Recently I interviewed Dr. Wendie Trubow, and we talked about heavy metals and how you can start going in the right direction regarding thyroid autoimmunity. If you would prefer to listen the interview you can access it by Clicking Here [1].
Dr. Eric Osansky:
With me, I have a return guest, Dr. Wendie Trubow. We are going to be chatting about heavy metals, and we will be tying that into thyroid health, thyroid autoimmunity.
Let me dive into Dr. Wendie’s bio. Dr. Wendie Trubow is passionate about helping women optimize their health and lives as a functional medicine gynecologist. Through her struggles with mold and metal toxicity, Celiac disease, and other health issues, Dr. Trubow has developed a deep sense of compassion and expertise for what her patients are facing. She is a co-author of the amazing book Dirty Girl: Ditch the Toxins, Look Great, and Feel Freaking Amazing! and has been regularly featured in mindbodygreen and Huffington Post. She is an accomplished speaker and previously had her own television show. She is on the faculty of A4M and is a speaker at their conferences as well as other societies. She and her partner will be releasing their next book in mid-2023. Thank you again for joining us, Dr. Wendie.
Dr. Wendie Trubow:
Call me Wendie. Thank you. Happy to be here. So near and dear to my heart, everything we talk about.
Dr. Eric:
Even though you’re a repeat guest, I’m sure there are people who aren’t familiar with your background. You had some struggles with mold and toxicity, and I’m guessing that’s what led up to you writing your book and getting into the environmental toxin field.
Dr. Wendie:
100%. I was a hot mess, anincludeame my message because when I finally got diagnosed with heavy metals, which included lead and mercury as well as microtoxins, which are the toxins that mold puts out when it’s hanging out in you. Super creepy. I had five strains of those. Plus, a whole host of other environmental toxicants, like gasoline fumes, plastics, nail polish toxins, beauty products, phthalates, parabens, flame retardants. I had a list of those, too.
I looked at my husband and said, “I’m such a dirty girl. We’re writing that book because I’m a poster child for healthy living. I have all this stuff, so what does everyone else have, who may not be as far into the functional medicine lifestyle as I am?” So it was pretty personal.
Dr. Eric:
We’re all impacted by these environmental toxins. Not everybody exhibits symptoms. Obviously, your book is bringing awareness to those who are not experiencing symptoms and of course many who are and are not associating them with environmental toxins. I didn’t realize you’re coming out with another book as well?
Dr. Wendie:
Like any good construction project, it’s been delayed. It’s called Sweaty and Bitchy: From Sex to Brain Function. Master Menopause, and Feel Freaking Amazing! However, we have so much going on that we are going to push that further back. We pushed it to January or February of next year.
Dr. Eric:
I’m glad I asked you.
Dr. Wendie:
Good construction project. We’re delayed.
Dr. Eric:
Now it’s early 2024. That’s fine. I’m sure it will be just an awesome a book as the first one, but you don’t want to rush it. Looking forward to that.
We’re going to focus on heavy metals. Our last talk, we focused on a lot of things. But plenty to talk about with heavy metals alone. Why don’t you start out by talking about why they’re such a concern?
Dr. Wendie:
This is so important. I’m so grateful to be able to discuss this. Heavy metals are all throughout our environment. A lot of times, they’re not really present in large enough quantities to do much to us. However, a big caveat: Because we started to use lead and mercury, and because thallium is in the soil of a lot of organically grown vegetables, and because cadmium is found in cigarettes and West Coast oysters, we now get exposed to heavy metals at a much higher frequency and amount than perhaps 300 years ago.
Because we are all by definition born to someone who’s female, we get 50% of what that person had. You get 50% of your mother’s heavy metals and other toxins. You’re born in life, and you’re behind the 8 ball. This matters because what we’re seeing is, for example, you and I both have teenagers. In theory, when you set aside what you get from your mother, teenagers shouldn’t have any of this stuff. There is no lead in their pipes. For everyone except for 10 million Americans, there is no lead in the pipes. Or mercury in the fillings.
Except these kids still come up with positive results. They are getting from their mother what they have. Even if you weren’t born in the ‘70s, you were born to someone who was born in that time frame. You were exposed to lead in the gasoline, lead in the paint, lead in the pipes, mercury in food processing, mercury in those silver fillings, which are 50% mercury by weight.
