Interview with Stephanie Seneff Ph.D

On Deuterium, Glyphosate, Mitochondria, Vaping, Cancer and more.

I think I finally bit the bullet and decided to wrap my head around the Glyphosate issue after Kennedy Jr went on Rogan.

My next step was to read The book on the subject written for mortals, and that was Stephanie Seneff’s Toxic Legacy.

After that, I would bore anyone who would listen with discussions about protein synthesis, loss of nutritional value in the soil and food, the destruction of the gut microbiome, desiccants etc. … I’m pretty sure I noticed some eye glazing, even the occasional roll.

But most people understood what I was saying and realized that we were discussing yet another Private Public Partnership untruth. I owe my understanding and ability to explain the issue to Seneff’s years of dedicated research.

I’m honored to do this interview with Stephanie and I’m so grateful for all the time, effort and valuable information she has shared with us.

We are about to get a front row seat into some of the latest thinking and research on the subject of glyphosate and its broad ability to cause damage and destruction.

With thanks to Stephanie Seneff Ph.D

Seneff (stephanieseneff.net)

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1. Stephanie, can you share a bit about your personal journey and what sparked your interest in exploring the connections between health, disease, and environmental toxins like glyphosate?

My journey down this road began around 2007 when I noticed that the autism rates were steadily increasing year by year, and we were being told that we’re just diagnosing it more. I suspected there must be some causal factor in the environment, and I wanted to see if I could figure it out. I read many papers on autism over the next five years, and developed an intuitive idea that it must be caused by something in the food or in the water supply, because of all the various gut problems that are associated with autism. In September, 2012, I happened to be at a conference where Prof. Don Huber, an expert on plant pathology, presented a two hour lecture on glyphosate, the active ingredient in the pervasive herbicide, Roundup. I was mesmerized by his talk, because the many ways in which glyphosate disrupts biological organisms fit very well with my knowledge of the pathological features of autism. I walked out of that room with a mission to learn everything I could about glyphosate.

2. In your research, you've identified a critical role for deuterium in health and disease. For our readers who may be unfamiliar, can you explain what deuterium is and why it's important?

Deuterium, also known as “heavy hydrogen,” is a natural element found everywhere hydrogen goes. It is an isotope of hydrogen the same way that carbon-14 is an isotope of carbon. Hydrogen, the smallest atom, has one proton and one electron. Deuterium has one proton, one electron, and one neutron. Neutrons are uncharged, and they weigh about as much as protons, which is what makes deuterium twice as heavy as hydrogen. Deuterium swaps in for hydrogen randomly in all of the hydrogen bonds in nature. Deuterium is present at 155 parts per million in sea water. That may not sound like a lot, but, because hydrogen is so common in our bodies (66% of the atoms in our body are hydrogen atoms), deuterium actually ends up in the blood at concentrations five times as high as calcium.

Deuterium behaves differently than hydrogen both biophysically and biochemically. Researchers have found that deuterium “gums up” the ATPase pumps in the mitochondria that produce ATP (the primary energy source of the cell). This causes an increase in the release of reactive oxygen species (ROS) during oxidative phosphorylation, which then can not only destroy the pumps themselves but also damage the surrounding tissues, including DNA. As a result, metabolic processes work very hard to keep deuterium levels in the mitochondria very low.

My interest in deuterium was inspired by Professor Laszlo Boros, who reached out to me in December 2019, complimenting me on a paper I had just published, and then asking whether I was aware of the role of deuterium in health and disease. I was not! He attached a manuscript he had published together with colleagues in the journal Medical Hypotheses¹. I immediately recognized the potential for glyphosate to disrupt critical proteins involved in deuterium management, and so I very quickly came to realize that glyphosate may be working synergistically with deuterium to harm the mitochondria. Mitochondrial disorder is linked to many chronic diseases, including autism.

3. How did your introduction to deuterium by Prof. Laszlo Boros in December 2019 influence your understanding of chronic diseases and the direction of your research?

