Dhru Purohit Show - Why You Shouldn’t Drink Tap Water, Top Sources of Forever Chemicals, and How Regulatory Capture Is Making Us Sick with Darin Olien

Episode Date: July 24, 2023

This episode is brought to you by Rupa Health, BiOptimizers Magnesium Breakthrough, and Calm.  Today on The Dhru Purohit Podcast, Dhru sits down with Darin Olien, co-host of the Emmy Award Winning Netflix docu-series, Down to Earth with Zac Efron, to discuss the top hidden toxins found in our everyday products. Dhru and Darin discuss the sources of forever chemicals that invade our water, food, and clothes. Darin has spent nearly 20 years as a Superfood hunter exploring and discovering new and underutilized exotic foods and medicinal plants. From his years of experience within the health space, he wrote his New York Times best-selling book, SuperLife. Darin is the host of the wildly popular podcast The Darin Olien Show, where he curiously explores people, solutions, and health as well as life’s Fatal Conveniences™ – a segment of the show uncovering modern-day flaws and challenges that may be undermining our health and our environment. In this episode, Dhru and Darin dive into (audio version / Apple Subscriber version): -Hidden toxins found in tap water (1:28 /1:31) -Water and other top sources of exposure forever chemicals (7:07 / 6:31) -Phasing out PFAS for safer alternatives (30:25 / 26:00) -Concerns around the new “Apeel” coating on produce (38:25 / 34:04) -Raising awareness of the toxins in our food and water supply (45:09 / 40:42) -Striking a balance between awareness and obsession (57:30 / 52:59) -Taking a precautionary approach to EMF exposure (1:06:12 / 1:01:30) -Minimizing exposure to fragrances (1:14:25 / 1:09:57) -Darin’s father’s experience with chemical sensitivities (1:16:28 / 1:11:51 ) -How to monitor your air quality (1:23:20 / 1:18:14) Also mentioned in this episode: -Fatal Conveniences  -SuperLife -The Darin Olien Show -(PFAS) presence in food article -Try This: How Indoor Air Quality Impacts Your Brain And What to Do About It For more on Darin Olien, follow him on Instagram @darinolien. Rupa Health is a place where Functional Medicine practitioners can access more than 3,000 specialty lab tests from over 35+ labs like DUTCH, Vibrant America, Genova, and Great Plains. You can check out a free, live demo with a Q&A or create an account at rupaHealth.com. Magnesium Breakthrough really stands out from the other magnesium supplements out there. BiOptimizers is offering my community 10% off + special gift with purchase, just head over to magbreakthrough.com/dhru, with code DHRU10. Calm is offering an exclusive offer of 40% off a Calm Premium Subscription at calm.com/dhru. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We are barely surviving, but we're certainly not thriving. Mayo Clinic study, 2.7% of Americans were deemed healthy from lifestyle, diet, exercise. That's a flipped statistic. That's scary. And we know. Top killers are killing us are manufactured by us. Welcome to the Drew Perot podcast. Each week, we explore the inner workings of the brain and the body with one of the brightest minds in wellness, medicine, and mindset.

This week's guest is Darren O'Lion, and he's here to talk to us about the top hidden toxins that are found in our everyday products and goods. Now, a little bit more about Darren. Darren is the co-host of the Emmy Award-winning number one Netflix docuseries, Down to Earth with Zach Ephron. Darren has spent nearly 20 years exploring the planet, discovering new and underutilized exotic foods and medicinal plants, which has led to others dubbing him as the Superfood Hunter.

As a host of the widely popular podcast, the Darren O'Lion Show, Darren curiously explores people, solutions, and health, as well as life's fatal conveniences, a segment of the show uncovering modern day flaws and challenges that may be undermining our health and environment. Fatal Conveniences is also the title of his new book, which was released on May 16th and a big part of today's conversation. Stay tuned for a fantastic podcast with Darren Alian. Darren, welcome to the podcast.

Pleasure to have you, brother. Big fan of the work, big fan of the book. I want to jump right in and talk a little about water. You know, I heard a great quote many, many years ago from a speaker and he said, either you get a filter or your body becomes the filter. Tell us what happens for those of us that don't have water filters. What are they exposing themselves to on a daily basis in our toxic water supply? Wow.

Well, you know, stepping into that, the job of the filter systems, the big filter systems, uh, are stopping dysentery, typhoid, things that acutely can cause, uh, diarrhea and kill us, right? So city water. Yeah. So the municipalities have, have done a pretty decent job on that, but they, they are way behind in terms of, uh, filtering out pesticides, herbicide, lead, mercury, uh, BPAs, BPHs. Uh, I mean, that was, uh, the alarming thing. I'm looking at PFOs from all of these directions and all of a sudden, you know, a study shows that the majority of people are being exposed through the water with PFOS. And so, you know, these permeate everywhere. And so the municipalities have not

filtered those things out. So they're, you know, the modern marvel of being able to build a house and live on it and turn the faucet on. And, you know, you've been in India, you've been in Africa, and that just simply doesn't exist everywhere, which is also a whole other human flaw of humanity that we're still allowing a few billion people on the planet who don't have clean water. So water is just incredible,

but the exposure of the ridiculous amounts of carcinogenic pesticides, glyphosate, astrazine, and the list goes on, the residual heavy metals, and then PFS, and the list goes on with the amount of toxic exposure. So, and, you know, the organizations tend to say things like, well, it's under lower limits, but in real world, that's not true. we are being exposed to water in many different these toxic exposures in many different ways from a shower to obviously drinking and cooking and everything else so easiest thing to do is buy a reverse osmosis or a distillation and strip everything out because it's it's you know the the most alarming thing is you throw this term around endocrine destraud disrupting. And people don't realize, like, these terms become kind of benign. And these are affecting our master glands, our regulatory bodies, our regulation of our bodies, our hormones that are

that are opening up cells, that are creating detoxification, that are creating estrogens and testosterone and the fabric of our life. And when we realize that all of these exposures plus the water, plus the personal care, plus the clothing, most of our clothing is from petrochemicals now, which is just a crazy invention that we have. And so these things are adding up and bioaccumulating in the body. And so when you thwart the endocrine system, you just look at the recent studies of we are in the next two decades. The statistics are showing we won't even have sperm that works anymore. And the male testosterone. You know, biohacking world is is increasing and everyone wants to biohack their hormones.

But this, you know, the reason I wrote this book is because the elephant in the room is all of this exposure that's inhibiting testosterone regulation, pituitary regulation, pineal optimization. And so this is this is the undermining of our health. And so, you know, once our hormones are hijacked with toxic exposure over time, then we're in a difficult situation. And it's almost like, you know, I'm fairly conservative in the book. But if you ask me, this is a very dangerous thing. we're playing with. If we are not, you know, we're sitting back and allowing for Flint,

Michigan chemicals to, you know, water starting on fire with all the chemicals in it. And then you look at the reports throughout the United States that, you know, 75% of the United States were getting high amounts of Phafos. And this is a derivative of Teflon. And this is a forever chemical and and we're playing a very dangerous game because if we just look at when we say forever chemical i i want people to pause in that process which is what they call pfas yeah and there's 9,000 of them yeah there's a lot of derivatives of pfos and they're used in many many different industrialized ways this episode is brought to you by rupa health let me tell you why I am such a huge proponent of functional medicine.

