Environmental Toxins, Fertility, and Finding Balance with Laura Adler | Ep. 586

Episode 586

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Friday Podcast, episode number 586.
In today’s episode, we are delving into toxins. This is a big topic that can feel
very overwhelming. And I feel like in today’s episode, we cover a lot of ground.
You know, we talk about the issue itself and the difference between personal
responsibility, like what you can actually do to reduce your talks and exposure, but
also what aspect of this is outside of your personal control,
right? We don’t have control over which corporations are pumping which pollutants into
the air and into our water. So there is, I think that one of the reasons that
this topic can be overwhelming is when you look at the research and you look at
all the data. I mean, there’s a lot of data on the impact of toxins on health and
it can be a huge rabbit hole. It can be extremely overwhelming. And so the approach
that I’ve always taken with clients is perfection, I don’t think is a good goal is
to I’m going to be totally clean and free of toxins because you can’t be, you
still have to breathe air and things like that. So there’ll always be some level of
toxin exposure in our modern world, but the approach that I’ve taken more so is
education and reduction. Let’s see what we can reduce. So before we jump in,
let me share a little bit about my guest today. Today on the podcast, I’m joined
by Laura Adler. She is an environmental health educator and science communicator with
over 14 years experience helping health professionals and health -focused businesses
understand the impact of environmental chemicals on chronic health conditions.
Her work bridges established and emerging research with practical accessible strategies
to minimize toxic exposures and build resilience against environmental challenges.
Combining environmental health education with business consulting. She has helped over
5 ,000 health professionals in more than 35 countries elevate their expertise, achieve
better client outcomes, and become sought after leaders in their growing field of
environmental health. So without further ado, let’s jump into today’s conversation with
Laura.
– And I’m excited to be here today with Laura Adler. Thank you so much for coming
on the show. – Yeah, thanks, Lisa, for having me. – Well, I am really excited to
have you here because as I was saying in our pre -chat, it has a huge conversation,
we’re on toxins to start by just asking you a little bit about looking for, and
I’m gonna put an asterisk there because I came to realize a couple of years ago,
I don’t know if it was entirely an accident. Thumbtack. So, you know, I was a
nerdy kid in high school who was reading books about animal agriculture, plant
agriculture, and was just interested in mushroom growing and food workshops and all
of this type of stuff. So I was very much interested in food and nutrition. And
that was sort of my entry into conversations about health. And so I went to a
health coaching program and began health coaching, you know, people that were, they
didn’t have any major health challenges. Most of them just wanted to lose weight.
And most of them were able to do that just by making, you know, some pretty simple
basic lifestyle changes, getting better sleep, all those sort of fundamental basics.
But then I had a couple of clients who did all those same things and nothing
actually changed for them. And that was perplexing to me. And so I started digging
into the literature around resistant weight loss. And that’s what kind of cracked the
door open for me. I was reading about obesogenic chemicals. These are chemicals that
are known or suspected to alter metabolism in ways that can lead to weight gain and
that no matter what people do, some people are just going to struggle more with
their weight than somebody else and that might answer some of those questions. And
it was really fascinating to me. I lived in New York City at the time, so I had
the New York Academy of Sciences in my backyard and Mount Sinai’s, Children’s
Environmental Health Center also, and it was on their mailing list and going to
every one of their workshops and lectures and symposiums that I could to just being
a sponge for this information. And that really is what kind of kickstarted my
obsession, if you would help the obsession with this topic. And so I really started
to dig into the literature and get a lay of the land, so to speak, of like, what
do we know? What don’t we know? Where are there other questions? Where is there
research happening? And once I had a pretty decent grasp of the landscape, I decided
to turn around and start sharing that with my peers because none of the health
coach nutritionists, et cetera, that I was talking to had any,
this wasn’t on anybody’s radar yet. This was in 2010. This really was,
yes, there were some people involved in pushing for change in chemical policy.
And yes, we had decades of research, but it wasn’t in the sort of cultural
conversation like it is now. Yeah, so I started teaching in 2012 and I have been
doing that nonstop ever since. And going back to that thumbtack, because I was the
nerd in high school that was vegetarian and interested in food, everything,
all of my high school papers were on that topic. I remember doing a demonstration
on how to make chocolate pudding with tofu in like a, it was so dumb, but
whatever. I was on the And so about I want to say seven or eight years ago,
I went back to my home or I grew up and you know when you go back to your room
or you grow up and you find like little remnants of things that you never thought
were important enough to take with you. So you just kind of left them in your room
and your parents maybe didn’t touch it. I found a box of index cards that was the
bibliography of this paper that I wrote in high school. And this was when we did
bibliographies on index cards because it was the 90s. And I randomly pulled out a
card and the quote on the card was something about people turning towards vegetarian
diets in part to avoid exposure to environmental chemicals.
