Why My Barber Thinks I'm A Freak (& Crazy Health Discoveries You Can Get From Your Hair, Your Urine & Your Stool).

In this episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness Show.

That's where we're all getting this stuff. And it's unavoidable in our toxic environment. We've got 100,000 chemicals in the environment. There's dozens of metals being drudger up from the earth's crust, from industry. Coal burning can go on and on. We just accumulate this stuff over time. People that are supplementing with iron or eating enriched flour, this is a form of iron again, they're like iron flanks. Our body can't use them and it builds up in our body and causes various problems.

He's an expert in human performance and nutrition, voted America's top personal trainer and one of the globe's most influential people in health and fitness. His show provides you with everything you need to optimize physical and mental performance. He is Ben Greenfield.

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Hey, folks, it's Ben Grief Greenfield. And I think the lady who cuts my hair thinks I'm a freak because every time I visit her for a haircut, I've got this little envelope with me, and I'm politely requesting that she save a few clumps of my hair clippings for me to put in an envelope and mail to my friend who is a guest on today's podcast. Her name is Wendy Myers, and I don't just send her my hair because she has some strange Ben Greenfield hair fetish. She's actually an expert when it comes to something called hair mineral analysis. And actually, she doesn't stop there. She does urine and stool analysis, too. So actually, last month I sent her everything. The hair, the urine, the stool, all the goods. And she was actually able to delve into and find a whole host of really interesting health information that we're gonna delve into on today's show. So if you're interested in how you can test your body, the things you can find out about mineral ratios, metals, just basically how to delve into the details of your biomarkers in a really interesting way, this episode is going to be quite up your alley. Wendy is a functional diagnostic nutritionist, and she's a certified holistic health coach, and she's the founder of a website called live to 110, even though I think it should be named live to 180. Kind of. Kind of an Underachiever, Wendy. I'm just saying, I've heard there's people out there who are. Who are targeting 600, 700, 800. I mean, why stop at 110, right?

Well, that URL was taken live to180.com yeah.

Oh, really? Was it?

A lot of them are.

That's funny. I didn't realize. Oh, 110 sounds pretty good. And, Wendy, we've talked a lot before different health conferences and fitness conferences, and I see you at places like Paleo Effects. I know that you're really kind of immersed in this whole process of analyzing people's body based on the strange parts of their body that they send to you, like their hair. So anyways, the first question that I have for you is basically the big raised eyebrow that I get from everybody when I tell them that I do hair mineral analysis, because they say that it's not really a reflection of what's actually going on inside the body because it's hair or it's dead or it's cut off. So can you explain in kind of scientific terms how hair analysis actually works?

Yes, and that's a reasonable doubt that people have, especially if someone's coming from a medical field or whatnot, and they just don't know anything about hair mineral analysis or they don't know how to read it because it's not what meets the eye at all. So you have to know how to read and analyze the hair mineral analysis for it to be of any useful information. And hair mineral analysis is, you know, it's used in all of the sciences. You know, hair mineral analysis uses mass spectroscopy, icp, that's inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry.

Okay.

And mineral testing by atomic absorption spectroscopy was developed almost 100 years ago, and it has been and continues to be the standard way to test for minerals in geology, agriculture, plant and animal and human tissue studies. And it is also the standard method of environmental mineral testing used throughout the world. And, you know, as a test, htma, or hair tissue mineral analysis, isn't perfect. There's no perfect test. It's simply a screening test, a tool that gives me a lot of information about the state of the body. And it's kind of like a treasure map that tells me where to dig further. It's almost like a blood CBC panel that's just a screening tool. It tells you where to dig further, where to investigate further. And so it's not like I'm using this in and of itself. I do other metals testing because hair mineral analysis by Itself doesn't measure all of the metals, but it's where I like to start because it gives me so much information. But some metals come out in the hair, some in the urine, some in the stool. That's why I want to do all three tests, ideally simultaneously, at least the urine and the stool. And this gives me a complete picture of someone's toxicity and hair testing. I like it because it's a long term test. It shows three months of what's depositing or being excreted into the hair as opposed to the urine and stool, which is just a 24 hour test.

Okay, got it.

So this mass spec, basically you get my hair and it's getting sent off to a lab that's putting it through a mass spectrometer.

Absolutely.

Okay.

And the mass spectrometer just basically the way that I understand that, because I used to have to run those machines a couple of times in labs in university, was it'll take different chemical species or different ions and separate them based on their mass. I think it's not just the mass, it's like the mass to charge ratio technically, but it allows you to differentiate between compounds, a whole bunch of different compounds, including small chemicals and small ions in like a piece of, in this case, biological tissue. Like hair.

Absolutely. And there's other ways to measure minerals. Like the hair test measures minerals and you can do that also with a spectra cell test to see what's inside your cells. And you know, there's other ways to measure it, but the hair mineral analysis is very, very reliable.

Okay, and you also called it an htma.

Yeah, Hair tissue mineral analysis.

Hair tissue mineral analysis. Okay, because is that just referring to the hair being a tissue? Is hair considered a tissue?

It is.

Okay, interesting. I always thought it was just like a thing all in and of itself.

It's dead. Yeah, it is a tissue.

This dead stuff on the top of your head. So we take this dead stuff on the top of our head, we put it through a mass spectrometer, and if you're listening in, you can go in the show notes because I'm going to put a link to all of my results so you can see what this stuff looks like. But one of the things that I got back from you, Wendy, was this HTMA analysis results. And I'm actually going to pull this up. And by the way, if you're listening in and you want to check these out, just go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com HairPodcast that's BenGreenfieldFitness.com hairpodcast so the HTMA analysis, Wendy, it's got a bunch of ratios in it like arsenic and aluminum and tin and all these different ratios. So can you go. Go into, kind of walk us through, like, what, what we're looking at here or listening about?

