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The Neuro Experience
Doctor Explains How Obesogens and Environmental Toxins Are Harming Our Health
01:02:37
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- [00:00]
A
I actually personally think there are much more important toxins we should be trying to avoid than aluminum because of the amount of. Because of the body of evidence that's showing its impact on humans. And the most important group is endocrine disruptors. You know, there's a crossover between that and obesogens. Both of these endocrine disruptors and obesogens, they are chemicals that have been recognized by NIH as chemicals that can affect our metabolic health.
- [00:34]
B
Welcome. How are you doing?
- [00:36]
A
Really well. Such a pleasure to be here.
- [00:38]
B
Vivian, I am so excited to interview you for so many reasons. One, as you know, I'm an Alzheimer's disease researcher. I live and breathe it. And lately I've been seeing so many articles, so much. There is so much coming out in the science around toxic exposure.
- [00:59]
A
Right?
- [01:00]
B
So whether it's heavy metals, whether it's microplastics, whether it's toxic mold. This is a field that I never thought I would get into. To be honest, I didn't really understand the science behind it, but now I'm getting more into it, and then I actually found you. And that's why we are here today. And I want to open up where the statement that you've made. So studies show that using aluminum utensils and cookware can double the amount of aluminum in your blood compared to those who don't. So my question is, how concerned should we be about the potential oxidative damage and DNA damage of aluminum?
- [01:38]
A
I love that question because I think when it comes to environmental toxins, we have to pull the lens back and consider the whole individual. It considered the context and the nuance. We have one camp saying, don't worry about aluminum in cookware. It doesn't leach. It doesn't get absorbed. Well, we have studies that show that it can get absorbed. Then we have studies that show that when it does get absorbed, in this particular study, they actually looked at the white blood cells in the blood sample, and. And they showed oxidative stress in those white blood cells and DNA damage. So it's affecting our cells. The question is, does it lead to disease? Right. That's what I'm concerned about as a medical doctor. And, you know, when you pull the lens back, you got to look at what someone's overall intake is of aluminum. How are they exposed through other things like antacids as a huge, you know, source of aluminum, potentially aluminum containing antacids for heartburn. So if you're taking one of those, then, yes, you should probably be more concerned than someone who is not exposed to other forms of aluminum in their daily lives. But you know, in terms for your audience who are concerned about brain health. Right. We have studies showing that people with Alzheimer's have more aluminum in their brain and csf. So that's the fluid surrounding the brain and the spinal cord, the nerves. And we know that it's causing oxidative damage, which is leading to inflammation. And we know that inflammation is kind of the hallmark at the center of Alzheimer's. So as a doctor, I look at it as well. At this point, we have, let's say, a glass of water that rats are drinking from. So we have some preliminary data saying, hey, rats are getting sick and some of them are dying. But we don't have conclusive proof that aluminum is causing the brain damage. So do you want to drink that cup of water or not? I don't. I would. You know, coming from the uk, I take a precautionary measure. Like I want to have things be shown to be safe before I put into my body. Whereas in the US is kind of the opposite. Right. You have to prove that it's harmful before it's taken away from consumer usage.
- [04:13]
B
Yeah. And that's scary. That's the scary thing about this health care industry. But I want to strip it back and understand what you're talking about when you say aluminum. Are we talking about aluminum foil? Are we talking about aluminum utensils? What about the aluminum that we eat, like our knives and forks? Like what. How are we consuming it? Is it when we get, you know, when it gets heated in the oven and then how much of it is actually, Are we allowed, like, what's the, the toxic load per week?
- [04:43]
A
Yeah. So the WHO set a standard of daily limit of 2 milligram per kilogram of body weight. So for me, that's about 140 milligrams. And according to the CDC, Americans are consuming between 7 to 9 milligrams per day through just food, just food exposures. So that's not including medications, your air, your water, your cookware and all of that. So just average. So if you add in an antacid, that could easily go into. That's your hunting.
- [05:16]
B
That's wild that we've got aluminum in antacids. I mean, what's the population? I was actually just interviewing Dr. Nathan Bryan and he's a nitric oxide expert and he was speaking about the amount of people that are actually on antacids. I don't know the. I don't know, you know, per capita or population size. What is but it's a very high amount of people consuming it. Now you're telling me that these antacids have aluminum in some of them?
- [05:41]
A
Yeah, like my lenta, some of them. So if you take one of those, then you should be more concerned and should be more kind of aware of what you're getting in through other sources. But yet one of the main ways is through cookware and, you know, in your kitchen, basically your drinkware. So, for example, if you put acidic food into aluminum foil, studies have shown that if you. I'm just going to say that again. Studies have shown that if you marinate acidic food and aluminum foil, you can increase the amount of aluminum in that food by up to 40 times.
- [06:26]
B
Give me an example, because that is wild to me. I'm great. We use a lot of aluminum. Right. So this is scary to me.
- [06:34]
A
So, for example, you want to marinate. Check. Chicken.
- [06:37]
B
Yep.
- [06:38]
A
You add some lemon juice. There's your. No acidity.
- [06:42]
B
Okay.
- [06:43]
A
Tomatoes also acidic. If you're roasting tomatoes in aluminum foil, that can increase. And if you're adding fruit, like rhubarb, for example, very acidic. I don't know. Rhubarb. Yeah. So those are the kind of situation. Vinegar, another example. So what you want to do if you want to use aluminum, is you want to marinate your food in a glass or some kind of an inert container first, and then when you're ready to cook it, then you wrap it in the aluminum. So you're then reducing your exposure.
- [07:15]
B
Okay. So it's all about reducing the exposure to these toxic or toxins, if you will. What are we actually talking about when you say utensils? Because when I think about it, I've got a spatula at home that I use for my eggs. I flip the eggs. It's. It is aluminum.
