In this week's Q&A, I focused on hormone optimization for pregnancy, copper toxicity from organic pesticides, EMF exposure concerns, and mold recovery protocols.
As always, this is for general education. It’s not medical advice. I’m not practicing medicine via Q&A.
Here’s what we covered…
DHEA in Pregnancy
DHEA is a sex steroid hormone. In women with PCOS, it will be pathologically elevated. You don’t need to give them more and you shouldn’t. I’ve also had women have idiosyncratic reactions to DHEA because it is an androgen.
I target a level of about 250 based on the LabCorp reference range for women in general. But women can get too much. Very unusual. Men, not so much.
In pregnancy, I would be inclined to use it because I would assume that it would support other sex steroid hormone levels. That being said, I would always defer to an obstetrician or midwife who’s perhaps better trained in that area.
I haven’t worried about the form and I haven’t seen the form matter when it came to testing. I just take off the shelf DHEA. I’ve used Quicksilver, Douglas Labs, Designs for Health. I haven’t had a clear trend on what works and what does not work.
Copper Sulfate in Organic Crops
Copper sulfate is an organic pesticide approved for use in organic crops because it is technically a natural product. But copper sulfate is inorganic copper. Your body can’t use inorganic copper the way it can use organic copper from foods like oysters or beef liver.
When I looked into the data, when you do the math for how much copper sulfate is being sprayed per year on planet Earth, there’s 60 milligrams being sprayed per person per day. If the average person gets one milligram a day in their diet, they’re spraying 60 times that on our crops every day. Pretty wild.
I think a lot of this copper is getting incorporated into the food and then people are consuming it. I think that’s one of the reasons why people are having so much trouble in our modern world with fruit, because fruit is very heavily treated with copper sulfate.
We’ll often have people limit these high copper potential foods and mostly it’s fruits.
Lowering Thyroid Antibodies
I don’t trend thyroid antibodies and because I don’t trend them, I don’t see patients resolving them. Lots of patients who are asymptomatic and feel well do have thyroid autoantibody levels that are detectable.
There’s a strong trend when we fix minerals and vitamins and macronutrients and diet and lifestyle over a long enough period of time. We see patients becoming less and less dependent upon thyroid support.
I had a woman come in on no thyroid hormone, started supplements, minerals, vitamins based on her lab testing. She saw rapid progress, felt much better, achieved her clinical goals. We added thyroid hormone and she rapidly lost weight, was delighted. Then we didn’t taper it fast enough and she ended up having some panic attacks. She cut the thyroid hormone out and all of that resolved.
Her thyroid hormone levels are better than ever now off the thyroid hormone after about two years of the right vitamins and minerals based on her unique labs.
EMF Exposure
There was a post on social media about the massive magnetic fields near the 49er stadium, which explain their very high rates of injury. I think that’s right. We’ve known for decades now that high EMF really degrade collagen and therefore undermine the integrity of the body.
The usual mouthpieces of the establishment have said this is a conspiracy theory. Those people obviously have no idea what they’re talking about. They’re just covering for an industry that we know has a lot of hazards and dangers.
Sources of pollution for EMF include cell phones, wireless routers, any kind of household appliance or electronic, smart meters on your homes. I try to hardwire everything in my own life. This whole computer setup is hardwired. There’s no wireless signals.
Little things anyone can do. Don’t put your phone on your body when you can keep it off. Keep it in a pocket on the backpack, put it in the console of your car. Even six inches actually does make a difference in terms of your exposure long term.
I wouldn’t work next to a refrigerator, deep freezer, or smart meter. I would never sleep next to a smart meter. The closest I think I would ever consider sleeping to one on a regular basis is about 30 feet.
You can go to your electric company and say I want my smart meter disabled and I want to go back to the old meter type.
I recommend people look at the 14 day reset. It gives them the minerals, the hydration, the sunlight, all the things that help them initially to mitigate the stress and damage being induced by EMF exposure.
Indoor Air Quality
The people who live in the highest air pollution environments are gonna have the worst toxic burden. Very subtle, insidious effect, but I guarantee you the people in Chicago, New York, LA, Atlanta have a much tougher time getting well.
Maximize your outdoor air quality first by picking the right place to live. For indoor air quality, I like to see a particle filter, HEPA filter specifically. Then I like to think about how else are we gonna clean the air. Are we gonna add like an ionizer or a UV light filter.
For VOCs, simplest thing to do to minimize VOCs is minimize your new stuff. New furniture, new clothing. I had a woman who ran a boutique clothing store and they had terrible ventilation and she had these crazy toxin levels and she just never made progress.
Getting your furniture aired out outside, opening the doors and windows. I tend to open doors and windows morning and night, get some fresh air in, get all that pollution out.
Rewiring a Hypersensitive Nervous System
Whenever I hear chronic congestion and panic and nervous system feeling fragile, I think about indoor air pollutants and specifically mold. A significant proportion of these folks have mold somewhere in the building where they’re living or working. When you eliminate that, a lot of the things get better.
The breathing program and breath work that I recommend across the board comes out of a school called the Buteyko method. It’s not overwhelming. It’s pretty simple. I really like it.
We have a mold toxicity protocol. We based it on Neil Nathan’s work. Breathwork is one of my favorite things for this. I’ve also seen the LifeWave patches work well.
I know that with what we do, we always get mold cases in the practice and our system works very well for getting those people well. I think it’s much more efficient than a lot of other systems I’ve seen.
Final Thoughts
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Until next time, be well,
Dr. Stillman
Executive Summary
DHEA supplementation when trying to conceive
Copper sulfate exposure through organic crops
Lowering thyroid antibodies and patterns of recovery
Cookware recommendations for optimal health
Oligo scan versus HTMA for mineral testing
EMF exposure and the 49ers practice field controversy
Indoor air quality and VOC reduction strategies
Polycystic kidney disease protocols
Chronic congestion and airway issues in children
Iron supplementation during pregnancy
Rewiring a hypersensitive nervous system after mold exposure
Vitamin C protocols adjusted for pregnancy
