How Toxins Cause Inflammation and How to Detox Them

Introduction to the Summit and Wendy Myers 0:00

Well, welcome back to the conquering Chronic Inflammation Summit. I'm your host, Doctor David Jokers. And today I've got the honor of interviewing Doctor Wendy Myers. She is a naturopathy doctor. She's a founder of Myers detox.com. Great website. She is an internationally recognized expert on heavy metal detox, anti-aging and bioenergetics. Today we're talking about how toxins cause inflammation and how to detox them. We've got so many toxins from microplastics to heavy metals, pesticides, herbicides.

We've got to understand how to reduce our exposure and how to effectively detox and eliminate these things from our body. Doctor Myers is a sought after speaker. She's a number one bestselling author and host of the top 50 rated podcast, The Myers Detox Podcast. Her mission is to educate and inspire the globe about topics related to anti-aging, detoxifying from our increasingly toxic world to combat disease and increase longevity. Again. You can find our website at Myers detox.com. Without further ado, let's go into this interview.

Well Wendy, great to connect and I always enjoy our conversations. And today we're talking about toxins. And I was just recently putting together an in-depth article on microplastics. And it's amazing to find out that we're consuming roughly about a credit card worth of microplastics every week, and that we literally consume about a dinner plate like 250g of microplastics in a year, the average, the average human. And of course, these microplastics cause damage throughout the body. I know we've had previous discussions about heavy metals.

There's just so many toxins that were being bombarded with. And so this is a really important conversation and we're going to have the people are going to get a lot of value out of this as far as how we reduce our exposure, how these how these toxins impact our health overall. And then we're also going to go through how we reduce our exposure and how we effectively eliminate them. So thanks for joining me Wendy. And let's let's talk about some of these toxins. Yes. Yeah.

How Toxins Bioaccumulate and Drive Inflammation 2:06

It's so important because I wanted to talk about specifically how toxins cause inflammation and what, you know, they all pretty much do. But you know, we're exposed to so many different toxins on a daily basis. And they also bio accumulate, you know, a, you know, I'm 52 years old and I've had 52 years of accumulating forever chemicals and PFOA and Teflon and, you know, DDT and pesticides. And these are toxins that are very, very difficult for the body to remove. And so they just bio accumulate. And at some point you have a toxin exposure or a stressful event, and your health can really go downhill quickly once you kind of reach this tipping point.

And I think a lot of people, you know, they're checking off all the boxes with diet and exercise and supplements and sleep and sunlight and doing the foundational things and still finding they're having health issues and symptoms and fatigue and brain fog. And and that's why I'm really passionate about this is really getting the word out, like people need our detox to their health regimen because it's we have, you know, most people have 20,000 different toxins in their body. It's shocking really, when you dig into it.

So you've got to be paying attention to this because it's one of the biggest factors in, inflammation and, and health diagnoses and symptoms that people are experiencing. Yeah, 100%. What are some of the biggest toxins that you're seeing when you're doing testing or that you're seeing impacting people? Yeah, I mean, I'm really do heavy metals testing. And so, you know, I don't do chemicals testing just because everyone has them. And so, in any kind of detox protocol, I recommend you're getting out chemicals to you.

But the main toxins I see that people have are lead. That's the number one toxin. I mean, it was just everywhere in our environment. And the gasoline and, you know, all the tires, wearing out it release a lot of lead into the environment. It gets in the soil, in the food. It's in the supplements. It's, you know, we inherit it from our our grandparents and our mother. This blood is stored in the bones. And then also mercury is a big one as well. And then arsenic and, there's there's many metals, but those are the top three that I see.

And how do those impact us? How do they how do they reduce energy? Energy? Production and impact our mitochondria? Yeah. So we really most toxins are going to impact our mitochondria, our little powerhouses that make our energy in our cells. And so when we, there's so many different things that can get into the, into the mitochondria and that mechanism, where we're making ATP and just, thwart that in many different ways. And one way is, heavy metals or poison enzymes that transport nutrients and the mitochondria and the heavy metals that do that, you know, arsenic, aluminum, tin, thallium and cesium, mercury, lead.

