The Epidemic Of Toxicity In Our Food
Episode 149
Toxicity is a hot topic discussed at any given time. However, there are some aspects of it that are less talked about, for example identifying where it is originating from and what is the right testing for it. This week on Integrative Wellness Radio, Dr. Nicole navigates us through the types of toxicity found in our day-to-day food, where do they originate from and what type of adverse health effects on our gut and the overall body. The Doctor then explains further how we can better equip ourselves better against some of these toxins that are mixed in our food. Interested in working with IWG? Book a complimentary consult call to learn more using this link: https://bit.ly/IWRcall2022 Noteworthy Time Stamps: 02:04 Leveraging better testing 05:23 It is not your fault 10:03 There’s toxicity everywhere 19:35 Culprits behind gut issues 28:34 The gut-brain connection 43:10 Anti Precipitants leading to aluminum toxicity 52:33 We’re used to not getting answers
Topics: toxicity, food, health, testing, better, toxins, brain, role
Key takeaways from this episode
- ## The Epidemic of Toxicity in Our Food
- Understanding the pervasive presence of toxins in our food supply is the first step toward mitigating their effects.
- Toxins can originate from various sources, including agricultural practices, food processing, and environmental contamination.
- Exposure to foodborne toxins can lead to a range of adverse health effects, particularly impacting the gut microbiome and contributing to systemic inflammation.
- Effective testing methods are crucial for identifying specific toxins and their impact on individual health.
Pull quotes
Imagine if medicine actually looked at you as a whole, opposed to looking at you as a bunch of separate systems.
Nick and Dr. **Unknown:** Nicole to learn more about the top trends in integrative medicine, to learn about what the limitations are with testing, and what you can do to start your health journey.
There are really only one to two labs that exist that are testing for different types of chemical compounds outside of heavy metals.
Transcript
**Unknown:** I've been up all night, no sleep. Imagine if medicine actually looked at you as a whole, opposed to looking at you as a bunch of separate systems. Dive into Integrative Wellness Radio with Dr. Nick and Dr.
**Unknown:** Nicole to learn more about the top trends in integrative medicine, to learn about what the limitations are with testing, and what you can do to start your health journey. Sometimes I tend to lose myself when I'm out here on the- Hello, everyone. Welcome back. So last month we talked a lot about mold toxicity, but I felt that it was really appropriate to dive into the other aspects of toxicity because this is the type of toxicity that is less talked about, number one.
**Unknown:** It's also really hard to navigate and to get better testing to know if toxicity is part of our puzzle. There are really only one to two labs that exist that are testing for different types of chemical compounds outside of heavy metals. And what I mean by that is this is everything from pesticides, herbicides, benzenes, probably things that you've never heard of before. But today, as we start this month, I felt that it was really, uh, appropriate to talk a- about ...
**Unknown:** a lot about the different types of chemicals and toxicities that we're getting exposed to, uh, by a lot of the foods that we eat, but also how is this actually playing a really significant role in our gastrointestinal health and really our whole body health, because the gut affects so many different things. So as we uncover this information, um, this is gonna be information that you maybe have heard a little bit about, but nobody has been able to elaborate further or necessarily connect the dots of how this plays a role in your health and maybe some of the symptoms that you're actually dealing with. So overall, as we start off this month, today specifically, we're talking about heavy metal toxicity in combination with different types of chemical toxicities that can play a significant role in your health, but number two is play a very, very significant role in your gut. And then also, like, where are these things coming from, how are we getting exposed, and how can we better equip ourselves to be protected and also to navigate around this through the different foods that we're eating and things that we're buying.
**Unknown:** Really from day one of starting our practice, we have really thought differently about the body and really wanted to uncover how everything is super integrated. And we started to leverage better testing, um, I would say probably three years into our practice, primarily because we kept hitting these plateaus with our patients and we kept, um, knowing that there was something more going on that we couldn't figure out because we had, I would say, limited tools, but also limited diagnostic testing. So as we kept digging and digging, we really started to understand the bigger picture behind the body, and that's really, uh, some of the technologies that we use today was how we started to understand this bigger role of toxicity, because again, there's really not many labs out there that are testing for toxicity through the urine or the blood, so we have some specialized technologies in our office that allow us to see if this is part of the puzzle, and then we can obviously test further from there. So for myself, I work with a variety of different patients.
**Unknown:** I don't necessarily just work with toxicity. It is definitely one of my specialties, but I really focus on looking at the body as a whole and also really deciphering what is the foundation or what is the root behind your symptoms. Because you can have ten, twenty different symptoms, but chances are there's maybe one or two things that are going on behind the scenes, if you know it or you don't, that are the reason for those symptoms. So, uh, what's been really exciting over the past few weeks is we have launched our Institute for Integrative Wellness.
**Unknown:** So this is actually specifically for how we are helping other practitioners and health coach- coaches and nutritionists to understand this integrative approach because, you know, those of you that are here right now, you're here because you haven't found answers and we really want to evolve how healthcare is being done. Uh, so just a bit about myself, um, for, again, for those of you that are new here. Uh, I, uh, as I got into this industry, I primarily got into this industry 'cause I was really interested in it. I didn't necessarily get into this industry because I was super sick.
**Unknown:** Um, what was kind of interesting is when I got into this industry and I did my testing and I started to dig a bit deeper, I realized that I actually wasn't very healthy at all, and it was really my aha moment when I realized that the things that I dealt with on a day-to-day, a week-to-week, a month-to-month, symptomatically just became my normal. The fact that I couldn't sleep very well was my normal. The fact that I had brain fog consistently was my normal. The fact that my stomach hurt when I ate too much or I ate out or I ate fried food was my normal.
**Unknown:** There were a lot of things that, you know, were either subtle or they came and went, and I hear this over and over again with our patients, is that things become our normal, number one, and number two is that we're pretty much just ca- like, calling it the aging process. We're just thinking that this is what happens when you get old. So it's not, it's just you don't know what you don't know and you haven't had better testing just yet. So first and foremost is I want you to know it is not your fault.
