Episode 107 .Arsenic and Your Health: Expert Advice from Dr. Joe Pizzorno"

Adam Rinde, ND (00:00:00):

This is The One Thing podcast, and I'm your host, Dr. Adam Rinde. The One Thing Podcast brings together leaders in functional and naturopathic medicine to discuss actionable information that may unlock puzzles in the areas of gut health, brain health, metabolism, and longevity. Please note these episodes do not replace the opinion of your doctor. They're not intended to diagnose or treat any condition. Please discuss this information with your provider and discuss your own unique personal health history. Before adapting this information, please subscribe to our episodes so that you can stay on top of the most current information in these areas of medicine. Hello everybody. Welcome to the One Thing Podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Adam Rindi. In this podcast, which is episode number 1 0 7, I welcome on one of the true pioneers in natural and integrative medicine, Dr. Joseph pno. For nearly 50 years, Dr. pno has revolutionized the field of naturopathic, integrative, and functional medicine by laying the academic and clinical groundwork for this field.

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As the founding president of BA University, he coined the term science-based natural medicine setting new standards for healthcare. In today's episode, Dr. Pizzorno shares his incredible journey from building a world-class institution to his groundbreaking work on how environmental toxins like arsenic impact our health. This conversation is filled with practical tips on detoxification, the importance of clean living and how small lifestyle changes can make a big impact on long-term health. Whether you are a healthcare professional or just someone who's looking to improve their health or optimize their wellbeing, you won't want to miss this conversation. This was a special treat for me, given that I go way back with Dr. Pizzorno when I was a student at BA University and got to know him from a standpoint as an educator and as someone who influenced me personally in this profession. So I am delighted to bring this conversation to you, and I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. So without further ado, welcome to the next episode of the One Thing Podcast. Dr. Pizzorno welcome to the One Thing Podcast. It's such an honor to be here with you.

Joseph Pizzorno, ND (00:02:39):

Thank you. Great being with you as well.

Adam Rinde, ND (00:02:42):

Thank you. And I can say with great certainty that you're the whole reason I'm a naturopathic physician, and I just am delighted I waited until I got at least a hundred episodes under my belt to reach out to you. I wanted to have a little practice before I introduced who I consider to be one of my greatest inspirations. So thank you so much. Appreciate it.

Joseph Pizzorno, ND (00:03:09):

Well, I have so many fond memories of you as a student, but also as a fellow basketball player. Remember, we played twice a week for God for years. It was so much fun. That's

Adam Rinde, ND (00:03:18):

Right. It was. Yeah. I will never forget the day that Dr. Kevin Conroy saw me walk out of the cadaver lab with a look on my face that he said, you should go down and play basketball with Dr. Pizzorno. It might be good for you. That was the beginning of a great, great tradition.

Joseph Pizzorno, ND (00:03:44):

Wow. Yeah,

Adam Rinde, ND (00:03:45):

Very amazing. Got some of that formaldehyde out of me too. That's good. So I'd love to catch up with your current life. I mean, when I joined the profession, you were just wrapping up your tenure as the founder and president of bas, and you are moving on to other ventures and overseeing the caring forth of Baer. But what are you up to these days?

Joseph Pizzorno, ND (00:04:18):

Well, that's a good question. So I left the presidency of Bastyr way back in year 2000, and I left it because number one, Bastyr was doing just great. As you know, he was the leading university in the world in this field, had money in the bank, growing student body. Everything was going very, very well. But the university was wanting me to be more of a fundraiser and an administrator. But what my true love is advancing the understanding of health and healing. That's why I got attracted to naturopathic medicine because it delved so deeply into people's health. And whereas I found with conventional medicine, well, it does some things remarkably well. It was so focused on disease diagnosed treatment of disease. Well, that had its place. I was thinking about how about the health of the person. So I decided that Africa got best of running properly.

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I got the profession back on its feet. You've got accreditation going and all those things. I wrote a textbook that bring the modern science into naturopathic medicine. I then want us to start looking at these foundational concepts of naturopathic medicine and start exploring every one of them to see the science support for those concepts and how could we advance them. So that's what I've been doing. I've been lots of different ways of doing it, ranging from writing more books and writing more textbooks, doing basically a regional research, both clinical and laboratory research, and then getting enter of a journal that's PubMed index that lets me write editorials where I get to explore ideas in our medicine. So now in PubMed, I have think about 75 editorials where I poke the medical bear a bit. I'm saying, well, conventional medicine does some things really well, but here's some other areas where medicine's not working so well.

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And I just started exploring them one by one. And the more I did it, the more I started getting interested in two areas. Number one was environmental medicine, because as I was looking at research, more and more research I was looking at, we have the highest burden of chronic disease in every age group ever in human history. Why is that happening? Our genetics didn't change. Our nutrition is worse, but not enough to explain the problems. But then we started looking at environmental metals and chemicals. Turns out virtually every chronic disease correlates with one or more environmental chemicals. So I just started looking with patients, okay, well, rather than focus on your disease, let's focus on nutrition. Let's focus on detoxification and see what's left over. And boy, patient after patient, the most effective thing I could do for them. Find out, well, what toxin were they high in? Get the toxin out of the body. Then the bike start working the way it's supposed to. It's a long answer to your short question.

Adam Rinde, ND (00:07:04):

Yeah, and it's well documented that you had worked with a big corporation out of Canada. I think that really gave you a good foothold on this, even kind of on a mass level. Can you talk about that?

