Infertility, miscarriages, brain fog and environmental toxins: My conversation with Dr. Tom O’Bryan

In this episode of Defiant Health, Dr. Tom O’Bryan discusses his unique approach to managing environmental toxins that now flood our lives, toxins that increase our risk for numerous health struggles including cognitive impairment, autoimmune diseases, and cancers. Dr. O’Bryan brings his considerable experience in educating and investigating the effects of such factors as particulate matter in air, glyphosate, abnormal gut permeability, and diet. He has a special interest in reproductive and cognitive health and describes his and his family’s unique approach to minimizing exposures in their home and environment. Among Dr. O’Bryan’s unique abilities is to translate the science into practical, actionable steps that you and your family can adopt. 

News for how to join Dr. O'Bryan's upcoming summit, The Inflammation Equation, can be found on his Facebook page. 

For more of Dr. O'Bryan's educational materials, go to his website, TheDr.com.
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For BiotiQuest probiotics including Sugar Shift, go here.

A 15% discount is available for Defiant Health podcast listeners by entering discount code UNDOC15 (case-sensitive) at checkout.*
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Get your 15% Paleovalley discount on fermented grass-fed beef sticks, Bone Broth Collagen, low-carb snack bars and other high-quality organic foods here.*

For 12% off every order of grass-fed and pasture-raised meats from Wild Pastures, go here.

*Dr. Davis and his staff are financially compensated for promoting BiotiQuest and Paleovalley products.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:06

In this episode of Defiant Health, dr Tom O'Brien discusses his unique approach to managing environmental toxins that now flood our lives, toxins that increase our risk for numerous health struggles, including cognitive impairment, autoimmune diseases and cancers. Dr O'Brien brings his considerable experience in educating and investigating the effects of such factors as particulate matter in air, glyphosate and normal gut permeability and diet. He has a special interest in reproductive and cognitive health and describes his and his family's unique approach to minimizing exposures in their home and environment. Among Dr O'Brien's unique abilities is to translate the science into practical, actionable steps that you and your family can take. I also want you to consider supporting the sponsors of this Defiant Health podcast Paleo Valley and Biodiquest.

Speaker 1: 1:00

Choosing high quality products to support your health journey is important. This is why Paleo Valley is a supporter of my Defiant Health podcast. Their grass-fed, pasture-raised beef sticks, for instance, are fermented unlike nearly all other beef sticks. If you haven't tried their pasture-raised pork sticks, you're in for a treat, as they are irresistibly delicious. Profession Biodiquest, also a sponsor of this podcast, provides unique probiotic products that, in my experience and the experience of the followers of my program, are unlike all other probiotics as they are crafted using the scientific insights of academic microbiologist Dr Raul Cannell, an innovator in the concept of collaborative effects among microbes. Welcome, dr O'Brien. You and I have talked a number of times over the years and I've always been thrilled at having another chance to have a conversation with you because I know you bring unique ideas to the table. So when your team approached me about this idea of environmental toxins, I thought how timely and how wonderful. So tell me how you took your career down this path lately.

Speaker 2: 2:06

Ah well, you know my entire career has been like this. I mean, when I was an intern in Chicago, my ex and I could not get pregnant. So I called the seven most famous holistic practitioners I'd heard of back in 1979, and they all told me what they'd do and I put a program together and we were pregnant in six weeks. My neighbors in married housing had been through artificial insemination, nothing had worked, and asked if I'd work with them and I said well, you know, I don't think it's going to hurt you. Sure, they were pregnant in three months. So now we're hot to trot, we're four months pregnant and telling our friends and very excited. And they tell their sister in Wisconsin who would drive down to Chicago she'd had three miscarriages. Please, please, can you work with me? And so I was treating patients out of my dorm room, but you know we lived on campus and you know you're not supposed to do that, but I did.

Speaker 2: 3:05

But I came out in practice from day one, understanding there's a bigger picture and there are emergency breaks. You know, you back out of a driveway and you say what's wrong with this car? It's barely the emergency break. And you let go of the emergency break, right. There are emergency breaks when we're trying to be healthy and we're not quite getting the job done. There's always emergency breaks and functional medicine is identifying what those are and get them out of the way. So your body always wants to heal a more healthy cell than the cell that's breaking down. It needs to be generated, and it's the environment. You know we call it epigenetics what happens around the genes? Well, what's around the genes are volatile organic solvents and heavy metals and diesel exhaust fumes in your lungs and what's going up into your brain. So it's been 40 years of learning more, all the time, of where are the emergency breaks that halt the quality of our health?

