Realfoodology - 39: Love Your Liver with Dr. Asia Muhammad

Episode Date: June 2, 2021

Today I talk to Dr. Asia Muhammad, a naturopathic doctor who specializes in gastroenterology and understands the necessary balance between conventional and non-conventional medicine.  We talk all about liver health! what it does, the role it plays in hormones, metabolism, why we are seeing a rise in non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (even in children), what you can do for optimal liver health and so much more!  Show Links: https://www.asiamuhammad.com/ https://www.instagram.com/dr.asiamuhammad/ To Find an Integrative Doctor https://www.ifm.org/find-a-practitioner/ To find a Functional Medicine Doctor https://integrativemedicine.arizona.edu/alumni.html Parsley Health https://www.parsleyhealth.com/

On today's episode of The Real Foodology Podcast. We have been dying of heart disease for the past two centuries, except 1918 when the flu killed more people. But we've had the same issues for a while. And you'd think at this point, these companies, advertisement agencies would get it and realize, hey, our formula's not worked. Let's change the formula. You know, we're dying of the same thing. Hi, welcome back to another episode of The Real Foodology podcast. I'm your host, Courtney Swan. I am the creator of Real Foodology. I'm actually celebrating my 10th anniversary this year of Real Foodology, which I can't even believe. I started it as a blog back in 2011 when I was living in Austin and I was, I went back to school because I had my undergrad

in communication and I really wanted to pursue my master's in nutrition. But in order to even be accepted into the program, I had to go back and do all the prerequisites. So all the science prerequisites that I did not do in my communication undergrad. So I was full on deep in all of the chemistries, biochem, organic chem, biology, anatomy, and physiology. It was a lot. On top of that, also working at Whole Foods and started this blog because I really felt like I needed an outlet to share all of the things that I was learning about the human body, about nutrition. I was sharing recipes, which I still do to this day on my Instagram. And a lot of it was based on sharing things that I was learning about our food industry and the way that our food is produced and how it is not

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my code realfoodology at checkout to receive 10% off site-wide. That's fromourplace.com, code realfoodology. Our place offers a 100-day trial with free shipping and returns. So anyways, that is a little backstory on Real Foodology. It is now an Instagram and of course this podcast, and I am just so happy that you're here today. If you're interested, you can find me over on Instagram at real foodology. I say this every week, but I am so excited about this guest today. You guys know, I love to nerd out on, on health. I mean, it's why I started this podcast, but this topic in particular,

it just really gets me excited. We go all into liver health, and I just love this woman so much. I speak to Dr. Asia Muhammad. She is a naturopathic doctor who specializes in gastroenterology and completed a three-year independent residency at Arizona Digestive Health, where she was able to study and learn directly under two MD gastroenterologists. This woman is amazing and such a wealth of knowledge. We talk all about liver health, what it does, the role it plays in hormones and your metabolism, why we are seeing a rise in non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, especially in children right now,

what you can do for optimal liver health and so much more. I really, really loved this conversation. So I hope you guys get a lot out of it. I hope you enjoy it as much as we enjoyed having it. Um, also if you don't follow Dr. Asia, please go find her on Instagram. I'm going to leave the link to it in the show notes. So definitely go check out her account. I found her sometime within this last year and I've really enjoyed following her. She's just, um, she provides a lot of really important, amazing information. So if you're into health, you will definitely love her Instagram with that. Let's get to a question and then we're going to dive into the episode before I get to the question. I just have a little disclaimer as always, these answers and this podcast are just for educational

and informational purposes only. I am an integrative nutritionist, but I'm not a doctor. And I don't know you personally, I don't know what's going on in your body. So just know that this information on this podcast is not a sub for individual medical or mental health advice. And it doesn't constitute a provider patient relationship. As always talk to your doctor first. So today's question actually comes from my podcast producer, Drake. I've been having so many functional and integrative doctors on my podcast that he was curious, how do you find an integrative or functional medicine doctor and how much does it cost? So before I answer that question, for anyone that is still not entirely sure or understanding the concept of functional

and integrative medicine, I wanted to give you a little bit of a background on it. So functional medicine and integrative medicine are pretty similar. They are preventative forms of medical care that work to identify and understand the underlying or root causes of a disease. These practices use a combination of modern and traditional healthcare practices to diagnose and treat a patient. It focuses on nutritional lifestyle, exercise habits. They look at your mental health, your social life, your home environment. It's just a really zoomed out perspective to see what's going on in your life and in your body. They are medically trained doctors. They can prescribe

medicine, but they try to treat with food, herbs, and lifestyle changes first before medicine intervention, but they can, and they will prescribe prescription medicine when it is needed. It's just not usually the first path that they take. So I have an integrative medicine doctor that I use just as my, my everyday doctor. Like she's just my physician because they can do all the things, order labs, prescribe medicine, anything that you would need from a doctor. But what I love is that they have this zoomed out perspective and they look at your body and your lifestyle as a whole. So integrative and functional medicine physicians believe that poor lifestyle choices are the root cause of many, many modern chronic diseases. Now, how do you find one? So there's two different ways. I mean, there's a lot

of different ways you can do a, you know, just a basic Google search, but in particular for the functional medicine doctors, there is an Institute for functional medicine. It's called IFM and they have a website where you can actually put in your zip code and it will tell you exactly where functional medicine doctors are in your area. I'm going to leave a link to that in the show notes. And then for an integrative trained healthcare practitioner in your area, you can go to Andrew Wiles Center for Integrative Health. And again, I will leave a link in the show notes for that. You can also plug in your zip code there and find a doctor that's in your area.

Now, I will say this. Unfortunately, because in this country, we do not practice preventative care, nor do we recognize it as the standard for healthcare. Most insurance providers will not cover this. And a lot of these integrative and functional medicine doctors do not take insurance, which is really frustrating. Hopefully that will change. I'm hoping as more eyes are opened to, um, how much more effective this practice is that hopefully we will start changing that. But I will say what you can do is you ask your provider for a super bill. This is what I do with my doctor. I get a super bill for every time I see her. And what I do is I turn that into

my insurance company and they will either give you money back or they apply it to your deductible. For me, they apply it to my deductible. So not all is lost and hopefully that will help you, but I will say they're expensive. So, um, however, if this is your only, if this is your only healthcare cost and you can afford it, it's worth it because in the long run, you're going to save yourself a lot of money on medical care and on prescription drugs and any sort of interventions that you might have due to poor lifestyle and, um, diseases. There's actually one more thing you can check out. There's something called parsley health i don't

know where they are outside of i know that they're in california and new york but look them up because i know that they are looking to expand right now but parsley health is an amazing resource of doctors it's a medical center and you pay x amount per year and you get four to six. I should have probably looked this up before. Okay. Drake is telling me right now it's 175 a month. You get five annual in-depth medical visits. So yeah, Parsley health is another great place to look. I know that the owner of Parsley health is an amazing doctor and she is really setting out to change the way that we approach health care. So, like I said, you get to see your doctor five times a month and it's really pretty affordable. It's only, well, $175 is a lot.

