Written by Christopher Kelly
Sept. 8, 2016
[0:00:00]
Christopher: Hello and welcome to the Nourish Balance Thrive Podcast. My name is Christopher Kelly and today I'm joined by Dr. William Shaw. Hi, William.
William: Hi. How are you doing, Chris?
Christopher: Great, thank you. I'm very excited to have you back. For everybody listening, this is not the first interview that I've done with Dr. Shaw. I will link in the show notes to the previous episode where we talked about the organic acids testing and we're going to talk a little bit more about organic acids testing today. But the primary focus of this interview is surviving in a toxic world and non-metal chemical toxins.
For those of you that don't know Dr. Shaw, he is a Ph.D. He is board certified in the field of Clinical Chemistry and Toxicology. He founded the Great Plains Laboratory. Before that, he was working for the Center for Disease Control. He is an amazing guy. I've just seen him speak at his workshop in San Jose where we talked about organic acids testing, we talked about the next generation genotyping that Great Plains are doing, we talked about the new test, which is the GPL-TOX, which is what we're going to talk about today. Dr. Shaw, I think you're doing some really exciting work and I'm very grateful for you. Thank you very much.
William: Well, thank you. So, the GPL-TOX test was the combination of really a lifetime goal to be able to have a relatively inexpensive test that would test for a good portion of the world's toxic chemicals. Because I saw that as being a big impediment and that virtually all physicians would not have any idea where to start with somebody who might have some unusual symptoms but has no idea where, what toxic chemicals may have affected them. And it's extremely difficult just to say, "Let's order all the different tests for every different toxic chemical." Or it would be very expensive and insurance would probably not pay for it and so forth.
By having all of these, and especially having them as a urine sample, that makes it extremely convenient. And because it is a urine sample, for most of the chemicals we test, we're testing the metabolites instead of the parent, which means the initial toxic chemical to which you are exposed. Instead we're measuring the breakdown products for the majority of the toxic chemicals.
Christopher: And, I think, that's what people are buying. I've said this before in the podcast that when you buy a test, you're not just buying the cost of doing the mass spectrometry, you're buying your experience in the field, right?
William: Actually, that's the most important thing. Because without the help in interpreting the results, this information would be close to useless.
Christopher: Well, before we get into the details, I thought I better connect the dots and just sort of circle back around with the last interview that I did where I did a Great Plains organic acids test. That's not the GPL-TOX. It's just a vanilla organic acids test. And I found quite a few problems on that result that I have been working on. And I would say the most interesting one to me was an overgrowth of clostridia species that I found. And those clostridia, they produce a metabolite called HPHPA. And this is a really interesting metabolite because it inhibits an enzyme called dopamine beta dehydrogenase.
That enzyme, it converts dopamine into another neurotransmitter called adrenaline that, of course, everybody knows. And we actually saw the manifestation of this metabolite on my organic acids result and that I had an elevation of dopamine and very low adrenaline. I went ahead and treated that with probiotic, which is a very high potency D-Lactate Free Probiotic. It contains 250 billion CFUs per gram and each serving is about a gram. I think pretty the main species of interest in this particular probiotic is lactobacillus rhamnosus which I hope I didn't get that wrong.
William: That's correct. That is correct. That first came on the scene when it was patented as a treatment for clostridia many, many years ago. I don't remember if it was the '50s or '60s. So, that was one of the more promising treatments for clostridia. And there are also treatments that are pharmaceutical like Vancomycin or Metronidazole, also are effective. But the high doses of probiotics are frequent beneficial treatment for that problem.
Christopher: Yeah. And that seems to have worked beautifully. I'll link to the probiotic that I used in the show notes. Before, my dopamine was literally off the charts and the adrenaline was quite low. Of course, we're not looking at the neurotransmitters directly. That's not possible with the urine sample.
[0:05:00]
We're looking at the metabolites. I'll link to my results that you can look at this. It's marker number 33 and 34 that I'm looking at. And in the retest that I did recently, and admittedly I was a bit sloppy and I waited too long to do the retest, but those two neurotransmitters are now back into the normal range. I wish I could pinpoint exactly how this feels in terms of my symptoms. I don't think it's huge. One thing I have noticed is I've gone back to being a morning person.
So, with the low turnover adrenaline, I used to find that 7 0'clock was not a good time to talk to me, which is not great. In fact, I actually changed my schedule so that my podcast started at 7:30 a.m. This morning, I accidentally got on to this podcast 30 minutes early because I thought I was starting at 7:00 a.m. and I forgot that I changed my schedule. It made me sort of more of a morning person, is the only thing I can pinpoint in symptoms. But, I mean, personally, I think it's better to quantify things and just fix them before you show symptoms.
