Dhru Purohit Show - Integrative Doctor Shares the Dangers of Microwaving Plastic, Eating Canned Foods and Top Sources of Endocrine Disruptors and How Simple Swaps in Our Home Make a Huge Difference with Dr. Vivian Chen

Episode Date: May 21, 2025

This episode is brought to you by Lumebox, Cozy Earth, and Ollie. We don’t often think of our homes as a source of toxins—but many of the most common exposures are hiding right where we cook, eat, breathe, and sleep. Not sure where to start when it comes to removing them? You’re not alone. Today’s guest is here to simplify the process, breaking down the top toxin exposures with a tiered ranking and showing you exactly what to remove, replace, or swap first for the biggest impact. Today on The Dhru Purohit Show, Dhru sits down with Dr. Vivian Chen to uncover the top sources of toxins hiding in your home. Dr. Chen shares must-do swaps in the kitchen, covering everything from cookware and food storage to baking essentials. She also offers practical tips to support your body’s natural detoxification and elimination process through simple lifestyle habits. Dr. Chen dives into the hidden toxins in feminine hygiene products and the safer alternatives. If you’re looking for simple, actionable strategies to reduce your daily exposure to toxins, this episode is a must-listen.   Dr. Vivian Chen (MBBS, MRCP, MRCGP) is a UK-trained medical doctor with 15 years of clinical experience in internal medicine and family practice, and the co-founder of LUMEBOX, the leading portable red light therapy company. Now based in California, she traded her prescription pad for a deeper mission: helping people uncover and address the root causes of their health struggles—from mitochondrial dysfunction to environmental toxicity. In this episode, Dhru and Dr. Chen dive into: The best and worst types of cookware (00:24) The connection between cooking with cast iron and iron levels (4:02) Common sources of endocrine disruptors (5:05) Microwave-safe plastic containers and recommended changes when using plastic (8:15) Canned foods and how toxic exposure can vary based on your choices (14:55) Top sources of toxins in daily life and how to improve indoor air quality (18:12) The dangers of using aluminum foil to wrap food (29:13) Unbleached parchment paper, silicone cookware, and stainless steel storage (35:09) Constipation, detoxification, and the importance of tracking fiber intake (46:13) Exercise and its full-body detoxification benefits (56:53) How to support the body’s natural detoxification pathways (59:58) Different types of saunas and their detox benefits (1:08:21) Red light therapy: how to use it and its full-body benefits (1:12:18) How sleep supports detoxification and the top causes of poor sleep (1:21:48) The risks of using paper cups daily and the benefits of reusable alternatives (1:34:08) Why conventional paper receipts pose health risks (1:36:53) How scented candles impact indoor air quality (1:39:32) The effects of traditional feminine hygiene products on health (1:41:48) Final thoughts and where to follow Dr. Chen’s work (1:56:56) Also mentioned in this episode: EWG  Bristol Stool Chart  Lupini Beans King Grove Organic Farm  Try This: Surprising Findings from a Major Report On Microplastics For more on Dr. Chen, follow her on Instagram, LinkedIn, and her Website. This episode is brought to you by Lumebox, Cozy Earth, and Ollie. Lumebox is offering my community $280 off their FDA-registered portable Red Light device!  That's over 44% off! Go to thelumebox.com/dhru and get your Red Light device. Right now, get 40% off your Cozy Earth sheets. Just head over to cozyearth.com/dhru and use code DHRUP. Want to give your dog the best in clean eating? Take the online quiz and introduce Ollie to your pet. Right now, Ollie is offering 60% off your first box of meals when you subscribe today! Just head to Ollie.com, use the code DHRU, and you’ll get 60% off your first box of meals in your subscription. Sign up for Dhru’s Try This Newsletter Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Dr. Vivian Chen, welcome to the podcast. Today, we're talking about the top sources of toxins in our home that caused this everyday exposure that so many people are worried about. And what we're going to have you do is we're going to have you rank some of the common ones that are there in our own households. And I want to start off with a big one. And that's the idea of cookware. Talk to us about cookware.

And what is the worst type of cookware that we want to all be avoiding? Well, first of all, thank you so much for having me. I'm a big fan of yours. And this sounds so fun. So cookware is like something I use every single day, multiple times a day. And hopefully a lot of people are cooking at home. So, you know, that's really healthy to cook at home. But what you cook in can determine whether you're exposed to endocrine disruptors

and forever chemicals. So Teflon was very popular, right? Because everybody loves to cook the eggs on. it, it slides right off, it's easy to clean, but it leaches PFS, these forever chemicals. And these chemicals have been shown in studies to affect our fertility, our immune health. It can cause pregnancy complications. It's been linked to certain cancers like testicular and kidneys. And the biggest problem with it is that it sticks around in our bodies.

It's called forever chemicals. right? So it's really difficult to get rid of in our environment and in our bodies. So PFAS is actually now found in 45% of US tap water because it lingers around so much. So if we're rating bookware, then, you know, the Tethlon, the black, shiny looking nonstick cookware is an F for sure. Okay. I will never cook in those. You never want it. So on our tier rank system where F is the worst, and then we have S is supreme on top, you're putting Teflon cookware as an F.

Correct. Yeah. And if it's scratched, it will be a sub F minus because when it's scratched, it actually releases more PFS into your food. You travel a lot. You see people. You go into people's home. Are people still using Teflon cookware?

Yes. Yeah. When I travel and I go into Airbnbs, that's when I see those cookware. So people are really attached to Teflon because non-stick and, you know, when I tell them not to, they go into this huge panic. Like, what do I use instead? How do you cook eggs?

That's the biggest question I get asked. And what do you say to that? Cast iron. So a well-seasoned cast iron is naturally non-stick. And you can easily cook eggs on that. And actually, you can use stainless steel to cook eggs too. So stainless steel is. there's kind of gaps between the metal, the surface.

But when you heat it up, the gaps close. And then you get a smooth surface. Then you add your oil, then you should be able to cook your egg on that. So you want to heat your stainless steel at a medium heat for like a couple minutes. And then you add your oil. And then you should be able to cook your egg. Well, we don't have a photo of cast iron, but we do have one of stainless steel. So if you had to say that Teflon coated pants,

especially the ones that have these cuts and nicks, which are so popular in not just Airbnb's, but people's homes, and they're leaching microplastics into everything you cook. You put that as an F. But stainless steel, where would you rank that? Stainless steel, I would put as A. Okay, great. It's a great, cheap alternative that's out there. Yeah. And if you have cast iron, that's also probably going to be about an A as well. Yeah, correct. Now, you had one caveat for cast iron that I saw that you wrote on social media on a viral post that you made about cookware on this topic. And that was around iron levels. Can you talk about that?

Yep. So any acidic food will leach iron from your cast iron pan. So if you already have a high blood iron level, let's say you have a conditional hemacromatosis, then you actually want to avoid cooking in cast iron because the iron can actually go into your food. And you definitely want to avoid cooking acidic food in cast iron. Not only that, the acidity. of the food actually can erode away that's nice seasoning that's actually making your cast iron non-stick. So I actually mainly just kind of pan fry and do my what I would normally do in a

non-stick pan in my cast iron. If I want to make a stew with tomato sauce or anything like that, I actually use my stainless steel. That's great. That's great advice. Okay, I want to zoom out for a second because we're talking about the everyday household items that we all interact with that are the biggest source of toxins. And then there's this group of toxins that you've been a big educator and champion in your work for such a long time. And then I want to talk about what are common sources that lead to this classification. So the classification are endocrine disruptors.

What are they? And then give us some examples so that we can rank them on our list. I love this question. So endocrine disruptors. are a group of chemicals that can interfere and mess with our own hormones. The hormones are these kind of messengers in our bodies. They go from the brain to the organs like sex organs and tell it what to do. So think of things like thyroid, that's a hormone.

Insulin, that's a hormone. Sex hormones like estrogen, testosterone. So endocrine disruptors can interfere with these hormones. and what we see as a downstream effect of that are things like fertility issues, insulin resistance, pre-diabetes, diabetes, weight gain, and lots of other conditions. So it's a big problem and it really affects us quite ubiquitously across the board. So pregnant women who are exposed could be passing these onto their unborn children. And if the unborn children are exposed during these critical windows,

it can actually switch on and off genes that determine their propensity towards obesity later on. So their kind of propensity to weight gain later on in life. So it's really important and kind of critical if you're in that preconception pregnant phase. But in children, too, it can affect their new nervous system development, brain development. The immune system has been linked to allergies and eczema. asthma, those kind of condition. So across the board, we're all affected and we all should be paying attention. Now, the commonest source of that group of chemicals that we are exposed to every single day is going to be in the kitchen again. What are some household items that are

examples? So I would say plastic is the number one kind of source of these endocrine disruptors for us. Plastic is we use about 10. 10,000 different chemicals to make plastic. Two-thirds of these chemicals have never been tested for safety. And 2,000, we know, are potentially harmful. And I would say plastic is the source of some of the most toxic endocrine disruptors, like BPA, thallate. BPA, thallades have been shown in studies to affect fat cells.

So they can make fat cells retain more fat grow bigger. and they can even turn stem cells. So stem cells are cells that are not kind of specific tissues. They can turn stem cells into fat cells. So they make us gain weight, retain more fat. They've been linked to insulin resistance. And the way they do that is by damaging our mitochondria. What do you think about, for example,

there's a lot of these plastic, you know, safe for food containers. You know, people are getting delivery or they're going to the store and they're like, hey, these are microwave safe. They're plastic. They're BPA free, right? Where would you rank those items? Because they're still plastic, but they're being told, people are being told that these things are safe. Guys, if you've ever, ever, ever wanted to try red light therapy, now is the time.

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sale right now. Upgrade your nights and transform your days with cozy earth. F. F. Yeah. Because they're just marketing gimmicks. Tell us why. Microwave save just means that the plastic won't melt in the microwave when you heat it up. It doesn't mean it's safe for your health. So we have a study from, I think, two years ago that showed just three minutes of microwaving food and plastic released millions. and billions of micro and nanoplastics into the food, just three minutes. And I'm not even including things like BPA and Thalate. We're just talking about micro and nanoplastics here.

So imagine the toxic soup that's leaching into your food when you're microwaving food in plastic. That's not safe, in my opinion. It just won't mouth. So on that note, so much of the food that we all buy, even if it's organic or grass fed or wild caught meat, a lot of that is wrapped in plastic wrap. That's just sort of our industrial food system that we're in right now. Right.

Right. I don't think that you're advocating because I know your work so well that we shouldn't be eating those things because a lot of those things are healthy. Yes. It's just that you want people to be aware of making changes where they can. So what sort of changes should people be making? Right. So the first thing is if you use,

plastic Tupperware, swap them out for glass. Glass Tupperware. Yeah. And if you would rank glass Tupperware, just right off the back, you'd put it where? S. S, right at the top. Yeah. It'd be supreme.

