We Need to Talk About Microplastics

Our parents are full of asbestos and we are full of microplastics. So it seems like it's a generational thing where each one has its own new materials crisis. We have basically bathed the world in plastic, and that is just now a problem. It's very, very hard to fix.

It's everywhere. It's in our drinking water, it's in our food, but nobody's really talking about, like, where they're coming from.

Isn't it cool that it's actually measurement that leads us down this path?

This is what Don't Die is about. Hi, friends. Today we're going to talk about a topic you're well aware of. Microplastics. We have some good news and some bad news. Bad news, of course, is microplastics are everywhere. We're going to talk through the evidence of what it means to each one of us. Also, I've dropped my microplastic levels by 93%. I'm going to walk you through the protocols I do to reduce my exposure. Let's go, you guys. It's been a really big week for microplastics.

That's true.

People are freaking out. So what do we know?

A big week for a small. For a small thing.

The big news is there was this French study that came out that said that water in glass bottles have five to 50 times the microplastics that plastic bottles have.

There's nothing sacred.

Yeah, exactly.

I feel like it, like tipped up right over the edge. They were like, what?

Come on.

That's it. Last straw. Yeah. People basically just like, I'm done. I'm done.

Science out the window, which I understand.

I mean, this is the thing, I guess, like you. You really need to adopt the mentality that you know that things are always going to change. It's not a matter that you're going to be let down by your expectations that science is never going to have it fully solved. Science is the process to continually discover. So if you trust the process that we incrementally get better and you just understand that's how we do it, then it doesn't cause despair, actually, it gives hope. So I saw this study. I thought that this is fantastic. I'm not discouraged. I feel hopeful that now there's this robust effort happening globally where people are actually measuring microplastics.

Yeah, agreed. We thought it'd be fun to, like, go through this episode, what we do know about microplastics and to levels that everyone's expectations listening. It's definitely nuanced. It's not like the science is really crystal clear. It's definitely emerging. So. Yeah. What are we going to go through today, Brian?

Yeah, well, I'm reminded when we had a don't die dinner about a year ago, and we had this one person attend. And Kate, do you remember this? She was completely fixated on microplastics.

Oh, I think I skipped that. I wasn't there for that dinner.

I think she mentioned the topic. We were weaving in and out of multiple topics, but this was on her mind, and she mentioned it maybe 15 times. Every time she made a point, it was centered around microplastics. And I think that there's a lot of people who do feel intense anxiety around this topic, and I think. So if. If that's you, you're listening, then the message we're going to give to you today is it's okay. We're gonna walk through the science. We're going to evaluate how you can potentially mitigate your microplastic risk. But I don't think it's something that is. Is cause for alarm. It's like, we live in a modern world. We have very serious constraints. So just maybe to. To try to calm some anxiety. If. If you're a listener and you're experiencing that right now, it's okay. At the end of this episode, hopefully you'll have a much more balanced perspective on this and it might even give you some relief.

Yep, definitely. And through the power of measurement, you can find out for yourself what your levels are and also reduce them. Like, Brian, this week you released an announcement saying that you've reduced your microplastics by 93% in your blood. Now, it's not 100% clear exactly what's contributing to that because you're doing so many things, but that's really promising to people. So not only is it achievable to measure your microplastics in your blood, but you can also reduce it.

Yeah, so that's a good point. And maybe before we get into the results, I guess the. What we will. We will review today is that I have been measuring my microplastic exposure and concentrations in my blood and also in my semen. So we've been trying to evaluate how it accumulates in various parts of the body. Mike, can you set us up? What are microplastics? How do they get into our bodies? And how. What does the evidence say in terms of the potential harms of these in our bodies?