William: That's right. So, there is like a tipping point. Usually, what I advise people, if the HPHPA gets up in the area of 500 or more, there are going to be more serious symptoms. The person is going to have depression, anxiety, and sometimes anorexia nervosa. I mean, there's just a wide range of symptoms -- autism. They all become much more severe symptoms when the values get to that range. Where with lesser values, some of the common symptoms are more in the gastrointestinal tract, problems with diarrhea, constipation and sometimes cycling between diarrhea and constipation.
Christopher: And so that's the good news. That got better. I fixed that problem. Perhaps less good is my arabinose. The arabinose is a sugar that's produced by pathogenic species of yeast called Candida. And I definitely had an elevation on the original test. I was 46 when the upper limit is 20. And I took a blend of botanical rainforest herb made by a company called Raintree. It includes a number of things that nobody has ever heard of including Pau D'arco, is probably the most well-known herb and then also a Brazilian pepper tree. There's a whole bunch of it. I'll link again to this product that I took.
I think I don't really know whether this worked or not. So, I'd been battling with arabinose for a long time and it really baffles me. I feel like I really haven't gotten to the bottom of it. I'm certainly not drinking alcohol or eating sugar anymore and it's been suggested to me that yeast can eat ketones and I think we touched on that briefly in our last interview, which is a perhaps less convincing hypothesis. But certainly, my arabinose got worse.
William: Yeah, it did. And so I would say you probably just need either a more powerful antifungal. And then the other thing I'm not sure of is whether the treatment stopped prior to the testing. Sometimes there is a rebound if the treatment doesn't go on long enough. Candida is sometimes a difficult player to eliminate.
Christopher: No. So, there was a long period. I took these supplements for a couple of months and then there was six months in between the two tests. I don't know whether it got better and then got worse again because I certainly did some other things that people would agree is not conducive towards health and longevity namely I went to Canada and raced my bike in the mud for seven days and I was using chemical toilets and, I mean, I was with 700 guys and they come from all over the world.
So, if there was any ever a good place to pick something up it was there. I'm not sure about that. But I will continue to quantify that and test. One thing I was also pleased with was the oxalates. We talked about that last time. I was really worried that maybe our diet was too high in oxalates because we eat so many vegetables and some nuts. Obviously, my wife eats the exact same diet and we also tested her and her oxalates were in the normal range. I think I'm a special flower and maybe the Candida is at play here in the oxalates.
William: Right. The Candida definitely contributes. It's interesting. I wanted to know the mechanism and I found that if I cultured Candida, it did not, and then tested the culture, it was not producing oxalates directly. But what it does is it produces a precursor of oxalates so that if it's in your intestine that precursor is then converted to oxalate by human metabolism. So, these things are tricky as far as understanding. Whereas certain fungi can produce oxalates directly. As a matter of fact, if you go out in the forest and see fungus on a decaying tree, frequently you'll see different colored crystals that are a lot of times are oxalates produced by the fungus.
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I can remember in a really damp humid Ford in Puerto Rico and seeing stalactite which I believe were probably oxalate crystal produced by the black fungus.
Christopher: Yes, absolutely amazing. Listen to my previous interview with Bill for all the details. And I'll also link to some of the articles that Bill has written. There's one in particular on the Weston A. Price website which I think is really interesting. The oxalate, I think, is the real issue. And we've been seeing this a lot. 100 people did an organic acids test after the previous podcast and it's certainly very, very common. I think your recommendation for nobody to eat soy or spinach especially if they're blending it is probably a good recommendation, general recommendation, for the people that listen to this podcast.
William: Yeah. I would say those foods are best used as maybe garnishes instead of as a meal itself. So, if you use spinach like you use parsley, you won't have to worry about it. But people should not be eating big bowls of the stuff and you can get other salad leaves that are much more suitable like romaine lettuce. It's not going to have any significant problem with the oxalates and forms a very nice salad without all the excessive oxalates.
Christopher: Yeah. I actually stopped eating spinach completely. I must admit, after that, I kind of fell out of love with spinach. But I certainly wasn't doing anything crazy like dumping three pounds of it into a Vitamix blender and drinking it or anything like that. It's just [0:11:49] [Indiscernible] in our household for a while at least. Okay, so I really want to talk about the GPL-TOX. Why don't you start by telling us why you decided this was an important area and that you should develop a test to find out how bad the problem was?
William: The main reason is there really wasn't any suitable testing available in the world. There are a couple of laboratories that offered each of these as a separate test. But if you wanted to test a lot of the common things in the environment on yourself you'd have to pay $10,000 and do 50 different tests. The goal was to combine them all into a single test and in an affordable price. That was the goal. And realizing that so many people had medical symptoms that were due these toxic chemicals, but unless you could measure them it would be almost impossible to prove with the exception of if you're working at a factory that had one particular chemical, you could do the one test that you knew that this company was producing. I mean, that's the only thing. But for the general public we're exposed to a whole variety of a whole ocean of toxic chemicals that we have no knowledge which ones those are.