They never stop off-gassing. This is all about saving your thyroid. The thyroid is particularly sensitive to mercury. Your teeth and thyroid are very close together. Anything off-gassing gives the thyroid a good kick on its way into the rest of your system. We are having these constant exposures. Even though we don’t have some of the things we had, we still have the exposures. Think of it like it used to be.
Dr. Eric:
That’s a good point. Just being born already with so many toxins, and it’s getting worse and worse from an overall toxin standpoint. You mentioned heavy metals. Thankfully, not as many dentists do mercury amalgams and silver fillings, but there still are some unfortunately. There are other sources, too. Most people are already at a disadvantage when they’re born because they are picking up half the toxins their mother has.
Can you go over some of the most common heavy metals you see in practice and also some of the main sources of these heavy metals?
Dr. Wendie:
The top two I see that catch my attention are lead and mercury. Then cadmium and thallium are the next two. There are others. We test for about 15 of them. Those are the ones we narrow in on. We do occasionally see arsenic because it’s a huge source in rice. The majority that I go crazy over are those top four.
The sources for lead are living in a home built before 1978. 1978 was the watershed year because the government outlawed lead being in paint then. If you live in a house built before then, or if you are a DIY human and like to do construction projects on those homes, you’re increasing your exposure. If you were born to someone who was born before 1978, you got half of what they had. Lead pipes is still a concern for about 10 million Americans.
For mercury, you’re looking at those silver fillings and high mercury fish. There is this subtle or sinister one, which is if you’re eating food that was made with mercury to process it, like high fructose corn syrup, has to use mercury to get from corn to high fructose corn syrup. You get a dose of mercury in that syrup, along with glyphosate, because you have concentrated the pesticide in that.
For cadmium, it’s West Coast oysters and smoking. Those are the big sources.
Thallium is largely from the soil in California. If you’re eating organic vegetables, this is a no good deed goes unpunished. You will often have higher levels of thallium in your bloodstream. It’s hard to get away from it honestly.
Dr. Eric:
It’s hard if not impossible. Everybody is different. I’m sure you see high thallium in some people, and in others, not so much. Same with other heavy metals. Is it rare you see low levels of heavy metals across the board?
Dr. Wendie:
The people who come to our clinic are self-selected. If you test the general population, you will certainly see more people who have nothing because you’re making the pool so much bigger. The people who wind up with us, probably at least 50% of them have notable levels of metals, if not higher. Depends on their age range, detox, genetics, food, and gut. At least 50% have notable metals I recommend treating.
Dr. Eric:
You mentioned mercury and lead are the top two. I don’t think anybody would deny how toxic they are. Same with cadmium. We don’t hear as much about thallium, so why is thallium so bad compared to these others?
Dr. Wendie:
It’s not necessarily that it’s so bad. When you compare it to lead and mercury, I’m much more worried about those two. If you were to have a big exposure to thallium long-term, because it is a heavy metal, it could make you sick. It does contribute to inflammation, and it can lead to degenerative and autoimmune diseases. We include it because often, people are doing a good job by eating organic foods. You should not walk away thinking that you shouldn’t eat organic. It’s something we need to monitor if you are eating a lot of organic foods, particularly cruciferous vegetables like broccoli and other ones from California. Your levels may be high, so we need to keep it in the back of our heads.
Dr. Eric:
You mentioned the potential impact mercury could have on the thyroid, particularly because of the teeth’s proximity to the thyroid. It’s always off-gassing. Does it also have an effect on the immune system?
Dr. Wendie:
The downside to all of these metals is that they act as an inflammatory force, not just like a little drop in the bucket, but they are innately inflammatory. The big picture thing is you don’t have a lot of it floating around your bloodstream. Your body knows it’s toxic, so you’re going to put it away. Where do you put it away? Your bones, your organs, your fat. Lead is particularly loving of the bones. When people have osteoporosis, my first response is, “You have a lead issue until proven otherwise because it hangs out in the bones.” Or Celiac. Those are the top two for us.
