Podcast Highlights:
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Environmental Toxins, Wildfire Smoke, and Practical Detox Strategies with Dr. Joe Pizzorno
Dr. Ben Weitz hosts the Rational Wellness Podcast and interviews Dr. Joe Pizzorno on the latest research about environmental toxins, emphasizing wildfire smoke risks, PM2.5 penetration, rapid body and brain distribution, and links to neurological, respiratory, and cardiovascular disease. Pizzorno argues toxins are a primary, solvable driver of chronic illness and that oxidized cholesterol reflects toxic exposure more than cholesterol itself. Practical protections include running high-MERV (≥12, ideally 16) HVAC filtration 24/7, avoiding incense, and supporting detox with glutathione (liposomal or via NAC), increased and diverse fiber to reduce toxin reabsorption, and saunas to sweat profusely (except PFAS “forever chemicals,” which don’t excrete via sweat). They discuss mercury release from forest fires, microplastics and gut binding, arsenic reduction from rice cooking, water filtration (carbon block, RO for arsenic), endocrine disruptors like bisphenols, and toxin assessment using GGTP, ALT, eGFR, and urinary 8-OHdG rather than challenge tests.
00:00 Show Intro and Mission
01:02 Meet Dr Joe Pizzorno
02:24 Wildfires and Toxic Exposure
05:21 PM2.5 and Systemic Damage
07:24 Cholesterol Oxidation and Toxins
09:35 Home Air Filtration Tips
11:25 Mercury From Forest Fires
13:15 Glutathione and NAC Basics
14:41 Binders and Fiber Strategy
17:26 Persistent vs Nonpersistent Toxins
19:21 Saunas and Forever Chemicals
21:47 Microplastics and Gut Binding
24:13 Post Fire Cleanup Safety
25:21 Arsenic in Water Rice Chicken
27:54 Whole House Water Filters
29:08 Chlorine Fluoride Tradeoffs
31:08 Plastic Bottles and Bisphenols
31:54 Endocrine Disruptors Explained
33:58 Phytoestrogens vs Xenoestrogens
35:49 Safer Drinkware and Cookware
36:37 Testing Toxins Smarter
39:49 Biomarkers GGTP ALT eGFR
44:37 Detox Nutrition and Glutathione
46:54 Toxins and Autoimmune Disease
48:22 Cure Versus Suppression
53:44 Final Thoughts and Outro
Dr. Joe Pizzorno is one of the founders of the modern naturopathic medicine and also the Functional Medicine movement, founding president of Bastyr University, editor of the Textbook of Natural Medicine, and one of the world’s leading authorities on environmental toxins and chronic disease. He’s the author of at least 14 outstanding books, including The Toxin Solution and a textbook on toxins that he cowrote with Walter Crinion, Clinical Environmental Medicine and he continues to publish groundbreaking research on the role of environmental toxicants in human health. His website is DrPizzorno.com.
Dr. Ben Weitz is available for Functional Nutrition consultations specializing in Functional Gastrointestinal Disorders like IBS/SIBO and Reflux and also Cardiometabolic Risk Factors like elevated lipids, high blood sugar, and high blood pressure. Dr. Weitz has also successfully helped many patients with managing their weight and improving their athletic performance, as well as sports chiropractic work by calling his Santa Monica office 310-395-3111.
Dr. Weitz: If you’re looking for clinically useful insights, not wellness hype, then this is the place for you. Welcome to the Rational Wellness Podcast, the podcast for functional and integrative practitioners who want to practice with greater clarity and precision. I’m Dr. Ben Weitz, and each week, I sit down with the leading clinicians, researchers, and lab innovators to explore the science, lab testing, and clinical reasoning behind modern root cause medicine. This is a show focused on practical, evidence-informed insights that you can actually use in patient care. Please subscribe to the Rational Wellness Podcast on Apple, Spotify, or YouTube. Please tell your friends and colleagues, and if you could give us a ratings and review on Apple or Spotify, we would certainly appreciate it. Finally, to access the show notes and the full transcript, please go to my website, drweitz.com.
Welcome to the Rational Wellness Podcast. I’m your host, Dr. Ben Weitz, and our topic today is the latest research on environmental toxins with Dr. Joe Pizzorno. Today’s guest hardly needs an introduction. Dr. Pizzorno is one of the founders of the modern naturopathic medicine movement, also the functional medicine movement, founding president of Bastyr University, editor of the Textbook of Natural Medicine, and one of the world’s leading authorities on environmental toxins and chronic disease. Dr. Pizzorno has spent decades helping practitioners understand how toxic exposures contribute to virtually every chronic illness we see. He’s the author of at least 14 outstanding books, including The Toxin Solution, and a textbook on toxins that he co-wrote with Walter Crinnion, Clinical Environmental Medicine. He continues to publish groundbreaking research on the role of environmental toxicants in human health. Dr. Pizzorno has been on the podcast before, so I’m very grateful that, to have another conversation with him. So Dr. Pizzorno, welcome to the Rational Wellness Podcast.
Dr. Pizzorno: Well, thank you for that very nice introduction, doctor, Dr. Ben. So you and I have had some good conversations over the years and, you know, the sad news is that as we work so hard to promote wellness and people listen to us, the vast majority of the public is still so subject to this damage, and I don’t think people realize just how serious it is. And, you know, it’s one thing to talk about the problems, but it’s another thing to realize that while some problems are solvable and some aren’t, the toxin problem is solvable. It’s the primary cause of disease today, and yet we are doing so little about it as a society.
Dr. Weitz: Unfortunately, we’re facing newer and more devastating toxins. Consider wildfires and smoke and-
Dr. Weitz: and that’s overtaking the northern part of this country that is just subsumed with massive amounts of smoke in the air. I live in Los Angeles, and lived through the Pacific Palisades and Altadena fires, and are still dealing with the debris that’s left over and everything else. So maybe we could start with talking about the risk of toxins related to fire.
Dr. Pizzorno: Yeah, that’s a great topic, and very timely because, you know, I live in Seattle, and periodically we get this huge smoke coming down from British Columbia. And I wish Canada would restore and resurrect its fire prevention protocols they used to have. Yeah. Because the last couple years we’ve had fires that we’ve never seen before.
Dr. Pizzorno: Some, some people say global warming. Now, whether global [00:04:00] warming is happening or not, what we do know is that over the last decade, no, it hasn’t been warming particularly. It’s all because Canada changed their practices for how they handle wi- wildfires. So when we’re looking at wildfires…
Dr. Weitz: What does that mean? You mean they’re not doing controlled burns like they used to?
Dr. Pizzorno: Right. So there’s two key things that have to be done. Number one is cleaning out the underbrush. That’s, that really helps these things spread. And the second one is something like 80% of the wildfires in Canada are from lightning strikes. So when they’re functioning properly, as soon as there’s a lightning strike, fire started, they go and put it out. Well, they’re not doing it as well anymore. They’re not putting the people into doing this. So it’s huge, the problem. I read an article on in I think it was for California, that in order to go through an area of forest to get rid of all the underbrush, it takes five to seven years to go through all the legal processes and our regulatory burdens and federal red tape and such. It’s like we made it harder, both in this country and Canada, to deal with the causes of these wildfires.
