Sawbones: A Marital Tour of Misguided Medicine - Chlorophyll

Episode Date: April 27, 2021

Along with Dr. Sydnee’s amazing videos, TikTok is also a host to an interesting wellness trend: chlorophyll. The green pigment that helps plants turn sunlight into food and oxygen has also been thought to boost your immune system and help with body odor. But chlorophyll as a health food is an idea that dates back to 1930, and spoilers ... it's just as effective now as it was then.Music: "Medicines" by The Taxpayers

Saubones is a show about medical history, and nothing the hosts say should be taken as medical advice or opinion. It's for fun. Can't you just have fun for an hour and not try to diagnose your mystery boil? We think you've earned it. Just sit back, relax, and enjoy a moment of distraction from that weird growth. You're worth it. that weird growth. You're worth it. Alright, talk is about books. One, two, one, two, three, four. We came across a pharmacy with a toy and that's lost it out. We were sawed through the broken glass and had ourselves a look around.

Some medicines, some medicines that escalate my cop for the mouth. Hello everybody and welcome to Salbone's Marital Tour of Miscotted Medicine. I'm your co-host, Justin McElroy. And I'm Sydney McElroy. That was a big pause there, you took. For when? Just then, like as we got started. I wanted to build some suspense as to who I was.

Oh, okay. Like maybe they wouldn't know this time. And now my identity has been revealed. I just... I just... Yes, it's Like maybe they wouldn't know this time. And now my identity has been revealed. I just... I just... I just... I just...

Yes, it's still you. And it's still me. Justin. Sydney. You... You've been on TikTok a lot lately. Mainly just watching your great TikToks and people making various recipes out of cake mix and two other ingredients.

Yeah, that's true. Don't mix it. That's always the key in those. Don't mix it. Don't mix it. You're going to be tempted to just sprinkle over top, a piece of butter, you gotta dump cake going. But there are also sometimes, I would say, wellness trends on TikTok.

Mm, that's a general way of putting it. Yeah, I don't get a lot of those in my algorithm. Can't imagine why. We know. Can't fathom why. But I have heard from many, many of our listeners too many to name. I would name you all, but so many people emailed this topic in quick, quick succession. And I look, people have been actually recommending this topic for a few years.

I'm just slow on the uptake of this one. But apparently chlorophyll is a big TikTok trend right now. For humans. Yes, honey. It's a huge on plant TikTok. Right. Long time. They're wild about it over there. That's right. Plants have been on the chlorophyll trend. They were, they knew chlorophyll was cool before it was cool. Yeah. But humans are just now getting into it. Get into it. This is good. I'm loving turning the power of the sun into usable energy for me

So thank you if you emailed in about chlorophyll now or in the past several years There are so many of you. I can't even you. I'll just know I'm talking to you right now. This is just for you Not the other people who also did it just mainly you just you so Justin yes, what do you remember about chlorophyll from your I it just mainly you. Just you. Um, so, Justin. Yes. What do you remember about chlorophyll from your, when did we elementary school science class probably? Yeah, checked out after that.

Then I got a third through fifth grade somewhere in that. I had some stuff, I had like biology and I think there's some plant stuff in there in college, but I worked out a system with my friends where, uh, one of us would go Monday and one of us would go Wednesday and one of us would go Wednesday and one of us would go Friday and then we would just compare it out so we didn't all have to go to class all the days and I'm pretty sure I didn't go to class on plant day, you know, like on the day. Right, so you don't know what chlorophyll does for plants. It's the green stuff.

Okay, that's a story. I'm sorry, let me, basically it's the good green stuff that takes, let's plant. You got this, come on. Yeah, it takes plants and the sun is in there. And then it turns like the, there's a word here you're looking for. Carbon dioxide into oxygen, photosynthesis. photosynthesis.

Good job, you got it. Yes, it's a, I'm gonna go, ungrow way down. It's a pig. Pigment present in plants and algae that is responsible for their green color. And it is stored in chloroplasts. You remember that.

Didn't you have to make the cells and you make the animal cell and the plant cell and you gotta make a cake or something looks like one? Mom, did it for me, you. Okay. Sorry. I loved making those. What?