Christopher: I've been aware of the problem for a while. My wife recently interviewed Dr. Julie Walsh who is a naturopathic doctor. She is the wife of Dr. Bryan Walsh who's one of my favorite human beings in the planet. She talks about how this was, what she thought was a huge problem in the research that she's been doing on the Paleo Baby Podcast. I'll link to that. And I've also just listened to Dr. Tim Gerstmar at the Ancestral Health Symposium talk about obesogens and their role in obesity especially in the US. Can you talk about some of the general problems that you think the environmental toxins are causing for people's health?
William: Fertility is one of the big things. There's marked reduction in fertility and problem with both men and women. A number of studies have shown markedly reduced testosterone and sperm counts in men over the previous decades. So, many, many of these chemicals have an adverse effect on reproduction and fertility. Another big aspect would be cancer. A lot of these things can be carcinogenic. Mental health can play very important role.
The brain is the most metabolically active organ in the human body. Many of these toxic chemicals affect the metabolism of the mitochondria, the energy producing organelles in the cell. That can have a tremendous effect. If your brain isn't producing enough energy your brain is going to be reaching inaccurate conclusions so the information you're getting from your brain is impaired. It's not working right. So, to my mind, a simple explanation is depression. It's just your brain not producing adequate energy to be able to function.
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Christopher: As soon as you say mitochondria, you've got me. I'm hooked. Every single interview that I do, every expert I talk to, they're all talking about mitochondrial function as being key to health and longevity and performance. When those little mitochondria get messed up lots of bad things happen. So, I'm really, really interested in that. Can you talk about the connection with an elevation of succinate, which is a mitochondrial metabolite that can be measured on the O?
William: Yes.
Christopher: Because when you mentioned that in my workshop, my eyes lit up. Because we see that all the time on the Os and I've never really understood what it meant.
William: Yeah. That was really a recent discovery. It's amazing to me after using this, having this testing available, I still find new insights into it. Once we started testing a variety of toxic chemicals I saw that there was a very close relationship between toxic chemical exposure and Succinic acid. And the reason for this is that Succinic acid is the substrate for the Krebs cycle enzyme succinic dehydrogenase. And succinic dehydrogenase is a unique enzyme in that it serves two functions in the mitochondria.
It's the only Krebs cycle enzyme that has two functions. It serves as part of the Krebs cycle itself, the part by which carbons are transformed and provide substrates for the electron transport, but it's also a part of the electron transport system itself, which is the system by which the mitochondria produces ATP as the main energy source in all cells, really in all living things.
Christopher: So, marker number 24, succinic on your organic acids result. Go now and have a look at that and see if you have an elevation. And if it's elevated, you may want to consider the GPL-TOX. In fact, I think you should consider the GPL-TOX anyway. But yeah, that's a really interesting connection there.
William: And then in addition, we have yet another marker of mitochondrial function on the GPL-TOX test itself. So, the succinic acid dehydrogenase is part of what is called complex II of the mitochondria that there are different complexes in the electron transport mechanism that produces energy. And marker on the GPL-TOX is a marker for mis-function or dysfunction of the complex I in the mitochondria. So, the two of them together are very, very useful. Sometimes we see both of them are impaired, sometimes just one or the other.
Christopher: And which is the marker on the GPL-TOX?
William: Yes. It's called tiglylglycine, and that is on the GPL-TOX. One other thing to point out is that the elevated succinic acid really means it could be non-metal toxins but it could also be metal toxins. If both of those groups are normal the reason for it can be a mitochondrial mutation or a mutation in the nucleus in the genes that regulate the mitochondria. And we've seen that. We were able to use it to find a genetic disease of the mitochondria called Kearns-Sayre syndrome where the person has profound lack of energy and has difficulty with exercise and so forth. And so what's fascinating is we see individuals who have extreme toxicity have abnormalities equivalent to people who have severe genetic deletions of the mitochondrial DNA.
Christopher: That's amazing. For me, just connecting the dots, and just recording the interviews for the Keto Summit, and in particular I talked to Travis Kristofferson and Tom Seyfried who have been talking about a metabolic theory of cancer and how the somatic mutation theory is falling apart. And, of course, this is very mitochondrial-centric idea of what might be causing cancer. So, really interesting for me to sort of connect these dots and say, "I wonder if these guys should talk to each other and do some testing."
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I think a lot of people listening to this podcast will think that they live a pretty clean and non-toxic life. Can you tell me about some of the potential sources of to the toxins that are measured on the GPL-TOX?
