Glyphosate Exposure Affects Your Family’s Health and Behavior

Episode Transcription

Dr. Nicole Beurkens: 

Hi everyone, welcome to the show. I am Dr. Nicole and today, we’re going to talk about glyphosate and how it may be impacting your family’s health and your child’s behavior. glyphosate, for those of you who aren’t familiar, it’s a weed-killer — that’s the most simple way to put it. You may be familiar with the brand name Roundup, you may have seen that in various stores and it’s commonly used by farmers and even people in their own personal backyards to address weed issues. In recent years, though, there have been many significant health concerns that have been raised about glyphosate and how it may be connected to everything from cancers to heart disease to things like autism and ADHD.

So to help us understand these issues, I’ve invited Dr. Stephanie Seneff on the show today. Dr. Seneff is a senior research scientist at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She has a BS degree from MIT in Biology and a Ph.D. from MIT in Electric Engineering and Computer Science. Her recent interests have focused on the role of toxic chemicals and micronutrient deficiencies in health and disease with a special emphasis on the perverse herbicide Roundup and the mineral sulphur. She has authored over 30 peer-reviewed journal papers over the past few years on these topics. Dr. Seneff is one of the most knowledgeable and also outspoken voice in the world about the problems with glyphosate and it is such an honor for me to have her on the show with us today, so welcome, Dr. Seneff.   

Dr. Stephanie Seneff:

Thank you so much for having me. 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens: 

I have to ask, before we dive into glyphosate, because you have such an interesting background, I just would love to hear a little bit about how somebody specializing in electrical engineering and computer science ends up really focusing on these important issues related to toxic chemicals? I feel like there’s got to be some story behind that evolution for you.

Dr. Stephanie Seneff:

Ah yeah, well in fact it’s probably 30-40 years ago, and my best friend at the time had a son who was a little younger than my son and he got a DPT shot and ran a high fever, had a piercing scream, had a bad reaction to the shot, got seizures a week later and was later diagnosed with autism. So he was one of the very early autism cases, and of course, it caused me to be quite interested in autism as consequence of that personal experience, and it was in the 2008 kind of timeframe that I’ve noticed that the autism rates were going up exponentially and exponential growth gets really scary once the numbers get big. We’re basically on the cusp of a catastrophe right now because the rates are still going up exponentially.

My prediction — and it’s exponential, you can actually draw it on a log scale and you’ll see a straight line, very easy. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to just extend that line and figure out when. And if you do that, you find that 2032 is the magic date when half the children born, 80% of the boys will end up with an autism diagnosis in their lifetime. So that’s really, really scary. I think if I’m a young woman in 2032 and I’m considering having a child and I’m thinking that there’s an 80% chance that a son will have autism, I might just decide maybe not. Maybe I won’t have any children. Because that risk is just too great a risk to bear, and I think that’s going to be a real tragedy. We’re going to face an implosion of the population, I predict where people will just decide it’s not worth the risk. 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens: 

And certainly, I have seen that mirrored in my career. I started working in the field of autism and neurodevelopmental issues in the mid ’90s and when we looked — that’s where, in the mid 90’s the number of kids being diagnosed with not even just autism, but if we look at things like ADHD and just other neurodevelopmental issues, it has just skyrocketed, that trajectory that you’re talking about how those numbers have increased, it is exponential and it’s already creating such a burden on all of our societal systems, right? To figure out how to manage the needs of a growing population of kids with all these issues.

Dr. Stephanie Seneff:

Right, and of course it’s not just autism. We see a lot of anxiety and ADHD and violent behavior and just depression, all these different neurological issues that we see today, along with physical problems like asthma and eczema and food allergies, all these different food sensitivities, and our children are in a mess already and it’s getting worse exponentially, almost all of these things are growing exponentially and so it’s just frightening to think about what it’s going to be like in 10 years. We absolutely have to fix this problem, there’s no question in my mind. If we have hope for the future of humanity on earth

Dr. Nicole Beurkens: 

That’s right, so you really got interested in these kids as a result of your friend and her son. So how did you get interested then in the research that you’ve done on these toxic chemicals and glyphosate, was there an evolution of that? 

Dr. Stephanie Seneff:

Basically, I was working in computer dialogue systems. My work involved developing computer programs that allow — basically precursors to Siri and Amazon Echo, that kind of stuff, which was fun work, I really enjoyed it and we were also working on developing games, dialogue games to help people learn a second language, focusing on Americans learning to speak Chinese. Which was also a passion that I had at that time. So, when I saw the autism rates going up it was painful for me, actually, to draw up the work I was doing on the games for language learning, because I thought that was good work and I wanted to see it go forward, but I ended up transitioning away from that.

