Why "Healthy" People Are Toxic: EMFs, Body Burden & the Detox Protocol That Actually Works

The loss of fertility in men has become an epidemic. It is likely that cell phones in pockets is one of the underappreciated factors that is an endocrine disruptor. You kind of have this almost ticking time bomb of reserve of lead, so you pass it down to your kids. This is this idea of generational toxicity.

My guest today, Nick the EMF Guy. Penaltz is the number one bestselling author of the book, "The Non-Tinfoil Guide to EMFs." He's an advocate for safe technologies and a real expert on all things EMF. He just came out with a new documentary called "Body Burden," and I watched it. It was really cool. So, all the shownotes can be at BenGreenfieldLife.com/EMFGuyPodcast where you can also leave your thoughts, your comments, your questions. Let's dive in.

Thanks, Ben.

I mean, you've been on my radar on and off ever since I read your book, the— what's it called? The Non-Tinfoil "Oil Hat Guide to EMS." Yeah. It's a great book. I still recommend that all the time as kind of a way to protect yourself from the polluted electrical soup that we live in. And then, you popped up on my radar a few weeks ago when you emailed me about this detoxification journey that you went on. That's always a weird buzzword in the industry that we're in, of course, And I know we'll get into that. I'd love to hear your thoughts on what actually occurred and your perspective on detoxification in general. But the link between that and electromagnetic pollution is pretty interesting. So, I would love to get into all things electricity and detox if that's a good enough combination here.

Sounds good. Yeah, it's a perfect toxic synergy here.

Let's just get toxic. Let's be positive right from the get-go. Hey, if you're listening in, I'll link to the documentary that Nick made, our previous podcast, his book, and everything else, if you go to BenGreenfieldLife.com/EMFGuyPodcast. That's BenGreenfieldLife.com/EMFGuyPodcast. Before we jump into this documentary, the Body Burden documentary journey that you went on, Nick, what's the latest since— I mean, gosh, I think it was 2018 Yeah, we did our podcast. So, what, like 7 or 8 years now in terms of what's gone on in the EMF world. But, give me the bird's-eye overview of some of the major findings or research that has occurred since our last show.

A lot has happened and at the same time not a lot. A lot on the scientific standpoint and my own understanding, but not a lot has happened on a policy standpoint. Not a lot has changed and that's been the frustration. Doing this 10 years, and you know, not a lot has changed as far as how much governments are telling citizens to be prudent towards the everyday devices that we use. So for example, you know, you had the major US-funded study called the NTP study at the end of 2018. We had the final reports, and essentially what it showed is clear evidence of EMFs, especially radiofrequency radiation, which is the radiation emitted by phones, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, cell towers. Their conclusion was there is clear evidence that it's increasing certain tumors in rats and mice. So in the end, you know, some people argued, oh, this is not a significant study. It is the best that we have, that we have funded. And when I say we, of course, I'm just Canadian, but the US government has funded this for $30 million. And it was originally the FDA who couldn't study this agent or this consumer product called the cell phone and said to the NTP, which is a branch of the NIH, can you study this agent? It took around, you know, 20 years from the ideation to the final report. And what it found is clear evidence that this is a carcinogen. Then the FDA said, we don't think that rats' studies apply to humans. Even if they originally asked the NTP to do the toxicology, and toxicology is done on rats. So go figure. So all the politics around that were kind of maddening, but it led certain groups to try to move things on a political standpoint and say to the FCC, the Federal Communications Commission, you know, they have— the FCC in 2021 was supposed to review the evidence around radiofrequency radiation and health. And Citizens and scientific groups and, you know, activists essentially took to the task and decided to send them the latest data on what they thought is the most important thing to include in this review. 11,000 pages of scientific documents were added to the docket, and the FCC said, you know what, we have done our review, nothing changes. So after that, the FCC was brought to the court and lost in court where the judges said, the 3 judges said, well, essentially you did not review the data. But that decision is from almost 5 years ago at this point and has been sitting there. And now groups are trying to argue, now we're going to sue the FCC again to make sure that now they redo the review with the proper science. So I know it's technical and it's legalese. What it means essentially is that we're completely running or flying blind at this point on EMF regulations. All we know is that the number one agency that's supposed to assure US citizens that things are safe when it comes to your cell phone and Wi-Fi and Bluetooth has not looked at the science. That's all we can say.

Okay. So, when you're saying there's been these studies on rats, I think you said monkeys also, how close is it to the real-world conditions in which humans use their phones or whatever, their computers, appliances, whatever on a daily basis? Because I know it's one thing to whatever, hold a cell phone and have full power up to the ear of a rat for 8 hours and maybe humans are talking on a, I don't know, like a wired or Bluetooth headset with the phone farther away from their head. I know not everybody does that, but do you know what I'm saying? How close is it to the way humans actually interact with their phones?

