Toxins are the kind of subject that makes people want to stop reading. Dr. Emily Hernandez saw it happen in her environmental medicine coursework, where class would end and the whole room would sit there having decided they no longer wanted to breathe, eat, or go outside.
In the third episode of The Healing Terrain, she asked CellCore co-founder Dr. Jay Davidson to make the subject smaller. Not everything you could worry about. Three places exposure comes from, and what is actually worth changing.
Why exposure matters in the first place
Before any of the specifics, Dr. Davidson explains what chemicals do once they are in the body. They damage mitochondria. They suppress immune function. They create the conditions where parasites, co-infections, and Lyme can thrive. They clog drainage pathways.
That is the reason this topic keeps coming up in conversations about chronic illness. Exposure is rarely the only problem, but it is often underneath the other ones.
His advice for handling the overwhelm is a habit, not a plan. After a podcast, a lecture, or a book, pick one or two things you can actually do. Come back for the next one later.
From there, everything sorts into three categories. Water, food, and air.
Water
Chlorine and fluoride come first, and fluoride is the harder of the two to filter out. Dr. Davidson also questions what is being added in the first place. “It’s not even actual fluoride, but they call it fluoride,” he said, describing it as a byproduct of the fertilizer industry that is sold as biohazard waste and then added to municipal water.
After that come industrial and environmental compounds, herbicides and pesticides like glyphosate, and elements that occur naturally in soil but can be released at higher concentrations through fracking.
He spends the most time on radioactive elements, and the difference comes down to stability. Lead, mercury, and cadmium are toxic. Uranium, radium, strontium, and radioactive forms of barium are toxic and unstable, releasing radiation as they decay. Contrast agents like the gadolinium used before an MRI fall into the same group. His way of explaining it is a charcoal grill. Swallow a coal that is burning white hot and it does not stop burning once it is inside you. “That’s what a radioactive element is. It’s not just a one and done.”
That also explains where filtration matters most. Alpha radiation from radium is not readily absorbed through skin, so a shower filter is optional. What you drink is what matters.
For that, he recommends distillation over filtration, and the reasoning is about what happens when each one fails. Filters saturate eventually, and there is usually no signal when they do. “As soon as they stop, now you’re the filter.” A distiller works by turning water to gas and back again, so if it works the first time it works the millionth time. He notes you may still get some volatile organic compounds, so a simple carbon filter afterward handles that.
Store-bought distilled water is the weaker option, since you have no way of knowing how long it sat, at what temperature, or in what container. All of this connects back to something everyone has been told to do. Drink more water. “In all reality, if there’s chemicals in the water, you’re not hydrating at all,” he said, adding that radiation dehydrates internally, so contaminated water can work against the exact thing it is supposed to do.
Dr. Hernandez raised the objection people always raise. Distilled water has no minerals in it.
Dr. Davidson separates the two jobs. Hydration is water’s job, and H2O handles it. The body does need sodium, magnesium, and potassium, and he still recommends minerals and electrolytes, just from a source the body can use. The minerals in tap and well water are inorganic. “That’s the same thing that builds up on your bathtub and your sinks and your faucets.” Minerals are meant to come from food.
One thing to expect after switching is more frequent urination. He describes that as the body finally getting a chance to clear what it has been holding onto. “If you keep drinking poison, your body can never start working on the burden.”
Food
Herbicides and pesticides lead here as well, and Dr. Davidson is honest about how far careful shopping gets you. Glyphosate has been found in organic produce. “I’m all for organic, I do think it’s cleaner, but it doesn’t mean it’s perfect.”
Dr. Hernandez described patients who show up discouraged for that exact reason. They followed the clean fifteen and the dirty dozen, bought organic, chose wild caught, and are still being exposed.
Dr. Davidson added spraying to the picture, including mosquito treatment run from trucks and planes in warmer climates. Restaurants are the gap most people miss, between the chemicals required for sanitizing and cooking oils he describes as mostly rancid.
His conclusion is not to eat more carefully. It is to stop treating perfect avoidance as the goal. “The things that you can impact, great, do. The things that you can’t control, that’s what a binder a day is for. That’s really the new multivitamin.”
Dr. Hernandez put the same idea from the body’s side. It was built to filter. The work is keeping drainage and detox pathways open enough to clear what comes in, rather than trying to live in a bubble.
Air
At home, two checks most people never make. If there is a gas stove or a fireplace, get a meter and confirm there is no leak. Put in a carbon monoxide detector. Mold is the bigger concern, and the distinction Dr. Davidson draws changes what you do about it. “It’s not mold you react to necessarily. It’s the toxin the mold creates.” Since that toxin is inhaled, it settles in the lungs and sinuses. He sees the same gap over and over. People take binders for the lungs and GI tract and skip the sinuses. Sinus rinsing belongs in the protocol.
He also brought up aerosol programs at altitude, and named the reaction before anyone else could. “As conspiratorial as that can sound, I’ve got all the receipts,” he said, pointing to a public statement from a Spanish ministry after COVID about adding pesticides and herbicides to existing aerosol missions. His objection is simple. If deteriorating health traces back to poisons, adding more poisons is not protection.
Outdoor air quality is mostly geography. Phoenix and Las Vegas when the heat leaves the air stagnant. Los Angeles and New York. Countries like India and China, where he describes it as another level entirely.
Indoors, his HVAC advice runs against the instinct to buy the highest number available. A MERV 13 or 15 filter mostly just makes the system work harder. “I think MERV 8 is fine, personally, on the health side of it.” In warmer climates he likes a UV bulb inside the system, plus clean vents and a recirculating fan that isn't ancient.
For room air, he prioritizes the bedroom, and the math is the reason. Eight hours of sleep plus getting ready is close to nine hours in one room, roughly a third of the day. His daughter has a filter in her room, he and his wife have one in theirs, and he keeps one in his office.
When choosing a unit he looks for HEPA and charcoal filtration, or ionization, and points to the cost people forget to check. “Usually your biggest cost is going to be replacement of the filter.”
Why he is hopeful about all of it
Dr. Davidson’s reason for optimism is not general. It is his wife. She nearly died twice, first as a child, when Lyme led to encephalitis and a coma no one could explain, and again in 2012 after their daughter was born. “You look at her now and she’s so vibrant, healthy.”
Everything else in the episode rests on that. “If you just remove what’s interfering with it, give it what it needs to build upon, the body is incredible.” Dr. Hernandez added something raised earlier that day at ECO, that the body is constantly working to protect a person, and that even unwanted symptoms are part of that intelligence rather than proof something has gone wrong.
His closing advice was about where to start. “There’s absolutely hope. Just keep moving forward, and sometimes the easiest things are where to start. Biggest dominoes, start knocking those down.”
Listen to the full episode
Environmental Toxic Load: What We’re Exposed to Every Day is available on Dr. Talks, Apple, Spotify, and YouTube.
*These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. These products are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.
