The Gatekeeper Organ

The liver is the gatekeeper to all other organs in our bodies.  Since the liver plays the greatest role in detoxing the body, helping it to function better will influence overall health and quality of life. Cleansing of the liver is highly recommended for those who are trying to detox their bodies of chemicals, excess estrogens, and other toxins.  In this podcast we explain the 2 phases of detox and how to best nurture the liver to help aid it in the natural process of detoxification. 

Stop Chasing Wellness is an online wellness coaching company founded by two Holistic Health Coaches, Gina and Kristin. Be sure to check out all of our offerings including our book, Stop Chasing Wellness; Create It, and our growing catalog of Hormone Specific coaching courses. All of our courses and offerings are designed to help you feel and live your best life in a simplified way that works for you. You can find Stop Chasing Wellness on Facebook and Instagram

Transcript

Hello friends, and welcome to the Stop Chasing Wellness podcast.
If you're here listening to this podcast, we believe it's because you value your health
and you may be looking for answers to help you live your healthiest life in a more simplified
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As certified holistic health coaches, Coach Gina and I, I'm Coach Kristin here, focus
our health coaching on the belief that what we put on our plate is a direct reflection
of what's going on in our lives.
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your level of physical activity and the overall health of your spirituality practice, your
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of life.
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to learn more about the wellness coaching programs that we offer, as well as to purchase
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All right, hello, everybody.
Health Coach Jean here, along with Health Coach Kristin.
And today, we want to talk about detoxing the body.
We want to start with the role of liver in detoxification, and I guess we want to start
with knowing that toxins are everywhere, right?
No matter how clean you eat and live, you're going to have exposure to them.
They're in the foods we eat, the packaging of the foods, the water, the medications people
take, the air we breathe.
You just cannot simply avoid toxins.
So sometimes people wonder if the answer to the problem is to detox the body.
But the miraculous thing that we have is the body is designed to detox.
The body works 24 hours a day on detoxing all on its own.
And if the body's functioning well, it'll process toxins and remove them naturally.
But we need to assist because not everybody does eat well all the time, and we are out
living and being exposed to these toxins.
So the liver has a big part in detoxification.
It has its own circulation system.
It's basically a portal system separate from other body circulations, and all toxic substances
that we eat, drink, consume, breathe, inhale, and absorb through our skin all pass through
the liver for filtering and removal.
There's two phases of detox.
Kristin will talk a little bit more about that.
But symptoms that you might not be running optimally, that you might have a malfunctioning
liver, it might have a toxic overload.
Think about things like asthma or allergies, blood sugar disorders.
The liver plays a key role in blood sugar regulation.
If you're happening to see chronic infections happening regularly, disrupted sleep, especially
between the 2 and 4 AM hour.
If you're feeling like you need that afternoon nap and you're having that profound fatigue
throughout the day, maybe some indigestion and acid reflux, especially with fatty foods.
Do you have mood swings?
Poor mental function?
Lowered stress tolerance?
And maybe you're not absorbing your nutrients very well.
And then how about one of the things that Kristin and I talk about so often are those
hormones, those female hormones, how are your PMS symptoms?
How's your libido?
And are you struggling with infertility?
Maybe skin disorders like acne and rosacea or unexplained weight gain, inability to lose
weight and excess abdominal fat.
That's a long list of things that are telling you that your body is like, my liver needs
help.
Yeah, definitely.
Yeah, there's a lot of stuff there.
I love the one for when you said chronic infections.
And it's not necessarily like the same, like maybe you just keep getting, maybe you do,
maybe you keep getting a recurring sinus infection or a recurring urinary tract infection or
maybe it's just multiple, like it's bouncing all around.
It's different.
It's one infection after the other, after the other, where you're constantly going back
for an antibiotic, right?
Things aren't working.
That stuff is just getting pressed further and further deeper into the body.
Yeah, cause you said nutrient malabsorption too.
