# Why "Healthy" People Are Toxic: EMFs, Body Burden & the Detox Protocol That Actually Works

## Метаданные

- **Канал:** Ben Greenfield Life
- **YouTube:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TYZe8DCEekw
- **Дата:** 09.05.2026
- **Длительность:** 1:02:00
- **Просмотры:** 975
- **Источник:** https://ekstraktznaniy.ru/video/51573

## Описание

Full Show Notes: https://bengreenfieldlife.com/emfguypodcast 

In this fascinating episode, Nick Pineault, also known as “The EMF Guy,” breaks down the latest science on radiofrequency radiation, including findings from the National Toxicology Program, the WHO classification of EMFs, and emerging evidence linking device exposure to oxidative stress and reduced sperm health. The conversation also highlights why current safety standards may not reflect real-world, long-term exposure.

You’ll also discover the concept of “body burden,” which is the accumulation of heavy metals, mycotoxins, and environmental toxins that can build up silently over time. Nick shares his own experience discovering high levels of lead, mercury, and mold toxins despite being physically fit, along with the changes he noticed after addressing detoxification through sauna therapy, oxygen cycling, and chelation. 

If you’re dealing with brain fog, low energy, or unexplained symptoms, this episode connects the dots 

## Транскрипт

### Male fertility crisis & cell phones as endocrine disruptors []

The loss of fertility in men has become an epidemic. It is likely that cell phones in pockets is one of the under-appreciated factors that is an endocrine disruptor. You kind of have this almost ticking time bomb of reserve of lead. So, you pass it down to your kids. This is this idea of generational toxicity. — My guest today, Nick the EMF Guy at Pennault's, is the number one best-selling author of the book The Non-Tin Foil Guide to EMFs. He's an advocate for safe technologies and a real expert on all things EMF. He just came out with a new documentary called Body Burden and I watched it. It was really cool. So, all the show notes are going to be Greenfield life. com/EMF guy podcast, where you can also leave your thoughts, your comments, your questions. Let's dive in. Thanks, I mean, you've been on my radar on and off ever since I read your book, the what's it called? The Non-Tin Foil Guide to EMFs. To EMFs, yeah. It's a great book. I still recommend that all the time as kind of a way to protect yourself from the polluted electrical soup that we live in. And then you popped up on my radar a few weeks ago when you emailed me about this detoxification journey that you went on. That's always a weird buzzword in the industry that we're in, of course. And I know we'll get into that. I'd love to hear your thoughts on what actually occurred and your perspective on detoxification in general, but the link between that and electromagnetic pollution is pretty interesting. So, I would love to get into all things electricity and detox, if that's a good enough combination here. Sounds good. Yeah, it's a perfect toxic synergy here. Let's just get toxic. Let's be positive right from the get-go. Hey, if you're listening in, I'll link to the documentary that Nick made, our previous podcast, his book and everything else, you go to benGreenfieldlife. com /EMF guy podcast. That's benGreenfieldlife. com/EMF guy podcast. Before we jump into this documentary, the body burden documentary journey that you went on, Nick, what's the latest since, I mean, gosh, I think it was 2018. Yeah, that we did our podcast. So, what? Like seven or eight years now in terms of what's gone on in the EMF world? But, give me the bird's-eye overview of some of the major findings or research that has occurred since our last show. A lot has happened and at the same time not a lot. A lot on the scientific standpoint and my own understanding, but not a lot has happened on a policy standpoint. Not a lot of uh has changed and that's been the frustration doing this 10 years and you know, not a lot has changed as far as how much the governments are telling citizens to be prudent towards the everyday devices that we use. So, for example, you know, you had the major

### The $30M NTP study: clear evidence of EMF carcinogenicity [3:14]

US-funded study called the NTP study at the end of 2018. We had the final reports and essentially what it showed is clear evidence of EMFs, especially radio frequency radiation, which is the radiation emitted by phones, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, cell towers. Their conclusion was there is clear evidence that it's increasing certain tumors in rats and mice. So, in the end, you know, some people argued, oh, this is not a significant study. It is the best that we have, that we have funded. And when I say we, of course, I'm just Canadian, but the US government has funded this for $30 million and it was originally the FDA who couldn't study this agent or this consumer product called the cell phone and said to the NTP, which is a branch of the NIH, can you study this agent? It took around, you know, 20 years from the ideation to their final report and what it found is clear evidence that this is a carcinogen. Then the FDA said, we don't think that rats studies apply to human, even if they originally asked the NTP to do the toxicology and toxicology is done on rats. So, go figure. So, all the politics around that were kind of maddening, but it led to certain groups to try to move things on a political standpoint and say to the FCC, the Federal Communications Commission, you know, they have the FCC in 2021 was supposed to review the evidence around radio frequency radiation and health and citizens and scientific groups and you know, activists essentially took to the task and decided to send them the latest data on what they thought is the most important thing to include in this review. 11,000 pages of scientific documents were added to the docket and the FCC said, you know what? We have done our review, nothing changes. So, after that, the FCC was brought to the court and lost in court, where the judges said, three judges said, well, essentially you did not review the data. But, that decision is from almost five years ago at this point and has been sitting there. And now groups are trying to argue, now we're going to sue the FCC again to make sure that now they redo the review with the proper science. So, I know it's technical and it's legalese. What it means essentially is that we're completely running or flying blind at this point on EMF regulations. All we know is that the number one agency that's supposed to assure US citizens that things are safe when it comes to your cell phone and Wi-Fi and Bluetooth has not looked at the science. That's all we can say. Okay, so, [clears throat] when you're saying you're there's been these studies on rats, I think you said monkeys also. How close is it to the real-world conditions in which humans use their phones or whatever, their computers, appliances, whatever on a daily basis, because you know, I know it's one thing to whatever, hold [snorts] a cell phone and have full power up to the ear of a rat for eight hours, you know, and maybe humans are talking on a I don't know, like a wired or Bluetooth headset with the phone farther away from their head. I know not everybody does that, but do you know what I'm saying? Like how close is it to the way humans actually interact with their phones? That's important and the study was designed, the NTP, if I recall correctly, was designed to mimic 30 years of exposure in humans. And people can argue about the dosage and this and that, but zooming out of the NTP study, the study is not the one study that exists about potentially radio frequency being an agent that is a carcinogen. In 2011, IARC at the WHO, which is International Agency for Research on Cancer, classified, based on the current data in 2011, this agent called radio frequency radiation as a class 2B carcinogen. So, after that, scientists reviewing the data of the NTP said, well, we have this decision, we have new rat studies, we have several different threads of evidence, including epidemiology in humans who have more elevated risk of ipsilateral cancer. So, you talk on the right side and you get a cancer of the head region or neck region. You know, so there is a strong correlation that was seen in data. So, some scientists in 2018 said, if we have another review at the WHO, this will be declared a class one carcinogen. But, that was in 2018 and since then things have been stalling and stalling because of course, you know, what tech industry entity at this moment would accept a classification that says your phone is essentially as bad as smoking. So, it has been extremely charged on a political standpoint. Some scientists say, you know, this is the next smoking. But, this is just cancer and it led me to you know, reviewing the evidence, it blew me away, you know. Huberman, everyone knows him. He's a

