Environmental Toxins: The Hidden Threat to Health

Hi everybody, I'm Dr. Sanda Moldovan, periodontist and nutritionist. Welcome to the Holistic Dentistry Podcast, the show that gives you the tips and tools to detoxify your mouth for a healthier body as we explore together the root cause of disease. Remember, you're not healthy until your mouth is healthy, so take care of it in the most natural way. Welcome everyone to another episode on the Holistic Dentistry Show. I'm your host, Dr. Sanda Moldovan, and with me today I have Dr. Kelly McCann, a board-certified physician in internal medicine and pediatrics.

I'm a medical doctor. They have physical problems, but what we find along the way is that oftentimes they get to a point where they might hit a roadblock and we can't seem to get much better, get much traction with just doing physical world reality things like medication, supplements, lifestyle, even sometimes the nervous system work that a lot of people are talking about now, whether it's the vagus nerve or doing limbic brain retraining, things like that. Sometimes people need to look a little bit deeper at what their beliefs are, what their thoughts are about themselves, how they relate to their illness. Are they feeling trapped, victimized by their illness that may be perpetuating some of the challenges that they have? And some of the ways that I think about this is like, have you ever been in those cars that have the driver's assist?

Yes. As a matter of fact, the Tesla Model X, right? You put it on there, perfect.

Exactly, right? And it keeps you in the lane. And when you start to go out of the lane, Usually there's some feedback, right? I had an older Lexus and the whole wheel would shake. I was like, what the heck is that? Oh my goodness.

Exactly.

You know? So what if our bodies have a, you know, a lane sensing feedback loop too, right? We just happen to call them symptoms. So here's my, here's my theory about this, that we're all here for a purpose and our purpose is unique to us. And our life's job is to be who we truly are and to bring our gifts to the world in our unique and beautiful way. And when we are not doing that, we get feedback in the form of symptoms to our bodies. And those symptoms are really messages saying, hey, you're getting off track, you're getting off track, you're giving too much to somebody else, you're not being you know, loving to yourself. You're not following your heart's desire. You bought this idea from your parents or church or whatever that you're not supposed to be who you really are and you're getting off track because you are supposed to be who you really are, right? And yet what we do in Western medicine, conventional medicine, and sometimes even functional medicine is say, okay, well, we want to suppress the symptoms. Like we want to get rid of them. If you have high blood pressure, we give you an antihypertensive. If you're depressed, we would give you an anti-depression medication. But what if the symptoms are not supposed to be medicated away? What if it's just feedback, right? And if we could actually look at that feedback and say, okay, how is it that I'm not showing up in my life in a way that I really, really want to? And what would my life look like if I showed up how I really want to? Be in the world. The way that I see it is the symptoms are the message. And the beautiful thing that I think a lot of people don't talk about is that the body is the map. Where the symptoms show up, how they show up, gives us a clue as to what the work is, what the dysfunction is inside of ourselves. If we have blockage in our heart blood vessels, doesn't that make sense that maybe we're not energetically open and loving and the love is not flowing into our hearts the way that it could be? If we have a thyroid issue, well, the thyroid sits right over the voice box, right? What if we're not speaking our truth? The thyroid also happens to be between the head and the heart. And what if our head and our heart are not in sync? Wouldn't it make sense that it would show up here? And sometimes it's not that simple, but that's the basic idea that I think I think we have a lot to learn from listening to our symptoms rather than trying to get rid of them and avoid them.

Yeah, definitely. I love the way you put that. Now, a lot of our mutual patients have Lyme disease with mold and other toxins. How do you go about— what is your diagnostic process like for someone like that?

Yeah. So for when somebody walks in the door and they've got this laundry list of symptoms, you know, I'm not going to the spiritual side first. I'm really wanting to help them feel better, because that's why they're there, right? Help them sort out what is the problem, take a good history, uh, and then pay attention to my own intuition as well as what they have to say to me. There typically is a hierarchy. When patients show up and they have lots of sensitivities, right? I might be suspicious that they have Mast Cell Activation Syndrome. That has to be dealt with first. I have to be able to calm down the immune system enough so that they can tolerate any other treatment. Treatments, because if I try and detox them from mold or detox them from heavy metals, or, you know, even treat the Lyme disease and they have mast cell and they're hypersensitive, we're not gonna get anywhere. So really calming down those mast cells is primary. And then generally we go after the mold next. And honestly, Sanda, there is so much mold in California. Really? So much mold. We do not build well. We build You know, they throw up buildings overnight. And if it rained for a month before they finished it off, they don't cover it up. They don't let it dry out. They just finish it. And you've got wet wood underneath your beautiful pristine house that you paid, you know, $3 million for, right? And then we love our, we love our sprinkler systems and we love our greenery and we put it right up against the foundation of the building. And then we have to use sprinkler systems because it doesn't rain for 6 months out of the year. And those sprinkler systems hit the house. And now we have a continuous source of moisture and mold loves moisture and wood and paper, which is what we, what we build with. We have a huge, huge mold problem here.

