Dr. Dietrich Klinghardt is well known for his successful treatment of neurological illness and Lyme disease with integrative medicine. Originally from Berlin, Germany, Klinghardt has practiced medicine in the U.S. for over 35 years. He also sees patients in England and Switzerland.
In Switzerland, he was part of a group that instigated a change in the constitution, making alternative medicine a constitutional right of all citizens. That includes homeopathy, neurotherapy, acupuncture and all other hands-on healing techniques.
“It’s the only country on the planet where complementary medicine or alternative medicine is the birthright of every citizen,” he says. “When we managed to do that, I made sure I got a [medical] license in Switzerland, as a possible escape route from the forces that are sometimes very obstructive here [in the U.S.]”
Here, we discuss the importance of detoxification for general health and the treatment of disease, and review some of Klinghardt’s top tips for detoxification. Dr. Richard Straube, a German toxicologist, developed a blood-washing procedure (apheresis) where toxins are filtered from the blood and can then be analyzed using affordable lab testing.
“Ten years ago, he found, on average in the population, 20 toxins over the threshold of detection,” Klinghardt says. “In just 10 years, that number has gone up to over 500, which is a shocking number … That’s an exponential increase that is not compatible with life …
He’s actually about to publish this research. He did the research on 1,200 patients. It’s one of the largest toxicology studies. Of course, the leaders are aluminum, barium, lithium and strontium. These are the [toxins] in geoengineering. It makes them sort of rain down on us. Because of that — and many of these toxins are specifically mitochondrial toxins — detox … is a survival strategy for everybody.”
Toxicity and Infectious Disease Go Hand in Hand
When your body is contaminated with man-made toxins, your body tends to compartmentalize them. Eventually, those body compartments will reach a certain threshold of toxicity, at which point your immune system can no longer control the microbial growth in that area.
“These become the areas where the microbes are domiciled, whether it’s Bartonella, Lyme, Babesia or herpes viruses. They’re not everywhere, but at the same time they’ve very strictly set up housekeeping in certain body compartments,” Klinghardt explains. For this reason, you can no longer distinguish between the toxicity and the infection, because they go together. As Klinghardt notes, “It’s a package deal.”
“For 20 years, I’ve been harping on Lyme disease and developed treatments that do not involve antibiotics, because it’s an absolute mistake to treat Lyme with antibiotics,” he says. “We know too much about the microbiome now and how sensitive the structures are.
The latest development in the last two years have been my work with Judy Mikovitz. She was part of our think tank that we had in 2006 or 2007, and tried to alert us then to the fact that embedded in our DNA are retroviruses, and that certain environmental conditions disable our mechanisms to silence those viruses, allowing them to become active …
The most well-known retrovirus is the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), but there are hundreds of others. Most of them are immunosuppressive. I’d like to prefer the term ‘immune-disturbing.’ Some aspects of the immune system are upregulated, others are downregulated. That makes us hugely vulnerable for Lyme’s, mycoplasma and Bartonella … Detoxification … is an absolute necessity to survive this insane time.”
Toxins can be either water or fat soluble. Two major water-soluble toxins are the vaccine preservative thimerosal (mercury) and the herbicide glyphosate. According to Klinghardt, they tend to be sequestered in areas such as the kidneys, lungs and bones.
Examples of fat-soluble toxins are benzene derivatives, insecticides, pesticides and herbicides. They like to settle in the fatty tissue, which makes them potent neurotoxins, since your brain is composed primarily of fat. Water- and fat-soluble toxins require differing methods of detoxification.
Detoxification Strategy for Glyphosate
While you may have over 20,000 chemicals in your body, two that are particularly hazardous to your brain are glyphosate and aluminum. Glyphosate is an analog of the amino acid glycine.1 It attaches in places where you need glycine. Importantly, glycine is used up in the detoxification process, hence many of us do not have enough glycine for efficient detoxification.
To eliminate glyphosate, you need to saturate your body with glycine. Klinghardt recommends taking 1 teaspoon (4 grams) of glycine powder twice a day for a few weeks and then lower the dose to one-fourth teaspoon (1 gram) twice a day. This forces the glyphosate out of your system, allowing it to be eliminated through your urine.
