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Child: Welcome to my mommy’s podcast!
Katie: Hello and welcome to the Fit Bottomed Zone Podcast. I’m Katie from fitbottomedzone.com. And I am back today with Sinclair Kennally, who is an absolute joy to talk to. I’m so glad I got to do these episodes with her. She’s a wealth of knowledge. And in this episode, we build on our first conversation about parasites and talk about the real reason your gut health protocol might not be working. As well as really deep dive on the nervous system aspects and how it relates specifically to gut health, to parasites, and to healing in all forms.
And Sinclair is so well spoken on all these topics. She is an award-winning authority on all kinds of chronic digestive conditions and symptoms. CEO of Detox Nation and owner of the Selah Center, as well as host of the Detox Nation Podcast as well as a survivor of autoimmunity and some complex health issues herself. She’s now helped thousands, in fact, over 15,000 people to recover from mysterious chronic symptoms and conditions, including related to the gut to deliver to parasites, and much more without lifelong dependency on medicine.
She also leads a large community focused on self-healing in a toxic world, and she gives some very practical steps in this episode for supporting the nervous system, our organs, what to do when the liver or gallbladder are stressed, how she personally lost thousands of gallbladder stones and parasites while she was in her healing phase.
And she gives some really important wisdom and caveats on how to navigate all of these things in a way that is most in harmony with your body. Let’s jump in now.
Sinclair, welcome back. Thanks for being here again.
Sinclair: Thanks so much for having me, Katie. It’s a joy to be with you.
Katie: Oh, it’s a joy to have you here. And if you guys listening, if you missed our first episode together, I will link to it in the show notes. Sinclair gave so much great information about misconceptions about around parasites and especially parasite cleansing and how not understanding these things can actually be way more stressful on our bodies and make the problem worse before it gets better.
And so many practical action steps in that episode. And in this one, I would love to build on that conversation because we touched a little bit on the nervous system aspect in that first episode, but you really hinted at this is a really vital piece and not in isolation. Nervous system alone isn’t gonna tackle parasites. And in order to address parasites or seemingly any health issue, we also have to have an understanding of our nervous system and befriend it.
So as background for this conversation, can you walk us into how nervous system regulation relates to, for instance, gut issues or the parasite things we talked about before? And I would guess really every health issue in some way.
Sinclair: Yes, totally. I love this question, Katie, because it’s really empowering when you learn exactly how your body is made. And we also wanna just gently unpack and let go of any limited stories that we may have picked up along the way. So lots of people who are talking about the nervous system right now, it’s another very like trendy topic, and that’s great.
Like when I started talking about this 15 years ago, nobody cared. So this is really fun to see everybody get interested in this. But it’s also not an accident that everybody’s becoming nervous system curious, because your nervous system is really on the back foot in this day and age, unless we give it some tender loving care. It doesn’t mean it’s not resilient though. So if you’ve ever accidentally picked up some stories about your nervous system, that it’s fragile, that it’s reactive, I just invite you to let those go as of today forward because it’s just simply not true.
Your body’s absolutely brilliant, and it is having the perfect response, a very logical response to the stresses that it’s been put under. So let’s stop talking about our nervous systems, like they’re fragile and reactive or broken because we had some bad issues, some difficult experiences, or because we’re in some habits right now that feel very depleting and feel unwelcome.
As soon as we realize how the nervous system works, we can let all of that go and just provide some very gentle support to the body that’s free and you can start doing today. So the nervous system is responding to both what’s happening, bioelectrically in the world, because your nervous system is bioelectrical. It’s sending a lot of your signals very, very quickly at the speed of electricity, right? In fact, most of your body’s communication is happening at the bioelectrical level. That’s why we call the endocrine system with your hormones, the slow nervous system, because it takes a really long time to send those chemical messengers very slowly throughout the body.
Your body has to respond instantaneously to the environment, to stresses, to inputs, and to desires as well from within, from within your inner being. So, how does all that work? Well, it happens really, really quickly, obviously, but we need to understand in order to support the new nervous system, just what kind of stresses it’s been put under. Most of those stresses are happening at the electrical level in ways you can’t see around you today. Like in the form of EMFs and also at the biochemical level.
