919: Addressing Toxic Burden, Mold, Metals and Parasites With Dr. Brandy Cummings

Katie: Hello and welcome to the wellness mama podcast. I’m Katie from wellnessmama. com and today’s episode tackles addressing your toxic burden, including things like mold, metals, and light, the very popular right now on social media idea of parasites and parasite cleanses. I am here back with Dr. Brandy Cummings, who is a nutritionist, but not your typical nutritionist as a former blackjack dealer who kind of makes them different than the norm nutritional choices herself and really deeply understands and cares about root cause symptomology and recovery.

In this episode, we get to delve into her work around toxic burden and specifically things like mold and mycotoxins, heavy metals and parasites and how they can all be related as well as some very important cautions and context related to the very popular parasite cleanses that are floating around and why just those on their own might not be the best option.

She has a deep understanding of this. I think you’ll really value her perspective. So let’s join Dr. Brandy.

Katie: Brandy, welcome back. Thanks for being here again.

Brandy: Thank you so much. I’m so happy to be back.

Katie: Well, if you guys missed it, I will link to our first conversation about that common experience of not ever kind of feeling quite the same after having kids and the actual reasons that can be underlying this that sometimes get missed in new moms. And Brandy, you gave such powerful key takeaways in that episode.

You guys, I highly recommend listening to that if you haven’t already. And in this one, I’m really excited to get your take on some other topics that are seemingly trending a lot on social media right now. And without being an expert in these, I’m seeing some stuff float around that I just wonder might be a little bit dangerous for people to do if they don’t fully understand kind of what they’re doing.

And again, this is a broad topic we’re going to kind of step into gently, but the overarching topic of addressing toxic burden and what can contribute to this from our environmental exposure to things as well as things like mold and heavy metals, but especially parasites is the one I’m seeing kind of all over Instagram right now.

With people doing some pretty harsh parasite cleanses and attributing parasite

detox sort of things for like kind of miracle recoveries. And it seems like this can be a component, and it feels like there’s some other context that’s important to understand.

So I know that’s a whole broad topic I just threw at you at once, but can you kind of walk us into the idea of toxic burden and what we need to know?

Brandy: Yes. So thinking about, you know, kind of piggybacking off of our conversation that we had the last time I was here, is this idea that moms often tell me that things were never the same ever since they gave birth. And why is that? And I see this a lot, especially in secondary infertility where they got pregnant, no problem with baby number one, and now they’re ready for baby number two.

But, oh my gosh, it’s like so much harder this time. Maybe there’s increased miscarriages or it’s taking so much longer. And like, I don’t understand what’s happening. Well, there’s a lot that’s happening, but a piece of it could be this toxic burden piece and where, like I mentioned before, we have all of these shifts that happen after we give birth and a lot of changes in our body and I think we all understand the hormonal shifts that happen after giving birth, but there’s a lot of other shifts that happen as well.

A lot of things about our environment that shift, how well we’re sleeping, where we’re spending our time, who we’re spending time with, our sense of community, all of that changes. And when we have all of these multifactorial things about our life and environment that are changing, we can have something called pleomorphism happen in the body, which is essentially where microbes are changing shape in the body. Where now they’re becoming more problematic and causing symptoms that maybe they weren’t before.

Maybe they were more dormant before, not causing symptoms, but now that we’ve had all of these kind of triggering events happen in our life, which, childbirth is a huge event, now they could become problematic. And so sometimes that looks like reactivation of certain viruses. Maybe people are having issues with Epstein Barr now, or maybe they’re noticing that they’re really sensitive and susceptible to mold where maybe they weren’t before.

I mean, they’re still living in their same house. They still have the same exposures that they did before, but now we are having a situation where there’s symptoms created in our body. And so this is especially, this is always something that I’m looking into, especially if this was not on somebody’s radar or top priority prior to giving birth. So big things that I’m looking at, I’m looking at mold and mycotoxins. There’s a lot of research around different mycotoxins. And just to add a definition, the mycotoxins are the toxins that some mold produces. And it’s the production of those mycotoxins that can cause problems in the body. And there’s research around connection between mycotoxins causing issues with infertility, with neurotransmitters, Alzheimers… Many, many different disease states that mycotoxins can contribute to. And then to your point parasites, which I know, I agree. They’re like, I don’t know, It’s kind of like, you know how health trends just really ebb and flow throughout time? And it’s like parasites totally have this cycle where they get really hot and then they kind of fade out, and then they get really hot again, and then they kind of fade out. And the takeaway that I want people to understand about parasites is that parasites are toxin sponges. And so as the toxin burden is high and elevated, parasitic load may also be high because they are toxin sponges.

