Harmful Toxins in Our Daily Products, Detoxifying Your Home and Body + Reducing Your Toxin Exposure

It is frightening, you know, when we think about the fda. I know for cosmetics, for example, when you're looking at ingredients and toxins, they'll approve these ingredients until they're proven to be harmful. Meaning, okay, let's get this out into the world. Let's find a celebrity to endorse it. And there's a bit of heat on this ingredient, but it hasn't been proven to be toxic yet. So let's see what happens. And to your point about children, of a girlfriend who was a teenager who wanted the new Hailey Bieber lip gloss, and it's full of chemicals.

If you sit and you survey your body and your home, you can start to get a picture of how many exposures, just exposures in a 24 hour period to synthetic chemicals, perhaps toxic chemicals, and how when you calculate a day's exposure, a week's exposure, a month's exposure, and so I added that up and it came up to almost a million exposures over the course of an average lifetime.

The following is an operation podcast production. So welcome, Dr. Cohen, to Rooted in Wellness. I'm so thrilled to have you here. We're talking. Thank you for having me a few seconds ago about, like, toxins, this is the mission. For the past year I've been on this mold journey and with that, just the awareness of the amount of toxins and plastics that are in everything and we'll dive into this a little bit more. I've got a six year old and a nine year old and I'm just seeing plastics everywhere. So before we dive into that, Rooted in Wellness is really all about, you know, ancient wisdom in our modern day world and really how we can become more rooted in ourselves, in our life and like in our inner wisdom that we have to heal. And I love starting the show off with just asking, what are two or three things that help you feel more rooted in your life and why?

Well, first of all, again, thank you for having me. And I love that premise that you start with because I think it, it also frames and shapes and even tells your aud really, you know, where this whole topic comes from. In my world, I'm rooted in, primarily in my, in my heart, to my family, which, you know, it's been a remarkable journey. But having, you know, my husband who really supports what I do, who's a physician. Also we have the same similar language to talk about when it comes to the work we're doing. Coming from wonderful parents, but particularly a father who's a physician, brother's physician. Wow, you get the theme here, but also my kids, you know, because I'm doing this for them. This is the mission is rooted in what future they're going to have. And so the kinds of changes I want to make in high schools and college or even to the public also really starts with myself being healthy to be there for them, but also for my kids to have a life they deserve that's free of illness. And so there's a mission behind this that. That really is important to me. I also would say that my career has been really incredibly rooted, rooting for me, I should say, because I never expected to be doing any of this work. And as I've moved through the, you know, the. The visibility of the work I'm doing, it's really circled back and told me how lucky I am to have that kind of mission and passion for something that feels so important and relevant for our time. So.

Oh, that's powerful. Having a why, right? Like something that just anchors you in all of those practices every day, that's powerful. On the flip side, and I'm sure you see this with a lot of your patients. You know, a lot of people have these daily habits or rituals that are, in fact, uprooting them, and they might be fueling the source of their inflammation or the fact that they don't feel good or their symptoms. You know, for you, what are. What's on the opposite end? What are some things that make you feel uprooted in your life?

Well, certainly exercise has been a major part of my life. I've always been a runner. I was an athlete in high school and a little bit of college, Although my. My teenage boys who play lacrosse might argue with me, you know, on that one. But, you know, I have always felt connected physically to my mental health through the exercise that I do. And so I feel somewhat uprooted when I don't get an opportunity to work out. You know, I often say to people, you know, one of my biggest fears, the beginning of COVID was not only getting Covid and getting certainly a bad outcome from COVID but as we moved through Covid and kind of understood who were the risk groups and some of those details. I never wanted to get Covid so that I was knocked out of running and that I couldn't move, and I got long Covid, which, of course, I take care of plenty of patients that were affected with COVID and have long Covid, but it was just something that was so important to how I perceive my day, how I function. It clears my head. I get some of the greatest ideas. When I go running, I call it flow. I think I've seen that in, in documentaries, but it really is the time where it's just myself competing against myself and no interruptions. And I think that's been really wonderful. In terms of other things that uproot me, I would say, you know, I get very upset and uprooted from some of the stories I hear from my patients about a system that I think has a lot of problems. And, you know, I often want to grab, you know, social media, my platform on social media, and get on there and say, you won't believe what I just heard or what I said. You know, it's just very upsetting to almost feel that there's untruths behind a system I've invested in, you know, to some degree as a medical doctor, not getting the full picture of how we heal, of how we prevent disease, of topics missed in medical school. So the system really bothers me. It's not the doctors, it's the system I really am disappointed in. But then there's always opportunity to fix it. And that's also been part of my mission. And I can share with that, you know, that with you later as well.

You are such an advocate for that. And I'm so happy you brought that up because, you know, I think I saw it firsthand with my mom, you know, when she, with her rheumatoid arthritis came into this world of, know, functional medicine and the things that she could be doing. She was so excited to get more information. Until this day, it's like a trend. We catch onto things that could be helping us, but we're getting mixed information from doctors and it's not to their fault at all. You're right, it is the system. So you are such an advocate for making changes in this area, which is why I was so excited to talk to you today. So thank you for bringing that up. You know, I would say most of us really go about our daily habits without even thinking about the amount of toxins that are lingering in all the things that we're doing. You have an incredible TED Talk that I listened to and you talked about doing a little experiment with your friends and counting, you know, the amount of plastics that you guys were using every single day. And I tried doing this this morning, and I want to preface this with, you know, I left the cosmetic industry about 15 years ago, and at that point I was very aware of things like phthal and chemicals and dyes and stuff like that that came in all the products that I was using. And since then, I've been on a mission to really clean things up, especially since getting pregnant, now having two kids. But after I went through my mold exposure, which I shared with you, I did a total toxin test. And still with the effort that I have as a nutritionist in drinking cleaner water, reducing plastic exposure, buying safer products, we still found parabens in my blood. The black mold was gone. That was a massive win. But also plastics, microplastics in my blood. And it's like, gosh, if this is me at my best, what are we exposed to? Like, the. The everyday consumer who hasn't even caught onto this yet or who doesn't have the option to purchase. So let's start off with, like, what is the impact of all of these toxins on our health?

Yeah, so too. So I like to contextualize this topic. And it's taken about 15 years to get to a point where I can frame it for people in a way that's so less daunting and more empowering. I start by saying that we have never experienced this situation in all of human evolution. We've been roaming the earth. No matter what origins you believe in, I never want to offend anyone's religion, but I say, you know, can we agree that we've been here a really long time, Millions of years humans have been around, and it's only been in the past, you know, five decades, six decades since post World War II, that we've had the introduction of over 95,000 chemicals that have been brought into the food we eat. They make their way into the water systems, which we can talk about. Very important topic is water quality for me. But also on, you know, the products that we love, right? The cosmetics, personal care products, the seats that we sit on have many chemicals that coat the textile material, the foods we cook with and store with. So the idea is that, you know, there's some stuff that we really brought in because it was convenient. It reduced resources of, you know, using up resources like wood, stainless steel. But now the situation is we've gotten ourselves into a pickle. We are now filling our bodies with these chemicals. And no one had ever pictured that to be the problem originally. And so now we can, as you did, test our blood, test our urine, even, you know, academically testing breast milk and other bodily fluids. What I try to, you know, give the perspective as is that you don't need to test your body for most patients and most consumers and people listening to know that we are still basically contaminated with these chemicals. What we want to do is understand how to get them out of our bodies in a very reasonable way that's practical. It's not costly. It doesn't require fringe diets or cleanses that can be unhealthy. It's really about using our body's physiology. Sweating, sauna, movement, sleep, and then of course, clean drinking water so we don't keep loading our bodies up with chemicals that we're trying to get rid of and then not buying products. And so what we can do is more important than what we can't. I try to say that we can wait for regulation and legislation which is slowly changing but too slow to make an impact on human health. So what we have to really do, and what I've written about, what I post about, everything I talk about with high school, college and all the training programs, is that we have to do this for ourselves and our families because there really is no time left to think about 10 years from now, 20 years from now, to get regulations on one single chemical or a couple. And so once we get that perspective where it's possible, that's where the why meets the what. And that's where we can get into what are the actionable statements that have shown academically evidence based studies to really remove many of those chemicals from our bodies.