And I wanna unpack both if we have time, because this directly impacts your gut. Your digestive system, and your immune system, every single aspect of each of those systems is governed by the nervous system. So even a little bit of dysfunction or stress in the nervous system is gonna directly impact your body’s ability to respond appropriately to issues in the immune system, and also to break down and absorb your food in the digestive tract. So we really wanna love up the nervous system in this day and age because it’s getting an assault from these chemicals that are coming in on our food, air, and water, and they have a direct impact on the nervous system. Most chemicals, heavy metals, and molds are actually neurotoxic in nature, meaning they directly harm the nervous system. They’re neuro excitotoxins like MSG, which sneaks in into so many processed foods.
You know, it hides under so many different names. Or these food dyes that are finally getting the national attention they deserve. Or whether it’s mold, which is also neuro cytotoxic. So it means they can literally excite nerves to death. And they can also degrade the myelin sheaths, meaning that your nervous system is going into reactive mode a little faster than it’s supposed to, and staying there longer. And what that means for you on a day-to-day basis is that very quietly, very slowly and without your consent, you have become more and more stressed, and you are more and more likely to stay stressed. Even though your body is hardwired to go back into a restful state throughout the day and night.
That’s weird, right? So as soon as we stock of that and how this has happened slowly, it’s actually started back in the forties. Yes, you could argue it started back in the industrial revolution, but when we really started spraying our food was post World War II in what they called the Green Revolution. Because spraying these petrochemicals, they had to do something with that oil surplus after the war made the leaves greener and darker on the farmer’s crops.
They’re like, oh, great. Let’s call it the Green Revolution. Let’s say it’s gonna up your profits. Let’s do this. Right? But they didn’t realize what it was gonna do to our nervous systems long term and what it’s gonna do to our soil quality long term. So the impact several decades later is that we’re finally hitting this crucial point that has been generations in the making. That crucial point is we are depleted, so we don’t have the minerals we need to run our nervous systems properly and have our nerves fire correctly because of what’s happened to our soil.
And we have all these toxins creating this overreactivity and this permeability of not just your gut lining, but every organ lining and even the blood brain barrier itself. So yeah, your nervous system is asking for some help, but that doesn’t mean it’s not amazingly resilient. So it will still respond to vagus nerve stimulation, to gentle techniques you can do throughout your day, what we call soma support. That’s our body of work around this. And it really responds well to, we were covering some natural bioavailable minerals. And then this can start to trickle down into immune and digestive support as well. So if you have an immune issue or a digestive issue, we want to create some practices that are healing every day for the nervous system. And also recognize that the nervous system is itself physical. Like, let’s not ignore the body’s needs.
That would be bizarrely cruel. Like, let’s, so let’s step away from the influencers that are like, just buy my thousand dollar meditation program. Sorry to be catty about it, but I want people to understand the depth of what their body is asking for and to really finally take control of their own lives.
So that was a long answer, huh?
Katie: Well, I love that and I think it speaks to the idea that it’s a both and in many directions when it comes to this. Like we hear all those additives about you can’t out supplement a poor diet. You also can’t out anything poor sleep. You can’t overrule your nervous system. It’s there for a reason. All of these things are actually working in our favor.
They’re doing exactly what they’re designed to do. I know that was a thing I got to relearn when I was in the experience of autoimmunity. Was rewiring the way I thought about it so that I could learn to show up in support for my body rather than doing things inadvertently that were not helpful because I didn’t understand. And I had to learn to audit my language and move from my body’s attacking itself, which is not very empowering language to my body knows exactly what it’s doing and it’s always on my side.
And get curious around what are the ways my body is specifically asking for support. I think that in general, making a state of curiosity is much more empowering for one, and also lets us listen to those cues a little bit better. And not to say that it’s easy to automatically like intuitively tune in and know exactly what our body needs.
It’s, I think, often very helpful to have support and lab testing and all of those things too. And I do think an important step of that is to befriend our bodies and our nervous systems and to actually start paying attention from a positive perspective. Not that like my body is broken and not to hold onto those stories because our bodies listen when we speak like that to ourselves. And you touched on the electrical and the biochemical, and I love that you addressed both. I feel like often even in naturopathic medicine or alternative health, people still tend to like whack-a-mole with symptoms or to like, whenever, when someone has a hammer, everything’s a nail and kind of single symptom solution.
