Decreasing Your Toxic Burden

Hi, I'm Dr. Tabitha the Gutsy Gynecologist. I'm a triple board certified, OB, GYN and Functional Medicine physician. I've embraced the world of functional medicine and wellness through my own personal health journey. And I'm super excited to share my wisdom and unique perspective as it pertains to women's health. After caring for thousands of women, I've come to realize that your gut health determines your gyne health and your overall health. And it's a super gutsy thing for me to go against conventional gynecology practice to bring you the truth. No more band aid medicine, ladies. We're talking root cause resolution on this show. So if you're struggling with hormone imbalance, weight gain, period issues, anxiety, insomnia, you name it, then you've come to the right place. And I want to be your gutsy gynecologist. So welcome. Hi ladies. Welcome back to the Gutsy Gynecologist show. This week I'm going to talk about toxins because somebody wanted to know, how do I decrease my toxic burden? You talk about that all of the time. So yes, let's get into that. But first I want to read a quick review from Lori from the Netherlands. I love that everybody across the world is listening to this podcast. So cool. She says, wow, we're lucky to have you creating this for us. What a gem. Thanks, Laurie from the Netherlands. So cool. So send me your reviews. I want to see what you have to say. It just fills my heart. It keeps me going and wanting to do this. So thank you, but okay, so I got a couple of women saying, how do I decrease my toxic burden? Here's the thing. Like, we are living in a world that we have never seen as a civilization. Like all of these thousands of chemicals are new in the past 70 to 100 years. And unfortunately, the United States is very lenient on what they allow companies to use in their products. If you look at the literature, most of the European nations don't allow over 2,000 chemicals that we allow in the United States. We know these are toxic. They get away with it by saying that your average daily dose that you're getting is technically safe. So what they're saying is if you use this lotion this one time at this dose, it's safe. They don't have to think about the fact that you use that lotion every day for 5, 10, 20 years, plus the air fresheners, plus the cleaning products, plus the makeup, plus the lipstick, plus the shampoos. Like all of that combined, that is too Much of a toxic burden. And that is what we need to be focused on, decreasing that exposure. Because our bodies were not designed to handle all of these exposures that we're now seeing at monumental levels. And because of that, we are seeing chronic fatigue. We are seeing all of these lifestyle diseases developing. Lifestyle diseases are obesity, diabetes, heart disease. All of this stuff was unheard of 100 years ago. We have created this, unfortunately, as a society, and the United States in particular, it's really bad. And it's largely because of our environmental burden. So I just wanted to talk about how can we decrease our daily exposures to all these toxicants that get into our system, that bog down our liver, that prevent our mitochondria from being healthy and producing energy, that damage our DNA so that it gets read incorrectly and can cause cells to go rogue and create cancer. So many reasons that we need to get these toxicants out of our body. And not to mention that a lot of them are stored in our fat cells. So your body is actually protecting you when it doesn't burn your fat for fuel, when it is holding onto that stored fat, it's doing it in an effort to keep those toxicants out of your bloodstream and away from your major organs. So your fat is actually protecting you. But I'm sure you don't want to hear that because you don't want to be carrying that extra fat. So if you don't want to be carrying extra fat, you have to decrease your toxic burden. That's just how it is. So let's talk about, number one. You have to get outside, you have to breathe fresh air. You have to see sunlight. There's actually detoxification processes that happen when you go outside and breathe fresh air, open your windows on a regular basis. Because everything inside of our houses and our cars, they have toxicants that accumulate in the air, and it becomes very concentrated, and we breathe it in, and it goes straight into our bloodstream. Just the same way that you breathe in oxygen, it goes straight to your bloodstream. Because your lungs are filled with millions of these capillary beds of all of these tiny little blood vessels that are ready to suck in the oxygen. All of that blood flow in your lungs sucks in all those toxicants as well. So it's really important to circulate the air in your house, open the windows, get fresh air, because especially newer houses that have just been built or carpet or new furniture, you probably have noticed that smell like it's really toxic and that just off gases continually for a long, long time. Older houses or even newer houses sometimes can have mold that becomes too much of a toxic burden if you don't have air circulating, old lead paint, wallpaper, all of these things. So open your windows. Don't just use the air conditioner. Otherwise you're recirculating those toxins and continuing to breathe. Here's another big one. Don't take the cash register receipts. I had to teach my kids this one when we went to Disney last week because everybody wanted to give us receipts. Those receipts are actually covered in a bisphenol A or bps. Those are toxins that get absorbed directly into your skin. And if you are someone who works with receipts, like it's your job to hand people receipts, consider wearing gloves. And definitely don't use use alcohol sanitizer to wash your hands frequently and then grab the receipt because that actually increases the absorption of that toxin into your system. So I felt so bad for all of the store workers through Covid when I would see them putting that alcohol sanitizer on their hands, grabbing the receipt and handing it off. Try not to do that. Try your best to get an email receipt or handle it very minimally because those toxins go straight into your system and wreak havoc on your hormones. Leave your shoes at the door when you come home. There's actually a lot of toxins outside in your yard, on your lawn, on your driveway, your cement. There's weed killers, lawn fertilizers, heavy metals from the dirt and the snow, salt. If you live where I live, these can all get transferred to the carpet and then get absorbed by us, especially small kids. So if you have kids who play on the floor, who are learning to walk or crawl or your pets, bring all of this stuff in, just kind of be mindful of that. I personally don't use pesticides on my lawn because I don't want them anywhere near me because they do seep in and they get into places that you don't want them. So just kind of be mindful of that one. Okay, here's another big thing that I mentioned. Quickly stop buying air fresheners and scented candles. If you need to use something like that because you want the smells in your house, use essential oils. Those are clean. Anything that says fragrance on it is