Brain-First or Gut-First? Rethinking Parkinson’s Disease w/ Drs. Ray Dorsey & Michael Okun - Transcript
Dr. Ray Dorsey
Adjusted for age, the rise of Parkinson's disease is going up sixty percent, far faster than Alzheimer's disease.
Dr. Michael Okun
It turns out by 02/1935, we should have twelve million people with Parkinson's. There's a big myth about Parkinson's, and the myth is is that it's just a brain disease. This is a whole body disease. We have to start thinking about Parkinson in a different way.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Ray Dorsey, MD, MBA is a leading neurologist and Parkinson's expert. He's the director of the Center for Brain and the Environment at Atria Health and Research Institute, and he's a professor of neurology at the University of Rochester. Michael Oken, MD, is a distinguished professor of neurology at the University of Florida, and he's co founder of the Norman Fixel Institute for Neurologic Diseases and Medical Advisor for the Parkinson's Foundation. Both have been recognized by the White House as Champions for Change for their dedication to advancing research care and advocacy for people living with Parkinson's disease.
Dr. Michael Okun
There are all these symptoms that are non movement that actually appear early and they call them prodromal features. Constipation, acting out your dreams, loss of smell in your nose nerves, gut dysfunction and changes, and even some of the neuropsychiatric things.
Dr. Mark Hyman
For all those golfers out there, is it a risk for people? Should they be worried? Should they stop golfing? What do they do to protect themselves?
Dr. Ray Dorsey
Individuals who live within one mile of a golf course had a 126 increased risk of developing Parkinson's disease compared to individuals who lived six or more miles apart.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Oh my.
Dr. Ray Dorsey
Do you know where else they find these toxins? They find them in the breast milk of nursing women. And it's all preventable.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Okay. You've got someone to walk in your office with Parkinson's disease. What do you do? Alright. Ray and Michael, welcome to the Doctor.
Hyman Show. So good to have you.
Dr. Ray Dorsey
Thank you very much for having us, Mark. Great to be here.
Dr. Michael Okun
Yeah. Amazing to be here.
Dr. Mark Hyman
You both have come all the way from Florida and New York to Austin, Texas to talk about your new book, The Parkinson's Plan, A New Path to Prevention and Treatment. As a functional medicine physician doing this for over thirty years, I was like, finally, there's these straight up neurologists from top academic centers who get it. They get that we are living in a sea of toxins, environmental toxins, everything from heavy metals to pesticides to plastics, and the list goes on, that are impacting our health in real ways and that we have to confront and face as a society. And that the canary in the coal mine, which is another story of the coal mine where they put the canary in it, if it dies, you know, the air is bad, the coal miners have to get out. The canary in the coal mine here is Parkinson's disease, which is what your book's about.
For those of you who don't know what Parkinson's disease is, I wanna let you explain that, but it's essentially it's a movement disorder where you get really slow and shuffly, y, and you talk soft, and it's just like a it's a very debilitating disease that happens as people get older. But it's happening in younger and younger people because we're living in a increasingly toxic world that's impacting our health. And not just across Parkinson's, but across everything from autism to Alzheimer's to cancer to diabetes to autoimmune diseases. I mean, the whole shebang. You guys are both neurologists, but as a what I call myself as a not a subspecialist or a super specialist, but as a super generalist.
I know a lot about it. A lot of things and not, like, not as much as I like on many things, but I I go I go pretty broad because I see the patterns and connections between things. And so what really got me excited was that, you know, finally, there's there's two neurologists who were talking about how to think about this particular disease, Parkinson's, in a different way. And also pointing out that what what a dramatic increase we've seen in the incidence of this disease. It's always been around, but, you know, why all of sudden is it skyrocketing?
Most people think, oh, it's genetics, and most diseases are genetic. But the truth is and Eric Burton said this, he's been on the podcast, that ninety three percent of disease, chronic illness is not genetic. It's it's it's basically the environment influencing our gene expression where we might have predispositions, but we're not predestined to the problem. Also, what was really interesting in literature to me in Parkinson's, it it was one it's one of the few diseases that I I've always said, you know, throughout my thirty years of talking, that even traditional health care and doctors and neurologists understand that that toxins are a major risk factor for Parkinson's. If you're a farmer, that's the most dangerous occupation on the planet, not because of injury from factory farm equipment, but from the toxins that they are exposed to.
So why don't why don't sort of I I guess start with Ray and Michael. Just sort of talking to me about, you know, Parkinson's. What is it? Give us a little background on on the biology of it, and then the the increasing incidence of it, and and what you think are the major reasons why we're seeing this this increasing dramatic increasing incidence. It's like orders of magnitude.
It's not just like a ten or twenty percent increase.
Dr. Ray Dorsey
Parkinson's, the first major description of the disease was by Doctor. James Parkinson in 1817 in London.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah. Why do these guys name diseases after Alzheimer's? Doctor. Alzheimer's?
Dr. Ray Dorsey
He didn't name it after himself. He called the shaking palsies. This other guy, the father of the modern neurology named after him. He he didn't have an ego. Yeah.
So he's 61. He's a a surgeon, actually. Yeah. And he's actually even a geologist, and he sees something new on the streets of London. Something so new that at 61, he bothers to write a case series.
He basically writes his case series on six people, five, at least five of whom are men. They're all older, and they have tremor, which has long since been described, but they have this stoop posture, this hunched posture, this tendency to walk faster and faster, and to fall forward. And he said in 1817, this has not been described in the medical literature.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Really? This is 1817.
Dr. Ray Dorsey
So in 1817, Doctor. Parkinson says that park disease that became known as Parkinson's has not been described in the medical literature, ergo, I'm describing something new.
Dr. Mark Hyman
And this was the beginning of the industrial revolution. And it's the beginning of
Dr. Ray Dorsey
the industrial revolution. And where is it?
Dr. Michael Okun
It's in London.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah.
Dr. Ray Dorsey
And air quality in 1800 London is equivalent to what is in Delhi, India today. It's equivalent to what was over in New York City with the Canadian wildfires, you remember, two or three Yeah. Summers sky has turned orange. That was everyday 1800 London. Yeah.
So I think Doctor. Parkinson is describing the effects of chronic exposure to high levels of air pollution. And so, Parkinson's, we think as a as a
Dr. Mark Hyman
And by the way, it was coal. Coal. Because coal was what they used to heat and do an industry with, and that's full of mercury and lead.
Dr. Ray Dorsey
Exactly. And so we look in the brains of people with Parkinson's, they have high levels of heavy metal. And so when you look at smog in LA, for example, you're seeing little pieces of dirt and soot that are suspended in the air. The fancy term is particulate matter. Most of them we cough out or sneeze out, but some are so small, less than one thirtieth the width of our hair, they penetrate the nerve that hangs down the response for smell that hangs down on our nasal passages.
And hitchhiking on those pieces of dirt and soot are toxic metals.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Wow. So it's a superhighway from your nose to your brain.
Dr. Ray Dorsey
Exactly. It's the front door to your brain. Wow. And it's the blood brain barrier, remember from medical school, right, doesn't let let things in.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Well, kinda it does. Well, but it kinda does,
Dr. Ray Dorsey
but this It's a little leaky. This this is the front door. This doesn't go through the blood brain barrier. It's just going through the olfactory nerve, the the nerve response or smell that's hanging it, and it's hitchhiking are these metals, lead from gasoline, iron from brakes, platinum from catalytic Yeah. Converters.
And so people with Parkinson's and Alzheimer's both have high levels of metals in their brain. No one's really been able to explain why, but I think one of the reasons why is air pollution, which is one of the toxicants that are inhaled that lead to Parkinson's.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah. We're exposed to I mean, listen. We're exposed to mercury in the fish we eat. Lead is, you know, in their food. And, you know, if you eat a lot of kale that's grown in urban environments, it just picks up all the lead.
You know, what what what you said was so interesting to me about the leaky brain because, you know, when I was in in sort of my early years of practicing, we were talking about a leaky gut. And I used to get laughed at all the time by traditional doctors because they're like, oh, that's nonsense. It's just, you know, you're quacking. For a long time, I've also basically been saying that there's a leaky brain. Well, you Michael, you you sort of just sort of brought this attention because I think people don't really understand what that is.
I mean, leaky gut is when the berry breaks down and food and poop leak in and affect your immune system and then start to cause all kinds of havoc. You know? And and as you mentioned, Michael Michael, that you basically have this barrier, this blood brain barrier, but it becomes permeable. And then all of a sudden, things get in from the outside. So it's not like a, like, completely impenetrable barrier.
And I think we're seeing increasingly things that cause a leaky brain like stress and many other things like toxins. So maybe you could talk a little bit about this leaky brain phenomena because it's really how the toxins get into the brain that are causing all these problems. When you do biopsies and you're finding toxins and heavy metals in the brains, like, what's happening?
Dr. Michael Okun
Yeah. And you're absolutely, you know, spot on when you talk about leaky gut too. And it turns out the gut is also a pathway, you know, where you can hitchhike in and potentially cause Parkinson as well. And we talk about now brain first Parkinson and gut first Parkinson. And and so this leakiness, you know, this permeability to, you know, to stress and and other factors that can get across is really important.
So if you think about the brain as having like a force field, if you're a Star Wars fan, you know, it's kinda got like a force field. And we've always kind of taught all the medical students. We've taught everybody in medicine that this is this impenetrable
Dr. Mark Hyman
force field.
Dr. Michael Okun
Nothing's gonna get through this force field. It's actually not correct. Not only is it not right, but as we develop, you know, treatments and as we develop, you know, different, you know, therapies, we're actually able to defeat the blood brain barrier is what we call it, or the BBB. We're able to defeat that. And and it's so super important for us to remember that things can get through it.
We can use that for therapeutics. We can also need to be thinking about that for cause and getting to the root cause of Parkinson. And one other thing treatment. And even treatment. But one other thing I just wanted to bring into the discussion, and and I'm so glad that you mentioned the gut, is there's a big myth about Parkinson.
And the myth is is that it's just a brain disease. Yeah. It's a whole body disease, Mark. And and and we see it in the gut. You know?
We see the proteins in the gut. We see it in the skin. We see it in multiple systems. And so we
Dr. Mark Hyman
Proteins that are expressed in the body in Parkinson's.
Dr. Michael Okun
Absolutely. And so
Dr. Ray Dorsey
And misfolded.
Dr. Michael Okun
Yeah. And misfolded. I mean, we have twice the risk of of malignant skin cancer, you know, melanoma in Parkinson's disease. Twice the risk of osteoporosis in Parkinson's disease. This is a whole body disease.
And as we think about it and I love, you know, kind of how you describe yourself as someone that that, you know, thinks of everyone, thinks of the whole. We have to start thinking about Parkinson in a different way. It's not just a brain disease, and it's not just a disease of dopamine. There are certainly multiple circuits in the brain. And then, you know, this barrier that we, you know, have, you know, invested so much in in all of our textbooks, we've gotta rewrite those.
Dr. Mark Hyman
So essentially, what you're saying is the ankle bone's connected to the shin bone's connected to the knee bones, hip bone, everything's connected. And we can't separate out the body into these organs and or I mean, it's it's such an unfortunate problem we have now because as we're beginning to understand the body as a network or as a system, network biology, you know, traditional medicine is organized according to parts, like geography. Where is it in your body? Is it your head? Is it your stomach?
Is it your joint? Is it your knee? Like, whatever. So you've got all these specialists that are specialized in their organ. But if you start to read across specialties, you see there's these common themes that are like inflammation, mitochondrial dysfunction, oxidative stress, the microbiome involvement, the misfolded proteins, things like all these things you're talking about aren't just about neurology.
They're about everything. And so so that's why, you know, you can start to really help people by understanding how these systems
Dr. Michael Okun
And we miss it, Mark. Like, so we miss the point, and and and we miss the diagnosis, and we miss the treatments, and we miss the approaches because no one takes a step back. Mhmm. Everybody's doing their super, you know, specialists. And Ray and I are completely guilty.
You know? Yeah. We're guilty of a lot of things, Mark. But we're definitely guilty of being super specialists. Right?
Yeah. On top of, you know, neurology, which is already a specialty, then we have a subspecialty of Parkinson and basal ganglia and all these crazy brain circuits. Right? Yeah. And so we have to step back, create navigators for people that are, suffering, and and, you know, dealing with these symptoms, and help to think of this as a whole body disease.
Dr. Mark Hyman
It really is. And and, you know, we were chitchatting before, and I mentioned this paper I read, like, I don't know, twenty years ago. Was in JAMA, I think. And I forget the exact title, but it was essentially explaining how Parkinson the biology of Parkinson's disease and what happens. And, you know, one of the key things we talked about in functional medicine is the mitochondria, with our energy system, how we take food and oxygen and combust it in ourselves.
