Weitz Sports Chiropractic and Nutrition
Weitz Sports Chiropractic and Nutrition
Autoimmune Disease with Dr. Holly Lucille: Rational Wellness Podcast 94
Loading
/

Dr. Holly Lucille discusses Autoimmune Diseases with Dr. Ben Weitz.

[If you enjoy this podcast, please give us a rating and review on Itunes, so more people will find The Rational Wellness Podcast. Also check out the video version on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/user/weitzchiro/]

 

Podcast Highlights

5:08  Dr. Lucille explained that she has become more interested in treating autoimmune diseases because more patients with autoimmune diseases have been walking in her office door. And she has found that the simpler, least invasive methods that in the past would really help patients, like simple diet and lifestyle recommendations, are not working as well anymore.  These tend to be more complex patients.

6:45  Dr. Lucille said that women are more affected by autoimmune diseases (75% of patients with autoimmune diseases are women) because the androgenic hormones in men, like testosterone and DHEA, are somewhat protective.

9:18  In the US 90-97% of patients with hypothyroidism have Hashimoto’s (autoimmune) Hypothyroid. Most MDs and endocrinologists do not run the thyroid antibodies (TPO and TGB) to confirm this because they have no ways to treat it, other than putting patients on thyroid medication like synthroid.  If the autoimmune component is not also treated, they are more likely to have autoimmunity against another organ, such as their ovaries. This can lead to premature menopause.  One controversial situation is when you have a patient who has elevated thyroid antibodies and elevated TSH, though normal T3 and T4 and no symptoms of low thyroid. The elevated antibodies is telling us that there is an autoimmune condition that we can try to get under control before too much damage to the thyroid gland occurs and they need thyroid medication. Dr. Lucille mentioned that food sensitivities, infections, medication, poor food quality, poor air quality, and poor water intake are among the triggers for autoimmune thyroid.  You have to take a careful history and probe what potential environmental exposures they might have, such as mold or other toxins. We also have to look at gut health, since leaky gut and bacterial or fungal dysbiosis can be underlying factors. And then you have to do some of the good Functional Medicine testing to confirm your suspicions. 

18:08  With a patient with autoimmune thyroid, if there is nothing suggestive in their history of environmental exposures, Dr. Lucille will look at vitamin D levels. She will also look to see if there is an Iodine deficiency, since Iodine is needed to produce thyroid hormone. And other halogens, like flouride, bromide, and chlorine can all block iodine from working properly, so you need to try to avoid these. If you do give iodine, too much can spur an autoimmune reaction, so she prefers starting with 100-200 mcg and not the higher milligram level advocated by some Functional Medicine practitioners.  You must also make sure that there are sufficient antioxidants, like selenium, since the production of thyroid hormone from L-tyrosine and iodine produces a lot of free radicals. Dr. Lucille also likes to test inflammatory markers like CRP (C reactive protein) and Homocysteine and she has started to use the cytokine panel from Diagnostic Solutions, CytoDx, which measures the TH1:TH2 balance.

23:10  If Dr. Lucille is concerned about a possible food sensitivity in a patient, she may just tell them to eat gluten free for 60 days or follow an Autoimmune Paleo diet. If they are someone who likes to see the data, then she may run some food sensitivity panels. Such test results can help with patient compliance and adherence, which is stronger than compliance. She finds such data helpful, but it is expensive for the patient. She may have them start following a modified blood type diet from Dr. D’Adamo which may help them avoid foods that they are reacting to as well as junk food.

27:07  If you suspect a patient may have exposure to toxins, you need to teach your patients to avoid further toxins. She relies on the EWG.org website from The Environmental Working Group to figure out which skin care, health and beauty aids, and cleaning supplies do not contain toxins. You have to stop exposing yourself to the toxins and then you can start to detox yourself. She likes to start by opening the emunctories by supporting the liver and the detox pathways and also using movement, saunas, steam, and getting hydrated.  The emunctories are the pathways and organs which help us eliminate waste and toxins. You want to make sure the patient is pooping and urinating and sweating and even crying can be good.  You want to support the gut, the liver, and the kidneys nutritionally. 

29:00  When we get exposed to toxins like mercury and other heavy metals, what happens is the immune system reacts to the toxin like the heavy metal, and then it will find a protein in the body that looks similar and then it cross reacts and attacks that organ. This is how autoimmune diseases get started.  Dr. Lucille discussed a case history of a patient who had Hashimoto’s had high mercury from eating fish that came up on a NutrEval panel.  She had the patient avoid sushi and use The Detox Qube from Quicksilver that includes liposomal glutathione, lisosomal vitamin C with Lipoic acid, and silica binders.

33:48  Stress can dysregulate the immune system and play a role in contributing to autoimmune diseases. Dr. Lucille explained that she asks patients to do You Musings in the morning and a daily autopsy at night.

37:07  Dr. Lucille will sometimes recommend the following supplements for patients with autoimmune diseases:  1. Vitamin D, 2. Essential Fatty acids, 3. Curcumin, 4. Resveratrol–200 mg twice per day, and a good gut protocol such as the 4 R protocol.  Here’s an interesting paper on resveratrol for autoimmune diseases: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5748756/  Resveratrol Role in Autoimmune Disease–A Mini-Review.

 



Dr. Holly Lucille is a Naturopathic Doctor and can be reached through her web site, http://drhollylucille.com/  and she is available to see patients at her office in The Body Well at 7235 Santa Monica Blvd., West Hollywood, CA 90046 by calling 323-658-9151.   

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 or go to www.drweitz.com.



 

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 rational wellness podcast on iTunes and YouTube and signup for my free ebook on my website by going to Dr. Weitz.com. Let’s get started on your road to better health.  Hello Rational Wellness podcasters. Thank you so much for joining me again today. For those of you who enjoy listening to the Rational Wellness podcast, please go to iTunes and give us the ratings everyday. That way more people will find the Rational Wellness podcast. Our topic for today is autoimmune diseases with Dr. Holly Lucille and how to treat them with a functional medicine approach. Auto immune diseases have been on the rise for at least the last four decades and they are between 80 and a hundred different autoimmune diseases and at least 40 other diseases are suspected to have an autoimmune basis.

According to Dr. Thomas O’Brien, if we include diseases that have an autoimmune basis, autoimmune diseases are the third leading cause of death in the United States. Since most of these diseases are chronic and often life threatening and in fact, if we include heart disease as a autoimmune disease, autoimmune disease probably is the number one cause of death. Some of the more common autoimmune diseases include Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s, asthma, Hashimoto’s hypo thyroid, rheumatoid arthritis, Lupus, psoriasis, alopecia, Crohn’s, multiple sclerosis and Type I diabetes.  Our immune system is designed to protect us from bacteria and viruses and parasites and to protect our tissues from damage that occurs on a regular basis. What happens in autoimmune diseases is that our immune system becomes dysregulated and it starts to attack our own cells and organs. The conventional medical approach is to treat autoimmune conditions either by controlling the symptoms, such as providing thyroid medication in the case of Hashimoto’s thyroiditis, or by using medications that suppress the immune system such as corticosteroids, chemotherapy agents, or the newer, injectable TNF Alpha blocking agents like Humira and Remicade, which are in very common usage today.  These drugs simply block part of the immune system and this is a problem because you do need a properly functioning immune system and these drugs have potential side effects like infections and cancer. But Functional Medicine in contrast treats autoimmune diseases by trying to look at the underlying factors that lead to the immune system getting dysregulated. These include leaky gut, food sensitivities, toxins, infections, nutritional deficiencies. This is very important. If I have a patient with Hashimoto’s hypothyroid and most women in the US with hypothyroidism have Hashimoto’s and all this patient is treated with is with thyroid medication, which don’t get me wrong is very helpful.  It doesn’t do anything for the smoldering fire of the autoimmune disease that has been attacking the thyroid gland. And chances are that will continue. The patient may need higher dosages of thyroid medication over time or they may end up with another autoimmune disease. So not just regulating the thyroid but also putting out the smoldering fire of autoimmunity is crucial for this patient’s long term health. And that’s something that we want to discuss today. Dr. Holly Lucille is with us today. I’m very happy that she’s here. She’s a Naturopathic doctor, a registered nurse and a nationally recognized educator, national products consultant and TV and radio host.  She’s the author of several books, including Creating And Maintaining Balance, A Woman’s Guide to Safe Natural Hormone Health and The Healing Power Of Trauma; Comfrey. Dr. Lucille is the host of the popular podcast Mindful Medicine and she’s in private practice in Los Angeles. Dr Lucille thank you so much for joining us Today.

Dr. Lucille:                           It is my pleasure always. I’ve never thought about this as much as I was thinking about this when you were talking about, I love the name of your podcast. It just makes so much sense.

Dr. Weitz:                            Cool. Thank you.

Dr. Lucille:                           Yeah. Rational Wellness.

Dr. Weitz:                            We’ve had a few challenges getting started today and of course just as got started, one of my lights went out, but …

Dr. Lucille:                           I’m sure it will be epic.

Dr. Weitz:                            So how did you become interested in treating autoimmune diseases?

Dr. Lucille:                           You know, Gosh, like I have become interested in treating anything else, if my practice informs me. My patients inform me, I mean like you, I hold a license to practice medicine and I need to have continuing education credits each renewal period and certainly get those and more and always continuing to learn.  But I have to tell you what I have to pay attention to and what gets my attention most is what walks through my door. And then as you said, in the last decade, for me, I have seen it, the increase of people walking in actually diagnosis in hand, right?  So they’ve already been through the conventional, Western, reductionistic process and they’ve been diagnosed with one, two, maybe other autoimmune diseases. Or I’ve got these more complex cases that with the least invasive methods, I’m used to using all throughout at my last 20 years in my career that could really get people far in their wellness and healthcare desires aren’t working anymore. So I’m thinking, “Hey, what’s going on?” And more and more those folks, we’ve ended up diagnosing with one autoimmune disease or another and having to get in there and treat and identify the causes of those. So it’s really been my practice that has informed me to get started down this sort of Naturopathic, Functional Medicine, comprehensive overview of helping people with autoimmune diseases.

Dr. Weitz:                            Why do you think women are so much more affected by these?

Dr. Lucille:                           Yeah, it’s true. I mean more than 80 immune mediated diseases that we looked at and seven in a 100 people aren’t affected. 25% of men, 75% being women. And I don’t think that we know all of those answers. I know that there are some associations with the X chromosome when it comes to sort of a genetic predisposition where a certain excellent gene appears to be critical and then I think on the other side, testosterone, if we look at it, it reduces the number of B cells, which is sort of, that type of lymphocyte that releases those harmful antibodies. So we’re maybe looking at more protection for men because of their higher levels of an androgen like testosterone.

Dr. Weitz:                            Oh, interesting. I was thinking that maybe estrogen was a factor in this.

Dr. Lucille:                           Yeah. Not so much as being protected at all. I think we’re looking more at being able to in treating, looking at optimizing hormones, especially the androgens when we’re looking at DHA and testosterone. That’s what my clinical assessment has been.

 




Dr. Weitz:                            Interesting. I’ve really been enjoying this discussion, but I’d like to pause for a minute to tell you about our sponsor for this podcast. I’m proud that this episode of the rational wellness podcast is sponsored by integrative therapeutics, which is one of the few lines of professional products that I use in my office. Integrative therapeutics is a top tier manufacturer of clinician design, cutting edge nutritional products with therapeutic dosages of scientifically proven ingredients to help our patients prevent chronic diseases and feel better naturally.

Integrative therapeutics is also the founding sponsor of Tap Integrative. This is a great resource for education for practitioners. I’m a subscriber to Tap Integrative. There’s videos, there’s lots of great information constantly being updated and improved upon by Dr. Lise Alschuler who runs it. One of the things I really enjoy about tap integrative is that it includes a service that provides you with full copies of journal articles and it’s included in the yearly annual fee. And if you use the discount code Weitz ,W-E-I-T-Z, you’ll be able to subscribe for only $99 for the year. And now back to our discussion,


 

Dr. Weitz:                             Let’s talk about Hashimoto’s hypothyroid and what percentage of patients in the US who have hypothyroid have autoimmune disease and when you’ve seen some of these patients, what do you find in some of the more interesting triggers for this?

Dr. Lucille:                           Yeah, so depending on the reference that you look at from looking at all of the Americans that have hypothyroidism, you’re looking at 90 to 97% of them having an autoimmune related hypothyroid, Hashimoto’s. And it’s interesting and I’m sure you’ve had this conversation and I’ve had this conversation with many esteemed endocrinologist in wondering if those are the stats. “Hey, why don’t you run antibodies TPO, thyroglobulin, why?,” and their answer I think from their scope of practice is quite good. It’s because they wouldn’t change their treatment.

Dr. Weitz:                            Right.

Dr. Lucille:                           So if you’ve got a high TSH, relatively low T-four, which is pretty much all that they’re going to see, you’re going to be diagnosed with hypothyroidism and then given a thyroid replacement therapy, most likely Synthroid or what have you.  And of course our argument is, okay, as you said in your introduction, that’s great. We can get TSH within normal limits again but we’ve got this raging fire of inflammation behind us that I don’t believe the symptoms are going to stop for that patient just because the TSH is within normal limits. And also that autoimmune disease can continue on.  And I’ve seen it way too many times and I’ll tell you where with women, and we don’t really have a test yet for this, but pretty much sure. And I say that clearly, premature menopause because their ovaries end up being affected.  Another gland being attacked by the patient’s own immune system and I’ve seen it over and over and over again in my untreated Hashimoto’s patients.

Dr. Weitz:                            Interesting. Yeah, no, it’s true. The average patient who goes to their medical doctor doesn’t get the thyroid antibodies measured. They basically just look at TSH and that’s all they really focus on.

Dr. Lucille:                           Yeah.

Dr. Weitz:                            I have found a number of patients who had elevated TPO antibodies and actually didn’t have symptoms of thyroid disease and I always find this an interesting phenomenon and I feel as Functional Medicine practitioners, one of the things that we can do is try to prevent some of these autoimmune diseases and if we can see some of these autoimmune markers happening, what it’s telling me is that there is this underlying smoldering fire and maybe now we can put it out before their thyroid gland gets so destroyed that they actually need thyroid medication.

Dr. Lucille:                           Yeah. It’s a tricky thing with, I always say you can’t treat lab tests. You have to treat people. But in this situation, if the patient isn’t really presenting with overt symptoms, you have to look at that lab test and go, “Huh, is this an earlier stage of the disease appearing? Is this something that could be prevented?” And I would say yes, because the other thing too, which I’ve found very interesting in the patients that I could get a hold of their labs all the way back, is that if you think about, if that thyroid starts to get attacked, and of course we remember that at the thyroid level is where the thyroid hormone isn’t made. Okay.  T4 is inactive, we have pro hormone almost.  We haven’t really identified a receptor for it. We have four months of stored T4 in our thyroid. So at first if you catch it early, and I’ve seen this, you got that T4 being released in flush into the bloodstream, converted into T3 in the peripheral tissues of course. And you’ll actually see a hyperthyroid that almost and you catch it early it’s Graves’ disease honestly. But that subsequent attack over and over again, you’re going to start seeing a decline in the hormones being produced. And also, of course, your blood work is going to then start showing. But I think when we look at thyroid as a whole, if a patient is having any abnormalities in their blood work, they are already in dire straits from a tissue perspective.  It’s been going on for quite some time.  So I think the biggest take home is when we’re looking at thyroid health and we think about metabolism, aerobic and anaerobic in every single cell in our body. It’s so important to know that it’s not a numbers game and look at it very comprehensively certainly those lab tests, especially if they’re not presenting with overt symptoms and you still got those antibodies on the rise, that is a great opportunity.  Prevention is always the cure.

Dr. Weitz:                            So what are some of the triggers for autoimmune diseases for thyroid and others?

Dr. Lucille:                           Okay, so just think about it. Certainly, there’s a genetic predisposition I’ve seen for sure, environmental influences, you think all the way through, food sensitivities, infections, medication, poor food quality, poor air quality, poor water intake. There’s so many contributing factors and that’s really the key I think is to help identify what are the contributing factors that are stirring on the body’s ability to attack itself.

Dr. Weitz:                            So when you have a patient that presents in your office and they have some indication or symptom of a autoimmune disease. How do you work that through? How do you decide it, try to figure out whether it might be a food sensitivity or a chemical toxin exposure or an infection, a mold exposure. How do you work that up?

Dr. Lucille:                           Yeah, it’s a lot. I mean it’s tricky, but I think that with Functional Medicine and in Naturopathic medicine, we’ve got all the tools and I do think it first starts with that clinical acumen. I mean here you and I live in the Los Angeles area and we just had four or five days of straight on rain and thankfully because we need it so much, but I have to tell you the buildings that I had been in in the past week or so, a lot of people are exposed to mold and that is an infectious agent. If you do not identify it, it can continue to contribute to a chronic autoimmune disease.  So getting that history from a patient, looking at their environmental exposures, drilling down into that specific part of the case is extremely important because we’ve been … if you’re 30, 40, 50 years old, you’ve been living on a surfer, that time had been beat up a little bit because of our increasingly toxic environment. And so that is just a place where you do that investigation. And of course the way that I played in my practice is my clinical hypothesis is so important and for everybody it’s individualized because everybody comes with not only different genetics, different biochemistry in a sense, but also their different histories.

And then we’ve got these incredible Functional Medicine labs to confirm our clinical suspicion. So as I said before, at least invasive methods to diagnose and treat. And I used to get away with a lot less and it helping people sort of clean up their diet a little bit, get moving a little bit more, open the emunctories and it’d be amazing, right? The outcomes from a clinical perspective, not to work really hard to drill down and understand all of these environmental triggers, but also there’s gut health and we can talk much more about that cause that’s extremely important when we’re talking about the immune system. So the testing I think is really important and also that good clinical acumen taking that case history, especially if you are at all suspicious of an autoimmune condition.

Dr. Weitz:                            Yeah. Alessio Fasano, one of the experts in autoimmune diseases, he talked about having this triad where you have food sensitivities and you have leaky gut is being a major factor. So there’s no doubt that gut health is super important for …

Dr. Lucille:                           Oh, you think about it because I mean you’re looking at 70% of the immune system, the gut associated lymphatic tissue. We’ve got our stomach acids, we’ve got these tight junctions. When there’s any amount of dysbiosis, whether it’d be a bacterial dysbiosis or fungal dysbiosis, you know those tight junctions get a little bit more loose because of those endo toxins that are produced. And then we’ve got larger protein molecules getting into our bloodstream. Our immune system is like, “Hmm, what are you doing there?” And what does it do? It mounts a response, exactly what it’s supposed to do, but if that continues on that it’s gets chronic. And I think that’s a huge underlying cause for autoimmune diseases.

Dr. Weitz:                            So let’s say you have a patient in your office and there’s no obvious cause. You go through their history, they don’t tell you anything suggestive of mold exposure.  Of course it could be they think they’re sort of okay with gluten and there’s nothing obvious. What direction do you go? Do you do a stool panel? Do you do serum lab work?

Dr. Lucille:                           Yeah.

Dr. Weitz:                            Urine testing. What direction do you tend to go to? And I realize there’s intuition and other things that go into this.