But there's many, many, many toxins, that will interfere in mitochondria production and energy production of the mitochondria as well. And then what happens when the mitochondria are impacted like this?

Common Heavy Metals and Their Effects 5:09

Yeah. Well, if we, if they're not getting the nutrients they, they need, they need the B vitamins and just many other nutrients, they need oxygen as well. They're just not going to be able to produce the energy that your body is capable of. But, you know, there's many ways the mitochondria produce energy. We get where, you know, the bio photons, the mitochondria are charged by the sun, red light therapy. So that's super important. We also get, energy from oxygen. So it's really important to do oxygen therapies.

I drink water that has oxygen infused in it. So feeding your body oxygen, exercise, all those things count. But detoxification is really key to really maximize your energy production. Yeah. For sure. What are some symptoms that people could have that would that may indicate that they have a high toxic load? It's, you know, it can really be anything. That's why it's so and so overlooked and missed is certainly when you're going to your doctor and you're presenting with symptoms, they're not looking at heavy metals or toxins.

It's just not kind of in their, their realm. And so you have to understand that, that they're they're not looking for that unless it's really good functional doctor. But you know, you can have the main things are fatigue, brain fog. You could have, low grade nausea, but also, you know, blood sugar control issues. You know, the number one cause of diabetes are toxins. That's going to cause some inflammation, for sure. A lot of people have blood sugar control issues. People have, you know, digestive issues, you know, just any kind of hormonal issues or you just, sleep issues.

I mean, it's in the research I've done over the past 15 years, every imaginable symptom and diagnosis can have an underlying heavy metal or chemical cause, or it's our it's exacerbating, that issue. Yeah. And and what are some of the best ways to assess heavy metals or any toxins in your body. You know I love hearing mineral analysis. That's a fantastic, way to go. It's because it's very inexpensive. It's easy to do at home. It's not invasive. And we're only looking at heavy metals and minerals with that.

But there's, there's, you know, you can do urine test as well to look at other heavy metals and chemicals. There's, hormonal analysis for chemicals as well, that you can do, but you can do stool tests for some metals. Blood tests are great for lead. As well. And for iron, some people have iron toxicity, so blood is best for those. But for, for the easiest test to do at home is a hair mineral analysis. And so that hair mineral analysis will, we'll look at what's what kind of metals are in the hair as well as different minerals.

Yes. Yeah. And mineral excesses and mineral deficiencies. Can you know tell us a lot about heavy metals that you have.

Testing for Heavy Metals and Toxic Load 7:54

So it gives us a lot of indirect information as well. And it's just a kit somebody can purchase. They get sent to their home and they basically follow the instructions and they're just clipping out a certain portion of their hair and then sending it back in. Yeah, exactly. It's really easy to do. Now. There are some, some women that are a little concerned about taking out any hair. So even me, I have a lot of hair and I still don't like to do it. But, you know, but you survive. You just take a little bit from the back of your, your head and, you know, no one sees a tiny bit.

Yeah. Now, what are some of the, the toxins that you find that are hardest to remove from the body. Yeah. So those are going to be pesticides and microplastics or the microplastics and also the, you know, phthalates and forever chemicals. So these are things that will bio accumulate. And it's very difficult for the body to get rid of those. So you can do all the detoxing. In the world, you can do detoxing for years, like infrared saunas and ionic foot baths, and you can do coffee enemas and liver support and all these different things that people do.

But at some point, I urge people to do plasma exchange therapy. And especially if they have complex chronic illness, they have chronic inflammation, you know, health issues related to chronic inflammation. Because you just can't get rid of this stuff. And it's just it's accumulated for years. I'm about to do that in July. And, it's just, most people need to do a series A, you know, 2 or 3 of them. And it's it's not cheap to do those, but it's very, very, effective. It's one of the most effective things that you can do to just pull everything out of your body and then totally mitigate any kind of, symptoms or health issues that you're having.

