In Your Pants with Dr. Susie G - Environmental toxins ☠️ Do you need to worry about them?

Episode Date: September 6, 2018

We're all exposed to environmental toxins on a daily basis. Environmental toxins are a result of industry impacting the quality of our air, food, and water. They're found everywhere so thank goodness that we have amazing biological mechanisms that detoxify this crap out of our system. Dr. Gonzalez is a Naturopathic Doctor who is trained in integrative oncology and treats all diseases from acute to chronic. He's passionate about educating and empowering people in becoming advocates for their own health. On today's show, Dr. Gonzalez will... - Give you the skinny on environmental toxins, particularly dioxin - Tell you how you can reduce your exposure to environmental toxins and optimize your health - Debunk health fads like alkaline water (sorry guys, drinking more won't make you healthier) and "BPA-free" plastics. - Discuss the links between environmental toxins and cancer, endometriosis and persistent pelvic pain - Share his top tips to help you supercharge your ability to detox especially unhelpful forms of hormones in our bodies - Create a defense for veggies and why you need them - Discuss how environmental toxins can cause infertility for both men and women - Chat about toxins in tampons and how these toxins accumulate over time (let's just say this one shocked me!) - Gives us the low down on organic foods - Defend why we need to look at the label! - Convince you to use food as medicine - Share his top 3 tips to improve your health

You're listening to In Your Pants with Dr. Susie G, the physiotherapist for your private, helping you get in the know down below. Hey guys, it's Dr. Susie G and welcome to the In Your Pants podcast, where we destigmatize private parts and cultural taboos, plus we throw in a few things here and there about health in general, because health isn't just in your pants. This is definitely not the place to be shy, so I hope you're ready to get in the know down below. On today's show, I'm bringing up an interesting topic that gets a lot of press in the media these days, cancer and environmental toxins. What are they and should we really be

concerned about them? So to help me quench my curiosity, I've got Dr. Christian Gonzalez on the show today. Dr. Gonzalez is a naturopathic doctor who graduated from the University of Bridgeport College of Naturopathic Medicine in Connecticut in 2014. He also did his residency at the Cancer Treatment Centers of America for two years in Philadelphia. Dr. Gonzalez is trained in integrative oncology and treats all diseases from acute to chronic. He's passionate about educating and empowering people and becoming advocates for their own health. Dr. Gonzalez, thank you so much for being on the show today. Oh, it's a pleasure. What an introduction. Thank you. Well, it's all you. It's all you and rightfully so for sure. And again, really glad to

have you on the show because this is such an important topic that I think there's a lot of fluff out there about what's happening with our environment and our bodies. And you are certainly equipped with the knowledge. I've been following you on Instagram for quite some time and I'm glad we are answering these questions today. So let's kind of get started. I guess my first question would be, we're all exposed to a lot of environmental toxins on a daily basis. So perhaps to start this conversation off, let's talk about what exactly are environmental toxins and where are they hiding? Oh, great. Yeah. Where are they not hiding is the question. They're everywhere. And I always preface these conversations with saying that we are all exposed to environmental toxins.

It doesn't matter where you live because nowadays they are ubiquitous everywhere, air, water, soil, food. So the beautiful thing is that we've been blessed with these mechanisms in our body that get rid of these toxins so efficiently and so effectively. But the other side of it is that we are overburdened and overwhelmed and sluggish with these mechanisms through lifestyle and the choices that we make with food, for example, that really back up our own detoxification system. So environmental toxins are found everywhere, as I mentioned, air, water, soil, food, and they're, for the most part, a consequence of industry, different types of industry, say, for example, paper industry or garbage burning industry. And they leak out into the environment and then cycle through, as I mentioned, air, water, and soil, and unfortunately creep their way into our systems, which we are being exposed to, as an example, saying our water systems or our food that we eat. So it's important for me to at least make people aware that these toxins are sort of a hidden secret when it comes to medical workups, because not many people are aware of what their toxic burden is.

And it can be measured, but not many people are aware. And a lot of these toxins cause a lot of known diseases. So this is why I like talking about it. That's great. And so you measured, you know, I mean, you measured, you mentioned about measuring these, these toxins. What are, what are some of those tests that you can do to measure the load? Yeah.

