Detoxify Your Life Without Losing Your Mind with Dr. Aly Cohen

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I'm JJ Virgin, PhD dropout— sorry, Mom— turned 4-time New York Times bestselling author. I'm a certified nutrition specialist, Fitness Hall of Famer, and I speak at health conferences and trainings around the globe. But I'm driven most of all by my insatiable curiosity and love of science to keep asking questions, digging for answers, and sharing the information that I uncover with as many people as I can. And that's where you come in. That's why I created the Well Beyond 40 Podcast to synthesize and simplify the science of health into actionable strategies to help you thrive. In each episode, we'll talk about what's working in the world of wellness, from personalized nutrition and healing your metabolism to powerful aging and prescriptive fitness. Join Join me on the journey to better health so you can love how you look and feel right now and have the energy to play full out at 100. Don't miss an episode. Subscribe now at subscribe2jj.com to start unlocking your healthiest, most energetic self. Want to listen to the show ad-free? Head over to subscribe2jj.com and start your ad-free experience today. Toxins. This is such a huge subject and it can be a super scary subject too, because as you start to dig into it, literally this happened right before we were recording the show. My husband wanted this specific type of rice and I didn't get it for him. The Instacart order came in. He goes, "Where is it?" I go, "Well, if you look at the ingredients, it's got some things in it that I'm not gonna buy for you." He goes, "Oh." And so, you know, as you start to unpack toxins, It feels like you're like, where can I be? How can I live? Right? And so our guest today, this is a repeat guest on the show. It's Dr. Ailey Cohen, and she is so logical and about how to approach this. She's a triple board-certified doc. She's triple board-certified in rheumatology, internal medicine, and integrative medicine. She's an integrative health expert. In Princeton, New Jersey, and the author of two books for the consumers. We're gonna be talking about Detoxify today, the everyday toxins harming your immune system and how to defend against them. She also has a textbook on the subject, so this is her whole world, and she's so reasonable about how she approaches this. We're gonna give you a cheat sheet that she's put together of the things you're gonna wanna throw away right now. Now, here's the thing. She approaches this not from like, get all this stuff out, but really from what is gonna make the biggest difference right now in your house, in your life, in your body, and let's focus on those first. She has a 4-step process she walks you through, the 4 A's, which we will be going through. And she also has some great information online. So I'm gonna put all of that at jjvirgin.com/aly, A-L-Y. And I will be right back with Dr. Ailey Cohen. Ready to soundtrack your summer? With Red Bull Summer All Day Play, you choose a playlist that fits your summer vibe the best.

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Thank you for having me.

And I think of you as the, the toxin queen. I don't know if that's quite the best thing here, right? But now this is your second book on toxicity. Third. Third. Oh, it's your— now you're truly— you're the triple toxin queen.

Yeah, I have a textbook over my right— is it my right shoulder? Right shoulder right there.

Yes.

And that was the textbook for Oxford. And then we moved into— now we're into consumer books, which is all good.

It's all— it's very timely because I think people are— they've been around, but I think people are becoming very, very, very aware of it. And one of the things that I think is so interesting that you talk about is You know, I've always liked to say that your body is a history book, and I think people look at this big acute toxic load, but that's not how toxins hit us. Like, they hit us as this little bit over and over that just kind of accumulates in our history book. And so you actually say this, you say that, that chemicals are actually more dangerous at low doses than high ones, and that really flies in the face of everything that's out there. And I think it's how a lot of stuff gets sneaks in for sure. So like, let's, let's talk about this myth and blow through it.

Yeah. Well, well, first of all, your point about, you know, acute versus chronic, heavy loads versus slow, insidious exposures are really both interesting. The big ones teach us a lot. Those are the occupational exposures from people who work in migrant farming or pesticides or in factories with vinyl chloride. We learn a lot from those guys. And then you have what really is facing the rest of us mere mortals, which is these low-level exposures to lots of chemicals that are unregulated in the US for sure. And really they're small amounts, but they're, but they're able to do a lot with the, with the size and concentration and power of what they are. And then we have mixtures. So it's not just like we're ever just exposed to one chemical at one given moment. We got medications, we've got chemicals from plastics, you name it. And so that's kind of how we, you know, we should be looking at it. They don't all smack you in the face, right? They don't all give you a rash. They don't always, you know, give you something where you'd be alerted to this fact. The fact is, is that they work in very interesting ways at the cellular level. And that is how we, you know, how I address it in the book.

Yeah. And that's to me what makes this so scary. Because it's not like I had a son who actually had an acute toxicity issue and nearly died. But for most of us, it's just this little drip. And toxins aren't studied in combination at low levels that have accumulated over years.

So each have their own properties. Like when I talk about, you know, to big classes of physicians and other training programs that I'm working on, you know, The idea is that there's, there's lots of factors involved. I want to educate people why they should care, right? So you have the type of chemical, what its half-life is, meaning how long it takes to break down in a typical system. You have whether it's a neurotoxin or liver toxin, its function or its damage. So all of these things around the chemical itself, exposure levels, that kind of thing. Then you have the host, which is us, right? Then you have the host, whether or not they have working kidneys, working liver. There's, you know, they're exercising, they're sweating out chemicals, they're drinking clean water or any water at all. They're eating certain vegetables and fruits and produce that offset. So you have the chemical problem and then you have the host factors and all of that makes it very, you know, specific to each person. But what we do know is there's a lot you can do across all humans and across all chemicals.

