 Hey, everybody. Thank you for joining us this afternoon. I am so excited today. Gosh, Dr. Patrick and I have busy schedules, but she's someone that I just always like to make time for. A colleague, a friend, we've been working together in these many fields of functional medicine and environmental toxicity for many, many years. And I just have such great respect for the level of science and quality of information that she brings to our field. We're going to talk about heavy metals and toxicants and all kinds of toxins in relation to the immune system because that's such a relevant topic for our last year and in general. And I think you'll really, really enjoy the content. I want to be sure and mention also that we have a conference coming up, the Environmental Health Symposium. I think that's the second weekend in April. Is that right, Lynn? 15th through the 17th and Dr. Jill and I will be moderating. And Dr. Jill is going to be speaking, not only speaking. I think this is the first time that we've had you on Environmental Health Symposium where you're just free. I mean, it's your brain for free. People get all the wisdom and all the knowledge and the clinical experience and guidance that you have. It's just going to be an open Q&A, right? You're just going to be answering any questions relating to immunity, metal exposure, toxicant exposure, co-infections. So I think that's going to be one of the highlights of the HS. Honestly, I'm really glad it worked out that way. I think that we need more of that. We need more just tell us where you're stuck, health care providers, and we will give you some guidance. And so I'm really looking forward to it. As well, we have some surprise, I don't want to call it surprise gas because it's a conference. They're speakers. But I found this gentleman. He's a pediatrician in Hong Kong, Dr. Paul Lam, who has been treating, are you ready for this? He's been treating pregnant women, detoxing them for metal toxicity. He's been treating infants and children who have really serious clinical conditions and reversing them by identifying and eliminating the metals in their body. And he's been doing this for many years. I've known Dr. Paul. I think I met him in 2012. And he's just kindest and wisest gentleman and really humane physician. And so he's going to really guide us through some cases that I think will help us all. He also treats adults with metal toxicity. So I think that'll be great. We have Dr. Larry Pilevsky. I don't know if you know Dr. Larry, but he's one of my best buddies. He's a pediatrician in New York. And Dr. Pilevsky has been identifying and addressing immune related problems in children for his entire career as a pediatrician. He's also going to give a very factual medical literature based talk on vaccines that I've heard before, that this is an update that is mind blowing because we're really going to get to look into the science behind vaccination. So I think that'll be wonderful. Dr. Anne Marie Fine and I are going to do a day long introduction to environmental medicine from a brand new perspective, Joe, we've never taught this way. So here's what we've done. You know how we're always just like factoids, factoids, factoids, you know, just drinking out of a fire hose. So it doesn't work that great. Yeah. We like it sometimes, but yeah, it's just not so practical. So here's what we've done is we flipped everything and said, so what if this patient walks into your office and hears the neuro inflammation that they present with, the neurotoxicity they present with the autoimmune disease they present with the cardiovascular disease, the obesity, the diabetes, the infertility. How do you address toxicant exposure from that perspective? What are the most likely toxicants? What are the most likely metals and solvents and pesticides and thawates? And how can you judiciously address this? And then what are the treatment interventions? So I think I'm hoping, I mean, we'll see, but I'm hoping that that'll be just easier to learn. It'll stick better and that everybody can become aware of the exposures that are related to these conditions. So I think that's going to be fun. That's going to be really fun. More stories, more patient stories, because that's how people learn, right? So speaking of, do you want a patient story? Yeah. Okay. So many years ago, I had a nurse come in who had peripheral neuropathy. So that's numbness and tingling and the hands and the feet, stocking gloves. So it was constant for her, this constant numbness and tingling and just pain in her hands and her feet. Interestingly and fortunately for her, she worked in a law firm that did what? Environmental Toxicant Medicine. Wow. She had gone to her neurologist and she had said, I don't know, do you think this could be related to arsenic? Because I've heard in my work at the law firm that, you know, arsenic toxicity can cause this. And the neurologist said, probably not, but I'll test if you want to. So he looked in her blood, which is the wrong place for arsenic and he didn't find any. He said, absolutely not. You don't have any arsenic toxicity. So somehow she found her way to me and I said, well, let's look in the right