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

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 Levitian. And our guest today is Joseph Pizzorno. 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 rah, you do the reading. I do like the rah rah. So we're so excited to have Joseph Pizzorno. Nd 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.

So welcome.

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 Wright and Sid Baker and I mean, just some really special people. Dr. John Bastyre, that I learned so much from.

It was remarkable, John, wasn't it? Dr. Wright who came and spoke. We met him years ago and he was just fantastic.

Yeah, he's amazing.

What a great speaker. So. All right. So cool. So what do you want to. Oh, just to acknowledge. All right, Jo, behind every man is a powerful woman. And at some point during the show, people might see your wife coming in and out because you guys work in partnership. So we'll just acknowledge that.

And my dear wife Lara is now enrolled in a Master's of Science in Nutrition program, graduate degree program. And so she's got to her computer to work on her classes.

Got it. And I'm going to be on her podcast shortly. Actually, I think we've scheduled it for sometime soon. So anyway, it's all really cool. So I think today we're talking about two really important toxic talk topics. One is toxins and the other is the unimportant molecules. Right, right. Let's talk about toxins first.

All right. Talk about toxins.

All right, so, so, 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 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 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 by loads 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 biphenyl, 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 now.

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. 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 simultaneously.

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. So it's not only that we're getting the chemicals, but also we have so many other things that are impairing the system function, and even that stress alone is gonna 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. 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 aren't we paying 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 a study published just a few years ago. It was on tomatoes. Turns out there's a lot of research using tomatoes. I don't know why, but must be convenient for them.

Then you can eat them at the end.

Yeah, there you go. Of course, some of these tomatoes, you may not want to, but anyway, true. So what was good about this was it was in a greenhouse. You have totally controlled environment. And they, you know, same seeds, 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. 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. And at that time, we were limited by our understanding.

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 recent research is saying. Wait a minute, made a mistake. So. Yes, exactly.

There's a typo.

Okay, so 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 nutritional 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 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 that. 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 methyl group on it.

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

Right. So just to be really clear for our listeners who might not totally think that through, so it 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 your arsenic or.

Your other toxins or your hormones.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. A bunch of other ones.

Like poor little arsenic is like. But wait, I'm not the only one, right? Well, pick it on me.

Very well said. So as we changed. 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. You don't have to worry about MTHFR polymorphisms because you 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 two stage process. You first form mma, which is monomethyl arsenic acid. You say MMA for short. So one methylation and it's actually eight times more toxic than elemental arsenic. 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.

And water soluble too, right? Like arsenic's not water soluble, the DMA is water soluble. That's how you're going to get it out. Is that.

You asked me a good question and I don't know about the water solubility, how important that is. What I do know is that the methylation makes it easy to get rid of, but it's a very good.

Because I know for hormones, they're not water soluble. And when you make them toxic and then methylate them, you're making them water soluble so that they can get out of your body and be excreted via the colon or your gut. So I'm thinking, is that the same process?

Good, I'll think about that. That's a very interesting observation because I know, as you well know, it's very true of many chemicals. I didn't know about that as a major factor for arsenic. Okay, so anyway. So anyway, so these flavonoids like fluorotin, are 90% lower in the food supply. So this flavonoid, which 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 one quarter to one third of all the major cancers. Lung cancer, colon cancer, prostate cancer. So how does it do that? Is by damage to 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, we obviously think about the chemically chemical, 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 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 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? Because I don't actually know.

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. Now I put this, I'm kind of side comment here. So we know kale is the highest source of organophosphate pesticides when grown chemically. So we want to say to people, hey, eat more kale, eat more organic grown food. And realizing that each of them have potential problems, Kale, if it's commercially 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. Okay, so I have a few questions about this. So you have. 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'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 I was 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 organically grown food versus 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 gets bigger, more protein, more sugar, and they lose the other stuff. So, going 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 if they've been hybridized to the point where they have lost the mechanisms by which the plants absorb and use those. Those nutrients, then they are gone. Fore.

Okay.

It's like the vegetable holocaust, but so 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? I mean, what's a girl to do?

Unless we all grow our own heirloom tomatoes.

By the way, are we growing heirlooms this year?

We're growing cherry tomato heirlooms.

Are they heirlooms?

Yes.

Okay, good. 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.

Wait, wait. Take the seeds from the tomato and grow it?