Or, oh, did I say a month? You can see them five times a year. And this is a really important thing. This is one more thing to note. That's really what puts functional and integrative medicine in a different box. When you go and see your traditional conventional doctor, you maybe get 10 minutes with them. And with Parsley Health, you get your first appointment. When I went, it was an hour and a half.

And this is the same with most functional medicine and integrative doctors. Your first visit is anywhere between an hour to two hours because they want to really dive in and get to know you, your lifestyle and know everything about you. And that's how you're really going to get care and how you're really going to get to the root cause of whatever it is that you're dealing with. So I hope this helps. Thank you so much for coming on today. I'm so happy to have you here. Thanks for having me. I'm excited about this. Yeah, me too. So for people listening that are unaware of you and your work, why don't you give them a

little bit of background on you? I started following you on Instagram sometime in this last year, and I've just been so impressed with all the information that you were constantly sharing on there. I just, I love following you so much. Thank you. I really appreciate that. Um, so I am a naturopathic doctor and I am in Missouri, St. Louis, Missouri. And so I went to school undergrad in Tennessee, then I went to the naturopathic medical program in Arizona. And afterwards, I completed a three-year residency under two gastroenterologists who are MDs. And we focus with GI patients and liver patients as well. So hepatology cases. Amazing.

Well, I wanted to go into liver health because this is something that I really love to talk about because I think that not enough people focus on the liver. Like obviously everyone knows kind of about the liver and what it does and the detoxification pathways. But I think sometimes people don't realize the real importance of it and how many different roles it plays in the body. Imagine having a metabolic coach in your pocket that you could access at any point, any time in the day, whenever you want. That's what Lumen is.

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So for those listening, what does the liver do exactly and why should we care so much about taking care of our livers? Yeah, the liver is a pretty remarkable organ. It's positioned right under the right upper quadrant. So kind of right under your right side rib cage. And it has a ton of functions. It produces proteins, it produces clotting factors. It's responsible for some hormone production, hormone breakdown. It's responsible for your blood breakdown products. After they leave the spleen, they kind of go to the liver and the liver breaks them down, which is why your stool is brown, the brown color that it is. It's typically like breakdown bilirubin products. Liver also filters pretty much blood that comes from the gut. So over, I think 70% of the blood that comes into the liver is coming from

the intestinal tract. So as to filter all of that out, it's responsible for detoxification, um, through different like phases of metabolism and cytochrome system. So it's a pretty remarkable organ. It's not just a one-stop. I don't think there's any organ in the body that has only one function, but I would say the liver probably has the most functions of any organ in the body. Yeah. It's so interesting. Cause, uh, you know, before I got into nutrition, I really was just like, Oh yeah, the liver just like detoxifies alcohol. You know, I just didn't really have any, I just had a really basic understanding of it. You know, I started to really pay attention to it when, um, I was in my twenties and I was having really horrible hormonal imbalance and I was getting really crazy cystic acne on my chin. And I, it turns out my progesterone was really low. There was a lot of different factory

factors that were involved in it. But one of the things that helped me the most with my acne was, um, starting to take herbs that were, that were supporting my liver and the detoxification pathways. And that was kind of the first thing that really helped me starting to, started to get on that path of, of healing my hormones. Nice. I really love to hear when patients or people say that, you know, they notice a change in other symptoms when they focus on liver organ, when, you know, typically we don't really see liver issues unless somebody has like, or not liver issues, but you don't really see frank liver disease unless somebody has like alcoholic liver disease or fatty liver disease or

cirrhosis of the liver or like jaundice of their skin, their body's not able to produce or break down their bilirubin. So it kind of accumulates in their bloodstream skin and you start noticing yellowing of the eyes and yellowing of the skin. So, um, yeah, I mean, it's, I love to hear patients can connect the dots without like obvious liver disease. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and too, and when I started realizing, um, just all of the stuff that we're exposed to on a daily basis, I think a lot of people forget about this too. It's not just how much alcohol you drink. It's, you know, what kind of pesticides are you being exposed to on a daily basis in your food? What's in your water? Are you being exposed to plastics? What, how polluted is the town or the

city that you live in? And that also plays a role in the detoxification through it. Totally. I agree with you. I was just reading this study on, um, some chemical that mimics estrogen in the body. And there's so many estrogen mimicking chemicals in the body. And, um, I was checking the water. I just moved and I was checking the water where I live. And I'm like, there's arsenic in the water and there are all these like endocrine disruptors. And I'm like, I don't want to take a shower. I love that you piece that in because it's really important that the environmental things we do, even from like using plastic bags and like microwaving our food and like plastic containers and those types of like ways that estrogen get into the body. Um, yeah.

Yes. I love that. You brought up such a good point too. I tell everyone, um, get a filter for your shower and then also get a filter for your bath. There's like a little thing that you can hang over your faucet in your bathtub that filters the water out. And that's super important. It surely is a hundred percent important. And when you look at some of these chemicals, like arsenic has been associated with like diabetes. Um, and exactly in some studies, arsenic and rice, they can link the amount of arsenic in a person's system and the risk of diabetes for that person is crazy. So I'm not sure why there's arsenic in the water, but it's really bothering me. So I'm definitely getting a filter for everything that water comes

out of. You're like, I'm not going to shower until that filter comes in and got an Amazon primate. Yeah. Oh my gosh. Yeah. That's so wild. So what are some things? So I don't, I always love to provide people with solutions. I don't want to just throw out all these like scary facts and then be like, Oh, good luck. So what are some things that people can do? Um, besides, you know, like we mentioned the shower filters, things that they can do to protect their livers and maybe, um, reduce their, like for lack of a better, like their toxin load. Totally. So with regard to protecting your liver and optimizing liver function, the first thing I always learn and I always teach is, um, avoid exposure. So if you know, something is causing, um, liver damage or irritating your liver, you want to avoid

exposure of those things, right? So that's excessive alcohol consumption. That is like high fructose corn syrup, right? So avoidance of certain products and then like, like Tylenol or acetaminophen, right? Which can affect your liver function and the pleat your glutathione level. So I'd say avoidance number one, avoiding those irritating factors. And then number two, I would say, um, supporting the biliary system, the bile flow in the liver, um, bile is like, um, something that flows through the liver, the liver makes bile, but it helps to digest food. It's really important for digestion and absorption of all of your fat, soluble vitamins, vitamin A, D, E, and K. Um. So I would say supporting your liver looks like eating bitter foods, right? So those are, I love dandelion greens and like mustard greens, like anything that's bitter will

help kind of stimulate flow of the bile from your liver. So that's something you can do. I'm going to keep going or. Please, please. Okay. Yeah. So in terms of botanicals, really a gentle one that I love is milk thistle, which everybody talks about milk thistle, but it's really gentle. And there's some really cool literature on milk thistle, reducing liver inflammation and helping to, to, um, trend your liver enzymes down because your liver enzymes, ALT and AST can be markers of liver inflammation, liver irritation. They're not really, um, so sensitive and specific for disease type.