Oh my gosh.

Yes.

That's kind of shocking because, you know, California, I think it's a sunny, dry place, not a place for mold. So, uh, obviously if the cause is somebody's house, How do you deal with that?

Well, as a medical doctor, I'm not really dealing with the building aspect of it, but fortunately there are folks who are trained in it. There's a wide variety of caliber of mold inspector. There are some mold inspectors who are fantastic and there are some who are great, just like there are great dentists and doctors and not so great dentists and doctors. So please, buyer beware, do your research. But there is a professional organization called the International Society for Environmentally Acquired Illness. It's a mouthful. So we call it I-S-E-A-I or I-C-I.org. They keep a list of vetted indoor environmental professionals who have the credentialing and the understanding that mold and these different environmental chemicals can make people sick. And so they know how to inspect the house, they know how to test, and they know how to write up a report for a mold remediator to then come in and fix the house. You don't want your inspector to be the same person as your remediator because they have a conflict of interest. You want your inspector to just do the inspection. So having a good mold inspector is, is important. But if you don't wanna, you know, shell out a couple thousand dollars because you're not quite sure if there's a problem, there are, you know, kind of do-it-yourself ways. And I can go through those if you want.

Oh, okay.

That's good.

And what's the process like to help someone with mold toxicity detoxify?

Yeah, good question. First, we do a baseline test. So I happen to use a combination of things, but mostly I do urinary mycotoxin testing. So mycotoxins are non-living metabolites of molds, and these are the parts that are causing the illness and the inflammatory response in a lot of people, and they can be measured in the urine. And they've used this worldwide, but more recently in the United States to identify mold toxin illness. It's not a perfect test because sometimes people can be really sick and they could be mold exposed and they're so sick they can't get rid of the molds and so you'll toxin, so you're not gonna see any in the urine. But for the most part, we do see some in the urine, especially if they have a history of it. And so then we track that over time. The things that we're using to help people get the mold out, glutathione actually is one of my favorite antioxidants. It also happens to bind a lot of chemical toxins like mercury, as well as mold toxins. And there's medical literature to support that. We use some binders, things like charcoal and clay to grab them in the GI tract to help escort the, the mycotoxins out. And then one of my favorite nutrients is actually called phosphatidylcholine or PC for short. And that's a building block of our cells that when you take it orally, um, it actually washes out the mycotoxins which are attached to our cells. So I love PC. It's fantastic for mold illness, any sort of environmental toxicant exposure. It's been used in Europe and Asia for decades. There's lots of medical literature to support its use for all sorts of detox protocols. It's also the building block for the lining of the gastrointestinal tract. It's important for our mitochondria. So PC is essential in my mold protocols. And then we tend to do a a lot of antifungals and we can do antifungal nasal sprays. We can do antifungal medications or herbs, and then, you know, support the pathways and support them for the detox, sauna, coffee enemas, colonics, things like that.

Oh, very nice. You know, one of the things that came to mind when you're talking about mold is that mold can also be underneath ceramic crowns that are bonded in. I've taken out actually some crowns and, you know, especially if somebody's going for a full mouth of veneers or crowns, The most severe case I've had is actually a patient. She was in her mid-40s and root canal teeth. And when I took out the crowns, they were all moldy underneath.

Oh my goodness.

And she had high mold levels. And, you know, after finding this out, she was actually able to detoxify from mold and her anxiety levels went down quite a bit.

I bet. And hopefully you let her know that her house was probably moldy too.

Exactly right. But in the mouth, you know, It's one of the places where it's moist, it's warm, so I mean, the perfect environment for mold.

Right. And even though you wouldn't think it can grow on the ceramic material or the different materials, mold is very, very malleable and, you know, it can grow on dust, it can grow all sorts of places, all sorts of crazy places. So, wow, that's quite a story.

