Change Your Brain Every Day - The Surprising Way Toxins Can Enter Your Body

Episode Date: February 28, 2017

NOTE: If you have not yet listened to the first episode of this five part series, we highly recommend that you get back to The Toxin Solution Part 1. In this episode, we'll be talking about the importance of being aware of the things/products that we are using or consuming and ensure that we don't expose ourselves to unnecessary toxics. 

Hi, I'm Donnie Osmond, and welcome to The Brain Warrior's Way, hosted by my friends Daniel and Tana Amon. Now, in this podcast, you're going to learn that the war for your health is one between your ears. That's right. If you're ready to be sharper and have better memory, mood, energy, and focus, well then stay with us. Here are Daniel and Tana Amen.

Back to the Brain Warriors Way podcast. I am here with Tana. We are blessed to have Dr. Joseph Pizzorno, founder of Bastyr University. He's really been a pioneer in health for many, many decades. And he has a new book that I read and gave him a quote for. And I loved his book, The Toxin Solution. It's just so practical. And one of the chapters in there that was particularly important to me was the chapter on personal products. Yeah, it sort of turned our house upside down. It certainly did. And, you know, I mean, it's just such a simple concept. What goes on your body goes in your body. And he recommended downloading an app called Think Dirty. I downloaded it, scanned everything in my bathroom and threw 80%. Well, we went shopping. It took us like a day. Because, I mean, you know, just things. I mean, I'm bald for goodness sakes. And I use this Paul

Mitchell mousse, you know, for the 14 hairs I have left. And on a scale of one to 10, so that's what Think Dirty does. It gives you on a scale of one to 10, how quickly is something killing you? And it was a nine. And what I like, and you can talk about this in a second, Dr. Pizzorno, but it actually tells you what ingredients are the toxic ones. And when you came into my bathroom, I just want to jump in here because women are going to freak out right now. We have a harder time with this because we are sort of raised to be primping and grooming and all of these things. And so he came in the bathroom and started scanning my stuff. And I'm like, you need to leave because almost everything was coming up nine and 10. And I freaked out. But things like what I found were the most toxic were things like

hairspray, which are very hard to get, or even the organic ones were not great. So we really had to do some work and research in this area. And it was all because of you. Well, that sounds good and bad. You turned my whole house upside down. I take credit for the, I gave you some guidance to improve your health and I apologize for making your life more difficult. So talk to us about personal products and your experience, uh, educating people and then helping them change their habits.

Well, and we have to be realistic. Okay. Because there are some things women are not going to give up. So let's try to come up with some healthy alternatives for them. Like I'm not going gray. I'm sorry. I, you know, I'm just, we've got to do a better job though, of making it to where, you know, it's, it's doable. And yet we are decreasing that toxic load. One of the things that I want to point out as you, as you begin to launch into this, Dr. Pizzorno, cause I know it's going to go deep. One of the people on my community really didn't like this topic. It really bothered her for obvious reasons. Same reason it bothered me, but she said, well, isn't that the liver's job? Your liver takes care of all of that. As though the liver

is some indestructible organ that handles everything. It's superhuman. So talk to us about that. And what can we do to make it better? Great. Lots of excellent questions. So when I was writing the toxin solution, I was trying to make it really practical for

people. So one of the first things I looked at is, well, where are the toxins coming from? And it turns out that as best as I can assess, and a year from now, that might be different as more research becomes available, but it looks to me like about 70% of toxins come from food and packaging materials. About 10% comes from health and beauty aids. Now, the challenge with health and beauty aids is that they intentionally have chemicals added to them to, of course, make them work better.

And the worst class of chemicals being added are what are called phthalates. What these phthalates do is they act as solubilizing and stabilizing agents for fragrances. So anytime you're using something that smells nice, almost certainly it has these phthalates in them. So the problem with phthalates is that not only do they easily penetrate the skin and get into our bodies, but when you're doing things like, for example, spraying with hairspray, or you're in the hot shower, you're washing your hair, or putting conditioner on and such, well, you're volatilizing a lot of these toxic chemicals, and there's no more efficient way to get these things into your body than by breathing them. Okay, so that's one reason why hairspray is

a problem, because you're breathing as it comes in. And what these cellulites do is they're endocrine poisons. And what that means is that they tend to block receptor sites for testosterone, receptor sites for thyroid, et cetera. And not only that, and this is a big factor with diabetes, they block the insulin receptor sites on the cell walls. Holy moly. Oh, yeah, so as you know, Dr. Amish, think back when we were in medical school a while ago.