That's important. And the study was designed— the NTP, if I recall correctly, it was designed to mimic 30 years of exposure in humans. And people can argue about the dosage and this and that. But zooming out of the NTP study, the study is not the one study that exists about potentially radiofrequency being an agent that is a carcinogen. In 2011, IARC at the WHO, which is International Agency for Research on Cancer, classified based on the current data in 2011, this agent called radiofrequency radiation as a Class 2B carcinogen. So after that, scientists reviewing the data of the NTP said, well, we have this decision, we have new rat studies, we have several different threads of evidence, including epidemiology in humans who have more elevated risk of ipsilateral cancer. So you talk on the right side and you get a cancer. Of the head region or neck region. You know, so there is a strong correlation that was seen in data. So some scientists in 2018 said if we have another review at the WHO, this will be declared a Class 1 carcinogen. But that was in 2018. And since then, things have been stalling and stalling because, of course, you know, what tech industry entity at this moment would accept a classification that says your phone is essentially as bad as smoking? So it has been extremely charged on a political standpoint. Some scientists say, you know, this is the next smoking, but this is just cancer. And it led me to, you know, reviewing the evidence. It blew me away. You know, Huberman, everyone knows him. He's a scientist. He has a large following. In 2023, he decided to review what is the data around keeping a cell phone in the pocket and a loss of fertility or reduction of testosterone.

And just to interrupt, you mean specifically without it being in airplane mode.

Yes, exactly. And he looked at both the heating, the heating effect, because, you know, testicles can be very sensitive to heat changes in temperature, but also the non-heating effect. So just the oxidative stress triggered by radiofrequency radiation. And what he said in his review, and it was just for his members, but it's still findable on YouTube, He said, well, the data is more convincing than BPA that this is an endocrine disruptor. And he also said, well, I don't like the idea of AirPods because of the lack of data. And that's kind of been my point even in my book is, I mean, why don't we have more data about consumer devices that are used worldwide nonstop, right? This, this is really the point is the lack of data. The data we do have points in a direction that is concerning. And right, we are in a day and age where the loss of fertility in men has become an epidemic. And it's something very concerning for, you know, some could say the survival of the human species. Like we need to conceive, we need to have a sufficient sperm count and good mobility and all these things. And then testosterone is also pretty much in a, in a, in a, an extremely bad place for men. So at least we could argue that it is likely that cell phones in pockets and our overall, overall use of wireless is one of the underappreciated factors that is an endocrine disruptor and that prevents us from having normal hormones.

Yeah, maybe the hidden blessing of agentic AI is that because we'll be able to put our computers to work for us, we might have to spend less time with our devices.

I hope so. I hope so. But, you know, what is maddening is these solutions already exist. Like, if people, you know, want to go away, go away from the conversation that's doom and gloom, They just have to ask, okay, well, what, what could we do about it anyway? Well, it's simple. You ask Apple and Samsung and phone manufacturers who have a proximity sensor that already exists, and when it's close to the body, it doesn't emit, it doesn't emit as much, or is shielded in a manner that minimizes cell phone radiation towards the user. And these, some of these early patents are from the early 2000s and they've, they've been shelved. Because it's not a requirement. So again, you have bad EMF safety guidelines essentially determined by industry, a lot of lobbying to keep them the same status quo. And then you have users that don't know better and you have the impact that is happening. At a minimum, we should be cautious and start reducing the exposure from our phones. But what we're seeing is we're not even there yet where the cell phone rules and the radiation they emit is just the same year after a year.

[Speaker:BEN GREENFIELD] Yeah, my phone annoys me anyways, which is why I have it in airplane mode 50% of the time during the waking day simply because I don't want Voxer and Messages and Slack and Asana. Even if I have the notifications off, I just don't want that bugging me while I'm working, while I'm working out, et cetera. And so, for me, it's kind of like, "Man, I don't want it on anyways until I'm actually ready to roll up my sleeves and work," with probably the only exception being my wife and I will sometimes watch some funny stand-up comedy short or silly thing in bed before we go to sleep at night. But, we could talk about phones, of course, till we're blue in the face. I know you outline a lot of this on your website and in your podcast on a regular basis. So, I'll link to that in the shownotes for those of you who want to keep up with all the updates that Nick is obviously on top of. But, the topic of toxins and toxin accumulation and the potential link between that and EMF is something I haven't talked about much on the show before. So, you made this documentary and from what I recall, even though it's been a few weeks since I saw it, you actually had a high burden of, I believe it was metals.

Very high lead and very high mercury and very high ochratoxin-A, which is a mycotoxin.

Were you doing a lot of sushi and coffee, Nick?