I know, it's shocking. Mine was one of those big cookies. This is our first time meeting, so you can imagine my shock at finding out that you loved making cell models. I apparently as a kid, that's very important because I had to do it many times. I feel like for school,

like I had to make multiple edible cells for school. Loved every one of them. Can't wait, can't wait to do that with our kids, can't wait for that day. Anyway, so it absorbs sunlight to give plants energy. That's photosynthesis, it's a way that plants give us oxygen. Yes.

Yes. So it's important for plants, it's important for humans. We have known about it since 1817 in the plant realm. But when did we decide it's medicine? When did we decide that not only was chlorophyll important for, you know, photosynthesis and plants in the creation of oxygen, which is the, you know, thing we need to survive? When did we decide that we should ingest it? I don't know. This seems like a recent trend, but it actually isn't. I thought this was really fascinating.

So a lot of what you'll read about, the current articles about it, kind of focus on the last few years. It seems like maybe like 2018 is when this was sort of revived or they're abouts, that's at least when it was a big enough trend that it ascended into the public consciousness and there are like think pieces about it. And like, popular science articles about it and stuff.

But that is not the first time that people investigated the potential help benefits of chlorophyll. For that, we have to go back to 1930. Wow, all the way back. Yes, at Temple University in the lab of Dr. William Gruskin. Now, Dr. Gruskin was intrigued by the potential of chlorophyll to do a lot of things. And when we get into the why's why did Dr. Gruskin think that chlorophyll might have all this

medicinal potential, I don't have a great answer for it. It's really hard for me to try to figure out exactly what the first thought was. You know, why do you think one thing might be medicine? Why is this the thing you decide to focus on? Is it just that it is the area of your research and so you may as well look for all applications of it? I mean, that's certainly true sometimes. Other suggestions have been that if you look at the chlorophyll molecule, it's similar

to the hemoglobin molecule in our human body. It's on the blood ones. Yes. There's a place where iron and magnesium, we have iron and they have magnesium instead, the plants. But anyway, it's a very similar, so maybe the thought was like this looks like hemoglobin. Actually, I don't know if we knew the structure of hemoglobin. I don't know if he knew the structure of hemoglobin. Anyway, this has been suggested as to why it has potential medical benefits as well as

kind of like hemoglobin. It does not, here's a spoiler, it does not function exactly like hemoglobin in your human body, so please don't think it does. But maybe that's why, for whatever reason, Dr. Greshkin was interested in the potential chlorophyll to do a few different things. He started off, and these were not commercial applications.

He was very much looking at like bench research applications. What does this do in a lab? I'm not necessarily thinking about selling it to anybody. No, bull. Yes, exactly. So he tried it first for things like wounds and burns. Like what if I apply it to people in like an appointment or paste or something, does it help wounds heal faster?

Does it help wounds heal faster? Does it help burn heal faster? Is it good for things like varicose veins? What if we apply it and just it somehow take it? Does it help with that? Does it help with like trench mouth, like an infection of some sort? Does it help with a brain abscess? So. Theory was it's doing something in plants.

Maybe it would do something for us. We just don't know what. A wide variety of applications, Dr. Gresken tried. There was not one thing that sort of came from that research, right? There wasn't like this giant medical breakthrough, which to be fair wasn't exactly what he was looking for anyway. I mean, sort of, but... It would have been nice. You always want to break through a huge scientific breakthrough. Yeah, but when you're doing pure research, a lot of what you know you're doing is building a body of knowledge

that someday may have an application, but like right now, it's this understanding is what you're seeking. Yeah. Which is beautiful in that sense. The understanding, that is the goal. Yeah, but if it turns into like a super good toothpaste or something like that, you're not gonna get out of it. I mean, you're gonna be pretty sad.

You're so close to what's about to happen. Oh really? That was very, that was very strange. That's where you went. So his research was funded by a nonprofit called the Lakeland Foundation. And they made a deal again. So I want to, there's a Saban's sidebar,

one of our classic segments that we always do, and it just enrates the suspiciousness of an organization based on its name. And I'm gonna go ahead and give Lakeland, sorry, what was it? The Lakeland Foundation? Like a seven out of 10 chance that it is Illuminati. Like a one, like very, very likely.

