454: How Clean Is Your Water? The Truth About Fluoride, PFAS, and Everyday Toxins | Aly Cohen, MD

What up team, it's episode 454 of the Genius Life. Let's go. ♪ I'm sight genius up in the moon ♪ ♪ Back to the moon ♪ ♪ Back to the moon ♪ - Back to the moon. ♪ Can you, what does it look like? ♪ ♪ It's life, my dear ♪ The Genius Life. ♪ I'm sight genius up in the moon ♪ - What's going on everybody? Welcome back to another episode of the show. I'm your host Max Lugavir. And this is the show where we unpack the tools, tips and science to help you thrive physically, mentally, and beyond. Before we dive in, I do want to take a moment to send love and thoughts to everyone affected by the LA wildfires this past weekend. And I also want to thank everyone who reached out to check on me. It truly means a lot. Fortunately, my home is in a safe location. It's pretty far away from the Pacific palisades and the canyon areas. So I'm totally okay. And at this point, I don't anticipate that changing. That said, let's take a moment to pause and think about all of those affected by the devastating fires, families who've lost their homes, the incredible first responders, local wildlife, and of course pets. The past few days have been incredibly tough for so many. It's a very powerful reminder to cherish what we have. Never take safety for granted and always stay prepared. Now today's episode of the show is incredibly timely. As we are talking about water, yes, water, and why it's come into the national spotlight recently. With RFK juniors recent push to reconsider fluoride in our drinking water, today's conversation with Dr. Ailey Cohen couldn't be more relevant. Dr. Cohen, an integrative medicine specialist and author of detoxify, dives deep into the hidden dangers of contaminants like PFAS, lead, and yes fluoride. She explains why what's in your class might be doing more harm than good, and how something as simple as reverse osmosis water purification could make a world of difference. But this isn't just about what's in your water. We're also talking about gut health, nutrition, and the small everyday exposures to toxins that can add up over time, impacting your immune system, brain health, and more. If you've ever felt overwhelmed by how to protect yourself and your family in a world full of chemicals, Dr. Cohen is here to help you cut through the noise and take back control. Make sure to listen all the way to the end. There's a ton of practical advice in here. And don't forget to share this episode with anyone who could benefit. And while you're at it, don't forget to hit subscribe on YouTube or your favorite podcast app so that you never miss an episode. And one more thing, if you love diving into health topics like this, join my free weekly newsletter at maxlegavier.com/newsletter. It's where I share my best research tips, health insights, and even product discounts. No spam, just value, I promise. And with all that out of the way, let's dive into this conversation with a great Dr. Ali Cohen. Here we go. Dr. Ali Cohen, welcome to the show. Welcome back. How you doing? Good. Thank you so much for having me, Max. I'm so glad to have you. I'm so excited to celebrate your new book, Detoxify. Love it. Thank you. Active verb, by the way. Active verb, yes. That was Adam. I was adamant about that when going back and forth as you've been through the book process. But it needed to be proactive, which is all the work that I do because it's a tough topic. But it has to be motivating to change in an easy way. And that's kind of why that had to go from something like a noun to being proactive. I love it. And you're matching the book cover. Let that not go unnoticed. Ah, sweet to notice. Particularly for those who are just listening, worth taking a gander over to the YouTube to see how wonderfully you're dressed, whimsically, and yeah, love the outfit. But let's start high level. Because people have short attention spans these days. What's the one thing that most of us are unknowingly doing every day that's wrecking our immune system? Ah, so boy, that's a big question. I would say that number one, number one, is we probably have too much stuff. We have too much stuff that's filled with chemicals and toxins, so to speak, that I talk about, of course, in the book and how they relate to the immune system. But the idea is that we have so much of everything, so much stuff that's unregulated in the US markets, completely unregulated, personal care products, cleaning products, chemicals on fabrics, textiles, food chemicals, drinking water contaminants. So I think one of the things I try to get people think about is you don't have to spend a lot of money just to remove some of the most egregious stuff in our lives. And that's pretty much don't buy stuff. There's a lot of chemicals in. And people don't know which chemicals will get into it. But I think it's cost effective, saves money, but it's also clutter and it's things we don't need in our lives. - Hmm, I'm sure you've gotten the criticism at some point in your journey that just raising the, you know, red flags around these kinds of industrial chemicals that were all unwittingly exposed to today is fear mongering. I take a different stance. I think it's actually just raising awareness so that people can make better and healthier choices. But how would you respond to that criticism? - I would say I was those people. I was a person. I came from a place of eating cheese whiz, Oreos. I grew up on all the major cereals with, you know, all the different pictures on the boxes. And, you know, my brother and I were used to play those games with the boxes and everything. The idea is that, you know, I came from that place. I think most of us who've grown up in the United States really have been marketed to, right? Our parents have been marketed to. They choose a lot of the food we grow up with. And then we grow into a world where we need to keep up with the Joneses when it comes to anything from lawn care to looking aesthetically pretty, putting chemicals on our body because we want to be prettier. I have two teenage boys. I mean, they're into this stuff too, right? So I'm living it myself. I'm living it with a new generation. And, you know, there's a sense of fear mongering because there's a lot to be feared. That being said, and I will share all those things that you need to know. And I do that very clearly. And I think very objectively without drama. But I also always post and share and teach high school and college and other doctors what we need to do to fix the problem. You know, I never post on my media platform, the smart human is my platform. I never post anything that I can't answer. I never post anything that doesn't have a solution. And I think that's really important because having done a lot of medical reporting and medical television in my years, I know how to, at least I like to think. I know how to build a sense of concern that doesn't make you resistant to change. You want people to have a nice dose of why so that they have a really big dose of what to do and give those solutions. - I love it. You don't write checks that your expertise can't cash. - I love that too, but yes, that's the answer. I mean, I think that it doesn't do any good to scare people into fear of not being motivated, not being empowered and not being actionable. And I think that's the fine balance of having done this for now 15 years and having practiced rheumatology and learned about the immune system in Western medicine and also understanding integrative medicine which I've trained for. It's now board certified specialty. And then this environmental health piece, all of those three pieces come 20 years into medicine, you know, practice for me. And I think I'm now at the place where I can really look even handedly at the situation and tell people what really is worth being worried about and how to fix it versus the things, you know, maybe not top of the list. - Yeah, and your triple board certified. So your pedigree, I mean, your pedigree is pretty impressive. - Well, I appreciate that. I will say that, you know, people get lots of degrees and don't always follow the line of thinking that I would hope they would. So degrees matter. I certainly love that I did the degrees and have them and certainly that means good training. But I also think what you do with that is so critical. - Yeah, a degree is not a guarantee of intelligence or critical thinking. - Money is not a guarantee for good taste, right? - 100%. - We know a lot about what we can attain but not necessarily use properly. So I like to think that I'm very much carrying the mentors of my Western medicine training, which I'm very proud of. Also my integrative medicine training, Dr. Andrew Wilde and all the people that came before me continue to do great work. And then the Environmental Health World, which is the Endocrine Disrupting Chemical Researchers who I've partnered with two books on, Fred Wompsall, who's remarkable for his work on BPA and getting BPA to Baby Bottles in 2012. So I have a lot of, you know, factions that I've trained with that believe it or not, I really strive very hard to do the right thing by. So, you know, it's important to me to really give good science. My dad's a doctor. He's an aprologist, 85 years. He's been practicing for some 60 years, 70 years almost. And so there's a lot