William: Just starting out, the first marker is a marker for a gasoline additive. And so this could be due to just driving in traffic especially if you live in a high traffic area, you have a long commute, I'm thinking like on the Los Angeles Freeway or something like that. But in addition to that, this additive, there's two additives that were put in gasoline and primarily this is to produce, increase what is called the octane rating of the gasoline so that the explosions that are occurring that cause your cylinders to move in your car are more smooth so that they're less erratic so you get better engine performance.
And so lead was used in the past but when that became banned there was increase interest in putting new things. So, the chemicals called MTBE and ETBE became widely used. And, of course, this is a common pattern. You ban one toxic substance and then you put in a new one that doesn't have a rap sheet yet. And so it takes a period of years to find out, "Oh, this may be just as toxic as the thing it replaced." That's what's going on.
Christopher: That's a very common anti-pattern, I would call that. And we see it over and over again with all these chemicals. You mentioned in the talk that sometimes the thing that they replaced it with may be worse than the original problem. It's just less studied.
William: Yeah. And so that was the case. First they came up with the chemical called MTBE and then more evidence came out that that was toxic so they add one metal group to the MTBE and get ETBE which has virtually all the same toxic effects but they haven't had the chance to put together all the studies to show that it's just as toxic yet. There's like a grace period in which they can pollute the environment until the necessary work is done. That shouldn't be how things are done. Things should be you have to absolutely prove the safety of something before exposing it to the environment, is the way things should be done.
Christopher: That's a really interesting point you just touched on there then. You think that the burden of proof is on the people that are introducing these chemicals.
William: Yes.
Christopher: Because in other areas of biochemistry -- Richard Feinman, in particular, and I hope I'm not misrepresenting him here, he thinks that the burden of proof is on people to show harm from a low carbohydrate diet. I think that's a really interesting idea. I think that people have failed to show any harm of a low carbohydrate diet. But you think with these new chemicals being introduced into the environment, it should be the other way around? The burden of proof is on the person introducing it.
William: Definitely. It should be on the person producing the thing to show that it is safe. Otherwise, it may take ten or 20 years to find out that a particular thing is extremely toxic. So, one example, if we go back to the example of the chemicals from the clostridia that inhibit the dopamine beta-hydroxylase, the enzyme that converts dopamine to norepinephrine, my research shows that the metabolite of aspartame, NutraSweet, the chemical in Diet Coke, causes exactly the same problem. And it will also inhibit the conversion of dopamine to norepinephrine.
This is something, of course, that's widespread. I remember I only used Diet Coke for two days in my entire life. I was like, "Okay, I'll try it out." And I got the most severe headaches within one day of using Diet Coke. And, of course, I never used it again. That was my one experience. But there's many websites talking about all the toxicity. So, the toxicity of aspartame is probably mediated at least partially through this exaction on inhibition of dopamine conversion.
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Christopher: Can you talk about how the metabolomics work for this test? We've not measured -- So, for this gasoline additive. I just said gasoline. I've been in America too long. For this petrol additive, we're talking about 2-hydroxyisobutyric acid, is the name of the compound that you've measured in my urine sample. And I should mention that I will link to my GPL-TOX result in the show notes for this episode so people can see my result and have a better idea of what we're talking about. Can you talk about how measuring this substance in the urine relates to my exposure?
William: This gasoline additive is broken down to this particular chemical, the 2-hydoroxyisobutyric acid. And so, this is in gasoline fumes. But the main source of contamination with this had to do with the spillage from the gasoline storage tanks. When you drive into the gas station, I guess you would call it the petrol station.
Christopher: Yeah, sorry.
William: What you don't see is underground there's this huge metal reservoir that holds thousands of gallons of the petrol. And invariably, these things leak. And the bad thing about the MTBE and ETBE is that they're very water soluble. So, once they've leaked into the ground, if there's any of the water moving underground, it will quickly move into the water supply. So, any places that are using wells, they quickly be contaminated by this gasoline additive. And there are cases like -- This was very popular in Southern California. It leaked into the water supply and about half the water in the entire city, was one of the popular beach cities in California, virtually half of the water was all contaminated, was undrinkable.
It took nearly ten years, ten or 15 years, to reengineer water that was safe to drink. And it resulted in huge lawsuits against the different companies producing the products. But again, it took a very long time before this was discovered. So, these things are long term and they can have profound effects. They can have neurologic effects. They can have psychiatric effects because your brain has to use tremendous amount of energy and your thought processes. Even when you're asleep your brain is still extremely active and requires energy for renewing itself.
Christopher: Are you dependent on liver function? So, if this metabolite is being measured in my urine, are you depending on my liver being able to metabolize the environmental toxin and create the actual substance that's being measured in the urine in order for this test to work? I'm just wondering.
William: Yes. So, all of these things require a functioning liver. It doesn't alter the test results very much because if your liver is extremely impaired you're going to be in the hospital. So, unless you're on your last legs, there's usually adequate liver function to produce enough of the metabolite that will be able to detect it. It would only be if a person is hospitalized and their legs might there be some reduction in the amount of the chemicals detected.