I personally have been taking 1 gram twice a day for some time now. The glycine is inexpensive and actually tastes sweet. Ideally it is best to take it around the time you are eating food that might be contaminated with glyphosate.
“At least for a while, we use high doses of glycine. There are no issues with it. There are no problems with it. The other one that has been published is admittedly only a chicken study that shows that humic acid and fulvic acid can completely clean up the organ systems of a chicken …
So, we do the glycine for a while. We monitor the urine output of glyphosate. When that slows down — in some people two months, in some it’s six months — we back off on the glycine and go on a smaller dose.”
How to Detox Aluminum
Aluminum is even more sinister. Stephenie Seneff, Ph.D., has shown that aluminum, when it gets in the extracellular space, completely changes the voltage on the cell walls — the voltage-gated channels — and has a profound effect on the microstructure of that matrix.2
“It basically impairs the receptors that we have on the cell wall, hormone receptors, neurotransmitter receptors, insulin receptors. They all get messed up by aluminum. It has a really, really strong effect, stronger than any other toxin,” Klinghardt says.
“Seneff’s work shows that glyphosate is a chelating agent. When you have glyphosate in the food, it binds all the trace minerals. They’re no longer available for absorption. It depletes us of trace minerals. However, there’s one exception and that’s aluminum. It works like a shuttle agent for aluminum. It binds aluminum, takes it across the gut wall into the tissues, and distributes it widely.”
One common ailment related to aluminum toxicity is underactive thyroid (hypothyroid), which is incredibly common these days. Aluminum hydroxides — such as that found in antiacids — actually interferes with intestinal absorption of thyroid hormones.3 Being a metal, it also has an affinity for the nervous system, and tends to collect in your brain, spinal cord and the enteric nervous system of the gut.4 In all of these places, it blocks vital functions.
To eliminate aluminum, you need to increase your intake of silica. Klinghardt recommends using silica-rich herbs for this, such as cilantro. “Dr. Yoshiaki Omura did a study5 20 years ago where he showed that you could decrease aluminum content in the animal model very quickly just by giving a cilantro extract,” he says. Other good options are horsetail (which is also high in silica) and a liposomal silica product called BioSil.
Citric acid has also been shown to mobilize aluminum. An easy and inexpensive strategy is to squeeze some lemon into a bottle of water and drink it throughout the day. Malic acid — apple cider vinegar — is another. You can also buy malic acid in capsule form, or use magnesium malate.
“Medical doctors can use desferal. It’s an injectable that’s injected once a week subcutaneously. It’s an excellent detoxer. However, there is some question as to whether it crosses the blood-brain barrier or not. Silica does. Desferal probably not, but you can debulk the aluminum in the body with a once-a-week injection.”
How to Eliminate Fat-Soluble Toxins
To eliminate fat-soluble toxins, Klinghardt recommends a combination of sauna and binding agents such as chlorella, ecklonia cava (a brown algae), and enterous gel such as methylated silica and zeolite. One or more of these should ideally be taken daily. When you do sauna therapy, the released toxins are then bound by these agents, allowing them to be safely eliminated rather than being reabsorbed.
“Do that regularly and watch your bowel transit time; it should be 24 hours or less. That means if you swallow something that’s not digestible, it should come out of the other end within 24 hours.
We have some patients where the transit time was 20 days or so. Those people are not able to excrete through the small intestine. They’re really doomed. It becomes a priority then to get the digestion going. That’s mostly the parasite issue. That is sort of my other hobby — to diagnose and treat parasites.”
Address Parasites
Many parasites, especially worms, but also fungi and Candida, can absorb multiple times their body weight in toxins. For example, many worms are able to concentrate lead 300fold compared to the tissues of the host. The parasite load of a host is also a bioindicator for the toxicity of that host’s environment.
“Every chronic Lyme patient is also full of parasites,” Klinghardt says. “If you don’t address those, it’s been shown that the worms in the Lyme patient themselves are infected with Lyme spirochete. If you do antibiotic treatment, it doesn’t harm the parasites.