Yeah. So any sort of glass option to basically, even if you get food in plastic from the grocery store, try to take it out, transfer to glass. Yeah, because it's contact time, right? If you're minimizing that contact time, you can minimize your exposure. And I love your point about the fact that. you can't really avoid it. Even if you're trying to stay healthy,

you just cannot avoid coming into contact with these endocrine disruptors now because they're everywhere. When they test Americans, 90 plus percent of us have BPA, PFS, Thalates, it's everywhere. And so not to make your listeners depressed, I think it's a really urgent issue that we need to raise and people need to know what they can do to minimize, their exposure, not to zero, just minimize.

And once you minimize that, now your detox organs, the liver, the kidney, sweat glands, they can eliminate these toxins more efficiently because they're not overwhelmed. Yeah, it's almost like we can't avoid these things, you know, completely in our lives, but you have to make sure you don't fall into the trap of, oh, well, just because we can't avoid them, whatever, you know, we just got to, you know, just keep on living our lives and whatever exposure. But talk to us, you know, you are an expert in this space around toxins and the role and the impact they play on our health. Remind people just how important that even with some of these swaps and we have a bunch more

that you're going to be talking about, we can notice significant differences in our toxic exposure in our lives. Oh, absolutely. I'll give you an example. So Harvard did a study. They looked at people who consumed just a serving, so 12 ounces of canned soup every single day for five days. They measured the BPA in the urine. Just doing that over five days increased the BPA by 1,200 percent.

Crazy. But if you then stopped eating the soup for two days, the levels fell to almost nothing. So what that means is you can, what you're doing can actually make a very big difference. So if you just reduced your canned soup consumption by two days, you can now bring that BPA level down. So if you're exposed to BPA from other things that you can't avoid, now your detox organs can get rid of that instead of dealing with a 1,200% increase in BPA. Yeah. In fact, that was on one of your lists. You have a viral post on Instagram.

Please everybody follow. Dr. Chan on Instagram. You have a viral post on Instagram where you talk about canned foods in particular. So we have an icon of canned foods. This is a canned corn that's here. Let's rank it and then let's talk about

what people can be looking for instead. And again, this isn't about throwing out all your canned stuff overnight. This is about minimizing your exposure and also not going crazy because just like me and you. We're going to be eating out sometimes. Even at a healthy restaurant,

they're going to be using canned vegetables, right? We're not going to go crazy and worry about that every time. Exactly. Right. But it's more about controlling the things that we can control at home. That being said, give us an honest ranking of canned foods. They're leaching all over this BPA in our body, apparently. I would say a B because I know that they can be helpful for some people.

So, for example, if your budget is limited. Yeah. And you want to eat beans. Well, beans are still beneficial, right? It's full of fiber. prebiotics and that can actually probably bind to some of the toxins that you might encounter in the in the can so I don't want to put people off and make them feel depressed like that there's no hope because if you're eating healthy food in that can is still better than eating ultra-processed

food right so it's a great it's a great it's kind of a gray area like so if I had a choice and I had the time to make my own beans from scratch that's an S if I can find glass, beans in glass, and you can find those in stores. Yeah, it's not super common, but it's getting more and more common. Right, but it's more expensive. Right. So that would be an A, and then the canned beans will be a B. Yeah, absolutely.

We want to make sure on our grand scheme of avoiding and living a low tax lifestyle, we focus on the biggest movers that are there that are going to significantly move the needle. And then where we can make small tweaks, great, we make small tweaks. being said, what would you say, if you look at the average person here in America, what are the number one, two and three sources of toxins in their life? Go even, you know, big picture. Where is that coming from? The air? The air? Yeah. Okay. So did you know that microplast, one of the main ways we ingest microplastic into our body is through the air. Yeah. So it's floating around, writing on the dust

when you're washing your synthetic clothes, it's being released into the air to when you're laundering it and when you're drying it. It's funny, I didn't realize this, but a third of the microplastic in the air that we breathe comes from tires. Did you know that? I knew it was high. I didn't know how high it was, but tires are largely latex.

and they sort of have a lot of runoff and other things. And I believe there's been some pretty big studies that have been done that show in higher trafficked areas like the Bronx or other highways that are typically, you know, adjacent to lower income communities. You have just massive rates of asthma, which they largely relate to these rubber tires and these latex tires that are. Yeah, 100%. I didn't know that.

So I find that fascinating, well, not fascinating, depressing. but um fascinatingly depressing yeah that's right but i think it's important because i see people running right next to busy highways right how much microplastic is in that air so can you take yourself into like more kind of countryside roads instead of running next to highways sure right and then there's certain cities like la is one big giant highway right right and you're typically you know going to have pretty bad air quality all around. Yeah. But I think you bring up an important point, which is that, okay, you can be air mindful,

especially on sort of windy days where you have a larger particle size or particle count that's outside. Yeah. But a lot of people forget that unfortunately, and fortunately, we spend a lot of time indoors too. Right. And we can do a better job of controlling the air environment in there. What would be one of the best recommendations that you would have?

Open your windows. and also if you can invest in a quality air filter. Because a lot of, you know, they have in small enough kind of microns to filter out the microplasters. Yeah, we have an air filter right in the studio. And a big part of it is that we built this studio out and I have an air monitor on here that's sitting on the desk right over here. And one of the things we saw is that, you know, all the soundproofing is polyester, there's microplast. There's other things. So we leave it running all the time. And I feel like if I don't have the air filter on and I come into this room, pretty much within a few minutes. Like I can feel like, like, I feel like a light, tiny level of feeling like a headache. Wow. Just because I feel like, again, it's a brand new room, new furniture, soundproofing, other things. All this stuff is leaching the air. And our air monitor has shown that the air quality is not great when we don't keep on the air filter. Yeah, yeah, definitely. And one of the main things. Like let's say you've just been out walking close to highways or busy roads.

Leave your shoes outside the home. Don't bring your shoes inside because that's when you're now bringing those microplastic particles into your home and those can now ride on the dust in your home. Every time you're walking around in your home, you're kicking it up and breathing it in. And if you have small children, young children, you know, their hand to mouth behavior means they they are more exposed than, let's say, an adult. Yeah, keep your shoes off. Yeah. Right.

Do what our parents have been telling us, right? Especially if you come from an Asian household. No shoes in the house. Yeah. Okay, so you ranked an air filter, which we have an icon of one of these. If you throw it up, is an A.S? Okay, great. So if you can invest in a good air filter, and again, if you can't,

often just opening your windows and letting more circulation in the house, even in a city like Los Angeles. I see anytime we open our windows, the air quality dramatically improves, even in a friend's house who doesn't have an air filter. Yeah, because we have so many things in our home that are just off gassing all the time. Yeah, well said.

Okay, let's come back to the everyday household items that we're exposed to. Is there anything else besides this category of plastics that you've talked about that falls into this, Indicrine Disruptor category? Or should we move on to the next thing? A big one is fragranced products. Okay, let's talk about that. We have an icon of a bottle of perfume and cologne,

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Well, the problem is that fragrance actually can encompass hundreds to thousands of different chemical. And most of them are not disclosed. They don't, by law, they don't have to disclose anything in that category to you. So it can very often contain endocrine disruptors like thallates. Because thalates, one of the uses for it is to fix scent. If you wash your hair in the morning and you can still smell your shampoo by, let's say, midday,

there's likely thalates. That's keeping the scent onto your hair. We talked about Thalates earlier. There is an obesity, it's an endocrine disruptor. So it can disrupt our hormones. It's been linked to low testosterone, low sperm count, fertility issues in women, allergies in children, asthma in children, and weight gain, prediabetes. I can go on.

It's been linked to so many different chronic conditions. So Thalides is something we really need to be cognizant of. And if you use perfume, I know, I see the perfume, that's going to be an F, your conventional perfume, there's some better ones like thalate-free. Yeah. But if you use perfume, you basically have 300% more thalates in your body than someone who doesn't. That's nuts. I literally get a headache when people wear perfume now and it's small quarters.

And it's just like, I'm like, wow, we need to get the message out. So I'm so glad you're talking about this. But again, it's not just perfume. Right. We have an icon over here of everyday household products. Right. If the company is well-intentioned, what people understand is that these fragrances come from fragrance houses. to add into their product, they actually have no idea what goes into making them.

That's right. And so they couldn't even tell you if it's safe, if it's tested and spoiler alert, they're not tested. They're not. And so nobody actually really knows except for maybe a few chemists at a company what's actually going into something. So we got no clue what's in any of these. Exactly.

So fragrance products, you know, your fragrance cleaning products that's like really popular, right? everybody thinks if they spray something that smells like meadows, then your home is clean. But that couldn't be further from the truth. It's actually dirtying the air in your home. So even fragrance in cleaning products and other household stuff, cosmetics, would you also put that as an F? Yes. Any fragrance products I would put as an F unless you're using high quality pure essential oil. Yeah. And where do you steer people if they're looking for better for you brand?

in all these categories. Where are you steering people? EWG, Environmental Working Group, I think they're one of the pioneers in the area. So they started talking about this many, many years ago, and they have this EWG database. So you can actually plug in products now, and they give a rating.

And what they do is they actually, so if a product that is fragrance, they would actually ask the company, hey, give me the ingredients in that fragrance. And if they don't, then is an immediate down. grade. If they do, then they look at the ingredients in the fragrance and they'll rate it accordingly. So that's what I like about it. So it's kind of, they really cut that work for you down if you

can find a product on that way. Here's one that I've seen you talk about before. And I think a lot of people haven't gotten the memo when it comes to everyday household products around it. And again, is it the most important thing? No, but there could be some awareness around it. And that's aluminum foil. Talk to us about aluminum foil. What is the challenge when somebody's using aluminum foil day in and day out. Aluminum actually leeches into the food you're cooking. So again, acidic food. And if you're cooking at high heat, that actually increases leaching of aluminum into the food.

So if you're wrapping your steak in aluminum and, you know, pouring some lemon juice on it. So that's acidic. And then you're, you know, putting it on the barbecue at 400. that's a recipe. The other thing is I see people marinating in aluminum foil because it's convenient. Okay, so now there's the acid and the salt and it's encouraging the leaching of aluminum and now it's mixing into your food. So I would recommend marinating in glass containers.

And then if you absolutely must use aluminum and I know it's convenient, use it for the least amount of contact time, right? So you've marinated it. You only need to cook it now for, let's say, five minutes, put it on, cook it and then remove it immediately. But better still, you can use bleached parchment paper or just use a pen and wash it. You know, like use a stainless steel tray and I know it gets messy, but if you spray with, you know, a non-toxic cleaning agent and let it sit, it does come off. So where would you rank on our list? Where would you? You rank aluminum foil as an everyday usage. We're not talking about occasionally.