How would somebody know that they're not absorbing nutrients properly?
What's theirs?
Let's talk about that for a second.
Because the first thing that comes to mind for me is like, if somebody, like one easy
way to tell this is kind of gross and graphic, but when you go to the bathroom, what's left
in the toilet, right?
There are parts of undigested food.
That's a good sign that like, you're not, you're, that shouldn't look like that coming
out of you, right?
It shouldn't look the same way going out than it did going in.
That's a sign right there that like the liver is not working properly.
Yeah.
That digestive tract, it's all, it's all relative, right?
When things aren't running optimally and then with that constant infections, right?
Low immune, low immune health.
That's a big one.
It's not normal to have all these allergies and asthma and colds and sinus infections
and it's, and don't wear that like a badge of honor.
Right.
I don't think people associate that with liver function when they think of asthma or allergies.
We don't typically think of that with, with liver, you know?
Yeah, definitely not.
I think for me, when I think liver function, the first thing that does come to mind, that
was like the, just that fatigue and feeling like something's off, right?
Like, I just don't feel good.
Like it feels sluggish and slow and tired, but there's, there's that list of stuff you
mentioned was really big.
I mean, like the liver is the gatekeeper to all of our organs.
So it's pretty much, that's a broad spectrum thing.
All that stuff you just listed was stuff that I think most people don't think of when they
think of the liver, but that's, it's affects so much of our overall health, our body, right?
So when we want to, when we want to work on like getting our liver back on track, how
do we talk about that?
Like when we're off, let's talk about when we're off track, some disruptions in our detoxing
pathways and phases.
There's two different phases with the liver detox is like, I think people think they need
a liver detox, but maybe we don't understand how the liver functions and there's, there's
two basic phases of, like you said, the liver is every day, all day long, working to help
flush toxins out of our body, because that's just the role of the liver.
It's like, it's like the sweeper.
He's cleaning up.
It's like, it's like your cleaning crew, right?
And maybe sometimes your cleaning crew gets tired.
So that can happen.
So things that can, so basically your phase one, phase one of liver detox is what happens
when the liver takes all of the toxins that are coming through it and all the chemicals,
all the toxins, and it turns it into something that the, that the liver can later destroy
and flush out and remove.
So it might take something like fat soluble toxins and turn them into water soluble toxins.
And then the phase two part of the detox is when the liver takes those chemicals again
and turns them into harmless water soluble forms.
So if that phase is not, if what's happening in phase one, isn't able to break that down
enough so that the liver can destroy it later, it gets stuck.
It gets clogged.
Basically it gets kind of stuck at phase one and phase two doesn't work properly, right?
So part of phase one, things that can help or not help, but cause it to get off track
is things, if it's, if the liver's just overwhelmed by breaking down a large amount of, let's
say you have a large amount of medications, whether that's prescription medications, if
you're taking over the counter medications, drugs, whether they're prescription drugs
or non-prescription drugs or maybe illegal substances and alcohol, those are things that
just really slow down and disrupt that phase one detox that the body's trying to naturally
do.
So if you notice that you feel like you have an intolerance to fragrance or even a caffeine
intolerance, like you feel like really jittery if you have like a little bit of coffee or
it just isn't settling right, those are signs and symptoms that that phase one chapter of
detox is not functioning properly.
And then in phase two, exposure to things like if we have a lot of pesticides or heavy
metals or caffeine and alcohol, and that can push phase one into overdrive and it overwhelms
phase two.
And that basically, it just causes those partially changed toxins to build up and we're not getting
rid of them.
So you might notice that you have an increased amount of inflammation or weight gain or inability
to lose weight, or your thyroid's malfunctioning, or you have leaky gut, just like digestive
issues, right?
Like your gut feels sluggish and heavy, and maybe you're just gassy and uncomfortable.
Those are signs that your phase two liver detox is not working properly.