Dr. Lucille:                           Yeah. So I look at other common contributing factors like vitamin D deficiency. So I want to make sure I’m checking that out. Iodine is really important because Iodine deficiency I think is a contributing cause to autoimmune disease, especially Hashimoto’s, but very controversial subject because if you have Iodine deficiency, what do you have? You have, because Iodine obviously T4, T3, we’re looking at Tyrosine the T part and the three or four being iodine molecules. And if the iodine deficiency is there, you’ve got these little friends that hang out on the periodic table, the other halogens that are toxic, that can come in and search, create and stimulate this immune response.

Dr. Weitz:                            For example fluorine.

Dr. Lucille:                           Yeah. Bromides, chlorine, all those things. And so I want to understand that I will jump to treatment because I have seen if you give iodine, it can spur on an autoimmune reaction.  But in my clinical experience, the way that I get around that is to make sure that the free radical load is down, the antioxidant status is up, especially with selenium. Once that I’m assured that is happening, I can start successfully putting iodine on board and watch those antibody numbers and they continue to go down. So that’s my quick tip right there.

Dr. Weitz:                            Are you talking about modest dosage, like 100, 200 micrograms or you’re talking about milligram dosages like some practitioners recommend?

Dr. Lucille:                           Well, I definitely start slow because we’d want to watch the antibodies and obviously there’s been some controversy and I do think that dosing iodine, heavy doses of iodine can be more harmful to Hashimoto’s if we’re not doing it in the correct way, which I think is that antioxidant status needs to be preserved first. And so then I start very, very slowly go up and watch the antibodies. But you know the other things too, I’ll run inflammatory markers, certainly C reactive protein, homocysteine. That’ll give me an idea if I should do more genetic testing.  You had mentioned a great lab. It’s fairly new, the test for Cytokines, I think it’s the CytoDX from Diagnostic Solutions. That’s a nifty nifty serum blood test.

Dr. Weitz:                            That tells us about TH one TH two balance, which is an important factor in autoimmune disease. Talk about that.

Dr. Lucille:                           Absolutely. I mean that’s the fun thing about sort of thinking through this and the way that we do is that there’s always a balance and there’s a balance with the immune system. Those pro inflammatory cytokines are important because they’re going to react if we need them to. But I think what happens is once it comes out of balance and those TH1 mediated cytokines which we see all the time, elevated and autoimmune diseases, they just take over. So our goal is to understand that imbalance get things on board that we can actually balance that out and quell that inflammatory response.

Dr. Weitz:                            For those listening who aren’t familiar with the importance of iodine. I just wanted to clarify a few points in sort of the history of hypothyroidism in this country is, we used to have commonly people would have hypothyroidism from iodine deficiency and they would get an enlargement of their thyroid called the corridor. And there were parts of the country in the Midwest called the goiter belt. And then we started adding iodine to the salt. It was a nationwide supplementation program to take care of this. And interestingly rates of hypothyroidism from iodine deficiency plummeted, basically went to super, super low levels, but then autoimmune thyroid took off.  And we’d seen the same phenomenon in countries around the world where they went from having Goiter causing hypothyroid to supplementing with iodine and then autoimmune disease taking off. And so iodine is super important in your body making thyroid hormone and part of the process stow in making thyroid hormone is that it produces a lot of free radicals and those free radicals cam create problems. So you were mentioning taking antioxidants to help quell that if you’re using iodine. Okay, so let’s go back.

Dr. Lucille:                           Nice clarification.

Dr. Weitz:                            Let’s say you’re working up a patient and you think they might have some food sensitivities. What approach will you tend to take? Will you either one, say “Let’s just cut out gluten, dairy, soy, do an elimination diet,” or will you use one of these panels to look at food sensitivities from Cyrex or when these other labs, what do you think is the best way to go about this?

Dr. Lucille:                           Yeah. You know, and I hate to keep coming back to this, but it’s just the gosh darn truth in my practice–is everybody’s so different. There are people that I can say, “Listen, I need 100% gluten free for 60 days, and I’d like you to go on an AIP.” So an autoimmune sort of Paleo type diet. And they’ll do that. They’ll do that sight unseen. They don’t need to see a test. They don’t need to see whether it’s acute allergies that they might have. Even these delayed sensitivities. If I do food allergy testing, I like to do at all just to get that in their IGG, IGA, IGM, all of it. But some people were okay, just let’s clear things out.

If we choose to do, because also and people don’t pay me to mind their pocket book. But when this is a chronic case and there’s a lot of different things to suss out. We’re looking at, I did a talk, Ben, I’m sorry I’m interrupting myself.  But I did a talk a couple of weeks ago in Hawaii called Superpower in your patient self care. And my whole talk was centered around the idea that I end up teaching in my practice all the time, because Docere right? Doctor in Latin means to teach. Here take this, like as you said, Humira.  Here take this is easy, easy medicine when it comes to an autoimmune disease.  You get that prescription, you take it down, pay your copay, open that bottle up.  It’s easy medicine.  What we ask people to do when we’re trying to excavate and identify and treat the cause and have an outcome of being able not to shed this diagnosis and not have this be as chronic or as debilitating and as life threatening and it can be, it’s not easy and it’s not inexpensive sometimes.  And so I’ll also take that in mind.  I mean if money wasn’t an issue, I think I would love all the data in the world because then I’d have it, I let my patients see it.  We could connect the dots together. They could have more of an adherence.  Compliance is like, “Yeah she told me to do this.” Adherence is a faithful attachment to something and I have those patients that just need to see it.  So if they need to see it, I’m going to run it, I’m just going to get that data so we have it, so they know it and they can be more motivated.

Dr. Weitz:                            So what you’re referring to in case there’s some patients who are listening who aren’t familiar with this, is there are a bunch of Functional Medicine oriented labs that are available. And except that they tend to be fairly expensive and they tend to be out of pocket. So it’s not unusual to run a big panel of food sensitivity tests. It’s very comprehensive, but it could cost 1000 bucks and it won’t be covered by your insurance.  And so patients who are used to just paying a $20 copay and getting all your lab tests done might come as a shock. People who are used to the Functional Medicine world would understand though.

Dr. Lucille:                           I have to say this because I’ve been using it clinically. With a certain amount of success, whatever I’m doing to get started. And if we are collecting more data, I will have people sort of just following a modified blood type diet, kind of just really not their food sensitivities by avoiding their avoid foods based on D’Adamo’s work. It gets us started, it gets us started cleaning up the diet, excavating certainly process students because that’s what it does. Gluten for sure. So we’ll get some parameters on board first and wow, we’re getting more data.

Dr. Weitz:                            Yeah. Interesting. So let’s say you have a patient and you suspect maybe they might have some exposure to toxins. How will you try to suss that out?

Dr. Lucille:                           Yeah, so, certainly we want to avoid any other exposure. So a lot of education on all of that. I mean, I always use ewg.org. environmentalworkinggroup.org as a resource as you do for my patients because it’s all right there when it comes to the things that they put on their skin, health and beauty aids when it comes to the cleaning supplies. So that dossier, the education and avoiding exposure is primary. We’ve got to stop at whatever the offending agent is. And then of course you have to an on the way that we talk about it, open the emunctories, we have to get those detoxification pathways really cranking.  That’s extremely important. We’ve got to start helping to get things out that might have accumulated and that are continuing to contribute to this sort of-

Dr. Weitz:                            For those of us who aren’t familiar with the emunctories can you explain?

Dr. Lucille:                           Yeah. So when we think, so among Montreal, this is an old word. It’s where we get things out. So if you think about detoxification and how we get out toxins, it’s your defecation, is through urination, is through perspiration. I mean heck, even a good cry, right is emoting, is can be very detoxifying. So this is where we want to look at the detoxification pathways and of course the gut is involved in that too. Liver, very important and all of the nutrients that drive the cytochrome P 450 pathways in the liver to do that, supporting those and as well then movement, Saunas, steam, like I said, staying hydrated, very important.

Dr. Weitz:                            For those who aren’t familiar with the concept, if we get exposed to toxins, let’s say you have mercury from eating fish or I just heard about a new test from doctor’s data that looks at heavy metals from a metallic implants, which is kind of interesting that a lot of us are as, as we’re getting older or getting knee replacements and other joint replacements and we’re told that they’re using titanium and other substances are totally not a problem with it. Turns out that of these metals are getting into our system and creating problems. What happens is your immune system detects that there’s this toxic near and then there’s just cross reactivity.  So what happens is immune system that’s attacking the metal then recognizes some protein in your body that’s maybe in your thyroid gland or your liver or somewhere else and it starts attacking that organ. So that’s how we end up with these autoimmune diseases from exposure to toxins.

Dr. Lucille:                           Yeah. Then there’s two cases that comes to my mind when you’re talking and this is the art of medicine, right? This is a process that we go through but one of, I mean she loves her heart riddled with them. A couple, she walked in with Scleroderma and as well as Hashimoto’s and I’m thinking, “Whoa, what is going on here when into genetic panel.” Just because we’d had some genetic family history with her, but guess what? Their family own dry cleaners all throughout the Santa Lucia, after school, where would she go? What was her first job? She had solved the exposure. Entire growing up years.

That was huge. Another woman where when you get this down, it’s great because you can start to see people get better and your antibodies come down. Because once again, if we’re looking at Hashimoto’s, you and I are not just looking at the TSH.  My metric is those … Well, my metric is the patient has to start feeling better. That’s number one. Number two, we want to see those antibodies come down because we want to see that the fire is not like raging, that it might just be there still and we can do things to put it out. Let him see those antibiotics come down. When that’s not happening, I always have to say, okay, why? Because the body has an ability to heal itself. That’s sort of one of our biggest tenants. And so what’s in the way we’re obstacles to cure.

And that was another one. This woman was doing everything and I thought, and her mercury, finally we did this testing. It’s her mercury was off the charts. So as soon as we effectively detoxify from mercury and she didn’t have any mercury amalgams, she was only 29 years old. And so hers was mostly her Sushi Habit. And so as soon as we’re able to detox that mercury, her antibodies, everything else she had been doing and having on board starting to drive down. Had my last case and I’ll tell you about, we’re talking-

Dr. Weitz:                            By the way, how did you measure the mercury and then how did you get rid of it?

Dr. Lucille:                           Yeah, so I’m very sensitive. I used a NutraEval for her, which is as a couple as a classroom and just for the patients that are listening or watching if you have the right insurance, we can tuck it under something called Pay Assured. And there are some interesting ways that we can make these sometimes cough rebutted tests and so that’s where that popped up because I had felt like she had done so much, so I really wanted to do the Mac daddy mac just to see what else that was missing. And that’s really a nice test to do that.

Dr. Weitz:                            No, we use that quite a lot. It’s a great nutrition panel that also includes heavy metals through serum.

Dr. Lucille:                           Yeah. And you can see those malabsorption markers, you can see dysbiosis, markers. And for me that’s kind of like a great test to do because it can spin off and make me focus and concentrate on additional testing and additional areas if needed. It will totally red flag a part of my brain to go, okay, this is where we need to start focusing and then for her, I use a detox cube from Quicksilver Scientific which is really, really comprehensive, has the glutathione in there sort of like the catch and release when it comes to pulling mercury out. These heavy metals have such an affinity for our tissues. And so I’ve had great success with that.

Dr. Weitz:                            So for those who aren’t familiar, it uses agents like glutathione, which is designed to help start to pull the mercury out of the tissues and then it has binders to bind to it, things like charcoal, and then make sure that they leave the body through the stool. Right?

Dr. Lucille:                           Yeah.

Dr. Weitz:                            And the urine. What role does stress have on autoimmune diseases?

Dr. Lucille:                           Oh, boy. This is a big one because if you think about it, so stress, obviously we need to quantify, but unhealthy, prolonged stress.

Dr. Weitz:                            Yeah. Chronic stress.

Dr. Lucille:                           Compounded. Those stressors. Because once again, we’ve got this wonderful fight or flight. We’ve got this autonomic nervous system that can help us respond to multiple stressors. When it becomes chronic. You’ve got sort of an over adaptation. You’ve got, we’re supposed to adapt to stressors, but when that hypothalamus, pituitary adrenal access starts to over adapt, one of the things that happens is a dysregulation of the immune response, which you can see in the final stages of sort of this HPA access exhaustion or dysregulation. It becomes blunted. And I think that’s where we start seeing the contribution of chronic stress to these autoimmune diseases.

Dr. Weitz:                            How do you handle that?

Dr. Lucille:                           Wow. Biggest thing. I mean, what do we do? We’ve got to start decreasing and reducing our chronic stressors. What I have people do-

Dr. Weitz:                            Meet the modern world, go live in a shack in the woods.

Dr. Lucille:                           Yeah. Well No, like right. Who will climb up to be a Zen monk. That’s never going to happen for a lot of my patients. There’s a couple things that I have people do and for some reason I’ve seen that adrenaline and meditation have not been effective as far as that way of framing them. So I have people do You Musings in the morning, I just want you to muse about what you want to do. And I have them do it for like three or four minutes, not a lot of time, but before they start getting connected to their devices before they start getting connected to anything else on the outside, I want them to at least to be able to stay connected to themselves.  People just are so disconnected from themselves that when it comes to, as I said, not easy medicine where we’re looking at dietary interventions, we’re looking at lifestyle modifications especially with stress reduction. So I have them do that. And a little other trick I have them do at the end of the day is simply called a daily autopsy because that day is done, of taste. Hey it’s gone. It’s dead. You’re never going to get it back. How did it go? What happened? Was there a piece of bread? Not that bread is evil or anything, but that you unconsciously sort of stuffed in your mouth at dinner after a glass of wine that you promised yourself you weren’t going to have.  And so those two things are really important to just frame the day for folks. Then I just, I have them do it. We share it, we talk about it. That’s really important. But of course, any other thing, meditation, whatever works for that patient, whatever for that patient is gonna create a parasympathetic response, that’s the opposite of fight or flight. That’s why we rest, relax, repair. Some people, it’s spending time with their grandchildren. Some people, it’s not spending time with their grandchildren. Some people it’s like taking a bath, lighting candles, carving out time to just read a book instead of watching television. So all of those things are so important to help. Cortisol is very inflammatory and we’re trying to quell the inflammation, so all those things need to be on board.

Dr. Weitz:                            That’s great. We can talk about autoimmune diseases forever. I’d like to hit on one more topic and recognizing that every patient’s individual in a specific patient in your office, you would have very specific recommendations. But just in general, what are some of the more helpful dietary, nutritional supplements for autoimmune diseases?

Dr. Lucille:                           Yeah, so from a research, and pretty much what I see in my practice, general support, I’m looking at vitamin D, definitely getting them up to optimal levels.  60 to 80, I think you’re not just one click above rickets, which I see a lot of people coming in with their lab test and they’re like, “Oh, your vitamin D is within normal limits.”  Look for optimal. Definitely healing the gut. So we’re looking at that friendly and good bacteria, which is part of the immune system as well as the stomach acid in the gut associated with panic tissue. And we’re looking at the gut.  Essential fatty acids I think are important.  Curcumin, I’ve written a lot about curcumin especially in higher doses. Potent anti-inflammatory, potent antioxidant.  Inhibits the TNF alpha and other interleukins. So that I think is extremely important.  Resveratrol.  This is actually something that folks that I’ve been talking to from a colleague perspective.  It helps to reduce oxidative stress. Yes. But it also inhibits that cell differentiation, which is extremely important. And so I’ve really seen resveratrol, be quite effective in treating Lupus, for sure, Rheumatoid arthritis, Hashimoto’s. So I use that all the time as well.

Dr. Weitz:                            200 or 400 milligrams. How much?

Dr. Lucille:                           What did you say?

Dr. Weitz:                            How many milligrams? 200 milligrams. 400 milligrams.

Dr. Lucille:                           Usually 200 milligrams BID or twice a day.

Dr. Weitz:                            Okay, good.

Dr. Lucille:                           And then you’re always looking at digestive health. The Rs we know the Rs, so removing those microbial the viruses or fungus. Certainly I do, I just want to touch on because they know we’re almost out of time, but Epstein Barr virus has been indicated is especially in a contributing factor to the initiation etiology of Hashimoto’s.  So I am testing for that more and getting on that as soon as possible. Any antimicrobial herbs …

Dr. Weitz:                            Are you testing for that through serum or through stool or?

Dr. Lucille:                           Through serum. Yes. And I mean, and if there are cases that are just ringing in my head once again, why aren’t those antibodies coming down? We’re doing everything that I know to do. That virus was, I mean this one woman bless her heart. I’ve never seen an Epstein Barr, not only just reactivation of a past infection, chronic activation and those titers are so high. So we needed to kind of pull our attention with antiviral support, immune support, really important. So I could go on and on. But those are the big ones that I use.

Dr. Weitz:                            Yeah. Another thing I wanted to point out, GI Map from diagnostic solutions or a stool test, I found that helpful with some autoimmune patients. They actually have a series of potential autoimmune trigger bacteria and sometimes that gives you some hints for things to try to target to clear out, to help reduce that.

Dr. Lucille:                           Yeah, that’s a great point.

Dr. Weitz:                            Okay, good, good, good. So any final thoughts and then how can everybody get hold of you?

Dr. Lucille:                           Sure. My website is always the best to send Dr. HollyLucille.com and for patients, I just want to say that there is hope if we look at this in much more of a comprehensive way and you help get your skin in the game and partner with somebody like Ben, myself, a functional medicine doctor, an hepatic doctor that is going to excavate and identify and treat the cause and ask those questions about why your immune system would start to attack itself. There is hope. So hang in there and then as you said, Ben, I can’t say this enough. Even though my parents both being pharmacists, there are medications out there that are being given every single day, these direct consumer marketing from the commercials.  Because we’ve got more and more autoimmune diseases because of our environment and other contributing factors.  But they do come with toxic side effects that they suppress the immune system.  We’re looking at increased risk of cancer and other devastating things. So if you look at the cost:benefit ratio, there’s a better way. There’s a more comprehensive way. Here, take this is easy, but if you do everything else, when we’re looking at lifestyle dietary, all the things that need to happen, you’ve got a chance for better outcomes and the quality of life that you’re going to soar with.

Dr. Weitz:                            Awesome. Talk to you soon Holly. Thank you so much.

Dr. Lucille:                           All right. Thank you so much.

 

How to Prevent Alzheimer’s Disease

 

While we know quite a bit about the pathogenesis of Alzheimer’s Disease, conventional neurology has not found any successful strategies or medications that prevent or reverse or cure the patient suffering with dementia or Alzheimer’s.  The most effective way to prevent and possibly reverse dementia and Alzheimer’s Disease is the Functional Medicine approach taken by Dr; Dale Bredesen in his ReCode protocol.  Dr. Bredesen has written a  popular book, The End of Alzheimer’s, that explains his approach that looks at 36 different metabolic factors that can influence neurological health and result in Alzheimer’s Disease.

We know that a buildup of Amyloid protein around the neurons in the brain, forming plaques, and an accumulation of Tau protein within neurons forming tangles are the physiological processes involved in the Alzheimer disease process.  This much we know. What is not as clear is what causes it and how to prevent these proteins from accumulating. Conventional neurological research has been looking for the one pathway that causes this for a number of years, so they can then develop a drug that blocks that pathway.  But this approach has not yielded any drugs that prevent or reverse the disease process, despite many billions of dollars of research.

