Heavy Metal Detox with Wendy Myers: Rational Wellness Podcast 063
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Wendy Myers talks about how to detoxify heavy metals like mercury and lead from the body with Dr. Ben Weitz.
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Podcast Highlights
2:47 Wendy Myers explained how she was feeling poorly with low energy, brain fog, and couldn’t lose weight and she went to her conventional doctor and found out that at age 37 she had the hormone level of a post-menopausal woman. But she didn’t want to take replacement hormones, so she sought out answers and found a program to detox heavy metals to improve your hormones and she did it and felt a lot better. Her hormones returned to normal and she felt better than she had ever felt, which inspired her to want to educate others about the importance of toxins and how to detox them, so she started her website, MyersDetox.com.
4:54 Heavy metals like mercury, lead, arsenic, cesium, aluminum, tin, thalium, etc. can cause fatigue, brain fog, trouble sleeping, trouble losing weight, hypertension, heart disease, blood sugar problems, hormone imbalances, hypothyroid, and it can also interfere with hormone production and conversion. Such metals are common in our environment, in the air, food, and water. Wendy said that some of the most common metals found in southern California where we both live are mercury and aluminum. Mercury comes from fish mercury amalgam fillings, vaccines, and it’s in the air from coal fired power plants. Aluminum is in the air from chem trails and other sources, in vaccines, in aluminum foil, and underarm deodorant.
8:03 I mentioned that I interviewed Dr. Pizzorno who told me about the arsenic in the chicken feed and Wendy talked about the arsenic in the rice, especially in brown rice, since the arsenic concentrates in the bran. She recommends rice grown in California over rice grown in the southern states or in China or India. Wendy Myers also talked about all the toxins found in personal care and makeup products as well as in household cleaners.
9:39 What is the best way to test for heavy metals? Wendy likes to start with hair mineral analysis and then she’ll determine if we should to a urine metals challenge test or a stool metals test. Stool is particularly good for cadmium and silver toxicity and cadmium does not show up in urine or hair. She will then design a custom supplement program to get rid of particular metals that are present. Unfortunately, metals are ubiqitous in our environment and they cannot be avoided, so you need to use detox protocols as part of your health routine regularly, including her Mitochondria Detox program, containing activated choline stabilized Silica, that is specifically chemically formulated to bind onto arsenic, aluminum, tin, thallium, and cesium. Thallium is in petroleum deposits, so it’s in car smog. We’re breathing that in every day, especially in LA, and so a huge factor on chronic fatigue. Cesium is a big issue from Fukushima, the nuclear disaster in Japan. It’s releasing tons of cesium into our environment. These metals are poisoning our mitochondria. Her Mitochondria Detox also contains Modified Citrus Pectin and her Mitotox product, containing energized structured water and minerals. Even if you support the mitochondria with nutrients like CoQ10, vitamin K2, B vitamins, and D Ribose, in order to improve your energy levels, but if you don’t get rid of the metals, the mitochondria can’t work properly. People are desperate for energy, which is why they are drinking so much coffee.
19:06 I asked what Wendy thought about IV chelation and she cautioned that when patients are very sick, they may not be able to tolerate IV chelation and if done incorrectly, it can damage your kidneys. She said that she prefers to use EDTA and DMSA suppositories when indicated. EDTA and DMSA are chelating agents that can be used intravenously, orally by prescription, or as suppositories. EDTA suppositories are particularly helpful for removing cadmium. She gets them from a company called Kelatox and they are available from her online store, Store.Myersdetox.com.
22:26 Wendy has a heavy metals quiz that people can take if they want to answer some questions and find out what their potential levels of heavy metal toxicity could be at MetalsQuiz.com Wendy has lots of great content at her website, MyersDetox.com, including over 250 podcasts and hundreds of articles.