And I love that your approach is very holistic. Can you walk us through what some of these starting points are? I know we kind of went through some steps in the first episode of making sure we don’t do things out of order and accidentally make things worse, but it seems like specific to gut health that there are things to understand on the both electrical and biochemical levels when it comes to that healing process.
And I would guess some of these steps get missed for people.
Sinclair: Yeah, I think that’s a really beautiful way to put that, Katie. And it’s super empowering to understand your body’s having a logical response here to the stress that it’s been put under, right? So we can actually trust the body signals even if we don’t understand them yet. That’s what I wish someone had told me when, back when I was suffering.
Just ’cause I too had that negative meditation. My body’s failing me, it’s against me. How come I got the short end of the stick? Blaming it on my DNA. And actually it’s never too late to reverse these issues. If we got a reputation for reversing chronic gut conditions, I think in part because we were willing to work directly with the nervous system and enroll it early on in the process of recovery.
And also by systematically tackling the blocks to healing. Because your body knows what to do and we wanna work with it. It just needs some strategic support in the right order. So thing one to me is always that nervous system support. And understanding the backdrop of irritation and inflammation that the body is working against. So that we don’t just, like you said, play whack-a-mole with the symptoms. Because if you actually go to the root causes first, yes, the symptomology could be very complex and you could look very different from every family member in home.
Each of you could be displaying a different set of symptoms and suffering, but it could still be the same root causes. The root causes are few. The symptom expressions of distress are many. So root cause support is actually so much more simple and systematic. And yeah, of course we’ll provide some symptom relief along the way so that you have the energy to do the work. But that’s, that’s I think the main shift in orientation that everybody needs to make in this day and age.
So what would that look like? It looks like acknowledging and respecting that the body knows how to detox. You’re a great detoxer. Don’t let any practitioner tell you you’re not a good detoxer. Even if your DNA report shows some interesting snips, we’ll call them interesting. Or it doesn’t mean that you don’t know how to detox.
If you couldn’t detox, you’d be dead. So it just needs some strategic support for the volume and the breadth and depth of our toxic exposures today. And of course, that nervous system support along the way. Ao other blocks to healing, aside from those toxin exposures and nervous system dysregulation. Because if the nervous system doesn’t feel safe, you won’t be allowed to go into rest, digest, detox, and heal mode. So you will actually downregulate your body’s own oxygen supply to the liver. You will down regulate resources to your digestive tract. You’ll down regulate resources for your kidneys. Because you literally have made the determination at the nervous system level, it’s not safe to do those normal body processes at this time. We need to instead send resources to the limbs. We need to send blood flow to the limbs and away from our vital organs so we can meet the challenge in the moment. And that’s great when you’re being chased by the tiger or dealing with a stressful meeting or a difficult parent teacher conference.
And you need to be really alert, you know, and very resourceful, whatever the issue is that you’re dealing with. But then we wanna go back into that rest, digest, detox, repair, default. And so your body needs some encouragement, almost like a retraining, like an athlete. To learn and remember how to get back there and get the signals it needs.
It’s safe to do that right now. We don’t have to wait until the toxins are gone. We don’t have to wait until the parasites are gone in order to go back into that mode. In fact, we have to go back into that mode first in order to, get those guys out. So those are a couple of those blocks that we were talking about earlier.
You know, why don’t people just get well from a simple gut cleanse anymore? And the parasite piece is a huge part of that too. So we can unpack that further. We can also talk about things we haven’t even touched on yet, if you want.
Katie: Yeah, I love that. And I would guess a lot of people have tried something gut supportive in some form. What, even if it’s just probiotics or a cleanse of some sort, it seems like cleanses are also kind of having a moment in the sun. And I would love for you to touch on your own experience with this. Because I remember reading that you released thousands of gallstones, which I think some people don’t even realize is actually possible to do at home.