No, no. Just, just, just go. Go to the store. Buy organic tomatoes and inorganic tomatoes. Grow your own tomatoes, okay. With hopefully, you know, 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 my own garden. Three days, it's gone. So it's like even the organically grown foods in the grocery stores, they have their downsides.

Yeah, we need to move to a warmer climate where we can have troubles year round.

So we live in Massachusetts. We live Newton, and we live in an eighth of an acre. Joe. Our property is so small that Tom Brady could throw a football way, like, three times the size of our property. It's crazy.

Way more than that, actually.

But yes.

Yeah, probably more. So. So I'm just thinking about. So the reason I went there is we've, you know, the house sits in the middle, and then on both aisles on the sides, we have fruits and berries and so raspberries, blackberries, and blends. And then we have blueberries. And then we have a whole line of fruit trees that hopefully this year we're gonna get fruit from. And our neighbor was like, that's really cool. You can put some fruit trees on my land, too. And so we have six fruit trees that border ours.

And we have a pawpaw.

Yeah, we're getting one pawpaw fruit this year, hopefully. And then the front of the yard, we have a whole line of vegetable garden and an herb garden, so it's all edible. And then more currants. But yeah, I mean, our growing season is four months at best.

Have you tried a greenhouse yet?

We don't have land.

There's no room. We really. Yeah, I think we.

We've used up all our land.

Yeah, we're gonna get rid of the grass soon because it's so bad for the earth. I was like, let's put a path in. And moss instead.

Yeah, but we. I mean, we have hearty kiwi, apricot, apricot, pawpaw, peach, nectarine, anything. Whatever we can do to.

And then vegetables, too. But I mean, we also have four kids, so it's like, you know, it's like a week's worth of food in our house. The locust came and ate on the yard.

Well, actually.

What's happening?

Oh, the hascaps are ready, by the way. We need to pick those.

One of the best things that I see is, like, my son doesn't actually love salad to go eat salad when we have dinner.

So we tell him he just won't forget not loves.

He just won't. At least in spring and after. Not winter, we just tell him to go eat in the garden and eat his lettuce and his tomatoes and everything else, and then he can go eat the rest of the meal at home.

Right. Some greens, so that's local and can, you know, I mean, it is hard because I think we do need to move somewhere warmer. But that's a conversation for another day. So what are people doing?

So, I don't know. Is Massachusetts that much colder than Seattle? You get more snow.

I think it does freeze. I mean, we got into the single digits this winter.

So. Yeah, I'm in Seattle, and I want to go back to recommending the greenhouse kit. I have just a 6 foot by 8 foot greenhouse and it provides all the greens we can possibly eat. As a matter of fact, I'm in possess now cut in store and freeze them for green drinks in the wintertime.

You know, Joe, the one thing that I have been trying to persuade Ed to do for years, although we don't have the land, and when we do have the land, we have to do this. There's some guy out in Arizona who bought a house. And weirdly, this house had a pool, which makes no sense in a desert, but okay, they had a pool, but he didn't want a pool. And the foundation was cracked, so he took this pool. And he's an engineer, so he likes to tinker. The deep end of the pool he made into a tilapia farm. The shallow end of the pool he made into the garden. Hanging over the deep end of the pool is the chicken coop. And the chickens poop in the water, make an algae bloom. The tilapia eat the algae. Then they pump the water up into the garden because it's dirty water. You know, they're filtering the water and they've used the plants to filter the water. And he's enclosed the whole thing in a greenhouse and it utilizes 90% less water than a typical setup like you or I would have if we weren't enclosed. And he's now taking it to third world countries where water's at a huge premium so that he can show people how to do this. Because they eat the tilapia, they eat the eggs. I don't think they eat the chickens. I never got that far. But then they eat the vegetables. It's in Arizona, so it's hot, so they grow year round. And he feeds his family of five. And that was so inspiring to me. Like, it's local, it's homegrown, it's like self contained. I really want to do that.

Really interesting.

It's really cool.

Yeah.

The whole ecosystem onto itself.

Yeah. Yeah. And one of the challenges I've been having is how to get enough protein out of the garden. And I decided not want to hassle with chickens. But this is kind of intriguing, right?

Chickens are great though. That's the one thing we do have, is chickens.

We don't eat our friends though.

