How Environmental Toxins Impact Our Health with Dr. Joseph Pizzorno

Transcript of How Environmental Toxins Impact Our Health

Dr. Cates: Hi there. I’m Dr Trevor Cates. Welcome to The Spa Dr. Podcast. Today we’re talking about environmental toxin exposure and the impact on your health toxins and our environment impact our health on many layers and have been linked to many different chronic diseases that are on the rise like cancer, diabetes, and autoimmune diseases. Our food, water, air, and personal care products are a source of many of these toxins and it’s essential that we address this to prevent and address disease and premature aging. So I asked a leader in the field back on my podcast to talk about this. My guest today is Dr. Joseph Pizzorno, who is a world leading authority on science-based natural medicine, a term he coined back in 1978 as founding president of Bastyr University. He’s a naturopathic physician, educator, researcher and spokesman and Editor-in-Chief of PubMed-indexed IMCJ, Treasurer of Board of IFM, member of American Herbal Pharmacopoeia, and a member of the science boards of Gateway for Cancer Research and Bioclinic Naturals.

Dr. Cates: He is co author or author of six textbooks including the textbook of natural medicine. And the recently released clinical environmental medicine as well as seven consumer books including Encyclopedia of Natural Medicine and the toxin solution as a political and academic leader in medicine for over four decades, he has been widely honored. In February, 2018 he received the leadership award from the Integrative Health Symposium and in October, the visionary award by the Academy of Integrative and health medicine. In this interview today, we discuss why talks and exposures are something we should all be aware of, the sources of toxins and how to avoid them and how to remove them from your body. Dr Pizzorno also shares some case studies and success stories that he’s experienced since the last time he was on the podcast, as well as tips on the most important places in your life to start cleaning out these toxins.

Dr. Cates: So please enjoy this interview and after you’ve had a chance to watch the interview, if you enjoy this or other episodes of the spa doctor, we always love to hear about your, your experience and see your reviews. You can hop on over to iTunes and leave a review of The Spa Dr. Podcast. We really appreciate your feedback, your honest feedback and your reviews on iTunes or wherever you like to watch some podcast. So enjoy this interview and I can’t wait to see what you think.

Dr. Cates: Dr Pizzorno it’s so great to have you back on The Spa Dr. Podcast.

Dr. Pizzorno: Great to see you again my friend.

Dr. Cates: Yeah. So you were on the podcast February, 2017 and talking with us about toxins and a lot’s happened since that time. So I wanted to have you back on to give us an update and I know you’ve won some awards since that time as well and been recognized, which of course you deserve because of all the time you’ve, you’ve been in our profession and leading the way for naturopathic medicine and and environmental medicine, many aspects of an avenue by like medicine. So, so what are some of the things that have been going on since the last time we spoke?

Dr. Pizzorno: Well thank you for the kind of introduction and yes, it’s nice to have received some more awards. I think what I most appreciate is that they are starting to come now from non naturopathic organizations that come from MD organization, nutrition organizations, things of this nature. So it’s nice to see it. These concepts of our medicine, nutrition and detoxification are now being so much more widely accepted. Yeah. So since the book came out, um, I was, it became more and more aware of the need for not only educating consumers like I did with The Toxin Solution, but also educating doctors because ultimately doctors need to understand that environmental toxins, they become the primary drivers of chronic disease. And I don’t care how good your natural or conventional therapies are. If you’re not dealing with the causes, you’re not going to get going to get very far and now toxins just dominate everything. So since we last talked, talked a bit in a couple of significant, okay occurrences. Number one is I was able to get togther with one of my graduates Dr. Walter Crinnion to write a new textbook entitled Clinical Environmental Medicine. And so what we did in this was we got together and looked at all the resource that was available where we brought in his extensive clinical experience doing detoxification with patients. We also brought in my extensive experience doing detoxification in large corporate wellness programs. So we able to bring a kind of a big public health perspective, bring in a very focused clinical perspective and then add in all the science. So we created a textbook which just came out last year that I think is really, really important for doctors.

Dr. Pizzorno: So I’m sorry about that. I’ve got a lot of really positive feedback from doctors saying, wow, you made the case for how toxins cause disease. You show us how to diagnose it and you show us how to get rid of these toxins. So that’s very exciting. And also along the way and you know, people are beginning to buy my book The Toxin Solution and now I’m getting these kind of out of the blue, reports from people who followed my protocols now of course is anecdotal. These are not controlled clinical studies and I suspect only people who were successful follow my protocols were the ones who contacted me. Okay. So I want to be clear, not controlled trial, but the results have been reported had been really impressive. So for example, one person told me that had had diabetes for 15 years and I’ve gone through the conventional protocols, went to the natural medicine protocols, Finally just said, I’m just going to do a detox and in nine weeks he got rid of his diabetes. Now it makes sense because as you may recall, as I’ve looked at the research on the diabetes epidemic, my belief is that 90% of the diabetes epidemic is due to environmental toxins. So if you get rid of environmental toxins, you give your body a chance to heal. What a lot of these things do is you know, everybody knows about insulin resistance, metabolic syndrome. Well what that is is the cells aren’t responding to insulin. And one reason for that is when you put these toxins, they bind to the insulin receptor sites on the cells so cells can’t respond to the insulin. Cause they can’t see it because the toxins are blocking the sites. So you move that blocker from the sites, then all of a sudden the cells can see the insulin and you don’t have diabetes anymore. Obviously it’s all going to work that effectively people early in the process. But nonetheless, that’s a good, a good sign.

