Testing for Dangerous Heavy Metals, Mold, & Toxins like Glyphosates with Dr. Robert Whitfield

Hey, everyone, it's Dr. Whitfield. And welcome back to my podcast, Breast implant illness with Dr. Whitfield. Today we're going to talk about toxicity, and everybody's heard me discuss genetics and how I feel. It's very compelling to understand your own genetics and how you detoxify. So genetically, we all have the ability to detoxify through sweating, breathing, going to have a bowel movement, and then urinating, of course. So these are governed mainly by the liver and kidneys and obviously our lungs with breathing. But ultimately it boils down to what our liver and our kidneys can handle. So when I get patients who are relatively ill, and once again, breast implant illness to me is really chronic inflammation. The breast implant is a component of that chronic inflammatory process within that given person. But how they genetically can manage their detox, where they live, the air they breathe, the water they drink, the food they eat, that dictates much of what you will see. So, for instance, I grew up in an environment where the groundwater was not good. And, and so as a kid, I was taught, you know, every weekend we'd wash the cars and, and everybody drink out of the hose. My dad, my brother. And so I just did what everybody else did. And so that groundwater had a lot of arsenic in it, which is very common. Other things can be indicative of where you grew up, like obviously, groundwater exposure. If you lived in an area where they sprayed a large amount of insecticides or, or pesticides, you would have that potentially in your system. So when I look at my patients and I'm trying to listen to them about what they're experiencing from an inflammatory standpoint. So in the neurologic system, you can have lots of signs of inflammation. And, you know, we've all heard about brain fog. And, and so I didn't really understand what brain fog was initially when I, a patient, first told me about it. So I just asked more questions because I was curious to and what they perceived as brain fog and they felt it was difficulty remembering things. So to me, obviously, short term memory loss in a young person or anyone is concerning, but especially person younger with children, that's very disconcerting. And you can have neuropathic pain and everything down your extremities. You can have restless leg syndrome, and then as you walk it down your nose and throat, you can have dry eyes, you can have a cough, you can have difficulty swallowing as you get into the respiratory system, shortness of breath, chest pain, pressure tightness. If you go to the GI tract, I mean, it's all over the place you can have an upset stomach, like heartburn, reflux. You can have constipation and, or diarrhea, bloating, just abdominal swelling, your musculoskeletal system, you can have just aches and pains in the joints and the muscles. So you see, ultimately, it affects every single system. So I always want to know how someone detoxifies. And I can listen to them for most part, after many, many years of genetic testing of my clients and listening to them and what symptoms they experience. And I can, in my head, formulate almost how they detoxify. And we have a few things we can do in the office to help back that up. And then I definitely want to get a urine tox test. And this tox test helps identify things like mycotoxins, heavy metals, and environmental exposures. So I want to go over one of these with you all so you understand what I mean. And so the report itself will have a litany of. Of toxins to report. And someone who's got a bad mold exposure may have aflatoxin. There's beta 1, there's aflatoxin M1, then there's all sorts of other. Just mycotoxins, like ochratoxin. Maybe people have heard of that from aspergillus. Ochratoxin is actually put into wine. So in the United States, there's no regulation of how much they put in the wine. But in Europe, there is actually a regulation about this. And that's another reason why people will have difficulty drinking wine. And they're particularly sensitive to mold. And ochratoxin. Veracuranjay is another toxin. And these are just a few of the ones that I commonly see in folks who've been exposed to mold in Texas. You have to prove to me that you don't have mold, not that I have to prove that you have it. So those are just some examples. Now, I will tell you that I have had patients come in with leaking ruptured devices and have very strange heavy metal reports. And one in particular was concerning on their tox test that was, you know, done. And it had aluminum and beryllium and gadolinium and nickel and platinum, tellurium, the other heavy metals that were reported, but just not in high concentrations or heavy metals such as antimony and bismuth and cadmium, lead, mercury, thallium, thorium, tin, tungsten, uranium. So these can all be found in patients. And you want to know, okay, why did they live in an area that had it? So they get environmental exposures. There's Been a lot written about devices, whether it's hip, knee, breast implants. Can these give you metal exposures? And most of the. The current thinking is that they even, like a knee or hip implant, can give you something called polyware. But these are urine tests. In particular, after I explant patients, I see these resolve so that the. The components from the patient's initial evaluation are different. And it's not that we're doing something that's from a detox standpoint. In fact, in these patients, we're getting these tests before they actually have participated in our detox program. So we know that the actual intervention of surgery, surgically removing a device really helped in this situation. So on review of someone who's had an explant who had heavy metal exposure, we can see all of it basically resolve for the most part. And in this particular case, it was. Everything was almost back to a, you know, a baseline, if you will, but beryllium and thorium. Now it is kind of interesting, and we'll have to dive a little bit deeper into this and. And look at. Why would something like that linger? And let's just look at, for example, the thorium. So thorium is used to make welding rods, fire brick, camera and telescope lenses, gas lantern mantles, and in the ceramics industry. It is also incorporated in metals used in the aerospace industry and nuclear reactors, or, I'm sorry, and in nuclear reactions. Thorium is. And had. I'm sorry, had been used as a contrast agent. And there are all sorts of side effects and symptoms with thorium toxicity, including hematologic, hepatic, and respiratory effects. Some common symptoms of thorium can give you just problems with breathing, can give you pulmonary hypertension and fibrosis. So, you know, it goes back to what I said initially, where I like to get this so that I know. We know. In addition to food sensitivity testing, which I think is very valuable, GI maps, which are incredibly valuable, and examining hormones and other blood work, I like the urine toxicity test coupled to genetics to really help clarify what I'm hearing when I interview patients. And then what can we really do to paint the broadest picture around why patients are experiencing what they're experiencing? I feel like looking at toxicity is incredibly valuable. You know, when I look at. And I've seen some of the most unusual things, including a triclosan exposure. So triclosan was something initially where I didn't quite. I didn't quite understand how someone can get such a. A large triclosan exposure. But, you know, when you look at things that are in products. It's important to understand from a chemical standpoint what we exposed to daily. And triclosan is an antibacterial antifungal agent. And it's a bunch of consumer products like toothpaste, soaps, detergents, toys. You get it through skin absorption. It's also found in some antibacterial wet wipes. So, you know, and other things like herbicides like atrazine and glyphosates. Everybody should understand glyphosate. Glyphosates are a systemic herbicide and crop desiccant. It's used to kill weeds, especially broadleaf weeds that can affect crops. So the exposures, you know, we eat the food that had the glyphosate on it or rebreathe it from working around those areas, and you, you just, you miss 100% of the things you don't look for. So I look for these all the time. I want people to know their genetics, their toxicity profiles, or food sensitivities, how their gut microbiome is, as well as their blood work hormone status. And that helps us paint the broadest picture to better understand and characterize why they're having the symptoms that they're having, and allows us to give them the best possible plans for treatment that include surgery in many instances, if they're coming to me for an explant. But these also provide them the best, you know, overall plans to get. Well, thank you all for joining me today.