Habits and Hustle - Episode 473: Dr. Aly Cohen: Hidden Toxins in Your Home (And How to Detox Without Going Broke)

Episode Date: August 5, 2025

Are we being slowly poisoned by everyday products? Dr. Aly Cohen joins me on the Habits and Hustle podcast to reveal the shocking truth about toxins lurking in our water, food packaging, and personal care items - and more importantly, what we can actually do about it without breaking the bank. We discuss why your filtered water might still be contaminated, the four essential supplements everyone needs, and her practical "4 A's" approach to detoxification. We also dive into the surprising connection between autoimmune diseases and environmental chemicals and why she thinks infrared saunas might be overhyped. Dr. Aly Cohen is a board-certified rheumatologist and integrative medicine physician with over 22 years of experience. She's the author of "Detoxify" and founder of The Smart Human platform. After her dog's autoimmune diagnosis led her to investigate environmental health 15 years ago, she's become a leading voice in practical, science-based detoxification strategies. What We Discuss:  (02:02) The Rise of Toxic Chemicals Since WWII  (09:48) Why Your Water Filter Isn't Working  (16:05) Symptoms of Toxic Overload  (22:15) Top 3 Natural Detoxification Methods  (27:29) Hidden Toxins in Food and Packaging  (31:02) Heavy Metal Testing: Worth It or Waste?  (38:09) The Iodine Deficiency Crisis (43:42) The "4 Fertilizer Supplements" Everyone Needs  (48:38) Plastic-Free Kitchen Swaps  (52:12) EMF Concerns: Microwaves and Cell Phones  (57:48) Teaching Kids About Toxins  (01:01:48) Fiber vs. Protein for Detox  (01:08:36) Exercise, Saunas, and Sweating …and more! Thank you to our sponsors: Momentous: Shop this link and use code Jen for 20% off Therasage: Head over to therasage.com and use code Be Bold for 15% off  TruNiagen: Head over to truniagen.com and use code HUSTLE20 to get $20 off any purchase over $100. Magic Mind: Head over to www.magicmind.com/jen and use code Jen at checkout. 99designs by Vista: 99designs.com/jen20  – click "Claim my discount" to get $20 off your first design contest.   Find more from Jen:  Website: https://www.jennifercohen.com/ Instagram: @therealjencohen   Books: https://www.jennifercohen.com/books Speaking: https://www.jennifercohen.com/speaking-engagement Find more from Dr. Aly Cohen: Website: https://alycohenmd.com/  Podcast: https://alycohenmd.com/podcast 

Hi guys, it's Tony Robbins. You're listening to Habits and Hustle. Crush it! Before we dive into today's episode, I want to thank our sponsor, Momentous. When your goal is healthspan, living better and longer, there are very few non-negotiables. One of them? Quality. And when it comes to supplements designed for high performers, nobody does it better than Momentus. Momentus goes all in on NSF certification, which means every single batch is tested for heavy metals, harmful additives, and label accuracy. And that's why they're trusted by all 32 NFL teams and top collegiate sports dieticians across the country. Here's the thing, they don't sell every supplement under the sun because they believe

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Okay, you guys. Today we have another really very interesting and very timely podcast. We have Dr. Ailey Cohen on the podcast. She is a rheumatologist and an integrative medicine doctor and environmental health, you said, correct? Correct. You're a real doctor. That's basically- I don't just play one on television, yes. Or on your podcast, yes.

Exactly, well, so many people now come on and I find out that they're chiropractors, not an MD. So now I just wanna be very, I wanna make sure we're especially clear. MD. An MD and a specialist, have you. She has a new book out called Detoxify, all about hidden toxins and what we should be aware of,

which I think is, like I said, exceptionally timely. I think that's like very much in the zeitgeist now about what is happening and how we have to be, we don't even know what we don't know. So I want to first ask you something because if you scroll on Instagram or any social media, there's a lot of, the things that do very well is things that are very polarizing, right? And fear-mongering. I want to ask you, before we even dive into all the different toxins out there,

what are harmful, what we don't even know about, is there a piece of it that is fear-mongering, or is it just really about raising awareness for things that just used to not be known in our world? That's a great question. And I contend with this issue myself, because I myself have been in this business now for 15 years learning this material. And so I would really say that it's something

that is pretty critical, that we need to be thinking about. And we'll get into why, because I'm equally, or if not more heavily handed on the what to do, as opposed to what the problem is. But I think you need to know what the problems are and why this science is finally getting into the public arena slowly obviously but it's getting in there. What are the most common toxins we are exposed to in the day that we don't even know? That we're not even at all familiar with?

Well, I think what we're probably most exposed to is the things that are in our food, which obviously we're getting a lot of attention about that on the news in terms of what's not regulated, but also food packaging. People don't realize even the food system is a problem when it comes to chemicals because, and I'm talking about harmful chemicals,

not just any chemicals, the ones that have been tested that do have the ones that have been tested that do have the science that's rigorous and consistent in terms of studies, that we know that food packaging can be a problem. But we also know things like drinking water, which is the most important topic in my list of all the things to talk about.

We're talking about high volume exposures is what I like to start with, right? I don't want people to be worried about going for a birthday party and having icing on the cake, or traveling and having to do bottled water. There's a lot about life, my colored hair, my kids who play lacrosse on artificial turf and out of the game right now on the East Coast. So the idea is it's not to say to everyday people, listen, flip out, become resistant to change, throw up your hands and say it's just too much to deal with. That's exactly why I wrote the book.

I want people to have a really practical and judicious approach to this topic. But you have to know why, you have to know where these chemicals come from, you have to know the science about them and why and how they work, and then you got to know what to do about it because it's all practical stuff. It's a universal message that we can all take upon ourselves to make small, simple changes. Okay, so, you know, when we were kids, let's say the 70s, 80s, 90s, right?

Are there more toxic chemicals that we are exposed to now than ever before? Or, like I said, is it that it's kind of become part of the conversation now that we just didn't care back then? Great, yeah, great question. So the fact is, yes, we have more chemicals. And the reason being is if you understand how regulation really doesn't work, I wanna say works, but it doesn't work in this country.

In the United States, here are the things that have actual regulations testing science. The FDA for medications, which has its issues, but generally is pretty good. And the EPA for some very limited chemicals, right? We have a bunch of them that they manage, especially in water systems, about 91 total. 91 in the water systems. In the United States, 91 chemicals, which is horrifying to think of that number as being so low.

I want to get into the water in a minute. And then we have basically nothing else. There is no required testing for safety or toxicity of the chemicals that go into our personal care products, our cleaning products, our textiles, things that we spray on furniture, our industrial chemicals. But did they have that back then, like 30 years ago, 40 years ago? No, because well, the laws that were back then are still the same ones that we have now.

Right. And yet what's happened is we have thousands of new chemicals that are added into the US market for the products that we use every year. There are about 15 to 20 new polymers that are actually patented every week and over 1,000, about 1,200 now, endocrine disrupting chemicals that we now won't know of from the endocrine disrupting researchers that do this work around the world.

And those are basically chemicals designated to affect hormones. And I'm gonna talk about in my book about how they affect the immune system as well. So what was the purpose of creating these chemicals? Was it to keep food fresher, or was it to just preserve things longer? Like, why now?

Great. Yeah. So we've had chemicals that were designed... Okay, let's go back a notch. So after World War II, late 40s, 50s, we had an enormous number of chemicals that hit the market. And that was really because of wartime. So they created Nogahyde, rayon, plexiglass, Formica, pesticides for people going overseas to wars to not get, you know, infections, right?

There was chemicals that were designed for the food packaging industry so that soldiers could take food overseas and it wouldn't spoil canned foods, right? BPA, bisphenol A, some of us have heard about it. It's just one of many bisphenol chemicals that line the inside of canned foods. Well, that came about in the late 40s and early 50s, even though BPA started back in the 30s in Germany. But the idea is that many of these chemicals were designed for a reason, right? And no one really understood how they would affect human health because they were never

required to be tested, particularly in vulnerable populations like pregnant women, in children, in the elderly, in immune compromised people. And so when you have this flux of chemicals, and there's great graphs to show sort of the correlation, association between sort of the rise, enormous rise in chemicals and the enormous rise in chronic diseases and also autoimmune diseases, what I deal with as a rheumatologist, you can see that we had this flux and yet no regulation to manage how they were managed in the population, how they were studied, who should be able to use them, not use them in what products, how safe, and also how they're degraded. How do we get rid of these chemicals in our trash? Where do they go and why do they end up back into our bodies if they go through the water system?

