Euthyroid Sick Syndrome, CIRS and Glyphosate Toxicity

Stephanie Seneff, Ph.D.

I’m so glad to be here, thank you. 

Christine Schaffner, N.D.

So let’s just dive in. This is an exciting topic and something that we were chatting before that I’ve seen clinically but always trying to understand as a naturopathic physician what are the underlying causes, what might I be missing and why are we seeing so much more of this than maybe years past. But what are we talking about when we’re talking about euthyroid sick syndrome?

Stephanie Seneff, Ph.D.

Yeah, so that’s a very interesting condition in which your thyroid appears to be perfectly healthy and your T4 levels are fine, but when you look at T3, it’s low and RT3, reverse T3, it’s high. So there’s these two ways that the T4 can get converted into T3. Two different enzymes. It’s called deiodinase 3 and deiodinase 2. So the thyroid releases the T4 and then the liver turns it into both of these things, RT3 and T3, but when the liver is sick, it makes too much RT3 and the RT3 actually, not only doesn’t excite the receptors but actually blocks the receptors for T3. So it works even more than just not being T3, it’s worse than nothing. 

So it’s actually suppressing the T3 from getting to the receptors, as well as of course, disappearing the T4. So you have both less T3 and T3 can’t get to the receptors, so it’s really a pretty drastic effect on the availability of thyroid hormone. Of course, thyroid hormone is very important for mitochondria. It induces mitochondrial proliferation. It makes the mitochondria make more mitochondria, so it gives you lots of energy. So when your T3 is low and especially when your RT3 is high, you feel very fatigued. So, you’re just exhausted and they have a bunch of other symptoms, too, but it’s basically feeling crappy, sort of like feeling like you’ve got a bad case of the flu.

Christine Schaffner, N.D.

Yeah and that’s many of my patients, right? One of the primary reasons that they come to see someone like myself is fatigue, low energy and low vitality, and many doctors might, we’re trained to think, okay, low energy, look at the thyroid. But we could be missing this if reverse T3 isn’t tested. Is that correct?

Stephanie Seneff, Ph.D.

Yes, you won’t know it. You’ll be puzzled because it looked like the thyroid is fine but yet, they don’t appear to have a healthy supply of thyroid hormone. And it’s because the organ, the liver, in particular, is responding incorrectly to the thyroid hormone.

Christine Schaffner, N.D.

Hmm hmm, hmm hmm. So again, going deeper. So that’s one, again, discovery to understand, okay, why somebody could be fatigued and why they have this imbalance. But for our perspective, we’re thinking, okay, why is the body doing this, right? Why is the liver sick? Why is it making the reverse T3? And you’ve made some connections of how mycotoxins from water damaged buildings can contribute to this phenomenon, and I haven’t heard this yet. So I’m super excited to hear this.

Stephanie Seneff, Ph.D.

And not just from the buildings, but also from the food. So you have a lot of problems with mycotoxins in the corn because of fungus growing on the corn as it’s being stored. So there’s a lot of issues there with them. There’s aspergillus and of course, there’s even candida. I mean, all these fungi are causing trouble and they’re producing these mycotoxins that are very toxic. And in fact, when those mycotoxins get oxidized by epoxygenase, they get even more toxic. And so the interesting thing is the connection between the mold and the glyphosate which is actually through a few threads. One is that aspergillus, for example, is very capable of metabolizing glyphosate. So not only is it not affected by glyphosate, it doesn’t have the sensitive enzyme that that microbes have, but it can chew it up and disappear it. 

So that’s a feature and if you’ve got mold growing in your body, it’s gonna get rid of your glyphosate, which is nice. But on the other hand, the mold causes its own problems. So if you’re getting a lot of glyphosate, then the mold is gonna, the bacteria are being killed off so that allows the mold to really get going. And the mold produces these toxins or you could be eating toxins from food that’s been exposed to glyphosate because it makes it, there’s a lot of fungus diseases right now in various plants, various crops. They’re having a lot of trouble with fungi and they’re using a lot of fungicides, too, which are also toxic. So, and that’s, I think also because glyphosate is making the plants less resistant to the fungi. And a reason why this is less resistant just because of a weak immune system. 

Glyphosate is really doing a number on the immune system. It really messes it up and I have a whole chapter. I have a new book on glyphosate, I have a whole chapter in that book on the gut and another chapter on the immune system, how glyphosate messes up the immune system. So you have trouble fighting off these fungi and you have trouble dealing with these mycotoxins because glyphosate is disrupting the enzymes in the liver that detoxify them. And so one is gluthathione. A lot of the mycotoxins get glutathione-related and that makes them water-soluble and then you can clear them through the urine, and get rid of them. And another thing is oxidation. You have these cytochrome P450 enzymes that also have the same idea. 

All of these enzymes that are detoxifying toxic chemicals in the liver, typically put things onto them or change them in ways that make them more water-soluble. And this is what allows them to get out because they can then pass through the urine and get removed from the body. And when those enzymes are broken then these other enzymes get going with the product that isn’t getting changed. And in particular, these epoxygenases convert them into even more toxic metabolites. So you really go into a downward spiral. 

