Chemical Sensitivities can be a major issue for many of our patient population. Today Dr. Rutherford will discuss them and how they fit into his treatment flow.
Note: The following is the output of a transcription from the video above. Although the transcription is largely accurate, in some cases it is incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors.
If you are interested in scheduling a consultation with Dr. Rutherford please visit http://PowerHealthConsult.com
Look like this trust me. They’re, not practicing classic functional medicine. There’s. A lot of moving pieces to it, we’re, trying to give you all of those pieces, the piece and last week we talked about leaky gut.
We talked about intestinal permeability and how it relates to chronic conditions, chronic pain, how you address it? How you prevent it from being sabotaged once you’ve, gotten done with your leaky gut.
Everybody comes in here today knows about leaky gut, they’ve done it, but it’s back by the time they get here. We do a test on them and they got like it Willie. He got that’s blown wide open and they wonder why.
So we just so we and and and then we talked about how that could be stressed. It could be that they didn’t, have a hydrogen of hydrochloric acid on and on and on so that’s. That’s last week again, and I mentioned that because again this layers on top of each other.
Today, we’re talking about multiple chemical sensitivities. Okay, when you’re, when you’re, when you’re, go to functional medicine, most people come to my office or coming in for chronic conditions.
Okay, they’re not coming in, because their diabetes is off. Some come in for weight loss, but the vast majority come in here with dizziness vertigo balance: migraines fibromyalgia, peripherally chronic fatigue, irritable, bowel syndrome, Crohn’s; disease rheumatoid arthritis.
Most people come in here with with chronic conditions that usually have an autoimmune component to it and or or and frequently also have a stress component to it. You put those two things together and your entire system starts to collapse varies from person to person, so there’s, a number of different, pretty well defined and known categories as to how to address those problems.
But the problem is on the internet. They’re, not well-defined. You’re, a million different people talking about a different things. You know must be that one, this one it’s. Not that way, so we so so we ‘
Ve talked about the bowels, we talked about large and small intestines. We’ve talked about leaky gut, even though it’s very difficult. To clearly say this is the next thing. Next thing we’re going to talk about? Is going to be chemical sensitivities because you can’t get chemical sensitivities without having a leaky gut okay, so we’ve already dealt with the leaky gut.
You almost can’t have chemical sensitivities. If you have a strong frontal lobe now, we have not talked about that, because that’s, separate that’s, that’s like that’s like functional neurology, but but but we will talk about it as Time goes on, you almost can’t hat.
You almost can’t have chemical sensitivities. If you’re, if you’re, if you have enough glutathione, so we’re. So let’s, talk about multiple chemical sensitivities, so chemical sense, since they reside patients that come in here and and some of them I’ve.
Had the patients coming here ago. I can’t be in here. Well, I’d, say why? Well we’re. I don’t know there’s, just something in here that you know I can smell your your front desk person who is like a hundred feet away as cologne on or something along those lines, and that and and so essentially when, When, when you have that amount of sense of activity it’s, called it’s called chemical intolerance and and and frankly it’s.
It’s, intolerance of your of many things. So so it’s, so it’s, a it’s in its autumn. It’s. You there’s, usually autumn unity involved, but it’s. Self intolerance, though you’re. You’re. Ultimately, you’re.
You’re chemically your system is intolerant to chemicals. Now, how do you get chemical sensitivities? Okay, there’s, a couple of different ways that you get them live or walk through. How do you get them you? Can you get them one of two ways you get them? Let me let me rephrase that as you as you you there’s, two types of chemical sensitivities.
Maybe that’s, a better way of going about there’s like a chemical sensitivity where you’re, just like blasted by it, you’re blasted by it. You you you, you, you work in a gas station. You work in a laundromat.
I guess I don’t know if people still work in laundromats, but you work in a lingerie. You’re somewhere, where you ‘ Re continually exposed to County working out a hairdresser or where you would get your nails done, or something that we’re, continually exposed to chemicals and and a lot of times.
These chemicals will go in, they just overwhelm your liver, or you have detoxification mechanisms to get rid of this stuff. You have in your liver. You have several pathways that are designed to detox your body.
