In this episode, I am speaking with Wendy Myers – who is a functional diagnostic nutritionist and a detox specialist. Wendy previously suffered from heavy metal toxicity and had to do heavy metal detoxing to overcome her health challenges. We will talk about the seven heavy metals that cause fatigue.
Table of Contents
In this podcast, Wendy and I discuss:
- The symptoms of heavy metal toxicity (the simple, give-away signs!)
- From where in the environment we acquire heavy metals and toxins – you must avoid these at all costs
- How metals interfere with your ability to produce energy, absorb nutrients, poison your immune system, disrupt your hormones, stop you sleeping properly and disrupt mitochondrial production (all affecting your vital energy!)
- The best way to test for heavy metal toxicity (and a shocking conclusion that might save you some big money)
- Which minerals help displace heavy metals and really must be taken when you detox
- How to safely detox in a way that is efficient, safe and effective
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Transcript
Ari: Hey, everyone. Welcome back to the Energy Blueprint Podcast. I am here now with my friend Wendy Myers, who is the founder of myersdetox.com. She’s a detoxification expert, functional diagnostic nutritionist, and NES bioenergetic practitioner in Los Angeles, California. She’s the number one best-selling author of Limitless Energy: How to Detox Toxic Metals to End Exhaustion and Chronic Fatigue and the host of the heavymetalssummit.com.
She currently hosts two podcasts. She’s a very busy person. I only host one, but she always has to outdo me by hosting twice as many as I do. She hosts two podcasts, The Myers Detox podcast about detoxification, and The Supercharged podcast about NES Health bioenergetics. She’s passionate about the importance of detox to live a long disease-free life. And she created the revolutionary Myers detox protocol and mitochondria detox after working with thousands of clients.
So, welcome, Wendy, such a pleasure to have you.
Wendy: Yeah. Thank you so much for having me.
How heavy metals affect your energy levels
Ari: Yeah. So, in this presentation, as her bio alluded to, she’s going to be talking all about heavy metals and fatigue. Heavy metals and optimizing your energy levels. So, I will hand it off to you and let you get into it.
Wendy: Okay, fantastic. So, I want to talk to you guys about heavy metals that cause fatigue, because I think there’s a lot of people out there that are chronically fatigued. Some people that can’t work, can’t even get out of bed, or they just have mild symptoms of fatigue, maybe feel like they’re getting older. And I assure you that heavy metals and toxins are contributing to those symptoms, and I’ll tell you why today.
So, what you’re going to learn today is symptoms of heavy metal toxicity. How we acquire heavy metals and toxins, where we’re getting them in the environment. The mechanism by which heavy metals and toxins cause fatigue, and we’ll talk about seven toxic metals that interfere in mitochondrial energy production, your mitochondria make your energy in your body. And we’ll talk about the best heavy metal testing methods. The do’s and don’ts of heavy metal testing, what you should know. And how to detox heavy metals safely and gently.
And so, first I’m Wendy Myers, I founded myersdetox.com. I had a lot of heavy metal toxicities causing fatigue and brain fog, hormone issues, and mood issues, and sleep issues, and things like that. And I got a lot better once I started detoxing heavy metals and chemicals, and founded my site, super passionate about this and trying to educate others that metals may be an underlying root cause of their symptoms.
And if any of you guys are experiencing symptoms like low sex hormones, low stress hormones, adrenaline and cortisol, low thyroid hormones, which a lot of people are dealing with, fatigue, brain fog, weight gain or resistant weight loss, or moodiness, mood swings, anxiety, depression, heavy metals can be big underlying contributors to those symptoms.
And there’s many more, I mean, I’ve been researching this for over a decade and it never ceases to amaze me how many different symptoms have a heavy metal as an underlying root cause. So, this is all in the research, even all the major chronic health issues, heart disease, hypertension, diabetes, metabolite disease, and fatty liver disease have heavy metal causes to those, that are contributing.
And so, let’s talk about how we acquire heavy metals and toxins. Where are we getting this stuff? So, we get it in the air, breathing. And there’s a lot of metals unleashed into the air from industrial manufacturing, from mining, just from auto exhaust and other ways. We get toxins in personal care products, stuff that we’re slathering on our skin and creating a very, very, effective entryway into our body when you place different products on your skin that have hormone disrupting chemicals, and heavy metals like lead and cadmium in them. And then…
Common places heavy metals are found
Ari: I want to pause for just a moment and point something out, because a lot of people think heavy metals, they think mercury or arsenic and their brain immediately goes to tuna fish, or seafood, and that’s the source of mercury. And maybe silver fillings, mercury fillings, like dental fillings. And then maybe they know, oh, there’s arsenic also in things like chicken and maybe rice, but there’s all these other sources you’ve, I mean, in the first two you’ve mentioned, you’ve mentioned the air as a major source.
