Aging and Toxin Exposure with Dr. Walter J. Crinnion

Dr. Cates: Welcome to The Spa Dr. Podcast. I’m Dr Trevor Cates. On today’s podcast we’re talking about the effect of toxin exposure on your aging process. Dr. Walter Crinnion is my guest and he graduated with the first class at Bastyr University Naturopathic Medical School in Seattle, Washington in 1982 when he started off in naturopathic practice, he began to explore why some patients were not getting better. When safe and powerful natural healing techniques for used. He realized that the cause of some illnesses were due to an overload of environmental toxins since no one had begun to teach this as part of medical schools, he began to search through all the published medical journals and medical conferences to find answers. With over 30 years of medical practice, he is now considered one of the foremost experts in the field of environmental medicine. He started the environmental medicine classes at many of the major naturopathic medical schools and found that the naturopathic association of Environmental Medicine.

Dr. Cates: Doctor Crinnion is a sought after speaker and lectures around North America and Europe at medical conferences. He also does a six month training course for licensed healthcare providers who want to become more proficient in environmental medicine. His first book, Clean Green and Lean, is an excellent overview of environmental medicine, how to lower your burden of environmental toxins and regain your health. He has also been on major media such as The View and has published in numerous medical journals. In this interview today we talk about how a certain toxic exposures speed the aging process and increase your susceptibility to getting certain chronic diseases that are actually associated with aging. We also talk about how to reduce your exposure to these toxins to slow down the aging process and either prevent or even reverse certain diseases like type two diabetes, heart disease, dementia, and other debilitating diseases. Dr. Crinnion has been on my podcast before and I’m happy to have him back on to delve deeper to help us achieve more graceful aging. So please enjoy this interview. Walter is so great to have you back on my podcast. Welcome.

Dr. Crinnion: Thank you. It’s always a joy to be with you.

Dr. Cates: Yeah, absolutely. So, um, we’re, we want to talk today about aging and how toxins are exposure to toxins and the environment. I really can really accelerate the aging process and what that means, what we can do about, so let’s, let’s start by talking to, is it really like what are the aspects of toxins in our environment that accelerate the aging process?

Dr. Crinnion: Well, let me take just a step back. According to the Centers for disease control, there are ongoing trials. This study, you know, they take blood and urine and stuff from people in the United States of America every year. And then they measure things in them including pollutants and now they’re up to finding about 125 that are in everybody. So the idea of toxins, this isn’t like, you know, something that isn’t affecting every single person that’s watching this. They have an average of 124 and that’s only cause they, they haven’t tested more. They’re going to find more as I keep every year they keep testing more. So we’ve all got this load in us. I mean, it’s a tremendous load that we’re carrying. And most of it’s from our lifestyle. You know, the, the products we use, our personal care products, you know, the flooring in the home and if we’re cooking with Teflon pans, you know, living in urban areas with air pollution, all these things, our bodies, doesn’t just have that one little thing in it, it’s got a number of times. And the commonality of all these pollutants in us is that they cause oxidative damage to our cells and tissues. Now we’ve known for the last, I don’t know, 40 years that all the effects that we know of as aging are due to oxidative damage. So all of these just merely accelerate the whole process why people a age and accelerate, I mean they’re responsible for the bulk of the risks of all these major chronic diseases that are now in epidemic proportions.You know, not just in our country but around the world.

Dr. Cates: Yeah, absolutely. And, and many of these conditions are associated with aging, but just overall we’re seeing increased rates. And what are some of the diseases that overall that you think are related to the toxin exposure we’re seeing more of?

Dr. Crinnion: Yeah. Well, most of these diseases are things that were considered to be a part of aging. You know, it runs in your family. By the time you get to a certain age you’re going to have cardiovascular disease or blah, blah, blah, blah, whatever. But Doctor Cazorno has been using a formula that the public health use to determine what degree of risk for a certain illness is due to like what degree of risk for a heart attack is due to cholesterol. Well I dunno like 20% some really, really low, right? So He’s applied that to these horrible diseases that are rampant like diabetes. And believe it or not, 90% of someone’s risk for getting adult onset diabetes now is due to pollutants. And there are four pollutants, that hold 70% of the risk and all of them are non persistent. So they don’t stay in the body long. So if one just does good, clean living, they can reduce their risk by 70% it’s astounding. It truly is astounding. But all the major illnesses, the neurologic problems, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, auto immunity, asthma, allergies, obesity, infertility, all these things that are plaguing plaguing our society are strongly linked to these pollutants.