And through a very series of steps, we actually can produce ATP or energy that runs the body. And and ultimately, the end result of of what's happening, and you you can explain this probably better than I I can, is there's mitochondrial damage, particularly in the area of the brain we call the basal ganglia that that is responsible for movement. So this is a movement disorder. Tell us about the the increasing incidence of this and why we're seeing so much. It's not just the the prevalence, which will grow as the population grows, but the actual incidence of how many new cases per k per population is actually happening, and and why we're seeing this accelerate over the last fifty years.
Dr. Ray Dorsey
Yeah. So when Doctor. Parkinson described it, he described six people in 1817 with the disease. 02/2017, the global burden of disease study estimates six million people have the disease. How do you go from six to six million in two hundred years?
Aging alone doesn't explain it. Adjusted for age, the rise of Parkinson's disease is going up sixty percent, far faster than Alzheimer's disease, sixty percent adjusted for age.
Dr. Michael Okun
Which is shocking, right? Yeah. Did you just say faster than Alzheimer's?
Dr. Mark Hyman
And Alzheimer's is very growing very fast.
Dr. Ray Dorsey
Yeah. It it can't be genetics because our genes, you know, don't change, generally speaking Correct. For just two hundred years, so it has to be in our environment. And if you look at a map of the world, areas of the world that are most industrialized, like The US and Canada, have the highest rates of disease. Areas of the world that are least industrialized, like Sahara and Africa, adjusted for age, have the lowest rates of the disease.
Areas of the world undergoing the most rapid industrialization and pollution, India and China
Dr. Mark Hyman
China.
Dr. Ray Dorsey
Have the fastest increasing rates of the disease. And so these chemicals, the ones that are implicating Parkinson's disease, are all mitochondrial toxins, means that they damage the energy producing parts of cells. You know that the brain is only 2% of our body weight, but 30% of our energy consumption is going to the brain, and nerve cells are the chief drivers of that. 75% of energy demands are from nerve cells or neurons. Right.
And so these toxins, whether it's air pollution, whether it's dry cleaning chemicals, you can believe it, whether it's pesticides, they all damage the energy producing parts of the cell. Some of them we inhale, some we ingest, some Parkinson's disease begins in the nose, some Parkinson's disease begins in the gut, right? So when Parkinson described the condition, he thought it began in the brain. So I'm describing a brain disease, it must begin in the brain. Actually, Parkinson's disease, Per Borghheimer, one of our colleagues in Denmark, says that there are two forms of Parkinson's.
One that's brain or nose first, pathology beginning in the nose, and one that's body or gut first, pathology beginning in the gut.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah. Interesting.
Dr. Ray Dorsey
And so these toxins, we I said to him, I emailed him. I read all his papers. I printed them out on my Sunday evening and Sunday afternoon. I just read them all, and went with my pen. And I'm like, holy cow.
And I emailed him. I said, well, how does this fit with, like, chemicals that we eat or swallow or ingest Yeah. Leading to a gut first form of the disease and chemicals that we inhale? He was skeptical at first, but we wrote a paper called The Body, The Brain, The Environment in Parkinson's Disease, arguing that Parkinson's that begins in the gut is due to chemicals that you ingest, like well water that's contaminated with pesticides. Chemicals that you inhale leads to a nose first.
Chemicals that you breathe in, like if you live near a golf course, for example, might be breathing in the chemicals.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah.
Dr. Ray Dorsey
Or air pollution will lead to a nose first form of the disease.
Dr. Mark Hyman
What you're talking about is is is just is such an important concept here around the the load of toxins in the gut. Yes. We eat toxins from pesticides and chemicals and ingesting all this stuff, but I think it's more than that. I read a paper years ago where there was a 400%, a fourfold increase in Parkinson's, and those people are constipated. And I don't wanna scare you if you're constipated.
You can fix that with magnesium and probiotics, and I've written a lot about that. But, like, that's a really interesting phenomena. And the and the the I don't know if you're aware of this phenomena, but in the metabolic health, there's something called metabolic endotoxemia, which means, in English, that there's bad bacteria in your gut that release toxins. We call them LPSs or lipopolysaccharides, which are like little endotoxins or little poisons produced by these bacteria that we absorb across a leaky gut that interact with their immune system and cause inflammation, which then leads to insulin resistance, which leads to weight gain, lens leads to diabetes. So I'm sure this metabolic endotoxemia also could be affecting the brain, not just because you're ingesting toxins, but the microbiome itself is so messed up because of our lack of fiber and polyphenols and probiotics and the use of antibiotics and so on.
Dr. Michael Okun
So this gets back, right, Mark, to this whole thesis of, like, Parkinson is a whole body disease. You're making the argument for us. And Yeah. And, you know, it's really, you know, interesting. You know?
So for almost twenty years, I've been the medical director adviser for the Parkinson's Foundation in addition to being a professor at University of Florida. And and when early on when we started to look at websites and and, you know, you and I and Ray were old enough to remember the early days where you get an analytic, and you're like, oh my gosh. All these people are actually clicking, you know, on these things. Well, we actually used that, you know, in the early days to see what people were interested in searching on the on the Parkinson Foundation website. And guess what kept coming up number one?
Constipation. Constipation. You got it, Mark. I mean, it's just sort of like, my gosh. And and so fast forward now.
You know? So so, you know, a couple of decades ago, Ray and I and I'm always the skeptic of the two. I work a lot in a in a in more of a a science laboratory setting and developing devices and things. And so so, you know, fast forward a couple of decades, you know, ago, if you said to somebody Parkinson's, you know, could be set off by a toxicant or an environment or whatever, people would say, you're crazy. Right?
And now, as we've learned more and more, we learn about, hey. Do you know what? Parkinson actually sets up many years in advance of when you see you mentioned movement disorder. Right. But there are all these symptoms that are non movement that actually, you know, appear early.
And they call them prodromal features.
Dr. Mark Hyman
So it's like prediabetes, but pre Parkinson's.
Dr. Michael Okun
Exactly. You know? Yeah. Spot on. And so so these are things like and what are they?
Yeah. Constipation. Acting out your dreams. Loss of smell. You talk about the hitchhiker, you know, in the you know, in your in your nose.
There was olfactory nerves. You know, gut dysfunction and changes, and even some of the neuropsychiatric things. So when you see middle aged men now, there's a study in Parkinson's showing middle aged men in their fifties suddenly start to get anxious. Right? They've not been anxious before.
That's you know, they may be the beginning of developing Parkinson's symptoms. This is a whole body issue that's that's going on. And so so I think it's important to to keep those perspectives, but there's nothing crazy about constipation, Parkinson, and how it ties in.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Well, it may it may be both a cause and an effect. Right? Yeah. Both. Yeah.
You know?
Dr. Ray Dorsey
So exactly. So I think it's actually an effect of the toxin. So we mentioned that the toxin can be ingested. Right? And so you know the enteric nervous system, which controls the gut motility.
That's the gut brain. The gut brain. And then the highway that connects the gut to the brain is the
Dr. Mark Hyman
Vagus nerve.
Dr. Ray Dorsey
Vagus nerve.
Dr. Mark Hyman
How am doing, doc?
Dr. Michael Okun
We're doing good. We're doing fantastic.
Dr. Ray Dorsey
So in 2003 in 02/2003, a German pathologist, really smart guy, Heiko Brauch, says, Parkinson's disease, the pathology does not begin in the brain. He said, Parkinson's disease, which you consider a brain disease, it does not begin in the brain. He says, I first see it, the pathology, in the olfactory bulb, the smell center of the brain, or in the dorsal motor nucleus of the vagus nerve. So he says the pathology of Parkinson's begins in the gut, and it ascends up like this misfolded protein like a fall of dominoes. This misfolded protein spreads from one nerve cell to another and goes from the gut up the vagus nerve, and then up from the vagus nerve to higher parts of the brain that are responsible for sleep, for controlling our blood pressure, and then only later to the part of the brain, the basal ganglia that you were talking about earlier that Caussification is actually probably one, is a sign that the pathology is affecting, for example, the vagus nerve, and we're getting reduced gut motility.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Is it overactive sympathetic activity?
Dr. Ray Dorsey
Well, it's the damage to the parasympathetic thing.
Dr. Mark Hyman
So they got over imbalanced. Imbalanced. For those listening, you've got the the fight or flight response and the relaxation response, the sympathetic nervous system, the parasympathetic nervous system. And what you're talking about here is the parasympathetic nerve that keeps you calm and relaxed. That's why anxiety increases actually stops working as well, you and get a relative increase in the sympathetic nervous system, which then when you're running from a tiger, don't wanna be pooping, so your your gut shuts down and a whole bunch of other bad stuff happens.
Right? You got it. I personally am waiting till I'm, like, or a 100 to start golfing because it's kinda slow for me. But I I play tennis, you know, they live seven years longer. But, anyway, for all those golfers out there, no criticism, there's a tremendous amount of toxins sprayed to keep those golf courses looking so great.
Is it a risk for people? Should they be worried? Should they stop golfing? What do they do to protect themselves? For sure, don't lick your golf balls, which I know people do to clean them.
Tell us, like, if you're a golfer, WTF.
Dr. Ray Dorsey
So Doctor. Brittney Krzyzynowski is a geographer. She's at the Baroneurological Institute, and she worked with her colleague, Doctor. Rodolfo Savica, one of our colleagues at Parkinson's Specialists at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. And she was concerned about the effects of living near a golf course, because golf courses use huge amounts of pesticides.
Dr. Mark Hyman
And a lot of people live on these golf course communities.
Dr. Ray Dorsey
And a lot of people live on these golf course communities. So she looked at Rochester, Minnesota, which does a very good job of measuring new cases of Parkinson's disease, and she found that individuals who lived within one mile of a golf course had a hundred and twenty six percent increased risk of developing Parkinson's disease compared to individuals who lived six or more miles apart.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Oh my.
Dr. Ray Dorsey
So why? And so she spends a lot of time in her paper discussing water supply. And so we talked a little bit about how pesticides can get into the water. For example, people who drink well water, not really by the Safe Streaking Water Act, prone to contamination from nearby farms in rural areas Run
Dr. Mark Hyman
off, seeps into the ground.
Dr. Ray Dorsey
Yeah. Have a higher risk of developing Parkinson's disease. So she's focused on that. I worry a little bit about the pesticides that are sprayed into the air. There was a small little report in the analyst in neurology that two neurologists found that eighteen of their patients lived near a golf course, and fifteen of the 18 lived downwind of the golf course.
So I worry about pesticides being sprayed on golf courses or on fields and people living downwind and inhaling them. We talked about how many individuals, most individuals perhaps, Parkinson's disease begins in the nose, so I worry about nerve toxins being inhaled into the nose. So what to do? One, well, listen. Pickleball.
Pickleball.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Pickleball.
Dr. Ray Dorsey
Pickleball. Know, why can't we ask golf courses Pickleball
Dr. Mark Hyman
is one most dangerous sports. There's so many people who are short of shape.
Dr. Michael Okun
Listen. That's don't no other to start.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Filling the emergency rooms with pickleball injuries.
Dr. Michael Okun
I have a whole pickleball for Parkinson talk so we can talk about to keep people safe on the Back to the golf.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Back to the golf.
Dr. Ray Dorsey
Golf. So ask the golf course what pesticides they use. See if they can use less toxic pesticides. Right? Can they use less?
Can they tell you when they're spraying? Right? So you can take interventions, especially if you're part of these. Maybe, you know, get out of town when they're spraying. You can close your windows.
You can get an air purifier. These are all things
Dr. Mark Hyman
You get, an air conditioned golf cart?
Dr. Ray Dorsey
Well, you can go ahead. Air
Dr. Michael Okun
gun golf drink the water from the court.
Dr. Ray Dorsey
And it's and it turns out not just living near a golf course has been an increased risk. Three different studies have found green space workers, including landscapers, to be at higher risk for Parkinson's disease, and one study found that green space workers are higher risk for ALS or Lou Gehrig's disease. So there are lots of clues as to what's causing these brain diseases, whether it's Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, or ALS, and lots of clues telling us that this is a preventable disease, and lots of clues saying that if we pay attention to our environment, like Rachel Carson said, we should.
Dr. Mark Hyman
But realistically, Ray, can can people really, like, reduce their exposure if they're out on a golf course for 18 holes? And, like like, isn't it just in there they're gonna be walking on? It's on their shoes. It's on their clothes. It's like
Dr. Ray Dorsey
I'm like you. I'm not a golfer, but I can't imagine that golf courses couldn't be using 50% less pesticides. There are organic golf courses.
Dr. Mark Hyman
They are actually.
Dr. Ray Dorsey
In Martha's Vineyard, they have organic golf courses. If we have organic wine, we have organic produce. If we have organic cheese and dairy products and meats, Why can't we have organic golf courses? Why can't we enjoy a nice sport without having to worry about
Dr. Michael Okun
getting a
Dr. Mark Hyman
parking lot? Maybe we wanna get president Trump on this. Regenerative golf course.