I was already aware that mitochondrial disorder was a primary factor in autism and in many other neurodegenerative, neurodevelopmental and metabolic diseases, including cancer. I was also aware that glyphosate damages the mitochondria, and that many believe that is a core feature of its effects on human health. I had also previously noticed that the cell has peculiar rules about which enzymes should operate where -- particularly whether a reaction should take place in the cytoplasm or inside the mitochondria. I was aware that great contortions are involved in transporting both the substrate and the enzyme across the mitochondrial membrane, performing the reaction in the mitochondrial matrix, and then transporting the product back out into the cytoplasm. I was puzzled as to why some enzymes needed to perform their function inside the mitochondria. When I went back and looked at these regulatory processes more carefully, it became clear that this was necessary because the reactions happening inside the mitochondria were often involved in fueling the ATPase pumps with deuterium depleted protons, given the origins of the substrates and the nature of the enzymes.

4. Your book, "Toxic Legacy," delves into the impact of glyphosate on our health and the environment. Can you give us a brief overview of the key takeaways from your book?

That book was the culmination of over a decade of research on the toxic mechanisms of glyphosate. The key takeaway is that glyphosate is far more toxic than we have been led to believe. It is pervasive as a contaminant in our food supply, yet the government has no interest in finding out how much is actually there. I am virtually certain that glyphosate is the primary cause of the autism epidemic in the United States – latest numbers show one in 36 children on the autism spectrum as of March 2023². I also believe it is the primary cause of the alarming increase we have seen in the last two decades in many chronic diseases, including diabetes, obesity, Alzheimer’s disease, ADHD, celiac disease, inflammatory bowel disease, and cancer.

5. In your opinion, what makes the synergistic toxicity of glyphosate and deuterium particularly concerning?

What I have come to realize is that the gut microbes play an enormous role in delivering deuterium-depleted nutrients to the host. In particular, Bifidobacteria, normally a dominant species in the gut, particularly the infant gut, are very facile at breaking down complex carbohydrates, such as fiber, into small organic molecules. Other bacteria are able to convert these molecules into short chain fatty acids (SCFAs) that are essential nutrients for maintaining the health of the colonocytes lining the gut. The process of synthesizing these SCFAs is fascinating, and it involves an intermediate step of producing hydrogen gas (H2) that is severely depleted in deuterium (loses 80% of the deuterium atoms³).

Glyphosate disrupts the balance of the gut microbiome, and, unfortunately, Bifidobacteria are one of the most sensitive species to glyphosate⁴. When their levels drop, complex carbs can no longer get efficiently converted into deuterium depleted SCFAs, and the gut becomes unhealthy as a consequence. Complex interactions between the gut microbes and the brain via the gut-brain axis then lead to disorders of the brain.

6. Can you explain the role of flavoproteins in protecting mitochondria from excessive deuterium, and how glyphosate disrupts this process?

Flavoproteins are a fascinating class of proteins, most of which extract a hydride ion (negatively charged hydrogen atom) from a substrate and transfer the proton and two electrons to the product(s). These enzymes contain a redox-active coenzyme called flavin adenine dinucleotide (FAD), that temporarily houses two electrons and two protons to become FADH2 during the reaction process. Flavoproteins catalyze difficult redox reactions, and use a sophisticated biophysical phenomenon called proton tunneling to assure that their product is delivered a proton rather than a deuteron. There is an important class of enzymes in the liver called cytochrome P450 (CYP) enzymes, that perform many functions, including synthesis of bile acids, detoxification of drugs and toxic metabolites produced by microbes, and activation of vitamin D. These enzymes are flavoproteins and they are suppressed by glyphosate⁵.

7. Succinate dehydrogenase is an enzyme you've highlighted as being disrupted by glyphosate. How does this disruption affect mitochondrial function and overall health?