So, so there's, there's a few laboratories that I use, but there's one that I use in particular for the, for, for most people and it tests over 270, about 300 different toxins through the urine. Actually, it's a toxic metabolite. So when they break up, they form up these breakdown products and it sort of bundles them into the percentile that you fall in. And most recently, I had a breast cancer patient and she had two major, major toxins associated with breast cancer over the hundredth percentile. She was all in the red there. And and the question is now where your exposure is coming from. right? This is what people need to be educated about because we can't run away from these

exposures because we live on earth. But where are the exposures coming from? And are we maximizing, optimizing our detoxification mechanisms? Right. And on that note, that's great. So where you mentioned some things in terms of where are these exposures coming from? You mentioned, you know, paper industry, garbage. But what about in our daily lives? You know, like you mentioned we're so surrounded by these things you know what do we need to on a daily level on a on a on a micro level what can we do to pick out and recognize these toxins or these pollutants and and what can we do to eliminate them or reduce them so that we can optimize our detoxification yeah so so the the power in our hands is is our ability to make uh choices so

So at the very basic level, eating a diet which is conducive to detoxification. And the most abundant diet with detoxification nutrients would be a plant-based diet or a whole food plant-based diet. Ones that would be based around high amounts of organic or local fruits and vegetables. Because that's where most of these environmental toxins are what they call fat-soluble. so they live in the tissue of flesh for the most part, which is why I'm a big advocate of choosing phytonutrients in plants, which would stimulate these detoxification systems. And then choosing clean water. Clean water doesn't mean going to Whole Foods and buying a six-pack of Evian water in plastic, right? Because plastic, for example, is a major source

of what they call a xenoestrogen. And they cause havoc on men and women's hormonal systems. So getting clean water, I can talk about a filter later that I highly recommend that filters out a lot of these toxins. And then exercise, right? Stimulating our detoxification systems that way, liver support. And then our exposures, say for example, you're going to Starbucks every day, you're drinking coffee from there and then you're getting it in a plastic cup well it just so happens that plastic cup is lined with styrene and styrene causes a slew of different things in people but if you have a little bit every day it's chipping away chipping away it's building up in your system right so what are habits every day that we need to be thinking about that's that's

great i'm glad you brought up the water thing because i actually had that question for later but we'll bring it up now because there's a lot of trend in alkaline waters, things about balancing the pH of the body and using these very fancy, very expensive waters. Can you talk a little bit about that? I mean, this is really necessary or what type of water I guess is beneficial and what type is just used for marketing? Yeah. I get a lot of questions about the alkaline water marketing and i i'm really not a proponent of it and because i'm not a firm believer you can drink alkaline water i'm not a believer at all because it's not based on basic science but you can't just drink a gallon of alkaline water and alkalize your body that

doesn't happen your blood can't alkalize that way because if you did say for example that was the case then if i drank a gallon of alkaline water i would die because my body would over alkalize okay what it what it is good for is people with acute heartburn because it will lower the ph of your stomach, but not much further than that. What I do recommend and the best filter I've found thus far, and I have no association with this company, is the Berkey water filter. Berkey, B-E-R-K-E-Y. And that water filter, it's fairly affordable compared to the ones that are installed under the sink. This is one that's right on your countertop and it's a water purifier because they can't even call it a filter because you can take mud water, put it in there and it'll

take a while but it'll purify and create water out of it so it's pretty incredible but um it gets rid of uh uh many many environmental toxins in the water plus pharmaceuticals plus fluoride which is a whole nother podcast that we could talk about right right now what about like bph or bpa free line plastics or you know sometimes those big five gallon water jugs that are bpa free but you use Whole Foods has the water filtration system inside there. I mean, what do you think about those things? I don't like them at all, to be honest. The plastic industry did something really sneaky a few years ago

when people found out that BPA was an incredible hormone disruptor and acts like estrogen in the body and is tied to breast cancers, cervical cancers, prostate cancers, uterine cancers. They switched it and they say, all right, let's do BPA-free and replace it with BPAS. And that BPA is now found to be even more potent in many cases than BPA in general. So I've never been a fan of plastic. I speak out against it a lot because that's one of the first interventions I do with anyone who presents with a hormonal issue.