place, which is in the urine and sure enough, she was loaded. It turned out that she had a fascinating story. So she was working as a nurse, but, you know, when she went home, she was helping her husband build a deck out in the back and they were using what is called CCA, that's the name of the treatment, wood, which is outdoor wood, right? So it's treated wood. And the way that they treat it is they soak the wood in copper, chromate, not the, you know, cup, not the kind of chromium three, but chromium six, which is toxic and arsenic. And that's why it's so heavy, right? So she was working all summer helping her husband build the deck. It was raining. And she was not so great at wearing gloves, right? So she was actually absorbing this arsenic from the wood from her hands into her body. And we know that that's possible. There are a lot of playgrounds across the United States that are built out of this CCA wood, right? That are a danger to children, because when it gets wet, not when it's dry, but when it gets wet, you can actually absorb some of that arsenic into your palms and your hands through the wood. So not only that, but she had arsenic in her water supply. She had a well, which is the greatest risk for arsenic. And her neurologist, of course, you know, he just wasn't oriented that way. That wasn't his orientation to ask her if she had checked her water for arsenic to ask her if she had any exposure. She knew that the CCA was exposure, but he had convinced her. So anyway, what we did for this dear woman was we, you know, we tested her water. She was she just hadn't done it. And she had pretty high levels of arsenic. And that's for 108 million people in the United States of America. Their arsenic levels are over the allowable legal limit for arsenic in drinking water. That's a lot of people. And we have a really serious problem. Our infrastructure isn't that great in terms of getting arsenic out of the drinking water supply and regulatory agencies are not that good at actually punishing or finding municipalities that can't regulate their arsenic levels. So this is a multi stage issue, you know, multi layer process. So at any rate, she was able to get just a good old reverse osmosis water filter. I'll talk about that later. That got the arsenic out of her water. We gave her some methylated B vitamins, selenium, sami, I think she ended up taking sami. All those things are really good to help the body process and eliminate arsenic. And methylated B12, that was the other thing, and her peripheral neuropathy resolved. It took, you know, it took a while, it took a couple of months, because as you know, that's damage to the nerves, and the nerves actually have to heal. So it's not like taking ibuprofen for a headache, you know, really have the nerves really have to heal. But I've been thinking about this quite a bit, because I just did a podcast on arsenic, and how huge a problem it is that it's the number one toxic metal in the United States as per the Center for Disease Control. So the Center for Disease Control has a list of 200 toxicants, you know, all of them, based on how likely you are to get exposed to them and how sick you may get. So they have a formula where they put those two variables together, and arsenic comes up number one. And the World Health Organization has actually rated it right up near the top. So the good thing, the good news is this is something we can do something about, right? It's coming from somewhere. It's either coming from our drinking water, it's coming from our vegetables, which is the highest source of the inorganic arsenic, that's the poisonous kind. In our environment, because why? What do you think? Multiple choice question. The reason vegetables are the number one source of arsenic is because of pesticide exposure. Number two, listen to number two, biosludge application to conventionally grow. That's what I was wondering if the, you know, manure, the old term for that was manure in the farm. Now guess what? They don't use manure. They use something that's legally called biosolids. Wow. You remember the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act, right back in the 70s. So way back in the 70s, corporations that produced things that they no longer could burn into the air or throw into the water thought, well, what's left? The soil. So they enacted all this legislation to allow the application of what are called biosolids onto agricultural soil. They throw a little zinc, a little phosphorus, you're a farm girl, you know, this, you know, potash in there and sell it as fertilizer. So unfortunately, there are no good regulations that prohibit high levels of arsenic, cadmium and lead. Those are the three biggies into those biosolids. So the plants will take them up and they end up in the plants. So this is just one great big commercial for doing what? Eating organic food. Yes. Because, well, because you can't use legally, use biosolids in organic agriculture. So when people say, you know, oh man, you know, I just don't have the money to eat organically, I'm like, well, do you, have you thought this is not a good thought, but we thought about how much it costs to have cancer? Have you really