And I know many people who have had their gallbladders removed because things got so severe. But it seems like that also speaks to, you just mentioned the nervous system. If our nervous system isn’t in a place to heal, our organs aren’t getting the maximal support that they need. And I would guess this is actually probably like a low level problem for a lot of us that we may not realize until things get really bad at some point.
But I would love to touch on that part and certainly if there’s any categories we haven’t even dove into yet, I would love to bring those to light as well.
Sinclair: Yeah, of course. Yeah, you’re right. So when I, I actually saw Michael, my fiance is a wonderful researcher and he heads up our practice with me in our campus. And he, this guy talking on YouTube about how he released thousands of stones. And I’m naturally a skeptic. Michael’s very curious and I’m very dismissive.
And he showed me that video and I was like, that doesn’t sound real, that it sounds like he’s totally lying. And then I had to live through it. So I totally understand if it sounds insane. But gallstones, gall just means bile. So not only do you have gallstones in your gallbladder at the potential for them to form there, but they can also form in the liver bile ducts themselves. And you have over 2000 miles of bile ducts in your liver.
Here’s the thing about the liver. It’s so phenomenal. It’s such a hard worker, and it’s also really good at compensating that it can be in distress for years before your markers will show that distress on normal blood work. In fact, you can be as down to 60% efficiency in your liver before your markers ever start telling that story.
In fact, I was specifically told, well, your liver’s not the issue must be those Irish genes of yours, because we would expect your liver to be in greater distress than it is right now based on the rest of your symptoms. I got told that over and over again. That’s weird because my symptoms started to finally resolve when I tackled parasites and when I, part of that process was getting thousands of liver flukes out.
I don’t know how they all fit in there. It was insane. The CDC says that liver fluke can live for 25 to 30 years. And again when you look at an enlarged liver, why is it enlarged? What’s enlarging it? Inflammation yes, but also physical blockages like gallstones and parasites. Most gallstones are not dense enough to actually show up on imagery at this time.
You might see a distortion in the bile duct itself, like, oh, it’s distended right there. That’s weird. If you’re using advanced enough imaging, and it’s distended like that because it has a blockage. And those blockages often start as just slower moving bile, it’s a little slow, it’s a little sticky and viscous. Bile should be clean and running quickly through the body. We, you know, supposedly we’re supposed to make around 32 ounces of bile a day. That’s crazy. So you should always have this fresh motor oil that is alkaline in nature, and it goes into the gallbladder to get condensed and perfected to meet that stomach acid bolus of food right as it hits the small intestine, along with your pancreatic enzymes and the sodium bicarbonate.
It’s this gorgeous digestive dance that happens every time we eat. But what happens if your liver isn’t able to keep up and your bile isn’t thin enough and fresh enough? Your stomach acid, your stomach knows. I say, oh, okay, there’s not enough support to meet me. I know, I will weaken my stomach acid, so I’ll actually raise the pH so it’s less intense, which means we won’t digest our food, we won’t kill our pathogens efficiently or at all. And because there’s nothing to meet me and protect the small intestine. We’ll burn a hole right through that intestine lining if that bile can’t move fast enough. So this is the trickle down effect of having bile move just a little too slowly. And before you know it, you have overgrowth in your gut. You have pathogens that you can’t kick. SIBO that comes back no matter what you do.
And it’s all started with too many toxins overloading the liver, making things just a little too sluggish, and now your whole digestive system is off. So you wanna understand and respect that. And most gallstones are just some cholesterol around some toxins. That’s how they all start out. So very gel-like in nature, easy to break up, squish ’em. They do condense over time. And the more dysregulated your body becomes, the more likely they are to become denser and denser in minerals. But anytime somebody comes to us in our practice and says, oh yeah, I have, I showed one gallstone that I’m scared about on my scan, or I have six gallstones. It’s adorable and I don’t wanna negate it.
It’s very real. But chances are you have hundreds, if not thousands, in addition to that, that are just not dense enough to see yet. So we can get these out gently and naturally at home without drastic interventions. Your body knows what to do and it will even volunteer them in the toilet if you give it the right strategies. So this is very different from kidney stones that can be painful to pass.