Well, you know, there's some significant ratios on the heritage on page two of the hair mineral analysis, and those go into various biomarkers. Like the calcium to phosphorus ratio indicates cellular metabolism. The sodium to potassium ratio is kind of like a vitality indicator. The lower that is, the sicker somebody is. And if it's really high, that can mean there's a lot of inflammation in the body. The calcium to potassium ratio is like a thyroid indicator. It like, a lot of people take thyroid medication and they don't really feel better if they have really high levels of calcium in their tissues. That calcium will block receptor sites on the outside of the cell membrane and prevent thyroid medication or thyroid hormones from getting into the cells. That's why some people don't feel relief from taking thyroid medication. It doesn't matter what's floating around in your blood. It matters what's getting into your cells. So that can give us an indication as to why that's happening. And zinc to copper ratio, kind of very general indication of your hormone balance. Setting to magnesium is an adrenal indicator. Can indicate if someone's adrenals are kind of kaputs, strictly clinical term, or if they are, their adrenals are very, very stressed. Okay. And calcium, magnesium is like a blood sugar ratio. It can tell me, you know, really kind of be an indicator as to why someone's having a lot of hypoglycemia and things like that. Or if they have diabetes, this will be out of whack. And the iron to copper ratio is kind of, you know, one indicator of potential infections in the body.

Okay.

The body will raise iron or raise copper in the body to fight infections that might, you know, it's like a X on the treasure map that tells us. Maybe we should dig a little further on that.

Who? You like that treasure map analogy, by the way.

I do. I do.

One secret pirate obsession. Okay, so who came up with these ratios? Like, where does this come from?

Well, hammer analysis began. It's been around for a long time, but it began being used more like in the 1970s. So there are a few pioneers. Dr. Paul Ek, there are Dr. David Watts, who still owns and runs Trace Elements International, which is the lab that I use in Dallas, Texas. So they came up with the ratios, and you Know, they're just general indicators of states of health in the body.

Okay, so let's delve into, like, an example of what we canwhat we can learn from this, from an application standpoint. So for me, I'm looking at my results here. Do I have anything? So it says, like, the ideal ratio of calcium to phosphorus is 2.63, and mine's 11, which would mean I have either tons and tons of calcium or very, very low amounts of phosphorus or both. But what does that actually indicate? Like, why would a ratio like that exist?

Well, you know, you have, we look at your hair mineral analysis. Your calcium is 165. So that's, you know, on the high side, it just means you have a lot of calcium deposited in your tissues. And so when you have a lot of calcium like that in your tissues, it interferes in cellular metabolism. It slows things down. You may not feel that as far as your energy levels or metabolic rate, your basal metabolic rate may be soaring, where you don't have weight gain or anything like that, but it's showing that there's a slowing of nutrients getting into your cells, toxins coming out, maybe thyroid hormones or glucose getting into the cells. And when this calcium is high like that, like I said, it just kind of interferes in your body's metabolism.

Now, when you look at too much calcium, I know one thing that can cause hypercalcification is, for example, taking excess vitamin D, especially if the vitamin D isn't getting absorbed. And I don't take a lot of vitamin D supplements. But low magnesium can also cause calcium imbalance, right?

Absolutely. There's a lot of different things that can cause calcium to deposit in the tissues. And I see this very commonly. And yeah, I'm, I'm not a fan of vitamin D unless people get testing to show that they need it. But even if you have low vitamin Ds on your testing, it may just be a magnesium deficiency that's causing that. So magnesium, the most important mineral in the body, and calcium is kind of dumb. It needs magnesium and D and K to tell it where to go or to deposit. So because people have mineral imbalances and other adrenal fatigue and other physiological problems in their body, people typically have a lot of calcium deposited in their tissues.

Okay, got it.

So in terms of things that you would do, like looking over my actual results, what are, what are some things that you want to point out and some fixes for what you see on my hair mineral analysis in terms of these ratios?

Yes. So for your you know, you've always had very interesting hair tests. Oh, thanks. And yeah, so here's one thing. If we look at the test, you have a lot, you know, and it's good. You have a lot of metals coming out. So that's a sign that your body detoxes really, really well. It's a sign that you're very, very healthy. And for a lot of my clients coming to me who are not so well, that are looking for answers, they. A lot of them don't have many metals coming out. And this is where I think a lot of.

When you say metals coming out, you mean like metals winding up in the hair? Like getting shoved into that, that dead tissue?

Exactly. Being excreted. Because your, your hair is kind of like a garbage can. Your body deposits excess metals and min.

Okay, got it.

Yeah. And so when we see a lot of metals being deposited into the hair, we see high levels on a hair test, on a hair mineral analysis. It's a sign that your body's detoxing really well. And when there's not that many metals coming out, a lot of physicians or other health practitioners will take that erroneously as meaning the person doesn't have that many metals, when in actuality a number of other things could be happening where they don't have the energy to detox. It takes a lot of energy to detox genetically. Some people don't detox metals into the hair. And other factors can be at play where they have their detox pathways don't work well genetically. And so a lot of people that may not understand that will dismiss. Hair mineral analysis is not valid. But as a trained practitioner, I take those things into account. And you know, I'm not a one trick pony. I don't just do the hair mineral analysis. You gotta do urine and stool also.

Okay, so when. Well, that kind of makes me wonder when you're looking at a test like mine, you see that I've got a lot of metals getting excreted in my hair. What you're saying is that you don't necessarily look at whether or not there are metals or there aren't metals, but you're looking at the actual ratios between them.

No, not necessarily. When I look at your test and I see there's a lot of metals, that's a good thing because you're detoxing them. Everyone has a lot of metals in their body. It doesn't matter what it says on the test. We all have them and we all have significant levels. But when I see a lot of metals, I Know that person is healthy because they're detoxing.

Well, okay, got it.

So you know that I'm detoxing. Well, what else can you tell from this?