I became determined actually to try to find what it was. I knew it had to be environmental. Genetics doesn’t go up exponentially, and most of the research dollars are going into genetic links and they were finding all kinds of genes that have small contributions, but they’re not finding any kind of obvious solutions there. And I don’t understand why they don’t understand that it’s got to be environmental and we need to find what it is, so basically, I became determined. And I was looking at all kinds of things, I was not looking at glyphosate for five years, of course, I was looking at the vaccines because of my personal experience with my friend. I definitely think the vaccines are a contributor to autism, but I think they’re secondary.

We’ll see who’s right in the end because we’re still all sort of seeking to understand. I believe glyphosate is by far the #1 factor in the autism epidemic, that’s my belief at this time, based on what I know about glyphosate. A really, really terrifying molecule in my opinion and unfortunately, we’ve been taught to believe that it’s perfectly safe and our government tells us it’s safe and media tells us it’s safe. Media says our food is wonderful, it’s safe, the GMOs aren’t a problem. Most people want to believe that, they want to trust their government, so it’s very hard to wrap your mind around the idea that the foods you’re eating might be poisoned. 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens: 

Absolutely. As we were talking, even before we started the show, that for some people the idea even that food impacts health and the brain and all of that, in general, can be a difficult concept. And then the idea that the food we’re eating and that we’re told is safe may be a problem, that’s maybe mind-blowing for some people. So I want to dive into this and let’s start on a really basic level. I’d love to have you talk about what is glyphosate? So you just said something really powerful a moment ago. You said that this is a really scary chemical, this is a really scary molecule. This is just creating havoc with lots of things. So what is this glyphosate?

Dr. Stephanie Seneff:

So glyphosate is actually a very simple molecule. It’s an amino acid, and amino acids are the building blocks of proteins. Glyphosate is not one of the coding amino acids. It’s a unique, synthetic amino acid that does not exist in nature. So they make it in the chemistry lab. It’s basically a modified form of glycine. And glycine is the smallest amino acid. So the amino acids are somewhat like beads on a string to produce the proteins. Amino acids also play other roles in the body. Like glycine, is, in fact, a neurotransmitter. Glutamate is too. So we have certain amino acids that also act as neurotransmitters. They are signaling molecules.

And glycine is also a precursor to some important things like hemoglobin in the red blood cells. Glycine goes in to make the Haem, so it has a lot of — it’s also a component of glutathione, which is a really important antioxidant in the liver. So glycine kind of makes its way into lots of different parts of your biology and every place where glycine goes, glyphosate goes too, because it is a glycine molecule. Your system gets confused, when it sees the glyphosate, it doesn’t realize it’s not glycine and it uses it as if it were glycine, but it has very different biophysical and biochemical properties. So it ends up messing up a lot of stuff because of that. That’s it mechanism of toxicity, very, very interesting.

There are other toxins that actually work the same way that are amino acid analogues of other amino acids. But there is no other molecule that I am aware of besides glyphosate that is an amino acid analogue of glycine. So it’s unique in that respect, there’s nothing else like it. So that mechanism of toxicity is actually unique, insidious, cumulative, it goes into your tissues, it gets into your proteins and it causes them to misfold, it causes them to not work properly, so it causes all kinds of damage. It’s like putting sugar in the gasoline tank. It gums up your systems so that they don’t work properly, and it does slowly over time and it accumulates, so it gets worse and worse. The more you eat — all the glyphosate that you eat, only a small percentage actually stays in the tissues, only 2%. So it’s an accumulation over a long period of eating that you actually get glyphosate all over your body, causing mischief in various ways. 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens: 

So it’s really insidious because it’s this laboratory-made molecule the body really thinks and treats it like the glycine that it’s used to having in the body and so that’s how it kind of gets all over. 

Dr. Stephanie Seneff:

Yeah, and it capitalizes on all those systems that are in place to deal with amino acids. So it’s actually actively taken up by the cells along amino acid transport channels because the cells just think it’s another amino acid. The problem is that it doesn’t work the way it’s supposed to work when it goes into the proteins. 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens: 

So was this molecule originally created in the lab for the purpose of being an herbicide? How did that come about?

