Menopause and Your Liver with Lorrie Rivers - #153

Menopause and Your Liver with Lorrie Rivers - #153

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Hey everybody, welcome back to the EnergyMD Podcast, where we help you resolve your chronic fatigue, whether it's from chronic fatigue syndrome or long COVID, by going after the real root causes, the combination of what I call the toxic five, heavy metals, chemicals, molds, infections and nervous system dysfunction so that you can get back to living your best life. So really excited today, because we're going to be talking with my friend Lorrie Rivers, and she's always a really great wealth of knowledge. And so today it's going to look a little something like maybe a little parasite, some menopause, especially talking about the liver. So excited about talking with her today, and so let's learn a little bit about her. So, Lorrie Rivers is the founder of the H, E, A, l heal, Advanced Recovery Program for long COVID, MECFS and fibromyalgia and other chronic illnesses, a holistic program that focuses on the client as a complete being and addresses root cause, root cause including hidden infections, nervous system reset, trauma and emotional healing, immune modulation, mitochondrial repair, pacing strategies and much more in a supportive group setting, Lorrie offers a unique style of intuition and caring, mixed with over 25 years of holistic coaching. She believes that every body, mind and soul innately has a blueprint for joyful vitality. I love that and health, and together, she and her students and clients get to uncover it so the whole self heals and playfully thrives on all levels. Lorrie, thanks so much for joining me today. You're so welcome. That's pretty good, huh?

1:44

Yeah, I haven't listened to that bio for a while. I'm so psyched to be here with you, Evan, I love talking with you always. Yeah, likewise, yeah. So, so you came in today and you said, Hey, let's talk about the liver. So let's start there. What? What is exciting you about the liver these days. Well, you know, when I first started with the root cause approach, which I know that you are such a master at as well,

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I was looking at the, you know, removing toxins and removing parasites. You know that I love to get into the nitty gritty about parasites and other pathogens and nervous system and all that good stuff. And of course, the liver

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is an important part of that, but I hadn't really been fully focusing on it until the past couple of years, and it's such an incredible organ. It does 500 different jobs for us within one day. At this point in time, your liver is doing 200 different jobs for you right now. It circulates your your entire body's blood and detoxifies it every five minutes, and it's just such a huge part of

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the recovery process for people who are dealing with these chronic illnesses. So I hadn't been giving it the proper attention, I think. And since then, I've been developing protocols, and,

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you know, kind of not failed experiments, but I don't know if you've ever done the full hold of Clark style liver, gallbladder flush, and

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it's it's intense, we'll just say that. But what I have realized since then is that really, anybody who's over 30 years old in this day and age needs to be doing these,

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this liver de stagnation work, and especially if you're dealing with chronic symptoms. You're dealing with liver and gallbladder stagnation, which means that your body's not able to fully detox. Detoxify these, you know, these environmental toxins that you teach about, and these

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toxins that are being created in the body by pathogens as well. So the you know, our poor bodies are just overloaded. And another beautiful thing about the liver is that it is so good at regenerating. It's it does it really fast. I think it does a full cellular turnover every couple of weeks. I can't remember the exact timing of it, but

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it's incredibly resilient. So if we can give it.

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Even just a little bit of help, then it helps to move along that recovery process, that detox process, and helping to get rid of pathogens, right?

5:13

Yeah, sounds super psyched about it.

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So, you know, it's, it sounds like pretty much everybody that we work with has liver issues.

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So can you? So how do you approach this? How do you go after liver stagnation? And can you? Can you define the difference between like, liver stagnation? I can't remember the other term that you used, stagnation or congestion. Yeah. Yeah. So it depends. The approach depends from person to person which, and I know that you are well versed in this, especially with things like MECFS, like long COVID, where we have, quite frequently, these super sensitive people. I was one of those people,

