The Liz Moody Podcast - EMFs, Microplastics, Red Light & More: The REAL Science Behind Today’s Biggest Wellness Topics

Episode Date: April 16, 2025

Do you know what the major sources of microplastics are in your home? Are you trying to decide whether you should throw out your plastic cutting board? Are you ingesting heavy metals without even knowing it? Is your microwave hurting you? I’m sitting down with Dr. Vivian Chen to learn more about microplastics, heavy metals, EMFs, PFAS, forever chemicals, water filtration, red light therapy, and health myths and tips. If it’s a toxin you’re afraid of, we’re getting into it. 1:58 Protein for Weight Loss? 4:31 Benefits of Fiber 8:27 Microplastic Prevention and Detoxification 21:10 Water Filtration and PFAS 30:29 Are Microwaves Safe? 37:10 Cooking with Olive Oil 39:20 Sugar Alternatives 44:58 Red Light Therapy 46:47 Can You “Wear Out” Your Mitochondria?  1:05:13 EMF Exposure 1:14:04 Bluetooth Headphones 1:20:52 Reducing Exposure to Harmful Chemicals Check out the EWG tap water database. For more from Dr. Chen, you can find her on Instagram @plateful.health or online at www.platefulhealth.com. Subscribe to her Substack at platefulhealth.substack.com.  Ready to uplevel every part of your life? Order Liz’s book 100 Ways to Change Your Life: The Science of Leveling Up Health, Happiness, Relationships & Success now!  To join The Liz Moody Podcast Club Facebook group, go to www.facebook.com/groups/thelizmoodypodcast. Connect with Liz on Instagram @lizmoody or online at www.lizmoody.com. Subscribe to the substack by visiting https://lizmoody.substack.com/welcome.  This episode is sponsored by: Seed: go to seed.com/lizmoody and use code LIZMOODY for 25% off your first month. Pique: go to piquelife.com/LIZMOODY for up to 20% off plus a special gift. Thrive Market: go to thrivemarket.com/LIZMOODY for 30% off your first order, plus a FREE $60 gift. The Liz Moody Podcast cover art by Zack. The Liz Moody Podcast music by Alex Ruimy. Formerly the Healthier Together Podcast.  This podcast and website represents the opinions of Liz Moody and her guests to the show. The content here should not be taken as medical advice. The content here is for information purposes only, and because each person is so unique, please consult your healthcare professional for any medical questions. The Liz Moody Podcast Episode 321. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What do you think that the wellness world is paying too much attention to? And what do you think they're not paying enough attention to? Just an additional 10 grams of fiber can reduce your risk of dying by 11%. The best thing you can do in your kitchen is swap your plastic tupperware to glass. You cook with olive oil. Yes. What does the science say? Gosh, I feel like there's so much myth around this.

The nervous system and our brain and what we tell our bodies is actually the condition. conductor of the orchestra that's our body. Hello, friends, and welcome back to the Liz Moody podcast. Today, we're going to dive into what the real science actually says about some of the most controversial wellness topics that you see on the internet. This is the type of nuance conversation that makes me so glad that I have a podcast because the answers often aren't as simple or as inflammatory as a 30-second social media post would lead you to believe.

You're going to come away from this episode with tons of questions answered and easy action steps that you can take to feel better in your body today. Our guest today is Dr. Vivian Chen. Vivian is a medical doctor with over 14 years of experience in the UK. She is an absolute expert at combing through the research to help people reduce their toxic load, improve their mitochondrial health, and get to the root cause of chronic health challenges. She is the founder of plaitful health and the writer of an incredible substack that I will link in the show notes. There is a lot of info in the episode. So if you want some key takeaways when you're done listening, head over to Liz Moody.substack.com and sign up for our brand new newsletter, which has action steps for each

episode as well as meal plans. We've also got challenges. Our new attention restoration challenge is 10 out of 10. We have a five-day gut reset that really works. We've got bonus interviews. So much good stuff over there. Dr. Vivian Chen, welcome to the podcast. Thank you so much for having me. I'm a big fan of yours. I'm a big fan of yours. So let's just. dive right in. We're going to get into so much stuff today. But let's start with what do you think that the wellness world is paying too much attention to? And what do you think they're not paying enough attention to? Ooh, I love this. I think we're paying too much attention to protein and not enough attention to fiber. Protein is definitely important. We need to be getting enough of

it, especially as we get older. And it definitely does make us more satiated. So protein is important. But what I see is people are kind of sacrificing the amount of their plate that's given too much to protein and not enough to fiber. And fiber, I would say, is just as important for satiety and also for longevity, for our gut health, for so many different things. The protein conversation is interesting because I feel like it's almost the modern iteration of the weight loss conversation. I think a lot of people feel like they're upping their protein and they think it's for an amorphous health risk. reason, but really it's because they think that's going to help them lose weight. Exactly. So do you think that high amount of protein, if your only goal were weight loss, do you think high amounts of protein is the best way to get there? I think it could work for sure because you get fuller and you

stay fuller for longer. And so naturally you end up eating less and you snack less. But is that good for long-term health? I think that's a different conversation, right? Because both of us know that the number of the scale does not equate to health. So if that's your only goal, sure. But I think for both of us, the goal is to thrive and to feel great and not just the number on the scale. Do you have concerns that protein unto itself is causing harm or is it just about the space that it takes up that could be other stuff? I think there's two things. One is that it's taking up the space for fiber, right?

because if you're just cramming lots and lots of, let's say, animal protein onto the plate, naturally the space for fiber goes down. And if you're full from just eating that protein first, you're not going to eat as much fiber. So that's number one. And number two, for certain populations, I do think that there is such thing as too much protein because it's not something we can store in our bodies, right? So when you get too much, now your body has to excrete it. How does it excrete? It's through the kidneys. So if your kidney function is compromised, you may have issues.

It's just an extra strain on the kidneys to excrete that amount of protein that you're not using. Talk to us about the benefits of fiber. This is really quite shocking, but just an additional 10 grams of fiber in your diet can reduce your risk of dying by 11%. That statistic is mind-blowing to me. And I feel like more people should know this. And if they knew this, they would be adding a lot more plants to their plates. Can you peg 10 grams for me? Is that like five carrots?

That's like probably one avocado. Okay. It's not hard, right? Maybe half a cup of beans. Oh, okay. You'll get that in your morning oatmeal. At every meal, I actually aim to try and get at least 10 grams. of fiber. So people want to get that 30 grams of protein. I would challenge everybody to also think

about 10 grams of fiber into that ball as well. And what are, so we have that it's going to reduce all cause mortality. Is that correct? Yeah. So risk of dying from anything. Risk of dying from anything. And then you've talked about some really interesting benefits that I've heard from fiber. Like it can actually help our body get rid of microplastics. Yeah. So fiber, think of it as a binder as well. So in our gut, it actually can bind onto contaminants we don't want to absorb. So, you know, now we're overwhelmed, right, from studies showing there's heavy metals in our seafood, there's microplastic in all kinds of foods, there's PFAS everywhere. Well, one of the ways that we can kind of prevent absorption from that is through ingestion of more fiber.

because yes, we may be eating these contaminants, but if we don't absorb them, then they don't impact us as much. There was this really interesting study on 700 healthy adults. And they show that the more plants in the diet, the lower their overall body burden of toxins. So we're talking about things like heavy metals, cadmium. It's a really interesting study because they looked at plants, not just fiber. and of course fiber does come with plants, but plants also come with binders like phytates, which people like to call antinutrients.

But they are anti-nutrients in that they bind onto things like iron and minerals, but they also bind onto things we don't want to absorb like heavy metals. So interesting. So when the carnivore community is like you should avoid beans because of the phytates, the lectins, all those types of things, those qualities actually have a beneficial component. Yes, absolutely. And there's studies showing that phytates can have anti-cancer effects in small amounts.

So there's nuance here, right? We don't want to get too much of these anti-nutrients because then, let's say you already have a compromised gut and you're kind of bordering iron deficiency. Now, if you introduce a lot of phytates into your diet, then that could prevent the absorption of iron and make that efficiency worse. But for most people with healthy gut, not iron deficient, a little bit of phytate and anti-nutrients, I'm putting that in air quotes, can actually be good for us. I love this. This is what I love so much about podcasting is because I feel like most of these things have nuance. Most things in life have nuance and social media by default because you have to get some of these attention in like five seconds. It has this flattening effect. And so, and you also need

to get people riled up. And so, of course, we were like, this is ruining your gut health. And it's like, well, actually, it has benefits. But if you have too much, it also is negative. And there's a middle ground. 100%. Yeah. And I feel like we're doing people a deserve us if we're not painting that nuance for them.

Because everybody deserve to know the full picture. And they can decide for themselves what to eat. I also love this because I was talking to my girlfriend the other day. And it just, microplastics keep coming up over and over. microplastics, nanoplastics on the podcast. And she was like, look, I know they're bad for me. There's a number of doctors who are like, this is one of the reasons young people are getting cancer at such a higher rate. She's like, I know they're bad for me. But like, how am I supposed to avoid them? They're quite literally everywhere. And so I like the idea, and we'll talk about maybe

strategies to avoid them, but I like the idea that you can also support your body getting rid of them. That feels really empowering to me. Right. It almost feels protective in a way, right? Yes, I know I'm being exposed, but let me eat more plants to reduce that absorption. And talking about cancer, well, 10 grams of fiber has been shown to reduce your risk of colorectal cancer by 10%. Which is one of the types that's going up in young people. Exactly. It's one of the types that's extremely alarming because the rate has doubled in young people. And now I think 20% of colorectal cancer is diagnosed in those under the age of 55, 20%. Yeah, that's not ideal.