Among the factors that Dr. Bredesen recommends looking at or screening for includes genetics (including ApoE), inflammation (HsCRP), food sensitivities, infections, heavy metals and other toxins, Homocysteine, fasting blood sugar and insulin, hormones, nutrient status (omega 3, vit D, vit B12, folate, the zinc copper ratio, etc.), the microbiota, the blood brain barrier, and sleep, among other factors. Amyloid PET scan and brain MRI with volumetrics can help with diagnosis. Dr. Bredesen looks at so many different factors because if your home has 36 holes in the roof and you only patch one, you will still have rain get in.

Dr. Bredesen is essentially taking a comprehensive Functional Medicine approach to Alzheimer’s Disease. It represents the biggest breakthrough in treatment for Alzheimer’s Disease.  Unfortunately it is complicated, since it doesn’t focus on one pathway and one drug that blocks it. And it doesn’t fit neatly into our medical system and a 10 minute office visit concluding with a prescription.  Dr. Weitz is very familiar with these protocols and testing and is available for Functional Medicine consultations for patients with early signs of dementia, like memory problems.
Weitz Sports Chiropractic and Nutrition
Weitz Sports Chiropractic and Nutrition
Menopause with Dr. Anna Cabeca: Rational Wellness Podcast 93
Loading
/

Dr. Anna Cabeca discusses Menopause with Dr. Ben Weitz.

[If you enjoy this podcast, please give us a rating and review on Itunes, so more people will find The Rational Wellness Podcast. Also check out the video version on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/user/weitzchiro/]

 

Podcast Highlights

0:57   Menopause is when a woman’s body is shutting off its reproductive capabilities. There’s a sharp decrease in estrogen and progesterone production by the ovaries, resulting in a host of symptoms including hot flashes, night sweats, brain fog, mood swings, depression, weight gain, vaginal dryness, hair loss, and fatigue. There are various long term effects of menopause including increased risk of bone loss and of cardiovascular disease. Testosterone and DHEA hormones also decline, though not as precipitously as estrogen and progesterone.

2:38  Dr. Cabeca said that when she was 38 she went into early menopause, premature ovarian failure. She was told she would not be able to have another child. She traveled around the world looking for answers and found a way through Functional Medicine to reverse her early menopause and at age 41 she conceived a healthy baby girl, her daughter Ava Marie.  All was well until she hit 48 and started to experience menopause again and found that she was gaining weight, which was very disconcerting, since she had previously lost a lot of weight. Dr. Cabeca also started to lose hair. She found that by following a ketogenic, low carb diet and also incorporating a lot of greens into it in order to alkalinize herself, she was able to restore her health and stop the weight gain, which she calls Keto Green.  Keto Green allows women to gain mental clarity, restored physical health, and also spiritual health. 

5:58  In her book The Hormone Fix, Dr. Cabeca talks about three important hormones during menopause being 1. Insulin, 2. Cortisol, and 3. Oxytocin.  Oxytocin is the governing hormone that’s our joy-peace connection.  It’s the hormone that creates the instant bonding that women have for their newborn babies. Oxytocin is also the hormone that leads to uterine contractions and stimulates labor and also is fired up during orgasm. It is the hormone of love, bonding, and connection. When you are chronically stressed, your cortisol levels will rise and then eventually they will fall, along with your oxytocin levels.

9:40  One of the main menopausal symptoms is hot flashes, which we don’t fully understand why they happen, though we know they have to do with the body’s thermo-regulatory center. Hot flashes seem to be increasing today because women seem to be losing their metabolic flexibility. We need to get back in tune with nature, reset your circadian rhythm, and get various temperature exposures from our natural environment.  We also know that insulin resistance is a common trigger for hot flashes, so if women their improve insulin sensitivity with Dr. Cabeca’s Keto-Green diet, many will find that their hot flashes will decrease or go away.

13:35  Elevated cortisol levels from uncontrolled stress can result in reduced levels of other hormones that are further down the hormone pathway, like DHEA, estrogen, and testosterone.  Controlling lifestyle choices like stress, resetting our circadian rhythm, getting good sleep, reducing EMF exposure, and reducing blue light exposure at night would help to with weight loss and other menopausal symptoms. 

16:50  Dr. Cabeca’s Keto-Green diet helps with menopausal symptoms.  Low carbohydrate, dark leafy greens and cruciferous vegetables are essential on our plates every single day. She recommends using her test strips that test your urine for both ketone bodies and for pH.  This tells you whether you are burning ketones for energy and whether you are alkaline from eating enough green vegetables.  Having an alkaline pH of 7 or more will help with bone density and women after menopause tend to have osteopenia or osteoporosis, so this is important. This also decreases your risk of diabetes, heart disease, metabolic syndrome, and other chronic diseases. Getting your body and your brain to burn ketones instead of glucose for fuel is beneficial since when women are going through menopause, as their estrogen levels drop, they tend to get brain fog, memory loss, and they start to fear dementia. But ketones are the optimal fuel source for the brain and it’s not estrogen dependent, so as learn to burn fat for fuel, women get more mental clarity and the brain fog lifts. This keto-green program helps both to diminish hot flashes and with that stubborn weight loss, so women both feel better and look better. Dr. Cabeca also feels that it’s important to practice intermittent fasting and not graze and snack all day long, but snacking causes insulin resistance and worsens symptoms. She says that it is easier for men to skip breakfast, while it is probably better for women to skip dinner. It is better for women to eat by 10 am for hormone stabilization and not to eat after 7 pm, since they will secrete more insulin, which will worsen sleep problems and weight gain.

23:15   Dr. Cabeca believes in using diet and lifestyle changes first for helping women with menopausal symptoms, but she does also believe in bioidentical hormones as well.  She also done research into the use of the androgens like DHEA for women’s sexual health. As women age, they tend to have increasing problems with vaginal atrophy, pelvic floor relxation, and incontinence.  Dr. Cabeca has developed a natural anti-aging cream with DHEA to be used topically for the vulva called Julva that is sold through her website without prescription. Vaginal estrogen helps the mucosal, top layer of the vagina, whereas topical testosterone or DHEA helps with the deeper muscular and fascial layers. Her cream also includes stem cells from the Alpine rose and natural emollients emu oil, coconut oil, shea butter.

 



Dr. Anna Cabeca is a OB/GYN specializing in Functional Medicine, menopause, and women’s sexual health.  Her new book, The Hormone Fix  will be released Feb 26. Her web site is Dr.AnnaCabeca.comDr. Cabeca is offering a free 7 day trial of her Julva cream for vaginal health:  https://order.julva.com/trial-pack?oprid=41914&ref=223313

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 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 your road to better health.  Hello, Rational Wellness Podcasters. Thank you so much for joining me again today. And for those of you who enjoy listening to the Rational Wellness Podcast, please go to iTunes and give us your ratings and review. That way more people will find out about the Rational Wellness Podcast.

Our topic for today is menopause with Dr. Anna Cabeca. Menopause is when a woman’s body is shutting off its reproductive capabilities. There’s a sharp decrease in estrogen and progesterone production by the ovaries, resulting in a host of symptoms including hot flashes, night sweats, brain fog, mood swings, depression, weight gain, vaginal dryness, hair loss, and fatigue. There are various long term effects of menopause including increased risk of bone loss and of cardiovascular disease. Testosterone and DHEA hormones also decline, though not as precipitously as estrogen and progesterone.

Today, my goal is to bring clarity to some of these issues. I would particularly like to highlight hot flashes and vaginal dryness and atrophy and discuss with Dr. Cabeca some strategies that can help women. Dr. Anna Cabeca is a triple certified OB/GYN in integrative medicine, in anti-aging and regenerative medicine, as well as an expert in Functional Medicine, menopause, and women’s sexual health.  She specializes in bioidentical hormone replacement, natural alternatives, and successful menopause and age management medicine. She has a soon to be published book, which is excellent. I’ve just finished reading it, “The Hormone Fix” which is an excellent look at how to help women deal with the hormonal imbalances and symptoms of menopause.  Hi Anna, thank you so much for joining us today.

Dr. Cabeca:         It is great to be here with you Ben, and for your listeners and viewers. Thank you.

Dr. Weitz:            Great. Maybe you could start by talking about your personal journey and how you found yourself struggling with hormonal issues and what you did to solve them.

Dr. Cabeca:         Yeah. Well, it’s been a long road and at 38, I was diagnosed with early menopause, a premature ovarian failure, early menopause, and I was told the devastating news that I would never be able to have another child. And that was it. Like all hope was erased from me, erased from me. And it’s something we know as gynecologists, I’m a Emory University trained gynecologist and obstetrician and I went to my colleagues. And what we know is that the likelihood of reversing early menopause is dismal.  We had a traumatic incident in our family and a lot of PTSD, and a lot of stress and grieving, and it was all around compiling upon that. That just set me off and I took a journey around the world actually looking for answers then. I looked in my doctor’s bag, I consulted with colleagues, and then I just started traveling. I took my kids, home-schooled them for a year as we went around the world and I looked for answers. So as a result of that and Functional Medicine and integrating that as well into my own life and the life of my family, lo and behold, at age 41 I conceived a healthy baby girl and that’s Ava Marie.

So grateful to God and grateful to medicine and the world of medicine to have healed me on that journey. And pretty much all was well till age 48. So for a decade approximately, I mean, all was well and then I experienced what so many women experience.  And that is my clients would come in and you hear this too, it’s like, “Dr. Anna, I’m gaining 5, 10, 20, pounds and I’m not doing anything different.”  Right?  You hear that all the time.

Dr. Weitz:            Correct.

Dr. Cabeca:         And I was like, “Sure you’re not, you’re more sedentary, not going outside as much, less active, whatever it is.” And lo and behold that happened to me, 5, 10, 20, pounds. And I had already lost 90 pounds in that journey and working to restore my health. And so anyone who’s lost a lot of weight and kept it off, when they see the scale uncontrollably rising, fear grips us. And not only that, I had a tremendous amount of hair loss. I was balding all the way past almost the crown of my head, and it was terrifying.  And that took me on another journey and that’s where I really incorporated the benefits of keto, getting our body into ketosis as well as enforcing the alkalinizing. I call that keto-alkaline or getting keto-green, which is hence what I write in my book about our Keto-Green Way to fix our hormones, because we know that it takes more than hormones to fix our hormones.  So that was my journey. Now I’m 52 with a 10-year-old and I am like just so emphatic on keeping this lifestyle and encouraging other women to embrace it as well because of the clarity, the mental clarity, the physical health, and not just that, the spiritual health that we gain and we can gain in the peri-menopause and post-menopause time period.

Dr. Weitz:            Great.  So when we talk about hormones in menopause, most of the experts talk about estrogen and progesterone and testosterone as the key hormones that drop during menopause.  But you write in your book that you feel that three of the key hormones in menopause are insulin, cortisol and oxytocin.  Can you explain why you say that?

Dr. Cabeca:         Yeah, absolutely. And oxytocin is the crowning hormone. That is absolutely my favorite hormone, and I believe that’s the governing hormone. There’s a spiritual basis to oxytocin, but ultimately that’s our joy-peace connection. And I would like and I’d love to get into more in oxytocin. I put a whole chapter in my book on it, but-

Dr. Weitz:            I don’t think most people know much about it. I mean, I’ve heard of it as the hormone involved in orgasm, but other than that, I didn’t have any clue about it. I’ve never seen it pop up on a lab test, so-

Dr. Cabeca:         No. And it’s really hard. You actually need to have a frozen sample in order to adequately, and it has to be delivered very quickly. It’s very hard to get oxytocin in blood levels. But most women experience oxytocin their first experience with an exogenous form of oxytocin is during labor, pitocin.  So we hear, “Oh my gosh, pitocin, we’re just giving it during labor.” And we’ve felt for so many years that it’s pretty harmless. And I think we’re starting to question some of that research, but pitocin is that hormone, it’s oxytocin and it works to contract our uterus. It works to help us deliver this baby. And the results of it are that instant bonding that defies all explanation. You never understand it until you experience it yourself, between you and that child that you’re looking at. That’s that imprinting that’s done because of oxytocin. You see this baby, look into this baby’s eyes and you’re like, “Wow,” and that’s that feeling. And oxytocin has that benefits.

It’s also a powerful analgesic. So it takes away the pain that we remember from Labor. It’s like, “Ah, I could do this again,” you think like several months later. And like, “What am I thinking?” when you’re in labor again. Right? “What was I thinking?” And the benefits of oxytocin, what it does is take away that pain. And same is true in so many ways. We know that when we orgasm, we’re fired up in the same brain center areas as we are in spiritual ecstasy.  And so there’s powerful connection, powerful spiritual growth that we can experience too with oxytocin. But it is that hormone of love, bonding, and connection. So from hugging, laughing, playing, giving, having pets, healthy, happy, laughter in your life and in your relationships can also stimulate oxytocin.

And that is, and one thing that’s really important to know what I learned from not just the everyday stress of running a family, wearing many hats, like so many women.  I was running a family, running a business, managing a practice, being a wife, all of those things.  So the everyday stresses, let alone post-traumatic stress, create this dysfunctional adrenal rhythm, and we can get into a state from of chronic high cortisol pushing down oxytocin to this chronically low cortisol and chronically low oxytocin.  And that is what we know as burnout or disconnect or divorce.  We can look at the physiology of all those things and look at those hormones and that’s how powerful they are.

Dr. Weitz:            Cool.  So one of the main menopausal symptoms is hot flashes. Can you explain exactly what causes them, is this due to low estrogen or progesterone or fluctuations or what exactly causes hot flashes and why do some women have hot flashes for a short period of time and then they go away, and I have other women in my practice in their 70s or 80s, and some of them still have hot flashes?

Dr. Cabeca:         Yes.  Yeah.  And that’s the conundrum with hot flashes.  And I don’t think I’ve read a really good explanation. I know the physiology of what happens, right? We believe like we have our thermo-regulatory center or internal thermometer, right? And so the hormones are adrenaline hormone, so when we’re getting a hot flash, we’re basically getting an adrenaline rush with vasodilation. It’s like, “Well, here I am just sitting on the couch, not doing anything and I’m getting this like physiologic outpouring of these hormones and hence sweat. What is happening?”  And we all know there’s always some women experience more or less, there are some theories. One very interesting theory that I came across as I kept hearing from my clients as I put them through what I discussed in my book, my “Keto-Green Way”, and they’re like, “My hot flashes are gone.” And that some clients would have hot flashes like every hour, every 20 minutes, and for years and within two weeks their hot flashes were gone.  And so I dug into that. And lo and behold, insulin resistance is a very common cause of hot flashes. So we’re predisposed to more and worse hot flashes with insulin resistance. I’m not clear on the mechanism of action there and I don’t think anyone is, if anyone listening knows, please email me because I have dug into some of the science and I can’t quite understand it.

But there’s that insulin resistant component to hot flashes. So as we control this powerful hormone insulin, which also has effects on progesterone, testosterone, estrogen, right? That’s why it’s the major hormones. And as we get more insulin sensitive, lo and behold, I mean, the hot flashes will go away. But also, hot flashes are worsening in our population now. And I think part of that is we have less metabolic flexibility in so many ways.  We go from a 70 degree home, to a 70 degree car, to a 70 degree office, and back 70 degree gym, when we go work out. Right? And so there’s not that opportunity to really gain this. Also there’s flexibility and this thermo-flexibility, let’s say. So really part of our prescription is to kind of get back in tune with nature, reset your circadian rhythm, get out in the environment, get all the exposures from our natural environment. And that includes the extremes of temperature as much as possible.

Dr. Weitz:            Yeah. I’ve heard a lot of people talk about exposing themselves to cold or jumping in a cold plunge or doing a cold shower.

Dr. Cabeca:         Yes. Yeah. To increase metabolic flexibility and burn fat I believe. And so it’s interesting that cold thermogenesis has a tremendous impact on helping our body also in resetting its circadian rhythm. It’s fascinating.

Dr. Weitz:            Seems to be one of the anti-aging strategies also.

Dr. Cabeca:         Yeah. And I just cannot bring myself to do it. Every once in a while I will like totally encourage going from hot to cold in the shower, but like got to get back to hot eventually. But the cold plunges, I’ve done the nitrogen chambers, where there are sub zero and I’ve done that for four minutes and yeah, no, I’m not a fan, but it was worth the experiment.

Dr. Weitz:            You’ve written in your book that elevated cortisol levels result in reduced levels of some of the other hormones like DHEA, estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, what does cortisol have to do with these other hormones?

Dr. Cabeca:         Yeah. Well, one of the things is that cortisol is derived from progesterone and pregnenolone.

Dr. Weitz:            Okay.

Dr. Cabeca:         So again, two of our mother hormones. And when we are producing cortisol, the hormones that are further down on that pathway, such as DHEA and our reproductive hormones, estrogen and testosterone, are diminished. This is just like a traffic jam, right?  All the traffics going in this direction, there’s very little coming down these roads. And that’s what’s happening essentially when we’re under a state of chronic stress and we’re producing cortisol. So we need to be conscientious of that, and resetting our cortisol balance, it has to be done through lifestyle.  And one of the things that I always say, Ben, is that diets fail because it’s a four letter word with the word die in it. So, I don’t love that. And yet 99% of diets fail, and the predominant reason is because it’s probably in my estimate, about only 25% of what we eat. The lifestyle factors, when, how, in what mood, and what else is in our food or in our environment or what other things are stressing us out, that has a greater impact. So controlling those lifestyle factors with simple disciplines and simple strategies can make a huge difference in our success, our quality of life.

Dr. Weitz:            Which lifestyle factors do you feel are most important in that regard?

Dr. Cabeca:         Definitely the part is resetting the circadian rhythm, so getting a good night’s sleep, uninterrupted sleep, removing the EMF exposure from … the EMF exposures, but also blue light exposures that are creating havoc with our own natural melatonin production. And that, again, an important hormone for-

Dr. Weitz:            Blue light is staring at computer screens and phones and things like that. So do you recommend blue light blocking glasses or?

Dr. Cabeca:         I do. When you’re at a computer screen, we should all be wearing blue light blocking glasses. So like typically, I have my glasses here on my counter and I’ll wear them when I’m working at the computer as well as looking at my phone. But definitely also just turning it off and going to good old-fashioned paper after sunset is key. And getting sunrises and sunsets, that inner eyes, not with glasses or contact lenses as a filter in between, but pure sunrises and sunsets to help us reset our rhythm.

Dr. Weitz:            Yeah. I was at an anti-aging conference and Dave Aspery was talking about using red light bulbs in your home at night.

Dr. Cabeca:         Yes. Yeah, to change that or red filtered glasses, which is another strange thing. And I always think of Amsterdam and the red light district when I think that. Yeah.

Dr. Weitz:            There you go. So you write a lot about diet and for help with menopausal symptoms. So specifically you talk about your keto-green diet. Can you talk about that and why that helps with menopausal symptoms?