So there's this lack of requirements that started at the get-go when these chemicals were really taking off. And now we can't put the genie back in the bottle. Right. So just over time, we become much more aware of what kind of the repercussions are of having them. Absolutely. I remember though when I was a kid, my mom was always super into like health and like I thought she was like super paranoid and overprotective and a crazy person. But she would not, she would always be like,

don't eat the tuna out of the can because of the can seeps chemicals. Don't, you know, MSG in Chinese food. So stay away from that. Don't do this, don't do that. And meanwhile, like, you know what, she was actually, she was right, like 30 years that. And meanwhile, like you know what, she was actually, she was right. Like 30 years later. Mom's are always right.

Always, moms are always right. Like 30, 40 years later. Absolutely. It's actually become the, it's become like the topic of conversation now, right? So like, I guess like anything, like you don't know what you don't know unless you really deep dive. So my mom, you know, you know, shout out to my mom. Like she was like on, she was like on the right thing there.

She's still the same way. But I find that to be very interesting because now it's all about drinking from a jar, not from a plastic. That was the other one. My mother would tell me even back then when I was 10 not to drink from plastic bottles. I mean plastic. She was progressive. I like your mom. Yeah, she was very knowledgeable and she still, I mean, not was, she still is very knowledgeable. Okay, so let's get back to this in your book because I find that like some of the things, the water system especially is very interesting because, you know, we all think we're doing the right thing. We get a filter, we filter our water, right?

Like one of those Brita's or whatever you have. I was told that those filters that you use to filter out tap water is only getting rid of maybe 10% of the junk and toxins that are in the water. And you're left with things that it's actually like you're drinking things that you would be like just beside yourself with. Is that true? True. And here's the thing, it's because the technology of a Brita filter or other picture filters, those are called carbon blocks. It's a big chunk of carbon. And they're the same type of filtration that's also in a refrigerator door. And it's because the water goes through it really quickly. Okay, wait a second. So that's very interesting. So that's what people do, including me, right? Like when you came over here

Sorry to tell you. Yeah, I gave you a glass of water I took it from my filtered water from my fridge Uh-huh that I would say 90% of people in the like who have like a filtered water system in their fridge That's what they're doing. So you're telling me that actually is Contaminated water so I can't prove to you 100%. Okay. I'm a scientist, right? I can't just say it's dirty and without knowledge of it.

Okay. But? But look, I was there too. I had years of plastic bottles when I moved from New York City to New Jersey suburbs where we're on a farm. So I'm like, oh, it must be contaminated. As I'm eating my cheese whiz and Oreos, I'm like, yeah, the water is contaminated, right? So hypocrisy.

But I was there, too. Then we got pictures. We did pictures for a long time. And as I dove deep into this area of chemicals, which was not my choice, I did this out of duress back in the day. My story of my dog getting sick and getting into this topic. I moved into, well, what's better technology?

And how are we going to have technology? What are we gonna choose that's gonna offset these growing numbers of chemicals, right? Because you can't be a toxicologist every day of your life. Right. So absolutely true about carbon blocks. So they are good, but they're not great. And that's why I would never poo poo anyone listening,

including yourself, to say you've done wrong, you're bad. Look how you poisoned your kids, you poisoned me this afternoon. Yeah. And every other guest that's been on the show. Yeah, so thanks for that. But the idea is that there's better technology. And the interesting thing is I've been watching

this better technology, which I'll tell you is reverse osmosis. Yeah, that's been around for a long time. But wasn't accessible financially to the average person. Is it now? Yeah, it is. And I'll tell you a really interesting story speaking of parents. So my dad is a kidney specialist.

He's 85 and still practicing. And he brought dialysis to New Jersey in the 70s. Most people don't realize that we didn't have kidneys that worked by machine. Not that long ago, we got that machinery. That's in the 70s. And your dad brought that here? He learned it and brought it to the state of New Jersey amongst other colleagues, but it was new. And it was accessible only to a group. But the idea is that this man is

still practicing. And what was so interesting when I studied water and water quality and what types of water filters exist and how can we do better with all the water contaminants that we now know are in water. Reverse osmosis is a type of material that is the pore size is so darn small. And in the 70s, when they were developing dialysis, they used reverse osmosis for dialysis patients because these are the most immune compromised patients in the world, right? And also, they didn't want them to get infections. So the material was so small,

the pores, that it would catch single-celled organisms like bacteria and viruses, okay? Since that time, all the compounds that we're talking about in terms of phthalates and bisphenols and lead and mercury and PFAS chemicals, they get stuck in that material because they're bigger than the single-celled organisms. So what happened was, I've been watching for at least 10 years as the most expensive machine in RO filters for homes, went from $1,200, $800, $600, $500, boom. Now they're at $275, at least the one I use. But the idea...

Wait, which one do you use? I don't tell brands, so that's part of the work I do. But in the book, I have a whole chapter on water and how to figure that out. Wait, wait, hold on a second. I understand? I don't tell brands, so that's part of the work I do. But in the book, I have a whole chapter on water and how to figure that out. Wait, wait, hold on a second. I understand if you don't promote brands, but I'm asking you so people can know, like you're talking about it right now.

Yeah, reverse osmosis under the counter or on the countertop are the types of machinery that anyone could look up. So we should just Google reverse osmosis over under the counter. Yeah. So I have sections. I mean, I have to tell you that this, you know, because I teach high school, college

and University of California, I don't promote or share brands on podcasts, but you can edit this out. I don't know what to do. No, no, no. Why? I'm not going to. Because it's one thing. I mean, what if we made clear you're not getting paid by a brand, but like what if someone

is listening and they want to know? Because I can guarantee that they're doing their job that they're supposed to or that they guarantee. They have to have NSF regulations. In other words, there's ratings, there's ways to do this, and I just make it very clear in the book, but the idea is that reverse osmosis is much more common than anyone's ever seen. The thing is that you want to get companies, and I list all the different things to look

for. It's not that complicated, but the idea is that reverse osmosis is now accessible for every human being in the United States, and it's not that expensive. The one we had, we had a plumber put in for 150 bucks for one hour. They tell you it's complicated, it takes hours, forget it. They're trying to take you for a couple more hours, right? The idea is that it's the kind of thing that,

if you have it on your counter, great, because I try out a lot of different ones. They send them to me, right? Just for fun, and I even test the water pre and post, just because this is work I do. And the ones from the counter can be pretty great, but you have to fill them up. And if you have kids and family

and you're running around all the time, it's just a pain, right? So I had mine put in with a plumber and it was like 400 bucks total upfront. And you pay 30 bucks for the cartridges to take it. You know, I change them myself every six months on holidays. I even talk about that in the book and how to keep up with filtration changeouts because it's a thing, right?

I have one on my counter right now and it's supposed to be a good one, but it's true. You have to constantly change it. And like every time I go upstairs to, you know, or downstairs, wherever to get the water, it's always empty. Yeah. And I was like, oh, yeah. Oh, no, it's exhausting. It's an exhausting thing. So if you get one in that's underneath the sink, that's put in, they just basically split the water line.

Plumbers are creative. They can kind of drill it into the side. You don't have to break nice countertop. So there's a lot of, you know, so plumber. Oh, yeah, plumbers are really creative. You'd be surprised. So what are some symptoms that we would not even know is happening to us because of the bad water supply that

we are drinking. So, water is just one input. Okay. Okay. So, when I talk about the book, you know, I try to give people an idea that I want to share with you different inputs. There's food. Yep.

And choosing, say, for instance, organic. USDA organic has value. It's the only other regulation besides, like, I was getting into the FDA and medications. USDA regulation is literally the only regulation in the food system we have that helps to keep us, you know, healthier. And I say that pretty adamantly. Now people may have trouble accessing, I don't know. I have seen every big box store in this country create lines of frozen USDA organic produce.

