428: The True Dangers of Industrial Additives in Our Water and Food Supply | Yvonne Burkart, PhD

What's going on everybody? It's episode 428 of the Genius Life. [Music] The Genius Life. Welcome back to another episode of the show. I'm your host Max Lugavir. And on this episode, I'm super excited to introduce you to Dr. Yvonne Burkhart. Dr. Burkhart is a board-certified toxicologist. With over 15 years of experience specializing in environmental health, chemical safety and human health risk assessment, she's known for her expertise in identifying and mitigating the impacts of toxic chemicals on human health and the environment, with a focus on reducing exposure to harmful substances in everyday products. She frequently shares her knowledge through her social media channels and via public speaking, advocating for safer consumer products and transparent regulatory practices. I am way in on this episode of the show, in which Dr. Burkhart's going to uncover the hidden dangers lurking in your drinking water and everyday products are tap and bottled water as safe as you think. Well, Dr. Burkhart's going to reveal shocking truths backed by data. It turns out even bottled water isn't a guaranteed safer option today, sadly. Throughout this episode from the food you eat to the personal care products you use, Dr. Burkhart's going to explain how to protect yourself from these environmental toxins and she's going to offer actionable tips for choosing products that prioritize your health and the environment. With the ongoing debate now raging on social media about the safety of food additives and other industrial chemicals now saturating our food environment, particularly in the wake of my recent US Senate. So I'm going to talk about climate hearing with others who are sounding the alarm about chemicals like artificial food dies being used in ultra processed foods marketed to children. This is a crucially important conversation to be had and unlike many on social media who seem so ready to come to the defense of ultra processed food manufacturers, Dr. Burkhart is actually a qualified toxicologist and she herself is concerned. To have this conversation for you guys to listen in. It's super important again. And I implore you to listen through all the way to the end and as usual to share it with friends and loved ones that you think might benefit from it. And now without further ado, here's my conversation with the great Dr. Burkhart. Let's rock and roll. Dr. Yvonne Burkhart, welcome to the show. How you doing? I'm doing amazing. Thank you for having me. It's so great to have you. I think you're the first toxicologist to come on the show. I'm super excited. Lots of questions that I have for you. But let's start high level as a toxicologist. What are some of the most common sources of toxins in our daily lives that people might not be aware of? Probably the biggest source is drinking water. I think a lot of people are unaware that tap water in general just is polluted all over the country and to make things worse people drink bottled water thinking it's better when it's actually not. Wow. So what are the kinds of toxins to be found in typical tap water? So you can find things like heavy metals, pesticides, you can find fluoride and other toxic substances that are the result of chlorination of water to disinfect. So disinfection byproducts, halogens, all sorts of different things, pharmaceutical drugs, hormones, industrial runoff. I mean, they try to filter as much of it out. And that's why the chlorination takes place. But that creates more toxic intermediates. And what are toxic intermediates? Like basically just like byproducts of the process of chlorination. So then you get these halogenated disinfection byproducts that can be even more toxic than whatever it was they were trying to disinfect in the first place. Wow. And does this differ region to region? I mean, I grew up, for example, in New York City drinking exclusively tap water. And I just actually distinctly remember it tasting quite good. But here in LA, the tap water is disgusting. And I've never drank the tap water here. So I would assume that there's wide variation region to region. Yeah, definitely. So it depends on where your source water is. But a lot of the water in the US, there's been studies showing over 40% are contaminated with PFAS chemicals as well. So that's another one that we need to be aware of. But it definitely is regionally specific. But for the most part, in general, tap water is not the type of water you want to be drinking exclusively anymore. Now are the levels of toxicants in the water levels that we ought to be concerned about is the concern more acute poisoning or is it more chronic? We just don't know. You know what, what a certain chemical consumed over the long term, even in low doses is doing to our health. Well, it's actually both. So there are cases when there's extraordinary high levels of lead in drinking water like Flint, Michigan. So there are contamination events that can cause acute toxicity. But in general, for most people who are not in those sort of emergent search situations, then it's chronic. These low dose chronic exposures, they're drinking water and a lot of people need to drink water, right? So you can't really avoid them unless you are removing them from your water. And why are more people not talking about this? If this is so ubiquitous, so common. I think it's that there isn't much that's being done on the federal level or on the municipal level. So every municipality has their own filtration system. And so if you will check the water report for your local area, you can see what's being removed, but you can also see what remains, right? So it's just that I think the infrastructure needs to be improved. It's the chlorination and fluoridation of water that's really causing a lot of issues. And alternatively, people will turn to bottled water. And you suggested that could be even worse. It can be in some cases because there's even if you look on a bottle of water that says purified water, that's actually just filtered tap water. But you're not really improving the quality or the purity much more than the tap water already was. So you're not removing that much. So you still have a lot of pollutants and contaminants in there. And then the plastic bottle itself is releasing microplastics and endocrine disruptors and heavy metals into the water. Yeah, there was a report published by consumer reports that came out just a couple of months ago that found that one brand of water, Poland Spring had particularly high levels of a certain thallate. Maybe you can speak to that. Yeah, so it depends on the type of bottle that was used, but there's typically thallies that are used to produce plastic. So in order to make plastic, malleable and moldable and, you know, to be able to be made into a bottle shape, there has to be plasticizers or chemicals. And these unfortunately are typically thallates and some bisphenols, depending on the type of plastic. But these chemicals are known to disrupt estrogen balance in the body. I've heard and correct me if I'm wrong, that bisphenols are used to harden plastic and thallates are used to soften plastic. So if you have a soft plastic like what you might find in a, you know, in a bottle of water, that those tend to be thallates in terms of the plasticizing chemicals that you might be exposed to. Right. That's correct. Wow. So how do we rectify the situation? How do we reduce our exposure? Well, first we need to invest in a water filter. I think at this point, we can't really avoid this aspect. It's people thinking that we don't need to filter it and then later finding out that their water quality has been horrible all this time. I think that's a really big issue. So at this point, there isn't much that we can do besides filter it. However, I have actually come across some recent studies showing that if you boil tap water, you can actually remove microplastics and nanoplastics 80% reduction just by boiling the water tap water. Where does the plastic go? How does that work? So it actually gets sucked down into the white crust that forms at the bottom. So it depends on the amount of calcium in your tap water. But most tap water should have enough calcium in it to cause that precipitation and it'll pull the microplastics out. And then another city came out showing that if you add lemon juice to your water, it can actually prevent the formation of disinfection by products. Whoa. So boiling tap water is actually showing to be pretty helpful. Well, what about charcoal filters? These are pretty common. Some people have them in their refrigerators. Some people have picture filters. Are those effective? They're effective to a certain degree because we really need to look at what they're actually removing. So there's so many different things that can bind to charcoal, but some things won't. And it depends on size. It depends on the affinity of that chemical to the charcoal in the filter. It's not a one-size-fits-all. It won't remove everything. So even with the boiling, there haven't been study showing that boiling can remove PFAS, for example, and that's a big problem in drinking water. So boiling, I think, is an option for people that don't have the money or access to get a proper filtration system, but still be aware that there's other stuff left behind. So hopefully there are some sort of home