Yeah. Well, of course, I love it. And I mean, I spent my fair share of time in Japan. I went to Southeast Asia for a total of probably 2 years in total in the last 15. So, I mean, where did I get this, right? It was kind of a personal shock, but it, it was not the beginning of this journey. Essentially how I came about this is I heard about this branch of medicine called environmental medicine, and I said, okay, well, what's different about it? And some of these physicians understood that EMFs is an important factor. And I said, oh yes, finally. I have doctors that confirm that, you know, EMF radiation should be minimized at home. So it meant a lot for me. I'm like, oh, well, these physicians probably understand. And the reason they understood these things is that in the 1980s, the early pioneers of environmental medicine, two of them being Dr. William Ray, who passed away in around 2019, another one is Dr. Walter Crinian. They were essentially physicians that were seeing a lot of patients from different professions. Some of them were factory workers, some of them worked with pesticides handling, for example. And they got these patients when they were in a very bad shape and they started looking into, okay, how do these toxins accumulate in the body? And not a lot of data was available. And this is where these pioneers started using things like sauna and looking at the data on sauna use specifically to start minimizing the body's burden of certain pesticides or endocrine disruptors. And, you know, it was before our understanding was better. Now we know that, for example, sauna use can be helpful with microplastics, but that's just data from the last few years. So they were really pioneers 40 years ago in starting to understand, okay, well, if we see people that do not have an acute poisoning, but they have a lifetime of poisoning, what do we do? Is it possible to support them in a way that is going to get them better. And these, these people fell through the cracks. So I ended up being invited to go to one of these clinics where these physicians do exactly that, have a focus on looking at what's in a patient's environment first. And when I say environment, it is the environment at home. What are you exposed to on a constant basis? Also, you know, what do you use to, to heat your food? Is it, you know, do you cook with aluminum pans or with Teflon? Right. All of these questions from everyday exposures, because it gives them a good snapshot of, okay, we think that this factor is important. And then they use a principle of just, you know, precautionary principle. We should filter your air. We should filter your water. I mean, it's everything you've been saying for the last 20 years professionally. Right. So, but physicians that tell their patients, okay, this is the most important thing, including EMF minimization. And this is one fold of their work. And the other fold is, okay, but what about what's been already accumulating in the body? So, for example, for me, a big burden that I discovered, because honestly, I had no idea, even shooting the documentary, I had no idea this was in my body. When we tested my urine, just, you know, normal urine test, it was within the reference range of, you know, that's— this is the Doctor's Data metals test. It's our toxic metals panel, very available. A lot of people have done it. And, you know, without any provocation agent like EDTA or DMPS, these pharmaceuticals that are going to take metals from your tissues or from bone and excreted. So, without the provocation, it was 0.62, which is, you know, the reference range is like 0.6. So, it was standard. So, I could stop there and say, "Oh, you know, lead is not a problem for me." The problem with lead is that about 95% of it is stored in bones. And when I looked into it, I said, "Okay, well, it's stored in bones. How much of a problem is that?" Well, the problem is that as we age, the bone turnover becomes greater and we can start having a lot of this come back into, into blood, but also it is stored in bones for a couple of weeks. With the bone turnover, it returns in circulation. So you might have relatively low levels in the blood, but in reality, you kind of have this almost ticking time bomb of reserve of lead. And we don't know exactly what is the safe level of that lead stored in the human body, right? So in the end, when I provoked with these agents, I had essentially 19 times more, more lead than that reference or non-provoked test. And then later on, a few months later, I was at 34 times. So very elevated levels. And what surprised me, of course, I, I wasn't, you know, very well versed into what the data says about these things. In environmental medicine, they have their own assessment of how urgent is it to treat a patient that has these levels. And what they said is, "Look, you're 37 at the time when I did the first test, you're athletic, you're fairly healthy, but we think you're going to feel much better if you get this out." So, started looking into it and in the end, they compared these levels to, you know, someone who worked in an industry their entire life. They asked me, "Nick, are you a welder or did you get exposed to obvious sources of lead?" My answer was, "No, I don't know where it comes from." So essentially it was the beginning of a journey for me to try to understand, okay, where am I exposed to lead in my everyday life? And I couldn't find a lot of sources and also start focusing on opening up my detoxification pathways and doing chelation, a lot of things. But it really opened my eyes. And in the end, the reality is that for most people, their lead burden, in particular lead because it's stored in bones, is just completely hidden. And we don't know exactly how much is it inhibiting their ability to live, you know, as healthy as they want, or at least when they get older and it gets released.

How's that going to affect them? The, the interesting thing that you said was you didn't know where you got exposed. Did you ever figure that out?

To this day, I don't know. I know that in certain South Asian countries there, there still is leaded gasoline or huge sources of lead exposure. But in the end, you know, our parents, you know, my, my mom is almost 70. She was part of the lead generation, leaded gasoline, leaded, you know, paint on the walls. So maybe it's part generational. That could be part of it. But also I probably got exposed through foods. It could be my love for chocolate. I know that certain types of chocolate have been found to be very elevated in lead, but I'm suspecting at this point, I really want to dive deeper in my understanding of genetic and epigenetic testing, and I know you're well-versed in that, but I'm probably just a poor eliminator of lead. And that's kind of the— it's one of the things in today's testing framework that's really missing is that we can say that maybe there's such thing as a tolerable amount of toxin, but the reality is that person A, person B, and person C will have different abilities to eliminate lead, right? So in the end, in my body, my conclusion is, well, it's very likely that I just store lead instead of being able to clear out whatever little amount of lead I'm exposed to on a daily basis. That's my theory, at least for now.

Yeah, maybe there was some ancestral advantage to storing lead that no longer serves us, such as resistance of bone to shattering upon being, I don't know, hit with a spear or a sword or something like that.

You never know. And look, it's also very linked to calcium status. That's the thing. Like, and I still need to look into that, look into, okay, well maybe I need a calcium supplement because lead will preferably displace calcium in bones, which in the end are decent. There's a decent amount of data on, you know, your bones not being as strong when we use lead instead of calcium, which is not surprising. You use kind of the wrong building block here, but in the end it is concerning for a lot of reasons. And I even, looking into it this morning, I found the study that said that they measured toxins in cord blood, and 80% of the lead could be directly linked to the mom's reserve of lead. So essentially, when you form a fetus, you have 80% of the burden of, of lead that has been found to be directly linked to what the mother had stored in her bones or her body. So you pass it down to your kids. This is this idea of generational toxicity. That is also something very concerning for me because, I mean, if we don't have a generation that starts cleaning itself up, we have something, we have a problem that's societal and that can get worse over generations.

Yeah, you hinted a couple of times at the potential link between high EMF exposure or electrical pollution and toxin accumulation or toxic accumulation or toxin accumulation. I've come across the idea that sympathetic nervous system stimulation due to excess stress, including something like electrical stress, could inhibit detoxification pathways in the body. I don't know if that's kind of where this road leads or if you found other things in terms of the link between EMF and toxins.

