David Stouder: Welcome everyone to the Humanized Health Podcast. I’m your guest host today, Dave Stouder, Rebekah will be back with us next time. And we have an interesting topic today and one that I don’t think all of us take as seriously as we may. And we’re going to talk about Maintaining Youthful Vigor and Biomarkers in a Toxic World.

We have with us today, Dr. Tom O’Bryan. Now, before I introduce Dr. Tom, as he likes to be called, I want to remind everyone to subscribe and get all the variety– we have all kinds of podcast audios, we have actual transcriptions of all these things and they’re free. And so you go to HumanizedHealth.com and we want to thank our lead sponsor, Village Green Apothecary, for making this all possible. Now, Dr. Tom O’Bryan is a recognized world expert on gluten and its impact on health. He is an internationally recognized and sought after speaker workshop leader specializing in the complications of Non-Celiac gluten sensitivity, Celiac Disease, and the development of Autoimmune Diseases, as they occur inside and outside the intestines. And he knows an awful lot about toxins.

Dr. Tom, welcome to the Humanize Health Podcast.

You know as, as we spoke off the air, a lot of information has been coming my way that we are really, really underestimating the impact of toxins on our, sort of American disease profile, if you will. And do you think that people really understand the impact of toxins on our health?

Tom O’Bryan: No, no, not, not at all. And the world we’re living in today is very different from the world a decade ago, just 10 years ago. It’s very, very different yet, we have the mindset of 10 years ago, 20 years ago, 30 years ago. “Well, I should do organic if I can once in a while.” I mean, that’s the way we think. And the amount of science is so overwhelming that when people start to hear summaries of the science, they get overwhelmed. They get overwhelmed and they get immobilized and they go back to “forget about it” and go back to however they’ve been living their life. They don’t have a clue.

I’ll give you an example. This really puts it in perspective. In my opinion, and I can’t find any science on this. I’ve looked and I can’t find any science yet. But in my opinion, the most sensitive tissue in the body to inflammation is a fertilized egg. It’s got no immune system. It’s got no protection whatsoever. The only protection it has is mom’s womb. That’s it. But wait, wait. So this is tissue that’s different than mom and, but it’s inside mom, but it has no way to protect itself.

So before I get into it, I forgot to tell you, the Center for Disease Control tells us that 14 of the 15 top causes of death in the world today are chronic inflammatory diseases. Everything except unintentional injuries like an accident of the 15 top causes of death. Everything else is chronic inflammation.

Everything. Without exception. Read the science. So it doesn’t matter if it’s Alzheimer’s or cancer. If it’s rheumatoid or multiple sclerosis, it’s an inflammatory condition. Your immune system has gotten activated. Now your immune system is the armed forces in your body. It’s there to protect you. It’s the Army, the Navy, the Air Force, the Marines, the Coast Guard. We call them IGA, IGG, IGE, IGM, cytokines. They’re just different branches of the armed forces. And when they get called out, when they’re called out in excess, that creates the inflammation, the long term inflammation.

Next concept. If you pull at a chain, it always breaks at the weakest link. Always. It’s at one end, the middle, the other end. It’s your heart, your brain, your liver, your kidneys. Wherever your genetic weak link is, that’s where the chain’s gonna break. Right? But it’s the pull on the chain, and that’s inflammation. It’s the pull on the chain that manifests wherever the weak link in your chain is.

If you’re an APOE4, if you’ve got the gene for Alzheimer’s, likely your brain is a weak link in your chain. If you’ve got a BRCA gene, likely your breasts and breast cancer are a weak link in your chain. It doesn’t mean you’re going to get breast cancer or Alzheimer’s if you’ve got the gene. It doesn’t mean that. But it means if you pull too hard on the chain, that’s likely where it’s going to manifest itself.

And that’s why you have to think about this. It doesn’t matter what your genes are in terms of whether you get a disease or not. Your genes determine what disease you likely will get if you’re going to get a disease. And that determination comes from the pull on the chain. 14 of the 15 top causes of death are chronic inflammatory diseases, okay?