The next things I would be looking at for people would be mercury loves the thyroid, or the thyroid hates mercury, whichever way. Autoimmune diseases are increased when you have high body burdens from metals. Degenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s, dementia, multiple sclerosis. All autoimmune like Hashimoto’s, rheumatoid arthritis, Celiac.
When you look at all of the things people struggle and suffer with, metals and toxins are implicated in pretty much all of that: heart disease, metabolic disease, diabetes, PCOS, bad periods, infertility, both male and female. Toxins are implicated in all of these at every level. It seems innocuous, like I don’t live in an old house or drink from lead pipes or have a mercury filling, but you still have it in your body because of where you came from. It can still cause issues even without active exposure.
Dr. Eric:
We’ll talk more about testing, but there are some tests out there that look at immune reactions to heavy metals. The point I bring up with this is it’s not all about the levels. You do provoke urine testing. Nobody wants to see really high levels. Even if someone sees low levels, it doesn’t mean there’s not a problem.
Dr. Wendie:
Part of the reason we get into this challenge is your innate detox systems are suboptimal, so that is one reason you store it instead of getting rid of it. When you have that, then sometimes, it’s hard to show what’s happening until you improve the detox mechanisms, so that when you actually do test again, you can see the true scope of it. It can be reassuring or horrifying. Depends on where you’re sitting.
Dr. Eric:
Our focus is on the thyroid, but it’s not just the impact of the thyroid. It affects so many different areas. When we talk about autoimmune thyroid conditions such as Graves’ or Hashimoto’s, mercury can have an impact, but so can other autoimmune conditions. If not a trigger, it can at least be a contributing factor.
Dr. Wendie:
It’s an inflammatory agent. When you look at autoimmune disease, you need to have leaky gut, inflammation, and a trigger. These can either act as inflammatory events or trigger if you have a big exposure.
For example, I have a patient who lives in a house before 1978; it’s an old Victorian. She is very handy and loves to do projects on her house. I saw her the other day, so it’s fresh in my head. She said, “I’m not doing well. I’ve gained a bunch of weight. My knees hurt. My brain is not working as well.” I know her. She had a lead level of 95 one day, which for the record is crazy high. We look for it well under eight.
Knowing her, I asked, “Did you do any projects on your house in the last few months?” She thought for a minute and said, “I ripped out my closet.” Don’t be a DIYer on your old, lead-laden house because you’ll get another exposure. She tested. She got rid of things over Thanksgiving. She did her construction. She stopped feeling well and happened to retest in January because she was due for a retest, and the protocols were on, and it had gone up. What happened? It’s often very subtle because you don’t see it. It does act as an autoimmune triggering event for a lot of people.
Dr. Eric:
Let’s dive into the testing. As far as detecting heavy metals, you use provoked urine testing. That involves a baseline urine test. Then you give a single chelating agent- I’ll let you take over.
Dr. Wendie:
We always do a baseline test on people just in case you’ve had an acute exposure. We want to catch and recognize that. The baseline urine test is getting up in the morning and peeing. That tells us if you had an acute exposure sometime over the past 4-6 weeks that you haven’t yet fully put away and stored in your bones or organs or fat.
Then we do a provoked test. We often do it on the same day. You empty your bladder and take these provoked agents. It’s a chelating agent called DMSA. I don’t see kids, but you’re going to give a kid a lower dose than you will give an adult. It’s loosely based on weight. We do a six-hour urine collection. Same test, but now provoked. It causes metals to come out of their storage depot and binds to them, and then you pee it out, and it’s measured. We look at the relative amount. We look at the baseline. What is the standard? Where are you?
Keep in mind, if you have high body burdens, you often won’t show the full extent of it. You’ll show something. I say to people after you do a removal protocol, your numbers will often go up. You have improved your liver and your gut and the whole system’s ability to get rid of it. Don’t freak out. It will go up. They always like to be prepped because it inevitably goes up, except for the people who started crazy high. They almost always go down. We often doing that type of testing.
Then we treat and test again. I’m a big fan of test, don’t guess. Whenever we are doing a treatment, we are testing to see what’s the impact been. Do you need another role? Do you need to focus on daily detox behaviors instead of ramped up detox? Depends what people need.
Dr. Eric:
How frequently do you retest?