Dr. Cates: Yeah. And that’s amazing. I talk a lot about hormone disrupting chemicals, these endocrine disrupting chemicals and how they bind a receptors and create issues. And what you’re talking about, these are endocrine disrupting chemicals. And insulin is a hormone. And so this is working in the same way. And so what we want to do is to reduce our exposure to these, get them out of the body as much as possible. Right. And of course, we talked about this last time you were on, but I want to encourage people to all the different hormones and how they function in the body and that these endocrine disrupting chemicals can impact our health in so many ways, right?

Dr. Pizzorno: Yes, absolutely. True. So let me give you some more anecdotal reports from people. Okay. So, and this one I really liked because it was such a theme in my book. So many people now are overweight and really, really struggling with that. And of course everybody’s saying, well, that being overweight, that obesity epidemic is what’s caused the diabetes epidemic. Oh, we look at obese people in the bottom, 10% of bioload environmental toxins, they don’t have any increased risk for diabetes. If you look at people in the top 20% of body load of rival toxins and the top 20% of body weight, 60% of them already have diabetes. It’s not like they’re at higher risk. 60% of having diabetes. Okay? So clearly you got to get the talkings out. So another anecdote was a woman who said, I’ve been trying forever to lose weight and it’s just impossible. So I saw you your detox program. Notice I didn’t say she went on a weight loss program. She wanted the detox program. Well, the detox program actually lost all this weight without any, without even trying. And the good news is that when you get rid of the weight because it’s due to toxins, as long as you keep the talk this out, the waste not coming back. Well, probably the most exciting anecdote report I got was from an MD, she had heard me lecture on this topic and follow the protocol at my book and she had been suffering from systemic Lupus Erythematosus.

Dr. Pizzorno: So this autoimmune disease as you know, is very, very difficult to treat and people end up on these very, very strong immunosuppressive drugs. They have all the side effects. So it’s a bad condition. She followed my detox program and she, she says quote, I mean 95% remission, so still has a little bit of symptomatology, but 95% gone just by getting rid of the toxins. So now why would getting rid of toxins, get rid of autoimmune disease. So I’ve obviously, I’ve always wondered … so, you know, I’m a true believer in natural medicine. I think our bodies have a tremendous ability to heal. And so when I hear the body’s developing antibodies to itself, that doesn’t make sense to me. Why would the body do antibodies to get rid of itself? Nature doesn’t do that. Then if you look at the research being done by a Johnny Kharrazian a phd, they showed in laboratory [inaudible] an autoimmune disease. It’s not the bias racked into the normal body tissues rather than normal body tissues have now been bound to environmental toxins. So they’ve changed it’s character. So it’s no longer a normal protein, normal enzyme. Now you’ve added foreign chemicals to it. Better now, make a foreign molecule, the body’s reacting to the foreign molecule. So if we get rid of the toxins and eventually then get rid of the toxins. And so now we only have normal tissues, you’re going to dramatically decrease this autoimmune reaction because the body now not having to react to these abnormal tissues.

Dr. Cates: Yeah, and that completely makes sense. And it is one of those things where you see people with autoimmune diseases and there are so many different ones and they’re on the rise, right? We’re seeing more and more of them. And why would that happen? And patients do say like, why me? Why, why is this happening to me? So, uh, so, OK. So let’s go back to your, your program and what, what you talk about in your detox program. What are the key parts of it that make it so effective?

Dr. Pizzorno: Thank you. So people have been asking for this. So my actually, my wife Lauren, I put together a lecture on how do you do it? Okay. So here, here are the key components. Number one is you must consciously and aggressively live a toxin free lifestyle. What I mean is, you’ve got to avoid the toxins coming in because you can do all these great detoxification programs just, but if the toxins are still coming back in again. Then, it’s kinda like what’s the point? So for example, when we’re looking at these talks and some toxins, let’s break down toxins into two categories. What would be call non-persistent toxins and persistent toxins. So non-persistent toxins, this means these are toxins, why it’s real good to get rid of all you do is stop exposing yourself. A good example of that is arsenic for example. Uh, we have to species evolve where there’s many of the water supplies we consume had our thinking. So we’re actually fairly good get rid of our stack but not getting rid of a lot of our stick and not from being exposed to arsenic all the time. So half-life of arsenic in the body is two to four days. So if you stop exposing yourself to our centers, then a week or two it’s all going to be gone. The problem is so many of our supplies in the, in the U.S. have high levels of arsenic, so there may talk like solve this for example, when you’re doing cleaning and you’re kind of smelling the chemicals, most of the chemicals are easy to clean out. But the problem is people clean everyday and they keep getting exposed.

Dr. Pizzorno: Then we have the other category which would be the persistent toxins. So these are typically new to Nate, which were molecules,, created in laboratories. And there are typically created to not be broken down by biological systems. So once again, the body, they stay there for long time. And there’s also some metals like that as well. So the worst of the metals is cadmium. Once you’re exposed to cadmium, the half life in the kidneys is 16 years. So if you don’t want to get exposed to it, I mean, so you’ve got to avoid the exposure that give you lots of examples. Now, once you’ve addressed what got rid of the external exposure, not the of internal exposure to toxins, most of the internal exposure to toxins, it comes from a toxic gut. The all time nature paths as you we’ll call used to say disease begins in the gut because you’ve got the wrong bacteria in your gut. It produced molecules that are bad for us and because of all the antibiotics that people are taking, not only because they’re prescribed, but now because of what’s in the food supply. They’re constantly damaging the healthy bacteria in their gut and replenishing it with actually a great unhealthy and bad bacteria.