So with that background, that it’s always inflammation, the million dollar question is, “What is activating my immune system trying to protect me?” Is it food? Is it toxic air? Do you live within a half a mile of a freeway? Well, you’re breathing diesel in the particulate matter in the air all day every day. “Well, I can’t smell any diesel.” It doesn’t matter. You’re breathing it. If you live near a freeway, you need air filtration systems and plants in your house to clean the air. You know, you have to– The best defense is a strong offense, meaning you have to take action to prepare yourself and protect yourself from this world we live in today.

David Stouder: All right.

Tom O’Bryan: Now if I may, specifically to your question– in the Journal of the American Medical Association, they published a study that came out of Harvard and the editors of the journal said this is an elegant study using sophisticated biomarkers to prove their point. Now, if you read a lot of science, you know that the editors of the Journal of the American Medical Association don’t say that very often. They don’t give a stamp of approval to a study, but they did. So, I knew, oh, this is important. Okay. And they looked at women going to assisted fertility centers. And as we all know, that’s a very stressful time for a couple trying to have a family. Extremely stressful. And they’re spending tens of thousands of dollars, insurance doesn’t cover it. And they’re hoping, right? So the authors of the study at Harvard ruled out all of the known risk factors, alcohol consumption, cigarette smoking, exercise, no exercise, socioeconomic class, race, they ruled all that stuff out in an elegant way.

And they looked at how many servings of fruits and vegetables the woman is eating a day when she’s going through the implantation process. Okay. And they divided the women into fourths, the lowest number of servings a day, the next, the third, and the highest number of servings per day. The results were shocking. Women in the highest category of fruit and vegetable consumption, compared to women in the lowest category of fruit and vegetable consumption when they’re going through the implantation process, women in the highest category of consumption had an 18 percent less likelihood of successful implantation. If they did get pregnant, they had a 26 percent less likelihood of a live birth. They had more miscarriages and stillbirths compared to the women that weren’t eating fruits and vegetables. And that’s like, what? What, what did you just say?

I mean, you have to look at those graphs and you have to read it a couple of times. And then you realize, oh my God, okay, there was one word in the title that most people didn’t pay attention to and that’s ‘conventional’ fruits and vegetables–conventional meaning what you buy at the supermarket.

Now there was a group of women in this study that were eating organic. And in that category, the results were the exact opposite. The more fruits and vegetables you eat, the better the outcome, as we would think would happen. But because women in the highest category of consumption– women are so toxic today from this toxic world that we live in. And they don’t know that they’re toxic. They think they’re healthy and they’re not, but they think they’re healthy. And they’re eating the highest amount of fruits and vegetables if they are in the category of accumulatively more toxic chemicals, more petroleum byproducts, more heavy metals, more mold metabolites, more bacteria in their bodies. If they, and their immune system is fighting this stuff all day, every day, then when you eat fruits and vegetables with the fungicides, insecticides, pesticides, rodenticides, antibiotics on the fruits and vegetables, it activates more inflammation and takes you over the edge. 18 percent less likelihood of successful implantation if they were eating more fruits and vegetables.

David Stouder: You know, Dr. Tom, when you first said that, I said, “Oh, he misspoke.” Okay, I want to just real quick go back to your chain analogy. So what we’re saying here is that the tug on that chain is mostly the toxins that we either get from our environment or we put in our mouth. And, and even if we eat fruits and vegetables, if they’re grown conventionally, so they’re, they’re not grown in good soil, you’re going to toxic soil, pesticides, all those things, we’re, you know, yeah, we get some antioxidants, maybe, but we’re actually just increasing our toxins, even though we quote are eating good food.

Tom O’Bryan: When you read this study, you have to read a couple of times because it’s so “what?” You know. And it’s from Harvard and the editors of the journal the American Medical Association put a stamp of approval–this is an elegant study using sophisticated biomarkers. You can’t argue with the study. The takeaway is that women have accumulated so many toxins in their body–and they don’t know because they feel like they always feel, you know, they feel fine. And they don’t realize how inflamed they are all the time. Now, there was one good point in the study that those women who fell in the category of organic and had exact opposite outcomes, much more successful outcomes. Women qualified with better outcomes if they were eating organic three times a week, not three times a day, just three times a week. And they had the exact opposite effect.