I think most people have no idea that they’re getting exposed to heavy metals via air pollution or personal care products. I’ve seen research showing that, maybe you know the percentage, I forget the percentage, but some ungodly percentage of like makeup and lipstick has high levels of lead in it.
So, people I think, it’s just, I just want to point out to people as you’re going through this list of places we’re being exposed, that it’s not just seafood. It’s not just dental fillings. There’s many, many sources of these different kinds of heavy metals, that we’re pretty much all being exposed to.
Wendy: Yeah. It’s really shocking when you kind of start delving into this. Like for instance, I was looking to buy some new dishes and it is shocking how many dishes have lead and cadmium in them. It’s unbelievable. So, I was trying to find ones that had been tested before. And so, it’s just in kids toys, there’s lots of lead in children’s toys, especially older ones, vintage ones. Even books can have lead and cadmium in them, in the colors that are in the inks. So, it’s just there’s a lot of places that even I’m still learning about.
Ari: I just, you know I heard one the other day from someone that I interviewed that I did not know about, which was the wicks of candles.
Wendy: Huh. Yeah.
Ari: Did you hear about that? That like traditional, I mean, I knew most typical candles on the market have all kinds of perfumes and stuff like that and the paraffin wax emits fumes that are toxic. But she was saying that lead is actually, lead particles are infused into the wicks of candles, in most of those kinds of candles. It’s not just cotton. And that I mean, you’re literally releasing lead into the air when you burn some of these candles.
Wendy: Yeah, it’s amazing when they have to have something in them that keeps them kind of burning. Like for instance, like marijuana or cigarette papers, those rolling papers have cadmium in them because it causes them to have a slow burn. And so…
Ari: It’s totally worth it though. I mean…
Wendy: Yeah, totally.
Ari: The cadmium poisoning is worth the cost of that cool slow burn.
Wendy: Yeah, that’s the exception to what we’re talking to avoid. Yeah, and then I mean there’s food, where you mentioned. And food, unfortunately because of the soil that food is grown in and the soil can have cadmium and other metals from chemical fertilizers. The chemical fertilizers can cause uranium to be etched off of rocks in the soil and get into the food, and the soil. And then we burned leaded gasoline for decades.
So, there’s lead in most of the soil were food is grown. And then the metals that are in the air can settle into the soil and onto the vegetables, and create a, unfortunately, a toxic food supply. Even if you’re eating organic food, remember organic means pesticide, herbicide free. It doesn’t mean heavy metal free. There is no certification on food for heavy metals because people will be too freaked out.
So, what I tell people is not to avoid certain foods necessarily. Like don’t stop eating fish because it has some level of mercury in it, but I prefer people don’t worry too much about the toxins in food because we’re getting them everywhere. You still have to eat, you still, fish is an incredibly nutritious source of food. I prefer that people eat fish and then do just a sensible daily detox. Because fish is such a good source of nutrition, that we don’t want to be missing out on that.
And so, you want to avoid some obvious sources like ahi tuna, that’s much higher sources of mercury than say, a skipjack tuna that’s in canned tuna fish. So, there’s some distinctions there to be made. Yeah, and then also industrial manufacturing, that unfortunately contributes to a lot of dumping into waterways, air pollution, contamination of soils. Louisiana is a mess. I mean, there’s chemical manufacturing factories everywhere there and there’s lots of dumping. Very high cancer rates as a result.
Supplements can also be a source of metals. Where people can get lead and other metals in supplements as well. That doesn’t mean avoid supplements. It’s just be aware, that’s a potential source. And it’s great if you have products that have third-party testing for metals. But even if products have lead in them, let say greens powders, a lot of greens powders can have a small amount of lead in them. But greens powders usually have so much boron that any lead in that product is not going to go into your system, because the boron really binds on to that lead and just takes it out of your body.
The role of vitamins and minerals in heavy metal detox
Ari: Yeah, there’s some interesting mineral to mineral interactions and inhibitory effects for, you mentioned boron and lead, but there’s also selenium and mercury.
Wendy: Yes.
Ari: Like the selenium content of seafood seems to protect against the toxicity of mercury. So, I’m curious if, I actually didn’t know about the boron and lead thing, but I’m curious are there any other interactions like that?
Wendy: Yes.
Ari: That are worth speaking about?
Wendy: Yeah, absolutely. And minerals are a key part of any heavy metal detoxification. Number one, because it makes your body work so that you can detox better. And number two, because minerals displace certain metals in the body, they push them out of the enzyme binding sites. Another example is zinc to cadmium. Zinc will help to push cadmium out of the body. Potassium will help to push out thallium and cesium. Let’s see, so molybdenum will help to push out tungsten. And there’s other ones as well, but there’s, these are just metals and minerals that have the same transporter proteins, amino acid transporters.
Ari: Yeah, fascinating.