Most proteins in the class called dehydrogenases are flavoproteins. Succinate dehydrogenase and α-ketoglutarate dehydrogenase are two examples of flavoproteins that participate in the citric acid cycle in mitochondria. This cycle, also known as the Krebs cycle, is the core metabolic engine of these organelles, and it ultimately converts organic matter to carbon dioxide and “metabolic water,” which is deuterium depleted. These enzymes have a unique ability to favor hydrogen over deuterium during the reaction. Succinate dehydrogenase converts a quinone in the inner membrane of the intermembrane space to a quinol by handing it two extra hydrogen atoms. This quinone is often referred to as ubiquinone, or Coenzyme Q10, a popular supplement for obvious reasons.

Glyphosate has been shown experimentally to suppress a dozen different dehydrogenases in E. coli bacteria, including succinate dehydrogenase, α-ketoglutarate dehydrogenase and malate dehydrogenase⁶, all of which are active in human cells inside the mitochondria. Multiple studies have also shown that glyphosate suppresses mitochondrial succinate dehydrogenase in mammals⁷. A study on soil bacteria showed a steady drop in the activity of dehydrogenase enzymes for 21 days following an acute exposure to glyphosate⁸.

Succinate dehydrogenase deficiency is a strong risk factor for cancer⁹.

8. Your research has led you to believe that glyphosate has a unique mechanism of toxicity that can explain how a single chemical could be causal in so many diseases. Can you explain this mechanism in lay terms?

A central theme of my book is the idea that glyphosate can substitute by mistake for the coding amino acid glycine during protein synthesis. Glyphosate is an amino acid and a glycine analogue. It is a complete glycine molecule, except that an extra methylphosphonate unit has been attached to the nitrogen atom. I argue in my book that there is a signature “glyphosate susceptibility motif” that certain proteins have, which makes them especially vulnerable to glyphosate’s mischief. Succinate dehydrogenase is a perfect example of this motif  -- it has a sequence “GAGGAG” (glycine-alanine-glycine-glycine-alanine-glycine) at the site where it binds phosphate in FAD. That’s four glycines that could be substituted, and such substitution would wreck the ability of the protein to do its job.

One chapter in my book is devoted to providing strong evidence that this phenomenon is taking place – some of it coming directly from Monsanto’s own studies. In fact, the enzyme that glyphosate suppresses in plants, EPSP synthase, has a glycine residue at the place where it binds phosphate in its substrate, phosphoenolpyruvate (PEP).

If that glycine is swapped out for alanine, a minimal change, the enzyme becomes completely insensitive to glyphosate. This property is exploited in the development of glyphosate-resistant crops.

There are several known toxins that act by substituting for specific amino acids by mistake, although I know of none other than glyphosate that specifically substitute for glycine. Glycine has essential roles in many biologically active proteins, and many glycine mutations are associated with severe genetic diseases.

Collagen is by far the most common protein in the body, and it is loaded with glycine residues. I suspect that glyphosate substitution in collagen is causing many problems in the bones and joints, as well as structural support problems such as pelvic prolapse.

9. Many of the risk factors for severe COVID-19, such as diabetes and obesity, are also linked to the rise in glyphosate usage. Do you believe there’s a causal relationship here, and if so, how does it work?

I do suspect that glyphosate exposure is a risk factor for bad outcomes from COVID-19. It is remarkable how well the chronic conditions linked to severe disease align with chronic conditions whose prevalence is going up dramatically over time exactly in step with the rise in glyphosate usage on core crops. While investigating a possible connection, I became fascinated with the strange lung disease that has become linked to vaping (smoking E-cigarettes). The symptoms of this disease overlap nearly perfectly with the symptoms of COVID-19. E-cigarettes contain glycerol as the base ingredient, and I think it is highly likely that the glycerol is often contaminated with glyphosate. Glycerol is the primary by-product of the biofuel industry, and GMO Roundup-ready crops such as corn and soy are commonly grown to produce biofuels. There is currently a glycerol glut in the market, making it very inexpensive, as a consequence of the large increase in the production of biofuels.

