107: The Bile Doxology
Bile flow is KEY to breaking down and utilizing fats plus flushing toxins and excess hormones out of the body. Unfortunately, a lot of people have poor bile flow which hampers all of these important processes. And, if you don’t have a gallbladder, your body is even more challenged in these areas.
Listen in to this week’s podcast to learn how bile works in your body, whether or not yours may be compromised, and what to do if you don’t have a gallbladder.
EPISODE 107: The Bile Doxology
SHOW NOTES
(0:00) Intro
Welcome back to the club
I just wrapped up my Blood Chemistry course 🙌🏼
Keeping in mind how much stress can impact the health of your body
Stress can impede proper digestion
(5:10) Today we are talking about bile!
Bile is key to your body’s ability to break down fats and to removing toxins from your body.
We can’t have a real conversation about detox, fat metabolism and good long term health without understanding bile and the way it works in your body.
Ann Louise Gittleman author of Eat Fat, Lose Weight:
“There is already a 75% bile deficiency by the time allergies, arthritis, and inflammation in joints and muscles develop. By the time cancer or chronic illness is diagnosed, a whopping 90% deficit has already occurred.”
(7:28) Doxology
Doxology is a short hymn of praises to God.
Praise God from whom all blessings flow
Praise Him all creatures here below
Praise Him above ye Heavenly Host
Praise Father, Son and Holy Ghost
The bile revamp:
Praise God from whom all bile flows
Praise Him that it’s how toxins go
Praise Him it’s how we break down fat
Praise Him our body works just like that
(8:50) What is Bile?
Bile is a substance that helps your body break down fat into small particles so that your intestines can absorb them. Part of that includes helping your body break down fat-soluble vitamins - vitamins like A, D, E and K.
If you want your body to be able to break down, mobilize and utilize dietary fats and get fat-soluble vitamins, you must have good bile flow.
Bile is produced by your liver and stored in the gallbladder.
For those of you who do not have a gallbladder, this can present a problem as you are missing your storage tank.
Gallbladder removal is one of the most common surgeries done in the U.S. But God put it there for a reason, it has an important job, and removing it doesn’t actually get to the root cause of why it became a problem (usually gallstones) and leads to other problems like compromised detoxification and nutritional deficiencies.
Bile is made of water, lecithin, cholesterol and bilirubin (it actually helps the body get rid of cholesterol which helps prevent high cholesterol) But if you consume hydrogenated or rancid oils— it can cause bile to be thick or sludgy - and this can cause crystallized stones to develop inside the gallbladder.
Healthy fats help make nice flowing bile and unhealthy fats cause sludgy bile.
I would venture to say that all of the years we were told to eat a low fat diet and to eat “heart healthy” vegetable oils are two big reasons there has been such an increase in gallstones and gallbladder removal surgery.
You need to eat HEALTHY fat to make healthy bile. And when you eat fat in your diet, bile is released from the gallbladder to help properly break it down.
Without bile, the fat goes undigested, resulting in fatty stools and poor absorption of fatty acids and fat soluble vitamins.
When you don’t have a gallbladder, your liver still makes bile, but it drips straight into your small intestine which can be irritating to the body. You also lack the benefit and wisdom of the gallbladder as the intermediary to release bile in the right quantity and at the right time.
This is why a lot of people without a gallbladder don’t digest certain fats well and why it can be incredibly helpful to use a bile supplement (bile salts) when you eat. It helps mimic your body’s natural output of bile so that you can maximize the fat breakdown process and help assure that your fat-soluble vitamins are being absorbed.”
Taking oxbile has been a gamechanger for many of my clients who have had their gallbladder removed.
I like Biotics Beta Plus
It is on my Master Wellness and Supplement List
(14:14) Bile + Elimination of Toxins
In addition to breaking down and mobilizing the fat that you eat, bile is also one of the primary routes of toxin elimination.