What are your favorite forms of fiber? I love raspberries because it has both soluble and insoluble. I mean, most plants do, but the soluble ones, they have the more kind of heart-healthy cholesterol lowering benefit, whereas the insoluble, that's, you know, think of it as bulking, helping you go to bathroom. By the way, talking about excreting microplastic, one of the main ways we get rid of microplastic is through our poop. pooping is really important if you want to lower your overall toxic load.

Are you like we should be pooping once a day? Are you one of those people? At least once a day. At least once a day. Yes. Okay. I interviewed a doctor once like 10 years ago who's like, I poop after every single thing I put in my body.

Like if I put it in my body, it goes out of my body. And that shows that my system is optimized. And I'm like, is that the goal? I'm not there. Right. I feel like that's what babies do. Maybe we kind of started life that way. and then we kind of trained ourselves not to do that.

But once a day is, okay. And if you're not pooping once a day, then you're missing a valuable opportunity to increase. 100%. And what's happening is the longer that poop stays in your body, the more you're reabsorbing these toxins. So you'll see people say, oh, yeah, I'm taking a cleanse, the liver cleanse,

and they're popping these supplements that push liver detoxification, but they're not pooping. So if they're not pooping, the liver's flushing out these toxins, into the gut. And all they're doing is just reabsorbing it. It's doing nothing. Oh, no. Yeah, that's not ideal. I love berries. I've been doing blackberries that I toss with cardamom. And it's like one of my favorite snacks. It's delightful. And then I'll do raspberries where like

speaking of poop, it feels very but whole core, but like I'll stick a little chocolate chip in the raspberry. And it's so delicious. Oh, yeah. That sounds amazing. I also love oatmeal. So oatmeal is one of the ones that's been very controversial. In the carnivore community, people are like, you're eating, it's better. So what I've heard about O'Mail, it's bad for your blood sugar, you're going to get a huge blood sugar, spike and crash. And then we've kind of debunked the FITES lectin, like whatever, the anti-nutrient conversation. But what do you think about the negative stuff people say about O'Mail?

Again, there's nuance here, right? So if you look at the large population studies, eating whole grains is actually correlated with a lower risk of diabetes. So if you have two or more servings of whole grains, like rolled oats every day, you have a 20% lower risk of getting diabetes. So how can it be pushing up your blood sugar? Well, I think it could be in certain individuals, and it comes down to bio-individuality. So let's say you have an intolerance to oats.

Yes, maybe it's causing inflammation. Maybe that's causing the blood sugar. What types of oats are you eating? Are you eating instant oats? Those packaged oats? those are heavily processed. Oats are not all made equal. So if you have steel cut oats, those are not likely to spike your blood sugar nearly as much as the instant oats, which are ground up a lot more finely. So what about the in between? I do like a rolled oat because I don't have the

patience for a steel cut. Yeah, me too. I think rolled oats are great. Okay. Yeah, this nuance. And also, what are you adding to your oatmeal? Are you adding a ton of sugar? It's what, you know, a lot of those packaged oatmeal are full of sugar. Of course, it's going to spike your blood sugar. So there's so much nuance here. Are you adding enough fat, healthy fat and protein to that? So you're dressing that oatmeal now with healthy fat, healthy protein to kind of stem that blood sugar spike. Wait, so what's the Dr. Vivian Chen oatmeal recipe? Oh, so I love, in the summer, I love overnight oats because I like just grabbing it and going. So I love adding chia seeds to my oats. So that's added fiber, added healthy fat. And then I will do ground flax seeds as well. So again, more fiber. And then I do

berries on top and then a tablespoon of some kind of nut butter. So almond or peanut. Let's talk about microplastics. The thing that I find sometimes most frustrating about the microplastic conversation is we have the news headlines that are like, they're in our brain, they're in our body. It's so scary. And then we're like, well, what should we do? And they're like, stop drinking from plastic water bottles. And I'm like, we all kind of do that. Most of us know that plastic water bottles are a microplastic risk at this point. And to my friend's point that I talked about earlier, it feels like they're still unavoidable because you're like, it's in the air, it's in the water, it's in our furniture. What other steps can we take that we might not be thinking, you know,

of that would actually make like a real difference in our microplastic consumption. The first step is you just mentioned bottled water. I feel like a lot of people are still drinking from plastic bottle of water at home. So I see a lot of... At home? Yes. Okay. I see at least so my kids, for example, when I take them to their friend's houses, they come home with bottles of plastic.

So that's what they drink. Okay. Maybe I'm in a bubble. I feel like we are. Okay. Do you shop at Costco? I don't. I'm in a two-person household, so I can't go through that much.

much peanut butter. Right. Yeah. But I would love to. The sample section is like, like the sample situation's amazing. Exactly. Whenever I go to Costco, I just see crates and crates of plastic bottled water being purchased. I feel like people are still doing that.

Okay. So definitely stop doing that. Yeah, definitely start doing that at home. Okay. Out? You're okay with it? Out. I mean, what choice do you have, right?

Well, this is always my question. Is it better to be thirsty or is it better to consume? Like, is dehyde? Worse or better for your health than consuming microplastics. Okay. Well, considering that kidneys are one of your key detox organs, I would stay hydrated, even if there's some microplastic. So if you're at an airport, you would grab like a plastic water bottle if you didn't have

your own water bottle. Yeah. And then just eat a lot of fiber. It happens acutely. So it's not over time. So like if you feel like you are traveling, say, or you have high microplastic exposure at that moment, you can up your fiber at that. that moment and excrete it. Okay. You're nodding. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. So when you drink water. Yeah. Okay. The water, small molecules are getting through your gut

barrier, right? That's how it's being, it's being absorbed. But the microplastic particles are bigger. So if you have a healthy gut barrier, those should not be getting through. I mean, of course, the nanoplastic and all of that can be getting through, but you can still trap a lot in your gut. Eat your berries while you're drinking your plastic bottled water. That's one way. There's also. mechanistic studies, very interesting, that certain strains of bacteria can break down harmful compounds from plastic before it gets absorbed into our bodies. So not human studies, piti dish studies, but things like kimchi, eating that, that could be helping to break down some of the harmful stuff from plastic before it gets absorbed. So we're going back to gut health again.

So I feel like optimizing your gut health, making sure you're pooping every day. Those are great things to do to mitigate the exposures we cannot avoid. Are there any other things that you do in your house or you would recommend that people do as sort of like a bare minimum in terms of trying to mitigate risk or avoid exposure? Yeah. So I think about exposure, right? What are we exposed to the most in our environment? We talked about water and the next thing is air.

We breathe around 11,000 liters of air per day. and there is bits of microplastic, nanoplastic floating around in the air, and a lot of it is riding around on dust particles. And so dusting is actually a key way to reduce your exposure in your home. And if you can afford it, investing in a good quality hepar filter, because those will trap your microplastic particles. Wait, and I've heard you say before that if we're dusting, we shouldn't like get a swiffer thing because then we're just spreading it all around. So what should we do instead? Yeah, you should wet a cloth rag and then wipe your surfaces because then that traps the dust and you would wash it away rather than swiffing and just moving around. And if you're not wearing a mask, you're actually breathing

potentially more in. So either don't clean, which... Or do the wet rag trick. Yes. How bad are plastic cutting boards? I definitely think that could be a kind of source of exposure. But it Is it super high? I don't think so. There was a study from last year that showed that we could be ingesting something like up to 12 credit cards worth of microplastic from our cutting board. But, you know, in that study, they were cutting carrots on those to get to that level. So it's up to that amount, but most cutting boards are not generating that much. I think it's important to when you get headlines like that to step back and actually look at the study, look at what they did. and kind of stay calm, right, and put your thinking brain, logical brain on,

and focus on the things that are easy for you and that actually make a difference. Instead of like, oh my goodness, I now have to throw away everything in my house. And of course, you know, the next time, if you do have a plastic cutting board and you are in a market for one, please do make the change to non-plastic. but I'm not, you know, one for like, let's just change everything overnight and throw everything out of your house right now. What's the alternative if we are in the market for a cutting board? Are we getting like glass?

I hate the noise that glass makes. But would I feel like there's like glues and there's issues with it molding? Yeah. So believe it or not, studies have shown that wood actually is naturally antimicrobial. The problem comes when they crack. So when they crack, then bacteria can get inside. And now that can be a breeding ground. So what you want to look for is a solid piece of wood.

So solid, not glued together, that kind of mitigates the glue issue. And you want to look after it. So make sure you dry it thoroughly after you use it, if you wet it, before you store it away. So that prevents the cracking. And, you know, a lot of people, they buy plastic because they can throw it. in the dishwasher. But the problem is that at high temperatures in that dishwasher, you're now increasing the breakdown of that plastic. So the next time you cut on it, you actually could be getting more microplastic and endocrine disruptors like BPA, thallates, on your food. So that's actually one of

the things not to do if you have a plastic cutting board. It just don't. Hand wash it. Yeah, handwash it. Don't put it in the dishwasher. Do you have wooden cutting board brands that you like? Yeah, several. So there's Treeboard is a good brand. They do solid. Mama Mangia is another one. I feel like there's so many more now. If somebody is nervous about cutting, like, meat, even with the anti-microbial thing, would you say like it's okay to keep a plastic cutting board for like your meat, your fish,

your stuff like that? Yeah, if you're really worried. But, you know, the ideal situation is get two solid wood cutting board, right? One for your meat and one for your vegetables. Let's talk about water because I'm a big, big, big fan of water filtration in the shower and on the faucet. And I get DMs from people all the time where they're like, my water tastes great. You haven't like tried my municipal water. I don't need to filter it.