Dr. Weitz: Yeah, unfortunately I was reading about a, [00:05:00] a big wildfire in in Minnesota right now that’s also burning because we decided to stop cutting breaks in forests and stuff
Dr. Pizzorno: Yeah. Hugely problematic. But, you know, so as… You know, that’s what I know about the political side of it. What I… More my expertise, of course, is in the medical side of it, and this stuff i- is just devastating. So the obviously, obvious ones, of course, is the smoke. Well, most people don’t realize that the smoke particles and what…Something called PM2.5, what that is particulate matter with a a volume of 2.5 micro cubic meter. Cubic micrometer, micrometer- Micromete- How do you say that right? Micro… Anyway, microns.
Dr. Pizzorno: Cubic microns. Micrometres. Cubic microns, that’s the right term. Okay. So anyway, the problem with the 2.5, so when we’re seeing all this smoke, the particle sizes vary hugely. Now, a lot of the research has been on on what’s called the 10 micron [00:06:00] smoke, and that’s problematic. And it causes damage. But the reason the 2.5 is so dangerous is that it bypasses the cilia in our upper respiratory tract, so it gets deeper into the lungs. And when we- people look at the soot looks terrible, they don’t realize the soot itself, the carbon, is actually inert, but the problem is bound to it are all these really toxic chemicals. So when the soot gets into our lungs and then these toxic chemicals start spreading. And this, now this is animal research, but the human research that’s been done is similar, but you see why it’s not all been done. If you look at animal research within one hour of exposure to smoke, the particulate matter is distributed throughout the whole body, so releasing chemicals throughout the whole body.
Dr. Pizzorno: And in three hours, it gets into the brain. So it’s not only affecting our lungs and our… It’s also affecting our tissues, and it’s also affecting our brains. So it turns out that the particulate matter 2.5 correlates with a lot of disease neurological diseases, respiratory tract disease, cardiovascular disease. For example, a person living [00:07:00] within 100 yards of a freeway has a 70% higher risk for a for a heart attack just because of what that exposure’s doing. And now you look at 100, 100 yards away, you know, it’s about football distance. Well, if you look at where most people live, vast portions of population live well within that range of fre- freeways and such. So the, the, the- Now,
Dr. Weitz: Why isn’t screening for toxins a part of cardiovascular medicine? You know, we spend all the focus on LDL, and yet very little on these other factors that also play a role in atherosclerotic disease
Dr. Pizzorno: Very good point. So we look at the environmental toxins, they’re a far higher risk for cardiovascular disease than it are things like LDL cholesterol. Okay? ‘Cause see, what’s happening is… i’m glad we’re having this chat, Ben, because- Well- … these things I think are so important, people don’t know about it. So what we’re looking at [00:08:00] these things like cholesterol. Okay? Right. So we measure people’s cholesterol. High levels of cholesterol do correlate with cardiovascular disease, but people don’t seem to realize that half the cholesterol in our bodies are producing.
Dr. Pizzorno: Cholesterol’s an important molecule, and people, for example, with higher cholesterol levels, have less Alzheimer’s disease. It’s help it helps the brain be healthier. Right. It’s not the cholesterol that’s the problem, it’s the oxidized cholesterol that’s the problem.
Dr. Pizzorno: When people look at the ratio of LDL to HDL cholesterol, they think, well, you want HDL to LDL Right. We want HDL to be as high as possible, LDL to be as low as possible. So why are they correlated with cardiovascular disease? So it turns out that HDL cholesterol is harder to oxidize than LDL cholesterol. But number two, HDL cholesterol is like the garbage man taking toxins from the tissues, take them into the liver to get cleaned up. Right. So the more HDL, more resist- resistant we are. So, well, what’s causing the oxidation of the cholesterol? Well, number one is, well, if you’re eating eggs and you’re frying those eggs, then you’re gonna get some oxidized [00:09:00] cholesterol. But any oxidative experience we ha- have, like air pollution for example, oxidizes cholesterol.
So they’re measuring the wrong things. So, so oxidized cholesterol is an indirect measure of toxic exposure. So if we’re to focus more on toxic exposure, we’ll go after the cause. So right now, some of these drugs, statin drugs, things like that, yeah, great, they lower the cholesterol, but they’re not actually dealing with the problem of the oxidized cholesterol.
Well, they do a little bit. They actually have a little bit antioxidant properties. I would assert that any benefit they have is primarily ’cause they’re antioxidants, not because they’re lowering the cholesterol levels.
Dr. Weitz: So what can we do to protect ourselves against toxins like smoke? I mean, I guess we could wear a mask. Other than that, are there other strategies that you think make sense? Like, I had a number of my patients take liposomal glutathione during the fires, and I had some of them use binders as well.
Dr. Pizzorno: Yeah, so one of the most [00:10:00] important things people can do if they have this option is that if they have forced air heating or cooling in their house, put into your furnace a high-quality filtering system. So the number, there’s numbers that are recommended to people and and I recommend you get the very strongest one that you can get. So we have one in our home, so it, and we run it 24/7. It’s alway- always running, and it’s always cleaning the air. When we had the forest fires here, when you… In the house, everything’s fine. You open the door, you can smell the smoke. So they’re very effective. So run 24/7. I live in Seattle. Seattle’s a pretty clean city as ci- cities go, but still more air pollution than if I lived in the outside area, in the, you know, the, in a, a farm in Eastern Washington. So running it 24/7 is a really good strategy.
Dr. Weitz: Yeah, we have a air purifier, a really big powerful one, and it actually measures the 2.5 particles, and so you- Right … can see what’s happening. And it’s interesting how my wife loves burning [00:11:00] incense, and every time she burns incense, that thing goes into the red.
Dr. Pizzorno: Yes. Yeah, incense is nice, but a lot of toxic substances there. Anyway, so they have a MERV, what’s sometimes called a MERV rating, and you wanna get a MERV rating of at least 12. Now, the one we’re using has a MERV rating of 16.
Dr. Pizzorno: That means that 99.9% of the PM2.5 is cleared out by the system, so the worst stuff’s clear. Now, again, getting back to the forest fires, so that’s the problem with the forest fires. Not only do they have a lot of the big particulate matter, they also have the very small particulate matter. But worse than that, forests are reservoirs for mercury. Most people aren’t aware of this. When a forest fire goes up- Ah you release a lot of mercury. So you say you, you recommend to your patients that they use glutathione.
Dr. Weitz: Now, how does the mercury get into the forests?
Dr. Pizzorno: You know, it just it’s always some in the air, and,
Dr. Weitz: It just drops out of the air. You
Dr. Pizzorno: just keep accumula-
Dr. Weitz: Coal fired power plants and things like that.
