Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 665: Dr. David Minkoff (Bonus Episode!)

Episode Date: December 19, 2017

In this episode Sal speaks with Dr. Minkoff, who started his career as a clinical professor of pediatric infectious disease and through a fascinating chain of events (as described in this episode) now has one of the larges alternative medical clinics in the United States. WARNING!: Some of the toxins Dr. Minkoff talks about that we are facing in our modern world are downright scary and may keep you up at night. The good news, however, is that he gives you some actionable steps you can take to minimize the impact. Find Dr. Minkoff at www.drminkoff.com, www.lifeworkswellnesscenter.com Dr. Minkoff talks about his background (1:50) The nightmare involving his wife (3:30) Western concepts with wellness side cross pollination happening (9:39) Need to build host up How often does he see high levels of toxins in his practice? (14:50) What are things people can do to detoxify their body? (18:13) Filter drinking/shower water Infra-red sauna Hydrated Multi-vitamin with liver support Good blend of essential amino acids Paleo type diet for 6 weeks Is he still on the fringe or does he see more of his colleagues talking about leaky gut? (21:55) Autoimmune diseases exploding in 21st century (24:01) What are big things people can do now to help prevent what’s happening? (28:08) Eat organic foods Stay away from nightshades  Get out in sunshine for 30 minutes and move your body Bedroom free of electronics – dirty energy Related Links/Products Mentioned: Mercury Toxicity: Background, Etiology, Epidemiology PUBLISHED ARTICLES – Dr. David Minkoff 6 Benefits Of Infrared Sauna Therapy The Allergy Crisis Allergies are on the rise, and here are three reasons why Autism Spectrum Disorders in Young Children Half of Florida's high school grads can't read at grade level, says Bill Proctor The Real Dangers of Electronic Devices and EMFs Featured Guest/People Mentioned: Dr. David Minkoff, MD Dr. David Minkoff - Facebook Frank Shorter Julie Moss William Nyhan Would you like to be coached by Sal, Adam & Justin? You can get 30 days of virtual coaching from them for FREE at www.mindpumpmedia.com. Get our newest program, MAPS Prime Pro, which shows you how to self assess and correct muscle recruitment patterns that cause pain and impede performance and gains. Get it at www.mindpumpmedia.com! Get MAPS Prime, MAPS Anywhere, MAPS Anabolic, MAPS Performance, MAPS Aesthetic, the Butt Builder Blueprint, the Sexy Athlete Mod AND KB4A (The MAPS Super Bundle) packaged together at a substantial DISCOUNT at www.mindpumpmedia.com. Make EVERY workout better with MAPS Prime, the only pre-workout you need… it is now available at mindpumpmedia.com Have Sal, Adam & Justin personally train you via video instruction on our YouTube channel, Mind Pump TV. Be sure to Subscribe for updates. Also check out Thrive Market! Thrive Market makes purchasing organic, non-GMO affordable. With prices up to 50% off retail, Thrive Market blows away most conventional, non-organic foods. PLUS, they offer a NO RISK way to get started which includes: 1. One FREE month’s membership 2. $20 Off your first three purchases of $49 or more (That’s $60 off total!) 3. Free shipping on orders of $49 or more Get your Kimera Koffee at www.kimerakoffee.com, code "mindpump" for 10% off! Get Organifi, certified organic greens, protein, probiotics, etc at www.organifi.com Use the code “mindpump” for 20% off. Go to foursigmatic.com/mindpump and use the discount code “mindpump” for 15% off of your first order of health & energy boosting mushroom products. Add to the incredible brain enhancing effect of Kimera Koffee with www.brain.fm/mindpump 10 Free sessions! Music for the brain for incredible focus, sleep and naps! Also includes 20% if you purchase! Please subscribe, rate and review this show! Each week our favorite reviewers are announced on the show and sent Mind Pump T-shirts! Have questions for Mind Pump? Each Monday on Instagram (@mindpumpmedia) look for the QUAH post and input your question there. (Sal, Adam & Justin will answer as many questions as they can)

If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. Mite, op, mite, op with your hosts. Salda Stefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. There are some people in our industry that have some very interesting information and viewpoints. And we'd like to bring some of these people to you. These episodes are very information and science heavy. Dr. Minkoff was one of the first people that I picked to interview.

