Dhru Purohit Show - Toxicologist Reveals the Top Sources of Hidden Toxins We’re Being Exposed to Daily with Yvonne Burkart, PhD, (Rebroadcast)

Episode Date: September 18, 2024

This episode is brought to you by Cozy Earth, TUSHY, and Fatty15.  Hidden toxins lurk in everyday products, increasing our risk of chronic diseases like cancer. These toxins can be found not only in products absorbed through our skin but also in the air we breathe and the water we drink. By learning about the impact of these hidden chemicals and where they are commonly found, we can make better consumer choices, limit our exposure, and improve our health and that of our families. Today on The Dhru Purohit Show, we are rerunning one of our favorite episodes with board-certified toxicologist Dr. Yvonne Burkart. Dr. Burkart reveals the top sources of hidden toxins in everyday products, including cosmetics, cleaning supplies, and household items. She discusses the latest research on toxin exposure, identifies common toxic ingredients and their sources, and shares her top tips for protecting ourselves from these toxins and optimizing detoxification in our bodies. Dr. Yvonne Burkart is a 22-year veteran of Toxicology with expertise in reproductive toxicity, particularly endocrine disruption, infertility, and cancer. She has also served as a Senior Toxicologist in the flavor and fragrance chemical industry, where she helped to ensure the safety of flavor ingredients, and is now a whistleblower on the lack of regulations in that field. Dr. Yvonne is on a mission to help consumers slash their toxic exposure with confidence and ease. In this episode, Dhru and Dr. Burkart dive into (audio version / Apple Subscriber version): Research confirming that hidden toxins in our cosmetics can turn on cancer genes in our bodies (2:01 / 2:01) The most common ingredients found in cosmetics that should be removed and everyday products that contain them (6:30 / 6:30) Why companies continue to use harmful ingredients in their products (12:11 / 8:52) Why consumers generally believe the industry’s blanket statements that chemicals are safe for the body (17:29 / 14:10) Why fragrances added to cosmetics or household products can be toxic and their impact on our body (19:09 / 15:50) How hidden toxins can have an obesogenic effect (24:49 / 21:30) Top 5 toxins that should be avoided (26:55 / 23:36) The power of glutathione, how to support its natural production, and supplementing with glutathione (33:46 / 28:30) The importance of breathing quality air and filtering water (53:17 / 48:01) Supporting the detoxification of microplastics and testing exposure (1:04:26 / 59:10) What conscientious consumers can ask companies to provide them (1:08:04 / 1:02:48) Products that Dr. Burkart has found to be surprisingly toxic (1:10:02 / 1:04:46) Dr. Burkart’s tips for minimizing her children’s toxic exposure (1:35:46 / 1:30:30) For more on Dr. Yvonne Burkart, follow her on Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, and via her site.  This episode is brought to you by Cozy Earth, TUSHY, and Fatty15.  Right now, get 40% off your Cozy Earth sheets. Just head over to cozyearth.com/dhru and use code DHRUP. Upgrade your hygiene routine and take care of your hidden skin with Hello Tushy. Go to hellotushy.com and use the code DHRU for 10% off your order. Fatty15 is offering an additional 15% off its 90-day subscription Starter Kit. Go to fatty15.com/dhru and use code DHRU to replenish your C15 levels for long-term health. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hi everyone, Drew Brod here. We have a crazy interview today. This interview we posted on YouTube 10 months ago, it has over 2 million views. It's with the world's top toxicologist Dr. Yvonne Burkhardt, and she's here where re-airing this episode that came out 10 months ago to talk about the top sources of hidden toxins that are spread throughout our life and spread throughout the day. If you're curious about this topic and how these toxins are increasing our risk of chronic disease and even contributing to things like cancer, today's episode is absolutely for you. Now, a little bit more about Dr. Yvonne Burkhar, who's a 22-year veteran of toxicology. She has an expertise in reproductive toxicity, particularly endocrine disruption, hormone disruption, infertility,

and even cancer. She's also served as a senior toxicologist in the flavor and fragrance chemical industry where she helped to ensure safety of flavor ingredients and is now a whistleblower on the lack of regulations in that field. You're going to hear a little bit more about her journey today, but after going through her own health crisis, from exposure to harmful chemicals and working in these labs, she witnessed firsthand the power of a low-tox lifestyle, which means reducing.

We can't get rid of all the toxins in our life, but we can reduce our exposure. She switched to that low-tox lifestyle, and she started to see amazing results, and that's why she's on a mission to help consumers slash their toxic exposure with confidence and ease. She's going to get into all those recommendations, but first we start off the interview by talking about a pretty pivotal study, although it's a small

study, about how these toxins can potentially contribute to the encouragement of cancer cells in the body. Let's jump into it. Dr. Burkart, welcome to the podcast. Here's something mind-blowing I learned from watching your content and being a fan of you. I learned that there's these hidden toxins in our everyday cosmetics especially, which we know that, Women use a lot more of them than men. There's these hidden toxins that are in our everyday cosmetics that can actually turn cancer genes on inside of the body. My mind was blown when I came across this, and this is related to a study that you broke down on your YouTube channel. Tell us about this study and what some of the findings were.

This study is literally groundbreaking in that there's a long-held belief in common culture as well as through the cosmetic industry itself, that beauty and personal care products don't contribute to our toxic load. They don't contribute adversely to our health, and they don't increase rates or risk of disease. This study basically completely shut that down. For the first time, we have been able to see exactly what certain ingredients are doing in the human model, in the ethically cannot study chemicals in humans. We can't subject people to toxic chemicals and see what happens. That typically happens in animals. Unfortunately, a lot of these chemicals are being released into our personal care products, into our consumer goods. And it isn't until after decades of use

that we start to see correlations and associations with disease. And this study basically asked 41 women to switch out their beauty and personal care products for a very short time. for 28 days, just 28 days, switch out your beauty and personal care products and stick to a list of approved products that does not contain parabins, phthalates, and other phenols, which are endocrine disruptors. Just to give you a background on endocrine disruptors, these are chemicals that are xenoestrogens that interact with estrogen receptors in the body. They can cause a host of health issues ranging from cancer, infertility, miscarriage, cognitive decline, and so much more. When these women switched out their products.

So what they did was they took measurements by injecting the breasts of these really, really brave participants. They took breast cancer cells, measured breast cancer genes before and after the intervention. So the intervention, like I said, was very simple. Only switch out your beauty and personal care products, avoiding certain ingredients, paribins, thallates, and phenols. After 28 days, they saw a significant reduction in breast cancer gene expression. which is huge. This is in humans. So this is, we're not talking about rats that were subjected to extremely high doses,

which is what you normally see. This is doses that you would see in products that are being sold on store shelves that people are using day in and day out as we speak. They have not been banned. They haven't been outlawed. They are still very much prevalent in the marketplace. I mean, mind-blowing. What are the implications?

You know, it's 41 participants. but as you mentioned, it's human beings, and it's also not just like an observational study. They're actually looking at these cancer expression of cancer genes inside of the body. What are the implications for especially all people, but especially women who are listening to the podcast today? The implications would be that even though there's 41 women, this study showed that the breast cancer genes were activated when they started, meaning that the products that they were using with those ingredients were responsible. for activating those genes. Once they took those ingredients away, breast cancer genes turned off. What does this mean? This means that once you stop using products that contain paribins,

phallates, and other xenoestrogens, that breast cancer genes turn off, meaning you reduce the risk of developing breast cancer. One of the risk factors for developing breast cancer is the activation of breast cancer genes. That's the first step in the process of developing cancer is the genes need to be turned on. Something needs to be turned on because estrogen is actually a carcinogen. It's naturally occurring in the body, but what it does is stimulate growth. Stimulate growth in estrogen responsive tissues. The breast, the brain, the uterus, the cervix, the gut even has estrogen receptors in it. So these estrogen receptors are all over our bodies. And when we're putting products on our skin that have estrogenic ingredients, they're getting absorbed

through the skin into the bloodstream and traveling to areas of the body that are responsive to estrogen, clearly the breast. Mind-blowing. You know, you mentioned a few of these ingredients that they had participants removed. Can you reshare what those ingredients are? Absolutely. Parabins being one of them. So there are several different types of parabins. And you can find these on your personal care products just by turning the bottle around and looking at the ingredients list. And you can see methyl paraben, butyl paraben, propyl paraben, those tend to be the most commonly used parabins. There's a long-held belief within the cosmetic industry that these parabins are innocuous, that the amount absorbed is so low that it doesn't matter. But clearly the study shows otherwise. What are some everyday products

that listeners are using? Literally this morning when they wash their face, when they are putting makeup on, what are some everyday products that you see people using that are sold on the store shelves today, especially here in the United States, that would be an example of being similar to the types of products that women would be using in this study and would contain these ingredients like paraben. This is an excellent question, and I set out to do research myself. I walked into a store, and I picked up several products to see how many out there still have parabens. What are the major products that I see being promoted online that still contain these ingredients? One of them being serravi. Serravi is one of the major brands out there right now. Some of their face washes still

have paraben in them. For no good reason, parabens are completely unnecessary. They're basically used to extend the shelf life. They're preservatives. They don't need to be used. There are plenty of other safer alternative preservatives out there. And it's basically because they're extremely effective and cheap. So they're not being phased out as of yet. Other products that I found were Nibia body lotion, which I personally used for quite a long time. And the issue with body lotion is that you apply it generally over large parts of the body and you don't rinse it off. So the chance for toxic absorption is greater than any other type of product. If there's these studies that are popping up, like the one that you mentioned, which we've linked to in the show notes, people can take a look at it.