And I was like, wait, what? This has been on my radar in some capacity since I
was a teenager. Also, my father works in the nonstick coding industry. He’s a
consultant, he doesn’t work with the chemicals, but these are the PFAS chemicals that
are ubiquitous. So I’ve also kind of had that perspective as well. So yeah, I’ve
been in this conversation for a very long time and it’s been really exciting to see
how it’s changed in that time span. – I feel like the last 10 to 15 years in the
health space have been very interesting. It seemed to coincide with the advent of
social media and this whole shift in this concept, even of social conversation,
which didn’t exist in the ’90s at all. – Yeah, at all. – At all.
It’s hard for the millennials maybe to understand this, but there was none of that.
And so it is really, I can remember when this was not on the forefront. So when
you said that I can really resonate with that, and now everybody’s talking about it.
So tell us a little bit about this whole concept of environmental toxins. So
typically I’m looking at things from the view of the menstrual cycle lens and how
things affect the cycle and how toxin exposure could affect whether it’s your
periods, hormones, fertility, all of those things, but of course it spans a very
wide net. So maybe share a little bit of insight from your research over the years.
Yeah. So I mean, I think what helps kind of frame the conversation is to zoom out
and look at some of the big picture stuff to help people kind of better
contextualize what are we talking about here. And this has changed a little bit. So
five to six, seven years ago, I used to say when people hear the phrase
environmental chemical, they used to and many probably still do, of things like air
pollution and polluted bodies of water and that kind of environmental toxin. Those
chemicals, harmful chemicals that are in those places are absolutely classified as
environmental toxins, but the conversation that I’ve been focused on and that
certainly a lot of people in the health space are focused on right now are the
exposures that we get in our daily lives just by like being a normal human being
on earth trying to have a job and go to the grocery store and get showered and
dressed and have a house, right? Or a place to live. And so in the normal course
of that, we are also exposed to a large number of chemicals,
many of which are known or suspected to cause harm, to be bioactive,
and that we are sort of micro dosing these chemicals, if you will, like all day,
every day. There has been an enormous body of evidence of published studies going
back decades, examining the effect that these chemicals can have in our bodies.
And so that’s kind of the big bubble of what we’re talking about in terms of
environmental chemicals. We are all exposed. There is no place on the planet that
doesn’t have some exposures. Chemicals are measured in the human body.
We have human biomonitoring studies, government -run projects in different countries
around the world that are monitoring for chemicals, among other things, in the human
population. And we have hundreds of chemicals in us. I don’t say that to scare
people. I just say that to frame the idea that chemicals that are in the stuff
that we surround ourselves with aren’t always bound to those things and that they
come out and that they get inside us. The presence of a chemical inside us does
not automatically mean that harm is being caused. Many chemicals are benign. And
we’ll take them in and pee them out immediately. And I’ll say everything is a
chemical, right? So in this discourse around toxins, people like to position the word
chemical, air quotes, as being like inherently bad. Like, it’s a chemical.
Well, everything is a chemical, hormones are chemical, estrogen is a chemical, water
is made of chemicals. And so it’s important that we, I know it’s a ridiculous thing
to have to say like, well, I have to say this, but I do have to say that because
there are people that look at anybody who’s talking about quote -unquote “toxins” and
making this sort of broad judgment that anybody who’s talking about this is fear
mongering. And that’s a common thing on social media. And that’s just patently false,
right? One, yes, sure, everything is a chemical. And yes, some of those chemicals
are harmful. And yes, some of those chemicals are even harmful at extremely low
doses. We know this lead has no safe level of exposure. There’s harm at every
exposure level. So we’re all exposed. We all have some degree of chemicals in us.
Sometimes we know or think we know what some of those health outcomes are. Other
things we’re just learning, microplastics, are in all of us. And we don’t actually
know what the implications of that are. We’re just starting to tease that out now,
and it will probably be at least a decade before we have more good evidence that
is, and I’m not going to use the word conclusively because that’s really hard to
do, and I can explain why if you want, but the reality is that we’re all exposed,
environmental exposures have the capacity to affect every organ system, every tissue
in the body, and so there is this great sort of push to know more about chemicals
that surround us, that make up our lives, and to regulate them in a way that
minimizes exposure or minimizes harm because we do know that these exposures
contribute to major chronic health issues across the board. And so that’s sort of a
reality of the conversation. That’s what we’re dealing with. Some populations have
more exposure than others. Some jobs have higher exposures than others for your
hairstylist or a nail tech. You have higher exposures than somebody who works in an
office. Or you might have different exposures to someone who works in an office,
maybe not higher or lower. Auto mechanics, firefighters, people in the airline,
industry pilots, flight attendants, they all have different exposures. And then there’s
communities that have different exposures, low income communities, fence line
communities, which are communities that live adjacent to or nearby things like
industrial factories or toxic waste dumps, or just a regular dump that have
disproportionate exposures. So there are lots of different layers to the conversation.