So that means that if you had the flu, your liver enzymes could go up. If you have cirrhosis, your liver enzymes could go up. I've seen patients with cirrhosis where their liver is like a raisin, kind of shriveled up, not really functioning, and their liver enzymes are normal. So they're not the best marker to say like your liver is inflamed or there's an issue, but they can be a great indicator that there's something going on in the liver. But milk thistle is one that has been shown to help lower your ALT and AST if they're an issue, but they can be a great indicator that there's something going on in the liver. Um, but milk thistle is one that has been shown to help lower your ALT and AST if they're elevated, which means it's reducing inflammation in the liver. Um, and then I love burdock tea.

That's one that I always like will recommend for anybody doing any kind of like heavy metal detox or low detox and so forth. So that's one that I would, those are two that I really love to, to discuss. So I can keep going, but I'll just stop. So, no, I mean, I love that. We can talk more about this in a little bit too, cause it'll, I can kind of wrap it back around with some other questions that I have. Um, you had mentioned the role. So I want to talk about the role of the metabolism in the liver. Cause I'm sure a lot of people are very curious about that. So what is, um, what is kind of, what is the role of the liver and the metabolism and how can it can help? How can it help your metabolism? Totally. So your metabolism, a lot of people know your thyroid gland, right? Kind of controls metabolism. Um, but your thyroid hormones converted from inactive to active in the liver. So T4 to T3,

that conversion happens, uh, mostly in the liver. It has happened in a few, another tissue as well. And so that, in that part, your liver plays a huge role in thyroid, I mean, health and your overall metabolism. So a lot of naturopathic doctors, when they're focusing on thyroid health, they'll also focus on liver health and like seeing what your liver function looks like and kind of put together a liver protocol for you. Your liver also plays a role in metabolism through like your like mitochondrial processes. So you think about like fat storage, you think about energy storage in the liver. A lot of sugars go to the liver, the liver will convert them. Your cells also can do this as well, but your liver has a huge role in kind of manufacturing.

Well, I'll say not manufacturing, more so processing like, um, sugars and fats and converting them and delegating how they should be stored. Yeah. Well, and this is why you briefly brought this up, but why it's so important, um, to be careful of things like corn syrup. And I would argue sugar in general, but corn syrup, especially because it really puts a strain on the liver. Another one too, that I think a lot of people don't know about is agave. Yep. I knew you were going to say that. Yeah, that's right. Yes. It drives me so nuts. I mean, I still, to this day, I'm finding all these like supposedly health food products that have agave in it. And I'm like, guys, this is basically just corn syrup

with a different label on it. It's 100% corn syrup with a different label. I tell you what, if I go to somebody's house and they're like super holistic, organic, and I open their counter because I'm looking for coffee or whatever I'm looking for, and I see agave, I'm leaving. No, I'm just kidding. I was somewhere recently and I was just like, I love this place. And I opened the counter to get it, opened the drawer in the cabinet to get a cup. And I was like, what is this? Anyways, that's one that, um, can be worse than high fructose corn syrup in terms

of the amount of fructose that can be fractionated in these products. And you have the most fructose receptors in your liver. So if you, if you, if you intake fructose, it's going to go to the liver. You don't really have fructose receptors on the pancreas. So you don't get that stimulation of that insulin response like you get with glucose. And so that's the one thing that I tell people, like, oh, sorry, if you have fatty liver disease, you have to eliminate high fructose corn syrup. And a lot of that in kids is like juices and like products that seem to be like relatively benign. You know, a lot of kids love

juice and you find a lot of high fructose corn syrup in those types of products. Oh my gosh. It makes me so sad. And this is actually something I wanted to make sure that we covered is the rise of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, especially in children. I was listening to something that Dr. Hyman was talking about. It was a couple months ago now, but he went to a convention, obviously this was before COVID and, um, it was, it was having to do with non-alcoholic fatty liver disease. And he said that he was meeting so many pediatricians that were there that he started asking, he's like, why are you guys here? Like we're, I mean, you're children's doctors. And they were like, we're seeing such a rise in,

in children that we're now having to like have a protocol to figure out how to, to prevent this in kids. I know it's, Oh God, it makes me so sad. It's so sad because the issue with fatty liver is that most people who have fatty liver will just have the fat in the liver and they don't progress to the inflammatory state. So that's just called NAFLD or non-alcoholic fatty liver. When you have NASH, which is non-alcoholic steatohepatitis, that means that the fat there is actually causing inflammation. And when you have NASH, that's the category of people that actually progress towards cirrhosis, right? So the more fibrotic stages, and you have four stages of fibrosis in the liver and stage four is cirrhosis. And I typically describe cirrhosis as like a raisin.

It's kind of like, like shriveled up, like scar tissue and nothing is flowing. And it's so sad. I remember being in residency and seeing this young person who had some just general symptoms, nothing so peculiar. Um, and I think that the primary care referred them to us because they had abnormal liver enzymes or abnormal liver ultrasound. So a lot of primary cares will do ultrasound if you have pain in your belly, just because they're trying to rule out gallstones, which are common. But what they'll find incidentally is like liver findings. So then they say, well, we don't know what this is. Go see GI pathology. We had this case of a young, a 30 year old with cirrhosis of the liver. And they typically say, if you're,

once you have cirrhosis, you pretty much have like a 10 year lifespan. If that, in terms of, you know, functionality, you have to get a liver transplant. So, um, but at that stage, you can't reverse it. Sorry for interrupting you, but it depends on how much of the liver is cirrhosis because your liver can regenerate itself at the regenerative organ. But, um, I've never, I've never really seen that happen in terms of patients who have cirrhosis, like the disease tends to be really severe because it affects more organ systems than just your liver. But, but, you know, the goal is preventing getting to that space and eliminating high fructose corn syrup is a huge thing for parents across the country. So besides high fructose corn syrup, why else are

we seeing this rise in, I mean, we're seeing a rise in, in general, but just it's extra concerning because we never saw it in children up until recently. Why, what are the contributing causes to this? So in pediatric populations, I, I wouldn't really know for sure, to be honest. I would honestly bet money that a lot of it is high fructose corn syrup. That's what I would say. There's this one, yep. There's this one hepatologist that put out this article a few years back and she was saying that she believes the number one reason for fatty liver is actually just high fructose

