- Discover how heavy metals such as mercury, arsenic, lead, nickel, and tin may enter the body through food, water, cookware, industrial exposure, and everyday environmental sources.
- Understand why Dr. Strauchman prefers provoked urine testing for heavy metals and how tissue storage can make exposure difficult to assess with simpler testing methods.
- Learn why detoxification may become especially important during rapid fat loss and how heavy metals and chemicals may influence hormone balance, thyroid function, cardiovascular health, and overall wellness.
Full Transcript
Introduction to Heavy Metals and Detox 0:00
You're telling me a stainless steel is bad? If it's lined with metal alloy, so it might have nickel in it. How do we find that? I would look it up online. They will tell you. So we're all getting nickel from our stainless steal now. I think one of the ways you can check, it is like your refrigerator. You know how some people have refrigerators and the magnets don't stick very well? Yes. It's because there's a bunch of metal alloys in there that are conjugated with the stainless deal. And so there is less steel in their so the magnet don's stick fairly well.
Same idea. Hi, it's Dr. Jenn. Welcome back to the Healthy by Dr Jenn podcast. Today we're going to be talking about heavy metals and chemicals and how to detoxify from them. and the co-founder and executive director of Ireland's Dream, sharing board certification in integrative medicine through the American Association of Integrative Medicine and his fellowship trained by the America Academy of Anti-Aging Medicine, or A4M. Most of her clinical practice is dedicated to hormone replacement with the use of bioidentical hormones, thyroid treatment, tick-borne illnesses, and IV therapy.
She also has a background in OB-GYN, which gives her a unique insight in women's health and menopausal symptoms. Welcome. Thank you for having me. Excited to have you here. So very interesting because you actually trained board certified OB-GYN and then you decided to go and start taking these A4M courses. What prompted that? My mom. I know she actually said to me when I was still a resident that she had read Christine Northrop's book, and I remember it sitting on the table next to
Why Integrative Medicine and Bioidentical Hormones 1:58
her bed when I was probably, I don't know, a teenager, you know the wisdom of menopause. And I remembered her reading that and thought, it was a teenage, dumb book. Oh mom, geez. she, when I was in my residency, she started asking me, you know, where do I get bioidenticals from? How do we, how do, like, I want to know how to do this. And I remember asking one of the drug reps that came in when i was a resident about it, and he's like oh they're the same as synthetics. Like you don't need those, just tell her to take synthetix.
I think she's pretty adamant that she wants bio identicals. Good for her. i'm pretty sure she is not going to And so as I neared the end of my residency, my husband actually started looking around online for me, and he found some different conferences. And he's like, you know what? Go to these conferences and see what you find out. As you now, bioidentical hormones lead into all the other integrative medicine things. It's a gateway. Everything kind of is. No matter what, it is always... It is great, though.
it's this little tunnel. I remember sitting there in my first conference going, Wait, what? Vitamin D does what. Oh, well that's pretty cool. Yeah. I loved it. Yes. And I came back and I told my husband, you know, I really think this is what I'm supposed to do. And so I completely changed my path. I never practiced OB-GYN. Wow. Um, I just went right into an integrative medicine practice, which is very unusual. It is. That's why I was like, wow. Well, and I don't know if people listening know, but the OBGYN residency, it's It's heavy surgical.
It is. Like, it's very surgical, which was that hard for you to give up? I do miss it sometimes. Okay. I was going to say, yeah. There are some procedures in my office. Keeps that going. Yeah, I won't lie. Sometimes when I pick up a scalpel, But you're preventing people needing surgery. Correct. Like that's because there's no way you would be in there doing like hysterectomies. And you were like, well, this could have been prevented five years ago. Agreed. Yeah. Yes. One hundred percent. So I'm OK with that.
But what I do is so much better, I feel like than what. I trained in because, like you said, you know, i can put people on natural hormones and prevent that hystrectomy. A lot of times that heavy bleeding gets better. that, you know, the sleep issues, just all the things that you take care of with hormones that these people didn't realize either existed or their friend told them and they want to know is it true? Can I sleep at night? It's so rewarding. I also like how you mentioned that the drug reps said that the drugs, the synthetic hormones are the same as the bioidentical.