- [07:32]
A
Right.
- [07:33]
B
So what do I need to be cooking in to have the best case scenario?
- [07:37]
A
I prefer stainless steel, but I know some pans with a coating, you can't use metal on it. Right. So then you probably want to use something like wood instead. But I think it's also important to consider contact time. Right. Because the longer the food is in contact with aluminum, the more aluminum leaches. So if you're only touching the food a few seconds, I really don't think it's going to be that, you know, that big of a deal. But if you are, you know, heating food up and you're stirring constantly and that spatula is sitting in the pot in the food, I think that's more a case for you Know, change.
- [08:17]
B
It's fascinating to me because I don't think even, you know, for me, I see the detrimental effects of it. But I want to know what are the other effects, other than raising our inflammatory biomarkers and inflammation in the blood, what are some other effects of aluminum in our blood?
- [08:36]
A
I think if, if we're talking about studies so far is mainly DNA damage and oxidative stress. There's not been a lot of association with other things. I mean, there's a lot of conflicting information or conflicting conclusions from studies, whether it's linked to Alzheimer's or not or cancer. Right. I'm sure you've read that.
- [08:59]
B
Ye.
- [09:00]
A
But I mean, oxidative stress and DNA damage means chronic disease.
- [09:06]
B
Yeah, exactly. At the forefront of things.
- [09:08]
A
So it's just a matter of how, when, in my opinion. Right. And we know you're not going to get sick from aluminum overnight. It's going to take years and years. And, you know, once you've lost sight of that initial trigger, how do you attribute to it in a study? It's very, very hard. And I think that's the problem with the study of most of these environmental toxins is that the time lapse between trigger and disease formation, there's like years and maybe tens or 20 years.
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B
Yeah.
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A
And it's really difficult then to link that association.
- [09:42]
B
So in terms of other environmental toxins, without talking about plastics right now, because we're going to get into that, it's a whole spiel. What are some other environmental toxins that you think are on par with plastic? The aluminum.
- [09:53]
A
I actually personally think there are much more important toxins we should be trying to avoid than aluminum because of the amount of. Because of the body of evidence that's showing its impact on humans. And the most important group is endocrine disruptors. So a lot, you know, there's a crossover between that and obesogens. Right. But both, both of these endocrine disruptors and obesogens, they are chemicals that have been recognized by NIH as chemicals that can affect our metabolic health, how we burn energy and metabolize in the body. They have this effect through a myriad of different mechanisms, but mostly by interfering with our own innate hormones. Hormones are these chemical messengers that tell ourselves what to do. Right. So blood sugar regulation, for example, that's down to hormones. Hormone, insulin, your weight, metabolism, thyroid hormone, fertility, your sex hormones, your testosterone, your estrogen. So hormones are really, really important, kind of the centerpiece of our health, but they're being eroded by environmental toxins. I really think that environmental toxins are a silent killer that we are basically ignoring right now in conventional medicine.
- [11:23]
B
Yeah, I 100 agree with you. Because like I said to you, I'm seeing the studies. And what we're seeing is we now know when it comes to Alzheimer's disease, that amyloid beta, which is the hallmark of Alzheimer's disease, one of them, it's a multi proteinopathy. But we know that the amyloid itself is an antimicrobial peptide. So in the presence of these microbes, in the presence of inflammation, we get an uptake in order to protect the brain. The brain is basically saying, you know what? Louisa is under attack. Let's raise the amount of amyloid in her brain so we can protect her against this. But what happens when you've got the environmental exposures to toxins from the air that we're breathing and then the aluminum and then the plastics and then the stress that we have, and then the lack of sleep and lack of physical activity? It becomes a heavy load on us. And I guess that's why we incur these disease states.
- [12:22]
A
Exactly. Yeah. I liken it to cutting down a tree. I love trees, by the way, so don't come at me, tree lovers. But if you know we're trying to cut down a big tree, I by myself, one hit with an axe, it's not going to do anything. You might see a little den. The tree's not coming down. But if there's 10 of us, each with our own wax, and we're hacking it several times, that tree will come down. Right. And environmental toxins, just like what you said, it's kind of like that. You're hitting at multiple points. Some of these toxins might interact with each other and have a synergistic effect where one plus one doesn't equal two equals five. So they're enhancing each other's harm on our bodies. That's when that tree falls. And I think that's the big picture we got to remember is that it's everything coming in together.
- [13:15]
B
You said something earlier, obesogens. I've never heard that term.
- [13:20]
A
So obesogens is a relatively new term as coined by a professor at USC called Professor Blumberg. And basically he identified a group of chemicals that can affect our metabolic health and increase our propensity towards weight gain. And back in the days when he first started talking about it, and when I first started reading research and started talking about it, there was a lot of backlash. People were calling me names and saying, you know, this is quackery. Even Though there are studies linking things like BPA phthalates to weight gain in humans, not just animals. But in more kind of recent times, NIH now has its own PDF on obesogens. You can go to the website and download this. So now, you know, more mainstream doctors are kind of starting to talk about it. But, you know, these chemicals that are listed as obesogens on the NIH website are in almost every American. That's the CDC test. So BPA is present in 93% of Americans, according to CDC. Biomonitoring phthalates, another obesogen, in 90% of Americans. And in my opinion, PFAS, the forever chemicals. That's a new emerging category of obesogen that's in 97% of Americans.
- [14:48]
B
Oh, my God. Okay, we're going to get into BPA because we're going to talk about plastics, but what was the other one?
- [14:53]
A
Phthalate. Phthalates.
- [14:55]
B
What, what are phthalates?