Christopher: And do you think the problem might get worse if it was someone losing weight? I know that some of these toxins are stored in fat tissue.
William: Yes. In the event there is some storage of these chemicals in the fat, and so what may occur in some cases, the person who's fasting or on a diet may, there may be higher amounts of these in the urine. As a matter of fact, that suggestion that some physicians have made is that prior to the test you do a one-day fast to provoke the increased excretion. So, if some of these are stored in the fat they'll be released. So, I anticipate that there's going to be higher amounts of these things following fast or dieting.
[0:30:08]
Christopher: There was a story that Tim told in his talk about the orcas, which are not far from where he lives, and there was a problem with the salmon run that year and there weren't so many salmon for the orca to eat. And the marine biologists were worried about the orcas. And they weren't worried that they were going to starve. They were worried that they were going to tap too deep into their fat stores. They were so toxic that when they started breaking down the fat stores it would actually poison the orcas and they would die, which I thought was an extraordinary story. I looked up online afterwards and it's true. I can't believe it. It's ridiculous.
William: Yeah. It would be very important for animals, all the sea mammals, the seals, the whales, and other marine animals that depend on fat for insulation as well as storage of energy. Things can be very severe for them because, unfortunately, fat is a place where a lot of toxic chemicals can be stored. And so the person losing weight or the animal losing weight can be exposed to much higher amounts of toxic chemicals.
Christopher: When I look at my result, it seems very clean overall, at least to my untrained eye. But the MTBE ETBE is certainly on the higher end. And I think there was one other metabolite that I looked at as well that could be related to exhaust fumes. I immediately started thinking about my life -- I'll describe it. I live in what I would describe as a Costco shed. It's like a very basic house in the redwood trees in a town called Bonny Doon just outside Santa Cruz. My water comes from a well. And the only WiFi signal is mine. And we only eat out of glass and stainless steel.
I don't own a microwave. My only exposure to plastic is the plastic water bottles I use in my bike. So, I live like a hermit in the forest, like very little exposure, I think. But I do ride my bicycle on the road and I wonder whether that kind of discrepancy that overall is very low on everything apart from stuff that might come from exhaust fumes. Do you think that exhaust fumes could be a problem for cyclists?
William: Definitely. So, I would say that's probably, I mean, you probably nailed that. That is probably your main source of the relatively little exposure that you have is probably due to that factor. Overall, I would say yours is one of the cleanest samples that I've seen and reflects your particular clean lifestyle.
Christopher: Or not clean. We bought this house that definitely needs some work but we chose not to. The carpet sort of smells like the pitbull terrier that used to live here. We decided not to overhaul the place and paint it and replace the carpets and everything. It's interesting my xylene is pretty low. I know this metabolite because we used to run the Genova Diagnostics organic acids test which has fewer markers in totals but it does include xylene. So, I was kind of excited to get that back. Can you talk a little bit about xylene, how it might pertain to new carpets?
William: So, this is a good thing. This is a common contaminant. One of our employees was just repainting her house and, of course, she had an extremely toxic amount of xylene metabolite as a result of that. So, anybody who does painting for a living or other kind of house refurnishing. And this could also be found in carpeting. And so when you put a new carpet in, it smells for a considerable period of time due to the outgassing and the solvents like xylene can be some of the common chemicals that are coming out. By the way, there are companies that produce environmentally sound paints. You can find them on the internet. You can even find probably, I would bet, in California, you can find retail outlets that have the paints that don't have large amounts of toxic fumes like xylene.
Christopher: What's the mechanism there? I'm always fascinated by the mechanism. I notice that you wrote in the description that xylenes are bound to glycine before being excreted. It may be that glycine is becoming a slightly or somewhat rare amino acid that we see people being deficient in. Is that the mechanism of toxicity there?
William: What is going on is that xylene is detoxified by what is called two phases and one phase, the substance which is the xylene is very fat soluble, not very water soluble at all.
[0:35:14]
And then it's converted to a more water soluble form. And then that water soluble form is conjugated with the amino acid glycine, which makes it even more water soluble so it can be removed and these are the bile or the urine. That's the two-phase reaction and the amino acid glycine is used up in the place. But that's a very common liver detoxification reaction.
Christopher: It seems that we see a lot of people with an elevation of pyroglutamate, which is an intermediate that dumps out when your liver is trying to produce glutathione. And so glycine is implicated as a deficiency in that situation. We see that all the time.