One is specifically designed to detox these chemicals and it’s, a glutathione pathway, so a lot of you’ve heard of glutathione and and glutathione is kind of cool when it comes to this. For the person who just has like an overload: okay, basically the glutathione Xin, the chemical comes in okay and it comes in, and here it is, and in that this is the chemical right there and it comes in and the glutathione does this and the glues.
I grabs it and then it like I don’t know. If you can see me do this, but it does this, it goes, it beats it up and it chops it up and it kills it and it crushes it, and that’s. What glutathione does and it makes it so that it can.
It can be managed by your liver and that it can be docks fied by your liver by your by your gallbladder, by your by your your intestines and then go out through the toilet, the urine your sweat and get out of you, okay, so that’s one so that’s, an easy one, because it’s easy and it’s.
Not because if you have that type of chemical sensitivity that and then your your your your liver frequently and your detoxification mechanisms frequently can take care of it. But the number one thing to do is to get away from it.
Okay, and if it happens to be your job, then that makes it maybe not so easy to get away from it, but that is one type of chemical sensitivity just to clear things. Up now there’s now type of chemical sensitivity that normally walks in here into probably the most functional medicine practices is different.
It’s, a chemical sensitivity where you develop what I already talked about when I said chemical and tolerance, and what happens is the chemical comes in to your system and it attaches to a protein? So proteins are a lot.
Most people know proteins, muscle, proteins, muscle proteins like do everything in your body like everything they there they become enzymes. They just do a zillion things. Okay, so proteins carry things around in your body.
All of your hormones have to attach to a protein to fly around your body before they get attached into a cell and then go into your cell okay, so it’s, the same thing with chemicals there. There are chemicals that come into your system and then they attach to a protein, and then they become a new.
What’s called antigen? They become a new irritant to your immune system, okay and so your immune system. So it’s. So now it’s, not even that it’s, the chemical it’s that it’s, the chemical attached to the protein.
Why is this? Why is this important? Because this is the person I was just talking about that walks in the front door. I goes I got ta get out of here. I can’t. I can’t. Take your clone. I don’t know. Well, I haven’t put on Cologne in three days.
I can still smell it: okay, that’s, that person they have developed a chemical intolerance. This is now become an immune and problem because your immune system has developed a sensitivity to this new antigen.
There’s, no longer a chemical problem. This is a problem to the chemical being attached to this. This protein called albumin, particularly okay, and it attaches to that and now it becomes an issue and it because it’s, not something I can just be cleared by your liver, that it’s, and and what do we do for all Chemicals and or metals we detox deliver or we detox detox detox, but it’s about more than that, and so, if you have the second one which MO which, if you have multiple chemical sensitivities, if you have intolerance to smells jewelry, if you have Intolerance, shampoos, lotions, detergents, multiple cat smell and constant skin outbreaks.
If you have like a combination of those, then this is probably what’s happening, not the overload the Ola Bert comes in it goes it’s gone. Maybe you can detox adavi by doing a little bit of detox or taking a bunch of glutathione and you’re fine.
But for those of you who have these real chemical sensitivities, you know you’ve done that and it’s, either not work or it’s works for a little time and it’s. Come back. So, okay, so that’s chemical sensitivity, so who gets chemical sensitivity? The second one, the one that shows up in in offices all over the country? The one that can’t be taken care of the one where people come in with masks over their face and and these types of things, okay, it’s; a combination, it’s, a combination of a number of compromises That have already become present in your system before you before you got there.
We already talked about glutathione and its ability to take the chemical and indication. Now that’s, the ability to take the chemical and crush it, but it doesn’t work that cleanly, when the chemical attaches to the albumin and becomes an antigen and becomes an actual like like something that that your body sees as A foreign object that sees it sees it now it sees the chemical it’s more than just a chemical.
It sees it as something that’s, going to assault its immune system. So so, usually people who become sensitive to this have lost immune tolerance already now immunity autoimmune, your immune system, you picture it as flying around in your bloodstream and and and maybe attacking viruses and stuff like a, and that is correct.
There was a part of your immune system that does that, but vast majority of your immune system is located on the inside of your sinuses inside your throat on the inside of your lungs, on the inside of your intestines and on the inside of the blood vessels.