He's got some, he's got an interesting story. So he was an infectious disease physician. His story is, wife is crazy. His wife, yeah, when it's, had some crazy symptoms and through the process of learning how to heal his wife. He kind of moved off into a different type of healthcare a little bit of like like melding the Western side of you know Western medicine with some of the alternative type of medicine and

It's very interesting. It's a very interesting episode now in this episode I know you guys listen to this interview. It's scared to shit. That's the thing. You're going to hear him talk a lot about toxins and things we're putting in our body and what they do. He does give some actionable items at the end that'll probably protect you from a lot of them. But what I found fascinating with this was just,

when he tests people for chemical loads in their body, he basically said, most people have high levels of something whether it's plastic or from gasoline or something else So kind of crazy, but anyway a very interesting episode again information heavy. It's Dr. Minkoff his website is drm i and K.o.f f Dot com so without any further do here's me talking to dr david minkoff you could talk a little bit about

your background and what brought you to what you're doing now i grew up in medicine with constant and i i uh... went to college at the university with constant in medical school and uh... after medical school i I went to UC San Diego, and I did a pediatric residency, and then a fellowship in infectious disease. And I was faculty there doing pediatric infectious disease, and then I went into private practice

and did a hospital-based practice in infectious disease. It was the early 80s. It was the beginning of the age epidemic. Got saw a lot of those type of patients. In 1982 or actually when I moved to San Diego with Frank Shorter to just one Olympic marathon and I got interested in running and did a four or five marathon. Then in 1982 when I saw Julie Moss crawl across the finish line that Iron Man inspired me to want to go do that and that was in February of 1982 and I did my first Iron Man Hawaii in October of 1982 and I've done 42 Iron Man since then, eight of them and why still racing now and

medical career wise, I did infectious disease and pediatrics till 1990 and we moved to Florida and I switched careers and started doing emergency medicine. But in 1996, my wife got sick. She's a nurse. She was always very health conscious. Always ate really well. Mother of three children, podium triathlete. And she decided she didn't like the feelings that were in her teeth, the mercury feelings, the silver colored fillings,

and she went to a dentist and had them all drilled out. And if people aren't familiar with this, mercury is the metal that at room temperature is liquid, but if you drill it with a high speed drill, it will aerosolize and it will go all over the body. So it got into her brain, it got into her thyroid, it got into her blood, and a few weeks later she started complaining of pain over her thyroid and her thyroid tests were abnormal and then she started complaining of pain over her liver and her liver tests were abnormal. And I was in a big community hospital in Lawrence, you know, my new all the best doctors.

And I had an endocrinologist look at her. I had a hepatologist. It's a liver specialist look at her. And then a few weeks later, she wakes up one morning and she says, I can't lift my arm to brush my teeth. Hold it, so. So I took her to a neurologist and he said, well, it looks like this is an autoimmune condition, whether it's thyroid or liver, probably her brain.

This looks like an MS type thing. She should go on steroids and interferon, which is the usual treatment for that. And the thing just didn't add up to me. It seemed like this is just like crazy. It's like a nightmare. And so she's a nurse and she owns a home health care nursing agency. And shortly after that, I went to pick her up one night

and a dentist had moved into the complex that her business was in. And on his marquee, it said natural dentistry. So one evening he was walking out to his car when I was picking her up, and I said, hey, can I talk to you for a minute? Here's the story. The only new thing I can think of is she had this mercury move from her teeth because there's been no other sort of insults of any kind, and he listed me and he says, oh yeah, she's mercury toxic.

Mercury and microgram amounts is neurotoxic. It'll kill brain cells. And there's nobody in this town that's going to... We live in clear water, Florida, it's a Tampa Bay area. He said, there's nobody in this town that's going to help you with this. This is 1996. And you better go see Alan. There's a doctor this town that's going to help you with this. This is 1996. You better go see Alan. There's a doctor out there who's real smart. He's an MD and he's a PhD.