But they take the scraps, our scraps. They poop and manure for the garden and we eat the eggs.

What was the name of that composter that Deanna mentioned? There's some composter that will compost in Six to eight hours. What would take you months to do? And I said to Ed, we should actually do that. It's electric. And we should do that for our chicken coop so that we can compost very quickly and turn it right into soil overnight and just keep it running. Right. A shovel pail a day. Keep going. And then we'll have fertilizer rather than lining up 16 compost bins, which we don't have the space for.

Anyways, let's get back.

Anyway, let's go back and talk more about this. I like that. These rabbit holes, These are fun.

So, anyway, so go back to toxins. So I've been studying it really deeply, and one of the areas I really studied was diabetes, because you look at diabetes now, and when I was in naturopathic medical school half a century ago, diabetes affected less than 1% of the population. I remember when I was my first year in practice, I was so excited when I saw my first diabetic patient. Now, you know, now it affects what, 13% of the population? Last I saw, and the current projections are one out of three people will have diabetes in their lifetime. It's like, what the heck happened? And so I look at it. Our sugar consumption didn't go up. Our genetics didn't change our diet. One of the big changes was more high fructose corn syrup.

Our sugar did go up. Our sugar did go up with all the drinks and the candy.

But high fructose corn syrup.

Yeah, that's right.

Okay. But we start looking at the actual research on those things, and diabetes. Not very strong. Something there, but it's not very strong. We look at the research on arsenic and bisphenol A and phthalates and PCBs, things like this. The correlation with diabetes is way stronger. And I would assert that about 90% of the diabetes epidemic that we're experiencing is due to metals and chemicals in the environment.

You know, I always say that to my patients, like, something is underlying your problem. Your diabetes, your cancer, your heart disease, your migraines, your bad periods. Something's underlying that. It's inflammation. What's underlying inflammation? Toxins. They're like the root of all inflammation. So we gotta deal with your toxins. And they look at me like, what? But it is.

Yes. I love quoting Dr. Sid Baker, as, you know, is one of the intellectual founders of functional medicine. And he has these great signs. And one of the things he said I thought was so good. He said, all of medicine is really quite simple. Get into every person what they uniquely need, get out of every person, what they uniquely do not need. And you know, so many times where I'm just confused what's going on with my patients complex, et cetera. Well, you know something, let's look at the nutritional status, let's look at the toxin status, fix those and then see what's left over.

Speaking of patients, do you have any patient stories you can share with us? Like around. Around metals?

Oh yeah. Without question, my most dramatic patients have been around detoxification. So for example, 67 year old woman from Canada, one of the wealthiest women in Canada suffering early dementia. Doctors couldn't do anything for her. I checked her out, super high mercury levels. So I put on my really safe mercury detox program. I say it's safe, emphasize safe part because it's slow. I'm a little concerned about people getting to really fast detox because if you detox faster than the body can get rid of the toxins by, if you release it from the tissues faster, you get rid of them, it's not a good idea. So I do a relatively slow approach. So it took a year and a half, but she went from a mercury of 50, which as you know is really high, to 17 to 7 to 3 over a year and a half period of time. And as her mercury levels went down, her dementia went away entirely. I had the opportunity to see her just a few months ago and now five, six years later, it was all gone. The dementia was gone, she was functioning just fine.

Joe, what's your favorite measure of, how do you measure toxins or mercury in the body? What's kind of your favorite measure?

As you know, the standard of care in terms of conventional medicine is you look at blood or urine levels. The problem is if you actually look at research on urinary blood and urinary and blood mercury, the R factor correlation is only 0.3. So these are your standard of care for toxicity. And they don't correlate with each other. Not very good. So I do use challenge testing. Now having said that, I'll be real clear, challenge testing is not very good. Okay.

It's not, it's not, it's not the holy grail. Right? It's like.

But, but it just, but it's better than just bladder urine.

It's a good starting point.

Yeah, no, we, that's what we. That's where we are.

And what are you using to. Because when you say someone went from 50 to practically undetectable in a year and a half, that to me is pretty fast. Honestly.

We tend to be Very conservative in our detox because we have seen so many people get hurt, sick by detoxing too fast. And we tend to be very conservative, slow and steady. It upsets. It's a challenge for a lot of our patients because everybody wants to be better yesterday.