William: For example, the metabolite of the NutraSweet is metabolized in a very similar fashion and being converted to a glycine conjugate which is called the hippuric acid. The main function of that is actually in removing toxic chemicals produced by your intestinal flora. There's tremendous amounts of those. Because probably in evolutionary history, there were no exposure to things like xylene and other chemicals but probably there's always been these microbial toxins produced in the intestine and the detoxification system probably evolved in order to clear this stuff out. It's only recently that it's had to deal with a new challenge which is this whole host of new toxic chemicals.
Christopher: It's the environmental mismatch. This is why the Ancestral Health lens is so powerful. You can see that it's not that these chemicals are problem per se. It's that we're not adapted to processing them. I'm sure we've always been exposed to toxins. It's just not like this, not in this amount, not this number of chemicals, not chronically like this.
William: Yes. And so, one of the other chemicals on the test, the phthalate, is another -- I mean, it's found that almost every commercial product, in plastics, in deodorants and in perfume and most of the cosmetic around and even drugs. Drugs use phthalate as a time release agents. And this is even though these phthalates have been proven to be very toxic. They alter the sex organs of male children so that they're deformed. And this has been found both in human studies and in animal studies. And the phthalates also cause defects in sperm production. So, I think I was somewhat taken aback because at the San Jose Conference, one of the women was applauding that fact, I guess, thinking that humans have destroyed the planet so much maybe we need less reproduction. Humans gone.
Christopher: I really don't buy into that philosophy. I think that's like tapping out. What's the point of any of it if you're just going to tap out and not reproduce? What's the point at all? I don't get it. Let's not do anything then if that's the idea. But I was delighted to see that my phthalates are super low. It looks like they barely registered. Is it common for you to see them higher than this?
William: Yes. We've seen a number of cases where there are many times over the 95%. For example, in a person who was an artist, had extremely toxic levels with extreme chronic fatigue. And they also affect the mitochondrial function.
Christopher: Yeah. I should probably elucidate what I'd been doing to get them this low and that's dodging soap. I'm definitely a soap dodger. I only shower really with soap when absolutely necessary, when I get really mucky on the bike or something. But for the most part, I just use cold water and I'm not using deodorant. I'm not really using shampoo, maybe once a week, and certainly no personal care products or cologne or anything like that. I'm just avoiding those things completely. And it seems to be working according to this test.
William: Yeah. I mean, it really looks great.
Christopher: Talk to me about pesticides. We buy all our food from the Farmer's Market and it's really common for that food to not be certified organic. But when you talk to the farmer or the guy selling the food, he says, "It's not certified. We don't use a lot of chemical pesticides. You're just going to have to take our word for it."
[0:40:05]
And to get this result back and see it looking so good, I'm quite please with that. But do you think that's where the pesticide exposure is coming from? Can you talk a bit about it and how you'd see it on the GPL-TOX?
William: We have a number of pesticides. It's an extremely comprehensive marker and we're measuring the metabolites of a wide range of organelle phosphates. I mean, it's more than 100 different organelle phosphates of pesticides that are measured in this test which makes it extremely powerful. And your results really are excellent. It looks like your farmer friends at the Farmer's Market are telling you the truth.
Christopher: There will be high fives at the Farmer's Market this weekend.
William: Yeah. So, people who are not eating organic foods are going to, typically, have much, much higher values. And we've seen individuals with severe impair, like severe autism, have extremely high values. And the recent scientific paper indicating that the greater the toxic chemical exposure the higher and more severe the symptoms of autism, for example. But these are also, they can affect the behavior. They can be carcinogenic. So they're really, really toxic substances. Yours is, again, one of the least toxic results that I've seen since we started doing this indicating really the food.
In Southern California, there's another source of worry and that is the aerial spraying because of the medfly, the fly that gets into fruits. It's widespread in Southern California. So as a result of that there is aerial spraying in which sometimes people will be just getting a tan in their backyard and they get sprayed from one of these planes and that stuff can be absorbed right through the skin and the person becomes toxic. But the food supply is the most common way that people become toxic.
Christopher: I actually spoke with a lady this week that said that she moved house because of that. She was by a farm and they were doing aerial spraying, so she moved. I think we better shift gears here a little bit and explain what people should do should the result come back and it's not what they hope for. Because my concern was these organic compounds, how do you remove them from your body? It's not like you can really sweat them out or can you?
William: Yeah. So, you can indeed sweat them out. That is one of the best ways of removing is exercise to the point of sweating. You need to do some vigorous exercise. It helps a lot. And one of the things that is most effective is the sauna treatment especially if combined with the use of the vitamin niacin. And it is the type of niacin that causes sweating. There are different forms of niacin. There's some that is called non-flushing. So, niacin has a reaction that causes the skin to become red and just as a temper, I think, but it because it's causing dilation of the blood vessels.
So, it also helps to bring some of the toxic chemicals up to the surface where they can be removed. And one of the physicians involved with detoxification has amazing pictures in which after people have done the sauna for a period of time they have stuff just pouring out of their skin. I mean, red, yellow, blue, black, just crud, just oozing out of their skin. So, this is stuff that the body has stored up. And with the sauna treatment, it's being released.