methods that are developed that can help people get rid of the PFAS and the water too. What about reverse osmosis purifiers? I had one for a long time by Aqua True, and I thought it worked phenomenally well. But then there was always the concern for me about remineralization, the fact that reverse osmosis purifiers remove everything from the water, including minerals that you would otherwise want to be there. So reverse osmosis removes the most amount of contaminants, but like you said, it can also remove the beneficial minerals. So in that case, you can remineralize your water, like you said, for some people don't do that, but I think. Over time, we need the minerals in our water. So I think it's, in my opinion, that's what I do. I have a reverse osmosis and I add mineral drops to my water. - Currently, I buy spring water in glass. Is that advisable? - Yeah, I mean, just the glass in and of itself is helping you to avoid the plastic. - Yeah, although the water does flow through a dispenser, but it's cold water. So I'm assuming, maybe I'm wrong in this assumption, but I'm assuming that I'm not exposing myself to plastic because heat tends to catalyze those, that leaching. Whereas the water is very, you know, rapidly, temporarily flowing through those tubes. - Yeah, you bring up a really good point because the leaching increases with time of contact. It increases with temperature, low pH. So all of those are not necessarily factors in this type of dispenser. But I think leaving your water sitting in a plastic container, that's still problematic because of the contact duration, the time. So the longer it sits, the leaching can still happen. - Yeah, it's not sitting in any plastic container as far as I know. - Yeah. - Talk to us about your background 'cause I'm fascinated by the field of toxicology. I've written about it as a journalist. I've written about many topics, actually, that would probably fall under that umbrella. But yeah, had you arrived at your profession? - I actually discovered toxicology by accident when I was in college looking for a summer job. So I actually became a dishwasher in a toxicology research lab and then started getting interested in what they were doing. And then I had the opportunity to become a research student as part of my undergraduate studies. So then I stayed in toxicology. I published a paper when I was in undergrad which I was really proud of. And then I continued on and just stayed. I just wanted to keep going. It was either that or going to another profession, either medicine, health-related. But I was really just hooked on basic research, toxicology, studying how chemicals interact with ourselves. How can we protect ourselves? That's always been just at the core of everything that I'm interested in, scientifically. - Wow, were you shocked when you discovered how toxic our environment had become? - Yeah, I was actually pretty shocked because growing up, no one ever talked about this. In fact, toxicology is a very lesser known field. Small number of people, it's just not widely known and that's one of the reasons why I'm speaking out about it is because there is an entire sector of science, that a field of science that is looking into toxic chemicals and how do we make sure that things are safe and using data and evidence and studies. This is really important to inform our decisions because not everything is toxic. But we need to know are there concerns and if so, how do we mitigate them? How do we avoid them? But yes, I was very shocked because growing up, I did have health problems and I didn't understand why until I started incorporating the environmental component into my lifestyle is when I started to feel better. - Hmm. - This episode of the show is sponsored by Monocora. I wanna talk about something I've been using lately that's not only super delicious, but also packed with some great natural benefits. Monocora honey, Monocora stands out because it's rich in MGO, a unique compound found in Monocora honey. 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All you gotta do is head to monocora.com/genius to get $25 off the starter kit, which comes with an MGO 850 plus Monocahoney jar. Five honey travel sticks, a wooden spoon and a guidebook. That's monocora.com spelled M-A-N-U-K-O-R-A.com/genius. For 25 bucks off your starter kit. This stuff is delicious. Highly recommend checking it out if you are into honey. And enjoy monocora.com/genius. Enjoy. Well, it's very concerning. As a guy, studies have come out recently showing, I mean, I guess these are small studies, but they've found, nonetheless, that, for example, a hundred percent of subjects tested had microplastics in their testicles. And we're now-- - And penis. - And penis? - Mm-hmm. - Yeah, I mean, that's pretty concerning. Like, I don't have a toxicology degree, but I mean, that just right there. I mean, that's a check engine light, to say the least. - Yeah, totally, because I think this is something that has been building up and it's not being studied until now, even though plastics have been in our society for decades, it kind of underscores the entire landscape of how chemicals are released and developed in the world. And it's, they're innocent until proven guilty, which is the opposite of how things should be. And is the reason why we are seeing microplastics in all different tissues of the body. So it started off as lung, gut, blood, heart tissue. Now there's testicle penis and even infant maconium, which is the first baby's first fecal movement, which means that babies are being exposed to microplastics in the womb. Did I say placenta? It's also in the placenta. So they're able to penetrate and transverse and cross cellular membranes. So do lung epithelium, do the gut epithelium, and also through the skin. Mm, and why does it seem as though the burden of proof is on the consumers, on the patients? Like that to me doesn't make any sense. Why isn't the burden of proof on these companies to prove that their products are safe? These chemicals are safe before unleashing them into the environment. - Yeah, it's really at the government level, the federal regulations, at least in the US, are not as stringent as they could be in other places of the world like Europe. They require a lot more data, evidence, safety testing upfront before you can sell a new product in Europe. If you want to introduce a new food ingredient or any type of cosmetic ingredient, you have to undergo some level of a safety check. There is an expert, a toxicologist like me sitting in Europe that does this. In the US, the FDA says, well, the burden of proof is on the industry, but no one's ever checking on it. It's just, oh well, you have to have the data, but it's okay, we're not gonna ask you for it. So it's pointless. Is it due to money, is it that they're lobbyists? I mean, I have no idea. - Yeah, there's industry groups, a lot of lobbying that goes on. So I think the regulations are highly influenced by industry. - One interesting thing that I saw on your Instagram, you, which is phenomenal, by the way. It's a great resource for people. You've said, as a toxicologist, you never burn candles in your home. Why not? - Candles, well, let me back up. Air quality and indoor air pollution are major determinants of health. The reason being that whenever you inhale something, it has a potential to quickly and easily enter your bloodstream and go directly to your brain. This means that it is extremely sensitive. It's not to be taken lightly. What you inhale will go into your body, into your brain. Okay, so just keep that at the top of mind. When you light a candle, you're not just liberating fragrance chemicals, but they're also as toluene, benzene, and other toxic chemicals that are known to be human carcinogens through the route of inhalation, being released into the air. And it's people like candles. Historically, they were lighting maybe beeswax or tallow candles for providing light. We don't necessarily need candles anymore, but people use them for religious reasons. There's many reasons to use candles. But when you are using a conventional candle with synthetic dyes, petroleum-based wax, and synthetic undisclosed fragrance in particular, you're releasing particulate matter, ultra-fine particulate matter, which is the most hazardous type. So we really need to be careful, especially if you have kids. These chemicals are not just staying in the air, they attach to the house dust and deposit on the surfaces of your home. So if you have a baby that's crawling around on the floor, putting things in his or her mouth, their airways are close to the ground, they're inhaling all of this and ingesting all of these particles. And pound for pound, they cannot detoxify the way that adults can. Their bodies are developing and these early life exposures have lifelong consequences. - Hmm, I mean, the link between exposure to fine particulate matter and conditions like cardiovascular disease, Alzheimer's disease, I believe is well elucidated at this point, but you're saying ultra-fine particulate matter is being released by these products candles. - Yes, that's correct. - And others, so I can't even, I mean, imagine how easily that's able to permeate our bodies. - Right, magnitudes, orders of magnitude. And just the fact that they're so small, they can just pass the alveoli in the deepest parts of the lung is one cell thick. It just passes right