I kid you not, I was at a conventional medicine that I speaking on, integrative medicine, tried to bring that in. And the person, she even made comments. She's like, no one likes electron hormones, so I got to do it. Then she sat there and she told everyone that progestins act the the projesterones and CEEs act same. And someone was taking notes and I'm like, do not take notes. That is wrong. I will send you resources. But the problem is because that drug rep put that seed in their brain that this is the same and these are residents that are attending, they're exhausted, their on call, doing surgeries, waiting for babies to come out.
Heavy Metal Exposure Sources 5:50
Then it's like a game of telephone. They're going to keep repeating that. It's like a campfire story and they believe it. And it's just, you know, they don't have time to go through the actual studies that prove that this is wrong. Then we end up with surgeries and chronic illnesses. Yeah, it is so frustrating. Agreed. Well, one cool thing. You like to talk about detoxification and heavy metals and that can sometimes cause hormones to try. Absolutely. It is all connected. Like you said, like the segue.
So tell us a little bit about heavy metals and what you've been seeing in your decades of practice. So it's really interesting and kind of funny because it came full circle. I remember when I was a resident, there was doc, he's retired now, but there is a doc in town that did chelation and the other residents are like, oh, is weird. Yes, they're like, oh, you have to rotate with him and he does that chelation thing. And they were just, have fun with that. I remember sitting there and going, Oh yeah, okay.
Now fast forward all these years later and I'm the weird one, whatever, doing the stuff. I think that all doctors should be doing it, but that's another story for another day, right? Yeah. So the interesting part about heavy metals is that people will tell me all the time, there's no way I'd have them in my body. I don't work at, you know, I work in a heavy GM you know, town, where a lot of people who come to me have either worked in the factories or whatever. But the ones who don't always tell me, oh, there's no way.
I don' have any of that stuff in me. And I mean, even being in Flint with the lead crisis that happened, they still don''t think. No, that's still an issue. It's not completely solved. That's another story. Because the problem is they fixed the main waterways in the the people would have to fix the lead pipes going up to their homes, because those are still leaded. So when people come into me and say that they probably don't have heavy metals, I have oftentimes talk them through it and explain to them, we have a very, very heavy arsenic presence in our water.
And usually well water, obviously, more so. And it's because we had some chemical dumping from plants decades ago. Before the EPA came in and said, yeah, no, you can't do that. It was decades of it seeping in to the groundwater. So we have a lot of arsenic. some lead. You'd be surprised how many people eat tuna fish all the time, and they don't get the kinds of tunafish that have been batch checked to make sure they have mercury in them. Yeah. So I get mercury. And sea bass, because it's a delicacy.
People are like... Chilean, yeah. I look at it like I'm like, ugh. Well, I used to, before I was woken to it all, you know, think sea-bass was fine unless I pregnant. Right. Especially because this is expensive. It can be good. When we moved, 15-year-old sea bass still frozen that I've never thrown away in my deep freezer, and I'm like, well. Well, if my parents are listening, which my family doesn't always watch this stuff, but stop eating sea But yeah, mercury in the fish, and people think that there's...
So just avoid it during pregnancy, you know? And it's like, why wouldn't you just have to avoid mercury all the time? Why just pregnancy? If you shouldn't have it in pregnancy you probably shouldn' t have at all. So, it' s just amazing. I get tin, I got a lot of nickel. Yeah, I get a lot of nickel. So tin though, that's kind of, from what? I know the nickel, and I've looked this up trying to figure it out, because tin you would think would be in the older generation, where they ate out of tin cans before it was lined with plastic, which is still a problem.
It's not any better, but I think that some of them, the Nickel for sure, it's a metal alloy, so it is actually conjugated in stainless steel, you know we all use stainless-steel water jugs now.
Nickel in Stainless Steel and Cookware 10:20
You're telling me a stainless steels bad? You gotta check for if it's lined with metal alloy so it might have nickel in it. How do we find out? I would look it up online. They will tell you. So we're all getting nickel from our stainless steal now? One of the ways you can check, it is like your refrigerator. Some people have refrigerators and the magnets don't stick very well. It's because there's a bunch of metal alloys in there that are conjugated with the stainless steel. And so there is less steel in their so the magnets don't stick very well.
