The Chronic Illness Epidemic: How Toxicity Is Driving Modern Disease

Introduction to Toxic Burden and Health Detective Mindset 0:00

You don't have to be perfect to become your own health detective. You start with one thing at a time. If you have that scratched up pan, it's time to swap it out for heating in glass, tempered glass or heating a stainless steel pan. A stainless-steel pan on Amazon is going to remove a million toxicant particles per day that are coming at you And what, disrupting your endocrine system, irritating your gut, you know, stressing out your nervous system and telling your mitochondria, guess what? You shouldn't make energy right now.

It's not safe. Let's go into defense mode. So as we become a health detective, we're going to look for those quick swaps that don't feel hard so that you could start building momentum. And we have to add energy back into the system early, earlier, early or earlier than you think. Symptoms are only part of the story. I'm Dr. Drew Kidder. I am Dr Emily Hernandez. And on the healing terrain, we explore deeper systems influencing clinical outcomes from toxic burden and microbial imbalance to the foundational factors that drive resilience and long-term health.

Hey, everyone, Dr. Drew Kidder here with Sinclair Canale for this episode of the Healing Terrain podcast. SInclair, so great to have you here. Happy to be here, as always. So we get to, As always, we have these geeky conversations just normally, but we got to now share this information with others that, you know, not only are thirsty for t his information, bu truly need to hear this informatio I wanna talk with you a little bit today, actually not a bit, a lot about really chronic illness in a toxic world, right?

You have become a truly an expert, pioneer in this space. And so I guess first of all, let's talk about like how we really got to the place where we are today that we're looking at the impact of the toxic that world that live in and how that is driving for so many chronic illness. Yeah, you know, none of us want to become an expert at this, right? So I think that the bill is coming due now, but it's actually been building for several decades and it is multifactorial. So you don't have to have gone through like an acute, exciting, strange exposure.

How Everyday Exposures Drive Chronic Illness 2:25

What we're really talking about when we say toxicity driving chronic illnesses, we are talking the little inputs. the non-stick pan that has some scratches in it that you still use. Yes, the nail polish, yes the Glade Air plugins, your Uber car freshener that gave you a headache for two hours afterwards that never used to bother you. you know, the downy sheets, like these all add up and they're compounding things that have been in our food, air, and water in increasing amounts in decades. So some of this is under our control and some it is not.

And so it can be really frustrating to have this conversation. It is not too late. And the math is there, the data is, there we can see these exposures in tiny amounts absolutely drive a myriad of different chronic illness diagnoses and just symptoms in general, but they are also reversible. So that's where we want to start. Love the fact that, you know, You're such a great, I think I've referred to you before as a hope dealer, right? Because you don't want people to lose hope, We can't live in a bubble, but what do we do about the things that are in our control?

Because what I'm hearing you talk is it's in the air we breathe, the water we drink, food we eat, all of those things, exposures that sometimes are entirely out of our control, right? I'm also hearing like, it's this law of biological accumulation. It's not a single acute, you know, episode. Its what's happening over time. So what, share, like what have you seen have been some of the biggest things to move people out of that toxic environment and address the toxins that they've been exposed to? I think the most important thing, and I know people are going to cringe when I say this, but the first thing is a mindset shift because I'm not being fluffy with you.

We'll get into the nitty-gritty details throughout this podcast exactly what to do. It's a mind-set shift from doc, I need to find the right doc who's going fix me with one pill or one band-aid or intervention and instead say I am going become my own health detective. I'm going to become the CEO of my own health. And a big part of that is retracing the timeline. Hey, when did this first start for me? When did my body first get my attention? What were those whispers before they became shouts? Because symptoms are the language of the body and they're showing us not just mechanisms of damage, but sometimes also routes of exposure.

