Glyphosate - A Global Health Threat, with Stephanie Seneff | The Empowering Neurologist EP. 127

that this chemical is, I think, the primary reason why the US healthcare system is in such a mess. You know, we have by far the most expensive healthcare system in the world, and we're getting really bad results in terms of life expectancy and all the different chronic diseases that we suffer from. Our healthcare system is failing. And, you know, if we appreciate the fact that it's failing because we're really sick because we're being poisoned all the time, it makes a lot more sense, really.

Well, hello everyone. I'm Dr. David Perlmutter. Welcome again to The Empowering Neurologist. Thanks for joining us. We're going to have an interesting discussion today about a topic that is really quite polarized in our modern health-related society, and that is The safety of glyphosate. Glyphosate is the active ingredient. It's an herbicide active ingredient in products like Roundup that people may use around their homes to get rid of weeds. But more importantly, 150 million tons of glyphosate are applied to the crops in America that we, we then consume. You know, it's been estimated then that that's 1 pound of glyphosate each year for every single person living in the United States. So there are certainly individuals who want us to believe that glyphosate is safe. Most of them have some connection with industry. And then there are certainly those who are calling out glyphosate as being a powerful health threat, one of whom is Dr. Stephanie Seneff from MIT, who's written a new book that we're gonna talk about today called Toxic Legacy: How the Weed Killer Glyphosate Is Destroying Our Health and The environment. She's got a lot of data that we're gonna talk about. She's going to describe for us the mechanisms by which glyphosate is threatening, how it affects the microbiome, how it acts as a chelating agent, a lot of different things that glyphosate does, how persistent it is in the environment, how it gets into not just the foods that we eat, but our drinking water and even the air that we breathe. Very interesting discussion. Put your seatbelts on for this one. So here we go. Hello, Dr. Senef. How are you doing?

I'm doing fine. How about yourself?

Doing very well. I just finished reading your book. I want to first thank you for taking the time to be with us. Thank you for the effort that it must have taken to create this work. I think it's very, very important. I want to do everything we can to get as much of this information out to the world because I think it's so darn important. I'd like to start off, if we could, by just asking you, how did you get started on your interest in glyphosate? I know you talk about it in the book, but I want to share that with our viewers.

Yes, I mean, it's quite interesting, really. I got interested in autism, actually, way back when I had— my best friend at the time had a child who, a young child who got a DPT shot, ran a high fever, had seizures a week later, and was later diagnosed with autism. Kind of planted a seed in my mind about autism, you know, when the child was severely disabled. Many, many years later, 2006, 2007, I was watching the numbers go up. They were going up exponentially. They still are. So it's very sobering to think about the rates we're going to have in another 10, 15 years if we just keep doing this. Autism is a very serious problem, and the government doesn't seem to want to pay attention to it. They seem to think it's just, you know, we're diagnosing it more. They're ignoring the problem. I wanted to figure out what was causing it. Around 2007, 2008, I looked into the vaccines quite deeply. deeply, as well as into all kinds of other chemicals in the environment. I didn't think of looking at glyphosate because it's safe. Everybody knows it's safe. It's Roundup. You don't think about it. But it was just fortuitous. I was sort of frustrated because I was learning a lot about autism, its relationship to the gut dysbiosis and the mineral imbalances and deficiencies and toxicities. I mean, there was clearly— things were messed up in the autism. The metabolism of the autistic kids is really disturbed. And I thought, something's got to be doing this, and I just don't know what it is. And that was just by chance that I happened to be at a conference where Professor Don Huber was giving a talk on glyphosate. This is in 2012, I think September 2012. He was a retired— he is a retired professor from Purdue University, an expert in plant pathology and plant physiology. And he was warning the world about this chemical that we've been overlooking that's much more dangerous than we thought. And he gave this 2-hour presentation and talked about the soil bacteria, the gut bacteria, the same thing, messing them up, chelating the minerals and preventing them from being taken up appropriately in the plant, in the human. So he was always drawing the analogies between what's happening in the plant, what's happening in our body. And he basically laid out the missing links for all the things I was looking at. I was thinking maybe these kids are getting a lot of antibiotics and they're messing up their gut. Well, glyphosate is a patented antimicrobial agent. You know, it just fit like hand in glove. And I was just amazed by that presentation. And I immediately dropped everything else I was doing and just started reading everything I could about glyphosate. And then everything I could about the diseases that are correlated with glyphosate and just started building the story. And I've never stopped since then. It's just been an amazing journey. And I'm more convinced than ever that I'm right at this point. And it's just astonishing that we could let a chemical like that go on for 40 years, 45 years. and not notice that it, you know, it's a primary cause. It's not the only cause. We have lots of chemicals. I'm not saying it causes everything, but it is a major player. And mostly because it's considered safe, people use it carelessly. People can use it in their lawn on the dandelions while their child's playing. They don't really think much of it because they don't realize it's toxic. But it's also all over the food supply. And we love it because it makes our food so cheap. And we've got this whole setup now with the way we do agriculture that's going to be very difficult to unravel. So we're kind of in a bind once we acknowledge that this chemical is, I think, the primary reason why the US healthcare system is in such a mess. We have by far the most expensive healthcare system in the world, and we're getting really bad results in terms of life expectancy and all the different chronic diseases that we suffer from. Our healthcare system is failing. And if we appreciate the fact that it's failing because we're really sick because we're being poisoned all the time, it makes a lot more sense, really.