But that is in a nut shell, what we’re talking about in the context of
environmental chemicals. It’s such a big topic.
It’s interesting. I feel like you’re obviously knee -deep in this, and so I could
relate when you said fear mongering. When I would talk about the birth control pill,
back in the day, like 10 years ago, people would come out the woodwork and say,
“You’re anti -feminist, and you’re trying to fear monger.” Even if you just tell
people what the actual research says about the side effects. You’re fair mongering.
There is a bit of a line there. I think with the toxin conversation, when you do
get into the research about the different toxins, it is absolutely terrifying.
Those are some of the hardest sections that I’ve found to write about, because
you’re wanting to share what the data has to say in a way that is accurate, but
you don’t want to create this fear in the reader. You want to balance the reality
of the situation. And then one thing I also want to say about it is, so for
example, like from the lens of menstrual health, when we start time out toxins, as
you just finished mentioning, they are literally everywhere. So,
from my perspective, when I teach about just some practical things you can do to
reduce your talking exposure, the keyword in my mind, and so I’d love to hear your
take on this, has always been to reduce if your goal is to get yourself clean and
free of all talk that that is impossible. Because I, and it’s interesting what you
said earlier, because I used to say something like this, I would say, Okay, so
let’s say you do all of the things, let’s say you go and you only eat organic,
and I’m putting air quotes, organic food, you only, you buy the cleanest products,
whatever, like you get the filters on your shower, you do all this stuff, like you
still have to go outside and breathe air, like you still have to like move your
house. So what is the goal? – You have to drive a car, you have to wear clothes.
– What is the goal here? – Yeah, I think the conversation is probably one of the
most important ones because people have become so hyper -obsessed and perfectionist
about everything and not just the toxins conversation, it’s about food. Like I sort
of banished always -never framing or language in my work. I used to say that when I
didn’t, when you know more, you learn, you learn more, you know, and you do do
better, all that stuff. But that framing of always -never, that binary black and
white, it’s either all good or all bad, is really stressful for people.
It adds so much unnecessary anxiety. And I have seen people in my own life that
have sort of succumbed to that and say, “Well, I can’t let my kid go to so -and
-so her best friend’s house because they have scented candles.” That is not what
we’re aiming for. In the food world, this hyperperfection of only eating again air
quotes clean is has been dubbed orthorexia. It’s not in the DSM five.
So it’s not a clinical diagnosis, but people are actually trying to push for it
because there’s some overlap. It’s an eating, again, not an official eating disorder,
but it ticks a lot of the boxes of people just becoming so hyper obsessed,
obsessive ingredient reading and all of that stuff. And this is coming from somebody
who encourages people to read labels, but to not become obsessive about it, the
reality is it is literally impossible to reach a place of zero toxic exposures.
Polar bears in the Arctic have PFAS and flame retargents in their bodies, despite
being thousands of miles away from where these chemicals are used and that’s because
both of those chemicals or classes of chemicals are persistent so they go up into
the clouds, they fall down as rain, they travel in wind currents and so they are
all over the globe and so it is a futile effort to try to get to zero.
All it does is push people towards a inevitable failure because they can’t and then
they operate under that like threat of failure when true quote success again air
quotes is impossible so the goal is not 100 % non -toxic again air quotes living it
is just to do the best that we can to reduce exposure.
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So going back to your discussion about menstrual cycle and fertility and all of this
is when we’re looking at studies of say couples in fertility clinics and we’re
looking at the birth outcomes of people that have say high levels of phthalate
exposure versus low levels and that the higher levels have more poor outcomes or
longer time to conception or whatever the outcome is, at the low end of the
spectrum, it’s not zero. It’s just lower. And so we are not aiming for zero.
We’re just aiming for less. We’re just aiming for less. And I say that talking
through the lens of what’s avoidable, because not everything is avoidable. And the
solutions, or the tools, or products that we buy, all the things that we do to try
to reduce our exposures, those are not equally accessible to all people. And that is
an important conversation that’s often left out, is that not everybody can do all
the stuff. Not everybody can buy the organic food or buy a $200 water filter or do
all of this stuff. And so that I think is a part of the conversation that’s often
left out in the course, especially online, when people are trying to condense
whatever they’re sharing into like a 90 -second reel or a 2 ,200 character Instagram
post, like there’s not enough space for nuance in these small snippets.
And this is a conversation that literally exists in this incredibly nuanced gray
area. Everything, the answer to every question I like to say is it depends The
answer the first response to any question is it depends. Yeah, I mean, it’s such
tricky Territory and one of the interesting things about the fertility awareness
charting field is that it does attract type a Really intense individuals and I I
feel like I can say that because I am one of them like I’m you we are the same
And so A lot of what I do in my client work and working with practitioners has
been to kind of deconstruct that a little bit. Yep. You know, to really get at
what the goal is. For example, with cycle charting, the goal can’t be to have a
perfect cycle every single month because you’re not a robot. So sometimes you’re
going to have a rough night of sleep. Sometimes stuff’s going to happen. So then
the question I want to ask out of that is, I mean, we’ve got these two extremes.