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Right, exactly. And so much of my messaging, again, has to do with don't bring these, you know, products, because, again, we don't have regulations on the chemicals that go into products in the United States. So let's start with that. The only regulations in the United States that have any teeth are perhaps the fda, Right. That manages the drugs, which. There are some problems there. But generally speaking, the FDA manages the drugs I use for my lupus patients, my rheumatoid patients, all the drugs that I use and I depend on and patients really do need when they need them. Then there's also the USDA organic regulation, which is relatively new in the history of our food industry, but is incredibly valuable because it does have criteria that have to be met to reduce the amount of pesticides in the food we eat, in the fertilizers, in the soil that produce is grown in. And that has a dramatic effect on the amount of those chemicals that make their way into our body through those foods and drinks. Besides those two bodies, in general, we really do not have protective Measures, regulatory measures, oversight required testing for toxicity, especially in vulnerable populations like pregnant women, children, young children, teens, and going right into menopause and women of older age, where hormones are actually moving around and being, you know, created and broken down. So we have a problem where the system is letting them in and they're getting into our bodies. But we also have means of choosing better. And that's how we can utilize the USDA organic certification if we choose to. And that has changed dramatically in terms of food availability and cost. Big box stores are making their own brands, frozen organics. USDA organics are remarkably cheaper than even fresh, which travels long distances, which loses nutrient value. So you're taking. There's a trade off there. So I'm a big fan of frozen USDA organic foods because again, it democratizes the food system to be cleaner and healthier for everybody. But we have these great resources. And that is exactly what I try to do, is put in a book that I wished I had 15 years ago as I was making my way through the same questions I'm sure you were with your mold exposure. My dog was sick. That's the forward of the book and how I got into this. Excuse me. And so I wanted to create a resource that wasn't endorsing brands, it wasn't endorsing specific products, but was really talking about the fishing rod and how we can teach people to do it on their own. Where you can, no matter what brands are bought and sold and formulations changed, you could walk into any store and have the right resources is to look up those products in two seconds. Look, my 14 year old, I have a 14 year old, actually, is now 15 and 17. These are tough, you know, these kids, your kids aren't there yet, but wait till they're teenagers and they love their cologne and they like their product and they're all over TikTok. But the idea that they, my son and all the high school students that, you know, he's friends with and the students I teach, they can whip out the same phone and look at the app. They can go on their same website as anyone else and be able to choose products that have actually less chemicals known to be toxic than other products. And that is a really empowering moment when we can choose and move the market in a better direction, a direction that actually creates more brands that, that fall in line with this, this philosophy and the market needs, so we have options. And I think that's what's changed between back 15 years ago and where we are now. And, and I'M sure you're utilizing a lot of these wonderful that are available. We just have to make sure that the vetted ones, the ones that actually really give us good information without being tied to brands particularly.

Such a good point. I think we're more familiar with the concept of having control by our dollar, using our dollar when it comes to the food industry. Right. So sending a message to big food companies that we are choosing organic out of necessity. We are aware of everything that's happening behind the scenes that we're making that, and only now are there other options becoming available in, you know, personal care products and cosmetics and mattresses and sheets and gosh, toilet paper now and stuff like that. It is frightening, you know, when we think about the fda. I know for cosmetics, for example, when you're looking at ingredients and toxins, they'll approve these ingredients until they're proven to be harmful. Meaning, okay, let's get this out into the world. Let's find a celebrity to endorse it. And you, there's a bit of heat on this ingredient, but it hasn't been proven to be toxic yet. So let's see what happens. Right. And to your point about children, I have a girlfriend who was a teenager who wanted the new Hailey Bieber lip gloss. And it's full of chemicals. Right. So I think that, you know, to your point, it could probably be a while before the system changes to that regard. But you know, we'll talk about the things that we can do to support our body's detoxification processes and, you know, so that we can find some sort of a balance for when those obstacles come up. But how many toxins is the average person exposed to a day?

So there's been several studies on this and we could speak to our own amount, actually. You know, people can think about this, but we certainly know that women in general use the most products per day in a daily basis for cosmetics. Right. And then men use about six. And this is an older study, but let's just say menus tend to use less. Although the market is changing and there's lots of marketing towards men, you know, and they like their products, but teenagers actually use the most on a daily basis. The most cosmetics and personal care products in a 24 hour period. And if you were to add up every component of chemicals that comes at you in a daily, you know, this is what I did for the TED Talk. I really tried to think about it in 24 hour period. Not so much just the plastic exposure from the cooking materials and the food Storage. But I was thinking about even the multivitamin that I was taking at the time that had lots of chemicals within the multivitamin itself. Even, you know, the hairspray or the air freshener or things that I thought was doing good, you know, good for my home, making my home cleaner. I had, you know, the lawn and care people were out there spraying, you know, we were using, you know, flea and tick collar kind of chemicals on my pets. Things that you don't think are additive, but really if you sit and you survey your body and your home, you can start to get a picture of how many experiences, exposures, just exposures in a 24 hour period to synthetic chemicals, perhaps toxic chemicals, and how when you calculate a day's exposure, a week's exposure, a month's exposure, and so I added that up and it came up to almost a million exposures over the course of an average lifestyle lifetime. And again, this could be more or less depending on your habits and sort of, you know, whether you've changed your habits, whether you're, you know, you're really stuck in your stuff. But the idea was that where all those touch points of chemicals there may be low level exposures, but they are possibly additive in terms of what our body holds within us. Some chemicals of course have different half lives, they break down at different lengths of time. For instance, bpa. Let's talk about BPA for just a moment. Bisphenol A or BPA is a well known chemical, especially back around 2012, because it was removed, removed from baby bottles and many sports bottles in the United States. And the reason it was taken out, which is only one of I think 11 total chemicals in the history of the United States, that chemicals were actually taken out of the market for that reason. That purpose. BPA is still in plenty of other areas in our lives, in canned foods, on receipts. But let's just say in 2012 it was removed from baby bottles and not allowed to be in US made bottles. And the reason was because of course, according to, you know, the environmental, I'm sorry, the endocrine disrupting chemical, researchers such as my co author for two books and all of his worldwide colleagues, they found enough data to show that these chemicals could work like hormones. They work like low level estrogens, low level androgens, which includes testosterone, low levels insulin, which is a hormone, or even thyroid hormones were just filled with hormones because they message and circulate, you know, circulate throughout the body to create enormous physiologic change, right? Fertility, growth, development, Brain development, that kind of thing. But what was found with bisphenol A was that it was a substance, a compound that was able to act similarly to hormones at low levels. They identified estrogen, but since that time, we've now found that it can actually do a lot more than that, also affect the immune system. So that's the why as well. It's the fact that we now have enough data to show that a large number of chemicals that have been tested by academic centers, not by manufacturing, they are not required to do anything before those chemicals get into products, but by third party academic centers who identified these issues. We now know that those chemicals make their way into our body and affect our bodies physiologically, like hormones, which at like, you know, parts per million parts per trillion infinitesimal amounts that can actually do, you know, reasonable harm physiologically. And so that's the idea. Let's get those out of our bodies so that we don't have these hormonal changes that affect everything from metabolism, immune system growth and development, brain development. And so that's, that's the why as well.

It's just insane. Like when we think about the low hanging fruit being something like fragrances or air fresheners, right? So I've shared this multiple times on the podcast, but working for a handful of luxury beauty brands, I would go around traveling to every retailer and I'd have to spray the rooms or the conference rooms with tons of perfumes. So breathing in these phthalates literally for eight hours a day. And sure enough, at that time, I had pcos. I stopped getting my menstrual cycle. Doctors told me that it was going to be really challenging for me to get pregnant, if at all. And it's like, gosh, that was 15 years ago and we only know more and more about this world now and there's, you know, no shortage of fragrances being promoted. So yeah, it's something that we can definitely take out or just, gosh, if you're going to wear perfume, spray it onto your hair or, or clothing just like not on your skin, right?