In your brain to keep out all the bad guys, this is where all the bad guys enter in and your brain has its own separate barrier, because nature kind of like says brain is pretty important so like maybe we should take care EE, good care of that And keep the crap out of there right.
So so, basically, people who get multiple chemical sensitivities usually have these barriers. They’re called barriers because the blood-brain barrier, the lung barrier, the intestinal barrier. We talked last week about intestinal permeability that’s, the intestinal barrier, that’s.
Why we’re kind of doing it in this order? Okay, you have intestinal permeability, you’re, more susceptible it doesn’t mean you’re gonna get it, but you’re more susceptible. You have intestinal permeability or lung permeability, or you have bad blood brain barrier permeability.
You’re gonna be more susceptible to this. If you have overwhelming infections, let’s say you’ve had leaky gut for years, and you have food sensitivities and it’s, overwhelming your liver and your liver, ISM detoxing as well.
You’re, going to be more susceptible to this. You’re, usually going to be more susceptible to this. If you have glutathione deficits, if I remember correctly, I think, even though the glutathione pathway is one pathway, I think it’s.
I think it’s responsible for up to like 60 or 70 % of the of the detoxification that deliver death. If you have good glutathione it’s almost impossible to develop autoimmunity. If you have good glutathione, you are probably not going to get chemical sensitivities.
Okay, however, a lot of us don’t have good glutathione, because we’re stressed. We have infections, we have viral infections, we have pathological infections, we’re stressed out of our minds. We have a leaky guts, we have SIBO, we have h pylori, all of those things put us and are we drink or you drink.
A lot of alcohol, or we’re, taken like five or six or seven or eight medications, all these things that put a strain on the drug. Maybe we maybe we, maybe we have fatty liver. All of these things will create a challenge and a deficit in that area, and the glutathione can become crop-top compromised and when it becomes compromised.
You now are more susceptible to these particles that come in at attached to the protein that are supposed to be cleared by there and they can’t clear it and then maybe you have a big stress. Maybe you get a treatment a trauma? Maybe you get a surgery, maybe you have a emotional trauma in women’s cases.
Maybe you have a child. All of these things that create a huge stress response of cortisol cortisol is a hormone in your in your adrenals cortisol’s. Most of you know it’s, a stress hormone. What also happens to have a lot to do with your immune system has a lot to do with those barrier systems there’s, a lot to do with blood or sugar.
That’s in your liver that it has to move out. You put this huge demand on your system and boom the next thing. You know you have an automated problem so and and along with an autoimmune problem, you can get you that can also be one of the things that can cause you to have these multiple chemical sensitivities, not everybody that comes in here has multiple chemical sensitivities.
Has an autoimmune problem, but my paid patient population, most of the people come in here haven’t who have multiple chemical sensitivities, has an autoimmune problem so and the other thing that so the things that you’ll, see in the person That that gets these chemical sensitivities just to recap, because because I didn’t say everything you’re gonna see low glutathione.
You’re gonna see barrier system problems, so you’re gonna see. Leaky gut – and we talked last week about – I think the best test word – is a cyrex to test with nighttime. Again I have no financial interest so with cyrex to zero.
Okay, I just think that’s, the best test, lung barrier test you want to find out for your lungs or good start, taking deep breaths like that, if you feel I mean really deep breaths and it really throw it out, you see how you Heard a wheeze in me that’s, because I had a pneumonia that lasted for almost almost six weeks back in the early 2000s and damaged in a damaged lung tissue.
For me. So I have bad lung barrier, which I take care of which I take care of, and and so, but that could tell you if you have a bad lung there. If you have COPD, if you have asthma, if you have bronchitis yeah well, you have a bad lung barrier.
If you have any of that stuff and a bad blood brain barrier is a little bit more difficult to to to determine as far as figuring it out. Some of the things that we do to figure it out, I’m, not sure I should share with you there challenges of certain neurotransmitters that if you take them and you fall asleep, you can look it up online.
I’m. Not I’m, actually not going to get into that, because I think it’s, something that should be done in a doctor’s office. But but I will say this, you know if you eat your food and it makes you see you probably you have you probably uh yep, you probably a bad blood-brain barrier, if you, if you, if you find you’re one of those people who, Like takes a bowel movement and also in your whole brain clears up you probably bad lung blood brain barrier.