That's an F for me. That's an F. Yeah, I actually don't have it in my home. And what's the concern about it leaching in the body? What is the long-term health implication? Right. So, you know, it's debatable, right? Some people say it's been linked to Alzheimer's

because they've found increased amount of aluminum in the brains of people with Alzheimer's. We don't know if that's a causative or an association. So that's up for debate because for every study that shows an association, there's a study that shows there's no association. But regardless, there's a study that showed that if you use aluminum cookware in your home, you're walking around with increased amount of aluminum in your blood. And when they took the blood sample out and analyzed it, the cells, the blood cells actually showed increased oxidative stress. So oxidative stress is like rust. in the body, it actually causes DNA damage and cell damage and it can trigger cell death.

It's not what you want in your body. It causes inflammation, which is kind of like the root cause of chronic conditions. So on a mechanistic level, if you're looking at that particular study, you know, separating out the blood from people who use aluminum, showing the increased amount of oxidative damage, that's kind of basis for me to avoid it. Yeah. And I think that you mentioned something really important, which is that you might have one study showing one way, another study showing another way, but in general, when it comes to a lot of these things, especially these household items that so many of us are using, we want to take a cautionary approach because the truth is a lot of these things may not get the funding or the level of research to even look at them individually at the highest level to see long-term exposure. What does it look like? your entire life to be exposed these toxins. And then they definitely don't get the funds and we don't have the ability and it's too

complicated to look at how all these cumulatively impact the body. So why not take a precautionary approach, be smart. It's not about doing all these things at once and protect yourself because we just don't know how bad these things are over the course of a lifetime. Yeah, 100%. Anything more that you want to say about that? You know, you've been a pioneer in this space for so long, and you were so early about a lot of these items. You were talking about plastics and endocrine disruptors a long time ago.

And actually, a lot of people gave you a lot of hate for talking about those things. Like, oh, you're fearmongering. This isn't a real issue. What's it been like for you in your career to now see so many of these things having been validated over a period of time? Yeah, it's actually, I mean, I like, I love that people are talking about it more. But yeah, you're right. Eight years ago when I first mentioned obesity, a group of MDs online actually clopped together,

shared my post and said, report this person because she's spreading misinformation. Now, I took the information from NIH website. So they threw their kind of, how shall I put it in a nice way, lack of awareness or, you know, doctors are too busy to read papers, right? They're really too busy looking after patients to read the most after day. science. But because they are not aware of the science, they're pulling information. We're talking about misinformation, which is a disservice to the public. And we know studies have shown that it

takes 17 years for what's been shown in research to translate into clinical practice. That's how long it takes. So we need people like you at the forefront, pioneering and sharing and, you know, leading their way to share information that's important that people can start using to do. day to stop protecting themselves rather than waiting for it to translate to the MDs to say that, you know, 17 years later, hey, plastic is bad news. Too late. Well, on that note, let's rank a few of these things that you mentioned. Okay, so we already ranked daily use of aluminum foil, especially when you're marinating it and

that sort of thing. We put that as an F. But you talked about unbleached parchment paper, which again, if, if, you're, you know, If you're looking for these on the cheap, Costco is a great place. You've talked about that before. You can find a lot of these things. And they're basically the same cost as a lot of the swaps that you've talked about. Where would you put this unbleached parchment paper, which is a good alternative for people

to be using where they use aluminum foil? It would be a B for me because it's still lined with silicone. Okay. Right. Paper is not automatically shiny and slippery. Sure. So the silicone at heat, could it be a consumer? term for psiloxane, possibly.

We don't know. We don't have very much research in that area. But a much better option than traditional aluminum. Yeah, exactly. But an A or an S would be a stainless steel. On that note, how do you feel about these are pretty common? These reusable silicone-based food bags that people are using. They're trying to get away from plastic and these, you know, whether it's Ziploc bags or something

that's similar, some are BPA-free, some are not. But where would you rank these food silicone-based bags that a lot of people use, especially when it comes to kids in their house? Or they might even use it for marination because they don't want to use plastic. Okay. So I would put that as an A for storing cold food. Okay. But I would not use those near heat. Yeah.

Okay, great. So it's an A for cold. Yeah. Right. So if you wanted to marinate something like a piece of chicken breast or something. Yeah, I don't know if I would put something as something as. acidic and though I have not seen studies on acidity and silicone. I have to say I need to look that up.

But let's say, you know, you have bananas that you want to freeze. That's fine. I would use that. So you have soup that you've made that's cooled down that you want to put into those super containers. Those are silicone containers too for freezing. I'm fine with that too. But I don't like those silicone baking mats or.

the silicone retensals where you're like, you know, eating it and cooking with it. Right. So try to avoid heat. And what's a better alternative if you're going to be dealing with heat? Again, if you're trying to stay away from silicone cookware and there was a recent study that was in the headlines around black paint, which ended up having a little bit of a retraction because the math was incorrect, but still the researchers ended up saying that their recommendation is still to avoid.

Right. Black. Can you summarize that? What are they talking about? That's plastic, though, right? So I would never put plastic with heat. Plastic cookware that specifically has black paint. Yeah.

Has a very high level of toxic load. Flame retardant, which is a toxin, a neurotoxin and toxic to the thyroid. And does that still go for silicone-based cookware as well? So silicone have not been shown to release flame retardant, but does that, you know, know, silicone at heat could release psiloxane. And, you know, there's kind of debates around whether that's harmful. Some people say, yes, it is. Some people say, no, it's not.

So, again, I take a precautionary approach. Do I have a better option that's not outrageously expensive? Yes, wood. So why not just go for wood? We have an icon for wooden utensil, right? Where are you going to put that? That's an A. Okay, that's an A.

So talk to us about wood. and are there any considerations around wood? Why do you prefer wood? I prefer wood because wood is naturally antimicrobial. So people think plastic with those sprayed on microband, which is antimicrobial is better. Microbane actually contains endocrine disruptors. I don't want that.

Wood is naturally antimicrobial as long as you look after it. So if you don't let it dry, If it's wet and then you put it somewhere and it starts to grow bacteria and mold, that's not good. But if you let it dry properly, it's actually naturally antimicrobial. So I like a solid wood piece. So you get some wood cookware or cutting boards where it's glued together. So they get many pieces. And then, you know, that potentially could expose you to formaldehyde because of the glue.

VOCs. So a solid piece of wood is best. Yeah, that's great. And anything about it being coated or not coated or... Yeah, I don't really see them coated, actually. Do you? I don't know enough about it. Okay.

I look at it sometimes. I hear people say coded, but again, I'm just trying, you know, everybody here listening, including yourself, we're all just trying to do the best that we can. Yeah, definitely. And I think that's a great time to actually just remember. mind people that, you know, here we are ranking everyday household items. And a lot of these things are super straightforward. Don't often cost anymore and are probably even going to last longer and maybe even save you money. Oh, yeah. Right? If you're going to start and move over to glass

Tupperware, sure, it's heavier. Sure, you might spend a little bit more money up front, although a great recommendation you had is that they're often pretty cheap at Costco. Yeah. Right. You can, you can, you can easily get a Costco membership, save a ton. And you might invest a little bit of money up front, but you're going to save money over the course of time. So these all should be low-hanging fruit that are pretty straightforward for people. You know, if you get a good quality water filter at home, reverse osmosis, and you're not buying bottled water from the store anymore.

You're going to save money. Yeah, 100%. You're going to save money and you're going to be doing better for your health, for your health, for your family's health as well. So these are low-hanging fruits that are there. And they're being talked about with the latest research, which you're breaking down, and with the caveat that you're not trying to stress yourself out. Yes. This should be something that you tackle one item at a time, focus on the biggest movers.

And over the course of even a few months, a few years, you'll radically have dramatically improved your toxic load. Yeah, 100%. So I have cleaners who come and help me clean. my house. And when I, I gifted them non-toxic cleaners to use for, to clean other houses with. And she came back to me two weeks later and said, my nasal congestion is not, it's gone. Wow. So the whole time she didn't realize that the cleaning solution she was using was the call of this chronic post nasal drip, nasal congestion. It's, it's nuts. I've had many stories of family members who switch their laundry detergent from the traditional brands that are out

there that everybody knows to more ego and minimally, you know, less chemicals, et cetera, cleaner for you, cleaner for the environment brands that are out there. And they're like, wow, my kids' eczema is so much better. And that's the only thing that I changed this week. Yeah. Right. Yeah. So one step, like you said, can make a big difference. And I think we should focus on doing one thing at a time. and celebrate those wins. And then when your time and resources allow, then you move on to the next thing. Yeah, that's well said.

Another thing that's out there that is also a good solution is, there's a lot of these stainless steel containers that, and I think you've recommended them before. In fact, people who traditionally use plastic wrap, which I believe we have an icon here for somewhere, you know, all these icons end up merging together. There we go. Plastic wrap that they'll wrap their food in.

They'll wrap other stuff in. I'm guessing you're probably going to throw that as an F. Yes. It's a super thin plastic to use all the time. You've got to have a ton of exposure of microplastic and endocrine disruptors from that. You know the study that recently came out about the plastic in our brain? The microplastic in our brain. I feel like there's been so many studies.

Remind our audience. Remind me and our audience. So I think maybe like a month ago, there was a study that showed that we have about a spoonful of microplastic and brain. So they looked at, they took brain biopsies from people at post-mortem in 2016 and 2022. And they showed that every single sample had microplastic. And the most common type of plastic, microplastic found was polyethylene, which is that type of plastic. So we are exposed to that very frequently for it to be entering our bodies being absorbed, passed through our bloodstream and get into the brain. That's nuts. There's a dear friend of mine and also one of the doctors on my own personal team, Dr. Elroy Vigdani. I don't know if you've connected with

him. Yes. Great physician out here in Los Angeles. And he was telling me that there was even, I'll have to look this up, I'll email him or Google it and we'll put in the show notes below. And also the studies that you've mentioned, we'll collect those. We'll put all the links there so everybody can see them. Yeah. He mentioned that in some cases when they were autopsing cadavers, they were estimating that one third of the brain's weight could be plastic. That sounded crazy to me. Oh, wow. But he mentioned it.

Right. Gosh. Who knows what's going on with those individuals? This most recent study showed the amount of plastic went up 50% just in that short five years. Five years. Between 2016 and 2022. Oh, my gosh. Why did they think that happened?

What was going on? Well, just the sheer amount of plastic weight being exposed to, right? So plastic, the problem with it is that it breaks down in the environment and it doesn't really go anywhere. It just kind of comes back into us. And we're pumping more and more into the environment every single year. So it just all adds up. Yeah.

Yeah. It's all that cumulative exposure. Yeah. So on that note, we have another icon over here. This came from one of your swaps, again, on Instagram, which we'll link to. And it's the idea of a stainless steel container, right? Again, you can use glass. Can you use stainless steel?

Yeah, absolutely. And is there any buying recommendations? And where would you rank it? Well, for stainless steel, you want to look for food grade. So that's 1810 or 188. So 18 slash 10 or 18 slash 8. So those are more resistant to break down rusting and it's just last longer, better quality. Got it.