Wendy: Yeah, and then there is water. So, water is a huge source of contamination and even if you’re drinking perfectly filtered water, you’ve got yourself a water filter, whatnot, you’re showering in water every day that’s likely not filtered. And so, I know in my area in Southern California, everyone has geranium. Everyone, every single person I’ve ever tested has uranium. There are getting it in their shower water. And arsenic, uranium…
Ari: I just thought my high levels of uranium were from my nuclear reactor in my basement. But apparently, it’s from taking showers.
Wendy: San Onofre. Yeah. I’ve always wanted to go see the nuclear power plants. I actually have clients that live near nuclear power plants that have cesium and strontium toxicity, and I don’t think they’re really that great at preventing toxicity from getting into the environment near them. So, that’s pretty much the gamut of how we acquire heavy metals and toxins, lots of different ways. So, the key point being everyone has some level of heavy metals in their body. And so, you want to be paying attention to this.
And so, we’ll get into seven toxic metals that interfere in your mitochondria, in your energy production. So, we know that these metals, arsenic, aluminum, tin, thallium, cesium, lead, and mercury are potent mitochondrial poisons, they interfere in energy production in different ways. And anyone who’s chronically fatigued or has severe fatigue issues is going to have some level of these metals. So, these metals will play a role in your symptoms. And in order to get better, in order to fully recover, you definitely want to add detoxification to what you’re already doing. This is one piece of the puzzle that a lot of people are missing.
How heavy metals can cause fatigue
Ari: Yeah. So, how exactly do these metals interfere with energy production and cause fatigue?
Wendy: I’m glad you asked that, because that’s my next slide. So, these are the different mechanisms by which metals cause fatigue. So, number one, they poison enzymes. That’s what metals do, they poison different enzyme systems in the body and interfere in their function.
So, as far as mitochondria are concerned, they poison enzymes that transport nutrients into your mitochondria. That’s why a lot of people take different mitochondrial supplements and maybe they don’t work. They don’t feel anything. They might not be getting into the mitochondria because of heavy metals.
They also block mitochondrial receptor sites as well. And so, if different hormones and things are trying to act on the mitochondria, they may be interrupted by heavy metals poisoning those mechanisms. Also, heavy metals poison the body’s ability to make digestive juices and get nutrition from food. I think people don’t realize the contribution that different metals, mercury, cadmium, lead, nickel, can play in reducing hydrochloric acid and pepsin production in the stomach. And then interfere in the pancreas production of digestive enzymes. Interfere in liver function and all of its different digestive capabilities in the body.
Ari: Now is that specifically as the metals have just come into the system and they’re sitting in the stomach, in the food that you just ate, they’re interfering with let’s say hydrochloric acid production in the stomach, in that moment or are you saying that accumulated levels of some of these metals that are inside of our cells, separate from the stomach, could interfere with hydrochloric acid production in the stomach?
Wendy: Yeah, it very well could interfere, I’ve never been asked that question before, but it could very well start interfering if you eat some food that contains a lot of lead. If that lead is getting into your cells, in the cells that produce hydrochloric acid that makes its way in there, yes, it can start interfering in that cell’s mechanism of action for sure. But it probably has to get into the cell.
And so, if we’re not absorbing our food, we’re not going to be able to optimize the amount of energy we can extract from that food. And so, and I see this a lot with clients, there’s huge, huge roadblocks to absorption of food. And metals are just one of them. So, I think a lot of people today have low mineral levels, low nutrient levels, even if they’re eating this amazing diet, they may not be absorbing. It doesn’t matter what you eat or supplement with it only matters what you absorb.
And so, and then these metals also poison immune system cells. They poison our macrophages, our neutrophils, our killer T cells, and this allows the overgrowth of opportunistic pathogens that drain the body’s energy. If your immune system is spending all night long fighting all these different pathogens, and viruses, bacteria, parasites, it is just a drain on your system. That’s why infections can cause fatigue. That’s one of the, just one of the mechanisms.
And then these toxic metals also poison enzymes that create thyroid and other hormones. Mercury is a huge factor in poisoning the thyroglobulin, which is like the storage form of thyroid hormones. Poisoning the production of T4, poisoning the conversion of T4 to T3, which is the active form of thyroid hormone. So, not surprising that because mercury is so ubiquitous in our environment, so many people have thyroid issues. And I think mercury is a big underlying root cause of that. Thyroid medications are one of the number one prescribed medication also.
And so, and then metals also accumulate in the adrenal glands and reduce stress hormone production, reduce adrenaline and cortisol. Cortisol, your getup-and-go hormone, which you need a lot of in the morning and if you can’t make enough, you’re going to be tired when you wake up. And then also fluoride calcifies. It’s not a toxic metal. It’s a toxic kind of mineral, but it calcifies the pineal gland which reduces melatonin production and interferes in sleep. So, if you don’t sleep well, you’re not going to have a lot of energy.
So, there’s a lot of different mechanisms by which metals cause fatigue. Big surprise we’re all tired today. And this is the number one complaint. This was my number one complaint, this is the number one complaint of so many people, is I just want more energy. And so, I’m glad you’re doing the summit because it’s really important to figure out why this is happening.
