What Glyphosate Does to Your Body

0:0070 to 82 % of Americans have detectable glyphosate in their urine. In the U.S., agricultural use has jumped over 750 % since GMO crops were introduced in 1996. In effect, glyphosate acts like a low-grade selective antibiotic.

0:24Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:It preferentially harms the good bacteria while sparing the bad. Glyphosate down-regulates something called GLUT4 in skeletal muscle and this is the primary transporter responsible for pulling glucose into muscle cells. When you disrupt GLUT4, this obviously compromises muscle health and it fuels insulin resistance. Many people assume buying organic meat is necessary to avoid glyphosate, but studies consistently show negligible levels in cattle, pork, milk, and eggs. So what's the alternative? The alternative is other chemicals, many of which are worse. Outright bans without better agricultural solutions means switching to harsher, less studied chemicals.

1:09Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:While we can't change what agriculture is doing, we can change what we do. Here is your actionable evidence-based protocol ranked by Scientific Strength.

1:30Should we spray our food with chemicals? Is glyphosate dangerous? And if it is, what's the alternative? This is an emotional topic, and I remember 10 years ago when I was finishing my medical fellowship in St. Louis, I started seeing signs about glyphosate everywhere on the highway. So naturally, I called the smartest person I know, my mentor, Dr. Don Lehman, and I said, Don, if we spray our food with chemicals, common sense says we'll get sick. he paused as he often does and he said okay well that's a fair thought gabrielle but have you

2:06Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:thought about how do we solve a broader problem and i was thinking well you know i've thought about a lot of problems and uh no i hadn't he said we have eight billion people to feed and if we don't use this what are we going to use do we use agent orange do we use a natural herbicide that might be just as toxic you know he had a point and recently a patient sent me a video about glyphosate and her morning toast she asked me point blank doc is my bread killing me and you know i didn't have a good answer for her but underneath her anxiety was a bigger issue and it's a bigger issue that we are all starting to see and that is is our food supply safe and who decided it was safe and how sure are they?

2:55We've relied heavily on industry to tell us what's safe, which creates an obvious conflict of interest and erodes trust. But on the flip side, chemical efficiency, aka glyphosate, has allowed us to feed billions of people.

3:13Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:And over the last 50 years, corn production alone has increased nearly 400%. So today, we're going to look at the evidence objectively. Anytime something is emotional, we have to look at the evidence. Let's define what we're talking about. Glyphosate is a broad spectrum herbicide and that was introduced in 1974 under the trade name Roundup. It is now the most widely used herbicide in the world. In the U.S., Agricultural use has jumped over, get this, 750 % since GMO crops were introduced in 1996. Agribusiness uses glyphosate for two primary reasons. Number one, weed control early in the growing season and pre-harvest drying, also known as desiccation, spraying crops like wheat and oats right before harvest.

4:12Why do we do this? We do this to dry them out uniformly, although I've never done this in my entire life. But the second use is why residue ends up in your food. When you look at human biology, glyphosate is poorly absorbed in the gut, roughly 15 to 30 percent, isn't metabolized much,

4:31Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:and is excreted largely unchanged without accumulation in human tissue. Yet, NHANES data shows 70 to 82 percent of Americans have detectable glyphosate in their urine. This brings us to the massive scientific contradiction that confuses everyone. In 2015, the World Health Organization's IARC classified glyphosate as, quote, probably carcinogenic to humans. Meanwhile, Meanwhile, the US EPA and the European Food Safety Authority concluded it is, quote, unlikely to pose a carcinogenic hazard at current exposure levels. Now this isn't a case of scientists that are honest versus corrupt ones. I don't think that that's the case at all.

5:28I think it's more likely a hazard versus risk. A hazard asks, can this chemical cause harm under any condition at any dose? Now, this is the IARC's focus, the IARC's focus. Risk asks, is harm likely at the doses humans actually encounter day to day, which is the EPA or the Environmental Protection Agency, or and the European Food Safety. So we covered hazard, which is, is this dangerous in any capacity at any dose? And then risk asks, is harm likely at the doses humans consume, what they encounter on a day-to-day basis? If we take a step back, let's think about a shark. And I have seen jaws. It's terrifying.

6:26A shark in the ocean is a hazard, right? But your risk of a shark attack while sitting on your couch is zero. However, there's a crucial detail regulators often miss. Here, pure glyphosate versus commercial formulations. So reassuring safety reviews usually test, guys, this is very important. Pure glyphosate in isolation. But in the real world, people encounter products like Roundup, which contain surfactants and other chemicals. Now, studies show these full formulations are significantly more bioactive, causing far more oxidative stress and cellular disruption than pure glyphosate alone. So think about cigarettes.