**Unknown:** It is not your-Your fault that you haven't been able to decipher where your symptoms are coming from. It is not your fault that maybe you tried an elimination diet and it didn't help you. It's not your fault that you bought three hundred dollars’ worth of supplements and you still don't feel good. It's not your fault that you feel like you've tried and you failed, because it's impossible for you to know what your body needs because every single person is extremely different, and everybody needs a different health strategy or a health protocol.
**Unknown:** So really at the end of the day, it's not always about what you do, it's also about how you do it. Because I have found over the past few years that getting better is all about strategy. And especially when you get to this world of toxicity. You know, for those of you listening right now, you might know that you have toxicity.
**Unknown:** You may have already done a heavy metal test, a hair test, a urine test. You maybe have been told you have a mercury toxicity. And you've done different methods. Maybe you've done chelation.
**Unknown:** By the way, if you've done chelation, please listen to my podcast about chelation. It is on our website. It's also on iTunes under Integrative, uh, Wellness Radio. But with that being said, is that you may have already tried things and either made yourself super, super sick or didn't get anywhere at all.
**Unknown:** And it's really because you have to be so strategic when you are trying to detox from toxicity. So with that, it's really, really important to understand that everything is talking to each other all the time. Everything is integrated. So when we really look at medicine, medicine has segregated every organ system.
**Unknown:** It says the heart, you go to a cardiologist. The heart is not communicating with the brain, the brain is not communicating with the gut. So we have a gastroenter-enterologist, we have a cardiologist, we have a neurologist, we have an endocrinologist. We have a variety of different specialists that nobody necessarily communicates with each other.
**Unknown:** And this like brings me to my second point of this is ignoring basic physiology that every single one of us have been taught in medical school, chiropractic school, naturopathic school, osteopathic. Whatever avenue of medicine that you've gone through, we've all learned physiology. And then we almost like forget what we learned because then we're told that everything works as a separate, uh, system or a separate entity. And really at the end of the day, if somebody is struggling with irritable bowel syndrome, but also is struggling with depression, and maybe that irritable bowel syndrome is due to some of the toxicity that we're gonna talk about tonight, then we potentially have a gut issue that is causing a reduction in serotonin, because ninety to ninety-five percent of your serotonin is made in your gut.
**Unknown:** So now you have a lack of serotonin because you have some gut issues, and then nobody knows where your gut issues are coming from because they haven't necessarily used any type of testing, especially testing for toxicity. But then you're also being treated separately by a psychiatrist for your depression. And we're kind of completely ignoring the fact that these two systems are very intertwined, and your gut issue easily can be compromising your feel-good hormone, serotonin, and causing you to feel depressed. I'm not gonna sit here and say that that's the case for every patient, but we cannot overlook that process, and we cannot overlook that connection.
**Unknown:** So we keep running into roadblocks with ourselves, with our doctors, with our symptoms, because we keep thinking that everything is functioning independently, and this is what prevents us from actually ever finding the root cause. And then on top of it, when we finally do get that diagnosis, we're almost like, "Thank God," like, "Somebody figured it out," even though that diagnosis might be just a description of your symptoms, and it might actually not be your root cause. Then we usually go into the, "Okay, what pill is going to cure or fix that diagnosis?" When really at the end of the day, that's not how it works. That's not how the body works.
**Unknown:** So when it comes to toxicity, there's toxicity everywhere. And I'm not saying this to overwhelm you guys. I will tell you personally, I went through the place of being so overwhelmed and almost angry because I was like, "Oh, my gosh," like, "how do you even navigate? This is so overwhelming." There is toxicity everywhere.
**Unknown:** I will tell you this, is that I used to think about the body a lot differently. I used to think about the body as, "Oh, my gosh, infections are taking over. Kill, kill, kill, kill, kill. Oh, my gosh, toxicity is taking over.
**Unknown:** Detox, detox, detox." But what I realized is that if you really wanna see success, and you really want to create, uh, a more resilient body, you need to fix the pathways that are compromising the body's ability to get the bad stuff out. So we have been exposed to bacterias, and parasites, and viruses, and toxins for many, many, many, many years. But we're sicker than ever now. And we have to think about why are we so reactive.
**Unknown:** Why are we so reactive to these toxins and chemicals, et cetera? And part of the reason is because the pathways that are equipped to get the bad stuff out are not working like they used to. I will give you the most simple analogy. If you have a vacuum, and you use that vacuum every dayThe filter is gonna get increasingly more full, and then it's gonna get to the point that the filter is so full that the vacuum is actually not working effectively anymore.
**Unknown:** The reason why this happens is because the filter is at max capacity. Our filters in our body include our liver, gut, kidneys, and lymphatic system. So if those systems are now at max capacity because your body has been so bombarded for years upon years, then you're not gonna be able to get rid of the bad stuff anymore, and now you're going to be a Petri dish of toxins, insecticides, pesticides, bacteria, and your immune system is gonna become extremely, extremely reactive. I hate to say it this way, guys, but if you have food allergies, you're already there.
**Unknown:** Your immune system is already reactive, and there is a reason why it's reactive, and you need better testing to figure that out. We have to definitely try to be somewhat proactive with the things that we put in our house and the types of, you know, bedding that we sleep on. We definitely need to be aware, but we also need to know that you can have the most green house in the world, but if you have a green house for the past three years, but you lived in toxicity for all the years prior to that, it doesn't really matter. You still need to get the bad stuff out.
**Unknown:** So when it comes to where the heck are we being exposed, this is, like, a fraction of the list. We're getting exposed to toxins from food, which is part of the topic we're talking about tonight. There are things coming from your lawn. Yeah, I'm not sitting here saying you roll around on your lawn, but if you get people to come onto your property and spray for mosquitoes, and you get your house sprayed for ants, and you get your la-- your, uh, lawn done, that is pesticides, herbicides, insecticides, fungicides, um, fertilizers, like, tons and tons and tons of stuff that you're being exposed to.
