How Microplastics and Inflammation Affect Your Brain

Microplastics, pollution, processed foods, chemicals in our homes, chronic stress. Most people don't feel the damage all at once, right? They feel it more, more slowly. They have less energy, they have slower recovery, brain fog, more inflammation, a body that doesn't bounce back the way it once did. So the question is, what is your body doing behind the scenes to protect you? And what happens when that system gets overwhelmed?

BPA, which is known to be an endocrine disruptor, and it basically mimics estrogen. And so that can lead to all sorts of issues, both in men and women, highlighted infertility.

The combination of lack of detox and energetics are kind of the central feature of brain fog.

Chronic inflammation is slow. It's like a rug that's smoldering. over time, and chronic inflammation can lead to really bad stuff.

What are microplastics when, when people are hearing about them, and what should people understand about them?

The easiest way to think about them is they're micron or even nano size, so about the diameter of a human hair-sized pieces of plastic or smaller. Most of our microplastic exposure comes from indoor air. The lint your dryer, that's microplastic. Microplastics can't be digested, so they get backed up in these lysosomes, much like food gets backed up and clogs a kitchen sink.

Welcome back, Kwik Brains. I am your brain coach, your host, Jim Kwik. Today's conversation is about something most people don't think about until they start feeling the effects. And I think most of our listeners here, wherever you are in the world, you, you could identify and relate to these things like the hidden stress that modern life places on, on your brain and your body. My guests today are David Roberts and Dr. John Gilday, co-founders of Mara Labs. And David has an interesting story, has spent much of his career working at the intersection of public health science and practical wellness with a deep focus on helping people reduce the toxic burden. And, and support your body's natural ability to, to heal. Dr. Gilday is a molecular biologist with decades of research experience in cellular resilience, gene expression, oxidative stress, and your body's natural defense systems. And together on this conversation, they bring both sides, both the personal and the scientific sides of this conversation. What happens when modern life overwhelms the body? And obviously your brain's part of your body and how we can better support the systems that protect, you know, your brain, your energy, your long-term health, cognitive and otherwise. And today I'm excited because we're going to be talking about what is really draining your cognitive energy from, you know, how modern toxins and inflammation can affect your brain and what most people misunderstand about detox and how to support your body's built-in defense system. And it's very simple everyday ways. So, David, Dr. Gilday, welcome to the show.

Thanks so much for having us. Great to be here.

Yeah, appreciate it.

So, I get to bump into you at various events that I get to speak at, wellness, longevity, biohacking. Transparently, I mentioned this in the beginning, I've been a customer of Mara Labs for years. And so, this is kind of fortuitous. I've always wanted to go deeper in this subject and our audience is very interested in this topic. So, maybe we can start with you, David, with the more personal sides of this. What led you to this work and why did it become so important to you?

Yeah. So again, thanks for having us. So yeah, my wife, my late wife, Mara, was diagnosed with breast cancer back in 2012, and she was a nurse and knew enough about chemotherapy that she didn't want to do that, but wanted to look into natural ways to fight the cancer. And so kind of chemotherapeutically. And so Looked at a variety of different research, came upon sulforaphane, which is the good molecule from broccoli, pretty quickly. And we ended up growing with John's help her cancer cells in our lab and put 60 different supplements on them to see what specifically killed her type of cancer. And the sulforaphane from broccoli was number 3 in directly killing your cancer cells. And so when I went out to buy it though, I couldn't find any supplements that had sulforaphane. They all had the precursor molecule called glucoraphanin. That's because the sulforaphane is not stable, but glucoraphanin, the precursor molecule, is stable. So if you have a head of broccoli, you start chewing it, it has glucoraphanin, you break the cell wall, and it releases an enzyme that converts that into sulforaphane, you swallow it and get the benefit. But if you try to harness it like in a capsule or something like that, it degrades within hours to days. And so we ended up growing like a lot of broccoli sprouts. And so for years we did that and it's kind of fun, but then it's hard to travel with them. And then in the summertime especially, they can mold. And so, I think I was asked, just at lunch with John one day, and I was kind of moaning about losing a crop or something. And, it's like, it would be really nice to have a stable form of this so I wouldn't have to grow the broccoli sprouts. And so, I don't know if that was the impetus, but 2 years later, literally over lunch again, he kind of matter-of-factly was like, Yeah, I stabilized sulforaphane. And we're like, what? And so, we sent it out for testing and sure enough, he had. And so, we were actually with a different supplement company at the time, so we weren't going to do anything with it. But, Maura was like, we have to get this out because it's such a game changer for people's health.