We've highlighted on YouTube for those that are watching there. Title being the reduction of daily use of parabins and thallates reverses accumulation of cancer-associated phenotypes within disease, free breast tissue of study subjects. So we have the link to that. So if there's more of this type of research that's popping up, why are companies that are out there, multinational, large conglomerates, why are they still using these ingredients in the products? There could be several reasons for this. One of them is definitely profit-driven simply because of the effectiveness and the low cost, but also the higher cost of having to substitute their ingredients. but it isn't until consumers become aware of these problematic ingredients and demand safer ingredients that some of these companies will actually start taking action.

So that's really the purpose of why I felt it to be so important to share this information because most people who are using cosmetics these days are young women. There was a study showing that up to 70% of young girls below the age of 12 are actually using cosmetics, being lotions, fragrances, makeup, any of those type of products that are to enhance physical appearance, those are considered cosmetics. And kids are starting to use them at younger ages these days. And this is something that we really need to pay attention to since disease rates are skyrocketing among younger populations.

So they're not disconnected, I think. And not only do we need to pay attention to it, there are actually, lifestyle aspects that we can all take on. Sure, choosing better products is an easier one and you've build out a whole entire platform on Instagram. Please everybody follow Dr. Burkhardt on Instagram. But there are also lifestyle tips that we're going to get to and one supplement in particular that is incredible at supporting our body's natural ability to detoxify. We're going to get to all that in a minute. So some of this might feel like doom and gloom, but it's for everybody's awareness, including my own awareness as well, that we don't have to live in this toxic soup,

which is an experiment. We all don't know. In fact, one of the main messages that you share on social media is that nobody knows for certain what is happening to the human body when you combine all of these different ingredients together and you course them over a lifetime of exposure. Can you chat a little bit more about that? Absolutely. When it comes to understanding the safety or the toxicity of a chemical, let's say, most studies are done in animal models, so rats and mice. And they're given extremely high doses

for short periods of time, maybe longer periods, but when it comes to doing these studies, they could be million dollars. It could take two or three years to study. Most companies are not going to do this because it's not mandated anywhere for them to do this, except in Europe. Europe has much stricter regulations when it comes to cosmetic ingredients in particular, and just ingredients in general, simply because of how their health care system is set up. So they're more of a socialistic setting. So it does not benefit the government for people to get sick, right? Whereas in our country, we live in a more capitalistic society.

Things are different here. So it's more focused on profits as opposed to people's health, unfortunately. And so when it comes to understanding the complexity of chemicals that we're exposed to, there is no way to apply that into a laboratory setting. There's just no way. Everybody's using different types of products. People eat different types of food. We have different genetic backgrounds. It's really difficult to make any meaningful conclusions with the complexity.

There's hundreds of thousands of chemicals that are being registered and released in. into the commercial space every single year. There's no way to keep up with that. There's no way to study all that. Nobody knows. So the framework is innocent until proven guilty, which is exactly what we see with this study on parabenza valleys. Fascinating.

Yeah, Europe, I believe, has the precautionary principle. And, you know, not to say out there that, you know, European governments have their own challenges and their health care system. and obviously there's a lot of beautiful things about capitalism, and I say that as an entrepreneur that are great, but you're just highlighting the contrast that when one of those, especially in the United States, can get so out of whack, people are left to fend for themselves. And luckily, as we have in America, most people are waking up today from podcast and social media, which is where you've really made your voice known on social media is that people are hungry

for getting to the root of this. They're not believing the common PR statements that are out there, which is, hey, these products have been tested and they are safe. Talk to us about that. Because people are like, well, these companies are telling us that this product is labeled as non-toxic, or this company is telling us that these have been tested and that they're safe. Or even I would see PhDs on the other side of things, say all of these are looked at and tested by the FDA and the ones that are not, these are all generally regarded as safe and we have no scientific evidence that any of the stuff amounts to anything. What's wrong with those blanket statements? I'll start with the last one that you

just said, which is we don't have any evidence that any of this is toxic. That's the problem. There's no evidence. There's no data. There's no studies. When things are considered generally recognize as safe, they are grandfathered in, they are ushered in. Well, Well, these were added to commercial products within the last hundred years. Sure, just let them slide in. Whole categories and classifications. Exactly. So my personal experience is with flavor and fragrance chemicals.

A huge number of those chemicals were just grandfathered in, generally recognized as safe, because they were already being used. But nobody tested them to begin with. So it isn't until later that we're like, hmm, maybe these chemicals aren't. innocuous after all. Maybe all of a sudden there are concerns with some really popular fragrance chemicals that are now endocrine disruptors and being pulled from shelves. They're now becoming restricted and banned. But the places that are enacting these restrictions are not the US, unfortunately. Let's talk about fragrance. That is part of your background. People think, wow, I love fragrance.

I personally don't. It gives me a headache. I don't feel great about it. As you can see in our studio, I have a high-quality air filter. You know, I have all these components that I had to share with my wife, who was obsessed with candles, who's now on the train with me, and we use beeswax candles, which is one of the things you recommend. But what is it about fragrance? You know, why is it that fragrance would be included in this list of hidden toxic things that are not just found in perfumes, but you see that fragrance is added to everything. dish soap and then going back to what we previously talked about, even many of the cosmetics, lip bombs, lotions that people put on their face. So how are fragrances made and what are some of the hidden toxic ingredients inside of them

that could be and are most likely incredibly problematic to our body? Fragrances are generally not coming from the source that you think. So a lot of people think they see the word natural fragrance on their label. Oh, it's natural. It must be fine. Well, that just means that it wasn't synthesized from an unnatural source, but it doesn't come necessarily from a rose. If you have a rose scent, it doesn't have to come from rose. So it can come from any other quote unquote natural source. A certain percentage has to be natural. And a certain percentage can still be unnatural. It's very ambiguous. There's a lot of gray area. And there aren't strict regulations on it because the industry. regulates itself. That's a whole other issue. But some of the hidden toxins and the issues that we have with fragrance are, number one, you mentioned how pervasive they are. They are literally in everything. Lipp products don't need fragrance, in my opinion. A face lotion doesn't need fragrance, but people like them, people enjoy them because of the sensory stimulation that we receive. And we are, in my opinion, becoming overloaded with these fragrance chemicals. The amount of

fragrances that are being churned out year by year, they're being pumped into public spaces. There are people that constantly send me messages asking what they can do. How can they get, for example, their apartment building to stop pumping fragrances into their gym? They're trying to exercise and get away from this and be healthier, only to be exposed to something that they're trying to get away from. Some of the hidden toxins are endocrine disrupting thalates. So the International Fragrance Association, or IFRA, is the,

the industry self-governing body for the fragrance industry, they have a list of what they call the transparency list. If you go on their website, you can actually search and see all the different types of chemicals that could be in the umbrella term fragrance. There are nearly 4,000 at this point. So it can be, the word fragrance can be any combination of nearly 4,000 chemicals, any combination. They include phallates, endocrine disruptors. There are carcinogens in there.

Styrene, for example, that's a known human carcinogen. Nothing is being done to regulate these because the industry regulates itself. When those fragrances come into your body, again, you chat, talked a little bit about it in the beginning, but just to connect it back to fragrances. So those thallites are coming into your body. What is the potential consequence, right? We don't fully know, but at least we do know that thallates have an impact. on the body that are exposure. So again, remind everybody what's actually going on physically in the body that these ingredients would be doing, especially if we're regularly exposed to them?

Well, thallates have estrogenic activity. So xenoestrogens, meaning foreign estrogens that are coming into the body. They are not naturally occurring, and they activate the estrogen receptor. And what that does is endless. You know the human, let's say, science has not. not yet fully studied exactly what's happening when the estrogen receptor gets activated. But for example, one of those components that we know is that when young girls are exposed to higher levels of estrogen, they can get puberty, they can get their period and hit puberty much earlier. Like you're talking about in some communities, often it's the most disenfranchised communities.

You have doctors that have been on this podcast that are saying that we're seeing girls at eight years old, right? getting their period, developing breast, these other things, which is not what the body would normally be doing. So early puberty, there could be all sorts of disruptions for infertility that could be there. Are there any other examples? Yeah, absolutely. There's actually studies on young boys that are being exposed that develop breast tissue,

gynecomystia in young boys. There's actually a shortening of the anogenital distance, which is a little. measurement of the distance between the anus and the penis, and the shortening is an indication of feminization. Wow. And that has been shown with thallite exposure. Also linked with thallite exposure is actually early depth. So the higher the amount of thallates that you are being exposed to over your lifetime can correlate with when you die. If that's not shocking enough, I don't know what is. These chemicals are not to be overlooked or to be ignored, simply for the fact that it affects your lifespan. We are going through a time in humanity where, again,

we talked a little bit about women, you mentioned about young boys, we're seeing amongst adult males a massive drop in testosterone. Now, we know that one of the major contributors to that is obesity, right? Obesity is one of the things that will drop testosterone. What a lot of people don't talk about is that some of these hidden toxins that you've mentioned also can have an obisogenic effect. Can you talk a little bit about that? What are obesityens that are often in the environment and kind of part of these hidden toxins that people are going through? They're actually one and the same. So the same chemicals that we've been talking about today, the paraben, thallates, and even ones that you may have heard of called P-FAS chemicals.