Speaker 1: 4:09

So something you've gotten quite a bit involved in, infertility. Could you tell us more specifically about the toxins that pregnant moms, or potentially pregnant moms, are exposed to?

Speaker 2: 4:19

Oh yeah, you know, with my neighbors and married housing, and shortly after that I learned that and this is one of those every and there's not much, that's every patient, but this is an every patient, every patient that had fertility complications, whether it was premature ejaculations or recurrent miscarriages or inability to get pregnant, every single one of them as a contributor to what was creating the obstacles in their health, in their ability to have a healthy pregnancy and delivery.

Speaker 2: 4:53

One of the contributors they were eating foods that they did not know were a problem for them because they didn't feel bad when they ate the food, and we've grown up believing if you don't feel bad when you eat something, it's good for you, it's not a big deal. Well, that's not true. You know, with celiac disease, the science is very clear for every one person that has gut symptoms, there are eight that don't. The ratio is eight to one. So if you think your gut has to hurt when you eat something, you'll get it right. One out of eight times Right. And so foods were a major contributor to the amount of inflammation people have, which was contributing to the emergency breaks holding back the health results that they wanted.

Speaker 1: 5:41

So are you talking about a specific class of compounds for pregnant or potentially pregnant moms? Is it mostly food? Do you think it's a variety of things like hydrocarbons in air? Is it particulate matter?

Speaker 2: 5:53

Yes, yes, yes. Unfortunately, it's yes, yes, yes. You know that there's such a cauldron of components in the toxic soup of our body. Now it's really difficult to pin one and you can identify, for example, the category of phthalates chemicals used to mold plastics. Phthalates are notorious. They inhibit neurogenesis, which means nerve cell growth and brain cell growth. So here's an example.

Speaker 2: 6:27

You know a study in 2016 in Chicago 346 pregnant women in the eighth month of pregnancy. They measured the amount of phthalates in their urine and they just looked at five of them. There are many, but they just looked at five, including the one most people have heard of BPA or Bisphenol A, which is in water bottles and many other substances, and they categorize the results into fourths the lowest, the next, the third and the highest. They then followed the offspring of those pregnancies. You know they checked in the eighth month of pregnancy what's their phthalate levels and they followed the offspring of those pregnancies and when the children turned seven years old, they did Wexler IQ tests on them, the official IQ tests. Every child whose mother was in the highest category of phthalates and 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 than the kids in the lowest category of phthalates and urine in pregnancy. And that doesn't mean anything to anyone until you understand that a one point difference in IQ was noticeable. And a seven point difference is a difference between a child working really hard getting straight A's in school and a child working really hard getting straight C's in school. That child doesn't have a chance in hell of ever excelling. Then just go to Google and type in phthalates and neurogenesis.

Speaker 2: 7:57

Here come the studies. And so these young girls who, unfortunately, have been painting their 10 little fingers and 10 little toes since they were five years old, and the phthalates in the nail polish is what makes them hard. The phthalates are in the bloodstream within four to five minutes of applying it on your nails. Now it's minute amounts and there's no evidence that that amount of phthalates is toxic for anybody. There's just no evidence. You know, but this stuff accumulates in the body for most people, and give me 20 years of doing that. Now you've got a measurable, noticeable amount that's in your system.

Speaker 2: 8:36

And so mom gets pregnant and now, unfortunately, her amniotic fluid, that baby, is swimming in. Well, we've all heard the studies. If you check the blood, the umbilical cord blood, at birth. There's 186 chemicals on average that are in the umbilical cord blood that are not supposed to be there 186. And some of them impact on baby's brain development and baby's growth ability. So that's why, in my world, it's critically important to get to the women of childbearing age and educate them on this so that they can look at it a little bit and see this is true. This is not somebody crying wolf, you know. This is really true science. And then they learn that they have to detox for six months to a year before they ever get pregnant. Get this stuff out of your body so you can have the healthiest, smartest little baby possible.

Speaker 1: 9:33

You know, before we started recording you and I talked, I was not aware what a world traveling you are. Is it your sense this is worse in the US than other places?