Ari: Yeah, absolutely.
Wendy: And any questions there?
Ari: I want to mention just a couple comments on the last two things you mentioned there. One is the adrenal glands and stress hormone production. I’ve, I don’t know if you’ve seen any of the work I’ve done around like debunking adrenal fatigue, but then there’s also, there are legitimately some factors which do cause low levels of, lower levels at least, of cortisol production, especially in the morning or throughout the day. And chronic stress, believe it or not, is not one of those things that is reliably linked with lower production of cortisol.
But I did find a couple interesting studies on accumulation of metals and there was an association with, I think in particular aluminum, maybe arsenic, I might be forgetting, but either aluminum or arsenic and the higher levels of load that they detected in the bodies of people of that metal, the lower, there was a clear trend towards lower cortisol production. So, it’s very interesting. I haven’t heard many people talk about that link.
And then fluoride and the pineal gland, also mentioned that melatonin obviously relates to our sleep, but a lot of people don’t know that melatonin is actually extremely important for protecting our mitochondria from damage. So, there’s in addition to the sleep angle of how that affects energy, which is huge, there’s also this very direct effect on mitochondria and keeping them protected from harm. It’s an incredibly potent mitochondrial antioxidant that should be secreted in abundance every night while we’re sleeping. And if we don’t get enough of it, the damage adds up in our mitochondria.
Melatonin production and how it is affected
Wendy: Yeah. I’m glad, I didn’t know that actually. And also because of EMF, Wi-Fi exposure, cell phone exposure, that also kind of vibrates and irritates the pineal gland, and also reduces melatonin production as well. And melatonin helps to detox the brain. It’s super important. I take it every night. It’s really, really important, I think. And I recommend that to most of my clients because you have to supplement what you’re deficient in, right.
Ari: Yeah, on that note. I don’t want to digress too much, but it’s an interesting subject. Melatonin supplementation for me, personally, as much as there’s, this really interesting body of like, there’s a huge body of positive literature around melatonin supplementation for all kinds of things, anticancer effects, digestive conditions, brain-related conditions.
I mean, it’s actually an incredibly impressive body of literature. Even using remarkably high doses, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60 milligrams a night, and just for reference the, for people listening, the body’s own production of melatonin is orders of magnitude smaller than that. It’s about 300 micrograms, which is point, point 3 milligram.
So, they’re using a hundred times the amount that your body would normally produce. So, for me personally, whenever I’ve experimented with doses, even typical sort of supplement doses of like three milligrams it actually profoundly disturbs my sleep. And not only disturbs my sleep for that night, but then disturbs my sleep the following night and then usually after two nights of bad sleep then I can get back into a normal groove. But I found that if I take really, really, small micro doses of melatonin, around what the body, the brain normally produces, about under 300 micrograms, that it enhances the sleep without causing any negative feedback and disrupting the sleep either that night or the nights after.
So, but so, there seems to be people like me and from the surveys I’ve done in my audience maybe about 25 percent of people respond like me, and then there’s other people who do great with 5 milligrams, 10 milligrams, 20 milligrams a night and it just has positive effects with no downside. So, that’s kind of an interesting aside on melatonin.
Wendy: Yeah, you have to be careful because too much melatonin can also suppress estrogen production. So, there’s always a cost and a benefit to everything you’re doing and everyone’s different you have to do what works for you. Everyone has different reactions, and I think people taking a high dose are usually taking a pill or something, and you’re not going to absorb as much that way. You really have to take it sublingually, ideally for to absorb.
Heavy metals testing
So, let’s talk about heavy metals testing. So, the best heavy metals testing methods out there. So, just to start this out, there’s no perfect heavy metals test. There is no test that’s going to tell you every single heavy metal that you have in your body. So, what I prefer to do with clients, I start with a hair mineral analysis. It gives us a tremendous amount of information. Does it give us all the information? No. It’s a great screening tool to help me design a kind of targeted detoxification program for someone.
But in an ideal world, I would love to also see a urine test and a stool test. Because different metals have different exit routes in the body. Some metal show best in the hair, some metals show best in the urine, and some metal show best in the stool. And urine is fantastic for showing cesium, and thallium, and cadmium. Almost every single client I’m testing has cesium and thallium, I believe from nuclear testing, nuclear accidents. I don’t think we hear about all the nuclear accidents. Fukushima, lots of radioactive contamination in our environment and those affect our energy, our mitochondrial energy production.
And I love stool testing as well. We see cadmium best in the stool, and we also see silver in the stool as well from mercury amalgam fillings also. So, ideal world, I want to see all three of those. As far as blood testing, that’s typically, a blood test is what you’ll get from your medical doctor if you go into his office and say. “Hey I’m concerned about heavy metals maybe contributing to my symptoms. Can I do a heavy metals test?” More often than not, they’ll do a blood test which will only test for four metals, mercury, lead, cadmium and arsenic.