[Speaker:BEN GREENFIELD] There's a lot of threads of evidence that show that there is not only an additive effect between, let's say, wireless radiation from cell towers, cell phones, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and different toxins. Oftentimes what we see is a multiplicative effect. So there are a lot of animal studies on that and a lot of in vitro studies. And one of the scientists that I've been studying is called Dr. Ronald Kostov, and he has an entire chapter of a scientific textbook on it. And essentially he talks about these toxic synergies. And the problem he says is, look, we need toxicology and we need these single agent studies where we will feed rats a certain amount of lead and then look at their kidneys and then declare something like, okay, well, at a certain dose it does kidney damage. The problem is that if we study things in a vacuum, it tells us nothing about what happens if you have lead but you also have cell phone radiation. When we do these studies, we often find that a certain dose of lead that was safe at certain levels is all of a sudden unsafe if we add a second toxic agent. And there's a lot of reasons that could explain it. Both will create oxidative stress, so maybe after a while it goes over a threshold where the rat's body is unable to cope with both. But also there is a lot of— there's evidence that showed that radiofrequency radiation will over time deplete your reserves of glutathione. So if your, your inner antioxidants are trying to just cope with the environment and now you add another thing that is requiring glutathione to deal with, well, maybe at one point you simply do not have the right inner defenses to fight. That's another possibility. There's a lot of different explanation on a scientific standpoint that could explain why is there a synergy between all these different environmental toxins But the point is this is that Kostov said, you know, we should try to— I don't know, maybe they're going to put it in AI and say, okay, what is the toxic synergy between these 10,000 known carcinogens and chemicals that can have an endocrine disrupting effect? And now what is the safe dose given these toxic synergies? We might just find that the safe dose is next to none or is much lower than what we think is reasonable. And that's, that's kind of the point here in environmental medicine. And even in, I think in your own life, it's okay, well, if we know that something might have a detrimental effect, let's try to minimize it. Because, you know, even if you tell me there's, there's such thing as a tolerable dose, well, how much can I tolerate of agent B, C, D, and E? And I mean, in the end, if you want to maximize your health, you should minimize the things that you know for sure are likely to harm it. So in the end, it's the problem we have right now is that we're still stuck in this toxicology model where single agents are with single study endpoints or very, you know, siloed type of research projects are being done. And this is the best we have, but it misses the point according to Kostov. And I agree with him where it's becoming, you know, this toxic soup that we have is very hard to study. So therefore, I think the, the case for minimizing all of our exposures as much as possible, which is kind of one of the frameworks that environmental medicine physicians are trying to put forward, I think is just the smart thing to do nowadays.

Is there any link between antioxidant intake that you know of, like taking glutathione or something like that, and lowered metal or toxin burden?

Good question. I don't know for sure. I haven't looked into like large datasets where you take glutathione and, you know, you have measurably lower levels of metals over time. I don't know where the data is at with that, to be honest with you. But I know in environmental medicine, you know, one of the doctors told me, Nick, take 5 milliliters of liposomal glutathione for as long as you have a breath. And I said, okay, well, Doc, I think I'm going to take it daily. In their view, it is something that they use very regularly. And I know it's not necessarily for everyone. I've heard contraindications for certain people who have a hard time processing it. But, you know, I think they're doing the best they can to recommend something that is likely missing. And, you know, the reason it's missing, it's probably because we are assaulted with so many things. But what is difficult to study is, you know, since we have all of these factors and almost all of us are now, you know, just bathing in, in these stressors all day, every day, all around the world, there's no solid control group that would be exposed to no heavy metals, to no EMFs. It makes the research very blurry. So it is difficult to to kind of do these large studies, but it would be interesting to look in that data specifically the glutathione status or supplementation.

[Speaker:BEN GREENFIELD] Yeah, you're right that some people don't do well with oral glutathione due to the amino acids that it's broken down into along with often genetically-based sulfur sensitivities. And, you can kind of skirt that issue with transdermal glutathione like a topical glutathione. There's one company called Oro A-U-R-O, that's run by Dr. Patel, a former pharmacist who has some good formulas on his website as kind of a workaround for that. But then, the other thing that kind of comes to mind here related to the link between EMFs and metals is this concept of metal accumulation or metal burden in the body potentially increasing sensitivity to EMFs like an electrohypersensitivity brought on by your body, I guess, being more of a conductive antenna. Is that just gobbledygook or is there anything to that idea?