Oh, that's a lot. Let's start with what are microplastics? So Microplastics are small pieces of plastic that can enter your body mostly through ingestion, but you can also inhale them. And when we say small, we're talking about like nanometer to micro, micron size. So really tiny, like hard to see with a microscope. Sometimes need like an electron microscope to see that, that small of a, of a, of a particle. And the reason these are interesting is because one, they've been increasing pretty dramatically in our natural environment due to just all the plastic used through and through industry, through clothing, things like that. So we're seeing an uptick in microplastics in general in our water supplies. And there is evidence to suggest that these microplastics, when ingested, get into our bloodstream, travel around in our bloodstream, deposit in our tissues, and may or may not stay there forever. And we may or may not be slowly turning into plastic creatures. Not to be dramatic or anything, but that's literally like what's kind of what's happening on a very small scale. Right. There's been studies now showing that at least humans have plastic microplastics in all types of tissues. Everything from ovaries, testicles, to plaques in our arteries to our brain to our kidneys, really all throughout our body. And that sounds super scary, but it's important to remember that we actually don't have data yet that definitively states that these plastics are doing harm. There is data to suggest that there may be downsides to having these extra plastics in your body, but it's all currently in animals and, and it's all sort of like correlative but not causative. So we're in a very emerging space with the science right now in terms of microplastics and what they're actually doing to our bodies. And we can go into that if you'd like to go into more detail, Brian.

Yeah, I've read a few books on this topic, and I mean, there's a few people who, they paint a pretty bleak picture. You know, they, they talk about like, for example, babies being born, the distance, you know, in between the anus and the genitalia, and how the length of that has been dramatically changing and how the hormones in these babies are dramatically changed and how when they grow up, their, their puberty cycles are very different. Like they, they present this case that humans are fundamentally changing in the womb when they're born and how they're developing, and they point back to chemicals and things like these, these microplastics. So I guess, like, several people have tried to basically Say, like, look, over the past couple decades, you know, sperm health has declined by 50%. You know, they point to these very large trends as it relates to our hormonal and sexual health. And they point to the same rise in, in the plastics manufacturing of the globe. Now, again, that's not, that's not a causation. Right. You're looking at these trends, but they are trying to piece together this complicated puzzle. What is happening that is causing these fundamental change, changes around human development and human, human evolution. And they're pointing here as a potential culprit. How do you read that evidence?

I mean, let's, so let's clarify exactly what we're talking about. So we're talking about microplastics, which are actual, like, particles. There's another way that plastics can alter human biology, and that's through the chemicals that are secreted by plastics. Especially when we eat those plastics and especially when we heat them. Those are, that's typically how we think about the endocrine disrupting. Chemicals getting into our bodies is actually through like, eating out of the plastic, heating the plastic, it leaches into the water, it leaches into the food that we're eating. That's, that's what I think of when I think about endocrine disruption. Whereas microplastics, I'm thinking about more like mechanical disruption of the tissues themselves. There could be some like, you know, chemical leakage from these microplastics, but it's probably more a, like a mechanical change or alteration to our body rather than like chemicals leaching out of a Tupperware dish when we heat it in the microwave kind of thing, if that makes sense.

So as our team, we, we've looked at the evidence and it's like Mike is saying, it's not conclusive, it's emergent. And therefore we've just concluded ourselves that microplastics are not necessarily a longevity therapy. Like, you would not be sprinkling microplastics on your food because you think it's going to give you a boost of.

Energy or microdosing microplastics.

Yeah, exactly. A microdosing protocol. So we have set out to reduce microplastics in my body and we'll get to those recommendations. First, let's just baseline some of the data that we saw this week that I think have people emotionally aroused. And I think that's an appropriate response because we live in a society where we have certain expectations that when we go out and about, we expect certain standards of safety or reasonableness on how things are Done. And I think people feel really rubbed wrong that this fundamental thing that is disrupting our, potentially disrupting our biochemistry is just omnipresent and nobody has any control over it at all. In many ways, this is just like air pollution or water pollution. It's the same thing. These are problems of the commons. This study came out this week, and this is the one, I think that got a lot of headline news is the French. Thank you, French. They did a study looking at particles per liter in cola, lemonade, iced tea, and beer packed in glass. And what they found is that they had five to 50 times higher concentration of microplastics than their bottled plastic, bottled or canned twins. And so this is alarming because a lot of people thought that glass bottles were a safe haven. They thought that the plastic bottle itself was the problem. And so the glass is not the problem. It's the paint flakes on the metal crowns which is the problem. Glass is the correct option. It's just the way they are manufacturing that is a problem. So this is interesting. So in the, the metal crown cleaning matter. So bottled caps with untreated crowns, they, they shed 287 liters per liter of water. But a simple air blast plus alcohol rinse cut that to 87 particles. So the process in which the crown is prepped and cleaned dramatically changed the number of microplastics you'd see in a glass bottle of fluid.

