Dr. Deb Muth 00:08
What if the toxins in your food and water weren't just harming our bodies, but rewriting the very code of human health?
My guest today, MIT scientist Dr. Stephanie Sineff, has spent over a decade connecting the dots between environmental toxins, metabolic chaos, and neurological decline. You'll want to hear every word of this conversation.
You guys can put our, Serenity ad in here, and then I'll do the standard intro.
Welcome back to Let's Talk Wellness Now, the show where we uncover the root causes of chronic illness, explore cutting-edge regenerative medicine, and empower you with the tools to heal. I'm Dr. Deb, your medical detective.
And today, we're diving into how environmental toxins and nutritional imbalances are silently shaping chronic disease patterns, from autoimmune disorders to neurodegenerative decline.
And how we can take back control of our health. So, as usual, grab your cup of coffee, tea, or whatever helps you unwind, settle in, and let's get started on your journey to deeper healing.
So, Dr. Sunif, so glad to have you here. I can't wait to have this conversation with you. We were just chatting off-camera a few seconds ago about what we're going to chat about, but tell us a little bit about your background and how you got into this field of looking at toxins and mitochondria.
Seneff 01:50
Okay, yeah, my background is a bit eclectic, so it starts out with biology. I have an undergraduate degree in biology from MIT. My PhD is in electrical engineering and computer science, so that's quite a switchover. And most of my career, I was writing computer code to train computers to talk to humans in a natural
conversation… conversational interaction with computers. We were pioneers in that space. You can see that it has really taken off now. And actually, by 2006, 2007, I started to realize that
the kind of work I did already then was getting compromised by the, by the emergence of AI.
And I got concerned that, I wouldn't be able to sustain the path I was on. And it's happening now, of course, to the young… many people, young people today, are facing a crisis in computer science, because it used to be if you had skills in hacking code, you were good to go, you know, and that's just not true anymore, so that's another whole story, but anyway, I decided I needed to do something different, and I pivoted in a big way in 2007.
managed to get the company that had been funding me, a Taiwanese company called Quanta Computers, And they,
We're willing to switch over to funding me to do research on health and toxic chemical exposures.
Which was a miracle that they let… they let me switch over to that, and that was fantastic, 2007. So it's been almost 20 years.
that I've been looking for toxic chemical exposures and their association with human disease. And I focused initially on autism and heart disease, kind of for personal reasons, because I knew people who had, you know, who had those issues.
But it led into a much, much bigger story, and I'm super excited about what's happened over the last 20 years. It's been a continual learning experience for me, and I've just kept broadening my space in biology, furiously reading papers as I discovered new concepts and trying to explore those.
opening up new windows, and it's just been a profusion of learning over the past 20 years, and I've published many papers at this point.
Peer-reviewed papers on the topics of toxic chemical exposures and disease.
Particularly, glyphosate is the one I really focused on, and I wrote the book, Toxic Legacy, how the weed killer glyphosate is Destroying Our Health and the Environment.
That was published in 2021. So.
Dr. Deb Muth 04:18
So I'm sure you have a few thoughts about the administration wanting to bring that back to be made at home instead of China, right?
Seneff 04:26
I know, that's so interesting. And actually, you know, he makes a point that I agree with, which is that we are relying on China.
for importing a whole bunch of stuff that's really toxic, and we're pouring it all over our food supply, so China's probably very happy to poison us, you know? Oh, absolutely. It's kind of ironic that we're doing that, and he makes a good point that we shouldn't be relying on China for these chemicals that are poisoning us, but where he misses the point is he says, well, we just need to poison ourselves, you know? Rather than getting rid of that chemical, we need to really change the way we grow food.
I think it's the number one most important thing right now.
in America is to change the way we grow food, and it has to be certified organic, regenerative. We need to focus on healing the soil, just as we have to heal the gut. I mean, we've really messed up the microbes in both the soil and the gut, and the consequences, as you can see, are a huge problem with human disease.