Good, because I want to talk about what we can do. But first of all, like, the things that I think we need to look at is where are these things coming from? What are the biggest offenders? Because I would think that the number one thing is try to avoid the biggest offenders. And then how can you really know what's going on with you? And then what do you do about it? So let's dig into the biggest offenders first.

Yeah, I look at the biggest offenders are pretty much the ones that have the highest load into the body. So when you think about that, you think about food, which we have to eat, and drinking water, which we have to drink, 'cause our bodies are made up of what, 85% water? Those are the two biggies. And within those, you can start to think of where we get the most in terms of quantity. So for instance, when it comes to food, we think of food chemicals like processed and ultra-processed foods. Those food additives, there are about 1,200 at least, I'm sorry, 12,000 of them. That have been grandfathered in, especially under a certain loophole in the food regulation system of the Generally Recognized as Safe, or GRAS, which, you know, hopefully that'll—

It's not.

Yeah, it really has grandfathered in so many chemicals and none of them have required testing before going into our food. But if you switch even, you know, the quality of your food from, say, processed or ultra-processed to whole foods, and then you go one step even further and you take away pesticides and, you know, genetically modified ingredients, going with USDA organic whenever you can, that is taking off layers and layers of toxic chemicals out of your exposure on a daily basis. When you look at drinking water, again, very high yield, high, you know, changes you can make filtering our water because that too is poorly regulated, still follows the Safe Drinking Act. Safe Drinking Water Act from 1974, which really only covered 91 chemicals back then and still only covers 91 chemicals at all of the wastewater treatment plants. There's 160,000 across the US that serve 85% of the population. So for drinking water. So the idea is if you can filter your water when it gets to your home or choose better water from even bottled water choices, and how you carry your water, how you carry your food, and what your food quality is, you're right then and there, you're taking away literally thousands of harmful chemicals to the human body.

Yeah, 'cause you look at it and, and as you were talking about this, I was like, okay, I wanna ask you about some specific ones. But then you think about it and you go, well, if there's a specific thing, let's say an artificial sweetener or a seed oil, but then it's really how does that one interact with other things? Then how does that accumulate in your body? Then what about what else you have going on? And it's just this, it is so hard to unpack. But I do have to ask some specific ones because—

Yeah, please. I mean, it's hard to unpack, but the idea that you're alluding to is, you know, should we be testing and should we be freaking out? Because in fact, what we want to do is not be a toxicologist, not overwhelm ourselves with the minutia of all these thousands is what do we do no matter what our daily exposure is from whatever products or air quality or food quality we come in contact with. That's really the goal.

Yeah, because I mean, the reality is, even if you were to test, like I just did a microplastics test, but, and I've done some toxin tests in the past, but then are they looking at all the different toxins? Like, if there's 12,000 different chemicals, are they looking at everything they need to look at? And, you know, so how would you even know? But some basic things. So basic ones like artificial sweeteners, because this is such an argument online. And just to me, it just doesn't make sense that these would be a good idea.

Yeah. And artificial sweeteners are in fact artificial and really should be thought of as not natural to the human body or even to the evolution of human beings. I mean, I bring anthropology in quite a bit to what I talk about because I think we lose sight of the fact that we really have been here for millions of years, 4.5 million years. And it's really only the last 75 years of human existence that has brought in around 95,000 chemicals, not just the 12,000 in food. So we have to be thinking, you know, if it's such a short period of time and we're having so many of these health issues in terms of chemicals like food, like, you know, synthetic sugars, we have to be thinking what is natural, what is helpful to the body and what is hurtful to the body. There's no question that there are chemical components to some of these sweeteners, and we know they change the gut microbiome for sure. There's lots of really great studies. I talk about them in the book. And that really, since the gut microbiome is the first thing that these foods and food additives do when they hit the body, they're going into your belly, your gut. That is the kind of thing where you wanna be thinking, how do I clean this up? Because some of them actually turn into formaldehyde. Some of them knock off good bacteria, the, you know, the non-pathologic bugs that protect us and protect that lining. And once you start eroding the gut microbiome with any number of chemicals, and I can think of more like chlorinated drinking water or BPA in canned foods, which is the plastic lining in all of our canned foods, or, you know, any, any other components of plastics that affect our food quality from storage, all of those things are taking a hit on the gut microbiome. And so you have many effects cellularly, but you also have that direct, you know, microbiome hits, and that affects our immune system and our health because the gut is so important to that.

It's interesting, there is a very, a new protein bar out and some big names are promoting it, and it's got sucralose in it. And I'm like, it's got sucralose in it? And they cite the studies that show that diet sodas and diet bars and artificial sweeteners help with weight loss. And I'm like, okay, well, if you looked at that one metric short term, look, 3 months, but you're not looking at all the other things. Oh, for that one thing.

I mean, come on. Frame a lot around product sales for sure. I mean, you know, you have xylitol, which are the alcohol sugars. You have sucralose. You even have regular sugar that can be broken up, you know, glucose, fructose, all of those breakdown products. Look, it's better not to have any sugar. And I'll tell you, it's a real problem because I love sugar. But if you're going to have sugar, not only should you consider something more along the lines of something that's less processed, less synthetic, but then again, thinking about that USDA organic designation because it does actually matter in the food system. I will say that it's not the only thing, but it certainly is the most important thing when it comes to reducing pesticides and other, you know, chemicals within our food system. We don't have much in the way of regulation. Let's be clear. We have the FDA for drugs and then we have USDA Organic for food. There's nothing else. I mean, even the Safe Drinking Water Act, I think, is worthless pretty much. Wow. So, you know, that says a lot that we don't have enough to protect our water systems from being, you know, pretty toxic.