Or, oh, listen, I was doing things, Mona, that, you know, I look back at horror. But this is the journey, okay? This is the journey. I'm a realist. I still color my hair. It's in the TED Talk, you know, I threw myself under the bus, to be honest. But there are things we don't want to change that come more difficult to, you know, to us than other things. I was, you know, really anxious to think about things in terms of high yield what is the highest yield thing I can do that would help to reduce this total body burden, as we call it, in terms of those chemicals, the chemical load. And I thought, well, sure, food is really something we can't go without or we don't want to go without. And that's a great place to clean up that influx of chemicals that not only get into our bloodstream and certainly can have those hormonal and immune system effects that we, you know, we were talking about, but also really affect the gut microbiome, which is this really ancient, beautiful, you know, tubing within our gut that is so critical to basically allowing what foods and chemicals go across that tube into the bloodstream. So the gut microbiome, which is so vulnerable, can get affected by these chemicals too. And we know that from, from the, from the research. And, you know, it's a journey for all of us. I was spraying, I think, one of my couches back in the day with non stick with stain guard spray because I was worried my kids might spit up on the couch. Right. I look back and can't believe, you know, I seriously did that. But I had a reason. I had a, I had a reason financially to keep that couch intact. You know, other things, I had a drawer full of, you know, plug in fragrance, you know, scenting things that they still have all over the market. In fact, they have them even if your cat is misbehaving. You know, plug in this and. Well, cats are supposed to do that stuff that you're claiming is so not normal. And so it's a journey. I remember the day I took that whole drawer and just dumped it. It's a learning process. You have to be willing to make those changes over time. There's no race, there's no rush. It's better to get it right and slow than to do it fast and wrong. And so I'm very comfortable telling people to take their time as long as these changes stick. This is not a diet. This is really about keeping these chemicals at lowest level from entering your body by the choices you make and then also making sure that your body's getting enough nutrition to combat the changes from these chemicals genetically and also detoxing naturally through very reasonable explanations of human physiology.

I couldn't agree with you more because, yeah, some people are going to listen to this. They take out some of the, you know, the air fresheners, the perfumes or the plastics and you might not feel different right away. Right. It's a big lifestyle change. And I think that the purpose behind conversations like this is that knowledge is power. We have to make this type of conversation and education and data just accept, accessible to the public. So we'll dive into some of the detox methods, but let's talk about, you know, how are these toxins showing up when we're saying the word toxic burden? If someone isn't going to go and do these, you know, fancy lab testings and stuff like that, what are some of the most common symptoms that you're seeing in your patients?

Yeah, and this is great. This is actually what I'm writing about for my next book, which is really tying the rheumatologic background of 20 years of clinical practice, and I'm still practicing, I love it, to what I've been watching for 20 years. And also this knowledge of environmental health that's been kind of moving along in the same direction and how these kind of. These topics have really overlapped now with the data that now exists. You know, we. Enormous amount of symptoms can come from these environmental exposures. The question is, where's the detective work in figuring out how your symptoms medically could be evaluated as well as from an environmental health perspective? I go through with my patients who can come in for any reason, you know, such as fatigue, which is a very nebulous, subjective type of, you know, symptom all the way through to my joints are swollen and visibly, you know, inflamed and everything else in between. I have patients that have no symptoms, but their laboratory testing shows that they may have an autoimmune disease and they've been sent by their primary care doctor to me. And so all of this, and rheumatologists in general are considered sort of a detective field within the world of medicine, in case you and your audience don't know that. But a lot of complicated cases end up with rheumatologists because we see really strange stuff a lot things that are often obscure and not very common. But what's really important in being a healer or a healthcare worker of any kind is to keep asking why. To keep asking why is why are you having fatigue in your 20s and 30s or 40s? Why are you tired? Beyond, you know, what might be considered, you know, normal for a young mother or parent running around someone who's working three or four jobs, we have to keep asking the why to get closer and closer to an answer that makes sense. The questions have to be not just, you know, what is your hemoglobin and hematocrit for fatigue? Let's see if you're anemic what is your vitamin D level? Let's check nutrition. Let's do conventional western questions, right? But we have to ask the questions of, well, what are you drinking every day? You know, how much of your water comes from a well or from tap or from bottled water, and know how to answer that question Once you get a, you know, a response from a patient. How much, you know, in terms of cosmetics do you use? What's your occupation? Are you getting exposed to something harmful just by the work that you do? And, you know, if you're a gardener or if you're, you know, a migrant farmer, or if you're working in chemical industry or biotech or what have you, where are you living? I had a patient that was living on top of a dry cleaner for two years. She ended up developing a very serious autoimmune disease. But it wasn't until an hour into our conversation did that information get pulled from her. So how does a 15 minute visit with a conventional doctor really get at those questions? That's what I think is very frustrating about the healthcare system is that not only are we not learning this material that is just so pertinent and relevant to common ailments, but we're not even setting up the healthcare system in a way that allows doctors to pull the important information from the patients to help solve the problem. And so again, we have a little bit of a problem with just the diagnosis. But again, I try to reach the masses. I try to reach the people who need to understand some of these ideas for their health. And that's kind of why I post the way I do on my social media. And that's why I write the books and teach high school and college, because we need to push this information into the demographics that are looking for it. You know, go where the love is, right? And that's where I tried to, you know, throw, throw this information out.

Do you know one of the way how I found out that I had mold, it wasn't by doing a test. We did a three day water fast with Dr. Mindy Peltz. I don't know if you, you have to meet her.

Okay.

And I was one of the few people that felt great. I felt inflamed, I couldn't sleep, I got bad body odor and I couldn't get my rings off of my finger. Even by the third day of just having water and some electrolytes. And sure enough, she's like, something's going on with your detox pathways. Go and get this checked. And that's what I ended up doing. And when I think back, you know, cultures, or let's take Ayurveda, for example. In Ayurveda, detoxing, gentle detoxing, is something that has been around for centuries. But they would look at symptoms that were really subtle, like, like body odor would be one of them. Looking at the coating on your tongue would be another. Your breath, the smell of your stool. Like if there are things that you suffer from, and doctors don't necessarily talk about this because they're looking for, I think, more of the real inflammatory symptom that's showing up. But it's like these subtle things that could be the little.

Well, we're looking for the criteria. Like everyone wants a rheumatoid patient to have the right blood work that checks off, to have the classic distribution of joints that are swollen of the hands or toes and come in with the same history. I wake up and I have hours of stiffness. Well, what about all of the symptoms that fall in the gray zone, that don't check the box of criteria for any of our currently diagnosed diseases? And I say that because up until very recently, no one knew what long haul Covid was. We didn't have Covid. And if I tell you how many patients that were not, not believed by the health care system for the symptoms they were experiencing and they were not faking and they were not, you know, trying to get out of work, the. So it goes back to this idea. And I was, I was just watching the show. The Nick, you know, it's just a wonderful show about how sort of how medicine was, you know, came to the United States in the early 1900s. And you, you're kind of. Of amazed at some of the things that they didn't know back then that we take for granted in healthcare and medicine now. But there were so many diseases or types of illnesses that weren't even classified. What I see are people with symptoms that cover a variety of potential illnesses. What are you going to do? Just kick them out because they don't fit the criteria that we've been taught in med school on a checklist or on a board exam. Those are the people that are falling through the crack. And similar to the way you had to discover your mold exposure kind of haphazardly, but also willfully trying to figure it out. I have patients that just don't know which direction to go. And yet they're being dismissed from very various different specialties because they don't fit the criteria for that specialty's diseases. And I think that's kind of a tragedy that we have to start thinking about how do we help these folks, folks to help themselves because clearly waiting for the healthcare system to wrap its arms around patients is not going to happen. Right. We have really tired doctors. We also, you know, from that perspective, tired, frustrated physicians in a system that their autonomy is going down the drain. So, you know, there's a problem here.

Absolutely. I think that's a really great point though. You know, if patients are going home suffering and not feeling the best in their body, but like to not give up, to keep asking why, to keep doing research and like the fact that we can go online and find anything is a blessing and a curse. But I think that if you're taking ownership, to at least find the education that can guide you in the right direction, that's the best thing that you can do. Just don't, don't give up. Right.

You know, it's funny you say that because I tend to like to teach my patients how to look up PubMed article and someone might say, well, what's a PubMed article? Well, the same access that physicians have to looking up studies using keywords that you would look up on Google. We have a database called pubmed.org, p u b.gov gov.org and you can type in words, you can try to play around with it. But I want patients to be educated because they should be educated. It empowers them to seek answers perhaps hopefully to the right practitioners and not get taken with a bunch of testing as opposed to sort of the really what to do use of their dollars and their, and their energy. But the idea is that we should be empowering, I think even high school students on teaching PubMed resources too because they should be able to at some point in their lives if they need to try to find answers that they're not getting from other places. And you know, that's the educator in me. I want people to have the tools to do what they need to do to get to where they need to be healthy.

Year I'm so happy you brought that up. Such an incredible resource, right? Yeah. And a lot of people don't know you can look up anything with regard to symptoms or supplements and they go really, really in depth. But they often give great summaries also at the end so that you can like take the intangible into the tangible.