usually toxic because that is a generalized term that the FDA allows when there's multiple chemicals put together and they don't have to list all of the individual chemicals, they just call it a fragrance. But those are very toxic and they cause major hormone disruptions. So please don't use the Glade plugins, the air fresheners, the little things that hang in your cars, or the the candles with all the fragrances in them because it goes straight into the air, into your bloodstream. These are also obesogens like I mentioned where they, these are the ones that like to distribute into your fat cells and keep you fat so you get that dreaded weight loss resistance. You just can't get rid of the weight. So those got to go. Let's see. Switch to organic food. When you are eating anything that's made conventionally, you're getting pesticides, genetically modified foods. Those are where the food has been genetically changed, usually with a pesticide or some form of chemical so that insects are less likely to eat them. But that also not only kills the insects, it kills us. So please try to eat organic as much as possible. Try to get clean meats where they're raised without antibiotics or growth hormone. Cows should be grazing on the grass, they should be grass fed. Chickens should be free ranged. And fish should be wild caught, not farm raised. And then drink lots of clean water. But I want you to drink out of glass or stainless steel preferably. Please try to avoid plastic water bottles as much as you can because plastic continually leaches those chemicals into the water. Even if you don't let your water bottle heat up, it probably has been sitting in a warehouse for six to 12 months with WHO knows what temperature. And that entire time those plastics are leaching into that water before you drink it. So it's super important to keep your plastic water drinking to a minimal. Just do that when you absolutely have to and then filter your water as much as possible. Let's see. Eat the rainbow every day. Actually, the colors of your fruits and vegetables are associated with different phytochemicals, phytonutrients that are antioxidants. They go round and clean house. They get rid of all the dead cellular debris and broken DNA, all the damaged cells that help combat these environmental toxicants. So eating the rainbow is super important. When is the last time you ate a purple vegetable? I would love to know. Because we have to get those colors in. And then we need to think about how our body detoxifies. So our body detoxifies a few different ways. The biggest, most common way we is through pooping, right? When you get rid of that stool, you are getting rid of toxins from your body. Because whatever your body's trying to get rid of, it will remove through your skin, through sweating, through your bowels, through your urine. So get pooping every day. If that's an issue for you, then you need to come see me or get that taken care of. Sometimes we just need some more magnesium in our diet or some MCT oil or more fiber. There's all kinds of reasons that you might need help getting your bowels moving every single day. Sweating is a great way to eliminate your toxins. So your body naturally sweats as a detox mechanism. Try to figure out a way to get sweating. Get your heart rate up 30 minutes every day. It's really good for your detoxification processes. For some people, if you getting your heart rate up to the point of sweating is too difficult or contraindicated, then try something like a dry heat sauna or an infrared sauna. These will also help detoxify at the cellular level. Dry brushing is a really awesome technique. You can get a natural dry brush most places and that gets your lymph flowing. So your lymphatic system, it actually follows your cardiovascular system, your blood. So wherever you have blood vessels, you have lymph vessels. And those lymph vessels and lymph nodes are taking the waste products that your blood is done using and transporting it and trying to get rid of it. So that's why sometimes you'll get a swollen lymph node if you're sick or something, because they're like a trash can. They're trying to get rid of that virus or bacteria, but it also does that with toxins. You want your lymphatics moving and it doesn't have a pump the way our cardiovascular system does. Our blood vessels, they squeeze and they pump, especially with our muscles, they move them. Our lymphatics don't have those pumps. They completely rely on us physically moving our bodies to get our lymph moving. And so dry brushing is a great technique to help move that lymphatic stuff to get some better drainage. You can also just do regular exercise. You can get massage, you can go get osteopathic manipulation. But these will all help your lymphatics move those toxicants out and then off. Gassing is another thing I think of. Sometimes I have to get my clothes dry cleaned, which I don't love, but you want all those chemicals that they used to off gas and not bring them into your house. So I literally leave my dry cleaning clothes in the garage for about two weeks before I bring them into the house because I want those chemicals to off gas and not be anywhere near me. I don't want to breathe all of them in. And like I mentioned, that's really common with new furniture, renovations, flooring, carpets, like open those windows, get that off, guessing out of there. The other big ones are what we're cooking with. So if you're cooking with non stick pots and pans, those chemicals actually especially Teflon, get absorbed into our food every time we cook. So I would say try to swap those out with stainless steel, lead free ceramic, anything that doesn't have that Teflon coating because that stuff is really toxic. So if you can try to do a couple of these things and every month incorporate another one. You know what I say with like products, once you run out, try a new product, try a cleaner product. You don't have to go through all of your makeup and all of your products, personal care products away today and replace them unless that's the kind of person you are. But most people, I say once you're just about out of a product, look for a cleaner product. And the best place is environmentalworkinggroup.org they have all the lists. You can literally look and see how toxic your product is and find some better solutions, alternatives. So I hope this was helpful because this is a huge reason why we are struggling with our health and we want to blow it off because you know, this is just life nowadays and how are you going to, you know, get around it. But there are ways to decrease your toxin exposure on a regular basis. So try and quote incorporating some of these things that we talked about. You can get the list, the link is in the show notes and let me know if you thought this was helpful. And like I said, go to Environmental Working Group, they're a great guide. But this alone might be the difference between heavy periods and PMS and painful periods and nice balanced periods and not so painful periods because it really is that impact full on your hormones and your health. So I hope this was helpful. Go have an amazing kick ass week ladies and I'll see you soon.