Man, this actually gives me so much hope because even though the headline sucks, because we're all like, God damn it, I've just been spending X amount more on glass. And here we are debunking this. But isn't it cool that it's actually measurement that leads us down this path? If we had switched this manufacturing method, then measured immediately, we've been able to catch this. But I'm given it's not. Totally unknown reason this came back the way we were able to deduce what it is that gives me hope.

You're such an optimist, Kate. Screw it all. Them out of here can't handle, I mean like the, the one safe haven. So I'm in an airport. I'm walking around an airport. I want some water. I forgot my water bottle. Right? I, I, I need to like purchase water in some way. And prior to this study, I'm looking for a glass bottle. Now what do I do? Right?

Like, that's right.

So glass bottles, not safe. Plastic bottles, not safe. Aluminum cans, not safe. It's like at some Do I drink from the water fountain?

Yeah, I guess.

Yeah, I guess that's what I'm. What I'm left to. I mean, at this point, it's sort of. This confirms for me the thing that I think I already knew, and that's really the only thing I trust is like my stainless steel water bottle filled from my house. Like, other than that, it's hard to really trust anything else.

Yeah, I have, Mike. I have the same experience when I'm out and about, like walking through an airport. There's literally nothing in the entire airport which I would put into my body. And so, like, maybe the filter. Like in San Francisco, they have those water refill stations where you can take your stainless steel container. I. But, you know, like, ostensibly that's okay, but I don't know what water filtration systems they have in place, do they? Or not at all.

How frequently do they change the filter, actually.

Exactly. And so I guess what would be cool is I think it'd be cool to live in a society where you didn't need to lock your doors. I think it'd also be cool to live in a society where we could just trust that our societal systems proactively cared for our wellbeing. I think this microplastic thing that there were and this is like, I conceptually, the FDA and other kind of bodies, they kind of look at this thing like they. So we like, look at the government and say, can you help us create, you know, some safety standard for doing various things? That's, of course, great. But also you have this other capitalistic tendency where people are wanting to make profit at any cost, and that leads to different incentives and also different systems. But just generally speaking, it really. We're just in this time and place as a humans where you really have to be on guard everywhere you go because you never know where you're going to encounter problems. And I think this is what people are feeling is like, we don't trust our institutions anymore. Like, we've had this absolute collapse. And so when this happens, we're like, who do we trust? Like, who is going to keep society straight? And so I really understand the desperation. And you guys, this is what don't die is. Like, this is. It's like to bridge this, we are proposing that don't die is the overarching philosophy of our society, that we actually build systems where don't die is the default. And so in this case, we would say microplastics are a potential threat to our health and wellness. We do not want them in. I don't want to jump to Regulation. But we want to measure this so that everybody has the same information. So I guess I'll cite the second thing we came out with this week, which is kind of making this microplastics week, is we shared that we did a test on an IV drip. So a lot of people get NAD drips and vitamin drips. And we tested the microplastics in a typical drip, and we found that it had, on average, 40,000 microplastics in a drip. Now, to put that in context, this is going back to the water. So if. If you drank the 2 liters of water a day, you know, as is recommended from these glass bottles, you would swallow 3,300 microplastics a year. If you get one IV drip, it's 40,000 microplastics. To put that in context. And so just give you some relative intuition building. And so I've been doing these IV drips, we. For a therapy we haven't talked about yet publicly. And we found a filter that we are now testing that filters out microplastics. You just put it on the line. We're waiting for those results. But just to give you context of, you know, again, this is bad news. It's in the glass bottles. It's now in our IV drips. Mike, what was your take when you heard that?

I wasn't super surprised. I mean, when you think about, like, you know, what an IV drip is, it's important. Plastic tubing connected to a plastic catheter coming from a plastic bag. So, I mean, we. We tested this because we were concerned that this was a possibility. So at this point, I basically just assumed that plastics are everywhere, and everything I'm ingesting has plastics in them in some manner. So not super surprised, um, but a little bit surprised, maybe by the. The amount like 40,000 is. Is quite high.

