Avoid Lead Exposure Risks You May Not Realize, with Dr. Lyn Patrick

Arsenic, lead, mercury and cadmium are literally the top metals that A, we're exposed to and B, are most likely to make us sick and kill us. So where do they come from? Right. We want to know so we can avoid them.

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Hello and welcome back to the five Journeys Feel Freaking Amazing podcast. Ed can't be here today. He's missing out, actually, because we have Dr. Lynn Patrick Lynn is a licensed naturopathic physician who has been in practice for 39 years. She specializes in environmental medicine, treating exposure to toxins, intoxicants, and trains physicians and primary healthcare providers in environmental medicine in a year long training program@emeiglobal.com super excited to have this conversation because, Lynn, this is near and dear to my heart. You know, I always think of toxins as metals, mycotoxins, and that other massive bucket which includes the flame retardants, the nail polish, the phthalates, the plastics, the styrenes, the gasoline fum. We're probably only going to have time to focus on one today and we could bring it back and talk about another. So what's the one you want to talk about? What's your, Is it metals, is it mycotoxins or is it other?

Oh, this is. So you know, my specialty area is in metals. So that's the one that I can talk most easily about. But I do not in any way, shape or form want to minimize the rest of the bucket because that bucket is really important. And the problem with that bucket is that we are today exposed to a myriad of toxicants that are endocrine disruptors and carcinogens and immunotoxicants, especially pesticides, as well as the rest of the things like some of the acrylics that are in nail polish, et cetera, et cetera.

Death by a thousand cuts, Lynn. That's what I call it.

It is crucial though. I just want to say it's crucial for everyone to really reevaluate your personal care products and the cleaning products that you use in your home and to really come, you know, have a come to whomever, talk with yourself about how just something as simple as vacuuming with a HEPA filter and your. Your vacuum, as well as wet mopping and wet dusting, can significantly impact the daily exposure that you get to chemicals that are carcinogens and endocrine disruptors.

Well, I want to pop on that because I was horrified when I read there was a study in 1989 from Massachusetts. Go Boston. That found that one in every six deaths was actually due to air or water quality. Now, this is in 1989, so it's only gotten worse since there's. So even filter your water and your air to the best of your budget is going to take you some.

Right? I think. And we're at that point. You know, I've been heavily involved in what happened in East Palestine, and now I'm equally horrified by what happened on the island of Maui. And I think we're at that point now. You know, Dr. Kridian always used to say, it's no longer voluntary to have air filtration in your home. And I was like, oh, come on, Walter. You know, we've got mercury, we've got lead, we've got all these other things that we have to worry about. And he would just look at me with this beautiful, compassionate smile and say, I've read the literature on this. I feel confident on this. And I now, having educated myself in the last 25 years, feel the same way that we all have to have some form of air filtration, and water filtration is absolutely critical. So be that as it may, you know, those two now necessary inputs into our lives. Um, yes, let's talk about metals.

Okay, so we'll set that to the side. So tell me, what are the most harmful heavy metal toxicants? Like, what should people. You know, because there's a whole list of them you test and you get 12, 13.

Well, I'll tell you what the government says.

No, I don't want to know what the government says. I want to know what Lynn says.