And I can't urge it enough if you're, you have complex chronic illness or chronic fatigue or just, you know, something the doctors, they just can't get a hold on it and everything you've tried isn't working. There are unbelievable recoveries very, very quickly. Doing like a once a month plasma exchange therapy treatment. You know, and some people need five of them, but most people just need 2 or 3. And you're you're good to go with the inflammation, with the weight loss, you know, fatigue mitigation, and just brain fog issues, dementia.

You know, if you have early dementia, any kind of thing like that, I would urge plasma exchange therapy. And how does that work? How does the plasma exchange therapy work? Yeah, essentially you go to a clinic that specializes in that, like MD lifespan.com. They've got like like three clinics right now. They're going to have 25 in the U.S. in the next year or so. And they're opening one here in Houston, where I am, where I'm going to go. So essentially what they do is it's about a 2 or 3 hour treatment.

They take out your plasma, which is part of your blood,

Hard-to-Remove Toxins and Plasma Exchange Therapy 10:45

and that's going to pull out all these toxins, mold, pesticides, the plasticizers, the, the plastics, the, the, the phthalates, the DDT and all these things that we have in our body. And, and every toxin you can imagine, it will, it's in your plasma that will be pulled out, and then they replace it with Olbermann and, and that's essentially it. And then they'll, they'll leave. Some people have detox symptoms that they'll give you steroids or other things that will mitigate the inflammation. And, binders that will, you know, reduce the detox symptoms, some for some that's going to be more severe than others.

And then after you pull all that out over the course of the next month, then you will start to start, the body will start releasing toxins from deep in the tissues and our connective tissue and our bones and our fat and start, releasing more of that in a month later than you do another one. And then, you know, you can test, retest your toxin levels, your toxin load, and see if you need to do another one. That's really interesting. Now, are you fully conscious while this is going on? Is it like an Ivy or.

Yeah. Yeah it's an Ivy. Yeah. And so there are certain centers. What was the name of the center that you mentioned. It's MD lifespan, Aecom, MD lifespan.com. So you can find a center that does that. Are there any other places that you know that that offer that. Yeah there's a lot of places they it might go under the name anus for reasons or different types of name like for reasons. But you can look up a, plasma therapy exchange and there's lots of places that offer. And that's something that's used in, you know, for dementia and neurological issues.

It's it's done in the medical community. But, but yeah, but MD lifespan, they really focus on the toxins and testing the toxins before and after which you may not get with, with other centers. But there's there's lots of options out there all over the world, especially in Europe. They've been doing this for a while. Yeah, it sounds really interesting. Sounds like something in our society today that's going to be really key. It really is. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. What are some other things people can do?

Maybe just at their home that can help support detoxification. Yeah. So, you know, one of the easiest things you can do is just taking minerals. You know, minerals push out and displace heavy metals, period. And most of us are mineral deficient because we've been getting this message like, oh, we need to reduce our salt intake, which is the worst advice ever that has harmed so many people. And a lot of people do that. They have high blood pressure, so they'll reduce salt. But high blood pressure is caused by high blood sugar.

It's not caused by by salt. Yeah, yeah. So you know, the genesis of a lot of problems is the high, high blood sugar. So you can do take minerals, you know, take all the trace minerals. I'm drinking ketone, which is basically, you know, purified salt water. You can just put, salt and I put salt in all of my water that I drink, because that will help you to absorb and retain it. And, Yeah. And then you want to take a lot of the macro minerals, big handfuls of those every day. Like the calcium that will push out lead from your body like zinc will push out mercury.

Magnesium, is most important mag license plate that will get, you know, all of your detox mechanisms working really well in your body. And, potassium is great as well. And then all the trace minerals you can get that, which is sea salt. Yeah. It's so important. So using a good quality salt and you mentioned how high blood sugar, insulin resistance to the root of high of hypertension, which is typically the case. And the interesting thing is when you go on a lower carb diet you actually excrete more minerals and more sodium.