In an experiment published in 2019, mice were exposed to vaping fumes for four months and then infected with the flu virus. These mice had an overexuberant inflammatory response to the virus, associated with suppressed expression of certain lung surfactant proteins¹⁰. These proteins play a protective role during infection by trapping viruses, making it easy for immune cells to clear them. These surfactant proteins are members of a class of proteins called collectins, all of which are crucial for trapping viruses. They are characterized by a “collagen-like stalk” which has long sequences of a “GxyGxy” pattern, just like collagen, and which offers many opportunities for glyphosate to substitute for glycine. Severe COVID is also characterized by an excessive inflammatory response in the lungs (a “cytokine storm”¹¹).

I also suspect that the burning of biofuels in cars, trucks and buses in big cities has led to the release of glyphosate into the air. Chronic glyphosate exposure to the lungs would then exacerbate the COVID-19 symptoms. I wrote about some of these ideas in an article published in the Wise Traditions journal in 2020¹², and I spoke about them in a presentation at the Wise Traditions Annual Conference in 2021. These slides are available for download on my MIT Web page¹³.

A study conducted by a team of researchers from Harvard University found a significant correlation between exposure to nanoparticles from air pollution and risk of severe outcomes from COVID-19¹⁴.

10. Given the widespread use of glyphosate and its potential health impacts, what steps do you believe individuals can take to protect themselves and their families?

The most important thing anyone can do to improve their health is to switch to a 100% certified organic diet. It’s also important to eat only whole foods with minimal processing, preferably cooked from scratch in the home kitchen. The diet should be diverse, with an emphasis on fermented foods, sulfur-rich foods, herbs and spices, and nutrient dense foods. Saturated animal-based fats are especially low in deuterium, which makes them a healthy choice. Coconut oil is also low in deuterium. Butter is not only low in deuterium but also an excellent source of butyrate. While many are opting for a gluten-free/casein-free diet, this is not necessary if you are avoiding glyphosate. Glyphosate disrupts the gut microbes’ ability to metabolize these proline-rich proteins, and this makes them allergenic. Seafood, fish, organic eggs and grass-fed beef are all excellent sources of minerals and B vitamins. In particular, the B vitamins, niacin and riboflavin, play essential roles in the enzymatic action of flavoproteins. Cruciferous vegetables, kale, onions, and garlic are beneficial plant-based sources of sulfur. Organic bone broth is a great way to boost your glycine levels, which can help reduce glyphosate’s tendency to substitute for glycine in proteins.

I recommend regular Epsom salt baths as a way to absorb sulfate directly through the skin. I believe that sulfate plays an essential role in trapping deuterium within gelled water and generating a flow of deuterium-depleted protons to support mitochondrial health. I am also a big fan of sunlight exposure -- sunlight triggers the synthesis of both vitamin D sulfate and cholesterol sulfate in the skin, and both are important for maintaining healthy circulation and a strong immune system.

11. In your opinion, what role should policymakers and regulatory agencies play in addressing the issues surrounding glyphosate and other environmental toxins?

Regulatory agencies have considerable power to be able to restrict the use of chemicals that are deemed harmful to human health or to the environment. Unfortunately, the chemical industry has learned how to control these agencies through extensive lobbying, such that they rarely act appropriately when members of the public try to alert them to identified toxic effects. I have hope that the general public will respond to warnings coming from those of us who have done the research and who know that toxic chemicals such as glyphosate play a huge role in promoting disease. A grass roots, bottom-up approach of educating the public so they refuse to buy the toxic food may be more effective than attempting to get the regulators to act.

12. As awareness grows about the importance of mitochondrial health, what areas of research do you believe are most promising for developing targeted therapies or interventions?

I have become intrigued by the possibility that cancer cells may have a positive role in the body by helping to resolve a deuterium toxicity crisis. Curiously, cancer cells thrive and proliferate when they are grown in a medium that is enriched in deuterium (twice the concentration in sea water), and they respond with oxidative stress and reduced proliferation when they are grown in deuterium depleted medium (half the amount in sea water)¹⁵. In fact, there is some excitement recently around the idea of a cancer therapy that simply amounts to drinking deuterium depleted water¹⁶.