But I've also found there are people, and I might be one of those people for whom they're particularly loyal to their toxins. And so what you see at the first blush is not really what's going on. And it's like, I say it to people, it's like picking taffy out with the tweezers. It's just this really methodical, slow, torturous process that goes on way longer than you would ever want it to go on. But I mean, I feel amazing, but still hanging out with mercury. So what are you using in your practice? Is it exclusively IVs? Is it oral and IVs? Like, how do you approach this?

So it's kind of two. Phase number one is find out what the sources of the mercury are and take care of them. So they have a mouthful of silver fillings, you know, so called silver fillings, which are actually 55% mercury. You have to have an ecological dentist to get the mercury fillings out. Okay. There's just no way around. And then look at, if they're eating fish, are they eating high mercury fish? And then occasionally you have to look at people with some kind of industrial exposure. Like are they a dental assistant? Okay, so got to deal with the causes. And then I like to facilitate the body's own natural mechanisms for getting rid of these, these toxins and then help a little bit with chemicals. So how does the body get rid of mercury? So it turns out that every day we secrete into the gut about 1% of the biload of mercury and then reabsorb 99% of what we just dumped into the gut. Why our smart bodies waste all that metabolic energy to get rid of mercury and then just reabsorb it? Because intra pack recirculation, what's happening here is that because our diets are so low in fiber that the mercury, which we expected would have bound to the fiber and gotten out of the body through the stools. Well, if the fiber's not there, it doesn't bind. So it gets reabsorbed through intrapathic recirculation. So first thing I do is I give people a bunch more fiber. Very straightforward. The second thing I do is I give people nac n acetylcysteine because as you know, It's a great precursor for glutathione. And glutathione takes mercury across the cell membranes, get them into the blood, and it helps blood get rid of them through the urine and through the stools. Okay. So I want to get their glutathione levels up and then finally I do give them a drug, dmsa, but only oral and only at low dosages.

What's low dosage to you? I mean, I know people can't get it without going to the pharmacy.

So like, So I use 250 milligrams every third night. Not a lot. I use 500 milligrams of NAC twice a day. Then I use three to five grams of some kind of fiber two or three times a day. Now the one I use is called pgx and I have a commercial relationship with the Canadian company that makes it. So I just use it because I get a good discount on it. Most any fiber should work. This is what I've used. So I've now done this on a lot of people. I can tell you without question that this protocol will get rid of the mercury and it'll do it without side effects.

How often do you test people by every six months. Oh, so it's not that much. So people are fine doing it and they're not like, test me, test me, test me. Because it feels like people just want a lot of feedback.

Yeah. It depends on an income range of the patient. Some patients, lots of money, lots of tests. Other patients you kind of stuck with clinical because it's too expensive to do everything else. Yeah.

Can you talk a little bit about how toxins are impacting the gut, the liver and the kidneys for people? So they really understand like what's happening.

Here though the easiest one is the kidneys. As I think we all know now, you have a diabetes epidemic in our country. We have a kidney failure epidemic as well. And why is that? Well, the kidneys play a huge role in getting rid of many of these toxins and they get damaged by it if it happens too much. So you look at things like you look at both accidental toxins as well as intentional toxins. So I say intentional toxins when people are using non steroidal anti inflammatory drugs, very, very damaging to the kidneys. And then you look at the environmental toxins. When we look at environmental toxins, not just metals and chemicals, but it's also gut dysbiosis. When the gut is particularly toxic, it's producing a lot of lps, lipopolysaccharides and they are particularly damaging to the kidneys. And interestingly enough, blueberries with the high anthocyanins will block the damage to the kidneys from the lps. So anyway, so we look at our organs for detoxification. The liver seems to be. This is just a subjective observation. Looks like the liver is better able to regenerate itself than the kidneys are, is my impression, can't it?

Right. Because you can transplant a small piece of liver into someone and they'll grow a full size liver. So I think it really does regenerate.

So have you actually seen kidney damage gets reversed if you detoxify? Really?