And that's where it just keeps backing up and backing up and backing up, right?
It's got to work correctly.
I just noted how you mentioned the thyroid, poor thyroid function in there and how many
people struggle with their thyroid and leave it with the thyroid, right?
Well, dig deeper.
Why is the thyroid off balance?
Dig deeper.
Find that root cause.
And it may just very well be that your liver is a little congested.
Nurture the liver.
I mean, really for every function and phase of life, because all of those things that
you listed as symptoms that the liver is malfunctioning, I mean, like I said earlier, it's such a
broad spectrum thing.
It's it affects every pathway and every aspect of your body.
The liver is the gatekeeper who had to nurture it for thyroid and everything to get deeper.
So then let's talk about some things that we can do just to help maximize that the liver's
ability to flush those toxins out.
So there's different like diet lifestyle things that we can do, right?
Yeah, definitely.
We can, let's talk about that rainbow, right?
It's always bringing, eat that rainbow, get those colored foods into your diet.
Add more beets, artichokes, mustard.
I've been adding dried mustard a lot lately to things that I've been making.
That's not one I normally had used before, but I've been using that a lot lately.
Turnip and dandelion greens.
Those dandelion greens in your yard, they're not just weeds.
People want to pull those out.
Those are special.
That's medicine.
But you got the dandelion greens, the daikon radish to stimulate that bile and avoid overeating.
I just watched a series on Netflix last weekend that was, did I talk to you about this?
The Blue Zone people?
Love that series.
I watched all five of those in one sitting.
It was so good.
Yeah, that's a good one.
But I think when they were in Okinawa, was it Japan?
They were in Japan.
Yeah, it was the Japanese.
They have an 80% rule.
And Dave brought it up to me.
I'm like, oh, the 80-20 rule, thinking of how we were trained nutritionally, right?
Eat good 80% of the time.
And if you indulge in other things 20% of the time, space it out, but keep your 80%.
This is a different 80% rule.
Stop eating when you're 80% full.
So one of the ways to support your liver and gallbladder are avoid overeating and eat smaller
meals.
Add things in like ginger and arugula and cilantro, turmeric, dandelion again, the mint
and leeks and parsley, and plenty of chlorophyll-rich foods, like the spirulina and chlorella, increase
your water.
Food storage.
You can add chlorophyll-rich foods, pretty easily find those things at Whole Foods or
health food stores or order them online, right?
Yeah.
And remember the water.
How many people are dehydrated?
Just drink water, drink water and eat your water.
Eat a lot of foods that are rich in water that have that high water content, and then
you're getting the benefit of the minerals along with it.
Yeah, the water just helps flush it all out.
Yeah.
Taking a sip now.
We have such a, there you go, take a big sip, cheers.
Also things that we can do are we eat a lot of refined carbohydrates, especially in America
and the carbohydrates come in the flake with bread and things like that, right?
Baked goods, bread.
I mean, we put bread on everything here in America.
Think outside the bun and try not to eat the bread or save it for those, for that 20% time,
right?
Because the carbohydrates just create inflammation and a lot of us have an intolerance to the
gluten that we have here in America and we don't know, we just keep stuffing it down.
So we need to avoid, decrease the amount of carbohydrates, the refined carbohydrates,
eat the healthy carbs, but the refined carbs should be saved for treats.
And you want to eat, like Gina was saying, the foods, she listed a bunch of stuff that
supports the liver, but when you're eating animal protein, so we need amino acids in
our body because it helps with that phase two part of the liver detox.
So when you're eating protein from animals, especially, it's really important to eat
high quality, get the best quality animal protein that you can get because it just eliminates
and best quality animal has the best quality protein and it's going to reduce the amount
of inflammation.
And then the liver supportive foods, like Gina said, beets and citrus, avocados, cruciferous
vegetables are so good for the liver.