Joseph Pizzorno, ND (00:07:21):

Yes. So about 15 years ago, one of the wealthiest men in Canada sent his Learjet down to Seattle, pick me up and fly me to Calgary, Alberta, and he said, I've been doing some regular conventional wellness programs for my 4,500 oil field employees. I'm not seeing a lot of change. Would you bring your naturopathic ideas to my employees and prove their health? I said, well, of course I'd be delighted to, but I'm a true believer in natural medicine. I'm also very objective, very scientifically oriented. So I said, in order for me to give the best health for your people, I need to test nutritional status, check their toxic status, check how well then metabolism's running. So I want to run some lab tests. How much can I spend? He said, well, if you can convince me that the laboratory tests will help improve the health of my employees, I will pay for it. So I did what was at that time the equivalent of about $1,500 retail on each of 4,500 oil field workers. Now that would cost about $3,000 per person to do it now. So I got all this data. I started looking at it and saying, well, what's going on here? And that's where I just dove right into, first off, nutritional deficiencies incredibly common. So I checked people for a number of nutrients, and out of the 4,500 oil field workers, only 50 of them did not have at least one nutritional deficiency.

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Half of 'em had multiple, so 99% of them had nutritional deficiencies, which is right there a problem. But then I started looking at toxins and I found all this toxicity, and that's where I started realizing, wait a minute, I got to pay way more attention to toxicity. And I was actually measuring people showing seen all this toxicity, that it's not what you see in the literature. I, I'm looking at real people here say, wait, real people dramatically more nutritional deficiencies, dramatically more toxicity than you see when you read the macro literature. So I started diving into it and getting more and more sophisticated in how you test people for toxicity, how you help people avoid the toxins and how you get 'em out of the body.

Adam Rinde, ND (00:09:29):

And I think it's interesting because a lot of people don't realize that you, even though you're really well known and most well known for naturopathic medicine, I mean, you are a big influence on the founding and the development of functional medicine as well. And I am curious how the environmental medicine is such a big part of the functional medicine platform. I'm just curious how this work helped inform the functional medicine community as well.

Joseph Pizzorno, ND (00:10:04):

Well, hugely. I've known Jeff Bland, who's the founder of Functional Medicine since the late seventies. And so we started thinking about producing this new way of looking at medicine. I was one of the first people he invited to join him, and I was on the board of directors day one. And not only that, but then I also worked with Jeff and with David Jones and Sheila Quinn and a couple of others. We actually, I would drive down to Gig Harbor every month for two years, and we worked out the whole functional medicine matrix, all foundational concepts, and that created functional medicine.

Adam Rinde, ND (00:10:42):

That's amazing.

Joseph Pizzorno, ND (00:10:44):

I still remember most people underwear. I was so involved in the foundation of the whole thing.

Adam Rinde, ND (00:10:50):

I know, and it's really interesting as a clinician out in the world with the brand of a naturopathic doctor, and people sort of say, well, I'm going to go to a functional medicine doctor, and I try to educate them that this is the same tree, same tree that blossomed. It came from the same roots.

Joseph Pizzorno, ND (00:11:13):

I'll go further, go to palmed and put Jeff Bland's name in. And he's written a couple of articles now where he says, functional medicine came from naturopathic medicine. Most people aren't aware that not only did he bring me in right away, but when he was a kid, his parents would take him to a naturopathic doctor. So it's like, this is not surprising that as Jeff started, got his PhD in nutrition or biochemistry actually, but nutritional biochemistry basically, and he started seeing the limitation of regular medicine. He knew where to go. He knew where to look to start thinking differently about this.

Adam Rinde, ND (00:11:47):

So before I leave that topic, I just want to bring up something that you shared with me once is the journal clubs that used to have with Jeff Bland and how equipped you became at firing through journal articles and extracting details. And I just can't help to think about what those journal meetings would be like today with AI available. It's really interesting.

Joseph Pizzorno, ND (00:12:13):

Yeah, so let me add to that story. So I would do a once a month journal club with Jeff, so only about half a dozen of us, Jeff would walk in, dump a dozen papers on the table, and we spend the whole evening going through the papers and the buck chemistry, it was just so much fun. But I also was doing a monthly study club with Jonathan Wright and Alan Ha. Wow. So they would bring a patient in and we'd do it from the patient perspective. So here, Jeff was great. Here's the science that they'd bring the patients, and there was right in the middle say, oh, here's the science and here's the patients. And boy, it was really a wonderful experience.

Adam Rinde, ND (00:12:50):

Amazing. Yeah. Yeah. It's just so fascinating. I had another clinician on our podcast that you might know Joshua Goldenberg, and we shared how the study of a journal article is a science and an art. It's just to really know what to look for. I would've loved to have been a fly on the wall in those meetings. Oh,

Joseph Pizzorno, ND (00:13:18):

Yes. They were just so special. I was really fortunate.

Adam Rinde, ND (00:13:23):

Well, great. Well, I know we got together here to chat about one of the environmental contaminants, pollutants, toxicities that you're really diving deep into, which is arsenic. And I'd love to just kind of start off with some basics. Some people don't know the difference between inorganic arsenic and organic arsenic and just some basics to familiarize people with this topic. Some background on the nuances.

Joseph Pizzorno, ND (00:13:58):

Arsenic is a pretty interesting toxin for a lot of reasons. Number one is most people aren't aware of how big a problem it is, and it turns out, as far as I'm concerned, it's the worst toxin in the world and it's pretty easy to document. But another thing about arsenic is we as a species have been exposed to arsenic as we evolved. And the reason I know that is because we have actually really good enzymes for get rid of arsenic. Now, in contrast, look to stuff like lead and mercury, or not mercury, lead and cadmium, for example, where we basically had no exposure as we evolved as a species. We have great trouble, get rid of those things. But arsenic occurs naturally in many water supplies, not all water supplies, but basically depending upon where the water's coming from, if there happens to be Arsenic in the ground, in the rock where the water's coming from, you'll leak into the water.

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Now there's also industrial contamination, and that's a big issue as well in that industrial contamination. Unfortunately, it's going to be more often be more toxic versions of AIC than the inorganic AIC that's found in the water. In general, the primary source of types of AIC people exposed to are our elemental arsenic, which is found in water and arsenal beane, which is form of arsenic found in fish. Turns out arsenal beane is not particularly toxic. Now, there are other forms of arsenic, and this is what's important. We have arsenic when it's being detoxified, it's detoxified through methylation. So you have arsenic detoxified to monomethyl arsene acid, we'll say m, MA for short or monomethyl, arsenic for short, but it's not technically quite the right term, which is actually eight times as toxic as element aic. Then we do a second methylation to do DMA, which is di methyl or cynic acid, which is virtually non-toxic, four times less toxic than elemental aic.

