124: The Glyphosate Study That Had to Be Retracted!

MK: Most people still think science is neutral, objective, untouchable. But the older I get, the more I realize that reading a study today is a lot like walking into Whole Foods and assuming everything on the shelves is healthy just because it looks cleaner and expensive. That assumption might have been reasonable in the past.

Probably not, but maybe a long time ago. Today it's dangerously naive and glyphosate is probably one of the best case studies we have for y You know, a recent New York Times article covered the retraction of a high profile glyphosate study, and instead of making me feel relieved that the truth is finally out, it actually reinforced something.

I believe for a long time. Modern science is often distorted by incentives, funding invested interests, and if you don't understand that, you're going to be misled. So today I wanna talk about what glyphosate actually is, why it's used almost everywhere, what the real health concerns are, why the science around it is such a mess.

What you can realistically do to reduce your exposure without living in fear. Welcome to the Primer Chief Podcast. You know, this isn't about panic. It's about discernment. But before we even talk about glyphosate, we need to talk about trust. Most people here, peer reviewed study and assume that means high quality, unbiased, and settled science, but peer review doesn't mean conflict free.

It doesn't mean well designed, and it definitely doesn't mean independent. A huge percentage of nutrition, agriculture, and toxicology research is funded or influenced by entities with a financial interest in the outcome. Sometimes that influence is obvious, sometimes it's subtle. Sometimes it's just baked into how the question is framed.

Or avoid it entirely. That doesn't mean science is useless. It means you cannot outsource your thinking. And glyphosate sits right at the intersection of big agriculture, regulatory capture, and public health. Glyphosate is a synthetic herbicide. It was patented in 1970s and later commercialized as Roundup.

You still find it in stores. You know, a nice white bottle with Roundup on it, and its primary function is to kill plants by disrupting a metabolic pathway called the Chiate pathway. And here is the line you always hear from glyphosate defenders. Humans don't have the shaky mate pathway. Therefore glyphosate is safe.

That sounds clean. It sounds scientific, but it's also incomplete because while you don't have that pathway, the bacteria living inside you do. And once you understand that the conversation changes. Glyphosate isn't just popular because it works, it's popular because it scales, it ena. It enables monocrop agriculture.

It simplifies wheat control, it reduces labor costs, and it pairs perfectly with genetically engineered crops designed to tolerate it. In other words, glyphosate isn't just a chemical, it's a foundation of modern industrial agriculture. And once an entire system depends on something questioning, it becomes economically inconvenient.

That's where objectivity tends to erode.

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 And now back to the episode. But let's stay grounded here. The biggest concerns around glyphosate aren't acute toxicity. They are chronic, low level exposure over long periods of time.

Some of the mechanisms that raise legitimate questions include disruption of gut microbiota. As I mentioned, your gut microbio biome or your de bacteria in a gut microbiome have the pathway that glyphosate targets increased intestinal permeability, a KL leaky gut. Mineral ation potentially interfering with nutrient absorption, possible endocrine disrupting effects and associations with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma in expo in high exposure populations.

But notice the language associations, mechanisms, plausibility. It's not necessarily proof, it's not certainty, but it's also not nothing. Binary thinking is where people get lost. You know, either it's completely safe or it's poisoning. Everybody. The reality lives in the gray and responsible thinking lives there too.

This is where that retracted study actually matters, not because it settles the debate, not because it exposes how fragile our confidence in the science often is. You know, you have. Industry funded studies showing safety within regulatory limits, independent studies, raising red flags and regulatory bodies, relying on outdated toxicology models and media headlines, flattening everything into outrage or dismissal, add in dose, timing, co exposures, gut health and individual susceptibility, and suddenly.

Is glyphosate safe becomes the wrong question. A better question is, is chronic glyphosate exposure biologically plausible as a contributor to modern disease? And the honest answer is. Yes, it's plausible. So the bottom line here really is that there is sufficient evidence showing that glyphosate is likely not good for humans if you're exposed to it over long periods of time, even at low levels.

And glyphosate now is prevalent. It's everywhere. I did a urine test not too long ago. I showed glyphosate in my urine. So we are all exposed and based on everything that we know, there is a high probability. It's very plausible that glyphosate is causing. Issues to humans. And again, the study that we've shown that was retracted, you know, the, the landmark study that showed glyphosate was safe, turned out to be funded and co-written by the industry that sells glyphosate.

I mean, you don't have to be a brainiac to understand that there is no way on earth that the outcome of that study that's funded and written by the company financially. Um. Benefiting from glyphosate is gonna say anything bad about glyphosate. I mean, that's just, you know, stupid if you believe that.

Anyway. So what can you do? You know, avoiding glyphosate entirely as so many things in life is not possible, you know, but there are a couple of things that you can do. You know, first, prioritize organic where it matters most. You know, grains, legumes, and conventionally grown wheat tend to be higher exposure sources, especially since glyphosate is often used as a pre-harvest dessicant, meaning to dry that stuff.