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way back when I first started this whole process, what and, and these are, you know, this is you if, if you're watching and you have negative reactions to any kind of supplement that you take, or you've tried all these different therapies, and they set you back. You know, ozone therapy. I know when I first started ozone therapy, I started at the smallest little amount, and it just laid me out for days. My body wasn't ready for it, right? So for those people, we have a very different approach to start to slowly break up some of that liver stagnation. So that approach is different from somebody who, say, has been, you know, working on their liver for for a little bit of time. They're maybe they've actually done a full liver gallbladder flush before, and they know that their body's okay with it. And then we have our intermediate, what I call our intermediate healing path, and that's for the people who are

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maybe a little more cautious, but they're not sensitive, right? That's where we usually start, people. So you want to give your body this this wonderful prep time, by using supplements, by getting familiar with the tools that you're using, and, of course, bringing in our nervous system support, because the body is going to be

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more able and ready to let go of some of that stagnation when the nervous system is happy as well, right? Yeah, and

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what was that I said That's true, yeah, yeah, things just go so much more easily when the nervous system is is chilled out, right? Yeah, and, and so, so that's how we approach it. It really depends from person to person, but when you come into the heal liver love program, you have a choice of which one of those healing paths you're going to start off with,

8:25

yeah, nice, yeah. So that you can, you can personalize it for folks.

8:31

So let's pivot a little bit. Since we're kind of talking, you've mentioned the nervous system retraining and the nervous system dysfunction that a lot of people have. Q, we talk about this, you know, quite a bit on the show. And so how do you integrate that into the programs that you're doing?

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Yeah, so one of my favorite tools is EFT tapping. And this is actually where I started my own health journey. Really was with EFT tapping when I had the severe MECFS and was bed bound and all that good stuff, and it was the first thing that brought me some emotional relief. Now I was still crying, you know, most days, and in pain and all that stuff,

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but the EFT tapping is so simple, and it's something that you can, that our students can, that our clients can do on their own. You know, once they learn the sequence, which is super easy, and we have videos that you can follow along with and it literally retrains the amygdala. They're these great MRI scans that were done before tapping and after tapping. Oh yeah, it's really cool. So you can see the amygdala is lit up all these red you know, places, um.

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And before the tapping on the MRI, and then after the tapping, it's all calm and peaceful and there aren't any red spots there. So that is the nervous system

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chilling out just by doing these this simple

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tapping sequence, right? So that's one of our go tos. We also work with

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emotional intelligence. I think that you know, most of the people who come to me, and I don't know if this is your experience as well, but most of the people who come to me

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are in so much physical and emotional discomfort that they take themselves out of their bodies, right? They're very disconnected from their bodies and their emotions. And I was absolutely the same way.

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And so we work to gently

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bring ourselves back in, and we have tools that we work with

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so that you become comfortable with actually experiencing your emotions, rather than pushing them down, getting them to go away.

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Yeah, all those things. I can see that you know exactly what I'm talking about. Because I'm sure that you know I know that you'll do that in your practice as well.

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Yeah, what kind of tools do you like to use to do that?

11:36

There's one that I developed that's that I call deep diving, and this was, I named it that before we had all this AI stuff that calls everything, that says we're going to take a deep dive into this, and that, I don't know if you've noticed that, but like everything that I see these days, it's, let's take a deep dive into this. And I'm like, Oh, y'all, come on, let's find a different way to say it. So anyway, I haven't renamed it yet, but it's

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it's a combination of this book that I found when I was in my 20s, called focusing by somebody kindling or something that was written back in the 70s, and it's a combination of that and some other metaphor work

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that I learned. And so it's about allowing yourself to feel the emotion and where it is in the body, and identifying what the shape is, what the color is, what the texture is,

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so that you're not wrapped up in the story of the emotion and you are going into your body. Now some, you know, sometimes we experience the metaphors outside of the body as well, and that's okay, too, and then we actually become friends with it, whatever it is. The the way that I kind of the metaphor that I use for this is that it's kind of like when you're a kid and you're terrified that there's a monster under the bed or in the closet,

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and it's that fear.

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It's like the fear is bigger when you haven't opened the door yet.