I like the Illuminati. I have no evidence for any shadiness to the Lakeland Foundation. Okay. From this story, it's a character shows up on your favorite show, Fringe, and they're like, my name is Roger Peterson, and I'm from the Lakeland Foundation,

100% that's an alien. 100% he's come through from the other dimension. No, they're not aliens. They're us from the other timeline. Oh, he checked. He walked right into it. It is not. See, there are multiple time streams

and they're built on, anyway, we can talk about French later. We can't actually. Exciting now. Now you have to. So they had a right to patent anything that can't useful that would come out of this, right? Like he's in it for the science.

He's in it for the love of the game. And they're like, that's fine. We'll fund that. But if you get anything good out of this, we get patented. You find a portals or not gold. You know, it's hard to say it because it's all property of the likelihood of thatation. They would, and so they did just that in 1937.

They patented the use of chlorophyll that was dissolved in an aqueous solution to find a way to take the chlorophyll molecule and dissolve it in water. Okay. That process was patterned. Did you describe water as an aqueous solution? Well, something with water. I mean, aqueous means like any liquid.

Disolved in an aqueous solution, you mean water? Yes. Disolved in water? Yes. But also, like, if you threw other things in there, it would still be under the pattern. Okay. Got it. Because you can't, so like like you have to find a specific form of chlorophyll in order to, like this didn't happen immediately.

It's not like he just dropped chlorophyll and water and went, made that, like that took some science to figure out. So he did that and patented that, or the foundation did. But they didn't have like one use to push it for. They just had this ability and if it does have some sort of medicinal potential, they've got the patent on it, right? So they're just kind of sitting on it.

And it was essentially unused for a while. And it's important to note that one result of his research that he really didn't pay much attention to because he was looking for like more purely medical benefits, like actually treat cure disease benefits. One thing that was unexpected is the idea that it might serve as a deodorizing agent. But he was really focused on that. But in the mid-1940s, there was a young advertising executive

named O'Neill Ryan. And he heard about... Not Ryan O'Neill, star of what's up, Doc? O'Neill Ryan. He heard about about... Not Ryan O'Neill, star of What's Up Doc? O'Neill Ryan. He heard about, yes, that is actually, yes. He heard about this research around chlorophyll, that Dr. Greskin had done, from a friend over dinner. And like at the time, he was looking for something.

And I guess maybe this would have been common at this period to be an advertising and actively looking for a product, not just to, here's a product that's already on the market and I'm gonna help them create a campaign, but I'm gonna bring the product to market, right? Got it, right. Maybe that's still, I don't think so. Yeah, yeah, this is more than just,

he doesn't just wanna market it, he wants to be the one behind it and market it. Got it. And so he was looking for something in this sound of promising. So he went to Lakeland and after some negotiations persuaded them to give him like soul licensing rights. Like I'm the only one who can license this product. Whatever it is. At this point, it's still just for a fill in water. You see this on Shark Tank. They have these great hooks in Germany that I loved, and I got this whole rights to have them over here. Yes. So after he had the rights,

he went to another businessman Walter Stanton and said, let's do this together. Let's find some way to make this a thing. I think there's some potential here. Let's make a company. So they took Ryan and Stanton and made Rice-Den. Okay. And that was the name of their car. They're her son.

No, that's not their son. I mean, I don't know. Some people call their business their baby. So. Yes, this was their business baby, Rice-Den. And the idea was that they were going to sell chlorophyll products to people. They went through like, they claimed like 600 different formulations before they figured out exactly the right solution, you know, the right thing that they wanted to sell. And they had a line that were that they were going to come out with 12 different products under the name Chlorism. The line of products was the Chlorism line, all chlorophyll containing. It's weird because every time I hear this,

I think chlorine, which like you don't want to drink. No. But I don't know. The chlorine would be part of the challenge. At this time though, a lot of people wouldn't have their own swimming pools. Like people wouldn't be thinking about chlorine too much. I wouldn't think. That's true. That's true.