Dr. Pizzorno: Exactly. Exactly. So it may not be high levels, [00:12:00] but still those trees live for hundreds of years, and they just keep accumulating it. Wow. So I think, I, actually I had a reason to look into that about 10 years ago, and I was stunned by how much mercury is released when the fires forest fires are happening.
Dr. Weitz: then you- And then of course, when we have fires that burn homes, then you’ve got all the things in the homes, and we’re talking about paints, and we’re talking about asbestos, and we’re talking about cars and lithium batteries, and all these other toxins that get liberated into the air as well.
Dr. Pizzorno: Yeah. F- for firefighters have a huge problem with toxicity, because as they’re going to these places, you have all these plastics burning and such. But also a lot of places they’re going are things like meth labs and such, and all of these solvents and all these chemicals. So there’s a substantial body of literature around the amount of toxicity firefighters experience. And go to Walter Crinnion, you may recall is one of my compatriots since deceased unfortunately. It dealt with a lot of firefighters, and basically went through extensive [00:13:00] detoxification programs with them, and it got a lot better.
Dr. Weitz: Right. So it sounds like, unfortunately, our world is getting more toxic, not less.
Dr. Pizzorno: It is. In, in many ways it is. I mean, we’ve done some things to clean some, some areas up, but there’s other areas that are just hugely problematic. But also, I wanted just to reinforce what you did with your patients and commend you. One of the most effective ways to protect ourselves from mercury is indeed glutathione, ’cause glutathione helps take mercury out of the cells and then neutralizes it, and it helps the body get rid of it out through the liver. So, glutathione is the most important strategy people can use today to protect themselves from environmental toxins, particularly mercury.
Dr. Weitz: And are you a fan of a liposomal glutathione? ‘Cause for years we were told that glutathione could not be absorbed orally and we had to use IV. And since they’ve come out with the liposomal glutathione it’s it…we seem to be getting much better absorption rates. Yes.
Dr. Pizzorno: Yeah, so, I, I fully agree. Oral glutathione [00:14:00] is will increase the blood level of glutathione, but unfortunately it’s a very expensive way to do it. Because in general, when a person consumes oral glutathione, it gets broken down by the gut into cysteine.
We absorb that cysteine and convert it back into glutathione. It’s much more efficient to either give people N-acetylcysteine, which is not broken down in the gut, and that produces increased glutathione, or you give people liposomal glutathione, both internal or topical. Now, the advantage of using the liposomal is that some people aren’t very good at making glutathione.
Dr. Pizzorno: So by giving them the supplemental glutathione, you can bypass those few people that are like that. But for the vast majority of people, giving them N-acetylcysteine will increase the glutathione levels.
Dr. Weitz: Okay. And what do you think about binders?
Dr. Pizzorno: So, okay, so let’s talk about that a little bit more.
Dr. Weitz: And I know there’s some controversy about binders. You know, I’ve heard… I’ve seen articles where somebody’s promoting a certain binder, and then other articles saying, “No, that binder is not [00:15:00] effective at all.” And then there people put out combinations of binders. Other people have tried to say, “Well, we need this binder for this toxin, and this binder for this toxin.” So what do you think about binders, and which toxin, which binders are best?
Dr. Pizzorno: Yeah, a very good question. So number one, the whole category, what we might call fiber, okay? These binders are made from various most are some kind of a fiber Unquestionably, it’s extremely smart strategy. So I’ll give you… And let’s go back to mercury. So if you look at our ability to get rid of mercury, we get rid of about 1% of our body load of mercury every day into the gut. That sounds good. We then reabsorb 95% of the mercury we just wasted all the energy getting rid of.
Dr. Pizzorno: Or spent getting rid of. Why is that? Well, our detox system evolved while we’re consuming 100, 150 grams of fiber a day. Now people consume 15 to 20 grams of fiber a day. So the body’s expecting there to be a fiber there. When it dumps the garbage out from liver into the gut, it’s [00:16:00] supposed to bind to the fiber there and go out through the stools. Well, there’s no fiber there, not enough fiber there, we just reabsorb it. So one of the most effective strategies people can do is simply increase their fiber.
Now, we can argue about which fiber is best for which particular environmental toxin. Interestingly enough, there’s actually little hard research. Lots of claims. When I’ve actually gone to PubMed and said, “Okay, now show me the research,” very little, small studies, inconsistent. So my own perspective right now is fiber is really important, and probably the more diverse the fiber is, the more likely you are to get the right fiber for whatever toxin you’re being exposed to.
Dr. Weitz: Okay. So lots of fiber, probably different kinds of fiber to hedge your bets as to what’s gonna be most effective.
Dr. Pizzorno: Yeah. Now, also just a little commercial statement, so conflict of interest here. I use a fiber called PGX. Okay? It’s manufactured out of Canada, and a company I advise Natural Factors is a company that sells the product. So I just wanted to mention that, too. PGX,
Dr. Weitz: yeah. PGX, that’s the one that Mark Hyman used to [00:17:00] recommend for for losing weight, because it expands in your stomach. Yeah.
Dr. Pizzorno: Yeah, so lots of research on it with losing weight improving diabetes, things like this. And I’ve said to them, I said to the manufacturer, I said, “Look, you’ve proven it helps improve diabetes. You think it’s because it’s stabilizing blood sugar. I think it’s because it’s removing the diabetogens. It’s binding to the diabetogens in the gut, so you’re not poisoning your insulin resist- your insulin sensitivity.”
Dr. Weitz: Right. Now, what are some of the hardest toxins to get out of the body? Are there ones that are really difficult? I’ve often, Do we have to, are there any, do we ever have to use oral chelators, or can just our body’s natural systems with some support from NAC or glutathione and binders, and things like that, will that be enough? Or are there certain toxins that it’s just really almost impossible to get rid of?
Dr. Pizzorno: Now that’s the key question. When we look at toxins, we can look at them as metals or chemicals, [00:18:00] but a better way of looking at them is persistent versus non-persistent So non-persistent means it’s a toxin we’ve been exposed to as a species or similar enough to a toxin we’re exposed to as a species that we’re really good at getting rid of it. For example, arsenic. We’re really good at getting rid of arsenic. Half-life, two to four days. Now, in general, it takes four half-lives to get something out of the body. So if you stop exposure to non-persistent, body gets rid of them real quickly.
Dr. Pizzorno: Of course, the problem is we’re so saturated with these things in our environment. I mean, the bisphenols, the phthalates all, all those things. While they’re short-term, we constantly are exposed to them. But then we have the persistent toxins. So these are toxins that either we were not exposed to as a species, like heavy metals, or they were intentionally designed to be difficult to break down by biological systems.