7:22People say smoking causes cancer and that's very reasonable. However, people will also say that it's the nicotine in the cigarette that's so dangerous. But in reality, it's all the other chemicals in the cigarette that is carcinogenic. I mean, there's obviously problems with the smoke inhalation itself, but it's not the nicotine that is the main primary driver of the carcinogenic outcomes. It's all the other stuff and all the other chemicals. So that is a similar example. Your gut microbiome. The classic argument for glyphosate's human safety is that it targets an enzyme that human cells do not possess.

8:13If we do not have the target, it shouldn't harm us, right? Well, I mean, it makes sense, but the problem is this. Your human cells don't have this pathway, but your gut bacteria do. A bioinformatics analysis revealed that approximately 54 % of species in the core human gut microbiome carry the glyphosate sensitive form of this enzyme. What is even worse, and this was shocking, is that it's not random. Beneficial bacteria like lactobacillus tend to be sensitive to glyphosate. Meaning when you ingest glyphosate, it can kill the good bacteria in your gut. And that's obviously an oversimplification.

9:10However, opportunistic pathogens like clostridium and salmonella tend to be resistant. In effect, glyphosate acts like a low-grade selective antibiotic. It preferentially harms the good bacteria while sparing the bad. Guys, this is not good. And animal studies demonstrate the following clearly. Exposure to doses equivalent to the U.S. acceptable daily intake altered the gut microbiome in mice.

9:43Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:Now this is in mice, but it did trigger intestinal inflammation and drove up pro-inflammatory markers like interleukin-6 and TNF-alpha. And a landmark 2024 study took the gut microbiome of rats exposed to Roundup and transplanted it into healthy unexposed rats. So this was a fecal transplant. Those healthy rats developed the same gut dysfunction and inflammation that those who were exposed to Roundup had. And what did this prove? This proved that disrupting the microbiome itself was sufficient to cause systemic harm. Now, I'm not saying that, you know, on a regular basis, people are doing fecal transplants, but this proof of concept is very compelling.

10:32Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:Let's talk about skeletal muscle health and glyphosate. Now, this is something near and dear to my heart, obviously muscles, and in three separate analysis of NHANES data have examined the link between urinary glyphosate and muscle health. A 2024 study found that for every doubling of urinary glyphosate, hand grip strength decreased with a 27 % higher risk of low grip strength. I was not expecting that and the fact that the NHANES data set is even looking at it. A 2023 study confirmed this inverse association with grip strength and a 2026 study found higher urinary glyphosate was tied to lower appendicular skeletal muscle mass and increased sarcopenia risk, particularly in men.

11:26Well, that is very concerning, especially with the increasing use of GLP-1s.

11:34Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:The next obvious question is, how does a crop chemical affect muscle tissue? And animal data shows glyphosate downregulates something called GLUT4 in skeletal muscle, and this is the primary transporter responsible for pulling glucose into muscle cells. Now, when you disrupt GLUT4, this obviously compromises muscle health and it fuels insulin resistance. All human data here is cross-sectional, which means we don't really have high-quality definitive proof of causation. But the signal is interesting, and when you combine three independent human studies with clear mechanistic animal data, this becomes a signal that we cannot ignore.

12:19Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:Now, you're probably wondering, well, that's great and what do I do about it? And this is what you can do about it. The first thing is to take action. You need to know where the exposure comes from. And I get this question all the time from patients. The answer usually surprises people. The highest residues are in grains and legumes because of that pre-harvest desiccation or spraying. What about milk and meat and eggs? Now, this is negligible. Many people assume buying organic meat is necessary to avoid glyphosate, but actually the data shows otherwise. Most mammals excrete glyphosate rapidly.

13:04And again, it's through urine and feces.

13:06Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:It seems as if it doesn't accumulate in muscle tissue or fat. Now, studies consistently show negligible levels in cattle, pork, poultry, milk, and eggs, even when the animal consumes conventional sprayed feed, which again also makes me think because if I just mentioned that the glyphosate has an effect on GLUT4, but we're not able to detect it in a meaningful way in mammals we last time i checked are mammals and again this is not settled science but it's really important that you have agency and that we talk about these things because they are all over the internet and back to food if you have a limited budget i don't think that you should spend your money on only organic meats but potentially on things like oats and grains rather than chicken or beef because if glyphosate is what you are worried about, that would be the way that you would reduce it.

