Prepare to have your health questions answered
here on Safe, Effective Natural Solutions with
Dr. Todd Binkley, owner of Binkley Healing Center
in downtown Ventura. Now, here's Dr. Todd. Good
afternoon. I'm Dr. Todd Binkley, board -certified
doctor of non -force chiropractic and practitioner
of functional medicine. Today, I'm going to do
a continuation of the topic from last week, toxins.
We're going to present a little more material,
some great studies on the effects of toxins and
motivate those of you who have never had your
body tested, perhaps to get tested for things
like arsenic, lead, mercury, cadmium, and uranium.
top five heavy metals that we're concerned about,
and chemical toxins like glyphosate, the most
common pesticide that people are exposed to,
people that work in agriculture or people who
live near agriculture. If you're downwind from
a field, it might be a mile away. But if you
sleep with your windows open and that stuff's
in the air, you're going to be breathing it.
I've tested people many times who said, no, I
don't live anywhere near a farm. And then I look
up on the map. Well, it's almost a mile away.
But when we test you, you're still going to have
a high body burden of that. I had a woman in
her 30s who was an attorney, was working indoors
her whole life in a courtroom, in an office,
couldn't believe that she had exposure to glyphosate.
But it was very, very high and explaining a lot
of the symptoms that she had. And just by giving
her some things to gently flush that out, she's
been feeling a lot better for a long time now.
So, yeah, it's very difficult to tell if you're
exposed to these things. And that's why it's
so critically important to get tested to see
if you have a body burden. of various pesticides
so that you know that you need to flush those
things out. Do you or does someone you know have
an unexplained rash that no one's ever been able
to resolve? Having extra toxins in your body,
your skin is an organ like the kidneys and the
colon. Your skin is an organ of elimination.
That's why sweat smells sometimes. That's another
way that your body flushes things out. the body.
So when you're having an abnormal amount of that
or it's been exposed to certain things, a rash
can be caused by your body's attempts to get
rid of that stuff. People that have autoimmune
conditions like rheumatoid arthritis or Hashimoto's,
the low thyroid condition that's caused by your
immune system overproducing certain... Your body
doesn't... A lot of times people say, oh, you
have an autoimmune condition because your body's
attacking itself. Nobody's immune system attacks
your own body. It overproduces certain things
that are normal. for it to produce. What's happening
is your immune system is finding foreign debris
in places in your body where it doesn't belong.
That's why so many autoimmune conditions start
in the gut. Things are getting into your bloodstream,
migrating to other tissues that don't belong
there. Foreign debris, foreign protein fragments
and other things end up, and if it gets lodged
in your thyroid, then your immune system rightly
sees that as something that doesn't belong there
and it attacks it. And that is the etiology,
the cause and the mechanism of a lot of autoimmune.
conditions. So lupus, multiple sclerosis, any
of these types of autoimmune conditions can be
caused or dramatically exacerbated, made worse,
and made much more difficult to treat and resolve
if you have a high body burden. of toxic chemicals,
heavy metals, mold toxins, and these other various
other types of toxins. If you have a family history
of cancer, then exposure to these toxins can
increase your, can doubly increase your risk
of certain cancers. And any stress you, they
impose stress on your immune system. The toxins
make it more difficult for your immune system
to fight off any cancer. And most doctors never
test for these things. At best, they'll do blood
tests. If you have a known exposure, you know,
something that you knew happened, you can go,
oh, I think I might've gotten exposed to mercury.
let me go get that tested, and they'll do a blood
test, and if it doesn't show up in your blood
test, they tell you you're fine. Well, that's
not true. It's good that it's not showing up
in your blood test, but it will only show up
in a blood test if you've had a recent, relatively
significant exposure. And most people have no
idea when they're exposed to these things. They're
exposed to minor, small, small amounts over years
and even decades, and you have no idea, you have
no symptoms to warn you of that, to alert you
to that, until many years later. until it gets
bad enough to stress a part of your body that
it shows up in some kind of a symptom. Because
your body stores these things in fat cells. It
wants to get it out of your bloodstream so it's
not circulating around, affecting your brain,
affecting your heart, affecting your liver and
kidneys. So it tries as best it can to eliminate
an exposure to any kind of toxic chemical or
heavy metal by flushing it out through the kidneys
and the colon and the urine and in the stool.