So in a way, they are offering some protection in that sense. And so when people see the latest trend on TikTok or Instagram or wherever that parasites are causing all these issues, and therefore you need to do a parasite cleanse and then therefore all your symptoms will go away. That is not how it works. We have to, maybe we do need to address parasites. That happens a lot. Parasites can cause a lot of symptoms in the body and they can create and hide in biofilms, which can interfere with our absorption of nutrients. It can interfere with our immune system or they can hide from our immune system.

And so it is very possible that we do need to address parasites, but jumping there first and jumping there with the understanding or with the hope that this is going to solve all of our problems, has a high likelihood of causing more harm than good, because if the body is not properly prepared for that, then remember, they’re toxin sponges.

So now we’re going to stir all this stuff up. How do you think your body’s going to feel with all of that biofilm, all of those toxins were you know, housed in the parasites? How do you think your body’s going to feel with all of this circulating? So the body has to be prepared for it. You know, your gut has to be prepared for it.

Your nervous system has to be prepared for it. All of these things have to be in place before we go there so that we can get the outcome that we’re looking for.

Katie: That is such helpful context, I feel like, then kind of the narrative that we just see circulating about parasites, especially I feel like it’s almost like a kind of polarized dichotomy of like, at least in the modern world, in the Western world, where we’re like, either parasites are kind of this big problem that can be solved with a simple parasite cleanse, and they kind of get hyped up that way, or the assumption that we, in the modern world don’t get parasites or this is a problem that doesn’t apply to us.

It seems like either extreme can be kind of equally problematic if we don’t understand all of that nuance that you just explained. And it makes sense to me. I love that idea of parasites being a kind of toxin sponge because that  kind of points to, like you talked about, needing to take that into account as part of any kind of detox or addressing parasites is also addressing the full toxic burden.

Seemingly we also see this with people during weight loss at times. I’m curious if this is similar where our body uses body fat actually to store toxins and keep them from hurting our organs and other parts of us. And so that’s like a thing is when we’re releasing body fat, we are also releasing some of those toxins, which our body does know how to handle.

However, like when that happens very quickly or something, often additional support can be needed. Is it a similar concept as we would see maybe in that?

Brandy: Yeah, totally, where we’re just, people will go too hard too fast. You know, they’re like, get these, I have parasites, what? Get them out! Like, let’s give them their eviction notice yesterday. And they’ll just go too hard and too fast. And then we have all of these circulating toxins and microbes and pathogens that the body cannot excrete properly. There’s phase one and there’s phase two detoxification, there’s also phase three detoxification, which is how our body is able to excrete those toxins.

And I know that you’ve had several episodes around detoxification on your show before. And I just think it’s really important to reiterate the importance of preparing the body to deal with that. And one of the biggest rebuttals, I guess, that I hear online against people talking about detoxification is that’s a complete waste of your money and the body knows how to detoxify.

You don’t need to help it at all. And In the right environment that is 100 percent true. And the issue is we’re not living in the right environment. We are living in unprecedented times where we have not  only massive exposure to a lot more toxins and toxicants that we did before, but we’re also living in a time where we have a lot more nervous system dysregulation than we did before, which lowers our resilience. We’re also living in a time where we’re not syncing up our circadian rhythm, which impacts the amount of water that our cells and our mitochondria make, which that special type of water increases our resilience to these things, to fungi, to parasites, to pathogens, bacteria, viruses and other microbes. And so we’re less cellularly hydrated and that lowers our resistance. And so we have just this perfect storm where yes, the body does need additional detoxification support that maybe it wouldn’t in an ideal environment, but there are proper steps that need to be taken so that we are supporting the body in a gentle way that doesn’t put us in a situation where we’re feeling worse than when we started.

Katie: Yeah, that’s such an important point and like not doing that too quickly sort of to overwhelm the body’s natural detox pathways. I feel like that’s another point that seemingly gets missed in these like kind of miracle cure detox systems that circulate on social media, is the idea that the body has all of these systems perfectly built in, like our body knows how to detox.

It’s perfectly designed for that. So if it’s not doing it, Kind of as efficiently as it could, to me that brings up the question of either what does it need that it’s not getting, or what is it getting too much of that it doesn’t need, or kind of like, how do we better learn how to speak the language of the body and support what it already knows how to do, versus kind of trying to override what the body is telling us and force detoxing?

And if there’s already something like, in other words, if we’ve got a methylation issue or we’ve got something kind of clogged in this pipeline of detoxification, and then we just try to sort of push more through that pipeline that isn’t necessarily going to be serving the body in the best way possible.

