherings or going out to restaurants and whether there’s anything I can eat there and all that. What I love about what you just shared is that it really underscores your previous point about how people have been trained now to think of those as adrenal and thyroid hormone dysfunction. Yes, they have those. Really, those are just expressions of distress themselves. They are not the root cause of the issues.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

No, do not get us wrong; everyone who is listening. It is important that your thyroid be addressed. It is important that your adrenals be online. It is important that you eat healthy. It is important that you do all the fun biohacking things that can support you. But unless you are solving those three and really the top two toxins, infections, and nutrient deficiencies come along like we just explained, unless you are solving those things, this is going to be a forever project, and everyone I know does not want to be on a forever project. People that I work with want a resolution. To solve this right now, enough is enough. Stop doing the old-school things that don’t work.

You know, Sinclair, let us remind our audience that the microbiome was not discovered by what is recognized as modern science until 2001. We are 22 years into this game with the gut microbiome, and when we first started this, nobody heard of it or knew about it. So these protocols were created by institutions like the IFM to repair and support the gut. As time has gone on, you cannot talk to anybody who has not taken a probiotic at this point. In fact, you cannot watch the nightly news without seeing a probiotic commercial. Do you know that most of the probiotics out there that you can buy at the drugstore and at the health food store are owned by the same companies that are making you sick? Nestlé owns at least three probiotic brands that I can think of off the top of my head, and they’re simultaneously creating the foods that are causing your problems. So there is an ethical dilemma there. I guess my point here is that we are evolving, we are learning, and things are shifting at a fast pace. So is it possible that what I am suggesting is the old-school way of solving gut problems from 2001? Is it possible that that is already outdated and there are better ways to do this?

Sinclair Kennally, CNHP, CNC

Yes, I love that you just highlighted that. What strikes me so interesting about that 2001 date is that we had previously been spending the last 50 years effectively setting our guts on fire, like just lighting a match, and with all the petrochemicals that came in after World War Two, there was a surplus of oil. We turned them into things that we could spray on our food. We called it the Green Revolution. Then glyphosate came online in the nineties in our Roundup Ready Crops, and we have been experimenting now that we are a couple generations into this. So yes, like ours, it sounds very established, as the health world knows, but it’s really not; it’s quickly evolving. It is very difficult to keep up. We are living in a day and age that, honestly, grandma and grandpa did not have to deal with growing up. Our guts are not the same as previous generations. It is shifting very rapidly. It makes sense that even a 20-year-old’s understanding is already super outdated.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Super outdated, and most practitioners are still practicing outdated natural medicine.

Sinclair Kennally, CNHP, CNC

Yes. That was so interesting for me when I was really sick and had to go back to the drawing board. Everything that I thought worked as a health practitioner was like, Nope. I went to allopathic medicine thinking they would have the strong stuff that would really fix me. They did not even know how to categorize. It got me diagnosed at the beginning, as we all know, and then going back to natural health in search of solutions. Many of those were essentially ineffective. They were too palliative in nature. It does not matter if it is a natural band-aid. A band-aid is still a band-aid. It is like delving under the hood into these deep root cause orientations, which is what is going to save us all, as I have seen over and over again. Obviously we are passionate about this topic. Now that we have set the stage and people understand that toxins, hidden infections, and nutrient deficiencies are really driving these conditions that we have mistakenly labeled as root-cause issues when they are really just symptoms of distress, given all of that, what does it really take at this point to restore our energy to what we need now?

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

We are ready to talk about that, for sure. This is where we are going to have a little bit of a science lesson, but I am going to make it super easy. We are going to talk about mitochondria. I am also I mean, we have already done it. We have thrown some stones at natural medicine right now already because, from a prevention and healing perspective, you are being taught from the natural space to eat your way out of this, to do an elimination diet, to sleep more, to exercise, and to focus on reducing your stress. You want vagus nerve stimulation. You want to make sure you are hydrating. You want to do a lot of that because, like, all of that is super important. But if you miss this piece, you are not going to get your energy back. That is what we are going to talk about. It is not that you are not doing all the right things; you are. It is just that there is a missing puzzle piece, right? It is kind of like your health is putting together a puzzle, and sometimes you are working on that puzzle and you are looking for this piece. You just can’t find it. You have already picked it up and put it back down five times, and then you finally put it into place.