Okay? So for example, if you’re spraying your food with a pesticide, you don’t want it to break down easily by the sun or by, by the organisms themselves. You want it to persist along. So those pesticides typically have half-lives in the, in humans ranging from months [00:19:00] to even years. So if a person’s eating conventionally grown foods, they’re continuously increasing their bioload of pesticides that are damaging their body.
Okay. So, those things, number one, of course you have to stop the exposure, but then you have to get them out of the body, and it’s pretty hard to do. So we do things like increasing fiber, that’ll get, help get out of the body. Doing things like increasing glutathione will help get it out of the body. One of the most effective ways is saunas. Saunas are very good at getting toxins out of the body
Dr. Weitz: All right. Is there a certain temperature of sauna and a period of time?
Dr. Pizzorno: So I recommend people use whatever level temperature they need to get them to sweat profusely within about 20 minutes. You want to sweat profusely for at least 20 minutes. Longer is better, but at least 20 minutes. And that 20 minutes, you get rid of all kinds of bad things. With one exception, by the way. I’m gonna quiz you. Do you know which toxin, of all the toxins I’ve looked at, there’s only one toxin that does not go out through the sweat.
Dr. Pizzorno: Put you, I put you on the spot. Most [00:20:00] pe- almost no one gets it
Dr. Weitz: I’ll take a guess. Gadolinium.
Dr. Pizzorno: Oh, interesting. I don’t know the answer to whether that’s right or not. Okay.
Dr. Weitz: Oh, okay. By the way that’s actually oh, I was gonna ask you about gadolinium because I’ve had several patients who had multiple MRIs with contrast, and then ended up having high levels of gadolinium, and it’s known to build up in the brain.
Dr. Pizzorno: Yes. I’ve had that question before, and I do not have a good answer for how to get rid of that.
Dr. Pizzorno: So I, my guess is it would come out with the sweat because it’s similar enough to other things to come out in the sweat, I would think would not be a problem. What doesn’t come out through the sweat is this man-made molecule called the forever chemicals, perfluorinates.
Dr. Pizzorno: Those perfluorinates, those non-stick things, they don’t go out through the sweat, which tells me they are re- and their half-lives, by the way, are two to seven years.
Dr. Pizzorno: these things are hugely problematic in our bodies, and they build up and increase our risk for disease. [00:21:00] Now if- Yes.
Dr. Weitz: By the way, which we also spray on forest fires.
Dr. Pizzorno: Do we do that? I didn’t know that. Oh, we’ll talk
Dr. Pizzorno: that in another- Well, a
Dr. Weitz: lot of, a lot of the flame retardant- Oh … chemicals includes PFOAs.
Dr. Pizzorno: I didn’t know that. How interesting.
As you can see, hugely problematic. And,
Dr. Weitz: And then even if they don’t come up in the smoke, you know, they’re now sitting on the forest and accumulating there.
Dr. Pizzorno: Yep, yep. Huge problem.
Dr. Weitz: I think they’re de- I think they’ve developed some flame retardant chemicals that don’t have it, but until recently they’ve all had it.
Dr. Pizzorno: I was not aware of that. Boy. One more, yet ne- something else to research.
Dr. Weitz: So, w- s- so let’s see. What about the m- plastics, the microplastics we’re reading about that are even contained in fish, and I guess sometimes find microplastics in the brain? How do we get [00:22:00] plastics out of our body?
Dr. Pizzorno: Now that’s a very good question.
Now, when we’re looking at the microplastics, I think we understand what is toxic and what’s not.
Dr. Pizzorno: So when we’re looking at plastics… By the way, if anybody wants to read more about this, I wrote an editorial in PubMed on plastic food containers, the safety of plastic food containers. So when you look at the plastic when it’s properly produced, so as you know, plastics are polymers of monomers.
So monomer is a short molecule, which is actually pretty toxic, but when they bind a bunch of them together it becomes inert. So plastic, most plastics are actually chemically inert. The problem is they’re not pure. In, in the process of producing them, we add a lot of chemicals to them, coloring agents an- anti or anti oil oil protection properties.
We do all these things so they’re actually full of a lot of different chemicals.
Dr. Pizzorno: So when we put the microplastics into our bodies, it’s not just the plastic that is inert, it’s what’s bound to the plastic. So now when we look at all these plastics being found in the brain [00:23:00] and in atherosclerosis, things like this, they’re telling w- wa- that the person has been exposed to all these chemicals, but once they get into the body they tend to be fairly inert.
Question then is how to get rid of them, and the best way I know to get rid of them is to bind them in the gut. The body’s gonna do a little but keep on get rid of them if you bind them in the, bind them in the gut. Now, I just read a study on a particular lactobacillus strain that actually binds to microplastics in the gut.
Oh. I mean, I j- just read the study a couple of days ago, so I’m very intrigued about this. I also found a study that looked at certain kind of microorganisms in the gut that also get rid of arsenic more efficiently. Oh. So we’re looking at the gut and looking at the organism in the gut.
We’re learning more and more they play a significant role in helping protect us. Right. If you get the wrong bacteria in your gut, not only are they producing the wrong chemicals, but they’re also not getting rid of the r- the bad chemicals.
Dr. Pizzorno: Let me switch over to my headphones here.
Dr. Weitz: What about the biodegradable bags that they now sell in the supermarkets in LA?
Dr. Pizzorno: Good question. [00:24:00] I do not have an answer for that at this point. Okay.
One… Another to look… to study. Yeah, because I, like you, I’ve looked at those things, and they say a bunch of them are compostable and things of this nature. I haven’t one put into my compost because I know-
Dr. Weitz: By, by the way, going back to the fires for one, one more question is somebody asked me if if…
when is it safe to go back into a, an area where homes were burned? So let’s say your home wasn’t burned and they supposedly cleaned it up. In the Palisades, for example, the EPA decided they would take about 12 inches of soil and that would be enough. Other people said no, you gotta test each area for every so many square feet, and then you might have to go deeper.”
What do you… wh- when is it safe to go back into an area that’s been hit with a fire?
Dr. Pizzorno: Well, wow, that’s a challenging question. All I have is opinion on this.
Dr. Pizzorno: first off, if you [00:25:00] can still smell it… I mean, if you’re smelling something- Right … it’s entering your body.
Dr. Pizzorno: So if you can still smell it, it means there’s still toxins being released.
Dr. Pizzorno: That’s number one. In terms of soil remediation, if you took off the top foot, my thinking is that would be plenty to get rid of any problem with the fire. I mean-
Dr. Pizzorno: I would bet six inches would be enough.
Dr. Pizzorno: But I don’t… I don’t know. It’s not my area of expertise.
So, and you were talking about these PFOAs and PFASs- Yes … and unfortunately I keep reading articles about how they’re, like, present everywhere. Yes. I mean, so many different water systems. And unfortunately we decided to stop regulating them a- at all.
Dr. Pizzorno: Now, the problem with something when it becomes so prevalent, it’s hard to kind of squeeze out of the re- out of the research what role they’re playing.