Dr. Pizzorno: So I said, okay, okay, now we’re avoiding toxins on the outside world and also avoid the toxins from the inside world cause we clean up the gut. We take them on a two week program. How do you clean up the gut? Now the big reason for that is not only are these molecules bad for us, they go right to the liver. Sure. And so poor livers haven’t spent all this middle block energy just come in to talk to us from the gut. It says less left over to get rid of toxins from the environment and also from normal metabolism. So after cleaning up the gut, we want to clean up the liver, mainly by mixture, all the nutrients necessary for the gut, for the liver function are there. They make sure we’re getting rid of the toxin from et Cetera. And then the, I’d be deaf for two weeks and then the final two weeks is clear for kidneys. Now, 50 years ago when I was doing detox for my patients, I wasn’t worried about the kidneys because people weren’t having trouble with their kidneys. But now, so many of the toxins, but also so many prescription drugs are extremely damaging to the kidneys. So now we’ve got a kidney failure epidemic as well. While all these centers are showing up all over the place. People’s kidneys are broken. So then we might clean up the kidneys. And the good news is that the gut, the liver and the kidneys have huge regenerative capability. So as soon as you stop damaging them, make sure they’ve got the nutrients they need, they will regenerate. And you’ll get health.

Dr. Cates: Yeah, absolutely. And I completely make sense. And like you said, if you’re reducing your exposure and the body has the ability to remove them, ideally, that’s great. But what you’re talking about is that we want to make sure that our gut, our liver, our kidneys are functioning optimally so they can do their job, but the how they’re designed to do, right. So, and there are certain certainly things that help support that certain nutrients. You know, I know I noticed you didn’t mention skin, but that is definitely one of the detoxification pathways is through the skin. Do you recommend, um, things for the skin as well, like dry skin brushing and those sorts of things?

Dr. Pizzorno: Yeah, that’s a very good question. And I would say my thinking has not evolved in that area. And so right now I do the skin detox through songs basically. Yeah. And I suspect in purely, I’m, I need to learn from you. I’m sure there’s more protocols we can use to help with the skin detox. My preference is that we don’t use the skin for detox because then you get acne and eczema and all this kind of stuff. But it is indeed an important detoxing system.

Dr. Cates: Yeah. I mean, I would think that there are certain things you should do with the skin to help ensure that when you’re doing the Saunas that, that this skin is actually able to, um, excrete the toxins properly. So proper exfoliation and support for the skin microbiome topically can probably help accelerate that. Just kind of a little side note. Um, but you know, I think this is fascinating about each of these different areas, the gut, the liver and the kidneys. So let’s start, let’s go back to the gut. What are some of the key things that you find that really help with restoring gut health?

Dr. Pizzorno: So the, the approach I take to the gut is what I do for all the organs of the body as basically for story, for process. Number one is stop damage in it, what is causing the damage. And then second is what can you do to help facilitate regeneration and proper function? It’s kind of, I mean I can tell you a lot of steps, but it comes down to stop the damage. She facilitated a generation. So with the gut, the primary causes of damage are the wrong bacteria in the gut, the use of nonsteroidal antiinflammatory drugs. So airtime person takes asthma, for example, increasing gut permeability. So that’s co that’s causing damage to the gut. And then it turns out that a lot of people are intolerant or allergic to foods that they eat. And people often talk about food allergies. [inaudible] terms typically not used quite accurately. A better term is food intolerance. So food allergy means you have an antibody or immune system reaction to the food, whereas many foods have constituents on them that when the body interacts with those constituents, things happen, which are desirable. And it turns out the worst of them is wheat. Wheat has been hybridized to the point where it’s very high in gluten, which gives them more, uh, high protein levels and gives it the nice smell and mixing nice collection of a material for making bread and things like this.

Dr. Pizzorno: And that’s all fine. But the problem is the gluten is high in something called Gliden and for about three cores of population, or they’re exposed to glide and increases gut permeability. So I’ve had so many patients with chronic disease, all I did was clean up the gut by having stop all things or damaging the gut, get the right kind of bacteria and into the, into the gut, get rid of the gut, leaky gut, excess gut permeability, and restore the health. So stop the damage. And number two, establish healthier conditions. So by hit stamps and healthcare security traditions, you’ve got to get rid of the toxic bacteria in receipt with healthy bacteria. And you’ve got to give nutrients to actively support, support the regeneration, that Gut Mucosa to get rid of the lid. Gotcha.

Dr. Cates: Okay. And, and what’s a, what’s an example of one of those nutrients?

