Detoxing for Health: An Interview with David J. Getoff, CCN, CTN, FAAIM

Mark Bielsky: In this interview, we’ll be talking about detoxification, an important topic that is often greatly misunderstood. We know that toxic substances are all around us, but, in your experience, which are the most common sources that impact people’s health?

David J. Getoff: It seems to vary depending on where the person lives and what their lifestyle is. For the majority of people, I would say the most common toxins are those in their home and work environments.* That includes the chlorine or ammonia cleansers they use to clean the kitchen and bathroom. It includes the formaldehyde that’s outgassing from their carpets, unless the carpets are many years old, and from any pressboard that was used in construction or remodeling during the last couple of years.

Exactly how long it takes these things to outgas depends largely on the temperature and air circulation. For example, if you’re going to put new carpeting in, do it in the middle of the summer. If you’re able to, keep a fan running and have windows or doors open on two sides of the house for cross-ventilation. If the weather is warm and you can do that during the day, you can reduce the time it takes for your carpets to outgas to just a few months. In cold weather, there’s much less outgassing, and it can take one to two years, unless things are done to accelerate the process.

Those devices that people plug into their wall outlets to put a nice scent into the room are another source of toxins in the home. I call them automated poison dispensers. Many people don’t realize that those generally do not use essential oils; instead, they use toxic chemicals.

In addition, a lot of people have pesticides sprayed in or around their homes. Even if the pesticide is only sprayed outside, the movement of air is bringing it inside. To make matters worse, some people live on or near one of the two most heavily pesticide-laden places in the United States – a non-organic farm or a golf course.

Then, there are the toxins that people put on their bodies. These could include your toothpaste, which is likely to contain fluoride and maybe even sodium laurel sulfate and methyl and propyl paraben, as well as a lot of other things. It might include your body lotion, your shampoo and conditioner, and your colognes, aftershaves, and deodorants.The use of an antiperspirant is particularly harmful, as it prevents the toxins that are in your body from coming out through sweating.

MB: What about toxins in our food? What kinds of things could people encounter there?

DG: The one that’s being spoken about the most is glyphosate, but that’s actually a little misleading. Glyphosate is said to be the active ingredient in the herbicide Roundup. However, according to Professor Gilles-Éric Séralini, who has done extensive research on the effects of Roundup on animals, some of the chemicals in it that are listed as inert ingredients were more toxic to the animals he studied than the glyphosate itself. Thus, it may very well be that there are other things in Roundup that are equally bad or worse for us. He also found that in a number of other pesticides and herbicides on the market, some of the things listed as inert ingredients were more toxic than the chemical touted as the active ingredient. So, “inert” may not mean inert.

Obviously, we’ve got all sorts of pesticides and herbicides in our food, but there are a lot of other toxins as well. For example, many people are eating genetically modified foods, which can cause a lot of health problems. There may be fluoride in our food, if the food was manufactured in an area in which the municipal water contains it. And the drinking water itself can be fluoridated or, in some places around the country, may contain lead. Flint, Michigan, got a lot of media coverage because of the lead levels in the water, but some scientists found that when they looked at the lead levels in different areas around the country, Flint wasn’t even the highest.

MB: Speaking of heavy metals, people talk a lot about mercury in fish. Is that as much of a problem as people say?

DG: How big a problem any specific toxin can be is often dependent on the individual. Some people are more sensitive and have faster, stronger reactions than others. But even if a toxin is not bothering your system enough for you to notice a symptom, it might be greatly increasing your risk of neurological or immune-related conditions, including autoimmune disorders.

There are a lot of things going on that people generally don’t understand, and one of them is the issue of mercury in fish. We know that there’s a huge amount in some fish, such as shark, swordfish, and many species of tuna, although not the very small ones. But is eating fish a problem? That depends on how much of it you’re consuming, how old you are now, and how much time you’ve got left on this planet. Mercury is definitely a problem. The question is, for how many people is fish the largest source of mercury? If somebody has one single amalgam filling in their mouth, it could easily be outgassing more mercury every day than the amount they’re getting in their fish.