I mean, I spent an enormous amount of time in supermarkets looking at this and price points. And the fact that these big box stores, we have ShopRite, Kroger's, Stop and Shop are just a few, I don't know what you guys have out here, Wow West, but it is a very lucrative business. So they make their own frozen USDA frozen. And the reason that's doubly important and valuable to customers,

and we should be thinking about this, is that it also flash freezes all the nutrient value. So what we think of as fresh in my world is not typically fresh from a supermarket. It's actually losing its nutritional value. So we have USDA organic as an input. We have water as an input that you can filter. These are high loads, right? So I always say start with the stuff that has the highest load.

Don't worry about the birthday cake and the, you know, whatever. Let's pick our battles and work through them in a really reasonable way. And I kind of, you know, I created something called the 4 As. And the 4 As in the book and how it's laid out and also what I teach students and other doctors is that, you know, the first is to assess, assess what you're exposed to. I have a 50 question, basic environmental health history that doctors should be doing, but they don't, right? Because we're not taught that in med school. Then assess is the first, avoid and swap,

because we have lots of ways to avoid chemicals, but also what if you like your stuff? Then there's resources for swapping out to things you do like, like makeup, EWG, and Yucca, and Clearia. That's just one example of swapping. And then the third A is add, which is incredibly important, which I'm sure you're going to love this one because it's exercise and sweating.

It's great quality sleep so that we clear out chemicals while we sleep from our glymphatic system. And it's certain nutrients that I lay out in the book that have excellent science, how they offset some of the damage, actually the DNA or exposomic damage that can come from exposures, they offset that. So it's nutrition, it's lots of anthropology. And then the fourth A is allow, which is the birthday cake, the lacrosse fields, the travel. It's not being a perfectionist, it's being a realist.

And those four A's, I think, are a really great framework to take complicated subject and really kind of, you know, work through it. You were just saying something about detoxification, just our own, our bodies are doing it ourselves, or just taking simple solutions for that. Is there any particular food that really works to help detoxify our body? Yeah, so I put in there 100 foods that help detoxify, because there's just so many. And it's not really hard to think about it in the sense that we want things that are whole. We don't want things processed.

We want foods that, for instance, allium, are really great sulfur-containing foods that, you know, like onions, shallots. We want things like cruciferous vegetables, which are remarkable at churning up the liver's ability to break down a lot of chemicals that we're exposed to. Really? Oh, absolutely. Cruciferous vegetables are like superpowers.

It's really remarkable. Broccoli, some of these studies in terms of breast cancer risk and reduction, a lot of that has to do with how we're breaking down chemicals that we're exposed to, whether we knowingly are exposed or not. There's plenty that we don't even know how to control, right? Air quality in cities and that kind of thing. But the idea that we have this ad of nutrition, sweating, sleep, and certain foods, omega-3

fatty acids if they're done well, which I talk about the good and bad and how to know the difference, supplements, if you're already doing a lot of great eating and water filtration, all that. There's also this idea that certain supplements, we're not going to get enough of those nutritional values from food alone, given the modern day food system. So that's a whole area of nutrition that I talk about in the book, that it's one thing to take away chemicals, which is really important, but anthropologically, what we know is that you have to add in nutrition for the body to work well.

Would you say that people should stay away from sushi then because of the high mercury, high toxicity levels? Well, that would have ruined my dinner last night. So, and I really enjoyed my sushi last night. And again, this is the allow piece, but you know, here's the thing. The moderation, right? Yeah, absolutely. And I think that's what I'm trying to, you know, I don't eat sushi every night.

In fact, we and my kids actually, we only stick to about every three or four weeks. We also choose fish that are small as much as we can. You know, we don't use a lot of tuna. We don't eat a lot of swordfish, big fish, gobble up littler fish. They bioaccumulate many of these PCBs and microplastics now and methyl mercury and that kind of thing. So again, it's moderation, it's laying down a plan to some degree, it's not always following it, but that's life.

And I think there's got to be pleasure in life. And so I think that's how I try to balance what I write, what I teach, what I post. It's about balance. So give me the top three ways we can naturally detoxify. Naturally detoxify in terms of just not chemicals, but what can we do? Exercise. For sweating. Sweating, but also blood flow to the liver turns up those chemicals,

activates what's called stage two conjugation. It's literally just blood flow even alone that's like filtering your body. So it's not just the sweating. Absolutely, absolutely. So that, so beyond sweating, so I was gonna say, obviously it would be sauna because sauna will like help you.

Yeah, yeah. Does the sauna or is that a little bit hype that the sauna help like what is like the number one thing for detoxification? I don't know, you know, I'm kind of really challenged because there's so many things that affect us and there's so many things we can do that to say number one, number two, number three,

I think it's all important. But sweating from sauna, like for instance, infrared sauna, you don't really sweat. I know, tell me about it. I've never been a fan of infrared saunas. I've also been a little concerned about any particular, you know, risk of elevated skin cancer risk because of the penetration of the rays.

And I'm not saying it's to scare anybody, but I did see a couple of papers in a textbook that I wrote two books back that concerned me. And again, there's not enough science that's being done because who pays for it to really look into this. What I like to do is harness what anthropology has taught us and evolution has taught us. That sweating means something and it's one of our superpowers. Wow, that's very interesting. Can you say that again and expand on that? Because I think that

cancer runs in my family and I'm sure people should know these things. So I've had my own risk of some serious, I mean, not just risk, I've had some serious skin issues and you know, cancers and removed and doing well and stuff like that over the years. And it's always been a heightened issue for me. So here's the thing, it plays into this concept of precautionary principle, which we now know for chemicals as well.

We may not have hard and fast evidence that a behavior or an exposure causes a problem, but we have enough from epidemiology and occupational studies and animal studies to make a good reasonable change in how we make, you know, go through life, right? Precautionary principles like basically, you know, think before you leap type of thing. When it comes to infrared saunas, and again, I'm not a dermatologist, I don't do research in this area, but I just collect the research off of PubMed.gov, people want to do their own research. The idea is that infrared tends, there's variations in terms of the rays, basically the UV light,

and I just worry because the promotional aspect is that it generates, it goes deeper than the outer layer of the skin. What does that tell us about the epidermis, the dermis, all the blood vessels that lie underneath? What does that say about what damage it could be doing to those interior layers? I don't know if the science is fully out on that issue, but I choose not to do that because I don't even want to play around with it. I'm heightened from my own history.

Right, right. So I just look at sauna and we put in a sauna, it took a lot of years to get it, it's the size of this chair, you know, whatever. But it's something I value deeply and I don't always get a chance to use it, but I'm sweating. I usually just exercise. But I just want to make sure people don't get scared off of doing healthy habits, but make sure that you're thoughtful, like anything else, before you put things in your body,

before you use any kind of gadgets or, you know, any hype. This is what's scary, right? Because, you know, we're living in a world where, we're in information overload, and people are posting lots of things because it looks sexy on Instagram, and it looks, and so people are watching that, like, oh, that looks like a great thing to do,

or someone said that's like a great wellness hack, and so it gets traction, and then everyone's doing it, right? Well, I think you have to know your messenger. Well, look at cold plunges, right? Like, I've never been a fan of cold plunging, and it's like the biggest thing in the world. And, you know, for me, it's like I knew it didn't do anything for my body. Like, I felt horrible before, because I had the anxiety of getting in. Afterwards, I was like chilled to

the bone for like an hour and a half. And I'm like, why am I putting myself through this? And then, of course, recently, I was, you know, I had a doctor on who told me, actually, you're right, women should not be going into these cold plunges because that's not like we're not... It's too cold for the stress hormones. And I was like, I knew that. Now I have an excuse not to use that. You're like, oh my God, I'm returning it. Where's the receipt? Right, right, right. My point of even saying the story

is that sometimes we have to trust our own intuition and not just follow trends because we think it's cool. That's the first thing. Although I have to say, because the sauna to me was such a way of sweating profusely, I thought it was a great way to detoxify. Now, I want to talk about the liver because that's how we, of course, flush out all these toxins, correct? What are some symptoms that we can look for

that we know that our body is highly toxic? Well, I talk about patients in the book, which I think people can identify. Someone came to me with fatigue and we went through the whole, I mean, fatigue, right? It's so subjective, it's so, yeah. But we work through it because that's my job and I've been doing this for 22 years.