That is what we are going to talk about today: that missing puzzle piece. What I am referring to here are your mitochondria. 

For those of you who know what mitochondria are, this is going to be a refreshing refresher for you, and you are going to learn some things as well. For those of you who do not know what mitochondria are, they produce about 90% of your body’s energy. That includes the energy that you feel when you are going about your day. That energy you feel at 3 p.m. or not.  It also includes something that I like to call invisible energy, which you do not feel. That is the energy that your body needs to digest that healthy food you are eating to make the hormones you all think are the root cause of a hormone problem. Well, your mitochondria make energy to make those hormones, including your thyroid hormones. This is the same way that mitochondria help you send nerve signals. They make your heart pump. They help you breathe. Every breath you take is because a mitochondria said so and so. It is all the body functions that happen inside of you that you do not consciously know are happening. This is why mitochondrial energy is so important. A technical term for what I am about to explain to you is the microbiome-mitochondrial axis. If you look it up on PubMed, that is what you are going to see. But while we are talking about this, I am going to call it the gut-mitochondrial connection because it makes more sense. The word axis is kind of confusing, but basically it is a connection.

Now I want you to imagine yourself. I am talking to the speaker, Sinclair. I want the speaker. I am talking to the listener. Excuse me. We are the speakers. I am going to talk to the listener here. I want you to imagine yourself with an imbalanced, leaky gut. I mean, you are here on this summit listening to this because you suspect something’s going on in your digestive tract. You have a leaky gut, you have dysbiosis, and your gut is imbalanced because of those things we just talked about: infections and environmental toxins. Then, of course, there is all this stress coming at us. There is inflammation. All of this is hurting us as well. Now, I want you to imagine that your mitochondria are weak and sick. They are not healthy. They cannot produce the 90% of energy that their body requires. Now, you have an inflamed and imbalanced gut. Plus, you have reduced energy production.

I mean, Sinclair, that is just disastrous, right? I mean, that is just pure disaster in the body. Here’s why I want to talk about two metabolites today: I want to talk about butyrate, and I want to talk about bile acids. I know you love talking about bile and the liver. That is your thing. But this is really critical from a gut-mitochondrial connection perspective. I am going to pull this all together for you and make sense of it. But the first thing to unpack here is your poor gut health, and I am sure you have heard somebody on this summit talk about butyrate. Someone mentioned that this is a postbiotic and that it helps fuel the intestinal cells, or your bacteria. I see you nodding. Yes. Okay, good.  We do not need to go deep into that. But the first thing to really understand here is that when you have this low butyrate metabolite, which is so critical for gut healing, it is also critical for your mitochondria. Because the short-chain fatty acid butyrate basically also supports not just your colon cells, not just your good bacteria, but also your mitochondria, this happens through a process called beta-oxidation, where ATP energy is produced, and that energy goes all over your body to support all those invisible things that I just explained. 

Basically, what I am telling you is that your cells, your mitochondrial cells, pick up those short-chain fatty acid metabolites, butyrate, and shuttle them all over your body and to each of the other mitochondria in your cells to make energy. Here is where it goes wrong: When your microbiome is broken, you produce fewer short-chain fatty acids. That is because fatty acids are the most important energy source for mitochondria. In your colon cells, we make most of our clean energy from fatty acids. This is a recipe for disaster. Now, the second thing that I want to unpack for you is bile acids. This is the next metabolite. Sinclair, I know from your programs that you support people through liver flushing. My husband has done your liver flushes. They are amazing. He is like a liver flush. Bile acids are so important because they are made in your liver, and that inflamed and unhappy gut that we just talked about alters your ability to actually make those bile acids. That is really important because the main job of your bile acids is to help digest that fat that we just talked about, which is so important for making mitochondrial energy and carrying out okay waste. When we are thinking about all of the toxins that we are exposed to, if we are not making bile and if we are not expressing the bile, then we are going to have a hard time getting rid of toxins. Well, your bile is not being made in normal amounts. Everything goes wrong, and you get this inflamed, dysregulated gut barrier function as well. What I want you to understand is that this is a really complex cascade of events, but basically, bile acids and mitochondria work together in your body for fat metabolism, energy production, and cellular signaling. This is where I really want your audience to understand that if you want to heal your gut, you have to bring mitochondria online. In your protocols with your practitioners, when you are working with them, they must be addressing mitochondria, and supporting mitochondria is a lot more than taking a fancy supplement that has 52 ingredients that are supposed to help you produce ATP energy. I am going to pause there, Sinclair, and have you weigh in on this, because I know that you are in the same vein of thinking that there are a lot of mitochondrial support products out there that are just kind of, how did you say it just a few moments ago? It is not a band-aid. You call it something else when we’re just..