He trains doctors and how to diagnose and deal with having metal toxicity like this. I went out there, spent a lot of time with him, learned how he did it, came back and tested her and she was indeed mercuritoxic. And then with the things he told me to do using nutritional methods, we were able to detoxify her and all her symptoms went away and she's completely fine. She raised three weeks ago, she won her age group at a local sprint triathlon. She's completely fine. And after I saw this it got me very interested in

Emergency room work is shift work. So I was doing 12-hour shifts three or four days a week and I had a couple of afternoons where I was free and in her nursing building afternoons where I was free and in her nursing building, agency building, there was an extra room. And I just set up a little clinic there to just kind of play, just see what would happen. And we had friends who saw what happened with my wife. And one of them had migraines, another one had IBS,

and another one had rheumatoid arthritis. And I just started to really just like come on in, I wasn't charging people and we're just gonna see what I can find on you and see if this stuff will work and lo and behold, it really works. And people started to get better and I moved from out of the emergency room because this was so intriguing.

You know, I'd had a very traditional medical education, but the emphasis on nutrition detoxification was practically none, the emphasis on drugs and surgery is very high. And I'm not anti-drug necessarily or surgery, depending on what it is, if you have an acute appendix, you better get it taken out. And if you're in the middle of a heart attack, you better go to a very fine medical center because they'll save your life.

But what I've learned over the years is that if you have a chronic illness, you have a high cholesterol, high blood pressure, rheumatoid arthritis, MS, Lyme disease, chronic headaches. toward arthritis, MS, Lyme disease, chronic headaches, the tools in the typical doctor box aren't any good. And they usually would use pharmaceutical medicines which have their own baggage of side effects. And none of them really treat the reason why the body is behaving in this way. And if you can do the right diagnostics, you can actually find out why is the blood pressure high now?

Or why is the cholesterol high? Or why is this guy tired all the time? It's not a genetic disease. The person didn't feel that way, you know, one month, six months, five years before, depending on how long they've been suffering. And there is a reason. Well, usually there's several reasons, and if you're good, you can find out what those reasons are and unwind, so to speak. the reason why his body is behaving that way and then they get well and their symptoms go away and their pain goes away and their energy goes comes back and they feel good and that's a lot of fun. You know I've often speculated on this exactly what you're talking about. I have a tremendous respect for

Western medicine. We've solved some of the, if not the biggest killers and problems that mankind has faced from infection to acute injury, to malnutrition even. And we've done a great job with it, but I think that same approach where, because I think we view some of these things as the problem. In other words, if I think we view some of these things as the problem. In other words,

if I have blood pressure, high blood pressure itself can cause issues within my body. So our approach is to control that high blood pressure because we know that that's going to cause problems rather than looking deeper and saying what's causing the high blood pressure, which then causes the problem. So I think it almost seems like, you know, maybe correct me if I'm wrong, it almost seems like we're at these crossroads where you're starting to see this cross-pollinization from the Western kind of concepts of medicine or how to treat things, which tends to be more symptomatic care with the kind of wellness side, which I know that's a large umbrella, but more along the lines of nutritional components, stress management, sleep, you know, those kinds of

things. Am I on to something or is that off? No, no, you're totally right. You know, if somebody has a strep throat and you do a throat swab and they have a, you know, a fiery throat and big glands and a high fever, then penicillin might be the exact right thing to do to get them through the hump. And in that case, you know, regular medications would be good. I see a lot of patients that have Lyme disease, and many of them have been on four, five, six antibiotics at a time for years, and they're not better.