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So for the normal person with average normal genetics, they actually get rid of arsenic with a halflife of about two days, two to four days. So in general, when the toxicologists are looking at detoxification, they say it takes about four half-life to get a toxin out of the body. So for example, a person's being exposed to arsenic within a week at most two, if they stop the exposure, it's gone for the vast majority of the population. Now, there are a couple situations where that doesn't happen. Number one is if the person has trouble producing the methyl groups needed to detoxify the aic. And what group would that be? People with high homocysteine people, high homocysteine have troubles with the methylation and they have more trouble with arsenic toxicity. That's number one. Number two, some people because of genetics do the first step of producing a more toxic version of ars, much better than the second step of making it into the less toxic version. It's only 1% of the population For that 1% of the top population, a stick is a big deal for them.

Adam Rinde, ND (00:17:04):

So it gets stuck in a intermediate phase.

Joseph Pizzorno, ND (00:17:08):

Yeah, it goes through the immediate phase too slowly. So you have too much MMA around. Now I said that think about 1% of the population has that particular deficit, but that doesn't mean only 1% of population has problems with arsenic. When we start looking at the epidemiological research to look at the amount of AIC in the urine, and there's no way to look at the arsenic in the urine. It could be elemental arsenic, it could be a more toxic methyl arsenic. It could be the DMA, or it could be a toll arsenic, which includes a arsenal bane. It could be. There's different ways to look at it. Anyway, so you look at, as the IC levels go up, you hit a threshold where you start seeing increased disease risk. Okay. You see increased disease risk for diabetes, for cancer, for stroke. I mean, AIC causes a lot of disease, cardiac death, for example. And it turns out we started looking at those thresholds. 35% of the adults in America, and actually in Canada as well say, just say North America are above the threshold for increased disease risk. That's one out of three people is right now getting increased disease because of ARS stack, and people aren't aware of it. To me, one of the most stunning problems in medicine today that this relatively easily intervenable problem, people aren't aware of it.

Adam Rinde, ND (00:18:28):

What do you think it's doing in the body? I love how you always focus on pathophys. I do. What do you think the pathophysiology or the patho toxicology toxicology of arsenic is?

Joseph Pizzorno, ND (00:18:44):

Really good question. I knew you were going to ask me that. So before we started, I just, okay, lemme just quickly review things. And what's amazing is it's still a problem. While we know some things that arsenic does, we don't know most of it. And I think a lot of it's because so much the damage is broad spectrum. For example, rsid damages, DNA, okay, well, if your DNA is being damaged, well, is DNA being damaged here? So it affects that enzyme, or is it being infected here? So affects that enzyme. So problem is it damage the DNA, but you can't say it's only going to cause one problem. It's could cause all bunches other problems. In addition, it increases oxidative stress, and we know virtually every disease is made worse when there's oxidative stress. It's a neurological poison, it's a fertility poison. There's all these things that it does, but in terms of saying, okay, it's doing exactly this, it's not really well understood at this point. It is surprising as bad as it is, as much research as there is, researchers are still trying to figure out what exactly are the mechanisms.

Adam Rinde, ND (00:19:49):

Yeah, and I mean, I think these toxins end up in tissues and where they really shouldn't reside. I mean, we're even finding other toxins like plastics getting pulled out of arterial tissue, and it just seems so disruptive when you're interfacing with people who you're sort of saying, Hey, look, this is a driver of cardiometabolic boic disease or an association at least. Do you find the world is ready for this information generally in the medical world, or do you just get kind of the shrug like, well, what are you going to do about this with toxins? Sometimes people just sort of shrug, or do you feel that people are sitting up in their chair and listening to this information? Are we ready to take action?

Joseph Pizzorno, ND (00:20:44):

Yeah, another great question. So I'm seeing you might say a self-selected portion of the medical population. So up until Covid, I was flying about a hundred thousand miles a year all over the world teaching doctors that these metals and chemicals are at primary cause of disease. I always talk about arsenic. So the doctors who attend my conferences, they get it, but it's only the doctors attend my conferences. And while there are a lot of them, from my perspective, I've lectured now to thousands and thousands of doctors, and my textbook of natural medicine is sold a hundred thousand copies. So I'm getting out there, but the medical mainstream hasn't got a clue. Not does the medical mainstream, not even have a clue. But as you know with you and I working on a patient with high arsenic, trying to get the speciation of the arsenic to understand within a particular patient exactly what kinds of arsenic they have. Is it the safe stuff or is it the toxic stuff? It's almost impossible to get the test run. We had to go towards the Mayo Clinic, I think, to get the last speciation that we wanted, and they didn't speciate it totally. I was really disappointed. I really wanted a couple of the IC species, which they said on their website, they're going to give us, they didn't give it to us.

Adam Rinde, ND (00:21:57):

Right? Yeah. So yeah, let's get into that a little bit. So if a person is concerned about arsenic toxicity, let's say they have early warning signs or they're concerned about exposure, what would be the first step in the evaluation?

Joseph Pizzorno, ND (00:22:19):

So first thing, everybody's listening. Don't wait until you have symptoms. Okay, that's way too long. So if we're looking clinically, as near as I can tell, I just wrote an editorial on this. So you go to PubMed, I think it's been posted, OL will be posted at any moment. Now, it turns out that the very first clinical side of excess AIC turns out to be hyperkeratosis initially, which can evolve into skin cancer, but hyperkeratosis. And so the simple thing you say to a person, rub your hands together. If it feels rough, you must consider aic. Now, having said that, don't wait for that to happen. And this is an early way, so best way of doing it's to do a first morning urine and tit tested for aec. Now, when you look at what are the standards that are accepted in the conventional world, they range from 10 micrograms per liter with the World Health Organization to 50 micrograms per liter with the A MA.