So what is the research show about the quality of our water and how it impacts our health? So I'm not a fear mongru, but I do think statistics are statistics and we should be talking about them. and two years ago, the national geological surveys show that around 45% of drinking water, so tap water in the U.S., contained PFAS, the forever chemicals, that we're all trying to avoid now, right, from the teflon, non-stick cookware, because it's been shown to increase our risks of certain cancers, fertility issues, weight gain, type 2 diabetes, so much more. Well, it's in our water, and you can't taste it.

So even if your water tastes great, it still may have PFAS. It still may have, I think the environmental working group showed recently that there's more than 340 different contaminants in our tap water. And that's through the municipal water supplier. Because the factors those suppliers only are required to test for 93 different contaminants by the EPA. Well, there's a lot more than that. Do you know when those 93 were decided on? Years ago, like more than 20 years ago, and they haven't changed. And they should have been changing every year.

So I think PFAS just got added recently. But that's not been enacted, though. Right. So it's added, but what does that mean? Like, when will the suppliers actually start to test? And I think there was a study or a report by the New York Times that found that a lot of the time those standards, are breached by the municipal waters anyway.

I mean, it's so interesting because there's the chemicals in our water. There's the PIFAs, all that type of stuff. But from a bare minimum perspective, I'm just worried about the chlorine because we know now the importance of our microbiome. We know how much our microbes impact our whole body health, not just our gut health. And chlorine is designed to kill bacteria. Like that is what we, it's not designed for it, but like, that's what we put it in the water to do.

So we don't get, you know, cholera. Yeah. Which is 10 out of 10. I love that. I'm super into not getting color up. But that chlorine is, I would imagine, having a really negative impact on my gut microbes. Right.

Right. They haven't done studies on that, but that would be. It makes sense to me. Because it is put in there as an anti-microbial agent. If you make sourdough at home, anyone who makes sourdough at home knows not to use tap water. Why? Because of the chlorine. It kills the bacteria.

And you want that life culture. So that, what does that tell you? That's so interesting. Okay, so what do you recommend people do in terms of filtration? First of all, there's no one water filter that would suit everybody. So I can't say, yes, everybody now go out and buy this particular water filter because filtration is very nuanced. It depends a lot on pH of your tap water and also what's in your tap water. So certain contaminants are harder to remove and you may need systems like reverse osmosis, which is kind of like the gold standard of filtration.

It removes pretty much everything, but it will also remove the healthy, desirable things, like minerals that you do want. Plus, it wastes a lot of water. So for every liter of drinking water you get out of an RO system, you're wasting four to five liters. And I live in California where water's precious. So for me, that just didn't sit right.

I did have an RO, but I switched. I looked up my local tap water. I actually tested my tap water. That's like 300 bucks. If you don't want to do that, you can just look it up. So go to EWG Tapwater database. So you can type that into Google. And then you just type in your zip code and it will pull up all the contaminants that's in your tap water.

Now you want to look for a unit that's been NSF certified to remove those contaminants. Okay. That's like, that's very straightforward. And then what about shower filter? I love shower filters. I love them too. So I got one. The first time I got one was for vanity completely. It was when we were living in England and the water was so hard and my hair was quite literally chunky. Like it would wash my hair and it'd come out chunky. And so I got a shower filter and it was so nice for my skin and my hair and all this. But then I started thinking about, oh, you're breathing in the steam. You're covering your skin with all of, again, the chlorine, the dry skin, all of that type of stuff. And so now I'm into it for the health, but also, like, the vanity is a good,

a good impetus. Yeah. So, I mean, if we're talking about gut microbiome, well, the skin has a microbiome too. So chlorine can be affecting that. And definitely on filtered water make certain people's skin more dry and hair more dry and brittle. And for some people, have to fall out. So I think for vanity point of view, definitely, but even from a health point of view, there was a study that looked at people who took very long showers and baths in highly chlorinated water. And by the way, it's not just chlorine. So when you add chlorine or chlorine kind of related products to your tap water, it starts to interact with the organic matter and water and create byproducts like trihalo-meathings. These have been linked to increased risks of cancer. There was this study that looked at people who

showered and took very long bath, so in excess of 15 minutes a day, in highly chlorinated water or water that contain high trihalomethanes, and they had an 80% increased risk of bladder cancer compared to those who showered and bathed and clean water, non-chlorinated. So what should we look for in a shower filter? Definitely look for testing that it removes chlorine. That would be kind of like main concern with shower because it's less like tracking the individual things like we're doing for a tap water, it's really just get the chlorine out. Yeah, because you're not drinking it. If you were drinking it, that's different.

Like, you really want very high standards. You don't want heavy metals. Well, heavy metals are very kind of large molecules where I'm not super concerned about thermal absorption because, you know, the water's kind of flowing through. Whereas with chlorine, you actually could be breathing it in. It vaporizes. A lot of the root of entries actually through inhalation and not through the skin. Interesting. Are there any shower filter brands that you like?

I love aesthetics. So I'm a sucker for a set. So I like Jolie. Okay. But that meets your standards for function in addition to having to cute form. But there are so many great ones that are not like, you know, Jolie's expensive. We have the Aquasana one, which is not aesthetic. But it works well. Exactly. I feel like there's so many brands that do meet great standards. And if you don't care about this. aesthetic that they all can function really well. And I will say you only, we change our like what, every six months. It's like a sort of one and done thing pretty much.

Like you don't have to think about it that often, which are my favorite health hacks or ones that you like do it. And you don't think about it anymore. We change our under sink filter, which we traveled with one too. We would install it in Airbnb's. It's really quick. I think people think of water filtration is like unless you have the pitchers, it's really hard and complicated.

But it took us maybe 10 minutes to just pop it in under the sink. What did you have at an ARO? We had a water drop that we traveled with. Yeah. And then we have an Aquasana one now that we're here, which is a little bit more intense. And they're not ARO, right? They are not ARO. Okay.

Yeah. So those are easier to install. Otherwise, yeah, I think it's like a whole thing. Yeah. The water wasting of the RO systems is also frustrating for me. And I also don't like the idea of like, if you have an RO system, should you be adding minerals back in? Yes, ideally.

Yeah. That feels like, I'm just like, why are we taking stuff out to, like, add it in? Right. And also, now you've got to think. about the purity of those rocks. What are you adding back? You've just filtered your water. What are you adding it? What do you think of mineral supplementation? I know that's kind of like trendy right now and a lot of people are saying it's the cure for everything. We're all mineral deficient. We're all mineral deficient. Right? Because if you ate more plants, I feel like that's part of the equation is like if you're not

eating plants, where are your minerals coming from? So plants, I mean, just for somebody, they're really rich in minerals? Very rich. Okay. I think of, I guess it's come from the dirt, right? that they're grown in? Yeah, yeah. So that's where it's getting it from. Because when I think of minerals, I think of like eating dirt kind of. But like the plants are grown in the dirt. So that makes sense.

Exactly. Yeah. Yeah, that's where the roots are taking it all up from. I do think people can be deficient in minerals, but that's probably because of the standard American diet. And if you weren't eating that and you're eating a lot of plants, I don't really know about mineral supplements. It is interesting how we're like willing to do almost anything to not just

change our diet? Right. Okay. Let's go back to the kitchen. There's a lot of concern around microwaves. People, to this day, people will message me and be like, is the microwave safe to use? I can't believe you're using the microwave lids. And I tried to do an expose on microwaves years ago. And I reached out to all these doctors. I reached out to all these engineers, these experts in, like, radio waves and all these things. And I tried to get anybody to confirm my bias, which is not, it was not good journalism because I went in with a very strong bias that microwaves are bad. At that point, I hadn't been using a microwave for years and years and years. And I could not get a single person, even the most conservative people, to say, like, using a microwave is bad for your health.

I'm curious what you think about microwaves, both in terms of being near them and then also what they're doing to our food. I have not seen solid research or evidence that microwaves are harmful for our health. And I think, again, that comes down to the nuance. Because how many minutes are we really using that microwave every day versus, let's say, our phones? I'm actually more concerned about the health effects of phone addiction than microwaves. Oh, that's interesting. So, like, you're more concerned with the health effects of phone addiction versus, like, the EMFs that you're getting from your phone. For me.

Yeah. That's interesting. Yeah. For our mental health, which impacts our physical health. Yeah. There was this really interesting study now. I don't think it's the best study in the world, but they looked at women who used phones near bedtime and women who had phone addictions. And those who scrolled for more than five minutes right before bed had a five times increased risk of breast cancer.