But if you can get those, then, yeah. Yeah, that will be either an A or an S. Okay, great. We'll put it as an A. Yeah. And you want to make sure that it's stainless steel and not aluminum. You're not looking for an aluminum container. Right, right, right.

Yes, absolutely. Right. You know, when people come to you and they say, what are other low-hanging fruits that are there in my home that are the biggest bang for the buck? You know, you've talked about air quality. We've ranked some of these endocrine disruptors. What else comes to mind? Let's go even bigger picture.

It doesn't even have to be a product. It could be an action that we're either doing or not doing. For example, I've heard you say that if you really care about your body's natural ability to detoxify, you have to make sure. You have to have to have to make sure that you're not constipated. Oh, yes. Talk about that. Okay.

Yeah, that's actually one of the most important things when it comes to. to detoxing and people often go jump straight to liver. They want to supplement their liver or liver cleanse or whatever it is. Well, the liver when it breaks down these toxins, sends it to the gut for the gut to eliminate. It's one of them primary ways we actually eliminate microplastic. We poop it out. We poop out, broken down or inactivated hormones, estrogen, right? So if you're not pooping, you can actually have recirculating estrogen. And now you have, you have, I know the term estrogen dominant is not officially a medical term, but you can have these symptoms where you're kind of more puffy and gain weight,

symptoms of excess estrogen. And then, you know, the toxins that the liver has broken down now also gets recirculated. So you're not actually ever getting rid of these toxins. You're not detoxifying if you're not pooping every single day. And you've got to be pooping proper poops. So if we can get graphic here. So I don't know if anybody checks that poop. Probably not many people do.

Only doctors do this. Isn't there that famous Bristol stool chart? Right. Yeah, exactly. Let me bring it up while you talk. Keep talking. Yeah. So if once you've done your business, look back in the toilet pan.

What does your poop actually look like? Is it a long S-shaped sausage? That would be the optimal ideal poop. Now, if you are, yeah, there you go. So type four on the screen is, for those that are listening, it's a long sausage or snake-like smooth and soft stool. I'm reading the description, okay? So that's a great poop.

Yes. So you want that every single day. Yeah. And you want to, you know, once or twice a day is good. but some people are not pooping every day. They're pooping once a week even, right? You're retaining all those toxins. So any of the other types, there's something not quite right, right?

So types one to three, you're kind of leaning on the constipated side, and then five to seven, you're more diarrhea. Yeah. Yeah. That's great. So for those, and we have a little toilet icon, but let's use that as the icon for constipation, even though they're not going to the toilet

or they're just sitting on the toilet forever. Yeah. Where would you rank, you know, chronic constipation? F. F is one of the worst things for you. Yes. And give us some remedies for those people that are in that category. There are some very simple things that they could be doing

to improve that. Yeah. What are those things? Well, number one, make sure you're hydrated. So if you're not hydrated, you will more likely to be constipated. Is there a rule of thumb, some guidance around that? Yeah, so unless you have chronic heart failure or kidney disease, you should be looking for your body weight in pounds in ounces of water.

So that's what I aim for. Sorry, half of your body weight in pounds in ounces of water. So if you weigh 120 pounds, you want to be drinking 60 ounces of water a day. Yeah. Yeah. And ideally filtered water. not plastic bottled water. That's great.

Another big recommendation that I've heard you share is that it's so easy in this day and age, even if you eat a healthy diet because there's so many tasty, healthy snack foods and other things, we just have so little fiber in our diets. Yeah. And one of the first things people should be doing after hydration is just track their fiber to see how much you're getting. I have so many friends that are shocked to see that they're like, oh my gosh, I eat so healthy and they look at their fiber in a day and they're getting maybe 12 grams of fiber.

Oh, yeah. Well, that's what the average American is getting, right? 95% of Americans are deficient in fiber. They're not meeting their fiber intake requirement daily, which is around 25 to 30 grams. And if you look at our ancestors who, they were likely eating around 100 grams a day. So that's a vast difference of fiber intake. Now, if you can't really go from 12 to 30 in a day, because you are going to get bloated, you're going to get uncomfortable.

And a lot of people have dysbiosis, right? So unhealthy bacteria in the gut, again, secondary to a lot of these toxins we're talking about. So that requires more gentle increase of fiber. So you want to, you know, increase by, you know, five grand. a day, see how you do. And then if you get bloated, you stop and just get, have your body accustomed to it. So I liken it to like going to the gym.

So if you never go to the gym, you never lift weights. You never, you don't go into the gym and suddenly lift 100 pounds. You go in with five and then 10. So you want to do that with fiber. But fiber 100% is essential for detoxing. It actually binds onto toxins and help us remove toxins. And studies have shown in healthy adults, those who eat more plants, they have lower levels of heavy metals like lead and cagmium. That's great. That's a great reminder for everybody. I've heard another rule of thumb.

I believe it was from one of our guests, Lane Norton, he would say for every thousand calories you have, not that everybody's tracking their calories, but sometimes, you know, people in general might know how much they're having. Yeah. You should be shooting for 15 grams of fiber. for every thousand calories. Yeah. Because that will put you to about 30. Yeah. Yeah.

On the minimum, at least. It might be a little bit, you know, slightly different that formula, but we'll put that in the show notes. I know I feel best for me. I probably have like 2,200, 2,300 calories a day. I feel best around like 50, 60 grams of fiber. If I have a little bit more than that, I don't feel that great. I mean, props to our ancestors that have been having 100 grams of fiber, you know.

Yeah. But I feel great around like 50 grams of fiber. on like 50, 60 grams of fiber. I get all the benefits, but I don't feel too bloated or other stuff. And some of my favorite sources of fiber personally, and I'd love to hear on your end, I know there's a whole spectrum of fiber that people can have. There's soluble, insoluble. There's fibers that are high fodmap, low fod map, like I don't do too well with chickpeas,

lentils, even though I grew up eating a lot of those foods. Okay. Yeah. Interestingly enough, when my mom makes them, shout out to my mom, and they're made in more the traditional pressure cooker style, which nobody makes anymore. I do much better. But if somebody's just putting chickpeas in a salad, I feel like I get very gassy, very quickly.

Yeah. So I like roasted at amami. They have like an organic roasted at amami snack at Whole Foods. Interestingly enough, I've tried so many different beans, and I have no affiliation with this brand or type of bean. But there's these beans called Lupini beans. Oh, yes. Yes.

Those are great. So high in fiber. They're high in fiber and I've never gotten bloated from them. So I don't know what's going on with those beans, but I feel so much better. And high in protein too. They're high in protein as well. Yeah, it's great snack. Avocado has a decent amount of fiber.

Yeah, lots of soluble. And then I love berries. Same. I ate a pound of blueberries yesterday. Yeah. Because I ordered from this farm called King Organic Farms. Okay. They're like the only blueberry.

no affiliation with the company. These are just like organic farmers that are doing it right. They're an organic blueberry farm in Florida. And so many of the blueberries that we grow out there, people don't know about this. Again, you're balancing everything you're trying to do. Even if they're organic berries, most of the berries that are out there, they're grown hydroponically in plastic. Plastic containers and their fat nutrients through the water, hydroponic. But they still can call it organic. And then these blueberries are grown in soil and they taste so much better. Wow. And they last literally, they last a month in my refrigerator.

It's kind of nuts. That's shocking. So I had a pound of them yesterday. Great source of fiber, great source of antioxidants, and I really enjoy them. What are some of your favorite ways to get fiber in the day? Oh, fruits and vegetables, for sure. But my favorites, raspberries, very, very high in prebiotics. And probably I would say highest fiber of the berries.

But berries in general are. amazing. They actually help our mitochondria as well. So because they're so antioxidant rich. And if you think about the fact that a lot of these environmental toxins are targeting and damaging our mitochondria and that's how they're exerting the harm, right? So our sex hormones are made in the mitochondria. And when the mitochondria doesn't have energy, now we have brain fog and have all these symptoms. We can't detox it properly. It's so important to eat these things to support the mitochondria. It's part. It's part of the way to protect us from these microplastics and endocrine disruptors. Kiwis are my favorite too.

So two Kiwis a day have been shown to help people with constipation and relieve the discomfort of constipation. So you don't have to eat prunes if you don't like prunes. Kiwis are great. That's awesome. You know, one of the things that is there in this category of low-hanging fruits, that every day help our body's natural ability to detoxify itself is exercise. Oh, yeah.

Let's talk about exercise and where would you rank it on the list? S plus. Why? Tell us why. Exercise has been shown in studies to reduce the risk of 10 plus different types of cancer. It's good for our immune system. It boost the glutathione, the master antioxidant and detoxify in our bodies. it pumps our lymph around.

So the lymphatic system is kind of part of our detox pathways. They, you know, it's kind of the conduit that carries waste material between our tissues to the detox organs and pump things around. But unlike the circulatory system, the lymphatic system doesn't have a pump. So unless you're moving, your lymphatic is sluggish. And a lot of people have this issue. So they're, you know, puffy is one of the signs of lymphatic sluggishness. So like the fluid that sits around yourselves are not moving. So the waste material literally surrounding, it's like not taking the garbage out.

And the garbage is literally, you know, filling up your kitchen and overflowing. So exercise is great for getting our lymphatics going. It's great for brain health. It's great for metabolic health. I don't, I cannot think of a system. in a body exercise doesn't benefit. It's such an important reminder because it's easy to get upset at the world. It's easy to get upset at big food.

It's easy to get upset at all these chemical companies, which largely came from a benevolent, benevolent place, right? They weren't trying to make the environment toxic. They were just trying to make money by making our lives more convenient. Yeah. And they did. But nobody really understood the downside, and that's where we're catching up. But plastics, there's so many plastics that are used in health care and devices and other stuff

that literally have made our lives so much easier and have probably improved the health of the world. Yeah. Right. And that doesn't mean that we have to stay and live in this toxic soup. The reason I'm going on this monologue is that we can't maybe change that overnight. We definitely can't change it overnight, both in the world and our home. Yeah.

But exercise, for example. literally could combat so much of the damage that many of us are worried about by these things. It doesn't mean that we can't reduce that damage that's there. But if you're complaining about all these things and you're getting upset by all the things that we already have ranked as an F on our list and you're not exercising, you have to take some personal responsibility and say, you've got to do the hard things. You've got to major in the majors and not get so upset by the toxic soup that we're in. it is upsetting, but exercising will help combat a lot of it.

Yeah, exactly. We have control over what we do to ourselves, right? It can be upsetting, and I don't want anyone to feel hopeless listening to this. Yes, all these things, you know, plastic in the environment that has to come from the government and regulation level, but we can do things to protect ourselves, and that's really important to remember. Yeah. So let's recap a little bit of some of the list that you had of things that we can do.

So going to the bathroom on a regular basis, we don't have an icon for that, but that's going to be an S or an A. Yes. Right. Not being constipated. Supporting your body's natural ability to detoxify. Yeah. Having a good quality filtration system at home. Yeah.