Well, Gregory Bateson once said that man is the only animal who will befoul his own nest, a sure sign of madness. I kept thinking about that quote as I was reading your book. We had a lot to dig into and lay some groundwork here, and you opened with autism. I think for our viewers, they're probably pretty used to our discussions of the relationships between what goes on in the gut and autism, that there are obvious measurable changes in short-chain fatty acids. There are obvious fingerprints that take— Right. That are available of what the microbiome bacteria specifically look like, what happens to specific species in the group Clostridia, for example. We've talked in the past about, at least in the animal model, reversing symptoms of autism by using BFRAG, the work of Dr. Elaine Hsiao at UCLA. But let's just very carefully talk about glyphosate, which apparently affects only plants and not human cells. So I really want you to go through that. That was the messaging that opened the door for glyphosate being safe for one and all. Let's use it around the globe. Let's modify the seeds to make them Roundup-resistant because glyphosate doesn't affect human cells.

Right, I mean, that was the line that we were given, and that sounds so beautiful. We don't have the pathway, we don't have the enzyme. So there's a specific enzyme in a specific biological pathway, really important to basically all the plants, and we don't have any of that in our cells. They don't have the genes for it, they can't make that protein. So how can we possibly be affected by glyphosate? It's so wonderful because it's specific to this plant. Enzyme that we don't have. And of course, what you overlook is that our gut microbes have that enzyme, use that enzyme to make essential amino acids for us, the aromatic amino acids, which are so important not just for building proteins, which of course would be enough already, but they're also the precursors to so many important biologically active molecules, including all the neurotransmitters— dopamine, serotonin, melatonin— the skin tanning agent melanin, thyroid hormone, B vitamins. And then there's also all kinds of exotic molecules that the plants make that are beneficial to our health. When you eat a plant-based diet, you get all these wonderful polyphenols and flavonoids. Those things all come out of that pathway too. So it messes up the nutritional value of the foods that we eat. And then it also messes up our gut microbiome, which then disturbs so much of our metabolism. And then we just get completely out of whack with So many different metabolic pathways.

So let me just, if I can step that down just a little bit, the message we were given was that this shikimate pathway, which is what glyphosate targets in plants to get rid of weeds, isn't an issue for humans because our cells don't contain that pathway that the glyphosate can disrupt. However, what you just told us was That bacteria that live within us that we depend upon to make our B vitamins and our neurotransmitters and to maintain the integrity of our gut lining just happen to have that pathway that is disrupted by this weed killer, and therefore it really does represent a threat to us through that mechanism.

That's right. And of course, not only does it disrupt their ability to supply those things for us, but it disrupts them. So you have the particularly sensitive microbes, which are the lactobacillus and the bifidobacteria. Those 2 are really the primary bacteria that get a whole— they take over the gut in the infant gut. The infant gut originally used to be almost all bifidobacteria back in the day when they were just drinking breast milk. And I wrote about that in my book. It was quite amazing back in 1920, 1930 when they looked at the— analyzed, they had almost pure bifidobacteria. But now they don't. I mean, they have all these other microbes because the bifidobacteria are really, really hurt by glyphosate. And there was a lovely paper that showed that. And they looked at all these different microbes, and bifidobacteria were practically completely wiped out by the glyphosate in the experiments that they did. Whereas other pathogens like Salmonella and Clostridia are much more sturdy against glyphosate. And so they get an edge. And then they overgrow in the gut and get the inflammation, the leaky gut, all this follows. Your immune cells get in there and start doing stuff and messing you up, you know, and things get out of balance.

So what you said in the book is that the research makes it clear that the good bacteria, if we can make that conclusion here, that good or healthful or bacteria that are doing good things for our gut, like maintaining the gut lining, are more sensitive to glyphosate as opposed to pathogens. So we're really selecting out bad bacteria when we are exposed to glyphosate. But hey, I'm not exposed to glyphosate, am I?

I wish it were true. You'd have to live on a different planet, I think. Maybe Bhutan. I've had my eye on Bhutan as a possible place to move to because they're mostly organic. They're still eating the kind of food we used to grow back in the early 1900s without chemicals. I mean, it's very few countries that aren't. America is a leader. We consume 20% of the world's glyphosate. glyphosate with 4% of the world's population. So we get much more here per person than almost any place else in the world. Brazil might be a close second, but we're the worst.

Interesting. And when we look at, uh, urine evaluations of, uh, broad spectrums of population, what do we find in terms of the percentage of individuals who actually show evidence of glyphosate?

