Is Your Food And Environment Killing You? With Michelle Perro

Our world is filled with chemicals. from our food to the products we wear and use, to the environments we work, live, and play in. Join Adiel Gorel and his guest, Michelle Perro, for a wide-ranging conversation on how we unknowingly poison ourselves, what we can do to stop it, and how embracing wholistic living can help mitigate or even reverse the damage before it becomes a chronic issue.

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Is Your Food And Environment Killing You? With Michelle Perro

How To Create A Wholistic Living Environment And Lifestyle, From Your Food To Products To Your Home!

I’m extra excited because I get to talk to an old friend and a fantastic doctor whose mind is not constrained by just thinking inside the box, which I love. Dr. Michelle Perro. Michelle, welcome to the show.

Adi, it’s such a pleasure to be here. Thank you.

Michelle, it’s almost like I’m lost as to how to begin because I know we can cover so many subjects. You have your areas of expertise. Why don’t you pick one and we’ll start there? Why don’t you give us your background? We know you are an MD, but let’s see how you got here.

Michelle’s Journey To Holistic Medicine

I’m going to give you the thumbnail version because we will be here for a few days since I’m not 21, as you may have noticed. Historically, I’m a pediatric emergency physician. That’s how I started. Totally academic trauma-based children’s hospitals and the whole deal. I ran an ER in New York and all that. I had my son and he had some challenges. I serendipitously ran into a homeopath. We crossed a similar job when I moved out here in ’89 from New York, California.

When I learned about homeopathy, my world flipped upside down. Long story short, I went on to become a homeopath and worked with a gal who changed my son’s health. I learned about GMOs and pesticides from a mom, transitioned into GMOs and pesticides and then launched into environmental health issues, everything that hurts the health of our children. Chronic diseases in children became my area of expertise. I wrote a book because I was not happy with the way things were going with our children’s health, What’s Making Our Children Sick. I’m working on the second one, How to Get Them Better: Making Our Children Well.

I’m running a website to teach people about the harms of genetically modified food, which we can talk about or not. I’ve been doing that. I never wanted to run a website but here I am running a website. I’m not trained in this but everybody else stepped back. I’m here on the front line. I guess I’ll do it as things may happen. I ran the website and also got involved with the Lyme clinic. I’m very passionate about Lyme disease and have been working on that for decades.

There’s so much to talk about. I feel like I stepped into a buffet of delicious food. Where do I start? Why don’t we start with the first subject you mentioned, GMOs and pesticides?

That’s a good place to start because whatever toxic issue you want to address in our children’s health, which means our health and animals’ well-being, starts with what we eat. Despite all the other factors involved, it’s not one thing driving the chronic disease epidemic in children. What I became hooked on was the toxic assault on food. Not just for our children. That’s my area of interest, of course.

It extrapolates to all eaters and consumers of food. That would be all of us last time I checked. Unless you’re a breatharian, the people who live on air. There are those people. I’m not one of them. I became crazed about how we are harming our planet through food poisoning. That’s where I would start. When I say toxic assault, I use those words deliberately and intentionally because that’s what it’s become.

Tell us a little more. Even in the title of what we talked about, we mentioned two things, both of which are pretty big, GMOs and pesticides. I don’t know which one you want to grab and run with.

The Truth About GMOs And Pesticides

What we have to recognize is that many Americans do not have a strong science background. It’s not well taught in high school. Most countries surpass us in science education. People don’t have a basic understanding of chemistry and biology, not necessarily to any fault of their own, but our educational system here in the US is lacking.

People often do not understand what a GMO is. Most people don’t understand that we’ve been eating this genetically modified food, and it’s exactly that. It’s been altered so that when companies like Monsanto, now Bayer, Syngenta, DuPont, and Dow spray toxic chemicals designed to kill their biocides, kill bio, kill life, the plants don’t die. That is the only reason why we eat GMOs. They don’t spare water or save the planet. They’ve killed off the soil microbiome and have tremendous harmful effects.

Let’s stop right here because you said so much. Break it down a little. When I was quite a bit younger, to me, GMO was you had a peach and then you created a nectarine. A nectarine, if I’m not mistaken and you can correct me, was a genetic product designed to make something not necessarily better than a peach but different than a peach. Nectarines were very popular. Wouldn’t that be one example of the early application? We’re still being very tame here. Would making nectarine be an example of a GMO?

No. When you go on websites like Genetic Literacy and all the pro-GMO websites that support genetic modification, you will see exactly that. They have done a very good job of obfuscating the truth of hybridization through sexual reproduction, all the way back to Mendelian genetics with peas. That goes back centuries. That is through sexual reproduction, crossing, and making whatever fruits you want, plum varieties, or when they cross apples, or making pluots, for example. They want us to be confused about that.

Genetic engineering is not a natural technique. They have to do a lot of things to the plant to get it to uptake the characteristics they want, which is to not die when we spray glyphosate, which is the main ingredient in Roundup and the main crop-associated pesticide. We can talk about that in a minute. They have to load the plant with all kinds of nasty stuff to get it to uptake this new gene. They have to propagate that one genetic trait. Most of the plants will often die, and maybe one lives, then they propagate that.

These seeds are not self-replicating. Farmers need to rebuy these seeds with all the chemicals that go into them and all sorts of other charges every year so much so that there are countries, many in Africa, where they don’t allow farmers to buy hybrid seeds. They want them to buy genetically modified seeds. You need to add extra nutrients to them because they don’t grow as well. They are not equivalent. The FDA, USDA, EPA, and every other agency would like you to believe these are nutritionally equivalent and GRAS or Generally Recognized As Safe. They are not. Did I clarify the confusion?

That’s an important point because it’s very easy to hark back to my simple example of the nectarine and those peas. When you say they are sexually selective, you are breeding for success. That’s not genetically modified.

This is the confusion. The initial GMOs took a gene gun to insert into the plant. It’s a very violent thing. The plants don’t want them. Since the original GMOs were introduced, and that’s GMO 1.0, we’ve gone into way more high-tech GMOs called CRISPR, GMOs 2.0, and beyond. The abilities they have with genetic engineering are mind-boggling. Before we get into the mind-boggle, we are eating these plants without our knowledge because the government passed a law we called the Dark Act.