Wendy Myers is a Functional Medicine practitioner who specializes in detoxification and bioenergetics in Los Angelesand her website is https://myersdetox.com/. She is the #1 bestselling author of Limitless Energy: How to Detox Toxic Metals to End Exhaustion and Chronic Fatigue. Wendy is the host of Theheavymetalsummit.com and she hosts two popular podcasts, Live to 110 and the Supercharged Podcast about Bioenergetics. Passionate about the importance of detox to live a long disease free life, she created the revolutionary Myers Detox protocol after working with thousands of clients.
Dr. Ben Weitz is available for nutrition consultations specializing in Functional Gastrointestinal Disorders like IBS/SIBO and Reflux and also specializing in Cardiometabolic Risk Factors like elevated lipids, high blood sugar, and high blood pressure and also weight loss, as well as sports chiropractic work by calling his Santa Monica office 310-395-3111.
Podcast Transcripts
Dr. Weitz: This is Dr. Ben Weitz with the Rational Wellness Podcast, bringing you the cutting edge information on health and nutrition from the latest scientific research and by interviewing the top experts in the field. Please subscribe to the Rational Wellness Podcast on iTunes and YouTube and sign up for my free eBook on my website by going to DrWeitz.com. Let’s get started on the road to better health.
Hello, Rational Wellness podcasters. Thank you so much for joining me again today. Dr. Ben Weitz here. For those of you who enjoy the Rational Wellness Podcast, please go to iTunes and give us a ratings and review so more people can find out about the Rational Wellness Podcast. If you want to see the video version, you can go to my iTunes (meant to say YouTube) page. You can go to Rational Wellness or Weitz Chiro.
Today our topic is heavy metals, what problems they occur, how do we get them, how do we get rid of them, all in the next five minutes, ha ha. Heavy metals like mercury, lead, arsenic, fluoride, et cetera, are very common in our food, water, and our environment. Mercury is common in certain fish, silver fillings in our teeth, and even in vaccines. Arsenic is very common in the water in certain parts of our country, including in southern California. It gets into rice and other foods grown in that water. Fluoride is actually added purposely to our water. It’s in toothpaste. It’s in mouthwash. Heavy metals are contained in tattoos. We could go on and on.
To help us figure out what’s going on with all these toxic metals and what to do about them, we have heavy metals expert, Wendy Myers, to talk to us today. Wendy Myers is a functional diagnostic nutritionist and a number one bestselling author of Limitless Energy: How to Detox Heavy Metals to End Exhaustion and Chronic Fatigue. She’s also the host of two separate podcasts, TheHeavyMetalsSummit.com, and she hosts two podcasts, including Live to 110 about detox and The Super Charged Podcast about bio energetics. She’s very passionate about the importance of detox to live a long, disease-free life and she created the revolutionary Myers Detox Protocol after working with thousands of clients. Wendy, thanks so much for joining me today.
Wendy Myers: Yes, thank you for having me.
Dr. Weitz: Great. How did you get into the health field? Tell me about your journey.
Wendy Myers: Well, I’m like a lot of health practitioners. I got into the health field dealing with my own health issues and trying to troubleshoot why I was tired, why I had brain fog, why I couldn’t lose weight, and why I just didn’t feel like myself. I looked in the mirror and I didn’t recognize the person in the mirror. I was kind of a shell of my former self and I just wasn’t feeling well. I just knew intuitively something wasn’t right. I went to my doctor and she found out that I had really low hormone levels. I had the hormone levels of a menopausal woman at 37 and believe me, I was really thrilled to hear that. I had low thyroid function and I had adrenal fatigue and nutrient deficiencies. I wasn’t working at the time. I was a stay at home mom. I was working full-time on my health, and I thought, “How is this happening? How do I have all these health issues when I’m eating perfectly, I’m exercising almost every day, I’m taking a shopping bag full of supplements every day?”