Yeah.

And so, she started raising the seed money for the company. Unfortunately, she took a turn for the worse and that was 2017. And, and just pretty quickly died. And so, after she died, we were like, we're going to do this. And so, I left the supplement company I was with, started Mara Labs, and, and then got the, you know, the product out on shelves within like six months. So it was a pretty quick, pretty quick turnaround. And so yeah, we've been. going at it since 2018.

I always admire businesses that they take something that's very personal and then they help, they learn something. There was a gift that came out of it, some kind of learning, and then share that at scale. Certainly, it's kind of our story also as well. Dr. Gilday, maybe we could talk about on the science side, what pulled you into studying initially the body's defense systems? You know, was there a moment when you realized that this was an area that you wanted to dedicate your work and your life to?

Yeah, so I would say that the NRF2 pathway, that's the transcription factor that sulforaphane is famous for, been aware You know, very aware of it since the '90s when that was discovered at Hopkins. We both went to Hopkins, so we kind of got educated in that atmosphere. We keep hearing about, you know, the Chemo Prevention Center. And so I've always been interested in it. And if you study anything related to chronic disease, then, you know, inflammation and toxins and the interface of that. are always central. And then I have an interest in epigenetics as well. So that noise that happens from, you know, the forgetting of the cell of what it is, the dedifferentiated state, is kind of central to the way I think of how chronic disease happens. And I think it aligns nicely with, you know, such a such a complex organ as the brain. And even though I studied the kidney, I studied dopamine in the kidney, but I was always looking at brains. So even though the brain is kind of incomprehensible to me, I try all the time. And so NRF2 being in the center of so many pathways that are critically important to the differentiated state, all different cell types, specific functions. Yeah. Energy detox is just very central to just the way I think about cells and health in general.

Oh, I want to go into the mo— in a moment, talk about microplastics because people are hearing about it all the time, especially the past few years. But before we do, when we're surveying our community, a lot of people have challenges with things like like brain fog, you know, and from, from your research or understanding, you know, what could be happening inside the brain when, when people, when, uh, that make people feel that way? Are there some, some considerations that you're looking at?

Yeah.

I mean, I, I certainly have a couple of pathways in mind when I hear brain fog. Energetics for sure is part of it. So mitochondrial function. And then I would say this, this entire CLEAR network. It's a set of genes that are turned on by TFEB1 that clear out all the junk. And then of course Nrf2 on top of it again is the toxins accumulating in your brain would be a big taxing to all of those systems, messing up your— clogging up your detox system. Messing with energetics. And then, yeah, just general differentiation state. I think a lot of people don't realize that when you have reactive oxygen species and they cause double-stranded breaks, it distracts the machinery in the cell from it remembering who it is. So it happens during development. You get, you know, locked into, this is the cell that I am and this is how I have to remain for the rest of my life. But It's slowly forgotten by that distraction. And so I think the combination of, of lack of detox and energetics are kind of the central feature of, of brain fog and surprising number of, of people that, that call in say that is one of the main things that they continue to take the product for.

What, what about inflammation?

Wow.

Yeah, like, you know, and its role, you know, if everyone understood one truth, let's say, about inflammation, you know, what do you wish that would be? And how do you think it could change, you know, this understanding change people's daily lives?

I mean, I think we both have a take on that. I mean, I think the important thing to know about inflammation is that there's really 2 types. One is good, There's a good type of inflammation. So if you get a cut on your hand, let's say your your immune system reacts to that, and it really it's a type of acute inflammation that brings healing. But then there's the the more chronic inflammation, especially in your gut, that leads to. So I look at it; the difference is sort of acute inflammation is like throwing gas on a fire. It's it's quick, and then it burns out. And but the chronic inflammation is slow. It's like a A rug that's smoldering over time. And that chronic inflammation can lead to really bad stuff. It can lead to intolerances, short-term allergies, and then autoimmune long-term. And so the thing to know about our products is, especially the broccoli one we were talking about, is that it— It can cut the pro-inflammatory markers quickly. So like 30% in 24 hours. And so people take it and notice a difference overnight, really.