And so you have to think about, could it just be that they're not sleeping well and restless leg syndrome? Is it because their vitamin D levels are low? Or is it because when we tested their blood, they had enormous levels of PFAS and some other chemicals known to be associated with that patient's activity, occupation, you know, in terms of being a pizza maker.

So PFAS is perfluorecals, is non-stick chemicals. So I think the way you can think about it is that, first of all, a lot of people are just not feeling well. I'm dealing with a lot of people with immune and autoimmune disease problems, but I'm trying to speak to people who haven't developed any illnesses yet as well, right? Is there any that you've noticed have been have peaked over the last, you know, whatever amount of years that you've been practicing? Oh, I've noticed. Yeah. What kind of, so it's an epidemic of immune and autoimmune diseases and it's not just me making it up.

No, which ones? Yeah. So there's over 80 autoimmune diseases that are listed in the Western medical literature, but we know somewhere between seven and 14 percent of the US population has some type of autoimmune disease, and it's been rising exponentially. One percent of the world's population has rheumatoid arthritis. So the challenge is this because we're getting better as exponentially. One percent of the world's population has rheumatoid arthritis. So it's

not that, you know, the challenge is, is this because we're getting better as doctors at diagnosing this? No, we're not because we get 15 minutes with our doctors if you're a conventional Western system. You know, we have better treatments, we have better pharma, which I will say is a good thing that we have tools, but I as an integrative medicine doctor don't use those tools until I have to. But the idea is that we have tools, but I as an integrative medicine doctor don't use those tools until I have to. But the idea is that we do have an increase in not only chronic health conditions, which I'm sure you've had guests that are talking about this, but from a rheumatologist perspective,

there's no question. I'm seeing younger patients, I guess it's also in the literature, I have a lot of references on this too, younger patients with autoimmune diseases, but particularly those with no family history. So these are de novo cases of people coming in, they don't know why they're getting an autoimmune disease diagnosed after, obviously, if I'm seeing them a lot of workup, or carrying a diagnosis when they come in, that's legit.

The idea is that people are getting sicker without really a family history, which is what we banked on. We thought, do I have good genes? No one in my family has this, that, or the other. I'm set. I'm cool, right? But it turns out that we have a lot more control, by the way, over our genes and what we develop in terms of health risks by what we control with our environment. And that's the take-home message of a lot of what I do and what I tell patients. When you control for some of these chemicals,

you will feel better. Rheumatoid arthritis can get better in terms of its flares, in terms of its pain and stiffness. I talk about patients like that as well. So the idea that these chemicals can, in fact, cause inflammation, and by removing them and adding in nutrition that's appropriate and very easy to do, people feel better. And there's no question about it.

Well, how about skin conditions like psoriasis, eczema, which I have too. So when I have a flare-up, I'm assuming a lot of it has to do with like my body's toxin, like besides being stressed and tired, but because of high mercury or heavy metals, for example. Is there any signs that you have heavy metal toxicity? Is there a test people can take? So all great, this is a lot of questions. So here's the thing, we are exposed by lots of different chemicals at any given moment in time. The question is, should we test, should we test, should we test? I am not a big tester anymore. I've done 15 years of this and

I've realized that people are spending too much on testing than they are on the doing. And the solutions are so much more valuable and so much more useful use of your money. Like take a $400 RO filter instead of spending $700 to see what's in your blood or your urine at one moment in time. Doesn't make sense to me because you are going to work on some and not others over time and mixtures make a difference. So I love that you said that. You know why?

Because you can be testing for, because the medical system is so broken here. And when you go, people are seeing all these naturopathic doctors, functional medicine doctors. When I go, I'm spending thousands of dollars on tests. And what I've noticed is, these tests, one test will then say,

okay, well then we're going to take you to the next test. You're going from test to test without actually like just doing simple solutions because your body changes every day, every week. What's in your blood. Your poop changes every day. If you get a poop test, you're going to see bugs from eating a salad versus eating a steak. So to me, put the money into solution. And one of the things

I want to tell you I put in the book because I'm in New Jersey. New Jersey has different laws than California in terms of being able to bill above the cost of a test. So it's already designed to not let doctors go haywire with testing. In New Jersey? Not in California? Rhode Island, New Jersey, I think New York. I mean, there are very few states in this country that have a real oversight to some degree on who can test and how much and how much above the test, really. So is California just a free for all? Is it like the Wild West? It is.

As far as I'm aware, it is. Oh. It is. And so here's the thing. You know, when I think about colleagues who do a lot of testing, and I would never put anyone down for their process, but I have had to learn to hustle. How do we utilize our insurance, what we pay into, which costs a damn fortune, right? To use that to test if we needed to.

So in the book, I put ICD-10 codes for tests that I think people can ask their own doctor for if they live in podunk, or podunk New Jersey or wherever they live in this country and have insurance. Guess what? The ICD-10 codes are the reimbursement codes when it comes to insurance. So you can hand that to your doctor and say, this is for Arson Academy and Lead and Mercury whole blood and here's the ICD-10 code. Would you mind ordering that?

I want people to use the codes and their insurance for themselves. If they can find someone who's able to order them, that's a great place to start if you're curious about levels. Or if you're occupationally exposed, that's a different level, that's OSHA. But I want people to know that they have access to a lot of testing through LabCorp and Quest and other national labs that do a great job. See, but people don't know that information.

And I have the other labs, the labs you're talking about too, the labs that are used by functional medicine and naturopaths. Everything's in the book. I want people to just have options and you decide what you want to do with it. Well, because I think people don't know what they don't know. And then if we actually took, I guess, take our medical, our personal medical, whatever you call it, I don't even know what you call it, our own medical history. Not a history, more like we kind of take the onus on us.

And there's probably a lot that we don't know that we should know that can actually save us a lot of money and probably some time, as opposed to thinking, because I know what happens with me and friends of mine, is every good, quote unquote, doctor doesn't take insurance. And so we end up paying out of pocket a lot of money and we're no better off than we were before we started. And I think that's the problem. I think a lot of times doctors make a lot of money off of these tests. They're like marking them up and then they're making a big portion. So it's beneficial for the doctor to be not all doctors, but it's a business.

I mean, this is why, you know, people, that's how people make money. And they're like, OK, go take this, this, this, you know, these 95 tests. And you're getting charged for them. You're getting a premium. And they have to interpret those. that's how people make money and they're like, okay, go take this, this, this, you know, these 95 tests and you're getting charged for them. You're getting a premium. And they have to interpret those. And so your interpretations are really important because if your interpretations are leading you

to more tests, maybe you weren't interpreted properly. I mean, that's a whole different level. You can get the tests, but how those labs are interpreted in the context of your life matters. And I will say that, you know, just to, you know, bash the medical training system, because I don't bash colleagues and physicians, even Western doctors.

It's not good business and I wanna educate them. I'm training three programs of medical doctors who did not get this information in medical school and are looking to learn it now. So there's a real push to educate doctors after medical school, that the system, even now, does not want to teach environmental health and nutrition in medical schools. And I say that because I've offered up 40 hours of free curriculum, because this is

what I do, and no one wants it. And the three deans that I know, because they can't fit it in, they want to teach to symptoms, pharma and therapeutics. There's no prevention. And the prevention is nutrition, which is about five to maybe 10 hours currently in any med school for four years of training. And certainly not enough environmental health have had anything, which is chemicals, environment, air quality, water quality.

So the system is a problem because it's pushing out doctors that are not taking a lot of this maybe seriously or maybe don't know enough, which is fair enough. And patients have to be advocates for themselves. Advocates. That was the word I was looking for. Yeah, they have to. And you do and I do. I'm an advocate for my own kids and my family, and we're not perfect either in terms of how we manage the system. But it's just one of those things where I think you need to know who the messenger is, who do you trust, you know, thinking about the secondary gain from whoever your practitioner is.