It doesn't matter if it's hormonal acne or an issue with your period, right? Because it's such a powerful hormone disruptor. So I always recommend glass or stainless steel water bottles, 32 ounces and above, and then using something like the Berkey water filter. So filling it up and having it next to you all day and drinking it and replacing it with some minerals, maybe some Himalayan salt. I always say throw it in there or some minerals in there. But that's the way that's the way to drink the cleanest, purified water and not exposing yourself to everyday plastic. right right and you meant and so you went on this topic of um you know hormone disruptions and um women and perhaps we'll probably get into endometriosis and pelvic pain and period pain and

um i guess you know how how do these environmental toxins contribute to these diagnoses yeah so so some so some environmental toxins we're exposed to our body's super efficient we pee them out we poop them out we sweat them out fairly quick others are build up in our fat tissue and those are the really dangerous ones and the one of the consider one of the most dangerous ones is something called dioxin okay and dioxin is um what i'll be talking about more of today because it is considered one of the most dangerous environmental toxins and it's because it takes it takes about 11 years for it to start breaking down in your body halfway right which is crazy and and it bioaccumulates meaning that if it's in the fat of the sardine that gets eaten by

a larger fish and then it gets up uptake it uptakes in the fat of that fish and then that fish is eaten by another one so the bioaccumulation as as it gets to larger animals um is pretty significant. So, uh, yeah, that's, that's what I want to talk about. Um, and, and, and I don't want anyone to get it wrong. Like there, there is not the, the EPA only does so much in reviewing these because there's so many, right? So every year they get 1700 new compounds introduced by the industry. They say, Hey, can you just review these so we can just put them out legally. And back in 1976, there was something called a toxic substance control act. And that basically says we need evidence that it causes harm, otherwise it's good. Well, 90% of these 1,700 new compounds

a year are approved because they can't show long-term evidence that it's not bad. They just say, hey, in a vacuum, this one toxin, not even interacting with other toxins, this one toxin, it's fine right so up till date we only know a quarter of what the 82 000 chemicals in the environment do only a quarter have been tested only a quarter all right so and that's not even talking about how they all work together so this is why this is why we need to be talking about this more right right and and so to talk a little bit about this dioxin um some more you know what what exactly what exactly is it and how does it contribute to you know pain syndromes like the ones we kind of mentioned endometriosis or pelvic pain so so i'll quickly just talk about what is

dioxin and then we'll move on to like how it's affecting uh men and women so uh dioxins are a byproduct of the waste industry and i mentioned burning garbage that's for the most part where comes from, but it's also the chemical pesticide manufacturing and paper bleaching. And what happens is these toxins seep out into the environment. And they are found, most of our exposures are via meat. So 93% of human exposures come from meat. The highest amount or the majority of it coming from milk and dairy and then the rest coming from beef pork fish poultry and eggs and that's because i mentioned before bioaccumulation right so these animals are eating other animals or they're eating in the soil and they're eating insects and it bioaccumulates

in the tissue yeah so it it is since 1997 the the gold standard for saying this causes cancer this doesn't cause cancer it may cause cancer is an international agency for research on cancer And they grouped it as, it's a group one carcinogen. So it definitively does cause cancer, right? It's a known human carcinogen. And there are multiple adverse effects. We see reproductive and developmental issues at levels 100 times lower than what causes the cancer dose.

And there's things like birth defects, fertility issues, endometriosis we'll talk about, diabetes, learning difficulties, immune issues, skin problems. There's a lot. And that's why it's considered so dangerous because guess what? We don't know the safe dose for this. All we know is that it can cause cancer in one in a hundred people or one in a thousand people or one in 10 people. But yeah, these exposures, we're exposed to them definitely. And this is why we need to be talking about it more. Right. Which is, which is why I have you on the show. Thank goodness. Right. But so, I mean, I'm, I'm pretty sure listeners out there, you know, are probably gonna listen to this and be like, holy crap. You know, I'm, I'm exposed to all this all the time.

Like, you know, instead of, I guess I want to say instead of fear mongering, like this may seem like a hopeless case. Right. And, and you already, right. It's not exactly. So I want you to chime in about that as well. For sure. Listen, and that's why I always preface any environmental talk with saying that we have these mechanisms that get rid of these things. We just have to be more aware of how we can optimize these, right? Because yeah, they build up in the fat tissue and not everyone who is exposed to dioxins will have a cancer diagnosis. That's simply not true. That's much more complex, right? But it is something to think about when we have something like endometriosis, which we'll talk about.