of that in my brain when it comes to formulating information and how to really share that with the most up-to-date information I can find. I love it, so set the stage for us. What is the most dangerous toxin or toxins? What are the most dangerous toxins that your average person today is being exposed to? - Great, so I'll start by saying there's over 95,000. I mean, that's a ballpark of what we're now of surrounded by in the United States. I mean, you know, around the world there's different restrictions in certain countries and the EU is much more regulated. But in the United States, we are pretty much a wild, wild west. And I say that because when you talk about toxins specifically, there's classes and they are designed certainly by function, what they do, you know, stain guard or grease proof or lining cans to protect them, you know, the food and drink from getting in touch with the metal surfaces, that's generally BPA concoctions. So that being said, given that we have so many and they have so many different functions and they have different half-life, so in terms of even discussing how to get them out of our bodies, that also is a different conversation, what I like to do is start by where's the biggest source of the problems, okay, because that's where you get combinations of chemicals. So number one on my list has become drinking water. A lot of people talk first food, I could say the same thing, they're equal in some ways in many ways, but I like to talk about the things of the highest yield that we can fix. By content of our body, we are 85, 90% water, believe it or not, and so when we drink water and where we get it and how clean it is, absolutely affects what our body tissues absorb and how we utilize that water. So I think about, you know, for instance, the Safe Drinking Water Act of 1974 that has gone pretty much unchanged in 50 years of U.S. regulation, and that law, which covers only 91 chemicals out of the 95,000 that potentially can get into our water, those 91 chemicals are the list for 160,000 wastewater treatment plants in the U.S. that serve 85% of the U.S. population. So the point I'm making is that because we have such poor regulation of our drinking water, which is very surprising. I mean, we're better than, of course, the third world country, but we are so far from where it's humanly safe, in my opinion. And because that water is drunk, drunk drinking, you tell me, every day in such large amounts from the time we're conceived to the time, you know, where we die, it seems to me that that's one of the most important things to hit when it comes to thinking about chemicals, because anything can get in drinking water, essentially. So the real point of that is, you know, because it comes from well water, it comes from municipal tap water, or treatment plant water, into our homes, we want to fix it at the point of use, which is at our sink. And so I think about toxins that really by volume, we can take care much quicker. In that water tends to be a variety of chemicals that we've heard on the news, PFAS, or Proflacals, you know, these are non-stick forever chemicals that have made our way into water. We've had lead problems before. Obviously, we've heard about Flint Michigan, but we have thousands of Flint Michigan's every year in this country. So, you know, we just want to think about water, I think, differently than just hydration, but thinking of it as what makes up our tissues at the cellular level, and how we have to get that right. This episode of the show is sponsored by Sizzlefish, Heart Healthy, Protein Packed, and Sustainably Caught. Sizzlefish is a total game-changer for anyone committed to eating healthy and living well. Did you know that omega-3 rich seafood like Wild Caught Alaska Sakai salmon from Sizzlefish is linked to reduced inflammation, improved brain function, and even a lower risk of heart disease? And here's a bonus. Wild Alaska Sakai salmon is the richest natural source of astazanthin, a powerful antioxidant that supports skin health, reduces inflammation, and protects your brain and heart. I've been cooking it up at home, and not only is it delicious and vibrant in color thanks to that astazanthin, but it's also become a staple in my kitchen for its incredible health benefits. 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What do you make of the recent headlines linking fluoridated drinking water fluoride in our tap water to reduce cognitive abilities in children? IQ, I believe. Yeah. And so that's a study that made more news, but that's been around that conversation. Dr. Granjean was one of the first people to really bring that to light. And these are some of the hardcore research. Endocrine disrupting chemical people as well. But the idea is that fluoride was really never meant to be in drinking water. I mean, there are arguments about from the American Dental Association that we've heard these arguments for really decades. The fact is, is that most countries in the world are getting rid of fluoride. If they haven't already done so, there's dozens and dozens of countries that are now getting that out of the water system. And fluoride, if you think about it chemically, fluoride, if you have a kind of in middle school, there's an elements table. And fluoride, if you look at the vertical, I mean, this is going back to middle school. But, you know, fluoride is on the same vertical as bromine, as chlorine, as iodine. And so when you think chemically about how fluoride could affect a variety of mechanisms, not just brain function and IQ, which is the previous studies, decreased IQ in pregnant women who drink fluorinated water, fluoridated water and actually can affect the IQ of their children. But we also know that fluoride can affect thyroid function because it can knock off the iodine, right, off of thyroid hormone, which has iodine, bromine, bromine flame retardants, brominated flame retardants can do similar things, chlorinated chemicals. So again, you know, if you go to the structure of the toxin, you can see how mechanistically we can see changes in clinical disease, potentially. It's so it's an endocrine disruptor affects thyroid function. And thyroid health is critical to brain development. Oh, absolutely. Thyroid health is critical. And I'll tell you I talk about this in the book, you know, when I get into sort of, well, what do we need to be thinking about in terms of just human health and autoimmune disease prevention? One of them is a multivitamin with iodine because we are so dec. malnourished in many ways with many of the most common nutrients. And we all think of vitamin D3. It's very sexy. We all know about it. We've heard about it. We got to get enough D. But people don't hear about some of the other really important micronutrients. And iodine is one of them, which we don't make as human beings. We have to get it from babies, have to get it from breast milk from their mothers. And we have to get a little bit of everyday technically to maintain thyroid health because it sits in the thyroid gland. And it protects it from some of the environmental chemicals that are everyday chemicals. Food washes and such that knock it out. So iodine is something that we should be getting at a reasonable, in a reasonable amount every day. It washes out every day. And it's critically important for childhood brain development and fetal brain development. And guess what? We don't have it in our diet on a regular basis because we have sea salts and hemolane salt and kelted salt and. none of that is iodine. It's not like the old Morton's table salt, which actually had iodine in it. It's funny. I just had lunch today in town and it came with one of those packs of degradable silverware, which would only begin in the LA, right? And it also had a packet of salts, and it's said, iodine is salt, which you rarely see unless you're at a roadside in New Jersey where you go to a roadside stop where they restaurants and stuff and they have them there. But we don't get iodine in our diet anymore. In fact, it was a public health measure back in the 50s and 60s because it was such a concern by you as health visuals that they actually had iodine not only added to salts, like Mortons, but also in bread. It was in, you know, added to bread, and a lot of people don't eat bread anymore. So see how we really do have one micronutrient that we can fix, just simply by understanding it. Would you recommend using iodine salt? Yeah. Well, iodine salt, or when you get into, I talk about sort of the human fertilizer of what I think every human should be on as a prerequisite, you know, bare minimum. One of them is a multivitamin that is comprehensive, which means that it has iodine, a sodium iodide, around 150 micrograms per day, or lower, but not higher. You don't want to go too high, of course. Certainly liquid forms of iodide, sodium iodide, are potentially at risk because you can go overboard with drops, or not easy to measure, and sometimes people take a whole dropper instead of a drop, or a two-dr. You know, so I think, you know, capsules, if you have to take extra, but really a multivitamin that's a really well-chosen, good quality multi, will have adequate amounts of iodine if you're not getting it on a regular basis from your diet. Mmm, that's great advice. I actually get delivered to my house, bottled spring water in glass, and I