The Lyme spirochete simply retreat into the worms, wait until you’re done with the antibiotics and then hatch back out. The teaching is to treat from large to small. In a chronically ill patient, always assume there are parasites. Treat them and then kind of slowly go down.”
Unfortunately, there are few effective tests to assess your parasite burden. Klinghardt uses autonomic response testing (ART), and prescribes various cocktails of antiparasitic drugs based on that testing. Knowing that parasites are loaded with toxins, you want to coax them out of the tissues and into the gut, where they can be safely expelled.
Klinghardt uses the Gubarev protocols for this. These are enema protocols developed by a Russian scientist. Once no more parasites are to be found, he puts the patient on antiparasitic agents such as Rizol Kappa and Rizol Gamma — ozonated plant oils from BioPure.
“Recently, there’s an incredible increase in literature showing that pretty much every medical antiparasitic can also be used for treating cancer. I’ll give you an example: Albendazole, a monthly treatment, used to cost $80. Then the articles came out of cancers healing from it. Now, it’s $24,000 a month …
We use the antiparasitic drugs, the multipurpose drugs. It happens to be that the internal pathways of a cancer cell are similar to the pathways of the parasite. It’s a very good policy to start chronic treatment [of parasites] early on, before attending to Lyme disease or mycoplasma …
The main issue with parasites is this: If you undertreat a parasite, that means if you use a dose of an herb or a medical drug that’s not enough to kill it, but enough to make it sick, that parasite will put out huge amounts of biotoxins that make you really deathly ill. The trick with parasite treatment is to come in high and strong from the beginning, so these creatures cannot shoot back at you …
Parasites only come out in the poop if the parasite is sick. Parasites do not show up that way. As long as they still live in the belly, in the gut, you can palpate and you can get certain signs that make it [seem] like you got the right diagnosis. But unfortunately, the larval stages of many parasites stray to the lung, and also end up in the brain.
Cysticercosis is the name given for that larval stages of tapeworms in the brain. We see that all the time. Kids that have seizures, most of the time it’s that issue. They’re easy to treat … but it’s difficult to do it with natural things. We find that the natural herbs that are used are good if we use them in conjunction with the medical drugs.”
Avoiding EMF Is Also Important for Effective Detoxification
In a previous interview, we also discussed the importance of avoiding electromagnetic field (EMF) radiation from cellphones, modems and Wi-Fi routers when treating chronic disease, as this exposure will exacerbate illness, including infections. Klinghardt comments:
“I think that is the most important issue of our time … Wi-Fi is destroying life on the planet. There’s absolutely no question. Unfortunately, titanium and aluminum in our system act like an antenna for the Wi-Fi. There’s a beautiful study on amalgam.
When you have an amalgam filling and you make a phone call on the side where the filling is, the speed at which mercury is evaporated from the tooth is increased multiple times.
Basically, we hold the position that the body needs to be metal-free in order to survive this crazy time … One phone call — I think a seven-minute phone call — activates the Epstein-Barr virus for many years. We have this published. All of us have that virus in us. If you want to have chronic fatigue, that’s a great recipe …
[There’s a] direct linear relationship between the cumulative exposure to man-made radiation and chronic illness. The more you’re exposed to, the more ill you are … This has to be modified when people are metal-toxic. They concentrate radiation in them, and then it goes up exponentially …
The combined effect of the toxicity and the Wi-Fi has unleased these viruses that are called human endogenous retroviruses. That is really, ultimately, what’s causing the severity of chronic illness.”
To protect against EMF, Klinghardt recommends the Building Biology approach to EMF remediation, which involves shielding your home, especially your bedroom. For internal protection, he recommends taking tincture of rosemary and/or tincture of propolis.
As for addressing retroviruses, Klinghardt has developed an herbal mix called RetroV powder6 made by Ki Science, which contains 10 herbs. It’s been shown to be superior to the eight drugs available for silencing retroviruses. Cistus tea and broccoli sprouts are two additional powerful tools against retroviruses.
More Information
To learn more, visit Klinghardt’s website at klinghardtinstitute.com. If you’re interested in treatment, you can contact the Sophia Health Institute, which has clinics in Seattle and Marin County, California.