And even if you don't know how to read a study. And I'm sure doctors love this when you come in with a pile of studies. But I'll tell you when they come into me and they have information they want to share or they want to tell me with, how can I look away? I mean, I could say I don't know that and it certainly figure it out with you. But boy, I mean, I find that an educator, educated consumer, you know, just really is wonderful. It's refreshing because it shows that they're ready to do whatever work they might need to do, medicinal or therapeutic or self care or what have you to kind of get to where they need to be. And I kind of, I really appreciate that.

I love that. Okay, so we mentioned the power of using organic foods when it comes to our health. Taking out just the toxins and fertilizers and pesticides there, cleaning products I think is something else that's becoming a little bit more mainstream and understanding that. But what are some other hidden sources that people should be looking for immediately within their home?

So you're talking about just personal care or cleaning as both. I would say no personal care.

So if people already know about, they know about organic food. Okay, yep, got that. I'm going to try to buy organic as best as I can, cleaning products. Got that. I'm going to put away the Lysol and I'm going to go for a better option. But what are some other things that people, if they want to listen to this, they're going to go back to their houses, would you say, to look for. For.

Yeah. So easy things, really? I'll start with some easy things and then I'm going to dive into water, which is a big topic I think needs to be discussed a little bit. So the easy stuff is first of all, not buying materials like chemicals. You know, we've been marketed to have a door cleaner, a window cleaner, an oven cleaner, a carpet cleaner. Who's marketing this stuff to us? Who's telling us that we need a single cleaner for every different object or surface in our home? So. So once we unravel this marketing mania of keeping up with the Joneses, we can really start to say, you know what, not only am I going to reduce the chemicals that get into my home, which make their way into my body or my pets or my kids, but I'm going to save money because I don't have to buy 10 cleaners for one room. I'm going to start with one thing. Either I make it myself with simple ingredients like vinegar, castile soap, baking soda, you know, real lemon juice, or I'm going to look up a vetted source that can tell me which are the Cleaner products, either cosmetic or cleaning that have already done the work through their toxicologist, through their scientists and our vetted and they're going to tell me brands that are better than others and there's lots of options. So I look at it as like first removing the stuff that we purchase that doesn't add value only adds potential harm, saving money. And then there's another piece of this is also so adding in the nutrient rich foods and the nutrient clean foods that are actually very helpful, studies show to detox and protect the body from harm from those chemicals. So it's not just removing, that's one piece. But we are very nutrient under underserved as a species. We're pretty much undernourished and we need to actually add that in as a component. So the first thing is to remove stuff. And it also includes clean, I'm sorry, cooking products, products like, you know, pans, stainless steel pans. Better option than, you know, cooking pans that have a PFAS or perfluoroalkyl coating. Yes, it makes it easier to cook. You can slide those eggs right off, what have you. But there's a cost to that. We have chemicals in that cooking pan that we now are linked to a variety of health conditions, not just endocrine and hormone disruption, but also so even reducing the effects of needed vaccines and how they stimulate the immune system intentionally, PFAS chemicals have been shown to downplay that reaction, which defeats the purpose of the vaccines we're intending for. So there's a lot of immune and endocrine related effects that can come from non stick surfaces, stained guard surfaces and chemicals. Wrappers and food and popcorn bags have PFAS to make them slippery, grease proof. So they're functional chemicals that we really don't want in our body. So those, those are kind of the, the beginnings is don't buy it. Swap out, you know, food storage containers, cookware, spatulas, get some bamboo in there and avoid those plastics that will leach into the foods and drinks that we consume on a regular basis. So that's a good starting point.

I love that I'm hearing start in the kitchen, go through your pots and pans. Right, you said stainless steel iron pots and pans.

Yeah, cast iron's great.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But don't be swayed by some of the pots and pans that are claiming to be green. You know, they're very hard to vet and I haven't, I have yet to find a source that can really test those because again, you don't have people Investing the money to test these products for chemicals, you could, you know, Consumer Reports does a fabulous drop for a lot of things, but they're not necessarily looking at the chemicals. They're looking at functional, comparative items for function. But not always is it based on chemicals. So we're not quite there yet. So stainless steel is always an old school goodie. Cast iron. And like I said, simple ingredients that you and I and our relatives, our great grandparents would have used back in the day.

Ah, what our grandparents use. That's where this is going. And someone referenced, like, go to YouTube. There's amazing YouTube videos on how to cook effectively with stainless steel without having that really nice slip that we all want. So I think that's a great start. We just did another clean out of. Sometimes you are eating with friends or you get those Tupperware containers and stuff like that. Just go to Amazon. You can get some glass containers. They're so much easier. Get stainless steel for the kiddos. It's cheap, easy, no plastics whatsoever. I think that's powerful. That's a great tip.

Tip. So I have another good idea. We love, you know, take out food on occasion. We're busy. I have two teenagers, you know, working, working long hours. And so I got a stainless steel kind of a camping jug that would fill up maybe two or three servings of our favorite Indian food or our favorite Chinese food. And I, you know, I have a relationship with the, the stores and they will fill up our food from, you know, and put it in the container. And its interior is stainless steel. And the lid, you know, has a plastic lid, but it's, it's pretty, pretty clean. And, you know, these are the things we. Now, my kids don't think it's crazy. Before, they used to think it was crazy. So the culture is shifting even within a family that seems to be going nuts. We're not going nuts. We're just moving slowly into a better place. I'm. I'm always relative to, you know, what is crazy and what is not. But if my kids can move into this, you know, and they're tough, you know, anyone's family can get used to these kind of changes.

I will be on a mission to help you normalize that. Okay, I'll join you in. All right, so also in the kitchen, let's talk about water. So water, I know you're going to talk about how it's foundational to detoxing. It's essential. But looking at the source of our water, and I'll tell you, like, living in Los Angeles. It's impossible to get safe water. And if you want to get really, really high quality water delivered, it comes with a heft price tag. Right. And I have another friend who just put in this like massive reverse osmosis system into his house and they use plastic piping and there were plastics found in his blood. So let's break down water. It's essential for, for everything you speak to.

Yeah. So I like to give a framework, again, a perspective that I think is helpful. So just to give some numbers, we have about 160,000 water treatment plants in this country. So we get our water from either municipal water, Right. I do here in New Jersey, probably in la. Major cities are usually on municipal tap water, which means that they, their water comes from these 160,000 wastewater treatment plants that are scattered throughout the country. So Those plants serve 80% of the U.S. population. Okay. In terms of their drinking water. Water. Okay. The other 20% usually is from wells. Wells in, you know, rural environments. Wells that serve whole communities, wells that serve individual homes. But these are wells that aren't really overseen by any governing body. They don't require any testing for water quality unless you sell your home. That's when it's usually required. And the testing is limited at best. So even if you are testing it, it's limited. Okay. In terms of the number of contaminants that could be in water. The 160,000 wastewater treatment plants that serve 80% of us, they are required under the Safe Drinking water Act of 1976 to only look for and remediate the levels of 91 contaminants that are considered harmful to human health. 91. At the beginning of this podcast, we talked about the sheer number of chemicals that are in our environment. Environment. It's upwards of about between 90 and 95,000 now. And those chemicals can make their way into wastewater treatment plants because they land on surfaces of lakes and streams. They're in aquaphores under the ground. And any of the contaminants that end up in those bodies of water, even sewage, by the way, that's a winner. Sewage becomes drinking water because it's all recycled back into these wastewater treatment plants that are only required to take out 91 chemicals. So what happens to the rest of those chemicals? Well, they just cycle back into our water system and they may travel like my water system comes from 30 miles away in a part of New Jersey. And I've interviewed them and they're lovely people and they, they are looking for terrorist attacks in the water system. And A bunch of other really important, you know, jobs that they are required to oversee. But they are following the Safe Drinking Water act, which has not changed since 1976, other than the recent change for the PFAS chemicals. First ever in, like, 26 years that there's been a change to that Safe Drinking Water Act. And so there are going to be limitations on PFAS chemicals. So that water, whether you get it from wells or you get it from municipal tap systems, is going to travel long distances, could be contaminated along the way, and by the way, has chlorine often and detergents added on its way out of these wastewater treatment plants, because that's how you keep water from causing major pandemics of infectious disease. But when it gets to your home, that is where we can make a difference. That is where we can control the risks at our tap. Excuse me, it's allergy season here. When you have a filtration system of some kind in your home, where you're kind of catching that water, whether it comes up from the well or it comes from municipal tap, you are controlling what goes into your body at the point of use. So I encourage people of, you know, any background, socioeconomic location, to create a filtration system whenever you choose to be appropriate. Appropriate cost, I can give you ideas, but certainly the cost of even a pitcher filter and can add up, but it's still better than nothing. You know, I encourage any type of filtration of drinking water. And then there's ranges of, you know, cost and. And also contaminant removal in terms of efficacy all the way up through to what I consider the most aggressive form of water cleaning, which is reverse, as most. And reverse osmosis is based on a very tightly poured material. So it's catching things by size. So it doesn't know minerals from lead. It doesn't know potassium from PFAS or bpa. It really just catches the material, the contaminants, by size. But that is really the only way we can clean water is if you take out everything and it doesn't harm you. We can always have a great salad with our RO water. We could add healthy minerals or sea salt with electrolytes, but we really don't need any minerals from water as our source. And that's why it's important to know that you can use reverse osmosis and not be sick and not have dead water and all the other things that have been linked to that water. But the cost of RO filters, just for your audience, they've come down over the last decade. And I've been watching them closely because I speak to inner city families and youth and teenagers. And I want people to know that you can get an RO filter now under your kitchen sink for upwards of $275. It lasts for like 10 years. You can get a plumber to come in for one hour to split the water line. That's it, one hour, you know, and it's like 130 for that. So for 400 bucks up front and 30 to $40 a year to change out the cartridges for the RO filter, you're actually probably saving more money than many of the pitcher filters or the refrigerator filters that have lots of refills. But any of them work, work to some degree. And I think. And there's no perfect system, but that's what we have to think of. We're not going for perfect. We're going for 80, 20. We're going for the best we can do in the situation that we've got. And I think that's a very reasonable thing to swallow.