I'm not saying they're bad people, but you may want to just explore it. Integrative medicine, to me, is my training, even though I train functional medicine and integrative medicine interested people. But I just want people to know that integrative medicine is more, it's less testing overall, and it's more of the philosophical components of human health. And I think that's the difference that I've seen. Even though they all agree, like functional medicine has many the same, they just don't

do as much testing in general from that training. Thank you for that. I think that's really good information for people. Let's quickly talk about a health issue that affects almost all of us. Fiber deficiency. Did you know that 95% of people don't get enough fiber in their daily diet? I was shocked when I learned this. Because fiber is truly the foundation of overall wellness. It's not just about keeping our digestion smooth and regular, although of course that's

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That's the number 99designs.com slash Gen 20 and click Claim My Discount to get $20 off your first design contest. Your brand deserves this level of creativity. Trust me. I want to jump into some stuff I read in your book that I thought was very interesting, and I guess I think other people find it interesting. Iodine. I don't hear about iodine very often. Can you tell us why iodine is so important

and what the benefits are? Yeah, you just got me all excited. I mean, this is one of those things when you're a geek, these are the things. So iodine is such an interesting topic. So when I tell, let me, where do I start? Iodine is a nutrient that the human body has needed for millions of years. Okay.

We don't make it as humans. Babies need to get it from their mothers, from breast milk. It's actually really critically important for IQ in a developing baby's brain. Certainly, iodine sits in the thyroid gland and helps manage thyroid hormone. Okay? It helps create thyroid hormone and active thyroid T3, T4, thyroid chemicals for the body, which have remarkable effects on metabolism and

all different aspects of metabolism in terms of growth and development, brain development, all that. We are deficient in iodine as a population. Again, back to anthropology. We talk about vitamin D3, we're all low, right? That's a sexy one. There are so many that we're missing, which goes to the chapter on why we need certain supplements and why we need them because we're not getting them in our food system and we're

not getting them consistently and we have busy lives. For one reason or another, you're not going to have sushi every day to have iodine, right? But it's in other things. So iodine sits in the thyroid. If you don't get enough of that on a daily basis, because it's in other things. So iodine sits in the thyroid. If you don't get enough of that on a daily basis, because it actually washes out, similar to like Bs and C vitamins, there's lots of chemicals, perchlorite, thiophinate. There's a bunch of chemicals that are in food washes, just regular food washes, right, the things you wouldn't see because they're done before they get

to the supermarket, that attach to the thyroid gland, the symporter it's called, and basically have a tighter hold to the cells in the thyroid gland than iodine does. And if there's no iodine there, it definitely takes hold and can disrupt the thyroid function of the gland. Okay, so those are endocrine disrupting chemicals, and those perchlorate, you know, cyanothionate, nitrate are just a few

that are very much commonplace that we don't know where they are, but they're coming in through food and stuff. The idea is that if you get enough iodine every day, you don't eat a lot and you don't want to take liquid iodine because it's so variable. But if you get enough in a multivitamin, which is what I lay out in the book, the four fertilizer supplements for human health, one of them is a multivitamin. And one of the best tests for a multivitamin, whether it's junk or not, is whether they got iodine right. And that's 150 micrograms of iodine per day. That's how much we need a day? Yeah.

It's not that much. You know, in the 1940s and 50s, the public health system in the US added it to bread and no one eats bread anymore. Then they added it to table salt. And no one eats table salt anymore unless you're actually on a highway and you stop off. They have a little iodine package that says iodized. I always find that interesting. I agree with you because now we all have Himalayan salt and all these fancy salts. So are you telling me the iodine salt that we find at like any fast food place is actually better salt than the Himalayan?

It's not better. And here's why. Because it's not, you really do want the more natural, less processed salt, like, you know, kosher sea salt, Himalayan, it's just scooped off of bodies that have the salt. It doesn't have iodine in it naturally, but if you can find iodinized Himalayan, or iodinized kosher, or iodinized, you know, unprocessed sea salt, it's better because it's got, it's balanced chemically.

So you have chloride, magnesium, sodium, and potassium all very evenly balanced, which is why it doesn't raise blood pressure in general, because only sodium, when it's pulled away from those natural things, can raise blood pressure. So where else can we get 150 milligrams of iodine? Great question. So dried cranberries, navy beans, yogurt that's real.

So just now that you might be aware of it, you can start to think about it. You can certainly get it from seaweed you know Dolce Nori you know I wouldn't recommend running out to sushi every day for it but the idea is that we can find it you just have to kind of be conscious of it. Get it from food if you can but from a consistency perspective as a mom as someone who's busy I can't guarantee what meal I'm gonna get every day you know or consistently. So I have a multivit meal I'm gonna get every day, you know, or consistently.

So I have a multivitamin as part of my fertilizer, which is, you know, very reasonable, and I talk about what to look for. And then the other three fertilizer supplements are vitamin D3, you know, because we're low, but we need to aim for a high normal blood level. We want probiotic generally, because a good quality probiotic that's alive and not dead on a shelf from packaging, that is very much helpful to the gut microbiome, which I'm sure you've had guests on before talking about the gut microbiome. And then the last one is omega-3 fatty acids, which are incredibly important to the brain, to inflammation. You can get them from food, but you can also get them from a supplement. And I teach people how in the book to vet those out.

Right. So let me just say that again, the four supplements, omega-3, vitamin D, multivitamin, and the fourth one was probiotic. And those to me are the highest yield. If they're done well, and I can't say that enough, I don't want people spending money on junk. But if you spend your money well and you get really clean products that are, and I don't promote brands, but I talk about exactly how to look for them. I know you said that a few times.

I know, I know. It's my Jewish guilt, but it's like something I feel strongly about. So I just want people to know that what I'm saying is the fishing rod. I don't want to give the fish. I want people to really, in a simple way, understand how to get what they need no matter what the markets change and all that stuff. What are some other micronutrients that are important that people don't know about? Well, I think some of the micronutrients, if you look at a multivitamin that's clean, for example, there's copper and there's components that are not all bad, right? Metals are not.

When you chelate, for instance, I always love this whole idea of chelation. I was going to ask you about that. You're chelating bad stuff, but you're also going When you chelate, for instance, I always love this whole idea of chelation. I was going to ask you about that. You're chelating, you know, bad stuff, but you're also going to potentially chelate the good stuff, like iron and copper. And, you know, for an in- Oh, so wait a second, because... Not to interrupt you, but because before,

just to make... Just to kind of close the circle, I heard that chelation was good for getting rid of heavy metals in the body. You're saying that's not maybe the greatest thing to do? So chelation has to be done by a really well-trained practitioner. So that's the caveat. If you are exposed, overexposed, we're not talking the walking well. We're talking about people, as far as I'm concerned, people who have symptoms that are neurologic that have not been, you know, real problematic because to me, I don talking about people, as far as I'm concerned, people who have symptoms that are neurologic, that have not been, you know, real problematic,

because to me, I don't want people going out and spending a fortune on things that either are not done properly and can harm them, but can be done naturally, or it can be done in a way just by, again, laying out very simple, reasonable recommendations and how to suss them out. What about a liver cleanse? I don't know what that means. What does that mean?

What does any cleanse? So yeah, that's a good question. So the reason because cleanses are so popular, right? How many people have sat here and said, oh, I'm doing a cleanse right now. I'm doing a liver cleanse. So I've never been a big person on like doing these five day cleanses. Yeah. But I wanted to ask you because you wrote the book on detoxification, is that a thing to do liver cleanses,

to detoxify the liver? If you break it down into semantics, okay, right? A cleanse is basically, I argue for a cleanse because I want people to not be exposed to chemicals, if that's what you mean by a cleanse. If you mean by liver, well guess what? Kidney, the liver, the skin, all of these need cleaning.

So to me, a specific warning. How do you clean your liver? Because you want to cut off the exposures as much as you can in the most reasonable way. I have a 21-day plan in there because to me, 21 days is not enough even to clean up your whole life, of course, but it's a really good start and it has to do with logic and it has to do with adding in changes that make sense

that are not a diet or a cleanse, aren't a, you know, do it quick. We're all about, you know, instant gratification. Right. Two teenagers, right? Right, right, right. Self-included. We are not people that think long-term and the goal is never to have diets and cleanses in my opinion.