Dr. Wendie:
Depends. For the person who had that 95 level who lives in that old lead-laden house, we treated for six months before we retested because her levels were ridiculous. Most people, after three months of treatment, I will retest.
Once you’re doing the program regularly, it’s about every eight weeks. We get more efficient with the treatment. With the first treatment, we want to make sure you’re tolerating it. Do you do okay when we raise the levels? It’s a bell curve. Most people do really well. Some people love how they feel. Some people take a while to get used to it. They had increased fatigue, gut irritability, or headaches.
We treat everyone based on the standard that maybe you’re the person who’s going to react, so everyone gets a lower dose for the first month. Then it ramps up second month and third month. By the time you have tolerated the whole program and do it again, we start at the highest dose, so you can have maximum efficiency for it.
Dr. Eric:
You don’t want to go too quickly. It almost takes time. A common question is how long it takes. Some people are surprised to learn that it takes a good amount of time, not just a month or two to get rid of all the heavy metals you have accumulated your entire life. We are born with them in the first place.
Dr. Wendie:
You didn’t get it in a year, so you won’t get rid of it in a year. It takes a lot longer than you would expect or even hope. Think of construction projects. They cost more money and take more time than you think. Constructing an ideally healthy human takes a lot more time than you would think.
I’ll speak for myself. I am particularly loyal to my toxins and my metals. I am coming up on about 3.5 years of working on getting rid of them. The issue is when we go back to the testing, which is not an exact science. When you get a number of 14, it’s not exact. That’s how much metal you have in your body. What it is is a guidepost of saying I have a body burden.
When you compare a reading of 14 to 40 to 95, I am pretty comfortable saying the person at 95 had a much higher body burden than the person at 14, but there is still a body burden. If it’s stored in your organs, fat, and bones, and you’re pulling it out, it’s a really painstaking process, so it’s not overnight.
There are a lot of ways to do it. We custom tailor treatment for what will work for you. What is your life like? What are your finances like? Are you getting exposed still? There are a lot of factors that go into it. It takes longer, especially if you are being exposed ongoing, especially if you have silver fillings in your mouth.
Dr. Eric:
Speaking of ongoing exposure or acute exposure, that’s what blood testing is used for. You mentioned a baseline test might pick it up, too. I’m sure you’ve had people go into your practice, like patients who already did blood testing, and everything was negative. Some know, and some do their own research to know it’s more acute exposure. The blood testing, just because everything is negative, does not rule out problems with heavy metals.
Dr. Wendie:
I have never had a patient in my practice who was positive on the blood test. If you go to your primary care doctor, it’s good to rule out there is no acute exposure. Let’s do a lead or mercury blood spot, and it should be negative. Unless you live in Flint, Michigan, it should be negative, but if it’s positive, that’s very worrisome because you got an acute big exposure that’s going on in your body. Most of the time, it won’t be positive because it’s stored away. It shouldn’t be in your blood. Your body goes, “This is toxic,” so you get rid of it as fast as possible.
Dr. Eric:
Makes sense. You didn’t mention aluminum. Is it something you don’t see a lot on testing?
Dr. Wendie:
I don’t see a lot of it actually. I don’t know why. It’s not tremendous.
Dr. Eric:
I don’t use chelating agents in my practice, but I wonder is there just not a great chelator for that when you use oral chelators to mobilize the heavy metals? I think you’d agree that aluminum is widespread. A lot of people still use aluminum pots and pans and deodorants and cans.
Dr. Wendie:
It is pretty widespread. I don’t really see that that often. I’ll have to look that up, Eric. I don’t pay attention to aluminum that much.
Dr. Eric:
Just curious. Not to get into the vaccine talk, but some vaccines use it as an adjuvant. It’s also an immune stimulator as well. The other heavy metals have an impact when it comes to the immune system and autoimmunity. Maybe we could both research it and see why it doesn’t show up as far as if it is related to the different chelating agents. I was just curious about that.
Supporting detoxification. What are some of the things that you do to support detoxification? I’m guessing maybe there is one or two things that you mainly focus on, but there is a lot of different things that could be done.
Dr. Wendie:
This is my favorite part of the conversation. The first part of the conversation is about how bad things are and how depressing it is, how you get all this exposure. But this part of the conversation is what agency do you have? How do you take control of the narrative? How do you alter your future and your health? I love this part.
