Mark Schauss on Toxins, Health and Lab Testing (Interview)

Hey, hey folks, it's Maximus Mark. I'm very pumped for today's show. Today I have one of the world's leading authorities in both the area of toxicity, detoxification, and a leading expert in lab data interpretation. Today's guest is none other than Mark Shouse. Mark Shouse is an internationally acclaimed lecturer on the effects of environmental toxicity on human health, health, and the use of laboratory testing. While researching these fields for the past two decades, he has gained a comprehensive insight into a range of neurological disorders including epilepsy, autism, ADHD, ADHD, and neurological degenerative diseases, as well as an array of other health problems. Dr. Shouse is currently the president of Lab Interpretation based in Reno, Nevada. Mark has also presented some of the courses in lab analysis for the Polyquin Institute. So with that said, welcome to the show, Mark.

Oh, thank you for having me.

Excellent. So before we get in, what inspired you to write your fantastic book, Achieving Victory Over a Toxic World?

Well, it was my young daughter. She was diagnosed with an advanced form of epilepsy that was supposed to be progressive, and the doctors told us that we should be prepared that by the age of 12, if she even lives that long, that we will probably have to institutionalize her because there's nothing that we're going to be able to do in order to save her from this form of epilepsy. She would have seizure after seizure, sometimes hundreds a day. Some lasting, one lasting up to 6 hours. I said that was not acceptable to me and I was not gonna take that kind of a diagnosis. And so I began my journey. I was already in the field of health, been in it since 1983, and I was already doing things like laboratory interpretations for doctors all over the world. I developed a system for it and I said, you know, I gotta use my tools. And then I also had a group of experts out there, people from different labs, osteopaths, MDs, NDs, chiropractors, the whole bit. I started questioning them as to what I could do to help my daughter, and I gained so much knowledge from that. And when she first had it, she was 3 and a half, so we basically were told we have about 8 and a half years with our child. Well, I can tell you right now, she's about to turn 15. She's in high school. The seizure activity is very rare. She doesn't have her drop seizures anymore, the grand mals. And she's doing quite a bit better than anyone had ever expected. And I needed to get that information out to people. I had to tell them that there were reasons why my daughter had this, and I believe firmly in my heart, and based on the science, that it was due to some toxic event when my wife was pregnant with her from some exposure. And I needed to tell people that there is hope out there and it's, you just can't take what the doctors tell you and then just lay over and play dead and say, well, we're just gonna accept things as they are. So I wanted to inspire people and I also wanted to scare them a bit because we do live in an increasingly toxic world that's really dangerous, especially for our children. It was very important that We make sure that we stay away from as many toxins as possible. Not possible for all of them, but as many as we can. And also that there were ways of detoxifying the body very gently, safely, and rationally that everyone can do. And it's not that expensive.

Yeah, that was an absolute— you're absolutely right. It was definitely an inspiring read and yeah, a little bit scary at the same time. But yeah, I remember reading through that, your book. It is absolutely a fantastic book. And yeah, definitely.

Thank you.

So in a nutshell, what is toxicity? Can you explain that? To our listeners why, why would someone need to be concerned?

Well, there's a lot of different types of toxins we have in our environment. First off are things that are chemicals that are foreign to our body that cause— that can cause harm to it. Some, like botulism, you can have just a few molecules actually can cause severe, you know, reactions, and very minute amounts can cause death. But then you have other toxins which accumulate in our tissues, and while it's the initial dose Low doses don't seem to cause many problems, and the accumulation over time can. These things can go from petrochemicals like benzene and toluene and xylene, things that are found in paints, paint thinners, and pesticide sprays, to heavy metals like mercury, arsenic, cadmium, a number of them that we see in our environment all the time. And also there's a few other ones. Stress is a toxin. When you have too much stress in your body, it causes chemical changes. So we have to be aware of all of those. Really, there's a kind of a saying in toxicity, it's all in the dosage. Even water can be considered a toxin if you take too much of it. So what we have to do is be careful of what we're getting and how much of it we're getting. Now a lot in the chemical industry would tell you, well, many of these chemicals are very safe, they're found in very minute quantities, And they may be right in the minute quantities, but if you're taking it on a daily basis, one example is bisphenol A, also known as BPA. They're found in so many different sources that a little bit here and a little bit there, and pretty soon you have a lot of it, and then the dose, you start getting the effects. So the big thing with toxins is everything can be toxic, including nutrients, you know, vitamins and minerals, but it's all in the dosage. So we want to make it the correct dosage for the person, person when it comes to nutrients and also to make sure that we keep the least amount of these toxins, you know, from getting into our bodies.

With something like BPA, it's said that it acts more like a hormone than it does a toxin. Therefore, even a minimal dose can disrupt the whole endocrine system. Would you agree with that or is that not quite the whole story?

Yeah, I would pretty much agree with it. The research that we're seeing, and it's still in some very early stages, you know, there's a lot of evidence that BPA does act like a hormone. Just a little bit of it can affect you, but that can be a toxin as well. You have hormones. If you get in too many types of estrogens for a male especially, you know, you get problems. So it is something that's normal to our body, but again, in the dosage, if you put too much of it, you begin to, you know, disrupt the whole hormonal system. BPA is just one of those things that you find in so many different sources. I think that every month we come up with something new. I didn't know until about 2 months ago that you can get it in the receipts that you get from stores.

Oh, wow.