But if philosophically you call cleanse getting rid of things that are not great for the human body, sure, I'm on board. Okay, so let me reword that, okay? Okay, so what's the first step someone should take if they want to start this whole detoxification process? Look around your home and your life. Just assess. You know, take a 50 question,

very simple, reasonable questionnaire, and start to just figure out what the problem is. Before you can go at it, you have to sort of see where these things are in your life. That's a great place to start, isn't it, knowledge? I think the water is, in my opinion, is the water. Oh, actionable. It's water and food. Yeah, water and food. What's something that, what are some things or the one thing that you think everybody should be throwing away in their household? Plastics in your home, no need for them. These are simple swaps, right? Glass and stainless steel, stainless pan, cast iron pan.

It's hard to cook on those things. Yeah, well, hard is hard, isn't it? Yeah, tell me about it. You know, this is the thing, like we've made our lives so easy and we love it, but we have to peel back from that and put a little elbow grease into things like scraping a stainless steel pan. By the way, when you cook eggs in a stainless steel pan and you clean it right after you cook it, it comes right off.

But if we put it down and you go eat your eggs, that's where everything sets in. So there's habits that we can do that really change the sweat equity of what we're doing. But the first place to start is stuff that's cheap and easy to swap out, air fresheners, cleaning products. We don't need a door cleaner, a carpet cleaner, a sink cleaner, an oven cleaner, a window cleaner. We don't need 20 cleaners. We were told that we did. We were marketed to. But going simple and less chemicals and less products,

you can make your own. I have recipes. You could go out and buy using references that I'm using, resources that are vetted for looking up these products for toxicity. Either way, we don't need all these chemicals in our homes, especially in our home where we have kids and pets and all that. So what's the number one kitchen product we should be throwing away? Air fresheners.

Ugh, anything in the air. It has phthalates and lots of fragrance, anything with fragrance and perfume, loaded with chemicals, proprietary blends, never going to know what's in them, linked to a whole host of health-related issues, and you can just stop by not buying them. You'll save money. Listen, the process is saving money, and believe it or not, putting it towards things that actually have high value.

Yeah, no kidding. But even when food, they say natural flavors, it's garbage. Yeah, so the only thing, and we go into it, is labeling that's USDA organic. Now, can you wash your fruit, soak your fruit and produce in one part, white vinegar and three parts clean water or baking soda? Certainly, that can be done and you can do that

with non-organic or conventional. You can follow the dirty dozen clean 15 list from environmental working group, great organization. There's options there. But essentially, you can make a dent in what you are purchasing and make those changes pretty reasonable. You know what it is also with, let's talk about kids for a second, right? Because kids, we have kids, I have kids, you have kids.

And how do we start instilling, how do we help our kids stay away from some of these things, right? Because you can only do so much when they're at home. I know you did a whole talk on that. And when I was doing some research on you, I saw this whole thing about children and parents and I wanted to ask you about that because that's like something very near and dear to my heart. Well, I'll start by saying I have two teenage boys that don't listen to me.

Yeah. So it's really impossible. Join the club. And when I come down in the morning to see them off and the whole kitchen smells like cologne and the dog and whole kitchen smells like cologne, and the dog and the cat smell like cologne, and it's like you can't get it off of them. It's like, how many books or how much do I have to do for these kids to listen to me and then they'll listen to their friends and they're like change.

A hundred percent. But that's the way life works. I can only hope by osmosis they're going to start to make changes, which I've noticed a few. But here's the thing. Like any human being, no one likes to be told what to do. Right. And that was the messaging and what I always try to teach

students in my book and stuff. You know, this is a journey. And when you tell your kids what they should be doing, they definitely say, screw you, I'm going to do the opposite or what have you. I think it's more about leading by example. And, you know, I like to see that they watch me going to do the opposite or what have you. I think it's more about leading by example. I like to see that they watch me when I take

FROZENS out of the bag and put them in glass and stainless steel to put in the microwave. But you use a microwave, which is very strange. I use a microwave. I have to survive as a mom and I use a microwave because it's useful in my life. Does it degrade some nutritional bonds in terms of nutritional value? Probably, but when you're on the go, realistically, I use the microwave.

So the reason why I'm, when I was growing up, right, my mom, again, back to my mom, the nonstick pans were like a no-no, the microwave standing in front, I can't tell you how many times you screamed at me about radiation. Which is I think if this was, if I was sitting in your chair and someone was like what's the number one thing that you'd get rid of in your kitchen that I think is harmful, it would be the microwave. Because people put it on and they wander around the kitchen and it's deadly. So you know what I did? I took that microwave and put it in a separate

room so that when I press on or whatever, I run out and it's not like in the environment. So let me ask you, would you get rid of your phone, which is working in the concept of a microwave or your laptop? You can tell I'm very close with darinolium because I'll tell you why. EMFs, I only use earbuds when I work out. I will use the headset with the wire because I don't want the EMFs in my brain. So to kind of answer your question, I try to be practical with what my lifestyle is, right?

Like I'm not going to not use my phone, but I'll make better changes and I will tweak how I use it. That's healthier and more advantageous. I 100% agree with you. Right. That's how I think my life. I 100% agree with you and Darren and his work. And I've, you know, I had a whole chapter on EMF in the last book I wrote. I didn't fit it into this entirely. So, you know, it's just a, it's a big topic. But here's the thing. a microwave is a Faraday box. Back from chemistry, Faraday discovered the fact that basically radiation within a box with the appropriate siding, pretty much copper and a bunch of other things, I think copper,

keeps the radiation in the box. In fact, when I have high school students and I teach them, I have actually a gauge, a meter that I bring the students over and I hold it in front of the microwave while it's cooking and I pull it away and I pull it. And you can see that EMF basically leaks from these boxes, right? They're just made in China and who knows what the seals are around it. But the idea, you know, microwaves are also around us all the time and we don't have the box. We don't have that.

So I have a microwave, but it's far away. It's not, I don't even understand the ones that are sort of at the midway. Yeah, I know you're talking about. They're like under the counter and people are cooking while they're microwaving and I don't think that's a good idea, particularly for women or pregnant women. But the idea that a cell phone is essentially it's an antenna. Totally. And it's communicating with cell phone towers about 90 pulses per second and none of those stupid cases or pendants or whatever you want to buy is going to stop that messaging. It will find a way.

The only way you can stop that is by turning off your phone on airplane mode. And my boys put them in their pockets constantly. And I'm constantly telling them I want to be a grandmother, and this is not going to help. So this is what they live with. But the idea is that I'm also practical when I search for pants for them

and make sure there's back pockets, you know? The idea is that I can't make them change entirely. I myself am very conscious where I put them. I don't carry them in my bra. Like a lot of high school, a lot of people carry them in their bra. You do not want that antenna near breast tissue. You don't want it near, you know,

I go into my kid's school and all the kids have their laptops right on their crotch, right on their groin. That is not a good place. You want to put it at least a foot or two away from your body because distance is your friend when it comes to radiation. It's exponentially improved by removing it from your body, which is why, you know, I don't want my kids to have the ear pods because that's an antenna as well. Of course they snuck them and I see them working out with them.

But you know what I find interesting? Cause I was asking you earlier about the kid situation and I'm always, I just did a whole Ted talk on this. That's why I'm like very much into like how I'm all about like teach somebody with everything, not just with kids in life, by being an example and like by visualizing, like by you, by people seeing you doing it and watching you versus just

like yapping because nobody listens after a certain period of time, right? Like not even a kid, like an adult, right? So you have to just act, do how you feel and then people will either follow or they won't. Or with kids, I feel like eventually like it bleed into their system. My kids know how important it is to be active and how to eat this and don't do that. They make fun of me now, but at least they are knowledgeable enough to know that what they're making fun of me is them also showing me that they're paying attention to my crazy neuroses. Exactly, they heard me. So maybe they'll like maybe think twice before they do it when they're older. Absolutely, it's exposures.

It's like repeating someone's name five times when you meet them somehow, because then you'll remember it. The kids will see you and they may make small changes over time and you won't know what successes you're gonna have by them doing it in their own lives. 100%. But they're witnessing, they're seeing and especially when they hear it from a TikToker or someone they respect like a bro or something in my world, then they'll be, oh, you know

what? I heard this guy told me I should wear regular earphones at the gym because I'm going to get radiation. All of a sudden, I'm off the hook as being the bad guy. So listen, it's an exposure wherever they finally dig in Yeah, it's fine with me Another big one is also travel I find because if you travel a lot and you're going in and out of those things that like They give radiation we know they the x-rays and how many years again?