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Now, those numbers keep coming down, but once I looked at the research, clearly even below 10 micrograms per liter of urine, you start seeing increased risk for disease. And when I talk about increased risk for disease, I'm not talking about small risks. So right now, look at the research literature as near as I can tell. Again, this is from the research about one out four cases of cancer are due to arsenic. One out of four cases of fatal heart attacks are due to arsenic. 50% of gout is due to arsen, 15% of strokes are due to arsen. Are you aware of any other factor that causes that much disease? It is just stunning. So I recommend for everybody whenever I'm not in private practice anymore, but people still keep asking me for help. So anybody comes to ask me for help, I always test them for toxins. I always test them for ARS stick. And that's why that particular person you and I are working with, I mean, I assume you're as surprised as I am to see how high his ARS stick levels were.

Adam Rinde, ND (00:24:18):

Yeah, he

Joseph Pizzorno, ND (00:24:19):

Has diabetes, he's had cancer. Okay, guess what? Diabetes and cancer and heart disease. He said all three of the big ones caused by Arsenic

Adam Rinde, ND (00:24:29):

Yeah. And so in a case like that, and that's a great example of where this goes. So you identify on a screening test that there's high levels of arsenic, and then obviously it invokes a sense of concern and need for action of where am I getting this exposure? So then this is when the nuances come in. And so you were talking about before about having to go into speciation testing. Can we just sort of unpack that a little bit more?

Joseph Pizzorno, ND (00:25:08):

Sure, sure. So the reason we do speciation is to determine which kinds of VAR are in a person's body. So when a person comes to see me, I typically do a first morning urine and we'll get all the labs, standard labs. They only report the total amount of rsic. Now, there is this belief within the medical world, and the lab world is patient comes in with high levels of arsenic. It's almost entirely due to fish. So they tell people, don't eat fish for three, four days before you run the ARS stick. Now, I'm right now in the process of calling to question that plan, and here's my reason for it. So the assertion is that, well, if you have elevated, let's say a person has 50 micrograms of ars stick in their urine, and with the standard of care is to say, well, once it's 10 micrograms per liter of ARS stick, you want to do speciation to make sure what it's okay.

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So they're going to assume that, oh, it's mainly ace beane and ignore not going further. But what I found is I looked into the research that with a fish, we person eating fish, about 10% of the arsenic in the fish is in the form of either elemental arsenic or methyl arsenic. The most toxic forms. Now it's true, 90% is arsenal bete, that's fine, but there's still that other 10%. That's the really bad stuff. So I think that the labs have been inappropriately discounting the high levels because they assumed it was just ace beane. Another thing about this ACE beane, which is pretty interesting, and I haven't found this in humans yet, but there's a number of animal models that show that some of the bacteria in the gut of these animals will strip off the ACE beane from the ARS and make into either elemental ARS stick or methylated it into methyl arsenic.

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So the idea of say, okay, I'll avoid fish for three days and then test it. Well wait a minute. Well, if say you eat fish every two or three days, you're going to have much higher levels of ARS stick than you think you're going to have if you wait for three days after testing, after eating fish to test for the aic. So at this point, I'm saying to everybody, get your ARS stick tested, and if it's above 10, do a speciation. But even if it's at 10, you need to do genetics to see if you're one of those people who is really fast at the first phase of that RT detox and slow in the second phase because 10 is likely going to cause trouble. And by the way, when we're looking at total arsenic, most of the increased risk for disease starts at around six. I'm been sticking with kind of the WHO levels because that's the worldwide level, but I'm going to tell you, I can show you research that started at six total arsenic in the urine. You start seeing increased disease risks.

Adam Rinde, ND (00:28:01):

So the sources are identified or there's clues to the sources on the speciation test, and that can lead people to thinking about dietary exposures or water exposures primarily. Those are the two main categories. Correct.

Joseph Pizzorno, ND (00:28:20):

So the main ones are water. And in terms of the epidemiological research, almost all of it's been done on water. And probably one reason for that because easy to test and they also do on urine. So main sources are water, and basically it just depends upon where the person's living. For example, here in Washington state, I'm in Seattle, Seattle, public water is actually really clean. Well, you go 20 miles north up to the San Juan Islands, me and the San Juan Islands have a lot of ars in their water supply. So anyway, and it comes in with elevated arsenic. I always test the water wherever they're either living or working regularly, we test the water. The next primary source is chicken. Up until about 10 years ago, arsenic compounds were intentionally added to chicken feed because they plumped up the chickens and they made that they're heavier, so they sell for more, and they also got rid of the parasites.

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Now it's no longer the standard of care, but many of the places growing the chickens are still using arsenic, and now it's becoming quasi-legal at this point. At some point, it'll stop happening, but you can't assume the chicken doesn't have arsen unless to test it. And the third major source is rice. And it's because rice for some reason, likes to absorb arsenic. So beans like soybeans, like to absorb cadium. If the water, the rice is growing and has arsine in it, it's going to absorb the arsenic. And unfortunately, it doesn't matter whether it's white rice or brown rice, organic rice or convent grown rice, all ice rice can have arsenic in it, but brown rice can have a little bit more gets in the skin. Now, the good news is that if you cook the rice for about three minutes and th throw off the water, you'll get rid of over half the arsine. The bad news is you also get rid of over half the minerals too.

Adam Rinde, ND (00:30:12):

Yeah, amazing. I just had a patient in today who's from the Philippines, and she was telling me breakfast, they have rice lunch, they have rice dinner, they have rice, and right before bedtime they have a little rice treat. And it's just amazing to me worldwide the impact of this exposure. Is there anything you can comment on the worldwide nature of that exposure to rice, because rice is a staple?

Joseph Pizzorno, ND (00:30:42):

Well, yes, and it's huge source of our all over the world, no question about it.

Adam Rinde, ND (00:30:47):

Amazing. And then water is an interesting topic because I think people just assume that, well, I use a filtration system, maybe my showers aren't filtered, but at least the drinking water. Is there other ways to get exposure like transdermally, or is the exposure usually just through oral intake of water?