Yeah, look at egfr. So I've had a number of, I should say unofficial patients. So you know, I hadn't seen me in my office, but they asked for advice and Lars had the same experience. And we've had a number of people come to us with low egfr. And so we go through the process, okay, what are you doing that's damaged your kidneys and then how can we regenerate them? And I'd like to quote one study which looked at aspirin use in people with kidney failure. And what was all they did? Follow these people for six years, they had EGFRs. In this particular group, you know, class five of kidney failure, their EGFR was 23. I'm sorry, ETFR was 23. Get the numbers right because I want to misquote 15. Okay. So they were really advanced. All they did was have them stop using non steroidal anti inflammatory drugs. And six months later the EGFR was 25. So I used this in my classes to my students saying the body has tremendous ability to heal if you just stop the damage. So with the kidney things, all he did was stop taking aspirin and the kidney function doubled after six months. So I think there's example after example where if all you do is stop the damage, the body will regenerate itself.

Interesting.

You think of your dad?

Well, no, well yes, my dad, but that was a special case. But no, I actually have a patient that currently that I'm working, we just started working with. So hopefully we can do some work with him.

So I wrote a couple of editorials on kidneys on how you can regenerate them on and my journal IMCJ or my journal, I'm the editor in chief of the journal imcj and they're in pubmed, so you can go to pubmed, put my name in and kidney and it'll show you the protocol. And again, just not a controlled study. But people. CGFRs don't tend to double. Okay. Clearly something unusual has happened here.

Interesting. Interesting. Yeah. Because we think of liver as a regenerating organ. We don't really think of kidneys too much as regenerating. So that can do that is pretty amazing. It makes sense because we do believe it's one of the. I think it's one of the most stubborn organs, is from what I've. In my clinical experience. But that's awesome.

Interesting.

Can we switch gears, Joe, and talk a little bit about what are the things you recommend people do? Like the best strategies to not only avoid toxins and then the best ways to decrease body load? Can we sort of go in two paths? What are the things you're telling people?

Thank you for that question. I think that's really important, and I think Laura and I are really conscious of this right now because so many of our family and friends in our age group are dead, have major disease, are done with life, and, you know, we're still just functioning at such a high. At such a high level. So it comes down to, of course, genetics has an impact, but genetics only accounts for 15% of disease. Even that 15%. 15.

1 5, right? 1 5.

1 5.

Did everybody hear that?

1 5, not 51 5.

Yeah. That's not my opinion. That's just basic research. And even a lot of those 15% can be improved. If you understand therapeutic nutrition and biochemical uniqueness, you can fix those as well. So if that's the case, that means 85% of the disease is under our control, which means toxins and nutrition. So how do Laura and I live our lives? One, we grow as much grown food as we can. Okay. Two, I would say virtually everything else we buy is organically grown. Now, I realize there are limitations. Some of the organic food is not as organic as I would like, but better than chemically grown foods. The second thing we do is do everything we can to decrease toxic exposure. So you can't come into our house and wear your shoes, for example, to show research. Studies show that people who have let people walk into their shoes will triple the amount of toxins in their air, in their dust. And compared to people. Don't let people with their shoes. Don't let shoes come out. Okay.

How's the mechanism?

Because you track it in.

You track it in.

You track it in.

You've been all over kingdom come. You track it in.

Yeah, interesting. Okay, cool.

If your neighbor next door just sprayed their lawn with some kind of a. Of an herbicide. Well, guess what? That herbicide just went into your house as well. Okay. So then we have a whole house filter of a MERV 16 filter. So MERV is a rating for it. And basically it gets rid of all the particulates in the air that are toxic. This is a huge issue. If you live within 100 yards of a highway or in a big city, there's all this particulate matter that's so damaging. So purify the air totally. Then we have a filter on the water coming into the house, not just on the faucets in the kitchen, but the water coming into the house. Because when you're taking a shower, a lot of these toxins will volatilize and you breathe it in, which is the most efficient way to get a toxin to your body is to breathe it in. Okay. So we do everything we can to not let any toxic water come into our house. And we got rid of all the plastic containers in the kitchen. We got rid of all the nonstick cooking ware in the kitchen. You get the idea. We do everything we can to optimize nutrition, everything we can to decrease toxic exposure, because we believe our bodies have the ability to be healthy if you just give it a chance. Means toxins out, nutrients in.

Yep. Agreed. Totally.

Yeah. No, I mean, the good thing is I feel like we do the majority of those things, which is nice.

We don't have the. We don't have the air filter, but we get the water, the food.

Yeah.

Getting rid of the plastics.