through, goes into the bloodstream and what these are doing are causing oxidative stress. So once you get, it's free radical damage. So once you get one oxidative molecule, it's gonna pass that free electron from one molecule to the next. It starts, can damage DNA? That's oxidative DNA damage. That's a basis for cancer, then you can get lipid proxydation. That's a basis for inflammation. So many other diseases can be explained just simply by looking at the process of oxidation that's happening in our bodies and free radical damage from so many sources. Wow. And you're your mom of two, two girls. Yeah, two girls. So what would you say are the core tenets of living a quote unquote low-tox lifestyle? Well, first and foremost, low-tox living means to do your best to avoid as many toxicants as you can. 80% of the time, 80/20 lifestyle. And I'm sure you heard a lot of people say this, but it actually makes sense in the context of low-tox, because not everything's toxic. You can't control everything anyway. So just do the best that you can, and especially focus on cleaning up the things that everyone needs. So I like to look at it as a low-tox pyramid, kind of like the food pyramid, but not the messed up one. The basic needs that everyone has are clean air, clean water, and clean food. Those are the basics. And then the next layer above that would be clean products that you're applying to your skin and using around your home. Those types of consumables like beauty and personal care, household cleaning products, laundry care, those types of things. And then above that would be things like clothing, textiles, right, mattresses, pillows, that kind of stuff, everything in your home that you can control. And then at the top would be those kind of wellness tools like a sauna or a cold plunge. You don't need them. You can get the benefits by doing free things, other free things, but I like to think of it like that because a low-tox life aims to not be overwhelming. Just take one step out of time. And if you think of it like, hey, what are the basics? Do I have clean water? Have I removed all the sources of indoor air pollution as I can? Am I doing my best to clean my home regularly? If you're doing those things already, you're already in good shape. Because I think people want to jump and skip steps and then they get overwhelmed and they say, oh my gosh, everything needs to go. I need to change everything out. It's overwhelming. It's expensive. I can't do it. And then they give up. They get overwhelmed. Right. So I think the key to not getting overwhelmed is to just do it one step at a time. One step at a time. One thing that I really appreciate about your work is that you're also a critic of what is referred to as greenwashing. So how do consumers better identify what's simply marketing and greenwashing, so to speak, versus a product that is actually clean and free of these kinds of worrying toxins? Greenwashing is basically the use of unsubstantiated claims to make consumers feel like a product is safer, more environmentally friendly or healthier than it actually is. So this is all just a marketing ploy. And greenwashing happens on the front of the bottle, the front of the package. Everything in the front, I always tell people ignore that. Flip it over if you're buying packaged goods, if you're buying any packaged foods, any personal care, beauty products, household cleaning products, anything that has an ingredients list. Look at those instead. Don't look at the colors because they'll use green colors to make you think of plants, nature, therefore it's healthy. So they'll use words like natural, which is completely not defined at all federally. So most terms, for example, milk has a federal definition of what milk is, but the word natural is not federally defined or regulated. So companies can use it however they want. They can say things are non-toxic. Well, how can you prove that? The only way to really know what you're buying is to read the ingredients list. And how can people order some ways to better understand? Because very few of us have the kind of training that you have. Any tools, tips in terms of assessing an ingredients list? Yeah. So if you look at an ingredients list, just know that the first few ingredients are the most abundant. So that's what the product is made of mostly. If it's water and it's got a bunch of other stuff in it, just know that water, you're basically buying expensive water for a lot of products. And in particular, I mean skincare products and beauty products. But in general, if you look at an ingredients list, what you what you want to see are easily recognizable ingredients. Ingredients that you don't have to Google or research to understand what they are. For example, if you're buying a shampoo that has 10 really scary sounding chemical names, that might not be the best option for you. That's not always the case because there are some synthetic chemicals that are not hazardous. But if you can see something like aloe vera juice, some sort of plant extract, soap bark, or something like that, something that you can recognize as a plant or as a food, beef tallow. That's a great skincare ingredient. You can recognize that. Beef tallow. Interesting. Yeah. Yeah. It's becoming really popular these days. I see a lot of brands coming out with beef tallow, body butters, lotions, all different kinds of things sunscreen. Wow. Do you use beef tallow on your skin? I do. Wow. As like a moisturizer. Yeah. Yeah. So they have body butters that and it doesn't smell like beef. That was my concern. They're they put essential oils, essential oils in it to to provide some kind of scent, but also benefit to the skin. And it works pretty well. Wow. This episode of the show is sponsored by Piori. You guys know that I'm a huge fan of Omega 3 fatty acids. Omega 3s are a powerhouse for your health back by solid evidence. Research shows that Omega 3s can significantly reduce inflammation, which is great news for anyone dealing with conditions linked to chronic inflammation. It's also been linked to improved heart health by lowering triglycerides and blood pressure and Omega 3s might even support brain function enhancing memory and mood. Whether you're looking to boost your cardiovascular health, keep your joints happy or sharpen your mind. Incorporating Omega 3 fish oil into your routine can offer some impressive benefits. 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But to get this off, our all you got to do is head over to Piori.com/max and that's spelled P-U-O-R-I.com/max and use promo code max again to get 20% off site wide Piori.com/max to get my favorite and most trusted brand of fish oil, which also happens to be certified environmentally sustainable, which I got to love as well. Piori.com/maxenjoy. That's good to know. A lot of people hear this, you know, adage to only put on your skin what something that you might be able to consume. Is that something that you think is a decent heuristic to abide by? I think if you are not wanting to look any further beyond, let me back up. I don't think it's a bad way of thinking, but it's very limiting. It's very restricting because there are certain foods that you shouldn't put on your skin. For example, chili peppers. You know, that's a food, but the cabsace in might burn your eyes. You know, it's not a good idea. And I think it's important to know that not all synthetic chemicals are bad. That's the thing is that people want to be quote unquote chemical free, but that doesn't make any sense because literally everything is made out of a chemical. So what I aim to do is to help people understand which are the healthier ingredients that you can look for instead of the conventional one. So calling out the conventional red flag ingredients and then hey, look for this one instead or hey, this is a better product based on the ingredients. So that's what I'm trying to educate people on is how to actually do that for themselves because ingredients are changing all the time. They don't stay the same. Manufacturers can swap things out left and right. They don't have to tell you. And if you're not reading the ingredients list, you're not paying attention. And then suddenly one day you break out in a rash. Why do you think why are the why does there seem to be so many credentialed credentialed antagonists on social media to the so-called low-tox lifestyle? I mean, as a consumer, sometimes you will express concern about a certain chemical. And then you know, you get it's almost like a like a lynch mob comes after you. Like, well, what is the toxin at what dose and what context? Show me the evidence. And I'm like, it's just to me, it just seems like another form of gaslighting because consumers are sick. Consumers, public health statistics are really staggeringly on a downward slope. And I don't think it's all about calories as some might suggest. I think we are really being exposed, you know, to innumerable chemical toxicants on a daily basis. But it seems like swimming upstream advocating for this sometimes, particularly on social media. You're absolutely right. And in fact, I would say I might even be a black sheep amongst the toxicology community because one of the key things that you mentioned was the dose. The dose of dose of dose. The dose isn't always the only thing that determines if something is causing harm. endocrine disrupting chemicals are everywhere the