Right? Especially on like dead tooth structure. It's still organic, so I guess I suppose that's why it takes the moisture there.

Right.

Now let's talk about Lyme disease. I mean, I see more and more young patients in my practices in Beverly Hills and Newport coming in with Lyme disease, and some of them don't even remember being bitten by a tick. So do you see that? Do you see an increased number of patients with Lyme?

I do. I do. You know, I think that I have a couple of theories as to what's happening there. In environmental medicine, we talk about the total load. And I think this is an important concept to understand. So some people are born with like huge sinks. Their body can take it all in. They can party like rock stars and they don't have a problem and they die in their 90s in their sleep, right?

Yeah.

They're very lucky. They've got huge sinks and big drains and they can tolerate whatever, whatever the exposures they have. And then there are a lot of people that have very narrow sinks and tiny little drains. The drains get backed up very quickly. They can't tolerate things. And then they overflow, they have symptoms. And, um, and because there are so many environmental chemicals in our world today, plastic, everything is made out of plastic. Um, you know, our personal care products are chock-full of chemicals. We're are bombarded by hundreds of thousands of chemicals on a regular basis, and it's dysregulating our immune systems and making it such that we can't fight these infections. I think the infections have always been there, um, or they are more likely to be there and be prevalent, but our immune systems are keeping them in check. This is one potential theory. The other potential theory, of course, is that with global warming, there's been a spread of the environment for the ticks and And people are getting bit. They don't know that they're getting bit because the nymphs, the baby ticks, are like the size of a poppy seed. So how are you going to know if there's a little poppy seed on your ankle for 24 hours and it falls off and you don't notice it? And so you don't have a recollection of a tick bite. The other possibility is that, you know, moms had these infections, they got pregnant, didn't know, passed it on to the baby. And then that environmental exposure history from all of the environmental chemicals is, you know, going back to that suppression of the immune system. What I tend to find is that these things happen in layers and we may never know where people are getting these infections. I, I like to also point out too, that many of the chronic infections that we think about as related to Lyme or being co-infections with Lyme, such as Bartonella, which is otherwise known as cat scratch fever, which gives you the clue that maybe it's not just tick-borne, right? So we can get it from a cat. Cat, we can get it from a bite or scratch. And did you know like 70 or 80% of feral cats have Bartonella?

Wow. I had no idea.

Yeah. Yeah. It's very common and the cats are asymptomatic. So you have no, no suspicion that the cat is sick. You're playing with the cat, it scratches you and all of a sudden, you know, you're sick and you have no idea why. And I don't see acute cat scratch fever ever. I mean, I think I've heard of one or two cases in my, my lifetime of practicing medicine, but I've seen a lot of Bartonella. And Bartonella is far worse than Lyme in my book, far worse. And it gets so much less press because it's transmitted by mosquitoes, lice, mites, ticks, cats, and it causes so much more problems, so many more, so much more pain and suffering than Lyme disease. So not everybody who has Lyme disease has had a tick bite. And even the medical literature will tell us that in some studies, between 9 and 50% of people have— or 9 and 30% of people have a recollection of a tick bite, something like that, who have been diagnosed with Lyme. We don't have to have a recollection, we don't have to have a bullseye rash. And unfortunately, many people are diagnosed in the chronic stage.

Now, is Bartonella a parasite?

It's actually another bacteria. The parasite kind of in that collection of ones that are talked about is Babesia. Babesia, I think about it like the North American malaria, although it actually has a worldwide distribution far broader than malaria. And I don't know about you, but I have never met a person who's never had a mosquito bite.

Yep. I haven't either.

So we're all at risk potentially.

Yeah. And probably some people are carriers, but they don't have any symptoms. Exactly. Some people are miserable.

Right. And I think that goes back to this like total load idea, as well as even the, you know, kind of mind, body, spirit pieces that we're talking about. So if people have a belief that, you know, that who they are is not okay, or that maybe they don't deserve to be here, or maybe they have to do and please others to win affection, they may be more susceptible immunologically because their belief structure is suppressing their own immune systems. Absolutely.

I like what you said about total load because that's the way we look at, when we look at cavitations or root canals, uh, that are infected or infested, as I like to say, it's part of that total load. That you talk about. It's like, I think our body only can handle so many microbes. And a lot of my patients who come in is like, I was fine until one day when this happened and I was completely bedridden. It's that one drop that kind of spills the bucket. And, um, also with cavitations, all I'm doing is just taking off some of the load, taking off some of that microbial population that's in the body that shouldn't be there.