The collaboration between glyphosate and the toxins from the molds are causing a really serious problem with liver toxicity. And then liver toxicity and also depleting the gluthathione, glyphosate has been shown to both deplete glutathione and end up with a lot of oxidized glutathione. So gluthathione is a great antioxidant, really important in the liver, keeping things healthy, particularly for the mitochondria to keep the mitochondria healthy. And when there isn’t enough gluthathione and the gluthathione that’s there is oxidized, you’ve got a problem. And so your mitochondria actually starts spewing out reactive oxygen species and the thing goes south. I mean it’s like a downward spiral because the mitochondria actually wreck the cell, wreck themselves and you’ve got mitochondrial deficiency in the liver. And I think that’s a consequence of both the mycotoxins which are also damaging the mitochondria and the glyphosate working together.

Christine Schaffner, N.D.

Every time I hear you speak, it’s like all roads lead to glyphosate, right? You keep on thinking about all of these mechanisms ’cause as you speak, I see a lot of patients who’ve struggled with either water damaged buildings and have a mycotoxin exposure, that route or as you said, through the food supply or through immunosuppression and fungal overgrowth in their body. And we use a lot of glutathione to help eliminate those mycotoxins. But again, not looking at a step deeper, like why wasn’t the body clearing those themselves? Or why was the body more vulnerable-

Stephanie Seneff, Ph.D.

Exactly.

Christine Schaffner, N.D.

So I think that’s a really interesting next lens. And then, I never had heard either the aspergillus connection and that aspergillus actually, biologically, might be helping us on some level-

Stephanie Seneff, Ph.D.

I know, that’s interesting, isn’t it? I think it’s doing better because it can clear the glyphosate. It’s kind of a feature. And I think that’s true of other toxic infections, as well. That because they can clear glyphosate, they get a big edge over the other species but then they also perform a service, ’cause they help to give the glyphosate levels lower than they would otherwise be.

Christine Schaffner, N.D.

We talk a lot in biological medicine around terrain theory, right? So it’s not about the bug or the toxin, but kind of the body’s response or the interaction with that. And that, for me, makes a lot of sense ’cause yeah, I believe even though our bodies are up against so much, we’re always trying to move towards health or there’s a wisdom inherent in moving us towards health. And so it’s like, what is the biological, maybe benefit in some way of allowing this fungi to grow in the body versus others. And we saw that in the early days with candida and mercury, there’s kind of a relationship-

Stephanie Seneff, Ph.D.

Exactly, yeah.

Christine Schaffner, N.D.

Toxicity have higher candida and we treat both and people get better, but yeah, that’s a really interesting angle. And so have you, in your work, when you have looked at, have you done any exploration of types of mycotoxins that have any connection?

Stephanie Seneff, Ph.D.

I wrote a paper, a chapter on this and I looked into the literature and just kind of found some names of some toxins and how they’re metabolized and how they become more toxic, that kind of thing. So I know about ochratoxin and aspergillus and it produces, what’s it called?

Christine Schaffner, N.D.

It’s ochratoxin and then aflatoxin.

Stephanie Seneff, Ph.D.

Aflatoxin, ochratoxin. Yeah, those are big ones, yeah.

Christine Schaffner, N.D.

Nowadays, Dr. Seneff, with these labs being more affordable and accessible, patients can actually measure their mycotoxin burden in the urine and Great Plains Lab which has a glyphosate test-

Stephanie Seneff, Ph.D.

Yes.

Christine Schaffner, N.D.

Has toxin test, too. So anyone who’s listening should do both, right? If this is something-

Stephanie Seneff, Ph.D.

I think that’s really a good idea, you can get a sense of whether they’re collaborating, whether you’ve got a problem with both, in which case, you know, you sort of know some things you need to do. Get out of the building if it’s toxic and stay away from the glyphosate, you know, the organic food, don’t get near the farm yards where they’re spraying. Agricultural landmines.

Christine Schaffner, N.D.

So, you know, we have this, you know, we’re looking at, there’s so many different physical effects of glyphosate and mycotoxins can have in the body. And we’re going back, you know, really focusing on the thyroid ’cause I think this is really important as you said, ’cause I think a lot of thyroid dysfunction or hypothyroid gets misdiagnosed or undertreated, you know. And so, in your research, have you uncovered different approaches that you feel like a clinician or a patient who’s listening, who is like, oh, that’s me, should investigate on how to really uncover, you know, a roadmap to heal this process in their body. I mean, I know we’re talking about mechanisms to think about but just curious from your perspective in your research.

Stephanie Seneff, Ph.D.

Yeah, well I think glutathione is central and of course, that also means sulfur is central and the sulfur containing amino acids. So I really think people need to pay attention to their diet, not just in terms of certified organic, which is absolutely essential, but also try to move towards a high sulfur diet and particular actually, particularly animal-based protein because that has a lot more of this sulfur containing amino acids and plant-based protein. So that makes animal-based foods more interesting, I think, in that case. And, so the sulfur, you know, getting enough sulfur. And what’s interesting is this whole mechanism of this T3, reverse T3 activity that happens in the liver is quite, quite fascinating. 