People sometimes ask me, “Would it be harmful for me to have some canned tuna a couple of times a week?” The thing is, they may be using their cellphone 10 to 30 hours a week. So, I ask, “Wouldn’t it make sense to reduce or remove whatever is hurting you the most first?” In some cases, using a corded phone at home might help them more than not eating the mercury-laden tuna a couple of times a week.

MB: What about pharmaceutical drugs? How big a source of toxins are those?

DG: That depends on the person. For many people, pharmaceuticals can be a major source and can also contribute to the toxic load in other ways.

A specific pharmaceutical may be destroying the ability of one of your detox organs to do its job. In the case of statins, this would be your liver. That’s why anybody on statins has to have liver tests done many times a year. If a drug is overloading or hurting your liver or kidneys, it’s reducing your body’s ability to get every other poison out.

A lot of people don’t think about drugs that they have been taking for years and years, such as NSAIDs, which have been known to cause kidney failure. Different drugs can affect different organs, depending on which pathway they take for elimination from the body. If somebody is taking a pain medication almost every day, they’re not addressing the cause of their pain; they’re only addressing the symptom. If they don’t start addressing the cause, that painkiller is going to give them additional problems.

MB: What are the signs and symptoms of toxic overload?

DG: If you had asked how somebody would know if their toxic body burden was increasing every day, my response would have been: Do you live somewhere other than a pristine rainforest? If so, your toxic body burden is increasing every day. This has been very well researched, and the Environmental Working Group (ewg.org) has the best information on it for the public.

But if we use the word overload, what are the symptoms? They vary immensely, which makes it very hard for both the individual and the doctor to identify them. In a lot of people, they include inflammation and pain somewhere in the body. The most common symptoms are fatigue, lack of energy, and headaches – although for some people, the latter are caused by dehydration. Others include dizziness and nausea, as well as tinnitus – ringing in the ears – due to a neurological issue. And what is it that kills the neurons or harms the nervous system? Toxins. Many other neurological problems – MS, ALS, and Parkinson’s disease – can also be caused by poisons. We know that there are clusters of Parkinson’s around agricultural areas where pesticides and herbicides are used. Fifteen people can have 15 different symptoms from the same toxic substance, or a person can have a variety of symptoms and not realize that those are caused by toxins.

MB: What if we just avoid most toxins and clean up our diet? Won’t the body just naturally detox?

DG: This answer has two parts that are equally important. One is that our bodies had certain abilities when we were born, and we’ve destroyed a lot of those over time. Getting them back once they have been lost is rather difficult. So, if your liver and kidneys are functioning at only 50 percent of the level that they should be, they may not be able to restore themselves without your help. At the very least, you might need kidney and liver support for maybe a year to enable them to perform their functions properly.

Here’s the second part of the answer: Let’s say somebody was able to eat 100 percent organic food, with the produce picked ripe. They stopped eating all the starches, sugars, and other things that depress their immune system, brought in enough properly raised animal products, and ate lots of good fats – coconut, butter, ghee, palm oil, extra-virgin olive oil, and cod liver oil. They began eating enough dietary fat to enable their body to start releasing some of the body fat that was storing toxins. Even if they did all these things perfectly, which is probably close to impossible, would this person be willing to wait 35 or 40 years to get much better, or would they like to add in the supplements and detoxification products needed to turn that into maybe two or three years?

In addition to all those dietary changes, they would have to make lifestyle decisions that enable them to avoid environmental toxins, when possible – not replacing their carpets, buying a new car, or remodeling or repainting the house. They would need to consider many other things as well, such as WiFi in the house, cell phones, and cordless phones. Many people don’t know that the cordless phone in their house is sending out a harmful inflammatory signal 24 hours a day, seven days a week, even when it’s not in use. Although it’s not a toxic substance, it’s a toxic frequency, and it causes a toxic reaction in the body.