Dr. Stephanie Seneff:

That is an interesting story because when it was first created, they discovered that it was a good metal chelator and they found the use for it was to clean pipes. So strip the metal off of rusted pipes and so clean them out and make them nice and shiny. That was its original use.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens: 

Wow! I had no idea!

Dr. Stephanie Seneff:

Yeah, and then somehow, someone discovered that it kills plants. It was an accidental discovery, and then, they thought, “Oh, maybe this can be an herbicide.” So they got that idea as secondary. And then they’ve also patented it as an antimicrobial agent, which is interesting. It kills bacteria, and actually there are patents that suggest that you might take it as an antibiotic, which is pretty outrageous!

Dr. Nicole Beurkens: 

That’s pretty terrifying!

Dr. Stephanie Seneff:

Or even as an anti-cancer agent. A lot of the anti-cancer agents are actually carcinogenic as you probably know, and glyphosate is carcinogenic as well — and hopefully, your audience is aware of these lawsuits that have been coming up lately, which is fantastic. I’m so, so happy, and I remember how thrilled I was when that first one — because I always thought, all these guys always find a way, it’s not going to work. And I was so shocked when they got such a big award — it was like 289 million dollars for Dewayne Johnson, and he was a guy who used glyphosate on the schoolyards, which is very disturbing to me, where he was using the glyphosate was where the children played, and he developed Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, and then there have been two more since then and the third one is a couple who used it on their own property.

Both of them had Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and it ended up as $2 billion dollars as an award, which was just shocking punitive because all this dirt is coming out about how Monsanto’s been manipulating the evidence and hiding and preventing the research on all this kind of stuff and offering papers and then pretending, putting somebody else’s name on it. All kinds of things that they’re doing to hide the evidence. I mean it’s just, to me, is so disturbing that a molecule that toxic could be around for 40 years and every year, going up exponentially in the usage. And we use more this year than we did last year and all the way back, it’s just more and more and more. Part of it is because the weeds are becoming resistant, so they have to use more to kill them, so they just put more in the formulation and we get more on the food. So we’re all getting sicker faster now because of this war in our food. The food is just simply not safe at this point. 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens: 

Right, so they discovered that this is good for cleaning pipes, but it’s also a powerful herbicide, let’s just use it as a weed killer. And then it seems like that was so effective and that took off. And I know Monsanto is the big company that took that and ran with it, they’re the owners of the Roundup brand. And I know I can still go to the home stores and home and garden stores around here, and you can see the ready Roundup containers, so this is something that’s not only being used on huge farms, like in our major food supply but also that people are using, as you mentioned, the lawsuit for the couple using it in their private home. So this has really become very, very prevalent in all aspects of our environment and food supply, hasn’t it?

Dr. Stephanie Seneff:

Absolutely. I think it’s really a wake-up call for us to figure out how to stop this. And of course, it’s very, very difficult because the regulators have been bought by the industry. They really, really want to believe it’s safe. It’s made our food very cheap, I mean it has been very effective for growing and you can have these mega-farms with very little labor — just pour the glyphosate all over them, especially once you’ve got the GMO, which is resistant. Because they did this: They inserted this bacterial gene to give the plant protection on the one protein that they’ve identified as being absolutely destructive for the plants, which is EPSP synthase in the shikimate pathway, and that is critical too for the gut microbiome, because they’re saying we don’t have that enzyme and therefore, we are not sensitive to glyphosate.

But our gut microbes do have that enzyme and they use it to make really important molecules that are precursors to the — well, they are the aromatic amino acids, and also precursors to the neurotransmitters — dopamine and serotonin, melatonin, the skin-tanning agent melanin, the thyroid hormone — all of those things come out of the shikimate path, then also folate, the B Vitamin, and niacin. They all come out of the shikimate pathway, and also the plants produce all kinds of polyphenols and flavonoids, these are really important nutritious molecules that plants use to actually defend themselves against drought and heat and insects. They use these molecules that come out of the shikimate pathway to do that, so the plants become weak as well because of that being disrupted — unable to cope with fungus infections.

They get all kinds of problems as well. They’re hurting too in the same way as we are because of the disruption of their metabolism by glyphosate. So our gut microbes are being disturbed and we’re getting an imbalance and our gut microbes are getting an overgrowth of pathogens because the beneficial microbes are preferentially killed by glyphosate. So we get an imbalance in the gut, we get an inflammatory gut, we get leaky gut and then we get autoimmune disease because we have undigested proteins that get into circulation and the immune cells react to them with antibodies that then end up attacking our own tissues through a process called molecular mimicry.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens: 

Which helps explain why we have such a growing number of children and adults in the population with problems like leaky gut, allergies, asthma, autoimmune problems — what you’re describing with the shifts and the changes that happen in the gut and the immune system are really at the root of all of those kinds of issues that we see. 