Dr. Pizzorno: So what I’m trying to get rid of toxic bacteria. I use good old golden seal. The nice thing about good golden see is that it kills off the toxic bacteria, particularly the clustered family, which is the worst alum, uh, and it does not particularly damaging to the electric sauce. So good, good way of of doing that. And then, when you’re killing off all those talks, bacteria is important to have something in the gut that will then absorb those toxins has it been released. So that’s why I like using fiber and things. Snakes for that. Oh, from that role. And then help facilitate healing of the gut. There are a number of methods, a glutamic acid for example, you to use to supplement glutamic acid is good. Sure. Around use of food. It turns out the cabbage family of foods is very high in glutamic acid. So cabbage, family foods, we helped that facilitate that regeneration. And then there’s some other things that are kind of unusual. For example, kiwifruit who would have thought to keep me food helps decrease gut permeability. So then there’s a whole list of nutrients to help facilitate the gut healing.

Dr. Cates: yeah, that’s great. Thank you for sharing some of those. And, and as far as then the liver, what are some of the things specific to the liver that, that, that the liver needs to do its job.

Dr. Pizzorno: So for the liver, there are to two key factors. Well three of them. First one is you know, stop loading the liver any more than you have to because you know, the less you load deliver, the more ables it’s able and more stable to get rid of other toxins can have more capability available. So first off you have to make sure the nutrients are there and the nutrients range from something that might be surprising. Like iron for example. Iron is the core for most of the key liver detoxification enzymes. She asked somebody to low in iron, particularly menstruating women for example. They’re going to have more trouble with those enzymes being formed because there’s not enough iron around. And the second you have to have the vitamins and minerals necessary for those enzymes to work in addition to hiring and in general with male your B vitamins.

Dr. Pizzorno: So since the vast majority of population is deficient in the B vitamins as well as an iron, there’s some simple things to do to help facilitate the liver. The next thing you want to do then is help my steak flush out to lower. So there’s all I called age old ideas about cholagogue and liver flush, things like that. The conceptually pretty good idea. Many of the methods that we use are kind of flawed. So for example, some people believe, well wait a minute, plus delivery is to get eight ounces of grapefruit juice and put in two ounces of olive oil and shake it up and drink it. Yeah, it tastes pretty disgusting, but I’ll cut clear out your liver. Okay. And indeed, if you look at the person’s skills, and I’ve done this, you look at the stool, you see these little bowls in the stools, they say, Huh, look, I’m get rid of my kidney stones.

Dr. Pizzorno: Okay, two big problems. Number one is they’re not kidney stones. They’re deposits of spotify fats. Cause a kidney stone is a hard, hard rock. Spotify, fat you squeeze on it, they go away. Cause I mean seriously, I’ve had patients bring it to me and say, look, I got real honest kidney stones. And I say, actually no, they’re just so complication of the oils. You just chuck. Well it’s worse than that. For example. It does indeed cause the liver to flush very powerfully. But if you’ve got bile stones just don’t in your, in your bio gland, your gallbladder, bile stones, your gallbladder, they can get stuck in the little tube that goes from the gallbladder into the gut. And so if you’ve got those stones and do that liver flush, you will induce an acute disease. And I’ve had patients do this. I’ve had patients in my office high temperatures, extreme pain from doing exactly that where I either had kids get that stone to pass or they’re going to have to remove them. The good news is that so far I’ve been able to get rid of one of my patients don’t to pass. But you should never have done that to themselves. That a body can dissolve the stones. But it takes time. So I’m not a great believer in liver flush. I am a believer in things like good old a dandelion root. Dandelion root is a very gentle cholagogue yup. Clear the stuff out of the liver and the gallbladder.

Dr. Cates: Yeah. Thank you for clarifying that because I think there’s a lot of information online about liberty detoxification and it, there’s so many different types of ways to detox. I’m using air quotes for people who are listening because it’s not really necessarily working and we want to make sure that we’re doing this effectively and not doing more harm than good. A lot of times we’re trying to do something really beneficial, but we can actually do some harm. Like you’re, like you’re saying, so thank you for clearing for clarifying that. Is there anything else when it comes to liver detoxification that people should steer clear on that people should be careful not to do?

Dr. Pizzorno: Hmm. Yeah, that’s a good question. The only one I have had direct clinical experience with actually damaging people has been those big glasses of oils and citrus fruits. There’s several variations, but those are the only ones where I’ve actually seen people get in obvious trouble.

Dr. Cates: Okay. Okay. And what about, what about colonics? Are you, are you a proponent of, of colonics?

Dr. Pizzorno: Unclear, you know, there are a lot of people who really believe in them. A lot of the old time nature has did them, but it’s always felt to me as somewhat unnatural. And so whenever something seems somewhat unnatural, I’m more skeptical. So I’m not in opposition to it. But turns out that’s not a therapy that I’ve used with my patients. That might be an occasional case where we had to do that. But in general I don’t tend to recommend that. How about you? What do you think?

Dr. Cates: When I first was practicing, when I was in Santa Barbara, we had a colon hydrotherapist and our clinic at the Santa Barbara Center. And you know, I never really felt like it made that much of a difference. And, but Dr. Walter Crinnion, who I studied with you mentioned was a big fan of that. And he said it was a really important part of environmental medicine detoxification programs. So that’s why I was incorporating it. But I agree with you, with your, when you’re, where you’re putting water in somewhere where it’s not usually they’re supposed to go, are you actually going to take out the good bacteria along with, what else might be coming out of it?

