In this solo presentation Dr. Paul Anderson outlines medical‑level interventions that go beyond lifestyle‑based detoxification. He reviews the body’s three detox phases—Phase 1 (cytochrome‑mediated oxidation of fat‑soluble toxins), Phase 2 (conjugation with glutathione, glycine, etc.), and Phase 3 (excretion via urine, feces, breath, and sweat)—and explains how clinicians can augment each step. For Phase 1, trace‑mineral repletion and chelation of heavy metals are discussed. Phase 2 support includes glutathione, vitamin C, and other conjugation precursors. Phase 3 enhancement involves adequate hydration, oral binders (prescription or supplement), cholagogues (phospholipids, curcumin) to promote bile flow, and heat‑based therapies such as sauna or clinic‑supervised sweating. The core of the talk focuses on chelation: categories of chelators (dithiols, DTPA, EDTA), their metal affinities, routes of administration, and critical safety considerations (loss of essential minerals, electrolyte imbalance, dehydration). Dr. Anderson stresses the necessity of medical oversight, regular monitoring of mineral status, and the importance of using up‑to‑date protocols, warning against online purchase of prescription chelators. He concludes with a call for patients to seek professional guidance when undertaking intensive detox protocols.
Chapters
Hey, it's Dr. Andersen with Medicine and Health. And in this section, I'm talking about toxins and toxicants. We want to get into specific therapies that would be largely beyond what you would do kind of naturally with a detoxifying lifestyle. There is a lot of crossover as well, but I wanted to kind of get into this and talk about a few things that have some need for medical oversight, some safety issues around them. And some other things as far as the management of your depuration and detoxification. So the first thing is, what could we do beyond just sort of general things to help our phase 1 and phase 2 and phase 3 detoxification in the body? Now, phase 1 is an enzymatic process That runs largely through the cytochrome system, and that helps to take things that are fat-soluble toxins and toxicants and to break them down to make them more water-soluble. Because if something's fat-soluble, it will prefer to go like into your fat cells or into your cell membranes. If we break it down and make it more water-soluble, it will tend to want to go out through the kidneys or maybe a couple of other routes out. So phase 1 support can be a couple of things beyond just sort of the normal, you know, hoping it runs along, etc. The first thing would be your healthcare provider might look at the availability of trace minerals in your body, and there are particular trace minerals That help to run phase 1. And so those trace minerals might be low, for instance, when they check you, and they may actually specifically supplement you there. The next thing though is that sometimes if you have toxicity or exposure to heavy metals, those heavy metals might need to be removed through a process called chelation to kind of clean up that enzyme system. So phase 1. Okay. So phase 1 then hands off these fat-soluble metabolites over to phase 2, and then phase 2 directly receives non-fat-soluble, so water-soluble toxins and toxicants in there. And that is supported by a whole lot of conjugation steps. So beyond maybe taking some extra of these intermediates that go on in phase 2, you know, like glycine and And glutathione support, stuff like that. Your healthcare provider might do procedures where they're helping you to detoxify, and then they're actually giving you extra of, say, glutathione and maybe some vitamin C and other things of that nature for phase 2. And then phase 3, we talked about in the prior section, but that is basically urinating it out and Getting it out in the feces. And then, as we mentioned, you can breathe some of it out and you'll sweat some of it out. So in a more medicalized system or specific therapies, a lot of times people will have you doing maybe detoxification protocols like chelation and things like that, but they may also have you doing some sort of sweating that can go on Some clinics have that right in the clinic, or they might, you know, figure out where you've got a place you can go to a sauna, and they may have you sauna 1, 2, or 3 times a week, you know, under either partial or full medical supervision. We at one point had this in-house in our clinic, and, and in people that needed, you know, more aggressive heat therapies, we would monitor them directly because of course you can get too hot. And And there are some contraindications for doing heat therapies. So phase 1, 2, 3 is going to be elimination— enough water, enough binder, and then enough heat to get stuff out. Now what about binders? Uh, what if we have, you know, we're eating fiber but the stuff's not leaving like it's supposed to? There are either prescription or supplement level binding agents that might be used. So there are some prescription binders that we'll use with people, especially if they have mycotoxins from mold and certain other chemical toxins. There are certain toxic metals that also require binding agents to help them get out. And again, that's because a binding agent I'm going to put in my mouth and either eat it or take the pill That's going to go through like a sponge, and then when the bile gets put into the GI tract, the spongy binding agent will hold on to the bile, and then the bile will go out in the feces holding onto the, the binding agent, and so it doesn't redistribute into the body. So sometimes you need a stronger one, which would be more of a prescription item. Now, in addition to that, sometimes with the idea of bile elimination and binding, you can enhance that by using what we would call cholegogs to help the bile flow more or more freely, etc. Now, those can be often natural substances, so Not that this would be medically used in this fashion, but most any fat can be a cholagogue, okay? But specifically medically, we might use phospholipids such as phosphatidylcholine and its relatives, because phospholipids increase the movement of bile through your liver and your gallbladder and out into the GI tract. Also things like curcumin, turmeric, part of it is called curcumin. So turmeric and curcumin are also going to help with the movement of bile through and out of the body. So remember, when we're working with bile activity, you know, it's kind of like with