But what it can't flush out, it wants to get
out of circulation as quickly as possible. So
as a protective measure, it will shove it into
fat cells just to get it out of circulation.
But then unfortunately, These toxins remain in
your fat cells forever. And the way you can test
this is with a urine test that identifies what
your body is, the small, tiny amounts that are
coming out in the urine. And sometimes you can
take certain agents to facilitate your body to
excrete a little bit more of that just for the
test. And then there are ways you can safely
excrete these things and increase your immune
system's ability to fight off most conditions,
reduce your risk to certain cancers. These things
are often also very commonly implicated. whenever
a condition of the brain is involved. So mood
disorders, anxiety and depression, brain fog,
unexplained fatigue or malaise, anything that
makes an increased risk of dementia. In older
age, Parkinson's and various forms of dementia
are also more likely to occur and more difficult
to address if you have a high body burden of
various types of toxins. As a reminder, you can
listen to past episodes of this show anytime
you like on my website. You can also subscribe
to the podcast on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify,
and on YouTube so that it comes to your... Whatever
you're chosen, whichever one of those things
you like the best. For example, if you go to
Apple Podcasts, it's the little purple app on
your iPhone or your iPad. And then search for
Safe, Effective, Natural Solutions or my name,
Dr. Todd Binkley. And you'll see the podcast
come up there and you can just click subscribe.
And then each week that episode of the show will
show up in that app. You just open the app and
there it is. And you can listen to it anytime
you like. And there's also a transcript provided
by all of those outlets on Spotify. on YouTube
and on Apple Podcasts. You can find a place there.
Click and it'll show you the transcription if
you want to read about some of the things you
heard me talk about or didn't quite hear something
and want to look it up. And as a compliment to
this show and the podcast, I'm also now doing
a series of presentations in my office in downtown
Ventura, live at Binkley Healing Center every
month, the first Wednesday of the month at 6
p .m. We'll have a 20 to 30 minute presentation,
some light refreshments, and then... plenty of
time afterwards for questions and answers. I
always love hearing your questions. I always,
I'm really excited whenever people send me questions
as it gives me more material to cover on this
show. Please let me know what you would like
to hear about on future episodes of this show,
but it's also nice to meet you face to face and
hear your questions in person. You can, you're
welcome to bring your friends and family, anybody
that has a concern or a question, you know, what
about this? Can you help with this? What causes
this? I've been, had this condition for so many
years and no one has been able to able to help
me, anything like that. There's no, there's no
bad questions. So yeah, please join us next Wednesday,
not next Wednesday, the first Wednesday of the
month, 6 p .m. So the next presentation will
be November 5th, Wednesday, November 5th, first
Wednesday of the month, 6 p .m. at Binkley Healing
Center in downtown Ventura, 961 East Main Street.
Space is limited, of course, so please RSVP if
you're going to make it and how many people you
might like to bring. RSVP 805 -612 - If you're
able to come to the talk, it's first Wednesday
of every month, 6 p .m. Next one, November 5th.
Reserve your spot, 805 -612 -5531. The presentation
will be on toxins, how to test for them, identify
them, why you should do that, who should do that,
how to safely eliminate them. And I will be doing
a really great case study of a 32 -year -old
man that came into me with some really severe
fatigue and dizziness. He'd been going to the
emergency room and seeing all kinds of doctors
that no one was able to help him for about seven
months, really debilitating symptoms. And I finally
identified the thing that everyone else was missing
after all the other. tests that he had done by
other doctors and that I did on him as well.
He had a large exposure to chemical toxins. And
when we started to get that stuff flushed out,
he felt like a whole new person again. And it
is, of course, Breast Cancer Awareness Month
still this month. So any questions when you come
to the live presentation, I'm happy to answer
questions about toxins and any other topic that
you'd like to talk about. I'm Dr. Todd Binkley.
You're listening to Safe, Effective, Natural
Solutions to Almost Any Health Challenge. This
week I got a question, or last week, whatever,
a few days ago I got a question from one of the
listeners about piriformis syndrome. What is
that? Well, the piriformis is a little muscle
about three and a half, four inches long. In
the upper glute area, it is a hip rotator, meaning
it turns your foot out, like a ballerina turns
their foot out, or soccer players often use that
muscle. If you're not a ballerina or a soccer
player, you probably don't use the piriformis
and the other hip rotator muscles that much.
