Listen
Listen to this podcast or watch the video.CLICK HERE
Transcript
- 02:10 About Tom Malterre
- 04:51 Controversial Studies about GMO’s
- 09:21 GMOs and How they work
- 12:43 Pesticides, Herbicides and How they work
- 25:49 GMO’s and Gut Problems
- 36:27 Healing your Gut damaged by GMOs
- 41:31 GMO’s and the Gut Biome
- 48:29 The most pressing health issue in the world today
- 52:13 More about Tom Malterre
Wendy Myers: Welcome to the Live to 110 Podcast. My name is Wendy Myers. You can find me on myersdetox.com.
Today, I’m very excited. We have Tom Malterre of WholeLifeNutrition.net on the line. Today, we’re going to be talking about GMO’s, genetically modified organisms or genetically engineered foods; and how GMOs affect gut health, and cause a cascade of other health conditions and diseases just by eating a food.
I also have to first do our disclaimer. Please keep in mind that this program is not intended to diagnose or treat any disease or health condition and is not a substitute for professional medical advice. The Live to 110 Podcast is solely information in nature. Please consult your health care practitioner before engaging in any treatment or diet that we suggest on the show.
If you want to sign up to get my free Live to 110 by Weighting Less e-guide and a taste of my upcoming book, The Modern Paleo Survival Guide, you can go to the website. There’s millions of places you can sign up to get free copies of five free survival guides and my weight loss guide, so go do that.
I also have a new episode of Modern Paleo Cooking up on the website, so definitely go and check that out this week. It’s all about Butternut Squash with Fried Sage. It was so good! I had a lot of fun making that on the show.
So today, we’re going to be talking to Tom Malterre. He received his bachelors and masters of science in nutrition from Bastyr University and is licensed by the State of Washington as a certified nutritionist.
Tom travels throughout the United States and Canada lecturing at conference on topics as diverse as vitamin D, gluten intolerance and digestive health. He empowers his people, and his followers through classes, seminars and private counseling; with his insight and depth of knowledge about the biochemical interactions with our body and their relationship to our diet.
So Tom, thank you so much for coming on the show.
Tom Malterre: Absolutely my pleasure. Thanks for having me, Wendy.
Wendy Myers: Why don’t you tell the listeners a little bit about yourself and how you got into your nutrition and just your whole deal?
Tom Malterre: Well, that was a beautiful introduction. You said so much.
Well basically, as a kid, my family doctor was Dr. John McDougall. And so it was nice having an MD in my life who was saying, “Look, I’m never going to treat you with meds. I’m always going to start with food first and then I’m going to use medication second.”
So as a kid, I used to listen to this guy lecture all the time. I had a crush on his little daughter when we were ten, nine years old or whatever.
So I kind of got into my head early, if you’re looking at cardiovascular disease, if you’re looking at blood pressure, if you’re looking at cancer, then look at the food first because if you tap into any data whatsoever, you’ll see that the diet will have a stronger correlation than anything medication, anything else basically you can do – other than maybe swallowing poison.
So I said, “Wow! This is amazing! I mean, food on our planet can change our health? That’s fascinating. Why? What is it? I mean, the pharmaceuticals are isolated chemicals that can affect single pathways. What are foods?” I started diving into it, I was like, “Oh, my gosh! Foods are tens of thousands of different chemicals and they affect every single pathway on our human body.”
In fact, we are eloquently designed to interact with these chemicals on a daily basis. They would literally talk to our cells and tell us what proteins to make, how to express our genes, what specific things to produce depending on what specific stressors we’re exposed to.
The discussion that happens between our food and our cells is gorgeous. It’s eloquent. I’ll never understand it, but I’m going to die trying – hopefully, not right now.
Wendy Myers: Yeah, I know. I continue to be amazed at how much you can learn about the human body and how it functions. It’s so fascinating to me. It’s so fascinating.
Tom Malterre: I’ll die trying. I should say, I went through. I got a couple of science degrees and I’ve just been a geek. I want to know everything. And anything that catches my attention, I’ll go after. So if I’m looking at thyroid function, I’ll say, “What’s going on?” being on thyroid function. I’ll get together with my friend, Allen Christianson and take his courses and look at all the data.
And then when it came to GMO’s, I kind of came across when I was looking at gut health gluten sensitivity, when I was looking at thyroid function, when I was looking at leaky gut and it kind of fit in. I talked to Dr. Don Huber who’s a plant pathologist from Perdue University. He’s had over 50 years of service both in the military and as a civilian and looking at chemical alterations in our environment.
And then, Jeffrey Smith who’s a world-renowned expert, I got to talk to him. I interviewed Dr. Michael Antonio, Dr./Prof. Seralini. Dr. Michael Antonio works with genes himself, genetics.
Tom Malterre: And then. Dr. Seralini, of course, is the “controversial” French researcher who has looked at the effect of both the GM crops (the genetic modified crops) and the pesticides associated with genetically modified crops and how they change cellular function – you know, that rate study that scared everybody. They got withdrawn and then put back and then whatever.
So I’d love to tell his story when we get around to that as well because he has his own side to the story. I got to interview him for 55 minutes the day after that article was published. And so, everybody is like, “Oh, he’s crazy. He’s crazy!” I’m like, “Well, wait a second.”
Wendy Myers: Those rats grew huge tumors, which is frightening.