So you actually need more. So you need to salt your foods. Well, taking a good quality salt and eat you. Oh, you also want to make sure that you're eating trace mineral rich foods, right? And so things like cucumbers, celery, sea vegetables, grass fed animal products, wild caught fish are very trace mineral rich, pretty much most real foods. If you're getting real grass fed, organic animal products, wild caught fish, wild caught seafood, in general, organic fruits and vegetables, it's going to be very trace mineral rich.

So eating natural on a diet is going to help support that. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. People think of meat as protein but it's actually very, very mineral rich. And you know fruit has the brix minerals which the complex minerals that we, we don't get anywhere. Also it's so I eat a lot of fruit as well. And juices are great vegetable juices also high concentration of minerals. Yeah. So good. So eat that real food diet. Focusing on those healthy foods. Focus on foods

At-Home Detox Support: Minerals, Food, and Liver Care 15:18

that are high in nutrients, low in toxins, which is difficult in our society. The best thing to do is organic, grass fed animal products, wild caught seafood, organic fruits and vegetables as much as possible. Organic is going to give you more nutrients and a lower toxin levels. So what are some other things that that you do on a regular basis to help you detoxify? Yeah, so I do lots of liver support. You know, there's a hundred million people in the US alone with nonalcoholic fatty liver disease. So they're behind the eight ball.

When it comes to detox. It's just on the back burner. It's not a priority. So getting your liver online really important with not destroying it with the toxic seed oils and high blood sugar. Are these three alarm fires the body's going to have to deal with the liver will, and but also, you know, liver supportive foods like, you know, broccoli sprouts are great. And yolks, cruciferous vegetables, onions, garlic those are great to consume ginger on a daily basis. But also, you know, liver flushes once a year.

It's super important to push out all that debris that might have collected in the gallbladder, liver ducts. And then also coffee enemas are indispensable for kind of mechanically, you know, ringing out the liver. That's super important. And, you know, there's lots of things you can do, but liver supportive herbs are great as well. Milk thistle, broccoli sprouts, things like that. And, also, it's really important to do infrared sauna. That's something I do on an online five days a week. I try to get in five days a week, about at least 20 minutes of sweating with each session.

And it's really mind blowing. The research that's out there when it comes to infrared sauna is not just for detoxification, because when you do an infrared sauna, compared to a regular or just, you know, dry sauna, you have much more productive sweat, more toxins coming out of your sweat, which is great. But you also dramatically, you know, reduce stress. You know, your parasympathetic nervous system is activated. You have, like, a lot of heat shock proteins activate your immune system, you get lots of micro circulation, which nourishes, brings nutrients and oxygen to every corner of your body, which a lot of people just really underestimate that you want to be doing things that enhance micro circulation.

So, and for instance, as a key for that and the stats on this are just mind blowing. There is this finished study that was done over many, many years, and they found that infrared sauna is, if you do them 5 to 7 days a week, there is a 40% reduction, mortality from all causes, which is just shocking. And it was even more shocking. The statistics on, reversing dementia are, you know, you know, absence of dementia development. You know, there's like a 68% reduction in cardiac events. There was just the statistics are just mind blowing.

But if you do a sauna, maybe 2 to 3 days a week, all those benefits are cut in half. So if you do a sauna, 2 to 3, three days a week, there's about a 20 to 25% reduction in mortality from all causes. And, so it's really important to try to do this five days a week. So you need one for for home use to be able to do that. But there's lots of great options out there for saunas. Yeah. Sauna is so powerful. So really good stuff. And you mentioned doing, liver flushes. Are you doing that with like, the, Epsom salts in the liver are the, the lemon juice and absinthe salts.

Yeah. You can, you can't. Yeah. Yeah. You can't do the classic. You know, Andreas reds style. I like I do an enzymatic liver flush. That's my zen cleanse. It's really fantastic. It's these enzymes that are fermented for three years, and you'll take those, for about a 24 hour period, and then do the olive oil and lemon juice flush. And I find that it's a lot more effective than, say, the. But they all work. They all work. They're all fine. But, the Andras Moritz, you're kind of loading up your liver for three days before you do it.