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And it's the same thing with these emotions, right? Once you open the door and you take a look inside, and you allow yourself to actually experience it, you you realize that it's not a big monster anymore, right, and our we're designed to actually feel our emotions. If you going back to a little kid metaphor, if you think about little kids, when they get upset about something, they throw a tantrum for, you know, however long, five minutes, whatever, and then it's done. A butterfly goes by and they're like, oh, right, that's how we're supposed to experience our emotions, but because we've been taught to push them down, to push them away, or because they're so scary for us that we do that, then we don't allow that energy to move through the body, and so it gets stuck. And it gets stuck in our cells too. You know, we one of the fascinating things that I find about

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doing liver work and doing parasite work is that these old memories will come up as you're releasing different layers, whether it's parasites or whether it's liver congestion and the it's the the issues are in the tissues, right? These, these cellular memories that get stored in our.

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Tissues, and it's crazy, you know, it's called retracing. And when I first, I mean, I first came across that term, like, I don't know, probably 20 years ago or so. And I was like, whatever. And then I started experiencing it myself and my clients started experiencing it. And I was like, This is crazy, but it's it's real, which is another reason that the nervous system work and the emotional work is so important.

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Very cool. I've seen that as kind of like a reverse chronology. Oftentimes, you know where it's like as you're getting to the next layer, then you experience kind of symptoms that you haven't experienced in several years, and then after that, you know, the next month or the month after that, then it's symptoms that you haven't experienced in 10 years. And some of that has to do with the emotions as well. Is that kind of like what you're talking about, where these, these, these emotions that you haven't had in a while end up coming to the surface and you're able to process them absolutely, yeah, emotions and even specific memories, like I've worked with students who you know they they have right before us,

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glom of parasite, release that they have. They're like, Oh my gosh, I haven't thought about this in such a long time, but this memory came up, or they'll have a dream about it, and it's usually very difficult time in their life, and then, and then they, you know, poop out the parasites, and it's kind of resolved, and they're not, they're not having those memories come up anymore. So yeah, and, and this the symptoms that you said too, you know, experiencing symptoms that you haven't experienced in years, sometimes decades. It's really interesting. Very interesting. Yeah, so have you found that a lot of the people that you work with are, are menopausal women, perimenopausal women, women who are, you know, in their 50s and above, or even 45 and above, because that's, you know, that's a big part of my population. And it seems like in oftentimes, menopause kinds of throws people into a into a bit of a tizzy. Maybe we can kind of talk about that a little bit Absolutely,

17:26

a bit of a tizzy is

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an understatement. I So,

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yeah, so part of the reason that I'm so passionate about this right now is because I I entered perimenopause a couple years ago, and it freaking rocked my world. I was not prepared. I didn't even given the fact that I've been on the, you know, the outskirts of

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traditional medicine for decades now, and haven't, you know,

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just have have done my own research and

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created my own approaches, and, you know, learning from other practitioners and and doctors as well, but a very different, non traditional approach there, because it works, as you know?

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But even with all that, I was not prepared. I just they're so historically that there's been so little information on menopause out there for women, if you go to PubMed and you type in pregnancy, there's like 1.1 million studies and articles in PubMed. If you type in menopause, they're like 94,000

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it is a such a small

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portion and and for the you know, I'm sure you run across this too. You know, women go to their doctors and say, Well, I think that I'm like, something has changed. Even if you have been dealing with chronic illness,

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something shifts where you're like, hold on, this is a whole new ball game now.

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And you know, medical doctors don't, they're just not trained

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on how to help women through this transition. And that's a huge transition. It's like puberty in reverse.

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But I would say that it's

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there's even less support out there. And the other thing that women in their 40s, 50s are running into at this point is they're taking care of their parents, right? They they by this time, are in established jobs.