Yeah, so I can also tell that you probably. I think your soils are toxic where you are, because I think based on your soil, I think that based on just your geographic location, that there's some toxicity in your soils or you've had some sort of exposure somewhere to a lot of metals, because some of your metals are on the high side. And this is everyone now. This is not just you. A lot of us have a lot of metals in our body. So for us, by looking at your metals, I'm able to give you kind of a plan to detox these metals. Because every metal responds to different substances that bind to it or remove it from the body. So by looking at the hair test, it's kind of like a roadmap that tells me what supplements that I need to give you to detox them.

Why do you say soil? And why wouldn't you think it's like, whatever, break dust or whatever, the air that I'm breathing or the water? Why soil?

Well, because of the. When I was analyzing your hair mineral analysis, there were just some things that made me think that it was potentially your soil number one, because Mount St. Helens erupted, like, in the 80s, and that releases a lot of beryllium into the soil. Volcanic ash contains beryllium. And you had beryllium in your stool test, which I very, very rarely see. Okay. So, you know, and also, I know you're growing vegetables in your own soil, and I think possibly it can be contaminated. So I think maybe just do a soil test just to see, you know, rule it out, what's going on.

Yeah, I guess I always assume, you know, because we live on the middle of the forest, and, you know, we have, though, used for a lot of our raised garden beds. We've brought in, like, potted soil, you know, the stuff that you get from the home improvement store, you know, in the big bags.

Yes.

You know, maybe. Maybe there are some. Some soil issues. That's interesting. How do you test soil?

You know what? I don't know. You know, I've never actually done that before. The medical director of our program has a. My detox program has a degree horticulture. So he would know, but I've actually. I've never asked him that question.

Interesting, interesting.

There's tests out there, of course.

Okay, got it.

So. So you think I should get my soil tested? And what are some other things yeah.

Well, of course you're getting this stuff in the air, food and water, of course that's where we're all getting this stuff. And it's, it's unavoidable in our toxic environment. We've got a hundred thousand chemicals in the environment. There's dozens of metals being drudged up from the earth's crust, from industry, coal burning, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I can go on and on. So, you know, we just accumulate this stuff over time.

Okay, got it.

So we've got the metal toxicity on there on the, on this HTMA analysis. So test the soil. I'm detoxing. Okay. Anything else that we should pay attention to on something like this?

Yeah. So I'll go over kind of the highlights of your hair mineral analysis. It appears you, you're a little bit more stressed on this test than the last. You know, when we see the calcium, magnesium, sodium, potassium on the high side, you know, you're just pushing your body. You're working out a lot and you're going, going, going. So you're kind of pushing your body to the max, but you're very, very healthy. You can sustain that, whereas another person would not be able to do that.

And what is it on the test that shows that you're pushing yourself to the max?

Well, when your calcium, magnesium, sodium and potassium are all above the reference range, the ideal level of where we want it to be, we know that you're pushing your body when the sodium relates to aldosterone production on a hair mineral analysis, and potassium relates to cortisol production. So those are your adrenal glands, adrenal gland hormones. So when those are being pushed, you'll see that sodium and potassium are higher on a hair test. And when they're really low, that's a sign of adrenal fatigue, adrenal failure.

Okay, got it.

So you're just pushing yourself and so. Which is fine. You can handle it.

Yeah, well, I mean, it's not a secret, right? Like I'm, I'm, I'm racing professionally, I'm running a business, you know, I'm, you know, with my family. I'm jet setting all over the place, speaking. So, yeah, it makes sense that I would be excreting all these minerals if that's a sign of stressing the body.

Absolutely, yeah. And then you've got some high copper. I think you're releasing a lot of copper on this test. You're kind of dumping copper. But on a hair test, you might look like you're copper toxic and a Lot of people. Practitioners erroneously think a lot of people are copper toxic when they're not. So when I look at your urine test, I compare the pre urine test to the post DMSA consumption urine test, and when I look at those two ratios of copper, you're in fact, not copper toxic. So this is, I know, is a release of copper, maybe some copper you had stored in your body from wherever you accumulated that or it could be an external contamination. I think likely not, because you've had high copper on all three of your hair. Two of your hair tests that you've done. You've done three. Yeah. So this is a release of copper, which is a good thing.

Okay, got it.

So again, it's good that you're getting rid of this stuff.

Exactly.

Okay.

And then we have manganese. On your last test, you had crazy high manganese. And this I suspected was coming from your well water. Yeah, Because.

Which we tested and had really high levels of manganese. Then we. We wound up filtering it out. I have a manganese filter now.

Yes. Yeah. And I see this on a lot of my clients that are drinking well water. They'll have iron toxicity, manganese toxicity, arsenic or uranium toxicity. And your magnesium came down a lot since the last test. On the last test, it was the highest level I'd ever seen. And manganese will really interfere in your energy production, so you want to be careful with that. And, you know, it's. You know, you could be having a massive dump of stored magnesium. I was concerned maybe your water filter might not have been working. However, your manganese is coming down to a relatively acceptable level on this test. So I think it's working and you're just still releasing more stored manganese.

Okay, got it.

Yeah. And then iron on the hair test, you're really high iron levels on your last couple of hair tests. So my concern with this is that anyone with this much iron on a HTMA needs a blood iron panel done, including ferritin, transferrin, and transferrin saturation. My concern is hemochromatosis.

Right.

And so if you have that on a blood panel, you just give blood, you just donate blood and get rid of it. Sometimes people that are using cast iron will get a lot of iron in their bodies that they can't utilize. It's a toxic.

That's interesting. You know, I cook with cast iron every single day for lunch, and I test my iron values, my blood iron values, and they're pretty good. I don't have excess iron or anything like that, but that's interesting. That's showing up in my hair. So my body's kind of getting rid of some of that iron too.