I think it's probably quite high, and I don't know the actual percentage numbers, but, you know, there've been some studies that have come out and they've There have been studies that have very clearly linked the glyphosate. I'm actually really surprised that they could see the signal in simply doing urine tests, like, you know, a urine test on a population. And there's one study— I can give you a couple examples, and one of them was liver disease. And so glyphosate is clearly causing fatty liver disease, which is an epidemic today going up dramatically. And they— and a study has shown that with rats, with levels of glyphosate exposure below regulatory limits, Rats developed fatty liver disease in one of the experiments that they did. Humans, they had this group of people they studied, they had— they put them into 3 categories: severe fatty liver disease, milder cases of fatty liver disease, and no fatty liver disease. 3 categories. And they found a statistically significant difference between the levels of glyphosate in the urine of the people who had the fatty disease versus the ones who didn't. And even within that group, the extreme cases versus the lesser cases, there was a statistically significant difference in the level of glyphosate in the urine. I was quite surprised by that because the urinary levels are measuring mostly what's happened over the last couple of weeks. So, you know, if you've— it's probably got a lot of variability. So I was suspecting the noise would be too high to see the signal, but that was not the case. And there's another study that just came out, amazing study in my opinion. They looked at pregnant women and they measured the amount of glyphosate in the urine in the mid-pregnancy, I think around 4 months timeframe. They measured the amount of glyphosate in the urine of these pregnant women. And then they have a test, and I didn't know about this test, but there's a test you can look at the genitals of a girl, a baby girl, and you can measure a distance. It's called the anourinary— it's the distance between the— anogenital distance. There you go. Specific measure. And that measure apparently links to testosterone exposure in utero. And then they found a correlation between the amount of glyphosate and that distance in these baby girls. And that having a big, a long distance, which means excess testosterone exposure during pregnancy, is linked, very strongly linked to polycystic ovary syndrome. And that is another epidemic that we're facing right now. So many women are having trouble getting pregnant because of this PCOS, which often messes up your periods. It's a very big disruptor of your endocrine balance that you see as an adult manifested by the exposure to testosterone in utero. It's quite fascinating. And it's a clear link because glyphosate disrupts cytochrome P450 enzymes. That's been shown in rat studies. And aromatase is a cytochrome P450 enzyme, and that's the enzyme that converts testosterone to estrogen. So it's extremely clear how this would happen given glyphosate exposure. So it all makes sense, you know, but it's—

I mean, you did a wonderful job in at least mechanistically laying that out, that glyphosate does affect aromatase and as such would, could lead to this hormonal disruption that you talk about with ever-increasing incidence of PCOS we see in our society, now the number one cause of infertility. Right. And with clear evidence as well that there's a strong a microbiome disruption that's really quite common. And interestingly, that may just have a metabolic play as well. We've seen some preliminary reports that reestablishing glucose sensitivity via a ketogenic diet has some role to play there. Mm-hmm. And it takes us back. And the relationship I would just offer up is the role of a good balance of organisms in the gut as it relates to metabolism. We know that there's certainly dysbiosis that characteristic of insulin resistance of type 2 diabetes with actual interventional research now treating type 2 diabetes. At least one researcher in Amsterdam using fecal microbial transplant with success, reported success. So it really is a powerful connection to the gut and the microbes with the damage to these organisms, the particularly the helpful ones. based upon targeting that shikimate pathway that they contain with glyphosate. But there's another, before we drop that, before we get to the chelating aspects of glyphosate, let's just talk a little bit more about the relationship through the microbiome and gut permeability and immune stimulation to the ever-increasing incidence of autoimmune conditions. I mean, it's been estimated that as many as 60 to 80 million Americans— have been diagnosed with a bona fide autoimmune condition. We've talked on this program before about underlying chronic infections like Lyme and other issues that may relate. But I think you, you have a card to play as it relates to this hand.

Absolutely. Yes. And I think it has to do with, in part with certainly glyphosate, but glyphosate messing up the body's ability to metabolize proteins. It starts with that. And that's partly the gut microbes because the lactobacillus that I mentioned earlier, they have several different enzymes that specialize in separating proline from the other amino acids in the chain. So casein and gluten both have a lot of proline. Proline is a difficult amino acid to— it's very— it doesn't want to detach. And you need specialized enzymes to pull it away from the other amino acids. amino acids in the chain. And these lactobacillus have all these specialized enzymes that we don't have. So we rely on the lactobacillus to help us to break down the casein in milk and the gluten in wheat. And so when the lactobacillus are being killed by glyphosate, which they are severely affected by glyphosate, they can't do that. And so those proteins don't get broken down. So you have these peptide sequences that survive the digestive process, and those things are very allergenic. So it causes a the gut to react by producing zonulin, which is an enzyme that opens up the gut barrier. And there's actually a paper, a couple papers, showing that glyphosate causes this upregulation of zonulin in the gut, which opens up the barrier and causes what's called leaky gut. The cells separate from each other, things can get through the cracks, and in particular these peptide sequences that didn't get digested can get through the cracks. Of course the microbes can too, so you get sort of stuff going into the blood that isn't supposed to be there. And this causes alarm bells in the immune system. So the immune cells start attacking these proteins and they develop antibodies to these peptide sequences. And then through this process called molecular mimicry, where the sequence in the bacterial— whatever the protein, whatever protein in the food or from the bacteria that the immune cells are reacting to, has a sequence that is very similar to a sequence in a human protein. And then the immune cells that develop those specific antibodies, they have— they're nearsighted. They don't quite recognize this isn't quite the right sequence. Sometimes it's actually exactly the same, the sequence. But even with a few errors, it looks enough like the other one that it binds to that too. But that happens to be some important human protein. And when it does that, attacks that protein, and it can cause a lot of nasty diseases that are autoimmune diseases like multiple sclerosis and celiac disease and Hashimoto's thyroiditis and lupus and all those things.