**Unknown:** Your pets are bringing that into your house. You're snuggling with your pets. Your kids are playing on that lawn. These are not chemicals that are, like, no big deal.
**Unknown:** These are extremely toxic chemicals. Your water that you drink, I don't care if you drink all the bottled water in the world, it's toxic. The tap water is worse, so bottled is better, but you need a water purification system. Most of the personal products, best part, most of the baby products that are being advertised, the baby oils and the, the diaper rash creams, when you actually look at the chemicals and you start researching them, half of them are carcinogenic, meaning they cause cancer.
**Unknown:** So you need to understand that you need to be your own advocate because no one's gonna tell you this, and no, it doesn't say it on the bottle. Half of your furniture is off-gassing formaldehyde. Uh, buildings are so interesting. You want a brand-new building, you get the off-gassing from the spray insulation, from the carpets.
**Unknown:** Then you get the asbestos and the lead paint in the old buildings. So, you know, it's give and take. Um, dental fillings, breast implants, we-- There are also a variety of other chemicals on cosmetic surgeries, fillers, Botox, et cetera. So honestly, there are so many avenues, but the point of what I want to bring to your attention today is more so some of the things that are playing a very significant role in our digestive system, that are playing a role in the epidemic of gut issues, celiac disease to be included, in addition to, um, a variety of different people that are suffering with food allergies and massive deficiencies.
**Unknown:** So one of my patients, um, he actually came to me a long time ago, and timing was just not good. He had a lot of stuff going on. He's working in the city. Um, he was really, really busy.
**Unknown:** So, um, I-- We did a bunch of testing on him, and he kinda, like, took some of the recommendations. Um, he didn't do my recommended, uh, plan for him. He was like, "You know, let me just focus on the supplements and the dietary changes." He's like, " 'cause that's all I can do from a time perspective." And I said, "You're gonna hit a plateau. Don't be disappointed when you do." So he hit a plateau.
**Unknown:** Um, he came back almost a year later, and he's like, "Ugh, you know, um, I ended up seeing somebody in the city because I'm convinced I have SIBO. I have all the symptoms." SIBO is small intestinal bacterial overgrowth, by the way. Um, has a lot to do with, like, a lot of bloating, pain at the bottom of the sternum, a lot of intolerance to, like, garlic and onion, reflux, indigestion, heartburn. There's a variety of symptoms that go along, but honestly, when you read the symptoms, it's very relatable because so many people feel so bloated after most things that they eat.
**Unknown:** So he was convinced that SIBO was the big thing going on and that, you know, he was back, and he wanted to, like, do a more comprehensive plan to address his SIBO. So it was interesting because one of the first, uh, tests that I did on him, uh, was our bioresonance technology, and as I was using that, I kept seeing, um, I kept looking at aspects of his gastrointestinal system and the aspects of his gastrointestinal system, there were no infections. Like, he didn't have bacteria. He didn't have parasites.
**Unknown:** He didn't have viruses. He didn't have fungus. He didn't have candida. He didn't have any of those things.
**Unknown:** So I was like, "Well, there's clearly something going on. This guy has a ton of symptoms." So as I was digging, digging, digging, I kept seeing a lot of toxicity come up. So this is another technology we have called the BIOScan. So the BIOScan is also a meridian-based technology.
**Unknown:** So I ran his large intestine meridian, and as I was running the large intestine meridian, I was challenging a variety of different types of toxins that I originally saw on the other testing that I did. And just for a reference, the things that you see in black are severe chronic.And this is everything from asbestos to fiberglass, to fiberglass to silicone. And this is not a guy who worked in, like, construction. This is just a, a regular guy.
**Unknown:** Um, MSG, Agent Orange. So there was no issues from a bacterial standpoint, which in his mind he was convinced that that's what it was, so he was going out and buying supplements to kill bacteria and to kill H. pylori, and he was taking all these different things when that was not his problem. His problem was massive toxicity.
**Unknown:** So this is actually in addition, the other aspects too, is, um, these were other types of pesticides and herbicides that when we actually researched them, a lot of these were being used on grains. So he was consuming a lot of rice bowls and a lot of sushi at the time. So when it comes to pesticides and herbicides, they are using, from the last report that was released a few years ago, over two hundred and sixty-two different chemicals on our produce. So sorry guys, when you go to that, oh, the Dirty Dozen, the Clean Fifteen, you know, let me just focus on the priorities.
**Unknown:** It's not how it works. The soil is toxic, and also the soil is completely devoid of nutrients. The main reason we eat vegetables is to get nutrients. So if you're completely-- if you're eating, uh, half conventional, half organic, you're not really doing yourself much good because you're getting food completely devoid of nutrients, and you're still getting the exposure to the pesticides regardless if you peel the skin off, 'cause it is in the soil that it grows in.
**Unknown:** So some of the big things that we're gonna bust through, um, tonight is in relation to the different chemicals that are in the food that are a big, big culprit behind all these different gut conditions like celiac, Crohn's, ulcerative colitis, and even irritable bowel. The other thing is how this is connecting to your brain, because how many of you are tired, you're foggy, your memory is not good, you're not sleeping properly? And you know, I know a lot of people are getting into their forties, fifties, and they're like actually scared with how bad their memory is. Like, this is, this is a huge, huge problem.
**Unknown:** And it is not happening because you're old. It's not happening for no good reason. It's happening because we are all saturated with toxicity. The other big thing is people think it's hard to get exposed to these chemicals.
**Unknown:** They're like, "How in the world would I ever get exposed to this?" You're getting exposed every single day. And if you think you've had good testing, you have not because one of the things that I'm gonna talk about is testing for heavy metals because there are a lot of issues for testing for heavy metals, um, with the accuracy and then let alone what is actually available for pesticides and herbicides and asbestos. There are not many tests out there that will give us that information. Um, another thing too is people say to me all the time, they're like, "Why would these chemicals, like, be on the market if they, um, if they weren't safe?