Right. Yeah. I think, I think you're really right. And the patients don't necessarily understand that idea, but hopefully through podcasts like yours and more self-education, they'll come to realize that there was stuff lurking underneath. It's like long-haul COVID, you know, I thought I was healthy and now I have a long-haul COVID. Well, there was stuff there. That's why you fell off the cliff.

Yeah. So true. Diagnosing these type of infection, is there a better test?

Yes. Um, so there are a couple labs in the country that are far more reputable than simply going to LabCorp or Quest or other commercial labs. And even amongst functional labs, there are some that are better than others. I have found that Igenex out of Palo Alto is probably the gold standard in the United States. It's a much more expensive test, but having done this for quite some time now, that's really the test that I found to be most reliable. There are a couple of other tests that are good. There's one called Infectolabs, which originally was founded in Germany, and then they have a branch in the United States. MDL Labs is also a medical diagnostic lab, is also decent. Stony Brook out of New York. New Yorkers have a really tough time because you can't get Igenex tests. You can't do a lot of the functional labs in New York, but Stony Brook has decent testing for Lyme itself. And then there are a couple of ones that I just think are hogwash. I'm not gonna name names, but suffice it to say, I really, I really do find that the IGeneX test is the most reliable.

Okay. Yeah. Thank you for sharing that. I know we have a lot of people that are listening with, you know, maybe even undiagnosed Lyme disease. So let's talk about that, or, or like Bartonella. So what kind of symptoms people could have from these? Type of infection?

Yeah, good question. All sorts of symptoms. So the hallmark kind of classic Lyme symptoms, in addition to fatigue, would be migrating nerve pain, migrating joint pain, migrating muscle pain. And so oftentimes people complain like, oh, this week my right knee really hurts and it's blown up and I just, I can't walk very well. And then it goes away. And then I have like left shoulder pain and then my hands hurt and Oh, so it seems like this weird, wacky migrating symptoms that happen. Sometimes the symptoms can be more persistent, but there is often this migrating component to it as well for Lyme. With Bartonella, um, I tend to think of that one as more presenting with pain and pain that is persistent. There's also some, what we call kind of classic, almost pathognomonic. So when people tell me the bottom of my feet hurt, A lot, getting out of bed and walking around the bottom of my feet kill. That's Bartonella. That's it. That's been Bartonella. Bartonella also can have a lot more neurological manifestations, migraines, headache, anxiety. I see palpitations. Yeah. This like mood irritability sometimes with Babesia, the parasite, a lot of brain fog. People can also get even some shortness of breath. They're, they're not hypoxic. Like they check their oxygen, their oxygen is good, but they just can't really catch a breath. Brain fog, dizziness. You can get all sorts of, all sorts of symptoms. Many of the lists of these symptoms are several pages long, single-spaced. Wow. So it can really impact any system of the body. And oftentimes people feel really crummy. They just, they feel like they're getting the flu. There can also be some cyclic nature to this where you might feel okay for a week or two and then you just feel really bad. So you get these flares as well. They're, they can be really debilitating symptoms.

Yeah. Um, so given how complex and chronic some of these illnesses can be, what mindset or daily habits do your successful patients tend to adopt?

Good questions. You know, the way that I like to think about it is Well, congratulations, you have Lyme. And guess what? You learn how to live a healthy lifestyle and we can get you better. And you can manage it. You can get to the point where you can manage it with a healthy lifestyle. And by that, I mean, you have to eat right. You can't eat like crap and expect your immune system to be resilient. You need to get good sleep. You have to have a reasonable amount of activity. You have to learn how to manage your stress, whatever that looks like for you. And that the congratulations is also that as a result of making all these healthy lifestyle choices, you're going to have a healthier life. You're going to have more longevity. You know, you are not going to make choices that are going to bring you down because you won't feel well when you do that. But as a result, it really is an opportunity to be the healthiest version of yourself.

Yeah, through breakdown comes breakthrough.

Exactly, exactly.

Yeah, I want to talk a little bit about, uh, environmental toxins and especially, you know, in the mouth that we have so many different dental materials. A lot of times we tend to focus on mercury. We know mercury is an environmental toxin, not just in food and fish, but also in dental amalgams. How do you like to test for something like this? That somebody is burdened, let's say, with, with these kind of heavy metals.

