Dhru Purohit Show - How Indoor Air Quality Impacts Your Brain and What to Do About It with Dhru Purohit

Episode Date: February 14, 2022

This episode is brought to you by Vivobarefoot and Pendulum. When it comes to air pollution, most of our collective attention is focused on outdoor air quality, especially with wildfires and general pollution on the rise. But what if I told you that our indoor air can be anywhere from 200 to 500 percent more toxic than our outdoor air? And according to the EPA, it can even get up to 1,000 percent more toxic than outdoor air.  Today on The Dhru Purohit Podcast, Dhru walks us through why indoor air quality deserves attention and provides some free and cheap solutions to radically improve your air quality.    In this episode, we dive into:    -What poor indoor air does to the body (7:17)-Particulate matter and why it’s so important (8:14)-Sources of indoor air pollution (9:10)-The costs of air pollution (10:36) -Air pollution and your brain (12:57) -Strategies to improve your indoor air quality (17:29) Also mentioned in this episode: -Try This: How Indoor Air Quality Impacts Your Brain and What to Do About It - https://dhrupurohit.com/try-this-indoor-air-quality/ -Indoor Exposure to Selected Air Pollutants in the Home Environment: A Systematic Review - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7729884/ -AirDoctor Air Filter - https://www.airdoctorpro.com/?c=hyman&affid=3&oid=31 -Air quality monitor - https://www.getawair.com/ -doTERRA essential oils - https://www.doterra.com/US/en -Young Living essential oils - https://www.youngliving.com/us/en -Aura Cacia essential oils - https://www.auracacia.com/ For more on Dhru Purohit, follow him on Instagram @dhrupurohit, and YouTube @dhrupurohit. Text Dhru at 302-200-5643. This episode is brought to you by Vivobarefoot and Pendulum. Vivobarefoot footwear is designed to be wide, thin, and flexible—as close to barefoot as possible. They promote your foot's natural strength and movement, allowing you to feel the ground beneath your feet. Vivobarefoot is offering 20% off your first order at vivobarefoot.com/DHRU. Pendulum is the first company to figure out how to harness the amazing benefits of Akkermansia in a probiotic capsule. To receive 20% off your first purchase of Pendulum’s Akkermansia probiotic supplement, go to Pendulumlife.com and use code DHRU20. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hi everyone, Drew Brode here. What if I told you that the air in your home could be up to 200% to 300% more toxic than the air outside your home? Today, we're talking about indoor air quality and how it impacts your brain and your focus. If you're curious about this topic, stay tuned. Hi, everyone, Drew here. If you're a fan of the show, I'd love your help. My team and I have put together a brief survey to get your friends. feedback on this podcast, help us source better sponsors that you actually want to hear from,

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offering my community 20% off your first purchase of their Pendulum Acrimancia probiotic supplement. All you have to do is go to their website, pendulumlife.com. that's pendulum p-E-n-D-U-L-U-M-L-U-M-L-I-E dot com and use the code Drew 20 spelled D-H-R-U-T-R-U-20 for 20% off your first purchase. Hi, everyone, Drew-Prot here. Welcome back. Today we're talking all things indoor air quality and how the air in our home affects our brain's ability to perform and our ability to stay focused and energized throughout the day. I'm pulling from one of our recent articles that we featured on our website from the

Try This Series. And more on that in a little bit. Let's jump into indoor air quality. When it comes to air pollution, most of our collective attention is focused on outdoor air quality, especially when it comes to wildfires and general pollution on the rise globally. But what if I told you that the air in your home could be up to 200 to 500% more toxic than the air outside of your home. And sometimes, according to the EPA, even up to a thousand percent more toxic than outdoor air. In today's podcast, we're diving deep into the topic of indoor air quality and giving it the attention it deserves because it's often overlooked. And I'm also going to share with you on today's episode some free and cheap solutions to radically improve your