### Andrew Huberman's review: phones in pockets & testosterone loss [8:33]

scientist. He has a large following. In 2023, he decided to review what is the data around keeping a cell phone in the pocket and a loss of fertility or reduction of testosterone. — And and just to interrupt, you mean specifically without it being in airplane mode. Yes, exactly. And he looked at both the heating effect, because, you know, testicles can be very sensitive to heat changes in temperature, but also the non-heating effect. So, just the oxidative stress triggered by radio frequency radiation. And what he said in his review, and it was just for his members, but it's still findable on YouTube, he said, well, the data is more convincing than BPA that this is an endocrine disruptor. And he also said, well, I don't like the idea of AirPods because of the lack of data. And that's kind of been my point, even in my book is I mean, why don't we have more data about consumer devices that are used worldwide non-stop, right? This is really the point is the lack of data. The data we do have points in a direction that is concerning. And right, we are in a day and age where the loss of fertility in men has become an epidemic and it's something very concerning for, you know, some could say the survival of the human species. Like we need to conceive, we need to have sufficient sperm count and good mobility and all these things and then testosterone is also pretty much in a in a in extremely bad place for men. So at least we could argue that it is likely that cell phones and pockets and our over overall use of wireless is one of the under appreciated factors that is an endocrine disruptor and that prevents us from having normal hormones. Yeah, maybe the hidden blessing of a gentle AI is that because we'll be able to put our computers to work for us, we might have to spend less time with our devices. I hope so. I hope so, but you know, what is maddening is these solutions already exist. Like if people, you know, want to go away from the conversation that's doom and gloom, they just have to ask okay, well, what could we do about it anyway? Well, it's simple. You ask Apple and Samsung and phone manufacturers to have a proximity sensor that already exist and when it's close to the body, it doesn't emit as much or is shielded in a manner that minimizes cell phone radiation towards the user. And these some of these early patents are from the early 2000s and they've been shelved because it's not a requirement. So again, you have bad EMF safety guidelines essentially determined by industry a lot of lobbying to keep them the same status quo and then you have users that don't know better and you have the impact that is happening. At a minimum, we should be cautious and start reducing the exposure from our phones, but what we're seeing is at we're not even there yet where the cell phone rules and the radiation the amount is just the same year after year. Yeah, my phone annoys me anyways, which is why I have it in airplane mode like 50% of the time during the waking day simply because I don't want Boxer and messages and Slack and Asana. Even if I have the notifications off, I just don't want that bugging me while I'm working or I'm working out etc. And so for me it's kind of like man, I don't want it on anyways until I'm actually ready to roll up my sleeves and work with probably the only exception being my wife and I will sometimes watch some funny like stand-up comedy short or or silly thing you know, in bed before we go to sleep at night, but you know, we can talk about phones of course till we're blue in the face. I know you outline a lot of this on your website and your podcast on a regular basis. So I'll link to that in the show notes for those of you who want to keep up with all the updates that Nick is obviously on top of but the topic of hoxins and toxin accumulation and the potential link between that and EMF is

