The Dr. Hyman Show - The One Factor That Determines 90% Of Your Risk For Disease with Dr. Todd LePine

Starting point is 00:00:00 The water that you drink, the air that you breathe, the food that you put in, and where you live in the United States, it can have a big impact on your overall health. Hey everyone, it's Dr. Mark. I think we can all agree that we're thinking a lot about immunity these days, but the pandemic aside,

Starting point is 00:00:18 I regularly see so many patients who struggle with recurrent infections. One of the most common is urinary tract infections. They're actually the second most common infection in the United States, especially in women. Now, there can be a lot of reasons someone might constantly be fighting infections like a UTI, but most of us have been over-prescribed antibiotics at some point in our lives. We may eat too much sugar, be stressed out too much, and all these things can upset our microbiome, and that directly impacts the balance of bacteria

Starting point is 00:00:45 in the urinary tract and the rest of our immune system. But a lot of women I talked to were doing the right things to try to avoid these recurrent infections, but without any luck. They've tried cranberry extract, and they make sure to pee after sex, among other things, but they still get frequent bladder infections. So I was really intrigued to hear about a product my team recently discovered called Eucora. They were completely blown away by the results. Two of them who constantly struggle with frequent UTIs

Starting point is 00:01:09 hadn't had a single symptom since trying Eucora. Eucora's unique target drink mix blends easily with water and tastes just like the pink lemonade you get when you're a kid, but without the added sugar. It flushes and cleanses the urinary tract with well-researched ingredients like D-mannose and also boosts your immune system with things like vitamin C and B6. Eucora also makes a supplement called Control to cleanse the biofilm from the urinary tract and a vaginal probiotic called Promote

Starting point is 00:01:36 to promote the growth of beneficial bacteria and discourage the bad ones. Both of these are a great addition to the Target drink mix for a more comprehensive protocol. Now, if you struggle with UTIs or bladder infections, I highly recommend checking out Uquora's potent line of products to promote urinary health. Right now, they're offering Doctors Pharmacy listeners 30% off when you go to uquora.com forward slash doctor. That's

Starting point is 00:01:59 u-q-o-r-a.com forward slash doctor. Now, let's get back to this week's episode of The Doctor's Pharmacy. Welcome to The Doctor's Pharmacy. I'm Dr. Mark Hyman. That's pharmacy with an F, F-A-R-M-A-C-Y, a place for conversations that matter. And if you're wondering why you might have some chronic ailment and nobody can figure out, this is a podcast you want to listen to because it's about something called the exposome, which you probably never heard of, but it's probably the most important thing that determines your health. And it's with none other than my colleague and friend, Dr. Todd Lepine, who's joining

Starting point is 00:02:36 us for this special episode in the doctor's pharmacy called House Call, where we at the Ultra Wellness Center discuss patients and diseases and mysteries that no one can figure out and how we treat these patients every single day in our practice. And Todd and I worked together for decades and we were together at Kenya Ranch years ago. He went to Dartmouth Medical School. He's board certified in internal medicine. He's a leader in many aspects in the world of functional medicine, training physicians all over the world, and is on the faculty of many groups, including the Institute for Functional Medicine, AKM, and A4M, and many other groups.

Starting point is 00:03:14 So I'm just so excited, Todd, to have you here again to talk about something that nobody heard about, but is probably the most important thing that determines whether you're sick or not. And it's called the exposome. So Todd, what is the exposome the exposome okay so the exposome is the term for the sum total of all the toxic exposures that we get in our uh environment and they can be both internal and external toxins and it can be a thought can be a toxin right so very good very good if you have a bad inner dialogue excellent literally talking to every aspect of your body excellent excellent

Starting point is 00:03:52 uh i actually didn't i didn't actually have that in my in my outline but uh and it's literally everything that happens to you and washes over you your whole life is what you're exposed to throughout your life exactly yeah and and even even the stuff that you don't even know which is is the in utero exposure. There's a lot of, like some of the children who have parents or the mother who's in a very stressful environment, those stress hormones of the mother actually get the epigenetics gets transmitted to the child. So these kids who are born in war-torn countries, they actually have epigenetic stressors. They've actually shown that the epigenetic methylation of people that are brought up in war countries have a different genetic exposure. Yeah, yeah. So the exposome, there's a paper in science that actually goes over this. And when I first read this paper, it sort of put a light bulb on me to really sort of

Starting point is 00:04:48 change the way of how I think of how is it that we interact with all of these environmental toxins. Now, the good news is that our body is able to detoxify. That's really a good thing. In fact, a lot of studies have shown that the people who age well and longevity is oftentimes associated with how our body deals with toxins. And I call that the George who age well and longevity is oftentimes associated with how our body deals with toxins. And I call that the George Burns gene, right? George Burns had two martinis and a cigar and he lived to a hundred. So he had good ability to detoxify, you know, and my father,

Starting point is 00:05:16 my father was a dentist and he was like George Burns. He liked his martinis and his cigars and he was exposed to mercury as a dentist and he lived to 94 and he was actually quite healthy. Wow. Um, and UB Blake was a famous musician. He said he'll live to be as a dentist and he lived in 94 and he was actually quite healthy wow um and maybe ub blake was a famous musician he said he lived to be well over 100 he said if i if i don't know i was going to live so long i would have taken better care of myself right exactly right so so the so we define the exposome is is that sum total of both internal and external toxins now unfortunately today you know we take the environment of or influences not just just toxins. People think of toxins like pesticides, mercury, but it's really everything that happens to you. Everything that happens to you, exactly. Inside and out. Inside and out. Endotoxins and exotoxins. So, we actually live in a pretty toxic