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Just head over to mag breakthrough.com slash drew and use the code Drew 10. at checkout. That's MAG, M-A-G, breakthrough, B-R-E-A-K-T-R-O-U-G-H- dot com slash D-H-R-U with the code Drew 10. Now back to today's episode. Can you give some examples of how they're used? Yeah, so like, you know, that stretchy shirt that you like and that has stain resistance. Athleteasure that men and women wear. All the time, right? That is Phafos. Water wicking, Phaas. Carpets that are stain resistant, Phaas, mattresses, Phaas. And, you know, the makeups that women are putting on very

sensitive. You know, you could argue that the lips and inside of the mouse is one of the most sensitive areas and transdermally the most sensitive. And when makeup claims to not be wiping off throughout the day, that is also a resistance that the Phaas chemical provides. Right. So Phaas is heat resistant and slippery. So that, if you look at the origin of how we use that in the 70s and 80s, and thank God they've now been.

band it in the nonstick pans. But then they just pivoted and putting it in our clothes, putting it in our makeup, putting it up. When you say they banned it, what do they ban? Because, I mean, there's still nonstick pans in the markets. What were they banning at the time? Yeah. Well, it's it's that the the the the the the telephone. They can't create more supposedly of the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the trademark Teflon. But the problem is with all of this stuff, similar to BPA, ban BPA, but it also now has BPH and as five other pivots, right? And so it's like, it's like I'm thinking about the tour to France, right? And so it's like EPOs. Like they're just good at pivoting so that it's non-detectable based on the current standards. It's a whackamol. So, you know, and then you have, you know, you have these organizations that are conflicting,

even though they're, on the one hand, they're saying probable, possible carcinogens and bioaccumulators linked to testicular cancer, colon and colorectal cancer, and all of these things. And for me, if any of that, and there's hundreds of studies, right, linking these dangerous endocrine disrupting, carcinogenic, Phaas chemicals, 9,000 and many products, hell, a baby bib that's easy to wipe off, right? A mom knowingly go, oh, that's convenient. Hell yeah, it's convenient. For a baby eating and the food gets on it, it's easy to wipe off. That's PIFS. It's on your child, right?

And they're eating and they're wiping it on their hand. So these things permeate everywhere and the fact that we are even having this discussion that we can have products in our marketplace that are showing up all over the place is very dangerous. Hell, the Coca-Cola company had, what was it, sunlighten or something? I think it's sunlighten. And they did, someone finally did a test on it. The company wasn't. It was 200 different forms of Phafos chemicals that were found.

It was like an orange juice, right? It was like an orange. Of course, it didn't have any oranges. Can we look it up, Tessa, and just see what brand it was, like PIFAs and the orange juice, Coca-Cola. It was a Coca-Cola base company. I think it was Sun, Sunlighten or something, 200 P-Fos chemicals. So a new class, a new consumer class action lawsuit was recently filed against.

Coca-Cola, alleging to the company falsely marketed simply tropical juice as all natural. While failing to disclose, it contains high level of P-FAs. Crazy. Exactly. Simply tropical. And this happened, like, you know, I'm desperately two years of writing this book and a bunch of researchers and gathering all this research. And this was like, all right, it just turned the book in and this started popping up. And now I get people, the NPR did a number on P-FOS last.

week and so it's starting to get in the lexicon the problem is yes let's give an example of a forever chemical DDT mm-hmm DDT was a pesticide no one knew about except a few people then they started to show the cancer links they banned it in 1972 guess what's in about 96% of there was a study that was done about 96% of of adolescent girls and it was in the blood of 96% of them. DDT. That was banned in 1972. So the problem is it permeates in our environment.

It bioaccumulates. It bioaccumulates in us a lot of times in our fat tissue because it wants to keep poisons away from vital organs. And so it has this bioaccumulating effect that can cause all sorts of downststrand. extreme effects. Plus, we're re-infecting ourselves, right? So if you use this and you have that, you know, wonderful

stain-resistant shirt and you wash it, every wash, not only is bleeding microplastics back into the, I think, a pair of jeans on average, 50,000 micro bits of plastic in

every wash of your jeans, right? So normal blue jeans, now stretchy jeans, have surpassed regular genes. So now that elastane, which is also an endocrine disruptor, that elastic stuff that they use, petroleum, that then is bleeding into it. So we have this problem where we're washing these clothes,

and this Phaas, for example, is then going back into the environment. It's going back into the soil. It goes back into the waterways. and then the water treatment plants have no sophisticated ability to filter out 9,000 different derivatives of PIFs. That's just one classification of a chemical, right? So, you know, if we're going to sit back and wait for a government, quote, unquote, organization

to do this, we're going to, you know, sprint towards, we're already sprinting towards our own demise from our endocrine system and our toxic exposure. So we have to take it on ourselves. So that's why we're having this conversation so that people listen and can go listen. I am not making this up. You know, this is stuff that, you know, for 30 years has been infiltrating my life originally from my father who had chemical sensitivity. That was the first, you know, I don't know, blue pill or whatever it is.

in my dad suffering as a result of this stuff. So I started pulling the string on all of these things. And then, you know, hey, whole healthy foods, you know, stay away from ultra-processed and all of that stuff. The calories, about 70% of our children are eating ultra-processed food. So we have this hopefully momentum of eating whole healthy food and everything else. But if we're not dealing with the. modern world that we all were born into. We didn't have a choice. We used to think that the placental

border of our mother was also like, well, it's, you know, that you can't cross that barrier. These chemicals are filtered from the baby. That's not true. So we're now seeing that hundreds of chemicals are already in the umbilical cord of a mom giving birth today. So we have to, literally wake up to this almost wage of war of chemicals that do not have our best interest. How the hell we got here? A bunch of many steps. Every fatal convenience has a beautiful story of why it was created. But it just took a turn.

They all took a turn. Maybe not the origin of Teflon. But really, you're like, if you're not doing the studies, then you go, oh, this is a great, convenient pan. so that nothing sticks to it. All upside and no downside. Yeah, I mean, how great is that? But if you're not testing the permeability of whatever you're laying on that pan into the food, that's a disservice and plausible deniability, which is what they still use today.

If a company is using a chemical and doesn't test their own product, then they do not know if it's causing cancer or endocrine disrupting or any other set of downstream effect. So they're not pressed to create a safety first, which is upside down and sideways. It's ridiculous, right? Why wouldn't you create a product that you would prove safe before you sold it? to other humans. Why wouldn't you do that? So that's where like the Minnesota small town kid in me, still to this day, I'm writing

this book, having these conversations, I still catch myself going, this is insane. It's crazy to me that we are exposing ourselves to 60,000 plus chemicals every year. and not even only a few percent are studied only for themselves alone. None of them are studies as they interact with one another. In combination and cumulative true effect that they're having on the zero. Yeah. Right? You know, I want to ask you a question.

Just sticking on this theme of PIFs, you know, and part of this dialogue in your book is like, hey, this is the world that we were born into. No solutions are perfect, yet still we have to do our best and yet still we have to advocate for those that don't have an opportunity to advocate for themselves, right? Especially those of us in the wellness community who have access to this information, not just for our kids. You know, I'm not a father yet, but I want to be one day and you want to try to bring your kids up in the best world possible, toxin free, but also for the families that are out there that are working two, three, four jobs and they don't have time to listen to a podcasts and they don't know anything else and they live in food deserts right so that's who we're all

advocating for so on the topic of Phaas what have you seen has been top one two and three exposure from your research if you could put it together is number one water is that where most people drinking water and showering potentially is that number one of how people are getting their exposure to Phaas and do you have any idea of what two and three would be yeah That is the, that's the one that shocked me. Water. The water. The 75%.