### Nick's shocking heavy metal test results (19–34x elevated lead) [12:37]

something I haven't talked about much on the show before. So you made this documentary and from what I recall, even though it's been a few weeks since I saw it, you actually had like a high burden of I believe it was metals. Very high lead and very high mercury and very high ochratoxin A, which is a mycotoxin. — Were you doing a lot of sushi and coffee, Nick? Yeah, well, of course, I love it. And I mean, I spent my my fair share of time in Japan. I went to Southeast Asia for a total of probably 2 years in total in the last 15. So I mean where did I get this, right? It was kind of a personal shock, but it it was not the beginning of this journey. Essentially, how I came about this is I heard about this branch of medicine called environmental medicine and I said okay, well, what's different about it then some of these physicians understood that EMFs is an important factor and I said oh yes, finally, I have doctors that confirm that, you know, EMF radiation should be minimized at home. So it meant a lot for me. I'm like oh well, these physicians probably understand and the reason they understood these things is that in the 1980s, the early pioneers of environmental medicine two of them being Dr. William Rae who passed away in around 2019 and another one is Dr. Walter Crinnion. They were essentially physicians that were seeing a lot of patients from different professions. Some of them were factory workers, some of them worked with pesticides handling for example and they got these patients when they were in a very bad shape and they started looking into okay how do these toxins accumulate in the body and not a lot of data was available and this is where these pioneers started using things like sauna and looking at the data on sauna use specifically to start minimizing the body's burden of certain pesticides or endocrine disruptors and you know, it was before our understanding was better. Now we know that for example, sauna use can be helpful with microplastics, but that's just data from the last few years. So they were really pioneers 40 years ago in starting to understand well if we see people that do not have an acute poisoning, but they have a lifetime of poisoning, what do we do? Is it possible to support them in a way that is going to get them better? And these people fell through the cracks. So I ended up being invited to go to one of these clinics where these physicians do exactly that have an a focus on looking at what's in a patient's environment first. And when I say environment, it is the environment at home. Where what are you exposed on a constant basis? Also, you know what do you use to heat your food? Is it you know, do you cook with aluminum pans or with Teflon, right? All of these questions from everyday exposures because it gives them a good snapshot of okay, we think that this factor is important and then the user principle of just you know, precautionary principle, we should filter your air. water. I mean, it's everything you've been saying for the last 20 years professionally, right? So but physicians that tell their patients okay, this is the most important thing including EMF minimization and this is one fold of their work and the other fold is okay, but what about what's been already accumulating in the body? So for example, for me a big burden that I discovered because honestly, I had no idea even shooting the documentary, this was in my body. When we tested my urine just you know, normal urine test, it was within the reference range of you know, that's good. This is the doctor's data. Metals test it it's our toxic metals panel very available. A lot of people have done it and you know, without any provocation agent like EDTA or DMPS and these pharmaceuticals that are going to take metals from your tissues or from bone and excrete it. So without the provocation, it was 0. 62, which is you know, the reference range is like 0. 6. So it was standard. So I could stop there and say, oh, you know, lead is not a problem for me. The problem with lead is that about 95% of it is stored in bones and when I looked into it, I said okay, well, it's stored in bones. How much of a problem is that? Well, the problem is that I as we age, the bone turnover becomes greater and we can start having a lot of this come back into blood, but also it is stored in bones for a couple of weeks. With the bone turnover, it returns in circulation. So you might have relatively low levels in the blood, but in reality, you kind of have this almost ticking time bomb of reserve of lead and we don't know exactly what is the safe level of that lead stored in the human body, right? So in the end when I provoked it with these agents, I had essentially 19 times more lead than that reference or non-provoked test and then later on a few months later I was at 34 times. So very elevated levels and what surprised me, of course, I wasn't, you know, very well versed into what the data says about these things. In environmental medicine, they have their own assessment of how urgent is it to treat a patient that has these levels and what they said is, look, you're 37 at the time when I did the first test, you're athletic, you're fairly healthy, but we think you're going to feel much better if you get this out. So started looking into it and in the end they compared these levels to, you know, someone who worked in an industry their entire life. They asked me, Nick, did you did you are you a welder or did you get exposed to obvious sources of lead? My answer was no, I don't know where it comes from. So essentially, it was the beginning of a journey for me to try to understand okay, where am I exposed to lead in my everyday life and I couldn't find a lot of sources and also start focusing on opening up my detoxification pathways and doing chelation and a lot of things, but it really opened my eyes and in the end the reality is that for most people, their lead burden in particular lead because it's stored in bones is just completely hidden and we don't know exactly how much is to live, you know as healthy as they want. Or at least when they get older and it gets released. How's that going to affect them? The um the interesting thing that you said was you didn't know where you got exposed. Did you ever figure that out?

### Where does all this lead actually come from? [19:33]

— To this day I don't know. I know that in certain South Asian countries, there still is leaded gasoline or huge sources of lead exposure, but in the end, you know, our parents, you know, my mom is almost 70. She was part of the lead generation, leaded gasoline, leaded, you know, paint on the walls. So, maybe it's part generational. That could be part of it, but also I probably got exposed through foods. It could be my love for chocolate. I know that certain types of chocolate have been found to be very elevated in lead, but I'm suspecting at this point, I really want to dive deeper in my understanding of genetic and epigenetic testing. And I know you're well versed in that, but I'm probably just a poor eliminator of lead. And that's kind of the It's one of the things in today's testing framework that's really missing is that we can say that maybe there's a such thing as a tolerable amount of toxin, but the reality is that person A, person B, and person C will have different abilities to eliminate lead, right? So, in the end in my body, my conclusion is well, it's very likely that I just store lead instead of being able to clear out whatever little amount of lead I'm exposed to on a daily basis. That's my theory at least for now. Yeah, maybe there was some ancestral advantage to storing lead that no longer serves us, such as resistance of bone to shattering upon being, I don't know, hit with a spear or sword or something like that. And look, it's all it's also very linked to calcium status. That's the thing. Like and I still need to look into that, look into okay, well, maybe I need a calcium supplement because lead will preferably displace calcium in bones, which in the end there are decent There's a decent amount of data on, you know, your bones not being as strong when we use lead instead of calcium, which is not surprising. You use kind of the wrong building block here, but in the end it is concerning for a lot of reasons. And I even looking into it this morning, I found the study that said that the measured toxins in cord blood and 80% of the lead could be directly linked to the mom's reserve of lead. So, essentially when you form a fetus, you have 80% of the burden of lead that has been found to be directly linked to what the mother had stored in her bones or her body. So, you pass it down to your kids. This is this idea of generational toxicity. That is also something very concerning for me because I mean, if we don't have a generation that starts cleaning itself up, we have something We have a problem that's societal and that can get worse over generations. Yeah