But it's. And that for everybody listening, it's a process. Right. So some people are going to be overwhelmed with having a huge garden or whatever else and can start with a couple of. You can get organic soil from the Home Depot and put a couple of pots and start with a few tomatoes. Doesn't have to be a whole garden. You don't have to grow your own food. You don't have to start with a big thing. You really want to just start slow and really start feeling. And from a energetic point of view, to be connected to the earth, to feel the seasons, to be out and see how something from tiny little seed can actually grow into something huge is just miraculous. And every year, I can't believe it. Like, I've been gardening since I was little and I still can't believe little seeds can grow into such huge things.

That's how I felt when I was pregnant. Like, it starts as nothing and it grows into a person. It's like I grew people how does that happen? It's miraculous. It's amazing. It really is. We never got to half the things.

I want to have one more comment, and that is you're fortunate in that you're relatively young and you're paying attention. The problem for a lot of people is when they're relatively young, the body's so adaptable, it kind of doesn't matter what you eat. You go out drinking with your buddies at night, whatever the case may be. And yeah, you may have a little hangover that goes away pretty quickly. If you look at the nutrition research based on age, what you find is a lot of these disease associations don't show up until about age 45. Guess what's happening up until about age 45. The body's able to adapt, but what's happening is you're accumulating toxins in your body, accumulating damage to the DNA. And once you're about age 45 now you have a situation where you can't protect yourself as well. And now you start seeing all these problems with the toxins. Okay, so the earlier people do this, the better. But a lot of people don't get into this until they start having symptoms. Well, by the time you start having symptoms and disease, sure, there's still plenty you can do, but you've waited way too long.

Yeah, but what's really interesting is I would say especially even over the last 10 years of my practice, I'm noticing people having symptoms at an earlier age. We have a ton of 20 somethings in our practice who have toxins and have symptoms and are sick in a way that. I mean, maybe I was shielded from it because I was like, if you're really sick, go see Ed. Maybe I was shielded, but.

Well, but that.

That.

I mean, I see a lot of Lyme patients. And I mean, the saddest part is when you see a teenager lose a year or two of their life and can't get out of bed because they.

Because they're depressed.

Right. They're quote, unquote depressed. Have Lyme and everything else. But the. But the reality is Lyme. I think if everything. If everything else was okay, the lime wouldn't be a big deal. But it's never just Lyme. It's always toxins, it's always methylation. It's always something else. Food, sensitivities, gut, you name it. It's never just Lyme and everything together with this world. That's when people lose years of their life. And it's very hard sometimes very hard to get back. And as a teenager, if that's your identity, that's with you the rest of your life. So it's.

I would challenge. I mean, people really can transform and they need to do the emotional work to untangle because that leaves its own residue of trauma and sadness and grief. So they have to untangle that. But it's absolutely.

It's possible.

Transformable.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So.

We didn't get to half the questions we were supposed to ask you, and I apologize for that. We went on to all kinds of rabbit hol.

So what other kind of. 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. I don't even know what the question is. It's a little overwhelming because it's really like, how do you start as a society? How do you start getting. Coming back?

There's no society.

We talked about individual, which. Yes. That all of us can do our part and we have to do our part without that. And I look at like, you talk about lawns or 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.

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

And you buy the books, Right. You have a whole bunch. You have a new book out, right? You gave it to us. What were we holding?

Yes. Well, the latest book is the one that Laura and I wrote together called Healthy Bones. Healthy you. And what I found remarkable about that book was Laura wrote the vast majority of it. I just did Science review and added 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 isolate out, oh, this is only what you need for bone. Well, do what you need for bone. Your heart's gonna be Better, and your blood sugar control's gonna be better and your toxin be lower, lower, et cetera. So there's one more thing I want to say. We talk a lot about nutrition and detoxification, but there's. 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 controls better, etc. But the other part is lovely relationships. You know, 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, to.

Have purpose in life.

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?

I have to learn that one if I can.

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.

Yeah. 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 have such a congruent perspective in the world as I have. That's great.

Yeah, definitely. All right, we're going to close the show out, so thank you for listening to another episode of the Five Journeys podcast Live like youe Matter. Our guest today was Dr. Joe Pizzorno. It was a pleasure to have you here. And if this made a difference for you when you were listening. Please leave us a 55 star review so you can pay it forward to other people who can learn more and transform their lives too.