Dr. Stephanie Seneff:

Right, exactly. 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens: 

So somebody thought, “Hey, okay. Great. This is a good weed-killer, this will help us grow crops better and more cheaply, except — oh, we didn’t really look at what the side effects of that might be.”, is what it sounds like, right? Like, “Okay, so this works great for growing crops cheaper and may be quicker.” But now what we’re seeing is this toxic build-up that you talked about and it really impacting human health in all of these ways. So somebody might say, oh, well — so the solution, what if we just wash the produce, what if we do something to the plants after, to get the glyphosate off? Why don’t we just do that?

Dr. Stephanie Seneff:

Does not work, absolutely does not work. Of course, if my theory is right, it’s getting built into the proteins in the plants so there’s no way you can wash that off, the cells take it up, as I said, along these amino acid transports. So it’s hiding inside the cells. You can’t just wash it off, literally, it’s embedded in the tissues of the foods you are eating. 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens: 

So once the plants have been treated with this, and we eat the harvest from those plants, it’s in there. I think that’s a thing that people don’t realize. They may think about things like pesticides or residues on things, and I think — oh well, we can just wash that off or whatever, the thing is no. It’s in these plants, and it’s getting into us then, as a result of eating this stuff.

Dr. Stephanie Seneff:

Right, and in fact, the highest levels are showing up in non-GMO crops and non-GMO foods, which is one thing people don’t realize, because they think, oh the GMOs, which is true, the GMOs are resistant when it’s sprayed on them, and they don’t die. But the non-GMOs is actually some major crops: Wheat, sugarcane, barley, oats, so for example, oatmeal or Cheerios. Garbanzo beans and lentils, legumes, all of them are sprayed right before harvest very commonly with glyphosate as a desiccant to dry the crop out. So the intent is to kill the crop, and of course, it works but it causes the wheat to go seed synchronously because, when it hits, when it gets a reaction to the glyphosate, it goes to seed and that synchronizes the harvest and increases the yield.

For example, that’s one benefit. It also kind of makes it easier to clear the debris because the plant is dying so quickly from the glyphosate that it’s easier to prepare for next year’s cycle. Also, it gets a head start on next year’s weeds because you’re applying it as a weed killer at the same time as you’re killing the crops. So they see a lot of convenience in that, but the problem is that that is what goes into the seed and it becomes very, very high in things like wheat germ, for example. Very high levels in chickpeas. Some of the highest levels are being found in these legumes, which I was actually really surprised to see that when I first heard about it. 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens: 

That’s interesting and it reminded me, there was a big story that came out in the news not too long ago about many common breakfast cereals that children are eating, you mentioned Cheerios being one of them, and the high amounts of glyphosate that they’re finding in the finished cereal product. 

Dr. Stephanie Seneff:

Yes, and there’s just new data coming out from EWG just a couple of days ago and they looked at all different — Honey Nut Cheerios, different versions of Cheerios, all of them were contaminated. And barley, of course, is going to put it into the beer. Zen Honeycutt tested the wines in California and all of the were basically contaminated, including the biodynamic ones, although they had a lot less. So it’s in the beer, in the wine, in the wheat. So I think that the gluten intolerance epidemic that we see is a direct hit. It’s a direct consequence of glyphosate.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens: 

I wanted to ask you about that, because I’ve heard you speak about that before, that we know that the rates of people either with things like celiac or frank allergies to wheat and gluten are increasing, but also this whole concept of non-celiac gluten sensitivity, there are so many more people in the population that aren’t able to tolerate gluten, but you have an interesting take on that that perhaps the problem isn’t just the gluten, but it’s the glyphosate piece. 

Dr. Stephanie Seneff:

Absolutely. And in fact, if glyphosate is getting into proteins, then it’s going to get into gluten, so it’s going to be embedded in the gluten protein, subsisting for glycine, and as a consequence, that’s going to make it difficult to break the protein down, so the enzymes that metabolize proteins get stuck when they see glyphosate, they don’t know what to do. So you end up with these peptides that don’t get cleared and that’s how you get irritation in the gut, that induces a leaky gut and then those peptides escape into the general circulation and they get that autoimmune attack. That then through molecular mimicry ends up attacking the thyroid, you get things like multiple sclerosis. You can get some nasty things as a consequence of the autoimmune reaction from the antibodies that were developed originally for the gluten protein. 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens: 

That helps make some sense around many people’s experience, which is they can go to different parts of the world and eat things that are made with wheat or have gluten and not experience the same effects that they get from eating that stuff here. Is that really that glyphosate connection, we — I think we use glyphosate in amounts that many other countries don’t, is that correct?