So anything that's having an effect on the estrogen receptor can also stimulate your fat cells to store fat. And the ironic part is that the more fat you have, these chemicals come in, they get stored in fat. So it's just an endless loop of being exposed, storing more fat, getting exposed, storing more fat. And then these chemicals are being stored in your fat. So you just can't escape them once they're in your body, except for detoxifying, right? So supporting your natural processes of detoxification combined with practicing avoidance as much as you can. So they're in your body.

You want to get rid of them. You also want to avoid bringing more in. Yeah. I heard a doctor on this podcast previously a physician, a colleague of mine who said that if you have a bathtub and you're filling you with water and that water, let's say it's pristine water is supposed to be clean, right? Outside of naturally occurring minerals and things that are inside of it, it's supposed to be clean. Now all of a sudden, there's another faucet on other side that's putting in polluted water inside of it. No matter how much you try to clean

your bathtub, no matter how much you try to shovel that polluted water out, if that polluted water is still coming in, you're never going to get that bath water clean because you constantly have exposure coming in. And this goes back to your main point, which is avoidance. If you had to say, based on all of the research that you've done, your background in this space as a toxicologist, what would be a few, let's say three to five, biggest bang for the buck, things that we should be avoiding like categories right like our fragrances and candles the most important is it cosmetics is it you know this thing how do you put together a sort of coherent uh order of operations that most people everybody's circumstances are going to be a little bit different you know men may

not be wearing in general makeup so that might not be the top of their list but What is the biggest bang for the buck when it comes to avoidance of toxic exposure? I'll start with what is necessary for survival. So, number one, we need air. Without air, we'll die in a few minutes. So the quality of our air is massively important for our health. And you've mentioned the candles, the fragrances, the scented products, things of that nature. So being aware that we can easily avoid a lot of these negative exposures in the air, that's huge.

So simple things like opening your windows and reducing your exposure to these fragrance chemicals, those are going to go a long way. Second, we all need water to survive. Clean water. Filtered water. Unfortunately, our water supply around the world is polluted. just plain and simple it's polluted with all different types of consumer products, pharmaceuticals, toxic chemicals, pesticides, heavy metals, whatnot. We need to filter it. So the better water filter you can get, the better your health will be because we're mostly made of water, right?

Third is we need food to survive. Food, when we eat unprocessed, ideally organic. It doesn't doesn't have to be all organic. I know some people may have differences in what they can access, but just eating whole unprocessed foods is already going to be a huge reduction in toxic chemicals through your food. Especially ultra-processed foods. I believe there are some studies that back to sub. We'll have to look it up afterwards.

I didn't prepare it for today's podcast. There tends to be a higher concentration of thallates, you know, chemicals, carcinogens in ultra-processed food, which includes a lot of the fast food that people are eating that's out there. Exactly. Processed meats that come from that sort of category. There's just going to be more exposure, more processing done at scale. Sure, it's super cheap, but it's in chemical plants and it's preservatives and it's this and it's that. So just even stepping away from ultra-processed foods as the foundation of your diet, I'm hearing you say that's a major step in the right direction.

Absolutely. Food processing. So anytime you process every step that you add to this process of making ultra-processed foods, you're adding some other unknown, undesirable chemical in there. For example, solvents, food packaging, plastic chemicals that are leaching into the food, so on and so forth. So if you can cook your own meals at home, whole unprocessed foods, that's going to be huge. Next, in order of what we actually.

need, some people need things like oral care products, right? A lot of people use oral care, personal care products. So the very basic necessities, things like toothpaste, body lotion, things of that nature, deodorant, if you choose. Try to make those as low tox as you can. Low toxe, meaning not trying to be non-toxic zero-tax because that doesn't exist. Low-toxic just means choosing the better option as best as you can, as frequently as you can. And I hope that gives hope to the listeners that we don't have to dump everything and run and hide. It's not about living in fear. It's really about making conscious and intentional, informed decisions about what we're buying

and applying to our skin. So that would be number four and number five. if someone chooses to have makeup in their lives or cosmetics or some kind of product to that effect, then again, trying to choose the least toxic option as much as you can, especially for products that go on your lips since there is some ingestion involved. I'm going to go through each one of those categories and ask a few more questions about them on behalf of the audience. Before we do that, I want to talk about your background in a particular molecule compound inside of the body that also could be a supplement, that actually could play a crucial role in helping us

reduce our internal burden, hence supporting our body's natural ability to detoxify. And that is one of your number one most recommended things. Can you talk about what that is? Yes, it's glutathione. It's the master antioxidant, which I think doesn't do it justice to what this molecule can do. It's very simple. It's three amino acids. We all have it in our bodies.

The highest levels are found in the liver and kidney, which are the detoxification organs that we have. And the third would be our reproductive organs, interestingly enough. That's how important this molecule is in protecting us. It protects not only just life, but also being able to reproduce. Yeah. When I heard you break that down initially, I was mind blown. Essentially if I understood, and I might have this incorrect.

But you're saying that there's literally glutathione is so important for our protection that obviously if the human race cannot reproduce, that is a major problem. We're all gone, right? Both for men and for women. So is it that you were saying that glutathione is literally found in the testes and the ovaries or that it's synthesized there? Can you break that down? It is synthesized there. It's found there. It's synthesized there. And once it's depleted, once it's gone, it doesn't come back. That's nuts. I mean, literally nuts like testicles. It's nuts. And ovaries as well, too. That's crazy. So essentially, you're inferring that the body finds glutathione and the unburdening of any toxic exposure. Prior to even the modern industrial world that we lived in, obviously human beings would have exposure to naturally occurring toxins in the environment. It could be forest fires.

It could be carcinogens through eating and cooking, you know, food that's overcharged. It could be whatever, stuff inside the water. So you're inferring that it's so important that it's a protective layer to protect our reproductive organs? Absolutely. That's exactly what it's doing. We actually did studies on animals that were born with a genetic mutation to have decreased glutathione. What we saw in those animals when they were exposed in utero to carcinogens that we would find, like you said, in cooked meats, charred meats, things of that nature, just naturally occurring in the environment. We found that the offspring actually had infertility, had fertility issues, and also developed cancer at some point. Multigenerational effects, transgenerational, meaning they were exposed in utero, their kids and their grandkids had problems.

So if you don't have enough glutathione on your body, your whole family tree is f***ed up. Pretty much. To put it directly, that's pretty much. If you don't have enough glutathione, you're done. You're done. So I just want to add one thing, you know, just because I've shared it inside of your bio that we've shared in the beginning. But like this is what your PhD was on, right? Yes.

Can you share a little bit more about that work? How did you decide to make that a part of what you would get your doctorate in? I actually discovered toxicology almost by accident. I was looking for a summer job when I was in college. And so I found this lab. A woman professor was doing research on glutathione. And I said, what is glutathione? What is this toxicology research?

I had no idea what it was. I was washing dishes for her and just observing from the background. And I just became so fascinated with what she was working on. And I just thought, my gosh, this has such far-reaching implications that if people only knew how important this molecule is in our health, our longevity, pretty much the foundation, the pillar of health. what we could do to live longer and live healthier. Because it isn't just about living longer, because we don't want to just live longer and be sick, right? We want to live longer and be healthier at the same time.

And glutathione, in my opinion, is really at the foundation of it all. And just to go a little bit further is that obviously, we'll get to this in a second. You know, your body, you can get glutathione from a supplement. We'll get into that. That's a whole kind of thing. and that could be useful in certain sections, your body naturally produces glutathione, and it recycles glutathione.

Another thing that I learned from you, and there are things and lifestyle behaviors that we can all be doing, and maybe some of us are, and there's some that we can turn up the knob on a little bit, to increase our own natural production of glutathione. So let's talk about that. What are some of those things

that are the foundational lifestyle pieces that we could all be doing today to make sure that our body is naturally recycling and producing enough glutathione. So the first thing is toxic avoidance. Glutothion is not just an antioxidant. So when I say not just an antioxidant, it sounds so simple. It's just helping us to prevent oxidation, right?

That's not the only thing. It actually will become, it will bind to toxic chemicals and help them to leave the body. So it's an active participant, critical place. in the process of detoxifying chemicals, environmental chemicals. So the first thing that we can do is practice toxic avoidance because we don't want to be depleting glutathione. By the way, glutathione is required just simply for the fact that we breathe oxygen. The process of cellular respiration generates free radicals

that require glutathione to neutralize them. So if we're already using a certain amount, right, just base level, and then you're adding in all these other chemicals, Well, then there's these other fires that glutathione needs to put out. But it's like, oh, well, I got to prioritize just living. So let me just live, survive. But then it means that a bunch of the other stuff is still burning in the background, if that makes sense. It's like the entire city's on fire.

So the fire station has to decide what to prioritize. And they're like, okay, we can't let the mayor's house burn or we can't let this school burn, which is the right thing. But then everything else around it because they don't have the resources because the entire city's on fire ends up burning. Right. And that's typically what is likely causing so much disease to pop up because we're, number one, we're already being born with a higher toxic load than our ancestors were simply because of the environment, because of, you know, how we're living these days, unfortunately. But then factor in the fact that we're adding to it every single day is not helping. And so the glutathione that we have is under tremendous pressure now. We only have a certain amount. Our bodies make glutathione, like you said, and it recycles it, but it recycles it only if the body isn't in a state of inflammation, isn't in a state of oxidative stress. So things that are increasing inflammation and oxidation are things that we need to avoid. And toxins is going to be one of the first one in that category. Absolutely.