My mom told me this 30 years ago 40 years ago and everyone poo-pooed her and laughed at her, and they laughed at me. My kids laugh at me because I refuse to go through that. Do you get the whole body check? I get the body check. It's so funny, I do the body check when I have time, but so often I don't have time, but you're happy. It's so funny because I feel that that's a better way to go too, if you have the time,

instead of the hands up and the, yeah. I don't love that. And the hands up and it goes around your face. How many times do the people at TSA laugh at me? They're like, ma'am, you get more radiation from your phone. I'm like, well, I get so much from my phone. Wherever I can make it a little less or where I don't need to like accumulation. So just pat me down.

And my family, my kids are like, man, look at it. Meanwhile, now they know. So they would never have known that if they didn't see me do that 100 times and they make fun of me. But people don't think about these things. They think it's like, okay to do these things. Yeah, I think what you're alluding to is,

or what you're actually saying is that basically wherever you can cut down makes sense. And I think that's been my message for everything I do because having done this for a long time, I was on the ledge in the beginning. When I first got into this, my dog got sick, I didn't know what was going on, I was a young mom, I was flipping out because he had autoimmune hepatitis,

he was four and a half year old golden retriever, and I couldn't believe it. And when we found out he had autoimmune hepatitis, and here I am a rheumatologist for humans, I started to explore his food, his water, his plastic vinyl toy in his mouth. I was doing an environmental health evaluation 15 years ago, but didn't realize it. Wow, yeah. And then I started to research all this, but I was coming across things about humans not

being covered from a regulatory standpoint, especially in the US, better in other places in the world. And as I started to build on this and I kept looking around at my cat, my dog, going, what, what, were you kidding me, were you kidding me? And reading some of these papers, the authors, I started reaching out to the authors of, you know, Fred Vomsall is my co-author for the last two books, one's a textbook. He's a world-renowned researcher in BPA. He and his colleagues 25 years ago began the process of studying this phenol A, and he was remarkably responsible for getting BPA out of baby bottles in 2012, plastic baby

bottles. And if we could do it for that product, why aren't we doing it for everything else? Unfortunately, it's not out of anything else but sports bottles and plastic baby bottles. So the idea is that you layer in your knowledge, you question, I went to the sources of the research, I really tried to figure out if this was me making this up or am I gonna flip out. And then as life layers in, you start to realize, how do you pick your battles?

What's the risk benefit ratio of these changes, right? Yeah, yeah. And that's what we do in medicine, you have to think about what is the risk and what's the benefit of anything you choose, whether it's medications, whether it's a procedure. But you could argue that it's the same when it comes to radiation or what you choose to drink out of.

Or, you know, I spent last night in a store looking as I'm traveling, looking for one of the plastic bottles that was cleaned by reverse osmosis, the water. Well, it turns out there was 12 options, there was no glass bottles, and I found one that did have, says ingredients cleaned by reverse osmosis. It was one of 12. All it takes is a second to know that. And when you know that, you're done, you just keep moving. And I think that's the balance of this.

Learn pieces that are practical, put them into use at your own pace, and they'll layer in. And that's where you're reducing your overall risk for exposure for health issues. One more thing on the water. What do you think about if you have the reverse osmosis in the kitchen, but in the rest of the household, you have regular water and your skin is like your biggest organ, right? It goes right through. What do you think about that? Great question. I addressed this in the book as well. Again, I'm a cost person. And when I think about this, I think, well, what is our highest exposure? Generally, it's by cooking and drinking.

So that's why the kitchen makes the most sense. If you're going to put your money into anything, put it into the kitchen process. The shower caps can be replaced with carbon block. You can actually walk into like a big box, like Home Depot Lowe's type of thing, and they will have one, because they can't even find it. But they'll find it, it's like in the back corner, whatever. They have to call four people to find it. And it's a carbon block shower head.

Oh, okay. And you can at least screw that in and every six months replace it. And they even have the cartridges. So the idea is that to spend 10 grand, eight grand, six grand, depending on where you are and who you're talking to, I would rather you take that money

and put it into USDA organic foods, a massage, a better mattress, change out your couch with flame retardant chemicals, get some new glassware and cookware for your kitchen, change out your personal care products. That's a better use of 10 grand to me. Now if you have a skin issue that's particularly concerning and you take long showers or baths all the time, that's where you risk benefit ratio the money spent.

But I want people like mere mortals to really know the difference in cost and what they're doing with that. You said massage. Does massage help to detoxify your body because it's pushing like maybe the toxins out of your body? Yeah, I talk about lymphatic system. I don't specifically say go get massages for your lymphatic system because it's a different type of massage actually.

Right, it's a lymphatic massage. Lymphatic's a little bit more aggressive and kind of pushes you and I talk about trampolining. Oh, yeah. So we section on trampolining and how that really helps move lymph around your body and actually can be just as effective as a good run. I talk about trampolining. So, the section on trampolining and how that really helps move lymph around your body and actually can be just as effective as a good run. I talk about that all the time. Yeah. Trampolines are so underrated.

They're underrated. What they're good for, not to mention just like jumping. Yeah, you can get a little one, just a little one people use. I have 70 of them around my house. They all laugh at me. Not, I have the big one, I have four in my gym because every time I have like 30 seconds, again, cumulative, I have so many different little hacks and habits.

It's kind of crazy. No, I love that. And the idea is that there's lots of different ways to move your body's lymphatic system, which clears many chemicals, manages the immune system in many ways because we have waste products that not only go to urine and blood, but also into our lymph system. And so when you ask that question about massage, that's my integrative medicine training coming in, which is that life, you know, we get very stressed and stress is amazing effects on the human body, good and bad, mostly bad.

But massage is something where if you're regenerating, you know, if self-care, you're really giving yourself as much attention as you can in various ways through sleep, through stress management, all that. That's where I think money should be put. I just don't like wasting money. It's just part of who I am. I think I grew up with this. Yes, yes.

Me too. Be genetically and religiously. But either which way, I have been always conscious of how do you beat the system when it comes to financial Dupes and and it plays right into recommendations. Yeah, I love that one other one fiber does fiber help fiber does help Anthropologically we had hundred grams of fiber back in the day or at least 50 and now we're getting on average five to ten grams Per day any average American you look over like, you know You know African countries and African plains are up to a hundred two hundred grams of fiber per day, any average American. You look over African countries and African plains, they're up to 100, 200 grams of fiber per day.

And fiber is critically important for the gut microbiome health because all those microbes love to eat fiber, fermented foods and other things as well. But fiber also binds a lot of chemicals. That's right. It's remarkable and it keeps our GI system moving nicely. We don't really want bars and shakes all the time.

We don't want to really do things that are pulverized. We really want our body to do the pulverizing because it keeps the colon cancer rates down and our GI system in good flow. So I'm a big fan. Yeah. The reason why I'm a big proponent of fiber because people talk so much about protein. Now protein, protein, protein, of course, very important, but they're forgetting about fiber,

which is so, like, I think so essential, right? Because of this reason alone, if you really want it, you got to like push all the things out of your body. And if you're like backed up even, right? You're going to, it doesn't, doesn't it kind of, what does it do to your body in the innards? If you just like aren't able to go, and I know it sounds gross,

but if you can't go to the bathroom for days, doesn't it like, what does it do to your body in the innards if you just like aren't able to go? And I know it sounds gross, but if you can't go to the bathroom for days, doesn't it like what does it do to your your body? All those chemicals and toxins that are just like sitting there. Yeah, it's like dialysis, right? We need to clear our kidneys. We have waste products that our body is designed to get rid of. This is why I love to harness anthropology, evolution, physiology. It's like makes my day. And the idea is that, look, literally we're getting a lot of calories

stacked on top of each other. Okay? So this whole idea of intermittent fasting rings true in the fact that we want rest for our gut. We want rest for our body to reset itself. Over the millions of years that humans have existed, we never had food all the time. We didn't have calories sitting on every table in every grocery store, every restaurant have 10 meals a day. So this concept where the body rests and cleans itself out has a lot to do with the fiber issue in terms of bringing out and making that food move quickly. But if you're constantly eating all the time and you're constantly getting exposure, you're going to kind of time and you're constantly getting exposure, you're going to get stopped up,

I think, when it comes to unprocessed food chemicals and really poorly organized flowers and that type of thing. So fiber is a really important issue. Moving your bowels is a good issue. And then intermittent fasting to let your body have a chance to catch up and let it rest at night. Rest and digest is what med school students learn. Intermittent fasting to let your body have a chance to catch up and let it rest at night. Rest and digest is what med school students learn. At night you rest and you digest. You have melatonin, which is really important for your GI system.