But we can talk about detoxification, we can talk about choices, right? So what they found is that people on a plant-based diet have significantly up to negligible amount of dioxins in their blood. There you go. That's one major intervention. If you are worried about dioxin, you have a family history of dioxin, you have a test and you have high dioxins shown then then that's that's automatically one thing we can do right alcohol alcohol is something that puts a major strain on our liver right and and thinking about

okay what is my daily or weekly dose of alcohol and and is it is it affecting my ability to detox because it does it it throws a forest fire in your liver so instead you know optimizing it with herbs, nutrients, which are liver-supporting and everyday liver-supporting. Say, for example, cruciferous vegetables. Cruciferous vegetables are awesome liver supporters because of their sulfur compounds, right? They also have an incredible ability to stimulate detoxification of estrogens. So you have these things called xenoestrogens, and they're producing or they're mimicking estrogen in your body and creating what we call the bad form of estrogen. And what What simply we can do is eat these every single day and really help our body detoxify.

Nice. Very cool. Very cool. I don't like typing away all this wonderful information that I'm going to have for these listeners, but this is awesome. So you mentioned endometriosis a couple times. Can you talk about that, and how do you work with a patient who has endometriosis? And I know we'll be talking about these toxins. Yeah, endometriosis is fairly common. And what we see is that it's tied to infertility a lot. So we see about 10% of the population have endometriosis.

And I've seen a lot of younger women with endometriosis, even back when I was in school. But 38% of infertile women have endometriosis. So it's something we need to think about. And then up to 65% of women with chronic pelvic pain have endometriosis. And it's responsible for over 100,000 hysterectomies a year. So it's something that we have to investigate. Modern medicine or at this point, there's no real known what the cause is. But what the theory is that there's something called a menstrual blood reflux into certain areas. What endometriosis is basically outside of the uterus, there's tissue which grows and shrinks with your menstrual cycle. But as you know, having outside of the uterus any tissue, it can cause major issues because it can implant in different ligaments in the reproductive system.

It can implant in your digestive tract, your bladder. So imagine every time you're building up tissue in your uterus with your normal periods, you're also building up tissue in that area too. And that can cause major issues, a lot of pain specifically leading up to infertility. So that's what it is. But there are numerous studies from mouse up to human that are really suggesting that dioxins are a major cause for this or something to really be thinking about. right? Because when you have uterine backflow, I mean, menstrual blood backflow, it happens to people who don't get diagnosed with endometriosis. So the question is, there's another mechanism going on. The belief is that because dioxins bind to a certain receptor that is all throughout the endometrium, it's called the AHR receptor, that causes, through different steps and

different mechanisms, increase cellular growth and increase inflammation and hormonal changes. And that is the belief of what's happening is that it's sort of kick-starting a change in the tissue such that it's creating an area very nicely where there can be other implantations of that tissue. And it's been suggested in different animal studies. And so say, for example, they did a monkey study, right? And what they saw was that when exposed to different levels of dioxin, there was something called a dose-dependent increase in the incidence and the severity of endometriosis, meaning that the more dioxin, up to 25 parts per trillion, that there was more endometriosis. And this was also confirmed in another monkey study where they

actually implanted the the tissue they they created the endometriosis surgically but when they were when they were fed uh feed with high amounts of dioxin it sustained the implantation of the endometriosis right and and and then even in human beings what they see is that women with increased infertility uh are having and this isn't this isn't um causation for the for the humans, but it's definitely, this is what we're starting to see now. And they're doing more and more testing on humans, but what they say is infertile women have increased amount of dioxins in the breast milk. And, um, what they, what they're also seeing is that the infertile women with endometriosis have detectable levels of dioxins when they compare it to fertile women

in the control groups. Um, so when they're measuring these dioxins, what they're seeing is that it's, it's closely bound to, um, endometriosis and infertility. interesting now do and i can imagine because not every woman has who has endometriosis is symptomatic so this could be a very silent thing happening right i mean especially when we're talking about for infertility right um everything's showing up negative everything looks good i mean no one really knows what's happening and they have no symptoms but what perhaps i'm hearing is that it could potentially be this endometrial tissue or even just the dioxin exposure or levels can be significantly high and that's exactly and and you're right not every there's

many women who can have these implantations of uh tissue throughout or outside of their their uterus and could be asymptomatic right we don't even know until say they did they they did a procedure and they then they found it but but that doesn't mean at some point it won't become symptomatic because there's mechanisms going on that are increasing inflammation and thus promoting pain in the future. And I've seen, I've had close experience with this with people that I know personally. And for me, it was more common than what I saw in my research earlier at being around 10% of women, because it seemed like to me it was way more common. Wow. Very interesting. Now, on the topic of women and menses and pain, what's your take on tampons?

