Understanding Toxin Testing: The Silent Killers Hiding in Your Body | TPE Blueprint #7

What if the real game changer in wellness isn't some new pill, but actually the ability to see what you've been carrying all along inside of you? So how would your approach to health change and totally shift if you were able to quantify your body's toxin load? That's exactly what Dr. Paul Savage and I are talking about in this episode as we go through what toxin tests are, how they actually shine a light on what these unseen threats are that are affecting all of us. Let's dive in.

Doctor Savage, we're back again for a duo episode, we'll call it. You know, and it's always awesome to have you here because you're always bringing different insights from the real world. You're in the office, you're publishing studies. I mean, you're seeing results and data all the time.

Yeah.

And that's what we're going to talk about is that this silent killer toxins and all these other diseases out there, but specifically the tests, like, what are these tests? What are. What's the data? How do we read the data? What. What does it all mean?

What do you need to know to know how much trouble you're in? Right.

And we're all in it. Right?

We're all in it. Yeah.

Okay, so I actually have my toxin test pulled up, and I'm going to. I'm going to bookmark that for a later bit in this episode. But this is where we started talking is the toxin test. Like, there's. We've talked about it on this episode. You know, you offer it at MD lifespan, and like I said, I've taken it. It's very simple. But they're not all the same. There's many of them people don't even know.

Many, many, many.

Yeah, most people probably didn't even know there was a toxin test.

Correct. Not to know that there's also dozens of them out there that you can do. And they're all. They're all good. They're all good. They just measure toxins perhaps in a different way, or they measure toxins in a different group. There's just a lot of. A lot of different companies out there doing a lot of different toxin testing.

Well, talk about, I guess, when did these tests come around? Because you were just telling me, like, hypertension, all these other diseases and these. These things that are affecting our body that we just haven't been able to test until there's a point where, hey, there's a test now for it. Now we understand more.

You know, that's. That's One of the things in medicine, we use this key phrase all the time called silent killers. You know, hypertension is a silent killer, because if you don't know you have it, then you're going. Then the consequences of having high blood pressure for many, many, many years, decades, adds up. And that leads to increased incidence of stroke and heart disease and all these terrible things that can happen. But people don't know that. We never really learned how to measure blood pressure until about 50 years ago, 60 years ago. I mean, it wasn't that long. About World War I is when it started coming out. We had other ways of doing it, but typically it was just a doctor filling your pulse and telling you you had a strong pulse or you had a weak pulse. But that's how they did blood pressure way back in the old days, until we actually started measuring and we started getting the data. And then we could start correlating like, wow, that matches heart disease and that matches stroke. Later on, you know, the way we used to check for diabetes, and this was very. Not long ago, was we used to put our finger in the urine and taste it, and if it tasted like sugar, we knew you were diabetic.

Wow.

That's how diabetes was determined until years passed. And then we started getting laboratory tests done. When I started as a doctor, and that was, you know, in the. Actually as an EMT, that was in the late 70s, there weren't a lot of lab tests available. People don't realize that where you have such a plethora of lab tests, there weren't a lot of lab tests back then. You had a cbc, you might have the kidney function, they might have the liver function. You know, you might have a urine test, but there wasn't a lot of blood tests that were done. It was all clinical at that point. Blood tests have really evolved and advanced in the last 60 years. When we talk about toxin testing now, I was testing peoples with some toxins way back in the 90s. So they were there at that time, but they were not. Very many companies were doing it. And we could do the heavy metals pretty easily. We had mold toxins that were coming in, but pretty easy. But when we started getting into the pesticides and the forever chemicals and microplastics, we did tests for those. Matter of fact, even today, the test for microplastics has a long ways to go. It is not a good test. The only test that we found that is reproducible and has some what we call acceptable variant is a company out of Finland.

Oh, wow. What's The, I guess. Do you know why that is so difficult to pick up?

One of the things that it hasn't been until the last five, six years that people actually started, hey, are microplastics a problem for us? Hey, are they in the human body? Oh, they are. And now it's just causes avalanche of all these, of all these concerns about microplastics. Correctly. But there isn't a lot of good testing around, certainly around for clients to get easily access to for microplastics. Now there are a lot of good tests out there for all the other toxins, all the pesticides, the PFAS, the PCBs, the mycotoxins, the heavy metals. I mean, we have some really good companies out there that do a really good job. Now patients can order from different companies. Different companies use different sources. Some people use the hair and the hair, you know, everybody's like, well, which one's better? They're all good. It just depends what you're looking for. Hair has an advantage that you can detect chemicals that, that have been coming into your system for quite some time. Because if it's in the hair, it's been there for quite some time.