States were trying to label GMOs. They made it a federal law that states could not individually label GMOs. Unless a company decides to label it as non-GMO, which doesn’t mean it doesn’t have pesticides, you don’t know unless the company labels it a genetically modified organism, unless you are one of the PhD parents having to scroll through all this literature, which is crazy.

Let’s stop right here. My aim is always to make it useful, practical, simplified, and hopefully not very expensive. Stopping here and understanding that when we get our food, we may unwittingly get some food that’s been GMO-changed. What can we do as a first line of defense to minimize or avoid it?

Practical Steps To Avoid GMOs

The first line of defense is to buy organic. If you buy organic food, you’ll see either the USDA green and white label or this little RO label, which means Regenerative Organic, which I promote. Either one is good. The little green RO label or the USDA green and white circle with a line means that if it’s organic, it cannot be GMO by definition. That’s not to say organic crops cannot be contaminated with GMOs.

According to the USDA, 5 to 9 percent of crops are contaminated because of birds, wind, and water. There have been lawsuits about that. In general, if you eat and decrease the amount of processed foods in your diet, you can avoid a significant amount of GMOs. GMOs and pesticides are problematic. You do not eat GMOs alone without their associated pesticide. You eat them together. Organic negates that whole issue.

If I jump over to pesticides, let’s assume there is a pesticide and it’s not good. I’m going to use an extreme example. Here is my field. I’m a farmer. My field is all organic. I grow pure and clean. Next to it is my neighbor’s field with heavy pesticides and GMOs so the plants don’t die from the pesticides. Our fields are touching each other. No matter what you do, there’s water runoff into my pristine veggies. What do we do about that?

That’s a big one because farmers have taken this to court. I say Monsanto-Bayer because they were bought by Bayer in 2019. They have sued farmers for having GMO crops that accidentally got there through wind, birds, water, and however they got there. The classic case is a Canadian farmer named Percy Schmeiser, who has since passed. He was sued by Big Ag for growing GMO crops. He didn’t want GMO crops. They wound up on his field, so it can go both ways.

The Power Of Regenerative Farming

Since we have so much weed resistance, Big Ag has had to create more toxic GMOs and pesticides. One is called 2,4-D. Dicamba is another. They are not staying where they are supposed to be and are causing drift, killing plants that are non-GMO on other farms. This is a big problem. Farmers are growing barrier trees around their farms to prevent the wind. It’s often wind that carries the GMO seeds.

One researcher from Berkeley, Ignacio Chapela, studied years ago that GMO seeds from the US traveled 1,000 miles to Mexico. That’s how far they can go. These seeds are free-agent hippies traveling across the world and having a grand time. They don’t stay where they are put. This is a problem. That’s why there is cross-contamination. Studies show that coming off this stuff, even after a week, your urine clears. You can clear them. Eating organic will 100% reduce your exposure to these toxic foods.

It was very difficult to hear that not only did the organic farmer experience this unwanted effect of having GMO plants with their associated pesticides migrate to their land but they were sued for it by someone with huge pockets.

He took it as far as the Canadian Supreme Court. It was like a ping-pong match. He would win and lose. When he finally took appeals, he eventually lost. It likely killed him, the stress and the money it took. Monsanto-Bayer makes billions of dollars per year. Deep pockets.

Here’s a question I asked myself and this is also the segue into pesticides. The name glyphosate has become prominent over the past few years, maybe even a decade or less. Regular people hear about it. People know about it. There were lawsuits. People say they got cancer because of their exposure. There were some wins to the tune of a few hundred million dollars for one person. In the thick of all of this, if I looked at what Monsanto had on its hands, I would say Monsanto was on the way to financial ruin.

If one person gets $250 million because they got cancer due to glyphosate, what’s going to happen when it’s a million people? To my surprise, Bayer, a company we associate with aspirin and things like that, chose to take all of this on. It seemed to the outsider that this was business suicide. Do you want to take on lawsuits where each one could be hundreds of millions of dollars and millions of people? Clearly, they knew something. Can you talk about that?

These guys, like Bayer Pharmaceuticals, have been around for 100 years. They’re not a new company. They’re a German company. Their history is quite dark, which we don’t have to get into. The leading cancer, clearly defined by IARC, the International Association for Research, causes a particular kind of tumor. One of them is non-Hodgkin lymphoma. It’s a blood tumor. What does Bayer do? They have a new drug coming out, which is used for the treatment of, and I know you know the answer, non-Hodgkin lymphoma.

They win on both ends. They create the problem and the drug to create it. Pharma is big business. They all do the same thing. Syngenta and AstraZeneca. They make the toxic chemicals and it’s true for breast cancer and the drug to create it. If anyone thinks that these guys don’t know what they’re doing, it’s naive. They knew it and probably had this drug in the pipeline. Drugs take years to create. What I remind people is when Monsanto went to the EPA to get this glyphosate approved in 1983, they had been using it as a pipe cleaner since 1973. It was invented in 1950 by a Japanese researcher.

This glyphosate is not a new chemical. They went to the EPA and said, “Look at our product.” An EPA pathologist said, “We can’t use this product. It shows cancer in the kidney cells.” This woman sent it back to Monsanto at the time. Monsanto had their pathologist say, “No, it doesn’t cause cancer.” They took it back to the EPA. I’m sure there was a large exchange of information about this. Lo and behold, it didn’t cause cancer. Monsanto knew about the cancer risk decades before the lawsuits began.

You’re saying this is out of curiosity because of the two-sided benefit to Bayer creating the problem and then the new drug that can handle it supposedly. It is very worthwhile for them to face the onslaught of lawsuits, which could end up in enormous numbers. It was still worth it.

This is my opinion and supposition. Looking at what I’ve seen so far, historically, I believe this is what they think. It is to their benefit. They’ll pay out hundreds of millions of dollars but when they make billions on drugs, it’s petty cash to them. “We’ll pay off some lawsuits.” I don’t know how they keep paying these lawsuits because there were hundreds of thousands of lawsuits when I checked.