Now, one could argue you should not be eating those things at all. Practically in real life, you know, even, even in our home here, we are an animal-based diet. We eat a lot of meat, predominantly meat, but we also occasionally baked sourdough. Yesterday was my birthday and I made myself a sourdough pizza. So I do, I'm exposed to grains, uh, and if that's the case, buying organic.

It is likely the better choice, reducing your exposure. Second, be selective with plant foods. Again, I've said so many times before, humans don't need plants in the diet to, uh, enjoy optimal health. But it doesn't mean you need to avoid plants entirely. You know, there are cultural components. There are, you know, plants can act as a, um, to make food taste.

Better taste different. There are cultural components. You grew up maybe with certain plants or whatever. There are so many reasons why you still might be eating plants, even though you don't need it from a physiological perspective. But if you do be selective, you know, diet built diets built around ultra refined grains and processed plant foods typically result in higher exposure than whole food diets anchored in quality animal protein.

And if you're selective with the plants you add to your animal protein, chances are you're gonna reduce your exposure to glyphosate as well. You know, three. Clean your up, your drinking water, you know, filter your drinking water. Glyphosate is in all of our waterways these days. It's, uh, fortunately it disappears from where you sprayed relatively quickly, but it disappears by going into the groundwater and being washed away and then ending up in the drinking water.

So, filter your drinking water using a high quality filter. We use home house water filtration from Radiant life. That's one of the easiest and best ways to filter every, all the water that we consume. Regardless of what tap it comes out of, the shower or the kitchen, et cetera. Fourth, you know, don't outsource responsibility to labels, you know, natural, green or healthy.

They're marketing terms. They don't really mean anything and they don't necessarily mean the product is safe to consume and is free of glyphosate. And this part matters more than most people realize. Gut health. Micronutrient status, sleep and metabolic health all influence how well your body handles environmental stressors, including things you can't fully avoid.

And this is exactly why my wife and I started MK supplements, and not because supplements detox you, but because nutrients, sufficiency, gut integrity, and metabolic resilience give your body more margin of error in a toxic, modern world. And when you're deficient. Inflamed and metabolically unhealthy.

Every exposure hits harder, and when your foundations are solid, your system is far more resilient. Obviously, supplements don't replace good food or good habits, but they can close gaps that modern life creates. That's why if you see it here in the background, you know, we consume organ meats every single day to close any nutritional gaps we might or might not have because very often.

You can't really tell for sure what gaps you have. So here are the key takeaways I want you to remember. You know, don't try to eliminate all exposure. It's impossible. You know, you just wanna lower the background noise, so to say. You wanna lower your exposure over time and strengthen the organism, your organism at the same time, so you can be more resilient and you can deal with those stressors that are environmental toxins better than otherwise.

You know, glyphosate isn't the real villain here. The deeper issue is a system that prioritizes yield efficiency and profit, and then funds the science that reassures us. Everything is fine while externalizing long-term health costs. If you take one thing from this episode, you know, let it be. This science is a tool.

Not a religion. Studies are inputs, not commandments. And personal responsibility still matters, maybe even more so than it did in the past. You don't need to panic, but you can also not afford to be passive. You know, understand mechanisms, question incentives, and you know, at this point I wanna, you know, my mom.

Recently had her annual physical just to, uh, go away from glyphosate for a moment. And you know, she, her cholesterol was high, you know, and so the doctor prescribed her cholesterol lowering medication and he cited a lot of studies. You know why this is a good idea. And I told my mom, Hey, look, take the time.

Look at those studies. See who wrote them, who funded them, and who. Benefits if you do something, if you, if you take that medication or if you f if you do what the study suggests and if there is a financial interest in there anywhere, if that study was funded, co-written, authored, or influenced by the industry, then you can almost be certain that it's not in your best interest.

And I would do the exact opposite, you know? So. Question incentives. Whenever you hear something, does someone benefit from what they are telling you? Um, if yes, that doesn't necessarily mean it's bad advice, but you have to be extra careful, you know, understand the mechanisms behind everything you wanna do, and make choices that support long-term health and not ideology, not marketing, and not blind trust.

And with that, we're gonna wrap it up. I hope you found this episode useful. Um, you know, again, it's not new. Glyphosate I think should not be part of. Of our environment whatsoever. In reality, nothing that doesn't occur also in nature that has been there before humans put it, there should not be, there should not be part of our environment.

'cause chances are there are side effects that we either know about and ignore, or that we don't know about. And we'll know about it when it's too late, when people get sick. With glyphosate, it's synthetic. That in itself tells you that it's probably not good to be in our environment if nothing else, but based on the fact that now that landmark study has been retracted, that evidently, you know, the idea that glyphosate is safe.

Is likely bullshit, or if nothing else was written by someone who financially benefits from selling glyphosate. You know, think for yourself. Don't just blindly trust studies. There are, unfortunately, very often, uh, there is as much chunk food and scientific research as there is in the grocery store. And with that, we're gonna wrap it up.

Share this episode with someone who could benefit from it, like subscribe, stick around, live comment if you're watching this on a platform supporting comments. Until next week.