### The EMF–toxin connection: multiplicative, not just additive effects [22:25]

you you hinted a couple of times at the potential link between high EMF exposure or electrical pollution and toxin accumulate or toxic accumulation or toxin accumulation. I've um come across the idea that sympathetic nervous system stimulation due to excess stress, uh including something like electrical stress, could inhibit detoxification pathways in the body. I don't know if that's kind of where this road leads or if you found other things in terms of the link between EMF and toxins. There there's a lot of threads of evidence that show that there is not only um an additive effect between, let's say, wireless radiation from cell towers, cell phones, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and different toxins. Often times what we see is a multiplicative effect. So, there are a lot of animal studies on that and a lot of in vitro studies. And um one of the scientists that I've been studying is called Dr. Ronald Kostoff. And he has an entire uh chapter of a scientific textbook on it. And essentially he talks about these toxic synergies. And the problem he says is look, we we need toxicology and we need these single agent studies where we uh we'll feed rats a certain amount of lead and then look at their kidneys and then declare something like, okay, well, at a certain dose it does kidney damage. The problem is that if we study things in a vacuum, it tells us nothing about what happens if you have lead, but you also have cell phone radiation. When we do these studies, we often find that a certain dose of lead that was safe at certain levels is all of a sudden unsafe if we add a second toxic agent. And there's a lot of reasons that could explain it. Both will create oxidative stress. So, maybe after a while it goes over a threshold where the rat's body is unable to cope with both. But also, there is a lot of threads of evidence that show that radio frequency radiation will over time deplete your reserves of glutathione. So, if your inner antioxidants are trying to just cope with the environment and now you add another thing that is requiring glutathione to deal with, well, maybe at one point you simply do not have the right inner defenses to fight. That's another possibility. There's a lot of different explanation on a scientific standpoint that could explain why is there a synergy between all these different environmental toxins, but the point is this is that Kostoff said, you know, we should try to, I don't know, maybe they're going to put it in AI and say, okay, what is the toxic synergy between these 10,000 known carcinogens and chemicals that can have an endocrine disrupting effect. And now what is the safe dose given these toxic synergies? We might just find that the safe dose is next to none or is much lower than what we think is reasonable. And that's kind of the point here in environmental medicine and even in I think in your own life, it's okay, well, if we know that something might have a detrimental effect, let's try to minimize it because, you know, even if you tell me there's such thing as a tolerable dose, well, how much can I tolerate of agent B, C, D, and E? And I mean, in the end, if you want to maximize your health, you should minimize the things that you know for sure are likely to harm it. So, in the end, it's the problem we have right now is that we're still stuck in this toxic toxicology model where single agents are with single study endpoints or are very, you know, siloed type of research projects are being done. And this is the best we have, but it misses the point according to Kostoff. And I agree with him where it's it's becoming, you know, what this toxic soup that we have is very hard to study. So, therefore, I think the case for minimizing all of our exposures as much as possible, which is kind of one of the frameworks that environmental medicine physicians are trying to put forward, I think is just the smart thing to do nowadays. Is there any link between antioxidant intake that you know of, like taking glutathione or something like that? And lowered metal or toxin burden? Good question. I don't know for sure. I haven't looked into like large data sets where you take glutathione and and, you know, you have measurably lower levels of metals over time. I don't know where the data is at with that, to be honest with you, but I know in environmental medicine, you know, one of the doctors told me, "Nick, take 5 ml of liposomal glutathione for as long as you have a breath. " And I said, "Okay, well, doc, I think I'm going to take it daily. " In their view, it is something that they use very regularly. And I know it's not necessarily for everyone. I've heard contraindications for certain people who have a hard time processing it. But you know, I think they're doing the best they can to recommend something that is likely missing. And, you know, the reason it's missing, it's probably because we are assaulted with so many things, but what is difficult to study is, you know, since we have all of these factors and almost all of us are now you know, just bathing in these stressors all day, every day, all around the world, there's no solid control group that would be exposed to no heavy metals, to no EMF. It makes the research very blurry. So, it is difficult to kind of do these large studies, but it would be interesting to look in that data, specifically glutathione status or supplementation. Yeah, you're right that some people don't do well with oral glutathione due to the amino acids that it's broken down into, along with often genetically based sulfur sensitivities. And you can kind of skirt that issue with transdermal glutathione, like a topical glutathione. There's one company called Auro, A U R O, that's run by Dr. Patel, a former pharmacist who has some good formulas on his website as kind of a work-around for that. But then the other thing that kind of comes to mind here related to the link between EMFs and metals is this concept of metal accumulation or metal burden in the body potentially increasing sensitivity to EMFs, like an electro hypersensitivity brought on by your body, I guess, being more of a conductive antenna. Is that just gobbledygook or is there anything to that idea? I mean, I've heard the Yeah, I've heard the biophysics explanation that if you have more heavy metals in your tissues, you're kind of an antenna for EMFs. I haven't found this to be very solid, but what is solid is that again and again, when they test people who declare themselves electro hypersensitive, they say, "I I suffer from electro hypersensitivity," which now has been renamed the EMR syndrome. What they say is they find that a lot of them have high metals. So, in the end, when I talked to environmental medicine physicians, I asked them about the electro hypersensitivity. these EMF sensitive patients. And in really that's something that may be hopeful because a lot of people who contact me told me, "Nick, you know, I hold the phone in my hands. I feel it. I feel very sick. I cannot even live in a city. " I mean, you would be very a lot of your listeners would be very surprised at the stories I hear where people are so sick from EMFs that they cannot be near it and they don't feel like they can go back to a normal state of health, right? Because imagine being a celiac. You are celiac, but you walk around and there's flour everywhere in the air. You would constantly get sick. That's kind of, you know, akin to being electro hypersensitive or suffering from the EMR syndrome and being in a city where you are constantly near something that triggers you. And it's very difficult to get better if you are always being triggered. That being said, in environmental medicine, they say, "Okay, you see this agent called EMFs and this thing seems to be triggering you. However, it is only what broke the camel's back. " That was kind of what I learned from one of the physicians, Dr. Michael Borschmidt. He told me, "Maybe this is the thing that you realize made me made you go over the edge to a symptomatic standpoint where you're completely shattered. Now your health is bad. " That being said, it was also the mold accumulation. metals. It was everything before that made your body unable eventually to cope with the totality of it. So, what they do is they don't treat a single problem. They won't say, "Okay, well, you're EMF sensitive, you avoid EMFs. If you're mold toxic, you avoid mold and we treat for mold. " What they say is everything matters all the time and it makes it a little bit like, "Okay, well, where do you start? " And essentially it's by taking the by asking the patient, "What do you feel is your main trigger? " Well, I think I've been exposed to mold and this. So, they go by history and then of course they do testing where they would see that the person reacts to EMFs. Even Dr. William Rae had a sort of provocation test for electro-hypersensitivity back in the days. I don't know if it's still being done now that he passed away, but he wrote a textbook on electro-hypersensitivity, a medical textbook. I think it's still the first in the world at this point that has been published, but essentially what they try to do is identify maybe the agent that is the worst for you, but you kind of have to look at it from multiple angles because again nothing exists in a vacuum. So, all that to say is long-winded, but if you have high metals, yes, it's been found again and again that you are more likely to react to other agents. And the same is true for people who say, "I cannot smell perfumes. If I go to a Walmart, I feel a headache because of all the plastics and I feel sick. " A lot of environmental medicine doctors told me these patients are in a very aggravated state. Their nervous system and their body cannot cope with it and it's likely that they will also react to EMFs and other things, including foods, right? They seem to have it's environmental intolerance and then it becomes eventually intolerant to everything across the board for some of them at least. Yeah, what was the name of the clinic that you went to start to address all this for yourself? Yes