Speaker 2: 9:43

Well, I thought so at first, but you know, we are in Costa Rica now and I was startled. You know, I think Costa Rica, oh, the land of fruit and vegetables and papayas, and all that. Costa Rica has eight times the amount of insecticides and pesticides per agricultural acre compared to the US. Eight times more, and the US is loaded. I mean just, it's poison Now what we're all eating when you eat conventional fruits and vegetables. Let me give you an example of that. That really puts it in perspective. And then what to do about it.

Speaker 2: 10:18

So in 2019, in the Journal of the American Medical Association, a paper came out from Harvard that the editors of the journal said this is an elegant study using sophisticated biomarkers to demonstrate their point. Now, you know really well, dr Davis, the editors of the Journal of the American Medical Association don't say that very often, right? So it's got to be a study with some credibility to it. And what they did was they looked at couples going to assisted fertility centers and they ruled out all of the known features that determine success or failure. They ruled out smoking, they ruled out alcohol consumption, they ruled out exercise, they ruled out obesity, they ruled out socioeconomic class, they ruled out race. They ruled all of that out and narrowed it down to one thing the number of servings of fruits and vegetables the woman was eating per day. And once again, an elegant study using sophisticated biomarkers to do this. And what they found out was just startling. They I was like what. They put the women in the categories of numbers of servings per day the lowest amount, the next, the third and the highest. And those in the highest consumption of fruits and vegetables had an 18% less likelihood of getting pregnant.

Speaker 2: 11:45

The more fruits and vegetables you eat, the worse the outcome. And if you did get pregnant, you had a 26% less likelihood of a live birth. You lost the baby, miscarriages and stillbirths. The more fruits and vegetables you eat, the worse the outcome. And that was like what? But when you read the study closely, there was a caveat Conventional fruits and vegetables and they had a subgroup of people, of women, who were eating organic. And in that category it was the exact opposite the more organic fruits and vegetables you eat, the better the outcome. And here's the take home that's so important for everyone to understand. They were put in the category of organic consumption if they ate three meals a week, not three meals a day organic three meals a week. And the theory is well, if they're trying to eat organic, they're probably using healthier dishwashing soap and healthier laundry detergent. They're probably doing some other things also, but they didn't look at lifestyle, they just looked at consumption of fruits and vegetables. So the good news is three servings a week of organic fruits and vegetables you increase your likelihood of success at assisted fertility centers.

Speaker 2: 13:10

Now, why is that so jaw dropping? Well, first, because we think fruits and vegetables are really important, and they are for many, many reasons. They are. But now the most sensitive tissue in the human body and I've never seen a study on this, but this is my assumption as I think about the science. I'd welcome your opinion the most sensitive tissue is a fertilized egg. It's got no immune system. It's totally dependent on the environment it's in and if mom is toxic, if mom's got lead toxicity and mercury toxicity and vol, organic compounds, phthalates and heavy metals, then that's what baby's brain and body is developing in and there's no protection if mom's tissue is saturated with this stuff.

Speaker 1: 14:00

So if we've got a pregnant or a woman who wants to get pregnant and is unsuccessful, is there a specific set of biomarkers you favor?

Speaker 2: 14:07

Oh, you bet. You bet there are, and that's how we cut our teeth, you know, and came out into practice so many years ago. But yeah, the biomarkers. Well, the first one is to do an accurate test to see are you sensitive to the most common food that people are sensitive to, and that is wheat? It's the most common when you look at the chemistry, when you do the right kind of testing and unfortunately, most of our doctors are doing tests that are only looking at one or two markers of wheat and there are many, many other markers. There's a laboratory that we encourage all of our docs to take a look at called Vibrant Wellness, because their technology Mayo Clinic calls it a new era in laboratory medicine that they're much more accurate and much more comprehensive. So the first test that we always recommend is a wheat zoomer and because you zoom in on the problem and the laboratory, when they came out in 2015, they first came out and Mayo Clinic's first paper came out in January of 2016. That's when I read about it. But the laboratory brilliant marketing on their part to compete with the already established labs. They included the markers, the most comprehensive markers to measure intestinal permeability or the leaky gut. That's part of the wheat zoomer test, so you get the most comprehensive test available in the world I shouldn't say the world. I've not taught in the Far East, but I was in Brazil a couple of months ago and then Rome last month. I'm going to India next week. I mean, I travel the world teaching about this stuff and I've never seen a laboratory that has any tests that come anywhere near the accuracy and the comprehensiveness of the zoomers. So I recommend four zoomers to most every person that wants to talk to me. That includes the wheat zoomer, the neural zoomer plus. Now they have a neural zoomer that looks at eight markers of inflammation in the brain, but the neural zoomer plus looks at 53 markers of inflammation in the brain and that is such a big problem. You know that it's not our topic today, but I'll just throw this pearl out there.