Joseph Pizzorno, ND (00:31:16):

Well, good question. So it turns out there are some R cynical compounds used in cosmetics. Now in general, most of those have been stopped in this country, but they may still be present in some other countries. So that's more of a theoretical. Practically speaking, water, rice and chicken are by far the biggest sources unless a person's living near an industrial site and architect is still used for a lot of industrial services. For example, if a person's a wooden boat builder, I used to, when I was in private practice way back in the seventies, I saw a lot of wooden boat builders. They were full of all kinds of toxins because the wooden boats, they got protected from barnacles. So they paint these really toxic compounds on them, and they typically have cadmium and arsenic in them. There are a lot of different kinds, cadmium, arsenic, some forms of copper. They're pretty toxic. So you can't throw out the industrial exposure. You have to consider that as well.

Adam Rinde, ND (00:32:10):

How about showering in water that's contaminated?

Joseph Pizzorno, ND (00:32:15):

Oh, yeah. So lemme finish that part of it. So I think it's a really good idea for people to filter all the water come into their house. So for example, in our house we have a carb block filter and a metal precipitator. So our water is really clean. Now, if you have an area that has a lot of rsic in the water, unfortunately a car block filter does not get rid of very much of it. The most cost effective way to do it, according to least the Oregon State government is with reverse osmosis. And the only way to know if you need it or not, you just got to have your water tested, see those ars in it, there's AIC in your water, you've got to purify it. And if you can't afford to do a whole house reverse osmosis system, you get a tabletop filter. There's a research study that looked at a bunch of different tabletop filters, and zero water was the only one that got rid of the arsenic because zero water was the only one that used the reverse osmosis as their detox method.

Adam Rinde, ND (00:33:11):

And for testing, I usually send people to tap score to just see how their local water is just from a bigger perspective. And then there's lots of labs you can send off your water to.

Joseph Pizzorno, ND (00:33:27):

Yes, there are a number of labs. Now if you're doing clinical testing, the lab that I prefer is doctor's data in Chicago. I'm a commercial relationship with 'em. But it just so happens when I was doing that corporal wellness program in Canada before I spent a hundred dollars and 4,500 people on lab testing, I thought, I think I'm going to do a little test of the labs. So I said split samples to six different labs that were doing toxic metal testing. And now give me, I want to be clear this 15 years ago, hopefully they're all better now, but of all the labs I tested at that time, only doctor's data came back with the right data. All the other ones were basically reported their background contamination of their labs. Yeah.

Adam Rinde, ND (00:34:09):

Yeah. So I mean, their medical director, Dr. Quig, I think he's,

Joseph Pizzorno, ND (00:34:16):

He's retired. He just retired lately. Recently. But yeah, David Quig was a giant in the field. I learned. And so many other clinicians learned so much from him. Yeah,

Adam Rinde, ND (00:34:26):

I learned a lot about methylation through him and really helpful. So it's great that he oversaw that lab for so long. Yes. So before we move into some other topics I want to just bring up, people are probably thinking, what do we do about this? If you have it avoidance. I always think about the late great Dr. Ian, who I know that you authored a great textbook with, and his first lecture in our environmental courses at BA University was avoidance, avoidance, avoidance. It was like his big message

Joseph Pizzorno, ND (00:35:08):

Avoids, avoids, avoids.

Adam Rinde, ND (00:35:10):

So people can see that as being a primary strategy of course. But if you have a load of toxin on your body, what are some of the strategies that you like to think of from a big picture? Not necessarily specific therapeutics, maybe we can get into that in a little bit, but just strategy wise.

Joseph Pizzorno, ND (00:35:37):

So this is a good place to put a plug for one of my books called The Toxin Solution. And in that book I say to people, going on a detox patient program is a stupid idea until your body's ready and until you stop, expose yourself. So I take people on an eight week program. So for two weeks I teach people how do you avoid toxins? There's no point in detoxifying if you keep on putting stuff in. So I talk about, okay, how do we avoid the toxins? Now there's a little trick here with this. So we're thinking about toxins. We think about, well, they're metals or chemicals, two categories. There's a much better way of thinking about toxins. Are they persistent or are they non-persistent? So non-persistent means that either exposed to metal evolved as a species like arsenic or they're chemical that's similar enough to other toxins.

(00:36:32):

We are exposed to devolve as a species that we got the detox enzymes for them. So turns out that arsenic, bisphenols, phthalates, a number of these really common toxins, if you simply avoid them within two weeks, they're out of the body. So we get these non persistent toxins out of the body. Within two weeks, people start feeling better. They say, wow, my symptoms a little less. Well, I got a little more energy. Then makes them more able than in more might say, committed to get rid of the long-term toxins. These toxins that have half lives in the range of months to years to even decades. You look at the PCBs, poly cornium, biphenyls, they get in farmed fish. Some of those PCBs are so hard to detoxify, they have a 20 year half-life, which means you go to the restaurant, you buy the farmed fish, and some of those PCBs are going to be in your body for the rest of your life.

(00:37:27):

So I spent two weeks, let's just avoid the exposure, start feeling better. Then you say, now let's clean up your gut. It turns out one of the major sources of toxins to the body comes from within when you have the wrong kind of bacteria in the gut. So let's get rid of the toxins, let's get the gut cleaned up, then spend two weeks getting the liver functioning properly. Liver's job is to deal with most of these toxins. And so once you stop overloading the liver with the gut toxins, now we start regenerating the liver. And then finally, by the way, this is new for me. When I was seeing patients 40 years ago, I didn't have to deal with their kidneys. Now I got to deal with their kidneys. Now we have failure epidemic. When I was seeing so many patients way back in the seventies, I never saw people with kidney problems.