Dr. Michael Okun
But practically speaking, you you have a right to know. So ask the course when do they spray the pesticides. Right? Maybe you don't wanna play right after they've sprayed the pesticides. Watch the water that's there.
Get a carbon filter. Maybe bring your own water. And when you're smoking, for those of you that smoke I'm not saying you should smoke. When you smoke your stogie and your cigar, don't put it on the ground, like, while you're you're you're gonna hit the ball, and then pick it right back up because you're gonna put pesticide in your mouth.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Thank you. Thank you. That was a good answer to a hard question, which still feels like a bit scary to think about golfing. But anyway, for those of you golfers out there, just take care of yourself, get your liver working, and, reduce as much exposures as you can. I mean, this is just such a great conversation because I think I I I'm, like, honestly pinching myself because I feel like, you know, I wrote a I wrote this book, you know, how to fix your broken brain by fixing your body First, and here you guys are neurologists starting to talk about these things.
And usually neurologists pay no attention to anything below the neck, you know, which is just dumb. Guilty. Guilty. Guilty. Guilty.
And and and now it's like, you know, you can't ignore the science anymore. And here you are, two of the most esteemed neurologists in the world who've written collectively, I don't know, a thousand papers and many books and have led organizations and advised governments and done everything. And here you are going, holy crap. You know, maybe we're living in a stew of toxins, and that's a big factor. So let's talk a little bit about the biology, and then I wanna go into the toxin story and how you kind of came up with this.
Because I think it's important to understand that there's there's fundamental biological processes that occur in the body that are common in most diseases. And where it hits you depends, I think, on your genetics, and who knows what? We still don't understand. But, like, the phenomena of, you know, mitochondria you mentioned, you know, the brain has a lot of every cell in the mitochondria has has sorry. In the brain has more mitochondria than any other cell.
The heart cell is next. Even more than your heart, your brain has more mitochondria. And they're very sensitive, little creatures. They're like little bacteria that we kinda coevolve with. They kinda hitchhike in our cells, produce energy for us, and we can make them have a home, and it all works out.
Dr. Ray Dorsey
Then biotic, really.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah. And the problem is that they're very sensitive to insults. So from your microbiome, from toxins, from stress, from, you know, inflammation from food, from infections, from I mean, why do you feel like when you had the flu or COVID, like you can't move when you're tired and you have brain fog? Because your mitochondria are being poisoned. Right?
But this chronic low level toxicity is something that has not been really accepted by traditional medicine. It's like, oh, you got acute poisoning. You come to the ER. You know, we'll give you something to fix that. But most traditional physicians just dismiss the idea that that low level toxins are an issue or that there's anything you can do about those.
Can you talk about how you kind of first discovered this and a little bit about the sort of the insights that led you to realize that this is really the big problem.
Dr. Ray Dorsey
Mike and I were both very, very traditional academic neurologists, and you know, I went to the oldest medical school in the country, and you know, we're not told a lot about toxins. We're told a little bit about lead. We're told a little bit about asbestos. We're told a little bit about mercury. We're told a little bit about smoking, which we'll get to in a second, but we weren't taught to generalize this beyond the specific disease.
Dr. Mark Hyman
And only acute. And Not related to any chronic illness. If you're poisoned, you're poisoned.
Dr. Ray Dorsey
Taught, so talk about asbestos, and mesothelioma, and stuff like that, but, you know, it was narrow.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah. Yeah.
Dr. Ray Dorsey
So I had the gift of a sabbatical. I'm an academic. I was an academic, so I had the gift of a sabbatical about eight years ago, and I devoted it to reading the papers of one of my colleagues, Doctor. Caroline Tanner, who's a neurologist and an epidemiologist who's now at UC San Francisco, and for forty years, she's been quietly, diligently telling us that chemicals in our environment are fueling the rise of Parkinson's disease, whether that's air pollution, whether that's pesticides, whether it's a dry cleaning chemical called trichloroethylene. She's been telling us that these chemicals are causing it.
So I'll give you an example of chronic exposure to a toxicant. Lung smoking and lung cancer. So in 1900 United States, there was almost no lung cancer. Lung cancer, the leading cause of cancer death in The United States and around the world, simply just did not exist in 1,900 United States. It was it was so odd it was considered a once in a lifetime holiday.
All the doctors and medical students would gather around when they saw a case thinking they'd never see a case
Dr. Mark Hyman
in attacks and diabetes
Dr. Ray Dorsey
and autoimmune disease. Right? These diseases just didn't exist. And it wasn't until cigarettes that twenty five years after the introduction of cigarettes, you got a corresponding rise in lung cancer. United States, we stopped smoking, decreased smoking in the 1970s.
Twenty five years later, corresponding. So the challenge with these diseases is that it's not an acute exposure, you get the disease. That's much easier to identify. Right? You take too much acetaminophen, you get liver toxicity, you know, it's a lot easier to make that relationship.
With smoking and lung cancer, which wasn't connection really wasn't made until the nineteen fifties, because there was a twenty five year lag between the exposure. And now we're seeing the same thing with Parkinson's. You don't get exposed to the pesticides as a farmer and develop Parkinson's the next day
Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah.
Dr. Ray Dorsey
Next year, next decade. It could be twenty five years later, thirty years They did a study at Camp Lejeune, which is the marine base in North Carolina Yeah. Container with this dry cleaning chemical. The marines were exposed at age 20 to the chemical in their drinking water.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Dry cleaning, like, from their uniforms?
Dr. Ray Dorsey
Yeah. So there was a there was a dry marines needed dry cleaning their uniforms. There was a dry cleaning base ABC dry cleaners on the base that inappropriately disposed of their dry cleaning chemicals got into the drinking water for the marines at Camp Lejeune. The marines even knew about it in the later years, but for twenty five years, a million marines, their family, and civilians were exposed to a cancer causing chemical in their water that's since been linked to Parkinson's. Doctor Tanner and her colleague, Doctor.
Goldman, looked at the marines
Dr. Mark Hyman
What was that chemical?
Dr. Ray Dorsey
Trichloroethylene, TCE.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah. Yeah. You forgot my paper about that.
Dr. Ray Dorsey
See. And they looked at the marines who were 20 years old when they were exposed. They were only there for twenty five months. Right? If you're a marine, you move from base to base.
Yet thirty four years later thirty four years later, they had a seventy percent higher rate of developing Parkinson's disease. So exposure to toxins when you're young, some of them were teenagers, when you're young sets the stage for developing a neurodegenerative disease Yeah. Thirty four years later.
Dr. Mark Hyman
So, Truman, I I was sharing this story before. I had a patient early on, which sort of clued me into a lot of this stuff, who was about 50. And I was pretty young to get Parkinson's. And she came in with Parkinson's, and, you know, I took her history. And, you know, in in in functional medicine that we do, we start, like, with what did your mother eat, and what was her, like, in utero environment like, and, like, what was your first year like?
And so we go through the whole thing. And she was like, yeah. I lived in The Bronx, and we were very poor. And I you know, we were we lived in this cockroach infested apartment, and the cockroaches would crawl across me at night and freak me out. And so when I married and, you know, had a little more means, we moved to Long Island, and I just had the exterminator come every week inside and outside.
And by the way, I have a barrel of Lindane, which is a banned pesticide that is so bad. I was like, this is this is a big deal. And then, you know, you start hearing of farmers are the most dangerous occupation, start to kinda start to dig in, and you see what's going on. But I've also had patients who who are exposed to other things that that can like mold, which can be a toxin, or, or even tick infections, you know, which you wouldn't think, but do contribute. So it's a whole host of things together.
And I think, you know, we talk about the effect of of toxins on your neurology, but, I mean, Rachel Carson talked about it on fertility. There's a book called Our Stolen Future I read again two or plus decades ago.
Dr. Ray Dorsey
Sean O'Swan wrote a book Falling Down.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Theo Colburn about the effect on reproductive health and the change in fertility rates. Know, I mean, it's it's I just did a a whole talk with a Stanford urology professor about the declining rates of male fertility and what are we doing about it. It's all it's affecting everything. So tell us about the most common toxins that you found that are associated with them. Where do we get them?
And how do we start to think about, like, oh, boy, I'm in dealing with this.
Dr. Ray Dorsey
There's a pesticide called chlorpyrifos that used to be found on over half of apples in The United States, widely used on golf courses, utility poles. Turned out that chlorpyrifos was used to kill insects in apartments in New York City, and this amazing scientist, Virginia Rao, at Columbia University looked at the children of women born who were were in the homes that were sprayed with this pesticide. She finds that pesticide in the umbilical cord blood of the children in whose moms were sprayed the homes were sprayed with is chlorpyrifa. The higher the level of the pesticide in umbilical cord blood, the lower the IQ at three, five, and seven. Yeah.
And then two weeks ago, she follows them up to six to 12, and she does MRIs, and they have structural brain abnormalities, and they have slowed motor function. In the lab And
Dr. Mark Hyman
these are developmental issues that kids experience as a result of being exposed to these cockroach pesticides that are used commonly in the homes.
Dr. Ray Dorsey
In New York City. They're no longer allowed. And then she also found, in addition to having structural brain abnormalities on their brains as early as six years old, they have slow motor function. In the lab, that pesticide damages the dopamine producing nerve cells that are lost in Parkinson's disease.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Which is the basal ganglion cells. Right?
Dr. Ray Dorsey
Yeah. So pesticides as a whole is one is the certain pesticides have the most robust evidence for their role in Parkinson's disease.
Dr. Michael Okun
One of the Parkinson 25 mark we talk about is don't poison yourself. You know? Yeah. Seems like a like a no brainer, no pun intended, but, you know, don't poison yourself.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Are, though. I mean, we we we you know, I'm I'm on the board of the environmental working group, which is a great organization that has done a tremendous job to catalog, identify all of our exposures across food, across household cleaning products, skincare products, you know, meat, fish, vegetables, and it really provides a a very good guide on that's evidence based on on how to reduce your exposures, filter your water, air purifier. We can talk about all this stuff. You know, what's what's really sort of concerning is that these these toxins, you know, are found everywhere. That the average newborn has 287 toxins in their umbilical cord blood.
This was a study done by the environmental wing group. They took 10 newborn babies, and they're like there was like stuff like DDT that's been banned or dioxin that's been banned, which is Agent Orange.
Dr. Michael Okun
Which is really bad for Parkinson, those two,
Dr. Mark Hyman
by the way. Wow. So the toxic exposures are are pretty ubiquitous, and it's hard to get rid of. And there was a big study that was done of the children of farm workers in California, and they collectively lost 41,000,000 IQ points. So this is exactly what you're saying.
Dr. Ray Dorsey
Exactly. And some of these toxins are so small that they cross the placenta, right, and they go into the child. And some are fat soluble, so you know your brain's covered in fat. Do you know where else they find these toxins? They find them in the breast milk of nursing women.
Dr. Mark Hyman
You know, I know that, and it makes me so sad. And you know, I'm not a designer or an engineer, but if there's any geniuses out there and want to design a good breast milk filter, that would be a huge boon to humanity because breastfeeding is still the most important thing you do to keep your kid healthy. And, you know, you're they're I mean, we're already born pre polluted. Right? Yeah.
So the question is then, you know, it's the degree, the amount, and you can if you take a good history, you can actually really find out what people's exposures are. Right?
Dr. Ray Dorsey
And it's all preventable. Right? This is all this is what your book. Right? Forever this is all preventable.
We need not have DDT. We no longer have DDT. We got rid of lead and gasoline.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Environment still.
Dr. Ray Dorsey
But we've we made progress. We lead levels today, right, are 95% lower in kids than when you and I Sure. Were children. Kids are smarter because we got lead in gasoline and lead out of paint. And the world did not spin off its axis.
Right? The air quality in Los Angeles today is 50% better than it was in the nineteen sixties when governor Ronald Reagan said we should eliminate all unnecessary driving because you couldn't see across the street just like you were talking about China. That was nineteen sixties Los Angeles. We fixed our ozone hole because we got rid of CFCs. If we get rid of these chemicals, we get rid of a lot of autism, we get rid of a lot of ALS, we get rid of a lot of Alzheimer's disease, and we get rid of a lot of Parkinson's disease.
The central thrust of the book is that Parkinson's disease is largely a preventable disease, is a product of the industrial revolution, and chemicals in our food, water, and air. We get rid of these chemicals in our food, water, and air. We get rid of Parkinson's disease. We create a world like 1817 or 1717 when there is no Parkinson's disease or it's extraordinarily rare.
Dr. Mark Hyman
I only have one word to say to that. Amen. It it is a big lift because the in the industrialization of the world and the amount of chemicals we use, we all benefit from. And and it's really tough to start thinking about how how do you reindustrialize to remove those? How do we reduce our exposures?