Yeah, yeah.

But then there's also, you could do blood testing, which is pretty common, especially if you're looking at microplastics or if you're looking at PCBs. And some of the PFAs are frequently done. Matter of fact, most traditional doctors are used to the blood testing. So they want a lead test, they're going to do your blood for lead. If they want a mercury test, they're going to do your blood traditionally. But that's not always the best way to test for toxins in the blood because the toxins aren't stored in the blood, they're stored in the tissues. And they, you might need to. And so therefore, urine testing is another way of testing for toxins. And that has the advantage of being a test that requires the kidneys to concentrate the toxins that it's excreting. Because remember your toxins, your kidneys filter a lot of stuff and put the good stuff back, put the bad stuff out. So the kidneys are like an auto, auto concentrator for us. So we can detect really small levels of, of toxins in the urine which we may not find in the blood.

Makes sense.

So that's why I said there's all sorts of different ways to look at these things. Some are more valid than others, but there's. And still to this day, there's not A lot of companies out there that are doing tissue levels of toxins. Like if I were to do a fat biopsy or a muscle biopsy, I send it off to a lab. Why would I want to do that? Especially the fat biopsy? Because a lot of these toxins are stored in your fat. And matter of fact, there's a good amount of science out there to believe that's why the obesity epidemic is. The obesity epidemic is because our body has been storing these toxins in the fat, and the last thing the body wants to do is open that door again.

I see. So it's holding on to that and.

The fat is what's holding on to the toxins. It's called sequestration, where the body is kind of pulling it out of the active metabolic environment and putting it off in a quadrant somewhere and locking the door. It just happened to be, that's a fat cell. And the body does not want to open that door because not only we get the fat come up, but all the toxins would come out. So it just wants that door to say locked.

Sure, yeah.

So people come all the time. Like, I did this test. That's fine. You just have to understand what that test is really testing. And because, you know, some of those, like the blood test, it may not be.

Concentrated enough to detect things at a smaller level. And that comes back to this whole question back again, which is one of my favorite question asked people all the time. What's the normal amount of toxins in the human body? Believe me, Joe, 80% of people can't answer that question. They're like, I don't know, what is a normal amount of toxins in the human body? And the answer is zero. That's why it's a toxin. It's not supposed to be in your body.

Yeah, it's a foreign, foreign thing that should not be inside of you.

People are like, well, leads common. But lead wasn't common hundreds of years ago. Not really, except unless you were a person who was dealing with tools and you're dealing with or medicine because they use lead and arsenic and mercury for a lot of different things. But in general, it wasn't in the environment for the general people. And if we went back 2,000 years, 3,000 years ago, the amount of toxins that you would find in the human being would be zero all the way down the line.

After this whole journey, what I really learned here is like, there are a lot of health conscious people. I think I'm considering myself one as well. But there's a Lot of things, no matter what you do, how much you pay attention to it, how much you avoid it, and sometimes it just got in. And I think TPE gave me a good opportunity to restart my body again.

Really fast. I want to go back to. So the urine test is the one that, that you choose, right. And so, like, I would like you to. Because I took it, it was very simple. And again, I have my results. I'm looking at them, and I want to kind of go through this, so. Because, you know, it's. It's a lot of. A lot of big words, a lot of names I've never seen before. Sure. So we'll interpret that, but break down why you choose urine test.

So we chose the urine test for a number of different reasons. One of the things is we wanted a test that people could do easily at home. Now, if you have to poke your finger and get it onto a blood spot, you know, get on a piece of cardboard, that takes some talent. If you have to go somewhere other than your home to have someone poke you in the arm to draw blood, that means you have to spend time and effort to go to that place. If you can do a test at home, like a saliva test or a hair test or. Or a urine test, those are really easy to do at home. So we chose the urine test because it's real simple. You get up in the morning, you pee in a cup, you put that in a tube, you split the tube in the envelope, and you split the envelope in the mail. You're done. It's very, very simple. Second thing is, we did. We chose this urine test because we could test for 109 different chemicals pretty much across the spectrum. Now, it doesn't test for microplastics and it doesn't test for PCBs, so we couldn't get those, which we wanted. But sometimes there's a give and take when you're doing those things. And like I said before, microplastics are really hard to test for at this point anyway. So there's a drawback with this urine test is that we couldn't do a couple of the ones we wanted, but the vast majority of the ones, we had some pretty good representation because even though this test has 15 different categories and about 10, you know, sorry, 12 different categories, with about 10 to 20 in each category, depending which category it is, there's a pretty nice spectrum across the board of toxins that are pretty common and pretty lethal in this test. So we had also a good representation of the different types of PFAS, for example, this test does 20 different PFAS, but there's 5,000 PFAS in the environment, and we're testing 20 of them. So it gave us a good reputation of the ones that we have a lot of research about and the ones that we like, and the pesticide, it gives us eight. And there's about 18,000 pesticides in the environment, but we get to test eight. So we had to be. We wanted a test that was relatively representative of what we would see here in the United States.