And so, since there’s dozens of heavy metals it’s not going to be ideal or terribly accurate. If it comes back negative, it’s typically a false negative where the body doesn’t allow metals to float around in the blood because it will harm organs and the brain. The body very quickly if it has an exposure tries to sequester the stuff away in your brain, in your bones, in your fat and other tissues of the body, away from vital organs. And so, the only blood test I’d recommend is Dr. Chris Shades blood test. That’s a different, whole different animal. You’re not going to get that at your doctor’s.
Ari: And just to mention some more nuance here. There’s urine, even urine testing is, there’s sort of debate around well, is it just standard urine testing or do you need to do a challenge test where you’re using these chelators to kind of push these metals out of your cells into the bloodstream, and then into the urine. And there’s some people who argue that’s the only valid way of assessing it. And then I think there used to be, I don’t think there exist anymore, but there used to be a biopsy test where they’d actually take a thick needle and take a chunk of your fat tissue and analyze that. And I know some practitioners who would say, that’s the most accurate one because you’re really actually looking truly at the levels of sequestered metals inside of the tissues of the body.
Wendy: Yes.
Ari: My understanding is that the test doesn’t even exist anymore.
Wendy: Yeah. Yeah, I haven’t even heard of that before. But yes, and in this also begs the question of, these are screening tools and they work for those purposes, to help people figure out what toxins they have and what kind of supplements or nutrients they should take to remove those toxins. Because even if you don’t have say a really high level of mercury on hair or urine test, there’s usually where there’s one rat, there’s a thousand more that’s just the tip of the iceberg. It’s just in a stored site somewhere in your body.
There’s usually more that comes out later as someone begins taking minerals, nutrients that they need to remove toxins, escort them out of the body and start doing things like infrared saunas and assisting the body’s ability to detox, we see many, many, many, more toxins start coming out on subsequent tests.
That first test is usually a baseline. For most people it’s very underwhelming, they don’t have that many metals if any coming out and but we already know that, we know that just working with thousands of clients, but on subsequent tests, they’ll have more metals coming out as they facilitate their body’s ability to detox. So, again, there’s no perfect test.
Ari: Yeah, another question and sort of layer of complexity to add to this is, we’re obviously in this discussion you’re focused mainly on these metals, however, there’s also hundreds or actually thousands of other chemicals that we’re being exposed to on a regular basis. Like benzene, and formaldehyde, and BPA, and phthalates and all kinds of other things that are not metals. Even fluoride which you mentioned here, or chlorine and chlorine disinfection by-products, and yada, yada, yada, the list goes on. We don’t even have any tests for most of those compounds.
Wendy: Yeah.
Are we toxic? And how to fix it
Ari: And so, I almost wonder, especially since, and you please correct me if I’m misinterpreting, but it almost sounds like we can safely assume that most pretty much everybody is toxic to some degree in lots of these things.
Wendy: Oh well, everyone is. I mean it’s impossible to not have lead. It’s statistically Impossible. It’s impossible to not have aluminum. It’s in every breath that you’re taking in. So, there’s some metals we know, we’ve done with our medical director Dr. Bruce Jones, we’ve done different statistical analyses and we can tell you the most common heavy metals, that everyone has, but it’s impossible for some metals like mercury and aluminum not to have them. And lead.
Ari: So, then the question is why bother with testing at all? I mean, is there a specific test that gives you some really high quality information that lets you discern maybe, okay well, this person is really toxic in this one particular metal and we have this one particular protocol, or supplement, or compound, that we know is really effective in getting rid of that particular metal.
Wendy: Exactly.
Ari: Okay.
Wendy: Exactly. Yeah, so, there are supplements that people can take, that everyone will benefit from. So, binders, modified citrus pectin’s, and things like that. And minerals, and there’s other things people can take. We know everyone will benefit from doing those. But some people, especially if they’re chronically ill usually will have one or more metals that are the big underlying root cause of symptoms. And say if you have a lot of arsenic, you can really hone in on specific supplements that remove that and focus in on that. With mercury there are specific supplements for that.
And some people have outlier metals where they’re metals we just don’t see very often, and somehow they had some sort of exposure and we’re just not going to know that unless we do testing. And people are usually very surprised, it’s also a way to kind of wake them up that they do have these metals and they do need to do something about it, because it’s involved to get this stuff out of your body. So, sometimes people need motivation, they need to see some proof and testing serves that benefit as well.
Ari: Got it. So, having said all that there’s going to be sort of, as you alluded to there, there’s going to be a set of strategies that basically everyone can engage in and that will help detoxify a large percentage of these different metals and maybe other toxicants as well. And then there might be some need for specific testing and maybe working with you directly or going through your program, to use some of the specific tests and identify is there any specific toxicities that I need sort of extra support to go after.