A little bit of an investment up front, but it's going to save you money in the long term, right? Reverse osmosis is typically what you recommend. So I actually swapped from. reverse osmosis to a different system. And I do agree. RO is probably the most kind of effective. If you don't know what's in your water and you just want one that's going to hit everything, then, yeah, get an RO.

But my approach, because I live in California and water is so precious, a typical RO waste a lot of water, right? For every one liter of water you get from your filter, you're wasting four or five liters. water. That's a big amount of water wasted. So I actually looked up what's in my tap water and I found a filter that was shown by NSF testing to remove that contaminant. And it's not an RO. And the advantage to that is now I don't need to add minerals back into my water because when I did use an RO, it's so effective, it would strip the water of the helpful minerals that you want. So I used to add minerals back in, but now I don't have to.

Do you think this is an area that I've always been confused about? Do you think that a lot of people are relying on the minerals from their water, separate from the water waste, as a key part of their mineral supplementation on a daily basis? I genuinely don't know the question, so I'm asking. Yeah, no, I think that's a great question. You should be getting most of your minerals from your food, right? If you're eating a variety of veggies and fruits, you should be hitting. that mineral goal.

But there's this idea that minerals help you absorb the water right, right, into the body. So there's probably some truth in that. Do you absolutely have to add minerals back into your water? Probably not if you're eating a very plant-rich diet and you're hitting the goals there. But most people are not. So they are relying. Yeah. Great, great.

So water filtration, right? We talked about air, constipation, making sure you're not constipated. We talked about exercise. What are the things are there, now that we've covered a lot of those basics, what are the things are there that you want to remind people of that they can do to support their body's natural detoxification abilities? So let's go to the liver.

That's kind of the biggest detox organ in our bodies. and the liver has phase one and two detoxification. Both of those phases require a lot of energy. So the currency of energy in our body is ATP, again, produced by the mitochondria. So if your mitochondria are not working optimally, your liver can't detoxify. So some of the things we talked about to help with mitochondria and help with liver detoxification. But there are foods that you can eat that would optimize. the liver detoxification enzymes.

So one of my favorites is the cruciferous family of vegetables. So that's your broccoli, your buckchoa, abbage, and my most favorite is broccoli sprout. Yeah. Do you eat broccoli sprouts? I do. Yeah. I do. I take it both as a supplement, sulfurophane as a supplement, and then I like to throw broccoli

sprouts or microgreens into my smoothie. Yeah. So broccoli sprouts actually have two to 50 times more. more sulfurophane than brome broccoli by pound. So it's super concentrated source of sulfurophane. What sulfurophane does is it switches on the liver detoxification enzymes. It also switches on antioxidant pathways in the body. So it does so many things.

It's kind of like this master switch that switches on all these healthy things in your body to combat the stresses in our environment. So I think sulfurophane is really, really important. It's been shown to help with BPA detoxification, for example, and that comes from plastic. We don't know at this point what helps with microplastic detoxification yet because the research is still in infancy, but definitely it comes out in the poop. So, again, going back to the poop, make sure you're pooping properly. So we have a bunch of cassiferous vegetables. Imagine that we also have some broccoli sprouts.

Where are you going to rank them? Definitely S. Yes. Right up there with exercise. and having a filtration system. I actually try to aim for at least two servings of cruciferous every day. So what does that look like for you? And how do you take it?

Are you eating it just raw? Are you getting into a salad? How do you take it? Great question. Broccoli I like to eat. So a key or a trick to getting more out of your broccoli is to cut it first, leave it for 15 minutes for the sulfurophane to eat. form before you cook it.

So because the sulfurophane is kind of, there's a process to get there. And the enzyme to get there gets destroyed by heat. So if you cook it too early, you're actually not getting the most sulfurophane out of your broccoli. So I would saute my broccoli or I steam it. I would have, you know, a serving of that, let's say. And then I'll throw my broccoli sprouts into a smoothie because I don't mind the taste of broccoli sprouts, but my kids are not then, unfortunately. So I kind of hide it in a smoothie.

So if I put, you know, a date and then, you know, raspberries and pineapple, they can't really taste it. Yeah. Yeah. And actually the blending action helps to release that sulfurophane as well. Oh, that's a great hack. I love that. Okay, great.

So we have now added to the list. We have the Cassiferous family. again broccoli one part of it broccoli sprouts supercharged part of it what do you think about you know some of the supplements that are out there that have sulforaphene i can't remember what brand i take but yeah is that another way to also yeah i think so um there is one researcher who says it should not be something you take every day okay interesting yeah he says that you could tip the system too much the other way like too much if you consume it in food form the body kind of recognizes it and contain the level and modulate the level.

Whereas if you hypodose, it may not, you know, on a daily basis. So maybe you take it for two days a week, three days a week, and you give your body a break. So, you know, the body kind of adjust and not modulates by itself. I have not dug into the research of what he said. It's just, I think he's a Harvard researcher. So I kind of like thought, oh, yeah, respect. Well, if you find it, send it over. I've had it on one of the top research.

is on the podcast, Dr. Jed Fahey. Oh, yeah. From Johns Hopkins. He was the one doing a lot of these pivotal studies on sulfurphine. And from my knowledge from the episode, I think he said that, you know, up to a certain dose is okay as a daily sort of support for your body's natural. Okay. Detoxification, but I know things evolve and the research evolves. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. So I usually do it in food form. Yeah. But when I travel, I do take that moment. That's great. Yeah. Amazing.

So we were kind of going on that theme of just a reminder. for our audience that even though the world seems crazy with all these toxins that are out there, there's a lot of stuff that we can do. One that we didn't talk about that is getting a lot more love in the last few years, even though it's been around forever, is sauna. Talk to us about sauna and where that fits into this category of supporting your body's natural ability to detoxify itself. Yeah.

So we know studies have shown that sweat contains some of these endocrine disruptors. right, like valades, EPA flame retardants and even heavy metals. So we are getting rid of them through our skin in the form of sweat. And sauna helps us sweat. So I think that that's one aspect of it. The other aspect is that when you are heating up your core body temperature, now that is a stressor for your mitochondria, just like exercise is a stressor, a healthy stressor for your mitochondria,

to make it work better. So when you go into sauna, you're putting heat stress into the body. Now the body releases beneficial compounds like BDNF. That's a compound that stimulates brain growth. And so there's been studies that show that, you know, sauna can have cardiovascular, lung, and brain healthy effects. Oh, that's fantastic. I know that for a lot of my friends who are all worried about this conversation of

microplastics, we just think like, man, doing a lot of a sauna proactively on a weekly basis besides the fact that it has all these studies linked to improving all-cause mortality and other aspects. It just seems like a nice way to probably get rid of some these plastics that build up in the body. Yeah. We don't know if microplastic can get through the skin. I have not seen a study on that, but I would guess nanoplastic definitely can. Yeah. Fantastic. What kinds of sauna do you like and recommend for people? So I personally have an infrared sauna at home, but that doesn't mean that that's what I recommend. It's just that I don't have space for a traditional finish sauna.

Almost all the studies are done using finish sauna. So they get up to a much higher temperature. My one only kind of goes up to about 150, but it's more comfortable for me. So my kids, my kids are 14 and 16. They go in a sauna too. I put them in a sauna. They don't have a choice. Is it punishment?

You didn't do your own work, get this honor. Honor is a reward where they get to watch their favorite show in the sauna. Oh, that's great. That's great. But yeah, like they don't like the traditional finish. It's too hot for them. A little too hot. Yeah.

So they don't mind the infrared so much. Yeah. I think anything that makes you sweat is going to be great. And even the club that I go to every so often here in L.A., they have infrared. And even though I love traditional sauna, and I've seen all the studies, and we've had on one of the preaminent researchers,

Dr. Susanna Soberg on the podcast. And she's done a lot in cold therapy in particular. She's from Denmark, but she knows a lot about the heat side too. And her protocol is usually 20 minutes at 180 degrees is where you get that benefit, you know, done at least two times a week. But she said, listen, whatever you have access to, even if you don't have a sauna. If you can do a warm bath, not a hot bath that burns you, it should be a warm bath.

Yeah. That you can still sit in. Yeah. You stay in that for a while. You'll start to sweat a little bit. Yeah. Sweating is good. Exactly.

Sweeting is good. Anything that makes you sweat. Exercise. Anything that makes you sweat is going to be good. And an infrared zone is going to make you sweat. Even at 150 degrees, you're going to sweat a little bit. Yeah. Yeah.

It heats up your core body temperature in a different way, right? So that light is actually directly agitating and causing heating of your core body temperature rather than from, is it conduction? Conduction from the heat of the air around you, which is the traditional finish version. Yeah. Yeah. Fantastic. What about red light? This is an area that you're super passionate about.

You actually have a company in this space. I'm a big fan of. Thank you. Talk to us about red light therapy. Yeah. Well, red light. I never thought I would create a product in red light therapy until there was a need to do it. So my dad was bedridden with severe back pain and hip pain a few years back.

And he was misdiagnosed. He actually had a condition, a muscular condition called Piroforma syndrome, but he was misdiagnosed as sciatica and put on the wrong treatment and just escalating doses of opioids. and I was worried he was going to get addicted, and plus he was laying in bed for weeks on end, wasting muscle. So I flew home. At the time, I had a little red light therapy device that I was using for skin rejuvenation for wrinkles and fine lines

because I had started seeing studies on it. But for skin rejuvenation, the light intensity is very low. So when I gave him the device to use, because I also read studies that red light could reduce inflammation, to help with pain and healing, he at first didn't see any effect, but then he used it for two hours a day and he started to get pain relief. So he started to use it consistently every day. And after two weeks, he was up and walking. Now, of course, I did other things. I put him on an anti-inflammatory diet, lots of turmeric and anti-inflammatory supplements too. So it's not,

you know, I'm not saying red light therapy is a miracle. But it was a very big part of his healing. Now, when I got home, I thought, well, nobody has two hours a day to do red light therapy. Only my dad, a retired person has. I need a light that's portable with high irradiance so that it would work to penetrate into deep tissue when you need it. And then you can move it further away to get that low irradiance for skin rejuvenation. And I couldn't find one. So most of the portable devices are very low in irradiens.

And so I created one. And the other thing I was looking for is third-party testing. So just like a supplement, you need the right dose of light to get the effect you want. Right. So if you look at the 2000 published studies on photobiomodulation, which is red light therapy, you'll see that the dose for skin is, you know, around 10 jol, so very little light. but the dose that you need for muscles and joints is much higher like 50 to 100. For brain help is also very high.

So instead of spending $300 on something for your skin and then another $300 for your joints and hips and then another $300 for your hair, why not create a high irradiance device that you can just adjust the distance and then you can get all the benefit. So that's what I wanted to create. And I wanted to third party test it so that I know exactly the irradians. You'd be getting at each distance. So I tested it at one centimeter away and then 15 centimeters away. So I knew exactly what I was getting.