I I don't remember, there was a World's Fair. I I was living in Queens in 1965 when they had the World's Fair, and I went to it, actually, because I lived in Queens. And and and they had DuPont up there, and they were like, better living through chemistry and all these Teflon and all these things like the PFAS chemicals. I just did I just did my function health testing, which is a company I cofounded. And one of the things we offer is PFAS or forever chemical testing and bisphenol A testing and heavy metal testing.
And it's hard to test toxins because they're fat soluble and, you know, they but it's amazing how polluted I am. And I'm like, I'm a guy who tries to be careful, you know, like, and glyphosate levels. Yeah. I mean, I eat out, and what can you do? Like, it's just it's it's really tough.
Dr. Ray Dorsey
So And there's a reason one in thirty one children have autism. There's a reason that more young adults are getting colon cancer. Right? When we were in medical school
Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah.
Dr. Ray Dorsey
I mean, no one got colon cancer. Unless you had a rare genetic cause, no one got colon cancer before 50. Right?
Dr. Mark Hyman
No.
Dr. Ray Dorsey
Why do one in eight women get breast cancer? Why do one in eight one in ten men get prostate cancer? Diseases have causes. And why is
Dr. Michael Okun
it not uncommon to see young people with Parkinson? You said young people with Parkinson, maybe that's rare when you were describing the person they met. Not so rare. You know? We're we're seeing lots of young cases.
And in fact, you know, it does increase as you age, you know, over time. But we see people in their teens, twenties, thirties, forties. Certainly gets more common the longer you live. But but this is something that another myth that should be busted for people, that this isn't just a disease of of I don't like to say older, I say more seasoned. This isn't just a disease of more seasoned people.
Dr. Mark Hyman
What you're both saying is is is just so important. And, Ray, what you just said, I wanna just double click on because you kinda went over really fast. Diseases have causes. Now you would think in medicine that that's what we pay attention to. But, unfortunately, it's not.
What we pay attention to is what I call the name it, blame it, attainment game. We name the disease by saying, here's the symptoms, here's the signs, here's the lab test, here's the imaging results that explain that you have this pathology. So we we are focused on the symptoms and the pathology we can see in the microscope, but not on the cause or the mechanism. And so by understanding the mechanisms and the causes, you can really do something. And the other thing I was struck with Ray you said, the the brilliant thing you said was cancer, you know, autism, Alzheimer's, and the list could go on.
Autoimmune diseases. Now these toxins are called
Dr. Ray Dorsey
diabetes, obesity.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Autogens, obesogens. These are toxins that cause obesity, toxins that cause autoimmune disease, toxins that cause neurologic disease, toxins that cause cancer, so even heart disease. But, unfortunately, if we're really being honest with ourselves, if this is true, and it's clearly increasingly true, the evidence just mounting every day about the role of toxins across all diseases, what do we do about it other than reducing our exposure? So I'm gonna talk about that, and I wanna talk about, like, medically, what can we do? Therapeutically, what can we do?
And and, again, it may not be your guys' expertise is what I'm doing for years, but we can kind of jam on it a little bit, but I'd love to hear your perspective on this.
Dr. Michael Okun
Yeah. I you know, I'll just say, first, for people that are listening, they should know that we should be embarrassed that we spend just 2¢ out of every dollar on prevention. Right? And so it shouldn't be a a big surprise that we haven't done the trials, we haven't done the the research, and we haven't looked upstream. And so the l so the p in the Parkinson's plane is about prevent.
The l is learning why. We gotta look upstream. Right? And I just wanna go back just for a moment and something that you said that resonated. And we had done an interview in the book, and we talked to Buzz Jana at Emory and Matt Lavoie at University of Florida.
And and, you know, talking about how, you know, one of the goals here should be the zenness of the cells in your brain. Right? And we
Dr. Mark Hyman
Zenness? Call it
Dr. Michael Okun
The zenness.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Like z
Dr. Michael Okun
e n? Z e n. And we call it the zenness
Dr. Mark Hyman
in the Like a Zen Buddhist.
Dr. Michael Okun
Yeah. Because, you know, again, you think about okay. So it's in in scientific terms, we say homeostasis. Right? Right?
But it but, you know, for for purposes of talking to a population, we're talking about how Zen are your cells. Right? And so you have, you know, a group of circuits and a group of cells that are in the brain, and it's like a thermostat. And what happens in your house when your thermostat goes out? You know?
Or hotter too. Right? And then and then you end up with, you know, real problems. And when you do that over prolonged periods of time, that's an issue. And so when we talk about both the prevention of Parkinson, but also the treatment of Parkinson, zen is an important word.
So we talk about, you know, you wanna keep your cells in, and we know that when it comes to to toxicants, we know that they tend to go to the mitochondria and other areas in the brain. We know that the brain has to get rid of things. Right? It has it's like a garbage disposal. Right?
And that's normal. It has actually, there are cells that that, you know, that have to eat themselves. Right, you know, in order to stay healthy.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Autophagy. Right.
Dr. Michael Okun
Autophagy. So, you know, so it's really important. And then we discovered a system in the brain we didn't even know existed.
Dr. Mark Hyman
The glymphatic system.
Dr. Michael Okun
The glymphatics, man. You're we're we're like a mad lick. Now we understand how important these things are. And then you start to say, ask yourself, okay. We gotta know why.
Learn why. So we gotta look upstream. Right? We gotta understand why does a disease start? Why does it spread?
Right? Why does it progress? Right? Those are key elements so that you're not looking downstream. You talked about the canary in the coal mine, everything.
We we need to understand those things. And actually, that's why prevention is so important Yeah. And so important for us to think about, because we're thinking as far upstream as we can. And we also need to shift our science at the same time, to be thinking more upstream, and to be thinking so when we talk about a a few pennies on every dollar, we're also, you know, need to shift our basic science, you know, to be thinking about these systems and the systems that are in place early on. When you look at a toxin and you say, okay.
Everybody's listening here. Let's we got the toxin. You know, I've been the medical director adviser for the Parkinson Foundation. Mark, just get rid of the toxin. Right?
Just get rid of it. Right? Well, there's an acute exposure. Right? Toxins.
Right? It's an acute exposure and a chronic exposure over time. And then you take something like paraquat, which has been in the news a lot, like a pesticide that's sprayed. And and by the way, you know, it doubled in use in The United States here.
Dr. Ray Dorsey
Weed killer that's sprayed on corn, cotton, soybean fields, and
Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah. And
Dr. Michael Okun
it doubles in use. So and and it's banned in '32 countries or over 30 countries. What is it? Know? Yeah.
And and Great Britain ships it to us, but they won't give it to their own people. You know? I mean, so you look at known toxins like this. Well, it's it's a challenge. Right?
Because paraquat gets into the system quickly, and it goes quickly to the mitochondria. It goes quickly to these systems, and it clears quickly, and it it hits your lungs. It hits your brain. It hits all of these things. Hard to measure.
Right? Hard to get rid So we need we're gonna need primary prevention to just step up and get rid of that. Whereas when
Dr. Mark Hyman
we Well, it's a political problem.
Dr. Ray Dorsey
Right?
Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah. It's a EPA problem. So the
Dr. Michael Okun
prevention isn't a it isn't gonna be a a pill. It's gonna be a policy. Yeah. Prevention is gonna be policy, not a pill. Right?
Dr. Mark Hyman
I love that. Prevention is going to be policy, not a pill. Yeah. A 100%. And sadly, and I was involved in advising on, you know, some of the the the science around the the MAHA commission report, which got remangled, unfortunately.
But We're hoping you're gonna fix that. The lack of of attention to detail on the speed at which it was done meant a lot of the links were all messed up. But that the the basic framework and content was right. And one of the things that had produced was, like, 40 or 50 pages on the role of toxins in health. And it got removed down to just a paragraph, basically saying, well, pesticides may be an issue, glyphosate may be an issue, but the science really doesn't show it yet, so we don't really know.
So forget about it. And and that was, like, so disappointing to me because there were a whole bunch of scientists that worked on this project that actually documented this. For
Dr. Ray Dorsey
generations for their lives.
Dr. Mark Hyman
So it it's really you know, we've got the the agricultural industrial complex, which is a real thing that even the government is actually supporting indirectly through crop insurance and subsidies, which then are used to buy the agrochemicals that then are used to spray, that then are used to, you know, help the crops and help the farmers, but ultimately hurt them. And I think hurt the farmers most and hurt their families and then the rest of us downstream. You know, we have we have to kinda go from field of work on this. We have to go from, you know, factory to our closet and to wherever we have to figure this out. And it's it's not gonna be easy, but the problem is that there's there's such a dearth of research really on on funding this.
There's also, I think, a real lack of research on what to do once you have the toxins. And this is this is an area that's sort of been on the margins of medicine. I wanna get into it in a minute with you because it's like, you can go to the environmental working group, and you can kind of read their stuff and get a pretty good sense of, okay. Here's the vegetables I never wanna eat if they're not organic. Here's the fish I never wanna eat unless, you know, like, unless it's ever like, I'm not gonna eat shark.
I'm not gonna eat swordfish. We're all like cesspools, and the question then becomes is you can do all these things, and even reduce your exposures. You don't drink out of plastic bottles. Filter your water. Have an air filter.
Eat organic when you can. You know? These are all things that you can do. Have better skincare products, household products. That that's that's easy.
The hard part is, okay. You've got someone to walk in your office with Parkinson's disease who's been exposed to chemicals, exposed to heavy metals. What do you do?
Dr. Ray Dorsey
So first off, we're all cesspools, and we're all victims. Right? Yeah. Yeah. No.
But some people take it take it the wrong way. I I know you don't, but, like, we're all victims. Like, these are unnecessary. These are involuntary. Yeah.
Right? These are involuntary.
Dr. Mark Hyman
If you're drinking, like, a six pack of soda every day, you know what you're doing. Yeah. But, like, here, we're just
Dr. Ray Dorsey
But the marines at Camp Lejeune didn't know that they were drinking And the Percinogens. Yeah. It's the Oh my god. And the and Asian orange, and the list goes on and on. And people who work with these drying cleaning chemicals, likely don't know.
Many of the farmers don't know that the pesticides are linked to Parkinson's. The vast majority don't. So, the first thing you need do is stop getting exposed. So, if you're a smoker and you get diagnosed with lung cancer, what's the first thing the doctor's going tell you to do?
Dr. Mark Hyman
Stop smoking.
Dr. Ray Dorsey
Smoke smoking. But if you're a farmer and you're coming with Parkinson's
Dr. Mark Hyman
Not farming.
Dr. Ray Dorsey
I mean, do we even
Dr. Mark Hyman
I have a patient with ALS who's a farmer, and it's heartbreaking because it's, again, one of those neurological diseases caused by toxins.
Dr. Ray Dorsey
Sometimes you find it early enough that, you know, we can maybe stop it.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah. No. I stopped it and reversed it with him.
Dr. Ray Dorsey
So there are ways that we can do this. So if you're working with park if you have Parkinson's, we give you in in the book the Parkinson's 25. 25 actions that can reduce your risk if you don't have the disease. If you're one of three hundred thirty million Americans who don't have the disease, we give you 25 actions to reduce your risk of ever getting Parkinson's disease, ever getting it. If you're not exposed to these chemicals, you are highly unlikely to ever develop Parkinson's disease.
And if you already have the disease, they might slow the rate of progression. So I'll give you an actually concrete example. They looked at people who already had Parkinson's disease, and they looked at people who lived in highly polluted areas of the country and those who lived in low polluted areas. People who lived in highly polluted areas had an increased risk of being hospitalized due to their Parkinson's disease if they lived in areas with high air pollution. Yeah.
So you got an air purifier in the corner. We can get an air purifier when you're driving through
Dr. Mark Hyman
there just for you guys.
Dr. Ray Dorsey
Thank you. When you're driving through Lincoln Tunnel, you know, roll up your window.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah. Put the recirculation on.
Dr. Ray Dorsey
Exactly. Recirculate the air. If you happen to live near fields that are being sprayed with pesticides, you know, close your windows. I mean, there are lots and lots of things that we we can
Dr. Mark Hyman
I hold my breath while I felt my gas tank? Literally, I hold my breath for though I like
Dr. Ray Dorsey
And and but we need to create a world where we don't have to take all these actions. So what are things that we can do in our community? Can we stop spraying pesticides on kids' schools and playgrounds?
Dr. Mark Hyman
That would be a good idea.
Dr. Ray Dorsey
Right? And we wonder why one in thirty one children get autism, yet we spray nerve toxins on their schools and playgrounds.
Dr. Mark Hyman
What did TX actually say when he heard of the theory of evolution? How stupid not to
Dr. Ray Dorsey
have thought of that. So there are lots of things in our communities that we can do, and what are some of these societal actions that we need to do? And I'll let you talk about additional ways to address it.