There’s. There’s, a number of things like that, but those are some of the more practical ways of trying to determine or whether you have a bad blood-brain barrier. So if you have a bad blood-brain barrier or a bad lung barrier or an intestinal barrier, all three of them and you’re susceptible.
You’re very susceptible to getting this. If you have any of the other things, I talked about it. If you have a fatty liver, if you have low glutathione most people, don’t know that a lot of people don’t know a glutathione is those who have it don’t know it can be tested.
If you have a low vitamin D, if you’re, one of those went to the doctor and your vitamin D is like really really really low and it’s really low. You you you, you want to think of two things you want what you want to think of.
I should get my vitamin D uh beep most people come into my office have low vitamin D. Autoimmunity has a lot to do with that, yeah in and and and if you have low vitamin D and multiple chemical sensitivities, they kind of go together.
If you got low vitamin D, that’s a bit of a problem now chemical sensitivities – and this came with this – this – this situation of chemical sensitivities also morphs over into the metals okay, and so so this is kind of like this is kind of Like a little bit of a controversial area, because there are entire areas of the alternative world that have hung their hat on heavy metals and the heavy metals is a whole topic unto itself.
And I’m gonna briefly kind of try to go over that topic with you, because this is a this. This can be a big part of this, but you have to be very careful about how you go about them. How you evaluate whether you have them if you’re, doing hair analysis, if you were doing urine analysis, if you’re doing things like that for heavy metals these.
These are not very good thing: tests for heavy metals stuff and throwing tomatoes at the at the camera there, because I’m. Sorry, they’re. Not now you can take a serum test. You can look if you take a hair analysis.
You take a urine announced. Your analysis is very inaccurate because it’s already after your liver and your and your kidneys have already cleared everything and – and – and I know a lot of you use these and you think they’re very accurate.
But everybody has heavy metals like everybody, you’re a met. You are metals. Okay, you’re eating iron right every day. Your your your, your, your breathing things in you go to gas stations. You get your everybody’s.
Got heavy metals we we eat, you know we eat so that we can get magnesium and that we can get all of these metals into us because we need them right. We need them to make red blood cells and so on and so forth.
So it’s, not unnatural, that we would have heavy metals in our body. It is unnatural. I have to money and and and but how do you figure that out it’s not through the hair? It’s, not through urine analysis.
Now you can take blood and do serum to find out if you have heavy metals and that’s. Okay, it ‘ Ll. Tell you if you have heavy metals, but it usually is only going to tell you if you heavy metals in the last couple of days.
So again I go back to Cyrax just because say and and and I’ll, go back Cyrus again. I don’t have any affiliation with him. These people picked up the mantle ten years ago or so and and and they were – I want to say there’s – a huge autoimmune population out there.
We need to know what to do to help them and they continue to work to develop testing to help those of us who wish to do this and they do have a chemical intolerance. Again, we’re talking about intolerance.
Now too, they do have a chemical intolerance test. Now here’s, the deal. Okay, I told you about. I already just said that urine is not good in the in the in the in the hair. Analysis is not good and that serums kind of good, because those are more for the person who just gets the inundation.
Okay, they get the inundation it’s there. If you wait long enough, it’s, going to go away and and manure liver detox it’s, going to go away. If you do a liver detox and take some glutathione, it’s, going to go away alright, but the difference is and and and – and this gives me the opportunity to tell you what the differences for the chemical that comes in and attaches to the Albumin this becomes a new antigen when the chemical comes in attaches to albumin, it becomes a new engine.
This goes for metals, too, okay, and so when it comes in and it becomes a new antigen, an antigen is something that is attacking you. Okay, an antigen would be a virus, a bacteria or something like that.
Okay, but this is an antigen. It’s, a chemical it’s. An environmental damage is a chemical attached to your human, and when that happens, your immune system goes up. That’s like like not supposed to be there.
Let’s, create something called an antibody to it. Okay, so that we can tag it so that the next time it comes in the immune system can can kill it, but it’s a little different because it’s, a chemical it’s, not a bug.