Yeah. So metals, the thing about metals is if we look in blood, we're looking at current exposures. The half-life of mercury and lead in blood is, let's say, 60 days, right? So if we're finding it in blood, there's a current exposure. Oftentimes with mercury, I will find those current exposures from fish eaters. They tend to have much higher current exposures. But yes, absolutely, you can get them from your mouth. And then, then we do urine tests too. So a urine test will also tell me current exposure, but then I find the best test to understand total body burden, what's in the body, is by doing a provocation test, which includes giving IV chelators. Chelators are molecules that will grab the metals, that have a higher affinity for the metals than the metals do have for the tissues. It grabs those metals and then they can be safely excreted out of the body. And then after you are given the chelators in the IV, you collect urine for a certain duration of time afterwards to then be able to see what did the chelators provoke, grab, and excrete in your urine. And from that we can extrapolate what is your total body burden, how high are your levels in the urine as evidence as to what might be in your body.

So what else comes out other than mercury when you're doing a chelation like this?

So what we're looking at when we're looking at those are all the different metals. So it would be like antimony and aluminum, cadmium, lead, gadolinium, uranium, most of the arsenic, most of the toxic metals. And we do see a lot. There's some, you know, that aren't classically thought of as, as toxic metals. Cesium. Yeah. Uranium, thallium. There are a couple of other ones and we do actually see those. I see them a lot in my California patients because I think a lot of the water used in the Central Valley is from fracking water, and so it's contaminated. Even if it's, even if it's an organic farm, we really have to think about the source of water that they're using to, to water the vegetables, the crops, right? And and it's showing up in, in the, these tests. Lead and cadmium. Lead comes from leaded pipes, which were banned for use in the '70s. Leaded gas, same thing. So I tend to see a lot of lead in my older patients. The other big source of lead is actually shooting ranges. I see it in my policemen and my gun enthusiasts, unfortunately.

Now, can somebody protect themselves? Let's say somebody is a policeman or they like to go to the shooting range. How can they protect themselves? From, from, or maybe what if they do come in contact with it, how can they eliminate it better?

That's a good question. The problem with these metals, and mercury in particular, I'll talk about because this is a dental program. The half-life of mercury in the body, in the blood, is 60 days. The half-life of mercury in the brain, 30 years.

Oh my God.

30 years.

And it is a neurotoxin.

And it is a neurotoxin. The Mad Hatter was mad because they used mercury in hat making. That's why he was the Mad Hatter. Oh my gosh.

So can we really get rid of mercury once it's in the brain?

You know, that's a good question. I'm not really sure. I'm not really sure.

You can't really dissect the brain to see what's going on.

Yeah, and you know, if you have a leaky, leaky cross the blood-brain barrier, which would not be ideal, then perhaps, you know, I'd have to do a little bit more research if the chelators cross the blood-brain barrier. There is, and they may or may not, so it may be that you only, if you have a leaky brain, can you actually get the mercury out, which is really not a great thing. There is something called ORS, or which I've heard older environmental dentists talk about, but it's not FDA approved and it's very difficult to get your hands on. But it's one of those chelators that's supposed to be magic. So I don't know, to be, to be.

So one of my podcast guests, previous guests is Dr. Kennedy and he actually has this water purifier that I've taken myself to help detoxify. Even though, you know, we, we remove mercury safely when I take out a tooth or, you know, sometimes it's inevitable that I might get contaminated. So I do take it.

Yeah. Yeah, that's a good thing. It's just quite pricey, that little tiny thing. It's so true.

Yeah, for a little jar like this, what is like 2 ounces, I think it was like $500 or $600.

Oh yeah, his prices have gone up. It's $800 now.

Oh, it's $800. Okay.

Yeah. So avoidance is key, people. Avoidance is key.

Definitely. So once you identify that somebody has had high levels of mercury from a provocation test, Yes. Let's say their mercury levels are high and they have mercury fillings. Would you do a chelation first to bring their level down, or would you send them first to get the mercury removed?

You know, when I first started out, I didn't know this, but yeah, you need to, you need to get the source of the mercury exposure out as much as possible. Because I think what would happen is if you just keep chelating somebody, is it going to keep coming out of the the amalgams and then depositing elsewhere in the body. And that's just a terrible idea. So really, I would only do a provocation with somebody who had mercury in their mouth. And then I would stop and say, okay, your mercury levels are high. Let's see what's in your, what's in your mouth. You need to go see a biological dentist and get that removed and then come back. And then we'll, we'll keep going.