**Unknown:** Like, don't they have to be safe?" No. Um, eating organic is not important. I know so many people ha-- just kinda give themselves that flexibility of being like, you know, "Does it really matter?" And it does. And then the other big thing is probiotics are just gonna fix all of our problems.
**Unknown:** So we're gonna talk more about that as well. So what's interesting about the, um, information in this slide is that this is actually an article, and I referenced it to the left. This is an article from NCBI. This is literally a well-known site for peer-reviewed, evidence-based research.
**Unknown:** So, like, this is not some like woo woo blog or somebody's private case study. Like, this was literally pulled from an extremely reputable site, from reputable research, from a reputable journal of toxicology. So they have pretty much guaranteed that glyphosate, which is first of all the chemical that is in Roundup, so you might be getting exposed to this from the Roundup that you use on your property for your weeds, but glyphosate is also on ninety percent of the produce in the U.S., traces of it on organic produce. But the thing is, is that if you say, "Screw it, if it's on, you know, if it's on the organic stuff, why am I gonna spend the extra money?" That's because if you get the conventional, you get the glyphosate plus two hundred and sixty-two other chemicals.
**Unknown:** So do the organic. But what they have proven is that in the specimens that they tested, it was specifically fish that they did this study on, that the glyphosate was actually destroying the villi of the gut, causing an au-autoimmune reaction which looked identical to celiac disease. In addition, it was also compromising the cytochrome P450 pathways. So let's keep this super simple, guys.
**Unknown:** P-- These, uh, the P450 pathways are in association with your liver detoxification. So a great example that I give people about liver detoxification is that everybody's liver detox is a bit different, but if you ever hear of those people that are like, "Oh my gosh, I used to be able to have five beers, and I could wake up the next day and go to work. Now I have like a half of a beer, and I feel like crap for three days." So again, that's not aging. That's because your liver is completely compromised.And it's not compromised just because of alcohol.
**Unknown:** It's compromised because of things like this, glyphosate poisoning your P four fifty pathways, which is not allowing you to now detox properly. And then in addition, it's also compromising your ability to activate D three. So how many of you guys are taking vitamin D, and every time you go get your levels tested, they don't change, or they do change, so you come off of your vitamin D three, and then you go back, and they're like, "Oh, it's bottomed out again." And you're like, "What the heck? Do I have to be on this forever?" And it's not that.
**Unknown:** It's the fact that you can't absorb it because these pathways are compromised. Also, you're gonna have a lot of issues with vitamin A. Vitamin A is huge for skin. So my ladies out there that are pumping themselves full of collagen and fillers because you want your skin to be beautiful, you need to start with your liver because if your liver sucks, you're gonna have a very expensive route of cosmetic surgeries ahead of you.
**Unknown:** Um, the other big thing is it's gonna mess up your bile acid production. So pretty much this-- these are the people that end up with gallbladder disease with their gallbladders removed. If you cannot produce bile acids and you cannot break down fats, you get stones, and then you need your gallbladder removed. Um, sulfates, by the way, when you get those, um, farts that smell like rotten eggs, that's because you're not detoxing sulfur and sulfates out of your, out of your gut.
**Unknown:** So that is all a sign that your gut is toxic. The other big thing too is the glyphosate is also, um, being connected to the celiac, but it's being connected to a lot of issues with birth defects and infertility, miscarriages, et cetera. So, you know, one of the big reasons they're using glyphosate is because this is one of the ways that they're killing, um, obviously all of the weeds around. They're also trying to protect their crops for higher yield against the different pests, but they're also using this in something called crop desiccation, which I didn't, um, know a lot about until recently.
**Unknown:** But crop desiccation is actually when they spray. So, like, if they, uh, grow a bunch of wheat, and then they harvest it, then they spray the crap out of that, um, area in order to fully kill off the crop, and they do this in order to, um, kind of like have a clean slate so that when they regrow, and especially if they're growing something else, like they usually will intertwine oats and, uh, wheat. Just so you know, that's why there is, like, a lot of, uh, oatmeals that say gluten-free. And if-- oats are supposed to be gluten-free, but if they're grown in the same field as gluten, that's why, um, they can sometimes be contaminated.
**Unknown:** But the point is, is that they kind of kill off the old crop in order to dry everything up so that when they plant, they, um, can pretty much make sure that they have a more progressed ripening process, so they get higher yields. So there's a strategy behind it, but they're not taking into consideration the fact that they're poisoning our soils, which is then in turn poisoning us and really all of wildlife in general. So the other big thing about this is that this specific compound, glyphosate... Actually, before I go there, one thing that I didn't say is the glyphosate is a weed killer that they're using, but the glyphosate is the primary, um, compound that's u- being used with GMOs.
**Unknown:** So genetically modified organisms, genetically modified foods, glyphosate is the primary, uh, compound that is being used in the growing of genetically modified foods. So if you are eating GMO foods, you are a hundred percent being exposed to glyphosate. If you don't know what a GMO food is, you're definitely being exposed to, to glyphosate. So the interesting thing about this is glyphosate loves aluminum.
**Unknown:** Aluminum is in all of your antiperspirants that you've been applying to your armpits every day for years upon years upon years. And for those of you listening that are like, "I gave that up five years ago," how many years did you use it for? I'm sure you used it for ten, fifteen, twenty, maybe even longer. So aluminum and glyphosate, um, they actually, uh, end up working synergistically in the body, not in a positive way, but they completely compromise our gut, um, microbiome, which I'm gonna talk a bit ab- about.
**Unknown:** But the other thing too is we hear a lot about this concept of the gut-brain connection. So if we have this conglomeration of aluminum and glyphosate together, we actually will compromise those cytochrome P four fifty pathways that we talked about, which play a very significant role in our melatonin production. So the other component to melatonin is the pineal gland of the brain. So they have actually found that aluminum glyphosate not only compromise the liver's role in melatonin production, but it also compromises the brain's role in melatonin production.