And I was quite delighted with what I’ve found because it went back heparan sulfate which is something that I’ve always been interested in way back when I identified heparin sulfate deficiency as a key marker of autism in the brain, deficient heparin sulfate in the brain ventricles. Very, very interesting. That’s a direct lead to autism. We’ve done experiments with mice where they’ve given them a defect, a specific defect, particular to the brain ventricles where they can’t make heparan sulfate. And they develop all the features of autism, most features of autism. It’s quite fascinating. And they found deficiencies in heparin sulfate in the brains of human autistic people after they died. And then post-mortem, they found they had inadequate heparin sulfate in their ventricles. So that’s very interesting. So heparin sulfate is important everywhere but in the liver, it’s extremely interesting with regard to this reverse T3. 

So it becomes quite fascinating to look at these enzymes and where they operate and how they’re managed in the cells because reverse T3, you know, the DIO3, deiodinase 3 versus deiodinase 2, have very different mechanisms of import, places where they work. I mean, within the cell, they operate very differently, which is quite fascinating. Whenever I see something like that, I’m like, okay, why is this? You know, I’m always asking why. And so DIO3, is actually, it’s excreted and as it gets into these clathrin-coated pits that are surrounding the cell and these clathrin-coated pits actually get endocytosed. 

They get brought in, in a sort of clathrin-based endocytosis where they get pulled in. And then, they recycle. They go back to the membrane. Back and forth, to the membrane. And they’re delivering things and doing stuff. But when there’s not enough heparan sulfate, they get stuck. They don’t go in, they stay on the surface and they get flat. They get sort of flattened out ’cause they’re supposed to be sort of like this and then they come in making little containers but instead they get on the surface and they flatten out like this and they stick to the stiff membrane. And the membrane is stiff because it’s not enough heparan sulfate. And so, so, so interesting because then this DIO3 sticks around outside of the cell where it’s grabbing all the T4 and converting it into RT3. So it prevents the T4 from having a chance to become T3 because it takes it away before it even gets inside the cell.

Christine Schaffner, N.D.

That’s a light bulb for me. I never knew why the body did this. You know-

Stephanie Seneff, Ph.D.

It’s so fascinating.

Christine Schaffner, N.D.

Yeah, yeah. So it’s definitely, it’s trying to do what it knows how to do but it’s basically impaired and stuck in a position where anatomically, it’s not able to do it’s physical-

Stephanie Seneff, Ph.D.

Yeah, it would have removed it from the surface and would’ve brought it inside where it wouldn’t have been able to do it, it wouldn’t be able to reach the T4 so it couldn’t do anything, it’d just be stuck inside the cell during this, you know, during this cycle. It wouldn’t stick along the surface for very long. So it wouldn’t be able to convert it very much of the T4 before it would disappear into the cell. And it couldn’t get at the T4 which is outside. Whereas the T3 actually operates on the T4, inside the cell. So the T4 has to come in and I think the T4 and I’ve forgotten it’s T4 that’s brought in through the receptor. 

I don’t know, I don’t know the details of that part. It gets really, really complicated, but it’s, but I know that T3 operates inside the cell and RT, the DIO2, producing T3 operates inside the cell. And DIO3 is at the surface, removing the T4 and converting it into RT3. And if it gets away from the surface, it can’t do that. And it gets stuck on the surface with a reduced heparin sulfate. And the really interesting thing is that, you know, heparin sulfate, since this requires energy, because you need ATP to activate the sulfate. You’ve gotta stick the sulfate onto the heparin. You have to attach the sulfate using this energized version of sulfate that is called PAPS. You need two ATP molecules to make one PAPS molecule. 

So when you can’t make a lot of PAPS because you have defective mitochondria, you can’t make a lot of heparin sulfate, so that’s also connected. So when the mitochondria are weak, the heparin sulfate gets deficient. And when the heparan sulfate is deficient, the liposomes become defective because they need the heparan sulfate in order to produce their acidic environment that allows them to recycle damaged stuff. So when you have, you can’t clear cellular debris because the lysosomes are defective because there’s not enough heparan sulfate to help them do their job. So it’s a really complicated sort of story with lots of threads, but the T3 encourages mitochondrial proliferation, encourages the mitochondria. That’s the thyroid hormone, the active one, it encourages, and strengthens and makes more mitochondria. It makes the cell very energetic. So when the RTP3 is blocking the T3, you can’t make very many mitochondria and you’ve got a kind of vicious cycle. But the other thing is that the T3 suppresses the conversion of assisting into hydrogen sulfate gas. 