And so the first thing they came out with in 1948 was toothpaste. Just as you said. Wow. You're saying I nailed it. Yes. Wow. That's amazing. was toothpaste Just as you You're saying I nailed it. Yes, so they did all this work. They had this company They have big dreams big hopes. They introduced their chlorophyll toothpaste And it doesn't make a big splash People don't get it right like There are lots of toothpaste

There are ones I already know about. I don't understand why chlorophyll would be helpful for me. I don't know what you want me to do with this. Just don't get it, right? So, like, 1948, the toothpaste comes out. Nobody's particularly excited. Now there were other people, though, who were interested in this area, and we're also trying to hop on the bandwagon, so to speak.

The non-existent bandwagon. There was a belief that there was a potential here. And I mean, you'll see, they're not wrong. They're just not there yet. So there was another researcher named F. Howard Westcott, and he had been looking into the potential of chlorophyll to treat anemia, which, again, this is why I think that the similarity of the hemoglobin molecule must be at the root of a lot of these ideas is because that tracks, right?

If you think it's like hemoglobin, then maybe it would help treat anemia. So anyway, he was looking into that, but he also noticed that specifically it had some odor neutralizing effects, at least this is what he said. Four things related to asparagus and vitamin B. If you ate those things, which are notoriously, they will cause you to have odors, right? That people think are unpleasant. That he saw that it helped with that. And he, unlike gruskin,

was down for some applied science here. He was all about what can I do in a lab that we could bring to the people. And so he knew that a deodorizing formula is a lot more marketable than this treats a brain abscess. Very important, but not the kind of thing you have a lot of commercials. but not the kind of thing you have a lot of commercials. Right. So he decided that what he was going to do was really focus on that deodorizing potential and see if he could do some experiments. And?

Well, I'm going to tell you what happened after we go to the building. I didn't see that one coming actually. This time you got me. Let's go! Madison's, Madison's, that escalate my car for the mouth! Mr. Ripple, then, what are you doing? I'm just ticking. What was- Look, my co-workers.

Every journey comes to an end. Remember, Black, the space will be with you always. Say, who are you again? Mr. Keirano. All right, right, right, right, so... Friendships will be tested. Don't you have to do it. You have to shoot Black.

Okay, I'll shoot you, Black. Wow, you shot him so fast. Destiny will be fulfilled. I've become a complete bird. What's flying? I'm flying. On April 28th, the saga starts concluding. Guys, we don't have a choice. We have to put on a show.

We can do it in the little barn. We've got the costumes. We put on a show. We can do it in no board. We've got the costumes. We've got a stage. We can do it, you guys. Mission to six. The final season on Maximum Fun. Okay, said, I got my wallet out. I'm ready to invest.

What happened? So Westcott did a study, if you can call it that, where he gave people he worked with, one doctor and four nurses, limited symbol size. A dose of chlorophyll. And then at the end of the day, he had them rate their underarm, rate their own, rate their own underarm odor. Do you feel like you're less stinky today than you were yesterday when you didn't get a chlorophyll? Are you less stinky now than you were four years ago? And based on this study, again, I'm air quotes, he, this yielded a 50% reduction in voter.

He imagined walking in a room and see a doctor in four nurses, but just like, I'll smell their own pet type. Smell their pets. Nice. It's like a six, not bad. Choice. 50% better beoted. So he expanded that to a bunch of college students

and had them all take a dose of chlorophyll and rate their stinkingness. And he claimed that the results are pretty pretty similar. This cuts your body odor in half if you take chlorophyll once a day. At the end of it, he concluded what he said was he was quoted the only effective treatment for onion eaters was to clean the mouth thoroughly and then use a chlorophyll mouthwash or suck a chlorophyll tablet. And that it was good for bad breath if you were a smoker or if you had an upset stomach,

you claimed all this. You can. A lot of things to be fixed by one thing. You can just take chlorophyll. And the smart thing that Westcott knew to do is, and I mentioned that already, he said a chlorophyll mouthwash or Succa chlorophyll tablet now. Why is that important? What is the patent that rights?