Dr. Cates: You mentioned heart disease, what about heart disease?

Dr. Crinnion: Interestingly enough, there is a stronger risk for heart disease from urban air pollution if you’re living in it. Urban area where probably almost everybody know the bulk of people in our country lived there for both the people around the world live in urban areas. There was greater risk for causing a heart attack by urban air pollution than by cholesterol. Let that sink in for a bit. Everybody thinks about cholesterol, but there have been probably hundreds of studies in all the major urban areas around the world and a day after the air pollution spikes, fatal heart attacks go up. I mean there’s so many studies that have been done on it. It causes high blood pressure, causes heart attacks, causes strokes. This is all just from breathing air and we don’t live in Beijing. You know, this is the kind of urban air that is around everybody, which I know that sounds kind of like, what can I do to stop that? My answer is get a good high quality air purifier in your bedroom. Cause the air that’s inside your house all came from outside. So the air in your home has all that pollution plus whatever you put on it, whatever you add to it from inside your house.

Dr. Cates: Yeah, absolutely. And I know that a lot of times when people think about toxin exposure because you can’t see it, it’s easy to think that it’s not there. But I mean at least you know, you can smell it sometimes, but not even that. Right?

Dr. Crinnion: Yeah. But in urban areas now, it’s very common for people to not be able to see the horizon like they used to. If you’ve got mountains or something around you. I’m in the Phoenix Valley and most of the time the mountains around the valley are in a haze. What’s that? That’s air pollution. Just take a plane flight, you know, you’re in a jet and you can see the brown layer. What I was amazed with was I used to see just a brown layer when I flew around the, you know, when we’re getting into a, you know, the big metropolitan area, I just flew to Australia, that Brown layer. Every time I looked out the window over the ocean, it was still there.

Dr. Cates: It’s very scary. So you mentioned air filter and the bedroom. So is there a particular kind of air filter that you recommend for people?

Dr. Crinnion: Well, actually they’ve got some that are small little filters that actually hold the same kind of filter that you put in your furnace and they’re not very efficient. But I’ve read now about four studies where they just use one of those. It can only work for a bedroom. And in every single study people’s blood pressure has dropped, including one of those cheapo, both things in the bedroom. So high blood pressure, you know, that’s a risk for stroke, heart disease, it blows out your brain, blows out your kidneys. I mean, this is a bad thing, right? The best filters are ones that you’re going to be spending 1000 bucks or more for that. Have a series of filters that clear out all the particulate matter that’s in the air and you’d go thousand bucks, but what’s a heart attack going to cost? You know, this is, I’m at the point where I’m telling people that a quality air purifier in their bedroom is no longer a frivolous spending thing. It is a necessity. It truly is. And so you know the good companies out there, you’ve got Iq Air from Sweden. Swedes are really good about indoor quality and safety overall. You got Blue Air and Austin Air. There are the really the big three that are out there.

Dr. Cates: I have a blue air filter in the bedrooms in my home, blue air filters. I like them. I’ve been using this for years, but I know that those two other ones are also good.

Dr. Crinnion: Yeah. So this isn’t something that she can go to Costco and get, it doesn’t have the good ones they’ve got, you know, okay ones. But you know, I live in the Phoenix Valley. I’ve got an Iq air right in my room.

Dr. Cates: So in addition to air filter and the bedroom, what other things do you recommend for people as a place to start? Because I, you know, as we talked about before and our interview and I’ve talked to my followers about is that we want to reduce our, you know, our total exposure, right? And, and so all the different ways that we can do that. I’ve certainly talked to people a lot about their, their skincare products and, and what to avoid in those. What are some of the other things that you think are particularly important for people?