Dr. Stephanie Seneff:

We use more than any other country in the world per person, I think Canada is a pretty good second, and also Australia, maybe UK as well, those are maybe the worst offenders, I think, with respect to glyphosate exposure.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens: 

Yeah. So we know that this is a pervasive problem now, we just talked about the protein, how it binds to the protein, which is the gluten in wheat. So that’s making me wonder now about things like dairy, for example — you know casein protein, which so many children are becoming intolerant to, if the cattle are feeding on glyphosate-laden grains, does that get into the milk and the milk proteins that we’re ingesting as well?

Dr. Stephanie Seneff:

That’s absolutely what I think is happening. And again, as in  I think, again, Zen Honeycutt, she’s in Moms Across America, I don’t know if you know who she is, she is really great. She’s a friend of mine, she’s just fantastic. And she’s out there, she just goes ahead and tests these things, and she found glyphosate in vaccines too, which is another terrifying story. She found it in mothers’ milk. So she had several women send off their breastmilk to be tested for glyphosate and the one that had the highest level was 1600 times higher than the limit they allow for water — glyphosate in Europe. 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens: 

Wow. So even in breastmilk. So babies are being exposed to this just from the breast milk. 

Dr. Stephanie Seneff:

Soy is probably worse if they are drinking the soy formula because soy is a GMO Roundup-ready crops. So the kids are getting it early in their food and I think it’s giving them a really bad start. It’s totally messing up the way the gut microbiome develops and it’s so critical in these first few weeks of life to get the microbiome on track. The right balance. That gets messed up early. 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens: 

So you know, when we think about kids with neurological issues, neurodevelopmental issues, mental health things, so whether they have been diagnosed with Autism or ADHD, or just a kid with high irritability or impulsive behavior or even things like seizures, learning difficulties, anxiety, all of that. Let’s just talk a bit because people may be thinking, I get it — we eat food, it’s got the glyphosate that messes up our gut, but can you talk a little bit, for the parents listening out there, about hey they can think about the connection between ingesting food with glyphosate in it and how that may be impacting their child’s brain and behavior?

Dr. Stephanie Seneff:

Well again, the shikimate pathway plays a critical role because that gut is producing those aromatic amino acids, which are then being converted into the neurotransmitters, serotonin, melatonin.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens: 

So the things our brain needs to function well, those neuro-chemicals that our brain needs to regulate our mood, our anxiety, our arousal level — all those neurotransmitters are directly impacted by this.

Dr. Stephanie Seneff:

Yes, and so then you have a serotonin deficiency which is directly linked to depression and violent behavior and also obesity, it turns out. All of those can be a consequence of serotonin deficiency. Thyroid hormone also comes out of the shikimate pathway, so that can be deficient and we have an epidemic in hypothyroidism, and in fact hypothyroidism in the mom is associated with a fourfold increased risk of autism in the child.

And there’s another issue with clostridia overgrowth in the gut, which happens — the clostridia are especially resistant to glyphosate, whereas the bifidobacterium and lactobacillus are more sensitive, so you end up with an imbalance, with an overgrowth of clostridia and they produce toxins, they release toxins that actually suppress the metabolism of dopamine, the conversion of dopamine into epinephrine, so you get — dopamine builds up as a consequence of that. So you get this hyper-energetic ADHD-type behavior from excess dopamine and insufficient serotonin, so it’s an imbalance in the neurotransmitters as a consequence of the glyphosate exposure in the gut.  

Dr. Nicole Beurkens: 

So just this cascading effect that starts out on this physical level, even if people may not realize that they’re having physical symptoms, it starts on this physical level, as you noted, it can be so cumulative over time and then it can begin to have an impact on the brain through all these different mechanisms. And my assumption is that children are more susceptible to that because they have more fragile neurological systems and they’re still in a very, very fast phase of development, right? The brain is growing and changing, so would it be right to say that the impact on them could be more significant and detrimental from a neurological standpoint, compared to an adult whose brain is already pretty well established?