(00:38:15):

And now they're all over the place. Now we got to clean up the kidneys. And by the way, in my class with the students, I used the kidneys as an example of our body's tremendous ability to heal. So let's look at somebody with stage five kidney failure. That means they have EGFR, which is for your listeners. That's how you measure how well the kidneys are working. And it should be above 75. It should be like 90. Okay, but let's say at least 75. Well, people with stage five kidney failure have EGFR of around 12 to 15, which means that they're on kidney dialysis and they're waiting to get a new kidney. You can't live with a 15. So some interesting researchers said, well, let's see. We know that one of the reasons why people have kidney failure is because of non-steroidal, anti-inflammatory drugs, assen and ibuprofen, things like that are very damaging to the kidneys.

(00:39:10):

So they said, let's take a bunch of people with stage five kidney failure and let's have 'em stop consuming nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs and measure the EGFR and let's come back six months later. See what happened. The EGFR average went from 12 to 25 over doubled by simply stopping the nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs. That was stop damaging the kidneys. They'll regenerate. So I basically say in this chapter, okay, here are things that are damaging the kidneys. Stop doing them. And here are nutrients to help restore the kidneys. And you can get the kidney function back up to normal, but you got to work at it. It works properly. So now we've stopped the exposure, got the gut working properly, got the liver working properly, got the kidneys working properly, now let's do our detox programs. Now our body's able to get rid of them. You don't want to stir things up until your body can get rid of it.

(00:39:58):

Now the body can get root. So I'd tell people, now here's how you start getting rid of toxins. I had this procedure where slightly reduce calories. So we want to start breaking down some of those tissues. A colonize the person because we alkalize the person easier for the kidneys to get rid of the toxins and we increase their fiber because one of the things, the way the body gets rid of the toxins from the gut is the liver I'M gives rid from the liver. The liver dumps the toxins into the gut. It expects there to be fibroid there to bind to the tox to get out of the body. But there's not enough fiber. The toxins come back with something called interpack recirculation. Well, how much happens here? Let's look at mercury every day our bodies get rid of about 1% of the by load of mercury.

(00:40:46):

So we've got some mechanisms we buy into glutathione, get out of the body, and then we reabsorb 95% of the mercury we just dumped into the gut. Why are our smart bodies waste all the metabolic energy to get rid of this toxin then just reabsorb it. Well, as evolved as a species, we're consuming a hundred, 150 grams of fiber a day. Now we consume 15 to 20 grams of fiber a day, almost 90% less or about 90% less. So the mechanism of body is expected to work is not there anymore. So when I talk about people, we prepare the body for detoxification, but we make sure we're getting that fiber in there. So biking rid of those toxins when they're being released from the tissues. And the final thing I recommend is good old saunas. Saunas are a very effective way to get rid of every toxin, be able to find, except the performance, the pfos, they're the only toxin that does not go out through the sweat, which was pretty interesting. So I had people sweat at least twice a week, at least 20 minutes of heavy sweating. If you don't get at least 20 minutes of heavy sweating, you don't get enough of the toxins. Toxins

Adam Rinde, ND (00:41:51):

Out. Yeah. Yeah. I love your recommendation in the toxin solution of the fiber goals. And I always warn people, I said, if you're going from 10 to 15 up to 30 to 45 grams, it's going to be a little rough, but stick with it because your body does adapt. And it's like anything, it's training the bowels to handle that fiber. But eventually when you cross that bridge, things are running way better. I think a lot of people have piggybacked on some of that advice with other fiber focused books, but people don't get that warning, I think enough.

Joseph Pizzorno, ND (00:42:40):

I agree.

Adam Rinde, ND (00:42:41):

Yeah. So there is one compound that I would hate to finish up with and not talk about because I think this compound is so instrumental in what we're talking about and that's glutathione. And I think you've been probably by primary education source on glutathione and on NAC and reading your journal and your editorials is just such a rich source for these compounds and nutrients, and these are so good and so important that there's always this constant threat of not being able to prescribe them. That's how good they are. Usually when a natural compound's really effective and good, then a lot of people get interest in them. So if you could talk about the role of NAC and glutathione and just sort of also just a quick mention of the labs you like to use for evaluating for glutathione status.

Joseph Pizzorno, ND (00:43:51):

I wish I had a better answer for you. So the standard of care right now, and you get this done right now, is to do RBC glutathione. I think it's useful if we had a druthers, we were able to measure not just total glutathione, but the ratio of oxidize to reduced, because the reduced glutathione is what really counts. The oxidize means it's been used up so you can indeed get that blood test done. The best way that I know to increase glutathione, there's two ways to do it. Well, there's three ways. So the way I prefer most is with octal cysteine. So we get pair of people 500 milligrams end cysteine twice a day to increase their RBC glutathione by about 30%. You get the same benefit with giving people about 15 grams a day of WHE powder. That'll also produce increased glutathione to about 30% by about 30%.

(00:44:47):

Oral glutathione, I believe is simply expensive glutathione, expensive cysteine, because most of glutathione given orally, whether it's a supplement or there's glutathione in the food as well, it's almost all broken down into cysteine in the gut. So it's a pretty expensive way of doing it. Now you can get people topical glutathione, that works pretty well. You can also get people IV glutathione. Now if you're give people IV glutathione, you have to be a little careful because it turns out, now this is animal research. I do not have human research. It would be kind of heart stite to do because of ethics. But if you take a rabbit and you give the rabbit high levels of mercury and their blood and give 'em IV glutathione, the glutathione will take mercury from the blood into the brain. So it turns out the way the brain gets rid of glutathione, the way the brain gets rid of mercury is by buying into glutathione, pumping across the blood brainin barrier. The rate at which glutathione goes cross blood brainin barrier depends upon the concentration gradient. So you got more glutathione in the brain, then in the blood goes that way. But if there's more glutathione in the blood than in the brain, it goes into the brain. So what I tell people is I'm not saying don't use IV glutathione. What I'm saying is first, make sure you've got the blood levels of mercury down before you get people IV glutathione.

Adam Rinde, ND (00:46:03):

That makes sense. And so for the listeners, the glutathione is, and please comment on this if you can, the glutathione is really that key portion, what you were talking about earlier in our conversation of making something water soluble, right? Phase one to phase two, converting the contaminant arsenic to get out of the body. So earlier in the conversation we were talking about methylations involved with the clearance of arsenic. How is glutathione involved?