### Inside the Deeper Healing Medical Center in Charleston [33:27]

it's called the deeper healing medical center in Charleston, South Carolina. All right, so walk me through what they did. Yeah, so essentially when I went there, they started with a history and they take a hit just basic measurement and they said, "You know, your metabolic health seems good. You have low body fat. You're athletic. This is good. This is kind of in surface. " Then I did a few just basic tests that they have me do. One of them, I don't recall the name of the test, but was essentially trying to walk in a straight line with my eyes closed. And I remember my physician, Dr. Stephanie McCarter, who now practices in Dallas, she said, "Nick, you probably have high metals. " And I said, "Okay, what you know, why? " She said, "Well, you know, that's how your neurology reacts to your eyes being closed and I can predict you have high metals. " I said, "Okay, whatever. I don't know. Like a lot of people are going to be skeptical if they hear that. Is that like a test based on I I have to find a source. Sorry, it just came to mind, but it is not something that is deterministic, but it was just like, "Okay, she has a hunch, right? Based on just the things that she sees and also my same thing. " — Okay. So, so, so basically what you're saying is like balance bad, poor proprioception clue that you might have some kind of a toxic burden. Yeah, and then food intolerance, acne, brain fog. So, I came at it as an athlete, you know, I just had completed a bunch of Spartan races. I know you've been See, you understand like the 21K in the mountains format in under 3 hours. I was performing very at a very high level personally, the best of my life, but I felt like, "My God, I cannot concentrate at a computer. " So, a lot of neurological symptoms, just brain fog and gut issues and what the heck is happening with me. So, I wasn't at my best health. performance, but mentally speaking, feeling very frustrated at the computer. So, I came at it, you know, as a you could say a fairly healthy patient with no diagnosis of anything chronic illness. And when we started testing for urine mycotoxins because it was something suspected just based on my history. Okay, let's test this. And we did a metal test before provocation and after provocation and had the test of that. And it was part of just the baseline that they did. And if they had saw someone that is way sicker, then they get into specific tests depending on what type of toxin they think is the worst for them or is likely will be found. So, after that, I kind of experienced part of their protocol is three modalities in particular that they kind of stack together. And it was interesting because, you know, when it comes to detoxification, I was always questioning like, "Okay, well, where should you start? " Like there are so many products out there, so many approaches and a lot of physicians go at it at different angles. But what was interesting is I got on the