- [14:56]
A
So phthalates are chemicals that are used in plastics and also in a lot of personal care products because they've helped to fix a scent onto a product. So think perfume. How does a perfume stick around so much? How can you smell it hours and hours after it's been sprayed on you? Because of phthalates. Otherwise, just by the law of physics, those molecules have evaporated and you can't smell it anymore. If you put essential oils on yourself, you can't smell it after an hour. Phalase, you can still smell it after a few hours because it fixes that scent to you.
- [15:34]
B
So then what you're saying is it's not even just about absorbing it through the skin. So I, I, I probably heard about this many years ago. So I started putting my perfume on my clothes instead of my skin. But now I'm probably also ingesting it through the nasal cavity.
- [15:51]
A
Yeah, or nasal cavity. Yeah, definitely through inhalation. That's one of the main ways if you're spraying things. Air fresheners is probably the candles. Candles, okay. Air fresheners. Any scented products, household cleaning products that are scented.
- [16:07]
B
Okay, so what you're saying is obesogens, are these toxic or these toxins?
- [16:12]
A
They are.
- [16:13]
B
In our environment, they're mainly made up of BPA phthalates.
- [16:17]
A
And well, on the NIH website, they list BPA phthalates, cigarette smoke, PM2.5. So air pollution.
- [16:28]
B
Air pollution.
- [16:30]
A
I don't think they listed PFAS, but I have in the last couple of years seen studies that have come out that show that people with the Highest level of PFAs regain weight much more than people who have a low level of PFAs. So if someone goes and loses weight through diet and exercise, that's what they did in these studies. The people with the highest level of PFAS in their blood, they regained the most weight compared to those with the lowest level of pfas.
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B
Okay.
- [17:04]
A
And we all know that it's not the losing weight part that's difficult. Right. It's maintaining that weight loss.
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B
Wow. So this could actually be the cause, evidently, of obesity. But I, you know, there's a lot of women who think they get to a certain age, they're like, you know what? I'm just not losing weight the same in my 40s as what I did in my early 30s. Could this be a reason for that?
- [17:29]
A
Yes, I think it's definitely one of the reasons. And we know from another study, when you lose weight, there are toxins that are released from your fat cells. So fat is actually an area where the body uses to store these toxins to kind of hide it from important organs. Right. So it's almost a way to protect us. And when you lose weight rapidly, they've demonstrated this in studies that your blood level of these toxins go up and it can then impact your thyroid function. And if you, if you have a low thyroid function, you are naturally going to find it harder to lose weight. Right. People with hypothyroidism, low thyroid function, they have a propensity towards weight gain.
- [18:19]
B
This is all just making sense to me and scaring me at the same time. Then it makes me wonder why we have FDA approved products such as Ozempic to help instead of. It's just like the, it's just like Lecanemab, the latest FDA approved drug which treats the symptoms of Alzheimer's disease. It doesn't treat the underlying root cause. And this kind of reminds me of what we're doing in the pharmaceutical industry where we just want to dampen down the symptoms. However, the root cause of obesity, for example, could be heavy metal exposure, environmental toxins.
- [18:58]
A
Yeah, it's everything. It's our diet, it's our lifestyle, it's our environment.
- [19:02]
B
And when they go in, and you mentioned the word endocrine disruptors. When they go in, they disrupt the hormones, for example. So let's take estrogen, the female dominant hormone, if you will. When you say disrupt, what could it mean? Does it mean that maybe it inhibits the release of estrogen?
- [19:22]
A
I love that question. So BP actually mimics our estrogen, so it can then go on our estrogen receptors and mimic it. So that's why it's being linked to breast cancer.
- [19:32]
C
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- [21:23]
A
Okay, can.
- [21:24]
B
You break down what mimic means? Because now I'm thinking about it. In the brain, we've heard of a term called the menopause brain. Over time, this is why two out of three women are out have. This is why two out of three Alzheimer's disease patients are female due to the the decrease in estrogen as we get older. So when you say it mimics estrogen, so then we are uptaking the BPA rather than the estrogen through the receptors.
- [21:56]
A
Well, so here's where the nuance comes in, right? Because in our bodies we have different types of estrogen receptors. There's alpha, beta and so for example soy, it acts differently on these two receptors. So when people say oi, soy is a phytoestrogen is going to stimulate and make you get breast cancer? Actually no, because on the breast tissue is inhibitory on the bone, bone estrogen receptors is stimulatory. So it supports bone health, but it actually is protective against breast Cancer. And so it's the BPA on different tissues are going to have different effects. But overall in human studies it's been shown to be associated with fertility issues, weight gain, neurodevelopmental issues in children. And it's through the vast different types of receptors we have, every tissue is going to respond differently.
- [23:02]
B
Yeah. Do you think that we could live in a world in 2024? I live in Manhattan. Right. Can we live in a world where we're not exposed to endocrine disruptors?
- [23:13]
A
No, I don't think so. That's why my approach is not, hey, let's avoid toxins 100%. We can't. It's not possible. And you will drive yourself crazy trying to because it's just not possible to avoid it 100%. But my thinking is we don't have to because we actually have detox organs. Right. So these organs help us eliminate exposure. So what we do have to do is try to avoid them when, try to reduce our exposure where it makes sense for us when we can. But you know, I see this kind of trend on social media right now as well. People are so obsessive over the exposures that they're literally getting super stressed trying to avoid these exposures that that stress is now becoming toxic. Right. It's causing inflammation in their bodies because they're so stressed. And I think that's, you know, counterproductive.