Oh, no, no, no. This is the one thing I actually agree with the government about. Yeah, I know the EPA has. There's regulatory capture there. I know that all too well. But there's another agency that is a sub agency of the center for Disease Control, and they. The Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, the atsdr, you probably never heard of them, but they actually do the research that. The actual research that is the foundation upon which the EPA creates regulation. So they know everything. And they have monographs for over 200 toxicants. Each monograph is over 300 pages long. So that's what, you know, we Train our doctors. That's the information that we rely upon to really understand toxicants. So what they have created is called the priority list of toxicants. And this is literally a list from 1 to 200. I don't have it up on my desktop, or I'd show it to you, but I know it by heart of the chemicals that you're, you know, you speaking to the consumers of healthcare out there and the doctors you are most likely to made. To be made sick by. And to be killed by. Okay, now how do they know that? Well, they actually have done the research, and they have identified which toxicants you're most likely to be exposed to. And that's based on something called the Superfund research. Which Superfund sites. Everybody pretty much knows what they are, right? So Superfund sites, as well as the actual rating of the toxicity of the toxicants. So we actually have a big mathematical algorithmic formula by which we decide how toxic toxicants are. So guess what the first three are. Lead. Our arsenic is number one. Let's go by the numbers. Arsenic is number one. Mercury and lead are number two. And number three, cadmium is number seven. So those four metals, arsenic, lead, mercury, and cadmium, are literally the top metals that A, we're exposed to, and B, are most likely to make us sick and kill us. So where do they come from? Right. We want to know so we can avoid them. Lead comes from a myriad of places. Some of the sickest people that I have ever treated were made sick by lead because they were taking herbal medicines that were manufactured outside of the United States, either in Southeast Asia. Not to name names or anything, but, yeah, Ayurvedic medicine. So Ayurvedic medicines, Ayurveda or Ayurvedic medicine, is a particular practice of medicine from Southeast Asia, India in particular, that utilizes botanical medicines, but also purposefully, sometimes adds metals to those medicines.

Why purposeful? Like, what do you get out of it?

I have talked to Ayurvedic doctors here, like Dr. Vasant Laud in the United States, and he said, we no longer do that. And I said, well, here's a paper from the New England Journal of Medicine that shows that they did an assay of these medicines and found thousands and thousands and thousands of times higher than allowable levels of lead and mercury in them. And he said, well, you know, that's. That's an older practice that's no longer used, and it's illegal in the United States to do that. But if those medicines are imported, people can end up with serious acute metal intoxication.

I'm not usually. I'm not brand conscious typically, Lynn. But I always say to people, for supplements, you want to know where that comes from? Because, you know, we. We make supplements ourselves and we test it for metals, mycotoxins, contaminants, and then we test to make sure it actually has what it's supposed to have. It's sort of a dual track. And so this is the kind of thing where if it's coming from some other place and it's not made in a GMP facility and it's not being tested, you have no idea what you're taking in.

We only have the current or the recent experience of the contamination of lead and other metals in baby food and in chocolate to understand how common this is. Right? The chocolate contamination was because it was lead in the soil. The cadmium came from the fertilizer used in the soil, which came from mine tailings, which is where the cadmium came from. So, you know, we. We know that this is all too common. And I'm working on a current article looking at lead in spices and herbs, which is also a common contaminant. And I'm sad to say this, but especially in turmeric, as well as some other botanicals. Right?

What about the live root? Do you find it in the root itself? Is it being absorbed from the soil?

It is absorbed from the soil, yeah. Now, I have to say, because I'm a geek and I look at this stuff, the turmeric that we get here in the States is mostly grown in Hawaii. And in Hawaii, they do not have the same problem that they have in India, in Bangladesh and Southeast Asia, where a lot of the turmeric that gets into the marketplace as a processed powder comes from. So even though Hawaii's got its own problems, right, with the volcanic emissions, you know, the vog, it. It is cleaner than the fresh root that the. The powdered, excuse me, turmeric that comes from other parts of the world.

So this is the third point, which is make a better choice. You might not be able to be perfect, but level up in some way and make a choice that's going to raise you, even if it's not perfect. Get better, right? Don't. Don't focus on how you're failing. Focus on where you can improve.

So the other place that lead comes from, since we're talking about lead, is that. And this is another story, right? Got to tell the stories because that's how we implant this stuff in our brain. And Go. Oh, right. That's where I heard about that. So I had a patient who was worked in the penal system, she worked in the prison system. So she had access to all kinds of interesting connections. And she was sick with multiple issues. She was hypertensive, she had autoimmune disease, she had autonomic nervous system problems, like we think about mold exposure as well as with chronic fatigue exposure. She was a sick puppy. And we tested her and she had extremely high levels of lead in her urine and in her blood. And what we surmised from that is that she was exposed to lead because we tested her bones and we found out her bones were okay. She wasn't leaching that lead from her bone. She didn't have osteoporosis, but she was exposed to lead currently. So we explained that to her. We wanted to treat her, but we most particularly wanted to find out where she was being exposed, because if we didn't deal with that, we would be treating her, we would be chelating her forever and ever and ever.