Dr. Pizzorno: And so the, the point I’ve of made with that is the primary reason why you’ve got all these problems in the colon is because people aren’t consuming the fiber. I mean, I’ll just be blunt about it. We evolved as a species to consuming a hundred, 150 grams of fiber a day. Now we eat 15 to 20 grams of fiber a day. It’s not enough for system work properly. It’s why some people, there’s no question, some people get benefits from colon therapy, but I think that over the longterm, they get much more benefit if they clean up the gut and dramatically increase their fiber consumption.

Dr. Cates: Yeah. Yeah, I agree. And so when it comes to fiber people, I still think people think metamucil. They think, oh, I just need to eat more whole grains. But so what do you, I mean, and part of that, you know, there is something too to that, but what are you, what do you think are the best ways to get fiber?

Dr. Pizzorno: So there’s no substitute for whole foods. I just put it right there. If you’re eating real whole foods that have been properly grown, properly prepared, and not contaminated, you’re gonna get fiber. Okay. Now because our modern food supply, even organically grown foods have worked so hard to make the foods bigger and prettier and highering levels of certain nutrients every time those kinds of things are done. They can get lower and lower in fiber in terms of ratio fiber to calories. So we do a challenge to get enough fiber with today’s food. Even the natural foods, we have a problem with getting too much calories. So I do recommend supplemental fiber, not a large amount, not in place of a healthy diet. But right now, for example, look my look at my, my wonderful blueberries. Okay. Well my wonderful blueberries, are kind of small, I’m really flavorful, I’m going to have a lot of fiber, but the organic blueberries you buy in the health food store are about three times as big as my blueberries. A lot more sweet, not near as much fiber, not near as much. So I think you now have to take supplemental fibers and there’s a number of that that are available. And basically the only one I’m against is going to be wheat fiber just because so many people react. Yeah, I know wheat fiber is not supposed to have lean proteins or amino acids on it, et cetera. I don’t trust that. I see way too many people were in trouble with wheat bran regardless of how natural it is. I prefer other forms of fiber. I’m a little hesitant about rice brand fiber because rice has tend to have arsenic in it. So I will go more towards, seems like flaxseed. A product I use called pgx made by natural factors out of Canada. I’ve got a, I’m a scientific consultant for them, so conflict of interest in recommending them but they are a good source of fiber. So there are a number of good fibers that are available. So I think people need to supplement their diets with fiber.

Dr. Cates: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Okay, thank you. And, and then kidneys, that was the last place you said that that was the, the kind of the third phase. What are some of the really important key factors for detoxifying the kidneys?

Dr. Pizzorno: So this was a big surprise for me because with that, with the toxin solution has for the first time I really dove into the kidneys because again, we just tend to see that problem in the past. And interestingly, as you may know, the kidneys have a huge blood supply, just lots of blood goes through the kidneys and turns out most of the damage to the kidneys. Now, not all of it don’t mean clarify for the vast majority of people, most of the damage to the kidneys is actually from the blood supply coming to the kidneys. It turns out this little arterioles feeding, the kidneys are very susceptible to damage and they tend to become fiberous has when they become fiberous cause a decrease in blood supply to the kidneys. Turns out there’s a number of natural medicine therapies that’ll help. We moved that fibrous material and let them flood, but blood vessel flow properly and we do that. Can you function comes back? No, I’m pretty early in the process of doing this, but I’ve seen enough that I think that the I’ve taken, it’s making sense. So how did you do that? Okay, well it turns out anything that we know that improves blood supply in general, it works really well for the kidneys. So I mentioned before, good old blueberries, Ginkgo Biloba, things of this nature are really important. But the other part is you’ve got to stop damage to the kidneys and the nonsteroidal antiinflammatory drugs and things like Tylenol or Acetaminophen are really hard on the kidneys. So I’m not taking, never, I’m not saying never take them. I’m saying never take them for very long because they are really hard on the kidneys. And if you look at research on kidney failure, uh, can, can you decrease function and, uh, lifetime dosages of various anti inflammatory drugs. You see the direct correlation, the more of these drugs people take the poor, the kidney function.

Dr. Cates: So you mentioned aspirin and Tylenol. What about Ibuprofen?

Dr. Pizzorno: Yeah, all of them are the same. Ibuprofen’s not as bad as Tylenol or Aspirine, but they’re all they all cause problems.

Dr. Cates: Yeah, they all do.

Dr. Pizzorno: And also they all cause increased gut permeability.

Dr. Cates: So now what about the people that are told for cardiovascular health to take a baby aspirin a day?

Dr. Pizzorno: I think it’s a terrible strategy. Okay. Now this, this is an unfair anecdote I’m gonna do doing anyway. So I used to be on a lecture circuit with a, a cardiologist and he was telling everybody he be kicking ass. Ron and I was arguing with him, say, wait, aspirin. It’s not a natural, just not a food. And that as compared to other nostril antiinflammatory drugs, I think aspirin actually is better. Has she gotten kind of a bad rep? But nonetheless, regular consumption, bot good idea. I said eat salmon instead, I said, get your water small salmon high, make it three fatty acids, you’ll get much better. Ah, benefits did with aspirin. You won’t get the side effects. And aspirine you know, punching holes in your gut. We argued and argued and argued he died two years later. Hmm. Okay. Now what was unfair is he had a lot more cardiovascular disease than I did, but he died in his forties okay. So that aspirin strategy sure didn’t work for that cardiologist.

Dr. Cates: Yeah, and the research on that, like where does, is that, you know, I haven’t really looked at that lately to see is there, is it still being used? If people still backing this, is there any kind of evidence that it really does help?