T3 suppresses that. So they RT3, it gets rid of the T3, gets rid of the suppression and allows you to convert cysteine into hydrogen sulfide gas which you need because you’re trying to make sulfate. So it sort of allows you to make the sulfate that you need to become energized. But then the enzymes that do that get blocked by glyphosate. So there’s like, you know, things gets stuck part way through because there’s all these toxic chemicals that are messing things up. And so the RTC is trying to correct the situation but it can’t. It wants to get the sulfate going so that the mitochondria can get going. And the whole thing depends on, everything depends on everything else. And the whole system is blocked at the level of the heparin sulfate and then, with glutathione deficiency also, because glutathione becomes a source of cysteine. cysteine is one of rich three amino acids. And when you break down glutathione, you get cysteine which can make sulfate. But if you break down glutathione, you lose glutathione and now you don’t have enough antioxidants. So you’re kind of juggling all these things that are deficient, struggling with the situation not knowing how to cope and the best way to cope, if you can’t make a lot of energy is to shut your energy system down and then you end up being exhausted.

Christine Schaffner, N.D.

Yeah, it’s like the body, you know, almost puts the brakes on itself in order to try to catch up but it’s a vicious cycle ’cause it doesn’t have the building blocks to catch up. Right and so-

Stephanie Seneff, Ph.D.

Yeah, it’s really interesting. And really the key of it, I think, is the glutathione deficiency ’cause if you can boost the glutathione, then you can boost everything else. So that becomes a source for the sulfate. And of course, you need to have the organic diet to get rid of the toxic chemicals. So yeah, but the glutathione is central and that means sulfur is central. And then the sulfur containing amino acids and of course, glycine as well, because glycine is, it’s glutamate, glycine and cysteine, that’s glutathione. And all three of those amino acids are really important to keep you healthy with glutathione. And you need to have a working system that makes the glutathione which is also problematic with glyphosate. So, you know, I think lyposomal glutathione is a good idea, if you have enzyme problems. You could just take cysteine, acetylcysteine. But if you’ve got blockages and you can’t make glutathione from acetylcysteine, which could happen, I think also with respect to glyphosate. So maybe the microtoxins, I don’t know whether they’d messed that up as well, but they might.

Christine Schaffner, N.D.

Hmm hmm. Yeah, I know, so many connections, right. And what do you, I mean, I know that you’ve talked about this before but a lot of the patients who are listening, you know, their mind is going to go to, I’m sulfur sensitive, I’m sulfite sensitive. I don’t tolerate glutathione. And so maybe, you know, again, we have a lots of ways to approach that and there are different forms and other things to do but I’m just curious if you’ve uncovered mechanisms for these increased sensitivity to sulfur compounds for some patients.

Stephanie Seneff, Ph.D.

That’s definitely glyphosate-related. And I wrote about that in my book, actually. And it’s connected to the enzymes that convert sulfate. Sulfite is really toxic. It’s very reactive and it’ll cause a lot of damage. And the microbes in your gut have lots of enzymes that either take it up to sulfate or take it down into organic amino acids. I’m talking about the oxidation state, you know, sulfite can go up to sulfate, which has four oxygens. Sulfite has three. Or it can come down to hydrogen sulfide gas, which is just no oxygen, it’s H2S or it can get assimilated into sulfur containing amino acids. So there’s a assimilatory sulfite reductase enzyme, which starts with sulfite and turns it into methionine. It combines it with a carbon organic molecule and makes methionine. And I have a paper that shows that glyphosate severely suppresses the activity of that enzyme in E. coli. 

So I think, and also, there are papers that have shown methionine deficiency in plants that are exposed to glyphosate. It also disrupts the uptake of sulfur into plants so when you eat plants that have been exposed to glyphosate, they have low sulfur content and that’s something Don Hubris showed. He showed very, drastically reduced levels of sulfur uptake into the tissues of the plant when it was exposed to glyphosate of sulfur, sulfur, and that’s of course, you need that for all the sulfur stuff. But so the assimilatory sulfite reductase is suppressed by glyphosate and that makes sense to me because it has a higher dependency. 

It has this critical glycine dependency that I talk about in my book. It makes a lot of sense that that enzyme would be messed up by glyphosate. It’s a member of this class of enzymes called flavoproteins that I write about in my book that I think get really hit hard by glyphosate. So those enzymes, it’s one of the enzymes that is in the sulfur system that’s going to mess things up so you don’t get it, when you eat sulfur, when you eat sulfides, you don’t have this enzyme working properly. Then what happens is, a bug called desulfovibrio which produces hydrogen sulfide gas with dissimilatory sulfite reductase which is not affected by glyphosate because it doesn’t have those dependencies that I just mentioned. 

So that one works and that enzyme turns it into hydrogen sulfide gas. And that gives you the bloating. And then the hydrogen sulfide gas, of course, if it’s too high, it can kill you. Hydrogen sulfide gas is actually a very, very interesting signaling gas. It has an important role in biology but when there’s too much of it, like everything else, carbon monoxide is the same. We know carbon monoxide can kill you if you hang out in the garage with the car running. And hydrogen sulfide is kind of like that. It can also kill you if we get too much but usually, you don’t get enough to kill you but you get enough to cause trouble. And it’s very light, it’s a gas, so it can just move right up through your body and into your brain and cause brain fog. So you’re producing hydrogen sulfide gas from sulfite because of these disrupted enzymes and you’re not making the critical methionine that you need which can then become cysteine which can then become glutathione. That whole channel is broken because of these defective enzymes.