You know, what have we inhaled that molds, you know in our college first apartment? Yes, it counts. The rashes that you used to get when the basement flooded every winter at home in your childhood home. These things matter and they all add up. So the routes of exposure, the type of toxin, and then finally the mechanism of damage that toxins creates. The biggest mistake we can make, especially for practitioners. I hear them say this all the time to me. Oh yeah, I know about toxins and everybody's got them so I just kind of generally account for it and I throw in a binder.

into the protocol, and that's enough, right? No, ma'am, that is not enough. Toxicants, by their nature, are very specific in the way they interrupt the body's own innate healing intelligence.

Becoming Your Own Health Detective 5:47

So as you become your own health detective, if you're doing this for yourself and you are at the beginning, just remember, first of all, I'm super lazy about self-care. I am a giant wuss.I hate trying new things. i had a huge chip on my shoulder and was waiting for someone to fix me. They had over seven different diagnoses. They told me I'd be in a wheelchair by 35 and that I would be dead shortly thereafter. I was being told, hey, go on disability. Since your brain doesn't work anymore, since you can't read an email or write a sentence, you know, that's your best bet.

Congratulations. And that is just not true. Now I have like a whole year long certification we built for practitioners in Toxin University. There's no way I could have done that. So you don't have to be perfect. to become your own health detective, you start with one thing at a time. If you have that scratched up pan, it's time to swap it out for heating in glass, tempered glass or heating on a stainless steel pan. A stainless-steel pan on Amazon is going to remove a million toxicant particles per day that are coming at you And what, disrupting your endocrine system, irritating your gut, you know, stressing out your nervous system and telling your mitochondria, guess what?

You shouldn't make energy right now. It's not safe. Let's go into defense mode. So as we become a health detective, we're going to look for those quick swaps that don't feel hard so that you could start building momentum. And we have to add energy back into the system early, earlier, early earlier than you think, I love, you know, something as simple as investing, it's an investment, right, in your health with making those swaps, swapping to stainless steel, swap into glass, but I loved what you said about symptoms being whispers, because I think we live in a world where we suppress symptoms.

When those are the voice that there is something wrong, that they're something that we need to address. Sadly, people are programmed to, Oh, I have a symptom. What do I do to squash? I had a headache. I'm going to take Tylenol. And I used to kiddingly say to my patients, oh, you have headaches. You take Tylenol, does Tylinol work? Yeah, it works for, about four hours. Well, what do you do then? Also robs you of your liver and that bill will come due later. And then what do you do? Oh, I take another dose of Tylenol and I go, oh, so I know why you have headaches.

You have a Tylinol deficiency, right? Kidding. But those symptoms and listening to those systems, but also I love that you are such a proponent of empowering people to take charge in their own health. Yeah, I think we have to be because the future doctor is you. Like you're going to your own healer and honestly you wouldn't want it any other way. You can use guides as navigators, you can practice as a navigator for as long as you need them.

Mitochondrial Support and Energy Before Detox 8:40

They might have the maps, but you are the territory, the terrain. So that's how I want all of the practitioners who are tackling root causes right now to really think about this, like, okay, we're going to put together the best maps we have, the data, best lab testing, you know, new cutting edge information, pair that with foundational ancient healing principles, and reactivate the bodies on intelligence. But it's still, every healing project is still a DIY project. You know, I'm not the food police, and I am not a police.

My job is to open doors. That's it. I love that. So, you know you say like, You are the doctor of the future, right? You, the patient, are that the Doctor of The Future? I kiddingly, not so much kidding, say that The Doctor Of The future is going to be an MD, but a mitochondrial doctor, Right? Talk about, I know I am nerds, we love this. But I think, you know, talk about that because mitochondrial function is a key portion of what you do in your programs in their patient care. Because can we expect to heal the body?

Can we to optimize organ function in any organ, the liver, you know, heart, brain, if we're not supporting the mitochondria. So talk to me about how you have woven, mitochondrial function before I want to segue into detoxification and drainage. And you're a wizard at, talking about the importance of drainage before detox. So talk mitochondria and then that important drainage. Well, any chronic symptom has a mitochondrial deficiency underneath it. Otherwise, the body would have had enough energy to reallocate resources to manage this and resolve it, and there are some extremes and some other factors in place, but that is a fundamental universality.