sweating. You got to get the body hot enough to make the sweating happen. Well, we want the bile to be a little more thin, so that would be a cholagogue like either an essential fat or a phospholipid or, you know, curcumin or one of the others. And then on the other end, when that bile goes out, we want to have a binder there to bind it up so whatever chemicals it's carrying will leave the body. Now you think, well, what if all my bile leaves the body? Normally we do recycle our bile, but your liver can make all the bile substrates that it needs. So don't You don't have to worry, your liver's got your back there. So the final medical treatment in the world of chelation and detox, at least for this particular discussion, is called chelation. And chelate comes from an old Greek word meaning claw. So chelate, keel, and claw. And basically it's a chemical that is going to bind and claw onto a heavy metal normally. You can chelate a few other things, but, but metals are really what we're usually doing there. So you've got lead or mercury or cadmium or other stuff. Now with metals, you still have to take care of all the other detoxifying things. You have to take care of the bile and the binding. You have to take care of hydration. So it doesn't let you off the hook for any of these other things. Chelation is just an added medicalized treatment to grab onto metals. Now, what are the safety issues with chelation? Safety issues with chelation are mostly that the chelator will bind not only to the heavy metals, but also to some metals or minerals that we might want in our body. It's very attracted— most chelators are very attracted to iron and zinc and copper. Uh, and, uh, to a smaller degree to things like calcium or magnesium, etc. So imagine if I'm chelating along and these bad minerals or metals are leaving, you know, like lead or mercury, etc., but then also I'm lowering my zinc levels. I might not want to do that because I might need my zinc for an immune response or other stuff. So how do we get around this problem? Well, number one, in training we train doctors that Not only are the bad metals leaving, but these good minerals leave too. So whenever we're giving a chelation protocol, in between the chelation days or treatments or whatever, we're giving minerals to fill the tank back up. So the other thing that can be not so good with regard to chelation as far as safety goes is if it either dehydrates you or throws your electrolytes off. So sodium Potassium, calcium, magnesium. If those go out of balance, you could have something like an arrhythmia or cramping or other stuff. And we generally don't get those side effects with patients as long as we're doing the chelation appropriately. So this video is not to tell you how to do chelation, it's just to give you that big picture to kind of top down. The other thing I'll say, having been a physician trainer for chelation procedures for 20 years now, is the science and the application has evolved a lot. So if you have a provider, you know, who's really up to date, they're going to be doing all this stuff. If you have a provider that's been doing the same thing for 20 or 30 years, you know, there might be some of the finer points that we've discovered in those last 3 decades that, you know, may not be happening. So whenever you're getting chelation, you want to make sure you're being hydrated well, you're getting enough antioxidants, like glutathione and those things. Someone is measuring and testing your normal good metals and minerals, and then they're monitoring as you, as you go through. So that's the idea with chelation. It's very specific and it will go in. Now, what things chelate? There's a lot of different chelating drugs. By category, there is a very common group of drugs called the dithiols. A thiol is a chemical which has a sulfur molecule or moiety in it, and a dithiol means it's got sort of 2 arms that can kind of grab onto things. Now, dithiols are generally very good for mercury, also good for lead. They also do like to hold on to zinc and copper and some other good stuff as well, but they're often used orally, especially in children. They're very effective And we also use them intravenously, certain types of dithiol chelators. So when they're being used, again, you want appropriate testing, you want appropriate monitoring, but those dithiols can be quite good. A question would come up and say, well, can't I just order those online? And the answer would be, at least in North America, no, they are prescription items. They're actually drugs. Okay. Now, my caution to you would be if you find a drug online that you can order without a prescription, there is a lot of counterfeiting and fraud and cutting of things with, you know, other bad chemicals. I would not recommend that you do that. You're going to need monitoring with these drugs. There's also a category of drug that's used in radiation accidents and other things called DTPA. And we use that sometimes in protocols where people have gadolinium exposure, which is very important to get out of the body. Often we get gadolinium from contrast, stuff like that. DTPA is a little more gadolinium-specific, but you still have to work on all of the other things that you would need— hydrating, replacing minerals, you know, enough antioxidants, all that stuff. So it's not just, you know, slamming a lot of DTPA in you. And then there's another one that's very, very common, usually intravenous, called EDTA, which is actually 4 arms that go around, and it's very good with lead, and it grabs a whole bunch of other minerals too. We're about out of time for this, but when we get to specific detoxification and depuration therapies, Healthcare provider may need to monitor chelation for sure. Heavier amounts of like binding protocols, heavier amounts of sweating and heat protocols really should be monitored, and, and you should get some help from a healthcare provider. And then very specific supports for the phase 1, 2, and 3 pathways that go along with those protocols and procedures. All right, I'm Dr. Paul Anderson. Thank you for all of you subscribers, whether it's on the podcast, the Pod Burners, we're on all of them, or on YouTube at DRA Online, or just go to my website, drainow.com. Like, share, subscribe, and please hit the notification because sometimes the algorithms shove us over to the side and you don't see us anymore. All right, thank you very much, and I will see you on the next one.