- [24:13]
B
Double edged sword. Yeah. I want to now move into this plastic world. Right. Because I've got so many things to ask you on this one. First of all, you've mentioned that plastic exposure costs us $250 billion in health care annually. How does exposure to plastic chemicals impact our overall health? And can you break down what microplastics are? I know there was a very famous study that came out quite recently. I believe it was in 2024, where they found microplastics in the carotid arteries and testicles of some males, which scares me. I also read another alarming statistics that a statistic that on average in the US we are consuming a credit card worth of plastic per month.
- [25:03]
A
Per week. Per week, yes.
- [25:05]
B
Right. Okay.
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A
I wish it was per month. When I first started kind of diving into environmental toxins, that figure was one cred per year.
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B
Now it's.
- [25:15]
A
Now it's one per week.
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B
Yeah.
- [25:17]
A
Which is shocking. When I first heard that, I thought, okay, someone made a mistake, that they meant one year. No, it's one, one week. And that, that came from the world, World Wildlife Fund study.
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B
Yeah.
- [25:33]
A
That figure. So Plastic is everywhere, right? We've, I think the figure something like we have 7 billion tons of it in just kind of out in the world. Where does it go? It comes back to us because it breaks down. So there's two concerns really with plastic. Number one is plastic doesn't stay intact. It breaks down into what's known as microplastic, what you were referring to earlier. So they break down into smaller pieces called microplastic. They can break down into even smaller pieces called nanoplastic. And those really are much more concerning for me because in studies, those nanoplastic can travel through our lungs, our bloodstream, and even cross the blood brain barrier.
- [26:20]
B
And can they accumulate. And yes, they accumulate occlude a vessel, for example?
- [26:26]
A
Well, they. That study you were referring to about it being found in arteries, so that was in the carotid artery. It had accumulated in the major artery called the carotid artery. And that was a study done on something like 300 people. And they found that those with microplastic in their carotid artery had a 4.5 times higher risk of having a heart attack, stroke, or dying.
- [26:56]
B
And that's alarming because when you think about it, you're not now just referring to oxidative damage. You're also referring to, well, if anything is in our system and it's blocking the flow of blood, because then you've also got to think about what else. Are there plaque built? Is there plaque built up in their response?
- [27:12]
A
So my question is, you know, with that kind of study showing the 4.4.5. So that's 450 times. Sorry, 450% higher risk of having a heart attack than someone who doesn't have microplastic. But what's the mechanism? There was the deposition of the microplastic caused by inflammation.
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B
Right.
- [27:34]
A
So maybe those people had more inflammation in their bodies and that's why the microplastic deposited. And that's what we're seeing. So we don't know whether it's causative. It's just an observation right now. But we have also observed that those with microplastic also have an increased risk of Crohn's disease now as well. So inflammatory bowel disease, they have more microplastic in their poop. So, you know, five years ago, if you were to ask me this question, I'd say, no, we don't have any human data, but now we do. We have more and more data. And the other thing about plastic is that it's what can leach into our products from the plastic. Right. So plastic can be made from I think something like 10,000 different chemicals. And we often don't know what's being added to plastic to make it plastic. We're talking these obesogens, endocrine disrupting chemicals like bpa, phthalates, pfas, these are being leached into the products that the plastic is surrounding or containing. For example, your water bottles. Conditions like sunlight, heat can increase the leaching of these chemicals into the water. Plastic food boxes, Food containers. If you microwave food in plastic containers, just three minutes of microwaving can release billions of nanoparticles and millions of micro plastics into the food.
- [29:15]
B
I was actually, I was thinking, and for everyone that's not watching on YouTube, I'm holding a Fiji Water right now. It's in plastic. Vivian's probably going to kill me, but I was thinking about what did it take for this to get into my hand or from the time of, I don't know when they bottled this, this probably went on a hot truck. It's, you know, it's very hot right now. It's the end of July, we're in Los Angeles, probably got on a hot truck, then it went somewhere else and it was hot. So you're thinking about the amount of toxins stewing in this bottle of water. Right.
- [29:47]
A
And study, one study I think earlier this year showed that 1 liter of plastic bottled water contained quarter million pieces of nanoplastics and microplastics.
- [29:59]
B
Oh my gosh, you're scaring me now. So then my question then is. Oh, by the way, I think it's quite interesting the, the microplastics in the testicles as well, could that also be problematic for sperm production? I think semen quality, infertility?
- [30:17]
A
I think so. I mean we know from mechanistic studies that phthalates reduces testosterone.
- [30:27]
B
Yeah.
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A
In rat studies. We don't have that data in humans yet. And we know that phthalates can reduce ATP production from mitochondria. So that may be how it's affecting testosterone and fertility is through impacting the mitochondria in these particular cells.
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B
This is wild. All right, so it's really hard to, I guess, and expensive to store your food. Okay, what are your best practices for eliminating BPA and plastics within the household?
- [31:02]
A
I think, you know, with the consumers speaking up and voting with a dollar, the cost of less toxic products are actually getting cheaper. So I, when I go to Costco, I can buy a set of glass food storage boxes for 25 bucks.
- [31:19]
B
What?
- [31:20]
A
That's it?
- [31:21]
B
I swear I think I ordered 12 on Amazon and it was like $90.
- [31:25]
A
Oh, you, you may have got some fancy brand like designer, but yeah, if you go to Costco and they're often on sale as well, so like, you know, from 25 goes down to 20 or maybe 30, like it's in the 20 to 30 range, almost comparable to your plastic ones. All right, so that shouldn't be too hard of a swap in my opinion. But if you can't make that, then at least scoop your food onto a ceramic plate to microwave it. Right. If you're going to store that food in plastic, heat it in a ceramic plate. Don't heat it in plastic.