Wendy: Yeah, exactly, exactly. And there’s things that people can do without doing testing. Like…
Ari: Okay. So, let’s talk about those. What are those strategies that people can use?
Wendy: Yeah. So, if you look at this slide, so this is all about how to detox heavy metals safely and gently. And also, you mentioned chemicals. So, I forgot to address that. So, people have on average 500 to 700 chemicals in their body, depending.
Ari: That’s it?
Wendy: Yeah. Well, there could be more that’s average. That’s average.
Ari: I’m just messing with you.
Wendy: Yeah. Yeah. So, the World Health Organization has done studies, there’s been other government agencies that have done studies, and it’s really shocking when you think about all these metals but not only the chemicals, but some of them kind of interacting with each other. There are studies that show interactions of certain chemicals and toxins and what’s, how that is affecting your body as well.
And so, there are tests for chemicals, but I don’t do them because I know that people have them and when they’re doing everything to detox heavy metals it’s going to be the same protocol to get rid of chemicals. So, I stopped doing chemical testing a while ago. There’s one from Great Plains Labs. There’s a hair mineral analysis lab in France, that test for about 40 chemicals, but I’m a little bit underwhelmed testing for 40 chemicals. I personally want more information than that. I don’t bother wasting people’s money with chemical testing.
Ari: Yeah. I hear you. And just to, this is a bit of a digression but there’s some sort of smarty-pants, evidence-based skeptics out there who scoff at this whole subject of detoxification. Say, oh, this is all pseudoscience, and nonsense, and specifically there are some people who will point out the use of this word chemicals and say, “Oh well, everything’s a chemical. Have you heard of this thing called dihydrogen monoxide? It’s duh-de-duh-de-duh” Which is water, and kind of make this case that yes, we have lots of chemicals.
We have thousands of chemicals in our body naturally and just because something is a chemical doesn’t mean it’s harmful. Which is true, and yet but you’re specifically here referring to man-made chemicals, many of which have actually known toxicity and have been studied and shown to be toxic to human health, or which haven’t been studied at all, and we don’t know if they’re toxic or not.
Wendy: Yeah. I mean, we have several thousand chemicals unleashed in the environment every year with no safety studying whatsoever. It’s just, good luck. Good luck with that. And let’s just see what happens in the general population, and than 10 years later, 20 years later, we’ll get some regulations in place and pay the thirty thousand dollar fine, who cares we made billions. So, that’s usually the whole, how it plays out.
So, you as a consumer, you have to be proactive because no one is protecting you. The government’s not protecting you, the doctor isn’t testing for this, the doctor doesn’t know anything about this for the most part, unless they’re brilliant. And so, even a lot of functional medical doctors, which is a leg up, step up from conventional medicine. Most of them aren’t looking at this. So, you really have to be proactive yourself as a consumer. If you’re sick, you have mystery illness, you haven’t been able to get better, detox is usually the missing piece of that puzzle.
So, if we look at how to get this stuff out of our body, because the reality is we have it, we need to be doing things on a daily basis. That we’re adding to our already healthy regime that we’re doing, all the food, and supplements, and the exercise. Detox is usually that missing piece of the puzzle. And so, what you can do is, number one a binder is a very simple thing you can take that acts like a sponge that’s absorbing toxins from your blood, your gut, etcetera. And very kind of gentle, passive way to detox.
And binders are things like modified citrus pectin, activated charcoal, zeolites, chlorella, things of that nature are fantastic to take. And you can rotate them also, you can take different ones. I have a few ones that I rotate as well. And then mobilizers. So, you want to take something that’s going to pull toxins out of the cells. Binders don’t do that. And there’s different things like cilantro, cilantro extract, will pull toxins out of the cell.
Zeolites can pull things out of the cells. There’s different other ingredients, like, I don’t know why I’m blanking. There’s DMSA or EDTA or there’s lots of different products on the market that will help to pull toxins out of the cells. Lipoic acid, things like that. And again, different products work on different metals and toxins.
Ari: And how specific are these things? Like let’s say something like zeolites, if it’s going into the cells, pulling things out of the cells, how do we know that it’s pulling out let’s say mercury or I don’t know formaldehyde, or BPA, or something as opposed to pulling out magnesium and zinc?
Wendy: Yeah. So, that’s the thing with a lot of different products that detox metals. Where you find metals you also, where you detox metals, you can also be detoxing minerals, which we want to minimize as much as possible when we are detoxing. For instance, zeolites are great at getting rid of uranium, and mercury, and lead, and nickel, and volatile organic chemicals, and even mold mycotoxins things like that, but they can also deplete copper and zinc. So, you have to be careful with them and that’s why when you’re detoxing or just being a healthy person, you want to be taking minerals every single day.
And they’re not sexy, they’re not marketed that much so people kind of aren’t looking at that as excitingly as they are as like turmeric, or resveratrol, or different antioxidants that are marketed. But mineral supplementation should be the foundation and focus of your detox and health regime. And yeah, and so, like I said different substances remove different metals. I have a whole chart that shows every supplement and what metals it removes.