indoor air quality today. So let's start off with the basics. What does poor indoor air due to the body. Air pollution can affect us in a lot of different ways. Symptoms like headaches, dizziness, itchy eyes, watery eyes, or fatigue are usually the things that show up more quickly. More aggressive things like cardiovascular disease and even cancer can develop much later down the line due to chronic long-term exposure. We're talking about a lifetime of exposure to poor indoor air quality. The level of exposure to air pollution that causes symptoms is different for everyone. Some factors that make you more susceptible are your age, pre-existing medical conditions, or how sensitive you are to

environmental toxins. Symptoms of poor indoor air quality often go overlooked. They can be easily mistaken for cold or allergies. So it's important. It's super important to pay attention to where you are if your symptoms come up. You can't talk about indoor or outdoor air quality without reviewing what particular matter is and why it's so important. Particulate matter, more specifically, PM2.5, you've probably seen that abbreviation, are microscopic airborne particles, 2.5 microns in diameter or less. Now, just to give you an idea, that's 30 times smaller than a strand of human hair. Just imagine that. PM2.5 is a concerning source for pollution that comes from dust, spores, pollen, mold, smoke, and even burning things like fossil fuels.

PM2.5 is pretty much invisible unless there's so much of it in the air that it creates smog or haze appearance, which if you live in Los Angeles, other big cities, you're very common to see that, especially on a sunny day. Now, here are the most common sources of indoor air pollution that's worth reviewing. Indoor air pollution comes from a variety of sources. I have a link to a review paper that's in the article in the show notes below, and it was published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, and in that paper, they give an excellent review of common indoor air pollutants and how they affect our health. Some heavy hitters in the paper that I just want to mention for the audience that's listening right now are the volatile organic

carbons or VOCs, if you're familiar with that abbreviation, which are a byproduct of off-gassing from especially things like new furniture, a new mattress that you got, carpeting, cabinets, and vinyl flooring. Other sources of VOCs include formaldehyde, pesticides, paint fumes, mold, smoke from cigarettes, charing or burning of food, actually. Charing or burning of food, if you're regularly cooking and burning your food and you don't open the windows, we're going to get to that in a second, that can also create VOCs and increase the particulate matter inside of the air. And of course, indoor fireplaces that don't have good ventilation. Cleaning products are also something to pay attention to, candles, and deodorizers are other

sources of VOCs that are out there. The impact that these toxins have on our indoor air quality depends on how old the sources, how often it's used, and whether it's emitting toxins all the time. Now, indoor air pollution and pollution in general has a major cost, and it's worth reviewing over here. A total of 7 million premature debts a year are from air pollution. That's all air pollution, indoor and outdoor. Think about that, 7 million deaths prematurely every year attributed to indoor and outdoor air pollution. That's five times the number of deaths a year from car crashes. and more than twice the number of deaths of COVID worldwide from the stat that we had pulled in

2020. That doesn't make these debts or any debts any less serious, but it does put into perspective the seriousness that we should be giving to air pollution and the impact that it has on our health. Now, the majority of the premature deaths from air pollution come from breathing in polluted air over a period of time, chronic long-term exposure. PM 2.5, the particulate matter 2.5, enters in the lungs, triggers inflammation, which increases the risk of heart disease, stroke, lung cancer, and respiratory infections.

Of the 7 million people worldwide who prematurely died every year from air pollution, 3.8 million people are from indoor air pollution. Just think about that. 7 million deaths worldwide prematurely from air pollution, 3.8 million are due from indoor air pollution. Now, the thing is, anytime we talk about this, we've got to contextualize it. Many of these debts come from underdeveloped countries where people use wood, charcoal, and other combustible fuels for cooking and heating in their home. And there's often very poor methods of ventilation. So that's something to contextualize of the vast majority of these indoor air deaths are coming