So I find the Zen cleanser just. It's it's faster and more effective. Yeah. That's nice. So Zen cleanse. Look out for that, guys. Yeah, absolutely. And so this has been great. And, obviously you mentioned the plasma exchange therapy. So make sure people are looking out for that. Talks a lot about the sauna. Are you, do you advocate things like oil pulling, dry brushing, Epsom salt baths? Can those be helpful as well? Yeah, yeah for sure. You know, the Epsom salt baths give you lots of magnesium sulfate.

So sulfur helps detox your body. So those are great. Get deep sleep after that. You know, I also, really like ionic foot baths. Those are amazing. Also for, you know, they're easy to do. A lot of people, many people don't have room for a sauna or, you know, they travel a lot or whatever. So with the the foot baths, you just put your feet in the water, gives you a lot of negative ions and sometimes positive ions that will pull out and to track different toxins and release them into the water, but also mobilize them in your body for 2 or 3 days after you do the foot balance.

So I really enjoyed those as well, and those are a part of my detox routine. But yeah, the I don't I don't do oil pulling though, I, I am an advocate of that. I know that that works. And that's, really helpful. I just do different things, than that for, for oral care.

Sauna, Flushes, and Other Detox Practices 20:30

But yeah, there's lots of great ways to, to detox. Yeah. Great. It's been really good. Wendy. And, any any last words, inspiration for our audience. Obviously, you guys can go to Maya's detox.com. She's got some great products over there that you guys can check out. A lot of really good stuff. So a lot of the things that she talked about, check out Maya's detox.com. And she also has a great podcast, Maya's Detox Podcast, where she talks all about this. Any other last words, inspiration or practical strategies for audience here?

Yeah, I wanted to talk a little bit about metals that cause inflammation. And so these are inflammation. So yeah. And I did a little bit of research on this. And it's really really interesting. There was a study that was done by the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. And they they looked at about 19 different metals and 4000 different individuals. And they did find that there was a very high correlation between heavy metals that people had and an increase in systemic inflammation.

And they did this by by testing C-reactive protein, which is a protein released by your liver. And the higher that is, the more inflammation there is in your body. And they found that mercury was correlated with the highest levels of inflammation, which was really interesting. And then second beyond below that was cadmium, which is, you know, a metal that we get in migratory fish smoking, cigaret smoking, marijuana. And just there's many other there's even sadly in organic food. They use fertilizers from Morocco.

These phosphate fertilizers and they have a ton of cadmium in them. And so that's used in traditional fertilizers and even in organic farming, unfortunately. So we do get cadmium in our food as well. And then the next one down was lead. So lead did cause a lot of, systemic inflammation. And I was really surprising to me that mercury cause the highest amounts of inflammation in the body. Yeah, I've heard that mercury is the second most toxic, metal in the world only to, like, uranium or something along those lines.

So, so I'm not surprised by that. And people have them in their mouth oftentimes right from silver amalgam fillings, right where they're getting them in their mouth. Right. Many people have gotten vaccines that have had mercury in them. And so and then, of course, you can get them from fish, right, or seafood in general, you can get them. So there's a lot of different routes that you could be exposed to mercury. So really important thing that we've got to consider. And like you said that's driving up inflammation in the body.

So if you got chronic inflammation you really have to consider these heavy metals. And you talked about getting that hair mineral test right. And that can obviously look at if you are dealing with mercury, lead, cadmium, arsenic. Right. Any of these, these types of inflammatory metals. And and then start working on detoxifying your body. Yeah. It's it's really interesting because I started having health issues when I was about 37 and did all the like one of the doctor, I'm like, figure out what's wrong with me.

And did about $4,000 worth the test, which today is probably $10,000. But I found out I had all these hormone issues, like the hormone levels of a menopausal women and, just had, you know, and following that, I was looking for clues, and I found hormonal analysis and did a test. And I was really shocked by that. I had mercury, I had really high arsenic levels, which prevent you from losing weight. They poisoned enzymes and transport triglycerides out of fat cells. And, I had, you know, uranium, and I had cesium and thallium, and those aren't aren't down on hormonal analyzes.