You were saying 75%. You know, we brought up that article test on that first one, Tapwater. So this was the U.S. Geological group. If you scroll up to the top of the logo, it says USGS. This was just released two weeks ago. It's all over the headlines right now. And it says tap water study detects PIFAs,

forever chemicals across the U.S. Obviously, this is the government's owner. version, but even 45%. And if you look at that subheading, Tessa, below, it says at least 45% of the nation's tap water is estimated to have one or more types of the chemicals known as per and polyfluorinated, basically PIFAs, according to a new study by the U.S. Geological Survey. There are more than 12,000 types of PIFs, not all of which can be detected in the current test. That's also crazy, right? I think you said 9,000. They're saying 12,000, But on top of that, we can't even detect them all because the tests we have.

And the last thing is the USGS study tested for the presence of 32 types. So this is 32 types of 12,000. By the way, we don't have tests for all of them. And they're saying 45% of the nation's tap water. My guess is if they could test for all of them, it's going to be 100% of the tap water. But you mentioned 75. Is that another source? Yeah, there's another study I found.

And it probably goes, this is where it gets into the whole, how our study is done. What are you testing for? What are you looking for? What do you have the capability? Bottom line, it's a freaking lot. So water was the one going back to you because I cut you off and I apologize. You're saying water was the one that shocked you the most. Before you dive deeper into water and anything else you haven't said, was there a number two and three of what you had seen are likely culprits that are exposing people? Yeah. I mean, it's, it's, you know, I look at things of, you know, water is alarming because we're, we're we're opening our mouth up and that type of exposure is very dangerous, right? And then as it relates to, I would say number two is the food exposure because it's, it's, you know, so we have plastics, we have containers. But in order for those plastics and containers to be functional, what kind of layer would they love to put on that, which they do? Phaas. So you look at a takeaway fast food. It's a slippery heat resistance. Internal layer.

Internal layer that you're like, your food's not getting stuck on that because there's a layer of Phaas. So now it's directly interacting with heated food, wrapping your food. So now you again have, and studies very clearly when food is certainly hot food, connected to plastics, plasticizers, PFAS, it's in your food, right?

I read a, maybe we can Google this. There was a study that came out last year that we put in our newsletter that ultra-processed food. So study ultra-processed food, P-FUS. So not just the packaging around it.

Maybe we just type it into Google. It might come up to study a little bit faster than finding it. So it's ultra-processed food, P-FUS concentration. Big study, a really good group that was behind it, saying that just eating an ultra-processed.

We're not talking about almond butter, almond milk, which are, you know, these are all processed foods. Most foods are going to be processed foods, even health foods, to some degree. Yeah. This is ultra-process foods, fast foods that are being made, sold places, and the production of them and the way that they're produced and the exposure and the industrial scale is themselves having all sorts of concentrated form of P-FAS internally. Oh, here we go. Yeah, this is the one. So P-FAS presence in food, comparison amongst fresh, frozen, and ready-to-eat-eat vegetables.

Can you scroll down to the conclusion at the bottom, Tesla? We can see if this is the one. And if it isn't, we can link to it in the show notes. This research examines examined P-F-F-S-F-O-S-Ros and ready-teed vegetables. All these different versions of P-F-F-F-S were frequently detected in the analyzed vegetable PFO PFOA, PFOA, and PFNA concentrations were found above attention limits recommended by the European Commission for vegetables. Frozen products contain the lowest amounts. Redduty Group showed the highest values for PFOS, but samples derived from organic cultivation showed lower than there, and it kind of got cut off. I don't know if this was the one we'll link to it, but this goes to the double whammy.

Yeah. This is ultra-processed foods. Somebody's making their diet of regularly fast foods. It's in the food. But then as you're mentioning, it's also in the packaging. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the chemical process that, you know, this ultra-process food is just,

I don't even know how we've normalized it because it's solely geared to create hyper-pallitability and for people to consume more, right? So their ultra-processed food is taking, I'm going to grab maybe even another food or I'm going to create it in the lab and I'm going to drive it into and create another food out of it to make it something to where someone wants to always eat it and create this addictive behavior. So any of that stuff along the way, any of those processes, any of those foods that they're using, how is PIFS showing? up in there. Because if you look at the cornerstone of Phaas as a heat-resistant, slippery surface, really good at its job, how is it? Just in the manufacturing of it, I have no idea how they would allow that, how it ends up there, but, you know, it's, you know, that also is absolutely alarming. This episode is brought to you by Calm.

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Com is offering an exclusive offer for my community of 40% off Com premium subscription at com C-A-L-M.com slash Drew. Just go to C-A-L-M-com slash D-H-R-U for 40% off unlimited access to Com's entire library. That's com. com slash drew now let's stress test the idea a little bit some people argue that if it wasn't for pfas so much of our medical infrastructure and some of the life-saving abilities that we have from

different types of plastics etc other stuff wouldn't be around right obviously there's this other component which is sure we don't live an ideal world but a lot of people are sick because of PIFAs, not working out, too many calories, too many ultra-processed foods, et cetera, et cetera. So there's a balancing there. But this is a transition. Like if you had a magic wand, you wouldn't wave away all Phaas overnight because a lot of things that we use in our daily life, not just diapers and other things that are cheap for some people to buy, although there's better solutions that you talk about, but also medical devices, right? Those would be gone and people would be alarmed to see. It's kind of like when environmental say, we need to be.

to get rid of big oil. And it's like, okay, do you want to get rid of big oil overnight? Because that's going to cause a lot of fucking problems. This is a transition. Do you feel that way? Yeah, absolutely. Like, I've been in touch with people that are in the industry that engineers, chemical engineers, and there's abs, it's, first off, their answer, it's lazy. They stopped doing the work. So they decided to use P-FOS as a chemical, even though. it's really good at its job, and that's what you're also saying, right? I've talked to doctors who are leading the charge and getting it out of the medical world because, like, you give an IV and it's full of P-FOS as you're putting new blood in someone or whatever it is.

So there is that drive. There are some people, but they're shouting as hard as they can. And people in the industry that I've talked to said, yeah, it's lazy because there's absolute evidence today showing that you can use same resistance, probably even at cost, at scale of using algae-based P-Fos derivatives. So it's like the supplement world. I've spent 20 years formulating in the supplement world. That was also like I was screaming at formulators and flavor houses going, why do you have chemical flow agents in my natural flavor when I just told you, right? And well, it's natural.

It's under the FDA bylaws, all of these things. So you get to the point where everyone just allows it to be there and there's a laziness. If there was a laziness and I didn't look at the natural flavor and I didn't test the products I was creating, then I wouldn't know. So then I would fall into the plausible deniability. And I would get lazy in the formulation. Same with this, literally talking with one of the top people in the industry using not only alternative PFS with algae-based oils and derivatives, as well as alternatives to plastic, at scale. Right? At scale. You're using plant-based materials at scale that are competing and will compete against the cost of plastics,

right? So you have this ridiculous chemical soup of plastics and then you layer on Phaas and you layer it's a laziness. And, you know, even, you know, stepping a little side for a second, like Paul Hawkins' work of drawdown. When you look at diving into each one of these, because I agree with you, 100% like environmental laziness conversations, you have to work with industry. You have to work with these people. You don't shut the light off.

It's dark and people are going to hurt themselves. You don't do that. And often the poorest of the poor. 100%. Yeah. And they're going to be hit harder than anyone. And so you have to work in the system, understand the system. And like Paul, very eloquently with Drawdown, if you invest in it, not only will it be profitable,

it will be exponentially better for you, the environment, and actually create a sustainable future for ourselves. Can you explain Drawdown? Maybe not all of my audience is familiar with it. They don't know about the book and kind of like, how many was it? It's like 52 or how many things were there? Yeah, it was a whole list of things. But yeah, if you could explain it.