**Unknown:** So you pretty much have the two avenues that are gonna help you produce melatonin completely compromised. And this is not necessarily just about your sleep. This is also very, very much about your brain's ability to detox. So if your brain cannot detox properly, you are at an extreme risk for brain fog, which then turns into short-term memory loss, which turns into long-term memory loss, which turns into dementia, which turns into Alzheimer's.And I think that a lot of us right now, especially if we have loved ones or friends that have gone through that, we are terrified that that is something that can happen to us.
**Unknown:** So we need to be aware that some of the compounds that we potentially are being exposed to are playing a very significant role in the toxicity of our brain, which is compromising our melatonin production. So a couple of takeaways for this is that, number one, melatonin helps you sleep, but melatonin detoxes your brain. So if you don't have proper melatonin, you might have compromised sleep, but you also potentially have the brain fog, the memory loss, uh, dizziness, lightheadedness, uh, and then again, you might even be moving into dementia, forgetting where you parked, things like that. The other thing too is if you've taken melatonin in the past, and it either kept you awake or it gave you really, really wacky dreams, your brain is toxic, specifically your pineal gland, because melatonin is a detoxer of the brain.
**Unknown:** So if you take it, and it makes you feel weird, gives you weird dreams, keeps you awake, then what that started to do was to detox the crap out of your brain, and it's making you feel real weird. So if you want more information about that, listen to our podcast on melatonin detox. We literally just released it last week. So these are just really, really important things to take away because this is not just about your gut.
**Unknown:** This is also in turn going to affect your neurological system tremendously. So overall, there are very strategic ways that you can improve how the brain detoxes, but it's not just about, like, loading your body up with melatonin because you have to make sure that your detox pathways work. You need to make sure that the liver is working, the kidneys are working. You need to be extremely strategic, so you don't make yourself sick.
**Unknown:** So the other thing too that I wanted to mention here is that when we're talking about the glyphosate, it actually will bind to a ton of trace minerals. So this is, like, another layer to the brain conversation because when you have toxicity, that's gonna affect the brain, and the brain is going to be, you know, the primary organ that's going to produce a lot of your feel-good hormones, and then your serotonin, which makes you feel happy and makes you experience joy in your life, and then GABA, which keeps you calm and prevents anxiety. All of these receptor sites are in the brain. But the thing is about all of those pathways, those pathways run on minerals.
**Unknown:** So zinc is a big one. Magnesium is a big one. And then all of your B vitamins run those pathways. So if you are eating a diet that is full of glyphosate, you're not getting pretty much any minerals from your diet, number one.
**Unknown:** Number two is the glyphosate, once it's inside of you, it actually pulls and steals all of your minerals. So now you're completely depleted of all of the cofactors that allow you to feel good, feel happy, feel joy. And then dopamine also is the primary hormone that prevents, like, addictive behaviors, and that's everything from gambling to alcohol to cigarettes, et cetera. So people that are really bottomed out in dopamine have big problems with addiction.
**Unknown:** Uh, another podcast that we did is about addiction dopan-dopamine connection. So overall, it's very important to understand this is twofold. This is partly about mineral deficiencies. This is also partly about toxicity.
**Unknown:** So when it comes to, you know, the foods that we're eating, there is a huge portion of the food that we're eating that has glyphosate exposure, um, or toxicity, I should say. So we really, really need to try to work with our local farms to source organic food as best as we can. Um, I always find it fascinating because I am fortunate right now to, um-- it's summer in New Jersey, and I live across the street from a farmers market. And when I go to the farmers market, I am always so fascinated on how different the produce looks from the grocery store.
**Unknown:** Like, I'll give you the celery as an example. The celery was super small, super thin, dark, dark green, and when I tasted it, it was crazy potent in flavor. And so the following week, I went back, and I was like, "Wow." I was like, "I can't believe how, um, how intense the celery is." And they're like, "Yeah, it's because it's not pumped full of hydration." And I was like, "Excuse me?" So they pretty much said that to keep celery hydrated because it usually travels, is they actually will inject it with fluid, and that's why celery is, like, plump, watery, and a light green color. So it's really, really interesting how manipulated most of our produce is.
**Unknown:** And, uh, when I lived in California, we actually had a, um, peach tree in our yard. It wasn't because we planted it. It was just there. And, uh, I remember grabbing a few peaches off the tree and bringing them in the house.
**Unknown:** One day, they were moldy. So it really made me think, like, what are they doing to the produce to allow it to come from Mexico and Ecuador and all these places? So I think that a lot of our food is really manipulated. I'm not gonna say that, you know, everything has glyphosate, but there is definitely a lot of preservatives as well as pesticides and herbicides that are being used on a regular basis, and we need to start sourcing from farmers if we have that accessibility.
**Unknown:** So the big one is about testing. So what the heck testing is actually available, and is there limitations with testing? So when it comes to the testing for heavy metals specifically, so heavy metals is your mercury, your aluminum, lead, cadmium.The most well-known test is going to be a urinary challenge test and then a hair analysis. So hair analysis I used to do for many years and I stopped doing it.
**Unknown:** And it was primarily because a hair test is an excretory test. So what that means is that if you have been recently exposed to something and your body is trying to excrete it, then I might see it come up in the hair. But if you were exposed to lead because your childhood home until you were 10 years old had lead paint, then if you're 50, you're not excreting that lead anymore. That's burrowed in your body.
**Unknown:** So I started to just get very frustrated with not being able to give my patients clear answers. And I don't do the urinary challenge test primarily because that requires me giving my patient an agent that's going to help them detox through their urine, aka push a bunch of toxins through their kidneys. And then I have to hope that their kidneys don't get damaged. And I know this because I did this on myself and I choose not to do that with my patients because I don't think it's safe.
**Unknown:** And I don't think that it is in the best interest because most heavy metals actually live in the liver and the gut. So if we're trying to work through the kidneys, we're trying to only eliminate out blood-based toxins. Most of your toxins don't live in your blood because if it lived in your blood, you'd be really, really, really, really sick. Most of them live in your fat tissue.
**Unknown:** They live in your connective tissue and they live in your liver and your gut. So one of the technologies that we use now is called the Oligoscan. This was introduced to us through Dr. Klinghardt, who is a German physician.