Dr. Crinnion: Well, I don’t recommend carpeting in the home because it’s a sink for dirt and all other kinds of pollutants. But if you do have carpeting in your house, don’t wear shoes indoors. Cause that tracks in more pollutants from outside? And that includes all the air pollutants that have dropped and hit the ground and any pesticides, etc, that if you’re walking across the grass, um, carpet is really not a good thing for the house. And definitely do not cook with Teflon pans or use microwave popcorn bags. Those put out chemicals known as perfloro Chemicals and the perfloro Chemicals are associated with host of really bad things including endocrine disruption. And they’re the hardest of anything to clear it out of the body. You can’t, they don’t poop out, they don’t pay out. It can’t sweat them out. So they are horribly difficult to get out. They’re easy to get in, really hard to get out and really damaging when they’re in the body. So don’t use a Teflon pans or other no stick pans out there that have, don’t have Teflon in them.

Dr. Cates: So the other, the other nonstick pans are okay to use,

Dr. Crinnion: Right? Just don’t, just don’t have the Teflon

Dr. Cates: And teflon is also used in other places too, right? Not just pants, right?

Dr. Crinnion: Yeah. The per fluoro compounds, um, Pfla is in the Teflon. PFLS is in Scotch Guard. So stain resistance. So that’s another thing for carpeting is stain resistance in any fabric. Stain resistance. Gortex you know, so you know the thing, that’s why peripheral problems are so hard to get out because as they repel water and they repelled grease fat, so they don’t stick to the fat. In your body that don’t stick. They’re not water soluble, so you can’t pee them out. You know they’re, they’re difficult and they are in, that’s one of the, the groups of chemicals that the CDC has been testing and there’s like six of them that they find in every bag and they’re not easy to get out. So don’t get them in your body. Just start with, so the perfluorocarbons, there’s Pfla and that’s in Teflon. And then there’s Pos, which is Scotch Guard. So any stain resistance for your carpeting or upholstery, anything like that has, has those in it. Unfortunately these perfluorocarbons have also been used as fire fighting foam. So areas, especially military areas where they’ve used a lot of this, it’s got into the groundwater and there’s been a lot of news articles about it being in the ground water. So there are a lot of sources for these things. So I mentioned earlier, I think everybody should have an air purifier, at least in their bedroom. Everybody should also have a water purifier. And I recommend RO because it clears out like 95% of everything. I live in the Phoenix Valley in Arizona where we’ve got high arsenic, we’ve got the Erin Brockovich chromium six we’ve got perchlorate. MTBE is a host of chemicals in our water and we shouldn’t be drinking tap water and many areas of the country also have this, these per fluora compounds in them as well.

Dr. Crinnion: Most of this stuff is clean living works is the, is the bottom line message. If you have clean air, clean water in your home, which you have to take, you have to do that. It doesn’t come naturally unless you’re living in a shack on the beach. Okay. Clean food, organic food as much as possible. Follow the dirty dozen fruits and vegetables and you know, eat a healthy whole foods diet and you’ll avoid so much. So many of these pollutants. You know, you don’t use the fruit for products. You go back to basic like, oh, having a bar of soap in the shower instead of all the, the wash and the, you know, with all the fragrances, the shampoos, I mean it’s, it’s basic. Healthy living still works. This is not hard to do.

Dr. Cates: Yeah. Yeah. Like you’re saying, it’s just if we reduce the total exposure we do, reducing further exposure is one of the biggest things that we can do because our bodies are able to eliminate in their design. It’s designed to eliminate a certain amount. So can you explain a bit about that, of how our body gets rid of these and at what point it just can’t or you met, you’ve mentioned one compound that doesn’t get eliminated easily.

