Cellular Safety and the Dangers of Mechanical Blood Microplastic Detox

In this episode of the Health Optimization Medicine Podcast, Dr. Scott Sherr, Dr. Ted Achacoso, Dr. Allen Bookatz, Jodi Duval, and Boomer Anderson explore:

• Can therapeutic plasma exchange (plasmapheresis) effectively remove microplastics from the body, or does it only address what's circulating in the bloodstream?
• How do microplastics trigger the cell danger response, and why can they become trapped within tissues even after blood is filtered?
• What roles do the exposome, gut barrier, liver detoxification pathways, and mitochondrial function play in supporting the body's natural ability to handle environmental toxins?
• Why does Health Optimization Medicine focus on restoring cellular safety and metabolic resilience instead of relying on invasive detoxification procedures alone?
• What practical lifestyle changes can help reduce daily exposure to microplastics and support long-term cellular health?

What We Discuss:

00:00 - Mechanical Microplastic Detox is a Myth
00:30 - Introduction: The Plasmapheresis Question
01:05 - The Therapeutic Plasma Exchange Trend
02:00 - Why Blood Washing Fails at the Cellular Level
03:55 - The Protein Corona & Cellular Lockdown
05:55 - Sterile Inflammation vs. True Healing
07:50 - The True Detox Protocol: Binders & Liver Support
10:50 - The Physiological Cost & Risks of Apheresis
12:20 - Low-Hanging Fruit: Dropping Your Plastic Exposure
14:15 - The Steel Man Argument: When is Plasmapheresis Useful?
17:05 - Final Takeaways: Mechanical Detox is a Myth
20:20 - Salutogenesis & Restoring Biological Coherence

Full Transcript:

Dr. Ted Achacoso (00:00)
Over 80% of human blood tested now contains circulating microplastics and nanoplastics, including sperm. These aren't just inert debris. They actively bind to our plasma proteins and accumulate in our tissue matrices. Many people are turning to invasive vascular filtering, like plasmapheresis, to wash their blood. But blood washing alone cannot touch plastic locked inside your cells. True detox requires cellular safety, not just mechanical filtering.

Dr. Scott Sherr (00:30)
Welcome to the Health Optimization Medicine Podcast. Your clinical team here today is Dr. Alan Bookatz, Chief of Emergency Medicine, Dr. Ted Achacoso, founder of Health Optimization Medicine and Practice, Jodi Duval, Naturopathic Doctor, Boomer Anderson, CEO and HOMeHOPe Practitioner, and myself, Dr. Scott Sherr, a board-certified internist. Today, your clinical team is going after one question: Can you wash microplastics out of your blood? In the next 25 minutes, you're going to get the cellular mechanism, the clinical protocol, and the one thing most practitioners get completely wrong about an environmental detox. Let's go.

Boomer Anderson (01:05)
All right, this is a juicy one or maybe a little bit of a plasticky one, guys. So let's get the clinical question of the day right on the table right now. At this given moment, there's been an absolute explosion of marketing around therapeutic plasma exchange. How many of us have done it? Anyone here? Nope. I do kind of want to do it, but I haven't done it just yet.

Dr. Allen Bookatz (01:25)
I've ordered it.

Dr. Scott Sherr (01:28)
You don't have a blood boy yet though, I know, so that's the problem.

Boomer Anderson (01:33)
I'm working on that guys. O negative. O negative is what we're looking for. All right. So therapeutic plasma exchange or plasmapheresis is really being pitched as the ultimate blood cleaning or blood cleansing longevity treatment. But Dr. Ted, physically washing the blood, does it actually clear out these microplastics from deep tissues? And how does it work if it does?

Dr. Ted Achacoso (02:00)
Well, the short answer is no. Mechanical plasma exchange only clears the circulating vascular plastic, meaning it has to be circulating in your bloodstream. So it's a surface level rinse. True tissue level clearance would require a combination of vascular clearing, oral binding agents, phase two liver support, and crucially, deep autonomic safety cues. Root cause is not enough if the root cause is still diseased.

Dr. Allen Bookatz (02:30)
Yep. Well, you know, and I gotta say, as an ER doc, I mean, I agree. We use apheresis for true life-threatening emergencies. I mean, we're literally pulling out antibodies or cells that are causing things like paralysis or your blood to clot when it shouldn't be, or you to just bleed out randomly. And we're just trying to pull these things from the bloodstream. So you can imagine that, you know, that's how we use this. Now, turning it into some sort of weekend lifestyle quick fix just to sort of detox, doesn't really make a lot of sense when we really dive into this. And when we look at microplastic toxin buildup, it's not really a toxin in the way that most people think. It's not something you need to remove from the bloodstream immediately. And it really acts like this more slow systemic invasion where it gets socked into the tissues. So I think of it like you have this house that's burning and what you have is fire that's smoldering behind the walls and it's causing these plumes of smoke. What plasmapheresis or apheresis does, it sucks the smoke out from the house, but it does nothing to address the fire that's causing it.