Dr. Deb Muth 05:20
They're devastating. I mean, we have so much chronic illness and so much neurological disease these days, and just the rise of autism, it should be telling us that we're doing something wrong, right?
Seneff 05:31
Absolutely.
Dr. Deb Muth 05:32
We have a problem. For those people who are listening that don't understand what the term glyphosate is, can you explain that a little bit to them?
Seneff 05:39
Yeah, so it's one of the many herbicides that we use. We use herbicides, fungicides, and insecticides in agriculture, all these poisons, and it kind of seems crazy to me that we would think it's okay to pour poisons all over our food supply. I don't understand why we think that's fine.
Yeah. You know, categorically. Glyphosate is supposed to be a wonderful chemical, because it's an herbicide that kills all plants except for those that have been engineered to resist it.
And supposedly is completely harmless to humans. And that's what gets to be, you know, disbelief, because how can something so toxic to plants be harmless to humans? Just, how can it be?
Dr. Deb Muth 06:14
We haven't been re-engineered like the seeds that they use from Monsanto, so how can it not affect us if it only affects everything but their seeds that they've modified to make grow beautifully under that condition? It doesn't make any sense.
Seneff 06:32
Right, and of course, the critical thing they missed is that our gut microbes do have that pathway. It's the chicken mate pathway that it disrupts. Really critical in all the plants, and in most of the microbes.
In the soil and in the gut, and so it kills off the microbes as well as the plants, and when it kills off your gut microbes, you gotta watch out, because gut dysbiosis is a huge thing. And we've had so many papers coming out lately that
Talking about the relationship between gut dysbiosis and all kinds of different diseases.
Dr. Deb Muth 07:01
Do you think that's why we see so much gut dysbiosis these days?
Seneff 07:04
Oh, absolutely. I think it's not just glyphosate, because we have lots of poisons that are messing up our gut microbes, but glyphosate is a really big one, because the shikimate pathway is essential for many of the microbes, and they use it to make essential nutrients for the host. So we get compromised as well, just because they can't make those nutrients in that.
Dr. Deb Muth 07:22
It's so…
Seneff 07:22
lies.
Dr. Deb Muth 07:23
so much harder today to treat people with gut issues than it was 25 years ago when I started. It was so much easier. And now, it's, like, nearly impossible sometimes to get some of these people back to a good, healthy gut microbiome, no matter what you do, no matter how well they eat, and all the things that they do. It's a struggle, for sure, compared to what it was 20 years ago.
Seneff 07:44
It's interesting that you have that personal experience, because I think people like you really can see what's happening.
Dr. Deb Muth 07:49
and appreciate.
Seneff 07:50
the difference between then and now. I, of course, as a child, autism was not something I knew about at all.
Really, when I was a child. It didn't exist, basically. I mean, it was so rare.
And now, you know, everyone knows someone with autism, you know, pretty much.
Dr. Deb Muth 08:08
autism and Parkinson's and Alzheimer's seems to be just so much commonplace. Everybody knows somebody in their family that is affected by one of those disorders, if not multiples, and
We tend to say it's genetic, right? Well, there's got to be a genetic… why wasn't it genetic 50 years ago, or 100 years ago? But now, all of a sudden, it's so prevalent in our environment that we've just become acceptable of it, and I think that's wrong for us to do that. We shouldn't be doing that.
Seneff 08:38
I know. I find it very interesting how quickly it appears that humans adapt to the new normal, you know?
Dr. Deb Muth 08:44
Yeah.
Seneff 08:45
It's normal that you have, you know.
3% of the kids have autism, that's normal, you know? It's just like, no, it's not. And also, of course, all the Alzheimer's and dementia and Parkinson's, as you mentioned, in the elderly, those are connected, because they're all related to brain problems that are being caused by chemicals that are destroying the brain.
Dr. Deb Muth 09:03
Yeah. So, how does glyphosphate interact with our body's ability to absorb those essential nutrients, like sulfur?
Seneff 09:12
Yeah, well, it's… that's a big… that's a big question. I don't know ...
