Why You’re Detoxing the Wrong Way

Dr. Meaghan Kirschling

Hi, how are you? Thanks so much for having me.

Dr. Kelly Halderman

You’re welcome. We are gonna be talking about one of my absolute favorite topics, and that is detoxification, and we’re gonna be talking about it in regards to the thyroid, ’cause again, our topic is thyroid health. So Dr. Meaghan, why don’t we start by talking about your practice and who you are and what you do.

Dr. Meaghan Kirschling

So I’m Dr. Meaghan Kirschling and I work outside of Minneapolis in a town called Bloomington Minnesota. I have a integrative health clinic where I work with a bunch of other integrative providers, and my background is actually chiropractic and nurse practitioner. And so I’ve just sort of always had this love for natural health, looking at things at the big level, getting to the root cause, and I treat a lot of hormones, a lot of thyroid, we do a lot of detoxification. We obviously also do muscular skeletal. We really just connect the whole body here at the clinic that I work at, One Agora Integrative Health. And just love this sort of area and the serene. I got outta traditional medicine, which is sort of the same story as probably everybody on this summit is the fact that it just wasn’t fulfilling. We were missing big, big parts of the picture, we weren’t really truly helping patients, and we were just putting one bandaid after another. And unfortunately too as time goes on, these wounds and the bandages need to be a lot bigger because of the fact that there’s a lot more coming at individuals. And so just really finding we didn’t have the tools to help people in the traditional medicine world. And so have come over a long time ago to this side of medicine and just thoroughly really enjoy not only helping patients, but the education part of really putting it all together.

Dr. Kelly Halderman

Awesome. Yes. I personally have known you for a long time. And the clinic that you have is one of the best in the twin cities, if not, you know, any the clinic that I’ve ever been to. So we have one smart cookie with us today. I’m really excited. So you said something that I think is really, really important, is that having to use bigger bandaids, because people are sicker and sicker. And talk to us about the toxic world we live in and how these toxins can perhaps be affecting the cellular communication and the metabolism and how that really affects thyroid health.

Dr. Meaghan Kirschling

Yeah. Well, and really, thyroid is a great conversation to have with this, because when we look at it, we’re just living in a much more toxic world. And I think that this can be such a doom and gloom conversation, and it doesn’t have to be. Honestly as we sort of dive into this topic and start talking about it, I think it’s actually actually very empowering because I think a lot of us go through our day and we don’t really question. And especially 10, 20 years ago, we just thought that if the FDA, if the USDA, if those agencies said that it was safe, that it really wouldn’t have long term complications or problems. And so we’ve had a lot of things sneak into our day to day life that we’re exposed to. And unfortunately that a lot of those things do stay in our body.

They stay in at a cellular level, they stay in our fat, our fat tissue, but they also accumulate organs like our thyroid. And we know this, there’s tons of research about this. We know this without any doubt,, but a lot of us then, you know, we accumulate it over time. So it’s not this bump in the night of okay, this is, you know, I wake up and today is the day I feel bad. It’s a sort of gradual onset. And I’ve heard a lot of other functional providers say this term, and I just think it’s true, it’s death by a thousand cuts. That it’s not necessarily that a lot of people will even come in and they’ll like, “Tell me the one heavy metal in my body. Tell me the one food that I’m sensitive to.” We’re still in sort of this find one problem and that’s gonna be the end all, the be all. 

And the truth is, is that a lot of us are just carrying around an accumulation of a lifetime of toxicity. And that with the thyroid and the thyroid specifically, then it’s not just the fact of that the thyroid itself is more susceptible to a lot of these toxins, but also then that as the body accumulates, that affects cellular communication, and our neurotransmitters, our hormones, then can’t communicate at the cellular level that they should. And then our immune system, hormone system, and our nervous systems start to have all of these changes and they try to compensate. And so then one of the master glance to try to really rebalance the body is the thyroid. And so you’re talking about sort of two different sides of the fact that the thyroid really will show up a ton when it comes to toxicity in the body and something that we have to address.

Dr. Kelly Halderman

Right, it’s like that cell danger response that Navion talks about, right? It’s really the body it’s trying to deal with the malu that it’s in and there’s signals. And one of the master regulators, like you said, is that thyroid gland saying SOS. Enough is enough, right? And again, death by a thousand paper cuts. It’s one thing after the next. And that’s what Dr. Eric Balcavage write about in our book. It’s not one thing. It’s that allostatic load that’s pushing down and just weighing so much. So yeah, you can do a heavy metal detox and you can do a parasites and all this, but again, it’s really the comprehensive ballistic view. So in your view being day in and day out with patients, what do you see as the most severe, the biggest, I guess, insult for pathogens or environmental toxins, or what have you? What’s weighing on the thyroid the most, would you say?