And as far as the USDA Organic, is it just that it has to be grown in a place with no pesticides, like no pesticides, that types of things used? However, if it's next door to a farm farm that is— I mean, that's what— that's— I'm still going to always choose organic whenever possible. Right. However, I always look at that and go, gosh, what I really want to know is, is this next door to a, to a farm that's not organic? Because there's no way that the water isn't getting over into the soil. Like, then seeds are blowing and all the stuff.

Yeah, for sure. I mean, and a lot of people do raised beds so they can control that process. But that's, you know, in terms of big farms, it's not as easy to do raised beds where you can separate soil. But soil is definitely part of the USDA criteria. It took 10 years to come up, you know, it was from the 1990s to 2000, I think it took 10 years to get USDA organic designation into, you know, the law books of the United States food industry. And, you know, so I think we, it's now been 20 years and it does have a little bit of a lift. I mean, people have to pay money into organic farming to get that designation. There's yearly audits. Oversight and, you know, it is a lift. There are people that can certainly do non-organic produce and use baking soda. And I have all of those do-it-yourself cleaners, you know, like vinegar and water, a combination is wonderful. Baking soda can do it. USDA Organic frozen are remarkable in the sense that they have such nutritional, you know, content because they're flash frozen and they also don't have pesticides.

And but they're in plastic bags. Any issues with that?

Oh, certainly issues. But I, you know, here's the thing. My whole world is about sharing with people as I sit here with colored hair and my kids are playing lacrosse on a toxic, you know, lacrosse turf.

Well, that's the reality. I love that. I mean, because that is the real— like, the reality is, okay, I got my nails done and I've got, you know, perfection here.

It's about— it's— I'm a realist, not a purist. And the way I like to teach and write and share with people is that, listen, maybe it's my own excuse to not being perfect. Perfect, which I'll never be and no one will be in this topic. The idea is that you do the best you can with what we have available and you suss out where are the tricks, where are the hacks that make the most sense. And that took 15 years for me to put together for this book so that people can really be savvy about what they put in and around their bodies. And also, as the 4 A's, you know, I have the 4 A's. The first A is Assess. The second is avoid and swap, which makes sense. The third is adding in nutrition and things that offset harm, sweating, sauna, exercise, stress reduction, cruciferous vegetables, and detoxifying support. And then the fourth A, believe it or not, is allow. And that's what we're talking about. It's allowing life to happen. It's birthday parties, travel, it's hair, it's nails if you want, but thinking about where else you want to make reductions in terms of exposures in a reasonable way.

So you mentioned BPA and you said— now I know there's the BPA-free cans. Are they really BPA-free?

Great question. You teed up a great answer. So, you know, here's the thing. BPA is one of only, I would say, about a dozen chemicals that have ever in any way, shape, or form been taken off the market in some way. In the US. We've had DDT, we've had PCBs. I'm just naming some historical chemicals that have been taken out, some parts of asbestos. But BPA was really— bisphenol A is a class of chemicals called bisphenols. They have a lot of, you know, effect in plastics. They really do make plastics hard, whereas phthalates tend, as a class, tend to make things squishy plastic, right? But BPA was taken out baby bottles, plastic baby bottles in 2012, actually with the help of my coauthor for the last two books, Dr. Fredrick von Saal, remarkable guy, and his colleagues and him really discovered how BPA works. It works to mimic estrogens at very, very low amounts, parts per million, parts per billion, parts per trillion. And, you know, the thing is, is that it was such a lift to get that out of plastic baby bottles, which, by the way, if they're harmful enough to do that, we should be really considering other components of our health, of our food system, meaning canned foods. But it was such an industry issue and it was never taken out from canned foods and other areas where BPA is utilized. So there's also, you know, when it says BPA-free, it's often a regrettable substitution is what it's now called, which is BPS, BPSIP. And there's dozens of bisphenols that have taken the place of BPA. To do a lot of the same function, but have turned out to be just as harmful on studies like BPS, for instance, in terms of its comparison to BPA. So the answer, stick to glass and stainless steel, try to swap out from canned foods. There's lots of different options to get away from BPA and its, its substitutions.

I know we have been carefully swapping everything in our kitchen and it was funny today we had an Instacart order come in and Tim's My husband was like, I wanted that other rice. I go, honey, I read the rice ingredients and there were these seed oils that were in there with some other suspect stuff. So, you know, he's like, oh. And so I know seed oils have been just— it's like this back and forth fight online. I had Dr. Cate Shanahan on who explained that it was the pro— like for me, I was looking at going, well, is it because we're getting too many omega-6s? She goes, that's not the issue. What's your thought on those?

Yeah, I know the argument is pretty pervasive, but it is a lot of the manufacturing. If you understand how food is manufactured and look, most people aren't growing their own food, not even because they don't have the land or the time or the interest, but it's just not what modern humans are capable of doing in the US usually. I applaud people who can pull it off. I think it's great to have your own garden and to really make and, you know, prioritize this. But manufacturing chemicals are real. I mean, we saw this in dark chocolate, one of my favorite topics and my favorite—

Don't, don't, don't do it with dark chocolate.