Water is all in water so if he could make a tablet form He doesn't have to worry about that existing patent and that's convenient to you to throw one in your part purse in your pocket so All of this would probably still be for not at this point. Because the public wasn't interested in chlorophyll. They didn't know what it was. They didn't know why they needed it. Some stinky college students was not it was not enough to convince them. Nobody was buying chlorophyll, tablet or otherwise, until in the summer of 1950, Reader's Digest published an article called Nature's Deodorant all about the magical deodorizing powers of chlorophyll.

Wow, Reader's Digest really put their thumb on the scales there. They really did of history at this moment. I love this kind of thing. Anyway, so this article came out and the public. By this kind of thing, do you mean Reader's Digest a magazine to which you do have a ongoing subscription? I love the the joke ones laughter is the best medicine and humor in uniform and there's another one. I love those

Yeah The everyone that they says there's a little note in there. It says thank you to our only 38 year old subscriber What an honor is to have a millennial like yourself. I used to keep all my readers digest. Anyway, so this article comes out and everybody is like, oh my gosh, it is the 50s and chlorophyll is the thing. We love it. And Rice-sen is already sitting pretty because they've already got their chlorident toothpaste out there. And they are the ones with the patent to, if it's going to be in a liquid, they're the ones who get to do it. So like the mouth washes in the toothpaste and all the different products that you could put on

your skin or drink or whatever, they're falling under rice and at the same time They're falling under rice. At the same time, you have companies like Nulo chlorophyll tablets who were using West Cots, Patton, and basically his intellectual property to develop their products. You have all these different chlorophyll products that all come to the market at the same time, as this article comes out and everybody wants them. There were like chlorets gum and mints that you could buy in addition to the tablets and the toothpaste and the mouth washes. There was a form of palm olive that was introduced, you know, the soap. Because that was already a big product at this point. They just

added chlorophyll to it for a while. And we're like, look, Paul Mollum, that's chlorophyll now. It's great. Yeah, that's all right. There was even a cigarette brand, Hail Sigarettes, which had like a chlorophyllter on them. Chlorophyllter? I don't even know if they,

you know what, I gotta look at the ads. And the ads were all very explicit. This is what they do, right? Like, this is the goal of advertising. Make you feel insecure about something. The ads were all very explicit, this is what they do, right? Like, this is the goal of advertising, make you feel insecure about something. The ads were very explicit, you smell bad, your underarm smell bad, your mouth smells bad, you smell bad.

That's exactly what I'm saying. And the only thing you can do about it is chlorophyll. Savoritizing the, advertising does not, does not make you sad. Well, they worked because by 1952, by 1952, there was an article that came out that dubbed it the year that everything turned green because everybody was buying chlorophyll constantly,

which is something I've never heard of this. I didn't know this was this giant fad. But as fads go, just as soon as the public was going wild and everybody was in Justin chlorophyll in every form that they could, just as soon as it got going, it started to die off. That's fads for you. That's the problem. That's why they don't call them, I don't know, permit cultural shifts. This was just a fad. Just like many of these sort of pseudometrical trends, they pop up, everybody goes wild for them. And the same year that they hit it big is the same year,

they sort of collapse on themselves. First, the FDA stepped in to sort of ruin the fun, and we're like, actually none of this is based on any science. So either we've been sleeping on this for so long. Yeah, I'm glad you guys like chlorophyll so much, but there are no high quality studies that could support anything that we're saying here. And then the FTC stepped in and was like, you actually can't market any of these claims because you don't have anything to back them up. And we're really mad at all of you for your advertising.

And we know that if this is okay. So they started shutting things down and deep-bunking claims. And then the Journal of the American Medical Association published a big article after that. And this was all in like in 1952 into 1953 that said like, okay, none of these claims are backed by hard science. The way that Westcott did these studies is not how we do science, right?

Like we don't ask our friends to sniff their armpits and tell us if they smell better. That's not the scientific method. And then they pointed out this sort of kind of last little note. Like basically they were saying, we don't know if chlorophyll can do any of this. We're not saying it can't. We're just saying we don't have

none of these studies actually prove that it does. And the only thing we throw out there is that in addition to needing high quality scientific studies to see if this works, and it totally, there are a lot of animals that eat plants all the time. And if you thought chlorophyll was really good at blocking odor, wouldn't goat smell better? Amic codally. Hey. Hey. Thanks.