And we… same thing with arsenic. Arsenic is so prevalent. I think it’s one reason why people don’t realize just how much disease it causes.
Dr. Weitz: What can we do to prevent arsenic? Now, we n- keep hearing reports that arsenic’s [00:26:00] in the rice. It used to be- Right … in the chicken. I don’t know if it’s still in the chicken.
Dr. Pizzorno: Mm-hmm. So the three major sources of arsenic are water, chicken, and rice.
Dr. Pizzorno: Now, with rice the good news is that if you boil the rice for five minutes, throw out the water, and then finish cooking it, you get rid of the arsenic, okay? Now, unfortunately you get rid of trace minerals as well, but that’ll get rid of the arsenic.
Dr. Weitz: In terms of- Can you soak it overnight? Will that get rid, will that get rid of it?
Dr. Pizzorno: You know, it may, but the research that I am aware of says you’ve gotta cook it for a few minutes.
Dr. Pizzorno: Okay? So not for very long, but for a few minutes, then throw it out.
Dr. Pizzorno: So, Now with chickens, it’s a little more unclear.
Up until about, I don’t know, 15 years ago, arsenical compounds were the standard of care for chicken husbandry. So, while it’s no longer standard of care, it hasn’t exactly been outlawed either, although it’s not recommended anymore. Having said that, the areas where the chickens are grown or growing up, the areas are saturated with [00:27:00] arsenic, so there still is arsenic in chicken.
Now I- I, about three years ago, I dove into the research to figure out how much arsenic is still in chicken in the United States.
Dr. Pizzorno: I could not find a single study. Okay, I found studies 15 years ago showing how much arsenic was in chicken. I could not find recent studies that actually looked at how much arsenic was currently in chicken.
So I don’t know what the answer is, but I’m very surprised and suspicious that there’s n- I could not find any research.
Dr. Weitz: All right. So when when it comes to buying chicken so many chicken is processed with all kinds of chemicals like bleach and stuff.
Dr. Weitz: That’s, So we all try to stay away from those things, and I wonder if we’re actually ending up with more arsenic.
Dr. Pizzorno: Good question. I wish I’d, I wish I knew the answer.
Dr. Pizzorno: And then … I suspect it’s not a major source anymore, but I’m not confident.
Dr. Weitz: Okay. And then in terms of the water, we just have to have a good purification system, right?
Dr. Weitz: Reverse [00:28:00] osmosis.
Dr. Pizzorno: Yes. So what I recommend to people, like we do in our own home, is we have a whole house carbon block filter. So every, all water coming into our house is cleaned up. Now, a carbon block filter will get rid of all the chemicals, but it won’t get rid of all the arsenic. It may knock it, arsenic down by a third. Now, fortunately, here in Seattle we just don’t, we don’t happen to have wa- arsenic in our water supply.
But a person does have wa- arsenic in the water supply, they do need a more sophisticated filtration system. So reverse osmosis is an example of one that does work. There are also some specific systems that have if you have a carbon block filter, you can add another filter to it that has certain kind of resin exchanges in it that’ll help get rid of the arsenic as well.
Dr. Weitz: So when you have a whole house filtration, it’s typically carbon block? Is that what it’s usually made of?
Dr. Pizzorno: That’s the typical one, yeah. So there, there are varying levels of sophis- sophistication. Now we’ve got a more sophisticated one if we need it, but we didn’t happen to need it. But my recommendation is the whole house, because if you put something on just your kitchen, well, that’s fine, but you drink [00:29:00] water throughout the house, but more importantly, you shower in water.
Dr. Pizzorno: And when you shower in the water, it’s now evaporating any toxins in it, and you’re absorbing them.
Dr. Weitz: Right. What do you think about the fact that we have chlorine and in LA we have chlorine and ammonia to kill bacteria? Mm-hmm. And then of course they put fluoride in too, which I believe is a toxin as well.
Dr. Pizzorno: So we take a public health perspective, one of the biggest improvements in human longevity was adding chlorine to the water supply, because basically babies young people were, and older people too, but mainly young people, were dying from infectious diseases- Right … from that, from organism in the water.
So clean up the water supply and chlorinating it is actually an important public health measure. Now, having said that, if the water itself was fairly dirty with organic compounds, when we put chlorine in with those organic compounds, they produce carcinogens. The researchers knew that they would increase the [00:30:00] instance of car- of cancer by chlorinating water, but it was more than made up for by the number of people’s lives were saved. That’s one of the main reasons why we use the Carbon Block filter, ’cause they’ll get rid of all those carcinogens
Dr. Weitz: Right. So I guess ideally you have whole house filtration and you have reverse osmosis for the water that you drink and cook with
Dr. Pizzorno: Well, if you have arsenic exposure. If you have ar- if you don’t have arsenic, then you don’t need the reverse osmosis.
Dr. Weitz: Well, aren’t there all these other chemicals? I understand people put prescription drugs down their toilet- Yeah, so carbon, carbon- … and it ends up in the water system, and-
Dr. Pizzorno: But the carbon block filter will cle- will clear all those things out.
Dr. Pizzorno: Like, it… and actually it is remarkable. We, it just so happens this past week I replaced our whole house carbon block filter, ’cause the one we had before, 25 years old, it wasn’t working anymore. We are stunned by the difference in smell of the water in the shower, the taste of the water when we’re drinking it. My wife talks about her, [00:31:00] how her skin is much nicer when she’s using our clean water for washing rather than the, the city water. It is remarkable how different it is.
Dr. Weitz: So for drinking water, we wanna avoid plastic, and some people are still using BPA-free plastic water bottles, but of course those most likely have BPS or some other similar compound that may actually be more toxic, correct?
Dr. Pizzorno: Correct. Yeah people were right to be concerned about BPA, but what happened, manufacturers replaced it with other bisphenols, and some of those bisphenols are more toxic.
But you mentioned bisphenol S, and that’s a good one to bring up, because bisphenol S appears to be especially toxic to male fertility. Research stuff shown as the levels of bisphenols, particularly bisphenol S, goes up not only does the quantity of the sperm go down, but the quality of sperm goes down, the abnormal, and the abnormalized sperm go up, and basically it’s making men in- infertile.
Dr. Weitz: Can you talk about how so many of these toxins are playing a role as [00:32:00] endocrine-disrupting substances?
Dr. Pizzorno: Yeah. Yes. That’s that’s exactly what they are. They’re endocrine-disrupting substances. So that means that it’s not just, you know, you think about a toxin, oh, it’s causing lung damage, things like this. Well, it’s also changing how our hormones are being, not only produced, but also how receptive our sensors are to those hormones. So we’re basically kind of dysregulating a… what is supposed to be a carefully regulated system.