Wait, can we pause for a second, Lynn? Because, you know, the training that I had was that you can evaluate stores based on provoked urine, that you cause it to come out. So for the listeners, when you're testing the blood, if it's positive, it's because it's an active exposure. Because you're going to sequester that, you're going to put that away. The body knows it's toxic. You're not going to have it floating around the bloodstream. So if it's positive, it's now, it's not an old exposure. So to just to distinguish that.

Right. The one exception to that is if you have active osteoporosis or you have active breakdown of your bone, which sometimes women will after being treated for breast cancer with cisplatin or any cancer for that cisplatin, Cisplatin is used for, is that that can be a source of lead. Your own body can be a source of lead in your blood. So but we, in this particular woman, we figured that out. So she went to town. I mean, she tested everything. And guess where she found the lead? She had some beautiful imported ceramic dishware from Portugal, I believe she had got at American Home Furnishings. And she had an industrial hygienist. I said she had a lot of connection. She had a connection to a really good industrial hygienist who tested this plate for lead. It had about a thousand times over the allowable level for lead. Now, there are ongoing two class action suits right now with both pottery Barn and American Home Furnishings. I think, actually, I take that back. They've been settled by now due to lead poisoning from that imported. You know, it's. It is legal to use lead as part of the glazing of this imported ceramic pottery. So that's the reason I bring this up is because it is honestly a more common source of exposure than you would think. Right.

What do you think of the 3M testing strips for lead?

The ones you get at Home Depot.

Or Lowe's, they come in a pack.

I got.

I got them from my boyfriend who sends me everything.

Yeah. Is the trade name Lead Check? Do you know the trade name? Because I can't remember who makes Lead Check. But Lead Check is the ones that we suggest. They are sold in any. You know, they're sold all over the place.

Like an eight pack of sticks.

Right.

It's little sticks that you.

They're more like strips, but yes. So these are strips. And the 3M product may be good as well, but the Consumer Safety. Consumer Product Safety Commission has checked them and that's what the EPA actually recommends, and they are good. Now, they are specifically for dust. So you can't use them for toys, you can't use them for plates, you can't use them for ayurvedic medicines, as far as I know, because they're specifically made to be able to identify and quantify the lead and dust. And that's what they're made for and used for is if you have a home that was built before 1978, there's probably some lead paint at some point in one of the layers of that house. And speaking of exposure sources, the most common exposure in the adult population in United States of America is home renovation.

The weekend warriors, right? Cut a hole in the wall and bam, you've just released lead.

How would you know, Lynn?

I have that patient. She showed up in my office and her lead level on provoked testing was 95. I was like, girl, you're doing like. First of all, do you live in an old house? She goes, yeah, I live in. In Victorian. Okay. Did you do any home DIY projects? She goes, yeah, we stripped the paint off of. Blah, blah, blah. I'm like, okay, no more DIY projects for you. Because her lead level has been consistently bumping every time she does a project.

Yeah. Yep. And this was in her urine?

Yeah, I provoked urine test.

I would be very interested to know what her blood level is.

You know, I never even did it. I should do it. I'm going to say to her every time you do a DIY project, go get your blood drawn and see if you have lead. Because she doesn't have osteoporosis. So it's.