**Unknown:** We have actually introduced a lot of different therapies that use a lot of quantum medicine and quantum physics because I find that chemistry-based tests like blood work, they're great, but they're a snapshot in time. They don't always give you the full picture. So when we use our blood work, we use it as one piece of the puzzle. So our Oligoscan actually has the ability to measure for all different types of heavy metals, and it also measures for mineral deficiencies as well.
**Unknown:** And this is measuring intracellular, what's happening inside of your cells. Because when you go get blood work and they say your zinc is fine, your zinc can be floating around in your blood, but if it's not actually in your cells, it's not benefiting you. Same thing, your B12 is through the roof. If it's in your blood, you're not absorbing it.
**Unknown:** So you have to understand what is happening intracellularly. It's not about what's floating around in your blood. So the one test that does exist is Great Plains Labs. They have a, I think it's called GPL Tox.
**Unknown:** Great Plains Labs is the name of the lab though. But this is actually measuring for 172 environmental pollutants and 18 metabolites of the toxins. So this is definitely something that is of extreme value if you are looking to understand if you have benzene toxicity or asbestos toxicity or other types of chemical toxicities. But one of the things or two of the different avenues that we use in our office outside of the Oligoscan is we use our bioresonance, which is a DNA-based technology.
**Unknown:** And then we also use the Bioscan SRT, which has literally thousands of different chemicals programmed into it that we have the ability to challenge against the body to see if they are actually causing stress on the system. So there's a lot of ways that you can go about it. We just choose to use our specific technologies because we feel like they give us the most accurate information. So we had a patient that had ulcerative colitis.
**Unknown:** They were actually being treated conventionally for a really long time through like immunosuppressants and high dose anti-inflammatories. And then they started to feel like I want to do something more because I'm not getting anywhere and I'm young and I want to actually get better. And then this person went to a functional medicine practitioner and they found that fungus was part of the puzzle and they started treating for Candida. And this person went on an extremely, extremely hardcore diet, no sugar, like no carrots because it had sugar.
**Unknown:** So like massive elimination diet, like a huge shift from their current lifestyle. And then also started taking a variety of different supplements. So the patient hit a massive plateau and almost like kind of went off the deep end because they were on such a strict elimination diet for so long. They were just so unbelievably frustrated.
**Unknown:** So once they got to our office, we started digging a bit deeper and we started to really uncover what the heck is going on in here that's being missed. And the primary thing that actually was going on was mercury saturation of the gut. And when we were really like asking questions and digging deeper in the history, what we found out was that he had a variety of fillings in his teeth when he was really, really young. And then one of them actually like cracked and fell out.
**Unknown:** And so when he went to the dentist, the dentist was like, oh, these are bad anyway. Let me just get these all out and we'll put the white ones in. So first of all, if it cracked and fell out, how long was that cracked before it fell out? So if a silver filling is cracked, it's leaching mercury vapor that's absorbing into your tissues.
**Unknown:** So then he had that situation, goes in and gets, I think it was four or five other fillings swapped, no protection for the patient, no protection for the dentist, and then put the white fillings in and said, you're all good to go.So this whole process is what created a massive leach of mercury that got into the gastrointestinal system, and this was really the start of an IBS that turned into an ulcerative colitis, uh, down the line. So we actually used some really specific strategies to help him detox from the mercury, which actually then completely resolved the candida. Um, by the way, for those of you that are fam-familiar with candida, candida is something that skyrockets when you have gut toxicity. It is not something that just, you know, happens for no reason, or it's because you, you know, you ate a bunch of sugar.
**Unknown:** How many people eat a bunch of sugar that don't have candida? So candida is actually a protective mechanism that your gut kicks in to protect you from the saturation of toxicity in your gut. So don't torture yourself and go on a candida diet. Figure out if there's more to the story.
**Unknown:** So another big one is outside of this conversation about the antiperspirant, and that being one of the ways that we get exposed to aluminum. Um, you get exposed to aluminum through aluminum cans. Um, you get exposed to aluminum by eating pickles, by the way. There's aluminum in most of our conventional pickles that are in the grocery store.
**Unknown:** So these chemicals are all around you. They are not necessarily, um, you know, really, really uncommon. So, uh, one of the big ones, uh, that I think is kind of interesting is that if you-- You've probably seen it, but there's a lot of different planes that are spraying. A lot of people think it's just like a normal plane that's, like, shooting off a bunch of, like, jet fuel.
**Unknown:** But, um, this is actually called geoengineering. This is not my opinion. This is not conspiracy. Like, literally there-- it's a government, um, protocol that they're doing.
**Unknown:** Um, the geoengineering is, uh, to try to be proactive in stopping, um, global warming. Uh, so what's interesting is the s- the major pa- uh, nanoparticles that are being, uh, emitted into the air is everything from aluminum to barium, strontium, plastics. There is a variety of things. But the thing you have to understand about this is all of this comes down, it coats our oceans, and it's metal.
**Unknown:** So if it's coating our oceans, what's happening is that sunlight is coming down, it's reflecting back up, the algae is not getting nourished, the algae is dying, the reef is dying, and this is what's killing off most of the wildlife in the ocean. So this is a huge problem that a lot of people need to be aware of. And, you know, don't take my word for it. You know, watch the, the documentary on it.
**Unknown:** Um, look at this video. It's, it's pretty crazy. But once it's on your radar, you'll notice it's a sunny day out, there's tons of it going on. So this is definitely something that is part of our exposures.
**Unknown:** Yeah. So there is a, um, site. It's called scorecard.org. Check it out.
**Unknown:** Um, you go to scorecard.org, you plug in your zip code. So some of you, if you're brand new to the site, then you don't have kind of a before and after. But I came across scorecard.org probably eight years ago. And when I plugged in the zip code of where I live in New Jersey, uh, the air quality was actually pretty good.