Dr. Cabeca:         Yeah, it’s really essential. There’s a few things. Definitely we want to improve our urinary pH.  We want to improve the mineral-rich foods. So diet is a component of that and lifestyle is a component of that, hence the greens.  Low carbohydrate, dark leafy greens and cruciferous vegetables are essential on our plates every single day. And it’s not enough to guess, “Okay, I’m getting enough greens.” It’s important to check our urinary pH. And I’m a real big advocate of this and I talk about it in the book, but it’s so simple. It’s so inexpensive. We can buy pH paper at any pharmacy or health food store, and I created urine test strips that have pH and ketones both on them, one less step, right, to make it easy for us and check our urinary pH.  A higher urinary pH above seven is associated with strong bones. And that’s important for us as we get older because women in their 30s are being diagnosed with osteopenia, even osteoporosis. Well, again, we have to get these minerals into our body and we have to nourish our body to be able to detox the harmful chemicals we’re exposed to on a daily basis as well.  So urinary pH, the higher the better, seven or better. And I have clients check that so they can start to discern what works for them. And it’s a very personalized program as you figure out, “Oh, this works for me, this doesn’t work for me.” Or, “This is helping me and this isn’t helping me.” And it sometimes takes time to figure that out but that discovery process is brilliant and enlightening. And now I’ve had thousands of women in my online programs do this and find quite amount of joy doing it and discovery any weight loss and improvement of menopausal symptoms. So that’s key.

That alkalinizing healthy bones decreases our risk of diabetes, heart disease, metabolic syndrome, and the list goes on. The second part, ketosis, as our estrogen levels start to decline, estrogen or so our brain uses glucose for fuel as a rule or ketones for fuel. Well, when women are going through menopause, they’re getting brain fog, memory loss, and the immediate fear is dementia, being unable to take care of themselves, so as they grow older, being a burden to their families.  And so we start to kind of live this fear-based profile, not realizing it’s physiology. So glucose utilization in the brain is an estrogen-dependent process. So naturally as our levels are declining, “Huh, we should have some mental fog or something.” No big surprise. So let’s conquer it. Ketones are the optimal fuel source in the brain. It’s not estrogen-dependent. So as we learn to burn fat for fuel, we get this higher clarity, brain fog gets lifted.

I hear so many patients tell me, “Dr. Anna, my brain fog is gone,” and just that kind of getting your edge back. So getting into ketosis and getting alkaline at the same time, that combination, which I call keto-green is empowering. It helps with diminishing the hot flashes, helping with some stubborn weight gain or difficult weight loss, helps with just the healthy metabolism and feeling healthy.  It’s the one thing, we want to all look good, but it’s even better to feel good at the same time. So that’s what really counts and we see that combination really empower. And a lot of factors in ketosis, there’s components of the ketogenic diet that I like and that I don’t like. So in my program I describe them and we really want to work and getting it to that state of ketosis.  So intermittent fasting, which has been shown to decrease our risk of breast cancer, as well as no more snacking. Women hate it when I say that because they’ve been told to graze and three meals, three snacks. I’m like, “Where in earth did we ever get that?” Right?  So that causes a tremendous amount of insulin resistance and worse symptoms. So we want to eliminate that snacking.

Dr. Weitz:            Yeah, it’s funny how the Functional Medicine world has kind of gone through this major change because for years we were concerned about trying to help people manage their blood sugar, and that’s one of the reasons for this small meals every three hours to try to keep your blood sugar even. The worst thing you could do is skip breakfast, and now the Functional Medicine world has come around and said, “Hey, we just came up with something. The way to be healthy is to skip breakfast and have long periods of time between when you eat.” So it’s kind of funny how we have come complete circle. Everybody’s fat because they miss breakfast and they have too long a period of time between eating.  Now everybody’s too fat because they eat too often and they need to skip breakfast and have long periods of time between eating.

Dr. Cabeca:         Like the pendulum swings, right Ben? It’s like always like where is it swinging next? Well, I think the big thing is that one thing that I recognize is men can skip breakfast. This is one of the differences in the sexes that I found out. Men can do a more carnivorous keto. Women, we can’t and we need to really eat by 10:00 A.M. for hormone stabilization. And I mean, that’s just traditionally how we’ve been designed while the men are out hunting say, right?  So in 10,000 years, supposedly our genes haven’t changed. But I like women to, I prefer we skip dinner or have a lighter dinner.  We definitely want to eat by 7:00 P.M. because we know that if we eat after seven, we secrete 70% more insulin, hence worsening sleep issues, hence worsening weight gain and those issues. So for us, for women, women in my perimenopause, menopause and post-menopause, as they go through my program, I really work to say, “Okay, let’s try to breakfast by 10:00 A.M. and really try to eat by 5:00 or 6:00 P.M.”

Dr. Weitz:            Maybe it’s my feminine side, but I’m with you on that. I feel so good after a good breakfast and I get ready to go. And sometimes if I don’t get a chance to eat, I’ll just skip dinner and I’m fine with that.

Dr. Cabeca:         Perfect.  Yes, no one has died from skipping dinner, I guarantee you.

Dr. Weitz:            So do you recommend bioidentical hormones after menopause?  That seems to be the focus for most people in the functional medicine community. The main strategy is to replace the hormones.  What’s your feeling about that?

Dr. Cabeca:         So nutrition and lifestyle first, right, I really feel strongly about that, something I did in my practice. So since 1999, I really became involved in bioidentical hormones, especially for sexual health because we didn’t really have options for women who’ve had breast cancer.  And as a practicing gynecologist in a small town Georgia, because I was a national health service corps scholar, so I came to a small town from my repayment and I was in this shrimping area called McIntosh county.  And I had to find really industrious ways to help these women because they had no options and they were just told, “Well, you just kind of have to suffer. You’re lucky to be alive. Right?” I’m like, “What?” And so I dug into the research and that’s where I started understanding some of the differences between bioidentical and the synthetic hormones as well as how we can use the androgens such as DHEA and testosterone to help women in sexual health, even if they’ve had a history of breast cancer.

More and more research done, especially by Dr. Rebecca Glaser, a breast cancer surgeon in the Northwest and just fabulous good science around that. And now over the last 10 years with the research doing, looking at DHEA vaginally. So Ben, one of the things is that as we get older, the natural hormone decline, like hot flashes will eventually stop for the most part with few exceptions, but vaginal atrophy changes, pelvic floor relaxation, incontinence issues tend to get worse. And again, incontinence is one of the reasons why care givers put their beloved into a nursing home. And look, I have four daughters, like I’m 52 with a 10-year-old, almost 53 with a 10-year-old, so I’ve got to keep that mental clarity and I definitely don’t want to give any of them an extra excuse to tuck me away in a nursing home.

So the pelvic floor health is a passion of mine and that’s why I really went to create some natural solutions using bioidenticals, and that’s what I teach physicians on when I lecture, writing prescriptions for bioidentical testosterone, DHEA, progesterone, and estrogen when needed as well as a combination either by itself or individually or to use topically or vaginally, preferably in clients as we’re getting older to help that. And that’s one of the reasons I created Julva, which is my natural anti-aging cream for the vulva to help with those changes, the dryness, the accidental leaks when we cough and sneeze and just really improve the quality of the health of that tissue because that’s just compromising.  We stop exercising because of it. We stopped having sex because of it.  We have discomfort, pain, and feel that our body’s betraying us in so many ways because of it. So the first choice is always bioidentical.

Dr. Weitz:            It seems like we’re kind of confused. So since we’re transitioning to the topic of vaginal health and the vaginal dryness and atrophy that occurs after menopause, which makes intercourse uncomfortable or painful and can lead to incontinence. It’s interesting that estrogen can be effective, but testosterone can be effective, DHEA, I mean, there seems to be some confusion about this. What’s the story? I mean, what’s the key for vaginal health? Is it all those hormones? How can testosterone work as well as estrogen or DHEA?  Maybe we just need to know a lot more about it, but-

Dr. Cabeca:         Yeah, so this is the issue that’s come about with the pharmaceuticals, right?  We know that estrogen works to help regain moisture, vaginal moisture, but it works on the top layer.  So we’re talking about vaginal estrogen. All of these, anything inserted vaginally is by prescription.  So vaginal estrogens, for instance, that helps the mucosal layer, the top layer of the vagina. And then to go deeper to the muscular layers and the fascia layers, we really need the androgen, so testosterone. Well, even fascia has progesterone receptors. So, so many women are using progesterone creams, but they don’t think, “Well, let me apply it down my bottom.” And I always tell clients, “From the clitoris to the anus, apply your hormone creams there.” And that’s very beneficial.  But so that’s the difference between vaginal estrogen and vaginal testosterone. Testosterone, DHEA, work all three layers of the vaginal wall to the muscularis layer, so that helps us get this delicate muscle back and functioning and improving. So that’s where the androgens come in. So I think the combination is really ideal. And in fact, in my practice, I would start with the androgens and progesterone first, where typically, I’d use a bioidentical progesterone, pregnenolone topical cream, if they’re cycling on and we’re doing all the other stuff, adaptogens, lifestyle, right? I’m not going to give hormones to someone who’s not embracing a lifestyle of health and wellness because it takes more than hormones to fix her hormones. And we want to improve the entire quality of life, not increase any risk factors. So that’s it. And no bandaids in our care.

Dr. Weitz:            I’m a chiropractor, so we don’t prescribe these things. But I do get into discussions with women about bioidentical hormones. And this seems to be some push back from women who don’t want to apply progesterone and estrogen down there because it’s a hassle. Some of them are worried if they are going to have intercourse with a man, are they going to get exposed to these female hormones? So have you gotten some of that kind of push back from women?

Dr. Cabeca:         I’ve heard those issues for sure, but definitely not in my client population because we’re really working on getting clarity. So hence one of the reasons I created Julva is partly of that. Number one, it contains DHEA, which is safe over-the-counter. Right? It’s been in pills oral form for the last 50 years. We’ve been able to buy that off the shelf essentially.  And DHEA is a precursor and a supportive androgenic or pre-androgenic hormone. And we have a lot of safety. And not only that, it’s about 10 times more in men than it is in women. So you are using this with a combination that I included with plant stem cells, we know stem cell technology is incredibly anti-aging and rejuvenating. So I use plant stem cells from the Alpine rose, which is this rose that grows up and like blossoms in the Swiss Alps.  I mean for me that epitomizes women, right? Women will blossom and will shine in the harshest conditions. And so this plant stem cell of the Alpine rose has been shown to have incredible resilience properties, and that’s why I combined it with other emollients like emu oil, coconut oil, shea butter, into this because again, clitoral health is really important. There’s 9,000 nerve endings in our clitoris. Keeping that tissue healthy and keeping it sensitive is really critical for many reasons, but it’s certainly for pleasure as we get older and to stimulate the pelvic floor sacral nerves.  And so, and all the way to the anus too, we forget about the fissures and hemorrhoids and things that can develop as we get older, that creates so many problems and that causes increased use of over-the-counter creams or topicals that have parabens and synthetics and and petroleum-based products, I mean everything that can cause further hormone disruption and worsening of the skin in general.  So I really had tried to find something and then created my own that was natural without parabens, without synthetics to help women in that area. And yes, use it prior to foreplay. Absolutely. Because he’ll benefit as well. But again, it’s like a drop in the bucket. A little bit goes a long way and we can see that improvement in the skin. It’s anti-aging to the skin for sure.

Dr. Weitz:            So is there a good scientific data or a DHEA play topically to vagina versus testosterone versus estrogen and-

Dr. Cabeca:         Not versus, but we’ve seen a lot of good research with DHEA vaginally.

Dr. Weitz:            Okay.

Dr. Cabeca:         In work done by Ferdinand Libre out of Montreal. And he has been looking at DHEA vaginam and following his research for years. And he’s looked at it even in clients who have had breast cancer. So we can safely prescribe vaginal DHEA progesterone.  It’s just a straight DHEA and a gel suppository vaginally and get really good results as well. And that’s been, there are ongoing studies and clients who had breast cancer, but we’re seeing no increase in recurrence. In fact, we see improvement in morbidity and mortality. I’m really happy to see that research and the safety profiles and the safety studies being done.

Dr. Weitz:            Cool. Would you mind sending me a link to one or several studies that I can throw in the show notes?

Dr. Cabeca:         Yes, I have a white paper too that I’ve written on it,-

Dr. Weitz:            Oh, okay.

Dr. Cabeca:         … so I’ll send that to you as well. Yeah.

Dr. Weitz:            That’d be great. And so that Julva product is available over-the-counter or through your website?

Dr. Cabeca:         Yeah. We’ll give you a link for your listeners to get a free trial. So a free seven night trial of Julva. And I highly recommend it. Give it a try, and also we always give a 60-day money back guarantee when anyone buys a full tube of Julva too.

Dr. Weitz:            That’s great. So I think I’m pretty much done with the question for today. Is there any other issues you’d like to mention?

Dr. Cabeca:         I think that’s it. I just don’t want women to give up hope and I find, because there’s a survey that I just saw the preliminary results on it that are being published, that women in their 30s and 40s are willing to take action, are willing to make changes, but come 56 and older, we’re like giving up on ourselves. And I don’t want anyone who’s listening at any age to give up on themselves. I don’t care what diagnosis you’ve had, how long you’ve been struggling. There is a road to improvement.  And I want to encourage you, I was told again at 38, I’d never had another child. Right? And living proof that can totally reverse many of the physical changes that go on. But even more than that, to keep looking for that trust in your inner calling and your inner voice. And in my book, “The Hormone Fix”, I really strive to give you that power with no barrier to be able to make easy discipline strategic changes that will impact the quality of your life forever. So, I encourage you and I would love to offer your listeners a sneak peek into my book and I’ll give you that link as well.

Dr. Weitz:            That’d be great. Yeah, I think everybody needs to keep in mind that even though your ovaries stop producing estrogen and progesterone, there’s still estrogen and progesterone produced by the adrenals and other organs, in your body throughout the rest of your life. And even though we assume that the androgens like testosterone, DHEA, decrease with age, they don’t necessarily have to. We’re not programmed for that to happen. So I think if you can keep yourself healthy and do some of the things you’ve talk about in your book, there doesn’t have to be this huge drop off in those hormones.

Dr. Cabeca:         So true. Yeah.

Dr. Weitz:            That’s great. Okay, so links to get a hold of you?

Dr. Cabeca:         Dranna.com, so, D-R-A-N-N-A .com, that brings you to my website and on social media, Facebook at Dr. Anna C and @Dr. Anna Cabec on Instagram.

Dr. Weitz:            That’s great. And your book is coming out when?

Dr. Cabeca:         February 26.

Dr. Weitz:            Okay.

Dr. Cabeca:         “The Hormone Fix”, February 26th.

Dr. Weitz:            And can we pre-order it now?

Dr. Cabeca:         Yeah, it’s available on anywhere books are sold. So Barnes & Noble, Amazon, yeah.

Dr. Weitz:            Cool. That’d be great. Excellent. Thank you so much, Anna.

Dr. Cabeca:         Thank you for having me.

 

Weitz Sports Chiropractic and Nutrition
Weitz Sports Chiropractic and Nutrition
Oral Health with Dr. Ryan Nolan: Rational Wellness Podcast 92
Loading
/

Dr. Ryan Nolan discusses Oral Health with Dr. Ben Weitz.

[If you enjoy this podcast, please give us a rating and review on Itunes, so more people will find The Rational Wellness Podcast. Also check out the video version on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/user/weitzchiro/]

 

Podcast Highlights

4:35  In Functional Medicine, the health of the gut is one of the keys to our overall health. Dr. Nolan explained that the gut is the distribution center of the body and it’s also where a lot of bacterial interactions occur, so the gut is going to determine how healthy you are.  If your gut lining is leaky, then bacterial toxins are going to get released into your system. Think of a castle as the gut and the mouth is the moat. If the castle door is open, then you want to make sure that they don’t get past the moat. If the mouth is not very healthy, then the patient is more likely to have heart disease or diabetes. The mouth is the gateway into the gut.

6:42  There is a connection between periodontal disease and Alzheimer’s Disease.  According to Dr. Nolan, periodontal disease is the diabetes of the mouth because periodontal disease can affect every organ system in the body. If you have periodontal disease, you most likely have bone loss. If you have inflamed gums, then you will have bacteria that can easily get into the blood stream, such as spirochetes, which have been proven to cause heart disease. If you have periodontal disease, you are five times more likely to get Alzheimer’s.

11:10  We know that the mouth is the most vascular area of your body and a small infection in your mouth is the equivalent of your whole forearm being completely infected. But patients don’t realize this and sometimes ignore infected teeth for years.

12:53  There is a controversy about whether it is better to get a root canal or an implant?  One of the problems with root canals is that it is not possible with the very complicated canals that the roots and nerves travel in to get all the bacteria out, so some say implants are better. Dr. Nolan said that even though you can’t get every single bit of bacteria out, but that doesn’t mean that it will turn into an infection or that the tooth will fail. He said that if there is enough tooth structure left, he will lean more towards root canal. If there’s not enough tooth structure and we don’t think we’re going to get at least 10 years out of the tooth, then it is better to do an implant.

15:19  Oral DNA is a company that allows us to assess the oral microbiota using PCR DNA analysis.  We can look at periodontal and other oral pathogens.

20.45   A biofilm is an array of bacteria stacked on top of each other that act as a functional unit and dental plaque is such a biofilm.  Brushing and flossing and using a healthy mouthwash with some natural biofilm busting agents can be helpful, though commercial mouthwashes or rinses with antibiotics can be harmful to the healthy bacteria in the mouth.  Also the natural pH of the healthy, commensal bacteria in the mouth are between 7.5 and 8, whereas the pathogenic type bacteria that lead to dental caries are acidogenic and acid tolerating species.  Some of the bacteria in the mouth will adapt to the conditions in the mouth. If you eat a lot of sugar and the pathogenic bacteria start releasing acid, these commensals will also start releasing acid in order to compete with the pathogens, so it is the conditions that make these organisms act in a beneficial or a harmful way.  It’s a bad idea to use mouth rinses that contain antibiotics, since they are ineffective at breaking up biofilms and they lead to antibiotic resistance.  Most commercial rinses are also very acidic, which tends to promote the pathogenic bacteria and leads to the demineralization and breakdown of the teeth and leads to dental caries.  Saliva, which naturally has a pH of 8, naturally helps to break down plaque and allows calcium to penetrate into the plaque and stop the demineralization that is resulting from the acid buildup of the plaque.

32:22   Dr. Ryan has developed a mouth rinse product that is alkaline with a custom engineered nano silver compound in combination with a plant compound that helps to break down the biofilm and allows the calcium in the product to penetrate and alkalinize the plaque.  It also allows saliva to penetrate the plaque, which also helps to alkalinize the area and protect the teeth. It is called NanoSilver Mouth Rinse and is available at Elementa Silver. Here is a link to the paper that Dr. Nolan and his fellow dental researchers published on the effectiveness of using a  Nanosilver mouth rinse to prevent dental caries: Anti-caries Potential of Silver Nanoparticles via Modulation of Free Calcium Activity within the Plaque Fluid of the Oral Biofilm: A Pilot Study.  