By the way, not just for the brain and sleep. We need melatonin that we make innately and we want to try to avoid melatonin supplements. Yeah, I was going to say, melatonin supplements, that's not… But it's all designed to rest and digest and give yourself that space for your body to catch up. I hate intermittent fasting. It's very difficult. I find it...

I end up eating more because I'm ravenous from like not eating at a... Well, you're also working out at a huge amount and I think that plays into... I think so too. I don't think the intermittent fasting is a good idea for people who are super active. I get nauseous, I can't. I mean, maybe I just haven't trained myself that way. I just face meals at an appropriate spacing, I think is reasonable. If you're diabetic or if you have low blood sugar, you have to be very careful with intermittent fasting.

But generally speaking, I think there's a smart way. Everyone should have sort of a personalized way. Do you intermittent fast then? So I intermittent fast in the sense, I'm nothing extreme because I like to eat and I tend to eat pretty clean in general, but I like to have a good couple of hours in the morning before I get started. I'm usually not hungry anymore because I've trained my body. Right, you trained your body.

And then at night I cut off my eating and brush my teeth so that I don't, I'm too lazy to have to go back and floss. So I cut off like about three or four hours before I go to bed and I try not to snack. So I actually just feel better. I don't have any intensive goals of weight loss or anything. I just feel better. And then when I actually eat, I tend to eat smaller meals, which, you know, are healthy

but smaller and I feel better with that too. So yeah, I do a little bit of it, but I don't think that I get aggressive in any way. I follow anthropology in my way. Are you super active though? Yeah. Yeah. Okay, maybe, but that's like to me now. I wouldn't say super active. Super is relative, you know? Like super, I run every day. You run every day?

Yeah, I run every day if I can. How much do you run? You know, I run anywhere between three and six miles. A lot of times it's three now because I'm so busy, but I do marathons and stuff. I also hate marathons. Yeah. I've done them in the past. I like them.

I usually do it when I'm not doing something like a book or academic stuff because I always rotate between body stressors and challenges and brain. I kind of like to break it up. Are you doing weights? I try to do a little bit of weights, but I'll be honest, I wish I could do better. And I see what you do and it inspires me. This morning I was doing workout and then I was checking you out and kind of prepping for the podcast and I thought, alright, shit, I gotta go work out.

No excuses. Oh my God, hilarious. Well, you know what's funny? The running though, people really get on my case because like, it's like so bad to do. It's so bad for my ear joints and like breaking down muscle tissue. I mean, I get like, I get... For you or for...

Yes, for me. Oh, for you. I'm talking about me. Yeah. Oh, okay. Because I was going to say I enjoy it. I think I'm stronger. Yeah.

First of all, for me, it's my meditation form. I cannot sit there and just, you know, with my legs crossed and sit in silence. Yeah. But I get my best ideas, my best flow, thinking. It's great for my cognitive. It's for me, it's like I love it. And I don't have to run fast. It's just like to run just to kind of, that's the only thing that gets my endorphins going.

Cheers. Yeah. I do too. Yeah. I think we I do too. Yeah. I think we're very similar. Yeah. Grab a drink. I know, right?

An organic drink. I was going to say, I'm healthy. Well, I drink organic beer. That's my favorite. Oh, I don't drink beer. I don't drink alcohol, actually. I do love organic wine and beer, but I have it so infrequently. But when I have it, I have clean versions of it, and it makes me feel better.

And I like that it's USDA organic. And again, it's following the criteria and the rules for that, which again, it's the only thing we have in our food system. So I look at everything through cleanliness and quality. I think people, I even have a food pyramid in there. Yeah, I saw it. And the food pyramid is taking, you know, Dr. Andrew Weil is my mentor and I love him. And he did the anti-inflammatory pyramid.

Mark Hyman's done the Pagan pyramid, Pagan diet pyramid. I looked at those and I thought, what do I really believe in? What has my research taught me? I really believe that what we need to think about is quality over quantity. Even in the book, I talk about Mediterranean diet is fantastic, very well studied, but if it's not clean in terms of organic or at least cleaning produce, you know, if it's not organic, it actually weighs down almost to a conventional diet in terms of some of the studies that have been showing that.

So quality in this day and age, modern day times, not theoretically, modern day times we have a very dirty food system. And I think when, so the pyramid, I had organic down one side, and I also talk on the bottom about detoxification as the bottom of the pyramid, then water quality, oh, food packaging. People need to understand food packaging because you can make a lot of dents in what you choose

and what you carry in your home. And then it was water and then the food. And I think if you put all that together, then you're talking about the big picture here. Yeah. No, I think it's a great book and I think it's an easy, good read and I enjoyed it and I think it's very timely, like I said 50 times already, but Ailey,

I know I said your name wrong five times before the podcast. I get it all the time. I know, well, it's spelled like Ali. Yeah, it's my own fault. I know. It's my parents' fault. Exactly. I deserve it. I'll tell your the time. I know. Well, it's spelled like Ali. Yeah, it's my own fault. I know. It's my parents' fault.

I deserve it. I'll tell your parents next time I see them. Oh, my mother's a piece of work, so she'll... I'm sure, like mine, I'm sure. So Dr. Ailey Cohen, where else can people find more information on you, the book, detoxification? Do you want to just kind of give all that before we say goodbye? Yeah. detoxification, do you want to just kind of give all that before we say goodbye? Yeah, so I started a platform called The Smart Human, The Smart Human, at a frustration about 10 years ago, 12 years ago, so TikTok, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook. I have a podcast called The

Smart Human podcast, which I have researchers on, physicians on. So I wanted the people who create the research, not the people who create the headlines. I really wanted the people who were doing the research to tell me. And you know what? Incredible breast cancer surgeon who tested breast biopsies, pre and post changing out cosmetics and how it changed the cancer signal. These are people that are doing incredible stuff but because they're in research, they're not getting the voice that I think they deserve. So my podcast tries to bring some of the best researchers in environmental health and nutrition and integrative medicine and have a voice.

So that's where you can find me doing that. And I write curriculum and I have courses. If you go to the smarthuman.com, I have some small but very useful courses on drinking water, pesticides. Do you practice still? I do. You do?

I do. I love doing all of this. And I do it because I actually believe in it. And it's a mission. And it shows me. The dog, it shows me. No, I think that's really important. I can't tell you how many times I have people on here who

are in the medical field. And they don't practice anymore because they are now more media doctors. They do the media, they do the podcasts like this, they write books, they go speaking, and they're not doing that. And I just find that to be like the people that I find I always get the best knowledge from, and like I glean as much, you know,

I glean the best info from, are the people who are like in the trenches. And so like actually those researchers that you're talking about, I really like to me, they're the ones who have the real meat that on the bone. Yeah. And they're not used to being in the media. Yeah, good. Those are the real deal. You know, they're uncomfortable giving recommendations.

Look, I wrote a textbook with Fred Vomsall. He pulled in 26 of his unbelievable researchers on food additives, Marisol Maffini, Shawna Swan, who did countdown and phthalate research. I mean, you'll recognize some of these names, but really no one you would know of because they're doing their research. And that's what they do well, and they're very proud of it.

And they're incredible scientists. And I've always respected that. And I will always probably be doing medicine as long as I can, like my who's 85 and loves his patients. Because you know what? At the end of the day, no matter how much attention I get or whatever for a book or this, they're the people who keep me humble. They're the people I'm doing this for and this is what I love or else I would never

have gone into medicine. So I think it's just a choice. I don't judge other physicians who get out of medicine or take on other projects. I think you just have to decide what you want. No, for sure. And this is the legacy of education and curriculum is really what I want. And so I'm just going to keep my head in the game. Well, thank you for being on.

Thanks for having me. I appreciate it. All right. Bye, everyone.