Yes. Yeah. Because it can build up in the liver and cause diabetes and blood sugar issues and a lot of oxidative stress. So I generally recommend people don't cook with raw cast iron because that. And I know people have been doing it forever. And grandma cooks in cast iron. My mom cooks in one. But you know that it's a form of iron your body can't utilize at all. So you need to get iron from red meat. And people that are supplementing with iron or eating enriched flour grain products, that this is a form of iron again, they're like iron flanks. Our body can't use them, and it builds up in our body and causes various problems. And so that's one thing you can detox it with ashwagandha. Ashwagandha is really helpful for detoxing iron. Yeah. Mm. So. And that's one reason why it makes people feel good. It's getting rid of their iron. So it's one of those things, you know, if your iron levels look good in blood, great.

It's interesting. I always thought that when you cook in an iron skillet, that it really increases the iron content of the foods that you're cooking. But what you're saying is that most of the iron from the cast iron skill is not absorbable.

Yeah. It's just a form. It's like iron flakes. Your body can't take that and use it. It has to be like cows maybe can eat that and then convert that mineral to a form that our body, our human bodies then can utilize, but we just can't utilize that. Yeah, the iron content is there, but there's different forms of iron, and there's some our bodies just can't use.

That'd be interesting if instead of testing the iron content of foods after somebody cooked with cast ir, if they'd actually test the iron content of the blood and see what it actually does. But you've seen it in the hair, huh?

Yeah.

Interesting.

Okay, cool.

Anything else that we can derive from this hair tissue mineral analysis?

Yes. So your cobalt is looking really, really high, and it's been consistently high. So this is due to oxidative stress. It doesn't mean you're a cobalt toxic. You have a lot of oxidative stress due to your levels of toxic metals in your body. Cobalt, it could be in the well water, not sure. But you could have an upregulation genetically of the transport system for cobalt. All minerals have a transport system in their body. For some people, genetically it's upregulated, it can be down regulated. So some people just excrete certain minerals much more than others, or excrete certain metals much more than others, or the opposite, which means they would retain that mineral or metal. So for you, we don't really know what it's from, but I don't really care. I'm not so worried about cobalt.

Okay, got it.

So then if we look at this pink toxic element section, we see that you've got a little bit of uranium. Uranium was a little bit high on the last hair test. You were excreting some uranium. This could be from the well water, but I see this really high levels in my clients in California, in the southwest United States. I'm actually uranium toxic myself, as is my daughter and every friend that I know that's in California because it's just, it's in the water, people are showering in it. You know, even if you're drinking filtered water and it's really high quality water, you can still be showering in toxic water and you absorb all that stuff in the water. Okay, so you've got a little uranium. I'm not really that worried about it. It was never really that high. The arsenic has doubled on this hair test. So you're having a release of that, you're excreting it, which is very, very good. And arsenic is very, very common. And it's interesting because I at one point was extremely arsenic toxic. And what it does is anyone who's having trouble losing weight, arsenic poisons enzymes that transport triglycerides out of your fat cells. So if you're kind of feeling like you're that hamster in the wheel where you're constantly exercising and dieting, going keto and all this stuff and you're just not losing weight, you know, this arsenic or other metals could be the cause of that. So that's a little interesting. Side note, and arsenics found in rice, conventional chickens, water and a lot of other places. I have an article.

More brown rice than white rice, right?

Exactly. Yeah. There's more metals in the bran, which is why I personally eat white rice. I think it's a lot healthier. And there's an article on my site, it's called the Toxic Metals Sources and Symptoms Guide. So you can look up any metal on this blog post and look at the sources where you. The most common sources of where you get these metals and all the symptoms they could potentially cause. Kind of interesting, interesting and then we see your mercury. Not so bad. This is actually really good. And you still have some. You know, it doesn't look like there's that much, but where you see one rat, there's a thousand more. You could potentially have more mercury. The hair amino analysis only shows three months of what's excreting into the hair, so you could potentially have more. And the Herriman analysis only shows methylmercury or what's coming out of fish. It does not show inorganic mercury from mercury amalgam fillings.

Okay.

Yeah. Chris Shea does a test, if you're really interested. You can differentiate between your methyl and your inorganic mercury on the test that he does@quicksilverscientific.com a hair test.

Sorry to interrupt. But a hair test will tell you not the mercury that you're getting from the environment, but more the mercury that you're getting from fish.

Exactly. Okay. It'll show methylmercury, which you can get. You can breed that in and things like that, but it's usually from fish. And, you know, fish is very, very healthy. But I really, you know, encourage people to eat the smaller fish that have lived, you know, not live long enough to accumulate much mercury, like, like anchovies and sardines and kind of the gross fish that nobody wants to eat.

Okay, got it.

But even, even salmon has mercury in it. But as long as you're, you know, taking coriander oil when you're eating fish, you're probably fine.

Okay.

All right.

Yeah.

Cool.

And we also get mercury from breathing in air. When we have crematoriums and bodies are burned, the bodies that have mercury in them get released into the air, and then we breathe that in. It's kind of gross.

Interesting. Well, I want to make sure that we get a chance to get through a little bit of the urine and the stool as well. But what are any other biggies that you think we can take away from this hair analysis that you think would be something I should act upon?

Yeah. So we'll just go over a couple more metals that you have. So you've got cadmium in the middle, the CD here, and this is very, very high. Cadmium is one of those metals that we don't see coming out in the hair mineral analysis very often, unless you're very, very toxic. Interesting. And interesting. So that's why when it comes to cadmium and lead and maybe nickel, that's why I like to do a stool test or a urine test, because we see cadmium best in the stool. And you have very high levels in the stool as well. And so cadmium is a Class 1 carcinogen. That's why people that smoke cigarettes that contain cadmium, that's why they get cancer.

Because I smoke a lot of cigarettes. I'm like the Marlboro man.

Yeah, exactly. But you can also get it from smoking marijuana. Marijuana has a lot of cadmium in it, but it has.

From smoking marijuana or from just consuming marijuana in any form?

It depends on the form. Okay. So the CBD oils, I've done a little bit of research, and a lot of the companies that sell CBD oil have done third party testing to show there's no cadmium in it. And other metals.