That was nice. Which I don't know if that's a scientifically sound statement, but there it is. So the fact that it is. It means it's good as having your buds smell their pits. It's at least as logical as that. What do you think the goats would smell better? I love that. I can see as a visit, this is not me if I'm shade because I am a doctor and I can see

myself writing something like this. Where I think like, I'm writing my article and I got on my science in there and then I'm like, this is gonna sound so clever. Gacha, wouldn't goats smell better? It's been one of, I just feel bad for the goats. Like don't you think goats are like, this is unnecessary.

Why do you have to bring me into this? I'm not, I live outside. I live outside and don't bathe. There are a lot of factors to play here, guys. Yeah, I have other factors at play. I can't understand. This seems unnecessary. I'm just trying to eat this can, like in cartoons. So the fad faded and people moved on to whatever, whatever became the next big medical trend in 1953,

1954 and so on. Until, whatever became the next big medical trend in 1953, 1954 and so on. Until like I said the past few years, it seems like these articles started popping up again in 2018. I am certain there were people trying this before then because the supplement has existed ever since the 50s. You could, you can buy and you have been able to buy chlorophyll tablets or drops, usually from supplement vitamin type stores or just like pharmacies. You can buy these kinds of things. Recommended dose between 100 and 300 milligrams a day.

Just like, here's this thing. Nobody really takes it anymore, but it's still out there. And it still exists in that form. You can find tablets, you can find the droppers are very popular. That seems to be what a lot of people on TikTok like is the idea of like putting a few drops of it in your water or whatever drink, and especially water though, because then it turns that bright green. Love that. It's great for TikTok too,

a little visual, it's huge. You can use, you can use it in smoothies too. A lot of people like the idea that you can use it in smoothies. And there are other like formulations that I have found just in like quick Google searches of like what products are out there with chlorophyll in them. And there are tons, there are tons of them. Of course people like Gwyneth Paltrow

on Goop have touted the benefits of chlorophyll periodically and they advertise one chlorophyll product, right? We found Chlorrella. Yes. Yes, that you can buy. And then there are a lot of other influencers and celebrities who have also claimed various medical uses now for chlorophyll supplements, chlorophyll drops, chlorophyll smoothies, chlorophyll, whatever. What is it supposed to be good for then? Is it still just deodorizing? Because I don't, it's hard for me to imagine a lot of these like celebrities wanting to

stand up and be like, I smelled so bad until chlorophyll. The deodorizing thing is still out there. That hasn't gone away, but now people also claim a lot of other things. One arena in which it has become very popular is skin care. The idea that you can either use a face mask with chlorophyll in it or some sort of topical application on your skin, like on topical meaning on the skin, that will improve acne or just generally give you clear, brighter skin. That kind of thing is out there. There have been some studies that have tried to prove this, but none of them are big enough or high quality enough to know, is that really making

the difference? So this is not really supported by evidence yet, but there are a lot of people claiming that they like the way their skin looks better now that they've either been ingesting or applying chlorophyll. Because that's the other thing. You can just drink the smoothies or water with chlorophyll or whatever,

and that's supposedly good for your skin too. So you can, you can ingest, you can take it either way hypothetically. Yeah. In addition, there are claims that it's a weight loss aid that it, yes, there's some very insidious anti-cancer claims. The anti-oxidant thing, it's all anti-oxidants. It starts curing cancer. And then all the vague stuff too. Like you'll find like chlorophyll detox packs. Yeah. It boosted my energy. Immune system support. My vibration is now improved.

Improve your wellness. And just those sort of like vague like this doesn't do anything but we really want to sell it to you. And here it is. And it looks exotic, I guess, because it turns your water green and that's very exciting and it's stupid sometimes. I don't know. I love humans, I'm a humanist. We can be so dumb so I turn my water green. Woohoo! It's fixing me. It's very exciting to people. It turns the water green and it might turn your poop and pee green. So that's how you know it's working. But of course I'm the dummy that

likes the asparagus scent in my pee because it reminds me that a few hours ago, I made a great choice. You know what I mean? Yeah. Like I'm dumb to, you can feel good about yourself. It's like, I'm getting Asparagus free out, J-Man. Thanks, past J-Man for that healthy choice. Thanks for the nutrients.