But it's in the upper glute area. It attaches
to the tailbone area, the sacrum specifically,
at the base of your spine, and then goes out
to the side and attaches to the femur, the hip
bone, that spot. If you just put your fist against
the side of your hip, that bone that you can
feel, that's the top of the thigh bone, the femur.
The piriformis goes from that to the base of
your spine. So a lot of overlooked low back pain.
And sometimes people have, so piriformis syndrome
is if you have pain right in that, somebody,
some doctor has identified that you're the cause
of your pain. in that area is because of a spasm,
inflammation, irritation of this muscle. It's
also a really commonly overlooked cause of low
back pain and sciatica. So it pulls on when it's
tight. When this muscle is tight, it pulls on
the base of your spine and irritates other muscles
going up into your low back and is a common,
very common cause of low back pain. And it's
also a very common cause of sciatica. The sciatic
nerve is a bundle of nerves that exit the spine
near the base of the spine, the low back and
the sacral area, right above the tailbone. And
these nerves come out from several levels of
the spine and then merge together and form this
big bundle of nerves that go all the way down
the back of your leg. back of your calf, even
all the way down to the bottom of your foot.
And in fact, everything below your knee is innervated.
All the muscles, all the nerve endings, the pain
sensors, and all the nerves below your knee are
branches of the sciatic nerve. And so it's very
common if you have numbness, tingling, burning,
or pain shooting down the back of your leg or
anywhere along that pathway. It could be just
in your foot or your ankle, your big toe. That's
often because of pressure on that nerve. The
nerve endings can commonly get pressure on them
from a herniated disc. It's a common symptom
of a herniated disc to have those pain, burning,
numbness, tingling going down the back of your
leg. But it can also very often, probably more
often, in my experience, it is caused by pressure
on the sciatic nerve bundle from the piriformis
muscle, this hip rotator muscle in the upper
gluteal area. goes from the tailbone area to
the femur, the thigh bone. And when you have
spasm in that muscle, it often doesn't hurt,
right? In that muscle itself, it can, but it's
more common to have pain in the low back or going
down the back of the leg when you have a spasm
in this muscle. It's very easy for me to identify.
So if you suspect that you have that, I'd love
an opportunity to identify that, whether or not
that's a cause of your issues. I see it probably
in 80 % of the patients that come to me for non
-force chiropractic. check it on everyone. And
it is so very, very common to have tightness
restriction or even a full blown spasm in this
muscle. It's often not a full blown spasm. It's
most commonly just really, really short and tight
because it's been too tight for years and years,
even decades. You can tell by how tight it is.
Some people come in and they have no range of
motion. in that muscle at all. What does that
look like? Well, you're lying on your back with
your knee pointing straight up towards the ceiling,
your foot on the table. So knee bent, foot on
the table, lying on your back and knee pointing
straight up towards the ceiling. And then I push
that knee towards the opposite side of the body.
This muscle, that's the way you test the piriformis
muscle. It goes from the base of the tailbone
area over to the thigh bone. So when you push
on the thigh bone, you're testing the length
and relative flexibility range of motion in that
muscle. It's really restricted in many, many,
many people. Most people who have low back pain
have restrictions in that muscle. And so to fix
it, you stretch it on the table. I help you loosen
it up on the table over a series of visits. It's
more difficult than some muscles to get loosened
up completely, but it always... feels better
immediately when you just start to lengthen that
muscle release some of the tension from that
muscle when it's really tight it can also very
very quickly eliminate sciatica just by getting
that muscle loosened up One of the worst scenarios
with tight site piriformis muscles is when it's
really, really tight on one side and not that
bad on the other side. The imbalance of having,
it's better to have both sides equally tight
than to have one side really, really tight and
the other side not so much because that imbalance
makes the symptoms even worse. And it's often
more difficult to release that tighter side when
one side is a lot tighter than the other. And
it's not uncommon. For that to happen, I've got
a couple of patients right now that just have
no motion at all. When I lie them on their back,
knee pointing straight up, try to push it to
the opposite side of the body, no motion at all.