from countries that are still developing and still working on providing cleaner versions of electricity and cooking and heating to a lot of the populations that are reliant on some of these old forms of cooking. Now, the cost of air pollution is enormous. It accounts for more than 3% of our global gross domestic product or $3 trillion a year due to its economic impact from medical expenses related to asthma, diabetes, chronic respiratory diseases and missing work. Now, I want to chat about indoor air pollution and your brain. The economic cost of air pollution are massive, but one of the questions that I asked when I was

putting together this article with my team was, how much of it comes from the loss of productivity? Today's economy relies on both physical and mental labor. Not only is our physical health effective, but cognition. Concentration and work performance go down as well on days that air quality is poor. And especially when it comes to indoor air quality that is often poor for long periods of time because people are not aware of how their indoor air quality is affecting their performance, this could be impacting productivity for a long period of time, especially in this day and age of Zoom that we're all living in. Now, when it will present a study that's actually about outdoor air quality, but it'll give you a good idea of how air quality in general impacts our brain's ability to perform.

So one study was looking at a professional umpire's calls and how it was correlated with air quality. What the researchers found was pretty shocking. Carbon monoxide and particulate matter 2.5, PM2.5, significantly increased the likelihood of an umpire making incorrect calls, which you can imagine when it comes to professional sports is a pretty big deal if a sports team is coming down to the wire. Even more concerning is that the levels were still well below what the EPA considered safe. So the stakes of outdoor air pollution are high, but studies show that the stakes are just as high, if not higher, for indoor air pollution. A study looked at in Israeli high school and the performance of students and how they performed on exams when it came to those exams getting them into university.

And it found that students were less likely to receive a passing score on days. Get this, right? They were less likely to receive a passing score on days where particulate matter 2.5 levels were high. Imagine your entire future riding on the air quality of your classroom on the big day. Working class adults' cognition is also affected. An interesting analysis of the speeches made by Canadian politicians showed that when indoor particulate matter 2.5 levels were high, speech quality went down. It was equivalent to losing about four months of education on one's IQ. Now, more recently, a study on office workers in several different countries found that higher levels of particulate matter 2.5 significantly, significantly impacted employees' cognition and performance.

PM2.5 has been associated with memory loss, disturbances, fatigue, and reduced mental sharpness by triggering inflammation in the brain. When you take in toxic air and especially air that has high amounts of PM2.5, it makes it harder for everything in your body to happen. Your brain has to work so much harder. Your lungs have to work so much harder. But there's a lot of things that you can do.

We're going to get to that in a second. And by the way, if you want to see the references for this entire episode, you can click on the show notes and it will take you to the article. And it's called Try This, how indoor air quality impacts your brain and what to do about it. While you're there on my website, Drew Perraud.com, click on the tab that says, try this newsletter. Every Friday, I send out a newsletter that will help you sleep better, get energized, enhance your focus. And it will help you also personalize your diet. It's a free newsletter. Anybody can sign up, and it comes out every single Friday.

So if you're curious about more of the topics that I cover in there and want to get first access, go to Drewpro.com or click on the show notes below to sign up. Now, let's continue talking about indoor air pollution because we're about to get to the good stuff and what you can do. So as I mentioned, PM2.5 has been associated with disturbances in memory, fatigue, reduce mental sharpness, and inflammation in the brain. In fact, neurological damage caused by PM2.5 has been observed in Alzheimer's patients and Parkinson's disease. As you can see, indoor air quality directly impacts our physical health as well as our brain

health. Even though it might not be obvious right away, the adverse effects of indoor air pollution can be serious and are often overlooked. Now that we know the different ways that indoor air pollution affects us and our brain's performance and why it's so important to keep our exposure levels low, let's talk about some the strategies that you can apply today, today to improve your indoor air quality so that you can feel good, focus on what matters, and perform your best. So in every newsletter that I put together and every article, I present a protocol with my team. The protocol has actionable

tips that anybody can do and immediately start to see if they notice improvements in their health and the area that we're discussing. So here's the protocol for today's topic. Number one, the most underrated, cheap, free, low-cost way, no-cost way to improve your air quality. When it comes to your indoor air is to open your windows, open your windows at least a few times today. Opening your windows is the cheapest and easiest solution to poor indoor air quality. Yes, it would be nice to have a fancy air filter, and I have some recommendations on that, but not everybody can afford that.