Tom Malterre: Yeah, right. They’re discrediting that one article and you’re doing it off of the base of tumors. You’re saying, “Look, you can’t extrapolate from the data and say that with this control size and this type of mouse, that that tumor was a result of the genetically modified crop and/or the Roundup that was fed in the feed.
The weird thing is that’s not all the study found. The study found pituitary alterations, it found kidney alterations, liver alterations. It found completely different levels of antioxidants in the animals that were fed the GM food or the GM-associated pesticides.
So wait a second, that’s telling me – wait, wait, wait. The intake of antioxidants goes down from those particular foods? And they’re looking at caffeic and ferulic acids.
No one is really looking at the minutiae. No one is looking and saying, “Wait! There’s minor changes that are occurring.” Everybody is saying, “Oh, you can’t say that it causes these huge tumors. That’s ridiculous!” But what about all the rest of this stuff? They couldn’t discredit that.
And when you look back at all these other studies that he was looking at, glyphosate effects and his recent studies, those haven’t been withdrawn. Those aren’t discredited, so his lab actually does some amazing work.
So they just poo-poo him off of that one study because it’s so controversial and it had so much press. It seems a little unscientific to me. It seems like we should really examine what some of the findings were in those studies.
For example, that lab, his study showed us that 90-day safety trials are not adequate for those chemicals and/or foods. Ninety days safety trials are the industry standard.
We have over 87,000 chemicals in industrial use right now in the United States whether it’s coming from agriculture, flame retardants or plastics, whatever it is. Did you know in 2010 – and this is an article published in Pediatrics in 2011 – in 2010, there were 74 billion pounds of chemicals imported or produced in the United States every single day – 74 billion pounds.
Now think about that for a second, okay? That’s over 250 lbs. per person per day – per day.
And then when you think about that number, they weren’t even looking at pesticides. They weren’t looking at Roundup. They weren’t looking at all of the other chlorophos and malathion, all the other things that are being used in agriculture all the time.
They weren’t looking at food additives. Of course, we have all of the preservatives that we’re putting in our foods, the food dyes that we’re putting in our foods. They weren’t looking at fuels. And coal, hello? Look at coal. It’s a catastrophe at pollution. And they weren’t looking at pharmaceuticals.
So how many people do you know over the age of 40 that aren’t on four to five to six medications in the United States? I mean, I’m seeing kids who are coming in at six months of age on Zantac from their pediatric physicians because they have colic or something. So the amount of chemicals we’re exposed to is astronomical.
Wendy Myers: And we wonder why everyone has poor gut health and digestive issues.
Tom Malterre: Right! And then when you look at, “Okay, who’s supposed to be evaluating this?”, it looks like out of all those chemicals, less than 3000 had really adequate safety testing and all those trials primarily were done for 90 days on animals – 90 days. And here’s what we’re seeing, Wendy, what we’re seeing from Seralini and others is that the gradual effects of organ functions, hormonal function occur over one-sixth of the animal’s lifetime, not 90 days. We’re looking at past 120 days.
So if you look at one-sixth of the life span of a human, we’re looking at 13, 14, 15 years depending on male or female. So how many chemical trials do you know where people are exposed to something and they’re waiting that many years?
Tom Malterre: Why am I saying all these? I want to say this because GMO’s in the U.S. were introduced primarily in 1996, 1996. And if you go back and you look at increased rates of thyroid cancer or if you look at increased rates of irritable bowel hospitalization or complications or death, if you look at Celiac Disease, if you look at autism or diabetes and obesity even, we’ll see this spike start happening around that same time.
Now it could be completely coincidental, it could be. It’s totally possible. But at that time, what happened was we kind of had this clean bill that say, “Alright, industrial agriculture is great. It’s going to ‘feed the world.’
So let’s go ahead and genetically modify a bunch of plants to either withstand the applications of hundreds of millions of pounds of herbicides/pesticides or let’s go ahead and put a pesticide in the plant itself and then have that repel the rootworm or what-not – the Bt Corn, which perhaps you’ve heard of, right? Actually every single cell of that plant will produce this natural “pesticide”.
Wendy Myers: That’s a lovely thought.
Tom Malterre: Well, the problem is – come on, this is a safe chemical. It’s used in organic agriculture. When you spray it on the crops, it will keep some pests at bay. But then when it’s exposed to air, water or sunlight, it will degrade over time. Within the soil, it’ll degrade relatively quickly. When you trap that component within a cell, it doesn’t have that exposure to the natural elements as much.
So the upsetting thing was when we looked at females and their offspring, unborn offspring and we found that in Quebec, there was a high level of this Bt toxin in the blood – high level of Bt toxin.
It was supposed to be degraded in the digestive tract. It was supposed to be dispersed out of the system relatively quickly, so how is this happening? Where is this coming from?
The theory is that it survives. It’s ending up in the blood stream. And if it does, then is it causing any harm?
There’s really no studies examining this, which just seems insane to me. But if you have a high level of Bt, is it because it’s getting in through the intestinal tract (how it does through an insect’s intestinal tract).
This chemical is designed to create pores in the intestinal tract of the insects and allow for the migration of microbes through and then have that an animal die of a type of sepsis, right – or insect in this case, not animal. That’s kind of disturbing, to think like, “Well, what if it’s doing something similar in our human bodies?”
Wendy Myers: Yeah, and that’s in soy as well, the Bt toxin?