corn syrup in adult and pediatric population. So it's that fructose really gets converted to fat. And it's, when you look at the biochemical steps of fructose metabolism versus like glucose, regular sugar metabolism, fructose is not a rate limited step. So we can just, it just goes into the liver and the liver just stores it, stores it, stores it versus glucose. It has a rate, a limiting rate step. So it's food loop. Well, can they see this if I'm doing this with my hand or should I say, should I explain this? Yeah. Explain it. Cause we're going to also. I won't motion with my hands. So when you, when you think about biochemical processes,

like you had like, I don't know, some plain sugar and it goes through the, um, the process of glycolysis breakdown, it's a step that is limited. So you think about like, maybe it only enters every 30 minutes into the reaction and it's a time regulated process. Fructose metabolism is not really like that. It just kind of flushes in. If it's coming in, it's going in. It's not really stopped at the door. It's not, wait, it's your turn. It's like, oh, the door's always open. We're coming in, we're being stored. So that's the difference. And so that's why it's so dangerous to have so much fructose. And you don't get that like satiation response, that normal hunger, like hormone response with fructose, which is why people can drink a ton of a big soda and still be hungry after because they don't really have that brain response to say you're full, which is not what you have with like regular sugar. So there's so many like subtle nuance to differences with fructose consumption. Well, and isn't it with fructose, since it goes straight to the liver, we don't use it for energy, right? It's not converted to energy like glucose is,

is that true? I don't, I honestly don't know how true that is. I would, I would bet money that there is a lot of truth to that because it's not dependent on insulin. So it's not going into like our cells for energy. So I would say, yeah, that, that sounds about right to me. Yeah, man. And well, and I would argue too, just in general, of course, high fructose corn syrup is a huge part of this problem, but I think in general, just our dependency on sugar, especially in processed foods. Yep. I agree with that a hundred percent. You know, you think about like meals that kids have in school, you know, you think about how there's always some sweetened juice or like snack or chip or cookie with it. Yeah. Well, and then you look at too, I mean,

we're putting sugar in so many things now that we're finding sugar and stuff that sugar shouldn't even be in. Right. My dad sent me a photo the other day. I love this so much because I'm trying so hard to get my dad to eat better. I love it. He sends me, um, photos of ingredient lists sometimes. And he sent me one of this salad dressing that he found in the airport and it had corn syrup in it. What? I was like, this is salad dressing. Why are we putting sugar in our salad dressing? I don't want sugar on my greens. So why honestly it's you, it's shocking if you're avoiding these things and then you kind of just peruse the aisles, what high fructose corn syrup is or sugars are in. It's like, why would you need sugar in these items? So you have to really read those labels or pretty much eat like a whole food diet. just kind of like really good, like clean proteins and

clean fruits and vegetables and just avoid those, those unpackaged goods. Yes. And if you want sugary treats, save your sugar for those treats and make them at home if you can, you know, or there's a lot of really good organic brands now that are making lower sugar stuff. Um, you can get pure monk fruit extract, or if you like pure Stevia, um, I always say to try to bake with those if you can, but there's definitely options. Cause I, I always love to tell people that it's not about, um, you want to still have your treats, you know, you don't want to feel like you're just totally restricting and you can never have a piece, you know, a piece of cake ever again, but it's more about saving. I always tell people this. I'm like, save your sugar for where it

counts. Cut out the sugar in, you know, your, your, um, almond milk in the morning and your coffee, for example, or in your salad dressings or in the places that you probably won't even realize you won't even, um, notice that they're gone. Whereas like, if you're eating a cookie, you're going to want that to be sugary. So save it for them. You know, I love those tips. Oh, they're great. Thank you. Yeah. So as far as non-alcoholic fatty liver disease goes, how, how can someone tell if they have it? I mean, is there, can you test for it or what is the, so your liver doesn't really have any nerve cells. So if you have liver pain, you're not, well, you're not going to feel liver pain. But if you have like issues with your liver, you're not really going to feel it.

The only time you really feel liver pain is when the liver is so large that it stretches the capsule that it's in. And that's when you feel pain. Usually you never see that unless somebody has like hepatitis where their liver gets really, really inflamed and their liver enzymes are through the roof and it typically resolves or goes down over time. But outside of that, the symptom picture for fatty liver disease looks like most Americans were tired, fatigued. Like we all probably have fatty, no, we don't all have fatty liver, but

what I'm saying is you won't really know unless you had like ultrasound or if you had like, um, blood work done, just general blood work, your CMP, we'll look at your liver enzyme. So your CMP is your comprehensive metabolic panel and it checks your liver, your kidney electrolytes. Yeah. And so that will, your sugar levels, that will tell you if your liver's a little off. By off, I mean, if your ALT, which is a liver enzyme is greater than your AST, that can be an indicator of fatty liver disease versus the other way around. If your AST is greater than your AST, that can be an indicator of fatty liver disease versus the other way around. If your AST is greater than your ALT, that's an indicator of alcoholic liver disease. If somebody has a history of that. So we would have patients come in and they would have alcoholic liver

disease. And we have to basically have a conversation with them about avoiding alcohol. And they would say, okay, I'm avoiding alcohol. And they follow up in like six weeks and their AST is still higher than their ALT. And that lets us know they're still drinking alcohol. So there are some really interesting ways to tease it out outside of that. It just be like an ultrasound of the abdomen. Cause you can't feel fatty liver. If you palpate a liver, you can't feel that. Unless the liver is like really larger and hepatomegaly, which is a big liver, which you can feel that, but you never really have enlarged liver with fatty liver disease. You typically have fat and then fat causes inflammation. Then you have scarring and the liver actually will shrink

for cirrhosis, not enlarged. So, Oh, interesting. So how would someone start to realize maybe that they have it? I mean, are there symptoms that you notice in your body? I mean, besides you said like the fatigue, but. No, not, you don't notice symptoms. You don't really have right-sided abdominal pain. You won't really notice if you have pain in your right side, it's a lot of times sawbladder issues, but you don't really have like right-sided pain. Some people are really intuitive with their bodies and they're like, oh, I know this is my liver and they're spot on. But a lot of like most Americans were so busy. Like we're not really like, oh, intuition, what is, what organ is bothering me? You know? So unless you go to the doctor, you're not going to really know. So just pay attention to your, your blood