Dr. Pizzorno: Yeah, I think there’s some evidence that has some benefit, but it pales in comparison to the adverse events in comparison to fish oil to get better results with fish oils without the adverse events. So yes, you make a case for why you asked. It might be useful, maybe some very specific circumstances, but in general not a good idea. Oh I have a great anecdote for you of a patient. Oh, who was taking uh, one baby aspirin a day and came to me complain about excess bruising and this has been going on for three years and you know, I’m a, I’m a really smart clinician. I went through everything I could think of about how to get her to stop, stop bruising so much and then one day she decided to stop taking that baby aspirin and all the bruising went away and it’s like, Oh God, why did I think of that sooner? Cause I was looking at you know, vitamin C and carotinoids and flavonoids. I mean you know, all the things you would think of, like how you make the full blood vessels stronger. No. If she has been damaged too much from the aspirin one baby aspirine a day was enough to cause her to have all this excess bruising.

Dr. Cates: Yeah. Yeah. That’s amazing. It’s amazing how often I’ve, over the years I’ve had patients, and I’m sure you have too, that they come in with symptoms like kind of like this situation and, and we look at everything that’s going on. It really, one of the biggest things is a medication that they’re on and they’re actually having side effects that they never even knew were related to that medication. Because they either, maybe they didn’t hear the doctor explaining that or maybe they were never told, um, and never looked up because I think people forget about all the possible side effects that can happen from taking medications. And that’s one of the things is looking for the root cause. Is it actually a medication that somebody is on? Is it a side effect of that medication? And oftentimes I’ve seen that that’s a country, at least a contributing factor to people’s symptoms.

Dr. Pizzorno: Oh, absolutely. How can be a really scary one? So a good friend of ours, an older man whose life has been saved by conventional medicine. Thank you. Conventional Medicine. But it was having really bad arrhythmias. So, and they couldn’t figure out why was happening. And so they did does that ablation thing where they go in and they burn the spots in the heart that are being the focal point of the [inaudible] oh, the eurythmics she’s having and it didn’t help. So he asked us for help. So we said, okay, first off, what are all the drugs you’re taking? So he’s taken an anticoagulent, because of heart problems, which the anticoagulant and what is the number, oh, I forget the exact numbers. But when we, one of the most common adverse events with this drug or side effects was cardiac arrhythmias. So drug he was taking was causing cardiac arrhythmias. They burned up spots in his heart, uh, to probably get rebut. But since they weren’t dealing with the cause were, weren’t able to get them and it’s just just appalling. The only course we recommend is, okay, fine, you need to add a go. Where’s an anticoagulant? That does not cost harder business. You just know I’m into my MD friends. Think through the results of your interventions. Sometimes they’re not doing what your, what you’re rethinking.

Dr. Cates: Right. And of course, we’re not saying that people should ever use conventional medicine. Certainly saves lives. It can help. It’s like, let’s get to the root cause first. Let’s remove the obstacles to healing. Let’s do that first and then look at how medications might help help some one when it’s necessary, but there’s so much else we can do to help support the body. And, and I know you and I kind of, we’re all over the place. All we’re talking about, but we’re going back to toxins, is that, and that being one of the big root causes that gets in the way of people’s ability for their bodies to heal, to do what they’re designed to do.

Dr. Pizzorno: A bit pejorative here, and I want to be very clear, I’m not anti conventional medicine, but I am anti health care system, which is all Lee conventional medicine. So one of the things I love doing in my home, Laura and I is, we host student leadership. And what we do is we bring in a, a couple of a really successful graduates or other experts in medicine to talk to the students about what is future mess and look like and how can he be leaders and what are the challenges so we have, we have these wonderful conversations. So the doctor, actually just a couple of days ago, we just had one and the doctor brought in the case of a patient with a thyroid that was failing and their TSH, thyroid stimulating hormone was at 4.4 and this lab, the normal range was up to 4.5. So the doctors say to the patient, everything’s fine. I’ve just, let’s just watch it come back in six months to see what happens.

Dr. Pizzorno: What’s happened is the doctors wait until it gets worse. So then they can then justify the drugs rather than saying, well, why is it already at the very top of the end? What’s going on metabolically is not working properly and well, let’s see if we fixed those. Now we can fix those, fine, let’s go to the drug. But most of the Times the cause of the dysfunction is identifiable. I talked to them typically or new to deficiency, fix that and the problem goes away. But so often the conventional medicine waits until the body’s so far damaged to do the intervention rather than dealing with the body early in the process where it’s much easier to fix things.

Dr. Cates: Absolutely. Yeah. Thank you for sharing that. Okay. So to, to help people with reducing their exposure to toxins, can you give some general tips of the most important places to, to think about when reducing exposure to toxins?