Now, do you prefer like IV chelation to help somebody detoxify, oral chelation, or It depends, you know, IV is preferable for a variety of different reasons.

The DMSA, you can take orally to get the mercury out, or a compounded version of the DMPS, which is the sulfur-based compounds that, that can get the mercury out. But most people don't just have mercury, right? Most people have all the other metals, and all the other metals are really only going to be taken out by the EDTA. And EDTA is not bioavailable, meaning if you take it orally, it's not really gonna get into the body enough to grab those metals. The DMPS or the DM— I'm sorry, the DMSA, the oral DMSA can get some lead out of this soft tissue, but it doesn't get lead out of the bone. So if you are just doing DMSA, you're working on the mercury, you're working on some lead, but not really getting the rest of the metals. And so I, I do prefer the, the IV chelation so that I can do the IV EDTA. As well as the DMPS.

Okay. So you do oral and IV kind of simultaneously?

Combined. Usually it's the IV followed by a couple of days of the, the DMSA to continue to get out as much as we can, right?

Yeah. Are there risks of chelation?

Of course. You know, when you get an IV, there are all the risks associated with getting an IV. With With the, the DMPS and the DMSA, if people have a sensitivity to sulfur, they can develop a reaction to those compounds, which is, it's problematic. And sometimes what happens, they will start to develop, like, they'll get mucous membrane involvement. So they'll get an IV with the DMPS and the next morning they'll wake up and they're like, my lips kind of hurt. My mucous membranes and other places kind of hurt. And that's the first sign that they're having a problem with the sulfur. I've tried to give lots and lots of molybdenum to help balance that out and to mop up that sulfur, but it doesn't, it doesn't always work. So that's one of the downsides. If people don't recognize or report that they're having symptoms and they keep getting the IVs, that reaction gets worse and worse. Full-blown mucous membrane involvement is actually called Stevens-Johnson syndrome, where it can, it can be life-threatening. I've never seen it get to that, but it can definitely get uncomfortable for people.

I mean, of course there's side effects to keeping these, um, you know, heavy metals in your body. So of course it's a process to get them out. And it took years for a lot of people to accumulate, you know, as we go through life, we keep accumulating toxins.

Yes. Yes, we do.

So how often should someone check for their levels of toxicity?

You know, it's a really good question. I mean, I think if people generally feel well— oh, by the way, sauna actually is a great way to help detox from metals as well as many other chemicals. So, you know, like a healthy lifestyle incorporating, you know, kind of routine detox support, like doing saunas and taking your antioxidants and things like that, can really go a long way. So people generally feel pretty well, you may not to do— may not need to do vigorous testing. And one of the other challenges with toxicity testing is that there aren't a lot of great tests. They're not very extensive. I mean, heavy metals is one of the tests that we can do that's pretty good, very reliable. It's been around a long time. So we can do things like that. But if somebody's sick, they're not gonna, they're not gonna tolerate chelation. I don't do chelation on my patients until they're like 70% better. And most of my patients are not well enough to tolerate chelation. I'll check blood levels of lead and mercury to give me an idea. I have a young man whose mercury level— I'm sorry, whose lead level is 9. Like, what do you, what do you do? Right?

Yeah.

Where is this coming from? Turns out, yeah, he's a gun enthusiast. He goes to the shooting range a couple of times a week. I was like, oh my gosh, why didn't you tell me? Yeah. So this poor kid, I've now taken away one of his new hobbies because his lead levels are poisoning his brain. And just by the way, there's no safe level of lead in the body at all, ever. So a level of 9 in a 30-something-year-old is not, not good.

Yeah.

That's a tough one.

This has been like incredibly enlightening here. Thank you for going into all the detail. I think a lot of Questions have been answered here. Any other advice that you have for people, how to keep like a healthy life, how to prevent this toxicity to build up in the body?

Yeah, I think it's really about avoidance, like we've been talking about, is so important. For example, plastics are ubiquitous. Yes. Everybody drinks out of a plastic water bottle. We think nothing of it. Everyone goes to Starbucks and drinks their hot beverage through a plastic sippy cup. Oh my goodness, we all do it. And when plastic is heated, there's so much more in the way of plastic particles that get into the body. So really being interested in self-educating yourself about what are the things that you can actually have control over. There's a lot in the world that we don't have control over, but we have control over our personal care products, we have control over the beverages that we drink, the food that we eat, the people that we surround ourselves with, like choose non-toxic friends, right? Yes. All of those things we can choose to live a healthy lifestyle, and those things will help us improve our resilience so that we'll be less likely to get sick.