### LiveO2, Juvent vibration & sauna: the detox protocol stack [36:29]

LiveO2, which is essentially just a system to have create an hypoxic situation where you have very low oxygen for a certain amount of time. The LiveO2 is two air concentrators with an air bag. I have one, by the way. I use it in my gym a lot next to the cardio bike. And so, it allows you to breathe high concentration of oxygen, but then with the flip of a switch go to kind of like, you know, top of a high mountain type of scenario with low oxygen. So, it's uh it's a form of intermittent hypoxic hyperoxic training. And I have seen, you know, there are claims that it somehow flushes the body from a blood flow standpoint. So, so they actually did that on you? and it's part of their protocol. It has been for a while now and basically they talk about specifically the microcirculation being hindered in a lot of people where the micro capillaries at the very end that are irrigating, you know, the end of all the circulation in your body is essentially closed and this sort of push-pull mechanism with low oxygen, high oxygen kind of opens up these capillaries. And the science is actually solid on that. But how much is it contributing to detox? I don't I couldn't find a lot of data, but we what they saw clinically is that if you open this up, then you just increase oxygenation. And Dr. Borschmidt in particular was like, "The number one thing is oxygen. " And it surprised me because, I mean, where should you start for detox? Is it, you know, treating the kidneys, this or that? For him it was oxygen. So, for me as an athlete, I had to push my body. So, this is why in in the movie you see me run on there, but for certain people, it is light walking is enough for them to desaturate and see on the pulse oximeter that they actually have a real impact. — Not just walking. There's units like the CellGym where you just do IHT while seated, while sedentary, like meditating or, you know, a lounge chair. So, you're right. There's like this this pulsing effect, right? Like a vasoconstriction, vasodilation effect that increases circulation and oxygenation. I don't know what the hard data is on like a lowering of metal or microplastic accumulation in response to something like that. But the mechanism of action kind of makes sense. Yeah, exactly. And there there's larger trials to to be done. I think in environmental medicine, they're very happy to look at something that could work in principle and experiment on their patient with modalities that are safe and that are supported in other fields. So, I know athletes are using them and that I mean, as long as it's adapted to how people react to it. So, very very weak people would walk or, you know, barely do any movement where I had to sprint at one point because my body, you know, had to really get a big hit before with all this endurance training that I did to really get the real impact. And when I started feeling the real impact, you can feel the flushing. It was interesting when I really pushed it with the LiveO2, I could feel my entire body completely flushed like as if you have a sort of uh I don't know. See, it's very profound. It's very interesting. — It's pretty cool. I've been using it for 8 years uh two to three times a week. And of course the basic version is breathwork in the sauna, for example. But the LiveO2 definitely turns it up a notch. Yeah, and after that the also use something called the Juvent, and that's a micro impact platform. And I started looking into it like what makes this different from, you know, just a vibration plate. In the end, the difference is that a vibration plate has enough amplitude to start creating these muscle contractions. The Juvent does not. It has a very low amplitude and follows a certain uh frequency that is based on that is different, but the basis of the science has been developed by NASA originally, which is like a super popular thing to do when it comes to devices, isn't it? But it it's true. It's the early research for uh NASA astronauts that wanted to maintain bone mass. But essentially, the idea was that you can shake, if I understand it correctly, and I don't have all the right uh scientific verbiage here, but it's as if you're shaking the inside of a cell and not contracting the muscles. So it is a very subtle impact, and we know that this can have a beneficial effect on uh maintaining bone mass. But does it have an effect on lymph, which is why environmental medicine physicians use it? The There's a question mark, but it is possible in theory. What they have found is, you know, this is a great way to do lymph circulation after the LiveO2, and that's about all I know about it, but a lot of people told me they swear by it. So that's something to further explore. Yeah, it's By the way, it's this idea, similar to rebounding, that G forces may enhance lymph circulation, and that some of that circulation might be inhibited if it is concomitant like simultaneously occurring during a muscle contraction. So it's kind of like light rebounding without intense muscle contraction, or light vibration platform at a certain frequency may allow for better lymph flow compared to like a power plate vibration platform or something you might use for like priming a muscle before or during a workout. This is way better stated than I just did, Ben. And on top of that, keep in mind that a lot of their patients are already weak or environmentally injured. So if you give them, you know, a vibration plate, yeah, it can work, and I know it's also there there's decent data for vibration plates, and there's a place for them, but the Juvent was specifically thought for lymphatic drainage. And after that, I went in the sauna. I knew about sauna use, you know, I I've been listening to your podcast. It doesn't mean I was applying my knowledge. And that's really my problem in my own life is that, you know, how much time did I spend in a sauna in the last 10 years since we last spoke? I don't know. I did it like once a month, twice a month. It wasn't sufficient. And this is really what they told me is, "Nick, look, you know you could sweat more. " And in my workouts, I do a lot of very heavy strength training. I do running, but it's not the same thing if you do it while relaxed, or at least that's my understanding if you do it then your nervous system is very — more parasympathetic state to enhance again like cellular waste removal. I am totally on board with the sauna, honestly, especially after reading Bill Gifford's new book. Uh he co-wrote the longevity book with Peter Attia. He just released a new heat book. It's called heat span or something like that. Anyways, it was a good reminder about the multitude of benefits of a sauna. And yeah, I mean, I'm in there twice a day often. I do an infrared in the morning a lot of times post-workout, and then a dry sauna in the afternoon. So I sweat a lot, but you mentioned something earlier about microplastics in sauna. What have you come across related to that? Because, you know, I've seen like Brian Johnson's anecdotal data, but no hardcore data on saunas and microplastics. Yeah, it was just