We’ve got the like, I want to get to net zero toxin. I’m going to never, I’m only
going to eat organic, all the things I’m going to do, all the things perfectly,
right? Like that unrealistic expectation versus the weight of this problem actually
thinking about how scary it is to be exposed to these toxins, learning about
specific toxins that are really dangerous. And, like, getting to that, I feel like
the other end of the spectrum would be the apathy of, like, well, I can’t control
any of it, it’s, like, in everything anyways, right? So, like, where’s the balance?
So I would actually reframe that because the two ends of the spectrum, yes,
to the end of the spectrum that you just described where people are, like, hyper
-perfectionists, that end of the spectrum, unfortunately, is veering towards anti
-science. These are folks that say sunscreen is toxic and it’s sunscreen that gives
you skin cancer, not the sun. That is just patently false. But they really, truly
believe that because they’ve fallen so deep in that perfectionist base of it being a
conversation of purity. So that’s one end of the spectrum. The far other end of the
spectrum are the cosmetic formulator influencers that are like all chemicals are in
skin care are totally safe and anyone who says otherwise is fear mongering or the
folks that say pesticides are totally safe and anybody who says otherwise is totally
fear mongering. So those are the two far ends of that conversation. And both of
them are wrong, right? The truth is in the middle. It is in that gray area. Some
of the perspectives that might be happening on the side that is trying really hard
to avoid all these exposures, but going to the extreme, there is some truth in what
they say. And there is some truth in what the folks on the other end of the
spectrum say, but it’s not black or white. That binary reductionist approach on both
ends really hurts this conversation around environmental toxicity. I think there’s less
and less people, there’s still probably millions of them, but there are less and
less people that are coming from the, I don’t really care, we’re all gonna die
anyway, perspective.
Because awareness about environmental chemicals is growing. 10 years ago, I would be
like, yep, it’s either you care too much or you don’t care at all. But Now, people
are aware of microplastics and PFAS and BPA, and maybe not everybody knows what
these things are, but they know the terms. Maybe they’ve heard them on the news,
they’ve seen them in the paper or whatever. If anybody even reads papers anymore, I
don’t know. Everybody gets their news from TV and social media. I think, to my
point, is that the people on the end of the spectrum that say like, pesticides are
totally safe, all chemicals in commerce are safe, everybody is fear -mongering, they’re
doing that in reaction to this other extreme, right? So it’s like they’re over
-correcting in both directions. And the people on the side that are dismissive of the
anybody talking about harmful effects of chemicals are ignoring decades of high
-quality peer -reviewed research on environmental exposures and health impacts.
And one of the things that the folks at that end of the spectrum like to do is
they require absolute proof
in these harms from chemicals. And one, proofs don’t exist in science,
they exist in mathematics. There is only evidence in science, right? So we’re not
anybody who’s like, “Prove it.” To me, I’m like, well, you’ve already lost. Sorry,
argument over. That’s an intellectually dishonest approach. So one, they’re coming from
the prove it crowd. The other thing that we have to acknowledge is that with the
exception of some pretty horrific historical examples, we do not test chemicals
directly on people for ethical reasons. So we cannot have a CT,
double -blind placebo trial on does this chemical cause this health problem?
That is profoundly unethical. And so what happens in the field of environmental
health is we look first at animal research. That is the model that we use,
and we use that to determine the method of action. How do these — one,
do these chemicals have any at what doses are these effects observed?
And what is the mechanism? How is this, is A leading to B? And we do that using
animal models. And there are plenty of people who say, I’m not a mouse,
I’m not a rat. Those studies don’t apply to humans. And my counter to that is,
yeah, sure, absolutely. But we also know enough about the field of psychology to
say, well, this model, this animal model fills in the gaps of that animal model,
meaning like rats, for example, don’t have the capacity to vomit. So that means that
some exposures that they get in their digestive system, they get orally, might have
a stronger effect on them because they’re not able to expel it, so it lives longer
in the system and they just sits in their bodies. This is why for rat poison
manufacturers of rat poison will put a chemical in there that induces vomiting so
that people who might accidentally ingest it will be triggered to vomit.
But it doesn’t work on rats because rats don’t vomit. So they will ingest the
chemical and it will kill them. So there are rodenticides that do that. So Anyway,
with this animal model argument, people like to say I’m not a rat, and I say,
okay, but rats are also used to determine safety. So if you are going to rely on
research on animals that determine safety, that same model has to be appropriate to
also determine harm. You cannot have it both ways, right? And so we look at animal
data, and then we turn to epidemiological data. This is observational studies on
humans. And we say, do we see these same chemicals in human population?