Yeah. Kate, what was your reaction when you saw this evidence that we. From our testing.

So not to sprinkle some optimism in here, but on the last study, it's like, I would guess that it came about because there's a higher demand for measurement around microplastics, period. And so the way that we're starting to slowly shift society towards saying, like, hey, we have these desires and demands, and then people are fulfilling them. And in a lot of ways, that's obviously what we're doing too. So sprinkling of optimism that actually, this is what we asked for. We asked to have these results. The results aren't what we wanted, but that then allows us to make changes into our lifestyle. And our manufacturing process and whatever else. So again, optimism. Yeah, I'm also not surprised. I also completely forgot that ivy bags are made from plastic. And I think that's like the common experience that I've seen is you don't realize how much plastic is everywhere you go. This study also that we did, this result we got was just the bag itself. So I was very curious to see what the liquid would be like once it runs through the line itself because it's obviously interacting then with additional plastic. So we didn't test that yet. But yeah, scary.

Yeah. So I mean, to put this in context, you know, our grandparents are full of lead, our parents are full of asbestos, and we are full of microplastics. Seems like it's a generational thing where each one has its own new materials crisis and I guess it'll be open on which one's the worst. Ali just posted here on that previous discussion, Mike, on the consequences to children. We're going to post this on screen. This is a quote from this paper. 100 million US children exposed to industrial developmental toxins demonstrated a 5 point drop in IQ with a 3.6% decrease in intellectually gifted and 3.4% increase in challenged children compared to a matched cohort of unexposed children. Thoughts on that?

Epidemiologic data. So like signal but not causative, I think is like the first thing we always have to think about when we think about epidemiologic data yet concerning. Right. I mean there's mechanistic explanation here as to, as to what's going on. This again, this may be, you know, we're talking about industrial toxins, which is different than microplastics, I think. So let's make sure we're just clarifying for the listener that we're not necessarily talking about the exact same thing here. This could be anything with industrial toxins from like PFAS chemicals to you know, phthalates, things like that. So it's important to remember this is not one for one in terms of microplastics, but it certainly speaks to like this overarching concern that we have that the things that we're doing to our environment are directly impacting our health. Which is like, just like quick, quick side note here, really interesting to me around microplastics. Like I think there's been a lot of conversation about there's microplastics in the water. It's everywhere, it's in our drinking water, it's in our food, but nobody's really talking about like, where they're coming from. And the. The data is actually pretty convincing that, like, one of the largest sources of microplastics and the. In the. On the sizes that we're talking about is actually coming from our washing machines, which is, I think, is really interesting. So, like, if we really wanted to impact micro, Micro. Microplastics in our environment, it's actually not to wear plastic and not to wash your plastic clothing like that. That's what's causing this environmental issue that we're not really discussing, which I just think is really interesting. Everybody's so focused on, like, am I, am I ingesting microplastics? Like, well, what can you do about it?

Yeah. Yep. And friends, this is what don't die is about, is it's don't die individually, don't kill each other, don't destroy the planet, and align AI with don't die. What we're trying to observe here is that there is no difference between us and each other, or us and our planet. We're the same thing in the same way. We treat our body in ways where we want to be healthy and exercising, sleeping well, and eating a good diet. You can't do that in isolation. You have to contemplate that we are in coexistence with each other and also the planets. Like Mike is saying, as we wear plastic and wash plastic, we have basically bathed the world in plastic. And that is just now a problem it's very, very hard to fix. And so if you approach this problem and say the primary of goal is existence, and you build societal systems around that, right now in the world, we go after wealth, power, and status at any expense. We martyr ourselves. And so as much as this podcast is about trying to be in ideal health and minimizing our individual exposure, it really is to try to say, this is a moment for a Zeitgeist shift, like a wholesale cultural shift. As a species, we move to a different way of being, and we're trying to provide the examples that it really begins with measurement. That above all that when you measure things and you're aware, then you can build systems. But science begins with counting. And so that's what we've tried to do with the individual body, but it easily maps to our collective behaviors. And also here on planet Earth, if.