And then liver supporting supplements are really good things like, well, the B complex
vitamins and then the ACD and E vitamins are good for the liver too, but that is another
reason why we love our juice plus so much because all of those plants, the fruits and
vegetables that are rich in those vitamins are in our juice plus.
So we're getting those every day.
So we're getting those every day.
So we're getting those every day.
We're getting those every day.
We're getting those every day.
We're getting those every day.
We're getting those every day.
All that stuff out, eat lots of fiber to keep your GI tract healthy, keep things moving.
Gina, will you talk to us about stress management and sweating in the sauna?
You're good at that part.
Stress management.
How do we keep our stress levels down in the world we live today?
pretty hectic out there, right? So we got to remember that self-care is not selfish for one thing,
and putting ourself first and taking care of ourself and our own mental health
will keep us in check and help us to be able to be of service to others. So we can't pour from an
empty cup, right? And you know that airplane analogy, we got to put our mask on first because
if we're no good for us, we're no good for anybody else. So take that time to get outside
and just breathe in some fresh air. Take a walk out and go for a hike out in the trees and
maybe get your feet in the grass or in the sand. If you walk down on the beach,
just get some grounding time in and maybe go for a massage, which is always one of my favorites.
I love a good massage. Take some time to yourself. Just have some alone time and just
take some deep breaths. Do some deep breaths, just three to five deep cleansing breaths. You can even
do box breathing, right? Take a nice big deep breath in. We can do one right now. Take a deep
breath in and hold that for three, four seconds and let that out. Countdown four, three, two, one.
Then take another deep breath in and you can do that three to five times. And that alone
rebalances out the central nervous system, just those few deep breaths.
And maybe stretching is always a good one, some gentle yoga or even just rolling a mat out on
your floor and just stretch. Start at your head and stretch your neck muscles and your traps and
arms and your back and abs and all the way down to your legs and feet and ankles and toes and just
take some time to stretch. As we get older, we're not as limber as we once were. So stretching and
breathing and just these are all good things to just keep your stress management under control.
And another good way to support the liver is by sweating. Get out and exercise
in some kind of way, whether it's going for a walk or walking on the treadmill or elliptical
or dancing or I had a fun time this weekend. I was out with my girlfriends and we were,
we ended up at it started out as brunch and it ended up in a dance party. So for an hour and
a half, we danced an hour and a half straight without sitting down and we sweat, we sweat why
we were in there. So that's, that's a good thing. But the other thing that I love and do regularly
is sauna therapy. And also a steam room is good too. But I prefer the sauna, I have an infrared
sauna that I go in three to four times a week and for 30 minutes and just get that sweat on,
get that those toxins moving and get that those toxins out the body.
I love steam room probably because I live in the desert and I just like anytime I can get extra
moisture. And then there's also a bunch of things we can do to decrease the toxic load. Do you want
to talk about that or you want me to go on with that? Because it's just, it's all around us,
right? Yeah, let's talk about it. So we have, because like we've said, it's not just our food.
I mean, there's things we can eat to help flush things out, but the toxic loads all around us.
I'm thinking just cleaning, cleaning chemicals. I love my Norwex cloths because I can clean and
wipe and scrub things down with just water. And these Norwex cloths are amazing. If you're not
familiar with them, they're just lined with antimicrobial silver. So it kills more bacteria
than when you're spraying all those chemicals on and wiping them off. I love those. So just
getting rid of that, just introducing that into my lifestyle. I use almost no chemicals in my
house to clean and my house is very clean. I like a clean house. I use the Thieves Cleaner,
which is all natural as well. And vinegar and baking soda. So easy, right?
And they're fantastic. You're breathing those chemicals when you clean, you're touching those
chemicals when you clean, it's all being absorbed into the body somehow. So, and I'm thinking of,
I'm going, when you're talking about cleaning and I go right to like how we're, we've got,
we've got skincare and beauty products and even things like our just plastics and plastic wrap.
