Environmental Chemicals and the Rise in Autoimmunity

Look at the back where it says ingredients.

I mean, most people wouldn't even think to look

for an ingredients label on a water bottle,

but it will tell you how that water was cleaned.

And it'll either say cleaned by distillation,

municipal tap, believe it or not, which is a shocker,

in a bottle and then you're paying for municipal tap water

which you can get in the bathroom,

or even reverse as Moses, which is an option.

And so, and you can choose between the aluminum cans

which may have their own issues with the plastic,

you know, an epoxy resin lining

or a plastic bottle.

So lots of choices, but I would say look for reverse as Moses,

like you would for a filter in your home.

Look for that in terms of bottled water

when you have the chance to do so.

And I've now gotten much more into using my stainless steel bottle

in terms of refilling.

It saves money, reduces microplastics,

and hopefully that carbon block is a good enough filter

at that moment in time for travel.

Someone mentioned minerals.

We do, you know, humans do not

have never gotten their mineral sources from water.

It is really from food.

And when we make the argument,

oh, reverse as Moses is dead water

or it's not good for you, I would disagree with that.

You have to remove the baby with the bath water

in terms of getting all of chemicals out.

It goes by size for reverse as Moses.

So it doesn't know a mineral

or something maybe healthy for your body

from something horrific or horrible for your body.

It doesn't know the difference, so it goes by size

which means you have to kind of remove everything.

So you can always have that water with a great salad,

you know, hopefully organic.

If you can find, you know, organic ingredients

which matters in the food system,

USDA organic actually really matters.

Frozen organic foods are far cheaper

and available across the country

in every big box store.

And I encourage people to consider USDA organic frozen produce

which maintains its nutritional value,

not just being pesticide, reduced pesticide load

and not genetically modified.

The second question you said Steve was,

is environment a big contributor?

To you, what are the question was,

can you elaborate on the connection

between environmental chemicals

and the rising rates of an autoimmune diseases?

Yeah, I wrote about it

and that's an entire book on the topic actually.

And the reason I mentioned that is because

it took a long time to get to a place

where I could pull the right data to really make the case.

There is no question that we are seeing

a rise in environmental in chemicals.

Certainly we have over 1,000 new chemicals

that are added to the market every year

that are untested, unregulated,

have no required testing for safety or toxicity,

particularly in vulnerable populations

like children, pregnant women, immune compromise,

the elderly.

So they're filling our system about 15 new polymers

a week are getting patented.

So there's really no shortage of flow

of new chemicals into the market,

into the stuff we love, into our household products.

You know, I live amongst everyone else too

and I'm managing the issue,

but there is also associated data.

I can't say causation from a human perspective

100% on every chemical,

but we see that there's an epidemic rise

in many chronic health conditions, metabolic conditions

and certainly immune and autoimmune conditions as well.

And this is globally because, you know,

we now have people who travel around the world

so we're not so much isolated anymore.

So this data is pretty robust.

And so the question is,

if you can't turn off the faucet of chemicals

into your environment from a regulatory standpoint

and you can't wait for Godot

and all these different things to get regulated

and people fighting over what's right, what's wrong

and, you know, manufacturing and lobbyists and all that,

the goal is to do it yourself.

The goal is to do it for yourself.

Do it now because we don't want to wait

the length of time it takes to remove one chemical

at a time, it will never happen in our lifetimes

and our kids' lifetimes.

So you want to start thinking about this stuff now,

not in any crazy freaked out way,

but in a way that makes sense.

Thinking about the quality and the quantity of foods

you put in your body, the water, your surroundings.

And I do like a 50 question assessment.

It's a survey for anyone to kind of think about

their environment, what they're walking through

so that they can see where the problems lie

and then they can just simply work on them.

So you have to assess, you can avoid and swap,

then add is what you add in nutritionally,

add is what you add in from a sweat and sauna

and detoxifying perspective, add is spiritual,

add is sleep quality in the glymphatic system

and then there's the allow, these are the four A's by the way,

the allow is really life, you know, have birthday cake,

eat that, you know, go travel, you know,

have kids on lacrosse fields, get your hair colored

if that's what you value, but do big ticket items

where you think that they're appropriate and comfortable.

Thank you.

David, two questions.

One, a lot of times when you speak

to someone about herbs, they offer you a tincture

in alcohol and a lot of people find

they don't think twice about it,

but some people have been told

that alcohol kills brain cells and they,

it affects your mood and they don't even

want a little tiny bit of it.