To name a few. The sequence was that they developed this, that glyphosate was developed, originally patented as a chelating agent for pipes that carried water. Then ultimately it was found it could be, not ultimately, but it was found that it was a powerful herbicide. And then even after that, because based upon its ability to kill bacteria, it was actually patented as an antibiotic. But having said that, the sequence then was such that Monsanto believed that to vertically integrate, they would create plants that could be sprayed with glyphosate that would not be damaged, and therefore farmers could spray their crops with this weed killer, the crop, the soy, whatever it would be, would survive, and yet the weeds would die. Sounds like an amazing business plan to me. But that said, there is this sense that people will say, well, GMO foods are safe. There's never been any real science to indicate that there's something wrong with GMO foods. But doesn't that kind of just sort of— Sidestep the whole glyphosate story?

I totally think that. In fact, when I first started studying glyphosate, then I was aware there were all these activists against GMOs, and I felt like they were missing the boat because the GMOs are enabling the use of the chemicals, and it's the chemicals that are the big problem. I'm not saying the GMOs in and of themselves are harmless, but I think the glyphosate is far more dangerous than the GMOs that are designed to, to protect the plant from it. The actual GMO engineering is not nearly as damaging to our health as the effect that it has to allow the plant to be exposed to the chemical. And the amazing thing is— so first of all, when they studied glyphosate to see if it was safe, they studied it in isolation. They have all these extra things they add to it in the formulation. It makes it much more able to get into the cells, much more toxic. And number 2, when they studied the GMOs to see if they were safe, they studied them without exposing them to glyphosate. I was really shocked when I read that. They knew that if they exposed them to glyphosate, they'd be toxic. So they said, well, we'll just grow these things organically. And then sure enough, they didn't seem to have a problem, but they missed the reason why they're toxic. They totally left it out of the experiment.

I highlighted that in the book with a big asterisk because again, to show that the GMO plants, feeding them to animals was safe, they did exactly what you said. They didn't spray them with glyphosate. And that's the issue. They somehow felt that was, They wanted to have a good study, so they didn't spray—

Right, very pure. Just question— the question is, is the GMO safe? It doesn't— it's not asking the question, is the glyphosate you're using on the GMO safe, you know? And I suspect they knew the glyphosate wasn't safe, but they didn't want to find that out, so they didn't want to formally find it out.

So is non-GMO necessarily going to tell you that there's no glyphosate residues on the wheat, for example?

That's a loaded question, isn't it?

You know it is. I'm leading the witness here.

Yeah, the wheat is amazing. And actually, you know, when I started seeing the celiac disease and I was thinking it was going up, I was thinking, oh my God, that's probably glyphosate. And I knew it wasn't. You know, wheat has never been— and they have a GMO wheat, but the farmers refuse to use it. And I was, you know, so I was kind of puzzled, how are they getting glyphosate in the wheat? And then I realized, I looked and I found that they spray the wheat with glyphosate right before the harvest to kill it. They do it as a desiccant. Works very well, especially if you're up north. So Canada probably uses this technique more than we do. They're facing a frost, you know, they've got to grab the crop before it gets ruined by the frost. They can accelerate the rate at which it matures and they can get those seeds to come out when they spray it with glyphosate. The plant, as a last gasp, it goes to seed, synchronizes the harvest so everything goes to seed at the same time, increases the yield, and then it also makes the stubble, easier to clear because it just kind of kills it quickly. It dries out. That's why it's called a desiccating agent. Works great. The trouble is that the glyphosate goes right into the seed, and you get really high levels of glyphosate in those crops that have been sprayed right before harvest. Of course, it's very recent. Right before the seed is taken as food is when it's getting all that glyphosate added to it. So you get actually much higher levels on average of glyphosate contamination in these non-GMO foods that are sprayed right before harvest. And that's been shown experimentally.

And again, a take-home here for our viewers is, yeah, it's non-GMO, whatever. It says it right on the label, but that's not a guarantee that it's glyphosate-free or that—

Absolutely not. No, it's—

Because glyphosate's used as a drying agent. But what about if it says certified organic?

It's much better, but it's still not a guarantee that it's free and they're not allowed to use glyphosate. So if they're following the rules, they're not putting glyphosate on those certified organic However, glyphosate's in the rain. It could be a neighboring farm where they're spraying it, and drift is going to bring it over. So it's impossible in this country, I think, to guarantee that there's no glyphosate in your crop, even when you are being conscientious about not using it. Probably the manure as well, because I don't know— I don't think they require organic manure for organic crops. So if you're using manure that's derived from cows that are getting lots of glyphosate—

Circle of poison. Let's— I know you didn't really cover cancer very much in the book, and there was plenty else to talk about, but I think we, to be fair, let's just go with Dewayne Johnson here for just a moment.

Oh, I'd love to, yes.

And tell us his story.