I know the stuff that we do that like, it gets metal tested, and it's got very low levels of metals. The nature CBD that I actually produce. But I also, you know, I live in Washington state, where there are things like edibles and marijuana tinctures you can vape and stuff like that. That. And I'm curious if that type of stuff is, you know, regardless of whether or not it's being smoked, a source of cadmium.

Yeah. So when you smoke it or vaporize it, you're getting a lot of cadmium.

Interesting.

All my clients that smoke marijuana, whether they vaporize it, and I'm not talking about the vape pens, those are different. But the vaporizing or smoking it, they have very high cadmium. I always know my marijuana smokers.

That's interesting. Yeah. Because like, when I do creative writing at night, for example, a lot of times I'll vape like a. Like a sativa, like a THC blend. So that's really interesting.

Oh, yeah.

What kind of things can get rid of cadmium?

Well, EDTA suppositories will get rid of cadmium.

Sounds pleasant.

And yes. So super fun. But, you know, it's one of those things where it's very, you know, it works really, really well. If someone has very high cadmium levels, it can be a 9, 11 because it is such a major carcinogen. So it helps to bring the cadmium levels down very quickly within a few months. But if someone wants to go more like au natural, there's a lot of supplements that reduce that, like coriander seed oil and modified citrus pectin. Works really well to absorb it. There's sodium r lipoic acid that will get it. Curcumin, garlic, glutathione, selenium, and eb.

Okay, got it.

We'll detox that. Yeah. And so then we've got some aluminum. And your aluminum has been high on all the tests that you've done. So you definitely have, you know, some source of aluminum that you're taking in. But, you know, you can accumulate these metals at any point in your life. So a lot of people, oh, I eat super healthy. I eat really clean. And most people have not been doing that their whole lives. You know, we're all guilty of eating pop tarts and fast food and all this garbage when we were little kids. So eating at restaurants, you get salt that has aluminum. It's an anti caking agent. Flourish uses aluminum as an anti caking agent. Aluminum cans, and I can go on and on, but aluminum is the most common element in the earth's crust. So pretty much all of us have aluminum.

Okay, got it.

And then just one more thing. On your hair test, you've got some nickel toxicity. Very, very common. I've only tested a couple people who are not nickel toxic. And we also have some tin. And tin is really interesting because you have your mitochondria that makes your body's energy, and you have a membrane on the outside of that mitochondria where it has to have a positive charge to function properly. And tin will dispel that charge so that it kind of handicaps the mitochondria to produce energy. And there's some other metals like arsenic and aluminum and thallium. Thallium is in the air. It's from car exhaust. And those metals will poison enzymes that transport nutrients into the mitochondria. And so when people have a lot of those metals or all four of them, that can eventually, at some point, really handicap someone's ability to produce energy and even cause chronic fatigue syndrome.

Okay, got it.

Wow. So there's a lot of stuff we can find out from this hair test, but you do the urine and the stool along with it. Do you do that to just like, double check and see if what's going on in the urine and the stool agrees with what's going on in the hair? Or can you get things from the urine and the stool test here that you did that go above and beyond what we get from hair?

Yeah, I like the hair first because it just gives me so much information, but it doesn't give us the whole story. And there's. There's some metals that come out only in the urine. You're only gonna see them.

Is that why you had. So you sent me up a bunch of stuff that I had to, like, take before I did the urine test. How can you explain how this actually works, like why you take stuff before you actually do the urine test, and then why you get like a pre medals and a post metals result.

Exactly. So, you know, a lot of physicians, if you go to them, they'll do one urine test and only give you dmsa. That's not as effective as doing it the way I do it. And I'll explain why. So we have a pre urine where you just kind of urinate and there's no chelating agents that you're taking because I want to see what you're detoxing on your own.

Okay.

And so we'll typically see metals that we don't see on the. After you take the dmsa. And then, you know, we analyze your urine after you take the chelating agents like DMSA and Glycine and BioSign. And when you take DMSA, it favors certain metals. It favors lead and mercury and nickel. And there's only so many seats on the bus. Just imagine a bus. There's only so much so many seats. So it's going to fill up those seats with mercury and nickel and lead first, and then other metals will get pushed to the side, and then we won't see them, even if you're toxic in them.

Okay.

So that's why I have to do the pre and the post. And I use more than just dmsa. DMSA is one of the chelating agents where it'll grab onto the metals in your body. That's what I mean by chelation or chelating. And it grabs the most things of all the other chelating agents, which is why it's used. But by taking glycine, you enhance the effects of dmsa. Me and my partner, I partnered with a medical doctor. We're creating a detox institute in certification and hair mineral analysis and other metals test and detoxification. And he's done a statistical analysis of doing urine tests with DMSA and then doing it with DMSA and glycine. It's far more effective.

Okay, got it.

So you take all this stuff, you do a pre urine test, then you take all these chelating agents, and then you do another urine test.

Exactly. And then we add Biosil to the mix. And Biosil's kind of funny. It's marketed as a hair, skin and nail product, but it's really an incredibly effective detox agent. And DMSA favors divalent metals. Valence refers to how a metal bonds to a substance and how strong that bond is. And biosil grabs onto the trivalent metals. So just, they just bond to things in a different way. And so DMSA likes the divalent metals. Biosil grabs onto the trivalent metals. So typically when people do a DMSA test, their trivalent metals, arsenic, aluminum, tin, thallium, cesium and antimony, will be underrepresented in the test.

Okay, got it, yeah.

So on my particular test, what did you find in the urine?

So in your urine, if we look at the pre urine. Let me just go over my notes here. So on the urine we see that you have got, you've got some cesium and your cesium is on the high side.

Oh wait, is this in the baseline or is this like after I took all the stuff to make me excrete the metals.

Okay, yeah. So this is the baseline, this is the pre DMSA test.

Okay.

And I'll just do, I won't go over the mineral part, we'll just focus on the metals. So if you look on page one at the bottom, you've got very high aluminum levels.