And it’s probably not going to be the most comfortable path to detox either. Are there general things that we can all kind of implement as daily habits or practices to understand that support the body’s natural detox processes?

Brandy: 100%. And so some of my favorites are to sweat. There’s lots of studies around how we can excrete toxins via sweating, and so whether that’s use of a sauna or working out until sweating, any sweating is going to support that pathway. Moving our lymphatic system, you know, our lymphatic system doesn’t have a pump.

So we have to, that fluid has to move somehow, either by manually moving it. So think about things like dry brushing or lymphatic massage or gua sha or a manual like, literally like lymph pumping that you can do. Or it moves with voltage and how we get voltage is by again syncing up with that circadian rhythm. I know Italk about this so much, but it’s just so important and people like to underestimate the power of the light signals that we can get from nature and our circadian rhythm. And it is just the thing that makes such the biggest difference in people’s health. And so when we’re getting that voltage, that power from the sunlight and sinking up to nature, that voltage can help to move the lymph as well. I think that, a lot of these antiparasitic protocols, a lot of them are herbal formulas. And like I said, they could be very warranted and used. I use them, but at the right time.

So if we’re not there yet, I love to think about how can we, this idea of like microdosing some of these really impactful herbs that have antimicrobial effects into our kitchens. That is such a great way to start. And so thinking about utilizing more herbs, especially things like oregano and rosemary and clove, these are not herbs but spices, cloves and cinnamon, garlic, again not an herb. But all of these things have powerful antimicrobial impacts.  And what I find in most kitchens and in most people that I work with when I’m asking them about their meals, herbs are not included in the picture.

Maybe there’s like a bottle of like almost expired something something in the cabinet, but utilizing fresh or dried herbs is really, it’s like an afterthought, or like, oh, if I had some, I’d add it. But really shifting our perception and putting more focus on how can we get those really powerful herbs into our diet, because that’s so safe and gentle and delicious and adds flavor and has such a powerful impact on the body.

So that’s another piece too. So I would say, you know, moving the body, sweating, supporting your limp, micro dosing with herbs and syncing our circadian rhythm are kind of my top go tos.

Katie: I love that and that was really helpful I think for a lot of those other things that are also trending but kind of without helpful explanation. Like lymphatic health, to your point it can be so valuable and so supportive and like the quick miracle cures that you see on social media are likely not the most effective or most body supporting path necessarily to get there.

However, like when you understand all of these things in concert, as part of that strategy of supporting the body and what it does naturally, it seems like they really can be so drastically supportive. And we talked a lot about circadian health in the first episode. I’ll make sure for you guys listening, if you haven’t heard that one, it’s linked in the show notes at wellnessmama.com. I do think like you, I’m a hundred percent team circadian health and light being a really vital factor, especially for women’s hormones. I feel like kind of the blessing and the curse is we respond so quickly often, or like we can respond very, in almost an extreme way to a lot of these factors because we are more sensitive and our bodies are meant to be more sensitive so that we can kind of stay in this safe range that makes things like fertility and carrying a healthy pregnancy possible.

But understanding that it also means we need to be a little bit more aware of keeping our body out of those extremes that can feel really stressful to the nervous system. When we’re either not getting too much of something we don’t need or not enough of something we do need. And I love that we’re seeing more of this conversation even about nervous system health and especially for women.

And I’m curious, any tips or suggestions you have for women on the nervous system side specifically, since I think this is another area that we’re seeing sort of trend and I suspect we’ll hear even more about this year.

Brandy: This is so… this is a non negotiable. I was just having a conversation yesterday with another practitioner and talking about how we will get new clients who have seen and worked with other practitioners before. And so that’s valuable information. I want to know what you did before, maybe help identify where those gaps were.

And it’s incredible the amount of people that come that had no nervous system support in their protocols. And to me, it is a non-negotiable. It has to be on board because we have to be sending signals of safety to the body so that the body can heal. So we don’t get stuck in a cell danger response situation, and we’re able to kind of close that loop and our mitochondria are able to shift into going back into powerhouse mode where they’re generating ATP and energy versus being in like fight mode, battleship mode where they’re trying to deal with whatever is going on. And so sending those messages of safety to the nervous system is so, so paramount.

There are so many different ways that we can do this. And again, it’s kind of like,  it’s a process, right? There are things that we should start with versus maybe things that we should wait till later to introduce. Things like eye movements and eye exercises. Those are things that might come a little bit later. But in the beginning, the first thing I like to do is just do an audit of like, what is the language that we’re using? What are we telling ourselves? Our subconscious is listening to everything. And so if somebody says like, hey, how you doing today? What’s your knee jerk response? Is your knee jerk response, “Oh hanging in there. Oh, just busy.”

