Toxicity: 3 BASIC TESTS

Welcome back once again everybody. This is I think is going to be our third episode, last one talking about all things toxicity, toxins, et cetera. And today we want to just kind of bring things home. We did talk, you know, about our homes previous episode and then general concepts. But ultimately, you know, today I want to talk about how do you know if you're toxic? You know, what kind of symptoms do you have? Are there, are there basic labs that your doctor can do, you can have them do? And then so what, how do you kind of treat it? What are some basic treatment things? Some, some cool biohacks and some basic detoxification support. So, so let's start with symptoms. How do, what kind of symptoms? When someone comes to you and you're like, I think this person has toxicity issues, what does that patient look like?

Yeah, I think the key is history first and we've talked about this and that'll often give you the details because you can see or hear really vague complaints like fatigue and brain fog. And they can be toxin induced or they can be hormone induced or they can be a nutri nutrient deficiency. So it's hard to pinpoint when someone's like I have brain fog or fatigue or pain that it's toxin. The history will support that. You're lending towards more toxin based on their exposures and their story. But when you, for me, the gold standards, when I have a patient that is, is reacting to everything, intolerant of everything, has a lot of mast cell or histamine related issues, my mind is immediately starting to go towards this person is got a high toxic burden and what are those toxins and what do we need to be looking for? And I think you're going to touch on this a little bit. The terminology that is often used freely in the public space of mast cell activation syndrome or MCAS is really truly something called tilt or toxic with.

You know, when I look at patients I'm thinking about toxicity. You know, the brain fog, chronic fatigue, fibro energy issues. All the typical things usually have gut problems. It's usually multiple systems and multiple symptoms. So like headaches and gut problems and fatigue and skin.

And skin autoimmunity.

Yeah. And so it's a. And, and the testing can be, the testing can be normal by the doctors, but they just don't feel good. When you get into the mast cell mass activation syndrome, there's five things that like to come together. It's called the Pentad super syndrome. It's hypermobility, dysautonomia or POTS autoimmunity GI issues and mast cell activation syndrome. And mast cells become popular these days. It's people have histamine issues. They like hob up. They react to a lot of stuff. Well, mast cell is a thing that's legit. But mast cell activation syndrome right now, legally is where mold was like 10 years ago. So if someone said they had mold issues 10 years ago and they're sick, they were considered crazy. They're fringe. They're a gas lit. Go home. Go home and talk to your xyz, whatever, your partner, because this is not. You see a psychologist.

Here's your Prozac.

Here's your Prozac going, please. Yeah. So that's kind of where mast cell is right now. So today with a mold patient, you can get the right people. You can go to court, you can get stuff paid for. It actually has legal status. Mast cell right now really doesn't. So if you go to your doctor, like, I have mast cell activation syndrome, you might get gaslit because it's, it's, it's fringe right now. Toxic induced loss of tolerance is a version of mas. It's not. It's a, it's a toxins. Toxin induced loss of tolerance. It's an expression of mast cell activation syndrome. And it's verified. There's a thing called a queasy. It's Q, E, E, S, I. You can go online and take that test. I think it's the University of Utah. Maybe it's been validated. This is legit. It's recognized by environmental health experts. So, like, that is useful in that if you take the queasy and see you have toxic induced loss of tolerance. That is an expression of mast cell activation. So just one of those nuances. Legally, if you're getting in trouble, you have to realize if you go to specialists and say of mast cell, you, you might get the eye roll.

Yeah.

And the oh, sweetie, O dear, oh, honey. Or whatever you're. You've been reading too many blogs, et cetera versus toxic induced loss of tolerance. They'll be like first they'll be like, what are you talking about? And they look it up. They'll be like, oh, wow, this is legit.

Yeah.

So it's just kind of like being smart, being a smart consumer of healthcare.