If we're all full of microplastics. How about Brian Johnson? How's he doing?

Yeah, we should put this graph up. I've been measuring. So Blueprint launched a microplastics test last year. It's One of the first in the world. And even though we don't have great evidence on what can be done to remove microplastics, we wanted to start the game. We've learned ourselves in going through our blueprint protocols. Measurement is always the starting point. You always want to know what your baseline is. And so we just assumed that if you start measuring microplastics in yourself and others, you create this broader self awareness. So I started measuring my microplastics and the latest result I got was really encouraging where I've dropped my microplastics by 93%. This is from a sample of my blood. I had one microplastic particle in this sample of blood which is down 93%. It's in the only 1.6% of tests from this nearly 3,000 test data set is lower than what I've done. And so that was really surprising to us that we have been that successful in reducing my microplastic load. And I guess I can, we can walk through the things I've been doing.

But just jump in. So this is like a, in a eight month period you went from being like a lot of us where we had, you had 15 particles in your sample of blood and we've also tested your semen and we know that there is microplastics in there too. So it's like you have had micro plastics throughout your entire body. So to have this result come back at almost none in your blood sample was like mind blowing to me.

Mike, you're, I mean, I guess we've done quite a few things. Like we did several things. Like one is we did a total plasma exchange and this was months ago. But you know, in doing that, because we just got this result back, that one IV drip is 40,000 microplastics. TPE could have been basically just been loading me up on microplastics. Right. Like you're like pushing it through this entire system. So I don't know if I'd point to TPE as I'm not quite sure how I think about TPE in this context now.

So the. Yeah, and it's a good question. Like the tp, when you get tpe, you are taking, you're basically taking your plasma out. It's a full, total plasma exchange. So basically a full plasma volume is taken out and it's replaced with albumin. That albumin comes from glass bottles. So previously I would have said, oh, interesting, that should be fine. But now like, I'm not sure how exactly they're topping those, those albumin bottles. So there's a chance that you're just giving yourself plastic back from the albumin. Like, who knows? It's often also given with an IV bag as well. So you often top them off with a little bit of like fluid on top of the albumin, which is coming from a plastic bag, which could of course be causing some issues as well. So TP is interesting because you're, you're actively removing these particles from the serum, from the plasma, but at the same time we might be giving it back. Blood donation though, has been shown to reduce plasma particles and is way more affordable, in fact free and good for humanity. So that's an interesting way to reduce it. Now you're only giving about, you know, I think when you give blood, you give somewhere between like 300 and 500cc's of blood. It's like a, you know, can of soda basically is the volume. But you know, over time you're slowly, you know, extracting plastic particles out of your blood as you do that.

It'd be cool if we started throwing like blood potties because it's good for everyone involved and we just all get together and we all just like bloodlet.

That'd be kind of cool.

It's like heal yourself and heal the planet, you know.

But you've been doing, you've been doing more than just that, Brian, right? You've been doing quite a few interventions to reduce plastic. What else is, has like found its way into your daily life.

So when we started this process, we basically said, okay, how can we possibly eliminate microplastics? That really is an eye opening experience because when you start doing this, you realize everything is made of plastic. Everywhere you turn, you find plastic. And just when you think you've kind of got your life cleaned up like something else that you do on a daily basis right in front of you is made of plastic. So it just really has permeated every part of our world. So generally speaking, I do try to avoid drinking plastic water bottle and water bottle wall. I try to drink water from my reverse osmosis water system. It also remineralizes in my stainless steel containers. Containers. Now when I travel, you know, I have the same limitations as everybody else, so I do my best, but I am, when I travel, I am subject to those. So I think now I'll probably be drinking water from plastic bottles. If I'm in a situation where I don't have my own water system or filter water from a friend or somewhere, someplace that does it.

I want to jump in right there. I'M not convinced about that yet, Brian. Like, just. Just to, like, play devil's advocate there. Although this one French study showed that there was more plastic in glass bottles than plastic bottles, there have been other studies that show that some plastic bottles have up to, like, 10,000 particles per bottle. So I think the. I think the jury is still out on what is better to be.