Yeah.

And you know, it's not that high, but it's over the reference range. You've also got high antimony levels as well. And you've also got a very, very high arsenic level. So this is the arsenic levels that I used to have that prevent.

Yeah, they're like through the roof. It says that they're supposed to be below 15. And my arsenic levels are above 244.

Yeah. 244. Uh huh. Yeah. So really, really high. And this is a lot of people. You know, today if you're eating a ton of rice and conventional chicken, conventional chickens are fed an antibiotic that contains a ton of arsenic.

So that much rice or conventional chicken.

Well, you could have gotten this from water. And those are just the top sources that people get them. But there's a lot of sources.

Interesting.

Yeah.

And barium is really high too.

Yeah. So I'm not as concerned about barium. And I think you might be looking at the post. You're looking at the post, I'm looking at the pre test. Yeah. So for. We'll go over both. So the next one on the pre DMSA or pre urine is cesium and cesium is from Fukushima fallout. So Fukushima is a nuclear disaster in Japan. And I've. And this is in fish. So you're getting it from fish from the Pacific. And there's been people monitoring cesium levels on the western coast of the United States for a Long time. And the cesium levels have dramatically risen in the fish population in the ocean over the last few years since the Fukushima disaster.

Interesting.

Yes. And I've also talked to people that have, you know, been in the detox game and for decades. And the owner of this lab, or the lady that runs this lab, this is a lab in Germany that does this. And they have been testing people before Chernobyl and then after Chernobyl, another nuclear disaster. And with cesium, there was very little cesium that they found prior to Chernobyl. And then after it, there was a lot of cesium in the hair. And then after a few decades, it. They don't see as much cesium in Europe now.

Okay, got it.

But now with. With. Same thing with Fukushima. Very little cesium. And then after Fukushima, a lot of cesium in people. I have cesium myself.

Okay, interesting.

I did an old test. So it's from fish. And Biosil detoxes this.

Okay, got it.

Yeah. And then you've got.

And Bios. Biosil is that same stuff that you said was good for, like, hair and skin and nails. You can also use it as, like, a metal detox.

Exactly. It's a silica. It's a. Silica is all it is. It's a mineral, but it's attached to a choline molecule. So that in and of itself makes it a very potent detox agent.

Okay, got it.

So just silica by itself or horsetail or not the same.

Okay.

And then we've got some mercury. Not too bad here. This is just what you're detoxing on your own, but kind of almost at that toxic limit. And then nickel, very, very high. Nickel above three is considered toxic. You're at almost 19. So this is everyone. And nickel is in a lot of different things. Primarily hydrogenated oils, partially hydrogenated oils, margarine, Crisco, fast food, processed foods, the bread basket at Olive Garden, things like that.

Right. Which I do a ton of.

Yeah, I know, exactly. But, you know, it could have been when you were a little kid, you picked this stuff up. It could also be from nickel jewelry.

Got it.

It could be from metalworking or whatever. There's a lot of different places you can pick up this stuff up. And then palladium. So palladium is one I don't see very often, but you can get it from car exhaust, from coins, dental crowns and alloys, radiation razors, watches, and white gold. So I don't suppose you're wearing any White gold.

No, I'm not a big white gold guy. Aside from the rack and my teeth.

Yeah. So who knows where you pick this stuff up? We don't always know.

Okay.

And then you also have high. We also saw some excreting into the hair.

Okay.

And tin, you can get that from canned foods, but it can also be in the soil and the water.

Got it.

And then you've got uranium is high, which we also saw some in the hair on the last hair test. Not this one, but the previous one. But you're also excreting it in the urine.

Okay, got it.

And EDTA will get rid of that. Zeolites and EDTA will get rid of that.

Okay, got it.

Yeah.

So. So a lot of. A lot of these things, you would just take typical. Typical elements that you would use in a detox, like things like zeolite, and they can cause the body to leach out these type of metals that are showing up in the urine.

Exactly. We do a couple approaches. Minerals help the body to excrete metals, and that's why my program is called Mineral Power. They're very effective detox agents.

When you say minerals, you mean like taking, taking like trace liquid minerals and electrolytes and things along those lines.

Exactly. Or just taking pills of macro minerals like calcium, magnesium, sodium, potassium, zinc.

Okay.

And you need a lot of those macro minerals. Sodium, potassium are not macro minerals, but you need to take fairly large amounts of those to replenish your minerals. And so those just by getting the body working better can help to push out metals. And then you can take binders, things that absorb metals. And then you can take chelating agents, which actually bind to and grab the metals and escort them out of the body.

Okay, got it.

And then if we look at your post urine or post DMSA test, we'll see that some of the metals that were high on the first test were actually lower on this test. And that's because the DMSA is favoring other metals.

Okay.

So if we just skip down to the second page, we'll see that barium is on the high side. And I won't really go into that one, but you've got some barium and then your mercury is, you know, a little two and a half times the toxic level.

And so what is thiswhat is this telling us? When you look atso, when you do your pre urine test and then you take these chelating agents and your post urine test is giving different values, what does that actually mean?

Well, that's that there's Only so many seats on the bus analogy.

Okay.

Where you're excreting more of the metal on your own. But when you take the dmsa, there's really more room for lead and mercury and nickel. So you can only excrete so much in 24 hours.

Okay.

You're just excreting more lead, mercury and nickel than you are the other metals, even though you're toxic in them.

So it's a way to see all of the different kind of metals that you're toxic in when you do the two. Two put together.

Exactly.

Okay, got it.

Yeah.

Some are going to show on the post analysis that don't show on the pre analysis.

Exactly.

Okay.

Yeah. And that's why we want to do DMSA because it's very good at showcasing whether you have lead, mercury and nickel.

Okay, got it.

Very toxic.

Got it. So in the case of these urine tests, is there anything that you do in addition to taking minerals to help delete some of these things out of the body, like taking things like minerals or zeolite?