And so, minerals I just touched on that. We need minerals to push metals out of the body. That’s the most foundational simple detox that you can do it. Seriously, that’s where I got started for the first three years of my detox program, I only took minerals. They’re that powerful. Taking selenium to push out mercury. Taking potassium to push out thallium and cesium. Taking zinc to push out cadmium. And there’s, zinc also pushes out mercury as well. Lots of others examples.
Ari: Have you measured this in any one where you’ve isolated this single variable of just put them on mineral supplementation and then assess their levels of for example, toxic metals and been able to show a significant response just from the use of minerals?
Wendy: I haven’t but I know somebody who has. And so, there’s a product I like called Healthy Salt. It’s 25% minerals, whereas, a regular sea salt will be 1% minerals. Himalayan point eight percent minerals, just to give you a contrast or frame of reference. And so, this mineral product we can see it pushes out cadmium, we can see it pushes out different metals.
My colleague, Eileen Durfee, she did Healthy Salt, did a hair test and we see metals coming out. Stopped the salt, did a hair test, had fewer metals coming out. Started the Healthy Salt, did a month, after month did a hair test, all the metals and cadmium coming out as well. She did that for about six months. And so, we can see, and I’ve noticed my clients, even the practitioners that I train a marked increase in their metal excretion following the Healthy Salt.
Ari: Wow, very interesting. And that’s called, it’s called Healthy Salt?
Wendy: It’s called Healthy Salt. Yeah.
Ari: Interesting. And that’s not the one, that’s not like Redmond, the one from Utah is it?
Wendy: No, it’s not. So, this is a salt that’s been processed for three years and they wash it, and dry it, rinse it, and dry it, burn it with some herbs and dry it, wash it again. And so, it’s concentrated. There’s low sodium levels, so you’re really getting the mineral concentration of like the trace minerals that a lot of people need. So, it’s not a food…
Ari: I haven’t heard of that. I’m going to check that out.
Wendy: Yeah, it’s great. I love it. And it’s, I add it to all my water and whatnot. So, it’s not something that you salt your food with. So, it’s not for that. You certainly can, because it has low sodium, it doesn’t have that type of sodium salty taste. It’s really a therapeutic salt that you would put in some water. And it’s so strong, some people especially if they’re ill can only handle like a tiny little amount on the end of a toothpick and they have to build up from there.
Ari: So, if it’s not for use as like salting foods, what’s the difference between something like that and just taking let’s say ConcenTrace trace minerals supplement?
Wendy: Well, I just find that it works better for my body. I’m attracted to it, I don’t know why the taste of it, a lot of things like ConcenTrace, they taste a little bit on the soapy side to me. There’s something off with them, and I can’t really explain why, it’s just something I don’t want to take on a daily basis. But the Healthy Salt, and my clients report the same thing, they’re just wanting to take that more so. I think it’s more of a natural salt.
Ari: Maybe they spike it with some kind of addictive chemical.
Wendy: Yeah. Well it has a lot of silver in it, you can definitely taste the silver.
And you need silver to detox. So, that’s the herbs that they burn in it. So, but
ConcenTrace, whatever, you know you can’t screw this up. If you have ConcenTrace take it. If you have other minerals, take it. I would rather people take something then nothing, everyone needs to be. Quinton is amazing. I love that product as well. But I personally just like the Healthy Salt, but I rotate things as well.
Ari: Nice. Are there any other strategies worth mentioning as far as detoxification approach?
Wendy: Yeah. So, grounding is something that a lot of people don’t talk about. Our bodies have to a certain charge to work. So, you can do anything you want like as far as detoxification, your body is not going to work as well unless it’s negatively charged. And this goes for any health issue, anything you’re trying to do or accomplish, any symptom you’re trying to get rid of. You have to ground your body.
And I talk a lot on my website about how to go about doing that. Just swimming in the ocean, walking on the beach barefoot, laying on the ground, it’s not enough. Today, it’s, I’ll take it. Any little bit you can do great, but we have so many things acting on a body like EMF, and the computer wireless, and cell phones, and all these different sources of Wi-Fi that elicit a positive charge on your body. You have to kind of fight back something stronger than just kind of earthing in nature.
But enough on that, there’s encyclopedias written on that. So, also infrared saunas. Infrared saunas are fantastic at assisting the cellular removal of toxins, getting them in the bloodstream to be processed and exit the kidneys. And also increasing immunity and just inducing this faux fever that helps to kill off infections and things that are blocking up your detox pathways, emitting their mycotoxins and parasite poop. Those kinds of infections can throw a wrench into detox. So, doing infrared saunas can help the, get those under control and to facilitate chemical, and metal removal from all your fat and other storage sites in the body.
Ari: And then I know you have coffee enemas listed here as well. Wendy: Yeah.