I mean, I've heard the biophysics explanation that if you have more heavy metals in your tissues, you're kind of an antenna for EMFs. I haven't found this to be very solid, but what is solid is that Again and again, when they test people who declare themselves electrohypersensitive, they say, I, I suffer from electrohypersensitivity, which now has been renamed the EMR syndrome. What they say is they find that a lot of them have high metals. So in the end, when I talk to environmental medicine physicians, I ask them about electrohypersensitivity. I ask them about these EMF-sensitive patients. And in really, that's something that, that may be hopeful because a lot of people who contact me told me, Nick, you know, I hold the phone in my hands, I feel it, I feel very sick. I cannot even live in a city. I mean, you would be very— a lot of your listeners would be very surprised at the stories I hear where people are, are so sick from EMFs that they cannot be near it and they don't feel like they can go back to to a normal state of health, right? Because imagine being celiac, you are celiac, but you walk around and there's flour everywhere in the air, you would constantly get sick. That's kind of, you know, akin to being electrohypersensitive or suffering from the EMR syndrome and being in a city where you are constantly near something that triggers you. And it's very difficult to get better if you are always being triggered. That being said, in environmental medicine, they say, okay, you see this agent called EMFs and this thing seems to be triggering you. However, it is only what broke the camel's back. That was kind of what I learned from one of the physicians, Dr. Michael Bauschmidt. He told me, maybe this is the thing that you realize made me— made you go over the edge to a symptomatic standpoint where you're completely shattered. Now your health is bad. That being said, it was also the mold accumulation. It was also the metals. It was everything before that made your body unable eventually to cope with the totality of it. So, what they do is they don't treat a single problem. They won't say, "Okay. Well, you're EMF sensitive, you avoid EMFs. If you're mold toxic, you avoid mold and we treat for mold." What they say is, because everything matters all the time and it makes it a little bit like, okay, well, where do you start? And essentially it's by taking, by asking the patient, what do you feel is your main trigger? Well, I think I've been exposed to mold and this. So, they go by history and then of course they do testing where they would see that the person reacts to EMS. Even Dr. William Ray had a sort of provocation test for electrohypersensitivity back in the days. I don't know if it's still being done now that he passed away, but he wrote a textbook on electrohypersensitivity, a medical textbook. I think it's still the first in the world at this point that has been published. But essentially what they try to do is identify maybe the agent that is the worst for you, but you kind of have to look at it from multiple angles because again, nothing exists in a vacuum. So all that to say, it's long-winded, But if you have high metals, yes, it's been found again and again that you are more likely to react to other agents. And the same is true for people who say, I cannot smell perfumes. If I go to a Walmart, I feel a headache because of all the plastics and I feel sick. A lot of environmental medicine doctors told me these patients are in a very, very aggravated state. Their nervous system and their body cannot cope with it. And it's likely that they will also react to EMFs and other things including foods, right? They, they seem to have, it's environmental intolerance and then it becomes eventually intolerant to everything across the board for some of them at least.

Yeah. What was the name of the clinic that you went to to start to address all this for yourself?

Yes, it, it's called the, the Deeper Healing Medical Center in Charleston, South Carolina.

All right. So walk me through what they did.

Yeah. So essentially when I went there, they started with a history and they take just basic measurement and they said, you know, your metabolic health seems good. You have low body fat, you're athletic. This is good. This is kind of in surface. Then I did a few just basic tests that they have me do. One of them, I don't recall the name of the test, but was essentially trying to walk in a straight line with my eyes closed. And I remember my physician, Dr. Stephanie McCarter, who now practices in Dallas, she said, Nick, you probably have high metals. And I said, okay, what, you know, why? She said, well, you know, that's how your neurology reacts to your eyes being closed, and I can predict you have high metals. I said, okay, whatever.

I don't know, like a lot of people are going to be skeptical if they hear that. Is that, is that like a test based on—

I have to find a source. Sorry, I just came to mind, but it is not something that is deterministic. But it was just like, okay, she has a hunch, right? Based on just the things that she sees and also my symptoms.

Okay. So, so, so basically what you're saying is like balance bad, poor proprioception, clue that you might have some kind of a toxic burden.

Yeah. And then food intolerance, acne, brain fog. So I came at it as an athlete, you know, I, I just had completed a bunch of Spartan races. I know you've been, you understand like the 21K in the mountains format in under 3 hours. I was performing very, very at a very high level personally, the best of my my life, but I felt like, my God, I cannot concentrate at a computer. So a lot of neurological symptoms, just brain fog and gut issues and what the heck is happening with me. So I wasn't at my best health. I was at my best performance, but mentally speaking, feeling very frustrated at the computer. So I came at it, you know, as a, you could say, a fairly healthy patient with no diagnosis of anything chronic illness. And when we started we started testing for urine mycotoxins because it was something suspected just based on my history. Okay, let's test this. And we did a metal test before provocation and after provocation and had the test of that. And it was part of just the baseline that they did. And if they, they had saw someone that is way sicker, then they get into specific tests depending on what type of toxin they, they think is the worst for them or is likely will be found. So after that, I kind of experienced, um, part of their protocol is 3 modalities in particular that they kind of stack together. And it was interesting because, you know, when it comes to detoxification, I, I was always questioning like, okay, well, where should you start? Like, there are so many products out there, so many approaches, and a lot of physicians go at it at different angles. But what was interesting is I got on the LiveO2, which is essentially just a system to have create an hypoxic situation where you have very low oxygen for a certain amount of time.

The LiveO2 is two air concentrators with an airbag. I have one, by the way. I use it in my gym a lot. It's next to the cardio bike. And so, it allows you to breathe high concentration of oxygen, but then with the flip of a switch, go to kind of like top of a high mountain type of scenario with low oxygen. So, it's a form of intermittent hypoxic-hyperoxic training. And I have seen their claims that it somehow flushes the body from a blood flow standpoint. So, they actually did that on you?

They actually did that and it's part of their protocol, has been for a while now. And basically, they talk about specifically the the microcirculation being hindered in a lot of people where the microcapillaries at the very end that are irrigating, you know, the, the end of all the, the circulation in your body is essentially closed. And this, this sort of push-pull mechanism with low oxygen, high oxygen kind of opens up these capillaries. And the science is actually solid on that. But how much is it contributing to detox? I don't, I couldn't find a lot of data, but we, what they saw clinically is that if you open this up, then you, you just increase oxygenation. And Dr. Barashmidt in particular was like, the number one thing is oxygen. And it surprised me because I mean, where should you start for detox? Is it, you know, treating the kidneys, this or that? For him, it was oxygen. So, for me as an athlete, I had to push my body. So, that's why in the movie you see me run on there. But, for certain people, light walking is enough for them to desaturate and see on the pulse oximeter that they actually have a real impact.