Yeah, we were excited when we did our first study. We knew that in the literature it said that there was anti-inflammatory activity and we knew the mechanism. It's a direct conjugation of IKK beta part of NF-kappaB system. And so We found that IL-6, a really good marker of smoldering inflammation, went down 30% in 24 hours with just our normal dose of our supplement. So we knew we were on the right track for that particular metric. And brain specifically, sulforaphane has no problem getting into the brain, which most of the other anti-inflammatories do.

Yeah, even dating back 30 years, I've been talking about broccoli as one of my top 10 brain foods. And then, you know, about 15 years ago, I started talking about sprouting. And there's a science, but there's an art to it also as well.

Yes.

For those who've ever attempted to sprout your own broccoli. Let's talk about— you both dedicated your careers to studying sulforaphane. So what is it and why is it so important? Yeah.

And so again, it's the good molecule that is derived from broccoli. So basically, if you like, like I mentioned before, the precursor molecule called glucoraphanin, which is basically in all broccoli supplements except for 2, ours and one out of France called Prostafane. And the reason for that is that the glucoraphane is stable. And so with our supplement though, we extract both the sulforaphane and make that stabilize, but there are 7 other isothiocyanates, cousin molecules to the sulforaphane, that we extract as well.

Yeah.

And so if you read all the literature that comes out of Hopkins and their chemoprotective center there, they couldn't stabilize it, but they had a a broccoli sprout growing center and would make these broccoli sprout beverages to give all of the people who did the studies. And so they're extracting all of the molecules, not just sulforaphane. And so we also go out and add one molecule from watercress called phenethyl isothiocyanate, which isn't— the name is not important, but what is important is that when you put that together with sulforaphane, It's actually synergistic. And so when we were talking about turning on NRF2, which is why you take sulforaphane, you basically— it's not additive. If it's 1+ 1= 2, it's synergistic, 1+ 1= 5. So there's a 5 times effect of turning on that pathway. So yeah, I mean, sulforaphane has 39 pro-health mechanisms in the literature and actually 40 now that we— someone did research on microplastics and releasing Microplastics for excretion, but basically brain health. So it turns on BDNF, so brain-derived neurotrophic factor, which as you know is at the center of brain health, protecting existing neurons, helping grow new neurons, inflammation, which we've already talked about, and then also this detox. So it's the best natural molecule at turning on the phase 2 detox, but it works in all 3 phases. So that's, it's a, it's one of the only things I know of that, that can work in all 3 phases of detox.

And when we're talking about detox, a lot of people think cleansing or water or juice fasting, maybe something even more extreme. Um, the way you look at it and also really in relation to sulforaphane, you know, what do, what do you think what is missing and what are people getting wrong about the detox process?

Yeah, at least the way I hear detox being talked about, it's, it's not generally through the, the actual detox pathway that your body uses to get rid of toxins. Toxins are usually toxins because they accumulate in your body. They're generally hydrophobic. And so just a general understanding of, uh, sulforaphane turns on this transcription factor that turns on a whole bunch of genes, and it's Those are made to both increase the amount of glutathione and then go through the three phases of detoxification. The first phase is making it water soluble, and so that takes a toxin that's locked in your system, makes it water soluble. That sometimes makes it worse at first, but so you get phase one. Then phase two is three different aspects of conjugation. You can get GST, glutathione conjugation, or sulfation or glucuronidation. Those are phase 2. And then phase 3 is how you get those conjugated compounds out of your body. And so that's how you normally detoxify. And sulforaphane does all 3 phases and is why you can actually detox without getting like a keto flu or Not keto flu, the detox flu, the Herxheimer's, a lot of the side effects that people will get if they're just mobilizing toxins.

Yeah, a lot of those cleanses you were talking about are really good at phase 1, but then it backs up and so you feel sick 'cause you have all these toxins released. And so sulforaphane actually, it slows down the phase 1, but it works in phase 1 and then it speeds up phase 2. And so you actually can clear really nicely and not have that sickness that you sometimes feel. And I mean, it works. Yeah, it works amazingly well. I mean, I joke, but it's also true. I always take bottles to holiday parties and people expect it now so that if they have a little alcohol, they won't feel bad in the morning. So it's one of the—

Yeah.