Christine Schaffner, N.D.

Hmm hmm. Is that bacteria normal flora or does it overgrow in the presence?

Stephanie Seneff, Ph.D.

Yeah, it’s just too much to, I think it’s a normal, it could be present in the gut and not cause trouble but when there’s too much of it an overgrowth of desulfovibrio. It’s also something, I’ve forgotten. Bilophila wadsworthia. That’s another one, that also makes hydrogen sulfide gas out of sulfite. And those two become problematic when that other enzyme was broken and the sulfite, of course, also is toxic. So if the enzymes aren’t working, you get too much sulfite, that’s going to cause a lot of oxidative damage and mess up your gut.

Christine Schaffner, N.D.

Hmm hmm. And we’re seeing, you know, of course, a lot of gut dysbiosis from, you know, glyphosate for all the reasons. And then within our patient population, there’s a presentation of small intestinal bacterial overgrowth. So some of these bacteria migrating to the small intestine and we measure, you know, different gases in the breath that the bacteria like methane and hydrogen and-

Stephanie Seneff, Ph.D.

Right, that’s also a very interesting topic and that relates to glyphosate, as well, because I mentioned the flavoproteins and there’s a bunch of enzymes that the gut microbes make that take what you just mentioned, all these hydrogen containing gases, methane and ammonia and hydrogen sulfide gas, and even hydrogen gas, all those gases that contain hydrogen, there’s enzymes that oxidize them and make them into organic matter. So methane can go to methanol and methanol can go to formaldehyde and formaldehyde can go to formate. Those are all different steps of oxidation of that original CH4 methane molecule. And each one of those steps involves a flavoprotein. So all those proteins are being suppressed by glyphosate. Normally, the gut microbes have a very interesting system of making gas, you know, these hydrogen containing gases and then turning them back into organic matter using these enzymes that are microbial specific. Like we don’t have those enzymes, we can’t do that. 

We depend upon them to make those organic molecules for us. And the really interesting thing about it, I just have to say this, and I wasn’t going to get into deuterium but deuterium is so fascinating and I’ve gotten into it lately. And that whole process of making these gases and turning them back into organic matter is a way to shake off the deuterium so that those organic molecules are deuterium depleted. And that makes them extremely healthy nutrients. So deuterium is a heavy hydrogen and it’s natural. It’s found in nature all over the place and our body has discovered sophisticated ways to keep it out of the mitochondria. And when, deuterium, when there’s too much deuterium in the mitochondria, they get sick and they can’t make as much ATP. The ATPase pumps get broken by these sort of bullied deuterium atoms that come in there and wreck the pumps. And they can’t make as much ATP.

And they start releasing these reactive oxygen species which is really bad. So their mitochondria get self-damaging from this excess deuterium, which is there because their enzymes that keep it low are messed up. And those are also flavoproteins. So the flavoproteins play many important roles but they’re all sort of connected to deuterium, I think. They’re able to actually select for hydrogen over deuterium in the reaction. They’re very clever. They’ve got this really curious biophysical arrangement that supports proton tunneling within the protein and the deuterium molecules are really bad at tunneling so they don’t make it to the other side. They don’t get into the product. It’s really cool science, but these enzymes get busted by glyphosate in a very specific way that exactly matches what I call my glyphosate susceptibility motif. So it’s all written up in my book about these flavoproteins. It’s really fascinating.

Christine Schaffner, N.D.

Yeah, like just another connection, right. And I’m glad you brought up deuterium as our community is learning more and more, as well as there are labs and solutions and things to, you know, uncover this as really a missing piece, especially in people struggling with mitochondrial dysfunction or cancer.

Stephanie Seneff, Ph.D.

Absolutely, really important. In fact, this is deuterium-depleted water that I’m drinking.

Christine Schaffner, N.D.

Litewater, are you drinking Litewater?

Stephanie Seneff, Ph.D.

Litewater, yeah.

Christine Schaffner, N.D.

Yeah.

Stephanie Seneff, Ph.D.

Litewater, yeah. It’s one of the few things that I, I don’t normally take supplements but I really believe in this one. I think it’s terrific. And I’m so happy that it exists, so.

Christine Schaffner, N.D.

Yeah, no, I’m glad I know that our mutual friends have really pioneered, you know, making this really a part of the conversation, right, in the modern illnesses that we see today, ’cause it’s like, you just explained so much complexity, right, and there’s so many factors but there’s these common denominators of where the body breaks down, right. And so this is a to come to a resolution, given, you know, all these factors that you’ve just shared, so.

Stephanie Seneff, Ph.D.