Dr. Meaghan Kirschling

So I’d say there’s probably like five or six different categories. And so one of them would definitely be heavy metals. And I think in the category of heavy metals, there’s really gonna be four major ones for the thyroid. Mercury, and it’s interesting because mercury actually has an effect in a couple different ways. It also mimics iodine. And so the other conversation that I think a lot of people sort of need to realize, because it’s so interesting on the physiological level, is that a lot of times when we talk about what’s toxic to the thyroid, it’s because of the fact that it sort of mimics or is very similar to the nutrients that the thyroid needs to function properly. And those are gonna be things, especially like iodine and selenium. 

And so when we start to get some of these more toxic environmental chemicals and heavy metals in our body, we start to alter the effect then of how the nutrients will be able to play into both the cellular level of communication and function, but especially the thyroid. So heavy metal-wise, mercury, aluminum, lead are the three big ones along with cadmium. Cadmium loves spongy tissue. And so we see a lot of times when people are exposed to cadmium, it’ll actually accumulate both in the thyroid and then the prostate glands, another one. That will really accumulate cadmium because of its sponginess. And so we then will see that heavy metals affected both because they’ll accumulate and because they interfere, and they also can lead to then autoimmunity, ’cause the immune system gets confused then by these foreign invaders in our body.

Dr. Kelly Halderman

Right. Yeah.

Dr. Meaghan Kirschling

Another major category is viruses. I don’t think you know it’s right to have a conversation about toxicity in the body without also looking at the burden of different viruses in the thyroid. And that we do know that like H. Pylori, Epstein-Barr virus, probably we’re gonna find a ton of research about COVID-19 and the effect then that the viruses have on the thyroid and its ability to sort of control the metabolism of the body. And then environmentally there’s pesticides, there’s a lot of flame retardants. People don’t realize the flame retardants on your mattresses, in your clothes, those have things that are like PCDs and PCBs, which are interesting enough, their backbone is either chlorine or bromine. And the reason that that’s important is because chlorine and bromine, and then also fluoride, they interfere with the thyroid because of iodine. And so when we are using environmentally, a lot of these chemicals that have a component that just interferes with the production and conversion of our thyroid hormones.

Dr. Kelly Halderman

Sure. So that’s like that co competition for the, right. So that being said, I’m just gonna go off a little tangent. Do you use iodine then if you find that someone has high toxicity in one of those areas to knock it off?

Dr. Meaghan Kirschling

You have to be careful, definitely. And honestly this too is where I find a full thyroid panel really comes into play, because not only when we talk about TSH free T3, free T4 and the antibodies, is it important to sort of see how everything’s working, but it also will tell you the stress of the thyroid. If that T3 is really suppressed, we’ve gotta figure out why, ’cause it’s for a reason. But if you have antibodies, especially TPO antibodies, I go really slowly or not at all at first with the iodine. You wanna clear some of that miscommunication before you just go in and start to provide some more iodine, ’cause the body then can sometimes go into a hyper or chaotic state. So yes, iodine does work, but it’s definitely not just flood the body with iodine.

Dr. Kelly Halderman

Right, yeah, I think it’s case by case. I know Brownstein just loves tons and tons of iodine, but I think that there is an art to medicine and definitely you don’t wanna be flooding in all kinds of situations. And yeah, that’s something, I definitely encourage people to work with a practitioner when they’re gonna be using that, ’cause you can get yourself into trouble. So Dr. Meaghan, you mentioned labs. Now, this is a big one, right? Because you and I were both traditionally taught, you screen with a TSH, reflects T4, that’s it. Case closed. You’re fine, you’re good. You’re good. You’re good. But we find that people standing in front of us, they have thyroid symptoms A to Z. They’re suffering, but they’ve been told, just go off. Go off on the , go off with me on this.