No, but I want to give people— I want to give people information that's positive.

So I'm kidding. I'm kidding.

Okay.

Okay. We're in the avoid and swap now. So this is— if we could do the biggest needle movers of avoid and swap, and as long as we have a swap for dark chocolate, yeah, we're going to look for quality.

But when it comes to manufacturing, it turns out that the smaller manufacturers actually tested lower when it comes to contaminants like heavy metals. So these smaller operations, if you can find them, if you research, are really doing really great work.

You have a couple of names you love?

I don't have off the top of my head, but I also don't share brands in terms of the academic work. But Consumer Reports, I'll give you a heads up. Consumer Reports did a great study on this. I think it was a year or two years ago. If you look up Consumer Reports chocolate, it's actually— you don't have to get a subscription and it's just a really great great study that they did looking at a bunch of chocolate companies and what they found. But, you know, the high-yield stuff is going to be things that are in food packaging by volume, is like BPA and plastic containers. Never microwave in plastic. I think a lot of people already get that already, not just for the chemicals that are actually interested in going into the food, which is, you know, much more likely if there's fatty foods, because many of these chemicals that I talk about in the book, they are lipophilic. They like fat. By the way, they like fat tissue, they like breast tissue. So I think we should be thinking along those lines as well, that when you reduce these chemicals, it's not just to make you feel better. And I talk about fatigue and autoimmune and rheumatoid and all that, but also, you know, certain other things we should be thinking of long term, like cardiovascular disease and cancers.

Of course, you were one of the first people that I heard say this, and it's been something that that to me is so clear and obvious, but no one talks about it is, and I think especially in the age of Ozempic, it's very important, is you just mentioned that toxins love fat. And I remember looking at something from NHANES where they were looking at diabetes and obesity because everybody thought, oh, if you've got more fat, you're more likely to have diabetes, diabetes. But they're like, it wasn't that, it was the toxins in the fat creating the diabetes. And, and the big issue of, okay, if you're starting to, to free up fat in the body, what you're really doing is freeing up toxins. And if you are not offloading those toxins, this could be more problematic. So what do you say about that? Do you have advice for people as they're starting to use— do things to help them lose body fat, to help them get rid of the toxins? Do you think this should be a part of these fat loss programs.

Oh, I think it's a wonderful thing to mention because, you know, we have as human beings this remarkable ability to store problems, right? We store, you know, for instance, mercury loves to live in muscle, um, lead likes to live in bone, which is why when I was hearing all about bone broth, I was very concerned because we boil bone and we have to think about what's released when we, we boil bone.

Oh, hold, have they been testing bone broth to see?

Some companies do, um, as far as I'm aware, some companies do. But again, it's a moving market. But I think when people aware, you know, they might think about the quality of their bone broth a little more deeply because of the way it's processed. But when it comes to, you know, it's interesting, many of these chemicals, as I've written about in other books and also in this, you know, we don't think of chemicals as part of the weight problem, the weight loss issue, or the inability to lose weight problem. We know that certain chemicals have the ability they call obesogens, not only to make fat cells larger, but to make stem cells that come out of our bones, our long bones, turn into fat cells. So we have a problem from that perspective making us heavy or keeping us from losing weight. And then we have, like you said, we have parts of our bodies that are storing some of these toxic chemicals to actually protect us in many ways. You could argue to sequester them. But I think when you start to detoxify, as my book says, but but really thinking about how do we just start now to move out of the habits that feed these chemicals continuously in our body, that's when you're gonna start having the bigger gains, which is getting them out of your body to begin with and trying not to let them back in. And I think that's kind of like the way to think about it. It's not to worry about what's released when you lose weight, it's how to get them outta your system to begin with and then keep that positive process going. You have one new message. Translating. Disney and Pixar's Hoppers is now available on Disney+. You could say that again. Critics are calling it Pixar's funniest movie ever and a wildly entertaining ride. Blizzard Potato is certified fresh and verified hot. Now we party.

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Okay, before we get to that piece, I just want to address one other one. And it came up the other day. Someone pinged me on social about replacing their Lululemons. And I'm like, oh yeah, oh boy. You know, because we think, obviously, we've all thought about deodorant because you, you know, shave your underarms and then put on deodorant. So you're like, okay, what am I putting on? And makeup and all of these skincare products, but what about clothing?

Yeah. Yeah. So out of— and it's kind of interesting how people prioritize sort of one thing that hits the media versus something else. I mean, these are really sexy topics, you know, you know, black, you know, plastic, food utensils was up there for a while. Now we have microplastics. They're all pretty worrisome and this to some degree, and there is science behind many of these headlines. But what I would like people to think about, instead of overwhelming yourself with smaller ticket items, go for big ticket items first and make this, as you said, you were tiptoeing through changes. I think you mentioned with Tim, you were like trying to say that over time you're— that's exactly what we should all be thinking about. Do this over time in a way that sticks. It's not a diet, it's a lifestyle change. It's a way of looking through you know, the world around you and what hits your body in, on, and around it and working that way through. Now, to be honest, dermal exposure, dermal, you know, absorption is what Lululemon and all these, you know, PFAS chemicals that make it, you know, sweatproof. That's— those are the kind of chemicals that are added to these fibers for textiles is what we're talking about. But the idea is that skin, although it is incredibly absorbent, we think about that with cosmetics. You can do things at the same time. You can change out when your next pair gets old and you want to switch out to new, cleaner, maybe cotton-based, USDA cotton. You know, there's plenty of different choices. There's even testing companies that are testing for these clothes options. But you can also be doing 100 other things where your energy, you know, doesn't have to be focused on just one item. Because again, I get my hair colored, I get this, I go to that. You know, you want to do things with the big-ticket items: food, water, cosmetics, feminine care products. I often tell women, especially women who have young people in their lives, that tampons and feminine care products going, you know, intravaginal absorption is something we don't often think about, but is something as women we really should be thinking about in terms of the repetitive nature of our menstrual periods and our products. Okay.