Yeah, so Paul Hawkin is a legend in the space of sustainability, regenerative ag, looking at systems of why they failed, how they failed. And, you know, because we have subsidized so many other things like big oil and all of these other things, we've done very little and left it to private sectors to try to figure out, sustainability. Maybe there's some ESG stuff, which I'm like all those suspect with pushing ESG goals because I, you know, there's a lot of charlatans. There's a lot of stuff. So what Paul really laid out is if you, if you invest into the infrastructure and over time, a solar panel, an electric car, Electric cars only make sense.

You have a lot of, there's a lot here, but I'm just going to be simple. They really only make sense from a carbon footprint if you're driving them for 15 to 20 years, right? They make no sense in terms of that. Just because it's not coming out of the tailpipe doesn't mean that there's a ridiculous amount of CO2 or pollution that it took to create this car

and to create the lithium and find the lithium and the coal bolt and all of that stuff. So Paul took from wind and solar and regenerative ag from conventional. Refrigeration management. Yeah, all of that stuff. And he drew it out and seeing that over time through infrastructure and thoughtful investigation and funding that you could actually, these things actually will work. But if you don't have the support, if you don't have the right funding, if you don't

if you're still kind of corrupted by these old systems, you'll never get there. So, you know, a lot of this stuff is system failures. You know, I look at all of this as a lazy, lazy system failure, right? Also on the consumer level, too, right? We're all guilty of it a little bit, right? 100%. I want to go to my market and buy my food instead of, you know, growing it. it.

Which is tough. It can be. It can be tough. But it's part of the innate nature. I just had these terraces built on one of these big slopes on my land. It was a lot of work. It took two days, about five guys. But now I go outside.

I stare at six fruiting fruit trees. 50 from lavender to cooking herbs to plants to cails to you name it I'm staring at now this food and so yeah it requires

input but there's something so much more connected and rewarding with that plus you're just eliminating so much of the fatal conveniences along the way because you don't know where food came from God forbid we keep having this weird appeal thing that they're wanting to put on.

The protective coating that was getting a lot of press and back to sort of, again, going back to good intentions. And honestly, I don't know, you know, just for those that are not following along, there's a food science company called Appeal. And it is making all the waves right now sort of in the natural food space. You even have natural food grocers, like one that I go to in San Diego a lot, called Jimbo's, which I really like. Shout out to Jimbo's. That's saying that because there's so much controversy with this chemical agent

that they're refusing to put it on produce. Now, this company appeal, food sciences created it to basically make fruits and vegetables last longer. It was a coding, and they would describe it as being something that was made from, vegetable sources, I believe, right? That's how they would describe it. And then the concern came up that a lot of people were saying that it has trans fats in it. Now, I have not looked into it and I have not talked to anybody who deeply knows.

Have you had a chance to look into it? Do you know if something is there? I am just now, I have about three researchers digging into it right now. Okay, got it. So on the website and everything else, they don't disclose everything. Because there's chemical agents that are, that are,

you think of something as good and as effective as Phaas, right? It's permanently on pretty much a container. So if you're spraying something on, something like on an organic piece of food or fruit, and you can't wipe it off, and then you're not disclosing what chemicals are being, that have to be created in order for that interaction to happen, that's scary. Yeah.

And those are so far, it's been, again, accusations. Accusations. I don't know if it's true or not. I actually have a contact from a long time ago that was there when they were trying to like make the rounds and spread the word a little bit about the technology. But it would be good to, I would love to reach out to them and have somebody come on and say like, okay, what's the deal? From what I understood, people were saying that the combination of a couple of ingredients

created the byproduct of trans fats as part of it. And I didn't see that people were saying that there was a P-FAS-like chemical, but that inadvertently this company that was trying to do good, which is prevent rotting and food waste and other stuff, ended up doing something bad. But again, I don't know if it's real or if it's not real, and I'd love for somebody to help me understand it. It's going to come out.

As soon as you have an answer, you know, please let us know. Yeah, I mean, I know a lot of food science-based company. and I've tested a lot of organic food. So what do you do? Are you sending it into a lab? I mean, you can test and send things into a lab to look for the most common Phas. Is that what you guys are doing right now? Right now, we're just gathering the information.

Okay, got it. So right now I'm pushing. I haven't, I initiated the research with a few of them. And now I'm just, have been sitting back to see what they come back with as a first wave. But as you and I are talking right now, absolutely committed. to getting something tested. Yeah. You know, because it's like, again, through the track record,

everything that I write about in the book and from petroleums and thallates and from personal care to clothing to plastics and Phaas, no, I don't have a high level of trust of anybody. Because the more you pull the string, the more I see, I don't, you know, you know, Okay, food waste, you use these terms, it's going to be better for you, blah, blah, blah. It's like, here, how about we stimulate a subsidy of giving seeds to people, appropriate seeds in every area of the United States, for example,

we have 47 million acres of lawn that we water for no reason other than to functionally border our property. So what if half of that we started planting food? You want food security? Let people grow their own food. Let people have agency over that. It's not saying that people are holding them back to it, but let's get back to growing as much food. Our food security would not even be an issue at that point. So that's where it's like I take this turn of like, okay, you're using this terms of like, again, we're going to find

out. And I'll reach out to you once I find out some stuff. I mean, we do see a lot of food waste at the supermarket level. Supermarkets throw out food just because it's ripened a couple of days early and they know the consumer, the consumer's not going to buy it. Totally. And you know, a lot of these, you know, obviously there's a lot of big grocery stores that are big box stores, but even if you go to local mom and pops supermarkets, and there's still a few here in LA that are there, or even if you go to cooperatives, they will tell you straight up. You know, I've been a member of co-op for like 30 years in Delaware, a Newark Natural Foods co-op that I still have a membership with. And they would just tell us like, nobody wants to buy these. So we like, we'll just give them away, right? And because

they ripen too, you know, too much and people see black spots and that. So I do feel like going back to that earlier comment that if you look at a lot of the history and you talk a little bit about the history of some of these in your book, you saw initially people trying to do some version of what they thought was good, right? I truly believe that 99% of humanity, right, probably 99.9% is genuinely good people. Then you have quite, corporations that can become lunatics because their primary motive is profit and the whole plausible deniability. And then people that are in leadership who want to not look at any of the data and then kind of give coverage through PR by letting everybody else feel like we don't need to

look into this. We don't need to check out glyphosate. We don't check in that. And now you have a system that's become, you know, crazy, right? Even though unfortunately, corporations, are treated like, you know, people here in the United States. So I feel like these are, a lot of them are well-intentioned, but they go off the rails. And my personal opinion on it, I'd love to get your thoughts on this, feel free to chime in or you can opt out. I sort of feel at the top level, we don't even have the data in many ways. Like you were saying, like our municipalities don't even know how bad the water is. And why I'm excited about, you know, people like Marianne Williamson and Bobby Kennedy personally is, like,

Like they want to kind of hardcore go after this regulatory capture and at least say, let's show people the data of how bad things are. Then we need a lot of different solutions and made the best solutions win. What if our NIH was giving out grants for who could come up with the best solutions for cleaning the water supply, right? That would be a whole different thing. But we can't do that until we have the data. And we're not going to be able to convince people to grow first. food until they see how kind of bad things are with the data. Now, you have access to a lot of data because you go into the studies, but I think we need this at like a governmental level. We need

a little bit of exposure. Any thoughts on that? I mean, tons of thoughts. And yeah, I think it's this whole idea that, you know, they take this, the government takes this role as you can't handle the truth kind of thing, which is ridiculous. And that's why I love Bobby Kennedy's work in terms of that, it just turns into the truth and this is what's going on. And that's where I love, you know, getting into these things because you can't change it if you don't know what the problem is. I agree 100% that if we are sheltered in this kind of delusional idea of the world, that I can go into the market and, yeah, everything's safe here. Of course. I'm not. If I was a mom, I'm not knowingly buying food that are full of Phaas or thallates or heavy metals, lead,

and there's some level that's okay of mercury and fish. And you're taking this stuff in. You wouldn't knowingly buy that. So if people were forthright, and they also had to prove that their products were safe first, then that's a completely different world. But we're living in this delusional world so that when people hear things like in this book

and what Bobby Kennedy is saying and he's worked at his entire life, look at the Hudson River is kind of this shining star of the most polluted river on the planet. Now it's one of the cleanest because of the work that he did with waterkeepers, right? That's on the ground real stuff, accountability of toxic chemical into our waterways from products that we're buying every day. So we have to face this stuff in order to change it.