I decided to not do the hormone replacement therapy, which was advised by my doctor, and I thought something caused my hormones to get out of whack. Doing something about that about that could help reverse them. There’s got to be a way naturally to get my glands functioning again how they’re supposed to. I was just typing in, “How to heal your adrenal glands naturally,” and I came upon a website that was talking about how heavy metals interfere in our hormones and interfere in thyroid and do this hormonal analysis and detox these metals as a start to find out what metals you have. I tried it. I started taking a bunch of minerals and did the program. I felt a lot better. Over time, my hormone levels corrected and I feel better than I’ve ever felt. I’m 45 today. For me, something just clicked inside me and I wanted to educate other people about the importance of toxins and heavy metals and how to detox them, so I started my website, MyerDetox.com.
Dr. Weitz: Cool. What effects do heavy metals like mercury, lead, and arsenic have on our bodies and our health?
Wendy Myers: Well, really almost every conceivable symptom and health issue can have an underlying metal or chemical cause that’s outright causing it or promoting it, and just so many issues that people suffer from, fatigue, brain fog, trouble sleeping, trouble losing weight, a lot of the major health issues people deal with. Hypertension’s caused by lead and cadmium toxicity, magnesium deficiency. Heart disease, a big cause is cadmium toxicity, hardening the arteries, diabetes, people have iron toxicity and arsenic toxicity and other metals that interfere in their ability to regulate their blood sugar. I can keep going down the line, but-
Dr. Weitz: Depleting hormones.
Wendy Myers: Hormones, yes. So many people are suffering from low hormone production and thyroid issues caused by a mercury toxicity, interfering in thyroid hormone, thyroid hormone production and conversion of T4 to T3 and on and on and on. Metals are ubiquitous in our environment. They’re present in the air, food, and water, so we’re ingesting them all the time. Eventually, they’re going to break down some metabolic function in your body and start causing health symptoms.
Dr. Weitz: Cool. Which metals do you think are most common in southern California where both of us live?
Wendy Myers: Yes. Well, mercury is the most common metal toxicity that people have. The next one is aluminum. People are breathing in aluminum all the time.
Dr. Weitz: Is mercury mostly from fish or what other sources are there?
Wendy Myers: Yeah. People are mostly getting it from fish, but they’re also getting it from breathing air because of the coal burning that’s done. That just gets in the environment. We breathe it in. That’s how it gets into the ocean and into the fish. We also get it from mercury almagam fillings, which many people have or have had in the past, and lots of other avenues that mercury gets in our body, vaccines, some vaccines. People are getting a lot of aluminum also from vaccines and they’re just getting it a lot of different ways, mainly breathing air, and underarm deodorant as well, conventional deodorant.
Dr. Weitz: How does aluminum get into the air?
Wendy Myers: Well, a lot of different ways. I believe it’s getting into the air from chem trails, but there’s also spraying that’s done. It’s used for geo-engineering and it’s used in a lot of different industries and from industry, it just gets into the air and then we inhale it.
Dr. Weitz: Yeah. I had never really heard of chem trails. I interviewed Dr. Harani and she was telling me about them. Can you tell me about the chem trails?
Wendy Myers: I’m not an expert on chem trails. I need to do a little bit more research myself, but I know that the chem trails release barium, strontium, aluminum, and other metals into the air. They’re trying to do geo-engineering and do other things to control our environment, but unfortunately, it’s having health consequences for people.
Dr. Weitz: Interesting. What are some of the other common sources of heavy metals in the environment? I spoke to Dr. Joe Pizzorno, and he was telling me about arsenic in the chickenfeed, and I’d never even heard of that before, but I guess it’s pretty common.
Wendy Myers: Oh yeah, very common. There’s arsenic in rice. The brown rices typically will have more arsenic because the arsenic will concentrate in the bran.
Dr. Weitz: Is there any way to get rice with less arsenic?
Wendy Myers: Yeah, so you want to get rice that’s grown in soils that are low in arsenic.
Dr. Weitz: Where is that?