It's something that we can all do. We can avoid, to the best extent, we can avoid adding new toxins that we expose ourselves to directly. we can at least pump the brakes on that and say, okay, you know what, I'm not going to use an air freshener in my car. I'm not going to use an air freshener at home. I'm not going to use these fragrances all over the house, including candles, which are pretty toxic. We're going to get to that in a minute. I'm going to minimize and I'm going to choose healthier options for cosmetics. In fact, you have a whole partnership where I think a company where you sort of have ranked different products that are better for you.

Is that correct? Yes, so I'm actually the head toxicologist at the SwellScore, and it's my job to actually vet and handpick these products that go onto this wellness platform, meaning that they have to undergo rigorous screening from myself. We need to look at the contaminant reports. We need to look at the certificate of analysis. Of course, the ingredients are extremely important, even down to the packaging and how sustainable the company is. a lot of these, a lot of our products out there, 99.9% are in plastic, right? That's just the norm. But this is something that I'm urging all of us to move away from, is from, move away from buying products that are packaged in plastic as much as you can. It's impossible to avoid

it all, but as much as you can, right? If there's something that you absolutely love and you don't want to give it up and it's in plastic, just try to make a better choice maybe in another area if you can. Yeah, it doesn't have to be all or nothing. Right. So I want to give a little plug to the SwellScore. Tessa, could we bring that up? Theswellscore.com. I actually wasn't familiar with it before I, you know, started following your work. And we can share our screen for those that are watching on YouTube. So this is a website and you guys have different categories, sauna and infrared, supplement and food, beauty and bath, household sale. And then people can, you know, they could sign up for like an email list and you'll keep them posted about things. And then within each of these

categories, you break down what are the better products for people? Exactly. So all the products that we have on the swell score have been vetted by doctors and scientists. So myself being the toxicologist on board, we've got naturopathic doctors, medical doctors that are all on board with vetting these products. So it's basically your best bet at finding the safest, healthiest products under one roof so that you don't have to do it all piecemeal. we're holding companies accountable.

We're scrutinizing them and putting them through a rigorous vetting process and only the ones that pass can actually make it onto the swell score. Beautiful. So if you click on the category up top, Tessa, beauty and bath, for example. You know, you can scroll through and you have subcategories on the left-hand side. It's manufacturer. But you could put in candle. We were talking about candles.

So if you could tap candle, then great. There's another candle kit that's there. Or you could hit body wash, right? If you go back, that's an area where people are trying to find, you know, better you know, alternatives and you can see a few categories. And my guess is, again, because you guys are very meticulous every month you're adding more products in different categories. Right. Because it takes time to be able to do that. Amazing. Yeah. It's a continuous process, continuous endeavor. I'm extremely passionate about this because I wish I had something like this when I started my low talks

journey. Amazing. Beautiful. Okay. Let's come back to Glutifying. Wanted to give a plug. Love companies that are doing amazing things. Swellscore.com. You can find in the show notes below. And, You can sign up for their email list. Let's go back to glutathione. So you were saying that our body naturally produces glutathione, but if we have such a toxic burden because of all these chemicals that we are exposing ourselves to, cosmetics, fragrances, et cetera, then our glutathione is busy and so it's not as effective, so to speak, because there's too much burden. Now, once, that's why number one in your list of things that we can do to support our body's natural glutathion process and production is avoidance.

Let's go from there. Let's give a number two and three. Are there other lifestyle factors, food, are there other lifestyle factors working out, etc., that also support our body's natural production of glutathione? Absolutely. So the second one would be through diet. We can provide the building blocks that are necessary for glutathione production as well as glutathione recycling through the diet. So eating foods that are rich in sulfur because sulfur is the part actually within the

glutathione molecule that's doing the hard work. It's the sulfur. So things like broccoli, cruciferous vegetables, garlic, onions, sulfur-rich foods, those can go a really long way to provide the building blocks. We also need protein because glutathione is actually. actually tripeptide, so it's three amino acids. So we need the amino acids, glutamate, cysteine, and glycine. And you can get that through food. You can also get that through supplementation. I personally take weight protein because there have been human trials showing that weight protein

consumption can increase glutathione levels, which I find to be really interesting. Nonetheless, we can also exercise. Exercise is a huge driver of glutathione. So initially when you exercise, there's actually a small period of oxidative stress that happens. But this is an adaptive response. This is to stimulate glutathione. So there's a little bit of oxidation that happens, but it's a good thing. And I don't think we necessarily need to turn that off by pumping in a bunch of glutathione. I think what we need to do is just allow the body to do what it needs to do, which is make more glutathione.

And that can be after weight training as well as aerobic exercise. Incredible. You know, you were mentioning about sulfur and how important that is. that'd be all the classification of cruciferous vegetables, right? So just name a few that are out there that, you know, broccoli you mentioned. We had on Dr. Jed Fahey on the podcast, who's a researcher, I believe, that he is with Johns Hopkins, and he was the one that did the research into sulfurophane and how broccoli sprouts have one of the highest concentrations of sulfurophane, which is an incredible detoxifier inside of the body.

Yes, absolutely. So broccoli sprouts, you can actually increase the amount of sulfurophane in your broccoli if you add some mustard seed on top when you cook it. That will increase the amount of sulfurophane. But also what I learned is that broccoli that's been previously frozen will not have the same level of sulfurane because of the enzyme that's required to create it actually gets denatured when you freeze the broccoli. So fresh broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, the really sulfury vegetables, leafy greens that you hear about.

There's a lot to it. And I think the fundamental is that it's actually being mediated through glutathione a lot of these benefits. Yeah, not to mention the extra fiber that you'd be getting inside of your diet. I will say that there are some people that I know that I really have a hard time with cruciferous. Maybe they grew up picky eaters. You know, they're not getting enough of these broccoli and, you know, they might vomit at the side of broccoli sprouts. Even though I love broccoli sprouts, you pour in a little bit of olive oil, sea salt, I'll just eat them by themselves. Like, they taste amazing.

In those instances, I think that there's some pretty good supplement options that are out there that have sulfurophane inside of them. You know, I'm not affiliated with any brands, but people can look them up and just get from a high quality source. Maybe even at the swell, you guys have the swell score, maybe even have some sulfurine recommended supplements. So just to recap, avoid toxins, number one, to the best degree we can, getting our recommended levels of exercising, and we're big fans on this podcast of resistance training, right? And sprints is another thing that we're a big fan of. So that is supportive. Of course, supporting our sleep, which has many other benefits, but there's a natural detoxification

process is going to happen. And I'm sure that's all tied in with glutathione as well, too, in supporting. those mechanisms, and then having a diet that includes things like sulfurophane and sulfur and a lot of the cruciferous vegetables. Those are the main things that you would say for glutathione. Is that accurate? Yes. It's very simple, actually. Very simple. Very simple. And everything is connected to everything. We're not just doing this to have better glutathione. We're doing this to improve our overall health, which is the good news in all of this. It's not that there's one diet that's perfect for avoiding toxins.

And then there's a whole separate diet that's good for your brain. And there's a whole separate diet for your heart. All these things overlap together. So even though it feels overwhelming, that we're exposed to so many different toxins in the environment, the good thing is that the solutions are very straightforward. Yeah, they can be tough, but they're straightforward in doing it. Okay, now let's go to glutathione supplementation, right?

Is it worthwhile? And should we be considering to include glutathione as a supplement form, especially if we have these other things, you know, taking care of in our life. I wouldn't say that across the board, supplementation is for everyone. Definitely consult with your health care provider before you start any type of glutathione or supplementation in that regard. But something that people have found to be useful, a lot of studies on this is Nacetyl-scysteine, which provides the rate-limiting amino acid cysteine for glutathione production. The issue is that you can't supplement with glutathione as is because it requires a transporter to get into the cell.

So it's not often, it's not efficient that way. Liposomal glutathione can be useful since it's already in liposomal form. It will just diffuse into the cell membrane, right? That's the idea. But some people have found benefit taking nacetyl cysteine. The issue is that if you have a genetic predisposition to have lower glutathione production, certain enzymes, genetic polymorphisms in those enzymes, and you may not, be able to synthesize enough glutathione even with NAC.

So that's one of the reasons why it is so important to practice the avoidance first, because if you do have the genetic predisposition to decrease glutathione, then practicing the avoidance will just help you to maintain what you do have because you may not be able to make it as quickly or as efficiently as someone else. One of the thing that we didn't mention inside of it is that are there any other supplements that would be useful in addition to glutathione, I've heard you talk about high-quality fish oil as being something that could be supportive

when it comes to minimizing our toxic exposure and supporting our body. Is that accurate? Actually, it would be something like vitamin D and magnesium. Those have been much more well-characterized in fish oil. Fish oil has been studied to a certain degree, but there's more evidence and more information about vitamin D and magnesium.

Now, let's back up for a second, and I said we're going to come back to this list. you gave us this order of operations of things to focus on. First, the things that we are absolutely, definitely, most positively, that we need to survive. And that first one that you mentioned was air and air quality. I've heard you share this on podcast before. We've written about it on our Try This newsletter is that most people, especially in this day and age of force fires and everything that's going on, especially here in North America, but in other parts of the world too, this summer, Sicily was on fire, you know, it's crazy.