We have to. And we have to have people have the courage to go like, listen, man, I don't, I'm not political per se. So I just want to go, hey man, yeah, that dental floss that you're putting in your mouth, I didn't create it, but it's got P-FOS on it. And P-FOS is linked to three different types of cancer and we've got to know about it. So as a mom, as a person who loves their children, as a person who loves your own mouth, don't put that in your mouth. Those are practical things. that's why I think when a politician or someone stands up and just says the freaking truth I think we all can even though no one's perfect that's for sure but this delusional world

like EMFs they surround us right here right now and they're showing up as if it's a chemical exposure there's study and we need so much more studies I agree with you. These are indicators. All these over 100 plus studies in this book, they're indicators that we have dangerous things happening in our world. We have to be aware of this stuff so that we have agency over it, not sprinting us towards more demise,

not wiping us of our testosterone and having, are the very fabric of us living is being undermined. So if you looked at evolution, evolution wants it to keep living. So male and female come together, you have a child and that child lives on and you want the best for them, you want to create a scenario where they can thrive in their life and be better and have their own kids and be a grandparent and all. That's life. But now if you look at all of this stuff, that's absolutely.

being undermined, every direction, just from this chemicalized world. So that's wrong. That's not right. And if we're not telling people about it, that is pointing back to this thing that, how is it? That we could create a culture that cares more about that corporate's profits. than the health and safety of your unborn children and my unborn children and children born today that have already not even had a chance and have been exposed to over 200 chemicals from the umbilical cord of their mother.

No one gave them that choice. But someone's making those choices. And the FDA, the USDA, the EPA, yeah, there's good people in those organizations. trying to do, but also it's hijacked. And clearly, pharma, FDA, government, all this stuff is all

twisted upside down and sideways. And I believe, just like you, that the human spirit is so freaking powerful. And we have billions of us.

So, we need to talk about this stuff so that people can make other choices personally eat better have a spiritual filled full of life and passion eliminate things that are undermining your health so you're not dragging around your own chemistry set of a body that's barely thriving and to your point i'm glad you brought it up the people that don't have that choice that are in a food desert in the middle of a city that have never seen a fresh piece of fruit it's crazy that's here today that that is when I look at all of these different angles and if you just look back it you take a step back we are barely surviving but we're certainly not

thriving. Mayo Clinic study, 2.7% of Americans were deemed healthy from lifestyle, diet, exercise. That's a flipped statistic.

That's scary. So, and we know, top killers are killing us are manufactured by us, right? Yeah. It's important, and I think anybody who pays attention and certainly picks up a copy of the book, sees your interviews, listens to this one. This is a sci-fi novel, right?

One of my favorite movies of all time was this Clive Owen movie called Children of Men. Have you seen that? I don't. It's a great movie. He's great, though. He's great. This is one of his early works. Oh, wow.

And it's the story, bring up the poster, Tessa. It's a story of a few. where society can no longer have kids. Yeah. They can no longer have kids and they don't know what is going on. Basically, nobody has had a kid for like, you know, years. It's a foreshadow. Right?

And the youngest kid in the world at the beginning of it ends up dying, which causes like a big panic. And now all of a sudden, Clive, this sort of office worker in a fact you know, like, sorry, in like a corporate environment is now being tasked and connects with somebody who for the first time can get pregnant, which is not supposed to happen. And then the story unfolds. Fantastic movie. And yet when you look at the declining sperm rates, when you look at the declining rates of infertility, which a big part for sure is toxins.

And we've had many people on this podcast talk about. It's also excess calories, ultra-process foods. And especially for many women, PCOS and preclampsia that happens during pregnancy, all coming from metabolic health. Yeah. Because our diets are so sugary, so rich in processed carbohydrates and out of control, not in a balanced way. So if you really look at it, we are like heading.

closer and closer towards these sci-fi movies. Yeah, and look at 2007. Yeah. Like a great, great book. I interviewed her for this book, Dr. Shanna Swan. Yeah. A book countdown. Great book.

I mean, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, racing towards it. If you were to try to undermine a society. I mean, to your point, it's not one thing. It's hundreds of things. right it's the ultra processed it's the chemicals it's the stressed life it's the not access to fresh food it's it's just getting us from it's the EMFs it's just from every direction um because it's like if you want to know where you're at I think personally in terms of self-development just look and

look at your life what's going on like are you happy, what's your finance is like. You got to look. You got to look directly in order for things to change. So we have to look directly at our society. Right. And these people, Dr. Shana Swam, Dr. Leo Trasande, like, there's a lot of people talking about this stuff that are like, hey man, we got to change this. And it's so slow from an organizational standpoint, from a EPA standpoint, from FDA standpoint. So we have to, we have to do it. It's not an easy oil tanker to turn. Sure. And there's small steps. Again, you've already covered a couple of them, but even filtering your water at home. Yeah, easy. With a good quality reverse osmosis filter. And then add the

electrolytes back in. You know, and then add electrolytes back in. Now, one thing that I haven't seen you talk about as much is under this umbrella of also, yes, this is all happening. And people like you, and in a tiny way, me, I write about it, I interview guests and experts on the topic. You know, we're trying to raise the alarm and your work has heavily been in the space. And also, too, it's a good, important reminder to let the audience know, like, you're not walking around depressed every day, right? This is something that you're concerned about. And it's a It's your life's work to help raise awareness about it. But you also are not stepping into nihilism where you're like, okay, we're just all

aft. There's nothing that we can do and just why do it anyway. And I think that's important because when you're listening to this, when you're watching it on YouTube, it's easy to feel like, man, all these people that are in control are so messing up the earth and it's me and my family that's suffering. Right. really the message is, hey, this is a system that we've all created. Sure, some more than others and some are profiting by keeping it that way.

And they don't want us to change things. But more and more people are waking up. And in addition to the small things that you can do, there's also this other aspect, which is working out regularly and sweating, going in the sauna, right? Eating healthy. These things, building muscle mass, these things are protective. Because really we have a split in society. Some people that don't have the education and the access are getting more

unhealthier than ever. And when we look at the statistics in America that are every year, we've had a declining lifespan, right? It's, yes, it's true. But my guess is if you also split the data into the healthiest of those that are out there, which again, that's not everybody. That's going to be the small percentage. I don't know if it's 2% as the Mayo Clinic was saying.

if it's a little bit more than that. But a lot of people that are probably listening to this podcast who probably have the time, resources, and access, we have to remember that regular things that we can do, sweating, you know, doing a hit class every so often, strain training, getting your metabolic system healthy, you know, not eating and basing your diet around ultra-processed foods.