work and see what those enzymes look like. Ask your doctor to order an ultrasound. It's just some jelly on the belly. There's no like radiation involved. So that might be something worthwhile too. Okay. Um, Oh, and you know, I, I realized as we were talking about alcoholic fatty liver disease, I don't know if we ever actually named this. So just for people that are unaware, I mean, non-alcoholic fatty liver disease is exactly what it sounds like. Um, it's fatty liver disease, um, that is caused by something other than alcohol in the body. And the reason why I wanted to talk about it today and why it's so concerning is because up until the last, I don't know the timeframe, but recently we weren't really seeing very many cases of this. And now we're seeing a huge rise in them, which is very

concerning. The hepatologists and gastroenterologists are now predicting that, well, this was like five years ago, they were predicting that in the next 10 to 15 years, fatty liver will be the number one reason for liver transplants, displacing hep C and alcoholic liver disease. And you know, there's a cure for hep C now there's like a drug you can take and it's like gone in like 90 days, but fatty liver, they're saying is the number one, going to be the number one reason for liver transplants, which is just completely metabolic, right? And you look at the literature, I think it's like, you find fatty liver really prevalent in patients with other metabolic diseases. So like, you know, weight imbalances and sugar issues and blood pressure cases and metabolic syndrome. So it's kind of like in that picture of metabolic disease, which if you look at the

leading causes of death, they can all be traced back to basically metabolic disorders. And then I would take it a step further and say, we can point it back to our diets. Yep. A hundred percent. I mean, we're eating our way into this right now. We pretty much are. And fatty liver, non-alcoholic fatty liver looks exactly like alcoholic liver disease without alcohol. It just makes me so sick. It really makes me sick for the kids. You know, like you think about these kids who have no idea and they're like, they have to trust the environment that they're in. They aren't making their own decisions and they grow up. And what are we going to have 20 year olds with cir have to trust the environment that they're in. They aren't making their own decisions and they grow up.

And what are we going to have 20 year olds with cirrhosis of the liver that needs liver transplant? It's so sad. It's, it's terrifying. Actually, when you think about this burden and your liver transplant costs about a million bucks, you know? So it's like, on top of that, we have to pay for these things or who's going to pay for these liver transplants for these kids.

That's going to need them in the future. So we have to think about all of these things. And I think there's a race now to come up with a drug for fatty liver disease. And they've tried a few different, exactly. So I don't think there's an FDA approved drug now. I went to this conference a few years back and these liver doctors are all kind of like fishing for the next like big breakthrough fatty liver drug. And I don't know if there's one approved now, but there wasn't the last time I checked. And so they've tried diabetes medications to see if that makes a difference. They've tried a few other, like basically metformin, a few like piaglitazone, which is a diabetes medication. I'm not sure what else they've tried, but their results are not so

promising. Um, what they typically look for in a study for fatty liver is like reversal or the halting of fibrosis. So that's a positive indicator that a drug is doing a good job. If it's, if it's preventing the scarring of the liver, because once you start scarring your liver, that's when you step into cirrhosis. So if a drug can prevent the progression to fibrosis, that's a good, that's a good drug, um, technically. So vitamin E is one that's been shown to actually help with fatty liver disease. Um, and it's been used in some studies and a lot of people will use that. I typically recommend like vitamin E rich foods for people who have any kind of fatty liver, liver issues. So awesome. I mean, I just, as you were saying all that,

I'm getting more and more frustrated because why still now that we have all the literature, why cannot, why can't we focus on the food? Why can't we hold these companies accountable and not allow them to make our foods highly palatable and full of all this sugar and all this crap that we know is contributing to these problems? Listen, you're preaching to the choir. I listen. Yeah. I mean, I had a doctor recently on another podcast and the way that he described it, I was like, yes, this is so spot on and it makes so much sense. So let's say that your kitchen is your body, right? And you have some crumbs in the corner of your kitchen and cockroaches start coming. And instead of removing those crumbs, you just spray them with raid.

Well, okay. So you're going to kill off those cockroaches, but then you're going to have more coming instead of just actually removing the crumbs, which would then keep the cockroaches from coming. So the crumbs being the sugar, why are we not just removing the sugar instead of we're just now adding more and more drugs onto the problem? That's a really great analogy. Right? I was like, damn, that is spot on. It is spot on. I don't know if that picture will ever change in America. I think that, you know, these big companies are in a race for more money and who can have the best drug and best outcome.

So I don't think that'll ever change. I think it's up to people like you and I, um, you know, kind of just grass rooting it. Yeah. So I agree. We just have to, um, have more of these conversations and people can start waking up and realizing what's in our food and start making those changes. And, you know, and I want to say this too. I, I remind people of this a lot. I don't want anyone to feel as though this is something that they are personally doing wrong. I really see this as our, our food system is, I agree. What is the problem? I 100% agree. And they're taking advantage of people. Yeah. There is Dr. McGregor. He's a big name in like a plant-based how not to die. He had this comment once that I agreed with. He said that he believes the number one cause of like metabolic disease, obesity, he was

saying is advertisement. Yes, exactly. Well, because they're taking advantage of people that may not know any better, you know, because I think about people that maybe don't have access to this information and I'm not saying that they can't get access to it, but, um, we make eating healthy really hard in this country and we make it incredibly confusing. You know, it's all, um, the information that gets to us in the news articles and, um, online are, you know, the, the large corporations that are paying for this advertisement, you know, and so we're being duped to think that we're eating healthy when we're eating all these, you know, all these foods out of packages.

Exactly. I agree. I just think it comes down to, you know, us and education, educating people. And it's, you'd be shocked or I'm not, I'm not sure you, I'm sure you would not be shocked at the number of people that are just unaware. Yeah, exactly. Well, and I think about too, how much our food has changed in the last, like, I would say like 40, 50 years. I will never forget this. My mom, um, before when my grandmother was still here, my grant, my mom flew out to her. She was living in Kansas and completely revamped her whole pantry because she was like, mom, you have to understand that these companies now that, you know, you've been buying these brands forever. And while they were cleaner when you were buying them, when, you know, when I was a kid, they've reformulated all

of their ingredients, you know, like there was a perfect example, saltines. When my mom was a kid, they bought saltines. And I think, you know, it was just like wheat flour and salt. It was pretty basic stuff, maybe some like, um, added vitamins and stuff in there, but now they put corn syrup in them. And so my mom was basically, yes. Last time I checked. And so there's things like that, where people don't even know that just these companies have been sneaking in little ingredients under our noses. And these are a lot of brands that, you know, our parents grew up eating, our grandparents grew up eating, and they never even thought to look at the labels because they just reformulated them under our noses.