Joseph Pizzorno, ND (00:46:41):

So it's a little trickier. Arsenic has might say two oxidation stage three and a five. It turns out glutathione is absolutely critical to move arsenic into the oxidative oxidative level. That can then be worked on by the enzymes. So people have depleted glutathione, they're not able to convert the AIC into the version that is detoxified by the body, or it's more difficult to do. So while we do focus a lot on methylation, you got to deal with the glutathione aspect as well.

Adam Rinde, ND (00:47:12):

Okay. And do you still feel , GGT is a good test, just basic lab test to assess glutathione status

Joseph Pizzorno, ND (00:47:26):

Very indirectly. So I think what you're talking about, and I do recommend GGT lot. So what GGT does, G else with GGT, its job is to basically recycle glutathione in the body. So our smart bodies we're exposed to increased oxidate stress or exposed to toxins, which cause oxidate stress. We upregulate GGT to recycle glutathione more quickly, to protect us from those toxins, to get the toxins out, protects us from the oxidative stress. So that's the good news. So the reason I like monitoring GGT is that then it's go away to tell me if I've been effective at decreasing people's buy load of environmental toxins. And I've seen this happen to many patients. Remember I talked about myself. So way back 15 years ago when I first started doing this, and one of the tests I ran on everybody was GGT. We also ran on all the people involved in all the doctors involved in all technicians involved because we're saying, well, we're going to help improve everybody's health.

(00:48:28):

And we found what was pretty interesting is that we found Elevate GGT, not just in the oil field workers, but in many of the doctors and people working on the project. And matter of fact, it turns out the person who had the highest GGT end up having the worst health outcomes of our whole team doing this project. Anyways, going back, look at mine, mine was 27. Now normal range for GGT depends on the lab. It's about 10 to 60. So 27 is right in the normal range. But that's started looking at the research and turns out that GGT within the normal range is predictive of diabetes. So A GGT of 40 to 60 has a 20 fold increased risk for diabetes. What happens, GGT is indirectly measuring toxic exposure to diabetic agents. A GGT between 30 and 60 has an eightfold increased risk for diabetes.

(00:49:20):

And think about, so wait a minute, 27, wow, I must be more toxic than I thought I was. So I just started becoming more and more careful about avoiding toxins. I got from 27 down to 24, and I said, well, it's still not good enough. So I did it again about three years ago. I was down to 17 and I just did it a few months ago. I was down to 15. So that tells me that as I systematically decreased my exposure to environmental toxins, my GGT went down. So it turns out it's a really useful tool to see are we being effective at getting rid of the toxins?

Adam Rinde, ND (00:49:50):

That's great. And it's very inexpensive too.

Joseph Pizzorno, ND (00:49:53):

Very inexpensive.

Adam Rinde, ND (00:49:55):

Well, this has been amazing to talk with you, and I had love to just kind of finish with just a few more comments and turn things over to you. So I've had the great opportunity of knowing you for the last 20 or so years, and there was one lecture, you held up a picture of your family, and I loved that. It was just so great. It was like your grandfather and your father and you and

Joseph Pizzorno, ND (00:50:27):

Great grandfather,

Adam Rinde, ND (00:50:27):

Great grandfather, and you just kind of showed kind of the lineage. And it just made me think like you're playing basketball at 60 and 70, and it'd be interesting to just hear what you would give advice through the early life midlife and later life stages. And as far as for each of those phases, one health tip that you might give to someone who's say in their twenties or thirties versus forties or fifties, and then later in life.

Joseph Pizzorno, ND (00:50:57):

Well, thank you. I appreciate that opportunity. I think back when, in the early seventies, I mean almost 50 years ago now, not almost 50 years ago now, when I first started getting into this field, I remember listening to my teachers and I came in with a lot of science. I was an obnoxious student because I would ask questions that they couldn't answer, but that's okay. But they did answer a lot of the questions. But they would say things like guy to detoxify the gut main way to help people to be healthy, detoxify the gut. Someone would say, and others would say, got to eat real food. There's just no stuff to real food. Yeah, you always fancy vitamins, but got to eat real food. And I kind of dismissed them as maybe now 50 years later, after I've looked at tens of thousands of research articles and seen tens of thousand people go to my corporate wellness programs and personally seen thousands of patients, they were so right.

(00:51:54):

So I tell people, I don't care what age you are, number one, you have to eat real food. And when I say real food, I'm not talking about the garbage that's in the grocery stores. And if anybody wants to wonder about why that food in the grocery store is not so good, I go to PubMed, get my editorial that facetiously titled Unimportant Molecules. And what I did with that is I went through and looked at nutrition and I looked at, well, what's required for human for life? Human life? When we figured out nutrition, we were studying foods, figure out what's necessary in the foods.

(00:52:31):

Most of the core nutrition research was done a hundred years ago. A hundred years ago. Our biochemistry was much more limited than is today. But also our technology was more limited than what is today. So at that point, we pretty much could only figure out and mainly using animal research, what had to be in the animal's food to keep 'em alive. And we discovered the vitamins and we discovered the minerals, and we discovered fatty acids and amino acids. And we say, oh, well, when you take any of these things out, the animal animal dies. So we add 'em all together, 43 compounds or molecules and elements. As long as you get those 43 elements and molecules in your food, the food's fine. So we start growing foods chemically. As long as we maintain those 43 molecules we're okay. But then I asked myself, well wait, how many molecules are in food?

(00:53:25):

All the food is all the world. How many molecules in food? All the world Turns out it's 50,000. So we decided that 99.9% of the molecules in food were not important. So when we grow foods chemically rather than organically, and those molecules are lost and they are lost, it doesn't matter. Well, so well, how much of these molecules lot are lost? They're looking at these flavonoids and carcinoids and lemon and all these different things. They're 90% lower in chemical grown foods than in organically grown foods. I said, well, okay, now are they important? Well, now we start to talk about phytonutrients, these miracle molecules from food. Oh, go drink this. There's this fruit drink. This fruit from South America is full of all these nutrients. Isn't it exciting? Well, yeah, it's exciting, but those molecules should have been the fruit supply to begin with. So now we're saying, okay, well, it's exciting.