Boomer Anderson (03:35)
Okay, so since we love mechanisms of action here, let's get down to the cellular mechanics. Dr. Ted, so when we ingest or inhale these microplastics, which we're doing all the time, what is actually happening at the cellular level? And let's bring this back and talk a little bit about how it relates to Naviaux's cell danger response.

Dr. Ted Achacoso (03:55)
Yeah, that's an excellent question, Boomer. When nanoplastics enter the bloodstream, they actually stop working for Pornhub. I'm kidding. They do not remain naked. They immediately attract circulating proteins forming what is known as a protein corona, right? The corona masquerades as a pathogen or a non-cellular threat, right? When these plastic protein complexes interact with cell membranes, they trigger a localized purinergic signaling, specifically the release of extracellular ATP or eATP.

Jodi Duval (04:35)
Yeah, and that eATP release is that universal cellular alarm bell. And we see this as the onset of systemic incoherence. And so everything is chaos. The cell senses a breach in its barrier, it locks down, it remains an army ready to attack. And the mitochondria, which should be generating energy through this oxidative phosphorylation, halt the ATP production. And then it shifts into that defense mode. And that is Naviaux's CDR phase one.

Boomer Anderson (05:15)
Phase one. All right, Scott.

Dr. Scott Sherr (05:20)
Yeah, exactly, Jodi. I mean, you know, it's called the biological lockdown, right? So when the cell hardens its membrane, it lockdowns the membrane itself to protect itself. It stops exporting anything. So while plasmapheresis cleanses the vascular highway, as Dr. Ted was saying, the cellular warehouses remain tightly sealed, locks on the door, holding onto the plastic. So what is this plasmapheresis even really doing in a lot of cases, right?

Dr. Allen Bookatz (05:55)
This way, if you have a cell that's stuck in a danger response, right? It's basically sending off inflammation, saying, "Hey, I'm in danger." Like think of it when you injure yourself, right? You fall, you cut yourself, it's bleeding. Then all of a sudden it gets red, it gets hot, right? That's your body's signal saying, "I'm injured, I'm being invaded. So send cells to help protect, kill whatever is potentially invading me." Now the difference here is that this is more like a sterile inflammation, right? We're not really protecting against or fighting any type of infection or wound, but what we're doing is we're still wearing that tissue down, right? Because the body thinks that it's trying to fight something off. And that's really, I think, the line that we have to draw here between acute care medicine and optimizing our health.

Dr. Ted Achacoso (07:05)
Precisely. Right. And here's where we separate pathogenesis from salutogenesis in health optimization medicine and practice. Pathogenesis is the root cause of disease. And we're looking at microplastics as actually breaking down the body and causing disease. But in health optimization medicine, we ask for the root causes of health. So if the cell remains in CDR1 or it is actually stuck in there, no amount of blood washing will release the deep tissue plastic. We must down-regulate the danger signals first. Not sick is not the same as optimized.

Boomer Anderson (07:50)
All right, so this is my favorite part of the podcast. We get to talk really tactics, tools. And Jodi, I know you love the exposome. I think you're getting an advanced degree in this, but let's talk protocol. If mechanical filtering isn't the primary answer, how do we actually help our patients when it comes to optimizing their exposome and clearing these nanoplastics? Is it even possible?

Jodi Duval (08:20)
Yeah, well, you know, I think the thing is here, Boomer, and when I was really thinking deep about this topic is that we really need to support these natural pathways of detoxification from that cellular point of view because we're going to be constantly exposed to this. You know, if we're doing plasmapheresis, it's a one-time thing, we're pulling it away. We're not actually looking at the cell, the excretion, the removal. And the thing is that we are constantly being exposed. So we have to look at the enterohepatic interruption. We use organic carbon binders. We're looking at this specifically with the humic and fulvic acids, and these can bind the microplastics in the GI tract, but we need to get them there. So preventing them from being reabsorbed and then ending up in the portal vein. So phase two conjugation, we support liver glucuronidation, sulfation pathways using active B complex vitamins, glycine, calcium D-glucarate, but we also need to test these markers as well. So we need to make sure that the B vitamins, the B complex vitamins, are what our body needs. So this helps the liver conjugate the microplastics that do get mobilized. And then barrier integrity, one of the most important things. So if we support the gut lining with specific amino acids, making sure that they're healed, there is no leakiness to any of these areas, and the immunoglobulins, so that the gut exposome doesn't get more plastics leaking into the bloodstream. So it actually has done a really good cleaning job and not recirculating and then the body gets surprised with having to clean it out again.