We’ve become a convenience-oriented world, and many of us don’t realize that, years from now – or perhaps sooner – the things we are doing are going to cause a serious health problem, and we could prevent it by reducing our exposure to those things.

MB: Which common diseases or conditions can be helped by detoxification therapies?

DG: Basically, all of them. Multiple sclerosis, all the different myalgias and arthritic conditions, and even heart disease can be helped, because toxins cause inflammation. Anything that hurts your immune system, whether or not it’s brought it down so much that you now have cancer, is going to cause problems.

I really don’t believe there are any health problems that might not be able to be reversed, if we have enough time and the person’s willing to make all the necessary changes. I have not yet seen somebody who can’t be helped. I have reversed end-stage cancer and all sorts of cardiovascular conditions. Does that mean I can reverse everything? I would never say that. But, in a general sense, I don’t think there’s a specific condition other than death that is irreversible.

MB: How do you generally work with your patients to help them detoxify?

DG: I begin by educating them on the most toxic things that they’re currently doing, so that they can choose to reduce some of those. I want them to start switching to healthier foods – organic foods, if they can afford it. However, even if somebody says, “I can only afford to make 10 percent of the food I eat organic,” that change will be beneficial. I would also like them to cut down on what I call Sabotage Foods®, a term that I have trademarked. Sabotage Foods® are sugars, starches, and alcohols, the latter two of which the body turns into sugar.

In addition to these dietary changes, I put them on some basic supplements, including nutrients that I know they’re likely to be deficient in. For the most part, the entire population of North America has less than optimal levels of magnesium, vitamins C, A, and D, and often other nutrients as well. The seven basic supplements that I give most people are a multivitamin/mineral formula and extra A, C, D, and E, along with fish oil and a probiotic. Sometimes, we also use a couple of others to address a specific condition they have, such as arthritis or heart disease.

I also get them on herbal or homeopathic kidney and liver support, so they can start cleaning themselves out. My favorite tablets are Liver Balance Plus and Kidney Rescue from the Pure Body Institute, and my favorite homeopathic liquids are apo-HEPAT and Renelix from Pekana Homeopathic Spagyrics.

I have to start many people at one-tenth, or occasionally one-fiftieth, of the labeled dose because, as their organs start moving the poisons out, they experience symptoms of overload and feel terrible. Then, we increase the dosage very gradually until I know that those organs are working decently well – which basically means the person has been taking the full dose of both the kidney and the liver product for three or four weeks without any problems. If they have overload symptoms when they go up a drop or a tablet on their way to the full dose, we have to go back down and proceed more slowly.

MB: Typically, how long do you do that part of the protocol?

DG: I generally have people on kidney and liver support for a minimum of six months. Then, once those organs are working well enough, I can add in some products that pull out specific toxins, such as lawn and garden chemicals, sick-building chemicals, or a particular insecticide. If I only supported the kidneys and liver for, let’s say, four months and then started detoxing the rest of the system, we would start overloading those organs again. So, I’m going to either keep people on the kidney and liver support at a lower dose or bring it back in periodically as they eliminate poisons through those organs more and more.

The amount of time that it will take me to effect a fairly thorough reduction in their toxic load is obviously going to vary from person to person. The two biggest variables are how much poison is in them and how long it is going to take to get their kidneys and liver working well enough so that we can start to pull those poisons out without making them feel worse.

MB: In addition to the kidney and liver support, are there different methods that tendto be effective for helping remove specific types of toxins from the body?

DG: Yes, there are specific things that work better in specific areas. For pesticides and herbicides, as well as quite a number of other poisonous substances, I use homeopathic remedies called detoxosodes. The homeopathic pharmacy that makes them has taken the substances that we want to remove from the body and done a serial dilution, so that little – or, in most cases, none – of that physical substance is left in the bottle. However, the energy is still there, imprinted into the memory of the water used as a carrier medium. I use those because they help release the poisons from your cells.