thought about the cost of having cancer? And nobody thinks about those things. Cancer is extremely expensive. Having an autoimmune disease is extremely expensive. Even the detox protocol that you took her through for three to four months is extremely good. Right. Right. Exactly. Exactly. But she was willing and ready and absolutely 100%. What a great thing that she had enough exposure to her law firm to know the questions to ask. And I just encourage you, whether you're a practitioner or a patient listening, if you're a practitioner, you probably are in the functional or integrated realm. If you're a patient, don't take these answers. If you feel like there's something more, keep searching because often there are underlying root causes. And again, I come from provincial training and we're not taught to really dig deep and look for things like arsenic. So it's a, this is rare. And now you know, I love Dr. Lynn Patrick so much. She's so knowledgeable on these things. And I always learn more when I'm talking to her. You guys are going to love the conference. We're going to have this and so much more. And the main topic is on toxicants, toxins, heavy metals, et cetera. So we'll talk a little bit more about those. And I love the, I love the speakers that you bring as well. I want to highlight that. If you guys want the anywhere you watch this video, you'll see a link below to look at the speakers, the schedule. You can sign up anytime it's online. So you can be at your home in your pajamas and watching it. And of course, you know, the timeline, I believe is that tell me the days that are Friday, Saturday, Friday, Saturday. Perfect. Yeah. And, you know, your friend in mind, Dr. Neil Nathan is going to be talking about the cell danger response, mold and metals, which is something that, you know, as clinicians who look at exposures, we're taught to look at one at a time, right? Like it's fairly, we can barely wrap our head around just one time. But the reality is, and you know this, that all of our sick patients are usually exposed to multiple things, right? Not just infections like Lyme and co-infections, or mold exposure, but metals and solvents and pesticides and phthalates and the whole ball of wax. And so looking at that whole ball of wax is really an art. And I think Dr. Nathan is very skilled in being. I do. And if you haven't heard about cell danger response, stay tuned, come to the conference. I think this is one of the most monumental, it's the Dr. Navio's work. And this is basically one of the underlying mechanisms that explain so much of our chronic infection and toxic load. And I've always said, sometimes I'll do the overview lectures, but I always just think real simply and with this toxic load and infectious burden, and I would say nearly 100% of my patients with chronic illness have some weighted balance of those two. And my job as a clinician is to figure out what's in their bucket, what's in the infectious load, what's in the toxic burden. But the best thing, and I'd love your comments on this, Lynn, is if we think about that bucket in patients just like your patient with arsenic, her toxic load was increasing, immune system was decreasing because of that. Maybe infections were involved too, but the main thing for her was that overload of arsenic. But we don't always have to know every single last toxin in the bucket, because a lot of times these generalized principles, like there is different mechanisms for removing lead versus say another type of toxin like ketomium. However, detox in general, there's a lot of commonalities. And then when we go into naturopathy and infrared sauna and hydrotherapy and Epsom salt baths, and these things are universal. So the great thing is we can take 80% of our detox and it applies to the whole toxic load. Any comments on that or how to, because I think clinicians, if you're listening patient or clinician, toxicants, toxicity, environmental toxic load could be overwhelming and very pessimistic, but I feel like it's not that way. Well, the good news is, and I want to use a specific example. So you are very familiar with the study that Dr. Stephen Genoist did. He looked at a very small sample of patients who were sick and then some who are not sick. And he put them in sauna. And then he actually looked at what came out in their urine and what came out in their sweat. And he looked at what was in their blood. And what he found was that the ability to sweat, it doesn't have to be fancy. Dr. Jill, I have helped so many people get better if they didn't have access to a sauna or they couldn't afford to buy a sauna, I had them go in their bathroom with a little space here, shut the door, put a towel under the door and literally sit in their bathroom for an hour and sweat and they got better. So it's kind of a universal technology. But what he found, and I think this speaks to your point, is that in those folks who were able to sweat, what he found in their urine and in their sweat was increased levels of metals like cadmium, very hard to get cadmium out of the body, and very common toxicant because it's in those biosolids, right? It ends up in our food, as well as in cigarette smoke. But