Dr. Stephanie Seneff:

That totally makes sense because when the brain is developing, it’s a much more complicated situation, the timing has to be right and it disrupts critical molecules involved in development, such as vitamin A, retinoid acid — vitamin A is interesting because it’s expressed, and then it’s removed and it has to be timed just right for the development to work correctly. And the enzyme that removes vitamin is what’s called a Cytochrome P450 enzyme — that whole class is disrupted by glyphosate, so the same thing with vitamin D. Vitamin D is actually activated by Cytochrome P450 enzymes in the liver. So you have a vitamin D deficiency problem. Then you have vitamin A is not being properly managed during development. It needs to be a certain high concentration and quickly removed, and if it’s not removed, then it messes everything up the way the development goes in the brain, it gets so messed up.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens: 

So that’s so critical for the cognitive development too, we just have research connecting that and what you’re saying is that whole pathway gets disrupted, and that’s the thing, I think the younger that kids are impacted, the more that trajectory started to get thrown out of whack, and then you just have this cascade, this snowballing of problems then, and I’ve always looked at it that children diagnosed with more modern to severe autism, they are the canary in the coal mine. They are really showing us the severity of how these things, like the glyphosate exposure, can impact a person. There are many adults and even kids with milder impediments walking around, maybe it’s not as obvious, but these kids are really showing us the severity of what can happen with this.

Dr. Stephanie Seneff:

Right, that’s the extreme version in a minute. It’s really sad when you see an autistic child who is clearly in agony, banging their head against the wall. I can’t imagine being the parent of that child and having to just stand by and watch that happen and be so helpless to fix the problem, it just must be very, very difficult for those parents. My heart goes out to them because a lot of times it’s just their bad luck that their genetics are such that their child is more susceptible — that’s where genetics play a role, it’s a susceptibility role, so some kids are more easily affected than others.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens: 

Well, I’m glad you touched on that, because sometimes the argument is — Well, if this was a problem, everybody would be affected by it — well, no! Because we all have a different predisposition to things and sensitivity to things based on our genetics, but it certainly is the environmental component that pulls the trigger, so to speak, right? Though for some kids, more genetically susceptible, something like glyphosate exposure, especially — I know there has been research done on certain areas in the country where there is such a higher prevalence of things like autism, seizures, more severe neurodevelopmental issues and that’s really connected to toxins in the environment too. 

Dr. Stephanie Seneff:

Yes, you can see that, well, in fact, California has done studies where they look at a distance — proximity to agricultural fields. And it’s quite interesting that they showed a connection between being close to agricultural fields and in particular, to glyphosate because they looked at a whole bunch of different chemicals. And they showed an increased risk to autism if you live close. And then they did a sort of — correcting the chemicals for the other chemicals that were present in the same time, and many of the chemicals disappeared. Their correlation disappeared but glyphosate got worse. In other words, glyphosate — these guys were innocent bystanders, these other chemicals. It was the glyphosate that was causing the problem of the autism connection. I was really excited to see that paper because I do believe that glyphosate is by far the worst. That’s the good news, there’s one chemical right? Just get rid of that one and we could see dramatic improvement in health across the board. I think if you just can’t get rid of that one, which of course is a very difficult task, politically.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens: 

Absolutely, and I want to get into that because, as you noted, there are several really pivotal lawsuits that have either just happened or are in process right now, looking at sort of going at it from the avenue of starting to hold these companies accountable for the very severe health damage that they’re causing to people, but the whole idea of getting this banned, that’s a process, I think we’ve convinced them now that this is something that needs to be on their radar  and that they need to be thinking about. Give us some advice on how can parents help their kids detox this glyphosate, how can they help? So we talked about that you can’t just wash it off and it sort of is everywhere in the food supply, so how can we reduce our exposure?

Dr. Stephanie Seneff:

Well, absolutely critical is to go organic, and luckily, we don’t have to wait for it to be banned, we can simply choose when we shop to buy foods that have a certified organic label and thank God for that because that will help a lot because that’s number 1, is to just immediately — even we did a sort of purge at one point, once we realized, we started buying organic and we had a kind of mixture in our cupboard and one day we were like, you know what? We’re not going to eat this. Let’s just purge it. So we just threw out a whole bunch of food that we had in our cupboards. Not organic? Gone. And then from that point on, we just bought certified organic. And it’s been improving our health as well — my husband in particular who has had some issues and he has been able to completely stop taking diabetes medicine because of going organic. It’s quite remarkable, so you can get significant improvements in your health.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens: 

So when something is labeled certified organic, just to be clear for people, that means that these herbicide, these chemicals, this glyphosate is not used in the growing or the harvesting of the crop. 