It’s, not something that ‘ S got DNA, that it can be killed, but it, but here’s. The point you’re not really going to have problems with heavy metals unless you have developed antibodies to that complex.
So for the people who have the mercury people go, get all the mercury out of your mouth, which I did back in the day and it didn’t do anything for me and I was chronic fatigue immunodeficiency disease.
That was, you know, which is we didn’t know what it was back then, and – and I did have my mercury taken out it didn’t, do anything okay, but there are some people get the mercury taken out of mouths.
Like a miracle right, these people have developed antibodies to the metal. Now that has to be taken care of. So what is the challenge? There is the challenge to get rid of the metal or is the challenge to dampen the antibodies challenges that dampen the antibodies and that can still go back to you know if you have the things that you were suffering from, that made you susceptible to getting the Chemical sensitivity, firstly, usually have to be taken care of.
If you have a leaky gut, they have a bad blood-brain barrier. If you have bad lung barriers, they have to be treated when and then treating the leaky gut is treating the leaky gut. You want to know about that.
Look at our last episode and and and that can get a little bit involved depending on what’s going on in your gut, and we talked about testing for that and and and and but but stress, if it’s because you’re stressed stress will cause you to create a lot of cortisol that can that can affect your liver.
That could actually cause fatty, liver. Okay. So so you have to fix those things and then you have to dampen immunity. Well, we’re, two things that dampen immunity the best. Well, ironically, one of them is glutathione.
It dampens the immune response against your barrier systems, particularly your intestines, in your brain well and your lungs, all three of them and then the other one. I mentioned was vitamin D: vitamin D is low because either you have an immune system or you have something that’s, causing your system to over fire.
Your your immune system Network and then vitamin D is what stops your immune system from from flaring up too much and attacking things that it shouldn’t like in autoimmunity. So an autoimmunity vitamin D is usually low because it’s being used that well it’s.
The same thing once you’ve made this chemical connection, okay with the metal attaching to something and then a body being created that’s like an autoimmunity. It’s not, but it’s a it’s very similar to your immune system.
I gonna autumn unity, and so the vitamin D is trying to help you to dampen that it the attack against it and eventually the vitamin D goes well. So vitamin D is a big part, but I mean it, but it’s like you have to treat it like an autoimmunity.
You have to figure out what your food sensitivities are. You have to figure out. You have to figure out the leaky gut. You have to get the barrier systems under control, you get your glutathione up, get vitamin D up and and then you can do like your detox, then you can do your liver detox.
Most of you who talk about these chemicals do now at home, liver detox is and stuff like that. Now a lot of you go well. What about with the? What about the actual key lations I do chelation. I just have one patient.
I have one patient who just came up from Texas. I think it was Oh No well wherever they came from it. Doesn’t matter, and so I just have one patient from out of state and and and very very educated in the world of the internet and all the different millions of things.
They are the miracle cure and that you can and and the metal group is like one of those it’s, all metals, its metals. You got it and you have to chelate it and then, of course, chelation. I don’t know course.
If you know this like the years ago, chelation and it cost like thirty thirty-five thousand dollars to go through this chelation and get the medals he laid it out of you. We have several doctors in Northern Nevada who do chelation and – and so I’m – very familiar with it because I went through it and I did it, and but now they have qhn online.
They have different types of chelation. It’s. A very dangerous thing to do for someone who has all of these compromises: okay, because if you’re using like DMPs, if you’re using DMS a to challenge yourself to find out.
If you have heavy metals with the urinary thing or you’re using it, along with other things, to try to pull it out of your system or if you’re actually going to a doctor and having it chelated out of you.
If you have all those things going on, you’re, pulling metals out of your system and they’re, going to eventually find their way through your bad blood-brain barrier to your brain and to your nervous system.
Does this ever happen? I have had probably three dozen patients come in here after they make elated and they have severe neurological symptoms. They’ve, been told it’s, just the detox it’s, a hurting thing they’ve, been told all these different things it is, it is I my mentor was talking about it.
Dr. Crosby was talking about it in a seminar that I went to that he he put on last week and he almost quit practice when he had two people that he sent for chelation get worse. One of them ended up in a wheelchair, from neurological damage from from from having, and I’m, not telling you thinking.