Dr. Crinnion: Yeah, so if you look at all the pollutants, they kind of fall into two categories. Those that are persistent, that stay around the body a long time and those that are not persistent, they’re out of the body in hours maybe a day at the most. So those are non persistent. Unfortunately that’s the bulk of them. Over 90% of the pollutants in your body have very strict short half lives. They don’t stay long. So for those, all you have to do is stop being exposed. Boom, they’re gone. There’ve been so many articles on taking people off of their commercial diet foods, changing them to organic food for a few days. Then going back to commercial changing to organic and within a couple of days of being in an organic there again, oh phosphate pesticide level drops like 90% in organophosphate pesticides were first developed in Germany in the 1930s by Schroeder as warfare, nerve gas agents. They’re neuro toxins. And interestingly there been two great studies out of France that just came out and the first one came out in the Journal of the American Medical Association and what it showed was that those individuals in this huge multi thousand people group in France who ate organic food had lower incidence of cancer. Oh that blew my mind. I’m just reviewing another article for my cranium opinion blog. Same Group of people and those that ate organic food more have less metabolic syndrome. So their blood sugar regulation is better. You know, you get off of these and it’s not hard. I mean you followed go to the environmental working group, get their dirty dozen list and that’ll get you out of most of the real toxic foods. So this isn’t hard to do. You don’t have to change everything organic. But like, I spend the extra 25 or 50 cents a pound for organic apples. You know, it doesn’t cost that much. If you, if you go by that dirty dozen and look at what you eat, it does not cost that much more to avoid those compounds in your diet. It really doesn’t, it, it does. This methods that, oh, it’s going to cost so much when you start adding up what it really costs per week or per month to avoid those dirty dozen and buy organic. Because most stores have organic now it’s not that much more. Five bucks a week maybe. You know, it’s, it’s not that much more.

Dr. Cates: Yeah. And it is like you’re saying that those daily choices that we make that because of the short half life, if these chemicals came get up out of our bodies quickly, that we, we, we can focus on the ones that works getting exposed to every day. And that’s, so you’re talking about choosing organic. So that eliminates that constant exposure to pesticide every day then most people have. Right. And same thing. My personal care products. That’s why I recommend, that’s why I wanted to create a skincare line that’s the, you know, the daily essentials that does products people use every day because those can get eliminated. A lot of the common toxins and skincare products. They can get a lemonade out of the body pretty easily, but if you keep exposing yourself to them every single day, your body can’t get rid of them.

Dr. Crinnion: Right. And one of the real bad ones in the personal care products is the low molecular weight thylates that are in all the fragrances. And those, the, the more, the higher the level of those in your urine, the greater your belt size, your waist size for obesity causes, uh, abds in men, low testosterone and infertility in women and fertility and pcls. So these aren’t innocuous compounds, their compounds. Yes, they got a short half life, but they pack a lot of health punch. So why, whoa. Yeah.

Dr. Cates: So you talked about some of the chemicals that we’re exposed to that have a short half life that are easy to remove out of the body. What about other ones that are, that that stick around that are really hard to get out of the body? You mentioned one, but are there other ones that people need to be particularly careful about? Expose, getting exposed to them?

Dr. Crinnion: Yeah, there’s just a very, a small man pull up these, the per fluoro compounds, it’s have flooring and then there’s the PCBs polychlorinated by phenyls, which there’s been a worldwide ban on production and use of those four decades now, but they’re so persistent. They’re still in the environment. The greatest source of exposure to these right now is the consumption of sardines and farm salmon. So those are the two really most toxic foods as far as persistent compounds go and then throw in the microwave popcorn with further per fluoro compounds. And then so there’s not a lot really those, that’s the major exposure source for those persistent compounds right now and there’s blood tests out that are available to measure the PCBs. There’s none available really for the peripheral compounds. Well, there is a test through national medical service, but it’s very, very expensive. And when I find people with PCBs, 99.9% of the time, they’re consumers of farm salmon or sardines, it does build up in the body, says surprised to hear about, I think because they’re oily and these fat saw pollutants go to oil or fat. It’s like typing into a swimming pool. And the reason why the Farm Salmon Atlantic Salmon have such high levels is because they’re fed pellets that initially are made from small oily fish. That’s the connection to the farm salmon. It’s the pellets that they’re fed to eat. And so these small oily fish are not healthy. But yesterday, well, if they’re highly oily likes, like the sardines are, the answer’s no. Okay. Right. And what about, I know because sardines are very, you know, actually both sardines and farm salmon are very commonly consumed.