I use a lot of these homeopathic detox products, such as Sick Building Detox, Lawn and Garden Detox, and Fire Retardant Chemical Detox. To determine which product to give a patient at any specific time, I use kinesiology, or muscle testing, which is very effective when practiced correctly. (For more information on kinesiology, see my websites naturopath4you.com and davidgetoff.com.)

I rarely use detoxosodes for heavy metals, though. Over the years, I’ve tried many different substances for heavy metals, including spirulina, chlorella, Metal-Free, and Intestinal Metals Detox (IMD). Every time I find one that seems to work better than the last, I switch over to it. For the most part, the one that I’ve been using for the last ten years or so is a natural substance called zeolite, which is mined. It has a cage-like molecular structure that loves to grab onto poisons – specifically, heavy metals.

The zeolite product I use is called ACZ Nano, and it’s made by Results RNA. I find it works very well. I have people shake it up really well, because the zeolite settles, and then spray it in their mouth a couple of times a day. I usually have them slowly work up from 1 spray twice a day to anywhere between 7 and 10 sprays twice a day.

Some people say, “But the zeolite doesn’t get into your bloodstream.” Even though zeolite particles may not be small enough to enter the bloodstream, you’re still detoxing the gastrointestinal tract. The body abhors a disequilibrium, so if you start bringing down the levels of heavy metals in your GI tract, those toxins will start coming out of other areas and moving into the GI tract. So, when you’re detoxing one area, you’re really detoxing a lot of other areas, as well.

However, you have to make sure the products you’re using don’t already contain heavy metals, to avoid intoxing while you’re detoxing. That’s been an issue with certain brands of chlorella, which were found to be high in mercury. I’ve had a couple of zeolite products tested that were loaded with heavy metals.

MB: It seems like there’s a very intense detox period followed by what we might call a maintenance period. Typically, what is the time frame of the detox period, and do people need to continue with maintenance for the rest of their lives?

DG: Again, it varies from person to person, but a typical detox period would be two years. That’s generally long enough to bring someone’s levels down sufficiently to greatly reduce their risk factors for disease. However, even if you change your environment, there are still poisons out there. Your body is like your house – no matter how thoroughly you clean it, it’s going to get dirty again. So, I generally suggest that people do what I’m going to do, which is to stop practicing any form of detox after I die.

Those of my patients who are the most interested in long-term health continue to come in even after we’ve been working together for a couple of years. They come back in when the last bottle of the detox product they were on is empty, so that I can muscle test them again to find out which product to give them next. A person can keep working in that way indefinitely, but if someone says, “I’m not going to do that much. Give me a time frame,” I tell them, “Okay, two years.”

Sometimes, people ask if it would be beneficial for them to do another bottle each of kidney and liver support once every year or two. I reply, “Sure. Absolutely.” After one or two years, I’m sure those organs could use a little more help.

One of the other detox experts says that it takes eight years or more for our skeleton to completely break down and rebuild itself. Since it has been proven that heavy metals are also stored in bone tissue, we should detox for at least eight years. I can’t really find fault with that logic, but if I say eight years, it can scare people off of even starting the process.

MB: What mistakes do people typically make when implementing a detoxification protocol and what are the ramifications?

DG: Probably the biggest mistake is believing something that has been drummed into us for a long time and is completely incorrect. That’s the concept of “No Pain, No Gain.” I tell my patients that no matter which product they are currently using – whether it’s kidney support, liver support, or one of the others – I want them to take it at a dosage that detoxifies their body without causing symptoms of any kind.

Even though I stress that I want a non-symptomatic detox, people often think that if they move faster, even if they feel bad, they will get better faster – which is in the majority of cases is not true. In actuality, that symptom of feeling bad is the body saying, “Excuse me. You’re hurting me. Would you please stop?” Hurting your body is not a way to accomplish things faster. Instead, you’re overloading your detox pathways, and your most likely going to slow down the process.