And I used to do full-time infectious disease, and I know antibiotics, and you know, in acute situations they can really be helpful, but in chronic situations like Lyme, they don't work at all. And you have to sort of build the whole stuff so that the host immune system can handle the infection. I don't know if you're aware of it. At the end of the 1800s, there was this big debate in academic medicine in France between a microbiologist named Bashant and Louis Pasteur, who was the, you know, he was at the big university, he was the big professor, he had all the notoriety, and they had an ongoing debate as to whether

what's the most important thing? Is it the microorganism that attacks the body or is it the body's host responses that can't deal with the organism? And pastures idea was, it's the microorganism. And if you got the microorganism, and it was a bad pathogen, it would make you sick and basha said no because when strep goes through or plague went through not everybody dies some people as hosts

and overcome it and that they can be uh... that it's not the organ and supposedly they have this debate and pasture apparently one, but on his deathbed, his last dying words was, go find Bashant and tell him he was right, that it's the host. And that's a lot of what we find too, is that if we can reconstitute the host in terms of immune function and energy function, like mitochondria, get them functioning again, that a lot of these illnesses, you don't have to necessarily get rid of whatever the thing is, that the body will handle it if it's in good enough shape.

And that's what good health is. I mean, people who are healthy, they have good immune function because they have good mitochondrial function that can manufacture energy. They have an intestine that will absorb nutrients and keep pathogens out. So this sort of, so our approach is how can we get the body and whatever condition is in back to a healthy state. And usually what we find in people is there's really sort of only two things wrong. One is, is they have things in their body which shouldn't be

there. You know, they have infections or toxins. And then on the other side is they have deficiencies. You know, if you have cancer in your vitamin A level or your zinc level or your salineum level is low, you're gonna have a lot of trouble with that cancer. It's not your immune system just won't work right. So if we could rebuild these things, then people often get better.

Now, how often, because I know in modern times toxins, you know pesticides or chemicals like that How often do you see that in your in your practice? Well, we do a laboratory screening for environmental toxins and everyone we see It's 22 of the most common ones and it's things from plastic petrochemicals, gasoline additives, fumigants insecticide, and almost everybody has one or more high levels. If you're drinking out of plastic water bottles, you're going to have high plastic residues

in your body. If you live in an urban environment, there's a gas added called H-T-B-E. You're going to have very high levels of H-T-B-E. You're going to have very high level of H-T-B-E. If you're not eating organic fruits and vegetables, your level of glyphosate roundup, which is the main test that I've used all over the world, your levels are going to be very high. These are all potent toxins. And I can just give you a couple examples. I had a 12-year-old come in about six months ago with a history of nine months of severe fatigue. She wasn't able to go to school.

She was just exhausted all the time. Prior to this, she'd been completely normal. And she'd been seen by a lot of different doctors. And when she came in to see us, I did this test on her and this gas adenine called H-T-B-E, which we find in most people. But in her case, the normal levels are under 200. And in her body, it was 39,000. Wow.

And huge, just huge. And her other, you know, her chemicals and pesticides and plastics and all the other stuff was low. So this is clearly an isolated exposure that was just massively huge. And so when the results came back and I started talking to the parents, I kind of jokingly said, is she sniffing gasoline? Is she washing her hands? Is she a painter?

You know, is she using this as a solvent? What is she doing? And they said, no, a couple of years ago, she took up mid-suit race car driving, and on a weekend, she'll spend three or so hours Saturday and Sunday in the car on the track Oh wow and the fumes from the gasoline had poidinger and She got better once we figured out what the heck it was And went back to normal. So these are these are things that are very important problems for all of us and These are things that are very important problems for all of us. And we encourage people to eat organic as you can.

Don't wrap food in tin foil or plastics. Don't microwave food in containers that could be, that plastics that could volatilize. Because these are toxins. And if you get a lot of them, your body is going to have a hard time. If somebody suspects that they have high levels of some of these toxins, what are some things that they can do to help detoxify their body besides reducing or eliminating their

exposure to these things? Are there things they can do with nutrition or supplementation that can help? Yeah, yeah. I mean, the first rule of toxicology is stop the offending toxins. So if you can figure out what that is, or if your lifestyle habit is that you have a lot of these exposures, don't drink in plastic water bottles.