Think of it in a couple of different ways. When you think about, let’s go big picture, toxins in general. You can eat them in your food and water and alcohol and juice. You could put them on your body with products and lotions and clothing. They could be around you, like living near a golf course or a power plant, or your air and water quality. There is some overlap with what you’re drinking and environmental things.
When you look at how you’re going to take control of this narrative, first, let’s stop getting exposed in as many ways as possible. When we’re talking specifically about metals, if you have lead pipes, obviously do not drink from your water. Lead gets absorbed in your skin, too, so you want to filter your water to get the lead out so that you’re not bathing in it and absorbing it and not drinking it and not cooking with it. That’s a special case. If you have lead pipes, you really want to address that.
The next level would be if you own a home that was built before 1978, try not to do DIY projects on it yourself. Every time you cut into the wall, remove a wall, change something, you’re disrupting what’s already there. You make the particles airborne. You breathe them in, they absorb through your skin, and you could eat them, not on purpose. Try not to do that.
If you have mercury fillings, get them safely taken out with a biologic dentist because they continue to expose you to mercury. I wish I knew this 40 years ago. I had mercury fillings for over 40 years. I never knew that it was implicated in hearing loss until I had hearing loss. If you have mercury fillings, get them taken out. They’re nasty for you.
Then we go to how do you actually optimize the body? Here’s the unpopular part: minimize alcohol. Alcohol is a direct poison. It’s literally poison. When you drink alcohol, you stop all of your typical detox work because the body knows if you have to deal with alcohol, it’s so much higher on the priority list than dealing with the toxins stored in your fat or the toxins nailing your thyroid. You’re going to want to minimize your alcohol so that you’re not distracting the liver off of doing routine and regular maintenance and detox on your body.
Then you want to optimize your liver: N-acetyl cysteine, alpha-lipoic acid, phytonutrients, antioxidants. Supporting phases one and two in the liver. Eating meat and flesh is particularly politicized, but there are benefits to eating flesh that support phase two in the detox process. If you’re someone who eats meat, just make sure you’re eating grass-fed, grass-finished meat and organic chicken.
Fish is really tough because it all has plastic in it. I’m not sure what to say in terms of fish, but try to go for cold water fish. Do not eat the high mercury fish because those are another huge source. Ahi tuna, that yummy tuna belly you get with sushi; Chilean seabass, which used to be my favorite form of fish; mahi mahi; swordfish. All the big predator fish have aggregated all the mercury from all the fish they have eaten. They can’t get rid of it any better we can. So when you eat it, you take what they have and start storing it for them.
You want to make sure your gut is optimized. If you don’t have a functioning gut with good bacteria in it and poop every day in a nice long pipe, then what happens is your body has dysfunctional detox, and you’re more likely to reabsorb all of the things you’re trying to get rid of.
Make sure your gut is optimized. That’s a whole conversation unto itself, so let’s go big picture. Don’t eat processed food. Avoid alcohol because it increases leaky gut, and it throws off the biota, the bacteria in your gut. Eat probiotic foods. Eat fermented foods. Eat foods that look like themselves, that didn’t come from a package. Minimize your sugar. Minimize your stress. Make sure you poop regularly with magnesium or things that help you move, like fiber, which also helps clean up the gut. Those are some practical things.
For magnesium, you cannot harm yourself. The only thing you will do, if you take too much, is have diarrhea. For people who are constipated, they are probably psyched. You’ll know you have taken too much mag when you have diarrhea; take less. That’s the line in the sand.
Dr. Eric:
Getting back to fish, do you put a limit on even eating smaller fish or having wild salmon or sardines? Do you say, “I only want you to eat fish two or three times a week?”
Dr. Wendie:
I don’t tell people to limit fish. What we’re living in now is what I would call death by a thousand cuts. There is a lot of ways to zero in on “oh my god, this.” If you pay attention to what’s happening in our food supply, it’s horrifying. Generally, the benefits to fish outweigh the problems with fish as long as you continue to work on optimizing your body. It’s not a perfect science. I would say it’s better for you than eating pasta. When you put it in the scale of things, if fish is a staple of your diet, you’re getting great omegas with it, and that’s healing unto itself. It’s also a good source of protein.
