Decrease Toxic Exposure and Become More Resilient, with Dr. Joseph Pizzorno

So when you grow the foods chemically, you maintain the important molecules, but then the other unimportant molecules go away. These molecules are necessary for physiology to be optimally functioning, not necessary for physiology to work so you don't die.

If you want to live like you matter, ditch the pills, look great, and feel freaking amazing. You're in the right place. I'm Dr. Wendy Trubo.

I'm Dr. I'd love a 10. Welcome to the Five Journeys podcast where.

We empower you to live a vibrant and healthy life by optimizing your structural, chemical, emotional, social and spiritual lives.

Hang on to your hats.

Hello and welcome back to another episode of the Five Journeys podcast, Live like youe Matter. I'm Dr. Wendy Trubeau and my co host is Dr. Edward Levitan. And our guest today is Joseph Pizzorno.

And.

And Ed's been psyched about this all week.

Extremely.

Yeah. So I don't know why I'm introducing him and not you, but I'll introduce him. I'll do the rah into the reading. I do like the rah.

Rah.

So we're so excited to have Joseph Pizzorno. Endy. He's a transformational leader in medicine and we don't say that lightly. He was a founding president of Bastyr University in 1978, also the year that lead was outlawed from paint cans, actually. And he coined the term science based natural medicine and led Bastyr to become the first ever accredited institution in the field of naturopathic medicine. This validated that health promotion, rather than only disease treatment, could be credibly taught, researched and practiced. So welcome. How do we. How do we.

Well, first of all, I want to, like, preface this because. Yeah, Joe. Just to. For kind of set the context. Joe's one of the founding people. And what's the saying in terms of standing on the.

If I can see so far, it's because I stand on the shoulders of giants.

Yeah. And Joe, for us, you're definitely one of those.

That's who you are for us.

So it's truly a privilege to have you on board.

Well, thank you. And standing on the shoulders of giants, I feel that way as well because I've got people who have been my teachers like Jeff Bland and Jonathan Ross and Sid Baker and I mean, just some really special people. Dr. John Bastyr, that I learned so much from, it was remarkable.

All right, let's talk about toxins.

All right. Talk about toxins.

Okay, so let me start with kind of some kind of overview, philosophical comments. Yeah, I've been involved in medicine now for literally over half a century. Okay. So that's a long time. I've read a lot of research and I've taught a lot of students and taught a lot of doctors and seen a lot of patients. And I'm starting to see some patterns that I think are important. And I want to be clear, I'm not saying these are absolutely certain and I'm still learning, but here's the patterns I'm seeing. Our human physiology is remarkably adaptable. We're able to adapt to a lot of wide ranging challenges. As we evolved as a species, those challenges were mainly lack of availability of nutrients. So we're actually pretty, pretty good at functioning in relatively low nutrient environments. And also as we evolved as a species, we were both exposed to some toxins, like arsenic for example. So we got real good at detoxifying arsenic. But other than that, we did not develop much mechanisms for protecting us from other molecules and metals in the environment that have been newly released. So things like mercury and cadmium and lead, these are heavy metals. We don't have good ways of getting rid of them. So as we have higher bioadoads of those metals, we have more disease. But the other area is all these chemicals we put into the environment. And these chemicals are both chemicals that are similar to natural molecules that were okay for detoxifying. But many of these chemicals are brand new to nature and they were designed specifically to be difficult to break down. And so once these things get into our bodies, they have half lives ranging from years to actually decades. There's one, what's called PCB or polychlorinate biphenol, that has a half life of 20 years. So half life means basically how long it takes to get rid of half the toxin. And the toxicologist will say four half lives is enough to get rid of a toxin. So we have some toxins, like if you want an ate farmed fish that could be in your body for the rest of your life after you've eaten it and it's causing constant damage. So anyway, so as I was looking at all this research and realizing, you know, we suffer the highest burden of chronic disease in every age group ever in human history. Why is that? Our genetics did not change and our nutrition, not great. You know, too much high fructose corn syrup and things like that, but not that dramatically different. What's changed? We've loaded ourselves with metals and chemicals, and not only have we loaded ourselves with metals and chemicals that we have problems detoxifying, we've actually sabotaged some of our core protective mechanisms.

Well, hold on. I think we need to also layer this on, because it's not. Look, we're total toxin fiends, so we're all about getting rid of them. But I also think you have to layer this onto any. It didn't occur in a vacuum. Right. You have all of this new exposure to the 150,000 chemicals that we've developed, like 500 of which have been actually tested to be safe. But then you layer on that.