It, it does work.

Yeah. The enzyme system for alcohol is aldehyde dehydrogenase. And so sulforaphane stimulates that. That I just know about that because it was highlighted recently at UVA as a longevity study. And so it's interesting that, that sulforaphane actually induces that.

It's a, it's a great, a great supplement to have, you know, on hand for, for all occasions for sure. Let's talk about— we were having a conversation before we started about microplastics and they're getting a lot of attention now. I've seen everything from there could be a spoonful of those microplastics in our brain to we're exposed ingesting in some kind of form into our body like a credit card a week or something like that. But, even if it was a fraction of that, What are microplastics when people are hearing about them and what should people understand about them so that they feel enabled, right? Because it could be very scary when you're thinking about the synthetic fibers that are in your carpets or in your clothing or in your furniture or all these where we're exposed or plastic bottles. What are microplastics and why should we be concerned?

Yeah, I mean, so the easiest way to think about them is they're micron or even nano size, so about the diameter of a human hair-sized pieces of plastic or smaller. And so those get leached from different plastic containers like water bottles and/or in the air, like you mentioned. In fact, most of our microplastic exposure comes from indoor air. And so that could be synthetic clothing. My couch has foam. And so if I— if you bang it, you'll see some dust. Yeah, the mattresses, most of them, a lot of them. And so, you know, the lint from your dryer. I can't take lint out of dryer anymore without holding my breath because it's proportioned to the amount.

Yeah, all of that.

Yeah, that's—

That comes up.

Yeah, that's microplastic. Mostly, unless you have all natural fibers that you're drying, which most people don't.

Cotton, wool, those things.

Yeah, exactly. And so, basically what happens is it gets in your body and it gets engulfed in these things called lysosomes, which are these vesicles inside the cell that are like the digestive— they're sort of the garbage disposals. And they have digestive enzymes they secrete and try to digest the various particles, which usually works if it's like a microbe or protein, something like that. But microplastics can't be digested, so they get backed up in these lysosomes, much like food gets backed up and clogs the kitchen sink. And so it doesn't work properly. And so, and so basically, It's an issue because the microplastics are porous. They can have, I read recently, up to 10,000 different toxins in them, including BPA, which is known to be an endocrine disruptor. And it basically mimics estrogen. And so that can lead to all sorts of issues, both in men and women. The Netflix documentary that came out in March talked about infertility, highlighted infertility, And microplastics? Well, that's because it can cause irregular menstruation in women. It can cause early puberty in girls. It can cause low testosterone and low sperm count, as well as quality in men. And so, I mean, just on the endocrine side, that's a big— it's a huge issue. But then there's other things that it can do too, cardiovascularly and on and on. And so, yeah, it's a big deal. But I mean, like, we said, because most of our exposure comes from air, one of the things that I mentioned to people is the best thing you can do is have a HEPA filter in the room you sleep in. And so that can mitigate quite a bit of your exposure.

Yeah, reduce all the synthetic fibers from furniture and your We've had this discussion with, you know, various mattress companies or, and, you know, talking about air scraping also as well that we spend 95% of our time indoors, you know, which, which could also be a challenge. So, so the, the, the downstream effects, your, your endocrine system, your, your hormones, cardiovascular, your nervous system. I mean, so if you were having sitting with like one of our listeners right now and you're having a meal and they wanted to ask you a question like something, because I'm sure people are very concerned, you know, how— if the question was something like, how would one support their body's natural defense, you know, systems today? What are a few simple things you would recommend?