Wendy Myers: Yeah, in California, and I tell people to avoid rices grown in south United States or that it’s grown in India or China because they have a lot of heavy metal contamination there in the soils, in the air. I tend to avoid any products from China or India because of that. A common source of toxins is actually products that we put in our body every day. Our skin is very, very adept at absorbing toxins through our skin and it’s a very effective absorption method, and so you want to be very, very aware of the beauty products and makeup and household cleaners that you’re using as well that you’re getting on your hands. People need to be focusing on using natural products, using vinegar, things that don’t have chemicals and preservatives like parabens and things of that nature.
Dr. Weitz: Yeah, personal care products really have a whole series of different toxins.
Wendy Myers: Yes, they do.
Dr. Weitz: Yeah. How can we find out if we have heavy metals? What’s the best way to test for them?
Wendy Myers: Well, I start with a hair mineral analysis with clients and that’s a great way to test for 37 metals and minerals. People can be toxic in certain minerals, as well. Once we do that, I’ll determine if they’re a candidate to a urine metals check challenge test and or a stool metals test as well. Stool is great to test for cadmium and silver toxicity. A lot of people have cadmium issues, but it doesn’t show in urine or hair. I’ll start there, and then once we find out what metals they have, then we can design a custom supplement protocol giving them supplements that remove their specific metals that they have on my Myers Detox Protocol. I really focus a lot on toxic metals that cause fatigue. There are certain metals in our environment like arsenic, aluminum, tin, thallium, and cesium that interfere in our mitochondrial functioning and reduce our body’s ability to produce energy, and so for those people that have certain metals that they feel fatigued or they have chronic fatigue, a good place to start is doing my mitochondria detox, especially if they don’t have money to do testing or work with a practitioner.
It can get very expensive to do that and buy all the supplements, but for people that just want to get started doing something really simple, really effective, I developed the mitochondria detox, which is a really simple three step system. It’s inexpensive and it’s a great place to start if someone wants to start doing a detox but they just don’t want to start right away with doing testing.
Dr. Weitz: It’s interesting you mention tin. We do a NutraEval on a lot of patients and it includes a serum heavy metals screen. I’ve had three or four just in the last week that had high levels of tin. I couldn’t figure out where they were getting it from. Where does tin come from?
Wendy Myers: Tin can be in the air. It can also be from industry that will release tin in the air. People that are working in manufacturing can get exposed to tin, but tin also can be part of a mercury amalgam. Tin is used in some mercury amalgams, so people can be getting it from there. Also, people that eat a lot of canned food, they can be getting tin from there, as well, but there’s other sources. On my website, I have a toxic metals sources and symptoms guide. If you type in heavy metals or toxic metals, it’ll come up in the search. I have every metal and all the most common sources and another section on the symptoms that each metal can cause based on my research over the past decade. I always keep adding to it also.
Dr. Weitz: It’s interesting. If mercury’s just in the fish, you should stop eating the fish to reduce your exposure, but if some of these metals are in the air, I guess the conclusion is you’re never going to completely reduce your exposure. You just have to find ways to clear them out of your body and maybe do a periodic detox.
Wendy Myers: Yes. Unfortunately, metals are ubiquitous in our environment. You can’t escape them. You can reduce consumption of certain foods or remove certain beauty products you’re using. You can control some things and remove the most obvious intake of toxins, but you can’t control everything. The most sensible thing is to really think of detox as a lifestyle and be adding detox protocols and supplements and doing certain things with infrared saunas just as a regular part of your health routine, rather than thinking, “Oh, I’m going to do this detox for 30 days or for a year,” or whatever you’re planning to do. You really have to incorporate detox on a regular basis into your health regime.
Dr. Weitz: Right. Interesting. Tell us about your mitochondrial detox program.