Starting point is 00:05:58 environment now. There's a lot of air pollution. So, you know, depending on where you live will determine your risk for asthma. When you live in more of a city where there's particulate matter from cars and diesel fumes, you are going to be more susceptible to breathing issues. Your water, very, very important. I mean, our body is 60 to 70% water. So what type of water are you drinking? Does it have some of the chemicals that leach in? I think there's a, over in New York, there's a, what is it? I think it was a case where they had some flame retardant that was being used by the military that seeped into the water systems. And now that people have to get bottled water. Most tap water in America is full of all these- Well, Michigan had that big scandal with the lead in the water. and now that people have to get bottled water most tap water in america is full of oh michigan

Starting point is 00:06:45 had that big scandal with the lead in the in the water yeah flint michigan but you know just the average you know water in america there's 38 contaminants according to one study around including everything from pesticides flame retardants antibiotics hormones medication because when you take the birth control pill where do you think that goes when it's metabolized? Into your urine. And then where does that go? And then it gets all cleaned up and used again as your water supply. So we are definitely exposed to enormous amounts of these compounds.

Starting point is 00:07:15 Right. And the concept in mainstream medicine is that, you know, the way they study toxicology is that you've got to give a certain dose to get cancer. And if you give that dose and you don't get, or give a dose and you don't get cancer, then it's safe. So we can use it, right? We can just use these chemicals. And that's an old way of viewing toxicology. And what we're finding out now is that toxins at very low doses, things like BPA, which is bisphenol A, are actually endocrine disruptors. So two of the

Starting point is 00:07:48 compounds that I find that potentially have one of the biggest impact in terms of very small amounts having a big impact are things like atrazine. That's a pesticide. Atrazine is actually an herbicide. Oh, herbicide. Atrazine is an herbicide. And there's some fantastic work. If you go onto the internet and you Google Tyrone Hayes and atrazine, he did some work showing that low doses of atrazine, which is used in corn, actually has endocrine disrupting molecules. And it can actually cause a male frog to turn into a female frog. That's not normal.

Starting point is 00:08:25 I wonder if that's why we're seeing a decreased male fertility. And a lot of these are estrogen molecules. They're like estrogen. And we study them, like you said, in a lab and you get one chemical and you see if it's safe. But things combine together and become synergistic. Yeah, absolutely. It's not like one plus one equals two. One plus one equals 100. Exactly. For example, if you take Tylenol, that might be okay. If you drink alcohol, that might be okay.

Starting point is 00:08:47 If you drink alcohol and take Tylenol at the same time, even the normal amount, you get liver failure. Exactly. It's a case report. I remember reading that in the New England Journal of Medicine. The guy was having one or two martinis and popping Tylenol, and he had liver failure. In the normal dose, not like overdosing.

Starting point is 00:09:01 Yes. Right. And it's one of the most common reasons for admission to the hospital with liver failure. So I think we have to be really conscious of all these combinations of exposures. And when I think about the exposome, I think of our diet. I think of our thoughts and feelings and our emotional brain speaking to every cell in our body and our immune system.

Starting point is 00:09:20 Our perception. Yeah, our perception. Even your thoughts influence your microbiome. So those little bugs in your gut are changing and listening to what you're perception. Yeah, our perception. Even your thoughts influence your microbiome. So those little bugs in your gut are changing and listening to what you're thinking. Not to put pressure on you, but if you have a negative inner dialogue, it's probably not benefiting your health. Absolutely. And of course, there's your environmental exposures, right? Which we talked about all the environmental toxins, both from pesticides and chemicals in our food and the air and the water and more and and then of course there's our

Starting point is 00:09:52 internal toxins right are which can be produced by bad bugs in the gut so your microbiome influences everything in and I think what what I learned in medical school is that you know your health is sort of determined by your genes. Like, you know, you're at risk for diabetes, you're at risk for Alzheimer's, you're at risk for this and that autoimmune disease. But it turns out it's the exposome that determines 95% of what happens with your health in terms of chronic disease. It's not your DNA. Exactly. It's what your DNA is exposed to. Exactly. And I, you know, we do the genetic testing here and there is this concept or this idea

Starting point is 00:10:30 that your DNA is your destiny. You know, heart disease runs in my family. Diabetes runs in my family. Alzheimer's runs in my family. And there may be a genetic predisposition. And my analogy to this is a loaded gun. Genes can be a loaded gun. If you have genes that maybe push you in the direction of one biochemical pathway, it's good to know that. But a loaded gun doesn't kill anyone until you pull the trigger.