They're in urine. But I had all these different metals, and I was I was really shocked because I lived such a healthy lifestyle. And, when it really started me on the journey that I'm on today, I really went down a big rabbit hole, trying to, you know, mitigate my own health issues and my own hormonal issues. And, but today, that's why so many people are having a lot of hormonal issues, metabolic issues, fertility issues, because of the damage these toxins, wreak on our hormones and our fertility and our weight, our metabolism and metals also contribute to, all the chronic health issues that people are dealing with and dying from lead contributes to 17% of fatal heart attacks.

It's responsible for that. And so it's they're also contributing to hypertension and diabetes and metabolic syndrome and, you know, high cholesterol even because, and I won't go into the mechanisms, but, you know, it's really, really important to be looking at detoxification to,

Inflammatory Metals, Binders, and Final Advice 24:57

you know, if you're looking to prevent or reverse a lot of these, chronic illnesses that have inflammation as an underlying root cause as well. Yeah. For sure. And now what do you find to be the most effective binders? Because, you know, binders are also a key for helping get rid of these types of toxins. Can you explain what binders are and what the most effective ones that you found? Yeah. Binders. Yes yes yes. Binders are just substances that absorb toxins. And they latch onto them and can carry them out of the body without, you know, irritating the body too much.

And so a lot of great ones are modified citrus patterns. You can take activated charcoal, the bamboo charcoals. There are different clays, like bentonite clay. You can take zeolites. I also like chlorella. It's kind of a, you know, a weaker binder, but it's incredibly nutritious. So I take chlorella and spirulina almost every day, because of the intense nutrition and minerals that you get from that. And so those are really the main classes of binders that are, you know, in iron tend to rotate those.

And so you want to take, you know, a binder on a daily basis, usually away like in between meals, away from medication and supplements. We don't want to be binding those up, but those are a really simple, basic way to detox your body. Super effective. I love C60 also, so I take one. It's actually they call it SS 60 by my vital C, and that's a fantastic, fantastic binder. And there's a lot of research behind it as well. And so that's actually one of my favorite ones. And the modified citrus, it's very, very gentle, very effective.

Lots of different benefits there as well. Yeah I know what the C60 that helps boost your body antioxidant enzymes inside your mitochondria that helps support mitochondrial health. So sod superoxide dismutase is actually one of the rate limiting, antioxidants that protects the mitochondria. And so as people age, as body levels go down, which causes more oxidation and rusting in that mitochondria, which is an a hallmark of aging. And so supporting that with something like C60, which is able to get in there really, really powerful for protecting the mitochondria.

Yeah. And then getting things out in circulation where we can bind them with other, you know, detox binders. So key. So that's why I take the spirulina also. Yeah that's a great. Oh yeah. Soda and sod as well. And marine algae is also a great source that you, you know it's in it's hard to get from food to sod. So it's, it's good to take a real concentrated source of the spirulina. Yeah for sure. Well, Wendy, I'm, I'm going to ask you again. Do we miss anything? Because it's been a great conversation that we've had, and we can go on and on, because such an important topic.

But anything else that you want to add? Any last words? Inspiration for people? Yeah. Well, you know, I know I'm throwing a lot out. You. And it might sound really overwhelming. But you can just start small, like. Like everyone starts, at some point just taking minerals, you know, maybe doubling up on the minerals that you're already taking. People usually aren't taking enough. And then, you know, slowly kind of graduating to doing some liver support and some sauna looking into, you know, invest in yourself, invest in your health, getting a sauna for home use or just using the one at your gym.

Every little bit helps. And then if you if you can afford it, if you do have the means at some point looking at that plasma exchange therapy because it's not cheap, it's 5 to 10 grand a pop, for each one that you do. But that's going to really give you the biggest bang for your buck, especially if you have complex chronic illness and you're just tired of just the doctor merry go round and you want to get relief and, you know, prevent it from progressing. You know, you you can't do better than the plasma exchange therapy.

Yeah. So good. Well thanks again Wendy. Guys, check her out. Myers detox.com. And also check out the Myers Detox podcast. Thanks again for your time. And everybody be blessed.