There is a certain percentage of blood lead that is from bone. There is a consistent turnover in a certain superficial layer of bone that does contain lead. So there's some, but not all right, it's a smaller percentage. I think it's around. I can't remember, I don't carry all this stuff around in my head, but 25%, 30%, something like that. So that is another common source of lead because lead was used in gasoline and lead was, and it's still used. And I have to say this lead is still allowed to be used in gasoline for small aircraft and for certain boats. So for certain marine use, we still allow leaded gas. Now, we just had a case of a young girl who lived near a small craft airport. And the planes took off, went right over their house, came in, landing right over their house. The airport was small, so they didn't. There was no legal need for mitigation. You know, in large airports they actually have to help mitigate the homes in a certain area of the airport. But this was a small craft airport. This kid had a blood lead level that was so high that she might as well have been living back in the 60s or the 70s, in the summer, you know, when we had thousands of kids who actually died of acute lead toxicity. This really, you know, didn't make the news, but it was a phenomenon because of the lead that was in the atmosphere from leaded gasoline. So we've made great strides in taking it out of standard automobile gas, but we haven't finished yet because it's still in small aircraft fuel.

I think it gets even more horrifying, Lynn, because think about it, when you're pregnant, you give 50% of your body stores to the baby, and then if you nurse, you give even more. Now I'm a huge proponent of pregnancy and nursing. I had four babies, but I. It's so funny to watch because each one, the oldest, has more medical issues than the youngest. It's just so interesting to me to watch that, you know, I cleaned out myself and I had very high body burden. So back to like, how are we getting exposed? How are my 15 year old patients getting lead? I'm like, well, your mom has led, so she generously donated it to you. So there's so many ways. And 10 million homes in the United States still have lead pipes. So people are still drinking.

Correct. You know, I was just Speaking with a family practice doc outside of Flint, Michigan. And you know, that's not resolved. There's nothing resolved about Flint, Michigan. And they also have very high levels of arsenic in their water. Oh, by the way, I'm going to be talking about arsenic next. And she said that she is now seeing women of reproductive age who are younger when they were living in Flint 10 years ago, and their blood lead levels are 15, 25, 30. What's going to happen when they get pregnant? They're going to pass that burden on to their growing fetus. So I think that, you know, in. In the medicine that you and I want the world to practice, especially here in the United States, that needs to be a standard part of preconception care. Right. You know, we need to know.

And not six months before you're going to get pregnant. Right. I'm like, that's not enough Runway for me to actually help you. We need a couple. I mean, I've been in. I've been trying to get rid of my stupid metals for four years. So I'm particularly loyal. I have terrible detox. And so I'm always like, give me two years at least to get the body burden down enough to make it meaningful.

Right.

Okay. I think we should stop there, Lynn, because there's so much more to talk about. But this is a good sort of.

Place, and I'm happy to come back.

Yeah, let's have you back in. And where can people reach you?

So I have a company called E M E I stands for Environmental Medicine Education International. But it's a lot easier to say E m e I global.com. and that's our teaching platform. So mostly, you know, I teach to physicians. And we are now just getting ready to launch our consumer course. So this is for everybody, because East Palestine really did it for me. It's like, okay, there was no guidance there. No guidance was given to those people. It was a failure of public health. So we're teaching consumers about risks for chemical exposure and how to mitigate those risks. So talking about air filtration, water filtration, simple supplementation, things like that.

Okay, great. So emeiglobal.com, we'll put that in the show notes so people can reach out to you. And I'll close out the show by saying, thank you so much. I mean, I love what you're doing. I honor what you're doing because it resonates so deeply with me. And thank you for being a champion for our health.

Well, you and I need to clone ourselves. Times a million, right? That's our job and that's our mission.

If you're listening to this and this kept your attention, follow like pass it along because it's the passing along part. It's our commitment is to reach 100 million people and, and that's going to be a big job, right?

We can do it.

We can get there, but it's going to take passing it along. So if you're listening, pass it along to someone who this would be valuable for. So thanks for joining us, Lynn. Thank you for being here. Our guest is Lynn Patrick. She's amazing, huge resource. And thanks for listening to another episode of the Feel Freaking Amazing podcast. I'm Wendy Trubo. This is Lynn Patrick. And we'll see you again.

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