Ben Greenfield: Not just walking, there's units like the Cell Gym where you just do IHHT while seated, while sedentary, while meditating or in a lounge chair. So, you're right, there's this pulsing effect, like a vasoconstriction, vasodilation effect that increases circulation and oxygenation. I don't know what the hard data is on a lowering of metal or microplastic accumulation in response to something like that, but the mechanism of action kind of makes sense.

[Speaker:BEN GREENFIELD] Yeah, exactly. And, there's larger trials to be done. I think in environmental medicine, they're very happy to look at something that could work in principle and experiment on their patient with modalities that are safe and that are supported in other fields. So, I know athletes are using them and that, I mean, as long as it's adapted to how people react to it. So, very, very weak people would walk or barely do any movement where I had to sprint at one point, And because my body, you know, had to really get a big hit before with all this endurance training that I did to really get the real impact. And when I started feeling the real impact, you can feel the flushing. It was interesting when I really pushed it with the LiveO2, I could feel my entire body completely flush, like as if you have a sort of, I don't know, see, it's very profound. It's very interesting.

It's pretty cool. I've been using it for 8 years, 2 to 3 times a week. And of course, The basic version is breathwork in the sauna, for example, but the LiveO2 definitely turns it up a notch.

Yeah. And after that, they also use something called the Juvent, and that's a micro impact platform. And I started looking into it like what makes this different from, you know, just a vibration plate. In the end, the difference is that a vibration plate has enough amplitude to start creating these muscle contractions. The Juvent does not. It has a very, very low amplitude and follows a certain frequency that is based on— that is different, but the basis of the science has been developed by NASA originally, which is like a super popular thing to do when it comes to devices, isn't it? But it's true. It's the early research for NASA astronauts that wanted to to maintain bone mass. But essentially the idea was that you can shake, if I understand it correctly, and I don't have all the, the right scientific verbiage here, but it's as if you're shaking the inside of a cell and not contracting the muscles. So it is a very subtle impact. And we know that this can have a beneficial effect on maintaining bone mass, but does it have an effect on lymph, which is why environmental medicine physicians use it? There's a question mark, but it is possible in theory. What they have found is this is a great way to do limb circulation after the LiveO2, and that's about all I know about it, but a lot of people told me they swear by it. So, that's something to further explore.

Yeah. By the way, it's this idea similar to rebounding that G-forces may enhance limb circulation and that some of that circulation might be inhibited. If it is concomitant, simultaneously occurring during a muscle contraction. So, it's kind of like light rebounding without intense muscle contraction or light vibration platform at a certain frequency may allow for better lymph flow compared to a Power Plate vibration platform or something you might use for priming a muscle before or during a workout.

This is way better stated than I did, Ben. And on top of that, keep in mind that a lot of their patients are already weak or environmentally injured. So if you give them, you know, a vibration plate, yeah, it can work. And I know it's also— there's decent data for vibration plates and there's a place for them, but the Juvent was specifically thought for lymphatic drainage. And after that, I went in the sauna. I knew about sauna use, you know, I've been listening to your podcast. It doesn't mean I was applying applying my knowledge. And that's really my problem in my own life is that, you know, how much time did I spend in a sauna in the last 10 years since we last spoke? I don't know. I did it like once a month, twice a month. It wasn't sufficient. And this is really what they told me is, Nick, look, you know, you could sweat more. And in my workouts, I do a lot of very heavy strength training. I do running, But it's not the same thing if you do it while relaxed, or at least that's my understanding if you do it and your nervous system is very— Yeah, yeah.

More parasympathetic state to enhance cellular waste removal. I am totally on board with the sauna, honestly, especially after reading Bill Gifford's new book. He co-wrote "The Longevity Book" with Peter Attia. He just released a new heat book. It's called "Heat." Heat span or something like that. Anyways, it was a good reminder about the multitude of benefits of a sauna. And yeah, I mean, I'm in there twice a day often. I do an infrared in the morning a lot of times post-workout and then a dry sauna in the afternoon. So, I sweat a lot, but you mentioned something earlier about microplastics in sauna. What have you come across related to that? Because I've seen Bryan Johnson's anecdotal data, but no hardcore data on saunas and microplastics.

Yeah, it was just emerging data. That's probably part of what I saw. I know the microplastic, the best data I saw is the accumulation of microplastic, not the elimination, to be honest with you. But I saw this headline on a scientific journal that said, you know, they tried to find how much microplastic is in the human brain. And identified we have on average one plastic spoon is my understanding. And you kind of saw this brain with a plastic spoon and I said, oh my God, is that bad? So, I don't know. I would love to see large-scale studies on like what is the best way to eliminate microplastics. Is it through sweat or is it through simply supporting elimination pathways? I know there's also something else that I think you might have experienced yourself, this plasma phrenesis. With certain clinics in Europe doing it frequently in patients and filtering the plasma, which is in itself, I think, in early research, but—