Got it. Okay.

The last thing was the cost.

When we did analysis of cost per test, I mean, like, of each separate one that we did, this test came out at about $6 a test.

Wow.

Which is really. I mean, it was just really, really low. So we're like, good. We can. We can deal with that price. So there was a lot of things that go into it, but people come to us for evaluations, talk in their initial consult with us, and they're like, here's my hair analysis, here's my blood test, and that's fine. We're happy to look at those. Like I said, we're not advocating that this is the best test that we do ever. It's just, it fit our needs the best. And again, it was representative of what we were looking for.

That makes sense. Is there a time where you would retest or maybe even do one of these other types of tests after you get this baseline?

Yeah, frequently. Like, if we. If we come in with somebody and they have a story that has to do a lot with microplastics or PCBs, then we have other labs that we use that we will test their levels with those other companies.

Got it. Cool. Okay. That makes sense.

A lot of times people come to us with some tests, but they're incomplete because they don't go across the spectrum. We may want to do a different test that covers more of a spectrum. But the thing that is that we know that your listeners don't know is that it doesn't matter which test you do, because we're all toxic. Everybody's toxic, period. End of story. It's just a question of how toxic and with which ones. Because in the world of toxins, we can look at them as highly toxic. I mean, let's give a good example of highly toxic uranium. It's radioactive. That's highly toxic. Yeah, right. Everybody agree with that one? But also, PFAS are highly toxic. Pesticides are highly toxic. Plastics are highly toxic, and believe it or not, mold toxins are terribly toxic.

Oh, well, it seems like mold specifically, like, you'll, you'll feel a reaction or a lot of. I've known a lot of people with some really bad reactions quickly from mold.

Yeah. I mean, they can come, they can get in. Mold gets in every different way. It gets in through breathing it in, tasting it through your skin. I mean, just every different way that mold can get into the body. And yes, it's unfortunate traditional doctors don't recognize mold toxicity as serious as some of the doctors in the fields that are a little bit more open to looking at different causes of illness.

Yeah, you're absolutely right. And unfortunately, when I look at my results, there is a mold that's kind of off the charts, and we'll interpret that. But yeah, it's interesting to say, like, okay, so there's a bunch of different toxins and there's even more.

Right.

In our body than what we can test for. Like you said, testing is getting better and technology is improving quickly. So I'm sure this is going to change.

Hopefully every year. It changes months to come. Every year we're getting more testing and better testing. And I'm sure, like right now, as I mentioned, microplastics just don't have a good testing modality. Even that. Some of the best microplastic testing labs in the world, and we use one in Finland, are discovering newer techniques or improving on their own techniques, and we're constantly getting updates. And so they're really moving down that path. But it's not like the heavy metals and the mycotoxins and some of the pesticides that we've. We've had tests for 40 years. And so they don't improve much. And the testing modality, as much as they were just ways of getting the cost down, improves.

That's true. Well, and that's the. I think that's what a big goal even of what MD Lifespan is doing. I mean, it's making this more accessible to the general public.

Yeah, that's part of our mission statement, is to help drive the cost down of all of this all the way across the board so that it becomes more available to everybody who needs it.

Yeah. And it's needed. And thank you. And so it's interesting that you say, you know, there's a whole bunch of toxins, of course, out there, but they're on the spectrum of how toxic are toxins, you know, and none of them are great. But at the same time, it seems like, yeah, you have some that have been around for a long time, like I said lead and all these other ones. But then you have these newer toxins that seem to be coming up.

Yeah.

Are you finding those? Are. Are they more dangerous? Is. Can you even tell, or how does that work?

100%, absolutely.

Really?

The microplastics are probably the single greatest toxin out there for a lot of different reasons. One, they never stop breaking down. I mean, so you have all these different sizes of microplastics that are interfering with the body on all sorts of different levels, even down to the point where microplastics are breaking down to so small that they act like DNA on your cells.