Most people are surprised to hear that the EPA has said multiple times, but I believe the original source was from a position paper that they put out in like the 80s. We pulled it up on a previous podcast. We'll link to it in the show notes saying that indoor air quality can be up to three to five times worse. Your indoor air is worse than the outdoor air, even in cities like Los Angeles, where I live. How is that possible that our indoor air quality could be so bad inside, even in some of the biggest cities in the world? It really has to do with our lifestyle. So a lot of people don't open their windows, which is the easiest and cheapest way to get fresh

air into your room. And in fact, if you open the windows for an hour, depending on the size of the room, an average room, you can exchange the air in that entire room. So fresh in the air within an hour, just opening the windows. But of course, if your outdoor air quality is worse than your indoor air quality, then that won't help, right? So it's really about the human activities that we're doing day to day, cooking. We don't really want to avoid cooking because we need to eat, right? And it's better to cook food than it is to not cook food, right, than to eat the process stuff. So we want to cook our food. But having adequate ventilation is absolutely paramount. fundamental critical. If you are cooking, turn on the vent fan. Make sure it's venting outside.

Open your windows. If you don't have a vent fan, take a fan and blow those fumes out and open window. That will do you a heck of a lot of good. And also don't burn your food because it's basically about the particulates that are coming out from smoke. So we want to avoid generating smoke. Another one is we don't want to burn things unnecessarily. For example, burning candles, there are definite use cases for that, but a lot of people burn their candles and they don't open their windows. So they're just trapping in a lot of these toxins

that we're creating that don't need to be there. And then excess moisture can lead to mold formation. So if you're not getting adequate ventilation, sunlight and things like that, into your room, so your home, you could get mold as well. So there's a lot of things inside the home that can very easily go awry.

And now all of a sudden these things, even some things we think of as being good. When I was young, I was really a big fan of, like, incense, right? And these are natural incense that have not had fragrance added to them, right? There's a whole category of incense that are fragrance added. And I would love that smell. It would remind me of, like, visiting temples in India and, like, you know, like a spiritual journey. And, like, it was great.

And then one time I got my first sort of air monitor. And I saw that, you know, the air quality as soon as I lit these incense, the level of particulates that are in the air by parts per million. This was like a live air monitor that had a reading on it. The air quality was scored from a zero is the worst to 100. And generally because I would keep an air filter in the house, I'd be around like 90, 95, you know, somewhere around there. And I lit an incense and I let it burn for about an hour.

And I came back in the room and the air quality was like 71. And that was just after an hour. So there was an immediate tank in air quality based on the part. particulates in the air. So there's so many different ways that our indoor air can expose us, but it's very easy to avoid those things. As you mentioned, you know, anytime you see smoke, whether it's from cooking or a candle or anything, you've got to imagine that there's particulates inside of the air. So just opening the windows is a huge component. Air filters. Is that something that you guys look at at the swelled? Have you looked at different air filters and which

ones are good to use? Yes, absolutely. So it has to do a lot with HEPA, of course. That's going to be the air filter that's going to trap the particulate matter that we're speaking of. Those tend to be some of the most toxic air pollutants, but also having a carbon filter to capture some of the volatile organic compounds that are generated from fragrances and things like that that you can't see necessarily with your eyes. Those being trapped on a carbon filter can also help tremendously. But something else I wanted to mention on top of just opening your windows is taking off your shoes before you come in the house. Oh, yes. Because you're tracking in so much actual physical, you know, gunk from outside, that's actually contributing to air pollution as well.

Because you're just walking around and constantly kicking it up. If you're bringing more in every day and you're not cleaning every day, then that starts to accumulate. Ah, great reminder. I mean, I grew up in a household that you had to take your shoes off, right? Asian households. Your background is Vietnamese. Absolutely. If you wore your shoes in the house, you would not be allowed back in. Yeah, yeah. Totally. So that's an easy one. So there's plenty of easy things. Many things that a lot of us are doing, but maybe we're not doing them at the frequency, or maybe we are doing them, because a lot of this audience is quite aware. And we need to give ourselves

a pat on the back and say, great, you know, you're doing a good job. In this toxic world that we are live in, in terms of exposure, you're not going to get around not getting exposed. There's going to be something. You're going to walk into a room. You're going to go into a gym. You're going to go to your office and they have air fresheners everywhere. There's going to be something or another. And slow and steady, you can reduce your total burden.

That's there. You don't need to freak out. We're not here fear-mongering. You're just trying to spread awareness that there's simple things that we can all do. So let's move from the next category. So we started with air. And then let's go to water. What kind of water filter do you use at home?

We have a reverse osmosis unit at home that hooks into our water line. And so that's what we have for drinking. We also have a whole house filter. So it's pre-filtered water that even goes into the reverse osmosis. But something that I've been exploring also are countertop distillers. So the process of distillation will purify the water to the highest degree, but it removes everything. So we would like to add minerals back in. And you can do that yourself.

and you can also pick the highest quality minerals to add back in as well. So you can really control your water quality with, you know, devices you can get at home. Beautiful. Are there any brands of anything that you recommend to people or should they just go to the swell score and check it out? The swell score, we do have a countertop distiller. I myself personally am using an Aquitru reverse osmosis under sync unit. Great. I have one of those in my place as well.

I've done business with Aquatrue over the while. I've been pretty clear with that. I recommend them. They've been a sponsor in the past. So obviously, you know, that disclosure for everyone. They did not tell us to mention that. That's just something that we use. I want to mention one other thing.

And this is taking this out of order. But it popped into my mind because you really have, as aware as I am of everything here, you changed my behavior in the last week on something. Okay? And here's what that category is. what is the challenge with the paper cups that we go out in the morning and I you know I'm not getting coffee from Starbucks.

Nothing wrong with that. There's a great Starbucks across the street. I go to another little bushy boutique coffee shop down the street. I like to make coffee at home and that's my preferred method. But every so often I like to walk with my wife and we'll go and get coffee together. When we go and get coffee, we get a paper cup. Amazing. It's a hot coffee.

we don't have plastic, we have a paper cup, we smile, we drink that coffee, usually takes us a little while, we're nursing it for a little while. What is one of the reasons why I might want to, and that I have been reconsidering getting coffee in that paper cup? Unfortunately, the paper cup is lined with a thin layer of polyethylene plastic. So a lot of people would believe that the paper cups that you're getting are lined with wax, but that simply isn't true. The wax coatings are for what I've seen when you buy water cups, usually with cold beverages. And I would surmise that the reason is that the hot liquid could melt the wax. Maybe that's why I'm not sure. But it seems that more cups out there now are no longer

lined with wax, but with plastic. And that plastic has been shown in studies to leach microplastic particles into your hot beverages. And so most people are, how long do you think it would take to drink a beverage, like maybe 10, 15, 20 minutes, depending on how hot it is. Takes me an hour. Yeah, it can. Sometimes I'll keep that coffee around for an hour. Right, it can, right? It really just depends. And within 15 minutes, that study found that 25,000 microplastic particles are leaching into your drink. Not to mention, there's also heavy metals, lead and so on that are leaching from those plastic linings, unfortunately. And that's not even mentioning the, the leeching. The, lid that goes on top. So as the hot liquid is passing through the lid, I would hypothesize

that there's microplastic shedding there as well. Yeah, I don't drink through a lid. That I'm good with. I convinced my wife when we originally, before she was my wife, and we were dating, we went out for coffee. I said, whoa, let me take that lid off for you. You know, we're going to walk a little slower because we're on a walking date, but it's going to be better for your body if you're not exposing that hot liquid. So what should we do instead? It's not that we shouldn't go out and get coffee, right? And obviously there's, you know, if we can get organic coffee and other stuff, because coffee has a bunch of different exposures to different things, but you're not telling us not to go out and get coffee. There's a simple solution. What's that solution?

The simple solution is to B-Y-O-C, B-Y-O-M, bring your own mug or cup. I love getting coffee out. I don't avoid getting coffee because it's not organic. I understand. It is what it is. I want to get that coffee out. I'll bring my own cup with me. Not only does it cut down on plastic waste or, you know, single-use cups, but it also clearly will reduce my toxic load because I'm not swallowing tens of thousands of microplastic particles with that drink. Do you approve of my Yeti mug over here? Looks great. I noticed it, and I was going to compliment you on that. So well done. Amazing. I made some tea at home, some green tea. And I got this from some friends of mine at HumanCo.

So shout out to them for the mug. Okay, great. So that was a little sidebar, you know, but it was an important sidebar because it's still one of those things that a lot of people get coffee every day. Some people are drinking three or four cups. We have no idea how many thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions of microplastics somebody's accumulating over the course of a year or a lifetime. Now, I thought I knew a lot about the subject and I would tell people about, hey, watch out for microplastics in tea and tea bags and, you know, make sure you're using teas that don't have that. I'll get your opinion on that in a second, but I didn't really know about nanoplastics. Nanoplastics are smaller than microplastics. So microplastics can break down and become nanoplastics.

And the issue with nanoparticles are that they can easily penetrate cell membranes and the effects are pretty wide reaching. They can penetrate skin, so on and so forth. So if you're applying nanoproducts to the skin, it could be penetrating the skin as well. Do we know of anything that helps us remove or encourage our body from removing microplastics? Does that go back to glutathione? Or does glutathion not make a difference when it comes to these microplastics? It hasn't actually been studied exactly how we can detoxify.