Dr. Ted Achacoso (09:40)
And don't forget, cell danger response one is actually a defensive mechanism and it's an evolutionarily conserved mechanism of the cell, right? And it's actually being stuck in CDR1 that will fuck you up. So, you should couple that with pulse antioxidant support to help the cell transition from CDR1 lockdown back to CDR2 and CDR3 recovery, right? In CDR1, the cell on purpose curtails the production of energy. So here's where you cannot infuse substances like NAD, you know, people get this IV NAD, for example, that will mess up your condition here when you're in CDR1, right? And the other mitochondria substrates in your bloodstream to force energy production, the cell doesn't want to produce energy, it's using ATP to actually signal other cells, right? That hey, we're in danger. Better alpha lipoic acid and NAC for glutathione production, ubiquinol, vitamins E, C, as antioxidants are more appropriate for CDR1 to transition to CDR2.

Dr. Allen Bookatz (10:50)
And if all of that didn't convince you, let's just think about for a moment the practical side of what actually happens with plasmapheresis. All right. The steps are the following. You show up in clinic. Step two, they take a really, really big needle, okay, and they put it in your neck. All right. It's a huge IV line, okay, because they need to suck a lot of blood out and then put it back. All right. And all of the things that go along with that can go wrong. Okay, you can hit an artery. I've done it. You can collapse a lung. Done that too. Come see me in the ER, guys. Not to mention infection risks. So all those things that Dr. Ted just mentioned, those are all oral supplements. So you can take oral binders, B vitamins, ramp up your mitochondria, bind up whatever toxins slowly with almost no risk. And so that's just a very different risk-benefit conversation here.

Boomer Anderson (11:55)
All right, so I want to jump in here and talk a little bit about lifestyle advice because lifestyle advice in this case becomes precision medicine. Here at Health Optimization Medicine and Practice, we don't prescribe lifestyle advice just because of a slogan. It's really prescribed based on cellular data. So what is the data actually telling us? Scott, let's direct this one towards you. What is the one thing that listeners can do this Monday morning to start protecting their exposome?

Dr. Scott Sherr (12:20)
Well, get some metabolomic testing done, but that's not Monday morning, I guess. That's more long term. But when I talk about that, I'm talking about what you described in your question here, Boomer, which is cellular data, right? We want to get the data of what people need. Dr. Ted talked about various antioxidants and Jodi talked about B vitamins, but these are things you can measure and you want to measure because you just don't want to take things without really understanding why you're taking them and then watching these levels over time. But from a low-hanging fruit perspective, there are just some things that we should just not be doing anymore. One of these is just don't do the plastic thing anymore, especially heated plastic, right? If you have a microwave, take off the plastic and don't heat it in plastic because that is just not cool. Just don't do it anymore, right? Stop drinking from disposable plastic water bottles. Or your coffee cups, right, from Starbucks take off the lids. And if it was in a hot car, the water bottle is gonna get really hot and even worse. You want to really use high quality carbon water filtration, at least under the sink in your house if you can, if not the whole house if you have that capacity. And it's really about shifting your lifestyle and just these small things can dramatically drop your daily exposome plastic burden.

Boomer Anderson (13:45)
All right, so this is a section of the show where we do our mandatory steel man argument, or devil's advocate. So if we sit on the other side and try to poke holes in what we're talking about here today, Alan, what would a conventional acute care critic, since we're picking on you as the acute care guy, what would they say to challenge our position on microplastic detox and plasmapheresis?

Dr. Allen Bookatz (14:15)
So if you weren't listening, I'm gonna put on my conventional critic hat here. Look, plasmapheresis is invasive, it's high risk. Let's just reserve it for things like an autoimmune crisis like Guillain-Barré or sickle cell crisis, where basically your red blood cells become like little ninja stars and they chomp up all of your insides. Or this fancy thing called TTP, which is thrombotic thrombocytopenic purpura, a mouthful. It's basically where you lose your ability to regulate a certain clotting protein and you basically start to completely bleed out from everything, like essentially an autoimmune type of Ebola virus, right? That's what this thing is reserved for. So not just some weekend detox. And the other thing is when we're doing this, we're pulling everything out from the blood, right? We're not able to just pull out these problem characters. So you're pulling out all the good stuff too. We need immunoglobulins. We need clotting factors. We need our essential proteins. So other than the risks that are involved with the actual procedure itself, we don't really know what happens afterwards, right? We're pulling out some bad things, but we're also pulling out a lot of good things. And if we're also going to look at the evidence here, right? Not only is this not evidence-informed, there is not a single large randomized double placebo-controlled trial, which is the type of data that we like to see in acute care conventional medicine, that shows that pulling microplastics out of the blood helps anybody live longer or better. So I would say that's really the case against us using this, and those are just facts there.