You know. This is kind of, this is just funny, but I remember, I had an aunt, she has since passed away, but anytime somebody would ask her how she was doing, she would say, “Well, I’m on the right side of the dirt.” And so it’s like thinking about how are you answering that question because when you’re like, “Oh, hanging in there,” if we’re continually sending that message to our nervous system, that’s what we’re going to continually do is just hanging in there. And just first just doing an audit because we don’t realize the negative language that we’re using throughout our day, whether we mean it to be negative or not. My friend Kelly Kennedy, she says, “good rising,” instead of good morning, you know, just really kind of going into this language piece even more in depth.

So that’s the first step. Then once we’re shifting and kind of moving into using language that is more supportive of our nervous system and sending those messages of safety, then anything that we can do to help shift us into that parasympathetic state throughout our day. And the first place I like to start with this is like right before meals. Because we like to, or we have a tendency to eat on the go. We have a tendency to eat with our phone. We have a tendency to eat while standing up. Or maybe we’re just grabbing those last few bites of whatever our kid had and calling it good. But I really encourage you to get out a placemat, put it at the table, sit down, put your phone away. Put your hand on your belly, take a few deep breaths before you start eating. Chew  your food to applesauce consistency. Think about your food. Think about the flavor of your food and how grateful you are and how this is going to nourish my body and really have that moment of reconnecting to that experience of eating.

That’s such a great place to start because just the idea of eating is a good reminder like oh yeah, this is where I’m supposed to be like supporting my nervous system today. And it doesn’t take really any extra time. And I love things that don’t take extra time or money as a good place to start.

Katie: That is such a great tip. And I love that you brought up Kelly Kennedy. She’s phenomenal as well. I’ll make sure her podcast episode is linked in the show notes. I love that idea of like learning to just pay attention to that subtle language and how impactful that was for me as well. I love that she says, grand rising or however she says it.

And when I’ve adopted for mornings actually is from another podcast guest, Susan David called Sawabona, which means in Zulu, I see you. And by seeing you, I bring you into being. But the kind of that more positive versus a good morning and like the connotations of that. But I think that’s just like one little diving in example for just how powerfully, like you said, our subconscious is listening to our language.

And to illustrate this, from what worked for me personally, or what I noticed when I started paying attention to this, is that I realized I was sort of asking my subconscious non beneficial questions all the time. So I was asking it, why can’t I lose weight? Or why is this so hard? Or why do I feel so bad? And it was doing exactly what it was designed to do and giving me answers to those questions.

Like, oh, well, because you have thyroid disease or because you have six kids or because whatever it was. And when I learned to speak more positively and have better curiosity, even in my inner language for myself, I realized by asking better questions, I learned to sort of make friends with my subconscious as well and ask questions that led to better answers.

Like, how can I make this really fun or how can I best support my body? And I started getting much better data just from that small shift and from not being so hard on myself in my inner language. I know this is talked about some, but like often as women, especially seemingly we will speak to ourselves and our inner speak in a way that we would never speak to our daughters, to our best friendany, to anyone else we cared about, but that’s like the baseline of our inner experience. And so not that it’s an easy overnight shift, but that I think to your point can be such a valuable thing to audit and become aware of, and just like shift slowly in concert with our body, with our nervous system, with our subconscious and can really pay dividends when we learn that.

Brandy: It’s so true. Even phrases that I catch my friends saying a lot, like, Oh, this project at work is killing me. I’m like, hold on, wait, you know, I invite you to have a shift around that. We just, we don’t recognize it. But once you know, you know, and once you start noticing what you’re noticing, you can really start to shift that in a really big way.

And it’s kind of like the circadian rhythm piece. People like to underestimate the power of it, but it is so, so, so powerful.

Katie: Agreed. And I think these do require a little bit more paying attention and awareness in that, like, at least if someone, I know when I had food intolerances, for example, before I was able to move past those, it was an easy feedback loop to know, like, if I ate a certain thing, I felt a certain way.

So that was easy to sort of connect. Whereas it takes a little bit more consistency, I’ve noticed, with some of these things we’re talking about, like, getting our circadian health aligned and our light exposure and actually really integrating that as a habit. Or really auditing and learning to have a healthier inner speak and kind of work with our emotions internally.

