Change Your Brain Every Day - COVID-19 Outbreak: Quick Tips for a Cleaner Household Today, with Kelly Vlahakis-Hanks

Episode Date: April 2, 2020

In the fourth and final episode of a series with Earth Friendly Products CEO Kelly Vlahakis-Hanks, Dr. Daniel Amen and Tana Amen discuss some of the quick and easy ways you can clean your home and body for a healthier environment and a healthier life. Learn what types of products and techniques you should use, and which you should avoid at all costs.

Welcome to the Brain Warriors Way podcast. I'm Dr. Daniel Amen. And I'm Tana Amen. In our podcast, we provide you with the tools you need to become a warrior for the health of your brain and body. The Brain Warriors Way podcast is brought to you by Amen Clinics, where we have been transforming lives for 30 years using tools like brain spec imaging to personalize treatment to your brain. For more information, visit amenclinics.com. The Brain Warriors Way podcast is also brought to you by BrainMD, where we produce the highest quality nutraceuticals to support the health of your brain and body. To learn more, go to brainmd.com. Welcome back. We are still with Kelly Blahakis. And Kelly, I just have to tell you how important this discussion has been. Her company, Ecos,

Earth-Friendly Products, I'm just so happy that we have you on because this has been such a stressful time for all of us, me included. And these times bring out different parts of our personalities. I mean, I've seen some people curl up and just get really scared. And I've seen even my kids, the kids in our house are just all behaving differently than they normally would. And because different parts of our personalities emerge. For me, I become like this insane cop, right? I'm super intense. I i'm like here's the orders here's the rules this is what you're doing and you know it's not making people very happy around me but

it's how i keep my family safe and this this is part of why this discussion we're having right is because i don't really know i'm at i can't get the products i need i'm a little out of my depth i know about soap i know about sanitizers, but they're toxic. And this is all on my mind. I mean, I'm bleaching the heck out of everything. I don't feel well later. And these conversations are so important. They sure are. You know, one of the things that we've tried to really do as a company is really empower people. We want to give them the knowledge. We want to give them the tools. While everybody is home right now, we want to give them the tools for the fight and the safer ones for that fight. We actually launched a series on our sites called Clean with Ecos and Healthy Homebody because we want to encourage people to

be healthy homebodies and to really spend their time utilizing clean products. I want to say that again. Healthy Homebody, it's a website. It's actually on our ECOS Cleans platform. So if you went to our ECOS Cleans Instagram, or you went to our ECOS Cleans Facebook page, you'll see we have a Clean with ECOS Healthy Homebody series. And every day we're trying to post different tips so that we can really empower people with, hey, listen, there is something you can do to protect the health of your family. I mean, our mission for 53 years has always been about protecting the health of your family. And I think that it's more important now than ever, but it's always been what we've done. And so, you know, our first post

was about hand soap. The second one was about all-purpose cleaners. And we're just moving through the one that's coming out today is actually about fruit and veggie wash that you and I just spoke about. So every single day, we want to give consumers something they can be doing in their homes to protect their health and to be cleaning. For us, we use Safer Choice certified products. So if you look at the front of the pack, I also want to give consumers, how do I know if a product is green? There's so much greenwashing going on. How do I know if they're using green

ingredients? We use a third party that audits all of our products and looks at all of our ingredients. The U.S. EPA Safer Choice Program looks at, number one, do you have the greenest ingredients? Number two, is it efficacious? Does it work? Because if a cleaning product doesn't work, it's truly not a sustainable good product. So they certify that it works. And number three, they look at companies that are really innovating in terms of green science. And then on the fruit and veggie wash we discussed, we have the USDA organic certification and Quality Assurance International comes in and audits all of our facilities and makes sure that we're utilizing only organic ingredients in the production of the fruit and veggie wash. That organic ingredients are never compromised by being mixed with anything that's not organic.

So there's a lot of things that consumers should be looking for on front of PAC to make sure that they're buying the products they want to bring in their homes. And then really just focus on that cleaning component. If you're cleaning on a regular basis and cleaning, do your laundry more frequently. When you think of doing laundry, a lot of people just let it build up, right? And you have piles and piles of laundry. But if you're home right now, keep your laundry clean.

Don't allow germs and bacteria and other things to really put up there. Wash your laundry frequently. After you finish washing it, don't let it just sit wet in the washing machine because you can have mold and other products. Quickly put it into your dryer so that you dry your laundry and put it away. Make sure you're cleaning your surfaces frequently with a product that's Safer Choice certified. Make sure you're cleaning your fruits and vegetables with something that's organic or something that you make at home that's safe. You know, washing your hands, all these things really are good for us if we utilize

good ingredients and the things that we're using. So the team put together some really great information. Conventional cleaning products emit fumes that are toxic to brain cells. And recently, scientists reported that exposures to high levels of fine particulate air pollution, the kind you might breathe if you live near a freeway, may contribute to accelerated brain aging and cognitive problems in older women, especially if they have the ApoE4 gene that increases the risk of Alzheimer's. These and other environmental toxins may be inadvertently consumed, inhaled, or absorbed through the skin. Widespread in our high-tech world, they include the chemical BPA in food and drink containers and on cash register receipts. I just go, you can keep it. Heavy metals like mercury and fish and pesticide residues

and fruits and vegetables we just were talking about. There are lots of ways to address the toxins in your life from eliminating them to helping your body's natural detoxification. And so limit exposure, which means by organic, limit gasoline fumes or secondhand or even thirdhand smoke. Avoid handling cash register receipts. Don't eat or drink out of plastic containers. Use apps like Think Dirty to scan your personal products and eliminate many toxins.