Do appreciate it. Great choice. Good fiber. The form that is used most is chlorophyllin, which is like a semi-synthetic, it's like a salt, wasodium and copper in order to make it water-soluble, in order to make it dissolve in water. And in terms of research on this to like prove what is it actually do, most of it has been done in a lab, in Petri dishes. There have been some attempts at some early animal studies

for things like wounds, burns, cancer-fighting properties, whatever. And none of these have been replicated in humans. There's no evidence right now that it does any of this stuff in humans. Again, a lot of this is always like a theoretical sort of idea like, well, but it's anti-oxidant. And so, wouldn't that be good for us?

The only evidence that has actually produced anything with chlorophyll. There was a study done in 1980 on nursing home residents and odor. And the idea was that if you gave these people who lived in this nursing home chlorophyll that you could reduce their body odor, their flatchalence, and the odor of their bowel movements. Yeah. And according to this study, it yielded positive results. Okay. Everybody was less smelly after they took chlorophyllin, but it was a very, it was like 63 people. It was a very small sample. And there's no, by the way, a lot of times,

we kind of try to understand why would that happen, right? Why would chlorophyll reduce your body odor? I can't find like a good mechanism for this. How does that happen in the human body? And I'm not saying that we always know, there are certainly medicines that do certain things and we don't fully understand why they do them, but we have done studies repeatedly to prove that, yeah, it does do this thing. I'm still not sure why, but it does do it. With this, with chlorophyll, we don't really have good heart evidence

that it reduces body odor, and we also don't know how or why it would. So we're missing kind of both pieces. There was some interesting research in 2001 about chlorophyllin and aflatoxin, which is a toxin that's made by fungus. And the idea is that if you are exposed to a lot of aflatoxins in your food, which in like certain parts of China, these toxins can contaminate a lot of food. And if you're exposed to them for a long time, it can increase your risk of developing liver cancer later on. And so they did a study where they tried to give people chlorophyll to see if it would like reduce the amount of damage that the aflatoxins can do. And they did see some positive results in this study, this idea that like if you are being exposed to these very specific toxins,

taking chlorophyll can help neutralize them. And then the idea would be you're less likely to get cancer later. They did not follow the study out long enough to ever prove that benefit. So we can't say that. It's interesting. It's intriguing. And I think certainly if you see that result in one study, you could do other studies about that specific thing to address that specific problem. But to take that and claim that it can prevent treat cure cancer is obviously false. Yeah.

We do not have evidence of that. Can it hurt you? Well, other than making your PM poop green, which it might, not really, there are some concerns. It can make you a little more sensitive to sun. There are some medicines that do that too, so you could take it and you're more likely to get a sunburn, which is bad. Because you're soaking up so many of us raised and converting them into energy.

It will not make you create oxygen like that. I don't think you can do photosynthesis from taking it. There's no evidence for that. It can cause some loose stools maybe. It has not been proven overtly dangerous as of yet, but there are no high quality studies to say, what would the toxic dose be? Is there an amount you can take that would tell you?

Folks, remember, as Sydney always reminds me, there's a toxic dose of everything. We don't know about interactions with other medications. We talked about that with St. John's word, right? Like it's important to know that it can, if you're going to take it, it can interact with some of the medications you might already be on. We don't really know that about chlorophyll. There's no proposed idea that it does. We just don't know. And we don't know about things like

how would it interact in people with other underlying chronic illnesses or pregnant people or breastfeeding people or kids. We have no idea about any of that. So to just say like, well, it doesn't seem to hurt anybody, I'm sure it's safe. That's a huge stretch right now. We just don't know.