So if water, purified water is going to help optimize our body, turn on its detoxification process, which is built in within us to help us harmonize and live our best lives, I see the, that as being like the number one investment that people should take. And I know, and I know because I've talked to two clients this week who were relying on their in fridge water filter. A lot of people have those in fridge water filters and they're not changing the filters in them. Right. Or they get the flashing light and they just assume that it's going to keep working. But I would say, like this is. It could be a game changer for so many people and how they feel. But also in terms of prevention, right?

Oh, absolutely. I mean, look, you don't know what you're not, you don't know what you're saving yourself and from. In terms of disease, we no disease is going to tap you on the shoulder and say, hi, I'm cancer in 10 years and you just pushed me off to 20. Right. We're not, we have no, you know, foresight into what our bodies are going to reveal to us. What we can only do do is control the things that we can control. It's like the serenity prayer, right? To have the wisdom to know the difference between what we can and can't control. I look at environmental health as, or sort of whether we develop disease as this dance between our genetics, our predisposition, genetically our lifestyle and our activities and Then our environmental exposures. And two out of those three things we can have a very big impact on. We can control our lifestyle to some degree, you know, hopefully more than others. And we have this environmental component that I'm absolutely convinced through the medical literature, through the research, and even through clinically through my patients, that we are able to make a big difference when it comes to human health. When we take control of what we put in our body, what we have around our body in our homes, and the lifestyle activities that we have been given, you know, due to our physiology in our species, we can do a lot. And it's proven to be so powerful that I'm very vocal about it.

You're so good. Like, just putting the empowerment spin on things. I think that water, like our food system, if we do create more of a demand, demanding that we need access to clean, drinkable water, we stop buying those really terrible thin plastic water bottles and giving them out here and there. I think that that could. And at home too, like, we're showering with our water, we're brushing our teeth with our water, we're rinsing our foods with our water, we're cooking with our water. So looking into and making those in home water filtration units more affordable needs to be top priority.

And there's a dignity issue. I mean, I was just speaking to some of the, you know, political people in New Jersey, and I have a real problem with this concept that every time there's an exposure or a spill or chromium 6 is found in Newark water or Flint, Michigan, or there's thousands per day that go on in terms of this country, why do we only give out bottled water? Which of course is very easy to do in an emergency, but the next step should be why don't we get in home? Reverse osmosis for two, $300. And the dignity of not having to stand in a line to get bottled water or to spend the money that they're savings on bottled water. Look at EAs, you know, these folks too late too. I mean, who knows? We will see the repercussions. But the idea that there wasn't a quick move to protect these folks and their water and to do as much as they could besides just handing out bottled water and saying things are just okay really upsets me. And I think we need to be thinking not just like an East Palestine environment, but that all of our homes are pretty much super fun sites in many ways. And we have to really embrace that and say, you know what? I'm not Going to live like this. I'm going to do whatever I can to make sure that my environment is cleaner.

Yeah, that ties into the big picture. Like these things that should never be privilege that are we take them for granted. So I love that we're making this a topic. All right, so when we're thinking about some other topics that I just have to dive in. Going through your social one, you had a really great post on dust, how dust at home can be pretty toxic. Can you share a little bit more about that?

Yeah, it's a really interesting thing. So, you know, there has been, first of all, we all have dust, right. You know, who doesn't have dust in their home? And it's just normal accumulations. It can be skin cells, it can be dust mites. But what was so interesting is that there were some really great studies back in 2011. There was a study by Car Weil, was that lead investigator, and it was at Harvard, Harvard School of Public Health. And what they showed was that dust harbor a remarkable number of toxic chemicals. And when they went into these homes, they found and studied this dust, these dust samples, they found that some of the highest levels were phthalates, which come from fragrances, perfumes, off gas. They basically off gas from personal care and cleaning products, also some of our couches and that kind of thing. But then the second level was phenols, which were like the bisphenols found in the dust. The third was a, that, you know, flame retardant chemicals. And then it got lower and lower in terms of the quantity of other classes and compounds. But what's so interesting is that, you know, we all assume that once we spray cleaning surface fluid, you know, on, on tables and scrub our tables, and it has a great scent and it's very appealing and makes our kitchens and our homes smell lovely. But those chemicals don't leave that space, generally speaking. They're there and they fall all through gravity, through sticking to different, you know, other pieces of dust onto the ground, onto our surfaces. And then what happens is they get stuck to, you know, paws. Right. You know, animals that lick their paws, especially cats that have been identified as being sort of the canary in the coal mine for many of these in house chemical loads. But they also stick to toys and if you have young children and toddlers kind of on the floor areas, that's particularly where dust accumulates. So with all this being said, and yes, it sounds so awful, here's the solution. We just need to not only remove, again, try to go upstream to the problem which Is buying a lot of these products to begin with and swapping them out, which is not hard and it is cheaper. But we also want to be cognizant that it takes time for that dust to resolve over time. Even if you're cleaning that dust more regularly or with an H vac system that's pretty hearty, good vacuum system, we can remove those chemicals over time if we take away the problem. And also if we do a little bit more due diligence on the dust removal. And it works. It really does. And particularly with even flame retardants that come off of certain couches. Those are heavier, bigger ticket items to swap out when you have a $3,000 couch or so. But that should be eventually on a list if you can do it. To swap out to couches that no longer require those flame retardant chemistry chemicals in couches. That's in 2013, that changed over. So you can just look at the label. But again, those are the chemicals that end up in dust. And dust can be removed. And we want to use water, not Swiffers. And these chemical loaded products that actually come with the machine. I find that really clever, but a little devious. Right. You know, to do that. But you don't want to use anything but just a wet cotton towel or paper towel. And you know, it's easy to pick up dust and remove it.

What you're making me think of is when we think about food marketing and advertising, right? Especially for kids food and stuff like that, it's not even often that the food itself will taste better to the child. And when I'm thinking about this in terms of, you know, cleaners, how I saw my mom clean. Take a second if you need to. Sorry, it's the allergies here. Yeah, it's all good. It's all good. When I think about cleaners and stuff like that, you know, I think about seeing my mom cleaning and the cleaners that she used growing up. And a lot of that goes back to marketing. We were marketed to as an audience to think that using those cleaning products were going to make us have a cleaner household or, you know, a nicer smelling household. And then even in the pandemic with like the fear around germs and antibacterial everything that we now know are doing more harm to our health. Simple relearning, like just a lot of the habits that you might get be used to in your mind that there's another way to do things. And our ancestors knew better. And the fact that if we're looking at, you know, people who are living outside of bigger cities and stuff like that, who aren't exposed to so many chemicals, you see the difference in their biology. Right?