We're storing like all the stuff we buy, everything's wrapped in plastic, packaged in
plastic, covered in plastic. I mean, something we can do in our own homes is just get rid of all
your plastic storage containers and just, you know, use glass to store your food. Buy Mason
jars. I store leftover food in Mason jars all the time. I make bone broth and put them in Mason jars
in my freezer. Yeah. Those are great like food containers to have on hand. Yeah. Yeah. And with
the, on that note, with the, with the beauty and skincare products, if people go to ewg.org,
that's the environmental working groups website. There's a tab in that page called skin deep,
where if you can go and look up different skincare products that pass, like they have like the red
light, green light, like they give it a rating and you can find skincare and beauty products,
whether it's shampoos or lotions or makeup, cosmetics, and things like that, that you can
use that are more on the cleaner end or that are officially to have the EWG seal of approval.
That's such a great tool. I have found even some things that I use that are inexpensive that are
on there. You don't have to buy high-end cosmetics and things like that to, to find clean stuff.
There's a lot of stuff that's already in your, your drug stores and grocery stores that you can
use that is, that is considered clean by EWG. Right. How about filtered water? I know Gina,
you just got an RO system too. Yeah. I wanted to just say too, you can get that at EWG app,
right? Right. So it's, it can't be made any easier. That's, it's an app that you can just
have and check things out when you're out at the stores. Yep. I just got the water filter,
the water I've should have gotten that years ago. I didn't realize like how easy it was to get that
and have it installed. And now we're just have this great water right from the faucet.
Not drinking it out of plastic. Right. So, so good. That makes it so easy. And I feel like
when you have good water at your disposal, you're just going to be more prone to drinking more of
it. So yeah. Anything else on that list we can do to decrease our toxic load and think about every
little bit that you do is just going to help these things. It's just helping. It's less that your
liver's doing for you. Right. So it's the, of the caffeine, the alcohol, the drugs, the smoking,
things like that are all taxing to the liver. So one of the things, that's why it's also important
to eat organic whole foods. We talk a lot about fruits and vegetables, but whenever you can get
them in organic form, that's best. Cause they're also not sprayed with pesticides, which is just
another something that's going to disrupt the liver. Right. Yeah. And then that antibiotic
and hormone free meats, wild caught fish, pasture-raised beef, all those types of things,
every little bit helps. And I had mentioned that there's, there's glutathione. I mentioned
glutathione for when I talked about the phase two liver detox. So glutathione is a, it's a potent
antioxidant in the body. So it protects the liver from damage. It plays a really important role in
preventing just conditions that are linked to inflammation. And, you know, if you leave
inflammation alone long enough, it's going to be, it's going to appear as some sort of diagnosis.
So that's what we want to avoid. Right. So there's a lot of different things that we can do to
increase glutathione production, a lot of foods that we can eat and just different stress
techniques. Gina was so good at talking about that. I also want to point out on our website,
speaking of stress on our website or on our, not our website, actually follow, you can find our
website on our podcast on our website, but if you follow us, wherever you find our podcast,
if you scroll through our podcasts, we had just published a series of a few different,
very short podcasts that Gina did specifically on different meditations. So those are a great
tool to have at your fingertips. But that's also stress, keeping your stress at bay and practicing
calming practices like meditation are really good way to help support glutathione production
in the body. We can also consume foods that are high in vitamin C and E, and those would be things
like almonds and avocados and berries, your citrus fruits, like grapefruits and oranges,
bell peppers are also high in vitamin C and sunflower seeds and tomatoes. Love that. And
a lot of those things are already in our juice plus capsules. Again, there goes juice plus for
the wind. Yeah. I was just thinking about the omegas also, right. Plenty of omega rich food
and our omegas too. We can plug those as well. And wild caught salmon, sardines,
I'm not a sardine person, but sardines are a great way to get those omegas in.
Options could be chia seeds and walnuts, and then adding magnesium in, adequate magnesium levels,
make sure that ensures that that estrogen is completely cleared out after being metabolized.