thallies that we've been talking about, the fragrance chemicals, these are causing harm at extremely low levels. Dose responses and the dose makes the poison concept was coined by Paracelsus hundreds of years ago. And he was a genius, okay, he was a visionary, but times have changed. New chemicals have been introduced. We can't just always rely on the old stuff and just say like this is the way things are. We have to be flexible and be open to what the evidence is showing. And unfortunately, the evidence that I speak of is the rates of human disease. And when people say, show me the evidence, well, guess what? There is no evidence because it was never tested. If it was tested, I would be happy to show you. The evidence is when you remove that substance, suddenly you might feel better. That's the evidence that I'm looking for. I don't care if it was shown to be safe on a rat. If it doesn't make me feel good, I don't care. If I remove it, I feel better, that's what matters the most. Yeah. I want to read a line from Consumer Reports article that came out over the past year. Many of these thresholds set by our regulatory bodies do not reflect the most current scientific knowledge and may not protect against all potential health effects of these chemicals. The decision to allow them in food is not evidence-based. I would agree with that, and also agree across all consumer products. So the levels that are set are based on animal studies at extraordinarily high doses for short periods of time. What is most relevant to humans is chronic exposure. And oftentimes, the data that are used to create these "safe levels" are not chronic data. You can't compare apples to oranges. It doesn't make any sense. But it's too expensive to run two-year chronic toxicity studies. It's millions of dollars for one compound, let alone all the chemicals in a product. Because products are not just made of a single chemical. They're made of a multitude of chemicals, but none of them have been tested in that mixture. So nobody knows if there's interactions that are happening and how those are impacting our health. It's completely one-sided, it's narrow-sided, it's missing the mark entirely. My understanding of how it works, and please correct me from wrong, is that they'll take a certain compound and they'll give it to an animal, and they'll continue to titrate up the dose until they arrive at the no observed adverse effects level. And then we assume, based on that level, that anything below that level is essentially safe, and then they extrapolate that obviously to humans. And that's generally how many of these thresholds are set. But with many of these endocrine-disrupting compounds, there's not a linear dose response. It's not necessarily the dose makes the poison. There's the concept in toxicology of non-monotonicity, where you might have low dose effects for various reasons. So yeah, if you could speak to that, is that generally an accurate, I mean, obviously very simplified, but just of how these regulatory thresholds are set? That's a great explanation what you did. So basically, when they administer doses to animals, they try to spread it out and get as many doses as they can, there's usually about five, right? So then they'll say, well, the highest dose we definitely expect to see an effect. And then you start to look downwards and see, okay, at which dose below that are there not effects? Right? So it's usually between doses. You don't know the exact dose, right, because you can only test so many. But you're right. It's based on that. So they say, well, below this dose, there shouldn't be an effect. And generally speaking, what happened when I was working in the chemical industry was you take that no observed adverse effect level or no L, and you divide it by 100. You give it 100-fold margin of safety. So you say 100 times less than this, there should be no effect. That's the presumed calculation. But we know that's not always the case because rats are not people. And so plenty of cases when drugs and other chemicals are tested on rats and then, oh, it's fine, but then oops, it's causing all of these people to die. So maybe it's not the best. And so I think animal testing, although in some regards, it might be necessary. I think a lot of it is just confusing things and giving us a false sense of security, basically. Yeah. And what you've alluded to is that these tests don't account for the cumulative effect, the chronic effect or the effect of these chemicals in the context of other chemicals, which is, yeah, pretty scary. Exactly. Because we're not just exposed to one chemical at a time. It doesn't make sense to do this, but it's not just one product that we're using that has a lot of stuff and it's multiple products. I mean, we're surrounded by, you know, things and they're all made up of compounds. So you can't just negate it and say, well, we did these tests and it looks clean. Therefore, it shouldn't cause disease or harm in any other context. It's kind of a blanket statement. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. And it's completely nonsense. And that's what we have to go off of because technically, you're not allowed to run human studies where you subject people to increasing doses of different things. That's technically not ethical, but unfortunately, the society we live in, the way that things are done, consumers are the test subjects where unwilling test subjects in an experiment, unfortunately. Yeah. You know, this dawned on me a couple of years ago and I saw a study that found that sunscreens, chemical sunscreens, when, I mean, chemical sunscreens might pose their own risks, right? The oxybenzones or the abobenzones. I know have been, have been highlighted by as potential endocrine disruptors. But this study found for the first time that these chemicals are not inert. They, when exposed to sun, when exposed to chlorine in pools, they transform into completely different chemicals that pose their own set of risks that are, you know, understudied huge knowledge gap for us. What are they doing to our children, these, these novel chemicals that these compounds convert to? I mean, we, we assume that chemicals, you know, we spread them on our bodies. They're inert, you know, hopefully they're safe, but we seldom consider how these chemicals are interacting with, you know, these other exposures, whether it's, you know, UV rays from the sun, chlorine in our pools. Right. Crazy. Yeah. I totally agree with you because it's like, okay, well, if I inject it into a rat, well, first of all, it's supposed to go on your skin. So if you're injecting it, how does that, how is that relevant? Secondly, like you said, photo activation by, by the sun, that's a huge problem. There's heat. There's, I mean, so many different elements. Nobody knows how these chemicals are reacting. They just see it in the vacuum of, oh, well, we sprayed on the skin. It should be fine. Again, it's, it's the issue, the issue that we're facing is the synthetic chemicals. It's not the historically used chemicals or compounds that our ancestors used. Because what's missing is the context of a history of safe human use. When you have that history, then we know we are the ultimate test subject. If our ancestors were using it with very little to no harm, then that's pretty clear indication that it's probably not an issue. But it's also scale, the amount that's being released into the environment, the amount that's flooding the marketplace. That's also at the core of the problem. What kind of sunscreen do you use for yourself and your kids? I actually use zinc oxide based. I have some that are made out of tallow. That's interesting. That's a really interesting one. But other ones that are just made out of organic ingredients that you can find. I think at Sprouts or any health food store, you can find these kind of sunscreen products. But I would look for non nano zinc oxide. Non nano zinc oxide. And non aerosol. This is very important. I know the aerosol sunscreens are very convenient. But the problem is that when you apply them, if you've ever seen anyone spring sunscreen on their body, most of it's going into the air. It's not landing on their skin. It's not evenly distributed. So are you even getting adequate protection? You end up spraying a whole lot. It poses an inhalation risk. And years ago, not that long ago, thousands of aerosol products were recalled because of benzene contamination. Benzene is a human carcinogen via the route of inhalation. And why it was in these products likely because of the petroleum based propellants that were used. Benzene is in cigarette smoke. Yes. And also candles. Conventional candles. Wow. You don't need to be inhaling benzene if you can avoid it. That's best. I think that's best. With aerosol sunscreen, even if it's mineral-based, we don't need to inhale zinc oxide. We can spread it on our skin in a cream-based formula. That's absolutely fine. Hmm. OK. Got to, got to, got to dip into the world of organic versus conventional. This is a very controversial topic on social media, although I don't think it should be. Organic versus not organic. Is it worth it? Is organic worth it? In my opinion, yes, because low-level exposures to pesticides, let's say prenatally, have been shown to have neurotoxic effects in children. So there's neuro-behavioral effects, cognitive defects, and kids whose parents consume foods that