- [32:06]
B
What about if you were eating off plastic cutlery and it's not getting, it's not exposed to heat? Is that a problem?
- [32:12]
A
I think little bits can break through. So we're thinking, you know, micro nanoplastic exposures here. So same as cutting board, right? Plastic cutting boards, they're soft. A knife can generate micro and nanoplastics on that cutting board and get into your food.
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B
Oh, wow. Actually, I think you did say at one point that having a plastic cutting board, just putting it into the dishwasher can be detrimental.
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A
Yeah. So that can increase the leaching of these chemicals. Right. And then the, the water is kind of circulating. So there was a study that showed that if you put plastic, those reusable plastic water bottles into a dishwasher, it increased the amount of endocrine disruptors in the water after you wash it. So if you washed it and then you filled it with water and then you analyzed the water 24 hours later, it, it had an increased amount of endocrine disruptors. Now I don't know what dish soap they use coming from the dish soap, but the idea or the hypothesis is that heat can increase the amount of microplastic breakdown. But going back to your point about cutlery, I, I take the 80:20 rule towards non toxic living. And you know, I don't really like, today I'm traveling. So if I was eating on the plane or eating out and I had to use plastic cutlery, I'm not going to sweat about that because that's one exposure. Right. That's not what I do on a day to day basis. I focus on what I do on a day to day basis as, you know, building that picture of that, you know, how what's my overall toxic burden rather than focusing on just one thing.
- [33:57]
B
Yeah. And look, I always say that mother nature is always there to help us. And is there any way of excreting these plastics through sweat.
- [34:07]
A
Oh. So, I mean, but the, the main way of excreting plastic, I think is through poop is. That's what we're seeing.
- [34:15]
B
So you need to increase the fiber intake.
- [34:17]
A
Yeah, 100. Increase your fiber intake. Increase your intake of phytonutrients and polyphenols from plants, because those actually can protect you from the oxidative damage that these chemicals can cause.
- [34:32]
B
Right.
- [34:32]
A
So I love this question so much because it's not all doom and gloom. Yes, it's doom and gloom news. But there's so many things you can do to protect you. Right. And override that. The toxic effects.
- [34:45]
B
Yeah. So for example, if somebody's listening and they're like, well, I want to lessen the burden on my system, maybe I'll be going into, maybe I'll go into the sauna every day. Can we see it getting excreted? Even the other chemicals that you mentioned as well, Even aluminum can be excreted through the sweat.
- [35:00]
A
Yeah. Well, studies have shown that sweat can contain heavy metals like aluminum, mercury, and also bpa. So sweat is one of our detox organs. I would say gut is probably our biggest one after the liver. So the liver kind of breaks down the toxins, but the gut actually pushes it out of our bodies. And both are important because if your liver is breaking down the toxins through phase one and two detoxification, but then your gut is not optimized and the toxins are not coming out, you're not actually eliminating them. And these toxins can be reabsorbed in your gut, back into your bloodstream. And now it goes back to the liver and say, hey, come and detoxify me.
- [35:49]
B
This is the same as when people are going and using the sauna. What I always like to say is once you use the sauna, make sure that you are washing yourself with a specific soap that actually gets, gets rid of the, the chemicals and the toxins off your body so you don't reabsorb it. I use a soap called castile soap, which can help just get rid of all the sweat. It's non toxic and I do that. You know, I, I visit the sauna as much as I can. Right now. It's on average twice a week. But I do that as much as I can use the castile soap with an exfoliating brush. Make sure I get all the toxins out.
- [36:24]
A
Yep. I love sauna too.
- [36:26]
B
Yeah. Are there any other ways that we can eliminate the amount that we have? Like if we do more sauna sessions every single day. Can we get rid of them?
- [36:33]
A
I would actually say the number one thing is make sure you poop.
- [36:36]
B
Yeah.
- [36:36]
A
Because how many people are constipated?
- [36:39]
B
Yeah, it's a risk factor for cognitive impairment, actually. Yeah. Oh, constipation. Yeah. It's a really wild study that came out last year, and I thought that was quite fascinating too.
- [36:51]
A
Wow. Okay. So I feel like so many people are constipated and some don't even know it because they think that going to the toilet once a day and, you know, producing rabbit droppings is normal. They don't even know they're constipated. Right. Because I. I'll ask my patients, when I was a family physician in the uk, Are you constipated? No, I'm not constipated. Okay, so how many times a day do you go to open your mouth? Oh, I don't go every day. Okay, so how often do you go. Oh, like once a week.
- [37:28]
B
You're telling me there are people who poop once a week?
- [37:32]
A
A lot.
- [37:32]
B
Wow.
- [37:33]
A
Yeah. So this is when. From my days of being a family physician, when I was seeing patient, you know, 30, 40 patients a day.
- [37:41]
B
Yeah.
- [37:42]
A
There will be so many of them that tell me they're not constipated, and they go to the toilet once or twice a week.
- [37:48]
B
So how often should we be going?
- [37:49]
A
We should be going once or twice. Twice per day.
- [37:52]
B
Wow.
- [37:52]
A
And you. Sorry to be graphic. I'm sure you. I'm sure your audience loves to hear about poop on the podcast, but if you look at your. The toilet after you've gone to the toilet, it should look like a big, long sausage. It shouldn't be rabbit droppings.
- [38:11]
B
Okay. And if it is rabbit droppings, you're constipated. Is that maybe because you're dehydrated, not having enough fiber in your diet?
- [38:17]
A
It could be that.
- [38:18]
B
Yeah.
- [38:19]
A
And. But most commonly, it's because you're not getting enough fiber. And if that's the case, toxins are not coming out.
- [38:26]
B
So the fiber, which is found in vegetables, fruits, is grabbing the toxins and pulling 100%.