have a little dropper of, like, some concoction of nascent iodine. I don't quite know what that is, but it looks like it's just like the brown, you know, and I put like three drops in that huge five-gallon tub that I, you know, get. So, you know, if I, I think I did the math at some point, but I've estimated that if I drink it over the span of two weeks, I'm getting generally through my water about 100% of my daily iodine needs. Well, that's actually really an interesting way to do it, and I certainly applaud anyone who thinks it through to that degree. I think for mere mortals, like myself, who, you know, kind of can't even find time to, you know, shower or grab the kids, and I got, you know, patients, people busy lives, which I'm sure you do, but at least where I'm from, there's sort of like this, how can you do it with the least amount of effort, least amount of thought, just get it done, you know what I mean? Like, that's how I was for most of my life. And for that reason, I think about the very simplest things, like you said, which is just supplementing with iodine assaults or a multivitamin or having seafood, you know, in a somewhat reasonable way, or basically seaweed, you know, nori, dulce, you can get seaweed, you know, so there's lots of interesting ways to do it, but the way you're doing it is interesting as well, and I really thought about that. Well, okay, so when it comes to cleaning up one's tap water, what recommendations do you make? Yeah, so, you know, it's not a grandiose punch line. Basically, what we want, we want to filter our water. Now, I applaud any person who filters their water with anything they've got, because at least they're conscious of it, they're thinking about it and they understand that there's at least a problem that they're trying to fix. The question is, can we all do it better? And that took a lot of time to figure out. So there are different types of filtration systems, you know, and there are different cost points, and there's different effort points. So I will say this, that carbon block, which is typically, you know, what you see in a picture, or activated carbon, that actually is pretty good, but not great for most systems. And again, there's tons of different products out there. So I'm not, I'm just giving a general overview. So typically, people like the carbon block filters because they're easy, and they can, you know, buy them online, they're refillables, and it's on the fridge, right? And they can change out their fridge, which I recommend, at least changing out on a routine basis. There's all sorts of other types. There's UV filters for infection risk. There's also, you know, reverse osmosis, which I'll jump right to because there's a couple in between, but reverse osmosis is, by definition, really the most aggressive way we can clean water in the United States, if you get a reasonable product. And again, you don't have to necessarily spend a fortune, you know, break the bank is why I'm sort of out there hustling this information so much is because I want people to know that all of the things I recommend really don't take much effort or much money. It's just about making better choices. So reverse osmosis, by definition, is really the material is so tightly woven that the pore size is so incredibly small that it really filters out by size, you know, of particles. So even though we have minerals in water and we have chemicals in water, it's going to take out everything because it doesn't know a good thing from a bad thing. But I say to people who ask me about dead water or is the water not good for you, we don't get our nutritional intake from water. Water is not the source for nutrition, generally speaking. And it really has never been what we should do is have, you know, filtered water or reverse osmosis, reverse osmosis water with the big, great, organic, clean, salad, bowl of fruit, whatever you choose to eat. But nutrition shouldn't be the primary goal from water. It should be hydration and should be cleanliness. Is there any concern that by removing the minerals from water, it's any less hydrating than water would be with? It's, you know, the minerals that you would otherwise naturally find there? You know, how do you measure hydration in terms of feeling hydrated? I mean, I've had reverse osmosis for over a decade and I've never, I mean, maybe I'm sluggish but I don't think it's from my water. It might be from my life, my teenagers. But I mean, the idea that, you know, there's just, there's just so much we can chip away out. And when we get to, I think, into the weeds with some of the details, I think it also can stress us out. So I try to just kind of, I mean, it's a great question. You know, we all want to feel good, right? But I'm not sure if the hydration is something you can tease out. I will tell you this. So my father being a kidney specialist, 85 years old, still practicing and managing dialysis, he helped bring dialysis in the 70s. We, it's kind of hard to believe that we just had sort of synthetic or fake kidneys since the 70s. Otherwise, people just died, right? We had dialysis, right? So he was one of the, the people who brought that to New Jersey when the technology was available to the masses. And at that time, it became, it was federally regulated to have reverse as most as water for dialysis patients federally regulated. And to this day, it's still federally regulated. And what's so interesting about that to me is that it was first designed to really keep out single-celled organisms like viruses and bacteria to prevent these immune compromise dialysis patients from getting major infections and sick and die, perhaps. So what they didn't know at that time is the 70s is that they were also basically going to be keeping out thousands of toxic chemicals that were either designed at that time or certainly were moving down the pike. And we now have these, I mean, he has big tanks of dialysis where they come in every month and they actually check his water content and look to see if it's hard water, soft water, and what's in it. We, as consumers, can now get an RO filter for somewhere like $275 under our kitchen sink with maybe $150 in New Jersey for a plumber for one hour to put it in. So that upfront cost and, you know, you save a fortune because you don't have to help out the drop-in pitcher filters or changing out the carbon blocks in your fridge. So to me, I look for the simplest cost-effective solutions. And it turns out that these have come down in price because there's so much competition on the market. So to me, that's a solution. I think that's a solid solution even for people who are, you know, thinking about getting whole house filters, you can actually save a couple, maybe six grand from doing that by just focusing on water you drink, water you cook with, and perhaps even putting a shower head with a carbon block which are $20. And so there you go. I mean, who needs to drink the shower water? Yeah. I actually recently installed a shower filter in my shower. Yeah. I don't know what it's doing, but I will tell you that I've already replaced the filter once and looking into it. Like as I was replacing it, it was brown and it was like dirty. Yeah, it's going to catch stuff, you know, and supposedly make sure hair look great, which your hair looks great, Max. Thank you. Thank you. But, you know, the idea is that there's, these are simple solutions because that's what, $20, big box storage, change out every six months and essentially you can solve the same problem instead of spending all those thousands of dollars on other things like, you know, USDA organic food, which we know has incredible value in this country, buying chemical, you know, beauty products, cleaning products that have viewed a none, you know, ingredients that are harmful. So there's better things we can do with our money. Are there any apps that you use to assess whether or not a product is quote unquote clean or at least has a lower, you know, a lower burden of these kinds of chemicals that we're trying to avoid? Yeah, no, this is a great question because, you know, again, back to solutions I teach high school and college and other doctors about how to look up products and when the high school students are the most fun because I have two teenagers and they're always looking for you know how to woo the ladies and you know they come up with products I can't even imagine there is one product that came to our house that was like castor oil with a brush and I was like what is this I'm like you know a castor oil used to be for used to make you go the bathroom people are punished they had to drink castor oil you say oh no you know it actually makes your lashes longer and thicker I mean and these are like strap in lacrosse play and guys you know so I'm like if this is making its way this this idea of beauty and and and getting the ladies and kind of the aesthetics that were being sold it really it's kind of that's a whole different level but yeah there's there's a lot of stuff that we can you know work with here and try to you know fix castor oil is still used by some it's like a to ease premenstrual pain yeah you can actually use it as a pack believe it or not I mean some people tell me that they use castor oil packs and it eases abdominal pain so maybe for menstrual symptoms I've never really I've never used it and