Golf and Toxicity Part 2

All right everybody, part 2 of golf course toxicity. Um, it's going to start shortly. Just going to wait for everybody to hop on. Dr. Whitfield MD, I'm in Austin, Texas, and our patients actually alerted us to problems with living near golf courses. As long as a few years ago, actually, um, had a patient of mine have atrazine at really high levels, and I hadn't seen that before. So we're gonna get into it here in just a minute. Everybody's gonna hop on, we're gonna get rolling. Remember to share this with your friends who like to golf or live around golf courses. This is not to do anything but to educate and inform. Hi everybody. It's a little cold in my office today, so we'll get rolling shortly. Everybody, come on, hop in. We're going to do a 10-minute talk and then go into the circle, live Q&A with me. Ask me anything, here's your chance. Looking forward to it. Get my chat ready. Streaming's live. Everybody's hopping on. We're going to go live across all the platforms here in just a moment at the top of the hour. Yep, and there we go. So now we should be live on Rumble and Substack and YouTube. And yep, there we go. And on Substack, I should be live right now. I should be. Yeah, it's all good. Perfect. Okay, all good. We got chat rolling. Hit me in the chat. Oh man, sorry, I was getting feedback on another channel. Just, I was double checking things. All right, I see you, See Fit Living, Paula, San, um, Karen, Betty. Thank you all for hopping on. I'm gonna say hi to everybody here. Okay, perfect. We're gonna get rolling. Hey everybody. All right, let's get rolling. Let's get into it. Gotta stay on time. We got a busy day in the clinic today. All right, all right. So today, part 2. It's from the fairway to the operating room. And so yesterday we talked about some of the increased risk in terms of Parkinson's disease. We mentioned a couple specific chemicals, chlorpyrifos and chlorothalonil. So I want to welcome everybody back. I'm Dr. Robert Whitfield MD MD. Robert Whitfield MD, board-certified plastic surgeon in Austin, Texas. And last night, we just laid the foundation, like I said. We talked about a couple of the different chemicals, and, that leads to a hidden toxic burden. The 2025 JAMA data shows a 29% increased odds, risk of Parkinson's disease for people living within a mile of a golf course. Um, once again, we talked about, uh, chlorpyrifos, chlorothalonil, uh, I mentioned atrazine. These are all chemicals applied to golf courses at scale with regulatory gaps, uh, that should concern all of us. So if you missed part 1, the full replay is live right now inside Dr. Rob's Circle. So you can go to drrobscircle.com. Today we're going to go deeper. Today we're going to connect the exposure to the operating room. Because here's what nobody in surgery is talking about. What happens when a patient walks into the operating room carrying a decade of accumulated chemical exposure, of which nobody measured because they didn't know about it. They didn't think to measure it. So the bridge exposure is really key to understanding why some of the people behave biologically different than others. And let's explain it physiologically. When you're exposed to organophosphates and endocrine disruptors, whether you're a golfer or you live near a golf course or kids play on the treated turf, those chemicals don't just pass through you. They don't go in and out. So let's just stop there for a moment. Right? They do not just pass through. You don't get absorption and then elimination. They build up in the tissues In particular, they store in the fatty tissue. So we've tested each of our patients as much as possible over the last several hundred patients up to— and not over 1,000 as of yet, but we look at toxicity burden testing and we want to know these exposures because many of my patients, one of them Lorne Bostick, a very famous podcaster, had so many heavy metals and used extensively dry sauna. Other patients who lived near golf courses had high levels of atrazine. Last night we interviewed my patient, Ashley Kurtz. She had high levels of organophosphates, heavy metals, as well as mycotoxins. So, You know, we do the test, it's very measurable. There's heavy metals like I said, and, and from all these exposures, you build up inflammatory cytokines. These disrupt your endocrine system as well. And, you know, throughout the course of time, these build up in your system as we spoke with my patient Ashley Kurtz last night. These chemicals do multiple things that directly can affect an outcome. One, they deplete you of glutathione. Glutathione is a master antioxidant in our bodies. Everybody's probably heard of glutathione as a trendy, um, antioxidant or one used for beauty, but it's incredibly important in the pathways of— if you want to think of detoxification. So when glutathione is depleted, your liver has a difficult time clearing all sorts of things, including something like anesthesia, efficiently. So if people have a tough time waking up, that can be one of the reasons— not the only reason, a reason. Your tissues can't then also manage oxidative stress very easily from surgery. That will slow down recovery. And two, they drive chronic inflammation, elevated rates like SED rate or C-reactive protein rates. They can elevate your cytokines. And we already talked about disrupting your hormone signaling. And inflammation and what we're describing is not just like soreness, right? We're talking about inflammation that's chronic and prevents you from healing properly. It also will affect how fat will survive. If we do a fat transfer. So there are a number of factors at play all the time. The third, these, um, these toxins can really compromise much of our detoxification pathway system if we don't have that much resiliency to begin with. Think of something like MTHFR. So I'm MTHFR positive. So I have mutations and about 36% of the population has mutations in the methylation pathways and MTHFR. So your methylation cycle is important for a whole host of reasons, but if it's already compromised plus you add all these different exposures, your body's ability to process and eliminate toxins is definitely going to be significantly reduced before you ever get to the operating room. So just think of that. Like, if you genetically don't detoxify well already and you build up all these toxins, you've lost your, your reserve, so