I’ve heard it referred to as the “river of toxins” where things like metabolic waste and excess hormones and other things your liver is dumping in there collect, flow and get flushed out through the colon.
If you don’t have good free flowing bile, you will be constipated. In fact, one of the signs that you likely need bile support is constipation. If you’re not pooping daily, all that wastes sit in your intestines too long and gets reabsorbed making you MORE toxic and potentially getting stuck in your lymph system, blood stream, joints and other tissues.
That includes excess hormones that can’t escape the body.
(15:46) Common symptoms you might experience if your body is not properly digesting fats which could be a bile flow problem.
Queasiness or feeling yucky after eating a meal with a lot of fat (impaired bile flow and compromised ability to digest them.
Tan or light-colored stools (are an indication of biliary insufficiency, because the bile is part of what darkens the stool
Nausea (not enough bile)
Motion sickness or any kind of nausea:
Including morning sickness, can indicate sluggish bile. This is because the bile is the primary exit route for toxins from the liver, and when it’s not flowing freely, those toxins can build up, leading to the feeling of nausea. This situation is exacerbated during pregnancy with a huge increase in hormones, which add to the liver’s burden and increase that toxic build up.
Dry skin and hair (lack of essential fatty acids)
Constipation (inadequate bile for lubrication) - one of the functions of bile is to stimulate peristalsis
Constant feeling of fullness
Inability to lose weight
Pain under the right rib cage (reflective pain from gallbladder)
Hemorrhoids (congested liver)
Varicose veins (pressure from constipation due to thickened bile)
Pain between the shoulder blades (reflective pain from gallbladder)
Pain between the shoulder blades can be a sign of many things, but it can also be due to referred pain from the gallbladder radiating up to the shoulder area.
Bloating or gas
Headache over the eyes (gallbladder meridian passes over this region)
Bitter taste in mouth, after meals (sign of bile regurgitation)
History of prescription or recreational drug use (need for more liver and gallbladder support) Sensitivities to chemicals
Easily intoxicated (need for more liver and gallbladder support)
Fibromyalgia (sign of liver and gallbladder overload)
Hypothyroidism (bile Helps Convert thyroid hormone into its active state
(20:39) A Functional Approach:
If I were looking at results from a blood panel, some of the markers I would be considering when it comes to liver and gallbladder function are ALT, GGT, Alk Phos, and LDH.
We can learn and do so much when we just pay attention to what the body is trying to tell us and these symptoms are the way our body communicates that something is off.
From the NAQ (which is a nutritional questionnaire) we can learn so much
There are 3 levels of symptom burden, meaning how burdened is your body. We look at how intensely you are experiencing certain symptoms and determine if you are at a low level of burden in the body, a moderate level or a high level.
When it comes to optimizing bile flow we would definitely want to make sure you are eating healthy fat and not inflammatory fat.
First things first we want to make sure you are eating ENOUGH fat - if you’re still in fear of fat, we have to overcome that hump. When you eat a low-fat or non-fat diet, you increase your risk of poor gallbladder function and bile flow which leads to detrimental cascading health problems.
Let’s take health advice from our Creator who put wonderful healthy fat in nature for us to consume - fats like coconut oil, olive oil, avocados, nuts and seeds, fat that naturally occurs in dairy and other animal sourced foods.
God did not make these foods fat free - they are there for a reason.
Remember that we find fat-soluble vitamins like A, D, E, K naturally packaged with fat in nature - that’s how God made it.
(25:04) Additional Recommendations:
Foods that help stimulate bile production and flow:
Beets, artichokes, lemon and lime, milk thistle, ginger, dandelion root.
Supplemental support:
I use Beta TCP, Beta Plus - both from Biotics.
The Advanced Tudca form Cellcore is a great formula that has the added bonus of the Bioactive Carbons which enhance the overall efficacy of the bile acids.
Remember, bile is your BF when it comes to detox and fat metabolism!
(27:42) Outro & Disclaimer
Thanks for listening! Have a healthy and blessed week!