The UltraMind Solution (74 page)

While this area of genetic testing and nutrigenomics (see
chapter 2
, page 37) is new, and more research is needed to help us refine our understanding, new doors are opening onto an entirely new era of medicine—one that no longer focuses on the disease, but on the person and that individual’s uniqueness.

The ways that toxins such as mercury affect your health and the methods we now have to heal from toxicity are some of the most exciting possibilities this new science offers. We are swimming in toxins today. It’s astounding that the human body can detoxify from these chemical agents that it was never designed to encounter.

But it can, and learning how to do that is one of the keys to UltraWellness.

Chemicals and Neurodegenerative Illness:
Can We Protect Ourselves?

The one disease that even conventional doctors now know is irrefutably linked to toxic chemicals is Parkinson’s disease. This first came to light in 1979, when young drug addicts consumed heroin tainted with the toxin MPTP and developed Parkinson’s. Recently Michael J. Fox, Janet Reno, and Muhammad Ali have increased awareness of Parkinson’s disease.

But Parkinson’s is a bigger problem than most people think. It affects over a million Americans, costs society $23 billion a year, and is second only to Alzheimer’s as the most frequent neurodegenerative disease.
¹⁶

Though genes influence the risk of getting Parkinson’s, one study of 193 identical twin pairs found that genetic factors do not play a major role in causing typical Parkinson’s disease.
¹⁷

Then what causes it?

Over the years, even in my relatively small patient population (a few thousand people), the link between my Parkinson’s patients and toxins stares me in the face. My patients with Parkinson’s all had clear, documented, and serious toxic exposures.

The owner of a vineyard loved to care for his grapes himself, showering them with the pesticides that he carried in a barrel on his back. He developed rapidly progressive Parkinson’s and died.

Or the woman who grew up in a rat-infested apartment in the Bronx and had a phobia about pests. She had her house sprayed with pesticides monthly inside and out for years. And she kept tubs of the toxic and
banned pesticide chlordane in her garage. Her Parkinson’s started early, at age fifty-three.

And there was the woman who at fifty-one started to have a tremor. Her mouth was full of fillings, and her mercury level was over 300 mcg/g of creatinine.

Another man was an endurance athlete who swam around Manhattan Island in the polluted Hudson River every year and developed Parkinson’s disease in his early fifties.

Reams of research confirm this link—exposure to toxins from any source puts you at risk: pesticide exposure; living in a rural farm environment; consumption of well water that contains runoff from all the nearby farms; exposure to herbicides; or living close to industrial plants, printing plants, or quarries.
¹⁸
In fact, farmers now wear gas masks, and farming is considered one of the most dangerous occupations.

But Parkinson’s is not just a disease of slow-moving feet, or a tremor in the hand, or the lack of ability to show facial expression. Parkinson’s also comes with depression, dementia, hallucinations, and even psychosis, all of which are linked to toxic exposures as well.
^19
;
20

Toxins must be excreted through the body’s liver detoxification system. Detoxification happens in two phases, both dependent on different sets of enzymes to do the job. As we know, the effectiveness of the enzymes you produce depends on the genes that have the code for that type of enzyme.

Figure 13:Two phases of liver detoxification

It might be hard to imagine, but nature has given us the remarkable ability to detoxify compounds that were not around at the time humans evolved, such as medications and environmental toxins. Drugs are metabolized or “detoxified” by enzymes, which are produced by ancient genes. Some of us are better detoxifiers than others and have an easier time getting rid of drugs and toxins.

Certain of those genes have been linked to Parkinson’s. One particularly worrisome problem is the gene called 2D6, which controls one of the main enzymes for detoxifying drugs such as SSRIs (Prozac and Zoloft) and many other common drugs and most pesticides.

This gene is slow in 5 to 10 percent of Caucasians. The gene that produces the slow form of 2D6 is the gene more common in patients with Parkinson’s disease.
²¹
So take someone with this gene, expose them to pesticides and antidepressants, and imagine what might happen.

While it is easy to despair about all the toxins we are exposed to from pesticides in our food and water, to plastics everywhere we turn, to mercury and lead from coal-burning power plants, there is a new strategy we can use to protect ourselves from these poisonous substances. It is the foundation of the UltraMind Solution.

Some have called this strategy “neuroprotection.”
²²
I am all for protecting our neurons, a proactive, optimistic strategy, and have used it successfully in patients all along the spectrum of mood, behavior, and neurodegenerative diseases, including Parkinson’s disease.

Dr. Jeffrey Cummings from the department of neurology and psychiatry at UCLA emphasized how important it is for us to focus on prevention and detoxification as a deliberate and careful strategy to deal with our current epidemics of brain problems. He explains:

Advances in medical and surgical therapies have provided substantial improvement in the quality of life of patients with Parkinson’s disease. Nevertheless, these approaches are largely directed toward
symptom management
and eventually must give way to identification of environmental hazards that can be eliminated and raising the level of public health, or to
chemo preventive strategies
that can be administered to exposed, at-risk, or minimally symptomatic individuals. The therapeutic nihilism traditionally implied in the term “degenerative” is giving way to the dissection of the sequence of the molecular events that lead from the initial trigger to cellular extinction.
²³

Wow. So here in the most conservative medical journal, the
Journal of the American Medical Association,
we have a call to action to eliminate toxins and
protect our brains through understanding the underlying causes of cellular breakdown.

Another key paper in the
Journal of the American Medical Association,
called “Neuroprotection in Parkinson Disease,”
²⁴
lays out the exact model we must address to protect ourselves not only from Parkinson’s but all types of brain damage.