But in general, what's happening with micropastics is oxidative stress and inflammation, both of which glutathione can help. So while we don't know the exact mechanism of detoxification, of practicing toxic avoidance, managing your glutathione levels, and, right, that's going to help regardless. Is there any way to independently, same way we would get blood work to look at our LDL or APOB or fasting insulin, is there any way to get a good sense of how you're doing as a glutathione producer? Like, are you doing well, are you doing poorly?

is there any way to independently as a biomarker or a measurement test look at levels of glutathione inside of our body to get some sense of, hey, are we doing well or are we not doing well? Do we have any technology like that? Yeah, I'm pretty sure that there are clinical tests out there that have been done. I personally haven't taken one myself, but I know that there's also tests that you can do to measure your toxin load as well. So I think that would be really interesting is to measure your glutathione and measure your toxin load as well. That could be really interesting. Do you know if any of these tests to measure toxins

are available to people that are listening to this podcast as consumers? I know that there's tests that clinicians will use to look at like heavy metals inside of the body. You know, there's companies like doctors data that provides doctors laboratory tests to look at like heavy metals. There's a company called Genova that a lot of practitioners use. But are there toxins screenings that are out there that are available to the everyday consumer that's listening to me. Yes, I've actually seen one from a group called Million Marker. Million Marker. Yes.

Can we bring that up online? I haven't used this one myself. Okay. But it measures endocrine disruptors and a lot of the toxins that we've spoken about today. Oh, wow. Amazing. Looks like they have a little bit of a focus on pregnancy and fertility. So it's an at-home test. It looks like you probably do a urine sample.

It looks like a urine. And you send it in. and they're going to look at toxins that are there. Cool. Obviously, as you mentioned, you haven't used this before. I'm not familiar. People should do their own research and dig into it a little bit. But good to know that there's some resources that are out there.

Yeah, there was another gentleman that reached out to me, and he runs one of the certification programs. And I get excited when I see people starting these different certification programs for an area that is not typically being looked at. And this was a certification for glyphosate free. So, Tesla, can you Google this? glyphosate-free certification. Detoxproject.org is the name of it.

And they have a test where you can get a stamp, kind of like Whole 30 approved or, you know, these different things or EWG or whatever. And they have one for glyphosate where companies have to send in their product to an independent lab, which is what you recommend, right? And then they can get their product actually tested. Now, they're not looking at all sorts of other toxins,

but they are looking at glyphosate. So I get excited when I see these things. There's no one of them that's the exact solution. But if a company is going out of their way to get their product tested as being glyphosate-free or something else, chances are that, okay, at least they have some awareness and we can pay attention. And it doesn't mean that everything they do is good, but it could mean that there's some indication that their products could be better. And we can ask them for more information. In fact, you made an entire video about this, about how you can't just accept companies work.

that if they're saying that something is toxin-free, you as a consumer can request information. What could you be requesting? The bare minimum that a company can provide is a certificate of analysis. That generally will include heavy metals and industrial solvents. That's a bare minimum. But there's so much more that companies can be doing. And there are some companies that are actually raising the bar and really pushing the industry in general. There's actually an organization called the Clean Label Project that folks.

focuses on this. And so they have different verifications and different seals based on the purity of their products. So again, like you said, it isn't something that's a guarantee of safety, something as a starting off point, that, hey, maybe these products are more clean than not. Let me look beyond that. Let me look at the ingredients and see if I agree with the ingredients that are in these products as well. But it's great to know that they are testing low for a lot of these contaminants and toxins of concern. What are typical responses when a company does not want to reveal? What are typical things that they've said to either you or others that people should be wary of? For example, I've heard people say that companies respond back and say that's proprietary information.

Is that one of them? Biggest red flag, if a company is telling you that their certificate of analysis or COA is confidential, that is false. That is not confidential. There is no reason that a company should not be able to share that with you. What are some other things that people might hear back? Oh, that you have to sign an NDA in order to read this. Let me get back to you or they'll try to give you some kind of logic to dissuade you from

asking for more information. That's what I've seen personally when I investigate certain product categories. Was there ever a product that? that you thought was like, okay, it's not that bad. And then you investigated it and you found like, whoa, this is really something that people should not be buying or consuming. It happens gladly not too often. For the most part, a lot of companies are becoming more transparent, which is great.

But generally speaking, it's a lot of the products that are labeled as eco-friendly. Unfortunately, we need to scrutinize extra, because that's classic greenwashing, which is making your product sound more environmentally friendly, safer, healthier than it actually is, simply just, you know, pushing on the sustainability aspect of it. A great example, laundry detergent sheets. We know that liquid detergent comes in plastic jugs. We want to get away from plastic. A lot of consumers are trying to do that. So they've started manufacturing laundry detergent sheets, which are in a paper box.

they're equal-friendly, but when you look at the ingredients, they are no different than what you would get in that plastic jug, even though they make you think that it's healthier and safer. Yes, there's no plastic in it, but the ingredients are still not optimal. Is there ever a time where you find that these one or two categories that have a lot of hidden toxins in them, they're the hardest for people to like let go of, right? What are those products or those categories that you find that we're still in a place where maybe there's not the perfect products to replace them yet? And just people are so used to using these things that they have a death grip on it. Even though they know there might be some challenges to their help. What are those products? Well, I would say that most products have an alternative now these days.

It's very rare that I haven't found a safer alternative or something. I would venture to say that there's a swap for everything. There is almost a swap for everything. Yes, there are some that could be cleaner. Diswater detergents. They're working on that. It's getting better. But I still think they can do more.

Shampoo bars. I think that can, that's also something that people are moving towards getting away from the plastic shampoo bottles and they want to buy a solid shampoo. But unfortunately, the ingredients are still better, but they can be. they could do even better, is what I'm saying. Did you make a video, and I'm asking because I think I remember watching this early on when I came across your content, around why we should be concerned or a flag should go off in our head if we're using something that foams. Did you make a video on this?

Like that cleansers and things that foam in particular. Yes. Or a sign of some not great ingredients. Yes. What could that possibly be? So those can be your anionic surfactants. So anything that's in soap, laundry detergent, shampoo, sodium laureate, sodium laurel sulfate, these sulfate anionic cleansers, they actually have other chelating chemicals in it to

boost the foam. And so it makes people think that you need foam in order to clean. And that's sort of the association that a lot of people have made. But these sulfates can actually strip away the beneficial and protective microbiome. on the skin as well as the barrier, the oil layer that sits on top of the skin. So over time, this can lead to allergies, skin sensitization, and a whole host of problems. You know, as you mentioned earlier in the interview, you said that we're working on getting better and better data.

But the problem is that people aren't even looking in the first place. So how can you get better data if they're not even looking and studying? That being said, there is often associative data. where people are sounding the alarm around something. They're looking at dropping in fertility. They're looking at dropping rates of testosterone based on our historical data that's there. And they're also looking at increases of incidence of disease, especially in young people. You mentioned to us before we started recording about a paper that you came across recently or that you've been highlighting.

Can you talk about that paper? And I think Tesla might even have it pulled up. Yeah, it was a study done from the published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in August of 2023, basically looking at the incidence of cancer among young people below the age of 50 in a cohort study between 2010 and 2019. So this is very recent. What they found is that the amount of cancer, the cases of cancer among people less than 50, so cancer historically used to show up around the age of 60, 62 was when you start seeing the amount of cancer. most cancer cases. That's the paper. Okay.

So in JAMA, title called Patterns and Cancer Incidents amongst people younger than 50 years in the U.S. population, 2010 to 2019, we'll link to in the show notes. Sorry for cutting you off. No problem. What they found is that the incidence of breast cancer is the highest it's ever been among people that are younger. Cancer in general didn't use to show up until later in age because, The way that carcinogenesis happens is that it typically takes decades from when the exposure started to see the actual disease manifestation. But that's changed now.

And I would hypothesize that it's because the exposure level, the toxic load that people are born with, with every successive generation is getting higher. So that window of health is shrinking. It's getting shorter. so that disease shows up earlier in life. And that's what they saw in this paper. So the rate of cancer in GI or gut cancer was the fastest growing, but the highest total number of cases was breast cancer in these younger people.

And I myself personally know a handful of women who develop breast cancer in their 30s. So I can't imagine how many of the listeners and viewers also have the same experience or personally went through cancer themselves. It's horrifying when you think about it. We are doing an experiment on entire multiple generations of human beings. You know, there's the other side, which is that innovation happened. Obviously, there's many instances where these plastics have saved lives, made certain things possible. And nobody's saying that we're trying to return back to a hunter-gatherer society, right?

You're not saying that. I'm not saying that. We're saying that, okay, great, we got a lot of benefit out of these things. Now, it feels that the consequences and the damages in relation to those benefits and other solutions that would be there, the damages is so potentially high that literally our species is at threat of survival as well as our health span. So even if we're able to live to 75, 85, 95, 95, whatever it might be, we're living sicker than ever before. And is that the world that people want to live in? And I'm hearing you essentially ask that question to individuals. Yes, that's basically the whole entire reason and purpose that I share this information is to let people know you don't have to choose that path.

Despite the toxic environment that we live in, you can still thrive and overcome. myself personally faced fertility challenges, but with lifestyle interventions, was able to reverse them. And that's how I know I have firsthand experience in knowing that you can still thrive regardless of how toxic the environment is. It takes work, it takes effort, it takes intentionality, but it's not impossible. It's doable. It's absolutely doable. And it's not difficult. It's just wrapping our minds around the fact that the products that we are being sold right now might not be promoting health the way that we hope, but there are companies out there who are pushing for change that are being transparent, that are sourcing quality ingredients that do

prioritize human and environmental health. And so that's what my mission is, is to really highlight and encourage these companies to really come to the forefront because when we vote with our dollars, and we put our money behind companies that are actually making positive impacts on human and environmental health, then we help them to grow. And then the price can go down, right? It doesn't have to be expensive or inaccessible to people. And even if you can't afford the top of the line, everything, I made significant improvements

in my health without investing in any gadgets or gimmicks or anything like that. It was lifestyle interventions. I want to ask you about natural flavors and foods. But before you get there, what was your red pill moment? What was the moment that you took that pill and you could never look at the world the same way? Because as you've mentioned, you know, you've also worked in industry. You know, you've seen behind the scenes. Was there a moment, a situation?