Yeah, it was very sad, actually. He's a lovely man. I've met him in person. He's got a lovely family, young family, young boys, and he was in his 40s when he was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. His job was to manage schoolyards in California, and he controlled the weeds in the schoolyards. These are children's schoolyards, right, by using glyphosate to control the weeds. That's already like, oh my God, glyphosate with children. Glyphosate was the only chemical he used in his job. He had had some trouble with his equipment, so he'd gotten sprayed with glyphosate in some incidents where the equipment wasn't working properly. He had very clear evidence of glyphosate exposure, and really no evidence of exposure to any other chemical. A lot of the times, the farmers are exposed to so many chemicals, each company blames the other chemical as the reason why they're sick, and they all get off the hook. That's a game they play. But here, there weren't any other chemicals, and that's part of why it was a very powerful story. It was a jury trial, and the jury awarded him really a lot of money. Most of it was damages. Monsanto lying about their product. And so that was a huge part of the award. And it was something like $283 million. It's been a while.

Then reduced, I think, to— what was it, $23 million or something?

Yeah, it kept getting reduced. It got reduced immediately by the judge through some kind of rule, regular rule about California's laws. And then it's been appealed. These cases never end. There have been 3 now. Big cases with 4 people. One of them was a couple, both of whom had non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. There's Hardiman, Hardiman I think was his name, the second case, and he just recently had— they went to trial in upper court and Monsanto lost. That's just brand new news. I just heard about that. Hardiman or something like that, the second case.

But now the World Health Organization actually has gone forward and characterized glyphosate as a probable human carcinogen, have they not?

Yeah, it's the IARC, International Agency for Research on Cancer, I think, IARC, which is part of the WHO. And they declared glyphosate a probable carcinogen actually back in 2015. And I think that's why these cases, why the lawyers even dare to take these cases to court, because it's always been— the company works very hard to make sure papers don't get published that, you know, show show their product in bad light. And as long as those papers aren't published, the lawyers don't have a legal case. And so there's a game on.

So Dr. Spernoff, the, the World Health Organization, uh, or a, a part thereof, has declared glyphosate a probable human carcinogen such that we are still using 150 million tons on, uh, on our crops in America. each year, equivalent to 1 pound of glyphosate per human living in the United States.

Right.

1 pound of glyphosate per year. So I'm trying to labor through that disconnect. The World Health Organization saying this likely causing cancer. Dr. Stephanie Seneff is telling us that the incredibly increasing rates of autism may be related to glyphosate now affecting some estimates as much as 1 in 40 kids that are born. I mean, these are individuals who are destined to require assistance for their entire lifetimes. 1/40th of our population.

It's shocking numbers.

All of this is shocking, and yet business as usual. I did a little Instagram clip from our hardware store a couple of weeks ago. Walked in, they were having a sale, and they had the Roundup stacked to the ceiling.

That's awful.

And, you know, in my neighborhood, I watch people spraying it in their driveways.

I know, I have that problem too.

No gloves, no mask, nothing.

Yes, it's so dangerous.

And from there, where does it go?

Right, well, so, you know, and it sticks around a really long time in the environment. That's coming out more and more as well. There's actually a lot of good news, good news from my standpoint. In the last few years, papers have been coming out left and right. I think finally people are realizing this chemical is not trivial because I think Because we were told it was so safe, it was kind of stupid to study it, right? Because why waste your money studying something that's safe? But now that it's become clear that it's an endocrine disruptor, it has effects at very low levels, and it lasts a long time. And so Monsanto was kind of saying, you know, oh, it's so great because you get a little sunlight— Biodegrades. Biodegrades really quickly, gone in 2 weeks. You know, this is kind of the message we're hearing, both in our body and in the soil. Goes away very quickly, this is such a great chemical. Certainly not true. And in fact, there's a brand new study just I just heard about it a few days ago that in Canada where they studied glyphosate in the forest and they actually in the tissues of the trees in the forest and they had sprayed it like 12 years ago and it was still there.

Yeah.

So it lasts a huge long time under certain circumstances.

Well, I think that we have to present what the paradigm is. One would think that here in America that certainly there is some due diligence done on these products before they're released upon the public. And the reality is, It's just the opposite. They are innocent until proven guilty, and it's up to people to show the risk. Things are released with no oversight. And I mean, you think about what happened finally with lead. Right. It took so long, but finally it happened that we finally— the evidence was just so overwhelming that finally people did something. But I guess to me and to many of The other people who are listening have our ear to the ground. The evidence right now with respect to glyphosate is profound and vast, and yet it continues on business as usual.

I know. I don't know what it takes to wake up the government. And I would think the government would be really concerned about this, especially the autism, because when those kids grow up, if we have 1 in 40 with autism as adults, it's going to be a huge burden on this society. And then meanwhile, we'll have another crop of autistic kids coming up in the next generation. It's It's unthinkable what that's going to look like. And for the government to not even notice that it's happening just is so puzzling to me. They should be spending every dime they can get on trying to figure out what's causing this autism. And in the book, of course, I write a lot about autism. That is where I started. And the more I look, the more it becomes so clear. There's all these papers now, for example, on propionate. And propionate is a short-chain amino acid— I mean, short-chain fatty acid. That is produced by the gut microbes and that is associated with autism in many different papers. That propionate, if you even put propionate into the brain of a mouse, you get an autistic mouse. So it's very clear it's connected.