And, you know, I was really blown away by the response because I feel like most people who had tried relight therapy before they tried Lombachs, they couldn't see any effect. That's because they were using a dose that was not right. for the purpose, right? But when you use the right iradians, you can get the result that you want. Of course, you're gonna have a little bit of a bias because you have a company in it, but you gotta rank it still, right?

It's definitely an S. Okay, great, we're gonna put it as an S. Actually, when we talked about red light therapy, I forgot to mention how it works. Oh yeah, talk to us about that. Red light actually can pass through, penetrates for your skin to reach the mitochondria.

We've been talking about mitochondria this whole time, right, as where the environment of toxins are attacking and exerting the harmful effects. So red light is kind of like an antidote to that because if thalates and BPA from plastic have been shown to minimize energy production from your mitochondria, well, now if you shine red light, red light actually can activate the mitochondria through an enzyme called cytochrome C oxidase. And when that enzyme is activated, you produce more energy. You also can increase blood flow by nitric oxide.

And I know I listened to your show about nitric oxide, which I found fascinating. And I agree. I feel like nitric oxide and increasing that blood flow is so important for delivery of nutrients to the tissue and removal of waste products and things like that. So that's how red light therapy works. It kind of, it's kind of like that morning cup of coffee for yourself. It just wakes it up and make it work better. Yeah, no, I'm a huge fan of red light therapy. I, you know, you're always trying to habit stack.

You're trying to take your habits and put them together. Yeah. So what I've found that works well for me is I love to like dim the lights down, usually around like 8 o'clock in our house, all this stuff. So we're not getting blasted by all this, you know, blue light around the house. And then when I start to wind down and I go into my, my bedroom where I have like a little stretching set up. I'll put on the red light in the room. And then I'll also just stretch a little bit. And then what I'll typically do is like a mindfulness

practice, but also to get like the actual, you know, just because you have a red light on the room, doesn't mean that you're getting like all that frequency exposure up close next to you. So then I'll go closer to the red light. Yeah. And I'll have like the loom box like right in front of my face or I'll put it on top. You know, I have a little stand for it. So I'll shine it on top of my, you know, scalp a little bit to get some of the benefits on my scalp because you hear people talk about you know the benefits there right that come in or if I have a little bit of inflammation in some area I might do that yeah so I love to do it in the evening when I'm stretching when I'm winding down and I typically find that you know that helps me also like just relax the nervous system because like

the blue lights off the red lights on and I'm just you know gearing up for a great night of sleep yeah that's a great hack um I love putting near and fred at the back of my neck before bedtime, that just totally relaxes me and sends me to sleep. And in fact, there's a study on basketball players and red light therapy right before bed for them improved their sleep. Oh, it's amazing.

Yeah. And can we, sorry, I want to talk about melatonin a little bit. So we know melatonin mainly as a sleep hormone, right, that's secreted from the pineal gland. It helps us sleep. But actually, it's a really powerful, antioxidant. So during COVID, people were finding that people with higher levels of melatonin were protected because it was a mitochondrial antioxidant. Now, there's melatonin that's released

from your pineal gland that's regulated by light through your eyes. So when you wake up and you go outside, first thing in the morning and you get exposed to sunlight, that melatonin shuts off. And that's a signal for your brain, like, okay, now you should produce melatonin 12 hours later. So that kind of sets your circadian rhythm for that day. But red light, especially infred light, has been shown to make your mitochondria produce melatonin inside the cell. And that is, again, another kind of protective mechanism for the mitochondria to fight that oxidative damage we talked about from all these environmental toxins. So there's actually two different melatonin mechanisms, which I never learned at medical school. And I never knew melatonin was such a powerful antioxidant and protective.

Yeah. You even saw during the pandemic that you had a lot of practitioners talking about the powerful role that taking melatonin could have, especially like a lot of the plant-based melatonins that got a little bit more popular. Right. Yeah. But my question mark with that, was I never knew whether the melatonin would get inside a cell where it needed to work to protect that mitochondria. And that's where red light therapy can be super beneficial. It's kind of produced locally and they're right then then. But I think that kind of gets us on to the next topic, which is the next tip that we should be doing at

home, which is sleep. Okay. Sleep is one of those things. I think that's just so underrated because it's passive. right? You're not doing anything and people are saying, well, is it that easy? Just go to sleep and you get all these benefits. Well, one of the biggest detox times of your day is actually during sleep because we now know that during sleep, especially deep sleep, the glymphatic system in your brain. So that's the lymphatic system in the brain actually drains more during sleep. So the pathways open up and the lymph actually trains from the brain during sleep.

And that's actually a really important way to get rid of the waste material that the brain accumulates during the day. And if you're not sleeping enough, that stuff is not coming out. It's so important. And, you know, I feel for people who, you know, what are the top reasons that you see, especially being a practitioner? Like, what are the top reasons you see that especially people above the age of 40? you feel like, you know, I used to sleep great. Let's start off with women, right? Yeah.

What are the top reasons you see that like, I'm not sleeping well as I used to? What shows up? Perimenopause. Perimenopause. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, estrogen plays an important part in sleep. It can actually impact your melatonin levels. So when the estrogen levels decline, your sleep can also go with it.

So a lot of people find that they can't fall asleep or they wake up and actually wake up in the small hours of the evening night is sometimes due to blood sugar this regulation. So when your blood sugar plummets and you start to go of hypo, the body wakes you up so that you go and eat and you don't die from hypoglycemia. So that's that that reactive hypoglycemia is actually usually the first sign of insulin resistance and pre-diabetes. And so if you're somebody who wakes up in the middle of the night and you're kind of semi-hungry, like check your blood glucose and see.

Yeah. And for the category of women, the parimenopause, gearing up for menopause stage, and the hormone imbalances that come along with it, obviously it's so personalized. But what would be the recommendations to them? Should they be looking for a practitioner who can talk to them about hormone replacement therapy? Should they double down on a lot of like the lifestyle things that we talked about? What directions do you want to send them in?

Yeah. So there's a lot of lifestyle things. can do, right? And I'm not against hormone therapy. I feel like menopause hormone therapy has been kind of put into that demonized basket because of the study that came out about, you know, increased risk of breast cancer and heart disease, which we now know is not representative of most women, right? So that study was mainly done on much older women who normally are not on menopausal hormone therapy, right? You normally want to start women in kind of their late 40s or 50s.

The research is now showing that if you start women, like within that 10 year, the first 10 years of them, the estrogen declining, that's kind of the most beneficial. And that's also the time they're least likely to have the side effects. Yeah. That's great. Yeah. If anybody wants to learn more, we've done a really great interview with

Dr. Lisa Mascone, who's a thing researcher in the space. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, fantastic. Anything else on the category of sleep that you want to highlight? Again, you know, everybody's learning and remembering. And I feel like the word has finally got out there that sleep is important. Now, whether or not people are doing it is a different sort of thing. Yeah. But anything else that you've seen that can dramatically help people, especially in that 40 plus category who are feeling like, my sleep is off. I know it's off. I need to get it better. but I just haven't been able to. What else is very supportive for that?

Stress reduction. So I was going to talk about meditation, which everybody kind of rolls their eyes and starts walking away or falling asleep when I talk about it because, again, it feels like I'm not doing anything. I feel like a lot of people want to be, you know, doing something to get the rewards, but sometimes not doing anything and going within and calming your nervous system down. nervous system down can be more beneficial than active doing. So I feel like especially in the modern world that we live in,

we're bombarded with stress from stress from social media, financial stress, news. We are literally, the nervous system is on higher alert all the time. And it's as if we're facing a saber-tooth tiger every single day. And our body doesn't know the difference. between mental stress and if it's the stress is real like we're facing a saber tooth tiger and we really need to run away or if it's you know social media and we're you know somebody's attacking us or criticizing us or you know we're arguing with somebody so that continued stress actually can lower the

stress basically puts things the body doesn't think is important onto the back burner so it will ramp down detoxification. It will ramp down fertility. So stress has a direct impact on thyroid hormone as well, for example. Why are women so disproportionately affected with thyroid condition? Of course, there's so many different factors. But women also, you know, are carers. They do have to work.

They provide for the family. They have to look after children. There's so many stresses in their lives that the thyroid. is often a place that takes a hip. And I feel like stress, I mean, there's studies that show that if you're stressed, you're more likely to have the vaso motor symptoms of menopause. So, you know, the hot flashes and things like that.

So if you can really kind of regulate your nervous system, right? And that's like the master conductor of our entire body is our brain. And if the brain is constantly telling the rest of the body, You are going to die, run away now, escape, you've got to run away. The body doesn't know what to do, right? It's confused. It's kind of like, oh, I've got to ramp up blood sugar to help you run away. So now you're more likely to run high blood sugar all the time.

We know that cortisol, for example, can pump up your blood sugar, right? So that's the stress hormone. So really kind of taking time. So this is my everyday non-negotiable. I have to meditate. What does that look like for you? Do you have a formal practice? Yeah, so I usually try to do Transcendental.

The goal is 20 minutes, but I don't always hit that. And I like to do it with my red light therapy. I feel like that really gets me into a very kind of calm state where I can get into meditation much easier. If I don't have time, it's a minimum five minutes. So I sit there and I just kind of say a mom. over and over. That's powerful.

I remember reading a few months ago, we had him on the podcast. I know it can be a controversial guy for a lot of people, but we had Brian Johnson on the podcast. And he was saying that one of the biggest things that he's seen when it comes to his sleep score, he's known for having this record of 100% sleep score on whoop is that his sleep quality is directly related to his resting heart rate. So a few things play into that. Of course, winding down at night. He has his own routine that's there.

But also to eating his, he eats his last meal way early in the day. But the recommendation on a practical level for most people is start by at least having, by the time that you're done eating, at least three to four hours before you go to sleep. I know when I have an earlier dinner, not only do I feel better because I'll have dinner, I'll go on a way. walk with my wife around our neighborhood, but I also end up sleeping a lot better. And when I do look at my resting heart rate, my resting heart rate is usually a lot lower right before I go to bed. So whatever your resting heart rate is around, you know, right before you go to bed, versus sometimes I know that even, especially for my wife, shout out to my amazing wife, she'll say that when we're out with friends and I'm kind of

a little bit more of a stoic individual. Like I listen very intently, but I don't have a lot of reaction or other stuff, I just listen, I'll smile and I'll engage in conversation. My wife, in the most beautiful way, is very, she's like everybody's number one cheerleader. She's very extra, right? She's put so much of her emotion and her facial expressions and she's in it. And people love her for that. She's very charming. And she'll come back no matter what dinner we're at.

And she always feels like, I'm so ramped up. Right. And her heart rate is up. And she's like, I never sleep as well. And I'm like, I know, babe. Thanks for taking a hit for the team, you know. We wanted to catch up with friends and that's part of our social life. But yeah, I know winding down at night, eating earlier, those things all help us.