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And so to have this,

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this just completely new thing thrown at you

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again, especially if you're already dealing with a chronic illness, it's like, what the heck is happening here and and, you know, again, it's kind of the same old story as long COVID And MECFS in that the vast majority of doctors are going to, like, throw an SSRI at you, or, you know, open so diazepane, and say, this will help with your anxiety, this will help with your depression. That's That's it. Now they're also, and it's also very similar to these chronic illnesses that you and I are well versed in helping people with, in that

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women are presenting with this

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very broad

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with these very broad symptoms. You know, it's not just hot flashes, it's not just anxiety. Some women don't have hot flashes at all. For some women, it's heart palpitations. For some women, it's difficulty sleeping. For some women, it's this uncontrollable anger, like even to the point of rage. And so it's, it's very confusing, and it's

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the frustrating thing to me, is that there is actually a very simple answer to this,

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yeah,

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I know, right, that that has been really misunderstood because of one flawed study that happened. I don't know. I think it was in the 80s or something, the Women's Health Initiative

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Now, having said that, we still need to take care of root causes, right? So what part of the reason that women are having all these crazy symptoms is because estrogen levels start to plummet, right? Also progesterone, but we're going to talk a little bit about estrogen because, and since we were talking about the liver earlier, estrogen is liver protective, it's actually brain protective. It's heart protective, it's lung protect, it's anti inflammatory.

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It's in

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every part of a woman's body are these estrogen receptors, right?

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So as the estrogen levels start to get lower and lower and lower, and it's not this graceful, like drop off,

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this is where perimenopause gets so interesting, because it's up and down and all over the place with the estrogen, which is part of that feeling like you're going insane, because one day you might be, you know, super teary and upset and not able to sleep and all that stuff, and then the next day you're like,

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super amped up or raging, or, you know, whatever, and, and this shows up in blood work too. It's kind of ridiculous to actually even get blood work done, because one day, your estrogen levels might be way up there, like you're pregnant with triplets, and then the next states, you know, has plummeted. So,

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yeah, so we're going back to this liver thing in that estrogen is liver protective, and once we take away that layer of protection, then these liver congestion symptoms start to show up, right that maybe people weren't experiencing before. So for example, if we're talking about trouble sleeping, especially if you're waking up around two or 3am

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that's usually liver liver congestion, right? Because that's when the liver is trying to get rid of stuff.

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So we find that a lot of times. So that's actually one of the first steps that I like for my perimenopausal and post menopausal women to take is to do some liver work, and along with and here's the simple answer, and then I'll be quiet while you talk,

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but the simple answer is bioidentical hormone replacement therapy.

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Body. It's safe. It's actually like we were talking about earlier. It is protective of the body. We got into all of this cancer scare stuff because of that Women's Health Initiative

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study that was done, that was the the findings were flawed, and the study itself really was flawed for a lot of different reasons. And I won't go into that right now, but you can look it up and, you know, find all the things that they got wrong about it. One of the main things is that they were using synthetic hormones created from horse urine. So of course, the body is going to be like, What the heck.

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What are you giving me? You know, I don't know what to do with that

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and but when we're talking about bio identical hormones, the body's like, oh yeah, thank you. Okay, I'm familiar with this. And then you get that anti inflammatory

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action happening. You get the the emotional stuff starts to even out again. You're still going to have ups and downs during perimenopause because of the drastic nature of the the estrogen levels, but

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so much easier, and it depends on the the delivery method that you're using to not all, not all bio identical hormones are created equal. So that's important too.

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Yeah,

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the I think I would just add, you know, estrogens water soluble. Progesterone is fat soluble. So oftentimes, if you're having and estrogens process processed by the liver. So oftentimes, for folks, when they

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when they feel worse, oftentimes it's that ratio that is off, and if the liver is not processing the estrogen correctly, then the estrogen increases. And it can be pro it can be anti inflammatory, like progesterone, but there are times when it can also be pro inflammatory, and then all of a sudden you're having worse symptoms around your cycles and whatnot. And I couldn't agree more about the delivery method. You know, you can you really need estrogen should not be taken orally. It ends up, you know, compounding,

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or the liver kind of throws on different compounds, you know, on phase one and whatnot. And consequently that it changes the estrogen molecule molecule, and it can become carcinogenic, or cancer causing, and so, you know, definitely bypassing the the mouth and using a cream or a trophy that's getting dissolved under the tongue is ideal when it comes to estrogen with progesterone, not so much, not that important. You can take it orally, and it actually works better for sleep and anxiety for the most part.

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But yeah, I'm glad you brought those things up. Really important, and especially, you know, the liver work, it sounds like.