Yeah, honestly, it's just, it's terrifying, actually, when you think about the amount of information that just kind of slides by, you know, that's legal. I know, I know, I know. This is all legal, you know. Yeah, that's such a great point. I know. I know. I know. This is all legal, you know? Yeah. That's such a great point. I know. So you had mentioned a little bit about metabolic health and metabolic syndrome and kind of the connection to all these diseases that we're seeing. Let's talk about that a little bit. So what exactly is metabolic syndrome? The metabolic syndrome encompasses, you have to

have three out of five. And so I'm going to get the five wrong, but they have to do with like blood sugar. So diabetes, prediabetes, um, waist circumference beyond a certain, um, diameter. Um, like I think also blood pressure issues fall into that category, dyslipidemia, lipid issues, and then weight issues fall into the category. So I think I'm getting one of those wrong, but they have to have three out of five to be classified as a metabolic syndrome. So you look at most Americans, we pretty much have meet a lot of those criteria. And most Americans have, or we have been dying of heart disease for the past two centuries,

except 1918 when the flu killed more people. But we've had the same issues for a while. And you'd think at this point, these companies, advertisement agencies would get it and realize, hey, our formula's not worked. Let's change the formula. We're dying of the same thing. We're not dying from a lack of statin medication. We're not dying from a lack of, you know, high blood pressure is not caused by a lack of amlodipine, you know, it's like diabetes is not caused by a lack of a deficiency of metformin. Hello. So, yeah. And you know, I, I found this so interesting, the same doctor whose analogy I gave you a little while ago, he also, he said on this podcast that, um, we're just, we have all these names for all these different things. So, um, you know, cardio, cardiovascular disease, Alzheimer's diabetes. And he goes, those are

all the same thing. He's like, they're all caused by the same thing. It's all metabolic disorder. That really blew my mind. I never thought about it like that before. But so really what's happening is, you know, we're just seeing all the same issues, but we're naming them different things. And yeah, there, I was just going to say, I got really excited about this. I read a lot of like random books and there's this doctor who believes that even cancer is a metabolic disease. A lot of cancer that people have are metabolic underlying metabolic disease. So there's some really interesting theories out there, even regards to that, because cancer

is one of those top five, you know, causes of death for Americans as well. So, yeah, I mean, it would make sense too, because we know if we're able to connect sugar to all of these, well, we know that sugar feeds cancer cells as well. Yep. Yep. Oh, that's really interesting. And, you know, metabolic syndrome is something that we're also seeing rising in children, which again, we can probably connect back to the corn syrup and just all the sugar and their diets. And, and also like all of our like obsession with like Netflix and like binging, you know what I mean? Like, I'm not sure binging is in the DSM like category of like disorder.

It's like, why don't they have to categorize everything? But it's like, like, Oh, I think hoarding, they added hoarding. Maybe binging is not in there, but hoarding is now like a diagnosis. Exactly. So we're like binging on Netflix, you know, like watching these 10 part series where it shows used to come out once a week. Now it's like, Oh, here you go. 20 episodes. You can watch it all overnight. And we're like in our beds with our snacks, watching whatever we're watching. We're binging our Netflix and binging our snacks. So there's a lot of factors to consider and think about kids and these tablets, right? A lot of parents, like, you know, tablets easy and convenient just to give the kid a tablet. I've never seen patients in residency and the mom would come in and the kids are like on their own little

tablets with their little snacks and their juice bags, like while the mom's getting her care. And when I was growing up, that wasn't a thing. We also didn't really have as much technology as we did. Um, so it's different, but I think that that's something else to think about as well. Yeah. I mean, I totally agree with that. I think about when I was a kid, I mean, the second I got home from school, if I didn't have any homework or I do my homework and then if I didn't, you know, I would just immediately run outside and I would be rollerblading. I'd be riding my bike. I'd be running around with the neighborhood, you know, like I had a trampoline, I was jumping on the trampoline. Um, I was incredibly active as a kid. And now, like you said, we see so many kids like on their tablets, their iPads, or, you know, binging TV or whatever. And, and, you know,

I think it all kind of goes hand in hand because I don't want to put the blame on parents because, um, you know, a lot of people are working a lot of job, you know, more than one job. And, um, it's the only way they can get their kids to, you know, go to, go to their job with them or whatever it is like they keep them distracted. So I get it. I don't want to vilify that, but it is a problem. You know, I get it. I just think that we have to be mindful of what the kids are doing while they're doing that. Cause it can sometimes be like a mindless thing where for the kids, not necessarily the parents or for the kids where they're just like, you know, like us, like watching our Netflix and they're like, I want some snacks. It's just convenient. So I think it's being mindful of that and maybe having healthier snacks

if they're, you know, engaging or doing those activities so that they can, you know, have that, that, that snack, but it's not, you know, packaged or juice or high fructose corn syrup. So those just little small things. Yeah. And also, you know, I have a friend that has three kids and they put a time limit on how much TV they can watch a day or tablet usage or whatever it is, you know, they're like, you get 30 minutes with it or an hour or whatever. Um, and I think that is, that definitely plays a huge role, but, and then, you know, you think about this last year. So to take it to now the adults, um, putting us in lockdown for the last year, and then we're all stuck inside, not exercising. That's also

contributing to, to disease and issues in our body. Yeah. So many patients that I've seen this year, they've their weight has changed, you know, just because of the lockdown, and they're really concerned now. And they are trying to find like creative ways and tools to kind of get the weight off. And they're still a little paranoid about being in public spaces. So it's just a different way we have to navigate healthcare now. So it's interesting. It's interesting time. Absolutely. So for those patients, what kind of advice do you give them? So I typically recommend a lot of like intermittent fasting, um, just because I grew up doing it and I, there's a lot of really great literature behind intermittent fasting. And I don't really describe it as like fasting.

I just describe it as like a natural rest and digest time for your body. So it should be happening every day in general. And it promotes motility. So promotes those waves you need in your guts, flush things down. So I'll just tell people like, you know, your last meals at seven, like give it a little time before you have your first meal. And if you have your first meal, make sure it's not anything carb heavy, like just have some clean protein and like some fruits or veggies or something like that. Not first thing in the morning, you don't want heavy carbs on your tummy. So I just give them little tips like that. And I do see success with, you know, steady, consistent weight loss and just kind of balance. But yeah,

and then I love recommending in-home types of exercises and YouTube and free like, you know, exercise programs. Yeah, those are all great options. I also like to remind people to when, because I think sometimes people get a little concerned or maybe even like scared or they think that fasting sounds really daunting. I think we forget that we're fasting while we're asleep. So if you can just commit to maybe not eating like two hours before you go to bed, you know, give your body some time to digest, to digest everything. And then you can fall asleep and then, you know, have your coffee or your tea or whatever it is in the morning, maybe a little lemon water, and then just wait until your body is actually hungry.