Dr. Michael Okun
Well, also and the other thing
Dr. Mark Hyman
is is that if you Awareness is important.
Dr. Michael Okun
Yeah. If you're a smoker, you know, what's the first thing you do? You know, if you get lung cancer or whatever? Stop smoking. Right?
So so so, you know, this idea that, you know, you you once you have the disease, okay, or once you have the diagnosis, that you stop, you know, with these things is sort of another myth that needs to be busted. You know? It is the way that you live. You even talked about some of the people that you see within the functional medicine. You know, you know, in that paradigm, you're thinking about how can we help people to live better.
Right? Yeah. So the global burden of disease study told us something
Dr. Mark Hyman
Just for those who don't know, that's like a 195 countries, a study of chronic illnesses all across the world. It was a large epidemiological study, one of the best ever done, and it gave us a lot of information about who's suffering from what where. Just So so people just so people know what it is.
Dr. Michael Okun
Yeah. So a 100%. So back in 2012, I had written this book 2013 or or something. I can't remember now. But but the we wrote a book called 10 Secrets to a Happier Life with Parkinson, and it kind of became this runaway bestseller.
But it was like 10 simple things that you do. Right? And in the prologue of the book, I made either the unfortunate or un or or the fortunate choice of two words called the Parkinson pandemic and came under a lot of scrutiny from from colleagues and everything, and rightly so. Right? I'm a scientist.
I should be able to take Turns out
Dr. Mark Hyman
you're prescient.
Dr. Michael Okun
Well, you know, so I you like, you have to put it forward. You have to you know, these things need data. So then we write the book ending Parkinson's disease in 2020. We have the first cut of that global burden of disease data. And guess what?
Ray is better at math than me. He he crunches all the numbers, and it turns out by 02/1935, we should have twelve million people with Parkinson's, which is like, wow, growing faster than Alzheimer's
Dr. Mark Hyman
percentage wise, how much of an increase in that is like in fifty year?
Dr. Ray Dorsey
Oh, in fifth well, in just in 1990, it's estimated that two point eight million people have the disease, and I'll steal Michael's punch line. In 2021, they estimated that eleven point eight million, a quadrupling a quadrupling.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Adjusted for population
Dr. Ray Dorsey
to So even if you adjust for population growth, right, population growth hasn't quadrupled between 1990 and
Dr. Mark Hyman
02/2020. Two or three are plus times the amount, which is in just the last Thirty years.
Dr. Michael Okun
After after
Dr. Mark Hyman
I graduated medical school.
Dr. Ray Dorsey
Yeah. Since you're medical
Dr. Michael Okun
school. 12,000,000, Mark, in 2035. How many do you have today? Twenty twenty five, 11.8
Dr. Ray Dorsey
according to You already got to twelve million fifteen years before we thought
Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah.
Dr. Ray Dorsey
It was gonna happen. And when you went to medical school, you know, Parkinson's was there, but it wasn't, like, everywhere. Oh, no. No.
Dr. Mark Hyman
I mean, when I've I've seen so many people that
Dr. Ray Dorsey
But now, like, anyone 50, if you're 50, you have friends, you have family members. You know, our inboxes are like, it doesn't stop. I walk the streets of New York, and I'm like, Parkinson. And when I see them, I get pissed off. Why?
Because it's a terrible disease, and I think it's largely preventable.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah. Yeah.
Dr. Ray Dorsey
Right? Suffering is part of the human condition. Right? You write about this. But preventable, needless suffering?
Really?
Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah. I agree. I think that's that's our goal. I mean, for me, my life goal is to prevent needless suffering because, you know, we can't change everything. So just for the audience, what are the air food and water things that they can do to reduce their exposures?
Dr. Ray Dorsey
So we give you the 25 recommendations in the book. I'm gonna read you number one. Wash your produce, even your organic ones, marking them as better than we do. Pesticides have contaminated our food supply. Remnants of pesticides are found in 20% of common foods.
Organic produce, dairy products, and meat can reduce exposure but can still have unsafe residues of pesticides. So wash your produce at least with water, and consider simple vegetable washes, vinegar, or salt solutions too. When the government measures the pesticide residues on a piece of fruit, they do that after they've held it under cold water for fifteen to twenty seconds. If that's what the government's doing, think about what you should do.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Mhmm.
Dr. Ray Dorsey
I'll do the second one. I'll give the last one to Michael. Number nine, use a water filter. A sipping a simple carbon filter, water filter widely available in supermarkets can reduce exposure to pesticides, volatile to organic chemicals like trichloroethylene, and other chemicals that may be in your water. These carbon filters can be installed for the whole house at the point of entry or at the point of use, such as faucets or even water pitch water pitcher.
My colleague at Atria Health and Research Institute, Robert Kachko, will tell you reverse osmosis is even better. And I'll let Michael maybe take number 10.
Dr. Michael Okun
Yeah. So, you know Yeah. I do reverse osmosis. In terms of your air, you know, number 10 is considered air purifiers. They're an easy, effective way to lower your risk of disease from indoor air pollution.
Air fire air purifiers do a range in cost. They can be as little as $10, as high as a thousand dollars. I'm sure the one Mark has us breathing here has gotta be the thousand dollar one.
Dr. Mark Hyman
It's not actually. It's it's $300.
Dr. Michael Okun
Alright. $300. And require periodic cleanings. And remember, they need filter changes and may need to be installed in multiple places depending on the size of the home, school, or workplace. Be sure to use air purifiers that have carbon filters.
They're designed to remove the volatile organic chemicals, VOCs, like trichloroethylene, which you all know from dry cleaning story and everything is so important in Parkinson.
Dr. Mark Hyman
This is great. So these are simple things that people do every day. I have an air filter in my bedroom, and in the place I spend the most time. I have a reverse osmosis water filter. You know, I think those are the two most simple things you can do at home.
Plus, go to ewg.org and make sure you clean out all your crappy household cleaning products and your skincare products, and you'll get like 80% of the way there.
Dr. Ray Dorsey
And a shout out to Ken Cook, the outstanding leader of the environmental working group. He and his team are helping us understand what are the the role of these chemicals in our environment, in our health, and how to get rid of
Dr. Mark Hyman
them. You know, we could talk about, you know, the role of toxins for a long time, but, you know, we we we kinda covered a lot of the sources. But I I kinda wanna spend a little time on on people who actually have Parkinson's and who are struggling. You know, there's been really shitty drug development in this disease. There is some really exciting new surgical interventions, the deep brain stimulation.
You know, Doctor. Machado at Cleveland Clinic who I worked with was one of the pioneers in this, a neurosurgeon. And I This guy's one
Dr. Ray Dorsey
of the pioneers right here.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah. You know, you you obviously read your work has been has been very involved in this, and that's a huge boon. It's it's a it's a big win. But it doesn't address the it's just like a downstream sort of better mousetrap to fix the problem, but it's an actually we still have the mice. I I would love to hear from your perspective from, like, a diet, lifestyle, supplement, detoxification, what you guys know.
I would love to unpack what people can do. And can can in in the answering of that, can you actually reverse it or stop it? Because right now, there's, like, clinical trials, for example, in Alzheimer's, like the finger trial, the pointer trial, Richard Isaacson's work, where they're showing not just slowing down of the disease, but actually reversing it with intensive lifestyle therapy and risk factor management. So do we see that in Parkinson's? Have you seen that in Parkinson's?
Dr. Michael Okun
You've
Dr. Mark Hyman
guys like Del Del Bredesen, who people think may be a little bit off the off the rails, but honestly, he's not, reversing Alzheimer's. I just talked to one of my patients two days ago who I've been treating for two years, and she was diagnosed with Alzheimer's, and now she's better and back to work.
Dr. Michael Okun
Let let's let's unpack a little bit, and and let's just start with sort of, you know, a few piece. So we need to change the way that we practice when we interact with folks with Parkinson. You know, it needs to be practical, proactive, and preventative. Mhmm. K?
We need to be thinking of those three p's when we're we're interacting. And I know
Dr. Mark Hyman
You want for that one? Personalized.
Dr. Michael Okun
And well, personal. We can keep going with p's too. And but but but absolutely. Although, I will say just, you know, like, in general, you know how people make things a little too cliche? Sometimes people say personalized, and that's gonna cure everything.
I say, well, what does that mean?
Dr. Mark Hyman
Like Well, the reason I the reason I say that is is because if you have a diagnosis of Parkinson's, it doesn't mean you know what's really wrong with you. Like, I always say, if you know the name of the disease, it doesn't mean you know what's wrong with you. You don't know the cause. You know the name of the symptoms, which can have many causes.
Dr. Michael Okun
So Parkinson's disease here's another myth. It's not Parkinson's disease.
Dr. Mark Hyman
It's been true.
Dr. Michael Okun
Parkinson's disease is. Yeah. Right? There are multiple causes. There are multiple syndromes.
Yeah. No two people look alike. And, I remember sitting next to Davis Phinney in the White House having nice discussion with him. And, you know, he said, when you have Parkinson's, you gotta make every day your best day. That always stuck with me.
And and then and then when I made my comments, you know, I said, you know, I think Parkinson's is probably the most complex disease in clinical medicine. And and I just I don't mean to insult other people in different diseases, but think about it. You know? You know, dozens and dozens of motor, tremor, stiffness, slowness, non motor symptoms, anxiety, depression, constipation, sleep, cognition. Right?
So you got all of those things. Right? Plus, you've got this miracle drug, dopamine. You give people dopamine. They wake up.
Right? And then, of course, there are fluctuations later. Then you've got, you know, as you mentioned, deep brain stimulation. You've got dozens of different medications. Oh, and by the way, it changes over time.
People wear off. They get these dance like movements. It is a super complex disease. Okay? So when you take all of that, we need a different paradigm to care.
And so unpacking the first part of your question is, we're doing it wrong, Mark. Like, we're we're caring for people wrong. So when we have HIV, we're able to create navigators. We're able to check people's viral levels. We're able to get people listen to this.
Mind blowing for people. We can get really expensive cocktails of drugs for people all over the world who have HIV.
Dr. Mark Hyman
I can't get L DOPA for pennies.
Dr. Michael Okun
Get L DOPA pennies on the dollar, so we call for that as a bold action in the book. A 100% of people on this earth, on planet, if anybody's listening, you know, we need to
Dr. Mark Hyman
And L DOPA is the drug that's the main, say, for Parkinson's treatment that increases dopamine, which is what gets depleted in the brain when you have Parkinson's.
Dr. Michael Okun
And it's a game changer. Right? And and so so super important to think about that. And in cancer, we do better in the way that we bring together the right teams. So so thinking about this, we propose we used to say the person with the disease or the patient is the son, and we revolve revolve around the patient.
I'm like the the the broken record of saying this for twenty five years at the institute I work at called the Fixel, and and now we've expanded that to be the Parkinson universe. And let me just explain that for people listening a little bit. So, of course, the person with disease is the sun, and we should all orbit around them. But what's the closest planet to the sun? Mercury.
Mercury is your caregiver. Gets a little hot being the caregiver on both sides because you're in between that and then all the other planets, which are all these different specialists. You might need you know, a neurosurgeon, a neurologist, a psychiatrist. Mental health is huge in this disease and a problem throughout the world, not just in The United States. All the rehabilitation specialists, PTOT, speech swallow, etcetera.
So you need all of these people orbiting at different areas, and then you've got Mercury, the caregiver, in the middle. Gotta take care of the caregiver. Okay? More men than women get Parkinson, but guess what? When a woman gets Parkinson, they don't do as well as men.
And the reason is the caregiver and the care partner. So we always should we should be challenging men. I'm sorry. Men, all the men that come to my clinic. I challenge all of you.
Care better for your you need to step up. The data says you need to step up. Okay? And then Pluto is the almost planet that stigma. Twenty five percent of people hide their diagnosis with Parkinson disease.
Unacceptable. So so and then and then what else, Mark? So the stars are all the support groups. Right? And then and then the the satellites are the sensors.
We have all these great sensors. I got some of them on. I think you've got sensors too, and watches, and rings, and all of these things, right, that can help us with sleep and exercise, and making sure we're doing all those things, bringing telemedicine. Ray is an absolute pioneer in bringing care to the home for Parkinson's.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Well, I thought that was an interesting thing you said in your book, because, you know, it it just annoys me to no end that that, you know you know, the body doesn't change when you move from New Jersey to New York or from California to Nevada, but you're licensed as and you can't treat a patient in another state, which is the most stupid thing. Yeah. In Europe, if you're a doctor in any country, you can treat a doctor anywhere else. We we uplifted those restrictions during COVID, and then we put them back in, and it's crazy.
Dr. Ray Dorsey
And who and who loses?
Dr. Mark Hyman
The mass the medical boards
Dr. Ray Dorsey
who make Yeah. But but the patients lose. Right?