- [38:33]
A
And we have studies showing that lots of different plant fibers can actually bind onto things like aluminum. So silica, for example, which is in strawberries, avocado, oats, can. Can bind onto aluminum and help it come out of your body.
- [38:52]
B
So what is silica?
- [38:54]
A
Silica is just. Just naturally occurring, and it's been made into a supplement now, like, so some people actually take it for aluminum detox. Silica, apparently is in Fiji water as well.
- [39:05]
B
Okay, well, let's see how well that is. That's, that's pretty interesting. So then once, I mean, so once we, we ingest these, these foods, then they combine to the metal, bring it out. I don't know what your take is on oats and glyphosate. And is glyphosate something that you talk about in terms of heavy? Yeah.
- [39:25]
A
So glyphosate is a pesticide and oats have been found to be heavily sprayed with glyphosate if they're not organic. Glyphosate is not the only issue. Chlormoquat is another pesticide that's frequently sprayed on oats as well, along with so many others. So oats, definitely something to try and choose organic. And actually the difference between organic and non organic oats is really not that much, especially if you go to somewhere like Costco. But pesticides, you know, they were, they were actually invented to kill pests through damaging the nervous system. Right. That's how it kills pests. So they're neurotoxins.
- [40:12]
B
Yeah.
- [40:13]
A
What is that doing in our bodies? Well, we thought that they don't harm us, but they are harming microbiome. So they're killing the friendly bugs in our gut by poisoning their neurosystem nervous system and then killing them. Actually, sorry, cut that. Like, do you microbiome do. I don't know if Mike, our microbiome have a nervous system.
- [40:37]
B
Wait a second.
- [40:38]
A
Yeah, we can cut that.
- [40:41]
B
I don't know where you left off, but you can like.
- [40:42]
A
Yeah, so these pesticides are damaging our gut microbiome because they're killing off the friendly bacteria that actually help us stay healthy.
- [40:53]
B
But have you heard of the saying the dose makes the poison?
- [40:57]
A
Yes. And that's true in acute toxicology. Right. So if I was studying toxicology and looking at aluminum and I'm studying at what dose it actually kills this rat or you know, makes the rat have neurological symptoms. You're going to see this acute dose effect curve. But if we're talking about daily low dose exposures, I'm not sure that we're seeing that linear curve. We know, for example, something like bpa, it doesn't follow that linear curve. And we have this term called non monotonic curve. So this is where one plus one doesn't equal two anymore. It's where one plus the first one may equal five. So I'll give you an example. Contraceptive pill. The amount of estrogen in the contraceptive pill the dose is super tiny. It's the equivalent of one drop in a Olympic swimming pool concentration in our body. But it has enough effect to inhibit our ovulation. So the dose makes the poison. Yes, I get that, and I do think that there's some merit to that, but I don't think we can say, okay, if it's just those make the poison, then tiny, tiny little doses don't matter anymore. Because yes, they can still have biological effects on our bodies. Yeah.
- [42:31]
B
And I guess it would also like to term it's deterministic by your lifestyle as well. Well, you have to remember that everything acts as compound interest. So if you're putting all of these toxins in the body, you're not eliminating it through either bowel movements or through sweat, then that's an issue. If you're not sleeping well, then you're also raising inflammation. You're not clearing out the system overnight. If you're not exercising, you're not getting these growth factors, you're not getting a in your cardiac system. So you. What you're really saying here is this is one segment of the whole picture. You're not saying that the number one reason why we all are dying early with chronic diseases is because of BPA and plastics and aluminum. You're saying that this is just one factor that maybe we haven't considered yet.
- [43:23]
A
100%. You got it.
- [43:25]
B
Why do you think that we, we are like, we don't know this stuff. Where is the like, does this come down to public health policy? Is this being hidden on the back end? The pharmaceutical companies just don't want us to know. This is obviously a question of your opinion.
- [43:38]
A
Yeah, I think that first of all, it's very hard to study. Right. We chatted about this earlier, that trigger event. So your exposure to the time, you know, to when you actually have a symptom, that lag could be years. So how do you attribute it all the way back to that exposure? It's very difficult. So most studies of these environmental toxins are population studies, observational studies, and they're criticized as not being robust enough because they're not randomized control trials. Well, you will never get approval to give somebody a toxin. Right.
- [44:17]
B
Which by the way, a randomized control trial is the gold standard in academic medicine. It basically means you randomize two groups. One group gets a placebo and the other group gets the actual bpa, if you will. Yeah.
- [44:33]
A
And they actually did this study. We can talk about that. It's very interesting. But traditionally it's not being done yeah. So, you know, it's just poo poo. It's just observational.
- [44:44]
B
Observational studies in the science, Helm is very like, oh, yeah, right.
- [44:49]
A
But my point is, if you have multiple observational studies showing the same association.
- [44:56]
B
Over and over the trend, I think.
- [44:59]
A
You should start to pay attention.
- [45:00]
B
It warrants some attention.
- [45:02]
A
Exactly. So I feel like it's. It's like painting a picture. Right. One stroke doesn't mean anything, can't see anything. But now there are multiple strokes, you can start to see what the picture is. You don't know definitively what it is, but it should give you cause for concern to do more. And that's what the NIH has done. Done to give it credit. I think the other thing is that, you know, there was this paper that said that showed that it takes 17 years or something like that, 12 or 17 years for what's in research to translate into clinical practice. So what's been shown in research.
- [45:35]
B
Yeah.