And then you go online and some people say

you can burn it off in hot water

and others say it doesn't really work.

What if someone didn't want alcohol

and wanted all the benefits of herbs,

is there anything that we could say

we're clear on that was sure of of what to do

to not be exposed to alcohol or you can't avoid it?

Well, I have patients who either have alcohol abuse issues

or for religious reasons or personal reasons

choose not to use alcohol, that's fine.

The benefit of a tincture,

which is an alcohol and water extract,

is that alcohol is an incredibly good extracting medium.

It also is a wonderful preservative.

It extracts a really wide range

of phytochemical slash constituents.

And when you put, if you, for instance,

take a mouth full of water,

take a dropper full of the tincture,

put it in your mouth, swish it around your mouth,

you actually have absorption within about 15 seconds

sublingually of that tincture.

And then what goes into your stomach

basically goes really pretty much right

through the gastric mucosa.

The challenge of using other delivery forms

is you lose that.

And so if you are dealing with people

with digestive issues,

and I would say over my 48 years of seeing patients,

I'd say 60% of my patients have serious GI issues.

And so if you are taking something in a pill form

or a tablet, you have to digest it.

And many people are not capable

of effectively digesting those forms.

Now, there are other forms.

Some people make vinegar extracts,

which works for some herbs, but not most.

Glisserates, which is a glycerin extract,

can be very careful about glycerates

because a lot of glycerin is really nasty

and is a byproduct of the soap industry.

There is organic glycerin that is not from the soap industry,

but glycerin is not a great extracting medium.

And nor does it enhance digestion and absorption.

But again, and I wish, because I know

that people are looking for simple answers,

and I wish I could just give you a simple answer,

the reality is you need to know your herbs.

And what I mean by that is think of each herb

having a personality like a person.

And some people, you know, are more sociable,

some people less.

Some herbs are perfectly fine as teas.

And so if an herb is good as a tea,

and you can get that herb organically grown,

or consciously wildcrafted,

and it's effective in a tea format,

and the person is willing to take it in that format.

You know, a lot of times people want the,

what works best?

Well, what works best is what you can actually get into the person.

And the biggest issue for clinicians

is patient compliance by far.

You know, herbs don't work very well,

and they're sitting in a bottle on the shelf,

and the person hasn't actually taken it.

So, you know, I always ask my patients

when I'm doing an intake, will you make teas?

Will you take a tincture?

And you find out what their limitations are.

I also ask people, what herbal flavors,

so don't tell me chocolate,

because I don't consider that really an herbal flavor.

What herbal flavors do you like and dislike?

If somebody says I hate licorice,

then don't give them licorice,

and don't give them fennel seed,

and don't give them anisee

because they're unlikely to take it.

So you really need to look at, you know,

if for the herbs that we want to give that person

is a tea work best,

does a tincture work best,

does a glycerate work best,

does a standardized extract

and a capsule or tablet work best,

does the ground herb and a capsule work best.

And so there are multiple delivery forms,

and then you have to match that up to,

what will the person do?

Many, many years ago when I,

this would have been back in the mid 70s,

I was a, worked as with probably all

of the nutritionally oriented physicians

in New York City at the time,

and my job, they would come in

with shopping bags full of vitamins,

and my job was to explain to them

why they were taking all this stuff,

and of course it was incredibly expensive,

and what I noticed over a period of,

probably several years,

is a lot of these people weren't getting any better.

They were taking lots of supplements,

they were, the wallets were getting thinner,

but not much else seemed to be changing,

and not only is it really expensive

to overload people with stuff,

it also people develop pill fatigue,

and again, some of those forms

simply are not bioavailable.

So figure out what somebody's willing to do,

if you're gonna do teas,

generally speaking for most people,

you wanna put all the stuff that tastes good in your tea.

Why?

Because people are more likely to do it.

Now, every once in a while you have a patient,

I don't care what it tastes like, I'll take it.

Oh, that's wonderful, but that's really rare.

So you make all the good stuff in a tea,

and then usually I'll give people, again,

a tincture, possibly a glycerate,

or other formats, and including things

where you don't have to take it at all.

So for instance, topical applications,

aroma therapy in the form of essential oils,

and by the way, for our listeners,

do not put undiluted essential oils on your skin,

unless it's tea tree or lavender.

Most essential oils are way too strong

to be used undiluted topically,

because there are people who recommend

you sprinkle undiluted essential oils all over your body.

That is a serious mistake,

and I know people have developed kidney damage

from doing that, so do not do that.