I've never had you know too many patients but I've heard I mean I have patients that talk about it and you know look as long as it's not invasive it's not harmful it's not going to kill you it's not going to give you trouble it's always the risk benefit ratio whenever I talk to people about anything whether it's medications for my rheumatology patients or I'm talking about you know herbal medicines or supplements everything in life is a risk benefit ratio and you have to really think it through to make sure that those choices are are wise absolutely in your book you talk about the four A's of environmental health navigation what are those what are the four A's and why are they critical to helping to detoxify our lives I do want to comment you did ask me about apps and I think I got gentle so I sorry about that it's you know maybe my age but I just want to go back to that before we go to the four A's I use environmental working group wonderful organization consumer advocacy group they've been around forever and they develop something called the skin deep database and also Yuga and Cleary are very helpful are they perfect no but they're very good and they use a lot of very well-sourced data to give rating systems zero to 10 for EWG zero being better 10 being more toxic I even said to my one of my teenagers listen if you want products you just have to find stuff that's you know two or below and sure enough this kid had products coming in the door for summer camp so and he taught all his friends and when I teach high school that's what these kids use I toss products at them they giggle they laugh they're uncomfortable and then they jump right in so you want to give people tools in my opinion which is actually one of the reasons I sort of developed the four A's because I've been doing this work a long time and I sort of came from a place of being freaked out I mean that's how I started in environmental health it wasn't by choice I actually my dog got sick and I had to figure out maybe what was making his immune system you know go south he had autoimmune hepatitis and in dogs it's random and rare and he was young and so long story short as I researched his exposures his dog food his water quality I mean this is you know 2015 years ago I started to ask questions well if that's going on with animals or there's no regulation for this that or the other what's going on with humans and I started reading about all that so that's how I ended up in environmental health and I've gone through this period of oh my god how is this information not available to me as a physician and here I was practicing medicine to young kids I'm like this is absurd when so much of the science shows how environmental chemicals really do play out on not just hormone health but immune system health so that was sort of this journey of being freaked out and then coming back to real life as you know I'm busy I got a lot of going on and so you have to merge the world of science and information with actionable you know the ability to be actionable in a reasonable cost effective practical way and so that's where I am now and so when I started to write curriculum for high school and college and now even for three physician programs on environmental health I had to come up with some way that I thought was tangible for people to understand so I really you know thought about it and I'm like well what are the things we have to do it well the four A's are assess because you have to know the problem you have to know your enemy right you have to know what you're going for so there's a whole process how you assess what exposures affect your life from air from water from feminine care products and intra vaginal exposures to air quality dermal exposure that kind of thing so assesses number one number two is avoid because you want to know how to avoid assess avoid and then the third one is add which is a piece that a lot of people don't really know about or think about certainly the chemical world doesn't necessarily know how to talk about the integrative world they're sort of separated but having that training add is the component of nutrition that offsets the effects from environmental exposures so in other words knowing that our environment can certainly affect our expression of genes or exposome and understanding how that works with DNA methylation and a variety of ways that our genes are expressed or not based on our exposures we now know that nutrition can offset that methylation process and it goes back you know to anthropology what clean highly nutritive foods can we take in that we've taken in for millions years into our bodies that actually have this added beautiful bonus of offsetting what we didn't done to ourselves from an environmental standpoint and then the last a so it's assess avoid add and the last piece is allow because life is life, life is fluid we go to birthday parties we celebrate big events we get exposed to chemicals when we travel that we can't control we go to college we live in apartments that we might not love because of vinyl flooring or you know the air quality or the location so I like the allow because I think it allows you to get going with the other stuff knowing that you're not a bad person there's no regrets you didn't do this to yourself and life is fluid so that's kind of how I built that structure for this really big topic yeah I love the emphasis on not necessarily a no-tox lifestyle which is likely impossible today I mean let's be honest I color my hair I mean I mean I wear makeup I'm most of it's clean but I mean there's sometimes which you know you can't always control for certain products or you know I just I feel like there has to be a human component and I think that makes people more proactive than resistant yeah it's about minimizing your exposures your your exposome which is a term that that I love but I'd love to double click on the ad component so what are some of the foods specific nutrients that we might be able to add to help assist in our bodies detox detoxification of some of these compounds so I mentioned iodine which is one of my favorite topics because iodine literally sits in the thyroid gland cells and affects what's called the sodium iodide simporter which essentially makes thyroid hormone and it's incredibly effective at protecting the thyroid when it's missing when there are open holes so to speak these environmental chemicals that are pretty much everywhere that we may or may not be able to control that are in a lot of different things stick very tightly to that gland and so just arming yourself with daily nutrition because life is variable yet pizza parties this but at least if you're getting as I mentioned a really solid clean multi that has no colors and fillers and preservatives it's third-party check it's not expensive but it's thoughtful that's giving you a little bit of a fix every day when your life's choices are altered vitamin D3 which is actually a hormone but we think of it as a vitamin we're told it's a vitamin but it's incredibly valuable to the immune system, incredibly valuable we've seen this with major infectious flu and COVID that lower D levels actually related to higher rates of morbidity and mortality from COVID exposure so we know that was a sexy or topic and that's what brought it to a lot of people's attention about vitamin D3 which is available over the count or D2 is something you would be prescribed by a physician which we don't often really use that much anymore but vitamin D3 is incredibly useful and it's fat soluble so one of the tricks I tell patients and I talk about it in the book is really that if you miss a day of your vitamin D3 you could take twice as much the next day if you miss a week and go on vacation you forgot all your whatever supplements at home you could take a week's worth you do want to get a baseline level and you do want to follow up with whatever level you're taking so you don't take too much of course but the idea is that vitamin D3 has some great practical benefits being fat soluble that helps you to live at a higher high normal level on testing as opposed to letting it sink back down to low or no levels because life is busy and we forget so D3 is really quite important I talk a lot in the book detoxify about the gut microbiome and how critical that is to the immune system system, how the microbes live in there and have been living for millions of years within us, and they are pretty much controlling our lives if you think about the volume of these microbes, and that we lose them every day, from stress, from medications, maybe chlorinated drinking water if you're in a situation where you're just drinking tap because that's just where you're at. The idea is that the gut takes a hit every day. The choices can build that up, high fiber, USDA organic foods whenever possible because less pesticides that kill off gut microbes makes a lot of sense, right? We kill off microbes in the fields, we want to not do that in our gut. And so maybe adding a probiotic, if you're not getting the kind of probiotic rich foods because life is busy, you're not getting five sugar for yogurts without added sugar and synthetic sweeteners a day, or you're not eating kimchi and drinking kombucha, a lot of stuff that a lot of Americans don't really think about. Pickles are great, vinegar is great, all of these are