It's just totally stuck. And so working on the
table, we can get that to loosen up, and it very
quickly starts to feel better. One of the most
severe cases I had a few years back, a 16 -year
-old cheerleader who had been dropped a few times,
fall on her butt, obviously. just that's how
we figured out later that caused this tremendous
pain that she had in her right hip and she had
been to several doctors nobody could figure out
nobody could help her she went to even went to
a surgeon who was thinking about recommending
some sort of surgical procedure she wasn't even
clear on what he was recommended doing just saying
he's probably there's possibly could be a candidate
for some type of surgery. I can't even imagine
what that would be, but surgeons like to do surgery,
but fortunately she did not need that. I very
quickly got her pain to where she could get back
to her normal activities after just about two
or three weeks. Um, she was feeling at least
50, 70 % better, something like that. She was,
I know that she could go back to doing most of
the things that she wanted. to do. And, you know,
then I think I probably had her coming in once
a week for another month or so after that. And
after, you know, maybe twice a month for a month
or so, after about three or four months, she
was completely back to normal, as good as new.
So 16 year olds respond a lot faster than 60
or 70 year olds. But no matter how bad it is
and how old you are and how many years or decades
that muscle has been tight, when we just start
to loosen it up, you immediately start feeling
relief. If you just tuned in, I'm Dr. Todd Bankley.
The theme of this week's presentation is toxins.
And it's important to note, especially the following.
The brain is the most sensitive organ in the
body to any kind of nutrient deficiency. The
brain is the most sensitive organ in the body
to any exposure to toxins. And those two things
often go together. If you're exposed to a lot
of toxins and you're not getting adequate nutrients,
you're going to have more severe symptoms from
that if your body lacks the things it needs to
flush out. But you never know how much you have
unless you do certain specific types of tests,
usually urine tests or heavy metal hair tests,
identify what you have, your body burden of those
things. And so if you have an increased body
burden, it increases your risk of chronic degenerative
conditions of the brain like Alzheimer's, other
forms of... dementia and Parkinson's. And there's
some really good data that's come out recently
in the literature. This is a study published
in the journal Neurology, where they analyzed
the records of more than a million Medicare beneficiaries
and showed that exposure to ambient trichloroethylene,
a common chemical used in degreasing and in dry
cleaning, exposure to ambient exposure. What
does that mean? It wasn't people that were exposed.
It wasn't people working. degreasing engines
and other machine parts in certain industries
or in the military, very common exposure. People
that worked in dry cleaners or in the places
that make those chemicals obviously are going
to have significant exposure to those chemicals.
This wasn't any of that. There was no direct
exposure to all. This was just breathing in,
just living near these places, living a certain
distance from these places and breathing it in
through the air had a 10 % increased risk of
Parkinson's disease. compared to people that
lived further away from them. So this was reported
by Brittany Krzyzanowski, PhD of the Barrow Neurological
Institute in Phoenix, and certain co -authors.
Exposure to outdoor trichloroethylene was associated
with new diagnosis of Parkinson's disease 14
years later. in a dose -dependent manner, meaning
the people that lived the closest to the sources
of that chemical had a higher risk. Well, other
studies I've reported recently, a study on this
show about the increasing proximity to a golf
course. Just living near a golf course because
of the pesticides that they use on the grass
can dramatically increase your risk of Parkinson's
disease. And there's been evidence linking air
pollution to Parkinson's disease. Certain other
studies, certain other pesticides have long been
associated with it. And air pollution, pollutants
from wildfires and other particulars. matter
in the air that we're breathing in more and more
of every year has been tied to an increased risk
of Parkinson's disease. But this is the first
data that's shown that it's a link just from
breathing the air near sources of these chemicals.
And it's something that's, it's an environmental
exposure that's widespread, but a lot of neurologists
are not. familiar with. They cited in this article
sites that environmental exposure to this has
been detailed in the books, A Civil Action, which
was also made into a movie, and the Pulitzer
Prize winning Tom's River. So trichloroethylene
is a volatile chemical that's used to dry clean
clothes like perchloroethylene, very similar.
Trichloroethylene and perchloroethylene are very
similar chemicals that are used to dry clean
clothes, degrease metal, decaffeinate coffee.
Yikes. Decaffeinated coffee. Some of the ways
they decaffeinate coffee are really, really toxic.
I don't recommend decaffeinated coffee. By the
way, since we're on that subject, decaffeinated
coffee is not caffeine free. So if you want less
caffeine, but you really like coffee, then just
drink less regular coffee. That's my recommendation.
But these things are also even used to anesthetize
pregnant women. Wow. There's a horrifying thought.
I wonder where that was happening. I'll have
to look that up. Toxic chemical causes cancer
has been well known to cause cancer for 50 years
or more, but this link to Parkinson's disease
is relatively recent. So the environmental...