So the biggies— this makes me happy because I'm like, oh my gosh, my like Lulu collection. Come on. The biggies. Would be food, water, and what we put on our body. That's like— and more skincare, not necessarily clothing as much.

Sure. Yeah. And also the things I call these are sort of like, you know, high yield light, but not really light. It's really the junk we bring into our homes that are for air fresheners, candles, you know, stuff that we make a choice at the store, which we can do better. As you know, there's plenty of resources, but we can do better on what we even bring in if we need to bring in anything at all when it comes to the air that we breathe And I think those are much lower, you know, lifts when it comes to making decisions, either not buying them to begin with or just simply going with things that don't have synthetic chemicals, you know, with fragrance and perfume. Yeah.

Or those are so gross anyway. Yeah. I mean, oh God, it's just like when you go get your car washed and they want to use those, those air fresheners. I'm like, oh no.

Right. Hotels. I walk into hotels. I just was in visiting, you know, Los Angeles. My hotel had so much spraying of perfumes in the lobby and it was remarkable. I couldn't even breathe. I mean, and when you've done this long enough where you try to— Yeah. Long enough, it becomes even more sensitive to you, you know? So yeah.

It was amazing. We went to Iceland back before the pandemic and I remember walking into this hotel. It was this most amazing hotel called the Retreat Hotel built into the Blue Lagoon with this incredible spa. I mean, it's one of my top 10 life experiences. And we were just gonna spend the night and we walk in and I go, this place, I mean, everything was organic. Everything. And you just, I was like, I never wanna leave here. I feel absolutely fantastic. You realize, and especially hotels are so problematic. There's one hotel chain, I'm not gonna blow 'em up here, but you immediately walk in and you're like, we've had to stop having events there because they use so much perfume that our members are like, we can't be here.

Yeah. And it is become such an issue that even in California, you know, back in the day we used to have magazines that you would open up and have perfume back when I was growing up.

Oh yeah, I remember those.

You can't do that anymore. And in California, under the American Disabilities Act, you can't actually wear perfume in certain workplaces because you could be sued because it's such a disruption to people's senses. So, you know, we know that that smell is becoming a lot more of an issue. Air quality is getting a lot of attention, not just from the fires in LA, but I mean, it's really making a lot of noise in terms of particulate matter and how much that affects human health for sure. Starting with your home, starting with your workplace. Like here, I have my cleaning guy. He came in and he gets all my cleaning stuff. I buy it so that I know what he's spraying and using. He doesn't mind and he's lovely. And the idea is that the more you can control in the worlds that you walk through, that's great. And what you can control, you can control. And, you know, you less worry about that and more about, you know, what you can do.

Well, let's talk about some of the things we can add, add in since we look at the big, the big ones that you swap out. And we have been doing it that way where, like, God, a couple of years ago I was actually drinking from plastic water bottles. Now I look at that, I go, I would never drink from a plastic water bottle. You know, I'd have to be It would have to be either I'm going to drop from dehydration or drink this plastic water bottle. We just never do it. What are some of the things that we should be adding in?

Yeah, for sure. So, so adding in is— there's lots of things that we want to start with. First, we want to start with adding in, as I mentioned, clean water and clean food, because those are fuel and they also detoxify us if we have working kidneys and liver and skin and sweat and lymphatic system, we're adding in the water that helps those detoxify better. We're adding in the food, which by the way, there's even more nutritious components to certain foods that offset chemical epigenetic changes. So we know there's actually food as medicine ideas like, you know, omega-3 fatty acids when they're clean and done well, when you have, you know, green leafy vegetables, folic acid, B9, when you have quercetin, vitamin C, when you're sufficient with iron and vitamin C, like you're just nutritionally sufficient, as I call it in the book, you're actually better able to handle the world around you that you may not be able to control. So you're adding in the things that at the cellular level make our bodies work better and even our organs work better. When you add in sweat and exercise movement, when you add in even weights and muscle, you know, you're churning up a lot of the harmful things that are getting through your bloodstream and into your organs and your muscles. You know, exercise, sweat, sauna. If you're not able, in my rheumatology world, you're not able to maybe bear weight and go for a run, then you would have chair exercises, utilize, you know, conventional saunas, what I recommend. Stress reduction changes the pH of the gut. The gut would work better, be better immunologically if we can reduce stress in some ways. So you're adding in, and sleep, gosh, sleep is so important to the glymphatic system. So, I mean, that's a lot of stuff. I don't want to overload you or your audience, but I mean, the idea is that we have so many options, not just to take away the triggers for the immune system and the, you know, all the immune disrupting chemicals, but we have this add that's the other part of this equation that really gets the job done too.