Dr. Meaghan Kirschling

Yeah. Well I always say to people, it’s sort of like if I got called in as a firefighter, fighter to the mall, and they said there’s a fire in the mall and I stepped in one store and said, oh, we’re fine, let’s just all go home. And it’s on the other side of the Mall of America, us Minnesota girls will use that analogy, it’s not that we ruled out a fire. We just looked at one specific thing and said, okay, not a problem. But that whole panel is so important not only for treatment because there’s different treatments, which I know somebody else will talk about. But that the other fact is that it actually tells us what’s going on. So when you have TSH, which is coming from the brain, talking to the thyroid to make more of the inactive T4, and then converting over to the T3, you’ve gotta see what all of those are doing because they’re all communicating to each other. And so in order to see really, A, what’s happening and how to treat and what to go after, you’ve got to figure out exactly what’s happening with that whole conversion. On top of that, you’ve gotta figure out if there’s antibodies because an autoimmune condition is way different than just the fact that there’s a communication problem and a conversion problem.

Dr. Kelly Halderman

Right.

Dr. Meaghan Kirschling

Since we’re talking about detox, I think it’s also very important to then go right into the fact that where T3 is converted is mainly the liver. And so that’s where we come right back to, we’ve got to detox and we’ve got to do it right in order to get the thyroid functioning. And then I also just wanted to, ’cause I definitely want the listeners to also realize, the other things that I think are sort of surprising that are very hard on the thyroid environmentally are antibacterial soaps. So they have something in them called triclosan, which actually interferes with the thyroid, and we’ve known this for years, and your body absorbs it. So even though you feel like you’re just putting it on your hands, your body is absorbing it, and that’s one of the reasons why they can be pretty toxic EMFs. 

As we get exposed to more and more EMF and WiFi we’ve actually studied since the 1980s the effect of cellular devices on the thyroid, and that was when we weren’t even in a very cellular world. Maybe we had wireless phones, and we’ve known since then that they have an effect. And even research in the early 2000s showed that even 33 hours a month, which is a little bit over an hour a day had really negative effects on the thyroid because it’s very sensitive to radiation and changes in that cellular energy around us. And so EMFs, antibacterial soaps, and gluten. Obviously diet and gut plays a role with everything, but especially we know the link between gluten and thyroid.

Dr. Kelly Halderman

Right. Absolutely. We could do just a little podcast on that but-

Dr. Meaghan Kirschling

Yeah

Dr. Kelly Halderman

Staying on the topic of detoxification, we were exchanging some texts because we’re friends outside of this and you talked about a book you were reading and all this information on detoxification. And then you have a very strong presence on Instagram. And so I’ve been following the Instagram posts that you’ve been doing on detoxification. Tell us why that you think that we’re doing it wrong. Kind of give us an idea. Go into that.

Dr. Meaghan Kirschling

We’ve talked about this a little bit, yeah, as friends, but one of the things that I’ve done during this pandemic is I’ve actually gone back old school. I tell people it’s really sort of sent me even back to a lot of publications and information that’s not sort of mainstream functional medicine. And one of the things that I’ve really found out is that we don’t detox right these days, I don’t think. For the most part I think we make it a little bit too superficial. We’ll talk about, okay, let’s just get the liver going and we can see that this is progressing too because when you and I probably entered functional medicine, we just put everybody on liver cleanses, gave them supplements and shakes and things like that. Then we got sort of smart about this and said, okay, now we need binders. We need something to take it out. We gotta get the bile going and we’ve gotta get binders and we need this and that. But I think along the way we’ve even missed some of the really important ways to detox. And when we look at cellular detox, a big part of it is fats. And the interesting thing is to really look at our society and how we’ve gotten even away from fats, like even healthy individuals. That we’ve sort of still been in this 1980s craze of low fat diet and. that we then have put into our diet, a lot of processed rancid fats. And we’re getting away from that, which is good. 

But when we look at this, it’s really about that cellular wall and the cellular membrane, which is made up of fat, and then a lot of these fat valuable toxins that attach on. And we talk about it accumulating in our fat cells, but it also accumulates in our cell membranes. And so we can actually use sauna and sweat, and niacin and binders, and things like that to actually get the cell to release and get rid of the fats, which get rid of the toxins, which actually then can change that whole composition versus just sort of going up and cleaning by just going after the liver.

Dr. Kelly Halderman

Right, I totally agree. The cellular membrane really is the brain of the cell in some aspects, And that we for a long time were missing the fact that, yes, a lot of these toxins are fat soluble, but the cellular membranes that make up every single one of our cells are just swimming with these toxins. And so I am, I’m a big believer from the school of Haman and Schumacher of oil changes. When they say oil changes, you’re giving copious amounts, I shouldn’t say copious, appropriate amounts of-

Dr. Meaghan Kirschling

I love the word copious. You said copious, yeah.

