2 thoughts on “The Health Edge: Heavy Metals-Part One”

  1. Marianne

    The Heavy Metals — Part I podcast has a lot of important information of which I was not aware. Thank you so much for finding source data on these and other topics, digesting it, figuring out what matters, and then telling us in a comprehensible way in these podcasts. The podcasts are the best source of helpful information that I know of. It’s hard for me to come up with words that adequately express how valuable these are and how grateful I am.

    It would be really helpful if you’d take the ball one step further and say what you do in your own lives with some specificity to address these issues. For example, what brands of deodorant, cookware, and tableware do you use? I looked at the ingredients of my deodorants, Tom’s and Desert Essence (long list that looks okay but some of them could be bad). Unsweetened cocoa powder has some health benefits — which brands are best to avoid the problems you highlighted? I know that EWP.org has a lot of information, but trying to research all this at the very practical level “where the rubber meets the road” is very time consuming and ultimately frustrating for this lay person.

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  2. Marianne

    Thanks very much for the comments about sourcing in the Heavy Metals Part II podcast, which are very helpful.

    Just to show you how a lay person trying to do the right thing is walking through a proverbial mine field, I had been putting cacao powder in my morning smoothie for no reason other than that I thought that ingredient was good for me. Now I’ll stop doing that, knowing that it might be bad for me.

    I appreciate that you “dive deep” and encourage you to keep that up and dive even deeper but please do continue to throw in commentary about how that information might be applied in each moment of making the myriad of lifestyle decisions (conscious and unconscious) in our daily lives. Most of the source research I come across “out there” is theoretical, with very little if any practical takeaways. Something Dr Perlmutter said in his 6/23/15 talk with Dr Bredesen at the Buck Center about Alzheimer’s expressed this point well:

    “We see some great epidemiologic studies from a researcher at Rush who has correlated low levels of DHA with dementia. That doesn’t mean the low levels of DHA cause dementia, but it’s sure enough for this cowboy to say, ‘It’s not my first rodeo. We’re going to put you on DHA and here’s why.’ There’s criticism when we look at these epidemiological studies showing low levels or high levels of something are correlated with dementia risk, and people say ‘That doesn’t mean you should go ahead and recommend them.’ Well, I’m recommending them here and now, and we’ll let the dots get connected at a future date. We owe that to our patients.”

    That is precisely what you two are doing, very uniquely I might add. Bravo, kudos, and profuse thanks!

    You’ve invited people to suggest topics they’d put on a “wish list” for future podcasts. I would love to learn more about pathways and signaling and other “big picture” mechanisms as they relate to many of the concepts you discuss. The terms “signaling” and “pathways” come up all the time in research abstracts about the pathology of neurodegenerative diseases. The”downward slide” in disease progression seems to be triggered by a combination of many of the topics you address (oxidative stress, inflammation, immune system, impaired autophagy and apoptosis).

    It’s interesting to realize that the great contribution you are making in the lives of people like me are at both ends of the spectrum — understanding the big picture (because you put it all together for me in a way I can understand) and understanding how all the detail of the research translates into the minute-to-minute decisions I make in my life.

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