Speaker 2: 16:30

Blue Cross, blue Shield, came out with a paper in February of 2020, just before the virus hit, and they said we've got a problem. We have a real problem. There's been a 407% increase in the last four years. A 407% increase in the diagnosis of Alzheimer's in 30 to 44 year olds. 107% in four years in 30 to 44 year olds, because people are getting toxic so much earlier in life, the accumulated amount of toxins in their body and many of them go right to the brain. Our friend, dr Dale Bredesen, who wrote the end of Alzheimer's. He says that of the five types of Alzheimer's inhalation, alzheimer's is 60 to 65% of all Alzheimer's cases. That's what you breathe. That's going right up to the memory center of your brain, causing the inflammation that kills off your brain cells and so very, very common. So that paper came out in February of 2020 and changed my understanding.

Speaker 2: 17:41

And so every patient I check every patient for a neural zoomer plus. And to tell you, dr Davis, I've never had a normal come back on a first visit never. And I've asked my friends, they're the same. There's two tests we do. Never have we seen normals. The first one on a first test, the follow up in six months or a year. It better be better or else we aren't doing our job. So the first one is the neural zoomer plus that always comes back positive, and the second one is called the total tox burden and it's a urine test that looks at is your immune system fighting all these toxins or do you have the DNA evidence of these toxins in your body Like mold, metabolites of mold, or are you fighting valid organic compounds? Do you have heavy metals? It looks at I think it's about 40. I'm not quite sure of the number Different potential toxins in one simple urine test. So we recommend the wheat zoomer because it identifies leaky gut and wheat sensitivity. The neural zoomer plus the total tox burden and the gut zoomer. Those four tests give us a nice starting point from which the initial recommendations we make to a patient. They're going to see really good results.

Speaker 2: 18:59

Now, usually it takes six months to a couple of years to really turn a body around. But you get results quickly. You start feeling better, losing weight, shedding pounds pretty quickly. If you get the big kahoonas out of the way, the big emergency breaks, get them out of the way, you start responding and feeling better. But to get the subtle stuff out of it. That's why you do those tests. Now. You have a baseline. That's where you start and then, mrs Patient, we'll recheck it in six months to a year. If you're really aggressive and you're following this squeaky clean, six months will be fine. If not, if you make a few mistakes and you cheat or something, let's wait a year to make sure that you're getting the best results you're gonna get, and then maybe we're gonna have to talk a little more about being vigilant about this or something. But we don't get normals back on a first visit and these are highly accurate tests the Zoomers because of Silicon chip technology. They really tell us a lot.

Speaker 1: 20:01

I like that approach very interesting. I'm familiar with a gut Zoomer but didn't know very much about the others. That's very interesting. The Divine Health podcast is sponsored by Paleo Valley makers of delicious grass-fed beef sticks, healthy snack bars and other products. We're very picky around here and insist that any product we consider has no junk ingredients like carrageenan, carboxymethylcellulose, sucralose and, of course, no added sugars. All Paleo Valley products contain no gluten nor grains. In fact, I find Paleo Valley products among the cleanest in their category.

Speaker 1: 20:36

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Speaker 1: 21:46

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Speaker 1: 22:18

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Speaker 2: 23:17

Well, we don't have any carpet in the house. You know we've got some rugs that we clean every once in a while, but we have tile floors and wood floors. You know, being in Costa Rica, humidity is high and so there's always a danger of mold. So when we go out for a number of hours for example every Sunday we go to a surfer beach or something to see the big waves things I turn on two ozone machines in the house and so we kill any traces of mold that might be around and we vacuum once a week, once or twice a week, you know, the floors and the shelves and all that just so there's no accumulation that can settle down here. We are blessed to have a farmer close by that delivers organic produce and organic eggs three, four times a week. He just came a couple hours ago with about a dozen cucumbers beautiful cucumbers and a couple dozen eggs.