Dr. Weitz: And one thing that I’ve read in so many articles is that these chemicals are kind of interesting in that in men they tend to be estrogenic, and in women some of them tend to be androgenic
Dr. Pizzorno: Yes. So this is, what’s so fascinating about these things is we have these receptor sites on our cells, and the receptor sites are there to say, so to say when, well, so here’s some estrogen there. Okay, receptor site grabs onto it and causes physiological changes in the cell. Same thing with testosterone.[00:33:00] But when you look at male versus women, our sensitivity and our reactivity to these estrogen, testosterone vary widely. So for men, it turns out when exposed to these, these toxins, they tend to overstimulate the estrogen receptor sites in men. Whereas in women, they tend to overstimulate the testosterone receptor sites.
So you start getting those kinds of damages going on. But also, when they bind to the estrogen receptor sites, they’re less active as estrogen promoters. So receptor sites, while they get the message, it’s not a good enough message, so the estrogen effects in women are not as good. So they might look at, you got estrogen has, let’s say, 100, a strength of 100, while these things have strengths maybe only 10%. Well, for women, means rather than have 100% effect, we’re only getting a 10% effect. But for men, well, they only have expect about 1% effect of estrogen and again, 10% effect of estrogen. So even though it’s not high, it’s too high for men and inhibits women.
Dr. Weitz: So, what do [00:34:00] you think about plant estrogens versus these toxic estrogens?
Dr. Pizzorno: So My only… I don’t have a-
Dr. Weitz: I’m thinking of foods like soy, for example … right,
Dr. Pizzorno: right, right. So, research has indeed shown that foods like soy and such do have protective benefits. So these phytoestrogens do have some protective mechanisms. I’m I’m not confident in my understanding of that research around men and women. I think the, the, the good research shows there is benefit. I think it’s more complicated than just, oh, we have less prostate cancer when men eat our soy products, for example. I think there’s lots of I,
Dr. Weitz: I thought it was because the plant estrogens, which are weaker estrogens and they’re probably not estrogens, but have some estrogenic effects, are taking up the estrogen receptor sites, blocking the toxic estrogens
Dr. Pizzorno: Huh, I hadn’t thought about it from that perspective. I think the issue [00:35:00] is that they’re outside the regulatory system. Now, where it… It doesn’t matter where it’s coming from, it’s outside our regulatory system, so it’s disrupting our regulations. Whether a plant estrogen is less problematic than an environmental estrogen, well, probably.
Dr. Weitz: Right? And some of the data, say, on soy for breast cancer especially some of the data out of China has shown and there was one large study where the women who had a previous history of breast cancer who consumed the most soy had the lowest risk of recurrence.
Dr. Pizzorno: Interesting. Interesting. You know, that, that’s a, a good question. I don’t have a good answer, but that may be right. Yeah. One of the fun things about environmental medicine is that there’s so much to study.
Dr. Weitz: So when it comes to drinking water, should we use glass or steel? Is steel a problem because you can get nickel?
Dr. Pizzorno: Right. So what we prefer are glass [00:36:00] and these very hard-coated ceramics. Okay. So for example, we’re converting all our cookware into ceramics, and they’re non-stick, and they don’t appear to be releasing chemicals into the foods. So there, there are good solutions out there. So there’s no aluminum in our house anymore. There’s no Perfluorinate-covered non-stick coatings in our house. We’ve gotten rid of all those things.
Dr. Weitz: Now, what about these apparently non-stick ceramic titanium pans that they say are safe. Are they?
Dr. Pizzorno: So what I’ve, what little I’ve been able to find says yes, but I would like to see more extensive research. Okay. It does seem like a step in the right direction.
Dr. Weitz: Okay. How do we test for toxins? We, at our office, we tend to use the Vibrant urine testing. We’ve used Great Plains or I forgot what the name of the company is now, but what do you, what is the best way to test for toxins? Back in the day, we used to get the DMSA and have the patients take a certain amount and then do a six-hour [00:37:00] urine, but then DMSA became only available by prescription, and as a chiropractor, can’t prescribe. It got too difficult. So we don’t use a a chelating challenge anymore. And, I wonder, are we really getting sensitive enough results without that? And i- and some practitioners I know I know I’m making this a long question, sorry, but will say, “Well, let’s use glutathione as a provocative agent.” Are there ways, So does does urine testing is it- No,
Dr. Pizzorno: Wait. You’ve covered a lot of questions. Okay. Let me start responding. Okay. Right. Okay. So my, my thinking on how to test for toxins has evolved quite a lot over the last few years. So num- number one is obviously can you directly measure the toxins? Our preference would be, of course, to measure the toxins in the tissues. For example, we know mercury’s very damaging to the brain. So what we’d like to do is stick a needle into the brain and see how much mercury’s in the brain. Now, in [00:38:00] general, people don’t like you putting needles into their brain.
Right. Okay? So we have to use other tissues like urine, for example. So what the problem is with urine is that- People were using the federal standards for what was considered safe levels of a toxin in the urine and the blood, other tissues of the body. And the definition for a vast majority of them is that by definition, you’re only toxic if you’re in the top 5% of body load and the compared to the rest of the public.
And if you’re the bottom 9% of toxic load, then you’re not toxic. Well, the problem is that does not actually correlate with what the research says. Let’s look at arsenic. For example, arsenic, 50 micrograms per lit- for gr- gram creatinine is considered the toxic threshold for arsenic. But if you look at the research shows increased instances of cancer and other conditions at five micrograms per gram creatinine.
Okay? So it’s like it’s one-tenth. So what’s happening, people are doing chelation therapy, chelation testing to say, “Okay, let’s find [00:39:00] enough of this toxin to show you really have it.” All you gotta do is do the regular testing, but get the right standards, and then you don’t have to do challenge testing anymore.
Dr. Pizzorno: But having said that, I wanna go further. As I started looking into it and realizing number one is we don’t know we are not able to measure the toxin in the tissue that’s most important. Number two, since we can’t, we’re having to then use these indirect measures, and they’re indirect. We’re not sure how accurate they are.
And number three, there are so many toxins, we can’t test for all of them. So I’m suggesting to doctors instead, rather than looking at a particular level of particular toxin, you may wanna do that anyway, but let’s look instead at how much, how hard is the body working to protect itself from toxins and how much damage has been done from toxins.
And then you have a way of measuring, well, did you decrease the toxic load? So first thing I say is, let’s measure the person’s e- liver enzyme called GGTP. Now, this is a standard liver enzyme, and what it does is it recycles [00:40:00] glutathione. So the more we’re exposed to environmental toxins, the more our smart body say, “Oh, we need more glutathione to protect ourselves,” and we operate operate GGTP Virtually every toxin I’ve looked at directly correlates with the GTT levels directly correlates with the level of toxin in the body.
That’s great. Okay. The body’s fighting hard. Next thing I’d like to do is I’d like to look at how much damage has been done to the liver, so I look at ALT. Now, again, looking at ALT, while the standard is up to 30, well, anything, ALT, anything above 20 indicates the liver is being damaged. Okay? And then the final one, and there’s two more- So
Dr. Weitz: wait a minute.