Tom Malterre: Bt is just going for approval right now in soy. It’s been in the corn for an extended period of time. But usually what they’ll do is they’ll do what’s called ‘double stack traits’. So you’ll have the Roundup ready and you’ll have the Bt traits, so you’ll get them both. So not only will you have this But toxin, but you’ll also have that spray of Roundup in the Roundup residue.
Let’s look at Roundup for a second. So is a Bt toxin toxic? It causes pores? It could be an intestinal irritant. We don’t know. We have no idea because there’s no human trials on this even though it’s been in the food supply for quite some time.
Let’s look at what Roundup does since you have two traits. One is they put the toxin in the cell of the plant. The other one is to allow the plant to withstand the application of the toxic.
And in this case, it’s a unique toxin, right? Glyphosate-based herbices. Glyphosate is the active ingredient in Roundup and what it does is it’s a very potent mineral chelator.
So you have a mineral, you have the Roundup. And the Roundup, due to its structure – form equals function in science – it will bind tightly to the mineral and not let it go. And in the particular case of Roundup, it binds very tightly to a mineral called manganese.
The manganese, when it’s applied – glyphosate applied to a plant, usually with a surfactant (that get rids of the waxy layer and allows for the penetration of the glyphosate into the planet) – then it will bind to the manganese in the plant. It can get unavailable for the plant’s use.
Now what are minerals in the human body? I mean, why do we say these vitalamins – that’s what they used to be called, vitamins and minerals, right? These are the vital components for life. They keep us going. What are they needed for? Well, primarily, they’re what are called co-factors for enzymes.
So what did we just say? We said ‘form equals function’ in the body when we talked about chelation. It’s the same thing with enzymes.
You have a protein, an enzyme, it’s floating around and it can’t really be in the right form to interact with something until it has a co-factor. The co-factor will kind of dock in there and then all of a sudden, that new shape, that new form can interact with the things.
Well, in turns out that manganese is a really important co-factor for an enzyme (a protein) called the EPSPS enzyme. This particular enzyme will have downstream metabolites meaning this protein will facilitate the changing of shape of other things.
Well, I don’t want to complicate this, but it’s all about information. A particular form of a protein will allow it to mate with another form of a substance and then that will change its shape and then that will mate, and then that will change its shape and that will mate.
So the downstream actions that occur, this EPSPS enzyme makes tryptophan, it makes phenylalanine, it makes tyrosine, it will make this caffeic and ferulic acid we talked about earlier, other phenolic substances, folates – you heard of folic acid, its importance for neural tube defects, for example.
So look at all the things that come downstream from this enzyme and if that enzyme doesn’t work, you don’t get those things. So what happens? Well, the plants get very weak. They can’t function.
But there’s a secondary effect of the glyphosate. Glyphosate, in stealing the minerals from microbes will become toxic to microbes.
You look up in the air, right? You look in the water, you look on your skin, you look on the soil, everywhere, what do you see on this planet? Trillions of organisms everywhere, everywhere. We are outnumbered ten to one just in our bodies. By gene expression, we’re outnumbered 1:150. There are microbes everywhere. They give us life.
We could not access minerals in the environment with a lot of microbes. We couldn’t produce a lot of nutrients in our own intestinal tract without microbes. And it turns out that glyphosate is a biocidal. It kills certain microbes. Uh-oh…
So we’ve knocked out the microbes that could be beneficial and guess what? It’s selective. So it actually leaves behind some of the non-beneficial, some of the clostridium perfringens, for example, clostridium botulinum, some of the salmonella species that could be toxic and it will kill some of the beneficial ones that you know about, the lactobacillo bifidu and what-not.
So we end up with this pathogenic imbalance, these disease-causing organisms overtaking some of the beneficial. And so you end up in an environment of dis-ease if that makes sense.
So let’s say you have pathogenic organisms growing in the soil and let’s say you have a weak plant, the plant becomes susceptible to the microbes and dies. That’s the mechanism of action of Roundup – steal life-giving minerals, leave the soil imbalanced (potentially pathogenic) and boom! The plant dies.
Tom Malterre: Now, let’s stop and think about this for a second. What do we need for life? Do we need minerals?
Wendy Myers: Yes, we do.
Tom Malterre: What do we need for life? Do we need tryptophan, phenylalanine and tyrosine? Well, what are those used for?
Let’s take tryptophan, for example. It’s the least common amino acid in the planet – the least common. You’re lucky if you’re getting 1.5 grams in a day. And yet, this single amino acid will allow you to make some really important neurotransmitters, neurological communicating molecules, things that talk to your brain and allow you to feel certain things, things like serotonin.
We’ve heard of that one, right? If you want to feel like you’re having a great life, you want to sing the fair ole’ happy song for all time, then go over some serotonin.
And then serotonin through a couple more steps (needing some of the co-factors like folates, for example) will become melatonin. And what’s melatonin? We all know that one is the post-Thanksgiving turkey effect, right? “I’m so tired after I eat my tryptophan,” right? You want to sleep well. You want wake up feeling refreshed and happy, so tryptophan is needed. We have to have it?
Where do we get tryptophan from in nature? Tryptophan is made by (via the EPSPS enzyme) plants and microbes. So if the plants and microbes can’t make it as much because we’re spraying hundreds and millions of pounds of herbicides all over the place that inhibit that enzyme in both microbes and plants –
I don’t think anybody is even examining the repercussions. I don’t think anybody is going around and saying, “In nature, do we have as much tryptophan” – which is already the least common amino acid on the planet, “Did we have as much tryptophan as we did before this onslaught of use, the 512 million pound increase use of this herbicide in this planet?” We don’t even know.