Yeah. And to be specific, I mean, what we're referring to is immune tolerance. And your immune system has T regulatory cells to promote tolerance to things. Basically the differentiation between self and foreign, right and wrong, good and bad, that kind of thing. And when you lose that, the Body just overreacts to everything. And then that's the patient that comes in and says, no matter what I try, I get worse. I tried a micro dose of this thing and I had a massive detox reaction. So that's the person that's clearly in a state of toxic burden, but probably a tilt patient as well. Probably has some mast cell issues. Probably, Maybe even in that pentad. But. But the reality is that this is a growing number of patients that I'm seeing and ones that you've been seeing for a long time, and it's just kind of everywhere. It's ubiquitous. And how many patients do you see that don't have one of those symptoms that you describe, like brain fog or fatigue? And then I take it a step further, and I may have patients that don't have, let's say, the cardinal symptomatology of what we consider to be toxin induced. But if I have a cardiometabolic patient and that's all they're seeing me for, and we're doing the things that I know should be getting them better, and their glucose isn't budging, their A1C isn't budging, their lipids, maybe, or inflammatory markers aren't budging, my mind immediately goes to what next? And it's usually toxins, and maybe it's heavy metals, maybe it's something else. And as you start to deal with those, all of a sudden you start to see the numbers get better. That's not, that's not a coincidence. That's true. And, and so I'm looking for it all the time in some patients right off the bat. In others as a kind of adjunct therapy to what we've already tried. If we hit a wall. If we don't hit a wall, you just keep doing what you're doing. But you always got to have that on your radar nowadays because they're just kind of everywhere.

Yeah. And one thing also, there's a thing called multiple chemical sensitivity.

Yeah.

Which is a. Another way of saying tilt.

Yeah.

But with that. And I'm, I'm a pragmatic fellow. You know, if you have. There's three domains of multiple chemical sensitivity or toxic induced loss of tolerance chemicals, which include killing chemicals, whatnot, medications and supplements.

Implants. I'm sorry, Implants and vaccines.

Well, they would. Well, that's. That's a little different because that's Asia. Yeah. That's. That's like going to be activating your innate immune system. Got it. But it's going to be your, your, your chemicals, um, and the foods is the third one. So I'll, I'll. So it's foods, chemicals and the medications and supplements. And so if someone like I react with foods and medications or supplements and chemicals, you have a 96% chance of having tilt. Yeah. If you have two of those domains, you have a 60. 60. I forget the number. 16 change percent 60. So two thirds. Right. It's pretty good. Odd. Yeah. So if you, if you meet that criteria you have toxin issues, you know, add on the systemic issues. And how many people is that that I see in my clinic? Most.

A lot.

Most. Yeah.

Yeah.

So what are some labs? Okay, we talked about what this looks like. If you've got some toxin issues. There are a lot of cool fancy functional medicine labs people can do. Like we were talking about 8 hydroxy deoxyguanosine and you know, all these kind of cool tests we can do. But what are some tests that the average person can do in a typical office working with a well informed doctor? There aren't super fancy that you can get your insurance to cover.

Yeah, I think a basic chemistry first and foremost. Someone has a cmp, a comprehensive metabolic panel. You can see their kidney function and is it normal or is it optimal or is it abnormal. You can see liver function tests and before you just assume it's fatty liver disease, if they're elevated, maybe it's toxin induced. Right. Especially if the, the, the shoe doesn't fit, so to speak. Metabolically you can look at things like their acid base status. So what's their bicarb, are they acidic? What's their A to G ratio? Do they have signs of meta inflammation? This is all on a pennies for dollar comprehensive metabolic panel. I like a ggtp, which is kind of a surrogate marker for detox and glutathione. So it's another way of looking at the liver oxidized ldl. So damaged LDL or damaged fat, if someone's got damaged fat, then it's being damaged by something. Is that something? A toxin. Looking at a urine to see what their urine ph is and seeing if they have, if they're acidotic. What are some of the other things that you like to look at?

I mean I also will look at some of the metabolic markers.

Yeah.

You know, but the uric acid level, is it really high? What's the triglyceride to HDL ratio that when you start looking at metabolic syndrome.

Yeah.

One of the causes of metabolic syndrome are environmental toxins. Yeah.

A1C. Yeah.

So A1C. You know if someone's insulin resistance is a common pathway for many toxins, whether it's plastics, synthetic estrogens and chemicals, petroleum distillates. So if someone has a elevated, you know, fasting insulin, their A1C is 5, 9. The fasting sugar. And you can have in the fasting sugar can look fine. The fasting sugar can be, you know, 90, 92.

Yeah.

But their insulin's 14. Their A1C is, you know, yeah, 5, 9. It's like if you hadn't done the other two lab tests, you would have looked at the fasting sugar and been.

