In this segment of the "Why Won’t My Chronic Infections Resolve?" series, Dr. Paul Anderson explains how various toxic exposures—metals, chemicals, and biotoxins (especially mycotoxins from mold)—can suppress the immune system and undermine treatment efficacy for chronic infections. He distinguishes between toxins and toxicants, critiques the notion of "normal" toxin levels, and describes how certain microbes can exploit heavy metals and chemicals to strengthen themselves, creating a feedback loop that drains immune resources. Anderson emphasizes that mycotoxins are particularly potent immune suppressors and argues for routine screening for mold exposure, noting that testing technology has improved dramatically in the past decade. He also outlines common hidden sources of mold, chemical, and metal toxins in the environment (air, water, food, building materials) and stresses that overlooking these toxic burdens can explain why standard antimicrobial therapies fail. The segment concludes with a call to investigate and address all possible toxic contributors when chronic infections persist.
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Welcome back to Welcome back to Medicine Health with Dr. Paul Anderson in our series on Why Won't My Chronic Infections Resolve? We're doing a lot of different vignettes into different reasons for that, so we'll have different videos. And this one is about the topic of toxicity and the effect of toxicity on your immune system, also on the ability of certain types of therapies to actually work, and then the effect of Toxicity on your overall health, your vitality, and the ability of your system to provide enough so your immune system gets what it needs. Very, very critical thing. So in this section of toxicity, what we want to think about there is you have different things that can be toxins or toxicants to your body. Okay. Now there is a technical difference between a toxin and a toxicant. They're all under the umbrella of things that your body doesn't like to have on the inside and things that are not good for you. Now, there is also in the world of toxicology, you know, this thought that, well, it's the dose that makes the poison, not the presence of the poison. This is why when you do certain types of testing, there's a cutoff level by which which they've decided that, well, most of humanity has this much of this toxin in them, so that's normal, quote unquote, and anything above that is abnormal. And there's a lot of debate around that because your body has absolutely— for instance, think about lead or mercury. Your body really has absolutely no need for or use for lead or mercury or a number of other things. So having a normal range for that is sort of a You know, it's, it's a misnomer to, to some degree. What we see with normal levels is that the actionable level of some big bad things like lead, the government keeps lowering the level at which you should probably do something about it, meaning they're getting more impressed with how bad lead is for you. But the other problem is because the normals are based on the population in, say, the US or other parts of the world, Um, as we all get more toxic, we all have a normal level of a baseline of toxicity, right? So it's not really normal. I used to tell patients, well, you know, there's no— nothing good comes from having lead or mercury or something in your body, but, you know, your, your levels are lower than maybe some other people who might be more toxic. There's 3 big areas of toxicity: metals, Chemicals, and then biotoxins, primarily mycotoxins from the mold world. And so if we look at them, they're all inhibitory to the immune system in different ways. But before we get to immune inhibition due to toxicity, want to talk about something that is an evolutionary advantage to some of the microbes, the bugs, the infections that cause trouble in chronic and acute illness. And that is that there are some forms of microbes that can make you chronically sick or give you symptoms, etc., that will metabolize some of the toxic elements in a way that is strengthening to them. So for example, they might use a heavy metal, which to us is a poison and to the microbe is actually something that makes them stronger. They actually will use it. One thing that you see in some of the research is there are microbes of different types that use certain heavy metals the way we use iron in our body. So they will suck up those heavy metals. So the more heavy metals you have available, sometimes that will create more growth of certain type of microbes because it strengthens them. And then that growth of those other microbes is a drain on your immune system. So that's sort of an indirect way. There's also, if you look at it, some evidence that would show potentially chemical metabolism by certain microbes again, sort of makes the microbe better and you worse. So that, that can happen too. But when we think about toxins, probably the easiest type of toxin to identify that's probably the worst for you if you have chronic infections going on are going to be the biotoxin family like mycotoxins. So M-Y-C-O, mycotoxins are going to be toxins created by mold. Okay, so the study of mycology is study of, you know, fungi. So there are certainly, uh, fungal forms in the world that are very, you know, healthy, and we eat them— mushrooms, stuff like that. And there are types of mold that are opportunistic, that grow when things get wet that shouldn't, and all that. And A lot of those opportunistic molds will give off a toxin that literally is an immune suppressant, to the degree that there are some drugs that are immune blockers that are made that are essentially the same as a mycotoxin, same chemistry. So in people who are not getting better, uh, and they have chronic infections, and maybe they keep going through treatment cycles that aren't helping and all of that, that. One of the areas we look— and so in other sections we've talked about, you know, immune suppressive drugs or lifestyle or other infections and this and that— another area we look would certainly be doing a screening for mycotoxin exposure. And so the mycotoxins, because they're directly inhibitory to your immune system, are usually the first target of things to look for. Now, one of the things that is important in medicine, they call it the practice of medicine because you never stop learning. Number one, it used to be a lot harder to test for mycotoxins. Number 2, almost nobody thought mycotoxins were that bad unless you had a real high exposure. And then number 3, owing to the— it was hard to or impossible to test for mycotoxins. Owing to that fact, a lot of the healthcare providers didn't even know you could or should, right? So, um, that I would say that, you know, in, in my chronic illness practice, you know, the testing of mycotoxins has been a big shift, you know, from, uh, 20, you know, 25, 30 years ago to, you know, the last, certainly the last 10 or 15 years. But some of it's technological, like you couldn't do it very well or at all before. So if no one is looking at things like mycotoxins, mold toxicity, et cetera, it should at least be screened for if you're constantly treating chronic infections and you're just beating your head against the wall. Because imagine, we talked about how bad it is if you're on a drug. So let's say your doctor gives you a drug to help one thing and it slows your immune system down, and then that creates other problems for these chronic infections. Well, that's bad enough, but then imagine no one's giving you this drug. It's just there. Okay? And I've seen it affect people because they can't see the mold infestation. A lot of times it's above your sheetrock in the ceiling, or it's in the walls, or it's in your vent systems or something else. Now, you can have your environment inspected for it, But sometimes it's not that obvious. You don't have to have stuff, you know, growing out and doing, you know, all these bad things. Chemical toxins, again, they can be screened in a urine test, and there are no perfect tests for these things, but you can at least get screening done. And chemical toxins essentially are going to do a couple of things, but mostly they're going to confuse your immune system. Your immune system's going to see them, it's not going to like them, it may make antibodies against the chemical It may find that the chemicals have got into your cells at the membrane or on the inside, so it might start attacking your cells. All number of things. Again, anything that throws your immune system off will create a problem for you in fighting other infections and getting healthy and getting over things. And then metals, like we talked about, kind of a couple of avenues into immune suppression. But generally speaking, heavy metal toxicity, if you have quite a bit of heavy metal going on or a lot of certain kinds, either is going to embolden your infections and/or create an immunologic challenge for you that, you know, is going to be a much bigger problem for you. So it looks like we need to get off of the radio here for just a moment. So we'll wrap up by saying one of the many reasons that we look at chronic infection treatments not working is have we turned over enough stones of underlying causes, toxicity, either mold toxins, biotoxin, mycotoxins, chemical toxins we'd be exposed to from the air or food or water any other way. or metal toxins, again, that we're often exposed to through the air, food, water, or maybe other areas. I'm Dr. Paul Anderson, and we will be back shortly.