That’s what I mean.

It was on TV. They got exposed to Roundup and called a 1-800-lawyer. They made a calculation and were willing to take the risk.

I don’t want to go into business here. It’s not why we are here to talk about. One would think that if there’s a lawsuit and you’re very well-heeled, your lawyers can drag it out over many years and prove it. Once one of them was proven, the rest of them were going to cascade down or whatever it was. If people go to the farmer’s market, that’s not necessarily a guarantee just because it’s called the farmer’s market. Who are the farmers? What are they doing?

You and I live here in the North Bay of the San Francisco Bay Area. Not far from me is the town of Petaluma. There are many farms and many of them are organic and very nice. The probability is that if I go to the farmer’s market in San Orfeo on Sunday, I will luck out and be able to buy produce that is indeed clean. If somebody goes to a farmer’s market somewhere in the US, how do they know?

This is how they know. I sat on a California board as a consumer representative. What I learned that year was that about 50% of what they’re saying is organic at farmer’s markets is not. What you’ve identified is a real problem. You have to get to know your farmer. You have to go to the market regularly and talk to the farmer. “Are you spraying? What are you spraying? Give me the chemicals that you’re spraying.” You have to become somewhat knowledgeable.

In the new book I have, I have a whole section on how to identify stuff in the farmer’s market because I have found that this is a big problem. If you have SNAP, which is federal assistance for food, you can use these at these farmer’s markets. I want to throw that in there. That’s practical. It behooves all of us, whether you’re on federal support or can go to the farmers market and support local farmers. I’m all about it.

Know the farmer. A lot of the farmers will be certified but it is very expensive for these farmers to get organic certification. It’s an expensive process. That may be changing in California but we’re just one out of 50 states. Not all states are doing this, trying to offer farmers lower prices so they can become certified. If you can talk to the farmer and they’re not certified but they say, “Yes, we don’t spray. The only thing we use is some vinegar to get rid of the weeds, which is non-toxic,” you develop a rapport. That’s one way to know.

Buy organic when you can from an organic-certified farmer. It often is expensive because organic farming foods are not subsidized by the government. Conventionally grown foods are. Organic is not. That right there is crazy to me. What I do during tough times is go to the end of the farmer’s market, and farmers are willing to let go of produce at a lower price and buy imperfect food, such as ugly fruits and vegetables. They call them ugly. They’re imperfect but they’re still good. They just don’t look that good. Some of us don’t look so good. Shop imperfect, shop at the end of the market, and support the organic farmers.

Building Direct Relationships With Farmers

To help me and people like me, all of us, let’s take it to the extreme. I live close to Petaluma where there are many farms. I go to a farmer’s market, start making friends with a couple of farmers, or go online and look up five organic farms in Petaluma. Petaluma is only 9 miles away from me, so I drive to the farm, talk to the farmer, get to know the farm, and then only buy from them. Maybe I won’t go to the farmer’s market anymore. They just ship me a box or something like that every week, which is not as fresh as it can be because it’s a whole week. That’s one extreme.

Suppose someone here lives in Milwaukee and says, “Hold on a second. I buy my produce and fruit at Whole Foods.” Whole Foods has those little sticky labels or the other supermarkets. “Am I good if I go that route?” You said the RO label, which stands for Regenerative Organic, or the USDA. “Am I good going to the supermarket and buying those fruits and veggies with those labels?”

This is why the toxic assault by individuals out there in cahoots with the government is still at large. Until a couple of years ago, I would have said yes. It may not have been as fresh, or maybe it was coming from far away. They might be shipping from Mexico, Chile, and Peru. What are we doing? We’re eating blueberries from 9,000 miles away. This is not sustainable.

A company sponsored by Bill Gates and others created something called Apeel. Apeel is a coated, waxy coat that sustains the life of the fruit or vegetable. It is sprayed on by the company. It can’t be removed. It is made from grapeseed extracted with a toxic solvent called hexane. It is contaminated with toxic metals in the coating. By law, they don’t have to identify that it has Apeel.

A lot of the fruits and vegetables, even organic, are coated with this waxy coating, like avocados, oranges, and apples. They’re not identified. This is a big problem. We have a Trader Joe’s here in our area and sometimes I buy from Trader Joe’s when I can’t get to a farmer’s market, which I can always do. We’re busy and working. I asked Trader Joe’s or Costco, “Do you use Apeel?” They said no.

Many people shop at Costco. They have large families. They’re not single individuals. Costco has said they don’t use Apeel. However, you need to keep on these companies. We have to be citizen scientists. We, as consumers, drive the market. We have to say to these big companies like Costco or Trader Joe’s, which answer their emails, “Do you use Apeel? Can I trust your organics?” See what they say. It changes and they don’t tell you when it changes.

Costco is the largest purchaser of organics. If you look at organic sales in the US, it’s a straight line. People want organics. Ninety percent of Americans do not want to eat GMOs. They want organic. We’ve gotten that message out. According to Jeffrey Smith, my friend and colleague, there’s something called a 5% economic tipping point with sales. When 5% of the population says, “No more. We’re buying organic,” people will change and will seek out organic regenerative farmers. That’s our mission.

However, what you described, that layer, which I read about before but forgot about, and you brought it to the forefront again, Apeel, how do you know? You may not know. You think you’re buying organic. Let’s take a little trip. You bought fruit in the market. It said organic. It had the USDA organic label. You’re so happy. You come home. It’s covered with a layer. You may not be able to see that and know what happens. Should you wash even the organic fruit and veggies that you buy? What should you do to get rid of that?

The Apeel won’t come off. If the Apeel is on an avocado, that’s easy enough because we don’t eat the avocado skin. If the appeal is on an apple, that’s a problem. It doesn’t wash off. Most nutrients are in the peel. That’s where you get all the good stuff. Polyphenols, flavonoids, and antioxidants are in the peels. We want to be eating peels, potato peels and apple peels, not just the fleshy fruit. It’s a problem. It does not wash off.

You have to ask the stores that you frequently go, “Do you use Apeel?” They have to disclose it and tell you whether they use it or not. You have to ask them. Sometimes, when the fruit or vegetable comes to a store like Whole Foods, it will say it on the box. It says “Apeel,” but they don’t individually put it on the labels of the fruits and vegetables.