On occasion, people move too quickly because of disbelief in the products. That was the case with one medical doctor I was treating. After he had been on kidney and liver support for a sufficient length of time, I gave him a homeopathic detox product. I advised him to start with two drops twice a day, and increase each dose by two drops every week until he had reached ten drops twice a day. I told him that if he experienced any symptoms that weren’t there before, he should drop down to the previous dosage and stay on that for about three weeks before trying to raise it again.

Two days later he called me and said, “I think I know the answer to this, but I want to be sure. We were taught in medical school that homeopathy is just water and alchohol and that it doesn’t work. I thought the remedy you gave me was bogus, so I just went ahead and took ten drops twice the first day. Now, I feel like I was run over by a truck. I have no energy, I’m nauseous, and I had to call in sick for the first time in years. Was it the drops?”

I asked, “Was there anything else you did that would have made you feel as if you were having a detox reaction?”

He replied, “No, I’m doing everything else exactly the same as before.”

I said, “Then, it’s the detox drops.” I told him to take 1000 mg of vitamin C per hour and drink a lot of water throughout the day, and he’d most likely feel quite a bit better in 24 hours. In addition, I pointed out he now knew homeopathy was not bogus.”

MB: Can you distinguish briefly the methods that enhance the body’s innate ability to detox from those that directly remove toxins?

DG: The best ways to enhance the body’s abilities would be to drink more water and support the kidneys and liver. We can also support the lymphatic system. Anything that promotes lymphatic drainage, such as bouncing on a rebound trampoline, is definitely helping the body detox.

In terms of specific substances, vitamin C and garlic will support the body’s detoxification processes, while binding agents such as zeolite and activated charcoal are directly detoxifying. If somebody takes a teaspoon of activated charcoal, puts it in a jar with four to eight ounces of water, shakes it up, and drinks that half an hour before a meal, it doesn’t prompt detoxification. It simply grabs onto and binds a huge number of poisonous substances if it touches them on its way through the gastrointestinal tract.

MB: What about EDTA and DMSA?

DG: There are quite a number of substances, including EDTA and DMSA, that act as chelators. They enter the bloodstream, where they bond to certain metals and minerals and deliver them to the kidneys or liver for excretion through the urine or stool. EDTA is such a good chelating agent for lead that, used intravenously, it’s one of the standard medical treatments for lead poisoning. It is a poor binder of other heavy metals, though. A lot of people are doing EDTA chelation for mercury, and it has been shown to be a very poor chelating agent for that, although DMSA and a lot of the others do chelate mercury. The reason I don’t promote any of these is that they are too aggressive. They work too quickly and can overload too many pathways. I don’t recommend any method of detox – such as EDTA and DMSA IV chelation – that cannot safely be used every day for at least a year.

One of the things known to be a big problem in chelation therapy is relocation. If you take something that breaks a toxic substance loose from someplace in your body, doesn’t bind it well enough, and – instead of moving it out through your urine, stool, sweat, hair, or nails – simply shifts it to some other place in the body, it might be even more harmful in its new location.

MB: Are there any foods or supplements with specific detoxification properties that people can use for maintenance after the main part of the detox is over?

DG: Certainly. Chlorophyll seems to help with detox, so green vegetables such as asparagus, broccoli, kale, and spinach are good. We know that garlic aids in detoxification, as I mentioned. My wife and I put fresh or granulated garlic on just about everything.

Cilantro has been shown to be a very good agent for grabbing on to heavy metals. You can add it to various foods, put some in your smoothie, or just eat it as a vegetable. However, because it’s one of the foods that really helps you detoxify, eating too much of it can cause a detox reaction.

MB: Are there specific genetic errors that would require you to do a little extra to help a person detox?

DG: The best answer to that is “yes but.” If somebody’s kidneys or liver have a poor ability to detoxify certain chemicals, I’ll treat them the same way whether or not that problem has a genetic basis. I don’t do genetic testing because I don’t give a hoot what the test says. I care about the feedback the patient gives me when we start doing kidney and liver support.