They're hormone disruptors like parabens, phthalates, lead, aluminum, and PEGs. Support your four organs of detoxification, your liver. Although, Kelly, I have to tell you this. You know the alcohol companies are retooling their plants, and they're creating hand sanitizers. Now, this is a good use of alcohol. Stop drinking it because it damages your microbiome, but maybe they'd be useful.

One thing that I, one thing that's so interesting. Jim Beam disinfectant, Seagram 7. But this conversation is really important because every day you turn the news on or you look at your phone and they're like, oh, there's this new thing about, you know, people who have really strong immune systems, vitamin D, vitamin C, every time I'm seeing, like that may be the thing that's keeping people from getting sick. It's your immune system. Keep boosting your immune system. And they have all these things that they're using, right? Vitamin D, vitamin C, things we've known about keeping your immune system strong. But what we haven't talked about is that when you use toxic products,

it decreases your immunity. That's right. And so many things to do. It's an important thing to do. Very important. I mean, so many of the ingredients that you just talked about, PEGs, phthalates, parabens, formaldehyde. I mean, so many of these things are in cleaning products, volatile organic compounds, VOCs. I think a lot of people are really aware, hey, when I buy a paint, I should really start thinking about paints with no VOCs or low VOCs. Yet they're bringing cleaning products into their home that are high in volatile organic compounds. And they become volatile organic compounds because they're so small, right?

Oftentimes in fragrances, that's a big carrier of a lot of the VOCs. And then you're inhaling these things and they're so detrimental to lung health. And they leave you then more susceptible to all sorts of illnesses. And so really making sure that cleaning products that have no or low VOCs are also very important. Making sure that cleaning products aren't using things like formaldehyde as preservatives, don't have things that are costed. I mean, things that when you think of cleaning products and you read, you know, sometimes I see people say, oh, I want something that eats through the grease, that eats through the baked on things, that's really aggressive and really

corrosive. Yet that residue is on your plate and you smell the lemon and you go, oh, it smells clean. Then you eat it. So it really is something when we talk about reducing our toxic load, that it's really a lot about our cleaning products. The EPA estimates that indoor air pollution can be five to 70 times higher than outdoor air pollution because of toxic cleaning products. And we're spending all day long inside our homes, inside of our workplaces. I went to this one presentation where they were saying that children, well, of course, this isn't true for right in this moment in history, but typically children are spending less time outside than prisoners are. They're not even getting their one hour outside a day.

And so they're inside homes, schools, and workplaces, and they're breathing all day long these toxic fumes. We have to change that. It really is so detrimental to human health. And it's amazing in 2020, this is still the case. When the EPA was started in 1970, actually this year is the 50th anniversary of the EPA and of Earth Day. When it was created, they grandfathered in 83,000 chemicals that were never checked for human health and safety. Yeah, and more than 40,000 of those are still in commerce today. And when we were fighting for the Toxic Substances Control Act back in 2016, they actually passed a law with TSCA that said every year the government will check 10 chemicals a year. 10 chemicals.

I mean, what is 10? You have thousands, tens of thousands. This is the evil ruler. I talk about it. Unbelievable. And the list of the first 10 chemicals, number one was asbestos. Who needs to spend the year thinking was asbestos. Who needs to spend the year thinking about asbestos? We know how dangerous it is for human health.

The second one on the list, though, is something I'd like to bring up, which is 1,4-dioxane. So when they passed this law in 2016 and said, let's look at the top 10 chemicals, one of those top 10 was 1,4-dioxane. 1,4-Dioxane is in almost all cleaning products. It's unbelievable because although 1,4-Dioxane is not an ingredient, it's a byproduct of the manufacturing process when you have ethoxylated surfactants. So when they test cleaning products for 1,4-Dioxane, the levels are super high and we know this is linked to cancer. So it's really important when you're getting a cleaning product to ensure that it's free of 1,4-Dioxane. Well, Kelly, we're out of

time, but how can people learn more about ECOS and earth-friendly products and how they can keep themselves safe? Where can they get more education that you guys are producing? Thank you. Well, I would welcome everyone to really visit us on our website, which is ecos.com. That's E-C-O-S.com. Ecos is the Greek word for home. And so that's our website. And they could certainly follow us on Instagram, on Facebook, at EcosCleans for all of our healthy home tips for being a healthy homebody and cleaning with Ecos. Great. Thank you, my friend.

Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you so much for sharing our message. I appreciate it. And I must say, I loved implementing the Bright Minds program here at Growth Friendly Products. Our entire team benefited so much from it and will continue to be. That's so wonderful. And Kelly, please give a heartfelt thanks to your team for continuing to work at this time when it's so scary for people to be out. What they're doing

is critical. I think of our first responders, our police officers, our firemen, you know, nurses, physicians, what they're doing is critical and they're putting their lives on the line every day. But we don't often think about the people who are getting these products out. We're just at home trying to order them and we're mad because we can't order them. So thank you. Thank them for being there and doing this is we're not really thinking about the people who are actually out there making them. That means so much to me, Tana.

Thank you for that. I will certainly relay the message to the entire team here at Ecos. We really want to do everything we can to support everyone during this critical time. Yeah. Great. Thanks so much.

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