Same idea. So every time I'm opening my refrigerator, because the handles are stainless steel, but magnets aren't sticking to it, then it probably has nickel in it. It has, yeah. So can you do just a simple magnet test on your... I wondering. Now that we're talking about this, I wonder. We'll get back to you guys. You got to get a magnet and try to stick it on the inside. I am so annoyed about the nickel. For cooking, obviously throw your Teflon pots out. Oh gosh, yes, anything like that. Cast iron, like in moderation.
There's debates on cast iron. But every day you just have to check the stainless steel. Yeah, and see if it's how, there's a percentage on it, how much of it is stainless. No, I think you're, so what's the percentage you need to have it not have nickel leaching in I wonder. You would have read up and some of them don't have Nickel. Food grade. Very, very little Nickel in them at all. Ours are Costco. Costco, I feel like, if it's not good, you just return it 10 years later. So that's what we cook in stainless.
What do you cook then? I actually use cast iron. I have a little bit of stainless steel. And I also have ceramic coated. If you check those Some of the ceramic coated, you have to like kind of read into and make sure that there isn't like a Teflon with the ceramics coated. So you to make but some of cleaner ones don't. And I think that those are a little more inert. But I do, I use probably more cast iron. I feel like out of all the possibilities, that's probably my safest bet. And I use a lot of, I used avocado oil when I cook because of like, we could talk about that for hours.
Why? But a little bit of butter sometimes depending on what I'm cooking. But, you know, There's no perfect and we have to always, you know, remember that because we'll drive ourselves crazy, right? We'll dry ourselves, crazy. But we know at least to stay away from the Teflon and all the likes, non-stick garbage coatings. We know that. So that's good. Well, okay, I guess that brings us to the point that we are going to be exposed to heavy metals. So how do we, what's the best way of testing and what is the way to eliminate?
So people can calm down and be like, ah. Absolutely. Here's thing about it. I see people who come into my office who are tested in ways that I actually am not a big fan of. My favorite way to test is provocation, provocated urine. And what does that mean exactly? So, provocative urine means that you're given some sort of chelation, whether it's injectable or you give it orally. I use oraly just for E's in my office. What do you use? Um, kelox. Mm-hmm. That's the oral that I've used for a million years.
You can do IV also, some of my colleagues, which is just as effective. They'll do like a push of IV chelation, and then what it does is it helps to pull it out because heavy metals like to sit in your tissues. And if you just do a simple urine test without the provocation, you won't necessarily see what is truly inside that patient.
Testing for Heavy Metals and Chelation 14:10
On top of it, some people do things like hair analysis. The problem with hair... So common with like health coaches and stuff. Yep, because they can't do the provocation and things that. They sometimes can get their hands on those tests and whatnot. So I prefer that you do that urine with the propagation. You'll get a better reading. And the hair analysis has external exposure too. You have to, because they're like, oh, take hair, you know, we take it closer to the root. They, they can't have their hair dyed for X amount of weeks, blah,blah, Blah.
It's just there's too much out there. Too much exposure. So I just like I like provocation better. Do you do a pre without any provocations and then after? Because that could get expensive. I don't do that. Okay. Why? There's two reasons why. Because one of them, who cares? I mean, it's funny, we actually got together years ago, this group, and talked about that. And, you know, there's just these two different camps. In my campus, they want to prove to them that chelation actually brought out the heavy metal and that they did have it in them.
They're like trying to prove it to the patient. I don't need to proof it the to patient, I explain it them verbally. This is why we're doing this. And make it their choice. If they're, like, oh I want to see pre-imposed. ever does. In my entire 20 years, I have never had someone say, let me pay for that test twice. I'm going to do it pre and post-provocation and show you because they know what I am saying is true and they understand it because I explain it. And so you get their heavy metal testing back.
You know, it's always, and I know this sounds weird, but it is one of my favorite tests to read. Oh! I will sit there and look at it and just intrigued by the things that I see in people. What people have to understand too, and I always explain this to my patients, is when it comes to heavy metals, when you start chelating them, I kind of make a decision based on my patience, what I think they're going to do. I'll use IV and use oral. It just depends. What do you have inside of you? How far away do live?