Yeah, it’s really interesting. I think it’s actually pretty simple but if I try to explain it to people, they kind of think, it seems like over their head, but it’s elegant really but it’s just so sad how much everything gets wrecked by glyphosate, it’s really scary. And then, and of course, working synergistically with everything else, you know, the mercury becomes more toxic and everything else, all the other herbicides and insecticides become more toxic because glyphosate disrupts the liver’s ability to detoxify and that’s what’s happening to the microtoxins, as well. The mercury and mercury needs to be sulfated. So if you’ve got a lot of mercury in your teeth, that’s going to become much more toxic because you can’t sulfate.

Christine Schaffner, N.D.

Hmm hmm, yeah and that’s a big part of our work on helping people safely remove those and detoxify them. I’m just circling back for one moment. You’ve mentioned the flavoproteins and the enzymes, you know, excuse me, you know, many mechanisms there and especially with the mitochondria. Is there any other kind of way to support that process or mitigate that dysfunction? Obviously, all the glyphosate detoxification and removal and avoidance strategy, but the deuterium depletion, in and of itself, does that help to recover those enzymes?

Stephanie Seneff, Ph.D.

I would think so. And in fact, you know, I’ve always liked a high-fat diet. I’ve just always felt it was healthy and even animal fat, high animal fat, you know, butter, lard and I eat lot of those foods and even animal-based protein, as I mentioned for the immuno acids, the sulfur containing amino acids but a high-fat diet is a low deuterium diet. So that’s extremely interesting. As soon as I learned about that from Laszlo Boros, I was just spellbound. I was like, oh, this is why, you know, it’s like so simple. It could be a really important aspect of a high-fat diet which is that it’s a low deuterium diet. So that’s a nice way to kind of reduce the amount of deuterium you’re exposed to by simply eating, tending to eat fats rather than sugars. And of course, Laszlo actually thinks fruit is very toxic because it’s high deuterium, which is interesting.

Christine Schaffner, N.D.

I know the fruit thing, I can never, you know, there’s so many people on different sides of the fruit camp. But you know-

Stephanie Seneff, Ph.D.

It’s really-

Christine Schaffner, N.D.

But yeah, I trust that and I understand that, you know, and especially maybe if we weren’t in modern life, our threshold for that would be more tolerable but I think just given, you know, our bodies are just so overwhelmed and our levels are higher than nature intended that we can’t maybe enjoy things that we might have otherwise.

Stephanie Seneff, Ph.D.

No, I agree. I think that many foods that are perceived to be toxic, wouldn’t be if we didn’t have all the toxic chemicals alongside them because those chemicals just completely do, even alcohol, you know, because if you have healthy enzymes that can metabolize ethanol, it’s actually a really super fuel, you know, it’s like sugar. It’s very easy to metabolize and turn into energy. But the problem is that if the enzymes that metabolize ethanol and its products are poorly, are working poorly, then you just have these reactive molecules hanging around causing trouble. So it really, a lot of the toxicity of things comes from insufficient enzyme activity. The enzymes are sick because of their glyphosate exposure. And I think that’s related to alcohol. I think, you know, methanol is extremely toxic and methane to methanol. I’m sorry, am I getting this right?

Christine Schaffner, N.D.

 Methanol?

Stephanie Seneff, Ph.D.

Formaldehyde is very toxic, right?

Christine Schaffner, N.D.

Hmm hmm.

Stephanie Seneff, Ph.D.

And so the enzyme that converts formaldehyde to folate, if that’s broken, now you’ve got a problem. It’s toxic formaldehyde. And the way you can, one way you can help to fix that is to drink a lot of ethanol because it competes with the enzyme that makes the methanol that goes into the formaldehyde. So by virtue of distracting that enzyme with this other alcohol, you don’t get as much formaldehyde and that can, so I think even alcoholic disease could be connected to this need to get rid of this formaldehyde which you know, your enzymes and your microbes are making this methanol. You can’t stop that. So then you just try to defer the enzyme. So get it distracted by the ethanol so that you don’t end up with this very toxic formaldehyde, which is just really curious.

Christine Schaffner, N.D.

Yeah, definitely. I know it’s like human behavior. There’s a, you know, just even over simplifying sometimes, you know, people have these sugar cravings or these, you know, whatever, not healthy things that they, you know, mentally understand, but physically, this driver’s coming from a biological driver, right. You know, whether it’s like overgrowth of yeast in the gut or these enzymes-

Stephanie Seneff, Ph.D.

Exactly, the yeast really wants sugar. So if you’ve got yeast, they’re going to get your brain to think you want sugar, too. And so fast. The microbes are in control. I mean, they really do talk a lot with the brain and they instruct the brain how to react. And it’s just really quite fascinating how you get driven by that. You have drives that you don’t understand that are driven by your microbes. So, yes, very fascinating.

Christine Schaffner, N.D.