Sinclair Kennally, CNHP, CNC

Well, yes, a natural Band-Aid is the same as a yes. Well, what I appreciate about what you just shared is that I think you are describing the paradox that so many people find in themselves. When you are not well, when you have not been well for quite some time, to be alive today is to have to deal with leaky gut because you are getting micrograms of glyphosate, even if you are eating all organic. Sorry to say, we are going to have as much as 60% glyphosate in traditionally conventionally grown crops, which is just wildly talked about that way now. Stephanie Seneff unpacks that in depth for us at this very summit. So I would not spend any time on that, but I just want people to really understand why it is that we are asserting that they have a leaky gut if they are alive right now. Why, once you find yourself in this quandary of I have a chronic gut condition, which means I am not absorbing my foods and I am not producing the appropriate byproducts like these short-chain fatty acids to support the mitochondria body-wide, now you have an energy deficiency, which is absolutely impacting your body’s ability to heal your gut. Wake up. It is such a resilient system. It is insane that these gut conditions persist when your body has all the knowledge it needs to fix them, just not the right components.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

I want to add something here. Sinclair: I do a lot of gut test interpretation and read gut tests. We do lots of testing. In my practice, there is a good reason for gut testing in the sense that we can see a lot of problems that are going on that need to be supported in order for people to get better. Oftentimes, it is motivating for people to see what is wrong, and then they stick with their protocol. But here is what I want to say: Can we just talk about Zonulin for a second and leaky gut? Okay. Everybody wants to know, Do I have a leaky gut?  If you heard what Sinclair just said, you all, We all have leaky guts because we are all exposed to glyphosate. I have never run a lot of toxin tests. I have never seen a person with no glyphosate in their body. Now, I have seen people who are better at keeping it low, but I have never seen a zero. Now I have seen sky high and lowish, but never zero. What I want to say about Zonulin is that this is a marker on a gut test that people get all crazy about. I want to know what my Zonulin is because somebody told them or they heard somewhere that Zonulin is a marker for leaky gut and leaky brain, but it is not very accurate. Here is the problem with it: It can be falsely negative, meaning it can look totally normal and be false. This is really dangerous because then you have a false sense of security that you are doing things right and that you do not need that extra detox work that Sinclair does, that I do, and that I know glyphosate clearly is not a problem for me. Zonulin is normal, so I really try to talk people out of doing that test. A lot of times, people are like, Well, you are just trying to not save money. I am like, No, I am saving your money because if we add that, it is going to cost you more, it is not going to be worth it, and it is going to possibly screw with your thought process and make you think everything is okay.  Here is the thing: There are a bunch of scientists up there who have figured out how to test for a lot of things on a gut test, but a lot of those markers are completely useless when you get on the ground, like boots on the ground working to heal people. We have to pay attention to how you feel. It is not always what is on the test that we are treating. It’s how you feel. It is the common sense of knowing. You all have glyphosate in you. Every single one, myself included, Sinclair included. We do not have zeros either, and we know how to get this stuff out.

Sinclair Kennally, CNHP, CNC

All the time. Yes.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Sorry I had to go off on a soapbox.

Sinclair Kennally, CNHP, CNC

I think it is really important because one of the things that people are asking out of the summit is, What are these overlooked factors? Why, essentially, have I not healed yet? If I go to work at Resilience, why is it taking so long? What am I missing, or what did my practitioners miss? I think this is essential to understand, and I want to make sure that we also get time to discuss it, like we have already covered some of those biggest mistakes, like preventing our viewers from getting back their energy. But is there anything else you want to highlight? Other things that people are missing?