Well, I love that you talk diet, exercise, because— however, the one I would like to dig into a little bit is sauna. Sauna and your opinion between— because we actually have both at the house. We have a hot sauna. It gets to 180. I just saw that Costco now has this one that you can put outside, this big, big old— it would be like a shack. And I'm like, maybe we need that. But— and then we have a Sunlighten near, medium, and far infrared sauna. And it, of course, doesn't get as hot, but the argument is it penetrates deeper or I don't know, I'm not a sauna expert. So what's your, what are your opinions on saunas? What kind of protocol should someone be on for it? 'Cause I think this is one of the most important things we can be doing.

Yeah, I think saunas are great. I worry, you know, and when you dig in deeper, I certainly worry a little bit about infrared saunas to some degree 'cause you can't always control for the manufacturing and the makers of it. But what concerned me, and I wrote about it in the textbook a few years back, is that I read some studies about the penetration of some of this infrared, you know, energy that goes deeper than the outer layer of the skin, which means I worry about skin cancers. I, as someone who's had multiple skin cancers in the past, wouldn't necessarily know exactly how to vet out the manufacturer. You can certainly educate yourself. And again, it's not to scare everyone away because we do have some actually interesting studies on infrared sauna helping with rheumatologic conditions like Raynaud's and rheumatoid and Sjögren's syndrome. They were just very short studies and it was almost like a hug. People felt very much warmed up in a hug, which I think you can recreate from other aspects, you know, even from just a warm conventional sauna or hands-on healing techniques. But the idea was that, you know, I just— I choose to go more with the conventional sweating mechanisms because sweating is really where you're removing some of those chemicals you're exposed to, to the skin surface. Where you can wash them off with clean water, hopefully. But so that's where I lie. I like to do old-fashioned conventional. I also want people to think about the kinds if they're going to go to a sauna or have a gym, which is great because it's big. I worry about, as you mentioned, some of these saunas where the wood is created with certain aspect of cyanide and certain— there's certain components of wood treatment that we worried about with playgrounds with kids. But we can also think about that in terms of, you know, conventional industrial saunas that you'd have to do your research on. We had one made in my house, which was tiny. I mean, it's the size of my desk, but it took like, you know, whatever, 15 years to finally do it. And it was made with nails instead of glue. It was made with untreated wood and it was made without EMF lighting and radiation because I thought thought it was sort of counterintuitive if we didn't kind of get that right. And we just asked a local, you know, carpenter to put it together. And it was a project, but it was fun and it was really educational. So, you know, there's all different ways to do it. Just, you might want to be thoughtful about either making them or even buying them.

Well, I've been thinking, so we have the Fast Heat one, and I went to get in it one day after my husband was in it, and it was like, I was like, oh, gross. You know, it's, it's a fabric one-person thing. And I'm like, I can't get in this because now you have got all your guck in here, and this couldn't possibly— I was like, honey, you got to clean this. This couldn't possibly be good because you're sweating out all this stuff.

Then you—

yeah, like, there's that problem too. Uh, but you did mention EMFs, so I would like to address those as well because you're so reasonable, you know. The challenge online is that people get crazy about this. I like how reasonable and logical and it's like you are about walking through all of these things so people don't get crazy and then they just give up because they can't live their life for sure.

And I think that, that, that's all about health coaching, right? You know that a lot of people listening to, you know, that you have to meet people where they're at. But I'm a realist in the sense that I don't think there's such a thing as perfection. I just talked to, you know, what is it, 700 kids in my kids' high school the other day. And I thought, what do I want these kids to come away with? I want them to come away with the idea of having agency over their body and to really do this as a journey like everyone's doing, because it is so overwhelming. But also be careful of the, the quick sells that we see on TikTok and all the marketing. It's just, it's overwhelming. And I think if we just sat back and did the simplest things, we'd be far more effective in making sure that our exposures are lower and our health risks are improved than if we did things that were quick and had all these like shakes and things that are just like, you know, anyway, I, you know, the idea is I like to be reasonable because I think that's the only way to do things in a way that's going to be successful. And as you said, people get overwhelmed very quickly. I'm overwhelmed and I've been doing this 15 years. But I at least was able to spit it out into a book that I thought made the most sense in terms of the big picture. It even has a 21-day plan, which is not to say you're all going to be without chemicals in 21 days. It's saying, do this day 1, do this day 2. I mean, you don't even have to put thought into it. You've read what you need to know. Here's how you get started. And I think that's what handholding people really need. At least I would have liked it. Yeah.

And I think I like the way you just framed the 21 days. These these like, you're gonna do a 7-day juice cleanse and be done. I'm like, what? You know, first of all, it's not gonna get rid of the toxins. And second of all, you're bombarded with toxins every day. You're never done. Right. So that doesn't make sense. But I love where you can take some focused time to just go, okay, now I can just focus on one thing at a time and make some shifts.

Yeah.

That become consistent and permanent, which is really what we wanna see. Right? That's, that's where we make a difference. But, you know, most of us aren't going to go through our house and throw everything out.