Cancer cells alter their metabolism in remarkable ways, most notably by avoiding using their mitochondrial ATPase pumps as much as possible. Instead, they rely on glycolysis to convert glucose to lactate, which they release into the medium in large amounts¹⁷. Glycolysis generates just a few molecules of ATP from each glucose molecule, but cancer cells compensate by running glycolysis in overdrive. The lactate becomes a deuterium-depleted nutrient to feed to the immune cells that infiltrate the cancer microenvironment.

Cancer cells also synthesize large amounts of succinate, and then ship it out as well. Succinate, as we saw, is a valuable resource for the mitochondria, via succinate dehydrogenase, which is often defective in cancer cells. Cancer cells also go into overdrive making collagen to support the extracellular matrix. This will allow them to trap deuterium in gelled water surrounding the tumor cells. By proliferating wildly, cancer cells build up an army of troops that can supply the infiltrating immune cells with what they need to restore mitochondrial health. Once the immune cells are healed, they can clear the cancer.

The pharmaceutical industry has developed a large number of drugs to treat cancer by disrupting various metabolic processes, but often the cancer cells acquire resistance over time such that the drugs are no longer effective. Curiously, other non-tumor cells often help the cancer cells survive, for example by providing them with healthy new mitochondria via direct mitochondrial transfer from one cell to another. Such a feat is often performed by mesenchymal stem cells infiltrating from the bone marrow¹⁸. It may seem surprising that the organism as a whole works hard to protect the cancer from harm, but this makes sense if in fact the cancer is working hard to heal a problem that might actually be worse than cancer itself. A provocative thought, indeed!

What if the best way to treat cancer is to nourish it? I suspect that that is true  -- allow the cancer cells to proliferate so they can heal the mitochondria of the infiltrating immune cells. Once the immune cells are healthy, they know how to kill the tumor cells. And the tumor cells are content to die if the deuterium levels in the medium have fallen to an acceptable level.

13. Your work has been instrumental in raising awareness about the health risks associated with glyphosate. What projects or areas of focus are you most excited about as you continue your research?

I have been following the advances in perfecting regenerative agricultural practices with great interest. I have come to believe that all chemical-based herbicides are very detrimental to our health, and also to the health of the soil. We desperately need to find a way to grow food economically without the need for contaminating our food with poisons. Regenerative agriculture also holds the promise to actually reverse climate change, by accelerating the rate at which carbon can be captured by plants and buried in the soil as organic matter. Glyphosate has been shown to suppress a plant enzyme called RuBisCo, the most common protein on the planet¹⁹. RuBisCo plays an essential role in photosynthesis --  converting carbon dioxide to organic matter.

14. For our readers who are inspired by your work and want to stay informed about your latest findings, what resources or channels would you recommend they follow?

I would recommend that they read my book, Toxic Legacy, as a starting point for understanding glyphosate’s unique mechanism of toxicity²⁰. I have posted links to various booksellers that carry my book on my personal Web page (stephanieseneff.net). Through the years, I have been interviewed by many podcast and webcast hosts, and these interviews can be found by searching my last name on the Web. I have also given many slide presentations on my work, some of which are available on the Internet. Many of my peer-reviewed publications, as well as PowerPoint slides from various presentations, are posted on my Web site at MIT:

Stephanie Seneff's (mit.edu)

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Air Pollution, Biodiesel, Glyphosate and Covid-19 - The Weston A. Price Foundation (westonaprice.org)

13. S. Seneff. Glyphosate, Deuterium and COVID-19. Weston A. Price Wise Traditions 21st Annual Conference in Allen, Texas, November 6, 2021. Slides available at https://people.csail.mit.edu/seneff/2021/WAPF 2021 Part1.pptx.

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20. S Seneff. Toxic Legacy: How the Weedkiller Glyphosate is Destroying Our Health and the Environment. Chelsea Green publishers. White River Junction, VT. July 1, 2021.