 

 



Dr. Ryan Nolan is a dentist and researcher in private practice in Orem, Utah.  His research has a focus on the role of biofilms in the oral cavity and his biofilm busting mouth rinse is available at elementasilver.com

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 your 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 listening to the Rational Wellness podcast, please go to iTunes and give us a ratings and review. That way more people will find out about the Rational Wellness podcast and please subscribe either an iTunes or YouTube or wherever you get podcasts.

So our topic for today is oral health. And I’m happy, we have dentist Dr. Ryan Noland with us today.  Like in the gut, there are healthy bacteria in the mouth that are beneficial for us. We can refer to this as the oral microbiome or microbiotic, and it’s estimated that there are 500 to 700 different species of bacteria, that’s right, in your mouth that can exist there. And there’s even an online human oral microbiome database. Any of these bacteria are helpful, known as commensal, sometimes we get an overgrowth of some bacteria that throws the oral microbiome out of balance.  We could also get pathogenic bacteria, or viruses, or fungi that can grow there and cause problems. Microorganisms in the oral cavity have been known to cause tooth decay, periodontitis or gum disease, and various other oral infections. It’s also known that most of these oral infections are caused by a group of organisms organized in a biofilm; rather than by a single pathogen. This biofilm on the teeth is generally referred to as dental plaque, I believe. There’s also increasing evidence linking bacteria in the mouth to cardiovascular disease, diabetes, pneumonia, preterm birth and other conditions.

Dr. Ryan Noland is a dentist and researcher located in Orem, Utah, and he’s been focused on the role of biofilms in the oral cavity; and he’s developed a type of specialized mouth rinse product to target these biofilms and raise the pH, and improve the health of the teeth in the mouth.  He’s published a scientific paper focused on this product entitled Anti-caries Potential Of Silver Nano Particles Via Modulation, A Free Calcium Activity Within The Plaque Fluid Of The Oral Biofilm: A Pilot Study.  Dr. Noland also has a podcast, the Biofilm Factor. Dr. Noland, thank you so much for joining me today.

Dr. Nolan:            Oh, hey, thanks again for having me, appreciate it.

Dr. Weitz:            Before we get to the tough questions or before we get to the scientific questions, I’ve got to ask you, is your dad a baseball fan? Because every time I write your name, I go “Noland Ryan, no, no, Ryan Noland.”

Dr. Nolan:            So it’s funny, so we’re Canadian, originally, so I’m American naturalized; so I’m a US citizen, but so we’re all from Canada. Mom and dad didn’t know famous baseball pitcher.

Dr. Weitz:            Okay.

Dr. Nolan:            But, from a strange turn of events, we ended up living in Dallas, Texas, for six years.

Dr. Weitz:            Really?

Dr. Nolan:            So, yeah so when I lived there, everyone called me Noland like it was my first name; so I got used to that. Then I moved back to Chicago and I didn’t … People would say, Ryan, I’d go “Who’s that, that’s not me, I’m Noland.” So, yeah, it ended up affecting my life a little bit more probably than you think. But yeah, no, no, he’s great, I still watch some of the older stuff that everyone follows; but I have no baseball skills, unfortunately, can’t help you there. But no, no he didn’t even know, my parents were clueless as to this famous pitcher, but yeah.

Dr. Weitz:            Okay so in Functional Medicine, which our podcast is really focused on, we often focus on the health of the gut as one of the keys to our overall health-

Dr. Nolan:            Absolutely.

Dr. Weitz:            And the oral cavity is really the first portion of our intestinal tract. So can you talk about the importance of the oral cavity for overall health.

Dr. Nolan:            Absolutely. So, if you consider the body a bunch of windows, I would say that basically the first window that really reflects what’s going on in the body is your mouth. But the reason why that is, is because the second window, which is your gut, is actually the most important part of your entire body.  The reason why is it’s because the distribution center.  It’s where all the energy goes, it’s where everything gets distributed and piled, and it’s also where a lot of bacterial interactions with the body also occur.  So naturally speaking, the gut is really going to determine how healthy you are. If you don’t have a functioning gut, if the lining is leaking, if for some reason there’s a bacterial overgrowth or other kinds of bacteria that are releasing toxins; those are going to get into your system. So it’s essentially like, how would I put this? The mouth is probably the moat, and if the castle door is open, that would be the gut. So you don’t want to let them get past the moat; that would be kind of my thinking about it.

And we see this a lot with patients that come in, they have a horrible mouth, and it’s … I can almost to the “T” tell now, look at someone’s mouth and be like, “Okay, this person probably has a good chance of heart disease, probably has diabetes, probably has this.” And believe it or not, nine out of 10 times, I’m usually right and it’s sad, it’s really sad.  But basically, we look at the mouth as more of a gateway into the gut, and since the gut is such an important feature of how our health functions, especially our immune system, it just ends up being a pretty damning representation of how things are going.

Dr. Weitz:            Yeah, no I totally agree with everything you’re saying. In fact, I was just talking to Dr. Vojdani, who’s going to speak at our Functional Medicine meeting tonight-

Dr. Nolan:            Nice.

Dr. Weitz:            And there’s a connection between periodontal disease and Alzheimer’s disease, because of that gut brain connection, etc.

Dr. Nolan:            Yep. So basically if you look at it, people who have periodontal disease … I always say this and I don’t think I’m alone now in saying that periodontal disease is the diabetes of the mouth. The reason why is periodontal disease affects every organ system in your whole body. It is not an isolated issue to the mouth, these organisms are able to, basically, get through these junctional epithelium. If you notice, anyone whose got periodontal disease, they have bone loss.  But on top of that, they have constantly inflamed gums, and so basically these organisms can easily get into the bloodstream, at that point, because there’s no junction that basically prevent that. Typically, a lot of the organisms that cause these diseases are motile, meaning that they have very good ability to move around.  And one of the organisms, in particular, it’s called a spirochete, it kind of looks like a corkscrew. These things have been directly, not correlated, but actually proven to cause coronary artery disease, so we know that they can increase your risk for a heart attack, among other things. And it’s nuts, because when you really start thinking about it, that’s just one of the issues, people with Periodontal disease-

Dr. Weitz:            For people who aren’t familiar with spirochete, these are a particular type of bacteria and Borrelia burgdorferi, which is the cause of Lyme Disease is a very prominent spirochete.

Dr. Nolan:            Absolutely. And I was just gonna say too, there’s been recent studies coming out linking periodontal disease to … Well, it’s already linked to diabetes, as you know, but it’s also linked to Alzheimer’s. And if I remember correctly, the one study said that if you have periodontal disease, you’re five times more likely to get Alzheimer’s, which is nuts, okay. So some stuff going on in your mouth, you’d think it’s be isolatory, it’s actually affecting your entire body and not just your brain, your heart, or any of these other things.  I think the other thing we should mention too, just real quick is a lot of research has been done as how the gut functions. And one of the things that when periodontal bacteria, they get into a home where they’re really not supposed to be in. So they’re in a foreign home, but they end up having this mechanism whereby they can start controlling how certain gut functions.  So they can actually … Every time you eat, the gut actually tissue opens ups to accept the nutrients to go into your bloodstream. So they can find ways of getting not just through bloodstream, through your mouth, but also once they’re in the gut, it’s like they have free highway ride to wherever organ they want to be in. And that’s really scary because we know that they’re … And if they’re in a home they’re not supposed to be in, they’re going to cause more damage.

Dr. Weitz:            Yeah, I understand. Once in the mouth, there’s actually a route directly to the brain through-

Dr. Nolan:            Yes, yeah so-

Dr. Weitz:            Some of the nerves pass through, right?

Dr. Nolan:            Yeah, so it’s more prevalent, actually, in your front eye teeth, so your canines. There’s been people who have died because they got an abscess, or an infection closer to that area because there is actually a connection to the brain through the blood way path going forward. I don’t remember all the anatomy, I just know that there’s been a lot of cases where people have gotten abscesses in that region are hospitalized and die. And that’s really scary.

Dr. Weitz:            Yeah, I know some Functional Medicine practitioners who, in a hacking sort of way, will sometimes use certain nutrients in the mouth [or the nose] in a certain hacking form because they’ll be taken into the brain and actually help improve brain function also, so.

Dr. Nolan:            Well, you say that, it’s funny because we know that the mouth is the most vascular area of your whole body. So, basically, if you have a small infection in your mouth, now it might only look small, but that would be the equivalent of being your whole forearm covered in essentially being completely infected in terms of surface area. Because if we look at all the blood vessels, that surface area is equivalent to basically your whole arm having an infection. And I don’t know anybody who wouldn’t go to the hospital if their a whole arm was infected, but they don’t see it that way. And so, it ends up causing so much damage, even if you don’t think it. I had this patient and he had waited and waited … He had an infection from one of his wisdom teeth.  He waited and waited and waited; didn’t realize it was an issue. So we took the thing out, and he came back a week later and goes “Doc, I’ve never felt so good in my entire life. I can’t believe what that was doing. I was constantly getting sick, my immune system wasn’t working properly, because I had this infection that I was fighting for 15 years because I didn’t go to the damn dentist.” And so we know these things are happening, and to deny it is just ludicrous, to me.

Dr. Weitz:            So, did you do a root canal or did you do an implant?

Dr. Nolan:            For that one, since it was a wisdom tooth, it was actually, believe it or not, semi impacted and so it actually required removal. So that wasn’t something we had to replace, because wisdom teeth are the spare tires of the mouth. So we never ended up having to do that, it was just lucky that it was where it was and didn’t have to lose a functional tooth.

Dr. Weitz:            What do you think about the whole controversy about when you do a root canal, it’s really hard to get the last bits of bacteria out from the complicated canals and that-

Dr. Nolan:            Oh sure. So, as a dentist, I can tell you just clinically, you’re never, ever, ever going to be able to remove every single little bit [of bacteria]. You have to do the best that you can with the technology that we have. Luckily, things are getting better. I actually started using … The tools are getting better, let’s put it that way. Now nothing’s perfect, just like with what you do, nothing’s perfect. But look, I would say probably about 90, 95% of the root canals that are done, are done to a very high standard, especially in the United States.  I mean, people here are great. I can’t say without a doubt that some of them are not going to fail; however I, in my personal opinion … So I have a root canal, okay, if that gives you an idea. I cracked my tooth chewing on ice.

Dr. Weitz:            So like a root canal versus implant, you come down more into the root canal side?

Dr. Nolan:            If there’s enough tooth structure remaining, I lean towards root canal.

Dr. Weitz:            Okay.

Dr. Nolan:            If there’s not enough tooth structure, and we don’t think we’re going to get at least 10 years out of it, then we that we do an implant because it just makes more sense, at that point, to do it. But no, you’re completely right. Look, some of these canals systems are so complex, that no matter what you do, you’re never going to be able to get it.  However, there is this idea of threshold levels of bacteria.  So even if you miss something even just a little bit, is it going to develop an infection?  It really just depends on how much bacteria were in there or how much didn’t get cleaned out.  So we can still see … I’ve seen these cases with guys that had half done root canals from the 1960s or earlier and the tooth never had any issues. So it’s hard to say, because it’s like, how is the immune system, how is all these, so there’s a bunch of factors. But generally speaking, we just do our best, and we hope that it works out, and if it doesn’t, then the second option is an implant, and usually those are very high success, so.

Dr. Weitz:            How do we assess the bacteria in the mouth? Is there a reliable way to test the oral microbiota?

Dr. Nolan:            There is, there’s a couple of companies that are coming out with more sophisticated methods using PCR which is DNA analysis. So one of those companies is Oral DNA; I’ve used them pretty extensively. And it’s pretty cool because what you can do, is you can actually get an array of periodontal or decay effective causing bacteria, or even fungus and get an idea of exactly what’s going on in that person’s plaque, or saliva, or whatever. Because basically what we’re looking at is we’re looking at threshold levels.  Once you start understanding disease only occurs at a threshold level, that’s where pathogenesis occurs.  So we just only going to start seeing pathogenesis if certain kinds of bacteria are all the above threshold levels.  And they’re ranked in order of individual pathogens in terms of their risk and it’s like you’re saying though planktonic bacteria, which are just bacteria by themselves, and biofilms are completely different animals.  And if you think … I used to think early on, so I’m in my 30s, every bacteria’s bad, get rid of them all, you don’t need them, they’re horrible and, by the way, these are the three that cause disease, end of story, close the book. Now we’re kind of looking at it like, “Wait a second, is that true or is that pathogenesis more complex than that?” And what I mean is when we look at pathogenesis, it’s evolved to be … Okay so there’s commensal bacteria and there’s pathogenic bacteria.

Dr. Weitz:            Commensals are good bacteria-

Dr. Nolan:            Yes.

Dr. Weitz:            And pathogenic are bad bacteria.

Dr. Nolan:            Right. So there’s inherently bad bacteria and there’s inherently good bacteria. I mean some to the extent have even been studied showing that they actually release calcium in the event of a carries attack. Meaning, let’s say you have a lot of sugar, and some of these bad actors start releasing acid, as a result, which we know it dissolves teeth. Some of the good bacteria, say, “Hold on a second, we’re going to release some calcium to help the host because we want to survive with the host.”  And then there’s others that they want us to sequester the calcium out, so there’s a constant battle of titans really going on between these bacteria. What I’ve shifted my focus to is kind of the newest … And I talked to you a little bit yesterday about this, but I’ve kind of shifted to the newest paradigm and this hasn’t been well adopted. So I’m still kind of on the front end of exception, I guess. But I kind of feel like it’s the conditions that set whether or not an organism is going to lean towards being more commensal or being more pathogenic; it’s not a pure, this is commensal and this is pathogenic all the time.

And the reason is because certain organisms adapt to the conditions which you give them; meaning that there’s some commensal bacteria pH of seven, that when you put them in an environment of pH five, all of a sudden they have to compete with a pathogen and they develop more pathogenic features in order to compete.  So they start releasing acid as a response, as well, and that comes from stressors and things like that. So, so we look at it, not just from a purely genetically or originally this is commensal or abnormal conditions, but rather, does the condition to determine whether or not it’s more commensal or more pathogenic?

 



Dr. Weitz:            We’ve been having a great discussion, but I’d to pause for a minute to tell you about a laboratory that I believe in and that we use their testing in our practice. Many practitioners understand that the gut is central to overall health and wellness; especially Functional Medicine practitioners. The medical literature indicates that an unhealthy microbiome, that’s the gut and our colon and other mucous membranes in our body, is associated with a variety of chronic illnesses; including autoimmune disorders, cognitive function, among others.

That’s why Diagnostic Solutions Lab developed the GI map. The GI map uses the most advanced quantitative PCR based technology to detect microbes that can cause illness and gut problems. This DNA based technology looks at bacteria fungi, viruses and parasites to see why many culture based stool analyses simply can’t fight.

Precise results offer previously unseen window into our gastrointestinal health. And insights allow functional medicine practitioners to personalize our treatment plans to address the underlying causes of illness, rather than merely treating symptoms. When your patients present with GI complaints, don’t just guess, test with the GI map from Diagnostic Solutions. And if you’re a patient, ask your practitioner to run the GI map for you. And now we’ll get back to our discussion.



 

Dr. Weitz:            So what are some of the most important ways to take care of the mouth and the teeth in terms of brushing, flossing, is water picking good?

Dr. Nolan:            Yes.

Dr. Weitz:            And what is the goal. Do we want a certain … We talked about biofilm a little bit, maybe why don’t you explain what a biofilm is.

Dr. Nolan:            Absolutely. So a biofilm is an array of bacteria, so individually bacteria, which come together and kind of a Tetris stack. So if you ever played Tetris, and you’re trying to get rid of all the blocks, you’re actually just rearranging the blocks in a certain order. And what we’re actually seeing from studies now is that they’re specific orders in which certain bacteria like to attach the tooth, and then they attached to another bacteria, and then they attach to another bacteria.  And depending on what kind of stacking occurs actually can determine pathogenesis, but you got to remember with threshold levels, if there’s more bad actor around, you’re going to have a worse stack. And so you’re more likely to have a more pathogenic stack, if that makes sense. It’s like if you’re playing Tetris and you’re getting behind, and you can’t seem to find the right block, everything just kind of comes together, and you lose the game.  It’s not a fun, but basically it’s a myriad of bacteria that come together and act as a functional, single unit. So together, they’re acting and combining all their features, which is why we have such difficulty dealing with them because now you have bacterial resistance mechanisms from one organism.  But guess what?  It’s being complimented by two or three other organisms, now, and those organisms have the defenses that that one doesn’t have, and so they work together just like a community to kind of prevent things from happening that will affect them and kill them.

Dr. Weitz:            Now biofilms can be helpful or harmful, is that right?

Dr. Nolan:            Yeah.

Dr. Weitz:            I mean, I mean if the good bacteria are forming a biofilm to improve their survival, then that’s a good thing, right?

Dr. Nolan:            Yes, absolutely. So like I said, I think that there’s definitely … You can’t paint them all with the same brush. However, that being said, the second you remove a biofilm, whether that be brushing or through chemical methods, it actually re-establishes within seconds.  It’s not like you have to worry about eliminating everything, I mean, there’s always going to be bacteria; we’ve evolved with bacteria.  So, I don’t think the ultimate goal is entire elimination.  I think the goal is to reduce threshold levels of bad bacteria, compliment the good bacteria, and set up conditions whereby it mimics what your saliva and what the natural human body wants to do; which is to just keep it enough at bay all the time. So it’s more of a maintenance issue, than it is an elimination issue.  And that’s a key distinction that we’re perceiving because it used to be like “Oh, you gotta get rid of.”  You can’t get rid of it, it’s always going to be there, so you just kind of have to accept what you have and set the conditions up for the host.

Dr. Weitz:            So therefore, products that contain antibiotics that might just wipe out a lot of healthy bacteria-

Dr. Nolan:            Sure.

Dr. Weitz:            Are not the way to go, right?

Dr. Nolan:            I would never, ever recommend antibiotics unless you absolutely need them.

Dr. Weitz:            And some of these mouth rinses have them, right?

Dr. Nolan:            Yeah, so this is kind of how I’d put this. Let’s say you have a sniper rifle, and you know exactly which person in the crowd that you need to kill; to make sure that things don’t go awry, because we’re looking out for the guy on the podium. And instead, what we do is we just basically hack and slash at every single person in the crowd; we save the guy. It’s the most archaic way of dealing with the biofilm; and not only that, antibiotics are one of the least effective ways of dealing with biofilms, because biofilms or about 1,000 times more resistant to antibiotics.  So there are companies which have come out with antibiotic rinses. Gosh way to give yourself antibiotic resistance without actually taking the antibiotics orally; what a mistake. I mean, I actually just made a post about this the other day; there’s an image floating around online, and it says … I’m sure you’ve seen this 10 year challenge thing where everyone’s showing them their pictures for 10 years ago, and they’re showing their pictures today.  So someone got a picture of a Petri dish with three or four different types antibiotics and showed that in 2009, there’s actually a clear border where the bacteria won’t grow. And then they showed a picture in 2019 and there’s no border; they’ve literally all become resistant to all four different antibiotics in the span of 10 years sitting on a dish. So the point is that antibiotic resistance is scary.