Now, I don't. Because do you think that was because the sleep quality was worse? I think it's more the sleep quality. I also think it's a kind of confounding. Like if you're scrolling that close to bed, you know, maybe you don't like interact. you know, maybe don't have like a community and that's kind of your community is online. And there's so many confounding, right? But that's really interesting to me that such an increased risk there with phone usage

and addiction. So it was a three-time increased risk of breast cancer if you're addicted to the phone. Interesting. Okay, we'll get into EMFs in a second, but to linger on microwave. So standing near it. This is the thing I think people don't realize, right? It's not like a plastic thing that just like emits radio. and the radiation is just all leaking out everywhere.

It's actually designed to contain the microwaves inside, right? So there's a metal casing, and every single microwave has to be tested against certain leakage limits. So you have to test below that in order to be certified, save, to be sold. This amount is tested at, I think, something like five centimeter away from the surface of the outside of the microwave. and if you ever tested an EMF near a microwave, you'll know that from a distance away,

that radiation drops down significantly. So let's say 20 inches away, that amount is dropped to like 100 of what it is. So if you want to use a microwave, just walk away, put your food in and walk away and make sure your microwave is not broken, right? So that's the only time when the radiation could be leaking out because now it's not a sealed unit.

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particles in your food. And some people actually say that that's a better way to heat your food because it can preserve nutrients more. I don't think that traditional ways of heating is necessarily better. I do find sometimes though when I put food in a microwave, the heating is not even. So I do have to stir through and like do it maybe another time. Now one really important thing I do want to emphasize is if you do use a microwave, please do not microwave your food in plastic so that I do feel can be harmful. Tell us why. The microplastic conversation is interesting because I think people can make the connection

very strongly plastic cutting boards, etc. Like you're chopping tiny bits of plastic, you're eating them. I think when you're talking about wool, but I'm never kind of chipping away at the plastic in the container that I'm microwaving it in, why would that impact my health negatively? There's over 10,000 different chemicals that are used in a manufacturing of plastic. and these are not permanently bound to that structure of plastic. So heat, acidic food, that can encourage leaching. So these things like phthalates, BPA, these are endocrine disruptors,

they can now start to seep into your food. But not only that, study last year showed that just three minutes of microwaving can release billions of nanoparticles and millions of microplastics into your food. And that's from what's labeled as, microwave-safe plastics. The acidic food is interesting. Am I like, is that when you get like that tomato ring and like your pasta leftovers, is that from some sort of chemical breakdown?

Well, it's because plastic is porous and it's the structure is not permanent. There's interaction at that interface between plastic and your food all the time. So yeah, if you have curry or tomato in your plastic containers, you'll see what's happening. The food, the coloring is going into the plastic, what's coming from the other side, but plastic into your food. All right. So microwave's great. Don't do it with the plastic.

And perhaps also reconsider plastic. If you're not going to get rid of all plastic in your storageware, whatever, maybe do it for acidic food specifically. Like don't keep your salad dressing or immediately thinking, like, we want glass bottle ketchup because that's quite a acidic. 100%. Yeah. That's interesting.

Anything acidic like your kombucha, the, best thing you can do in your kitchen is to swap your plastic Tupperware to glass. I did that maybe a year ago and it's not that expensive. There's like some pretty good, and it still has a plastic lid and I just don't fill. People are always like, well, how do you find some? And I'm like, you don't. Everything I've seen has a plastic lid. But I just don't fill the food up till the top top to touch.

Yeah, just don't let it touch. But actually, Costco just started doing glass with glasslets. Really? Yes. And it's not expensive. It's something like $70 for a set of 20. Okay. The last thing I want to touch on in the kitchen is sort of another health myth out there is that you shouldn't cook with olive oil. You cook with olive oil. Yes. What does the science say? Gosh, I feel like there's so much myth around this, right? People say you shouldn't cook with olive oil because it has a low smoke point. There's two problems with that. Number one, smoke point is not the best way to assess whether an oil is safe for cooking. What's a better way is looking at the oxidative stability.

What that means is how stable that oil is under heat to breaking down into what's known as harmful polar compounds, so things like aldehydes, peroxides, things you don't want to be eating. And when they put it to the test, olive oil actually generated the least amount of polar compounds compared to oils with much higher smoke points. So that would be number one. And I think it probably is because olive oil, a good quality olive oil, usually very high in polyphenols. So those are kind of counteracting the polo comets, like canceling them out. So I actually like cooking with olive oil for that reason. And number two, olive oil doesn't actually have that low a smoke point. Right? So it's low compared to something like canola.

but it's still 400 degrees Fahrenheit. Who's cooking on the stove at that temperature? Maybe you're deep frying or baking, but salteing gets up to, what, 250? That's it. You're nowhere near that smoke point. So those are the two myths that I just really can't stand seeing. Olive oil is the only oil I really use in my kitchen. I'll do like a sesame oil for finishing or things like that, but for cooking, I'm almost exclusively

using olive oil. Same. That's what I use. sometimes I'll use avocado oil if I'm cooking food that needs more of like a neutral taste because sometimes you can really taste that olive oil. I know. I just feel like it's always good. I love the flavor so much. But some people like, oh, olive taste in the curry. Not quite sure about that one, right? So, yeah.

Last one for the kitchen. What is the data show right now about alternative sweeteners? I like to ask this periodically on the podcast because I do think it's evolving and we're studying it more and more. So I like to just kind of check in. I feel like people have a general sense that like aspartame sucralose are maybe not as ideal. I am talking about the ones that have the health halo around them right now. Like erythrititol, stevia, alias, monk fruit. What do we know about them? That's really interesting.

So I like them because I do feel like they can be helpful in small amounts in a diet where you're trying to reduce that blood sugar spike from sugar. Now, Erythritol had bad press. I don't know if you're familiar with it. Maybe a couple of years ago there was this study done at the Cleveland Clinic, right, very reputable center. And what they kind of released to the world was that erythritol was associated with an increased risk of heart attacks. Yeah, I stopped drinking beverages that had erythotol in it after that study. Right, okay. But if you unpack that study, right, so this is why

I say, don't panic and go straight to the source and look at the study. Look at what they did. And what they did was, they did not even ask these participants what they ate. So, The eurythritol wasn't necessarily coming from the diet. They weren't necessarily eating it. Ibrithetol is actually made in our bodies. And if you have metabolic syndrome, you actually make more eurythotol. And we all know that if you have metabolic syndrome, you're more likely to have a heart attack. Oh.

Right. So they measured blood levels of eurythritol in those who had heart attack. So of course, you would see that correlation. It's a little bit of a no-brainer, right? But why did they not take a survey of the diet? No, really, why didn't they? That feels like poor science for a reputable institution. I know.

I was actually really shocked, so shocked that I had to write a substack about it because I just felt like it was doing erythletal a disservice, and I have no shares in arthritis products. But I felt like it was a good alternative for people that was being pushed to the side, and now people are scared to use it. And another thing that they did was they gave irisritory, A lot of erythetol to people, something like 30 grams, which is, what's that, like seven teaspoons of arthritis.

And then they took blood samples from these people and dropped it into a peyceotish and saw that the blood increased clotting, had increased clotting and said, erythot cause these increased heart disease risk because it made your blood clot more. that's also bad science because one, one, I don't think anyone ever eats that much erythritone in one go, like seven teaspoons of it. That's super sweet. And I feel like they should have measured clotting markers in the person, like the human and not like taking it out of context and then just kind of. So, yeah, there's so many criticisms of that study. I'm not a fan of that study.

and I still continue to use Eritrethol. Do you, I feel like there's like, sometimes I have this general sense of like this stuff's too good to be true though. Like it feels unfair that I get to like have my little soda and that something is going to come out at some point down the line. Yeah, I feel like too much is probably not good. Okay. So we don't really know the long term effects of these on our gut microbiome yet. And I feel like that's my biggest question mark. So we do know a lot of them give GI side effects.

So some people actually feel bloated from them, especially, you know, with sugar alcohols, like xylatole can do that more than eurithrotol. The new kid on the block is alulose. I actually like alulose too, like from the data I've seen so far. There was actually this study that showed that if you consume alulose with a carb heavy meal, it can reduce that blood sugar spike. And they hypothesized because it worked on gLP1. So, you know, a Zembek. I'm not saying go out there and eat alilose every day. I think in moderation, these things can be part of a healthy diet. Now, where the problem is, though, is that people think it's healthy.

And then it just now starts to feed that reward system and they eat more and more and more. Now the overall consumption of that food increases. I'm sorry, but, like, you know, eating 10 cookies a day is never going to be healthy. no matter whether you use irretitol or allulose, right? Because there's other things. It's a packaged fruit. So for me, it's the healthy soda is my like Achilles heel. Like would you say one a day of like a poppy or an olipop type situation would be okay? Or would you be wanting it to actually be like special treat territory for me? In an ideal world, special treat. But I think that if you're making that choice every day one poppy instead of one Coke, definitely.

you make that swap. So I think we've got to meet you where you're at, right? Like, what are you swapping it for? And if it's more beneficial, I think it's still a good thing. Is there a hierarchy at all? Like, do you think monk fruit is better than civia or ritha child is better? Like, all ullos is better. If we're choosing, are they all kind of same? Yeah, it's really difficult. And I like a combination of all of them, if I have to say, like, if I had to choose, so this is what I have in my home, right? I have all of them. And I just rotate through them. So then you don't have too much exposure to one. Oh, that's smart. That's very smart. Okay, let's go in to red light therapy. Red light therapy is another one of those things that I feel like, is this too good to be true?