Avoid the heavy metal fish. Avoid predator fish. I live in Boston. There is a song written about “love those dirty waters.” Don’t eat fish from the Charles River because it’s dirty. Make sure the sources of your fish are clean, to the best of your ability. It’s a little challenging, but do your best.
Dr. Eric:
Good advice. Your thoughts on sauna therapy?
Dr. Wendie:
Oh, you said the magic word. I love saunas. We have a sunlight sauna in our basement. That was my 50th birthday present. I turned 50 during COVID, and we were not traveling. Well, instead of a trip to somewhere cool, how about a sauna? We got a sauna. I’m a huge proponent of them. I’m a huge proponent of near, mid, far infrared because it gets to all the levels, especially deep, intracellularly, to help move things along.
What it does is it helps you move toxins out of your body through your sweat. It continues to act for about a half hour after you leave the sauna. I am also a huge proponent of dry brushing; Epsom salt baths; exercise. Obviously not to the level of sauna, but exercise will get you sweating and also help you with detox.
Back to your question. Yes, huge proponent. As often as you can. I do an hour. I know they recommend a half hour. I just like the relaxation of sitting in my sauna, and nobody talks to me. It’s probably a bit of going back to basics and having some downtime, so I spend an hour sitting and relaxing.
Dr. Eric:
Do you dry brush while you’re in the sauna, or do you wait until you’re in the shower?
Dr. Wendie:
I had a couple patients who said to me they didn’t get a sweat going while they’re in the sauna. I told them to try dry brushing before going in, so they can wake up the lymph. They found it did help them with sweating in the sauna.
I would say to dry brush before. It’s gross when you’re in the sauna and wet, and you’re already sweaty, to start. It’s not dry brushing at that point if you’re already sweating and moving the toxins. Dry brush before, get in the sauna, sweat, wait 30 minutes, and then shower.
Dr. Eric:
How about colonics, colon hydrotherapy?
Dr. Wendie:
Love them. There are so many things about colon hydrotherapy. I could go on and on about one. Everybody’s constipated. There are only two speeds: constipation or diarrhea. People tend toward constipation more than diarrhea. It’s fantastic for retraining the gut muscle to contract properly. Love it.
Then for detox purposes, if you’re impaired at moving your toxins along, it can retrain the gut to start to move properly. Some of the colonics, depending on what’s in them, can also support you with detoxing in the moment. People do coffee enemas. That sounded pretty unpleasant to me, so I never did it. I’ve done colon hydrotherapy with therapists who measure the pressure in your gut, and it’s amazing.
Dr. Eric:
I’ve gotten colon hydrotherapy. I do sauna regularly like you do. Have you heard of Dr. Walter Crinnion?
Dr. Wendie:
Maybe?
Dr. Eric:
He unfortunately passed away a few years ago. He was a naturopath who did a lot of research in the world of environmental toxins. He was actually one of my instructors when I went for my master’s in nutrition. We had a detoxification and biotransformation course. I’m not saying I agree with this, but he is also an expert. He said if there was one thing he would recommend to support detoxification (I don’t think it was specific for heavy metals), it would be colon hydrotherapy. It was interesting that he mentioned that over sauna and all the other modalities that are available.
Dr. Wendie:
I have to think about that. Here’s the issue. I think everything’s great. For certain people, things work better and are more accessible. I’m reluctant to say that one thing is the holy grail because it depends where you are in life and what works for you and what your finances allow for. Anybody healthy enough can get a good sweat on. You don’t need a sauna for that. I think it’s up there in the top five, I’ll put it that way.
Dr. Eric:
How about supplements, such as NAC, alpha-lipoic acid, liposomal glutathione? What are some of your favorites?
Dr. Wendie:
I take liposomal glutathione, Vitamin C, NAC, alpha-lipoic acid, and fiber every day myself. Remember, I’m still trying to get rid of my toxins. I take it every day as an ongoing support.
It’s really important before we talk about specific supplements to preface by saying think of healing as a platform, a foundation. The base of the pyramid for healing does not include binding toxins. The reason is if you haven’t handled your food, gut health, sleep, stress management, relationships with others, which could cause or help your stress. If you haven’t handled what I call the foundational behaviors of your life, you cannot detox.