Because the introduction of genetically modified foods directed us towards that, we’re now using it all over the place. And you know what? It’s not just on the foods. I mean, I live in the great northwest. I just took my kids up on a ridge line last night. We were hanging out this absolutely gorgeous – and we could see clear cuts everywhere.
If you see a clear cut up on in the northwest, you know that after the evergreens [inaudible 00:20:28] first primarily were chopped down – and some cider too, they were chopped down – then what they’ll do is they’ll plant the seedlings after they’ll peel the under-brush seedlings.
So they’re worried about all that are coming up first. They’re worried about other things shooting up some of the very bushes, so they’ll spray the herbicide all over the hillside. It’ll drain into the water supply and what-not. What are we doing? Well, this is everywhere.
Look at the side of the road or all highways. As you go down, you’ll see these foot or two foot long buffer of brown because they don’t want the weeds, they don’t want the plants growing over the asphalt, breaking up the asphalt so zap! They’ll just spray this Roundup.
We used to think, “Oh, come on! It’s gone in 20-40 days. It’s gone, no big deal.” But now we’re seeing it can be sequestered into the soil and chelate minerals in the soil and disappear that way. It can potentially be degraded by microbes. Some microbes can actually interact with it and degrade it. That’s a possibility.
But there are cases now we’re seeing where some of this Roundup may last in the environment in certain situations up to twenty years!
Wendy Myers: Oh, gosh. That’s frightening.
Tom Malterre: Think about this. How can you know the results of anything you do? How can you foresee what’s going to happen? Let’s identify real fast. This is not a terrible thing. It’s just is.
I think the people who were applying the herbicides [inaudible 00:21:55]. “I want to save money. I want to save man-time. I want to cause as much joy in people’s lives as I can.”
I don’t think this is a mal-intended thing, but what I think is we never really thought of all the repercussions. We never really thought, “Okay, this is what we’re doing. Let’s be aware of what we’re doing.” And then let’s look at long-term effects.
I don’t think anybody could predict it. I don’t think anybody could’ve seen some of the rat studies that were showing liver toxicity and antioxidant stress. I don’t think anybody could’ve predicted all these studies that are now coming out about the endoctrine disrupting effect of the glyphosate meaning it switches hormone.
I don’t think anybody could’ve predicted the increased rise of anencephaly, which is a neural tube defect, some of the birth defects. I don’t think anybody could’ve ever predicted those things.
But now that we’re seeing them, how many times can people look at those studies – there are literally hundreds of studies now, hundreds of studies? How many times could the look at those studies and say, “Oh, these are all false. There’s no truth here. There’s no possibility that there could be harm.”
Come on! The reality is no scientist, no scientist is worth their grain of salt or worth their paycheck, whatever analogy you want to use, will look at the situation and say, “There is no harm.” You can’t predict that. You have no idea.
This is a new denatured compound and you’re putting increasing amounts. We’re finding it in the air, we’re finding it in the soil, we’re finding it in the water. Through moms across America, we’re finding it in the breastmilk. The Bt toxins, we’re now in the cord blood of unborn infants. We’re finding it all over the place. It’s all over the place. I don’t think Einstein can foresee what’s going to happen to cell function over time. I don’t think you can see what’s going to happen to microbe function over time.
So I think what we have to do is we have to take a back step and we have to say, “We don’t know. We really don’t know.” Although it’s been beneficial for some people in increasing profit, what’s it been for the bottomline of life on this planet?
My awakening that I’m getting, Wendy is that I have these five beautiful kids. Every day, I wake up and I watch them grow and I want to do everything I can to protect them. They’re so joyful. I mean, they just sing and dance spontaneously all the time. When you look at that, you just go, “Awww… that’s just so sweet. How can I give them the possibility for a fabulous future?”
When I think of all these things, I wake up to an inbox of new research studies every single morning. The more research studies I read, the more I go, “I’m not sure industry has been taking into consideration my children, your children, your neighbor’s children, everybody’s next generation and the next generation, the next generation,” like that, right?
I think they’re very much focused on the currency of today, which is the dollar bill or the gold or the silver or you name the currency depending on what country you live in. But what we’re now looking at is the true currency of life itself. We need to breathe clean air, we need to drink clean water, we need to eat mineral-dense food, amino acid-rich foods.
Those things work together in our body to balance out our mood, to balance out our energy, to provide antioxidant protection, which will alleviate joint pain, alleviate headaches. These are all incredibly important, dynamic features of life that all stem from the elements around us. Those, those things are the true currency.
Wendy Myers: So what are the problems that GMO’s are causing specifically in our gut? And what are some of the things that we can do to heal our gut if they’ve been damaged by GMO’s?
I know so many people, even if they’re trying to eat perfectly organic, they’re eating paleo, they’re eating whole foods, whatever they’re trying to do, you still get a chip every once in a while or you still try mom’s cooking and to use regular corn or what-have-you.
It’s everywhere. It’s in all the restaurants, all of them, every single one. So what are someone to do?
Tom Malterre: That’s such a great thing. I’m going to bring one awareness because you can avoid the corn, the soy, the canola, the cottonseed. There is your highest concentration of Roundup-laden foods. There’s a new study showing that the organic versus the conventional soy or the GMO soy, there’s a different nutrient content and there is a higher level of the Roundup residue in the GMO-produced soy, of course.