Because right now, everybody on the internet says it's going to help with your skin, it's going to help with your hair, it's going to help with your pain, it's going to help with your energy, it's going to help with your sleep, it's going to help with everything. And I just worry that it's going to come out later, that not only does it not help with these things, but it maybe harms these things. There's famously, I read this thing that in the 1920s we were using x-rays for beauty treatments and people were like, oh, it's the new greatest thing, just get x-rays for beauty treatments. And then obviously later we're like, oh, no, that was a really bad idea. Is there a chance that we're going to feel like this about red light therapy in like 20 years?

Well, I don't have a crystal ball. So I can't guarantee you the future, but I can tell you that relight therapy is not new. It's been around for over 50 years now. So I think that if it's been around for that long and being used for that long, we should have seen something by now if it's going to cause harm. That said, there is still nuance here, right? There's so many different types of devices on the market that, yes, some can cause harm. I can't tell you that they're all going to be safe. But to your point about it being almost like snake oil, like how can it do that many things?

Well, it's getting to the mitochondria, which is, I feel like increasingly we're realizing how important the mitochondria is for chronic diseases. I feel like it's at the root of so many chronic health challenges, insulin resistance, type 2 diabetes. Even people are saying, like, you know, aging is mitochondria getting older and less optimal in function. Why would that be? Can you explain sort of the mechanism of action that the mitochondria would be having these broad effects to somebody who didn't even know what a mitochondria was? Yeah, so the mitochondria is, if you remember from your biology days. We don't. I promise. So it's the powerhouse inside every single cell, right, apart from red blood cells. Every other cell in your body has mitochondria. And some tissues have

more than others because they require and use a lot more energy. So, the brain, the liver, the heart, very, very dense in mitochondria. Like we're thinking thousands, in excess of thousands of mitochondria per cell. So now if those numbers decrease, or if each mitochondria can only generate 80% of the energy that they were generating, let's say, 10 years ago, that organ is now not able to function as well. So your brain might start to become more foggy. Your liver may not be able to detoxify as well. And in your skin, the collagen, the cells that produce collagen now can't produce as much collagen.

And so that's why red light therapy has been kind of researched, actually, to do all those things. And it first was put on the map by NASA, who noticed that the astronauts who were using red light to grow food, plants in space, their injuries healed faster than astronauts who were using different. light wavelengths. Because the red light was impacting the mitochondria in a way that made it heal the wound. Yeah. So if you think about the fact that those cells have more energy, they now have more energy to heal. But not only that, red light therapy has also been shown to improve blood flow. So it does that by increasing nitric oxide. So if you have more blood flow, that's great for any healing tissue, right? Healing wounds. Are mitochondria moving around our body all the time? Or is it like you have your knee mitochondria and so if you do the red light on your knee, it's going to work on those mitochondria

and make your knee feel better. That's so, that's such a great question. I love the question because mitochondria do not move, but they talk to each other. Ooh. Yeah. So that's what's really interesting. Our bodies are weird. I know. It's so weird. But it's so smart. I love it. So mitochondria can send signals to each other and they do it through interleukins, like these are chemical messengers in our blood. So if you remember back to like the last time you were sick, you probably felt lousy, right? Didn't want to do anything, no energy sitting on the couch. That's your mitochondria. Mitochondria sensing is what's called a cell danger response.

We are under danger. We're being attacked as a virus. One way I can get rid of this virus and starve it is by ramping down energy. And I don't want to help this virus survive. So I'm going to downgrade the energy level. and not let this virus take hold. Wait, so then if you use red light therapy when you were sick, would that make the virus more likely to take hold?

Well, that's really interesting, right? There's this intensivist. He actually did his own research on his patients, but also shared research that near infrared can modulate the immune system. And what modulating means is you're not necessarily hyper-stimulating. You're bringing the immune system back in. to balance. So whatever needs increasing gets increased. Whatever needs reduced gets reduced. And you're not getting that situation where everything is just like increasing and booming.

So you can use it when you're sick to pods. Yeah. So there actually, there were these studies that were done during COVID that when they applied retlytheraphydrase, so specifically near infrared to patients with COVID on ICU, those patients had quidid. quicker recovery and discharge time from the ICU. Would one use for red light be if you kind of feel like you're a little bit under the weather, like you've had a lot of exposure, you could do a red light session? I definitely do that. And where would you want to put it?

Or would you just want a whole body exposure? That's a great question. So that's kind of like a two-part question, right? Number one, because we said the mitochondria talk to each other, there is systemic benefits, right? So it's almost like if you just shine it anywhere on your body, now you know, you're active. these chemical messengers that could now go to the places where they need to go to. And they have done studies where people with depression and back pain, who used it on the back only noticed an improvement in their depressive symptoms. And of course, there's a confounding factor

here, right? If you're not in pain, you're not going to be depressed as much. But that is still very interesting. Does suggest that there's systemic effects of reli therapy. So that's number one. like I almost feel like if you shine it anywhere, it could do something. But number two is where if I have a tickly throat or sore throat, that's kind of where I would generally aim it because you do have some local effects of, you know, lowering the inflammation. Honestly, I have heard so many people say, like they put it over their sinuses to help with their nasal congestion. And if you think about the fact that that acute inflammation, right, There's a lot of inflammation there when you're congested.

That's helped them as well. It does sound like snake oil because it can do so much. But I think it's because it's tackling that very, very root of so many problems. And you've mentioned near infrared and then there's red light. Do we need both? Do they have different effects? They have different effects. And the main difference between the two is that red doesn't penetrate as deeply as near infrared.

So knee-infred can penetrate into tissue much deeper. So red is generally been studied to be great for things like skin. So if you want to, you know, support the collagen, if you want to tackle acne in the skin, red, sometimes knee-infred can be great for that too. But if you want to deal with something deeper, for example, knee pain, muscle ache, you want knee-infred because that penetrates deeper. And is it bad if you use both? Like if I'm working on my skin because I want, so I want red light there.

It's it bad if there's also because a lot of the devices have both. I don't think it's bad. No. Because I think it can only be good to have both actually. Is there like worry about it going too deep though? Like I think about with the hair growth ones, the helmets, it going into my brain and having some sort of negative effect. I feel like that's a good thing because there's actually active research. on relic therapy in neurodegenerative diseases. So things like Parkinson's, Alzheimer's,

and what's really interesting is that these tiny case studies of people with Parkinson's, where they're not even treating the brain. They're treating the abdomen. They're putting relic therapy to the abdomen, and they're showing improvement in their motor symptoms. So that would be coming from the brain. So that really suggests to us that there is this gut brain access. Interestingly, a lot of Parkinson's patients, their first symptoms are gut symptoms. So they don't start with motor symptoms or brain symptoms. They have constipation that's very common first symptom. Maybe that's where the pathology starts and then it gets into the brain.

We're making the distinction between red or near infrared. Is there anything else we should be looking for to make sure that our red light device is effective? Oh, yeah. I feel like dose is really important, right? So if you go and buy a magnesium supplement, you're looking at a dose on the back of that packet. But people are willing to just buy any red light therapy devices without checking what the wavelength is and what the irradiance is. Has it been tested to deliver that irradiens? Otherwise, you're just blindly.

Wait, what's irradiance for somebody who's like never heard that word? Yeah, great question. So irradiance is basically, think of it as the intensity of the light. But it's essentially the power of that light. And that's kind of the dose, right? So the higher the intensities, i.e. the higher the irradians, the less time you need to treat a particular tissue because you get to that dose much faster. And can you overdo it? Like is too much irradiens and you leave it on maybe for too long? Is that bad? It depends on what tissue. There's new ones again. Yeah. I'm all about the new ones.

But for example, on the skin, they've shown that if you get too much, you may not see the benefit. So that's kind of the bad. Wait, what do you mean you when it's like it? So you may not, you may not see the improvement in your wrinkles if you use too much. That's interesting. Yeah. The ideal dose is like 10 joules. And so usually for a device around 100 millawatts per centimeter, you want to be getting about two, three minutes. That's it. So this is why it's so important to know the irradiens that or the power intensity because if you know that, then then you can calculate how much you should be using on your or ask chat of your body. Or ask chat. GBT or something. It feels complicated. I'm just like, I feel like I was browsing some red light therapy device websites in preparation for this interview. And they're not saying,

like, here's the irradiens. Here's exactly how long you should be using it. That's the problem. So how are we, so that that would be a red flag to you if they're not saying. It's a total red flag. Yeah. Or they say something like, you know, more than a hundred. What is my? more than 100. Is it 500? Is a thousand? Like, that is a total red flag. What did you do to verify? So literally just looking for like the word irradiance on the website would probably be helpful. Ideally, you want to be seeing that they third party tested this too, right? And not just using an optical light meter in the bedroom where there's like light everywhere that you could be picking up. That's not accurate. And irradiance is part of why we can't take the face masks.

and put it on our head and expect hair loss to be mitigated. Can you explain that? Because my sister, if you're listening, Katie, this is for you. Because she does that. And she's like, it's great because I already have this face one. Why would I not just put out my head for hair growth? Right. And I want to ask, like, has it worked for Katie?