Yeah, I like the general idea, actually framed like epidemiologists, is reduce your toxic burden first. And so what are the what are the big things that you do? Like if you're vacuuming, use a vacuum with a HEPA filter, and then the food that you eat, try and source it as best you can so that it you know has as little plastic in contact with your food before you eat it. Your water, the best source of water, at least from our research, is reverse osmosis water has. No microplastics. So after you reduce the intake, then the next thing to look at is your barriers. So when you breathe it in, the majority of the microplastic gets caught by your mucus layer and is rhythmically moved backwards up through your esophagus and swallowed. So basically, all of the biggest burden of your microplastics are in your alimentary canal. And then making sure that that barrier is intact will keep it from being absorbed in general. And so we always say, you don't listen to us, it's the review articles say that NRF2 is the center of tight junctions. So you keep tight junctions along your entire digestive tract, you're gonna keep them, most of them from being absorbed. And then after, After that, if they're small enough, there are cells in your body that just run around and consume things, and those are your macrophage or your microglia in your brain. So that's the other place beside the lining of your intestine and your lungs is wherever macrophage accumulate, they have microplastics in it.

Now, there's no test. Is there a test for Microplastics?

Yeah, Brian Johnson's has a, um, has a microplastic test from blood. And then, um, so what we were interested in was, uh, this researcher who's a lysosome researcher, um, John Budvig, uh, did a test on himself and took our product and tested by that facility And got the highest microplastic score ever done by that company. So it mobilizes microplastics, and we think the mechanism is by this— it's called lysosomal dumping. So it fuses with the cell surface and dumps the contents of inside the lysosome into the extracellular fluid. And so that's the first step. We were very excited that, you know, we could show— he repeated that study with us this year, and so that's reproduced now. And then I continued the study with showing where is it removed. And so we measured sweat, feces, and urine. And by far the most, the biggest signal of where it's increased to get it out of the body is in feces. And so we showed just recently that that is the way that the majority of the microplastics are gotten rid of. And so we did an induced removal of microplastics with a large increase in feces. So that's sort of the framing that I generally think of is, you know, reduce the amount that you take in and then have a known mechanism. of way of getting out and be consistent.

So, so in your research and just in your experience, what, what are the top foods or your go-to supplements that you would recommend our listeners should want to, who would want to support their detox, inflammation, you know, balance, brain cognitive health?

Yeah. I mean, I think the ones when we have a 7-day microplastics detox protocol, we have The broccoli, first and foremost, if you're going to do one, that would be the best because it just covers so much. And it's like John said, it gets to the brain. And so it helps with neuroinflammation. And then second would be resveratrol. So if you think about the kitchen sink analogy where the sulforaphane unclogs the sink, but the resveratrol actually widens the plumbing, so it allows— more of these microplastics get out. And then we, you know, also flush niacin can actually increase the vasculature and help with reduction as well. And then most recently, the fenugreek. We've read that fenugreek actually, as John said, most of those microplastics stay in your gut. And get excreted, but the fenugreek can actually bind those in the gut and help with that excretion. So we're not talking about what the microplastics that are inside of you, but the ones that are in your gut. So those would be, I mean, but inflammation-wise, the curcumin is the best natural molecule at downregulating the NF-kappaB, which is sort of the holy grail that the pharmaceutical companies would go after when they're trying to get an anti-inflammatory to market. And so, ours is very bioavailable. Can't say it's the most bioavailable or else we'll get sued, but it's very bioavailable and you can feel the difference.

And, it's different than just taking turmeric, right?

It is.

Like eating turmeric.

Yeah. It's about, what is it, about 5% of turmeric is curcumin. And so, it's the molecule. And so they— you extract the curcumin from the turmeric root, and then you get, you know, curcumin, but also cousin molecules to curcumin. And then basically— but it's basically less than 1% bioavailable, and so not much gets through the gut barrier. And so if you're taking it for your gut inflammation, it's great. But if you're taking it because you have you know, knee pain or joint pain, it's not going to do the trick. And so, as John said, like, you know, if you're talking about brain, the best is broccoli because it travels so easily through the barriers. But curcumin is also very good.

Yeah. And I don't know a human being that could— I started just recently, started taking your Kirk Elite Also, I don't know how many, you know, like how many people could really eat that much turmeric and broccoli, you know, and then certainly if they're traveling, you know, also with, with everything else. So I mentioned I was, I started taking broccoli years ago, you know, probably early when you, when you initially started because I, I knew that the power of it, but I couldn't get it easily into my diet right now or as much, you You know, for that inconvenience is very important for me in order to be compliant, right? You want to be able to reduce that friction. But, you know, I just can't go without it because of the change in mental clarity. You know, I just feel lighter, less inflamed. Where now we did something really special for our listeners also. So I just want to mention that for Broccoli, this product here, I want to thank you for offering a special discount to all our listeners. as a consistent listener to our show. If you go to— what is it? It's mara-labs.com.