So, you know, the bleach, obviously, in tampons that are just the regular standard tampons, but even the organic tampons and, you know, perhaps using the silicone menses cups now are very popular. Yeah. Can we talk a little bit about that? In the early 2000s, they said that the level of dioxins in tampons is negligible, right? Right. So because it was in the early 90s, that's when everyone was really like, what the heck are these dioxins? I mean, they've been out for a long time, but that's when they really started becoming an issue.

But Dr. Tierno in NYU, he's known as one of the leading experts on tampons. He said that, yeah, OK, there's a small amount per tampon, but because it's, as I mentioned, fat soluble or it hangs out in the fat tissue throughout your life, continuous trace amounts over time can have an additive effect lifetime which can cause major issues and if you think about it a woman will be exposed to uh 2 000 days of tampons over 11 000 tampons right and here's the crazy part it's considered a medical device so uh what that does is it excludes tampons from being labeled or chemically regulated as say food or drugs or cosmetics yes yes no kidding they they manufacture these with yeah i mean glyphosate which is a whole nother that's a that's a that's a whole nother podcast but glyphosate which is

basically the the herbicide of roundup um they it's high it's in high amounts in cotton right and these tampons conventional tampons are made out of cotton so if you think about the tissue where the tampons are laying lying around are extremely vascular super permeable and there's an uptake of these toxins right into your blood and this is not even talking about chlorine fragrances dioxins so for me um well i did a post on tampons a while ago um and that was one of the most eye-opening posts for me because i was like oh i'm gonna talk about tampons because there's chemicals in them. And then once I really went in there, I was like, Whoa, this is not regulated like it should be. And so what about the menses, the silicone cups? I mean, what would you recommend

that if, if, if you're like, well, tampons are bad and even the organic ones are not the greatest, but you know, again, everything is sold. There's still, there's still better. I'll say something about the cups, but they're still better. I mean, when I, when I had posted on this, I mentioned a few brands um that do have organic they use organic cotton which is major from the get-go because of the glyphosate um and and by virtue of it being organic it excludes many other chemicals many chemicals is it perfect no is it exponentially better yes now for the cups they there there isn't enough to show what the silicon does um if it's inert so um i don't i don't i i don't i can't really speak to that fully right now what i do know is that there's increases

in toxic shock syndrome um with the cups versus the tampons or the pads yeah so yeah yeah but but but the cup i didn't know that i know people who have used them and they love them um i guess you have to get used to them uh because it's a big change but even though like i mentioned the pads the pads i know people use those too when they go i actually like the pads so uh i mean it's it's a matter of preference but at least being educated to know hey i'm gonna go organic or i'm gonna get these these really good lines pay a little extra put in a little extra yeah yeah don't get the scented you know i mean they come in so many different yeah the scented crap and it comes in a plastic applicator i mean everything is just like yeah i hear you on this

one and now they have underwear so like um uh is it think thanks thanks is a brand i believe that um is period underwear and i have a couple pairs i'm gonna get a little tmi hair but um i mean they work great i mean they work wonderful they're reusable you wash them yeah um they absorb really well so yeah don't have to stick anything up there that's perfect so very friendly and all that fun stuff so um but yeah and yeah so hopefully you can i can link that um it was this a blog post that you did i'm i'm terrible i'm sorry i didn't oh no no no no it was a while ago um but it was uh it's on the instagram page oh okay all right i'll have to have to find it and then i'll link it to the to the podcast notes for for everyone so that's awesome it was i think it

was just it was well responded because people are like whoa you know no one ever said but then the crazy thing for me is always like why like why is why don't people say anything about this i mean this is something that is a monthly thing for yeah women yeah and uh and and there's a step that we're missing where we're not even thinking twice about the choices that we make right exactly tampons it goes for many things it goes for many or like makeup for example i mean you mentioned that too you know looking the ingredients in your makeup you know you're putting that on your face every day or the lotions that you use or creams exactly every single day and and and because there's measurable they they'll put out studies and they'll what they say is that it's a negligible

amount of course it is when you have it in a vacuum and you're only exposed to that one thing but right you know you take a conventional deodorant you have 10 15 chemicals in there that you can't pronounce you know and it's like food that's we're not even talking about food so you can see where your burden comes right so you need a crappy meal you put on then you go and take a shower with some with some low quality shampoo body soaps then you put on deodorant then you put on lotion. You see, you see where I'm going with this. It's every day, every single day. And, and God bless our livers. God bless. They do so much, right? I mean, our ecosystem is amazing, but like you said, there's always that tipping point of that, that allostatic load.