It's very important when this is happening especially if you have this severe reaction, this oozing, to shower, get rid of it, to towel it off so that otherwise it could be reabsorbed back into the skin. So, it's a very good idea when you built up a sweat to wash it all off so that it's not reabsorbed. Because, otherwise, this stuff can be reabsorbed right back into the skin again.
Christopher: And I have been sauna-ing. I do have an infrared sauna. It's a really, really cheap one. It's made of super cheap pine wood. I have to construct it myself, more or less. It's got like tin foil panels.
[0:45:07]
But it does get quite hot. It's pretty good. And it definitely makes me sweat. And then I do jump into a cold shower immediately afterwards. And from what you just said, that seems like the right thing to do. Obviously, I sweat a lot on the bike but the atmosphere is so dry here in Northern California or it tends to just dry. You don't really drip sweat. And so I would question how much stuff I would really get rid off in that way.
William: Yes, so that's a problem. I still remember playing tennis out in Las Vegas in the summertime where it was like 115 but I didn't have any sweat. At least I didn't have any detectable sweat. I was actually sweating a lot. And so what was curious, when I went back to my room I saw my whole body was covered with a white coating which, of course, was salt. I didn't feel any sweat at all but, obviously, I had sweated an extreme amount playing tennis at 115 degrees. But there, the humidity was something like 2% or something like that.
Christopher: Talk to me about hepatic recirculation. So, some of the things like cholesterol, that's hardened stuff and it should be reabsorbed in the intestines and certain soluble fibers might prevent that. So, do you recommend those things?
William: Yeah. Actually, that's another thing that's recommended in the sauna treatment, is taking some vegetable oil so that will have a tendency secreted into the bile will just go out of the body with the stool by taking some vegetable oil during your sauna treatment. That can be very helpful to eliminate those toxic chemicals that are appearing in the bile.
Christopher: I worry about vegetable oils though. I've kind of decided that these vegetable oils are probably not something that we should be having in general. But you think it's okay in this instance?
William: Yeah, it does seem to work. I thought the same thing but I think that you kind of have to decide which is the most important factor. So, if you have a lot of exposure, it may be helpful. But you need to make sure, of course, you get the right balance of fats. And then the other factor is a large number of the chemicals you will see on the test are derivatives of a cysteine which means that these are produced by glutathione. So, about half the chemicals in the GPL-TOX test are detoxified using glutathione. Using glutathione can also be very helpful in eliminating the toxic chemicals from the body.
Christopher: Interesting. Yeah, we've been using PharmaNac. I've interviewed a scientist that invented PharmaNac and it's n-acetylcysteine, a whole gram of n-acetylcysteine in a blister pack. Yeah, that can be a way to improve your glutathione status.
William: So, you had a little bit of a glutathione deficiency on the organic acid test.
Christopher: Yeah, that's right. You're right, markers number 58 and 59. I will, of course, link to these results so people can see my organic acids test and the GPL-TOX. Yeah, I think I might have to get back on that.
William: As you're detoxing, of course, you're using up glutathione. You may need to replenish it either with the n-acetylcysteine or with the glutathione itself.
Christopher: Right. Yeah, I know. I need to think about that. We're going to add it on. So, the organic acids test is one of my favorite tests. And we run them on absolutely everyone. And, in fact, when someone says I can only afford to do one test, I always suggest the organic acids test. And we've decided, I talked to Tommy yesterday and we decided to add the GPL-TOX onto all of our organic acids test to see what kind of exposure people are having. So, if you order an organic acids test through me, you will automatically get the GPL-TOX in addition to that.
The cool thing about it is it's not an additional test. They can do the test from the same urine sample. So, you just get the extra information without any additional hassle. When I attended this workshop recently in San Jose, they were doing a special offer which was to save some money on the organic acids test. I think what you had in mind there, Dr. Shaw, was that perhaps doctors who were new to the test would order one or two because they just want to see how it was and they would save some money.
[0:50:00]
Well, I ordered 20 of them. I'm going to pass that savings on to the people that listen to my podcast.
William: That's great. That's a good opportunity.
Christopher: Yeah. So, if you come to the show notes for this episode, I'll put a link to the test in there and if you use the discount code TOX, you'll save $150 off the cost of an organic acids with the GPL-TOX. You're going to have a ton of data that we can talk about after that. So, yeah, that will be fun to see what kind of exposure everybody has, whether everybody is living quite as cleanly as I am or whether there's some problems there. Was there anything else I missed? Was there anything else you wanted to talk about Dr. Shaw?