Right.

And, if you put /kwik, that's K-W-I-K, and you use K-W-I-K at checkout, you get a special discount just as a thank you for being a listener and joining this episode. We'll put all of that as we always do in the shownotes at jimkwik.com/episode-1. For those who are not familiar yet with Marlabs, what, what does broccoli do specifically?

Yeah. So as I mentioned, it turns on the BDNF production.

So brain-derived neurotrophic factor, which is like fertilizer for that, for your brain, for especially for neuroplasticity.

Exactly. And probably about a quarter of the people who take it will have vivid dreams. I don't know if that happened to you. It's great for Inflammation. So as we mentioned earlier in the program, it turns, uh, reduces pro-inflammatory markers 30% in 24 hours. That's 2 of those capsules, 2 broccoli, and those 2 capsules, it's 10 milligrams of sulforaphane. This equivalent of about 5 pounds of mature broccoli. And then it's really great at detoxification. So it works in all 3 phases of detox, but it's the best natural molecule at phase 2 detox. And separately from that, and more most recently, it's been shown to mobilize microplastics for excretion, primarily excretion through stool. So it's, it's the only thing that's been shown to do anything to get microplastics out so far.

And what's the recommended protocol for it?

Because it's pretty powerful, we recommend people start off with 1 capsule. And then, and then if that works for you, And you're noticing the benefits to start off with too. You know, we offer a 100-day money-back guarantee because we want people to not feel burdened if it doesn't work for them. Everybody's different, and some people will notice that it doesn't, and that's okay.

And they take it in— does it matter the time of day, food, no food? What do you recommend?

We recommend taking it with food because it can be hard. It is potent. It can be hard on your stomach and cause Cause a little nausea. So if you drink some milk or eat some food with it, you bypass that. As you kind of take it longer, you don't have to do that.

It's part of my staple. I mean, this is kind of one of my non-negotiables. So I want to thank you, David, Dr. Gilday, for giving us your valuable research and your insights today. For those people who are listening and they want to go further into the topic, or where can they connect, or Or be able to find out more about your company?

Yeah, so we're at mara-labs.com. We have a blog. You can sign up for our newsletter. We send out information regularly, but we're also on social media at The Mara Labs, Instagram and Facebook, The Mara Labs. And so, as you mentioned, we do have a 25% off sale for the first, this first week after this is launched.

Well, everyone, there you have it. Today's conversation, let it be a reminder that brain health doesn't happen in isolation. You know, your brain is connected to your gut, to your immune system, to your inflammation levels, your environment, the daily choices that you make. You know, even when we're talking about nutrition, you know, what What you ingest matters, especially for your gray matter, you know, and it's nice to have some hope and some help, especially when it comes to things like microplastics where, you know, we can reduce, you know, we can only control our environment to, you know, to a certain degree to mitigate the effects, but it's nice we can do something proactive, you know, and also know that all the other benefits with inflammation, the brain-derived neurotrophic factors, And just, it's a reminder that while modern life exposes us to all these more stressors than ever, as I mentioned from previous generations, we're not powerless. And this is really what it's about. It's giving people a reminding of their own agency that we have these built-in systems that are very intelligent. They're designed to protect and repair, restore harmony and balance. But the key is really learning how to support these systems because what you nourish flourishes. Right? You know, while we're reducing the unnecessary, you know, toxic exposure, we're supporting our gut. We're paying attention to what your brain and your body is trying to tell you. So again, if you want to learn more about Mara Labs and the product that I mentioned that I've been taking for years as a customer, paid for it myself. You know, my family also as well. We have we turn a lot of clients onto it. Mara Labs dot com forward slash quick. Kwik, that's K-W-I-K. And at checkout, use K-W-I-K for a very generous discount. And if this episode gave you a new way to think about your brain, your body, I would love for people to share their biggest takeaway and post it online. You could tag Mara Labs. You could tag us on there also as well. I always reshare some of those. Since you tag us, we get to see it. Until next time, this is your brain coach, Jim Kwik. And be limitless.