I see that in clinical practice all the time, right. You know, and I think that’s another, you know, kind of perspective, right. Especially nowadays where we’re in this, whatever we’re in, that we’re focused on one microbe or one bug. And even in my world, you know, we get very focused on, you know, certain pathogens when we have to look at it, you know, in this ecosystem and community that we’re really meant to live in harmony with microbes and viruses and fungi. But these other factors make us less resilient and more vulnerable and things grow in ways that they shouldn’t, you know, so it’s not thinking like, oh, there’s just one invader causing all this havoc. It’s this complex network. And the more I learn, of course, I treat pathogens but I do feel it’s the toxicity that has just overwhelmed and overburdened us to change our response that otherwise we would have recovered from more quickly.

Stephanie Seneff, Ph.D.

Yeah, I think that’s true. And I think that, you know, we experience disease not so much because of the bugs, but because of the chemicals and then the bugs are actually trying to fix the problem. I think in most cases, their goal is to keep you healthy because you’re their home. They don’t want you to die, right. But unfortunately they have to have these, do these things that cause these symptoms that are nasty, in many cases, in order to fix a problem, they’re trying to fix a problem. And they’re, of course, struggling too, because they don’t understand how to deal with glyphosate either. Nobody knows how to deal with glyphosate. They’re just so, so difficult.

Christine Schaffner, N.D.

Hmm hmm, hmm hmm. Doesn’t that change the whole field of infectious disease, right, if we looked at it from this angle. So Dr. Seneff, so, I mean, you, I mean, I think I’ve known you maybe eight years now and you’ve been just ahead of the curve with glyphosate. I mean, do you feel, I mean, obviously, a huge awareness I think has shifted in that time? But do you feel like, is industry catching up or do you feel like we just have a long way, still?

Stephanie Seneff, Ph.D.

I know, I wish I could see into the future ’cause I keep trying to predict when is it going to fall? And I keep believing it’s going to fall in my lifetime. And I hope that’s true. I’m very happy about Mexico. Mexico has decided to completely abolish glyphosate by 2024 so they’re phasing it out. America’s, the US is very upset with them for that, which I find ironic. And you know, all these lawsuits, I think that that really was a real driver bringing public awareness to glyphosate with all these non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma lawsuits. And there were three that were spectacular wins. And now there’s like tens of thousands of people waiting in the wings for their day in court. And that’s quite frightening for Bayer. Bayer stock has collapsed. And then of course, there’s various bottom-up activities involved with banning glyphosate in local communities, like, you know, banning the use of glyphosate on the school yards or banning it in public places.

I think local communities, people are putting in the effort to talk to their, you know, government, local government, and get these changes to happen and it’s becoming successful in multiple cities in this country. I’d love to see a state like California decide to ban glyphosate. That would be so awesome. And maybe, there will be a state. It probably won’t be California because they’ve used it very deeply- Yeah, there ya go. So, you know, I think Europe is also making efforts and various individual countries in Europe are trying to ban it. And then there’s this kind of higher level EU community that says, no, you can’t do that. We’re getting the same effect in states, as well, where some city will try to ban it. And then there’ll be a government rule at the state level that says the city can’t do that. So that’s very frustrating. 

That’s happened in Hawaii, too, with the individual counties trying to take action. And then the main government of the state is saying, no, you can’t do that. Even when they pass laws, they basically disable the laws. So it’s very, very frustrating when you see things like that. There’s so much control. Monsanto worked very hard to control the top, you know, and then to disable the bottom, disenfranchise them. And so that’s worked spectacularly well to keep us poisoned and the US EPA, the FDA, they’re just completely useless. I’m so annoyed with them. It’s very, very frustrating. I still have hope that there could just be one person in the government who has a powerful role, they would just decide we’re going to do it, and you know, and really bring it onto the radar screen and get them to be aware that this is a serious problem because we’re all just getting sicker and sicker and there’s no end in sight. And I think that COVID-19 is also much worse in the countries where glyphosate is heavily used. 

And I really think that’s a complete connection. As I said, I have a chapter in my book on glyphosate suppression of the innate immune system. And it’s when your innate immune system is weak that you have to bring in the big guns and we get all this overzealous adaptive immune response is what’s killing people with COVID. It’s not the virus, it’s the response to the virus. And that response is necessary because the innate immune system can’t clear it. And I write about that in my book, as well.

Christine Schaffner, N.D.

Yeah, no, I agree with you. And you know, I think the track that we’re on, I think that is an intention to hold it, you know, maybe one person in government because you know, people who are in these roles, their families aren’t immune from, you know, the illnesses that we all see in our communities. And so it just takes maybe a connection or an insider and an understanding that this is, you know, the cause of modern illness today. You know, so I’m gonna put that in my intention, as well, Dr. Seneff. And then tell us about your new book. So I wanna-

Stephanie Seneff, Ph.D.

Oh, I have it here. I can show it.

Christine Schaffner, N.D.

Yeah, please.

Stephanie Seneff, Ph.D.

One of the very few copies at the moment. It’s going to come out July 1st.

Christine Schaffner, N.D.

Oh, perfect timing. Yeah. So perfect timing. So “Toxic Legacy”. And what do you go through in the book?

Stephanie Seneff, Ph.D.