Speaker 2: 24:13

My wife likes her egg yolks in her coffee, raw egg yolks in the morning. You know I'm in charge of coffee in the morning when we wake up and her coffee has two egg yolks, tablespoon of medium chain triglyceride oils, a big tablespoon of ghee, a scoop of collagen protein powder and a half a teaspoon of coconut sugar. Mine has the coconut sugar, collagen and cinnamon and that's our morning coffee. You know, we'll sit outside and listen to the birds and start the day, and we've set ourselves up so that we have access to organic almost all the time, unless we're going out somewhere to a restaurant, and then it's more difficult. But this is. It takes years. So we have an air filtration system that is running in the living room all day and at nighttime I wheel it into the bedroom. Our son sleeps with us in the bedroom and so the air filtration is going in the bedroom all night. It's a quiet, running thing. My wife uses organic nail polish whenever she does her nails, which is not too often, but if she's going to, you know, some special event, our soaps are organic, our shampoos are organic, you know. So you just learn.

Speaker 2: 25:30

You know, in my second book, title was you Can Fix your Brain, and I argued with Rodale Press for two weeks about the title. It's like you, you know, you get an idea in your head. Nope, this is it. This is nope, this is it so. But the subtitle is just one hour a week to the best memory, productivity and sleep you've ever had, and that's actually the secret to success that we always recommend. And then we have an event coming up soon and this is going to be the implementation recommendation, which is you tell your family every Tuesday night after dinner or every Sunday after services, whenever it is but every week I'm allocating one hour to learn a little more about how to be healthier.

Speaker 2: 26:15

And then you go back to my book and you see the three URLs. When you read that you leave your leftover food in a plastic storage container in the refrigerator the next day, the chicken's got phthalates in it. From the plastic container or whatever you put in there, it's got phthalates in it. Then you order glass storage containers, right? So you go back in my book and there's three URLs. There's Miles Kimball, there's Amazon and then wherever the third one was, I don't remember and you look at the oh, those are old. Oh, I like those and you order three round ones and two square ones and one for the pie. You pay through credit card hit send.

Speaker 2: 26:51

It took you an hour to do that, but now you're done forever. You're never going to poison your family again with minute amounts of toxins from leftover stored in plastic storage containers. The next week you go and you look for the URLs on organic makeup companies and you look to see what you like and you order it. Maybe you're gonna have to do it again in two months because you don't like the color on your nails or whatever. But one thing at a time, just one thing a week, one hour a week, and in six months you've changed your lifestyle completely. You take it in bite-sized pieces, just one hour a week, to the best memory productivity, sleep, energy, exercise capabilities, whatever you want. But one hour a week because it's overwhelming to try to do all of this at one time, completely overwhelming. Most people freeze. They don't know where to start.

Speaker 1: 27:48

I didn't know, you're a recent father, I'm a recent grandfather and having watched my daughter-in-law just delivered her second baby literally five days ago.

Speaker 2: 27:56

Congratulations.

Speaker 1: 27:57

But you know I was surprised that here is a. My daughter-in-law comes from a well-to-do family and kind of gets the red carpet rolled out for her obstetric care and she got sadly almost zero useful information, the kinds of things you and I get concerned about Diet exposures, omega-3 fatty acids. Did you do anything specific through your wife's pregnancy? Ha ha.

Speaker 2: 28:26

We had two doulas, two midwives, a nutritionally oriented counselor for pregnancies, a shaman to deal with negative energies, a pelvic floor therapist, so she was exercising her pelvis through the entire pregnancy to make sure it was pliable and expansable and all of that. Yeah, we learned about fats, how important good fats are for the baby in utero when baby's developing. So lots of essential fatty acids. Most people avoid tuna fish now, which is a smart thing to do, because most of the tuna is quite toxic, except one. It's called ventresca with a V. Ventresca means belly of the baby and it's baby tuna and the belly and salmon fishermen, baby tuna, get caught in their nets and they just throw the baby tuna back and they're dead. But they throw it back.

Speaker 2: 29:23

But if they harvest them and they take the meat, it's delicious tuna fish and it's mercury free. You can't say you know there's atomic levels there somewhere so they had to stop marketing it as mercury free tuna. But it's very, very low in mercury, hard to identify, hard to find any, and one can of that tuna fish is 7,000 milligrams of omega-3s One can built. So my son gets a can a week. You know a little bit on his gluten-free pizza one day, you know, and a little bit mixed in with his hamburger meat another day just to get one can a week, and so I'm sure he's getting his omegas because he's not taking any pills. He's three now but he's not taking any pills. But we give him probiotics daily and then a smoothie and the rest of it's coming from his food.