Yes. Well, it depends on your metals. You know, different metals respond to different substances. So what I do is based on your health conditions, your health status, how sick you are or not, and based on your metals, I'll design a custom supplement plan to help you start getting rid of these metals.

Okay, so all these like you, you sent a bunch of supplements, supplements up to my house after this eval. And these are these supplements that you sent up, like I know you sent zinc and like a vitamin C mineral complex. All of these are designed to go after the specific things that I'm showing to be high in.

Exactly.

And you do get concerned at all because I've interviewed people before who say that you can't just like throw a bunch of things like high dose grocery shopping carts full of cilantro into the body and expect that there's not going to be metals like leached out into the bloodstream and, and crossing the blood brain barrier and causing issues like that. So do you, when you, when you detox, do you need to pay attention to things like that? And if so, how do you do that?

Exactly. So you don't ever want to do a detox program without taking binders because if, say your detox pathways aren't working very well and you just can't, you know, you can take chelators all day long, they have to exit your body. So it, if that's not working for you, you have to take binders like modified citrus pectin and that will help to clean your blood. It's a blood cleanser. It gets into your blood and in your gut, and it absorbs all these metals and chemicals. It's really amazing. And just taking that alone is a very potent detox agent and effect.

Okay, got it, got it.

Yeah. And you can also take zeolites. Those are my last resort because they detox. They lower your zinc and copper too much. So. So not my favorite. But I will use that if people can't tolerate modified citrus pectin for whatever reason. And then there's also things like imd, Intestinal Metal detox by quicksilver. That's also another great thing that it's a binder that will reduce your absorption of metals.

Okay, got it.

So, yeah, I mean, there were, like, 20 different bottles of things that you sent up from that, like biosil to iodine to zinc, but they. They all have a specific purpose in terms of going after these specific metals.

Exactly. And when I make up a supplement list for people, there's a very detailed description where you see every supplement and then all the metals that it detoxes. So you know exactly why you're taking that.

And then we also have the stool analysis here. And by the way, again, if anybody wants to look at these results, see what they look like and kind of follow along, go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com HairPodcast okay, so stool was the last one. So we've got the hair, we've got the pre and post urine, and then the stool as this other report. Did you find anything in the stool?

Yes, I did.

Okay.

Yeah. And so.

And actually, before you jump into that, one thing I wanted to ask you is a lot of people will test the stool for, like, bacteria and yeast and fungus and parasites. This stool evaluation is different than that.

Right, exactly. So, you know, we're testing metals in the stool, and that's it. And there's other tests you can do, like GI effects or other tests that will test pathogens. So that's a completely different test.

Okay.

And so for your stool test, what's interesting is the stool can show metals in the foods and supplements that you're consuming. So we don't always take high levels in the stool at face value. I don't automatically think, oh, you're toxic in this because it's high in the stool, because it could just be in a supplement that you're taking or whatever. And so that's why we want to compare it to our urine test and then a hair test to see if all Those three corroborate the high level in the stool.

Okay, got it.

Okay. So we already talked about beryllium. You had some beryllium in your stool, and it wasn't coming out in the hair or the urine. But that doesn't mean it's not there in your body. It's obviously there in your stool, but it could just be coming from your food. Food that you're eating.

Okay, got it.

Yeah. And so. And beryllium is a Class 1 carcinogen according to the IARC. That's the International Agency for Research on Cancer. It's based in Lyon, France, and they classify toxic chemicals and into toxic classes. So it's concerning when I see this, but at the same time, we'll just kind of wait and see, you know, on that one. And, you know, I recommended for you EDTA suppositories. So that will remove any beryllium that you have.

And that's. That's, again, not something that's going to, like, release a bunch of beryllium out into the rest of the areas of the body. It just basically makes it come out in the stool.

Yeah. So EDTA is very, very effective at chelating and grabbing onto these metals. But as long as you take the modified citrus pectin and the IMD that we sent. I don't know if I sent that or not, but as long as you take that, you're fine. You're not going to be. You don't have to worry about these metals depositing in other areas of your body.

Okay. And EDTA is just considered, like some of these others. A chelator?

Yeah, it's a synthetic sulfur that chelates metals out of your body. It grabs onto them.

Okay, got it.

Anything else that we can tell from the stool?

Yeah. So you've got very high cadmium in your stool. And, you know, I. You know, I. Cadmium could be from other supplements, like Chinese herbs. You know, Chinese herbs, depending on where they're grown, can have a lot of lead and cadmium and nickel in them and other metals, which is why I tend to shy away from them. Because if they're grown in China, forget it. They're going to have a ton of metals in them. Even if they're organic. Organic does not have to be free of metals. And if they're grown in India, forget it. So you just have to know the source. If they're grown in the United States, that's probably fine, you know, but you just have to know your source.

Got it. Okay.

And also a food or Marijuana is grown with phosphate fertilizers like Miracle Grow or chemical fertilizers like that. These can have a lot of cadmium in them as well. So you want to be careful about the fertilizer you're using. You know, compost is good. And coffee also has cadmium. But again, it depends on where the coffee is grown. Some soils have a lot more cadmium than others. One of those things I've kind of wanted to delve into and test coffees from different countries to see the cadmium levels in them.

Interesting. Okay.

On my bucket list.

Okay.

Okay. So of the things that can get rid of cadmium within the body, those would be like the macro minerals and the trace liquid minerals or trace minerals, Things like that.

Yeah. So cadmium. The only minerals that get rid of that are the zinc. But you can also use a lot of the things that I sent you. You can use the modified citrus pectin, the sodium R Lipoic acid. The only one I recommend is by Life Extension because it's a fat soluble sodium R. Lipoic acid where all the other ones are water soluble. Not as effective at getting metals out.

Okay.

And the other ones are like curcumin, garlic, glutathione, things like that.

Okay, cool.