The Importance Of Verifying Store Practices

Let’s step back and make it doable and feasible. Sometimes, in my real estate business, people say, “Just talk to the bank.” What does that mean? Do you stand in the street and yell at the building of the bank? No. You go inside. Who do you talk to inside? A twenty-year-old clerk? What does it mean to talk to the bank? You say, “Ask Costco.” You step into Costco, and there is a 21-year-old working at the counter. Can you ask them? No. You can send an email to the corporation. Is that what you do?

That’s what I do. If I have an issue with Costco, I’ll use them because we’re talking about them, I send them an email. They respond. You go to Contact Us. Sometimes they don’t want you to find that button but if you go on their website, they all have one. What I do personally is when I send them an email, I CC about 50 of my women, friends, and people. In my community, a lot of the women do the shopping but not always. Men are eating, too, the last time I checked. Whomever it is, you CC your friends and say, “I’m letting my community know your response.” You can CC all of us because we’d all like to know.

That is a powerful way of doing it, and it’s very smart. If we want to ask a supermarket, a chain, Costco, or anybody, we go to Contact Us on their website and fire off an email. You’re saying that they will respond. That’s a surprise to me. It’s very nice to know. That mega CC sounds very lovely because they not only got an email, but they also got an email from 10 or 50 people. That’s very nice. It’s not a BCC. It’s a visible CC. I like that a lot. They can say, “No, we don’t use this on Wednesday,” but on Thursday morning, they start using it.

I do ask them for verification. I say something like this in my email: “I enjoy shopping at your store. Thank you so much for carrying organic.” I always sandwich it with a polite statement. “However, I am concerned with Apeel. I choose not to use it. Can you please tell me if you use Apeel on your produce? Thank you so much. Can you also let me know how I can verify in the future going forward that you will not change this policy? Myself and my friends want to know that.”

I have some little numbers and letters after my name, I use everything I can to shake people up. I’m putting it all out there. That’s what I can do. If you don’t have a nice high school education, what do you have? Maybe you belong to a PTA, gym, or office. Most of us have lots of email contacts. Everyone has email contacts, but we somehow have to let these people know that we, as consumers, buy their products. We’re the ones directing what we want to see them carry. They’re not going to tell us what to eat. We’re going to tell them what we want to eat. Ship it.

That’s a good little tip that you gave us. I would never in a million years write that email and use the letters that I can use after my name because the letters that I can use after my name have to do with my degrees in engineering. I think that’s a great tip for all of us. Many of you on the line may have a degree in Engineering and Philosophy. Use those letters. I never thought about that.

These are ways to shake them up to say we’re watching and you would think that we wouldn’t have to do this. Not only have we developed a PhD to go feed our children dinner but we have to become CSI agents to understand going food shopping. Do we need a barcode to look and see? There are companies on your phone, like Yuka, where you can look at which are the most organic ingredients. Are we going through the supermarket aisles and scanning with our phones on barcodes to see how food compares? This is crazy-making, especially for families.

Imagine your family. You had young kids and I had young kids. The kids are running around the store and you’re checking the barcodes to see if a food is okay? It’s mind-boggling what we’re being asked to do. I don’t want to be CSI food police, but that is indeed what we’ve had to become to a degree. Some of us can do it more than others. I have a nonprofit. You have a podcast and a degree. We can do it. Hopefully, for those of us who have a microphone, we can help move the needle, but it behooves all of us to do it. Whether you have a kid in a PTA, a Girl Scout, a soccer club, or whatever it is, this is our issue. Not me and you but our. This is all of us.

Going back to the Apeel, is the reason behind it to keep the fruit or vegetable looking good over transport? What’s the rationale there?

I’m going to give you what their rationale is and then my opinion. The rationale is that it will prolong the shelf life of the fruit or the vegetable. Fruits and vegetables were meant to die after a few days. They’re not meant to be eaten forever. If you leave your bananas out, you’ll see them turn black in a few days, and that’s what’s supposed to happen.

We’ve sprayed this stuff, but what we don’t know is that you’ve sprayed this toxic chemical on the fruit or the vegetable. What is the nutrient density? I can’t find the nutrient density quality after that avocado can live for a month on your shelf. Avocados go bad in a few days. That’s one. Number two is you have to look at whether this is a globalist issue to put an assault on our food supply.

That opens up a whole new box. It’s not practical and it’s not maybe perhaps part of this show but you have to wonder why. To create the shelf life, we’re adding more toxic ingredients. We’re already toxically overloaded. It does not help us to have a longer shelf life. That may be what they want but it’s not what’s best for the eaters. I would say there’s a bigger agenda but we can take that offline. I was going to say a glass of wine or a cup of tea.

What happens to you when you consume that layer, the Apeel? What happens to your body?

Toxic Metals And Detoxification

They have no data. If you go look this up on the Apeel website, I always look at the stockholders. I say, “Who owns this company?” That’s what I do. “Who’s behind this?” That’s one issue. I saw the hexane, which is a solvent. I know there are toxic metals in there. How much metal are you getting? Not so sure. Let’s look at the toxic metals in Apeel. I don’t know which ones have been identified. Maybe arsenic, aluminum, or cadmium. These are all toxic metals.

We can probably clear a few of them, but we’re getting these metals from multiple food sources, in our medications, air, or water. You may not have filtered water. Maybe you have a type of carbon filter that doesn’t take out everything. We become toxically overloaded. We overwhelm our abilities to detoxify. Detoxification happens in two places. One is your microbiome, which is the collection of organisms in your gut. They’re your first line of detoxification.

Fatty Liver Disease Epidemic

Remember, glyphosate, which we’re all eating, is patented by Monsanto in 2003 and 2010 as an antibiotic. It kills off beneficial microbes. It’s been shown in many studies and peer-reviewed literature. That’s the one thing. The second line of detox is your liver. Our livers are under assault. How do I know that? I’ve been using that word left and right on this show because 1 in 3 Americans has something called NAFLD or Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease. It’s a metabolic-associated fatty liver disease.