That’s what those bio monitoring studies I mentioned earlier do. They track that. And
they say, is it in people? And if so, on average, how much? And is there
differences in different populations? Are children more exposed? Are women more exposed
than men? Like lots of different variable factors. So we look at at epidemiological
research, which is observational in nature, it’s not intended to prove causation,
or to show causation. Yet there are people, again, on this end of the spectrum that
are like, prove it, show me the studies, blah, blah, blah, that demand such an
incredibly high bar that we ethically cannot produce. And so we have imperfect data,
but that data, epidemiological data, tells us so much. And if we can see the same
types of effects in humans, whether that’s a fertility outcome or a metabolic outcome
or cardiovascular outcome associated with these chemical exposures that we’ve already
determined in animal models, then that is considered strong evidence. And that’s what
we have, but somehow that’s not good enough for some people on this end of the
spectrum. So it’s a really complicated and nuanced topic. I don’t even know what
your original question was, where I went down on that rabbit trail. – Well, that’s
really helpful though. I think that because there’s this perspective about science
that really irritates me, that it’s infallible. And as someone who also spends a lot
of time in research. When you’re looking at different research papers, they are
sometimes looking at an isolated, whether it’s a chemical in this case, or an
isolated nutrient, and it’s looking at a specific situation that may have been
created. Sometimes that’s the kind of study that you’re looking at. Sometimes you’re
looking at observational data, but it’s like, you don’t always know what all the
other potential contributing factors are, even though the researchers try to screen
screen those out. What I always say is that research is done by people and so you
can have a result where you’re looking at a paper and you are looking at the same
data as the researchers, but your conclusion would have been different or you would
have highlighted a different aspect of the result as opposed to… I’ve seen studies
where the thing that is most interesting to me isn’t even in the abstract because
they had a specific or they’re of a specific opinion. >> Right. >> If you are of
the opinion that chemicals are largely safe and that X chemical doesn’t have, because
I’ve heard some of that stuff too, where it’s like this chemical like, there’s
chemicals that are known to cause these problems, but there’s people that will say
that it’s completely fine and whatever. If you’re of the opinion that chemicals are
just all safe, then when you read the same data that I read, you might actually
provide a different explanation and a different interpretation. So it is important to
understand how research is done. And I think you highlighted an excellent point,
which is that this is not a situation where we could literally use that gold
standard and test these things. We’re going to give pregnant women this toxin.
And so I’ll give you an example of where we did do that recently, and a test did
get approval through the ethics board. So I think this was in 2018. This was a
very small study, so like less than 10 people. So not something that we can make
broad assumptions on, but it was an important first step of this type of research.
And so what researchers did is they said, we’re going to give humans, these
volunteers, a the dose of BPA, bisphenol A exposure that is equivalent to the
maximum tolerated level that is already set by the EPA.
So EPA says 50 micrograms per kilogram of body weight per day is the safe limit.
That’s the cutoff, like that’s safe. And there’s a large margin of safety that’s
baked into that figure. Usually it’s 100 or 1 ,000 or a couple of thousands fold
and we’re going to just give them that and they got approval from the ethics board
because a federal agency has already deemed that level safe and so those are like
well let’s test it directly and see what happens and so they did and what they
found is that single dose of BPA at that maximum level which certainly might be
more than what we might get in an average day that altered their body’s insulin
response in a way that would, if kind of left unchecked or continued, might lead to
diabetes. And so, okay, yeah, it’s a small study, yes, we need to reproduce it.
But it is like shining a flashlight into a dark cave of the unknowns and skimming
across something and going, whoa, what’s that? Let me go explore that doorway for a
minute. And so that research is important because it can open doorways into more
granular study. We do have a few of these examples.
Most of the examples are quite terrible when we’ve tested chemicals on people, often
almost exclusively without their consent. Lots of bad history there. And so we’re
operating in a degree of uncertainty. And for some people, that’s unacceptable,
that uncertainty. But to your comment about science, science is a process,
it’s not a finished product. And so, yes, science is fallible, one,
because it’s done by people, and people are fallible. This is where the peer review
process is super helpful, because then you have lots of expert people who are
combing through research to identify any flaws in their logic,
in their data, in their whatever methodology, whatever. And so the peer review
process is super important. And science is fallible because as we learn more,
our positions may change. And people also can’t handle that, right?