### Microplastics in the brain & what actually removes them [44:35]

emerging uh data. That's probably part of what I saw. I know the microplastic the best data I saw is the accumulation of microplastic, not the elimination, to be honest with you. But I saw this uh this headline on a scientific journal that said, you know, they tried to find how much microplastic is in the human brain and identified we have uh on average one plastic spoon is my understanding. And I you kind of saw this brain with a plastic spoon, and I said, "Oh my god, is that bad? " So I don't know. I would love to see large-scale studies on like what is the best way to eliminate microplastics? You know, is it through sweat, or is it through simply supporting elimination pathways? I know there's also something else that I think you might have experienced yourself, you know, this plasma phrenesis with certain clinics in Europe uh doing it frequently in patients and filtering the plasma, which is in itself, I think, in early research, but It's expensive, you know, plasma phoresis where you're filtering your plasma and then getting it replaced with albumin and typically like a nutrient, mineral, and vitamin IV afterwards. Or I know phoresis is very popular in European biological medicine, where they take the plasma out, filter that, and then you get your own plasma back. Uh there's young plasma exchange, where assuming the donor had low microplastics, which where they're usually filtered and screened. You get your plasma taken out and young donor plasma. And then there's the idea of just trying to approximate that, which some clinics are doing now. You take your plasma out, then you get the albumin back plus things like stem cells, exosomes, and biologics like peptides. But as you can imagine, like your starting point for the cheapest form of that is like 8 to 10k. So not, you know, it it's really not scalable. And then with the sauna, you know, like microplastics are like 100 to 1,000 Daltons in size, and your sweat glands can pass about 100 Dalton-sized particle. So it's like, yeah, you can sweat a little bit of it out, but the larger, more problematic particles really comes down to either paying a bunch of money to filter the blood and plasma. Option B would be like reducing your exposure and preventing accumulation. And then the final option might be some of these newer companies that are developing like gut microbiome-based products that you would consume that would allow the bacteria to produce postbiotics that remove the metals. But again, that's only from the gut, and that also wouldn't address like your existing burden. Kind of similar to the metal piece. So yeah, it it's a problem. It's kind of like, you know, how big of a paycheck can you write to get rid of your microplastics, which doesn't seem fair, but that's kind of the best solution I've come across so far. — Yeah, and I hope I mean, it's always like that with, you know, medical technologies. If it can start being more popular, maybe there are better manufacturing practices, and eventually the price goes down to become affordable. I know that I know genetic testing is an example, but there's a lot of examples where technologies have become more powerful, and maybe it can be something that can be sustainably used in populations. But I agree with you, it's it it's discouraging if you see treatments that are exciting or have potential to save lives, and it's 5, 10,000 dollars, it's simply too cost-prohibitive for the vast majority of the population. But at least it's good to see that, you know, maybe these technologies will in the end uh be brought to the US. I know in environmental medicine, they wanted to take some of the uh biological medicine technologies from Europe and start seeing if there's a regulatory framework to bring them back. That's they're always on the cutting edge. And another thing that they brought that I know you talked about several times, but they had me uh try this uh basically ozone and ultraviolet blood irradiation, UBI. So what is it? Major autohemotherapy. So essentially, they did a little quantity, they extract blood, they uh basically add ozone in, and then pass it through UV. And they had good results. I heard some people athletes seem to have uh a sort of um body-wide infection that wouldn't go away and had immense results from this sort of therapy. But I know there is even uh an ozone movie being uh being in the works right now about the the pioneers of ozone research. So that's another rabbit hole that I haven't gone into too much, but I know that there's something to it. Definitely, so it's part of the tools that they have available at the clinic at a minimum. Yeah, more specific to like bacteria, viruses, mold, microtoxins, absolutely. And then you can get a form of ozone dialysis where the filtration medium might remove some metals and potentially microplastics as well. So, there's kind of like levels of ozone treatment like there are levels of plasmapheresis or blood filtration treatments. But yeah, the ozone piece I think is really good if you have like a mold microtoxin or even like a Lyme-based burden. So, so they did IHHT like a LiveO2, they did vibration frequency, they did sauna, they did ozone. Were there any other kind of like major treatments that were notable there? One thing that some of them swear by is colonics. You know, the I I'm still you know, I have a question mark about it. I mean, you and I I think you've experimented with coffee enemas and yeah, I mean Yeah, I will admit guilty. I do a coffee enema about twice a month. — Okay, I mean, if if I was you know, as diligent as I should be, I would do it every weekend. I don't know what it is to this day and some people always raise an eyebrow. People laugh about it, but you know, I think there's something to it. The colonics part is I don't know. I don't I haven't even looked at the science around colonics. Maybe it's still in in controversial state, but Yeah, it's kind of like the mechanism of action. You get increased peristalsis, move things through the digestive tract. If you're gummed up or constipated, it could help with that. And in the case of coffee induced endogenous glutathione production which we've already established might be important from an antioxidant standpoint. I think as far as speeding up toxin elimination and potentially something like plastic or metal accumulation through the stool, there is a plausible mechanism of action for it that hasn't really been established well in research cuz it's probably just difficult to do a large-scale human clinical trial on coffee enemas, but when I say twice a month, I mean, like I wake up, I take an activated charcoal and zeolite-based binder about a half hour later, I'm doing a coffee enema with like good organic mold-free coffee, which is important, at the right temperature. And then I go and sweat in the sauna for about 30 minutes after that. And you know, I do ongoing testing. I've always been pretty low in metals. Urinary or salivary rather microplastic burden has also been low every time I tested. And again, like that's totally anecdotal. I don't know how much it's doing, but I can tell you you just feel bright and clean and alert and incredible the rest of the day after you do one of those things. I don't know to this day like I don't I talked to my one of my health coaches back in the days, Anthony Di Clemente. He told me, "Nick, you know, I've tried every machine out there. I've tried the most expensive supplements. I spent 50k on all these tools. And yet, the good old coffee enema makes me feel like, you know, it makes me feel incredible. " So, I said, "Okay, well, I agree with you. " So, he had me do them and I agree with him. So, I don't know what it is. Maybe it's all in our heads, but — So, what happened like at the Did you actually do like a test retest to see how much this moved the dial? We didn't test at the clinic. In fact, the heavy metal test came after we shot. So, my goal was to go to an environmental medicine clinic, show how they do things, what's the philosophy because I wanted to get all of this in camera. And in the end, you know, I thought it was a good reflection of like how the philosophy of environmental medicine. But then when I got the results, I said, "Okay, guys, we need to have a call. Like what's up with that? Like elevated lead, where does it come from? What do I need to do? " I started almost panicking to be honest with you. So, at this point, I just started on some of the protocols they recommended. And it was a long journey, but I didn't feel much different for about 12 to 14 weeks of doing certain protocols that they told me about. But at just before Christmas, it was in September and just before Christmas, I started feeling much brighter and started getting, you know, clearer and clearer. And in the end, they did recommend to seek local help. So, I started seeking one of their very rare environmental medicine physicians in Montreal, Dr. Vicki. And I started working with them. I found another doctor who could do chelation therapy in Ottawa because in Quebec it's actually illegal to do chelation therapy at this point. It's been Yeah. prone to controversy and you know, I would imagine, sorry to interrupt, some concern about freeing up heavy metals and potentially via like, you know, poorly administered chelation. I know some people have, you know, potential osmotic transfer of metals into neural tissue, things like that. So, I think chelation does it does justify some regulation, but it's not rocket science. Yeah, exactly. I