Yeah. Have a better night's sleep. I think that's such a great point, right? Because I feel like people expect now to be working, working, working until 10 p.m. on their laptop, blue light. And then boom, 10, I'm going to go to bed and then fall asleep right away. That's just not going to happen. It's not going to happen.

And, you know, you're a doctor. and an entrepreneur. I have a history of starting companies, and there are periods of your time in your life where you have to do that thing. Yes. That's there. And the hope is that that becomes the exception to the rule,

that the base, or at least whatever you can, you're doing a lot of the things that we're talking here, especially the lifestyle components, so that you set that great foundation. Yeah. That's there for your health. because there's plenty of people that have all the career success and money. Yeah.

And they just wish that they were healthy. Right. And they don't have the health component. Right. There's people that feel healthy that literally feel so incredibly wealthy because they've invested in their body. They've invested in their family and their relationships in their home, in their food, in all those aspects.

And they feel like, you know, they feel so wealthy internally. 100%. Yeah. Yeah. I can agree more. Important. Important, important items. Okay, so that's sleep.

Are you open to ranking a few more of these things that we didn't get a chance to rank? Yeah. All right? And I'm going to take one that I've heard you talk about before. And that is something very simple that many people can do to improve the quality of their air in their home. And that is plants, adding a plant to your home. Where would you rank it? And why would you rank it there?

I would put it, let's say B. A B? Okay. Because I'll tell you why. The NASA study that showed that plants improved indoor air quality, they had literally like 100 plants in a very small space. So you need a lot of plants. You need a lot for meaningful air filtration. But I love them anyway because they just, they make you feel more relaxed

and, you know, you feel happy with plants around, or at least I do anyway. So, yeah, I think it's a great thing. Just look out for mold. Okay, great. So watch out for mold. Yeah, because plants, if you're not looking after them or the soil is waterlogged, often a source of mold in the home. Okay.

Great, great. All right. Here's another one, low-hanging fruit, something that people are waking up about, especially around this conversation around plastics. And that's the idea of these paper cups, which are really plastic. plastic cups, the disposable coffee cups that are everywhere, Starbucks, your local coffee house,

where would you rank these, the daily consumption of these? F. F, if it's daily. We'll put it right there with constipation. Yes. What is the big problem? For anybody who's not gotten the memo on this, what's the big problem? Yeah, so we talked about this earlier, right?

Paper is not waterproof. So for the parchment paper, they put wax or silicone on top. With these paper cups, they put a lining of plastic inside. So you're not drinking from a paper cup. You're literally drinking from plastic. And, you know, in contact with something hot, right? Those usually have hot drinks in them. Heat can increase the leaching and the breakdown of plastic.

So now you're really drinking plastic, really, in your drink. And the plastic lit that often goes on top of them, too. like people drink through them. I know the contact time is not as much as the cup itself, but there is still some chemicals that's going to leach in to that tea or coffee that you're drinking as you're consuming. Especially if you're doing it every single day. Yeah.

I wouldn't do that every single day. I mean, on the occasion, I always have a reusable cup in my back. Yeah. Yeah. I can show you mine. No, same here. Yeah. And would you put a reusable cup?

We have one here. would you put that's a yeah yeah yeah i have a yety i love it yeah and i know it has a plastic top i just take the plastic top off yeah and i just drink right from there yeah and if i need to keep it warm for a little while sure i'll keep the plastic top on top but i don't even drink out of the plastic top for a yety because again i drink coffee or tea every day sometimes two cups right am i going to live another you know knock on wood i live a long time but if i I'm going to live another 50 years, 60 years from now, I don't want to be drinking out of a plastic hot thing every single day.

Right. And you can see that those Yeti lids, not to any other brand that's out there, those plastic they get, even if they're made with higher grade plastic, they get cloudy. Oh, yeah. And cloudy is a sign of it getting degradated. 100%. Yeah. Yeah.

Definitely don't put those lids into your dishwasher either. So a lot of people think that that's good because it's. disinfecting the lid, what the high heat and detergent combination and the length of time is in that dishwasher at high heat can actually increase the leaching. And they've shown that in studies. Yeah, it's a big problem. Yeah. All right. Here's another thing that's a big problem when people go shopping. And that's receipts. Yeah. I feel like I'm still seeing so many people who have not gotten the memo about traditional receipts and why they're such an issue, like a sales receipt that we'll get.

What's the problem with them and where would you rank them? Thermal paper receipt, well, that's a F because the BPA on those thermal paper receipts are not bonded to the paper. It comes off very easily, transfers into your skin as you're touching them. And it's even worse if you've just used hand sanitizers that actually includes. increases the penetration of the BPA into your bloodstream through the skin. So if you're going to touch it, don't use hand sanitizers beforehand. And better still, just don't get them. Like, you know, get an E receipt.

I feel like that's really common now. Like I get asked all the time, do you want a receipt? Do you want a receipt? And I actually just say no. And if you must keep a receipt, then try and get like an E receipt instead. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

That's a great thing. If there's a moment or situation where I have. to get a receipt. I'll even sometimes just tell the cashier, oh, you can just put it right here. I'll take a photo of it. Right. Right.

Yeah. Because usually I'll only need a receipt if it's like a business expense or whatever. And you can just, I take a photo in my Quickbook app, you know, where I go my bookkeeping for my companies or I just take a photo of my email and I forwarded over there. Great. I love that. I love that.

I'm going to seal that idea. Because you're never, even if you keep a paper receipt, they just accumulate over a period of time. And it's not like anybody's really like, filing them appropriately, a photo is going to last. When IRS asks you like three years later, hey, what did you do that day? Now you have to expose yourself to the BPA going through it. Yeah.

Yeah. But I think there was a study that showed that cashiers had higher levels of BPA. Yeah. And my heart goes out to all the cashiers, you know. They just nobody knows. And there are places that are out there that are starting to get BPA free, but receipts, but I still worry about what other chemicals are on. The alternatives, right?

The substitutes. Like is it BPF and BPS? So I see now, which I love, a lot of cashiers wearing gloves. Yes. If you're a cashier, if you have to interact with receipts, get gloves. Yeah. That's going to be a great solution. Definitely.

And if you can't, then regularly wash your hands. So you can wash that off and minimize the contact time. Yeah. You know, here's another one that you've talked about that's gone viral a few times. And that's going back to this category of fragrances, these are. scented candles, right? Not only do you get the scent, but also people don't realize like candles indoor and burning them frequently. It contributes to poor air quality. Oh, absolutely. It's one of the biggest air polluters in the home because paraffin candles when burn actually releases

PM2.5, which are small particles that you breathe in and travel through your bloodstream. and cause inflammation in the body. It's been linked to increased risk of dementia and, you know, for pregnant women, pregnancy complications. So PM2.5 is bad news, but it can also release something called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, PAA. So that is actually a carcinogen, some types of PAHH. So you really don't want to be breathing that. So parathin candles are out. That's an F, especially if it's artificially fragranced.

Again, going back to fragrance, you don't know. Yeah, so you're releasing phallades and all kinds of VOCs into your air along with the P.A.H and the PM2.5. If you must do it, have an air filter in the room. Or open the windows. Right, exactly. Or you can go for soy coconut. Beast Wax, those don't tend to generate a smart pH. Yeah.

I've measured them using my portable air monitor and the one that I have at home. And you still get a lot of particulates in the air. You do. I have a portable air monitor that not just looks at PM2.5, looks at PM1 and PM.5 as well. Wow. And it always shoots up anytime something's burning. 100%.

Yeah, because that's just the nature of combustion. That's combustion. You can't get away with it. So you can get the melts. Yeah. So it's like a heat source on top and the wax melt underneath it to, you know, release the scent or artificial candles. Yeah.

Yeah. You know, this is one that I think that a lot of women are still getting the memo on. There's a lot of alternatives out there. But feminine hygiene products, the traditional ones that are out there. Yeah. Why should people be concerned about them? and pay attention to what they're purchasing. Yeah, that's a great one because I feel like there's not enough research on here,

but I do get a lot of anecdotes from patients and, you know, clients who use conventional feminine hygiene products and switch to organic and say my period crimes have gone, or I don't have the constant irritation, or I don't have my recurrent BV, bacterial vaginosis anymore. Why is that? Because a lot of the conventional products have pesticides. So cotton is heavily sprayed. So conventional cotton is going to have pesticides.

We have a microbiome in the vagina as well. And that's really important for maintaining vaginal health and preventing infections. When you disrupt that microbiome, now you can be more susceptible. to recurrent BV or infections. And the conventional products also can contain fragrance, believe it or not. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So people want it to smell good down there for whatever reason.

So there's fragrance that's going to be endocrine disruptors, literally going into your reproductive organs locally. So that makes sense as to why those periods, cramps can improve, right, when you switch to organic products that don't have these. And a lot of these conventional ones, they're like hyperbleached. Right. Leach is another problem. There's other things that are there. So chlorine is another antimicrobial that's going to disrupt the pH and also the microbiome in your vagina. Yeah. And a lot of tampons have been found to have dioxin, which is a potent endocrine disruptor that's linked with breast cancer.

and endometriosis and PCOS. Wow. So it goes without saying, but that's an F. That's an F. And there's so many options that are better that are out there. You can go to EWG, you can go to different databases, and there's so many more better for you brands that are out. Oh, yeah.

So look for organic. Right. And then, you know, you want to look for the unbleached products. There's a brand that I really like called Rail. I'm not affiliated with them, but they're really clean and I like them. But there's so many now on the market too in Target. And it's not much more expensive than conventional. And I feel like it's one switch that's not too costly that is worth making.

Yeah. You have, you said two young boys? No, I have a girl and a boy. Okay. Yeah. How old's your girl if you don't want me asking? 16. What have you been seeing in this day and age?

obviously they come from a household that is really on the up and up on these things. But even every parent, no matter how hard they try, their kids are growing into young adults and they're going to be their own person one day if they're not already their own person. Yeah. Right. What are some of the things that they're consuming or their friends are consuming that have you in a place where you're like, oh, you know what? I really don't like this.

And I'm hoping that with the education and the home-cooked meals and the things that they're learning, that one day they'll realize that they'll back off of that. What is there? Gosh. You're like, okay, let me actually get out my Google Doc. That's a list. Like, I'll give you an example, right? Yeah. There was a recent independent group that came out.

It was this entrepreneur and he made a bunch of money in tech. And he's from actually the Bay Area, San Francisco. And he used a half a million dollars of his own money. and he launched this project called Plastic List. Have you seen this? No, I haven't. Okay, I'll send you the link on Twitter. I'm blanking on the entrepreneur's name, but we wrote a whole news that are about it.

And he said, okay, I'm going to take the common things because everybody's talking about plastics, thallates, microplastics, other stuff. I'm going to take the most common things that I eat in a day. And these are often healthy things, a lot of them. And I'm going to have put my own independent team of researchers, and we're going to work with a lab. And we're going to do proper testing and sampling. and we're going to send it in to see exposure of different plasticizers that are inside of the food. Okay.

