Interviewer: Doctor, you've written a couple of new books. One is "Toxic Relief." Can you talk about what some of the more common toxins are that are out there that we come in contact with that we probably don't even realize?
Dr. Don Colbert: Well, it's interesting. There's about 70,000 chemicals that are out there and a study done, it was either the EPA or the CDC, I forget which one, but they said the average American contains about 700 of these chemicals; significant quantities of these chemicals in our bodies. Essentially these chemicals include, especially pesticides, organophosphates, organochlorines like DDT, DDE. What's amazing is that DDT was banned in the '70's but we still have this and the metabolites in our body, you know, 40 years later. Also mercury. Mercury is so common. It's everywhere; lead. Everyone has got mercury in their bodies; pretty much everyone on the planet. Everyone has got lead. Everyone has fire retardants. Everyone has these phthalates, you know, these plasticizers in them.
Again, these toxins have unique capabilities where they gum up the mitochondria. They create free radicals. They damage certain cell structures creating free radical damage. But others are solvents like benzene, taluline, the hexanes and things like that. There's just so many different chemicals out there that are potential carcinogens and that just damage our, especially the mitochondria, as well as the brain, as well as they collect in areas from the heart to the kidneys to the liver to the brain and GI tract and kidneys.
Again, we're just inundated with so many different types of toxins. That's why when people get older, and this was a study that just came out a few weeks ago that I found fascinating, they found women that were osteopenic and osteoporotic, they started getting high blood pressure and they started getting decreased kidney function. They finally realized the lead was coming out of their bones. These women, when they lost bone, they had had lead that stores in the bone. It's known that lead stores in the bone. When the lead came out of the bones due to the osteoporosis process it literally redeposited in the kidneys and made their blood pressure go up and then reduced their kidney functions.
I said, that's amazing because a lot of these diseases we're seeing later in life are simply either a collection of these free metals that are actually overburdening our system. Like mercury and lead coming out the bones and cadmium from, you know, cigarette second hand smoke or from auto exhaust and things like that. It could be these phthalates building up that affect our hormone levels, or it could be these pesticides building up effecting, they effect the mitochondria. They effect so many areas of the brain; even our thinking and our neurotransmitters in our brain leading one to more memory problems, to more depression and anxiety, and who knows what other types of problems we're having.