They say you can’t change your mind. You told us this, and now you’re telling us
this and that’s just proof that you don’t know what you’re talking about when in
fact that is just the process of scientific discovery and so people have a really
hard time swallowing that and you know as scientists they don’t I think at least
the folks that I’ve spoken to they don’t attach like personal value to their work,
meaning if we find an outcome or we don’t find an outcome, it’s neutral. Because
that’s the sort of, ideally, hopefully, that neutrality is part of the scientific
process, is to not go in with a, “I’m gonna do a study to find this,
to find X or Y.” That is not how the scientific process works. You can go within
within a hypothesis and test it, but good researchers know that the process is to
prove themselves wrong. Like that’s how you design a good study is just what can I
do to make sure that my hypothesis is rigorously tested? And I’m going to try to
prove myself wrong. See, I feel like that’s the ideal. I’m reading so many different
studies. I definitely feel like people are still and they do go into– – Yes,
100%. – And when they, and it’s so funny, when you read a research paper, where the
researcher finds something that they didn’t anticipate finds. (laughs) – Yes. – Because
sometimes like the mental gymnastics or like the actual physical written gymnastics
that they kind of like the word vomit around the thing that they found that they
didn’t think, it’s entertainment. I mean, maybe this is not the kind of entertainment
that people are used to, but like I find that stuff to be just really interesting
because, and I feel like people need to know that. And I think that we’ve gone to
a place where we want, I mean, I think that it’s good. I think that requiring and
requesting evidence to support your points. I do think that overall it’s positive
because it does prevent just general nonsense all the time. – Oh, absolutely. I’m a
huge fan of citing research. – Huge research. – Yes, but with that said, the problem
is that there’s always gonna be people that are doing things more or less close to
the ideal, as you described. – Of course, yeah. – And so you can also find a paper
to support anything you want. There’s at least one paper out there that is contrary
to this or whatever. There’s always, if you’re looking at any topic, there’s like,
and you look at multiple papers on any topic, there’s going to be papers that show
a positive result and a negative result. You would have to have the wherewithal
patients understanding to look at those research studies critically, look at the way
that they conducted it, to try to have a better understanding as to why maybe this
study found this result versus this study and all of that. So at the end of the
day, there’s never going to just be this easy like this is the clinical study.
We never have to do any more research ever again. We found the answer. And so it
is a process, as you say. And – This is where, I’ll just interject.
This is where like consensus statements come in and said like, let’s look at meta
-analyses. Let’s look at these systematic reviews that are looking at a lot of
different papers and pooling the data and then analyzing it and saying, are we still
seeing these trends and are the quality of the studies that are, if it’s garbage
in, it’s gonna be garbage out, right? The quality of the studies in any in meta
-analysis or systematic review has to be quality, but if we look at bodies even like
the American Gynecologist and Obstetricians or that ACOG, ACOG has put out a long
time ago position statements on four clinicians to advise their patients in lowering
exposures to say endocrine disrupting chemicals. They’re not going to do that if they
don’t think that there’s a strong enough body of evidence to support making that
recommendation. And so when we have large bodies like ACOG, like the Endocrine
Society, the NIH has a whole division, NIH, the National Institute of Environmental
Health Sciences that is devoted to exploring this, and they also have these position
statements. And it’s not a, again, it’s like there’s this bar of like absolute
certainty and like we exist in a place of uncertainty and we have to be comfortable
with that and the choice that we make is given the evidence that we have and how
strong that evidence is or how weak that evidence is and given a degree of
uncertainty do we have enough to feel comfortable making a recommendation or taking
action and some of that is the individuals shoulders to make that decision maybe i
don’t have an exact volume of conclusive data that shows without us without a doubt
that x or y is safe or x or y is harmful we have to be able to make decisions
and move forward even given uncertainty otherwise we just do nothing right like we’re
just in this paralysis mode And at the same time, we have to recognize that vested
industries, the chemical industry, the tobacco industry, et cetera, part of their
procedure is to manufactured out. There’s multiple books written on the topic of
manufactured doubt. There’s a 2014 documentary called Merchants of Doubt that talks
about this, that there are paid consultants at these large industries that represent
the chemical company or whatever, agricultural industry, whatever it is, the sugar
lobby, that intentionally sow doubt. And so I think a lot of the folks that are on
the side of the environmental health conversation that are being dismissive, they’ve
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What you’re saying is that there’s, I mean, it’s not necessarily a surprise to learn
this, but these organizations are specifically like paying people to go out there and
say, actually these chemicals are really safe. And now this is a movie. This is not
like a scientific source, but I remember watching Aaron Brockovich, right? That movie.