So yes, those four crops, just avoid those entirely. Sugar beets, you may want to avoid. So if you see something that’s sugar and it doesn’t say “100% cane sugar” – and ideally, you would do organic cane sugar because they do spray Roundup on the cane as well. So yeah, being conscious of that.
And I want to bring another piece into this and that is when you’re making the decision to go organic, when you’re making the decision to go GMO-free, you’re protecting not just yourself. You’re protecting the air, the water, the food, the soil, the next few generations, the people who live within 500 meters of the application site (or maybe 1500 meters from a recent study).
We’re seeing [inaudible 00:27:40] studies that show 6.1 time increase of oxygen for the women who live close to pesticide areas (that’s not necessarily Roundup). There is a recent study that show it’s in 1500 meters, so basically, within a mile of application of certain pesticides. So we have to be conscious. When we buy something, it affects us and a lot of other things.
The other piece is the skin care products. Have you noticed these days – like I used to buy, I don’t want to highlight a brand, but it was called something + “Organics”. I was like, “Oh, wow! I love these products. They’re great. They focus on a lot of organic supply and what-not.
As time goes on, I notice the organic just disappear from the label. What? What just happened there? Because they have GMO ingredients in them.
And now, if you ever go out and you try and develop a supplement or a skin care product line (which a lot of my colleagues do when I used to be on the Medical Affairs Board for development of supplementation), it’s tough. It’s really tough.
Wendy Myers: I know. I’m trying to design a supplement right now. Everything is from China or GMO or something. It’s very difficult.
Tom Malterre: People don’t know that behind the scenes while they weren’t even looking, everything turned into this conventional chemical use soup. And so whenever you apply something, buy something, adjust the supplement, a lot of times, you’re getting stuff that’s genetically modified or have chemicals applied to them.
Wendy Myers: And that’s why there’s so few supplements that are USDA organic. There’s hardly any. And it’s such a popular thing. People want those products and they’re so few for that very season.
Tom Malterre: So you had a couple of questions. Number one was how to avoid it? So I gave you a couple of different things, foods to avoid like the soy, corn, cottonseed, canola and then sugar beets. So if you can get rid of those five particular things from your diet entirely…
Wendy Myers: Even organic?
Tom Malterre: Your possibility of cross-contamination on corn, soy and canola are extremely high. And unfortunately, alfalfa, there’s this genetic crossover. You have this cross-pollination and all of a sudden, you had a crop that wasn’t genetically modified that is genetically modified.
It’s really hard not to find genetically crossed crops due to the pollination. That’s tough. If you want to completely avoid, you could do that. That’s a possibility.
The other possibility is of course being very selective and quizzing, being an investigator. I will tell you, there’s nothing that drives change on this planet like a consumer.
If you are a very proactive consumer and you’re calling up a manufacturer and saying, “Okay, I see this is GMO-free, but I don’t see a certification on here… I don’t see non-GMO product certified” or whatever it is, if you push as a consumer and say, “I’m happy to buy your product when you do that… I see that your chips have organic canola oil. Can you guarantee there’s no cross-contamination? Would you be willing to consider a different oil?”
I mean, there’s chips now being made with coconut oil that are delicious. I don’t know if you’ve tried those Jackson’s brand of chips, but come on! There are options out there.
Wendy Myers: Yeah.
Tom Malterre: So we can push that. We can be conscious consumers. I think that’s a very, very powerful place to be – very powerful.
Then the other pieces you said, “What can you do to heal myself after eating genetically modified foods for years?” It’s kind of the same answer. To heal yourself, you stop participating in the process, number one, because if you are participating, you are contributing to our entire globe being saturated with chemicals.
If you step back from that, then you’ll have less of an influence on that. You’ll have more influence in directing towards a cleaner planet. That will affect you because it’s in there, the water – it’s everywhere. So that’s the first step.
The second step is grow your own food if you can, if it’s possible. Get to know your farmers, get to know the people who are supplying food around you. I’m going to put on my website, WholeLifeNutrition.net, this video I did of this permaculturist who – oh, my gosh! He blew my mind. It’s so beautiful.
He put his house and his ducks and his goats at the top of his farm. And then as it rained, all their manure will get washed down through these bioswales. They’ll be redirected. He could slow it down and spread it out and kind of capture the water as much as he could, so he didn’t have to use any irrigation at all. It was fascinating.
And then he had these storage ponds that would bleed over during the summer time. So there’s this thinking of some farmers. They’re extremely conscious of not using any fertilizers, not using any pesticides, any herbicides and having very diverse yields.
I mean, he was growing plums and applies and raspberries and grains and beans. And then he had his chickens and the eggs. I mean, the whole farm was amazing. If you can line up with people like that or you can enquire as to how you can purchase products from people like that, then boy! You will change the face of agriculture on this planet. But then, of course, there are people who live in the cities. They can’t have access to that, so I would say, look for the pasture finished, look for the organic, look for the non-GMO labeling on your products because that will give you less of a chance of having any sort of genetic modification, of course, or pesticide contamination.
But more importantly, think of what happens. Think of what happens. For example, in the Midwest right now, Indiana area and Chicago and Illinois, they’ve been looking at the rhizosphere. They’ve been looking at how the use of Roundup over years on genetically modified crops kills the microbes in the soil.