Speaker 1: 30:19

That's fantastic. Now I understand you're putting on a summit coming up sometime soon.

Speaker 2: 30:24

We are. We are Thanks for asking it's. You know, you and I both have had many patients over the years that follow our recommendations to the T that they get great results and they're really satisfied and grateful. And then we hear a couple of years later they died of something else. Every disease is a disease that begins with inflammation. You know, the Center for Disease Control, the CDC, tells us that 14 of the 15 top causes of death are chronic inflammatory diseases. Everything except unintentional injuries is a chronic inflammatory disease. But nobody talks about this. You know we wait until people have complaints. Then if we do some sophisticated tests, we might identify antibodies to the brain which we have to address that inflammation going into the brain and then their depression goes away or their seizures go away or whatever it should be. But it's not until they've gone down the path with so much tissue damage that now they start getting symptoms. We want people to be going back to their doctors and asking do I have any markers of inflammation in my body or is my lifestyle causing inflammation? That I'm not aware of Because I feel fine right now, but I know that cancer is there for years beforehand. Cardiovascular disease is there for years while I feel fine. Is there anything I can do to identify that I'm on the path going that way so I can stop it before I get to that path? I don't want to happen to me what happened to my dad. You know, we hear that and I want people asking those questions of their doctors. So we're doing an event called the inflammation equation, decoding the path to optimal well-being. Because it's so overwhelming to try to figure this out. We're gonna decode it for you.

Speaker 2: 32:25

I'm interviewing, I interviewed the world leaders. I went to Israel and Yehuda Seinfeld, the godfather of autoimmunity, I mean this guy, 26 of the MDs who went to get their PhD in immunology from his department. There are many, many more, but 26 chair departments of immunology in medical schools and hospitals around the world. He's the godfather. We interviewed him. We interviewed David Furman at the Buck Institute and Furman's got the contract with NASA to figure out why are our astronauts aging so quickly in space? Because most people don't know this, but it's impossible for a human to go to Mars. I mean, you know the technology will get to take us there, but humans will die in space. They age so quickly. They'll die before the two and a half years when they get there, they age so quickly, and Furman's been looking at why is that happening? Why do they age so quickly?

Speaker 2: 33:22

It's always inflammation, always, and when I interviewed him about inflammation, his pearls of what to do are so remarkable and easy right. Jeff Bland, the father of functional medicine, talks about inflammation as a dimmer switch, and most of us have it dim turned up so high that it's causing tissue damage. And Isaac Elias, who talks about what cytokines, what immune system markers are at the very top, trickling down, creating all of the inflammation we get in our bodies, and so it's called the inflammation equation. It'll be for one hour a day for nine days. It's free, it's gonna be free to everybody. And then my partner, tom Malter, and I will have a 15 minute discussion.

Speaker 2: 34:10

As could you believe what Dr Dvorak said about how the mind creates inflammation. I didn't know that. Well, you know. I know if I have an argument with my wife, maybe I don't feel good for the rest of the day.

Speaker 2: 34:23

We talk about this in the everyday language, so people are gonna have takeaways every day, and we're encouraging all of our doctors and our healthcare practitioners, the health coaches and nutritionists to send the announcement out to your entire tribe of people who follow you, because every day we're recommending people go back to their doctor and say ask your doctor about Galactin III.

Speaker 2: 34:50

It's a $46 test, you know, with LabCorp a very simple test, but it's at the headway that causes the trickling down of all the inflammation we get in our bodies. Or have an antibody test done to see if you have antibodies to your brain, and when you do, here's what you do about it. So we're going to introduce this concept of going after the inflammation to identify it and then what to do about it years before it's caused so much damage that now you have symptoms. I wanna change the discussion between patients and doctors. I want patients demanding more earlier markers and they're out there, they're simple, they're not expensive and earlier indicators. Is there something in my life that I can change to ensure my quality of life in my senior?

Speaker 1: 35:44

All right, I love that Because I agree. A lot of my mainstream MD people are just not involved in health you as well as I do and so it's the responsibility of the individual to agitate for those kinds of things. Any neat thoughts on your approach to heavy metals?