And it was based, I don’t know how loosely, so please just excuse if it’s like not
the most scientific, but what came to mind when you said that was that part of
that movie where the, one of the families was like, they actually sent something,
they had, they sent someone out and they did a whole seminar telling us that it
was safe and how good it was for us. Yes, but that has been repeated in countless,
countless industries. And this is also not new, right? So I’m in the middle of
reading an excellent book called The Poison Squad, which has to do with Harvey
Wiley, who was a cabist at the turn of the last century, late 1800s,
into the 1900s. And he was instrumental in among some other sort of events it
happened, he was instrumental in the passage of the very first Food and Drugs Act
of 1906. And I’m listening to this highly cited book, that’s audio book,
but a book that’s talking about all of the links that the chemical industry at the
time, there wasn’t really a pharmaceutical industry, but there were people selling
what are called patent medicines. This is where the term snake rail salesman comes
from that era, the meat packing industry, all of these industries that were producing
like the most toxic, adulterated food with formaldehyde in it,
saturated in formaldehyde. A milk would be preserved with formaldehyde so that they
can sell spoiled milk and people won’t know. They would use copper chromate and I
mean, it’s a disgusting, it’s a fascinating book. I highly encourage people to read
it. It’s an easy book to listen to or interesting book to read, even though it’s
technical. In the health space, folks love to glamorize and sensationalize the way
our grandparents say it. It was all pure. They didn’t have pesticides. Girl, they
had worse. The food was so bad. Didn’t they advertise DDT as an insect repellent or
something? – Yeah, so DDT was used as an insect repellent. Kids were sprayed with
it, powdered with it. On a regular basis, they would run after the DDT truck.
– Like if you ever see those old ads, it’s like there was like a catchphrase of
like rhyming it. Yeah. – So, and these industries use, they recycle the same tactics.
The tobacco industry used it very famously to manufacture doubt about the safety or
the harm of cigarettes. And so that documentary that I mentioned, Merchants of Doubt,
highlights that the same literal same human beings that were paid by the tobacco
industry to discount and manufacture doubt about the harm of cigarettes were then
also hired by people in the fossil fuel industry to discount the data on climate
change, like the actual same person. So like these are tactics that are utilized
over and over and over again, which is why we’re in this like really messy soup of
discourse about nutrition, about pharmaceuticals, about environmental health,
environmental chemicals, and it really muddies the water. So that’s where like we
have to take a data forward, I think a very data forward view on this topic and
what does the data say? And the data says these environmental chemicals, many of the
ones that we are exposed to, are absolutely causing or contributing in some capacity
to poor health outcomes. And the way we rectify that first and foremost is by
regulating these chemicals in a more comprehensive way, in a way that is exposure.
But when we try to do that, we’re up against that same industry influence. So it
is like we’re kind of stuck. We’ve been in the spot for decades. Well, so I know
before we started recording, I mean, one of the things that we were talking about
was the difference between the kind of addressing talks and exposure as a personal
issue versus a kind of bigger, broader problem. And I mean,
I think one of the challenging aspects of that is that we want to have personal
power over our own selves and over our own health. And I think we do to some
degree, I think there’s a lot of benefit to being made aware of these different
products. I mean, as a female, all of the products that are made for us are full
of all kinds of chemicals. And there’s a lot of studies that show that if You just
stop lathering that stuff all over your body, that it really does reduce your
exposure in a significant way. There’s a lot of value to that, but to your point,
why are the chemicals allowed to be there in the first place? There’s definitely
more to this conversation. We still have to go outside, we still have to breathe
air, we’re still being exposed. I think earlier when I was pointing that dichotomy
between I’m going to take control of my health and my exposure. I’m going to do
everything I can versus just being super apathetic. It’s like one of the challenges
I’ve with clients is just sometimes for someone who hears about that, it might be
less common now because like you said, it’s a really big part of the general
conversation. But I remember working with younger women, women in their 20s.
Women not saying anything negative, but when you’re in your 20s, maybe trying to
have a baby. Like you’re just, you might not have been exposed to all of this
information around all of this stuff. So I remember having, doing these group classes
and I would have someone who really was green to this information and just like
you’d see the look on her face. She would just, because if you really get into it,
it’s everywhere. It’s like, it’s not just your beauty products. It’s not just those
scented plugins. It’s the off gassing of your carpet. It’s the mattress. But it’s as
you were saying earlier, it’s apparently you’re like it like it’s everything like
it’s everything, right? So I think for my listeners to this podcast, we don’t really
have to convince them that the science is there. I feel like they know, you know
what I mean? Like yeah. And this is something that I’ve written about. And like I
said, there’s an extensive chapter in recent book, Lily wrote this whole chapter on
toxins related to fertility. And so There’s enough evidence, like you said, for us
to know that some of these chemicals are associated with certain negative outcomes to
what extent, in which all of that is a whole other conversation. So in the work
that you’ve done, what can we do for the person who is a little bit more type A?