### Chelation therapy results: motivation, clarity & mood return [54:53]

think in Quebec, it's just like my overall view of what's happening here. I you know, I live in Montreal still to this day and they're just very focused on mainstream medicine and kind of have this witch hunt against anything alternative. But there is decent evidence. I To this day, I would never dare recommend that anyone do chelation therapy without the use of a physician. I really felt the difference after a couple sessions. And I started, you know, experiencing things that were very bizarre like waking up in the morning and feeling motivated without anything having happened or my ambition coming back like, "Hey, maybe I could, you know, study this topic and maybe I could have bigger objectives for my business. " And it's something then I realized, "Wait a minute, it's been 5 6 7 years since I had these thoughts. So, what's happening to me, right? " So, my brain kind of being different. And I remember, you know, meeting Dr. Chris Shade at a conference when I was at the Health Optimization last year in Austin. And he said, "We kind of talked about my metal burden. " And I told him, "Yeah, I have high lead, high mercury. " He said, "Oh, okay. So, you're one of these lucky people who is both depressed and anxious. " I said, "Yeah, well, that pretty much sums it up. " So, I had like a psychological change, but even to this day, it's starting to get better and better. So, I What it made me realize is just like I wasn't really focused on the right thing for my health. Focusing on performance was something fun for me and I really, you know, achieved new heights in my physical performance as an amateur athlete, but is it what really mattered to me? Not that much. What mattered to me is to feel good, be present with my family, and think clearly. And I was just in a bad state mentally. Like my brain wasn't what it used to be. And I I swear I was able to write for about 2 hours per day and then I was done. Feeling very unmotivated, a lot of friction from just my brain not being on the way I like it to be. And I didn't know what was wrong with me, but I can tell you when I started really focusing on detox and started sauna three times per week. I still to this day do three long sessions of 45 minutes. I sweat my butt off three times per week no matter what. And a year and a half later, I'm getting constantly better. My body is still, you know, aching. I feel like it's too much time at the computer. I could be better on like the physical aspect, but I do see a steady improvement in my brain function. And that has been kind of my North Star is, "Okay, how much can I get done? be present? What is my baseline of happiness? " And it's much much higher than before. Yeah, I thought the documentary was pretty intriguing when it came to seeing firsthand what a lot of these protocols look like. And sure, there's certain things people might not have in their home like a LiveO2 or a the right kind of vibration platform, but a lot of this stuff, you know, having good stool movements, breath work, sauna or sweating frequently, movement for lymph flow. I'm kind of a fan of daily detoxification rather than just effing yourself up and waiting until January 1st to do some massive 30-day protocol. Yet, some people might find themselves in exactly the same shoes you were in, high lead, high mercury, high mold. And I think stepping into a clinic like that to have a little bit more of a sledgehammer approach, if done the right way, is something that would benefit a lot of people. So, the show notes, I'll put those at ben greenfield life. com/emfguy podcast. I'll also link to the documentary, the previous shows we've done on EMF. I still think your book is fantastic, the tin foil hat one. So, I'll link to that. And Nick, as usual, you're a wealth of information, man. Thank you. I appreciate it. And I can send people towards, you know, if they want to find a physician, there are a lot of clinics around the world in environmental medicine. There's the European Academy for Environmental Medicine that exists. And also the American Academy of Environmental Medicine or even the National Association of Environmental Medicine. All of them, you know, have sections on their website where you can find providers. There's a lot of pioneers throughout the US that are often talking together in these organizations and helping each other. And to be honest with you, Ben, the only reason I didn't go to three or four of these clinics, because I know these physicians, is just I didn't have 150k in my back pocket to film all of my experience. But I hope that people who watch the documentary are simply inspired to start taking things seriously. Like, okay, what could be in my body? Do I feel my best or do I feel foggy? Because at 37, I was just in a bad spot mentally and I just realized that a lot of my, you know, lack of motivation and ambition and kind of low-level depression, a lot of it was due to just, you know, the accumulation that I had in my body. And the wrong focus in my life, you know? Should I run, you know, more Ks this week and and go faster, or should I get rid of more toxins and feel happy? For now, at least my priority is continuing to, you know, get my body in the right spot. And I feel like maybe a lot of people could resonate with that. Yeah, well, I agree. And I think if you get a little bit of time this weekend or whenever you're watching this, check out the show that Nick made. So it's it's I thought it was pretty interesting. So, Nick, thanks for doing this, man. Thank you, Ben. Thank you for having me. All right, folks. Thanks for tuning in. 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