Change Your Brain Every Day - Why You Might Be Breathing or Eating Harmful Molds

Episode Date: March 1, 2017

NOTE: If you have not yet listened to the first two episodes of this five part series, we highly recommend that you get back to The Toxin Solution, Parts 1&2. There are various ways toxins are introduced into our system and one inevitable factor is the environment that we live in. Listen to this episode as we discuss the toxic role of molds. 

Hi, I'm Donnie Osmond, and welcome to The Brain Warrior's Way, hosted by my friends Daniel and Tana Amon. Now, in this podcast, you're going to learn that the war for your health is one between your ears. That's right. If you're ready to be sharper and have better memory, mood, energy, and focus, well then stay with us. Here are Daniel and Tana Amen.

Welcome back, everybody, to the Brain Warriors Way podcast. You're in a war for the health of your brain and body. I am here with Tana and also Dr. Joseph Pizzorno, the author of The Toxin Solution, phenomenal book that I highly recommend. We have talked about toxins in food, toxins in personal products. We've been somewhat horrified and horrifying. And now we're going to talk about toxins in the environment. And why I got interested in this issue is at Amen Clinics, we've been using brain imaging for the last 25 years. We do a study called brain SPECT imaging. SPECT looks at blood flow and activity. It looks at how your brain works. And I first started scanning people as the director of a dual diagnosis unit. It's a psychiatric hospital unit that takes care of drug addicts. Clearly saw the effects of toxins on the

brain. And then I started getting patients who are not using drugs. They were not drinking alcohol or smoking and their brains look toxic. And it's at that point I went, why? And I started learning about mold and other environments. Well, you even talk about how you had, your very first scan looked a little bit toxic. It did. I had meningitis when I was a soldier and also ate a lot of fast food and wasn't sleeping and putting products on my body that I had no clue. So, Joseph, talk to us about environmental toxins. So this is a big challenge. As a matter of fact, I just wrote a letter to President Trump on how to cure the sick healthcare system. And one of the points I brought up to him was that now the passive determinants of health have become unhealthy. to exercise more, lose weight, don't eat junk food, all these active participants or active ways in which they can promote their health or, if they're not careful, promote disease.

But we also have the passive determinants of health, and that is the area people breathe, the water they drink, the things that everybody has to do and there's not much you can do to make changes in this. So then we start looking at what's in the to do and there's not much you can do to make changes in this. So then we start looking at what's in the environment, and there's lots of reasons to become really concerned. So while I'm a great believer in civilization, thank you, I mean, it made our lives much healthier and much more, I should say, comfortable. And in some areas, it's made our health better as well. But there's been a side effect of all these chemicals and metals we're being exposed to. So, for example, most people don't realize that 10% of the public water supplies in the U.S. have arsenic levels high enough that are known to increase the risk of a bunch of diseases, particularly things like cancer and gout and things of this nature. So 10% of the public water supplies.

Then you look at anybody living in a big city. So in a big city, you've got what are called PAHs or polyaromatic hydrocarbons. And these polyaromatic hydrocarbons is what you get when you're burning fossil fuels, when you're on the barbie and barbecuing your food or if you're around somebody who's smoking, these PAHs are really toxic to us. They do things like, and they do many things, but the one which is most worrisome is they damage our DNA. So if people are exposed to the PAHs and as they damage their DNA, not only does that result in increased risk for cancer, increased rate of aging, but also means increased risk of a wide range of diseases. Because when you damage your DNA, you can't make your enzymes right.

And since our bodies are enzyme machines, and when those enzyme machines start breaking down, we get sick. So there are lots and lots of examples of these toxins coming from us from every direction. So I had read a study a while back. I don't remember where it's from, but there was, um, in addition to everything you're talking about, how these environmental toxins are also something called obesogens, which is a whole nother issue. We'll get into it another point, but they actually increased the, you know, our ability to sort of metabolize correctly and make people more obese and people don't even know it. And the study that I read about was that people, it was where they studied the most obese populations

tended to be on the Mississippi river and then spread outward. And when they tested their water supplies, the amount of chemicals in the water were horrifying. And when they tested the blood of the people who live there, they had the same chemicals. And those were known obesogens that were actually making the problem worse. So, yeah, I don't know. Go ahead. And the men and women who do all this research, they are now calling many of these toxins who are commonly exposed to, they're calling them obesogens and diabetogens. Wow.

And there's one study which is really interesting. So everybody knows that when you get obese, you eventually get diabetes. I mean, everybody knows that. That's what happens. So this group of researchers said, okay, so we know obesity is causing diabetes, but is it being obese that's causing diabetes, or is it how they became obese that's causing diabetes? So they measured the chemical levels in obese people. And what they found was that

the obese people with the bottom 10% of body load of chemical toxicity had no increased risk for diabetes. So in many ways, diabetes and obesity are the result of the chemical toxins. Wow. Yeah. You make that argument very persuasively in the toxin solution that it's not just kill the sugar, although that's a good thing. It's much more about the toxic load. Tell me about your experience with mold. One of the things we now routinely screen for when we see a toxic brain is mold exposure. Yes. So that's a very good point to be bringing up. And I have to admit that I was not actively sensitive to the problem with mold until about a year ago. And so kind of as I was studying all

these various toxins, I was starting to see these things called VOCs or volatile organic compounds. And these VOCs are pretty toxic as well. it's looking at where they're coming from it turns out they are produced when mold grows on building materials so we have building material that's damp and the mold grows on it it starts releasing these chemicals and these chemicals look like many of the other chemical toxins we're being exposed to like the herbicides and pesticides in our bodies. And I look at, well, how many people are being exposed to mold in their environment? And according to researchers, one half of the homes and office buildings in the U.S. have demonstrable water damage in those facilities.

Wow. So then they start looking at people who are working in well-documented mold-contaminated working environments. You see a dramatic increase in neurodegeneration, immune diseases. There's a wide range of problems that start showing up.

So mold is a big problem. And I'm now telling, I wrote an editorial on this for my journal, IMCJ, which is Innovative Medicine and the Clinician's Journal. I wrote an editorial saying, if you have a patient who comes in to see you with any respiratory problem, you've got to look for mold. And if you see an adult with adult onset asthma, 70% of the time is because they've been exposed to newly exposed to mold damage building. Wow. And adult asthma increases your risk of Alzheimer's disease 30%, which just shocked me that you have to ask yourself, well, why, you know, why is the body's immune system overactive that is causing something like either autoimmune disorders or asthma?

So important. When we come back, we're going to talk about detoxification. So important. And it's not just your liver. So stay with us. We're here with Dr. Joseph Pizzorno, The Toxin Solution. You can learn more about his work at thetoxinsolution.com. Thanks for listening to today's show, The Brain Warrior's Way.

Why don't you head over to brainwarriorswaypodcast.com. That's brainwarriorswaypodcast.com com where Daniel and Tana have a gift for you just for subscribing to the show. And when you post your review on iTunes, you'll be entered into a drawing where you can win a VIP visit to one of the Amen clinics. I'm Donny Osmond, and I invite you to step up your brain game by joining us in the next episode. Thanks for watching!