Wendy Myers: Yeah. This is a really simple thing that I developed because I noticed over the years working with clients the number one complaint was fatigue, and that was my number one complaint also. I really think that fatigue and mitochondrial dysfunction is the real underlying root cause of so much disease today because if you don’t have enough energy, you can’t sleep. You need energy to sleep. It’s a very energy intensive process and regenerative process. You need energy to heal your body for digestion, for your brain to work, to detox. You need energy to detox. If you’re chronically fatigued, detox goes to the wayside. Your body’s going to do more important functions before it’s going to spend energy detoxing.
For me, the key was really helping the mitochondria work better, and I happened upon the research that showed there were some specific metals that actually poison enzymes that transport nutrients into the mitochondria. People can be taking mitochondrial supplements like Ribose or NAD or whatever, B complex vitamins, and they’re not working or they’re not feeling more energy because the enzymes to get those nutrients into the mitochondria are not working. Really, the key that a lot of people are missing is detoxification of these metals. That’s the key, and then once you do that, then you can do the mitochondrial supplements, like zinc and vitamin K and K2 and magnesium and all the other nutrients required for that Krebs cycle to make ATP or our energy currency in our body. That’s the key a lot of people are missing when they’re looking to improve their energy levels. It’s why Starbucks is making billions of dollars. People are looking for that fix. They want to do anything to have more energy, and so that’s why people are drinking coffee all day long and they’re eating carbohydrates and sugar. They’re just reaching for anything. They’re self-medicating. That’s why a lot of people do stimulants and recreational drugs and things of that nature, because people are desperate for energy in any way that they can get it. I developed the mitochondrial detox to help to clear out these metals and it starts with an activated silica. It’s a choline stabilized silica that is specifically chemically formulated to bind onto arsenic, aluminum, tin, thallium, and cesium. Thallium is in petroleum deposits, so it’s in car smog. We’re breathing that in every day, especially in LA, and so a huge factor on chronic fatigue. Cesium is a big issue from Fukushima, the nuclear disaster in Japan. It’s releasing tons of cesium into our environment. These metals are poisoning our mitochondria.
Dr. Weitz: It’s continuing to do that, right?
Wendy Myers: Oh yeah, every day. It’s incredible that that’s allowed to continue, but we just can’t seem to fix it. The mitochondria detox also involves a modified citrus pectin, which is a binder that will absorb dozens of metals, hundreds of chemicals. It’s incredibly effective. This simple system is a great inexpensive way to very effectively detox your body and recover your body’s ability to make energy.
Dr. Weitz: I guess there’s some controversy about the effectiveness of modified citrus pectin.
Wendy Myers: Yeah, there are. Like anything, there are varying degrees of quality of modified citrus pectin. There’s different types of modified citrus pectin. With silica, there’s many, many, many different types of silica and they all do different things and detox different metals. The formula that I have, we have actually studies that show that it kills cancer cells, that it kills prostate cancer cells. It feeds good gut bacteria and it detoxes certain metals. In studies, it shows this.
We have the scientific proof to back up the claims that I’m making, but there certainly are garbage modified citrus pectins out there, absolutely, like with any product. There’s garbage chlorella and chlorella that works great. There’s garbage what have you, multivitamins that work, and ones that work amazing. There’s always a range of quality. Same with zeolite. There’s a range of quality in stuff. It’s harmful.
Dr. Weitz: Right. No, yeah, I saw on your website, you have Isaac Elias’ modified citrus pectin. I interviewed him on my podcast, yeah.
Wendy Myers: Oh great, yes, yeah.
Dr. Weitz: Yeah, he’s a really smart guy.
Wendy Myers: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, and so he’s the one that formulated our CitriCleanse product that’s our modified citrus pectin.
Dr. Weitz: Oh, okay.
Wendy Myers: Yeah, so he’s an expert. He’s been doing this for 23 years and pioneered the research on modified citrus pectin, so I’m very confident in our citrus pectin.
Dr. Weitz: Right, yeah. I interviewed Chris Shade a few weeks ago and he was telling me he didn’t think that modified citrus pectin was a good binder and it was better to use charcoal and clay and things like that.