great for the gut, but the probiotic microbes often get lost and we might need to add them back in, and there's great science with the gut brain connection. I'm sure you've talked about that on your episodes before, but having these microbes bolstering the gut helps so many systems, not just the immune system, which I talk a lot about. I love it. I was thought of the gut as, and the gut microbiome specifically as essentially the immune system's training grounds. Yeah. Well, it's the first entrance pretty much into the body. I mean, we have the skin, of course, which is very protective, but when it comes to just getting into our bodies in such a direct way through ingestion, I mean, it's 26 feet of bowel. You know, it's the tube is what I tell patients just think of a tube from mouth to butt, and on the inside layer of that tube, if it was just one straight tube and on the inside the interior layer, that's our microbiome. And essentially it's as thin as half of a diameter of a human hair, and it covers the surface area of an entire football field. And so when we think about how vulnerable that is, to stress, which changes the pH and the acidity, or to again, to chemicals and food that are loaded with either pesticides or processed food chemicals, perhaps, which can have a direct effect, but also indirect effect, the idea is that the gut is just very vulnerable. And so part of this concept of feeding your body nutrients with a multi, maybe look at the probiotic or some form of getting those microbes back in as sort of a multi-fear gut. And so I really talk about that quite a bit. And there's other nutrients. I mean, I go through them and I kind of give the logic, because I think you have to know, again, I really, with my patients as well, I want them to understand the why. I don't want to tell people to do something. It's like telling your children, my kids don't listen to me, I tell them to do something. I think it's better to explain why it matters. And maybe that's something that they hold on to, and find a reason to do it. But yeah, I think there's so much we can do that it's just like I'm just busting out with trying to, you know, having done rheumatology for 20 years, I've seen a lot. I've seen a lot, Max. So I feel like I'm ready to sort of share that kind of stuff. It's so important. And I think part of what, you know, solidifies behavioral change, what catalyzes it, and ultimately, you know, solidifies that as a daily health habit is sharing the story of how these different micronutrients support immune function. Because, you know, they say, facts tell stories sell, you know, you can tell somebody until the cows come home, the vitamin D is good for you, vitamin B12 is good for you, iodine is good for you. But I think most of the time that, that kind of data forward approach for someone who's not a scientist, especially falls on deaf ears. But it's like once they start to understand the story of how all of these different nutrients and ultimately foods fit together to support immune function that can potentially help you ward off these awful conditions that nobody wants to suffer from, I think that's what helps to catalyze real change. Oh, absolutely. I mean, even like green leafy vegetables have full of acid, B9, vitamin B9. Studies show that it offsets the effects of BPA, bisphenol A, and heavy metals too. Quaricetin, antioxidant, I mean, it's in onions and the skin of onions and apples. Quaricetin is incredibly good as an antioxidant to help with heavy metals and BPA as well. I mean, there's just, and I talk about these because I want people to understand that food is medicine if it's done right. And I say done right because not, you could have a kale salad that's loaded with pesticides and it feels healthy. But it may not be as healthy as we could choose in terms of choosing better. And I think people may want to understand that because it's not necessarily a cost choice. You could just make a simple change. You can even get frozen organic foods which are so filled with nutrient value but also don't have all the pesticides and fertilizer chemicals. Yeah. Well, when you're traveling and you don't have access to organic and you're at a restaurant, for example, and you have the option of ordering a side salad knowing that it's in all likelihood a conventionally grown, conventionally grown leaves. Will you eat that or will you? Don't you? And I will. I mean, here's the thing. That's the allow. That's the allow. I mean, I'm here traveling and I'm meeting with you. And, you know, I post on, you know, when I'm in the airport and you can't bring your water into through security, what are the water bottle choices? And what I try to show people is that even in an airport, you have 20 different selections. If you pick off a bottle water, look at the ingredients. They're like, what? Ingredients in water? Yeah. You can actually look at the ingredients on bottled water and it'll say how that water was cleaned. So ozination, distillation, reverse osmosis. I've seen, which is shocking, municipal tap water. It's like the audacity to sell me back a bottle with municipal tap when I get it gone over to the sink in the bathroom, but I've seen it before. It's like designing. I don't know where it was, but it was just like, I'm sitting there like wondering where's the center at lives get going to start. But the idea is that, you know, no one really bothers to look at that. We just grab water and I'm just kind of making it one step easier to sort of see where you can make that choice a little bit cleaner. Yeah. And obviously choosing reverse osmosis would be my choice. You can't get rid of the microplastics. You can't necessarily deal with that at that moment, but you can choose water bottles or bottled water that has a little bit cleaner process. And when you travel, you know, it's not always easy to find what you need to find. So you have to kind of write it off as a part of your life that you're going to maybe clean up after. And when I get home, I actually do more running. I have a sauna that I sit in. It's tiny. It's the size of this desk, but it was a priority at least after whatever 15 years of doing this. I wanted to have access to that and people have that at their gym. But I will probably pay attention about it for a week or two as much as I can to kind of cleaning up from my travel experience. And it's not a stretch, but it's something I'll likely do as a just kind of a reflex. I'm really grateful that LAX now has, you can buy spring water. I think it's Evian in glass, but it kills me that it's $9 a bottle. It's like, $9. All the glass bottles are gone. It's like, my tears are running. I mean, when I go to a restaurant, they actually serve glass bottled water. I have to take a picture and post and I have to comment on it because it's like, it's it's getting to be an endangered species. And even the top water companies, like you said, Evian and whatever, you know, it's now become a choice for the rich, so to speak. You've got to pay more to not be poisoned today. It's crazy. It's criminal. It really is criminal how hard I feel like we all have to be, I want to say work, but just the cognizant component of it is upsetting because of where we are from a regulatory standpoint or lack thereof in this country. And it crosses across, you know, cosmetic and personal care and all sorts of products. Even OSHA regulations and occupational exposures, you could argue are really problematic. But, you know, my goal is to really just kind of, how do we work now for our bodies, for our family, but family's bias, to reduce what we're now seeing in terms of autoimmune and immune disorders, which is why I turn to this topic. And I think being proactive and not waiting for regulation is like waiting for Godot. It's not going to necessarily happen in a time span that's going to be conducive to good health for this generation. We have to keep doing it ourselves. We have to be proactive in our own home, in our workplace. If you feel compelled, you know, I mean, there's little things like I buy my own cleaning products for the cleaning service, you know, why would I want other chemicals, you know, and they're not expensive, it could be a bottle of vinegar that I mix to add my own do-it-yourself cleaning products in the book. The idea is that there's ways to reduce, you know, almost every aspect of our life. If you're interested and you're proactive, I almost gamify it. I mean, I'll be honest. I'm at the point where like, I like the challenge of certain situations and figuring out how to do it better. Yeah. I don't know if everyone feels that way, but I certainly. You know, I see my glasses are always looking at things in that in that kind of way. Well, I don't know why you get pushback today when suggesting that people should ought to do just a little, put a little bit more effort into their dietary choices and to mitigate these kinds of exposures. I mean, you have to put in the work to achieve a fit body today. I mean, our lifestyles have become by and large sedentary, right? We're in our cars or we're sitting on our couches or we're sitting at desks. You know, during our nine to fives, everybody knows you got to put in a little bit of effort to whether it's get to the gym or, you know, even what are they called exercise snacks. You like, you've got to, you do have to make some