That's interesting. So you would flip a coin at this point between plastic and water.

Or you'd go for the fountain. You'd go for it.

I'd go for the fountain, I think. Yeah, I go straight for the fountain. Because it's not in the plastic. Presumably it's, you know, not as contaminated.

Yeah, well, I guess, like, what I'm saying is, is when no fountain is available, when there's. Because, like, the number of places that have refillable stations is small. And when you're out and you just don't have. I mean, you have to. Otherwise hunt down a watering hole, you know, like. But when you. When you're. When you're not in that. When you don't have that kind of time. Right?

So I purchased a. Like, a filtered metal bottle. So the. Which.

The filters inside the bottle.

Inside the bottle. So, like, it's connected to the straw that goes down into the stainless steel bottle.

Is the straw plastic? That's the thing, Mike.

That's the thing. So when we went to India, we. We researched this. We found this bottle. I bought this bottle, I took it to India, right? So the first thing I did is I opened up. I'm like, wait a second. This filter for microplastics, and it's made of plastic. Okay? So second. So then I filled the. The can with. I filled the can with bottled water, and I'm thinking, like, okay, now it's going to filter out these plastics. I couldn't even drink the water. It was like, I tried to. I had to suck so hard, and I couldn't get any. I couldn't get any water. So I, like, literally couldn't even drink.

Oh, my gosh. I'll admit, this situation's not perfect.

That's what I'm saying.

It's like. I know. So, like, there's, like, you can hunt down a watering hole of pure spring water coming from a volcanic water flow that's been there for 10,000 years. Also, everybody else, like, just has. If. If you're on the border of. Of dehydration, you have to drink something. Like, what do you do? Like, not everyone's got a reverse osmosis system in their house. It's just, it's pretty challenging.

It's kind of funny. I, I'm glad that we're laughing about it because it is sort of hilarious like how challenging this issue is. Right?

It really is tough. Okay, so then other easy things. So we talked about water. So as best you can filter water at your home, filters like Brita do not filter out microplastics. The reverse osmosis water system I have in my house, it's on my website, on the blueprint website under protocol. It's a reverse osmosis system. It was $1300 to install and it also remineralizes if you, you can find systems that I think a few hundred dollars that are reverse osmosis. Is that right?

270 to 350. And do the same thing in terms of remineralization and managing microplastics.

So get one of those if you can. Stainless steel as best you can. But then of course when you're out and about, I think just understand we have limited options on storage. I store everything, all my food and, and things in food grade stainless steel. I'll drink out of ceramic and so just don't. I try to avoid plastic as a material to store food or drink out of. Um, I don't do any canned foods. So there was a lot of study, several studies that showed BPA concentration went up dramatically up by 20 fold after a week of consuming canned soup as opposed to fresh soup. So this is up to 20x increase.

Um, can I also just quickly add in there for people watching at home that listening at home that some folks with women with higher levels of BPA had fewer eggs retrieved in egg retrieval process. So this is having presumably impact on our health actually. So that one in particular struck with me cooking.

So this is an easy one. Take out your plastic cutting boards, use wood, avoid reheating plastic containers. That's an obvious one. And do not use non stick cookware that has, you know, bad chemicals on clothing. I tried so I, I've had to clean up my closet quite a bit. Choose natural fiber clothing, cotton, bamboo, hemp, wool. And try to avoid plastics. Plastic polyesters. Most of the workout clothing in health culture is not that it's polyester based. So try to do natural fibers and then you can vacuum with a HEPA filter to try to trap the microplastics that would otherwise be put into the air. And then having a MERV filter. Now heads up on this. I put in a pretty robust MERV filter in My AC in my home system. And you can mistakenly put a higher Mr. Filter than your system is rated for. So I was right there, borderline. And it was causing some challenges with my system. So if you put a high MER filter in your home to try to trap ventilation or pollution in the air, just be mindful to only do what's up to your system rating system. And then of course, avoid paper receipts. Opt for digital.

Yeah, and that's more of a BPA kind of thing than microplastic as well. I've got a couple more plastic tea bags, like thousands of microplastic particles per plastic teabag, and you're dropping it into a hot glass of water or a cup of water, which is leaching chemicals from the plastic as well. So opt for paper.