We know that these organisms, especially in a biofilm are much better at getting co-evolutionary mechanisms like sharing DNA, sharing resistance features. So why would we want to limit the things that’s currently working for systemic infections and things like that?  Why would we expose bacteria and give them a free shot at getting resistance because of a mouth rinse, when there’s other solutions out there?  It’s just, to me, that was my mind. That’s so archaic; are we trying to reinvent the wheel here like at putting spikes on it? The point is, it’s just to me that’s very, very not prudent and stupid, really, to be honest.

Dr. Weitz:            Right. So what you’re saying essentially is, don’t use some of these commercial mouthwashes that claim to kill all the bacteria because they have antibiotics in them and they’re really, ultimately, going to be harmful for your oral health?

Dr. Nolan:            Yeah, additionally, I should say-

Dr. Weitz:            Likewise, toothpaste that happens to have it as well.

Dr. Nolan:            Oh yeah, you wouldn’t want any antibiotics in your oral care regimen. The other thing is to say about these commercial products. One of the things that we really looked at, when we were looking at commercial products, is they are so acidic. And it wouldn’t seem like it’s an issue because a lot of these things, even though they’re acidic, they do kill bacteria. But they don’t do so in a fashion that really sets you up for a win after. So what do I mean by that? A lot of the organisms that cause disease in your mouth love acidic conditions.  So you’re giving … So let’s say you use something and not could it dissolve your teeth because it’s acidic, let’s say it does kill some bacteria and then just leaves the acid behind as it slowly deletes away. Now we’re setting up a condition where every organism got a free pass to an environment they love. So they’re going to multiply and come back even stronger and happier; it just doesn’t make sense. So, I looked into this and I really, really put a lot of thought into it. And what I ended up finding is the part of the reason why this is is because they don’t have preservative mechanisms that work in the alkaline range. Meaning that they, literally, have no choice but to use preservation and techniques and antibacterials, because they only work in acidic conditions; which blew my mind a little bit.  Because if you’re thinking about it, now we’re using archaic systems that only kind of work, we’re giving some of the bad bacteria some advantages, were dissolving teeth in the process; and on top of it, there’s nothing that seems to be being commercially made in the alkaline range. Which is where, by the way, your human saliva if simulated, is close to a pH of eight.  So why the heck are we not mimicking what your body’s naturally trying to do?

Dr. Weitz:            So the natural mouth pH is eight, you said?

Dr. Nolan:            So there’s something called unstimulated saliva and stimulated saliva. Stimulated saliva is basically where your body starts releasing saliva; it happens throughout the day, but let’s say you’re chewing gum or you have something you’re eating. The pH of your saliva actually goes up when that happens. So yeah, so your saliva likes to be in a probably about a pH range of seven and a half to eight; that’s the ideal range for-

Dr. Weitz:            Is that … And I know bacteria, some, in the gut, acidophilus, are acid loving bacteria.

Dr. Nolan:            Correct.

Dr. Weitz:            Got more alkaline. So when you’re talking about a pH of above seven, you’re talking about a pH that’s alkaline.

Dr. Nolan:            Correct.

Dr. Weitz:            Being a bacteria is the mouth, the healthy ones generally prefer more alkaline environment?

Dr. Nolan:            Yes, so commensal bacteria are seven or above. And it’s funny because even some of the bad actors stop releasing acid when the biofilms’s at a pH of seven, seven and a half or eight. They don’t seem to be able to function properly, and it reduces their threshold levels as a result to low enough levels that they essentially act as a pseudo commensals.  Meaning they’re providing competition, but they’re not exerting pathogenesis.  And so we’ve actually determined that this is the primary reason why.  So if you set the playing field in the host’s advantage, which is us, you’re going to have a better chance of not exhibiting disease, perhaps.  The other thing I should mention too, real quick, and it’s a little more advanced but there have been studies on calcium and fluoride penetration into the plaque. Obviously, these things are helpful, once they get into the plaque. The question is, do they actually get there? And the answer is no. So one of the big issues and what saliva actually does for us is it actually not only kind of breaks down the plaque, it actually releases calcium into the plaque, but it sometimes can take up to an hour or two.  So we know that’s the mechanism of how things work. So there’s been studies done on how much of these agents can actually get into the actual plaque where the interface between the tooth is where all this de-mineralization and acid build up is occurring.

Dr. Weitz:            So just let me stop for a second.

Dr. Nolan:            Sure.

Dr. Weitz:            So one of the things you’re talking about is the plaque on the teeth, which is hopefully what you’re getting rid of with brushing and flossing, and when you go to get your teeth cleaned, that that plaque can lead to a breakdown of the calcium and de-mineralization of the teeth?

Dr. Nolan:            Yes, sir-That’s correct. So, um, what we’re finding is that the penetration ratio of neutralizing agents is only about one to two percent; that is abysmal. And not only that, at a low pH, even … So at a low pH, these things enter at half the rate of a higher pH.  So it’s kind of really counterintuitive now to use something that’s acidic, because not only is it not going to be able to deliver what we want, but on top of it, it’s going to cause all these other potential issues.  So it’s funny because the more and more I get into it, the more I realize just how bad of an idea it is; and hopefully that makes sense to you. But essentially, it’s just we want to mimic what saliva does.  And in order to mimic what saliva does, we have to have something that’s able to deliver neutralizing agents better than two percent.  I don’t know about you, but two percent is, that’s a joke.  I mean, it may as well not even happen; it’s not enough, so.

Dr. Weitz:            When you’re talking about a neutralizing agent something like calcium, which is alkaline can help to neutralize an acidic plaque-

Dr. Nolan:            Correct.

Dr. Weitz:            And it can’t penetrate and now you have developed a mouth rinse product that can help with that?

Dr. Nolan:            Yes, correct. So one of the things that we really, really looked at is we looked at all the existing agents on the market. And I pretty much couldn’t find an anti-bacterial agent that was basically above six. Almost exclusively about 95 percent of them are pH of five and a half or below. And a pH of five and a half is actually called the critical Ph. The reason why it’s called the critical pH, is because that’s when demineralization and decay actually occurs.  So the tooth starts dissolving pretty heavily at a pH of less than five point five.  So now we have all these agents commercially available that literally can dissolve your teeth, and they’re supporting an environment that’s not great.  So what we did, is we looked at the most recent technology available.  So my background’s actually nanotechnology; I’ve worked on carbon nanotubes, in college, and so I actually met up with a good colleague of mine in school, his name is Matt Hollister; really, really bright guys.  So he knew that I worked on nanotechnology applications, and I actually was, at that time, actually still kind of endeavoring in that and researching that. And he goes, “Brian, what if we could do something where we could use some of these nano compounds to effectively enhance the remineralization cycle?” So, we kind of got our heads together and started kind of hypothesizing some of these things really early on, even in dental school. And basically what we ended up doing is we spent three years and we actually custom engineered a nano silver compound, among others, but a nano silver compound that we found can actually increase the amount of neutralizing agents that get into the plaque.

And we did a clinical study on it, and found that when you add nano silver to a solution … And we’re talking only about 10 parts per million; it’s very dismal the amount that you have to use. It increased the amount of calcium that got into plaque over the control by 4.6 times; it is nuts; the results that we got were insane. So it basically is a perfect delivery system for getting into the biofilm. On top of that, when we engineered these, one of the major issues we had was how do we ensure that these actually are kind of more selectively targeting the biofilm, and how do we basically make sure the stuff’s alkaline and, on top of that, we want to make it non toxic?  So we actually ended up going the route of using plant compounds to synthesize these nano particles. And if you already know, I mean, a lot of plant compounds are very biocompatible. So, basically, the outer surface of the nano particles is actually covered in a plant based compound, and it’s actually is able to pretty selectively attach to biofilms.  So now we have something that acts like a cactus spine, gets on the biofilm, gets in the biofilm penetrates it, and opens up channels for calcium, saliva, and other things to get in. So it’s kind of an ingenious system, because not only is it alkaline-

Dr. Weitz:            Is it the plant compound, or the silver that breaks the biofilm?

Dr. Nolan:            So the plant compound allows it to approach the biofilm and attach to the biofilm and enter.

Dr. Weitz:            And what compound is this?

Dr. Nolan:            I can’t actually tell you because we have our patent pending. But I can say it’s from a plant, and it’s from a pretty cool plant at that.  But that information will probably be more available probably towards the end of the year. But, the silver nano particles are essentially … How would I put this? Silver nano particles that are like carriers. So basically, what they do is they’re able to get kind of close enough and enter the biofilm, kind of rip it into pieces, if you will, put a bunch of holes in it.  And silver ions are actually what ends up getting released after from the nano particle over time. That enhances its anti-bacterial capacity, but also keeps things … It targets the areas which are going to be caused … Which are building up the acid, which is the deeper layers of plaque. And so that’s kind of the way it works; it basically acts as a delivery system for other neutralizing agents. So instead of two percent, we’re seeing maybe 20 or 25 percent, which is a huge deal because it also helps saliva do its job.  So what we’re doing really is we’re mimicking what natural saliva is going to do in a much faster time period. So instead of saliva after … Let’s say you eat a bunch of sugar, saliva might take an hour to neutralize that plaque acid that’s already started building up. We’ve seen the neutralization effects within a couple minutes; I mean it’s pretty astounding. So, it pretty much works instantly, and so we’re basically just mimicking what the body wants to do. And we’re helping it out, so.

Dr. Weitz:            That’s great. I know you mentioned fluoride also I’m a big fan of calcium, but not such a big fan of fluoride.

Dr. Nolan:            Totally understand.  So here’s the thing. I mean, I’m not anti-fluoride, but I will say this I am pro-progress. I’ve tested along the fluoride stuff, and I just haven’t seen the same level of efficacy. So when people asked me am I anti-fluoride, I mean, you guys don’t put fluoride in your product. Yeah, but I also didn’t see when we were doing all these tests, I just didn’t see the same level of efficacy. And to me, I care more about what the end result is.  And it just so happens that it just didn’t end up with my product because of that. So, to me that matters more than the politics behind fluoride. I know a lot of people aren’t a big fan, but it’s great, because there are people like yourself who were like, “Look, I just want something that’s going to work that doesn’t have fluoride in it because I’m concerned. I’m not concerned, I use it all the time, but I can understand that. And so it’s great because then you have an alternative instead of everybody else using it, and then you don’t have an option. It kind of feels he got shut out of the market is anyone looking out for me?

Dr. Weitz:            Just to go into it for a second. Fluoride is a toxin in some levels, and it’s given off by the fertilizer industry and things like that. And the type of fluoride that’s in the water; even if we decided that fluoride was a good thing, it would be nice if we agreed on that. And then we decided to put a super purified form of fluoride in, but instead we’re putting this industrial waste product into the water. I forgot the exact name of it-

Dr. Nolan:            Fluorosilicates, instead of sodium fluoride, I think that’s what you’re saying, right?

Dr. Weitz:            Is that what it is?

Dr. Nolan:            Yeah.

Dr. Weitz:            I know it’s a-

Dr. Nolan:            It’s a green looking-

Dr. Weitz:            Byproduct of the fertilizer industry and basically it’s a way for them to dispose of this waste product. And then in the bone, it’s replacing the calcium and so just because it gets incorporated into the bone, I’m not convinced that it’s a healthy thing; we’d be much better off with calcium in there.

Dr. Nolan:            Yeah, so here’s my thoughts. Definitely some things that I would say is that there is always a level where something’s going to be a toxin, no matter what. However, I think one of the things you really should focus on is how much benefit do we get from it being in the drinking water? As you know, the United States is one of the few countries that still mandates fluoride in water. One of the things that we’ve looked at is basically outside of developmental, meaning if you’re a kid and you’re drinking the fluoridated water, adults don’t really benefit very much from drinking fluoridated water. So the reason is is because the concentration’s usually 1.7 parts per million.  So topically, that’s not going to do anything because it’s not really going to penetrate your plaque. So the only thing that’s going to do is basically just accumulate in your body, it usually enters the bone. But it doesn’t really offer you really much benefit past the age of eight, in my humble opinion.  So it just makes sense that … So then you have to ask yourself “Okay what’s happening in other countries, what does their decay rate look like, the ones that have taken fluoride out of their system?” So a study in 2015 actually compared a bunch of different countries that haven’t had fluoridated water in some time. And the decay rate approaches the same decay rate that we have in the United States. So the question becomes, “Okay, is orally ingesting fluoride helpful?” And the data doesn’t look as promising as what we originally thought in the 70s and 80s; and there could be a number of reasons for that.

It could be that more people are using topical agents, it could be a number of people care more about their oral health, it could be a number of different things. But the one issue I have with some of these studies done in the 70s, is they just don’t have very good controls. And anytime you look at a study, you have to have a pretty good control, and you also have a pretty good idea of all the variables that you should control for. So I’m not so hot, necessarily, on removing it from the water, but I’m also … I’m able to come in with an unbiased opinion and say, “But is it really helping to the extent we thought it was?” And the answer is probably not.  The other thing is, is I still use topical fluoride agents; luckily you’re not digesting them or anything like that. But I can understand why someone … There seems to be a fair amount of people concerned about it. I mean fluoride is the most reactive element on the table, I mean, we know that it reacts pretty readily. And one of the things it reacts with this is organic compounds, and we’re an organic compound, essentially. So, I mean, look, having concerns about it is okay, I think people need to be okay with that.

Dr. Weitz:            By the way, throw in one more thing. And I know we can go on and on about this. But one of the concerns about fluoride is it can replace iodine, because it’s a very similar compound; it’s in the same row in the periodic table, and so therefore it can impair thyroid function. And that’s one of many concerns I have about fluoride.

Dr. Nolan:            Yeah. So the other thing too, as you mentioned, is we started seeing a lot of something called fluorosis and I’ve seen it a lot in my clinical career. But basically what happens is, if you have too much fluoride, you can actually develop these pit and fissures that are actually more likely to break down and get decay. I’m sure you’ve seen-

Dr. Weitz:            I understand it’s fairly common, yeah.

Dr. Nolan:            Yeah, it’s very, very common, So the question becomes, is there a point where there’s too much fluoride and I would say yes.

Dr. Weitz:            Especially if you’re consuming fluoride in the water, and they decided “Okay, if you have this much water.” But what if you’re cooking in the water, drinking the water, then you using a fluoride toothpaste-

Dr. Nolan:            Showering with it.

Dr. Weitz:            And you’re doing a fluoride mouth wash, so the compound total amount of fluoride, yeah.

Dr. Nolan:            So you’re exactly right. So there’s many routes of exposure. I think it becomes a question of how much good versus how much possible harm.

Dr. Weitz:            And plus, if we wanted diabetics to have Metformin, we want them to have a specific dosage-

Dr. Nolan:            Sure.

Dr. Weitz:            We wouldn’t put it in their tooth paste, their mouthwash, water, they’re getting a completely uncontrolled dosage, and you have no idea how much you’re actually getting.

Dr. Nolan:            Right, so you’re-

Dr. Weitz:            So it’s a very inefficient way to, basically, give a chemical, a drug to the population.

Dr. Nolan:            Right, so I say this from a clinical perspective, I like flouride and I like topical fluoride the most. I don’t know, like I said, I’m still kind of debating whether or not having it in the water makes a ton of sense. I’m going to need some more studies to have a official opinion on that. However, you’re right in saying that everybody’s dosages seem to be very different. And that seems to be a concern, because you get people have too much, you get people that maybe aren’t getting any.  And so you have a wide array of people that don’t seem to be getting consistently dosed and so that’s a problem, and we live in the United States, which is 75 percent fluoridated water, and we’re comparing against these other countries that don’t, seem very similar and points in the decay rate.  So, you know what? You wouldn’t be a good scientist unless you actually questioned it. You got to understand why things happen and you can’t just say, “Oh, well, it’s good, so, therefore, we have to have it.”  I think I lean in the opinion of people should have a choice; they should always have a choice.

Dr. Weitz:            Right, I mean you’ve being-

Dr. Nolan:            I can’t-

Dr. Weitz:            Given a prescription drug without your consent, essentially.

Dr. Nolan:            I can’t go and just say “Hey, look you know what? Silver is great because it cleanses the water, let’s put it in the water.” I can’t go do that, okay, even if I knew it was a beneficial compound. I just told 330 million people they don’t have a choice; not that’s not fair, in my opinion.  So I’m with you on that, I think mandating that it’s in the water; I think people should have the choice.  Now, obviously, there’s been a lot of push back and forth between the dental community as well as, people who fluoridate the water, and things that.  I just think, at the end of the day, the citizens should have the choice, really.  I don’t think it comes, it doesn’t come to me; I don’t get that decision.  So, yeah, so I’m still kind of on a fence there, but I’m willing to question the limitations.  I think that that is okay and if that makes me a black sheep, it makes me a black sheep.  But look, if you’re looking at the data, the data’s going to tell you what you really want to know. And even though we do need more studies; it’s definitely raised an eyebrow for me because I’m like, “Well, how does that really… What kind of picture are we painting here? And the picture right now is not enough studies to confirm fluoridation in the water. Is it really working?  I don’t …. Maybe, maybe not.  I mean, so we have to question, and we have to at least pop that tomb open; we don’t really know where that rabbit hole’s going to go.  But yeah, so for now I’m okay with the topical fluoride; I still have some reservations about fluoridating.

Dr. Weitz:            Great. So there’s a lot more stuff we could talk about, but I think we provided some good information about oral health to our listeners. So how can everybody get a hold of you, and is your mouth rinse product commercially available now?

Dr. Nolan:            Yeah. So we launched it in September, we’re doing a rebrand now. So we’re going to be able to have all the new bottles and a lot more new product coming out probably in February.  So basically the website is elementasilver.com. And we do sell on Amazon, if you Google Amazon and then throw in Nanosilver rinse, our product will come up. And my Instagram handle is @ryannolandmd. I’m very interactive on my Instagram, I try and always post thoughtful stories and things to kind of … I don’t know if I’d be a podster, I don’t know if that’s the word for me, I’m not lurking, but I like to question things. So if you like someone who’s kind of questioning the existing paradigms, I’m probably a good person to follow. Because I do make a lot of posts about “Hey, what do you think about this?” And we do get a lot of people who say “Yay or Nay”, but they at least agree. “Hey look, this guy’s questioning a paradigm, he’s got some evidence. Let’s think about it.”  That’s a problem, so we have to think about things and address them as a society, not just as a dental community. So yeah, those are my handle.

Dr. Weitz:            I think that’s one of the keys to wisdom is always questioning our paradigms.

Dr. Nolan:            Absolutely. Oh, I should mention this, we do have an Instagram account for our product it’s at @elementaoralcare. So you can find us there and like you’re saying, we have a product that I think a lot of people are going like specifically because it’s a different way of approaching the same problem and we do have a fluoride free product. So if fluoride bothers you, it’s not really a concern.

Dr. Weitz:            Great. Awesome.  Thank you for joining us.

Dr. Nolan:            Hey, I appreciate your time. Thanks so much for having me. I had a really great discussion.

Dr. Weitz:            Excellent. I’ll talk to you soon.

 

Weitz Sports Chiropractic and Nutrition
Weitz Sports Chiropractic and Nutrition
The Truth About Fish with Randy Hartnell of Vital Choice Seafood: Rational Wellness Podcast 91
Loading
/

Randy Hartnell of Vital Choice Seafood discusses The Truth about Seafood with Dr. Ben Weitz.