Like, yeah, you know, and I take it a step further and I look at leptin and adiponectin and if those look good, even more upstream, then you're at a point where it's like, this is not a classic pre diabetic insulin resistant picture. This is a downstream marker that's telling you something. But the reality is that the dominoes aren't falling like they should. I have a case like that right now in her A1C. We've been struggling with it and she's not overweight, she's active and she eats clean and she's fastidious about her diet. We worked on her hormones a little bit and that was part of the problem. And that's gotten things better. But then we kind of hit a wall. We worked on the gut a little bit, that's gotten things a little bit better. And then we hit a wall. I'm like, let's look at metals. And we just got her heavy metals testing back and her mercury in her letter elevated. And I know for a fact that as we get this out of her system that A1C is going to drop even further because I've seen it happen before. So it's that sequence of events at which you can kind of look at things. But metabolic stuff is a good one. What else are you looking at? I'm also looking at inflammatory, inflammatory markers.

Well, look at those. I look at a white complete metabolic. I'm sorry, cbc, cbc, CBC with a diff. Because you can see, you can see either a elevated white cell count, you know, 9ish or suppressed. Yeah. Or like a 3.0. You can see platelet abnormalities. And so you can look at that to get a basic idea what's going on. And then from there look at. Okay, if your white count's up, you know, what's your hscrp, what's your SED rate? You know, certain toxins and chemicals will actually make the fibrinogen level go up, which actually thickens your blood a little bit associated with cardiovascular disease. And so these are all labs that standard LabCorp Quest labs that can be done. And if, if you're in, you know, if we, we have a little difference on AI. I'm using AI these days. I love AI. I'm using.

I don't use it at all.

I know, but, but you can. It's really interesting. Now, I'm not recommending. This is not, you know, meant for medical recommendations or advice. Yeah. But if you have your labs and you can't and your doctor's like, I don't know, you can actually take iai, you can prompt it the right way and you can point it towards this person's website, that person's website, or even say, I want you to look at a functional perspective. It's not Perfect, it's not 100%, but it will give you some ideas, like what might be going on. Yeah, the devil's in the details. With the right prompting and the right source. If you download some of our blogs on this, we did a whole cardio metabolic series. You can download those and use those in the AI tool as its reference. And all of a sudden you create your own kind of thing.

Also on the cbc, mpv, mean platelet volume, if that's elevated, you have meta inflammation, metabolic induced inflammation. And then on that, diff, eosinophils, if they're high, you got to be worried about mast cells. You got to be worried about tilt monocytes if they're high. Surrogate marker for dysbiosis. And then basophils if they're above 1, that's surrogate marker for interleukin 6, which is an inflammatory cytokine. So literally pennies on a dollar. Now all of a sudden I can tell you about your immune system. If your mast cells are activated, if your gut's off, if you have metabolic dysfunction on a cbc. So there's so much information to be gained from these very, very simple tests, but practitioners just steamroll through them because they're normal or borderline, and off you go. Because it's not catastrophic and I don't need to intervene.

And that's the reason why I look at them. I look at every single one. Like in just the way my brain works. I know you have, you have a pretty amazing memory, but I'll look at and I'll like, okay, I'll just see it move on. And then when something's off, I'll be like, wait a second. Yeah, the CBC was eight.

That's why trends are important. Yeah.

Yeah. Day two. Well, that's. That's up a bit.

Yeah.

And the HSCRP was like three and change.

Yeah.

The said rate was 35 in this mid mid twenties female. That's high for them, you know, so.

SED rates, inflammation, hscrp, high sensitivity, C reactive protein, inflammation. You can look at immune mediate inflammation. Now, your provider might not do like a TNF Alpha or Interleukin 6, but you can get this through Quest and LabCorp. I mean, there's ways to look at inflammation, there's ways to look at metabolic dysfunction, there's ways to look at your kidney function, your liver function, surrogate detox markers, oxidative stress. These are all things that are pretty simple and collectively they might paint a picture of someone who's toxic.

Yes.

And then it's just like, okay, your story fits, your labs fit. And we haven't spent a thousand dollars on testing. Let's work on some stuff. And so what would that be?

So what do we do? You know, so you've got the symptoms, you sound toxic.

Yeah.