It's really— you want them to— like, it took me years to— even though I knew my couch had flame-retarding chemicals, that's a pretty expensive item, and it took a few good years with some expensive kids to decide when that was going to be replaced. You know, you said your nails— you know, when I go to get nails done, which I like to do on occasion, um, I make sure that my base coat is a 1 on EWG or Healthy Living or Clearia or Yuka or Think Dirty, some of the wonderful apps that we have for free available to us to look these up. Why? Because whatever we put on our skin or our nail is going to be the most important layer. So that's just one more level. I bring it with me, you know, thinking about how you walk through life really just makes— especially with habits that you enjoy, tea and coffee. I use, you know, glass. Glass or porcelain. I use organic filtered water. I think about organic cream and sugar. The habits, the things you do the most, put time into thinking about cleaning those up a little bit at a time.

I love that. And I know you have a gift that we're going to put at jjvirgin.com/aly, A-L-Y, and that is the household items you should throw away now. So like, what's the most important? I do have to ask you about that because you You mentioned coffee and I went down this rabbit hole 'cause I saw Dr. Peter Attia had found the coffee maker that didn't have plastic. And I'm like, oh my gosh, I didn't even think of that piece of the thing. And it really is, it's the things you do all the time that are the most important. So is that, 'cause we still have the very expensive coffee makers that I'm like, oh.

Oh, my husband has one, but he's been going on and off between French presses every time he gets panicked. He starts doing—

I just do not like the French press. Like French press, I have to drink it immediately, and then it's— it's— I'm a supertaster and it's too bitter. And then, but we have these two very expensive— we have a very expensive espresso maker, another, and I was like, oh shoot. Then I saw the one that—

perfect system. And even a reverse osmosis, which is the water filter type I like people to really consider because it's the most aggressive mechanism for cleaning water we have as consumers. And very reasonable price points now. I followed that. Any filtration is good filtration, but it's not as good as reverse osmosis, which can do the most. But even that has plastic components to it, at least the one I've been using. So, so there's never going to be a perfect system. What we want to think about is does that RO filter get hot or cold at high temperatures, or is that pitcher in the high heat? Or because heat and scratching is what makes, for instance, Tupperware become opaque from being clear when you buy it. It's showing you that that material is the matrix that is pliable and will leach into our food and water that it's carrying. So the idea is that if you don't have extremes in temperature, it's more likely that that plastic's gonna stay more stable in general.

Yeah, I was just thinking, you know, one of the first things we did obviously was replace all of our Tupperware.

But then of course everything has plastic tops, but it's like, And then, and then takeout food. I mean, everywhere you go is single serve plastics, right? So, you know, there's, there's only in traveling. I mean, I come home from traveling and I'm like, I'm like, you know, ready to just purge, right?

In my sauna. I literally come home when I'm home, I'm in my sauna every single day. So I'm like, get this out.

It takes like a week for me to feel clean again. But, you know, look, not everyone has the luxury of coming back to some environment like that. They might be living that life as a traveler. I talk about One of my patients in the book who's a, who's a pilot and, you know, he's constantly living out of hotels. And yet, you know, we figured out a way to lower his plastic intake and increase his food quality and to make sure that he had more preparation involved that wasn't over the top. And he was able to lower his chemical load and he was able to feel better and actually lost a lot of weight. So there's, there's reasonable hacks. Even with lifestyle, you just have to be a little bit more attuned to preparation.

Well, I would love— I keep saying I'm going to let you go, but just give us a couple, just a couple travel hacks that could be good. I mean, obviously one that I've now taken is taken a really great bottle with me, a safe bottle with me for water, for coffee, for all of that. What else are a couple of them?

Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, stainless steel bottles kind of like this. One of the things I lost, I learned the hard way, is that when you go to the security and it's filled with liquid, they will actually steal your— take your bottle unless you empty it before you go through security. So that can be pricey. And I learned that when I was in a rush and I couldn't run back to empty it. Um, but here's some of the hacks that I like to think about. So for instance, um, they make— there's bottles that are made with stainless steel that are 3 gallons. So for instance, you know, traveling to tournaments like we just did with my kids, or, um, any number of car trips you take, fill it up at home where you have the greatest amount of control over your water, your quality, right? If you have a system at home, RO filters are $275. You can get them under your sink, on top of your counter. Plumbers are cheap. It's honestly something that I recommend is one of the highest yields thing you can do because then you're filling up at home to take it with you with glass, stainless steel, or even a big container. When you're traveling in the airport, and I actually, you know, take videos of this all the time, You're— say you're, you know, left your bottle at home and you need plastic bottles to drink water and you can't find any in glass. Look at the word ingredients on these plastic water bottles because no one thinks that there's an ingredients label, but it tells you how that water was cleaned before it was put into that package. So when it says distilled versus, you know, say cleaned by reverse osmosis, I choose reverse osmosis. It's not necessarily going to cut down on your microplastics, but it certainly will cut down on some of the water quality issues that where the source was. When I travel, I use this, my container for hot tea in the morning or coffee in the hotels. I often will bring water from, you know, CVS or Walgreens or Whole Foods, anywhere I can get my local hands on better choices of water. I will usually buy it and bring it to my hotel room.

Glass or plastic?

Well, I look for glass always, but that's like, you know, endangered species. In fact, I take videos at restaurants where they still serve glass and I'm like crying, like I'm in tears at the restaurant because I can't believe they've actually been able to do that. So, you know, I think we have to just, you know, manage our expectations. Don't jump off the ledge here when it comes to having a particularly dirty couple of days, weeks or whatever, that there's always a chance to do better. We can always right the wrong by just doing better. And in fact, it certainly plays out when it comes to blood and urine testing. When this is done, we can see that when we change behaviors, the studies show organic foods, less plastics, the studies show that behavior changes matter, product choices matter. And then that subsequently is going to change your risk for diseases, especially in my world, immune disorders. But really all, all diseases are really interconnected with the immune system. System. So, you know, you change your destiny when you change your choices and you change your lifestyle for sure when it comes to health.