Yeah, it's kind of a brainwashing. I mean, in a way, it is a real brainwashing. And, you know, listen, I grew up in the culture where we had, you know, I was eating, you know, Oreos all the time and, you know, cheese whiz. And I, you know, I was really one of the biggest consumers of sugar cereal. I mean, nothing was more exciting than sitting at the kitchen table with my brother and kind of like reading and playing the games on the back of the boxes. Right? There is such an appeal, but there's such. There's something very, you know, kind of subtle about this marketing, too. You know, as, you know, how they place the boxes within eye and hand reach of children and carts and that kind of marketing to, you know, the guilt of moms who don't want to buy the box cereal, but the kid is having a tantrum or really wants it. But I'll tell you, you know, us adults, we. We are really manipulated in, in social strata to keep up with the Joneses. You know, there's so many people that spray pesticides on their lawns. And I go jogging in the morning and I'll see, you know, lawn after lawn with the sign that happens has someone walking a dog and a child and it has an X saying do not walk on this lawn, and it's got a commercial lawn care company on the corner. Well, if you're going to put a sign up that says don't put children and dogs on this lawn, why aren't we thinking that that could be a bad thing? And we track those chemicals into our home and so just, you know, know, keeping up with the neighborhood folks and not having the, you know, the craziest lawn on the. In the neighborhood becomes this social comparison issue that, you know, it's in the culture. And I think until we start to change some of that culture or unfortunately, until someone gets sick and starts to really pursue this, which often people do, you know, it's kind of something that we have to keep talking about to get it moving. And I post on these things and I try to get people to really think about what they do in their lawns and, you know, know, keeping up with this fantasy that we're going to be better people with these products in.

Our lives, Gosh, now we know better, so we'll slowly start doing better.

So we do better.

Yeah, that's it all right. So when we think about detoxification, you know, I think about if I'm exposed to these toxins and I know my children are also, especially with the things that we've covered, simple ways for us to support ourselves and our children in detoxifying outside. You mentioned sweating. Proper hydration is a really good one. What are some other simple ways that people can start detoxing at home?

So a couple really easy ways. Well, you talked about exercise, which is so critical and so wonderful because sweating is built into our bodies in such a beautiful way. I actually go running with extra layers, believe it or not, because I want to sweat even more. I mean, obviously this is dependent, you know, everyone has to, to decide based on their own health conditions. But the idea is that sweating is so critical. We also have, you know, if you have access to sauna, old fashioned sauna where you sweat. I don't as much talk about infrared because there's some deeper layers that those sprays are getting to. I prefer just old fashioned, using your heating mechanisms to sweat safely if you're the right patient for that or person for that. So saunas can be wonderful. But there's also, in terms of foods that we eat, really great detoxifying foods. And these are like, you know, heavy hitters. So for instance, cruciferous vegetables as a group of vegetables have been shown in so many studies to really help detoxify the body from some of the chemical compounds that are in the foods, the bioactive chemicals, chemicals in these foods and what they are able to do is not only turn on certain chemicals within the liver and our detox pathways, but they also act even as the fiber that helps pull some of these toxins through the GI system and help cleanse the gut microbiome, which is that interior lining of the, the GI tract which we talked about, which is so vulnerable. We need fiber. We all know that, you know, if you have low fiber diet, you have higher rates of colon cancer. This has been shown many times over comparing different diets. And so when you talk about the mechanical component, you also want to think about the compound and bioactive component of cruciferous vegetables. Now I will say it's always good to have USDA organic versions or cleaning that, that those cruciferous vegetables so well with either soaking and agitating and baking soda with water or white vinegar and water. So you don't always have to have organic if it's, you know, if you have less access or you know, financially, you know, it's so I don't want to ever limit people to only organic. But it is a great choice that frozen organics again helps to keep those prices dramatically down. But you really wouldn't want to defeat the purpose of having a kale salad or broccoli or Brussels sprouts which are sprayed with chemicals when you're trying to detox your body. So just kind of thinking about that, you know, is, is important. But yeah, we all have access to these vegetables, some more than others. But these are, these are our tools. You know, between water and high quality foods and sweating, there's not a lot of reason to have to go too crazy with other areas of detox that I think can get people into harm.

I love that. Yeah, I would say we probably purchase broccoli and broccoli sprouts like medicine in our house. And I really try to coach clients on buying things like herbs and really looking at their spice cabinet as a source of antioxidants that are really going to support the body. This concept of food is medicine. It's becoming so mainstream. But it's factual. There's no joke around it. It's designed by nature to really help us thrive. Right. What are your thoughts on chlorophyll? Like chlorophyll. You know, I give my, my kids green water. They're like, oh, it's green water. It's something that's.

Yeah. I mean all of the, all of the plants that again, chlorophyll, I mean again, sourcing them properly. I always have this caveat about supplements that I do depend on and do rely on and how their quality matters or else don't take them or the quality of the food you eat or don't eat them. You know, it's, it's kind of, kind of like this extra layer beyond just anti inflammatory food groups or macros. I'm really into quality matters above everything else. That's my, my work in the environmental, you know, chemical world. But you know, anything that's plant based, that is clean, that helps move the body and feed these microbes that will end up feeding us by creating a whole host of, you know, small chain fatty acids and butyrate and all these like really beautiful compounds that feed the brain in terms of the gut brain connection, chlorophyll, one of them, I mean, spirulina. I mean there's a bunch of different components that we can take. Do I, you know, for the east coast versus West Coast. I always laugh about that because when you go to California there's a whole different sort of Wellness World in New Jersey. We're like. We're at vegetables. Okay. We're at just like, vegetables in the vegetable section. Okay. You go to California, it's like 30 different vegetables. Everything's organic on every corner, so, you know, depart depending on what part. But it's just. I really try to talk to folks with kind of creeping up into the variety. I didn't even really know what kale was until about 15 years ago. I mean, I. I really was slow on the draw because, again, east coast doesn't have all these varieties of foods, or I. You're scared to, you know, just don't eat them. I think that's really important is to start to expand your regimen, expand your options, get more colors in more varieties of fruits and vegetables. And I think that's where we cover the anthropologic history of human genetics, is we're really feeding the genetics that have evolved for years to rely on the compounds that come from these foods.

Exactly. And. And it's really going back to basics, like we're trying to get out of the problem that exists today and just going back to what we know was pure, like, you know, a concept that we know that was really able to support us, and that's just going back to basics. So, yeah, people don't often associate just eating more fiber with something that they can do to detox the body. And I agree with you. Try one new veggie a week if that's what it is. Right. If you're not somebody who's used to eating veggies, try one new veggie a week. Right? Okay.

No, it's actually fun. I mean, you can play games with your kids about these kind of things. You know, we swap out personal care products, you know, once. You know, once a week, once a month, you know, we'll. We'll try something interesting and new. Sometimes it's funny. Sometimes it's, you know, blows up. Sometimes we're like, ew, that was just an awful experiment. But at least you're expanding your. Your, you know, you're sharing. In my case, my kids are sharing this idea that, you know, they have. They can make a difference. You know, they can decide the fate of their bodies by the choices that they make. And I think that's just really critical.

Yeah, it's a good point. I think some people might be listening to this, and they might feel that even simple detox concepts might feel like deprivation or taking some things away from our kids. Like you mentioned, the things that you like growing up now our kids, for example, the LA school district gives out direction. Doritos. It's part of what they give at school. Right? And like thank God they're giving out some food and sometimes you'll see some apple slices and carrot sticks and some stuff like that. But more often than not you'll see a lot of processed junk food and coffee cakes that are served in plastics or foods that come off of really hot stoves that are wrapped in plastics. And it's doing your best. Like my hope is for the people who end up listening to this who just don't have the access to everything or, or doing the simple changes that we're talking about might seem like a really big step. Starting off with one, two or three things to really simplify it. Hopefully you'll notice and feel a difference and do more education to slowly prompt the other changes to happen. Because it can get expensive. My God. Yeah. LA is this Mecca where it's like as a nutritionist you go into a superstore and it's like, I don't even know what to eat here anymore. There's so many options, emotions. It's wild. Yeah.

I mean, and to your point, you know, I, like I said, I, I want to make sure that when I speak to people, I'm, I'm, I'm gonna hit them back with every but they give me, you know. But organics are expensive. No, they're not. You can get them organic, you know, frozen. But water filters are expensive. No, they've come down in price. This should be an expense up front as opposed to a year long, you know, expensive of expensive, expensive, you know, drop ins or replacements for other types. You know, there's just so many solutions and I think, you know, giving people the out that again, it's not, it's a journey. Take whatever step you can do that makes you feel good because it is a positive cycle towards change. And that's what we want. We want to not be resistant and overwhelmed. We want to be empowered and keep moving and whatever that takes, if it takes blood tests to show that you've made changes, I can tell you the study is already showing. You know, there's just plenty of evidence in this book what I post about to give you the answer before you have to spend the money on the testing and more on the doing. And that's actually what I've found is most effective, is the doing part.