Yeah, I think you're referring to the work of Dr. Derek McFabe in Canada. And we've actually had him on the program and demonstrated those videos, which are quite compelling. And, you know, To be fair, propionate gets in all of our brains as one of the 3 major short-chain fatty acids. It's more the ratio. And it absolutely gets right back to what you were talking about in terms of overgrowth of Clostridial species with suppression of other species that would have otherwise created more of a balance in the short-chain fatty acids just based upon that weak link in the chain, that shikimate pathway. Yeah.

Right. And it's been shown experimentally that glyphosate causes the gut to be acidic. And under acidic conditions, the gut microbes produce more propionate and they produce less butyrate. When you get a slightly— I mean, I'm sorry, it's basic. Glyphosate makes the gut too basic. So it's like 6.5 instead of 5.5. Doesn't sound like a lot, but it's a huge difference.

That is huge.

In the pH in the gut.

On a log scale?

Yeah. And it has a huge impact. And butyrate is what the Gut colonocytes, those R cells that line the gut boundary, depend on butyrate as a primary source of fuel. They love butyrate. Butyrate goes way down when the pH goes up. That's just because which microbes like which pH. The guys that like the acid can't live because it's too basic. Then they're the ones who make the butyrate. When it gets basic, you get a lot of propionate. You get that imbalance. And then the propionate is very clearly connected to autism. So it works very beautifully as far as glyphosate has been shown to cause the pH to go up. And then the acetic acid, acetate, also goes down.

Yeah, and I think we're just beginning to look at the epigenetic play of these, of the shifts in the short-chain fatty acid, how they may affect gene expression. You're very vocal, have been for years. You wrote a series of papers describing the mechanisms back in 2015 with correlations to autism and other autoimmune conditions, especially thyroid issues. What kinds of pushback have you experienced over the years?

A lot. I mean, I'm still labeled as a kook by some of the mainstream folks. Oh, good.

We should have an annual meeting.

Yes, it's, you know, they just think I'm just crying fire irresponsibly, I guess is the way to say it. That I'm alerting people to a problem that doesn't exist. And that that's bad because I'm misleading. It's basically what, disinformation you call it? False news? But

who's really manipulating the narrative here? I mean, we see how the narrative— we saw it happen with Sugar and fat in terms of medical messaging. And now we're seeing how aggressively industry is manipulating the whole narrative surrounding glyphosate. And yet they've agreed to— what is the settlement that they've allocated for the 100,000 lawsuits? It's in the billions.

Yeah, it's $10 billion. $10 billion. They're trying to put together a settlement for $10 billion as a class action lawsuit. And I think it's still struggling, there's still some issues that they haven't quite signed it yet. I think it's way too little, I mean, for what they've done. And they're hoping to get off the hook as far as setting up some committee that's gonna study and is gonna find that glyphosate's perfectly fine, and therefore nobody can ever sue them again. They're hoping to set up something like that, and the other side is seeing through that scheme and not letting them do that, as far as the last time I checked on that. It's hard to keep up with this political game.

There was a fair amount of literature that came out of, I believe, France, showing the carcinogenicity of glyphosate, with that literature subsequently being suppressed or at least, uh, or buried or at least, uh, derogated to some degree.

Right. I mean, of course it was, it was actually very good timing for me when I first came back from that lecture. And then it was Seralini in France, Professor Seralini and his team. They've done some really great work and, and they had just published a paper which I read immediately after I got back from Don Huber's presentation. And that paper was really what really clinched it for me. I was like, okay, I'm going after this, because it showed for the first time that low-dose glyphosate over the lifespan of the rats caused all kinds of problems. And it was interesting because after 3 months, the rats were doing okay. They had a control group and the exposed group, and it was a low level of glyphosate, which in the past they'd always done high level of glyphosate. So they'd say, well, it's ridiculously low, it's going to be perfectly fine. Absolutely fine, but it wasn't. After 3 months, the rats were fine. They looked okay. After 4 months, they started to get sick. By the end of their life, they had a shortened lifespan. The females had massive mammary tumors. The males had kidney problems and liver problems. They all had reproductive issues, shortened lifespan. I mean, it was a mess after the entire lifespan experiment. That was really kind of a holy cow experiment, because that really exploded. exposed glyphosate as being something you need to worry about at low levels. I think that paper was a milestone because after that paper, there have been many, and more and more recently, as I said, there have been many papers that have started to look at glyphosate at low levels. They never did before. It was always very high levels. Glyphosate is an endocrine disruptor. That's very clear at this point. Now all these papers are coming out and showing disruption of the hormone systems in all kinds of problems. And even multiple generations, epigenetic effects that show up when the pregnant rat is exposed to glyphosate at small levels, doesn't even hurt the rat, the pups are fine. By the 2nd, 3rd generation, you start to see all kinds of problems. It's really, really fascinating. Epigenetic effects where it goes straight for the germ cells in the fetus. So that's already the next generation. And those germ cells remember that exposure in utero. And then they act on it much later on and produce these offspring that have problems.

You mentioned in vitro study of human breast cancer cells being exposed to a dilution of glyphosate of 1 part per billion, which is a— Trillion, trillion. Well, I guess it was 1 drop in an Olympic-sized pool.

Yes, right. Tiny, tiny amounts. That's quite a dilution.