Speaker 2: 36:02

Oh yes, they're pretty much unavoidable nowadays. Unfortunately, these chemtrails that people think are harmless. My friends who have analyzed some of this say they're very, very high in aluminum, very high in other things, but we're exposed to heavy metals every day. Unfortunately, if you eat rice, if you go gluten free and you're eating rice, unfortunately most of the rice is high in arsenic and it's because rice grows in water and the water comes from the streams and the streams are coming from upstream up river and the farmers 30 miles upstream have been spraying their crops with these arsenic-heavy sprays that get into the water supply and come down and the rice sits in the water and the roots of the rice just absorb this stuff and bring the arsenic up to the heads of rice.

Speaker 2: 36:55

And so when you eat rice, if it's not organic, and sometimes even when it is organic, it still has heavy metals in it. But those people that eat a lot of rice, you just have to check yourself do I have arsenic right now? It's unfortunate, but the world we're living in is very toxic and we have to take an offensive approach to play defense. We have to do some things to protect ourselves and our family. The first is to test to see, do I have high levels of heavy metals in my body.

Speaker 1: 37:30

So you're very selective in the fish you choose. How do you manage shellfish? Awkwardly at best.

Speaker 2: 37:37

Ha, ha, ha, ha ha ha. I just love shrimp, you know I do, and so once in a while I give myself a treat, knowing it's not ideal. I'm not perfect, you know, none of us are gonna be perfect but I really avoid. And I ask sometimes could you ask the chef where his shrimp comes from? And they just kind of look at me, you know, but once in a while the chef in the back is actually the chef and he'll know where is it Chinese or what is it you know.

Speaker 2: 38:07

And here in Costa Rica we have some local fish farms and I just saw one report that showed they were not toxic with heavy metals at all, which I was startled by, and that report a doctor commissioned that report, so it wasn't a company that paid a lab to alter reports. It seemed to be genuine. But shellfish is not something that I can easily obtain here and feel really safe about. Now in the US there are some stores Whole Foods and others that will have wild caught shellfish and especially if you can get Alaska, you're safer there than Atlantic. Atlantic tends to be more farm raised. Pacific Northwest, there are some farms in British Columbia, but if it's wild then it's safer, you're closer, it's more likely that you'll be safer there.

Speaker 1: 39:02

Dr Tom McBride, it's always a pleasure talking to you and I do appreciate you voting some of your valuable time. I will post a link to your upcoming summit, but if listeners want to get more of Dr Tom McBride his wisdom, where should they go first?

Speaker 2: 39:15

Oh, thank you. It's thedrcom, thedrcom Just don't spell the word doctor out, thedrcom. Everything is there Lots of videos, lots of downloads. And let's give you guys a pearl If you go to thedrcom, forward, slash plant, download the handout that NASA published the studies because their astronauts were going loopy in space. They don't talk about that with the press but their brain function was not quite on par and they realized it was the air. It was very toxic air. So they published the studies on house plants and how two six inch house plants in a 10 by 10 room absorbs over 70% of the toxins in the air. And so we've got the handout for you from NASA with the pictures of the plants oh, I've seen those before. Oh, I like those.

Speaker 2: 40:09

And you just go out and buy a bunch of house plants and put them in your rooms, all the rooms in your house, and they absorb the toxins that you're not aware of. This is all in my book. You can fix your brain, but it'll also be in our summit. You know like unless you're sleeping under organic sheets and organic blankets, you're breathing flame retardant chemicals every night. Even if you've washed the sheets 20 times, there are still traces of these chemicals in there and your blankets and your comforters. And these flame retardant chemicals are highly carcinogenic.

Speaker 2: 40:45

And if the nightstand next to your bed is not solid wood, it's press board. And press board is soaked in formaldehyde which outgasses into the air and you're breathing minute amounts of formaldehyde anytime you're in the room, can't smell, it, can't taste, it doesn't affect you right away because they're minute amounts. Or your kitchen cabinets, if they're not solid wood, they're press board. You're breathing formaldehyde and you start learning about all this and once again, as you said at the beginning, it's very overwhelming. That's why you do one hour a week. But go to the drcomcom and download the handout and get some of those plants and you're gonna reduce the amount of toxins your family is breathing 24 seven.

Speaker 1: 41:32

Oh, that's such terrific advice. I love that. Dr Brian Trilley, thank you very much. I hope we can send some people over to your summit and to the drcom.

Speaker 2: 41:41

Yes, yes, thank you so much.

Speaker 1: 41:43

Okay, thank you, Dr Brian. You bet Thanks to everyone on theações For me by Ms Dong For China China edition.