Filter your shower water. Make sure your drinking water is filtered because a lot of stuff comes in through the groundwater and gets into our bodies. Sauna is very good. It can be regular heat sauna or infrared sauna because a lot of these toxins are stored in the body fat and with sweating they come out. Interesting. You want to make sure that the intestine is healthy, like you have a bowel movement at least one every day. You're drinking enough fluids so that you're in flow with every couple of hours you're urinating and it isn't too dark. You want to make sure that, I mean, we check people very carefully for their gut because

lots of times people have parasites or bad bacteria and they have biotoxic waste too, which sort of gets added to the load. So we want to make sure that the elimination systems are working. And then supplements with a good multivitamin, something that's got good liver support to help deliver detoxify this stuff. And then the whole detox system is amino acids.

And we want to make sure that they get a good blend of essential amino acids because if they're low, they won't detoxify. So these are strategies that can help anyone where they don't need a lot of intervention, but I find for most people, if you say, okay, from now for the next six weeks, go on a paleotype diet, avoid grains, beans, nightshades, avoid all dairy products except organic butter. Eat all organic, including, you know, graph-fed meats so that you lower your your exposure, and then take a few simple things like a multivitamin and a probiotic and a greens mix and some fish oil and a little, either eat some seaweed

or take a little bit of iodine, that this super simple thing for most people within five or six weeks, they'll feel definitely better. They're intestinally better, they're bloating will be better. They'll start having bomb movements and they'll really feel better. And their energy will come back and then of course sleep will be better. And for many people just doing something like that and then getting outside, getting some sunshine, getting some kind of exercise or something they enjoy. They like tennis, like tennis, if they like to live with weights, if they have time to throw in so-and-so for half hour, three or four times a week.

That's pretty, you know, and pay attention that they're getting enough sleep. That's for most people, they don't need a doctor, they don't need a fancy program, that if they just did that, it would make a huge difference. That's awesome, you know, it's funny, 10 years ago, so I've been in fitness now for 20 years, and 10 years ago, if I mentioned, you know, gut hyperpermeability or leaky gut syndrome or if I talked about how the body can build immunities

to foods because of leaky gut, I would get laughed at. And it's great to hear doctors talk about these things now. Are you still on the fringe or are more of your colleagues starting to talk about these things? It's getting better, but if you go into the gastrointestinal, you know, the gastroenterologist community, they're not into this at all. You know, if you see, there's lots of naturopath chiropractors, some MDs were probably the most resistive of all the professions. D.O.'s are better. There's a lot of people now that recognize this, that, gee, with, your gut is important.

Leaky gut is very common. But in the traditional, with the traditional profession, it's completely, you're nearly completely ignored. You know, we're going to do an endoscopy and a colonoscopy and if that's okay, and then we're going to do a regular celiac test, and if we do that, then you're not gluten-sensitive, and then you can eat what you want. These things are so crude in terms of trying to help with functional problems that they don't really help at all.

Sometimes they find things on these people, but most of the time, the person has a functional problem with these things, but it's hard to measure it with a CBC or by feeling their belly or by looking down into their stomach, but they tell you, I don't feel good, or I'm bloating, or I don't sleep well, or I'm tired. Oh, we see it all the time in what we do. It seems to have gotten worse. Statistics on this are kind of hard to find although there are some statistics that are

quite alarming uh... food allergies is a big one you know when i was a kid when i was in elementary school thirty years ago i don't remember any kids with food allergies and i have two kids now and food allergies uh... there's entire clat classrooms that are peanut free

or egg free, autoimmune diseases seem to be exploding and some statistics, and it's funny because it's hard to find statistics on this, but some of them are clear like autism, for example. I think it was like one out of 5,000 kids, and 1980 had autism, and now today it's, some estimates one out of 68 children. Is there, are we having an explosion in chronic disease?

Oh, it's absolutely, there's an epidemic of it. When I remember in 1978, I was a pediatric resident at UC San Diego and the chairman of the department is a real famous guy, his name is Bill Nighan. He would make rounds with us once a week. And I remember distinctly walking through University Hospital, there's a 15-month-old in a crib. And he came up to the crib and he said to the, there's like 10 of us or 15 of us residents

that were following around. And he would sort of pontificate on things. He was super smart. And we just loved having the time to be with him. And he said, I want you when we're done with rounds, everybody come back and examine this child, because you'll never see another one of these in your career. He said, this child has autism. Wow. The incidence of autism, he said, was like one in 150,000 burks. That's what he told us. I don't know if that's actually true, but it's very rare. And he said was like one in 150,000 burks. That's what he told us.