I love that. Yeah, that's a great reframe. All right, well, we're thinking about detoxing as we Age. So I'm finished with having kids. I work with a lot of women who are moving towards, towards menopause and beyond. And also another overwhelming concept to think about, the changes in hormones as we age, susceptibility to more symptoms and even disease within the body and then toxins. So any tips to support our bodies through this toxin journey as we age, get older?

You know, it's really interesting because I am now getting into this area of symptoms that I can't explain that, that, you know, it's, it's, it's kind of this feeling of lack of control. I will not lie. Okay, I just turned 51 and I'm, you know, very happy to have arrived at 51. So let's not, you know, let's, let's understand that. But the idea is that, you know, our bodies are going to change and it feels very, like I said, out of control. But many of these chemicals are perhaps contributing leading to some of our symptoms. And the reason I say that is because again, there are, there are periods during human development that are particularly vulnerable. And those are the periods that tend to have either greater creation or breakdown of hormones. Those are the endocrine disrupting chemicals which again, you know, include phthalates and platinum target chemicals and plastic chemicals. So to not contribute more to a problem that is considered, you know, human evolution and aging and menopause is to really think of these chemicals and detox as a way of not adding fuel to the fire, not adding synthetic estrogenic chemicals, even at low levels to your body. When it's trying to figure things out, it's trying to make you comfortable, but figuring it out after, you know, ovaries are done their job. So we have to kind of same with pcos, right? Pcos. We know there's a lot of data to show because there's so many estrogen driven and androgen driven chemicals and hormones in that process. We want to reduce any fuel to those illnesses in terms of symptoms. And that goes to this idea of let's reduce those chemicals for that reason. So when I think of aging, I think of being kind to ourselves, number one, and listening to our body bodies and appreciating where we've arrived, you know, because I, I don't take it lightly that, you know, lives are not always as long as, as the ones we are living. But then supporting our body in the kindest, gentlest way by treating it with self care through the foods that we carefully choose and the water that we try to figure out. That to me is the proper way to age. And I'm still in it and I'm still aging. But I'm hitting this very humbling moment, moment in my evolution. And I think it's time to just embrace that framing that we don't want to beat the system. We're never going to beat the system. Right. We really have to play along with the system and just be kind and accepting. And I think that's how we feel less stressed and keep doing positive things.

Oh, God, I love that. We're not going to beat the system, but we don't have to play with the system. And with aging, it's like all these products that are being marketed to us, if it sounds too good to be true, it's too good to be true. And if you're someone out there who's reading labels on the products that you're using or wanting to buy safer food, but then you're choosing to go buy a product that's been on the market for like next to no time, there's no science behind it, no data behind could be the source, right? And it's like you're consuming it. What you're putting onto your skin, you're digesting in the same way that you're eating your food. So we have to consider that. And I think it's like it's more women. And I love that you're just like owning this, the stage that you're in, having these conversations. If we can move into our 40s, 50s, 60s, and beyond feeling better, kind of embracing the nurturing aspect of all of these things, gosh, let's go back. Let's just advocate for that. I totally agree.

And listen, things are never going to be the same. I'm never going to necessarily fit into that bikini that I had when I was, you know, 2020, but it's okay because I'm in a different stage of life. And I think that, that with wisdom as you, you know, proclaim and, and share and harness and, you know, wisdom really does mean something. There's confidence in wisdom. And I think again, supporting your body through these stages instead of trying to fight them will not get you in more harm because there's so many quick fixes that people do to themselves. And look, I've been tempted to too, but. And I still color my hair, like I said. But I, you know, I'm trying to really understand what it means to be a human who ages on, on earth and, and try to maximize the healthy years and compact the illness years in the best way possible. And I Think that's just changing the mindset and embracing the good.

I love that. You know, I would say, and I say it all the time, I think that my greatest healing and when I felt my best, best is always when I go back to simplification and like really going more of the minimalist route. I feel like my body comes back into balance. I recheck all the things that I'm doing and trying because it's really tempting to go out and try all those new things and new products and new supplements. And there's a lot of health advocates like advocating to try a lot of new supplements all the time. So like turning down the noise and all that to figure out what you need. Need, right.

And really just, you know, taking in your gut instinct. I mean there is such a thing as a gut instinct that we often ignore. But I like to think that that's the second brain of the gut where it has all these healthy microbes talking to us and telling us good information. Going back to basics, cleaning up the body, it's really critical. And the gut speaks to us and our instincts. So not not reacting to every marketing campaign that comes at us is kind of, I think, relieving such a great point.

I'm going to get to some rapid fire questions before that though. Do you often look at stool tests for your patients?

So that's a really great question. So stool tests. And I'll be honest because of course, I've been doing this a while now and I really took them to heart a long time ago. I was very into this. Now. Now what I would say is they've come down in price to the point where you can do some of these tests very reasonably, get some interesting information, help guide patients to make better choices if they are those that need that. But I, again, I'm very conscious of people who don't have, you know, an extra 100, $200 at least in New Jersey. It's out of pocket. None of this is covered by.

You.

Know, conventional healthcare or insurance. Insurance. I would rather people use all of that testing money towards the proactive purchases that make sense, the filters that make sense for them. The massage once a month, the joining a gym that has a sauna. You know, these are the kinds of activities that are the doing, the looking at the stool samples. First of all, they change often with every meal. Meal. Right. Bacteria follows the meals that we consume. So you will have a different set of microbes which would be very interesting after, you know, after a meat meal or a processed food meal as you might, you know, then compare to say a high fiber organic meal, so microbes follow, you know, sort of the meal. So I find them to not be as telling or important or informative as certain. Maybe urine tests or blood tests when those are needed. And I think deeper dives on just what's covered by insurance, which I talk about in my new book, sort of what are the tests that we should be asking our primaries to do when they don't even know what to ask for or to do. I say help those doctors to get more answers for you by offering up certain blood tests that are paid for at Lab Coat Quest under insurance, not out of pocket. I move people towards getting those tests done for cancer screenings that are routine for basic heavy metals in blood. These are covered. They just need the right codes and the doctor's willing to write the script. So to me that's kind of where I push people is use the system that you've already paid for and then take that money and put it towards the proactive steps that you can do to make yourself healthy.

I'm really happy you said that. I think that we're living now in a society that's also marketing this aspect of being data driven. It's like, oh, I need to get the blood test first and then I'll, then I'll get healthy. I'll get the stool test first to see what's going on and then I'll get healthy. And I think that, you know, just summarizing a lot of the content that you've given us today is like, just be proactive. If it's going to be a journey anyways, be proactive in how you can, can use gentle detox methods every single day to have those become you as opposed to you having to go on a hardcore detox, like make it become a lifestyle so that it doesn't have to seem so rigid and hardcore and, you know, impossible or challenging to do. Right. I would much rather live in a body where I take down the toxic burden as opposed to, you know, being full of toxins all the time to feel like I need to go hardcore all the time. And I think that that that's a concept that we've got to break up with in society. Like no more hardcore. Life is hard enough. We do all the hard things anyways.

I don't believe in diets. I actually, just as you said, I don't believe in diets. I don't even like the word because it implies a very short lived experience that would likely rebound. I just don't like the concept of diets. I think when you layer in things like, you know, intermittent fasting, for instance, which, you know, having studied anthropology for, for years in college and really lo embracing the study of evolution, anthropology, intermittent fasting is as close to prehistoric man or woman as you can get right now. I'm not saying that's for every person because if you're a diabetic, you want to be careful with this process and, you know, other health conditions. So don't do that unless you, you really feel comfortable and talk to your doctor. But being hungry is so discouraged in our society. Right, right. It, it feels like neglect it. You know, you don't want to be hungry because, you know, you were bad, you know, you didn't have means. It reminds people of childhood, you know, upbringing. Being hungry is always really considered socially as a problem when in fact being hungry is really where most of our hours were spent for millions of years of our day looking for food until we got food and then we're like, oh no, I gotta go back out and get more food for the next 10 hours. So the idea that we are hungry and allow ourselves to be hungry to a point where we're not sick or fainting or any of that is a very important cleansing topic, you know, cleansing modality that I think. Well, it certainly resets our cells. It has been shown to decrease aging, you know, effects of aging. We know that it helps correct lipids, it helps with, you know, use of insulin. So again, those kind of simple instead of dieting, but layering in aspects of lifestyle that get us to the same end, but in a safer, more reasonable way. I think that's a really good way to look at things instead of diets and quick fixes.