William: Yeah. Actually, there's one other thing that is like an add-on which is the glyphosate, which is part of the herbicide called Roundup. It has association with almost every chronic disease and we recently found that was present -- Some children with autism had very high values. So, it's very important that your listeners understand the issue with genetically modified foods is not necessarily just a fact that they've had these genes from bacteria spliced into the food. There is some concern about that.
But the greater concern is that these genetically modified crops had been genetically modified so that they can be doused with very high amounts of herbicides without dying. And as a consequence, these genetically modified foods, which is rapidly becoming a large portion of our entire food supply, have extremely high amounts of toxic chemicals. Glyphosate, unfortunately, wasn't able to be tested by the mass spectrometer. It had certain properties that didn't allow it to be tested with the others but we have it available as an add-on test in which you get something like a 60% discount if you order it together.
So, you can get organic acids, GPL-TOX, and Glyphosate for really substantial savings when ordered together. And this is extremely fascinating because it ties together a number of different factors. So, the Glyphosate kills a lot of the beneficial bacteria but at the same time it stimulates the growth of bacteria that are not affected by Glyphosate like the clostridia. So, there's several papers published recently in which there is increasing clostridia infection of the dairy herds and our meat animals and also that the farmers are becoming infected with clostridia. And these are in fields in which the Glyphosate is being used a lot. And, of course, that feed is going to the animals and then the animals in turn have high amounts of the clostridia and then are infecting the humans.
So that you can see that this chemical being put into environment can cause the entire ecosystem to be shifted so that there's huge amounts of unfavorable bacteria in our environment. It's a really big deal.
Christopher: I think it's quite depressing, actually. It was you, actually, that first elucidated this mechanism to me. We'd been thinking about this for a while. What is the mechanism of toxicity for Glyphosate? And it was you that pointed towards these studies that showed the changes in the gut microbiome. My question to you is, though, do you think you're going to see anybody that's not had exposure to Glyphosate?
William: Just in those countries that ban it. But even in those countries, for example Europe, most European countries are banning the use of this but they're allowing the animal feed which is loaded with Glyphosate to be fed to their cattle. So, for example, Argentina, which has soy doused in Glyphosate is exporting most of the animal feed to Europe. And so even though the chemical itself isn't allowed, all the animal feed is contaminated. As a consequence, people in Europe are getting large amounts of exposure as well.
[0:55:04]
So, it's quickly becoming almost a worldwide exposure to this particular chemical, which is really bad. We're really heading to an ecological showdown, so to speak.
Christopher: And what's your grand vision of Great Plains? Do you think that people are going to have to test this and see that it's really happening before they do something about it? Is that what you're thinking?
William: Yes. So, I think that's one of the things that testing is very powerful because once a person sees that they have these chemicals, or that their children who were impaired have these chemicals, that's going to make a group that's going to be involved in the solution of these problems. Until people know, "Oh, I've got this in my body and this might not be good for me and animal studies have shown that it causes cancer," and so forth then there's going to be a much greater concern. It's that adage out of sight, out of mind. So, once it's in your sight that you have these particular things, you're going to be much more on board as far as being involved in the regulation of toxic chemicals.
Christopher: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think it's such a powerful thing and that's why I'm adding the TOX on to the organic acid so that people won't think about it as long as they can't see it. And I had seen it in the past. With the xylene that we used to measure on the Genova test, I worked with an auto body workshop owner and he installed a $30,000 air filtration system after he saw his xylene. We did see reduction in the xylene afterwards when he redid the test. So, something changed. Yeah, it's important. It's powerful when -- Certainly, for me, I know personally as well, when I see a test result, that's a powerful motivator for me. You have to quantify it to take action.
William: Yeah. I mean, so the exposure like that, I mean, this affects the central nervous system. This is going to lead to, if not taken care of, it's going to lead to depression and it may lead to Parkinson's or other neurologic diseases as a result of the long term exposure. It's an extremely important topic so that people can have a healthy environment for them and their descendants.
Christopher: Well, Dr. Shaw, this has been fantastic. I will, of course, link to the Great Plains Lab webinar archive which is growing all the time. I just looked at it last night and there were some new webinars I hadn't seen. And then also I should link to the separate website that you have, your Great Plans University, which is how I found out about your workshop. Are there going to be other workshops like the one that I attended in the future?
William: Yes. For your UK colleagues, there's one going to in London in October. Be sure to take a look at that. We'll be talking about really the same topic we talked, how to ensure that your children are healthy, how to ensure that you're fertile, what are the things that can be done to make sure that the children you have are going to be the healthiest possible, what are the different steps you can make to ensure a healthy pregnancy and healthy children after birth?
Christopher: The most important of topics. I find you a delightful speaker as well. I really enjoyed your presentations at the workshop in San Jose. Thank you very much for that. I think you're doing fantastic work.
William: Thank you. Appreciate it, Christopher.
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