[Speaker:BEN GREENFIELD] Yeah, it's expensive. Plasma pheresis where you're filtering your plasma and then getting it replaced with albumin and typically like a nutrient mineral and vitamin IV afterwards, or inus pheresis is very popular in European biological medicine where they take the plasma out, filter that, and then you get your own plasma back. There's young plasma exchange where assuming the donor had low microplastics, which they're usually filtered and screened, you get your plasma taken out and young donor plasma. And then, there's the idea of just trying to approximate that, which some clinics are doing now. You take your plasma out, then you get the albumin back plus things like stem cells, exosomes, and biologics like peptides But as you can imagine, your starting point for the cheapest form of that is like $8,000 to $10,000. So, it's really not scalable. And then, with the sauna, microplastics are like 100 to 1,000 Daltons in size and your sweat glands can pass about 100 Dalton-sized particle. So, it's like, yeah, you could sweat a little bit of it out, but the larger more problematic particles, really comes down to either paying a bunch of money to filter the blood and plasma. Option B would be reducing your exposure and preventing accumulation. And then, the final option might be some of these newer companies that are developing gut microbiome-based products that you would consume that would allow the bacteria to produce postbiotics that remove the metals. But again, that's only from the gut, And that also wouldn't address your existing burden, kind of similar to the metal piece. So yeah, it's a problem. It's kind of like how big of a paycheck can you write to get rid of your microplastics, which doesn't seem fair, but that's kind of the best solution I've come across so far.

Yeah. And I hope, I mean, it's always like that with medical technologies. If it can start being more popular, maybe there are better manufacturing practices and eventually the price goes down to become affordable. I know that genetic testing is an example, but there's a lot of examples where technologies have become more powerful and maybe it can be something that can be sustainably used in populations. But I agree with you, it's discouraging if you see treatments that are exciting or have potential to save lives and it's $5,000, $10,000, it's simply too cost prohibitive for the vast majority of the population. But at least it's good to see that, you know, maybe these technologies will in the end be brought to the US. I know in environmental medicine, they wanted to take some of the biological medicine technologies from Europe and start seeing if there is the regulatory framework to bring them back. That's, they're always on the cutting edge. And another thing that they brought that I know you talked about several times, but they had me try this basically ozone and ultraviolet blood irradiation, UBI. So, what is it? Major autohemotherapy. So, essentially they did a little quantity, they extract blood, they basically add ozone in and then pass it through UV. And they had good results. I heard Some people at least seem to have a sort of body-wide infection that wouldn't go away and had immense results from this sort of therapy. But I know there is even an ozone movie being in the works right now about the pioneers of ozone research. So, that's another rabbit hole that I haven't gone into too much, but I know that there's something to it. Definitely. So, it's part of the tools that they have available at the clinic at a minimum.

Yeah, more specific to bacteria, viruses, mold, mycotoxins. Absolutely. And then, you can get a form of ozone dialysis where the filtration medium might remove some metals and potentially microplastics as well. So, there's kind of levels of ozone treatment like there are levels of plasmapheresis or blood filtration treatments. But yeah, the ozone piece I think is really good if you have a mold mycotoxin or even a Lyme-based burden. So, they did IHHT, like a LiveO2, they did vibration frequency, they did sauna, they did ozone. Were there any other kind of major treatments that were notable there?

One thing that some of them swear by is colonics. I'm still, you know, I have a no question mark about it. I mean, I, you and I, I think you've experimented with coffee enemas and yeah, I mean, yeah, I will admit guilty.

I do a coffee enema about twice a month.

Okay. I mean, if, if, if I was, you know, as diligent as I should be, I would do it every weekend. I don't know what it is to this day. And some people always raise an eyebrow, people laugh about it, but you know, I think there's something to it. The colonics part is, I don't know. I don't, I haven't even looked at the science around colonics. Maybe it's still in a controversial state, but—

[Speaker:BEN GREENFIELD] Yeah, it's kind of like the mechanism of action, you get increased peristalsis, move things through the digestive tract. If you're gummed up or constipated, it could help with that. And in the case of coffee-induced endogenous glutathione production, which we've already established might be important from an antioxidant standpoint. I think as far as speeding up toxin elimination and potentially something like plastic or metal accumulation through the stool. There is a plausible mechanism of action for it that hasn't really been established well in research because it's probably just difficult to do a large-scale human clinical trial on coffee enemas. But, when I say twice a month, I mean I wake up, I take an activated charcoal and zeolite-based binder, about a half hour later, I'm doing a coffee enema with good organic mold-free coffee, which is important, at the right temperature. And then, I go and sweat in the sauna for about 30 minutes after that. And, I do ongoing testing. I've always been pretty low in metals. Urinary or salivary rather microplastic burden has also been low every time I tested. And again, that's totally anecdotal. I don't know how much it's doing, but I can tell you you just feel bright and clean and alert and incredible the rest of the day after you do one of those things.

I don't know. To this day, like, I talked to one of my health coaches back in the days, Anthony DiClemente, told me, "Nick, you know, I've tried every machine out there. I've tried the most expensive supplements. I spent $50K on all these tools. And yet, the good old coffee enema makes me feel like, you know, it makes me feel incredible." So, I said, "Okay. Well, I agree with you." So, he had me do them and I agree with him. So, I don't know what it is. Maybe it's all in our heads, but—

So, what happened? Did you actually do a test retest to see how much this moved the dial?