When it does that, it leaves those plants more susceptible to [inaudible 00:33:56] infection, which is a disease of the plant and it makes the plants weak.
So the soil microbes are responsible for what? They stimulate the root nodules on the plants to then interact with the soil. They secret acids and then their root nodules will absorb the minerals.
So not only are you going to have less pesticide exposure as potential irritants in your life, but you’re going to get more mineral-dense, more nutrient-dense foods, which will give you more nutrients.
And Wendy, what I’m seeing in my clinical practice – and this is my friend, Sydney Baker who’s told me about this, he says, “Look, all the disease is primarily from here, getting too much of things you don’t need or too little of things that you do need.” So the state of dis-ease is an imbalance, the state of getting too many irritants and not enough nutrients.
And nutrients would include things like love and a sense of purpose. Irritants would be things like stress as well, but then they include the pesticides, the herbicides, the air pollution. In the year 2014, the irritants are going at this and the nutrients are just dropping.
Wendy Myers: Yeah.
Tom Malterre: So is it any wonder then that we’re all walking around and so many people have irritated bowels, so many have stress and anxiety and depression.
Instead of looking to say, “Well, what nourishes us? What gives us the neurotransmitters to calm our brains down, to bring in the happiness, to put us to bed at night and tuck us in?”, instead of looking, “How can we increase those nutrients?”, we’ll add in the chemical that will inhibit the serotonin to being re-uptaked… – I don’t know if that’s a word. It’s like the serotonin re-uptake inhibitors, right? You inhibit the re-uptake of the serotonin and that has its own side effects.
So yeah, it’s a mindset that we’ve spawned ourselves in. I think the GMO’s right in the middle of that mindset. It’s like, “How can we make this mechanical, industrial, capitalistic leap forward, monetary leap forward without any respect for the nutrients, the essential elements?” I would say that’s the mindset we’re stuck in.
Wendy Myers: So what are some other things that people can do, say, if their leaky gut has been damaged by GMO’s? Should they be taking probiotics to fight the Bt toxin? Should they be drinking bone brothes? What are some specific things people can do in their daily lives to try to heal their gut?
Tom Malterre: Well, let’s look at those. Probiotics themselves are potentially beneficial. If you knocked out some of the beneficial species and you needed to replace those – and we’re now seeing that some of the exact species that were knocked out (some lactobacilli bifidu) are indeed what you get in probiotic supplementation. So yes, yes. I would say interestingly enough in my own clinical practice, there are two primary supplements — two – that I see the biggest bang for the buck in a short period of time. That is, one, probiotics and two, amino acids.
So let’s imagine that this world is where it’s at right now due to chemical imbalances. Let’s imagine you just can’t spray or use billions of pounds of chemicals every single day without adversely affecting microbes, without adversely affecting plants.
When you do affect those plants and those microbes – and they are responsible for a lot of our B vitamins, a lot of our amino acids that help our brain function – if you give some of that stuff back, either give the microbes back or give the amino acids and B vitamins back, what’s going to happen?
I would say I can tell you what happens – people sleep better, people get happier, people’s muscle tone comes back. So the amino acid supplementation can occur through complex amino acid supplementation (like you get an amino acid spread that you get at your local practitioner’s office, for example) or you can do a bone broth, you can do a super stew.
I have a turkey chili sitting on my desk here and it’s fantastic. You just pasture organic turkey (our friends from the farm have turkey, we have local people here that do these amazing turkeys) and you soak that in any of the vegetables over time.
A lot of herbs, culinary herbs have not only incredible amounts of vitamins and minerals, but they have incredibly amount of those plant compounds, those antioxidant plant compound that are produced in there and they have certain elements that balance out the microbes.
A lot of culinary herbs – what are ‘culinary herbs’? Whether you’re looking at basil, you’re looking at mint, whether you’re looking at thyme or looking oregano, they’ll know out pathogens and allow for the growth of beneficial. They actually communicate via their chemical structure and disrupt the bacterium from overgrowing. It’s fascinating. They’ll disrupt the formation of what’s called [inaudible 00:39:21].
So the whole soup idea, the whole stew idea, the whole bone broth idea, if you have a digestive disorder (i.e. inflammatory bowel disease or irritable bowel syndrome), then those bone broths, there’s nothing to it. You’re not going to get a lot of – the starches in there, you’ll have a hard time digesting. These are wonderful ideas. Now the secondary piece of the probiotic is that you can get your probiotics in your food. You can get more of the amino acids in your food.
So if you’re into yoghurt, if you’re into kefer, if you’re into lacto-fermented vegetables, if you’re into sauerkraut, if you’re into fermented eggs (as they do up in Alaska), if you’re into fermented fish as they do in Asia, the fermentation process will give you both the probiotics and the amino acids simultaneously.
And all indigenous cultures do that – intentionally or non-intentionally. I mean, before refrigeration, we did that all the time. You just spoiled your book, right? And we make stuff, we make our own apple cider vinegar by just leaving pressed apples over time.
One of my favorites things to do is for my children with autism that can do the dairy, for example, I’ll have them grind up some cashews in a vitamins with a little bit of water (or you can do coconut milk if you want it really rich), a little bit of chia seeds and then we’ll just spoon in some probiotics.