You said the glass. The. The cup itself could also be lined with. So you're getting double exposure, right?

Yeah, but I was actually talking about like, so the actual tea bag itself. There's some companies that make a tea bag out of plastic. It's like a plastic mesh. And that's bad news as well as the to go coffee cups, which is what you were talking about, Brian, which is also bad news.

Like two months ago, Mike came over to Brian's house and I was there and I was drinking a coffee out of a takeaway cup. And he was like, Kate, what are you doing? And it was like this like wake up call. And so the next day I went on Amazon and I got myself my emotional support mug that I take everywhere. I highly recommend having this. Yeah, exactly. So good job, Mike.

I'm glad that my health shaming had a positive impact.

That was a pretty dramatic interaction. I saw that whole thing. It was pretty good.

Yeah, yeah, it was, it was intense.

It came from a place of love. Not.

I needed it, I needed the intervention.

Well, the thing that's amazing around this is that as hard as we try to be aware, I do find myself being caught occasionally of like doing something really stupid like. Oh my God. What? How did that pass my self awareness? Like, it's just really remarkable how society was not built with a health first mentality. Let's just say. Let's just say that it's not super hard.

It's like a couple of. A couple of like regular things that you do, like Kate's, you know, famous mug or a stainless steel water bottle. And then like a filtration system in your home. And beyond that, like there's, you know, it's, it's basics. Right. And then I think like, this is one of those areas too, where because it's so ubiquitous, the plastic in our environment, you have to kind of take like an 8020 approach to it, you know, like you're not going to completely eliminate plastic from your life. So just like do your best when you can. And if you're in an airport and you're dying, dying of dehydration, like just buy water, drink the water, you know, like it's gonna be okay. It's not that big of a deal if you're already eliminating the plastics in your home and the majority of your life, like you're doing so much better than most people.

Can we cover the other thing that you've been doing, Brian, that has had crazy results on toxins? Sauna. Is this possibly related to microplastics?

Yeah, that's right. Cause we didn't really get to the things I've been doing. So one is we did the TPE and we said we're not quite sure. That's complicated. Two, as we said, we've tried to eliminate plastic from my life. So these are just the basic things that everybody can do. Use stainless steel. Don't drink out of disposable things. Yeah. Like we just went over and then. Yes, sauna. So sauna could be the most efficacious thing we've done to produce toxins of all types. So we did this test after several sessions of sauna. The reduction in my other toxin levels were pretty dramatic. So it made sense that we'd also see a dramatic reduction in microplastics, that we saw a reduction in other industrial grade kind of toxins so far. Mike, is that, would that be fair to say that of the things we've done, sauna has been the top performer in toxin reduction?

Yes. Even more so than environmental exposure, I think, like, like more so than focused, like reduction in environmental exposure. Because you've been doing that quite a bit and yet it's still. Things still seep in. Right. Like you, you can't. Like that there's so many things that we can't control. Right, right. Like whether plastics are in, you know, the water that you're drinking or whether there's, you know, air pollution in your home or, you know, when you walk outside, can't control those. Right. Like you're going to get exposed to stuff. And sauna has been really impressive in terms of like how dramatically it removed all of those toxic chemicals in like a super short period of time. Like I was personally, like, I expected a little bit of change, but I was blown away. By the reduction, it was almost like, you know, moderate to zero, like almost completely zero.

A 65% drop in 2, 4D, 100% drop in MEP. So these are all, you'll look up the specific chemicals, you know, 15% drop, a hundred percent drop, 56, 56, a hundred. And you'll look up the various things. These are like industrial grade chemicals. Suffice it to say that this, the sauna was probably a significant contributor to microplastic reduction.

Yeah. And we have a whole episode now on Sauna on our podcast. So check that out. The TLDR is Brian's doing a dry sauna at 200 degrees Fahrenheit for 20 minutes daily. It is very hot. He sweats a lot. So, yeah, it's definitely not an easy therapy to do.