Now there’s no rationale for why three times a week with–18 times a week if you eat three meals a day–of conventional except–and and the authors did not address this–but what I think it is, if a woman is eating or “Yeah, you know, I’ll eat organic whenever I can couple three times a week or so…” they’ve also bought organic shampoo in their shower. They’ve got organic soap at their kitchen sink. They’re using organic dishwashing detergent. They’re doing the little things that accumulatively are reducing their exposure to the amount of toxins we’re all exposed to today. I think that’s why it only took three servings a week to get that result.

David Stouder: That’s interesting. Well, you know when we really, when we dig too deeply into the toxins, one, it’s not a happy topic. Second, it can overwhelm people. And we could probably talk for most of the day about some of the things that we could do. But if you could, I do want to talk about some of these biomarkers.

But first, what are a few basic things, like if you could just be a king for a day and get everybody to do just a few basic things to minimize the toxins around them that are pretty doable for most people, what would that be?

Tom O’Bryan: The first thing is get educated, get educated, read my books as an example. And read Dr. Joe Pizzorno, one of the greats in the field. He has a book called detox what’s it called? I don’t remember, but it’s at Amazon, Joe Pizzorno, and it’s got the word detox in it.

David Stouder: I think we’ve had him on the Humanized Podcast, too, so people can check that out.

Tom O’Bryan: I’m sure you have. Yeah. But when you get educated on this, you realize, okay, okay. And the way to approach this is you allocate one hour a week and you tell your family, look on Tuesday nights after dinner, don’t bother me. I’m going to study for an hour to learn how we can be healthier. And then every Tuesday night, you’re going to learn one more thing. When you learn that you put food in plastic containers in the refrigerator overnight, your food’s got phthalates in it the next day.

Plasticizers, which are hormone disruptors. “What? Wait, what? What? If I store the leftover chicken soup in a Tupperware, the next day that the soup has got plastic in it?” Yes. The best thing you can do with plastic containers is give them to your husband to store nails in the garage. That’s what they’re good for.

And when you learn that, then, you know, you go to my book because I’ve got 36 different “to do’s” in there.

David Stouder: Tell me the name of the book, Dr. Tom.

Tom O’Bryan: “You Can Fix Your Brain.”

David Stouder: Okay. Go ahead.

Tom O’Bryan: I took the brain as the example, because most people are scared about brain function and justifiably, but you go back to the book and there’s the three URLs for glass storage containers, and you go to mileskimble.com and Amazon and whatever the third one was, and, oh, those are– “Oh, I like those.” And you order three round ones and two square ones and one for the pie, you pay through the credit card, hit send, you’re done. It took you an hour. You’re done for the week.

Next week, Tuesday night after dinner, you look for organic nail polish that’s phthalate free. Because you’ve learned that when you apply nail polish, those chemicals are in your bloodstream in four to five minutes. And you say, what? And they disrupt your hormones. They alter your hormones. Not one nail polish application. Yes, you can measure the phthalates from one application, but give me a little five year old girl that paints her ten little fingers and ten little toes once a week for 25 years. Now she’s 30 years old, married, gets pregnant–

Chicago, 2016, they took 326 pregnant women in the 8th month of pregnancy, and they did a urine test to measure the amount of phthalates they had. These chemicals are used to mold plastic. It’s what makes polish, nail polish, hard, are the phthalates. And they measured it in these women’s urine, and they divided it into fourths, the lowest amount, the next, the third, and the highest. They followed the offspring of those pregnancies for seven years. And when the children turned seven years old, they all had relatively healthy pregnancies, healthy delivery. And when the kids turned seven years old, they did Wechsler IQ tests on them–the official IQ tests. There’s not much in medicine that’s all or every. This was every, every child whose mother was in the highest category of phthalates in urine in pregnancy compared to the children whose mothers were in the lowest category, every child in the highest category, their IQ was seven points lower. Every single one of them. Now that doesn’t mean anything to anyone until you understand a one point difference in IQ is noticeable. A seven point difference is the difference between a child working really hard getting straight A’s in school, and a child working really hard getting straight C’s. This kid doesn’t have a chance in hell of ever living to his full genetic potential.