I mean, she has stunning. I think the hair growth thing, it's interesting because I think both, I want to do a podcast on this. Is hair loss going up maybe because of autoimmune diseases going up, because of COVID, etc.? Or are we just talking? about it a ton now and it's become another one of these like false beauty standards where it's like oh you need to my my sister has insane hair it's gorgeous and so like it looks fine you know okay so she doesn't even need to yeah but i would say you know the studies show for hair the red light

therapy does have to be very high dose most studies are using lasers so that i mean that's like the highest dose you're going to get i wouldn't put the red light masks on the scalp for hair because those masks are generally between 20 to 30 millowards per centimeter square in irredions if you test them that's not going to do anything for hair but that's good for skin it's good for skin because the skin needs very little okay but don't put it anywhere else you know if you can't put it on your knee it's going to do nothing because it's not going to penetrate down so 20 to 30 great for skin what number would we be looking for for hair I would say between 100 to 150 and what would we be looking for for like knee pain? Around that age. Would 100 to 150 be like any sort of non-cosmetic thing

we'd be wanting to be in that range? If you want it to penetrate. Okay. Yeah, that's kind of the range. So near and bread and then also 100 to 150? Yes. Okay. Cool. Does the data support it for hair growth? 100%. But for a very specific type of hair loss called androgenic alopecia. So that's male pattern or female pattern loss. So that's more kind of the hormone-related hair loss, right? So hair loss, there's so many different reasons, like thyroid, micronutrient deficiency, like there's so many different reasons. Let's say you're lacking iron, you're deficient in iron. That's the reason for your hair loss. I don't think rare life therapy is the treatment, right? Maybe it will stimulate a little bit, but that's the wrong tool. You should just go and get more iron. But with this particular

type of antigenic alopecia. It's basically where this kind of excess of a testosterone called dihydro testosterone pushes the hair follicles into the phase of non-growth and, you know, fallout. Red light therapy has been shown to improve blood flow and potentially reduce that level in the hair follicles. And that's why it can work so well for this particular time. When you think about strength and resilience, like your ability to feel energized, to recover well, to stay strong as you get older. What do you think that actually comes from? Most people say working out or good nutrition, and yes, of course that matters.

But there is a biological foundation underneath all of that that most people are completely overlooking. I have been diving deep into this lately with the team at timeline and what I've learned has genuinely shifted how I think about my own health. Every single movement that your body makes every step, every workout, every muscle contraction depends on energy produced at the cellular level. And at the center of that is your mitochondria. Here's the thing that nobody tells you, certainly nobody told me,

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I am not making it just look younger. I am making it actually younger. One Skin has four peer-reviewed clinical studies in over 10,000 five-star reviews. The data backs everything up. For a limited time, get 15% off with code Liz at oneskin.co slash Liz. Again, that's 15% off at one skin.co with code Liz. Oh, that's interesting. Yeah. Is there worry about wearing our mitochondria out, like that we're stimulating them too much and we only have so much mitochondrial power over the course of our lifetime and we're

kind of like, it'll all have positive benefits until we're 60. And then it's like super downhill because we've kind of like used up there. Oh, that's so interesting. I feel like it's the opposite. Okay. Yeah. Because anything that stresses you actually stimulates you. your body to make more mitochondria and actually stimulates your body to get rid of poor functioning

mitochondria. It's called autophagy. I mean, we're getting into cells that are senescent not so helpful anymore. And then generating new mitochondria. It's called mitophagy, which are higher in function. This is why exercise is so good for us. When you're exercising, you're sending a stress signal, but it's good stress to the body to make more mitochondria. When your heat stress, cold stress, anything like that actually pushes the mitochondria to say, okay, I've kind of got to level up now, I'm going to do better. And I actually think it's a good thing. Okay.

So even over time, even if we use it for 40, 50 years, you don't expect to see negative results. Don't think of it as the battery, like the battery in our iPhones that kind of degenerates and just goes to nothing. I think that you can do things to lengthen that battery life, if you like. I know you've looked into some of the data around hair loss and hair growth. Do you think that more people are experiencing hair loss right now than ever before? Or do you think we're just talking about it more slash people are able to sell things to help fix it? So they want us to talk about it. Yeah.

Yeah, there is definitely that. But I do think that COVID through a spanner in the works for hair because I did see that a lot with people. And I feel like that is tied to a mitochondria again. I know we're talking about that a lot, but we know specifically that COVID, the virus, targets the mitochondria. So that's why, you know, the long COVID syndrome was the symptom extreme fatigue. Oh, so would Red Light help with long COVID potentially? There are studies on that now.

Yes. Oh, interesting. Is Red Light therapy helpful for thyroid support? Oh, yes. So there are lots of studies now on Red Light Therapy. thyroid, but particularly they were using lasers in these studies. So there's one very notable study out of Brazil where they actually reversed, got people off thyroid medications. Now, I want to preface this by saying, if you're on thyroid medications, please don't just come off. It's really

important that you work with your doctor if you're using red light therapy, because what can happen is let's say it's working and your dose needs reducing, your doctor needs to supervise that so you do in a responsible and safe way. So I made my own RET-Ly therapy device and I've had so many testimonials from our customers who have used it and this is LED-based RELA therapy. And you definitely need something powerful because you need that RELight to penetrate. But we've seen people reduce their thyroid medications, come off medication. and also lower their antibodies. I have collected 30-plus case reports that I plan to write up one day.

It's very, very exciting to see. And that's why we put that disclaimer, please work with your doctor if you have thyroid conditions. It's not because it's harmful. It's because it could actually work. Where you might need to now think about medication reduction. Is there an amount of time or like a weekly protocol if you're looking to use it for thyroid health? I think it depends on the irradiens again, right?

Like I keep going back to that because that's the dose. Something around 100, so Lundbach's what I made, 100 to 150. I usually say three times a week, just get it in front of your neck. I timed it to end at 12 minutes so that it delivers like the perfect dose across a big range of things. So that would be like a great place to start. And then you want to test your thyroid function six weeks later and see what happens. And then the last thing I want to touch on for red light is hormonal related stuff like cramps, endometriosis, PCOS. If we put it over our uterus ovaries like that area, can it penetrate deep enough to help with that stuff?

If you have enough irradiens and the right wavelength. So near infrared can. At the right irradiance, it can. So there is a study out of Korea that showed that women who have menstrual cramps who use near infrared over their belly, their cramps reach. used. And again, I've seen that like firsthand with so many people. My own daughter uses it for her for her cramps. Endometriosis, I feel like they're kind of like, we can do surgery every few years to cut all that. But they're not, or you can go on birth control, but they're not giving people a ton of options. So I'm kind of like, I don't know if there's research on this yet, but like if

it could actually stop that excess tissue growth, it would be so interesting. Yeah, so I don't know about that. But it could help with the symptoms. I do know about pain relief and inflammation. That's the only kind of like the extent to which I've researched that topic. But that would be a really interesting. I know. I feel like we need to figure that out. Yeah. You know?

100%. Okay. Last thing I want to get into that's sort of like I feel like widely misunderstood and people are talking about is EMFs. There's a lot of people on one side of things who are like 5G is killing us. The Wi-Fi is killing us. We've never had this much exposure before. And then there's people on the other side.

my own husband included, who's like, the government tests this stuff. He runs a technology company where they have devices. And he's like, the amount of testing we have to do on our devices to even be able to sell them is wild. So whenever I'm like, keep your phone away from your head while you're saying, he's like, no. So. That's so funny. What is the science show about EMF exposure right now? And I'm going to sound like a broken record, but it's nuanced. So we have large studies that have shown that people who use the phone right next to their head making phone calls for thousands of hours may have an increased risk of certain types of brain tumors and acoustic neuroma, which is a tumor of the hearing nerve. But we also have large studies that show no increased risk. So the data

is very conflicting. And if you throw into that mix, the fact that there are industry-sponsored studies, and those are 90% more likely to show no increased risk of anything or any harm. Now the water really gets very muddy. So I kind of look at all the studies as a collection. And also I look to our official health organizations, right? WHO FDA. I know the trust in them. It's been debated right now.

But even they are confused, I feel like, because we've got in the... IARC, the International Agency on Research on Cancer, that's an arm of WHO, right? In 2011, they classified EMF as a possible carcinogen, so class 2B. And what that means is there is some evidence to warrant concern and further research, but there is not enough evidence to call it a carcinogen yet. And that's because of this conflict that for every one study you find that shows increased harm. There's one that shows that doesn't.

But then in 2024, the WHO itself released a report, I think, based on a systematic research that showed their conclusion anyway, was that there is no increased cancer risk from radio frequency waves from your phone. And the FDA also takes that position. So very similar to your husband, like, there's no evidence. I think that there is smoke. We just don't know where the virus. The nuance is, who are we talking about? Are we talking about children within a skull?

Are we talking about pregnant women? Are we talking about people who maybe have a very high toxic load from other things? Maybe they have an underlying infection already. Are those people more prone to EMF? I think so. Via what mechanism of action? What would be happening in their body? So for a child, right?

If you just think about the body mass, So if you think about the studies that did show and harm, a lot of them are animal studies. What they're doing is exposing the full body of that rat to EMF. That's not how we are exposed to EMF. We're holding it somewhere. It's one part of our body that's more exposed than the rest. That rat's getting like full exposure everywhere. So smaller body mass, there's more exposure.

There's more body-wide exposure. So if you think about a baby or a child, there's more likely. Like per body mass of that. Like a phone is half the baby's body. Right. Exactly. And also their skulls are much thinner. I feel like our skull does protect our brain. But there are some mechanistic studies that have shown EMF may open up blood brain barrier.