Starting point is 00:10:57 Yes. So environment loads the- Environment pulls the trigger. Pulls the trigger and the genes load the gun. Absolutely. And what we've also found, and this is really interesting, is that things that we thought were strict Mendelian genetics, like Huntington's chorea, they've actually studied the genes of people who have Huntington's genes, and they do not clinically manifest Huntington's disease. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:11:17 So there's more to it than we really fully understand. So genes are important, but they're not the main thing. I would venture to say that when you look at things from a numbers standpoint, it's probably 70 to 80% is environment and 20, 30% are genes. Yeah, and in one of the studies I read on the exposome, they said 95% of chronic disease is driven by the exposome. And I think I heard a guy say recently that it's not your DNA, it's your

Starting point is 00:11:48 dinner that matters most. And I think that is a great quote because it sort of speaks to the fact that we can't change our genes, but we can change how those genes are turned on or off or expressed. And the exposome essentially is talking about what our biology and our genes are exposed to over the course of our lifetime and how that influences the course of our health. And in functional medicine, and here at Delta Wellness Center, the things that we do really well are look at the exposome. So tell us more about, you know, what are the kinds of things you think of when you're looking at a patient to assess their exposome and how that's contributing to their health? Well, you know, you mentioned earlier about your experience with heavy metals. So heavy metals can be disruptive.

Starting point is 00:12:27 And so we oftentimes will look and assess for heavy metal toxicity, heavy metal burden. So when we check for heavy metals, guess what? Everyone has them. We all have exposure. I mean, I don't think I've ever seen a negative heavy metals. I did a few times. People who are vegans and never eat fish and they've always doneited on that yeah have no fillings yeah very rarely do you ever see and probably are good detoxifiers yeah and then you just but almost everybody else has some level

Starting point is 00:12:53 a small amount a small a small amount some have a lot and they're they're they're in the environment so you know yeah burning of coal coal you know coal gives off mercury and it gets into the water so you and lead yeah so you get some. So heavy metals disrupt enzymes in the body. They disrupt detoxification enzymes. So things like mercury, lead, aluminum, arsenic, cadmium for cigarette smokers. In fact, some of the first time I actually learned that is when I had a patient who was a heavy cigarette smoker and I checked heavy metals and the cadmium was off the charts. I'm saying, where's this coming from? And it turns out that cigarettes, tobacco, for whatever reason, it accumulates cadmium and you see heavy cadmium in cigarette smokers. So heavy metals can be a source of toxicity.

Starting point is 00:13:42 And they can cause all kinds of symptoms, right? So give us like some general symptoms that you'd see in a patient with heavy metal toxicity. Because when you go to your regular doctor, they're like, well, what is your lead and mercury and arsenic and cadmium and aluminum levels? They're not checking that, right? Yeah. Well, the other thing that's also interesting is that when you look at metals, there's this whole, this theory now about neurodegenerative conditions. And it's thought that metals play a role in what's called metallostasis. So metals disrupt the folding of proteins. So when you have excess amounts of metals in the body,

Starting point is 00:14:18 it causes proteins to misfold. And misfolded proteins are tied in with a lot of neurodegenerative conditions including things like als things like alzheimer's and there's an interesting study it just came out this past week and i'll send you the paper mark about the role of excess iron so we think iron is good well guess what too much iron is not good and especially free iron uh iron is a very reactive metal that was a chemistry major so i so I always liked to look at the chemistry. So when you look at- That explains it all. Yeah, exactly.

Starting point is 00:14:51 I'm a science nerd. So when you look at metal- I was a Buddhism major. And so iron is reactive and it reacts with oxygen. So when you leave something metallic outside, it rusts because it oxidizes. It interacts with oxygen. So when you leave something metallic outside, it rusts because it oxidizes, interacts with oxygen. So our bodies actually keep iron wrapped up and we keep that in the molecule called hemoglobin. We wrap up iron. And if you have free iron in the body, you get the Fenton reaction. Basically, your body starts to rust. And I've seen this in patients with

Starting point is 00:15:23 hemochromatosis. So when you have hemochromatosis, which is a genetic condition that causes you to not be able to get rid of your iron, which is a metal, which is- About 10% of the population has some degree of that. Exactly. Yeah. And what happens is iron is found in all tissues because blood is in all tissues. And when that iron can't get detoxified you build up iron in your liver your heart your pancreas and your brain and your joints and guess what you rust yeah you get a rusty brain a rusty tin man exactly you can develop in fact one of the first times i had your diabetes exactly you get diabetes liver failure heart is cardiomyopathy you name it it. Heart failure. Exactly. Dementia. Dementia, exactly.

Starting point is 00:16:05 That's a mess. So we call it metal trafficking, and looking at the role of metals is really, I think, important. Aluminum also, excess amounts of aluminum has been associated with increased risk for Alzheimer's. And again, it's probably related to these metals actually causing proteins to misfold. So we shouldn't be using that aluminum deodorant or cooking from those aluminum pans? No.

Starting point is 00:16:26 Or aluminum, you know. Antacids. Soda cans. Yeah, but like the. Oh, yes. Oh, yes. Antacids often have aluminum. Exactly.

Starting point is 00:16:35 So yeah, there's a lot of aluminum in us for. So heavy metals. So we see heavy metals as one of the big exposome areas. How, for example, would we assess someone's heavy metals? Because. Well, we do the, you can do the urine provocation testing for heavy metals, which is, you know, what we do a lot in patients with, provoking with DMPS and. Or DMSA. Or DMSA, exactly. Yeah, you can do that. You can also assess it in the blood. And there's, and there's different, like when you check mercury, there's two different forms of mercury.