Dr. Kelly Halderman

Copious. We look good, we look vibrant. So looking at the phosphocholine and talk about that. Talk about using butyrate to help burn off some of those, ’cause you can kind of have a diet from that. Talk. about that a little bit.

Dr. Meaghan Kirschling

Yeah, so I think a key part of it is short acting niacin. I think it’s key that a lot of people don’t use and the reason why I, and this is Hubbard’s work and now it’s Dr. Root’s work from the 1970s, late 1970s on, but with the niacin, you actually get this really cool effect that we never talk about, which you get this lipolysis, which is a release of fat-

Dr. Kelly Halderman

Sure.

Dr. Meaghan Kirschling

After the flushing, But it has to be the short acting, it’s gotta be the flushing niacin.

Dr. Kelly Halderman

So the nicotinic acid, would that be? Okay. Okay.

Dr. Meaghan Kirschling

Yep. And it can’t have any of the sustained release aspect of it. And a lot of our supplements have gotten away from that cause it’s uncomfortable.

Dr. Kelly Halderman

They have.

Dr. Meaghan Kirschling

It’s not necessarily fun to flush. You do get that itching, redness burning. But the cool thing is, is that then a couple hours later they’ve proven that what you’re then doing is you’re releasing the fat. And that’s why it’s one of the only supplements that we know that can actually raise HDL, your good cholesterol. For the longest time we’ve known it’s really only exercise, diet, and short acting niacin, but it’s because of the fact that it has such this positive effect on your fat and fat cells and fat metabolism. So by taking it, you’re then able to flesh out and sort of mobilize the fat. And then by then taking in the good fats, you can start to then replace this fat that’s in your body that’s connected to all of these toxins, with the good fats that you’re taking in and then bind it out ’cause it’s all gotta come out through your gut. So you’ve gotta have a healthy gut. I think the butyrate helps in a couple different ways in the fact that it helps to be able to detox, but it also helps your gut be able to then get it out. versus then again, what we’re trying not to do is just recycle and make this an endless cycle of toxicity.

Dr. Kelly Halderman

Sure. That’s great. So get to get a little bit more granular, what’s the timing of the sauna and the short acting niacin, what do you like, and then the administration of phosphocholine?

Dr. Meaghan Kirschling

And I do this a little bit individual for each person because of the fact that when you look at this, it’s gonna depend who on how toxic you are, your overall vitality and what you can take. I start people really slow on the short acting niacin. You usually want to wait somewhere between the two to three-hour window before then you exercise or do some kind of lymphatic work, whether that’s dry brushing, rebounding, chi machine, something like that, and then get into a sauna. Or if some people don’t have sauna, infrared is best. Hubbard used all dry sauna, but he put people in for about 45 minutes. With an infrared, you can be in from 10 to 20 and get great results. 

But the infrared and low level laser, which is also great for, and red light, which is great for the thyroid, it’s fantastic to use too ’cause you’re getting such an increase in cellular activity. And so then you usually wanna put them into, sometimes sweating to pull out heavy metals and things like that, about two and a half to three hours after they take the niacin. It’s good during this time too to be taking things that help with your bile, ’cause bile’s what’s gonna push out the fats soluble through your gut. So that could be anything from chew curd, a phosphatidylcholine. Quicksilver has a great supplement called Liver Sauce that I love to use. 

And then you want to, about an hour after you come out of the sauna, 30 minutes to an hour after, take a binder. Some people, ’cause I know we’re getting into a big timeframe, take the binder right after. That’s fine. And you’re gonna wanna take the electrolytes during, like electrolytes during the sauna. And then the fat, you can really then take two, three hours. Afterwards, you can take it with dinner, but you just wanna make sure to be putting in good fats. It can be flaxseed, chia seed, hemp. I love C60 and using those oils Phosphatidylcholine is great for the actual cell membrane. So you wanna take like a plethora and a copious amounts of fats and oils.

Dr. Kelly Halderman

Sure, and so for those people who already have issues with their gallbladder, don’t have a gallbladder, what does a strategy look like for someone who, again, is maybe eating the omega six oils or eating unhealthy and you’re trying to switch them over anything above and beyond what you just said to kinda get them used to instead of just bombarding them and having issues?

Dr. Meaghan Kirschling

So just then push the fats with meals and take a digestive enzyme with ox bile. Either take smaller amounts of fat during the day so you’re not putting a big load on the gallbladder, or just make sure that you’re taking in more good fats with your meals and just take a digestive enzyme with the ox bile, ’cause that will help the bile to be able to actually then move, which is great because that then is gonna detox as it goes down the gut and you’re not gonna have the side effects of pain and whatnot that can come from the gallbladder being overactive.

