#30 Glutathione And Liver Support Made Simple

Your liver is doing hundreds of jobs every single day, and most of us only think about it after a heavy meal, a night out, or a scary lab result. We’re Dr. Kylie Burton and Jessica Brickie, and we’re pulling liver health out of the background and putting it where it belongs: at the center of your energy, metabolism, and hormone balance. If you’ve heard glutathione called the “master antioxidant” but never understood what that actually means, we make it simple and practical.

Inside today's episode: 

• Glutathione matters for detoxification and oxidative stress 
• How a supported liver can change the way you feel day to day 
• The liver's impact on your hormones: directly converting free T4 into free T3 (thyroid hormones) 

We also get real about bile flow, gallbladder issues, and why removing the gallbladder may stop the pain while leaving the root liver burden untouched. 

You’ll hear our go-to liver support strategies and when glutathione supplementation or subcutaneous glutathione injections may make the most sense.

Grab your labs too because we scan the metabolic panel for ALT and AST and what ranges can signal liver support is needed. 

Love what you're hearing on the podcast? We'd be grateful for a quick review and share to your socials so more people can find join us and do peptides right.

Want to connect more with the hosts? We'd love it! Connect with Jess at B2BwithJess.com/peptides or on Instagram @jessb.talkshealth. Grab your Blood Work & Peptides Mini Guide for free at drkylieburton.com. 

Ready to explore peptide therapy for yourself? Visit the company we recommend for pharmaceutical peptides and receive all the one-on-one support that comes included at drkylieburton.com

Want to offer peptide therapy in your business? Whether you're adding it to your existing practice or building something new, learn how to get started—and how we'll mentor you along the way—at drkylieburton.com

Legal Disclaimer: This podcast is for educational and informational purposes only and is not intended as medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always consult with a qualified healthcare provider before starting any new health protocol. Dr. Kylie Burton and Jessica Briecke are affiliates and may receive compensation for referrals. Individual results may vary.

You have the science. You have the tools. Now it's time to take the next step.

This is PepTalk: Peptides Unpacked—science made simple, results made real.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:03

Peptides are powerful and often misunderstood.

SPEAKER_00 0:07

And we're here to change that one conversation at a time. I'm Dr. Kylie Burton. And I'm Jessica Brickie.

The Liver’s 500 Daily Jobs

SPEAKER_01 0:15

This is Pep Talk. Peptides Unpacked. Science Made Simple. Glutathione liver. Two very important pieces of our health that we have not addressed specifically on this podcast yet. So we're spending this episode talking about these two specific things because your liver has over 500 responsibilities every single day. It's working furiously in the background and you don't even realize it. Just like your heart. It keeps pumping, keeps in keeping you alive. These two organs are vital and vitally important to everything we do every minute, every second of our life. And we just let them go on the background. So glutathione is a big component of your liver, and your liver doing all 500 jobs it has effectively and efficiently. So let's dive into the liver and glutathione. Jess, what do we got?

Thyroid Conversion And Metabolism

SPEAKER_00 1:15

So glutathione is actually, we call it like the master antioxidant. It is a, it's produced by the liver, and it is going to support the liver in all the things that you just mentioned, right? Detoxification is the is what most people think about when they think about the liver. It's like it's my detoxifier. If I drink too much, then it's got a my poor liver. You know, there's t-shirts that people walk around with in that, you know, doing the drinking around Disney World. I think of that. Drinking around the world at um Epcot, and they'll wear these t-shirts and say, shut up, liver, you're fine. Your liver's not fine. It's really struggling, but it's really kind of funny. People really think about it as that. But over 500 jobs in the body that includes making certain kinds of hormones. So in thyroid, for example, we will take the inactive version of thyroid and convert it. And the two main spots that that happens is in the liver and in the gut. The hill I will die on. Heal and protect your gut, heal and protect your liver. If you do those two things, you are going to be golden for the most part in your health journey.

SPEAKER_01 2:20

So you take the word conversion. Yeah. And my brain went into the labs. Yeah. And your liver is required to convert T3, T4, technically. So let's say this correctly. Your liver is required to create to convert free T4, a thyroid hormone, that your thyroid produces into free T3. If your liver is not able to make that conversion, that free T3 is responsible for talking to every single cell in your body. It tells it to speed up your metabolism. It tells it to speed up your or raise your internal temperature because it's cold outside. Like that is your communication pathway of free T3. And your liver is has more impact than your thyroid than actually treating your thyroid specifically.