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So when you get somebody who's who's perimenopausal, how does liver work? Kind of fit into that? Do you do that first? Do that second? Do you do that third? How do you how do you put that in there?

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I like to get them onto the bio identical hormone therapy as soon as possible, because, especially the type we use, which is liposomal,

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it's going to start to give them some relief that they desperately need, right? And then we start to fold in those liver protocols over time, too, and again. You know, it depends from person to person, if they're dealing with a ton of chronic illness symptoms and they're very sensitive, then we're going to take it on a case by case basis.

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If they're if they're pretty sturdy, then we're going to start off with that, with the BHRT, you know, pretty soon to to get that relief. Yeah, nice. And do you,

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and you're not prescribing BHRT, right?

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That's correct. This is, it's over the counter. It's actually quick silver, scientific, if you're familiar with them. And, you know, because I actually was personally using creams for a while, and they did lift me out of a hole to a degree, but I still, like, you know, you and I have talked many times over the years. And I'm a pretty like, I get jazzed by life, you know, I'm, I'm pretty frisky, and,

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and, and I like, you know, I like things, I'm I'm passionate about things.

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And I was just flat. I lost my confidence. I was not I was not me. And.

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The creams didn't, didn't give me that back within a couple of days of using the quick silver

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hormones, which are practitioner grades. So you do have to work with a practitioner. But

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I was, I was like, oh, it's me again. You know, my confidence came back. I was psyched about life again. I was ready to start really digging into things again. So I

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can't remember your question, but I just there, there's such a big difference in

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using something like a cream which just kind of lays on the surface. Oh, you were asking about prescribing, yeah. So, so we use, we also use DHEA. I wish that we could prescribe testosterone, but, you know, can't do that. I think you might be able to do that. But my practice, we don't do that. Yeah, I do wish. I do wish that we could, yeah, but it would, it would probably be a shot, you know,

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injection, right? Yeah, I don't prescribe anymore, so I use other things, but,

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but, yeah, you know, when I did

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prescribe the adage that what I learned from Jonathan Wright up here in Seattle was the fact that you always want to get the hormone closest to where it's supposed to be released. So for men, since there isn't a vagina, the closest place that you're going to have a mucus membrane where you can put something on is going to be the anus. So he always recommended that testosterone cream was put on the anus, since the testicles were right there.

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Yeah. And so it was definitely hard to get men to do that. They really weren't that interested but, but they definitely had good benefits with that. So it sounds like with the Quicksilver, in order to bypass the gut, you're using the liposomal and you kind of hold it in the mouth for a period of time in order to get it absorbed. Is that correct? The so the progesterone and we use different types of estrogen, right? So there's not just one estrogen, which I know you're familiar with, but depending on where the the woman is in their you know whether they're perimenopausal or post menopausal, we use either estriol or estradiol or a combination of both of them. And all the estrogens and the progesterone are transdermal, but they're still liposomal. So it's really cool. You can see

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under the microscope, you can see the creams, and you can see the the broken up hormones, like, you know, within the cream. And with that same microscope,

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what's the word I'm looking for? The the comparable, you know, micro

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work right now, but with the quick silver ones, you can't see anything. It's so small. Those the hormone particles are so small, and that's why they're so much more effective. And I, you know, one of my,

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one of my students, who's been using them as well, she was like, this is a totally different game. And you know, that's what I've been finding too some.

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And the DHEA that we use has all these beautiful also has pregnant alone in it, and all these other beautiful adaptogens. And it is oral, so we do hold that in the mouth, yeah, like you were talking about nice, well, and it sounds like that one especially is also supporting the adrenals.

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So absolutely yes, about how the adrenals play a role in all this, yeah, yeah. So, you know,

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as women were born with a about a million plus or minus eggs, right? And once those eggs, by the time we're 30, I think we're down to like, oh, I can't remember, maybe 10%

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of the eggs are left, and then by 40, I think it's something like 3% of course, it varies from woman to woman, but, but the ovaries at that point, they're like, Oh, well, we don't need to be doing this job really anymore, now that the eggs are dwindling, and now that we don't have any more eggs, so we're retiring like we're going on vacation. Peace out,

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see you later.