We know that 0.1 parts per billion, and that’s very small, microgram per kilogram, that super small dose correlates with non-alcoholic fatty liver disease. That’s the old terminology shown by Dr. Michael Antoniou from King’s College in the UK. It’s a great paper. Fatty liver, what’s the problem? That fatty liver can progress to a more inflamed liver called NASH or Non-Alcoholic Steatohepatitis.

That can lead to fibrosis of the liver. It’s irreversible. Those early stages of fatty liver are asymptomatic, meaning people do not have any symptoms. Children have it, too. The children most at risk are obese children. How many children are obese? 1 in 3 to 1 in 5, depending on where they live, their economics, and their ethnicity. That is an epidemic.

When I was a kid, we used to have obese kids but maybe one in the whole year in the class. In the whole set of classes of the same age, there were maybe two. It’s maybe 1 in 100. You’re saying it’s 1 in 3 or 1 in 5.

It depends on where you live, the child’s ethnicity, and their socioeconomic background. For children of certain ethnic groups, for example, if you are a Puerto Rican child, a Native American or Indigenous child, or a Black child, your rates are much higher. Also, the lower socioeconomic groups because of food deserts and the capacity to get real food, like Richmond, California, which is right near us. Food desert. Families can’t even get real food. It’s much higher. There’s also a social justice issue. As a pediatrician, that is not acceptable to me that a certain population can buy this food at the farmer’s market and other kids are eating food out of 7-Eleven. I’m saying it’s unacceptable.

It’s so funny. When I was a kid, my family didn’t make any effort. My mom would go to the store and buy food or to the market. Everything was very simple, but 95% of the kids ran around real thin. I was real thin for many years. Most of the kids were. That’s heartbreaking to think that. Is there anything that can be done to help people’s livers? I know there are some supplements, maybe Silymarin or some other stuff. What can people do to supplement and maybe support their livers?

You have to reduce the toxic load. That’s pretty clear on how to change your food. What I don’t want people to do is go out and eat their Doritos and Coca-Cola and take their Silymarin to offset the toxic effects of lifestyle. You have to change, and change begins with you. That’s the first thing. You have to get off ultra-processed foods. People have to cook their food. Everyone’s back in the kitchen. Kids love knives. Teach your kid how to cut vegetables. It’s a beautiful thing.

How can you support your liver? There are very affordable ways to support your liver. One is to drink lemon water. Two is to have a little apple cider vinegar. If diluted and you drink it straight, it can mess up your teeth. It’s a mild acid but healthy for your liver. It contains a microbe called Acetobacter. Acetobacter is one of the microbes that can break down glyphosate. I’m making some of my apple cider vinegar right around the corner here. I drink my own. I got mine cooking.

It’s simple and pretty affordable and everyone can do it. Drink lots of water. Water is a filtration system but I say you’ve got to use a water filter. The days that you can use tap water are over. There was a time, maybe many years ago, before we began fluoridating everything, and that’s a whole other topic. Let’s say you’ve done all that. You need some more support. There’s herbal support, like Silymarin, dandelion, and artichoke. You can use slippery elm and marshmallow root. There are different herbs that you can use for liver support.

What’s good for your liver is glutathione. Glutathione is the body’s master antioxidant. It goes down with age and glutathione helps you process a lot of these toxic elements as an antioxidant. A lot of these things are oxidizers. When people say, “What’s an oxidizer?” I say, “Think of it as internal rust in your body.” We take antioxidants like Vitamin C and all the good things and fruits and vegetables that give them color or antioxidants. NAC, N-acetylcysteine, which is used in mainstream medicine for acetaminophen overdose, and Tylenol. You can take that.

It’s the rate-limiting step, the precursor to glutathione. I take some NAC every night before I go to bed because it goes down. You can do that. Support your liver as well. There are homeopathics but I don’t want to get into the homeopathics because those need to be prescribed individually. There are two standout names. I’m going to say them in case there are any people out there who love homeopathy.

Lycopodium is one. Chilodonium is the other. Both of those homeopathic remedies come from plants. Remedies are made from plants, animals, and minerals. Plant remedies and plant medicine are super strong. I gave you a couple of ideas there. There are other things you can do like liver flushes through enemas. You need to be working with a holistic practitioner if you want to get into some of those things regarding how to do colonic flushes to clear your liver. It all starts with what you’re putting in your mouth.

Michelle, why don’t we segue over to the side a little bit? Talk about stuff that doesn’t just pollute, clog, and rust but stuff that could nourish and make it better. Why don’t we talk about light, specifically sunlight?

The Power Of Sunlight And Nourishment

You would think that shouldn’t be a big conversation because I don’t know many people who don’t love to be in the sun. People are flocking to the beach. 80% of the US population lives on the coast. You can get sunlight and water. Water and sunlight are a great combination, particularly ocean water. It’s phenomenal. Why are we slathering children with sunblock? A lot of those mainstream sunblocks are toxic. You have to buy an organic sunblock or one that’s not like zinc oxide or something like that.

I’m not telling people to go out there and burn but sunlight every day will help convert vitamin D in your body. It’s super helpful. That light is nourishing. We are electric and energetic but vitamin D has to be converted from an inactive form, Vitamin D2, to an active form, Vitamin D3. Vitamin D is not a vitamin. It’s a hormone. That hormone is intimately involved with your immune function. You need vitamin D for robust immune function. One of the treatments for autoimmunity and cancers is high-dose vitamin D.

We’re sunblocking everybody, which is problem one. Kids have very low amounts of sun. That is one of the key things sunlight does. It also increases melatonin production. Melatonin is another hormone we need. It’s also made in our gut by our microbes, which we need to regulate the sleep cycle, our circadian rhythms. Melatonin is also very important for immune function. What’s shown to be helpful in long COVID is high doses of melatonin but I digress. Let’s leave that alone. Also, ocean water, which has negative electrons. We need to restore these negative electrons, even walking on the beach.

You want to say negative charges.