That's just going to be like, you know, we can't do this anymore. Our bodies are tired and we have nowhere to compensate. We have nowhere to give you. And then at that point it's, it's already been a long road you know and then we're very impatient and frustrated and wondering well what the hell is going on with my body when yeah it's kind of going to the bar you know and you have a hangover and you're like oh that last tequila shot well what about the 10 before that you had before that last one you know what i mean yeah and then you'll be talking about that last tequila shot all day like how did i do that last tequila shot yeah but it's like it wasn't that one it was like the 10 before and then the beers that you mix with that or whatever you know i mean we don't

think about it that way, but you're exactly saying that, that it's accumulated over time and not just what we're exposed to, but even from a genetic level. I mean, there's so many other factors that are contributing to the overall load and our body's ability to detoxify. And if we can just kind of cut the body some slack in some areas, like you're mentioning the choices of food and exercise and stress management and all those things, I mean, we can certainly set ourselves up for a better healthier life down the future you know exactly for sure and and that's that's that's the major thing like it what can we empower ourselves about right like and that's what i mentioned making these choices which are going to facilitate our the healthiest selves i mean it's

it's easy to to choose another deodorant it's not i mean we can make the choice and we can go okay you know let me research let me find out i mean i've had a lot of people switch deodorants fairly quickly and they go you know what like i got used to it and i'm fine with it now um but that's just deodorant it's we it's sometimes it's a little bit of trial and error and going oh no this shampoo works and no this one doesn't really work but i mean in the long run it's it's for us right all right all right and and the environment i mean not just for us but you know indirectly like less waste you know if we have less plastic and we don't use plastic bags or plastic cups and we use glass i mean you're saving the environment too and yeah which we're just only growing our

kids right yeah it's yeah it's like our responsibility the whole thing with this is that the disconnect is is the thing where um and i remember i had a patient to go no you know it's They sell it at Target, so it has to be safe. That's not the case. It's never the case because your shampoo is at Target doesn't mean it's safe because your food is being sold at, we'll say, Stop and Shop doesn't mean it's safe. There's a lot of, and not to step in that realm, but very quickly to say, there's a lot of politics that happen as something gets cleared.

I mean, why genetically modified food is on the shelf is beyond me, but if you research it, there's a lot of politics. So that's what we need to think about. Because it's on the shelf does not mean it's safe by any means, by any means. So it's up to us to educate ourselves. Yeah. And take that step, you know, and do a little at a time. But again, everything accumulates, you know, and on that topic of food and what's on the shelf. I mean, I'm sure you've heard this in speaking of politics and I won't go down that rabbit hole for this show. but you know some farmers out there would say there's no such thing as organic because

of the runoff and things that are absorbed in the sky through water and then it rains you know so what is your what would you respond to that you know when we're talking about organic foods versus non-organic foods or gmo um based on that kind of you know rebuttal i suppose yeah hey look the best thing we can do is have our own plot of land and start growing our kale and our broccoli and our peppers amen that is the best thing by far unfortunately uh i live in the city so that's not happening anytime soon so i have to go to a farmer's market or whole foods or wherever it may be where i can get produce now i will always choose uh organic produce uh with the label if i'm at the supermarket or get to know the farmer and know what their practices are

yeah is there such thing as completely organic no not at all even the organic label uh there's room for different synthetics or different toxins in there right they they allow they have a little leeway right so it's not 100 organic uh ever yeah it is it is and and this this will always be it is more nutritious there's there's there's higher levels of vitamins higher levels of minerals and all phytonutrients in organic food. And it is taking away all of the synthetic herbicides, pesticides, different insecticides and toxins that they use. There's no microwave radiation or radiation used to get rid of anything there. But as long as I'm assured by standard it has to reach this level, then I'll deal with the other 10%.