You've got some labs that are suggestive. There's some functional labs on urine testing and others. We won't talk about that. Yeah, because it's, you know, most people don't have access to that unless they're working with someone like us. But the reality is we're all exposed to stuff. Yeah. So where do you start? You know, I start with the foundations. You know, I believe you gotta perfect the basics. Just like a professional athlete, you know, they, you know, professional soccer player. They work on the basics, they work on passing, they work on kicking, you know, and once you perfect those, then you can go on to the really cool stuff. The basics are, you know, eating real food, not eating processed food, organic food when necessary. Clean environment, clean food, clean air. You know, if you're chronically stressed, if you have a lot of toxic people around you. I used to hear people say toxic people, and I'd roll my eyes. I'm like talking. I'm like, it's one of those woo people again. And now I'm like, no, it's. It's legit. It's real. It's like if you have people around you who are inflammatory, who are stressful, who are, you know, one of my.

New things, it's contagious. You will catch that inflammation you mentioned.

I don't know if you've read this anywhere, but something I've picked up clinically, like, we Pick up things clinically years before. I feel like they make it to the literature. But the idea of being married to a relationship or having a family member of someone who's a narcissist. I've seen this trend of patients, typically females, because 80% of my practice is females who have like, they sound like a patient with trauma. And the only thing is, oh, well, my first husband was a narcissist or my mom was a narcissist. And you're like, eh, whatever. And then you start asking these questions and you're like, oh, so you never felt validated. You were waiting for the next pin to drop, you're waiting for your mom to go off. You never felt safe. Like you tried to like, wow, that's. And you, and you were developing your entire life or you know, that's like. So point is like, I personally feel I've not read this. Maybe you read this somewhere. But clinically I feel like I'm concerned. Now if you have a narcissistic person in your life for time, I'm considering that as a type of trauma.

Yeah.

Because of the emotional stress.

Yeah.

And it's one of those things. It's, it's like a. Of course it is, but I just haven't seen it validated in the literature yet.

I mean like, what, what is trauma? It's limbic dysfunction. It's sympathetic overdrive. There's different ways to say the same thing. And, and this is clearly something that can cause that. So yeah, if a TBI or you know, sexual abuse or, you know, an alcoholic parent can, can cause the same type of stress, why couldn't that? You know, I just think the reality is, is that stress, distress, stress, distress, stress, when it comes to situations that are traumatic trauma is perceived differently by different people. If it's affecting you in a way that you're stuck in this fight, flight or freeze situation, then your body's not working right and it's going to create the state of, of disarray, metabolic, inflammatory, immune, dysregulatory and, and then that's, that's where toxins thrive. You're not getting anything out of your system in a state like that. So yeah, you gotta, you gotta clean up your environment. And that means people too. That doesn't mean take them out. That just means don't hang out with them. Maybe, maybe sit down and consider who adds value to your life and who doesn't. And if you can move on from some people, move on from some people. You know, give your valuable time and Energy to people that give back to you, that you love and that love you back. Not to people just for the sake of it, if you can. But clean water, clean air, clean cookware, clean products that you're putting on your body, whatever you're rubbing on your skin, you might as well be eating. It's getting right into your system. Keep that in mind. What you eat is really important, but you don't have to break the bank on, on organic food. Utilize what you can use. EWG.org do the Clean 15 and the Dirty Dozen. Grow your own stuff. Use local farmers markets. Buy organic when you can. Grass fed, grass finished, pastured, all that good stuff. But then like, you know, you want to work on getting the systems right. Right. And for me, that always is kind of working backwards in the order of which dysfunction happened. Liver was probably stop stockpiling toxins well before the kidney function started to get a little bit abnormal, well before the gut started to kind of slow down. Maybe we got to work on the gut first. Well, that's really where you should start, in my opinion, because it doesn't matter how much stuff you give someone to get their liver working right and their kidneys working right if they're not pooping too. And so you got to make sure that someone's moving their bowels appropriately, that their gut's working appropriately, that their kidneys are working appropriately. So that's hydration, that's fiber, that's cruciferous vegetables, that's other detoxifying vegetables, the cholagogues that help your body produce bile, like globe artichoke and some of these bitter foods and citrus that helps glucuronidation. Just kind of learning a little bit about that and then adding things that are naturally high in antioxidants like polyphenol rich foods and colorful foods. So you look at your plate and it's tan and white. Not good enough. You want purple, you want red, you want orange, you want yellow, you want green. And then you can start to kind of layer in, you know, other specialized things like whether it be supplements or sauna or coffee enemas or IVs. Let's talk. Why don't you talk a little bit about some of those things?

So like the foundations, you nicely kind of tied everything together. The food, clean food, everything. I think the next level of like power and strength is going to be some of your old school stuff like sauna, like colonics. Yeah. Or coffee enemas. Sweating as part of that dry brushing, massage.