he also found that this phenols, which are a common plasticizer in our drinking water, they can be in our polycarbonate bottles, they're in the canned food, they're in our cosmetics, those levels were also really strongly elevated as well as aluminum. We can sweat out aluminum, right? Oh, and aluminum, that's a huge problem. I was consulting with some doctors in India and their patients and 100% of the cases, I don't know if it's because they're cookware, but I was finding such high levels of aluminum. And again, you know, where's it coming from? Well, I suspect that their cookware might be an issue. For sure, but that was my biggest suspicion because they all had common types of cookware. And again, it was, I don't know that I for sure know the sources, but it was so common. And I think the US as well, in fact, when I do a heavy metal panel on lab core quest or whatever lab, aluminum is not typically included in there. And I will actually add that now. Is serum still a good or whole blood the best way for aluminum? Or would you test a different way? What did you do? So I have been so conflicted about this that I invited one of the global aluminum experts. So Chris Shaw is coming, Christopher Shaw from University of British Columbia to talk about his research. You know, he's a neuroscientist and he's done quite a bit of research on aluminum, but this is a big problem. We don't have good tests for aluminum. We just don't. So I wish I could give you an answer, but I don't think there is one. That's how I felt too. I'm like, I'm not sure which way to go for now. I'm doing the blood sample. But hopefully after EHS, you and I will be updated, you know, in what really is the best test. But to get back to sauna, so sauna is also a really good way to eliminate some pesticides. We can actually get organochlorine pesticides. You know, those are the legacy ones that are in our fat and 99% of us have, you know, DDT metabolites in our fat. It's just that it's in our diet and we probably inherited some from our mom. And the half-life is so long that we can't hardly. Half-life. So that's 100 years to get it out of your body. So, you know, we have to help that process just by itself. We're not going to do it. So that's when I think the beauties of using those low-cost, potentially low-cost technologies, of course, not everybody can handle sauna. Folks who are really environmentally ill or who have POTS, you know, postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome, that's, you know, where you get dizzy and when you lay down your heart rate goes up. Those folks have difficulty and they need to be very slowly accustomed to sweating. And nowadays, there's, like you said, space heater in the bathroom, I have recommended that too. And then on that, even on the other spectrum, there's this couple of companies make the sauna blankets, the little cubicles that you sit inside, and then of course the full blown ones, but those can range from well under $1,000, which is still is a cost, but they're much more affordable now. And space heater in the bathroom is still a good option. You know, it's just sweating. It doesn't matter how you do it. A lot of the doctors that I train ask me, well, isn't far infrared really the only way to sauna? It's not. And that study that I was just mentioning, Dr. Genoese, he actually compared infrared sauna to radiant heat sauna. And he found that the level of excretion in the sweat was equivalent. The level of excretion in the urine was equivalent. So it doesn't matter. Well, I wonder if, I mean, some of the new infrared near and far, and I'm suspecting there might be some healing properties, like maybe increased collagen production with the near infrared. But if you're just focusing on detox, which is the majority of our patients, then like you said, just getting them to sweat, what about people who don't sweat? What would you say about them? From my mentor, Dr. William Ray, who was a cardiothoracic surgeon who practiced environmental medicine for 40 years, is that those people have dysautonomia. Yeah. So they have an imbalance between their nervous systems, the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system that prevents sweating. So the treatment protocol for dysautonomia, and by the way, those folks also are environmentally exposed. That's how they got that problem in the first place, can be treated and addressed. And of course, let's just take an example. If somebody's in a moldy home, it doesn't matter how much you put them in the sauna until you get them out of the moldy home, they're not going to sweat in the sauna, right? So you have to remove them from all the toxins they're exposed to. But once you do that, very short periods in the sauna, so five minutes is useful. Then they can work up to 10. I had a patient who had took him a year to be able to tolerate an hour of sauna, but the man got better. And he was very, very ill. So that's the standard protocol for folks who have, who don't have the ability. Yeah, exactly. I'll have them turn on the sauna and get in at 100 degrees and stay for three minutes. And what I'll do, or actually, I'm sorry, I set it to maybe 130, but get in at 100. So it's