percent my my own way do you see what i'm saying yeah but yeah totally i mean you're just less again you're going back to you know lessening the load sure it's probably not going to be completely perfect unless you grow even if you did grow your own stuff like there's going to have that runoff but you're lessening the the amount of exposure the load of exposure that you're you're you're kind of giving your body you know on a daily basis moment to moment basis really and you're making wise choices just making a better choice bottom line um and we can't always look at you know the fancy labels on some of these products you know you gotta i'm i'm a firm believer i'm with you on that where you have to look at the label look and compare at the things

that you're buying because just because it has a fancy bottle or it has a fancy sticker and it looks all pretty uh it doesn't mean that it's good quality you know just look at where it's coming from is it locally sourced versus you know somewhere else um what if you can't read the ingredients so that's a problem you know like if you don't even know what's in it that's that's just start with that like start looking at where your food is coming from what is the quality that these animals or i mean i know you're heavy on the plant base but even if you are eating protein i mean pick a cleaner protein you know know the farmers in your area perhaps go local um i hear you on all angles. Yeah, yeah. And like, look, look, I personally eat a whole food plant-based

diet. Other people have their own choices in diet, and that's fine. But if you do choose to eat meat, then choose your meat organic. There's no doubt about it. Because the feed that they give these conventionally raised animals, aside from dioxins, are heavy on glyphosate, which is in its own right like i said a whole nother podcast but they're high in dioxins and high in other chemicals and then it gets into the tissue because i as i mentioned it's fat soluble so it stays in their fat we eat it or uh it comes out in the milk and we drink it or we eat it in the form of cheese so without a doubt unfortunately in today's day and age it has to be in that form but but think about your plate and think about is most of my plate fruits or vegetables and then other forms

of you know we'll say if you eat grains grains if you eat proteins proteins there you go you know right right exactly right i always say i'm like if i don't see the animal in a happy environment because i live in asheville and and we have we're right next to a college um that is an agricultural like college like working and going to school at the same time one of the few i guess there's only 20 of 20 of these kinds of colleges in the whole u.s but they teach these college students how to woodwork how to raise farm animals like naturally on on the hillside eating grass and then they shift the animals you know once they've grazed an area they shift them over i mean these animals are so well taken care of because we walk our we are constantly walking and hiking around the

college grounds so i know exactly like where the chickens are laying their eggs you know it's like fantastic to see that you know these are happy animals they're not stressed out you know they're eating grass they're in their natural environment they're free to roam everywhere yeah you know yeah yeah and and versus what what you do see and and what actually people don't want to see but the the atrocities that go on in in factory farming is just beyond and they should see these things because that's what's like you know that'll make you know would you want to support something like that or do you want to support an animal that lived a great life and you know then ended up on your plate you know and i've read i've read even when the animal you

know their conditions they're releasing steroids and hormones because of because they're stressed and these steroids and hormones that are elevated even to the point even even when they even if they've lived a wonderful life but they get freaked out right before they're going to be you know, put on your plate, I guess. I've, I've even read research that said that even that moment, if they're not in a relaxed environment from going from, you know, to the butcher, for example, and they're freaking out, that will change the chemistry of what you're going to be eating. That's, that's a, that's absolutely true. I 100% true. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, I mean, I'm passionate about talking about food because that is the basis of health and food medicine is

an incredible intervention that you can do with people not even talking about any supplementation not even medication food medicine is the first step you always take and people can there there can be miracles just with changing a diet uh adding things in and putting them out yeah you know yeah and pain i mean we were talking about pain and i was gonna mention it for all my guys out there i know we're talking about periods and such but it's the same the same applies to men You know, men who have autoimmune diseases, men who have difficulty losing weight, you know, cognitive issues, concentration, anxiety, I mean, pelvic pain, your immune system is huge, you know. Yeah. And it's all influenced by these choices that we make, right? Just one hormonal disrupting food can completely imbalance, let's say, testosterone or estrogen or progesterone.

And just think, it's a very intimately intricate system and all these hormones work together in concert like a symphony. And then imagine you're at a symphony and the guy who's on the tuba, he's got like i don't know a sock in his tuba and all of a sudden it sounds muffled you're gonna catch that really quick right so that's how it happens and our body has awesome ways of compensating until it can't compensate because it's too much right right right exactly what do we do and then you have to start from the you sort of have to start from the beginning and what i want listeners not to get is that it's not impossible because just because we are adaptable highly adaptable creatures you know a species that our cells are constantly changing and adapting to

the environment and the fact that it can adapt and it has changed and it's changing moment by moment doesn't mean that you're screwed it means that you know you are now more knowledgeable you have more wisdom you're going to make some changes and you're going to start to see these these issues reverse it might take some time and it won't happen overnight because this didn't happen overnight you know it takes a long time but you'll be happy that you recognized it that you're you're on the right path stay steady the course you know um because we're we're we're a culture right now that wants things like yesterday oh yeah you know for sure notice but we we are like wait i want to get better yesterday why am i dealing with this thing right now i mean what's the pill how many