Ari: That’s something that I have obviously heard of for a long time. When I was a little kid my grandma was sick with cancer and did the Gerson method down in Mexico, and one of the big parts of the protocol was coffee enemas. So, this is something I’ve heard about, since jeez, 30 years now, but I honestly really have never seen much literature, but admittedly I’ve never really looked to see what the scientific, the state of the scientific literature is on coffee enemas. But is there actually any legitimate research on this and showing how it might affect something like detoxification?
Wendy: There is some research on coffee enema’s. There’s not a ton. It’s not something that large universities are going to be studying, because there’s no money in coffee enemas. There’s not really any company funding studies on coffee enemas. There are some false information on Wikipedia that says coffee enemas cause death. It’s kind of funny. But we do know that coffee enemas can dramatically improve liver function, just help to kind of irritate a little bit. Coffee enemas create kind of a hermetic effect on the liver, they stress it a little bit by the caffeine dilating all the capillaries in the liver.
And that theoretically helps the liver to dump its toxic contents into the intestine for elimination. And so, they’re very effective at managing detox symptoms and we know that people that are doing infrared saunas and taking certain mobilizers and nutrients to facilitate detox of heavy metals, that they can feel bad at times. They can have brain fog. They can have headaches. They can have nausea. And doing coffee enemas, really, they help to ameliorate those symptoms.
So, they’re really invaluable. They’re used in the Gerson protocols because a lot of times when people have cancer their livers is not functioning, and they have a lot of toxins they need to process and the liver is kind of backed up. This is a very simplified way of explaining it, but the liver’s having a hard time processing, and breaking down, metabolizing, and excreting what it needs to be excreting to flush the body of these toxins that are creating problems in cancer patients, and other people.
And also, when you look at the fact that a hundred million people it’s estimated have fatty liver disease, it correlates very strongly with metabolite disease about 25% or so of the US population has metabolic syndrome. They’re almost always going to have a fatty liver disease along with that diagnosis. And coffee enemas could really help to get the liver functioning better. And so, I think they’re really, really key for people, I think there’s a lot working against proper liver function not to mention diet, high carb, high sugar diets. The liver has to deal with, I think our livers have a big job today, and the liver needs all the help it can get.
I know anecdotally that thousands of people that are recommended to do coffee enemas almost everyone loves them. They, I feel better from them. They have helped me tremendously. I could not live without coffee enemas. So, there’s a lot of anecdotal stories about them. Not as much research as I would like, but I recommend them because I know they work, and they help people.
Ari: Nice. Excellent. Anything else you want to say to wrap up? This has been phenomenal information. So, thank you for coming on the summit. Do you want to have any sort of final words for people listening?
Wendy: Yeah. I have a couple things. So, if you want, really want to get to the root cause of a lot of your symptoms, I really strongly feel like heavy metals based on the research I’ve done over the last decade, metals contribute, can contribute to almost every type of symptom. Brain fog, fatigue, poor mood, anxiety, depression. So, it’s worth investigating.
It’s worth learning a little bit more about because if you have, because this is me when I was, about 10 years ago, I was eating a perfect diet. Making all my own food, all organic fresh. Taking the best supplements. I was exercising six, eight hours a week, really taking care of myself. Can’t say that today, with the exercise part. But really focused on stress reduction. I did not have a stressful lifestyle, and I still felt like crap. And I just was thinking, what do I have to do to feel good?
My full-time job is taking care of myself, and it really was frustrating to me. And so, I went down that rabbit hole and low and behold I had mercury, cadmium, thallium, uranium, and all these different metals. And for me a light bulb really went off and I thought this is it. These metals and chemicals are my problem. It’s not all this other stuff I’m doing. And so, if anyone identifies with that, I urge them to look into detoxification.
And also, I have a quiz if people are curious about the relative levels of metals and toxins they have in their body. They can take my quiz, heavymetalsquiz.com. And they get a free video series after that about how to get started with detox.
Ari: Beautiful. And so, is that the best place that people should go if they want to learn more from you, if they want to get started following your work? Wendy: Absolutely. Yeah, heavymetalsdetox.com and my site is myersdetox.com. There’s tons of free information, hundreds of articles, hundreds of podcast about metal and chemical detox.
Ari: Just to clarify, is it heavymetalsdetox.com or heavymetalsquiz?
Wendy: Yeah, just heavymetalsquiz.com to take the quiz.
Ari: Okay. Okay, just want to make sure because you said heavymetalsdetox.com.
Wendy: Oh, I did? Oops.
Ari: I think you’re, because I know your site is myersdetox. So…
Wendy: Yeah. Yeah.
Ari: You switched them in your mind there but heavymetalsquiz.com.
Wendy: Yes, thank you.
Ari: For everybody listening. Wendy, thank you so much. This has been phenomenal information. Really enjoyed talking to you, as always. For everybody listening, hope you enjoyed this interview and I will see you in the next one.