I don't know if that's actually true, but it's very rare. And he said, if you're a busy pediatrician, you will never see that many children. And you may never see another one of these in your life. But in case you do, you'll have seen one here and you'll recognize it. And like you said, the incidence of autism now for males is like one in6-ish, and this isn't better diagnosis. This is toxic mothers, toxic babies, toxic vaccines, toxic food, and these guys just can't handle it. The host is so overwhelmed.

The host body, probably starting in utero, is so overwhelmed that they can't do it. And, you know, they're given three, you know, vaccinations on day one. A lot of these mothers are toxic and they're dumped, they're toxins into the baby during the process of gestation. And the kids don't have a chance. There's epidemics of childhood cancer. We have epidemics of childhood obesity. The incidence of chronic illness of autoimmune illness is just skyrocketing. No, we've, our planet's toxic and we've done it to ourselves. And we have to back up from this. You know, I think there's going to be nobody to work. You know, if all these kids are autistic

and you look at the whole school system, I mean, every school and every grade has special needs kids now. They have ADD, they can't learn and they can't you know in Tampa Bay something like 50% of the kids that graduate high school can't read and if you're an employer like we have 38 people working for us in our clinic, try to find someone that can actually read and write, get to their at 8 o'clock, give you 8 good hours, and do the job. It's getting rarer and rarer and rarer. I think it's because people are sick.

Well, before we, and that's great information, I'm glad you shared that. Before we sign off, I do want to ask this because sometimes when you learn about information like this, it can seem overwhelming, like the average listener's listening going, well great, now what do I do? I'm surrounded by all these things. This is how I live. Like what do I do now?

What are some, I guess, big rocks or big things that people can do that'll help them that are that they could start with you know maybe like a few things that they can avoid or do uh... to help prevent you know what's happening well i think i've made this reiterates the thing i said earlier i think that uh... the human body needs to have nutritious food that isn't toxic so eat organic food. We find these days that most of the grains are toxic, so I say, do a paleotype diet, because for most people that works.

So they avoid grains, they avoid dairy, except for organic butter. And I usually start people off of meg-shade vegetables. So it's peppers and eggplant and tomatoes and white potatoes. Because many people are sensitive to these things, especially if you have joint pain or you have any kind of autoimmune condition, as a start, just eliminate those from your diet. And then get some, get out in the sunshine every day for a half an hour.

Walk if you don't do any exercise, get out and walk or walk your dog or do something so that you get outside and you breathe and you move your body. If you like exercise and you have something, you like, we'll do that. And then make sure you get enough sleep and try to have the environment you sleep in,

free of electronics, you know? I don't like big screen TVs and bedrooms. I don't like cell phones next to the bed because these things are dirty energy. If you put somebody's body next to a regular outlet, that outlet is pulsating at 120 times per second, and the electrons in your body are moving toward it and away from it with every pulse of that electrical current. And our bodies, they work on small microcurrents. A sodium moves across the membrane one way and the potassium moves across the other way,

they're little microcurrents, and they affect us. So if you can sleep in an environment where your body isn't under electronic or electromagnetic stress, that's really helpful. In our house, we can turn off the electronics in the master bedroom just by itself, and if you walk in there, when it's off versus when it's on, you can feel it. So I think these are kind of simple things that can make a big difference.

And I think the other thing is just try to reduce your exposure to toxic things. So don't use plastic water bottle and put your food and containers that are safe that these are these are good things and and and and people generally feel better quite quickly after instituting them excellent that's that's what we find as well I want to thank you for allowing me to do this interview with you I appreciate it well great it was fun to thank you for allowing me to do this interview with you. I appreciate it. Well, great. It was fun to talk to you and hope to see you sometimes.

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