Starting point is 00:17:06 Mercury takes organic and inorganic mercury. And, you know, organic mercury tends to accumulate in the hair. So you can actually assess hair. That's more from like fish, for example. From fish, yeah. Like methylmercury. Right, right. So you can assess it in the hair.

Starting point is 00:17:19 You can assess it in the blood. And you can also assess things in the urine. And they sort of, each of them give you a different perspective. And the inorganic is from your fillings. From fillings. And from pollution. Yeah. You know, the thing is people say, oh, you got these silver fillings, you're no problem. The dentists say they're great. But, you know, you and I both know that when we've seen these patients, they do have high levels of inorganic mercury. You can look at their tests and it does affect their health. And you remove the fillings and the mercury levels come way down. I've seen this over and over again,

Starting point is 00:17:48 and then patients feel better. Now, this is not well accepted as a thing in dentistry, except if you look at what most dentists do now, they've moved all the way from these, quote, silver fillings, which are mostly mercury. Without saying they're bad, it's like, well, they're not bad, but we don't do it anymore there's too much reliability it's it's a can of worms so so so basically this is uh if they were to admit that there's a problem because once you remove mercury from the tooth it now becomes a toxic waste product and it's fully regulated it's fully regulated yeah that's interesting so ask your dentist it's fine in your mouth but remove it now it's a toxic toxic product yeah that's interesting ask your dentist if if mercury so safe, then why can't you throw it in the garbage?

Starting point is 00:18:28 And why do you have to dispose of it by the regulations set forth by the EPA as a toxic waste? I always thought that's an interesting point. You know, if you can't answer that, then you shouldn't be putting it in your mouth. So we can look at the blood. We can look at the urine. The problem with the typical blood test is if you haven't had a current exposure, your body clears it after 90 days and it doesn't necessarily get rid of it.

Starting point is 00:18:49 It might store it in your tissues, in your liver, in your muscles, in your brain. And so you can't really tell. And that's why this challenge test can help pull it out. Exactly. And then we get a real more accurate view of what's happened over the course of your life. And the big thing, this is a clinical problem, I'm sure you've seen this, is lead. Now, we tend to have less lead toxicity now because we're not using lead paint, we don't use lead in gasoline, we don't have lead pipes, or at least unless you have old buildings. But I have seen this in a few patients, especially in women, where in menopausal women, after

Starting point is 00:19:22 menopause, they'll have accelerated bone loss. So lead gets stored where? In the bones. In the bones. Yes, in the bones. So as a woman goes through menopause and she's had a body burden of lead and it's sort of sitting in the bones. And all of a sudden, you're now digging up the bones. And when you go through menopause, you pee out your bones.

Starting point is 00:19:42 That's how you do it and we can you can just uh do a test called bone resorption testing which checks for the collagen breakdown products of bone and when you see increased bone resorption you know that they are peeing out their bones and when you see high levels of lead you know that they're actually getting exposed and it's like dripping lead out of the body and i mean not actual bones coming out of your urinary tract it's just a breakdown well it's the breakdown right but it's sort of like you know it's it's like you know when you get osteoporosis where do your bones go you literally you pee them out well speaking about the bones digging up the bones there was a study already years ago that they had to dig up this graveyard in europe and they had to remove the bones and put them somewhere else.

Starting point is 00:20:28 And so what they did was they decided to check the bones for lead. And they compared that to today and they found there was a thousand times more lead in the bones of modern people than there were 300 years ago. Wow. Yeah. So it's in there were 300 years ago. Wow. Yeah. So it's in there. That's incredible. And I think that, you know, mercury is also one of those factors that are just so common because it comes in our diet, it comes in our fillings, it comes in pollution.

Starting point is 00:20:57 And it's probably one of the most undiagnosed things I've ever seen. And I certainly became an expert in it, not by sort of design, but because I got really sick from mercury poisoning. And that's what led to me to have this, you know, chronic fatigue syndrome and kind of figure this whole thing out. And then, you know, the old term is the mad hatter. Remember, you know, in Alice in Wonderland, the mad hatter, right? Well, they used to use mercury when they made hats. And what they found out is that when you got mad, if you had enough mercury, it affected your brain. You'd have delirium and other symptoms because it has a brain effect.

Starting point is 00:21:36 The other thing about these problems with toxins is that they don't manifest the same in everybody, right? Yeah. So they might make you crazy. They might give you autism. They might give you Alzheimer's. They might give you chronic fatigue syndrome. They might give you an autoimmune disease. They might cause weight gain. I had a woman who was a fitness trainer and ate perfectly and she had these 40 pounds she couldn't lose. And I took her history and thought she might have some mercury issues and we tested her and she had

Starting point is 00:21:58 very, very high levels and we treated her. And over the course of the number of months, without changing anything else, just by treating her mercury, her weight dropped 40 pounds. Wow. Wow. So it can, yeah, because we know that there's these compounds called obesogens,

Starting point is 00:22:12 which are environmental toxins that cause obesity, the interruption, mitochondrial function, your energy production, your hormones and metabolism. So really it's important to really dig deep. So besides these heavy metals,

Starting point is 00:22:24 you know, what other things can we look for that most physicians don't look for? Pesticides. Pesticides. Big one, big one. Herbicides, pesticides. Yeah, yeah. So pesticides are the compounds that we use on plants to keep the bugs from eating them. And there are, you know, there's a whole bunch of them.