[If you enjoy this podcast, please give us a rating and review on Itunes, so more people will find The Rational Wellness Podcast. Also check out the video version on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/user/weitzchiro/]

 

Podcast Highlights

3:12  Randy Hartnell became a commercial fisherman while going to college to help finance his school and fell in love with commercial fishing. He did commercial fishing for over 20 years till farmed salmon came in and in 2000 they had a large catch of Alaskan wild salmon and they couldn’t sell them because everybody was buying the farmed salmon for less money.  He had to give up the business, so he transitioned from catching fish to marketing fish and started Vital Choice Seafood, and his mission was to educate people about the difference between wild salmon and farmed salmon and provide them with access to wild salmon.  

7:30  Vital Choice sells a Ventresca tuna that comes from the smaller tuna and it is lower in mercury than most canned tuna sold.  The younger tuna not only have lower mercury levels, but they also have higher omega 3 levels.

10:15  Fish is sometimes mislabeled by some less scrupulous people who sell fish. Randy talked about filming a segment with Dr. Andrew Weill where they went to the Fulton Fish Market in New York City where they went into one stall by Slavin and Sons in November, which is not wild salmon season and they had all these pallets of boxes marked wild king salmon. He asked them where they got all this wild king salmon this time of year and they said, “Why those are farmed wild king salmon.”  Then the New York Times did an investigative report on this bait and switch practice. Then a year or two ago there was a big study done in California showing half the fish in sushi bars is mislabeled.  There was one species like an Asian Carp that was labeled as more than a dozen different types of fish.

12:10   Less scrupulous restaurants sometimes sell farmed salmon and call it wild salmon.  Farmed salmon don’t eat krill and phytoplankton, so their skin is not pink and they have lower levels of omega 3s, so they have to be fed dye so their flesh is pink.  And farmed salmon is increasingly being fed grains, which are the cheapest form of food.  But this gives the farmed salmon higher levels of omega 6 fats and lower levels of omega 3 fats than wild salmon.  Another problem is that farmed fish tend to have higher levels of toxins since they are also fed rendered fish feed made of tons of anchovies and sardines rendered down into pellets. While the individual sardines and anchovies have miniscule amounts of contaminants, when you render them down and concentrate the the toxins. 

34:25  Unlike what I thought, which is that most of the mercury in the fish is from coal-fired power plants that spew mercury into the air, which then drops into the oceans, Randy explained that at least half of the methyl mercury in the oceans is from natural sources, eroded from the land masses. They did hair analysis of Inuit Eskimos 10,000 years old and found that they had substantial levels of mercury. There has been mercury in the oceans since the beginning of human existence and we have evolved living off fish from the oceans with no ill effects.  Consider how healthy and long-lived the Japanese are and they eat seafood many times per week, including while Japanese women are pregnant. And the Japanese have among the lowest rates of infant mortality.  One hypothesis is that seafood is also one of the richest sources of selenium and selenium binds with methylmercury and renders it harmless. This is in contrast with mercury from industrial accidents like Minamata disease from severe levels of mercury found in fish resulting from the Chisso Minamata factory that was producing acetaldehyde using mercury sulfate as a catalyst.  This led to massive levels of mercury in the fish far above the levels that would occur naturally and this level did create a severe neurological disease.  While we may want to avoid shark and swordfish and the other big bill fish, for most common seafood, the relatively low levels of mercury is just not really a health issue and the health promoting benefits of eating fish far outweigh the potential downside, such as the levels of omega 3 fats.

 



Randy Hartnell is the founder and president of Vital Choice Seafood.  They offer exceptional quality, wild seafood, both frozen and canned, fish bone broth, as well as a range of other products at VitalChoice.com or by calling 800-608-4825. 

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 Rational Wellness Podcast on iTunes and YouTube, and sign up for my free e-book on my website by going to drweitz.com.  Let’s get started on your road to better health.  Hello Rational Wellness Podcasters. Thank you so much for joining me again today. And for those of you who enjoy listening to the Rational Wellness Podcast, please go to iTunes and give us a ratings and review. That way more people will find out about the Rational Wellness Podcast.

Our topic for today is health fish. We’ll be speaking to Randy Hartnell, the Founder and President of Vital Choice Wild Seafood and Organics. A company dedicated to bringing to the public top quality seafood that has lower levels of hazardous contaminants like mercury. There are many questions today about whether it’s healthy to eat fish and seafood.  On the one hand, many, many scientific studies have shown that eating fish and seafood promotes better health. Even more studies demonstrate the health benefits of omega 3 fats from fish and seafood. We know that seafood, especially certain types like wild salmon, not only contain quality protein but many vitamins and minerals including fats, soluble, vitamins D, A, B vitamins, and are the absolute best source for omega 3 fats that promote cardiovascular health, reduce inflammation, and have so many other health promoting benefits. This is why I eat seafood at least several times per week, and I recommend it for my patients.

 On the other hand, we have many concerns about eating fish today for a number of reasons. Toxic chemicals that humans have been dumping into the oceans for decades like mining waste, agricultural runoff, industrial waste, mercury, et cetera. Oil spills, nuclear radiation from Fukushima, we’ve probably all seen the reports about the Great Pacific garbage patch of floating plastic. Recent reports about microparticles of plastic found in fish. There’s questions about the sustainability of fish in the oceans. Farm fish versus wild fish. There’s an issue with the genetically modified salmon that’s on the market now. Also reports that when you go to buy seafood, many of it is mislabeled. It’s farmed and it’s labeled as wild, or labeled as the wrong species.

So Randy, thank you so much for joining us today. Maybe you can start by telling us a little bit about your background and how you came to start this seafood company, Vital Choice.

Randy Hartnell:                 Well, thank you Dr. Weitz. I really appreciate the opportunity to be here today to address some of these many questions.  There’s a lot of confusion around seafood, so I always appreciate the opportunity to bring some clarity to it.  Well, I started as a commercial fisherman back in my college days.  My dad worked up in Alaska as a court engineer, and he got me a job in a cannery, and he got me a job on a boat.  So I financed my way through college as a fisherman in Alaska.  I had planned to go onto grad school, but basically I fell in love with fishing, and took that up as a full time profession and ended up doing that for over 20 years.

Then about late 1990’s, early 2000’s, something disrupted our industry and I basically had to move on and do something else. That something was farmed, industrial salmon. Basically took over the world markets for salmon. I got to the end of the 2000 season I think, and we had caught a lot of fish, but nobody wanted to buy them. It was the first time in all my years as a fisherman I couldn’t afford to pay my crew. I couldn’t pay my bills, so I moved on.  I ended up transitioning from catching fish into marketing fish.  I started a company called Vital Choice, and my mission was to, one one hand, educate people about the differences between wild and farmed salmon. Also to provide them with a preferable alternative, provide them with access to wild salmon.  So, that’s what we’ve been doing ever since, almost 18 years now.

Dr. Weitz:                          Cool. So let’s talk about, maybe we can talk about some of the health benefits of eating fish on a regular basis?

Randy Hartnell:                 One of the interesting things that happened when I started this company was I was selling direct to consumers.  So I had a one on one relationship with my customers, and they had lots of questions. All those years that I was a fisherman, I didn’t know an omega 3 from anything.  I just had never heard of omega 3’s.  So I needed to do a lot of studying and basically that continues until the day I read just about every book on omega 3’s, and there are a lot of them out there, and all the health benefits of them as you know.  Seafood is probably one of the few foods out there that pretty much everybody agrees is healthy.  If you get the right versions of it.

Dr. Weitz:                          Right.

Randy Hartnell:                 So, seafood has been in the human diet from the very beginning. Our bodies are constructed of these marine omega 3 molecules, and we still need them, they’re still essential.  Seafood is really the only place you can get them, or products from the marine food web.

Dr. Weitz:                          Can you explain why the fish that you’re offering is healthier than what a lot of other’s are selling? Such as the canned baby salmon that’s lower in mercury?

Randy Hartnell:                 Well, I think there’s some confusion there. I don’t know of anybody that’s selling canned baby salmon.

Dr. Weitz:                          Oh, okay.

Randy Hartnell:                 Salmon are relatively short lived species. So even if you get a grown up salmon, it’s going to be only four years old. It’s going to have relatively low mercury levels. Where the younger fish come in is with the longer lived species. So like a halibut, or a tuna. They can over many years, they can get huge. So if you’re going to the market to buy fish for your family, and you’re aware of this contaminant issue, you’re going to choose the smaller fish.  So that’s what we do. We just buy the kinds of fish that we want to feed our families and we know that our customers appreciate it. When it comes to those longer lived fish, that means that you want the smaller ones.

Dr. Weitz:                          Oh, okay. I thought that you had some sort of salmon that had less mercury in it?

Randy Hartnell:                 No, I think what you’re thinking about is … because we have a lot of fans for our product called our Ventresca.

Dr. Weitz:                          Oh, okay, yeah.

Randy Hartnell:                 Which are smaller tuna.

Dr. Weitz:                          Oh, tuna, okay.

Randy Hartnell:                 Albacore tuna. A lot of-

Dr. Weitz:                          That’s what I meant. Yes, yes, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Randy Hartnell:                 A lot of people, health experts tell people just to avoid tuna.

Dr. Weitz:                          Exactly.

Randy Hartnell:                 It’s an unfair generalization because there are 800 pound tuna that have sky high mercury levels, and there are three pound, five pound skipjack tuna that are two or three years old that have relatively low levels, and relatively high omega 3 levels. So it’s not fair to the fishery, to the industry, to the community out there just to tell people to avoid all tuna. It really is based on a lack of knowledge about that type of fish.

Dr. Weitz:                          Right. So you’re using the younger tuna and those are much lower in mercury, right?

Randy Hartnell:                 That’s right. The University of Oregon, I believe, did a study on albacore caught off the coast of Oregon, Northwest Washington. Where they drew a correlation between tuna size, or age, and mercury levels. Now generally the smaller fish have lower mercury levels. The interesting thing is they also have higher omega 3 levels in our experience. Just remarkably high fat levels in these younger tuna.  When I first went down to the dock to meet our fisherman, his name is Paul Hill and he’s been a … he’s a second generation tuna fisherman and when I told him we only wanted to buy his small fish and he just couldn’t wrap his brain around that. He said, “My whole life, my dad’s whole career the buyers told us that the small fish were trash, and they wouldn’t pay us anything for them. And you’re telling me that’s all you want?” That’s all we’ve doing now for probably 16 years.

Dr. Weitz:                          Oh, interesting.

Randy Hartnell:                 That’s great for him because you know, the big buyers, they want the bigger fish. The yields are higher, they’re less costly to process. Our customers are more focused on the purity and the health benefits and those are both delivered in a superior way by the younger fish.

Dr. Weitz:                          Oh, okay.

Randy Hartnell:                 The one thing I want to clarify is we’re not out there … he’s not out there targeting little fish, right? He’s just catching fish and they’re part of every load. So when he comes in, he size grades-

Dr. Weitz:                          Oh okay.

Randy Hartnell:                 … and we take the small ones. So it’s-

Dr. Weitz:                          You’re not going after the tuna nursery schools?

Randy Hartnell:                 No. That’s right.

Dr. Weitz:                          I figured you’d just wait until the tuna come across the border and then you separate the mothers from the baby … no, I’m kidding. So what about some of the reports that some of the seafood is mislabeled when you go to buy it?

Randy Hartnell:                 You know, that’s been going on forever because it’s really easy to bait and switch people. I like to tell this story of many years ago I was back … and like I said, things haven’t changed that much, so it’s still applicable. I was back in New York City at the Fulton Fish Market, and I met Dr. Andrew Weil. I was going to show him around the fish market.

Dr. Weitz:                          Oh cool.

Randy Hartnell:                 We had a video crew with us. We walked into this one stall, Slavin and Sons, I believe it was. I noticed … this was in November, which is not wild salmon season. I noticed all these pallets of boxes piled high and on the end of the box it said wild king salmon. So I asked him … I think it was the grandson of the founder … I said, “Where in the world are you getting all these fresh wild king salmon this time of the year?” And he goes, “Why those are farmed wild king salmon.” People don’t want to pay for real wild king salmon.  I went back and wrote an article in our newsletter about it. Marianne Burrows at the New York Times somehow got that, and she called me up and she said, “Well, we want to do an investigative report about this.” So sure enough a few weeks later, the front page of the Sunday New York Times was a big story about the bait and switch.  Fast forward to just last year or two, there was a big study done in California basically showing half the fish in sushi bars is mislabeled. There was one species like an Asian carp or something that was labeled as more than a dozen different types of other fish.

Dr. Weitz:                          Wow.

Randy Hartnell:                 Then of course one of the most common examples that I run into is in restaurants. As more and more consumers become educated and they’re requesting wild salmon and they understand the differences, the less scrupulous restaurants are just calling their farmed salmon, wild. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve gone in and it said wild salmon on the menu and it’s clearly not been wild salmon.  So it’s just something people have to be aware of and-

Dr. Weitz:                          Now, can you tell just by looking at it? Are there things that the consumers can detect?

Randy Hartnell:                 I probably eat more salmon than just about anybody on the planet and caught millions of pounds of salmon and I can’t always tell.

Dr. Weitz:                          The color seems to be different right?

Randy Hartnell:                 Well, the aquaculture industry has done a good job of mimicking wild salmon color. The farmed salmon, they’re not eating what wild salmon are eating. They’re not getting the krill and the phytoplankton.

Dr. Weitz:                          Right. That’s one of the main issues right?  The fish are getting the omega 3’s because of what they’re eating, and then-

Randy Hartnell:                 So their diet … the farmed salmon diet is supplemented with a synthetic version of that compound that will turn the fish flesh the color that resembles wild salmon.

Dr. Weitz:                          Yeah, essentially they’re dying the fish pink?

Randy Hartnell:                 Yeah, I guess you could say that, right, right.

Dr. Weitz:                          So those farmed fish are being fed a much less healthy sources of nutrition, isn’t that right?

Randy Hartnell:                 In the early days when we first started, the primary criticism against farmed salmon was that it had much higher levels of contaminants. A lot more PCP’s and-

Dr. Weitz:                          Right.

Randy Hartnell:                 … and that was because they were being fed predominantly rendered fish feed. So they’d go out and catch tons of anchovies and sardines. They would render them down into pellets. While those individual sardines and anchovies just had minuscule levels of contaminants, when you render them down and concentrate them into pellets, you’re concentrating all those contaminants. Then you start feeding basically livestock fish it’s entire life, it accumulates.  Also fish feed like that is very expensive, relatively expensive. So there were two challenges, it was expensive and it was giving their farmed salmon the high contaminant levels. So, how do you address that? Well, you find cheaper feed that doesn’t have contaminants in it. That, just like every other livestock turns out to be grains. So farmed salmon now have been fed increasing amounts of grain products.

I’m sure the aquaculture and scientists are trying to figure out how they could get away feeding pretty much all. Because it’s the cheapest possible thing you can feed them. Consequently the farmed salmon are fat. The profile no longer mimics the wild salmon. It has much higher levels of omega 6’s from the grains. I’m speaking generally here that there may be exceptions. I’m sure there are salmon farmers out there that are trying to do the right thing. Trying to-

Dr. Weitz:                          Yeah, but for those of us in the Functional Medicine world, many of us are trying to stay away from grains, and advising our patients to stay away from grains. Then we go eat fish and to find out that the fish actually contain inflammatory omega 6’s because they ate grains. Potentially we may be exposed to some of the same immune issues that some of us have when we react to gluten.

Randy Hartnell:                 Wild salmon, say a wild sockeye salmon has roughly nine omega 3’s for every omega 6. King salmon might be six to one. Basically, wild salmon you’re getting a lot more omega 3’s than you are 6’s. A farmed salmon is, last I heard, roughly one to one. So if you’re trying to improve that ration, it’s pretty hard to do with farmed salmon.

Dr. Weitz:                          Absolutely, absolutely. How about being able to detect other fish … one species from the other? Are there any hints that we can use if we go to a fish market?

Randy Hartnell:                 You know Ben, the best way to protect yourself is just find a good fish monger that you can trust. Or find a good restaurant that the person running it really knows what he’s doing. The problem is people are often driven by price. When you want the cheapest anything, you go to places that generally don’t hire the most knowledgeable people. They’re just trying to move product and they don’t know what they’re selling. I’m talking about a fish counter, or restaurant.

Dr. Weitz:                          Yeah.

Randy Hartnell:                 That’s really, I think, the safest way. I figure out which restaurants in know that I can trust that care about their reputation and would never bait and switch a customer and that’s who we try to be for our customers. As far as … you go into a sushi bar and they tell you it’s some white fish, how in the heck are you going to know unless you do a DNA test on it?

Dr. Weitz:                          Yeah.

Randy Hartnell:                 As for your original question, it’s really difficult for people. That’s why it’s so common. That’s why so many people get away with it. Because there are very few penalties for people who get caught. Other than their reputation.

Dr. Weitz:                          So we can order fish frozen through your company?

Randy Hartnell:                 Yeah, we have a broad line of premium Alaskan frozen seafood and then we also have canned, and pouched seafood. Our product line has really expanded over the years. We’ve also got other proteins, but seafood is still our passion in what we do.  Now we just … to put it as simply as possible, we just … my wife and I started the company. My brother and sister still work in the company, we’ve grown quite a bit. But really we’re just buying products that we want to eat ourselves.  That we can trust and we apply that standard to everything that we buy.

Dr. Weitz:                          What about some of the reports of the plastics. There recently have been a bunch of reports about micro particles of plastic in fish?

Randy Hartnell:                 It’s definitely concerning. It’s a horrible problem, how it impacts salmon in Alaska. I haven’t seen any evidence that it’s impacting them, although of course all of our oceans, none of them are pristine anymore. One of our big missions from the start is what can we do to protect the seafood resource? To protect the oceans?  Most of our charitable efforts over the years have gone toward environmental organizations working to protect the ocean.  One personal mission I have is just by educating people like you do about how incredibly important seafood is.  Hopefully people will start to make the connection if we don’t have healthy oceans, we’re not going to have seafood. If we don’t have seafood, we’re not going to be as healthy or have it to enjoy.  It’s already happening in many parts of the world.

Dr. Weitz:                          Yeah. You know, I hear these discussions sometimes where you get these really smart people like Elon Musk and even Steven Hawkings before he died recently, talking about how we need to explore Mars because we’ll probably have to leave the planet, because we’re destroying it. It’s just insane to think “Why don’t we just protect it?” That would make a lot more sense.

Randy Hartnell:                 And Mars once we get there too, right?

Dr. Weitz:                          Right.

Randy Hartnell:                 Well, there won’t be any oceans to mess up. I think there’s room for both, and I do see some encouraging signs that … there are more and more people becoming aware of these problems. And more and more people working on solutions. So hopefully they will be successful.

Dr. Weitz:                          What do you think about this new genetically modified salmon? What’s it called? The AquaBounty or something like that?

Randy Hartnell:                 Well, that’s sort of been on our radar for more than 10 years. What to say about it?

Dr. Weitz:                          It grows twice as fast as other salmon.