were pesticide treated versus organic foods prohibit certain types of pesticides. And therefore. just the burden already on the consumer is less, and not only that, but on the environment, what's getting washed down into the water system, into the soil, and also for the occupational workers that don't have to spray these toxic chemicals on food and wear hazmat suits. This episode of the show is sponsored by Life Force. If you're ready to take your health and wellness to the next level, let me introduce you to Life Force, the revolutionary health company that brings at-home lab testing right to your doorstep. Life Force is all about helping you to optimize your health and performance with cutting-edge science-backed personal health plans based on your biomarkers. Life Force's expert team of doctors and scientists have developed advanced at-home tests that provide deep insights into your health from hormone levels to nutrient deficiencies and everything in between, and they offer a personalized approach to your wellness journey. Once you get your test results, they create a customized health plan just for you. No more guesswork, just clear actionable steps to improve your health. If you're ready to transform your health and unlock your full potential, head to mylifeforce.com and use code genius for 15% off. Again, Life Force is a powerful at-home biomarker testing solution. They test super important biomarkers like ABOB, LDL, A1C, hormones, and more. All you got to do is head over to mylifeforce.com and use code genius and you'll enjoy 15% off. Yeah, I mean, occupational exposure to herbicides and pesticides is a, I mean, it's crazy. The connection now being made between certain, like, herbicides like paracquod and rotonone and Parkinson, Parkinsonism. I mean, these are human health outcomes that are understudied in the setting of herbicides and pesticides. A lot of the emphasis is placed on cancer. There's like a whole host of other conditions that might be triggered by chronic exposure occupationally to these herbicides and pesticides. But critics will say, well, organic, when you consume organic, organic is not a guarantee that you're not being exposed to pesticides. There are still certain pesticides that are organic approved. Organic is not more nutritious than conventional. How do you respond to those critics? Well, I just look at the evidence, look at the data. Just look at what the regulations are supposed to do for us. Just look at what is in the national organic program, what's outlined, what's not allowed are synthetic fertilizers, synthetic chemicals and GMOs, right? And I think that people can argue whatever they want at the end of the day, eating a diet of whole, unprocessed foods, even if it's conventional, by far, trumps anything that's processed. Even if it's organic, even if the ingredients are immaculate, it doesn't matter. The process of manufacturing processed foods introduces toxins, period, end of story, no argument there. But when it comes to organic versus conventional whole foods, if you can afford it, organic is the way to go. Not just like I mentioned on the consumer, but also on the environment and on the occupational exposure. And there's even evidence that people who live near agricultural areas have higher incidents of things like respiratory disorders, neurotoxic problems. So there are conditions that are associated with just being in proximity, not even consuming them. It's scary. If money is tight, for example, I mean, we live in chaotic times, a couple of weeks ago, I mean, there were whispers of a possible recession on the horizon, although I think that's all but dissipated at this point. What do you prioritize in terms of what you're purchasing organic if money is an issue? It would be, I actually shop using the environmental working groups, clean 15 and dirty dozen lists. So these are lists of produce products that were tested by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and other sources of data. And they compiled it basically showing which are the produce products that are most likely to be sprayed. Those would be considered the dirty dozen. And then the clean 15 are ones that you can be more confident about buying conventional. And I think that's extremely helpful because if you're not out there, you know, talking to every single farmer to know their practices, a lot of people don't have time to do that or the access. So I think it's a really great resource to be able to know. Well, for example, strawberries are always going to be on the dirty list. I remember learning this as a student in toxicology. Strawberries are one of the most heavily sprayed crops, especially if you're buying them out of season. They're being artificially ripened. I wouldn't touch those. So I also eating in season is helpful. Locally, and if you can talk to the farmers great, if you can't, then check out the EWG lists. They're very helpful. And you can also soak your produce at home. Yeah. I definitely abide by that list. And I'm a fan of the environmental working group. I've cited them many times. I got to speak recently at a conference in DC, the brain and environment symposium. And I got to meet the president of the EWG. And I got to speak on the panel that I was on was a journalist who works with the environmental working group. But I do see on social media claims the environmental working group, you know, critics of even the environmental working group that the environmental working group is a front for the organic industry that it's not a scientific organization. I mean, how is your average consumer to make sense of all of this noise? You know, we hear such divergent opinions so frequently. And so I love that you're the black sheep in the industry, but you're somebody who I get the sense is coming from a place of honesty. And so how is one to make sense of, you know, those criticisms? I think it's important to sort of look at the, you can always follow the money and see where the noise comes from and the noise more often than not in my experience comes from industry. However, so closely associated, I don't know, but there seems to be heavy ties to the industry, whether it be the food industry, the personal care product, the beauty industry, the chemical industry just across the board. These industry groups have a lot of money behind them. And so I, you know, it's not surprising that you hear a lot of pushback because I mean, what is the problem with encouraging people to be healthier, right? I think that's just the the biggest question in the world. And to practice the precautionary principle, which is a concept that was first devised in the setting of environmentalism, but I actually think it's so apropos for as a lens through which to view food and the chemicals that we're allowing into our homes. Because we've seen throughout history, and this is just my own personal take on it, but we've seen so many times where the industry is like, no, it's fine, it's fine, it's fine, it's fine. Only decades later, after countless exposures, you know, to the human population, we've realized, oops, actually, that was toxic shit this whole time, you know? Like as was the case with partially hydrogenated fats, trans fats, artificially created trans fats, led in paint asbestos in building supplies, talc in baby powder, so many instances where certain compounds were deemed safe for many, many, many years, only later to be found, you know, was doing real harm. And who's going to have your back if you get sick one day from exposure to one of these chemicals? They're not, you know, nobody's coming to save you. There's no check, you know, waiting for you. Good luck trying to, you know, to form a class action suit, you know, if you or even to be able to determine what specific exposure caused your illness. And so for me, I think the precautionary principle makes a ton of sense, but it just, you know, I guess common sense is lacking these days. Yeah, I love that you said that because common sense is what can really help you navigate when you're looking at all of these posts online are the ones that make you feel fearful? Are they helping you or are they not? And oftentimes people, I think, on my end of the spectrum, get accused of being fear mongers, but that isn't even the whole point of it. The point is to help you not have fear, to provide you with the tools and the resources and solutions, to circumvent the fear, to push through the fear and to just understand like, hey, things aren't as clean as we once thought they were, practice the precautionary principle, avoid them before, you know, something happens. Not that something will happen, but just to prevent and just preventive care, just taking preventive measures. I don't think it's, I don't think it makes sense to demonize wanting to be healthier. And I think that's what we see a lot of times online. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. I mean, it's like eating a healthful diet and exercising regularly, for example. We know is a fantastic preventative strategy against type 2 diabetes and obesity, right? You might work out, need a healthful diet, and conversely, you might be completely sedentary, but might have a genetic makeup where you might never have developed type 2 diabetes or obesity, for example. But that doesn't mean that those efforts were ever in vain. I mean, there's so many other benefits to eating a healthful minimally processed diet and exercising regularly. Yeah, they're preventative against all these non-communicable conditions that you may or may not ever develop. But that doesn't mean that those that doing that wasn't a good idea all along. Exactly. In my opinion, if you even attempt to avoid these talks chemicals, it's only going to benefit you. There's no, there's no downside of it at all, in my opinion, health wise. Yeah. It might, it might require that you do some work, maybe invest and save money for some things that you might not have, like a water filter, things like that. If you don't, it's not the end of the world. Just do your best. There's so many free ways to avoid toxic chemicals. In fact, when you start cutting back and buying fewer products, you save money, and you reduce your toxic load, it's pretty straightforward. Pretty straightforward. Okay, here's a confusing topic, natural flavors. I personally, I consume products with natural flavors of them, but I understand that some people have concerns about these chemicals. What's your view? My view is flavors are overused. Am I afraid of them? No. Do I know what's in them? I did for many years. Yes, had access to flavor formulations when I worked in the flavor industry. I evaluated thousands of chemicals for safety that were used in the flavors. There were a few restricted compounds, but those are actually naturally occurring from in many cases in different plants and extracts and what have you. Not everything in flavors is awful, but are they always needed is the question. So for example, I was at the store and I saw salami that had natural flavor and I thought, that seems just completely unnecessary. I'm not going to buy that. If it's something that doesn't need a flavor, it shouldn't have a flavor in it. That's a pretty good sign. Like maybe avoid that product if it does or almond milk. Almond milk doesn't need a flavor, you know? So I think oftentimes our senses and our taste buds are somewhat being manipulated by these flavors because they are created to be more delicious than what you would find in nature. Yeah, hyper palatable. Exactly. Typically with the intent of getting you to over consume whatever the product is. Right. I mean, if you ask any flavors, at least those that I had contact with, they'll say, yes, I would absolutely love to design a flavor that makes consumers just eat it nonstop because they love it so much. You know, but it's not necessarily from a malicious standpoint. It's more of their, that's their art. That's their craft. They believe that making foods taste delicious is the way to go. And oftentimes these large scale manufacturers add flavors to make things consistent. Because as soon as the consumer senses that something has changed, they won't buy. Then you've lost a customer. So they start adding flavors to things just to make it have a baseline. So it's not always just coming from a bad place. I don't think flavors should be demonized. Should they be more transparent? Absolutely. The problem that people have is that they don't know what's going on behind the word flavor. They don't know what it means. And that's the problem of all the flavors that I worked on. I don't have concerns. Do I want to consume foods that have flavors all the time? No, because I want to taste real food. It's similar to when you see fragrance on a label, right? Like that term fragrance can represent hundreds of chemicals. And there's very little transparency there. Oh, absolutely. So the fragrance industry, the international fragrance association or ifra, they published their transparency list. So all the list of probably close to 4,000 chemicals right now, that could potentially be put into a fragrance. And who knows how many of those 4,000 are in a fragrance, right? Fragrance or perfume. That's how it shows up on the label. When you look at the transparency list, it's it's fake transparency because you still don't know what's in that fragrance that you're buying. But it could be anything out of this list. It's like a mixed bag, right? And the problem is that they have known carcinogens, known endocrine disruptors in this transparency list. So they're telling us we're putting these in there. And there is even a test showing that 100% of 40 some odd fragrances, designer fragrances tested from a department store, tested positive for high levels of thalates, even those that were manufactured in Europe, where thalates are not allowed. Is Cologne and like perfume for women? Are those like the worst things ever? Yes, I I used to have perfumes and fragrances had a stronghold on me. And I think it's not surprising because our sense of smell is hardwired into our brain. And it elicits emotions and memories and triggers lots of different things. And so it's a sensory experience and you know, we're sensory beings. So I don't think it's a surprise that people are really connected and addicted to perfume. It's just the chemicals that are in there are not safe. We shouldn't be dousing ourselves in Cologne and perfume. And then wondering later on, why, you know, you're experiencing fertility issues or my grains. I mean, a lot of these a lot of these compounds are Zeno estrogens, right? They're like estrogenic, right? So men are slathering themselves with Cologne that are actually maybe in some way some capacity having a feminizing effect. Yes. And they think men somehow think, oh, well, I'm a man. Testosterone is my hormone, right? Estrogen doesn't matter, but it does. It absolutely matters for men. And there are case studies of men that have higher levels of thalates, I have lower semen quality, lower testosterone, and the parameters of fertility. Wow. I've been one Cologne in years, decades. Good for you. Probably. Yeah. Um, man, so, so crazy. Um, yeah, we live in such a skewed world where, I mean, you're almost like slapped on the wrist for discussing these topics. No, because there's so much money involved, but it's, it's really sad. I mean, it's really sad. And it may, you know, I'm, I'm not often prone to pessimism, but I don't see things getting any better. Do you, with increased awareness, do you see this? You know, do you see things improving or is it just like getting worse and worse? No, I absolutely see things improving. You do. Yes. I have been actively speaking out on this issue of toxic chemicals in consumer goods for a number of years. And in that span of time, when I started, the products that were available that were low talks, safer, better for us were very few and far between, especially in stores. The big box stores carry the big brand names of the big top eight corporations that basically run everything. They give you this illusion of choice. But most products are owned by these top corporations. And unfortunately, those are all the ones that have the ingredients of concern because they're cheap. They're easy to manufacture. Nobody's questioning it. So why change? We're making a ton of profits. So let's keep going. The smaller brands that are trying to make the healthier products, they have to compete with all these big brands to try and get shelf space. But with consumer pressure and demand, there has been a dramatic shift. When you walk into the big box stores, now there is even a small section of healthier, more plant-based, quote unquote, natural. I use that very lightly products that are better for you. And it's, it's amazing to see, to be honest. I'm amazed in such a short amount of time. How much being loud about this topic and having getting consumers to rally behind this has dramatically shifted things. And there are more small brands that are emerging that are making healthier products that really have people and plan it as a priority instead of the profit. And those are the brands that we should be pushing to the forefront to try and drown out and let these other big brands know, hey, we're not standing for this. You've been putting parabens and thalates and formaldehyde releases in my shampoo for years. And now I have this health problem. I'm not okay with this anymore. Yeah, it's really important to vote with your wallet. Oh, absolutely. That's how you hit them. And I think a lot of companies would be open to knowing if you decide not to buy a product. Why is that? I think it does make a big impact. And I do it all the time. Like, hey, I used to buy your product. I don't like it anymore. Get rid of this ingredient and I might come back. Get rid of this ingredient. Get rid of that. I might come back. You know, or give them suggestions. You know, if you, I really like your product, but the plastic packaging really has got to go. If you can change that, that would be great. And the more often they hear this, they will take heed because they don't want to run out. You know, they don't want to lose out on business. They want to continue providing these healthier products. Well, we need more people like you. I mean, not everybody has your pedigree and you're your background, your credentials. And I think oftentimes as a consumer, you get a lot of flak, especially today on social media. You're called a fear monger and, and, and, you know, I mean, people with all kinds of covert biases vested interests will come after you. And it could be really overwhelming, intimidating, in fact. And I've seen this personally. I mean, I've, you know, there are certain topics that I'm like, Oh, do I really want to, you know, go down