Safe quotes.

Yeah, right. They won't kill you at first. Look. And then you layer on. We also lead much more stressful lives and we eat much differently than we used to. And it's like a badge of honor not to sleep very much at night. Not only that we're getting the chemicals. It's that. But also we have so many other things that are impairing the system function. And even that stress alone is going to shut the system down. So it's just like that hungry and tired toddler. It's a really nasty, perfect storm of terrible combinations.

Very well said. Very well said. And that leads right to my next statement. So as I was looking at some of these toxins, I was wondering why we're not paying more attention to them clinically. And the one that really grabbed my attention was arsenic. Most people don't realize that one third of the US Population has arsenic levels known to induce disease and diseases like cancer and stroke and diabetes and gout. And all these conditions are being caused by arsenic. Why don't we pay more attention? So I started being curious. Well, could it be that even though our arsenic levels haven't changed much, they actually have gone up just a little bit? Could it be we're less able to protect ourselves from the toxins, from this arsenic and other toxins? So I started looking at how does the body protect itself from arsenic? And then I started looking at those molecules that are important for protecting us from arsenic. What's happened to them in the food supply? And I found this incredible study that just made it all crystallized for me. So this was study published just a few years ago. It was on tomatoes. So what was good about this was it was in a greenhouse. You have totally controlled environment. And they, you know, same seed, same soil, same light, sun, you know, water, everything's the same. The only difference was they put chemical fertilizers in one plot and organic fertilizers in the other. And what they did was unusual. First off, they did it for a whole year so you see how the molecules change over time. But then they looked at the carotenoids and flavonoids, and what they found was that when you grow foods chemically, you maintain the vitamins and minerals, pretty much. So we. When. But when you grow foods or chemically, you don't maintain the other molecules. Now, what are these other molecules? So I started looking at this. If you go back about 100 years ago, when we did all our nutrition, most of the key nutrition research was done 100 years ago.

Wait, doesn't that seem a little bit, like, concerning? Because we wouldn't use a computer or a car that was built 100 years ago.

But good way of saying it, because what's happened is recent research is saying, wait a minute, we made a mistake.

There's a typo.

Well, 100 years ago, we were limited by our understanding of physiology and by the technology that was available to us. So pretty much all the nutrition research came from animal research where we'd find, what if we remove particular molecule or mineral from a food, do they die? Then we figure out, okay, what vitamins, minerals, and other molecules are necessary for animals to not die. Then we notice a couple examples of some things. Oh, wow, there's a really severe nutrition. And humans got like, beriberi or scurvy or something like that with severe nutritional deficiencies. So when they add them all up, there's only 42 molecules. When we look at food, it has 50,000 molecules of it. So when you grow the foods chemically, you maintain the important molecules, but then the other unimportant molecules go away. When I say go away, I'm talking about they're down 90% or they're not even there anymore. Now, why is that important? So these molecules are necessary for physiology to be optimally functioning, not necessary for physiology to work so you don't die. Let's look at arsenic. So we get rid of arsenic very efficiently if we have the nutrients that we need. So the nutrients that we need for arsenic are folates, because folates break down arsenic.

So activated. Activated folic acid. Folic acid with the methylation.

Notice I didn't say folic acid, I said folate.

Right, Right. So just to be really clear for our listeners who might not totally think that through, so starts out its life maybe as folic acid, but if you don't convert it by methylating it, it's inactive, you can't use it, and it's not good for detox and methylation.

Right. And then if you can't methylate, you can't get rid of arsenic or your.

Other toxins or your hormones.

Yeah, but. Yeah, exactly. Bunch of other ones, Right?

Like poor little arsenic is like. But wait, I'm not the only one, right?

Well, pick it on me. So as we change. So this is a dietary change, not so much a fertilizer change. As we started eating less and less folate rich foods like whole grains and like green leafy vegetables, things like that, we became folate deficient. So then we gave people synthetic folic acid that does not exist in nature. And as you said, so. Well, Wendy, you got to convert it into activated methylfolate. Well, it turns out when you eat proper foods, they already have the methylfolates in them. Don't worry about MTHFR polymorphisms because we know one quarter, one third of people don't make the conversion very well. But there's another problem here and that's where we get back to this. Unimportant molecules. It turns out a bunch of flavonoids in the food supply like fluorotin is what I'm thinking of. Actually make the detoxification process of arsenic work more quickly. So you may recall when you detox by arsenic, you go through a two stage process. You first form mma, which is monomethylarcinous acid. You say MMA for short. So one methylation and it's actually eight times more toxic than elemental arsenic. Then you do a second methylation.