- [45:36]
A
And what doctors do, there's a lag of years and years. Right. So I think that's what we're seeing. Right. So the research is emerging. We've poured more funding into that kind of research. Now there's going to be a lag. I think we've been, what, seven years into this. So maybe another 10 years doctors will start talking about it. But I do think that in 10 years it's going to be part of standard protocol, or I hope it's going to be anyway.
- [46:04]
B
What? To measure it as a vital sign.
- [46:06]
A
Measure it. To talk about it, to avoid it. To talk about how we optimize our detox organs to work better.
- [46:13]
B
Hey, I'm still waiting for exercise to become a vital sign. So once that gets in, we can move. Make room for.
- [46:18]
A
I love this. Yeah.
- [46:20]
B
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- [48:34]
B
You'Ve had a personal experience which has led you down this path and that has to do with your daughter. I'd love for you to share the story on that to help everyone understand why you're so passionate about this.
- [48:45]
A
Yeah. So just to give you my background, I trained as an MD at UCL which is a medical school in London. After that I was board certified in family medicine and then internal medicine. So I practiced medicine for 15 years. During those 15 years I was starting to feel really fatigued, brain fogged, I had cystic acne requiring rakuten and when I went to my own doctors they just said there's nothing wrong with you because they ran the bloods and then said they're all fine, there's nothing wrong with you, you're just.
- [49:20]
B
A million times yeah I believed them.
- [49:24]
A
So you know, I just continued working and everything came crashing down because when I had my daughter she was just eight weeks and she completely stopped feeding. She became so dehydrated she had to be tube fed so she had to be hospitalized and they passed this tube through her nose into her stomach to feed her. I didn't know why and actually none of her doctors knew why. They. They said it was reflux, but then they did PH studies and it wasn't reflux. And then they said, oh, it was behavioral. And I said, no, this is the point where I say, I can't go along with this anymore because I do not believe that babies will have behavioral issues where they refuse to feed. It's kind of like saying a baby is manipulative. So that's when I started to do my own research and reading, and I found this paper from 1983 describing her symptom, which is feed aversion associated with cow's milk protein allergy. So I asked her pediatrician to switch her milk to hypoallergenic formula called Neocate. And she was better within a week. But then I was kind of left with, well, why did she develop this allergy? So strange. I don't have any food allergies. My husband doesn't have any food allergies. Where did this come from? Her doctor said it's genetics. And I thought, okay, well, it isn't. So this is another point of I really don't have any trust in my doctors. Unfortunately, I have to take this on myself and advocate for her from, For. For us. So this, this kind of. When I segued and went down this rabbit hole of lifestyle, medicine, nutrition, and then this whole world of environmental toxins opened up to me because I saw these papers linking chemicals like phthalates, mercury, heavy metals to the development of allergies. And we know there's an epidemic of allergies, asthma, eczema, these are. Have all been linked to environmental toxins. But you're not going to find a conventional allergist who talks about that.
- [51:45]
B
No.
- [51:46]
A
So that's why I'm so passionate about it. And that's why I. I'm not a very public person, actually don't like the limelight. But I feel like this message needs to get. Yeah, because people need to know.
- [51:58]
B
It's funny you said that, because my entire life, I never had an allergy. And when I moved to New York City during allergy season, I. I cop it so hard that I have to leave. Copper means, like, I get it so bad. And it's around March, so I am like, I just can't be in New York during March because I am. And there is nothing that can unblock my nose or save my eyes from watering. And I've never had it my whole life. And I just think, okay, maybe it's the New York City. Poland.
- [52:28]
A
Yeah, must be.
- [52:30]
B
Or.
- [52:30]
A
Or it's just the, the pollution, the pollen. Yeah, yeah.
- [52:34]
B
How do you feel? About what? About pollution. Is that another.
- [52:36]
A
It's huge. Yeah, it's huge. And I don't love talking about it just because a lot of people just kind of throw their arms up in there and say, well, there's nothing I can do about that. So you're just telling me I'm doomed. And, you know, air pollution, I really feel like, needs to be kind of like a more higher level policy change. But what's inside of our home, the air inside of our home is within our control. So I like to talk about that. But, you know, there is huge amount of evidence showing a link between air pollution and neurodegenerative diseases from Alzheimer's to Parkinson's. I'm sure, you know.
- [53:17]
B
Yeah, that is so frightening to me. I think you're doing a marvelous job. And now also you are trying to power the mitochondria, which is the, the energy producing part of the cell. You're trying to power that through red light therapy. I'm a huge fan of red light therapy for many reasons. One, I know that it can actually penetrate the skin and have an effect on these superficial organs. I know that there's actually great human research on the retina. If I'm not. If I'm not mistaken. But for me, and everyone knows I speak about this on the podcast, I'm doing anything I can to look 29 for the rest of my life. Not 29, but when I did my blood work and it comes back with an inner age, it said that I was like 28.7. I'm like, okay, I'm sticking to that. I just need to make sure. So I've got. You were kind enough to send me this, this handheld red light therapy. Best thing ever. Because I have a red light panel at home and it was like, I have to sit there in front of it. Then you sent me. So every morning I'm like a crazy person. I'm walking around my house just like with the red light panel literally strapped to my arm, my hand, and I'm just walking around with it. So I want to spend just a few minutes touching on what red light therapy is.