And so the other thing you have is lead in the stool. Again, because we didn't see any in the urine test. I think this is in something that you're consuming. And it could be in a protein powder or a Chinese or ayurvedic herb that you're eating. And here's the thing.

Just you said that's the nickel or the lead.

That's the lead.

Okay, got it.

Yeah. It could be coming from well water, but, you know, it could be more likely coming from a food or supplement that you're taking. And here's the thing. There's a lot of labeling on supplements called the California Prop 65 that is attempting to warn consumers of lead levels and other metals in supplements. And a lot of greens powders have a California Prop 65 warning, but they may contain lead, but that doesn't mean the lead's getting into your body because you have to earn, you know, learn something about chemistry or know something about chemistry. When there's, say, lead in a greens powder, which most of the greens powders will have lead in them because the lead is in the soil from when we had leaded gasoline. And so that lead was in the air and then settled in the soils. And it gets in our food and our vegetables. So just because lead is in the Greens powder doesn't mean it gets in your body because it. It's so tightly bound with boron, there's no hope of it ever unbinding with boron and then depositing into your body. Okay, so these testing mechanisms, like the ICP that's used for the testing, it can determine the metal levels, but not the bonds that they're in.

Okay, what does that mean exactly?

Well, because lead is very tightly bound with boron, it's not going to get into your body.

Okay, so basically, if you have high boron levels and have high lead levels, then that would be a good one two combo.

Exactly. But when you're talking about greens powders, they have very high boron levels. So the lead in those substances, just because they're shown to have lead doesn't mean that you need to be concerned or avoid those products.

Okay, got it.

And so there's a lot of stuff on the Internet, oh, this supplement contains high nickel or that contains high lead or whatever it is. But just because it's detected in that product doesn't mean that it's harmful to you or you should avoid it. You have to know something about chemistry, not just that metal being detected in the product.

Okay. All right.

You know what I mean? Like, for instance, there's a lot of stuff on the Internet that zeolite contains really high aluminum, but that aluminum is. Is so tightly bound in the honeycomb structure of the zeolite that will never get into your body, has no hopes of getting in your body.

Okay. Okay.

Interesting.

Yeah. Then we have nickel. You've got nickel on the stool. You've also got it in the urine and the hair. So this is everyone. Everyone's nickel toxic. You can find it in tea and coffee and nuts and like I said, the partially hydrogenated oils. Nickel is also a Class 1 carcinogen. Pretty nasty stuff. A lot of people that. It can promote autoimmune disease and skin rashes and things like that. I. When I've had nickel coming out, I just get all kinds of rashes and things, maybe tmi, but yeah, everyone's in the same boat with the nickel.

Okay.

And your 10 is above average. But we also see this in the hair and the urine, so that corroborates that.

Okay, okay, got it, got it.

Interesting. So all this stuff put together, the hair, the stool, and the urine. The basic idea here is you look at each of the elements, like the metals, and in addition to the metals, some of the toxins that are showing up on this, you take the actual supplements that are specifically designed to get rid of, to chelate and to remove these compounds. And how long does it typically take after you start into something like that to, to see a change?

Well, but someone like you that's really, really healthy, probably two years. Okay, 18 months to two years if someone is sick.

So you take all these supplements for like two years?

Yep.

Wow.

Unfortunately. Yeah. Well, you have to think about it. A lot of supplements it is, but you have to think about it in terms of, you know, you're in their 30s, you've had three decades of accumulating toxins, you're not going to magically get them all out in six months. Yeah, it's just not going to happen. And so you kind of have to think more long term. But when I'm working with people, I really like to teach them the tools they need so that they can use these tools and what they've learned for the rest of their life so they know how to detox their body. They don't need to work with me forever.

Okay, got it.

So if people want to actually get one of these for themselves, they can just go to your Live to 110 website, right? Live to 110?

Yes. Actually there's a link in the show notes to it, I'm assuming. And yeah, so you can go to live to110.com.

Okay.

And my program is called Mineral Power and you can learn a lot about it, a lot of free info. On my side, I've got my own podcast. So.

Okay, so I'll put, I'll put a link over in BenGreenfieldFitness.com HairPodcast and there's a discount code over there too do. So for somebody to do all these tests all put together, how much would it cost?

Well, my Mineral power program is 4.99 and so that, that includes a hair mineral analysis and all kinds of support. You know, I provide like webinars and a forum and what else? There's a 25 part video series. So really a lot of learning and support involved and unlimited email support because I don't like just sending people on their way after they do their test. I want to support them to do this. But if they also elect to do a urine test and, or a stool test, you can do both of them for. I believe it's 450 for the consults.

And then you get $50 off with the code. Green 50.

Yeah. So green 50, you'll get $50 off the mineral Power or any of the tests. Any of the tests you'll get $50 off.

Okay, cool. Got it.

Nice. All right, well, I'll put all these links in the show notes over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com HairPodcast if you want to get one of these own hair urine stool specials for yourself. And then Wendy actually did a really good job with me, kind of walking me through each of the different supplements that would help me to get rid of each of these metals and toxins. So she, she's really, really easy to work with as far as spelling it all out for you. So, Wendy, I wanna thank you for coming on the show and for sharing all this stuff with us.

Yeah, absolutely. It's my pleasure. I love to teach people about detoxification because I think for a lot of people, they're feeling tired or they just don't feel like they used to. And they're doing everything right. They're eating good and exercising and taking supplements, and they still don't feel good. Usually detox is that missing piece of the puzzle.

Okay.

Okay.

Got it.

Cool. Well, folks, Again, go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com HairPodcast if you want to check out my own results and also all of the stuff that Wendy has to offer over on her side. So, Wendy, thanks for coming on the show.

Thank you so much for having me.

All right, folks, well, I'm Ben Greenfield along with Wendy Myers signing out from BenGreenfieldFitness.com have a healthy week.

You've been listening to the Ben Greenfield Fitness podcast. Go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com for even more cutting edge fitness and performance advice.

Sam.