And that your skin is a great place to absorb that. And so that was something that was kind of shocking to me, but it was just one more source of it. You know, we had the old Nalgene bottles, which supposedly no longer contained BPA, was used to harden plastics. So many different places that we're getting it from. And, you know, it is considered the number one money-making chemical in the world, President. I believe the estimates are that it generates about $100 million per hour.

Wow.

That's a kind of a staggering figure, which is why there's such a big backlash by the industry, obviously. Yeah. You know, trying to come up with studies that say everything's fine with it. I mean, that's a big chunk of change. So they're gonna— kind of put down any of these negative studies, but BPA does raise a lot of concerns.

Yeah, definitely. I know there are still, unfortunate as it is, there are a lot of skeptics out there who don't, they're not believing what is out there about toxicity. So how would you respond to the statement when people say the body has its own detoxification pathways and can detox itself?

Well, I would really challenge them. To read the research. One of the things that I have to say, you know, when I wrote in my book, some of these toxins the body does have a pretty decent pathway to detoxify because there was some heavy metals the body does tend to excrete it. And the reason is because humans have been around some of these chemicals for 9,000 years since the dawn of the Iron Age and any time they used, you know, metals. But some of these toxins, I would challenge these skeptics, do you know how long they've actually been around us? Many of them for less than 20 years. Wow. How could the body all of a sudden have this great knowledge of how to excrete something that it's never seen before? And some of these actually have an affinity to get into fat tissue and stay there. And the research that's coming out was suggesting that many of these chemicals do reside in the body a lot longer than had originally been suspected. And the research on that is coming out fast and furious. And that's the kind of research that I think scares some of the corporations, you know, greatly. I mean, the European Union passed rules in 2006 called REACH that said that they're gonna have to start proving that these chemicals are safe and not take for granted that they're safe and then prove that they're not. So it's a big change in the way a lot of countries around the world are looking at it. And if it was so, you know, easy for the body to get rid of it, why are a vast number of scientists getting more and more concerned about it?

Yeah, definitely. Absolutely. Now you mentioned in your book glycine as one of the daily supplements that someone could take to detoxify themselves. Can you talk a little bit about glycine?

Oh, absolutely. It is one of my favorite topics, and one— I'm right now in the midst of writing my follow-up book called Surviving in a Toxic World. One of the chapters is going to be on glycine, and glycine is something that the human body has a desperate need for, for many different reasons. Glycine is found in collagen, which is in your bone, your tissue, represents over 50% of your total protein makeup of your body, and the predominant amino acid is glycine. So there's an important thing there. But also glycine has this amazing affinity for petrochemical toxins and binds up with them very readily and just flushes right out through the urine. So it's a really nice effective means of getting into your system, looking around, finding those toxins, binding them up, making them nontoxic, and getting out. A couple of nice things about glycine, it's one of the least expensive nutritional supplements on the market and it tastes good. So using it with children is a breeze. You just take, you know, a few grams, put it into their juice or water, tastes fine. You can even put it right on the tongue. You know, it's a kind of a sweet little taste to it, so it's easy to use. But I think it's one that I've seen over the years more and more deficiencies and people as I run amino acid testing. I think it's— everyone should be getting, if you're an adult, at least 3 grams a day. Again, real inexpensive. It should just be part of the daily routine, getting in. Children can take a gram. Nice little thing about glycine also is it converts to certain neurotransmitters in the brain that improve memory and cognition. So not just are you getting detoxified by using it, you're gonna sharpen your brain and you're gonna improve energy cycles, things like that, and help to build muscle and collagen that's gonna help your joints stay more fluid and pain-free.

Is it possible to take too much glycine and become toxic in glycine at all?

Well, there's been studies that have used up to 30 grams per day without negative results. The only possibility, and this is purely hypothetical, and I presented it at a couple of conferences, is that it could cause people to shuttle heavy metals around. Again, hypothetical. We're not sure if that really does happen or not, but, you know, for most normal people who don't work out too much, 3 to 5 grams, you're going to be very safe. I haven't seen anyone with an issue except for one group, and those are people with diagnosed true Parkinson's disease, right? They have a specific inability to utilize and metabolize glycine properly, and it actually makes them shake even more. Whereas in a normal person, it's actually calming.

Okay, all righty. So what, what do you believe to be the most harmful toxins in our environment, and, uh, why?

Oh boy, you know, I don't think there's— I would say there's anything In particular, I think it's the combination of the multiple toxins that's the most concerning to me. If we go back 40 years, you will have cut, say if we could time travel, we go back, you would cut out about 90% of the toxic chemicals that you're being exposed to today. They didn't exist 40 years ago. But now we have 80,000 chemicals, especially in the United States, more so than most any other country, 80,000 chemicals, most of which we don't know what they do and how they affect the human body. So it's just the sheer number I think that is staggering. There are some that I think because of their prevalence that are disturbing, like bisphenol A. Another one is phthalates, and that's an interesting one to spell, it's P-H-T-H-L-A-T-E-S, and it's used to make plastics soft. It's also used in things like air fresheners because it holds an aroma, and then when heated or forced out into the atmosphere, it releases the scent so you can smell things. And so these little plug-ins or your shampoos, conditioners, different types of personal care products that smell good will contain these phthalates. And we know that phthalates disrupt testosterone in both males and females. There's been ample evidence. That it can damage DNA in male sperm. It can cause shortening of pregnancies, which we know is very important to go to full term. We also know that it can cause insulin resistance in men and gut obesity. There's just so many different issues that it can cause. One problem I find is that electric