If you improve your liver, but your gut’s dysfunctional, you’re not going to remove those toxins. You’re simply going to recycle them. Then you’re doing even more work and not understanding why your body is so fatigued. If you have a dysfunctional gut that’s not absorbing your supplements, then it doesn’t matter how much you take. They won’t be effective.
Any time we’re talking about this, you have to deal with the foundations first. Then you can deal with what I call higher order behaviors of detox, which is the removal process. You have to heal your gut first. You have to sleep. You can’t be a stress ball. You have to eat food that supports your body. Don’t bother detoxing until you have gotten that stuff pretty well handled. Then we can go to supplements. I had to put that in.
Dr. Eric:
That’s good to know. You focus initially more on gut healing, making sure the gut is healed. Then not just supplementation, but even sauna therapy or colon hydrotherapy. It’s still first focus on the gut.
Dr. Wendie:
Well, I think colon hydrotherapy has a great way for healing the gut in general. That, I would not put later. Sauna is fine because you’re using your skin to mobilize the toxins. It’s when you’re talking about binding the toxins. Let’s take things that support the liver’s ability to mobilize and process toxins. You don’t want to do that until you’ve fixed the gut. Gut first, and then you can layer on improving your liver with the things we were talking about, like N-acetyl cysteine and alpha-lipoic acid, which are the precursors for glutathione, which helps the liver to process, bind, and remove toxins.
Dr. Eric:
As far as alpha-lipoic acid, NAC, and liposomal glutathione, you are actively trying to detox, reduce your toxic burden. You’re not suggesting everybody should do that on a wellness basis.
Dr. Wendie:
Maybe, maybe not. Almost everyone could use Vitamin D. It’s an immune modulator and regulates the gut and the immune system and the tight junctions in your gut. It helps fight off disease. Everybody could use Vitamin D. Check your levels with your provider.
The B vitamins, most people do really well with them. Those support general health, energy, and detox. It’s a mix.
Fiber, most people could take a fiber and be okay with that.
Dr. Eric:
I take Vitamin D. I definitely need to take it, and a lot of other people do. I agree with fiber. I was specifically talking about those three: NAC, liposomal glutathione, and alpha-lipoic acid. Are those wellness supplements? Should someone just take NAC on a regular basis, or is it just like just rely on food for detox once someone has reached a point where their toxic burden has greatly decreased?
Dr. Wendie:
I would say this is the part of healing that really deserves a consultation with a functional medicine provider. It’s hard to make a blanket do this, don’t do that. I don’t know who’s on the other end of listening. I love NAC, alpha-lipoic acid, glutathione, fiber. I think they’re fantastic. I use them myself. And it’s hard to design a plan for you without knowing you. You can’t go wrong focusing on the foundations of your health and making sure your gut is optimized. Then when you really want to drill into the nuances of detox, do it with a provider.
Dr. Eric:
Awesome advice. Anything else that you want to cover when it comes to heavy metals? I think we covered a lot. Any last words you want to say with heavy metals?
Dr. Wendie:
Love last words. For heavy metals, you might not be able to get away from what you were exposed to at birth. You might live in a home that was built before 1978, so you can’t get away from ongoing exposure. But you do have the ability to heal from this, especially with regards to autoimmune disease. You can absolutely heal. Don’t give up because you have control of this narrative. There is hope.
Dr. Eric:
Thank you so much, Dr. Wendie. Where can people find out more about you? There is your current book Dirty Girl.
Dr. Wendie:
It’s cheaper on Amazon. Don’t type in “Dirty Girl.” You will be sent off into a rabbit hole. Type in “Dirty Girl detox book” or “Dirty Girl Trubow,” my name. My website is FiveJourneys.com. That also has our supplements and our podcast, which is Five Journeys Podcast.
I’m also on Instagram and Facebook at WendieTrubowMD. Our new Dirty Girl brand is now live, DirtyGirlDetox, on Facebook and Instagram.
Dr. Eric:
Thank you, Wendie. You said not to call you Dr. Wendie. Wendie, thank you again for getting together. It was great to do a deep dive into heavy metals.
Dr. Wendie:
You, too. Thank you, Eric.