Some people have trouble getting their doses up to where I want them. Every time they try to increase their dosage, they get a detox reaction and have to drop it back down again. If I were to run DNA tests on those people, we would see problems. However, I wouldn’t do anything different, because I’m always trying to push people to detox at the fastest speed that does not provoke symptoms.

MB: Do you use any laboratory tests to assess your clients’ toxic load?

DG: There are very few tests that I use, because I have found muscle testing to be so accurate in providing the information I need. However, Great Plains Laboratories has a toxic non-metal panel called GPL-TOX that detects metabolites of many different poisons in the urine. That test sometimes helps me to identify something that I wouldn’t have thought to ask a patient about.

I ran the GPL-TOX on my wife for fun, and I found that a particular chemical associated with organophosphate pesticides was really high – way off the top of the chart. I realized that her pesticide exposure was coming from her favorite hobby, playing golf twice a week at one of the most toxic places you can be on planet earth – a golf course. So, I put her back on kidney and liver support, which she hadn’t taken for a while, and increased her vitamin C. I also put her on a liposomal glutathione supplement, as glutathione plays an important role in detoxification. (The brands that I like are ReadiSorb and Valimenta.) Although she has no health problems that would indicate pesticide poisoning, that toxin could cause cancer or neurological disease, so I’m addressing it based on the test.

I was introduced to the GPL-TOX by a doctor who was giving a presentation at the Environmental Health Symposium. He mentioned that a particular chemical was very high in one of his patients whom he had run this test on, and he found out that it was a metabolite of a chemical that outgasses from memory foam mattresses. She got rid of her memory foam mattress and, in 30 days, all of the neurological symptoms that she’d had for years were gone. After that, two other patients with neurological problems tested high for the same chemical. In both cases, the doctor said, removal of memory foam mattresses from their homes eliminated their symptoms within 30 days – and the test had helped him find the source of the problem.

The only other test I really like, although it’s rather expensive, is the Cardio ION Profile. It was originally run by Metametrix Clinical Laboratories, but it’s now available through Genova. It’s a blood test and urine test combined, and it shows your levels of essential fatty acids, amino acids, vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants. For people who can afford it, it gives a lot of information.

MB: In closing, how would somebody find a practitioner versed in effective detoxification therapies?

DG: That’s a very difficult question to answer. There are some good associations out there: the American College for Advancement in Medicine (ACAM), the International College of Integrative Medicine (ICIM), and the International and American Association of Clinical Nutritionists (IAACN). However, it’s impossible to assess, by looking at a number of professional listings, a specific practitioner’s ability to safely and effectively help your body detox, because we have no standards of practice in this area.

So, I don’t know the answer to that question, and I’d like to. In fact, that’s one of the reasons I started writing the book that I’m almost finished with. I want to be able to tell people to go to my website and click on The Detox Professionals or The Detox Academy, which is what I’ll probably call it, to find health professionals whom I have trained. I’m going to teach them everything I know so they can help their clients or patients effectively – and, at that point, people will know what they are getting when they select a practitioner.

FOOTNOTE

* The dictionary definition of the word toxin is “a poisonous substance that is a specific product of the metabolic activities of a living organism and is usually very unstable, notably toxic when introduced into the tissues, and typically capable of inducing antibody formation.” (Source: Merriam-Webster.com; emphasis added.) However, since the general public uses the word toxin pretty much interchangeably with poison – and since we do not say de-poisonify but rather detoxify, the word toxin is used in a general sense in this interview when referring to various poisons, including toxic chemicals and metals.

David J. Getoff is a board-certified clinical nutritionist, traditional naturopath, and fellow of the American Association of Integrative Medicine. He is the vice president of Price-Pottenger. David maintains a private practice in San Diego, California, and has contributed numerous articles in past issues of the Price-Pottenger Journal of Health and Healing. His websites are: naturopath4you.com and davidgetoff.com.

Mark Bielsky serves on the Price-Pottenger Board of Directors. 

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Published in the Price-Pottenger Journal of Health & Healing
Winter 2017 – 2018 | Volume 41, Number 4
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