We didn't test at the clinic. In fact, the heavy metal test came after we shot. So, my goal was to go to an environmental medicine clinic, show how they do things, what's the philosophy because I wanted to get all of this on camera and in the end, you know, I thought it was a good reflection of like how the philosophy of environmental medicine. But then when I got the results, I said, okay guys, we need to have a call. Like, what's up with that? Like elevated lead, where does it come from? What do I need to do? I started almost panicking, to be honest with you. So at this point, I just started on some of the protocols they recommended and it was a long journey, but I didn't feel much different for about about 12 to 14 weeks of doing certain protocols that they told me about. But at just before Christmas, it was in September, and just before Christmas, I started feeling much brighter and started getting, you know, clearer and clearer. And in the end, they did recommend to seek local help. So I started seeking one of the very rare environmental medicine physicians in Montreal, Dr. Vicky, and I started working with them. I found another doctor who could do chelation therapy in Ottawa because in Quebec, it's actually illegal to do chelation therapy at this point. It's been prone to controversy. Yeah.

I would imagine, sorry to interrupt, some concern about freeing up heavy metals and potentially via poorly administered chelation. I know some people have potential osmotic transfer of metals into neural tissue, things like that. I think chelation does justify some regulation, but it's not rocket science.

Yeah, exactly. I think in Quebec, it's just like my overall view of what's happening here by, you know, I live in Montreal still to this day and they're just very, very focused on mainstream medicine and kind of have this witch hunt against anything alternative. But there is decent evidence. To this day, I would never I would never dare recommend that anyone do chelation therapy without the use of a physician. I really felt the difference after a couple sessions and I started, you know, experiencing things that were very bizarre, like waking up in the morning and feeling motivated without anything having happened, or my ambition coming back, like, hey, maybe I could, you know, study this topic and And maybe I could have bigger objectives for my business. And it's something then I realized, wait a minute, it's been 5, 6, 7 years since I had these thoughts. So what's happening to me, right? So my brain kind of being different. And I remember, you know, meeting Dr. Chris Shade at a conference when I was at the Health Optimization last year in Austin. And he said, we kind of talked about my metal burden. And I told him, yeah, I have high lead, high mercury. He said, oh, okay. So you're one of these lucky people who is both depressed and anxious. And I said, yeah, pretty much sums it up. So I had like a psychological change, but even to this day, it's starting to get better and better and better. So what it made me realize is just like, I wasn't really focused on the right thing for my health. Focusing on performance was something fun for me, and I really achieved new heights in my physical performance as an amateur athlete. But is it what really mattered to me? Not that much. What mattered to me is to feel good, be present with my family, and think clearly. And I was just in a bad state mentally. Like, my brain wasn't what it used to be. And I swear I was able to write for about 2 hours per day, and then I was done. Feeling very unmotivated, a lot of friction from just my brain not being on the way I like it to be. And I didn't know what was wrong with me, but I can tell you when I started really focusing on detox and started sauna 3 times per week, I still to this day do 3 long sessions of 45 minutes. I sweat my butt off 3 times per week, no matter what. And a year and a half later, I'm getting constantly better. My body is still still, you know, aching. I feel like it's too much time at the computer. I could be better on like the physical aspect, but I do see a steady improvement in my brain function. And that has been kind of my, my North Star is, okay, how much can I get done? How much can I be present? What is my baseline of happiness? And it's much, much, much higher than before.

Yeah, I thought the, the documentary was pretty intriguing when it came to seeing firsthand what a lot of these protocols look like. And sure, there's certain things people might not have in their home like a LiveO2 or the right kind of vibration platform, but a lot of this stuff, having good stool movements, breathwork, sauna or sweating frequently, movement for lymph flow. I'm kind of a fan of daily detoxification rather than just effing yourself up and waiting until January 1st to do massive 30-day protocol. Yet, some people might find themselves in exactly the same shoes you were in, high lead, high mercury, high mold. And, I think stepping into a clinic like that to have a little bit more of a sledgehammer approach, if done the right way, is something that would benefit a lot of people. So, the shownotes, I'll put those at BenGreenfieldLife.com/EMFGuyPodcast. I'll also link to the documentary, the previous shows we've done on EMF. I still think your book is fantastic, the tinfoil hat one. So, I'll link to that. And, Nick, as usual, you're a wealth of information, man.

[Speaker:NICK] Thank you. I appreciate it. And, I can send people towards if they want to find a physician, there are a lot of clinics around the world in environmental medicine. There's the European Academy for Environmental Medicine that exists and also The American Academy of Environmental Medicine, or even the National Association of Environmental Medicine, all of them, you know, have sections on their website where you can find providers. There's, there's a lot of pioneers throughout the US that are often talking together in these organizations and helping each other. And to be honest with you, Ben, the only reason I didn't go to 3 or 4 of these clinics, because I know these physicians, it's just, I didn't have $150K in my back pocket. To film all of my experience. But I hope that people who watch the documentary are simply inspired to start taking things seriously. Like, okay, what could be in my body? Do I feel my, at my best or do I feel foggy? Because at 37, I was just in a bad spot mentally. And I just realized that a lot of my, you know, lack of motivation and ambition and kind of low-level depression a lot of it was due to just the accumulation that I had in my body and the wrong focus in my life. Should I run more Ks this week and go faster, or should I get rid of more toxins and feel happy? For now, at least, my priority is continuing to get my body in the right spot. And I feel like maybe a lot of people could resonate with that.

Yeah, well, I agree. And I think if you get a little bit of time this weekend, whenever you're watching this, check out the show that Nick made. So, I thought it was pretty interesting. So, Nick, thanks for doing this, man.

Thank you, Ben. Thank you for having me.

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