And not always is even an air filter as good as opening a window. The combination of the two seem to work really well. That's why when you're in doubt, or you start to feel a little sluggish or you can't focus, one of the things that you can do, especially if you're working from home, is you can open up your windows for a little bit to increase air circulation. indoors. One of the things that I like to do is I'll open all the windows in my house at the same time for a period of time. And I'll even do this in the winter months. And I did this when I lived on the East Coast, so even when it's colder, just to get a new circulation and flow of air

in the house. So when it comes to this no-cost solution, there's no hard and fast rules about how to do it. But if it's a nice day out and the air index quality is at a safe level, opening your windows for at least 20 to 60 minutes can help freshen the air and get the stagnant air out. This is especially important if you just put a new carpet or furniture or just bought a new mattress. I'll often take a new mattress that I might have bought for my house or a new piece of furniture and I'll put it away in a room that I don't use often and I'll just leave the windows in that room open all day so I can ventilate the house and get a lot of the toxic fumes and VOCs that are on that furniture to circulate.

In some instances, I'll even put that furniture outside if I can put it on a patio or a deck where it can be covered and protected from the rain. I want to get those things that often have fire retardants and other chemicals on them, furniture, mattresses. I want to ventilate them so I can get as many of the fumes. And I'll also wipe them down. I'll wipe them down with a damp cloth and then wash that cloth afterwards. So in addition to furniture, another area that opening the windows is so key for that I hinted at earlier

is when you're cooking. If you're cooking anything in the kitchen that accidentally chars or burns, just simply open your kitchen window or one that's nearby. Ideally, keep it open for the whole time when you're cooking. It's just like habit. You open up the window, get in some fresh air, feel a little bit better. And anything you're cooking, again, especially if it chars, all that, which would normally just stay stagnant in the house and just kind of continue to circulate, ends up leaving the house. And even better, if you have an exhaust hood, you can always use that as well. Breathing and smoke from charred foods is another less obvious source of indoor air pollution. One of the things that I

noticed from my air filter, and I use one called Air Doctor, and you can find the link to it in the show notes if you want to check it out, is that the air doctor lets me know when my particulate matter in my house gets above a certain level. And one thing that I notice, especially when I'm cooking any kind of protein that might char on the stove, is that my air filter starts freaking out. and the lights go off and say ventilate, ventilate, ventilate, and it automatically ramps up to a higher level just to start to clean up the house a little bit more. We can prevent that by opening up our windows. Now, we often worry more about outdoor air quality than indoor air quality.

So I've seen some people, and members of my community asked after this article came out, and they said, well, sometimes the air quality in a city that I live in, maybe Paris or New York or L.A. or somewhere else, there's days where the air quality is not that great. And so I'm worried about opening the windows and bringing in that new air. Isn't the air quality outside worse off than the air quality inside? And one thing that I've seen from monitoring, not only my air, but getting the data from many members in our community, is that actually, in certain instances, when you're talking about charing food, when you're talking about getting new furniture, when you're talking about just air being stagnant indoors, often as bad as

the air is outside, the air inside is often worse. So for sure, on the high red days, so usually air quality, if you have an iPhone app, we'll chat about that in a second. If you have iPhone, if you have Google, many of these apps are now starting to show the air quality on the app itself based in the weather app. And if you don't have that, you can most likely get that for free and we have some links to some resources below. But often, even on, so if there's a day that is being flagged as red or high yellow, okay, you might want to be mindful about leaving your windows open all day, but in general, even if the air quality is moderately bad outside, still getting a refresh of air inside is going to improve your overall indoor air quality. Indoor air quality for most people is just so bad.