He talked about this at the seminar he fully talked about this, so you have to be very careful if, if metals are a perpetuating factor in your disease issue, you have to get rid of other things. First, you have a lot of times when we’re, doing the hierarchy of functional medicine, and we do the gut.
We do the SIBO and we’re and we’re healing up the intestinal permeability, getting rid of the bugs whatever the hierarchy is for that patient a lot of times these chemical sensitivity symptoms disappear without doing any type of a chelation.
Now, if we do all of that, and there’s still chemical sensitivities symptoms, it is only at that point in time where the blood-brain barrier is, he only got brain barriers healed. The lung barriers healed.
Your glutathione stores are off your vitamin DS good. You’ve, taken care of any of the bugs you of the immune system as pristine as you’re, going to get it in that person. At that time it’s, potentially okay, to do some sort of chelation.
Because now, when you draw those metals out of your system, they’re, not going to go into your brain. I mean they’re gonna go a lot of other places, but you don’t want them in your brain. You don’t, want metals in your brain or in or attacking your nervous system, and, and so you know, and even that is still a little iffy, maybe if the person is doing really really really really well, you know you have a conversation kind Of go like do we really want to go there, you know: do we want to do that if it is, if it’s, a matter of going and taking the mercury out of your mouth, that’s, a different animal? If, if you have antibodies to the mercury, and you go, take the mercury out your mouth, you’re, probably going to feel better.
It’s. Gon na be one of those miracles. Oh, my god, like everything’s gone that’s; the cause of everybody’s; fibromyalgia! No! It’s. Cause of your fibromyalgia because you had antibodies to your teeth.
To your to the mercury in your by chelating is a different animal. Okay, chelating is a different animal and, and that’s, a point where you have to have a a serious discussion with your with with your practitioner as to you know what they’re feeling is on what they eat.
What are they using? How far they want to go or they gonna? Let go like the whole full board. There’s a whole chelation, or they’re. Just gonna use the world’s stuff, and are they gonna use chlorophyll or are they gonna use like glutathione or where they gonna use their? Are they gonna use like the MPs or DMS a you might want to pass? I know this is religiously heretical to a lot of the heavy metals out there and but but trust me everything I’m telling you is based on volumes of research and data in clinical trial and errors, so so that’s.
Multiple chemical sensitivities, now I mean I again, you can do it, we could do ours on it and type of stuff, but that is the that is kind of like the hierarchy. Is you know the next thing we’re gonna probably gonna? Be talking about is gonna, be the stomach, but the chemical sensitivities in in this order.
We’ve, put them after the small intestines and and at the large intestines, and we and and and gut problems, and it’s. Have some permeability, because so much of that precedes you getting the chemical sensitivity and so that’s where that came in at this point in the hierarchy.
The next thing we’re gonna there. We’re gonna start talking about your stomach next time and that’s gonna. I think that might open quite a few eyes. People know stomachs, get all servers and they know I get acid indigestion and I get gastro esophageal reflux this it’s.
It’s, even a bigger deal than that. Your stomach is a huge linchpin in the rest of your physiology. So so sometimes you all be treating the stomach and the chemical sensitivities go away. Sometimes you’re gonna have to treat the the intestines and the barriers and, and then the chemical sensitivities for stomach they go away.
We’ll talk about so there’s, so there’s. There’s, a lot of vicious cycles. Here the hierarchy is there to give us a framework of how we should look at a case and then once you’ve looked at the whole case.
Together, the hierarchy may change for that person, but it’s. Gon na stay relatively close to what we’re, presenting to you so multiple chemical sensitivities, heavy metals that’s – that pretty much covers it for today.
So I hope that you enjoyed that. I will be very interested to hear your comments on this either way. It helps me helps me understand what my patients are being told out there. I’m, always happy to answer questions, and so next week it’s.
Gon na be stomach, and we’re gonna take to talking about hypo and maybe high perchloric acid next week. If you’re, if you’re enjoying this, then then you know please don’t miss next week. Next week is kind of a big big deal in most people’s journey to wellness.
So, okay, that’s it for this week. Thank you for watching again and take care.
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