Starting point is 00:22:43 And you can actually measure them. There's labs that will actually measure pesticide levels. One of the pesticides, which is a real bad one, it's actually, I think, been banned in Europe, is the neonicotinoids. That's the one that they associate with bee colony collapse. And pesticides, interestingly, are also associated with ADD and I think you had that study where they looked at the children who lived downstream from pesticide exposure and they checked how they would draw and such.

Starting point is 00:23:15 And it was a big difference between those who had high levels of pesticides and how their brains worked versus those who had low levels of pesticides. Oh, for sure. For sure. Because they're neurotoxins. They're basically a pesticide works on the nervous system of insects. And our nervous system is not that different than an insect. And high levels of pesticides are not good things. No. I mean, the other thing is farm workers and their kids, the kids, through various diagnostics and neurologic testing, they found they lost 41 million IQ points being exposed to

Starting point is 00:23:46 pesticides. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And there's an interesting study that looked at pesticides in Japanese populations. And the interesting one is that they found higher levels of pesticides in people who ate more fruits and vegetables. Yeah. That's counterintuitive, right? But it's not counterintuitive because if you have pesticide-laden fruits and vegetables, you're going to have higher levels of pesticides. So it's not just don't eat your fruits and vegetables, eat your organic fruits and vegetables. Yeah. I mean, there was a paper recently published linking pretty clearly the fact that organic food eaters had much less cancer than people who ate traditional fruits and vegetables.

Starting point is 00:24:24 And the Dirty Dozen is a great guide from the environmental working group but what are the 12 most contaminated foods so strawberries i love but i would never eat a conventional strawberry because it's one of the most yeah pesticide and herbicide laden things and glyphosate which is another compound it's not a pesticide it's an herbicide it's sprayed on 70 of our crops yes and it's the most abundant agrochemical used around the world. And it destroys our microbiome. It's literally like an antibiotic that kills your own microbiome as well as the microbiome of the soil.

Starting point is 00:24:53 So that leads to all these other complications. And when you go to your traditional doctor, they're not measuring your glyphosate, they're not measuring your pesticide levels, they're not measuring your heavy metals. And you're coming in with all these symptoms that could be related. And so part of the difference with functional medicine is we actually start to think about these things. And we have methods of diagnosing them and we have methods of treating them, right? So how do you begin to start thinking

Starting point is 00:25:12 about treating these things? Yeah, you talk about glyphosate, I think that's a big one. And that's sort of the elephant in the room because it's ubiquitous, it's so prevalent. And we do testing for that now. I don't know if you've been measuring. I do.

Starting point is 00:25:26 I measured mine. I was shocked. I mean, I eat clean. I try not to eat GMO. I do travel, although not anymore. Maybe at levels are lower. But I eat organic. And I really am focused on detoxification.

Starting point is 00:25:43 And my glyphosate levels were in the 50th percentile, which is pretty high considering I'm on on the extreme end of paying attention to this because it's in everything. And if you don't know where your food's coming from, it likely has it because it's on everything. Exactly. And you mentioned it because the glyphosate is actually an herbicide, which is supposed to not affect the human system because it works on a different pathway the chicane pathway and that pathway is actually in the in bacteria so when you uh ingest glyphosate it actually has an adverse effect on the the gut microbiome and uh there's some interesting work by stephanie senes and she has a whole uh bunch of data linking the increased use of glyphosate with linking it, not necessarily causative, but linking it, correlating it with autism. And I think there's some truth to that

Starting point is 00:26:32 because what you're doing is there is if you're having higher levels, especially early on, that you may be disrupting the microbiome, which is in turn affecting the gut brain access. Absolutely. I mean, we know that most kids with autism have terrible guts. Yeah. By helping their gut, they get better. I mean, there's studies showing just giving a kid a fecal transplant who's got autism. Yeah. Helps fix their autism. Yeah. Well, the other interesting thing about autism is that, you know, we talk about there's how, you know, kids with autism, it's their social interaction. And a lot of the, you know, the social hormone is oxytocin. It's the love molecule. And what we found out is that the gut bacteria actually produce oxytocin.

Starting point is 00:27:08 Oh, the good ones. The good ones. The good bugs. Yeah. So it makes sense that when you have disruption of the microbiome, you may be disrupting the social network of your gut, which may be playing a role, one of many factors of many, many, many factors in, you know, this autism spectrum condition that we're seeing. So if you want to have happy, healthy relationships, you got to fix your gut too. Yeah, exactly. Happy gut. Exactly. So let's talk about

Starting point is 00:27:35 once we started to identify all the factors in the exposome, right? Your diet, stress levels, the air you're drinking. I mean, the air you're breathing, the water you're drinking, you know, the light you're exposed to. These are also, you know, influences on your gene expression. Light pollution. Light pollution. Yeah. You know, environmental toxins. All these factors, your microbiome are influencing your genes and your gene expression and your health. But when we see a traditional doctor, and you're not here at the Ultra Wellness Center and a functional medicine doctor, you're not really getting evaluated for all these things, right? So here we were able to test and measure these things, and we know which one to look for depending on the patient's story. And once we find these things,