degree of effort today with regards to your fitness. I don't know why it's so inconceivable that it should also be reasonable to put the same degree of effort into what you're allowing into your body. It's like food, it's like considered food shaming or access shaming today. Yeah, and some people don't find their community. I mean, in New Jersey, it's not like California. I mean, a lot of people find it very hard to make requests and live their lives a certain way without their kids making fun of them or their friends thinking they can't go out to dinner with them because they're crazy because, you know, they want to bring their own water or whatever like I do, even. But, you know, you know, the thing is though, Max is what I've noticed having just watched over the years is, you look, it's a laid gratification sucks. I mean, people don't like to wait for an outcome and they won't always see an outcome. When it comes to say chemicals and environmental health, we don't always have a direct cause and effect in our lives. Like, for instance, we don't necessarily have a clinical effect from being exposed to so many chemicals, especially in mixtures that we're saying, you know, right? We're not just exposed by one chemical. We might have multiples, of course. And we may not have an illness from that. And I think when it doesn't smack you in the face, it doesn't cause a problem, especially if it doesn't cause you pain or aesthetic changes, right? That's when people really get moving, right? When they're in pain or they think they don't look good or fat or whatever it is. That gets people motivated. But when you don't see an actual something like an immune system change where there's cellular change, where there's, you know, you know, cells in the body that go up and down from exposures, when that doesn't smack you in the face, people have a real hard time buying into it. What I'm trying to tell people is that low level exposures over time can potentially increase your risk of developing immune and autoimmune diseases. We know this. And what we're seeing now in my practice in epidemiologically is this is happening at younger ages with no family history, which even points to the fact that environment plays a big role. And so I'm sort of telling people the punch line without people feeling in until it's them or their family member. And I think that's what we want to do is we want to avoid getting sick and kind of getting ahead of it before it becomes a problem. We have to change after it. Well, what are the, what would you say are some of the health effects that people might be familiar with suffering from today? I mean, one thing that's come up because of our, you know, the exposure to a lot of these environmental toxins that you're talking about, they have that tend to have estrogenic effects, that it's increasing estrogen receptor activity in boys as well as in girls. And it's one of the reasons why it's been speculated so many girls today seem to be getting, you know, the onset of puberty at earlier ages and they had historically. Yeah, absolutely. And so that's something we've been watching for really decades, really centuries because women used to get their periods at 16, 17, 18. And on average now it's somewhere around 11, 12. And in African-American women, young girls, they're, it's even shifted younger, even 9 and 10, 11. And it's been associated with, you know, exposure to some of the chemicals that are sold to African-American women. And so it's a big movement to really not only sus out the chemicals that are attributed to this estrogenic component, but also thinking about products within different demographics that may be affected more. We also know different periods of development have different abilities to have higher and lower hormone function, right? So the, the really the vulnerable periods of development. So in utero exposure where we know the placenta doesn't really block majority of these chemicals. So in utero exposure is very important when thinking about cleaning up your body. Toddler years where young children have hand and mouth behavior, but they also have very limited detoxification processes. So we want to be thinking about their environment and what they touch and feel on the floor of their home and dust and that kind of thing where chemicals often lurk. Then you have the teenage years. So this is living at where there's , you know, emotional everything and there's hormone changes and body changes and brain development. And that's another very vulnerable period where hormone effects from many of these chemicals that can mimic estrogen and various other hormones and disrupt the messaging of these hormones can have a hold and maybe potentially cause more harm. And then even metapause is another time. So it's not just what the chemicals are, it's also the vulnerable periods that are happening. You know, and so there's changes when it comes to say something like puberty, but we're also saying like I said, there's younger ages of lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, there's very, there's more dominant female to male prevalence of many of these autoimmune diseases. We know that's estrogenic in nature because all the immune cells in the body have hormone receptors for estrogen. But when you have all these chemicals that are estrogenic, it also adds a little fuel to the fire. It's kind of scary. We're swimming in like an estrogen soup. Yeah. And it's not just estrogen is anti estrogen or anti-androgen components. There's, you know, insulin is affected. That's a hormone. Fertility is certainly something that we're more aware of, not just waiting later to have kids, but also having difficulty having kids. So fertility issues is also hormone-related. But, you know, growth in development, bone strength in older women. These are all hormone-related, very conserved, very ancient, incredible messaging systems that the human body has. And we've developed this upper millions of years. And then boom, 1950s, we have thousands of chemicals that are being created for a lot of reasons that seem honorable at the time. You know, soldiers overseas. Let's create pesticides to protect them. On the battlefield, let's create naga-hide, rayon, plexiglass for fighter pilots. So we have a lot of, you know, creations that were meant to save natural resources, canned foods. But what wasn't really thought about at that time was not only where these, how these chemicals break down. We didn't have the science. We didn't have, you know, but also how they affect the environment, how they break down in the environment and, you know, sometimes circle back from our water systems right back into us. Well, also how they affect us. I mean, there was that, it was such an eye-opening episode of the Joe Rogan experience when Shana Swann was on the show. Years ago, and she, you know, sounded the alarm about the fact that a lot of these exposures, I think, to thalates in particular, were reducing the anal-genital distance in voice, which is a very crude indicator of how these chemicals are feminizing boys, right? I mean, like that's probably just a very tip of the iceberg, but it's something that can be easily measured. I mean, not that easily, but yeah, it's crazy the degree to which these chemicals, you know, ways they're known and unknown are affecting our bodies. Her work was incredible with thalates, and she had a lot of pushback in the beginning, because no one really, I mean, who do you think pushes back the chemical industries? Of course. That chemical industries manage a lot of what, you know, how hospital systems work. They manage a lot of things. The studies that are going on are really done by third-party systems that are in some ways siloed and protected from the chemical industry in order to get their work done. But this is a pretty fierce, you know, group of researchers internationally that are working on this topic. But yeah, thalates were, that's particularly what she was, you know, is well known for, and she contributed to work that, we've worked together, but her work was incredible, and it really was such excellent science. And I think that's what we need to pull from is the excellent science that's really showing an association. We can't always do cause and effect, because in humans, there's too many confounders. There's lifestyle, and there's, you know, our lives change, our diets change, and our genetics change from generation to generation. But we have animal studies. We have great animal studies, and we have epidemiologic studies, and we have CDC runs studies where we measure blood in Americans every two years. It's called the enhaned studies. And so we have plenty of data working off of humans, but also animal studies to really make better decisions. And I'm kind of pulling as much as I can from those studies into practical every day in the supermarket on the sports turf decision making, you know, because these are the choices we can make. I have two sons that are athletes, and I think about these things, where are they spending their time? Playgrounds, you know, we need to be thinking about what we can do to make small changes to that are effective. It's so important. And somebody, like Rachel Carson, right, the author of Silent Spring, she was met with fierce pushback at the time in which that book came out, and subsequently, We've banned