that, you know, open that kind of worms, for example, when talking about organic. But I mean, I, there are certain products that I preferentially by organic, for example, dark leafy greens, berries and things like that. But, but yeah, it, it, there's a lot of resistance to challenging the status quo today. Unfortunately, it's a, it's a huge problem. How can consumers help? I mean, aside from voting with their dollars and I mean, is just continuing to beat the drum about this topic? - Yeah, just keep talking about it, keep sharing this information, spreading it with other people, but also be aware that there is a ton of misinformation online. So looking for the sources of reliable, evidence-based information is key. And I think that's oftentimes what happens is if I end up searching for a chemical or an ingredient online, if you type it into a search engine, you'll get a lot of paid pages that show up. So it isn't necessarily unbiased. So you have to know where to look, how to look for it. And it's not necessarily obvious for everyone, but that's what I aim to do. It's to share this knowledge with people so that they can go out and research for themselves and become more empowered and informed. Because ultimately, at the end of the day, it's not about controlling everything, running and hiding and being afraid of everything in the world. Those state of the world is what it is. Can we avoid a lot of things? Yes, can we help our body to detoxify and remove these chemicals? Yes, we can. It doesn't have to be difficult, and it doesn't have to be overwhelming. And I think just taking a moment, taking a pause, to just make a more informed choice is already better than not. Yeah. Do you have a stance on-- because this is a big topic today on social media-- industrially refined seed oils from a nutrition from a health standpoint? Well, just from a basic science standpoint, I see them as problematic being that if they're processed with hexane different solvents, these are not chemicals that we should be consuming regularly. Not to mention, if a fatty acid is easily oxidizable, we talked about this earlier, the process of oxidation and lipid proxidation in the body, these give rise to free radicals. So when something is easily oxidizable, you are increasing the rate of oxidation in the body, which is the basis of aging and disease. Am I saying that seed oils are the only thing that are causing this? Absolutely not. Most chemicals out there mechanistically are destroying our proteins, our cells, and our lipid bilayers through the process of oxidation. Microplastics, all different types of chemicals that cause toxicity, cause harm in the body, chemicals that are found in cigarettes, in automobile exhaust, in smoke, heavy metals, they have a basic mechanism of causing oxidative stress. And that mechanism has been elucidated for highly refined oxidation prone, polyunsaturated fats, when extracted from the food matrix, heated as they typically are, particularly in the restaurant setting. But they're marketed as cooking oils, so they're being exposed to heat. But I really welcome nuance being brought to the conversation because people love to identify, or to believe that they've identified a book, The Boogie Man. And so a lot of people point at seed oils today is the soul smoking gun in terms of all of our health ailments. But I think it's important to recognize that there is no soul smoking gun. It's a multi-faceted issue. And I think with seed oils, it's probably, it probably is a case of the dose making the poison. But you know, you so much has bring up the topic today on social media, and it's become so inflamed, you know? And so polarized as so many other topics have become, where it's like, you know, on the one hand, some argue that they're the worst thing ever again, the soul boogie man, the soul causal player in all of our problems. But then others seem to give them free reign and, you know, suggest that they're, in fact, healthy and we should be consuming more of them. Which I, at this juncture, I believe the truth is likely somewhere in the middle. Yeah, I would agree with you on that because I think, well, it's not just one thing that's causing all of the health issues. It's the multitude, like you said, of all the things that we're being exposed to. If they're all triggering the same molecular mechanism and pathways, that kind of tells you something. It's not just one thing. It's the same core basic mechanism that's causing a lot of the issues that we're having. Yeah. Health wise. The advocates for seed oils will say that, like, yeah, there's a lot of really scary mechanistic stuff and animal studies that show really kind of scary, you know, there's some scary potentiality there, but the human randomized control trials don't bear out the harms. The epidemiology don't necessarily show a signal of harm. But I don't know. I just think that the studies are, the human randomized control trials are all very short-term. The epidemiology is mired by lots of potential confounding, you know, polyunsaturated fats, for example, are found in very healthy foods, like nuts and seeds and things like that, fish. So, for example, looking for serum levels of linoleic acid might actually indicate and, you know, seeing an association between higher levels and more positive health outcomes might, there might be healthy user bias there, you know. And also, these oils have been marketed as healthy for so many decades. So, again, I mean, I have to default to the precautionary principle. I mean, these oils didn't exist in the human food supply prior to 70 years ago. - Yeah, that's how I practice as well. Just looking back on the historical data, what have we been safely using the longest? I'll stick to those. That's generally how I operate and how, I think that's an easy way of thinking about things. Just how have things historically been used? - Yeah. - Going back to what our ancestors did is a good idea, in my opinion, in many ways. - I think it's a great idea. I think it's a great idea. What role would you say diet plays or other lifestyle habits interventions like Sonny, kind of alluded to Sonny use earlier? Like in so far as our capacity to detoxify, I mean, what is one, you know, we've talked about a lot of scary things, obviously over the course of this conversation, but as a consumer, as a, you know, as somebody tasked with thriving or surviving and ultimately hoping to thrive in this environment, what are some ways to potentially, I don't know, detoxify. We've already talked about ways of reducing exposure, but any ways of, you know, of stacking the odds in our favor, you know, so as to be more resilient, 'cause these exposures are to some degree inevitable today. I hate to say that, but it is true. So yeah, detoxifying, you know, it's sort of a, you know, a word that's been co-opted in many ways by the wellness industry, but is there any way for us to detoxify in a way that's effective? - Yeah, so I love that you mentioned two things. First, you mentioned the fact that we should avoid, right? So I think in the process of detoxifying our lives, avoidance is absolutely imperative, because if you keep feeding your body more toxic substances, it can only detoxify to a certain rate. So removing the sources, removing the triggers, that's huge. The inputs, if you can cut them off, that's best. Number two, you can use lifestyle interventions. I am not a proponent of gadget, or sorry, gimmicky detox, pills, teas, that necessarily isn't going to be the best. What's best is lifestyle changes. So for example, if you take off your shoes at the door, you're leaving a lot of junk from outside, outside. If you want to change into indoor shoes, that's great. Barefoot, whatever your preference is. Just leave the outside shoes at the door. Detoxify your air by simply opening a window. Opening a window can refresh the room air of an average sized room in less than an hour. Completely, just if you open a window, it doesn't even have to be completely wide open. And even during the winter, I know that it's colder, cooler, people may not want to do that. But actually, when I visit relatives in Germany, even in the dead of winter, as soon as you wake up in the morning, you have to open those windows and let the stale air out. You've got to let the fresh air in, even if it's cold. It's actually really invigorating, which I'm sure you've experienced as well. So simple things like that. Then you can also exercise. Exercise is massive for so many things. I mean, you've talked about it. Exercise, it's a non-negotiable. Moving your body can actually increase the amount of glutathione that you have in your body, which is the master antioxidant and detoxification molecule in the body. It's the most powerful. It's the most miraculous and amazing thing. And I'm a bit partial to it because I studied glutathione for my PhD. Wow, I didn't know that. Yes, I absolutely studied glutathione in the context of how it can help protect our reproductive organs from toxic injury, from environmental chemicals. And it does. So don't deplete your glutathione. Because once you do, it's really hard to bring it back without adding in exogenous glutathione. So how do we upregulate our glutathione production? So the sleeping is one. Exercising is another. Weight bearing and aerobic training both can increase glutathione. If you eat sources of sulfur in your diet, may or may