Their indoor air quality is so bad, especially if they don't use a filter and especially if they're not used to regularly opening the windows. So even if the air is bad outside, the air inside is often worst. Opening your windows for a short period of time almost always helps clean up the indoor air quality. Okay, let's get into some of the recommendations that I mentioned. Smartphone weather app. Both the iPhone and the Android smartphones have exact readings on particulate matter 2.5 built into their weather apps, specifically for outdoor air, right? They don't have yet. The day would be amazing when they do that your smartphone could tell you the quality of your indoor air that's not there yet, but they can tell you the quality of your outdoor air.

outdoor air. One note is that the readings are usually averaged based on the city that you're in. I live in Los Angeles, which is a big city. So if you want a neighborhood level data, you'll have to use something more localized. And that's where my next recommendation comes in. There's a website called Purple Air. For more detailed readings, I often use it. And this website, Purple Air, helps me check the air quality around me because it gives me an aQI measurement in real time based on neighborhood level data. Now, it's not available in every city, but in most big cities, these devices are on school buildings or office complexes, and it'll give you much more localized weather data based on your neighborhood. And a lot of things impact the neighborhood

level data of air quality outside, the amount of trees exposure, the wind currents, the close to the coast, all those things play a role. So check to see if your city is on this website, Purple Air. And for anybody who's listening that doesn't have access to the show notes at the moment right now, that's PurpleAir.com or Map.purpleair.com, and you can look to see if your city is on that tool. Just to remember, don't freak out too much if outdoor air quality is poor. As we mentioned earlier, indoor air quality is often so bad that most people would benefit

from opening their windows if they haven't taken measures to improve their indoor air. Next recommendation, house plants, indoor house plants are totally underrated as a means of air filtration. They're pretty remarkable and highly cost effective. Plus, they bring an aesthetic value that brings a lot of people joy, myself included. In some instances, they can also help to filter out viruses and bacteria. I'm going to list a few plants, some of the top ones, that people often used to help them filter their home air quality. And many of these recommendations come from a popular TED Talk that was done by a gentleman named Kamal Mittal titled How to Grow Fresh Air. In this talk, which you can find in the show notes, Kamal describes the findings from a study

in Delhi, India, a city that has one of the worst air quality out of any city inside of the world. When the plants listed below were placed in the Delhi office building that Kamal was in, eye irritation went down by about 50%. Respiratory symptoms went down by 30%. Headaches by 20%, breathing issues by 10%, and productivity went up by a whopping 20%. Here are a few of the plants that Kamal mentioned. The first plant was the Eureka plant, which helped filtered out benzene, carbon monoxide, formaldehyde, and other VOCs. They're also, non-toxic to animals and they like plenty of light. They're great for living rooms. The next plant was mother-in-law's tongue. It's great for bedrooms because it converts carbon dioxide into oxygen

at night. It also helps get rid of formaldehyde and other VOCs. The third one and the last one that he mentioned was the money plant. It helps filter out formaldehyde and other VOCs. This plant can go into any room but keep it out of the reach of animals and children since it's a little toxic if ingested. All right, the next recommendation, minimize or avoid anything that has fragrances or perfumes. I always get a lot of pushback from people when it comes to fragrances and perfumes. But the truth is, a lot of these compounds are toxic and we don't know how toxic they are because they don't disclose all the ingredients that are inside of what these fragrances end up becoming. Air fresheners, scented candles, incense, fragrances, and other perfumes are now being called the new secondhand smoke. They release harmful VOCs and

other toxic chemicals into the air that it can impact your health and, of course, your breathing. Have you ever gotten a headache after riding in someone's car? Like, have you been in an Uber that has a ton of air fresheners? I'm guilty of that. That's happened to me many times. Maybe you went on a date with someone who wore too much perfume or cologne and your head started hurting. If so, you know what I'm talking about. That's another form of indoor air pollution. If you get headaches, lightheadedness, dizziness, shortness of breath, or feel tired, and have air freshener in your home, car, or workplace, it's probably a good idea to ditch them. Instead, try something more natural, like essential oils, which are a good go-to and using an essential oil diffuser. When it comes