Starting point is 00:28:18 what can we do to relieve that burden? Because it's kind of depressing. You go, well, what can I do? I got all these exposures. we got all these toxins, you know, but you related to me before a story about a woman who had a significant exposure to pesticides and you treated her and she got better. No, it was actually PCBs. PCBs, yeah. And up in the Berkshires with General Electric, we have the whole PCB saga up here. So, PCBs are these persistent organic pollutants. They basically stay in the body. And in general, I'm going to make a generalization here. There's a lot of environmental toxins are lipid soluble, which means they love fat. So, they get stored in fat. And when they get stored in fat, your body's not able to detoxify

Starting point is 00:29:04 them as well and as they accumulate they can disrupt the endocrine system cause insulin resistance and pcbs have been known to do this that affect the thyroid they affect uh insulin resistance and this lady um wanted to be tested for it and so i go in and went ahead and tested her for it and she had high levels of PCBs. So I started to support her detoxification for fat soluble PCBs with cholestyramine. And what's that? It's a molecule that prevents the, it's actually originally used for cholesterol. So it was because cholesterol gets recycled in the body, your body eliminates cholesterol. Through your bile, through your liver.

Starting point is 00:29:43 Through your bile, exactly. Because cholesterol is a good molecule. Cholesterol is the building block of all your hormones. It's for cellular membranes. And cholesterol gets a bad rap, but cholesterol can be a very good molecule. But the compound cholestyramine was originally designed to lower your cholesterol to prevent the recycling of your cholesterol and it works for other things i think you know at some of the work with richie shoemaker with uh his use of uh it's an interesting story that he had how he was using that for mycotoxins and how it helps the body to eliminate mycotoxins yeah and when i treat those are mold related toxins they just recirculate right and create chronic inflammation yeah it's like a merry-go-round so you might have been exposed to mold 10 years ago but the mold toxins keep in your body and

Starting point is 00:30:29 keep causing neuroinflammation which is why people have brain fog and fatigue and exactly that's another one of those things in the exposome is mold we didn't even talk about that yes that's another huge one no in mycotoxins yeah definitely but in this this lady i i you know we treated her with you know lifestyle changes but also i I used colostyramine. And I did it sequentially. I was over about a year. And slowly her levels came down. And as she did that, guess what?

Starting point is 00:30:54 She started being able to lose weight. Yeah. And she was very, very happy. She helped to reverse her prediabetes and just felt so much better. You know, because when you're carrying around an extra 30, 40 pounds, that's like a backpack all day. You know, it wears on you. I mean, you're right. I mean, you just mentioned diabetes, but we know for sure that environmental toxins cause obesity and diabetes.

Starting point is 00:31:19 The data is very clear on this. Whether it's, you know, arsenic and diabetes or these persistent organic pollutants. So it's not trivial to think about these toxins. And if you look at that registry biopsy studies where they literally took, let's say if you have a breast reconstruction, they take fat tissue and they send it to a lab or an autopsy, they'll take a bunch of fat tissue

Starting point is 00:31:41 from people and they send it to a lab. And literally everybody's a toxic waste dump. Like if if we were food we wouldn't be safe to eat and and and if you look at the kinds of things that are in there it's dioxin it's ddt it's pcbs it's flame retardants it's heavy metals i mean these are the things that are stored in us and so so traditional doctors are not trained in toxicology except for if you have an overdose of some toxin or an extreme acute exposure. But if you have a chronic exposure over a lifetime, there's no model for how to deal with this.

Starting point is 00:32:13 But the good news is with functional medicine, there is a methodology for helping people to upregulate their own detoxification system and to bind these toxins. So tell us about how do we do that in functional medicine? You know, you just, you bring up a really good point, which is that fat is the storage depot. It's a toxic waste dump. And I often tell patients that, you know, if you're wanting to lose weight, you need to support detoxification. Absolutely. It's a critical, critical thing. So in the science of how your body detoxifies, we sort of divvy it up into phase one and phase two detoxification pathways.

Starting point is 00:32:50 So phase one is the oxidation process where your body sort of activates a molecule. And phase two is what we call the conjugation pathway where we stick molecules onto them like sulfate or glutathione to detoxify them so the first step sort of gets it ready the second step packages it up to get rid of it yeah so you can think of it like taking out the garbage so you every garbage you wrap it up in in a in a plastic bag or a trash bag and then the guy comes out and takes it out yeah and that has to be in a balance so if you have too much of phase one and not enough of phase two, it builds up and you get these reactive species.

Starting point is 00:33:28 So you have to have a balance in that phase one, phase two, a part of detoxification. And glutathione is one of the great molecules that our body has, which helps with detoxification. It's an antioxidant and our bodies stick glutathione onto toxins and that's one of the enzymes one of the most important enzymes i think is the glutathione s transferase a lot of people say well i'll just take more glutathione well it's not just taking glutathione you've got to stick the glutathione onto the toxin and that happens through glutathione as transferase and the cruciferous vegetables upregulate that that enzyme so a lot of foods are we use foods as medicine to upregulate these pathways and you just mentioned the broccoli

Starting point is 00:34:11 family but any of those foods broccoli cabbage kohlrabi brussels sprouts watercress arugula you know those are all foods which actually upregulate these pathways green tea does also and and you need those and i find those for me are a staple in my daily diet i eat those every single day because they're so important but there's a lot of other ways to up regular these pathways you're right you need various nutrients to help like selenium and and all the b vitamins and all these things that help these pathways so we really are focused on nutrition and nutritional detoxification as the first step. And then what other kinds of things can we do to help the body to get rid of toxins?