Dr. Ted Achacoso (16:00)
I would still like to try it, Dr. Allen, but your criticism is entirely valid. You know, when all else fails, plasmapheresis. No, plasmapheresis is really invasive, as you said, and carries real physiological costs. It removes a lot of stuff that you actually need. That's why HOMeHOPe does not advocate for plasmapheresis as first-line or routine wellness therapy. Instead, we focus on salutogenesis, right? We build cellular resilience from the inside out, using precise metabolomic markers and autonomic safety. And here in autonomic safety, it's really interesting when you are wanting to get out of the lockdown from a cell danger response one, you really have to remove the offender first. You have to remove the microplastic. And I liken this microplastic to be the belt, right, that is being held out by the parent to spank a child, while holding a candy for the child to take. No, the child will not take the candy. You have to take out the belt first, right, before the child will actually start calming down. So prevention is still disease-centered, whereas health optimization is health-centered.

Boomer Anderson (17:05)
All right, so this section of the podcast we're gonna get into take homes, right? So everybody listening here, what are three take homes that we can do around exposomics and microplastics? We're gonna go back to Dr. Ted since you're so passionate about kids taking candy.

Dr. Ted Achacoso (17:25)
Yes, first, mechanical detox is a myth. You cannot wash your way out of a toxic exposome just as you cannot wash yourself out of toxic relationships. So if your cells are locked down in a cell-danger response, you cannot actually wash out any of that toxic exposome. You must establish cellular safety first by removing the belt that you're actually threatening the child with rather than giving the candy at the same time, and down-regulate the extracellular ATP signaling before deep tissue clearance can occur.

Boomer Anderson (18:00)
All right, for number two, we're gonna go over to Australia. Jodi, what do we got for a second takeaway here?

Jodi Duval (18:10)
Yeah, so as I said already, you know, I think supporting our natural barriers and pathways are essential. So really making sure that your gut barrier has everything it needs, it's in good integrity and the liver phase two conjugation, and you know, we can be using substances like the fulvic humic acid binders, the calcium D-glucarate, targeted amino acids to make sure everything is beautifully bound and the plastics are fully excreted and making sure that the body has that beautiful way out for the plastics.

Boomer Anderson (18:45)
And for our third takeaway, you've heard from him today representing acute care, Dr. Alan Bookatz.

Dr. Allen Bookatz (18:55)
All right. Take home number three is it's expensive. We're talking like ten to thirty thousand dollars to get a package of these things.

Dr. Ted Achacoso (19:15)
Still I want to try it.

Boomer Anderson (19:20)
We're looking for discounts, everybody.

Dr. Scott Sherr (19:25)
I have a guy down here, I can get it to cost less around here.

Boomer Anderson (19:30)
I'm gonna try and do it at home. I'm joking.

Dr. Allen Bookatz (19:35)
All the precision medicine in the world is useless if we keep repoisoning your cellular matrix every single day. So as we said, stop microwaving plastic, switch to glass or stainless steel, and put a carbon block filter on your drinking water. Better yet, RO. Simple, cheap, and it works.

Boomer Anderson (20:05)
With remineralizing stones. All right, let's bring this back to health optimization, medicine and practice. And we're gonna take it home with some health optimization medicine and practice thoughts from the one, the only Dr. Ted.

Dr. Ted Achacoso (20:20)
To tie this whole discussion back to the foundational principles of health optimization, medicine and practice, our biology does not operate in isolation. I've always said this, we are always in continuous interaction with our environment. In fact, we are part of the ecosystem. The modern exposome is flooded with novel xenobiotics like microplastics that our evolutionary biology has never encountered. When these compounds overwhelm our cellular matrices, the mitochondria react by dropping energy production to prioritize defense. By tracking metabolic markers, restoring mitochondrial coherence, and providing safety cues to the nervous system, we shift the clinical focus from fighting disease to cultivating health actively.

Dr. Scott Sherr (20:55)
Well, everybody, thank you so much for listening to another episode of the Health Optimization Podcast. If you are a practitioner who wants to stop chasing disease markers and start mastering cellular salutogenesis, we invite you to join our global community. Get certified in health optimization medicine and practice. Learn how to map the exposome, measure clinical metabolomics, and restore true biologic coherence. Go to homehope.org and begin your certification journey today. With metabolomics, epigenetics, or exposomics, like we're talking about today—exposome the study of toxins. So for Boomer Anderson, Dr. Ted, Jodi, Dr. Alan, the critical care expert today, and myself, thank you for listening to the Health Optimization Medicine podcast. We'll see you next week.

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