Right. So that's one mechanism. And then it may activate these channels on our cell membranes. So when they open, they allow more calcium into the cell. and that's actually one way we kill our own cells. The cells program death for itself. Like, oh, I don't want to be alive. I'm causing more harm than good.

They influx calcium. But if you're doing that when you shouldn't be doing it, then you're unnecessarily killing cells potentially. None of this is kind of set in stone. This is all mechanistic studies. But what is really interesting is that when they put EMF in a mix of an environment that's highly toxic. So let's say a cell that's bathed with other toxins. The EMF now causes more cell damage. Okay. So that's to your point of like if you already are in a sensitive body for

whatever reason, this might have more of an impact on you. Yeah, exactly. I don't want to gaslight people who are living those symptoms. I feel like those are real. But for healthy people who don't have symptoms, I think that also can be a reality, right? Like that some people, people are just not as if affected by it. And your husband is absolutely right. Like this stuff is heavily regulated. In fact, if you go to your phone, like it will tell you what the specific EMF is being tested to, right? The level is being tested to because that's a regulation. It is there to protect. We do have regulations to protect us. Now, is that bar set too high for some people who are sensitive? Maybe. And maybe we need a different bar or maybe different devices for that group of

people. Okay, I want to get into some little nitty gritty stuff. Some people online say that if you have your phone plugged in, it's releasing more EMFs and you shouldn't, like the one thing you shouldn't do is like sleep with your phone plugged in by your head. Yes, I agree with that. Yeah. I actually think, you know, because there is that smoke, right? So there's the potential, and I come from the UK where, you know, we take a precautionary approach to everything. So if there's a hint of something being harmful, then we take precaution. We don't panic, but we don't. we take precautions. Are there things?

You keep calm and carry on. Right. Exactly. So we, you know, let's think about what we can do to reduce exposure while still carrying on with our lives. So what can you do? Well, when you're sleeping, you're definitely not talking on the phone. You don't need to use it.

So why have it in your bedroom? Because it's my alarm. Because people are always like, because it might be an emergency in the middle of the night. I'm like, first of all, you can put your ringer on like loud and put it in the other room. But second, I'm like, when was the last time that happened? just like curiosity. Like when was the last time it happened? And they're like, oh, literally never. And the thing that frustrates me is when people are like, I cannot get my phone out of the room because I'm like, you're addicted. It's okay. You can just say you're addicted. I go through phases where I very much

am like making up all the excuses and I can just say I'm addicted. But like I'm old. When I was a kid, nobody had cell phones and we just had like home phones and it was in the kitchen or whatever. And we all survive. Like same when they're like, we can't take cell phones out of schools. And I'm like, I didn't have a cell phone in my school a single day of my life. And I'm fine. I was fine all day. I loved that my parents didn't know where I was. Yeah.

Exactly. Just maybe with the parents were concerned. Exactly. I'm 100% with you. I feel like it's an excuse. It might sound harsh. It is an excuse, right? You can buy an alarm clock.

Oh, no, it's my night light. No, buy a torch. Yeah. You know, like, or have a nightlight. There is no reason. phone should be in a bedroom. I really feel strongly about it. I feel like it affects our quality of sleep. Just that temptation to like scroll one more time before you go to sleep while that blue light is now disrupting your melatonin. Well, and you're when you wake up, you're basically using your

willpower right off the get-go. So when your phone's right by your bed, you have to basically say, I don't want to be on that, even though your temptation would be to grab it, to scroll on Instagram, to check your email, whatever. So you're having to use this like limited supply of willpower right from the second that you open your eyes, which just feels like a waste to me. 100%. I get it. And if you can't have it out of your room, well, at least, you know, have it at least three feet away from you. Okay, so that's something I want to double-click into. The distance that the device is from you drastically impacts the amount of exposure that you have. 100%. Like exponentially. Exponentially. Yeah. Same with microwave. We just talked about that, right?

So five centimeters away from microwave, there's a certain level. And then 20 inches away, it's a hundredth of that level. That applies to your phone, too. So if you have it three feet away, at least, that distance dilutes the amount of EMF. So talking on speakerphone is going to be significantly better than putting it up to your face? 100%. Yeah, there's no doubt about it. How do you feel about Bluetooth headphones?

I'm in two minds. I don't think they're the devil like everybody else says. Like, it is not the same as putting a microwave in your ears. It's completely. Or like that they're communicating, like, that your brain is between this Bluetooth ear that's communicating to this Bluetooth ear. So this, like, wave is going through your brain as, like, the images I've seen online. Yeah, I mean, there are waves going into your brain for sure, but the two are not talking to you.

It's not like the magnets, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. But they do work by radio waves. So there are sound waves traveling. That's for sure. If it's between holding the phone next to your head or using those headphones, I would choose wearing those headphones because even that can reduce your EMF exposure. And those are regulated too.

So am I a fan of, would I let my children use them? They don't have those headphones. Which is that, again, because they're like kids and you're more concerned? I feel like when you're developing, you're just more susceptible to changes, right? but do I wear them when I'm at the gym? Yes. I tried to wear corded headphones to the gym once and I was like, this is ridiculous. This is like absurd.

You're a danger to the public, like tripping people over. And to the point of like there's nuance to all of this, exercise has probably been shown to be the single best thing we can do for so many facets of our health. And if I'm listening to a really interesting podcast, which is literally the only way that I can get myself to go to the gym, I'm going to exercise. So if I take away the podcast, am I going to be way less likely to go to the gym? Yes, am I going to not do that exercise? Yes. Am I going to not benefit from all of those positive effects? Yes, you know? 100%. That's how I weigh things up too. Yeah, and I'm with you. Like, ah, exercise is not my favorite thing in the world. I don't wake up and say,

let me go to the gym. But I diarize it and I kind of couple it with something I look forward to. and, you know, listening to something definitely keeps me in the gym for longer. So I feel like the benefit outweighs the harm from a little bit of EMF. I'll just go eat more berries after my exercise. You know, because one of the things that people worry about is oxidative damage, right, from EMF. Oxidative damage is kind of rust in your cell. And you can mitigate that with antioxidant. So drink your matcha, eat your berries.

I love that. I feel like the headline for this episode is just like berries. Yeah. Eat more berries. The miracle solution. Yeah. Are there any other health myths that you see online, things that you don't feel like the data supports that kind of drive you nuts? Eating butter is good for your gut health because of the butary.

Okay. What is the science show? Well, the science shows that saturated fat is actually bad for your gut health. So how much saturated fat is there in butter? A lot. Right? I'm not saying don't ever eat it, but should you eat a stick of it, like these people are eating in the name of gut health that really makes sense.

Even though butrate, good for your gut health, but you're saying, again, there's new ones. Like, look at the different things. We don't have studies that show butyrate in a form of a supplement is beneficial. Beterate in a form of what your bacteria in your gut has produced from eating fiber. Yeah, that's the short chain fatty acid thing, right? Exactly. We know that that is fuel for the cells in the gut itself, right? So it can prevent leaky gut, for example.

But that has to come from the bacteria that has eaten the fiber. I just don't think that there's a shortcut here. So you have to produce it in your body. So basically, for anybody listening, if you're not familiar with short chain fatty acids, it's cited in almost every gut health episode I do is just like this phenomenal, amazing thing, whatever. You want to eat fiber, particularly there's a type of, I feel. like is insoluble is particularly good for buterate production. Yeah. So like asparagus, those

like woody types of things, your little bacteria munch on them. And then they essentially poop out short chain fatty acids or buterate, which it helps with leaky gut. It helps with all sorts of different incredible things in your body. But you're saying we need that manufacturing process needs to happen inside our body. There's not evidence that externally adding in butyrate is going to produce the same effect. That's not that I've seen. Yeah, and definitely not from butter. Okay. Are you cool with butter in general versus just like eating it on a stick? I mean, I would give you this thing, right. So environmental scientists, when they go, when they want to test how much persistent organic pollutants. So these are contaminants that kind of look in the environment. When they want to test that in locality, they actually go and buy the butter and test that as a measure, one of the measures.

Because the ideas of the cows are being exposed to whatever and then it's concentrating in the, of milk and then we're concentrating that even more in the fat. Yeah, it's a very concentrated form, right? So the further up the food chain, you're concentrating it up more and more. So if you're going to have butter, make sure it's from a quite good source is my main takeaway from that. Sourcing is really important. And I think that too much saturated fat is definitely not good for your gut health.

I just want to put it out there. No, the carnivore people. Yeah, we'll get attacked now. But, you know, that's what the science shows. Yeah. That's what we got to stick to. Yeah. Any other things that drive you nuts?

So many things. I mean, I think that the latest thing is, I feel like people are just hyper-focused on very small things that in the big picture is not making that much difference. So, for example, toilet paper, right? Do I want PFS, the forever chemical, on my toilet paper? I don't want that. But is that going to be my biggest source of exposure? No. But people are now being scared and thinking, oh my goodness, I can't. It's back to your point of like if you overwhelm people too much where they just like gone into this mode of no action, I feel like that's really detrimental. So yes, I'm into like sharing these findings from science, but I also feel like the report

of it. Like, we should be reporting on it responsibly rather than just using it as a fear-mongering way to, like, drive viewership or whatever. Like, we should be throwing in nuance. Like, yes, there is PFAS in your toilet paper. But in the grand scheme of things, you know, go filter your water first. That's one thing you can do. Like, please don't worry about it too much. Can you give us, like, a little hierarchy? Like, first thing we should do if we're trying to reduce exposure. To PFAS? Yes, let's say PFAS. Definitely your Taflon nonstick pans. Okay.