Those are not drastic immediate overnight fixes. However, I do think long term those can be sort of the highest ROI things we can do or at the very least are the foundational things that then if we do need to do the fancy parasite cleanser, or if we do need to do any of these biohacks or take supplements, like all those things work better when we’ve already addressed these foundational things, so they kind of give us a higher R. O. I. even for our actual money spent, but certainly for our time and effort invested as well. So I love that you explain those things so clearly. Are there any factors specific to toxic burden and women, especially that we haven’t gotten to dive into yet?

Brandy: One of the things that I hear a lot, cause I look at mycotoxins. And one of the things that I see a lot is that this  connection of mycotoxins to other interferences in the immune system. So other infections, like maybe you get sick a lot, maybe your kids have strep a lot. So there’s that strong connection there and then also a strong connection between mycotoxins and our emotional health and their impact on neurotransmitters. And sometimes women, they have a hard time wrapping their head around that that may be a possibility, because what I hear a lot is, oh, my house is brand new. We don’t have, you know, we’ve never had a leak. We don’t have any water damage. That can’t be it. And then as we go down, as we dig deeper, we do proper testing. We do the proper protocols to support drainage and detoxification, it’s like those symptoms start to get better.

And so I think that that’s just an important takeaway for people is that, even if you feel like your house is new or you don’t have any leaks or anything, especially new houses they’re built to be airtight. And so we’re having less circulation of air through those houses, which can be problematic and can contribute to creating a hospitable environment for microbes to grow. And so really just like opening your windows, like get things circulated, especially if your house is newer. Really, it doesn’t matter, any house, you should be doing this and getting that air circulation through there because people forget that houses are just built differently now.

And then on top of that we have off gassing and V. O. C. S. of materials in those newer builds that can be contributing to our health as well. There might have been a leak when the house is being built that you are not aware of or not seeing outward signs of. And then the other thing is that bacteria can cause similar types of symptoms that mold can and can sometimes be more prevalent than mold or mycotoxins in the home.

And the good news about that is that remediation for addressing some of these gram negative bacterias that can be in our home is an easier process than with mold and mycotoxins. And so I think it’s important just to get a test done on your home. You can test for mycotoxins. You can also test for the bacteria and really get a picture for what’s going on in your home.

What are you exposed to? Because if you can start lowering that exposure and that total body burden, remember, parasites are toxin sponges. So the lower our total body burden is, the less exposures we have, it’s possible that that could translate into less issues with parasitic load as well.

And then if we know if we have exposures in our house, anything that we do to improve air quality and lessen our exposures will obviously have a net benefit for the whole family as well. And then the other point that I think is just, we couldn’t have this episode without mentioning, is just to be mindful of, of course, where else are we being exposed?

What else is contributing to that bucket of toxins and toxicants that’s just causing it to be more overfull than what our body can handle at any one time. And so a lot of times this is our personal care products, our hygiene products, our cleaning products. And so there’s lots of apps now where you can just kind of go through and scan it and like make a list of the kind of top offenders and just swap them out one by one.

This doesn’t have to be an overwhelming thing. It doesn’t have to happen overnight, but starting to have that awareness of what we’re being exposed to in our home is a really great first step. And then outside of your home thinking about toxins and toxicants that we may be exposed to. This is what I tell people, we have to live in this world.

Right? And the goal is not to live in a bubble. The goal is not to hide from the world. The goal is not to try to sterilize our environment. The goal is to increase our resilience so that we can interact with our environment in a very robust way. You know, you can get parasite infection that will come through your skin, you know, transdermally.

So you could be out grounding, like we’re told that we should do because it’s so powerful and get a parasite that way. Like, let’s not stress about that. Does that mean we shouldn’t be grounding? No, of course not. And women, especially, I find sometimes they can really spiral once we start having this conversation around toxins and really try to like get a bit more reclusive and hide from our environment.

And I just encourage you to shift your mindset to how can I increase  my resilience so that I can interact with my environment in a robust way and not have downstream consequences.

Katie: Oh, such a great overview. And I know that you have a lot of resources available for this. You actually work with people also on this. I’ll put links in the show notes, of course, but where can people find you and keep learning from you?

Brandy: So my website is resilientmotherhood.health, and that is also my Instagram handle, resilientmotherhood.health. And so, and that’s where I’m most active.

Katie: Amazing. Well, those links will be in the show notes. Dr. Brandy, you are such a wealth of knowledge. I feel like this has been such a helpful and important conversation, and I’m so grateful for your time. Thank you so much for being here today.

Dr. Brandy Cummings: Gosh, it’s really been a pleasure. Thank you so much, Katie.

Katie Wells : And thank you as always for listening and for sharing your most valuable resources, your time, your energy, and your attention with us today. We’re both so grateful that you did, and I hope that you will join me again on the next episode of the Wellness Mama podcast.