14:11Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:The GMO, an alternative problem. Well, over 90 % of U.S. corn and soy are engineered to tolerate glyphosate. That is GMO. Major health organizations agree that the genetic modifications themselves are safe. The issue isn't the modified gene. It's that the GMO agriculture enables massive repeated herbicide spraying. Let's say agriculture or a farmer or someone wanted to use a little bit of glyphosate to kill the weeds. But what's happening is that when you genetically modify crops to withstand glyphosate then you can spray the heck out of it because it doesn't touch the crop that you're going to eat but it gets all over the crop that you're going to eat but it doesn't kill it the glyphosate kills the weeds so what's the alternative the alternative is other chemicals many of which are worse the leading chemical alternative to glyphosate is a component of agent orange 2 4d a meta-analysis linked high 2 4d exposure to a 73 increased risk of non-hodgkin's lymphoma and animal studies show it causes worsening liver inflammation and gut dysbiosis than glyphosate at equivalent doses.

15:45Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:So what do we do? Outright bans without better agricultural solutions means what? We revert to heavier, something called tilling, which destroys topsoil. We're switching to harsher, less studied chemicals. I don't think that that sounds like a good option. Here is what I am gonna tell you. Like I said, we can't change global agricultural policy overnight. But here is your actionable evidence-based protocol ranked by scientific strength. Tier 1 high-impact dietary swaps, and this has the strongest evidence. Human crossover trials show that switching to an organic diet reduces urinary glyphosate by 71 % in just six days.

16:33Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:So if this is something that is concerning to you, priority number one is buy organic or glyphosate tested oats, wheat flour, bread, breakfast cereals, all the things you're not supposed to be eating, lentils and chickpeas. Priority number two, wash fresh produce under running water and peel it when it's practical. And then don't stress conventional meats, dairy, and eggs seem to have a lower, almost negligible glyphosate detection. Tier number two, gut microbiome protection for your gut microbiome. And if this is a primary target of protection for you, prioritize fermented foods, which I think we're going to be seeing more about, yogurt, kefir, sauerkraut, kimchi, and a diet rich in fiber and prebiotics.

17:25Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:Perhaps you would even consider strains of lactobacillus and bifidobacterium, which research shows it might help mitigate the environmental pollutions in the gut. Tier 3, this is antioxidant. I'm going to tell you about something called NAC. And muscle protection, I lumped it both together. N-acetylcysteine, or NAC, there are preclinical studies that show NAC helps restore glutathione, which is the master antioxidant, and offset chemical-induced oxidative damage. Now, no podcast would be complete without protein and resistance training. You must protect your muscle tissue from sarcopenia. It's probably a stretch to say that things sprayed with glyphosate will cause sarcopenia, but you give me a microphone and I will tell you to eat protein and do resistance training.

18:14Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:No, but seriously, maintaining a higher protein diet at 1.2 to 1.6 grams per kilogram of body weight combined with regular strength training makes everything better. Be extremely skeptical of products marketed specifically as glyphosate detoxes. Why? Because of the obvious, your kidney and liver clear glyphosate naturally, which is one reason why we don't see it in mammalian tissue. You should save your money there. So to return to my patient's question, no, your slice of bread isn't killing you. And instead of agonizing over parts per billion of the residue in your food, while like myself, I'm neglecting sleep, but I always crush my protein intake and do strength training, we have to keep this in perspective.

19:04Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:There are logical steps to take to lower your exposure. I fully support that, especially for little kids. But we should really direct our energy to where we know yields health returns. So the key takeaways are the following. Your gut microbiome bears the brunt. It does. Beneficial bacteria carry that enzyme that glyphosate targets. When you support your gut with fiber and fermented foods, then you have the best protection for your stomach and the rest of your body against glyphosate. Muscle health matters. Again, glyphosate exposure has been linked, linked, not causative, to sarcopenia and lower grip strength.

19:47Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:But if you counter this with adequate protein and heavy lifting, we know that that has a positive impact. Target your organic budget. You can buy organic wheats and oats and legumes, but don't worry about meat, milk, and eggs. Banning isn't simple and we have to acknowledge this. If we ban glyphosate, alternatives like 2 ,4-D, they carry significant risks of their own. So what do we do? What do we focus on controlling? Number one, well, we focus on controlling what reaches our plates because that's what we know has impact on overall health. So everything I share today is for educational purposes only, and it's grounded in my clinical perspective and the current scientific consensus.

20:33Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:Friends, I'm Dr. Gabrielle Lyon, and as always, stay forever strong.