**Unknown:** Our, uh, water quality, not so good. So, uh, more recently, when I've looked on scorecard.org, our air quality is actually terrible. And when I go, I speak all over the country, um, to teach other physicians how to do integrative medicine, and when I do that, I always, um, ask them, "What's your zip code?" And I pull up scorecard.org. And what I've realized is over the past two years, every single location, Midwest, West Coast, um, South, et cetera, everywhere, the air quality is terrible.
**Unknown:** So this geoengineering is definitely causing some significant issues, um, with causing a lot more air pollution. So scorecard.org is really fascinating because it tells you about the pollution in your air, it tells you about the pollution in the water. It also tells you about the, uh, local, like, either factories, power plants, or companies that are contributing to the pollution, which is very, very fascinating because sometimes you're like, "Oh, my gosh, that's a couple blocks from where I live." So, um, so it's definitely worth checking out. Um, another thing too is fifteen thousand new chemical patents, um, new chemicals patent each day, and only one is tested per month.
**Unknown:** So there are tons and tons of chemicals that are being put onto the market, being put into our furniture, building materials, clothes, that are not being tested properly and that's coming out, you know, years down the or, or years, uh, ahead that... Think about Teflon, guys, like the non-stick cookware. Now everyone's talking about it now being like, "Ooh, that was bad. There's aluminum in that.
**Unknown:** There's cancer-causing properties in that." But it was like the best thing ever for years upon years upon years. So it's really, really important for us to understand these chemicals. Um, and scorecard.org is a fantastic resource. But in addition to that, if you're trying to understand more about what's happening in your house, like what are the products that you're using on your body, what are the products that are in your kitchen, you should definitely look at, uh, Think Dirty, which is an app.
**Unknown:** Uh, Think Dirty is something you can download onto your phone, and it can evaluate a lot of the products that you're using, everything from your makeup, shampoos, conditioners, uh, body wash, et cetera, to see if you are actually being exposed to a variety of different chemicals. So when I was mentioning before about eating organic, it's definitely important to eat organic, um, despite even if there is some pesticidesBecause what's happening is that when you're eating conventional, not only are we dealing with, um, the pesticides, the two hundred and sixty-two pesticides, but we're also dealing with genetically modified. So if your produce, the little sticker on your produce starts with a four, your produce is genetically modified. Also, too, if your zucchini is the size of your forearm, it's probably genetically modified, AKA the seed was made in a lab.
**Unknown:** If your, you know, if your tomato is as big as your head, it's probably genetically modified. Produce is not supposed to get that big. So we need to start thinking, like, bigger is not always better when it comes to our food because a lot of these things are being genetically manipulated. So when it comes to these genetically modified foods, the one that I really wanna mention is that there are certain GMOs that their metabolism has been changed by altering the genetics.
**Unknown:** So these are crops that their genetics have been altered to make them either grow bigger, grow faster, or to be pest-resistant. So that means if the bug bites that crop and eats it, it dies. What the heck is that doing to us? Like, we have to really think about that.
**Unknown:** Like, how is this changing our genetics? How is this compromising our bodies? I see it every day in the type of testing that I do. Like, people's DNA is damaged.
**Unknown:** Yes, DNA can be damaged. It's really, really important for us to start thinking about what are these chemicals and what the heck are we putting in our bodies. So another thing here is, um, the probiotic conversation. So one thing I didn't mention so far is that the specific glyphosate chemical, it actually causes, um, a massive, massive, massive imbalance in our microbiome, AKA good bacteria versus bad bacteria in our gut.
**Unknown:** So, um, what they have found is a lot of the bad bacteria, pathogenic, meaning it causes problems, like salmonella. There's all different strains of salmonella. By the way, uh, salmonella enterica typhi, that is actually typhoid fever, which a lot of people think doesn't exist. It exists, trust me.
**Unknown:** Um, Clostridium perfringens, uh, Clostridium botulinum, also known as BOTOX, by the way. Um, Clostridium botulinum comes from canned food and causes paralysis. So when you get BOTOX in your face, it, uh, paralyzes your muscles. So anyway, the, the point of me telling you this is that what they have found in people that have massive glyphosate toxicity of their gut is they have astronomical amounts of salmonella and Clostridium sha-- uh, strains.
**Unknown:** Clostridium, that's also the family of C. diff, if anybody ever heard of that. C. diff is the bacteria that gives you chronic diarrhea that can kill you.
**Unknown:** So if you have this overabundance of the bad, and then you also have the, um, a drop in the good bacteria, like the bacillus and the bifido and the lactobacillus, you're going to have this seesaw of too much bad, not enough good, and you could take all the probiotics in the world. But your probiotics will not absorb and actually improve your gut because the glyphosate is gonna constantly push it out. So we really need to start thinking more proactively about how we're taking care of our guts. But if you have toxicity in your gut, and the likelihood that you have that is very, very high, then your probiotics are just causing you to have really expensive poop.
**Unknown:** So if you haven't figured it out yet, I'm here to tell you that you don't know what you don't know. It's impossible for you to know these things unless you live and breathe it like myself. But also in addition to that is it's impossible for you to know about the things you're being exposed to and how that can actually play a role in the symptoms that you're having. You know, you go with a stomach issue, and you're like, "Oh, you have irritable bowel.
**Unknown:** Yep, we figured it out. Great. Fantastic. Crushed it." And it's just like, well, why?
**Unknown:** But a, a lot of us aren't even asking why because that's our normal now. That's like, "Oh, you have irritable bowel." "Oh, I have irritable bowel too." And we're just used to not necessarily ever getting answers about these things that we have going on, and we need to really stop accepting these as our new normal. And we also need to stop blaming it on aging and blaming it on bad genes. You know, it's just so many people are just saying, "Well, you know, gut issues run in my family." Okay, you might have a predisposition, but that doesn't mean that you're gonna develop that condition unless there's other factors that are going to catapult that condition.
**Unknown:** So, you know, overall too is things don't always look like the textbook. You know, for me, my gut issues, I didn't even know I had gut issues because they came and went. Oh, if I ate too much, my stomach bothered me. Oh, I got bloated when I ate certain things.