Exactly. That's exactly how I describe it. Yep. Most of those hours are going to be sleep. So you just tack on a few hours before and tackling a few hours after, and you shouldn't really be eating so close to bedtime anyway, just because I can damage your digestive function, specifically your esophagus and your stomach function. So I think it's just kind of explaining or educating the normal function of the body, right. And just allowing you, trusting your body to tell you when it's actually hungry. You know, hunger is a conditioned response. If you're used to eating at 6 a.m. every morning, you're going to, when you stop, your stomach's going to say, Hey, where's my food, but you can condition it to kind of push it out a couple more hours or just have tea to replace that meal or such. Maybe nobody eats at 6am. Maybe I just made

that up, but, um, really early time. Probably not anymore, you know, cause people aren't getting up for their office. There's so much working from home now, but, but no, I mean, yeah, it makes perfect sense. And then it makes it not feel so daunting and it feels a lot more, um, accessible and easy to do. I, I think that helps a lot and just, um, you know, trying to cook more meals at home, uh, just become more aware of ingredient labels, start reading the labels and look for sugar. I tell people for, if you're going to look for one thing, look for sugar in every ingredient label that you're picking up. Nice. That's kind of the number one. So how can we, what are, um, I mean, I feel like this whole episode is kind of full of this already, but maybe there's something that we

haven't covered yet as far as, um, you know, if someone's listening right now and they're concerned either, maybe that they, they might be headed this way, um, to non-alcoholic fatty liver disease or metabolic syndrome, or maybe they already have the symptoms. Um, maybe they have it. What are some things that people can do either to prevent it or hopefully, um, reverse those symptoms? So like we said, first, like avoiding exposure, that'd be number one of irritating factors. Number two would be making sure you're, you have adequate antioxidant status across the board. When you look at fatty liver studies, there's like deficiencies in vitamin E, vitamin C, zinc. These are all really important actually for liver function. So you want to make sure those levels are adequate.

You can have your, you can have blood tests performed. The types of blood tests will matter in terms of like, if it's actually reading intracellular or extracellular levels of these things. So you can be extracellularly, it looks fine, but intracellularly you're, you could be deficient in zinc. So your, your primary care doctor, they don't really run those tests. So you may have to find a functional medicine doctor that can run more, um, intracellular status tests for you to know where you're at.

It's not worthwhile just going and taking a ton of certain supplements because they can accumulate in the body. But I would say vitamin C, vitamin E and zinc are really potent ones for the liver. You have to be mindful of vitamin A, excess vitamin A can irritate the liver in some cases. So that's one to be cautious of. I'd say having green tea has been shown to be somewhat beneficial for liver in terms of fatty liver specifically. There's another really cool botanical that I love to recommend for liver issues. It's called gynostemma and tephylum. That's a really cool tea that, that some really cool literature on metabolic disease and fatty liver disease for that one. Those are

some things you can do. If you lose six to 10% of your body weight, the fat in the liver will actually start to go away. So if you can calculate your body weight and take 6% of that or 10% of that, that would be like a target goal in terms of weight loss, just for fat in the liver to go away. We know when you lose that amount histologically, what it looks like under the microscope is actually improved from where you started. So you don't actually have to have a liver biopsy where they take a piece of tissue from your liver. You could just lose the weight. And we know that's sufficient for actually improving how the liver looks under the microscope. Wow. So that's really important. And you know,

I feel like in the last couple of years, it's been harder and harder to have these conversations about weight and I get it, you know, I get it. Yeah. Um, but this is a really important component of it. And I, I'm such a supporter of this body positivity movement. And then in the same breath, I'm like, Hey, let's focus on health. I think that we can love our bodies exactly where they are and where we are in this moment and also strive towards better health. And if that means losing weight, you can love your body throughout that entire process, but ultimately, you know, striving for, um, feeling good in your body and the best like possible health that you can get in your own body is the most, like, I w I would say the best form

of self-care that someone can do, you know? I would agree with you. I typically tell patients, yep. I agree. I think also like my, the word I love to use is optimization. It's like, let's just optimize, you know, like there's always something we can do or tweak in anybody, you know, like that we can kind of optimize you. So I think of it as like optimizing us for our best self possible. That's all around mind, body, soul. Um, so I agree with you. I'm a hundred percent there, but I love the fatty liver studies. It's not saying you have to be this amount of weight, right? It's just says six to 10% of your body weight. So that could be 10 pounds. That could be 15 pounds. It could be more,

but those numbers are extremely achievable. Yeah. Well, and I was just going to say that it's going to look different for everyone. You know, I think if, if, if we've learned anything that health does not look like one size, it does not look like one weight or shape. It's going to look different depending on your specific body. So it's all about just getting your body to a place that you're, you're at optimal health. That's it. Exactly. I agree. Yeah. I think it's so important.

So before we go, would you recommend that people take a liver supplement on a day-to-day basis? I don't think that it would hurt necessarily depending on what the supplement is. So I like more gentle liver tonics, like your milk thistle or your burdock. Um, there are a few other like, like gentle liver herbs that I would recommend like starting with your diet first. Um, so trying to get in those bitter foods every day or every other day. So I love dandelion, mustard, um, just, I love bitter recommending bitter greens. There are a few other bitter foods as well. You can do artichoke is really good for, liver and bile flows. I would say, start there making sure every day or every other day, you're having some kind of liver positive food, a vitamin E rich food, which are like your seeds

and whatnot, um, vitamin C rich foods and zinc rich foods. I think the highest zinc containing food is like oysters or something. When everybody eats oysters every day, which probably wouldn't want to. Um, but I would say, start with those things. A supplement is not like totally harmful, but just be careful with like the quality of the supplement and where you're sourcing it from. Yeah. There's one that I really like that I usually recommend, but I'm curious to know your thoughts on it. It's I don't know if you're aware of the brand health force superfoods. You may recognize their label if I showed you, but I X, I just pulled up their ingredients and it's milk thistle, dandelion. I don't know how to say this word. Um,

Chanka Piadra. I don't know that one either. Yeah. I don't know. And then turmeric. It sounds, it sounds benign, but I don't have a problem with it. You know, I think that, and I think in 20 years, like the conventional world is going to be like, oh my gosh, we had it wrong. We should have all been on all these supplements. So listen, I take like 40 things a day. I'm always experimenting on myself. Do not do that. But you know, I don't see an issue with the gentle liver botanical to help support your liver function. So there's no long-term study saying taking milk thistle or eating dandelion every day, you know, leads to some out like adverse outcome. There's some really weird literature around like green tea extracts and somebody having like liver failure, one case in the literature, you know? Um, and so a lot of

times in conventional medicine, they'll use these like one-off cases to be like, Oh, this is why green tea is bad. It's like, chill out. Your drug killed a thousand people, you know, or 20,000 people. It's like, it's not the green tea. Green tea is not the issue. Um, so I have no problem with like, um, consumption of supplements. Just make sure you know where you're getting it from and whoever you're, who is recommending it knows kind of what the goal is with the supplement. Yeah. I love that. So before we go, I have one last question for you that I ask everyone, what are your personal health non-negotiables? No matter how busy you are that day, what are things that you do to prioritize your health?