certain chemicals like DDT in the United States, I believe she did incredible groundbreaking work advocacy, you know, to the lay public, to the mainstream, with that book, which was revolutionary at the time. And, but it's always, it's important to remember that even back then, like that idea that we should, you know, maybe cut our use of this chemical that seems to be eradicating all the burrs and the wildlife in the areas in which it's spread. That was thought to be like a, you know, just such a rogue heterodox, like, chemophobic suggestion, and she was right, you know. Yeah, she was right. Unfortunately, she died very young, which was unfortunate too. I don't know if you knew that. You know, who knows about the exposure she experienced, but, you know, she just observed, you know, she just observed nature having effects from exposure. And she thought if that's happening to birds, why is that happening to humans? You know, and it was just such a simple premise that became such a mantra of so much work internationally. But we can't always see and feel damage and kind of like trauma, right? You can't always see it on face value, but we know it's making its way into our cells and our activity of our bodies. And I think that that's just something we have to buy into that even if you can't see it, even at very, very low levels, parts per million parts per trillion, we can have, you know, immune effects, we can have endocrine system effects. You know, in these immune EDCs and IDCs, immune disrupting chemicals that I talk about, you know, they're, we can reduce those exposures. We have plenty of studies to show that when you change behavior, you can lower levels in your body. Now, whether you develop a disease or not is clear that is this dance between our genetics, our lifestyle and our exposures. But that leaves two out of three areas that we can have control over, right? Can't change your in-laws can't change your, you know, the idea is that we have lifestyle and we have environmental exposures that can really make a dent in our future health and the health of generations actually. So, you know, it's time to pay attention. I think we're sick enough now as a culture that even metabolic diseases are affected by these chemicals. We should, you know, obesity and hypertension and hyperalipidemia and all those things because they're not siloed. All these systems work together. 100%. Are there any lab tests that you recommend? Yeah, I actually talk about some lab tests in the book. Well, first of all, I'm a big fan, as I mentioned, is saving people money. Okay, I'm really conscious of how people spend their dollars because, you know, we're going with everyday people, you know. And so, one of the things I really try to do with my patients is I want them to use their insurance that they've paid out heavily for. Most people or many people use the codes that are able to test for very basic heavy metals, cadmium lead arsenic, metal mercury, use your insurance. And I put the right codes in the book so that if you can have your primary care doctor or your specialist or whoever's willing to just order them, they may not know how to interpret everything. I mean, God knows we did not learn this environmental medicine in med school and we're not learning it now. Okay, so let's be clear on where the training and how the disappointment is so deep, right? We shouldn't have to go outside of our medical school training to learn what affects so many human lives, right? But I want to give people, at least in the books, a list of very basic lab tests for heavy metals. We're starting to move into other chemicals that are now being utilized by lab core and quest and all the national labs that take insurance. And I, the lab industry is a big deal. I mean, I have other labs that are specialty for people who want to go deeper and beyond. But generally, if you use your money for basic testing, I think that's a good place to start. I will say this, we are all loaded with chemicals. So I, again, like people to not go nuts with testing and just put the money into a versus Moses and buying organic food and getting a massage and getting therapy and all of the things that are part of human health. But I think people waste a lot of money on the fear component of testing when it can change from day to day as well. That makes a lot of sense. Yeah, I really, I really appreciate that. Are there any common detox trends or products that you think are actually potentially doing more harm than good? Gosh, there's so much I see in on TV and TikTok and, you know, I've gotten a little bit, you know, just sort of frustrated seeing the stream of kind of unvedited, unregulated commentary from people who, you know, are anecdotal at best. Yeah, you know, trends that really, where you're taking something by ingestion, really bother mail, start with that. Okay, just being practical. That's where you get into harm's way. I think things that you ingest can really be a problem because you don't know how much to take, certainly even vitamins you can take too much, right? And that can have clinical effects. But I don't want people to do things that actually can create harm by ingestion. So that's a starting point. I also think where you get your supplements and some of your detox products matter because there's a lot of fake products out there. You know, Amazon and some of these big sellers, they can't control their inventory. And we now know that there are a lot of fake companies that are reproducing brand name products. And I talk about that and kind of ways to understand that. But, you know, you can actually see the difference on an expiration date and where they posted based on knowing what the real stuff looks like versus the fake, the frauds. Well, where you source what you take in and the route or route of which you do makes a big difference things you put on your skin, give you an opportunity to see if there's a reaction. You know, putting on the wrist or your arm, things that you ingest can be more problematic, not just directly, but also maybe it interacts with medication you have to take or, you know, maybe the quality is poor enough where you can actually develop, you know, liver injury, which we're seeing with a lot of supplements that have contaminants. So I just, you know, I'm not trying to scare people, but I want people to realize that you really want good information. And you want to trust the person, whoever that may be, that's vetted with some decent amount of training, you know, in education and medical school and, you know, to really be the voice of that if they're going to be doing some kind of detox program. Well, detoxification is a real thing. And there are ways to support your body's detox pathways, but the word detox has become co-opted by the supplement industry, the wellness industry. And has been used to sell all kinds of plans and products and juices. Don't get me started because I've come to realize that, you know, as much as Western medicine has a lot of problems with diagnosis and management and believing their patients and getting a good history in 15 minutes. You know, I'll need a drink and organic beer if you wait long enough, but the health and wellness industry has done some pretty big damage. I think in certain, you know, I've heard cases I hear a lot about, you know, people spending a fortune for testing and being sold supplements right afterwards as if, you know, you're going to die, Mrs. Jones, but here's my supplement. I worry about that. I really do. You know, and, you know, when people are so disappointed in the Western healthcare system and they're not getting their symptoms addressed, they're looking for answers, they're looking for solutions. And unfortunately, they may get sold information that products that I think could be more harmful. And it's disappointing. So I think that there's a whole world of, you know, integrative medicine, trained physicians, functional medicine, you know, practitioners, people that have really trained to understand the body's process and detox process at the very least. We know how the kidneys and liver work. We know how medications can affect problems. We know drug interactions. I think that's a really good place to consider getting information. So when it comes to the big rocks for somebody who's on like a limited budget, what would you say are the primary things to focus on? Let's like give me your top three. Okay, top three is to stop buying the stuff in the first place. Save your money, spend your money on a great water filter system. That's under your sink, not necessarily on top. I've been in apartments smaller than this table. And I can tell you that it can still fit an RO filter underneath. It should have three canisters and a carbon block in that and a tank and it makes its own water while you sleep, right? So you really want to be thinking water. And I've gotten so kind of interested in water. I test my own water test products I do before and after I'm really into understanding Duke University. And I interviewed this person who has a wonderful lab, Heather Stapleton, and she, they did a study on water filters and reverse osmosis. It was confirmed really is one of the most aggressive ways to clean water and was very much capable of taking per flu or alcohol chemicals, so the forever chemicals off as a class, which are