to speak. You're less resilient. So what does this really mean in the operating room? What does it look like clinically? I think we'll go through just a couple of scenarios. And I think everybody can imagine these things happening. The first patient comes in for surgery, maybe it's explant surgery, it's fat transfer, maybe it's liposuction. She's been symptomatic for years with fatigue, brain fog, joint pain, hair loss. She lives on or near a golf course in one of the cities where that's, uh, very common in the Southwest. She's not been tested for toxicity, and no one has ever measured her for heavy metals or mycotoxin levels and maybe other inflammatory markers. Um, she, you know, passes the basic, you know, physical examination test. She does basic blood work, which is all fine, and she goes for surgery. Patient B will describe similar symptoms but does the SHARP method. So about 6 weeks before to 8 weeks to 6 months, depending on when someone enters the process, they have their genetics looked at. So we have a better understanding of their genetic predisposition for detoxification. We do a toxicity burden test to look at their toxic burden. So we look at things like organophosphates, which is an environmental toxin, phthalates, BPAs, glyphosates. We look at all these things in addition to heavy metals and mycotoxins, things like ochratoxin, aflatoxin, fumonisin. So we're looking at all this. In addition, we look at hormone balance and we look at sensitivities. A lot of people have a lot of sensitivities to things in their environment as well as in their diet. So in this patient, we'll say we found elevated levels of atrazine. We obviously know that that's a bad actor and one that's commonly found and has been used over a long period of time on golf courses. So we also know from their genetics that they don't detoxify well. They have a limited glucuronidation pathway, and they're already heterozygous for MTHFR. So at this point, You know, that's when the short method really, that's when it takes control, right? So rather than go off and do something for that patient in the operating room, we work really hard to prepare them. And so I feel like at this point, after almost 30 years of operating, it's much more effective, much, you know, better for patients to have more and more preparation and better understanding of their genetics, toxicity burden, gut health, food sensitivities, and hormonal balance prior to an operation rather than trying to react to problems afterwards. So we start the SHARP Method from the time we meet them. We support the detox pathways. We use liquid liposomal vitamins. I like liposomal methylated B, liposomal glutathione, liposomal vitamin C, and liposomal vitamin D3K2. We also have magnesium. And we use some carnitine. This helps diminish the inflammatory burden. Now, if you don't think this is the case, I had a teacher show me this. In fact, she is a great example of someone who is completely naive to supplementation and dietary modification. So she called us, she had implants for years and had a lot of difficulty with brain fog and fatigue. She is a teacher and only could come in the summer when she was done with teaching. So we put her on the program, and at that point we're measuring very specific urinary metabolites, which we don't do now, but we could follow those, and they dropped over time, indicating that her inflammation was decreasing. So we know just by running the protocol and paying attention to sleep hygiene and nutrition that you can reduce your inflammation. So that's the difference, right? You prepared, that patient came here, had surgery. Most people will spend a week with us. They're more than welcome to spend longer, but our, you know, the recipe that I find that makes the most sense initially is to come here already prepared for surgery, arrive the day before in Austin. We go through everything, reconfirm plans, we get all the paperwork done. Patients will typically go out to the restaurant that we recommend, The Well, which is gluten-free, dairy-free, seed oil-free restaurant here near my clinic or downtown. They have a couple different locations. Have a great meal and then come for surgery the following day. The following day, having been prepared properly, They take a couple little medications to help with nerve pain, inflammation the night before, come in, our anesthesia team does a great focused ultrasound-guided nerve block to really reduce pain before they ever go back to the operating room. We go back, we take care of them in a really smooth, efficient way. We add more local anesthesia that's long-acting, works for about a week, and then patients come to the recovery room. They're able to get on their way within a half hour, hour. They're typically doing extremely well, need very little pain medicine actually. And then they come to my clinic the next day. So everybody operate on yesterday, which was Tuesday, April 14th, because today is the 15th. I had to look at my counter again. Is here in the clinic, and they get treatment with the Human Regenerator from Germany, which really helps with improving and getting everybody into a parasympathetic state. Remember, we The parasympathetic state is rest and digest. And then we like to use a combination of NanoVi and Flopresso. So you lay in the Flopresso, which is a great lymphatic massage device from New Zealand, with simultaneous NanoVi treatment. After that's done, the patients typically get into the vertical hyperbaric chamber and then finish it off after we pair that treatment with a red light treatment. So we have a 6-foot-tall red light, and that's really our recovery stack. And they do that, um, throughout the week they're with us. And so I feel like that's the, the way, you know, so we've prepared the patient, we know their genetics, we know their toxicity, we know the gut health, food sensitivities, hormone balance, we've got them better sleep hygiene, better nutrition, they're really, really prepared. So I feel like surgery without preparation is, is not the way we should be taking care of patients. I think principally it makes sense. I want to do things that fundamentally make sense to both patients and providers. And this has worked so well. We feel extremely fortunate to be able to share this with everybody. We published a book about it. We've done 160 podcasts and I think over almost 4,000 videos now. So