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Yes. I mean, we could go a lot of places, but the final kind of concept I want everybody to get out of this is that your mitochondria and your gut are constantly talking to each other, and dysfunctions in either the mitochondria or the gut affect each other. I want you to think of your mitochondria and your gut like completely connected twin flames—permanent, forever partners. They are together in this, and so the reason that I am talking about mitochondria on a gut summit is because you cannot solve one without the other. I think the biggest takeaway and the biggest mistake are that, for people here watching this interview because they want to know how to get their energy back, the biggest mistake that will prevent you from getting your energy back is not focusing on those three root-cause problems we talked about and solving gut issues. It is the beginning of everything, and it does not matter how much work you have done or how many protocols you have run on your gut; chances are you have not run the type of gut protocol that Sinclair is doing or that I am doing. It is because most practitioners you are working with are using old-school five-hour protocols, and they are not solving this in a really smart way with the latest kind of knowledge around gut microbiome and how to solve this. You are going to be on a hamster wheel unless you do something different. I know a lot of people think I have done gut work. I have done gut work. I’ve got that box checked. No. You have not done it. You have not done it in a way that is going to solve the problem.

Sinclair Kennally, CNHP, CNC

Yes. I really appreciate you saying that because I think everybody has a sense, and I remember feeling this way myself. You hear it all the time in our practice and in our courses. I have done everything. I have tried everything. The truth is, you have not tried everything within your awareness so far, and that is great. We all go through those chapters. Sometimes you cannot skip it because you have to earn that badge of honor of being the CEO of your own health, which is what you are doing right here, right now, in this summit. You are becoming your own expert, and it is okay to have been treading water. There is validity to that. But we do not want you to spend your budget and your energy on that any longer than absolutely necessary, which is why real root cause work is so essential. Do you have any last thoughts for folks as we wrap up today—words of encouragement or where they can go from here?

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Yes. I mean, ditto to what you just said. I love that comment you just made: You have done everything up until you are aware—everything within your awareness up until now. I think my words of encouragement would be, Is it possible there is more to know? Is it possible there is more out there than what you have already tried? I know Sinclair well, and I know she is bringing people to this summit who have solutions for you. My advice to you would be to watch the interviews, take the time, and get access to this summit so you can watch it over and over again. Give yourself that, because if you are here listening, you are fortunate enough to have either intentionally or accidentally stumbled on Sinclair. 

Either way, however you got here, you are a junkie that already follows her and you love her, or you are like, I do not know who this redhead is, but she looks pretty amazing. I am going to fall over. You are fortunate to be here, so my advice to you would be to squeeze everything you can out of this summit because she is bringing answers for you, and she really has a mission in this world to help people heal and solve problems. Sinclair has worked with my own family. I have worked with Sinclair. I trust her implicitly. I would say that would be my final word. This is not about continuing to do what has not worked. It is about you finding something new, and you are going to find it here. I am just going to drop it there with a mic drop. Okay. I am going to throw this on you and say thank you for who you are, who you show up as in the world, and for the problems that you help people solve. for the big stand you are taking against trans and for transforming how functional medicine is practiced. Thank you, Sinclair.

Sinclair Kennally, CNHP, CNC

I do not know what to say, my goodness.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Say, Thank you.

Sinclair Kennally, CNHP, CNC

Thank you and welcome. I do hope people stick around. I also want them to know where they can find you.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Oh yes, you can find me. You can find me at LauraFrontiero.com. You can find me on Instagram at @Laura.Frontiero. You can find me speaking at all kinds of summits. You can find me on DrTalks in their library all over the place. You can find me at Sinclair’s house sometimes.

Sinclair Kennally, CNHP, CNC

Thanks for dropping all those truth bombs today like you were on fire with me, and I just really appreciate your contribution to the space and that you are helping to lead the charge and helping people wake up to their own potential and to be able to be in charge of their own bodies once more. Also helping practitioners to have this awareness that there is more to the story. This can actually be a lot easier than we have been making it out to be. It can even be enjoyable. The way to take charge of your healing process. Again, as long as you are actually dealing with the real root causes.