The basic concept goes like this—

Environmental factors interact with susceptible genes to trigger this injury in the brain, and at each point of injury there are things we can do to stop or reverse the process.

Free radicals from toxins lead to oxidative stress, which damages our mitochondria, the cells’ energy factory (see more on this topic in
chapter 11
). This leads to overexcitation of cells and inflammation. Ultimately, all this results in cell death and the symptoms we see as mood disorders and behavior problems, as well as Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s.

The authors of the study suggest that if we can use antioxidants, energy boosters, and anti-inflammatory treatments along with compounds that reduce the overexcitation (excitotoxicity) of brain cells, which lead to cell death, then we can protect the brain and prevent, stop, or reverse this process.

These are exactly the same underlying factors that are the basis of the seven keys of UltraWellness, on which this program is founded.

The astounding fact is that changes in brain function can be seen on PET scans decades before the “disease” of Parkinson’s occurs.
²⁵
“Premotor” symptoms such as depression, poor cognitive function, and poor sleep often occur years before doctors can make the diagnosis of Parkinson’s.

By the time the clinical diagnosis is made, more than 60 percent of the neurons related to movement (in the substantia nigra, the part of the brain that controls movement and is damaged in Parkinson’s) are degenerated! So waiting till then is very late. The good news is that we can protect the brain. But we must start before all the brains cells are dead.

I have applied these concepts over and over in patients with every type of mood, behavior, or degenerative disorder and am often witness to miracles. Not everyone can be helped completely, though many can. Using these tools recovery is often possible.

It doesn’t matter if it is mercury or lead or pesticides or any of the other eighty thousand—mostly untested—chemicals that we are exposed to. The end result, one of the final common pathways that leads to illness, is our overloaded detoxification system. This occurs in many chronic illnesses
such as Parkinson’s, depression, autism, dementia, chronic fatigue, cancer, heart disease, diabetes, and obesity.
²⁶

This process of oxidative stress, inflammation, toxicity, and cell death through injury to the energy system of the body or mitochondria is central to nearly all chronic illness. At the end of the day, our cells die when they lose energy or the ability to make more energy. You will learn more about this in the next chapter.

Let me tell you two stories of patients with whom I used this method and the remarkable results that occurred. They are wonderful examples of how balancing the seven keys, and enhancing detoxification, can mean the difference between a life of suffering and UltraWellness.

Is Depression a Form of Poisoning?

Joanne was a thirty-six-year-old professional woman who came to see me after struggling for years with severe depression, fatigue, weight gain, severe PMS, and fibrocystic breast disease.

Often, she said, she wanted to “hurt” herself.

Her story has many pieces but they all fall into the seven keys. Often when one thing goes wrong, such as detoxification, everything spins out of control. In all the clues she gave me, I found the answer.

She was toxic. She was unable to detoxify her hormones, which led to severe premenstrual syndrome, painful breasts, and heavy bleeding—a sign of too much estrogen that couldn’t be properly detoxified and eliminated from the body.

Prozac was prescribed for her for years without much benefit, as was a birth-control pill to “control” her cycles.

Joanne complained of being a sugar addict (which fuels the growth of yeast). She also took many antibiotics over the years for chronic sinus congestion (which kills the good bacteria and promotes yeast overgrowth), and had many vaginal yeast infections. (Think yeast in the gut.) No surprise.

She was always sick. Her skin was dry, her nails soft, and her hair thinning. (Think thyroid problems.)

Her blood work and other tests turned up many other clues.

A C-reactive protein blood test that picks up hidden inflammation was very high, with a level of 4.3 mg/L (normal is less than 1 mg/L). (See The UltraMind Solution Companion Guide online for testing details. Go to
www.ultramind.com/guide
.) Her white blood cell count was low, with a high level of lymphocytes and a low level of neutrophils characteristic of a yeast infection. Her B
₆
and folate levels were
very low; they are needed to support mood and hormone metabolism. She also had antibodies working against her thyroid gland and a “borderline” thyroid level.

But most alarming was her extraordinarily high mercury level of 260 mcg/g of creatinine (normal is less than 3 mcg/g of creatinine), accompanied by a mouthful of fillings.

Although the cause of her depression and many of her problems (including her weight gain) was mercury, we had to clean up all the collateral damage. We have to clean up the whole mess to restore optimum health. Treat the cause, yes, but also help people get relief from all the effects—in Joanne’s case this included chronic sinus infections, yeast problems, PMS, hormonal imbalances, painful cystic breasts, thyroid problems, nutritional deficiencies, and inflammation.

So we went to work. We cleaned up the yeast with antifungals (medications used to kill yeast and other fungus in the gut); boosted estrogen detoxification with vitamin B
₆
, folate, and magnesium; supported her liver detoxification with herbs and essential fats like evening primrose oil, an anti-inflammatory omega-6 fat; cleaned up her sinuses with salt water irrigation; and gave her a small dose of bioidentical
*
thyroid hormone called Armour thyroid (see
chapter 7
).

Then came the job of safely removing her mercury fillings
²⁷
and using detoxifying foods such as broccoli sprouts, watercress, and kale, as well as metal chelators (medications that bind to heavy metals and help you excrete them more easily) to help her detoxify the mercury she had been exposed to. I also gave her herbs, and nutrients to support both methylation and sulfation—the keys to detoxification. (I will explain this connection in more detail in a moment.) And she began doing hot yoga and taking infrared saunas, which helped her promote the elimination of toxins through the sweat.