just slowly rising in temperature. And by the time there are three minutes, it might be 105. And then the next time they go to five minutes. And so what happens is over maybe 10 to 15 minutes, they start to get to the top temperature of 130. And then as they start to get there, they can go up to 30 minutes. And once they get to 130 for 30 minutes, they can go a little hotter. But it's just a very slow, and I usually have them no more than two or three times a week at that very low temperature. And if they have that evening or the next day, sequelae where they don't feel well, they've overdone it, they take a break, they go back to lower doses. I always give tri-salts or electrolytes with the sauna, often give binders after. I like to use clay or charcoal or zeolites for metals. Any comments on those little protocols, tips for sauna? Yes, everything. I think electrolyte replacement is absolutely necessary. In our clinic, which I'm no longer there, but in our clinic, we have an environmental sauna. So we control the temperature. We do really keep it under 130. In gyms, sometimes those saunas are way too hot. Oh, they're terribly hot. And people go in there for 45 minutes. I'm like, that's a stressor on the body. And there's this, I think of it as a cortisol response. If you get too high, you're actually making the stress response worse. You're making that sympathetic overdrive worse. So I agree. You can really get some as long as you're sweating. And you can do that at 130 very easily. Right. And what I learned in my environmental medicine training was that there are two types of sweat glands. One is specific for ammonia and water. And the other is specific for releasing some of the lipophilic. Yes. The temperature, the less active those important that releasing sweat glands are, they actually get turned off at high temperatures and you're just releasing water and ammonia. First, because then you're going to be dehydrated. And so that makes a ton of sense when I've never heard it explained like that. So low temperature sauna is medical sauna. So let's talk a little in our last five, 10 minutes or so about the conferences on immune system. And that's been the hot topic, of course, with our pandemic and everything people worried about immune system. Now you and I for decades have been talking about immune system. This is nothing new. How let's talk a little bit about the basics of how toxins, toxins, heavy metals affect immune system. Do you want to give us just a little tiny overview on that? I think it is probably helpful to go back to arsenic, because arsenic is something that we now know 108 million people are drinking it, you know, from their tap work. And while we're on that subject, a simple reverse osmosis filter will get the arsenic out of your tap work. Her charcoal is not as reliable, but reverse osmosis is very reliable. So arsenic is a specific immune suppressing metal. So those effects have been known for decades. One of the things I think is interesting is that arsenic decreases macrophage function. So we know that the macrophages are like the garbage men and women of the immune system. They go in and they literally will take the garbage out, make them surround the garbage and remove it either through the lymphatic system or sometimes back into the blood. And so one of the things I've learned is that in COVID, macrophage function is very important. We forget the T cell mediated immunity, right? People are talking about B cells. I mean, no, no, no. It's actually T cell more important. And arsenic also suppresses these cells called natural killer cells. So natural killer cell function is very important in actually attacking viruses directly. We need robust natural killer cell function, right? And again, when we're looking at viruses and cancer cells, by the way, innate immunity is the key. That's what we need. And so I think we can say the same thing about mercury. It has a suppressing effect on natural killer cell function. So does lack. And all these things are in cigarettes. I mean, it's not that I would ever smoke a cigarette anyway. But now that I know what I know about what's inside of cigarettes, I can't. I mean, somebody would have to put me in handcuffs to give me a smoke. Well, let's have real briefly, because a lot of kids are vaping now or adult sections, they're just kids. But same thing, right? You're not losing the risk. In fact, I think there's higher levels in smoking than in regular smoking. There's nothing safe about vaping, nothing. It's more addictive than smoking cigarettes. Yeah, absolutely. So back to immune function. So I think that we are at this place with COVID, where we literally, there's a fork in the road. And we've got to go one way or the other. We can't hang out at the junction anymore. We have to make choices about how we live, how we spend our money, how we take care of our bodies that go down that, you know, left hand to right hand side, whichever one it is, to robust innate immunity, because we don't have any choice anymore. You know, and I don't want to talk about the vaccine because it's so political. But one thing I will say is I heard a vaccine developer lately, you may have