Now you just go to Google and type in phthalates, P H T H A L A T E S and neurogenesis, nerve cell growth. Here come the studies. The higher the phthalates, the more inhibition of brain cell growth in utero. And then you start realizing, wow, mom’s high in phthalates. Their baby, seven years later, their IQ is lower. Every single one of them, and there are many studies like this, many, and it’s overwhelming. That’s why you take one hour a week, and you just you just apply it to one principle, you can’t read a book in an hour, you know, you read one chapter in my book and there’s a to do at the end of the book.

David Stouder: Excellent.

Tom O’Bryan: You read one chapter next week, and there’s a “to do,” and in six months, you go to church and you see somebody you haven’t seen in a while and they say, “Wow, you look fabulous. You look so young. What happened to you?” “Well, you know, I ordered glass storage containers, and got rid of the plastic containers. I got organic shampoo. I got organic cosmetics. You know, I’m exercising. I’m walking every day, 10,000 steps a day. I’ve got a little monitor to measure me while I’m walking.” And you’ve just boom, boom, boom, boom. And in six months you have a new body. You’ve got a new metabolism.

JAMA, the Journal of the American Medical Association, published a study. The magic number is 9,826 steps per day. So 10,000 steps a day and you reduce your risk of dementia by 51%. If you walk 10,000 steps a day–didn’t matter if you had the gene for Alzheimer’s, it didn’t matter. It’s like “What? Really?” Just walking 10,000 steps a day. So you get one of those little watches that measures how many steps you take, you know, and you just make it a priority. You start with 1,000 and in a week you do 1, 500 and then you add a little more and add a little more. And in a couple of months you’re doing 10,000 steps a day. You know, but you just take it in pieces, little piecemeal, baby steps at a time. You try and do all of it. You’re overwhelmed. You throw the baby out with the bath water.

David Stouder: Well, I think that’s perfect advice, I like that. So in your book, you’ve sort of lined that out for us. We could read a chapter. That’s our homework. You know, to order some glass containers or to walk more or whatever the thing is.

Now, I have noticed in the people I encounter in the store that, you know, risk numbers and biomarkers and tests are sometimes motivating, when the doctor says you’re, you’re whatever is too high or whatever is too low. Everybody gets a tizzy. And you know, sometimes I’m not so sure some of the things are that relevant. But, if you’re going to look at what kind of testing we might do, if you know, because I can sit here and say, “Well, I gotta be toxic. I live in a toxic world.” But like you say, “I feel good. I’m fine.” It can just sort of fade and I don’t worry about it. So what kind of test, what biomarkers would you suggest? So that I can see I can see in that objective way. Oh, my God. This is going on in my body.

Tom O’Bryan: There are three tests that change your paradigm. They’re all from a laboratory called Vibrant Wellness, which just opened in 2016, the latest cutting edge technology. Mayo Clinic has published a number of papers on this. Mayo Clinic says “A new era in laboratory medicine,” much more accurate tests. I mean, that’s a whole discussion we won’t get into here. But doctors think their tests are accurate. They often are not. They’re wrong. Three or four out of 10 times are completely wrong. And doctors don’t know that. And the only way they can learn– that’s when I talk about it on stage all the time, is that you do double blinds. Meaning when you draw a tube of blood, you draw two tubes out of the same venipuncture. One, you label the patient’s name, the other one you label “Joe Smith.” And you send it to the lab, order the same test, but don’t tell the lab it’s the same person. And when the test results come back, you look at one and you, “Wait, what? What?” And about 3 out of 10 times, the results are completely different. Completely.

I started teaching that in 2008, about laboratories, and you can’t count on them because it’s old technology. Okay. Well, this new technology, Mayo Clinic calls it a new era in laboratory medicines called silicon chip technology, very, very accurate. And they have a battery of tests that you can do. But the three that every patient gets before I talk to them– the first one’s called The Wheat Zoomer, because it looks at sensitivity to wheat, even for gluten-free people, they need to do it. And it’s the most accurate measure for leaky gut of any test that’s out there. And leaky gut is the gateway in the development of chronic diseases. So you have to have your baseline.

The second test is The Total Tox Burden because it looks at mold metabolites, chemical accumulation in your body, petrochemicals, volatile organic solvents, heavy metals, it looks at a battery of toxins, and I’ve never had somebody come back normal on a first test. No one. And that we all have toxins that are at warning threshold levels and beyond threshold.