We need to be electrified and have a high voltage in our bodies. When those negative charges are reduced, which is called zeta potential, cells stick together more. We don’t want our cells, like our red blood cells, clumping. We want them electrically charged and bouncing off each other to flow through our bodies and carry the oxygen. Without oxygen, we don’t survive. That is based on a strong electric charge.

Grounding And Connecting With Nature

That brings the grounding issue to the Earth as a negative electric charge. We develop sometimes a positive electric charge. We need electrons. The more electrons we have, the better off we are. For us, to walk on the beach with our bare feet, we exchange electrical currents with the beach. We get electrons. The idea is the expression, “Hug a tree,” because we’re in California. If you stand near a tree and simply grab a couple of leaves, you get electrons because the tree is rooted right there.

People talk about grounding the stuff you can buy there, half sheets you can put on your bed, and the ground socket in your home. If you can walk barefoot, that’s a good thing. I’m a citizen scientist, like you say. I am trained in science, math, and physics especially, but not in medicine. I explore and ask. I’m asking you. The more I have been learning about light, especially sunlight, it ties very strongly to the circadian rhythm.

I noticed years ago that when I take a very long flight to another continent, maybe 10 or 12 time zones away, I can greatly minimize my jet lag by getting to my destination. If it’s in the afternoon, no matter how tired I am, walking outside with the sun into my eyes, and preferably walking barefoot on some grass, beach, or something, minimizes my jet lag. I understand a little more. Turns out, and you may agree, I want to hear what you think, that getting the sunlight in the morning, the sunrise, helps set this major clock.

When you think about our body, we have trillions of cells. Every cell has its little clock. Things that happen in the cell are timed. We have trillions of clocks but the master clock is the morning light. We were, as humans, designed to wake up when the sun is up. We get exposed to the sunlight. Our master clock gets set right. That affects the melatonin later on and all of that stuff. Ideally, we simply go to bed when it’s dark. It’s not easy to live life like this because your friends call and say, “Let’s meet for dinner at 8:00.” What do you think of all that?

I am with you. There’s no doubt that there is an effect of the sunlight on the retina, which is the back part of your eye. There are a lot of people who talk about staring into the sun. You’ve got to be careful with that and do it at a certain level. I don’t. You have to follow your intuition as well and it never felt right to me. I do believe in sunrise and sunset. Your circadian rhythms get activated by sunlight. People who work night shifts have poor health because they don’t experience that circadian rhythm. I am with you 100% there.

If you are flying across ten time zones and you don’t have access to sunlight and a beach because you’re flying somewhere in the middle of the winter, there are things you can do homeopathically to help you. There are two products I recommend. One is homeopathic cell salts. Cell salts are homeopathic twelve minerals made by Dr. Schuessler, who was a German homeopath. He’s a brilliant guy. Those cell salts can help recharge your battery. They’re homeopathic minerals.

What I do when I travel many time zones is take something called cell food. Cell food is little oxygen in a bottle with some minerals in it. I put it in some water and drank some. It recharges your battery but I would prefer to walk on the beach, walk barefoot in a forest, watch out for those oak leaves, and/or get a little bit of sunlight. I love the sun. I’m with you 100%.

What is happening with the combination of the factors we talked about in addition to 5G and our constant attachment to devices that are constantly emitting electromagnetic frequencies is that it diminishes our electric frequency. We have to be so mindful because everyone is on the computer. Kids have their devices strapped to them. That is harmful.

You travel to some cities, Adi. When I was in New York, there were 5G towers on every block. Some apartment buildings had so many routers in one corner of a building. There are 5G maps you can look at to make sure that 5G’s not near your bedroom window. We are in this world which allows us to get fast internet. We’re paying the price as a cost of convenience.

I’ve learned that I’ve been doing things backward. First of all, the notion of looking into the sun sounds crazy to me. I would not do it but I did get a little unexpected benefit. I went on a major hike in the sun and I was super tired. I went to bed at 10:00 PM, which is not usual for me. Guess what? I wake up at 6:00. When I wake up, I go out and I want to look outside into the light.

When I woke up at 6:00, the sun itself wasn’t out yet. It was only those beautiful red and yellow. It was the sunrise. I could look straight into where the sunrise was because the ball of fire wasn’t there to scorch my eyes. That was an amazing treat. I walked around looking into the sunrise and enjoying every moment and then the big ball came. I can’t look into that thing.

I’ve been using not only my regular glasses, which we all know repel UVA and UVB. In addition, I have sunglasses that I put on top of it. When I was hiking on the mountain, I had not only this barrier but the sunglasses on top and a hat. What I learned was I want to look at the sky in the daytime with no interference, no glasses.

When I would go home and look into my cell phone, which is a source of blue light, I many times would look without my glasses so I could see a little closer. It turns out it’s the opposite. I should use the barrier when I look at my cell phone, which will make me look from further away, and not use the barrier when I’m outside. For me, it’s all new. What do you think of that?

It’s true because we know that blue light from our devices harms our eyes. I have no doubt it’s one of the drivers for this cataract explosion that is affecting our population. I have blue filters on all my devices, including my glasses. I normally wear them, even during these interviews. I don’t need glasses to see you but you’ll even see my blue light filter on my readers. We all need blue filter blockers. They are damaging to the eyes. I believe that to be true.

I also agree with your point about looking at the sun, although there are sungazers out there. It’s the whole thing of being a sungazer. There’s a certain amount of individuation and common sense that one must employ. What might be good for your health may not be good for mine. Practice individualized medicine. When I’m out and doing exercise outside, I don’t wear any glasses. I’ve never worn sunglasses. If it’s so bright, I’ll wear a hat to block some of the major sun, but I will let myself get exposed as best as I can, including my eyes. I believe that the retinas do need some sunlight 100%. You have to find ways to do it.

I believe they can get sunlight without looking into the sun. You’re just walking outside. You could wear a hat with a brim. You don’t have to or you can just go like this. You don’t have to look into the sun but you can still get all of it. Some people went as far as to say something that made me think. They say that when you’re indoors and looking at sunlight through a window, the window blocks a huge amount of the full spectrum you need to get. If you open a window, you’ll get to it.