I think that's it for this week. Um, that the, the TLDR is. Plastics are everywhere. It's a, this is a good challenge for the human race to take on that. It really represents a common, the problems like we, we have this in terms of air pollution, we have this in terms of toxins in our food. We have these in toxins and microplastics. This really is a global problem that no one person can solve. And I think it really requires a new ideology, a new way of being in order for us to actually be efficacious in addressing this. Anything short of that, we're just going to be chasing our tail. That just will never make progress. And so I think I'm very happy that we've been leading the charge on this front with measurement and giving people the option to measure themselves and to start doing these experiments. Like Mike said, some people have done this, they've given blood, they've seen a reduction. So we're starting to see people trial various therapies and get some data. And as more people test, as more people do these various therapies, we'll get more and more insight. So I think we're on a good path. I think we'll wrestle this. It's like a typical growth path of people, of humans developing new technologies, doing things without knowing the harm. And so we'll solve this. And I think also a lot of companies will be motivated to try to find therapies that could potentially remove them and, or offset the effects. So do not lose hope.

Yeah, actually just really quickly before we end, if people want to test their microplastic levels, is that pretty much the only way they can do it? So we offer, offer tests at home. It's a finger prick, you Put it on a little blood spot card, you mail it away. And then they analyze the amount of microplastics at three different types sizes of microplastics. But besides that is. Do you guys know, is there any other way to measure microplastics? I remember when we came to market with this, it was like the first on market.

Not that I'm aware of. No. No imaging or anything that's, that's commercially available that allows you to measure them. So really it's serum testing is about all.

We have a heads up that when you do the test, it is a metal lancet. So it is not a plastic thing. The plastic things are very easy. You just hit the fingertip and then you're done. This you have a metal, like it's a metal sword or metal spear. And it's hard to stick that in your finger if somebody else can do it for you. But just a heads up, we've tested a metal lancet versus a plastic. And the plastic lancet does cause a lot of plastic exposure in the test. So you get an inaccurate reading. So you need to use the metal lancet in order to get the accurate results.

And then can you share what you're testing upcoming? So you did a PFAS test Forever chemicals test. We'll share those results. You've tested your baseline semen microplastics and you're doing a follow up, is that right?

That's right.

Okay. Anything else that we're testing that we want to share? I really want to test your sweat if we can figure out a way to do that. So when you're in the sauna, collect your sweat and see.

Yeah.

How much is coming out.

I agree, I agree. We've got some good baselines across all kinds of things. Microplastics, industrial grade chemicals. And now that we've got some. Now that we're making these pretty aggressive moves on trying to remove plaque toxins from the environment, plus Tusana, plus other things. I think we're really starting to craft a, a good protocol on how to approach toxin exposure generally and how to minimize the, the concentration of the body.

Yeah, it'd be really cool if we could say something to the effect of that, you know, this one pocket on earth is a safe zone for microplastics. And that might be literally because, you know, the studies show it's like everywhere and yeah, it'd be cool to be an example of what the future could look like.

I'm just really excited for the blood party.

There really is like a gigantic Opening of what? What is the format of a. Like a don't die culture kind of party?

Totally.

That kind of breaks all conventions and norms and veers into some interesting territory, I think. Yeah, I think that's a good opportunity.

Olive oil baths. All right, you guys, should we wrap?

Yeah. Kate and I are off to Washington, D.C. in an hour. We're going to teach Congress how to sleep. I wrote an op ed, uh, that we pitched to the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post. It was go the to sleep. Dear, dear Congress. And then an open letter about how sleep improves performance and sleep deprivation causes all kinds of problems that nobody wants.

We're having a Congress slumber party.

Mike, you need to jump in there. You should go in there and do, like, emergency ER doc stuff.

Oh, that'd be interesting.

You guys are not okay.

This.

This is.

This is an emergency.

This is. Yeah, this is not.

Yeah, I'd be happy to talk to him.

All right, you guys be well.

Talk soon.

Bye.

Bye. This is the Brian Johnson Podcast. Special thanks to my co hosts, Kate Tolo and Dr. Mike Mallon. For more science breakdowns and protocols, subscribe to my YouTube channel, follow the podcast on your favorite platform or follow me on Instagram or X at Brian Johnson.