You can pass gallstones without even noticing. And that sounds weird to say because gall attacks, gallbladder attacks can be very painful. Where your gallbladder is seizing, there’s that really sharp pinging and it’s really scary. But your bile ducts do know how to dilate and let go of these guys, and we can also dissolve them and soften them with natural tools at home along the way to make passing them even easier.
Katie: That’s definitely exciting and hopeful, and I’ve done versions of like liver gallbladder flushes before, and it’s certainly enlightning to see what comes out. And better out than in I suppose, but it was definitely surprising the first time I did it. And you also mentioned liver flukes. Can you explain what those are for anybody who’s not familiar and what did you do to help them exit your body?
Oh, that’s a great question. Okay, so liver flukes might be my favorite parasite, and I know that sounds like a weird thing to say, but if you’ve ever had any upper right quadrant pain in your abdomen, yes, you might have gallstones and like sluggish bile and inflamed liver, but that can also just be your parasites talking.
Liver flukes are a class of parasites. Trematodes is the class name. And there are actually several different kinds of flukes, intestinal flukes, lung flukes, blood flukes, and liver flukes, and also pancreatic flukes. And they are small in nature. They look like little underwater sea creatures, which means they, don’t all look like worms.
In fact, they don’t, they’re not shaped like worms. They’re shaped like little shellfish and weird little livers and Mentos. And one of my favorites is they look like rolled up tomato peels. Like, but I haven’t eaten tomatoes or peppers recently. How come I have those in my stool? Well that’s because they’re actually parasites that form in the shape of your bile ducts. So liver flukes are really common the world over. There’s no continent that doesn’t have them. They’re super common here in North America. They come in on your produce and on undercooked meats and fish.
So it’s not a question of like if you’ve been exposed to them, you absolutely have. It’s a question of whether or not you’re a good host for them. Did your immune system see them coming in and tell ’em, oh no thank you wde won’t have any of those today. Was your stomach acid strong enough to fight off the pathogens? These are the conditions that we want to be able to foster. So that your body’s protecting itself and maintaining health over time. If you weren’t able to do that, the liver flukes will come into your small intestine via your food, punch a hole in your stomach lining and migrate their way to the liver.
They’ve got a nose for it and bury it themselves in your liver. Like I said, the CDC says that they have a lifecycle of 25 to 30 years, which is insane. Some liver fluke species, you can tell how old they are by how dark they are. Because they darken over time as they steal more and more of your iron. It’s trippy stuff. So yes, we wanna go after them with antiparasitics, but your body can also start to volunteer them and push them out with just some basic liver support.
So sometimes you can see them in the toilet just from that alone. Sometimes they look like melted jolly ranchers. They look like little grapefruit seeds with legs on them. I got out tons of those. They’re just bizarre. So that’s what liver flukes are. And yes, and certain antiparasitics work better than others for them, but we always wanna support the body with energy support and drainage support and liver protection before ever going after parasites directly.
That makes sense and you made a really strong case for that and the order being important and the steps being really important in our first episode. So if you guys miss that, make sure you listen. It was super, super educational. And I’m curious, you mentioned parasites exist pretty much everywhere in the world, especially in North America, even though we like to be in denial about that.
And that for most of human history, this was something people sort of knew and seasonally addressed. Is this something that if people were aware of it, it’s worth most people addressing seasonally and being proactive about? Like, it sounds like you work with many people who have kind of reached an extreme stage where it’s like intervention is necessary in a very specific way.
But are there things we can all do to support all these areas of the body that we’re talking about and or to be proactive against parasites kind of seasonally, or do you have any recommendations for that?
Sinclair: Oh yeah. Let’s just walk through some of the, some of the steps. So a lot of people come into, like, our course, Rapid Liver Reset because they’re trying to save their gallbladder or recover from a gallbladder surgery that turned out did not solve all their solutions. So I, I totally get, if that’s you in the audience it’s more common than you think.
In fact, one in four gallbladder removal surgeries has surgical complications. And 41% of people who have gallbladder removals still have abdominal pain and digestive symptoms persist. So you’re not too far gone. If that’s you, it’s okay. Your liver is so smart and can really compensate very well for that. So if I just wanna make sure we’re not leaving anybody out that’s listening in, you know. But if you’re somebody that’s just proactive and you wanna make sure these don’t become issues for you, it’s a great idea to do a seasonal liver cleanse and a seasonal parasite cleanse. So we teach both of those options.