Estrogen Clearance And Liver Overload

Castor Oil And Coffee Enemas

Gallbladder Removal Misses The Root

Bile Flow And Feeling Better

SPEAKER_00 3:15

Correct. Also, our sex hormones, right? Well, as we think about women that are estrogen dominant, a lot of times that's because the liver might be struggling. It's not supported very well. So it can't convert the estrogen to what we need, and it can't detoxify the waste part of the estrogen component when it's going through all the biochemical steps that it does in the liver. So when it comes to supporting that liver function, there are a handful of things that we do. Now, um, we just did a podcast where we were talking with uh Samantha Lander and we were talking about the old school things that we do that I do that she does, which is castor oil packs over the liver. Um I do coffee enemas. I get really grumpy when I have a week that I don't get to do one. Um, that's going to support the manufacturing of glutathione in the body, both of those things. But if those are things that you are not interested in doing, we can support the body by taking a supplement, glutathione. We can do it in a couple of different ways. There is the liposomal version, which means basically that will get through the digestive tract. It's protected enough to get through the digestive system. There are some good supports there, but to me, the best way for glutathione to be in the body if we're going to take a supplement is doing it sub Q. So we can help people find that glutathione to support those over 500 functions in the body, in the liver. And I also want to say this, this gets often overlooked. There are a lot of people, including myself, that no longer have a gallbladder. Um, you get gallstones and the immediate fix, so mine was done 27 years ago. If I knew 27 years ago what I know now, I would have, I would still have my gallbladder, it still serves purpose. But by removing the gallbladder, you remove the symptom, which is the pain, which is the gallstones. The reason that you get gallstones, the reason your gallbladder typically is going to act up is because the liver is overburdened, it has sluggish bile, it doesn't have enough glutathione production in there, and that bile that exits out with all those waste that we just talked about, estrogen, for example, like needing to go into the bile, into the digestive system where we poop it out, that sludgy, gross, thick bile will go into the gallbladder where it gets stored. And then when the body is digesting fats and it calls to the gallbladder to squirt some of that into the digestive tract, it can't fully empty that. Why? Because it's sludge. So it sits in the gallbladder, it turns into gallstones, which are extremely painful every time we eat something heavy in fat. You remove the gallbladder, you didn't fix the problem and the root problem of that liver. Protect the liver. But and it can be tough for people. So after after you've had a gallbladder removed and you go and you eat something, you don't you have a constant drip of that bile in as opposed to getting squirted in like the gallbladder would do, and it's fine that common buck duct common duct bile duct will step in and act kind of in the role, but not exactly. So you're still okay. But again, if you didn't fix the liver issue, you're never going to fully get better. You just don't have the gallstone pain anymore or the gallstone infection, which it can get to as well. So back to the glutathione. We want to support the liver and the liver function and that bile flow and all of the many jobs that you mentioned by supporting that. And that's something that you and I can help people find their route to. It you will feel like a million dollars when you are operating with a healthy liver, which can heal. It can, you can, if you've been diagnosed with non-alcoholic battle liver disease and AFLD, um, you can recover from that. You need support. Glutathione is a really great support. That's a good base start for protecting your liver.

SPEAKER_01 7:23

Now, correct me if I'm wrong. The first time I heard about coffee enemas, I was like, people do what? But the whole point of the coffee enema is to release a substantial amount of glutathione.

SPEAKER_00 7:37

Correct. Yeah, it increases it increases the glutathione production in your body. Right. So when you're doing a coffee enema, the idea is it's not it's not used as a tool for constipation, which people assume coffee enema enemas in general are only for that. It's actually done after a bile movement, and you actually hold, and it's not Folgers coffee, by the way. We're not like putting like that's very specific. It's a very specific thing. I have a whole document. People can can reach out to me to to get that from me, but it is a very specific thing. But the goal is to hold it because we have we do have a duct that goes from the um large intestine, the colon to the liver that supports that glutathione production.

SPEAKER_01 8:16

But not everybody wants to, you know, I was just gonna say if you don't want to do a coffee enema, you can do a glutathione injection instead.