The EPA, Environmental Protection Agency, banned
most uses of trichloroethylene and perchloroethylene.
As of June 2025, most of the ban is likely to
remain in place and will lead to a phase -out
of uses of the chemical over the next decade.
However, the ban does little to address the thousands
of sites contaminated with the persistic chemicals,
these chemicals and others that are around the
U .S. and around the world. So if you or someone
you love lives near one of these places, it's
a very good idea to get a urine test to measure
your body burden of these chemicals. they can
increase your risk of any brain conditions. So
in addition to Parkinson's and dementia, they
can also increase risk of anxiety and depression
or make those conditions worse. They very often
contribute to brain fog and fatigue. Some of
you may be becoming fatigued hearing me talk
so much about toxins over and over again because
it can be kind of confusing, but it is so important
to get these things checked if you have any of
those symptoms. So back to Parkinson's, there's
another study that came out relatively recently,
exposure to the industrial solvent trichloroethylene
and other volatile organic compounds in drinking
water, raised the risk of Parkinson's disease
decades later in an analysis of 158 ,000 military
veterans. So this was personnel that compared
military personnel who lived on the base at Camp
Lejeune in North Carolina from 1975 to 1985.
They compared them with military personnel that
lived at Camp Pendleton. a large California base,
which most of us are familiar with around here.
So the people at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina
had a 70 % higher risk of Parkinson's disease
compared to the people that lived at Camp Pendleton.
This was reported by Samuel Goldman, M .D. and
Masters of Public Health, University of San Francisco,
and San Francisco Veterans Affairs Medical Center,
and their co -authors. So it was published in
Journal of American Medical Association Neurology,
and the exposure occurred. when Marines were
an average of age 20. And the Parkinson's diagnoses
emerged at Camp Lejeune on average 34 years later.
So when you hear me talk about, this is a perfect
example of how most people are totally unaware
of their exposure to these things. They don't
have any symptoms until years later. In this
case, Parkinson's showed up. 34 years later,
so average age of 20, these men and women serving,
and it most often shows up. 34 years later in
your 50s. So trichloroethylene has been used
since the 1920s to decrease metal, decaffeinate
coffee. Talked a little bit about this already.
It's been linked with cancer, miscarriages, neural
tube defects where people have a cleft palate
or parts in the middle of the body, parts of
the spine, spina bifida, where the bones don't
close in the middle. Congenital heart disease.
which one of the most common one of those is
where there's a hole between one side of the
heart and the other or just underdeveloped heart
tissue. Autoimmune disorders, which we talked
about, and Parkinson's disease. So from 1975
to 85, the median monthly level of trichloroethylene
in the Camp Lejeune drinking water was 70 times
higher than the permissible level. Wow. So their
drinking water, it's unavoidable, their drinking
water has 70 times the permissible level of trichloroethylene.
And the wells providing this water were taken
offline in the mid -80s after the contamination
from underground storage tanks, industrial spills
and waste disposal sites for the trichloroethylene
and an off -base dry cleaning business for the
perchloroethylene after these were discovered.
So the co -authors evaluated the health reports
of 172 ,000 Marines and Navy personnel who lived
at Camp Lejeune from 1975 to 85 and compared
them with 168 ,000. and Camp Pendleton personnel.
And interesting to note that the study was just
the military personnel that lived on base. It
excluded their spouses and dependents and the
large civil populations who worked at the base.
So this, of course, means that these studies
are radically underestimating the effect on the
total population. I'm going to be doing more
studies on this, and, of course, I will report
them when they come out. We are almost out of
time again to hear a fascinating presentation
on toxins and some great case studies of people
who I have helped by getting those toxins flushed
out. Join me November 5th, Wednesday at 6 p .m.
at my office for my presentation, Toxins Live
at Binkley Healing Center. We'll have plenty
of time afterwards to answer any and all of your
questions, and I'd love to meet you and answer
them face -to -face. until then have a blessed
weekend You've been listening to Safe, Effective
Natural Solutions with Dr. Todd Binkley. If you
have a health question you want discussed on
the show, email your health questions to drbinkley
at binkleyhealingcenter .com. Take advantage
of this opportunity to ask questions for yourself
and for your loved ones because our health matters.
Join him next Friday at 2 p .m. for Safe, Effective
Natural Solutions here on 98. The Word.