Yeah.

Like movement. Actually some of These like vibration devices that vibrate people's bodies are actually lymphatic massages. So, so, so IVs. So IVs are you. Obviously you have to be working with a doctor. It does those. But you know, doing IV vitamin C with B vitamins with glutathione with magnesium is a nice way to bypass your gut and just get people's antioxidant levels up really quick, really fast. It can help with heavy metal issues, other toxin issues, chronic infections which a lot of these individuals when they get toxic, that's when the infections reel the head and like to get the lyme reactivation, Epstein Barr or the hsv. I've had a slew of patients this past year with low level shingles and they didn't realize the gentle rash and stuff or the cold sores or whatever where some were some version, some type of herpes virus. And so IVs are nice for that, but you have to be working with someone who does that. I really love cleaning the bowels out. You know the most potent thing is going to be a colonic thing you can do at home is a coffee enema.

Yeah.

These things actually flush out endotoxins which are one of the big three biotoxins in water damaged buildings. You also get some lymphatic activation. You get vagal nerve activation. You know, remember back in medical school we actually rectal insufflation things we do in medical school to lab animals that are unethical but, but things they did, you know. And you watch the, the heart rate drop down, you see vagal nerve activation.

You just glutathione you.

When you do coffee and I'm a. Your small bowel glutathione Production increases by 800%. Jesus. So that's a pretty good.

Yeah.

Pretty good thing for like some. You know what my patients lovingly call butt coffee. Yeah.

So butt coffee is a clean out, a microbiome reset, an antioxidant boost.

Yeah.

And. And promotes bioflow. I mean like that's pretty profound.

That's a lot of stuff that's cheap. I'm sweating. You know, I like sauna sunning is amazing. You know, you have to pay to go to the places. Except for the summertime. What I usually recommend people is do it, see how you feel, see if you like it. Some of my patients with dysautonomia can't stand the heat.

Yeah.

So for them it's not. They have to. Yeah. If you can't stand the heat, like you feel sick and feel cruddy and lighthead and dizzy. Okay, great. Doesn't mean sweating is not good for you. It means your nervous system can't handle it.

Yeah.

So minus those individuals, you know, if it works, we should be, you know, I think about how did we sweat 100 years ago? It was daily, all day long in Richmond from probably May, June until right about now. And, and that was our, you know, we go camp. I always feel better after camping. Yeah. You're outside sweating for a week. Really? You know. Yeah. Why is that? Maybe part of it is, you know, the stress.

And I'm sweating de stress being near water, being in the woods and all the terpenes coming off the trees and breathing fresh air.

I think it's all the sweat.

I personally think it's all the sweat sweating. No light pollution, no noise pollution.

But sweating is such a huge, huge thing and relatively easy to access.

Yeah.

There's a lot of other things you can do, like vibration plates. You can do rebounders, which are just lymphatic things. Massage, acupuncture can actually open up detox pathways as well, which is a little higher level kind of thing. I've had many patients who've gotten stuck with the nervous system issues with dysautonomia and chemical sensitivities. They can't handle anything and they can do acupuncture. I've had patients who. That's actually calmed their nervous system down, opened up their pathways.

So massage is huge. When I, I know that I talked about when I was heavy metal, toxic, and I was losing weight and I got worse because it was just flushing it through my system when I was in that same state. And I would get full body massages, I would feel worse afterwards because the lymphatic flow that was being promoted was pushing toxins through my system and it wasn't ready for it. And I quickly picked up on that. And I'd start taking activated charcoal before my massages and I would hydrate like a lunatic and lots of mineral support afterwards. And it went away. Now it's not an issue because I'm not toxic anymore. But it's just these subtle things like, so if you're someone who has gone to get a massage and like, I don't like massages, I don't feel good afterwards. It might be because you are toxic and that massage was promoting lymphatic drainage and pushing toxins through your liver and you just, your body didn't like it. Maybe you don't give up on it. Maybe it's just a subtle clue of hey, maybe I should be doing something else to kind of feel better and then retry it. But what about supplements?

So one of my favorite go to supplements for this is phosphorcholine.

Yeah.

It, if you have bowel sludging, if you've got portal vein sludging, it's. Phosphorcholine is the primary phospholipid in biofilms. If you've got biofilm issues in your gut from who knows what and it just is, it's like soap. It's like soap for your cell memories and just kind of if you've got mold issues. This is one of our go to detoxifiers that you know, some of my patients can't tolerate stuff. And to date using lipids as a detoxifying thing tends to be one of the things that most people will tolerate who can't tolerate.