Dr. Pizzorno: Yeah. It’s my measure for, oh, you’re starting to get some toxic effects.
Dr. Weitz: By, by the way, you know, these labs have different measurements. Yes. And, you know, the standard at UCLA since the pandemic for ALT is now 60.
Dr. Pizzorno: It used to be 30.
Dr. Weitz: I know. UCLA I’m talking about. They’re…
Dr. Pizzorno: So sometimes, it depends on the equipment they use, they can get some different measures. But anyway interesting. Okay. [00:41:00] So again, same thing.
Dr. Weitz: Every- Well, think about it. The pande- we had the pandemic. All these people were drinking more. Right. Interesting. They were, you know, weren’t, a- and you know, their liver enzymes went up, and that became the new norm.
Dr. Pizzorno: Wow. You’re right. That’s the new norm. 95% ra- range, new norm. Okay. So next one I look at is kidneys. Now, I use eGFR because it’s readily available. The problem is eGFR is too easily affected by too many things. But once again, every toxin I look at, the more the toxin, the lower the kidney function is.
It’s just very consistent. And the final one I like to look at is urinary 8-OHdG. It’s a measure of DNA damage. So when our D- DNA gets damaged, our smart bodies re- remove the damaged DNA and put back in the healthy piece of the DNA, while the damaged DNA ends up in the urine. Once again, every toxin I’ve looked at, 8-OHdG in urine goes up in proportion to the toxic load. So what I say to people is, “Do these four measures and it’ll tell you, well, how toxic’s the person. Then as you do your intervention, these numbers will get better.” [00:42:00]
Dr. Weitz: And if they don’t get be-
Dr. Pizzorno: and if they don’t get better, either they’re not getting the toxin out or they’re being exposed to too much of it still.
Dr. Weitz: Now, if, let’s, if somebody has higher levels of urinary toxins could that just mean that they’re doing a better job of getting rid of them? Like, let’s say you have two people who maybe are living similar lives, getting exposed to similar toxins- Mm-hmm … and one of them has higher levels on their urine. Could it be that the one that doesn’t have the higher levels is just not getting rid of them?
Dr. Pizzorno: Ab- absolutely true. And that’s, again, another reason why I like looking at how much damage is happening, not just what the level of a toxin is in a particular bloo- in a ticker.
Dr. Weitz: Right. And what about serum levels? We didn’t talk about serum levels. The reason I don’t do serum levels is because that’s just the current level in the bloodstream.
Dr. Pizzorno: Right. So one would think that blood would be better than urine, and I think there’s some truth to that. But problem is, it’s not true for everything. So for example, [00:43:00] urinary arsenic has strong correlations with many chronic diseases. Blood levels of arsenic have virtually no correlation. So there’s a number of situations like that where it makes it hard to understand. Clearly blood is gonna be, is going to be better but not for everything.
Dr. Weitz: Okay. So, yeah I’ve done a GGT test regularly on patients. I hardly ever see that go up. I don’t know why. Maybe I’m not using it… What, what number do you like to see that de- concerns you?
Dr. Pizzorno: Well, I’ll use myself as ex- as my own as an example. So when I first learned about this 15 years ago, I was doing this corporate wellness program in Canada, and we were testing people extensively for toxins and nutritional status, et cetera. And I found… And the normal range for a GTTP, by the way, is 10, 10 to 50. Or it could be 10 to 60. It depends upon the lab. So my GTTP was 28, and I thought, “Well, that’s pretty good.” Then I looked at the research that showed that a GTTP [00:44:00] of 40 has correlates with a 20-fold increased risk of diabetes.
The GTTP is proportional to diabetogens. Then I found a study that showed that GTTP of 80 30, had an eight-fold increased risk for diabetes. So I said to myself, “Wait a minute. 28 maybe was not as good as I thought it was.” Then I started getting even more careful, and I’ve been tracking it over years. Went from went from 28 to 24 to 17. My last one was 11. Wow. So that’s telling me that I was going through step by step, decreased my toxic load, my GTTP went down, which helped me I’m going the right direction.
Dr. Weitz: Are there foods that enhance detoxification?
Dr. Pizzorno: Well, sure. Any food high in rich in fiber is gonna do that. Your cabbage family foods promote the liver detoxification. By the way, you might wonder, why do cabbage family foods improve liver detoxification? Because cabbage, cabbages are full of these compounds that are actually potentially toxic to [00:45:00] humans, so we have to detoxify them so it, it doesn’t, we don’t get hurt by them. Well, by upregulating enzymes that detoxify those things, well, we get rid of other toxins as well, and that’s why it’s beneficial for us.
Dr. Weitz: All right. What about the strategy of supporting the liver to enhance detoxification? And there’s a whole series of supplements around that can support phase one, phase two of liver detoxification. Some people talk about phase three.
Dr. Pizzorno: Right. Absolutely good good strategy. And I… And this is very real. So we look at the liver, you know, y- as you know, phase one and phase two. Most people don’t realize that phase one, what are called cytochrome P450s, these are iron-dependent. So if you have a woman coming in who’s menstruating heavily and is an- anemic, she’s gonna have more trouble with toxicity because she can’t produce enough iron, has not enough iron to make those enzymes work properly.
So that’s… there’s that. Then you start looking at all these other enzymes, particularly in the the phase two, you should look into what’s needed for them, the B vitamins, the [00:46:00] minerals, things like this. Turns out virtually every required nutrient is required for our detox systems to work properly. Then you look at the general population and realize the general population, the vast majority of the population is deficient in multiple nutrients, not just one. When I did my study in Canada, where I looked at nutritional status of 4,500 oil field workers in Canada, only 1% of them did not have at least one nutritional deficiency, and 99% of them had at least one nutritional deficiency, 50% of them had, like, six. It was just huge. So nutritional deficiencies are very common
Dr. Weitz: How should we measure glutathione levels? Are serum levels of glutathione a good measure?
Dr. Pizzorno: Yes. What I’ve measured is RBC, or red blood cell glutathione. That seems to be pretty good. I haven’t studied enough to be really authoritative about it, but from what I’ve seen, that, that looks pretty good.
Dr. Weitz: Right. All right. What are people getting wrong about toxins?
Dr. Pizzorno: Not being aware of how bad they are. [00:47:00]
Dr. Pizzorno: People need to be… I mean, I’ll be very specific. People need to get paranoid about toxins.
Dr. Pizzorno: That’s what it’s gonna take, ’cause they’re everywhere: air, water, food makeup containers. It’s just everywhere.
Dr. Weitz: Yeah, unfortunately. And they’re big drivers of autoimmune diseases- Yes of so many chronic diseases. You mentioned heart disease and diabetes.
Dr. Pizzorno: Yeah have you interviewed Datis Kharazian?
Dr. Weitz: I’ve never been able to get him on. I know you did a course for him, right?