That's not something that we think of often, right? But when we have that extra estrogen
laying around in there, we need to get that out of the liver as well. And then increasing
muscle mass. The more muscle we have, the better our metabolism is running, right? So it helps to
decrease body fat and encourages that estrogen to leave the liver, get out of the liver after
it's processed. So adding that strength training in is always a good
option too. A couple times a week get that into your routine.
And one last thing on the glutathione, we had tying it back into, we had also, we keep mentioning
cruciferous vegetables. Also a really good way to support glutathione production. And then things
like onions and garlic too. So don't be afraid of those and selenium rich foods. Not only are
they good for the thyroid, but they're also good for the glutathione production. So things like
beef, good quality beef and Brazil nuts. Two Brazil nuts every day is enough, has enough
selenium to support thyroid function. So that was good. Yeah. Yeah. I put two of those in my
smoothie every day just to, just to nurture my thyroid. I don't have a thyroid issue. My
thyroid's always, always good. Like let's get a couple of those in every day. Cause I honestly,
I don't love how they taste so much. Like if that is just to eat them, but I pop them in a smoothie
cause then it blends up into nothing. And I'm like, I don't even know I'm eating it and I'm
just getting it anyway. I love the real nuts. Yeah. I think that's really helpful. Go ahead,
Gina. No, you go ahead. I was going to talk about some, I was going to change the subject.
We'll go ahead and change the subject. Cause I was about to wrap us up, but if you have more to add.
So I just wanted to throw in too, there's also hidden chemicals that are harmful also that you
just want to keep an eye out on avoiding. And I'll just go through these quickly. So just keep
an ear out. And when you're out in the stores and you see these things or just know that they're
things that you probably want to stay away from. So your BPA, right? Most people know the BPA
that's in your water bottles and baby bottles and plastic lined
cans and things. We don't want that in our body. Look for things that are BPA free. The phthalates
that's, that's like a softener, a plastic softener. It's we don't want that in our food.
It's also found in fragrances. And that's not a that's okay. It has to do with male fertility
and birth defects as well as hyperthyroidism. So keep away from that. Dioxins are another thing
to keep away from. That's used in bleaching and deodorizing processes and food and personal
care products. Parabens, that's a preservative used a lot in personal care products. Keep that
away. That's banned in the European countries, but it's not banned in the United States.
Triclosan and other antibacterial agents keep that stuff away. We don't need that in our body.
Artificial fragrances, pesticides, non-organic pesticides we don't want in our body. And then
the PCBs, we don't want any of that in our body either. They're slow to break down. They're
persistent in the environment and that leaches into the water supply. So
keep keep an eye out. We don't want that those endocrine disruptors in our body.
Glycol ethers, we don't want that in our body either. That can cause like fatigue,
nausea, low sperm count, endocrine disruption, and that affects fetal growth as well. So
keep that away from your body. And then atrazine, that's a weed killer. Frequently it's in corn
production. So, and corn is mainly a GMO product to begin with. And now you have this
other chemical that they're using on top of it. And it's the second most common weed killer after
Roundup. So we know how everybody feels about Roundup. It's not things that we want in our
bodies. So that's why GMO organic food and, you know, using clean household cleaners and checking
the EWG website or app for your clean personal care products, because all that stuff that Gina
listed is found in that, in your food and your household cleaners and your personal care products
and, you know, feminine care products and our drinking water. So making sure we're picking
the best quality in each of those categories is just such an important thing to do for the liver.
So yeah, I think this was really eye-opening and hopefully helpful because I mean, we want people
to feel good and we can keep the liver working properly so we can help just feel our best and
keep our immune systems functioning properly and sleep well and all those good things, right?
All of them, all the things. All right, guys, thank you so much. Hopefully this was helpful.
We'd love to hear from you. If there's anything we can help you with, reach out.
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