Like in Rapid Liver Reset, we teach you multiple different liver flushes. And it goes for like the mass cell activation syndrome people, and the Lyme people are extremely sensitive. Who can’t even look at a supplement without crashing. There’s a no flush, flush for them. All the way to a deep flush for people that just want to like, make sure they don’t create that tummy tire where they’re, and a little bit of aging and fast forward, they’re like, huh, maybe my liver’s not keeping up.
Anytime you think you’re aging quickly or you have digestive issues, or you’re packing on fat, your metabolism’s changing. It’s not just a thyroid issue. The thyroid and the liver are deeply interconnected. Think liver support. So like we mentioned, I believe it was in the last episode together, gentle liver support can be folded in with every meal. So it doesn’t have to be like a huge event. Think about how to love your liver all, all year long. Like dandelion tea is a great, as long as it’s organic, practice to do all year round, just to give your liver a little bit of love. Chamomile tea is also a wonderful digestive bitter that’s highly anti-inflammatory.
But if you need more support than that, then yes, I would encourage you to look into our different flush protocols. They’re very gentle to fill, fold in. Like for me, I got out those 15,000 stones over a six month period where I was doing these, we designed pulse flushes for me is what we call them. We would pulse up on drainage support binders, you know, really strong bitters. And then I’d go in and do a coffee enema with some anti-parasitics and I would get out these liver flukes and these stones. And you can also add things to coffee enemas. If you’re more of an advanced student, you’re like, yeah, I do coffee enemas already.
You can actually add anti-parasitics to your coffee enemas. You can add, even add binders to your coffee enemas to help mop up any inflammatory response to those toxins being mobilized so that you can reduce symptoms. So there’s lots and lots of tricks like that along the way as well. And there’s also suppositories that I love to work with that have stone breakers in them, like chanca piedra. And you can even make your own suppositories at home if you’re adventurous to help provide some support, because herbal formulas can be much more impactful if you take them rectally.
I know this is kind of gross, it sounds a little bit advanced, but your herbs will change in composition as they go through your stomach acid when you take them orally. So they can have a stronger impact, certain ones like chanca piedra if you take them rectally. So I know I’m a giant wuss. All this sounded crazy to me in the beginning, but I know because I’m a giant wuss and I was super sensitive and really unwell that if I can do it, anybody can do it. So that, that’s the liver support stuff specifically.
And I agree with you also about the liver. I mean the parasite cleanses also being beneficial seasonally.
Katie: Amazing. I feel like I have a much clearer picture of all these things. In small ways, like you said, we can all support our body every day, especially in the nervous system side and with that both and also physically biochemically in the ways that we can support our organs and our digestion.
And I hope we get to do more episodes in the future ’cause I learn so much every time I talk to you. But for today, where can people find you if they wanna start, for instance, trying these liver flushes, or they wanna start learning to support their body in digestion a little bit more in these small ways? Where would you suggest people start?
Sinclair: Oh, that’s a great question. Thanks. Then you can come find us at detoxnation.com. So I write a lot of blogs there for you about liver and gallbladder support and all of the root causes that would lead to digestive dysfunction, what you can do about them too. So mold toxicity, parasites, nervous system dysregulation, that’s all my jam. So come find us there.
There’s free assessments for you to start learning more about your body and lots and lots of fun free downloads. And of course we’d love to have you on our podcast, Katie. ’cause I believe so much in your work. I think that you are really protecting families, some of the most important information in this day and age. So thank you, thank you, thank you for your advocacy in the space and for taking care of families and empowering them the way you do.
Katie: Well, thank you so much and for everything you’ve shared today, I learned so much. You are an absolute joy to talk to, and I hope you get to have many more conversations in the future. But for today, thank you so much. And thank you guys as always for listening and sharing your most valuable assets, your time, your energy, and your attention with us today.
We’re both so grateful that you did, and I hope you’ll join me again on the next episode of The Fit Bottomed Zone Podcast.
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