So they're literally like she fusing the.

DNA and making the. I mean, but you have these big particles that are causing irritation to the gastrointestinal tract. Probably a major cause of why we see an increase in colon cancer and gastric cancer. These bigger particles. And then you have these smaller particles which are acting like hormones, because they look like hormones and they're causing estrogen to not be released or be released too much. And then you have them even smaller, and then they start interacting with the cell membrane and making cells turn into cancer, and then even smaller on the DNA and make it. So it's like microplastics are a toxin. That effect. I mean, this is not common because lead and mercury, we know all the different receptors that they hit. But microplastics have, as we're getting further into discovery, literally touch every aspect of biochemistry all the way down to the DNA, which is the smallest part of the cell. So this is why we're like, microplastics are. If you're asking who's the king of the toxins, it's the microplastics. And everybody has microplastics now.

Oh, my gosh. Well, and you said what? We're digesting a credit card's worth of plastic.

You have a teaspoon of plastic in your brain right now. We know that, too. And 68% of people have plaque in the arteries and the plaque in the arteries. And if you have plastics in those plaques, your chance of having a heart attack versus somebody who doesn't have plastic in those plants is increased by 400% in the next three years. So these are very problematic. Now, on top of all the differential and the size of the plastics, plastics also carry every other toxin with it because you have to have 47 different toxins to make plastic. So when you plastic, it also contains all of those 47 other toxins. So you're getting this bonus package when you. When you're when you're ingesting plastics, not only the plastics, but you're getting the phthalates, you're getting the phenols, you're getting metals, you're getting all these other chemicals and that are coming along with it.

Well, yeah, because they were needed to make the plastic.

Right. Or then they're this, they're the paint or they're this the seal that you put on the plastic so you can see Coca Cola. And it's fused to the plastic, but that's fused to plastic. So now that toxin is going to introduce you. Introduce into you as well all those different dyes, all those different things. And then you have the food part and the way it changes the food by plastics interacting with food particles, make them toxic. And then that's how you get all these other different documents. And now those are being absorbed along with plastic. So the plastics not only differentiate on all different sides, which affect the body at all sort of different level. It's also a party bus of all the. Of all the worst toxins that you can imagine coming with it.

Oh, gosh.

So, yeah, that's very afraid. You'd be very afraid of plastics there. And you know the world. I would say those are the king of the planet Blast as king of the king of the toxins. They are the Godzilla.

Okay. Yeah, it's, it's, it's interesting when you start to break down what's. How something is made. I mean, just look at stainless steel cans. Exactly. I'm like ceramic. No metal. Water can I. I promise, I, I think I scare most of my friends now because of the information you've given me. And. No. And they actually thank me for it. But I'm like, sorry to be a downer here, but people ask me all.

The time, of all the different things I can do to help AV toxins, what's the one I should do?

Water.

Yeah, it's your water. You gotta filter your water. You got to.

Yep. And. And I use the Aqua True. Right on the. The. I know that you recommend it as well.

Yeah, I recommend the better versions where it's the triple filters that are under the sink. Those are the best.

But this is triple.

Different.

It's a plastic container on top that's holding all the reserves. So don't leave it in the plastic container. Pour it out into a glass.

That's fair.

They have that on the guidebooks. Like, this works. But as soon as it filters in. Don't leave it in the plastic, for God's sakes.

Yeah, no no, no, no. Don't do that. And plastic water bottles. Please just stop using those. Yeah, yeah. All right. Would this be a good point to just do a quick overview of my toxin, just to kind of distinguish what some people might see? We don't need to go too in depth, though, because.

Do you want this to be this episode? Do you want to be in another episode? Because this is going to be another episode all on itself.

Well, I think.

I think we should say timeout. This is talking about toxin testing. Let's talk about. Let's make that the next episode.

Fair. All right, we're teasing it. So is there anything, Dr. Savage, that we missed out in this, in terms of just understanding the testing, the data, the types of toxins, the spectrum?

It's just the message that we give to the listeners all the time. You don't have to do anything, but you do have to check your levels of toxins. What you don't know is hurting you.

That's it. Don't let it be a silent killer.

Don't let your data killer get your data.

All right, until next time. And next time, we will be breaking down what an actual test looks like, and we are teasing y'. All, but you'll. It'll. It'll be worth it. And we'll even take more time on it, so you can understand when you get your own toxin test. So thank you for watching, listening.

Appreciate it.