Dr. Stephanie Seneff:

Right. They’re not allowed to use it. It doesn’t mean that it’s not there, because it’s pervasive, it’s in the rain, it’s in the soil, so they can’t — it still can have some glyphosate in it, but in general, with the testing that’s been done, the organics either have — are undetectable or are much lower than the non-organic, so it’s certainly a way to reduce and it’s an important way because that’s how we’re getting it. I think most of us are getting it mostly through our food. I mean those are people who live near agricultural fields, they have a bigger problem and I don’t know what to suggest to them other than to move. They would have to move, I mean you really have to recognize — I can not live here, it’s too dangerous. And you can have your water tested for glyphosate, there are actually websites where you can actually send a sample of water off and get a result. If you think that there is reason to believe — you can look into your water supply and see where it comes from, you can get a guess to whether it’s safe, but you can also have it tested and see how that comes out. And you can have your urine tested too to see if you are exposed. That is something you can do online on the web.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens: 

There are several good tests for that and we’re doing that more and more on kids now. I’m seeing just clinically more of a connection between kids who live on farms, non-organic farms, things like that and higher rates of seizures and those things. So there are some very good tests available, and as you said, people can get them done either through a practitioner or on their own, just to look at what those levels are.

Dr. Stephanie Seneff:

Yeah, just to see if there is a problem, then you can start to think about how to fix it. There are some nice studies that have been done on cows. Cows are getting sick of course, they’re eating lots of glyphosate in their GMO feed. A study where they measured the glyphosate, cows were sick, they measured the glyphosate — they found it in the urine, they fed them fulvic acid and humic acid, which is organic matter from the soil, and you can get that online, you can get actual pills that have that. I recommend that because it helps bind to the glyphosate and get it out of your gut — they also gave them sauerkraut juice, which is very interesting — this is basically probiotics.

I had to research to understand why that was helping, and it turns out that apple cider vinegar and sauerkraut and other fermented foods like that, Kombucha and Kimchi — they contain acetobacter, which is one of the very microbes that can fully metabolize glyphosate. So I recommend eating fermented foods for that reason. I really feel eating things that can help you clear it, and then not eating it eventually starts to reduce your load. It’s very, very difficult to get it out of your proteins and the best way to do that is to beef up your sulphur supply. Sulphur is absolutely essential for the cells to be able to clear soluble debris. What I think is happening is that certain proteins are getting contaminated with glyphosate and then they are getting misfolded. Then they are accumulating as debris inside the cells. And if the cells don’t have a healthy digestive system themselves, which means they have a sulphate deficiency problem, they can’t clear that debris. So important to a lot of sulphur-containing foods. I love garlic and I eat tons of it. That’s why if you like garlic, eat up! Really, put garlic in lots of your foods, it’s delicious.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens: 

Yeah, garlic is good, then our cruciferous vegetables — things like broccoli, sprouts, any of the cruciferous vegetables, really great for it. 

Dr. Stephanie Seneff:

Cabbage is great of course, fermented cabbage. You can make it nice — we do it, sort of stir-fried cabbage with vinegar, sort of a sweet-sour, hot and sour cabbage. Things like that, and Brussel sprouts and broccoli, those are all great, and broccoli sprouts in particular. So eat a lot of those foods, also sulphur-containing animal-based foods if you’re not vegetarian. Seafood is a very good source — fish and grass-fed beef is a good choice, and organic eggs are great, that’s a really economic choice to get. And foods that have, not just sulphur, but a lot of good nutrition in terms of the minerals because we have mineral deficiency problems. I think I’ve mentioned that glyphosate binds to the minerals and makes them unavailable, so we need to increase our mineral supply by eating nutrient-dense foods and organic eggs is a really good choice, to eat a lot of eggs.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens: 

Awesome. Two approaches here, and this is so helpful because it helps empower us as individuals and as parents. Okay, we may not be able to get glyphosate banned tomorrow, but we can start doing things right now to help support our health. First basket of things, stop putting more of it in, right? So eating organic — don’t put more glyphosate in, and then in the basket of how to help get it out, talking about the things like the fulvic and humic acid, those types of things that we can take, through some of those soil —

Dr. Stephanie Seneff:

And bentonite clay is another one, bentonite clay as a binder.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens: 

Bentonite clay, great one. Eating more sulphur-containing vegetables and animal products, these are such great strategies for us to be thinking about, and in fact, things we can do right now.