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The problem with that is that, of course, they have been producing the majority of our estrogen, progesterone, and think it's about half of our testosterone and.

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So what happens then, as you were talking about, is the adrenals have to take over that load, which they they can't produce that much. It's a very small amount that the adrenals can eke out. And then, especially if you're dealing with adrenal overload, which so many of us are these days, then you're kind of screwed, right? Your body's just not able to produce

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naturally. It's not going to produce as much estrogen, progesterone and testosterone, anyway, but yeah, once the ovaries Peace out, we need some help,

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sure.

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And so then coming back to the

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to the hormones, can you talk a little bit about and let me know your comfort level on this, but in terms of the the different forms of estrogen that you like to use.

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Yeah. So, like I was saying, for women who are in perimenopause, we use

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estriol, usually, and then for what, and and also, you know, if you're dealing with vaginal dryness or painful intercourse, which you know so many women are dealing with as well. Then we can also add in a combination of the estriol and estradiol, but then after, when you're post menopausal,

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then that's when we use more of the estradiol, but also a little bit of the estriol as well.

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And you know, both of those are very safe types of estrogen. They're not

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growth estrogens. You know, whereas the, what is it, the estrone that is created in fat cells, right? So it's, it's more common

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in people who are,

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you know, have more fat, and that's where we need to take a look at that and say, okay, that that does contribute to cancer, right?

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So we want to be careful with that. Yeah. So those are the, those are the types of estrogens that we use, and you can apply them on lots of different places on the body. But like you were talking about, you know, applying to the vulva is super helpful, especially if you're having UTI issues, if you're having

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dryness issues, pain, you know, pain issues, all that good stuff. Yeah, no. Well, Said, Okay, great. So, so can you tell us, I know you've got a liver program that's coming us, coming up. You want to tell us about that? Yeah, sure. So in our liver program, we we have those three different

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kind of choose your own path options, and it is a group program, so we all go through it together. You have live Q and A's that you can come to and, you know, ask questions. And

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my mission, really, with all of this, is to empower people to take agency over their own health and over their own wellness. I think there's so much

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power within knowing what's going on. You know, what's what? Why am I experiencing all these crazy symptoms? Now are we going to know exactly why? No, not usually, but we do know that it's one of the you know what you call the five, what? What's your brilliant,

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toxic five? Yes, the toxic five, right? So let's give our liver some help to start getting rid of those. So not only are we

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empowering the liver also and decongesting the liver and the gallbladder, but that also usually means getting rid of liver flukes, right? We had to get parasites in there.

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And what I find a lot of times too, is that as people are doing this liver work, that the body starts to just volunteer, actually parasites from the gut and other areas in the body, but there, because the liver and the gallbladder dealing with so many toxins,

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we gotta give it some help, right? We gotta go go through and.

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Uh, help it get to the place where it can run cleaner and take these toxins out. So that's what that program is about, yeah, so we do deal with parasites in that one as well. Very cool. And so then, where can people go and learn more about you? More learn learn more about the program? Yeah, take a look at Lori rivers holistic.com

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and I'm sure we'll have a link for you for that. Yep, we'll put that below. Um, yeah, yeah, and you can get on the wait list. And in fact, I'm going to be doing some workshops where coming up here, where we're going to be going through in more detail how the liver and hormones are related, how the liver is related to histamine intolerance. More about your gallbladder, because if you haven't had problems with your gallbladder, you probably don't know a whole lot about it and why it's so important in the body. And by the way, if you don't have a gallbladder, that's okay too. We're going to talk about that as well. Yeah, so, thank you for asking about that. Yeah, absolutely. So, yeah. So, I think you know, for people listening, you know, big picture stuff, it's really important to love on your liver and address all these other causes that we're kind of talking about. And it sounds like this is a great way to take that step into loving on your liver a little bit more. So, Lori, thanks so much for joining me today. I so appreciate you sharing your knowledge with us. You're welcome. Evan, thank you so much. Always a joy.

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