Toxic intermediate.

Toxic intermediate, exactly. Then do a second methylation, you create something called DMA, which is dimethyl arsenic and that's 400 times less toxic than elemental arsenic. So these flavonoids like fluorotin are 90% lower in the food supply. So this flavonoid, which the enzyme that does the detoxification wants to have around, so it works more effectively to get rid of arsenic. Not there anymore, but it's even worse. Arsenic accounts for 1/4 to 1/3 of all the major cancers, lung cancer, colon cancer, prostate cancer. So how does it do that is by damage the DNA. Well, guess what, a bunch of these flavonoids protect the DNA from arsenic damage, but they left the food supply. So what's happened is we've made these toxins become progressively worse because we're less able to get rid of them. So it's not just increased toxins, it's the loss of all these other molecules that are called unimportant but turn out to be critically important.

So I have a question.

Just one?

Well, I have a lot, but this is Something I'm thinking for myself. So we obviously think about the artificially grown plants as not ideal by any means. And then we have organic, which is supposed to be significantly more ideal. I know in our practice, one of the things we look at is, is a urine metals test. And one thing that comes up often is thallium. And I've looked at where does this thallium coming from for everybody, because we look for. We ask all our patients to go as organic as possible to eat it, whole grains, et cetera. And a lot of that's from cruciferous vegetables in California. So this is truly what's better for you because you're getting the thallium from the soil in California, but they're organic vegetables. Can your body handle it better because they're organic and cruciferous vegetables can help you detox, or is there a better source? Or do you not eat it at all?

Where's the line in the sand?

Where does it go?

That's a great question, and that's one which has been bothering me, and that is indeed, yes, you got the thallium. You see a little bit more in organically grown vegetables because of where they're grown. And unfortunately, there's other examples as well. So, for example, we talk about people eating kale. So we know kale is the highest source of organophosphate pesticides when grown chemically. So we want to say, people, hey, eat more kale. Eat more organic grown food. And realizing that each of them have potential problems. Kale, if it's conventionally grown, don't eat it because of the organophosphates. And then, as you say, if some organic food may have more of this thallium, and that's of concern. And what we need to do is make sure all our detox mechanisms are working as effectively as possible. I wish I could say, yeah, pretend there's no thallium in some of the organic food. But that's true. We need to avoid it.

So I have a let's. Okay, so I have a few questions about this. So I'm trying to articulate whether the food that's been conventionally grown that by the end of being grown no longer has all of those, what you're referring to, tongue in cheek as unimportant minerals and nutrients, that when you take that fruit or vegetable and reproduce it, is it permanently lost? Or if you then did next generation and didn't give it chemicals, it would have those 40, 50,000 other minerals, does it regrow or is it permanently lost? In the lineage.

Boy, that's an incredibly good question. So let me back up to a study that looked at the mineral content of food over the 50 years from 1950 to year 2000.

I don't know. I'm not sure I'm going to be able to handle this emotionally. Joe, this is not good news. Right? But listeners, brace yourself. This is not good news. I can tell you right now.

So we look at the trace minerals in the foods. So while we were saying before the vitamins and minerals were being maintained, the big ones were trace minerals were not being maintained very well. And so if you look at commercially grown food over that 50 year period of time in which we have actually several studies, trace minerals drop dramatically. And one example is copper. Copper decreased by 70%. The researchers were very clear to say, oh, it's not because of fertilizers, it's because of different seeds that we picked and hybridized. So we have situation now where they're also hybridizing foods so that it get bigger, more protein, more sugar, and they lose the other stuff. So back to your question. If the genetics of the food have not been changed too much, put it in back into good soil with good healthy fertilizer, they'll grow all these molecules again. But they've been hybridized to the point where they have lost the mechanism by which they, the plants absorb and use those nutrients. Then they are gone forever.

Okay, sick.

The vegetable holocaust.

It's terrible.

We know that the majority of the foods that we even organic eat in the supermarket have been significantly hybridized and over hundreds, maybe thousands of years. What do we do?

What's a girl to do? What's a girl to do?

Unless we all grow our old heirloom tomatoes.