Fantastic. Okay, again, I'm going to put your, um, all your information, your social handles, your books, your podcast, and also that, that sheet of all the swaps at jjvirgin.com/aly. And Detoxify is available everywhere. When's it out?

May 6th, and it's available now for preorder, but May 6th is my birthday.

Oh, wow. It's really your birthday?

Birthday of the book.

Okay. I was like, wow, my son's birthday is May 9th.

Yeah. Yeah.

Okay. Yes. It's the book birthday. I think of books like that too. It really is like you're giving birth. Yes. Yeah. All right. Well, thank you so much for doing all of this. This is quite an endeavor and I appreciate all of the amazing information you've shared.

Thank you. I also have courses if people ever want to go to thesmarthuman.com.

We'll link that too. So what are the courses real quick?

So they're tiny, they're small, but they're easy to chew off, you know, to bite off. There are ones on pesticides, ones on EMF radiation if you want to dive into that topic. I think I have an integrative rheumatology talk. I do one for pharmacists because I'm trying to hit all demographics with this information, but I'll be loading up more as I go. So hopefully people will check it out. Heavy metals, Another one.

Yeah. Awesome. Thank you. Perfect. We'll put all that in the show notes. So again, JJVirgin.com/ALY, and we will put everything there, including the courses.

Awesome. Thanks, JJ. I really appreciate you having me on, and thanks to your community for, for listening.

All right. I want to talk about some action items, and we have been detoxifying. Now, I have been focused on toxins for years. However, I will tell I can tell you that, like, if you're not actively thinking about it, you don't realize all the places they can sneak into your life. And so I'm, I'm on an active detoxifying journey. So I'm going to put some of the things that I love the most into the show notes as well. I do have a Sunlighten sauna. We also have a Fast Heat sauna from Relax. This is a one-person sauna that Tim uses. I'm kind of obsessed with my sunlight and sauna, and I really trust the founder Connie Zak, so I know that this is a high-quality unit, not something you need to be afraid of. We also have an amazing water filtration system and an air purifier, so actually have multiple air purifiers. So I'm going to put all of those in the show notes for you, and I'm going to look at the biggest things right now. Like, let's talk about the biggest shifts that you can start to make. And I think number one shift is if you are still using Tupperware, switch that out to glass. You can get some really inexpensive glass storage units, um, from Amazon. That's where I got mine. So that's the first thing is let's get rid of the plastic. So I got rid of the plastic, um, storage units, and I also got rid of like plastic cooking utensils. So those are the first things. Oh, and I also got rid of plastic cutting boards. I never— that was one that was like, oh yeah, plastic cutting boards, duh. So I use all wood cutting boards. So that's the first thing. The second thing is, you know, we've been talking organic, and so let's, you know, continue that shifting towards organic. It's easier now than ever. So organic. And the third thing is, what are you drinking your water out of? And I mean, full disclosure, I was— I got this big old plastic water jug a while back, and I'm like looking at going, what on earth did I get this for? So I have all stainless steel now, water containers, coffee containers I travel with. And because you also want to be careful if you're getting a coffee at a coffee store and using that plastic cover on it and drinking through the plastic cover. So I've got now a coffee thing that I use for the coffee store, that I bring with me when I travel, and I have my, my big stainless steel water bottles I take to the gym. So those are— those things alone, major difference, major, major difference. And of course, the skin and makeup, getting cleaner skin and makeup as well. So I'm going to challenge you with going to glass, going to purifying your air and water. I'll share which different ones I have. Doing organic. Let's try to get those biggest rocks first. And if you can get a sauna on board, I think that is one of the greatest things. And obviously you're here and you're exercising, right? So I'm betting you're doing a lot of these things already. And what I would say is, I'm just every day looking at how can I go get a little better? Where else can I remove some toxins out of my life? And, uh, because I know it's not going to be my hair color or my nails. I'm just, just saying it's not happening. Maybe one day. I doubt it. All right, that's it for today's show. Thank you so much for hanging out with me. And again, we're going to put all of the great information from Dr. Ailey Cohen at jjvirgin.com/ailey, along with some of my favorite items that I use to help me on my detoxification journey. Be sure to join me next time for more tools, tips, and techniques you can incorporate into everyday life to ensure you look and feel great and are built to last. Check me out on Instagram, Facebook, and my website, jjvirgin.com, and make sure to follow my podcast at subscribetojj.com so so you don't miss a single episode. And hey, if you're loving what you hear, don't forget to leave a review. Your reviews make a big difference in helping me reach more incredible women just like you to spread the word about aging powerfully after 40. Thanks for tuning in, and I'll catch you on the next episode. Want to listen to this show ad-free? Head over to SubscribeToJJ.com and start your ad-free ad-free experience today. Hey, JJ here, and just a reminder that the Well Beyond 40 podcast offers health, wellness, fitness, and nutritional information that's designed for educational and entertainment purposes only. You should not rely on this information as a substitute for, nor does it replace professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment.

Treatment.

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