Those things definitely work. And not only that, that's what I feel is kind of like majoring in the majors, right? you were on Max Lugavir, for he's a friend of mine, you know, you were on his podcast and he has this whole thing. We have to not major in the minors,

but we have to also make sure we major in the majors. Now, that doesn't mean that we can't talk about all this stuff, but we can make small swaps along the way without making sure that like,

hey, don't skip your workout this week, right? And if you have access to Osana or you can go to your local YMCA or whatever it is, you can take, you know,

get your 10,000 steps in and walk with a friend, those things still do matter. Do you feel that that's true? Million percent. You know, and I think, I think, you know, it's so easy, even myself included, to get pulled into this because the more you look, the more you look and more you find. But the agency that we have is so powerful. And like you said, I mean, the simple things that can do will add up to be so powerful against any of them from sleeping you know you're right we even mentioned sleep yes eight to nine hours and that is a preparation also from the night before and then uh so what are you doing to prepare yourself to sleep um what was your hydration like what kind of food are you striving to eat right and and preparation around that but if you

hydrate well and eat well and exercise. I mean, I've never, you know, I have to tell myself to not work out. At least like, take a day. Like, let your body take a break. But yeah, the agency that we have. And then I like what you said, there are these all these little tweaks. People around me if I see them like doing, like putting their cell phone right on their crotch or something. I'll be just like, I just reach over.

They're good friends, obviously. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I just go, yeah, I just put it over here. You know, like, you know, and so don't obsess about it, but learn, because in the learning, you have now knowledge and you, and then applying that knowledge is wise and wisdom. And it aligns. It continues to kind of recapitulate energy, right? You get to pull, you get to, when you, it always feels good when you learn something and then you apply it and you

integrate it. Yeah. And then you continue to build. Hey, maybe some people are going, yeah, man, I eat out too much. And so let me start working on eliminating some of the ultra-processed food. Yeah, I'm only sleeping like six hours. To your point, work on those major things. Work on those things that are going to move the needle.

Definitely make sure your muscle mass is strong. Like that's your freaking engine. And we need that because that's all. going to push against that's going to the exercise the sleep there's no amount of anything that's going to kind of take over that you have to do those things in order for them to enact your you're the basis of your foundation of strength and and then as you optimize you start to minimize some of these exposures and and it is a slow continued evolution I'm not perfect You know, you know, certainly when I was talking to my good friend, Jeff Garner, shout out to Jeff.

He's been a sustainable fashion designer for 20 years. Had him on my podcast years ago. And I was aware of, you know, I'm not buying, you know, a lot of stretchy jeans or, you know, the nylons and rayon. I'm not buying that stuff. but it's also woven into a bunch of clothes that I had. And so they're like going, oh, my God, he just destroyed my whole closet at that point. And so I'm also now starting, this is like this shirt and these jeans were made by him.

I'm luckily in a position, but I'm also like, okay, well, how can more people get access to that? So he's designing some basic t-shirts that are clean and healthy. And so let's kind of get some. some of that out and let's try to do something but again over time i think of all of this stuff as kind of going from as people are reading this book hell they could just open this book and just read a page and and and and think about it and integrate but the most important thing i think is to your point the agency of the things that you can do continue to do exercise sleep hydrate eat whole healthy plants and food and whole healthy food. And then from inside out, your water and your mouth

opening up to food and water, you know, make sure that that's clean. And then as you go out and what are you slathering on your skin, the lotions, the things that you are doing, yeah, the underwear that you're putting on your sensitive genitalia that are transdermally, potentially getting into your body and then goes into your bloodstream and causing these stressors, am I sleeping with the Wi-Fi router at night? Why would you need to keep it on, turn it off, lower these exposures and continue to gain kind of that agency. But take it one step at a time. Yeah, it's an important message, one step at a time. You know, I had somebody come in, a gentleman from the Austin area. I'm forgetting his name.

I will recall it in a minute. Joe Rogan. He was a medical doctor from Mexico who came to the U.S. and then because he wasn't licensed here and he got very passionate about this whole concept of EMF exposure, not just from cell phones and cell phone radiation, but anything electronic. And one of the things he did, he came in my house,

he did the whole testing and everything like that. One of the things he showed me that was a nice low-hanging fruit because same as you. He said, listen, these things are all around us. And we don't know fully to what degree the combination of all of them can do, but we have enough evidence to know we should take a precautionary approach in our life. And where he focused in on is he focused in on the most important thing is at night, your body goes into DNA repair.

And we want to make sure that at night especially, we want to protect the brain and the body through this DNA repair process. So especially if people have strong Wi-Fi, that could be one thing. You know, consider turning that off or at least even before that, this is one of the recommendations in your book. Keep your cell phone away from you, right? Put it on an airplane mode and keep it away from you. I'll tell you the honest struggle that I have a little sort of anecdote is I am the person that often gets that call in the evening. I have a large friend group.

Maybe it happens three, four times a year. I'm not saying it happens on a regular basis. I'm not a doctor. I'm not this or that. It's always the decision of do you turn the Wi-Fi off or do you keep the cell phone on and put the phone away so that you can still get a call? Because people do worry about that, right? People do worry about that. So that's always something that's there.

But regardless, the other thing that he said is that where you put your pillow down and where your head rest, you want to do your best to not have anything plugged in. You know, we put a lot of attention on cell phones, but then he took his meters, he used like five of them, all measuring different frequencies. And he said, let me show you what your regular old alarm clock and lamp plugged in right next to your head where you sleep.

Let's look at the amount of radiation coming off of that versus just, let's say, your cell phone, right? And with my lamp and alarm clock plugged in, they, you know, right next to the bed and the lamp was off and the alarm clock was on, there was a lot of EMF radiation that was coming. He said, just at night, you don't need these things or just put them in a further part, you know, further away from the room. So these were all just tiny things, right, that we can all do to minimize that exposure. And, you know, going back to the concept of cell phones, you mentioned another one,

don't keep your cell phone on on your lap, right? You also recommend to women, it's a really great Instagram post. Like, don't keep it in your bra. A lot of people give in their sports bra. Any other couple tips on the topic of cell phone or EMF that you want to show? Yeah, just think of it in terms of all this stuff because it can get, people can get a little weird about,

oh, my God, these are not dangerous and all this stuff. It's causing stress. And to your point, the doctor was saying, these are causing your body stress, and it's showing up in a variety of different ways. It's showing up with free radical oxygen species. It's showing up with the blood brain barrier, scared the hell out of me,

with opening up the blood brain barrier and allowing albumin, a type of protein to go into the brain, and that can cause inflammatory responses, et cetera. So it's a stress that's happening. So just think of duration and proximity. The closer you are to these even plugged in because there's alarming research just around wires that are not grounded properly. Right.

The magnetic fields that come off of that, the frequency fields that come up. Leukemia connected to children. The studies are scary from old schools and things like that that people are in all the time. It's proximity and duration. If you're around these fields a lot and you're close to them, it's causing your body stress. Right? And these things added up. I think it's about 17% of America or the world has electrosensitivity.

And the WHO is actually trying, which is wild, they're trying to push it in terms of acknowledging that there's a certain sect of people that are being. harmed knowingly being harmed, meaning they get around electromagnetic fields and they can't function as well. So those people, similar to my dad with chemical sensitivity. Yeah, I want to talk about a story in a minute. Yeah. And so, but think about it. They're just more susceptible because their cup kind of spilleth over. It's still affecting ourselves. It's still affecting us. So just think of all of this stuff as, yeah, the lamps, the alarm clocks, the cell phone, the Wi-Fi router, proximity and duration. So if the cell phone's on, if it's on you and it's on, that's proximity, very close to your genitalia and your phone's constantly trying to pull in a signal. So it's a lot of radiation pulling into your body all the time.