Just all the demands of doing IV. Because IV in my office, But IV in my office, you know, I have patients that come to me from two hours, three hours away, and that's going to become difficult. Yeah, so they'll usually take the oral, but the oral will take longer. But to see what they have inside of them and then to explain to them, listen, you're going to see your numbers. If I could do this test every day, which would be really fun, but not it's cost prohibitive, of course, we would actually watch your number rise.
Because I'm going continue to pull it out and we're gonna get higher and higher numbers, eventually it is going hit a plateau and then it will start to decrease. But where? I don't know. Um, and it, it's just so, It's kind of to me like satisfying. So you get a patient's test results back. It was like, Oh, look, your tins gone. Look, you don't have arsenic in your body anymore. Yay. Um. And I just, I, its something that I really, really like to do. Its one of my favorite things. Cause you feel like you're.
I like to clean too, so maybe that's where, right? It's like satisfying, yes. It is satisfying. You get a clean kitchen at the end of the day. Yes, you've cleaned them out. They look so much better now. But why would patients even care if they had heavy metals in their bodies? What kind of things do heavy metal do in a negative sense? So many bad things. Of course cancer. I mean, because right, cancer, like arsenic causes bladder cancer and we all know that. Um, you know, many of them cause mental decline, dementia, cardiovascular risk.
I mean, the hormone disruption, thyroid disruption. The list goes on and on. What's so interesting about the heart disease, because they used to use IV chelation to reverse heart disease. And then when, I think it was even before stents, it just was open heart surgery, then it all flipped like, that's quacks, like that doesn't work. Because I read this, this was like 15 years ago when I was reading this book, because I just intrigued.
Health Risks of Toxic Burden 18:30
I'm like hey, conventional medicine doesn t work, we're chronically ill, and I found that book and was Oh, they used to this chelation works to reverse heart disease and they took it away. Yeah, exactly. It's mind blowing. And that's sad. There's so many good, sad rabbit holes to go down when it comes to heavy metals and chelas. Very. I don't even understand the stigma that exists. You know, myself and another doc in our area, when that issue happened with the lead in Flint, we were like, oh, you know what?
We have a solution. Nobody really seemed to care. And I told, you know, my colleagues who were like, why aren't you? I said, well, we tried, but you can only do what you could do. If people don't want to listen. I don' understand though, again, Why would you have a stigma about taking heavy metals out of people's bodies? You think it's okay to walk around? We have plenty, like piles and piles of literature showing what it does to you. We ignore it. There's a simple solution, and we ignore. It doesn't make any sense.
I mean, it does if we dig down the rabbit holes, right? But it doesn' make sense, why wouldn't you want to get this garbage out of everybody? And so for me, that is just, in chemicals too, we were talking about chemicals. Look at our world around us. You know, we have glyphosate in anything that isn't organic. And shoot, even when it is organic, it still has some glyophosates in it because it's so hard to get out. It definitely does, especially like in the Midwest when they're spraying glyphasate all over crops.
and it like, cool, you're on property. I go with this through my patients. They're like we want to move out to where there's more land. As long as that land's not next to a field, that's fine with glyphisate. That's one thing I liked about Tennessee is everyone has cows. Oh, and it's not really crops. Corn and soy. There's a few and I'm like, ugh, but yeah, it is hard. Well, because my son, I remember I tested him for glyphosate and his urine and he was eating all organic. It was before, you know, kids go rogue and they pick their own food and you're like ugh.
Oh it was the worst. And it happens. It just waits till they get teens. Anyway, but he had glyphosate. And I remember Mosaic, I called and I'm like, there's no way this is wrong. They're like no, even if they eat organic, it's just inert right now. Absolutely. In the air, in the rain. But that's enough. Someday we will wean off of glyphasate, and it has taken I hope so. Well, but to be fair, like, there was no way it could just be eliminated like that. True. We would have a fall of food and our infrastructure and farmers.
So I think it's just gonna be like key lady. No, it' just like Key Lady and it takes time. Yeah. That's a good analogy. It's interesting, too, because I do a lot of chemical testing in my office because i find that to b just as interesting as heavy metals. Yes. And you get their chemical profile back and Do you realize that you, you know what I mean? And you tell the patients and they just look at you. Where did I get that? You know, yes, like I tested, yeah, my son, because I ran the whole talks on him, Styrofoam stuff.