Was it your fertility journey? Or was it truly just a more gradual situation? Was there somebody that nudged you and said, hey, we need to reconsider how we look at this kind of whole field. There's that saying, you know, it's hard to get a man, Upton Sinclair, I believe it is. It's hard to get a man or a woman to question a truth when their sort of paycheck says that they shouldn't be questioning it, right? I'm paraphrasing here, right? So did you have a moment that nudged you in this direction that changed your perspective on the world?

Yes, it was when I was working in the flavor and fragrance company, the frequency of calls that I would receive from factory workers who were experiencing debilitating health issues on the job was shocking to me. And just my own health deteriorating working below some of the labs that were synthesizing these flavor chemicals. What kind of things did you see the factory workers going through? What were you going through? Like what were they saying? They would say things like my eyes are burning, my skin is burning. I can't see. I'm having migraines.

Some people had some peripheral blindness in one side. They were being part of their job was to sniff these chemicals, to give it a sniff test. Does it smell like it's supposed to smell? does this flavor smell right? And they make people smell them, sniff them at high concentrations. This is at the occupational level. This was such a huge eye-opening experience to me that people were saying they had a styrofoam cup next to their workspace that actually started to disintegrate because of the chemicals that were in the air, that they were synthesizing in these huge vats. That's scary. Absolutely is scary. And the fact that before I even went into the job, they,

asked me to take a comprehensive health exam so much that the lab that I went to asked if I was going into the military into special service. I said, why? I've never seen such a detailed test before. They're literally measuring almost every function in your body, you know, how well you can breathe, you know, all of these different markers. And I thought, why would they need to measure this? And every year, why are every year we would get incentivized to take our health to do another biometric screening. That made me really think what's happening to us that we need to be screened every year. I'm working in an office. What's going on? Why do we need this? There's something happening and why are so many people saying that they're experiencing adverse health reactions, severe reactions

on the job? What did you notice with your own health? I was also getting migraines. I was very irritable. I had issues with fatigue, brain fog that made it difficult for me to formulate sentences. All from being there working in this lab. Yeah, I was actually in the office below the lab, but I would frequently visit the lab to meet with colleagues and so on. But just being in that building, there was something going on. Would this be thought of as like a traditional like flavor house so you had clients of all different types in the food industry and you would synthesize and sort of sell flavors out to places and that was kind of like the core bread and brother so these like proprietary ways that you guys came up with you know these flavorings and

then you would license and sell that out yes yeah um how has that impacted you as a consumer and a mom and you can't get hardly any food these days, especially for kids, even a lot of organic food that doesn't have flavoring added to it, like natural flavors. Obviously, there's a difference between artificial flavors, then there's natural, then there's organic flavors, which is a whole sort of kind of trickery that's there inside of it. So how is that changed and what is your honest view about flavoring added to products? often snacks, protein powders often will have them, pretty much anything these days, even at Whole Foods, will have natural flavors.

Does it make you question the consumption around them? Yes, absolutely. In fact, while I was working in the flavor company, I was avoiding flavors. Part of my job was to actually do what they call bench tastings, which were involving flavors that were under development in the last. laboratory. So tasting it and finding the right dosage to be used in foods later. But we would do what's called a taste and spit. So you taste it and you spit it out. So it wasn't yet fully vetted for safety. In fact, I was the one that was responsible for determining what is the level that we can

taste so that we don't die. And then divide that by 100. That's the quote unquote margin of safety was if you eat 100 times this much, then you could have a problem. But that's not based on any actual scientific direct study on that chemical. It was an estimation based on similar chemicals. It gets pretty complicated and nuanced, but nonetheless, I was one of the few, I was probably the only person in that company that was actively avoiding flavors while being employed. There's a friend of mine that owned a flavoring house as well and kind of was in that space. And he said, you know, even something that we were looking at at the time, and this is when I was

early in the space. I didn't know a lot. He said even something like a strawberry flavor, which would be a natural strawberry flavor, right? It's in a lot of kids products, a lot of adults products out of there, blueberry flavor. He said, I said, can we see the transparency on the things that make up that flavoring, right? And he said, literally the sheet could be 40 to 200 different chemicals. He was replying back to me. Would that be accurate?

that a simple thing like a natural strawberry flavor could have, you know, hundreds of chemicals that are all working together to end up creating that flavor? Yes, that's definitely possible. And oftentimes what was happening in the industry is that competitor companies were getting a hold of flavor formulations, analyzing them, finding out what the chemical composition was, and then trying to undercut. So there's this whole thing that's going on in the flavor industry. So some flavor chemists would try to make their flavors more complex so that the other guys couldn't reverse engineer and figure out what it was.

So it could be well into the hundreds of chemicals. And those chemicals are not just like other fruits and things. It could be like vegetable oil derivatives and extract from this thing, like some component, like anything that they could say. But it would have to come from a natural source, as you mentioned earlier. but that doesn't mean that it can't have been processed five times or more. Or more for that one ingredient, which is part of another 200 ingredients in a particular flavor. Right. Exactly.

So you can take something that's like a whole food source and really get it down to a single chemical entity. That's the worst case scenario. And that's actually what's happening, unfortunately. Here's the other side of this that is something that I know that I struggle with. and a lot of people who are trying to help individuals live a healthier life struggle with. Generally, the more restrictions you place on someone in terms of what they need to do to be or eat healthy, let's talk about eating healthy, the more things they have to do or the more things they have to avoid, the more likely that they're not going to be compliant and the more

likely they're just going to return to the average of what everybody's doing. And the average of what everybody's doing is they're eating a lot of processed foods and they're getting a lot of their calories from ultra-processed fruits. And they're drinking soda and the number one vegetable consumed in the United States is potato. And number two is tomato because of ketchup and pasta sauce and potato because of French fries, right? So the challenge that I have and I have some good friends that are on a crusade to tell consumers. In fact, I just had an episode of my dear friend, Vonie Horry, the food babe. and she has her own brand called Truvani. And she feels very clear that natural flavors are one of her top priorities of things

that she wants people to avoid. And she has very similar to you. She didn't work in the industry. But she feels that she had all sorts of skin rashes and eczema and other stuff. And once she's removed the amount of natural and I think she might even been having some artificial flavors at the time that that went away. Right. So that's her personal sort of end of one.

story. I contrast that with somebody like myself who generally is eating mostly home-cooked food that's there. Or if I'm ordering out, it's going to be from restaurants that are using, you know, minimally processed, things like that, staying away from pretty much all ultra-processed foods that are there. And still, occasionally, I might have a protein powder that has some, you know, natural flavors in it. Or I'm at my family's house and there's some ingredient that they might be using in something that has a little bit of natural flavors in it. And in addition to that, I say that let's say 10% of my 10% or less of my calories is coming from something that might have a natural flavor in it. Right? I don't do any artificial flavors, but natural flavors.

But it's not just like our food habits to live in isolation. I'm also trying to go to the gym and have resistance training. I'm also trying to limit my exposure to like fragrances. I'm also trying to do that. So my only concern about statements that come from the top that say, hey, we need to avoid natural flavors. And that's one of the top priorities is that many of the people that are out there that are listening, they still, at least based on the data that we have, they're not exercising enough. They're not, their sleep is often messed up. And not that it has to be either or, but again, going back to this first thing, the more stuff you put on people's plates, the more that it's likely that they're going to be like, I can't do any of this right,

and they just give up and they go back to doing. You know, you and I are different. And obviously, probably a lot of my audience and your audience is different that's out there. A lot of them live and breed this stuff. Their primary value in life is maybe avoiding these ingredients and things. So that's kind of like something that I struggle with. And I would love your honest take on that in terms of how you think about it as a communicator to the public when you, you know, you're trying to balance out how many things you have people doing and the prioritization of those things. I agree with you that the more we add to the list of things to do, avoid, don't do this, don't do that, it can get rather daunting, especially if somebody is just hearing about this for the

first time. So really simplifying it and distilling it down, which I love that you ask, what are the top five things that you can do right now? What are the areas that you can really focus on? And I really love that type of list question because it really helps people to focus and don't get overwhelmed, don't start drowning and drinking from the fire hose, just one step at a time, one foot in front of the other. We're really talking about lifelong habits, not the occasional every now and again kind of thing. It's what are we doing overall? And I like to tell people, think about it in a risk-benefit analysis.

choose the option that has more benefit than risk as much as you can. That's very simple. It doesn't have to be perfect. You're never going to be perfect. Just take that weight off your shoulders of trying to be perfect. You know, coming from someone who's a, you know, recovering perfectionist, I know how to, you know, work around that kind of mindset of all or nothing. It doesn't have to be like that. It's just trying your best more often than not. That's how I see it. It's great advice. It's common sense advice. And I think that it's the advice that people need to hear because I'm so thankful for many aspects of social media.

And naturally, because things that are sensational get the most amount of attention and energy, you can see a lot of things where even sometimes physicians are growing in the grocery store and they say, see this product here, which is maybe not the worst of the products, right? Could be better. It has natural flavors. Like, this is going to kill you, right? And it's like that sometimes gets people so, okay, I guess, okay, so everything is going to kill me. All right. So let me just live my life, right?