Dr. Crinnion: What about heavy metals? So the big ones there, mercury lead and cadmium. Arsenic is a real bad player as well. But our snake, the primary source of arsenic is the water that you drink from the ground. So if you get an r o filter, you’ve knocked that out. It’d be so that’s good. You know, then there’s the high mercury fish that you want to avoid. Uh, led is a real big problem. Fortunately with the exception of, you know, the most recent problems with the water supplies, but that was kind of a temporary blerch in lead. Um, so fortunately there’s not a lot of lead exposure, but led stays in your body like forever in your bones forever and then gets dumped out every night as your bones turnover. So some people do have a high an OLED which is associated with a lot of problems from parkinsonism to high blood pressure, lots of illnesses with the lead. Cadmium is much more insidious. Smoking has been the big source of cadmium, but it turns out toe food consumption gives you higher levels of Kevin’s smoking. Interestingly enough, trying to be healthy, oh my goodness. And Canyon Causes Osteoporosis, kidney damage, and high risk for a number of very unpleasant cancers. Now, the good thing about the heavy metals that they’re easy to test for from a urine test and relatively simple treatment approach. A mercury, you can clear out of your body within a number of months led. Not so much cadmium takes a while, but you know you can rule those things out very, very easily with a good testing. Whereas perfluorocarbons can’t test for.

Dr. Cates: The test you are talking about are not regular doctors would have done. So the thats people can run in environmental medicine while run.

Dr. Crinnion: Right, right. Yeah. I review so many tests and I will get urine tests on metals run by the Mayo Clinic or someplace else, a standard reference lab and the reference values. These labs for the standard reference labs are used to looking at metals or other pollutants in workers. So their level of detection is way high. So I just looked at one from the Mayo Clinic and it said, well, there’s no arsenic in this person’s urine. They live in Arizona. That’s impossible. You know, there’s no mercury or lead. Well it’s cause their level of detection was so high because they’re looking for poisoned workers. So that’s why you really need that to go with a lab that caters to docs who understand environmental medicine. Environmental Medicine is not toxicology, it’s not toxicology, it’s environmental medicine. It’s a different realm. And we look at different levels. We’re not looking for people with acute poisoning of lead or mercury or cadmium or per floor compounds. We’re not, we don’t work with industrial workers know. We can certainly, but that’s not what we deal with. We deal with everyday people like yourselves that sit in home offices or regular offices or whatever that don’t, you know, they’re not decent mechanics. They don’t, they in their mind, I’m not exposed to toxic chemicals, but because we have these bad habits of breathing, eating and drinking water, we are exposed.

Dr. Cates: Yeah. So the difference is really, do you want to, are you just trying to be avoiding being extremely ill or are you trying to be optimally healthy? And this is a conversation that I often have with people about lab testing. What’s done and and like conventional doctors office versus, and a nature pathic doctor or a functional medicine medicine doctor’s office is that we’re looking to optimize health and we’re looking to, we’re not going to wait until the lab results are so bad that you’re going to die or that you know you’re going to have some really serious disease. There were trained to help prevent that and help optimize your health. Right. So that’s kind of what you’re talking about. We wanted to detect those levels before somebody gets super toxic. Hopefully we can catch them. Right,

Dr. Crinnion: Right. The analogy I used to use, I used for years did you to a medical doctor in an h pathic doctor riding in a car on the freeway and the oil light comes on and the nature pathic doctor says, we better pull over and put in oil. And the MD says, why the engine’s running fine? And then I keep driving and then the engine seizes up, stops running the MD runs out, opens it and says, oh, it ran out of oil. We looked at these things and we don’t want to get, have people go there. But fortunately our medicine can also reverse the process and bring people out of chronic illnesses. In my work with detoxification, getting people to reduce their toxic burden, I’ve seen literally every major disease out there reverse and people regain their health and it was just a matter of lowering their toxic burden and allowing the body to heal itself. People tend to think that these illnesses in aging are just natural, it’s not adding more birthdays that make these things happen. It’s adding more pollutants. If you have less pollutants, you can have a lot of birthdays and still be very, very vitally healthy.

Dr. Cates: Right? So about aging, going back to aging, let’s talk about telomeres for a bit and the impact of the changes would tell her. First of all, I’m just kind of, maybe I start with a review on telomeres and the impact of toxins on telomere.