It's less direct, it's more indirect and so they tolerate it better. It's an oil change.

Yeah. And so particularly like phosphatidylcholine, you can use, you know, balanced Omega 3s and Mega 6s. There's only one product I use for that. Things like olive oil can be helpful. They'll make you make more bile. Omega 3s also help with that. They're anti inflammatory. And if you have. One of the issues with a lot of people with chemical sensitivity is they get this mild like cytokine like response. So you, you try something and you feel horrible afterwards. In the mold in the sers world we'll give people omega 3s for a month and retry because it calm, it calms down. Yeah, that cytokine response, if you've.

What I like to do with that is add spms as well. Because I recently learned that if you give omega 3s to somebody who's horribly inflamed, the process of the omega 3 going down these pathways to become specialized pro resolving mediators, whether they're D series or E series based on DHA or EHA to become, you know, morasins, protectins, resolvents, etc, basically fish oil converting into the anti inflammatory magic, that pathway is blocked if you're chronically inflamed. So if you give someone fish oil and they're like I don't feel any better, it's because that pathway is blocked. And if you give them concurrently spms, you bring that, that inflammation down. Now all of a sudden the fish oil kicks in and you can downshift on those SPMs and go from this much A day to this much a day. And you just reverse titrate or deescalate. And now all of a sudden the fish oil is doing its job. So anybody that I have that I give omega threes to that are kind of unresponsive, that's where my mind goes. And I add in that layer of SPMs and it really does the trick.

Yeah, it's a good. So it's one that, that's one of the. It's lipid therapy. It's PC, Omega 3 6. Your. Your pro resolving mediators.

And then things that'll burn out those long chain fatty acids like tadka butyrate. Things like that.

Yeah. Which are, which are helpful for that. But you know, in the general detox, we'll leave that to the side. But so PC, which led to that.

I love PC.

Yeah. And then, you know, vitamin C, vitamin D, just basic things that help with inflammation. If they're toxic, you can use liposomal glutathione. Nac. Magnesium is huge.

Yeah.

And he isn't a huge one. People don't realize the importance of magnesium. With over 200 different cellular mechanisms in our body, it's like super important.

Yeah.

And if you're constipated, by the way, it can help move your bowels as well. If you do magnesium citrate, it helps with kidney functions more. If you do have magnesium glycinate, it's going to help more with glutathione production and with sleep at night. If you use a magnesium taurate, you get the taurine you mentioned before. With phase two detoxification helps with cardiovascular issues. You can actually pick the type of magnesium you want. Yeah. Based on what you're trying to figure out. So there's lots of other herbs. What are some other things that you feel like you.

I like milk thistle. So silymarin. It's great. It's going to protect your, your liver cells, your hepatocytes can boost glutathione as well. I like dandelion root. I think dandelion root's really beneficial. I like to use glutathione, definitely liposomal. I like curcumin. I think that's great to help with detox. It's anti inflammatory, it's antioxidant. B vitamins are the unsung heroes, especially in phase one detox. They're also involved in phase two a little bit different. B12 is involved in both sides of the coin. So make sure people's B12 levels are appropriate. You need to be able to methylate appropriately. If you're not methylating, you're not detoxing. If you're not methylating, you're not making nitric oxide or antioxidants or neurotransmitters. So what's methylation? That's B9, that's B2, that's B6, that's B12. Mag is a CO factor. So I'm doing a lot of B support, I'm doing a lot of MAG support, I'm doing vitamin C support, doing some other trace mineral support and then I'll layer in, you know, does this person need more liver directed support? So I'm going to do some dandelion, I'm going to do some milk thistle. Most of my patients get glutathione. I'm measuring glutathione levels. You can get that through a basic lab if your provider's willing to do so. I'm trying to push those levels to that higher quartile of normal. I don't care if someone's glutathione level comes back elevated. That's not toxicity, you need glutathione. And these levels are designed to prevent deficiency state, not optimization. So it's not something to be overtly concerned about. I use NAC a lot because of the cysteine, the N acetylcysteine. If someone's not getting enough protein, I might give them some free form amino acids to kind of help. On that side of the coin. There's a couple of products that I use that are really great to do a little bit of combination for phase two support. It's actually called called phase two. Five Bile support. It's a really nice product by php. Um, so there's a combination of things that I'll do and then if I'm specifically talking about heavy metals, I'll lend in or lean into things like glutathione, nac, sometimes chlorella, sometimes alpha lipoic acid, that's another good one. It'll help recycle. Glutathione gives you that antioxidant burst, Vitamin E gives you an antioxidant burst. But I might even use chelation. I might use edta, or dmsa. Should always do that under the supervision of a practitioner. So again it's are we just globally detoxifying? Are we specifically going after a certain toxin? And then depending on the answer to those questions, I'm going to come up with a plan for that patient. But like a multivitamin and some extra antioxidants some extra liver support, get their gut working, clean up their environment, get them hydrated, get them moving. All of a sudden, like, magically, they're getting better. It's not magic. It's just getting the body doing what it's supposed to do.