We don't think it can hurt you, but we have no idea. And so I would never based on that lack of evidence. I would never recommend taking it, especially when I don't know that it would do anything good for you. And certainly if you were considering it, you should talk with your primary care provider about it first, because if you're in any of those groups where you might be higher risk,

you maybe it's not a risk you wanna take. But said, I gotta have my chlorophyll. Here's the thing, if you wanna take chlorophyll, my recommendation is to eat your vegetables. Because, start over, I don't like this. chlorophyll. My recommendation is to eat your vegetables because two cups of raw spinach equal the amount that a liquid supplement suggested dose would be like 15 drops. It's the same amount. That's not that much. It's raw. It's fluffy. You think about it. Yeah, I mean, that's not a lot of spinach. And also, I will say two things. The reason that in my mind, the spinach, or whatever vegetable you want to replace with

this, whatever, especially green vegetables, that's what we're talking about. The reason the vegetable is superior to the liquid or pill or whatever supplement. One, it can be a cost issue. I mean, typically a bag of spinach is not particularly expensive. And for some of these supplements, you could be paying 30 or 40 bucks. Now, there are cheaper versions out there. I'm not, there are so many different versions of this out there.

And again, we've talked about this before. You don't know exactly what's in them. It's just plant blood. It's cheap and easy to put. That is how it's plant blood is how it's been build before. God. Yeah.

That's funny that you said that. I'm crushing it. This happens to have a really good tune with the hucksters this time. I know. You could do this. You could be a patent medicine salesman. So even if you could get it cheaper, the other thing I

would say the advantage of the vegetable itself over these supplements, spinach also has vitamin A, C, K, folate, calcium, iron. It's good, it's yummy. You can throw it in with a meal and it tastes good. You can get salad out of it. Stop, Dr. McRoy, stop. I'm not gonna let you use this podcast as a platform to pedal your lies about how spinach is, let me check their transcript.

Yummy. I like spinach. Spinach is transcript. Yummy. I like spinach. Spinach is good. Yummy. I like spinach. You are losing, you realize you lose credibility when you do things like this. If you do.

Your credibility is so important, it's the bedrock of this podcast, and you pedal it away when you say things, you just platform to say things like Spinach is yummy. You could eat other vegetables, especially green leafy vegetables are good for you and you should eat them. And if you don't want to eat spinach, eat a different one. And that is better for you.

I mean, overtly better for you than taking a chlorophyll supplement or tablet or liquid or whatever you want to take. It's just eat the vegetable, two to three cups of veggies a day. Why not like eat more, eat four cups, eat five cups, vegetables are good for you. That is a better way you get other good stuff that you need and it might taste a lot better.

Then taking a supplement that we don't know if it helps you, we don't think but we aren't sure if it can hurt you. And your pain extra money for when you could just like, you'd have salad and it would taste good. I feel like this, you chose this topic for your ulterior motives. Obviously, since I'm touting the benefits of green leaf of vegetables, it is, I feel like that we have a lot of medically inclined listeners would point out that if you are taking a medication like Warfare and which can interact with vitamin K, which is found in green leaf vegetables, you should always talk to your doctor, your provider for you.

I am anxious. Is it for you to adjust the amount? No, no. No, but you have to know how much you're eating and keep it stable. And people who are on that medication know that and have talked to them. But I just, I always feel like if I'm going to here, I'm not gonna say like everybody, no matter what, should eat all the spinach they want all the time. No, there are some people who need to watch

the amount of vitamin K they consume. Thank you so much for listening to our podcast. We appreciate you. As always, it's a joy and a treasure, a pleasure to be here. No, a treasure. Thank you all of you who wrote in about chlorophyll. I did not know this was a thing,

and it is fascinating that this has become a thing This is hidden for me on tiktok. I guess Yeah, I've just liked enough of these sorts of videos that maybe they don't get so I don't understand the hour Find city on tiktok. She's no don't feed on there. Yes, do it's classic. You love it Thanks to taxpayers for the use of their some medicines as the insurance not sure about program. And hey, we got a book, saw one's books, wherever books are, go buy it. And that would be, that would be really top notch. So thanks. And that's going to do it for us for this week. So until next time, my name is Justin McRoy. I'm Sydney McRoy. And as always, don't Don't drill a hole in your head!

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