(00:54:23):

We can start giving to people with these pills and things and such. Well, yeah, they could be useful, but let's start with the food, having those molecules in them. So number one is eat real food, organically grown, heirloom, organically grown, if at all possible, number one. Number two is avoid environmental toxins. Now, a lot of people will eat crappy and they'll be okay and they'll be exposed to toxins. They're okay. They don't notice it because we look at the research, most of the research does not show toxicity from most of the common toxins. Now, this is not all toxics. Some show toxicity right away. The vast majority of them, they don't start showing toxicity until a person's about 45 years of age, because up until about 45 years of age, our body's adaptive ability has been able to kind of keep things functioning. But many of these toxin levels are going up in the body higher and higher and higher because they're so hard to get rid of.

(00:55:18):

And we're now having damage to DNA. So our ability to adapt to these toxins, it becomes limited. So now up to age 45, maybe more diabetes, maybe more heart disease, well age 45 now, the correlation with the toxins, all the very direct, all the toxins, as the toxin levels goes up, all these diseases go up. So don't wait until you're 45 years of age to start dealing with the toxins. Deal with it. Now, my wife, actually last night, my wife and I were just talking about how fortunate we feel that we learn about this in our twenties. So since our twenties, we've been eating organic real food since our toys, we've been avoiding toxins, and now we're maintaining pre-high level of function. But our family and friends who did not follow our pathways, they're dead. They have major disease or they're done with life. It is so sad to see.

Adam Rinde, ND (00:56:11):

Wow, that's really a great take home message. And what I get from it is don't wait. Start as early as possible today, and don't wait until the disease starts to kind of show above the surface.

Joseph Pizzorno, ND (00:56:32):

It's much easier to treat a disease before it starts.

Adam Rinde, ND (00:56:36):

Yeah. Well, I just want to thank you on behalf of all of us who are your children and grandchildren in this profession, and we've just learned so much. I feel a great responsibility to carry forth the work that you've done, and I feel like there's a lot of reverence in just continuing to bring this medicine to the world. So any parting thoughts or anything you'd like to kind of tell the audience about that to engage with you in the future or anything that you'd like to share that you're really excited about working on right now?

Joseph Pizzorno, ND (00:57:20):

Well, first I want to thank you because you are why I did this. I could see what needed to be done, but I couldn't do it by myself. And I had to find people who had vision because remember when you started this, our profession was still pretty weak. So you're one of those people who were in the pioneer stage. They're saying, this is important. I'm willing to take the risk to go on to do this. And so I want to say thank you, thank you.

(00:57:42):

I can have all these theories and have all these experiences, but if they're not carried forward, it's pretty limited value. And in terms of my message to people, health is the normal stage of things. I was very fortunate because I got to know my great grandfather as well as my grandfather, my father. I got to see what happened to my own family's life. My great for grandfather died at age 95, had no apparent disease and never saw a doctor in his life. He ate real food and he had his own garden. My grandfather came home from Italy, so he kind of had this Mediterranean diet and lifestyle and health orientation. My grandfather was kind of half European, kind of half American. So while he also lived at age 95, he also had a fair amount chronic disease before he died. And then my dad, who I love dearly, who totally adopted the unhealthy American lifestyle, my dad died at age 88 with all kinds of disease, all kinds of degeneration.

(00:58:51):

Thank you conventional medicine system for keeping him alive the last 10 years of his life. But we went from my great grandfather never needed a doctor to, my dad desperately needed a doctor just to stay alive with all his chronic disease, and it was all based upon how they lived their lives. My great grandfather and my grandfather grew their own food as much as I could. My dad did not. I grow as much my own food as I can. Another of my graduates, I think he graduated before you did. So Guyano is an ND in Vancouver, British Columbia, and he actually has hospital privileges, but PreOn used for a naturopathic doctor because he was so effective. He and I have having dinner a few years ago and he said, I noticed all my long lived patients have their own gardens,

Adam Rinde, ND (00:59:37):

Their

Joseph Pizzorno, ND (00:59:37):

Own food gardens, growing as much alone food as they can. And when I now compare a tomato of my garden to an organic tomato from PCC to a chemically grown tomato from Safeway, you would think they're different foods. The quality of the taste between those foods is dramatic. What makes foods taste better, tastes differently? These other molecules in the food, all those other molecules that our body evolved with are in these food that you get from heirloom or organically grown foods. Conventionally grown, chemical grown foods don't have these molecules in them that our bodies we're expecting. So my message to people, eat real food, grow as much of it as you can. Avoid the toxins. Get exercise, have loving relationships, get enough sleep. You know something, you're going to have way less disease.

Adam Rinde, ND (01:00:30):

Excellent. Well, I've got a title for your next book. It's Green Zones. It'd be interesting to compare that with the Blue Zones with people who have their own gardens.

Joseph Pizzorno, ND (01:00:43):

Good idea. Good idea.

Adam Rinde, ND (01:00:46):

Well, thank you again, and I'm always learning from you and I'm going to continue learning from you and really appreciate you being here with me. This has been a treat.

Joseph Pizzorno, ND (01:00:57):

Well, thank you. It's very kind.

Adam Rinde, ND (01:00:59):

Thank you so much for tuning into this week's episode of The One Thing Podcast. Please share these episodes with your friends, loved ones, colleagues, patients, healthcare providers, anyone who you feel might benefit from hearing these informative interviews. We tend to learn best from people sharing things with us. That's often the first time it's introduced, so don't hesitate if the content of these episodes reminded you of someone that might benefit from it. Forward the episode to them, and I'm sure they'll either appreciate it or be appreciative that you've thought of them. So once again, we'll look forward to seeing you next episode on The One Thing Podcast. And again, much appreciation for you being here with me for.