Dr. Kelly Halderman

Perfect. Okay, so to sum up what we started talking about and how it’s not all doom and gloom, there’s things that you can do, can you kinda go through again and highlight things that we can do based on the environment that we live on, live in, and then kinda summarize maybe your best tip this summer for just staying healthy and keeping your cellular detoxification going.

Dr. Meaghan Kirschling

Yep. So I think when it comes to the thyroid and just detoxification in general, the number one thing is you’ve gotta make sure that you’re moving your bowels right? And so I always tell people that’s the number one thing, because that’s gonna be how we detox out these fat soluble toxins. So that’s number one first and foremost. And then if not, obviously magnesium, vitamin C, using products. I love Ortho Molecular Super Aloe. Things that’ll just get that moving because what we’re trying to do too, is to move the toxins through, not to just recycle. 

There’s a lot of great, like, this is a reason to eat organic, is because that way your body’s not accumulating heavy metals that are in our soil, pesticides, things like that. Be smarter with what you’re putting on your skin. Use organic products. Really move over and make those gradual changes to make your home and the products that you’re using on a day to day basis more organic and natural. Definitely take the aluminum out of your deodorant because that aluminum has a direct effect. Avoid, this is much easier to do now, which is great, but avoid secondhand smoke and that’s a lot of cadmium. As you know, and I think we both agree on this, a lot of people have to start by looking in their mouth.

Dr. Kelly Halderman

Oh yeah.

Dr. Meaghan Kirschling

The mouth and dental health is so important. And so if you have mercury, if you have infections, things like that, a lot of the culprit comes from the mouth.

Dr. Kelly Halderman

Absolutely. Yeah, definitely.

Dr. Meaghan Kirschling

Filter your water, spend the money money. There’s lesser cost filtration systems than there used to be, but filter your water because you don’t want that fluoride. You don’t want those other contaminants 

that especially are in city water that will interfere with the function of your thyroid and will lead to more toxic cells in general.

Dr. Kelly Halderman

Yeah, and even the EPA’s worried about the level of PFAS right now.

Dr. Meaghan Kirschling

Yeah. Yeah.

Dr. Kelly Halderman

I mean, like very much. So this is a very important thing in that we’re just looking at the tip of the iceberg. So I completely agree with you. Just filter your water, buy filtered water. Make that a priority.

Dr. Meaghan Kirschling

Yeah, definitely. It’s just such a great investment. Also there are things, Brazil nuts. I’m a big fan of those for the thyroid, ’cause that they have selenium. Actually hot lemon water is great for the thyroid and great for detoxification. And so that’s something that’s easy to add in, especially lemon water in general, but warm lemon water especially. Celery juice because it has a lot of nutrients is another thing. I know the medical medium loves it, but there are some great things about celery juice. And then I also am a big believer in a lot of the energy things and more cellular energy things that we have out there. The red lights. In clinic, I use a lot of frequency-specific microcurrent low level called laser, things like that. But that really helps with the thyroid because of the fact that you can really get those cells to heal and rejuvenate with those kind of therapies. And so I think it’s a good idea too to invest in a red light and use it at home as often as you can. That one right there, yeah.

Dr. Kelly Halderman

There’s the Jew. There’s the Jew right there. Yeah, I totally-

Dr. Meaghan Kirschling

See how many things we agree on.

Dr. Kelly Halderman

That’s right, we have so many toys that are in common, but I do agree that sometimes you just need the extraneous energy to really kickstart and really get you going. And they’re not just red lights that someone marketed really well, there’s science behind all of this and it’s really strong. So Dr. Meaghan, you have been so great, so much information. I love the cellular detoxification aspect of it because, again, it’s not just liver and liver cleanses, do your gallbladder cleanses. It’s deeper than that. All the tips that you gave us on the niacin, I did not know that. I do take short acting, but I didn’t have that lipolysis information. So I really appreciate you being here today. If someone wanted to contact you or your office, how do we get a hold of you?

Dr. Meaghan Kirschling

Well, it’s probably easiest to find this on social media. So One Agora Health is the clinic, I also do have an Instagram page, Dr. Meaghan Kirschling. And then you can also find us at www.oneagorahealth.com.

Dr. Kelly Halderman

Okay. Perfect. Well, thank you so much. Have a great rest of your day.

Dr. Meaghan Kirschling

Yeah, you too. Bye, Kelly.

Dr. Kelly Halderman

Bye.