That's number one. Yeah. Especially if they're scratched. If they're scratched, they're actually releasing four or five times more Phas into your food. What are your thoughts on like the healthy nonstick pans? The ones that say that they're Phaas free that are. I've done so much research on those. The back and forth between me and those companies are insane.

Because this is me, right? Like what actually makes up this coating? Mm-hmm. This like non-toxic coding. And then they say, oh, it's ceramic. I'm like, no, it's not ceramic. It's soul gel. But, you know, what is it actually? What did you add to make it this particular color? And did you add anything else? We can't disclose it. It's proprietary. We can't disclose it. All I can tell you is it's safe. And I said, okay, if you don't know what's in it, how do you, like, how do I know it's safe if I don't know what's in it? That's just the oxy. to me. So they'll give me like testing report for heavy metals and they'll give me testing reports for PFS. But I mean, those are not the only things I'm worried about. Like if you've put any type of plastic like things in there, then it could be leaching thalades and BPA, or like,

we just don't know. Yeah. And again, heat degrades those chemical bonds. So it's going to be leaching more. Yeah. Have you ever tried one of those? We use stainless steel primarily. So like It's like we're cooking eggs will use the kind of like healthy nonstick, but stainless steel is like our go-to. Yeah, got it. What are our thoughts on that? Yeah, I love stainless steel. There's actually a way to cook it, cook your eggs on it. I tried.

You just need patience. I feel like then it gets too hot and let you like. I'm so impressed with what can do it. I got out of the cooking world for a reason. This is not my forte. But honestly, like, I have no problems with that, right? Because you're minimizing your exposure. So what?

Like you're cooking just eggs and then everything else you're doing stainless steel. But you're like a little suspicious. You're suspicious enough of like the healthy non-stick. I'm not suspicious. I'm just not 100% on board with it because I don't know. And when I don't know and there's better options, I just choose those options. So what do you use in your kitchen? I have cast iron, a really well-seasoned cast iron cooks like non-stick.

Yeah, I need to go back to that. I know that is like this. And then do you use stainless steel? for like pots and stuff like that? Yeah. So cast iron can leach iron into your food, especially if it's acidic. So if you don't want that, then you should use stainless steel or, you know, I use this 100% ceramic. So it's not this pseudo ceramic, but it's like 100% of the pan is ceramic and it's been leech tested for heavy metal. What brand? It's called extrema. Okay. Yeah. So I use that if I have acidic cooking if I'm making tomato sauce, pasta and things like that, or otherwise I use my

stainless steel and then cast iron is for the non-stick stuff. Okay, so cookware, number one, what would be our second biggest source of exposure if we're focusing on this instead of our toilet paper? It's water. Okay. Yeah, so we, you know, 45% of tap water has PFAS, so we've got to be filtering our water and bottled water is no better. Yep. And number three? If you, if you If you have any kind of wrinkle resistant or stain resistant clothing or furniture at home, that is actually a source of PFAS. And those particles are breaking off and going onto the dust in your home and you can be inhaling them. Okay. So until we do all three of those steps, we can keep our same toilet paper.

Right. Exactly. Like, I mean, I have to say, like, I haven't changed my toilet paper, but yeah, maybe one day I will. Like, I think it's for a lot of people, it's also the expense of it. Yes. And when I think that's the furniture one, too. So that's why I love your dusting tip, because if we have this furniture, we're probably not going to, and we have kids at home and we're trying to get like the stain-resistant couch, whatever, probably not going to, like, go by a whole new couch. But then dust and dust with a wet rag.

Right. You know. Yeah. And invest in an air filter. Yeah. So I love that you give lots of options for all of these things. Can you leave us with just one homework assignment, something that we can all do starting today, starting right when we turn off this podcast.

It'll make a real positive difference in our health. We didn't really touch on this, but I really believe that the state of our nervous system is really important for our health and is more important now than ever. So if you don't have a meditation practice or like some kind of mind-body practice like breath work, please start, like just five minutes, sit by yourself and just focus on your breath for five minutes. And if you have a practice, then just carry on or maybe increase. I have to make myself do it. So it's not, again, it's like exercise, right?

It's not something that I wake up every morning and I, you know, I've built it into my routine. Yes, I do it most days because I've put it into my calendar. So, yeah, that's what I would say. It's annoying though because unlike exercise, you can't like listen to a podcast or watch a TV show while you do it. You have to actually just like do it. And why do you think that is so important, just in a nutshell? I feel like the nervous system and our brain and what we tell our bodies is actually the conductor of the orchestra that's our body. So the organs in our body are like the instruments.

And what your brain is telling those instruments to do is the outcome. So you could be pushing all the most expensive supplements. But if your brain is telling your body, hey, you're in fight or flight state. you've got to run for your life now. Your body is not going to upregulate fertility or liver detoxification or gut health. Those are pushed to the side. Everything in your body is now geared to help you run away and save your life. And I feel like more and more people are just living in that state.

And so people are saying, I'm trying everything. I've just not seeing any progress. I can't, you know, I can't heal. I can't heal my gut. I'm taking Burei supplements or whatever, a million different. things. It's because the control center is not in the right gear. And you know, like, the self-talk to, right? Like, there's so much guilt when we do so, oh, no, like, I just drank from a plastic bottle. And your brain is now sending all this negative messages to your body. I think that's

actually worsening the impact of microplastic. On our bodies, when your brain is also in that state, Can we talk about the mind over milkshake study? Yeah. So I love the study, not because it's well done, but I think it brings up a really interesting point. So they gave a very small group of volunteers the same milkshake, exact ingredient, exactly the same calories. But one group of people was told this is really indulgent, really high calorie. And the other group was told, this is really low fat, low calorie,

very healthy. And then they all drank the milkshake, then they measured their blood levels of ghrelin. So grelin is this hunger hormone that our bodies release to tell us, you're full. Stop eating. When they measure the grelin level, the people who are told this is an indulgent high calorie milkshake, they had a higher grelin response. In other words, what they believed was that this milkshake was higher calorie. So it's going to make me feel. fuller and the body's released those more of those hormones, right, to say, okay, you're full. Stop. So I feel like our mind has a lot more control over our body than we realize.

And in a real like cellular, hormonal, all these things, it's not just like, oh, like, vibes are creating whatever, you know, it's like, no, this is like real happening on a physiological level. Exactly. That's why I love that study because I feel like it's a little glimpse into a whole other world that we're really not talking about. Well, I think we're getting to the very, like, beginning of it with the gut-brain connection because we're seeing how our microbes are impacting our brain and our mental, like we're kind of just kind of scratching the surface from that

perspective, I think. Yeah, definitely. But like the hormones of that, that's, I've never heard that. That's really so, so interesting. And I feel like listeners of your podcast, like, given the current, you know, bigger environment that we're living in, are probably daily feeling very stressed and maybe, you know, anxious about what's happening around us. And it's just more important than ever to like kind of go inside and like emanate that piece and that I am safe. It's going to be okay. My body's safe. Giving that vibe to your body. Like if you're going to spend time on something that will have real physical effects on your body. I believe so. And then we can also talk about all the other stuff, but like we're human. That's one of the reasons I love talking to you about this

is because you share the science and you share like you're a human being trying the best that you can. And you don't need to stress out and pay attention to every nitty, gritty detail to have these real impacts on your health. I think that's really important for people to know. Actually, one of my missions is for people to know that I am not doing all the things all the time. Because the last thing I want is for them to have that perception. And then now they're giving themselves that negative self-talk of why can't I be perfect? like, why can't I be, you know, like her doing all these things? Well, I'm not.

Yeah. And you've had a real positive impact on your health, you know? Yes. It's both and I love that. Can you share a little bit about where people can find you and what they will find when they go there? Oh, thank you. So I have an Instagram account that the handle is at plateful.com. P-L-A-T-E-F-U-L-H-E-A-L-H. So that's where you'd find shorter. form, reels, like bits of information. If you like long form, like more nuanced information, then my substack is where you want to go. And I have the same handle. It's playful health for that as well. I also founded a R-L-L-L-L-I-Therap company. It's called Lumbach. So the website is www.com.

So L-U-M-E-B-O-X. Amazing. I love your sub-tack. I also, I'm like, so over short form and like clickbait and all of that. So I love the nuance. I obviously have a podcast, so that's where I live. But thank you so much for everything that you're doing and sharing and for sharing all of your wisdom with us today. Well, right back at you. Thank you so much for having me. Unfortunately, that is all for this episode of the Liz Moody podcast. If you've got friends who are confused about all of the fearmongering that's going on on the internet, please send them this episode so they can calm down and they can take the steps that actually make a difference. Make sure that you're following the Liz Moody Podcast and Apple Podcasts on Spotify or on YouTube

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I share tons of inspiring and always very real content and exactly how I am using everything that we learn on the podcast in my real life. Okay, I love you. And I will see you on the next episode of the Liz Moody podcast. Oh, just one more thing. It's the legal language. This podcast is presented solely for educational and entertainment purposes. It is not intended as a substitute for the advice of a physician, a psychotherapist, or any other qualified professional.