Detox to Reverse Disease, with Dr. Joseph Pizzorno

Because our diets are so low in fiber, the mercury, which we expected would have bound to the fiber and gotten out of the body through the stools, while the fiber's not there, doesn't bind. So it gets reabsorbed through intrapathic recirculation.

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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 North. 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 lead 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 let's talk about toxins.

All right, talk about toxins.

Okay. 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 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.

Yeah, our sugar did go up with all the drinks and the candy, but.

High fructose corn syrup? Yeah, yeah. But we started looking at the actual research on those things in diabetes. It's 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 got to deal with your toxins. And they look at me like, what?

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 some, I'm just confused what's going on with that patient's 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.

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 though.

The easiest one is the kidneys there. As I, 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 sterile 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 a high anthocyanidins will block the damage to the kidneys from the lps. So anyway, we just 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?

Yeah, look at egfr. So I've had a number of, I should say unofficial patients. So, you know, they 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 of okay, what are you doing this damage to 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 EDFR was 15, so they were really advanced. All they did was have them stop using non steroidal anti inflammatory drugs. And six months later the EDFR was 25. So I use this in my classes with my students saying the body has tremendous ability to heal if you just stop the damage. So with the kidney things, all they 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. So I wrote a couple of editorials on kidneys, on how you can regenerate them in 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's ETFRs don't tend to double. Okay. Clearly something unusual has happened here.

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.

I want to add 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 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. Because what's happened 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 at 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? Because they're quote, unquote depressed, have Lyme and everything else. 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. So it's 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.

Speaking of patients, do you have any patient stories you can share with us, like 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 them 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.

So, yeah, 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 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.

It's not the holy grail. Right.

But it's better than just bladder urine.

It's a good starting point.

Yeah.

That'S where we are.

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.

Yeah, 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.

No, 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 all, 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 it. 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 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 intrapack 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 much more fiber first. 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 blood, 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.

So I'll go back, what's low dosage to you? I mean, I know people can't get it without going to the pharmacy so.

Yeah, 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, 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, guys. I get a good discount on it. Most any fiber should work. I just. 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. It's not that much people. So people are fine doing it, and they're not like, test me, test me, test me.

Yeah. It depends on an income range of the patient. You know, 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, yeah.

So 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 course. 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 level. So it comes down to, of course, genetics has an impact, but genetics only accounts for 15% of disease.

15. 1 5, right? 1 5, yeah.

Did everybody hear that?

1 5, not 50. 1 5.

Yeah. That's not my opinion. That's just basic research, so. 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.

How's the mechanism?

Because you track it in.

You track it in, pure and simple.

You track it in over kingdom come. You track it in.

Yeah. Interesting. Okay.

If your neighbor next door just sprayed their lawn with some kind of an herbicide, well, guess what? That herbicide just went into your. 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 for 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. 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.

Agreed. Totally.

Joe. Where can people find 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. 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 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 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 five star review so you can pay it forward to other people who can learn more and transform their lives too. Inspire and empower someone else by leaving a five star review so they can.

Transform their lives too.

Sam.