And the third test is called the Neural Zoomer Plus, because it looks at 53 markers of inflammation in the brain. And that scares the hell out of people. And it should. It’s a wake up call when you understand, when I interpret the results for you, and it’s all in my book, “You Can Fix Your Brain.” When you understand your brain’s on fire right now, you have elevated antibodies, killing off brain tissue, killing off brain tissue, killing off brain tissue, and you’re making jokes that you’re getting older and you can’t remember the way you used to. “Well, how old are you?” “I’m 44.” No, that’s not supposed to happen.That’s memory loss. That’s inflammation in the memory center of your brain. Those are people that walk out to the parking lot, and they forget where they parked their car, or they walk into a room and forget why they walked in the room. That’s a highly inflamed brain, and the inflammation is in the memory center of the brain.

So we identify that in the Neural Zoomer Plus. So those are the three tests everyone gets. And if they don’t wanna do the test, I give ’em the name of a couple other doctors to go see. I’m not gonna waste my reputation on someone that won’t do what needs to be done.

David Stouder: Alright, well I’m familiar with Vibrant Wellness. So we’re talking about the Wheat Zoomer, and we’re talking about the Total Tox, and the Neural Zoomer Plus. And, you know, many practitioners and nutritionists use Vibrant Wellness, so as you’re talking to your functional doc or your natural practitioner, you can ask for these things.

In a broad way, as you’re talking about the toxins we’re finding in the womb, so in the babies of the moms, as our environment gets more toxic, it seems like every generation is more toxic and passes on more toxins to the next generation, which grows up with even more toxins and passes it to the next one. And so we also have to realize, obviously, there’s outliers. But that is the general thing. So in terms– when you mentioned, it was interesting, when you mentioned the study where people who ate more conventional fruits and vegetables got worse outcomes in the in vitro fertilization, but if they ate organic, even a small amount– so, obviously we want to try to get the cleanest food, organic non-GMO and from the ground, if possible, the least amount of packaging and certainly plastic you’ve mentioned.

Now, even before I do a test, are there a couple of key supplements, we’ll probably find in your book, that you think just in general are going to help people with toxicity?

Tom O’Bryan: Yes, yes, the most important one is a supplement that’s been around for a long, long time. Water. Okay. Most people are dehydrated and if you’ve got a four lane highway, you’re driving down the highway doing 70 miles an hour, everything’s great. But then, wait a minute, you know, there’s some flashing lights up ahead, it goes down to three lanes. You have to slow down maybe to 55 or so, and then it goes down to two lanes, and then it goes down to one lane, and now you’re doing 20 miles an hour. That’s dehydration. And all you have to do is pinch the back of your hand. If it doesn’t go down immediately, with no sign of a pinch, You’re dehydrated. And it’s a third of an ounce of water per pound body weight.

And if you are exercising and sweating, or you’re doing saunas regularly, it goes up to a half ounce of water per pound body weight. There is no way to safely detox if you are not well hydrated. Critically, critically important. And then of course you want the best water that you can get. So then we talk about water filtration systems and you get the best that you can afford.

If the best thing that you can afford is a countertop thing, you know, that you take the water from the sink and you put it in your little pitcher and it’s got a filter on it. Great. That’s going to help. You know, the very best of course is a full home system so that your bath water, your shower water, the water in the bathroom sink when you brush your teeth, that’s all filtered. It’s just what can you afford right now, or what can you budget for and save up for. But nothing is more important than being well hydrated. And you get great results.

Every patient of mine, I tell them, you wake up in the morning, most people, first thing they do is go, they go to the bathroom. Next, go in the kitchen, two big glasses of water right away. And we use Vitality C. I’ve been using it for 25 years. I put a scoop of Vitality C in the water for my wife and I. So we get 4, 000 milligrams of vitamin C to start our day, support the adrenal glands, the anti-stress vitamin, you know, all of that kind of thing. But you start first thing in the morning and within three, four days of having two big glasses of water when you first wake up, you’re looking forward to the water because wow, your bowels are working so much better. Wow. Boy, a couple of days in a row now I’ve had really great bowel moves. I’m– you know, I don’t usually talk about that stuff, but I just feel different. Wow. I feel light and you’ll see the results really quickly.