Yeah, that's great advice for sure. Just be mindful of the choices we make every day. Well, let's talk about this particular test called MicroGenDX, and you brought it to my attention. I'm curious, you know, how you use it and what do you use it for?

Absolutely, Sanda, this is such a cool test. I'm so glad that you asked. I love talking about it. So right now, when we have an infection, we can take a scrape, put it under the microscope, take a look. We can send something for culture, and then we sit around and we wait. And when they get the specimen at the lab, they literally take a Petri dish and they smear that thing on, or if it's a urine analysis, they pour the urine on and they watch it grow on that Petri dish. That's our gold standard for today to identify that we have an infection?

Really? Terrible.

That's ridiculous. That was, that's been around for over 100 years and that's our gold standard. So 50 years ago, some brilliant person developed something called PCR. PCR is when we have a probe of DNA of a specimen. So say we know that there's, you know, I'll use names of bacteria that you might recognize, like E. coli. E. coli causes a lot of UTIs. Probably not a lot of E. coli in your mouth, but I can't pronounce a lot of those mouth bacteria.

So, um, so we use PCR testing for oral DNA as well, by the way, for all bacteria.

Right, right, right. So that, that idea has been around for a long time, but the PCR is only as good as the number of probes you have. If you have 100 probes, you can look for 100 organisms. And we know there are tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of organisms, and there's certainly more than, you know, 100 in your mouth. Most companies don't have the technology to look at all this different PCR, right? So what these folks did is something called next-generation sequencing. So they literally flipped PCR on its head and said, okay, rather than use a probe, let's look for all the DNA in the specimen and match it against a library that we have of tens of thousands of organisms so we can really identify what's there. And then not only that, based on the medical literature, we know what these bacteria may be sensitive to. It's not perfect, but it's better than nothing. They can also test for fungi. So you can do a swab, you can do dental, um, dental floss. You can do a swab. If we're looking at other areas of body, you can do a sinus swab, urine test, semen analysis, and look for different bacteria and fungi that are in those areas and get a report back in a couple days of exactly what's there, the percentage of what's there, and what those antibiotics what antibiotics or antifungals will kill it.

That's amazing. I could only think of uses for the mouth for this particular company and test.

Yeah. So, so great. I mean, there are a couple companies out there that are doing a little bit of this with PCR and then they make some recommendations like, here, you need our oral microbiome product. But I found it to be tremendously helpful. I had one young woman, she had super sick thick, salty saliva, and it was just really, really bothering her. She also had brain fog and fatigue and Lyme disease and joint pain and mast cell activation. So she had all these other things too. But one of her biggest complaints was this weird mouth thing. And I had just learned about this test and I was like, hey, why don't we do this test? And when we got to the—

Did she do like a cheek swab or saliva?

She did it herself. I just sent— I just had the company send her the kit. She— I think she used, um, like dental floss and sent in the dental floss.

Okay.

And we get these test results back and I picked an antibiotic regimen that would cover what was in her mouth and also help with the Lyme disease. And I kid you not, this kid could barely function and now she's like 90% better. She feels fantastic. She doesn't have any Lyme symptoms. Her mast cell symptoms are very stable. She's weaning off all of her mast cell support. She feels fantastic. And her saliva is normal. She's so, so happy. And I, I really don't think I would've gotten her to that point without that test because the regimen that I chose was a little bit of an oddball regimen for Lyme disease, but it covered what she really needed in her mouth.

Wow. That's really a great share. Well, Dr. Kelly McCann, it was such a pleasure to have you on our show.

Thank you.

I'm going to include your Instagram and Facebook below for those of you that are interested in learning more. They should follow you or go to your website to learn about environmental toxins and chronic illnesses.

Thank you so much, Dr. Sanda Moldovan.

And to everyone, thank you so much for joining us on today's show. Until the next one, stay healthy. Thank you so much for joining me this week. Please make sure you check out the show notes for any links mentioned in the show. If you like today's show, please invite your friends to listen as well. That would mean a lot to me. Do you have a question you'd like me to answer? Message me on Instagram @DrSandaMoldovan. This is Dr. Sanda Moldovan, and remember, your mouth is the gateway to your health, so take care of it in the most natural and best way possible.