I’ll use this blend of powder probiotics, throw it in there. And then let that sit in a glass yoghurt maker. We have a glass jar yoghurt maker. And then overnight, warm it. And the next morning, it’s bubbling and looking beautiful. And then what we’ll do is chop up some fresh fruit. If the child can tolerate peaches, you’re going to get peaches or you can be doing berries, strawberries, blueberries, raspberries, what-not. Delicious!
Wendy Myers: That sounds good.
Tom Malterre: Yeah! Yeah, so you’re getting some of the amino acids in there and you’re getting probiotics simultaneously. So there’s lots and lots of different ways of doing that.
Wendy Myers: And so what are some of the ways that specifically – I’m very interested in this, how exactly these GMO’s are damaging our gut lining? What is the mechanism? You explained that the GMO’s, the Bt toxins and the GMO’s will kill microbes in our gut, but what exactly is that mechanism?
Tom Malterre: Number one, let’s look at this, there are no human trials yet on this. There are none. Even though we’ve had these in the food supply since 1996, there are no human trials.
So when we talk about disruption of microbes, we’ll talk about a fish trial, we’ll talk about a poultry trial, we’ll talk about a cattle trial. So we’re extrapolating from the animal data showing it very clear – very clear, there is a disruption. But we don’t know what’s happening in humans.
I don’t know if you’ve seen the [inaudible 00:42:27] gentleman on the Green Peace Talks, talking about this pink farm and how he changes the feed from GMO feed to non-GMO feed and the pig’s GI tracts change. I don’t know if you’ve seen Howard Vlieger who’s an agricultural consultant, traveling around looking at the stomachs of animals after slaughter and looking at the intestinal tracts of animals. You’ll see there’s a considerable amount of inflammation. This is all extrapolation of data now because we don’t have the human testing. So you’re asking, “What’s happening in the human intestinal tract after the consumption of GMO foods or pesticides associated with GMO’s” and I can say I have no idea. I have to give that caveat first, I have no idea. Nobody has any idea.
But we really should be looking, absolutely we should be looking because what I do know is what you’re seeing and every practitioner is seeing right now, in the last ten year, something weird has happened.
Something really weird has happened in that I have so many more people with irritable bowel syndrome, inflammatory bowel. They have fructose intolerance, lactose intolerance. Something is disrupting – Celiac Disease, gluten sensitivity, dairy sensitivity, soy sensitivity.
Whatever it is, something is disrupting the immune cells and the communication along the intestinal lining. Something is disrupting that.
So whether it is the Bt toxin that we’ve all gotten in and is causing pores in there (maybe), whether it’s the and glyphosate changing or the glyphosate-based herbicides like Roundup and Rodeo is it’s changing the bacterium in our intestinal tract, which is then causing a disruption of the intestinal barrier, which is causing more inflammation, leaky gut, we don’t really know.
But those are the two primary mechanisms we’re imagining, that the Bt toxin is in intact like we’re seeing in children and women in Quebec.
If the glyphosate is causing the same reactions as it does in humans, then it’s a logical association to say, “Oh, likely, there’s some disruption then in the intestinal environment that leaves people more susceptible to leaky gut, it leaves them more susceptible to then having a constant inflammation in their intestinal tract.
And when you look at the food sensitivity research, the Celiac research, you will very clearly that if you have a leaky gut, constant inflammation in the intestinal tract, you’re far more likely to get most diseases.
I mean, the seat of your immune system is your intestinal tract. The majority of your immune cells are there to protect you from viruses, bacteria and parasites, everything else. That’s why they line that inner tube of life to protect you from those 26 tons of foreign molecules you will chew up and swallow in your lifetime and food.
So if you irritate the intestinal tract, you irritate the body. The question then becomes is how much of our GMO food supply now is irritating the intestinal tract and there are no trials on this.
I would say that some of the largest conglomerate corporations in the planet are chemical companies, Dow, Bayer, MonSanto – you’ve heard all those big names – Dupont and they sponsor a lot of the agriculture research departments.
Stanford, for example, got a nice grant from [inaudible 00:45:55] after that. A study came out, a review on organics that kind of say, “Organics really aren’t that much better than non-organic.”
I don’t know how much the industry is affecting behind the scenes, but we can imagine due to their lobbied strength that they will inhibit research because we know immediately, if a research articles comes out against chemicals, there’ll be a backlash from the media that says, “Oh, no! That’s nonsense. That chemical couldn’t be causing those problems.”
But I want you to logically put the pieces together and say, “What’s causing this drastic spike in business?” How can we then…
Wendy Myers: Yeah. We know that leaky gut leads to autoimmune now, it leads to food sensitivities and allergies and autism. And these things, like you said, there’s skyrocking. Thirty percent increase of autisim in two years – 30 %?
Talk to anybody who’s into autism research and they’re going to say, “It’s because we’re having more sensitive, diagnostic criteria, these things…
Tom Malterre: No, nonsense. That’s not true. If you’re a clinician who sees autistic children, you will know there is a dramatic spike. Don’t insult us by saying it increased of being able to diagnose and stuff.
The reality is that something is there. It’s not our genetics. Those don’t change within a decade or two, they don’t change. What changes is environmental exposure, what changes is our microbiom, that little, microscopic universe around us?
And then you start to ask, “What’s altering those? What’s altering that environment? What’s stimulating us to be on alert and alarm all the time?” and the only probable suspect you look at is the 74 billions pounds per day that were introduced in of certain chemicals.