So these are the kind of safety guards to think of, right? Putting up a cell phone to your head for periods of time, you know, the guilloma research is continuing to show up with not allowing for senescence to happen with the cells, the RNA and DNA signaling. So it thwarts that whole thing, i.e. gyloma tumors show up with proximity and duration. And when you show some of the research and you show the from children, scary, that cell phone signal is going all the way through the brain and the skull of a child. So they're infinitely more susceptible just by the thickness of not being as thick of a skull as an adult. So these things we have to be, we have to be aware and they're invisible. Yeah. Do you know Deborah Davis?

She's part of the environmental trust. Yeah. I don't know her, but I know of her. Yeah. Yeah, she'd be a great person to talk to. She was on the podcast previously. And she's, Tessa, can we bring it up? Deborah Davis, it's the environmental, yeah, there we go.

Environmental Health Trust. She's been on the podcast, and she's a researcher in the space, PhD, also a master's in public health. Oh, yes. I've seen it. And they have a section on their website. It's eTrust.org. If you hover over science, you can go to all these different categories.

So electromagnetic sensitivity, cell phone towers, and, you know, brain development, children's vulnerabilities. And she's accumulated one of the best databases of walking through peer-reviewed research on each one of these topics. And it's a great resource for anybody who's like, is this real? Like, what should we be looking into? And the same thing as you. You know, she says space is your friend. Yeah. So one simple thing, you're using a laptop, right?

Okay, try to charge your laptop and then unplug it. Right. You know, it has its charge. And then best case scenario, especially if you're working at home and you're about to put it on your lap, put a pillow, put something to put a little separation between it. Or leave it on a desk, which is what I do. And I have a Bluetooth mouse and keyboard, right? Sure.

Do you still dealing with Bluetooth, whatever? but your hand is not directly on the battery. Right. And you're not getting that exposure, especially if it's not plugged in. So she has a lot of really great common sense stuff, and she's a big advocate in the space for people to check out. That's fantastic.

Yeah. You know, a couple more topics I want to hit on. This one was a huge one for me, and I don't know if I have chemical sensitivity. You know, I want to talk about your dad's story in a minute. But I always from a young age, like fragrances would just over Overwhelmed me, right? I would start sneezing.

It would be too much. I'd get headaches. You know, I don't have any kind of allergies or whatever, but all these fragrances. If I went to a party and some aunt gave me a big hug and, you know, had like this overwhelming amount of perfume on or something. Or one time I was in Scotland and Edinburgh and we ran an Airbnb and the lady there was so sweet, but everywhere had febrize and this chemical and candles. And I literally ended up.

ended up walking in, smelling the place and said, listen, I actually can't stay here. I'll pay for it. You know, nothing wrong with you, but I'm just too sensitive to all these smells. What have you found out about fragrances and why do you recommend people start to hyper-aggressively take out the unnatural fragrances in their life? Yeah, this one's a, this one's a, you know, a weird loophole that has been created for as long as they say that these are their trade secrets. There could be hundreds of chemicals that will not show up on a label. And most of them now they don't use any natural flavors.

They used to use musk, which was a natural flavor, or excuse me, a natural scent. And now there could be hundreds of these things, and most of them are, they don't have to disclose. So as you dive into them, the endocrine disrupting, the carcinogenic activity, just kept, showing up in every direction and my same similar you you more than likely you definitely have a degree of chemical sensitivity from this stuff because that's that that that was the early symptomology of my father wow so so he would get brain and this is a highly functioning double master's about your father and how that sort of been has been a big part of your journey of why you've been why you've been why you gotten in this space yeah so I was studying physiology and nutrition in college and it was

probably 93, 93, could have been even earlier, 91. And my dad started talking to me about, hey, I'm not functioning very well. My brain's fogged. I can't think. He was a professor at the University of Minnesota, and he would have people come into him, and he all of a sudden, they'd show up. he'd smell this and he'd start reacting, then he would be done. He couldn't think.

Like perfumes and colognes and stuff? All of it. Wow. And so then he was, as a teacher, a professor, he'd start finding VHS tapes and finding research and start highlighting it, make copies and sending it to all of us. And you're like going, what's going on? Right?

You don't believe him at first because I didn't know of anyone in my life that would ever. So that progressed. And then in order to be around him and come home from college, he would send me a care package of unscented clean products. And so I started using those because I was like, well, I got to go along with it because I don't want to not see my dad. And as I kind of detox myself, I was feeling better. And I didn't realize I wasn't feeling good with these things. And the more I learned, the more I realized that, wow, they're not disclosing these highly volatile. And think about it.

Our olfactory system is potentially one of the most sensitive that we have. And we don't even talk about this in food, but our food selection comes by way of olfactory. The sensitivity of our olfactory system can tell us exactly what nutrients we need through the sensitivity of our olfactory, which is an incredible hole rabbit hole, which is so interesting. But if you process any of it, it's hijacked. Right. Processing ingredients, smells, flavoring. Exactly. So we're hijacked through that as well. So, but it's also deeply connected directly to the brain and the sensitivity of those volatile organic compounds can go right through the sensitivities of our nasal passages and right into our blood. So this is a very important system. And my dad

within 10 seconds of smelling something that was chemical. And this was even off gassing of a t-shirt. Wow. And I didn't even smell it. I couldn't even smell it. I couldn't even smell. And this is carpets. This was shampoo. This was laundry detergent. This was synthetic fibers. This was, this took him out of his life. So I was, I was watching this, this vibrant, smart guy just all of a sudden, it was a bad episode of Twilight Zone where he all of a sudden just had to distance himself from society because he couldn't, so he would jump on his motorcycle. he loved Harleys later in his life and he jumped at his motorcycle

and would go camp on a beach just to get away from all of the exposure. So that made a very big imprint because that also started him down this path of he picked up alcohol

after 30 years of sobriety because he was so depressed and it just, I believe they are connected and he ended up passing away on his death certificate of alcohol Paulism. So, so, I mean, it's 20 years ago, obviously, but, you know, so this book is dedicated to him and it hasn't gotten better. It's gotten exponentially worse with more and more, not only fragrances, but these chemicals that are created and not, again, not disclosed.

Why would you do that? Why would you, you know, whether you're sensitive and aware of it or not, does does anyone know that that headache that they have um was from you know i remember i was in a taxi and some i think i was in spain and i this guy had one of those green air fresheners and i and i i was out of my my sticking my head out the door or out the window and i was just like i take so many ubers, I wish they only had one green air freshener. There's all the glade plug-ins in every vent and in the back. It's just abusive. I sometimes will send them a message beforehand like, hey, listen, I'm a little sensitive to these. Would you mind just putting them in the glove box? And people are usually nice. You know, they'll say, okay, yeah, I'll take them, I'll put them in

the glove box. These are, it's abusive. And so, yeah, that has a deep connection to my father into this kind of fatal conveniences and again the thwarting of our endocrine system and volatile organic compounds that we don't need to have in a world and there's great solutions there's incredible solutions for this i love like i always carry a nice little blend of lavender or rose essential oil and imagine we don't have to undermine our health, that we can actually do some things that uplift us and actually drive us back down to parasympathetic response instead of sympathetic stress all the time.

Smelling an incredible essential oil immediately calms things down. So you can smell good and be good. Yeah. And that's where we need to shift. It's laziness and it's profits and it's all of this stuff. And lack of awareness, right? Lack of awareness, yeah. There's lack of awareness.

You know, in my home, in my home office, in my bedroom, also my wife's home office, and actually here at the studio, it's right behind you. It's that little device that's in the back, that gray thing. It's kind of muted right now because we don't want it to be, you know, distracting for anybody. I have no affiliation with the company, but I just found out a good device. It's like 200 bucks. It's called Aware. And it basically is constantly in real time monitoring VOCs.