Dr. Pizzorno: Okay, so there’s two answers to that. So the general answer is most of the toxins come from our food supply now either directly from how the foods would be produced or indirectly from leaching of chemicals, from the packaging materials into the fruits. So that is kind of something which must be, must be controlled.
But having said that, you also have to recognize that some people may be in an area of the country where there’s something in the environment at the independent foods, why that must be a paid attention to. And the one which I actually, I’m working on, I’m giving a lecture in London and in Moscow in September. And um, I’m actually looking at the research on this right now and pointless. The resource on arsenic is just stunning. I would say right now arsenic is probably the major cause of cancer in the world. Okay. Now it says the only caused by now fake. It’s the major cause of cancer. So if you’re living in an area where there’s a lot of arsenic in the water supply, that actually may be the most important thing you need to immediately. So it turns out that the most of the best research on, arsenic causing problems is looks at the amount of arsenic in the water supply. I think there’s other, there are other sources of arsenic and I’m not going to say the arsenic in our water supply is the most important right now. It clearly has the most researched. I’m going to say right now at this point, it’s probably the most important by much.

Dr. Cates: So the threshold, um, for the amount of arsenic in the water supply to start increasing the risk of disease is about 10 micrograms per liter of water. Turns out that 10% of the public water supplies in the United States have more than 10 micrograms of arsenic per liter of water and only half the water supplies have reported the RC clumps y. So testing for arsenic is like the $20 test. Why have these public water supplies not test for arsenic? I would assert, and this is kind of a mean thing for me to say, I would assert that they tested it and found the arsenic and didn’t report it because it’s hard to, it’s hard to get arsenic out of water supply. So we have a lot of people with high levels of arsenic and there are some areas where the people are drinking well water in the well, water is contended and one of the worst areas for that turns out to be in Maine. In Maine, there are supplies that we showed that 50 to 3000 of our leader that was fairly easy to scale after people start paying attention. Because you get all these diseases, all these increased diseases within those areas and that research of the arsenic in the water supply. Right now, 35% of people in United States have arsenic levels in their body known to induce disease. So food for the average person is primary source. But you better check your water supply to see if there’s arsenic in it, cuz it it is, that’s by far the first thing you’ve got to do in your home now.

Dr. Cates: So, so I know and where I live in Park City, Utah, there is highly high amounts of arsenic in the water and people might think, oh, you know, it’s just a little mountain town. Why would it have arsenic? But it used to be a mining town and because of of what’s kind of remains from the the mining, that means there’s high arsenic and low water. So I of course talk to all my patients about getting reverse osmosis water filter filters to drink. But I also recommend whole house filtration system are putting it on your shower or your bath. We’re absorbing it through the skin as well. Do you also recommend that too?

Dr. Pizzorno: Yes. So I recommend a carbon block, whole house filters because I just said in terms of all those chemicals and such, you take a shower, hot shower, you’re breathing them in. And so it’s really important to ’em do a whole house water supply or where it comes in. Now the problem is carbon block filter will not clear out arsenic. Pretty much the only way to get rid of arsenic is reverse osmosis. Oh. Or distillation, which are, which are expensive and difficult processes. Yeah.

Dr. Cates: Yeah. Okay. So water filters? Both for drinking and for home, for showers and um, eating organic foods, being, making sure you have clean sources of food, right?

Dr. Pizzorno: Sure. The storage of those foods is not safe as well. If you go get a bank account of organic, well that can, is lined with plastic with BPA in it. So you’ve got to pay attention to the packing materials as well.

Dr. Cates: And it’s so hard because you know, it’s, we go to the grocery store to buy stuff. Everything’s in plastic or cans. Yeah, except for the produce. But even, but even some of the produce and the meats and cheeses, then you know, all the different things that we’re, we’re eating, they’re, they’re wrapped in plastic. They’re stored in things. I know that I see a lot of times at whole foods. I see. Or the health food stores. I see them switching away from cans to the cartons. But what are the cartons lined with?

Dr. Pizzorno: I initially was very concerned about the cartons, but it turns out they are lined, Ted cartons for the Tetra Pak cartons. Containers, are indeed lined with plastic, but it looks like the plastic doesn’t Leech. So right now I am saying they’re probably okay on one be Viet delve more deeply. But if your choice is between a can or one of these tetrapacks, I definitely am supporting the Tetrapak in comparison.

Dr. Cates: Yup. Yup. Okay. And then when you get food home storing them in glass, and porceline that’s the best way to do it.

Dr. Pizzorno: And we have cooking material, cooking your foods. You don’t want to use Teflon coated things. You want your stainless steel. There are some hard ceramics out now that looks like they don’t teach into the food supply. So the good news is that more and more of the public is looking for the safer cooking utensils and they are becoming available to us, which is good. So you’re looking at our house, there’s no plastic containers. There’s still one Teflon coated fry pan that we very, very rarely used. But to be honest with you, there’s still one in our left in our house, we’ll get rid of it eventually. But other than that we have removed virtually everything from our house and our environment that we can, that is a source of toxins. We’ve been really, really aggressive about it. Yeah. Yeah.

Dr. Cates: And like you said, it depends on where you live, your hobbies, right, your hobbies, your work environment, those are the things are also places of exposure, right?

Dr. Pizzorno: Yes.

Dr. Cates: Yeah, absolutely. And then of course I’m going to add in that personal care products and there as an important thing to look at because especially for women, we use so many that it’s important. I mean there, there are things like Teflon in and lotions and makeups and, and we, we don’t need that extra exposure.