let's take it a step further because this is where it gets really interesting for anybody considering, you know, a procedure like a fat transfer. When we, when we harvest fat for transfer, we're harvesting, you know, the adipose tissue and that tissue stores a lot of toxins. So I just was on a call with somebody from Canada and they know they have a mold exposure. So we're gonna be very careful with them, and they're already investing in better air filtration, but we're gonna help them with a preoperative workup to establish their levels and then treat those levels. We're also gonna look at their heavy metals and other pesticide metabolites, anything else that be disrupting the endocrine system, like, say, like phthalates. Phthalates are plasticizers that come from plastic water bottles. They make the plastic water bottle. Firmer. So you'll look at all these things before you take them to the operating room. If you were just to take them to the operating room, harvest the fat, transplant it, no matter technically how gifted you are, you could still have trouble with healing because of the amount of toxic burden the patient's facing, the amount in the fat you're transferring. So you potentially could have a really poor retention rate. We don't want to do that. We want to get everybody as, you know, prepared, make it as smooth and efficient as possible. And the patient, you know, they don't understand that. They're trusting us to figure all this out and, and help them with it. I think that's why so many people, you know, want to come to our practice because we have a built-in program. We have full-time functional practitioners for this. I have 3 full-time staff devoted to this, and it's It's something that I used to do for every patient, but I can't go through every detox with every patient now. But for many, many years, I went through all the genetic results and all the toxicity testing with all the patients myself. But now we've got wonderful detox practitioners, Chelsea, Gina, Melinda, my nurse practitioner. Everybody's kind of used to the programming. Everybody in my clinic They take great care of patients and make it possible for us to do all this. So when you spend these 6 to 8 weeks preparing for surgery, optimizing nutrition, sleep hygiene, really getting your diet on point, the— what we feel is the best preparation then helps you succeed in the operating room. We feel like our ability to transfer the fat is better, our retention rates will be better, and we want to always concentrate on, on the connection between maintaining your BMI and not creating a caloric deficit. That's a big component. So, you know, the connection between the, the golf course and the operating room is, is really like a chemical one, and it's another example of exposures that we have to pay attention to. And they're not just at the course or in your backyard. If you live near one, you just have to be thinking about this all the time because it's going to potentially affect you or your loved ones or your children. So we don't want to, you know, ever do anything but just like educate and raise awareness. So that's something I feel like it's very frustrating. None of this is— I'm not being, you know, speculative at all. This is all published material in the Journal of the American Medical Association. And in our patients, we have testing over and over again that reveals data like atrazine, like organophosphates. In addition, we've contributed ourselves to the literature. I published the largest PCR-tested explant capsule series in the world, shows 29% contamination rate in 694 consecutive samples. You know, we're constantly looking at and evaluating heavy metals and mycotoxins. We are hopefully going to get something published about our patients' genetic results. We have an IRB for that right now. We want to always raise the level of care for any of our, our patients and really create a standard that's high as possible for cosmetic surgery in general. Because right now it's not part of the process. I don't think there are many clinics like ours measuring toxic burden in the entire world. We think it's very important before surgery, and I hang my hat on it after surgery as well. I look back at it, I see what's been affecting patients to give me clues about why they may have other issues that develop chronically or that they just have to work through over time. So I think it's important to really ask the patients about their travel history, where they grew up, where they lived, what's been their exposures. If you can fill in those gaps, that will help you. The SHARP method for me help fill in those gaps, looking at genetics, looking at toxicity burden, gut health, food sensitivities, hormonal balance, all those things that were outside of the standard purview, you know. I get a little bit of grief for how long SHARP, the acronym, you know, what it stands for, but in reality, it's a very, very, very efficient tool to help your patients combined with our supplementation protocol, sleep hygiene, optimization of nutrition. All of that's put in place to really help patients, you know, have the most success. That's really the whole point. You want your patients to have the most successful experience. That's everything our clinic and our team stand for. We work really, really hard for every patient, create as individualized a plan as possible, and work over the year to take care of you. And longer. So tomorrow in part 3, we're going to talk about what you can do, whether you're a golfer, a live near a course, or you're considering surgery. There are some specific steps you can take to measure your toxic burden and start reducing it. So we'll touch on that tomorrow. And if you want to go deeper today, I have time. We're going to go into Dr. Rob's circle now. I'm going to stop the live feed, and we're going to continue the discussion inside Dr. Rob's Circle. I know it's middle of the day. I appreciate everybody hanging with us. I look forward to seeing you all tomorrow. Tomorrow at 7 PM, um, Central, and we'll live stream it. All right, everybody who wants to ask me questions now can go into Dr. Rob's Circle. So drrobscircle.com, drrobscircle.com, or you can go to my website, drrobertwhitfieldmd.com, and click to join. That will get you in as well. There's no barrier to entry at this point. Okay. All right. I look forward to seeing you all inside the circle.