When I was in naturopathic medical school almost half a century ago, diabetes was rare. It affected like one half of 1% of the population. I remember my first year of practice in 1975, I was so excited when I finally saw a diabetic patient. Oh, now it's 20 times more common. So what's happening is the phthalates, you get in the cells and BDAs, by blocking the insulin receptor sites,

now the pancreas has to overproduce insulin in order to get the cells to get the message to let sugar in. Well, that's fine. Our bodies have this remarkable adaptive ability, but you do that for 20 or 30 years, and now you've overused your pancreas, your pancreas burns out, and now you've got diabetes. Well, you don't suddenly get diabetes,

you have to work at it. And unfortunately, with all these chemicals we're being exposed to, many of them, not just the phthalates, are blocking the insulin receptor sites. Well, then you might say, as you asked, well, isn't our liver supposed to take care of these things? And the answer is yes, our liver does take care of these things. But remember, our liver has limited capability. And what that means is that after we reach a certain threshold, we can't get rid of all of it. But not only that, getting rid of these toxins, breaking them down is not, you might say, a free process. To do that, we have to use up nutrients that are important, but also these chemical toxins we're being exposed to, not only are they themselves directly increasing oxidative

stress within the body, but they're dramatically increasing oxidative stress within the liver, and they're depleting the liver of the most important intracellular and intramitochondrial antioxidant available to us, which is glutathione. So it turns out that the more people are exposed to toxins, the more oxidative damage they have. And we were talking about neurological systems. The worst thing we can do for our nerves is expose them to oxidative damage that depletes glutathione, as well as to things like neurotoxins, which is a whole nother topic we could spend hours talking about. Yeah. Now you just scared me even more. Why do I always have friends that do this?

Oh, sorry about that. Well, it's just such an important issue. And I know after I got Think Dirty, and then there's another app, Healthy Living from Environmental Working Group. They have one Skin Deep too too we're in hawaii and so automatically i didn't trust what they had at turtle bay in the bathroom and so we went to the grocery store and it was so simple to just start scanning things to read the labels and then scanning and then we're in honolulu and uh uh, Tan and Chloe went to this, uh, all natural, all natural cosmetic store called lush. And they're so excited, uh, about finding these natural products until I started reading the label and I'm like, this stuff is toxic.

And what's weird is a lot, that's one of the big problems with quote unquote health products, right? So there were about 10 to 15 that were truly great. And then all of a sudden you're sort of led down the rabbit hole of buying other products that were not, but you've already made the assumption that their products are all great. So-

Just read the label. You gotta read labels. Absolutely. The label. So phthalates, terrible. And also something I want to add to this, and that is, it's not just the toxicity of the health and beauty products. It's a number of health and beauty products you're using. So for example, you can look at someone like myself and I use basically no lotions and potions, things like

this. I'm in the lotions and potions phase, like most women my age. So this is why it's so important. So there's one study where they looked at, they took 25 healthy young men, supposedly healthy young men, and they had them avoid all these health and beauty products. And they measure the level of phthalates in the body. And the good news is that after a few days, the blood levels of phthalates goes down very dramatically. Then they started doing things. They added lotion. Then they added cologne, then they added hair gel. Anyway, they just kept on adding the typical things that people use. And by the time they're done,

the people are using, the young men are using six health and beauty products, which is what the average man uses. That person's thylate levels were then 300 times higher, not 300%, 300 times higher than people not using any. Well, now if you add cosmetics and perfume, women are really, really women,

women use more than men, which the bottom line is the more you use, the more you got these chemicals in your body, they're making you sick. So, so we need like, at some point we need to talk about some simple things that people can do to help sort of quote unquote detoxify. I know there's no magic potion to make it all go away, but what are some things we can do besides, you know, the fact that we started cutting back at

our house dramatically on those products. Um, there are some, we still use, and I try to get the least toxic I can find, but what can you do? Like, is it something you eat? Are there supplements? Are there, I've heard green drinks can help. I mean, help us out with some little tips. We're going to do a whole podcast on detoxification. Great question. So it turns out there are a number of things we can do.

And it comes back to what we talked about in terms of helping our liver get its job done properly. Now, there are a lot of things we can do, but there are two which I think are most important. Number one, when our liver is breaking these things down, it dumps these things into the gut. Now, it's expected when it dumps it into the gut for there to be fiber there to then bind to the toxins and get it out through our stools. Well, that system works great if you're on the diet that we evolved on as a human species. As we evolved as human species, we are consuming 100 to 150 grams of fiber every day. Now the Irish person in North America consumes 15 to 20 grams of fiber a day. So after our liver goes through all this trouble, get rid of these chemical toxins, it then reabsorbs most of them through something called intrapatic recirculation. Because since it wasn't bound to the fiber, it's floating there freely.

And because the body wants to retain certain nutrients for the liver, it then reabsorbs the sticks. So if what I'm hearing is correct, consuming more fiber can be helpful, correct? Yes. So we're going to talk about, we're going to do a whole podcast on detoxification. What I want people to hear now is the best way to start detoxifying is to decrease your load. So eating organic, using less products or using products that are less toxic for you. Download Think Dirty or Healthy Living by the Environmental Working Group, some apps. Just start educating

yourself. Initially, you'll be horrified. Therapy will be good for that. And then be empowered. And you can get the toxin solution at the toxin solution dot com. You can learn more about Dr. Pizzorno's work. We are going to come back with him and we're going to talk about toxins in the environment. Huge issue. Stay with us. Thanks for listening to today's show, The Brain Warrior's Way. Why don't you head over to brainwarriorswaypodcast.com. That's brainwarriorswaypodcast.com, where Daniel and Tana have a gift for you just for subscribing to the show. And when you post your review on iTunes, you'll be entered into a drawing where you can win a VIP visit to one of the Amen clinics. I'm Donnie Osmond, and I invite you to step

up your brain game by joining us in the next episode.