Thank you for reframing that necessity for the future. Let's just unlearn that concept all together. Yeah. All right, Some quick rapid fire questions for each you. Number one, how do you think that people are making healing and health too complicated?

Overthinking things. Overthinking things. I, I think that the more we overthink, you know, getting stuff done through multiple products and visits, you know, perhaps to doctors if needed. But, you know, we are overthinking and that's why I love again, talking about anthropology, because really it's very simple and if we step back and have a little more perspective, we tend to make better decisions. When you're in it, you tend to make pretty rapid, you know, kind of harmful choices. So I think with health and health and health, wellness and prevention yeah. There's legitimate people out there sick. Okay. They are legitimately ill and they're sick a lot, and they're not getting answers. That's a very important group of people to acknowledge and validate. But for other walking, well, so to speak, people that are well, that just really want to prevent illness or keep their diseases in remission or not active and not flaring, I think we need to not overdo it and kind of sit back and say, what have I done right? What have I done wrong? And where do I get back on track?

I love that. Wherever you are in the spectrum of health, just simplifying everything, going back to basics. Yeah. And a lot of that inner wisdom that you talked about earlier, like, if we just tune in to what we need for our health, like, often we get answers, right?

Absolutely. Listening to your body is. Is a really big part of this.

What is your favorite ancient healing remedy?

Ancient healing remedy. That's really interesting. You know, like I said, I'm a big fan of. Of movement. I like sweating, but I will say my favorite is sauna. If. If, you know, it's all tied together. But this concept of just purging my body, you know, of certain contaminants that I have no control over just as much as the ones I do after vacation or, you know, having a great weekend, you know, I think there's just something very healing about this concept of sweating. And whether I do that through exercise or a sauna, you know, I think that's my favorite. I look forward to it. I try to do it as often as I can make time for. It's not always accessible, of course, but that. That would be my favorite.

Coming from a toxin expert, I think that that's going to impact a lot of people. If you had to pick something about modern medicine that excites you, what would it. It be?

That is an interesting question. So recently there were headlines about sickle cell anemia. And a patient, a young boy who was given gene therapy through crispr, which is the process, and was able. And they've been looking at this for a few years now. They've. I've seen the early trials, and they were able to basically cure this young boy. Sickle cell anemia, which is a really horrendous, painful condition, affects more African American, mostly African American people, and evol. The blood cells sickle, and it was evolutionary protective against malaria in certain countries where this was quite, you know, is quite active. And this young boy became healed. And if, as a doctor who's seen and I worked in the Bronx and Manhattan and all the hospitals in those areas to have witnessed and taken care of sickle cell patients and the pain that they go through is something you don't frequent, forget. And, you know, that was just so. It made me so happy to post on that when that happened, when, you know, it really made the news. And so I'm hopeful that we use gene therapy and CRISPR in a very ethical and meaningful way to help reduce some of the worst diseases that have, you know, plagued humans. Cystic fibrosis, you know, just, you know, retinoblastomas. Certain things that have really. Certain diseases that have really been just. Are just blatantly obviously horrific situations, then we're going to end up moving towards, I think, less awful diseases and more into sort of preventive worlds. But that was just really exciting and I was really happy to see that.

That's incredible. It's so important to me to have doctors on this show. The inspiration was really to merge the power of ancient healing rituals that we know to be true to health and going back to both basics to get us out of the mess that we've created just out of living in a modern world and the power of modern day medicine and the gifts that it gives us and the technology that is available to us to eradicate so many diseases and suffering from people. So thank you for bringing that up. That's a powerful story. What are three top things that we can start doing right now to optimize our health? We talked about a of lot. Lot of them.

Great question. Yeah, we talked about a lot of them. I guess maybe I'll just reiterate. Get this junk out of your life. Get the cleaning products that are toxic and unnecessary. Even my workplace, I'm sitting here in my office and, you know, I have a cleaning service that comes in and I supply this, the products to that person at every other office. They go back to, you know, sort of the. The status quo, chemicals and, you know, cleaning compounds. But if we get this stuff out of our bodies in reasonable stepwise way, it won't get into us. That's number one. And that goes for all spaces in your home. And think about your body and survey your body and kind of see what you put on in and around your body, you know. Second thing is I would start to think about the quality of your food because food is medicine and food fights the epigenetic changes. There's these genetic changes that can occur through our exposures. We've seen this in animal studies, we've seen it in Human studies, really, if we can eat more nutritiously, if we can find foods that haven't traveled on trucks for weeks and months or kind of cooled at low temperatures before heading to Whole Foods or whatever, big box store, and we have nutritional value that's frozen when it's picked. I think people will think what they eat when they understand how the food system works. So chemicals out, food in. And then I won't certainly dismiss mental health and taking care of ourselves and understanding when too much is too much and reaching out for help when we need it and taking time to be in a quiet space without all the noise. I think that gut brain lifestyle, you know, connection is just so critical because they're all connected, they're not all siloed. So those would be kind of the three things that I would try to, you know, share with patients to take care of.

First, you just gave me the full integrative approach, which I love. Thank you. All right, if you could leave our listeners with just one takeaway that you're most passionate about right now, what would that be? You mentioned your book. I know there's probably quite a few.

What am I passionate about? Oh, my gosh. Well, I'm about to start the seasonable CR lacrosse of two boys on travel team. So I'm preparing myself emotionally to be passionate about lacrosse. But in my passion, you know, I don't know. I. I love the work that I'm doing. I think it's taken a while to get here. People are listening. Finally, it's making its way into podcasts like yours, into, you know, teaching programs like at University of California, Irvine and Academy of Integrative Health and Medicine and all of these physician training programs. I'll be doing curriculum for them. I'm working now to get it into high schools. There is just so much information that I think needs to get out there, and I'm very passionate about how that makes me feel when people see results from this information. And I think that's going to keep me, me, you know, in my heart satisfied for many years to come. So I'm just going to keep doing what I'm doing and go where the love is and keep, you know, moving, moving the ball down the field to get this, you know, to get us getting healthier. Because ultimately my goal is for people to be healthy and not get sick. That is the punchline to all the work I do. And even with my, my patients, let's not be sick at younger ages with no family history. Let's figure out why we're getting sick. And let's keep us from getting there. So, so, so that's what keeps me happy and passionate.

Incredible. You, Dr. Cohen, are such an incredible educator. You are inspiring. You have a way of pitching these really scary, complex big topics and making them really attainable and tangible for us. And as you were speaking to that last point, I think that there's a lot of adults out there who may or may not. If you can't make the decision for themselves what you're doing and advocating for youth, a lot of us, I mean, find me one parent that wouldn't stop the world to help their child. So I promise you, you're gonna have a crusade of people advocating and cheering you on in all of these endeavors. And I'm excited to follow on and promote everything that you're doing. I will be following along. First, I'll point out we're gonna link out everything but two of your amazing books that are My Bedside that I Cannot Put down, Integrative Environmental Medicine, and another one, A Guide to Toxic L Living. How can people find you? How do you like to communicate with your audience?

I love. Social media is where I post my, my nuggets of information. It's all called the Smart Human, I named it. Anthropologically, I wanted everyone to know we're all humans. We all bleed the same blood color. I mean, we, we, you know, we, we just really need to think of ourselves as a species that needs to keep ourselves healthy. So it's all the Smart Human on TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, all that. I, I of course, podcast and talk to some really interesting medical researchers, environmental health people. I try to get the researchers whose voices are never heard to tell us about what they've discovered instead of hearing it third party through different media outlets. So those are my heroes. I like to hear from them. So that's really it. And I'm in Princeton, New Jersey, if people want to see me or connect through telemedicine. And I'm still practicing. I love what I do and hopefully I'll be able to continue that along with all the work I'm doing.

I love that. Thank you so much. Go watch your TED Talk right away. I'm so grateful for you and for your time and for connecting with you today. Thank you for everything. And to be continued. You're gonna. I would love to have you back on one day.

Thank you. Monty. Thanks for having me and appreciating this work. It's really special and it takes a village, so I really do appreciate it.

Thank you. Thank you.