Randy Hartnell:                 It’s not available in American markets now that I’m aware. There’s been such a push back from the consumer that to my knowledge, it’s not available.

Dr. Weitz:                          I mean, once a species is out in the public, in the wild … I know they say they’re going to keep it contained. But my worry is it’s going to take over. You know?

Randy Hartnell:                 I maybe have some good news there. Because these are Atlantic salmon, Salmo salar is the species. I live in the Pacific northwest. So we have five different wild salmon species that populate this region.  Years ago, somebody thought it was a good idea. “Let’s bring in some Atlantic salmon and plant them. See if we can get them going. Then we’ll have six species in the wild.” They tried multiple times to bring in healthy, truly wild Atlantic salmon and they just would not take. They’ve never been able to survive.  So I think that’s one fear that’s probably not serious.  I’m sure if they escape … and sometimes the Atlantic salmon farms will have escapes. Just last year, here in Washington state, hundreds of thousands of farmed salmon got out. There’s no evidence that they’re displacing the wild salmon. They’re finding them with empty bellies. They’ve been fed their whole lives. For generations they’ve been hand fed, machine fed, whatever it is. I’m not an expert, but I do pay attention and I have never seen any evidence that they are displacing the wild salmon.  There are a lot of other concerns, habitat destruction, but I don’t think GMO salmon present that much of a risk to the wild salmon.

Dr. Weitz:                          What about some of the issues about over fishing and sustainability?

Randy Hartnell:                 You know, that’s a huge problem around the world. There’s good news there on several fronts. Over the last 10 years there’s been an increased consumer focus on that issue. There’s one organization … there’s probably 30 different organizations focused on sustainable seafood and it’s growing all the time. It’s confusing for consumers because there are so many different ones. Some of them sort of have maybe less than noble agendas.  There’s one that’s sort of the gold standard, and we were one of their first licensee’s way back in 2002. That’s the Marine Stewardship Council. Basically what they do is they will go in and assess a fishery and look at the impact of a particular fishery on other species. It’s very rigorous, it could take years to get a fishery certified as being sustainably managed. So, Alaska was the first fishery state wide, all their salmon were certified by the Marine Stewardship Council. There’s a little blue logo you can find. If you go to msc.org you can learn a lot more about it.

The result is more and more consumers are looking for sustainable seafood. It’s kind of like what we talked about earlier, if you go to stores and restaurants that have made their business about sourcing only sustainable seafood then you can pretty much trust that you’re getting fish that are coming from responsibly managed fisheries. We only source fisheries from healthy, sustainable, sources.  Alaska is really a model for the world. A lot of people are unaware of this, but Alaska pursued statehood in part to take control of their fisheries back from a federal government, which was mismanaging them, imagine that. They wrote right into their founding constitution that all the fishery sources would be managed on a sustainable yield basis.  Basically what that means is scientists, biologists, are in charge of those salmon runs. They’re isolated from the market. No matter how much the market demand is for wild salmon, the scientists are going to dictate how many are caught. Then they’ll take those that are caught and they’ll go out into the market.  Just this year, or the last couple of years in Crystal Bay Alaska, where I used to fish, they’ve had the biggest runs they’ve ever seen since they’ve been keeping track.

Dr. Weitz:                          Oh wow, cool.

Randy Hartnell:                 … 50, 60 million salmon coming back. It’s just an amazing story.

Dr. Weitz:                          Is there any increasing demand for wild salmon now that people are more educated about it’s benefits?

Randy Hartnell:                 Huge. Because back when I was a fisherman, if we had a big run like this, our price would collapse. Then farmed salmon came along and people just buy farmed salmon. But now a lot of people are a lot more knowledgeable about farmed salmon, they want wild and they’ll pay more to get wild.  So now the fisherman are doing really well. Even though that was the biggest run they’ve had in 50 years, the price was almost as high as it’s ever been.  So the fisherman are doing a good job and being well rewarded for it.  That was another part of our mission was to educate people about the differences so that they would create demand, drive the price up.  Because the whole fishing industry is really the most vocal, political advocate for the salmon resource.  There are all kinds of competing industries that want to come in and destroy the Alaska salmon habitat, just like they have in the rest of the country.

Dr. Weitz:                          Yeah, we keep reading reports about how they’re opening up more mining and more oil drilling off the coast of Alaska, it’s kind of scary.

Randy Hartnell:                 We have a saying, if you want to save wild salmon, you need to eat wild salmon. Stay wild, eat wild. Because a healthy salmon industry is the last line of defense for these wild salmon. If your livelihood depends on catching these fish, then you’re going to do everything you can to make sure they’re managed responsibly, that the habitat is protected.  So far, they’ve been successful of fending off this trillion dollar mine. This mine that they want to put in, it’s called the Pebble Mine up in Bristol Bay.

Dr. Weitz:                          I heard about that. Wasn’t that just approved again, or something?

Randy Hartnell:                 Well, with the current administration they’re not big defenders of the environment … Yes they did, but I don’t think … as long as you’ve got a trillion dollars worth of minerals sitting in the ground, the fight is never going to be over, right?  If was those fisherman, the native communities along there that just made passionate pleas and reached out, and got help from a lot of the bigger environmental organizations. Politicians and commerce. Tiffany said, “We will never buy gold from those mines up there.” They’re just one example of many. It was a fisherman that really … the heart and soul of that fight, and continue to be.

Dr. Weitz:                          Well, that’s good. Good to get some positive thoughts about that. Everybody get out there and eat your wild salmon.

Randy Hartnell:                 The one last thing I want to say about the sustainability issue. There’s a book called ‘Perfect Protein’ by Andy Sharpless who is the CEO of Oceana.

Dr. Weitz:                          Okay.

Randy Hartnell:                 He points out the sustainability movement that’s been underfoot is really having a positive impact. Fisheries around the world are stabilizing. If you’re out there harvesting fish that, in an unsustainable way, you’re over catching or whatever. The market doesn’t want those, so that’s going to force you to clean up your act. That’s basically what’s been happening. There’s still bad actors out there of course. There’s still some little black holes and we don’t really know what’s going on.  By and large there have been a lot of fisheries that have recovered and are doing a lot better. Now we just need to focus on cleaning up the ocean.

Dr. Weitz:                          When it comes to sourcing omega 3’s, some of the companies go, “Oh, our omega 3’s are from more sustainable sources. Some of them are from krill and some are from Norwegian fish. Some are from squid and things like that.  From the standpoint of sustainability, what’s the truth about the best place to source your omega 3’s?

Randy Hartnell:                 Well you know more about this than I do, probably. I don’t think that anybody will tell you that … the best form of omega 3’s is in food.

Dr. Weitz:                          No, I know but if you are going to say use fish oil capsules, is krill a problem because that’s what the whales eat? Or is it better-

Randy Hartnell:                 That’s a great question, that’s a really great question. The thing about krill oil is it’s all the rage in the nutrition and health world.

Dr. Weitz:                          Right.

Randy Hartnell:                 The consumption of krill oil is relatively minuscule compared to the population of krill. There’s a massive krill biomass in the antarctic. The total allowable catch is like a thing slice of that pie. The amount that’s actually caught is a super thin slice of that pie. So they’re not even approaching the total amount that they’re allowed to catch, conservative guidelines. So the Marine Stewardship Council as a result has looked at that and from a scientific perspective, and they have certified krill oil, we were the very first krill oil, actually.  I happened to be in the offices of the Marine Stewardship Council in London, the day the approval came through. I said, “Wow, this is great. We can add MSC certified krill oil.” Because Whole Foods had stopped selling krill oil because of the concerns that you mentioned. It’s one of those things where it was a PR, it was kind of a green washing PR move. Or at least they were holding off until they were convinced that it was a sustainable product.

Dr. Weitz:                          What about fish oil from say squid versus fish? Is there an issue of sustainability there? Does it make a difference, you think?

Randy Hartnell:                 Depends on where the fish are coming from. A lot of the fish oil comes from the big anchovy fisheries in Peru. It’s one of the biggest fisheries in the world.

Dr. Weitz:                          Right.

Randy Hartnell:                 It’s a regional type of … a certain type of fish in a certain region. I’ve listened to a woman from Peru who manages their fisheries down there, talk about how it would be so much better if we consumed these fish, these incredible omega 3 rich fish as food rather than rendering it down and feeding it to salmon. Right? Which is where a lot of it goes. Or turning it into to fish oil for humans. You’re just better off eating a can of sardines than eating the fish oil.  We have supplements. We have fish oil, sockeye salmon oil, but I just eat fish almost every day, or several times a week like you do. Because that’s the best source of omega 3’s. If you’re eating a sustainable fish than that addresses your question.  As far as the quality of omega 3’s from squid versus green lip mussels, versus salmon, or whatever, sardines. I don’t know, my sense is that I’ve talked to a lot of scientists and lipid scientists. Their opinion is essentially an EPA or DHA omega 3 molecule doesn’t really matter where you get it from a nutritional standpoint.

Dr. Weitz:                          Yeah.

Randy Hartnell:                 Although the krill oil in is phospholipid form, so there’s some case that’s more bio available. Nothing is more bio available than the omega 3’s you get in the fish itself.

Dr. Weitz:                          Right. So the conclusion really is to just eat more fish.

Randy Hartnell:                 Eat more sustainable fish.

Dr. Weitz:                          Sustainable.

Randy Hartnell:                 Alaskan salmon and sardines, and what not.

Dr. Weitz:                          Yeah, yeah. Those are the fish that I tend to eat the most as well. Okay, great. So how can our listeners and viewers find out more about your products? Order your products?

Randy Hartnell:                 Go to Vitalchoice.com and we have tons of information. We’re really passionate about education. We have a news letter that … we do some science based articles about the environment. A lot of these things we’ve talked about. There’s also specials for the products. We have absolutely fantastic customer service. So you can call us 24/7 and talk to knowledgeable customer reps about these products. We have 100% money back guarantee, if you don’t like … we have a lot of pressure on us to make sure what we send people is good. I think we’re close to 11,000 reviews on our website now.

Dr. Weitz:                          That’s great. What’s the low mercury tuna called again?

Randy Hartnell:                 Well, I’ll tell you but it’s probably not going to be in stock. We can’t keep it in stock.

Dr. Weitz:                          Oh, is that right? Wow.

Randy Hartnell:                 We call it Ventresca.

Dr. Weitz:                          Yes.

Randy Hartnell:                 That’s the belly of the young tuna. But just all of our canned albacore tuna is fantastic. It’s a superb, good source of omega 3’s. It’s coming from those smaller fish so it’s going to be the best risk reward ratio there.  I’m not sure how much time we have left, but I didn’t want to go without giving an opportunity to discuss the whole mercury radiation.

Dr. Weitz:                          Oh, okay, yeah, sure. Yeah, absolutely, let’s go into it. So why don’t we start with the mercury? My understanding is most of the mercury is being dumped into the ocean from coal fire powered plants, right?

Randy Hartnell:                 One thing that’s interesting is that a lot of the … at least half of the methyl mercury that’s in the oceans is from natural sources. It’s eroded … the land masses over the eons have eroded down. They found remains of Inuit Eskimos 10,000 years old. They do hair analysis and they find mercury in their hair.

Dr. Weitz:                          Oh really?

Randy Hartnell:                 So it’s not like mercury is a new thing. In fact it’s always been there in the marine environment and life evolved in the ocean.

Dr. Weitz:                          Oh, because people are always talking about coal fired power plants spewing hundreds of tons of mercury into the atmosphere. Which then falls down into the ocean.

Randy Hartnell:                 I’m not saying that’s not a factor. That is a factor and it also makes for a great copy if you’re trying to raise funds for your environmental organization. You know, follow the money right? So it is a legitimate concern, but honestly we are burning less coal and that’s a good thing.

Dr. Weitz:                          Right.

Randy Hartnell:                 … than other parts of the world are. Anyway, the main takeaway here is if you look at people who eat the most seafood in the world, take Japan for example. 80 plus million people that eat seafood many, many times a week.  Pregnant women eat seafood many times a week.  They’re not the sickest people on the planet.  You don’t find mercury toxicity. You find that they’re some of the healthiest, longest living … and it’s complex.  It’s not only the fact that they’re eating a lot of seafood.  There are other things maybe they’re not doing. They’re not eating an American diet.  We are exporting our bad food over there too I guess.

Dr. Weitz:                          Oh yeah, we’re exporting our rates of diabetes and heart disease, and cancer as well.

Randy Hartnell:                 The bottom line is they have some of the lowest infant mortality. They live the longest. The lowest amount of different types of common diseases that we have. If you go to a place like the Seychelle Islands where seafood is pretty much their primary protein, they’re eating 15, 16 times as much seafood as most Americans. There’s been a study run by the University of Rochester, I think, close to 30 years they’ve been looking at these people and they tested the mothers when they were pregnant for mercury levels. Yes, some of them have higher mercury levels that correlated higher fish consumption.

They fully assumed that as these kids got older … were born and got older that the kids born to the mom’s with the highest mercury levels would have the most developmental problems. They found no correlation. They did a study with 14,000 mother child pairs in the UK, same thing. It turned out that the kids born to mom’s who ate the most fish had the least developmental problems. The mom’s have the higher mercury problems, but the kids have the least developmental problems.  Those are two very rigorous studies showing that these trace levels of mercury that people freak out about are … at least for most people, not an issue.

Dr. Weitz:                            Are you suggesting that’s because the levels are just not high enough to really cause problems?

Randy Hartnell:                 Well, there’s one hypothesis is that life evolved in the oceans, amid a background of methylmercury. So we developed a way to deal with it. The way that deals with it is selenium. Selenium binds with methylmercury and basically renders it harmless. Seafood is one of the richest sources of selenium. So in a sense you’re getting … We’ve got a lot about this on our website. If you just go to our website and type in selenium, or methylmercury there’s just a lot of information there, videos. But basically that’s one hypothesis that when you get methylmercury from seafood the concentrations are so low that the selenium basically is the anecdote to that.

As opposed to if you get mercury toxicity from industrial accidents … a lot of people like to talk about Minamata and the horrendous birth defects that came from the Minamata industrial accident in Minamata, Japan. Just horrible birth defects in the kids. But the levels of mercury that was in those fish in that area, they’re just orders of magnitude higher than anything you’d get in common seafood.  So one of my closest friends at the NIH has studied this. He’s one of the authors in this study in the UK, his name is Dr. Joe Hibbeln. He said mercury is just not an issue in most common seafood. You want to avoid the shark and the big bill fish, the long lived high on the food chain-

Dr. Weitz:                            The swordfish and-

Randy Hartnell:                 Right. The sardines and the salmon and the kind of fish you find in most supermarkets, the benefits just so vastly outweigh the risks. He even concluded in his paper that was published in the Lancet that advice. Especially to pregnant and nursing women to avoid seafood risks causing the harm are trying to prevent. So you’re telling women … I had a friend his name is Barton Seaver, he’s written a bunch of books on seafood on the east coast. They just had a child here a year or two ago. They went to the OBGYN and they looked for the best OBGYN in the Boston area.  They went in and she told his wife don’t eat any seafood while you’re pregnant. This still is going on out there. So they’re conclusion based on 14,000 mother child pairs was when you give that mother than advice, you risk causing cognitive deficits that you’re trying to avoid. So they’re well intended, but they’re just not up to speed on where the science is.

Dr. Weitz:                          Okay. What about some of the other toxins?

Randy Hartnell:                 So the PCP … it kind of applies … we used to do a lot of testing on our Alaskan seafood. We just saw the same basically low results every time. we never had a spike. Pink salmon is only out in the ocean for two years, that’s it’s life cycle, two years. A sockeye salmon, four years. Maybe a king salmon will live six years, but they’re not like these longer lived fish like the Chilean sea bass or a halibut or whatever.

Dr. Weitz:                          Chilean sea bass is on the list of fish that are among the highest in mercury now.

Randy Hartnell:                 Well I was just looking at that yesterday, because there is no an MSC certified Chilean sea bass and we’ve had a lot of requests for it. Again, it lives a long time. So if you look at the studies it has super high mercury levels if you get the bigger ones. That’s typically what industry wants, they want the bigger ones because they’re cheaper to process. If you get the little ones, they’re comparable to an albacore tuna or something. So not that bad.  The big takeaway is just risk versus reward. These nutrients … like a wild salmon is … I never heard anybody make a case that there’s any other food on the planet that’s more nutrient dense than a wild salmon. We’ve got all the fats, the proteins, the micronutrients. It’s just incredibly nutrient dense type of food.  The other is there are going to be trace levels of mercury and maybe some other contaminants, but we’ve got to eat something, you know

Dr. Weitz:                          What about all these plastics? Some of these reports on the plastic stuff is pretty scary.

Randy Hartnell:                 You know, I talked to Dr. Ray Hilborn at the University of Washington, he’s a fisheries expert, he’s written a lot of books. He’s one of the leading scientists in fisheries, about this. From a nutritional standpoint, he wasn’t aware of any evidence that there’s harm.  I think also it’s a matter of choosing species that are coming from the cleanest areas. I think if the fish is ingesting the plastic, typically it’s going to pass through the gut and not make it’s way into the flesh. I haven’t seen any evidence that it is.

Dr. Weitz:                          Well, these new articles about the microparticles, you know?

Randy Hartnell:                 Yeah. It’s concerning. I’m not trying to-

Dr. Weitz:                          We’ve got to do something about these just floating patches of plastic. It’s just incredible. I can’t believe we’re not concerned about it.

Randy Hartnell:                 Well I think there are a lot of people that are concerned about it. They just hauled a bunch of big … I don’t know if you’ve seen the story about the young guy that came up with this idea about how to collect it and-

Dr. Weitz:                          Oh, I saw the commercials where these two guys are like diving under the water and picking up plastic and stuff.

Randy Hartnell:                 Yeah, there’s an organization that we support called Plastic Bank. In fact I just saw an American Express commercial that featured them, which is pretty cool. They’re just based up in Vancouver, an hour from us.  They’ve come up with this model where they go to a lot of areas around the world where plastic accumulates on the beach. It’s pretty horrendous in a lot of places like Bali. We think of these tropical paradise and they’ve just been destroyed by all this.  Well they go in and they basically create an economy around the plastic. So they pay people to go out and pick up plastic on the beaches, then they haul it back to these recycling centers that they set up. That’s Plastic Bank, I don’t know if it’s dot org or dot com. There are just more and more of those kinds of efforts springing up. I look at is as … when they say all progress starts with the truth and we have to start acknowledging what we’re doing to the oceans. And also realize how vitally important the oceans are to our own well being. You can’t have a healthy planet, healthy population without healthy oceans. So we’re working to educate people and do what we can to support that.

Dr. Weitz:                          Excellent. I think that’s a good note to end on. We need to have healthy oceans to have a healthy planet. We need a healthy planet to have healthy human beings.

Randy Hartnell:                 That’s right, that’s right. That’s why we called our company Vital Choice. It’s a vital choice to choose the right seafood from the right fisheries.

Dr. Weitz:                          Well sounds like you’re on a good mission and I know you have a great product. So thank you for bringing some information about fish and seafood to us, Randy.

Randy Hartnell:                 Thank you Ben, really a pleasure.