So you're saying even this healthy thing that I'm getting from Whole Foods or whatever is going to kill me. So I, let me just, I'm overwhelmed with everything that's going to kill me. I'm just going to live my life. But obviously what you're saying is the common sense approach. It's the nuanced approach, which is do your best. Think about these categories that you covered and that you talk about on social media. find the one that maybe you have the most exposure to or start with your water and your air

and do the basics and you build up. You know, don't drink from the fire hose. And I like that advice, but sometimes as simple as it is, as common senses is, people need to hear it again because there are a lot of well-meaning people that are trying to hack the algorithm

that is giving people anxiety that everything is going to kill them. I definitely seen posts like that. And the content that gives you this immediate sense of angst, anxiety, fear, and stress, more often than not, you brush that to the side. Yes, there's a legitimate concern with natural flavors being overused. I totally agree with that. But do I think that because there's one less optimal ingredient on an ingredient list that I'm going to just not buy anything and just not eat anything and just live under a rock? Absolutely not. It just

doesn't make sense anymore. When I look at food labels, I think, why? is there natural flavor in here? Does there need to be natural flavor in here? For example, like you said, you have a supplement. The supplement is more benefit than risk. That's the idea, isn't it? So if you have a natural flavor in a supplement, you're adding that as part of an overall healthy lifestyle. So maybe that flavor isn't really going to be a big issue, as opposed to I saw in the store almond milk that just has flavor, but it's unflavored almond milk. I thought, what is this for? I know exactly what is for.

They're masking the off chemical taste of whatever they're putting in this almond milk. That was absurd to me, that it was an unflavored almond milk, but it had flavor in the label. So just to understand that you think that they're adding flavor in and an unflavored to cover up like amulsifiers or carajian or something like that. Yes. I know it happens. And, yeah, masking flavors, masking scent, masking odor. it happens all the time. But you just have to check the label. And if it's something that's in there that just strikes you as what, why is that in there, then maybe try to look for a different option. As a mom, you have one child? I've got two kids. Two kids. So as a mom of two, do you want me

asking how old they were? They are four and six year old girls. So four and six year old girls, amazing. What are some of the things that are most important for you for them at the age you're in right now? Obviously, they live in your home, so they're getting the better quality water, they're breathing the better quality air, etc. But just as they're sort of living life and are in school and other stuff, what are some key priorities for you for minimizing their toxic exposure? The first thing is letting go and releasing what's happening at school. I cannot control what they are exposed to at school besides their water and their school lunch. Those are the things that I can influence. I cannot control if their teacher is using a scented plugin or if they're using some questionable

chemicals to clean the classroom facilities. I can't necessarily control that. I can encourage and perhaps suggest better options, which I have done, just providing the teacher with a gift basket. Here's some Lotox hand soap that the kids can use when they use the restroom or here are some wipes that you can use for the kids, you know, that aren't scented and fragrance and all that kind of stuff. So I do provide that for the teachers as much as I can, but there's only so much that we can do.

So I release what's happening at school for the most part and just really focus on what we're doing at home because that's where you have the most control out of anything in your life is in your own home. Naturally, you're two girls being in your orbit. I'm sure they're around school saying, I don't know if we should be using this thing. They might be. I mean, they come with me. They see me scrutinizing products, reading ingredient lists, and I make it a habit. to tell them, hey, between these two or quiz them, what do you think is the better option?

You know, and they know to avoid the, you know, brightly colored toothpaste with the glitter in it, with, you know, all the animals on it and the characters. And so they're pretty keen already on what are the red flags, really just high level overview on how to navigate what's happening in store aisles. That's fantastic. And ultimately, at the end of the day, whether it's for young children you have or for adults, that goes back to the core message, which is it's just about education, getting that education and having that awareness. I want to come back to your story. You know, did your health improve

as it sort of went downhill a little bit at the flavoring house that you were at? Were you able to recover from that or were there any sort of lasting impact that was there? I, for the most part, have been able to recover from that from what I can perceive fully. I don't have the same issues that I had whatsoever. I had like the brain fog and the fatigue and the energy issues, the sleep issues. I had skin problems. I had adult acne all over my face. It was horrible.

And once I started working with a functional doctor, we started pinpointing what are some deficiencies I have, which helped significantly. But the last piece of the puzzle was really me detoxifying my home. And that's when I saw the next jump improvement in my home. health was getting rid of, like you mentioned, the candles, the plug-ins. I was the person that loved working in the flavor and fragrance company because I got free fragrances. It was the best. You know, I loved it. But then, you know, untangling myself from that stronghold that it had on me was a really, really, really, really big, big way to improve my health, which I still to this day don't use fragrances.

and I minimize scent. I don't necessarily avoid every single scent. I don't see any issue with essential oil-based products like candles. Like you mentioned, beeswax candles. I really dove into the scientific literature to look at the types of waxes that produced the least amount of pollutants into the air. And thankfully, it was beeswax that came out on top. Huge.

Dr. Burkhar, as we're winding down here, and thank you so much, first of all, for making the journey appear. As I've mentioned, I've been a huge fan of your work. And when I saw you were on my buddy Sean's podcast, and he had mentioned you to me, I thought, oh my gosh, I didn't actually even know where you lived. And the fact that you were here in Southern California, I thought, wow, this is incredible.

I'd love the opportunity to chat with her. So number one, thank you for doing what you're doing. Thank you for putting your content out there. Because I could imagine, in addition to all the people that you're helping, there's probably also, every so often, people that are experts in the industry who try to come after you and say that you're fear-mongering and try to discourage you. And whether that's what they truly believe or whether they're nefarious, you know, there are big companies. Pharma has been known to hire.

GMO companies have been known to hire PR houses and have people that look like their everyday normal people to leave crazy comments on people's pages. So I appreciate you stepping into your hero's journey and saying, look, even if people are going to push back, the world needs this information. My daughters need this information. My daughter's future kids need this information. So I just wanted to take a moment to just acknowledge you for going down this journey and for putting yourself out there publicly for the world's benefit. Oh, thank you so much for mentioning that. because being trained classically as a toxicologist, my colleagues and I butt heads, my friends from grad school don't understand why I'm speaking about the things that I'm speaking about.

There is a huge pushback from the toxicological community because we're trained to think in a certain way, that the dose makes the poison, that these small exposures don't matter. But there are trailblazers, there are people out there who are doing the work to get this evidence. And so, yes, while there is a significant amount of pushback, I come with the receipts. I come with the evidence. So you can argue, let's argue about the data. Let's look at the numbers. Let's look at what's being published, what's being studied. Even though there's very little, it's still enough to make meaningful conclusions about what's happening in consumer products, what's happening with our daily lives and how we can make better choices that will benefit

not only us, but future generations, like you said. Powerful. Before we leave people with a few resources, which we'll get to in a second, is there anything else that you wanted to get a chance to talk about that we didn't cover? I think we pretty much covered it. I mean, you asked some really, really excellent, very detailed questions. So I think that's a really good place to leave people with and just let people think on it and give people action items on things that they can do right now to reduce

toxic load. Beautiful. Okay, resources. We have your Instagram, which if you can share on social media, how people can find you. Yes, I'm at Dr. Yvonne Burkart. And I'm also on YouTube. You can watch some of my longer form videos there, where we get really deep on one subject at a time. So I did a really in-depth diaper investigation. I'm now doing one about baby wipes. So really trying to help, especially parents navigate the aisles. Because with our children, more often than not, when we start taking action is when we find out, hey, we might be pregnant, we might want to get pregnant.

So let's start purging our home of all of these toxic products. So that's a great place for people to get help with that. And a little spoiler alert on the diaper investigation. There was, I think, 40 companies that you looked at? 30. 30. And out of them only like four of them? Three.

So three. 10%. So 90% of diaper companies that were marketing themselves as non-toxic claiming to be free of X, Y, and Z chemicals, either didn't respond to my inquiries or could not furnish some sort of proof or evidence or test reports of these claims. So 90% of non-toxic diapers, diaper brands are making unsubstantiated claims. Crazy. Crazy. You mentioned a couple certifications that are out there. And obviously the Swell Scores is a group that you're involved with. You're the head screening expert that's there. Are there any that you feel that you would trust these certification groups that are there, these databases that you have experienced in the past?

Yes, I actually would go to the Clean Label Project. Clean Label Project.org. It's a nonprofit organization. that actually has several different levels of certifications and their purity award being the highest. So especially for parents, so what they do is they will test categories of products, publish the reports for you to see, and a company that gets certified means that they have met certain criteria. So the purity award is the highest that you can achieve. And so thankfully, they are focusing a lot on baby foods at the moment, which is huge because, as you know,

there were high number of heavy metals or high levels of heavy metals in baby food that came out recently. So there's actually a new bill that was just signed recently that requires baby food manufacturers to test and publish their heavy metal reports or their foods in California. Yeah. That won't go into effect and you won't see that until 2025. So the Clean Label Project is a great place for parents who are looking for cleaner baby foods. Again, these are processed foods. So still not fresh, unprocessed foods. But let's say if you choose to want to give your child some food like this, the clean label project is a great place to start.

Beautiful. Amazing. We'll link to that in the show notes as well as some of the other resources that we shared. Dr. Burkhart, thank you so much again for being on the podcast. And thank you for your incredible work that you're doing to make the world a less toxic place. Thank you so much, Drew. It's been a pleasure. Hi everyone, Drew here.

Two quick things. Number one, thank you so much for listening to this podcast. If you haven't already subscribed, 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.

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