- [54:32]
A
Oh, yeah. So I mean, the. I feel like red light therapy is kind of like the antidote to what toxins are for our mitochondria. I feel like a lot of the health impacts of toxins is through its effect on our mitochondria. And we have mechanistic studies to show that. Right. Phallics can reduce our ATP production from mitochondria. So can bpa. So all these environmental toxins affect and damage our mitochondria and that's one of the ways it's impacting our health. Red light therapy can penetrate, as you said earlier, penetrate through our skin and reach on mitochondria where it's actually received by a receptor called cytochrome C oxidase, activates it, which then stimulates the mitochondria to produce more ATP, which is energy. It can also improve blood flow by increasing nitric oxide. It can also release, stimulate, help stimulate the release of various growth factors. So that's why there are human studies with red light therapy on wound healing, skin health. So you'll love this. I love this study because it's on split face. So women who use rare light therapy on one side of their face, the other side got sham light. So it's a look alike. They don't know which one is placebo, which one is real. They used lights on both fas. One side is real red light therapy, the other side is fake. And after eight weeks they took biopsies and showed that the side where they used red light therapy had increased collagen, but not only that, on a kind of more subjective level. So they had people assess. Right. But it was blinded, so they don't know which side is which. The side with Rayleigh therapy had less fine lines, wrinkles and more skin elasticity. So that's a human study. And there's a lot more other human studies. But you talked about retina. So that study was done at UCL where I went to medical school. That's a very small study, I think 12 people, but. And very low light, very low irradiance, red light. And it helped improve. I think it was, what was it? Macular degeneration?
- [56:56]
B
Yes, it was, yeah.
- [56:58]
A
And then just last year, the same researchers did red light therapy study on blood sugar. So they show red light on the back of subjects and showed that they had a lower blood sugar response to a blood glucose response. Lower blood sugar response to oral glucose tolerance test.
- [57:25]
B
Oh, no way. Yeah, I think, you know, you said that there's a margin of around 17 years. I think eventually, just like with hyperbaric oxygen therapy, we're now seeing it more readily available in hospital settings. I think eventually to help with skin healing, wound healing. This may be something of the future. That is. Yeah, we're going to a red light therapy bed if you.
- [57:47]
A
I think so. I mean I was using it as a dermatologist in the Hospital. I did a dermatology. What is it called? Residency. Okay. And so we used lasers. We use light therapy.
- [58:00]
B
But isn't it much more stronger in a dermatology unit?
- [58:04]
A
Yes. So it's much stronger to the point where, you know, you might cut yourself, you might burn yourself. So that's not safe to be used at home. And that's where kind of LEDs have come in. They're less power, but they still can deliver these benefits. So a lot of these human studies are actually done using LEDs, not lasers.
- [58:25]
B
Yeah.
- [58:26]
A
The one thing I want to say about the eye study is that the level is very low. So a lot of the devices you will buy on the market, for example, your panel is going to be very high radiance. It should be very high radiance. You probably don't want to be looking directly into that until we have more research to show they're safe.
- [58:46]
B
Okay. No, I wear the little sunglasses.
- [58:48]
A
Yeah. So in the study they use super low. Yeah. Like.
- [58:52]
B
Yeah. And I've been, you know, because the. I put this all over my body, for example, because it's an entire panel, I stand in front of it with minimal clothing. So it just gets everywhere. I think I do it for about 20 minutes a day. But it's interesting. Now I. With your handheld one, I'm able to just use it on my face. And I guess they call it spot reduction. I'm not sure what they call it, but it's like I just. But I can also do other things as well as I.
- [59:15]
A
Exactly. So that's why I kind of designed it to be portable because I also have a panel and I don't use it. I use my LuneBox more because it's just more convenient. I'm busy. I'm, you know, doing sitting, doing something I can use at the same time. But one thing about the targeted portable devices is that you can have it closer, let's say, to a joint. You can get it around your joint, get it closer where the light penetrates better. Right. Because a panel, it's kind of awkward to get body parts close to it. And in order for the light to penetrate deeper, you do want it to be closer and you need a higher dose. So red light therapy is quite nuanced again. Right. Because the dose that you use depends on what goal you're trying to achieve. For the skin is very low. That's why those masks that you see.
- [60:08]
B
Yes.
- [60:08]
A
They're going to be useless for joints and muscles because the irradiance is 10, 20 lumebox. Is 140.
- [60:16]
B
Oh, that's amazing.
- [60:18]
A
So that's why it penetrates joints. I see people using that light and putting on their shoulder and I laugh because it's never going to penetrate the joint. Or they put it on their head. They. I even see dermatologists put that mask on their head and say, oh, I'm now using it for my hair growth.
- [60:34]
B
Yes, well, that's another area, hair growth. So with your handheld one, I can put it on my hair. Right. I mean, I don't have a problem with hair growth. It grows too fast. But I have noticed that as I'm getting older, it's thinning out.
- [60:47]
A
Right? Yeah. So red light therapy. There's quite a lot of research on hair growth as well.
- [60:51]
B
Oh, my gosh.
- [60:53]
A
So you can get these helmets.
- [60:55]
B
Yeah, I've seen them.
- [60:56]
A
Laser. But you do need that irradiant, the high irradiance. Right. That's why they use laser, because the irradiance is higher. That kind of amount of total power dosage is high. And you need that to penetrate through the hair and into the scalp.
- [61:13]
B
This has been a monumental episode for us because now we understand what toxins are doing, environmental toxins are doing to our entire system so we can help fight off these detrimental diseases. Vivian, where can we find you to find out more information?
- [61:30]
A
Oh, thank you. So I have an Instagram account. My handle is at platefull Health. So that's P L A T E F U l dot H E A L T H. I have a website as well as www.playforhealth.com.
- [61:47]
B
We'Re going to link everything below and the red light panel as well.
- [61:50]
A
Loom box. Yeah. If you'd like, I can can give your audience a discount code.
- [61:55]
B
Oh, we'd love that. We love discount codes. We'll put that at the bottom as well.
- [61:58]
A
Okay, great.
- [61:59]
B
Vivian, thank you for being part of the Neuro Experience podcast.
- [62:01]
A
Thank you so much for having.