Every chronic symptoms has within it a myocondria deficiency as a core factor. So before we go to like detox and, you know, doing parasite cleanses and like, let's scrub all this stuff out of the body, we have to ask ourselves, what would the bodies like given the fact that it's already been on the back foot for years if not decades because of quality of our food and the toxicant exposures. You have remember that mitochondria respond to toxic exposure just as the rest of your body does. They are listening all the time within the cell and also into the extracellular matrix How's it going out there?

Is it safe? Are we good? Should I be making energy or should I going into defense mode and shutting down and going on alert? Or can I actually be the little energizer bunny power plants that we want to be? So as soon as a toxicant comes into proximity with mitochondria, they will slow down productivity of ATP production, which is the body's energy currency, right? It is a body capacity to do work. So if you have a constant interruption, you are going to have this feedback loop that goes like this.

Toxicant comes into the body, circulates enough that the mitochondria get the signal, no good, we're gonna shut down. The immune system and the nervous system are also having their own layered responses within that because you had a million to two million mitochondrial per neuron. So, of course, your nervous system's going to notice, oh my God, brain fog, Oh my god, inflammation, I don't feel safe, anxiety. You know what that means? Because we don t feel save on the inside or the outside, we're going slow down detox and drainage.

Let's just slow everything down, let's go into stress management mode. Yeah, exactly. And it's so much bigger than fight or flight. This is really about physiological responses your body is reprioritizing away from healing, detox, and repair. right when you need them the most. So we really want to add in a lot of energy and stack it, stack the deck in your favor. Before we ask the body to do the work, your body's not stupid. It knows that stuff needs to happen. it needs some strategic support. so we want it ease into a very robust stack of Energy support and I say ease in to very intentionally because what happens if you give a starving body energy, it wants to some ketchup work.

So if you've ever had a paradoxical reaction to mitochondrial support and went, why won't even energy support help me? Why am I broken? You're not broken. Your body was just like, OK, I finally got something. You know, and it didn't feel good. The healing response didn' feel so good, so sometimes we need to ease in for the more sensitive individuals, especially when drainage has really been blocked for a long time. That's OK. But we still got to get there. We still gotta get that mitochondria support in.

Love it. So I'm hearing mitochondria be for anything else that you do just from the standpoint that the body meets the energy.

Drainage, Bile Flow, and Detox Pathways 13:40

Like Mito ATP or Midoactive rather, you know, and like hydroxygen, like these are really core elements in that process. And you can microdose if you have to, but you still got to get them in and start speeding up the gears. Yeah. So drainage may be a foreign concept to some, right? We hear about detox, this beautiful phase one, phase two of liver detoxification, all the cytochrome P450 enzymes in the conjugation and all of the things, that then take that toxin from fat soluble to water soluable to eliminate from the body.

But what if they can't be eliminated from a body because what is not functioning properly? Well, when you don't have enough energy for a long time, and when even depleted of core nutrients that support basic things like nervous system function and gut motility, it's really easy for the whole body to experience stagnation. And so when your asking the body remember how to excrete and upregulate excretion, you know, up regulate these detox processes, the first question you have to ask is, am I trying to flush a clogged toilet?

She says, what happens when we do that? It's not cute. It is a little messy. A little fast. Great analogy. Yeah. So it just in simple terms, I know drainage is an ugly word and it doesn't sound profound, but it actually is miraculous because we're supporting the body's own innate strategies for release. I'm moving stream runs clean. A stagnant pond is exactly where you get those algae blooms, the trash buildup, when the fish are sick, The ducks won't go there. Like that's what's happening in your drainage pathways right now.

So it's the perfect environment for toxin build up, pathogen bloom, fungal overgrowth, all that stuff. If you cannot move things out fast enough, but if you're trying to get this system going, you know, and it has been on the back for a long time, You have to start from the bottom up. so we have move our bowels daily, gotta get obsessed with poop guys. No doubt, no doubt. Yes, sorry, we talk about poop here a lot because if you're not pooping, you are not eliminating those toxins. What do you deal with?