Dr. Crinnion: Right? So you know for cells to divide for the chromosomes to divide, you have these little handles at the end called telomeres and every time the cell divides, the telomeres get shorter and shorter and shorter. If it gets too short, that cell can’t divide anymore, gets stuck midway. But we have enzymes in our body called telomerase that add to that telomeres so they can keep making more cells in infinitive Lee if they can keep doing it as long as, as long as the telomere length is long enough. Now, what damages the telomere length besides just reproduction of cells? Oxidative stress, which I’ll beat pollutants do. So that’s another means by which they affect agent. So like I talked about air pollution, I just read an article about how air pollution knocks out telomerase and shortens telomeres. So the oxidative stress, the telomeres, if you want to be a vitally healthy person, you need to have good telomeres. So that means low oxidative stress, which you have to take care of your pollutants, high antioxidants, and actually dealing with emotional stressors as well. Uh, some interesting articles on telomeres and people in stressful situations. It turned out to not be the stressful situations, but that person’s perception of if it was stressful or not. If they flipped out and freaked out, yeah, they had shorter telomeres. If they went, this too shall pass. No big deal. In the grand scheme of life, their telomeres did not get shorter. So a whole host of things that we can do. But yes, the environment pollutants directly affect telomere length. And the other thing they directly affect is mitochondrial function, which is the organelles inside each cell that burn fat for fuel to make energy so that the cell has energy, it can do what it needs. And the whole organism has energy, which is why when you look at almost all of the epidemiologic studies in workers around pollutants, fatigue is the leading symptom. So fatigue, low telomeres, which means the cells aren’t working right. Isn’t that like the definition of aging? And so many of these, um, you mentioned mercury earlier. So there was a dock in internal medicine doc in San Francisco where they have a lot of fish restaurants and she had a very wealthy clientele that ate at the high end fish restaurants all the time. So the symptoms that she found associated with these fish eaters, were, cognition, fatigue, headache, joint, it’s like all the things that we think of as aging. It’s polluted, you know, you want to be young, stay vital and keep that body working. Clean up really works.

Dr. Cates: Yeah. Yeah. So just as a review of what people action steps for people to take, so reduce your exposures. We talked about different ways to reduce your exposures.

Dr. Crinnion: Oh boy. The avoidance step just by doing good avoidance. It was so very, very far. I mean the letters that I’ve got from people that have read like Clean Green and Lean and got off there are there non organic food. It’s like some of these people have had their lives turned around by just doing these simple things. Right, right.

Dr. Cates: And then consuming more antioxidants. So antioxidant rich fruits, vegetables, produce in general and then maybe taking an antioxidant supplement as well. Any other action items that people should, should you know, take. And of course I think it’s important to mentor. We talked about seeing a naturopathic physician or functional medicine doctor that specializes in environmental medicine to have testing done and then individualized treatment. But anything else that you would suggest?

Dr. Crinnion: Yeah cause there are lab tests available to measure things like the valet and the organophosphate pesticides and so you can get those, those urine tests done. Do Avoidance rejects the year and am I clear? If not, what’s what’s slipping in there that I don’t know about and they get it done. You know it’s going to pay such huge, huge dividends.

Dr. Cates: Yeah, absolutely. Okay, well again, thank you so much for coming on today. Tell everybody where they can find you.

Dr. Crinnion: Www.CrinnionOpinion.com so that’s it, that’s my site.

Dr. Cates: Okay, great. Thanks again. I really appreciate you coming back on and sharing some really important information and tips on how to reduce toxins in your and your lives and be healthier, live a healthier, longer life. Right,

Dr. Crinnion: Absolutely. With great vitality. Fantastic.

Dr. Cates: I hope you enjoyed this interview today with Dr. Walter Crinnion and got some great tips on how to reduce toxins in your life so that you can have more graceful aging. He help you look and feel your best well into your senior years and live it to be 120 feeling and looking your best. So I hope you enjoyed this. To learn more about Dr Crinnion, you can go to The Spa Dr .Com, go to the podcast page with his interview and you’ll find all the information in the show notes, the link to his website, all of that information there. And while you’re there, I invited join the spa doctor community so you don’t miss any of our upcoming podcasts. And also I invite you to take the skin quiz if you haven’t already done so just go to theskinquiz.com it’s a free online quiz, gives you information about what your skin is trying to tell you about your health and what you can do about it. Just go to theskinquiz.com and also I invite you to join me on social media, on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Youtube, and join the conversation and I’ll see you next time on The Spa Dr. Podcast.