SPEAKER_00 8:24

Yep, you certainly can. You certainly can. And you can do it, you can do both. So, you know, I I do multiple things. I, you know, I take supplements like Tudka, I do coffee enemas, I do castor oil packs, I take bitters, like all of these are base supports for the liver that I think every American should be doing some level of some sort of liver support. The majority of people that are walking around this planet, and I should have looked up since it's statistics, but we just kind of said, let's talk about this on record. I wasn't prepped, but if you are somebody that is struggling with blood sugar imbalance, metabolic dysfunction, you are carrying extra weight, especially visceral fat, I promise you, you have a level of liver dysfunction, of fatty liver that needs to be addressed. So we have done episodes where we've talked about the three-quarters of Americans are overweight. That's statistic, and how many of those are obese, like it's crazy. That three three-quarters of American people need glutathione, they need liver support. That's just I think if you're if you have a liver, you need liver support. I think so too. It's way too important. 500 plus jobs. Way too important to ignore the liver.

SPEAKER_01 9:39

Everything else. Everything hormones are off, liver, thyroid problems, liver, gut problems, liver. Vitamin D, liver, vitamin D, yeah, liver. So your liver is that important. It's that does a lot of things. We need to provide it some love. So let's give your liver some love. Go grab your glutathione, add that to your peptide stack, or heck, just get started with that as your first peptide.

ALT AST Labs And Next Steps

SPEAKER_00 10:07

Um, it is injection only, correct, Jess? It is. Um, for with us, it is injection only. Baby little needle, not a big deal. Um, but if you want, I think uh if you're not sure if your liver is struggling, struggling, Kylie can tell you how you can take a peek at that too, because there are ways. Even if it isn't on paper, though, even if it isn't showing up in the way you're gonna explain that here in a second, understand that if you are dysregulated in any way, blood sugar, weight, whatever, your liver definitely needs that support. But there is a way for people to take a peek at their labs, right?

SPEAKER_01 10:42

Yep. If you look for the metabolic panel, there are some specific markers that are directly correlated to your liver. Those two markers are ALT and AST. You want to have those markers flow around 15. If it's over 25, 26, you're elevated and you could definitely use some glutathione. I've seen them in the 200s, I've seen them in the 300s. And typically, a physician who orders these labs is just again standard regular blood work, will say nothing about it, even if they are elevated, unless you have a diagnosis of fatty liver disease. I know I've seen like I've seen thousands of labs at this point, and 90% of people, I will talk to them about their ALT and the AST, and they have had never, no previous discussion about those two specific markers, even though there's a little red H to the side. So arm yourself. Know what the labs mean ALT and AST. The number is 15, that's the magic number. If you're over 25, 26, you definitely want to get some liver support going there. If you live in America, you want to live have some liver support, anyways, because it's just the environment that we live in, the air we breathe, the water we drink. Uh I got we live in Utah. I'm a Utah girl, and we have arsenic levels in our ground because of the red clay. So you just have a typical standard amount that's a little slightly elevated of arsenic, a heavy metal in the water that we drink. So whether it be about that. You can't filter that out. Water that we're drinking, washing our hands with, like that's just it's there. You can have the best filtration for your um filtration systems definitely help, but there can also be a lot of different things.

SPEAKER_00 12:31

But if your filtration system in your body isn't working and you can't excrete that, then you're in trouble.

SPEAKER_01 12:38

Your filtration system in your body is your liver. Help it with glutathione and go grab yours today. Link is in the show notes.

SPEAKER_00 12:47

Jess, where can they find you? b2bwithess.com is my website, and you can find me on Instagram at jessby.talkshelp.

SPEAKER_01 12:57

You can grab your peptides if you haven't yet, or whether you want to switch over or add to your new stack. Get started at drkylieburton.com. If you're interested in looking up what your blood additional blood markers, you can actually grab your labs and upload them in my brand new platform. Check it out at protocol.dr Kylie Burton.com. And you can get a personalized peptide plan specifically from what your labs say and a few additional health questions. So check it out there, protocol.dr.Kylie Burton.com. Give your liver some love. If you haven't started your peptides yet, glutathione is a great one to start with. Just support that liver. Uh if you're wanting to add glutathione to your mix, go for it. We are a fan, you cannot go wrong. This is pep talk, peptides unpacked.