Auto-toxification. They're going to be reabsorbed. So, focusing on first bowel movements and then what do look at is kind of next. With Cellcore, we talk about the drainage funnel, right? But what's within that? What's your kind of, I know what you're oftentimes coined as. So, talk more about that drainage, like the additional layer. Well, your drainage is following the core principles of ancient healing, of homotoxicology, actually, itself. You know, the same stuff that I learned in bioregulatory medicine.

We're all saying the we need there's an order of operations to increasing the body to support release as soon as you get those bowels moving we can start tracking and supporting things like bio flow and you know regulation at the liver level because that is those two bookends are going to keep your intestines moving. So that's really critical. Gut motility is regulated by the nervous system. And yes, your microbiome plays a role, but your bile flow is critical for that. You can't obsess about the small intestine and spend all of your money in your protocol budget on probiotics or antibiotics and recovering from them.

you know, if you're not looking above and below, you are not going to get anywhere. So that's what we think about in terms of the drainage funnel. For drainage support, I like well-rounded formulas that support the liver and kidneys and protect them in this process. You're going not to milk thistle your way through detoxing this day and age. I loved it back in the day. It's not for general liver support. Certainly. For people who are already healthy. But for people, who have chronic symptoms and conditions, that is not enough to destagnate a very overloaded liver.

And you have to remember that your liver will lie to you on lab work because ALT, AST, these kinds of standard labs are tracking very downstream distress after pathology is already on its way to development. It's not actually tracking or showing you bile flow or liver efficiency. So assume, in a stagnant world, there's a little less bioflow efficiency than you would like. So you want to love up those bio-ducks with biobuilders and bio movers, like Tedka, for example, which is also highly neuro-inflammatory, I mean, anti-flammatory.

Thank goodness. It's like a great two-for-one right there. And it is the king of bio builders and biomovers. I like that, and I liked a well-rounded formula, such as Pale Support. That's trusted, tried, true, surprisingly well tolerated. You know, so those two together, it's not one or the other because they have very different functions as well. So your drainage support stack is critical. To get your valves moving, you can add in that, KL support and Tedka, for example. All the way up to really facilitating cellular detoxification.

But as we're draining at the cellular level, if they can't move through those pathways, they're never going to be properly eliminated. Yeah, and like lymphatic detox is very trendy online right now and everybody's learning the self massage points, which are great.

Practical Swaps and Final Takeaways 18:38

Those are a great maintenance supports. But if for the people that like feel worse after that, it's because you moved out waste and pathogens and histamine, you know, because lymph is a histamines mover and you dumped it into the bloodstream and there's not enough flow in the liver. So you're ignoring the order of operations in a drainage funnel. I love this. You and I could go on for hours on this, but I think there are so many tangible tools that you gave people looking at eliminating what is in your control, getting rid of those pans, right?

Getting rid PFAS, PFOS, right? All the toxins that we're exposed to. But really starting with the basics, giving the body what it needs to function properly. So in closing, give everyone, the audience, an amazing Sinclair nugget, a takeaway of something actionable they can do today. Okay. Well, first of all, there's nothing wrong with your body. Your body doesn't make mistakes. It's responding very logically to unprecedented stressors from these different types of toxicants, the industrial chemicals, heavy metals, molds, all these food preservatives, food dyes, and all the different names for MSG.

Like, it's everywhere, but it doesn t mean that it s too late. And so, as you learn about these pieces, First of all, be upregulating your energy and supporting your nervous system so that you have some momentum on your side. And remember, this is a little step at a time. That's it. and that is enough. It really is. You lived your way into this, you've got to give yourself time to live your out of it, so give your body grace because it's on you side, it wants to feel good, and it has not given up on yet.

Sinclair, as always, fantastic to see you, pleasure to have you on this episode of the Healing Terrain podcast. And thank you so much for everything that you do in this space. Thanks for listening to the healing terrain. If this episodes challenge the way you think about health and healing, please follow, share and leave a review. It helps more practitioners and curious listeners discover the conversations shaping the future of foundational medicine.