Starting point is 00:34:51 Well, there's also, traditionally, there's been the phase one, phase two parts of detoxification. There's also a phase three, which Jeff Bland got me aware of, which is the urinary excretion of toxins. And it's very important to actually have an alkaline urine. So measuring your urinary pH is important because having a pH seven or above helps with the facilitation of detoxification. So drinking- It's not just drink water, but you got to eat a diet that makes you more- And eating a more plant-based diet, a heavy plant-based diet will help to alkalize your urine. Plant-based diet a heavy plant-based diet will help to alkalize your rich diet yeah oh yeah plant rich diet yeah plant rich diet exactly so so uh we we we have to take these foods in

Starting point is 00:35:30 and then and then fiber also such a critical component you mentioned colostaramine yeah but there are other binders that are just naturally found in fiber that help you eliminate these toxins oh yeah absolutely and that's that's i call it you know there's phase one phase two phase three which is the urinary uh detoxification and in phase four is the it, you know, there's phase one, phase two, phase three, which is the urinary detoxification. And then phase four is the gut. You know, you got to poop it out. That's really, really important. So making sure that you're moving your bowels one to three times a day is very, very important.

Starting point is 00:35:54 Take out your garbage, you know. And people tell me, well, how often do you move your bowel? Oh, every three days. They're like, no, you don't want to do that. Yeah, I mean, it's true. No, it's true. I mean, and people, Parkinson's we know very clearly is linked to environmental toxins, but it's also linked to constipation. So absolutely. In fact, that's one of the, one of the key things is that, is that, is that way before people

Starting point is 00:36:14 develop Parkinson's, they actually have constipation issues. And there's a strong, uh, uh, evidence in the literature that Parkinson's actually can begin in the gut. Yes. Well, it might be beginning in the gut, but also if you're not eliminating what's in there, it's exposing you to more toxins over time. So we use food. We also use a lot of special nutrients to upregulate these pathways that whether they're herbs or vitamins, things like milk thistle, selenium, N-acetylcysteine, lipoic acid. So we have a whole regimen in functional medicine to help your body detoxify. And there's other things you can do, right? Sauna, sweating. Sauna, sweating, right? Sweating.

Starting point is 00:36:49 Exercise. Exercise, yoga, right? All these things help to detoxify your body and move things around and move your lymph and your blood around and actually helps you detoxify. So there's a lot of strategies we use. And sometimes we even use intravenous therapies to help people like IV glutathione and vitamin C and other things. so we have a really comprehensive approach to helping identify what your exposome is how that's contributing to your issues and how to treat them very personally and specifically because it's different for each one yeah absolutely yeah and and they're and they're it when you actually get into you know when you start reading into the

Starting point is 00:37:24 literature you really realize that this is a big problem and you can sort of become pessimistic. It's like, oh, what do I do? It's like we're living in this toxic world. And yes, that's true. But the cockroaches that survive are the ones that can eat DDT and do okay. So being aware I think is the – Don't try that. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:37:43 Being aware of the exposome I think is the- Don't try that. Yeah. Being aware of the exposome is the first thing. Just sort of understanding that the water that you drink, the air that you breathe, the food that you put in, and where you live in the United States, it can have a big impact on your overall health. And then you also mentioned your thoughts. It's really important. And I always go back to this is my understanding of the power of the mind and the power of thoughts was with Bruce Lipton's book, The Biology of Belief, which is a fantastic book. If anybody's not read it, I highly recommend it. It sort of changed the

Starting point is 00:38:18 way I understand how your thoughts can actually affect the expression of your genes and change your physiology. And your immune system and everything else. Everything. Absolutely. It's a game changer. And I highly, highly recommend it. He's on the internet. You can read his book.

Starting point is 00:38:31 You can watch some of his videos. And when you listen to how he explains it, you really understand the importance of how you see the world and how you perceive the world, that internal dialogue that we have. And when you have happy thoughts, you'll be happy. When you have negative thoughts, you'll be negative. Thoughts can be toxins. Absolutely. Absolutely.

Starting point is 00:38:52 Yes, absolutely. Relationships can be toxic. Exactly. Yeah. All of that plays a role. And I think that, you know, the thing people should know is that there are ways to deal with this and to reduce your exposures. And one of the best resources is the Environmental Working Group. I'm on the board. If you go to ewg.org, you can learn about how to reduce your exposures through what skincare products you use,

Starting point is 00:39:17 whether it's face creams or sunblock, household cleaning products, foods these things we we have control over and you can't eliminate everything but you can dramatically reduce your exposure and then using the principles of functional medicine you can help and that's really what we do here at the ultra wellness center we're like medical detectives we help you identify what is going on we deal with mystery illnesses you know we Todd Todd Todd and I used to work at Kenya Ranch, which was a health resort. And I often call us the resort doctors because we're the doctors of last resort. And people come after they've seen everybody, done everything, tried everything, and they can't get better. And then we figure it out because it's not magic. It's just science. We actually have a method and an

Starting point is 00:39:59 operating model called functional medicine that helps us navigate to what the real issues are and have a very specific way of addressing them. So don't fret, don't fear, just realize that yes, we have to deal with the exposome, but there is a lot of science around how to do that effectively. Exactly. And then one other last thing I'll end is what I call the silent toxin, which is in the world that we live in is EMF pollution. It's a real issue. And you have continuous exposure to EMFs. Now, and you have what's called non-native EMFs, which is they're not found in nature. They're man-made things like Wi-Fi and cell towers and stuff like that. And there's a lot of evidence that these non-native EMFs at continuous exposure levels affect the immune system.