**Unknown:** Like, oh, I didn't do well with too much pizza. You know, but pizza's bad. Everybody does bad with pizza. So I really just, like, didn't know that my gut was compromised.
**Unknown:** And when I finally did my own testing, I had massive mercury toxicity that didn't change until I started doing a mercury gut protocol because it was all in my gut, and I ended up having a lot of different pesticide, herbicide issues as well in, uh, living amongst parasites because I ate tons of sushi, and I didn't know any better about farmed fish versus wild fish, et cetera. So trust me, I can relate to not knowing what was going on, and I can relate to getting your testing back and being like, "Oh, man, like, I had no idea that I was this messed up." But I promise you, it is all fixable without a doubtSo overall, like some of you here today like have had some testing, you definitely suspect toxicity, or you've had a hair analysis tell you that you've had toxicity in the past, and maybe you're here because like you're like, "Well, what do I do because I've tried things and they haven't worked?" So been there, done that with my own personal journey. And functional medicine is fantastic because functional medicine gives you better testing to get better information and really find the root cause. I have personally moved from functional medicine to integrative medicine, and I've done that because I really found that functional medicine had a little bit more limitations when it came to the toolbox.
**Unknown:** The toolbox was very diet and supplement oriented. And I hit plateaus with that journey of doing diet and supplements, many of my patients hit plateaus, and I, I knew that I needed to expand. I knew I needed to learn more. I knew that I needed to offer more alternatives to the healing process.
**Unknown:** And the first thing that we actually incorporated in our office was detox therapies. We brought in some therapies for lymphatic drainage, we brought in infrared saunas, we brought in detoxification foot baths. And we brought these things in because we realized how complicated detoxing is that, you know, if you're really taking supplements, a lot of that is only working through your liver and gut. But what about your kidneys?
**Unknown:** What about your brain? What about your lymph nodes? Like what about all the other pathways? So we knew that we needed to provide more.
**Unknown:** So any recommendations that we make moving forward, if it is about your diet, if it's about supplements, if it's about detox therapies, any other types of therapies, it is all tested against your DNA, so it is literally as specific as it comes. You really can't get any more specific than that. We are integrative practitioners. We are going to recommend an integrative program for you.
**Unknown:** We are going to literally be talking to you about lifestyle, neurological detoxification. We're gonna talk to you about all those things. If that's not something that necessarily is what you're looking for, our integrative assessment is a great option just to do more diet and supplement based, um, alternative. But our programs with the doctors here at Integrative Wellness Group are all about being integrative and really being able to tackle the reason why you're having symptoms.
**Unknown:** And even of note of that, um, I felt really compelled to also put this in here too. Um, I was actually at a conference recently, and it was just really awesome, um, statement that one of the, uh, speakers said. And, you know, when we have a video game, um, depending on your age, you know, I never personally played video games, but I get the concept is, you know, you don't play level one and be like, "Oh, I'm bored. I wanna move to level twenty-seven." You actually have to master and complete every single level before you're going to get where you wanna be or be able to get to that level twenty-seven.
**Unknown:** Um, for those of you that are chronically ill, and for those of you that are, you know, been suffering for years upon years upon years, you're not going from chronically ill to cured within two weeks. So I loved this quote. This was also inspired by a friend of mine. Um, "When people tell you to quit or just not to start, it's because you have ran to the end of their skill set." And I thought this was really fascinating because when it comes to our health, there's a lot of naysayers.
**Unknown:** There's a lot of people that tell us, you know, like, "Why would you go that route?" You know, "That's not commonly ac-accepted. That can't be real. That's hocus pocus. That's voodoo.
**Unknown:** That's not scientific." And I always find that to be really, really interesting because just because something is the common belief or it's just because it's always been done that way, it doesn't mean it's right. And if people, if their skill set has always been drugs, drugs, drugs, drugs, surgery, drugs, then they're never gonna necessarily understand why you would seek out something beyond that. So we have to definitely take people's opinions with a grain of salt and know that it's our life, it's our journey, and it's our choice, and it really comes down to our values. But I definitely appreciate you guys being here.
**Unknown:** There's so much to talk about. You know, we covered almost like two chemicals today, which there are thousands upon thousands upon thousands. So, um, my goal for this month is to really focus on the ones that are s- most important to our health and the ones that I see over and over again, um, with my different clients that I have coming through the doors. So overall, um, I hope that you really were able to take this information and run with it.
**Unknown:** This is all about education. I love doing these because it allows you to be like, "Holy crap, I had no idea." And it's really-- that's your first step in your health journey, is being, is being educated, being knowledgeable, and being aware. Um, awareness is a hundred percent step number one, and then moving on from there is being able to then take that actionary step into figuring out what your body needs because it's not about the cookie cutter detox protocol. It's not about Googling right now, you know, "What helps me detox from glyphosate?" You will be sick, so please try to work with a physician if it, even if it's not us, someone that is well versed on that.
**Unknown:** So if you are looking for some of those podcasts that I mentioned about melatonin, we have a wealth of information on our website, integrativewellnessgroup.com. And then also if you follow us on iTunes, we are Integrative Wellness Radio, where we also post all of our podcasts. So definitely check that out, and then I will see you guys next week. All right, guys.
**Unknown:** I will see you then. We thank you for being a listener and subscriber to Integrative Wellness Radio. If you're looking to learn more about Integrative Wellness Group as well as Dr. Nick or Dr.
**Unknown:** Nicole, you can check out integrativewellnessgroup.com. All night, no sleep. 'Cause I feel like I'm always dreaming. Wide awake, that's okay.
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About Integrative You Radio
Integrative You Radio is a root cause medicine and integrative medicine podcast hosted by Dr. Nicole Rivera and Dr. Nick Carruthers — two integrative doctors who build personalized wellness protocols from your DNA, minerals, hormones, gut, and nervous system rather than from a population template. Looking for an integrative doctor who reads your labs together instead of in isolation? This is the show.
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