Dr. Pizzorno: I did. I actually, I did a five-hour course on environmental medicine for him. You need to talk to Tatis. He, you know, he’s a chiropractor like you, and he really knows his-
Dr. Weitz: I know. I’ve talked to him before. Yeah. I just can’t get him to come on. Maybe maybe you can talk to him for me.
Dr. Pizzorno: Well, hey, do you know about the research he did with Arist кра то Arist кра то Bilgan? Bystrani? Yeah. Have you seen that research?
Dr. Weitz: I know they’ve done a lot of work together.
Dr. Pizzorno: Well, so they’ve got a, an research that’s really advanced in immunologist. So they’ve done research looking at-
Dr. Weitz: Yeah, I’ve talked to him many times.
Dr. Pizzorno: Oh, good. Yeah. Okay. Okay. So you know about [00:48:00] the the autoimmune diseases being-
Dr. Pizzorno: they’re not reacting to bi- normal bio tissues. They’re reacting to bio tissues that have been contaminated with metals and chemicals that make them abnormal. Right. That’s what the body’s reacting to. I thought that’s absolutely fascinating.
Dr. Weitz: Yeah. All right. So I think we’ve covered most of the questions I had. Any other information you want to leave everybody with?
Dr. Pizzorno: Actually, I like to br- broach a different topic with you, and I’d like to- Sure … get your thoughts on it.
Dr. Pizzorno: So I just wrote an editorial, Cure or Suppression? Okay. So I was looking at how do you know when you’ve cured a patient? And starting with the hypothesis that drugs work too well. They work too well to turn off the body’s symptoms that the body’s breaking, so you don’t have to deal with the causes. For example, ch- high cholesterol and heart disease. Well, you just turn off the symptom of the high cholesterol with a drug and you think everything, everything’s fine. Well, if it’s, they’re having problems because of arsenic or cadmium or lead or one of these other things, you ignore that, and it keeps on [00:49:00] causing trouble.
So I was thinking, so how do you know if you cured a patient? So number one, yes, well, did the presenting problem go away? Okay, well, you gotta start there. Presenting problem didn’t go away, you haven’t cured the patient. But let’s look at that more closely. If the presenting problem is, like inflammation in rheumatoid arthritis that a woman is getting because she has high levels of PCBs, just because you’ve turned off the inflammation doesn’t mean you’ve cured the disease, because as soon as you stop doing it, it all comes back.
Okay, so number one is not is it cured, but does it come back? Number two might be, does it come back when you stop the intervention? Now, there are some situations, however, where you might have a natural intervention that’s necessary. Look at a person with a genetic susceptibility. For example, a person with osteoporosis, and they have vitamin D receptor sites so that the normal amount of vitamin D that’s recommended to people is not enough, so they need extra vitamin D to maintain bone, the bones.
Okay, well, that’s an example of where you’ve got a cure but you can’t stop the intervention. [00:50:00] Okay, so first one is, when you stop the intervention, does the condition come back? And if it doesn’t come back, then probably in the right direction. But if it does come back, well, is it because that person’s genetically needs something? But I’m going to add a third one to this. When I’m done, I’ll ask your thoughts on it. I’m gonna add a third one to it. What is the side effect of your intervention? With conventional medicine, side effects are the fourth leading cause of death in the United States, so we have huge problems. But we natural medicine people think the side effect of a proper intervention is better health. Because remember, we’re dealing with the cause of a particular problem. It’s not only causing that one problem, it’s causing other problems as well. So if you get rid of that, the person should feel generally healthier. Now we know we’ve got cure, a cure. Present problem’s gone, and the person’s feeling healthier. What do you think?
Dr. Weitz: Oh, I think it’s super important. And that, unfortunately overall health is never considered as part of modern medicine.
Dr. Pizzorno: That seems to be the case, doesn’t
Dr. Weitz: it? And it’s crazy the [00:51:00] way conventional medicine will critique functional medicine approaches, like say Dr. Bredesen’s approaches to Al- Alzheimer’s disease, and he’s getting people to eat healthier, exercise, sleep better increase blood flow, manage, you know, their inflammation, all these other factors replete nutrients.
And even if their brain health didn’t significantly change, even though it does and reverses the side effect is their overall health gets so much better, and yet they’re so antagonistic to that approach because it, it hasn’t been shown to be effective in a randomized clinical trial where you only change one intervention.
Dr. Weitz: And it’s one of the reasons why I think conventional medicine has a tough time appreciating functional medicine, because we’re not just changing one variable. We’re [00:52:00] not just adding a drug and leaving everything else the same, and-
Dr. Pizzorno: Well said. And it’s such a huge problem in our field because what we do we look at the whole person. We don’t just look at one thing, and that’s where conventional medicine gets into trouble ’cause it says, “Well, we’ll try to get the whole thing done with just one agent.” Well, okay, you take a sledgehammer to it. Okay, fine, you’ll turn something off, but if you look at the whole picture, much smaller interventions grouped together have much, much bigger effects than just one intervention at a high dose.
Dr. Weitz: But we have to change what is considered a valid scientific study.
Dr. Pizzorno: Yeah. Yeah. What’s… So that’s what, that’s why I h- did the whole thing about was cure versus suppression. What are definitions of success? If our definition of success is, oh, the blood pressure got lower or the cholesterol levels went down, well, that’s pretty easy to do with drugs. But if our measure of success is, oh, the body’s now producing normal amounts of cholesterol like it should, and it’s regulating its blood sugar the way it’s supposed to on its own, well, if [00:53:00] that’s your criteria, that’s much harder to do. Okay?
Dr. Pizzorno: It’s the only way you get to cure. I mean, this is why we now suffer the highest burden of chronic disease in every age group ever in human history, ’cause the drugs work too well to turn off the symptoms of the body breaking. We’re not dealing with why the body’s breaking. Right. So next thing, you have more disease.
Dr. Weitz: Absolutely, which is why we gotta get to root causes.
Dr. Weitz: And I would argue everybody ideally should have a conventional doctor and a functional medicine doctor so you can look at the p- whole picture.
Dr. Pizzorno: Absolutely. Exactly. Every profession has its strengths and its weaknesses. Let’s stop trying to make conventional medicine work for everything, because it simply doesn’t.
Dr. Weitz: Right. Well, thank you so much, Joe.
Dr. Pizzorno: Ben, always a great chat with you. All the best.
Dr. Weitz: It’s such an honor. Thank you.
Thank you for making it all the way through this episode of the Rational Wellness Podcast. For those of you who enjoy [00:54:00] listening to the Rational Wellness Podcast, I would very much appreciate it if you could go to Apple Podcasts or Spotify and give us a five-star ratings and review. As you may know, I continue to accept a limited number of new patients per month for functional medicine. If you would like help overcoming a gut or other chronic health condition, and want to prevent chronic problems, and want to promote longevity, please call my Santa Monica Weitz Sports Chiropractic and Nutrition office at 310-395-3111, and we can set you up for a consultation for functional medicine. And I will talk to everybody next week.