The Nature Of Light And Its Interaction With The Environment

It got me thinking, “I’m sitting here with you. There’s a window here to my left. If I open it, will I be exposed?” It occurred to me what light is. Light is particles and photons. Photons move at the speed of light. When I open the window, I assume, and this is only me speculating, a rush of photons come into the room. Some of them will hit my retina, even if I’m not looking at the window or through the window. That’s an interesting thought I had. I wonder what you think about it.

I’ve pondered that very same question. I don’t have the exact answer to it. I have house plants everywhere because they also clean the air. I love plants. When they’re near the light, they know where that light is. They grow toward that light even though the light is indirect. They grow toward it. Somehow, I suspect that your theory is accurate, although I can’t confirm it, but I’ve only seen it with my plants. As you know, plants are very photosensitive. They release a hormone to help them grow based on light. I’ve thought about that. I like the theory. Can I prove or deny it? I cannot, but I like it.

That is in physics. Light is photons moving.

Whether you open the window and they rush in, I don’t know if that’s true, but my plants seem to know.

It’s interesting. You mentioned an expression that is new to me, which is zeta potential.

I’ve only learned about zeta potential. It’s not something I was familiar with because it’s in none of my medical readings. I’m quite an avid reader of medicine, sociology, and philosophy. I read a lot. I’ve never seen this. I read about it through a Canadian psychiatrist, Dr. Andrew Moulden, who died at the very young age of 49. He was writing about zeta potential and how aluminum diminishes zeta potential.

We’re all exposed to aluminum. Aluminum is ubiquitous in our environment. It is a toxic metal. We cook with it. It’s in cookware, medication, baking soda, and vaccines. People are wrapping their chicken in aluminum foil. It’s pretty much in the environment. We are citizen scientists. When we tested baby formula and Girl Scout cookies, aluminum was off the charts.

Dr. Moulden found out that aluminum, a three-plus charge metal, diminishes the charge on red blood cells and causes clumping. I read that many years ago and thought, “Wait a minute. Hold on.” I do something called live blood analysis or dark field microscopy. I can look at people’s blood. What I see frequently is that the blood is clumped, causing these Rulo formations. It looks like coins.

Red blood cells carry oxygen in your body. They’re supposed to be dispersed throughout. We see all this clumping going on. That’s because of this loss of zeta potential, which has been written about for decades. I didn’t invest it. Dr. Moulden didn’t invent it. I read a book and a physician from 1999 was talking about it. It has to be restored to restore good health. What restores good health is mitochondrial function. That is the key driver of health.

The Impact Of Aluminum And Toxic Metals

This is why I have been on this mission to get toxic metals out of our food, for example. That’s what I focus on. A hundred percent of school lunches contain toxic metals. A hundred percent of infant formulas we tested, like baby formula, contained toxic levels of aluminum. In parts per million, that’s milligrams per kilogram. That’s a high amount. We tested Girl Scout cookies with toxic metals, 100% of them were with aluminum.

You say, “What’s the problem with aluminum?” Unfortunately, it’s a neurotoxicant. It is causative of Alzheimer’s, autism, cancers, and immune dysfunction. Aluminum also binds to glyphosate. Glyphosate and combined aluminum have six different ways. Glyphosate neutralizes the charge of aluminum and shuttles it from leaky gut, which is about all the kids have, across the blood-brain barrier. If the gut is leaky, the brain is leaky. It shuttles into the brain.

What have we found in an autopsy of brains with Alzheimer’s and autism? It has aluminum in the same areas of the brain. Let’s be clear. That is a driver of the chronic disease epidemic, where Big Pharma makes a lot of money from keeping us sick. This is why we are on this mission: not just to get rid of the pesticides in our food but also to get rid of the toxic metals.

I might add that Dr. Gilles-Éric Séralini, a French researcher, found heavy metals in pesticide formulations. When I say heavy and toxic, there’s a little bit of a difference. I can explain it. They were contaminated, the pesticide formulations themselves with toxic metals. Even when they’re spraying it, you’re getting it that way.

Those toxic metals are hard to clear. When you have a substance like glyphosate in everything, glyphosate is also a metal chelator. It binds nutrients and the metals we need to run our functions like magnesium, calcium, zinc, and copper. You need those metals to run about every biological function. Aluminum can compete with a lot of those metals. These toxic metals compete with biologic metals. That’s why we have to reduce and get rid of them. This is a massive problem that may be unknown. You say, “How does that get back to the zeta potential?” Aluminum is a driver of lowering that electric charge.

I would like to invite you to another episode. There’s a lot of stuff to talk about. I want to talk about the nature of water. That lays the foundation for why homeopathy would even work. The structure and qualities of water. For many people, water is your edge to all. What the heck? No. There’s so much to talk about in the field of water that we are not even going to talk about it here.

I do want to get something very concise and simple. We talked about eating at home. We are buying the USDA organic and the RO label. We are maybe going to the farmer’s market, trying to avoid this Apeel if we do it with chicken, fish, beef, wheat, grass-fed, grass-finished, pasture-raised, and all of that good stuff. The oils that we use at home will be the good ones. Which ones do you recommend?

The oils I use in my kitchen because I do a lot of cooking, are olive oil. I cook with it a certain way. Also, coconut oil. I don’t use beef tallow so much. I have a very specific cookware that I use, which I know you use as well. That will allow me to do oil-free cooking and also often steam with this special cookware that we love. That’s what I do. I don’t usually cook in butter. I’m a big fan of butter from grass-fed.

Assuming you don’t have dairy sensitivity, I do not, fortunately. It’s mostly coconut and occasionally avocado and olive oil. I avoid the seed oils when I can. They’ve got a lot of bad press. Also, sunflower, peanuts, soy, and canola. I wouldn’t use any of those oils. Back in the day, when my grandmother was cooking, they used beef tallow and animal fat to cook.

Navigating Healthy Eating While Dining Out

It’s very similar to what I use at home, too. We eat at home. We’re good. All of a sudden, I get a call from my friend, Michelle Perro. “Come on, let’s meet.” Where do we meet? We normally go out to a restaurant. We either eat a vegetarian or a vegan dish. We eat chicken, beef, fish, or whatever it is. It’s almost guaranteed that unless it’s the top-of-the-line seven Michelin stars and even there, the chicken is not going to be pasture-raised. The beef is certainly not going to be grass-fed or grass-finished. The cooking oils in the kitchen, we have no idea what they are. Also, the extra sugar they put in. What do you do when you go out?