A lot of times people want to jump to the cool, fancy new supplement.

Yeah.

And not do the basics.

Well, got to do the basics.

One side note.

Can't put paint on burning house. You shouldn't. You could, but you shouldn't.

You shouldn't put paint on a burning house. Yeah. Let's talk about curcumin real quick. Just because it's. I'm not sure when this will be coming out, but probably three, four weeks ago. There's some press about curcumin and Liberty. Yeah. So what. What are your.

Am I allowed to curse?

I can't.

Got to keep this pg, right?

Yeah. Keep this. Those might get kids, you know. I doubt there's kids listening to this.

I'm horrified by that. By that article.

Yeah. So what are your. I. I actually had a couple patients mention it to me. This happens all the time the way.

Thankfully, I've had none.

I had a couple mentioned to me. I'm like, well, I don't know what you're talking about. So I looked into it, found the original article, the news report.

Yeah.

And then looked at what people were saying and, you know, it was a little. It was a little concerning listening to these specialists in this report saying 30% of all liver failure is related to supplements. So you're shaking your head, Dr. Jensen. Why is that?

Yeah, I don't believe it. And I don't know where they're getting their statistics from. The reality is, is that if you're overusing these supplements, if you're overdosing, if you're pushing the system too hard, then, yeah, there's the potential for this to happen. There's potential for liver failure or at least liver injury, there's potential for kidney injury. But if you're doing it in a dose that's appropriate, if you're doing it in a dose that's directed by a clinician that knows what they're doing and they're monitoring your labs, I don't find any concern whatsoever. Curcumin is the short list is what it doesn't do. It's antioxidant, it's anti inflammatory, it's pain relieving, it's anti cancer, it's anti dementia. I mean, the list goes on and on and on. It feeds your microbiome it helps with a ton of things. I have yet to date had a patient have any liver problems from curcumin. And I have a lot of them on it. And I personally remember, I have no problem talking about myself, about my own personal medical journey. When you and I were talking about my eczema and my allergy flaring and how I was going off and on a prednisone and how bad that was for me and it was like we're going to work towards the ultimate goal of figuring out the root cause and getting it right. But your body clearly responds to an anti inflammatory. Right. Maybe it's the immunosuppressive component, but I think it's the anti inflammatory component. So what can we use naturally to bring down inflammation like the prednisone is doing? Why don't we try curcumin? Why don't we kind of go up on the curcumin to a dose that does the job, hit that and then reverse titrate. I was taking 5 grams of curcumin a day at one point in time with no recourse whatsoever. And it absolutely did the job that the prednisone was doing. And I was able to then reverse titrate and deescalate and then eventually come off of it. And I use it now on an as needed basis for pain and inflammation. But it's one of those things where if someone reads about it, oh, curcumin is good for pain and they're chronically in pain and they're struggling and they're suffering and they're scared and they don't want to be an opiate addict and so they just start taking grams and grams of this stuff.

Yeah.

Something bad might happen.

So there's a couple, when I looked at the article, agree with everything you said that was interesting because the what one was they were quoting a liver guy who said 30% of liver failure liver transplants related to supplements, particularly curcumin. I actually started looking into like that and the one lady evidently got her supplement from a well known store. I won't mention because I love what.

Else is in it.