PM 2.5, right? It's also monitoring CO2 levels because we have a studio and, you know, there's not ventilation. We're in a corporate building. And when we built the studio initially, you know, we have to paint. We use low VOC paint. We try to pick natural fabrics and things as best as we can, but you're still going to get anytime you build a new room, you're going to get VOCs. And I didn't want to even move in until the air was a little bit better quality.

And we also, you know, have a good quality air filter. but there's a big link to productivity and these things, right? And we have a whole newsletter on the topic we can link to it in the show notes with a bunch of free tips about just simple things that you can do at home, often even just opening the window. As much as we like to kind of shit on the air outside, for a lot of people's homes because they have so much off-gassing, the outdoor air is actually way healthier than the indoor air,

even here in a place like Los Angeles, right? So just opening up the window for a little bit, getting in some fresh air, not having, you know, if you're going to burn incense or all the things, like keeping the windows open, letting those things go out. If you get a new car, right, wiping it down as much as you can, which takes a while. Open all the windows and let it. Open all the windows.

And, you know, it'll take a little while, but support the off-gassing of these things. You know, my heart goes out to everybody, obviously, who has chemical sensitivity. You see it increasingly more and more people. A lot of people don't, which great, good for you. But it's tough. It's really tough. And I feel for your father, he must have been a very challenging time because at that time, there wasn't as much awareness.

And so probably just a lot of people making him feel like he was crazy for thinking that. 100%. Right? And so that's very isolating. So it's powerful that you are doing the work you're doing and dedicating in your father's honor. Yeah. Thank you. And good for you, man.

Yeah. It's these little things that you're demonstrating here, that you're creating in a healthier environment. And these things add up. These little things are so powerful. And think about, you know, children and schools and things like that. You know, from the kind of stuff we use, let's pay a little more attention. Let's pay maybe sometimes we have to pay a little more for something that doesn't have it. Unfortunately, that does occur.

But the more of us that become aware and do these little things. things, then, you know, you demonstrate that and you gain a little more of that agency back. Yeah. You know, just to come back to this concept, because I do think when you learn about the space, you want to sometimes step into a little bit of a nanny state where you want to tell every other corporation what they should do. And I really think, you know, just again, going back to like some of the things that Bobby Kennedy's been saying, it's like, let's at least do the research to know the true harm. And then let's not let corporations outsource the cost of cleanup.

So whether it's the, you know, we're basically, I mean, we see this with one of the number one items bought on food stamps is, uh, is soda, right? So does one of the number one things? And obviously we need the ability. We need the SNAP program. We need people to have and help them with food insecurity. right? There should be a fierce debate, right? All I want to do is I want to hear the debate from both sides about whether or not we should be subsidizing Coca-Cola, Pepsi, and their bottom

line. I think I read a few different reports on it, but up to a billion dollars a year in purchases of, I think Coca-Cola alone is coming from the SNAP program that's there. So do we want to be incentivizing those food purchases and then not incentivizing other things that are there? So let's not let, you know, and then you look at who are the patients that have diabetes? who are the patients that are on dialysis, and then it's the larger public that ends up absorbing the cost of this. Same thing with a lot of the top polluters, right?

It pollutes the water systems, it pollutes this. So at least if we had the data around this and how much these polluters were contributing, then society can say, okay, we live in a free market. You want to wear that toxic makeup? Well, the true cost of it is X because we have to charge you now for the cleanup

of the tax, the municipality has to pay to go through the process. I'm a big fan of people choosing what they want to do, right? Like if you want to go and slather yourself with all sorts of crazy chemicals, you know, be my guest, right? You're an adult, you can do that. But you should know the true impact, and that's the argument in this book. People don't know the true impact.

The data's not there. A lot of the scientists don't even know the true impact of it. And then the second thing is we're all paying for the cleanup, which is unfair to the people that are taxpayers in this country. Totally. Yeah, it's a big, It's a big, but I like your point too, to actually have this as a conversation.

Should the Coca-Cola's of the world pay for the tax of their product that's the most plastic producing company on the planet, that their product sticks around for a thousand years? Should they be involved since they're already involved? in producing these things, should they be involved in the production of a cleaner product? Not only, it's an ecosystem, ecosystem of you, ecosystem of the world. But pretending it's not there and it's not creating a huge amount of harm. I think, yeah, let's get all this stuff out on the, let's take a society that's acting like a little adolescent brat.

and doing whatever it wants. And let's be adults here and take responsibility for our lives and hold others accountable for what they're doing. And like you said, let's have healthy debates. You know, I always think about relationships. If you want a deep relationship with your partner,

but avoid. real feelings and avoiding what's going on and avoiding conversations, hard conversations. Are you going to have a deep connected relationship? No. You're going to have a superficial, resentment-filled, sad, and probably mostly disconnected relationship. It's the same thing here. We just want the best, and I believe also in what you're saying, 99, probably 99. 0.99% of the people are good. So let's act like it. Let's also hold

corporations in the same vein. And in that spirit, let's turn and face things and move together as a society. That's my utopian dream. Yeah. That we face things, change things together. Stop making everyone wrong.

But if we're going in the right moral direction, for all of humanity and the planet and not using bullshit terms to pretend that you're doing while at the same time harming the very thing that you're doing for the environment or whatever it's not the...

we need the right leaders to do that and we need a lot of people to become aware of these types of conversations so that they can be the agency of change in their family and with their friends, and take that cell phone off the crotch of their beloved as well. Darren, this has been great.

The book is out. Fatal conveniences. We have a link to it in the show notes. Anything else besides your book that you want to give a shout out to while we have folks' attention? Oh, man. You know, I'm proud of my Baruka's company. Yeah.

We got tested with a third-party Swiss company that were the most, one of the most regenerative and fair traded companies just by us collecting a wild food in the savannah of Brazil creating jobs you know 20 years as a superfood hunter and formulator it is a shining example and just a great expression of the kind of work that I want to do with conscious capitalism so and other people listening here as entrepreneurs let's lead Let's lead our friends. Let's lead our employees. Let's lead our companies.

Don't be lazy because treat people as if they know, even if they don't currently. Treat them with that respect and make products that are great. Make packaging that is great. Make supplements and food and personal care. Make them great. And then shout it from the rooftops because that's, the real marketing. Tell them how great these products are because you've kicked ass and done it. So, you know, that's leaning into the spirit of who we really are as opposed to, you know,

listening to these people that are just trying to manipulate us through marketing. So anyway, just a little shout out to the entrepreneurial people and the spirit out there. Let's just kick some ass in a good way. I love it. A great reminder. Darren, thank you so much for coming on the podcast and sharing your work with us. And the fact that you wrote your book to honor your dad, just want to say that's as somebody who's very close to his father, just a beautiful way to share and keep his legacy around. So thank you for that.

Thanks, Drew. I appreciate it, brother. Hi, everyone. Drew here. Two quick things. Number one, thank you so much for listening to this podcast. If you haven't already, subscribe, just hit the subscribe button on your favorite podcast app. And by the way, if you love this episode, it would mean the world to me.

And it's the number one thing that you can do to support this podcast is share it with a friend. Share with a friend who would benefit from listening. Number two, before I go, I just had to tell you about something that I've been working on that I'm super excited about. It's my weekly newsletter. And it's called Try This. Every Friday, yes, every Friday, 52 weeks a year, I send out an easy-to-digest protocol of simple steps that you or anyone you love can follow to optimize your own health. We cover everything from nutrition to mindset to metabolic health, sleep, community,

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