And yet it accelerated their growth.

That's right, that's right. Yeah, it definitely encourages cancer cells to grow. And there's another paper that showed that it's a primer. So when you have other known carcinogens, if you also have glyphosate, then those carcinogens become— have their carcinogenic effect much faster in the presence of glyphosate. It's an enabler to cause other carcinogens to kick in sooner. Contact. And that happens a lot with these chemicals. They really are synergistically toxic, which is another concern. We never study them in combination. All the studies are in isolation.

Well, that said, typically glyphosate is not really even generally available in and of itself. It's generally part of a mixture. So how does that affect how it works in terms of some of the concerns?

Yeah, and that's some of Seralini's studies have shown that the formulation is hugely more toxic than, especially acutely toxic, that glyphosate by itself, if you have, if you design your experiment right, glyphosate can't get into the cells and you don't see much of effect. But with those, with the formulations, they put other chemicals in there that enable the glyphosate to be taken up by the cells. And these are sort of chemicals that disrupt the cell membrane, open it up so the glyphosate can get in. And then those chemicals are toxic in and of themselves, and they make glyphosate much more toxic than it would otherwise be. And when Monsanto did its studies way back when, it only studied glyphosate in isolation. So they've learned how to make formulations over time that are more and more toxic to the weeds. So they've introduced new formulations of Roundup that have augmented stuff in there that makes it more toxic to the weeds. And they're not thinking about, maybe they are, but they don't want to think about the possibility it might also make it more toxic to us.

I'm hopeful that our viewers are getting this because this needs to stop. I mean, we can't let this continue. This is, as you mentioned, toxic to us, that's for sure. But the implications, at least of the rodent studies, in terms of what's gonna happen to future generations, I think is, gosh, it's certainly worrisome. Let me shift gears for a moment. And originally glyphosate was developed as a metal chelator. And I think you spent quite a bit of time in your book talking about that there are some implications based upon how it chelates metals in terms of human health. So first, tell us what it means to chelate metals, and then let's relate it to some concerns.

Right. It basically means that it binds very tightly to the metal and holds it so that it can't do what it would normally do. And we have all these minerals that we need in very small amounts, trace amounts of manganese and zinc and cobalt, you know, all these wonderful minerals that are— and they're often— those minerals are both toxic and deficient at the same time with glyphosate, because glyphosate disrupts the whole transport system for how you manage them. The body has these sophisticated mechanisms, carrier molecules. For example, heme carries iron. And you have cobalt, cobalamin carries cobalt. So you have these different ways of taking these minerals and incorporating them into interesting molecules that can transport them and deliver them where they need to go effectively and safely. Because iron, of course, is very reactive. if it's just out in the open. But then you have iron, like ferritin, you have various molecules that specialize in transporting iron and delivering it to the various organs and the various cells that need the iron to do their job. All these enzymes that are— these minerals are catalysts for various important enzymes. And glyphosate basically binds really tightly to the enzyme, to the metal, and hangs onto it. And that also changes the metals. For example, aluminum, I think, is a very serious worry. Arsenic and aluminum, both of them, They're a +3. They don't react. They stay at +3 all the time. Other guys, the ones that move around in their oxidation state, their valence state, from +3 to +2, like cobalt and iron, they have interesting properties that help to make reactions take place. But aluminum is basically inert in that sense. It can't make reactions take place, but it can really mess things up because of that +3 charge. And it gets into places and binds to things. It causes Alzheimer's disease. It's also linked to autism. There was a study that showed high aluminum in the autistic brain. Chris Exley had a really interesting paper about autism brains postmortem, where he showed unusually high levels of aluminum in the brain. That's been linked to Alzheimer's as well, very clearly. I actually wrote a paper together with colleagues about the idea that glyphosate is actually studies that show theoretically that glyphosate would wrap up— 2 glyphosate molecules would wrap— would hide the +3 charge of the aluminum atom. They would bind to the aluminum and form a circle around it like a cage. That would make a neutral molecule that would be very easy to cross the gut barrier because the +3 charge interferes with the aluminum's ability to get past the barrier. Once you have the leaky gut and the aluminum molecule that no longer has the charge it can get past much more easily and it can go into the brainstem and cause— disrupt the brainstem nuclei that way. And there was a paper that was published from some Sri Lankan researchers who argued the same thing for arsenic being carried to the kidneys by glyphosate to cause kidney failure in agricultural workers in Sri Lanka. So it's a principle that's applied to both of those metals, arsenic and aluminum, that have similar properties. That glyphosate basically, it drops it off when the, when the pH goes down. So it carries it very tightly with the high pH, and then when the pH goes down at the terminal watershed in the kidneys and in the brainstem, it drops it off. So both the aluminum and the glyphosate separated become very toxic at that point.

So, Dr. Steniff, we live in Southwest Florida. We are downstream from Lake Okeechobee. You know where this is going. We are downstream from, from big sugar, which uses a lot of glyphosate. I know we're seeing higher and higher levels of cyanobacteria, all kinds of issues that we've never seen before. What is going on and what is the risk that we are experiencing?