difficult. And so again, I think putting time effort and money just to get that right is critical. I think in terms of food, USDA organic, frozen foods in season is cheaper, frozen, accessible at every big box store in the country has nutrient rich value from being flash frozen, but also has no chemicals and pesticides and synthetic, you know, stuff. It's super smart now because it's so much more accessible and affordable than it ever was. So those are the two biggest changes. And maybe first or third or whatever you want to look at is just don't buy a lot of products to begin with and vet out there. the ones that you do need or want makeup, personal care products, feminine care products, especially women with tampons and, you know, all that is so much chemicals that we want to be thinking about what we what we put in our bodies, much as we put on our skin. Are there options for like cleaner tampons these days? Yeah, yeah, there are. Well, here's the thing, in personal care products, it's important to know, we have USDA organic, which is a is regulated by the United States began around 1980s, very, very important. And you know, is it's pretty much the only thing we have when it comes to clean food. I mean, certainly I encourage people who don't have access to organics just to wash their food and rinse baking soda vinegar. There's so many hacks for that too. But if you have your choice, USDA organic, the thing is, is that does not apply to anything in the cleaning product world or the personal care product world. There is no such thing as organic products, even though they say organic, it could mean one ingredient that's USDA organic and a hundred others that are not. So there's a lot of organic washing, so to speak, in products that are just not in the category of oversight, like food is. And so I think when we think about that, you want to look at vetted sources, like Schindy database and Claire Yanuka, who do this for a living, who manage these markets and really keep a close eye on them, and give us, you know, again, not perfect, but pretty darn good information that we're not able as mere mortals who aren't toxicologists able to do. So I think that's the three things I would say. Highest yield is water, prioritize it, think about it, take it with you. I take it to, you know, I have a huge stainless steel one I take to lacrosse tournaments for weekends, you know. Why am I going to buy bottled water when you just go to the back of my trunk? And, you know, there's little hacks in everything, food, and then of course not buying stuff to begin with that we've been marketed to. Yeah, it's huge. I think that it's probably smart to put increased scrutiny on the things that are, you know, as they become less essential, so like cosmetic products and things like that. I mean, there's, you know, when traveling obviously, or if money is really tight, you've got big family to feed, like obviously you need food, like you want to be fed, you don't want to go hungry, right? And so there are certain concessions that one might make. But with things like we had a discussion recently on the on the podcast about like fragrance candles and things like that. And just the soup of industrial chemicals that you're being exposed to when you burn like an industrial artificially fragrance candle in your home. And then those particles that particulate matter then settles on the floor and you've got an infant crawling around getting all that stuff on their hands and then, you know, hand to map. It's like, you don't need, you don't need to be burning a candle in your home. I mean, it might be nice. It might be romantic occasionally. But like those are the kinds of products where you want to put increased scrutiny on and up for the best version. I don't know beeswax people have told. Yeah, companies committed to making cleaner versions. And again, there's no oversight and regulations. So you have to really know the company, you have to reach out, you have to really kind of do a little research on that. And then you can shop at places, you know, big box stores like Whole Foods. I mean, I'm not promoting anything. But there are certain at least layers that might be more effective. Even I think Target's gotten better at this, you know, in terms of understanding their products and what comes into their stores, there's much more awareness than there ever was. It's by far apart from perfect. But you have that added layer of your own apps and your own, I mean, I go into stores and I will spend hours there looking at products and looking them up and scanning them and seeing if they're in the database, not in the database. So I just think once it takes 15 minutes for me to shop now because I walk into these stores and I already know my products, you know, so in a way, it makes life a lot easier. But yeah, I mean, it's like there's a lot of stuff we just, you know, it's superfluous, right? We don't really necessarily need it. I had a whole drawer of plugins. I didn't know home, I was, you know, a young mom, and I remember the day that I dumped an entire drawer of like pumpkin spice latte, drink, you know, soda, gel, whatever plug-in, and you know, babies or ocean breeze. I mean, I had every name you can think of because that's like this fantasy that we're being sold of a better place world by, you know, but there are cleaner products. There's, there's definitely certain essential oils that if they're vetted, can give you the same experience. Well, clean has no scent. Yeah, well, you've been lied to. I mean, we expect clean to smell like a fresh linen breeze or, you know, a citrus spritzer or whatever you know, but clean has no scent. Yeah. And, you know, there are people who aesthetically like, you know, perfume, as an example, you know, like, or, or musk or some of these chemicals, they just want to smell better, right? And I'm one of those people. I like perfume. I grew up on perfume. And, you know, I did a little experiment with my teenager and I bought, you know, low, very low toxic perfume. It was male and female sense. And we did an experiment. We just, you know, he knew how to do this with a teenager. And they know how to do a sense or like all the thing in these middle school. And, you know, by the way, you don't have kids yet, but I'm telling you. And he would take the card and go like this and like, it's a thing with these guys, right? Yeah, it's great. I mean, it's so funny. Like, it's not crack and they're not selling like, you know, hard quirks. I'm like, whatever they're passing behind the car over there, thank God, it's not something, you know, that they're going to get arrested for. But it's just so funny the value they put on it. And it turns out, when you know it, he loved the stuff that was non-toxic, low chemical rating. And we both got something, you know, I bought one of you blowing. You know, it was kind of a fun experiment. We did this with chocolate. I got a huge box of chocolate that was rated very low in terms of heavy metals, cadmium and lead, came from a consumer reports study. I posted on it. And it was well done. And there was one company that actually also was organic as well as low toxicity. And they had some kind of variety box, which I love to do with kids. If you're interested, you know, you get a variety box and you sit around and you taste them and you have fun with your kids while you're teaching them. So I think that there's experiences that you can educate and still have fun. Amen. Well, I'm super excited for your book. Thanks for coming in and telling us about it. Detoxify the everyday toxins harming your immune system and how to defend against them. Super important topic, especially today. So thank you for being such a powerful advocate. Where can people find you on social media and where can they pick up your book? So social media, it's all thus smart, human, anthropologic. I named it that way, but the smart human on Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, my podcast as well. But, you know, that's really my baby. And the book is available on Amazon and Barnes and Noble and all. Local bookstores should have it. And really excited about it. You're best. Well, thanks, Alie. Last question. Like, it's asked everyone in the show. What is living a genius life mean to you? Oh, boy, that's a big topic, big question. Genius life. I wouldn't assume myself to say anything of genius, but I will say that I don't triple board certified. You know, you've got a few brain cells. You can have a lot of degrees and not necessarily function, you know, and do well. And, you know, there's, there's all two smarts in life. But I will say the genius life is making for me. And it goes into the name of the smart human. It's making just smarter choices. And you don't have to be, in my opinion, in my role, so so brilliant, you just want to be thoughtful. It's a journey. This process is such a journey. It's a tough topic. And I wanted people to think about that. And I like myself want to make smart choices for my own health and for the health of my family. And so it's instinctual, but it's, but it takes a little work. And I think we can all do it. Here here. Love it. Thanks for coming in. My pleasure. Thanks for having me, Matt. Thank you guys for listening. Share this episode around with friends and loved ones. And that's it. I'll catch you on the next episode. Peace.