Styrene, I know styrene. And I'm like, what is he? Like jet fuel. Oh, Yeah. Yeah, he elates parabens.
Chemicals, Glyphosate, and Detox Concerns 22:00
I mean, all of it. You look at it and you just think, My gosh, this person was even being careful and they had this much in them. But you know what's interesting with styroene? I'll always tell patients, you know, your styrene in your body, it's pretty high, we need to do some binders and get this out. They're like, but I don't drink out of styrofoam. Did you before though? I mean, when you were 18, did you go to the football game and got a hot chocolate in a styrophoam cup? When you are 21 and driving to work, do you stop at the gas station and you get a coffee in the styropoom cup.
And they're all like but that was a long time ago. Doesn't matter. I know it was a long time ago, but trust me, some of these things have an 80-year half-life. You'll be dead long before they're gone. Long before. Or they are hanging out in your fat cells to protect you and they just like, hey, we're here. Well, and that's what I think is interesting. And I would love for you to talk about that with everyone doing Ozempic and GLP-1s with rapid weight loss of fat. Yeah. And they're not working with an integrative doctor.
And it was interesting because I know someone that lost so much weight on the GLP-1, she had her gallbladder removed. I'm like, that's not a coincidence. Your body was like what are you doing? I cannot take care of all of this because fat is protecting us. So what were your thoughts on that and what you're seeing? So as the patient detoxes in, I mean, we do store a multitude of toxins in our fat cells, right? So that's why obesity is such a risk factor beyond the obvious things. It's such risk a factor for a lot of the cancers.
smaller and smaller, we know that we never lose them, right? They just get smaller. As they get small, they release all their toxins, and those people aren't detoxing. And so, I don't have a ton of patients in my office that take the GLP ones, I'll be honest with you. Because you know, integrative medicine is kind of a different subset of patients. A lot of them wouldn't touch that because it makes them very nervous. There aren't a lot long-term studies on people taking it for non-diabetic reasons and whatnot.
But for the few that I do have, we always talk about we need to do detox, because I can tell you right now, everything you had stored in there, It's all been released, and we have to make sure it's not traveling elsewhere in your body, getting stored in you organs and things like that. Right. No, that's good. All right. Well, awesome. This has been a great discussion. I'm going to do some rapid fire questions with you. What is your favorite biohack that actually works? Oh, That is a good question.
Cold plunge, I do love cold plunch. I've had some patients with things like aneurysms, like people who had one of my patients has a surgical threshold aneurysm on his heart and cold plunge
GLP-1 Weight Loss and Toxin Release 24:55
combined with some other things that a lot of other Things he's done, but but it's helped to reduce it and there's some studies on that too So I do like cold and it is very popular now. Yeah, we live in a cold state So, you know cold plunged they don't most of the year. They don' even have to have a cool plunch They just go outside Like in the... That is correct. They could do some of the cooler plunges around the area and partake in those and enjoy themselves. That's great. If you could eliminate one toxin from the world today, right now, what would it be?
Glyphosate, but it would be close to red dye or any dye. Yeah. Well, that one we're getting close on. Yes. Closer. I know. It makes me very happy when I, I don't like packaged foods, it does make me happy. When you pick one up and it doesn't say that it's, you know, beet, red beet. Exactly. Or spirulina or whatever they're using. That makes it so much easier. And then what is one word you want to leave with our audience for the week? Philanthropy.
Rapid Fire Biohacks and Closing Thoughts 26:05
Oh, great. We do not have to get paid for everything we do. we can be good people and make this world better and do things for people without getting paid. Everybody, I feel like, in this word today wants to make a buck off everything they do and we've lost philanthropy and need to back there. That was good. I like that. Some conviction there for everyone listening. Well, thank you so much. How can everyone find you? I know a lot of listeners live in Michigan. Where did they find you? Um, I practice in Grand Blanc, which is 15 minutes east of Flint and our south of flint.
Sorry. We're just south the Flint. And, um, i have a website. It's, uh, you can Google my name and it'll come up, but we're natural onus and pain relief centers. That's N W P R C.com. Um we have Facebook and all those other things too. Good. Yeah. Great. Thank you so much for your interview. It was excellent.
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