Dr. Mark Hyman
Patients lose. Yeah. Right. It's just a money draft. Yeah.
Because every every state has a licensing board, and they're all making millions.
Dr. Ray Dorsey
So we should make it so that any patient any Medicare beneficiary, any patient can receive care from any clinician that they need to.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Absolutely. So thank you
Dr. Michael Okun
for saying that out loud. Like, sometimes we think it, but we don't say it. So thank you for saying it
Dr. Mark Hyman
out on a telehealth bill also in congress, so we're on that.
Dr. Michael Okun
So maybe for the last, you know, two decades with Parkinson Foundation, we may have spent a lot of hours advocate advocating so that your your care is defined by where your physician or health care provider is, not where the person with disease is. It's a very simple concept that we just can't seem to get. And then we did a what a red card campaign in our last book, Ending Parkinson. We we actually took over the the White House and sent thousands and thousands, like 20,000 plus cards. One of the things we called for was was just this, watch out the COVID restrictions on telemedicine were lifted.
It's gonna go away. Pay attention. We need that. And so it was one of the three things that we asked for.
Dr. Mark Hyman
So is there more? Because you're what you're talking about are sort of structural changes in the care delivery model. Yeah. What I'm really trying to get at here is, like, doctor patient, like, what are the therapeutic interventions other than just the social support and the structure and the care coordination? All the things you're talking about, which are really important.
But, like, I'm I'm trying to get to the granular level of, like, if someone's listening with Parkinson's or someone in their family has Parkinson's, like, what do I do? Is there a way to slow this, stop it, reverse it?
Dr. Michael Okun
Yeah. So the practical. Now you're to the p of practical. Right? Let's get practical.
Right? No. That's good. Alright? So so we think about practical.
Right? And the the practical advice now that we should be giving that most people don't is guess what? When you take dopamine, dopamine, the most common drug for, you know, for Parkinson's, very important. Still the best drug we have. Ray likes to say, what a travesty that here we are fifty years after, and it's still our best drug in the armamentarium.
Right? That's That's That's That should be unacceptable But but having said that, dopamine depletes cofactors in your blood. And so your vitamin b six may go down. Your homocysteine may go up. You know, other things that might put you at risk for dementia and other things.
So guess what? From a very practical standpoint, you need to be on at least a general multivitamin. I call it, like, a Centrum equivalent because most people I I I don't favor Centrum over any other company.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Don't take it by myself. Right.
Dr. Michael Okun
I'm not I'm not doing
Dr. Mark Hyman
that. But He doesn't wanna take pills with dyes in them and
Dr. Ray Dorsey
titanium and,
Dr. Michael Okun
you know, kinda clean No question about that. But but but but You're just adding more shit. But but fundamentally, thank you for saying that. Again, you get to say the things
Dr. Mark Hyman
Talking to the expert
Dr. Michael Okun
here, man. I know. Know. Mark gets to say things out loud that we can't. But from a practical standpoint, you send people to the shelf Just
Dr. Mark Hyman
text me.
Dr. Michael Okun
I'll say it. And say you wanna look for a good multivitamin because because this is gonna be super important. Right? And then when you're going to your general doctor, you wanna have them check vitamin levels on you. You're bigger thing.
They're checking you know, we're so preventative in cardiology, Mark. Why are we not in neurology? Right? It's ridiculous. Right?
Vitamin E levels are low, you know, in in in Parkinson. Right? Vitamin D levels are low. Right? And then it's a double edged sword with vitamin D because we are we should be telling folks it's twice the risk.
Did you know that? Twice the risk of melanoma in Parkinson disease. You sweat different. You smell different. You know?
You Joy Milne was the the famous UK person who could smell Parkinson's disease. And then they said, you know, you you talked about quack. They said she's a quack. They put her to the test. Sure enough, there's a smell.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah.
Dr. Michael Okun
So you sweat differently. Remember, it's a full body disease. It's in the skin and everything. And and you're not as well protected against the sun. And so we need to tell people about that.
And of course, practically speaking, you can get seborrhea and other things with skin, twice the risk of osteoporosis. Are you getting regular bone scans? You know, like, I know this sounds like so and we wrote the book 10 secrets. You know, you think everybody knows this, but they don't. You know, two times the risk of that.
So we need to pay attention to those things. And then in addition, as we're seeing folks kind of along the way, I know and Ray may wanna talk about this. We need to shift our discussions with them to to sort of include the why, you know, figuring out what is your real history. And I was kinda jealous when you said in functional medicine, we always start the visit with the person. And Ray and I have taken care of thousands of people with Parkinson's.
We didn't always do this. You always start the visit from the beginning. You know, it's like, you know, Mel Brooks in history of the world. No. No.
The beginning of time. Right? You start from the beginning, and you wanna know what that story is. And I don't know if you wanna comment on that.
Dr. Ray Dorsey
So I wanna go to slow, stop, and reverse. So can we slow it? Yes. Can we stop it or reverse it? No evidence that we can do that today.
But let's talk about slow.
Dr. Mark Hyman
I'll I'll jump in
Dr. Ray Dorsey
on that. I know. We're gonna we're gonna
Dr. Michael Okun
It's anecdotal,
Dr. Mark Hyman
but I always say it's anic data. Okay.
Dr. Ray Dorsey
Anic data. And so we're gonna so slow. We told you to do 25 things to stop getting exposure to toxins. We got that. Next one is exercise.
So, is probably this century the biggest therapeutic advance. Sir William Gowers, when he described Parkinson's disease in the late eighteen hundreds, he said the life of someone with Parkinson's disease should be quiet restful. He was wrong. A 100%. If you have Parkinson's disease, you cannot be quiet and
Dr. Mark Hyman
The boxing thing is a real thing that's worse
Dr. Ray Dorsey
should be than loud
Dr. Mark Hyman
and you
Dr. Ray Dorsey
should be boxing. You should be knocking out Doctor. Hyman in the ring with Seven rock steady
Dr. Michael Okun
thousand steps a day.
Dr. Ray Dorsey
So we increasingly know that vigorous exercise, the amount of exercise to make you sweat has enormous health benefits. And it turns out it doesn't appear to be which exercise, whether you like to box noncontact boxing, not hitting people in the head, whether you like to swim, whether you like to jog. It all beneficial.
Dr. Mark Hyman
The pugilistic Parkinson's and myoprolinia. We
Dr. Ray Dorsey
don't want that. We can
Dr. Michael Okun
talk about that too.
Dr. Ray Dorsey
And so it turns out that exercise, as you know, releases brain growth factors in the brain, and it likely protects the remaining nerve cells and protects them from dying off. Our colleague, doctor Boss Bloom, has even shown that, you know, you can see these changes on imaging. So now with imaging, you can actually see beneficial therapeutic effects of of exercise. And then Michael and I both have had patients who have, one, either not taking medicine for many years because they were just so prominent on exercising two, three, four hours a day that they've delayed their need for medicine. And we have had patients who've been able to come who've decided to come off medications and just treat their Parkinson's disease with exercise and other behavioral factors.
Dr. Michael Okun
Although we don't recommend that in general. In general? But it's something we have to have an open mind to.
Dr. Ray Dorsey
And you said, you know, anecdotes, so we see this. So now you wanna say stop and reverse. So you know what gets measured gets managed. What gets measured gets managed. And so we
Dr. Mark Hyman
And you got an MBA, so you know that. That's what's his name? Drucker?
Dr. Ray Dorsey
Peter Drucker. Yeah. Peter Drucker. So cholesterol. We came at the age where cholesterol was starting to be measured.
We only got statins and everything like that because we started measuring cholesterol. Hemoglobin a one c, right, after we did our training that we're gonna measure that glycolization of hemoglobin is a measure of diabetes, and we do that. But are we measuring I have never. In my entire life, I'm a neurologist, many pesticides are nerve toxins. I have never measured a pesticide level.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Aw. I can help you with that.
Dr. Ray Dorsey
Okay. But, exactly. But if we're not measuring pesticide levels in in people's bodies Yeah. How can we manage and see if we're taking steps to reduce it? When we did that with lead, when we measured lead in children Sure.
We got really, really serious about getting lead out of paint and lead out of gasoline.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Problem is you need a fat biopsy to properly assess
Dr. Ray Dorsey
Exactly.
Dr. Mark Hyman
But there's other ways.
Dr. Ray Dorsey
And so there are fat biopsies. So if we start to measure these chemicals in our bodies, whether that's in our blood, our urine, our fat, our hair, or stool, we can take better actions to be more informed, and if we can start measuring these chemicals in our environment, in our water, in our household dust, in our soil Yeah. In our air. You know, we have a thermostat in this room.
Dr. Michael Okun
Why don't we have
Dr. Mark Hyman
a There's actually body things you can now wear that will register the the PPMs or particulate matter in
Dr. Ray Dorsey
So the why don't we why don't we have a thing that's measuring particulate matter in in our air? Yeah. Right? That's a more greater determination
Dr. Mark Hyman
of our health. Indoor air pollution is a big thing. Yeah.
Dr. Ray Dorsey
Greater determination of our health than the temperature. What gets measured gets managed. We need to start measuring these chemicals in our bodies. We need to start measuring these chemicals in our environment so we can figure out what interventions, which you're gonna talk about in a second, can reduce these things in our bodies, in our environment, we can all live longer, healthier lives, and perhaps low maybe get to the point that we can
Dr. Mark Hyman
stop So even in depression. You know, you just said something like, you know, I never measured a pesticide. So in academic medicine, other than maybe checking your blood mercury or lead, maybe ours like, doctors don't know what to do. Don't know what labs to send things to. Don't know how to test them.
Right?
Dr. Ray Dorsey
They're not widely commercially available. You can't just check them off, generally speaking, on a lab format.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Know, you Precinctly now, they are like
Dr. Ray Dorsey
They are. You know, when we were in training,
Dr. Mark Hyman
this would be like But we need to start measuring these things.
Dr. Ray Dorsey
100%.
Dr. Mark Hyman
The body has this embedded system for removal of toxins. Your, you know, sweat, your breath, your poop, your pee, your liver detox systems, you have enzymes. And I think, you know, as we're beginning to understand genetics, I think and we're now we went from a billion dollars. I think it's now $300 to get your whole genome sequence. Yeah.
You know, you can actually start to see, oh, I have these detox pathways that may need a little help, or my methylation pathways that help also with detox also need a little help. Or, you know, I I have certain increased needs for x, y, or z nutrient, or one third of your genes code for enzymes. Enzymes require cofactors or coenzymes. All those are nutrients. Like so and we have huge variations, as Bruce Ames says, in in our need for different nutrients at different doses.
So we're all very soon gonna be able to sort of create a road map of prevention and go, oh, here's your genetics. Here's your potholes. Here's what you need to do to fix those and prevent it. And so, you know, one of the things I wanna dive into is is, one, how do we detox? And two, how do we resuscitate our mitochondria?
Because you know, I don't know you know Suzanne Go. She's a pediatric neurologist, Harvard trained, Oxford trained, you know, published in a journal, you know, JAMA, and is basically discovered in autistic kids using very sophisticated MRI imaging, functional MRI imaging, that their mitochondria aren't working. And she provides them mitochondrial cofactors, co q 10, carnitine, things like that. And they actually get better. Now I'm wondering I remember the I read a study years ago where there was they reused like twelve hundred milligrams of CoQ ten.
Like, normally, you take CoQ ten, you take fifty milligrams or a hundred milligrams. They're using twelve hundred milligrams, and they found an improvement in their clinical outcomes. So is there any conversation among your colleagues and neurologists? Like, how do we put together a comprehensive mitochondrial rejuvenation program, and what does that look like?
Dr. Michael Okun
Yeah. So, you know, it's a great question. And I think part of it too you know, Tony Lang is one of the leading neurologists in the in our field in Parkinson's disease. And and when we were talking about him and doing interviews, you know, with him about the book, you talk about when something is has dysfunction, so it's not working properly or something's kind of dead or degenerating, you know, and, like, where is it on that spectrum? Right?
And so I think one of the challenges for us is understanding which segments of ourselves we talk about the zenness, trying to get get ourselves more zen. Which segments of the zen are still functioning, and can we rescue them? Which is what you're talking about. And could you rescue them with, let's say, higher dosages of CoQ ten or or something of else? And and which are too far downstream?
You know? Like, they're they're they're already gone. They're too far downstream, or we need to look more upstream in, like, for the answer. Right? So is the is the answer Yeah.
Dr. Mark Hyman
I mean, you're right. Just I I I I'm going backwards. I'm going, how do you fix the mitochondria? Realize, how do you fix the toxins? Yeah.
So let's go back to the toxin, but stay with the mitochondria for now.