That can be literally things that you eat on a daily basis. Like for me, I make sure I get greens with at least one meal a day. It could involve, you know, mind, body, spirit stuff, meditation, just things that you do for your own personal health. I have to have my oat milk latte. I'm really bougie. Not really, but it has to have chai, like a chai rooibos oat milk. Rooibos is a South African botanical that's been shown to help preserve your glutathione level. So I'm all about glutathione all times of the day. So I'm always like sourcing and trying to find like rooibos tea. So that's something I have every day. I try to have a smoothie every day. I'll make a big batch and separate it out through the week and just put a ton of like greens and veggies and berries in there. So I don't have to really worry about eating them all day. So I would say

smoothies and teas are kind of how I go about. And then I do, I read, listen to audio books every single day, at least two hours. So that's something that I also do. Oh my gosh. That's amazing. So I said that was our last question, but I actually was going to ask you about glutathione. And then you reminded me that we didn't even talk about it. Can we talk about that really fast? Yes. Can we please talk about it? Yes. Yes. Let's do it. So glutathione. Oh, wait, you go. Sorry. This is your podcast. No, no. I'm the, the platform is here for you. I'm please. We're all yours. I get so excited about antioxidants. Like I'm, I'm trying to live to 150. That's one of my goals. And so I know I need to keep my antioxidant levels like up there. So good. You and Dave Asprey, you guys are going to be the last one. I love Dave Asprey.

So one way you can, so glutathione is an, is it your master antioxidant? They'll say, um, it's the most potent antioxidant in the body. And when you look at literature for chronic disease, you typically find glutathione depleted across all chronic diseases and including COVID you find like low glutathione levels. Glutathione is crucial for detoxification. It's crucial for the phase one and phase two detoxification in the liver and in the body. If you don't have enough glutathione, you can actually mess up your detoxification pathways and cause toxins to be stuck in these intermediate cycles where they're actually more toxic and wreak more havoc on the body. So you have to make sure

you have correct glutathione levels. The issue is there's no test for it. Like primary cares or just typical doctors aren't testing for glutathione, but there are some tests you can use to actually assess your glutathione level. One is called GGT. It's an enzyme that's actually measured for liver test issues, but it's actually one associated with your antioxidant status, which is really cool. So you can measure your GGT level and it's inversely correlated with antioxidant status. So if it's really high, that's could be a sign. If it's high, it could be that you got punched in the liver. It's a really sensitive enzyme. So it's not really specific for

one thing, but you have to be mindful that if it is high, it doesn't necessarily mean you have low antioxidants, but it can mean that if it's high over time and you track it every three months or six months, and it's consistently high, that could be a sign that you are low in like your lycopene, which is like a plant antioxidant. You could be low in your vitamin C, vitamin E, glutathione. Um, so there are ways to track it, but in terms of boosting glutathione, there's a ton of things you can do. Um, should I just start listening to them or you want me to list them all please. So I love Roybo's tea. I never know how to say it, but it's R OO-O-I-B-O-S. But it's like a more like florally type of tea.

Florally, that's not a word, but it's more floral type of tea. And it tastes good on its own, but you can have it every day. It doesn't have any caffeine in it. I love rosemary. Rosemary is great for promoting glutathione pathways. Cacao is, which is chocolate, but I call it cacao. It needs to be at least 70%. Um, and you want to make sure it's like free, like third-party tested because chocolate can have a lot of cadmium in it, which can be stored

in your kidneys and damage your kidneys. So you don't want to do that. Um, green tea is a good one. And the gentle one Ginkgo by Loba is a really interesting one for glutathione. NAC is one that people commonly will use for boosting glutathione. You have to be careful with NAC because it can too much NAC can actually affect your intestinal mucus lining. But I've never seen an issue with it for patients, but there's some interesting literature. Yeah, no, continue. But I have a question about NAC when you're done. Yeah. Um, there's just this one study that came out, um, saying how NAC can irritate your mucus lining of your intestinal tract. And it's actually considered a mucolytic. So they'll say like, Oh, if you have like a lot of like, um, lung issues and you have like sinus

issues, take NAC to help break up the mucus. And it is a great mucolytic, but you have to remember your entire GI system is mucus, like from the top to the bottom, it's the top mucus layer that's protective. So you don't want to overdo that one. You know, so that is exactly what my question is about NAC because I've noticed, um, over this last year, I really upped my NAC just because of everything we've been going through with COVID. And I've noticed that my, like my nose, for example, is super dry. Like, I feel like all of my mucus membranes are really dried up. Is that too much NAC probably? Probably. Um, I typically, um, just kind of do the recommended dose on the bottle daily. I never,

I mean, unless I need more than that, but you be mindful of that. It is a mucolytic, so it will change your mucus membrane makeup. Maybe. That's so interesting that you say that. It's a great observation. Well, you know, it's funny. I'm really in tune with my body and I can pretty much like pinpoint things pretty easily when I can feel things being off. And for some reason, I'm just always intuitively led to certain things causing certain, I really don't know how to explain it other than I just start Googling and I'm like, okay, it might be this. I feel like it's the NAC. And then I start finding the literature, like connecting things. And I'm like, oh my God, I think it's the NAC.

Yeah. I would say just kind of stop it and see what happens. Stop it for a little bit and see what happens. Okay. I actually did. I just stopped it like a week and a half ago. So it's still pretty new, but. Okay. I'll message you on Instagram to see what you, what you found. Yeah. My anecdotal personal research. Well, thank you so, so much for coming on today for everyone listening. Where can they find you? Yeah.

So I have a website and Instagram. My website is my name, www.asiamuhammad, M-u-h-a-m-m-a-d then my instagram is doctor.asia muhammad please go follow her guys we're gonna put those in the show notes too her instagram is so amazing it's so fun to follow i really love creating content and just i really love that so thank you yeah it's super informative too. So keep up the good work, please. Thanks so much for this. I love your Instagram as well. And I love this podcast. Thank you so much.

Well, I'm so glad that you came on today. Thanks for having me. This was fun. This is really fun. Thank you. Thanks for listening to today's episode of the Real Foodology podcast. If you liked this episode, please leave a review in your podcast app to let me know. This is a resident media production produced by Drake Peterson and edited by Chris McCone.

The theme song is called Heaven by the amazing singer Georgie, spelled with a J. Love you guys so much. See you next week. I can see my feet up to my ego it makes me that I try so if it doesn't like me I wish I'm the light