Yeah, so I talk a lot about glyphosate acid, glycine analog. That’s the thing that really is fascinating to me. And I think it’s the reason why one chemical can cause so many diseases. And I argue in my book, you know, we’ve seen the data, all these diseases going up exactly in step with glyphosate, you know, autoimmune diseases, neurological diseases, of course, autism was the one I started with. 

Perfect match, you know, the rise in autism in first grade and the rise of glyphosate usage over the previous four years. So from the age of two to the age of six in that child’s life. Perfect match. And stunning correlations. And of course, you know, these charges started coming up. Nancy Swanson was the one who started doing these charts. She’s a friend of mine. She’s awesome. And you know, people said, oh, correlation doesn’t mean causation. I mean, they always find an angle to say. to let people think, oh, good, I don’t have to worry about that. You know, when you get that kind of stunning correlation with all those diseases. For me, it was, oh my God, how is this chemical getting so smart? How can it do all this? And they were saying that, too. How could one chemical possibly cause so many diseases? Well, for them, they just dismissed it. How could it. For me, I’m like, okay, I gotta figure this out, right? And that’s when I really came upon this idea. Well, and actually Anthony Samsel was the one who suggested to me. 

We knew it was a glycine analog. And he said, maybe it’s getting into the proteins by mistake during the coding process, you know, ’cause you have the DNA code and that’s what tells you which amino acid to put next and put them on a string. And so when it says glycine, it grabbed glyphosate by mistake and you stick it into the protein. And that became really an a-ha moment for me. Once I started looking at that, it became very clear that it makes a huge amount of sense, you know, and that it could explain how one chemical could cause so many diseases. And that’s how, for example, the flavoproteins get affected and it’s really very similar to what’s happening with the enzyme that it famously disrupts in the shikimate pathway, which is called the EPSP synthase. 

And that enzyme has a glycine at the place where it binds phosphate from PEP and that glycine, if you replace it with alanine, which is a very small change but it’s a different code, then all of a sudden, the enzyme’s completely insensitive to glyphosate. And that’s very, very interesting because if you say the glyphosate is just replacing the glycine in the enzyme, sticking its methyl phosphonate in the spot where the phosphates supposed to go, for the substrate, you can’t fit anymore. It’s just blocking the door and then it can’t do it’s reaction. And that’s what’s happened with the flavoproteins, as well.

Christine Schaffner, N.D.

Hmm hmm, yeah. And that, and then you mentioned, we started the conversation on glutathione, right? So glycine being part of gluthathione and then-

Stephanie Seneff, Ph.D.

Exactly, glutathione is probably getting contaminated with glyphosate. In fact, that glyphosate causes the increased production of an enzyme called GGT, gamma-glutamyl transpeptidase, which breaks gluthathione down into individual amino acids. And that’s part of why gluthathione gets depleted because you’re running this GGT and breaking it down but I think it might just be because it recognizes it’s a sick version of the enzyme, has to be disassembled and hopefully, rebuilt with glycine instead of glyphosate.

Christine Schaffner, N.D.

Yeah, wow. And then, collagen, right, so collagen-

Stephanie Seneff, Ph.D.

Collagen has huge amounts of glycine, you know, GXY GXY GXY, long strands of every third amino acid being in glycine. And collagen is, you know, we’ve got a lot of trouble with collagen. Collagen is not working correctly in our joints and our bones. And we’ve got a lot of joint pain and bone pain and, you know, easily breaking bones and having sort of bone rubbing on bone because the collagen is not holding the water the way it should. It doesn’t have the proper flexibility and it’s tendon strength. So we’re just really, really messing things up with the collagen, I think, and that’s causing a lot of these diseases that are characterized. 

You see so many people and of course, back pain, hip replacement therapy, all that stuff, children, all kinds of shoulder problems. You know, it’s all, I think, reflected in the contamination of the collagen with the glyphosate. So the book is really centered on that topic and it gets to it, sort of after a few chapters or introduction where it talks about all this evidence of glyphosate causing all these problems in all these species. And then there’s these two chapters that actually cover the science behind the idea. And then there’s individual chapters on individual diseases including autism and neurological diseases, in general, and autoimmune diseases, immune system, reproductive issues, and liver disorder, gut, of course, there’s a whole chapter on the gut, so.

Christine Schaffner, N.D.

Well, I can’t wait to read this and I know your life’s work has been educating all of us to look at this. And then these, again, pervasive mechanisms, how this is really, you know, one of the most predominant underlying causes of the modern illnesses that we see today. And so I know that we all are so grateful for your work. And I know this is a lot of research and investigation and putting a lot of these pieces together, you know, to share the story ’cause you know, if you’re in one of these camps, you wouldn’t see all the connections. So we appreciate you, you know, connecting all these really, you know, important thoughts and all of your work. And thank you for opening us up to, you know, yet another connection in the world of glyphosates. So thank you so much, Dr. Seneff, for your time today.

Stephanie Seneff, Ph.D.

Thank you, this was fun. Thanks for having me.

Christine Schaffner, N.D.

Thank you.