Yes, it's very sad what's happening there because Florida has such a wonderful environment there for the birds and the, and the The manatees and the dolphins, I mean, all these wonderful species that are living in this now very, very toxic environment. I've been watching Florida for quite some time. I believe glyphosate is a major player in that whole mess that you're seeing there with the cyanobacteria. In fact, I wrote an article together with Jennifer Margulis. We published an article on the web on the topic of those manatees, which you probably know the manatees are dying this year in record numbers in Florida. The dolphins are also suffering from actually Alzheimer's disease. They're getting dementia. And I think that those are both connected to the glyphosate. The glyphosate is used on the sugarcane. It's also used in the waterways to control invasive weeds. And it's used on the beautiful homes that have these gorgeous yards. They're using glyphosate too. And all that glyphosate is getting into the waterways. The cyanobacteria actually are really smart. They can completely metabolize glyphosate and use its phosphorus atom as a source of energy. source of phosphorus, and that really promotes their growth. They're clearing the glyphosate in the process of growing, but then they're creating a food source that really messes up the entire food chain. They block the sun because all this algae grows. The cyanobacteria provide nutrition. They make the nitrogen sources that allow the algae to grow. Then you get this massive algae overgrowth, which blocks the sunlight, and then the plants underneath— They're not getting enough light. Can't get enough sun, they can't grow, but they're also being exposed to glyphosate as well. So the manatees eat these plants that can't grow because the sunlight is blocked, but also because the plants are being exposed to glyphosate. And then the manatees are getting exposed as well, and they're getting sick and dying. It's a very, very sad story in a beautiful place.

Well, we have a manatee— I have a family of manatees that lives right in, I would say, our backyard, but right outside the seawall. But you mention in the book how one study demonstrated that what may be related here is a chemical called BMAA.

Right.

That is produced by these cyanobacteria that's found to accumulate in many of these dolphins that are dying and washing up on beaches when they postmortem look at their brains. So this BMAA has, there are some researchers and at least one clinician that I'm aware of, they, that feel that BMAA may be playing a central role in things like Lou Gehrig's disease.

Yes.

I would say possibly contributes to Alzheimer's in humans. But if you are a follower of Dr. Dale Bredesen, as am I, you realize there are many factors that can tip the brain over to being a feedforward event as it relates to neuronal degeneration. But that said, in the just couple minutes that we have left, let's spin this so we can know what we can do. I mean, where do we start? What can we do to protect ourselves? And even more importantly, after we're protected, then what can we do to support you and to get the word out that this has to stop?

Right. Now, the obvious thing is to buy only certified organic food when you shop at the grocery store. And luckily in the United States, it's becoming more and more available. I've been watching Whole Foods. Luckily, we have a Whole Foods near our house, and we buy almost all of our groceries there. We buy everything organic, certified organic, and their supply is getting bigger and bigger over time. And that's really nice to see. So we're getting the message. The United States is not able to make enough. We have to import a lot of our certified organic food because our farmers are not producing it. We need to fix that. And I'm hoping that the farmers will start to see that first of all, that they're getting sick because they're being exposed to these chemicals, and then to think that if they could convert their farm to certified organic, they could make— they could sell their product for more money and they would be a lot healthier. And so I'm hoping that there will be motivation on the part of the farmers to change their ways through consumer demand. And so I think the best thing anybody can do personally is to switch to certified organic, both for their own health and their family's health, but also for to encourage the farmers to grow certified organic food.

Well, the threat of toxins on farmers, I think, was talked about multiple times in the book. But the one that really I remember most is how your grandfather was found.

Oh, that was so tragic. Yes, I remember that very well. I was 14 years old. And he was— so he had a farm and he grew peaches and apples. We went there several times to visit. I always enjoyed his farm. They had pigs and peaches and apples, and it was quite fun. We would sell the fruit at the apple stand on the highway. It was a fun childhood experience for me. But he was found dead on his tractor with a bag of DDT that had broken open. He was in his early 50s when that happened. That planted a seed in my brain at a very young age. Rachel Carson's book, Silent Spring, shortly after that. It came out right around the time when I was 14 years old, and I read that book. I think that had a deep, deep impact on me. The combination of my grandfather and that book was probably what led me to where I am today.

We're grateful that it did, that there's an upside to that painful experience and trying to right the wrong. Great to see you again, and congratulations on the new book. I'm certain this is going to really move the needle and it needs to move the needle. And, you know, there's so many of you out there now that are working towards this goal. We've interviewed Jeffrey Smith a number of times.

Yes, he's been great.

Yeah, he's terrific. And I just want to thank you for joining us today.

It's been my pleasure. Thank you so much for having me and thank you for the work you do to help to get the message out.

Thank you. Talk soon. Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

quite a bit today, didn't we, about glyphosate? And, you know, you may wonder what we do moving forward. I think Dr. Seneff certainly outlined an action plan for us, and I am gonna be on the side of the science on this one, indicating that I truly believe that doing our best, for example, to buy organic foods and to continue to do our very best to avoid exposure to glyphosate, especially as it relates to what we might use around our homes, Yeah. Is extremely important. I do believe, like Dr. Seneff, that this is a clear and present danger, a danger of significant importance threatening not only our lives directly, but the, the whole vitality of the biosphere. So hope you enjoyed the program today. I know I learned an awful lot. Thanks for joining me. I'm Dr. David Perlmutter. Bye for now.