Dr. Stephanie Seneff:

Also getting out in the sun to get the vitamin D, but also I believe that the sunlight catalyzes the synthesis of sulphate in the skin according to my research, so it’s a very good way to beef up your sulphate supplies, to get out in the sunlight without sunscreen and without sunglasses, and particularly sunlight to the eyes because it goes to the pineal gland, and the pineal gland makes sulphate in response to the sunlight, and then in the evening, it hooks it up with the melatonin, so you get the melatonin sulphate that delivers sulphate to the brain, which helps the brain to clear the garbage, which is what it does when it sleeps. So we have an epidemic and sleep disorder that’s going up exactly in step with glyphosate and I suspect that’s part of the reason the melatonin is deficient because it comes out of the shikimate pathway and the sulphate is deficient, and I’ve written a lot about how glyphosate messes up sulphate. 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens: 

And so what I’m hearing too is so many of the things that I talk about and recommend to people in general when they have kids with theses issues — things like eating more fermented foods to be able to support the microbiome, getting outside and getting the sun to regulate the circadian rhythms, help with vitamin D production, eating more nutrient-dense whole foods —

Dr. Stephanie Seneff:

Yes, whole foods is very important, don’t eat the processed foods because they have a lot of other chemicals besides glyphosate. Processed foods are really, really bad.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens: 

Absolutely. So all these things, now what we’re hearing is — now this is an additional reason to do those things, which is it reduces our exposure to glyphosate and helps us detox it. So that’s the great news for people who are already doing some of these things — they’re also helping to protect against the effects of the glyphosate, and for people who maybe needed another piece of motivation for why it would be helpful to do these things, you’ve given us a great one!

Dr. Stephanie Seneff:

Yes, and it’s nice that it’s really just doing things that are natural. You’re not taking any kind of a nasty drug that might have some nasty side-effects, you’re just doing things that are natural, so it’s safe, it’s very safe, this program and I think it will just greatly benefit your health and improve all of your children’s as well. The extra money you spend on the food, you’re going to get it back in terms of the health conditions of your family, to protect yourselves from all these very expensive and of course debilitating diseases that you’re going to face if you don’t do it. So I think it’s absolutely compelling to spend the extra money and not feel bad about that it’s costing you more for your food budget. It doesn’t waste your time to cook! That’s another big one because we’ve been taught that cooking is a waste of time, in a way, we have better things to do than cook, and I think we should undo that lesson. We should really respect cooking as being a really — it’s not a painful thing to do, either, cooking is fun. And I really think that that is something you need to set aside time for. 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens: 

Love this. This has been such a fascinating conversation. I’ve learned a lot. I know the listeners have learned a ton. And what I really appreciate beyond just the information and the practical advice is just your passion for this topic and for doing the research to look at these issues and really trying to get to the root of tackling what are some of the biggest, most insidious health-related issues of our times, so I really just can’t express enough how much I personally appreciate what you’re doing and the time that you were willing to spend with us. I want to make sure that people know where they can get more information, I know you just got a ton of studies and things. Where can they go online to find out more about what you’re doing?

Dr. Stephanie Seneff:

One thing is if you can remember my last name,  S E N E F F, it’s quite unique and if you search it on a web engine you’ll find all kinds of hits, various videos, and whatnot. Things like this. I have a webpage at MIT, which is a little cumbersome.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens: 

We will put it, it will be right below, so when you’re on the page, listening to the podcast, we’ll have it right there so that people can get to your page on the MIT site because it’s filled with so many great things.

Dr. Stephanie Seneff:

Yeah, it’s very techy-looking, it’s not very fancy, but it has a lot of material!

Dr. Nicole Beurkens: 

But some people will really want to delve in more into the science and the mechanisms of this, so I love that you are able to talk about it with us in a way that we can all grasp, and then you’ve also got great stuff out there for people who want to delve more into the intricacies of it.

Dr. Stephanie Seneff:

Right, and there’s a bunch of slideshows and there’s also video presentations and also my papers, which are quite dense.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens: 

But you’re fantastic! Thank you so much for the work that you’re doing around this, and again, I so appreciate you taking some time out of your schedule to talk with us today!

Dr. Stephanie Seneff:

It’s been my pleasure, thank you so much for having me.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens: 

Alright, everybody, that’s it for this episode of the better behavior show, we will see you next time.