Well the thing about it, well so I started looking at that. But the thing is like when you say what other supplements were they taking? Because a lot of stuff out there is not clean. 25% of calcium you get at your local pharmacy has lead in it. Yeah. So, so, so the question is what were they getting it from a reputable source or not the curcumin? This one thing that the lady one person was. But what else are they taking? But then I actually decided to do a literature search, you know, and there, there are some people that can have an idiosyncratic reaction to curcumin that can have elevated liver enzymes and if you don't stop it, those people can. It's idiosyncrak is a fancy way of saying like rando oddball thing. People have a crazy reaction to it. We don't quite know why, you know. So it, it is, it is a real thing that's uncommon and you can be picked up if you're working with a doctor who checks labs. Yeah.

So you shouldn't just swing a broad sword at that point in time and make everybody afraid to take curcumin.

You know, I mean it's like the fish oil thing back 15 years now they said fish oil calls prostate cancer. And all my people stop taking any fib. Yeah.

And you're gonna bleed out.

Yeah. And the funny thing about that arc that because that was based on a published article. When I actually got pulled that article and looked at it, they were looking at blood omega 3 levels which, which they were using as a mark marker for supplement. People taking supplements, they never asked anybody, are you actually taking the supplement and is it a good source or ransom source? Yeah. So my thinking is, well, maybe if your body knows you have this cancer, it's going to ramp up naturally. It's anti inflammatory response. That's my theory. Yeah. Which one was right? Well, no one asked what supplements they took. So I'm just as right as they are. I'm just as right as they are because I have just as much backup for mine. That'd be. That's one of those ways that one study should lead to two or three more studies. And it just fizzled out after a while. But it's like that stuff happens all the time. Yeah. Where things come out. Curcumin, you know, has been used by the ayurvedic medicine in the Indian culture for thousands of years. Um, you know, it appears from safety data you can take up to 10,000 milligrams a day safely. Not recommending that. That's a medical dose. I use it with a lot of my patients with MGUs, which is a precursor for multiple myeloma. There's really good data on it. Two to three grams of a particular kind with piperine, which happened to be the one they mentioned, the article actually helping slow or halt progression of MGUs to multiple myeloma. So it has a lot of really cool uses. I think this is just an unfortunate. And. And maybe when this comes out, this will be kind of like this conversation will die down. But, yeah, this. These are the kind of little things we're all swinging.

I like. I like defending stuff like this because it just makes me irate when I see these articles get pushed out, and it's just like, it's not a good study or the appropriate questions weren't asked. I mean, it's just. It's.

It's sensationalism. It's people, you know, getting eyeballs for stuff. And if everybody gets. Fear is more motivating than success.

Yeah.

Me say, watch out for this. You might die. Watch out for the supplement. You might. You know, just doing our social media stuff, and I. I've kind of resisted it today, but if I have a negative thing, like, you know, don't forget the supplement might kill you. I'll get, like, thousands and thousands of views. And if I'm like, probiotics are great for you. Like, no one looks at it. Right? So it's just like. It's like, magnesium's great.

You know, people love bad news.

It's. Yeah, yeah. And so it's one of those things where unfortunately, in our current media, and particularly the health thing, you know, bad news drives, looks, and clicks.

Well, here's the. Here's the bad slash good news.

Okay, what is it?

If you're alive on this planet, in this country, listening to this podcast, then you probably have some toxins. That's the bad news. Here's the good news. All the stuff we just said, right? That's what you can do to get better and at least play detective and figure out what it is that you're being exposed to or have been exposed to. Remember, this isn't about acute toxicity, although that does exist. This is about cumulative. This is what I lovingly refer to as past pretense. When I'm talking to patients and they're like, oh, my God, my levels are so high. Where's it coming from? It may not be coming from anywhere anymore. This may be all what you were exposed to, but we have to figure that out now. Let's figure that out. And when we do that together and know that it's currently safe, now we know that we can just gently get this out of your system and over time, it'll get better. Or we find out that you do have an exposure. Man, look at what we just prevented from getting worse. Awesome. And then you just move on. But the goal is to figure out, am I being exposed or was I? And then what can we do about it? What are the markers I should be looking at? What is my plan of care and then clinically correlate my symptoms? Do they get better or not? And if not dive deeper period.

And also one thing just for people to note as well, all these podcasts we turn into blogs that get sent out in our weekly newsletter which kind of take all this and condense it into like a little blog. So if people aren't following us and getting our newsletter that can help take complicate things like this that go on for however long we've been talking 40 minutes or whatever and make it into like a 15, 10, 10 minute.

Yeah.

Article.

Simplify it.

Yeah, exactly. So cool. Well hope this was helpful if you've hung around this long and we will talk to you all later. Take care and we'll talk to you soon.

See you.