This is a problem. There are two things I do. I try to avoid eating out in certain restaurants because they use a lot of soy and corn. That’s Mexican and Asian cuisine. It’s all going to be GMO. Not 100% but almost always. I try to avoid GMOs, even if I’m going to get some pesticides. I like eating out too. I love meeting up with friends. What I do often is if I’m at a regular restaurant, I’ll have the salad. If I have the salad, I ask for olive oil and vinegar. They will bring olive oil and vinegar to the table.

It may not be the best olive oil. It may not be organic. Olive oils are now contaminated. They mix olive oils together, but at least I know I’m not getting canola oil, which is the worst, even organic canola oil. Don’t even think about it. I’ll ask them to bring it and I’ll do big salads. I try to eat at the organic restaurants, but as you and I know, even here in Crunchy County where we live, there are very few organic restaurants.

Would it be more beneficial, even if somebody is a meat, chicken, and whatever fish eater, to go vegetarian or vegan when you go out?

No, because if it’s not organic, they use glyphosate as a desiccant. The highest amounts of glyphosate are in wheat, oats, and legumes. If you’re eating vegetarian, maybe you’re going to eat Indian. You’re going to have rice and lentils or chhana, those lovely cheeses that I love. Also, Anar Masala, which I endure. All those yummy legumes are going to be filled with glyphosate. Those are the highest amounts because they’re using glyphosate as a crop desiccant. Some of the highest amounts that were found by a friend of mine who did the testing were in a bunch of chickpeas. It has 2,000 parts per billion off the charts. Vegetarians often have higher amounts of pesticides than omnivores because they eat more wheat, legumes, and oats in their diet.

If you go to that Indian restaurant and you get the chicken tikka masala, you know that chicken is not pasture-raised in any way. It’s totally grown with hormones. That’s what you’re getting. It’s delicious.

I do the best I can. Sometimes you can’t avoid it. Occasionally, I’ll do a gluten-free pasta dish because I don’t do gluten. Let’s say I could not avoid it. Let’s say I have a glass of wine. For sure, It’s not an organic wine and is 100% glyphosate. It has been shown that all the California wines and German beers have glyphosate. Study shows that. When I get home that evening, I will take my NAC and Silymarin. I may take some homeopathic to help my body clear it.

We don’t want to live in a bubble, nor do we want to create a state of neurosis where you can never go to grandma’s house or a friend’s out for dinner. That is crazy making. That is what I don’t subscribe to and I don’t recommend. There’s got to be a modicum of I will get some of these foods but my body is healthy. When I do indulge, I can help offset it.

Drink a lot of water to help. If you eat some things that disagree, you can take some digestive enzymes, if necessary, to help you process it, if you’re having discomfort. Occasionally, we’ll do that because we’re social creatures and I want to meet with friends over a snack, dinner, or lunch. I will avoid the GMO corn. I know what foods are genetically modified and I will never order those foods. If I’m getting pesticides, at least I’m not getting GMOs. I tell people to avoid corn, soy, and canola.

Maybe a mini divorce from the devices. Many of us are addicted to a point. Maybe sometimes fifteen minutes away from it. It sits on the counter. What? No. Start with five minutes. It sits on the counter. You are somewhere else. Impossible? Try for two minutes. Divorce from that thing.

I plug mine in and walk away. I try to leave. Whenever I go sit outside or do what I’m doing, I have to go down and hang out with my chickens for a while. I don’t leave them alone. I let them out because I have a bobcat living under one of our decks. We’ve had some interesting times here. I separate myself, be outdoors, not connected, and let my brain think, imagine, create and not be tied to devices. Full disclosure, I’m in podcastitis. I’m always trying to learn. I feel like if I’m not doing anything, I can listen to a podcast.

You’re not watching. You’re listening.

I’d say divorce yourself from information. Let your brain free flow. Sit, meditate, and breathe. What a concept. Look at the clouds and get off our devices because there’s so much more than that.

I wonder when people say, “We went to Hawaii for a week. I felt so great. It’s because I was on vacation.” Maybe it was because you were looking at this blue sky and getting some real sunlight. You’re walking on the beach with your bare feet. Maybe all of that stuff was helping.

No doubt. Chances are you weren’t sitting in front of a computer eight hours a day. Many of our jobs are sitting in front of these computers all day long. We take little breaks, but then we’re back. It’s this inundation of these constant frequencies that offset our own. We have to be on a constant resetting of our frequencies and detoxification to stay in homeostasis.

Michelle, we could easily go for six hours. I hope we meet again on this show and in many other ways. Thank you so much for taking the time to come here. I learned a lot. Hopefully, the audience learned something, too. I appreciate that you took the time. Thanks.

You’re so welcome. I love chatting with you. You are an honorary, I’m not going to say MD, but maybe ND. I appreciate what you bring to the table, Adi. Thank you.

Citizen scientist. Thank you so much, Michelle.

Important Links

• Dr. Michelle Perro
• What’s Making Our Children Sick
• GMO Science on Facebook

About Michelle Perro

Michelle Perro, MD, DHom is a seasoned clinician with over 40 years of experience in pediatrics and integrative medicine, dedicated to treating children and families. A Yale graduate, she trained at Mount Sinai Medical School, Bellevue Hospital and NYU, later serving as Director of a Pediatric Emergency Department in NYC and spending over a decade at UCSF Benioff Oakland Children’s Hospital.

For the past 25 years, Dr. Perro has championed integrative approaches to health, focusing on the impact of GM foods and pesticides on children’s well-being. She has lectured globally, and co-authored the acclaimed book What’s Making Our Children Sick?

Dr. Perro is CEO and co-founder of www.gmoscience.org, promoting food as medicine and regenerative health education. She also hosts the podcast, The New MDS and offers parenting resources through her website. Her upcoming book, Making Our Children Well is set for release in 2025.