heard him talk and said one of the potential risks with the vaccine is that it may allow for more variants. So those variants will affect those of us who may have chosen not to be vaccinated, right? So it's everybody now. It's all of us. We all have to make very conscious choices about innate immunity. And avoiding metals and improving metal excretion is in my book, one of those choices. Like we actually have to choose that. I think, Lynn, if we had to have a take away of like what to do in this era and everything, we must start choosing to do daily detoxification things. I've always told people 21 day detox, 30 day January 1st, that's great. No problem. But if you are not choosing, like I practiced what I preach, I know you do as well. I choose every single day to do things like sauna or a charcoal or clay or eat clean, all organic or drink purified water. And you've heard me say clean air, clean water, clean food. Some of these things do not have to be incredibly expensive or difficult. It's very simple because what we put in our body protects us from accumulating that load and then choosing to do like the types of food that we eat, the type of water we drink, the air quality using air filtration systems, epsom salt, baths, infrared sauna, space heater in your bathroom. These things you have to make a choice every day and you do have to choose. Unfortunately, in this century, we must choose to put some of that in because if we don't, the load is so great that we're all going to be overcome in some way by it. And I don't mean to be fatalistic, but I've realized I'm sure you've seen this 10, 15 years ago when I started seeing functional medicine practice patients, it was a thyroid disorder and three months later they were well. I never see that anymore. The complexity level is so 10 to 100 times greater than it was even in one or two decades. And I believe that the hidden elephant in the room, which was one of the titles of our conference, is the toxic load. And I just heard just for everybody, Shannon Swan, who is one of our renowned, she started looking at this long before anybody else even cared or knew back in the 70s. She just written a book and I'm so sorry that I don't have the title of it. But one of the things we'll add it to the, we'll add that one of the things she says, and this just came out in an article I think in the New York Times, is that her estimation based on the literature, is that by 2045, the male sperm count in the world globally will be zero. Wow. Is it called countdown? I think I found it by the Shannon Swan PhD. So she is one of our just renowned, really beloved, very well-respected researchers in the field of endocrine disruption. She was the one who found that phthalates in pre-exposure to phthalates in the womb, so prenatal exposure to phthalates altered the analgenital distance in voice, which was that the actual distance between the genitals of an infant boy and the anus was changing. And that is a bad thing to happen. There's a lot of reasons that it's bad, but it is a bad thing to have happened. And so for the last almost 30 years, she has been on the bandwagon about this and continuing to publish and she's just wonderful. But that's the reality. And the thing, Jill, that you and I both say is knowledge is power. And so we can take this knowledge and we can implement in our lives things that we can incorporate into our daily routine. I do a sauna. I try and sauna every day. I don't have to do it for an hour. I just do it for 15 minutes. That's okay. I feel so much better and I sleep so much better. Yeah, same thing. I just pick and choose and there's no obligation, but it's part of what I value, which is my health. And I just really believe we have to teach our patients to choose to value maybe taking 20 minutes a day to some practice. Again, it might be your, I use an Epsom salt bath every single night that I can. It's just so powerful, so simple, so cheap and easy. And then like you, I sleep better. So there's these things you can incorporate. So let's just end with, obviously wherever you see this video, you'll see links to the conference more information. And as you can see why I love Dr. Patrick is she really brings some of the best and brightest brains and researchers. She's always looking for who is the expert and then let's get them to the conference. Let's get them to speak. And I don't know of any other higher quality organization as far as the types of people that you're going to see. And sometimes the level of knowledge is pretty amazing. But there's also at this conference, we're going to have some really practical ways. Like you heard, I'm going to do a live Q&A. I've never done that before on the conference, but I'm so excited because it's going to be really, really interactive. So you literally get to bring your questions and I'll be there and just be able to answer them in real time. Great. Yeah. Environmental health symposium. I'll see you all there. Jill and I will be moderating. We'll be introducing and listening to some pretty amazing docs and researchers. Awesome. Well, thanks for your time today, Lynn. We will talk in a few weeks. Okay. Great. Thank you so much, Dr. Jill.