people how many people come and say that's a whole other topic what pill can i take or what natural pill or what natural can i take for this and i'm like what for what that doesn't work that way you know but but that's but that is what we're conditioned to because we're like hey i want to pull up information on my phone in 10 seconds i'm going to do it and i'm going to take this medication and it's going to help me right now um and like you said it things take a while to develop and then they take sometimes if it's a very chronic disease a while to heal but our body is smart enough to always want that balance if we cut our knee it's we're gonna it's with a clot and we're gonna we're gonna have a little scab and then it's gonna heal because our body's

intelligent enough to know what it's it's home balance is what is our it's our homeostasis absolutely you give it a right environment you optimize the environment for healing it's gonna happen just stay steady for sure oh my gosh this is such deliciousness here so to end on a wonderful know again i know we've talked a little bit bits and pieces about how we can protect ourselves but you know just like in a nutshell give us the top three you know top three i know you could probably give us more but top three things to do to protect ourselves um from from these environmental toxins to optimize obviously our health get a water pitcher uh the berkey is my favorite b-e-r-k-e-y um there i'm sure that there's ones as good but those last time i did

some heavy research. That's the one I found. And then many other people and practitioners love them. So I have one and I love it. Okay. Berkey. The second thing is to familiarize yourself with the Environmental Working Group, EWG. They are the body that does a tremendous amount of research on all of these things. They have a Skin Deep app and a website where you can type in, I mean, I don't know if it has every single say deodorant or, or, or, you know, concealer that, that, that, that it's present, but you can type it in and they'll they'll grade it basically and tell you hormone disruption, cancer causing, uh, inflammation, skin, skin issues.

So, uh, awesome. And then they also have their clean 15 and dirty dozen, which, um, some people know and some people don't, but the 12 foods that you need to get organic and the 15 that don't don't necessarily need to be organic. So if you're on a budget, there you go. Major. And then just choosing organic as much as you can, and then putting together as much whole food plant-based meals you can, right? So surround your plate with vegetables in a variety of one. Think the rainbow, every single color of the rainbow, and try to get that in every single day in whatever form it may

be it can be raw it could be you know cook lightly it could be juiced it could be smoothie just get it into your body because your body will know what to do with that versus i don't know a box of triscuits for example right oh speaking of juicing sorry real quick um should skins on obviously skins are better i mean there's so much out there about juicing and smoothie that it denatures the nutritional value what do you just quick on that yeah i i always say to clean the skin it doesn't get rid of everything uh but i do there's nutrition in the whole thing so i i clean it lightly use it and um the juicer that i use is a slow masticating one so it doesn't necessarily burn the enzymes but i always drink it right then and there i don't i'm ocd about keeping it out for

a long time gosh yeah but then i do smoothies too you know what i mean because so it's just a variety, whatever I'm feeling in the morning, you know? Great. So great. Oh, this is, I'm so, I'm so excited. This is what a great episode. This was great. I mean, you've shared so much wisdom with us. And again, I'm so glad that we're able to collaborate together to get this information, which is so valuable and so priceless to the community so that we can each take our responsibilities and owning our own health and helping out the environment. I mean, what more can we want to save the world right so i mean that's just a little feat right just saving the world but why not yeah we have one one plate at a time right one person at a time i should say so

how how can our listeners connect with you um yes for future yes so uh email is info at doc gonzalez.com um i'm always open to emails all the time and i'm pretty good at answering them info at doc gonzalez.com uh with a z at the end gonzalez and then the instagram is at underscore doctor d-o-c-t-o-r dot g and then underscore um for the symmetry and uh yeah that's and then website will be up this month it's under construction by the time the show airs it's going to be way up and ready and i'll have the links in the podcast show notes so not a problem at all so again dr g thank you so much again for such wonderful information and to all our listeners out there you know as always in loving wellness for your pelvis this is dr suzy g until

next time my friends i'll see you later thanks for listening to today's episode be sure to head on over to drsuzyg.com where you can get more information show notes and related articles on today's topic. Also, if you like what you're hearing, head on over to iTunes, subscribe to the podcast, and leave us a rating and review. We'd love to hear your feedback. Thanks again. Oh my gosh, this is such deliciousness here.