to essential oils, I love the brands, Dutera, Young Living, and there's a few other ones that are mentioned inside of the show notes. Okay, this is the splurge section. The splurge section is where I cover, if you have a little bit of a budget, what would you want to spend your money on that can actually dollar invested per benefit extracted could significantly improve your health? It's not needed for everybody, but if you have the budget, it's a great thing to explore. So the first thing is a high quality air filter. There's plenty of them that are on the market that are great. And there's plenty of them, even more on the market, that are not great. The one that I use for many years, and I have a partnership with them in full transparency, it's called Air Doc.

It's 100 times more effective than a regular HEPA filter. It traps and removes VOCs and particulate matter 2.5. Plus, it's super quiet and sets off an alert when it's time to change the filter. I first became aware of the air doctor from my friend Ocean Robbins back in 2017, and I was so impressed with their device that I told them that they have to partner with myself and Dr. Mark Hyman because we love them so much. We've had thousands of people buy their air filters over the last four to five years. and the majority of people have been so happy with their experience.

Here's another device that I love, although in full transparency, it's on back order for 12 weeks. I have no partnership with them, but I have one of these devices in my home and I love it. It's called the Aware device, A-W-A-I-R, and it helps to monitor indoor air quality. And it's excellent for anyone where the air quality changes throughout the day. By the way, that's most of us. we use it in our office where we have guest and record podcasts. While it doesn't filter the air, it tells you if you have the air quality that's ideal for maximum performance that includes particulate matter, VOCs, carbon dioxide amount in the air,

as well as humidity and temperature. All those things play a major role in your brain's ability to perform. And if you have a little bit of a budget to splurge, I highly recommend checking out this device. But again, remember, it's on back order because it's such a popular device. For the entrepreneurs that are listening, if you have employees on your team, I would highly recommend getting this device for all your team members. There's so many times where we don't feel good and can't perform or can't think or can't write.

And often, our air quality plays a major factor in it. So this aware device is really cool because it will give me an alert and say, Hey, there's too much carbon dioxide in the room right now. You should open up the windows and circulate the air a little bit. Or, hey, the temperature is a little bit too hot. We know that at this level and the humidity, you're not going to perform your best. So maybe try to lower the temperature or ventilate a little bit to help improve brain performance. Now, as I mentioned before, the EPA reports that indoor air can be up to a thousand times more polluted than outdoor air.

Considering on average that 90% of a person's time is spent indoors, this is definitely an issue that we want to want to pay attention to. And given the fact that high levels of PM2.5, carbon monoxide, VOCs, and other air pollutants directly affect cognitive function and productivity, it might be time to start looking into the sources of air pollution inside of your home and try to filter them out as best as you can. Like all things, it's not about being perfect. I'm not trying to do fear-mongering on indoor air quality. It's just about being aware and doing your best. I hope you got a lot from today's episode. And if there's one major takeaway, that's low cost, no cost, no effort or energy besides

getting up and moving your arm, it's opening your windows. Opening your windows first thing in the morning and letting a batch of new air come and circulate inside the house is a low cost, no cost way to significantly improve your brain's function and your indoor air quality. I hope you enjoyed today's try this podcast on indoor air quality and how it impacts the brain. If you want to read the newsletter version, which also includes over 20 references, 21 references, to be exact, on all the sources that we use to put together today's protocol, you can find that in the show notes below or go to Drew Perot. That's D-H-R-U-P-U-R-H-I-I-T.com.

I have the links for everything I mentioned inside of that article. If you know someone who's trying to improve their indoor air quality, please do me a favor. Send this episode in the article to them. I know that they'll greatly benefit from the work. This is Drew Prood signing off. I'll see you next week.