They measured all sorts of things. One of the highest things that came back on the list was the daily Bubba tea. Oh, yes. I'm aware of that study. Yes. The Bobat, yeah, the Bobat tea was number one. Now, what he wanted to share with people is that often these companies, and by the way, I'm not throwing shade on Boba Tea, another really high. high source of plastics inside of there. And I think they were looking at BPA, polyureol, they weren't

looking at microplastics. Okay. Because that's still an emerging science. Right. Right. And I've talked to a few labs that are there. They're still standardizing exactly the way that they do it and other stuff. Very difficult. But they looked at, what did you say was the number one plastic that was there? Polyethylene. Polyethylene. They were looking at polyethylene and a few others. And they even found that grass fed ground beef from Whole Foods had a high level. And there was all these different speculations as why was it? Why is that going on? What's there?

But bottom line is everything that he was consuming in the day had some plastic exposure. But there were some things that had astronomical levels. And you can go and see it at PlasticList.org. One of the number one things was Bubba tea. Long story short about this, and I'll hand it back over to you to talk about your kids and what you're worried about or trying to figure out how to improve. the brand actually reached out that he tested and said, listen, we have no idea where this is coming from.

We want to do better. Can you help us? Wow. And they actually set up a little process to help them investigate and put a little bit of team because is it coming from the tapioca that they're ordering from a bigger supplier? Is it coming from something else? Is it coming from the kitchen? A lot of people don't realize, but you cannot have,

even if you're a great brand that cares about people's health like a sweet green or a whole foods or whatever. You cannot have in the state of California, you cannot have wooden cutting boards. Right. You have to have plastic cutting boards. And I think in some cases you might be able to have steel or some metal surface as well. But you cannot have wood cutting boards. So is it coming from, you know, the plastic cutting boards? Is it coming from this?

So they're going through this process where they're trying to figure out where is it all coming from. But that just blew my mind away. Every younger cousin of mine, I was like, you need to like watch out. for your boba tea. Oh, yeah. It was a month worth of plastic exposure, I think. Either was a month or a year, something crazy, in one single serving. Do you know if it's the boba itself or the drink?

I think that they took a sample, multiple samples that were there at different times. And I have to imagine that they're taking both some of the liquid and as well, one of the boba, the tavioka bowls, right? Okay. I'm imagining it's got to be because if they're looking for I believe what they did for certain drinks is they blended it because we talked about talked with one of the researchers that was involved. You're trying to get a ubiquitous sample that's there.

So I believe they blended it and they put it in Ziploc bags that have already been standardized for the level of plastic inside of them. So they doesn't add extra contamination. And then they sent it in. So I don't know what it was, but I think it was blended. Oh, okay. Okay. Yeah.

Because, you know, the cups that Boba comes in is, plastic as polyethically. Right. So you would assume that it's going to have some from the cup itself. Right. And they also looked at like Starbucks coffee and they looked at this, which did rank high, but Boba ranked exceptionally high. Wow.

For whatever reason. Anyways. Yeah. So that's a very popular drink. I have so many friends whose teenagers. Yes. They're obsessed with Boba. I don't know if all Boba is the same, but that is enough to at least raise the alarms.

100%. Yeah. I am concerned about that for sure and my kids are obsessed with it. But we limit it. So they know that it's not like the best in a world for them. But I also have learned being a parent of teenagers is that if you are very strict with them, you almost put that food on a pedestal when they now think it's cool to sneak behind your bags and consume those things.

Oh yeah. Everybody went through that. You went through that growing up. I went through that. Exactly. You pushed too hard. you're going to get retaliation. Right.

Right. So then, so this is what happened, right? Like growing up in my household, my kids know which ingredients are good and that, they don't think of it that way, actually. They just think what's nourishing, what's not nourishing. And, you know, there's snack bars. I buy the better ingredient snack bars at home, which they don't like. They like the super high sugary ones.

And my daughter's high school installed a vending machine, which I didn't know. about. And all of a sudden, across like the span of a month, she was covered in acne. Oh, wow. And I thought, what just happened? Like, are you very stressed at school? And anyway, the truth eventually came out. She had been consuming like two of those bars a day because she's like, you know, I can't get it at home. I can only get at school. And she was like, you know, having the time of her life with these bars. But she learned her lesson. She actually wrote a whole, but she wrote an e-cook book.

And she just added to it and talked about her experience, like food really can impact your health. This is what happened to me. And when she cut that out, her skin went back to normal. Wow. Yeah. So that's how powerful it is.

And I try to let them learn that hard lesson because I don't feel like breaching helps. My kids are both tennis players. So one of the things that I absolutely can't stand is the Gatorade. The matches. So when I go to Matches, like one of the items that are always on the request list is Gatorade. And I'm like, why do we need Gatorade? Like they don't need it for hydration.

They only need electrolytes and water. If they need, you know, a source of carbohydrate, eat a banana. But, you know, that's a battle that I have. have with even the parents. The parents actually think Gatorade is good for them because they've been conditioned or marketed to think Gatorade helps them rehydrate and refuel and recover. So I actually did a little session with the kids and the parents, which the kids absolutely hated because I was taking away one of their favorite things.

Yeah, yeah. It reminds me, I saw this meme. Like the original Gatorade was not like crazy. It was water, sugar, salt. salt, potassium, and lemon juice. That was the original Gatorade. Wow. Obviously, now there's dextrose, there's phosphate gum.

We'll put this graphic up. I'm sharing my screen, but it's not the most natural flavors, yellow five, which hopefully I think is being banned right now by RFK. But yeah, the original Gatorade was not crazy. Right. But it just has gotten so crazy in this space. Yeah. Like, why do we have to, I can't.

I moved here from the UK. Okay. And we don't use those same food dyes that are found in American food. So Doritos in the UK, my kids sometimes used to eat at birthday parties. I took them to a birthday party here and they were eating Doritos. I picked up the packet when I first moved here. And I was so shocked to see that the ingredients were completely different. Right. It's really a problem. But the good news out of all this is that it really does feel that the momentum is picking up and people are paying attention. Yes. For a lot of my friends who have teenagers, they're starting to notice that it's trending on things like TikTok and social media for a lot of the kids that they're waking up and then understanding that like, okay, maybe I shouldn't always be eating fried seed oils. as like a huge staple in my diet. And, you know, it's going along with this awareness and them learning from other people. But I think you made an important point, which is that you can't push too hard. If you do, you'll get all this revenge behavior that's there.

And as somebody who ate like crap all throughout high school, at home, I ate great because my parents were very healthy and made home-cooked meals. When I got into college and I would see how often my college roommates would get sick and how poorly they ate, how quickly a lot of them gained weight even, right? The classic sort of freshman 15 or 20. That's actually when a lot of the behaviors and lessons that my parents taught me kicked in.

And I was like, I don't want to be unhealthy, right? I don't want to be dealing with all this other stuff that people have. And I've seen so many of my friends say that their kids went through the same thing. They leave home. All of a sudden,

they see how other people are living and they go rave back to the values that you taught them in the household. So it's worth doing, even though you get pushback. Yeah, you're going to get pushback. That's going to be there. We gave our parents push back in some capacity.

And that's all part of the process. But yeah, health is becoming more mainstream. More and more podcasts from all sides of the political aisle are talking about health. And people are realizing that this topic of toxins, everybody cares about it. Right, right. Everybody wants their household, their food for their kids, for their family, for themselves. they want a cleaner source. And people actually do care about the environment as well,

especially when you stop preaching to them and you start educating them, which you're so great at doing. And I want to acknowledge you, you know, there's not that many doctors that are up and up on the latest research, but then there's also not that many that use a platform like you do on Instagram and going on podcasts to make it relatable, make it fun, which you absolutely did in today's episode. And I think that's important because people just want

to get educated. And then they're going to prioritize in their own household, what's the right fit for them? So we got to make sure we don't fear monger, but we present the right information. And of course, the majors that everybody can do, which you did in today's episode. This has been a huge blast for me.

Oh, yeah. And I know for our audience as well. Any final words that you want to leave our community with? Well, no, I just want to acknowledge you and the work you're doing. I feel like we need pioneers who are pushing the way and leading the way and not scared to like show the evidence when they first come out, even though people might strike you and say, that's nonsense or it's misinformation, like they did to me, just to have that courage, right?

Because it's so important for people to realize. And I agree, like, health is literally bankrupting the U.S., right? The amount of money we spend on health-related costs and just plastic, a lot of. the Endocrine Society estimated it cost $250 billion in 2018. Wow. In healthcare costs. It's just ridiculous. And we need to raise awareness absolutely that.

So I want to thank you for doing that. And also doing it in such a way that, you know, is not fearmongering and just panicking everybody. and just sending that message, like doing one thing at a time really can make a difference. Don't think, oh, it's just so overwhelming. Toxins are everywhere.

I may as well just not do anything. That's not, you know, even if you just do the one thing, like cut down on consumption of canned food, see how much difference that can make. It's a 1,200% difference in your BPA levels, right? That's a massive difference from one little. action. It's so true. It's such a great reminder. All little things they add up. And while you're doing the little things, which we gave you plenty of swaps and things to focus on today, never lose sight of the

big things. Exercise, great sleep, right? Community. Yep. Meditation. Poop and poop. Yeah. Yeah, you got a poop. Yeah, you got a poop. Where can people go if they want to keep in touch with you and find out more about all the great stuff you're out too. Thank you so much. So I am active on Instagram. My handle there is at plateful.com. So that's P-L-A-T-E-F-U-L dot H-E-A-L-T-H-E-A-L-T-H-H-E-A-L-T-H-H-E. I also have a website. And please use Drew's link if you want, if you're interested in a loombox. Yeah, we'll put that in the show notes below. Dr. Vivian, this has been fantastic. I'm so glad this worked out. We've been in touch for a little while. now, but we got you on the podcast, and I think it was a great episode. Thank you so much for having

me. It's being so fun. Hi, everyone, Drew here. Two quick things. Number one, thank you so much for listening to this podcast. If you haven't already, subscribe, just hit the subscribe button on your favorite podcast app. And by the way, if you love this episode, it would mean the world to me. And it's the number one thing that you can do to support this podcast is share it with a friend, share with a friend who would benefit from listening. Number two, before I go, I just had to tell you about something that I've been working on that I'm super excited about. It's my weekly newsletter, and it's called Try This. Every Friday, yes, every Friday, 52 weeks a year, I send out an easy-to-digest protocol of simple steps that you or anyone you love can follow to optimize your own health. We cover

everything from nutrition to mindset, to metabolic health, sleep, community, longevity, and so much more. If you want to get on this email list, which is, by the way, free and get my weekly step-by-step protocols for whole body health and optimization, click the link in the show notes that's called Try This or just go to Drew Perot.com. That's D-H-R-U-P-U-R-O-H-I-T dot com and click on the tab that says try this.