Dr. Pizzorno: Right. That’s other big ones are food, water, health and beauty, air, and cleaning products. And so it wouldn’t even talk about here. So when you’re living in a place like parts of Utah, which is a gorgeous, we long I’ve been there, we got hiking that which we just elaborate. Beautiful area in general. You’re probably not going to have a lot of air pollution. I can’t say that for sure. When we were there it was very clean, which you live in a city, uh, or live within a hundred yards of a major highway. You can a lot of air pollution. And what these things are is the air pollution is high in particulate matter. So we see a diesel truck going down the road. Do you see the kind of blue black smoke coming out? Well, that’s pretty bad stuff. So it’s full of particular matter. And what makes that problematic? This particular matter binds to the hydrocarbons in the, um, in the, in like my civic gassing and waste products. And those hydrocarbons are very, very toxic, Carsenogenic, et cetera. And so by binding to those small particles, when you breathe it, those small particles actually are able to penetrate the lungs and get into the light. So I’ve called 2.5 micron, anything smaller than 2.5 microns, and diameter or go deeply to body. And animal research has shown that if you put an animal, yes, no one rabbits, put an animal in an environment with high particulate matter within one hour, those particular matters actually found in the brain. So these things bring those toxins into the body more efficiently and then distributed everywhere. So one of the things I also recommend is you if you have a whole house air conditioning system put on a good filter. The filters are ranked according to the ability to filter the air and how much they decreased the amount of air going through. And so we used something called a Merce 16, Walter, and I recommend at least Merv eight in our textbook. They click on environmental medicine in our home, we put it in in verse 16 and what that means is that it clears out 99% of the toxins within a single pass. So we run this year round all the time and we had a couple of operations. We have been doing this now for just about two years. Two things have happened, which were quite remarkable. Number one is the house is cleaner. We don’t have to dust as much, there’s simply not as much dust. And the other one, which was such a, it’s such a clear objective measure, is every couple of years we’ve had to clean the refrigerator cooling coils because they come get filled with dust everywhere. With refrigerate, you should know you’re supposed to clean these things out at least every year, every year or two. We do it. And there’s, you know, if we do it in a year, it’s like an eighth of an inch of dust, if we do it two years, a quarter inch of dust, at which point you’re wasting a lot of electricity just to keep it cooking. So this year we went to clean our refrigerator, clean coils and no dust. So first time ever, it was just studying. So if the house air filtration system is not clearing all the dust out who is? Well our filter cleaned the dust out and that dust is full of all kinds of bad chemicals and metals and things like that.

Dr. Cates: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Well, Joe, this has been a fantastic, always great to catch up with you and I know we’ve covered a lot today. But I want to go back to what you talked about. You talked about a textbook and I know that’s, that’s a Dr. Walter Crinnion and you did this textbook together and it’s really designed for practitioners for, so for the people that are practitioners that are listening, watching where I want you to tell everybody where they can find it. But before I do, I just want to say, how devastated I am and, that we’ve lost Dr. Walter Crinnion. He passed away this, this past year and a what a loss that is our profession and really to the world because of his, the way that he was such a pioneer and, uh, just working so hard on environmental medicine and getting that awareness and trying things that nobody else was willing to do with himself and his patients. And so I think, I just want to recognize him and, and I know that you must have gotten to know him really well with how closely you worked together on this.

Dr. Pizzorno: So, so Walter was a graduate our very first class in best year. So I’ve known that. I know Walter, you know, for a very long period of time and I’m so grateful that we’re able to get the textbook done before he passed away. But I think he’s a good example of what happens to pioneers because as you go into that early process of learning how to get toxins out of his patient’s bodies, I think he was being exposed to their toxins. Yeah. Cause I look at what he died of. I don’t think it’s appropriate for me to talk in a public forum of what happened, but it sure looks to me like he died from the damage done to his body from the toxins coming out of this patients sort of looks to me like very unfortunate. Nonetheless, we’ve got a lot of great information in the textbook.

Dr. Cates: Okay, great. So tell everybody where they can find the textbook.

Dr. Pizzorno: Oh, so Amazon just put Pizzorno into Amazon and the consumer book, The Toxin Solution comes up and the textbook, comes up clinical environmental medicine and the good news is that it’s done very well as a textbook. In the first year over a thousand doctors bought a copy of the textbook, which for a textbook is actually, your textbook is really quite good. So good news is that tells me doctors are starting to pay attention.

Dr. Cates: Yeah, that’s fantastic. That’s fantastic. And tell everybody your website where they can find more about you,

Dr. Pizzorno: Drpizzorno.com and unfortunately I’m not very good at maintaining my website. So drpizzorno.com.

Dr. Cates: Alright. Or just pick up one of your, one of your many books, especially in these last one, The Toxin Solution. Okay. Thanks again for coming on. I really appreciate the interview.

Dr. Pizzorno: Great talking with you my friend.

Dr. Cates: I hope you enjoyed this interview today with Dr. Joseph Pizzorno and you can hop over to Amazon to find his books and also you can find the transcripts and more information on thespadr.com on the podcast page below his interview. You’ll find all that, the transcripts, the information there and while you’re there at the spa Dr Com I encourage you to join our community so you don’t miss of our upcoming shows and if you haven’t already found out your skin type, you can go to theskinquiz.com find out what messages your skin is trying to tell you about your health. Believe it or not, your skin is trying to talk to you and give you messages so you can find out what it’s trying to tell you, what your skin personality type is at theskinquiz.com and get real solutions for your health and your skin. Also invite you to join me on social media, on Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, Instagram, and Youtube. Join the conversation there and I’ll see you next time on The Spa Dr. Podcast