Dr. Michael Okun
So so we know when it comes to to toxins for Parkinson, we know that when you take, you know, toxins we have a very good friend. He was a mentor of mine at Emory named Tim Greenemeyer. Tim Greenemeyer studied a toxin called rotenone, common herbicide in people's garages. You know? It was in the they used it in the creature from the the the dark lagoon.
They put it into the water and make the fishes all die instantly come to the top. Great visual effect. Terrible if you're the creature, hooray, who's in the in the water. But he actually now has Parkinson himself. And and and he he wrote an article and was interviewed and went public with it in a in a very, I think, important magazine.
I think it was in science. You know, which is, you know, very credible, get a reputable magazine that you may be on the top levels, I think, talking about this and talking about the lack of protection. But the thing about rotenone that he studies is it's like MPTP, which is the other toxin that came from the designer drug, you know, where they were trying to make a drug called MPP plus, and they made MPTP instead. MPTP Yeah. That's right.
Was like the frozen addict. If you ever watch the old PBS special, you know, and read the book by Bill Langston. Amazing story. And it was because of recreational drugs that we actually got our best early animal model.
Dr. Mark Hyman
So
Dr. Michael Okun
people say, oh, well, maybe recreational drugs are bad. Maybe not. It it spurred decades of research in Parkinson, and important research for my mentor, Malin Delong, and others. But what do those toxins do, Mark? What does
Dr. Mark Hyman
that poisons.
Dr. Michael Okun
Yes. Complex one of the mitochondrial system. And in fact, it's nonselective for MPTP, which is what we worked with.
Dr. Mark Hyman
What was the memory name of that drug again? Like crystal something?
Dr. Ray Dorsey
Yeah. It's a it's a it's a form of heroin that
Dr. Michael Okun
Yeah. It's a it's a methamphetamine. Yeah. It's a methamphetamine, yeah, and ecstasy, you know, sort of in that it's in that that category of drugs, but it was a designer drug maker trying to make designer drug. He just got one little thing wrong on the end of that.
So you take this complex one and the one that that that Greenemeier was working with, which was different than my mentor who worked with MPTP, that one go only does brain cells it only hits complex one in those dopamine cells. Okay? In the brain, it's very specific toxin to that. And then Greenemeier himself ended up with Parkinson disease, and talked about how he probably should have been more protective, and he's very open, you know, about his his story, and I think that's a really, you know, great thing. And the question is is is is access to.
So let's say somebody in functional medicine wants to address mitochondrial dysfunction. Awesome idea. Okay? And there are a lot of drugs out there that are addressing it. You gotta beat the the leaky brain, so that's good.
Right? You gotta beat the leaky brain. You gotta get to and there's mitochondria in other areas besides the brain too that may be affected as well. And and then you've got to figure out, you know, how how far down the system is it gone, what's the dose, you know, response on that. And here we are spending like 2¢ out of every dollar on prevention.
We're spending like zero on every dollar trying to figure out, you know, how we could actually try to resuscitate and improve the functioning, make them make those cells more zen.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Well, this is really important what you're saying because, you know, one of the failures of modern medicine came out of Louis Pasteur, which had a lot of benefits, discovered bacteria, but it was like, oh, there's a single cause for a single disease treated by a single drug. You've got pneumococcal bacteria causing pneumococcal pneumonia treated with penicillin. Boom. End of story. And we've been chasing that false tiger for a hundred and plus years for chronic disease, which it doesn't apply.
And these conditions are all multifactorial, meaning there's multiple causes, and you need multimodal treatments, meaning you need a lot of different things. You mentioned exercise. You mentioned reducing your exposures. You mentioned, you know, mitochondrial herbs. You mentioned l dopamine.
There's lots more things, and you can't just do one thing. And people will say, well, you know, how do you do a randomized control trial? You don't know what works. Let's just try co q ten. Or let's just try lipoic acid, or let's just try blah blah blah.
And I'm like, no. Like, it's like it's like saying it's like saying we're gonna create we wanna win the NBA playoffs, but we're only gonna put Michael Jordan on the team, and he's got no other players on the team. He's gonna lose every dime. Yeah. Right?
Yeah. So, you know, I think I think this is a fundamental flaw in in research, and I don't know how to answer that. Well, let
Dr. Michael Okun
me just add, like, just add on to that and just pile on a little bit and just say, we talk about, in the book, about combination therapies. Remember, carbidopa levodopa is a combination therapy. You need the two to get it to the brain. Right? And to reduce the nausea, get it out of the blood and up into the brain, pass the blood brain barrier.
Right? That leaky area. Right? And and HIV drugs. We talk about HIV drugs and heart therapy, which was, you know, where you take a bunch of these drugs together in combination, and that was the winner.
Right? You talk about cancer chemotherapy. Malcolm Gladwell loves talking about this, telling the story. We tell a piece of that story again. The most disagreeable guy at NIH ever that you wouldn't wanna be in the same room because he's, you know, such a curmudgeon.
It takes a guy like that to challenge the system to cure these kids with leukemia Yeah. Put these combinations together. Yeah. Now we're so far down the road, and yet we're still not thinking in combinations. And so I just wanted to to add on to what you're saying.
You know, like, what are we doing here?
Dr. Mark Hyman
Well, so I I think I'm gonna come back to the how do you remove toxins? Because that's like going upstream. But, you know, often, like, you can intervene with mitochondrial therapies, and you can get pretty, you know, I would say complex because there's a lot of different pathways. A lot of enzymes, a lot of the steps. So co q 10, talked about.
We didn't talk about this, but NAD or NMN, which is a a common longevity now supplement. But that actually plays a big role in mitochondrial function. Creatine, which have been shown to help you have different neurological diseases
Dr. Michael Okun
Helps your thinking in
Dr. Mark Hyman
some of
Dr. Michael Okun
the recent studies.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah. I that's why I'm so smart this morning. I just I got about ten grams of creatine. I had chronic fatigue syndrome as a result of mercury poisoning living in China. And I can tell you my CPK, which is muscle enzymes, were 600 for years until I figured out how to fix my mitochondria.
So, you know, then there's things that help, like other antioxidants, like N acetylcysteine, things that boost glutathione. There's phytochemicals like resveratrol, curcumin, green tea extract, carnitine, all the B vitamins, which are cofactors, particularly riboflavin, niacin b one I mean, b two, b three, all the methylation vitamins, b six, b ole, b twelve, magnesium. And even there's interesting things like peptides, like s s thirty one and humanin and MOT C, which are kind of a little bit beyond the conversation we're having here, but that our our body's own biological way of regulating our mitochondrial function peptides are essentially the body's like communication superhighway system, and we we've been using them in medicine for years. Insulin's a peptide. GLP one's a peptide.
So, like, there there there are things that can help the body function better. So what I find is those things can be really great, but you have to first deal with the gut. You have to first deal with reducing toxic load. And so that's where I think, you know, you know, we're we really need to start funding these trials on using these these multifactorial assessments. Like, let's look at all the potential causes.
Do you have mold? Do you have mercury? Do you have pesticides? Do you have, you know, stuff from your household cleaning chemicals? Are you exposed to particular air pollution?
Like, what's your
Dr. Michael Okun
And we have AI. We have the ability to now deal with multiple factor. Right? Like, never before. No.
It's in the age that we're in, yet we don't study.
Dr. Mark Hyman
We don't. And then and then, you know, we once you once you understand those, you start to kind of address all those systematically, and then you start to resuscitate and repair the body. So you take out the bad stuff, put in the good stuff. That's what functional medicine is, really. And I think, you know, what I'm I also wanted to ask you about before we get into the whole detox thing, because I I think and I wanna just end because we're we're on a long time.
I could talk to you guys forever. Recently, there's been some real advances in blood biomarkers for Alzheimer's, like p tau two seventeen and Yeah. Neurofeminate light chain and other other biomarkers. Are there biomarkers for Parkinson's? Because it's a syndrome.
What it means as a syndrome is that it's a clinical diagnosis. You go to an expert. You you meet these criteria for these features, and you go, okay. You got Parkinson's. But it's not like, you know, you do a, like, a, like, a blood test for blood sugar, and you see you have diabetes.
So is there now or will there be soon blood blood biomarkers?
Dr. Michael Okun
So Alzheimer's is just a little bit ahead of us, and, you know, and they have, you know, evolving. And and people should understand these things are evolving because we get better and better, and we should get better and better. It shouldn't be a static, you know, type of type of deal. Where we started was by saying, oh, we just have the clinical examination. But if, you know, if you only train 40 or 50 docs or health care practitioners in The United States alone, you know, and Medicare doesn't even cover those.
They're covered by grants and and philanthropy and things like that. We are going to, you know, have a public health crisis. We already have a public health crisis. Alright? So we're gonna need biomarkers both to tell we have the disease and also to tell how the disease is progressing over time.
And so when we make measurements on all these things that you're interested in
Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah.
Dr. Michael Okun
We have a way to biologically measure them. So do we? So so the things that we have so far. Okay? So we've got a test called a dopamine transporter test.
It's a one two three. It's a cocaine analog. Don't get scared. You don't get cocaine, or don't get excited, you know, Mark, you know, like, on any way or the other. But but but it's a test that you can tell how the dopamine transporter is in the brain.
Doesn't tell you if you have Parkinson's or not, but tells you you have a dopamine transporter deficit.
Dr. Ray Dorsey
It's an imaging test.
Dr. Michael Okun
It's an Right?
Dr. Mark Hyman
It's an MRI.
Dr. Michael Okun
Take a picture. It's it's like a nuclear medicine test.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Nuclear medicine.
Dr. Michael Okun
Yeah. So we have that. We now have you know, there was a 21 center study that was just done by David Valancourt. I was part of that study from the University of Florida. He developed a free water imaging, so we can tell the difference between Parkinson, PSP, and another mimic called MSA.
So there are two other Parkinson common mimics. These are things that look like Parkinson, but aren't exactly Parkinson. Progressive supranuclear palsy, Dudley Moore had MSA is multiple system atrophy. He has all those autonomic features, fight or flight things associated.
Dr. Mark Hyman
So in English, it's diseases that seem like Parkinson's, but aren't it? So you can kinda test for it?
Dr. Michael Okun
Exactly. And and now we can do something the eyes can't see. It's really cool. The eyes can't see it, but the AI can. So they can take your MRI with this six minute sequence and tell the difference between these diseases.
And then the the latest evolution has been blood and skin tests.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah. Blood.
Dr. Michael Okun
Yep. Okay. And so people are really interested in measuring the protein called alpha synuclein. Okay? So you talk about p tau two seventeen, which is really hot and really important for Alzheimer's disease.
People have been talking about alpha synuclein, is that protein that gets deposited in something called the Lewy body, again, named after the guy, Lewy, who described it in the microscope. Right? So but then
Dr. Mark Hyman
Lewy body is like a combo of Parkinson's and Alzheimer's.
Dr. Michael Okun
Yeah. So that so so the
Dr. Ray Dorsey
More Parkinson's, but, like, it's like it's like the amyloid plaque that you see in Alzheimer's disease, the pathological hallmark what you see under the microscope Yeah. In Parkinson's body is a Lewy body.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Garbage I've had many patients with that, actually. Great.
Dr. Michael Okun
So we're interested, right, in measuring that, and that is huge. Right? So when we can start to measure that and the fluid that bathes your brain and spinal cord called the cerebrospinal fluid.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Do you have to do a spinal tap or can you still
Dr. Michael Okun
Well, that's how it started, you know, with with spinal taps and and looking at it. But now there are now evolving ways to look at this in the blood and in other areas, and it's getting better and better. And then also skin. So skin biopsies, you talk about fat biopsies, but skin biopsies For mitochondrial function. And then, you know, no, for for synuclein.
Dr. Ray Dorsey
Oh. Protein is not just found in the brain. It's not just found in the gut. It's actually found in the skin.
Dr. Mark Hyman
And just for people understanding, like, you know, genes make proteins. That's all they do. And one of the hallmarks of aging is proteostasis or just funky, weirdly misshapen and folding proteins that don't work properly.
Dr. Ray Dorsey
Yeah. So you fold the sheets, and, you know, if you have a regular sheet that's easy to fold, and it's nice and neat. But trying to fold a fitted sheet is a really big pain in the behind.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Right. Exactly.
Dr. Ray Dorsey
And so a miss a fitted sheet is always misfolded. And so in Parkinson's disease and Alzheimer's disease and ALS and a lot of other brain diseases, the hallmark of the disease, when you look on the microscope, are misbuild proteins. But I don't know
Dr. Mark Hyman
if this is true. I'm just hypothesizing. Because the genes make proteins, and the proteins have functions, and they're damaged because of environmental factors that change the gene expression or the what we call post translational gene products, the thing the protein the genes make, through proteomics, which is like a new way of actually testing large numbers of proteins in the blood at very low cost, Are we seeing protein signatures of Parkinson's that can be identified?