Wendy Myers: Yeah. Yeah, well, there’s certain a case for that, but activated charcoal also is indiscriminate and detoxes a lot of minerals as well that can be problematic, but the citrus pectin is shown to be really, really effective for a lot of different metals.
Dr. Weitz: Yeah.
Wendy Myers: There are more effective binders, but there’s a price on the other side of that also, like what is the nutritional cost of that binder. There’s pros and cons to every product and modified citrus pectin is no different.
Dr. Weitz: Cool. What do you think about IV chelation?
Wendy Myers: Yeah, so that has its place. I think that some practitioners overuse it or it’s the only thing that they do for detox.
Dr. Weitz: By the way, for listeners who don’t know, we’re talking about intravenous where you go into a doctor’s office and they give you a drip of these agents that help chelate out metals.
Wendy Myers: Yes, yeah. It definitely has its place. If your life is at risk or you’re really high in heavy metals or you tried other things and they just don’t work, IV chelation, if it’s done correctly can be very effective, but it can also be done incorrectly and damage your kidneys. Some people are too sick to do that, to do IV chelation. Every client is different. Every situation is different. I’m a fan of doing gentle, slow things first before I drop the nuclear bomb on that. IV chelation is probably the strongest thing that you can do, and it’s just a lot of people are not a candidate for that. Everything has its pros and cons, but some people, they’re just not able to detox on their own or they need that to save their life, and it definitely has its place.
Dr. Weitz: Yeah, no, I think the trend now in functional medicine is to do it slow and to use agents that bind and rev up your own glutathione production and things like that, that has side effects and may take a little bit longer, but just as effective.
Wendy Myers: Yeah, absolutely, yeah. I think there’s a lot of practitioners that are doing better practices with IV chelation. It does have its place. For me, I use supplements and I’ll use EDTA and DMSA suppositories when they’re warranted because I think for cadmium, which a lot of people have, you have to use EDTA suppositories to get rid of that. The EDTA suppositories are shown to be just as effective using three of those a week as one session of IV EDTA and it’s a lot less expensive. You can get a two month supply of EDTA suppositories for one session of IV EDTA. It’s a lot more cost effective and it’s safer, as well.
Dr. Weitz: Are those available over the counter?
Wendy Myers: They are. They are available through a practitioner. You can get them at Store.MyersDetox.com.
Dr. Weitz: Interesting. What company makes them?
Wendy Myers: Chelatox. It’s a company called Kelatox that makes the EDTA suppositories. They’re great. I have people take them about every other day and start them at night and really, really effective.
Dr. Weitz: Do you use glutathione or any C to stimulate glutathione?
Wendy Myers: I do. I have clients use NAC, N-Acetylcysteine as a precursor to make glutathione on their own. I have clients do coffee enemas to naturally stimulate the production of glutathione. I find that there’s some people that genetically, glutathione can make them worse, so I tend to not use glutathione with clients. I’ll just give them the precursors to make glutathione.
Dr. Weitz: Interesting. Great. Good. I think that’s most of the questions I have. Anything else that you wanted to tell us about getting rid of heavy metals?
Wendy Myers: Yeah. Well, actually, if anyone is interested, I have a heavy metals quiz that people can take if they want to answer some questions and find out what their potential levels of heavy metal toxicity could be, and they can go to MetalsQuiz.com and take that quiz. I also based on their toxicity level have some solutions for them on how to lower their heavy metal levels. Lots of great content and information on my site, as well. I have over 250 podcasts and hundreds of articles, so lots of free information for people to dig into on how to detox their body and educating them about potential sources of metal toxicity that they might not be aware of.
Dr. Weitz: One more time, what’s your website?
Wendy Myers: Yes. It’s MyersDetox.com.
Dr. Weitz: That’s great. Thank you, Wendy. I really appreciate you providing some useful interesting information for us, and I’ll talk to you soon.
Wendy Myers: All right. Fantastic. Thank you for having me.