Just logically, I want to go somewhere else. Trust me, I want to go somewhere else. Trust me, I want to go somewhere. I want to say it’s the high-fructose corn syrup, I want to say it’s the sugar, I want to say it’s the stuff that would be easy to get out of the diet, I want to say it has nothing to do with clean air, clean water or clean soil. Logically, it just doesn’t make any sense not to look at those things. They are the true currency and if you’re in debt, if you’re in deficit, if you’re in a state of dis-ease (too many irritants, not enough nutrients), you have to think, “Well, what are the two currencies? Where is that clean air, clean water, clean food?” It just makes sense.
Wendy Myers: Well Tom, thank you so much for coming on the show. That was so fascinating. I’m so happy I heard you on. I heard you on Tom O’Brien’s gluten summit. Your presentation was amazing, so I just had to have you on the show.
Wendy Myers: But I have one question that I like to ask all of my guests. What do you think is the most pressing health issue in the world today?
Tom Malterre: I would say industrial agriculture. I would definitely say if we could get back to being connected to the land, that it will change our health tremendously.
For example, I was just living up in the hills. When you are looking at the plants around you, the animals around you, the water around you – and I’ve done survival courses before – you grasp the importance of every aspect of life. You really grasp that you rely on that spring water, you rely on those small animals, you rely on those plants, you rely on that soil being vital for your survival.
I think if we can pull that consciousness back – I mean, we’re so removed from life. Everybody’s sitting in cubicles and we’re running out, we’re grabbing these packages of bright colored food. We have no idea how it came from, how it was produce, what is alive or not alive in the soil where it came from? What is the air like around it where it came from? What’s the water like downstream from there?
We’re just removed from that. We’re totally removed from that. So I think if we could reconnect with where our food comes from, how it’s produced, then I think we’ll completely change not only our health, but the health of the entire planet.
Wendy Myers: I tell that to all my clients. I firmly believe that to be truly healthy, if you don’t want to supplement (which I think most people need to be supplementing minerals, mainly minerals), if you’re not willing to do that, you have to grow your own food.
Even people that eat organic food – and I know because I’ve perused all the farmer’s market in Los Angeles, I’ve talked to all the vendors, I know where the best strawberries and the best cucumber and the best of everything is, but even a lot of those vendors use chemical fertilizers.
Even those vendors that have really good food, they still don’t have any financial incentive to re-mineralize the soil every year when they’re planting a new crop.
So unless you are a master gardener and you know how to re-mineralize your soil or however method you do it, you’re not getting enough minerals and nutrients.
Tom Malterre: Yeah. And I can’t wait to put that interview up with that permaculturist because he would grow a multitude of different crops knowing which ones were nitrogen fixers, what’s going to give us more phosphorus in the soil. It was really intricate. It was really gorgeous. He basically said you need that diversity, you need all the different types of plants.
If you’re mono-cropping and you’re just growing one particular thing and then you’re relocating and doing another particular thing and another particular thing instead of growing multiple different things at the same time, you’re going to be missing out on the ability to let all those nutrients once the plant dies off go back into the soil and enriching and enlivening the soil.
And then if you’re tilling and you’re knocking out some of the beneficial species – I mean, organisms grow depending on oxygen exposure. So if you till, you’re tilling a lot of beneficial oxygen lovers up at the top.
So there’s a lot of consciousness, a lot of awareness about how life works and that we’re not alone, there’s this microscopic universe, there are other animals that rely on us.
Once we have that awareness and we’re grateful, we have the gratitude, we’re grateful for the fact that we’re part of something much bigger than us, we can be wonderful stewards in this planet. Not only be healthy ourselves, but revel in the health of the world around us, that’s the key right there.
Wendy Myers: Yeah, that’s so beautiful. I love that.
Wendy Myers: So Tom, why don’t you tell the listeners where they can find you. You have lots of amazing videos and all kinds of free stuff on your website. I love watching your videos because you’re so eloquent and so well-spoken. So why don’t you tell the listeners where they can find you, kind of the upcoming events that you have and what-not.
Tom Malterre: Sure, sure. Well, those are one-shot wonder videos. I don’t do any sort of scripting ever, so thank you for the compliment on that. I just kind of wing it.
But yeah, WholeLifeNutrition.net, that’s the primary website. My wife has a wonderful recipe blog called NourishingMeals.com where she gives away free gluten-free, dairy-free, organic, GMO-free recipes all the time. So that’s great.
And then we also have our books, The Whole Life Nutrition Cookbook and The Nourishing Meals Cookbook. Those are on Amazon or you can get that on our website as well. So that’s the best way to access us.
I teach physicians and other healthcare practitioners online how to apply functional medicine principles into their clinical practice, we do diet stuff, we do all sorts of stuff, so yeah, come to the website.
Wendy Myers: Yeah, lots of good stuff on there. And listeners, there’s a free download where you can get lots of free recipes and all kinds of fun stuff going on over there.
Tom Malterre: Great.
Wendy Myers: Well Tom, again, thank you for coming on. I so appreciate it and I know the listeners have too.
Tom Malterre: Absolutely my pleasure. Thank you so much.
Wendy Myers: And every one, if you guys want to learn about detoxification and the modern paleo diet, sign up to get notifications about when my upcoming book will be published. Go to myersdetox.com and sign up. Thank you so much for listening. My name is Wendy Myers and you can find me on myersdetox.com.