So that’s critically important. That’s most important is to be hydrated. You never, ever, begin a detoxification until you’re well hydrated. Just don’t do it because you’ll get sicker. There’s a risk of getting sicker if you mobilize these toxins. “Well, I found out I’ve got mercury, so I’m on an anti-mercury protocol.” You mobilize the mercury that’s deep in your cells and you get in the bloodstream to be eliminated, but it’s in the bloodstream, it goes to your brain. And you can have lots of problems.

Why women– as after they go through a change of life, why does their brain deterioration happen so quickly? One reason is because when their adrenal glands have been stressed out in life, you know, when you go through a change of life and the ovaries shut down, it’s the job of the adrenal glands to make one-tenth of the estrogen and progesterone that your ovaries used to make. Just a little bit, but when your adrenal glands are worn out from a very stressful life and you don’t do that, now you have the risk of osteoporosis and a lot of heavy metals are stored in your bones. So as your bone cells start to break down, because you don’t have enough estrogen going through the change of life, those heavy metals, the lead gets into the bloodstream and it goes to the brain.

So women’s cognitive function tends to go down pretty quickly compared to men after the age of 50, 55, you know, the percentage of people that have cognitive decline. When you see those studies, you go, “Wow, why is that?” That’s not– women have less cognitive decline and less cardiovascular disease when they’re menstruating, but when they stop menstruating, all of a sudden their cardiovascular disease risk is parallel to men. Why is that? Well, they’re not bleeding anymore–every month, right? So that’s why women, as they go through a change of life, should consider donating blood once a month to Red Cross. You just donate a little bit of blood and you’re maintaining that mechanism that’s filtering your blood and you make new blood cells that way.

David Stouder: Excellent, excellent. Well, I’ll tell you what, this is a huge topic and I’m going to go get your book. I recommend that. I’m sure it’s full of great information, but what really struck me is that you’ve laid it out–you told us how to do things and the book is laid out to be a nice guide.

Tom O’Bryan: It is a guide. And when it came out, it was number one in seven categories on Amazon for brain and nervous system function. I’m very proud of it and we’ve gotten hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of letters, you know, emails that say, thanks so much. It’s really great.

David Stouder: All right. And Dr. Tom, is www.thedr.com, is that the best place for everybody to find you and information about your book?

Tom O’Bryan: That’s our website. Yeah. And you can find the book there or the link goes to Amazon. Yeah. But where I think people can really get a lot of bang for their buck, in terms of their time allotment– we just put together a few months ago, a docu series called “The Inflammation Equation.” And it’s free, it’s all free. It’s at TheInflammationEquation.com. And I traveled to seven countries and I interviewed the world experts whose studies I’ve read so often and I asked them the questions about toxicity and about health and vitality and how do you regenerate healthy cells. And you get the big picture about pulling on the chain and how that’s happening in your life. You hear it from the horse’s mouth, you know, you hear it from Yehuda Shonfeld, the godfather of autoimmunity from Tel Aviv, Israel, you know, or David Fuhrman at Stanford who has the contract with NASA, and he identified why the astronauts age so quickly in space. It’s inflammation. And he talks about what do you do about that? So it’s TheInflammationEquation.com, it’s free, it’s there for everyone.

David Stouder: That’s excellent. Well listen, those are really valuable insights and more. I urge everybody to get the book and, and the other thing, the message here is not to frighten everyone. Let’s not have to get frightened into doing the right thing. How about if we get inspired to lead a less toxic life so that we can live up to the headline of this is youthful vigor as we change.

Tom O’Bryan: Yeah, that’s really great. And if I may, the way to do that, the only way that I have seen successful consistently in doing that is, you know, everytime someone asked me to sign a book, autograph a book, I write the same thing. I asked him their name and then I write “Base hits win the ballgame.” Stop looking for home runs. Do the little things. One hour a week, every week. Get rid of your toxic nail polish. Next week, get rid of the Tupperware. Every week you just do a little thing and accumulatively base hits win the ballgame.

David Stouder: Well, that’s excellent advice. So let me remind everybody– there’s TheDr.com, there’s TheInflammationEquation.com, and you can also go to HumanizedHealth.com to get all the podcasts. We have other podcasts with Dr. Tom. And Dr. Tom, we learned a lot today and thanks for being with us.

Tom O’Bryan: Thank you so much.

A real pleasure.