Erica Hoke covers practical ways to reduce toxin exposure before pregnancy. Switch laundry products using EWG ratings, skip fabric softeners and dryer sheets which can trigger asthma, and avoid triclosan and sodium lauryl sulfate in toothpaste. Small changes to everyday products can protect hormone and gut health.
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doing today? Uh, it is Wednesday after a holiday. I dare you to tell me what it is, right? We're all like, I don't know what it is, but it is in fact Wednesday. And if you, um, if you don't know who I am, Erica Hoke, I'm a coach, and I had a 1% chance of getting pregnant at 35, was told I need donor eggs, and for, um, without reproductive medicine. So I'm here to you, I'm here today talking to you about and how to prepare your body for pregnancy and how to avoid those toxins that are going to be impacting your hormones, um, and your gut health, okay? So people frequently underestimate, clients frequently underestimate the impact that all of the toxins that we rub on our skin, our body through that, um, have on our hormones and our endocrine system, right? But it has to do with the fact that there's so many more exposures and the amount of toxins that are getting into our body, our body, increasing, right? Um, use hand sanitizer on a daily basis. 15 years ago? Not very many, right? We think of our skin as a barrier, meaning that what we put on our skin doesn't go into our bloodstream. But not true. So, so, like, that I'm super passionate about, and I could spend a lot of time talking about it, so I'm gonna just get down for you. This is going to be a jumping off point. It's going to be something that I want you to just think about, um, when you reach for that product that you've been using for a long time and turn it over and look at, do some, start doing some label reading, okay? So here I'm gonna just pare it down to a few bullet points for you to get started, okay? So the biggest impact of avoiding toxins in your environment, the very easiest and biggest one, can anybody guess? It's, it's your laundry clothes or on your sheets 23.5 hours a day, right? So the easiest and biggest impact that you can have on your health is going to a green laundry detergent, laundry product, um, that has a, a green or at least a yellow rating versus a red bad rating. Explain to you what I mean. EWG.org, you can plug in your laundry product. It has an app, give you a scale and rating— green, yellow, red, right? Just like a traffic light. And, uh, you want to find something that is on the, the non-toxic scale. They're, um, like Seventh Generation, Mrs. Buyers and things like different products, like brands. Some of them are good and some of them are what we call green, greenwashing ties that they are green, that they're better, and they're in fact no better than the soft soap or the Tide, the what have you. Vigilant in choosing something But switch out your laundry products. Stop using fabric softeners today. Stop using dryer sheets today. EWG.org gives most laundry products a D or an F rating, and at the top of those lists are those fabric softeners and those dryer sheets. So they're actually a class of chemicals that are asthmogens. Okay, so I don't— again, I could talk this, um, so laundry products. Um, the second one, the second chemical that I— or the second product, that's the word that I'm looking for— the second product that I want you to take a look at, toothpaste, and specifically a chemical, avoiding a chemical called triclosan. So the reason that we're avoiding triclosan in both toothpaste— toothpaste, put it out this morning— toothpaste and hand soap is because triclosan also affects your gut microbiome. So we want good gut health. As a matter of fact, tonight I'm doing an hour-long presentation on infertility and gut health, what can improve your gut health and why it it even matters. Gut health has a huge impact on— this is one of the key components, right? So if you're brushing your teeth twice a day, your mouth is a mucous membrane, is highly absorbable, right? Gets in your bloodstream so much faster than even doing things on your skin. Triclosan and sodium lauryl sulfate in toothpaste, given its antibacterial properties and the foaming agent, sodium lauryl sulfate, in toothpaste. So pretty much toothpaste all has sodium lauryl sulfate. And over the course of the past 10 years, the smaller companies like Tom's of Maine, green companies, have gotten gobbled up by Procter Gamble. And, um, have been added in because they're cheap. It makes it, it makes it, uh, companies. So those are two things that I want: dairy products and toothpaste. Everybody uses them, use them every day. I'm just over time here. So if you want that gut health course, it's in my, my my free Facebook group. I put the link here. And if you want information about avoiding toxins that could affect your fertility and how to prepare for pregnancy, you can check out my blog, ericahoke.com. Health and blessings to you guys. Bye-bye.