Dr. Michael Okun
Yes. We are starting to see them. But as we get more data, we're overwhelmed by the data where AI is helping us. But now you have imaging, you have blood, you have spit, you have you have skin. And the answer isn't gonna be in one thing.
You know, people like to go binary yes or no.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Because it's like if you're making a difference, how do you know? Like, I know if I had Tim with Alzheimer's and I check their p tau two seventeen, and I do 10 things, and I check it again six months from now, it can go down. What gets measured gets managed. Right. So is there anything like that coming?
Dr. Michael Okun
So that is is is right now. Like, right now, Mark, what so many people all over the world, multiple laboratories are working on, because we're not quite there with the with the statistics to say it's good enough yet, but we're smashing these tests together. And my prediction is, and I think Ray feels the same way when we were writing the book, is it's gonna be a combination of these tests that are gonna are gonna give us those markers. But what you said is so important, and I just wanna reemphasize that. We have to be able to measure trajectory.
It's not good enough to just diagnose. Like, don't need a biomarker just for diagnosis. Like, you can see a lot of Parkinson's. You know, it's a clinical And data
Dr. Mark Hyman
your cholesterol goes down. Right? Like, you wanna know what Yeah.
Dr. Michael Okun
You have Parkinson. If you respond to the dopamine and everything, that's pretty doggone good. What we need to do is we need to be able to see how it changes over time. And then when we intervene, you know, do these things that we're given. Because it might be some of the things we've tested actually did work, but we couldn't measure it Yeah.
As as Ray said. Yeah. And so it's a it's a problem. It's a challenge, let's say.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah. This is really great. I wanna wrap up because and and I don't wanna put you on the spot because you didn't learn this in medical school, and I spent the last forty years studying this, which is how do you help someone detoxify? How do you measure toxins? How do you detoxify?
So in functional medicine, we can do heavy metal challenge testing. We do blood testing for heavy metals. We can do blood testing for things like PFAS, BPA, glyphosate. Also, urine testing. You can look at urine testing for a lot of the things like atrazine and all the things like the the pesticides and paraben.
So we can actually look at all these things in the urine. And there are specialty labs that do that. It's typically not your average lab. And then we get a sense, okay, based on someone's history, based on their load, where where are they at? And then then we design a detox program, which essentially which uses all your body's built in waste management systems.
Right? So sweat. Saunas are a great way to mobilize toxins. Making sure you drink a lot of water and pee and clear urine. Simple.
Fiber. Like, make sure you're pooping and not constipated. You know, I had a patient once I said, do you have regular bowel movements? She goes, yeah. I said, how often do you how often do you go?
She goes, well, I go once a week. I'm like, what do you mean that's not regular? She goes, yeah. It's regular for me. I go every week.
You know? But you wanna go every day at least once or twice. These are just basic things. And then there's all the things you can do to upregulate your body's own built in detox pathways. And that includes things to do to with diet.
So you obviously reduce all the crap in your diet, all the sugar, all the processed food. That goes without saying. But there's certain foods that have the ability to boost your own detox enzymes, like glutathione, which actually is you can use intravenously in Parkinson's and temporarily see reductions in tremors. So it's really it's like one of the most important anti inflammatory mitochondrial compounds. So we basically give them broccoli and collards and kale and other things like garlic and onions that boost that.
And we give them foods that help with b vitamins and methylation. And we do all these these sort of dietary interventions, and we even talk about maybe keto diets may be helpful. And then you kind of obviously can fix the gut, and that's a whole another functional medicine domain. But in terms of detoxification, you know, there's there's chelation, which can be used for heavy metals, and that's been published, ADT chelation, DMSA chelation. These are things that are published in JAMA.
And in fact, in one study, they did it for kidney failure, they found that people that had lead, they're more likely to progress to dialysis. And they did EDT chelation, and those who went through it didn't progress. So we had we had some data. We don't have enough, but we have some data. So you you can do chelation for your metals.
And then, you know, for the, you know, the mitochondria rejuvenation and the cellular removal of toxins, it's a lot harder. And this is where things are kind of I think need some funding to see what's going on here. Because clinically, I can tell you when we do things like intravenous glutathione or intravenous NAD or we give something we call the PK protocol, which essentially is a cellular washout. It's like using high doses of the fat, phosphatidylcholine that your membranes are made out of. It where all these toxins are, it flushes them out.
And then you also combine it with things like glutathione and the b vitamins and carnitine, and you see people's mitochondria come back online. And I have a patient who's like a rock star, and and that rock star couldn't play the guitar because they had Parkinson's. And all of a sudden, they did this protocol, and boom, they're back on tour. So I think there's a whole bunch of things that aren't drugs, that aren't anybody who's gonna fund, you know, a billion dollar study unless it's the government or philanthropist, but that actually have real promise. And I would love to sort of hear your thoughts on how we start to take some of these things that are in the anecdotal or anic data stage and and actually start to apply them and do clinical trials, sort of like Richard Isaacs is doing.
Because what all you guys are talking about in here is amazing, and it's it's gonna get a peel a lot of the way there. But there's a whole another level of thinking about this. I'd love to just get your final two cents on.
Dr. Michael Okun
I think I I love the term anecdata. Right? You know? And I think that's really important. And and I'll just say it's it's it's tricky because, you know, in the New England Journal, they tried to there's a whole bunch of iron, as you know, in the brains of of folks with Parkinson's and everything.
So they tried to use the standard, you know, chelation, you know, and for iron, and that that actually did work. Well, sure.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Sure. Here's why. Here's why. It's a it's a problem of thinking. If you give someone a drug for chelation, and you don't make sure that that compound gets out of their body by peeing a lot, pooping a lot, making the liver enzymes work, and binding them up in the gut, and doing all these things, of course, you're gonna get worse.
And that happens also when you do treatment for heavy metals. If you don't if you just give the chelator without all the other support, then of course, you're gonna get sick.
Dr. Michael Okun
Yeah. And we're not Ray and I aren't experts on this, but but I I will say that I was so enthusiastic when the government was investing in that we had a center for alternative medications where they were funding starting to fund clinical trials. This was many years ago. One of my mentors, Maylyn Delong, was involved in some of those original discussions. And and we just need to do more of it.
I mean, this is super interesting, super important, And and and what excites me, and I'm interested to to hear what Ray thinks, what excites me about it is the why and looking upstream. Like right? So so what you're talking about is looking for the root cause. And so so when the guys
Dr. Mark Hyman
or causes.
Dr. Michael Okun
Yeah. Root cause or cause is. And so when the guys that discovered Helicobacter pylori, which is this, you know, infectious agent
Dr. Mark Hyman
Are you guys the Barry Marshall of neurology?
Dr. Ray Dorsey
Yeah. Well, we
Dr. Michael Okun
have the story in the book.
Dr. Mark Hyman
But please don't take the toxins. Yeah. But we have this They You drank know? A baker of bacteria and proved you had an ulcer. But don't drink a baker of toxins and think of Parkinson's.
Yeah. So we
Dr. Michael Okun
have the story in the book about how nobody believed them, that this could be infectious causing all the peptic ulcers. And and it turns out it was infectious. They ended up winning the Nobel Prize Yeah. On this, you know, and it was really important and fundamental. And people, what were they saying?
Oh, you you need to eat less spicy foods. You need to do all this. It they didn't understand upstream what was going on. So I don't know. What do you think there?
Dr. Mark Hyman
If you guys keep going, I wanna beat your Nobel Prize ceremony. Because I think this is worthy of a Nobel Prize.
Dr. Ray Dorsey
Well, I think the credit really goes to Doctor. Caroline Tanner. For forty years, she's been detailing this, and we haven't been paying enough attention to her. You know, in my mind, she's a giant. In reality, she's like maybe five feet tall.
She's over 70. She looks like your prototypical grandmother, and she's been doing this for forty years. She did studies in China as a woman in the nineteen eighties looking at chemicals and Parkinson's disease. Just imagine that. We wanna say yes.
We wanna say, right, we wanna say yes to everything that you're saying. We just don't have the evidence. And I think both Michael and my minds have been opened. If you had asked us fifteen years ago about chemicals, we would have been poo pooing or soft pedaling them, and we know we just don't have the evidence. We do know the Mediterranean diet, for example, high in fruits and vegetables, low in animal products, perhaps low in toxins that get magnified as they go up the food chain is beneficial for people with Parkinson's disease and might even prevent you from getting it.
We know that vigorous exercise is helpful for people with Parkinson's disease and might reduce your risk of ever getting Parkinson's disease. We know that these chemicals are causing likely causing disease, and we know that stopping exposure to these chemicals is potentially beneficial. We just don't have the data to answer to you here in 2020, '25, you know, what complement of mitochondrial supplements or other complementary medicines would make a big difference for people.
Dr. Mark Hyman
But the NIH needs to focus on this. Right?
Dr. Ray Dorsey
And then we're gonna come back to your house, come back in five years, and we'll tell you what what has been found because people like you are constantly pushing the envelope. And you've been doing this for, you know, thirty years. Right? Yeah. And you were, you know, not widely, you
Dr. Mark Hyman
Respected. Don't read my Wikipedia page, please. And and, you know, you
Dr. Ray Dorsey
you and others have made us think about things in a more holistic manner, and you've told us that the power of prevention, you've told us that the the roots of these chronic diseases, many of them lie in our environment. If we pay attention more attention to the Mark Hyman's of the world, if we pay attention to the people who are out there on the front, Fannie, Harry, and others
Dr. Michael Okun
Yeah.
Dr. Ray Dorsey
Who are out there telling us that chemicals in our food, water, and and air are fueling the rise of chronic diseases, we can prevent them. We can slow them. We can treat them, and potentially, can even cure them once we know
Dr. Mark Hyman
the cause. And I'm just gonna say by by as an add, my antidata of treating dozens of Parkinson's patients over thirty years or people with Lewy body disease. I've had many of those as well, surprisingly, and I'm not a neurologist. But when people try everything and they can't get any help, they come to me, and we treat them at the Ulster Wellness Center. And I can tell you, I've had so many patients who've we've slowed, stopped, or even reversed significantly their Parkinson's by using this kind of approach systematic approach.
And I think people should be hopeful out there, and I'm really hopeful that that that you guys are doing this because, you know, we need real scientists. I'm just a science reader. I'm not like a mean, I I publish some papers, but I'm like, that's not my gig. But but I read the science, and I'm like, I know that the smoke signals are there, and that that there needs, like, to be a serious investment in this in this field and in the kinds of therapies that can really improve people's lives, especially as we're seeing the acceleration in this whole thing. So I wanna just thank both of you for what you're doing.
I think this is such an important book. It's The Parkinson's Plan, a path to prevention and treatment. You can get it anywhere you get books. It's out now. I would encourage you to get a copy and check it out if you know anybody with Parkinson's, if you have it in your family.
Or you don't want
Dr. Michael Okun
to get
Dr. Mark Hyman
it. If don't want to get it, which would pretty much be everybody.
Dr. Ray Dorsey
And the seeds of the disease are planted early. The
Dr. Mark Hyman
Decades before.
Dr. Ray Dorsey
Decades. Decades. A child.
Dr. Mark Hyman
As Yeah. A child.
Dr. Ray Dorsey
So Teenagers.
Dr. Mark Hyman
It's never too early to start. Yeah. So I I just honor you both for what you're doing, and the courage you have to go against the grain, to speak the truth, to, you know, honestly, to, be exposed to potential ridicule of your colleagues. It's not easy. Right?
And and yet here you are, and, I'm just so impressed, in having this conversation. And, you guys are great. Let's keep talking. Let's revisit this. And when we have more blood biomarkers, when we have more treatments, if you want anybody to kinda give you my data from my decades of doing this to kinda guide some things that could be helpful, if you wanna get some research funded, if you have some philanthropists, or if there's anybody who's listening out there who's a philanthropist who has any of this, like Lewy bodies or Parkinson's, like please we need help because the government's not doing it.
Pharma for sure isn't doing it and I think you know, these guys are doing the work. So so let's let's get some help for all the needless suffering out there. Thanks, Ray. Thanks, really If great you love this podcast, please share it with someone else you think would also enjoy it. You can find me on all social media channels at Doctor Mark Hyman.
Please reach out, I'd love to hear your comments and questions. Don't forget to rate, review, and subscribe to the Doctor Hyman show wherever you get your podcasts. And don't forget to check out my YouTube channel at Doctor Mark Hyman for video versions of this podcast and more. Thank you so much again for tuning in. We'll see you next time on the doctor Hyman show.
This podcast is separate from my clinical practice at the Ultra Wellness Center, my work at Cleveland Clinic, and Function Health where I am chief medical officer. This podcast represents my opinions and my guests' opinions. Neither myself nor the podcast endorses the views or statements of my guests. This podcast is for educational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional care by a doctor or other qualified medical professional. This podcast is provided with the understanding that it does not constitute medical or other professional advice or services.
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