not want to eat eggs, I put this on my Instagram. and people had a problem with me saying eat eggs and meat. I mean, why? I don't know. There's other sources of sulfur, and they're known to increase glutathione sources of cysteine. So glutathione is made out of glutamate, cysteine, and glycine. Three amino acids, extremely simple, but cysteine is the least abundant. So it's the rate limiting amino acid. The more cysteine you can feed your body, the more glutathione you can make. That's basically what it is. It's limited by the amount of cysteine that you consume. And where cysteine is, is that an essential amino acid? It is. And is it, so where do we find that, and meat? And meat, eggs, dairy products. What are the other, so cysteine, glycine, and glutamate? And glutamate. Glycine, we also tend to under consume, because it's found in, I don't know if our, is glycine to be found in plants? I think it is actually, but it's one third of collagen is glycine, and we tend to under consume collagenous. We don't really consume much collagenous tissue these days. Mm-hmm. Yeah, and then leafy vegetables, like you said. So forafane, that can help provide the sulfur that you need, which is part of the cysteine. Because basically, it's the sulfur part of the glutathione that has all the power. And that's found in the cysteine molecule, in the cysteine amino acid. Wow, so cruciferous vegetables, broccoli, the smelly vegetable. You can tell sulfur. Yes, you can. And then also garlic, onions, asparagus. Let me think berries, green tea, so matcha specifically. Matcha? Yeah, can increase glutathione production, way protein, if you are someone that likes to consume that, that has been shown in human studies to increase glutathione production as well. Way protein? Way protein. Wow. By just providing the amino acids. I'm a huge fan of way protein. Yeah. Take it like two or three times a day. But you need to find the right one. That's probably an overstatement. Yeah, like once a day. Wait, what do you mean you need to find the right one? Well, purity is absolutely imperative. If you're looking for protein powder, those are some of the most contaminated products on the market. Protein powders. Protein powders. Protein powders are some of the most contaminated products on the market. Yes. Why and contaminated with what? Well, if you're getting plant-based proteins, then it's heavy metals. If you're getting chocolate plant-based proteins, then it's a double whammy because chocolate is a source of lead. It can be. So if you're buying protein powder off the shelf, and it's a chocolate plant-based protein, I would urge you to take a pause and look at the contaminant report. If you can ask that brand, if they've tested their products, third party, for contaminants, that's really important. If it's something you consume every day. If it's not something you're consuming every single day, then it doesn't have to be as pure. So whey and vanilla. Vanilla whey is probably your safety. Vanilla whey. Yeah, would be likely the least source of contaminants, the lowest. OK, but my vanilla whey has natural flavors. Are we cool with that? Depends what's in there. You can ask the company. So if you see natural flavors, again, don't run for the hills and think that it's off the table. Do a little bit of legwork. If it's a brand that you love, and you're using all the time, just ask the company what's in your flavor. And if they are hiding from the question, evading, or not answering, or ghosting, that's not a good sign. But at the same time, think of how frequently you're consuming it and what are the benefits? Are there more benefits than there are risks? To a protein powder, if there's more benefits and risks, then that's not necessarily a bad thing. And I think that's also a key component of low-talks living in the mindset that I want more people to have is just looking at an overall benefit risk ratio. There's risk with everything. Get the product that has the most benefits and the least amount of risks. That's the key. Not perfect. There's no such thing as no-talks. Low-talks. Low-talks. I love that. So eat beef and eggs, crucifers, vegetables, exercise regularly, sweat, sweating as well, I'll assume. Oh, sweating is-- Independent of the-- Exercise. Yes, correct. Independent of the things that we've mentioned. Sweating is a pathway for detoxification of heavy metals, bisphenol, phallate, organophosphate, chemicals, pesticides. So a lot of people will say, oh, well, sweating is not a detox pathway, but it actually is. It is, yeah. I mean, that's pretty clear. There are studies, there are blood urine sweat studies. Yes, I love those studies. Those are great, because for the first time, they exactly identified what's coming out in the sweat. And before that, it was kind of just postulated that it's a detox pathway. It's healthy to sweat, but now there's actually hard evidence. And what about, I mean, another route of detoxification is pooping, right? Oh, absolutely. That's one of the major ones, pooping and urination. So if you're not actively pooping or regularly, then that's a problem, because a lot of fat soluble compounds get broken down by the liver and will be found in feces. So if it's still sitting in your colon for prolonged periods, they can reenter the circulation. And is this why dietary fiber plays a role in helping us detox? Because my understanding is that it traps these bile acids that contain compounds that the liver has basically deemed for excretion, and the fiber essentially traps them. Yeah, it helps to bind it and keep it trapped within the matrix of the feces. But urine is also massively important. And people don't drink enough water. They're not urinating enough. Or they have some issues with kidney, and there are some chemicals that can target kidney health as well. So if you're having any kind of problems there, you should get that checked out. I mean, it's pretty simple to do. If you're going to a doctor, get your analysis. Wow, so much incredible information, Dr. Burkhart. This is a fascinating conversation and so important. And I feel like, I mean, we didn't even get to touch on GMOs, which a lot of people are curious about, have a lot of concerns about, rightfully so or not. I don't know. My understanding with GMOs is that there's only about 12 items that are typically genetically modified. And most people aren't-- and most of them aren't consumable, anyway. Do you have any concerns about that? I think the process of creating the GMO isn't the issue. I think it's the processing of the GMO crops. Right, why these crops are genetically modified? So they can withstand being doused by herbicides and pesticides. Right. It's not the GMO necessarily that's current. Right, that doesn't concern-- I don't see that as a legitimate concern. Because there is evidence of potential gene transfer just in the environment. It's not an isolated event that it was a man-made process. So I think it's the post-processing and how things are treated, how the crops are treated, and the products that they end up in. That's more of the problem, in my opinion. Got it. Makes a dumb sense. Well, yeah, this was a great starting place. I'd love to-- you know, you're welcome back any time. I'd love to do around, too. I'm sure we're going to get a ton of questions as a result of this. You guys can go to our YouTube channel where this video is posted and drop some questions in the comment or if you're watching this on YouTube, leave some questions down below. And I'll be sure to get to as many as I can. And maybe you'll be so kind as to chime in as well. But I've got one last question for you before we get to that. Where can people find you on social media and support your work? Oh, I'm on Instagram. You can find me at Dr. Yvonne Berkart. My website also has a ton of information and resources and free guides and downloads that I've created. That's DrVonBerkart.com. And I also have created an online course to help consumers be able to navigate ingredient lists in a way that is evidence-backed and using toxicological techniques and strategies in a practical way to navigate those ingredient lists that may look like a completely foreign language. Hmm. Well, I'm grateful that we have a black sheep such as yourself spreading the good word. And you know, it's the black sheep that end up changing the world for the better, typically. So, yeah, I just, I'm grateful for you. And I know that you probably get a lot of pushback as do I. As does anybody who's really trying to change things today. And so, thank you for doing what you do. The last question that gets asked everybody on the show, what is living a genius life mean to you? Living a genius life means using your genius superpower, which is your intuition, to help guide your decisions over fear. Yes. Believe it or not, intuition has a lot to do with avoiding toxic chemicals. A lot of it is innate, right? You smell something bad. Okay, maybe that's not a good situation to be in. You know, our senses really give us a lot of information. So, I think relying on how we feel on a gut level is this something that makes me feel better or am I more afraid? Am I more afraid than maybe don't go down that route? Yeah. So true. Well, thanks again for coming out. Thank you guys for listening. Go give Ivana Falo, who works great and important. And yeah, I will catch you on the next episode. Peace everybody. (upbeat music)