 Hey everyone, this is Dr. Ruscio. I just wanted to quickly touch on the gut-liver connection. Now if you haven't heard of this or if you're not familiar with the anatomy, everything in your digestive tract drains to and is filtered by your liver via what's known as a portal vein. And this is how we can see problems with the liver ultimately being caused by a problem in the gut. And I'd like to share with you the results of a very exciting study, actually meta-analysis, which is a study that summarizes many studies that illustrates the profundity of this connection. So the study I'll put the abstract up here in the screen was entitled effects of probiotics on non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, a meta-analysis. And essentially what they found was two of the most prominent liver enzymes that will go high when people have problems with their liver, the ALT and the AST, were actually shown to be significantly reduced when using probiotics. Now remember, this is a meta-analysis. So this meta-analysis actually summarized the results of four various clinical trials and looking at 134 total patients. So it's a decent sample size and it's looking at four different clinical trials using probiotics and showing a significant ability to lower ALT and AST, two of the enzymes that your doctor would order and analyze in a lab panel to assess the health of your liver, leading the researchers to conclude probiotic therapies can reduce liver enzymes, total cholesterol, TNF-alpha, which is a inflammatory marker, improve insulin resistance, and in non-alcoholic fatty liver disease patients, modulation of the gut microbiota represents a new treatment for non-alcoholic fatty liver disease. So great news and regarding what type of probiotics, these were mainly lactobacillus bifidobacterium blends like our lactobifidoblin probiotic that we use in my clinic and I recommend in Healthy Gut, Healthy You. And the duration of time the probiotics were used between two to six months. So a simple intervention of a well-formulated probiotic can have a significant impact on decreasing liver enzymes and what likely is happening there, this is my opinion now, is the probiotics are improving gut health and as the gut is healthier, there is less of a mess in the gut that needs to drain too and be cleaned up by the liver and then the liver is less overworked and is able to heal and regenerate and therefore there are less liver enzymes. Remember the liver enzymes are a byproduct of liver damage and then these enzymes essentially spill out of the liver when the liver is overworked and damaged and can't regenerate and repair itself. So those liver enzymes truly are a indicator of liver damage and liver inflammation and the probiotics again likely by improving gut health take a burden off the liver and then therefore lower liver enzymes. So something to think about if you are struggling with a liver condition especially elevated liver enzymes is a probiotic and or any other therapeutic options that may improve your gut health. So this is Dr. Ruscio and hopefully this helps you get healthy and get back to your life. Thanks.