Starting point is 00:40:47 There's some really good stuff on this. And I've had some patients who are, you know, the quote-unquote EMF sensitive. I really want to define that. They have a nervous system that actually picks up. And we're energetic beings. I mean, our bodies are electric. When we want to measure how our brain's working, we do a what? An EEG.

Starting point is 00:41:04 That's an electrical signal. When we want to check the heart, we's working we do a what an eeg that's an electrical signal we want to check the heart we check an ekg those are electrical signals so it only makes sense that our bodies interact with the with bioenergetic fields absolutely and you can't go to any mainstream doctor and get a test for emfs so you got to do it on your own and i turn my wi-fi off at night. Yeah, we bought one of those EMF measuring devices. Trifield meters. Yeah, you know, I put it next to my phone and it goes from like 5 to 5,000. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:41:32 You know, in New York City, we had our apartment. It was, you know, always in the extreme danger range, even when something was going on. Everybody's Wi-Fi in their apartments. But, you know, in our house up in Massachusetts, it's much less. And actually, there have been some studies showing that actually when people go camping and they're out in nature, they're not surrounded by EMF fields. They will actually reset their circadian rhythm and they will sleep better. Oh my God, I notice that every single time. I just sleep like a baby.

Starting point is 00:42:00 And then there's actually even some things that sounds a little crazy, but there are things that you can use in your house. They're called stetzerizers and they actually decrease dirty electricity. Yeah. If you've ever used her, use those or heard of them. But we created a Faraday cage over our bed in New York city. We basically created this tent.

Starting point is 00:42:14 It was made of this cloth. It's EMF. It's silver, silver, silver. And a little thing under the bed. And it was the most interesting thing. You could,

Starting point is 00:42:22 you could go inside this tent in your bed. You couldn't make a phone call with your cell phone you couldn't get wi-fi it was completely impervious and you know you put that around you when you sleep and it's pretty cool yeah that but there really is a science to that it are you know we we are affected by energetic fields and you know let's you know i always talk you know, some people give off good vibes and bad vibes. That's energy. That's energy. And there is, you know, non-native EMF. And I think that's one of the, probably the things that's not really well talked about in mainstream medicine, even in alternative medicine. It's hard to figure out what to do about it or, I mean, you can reduce your exposures, but how do you actually diagnose it? That's the

Starting point is 00:43:01 issue. Yeah, yeah, exactly. But I just think being aware of it and minimizing it and just, you know, is an important thing. Well, Todd, this has been a fascinating conversation about something probably people have never heard of called the exposome, but it's probably the most important thing determining your health or your risk of disease. And it's something that you can do something about because it's an empowering idea that our genes are not our destiny, that what is washing over those genes over the course of our life is determining our health or our risk of disease. And it's something

Starting point is 00:43:31 we can do something about, whether it's our diet, whether it's exposure to toxins, whether it's our thoughts, whether it's even our exposure to EMF. So we really covered a lot here, Todd. I think this has been an amazing conversation. Thank you so much for being on The Doctor's Pharmacy on this special episode of The House Call. If you love this podcast, please share it with your friends and family. Please leave a comment. We'd love to hear from you. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts, and we'll see you next time on The Doctor's Pharmacy. All right. Thanks for tuning into The Doctor's Pharmacy. I hope you're loving this podcast. It's one of my favorite things to do and introducing you all the experts that I know

Starting point is 00:44:17 and I love and that I've learned so much from. And I want to tell you about something else I'm doing, which is called Mark's Picks. It's my weekly newsletter. And in it, I share my favorite stuff from foods to supplements to gadgets to tools to enhance your health. It's all the cool stuff that I use and that my team uses to optimize and enhance our health. And I'd love you to sign up for the weekly newsletter. I'll only send it to you once a week on Fridays. Nothing else, I promise. And all you do is go to drhyman.com forward slash pics to sign up.

Starting point is 00:44:49 That's drhyman.com forward slash pics, P-I-C-K-S, and sign up for the newsletter and I'll share with you my favorite stuff that I use to enhance my health and get healthier and better and live younger longer. Now back to this week's episode. Hi, everyone. I hope you enjoyed this week's episode. Hi, everyone. I hope you enjoyed this week's episode. Just a reminder that this podcast is for educational purposes only. This podcast is not a substitute for professional care by a doctor or other qualified medical professional. This podcast is provided on the understanding that it does not constitute medical or other professional advice or services. If you're looking for help in your

Starting point is 00:45:24 journey, seek out a qualified medical practitioner. If you're looking for help in your journey, seek out a qualified medical practitioner. If you're looking for a functional medicine practitioner, you can visit ifm.org and search their Find a Practitioner database. It's important that you have someone in your corner who's trained, who's a licensed healthcare practitioner, and can help you make changes, especially when it comes to your health.

The Dr. Hyman Show - The One Factor That Determines 90% Of Your Risk For Disease with Dr. Todd LePine

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