By the way, are we growing heirlooms this year?

We're growing cherry tomato heirlooms.

Are they heirlooms?

Yes.

Okay. Good job, honey.

You're going the same track I am. So I actually have been working more and more to grow as much of our own food as we can. And I go for heirloom seeds wherever possible. Because the heirloom seeds, they may not be quite as big and fancy, but boy, they get much better quality food.

And they smell different and they taste different and they smell different.

Get a chemically grown tomato, get an organically grown tomato from the grocery store and then grow the tomato yourself and compare them. There's no compares.

Wait, take the seeds from the tomato and grow it.

Just go, go to the store. Buy organic tomatoes and inorganic tomatoes. Grow your own tomatoes. Okay. With hopefully Heirloom organic seeds and then compare the results. They're dramatically different. My food is so much better at what's in the food, what's in the grocery stores, but it's even more than that. So look at the. To make organic foods work commercially, they have to make some choices. And one of those choices is shelf life. Okay? Because I'll tell you, you buy organic food and put in your refrigerator, it'll last at least a week, maybe two weeks, put it, but grow it from our own garden. Three days, it's gone. So it's like even the organically grown foods and the grocery stores, they have their downsides.

So instead of the 42, because this is for me, this is a learning for me. Instead of the 42 major molecules, there's 50,000, which I knew there was a lot more, but didn't quite realize that it was that much. And that's what you need for optimal health as a society. How do you start getting. Coming back?

There's no society.

We talked about individual, which, yes, all of us can do our part, and we have to do our part without that. And I look at what we plant. We don't plant any fruit growing trees. We just plant grass and we plant.

Occasionally hydrangeas and roadies. It's Massachusetts. It's got to look a certain way.

So I guess I'll get off that.

There's no society. There's only at the individual level. How do you transform your circle? And how do you inspire and empower people to take control of the narrative, make change at the local level? Because ultimately that will filter up to companies. When you vote with your feet, they take notice. They really do.

So is there anything that you want our listeners to come away with besides a huge mouth?

And you buy the books, right? You have a whole bunch. You have a new book out.

Yes. Well, the latest book is the one that Laura and I wrote together called Healthy Bones, Healthy youy. And what I found remarkable about that book was Laura wrote the vast majority of it. I just did science review and add some things about toxins to it. But what I found fascinating was every factor she went through that was necessary for bone health was necessary for health of the rest of the body as well. It's like you can't find out, oh, this is only what you need for bone. Well, doing E for bone, your heart's going to be better and your blood sugar control is going to be better and your toxin be lower, et cetera. There's one more thing I want to say. We Talk a lot about nutrition and detoxification, but remember, there's other parts of life as well. So in terms of physical, how about exercise? So I'm a great believer in strength training. Yes, aerobic exercise is fine, but strength training is so critical because as you build your muscle mass, you increase your everyday energy that's available and you make yourself more resistant, more resilient to any kinds of health problems, blood sugar control is better, et cetera. But the other part is lovely relationships. You need to have lovely relationships, and how you go about doing that is up to you, but you need to have people in your life who think that you're important. And finally, I think people have to have a spiritual relationship. Again, I'm not going to promote any particular religion, but the idea of us being part of something bigger, a life, kind of a universal life force, I think it's important for people to recognize that we're a part of something that's bigger than ourselves and having purpose.

The only thing you didn't say was being kind to yourself and forgiving yourself for the mistakes you made or the things you didn't know and then the mistakes you made as a result. Knowing now what you didn't know then be kind to yourself, Joe.

Where can people find you? How can they connect with you?

And we'll put it all in the show notes too, by the way.

Oh, thank you. So I'm at the stage of my life where my main job is teaching. So I do not see patients independently anymore. But I do write books. So I have out now 13 books, I think, six textbooks for doctors and seven books for consumers. And so I recommend that if people want to learn about my understanding of health, that's why I write those books.

And they're awesome.

That's awesome.

Cool.

Thank you for being here. You just made our day.

Well, you made my day. It's so wonderful to hear people who have such a congruent perspective in the world as I have. That's great.

Yeah, definitely. So thank you for listening to another episode of the Five Journeys podcast, Live like youe Matter. Our guest today was Dr. Joe Pizziorno. It was a pleasure to have you here. And if this made a difference for you when you were listening, please leave us a five star review so you can pay it forward to other people who can learn more and transform. Transform their lives too. Inspire and empower someone else by leaving a five star review so they can.

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