I want to clean. I want to be clean. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like what do I do,
right? Like so where is that middle ground? What have you found has been most
helpful for your clients. So I think just to frame it in the fertility conversation,
the primary things that I think are important to prioritize, I mean, I try not to
talk too much about environmental chemicals through a like condition specific lens,
because all of the chemicals that are negatively impact human fertility,
also impact cardiovascular disease, also can impact cancer, can also impact metabolic
conditions. So if there’s like redundancy, like so much redundancy, so because we
have these single chemical can have like a dozen different endpoints and we don’t
know what makes it move down one path and affect this person this way and that in
that way, it might be the timing of exposure, like when are we being exposed? It
might be the dose that we’re being exposed to. It might be genetic susceptibilities
that turn somebody down this path and somebody else down that path. I say all of
that to say the primary things that I would prioritize within the context of human
fertility, male and female, are endocrine disrupting chemicals that probably tracks
with what’s in this chapter that you guys wrote. So endocrine disrupting chemicals
primarily and then things like heavy metals. The strongest evidence that we have in
terms of environmental chemicals affecting human fertility are with things like
phthalates and endocrine disrupting class
that are used in different places, BPA, and I would extend that out to bisphenols
in general because BPA, like phthalates, is just opposite of phthalates. BPA is one
chemical in a family of chemicals like bisphenols. So phthalates are a family,
bisphenols are a family, and then PFAS chemicals, that’s the third one. PFAS
chemicals are a large family. We don’t even know how many, but it’s estimated to be
at least 14 thousand chemicals under the PFAS umbrella and phthalates less and BP,
bisphenols less. And so the strongest evidence that we have are with those three
classes of chemicals. And so then the task becomes, well, where do those chemicals
show up? And how can I focus my time and my effort without going overboard to,
as I like to say, identify and address. So let’s identify where they are, and then
let’s address them in the ways that are reasonable and accessible. So we can just
go through that list of those three chemical categories and say, okay, well, where
do those live? And what can we do to minimize our exposure? So phthalates, there
are can be there’s two different types. There’s like high molecular weight phthalates
and low molecular weight phthalates. So high molecular weight phthalates are what are
used in plastics. So soft plastics, this is things like a shower curtain,
a rubber duck, a like plastic PVC raincoat for kids,
for adults, whatever, kids rubber boots, for example, soft,
plasticky materials, sometimes even in food packaging, like squeezable, ketchup bottles,
et cetera. So those are high molecular weight phthalates in plastics, low molecular
weight phthalates are found in fragrance products. So perfume,
but also makeup and also your toilet bowl cleaner and your shower spray and your
kitchen sink spray and your laundry detergent and your dryer sheets. And if you have
them scented candles and air fresheners and febrize and plugins and read diffusers
and incense and the whole gamut of fragrances. And so the recommendation is twofold,
is one end of the spectrum, is to minimize exposure or use of soft plastics.
I like to prioritize food packaging because that is exposure that we’re ingesting.
And so that exposure route is likely to be more impactful than exposure that we get
from a raincoat, and I’ll say maybe to that, because skin absorption of high
molecular weight compounds is going to be limited to some extent. That said,
materials shed chemicals, for the most part. These chemicals that are used in all
manner of products are not molecularly bound, they’re just kind of hanging out.
And so that means that those molecules can shed on their own. And where do they
shed? They shed into our homes. And where do they settle? They settle in the dust
in our homes. So there’s been numerous studies. There was a meta analysis of I
don’t remember how many studies they looked at. I think it was 14 studies done
across the US of house dust studies. Super boring topic, but to some people I think
it’s really interesting. And 100 % of dust samples across all of these studies
contained phthalates and some other compounds. So phthalates are ubiquitous and they’re
in the dust in our house. So yes they’re going to shed from the raincoat and yes
they’re going to shed from the shower curtain and the rubber dubs and all that and
we may not encounters too much of that through our skin, but when they settle in
our dust, then we inhale them and then we ingest them when we handle that anything
that fell on the floor and then you’re eating popcorn on the couch and you drop
something and you pick it up and you get a little dust and you don’t realize it.
So house dust is a meaningful source of exposure. And so what do we do? We clean
our homes more frequently, a recommendation that no one wants to hear. I’m sorry.
And there’s a specific way that we do it. This is a low cost or no cost
intervention is we either increase house cleaning so that there’s more frequency with
the aim of capturing and removing things like dust. So not sweeping it with a
broom, because that’s just kicking it up and kicking it around using a vacuum.
Ideally, this is the not a low cost intervention, but is getting a vacuum with a
HEPA filter, that’s ideal, but any vacuuming is going to be better than no
vacuuming. And then wet dusting, wet dusting is just taking like a cotton cloth,
whatever kind of cloth, getting it damp, doesn’t have to be even with cleaning
solution, just water is fine. And the idea is that we are capturing that dust and
then we can wash that material and reuse it over and over again. So I’m not
recommending Swiffer. Swiffer does the same thing, but that is plastic. It’s a woven
plastic that will sit in a landfill for 500 years. So don’t endorse using those
types of products. So that’s a really simple intervention, is increasing house
dusting, and then hand washing. So wash your hands regularly, even though you’re in
your own house, and maybe you’re just making a sandwich. If you’re going to go sit
on the couch and eat it, wash your hands. They can actually help reduce chemicals
that we’re supposed to in the home. And then going back to the fragrances is ditch
those scented candles and the air fresheners and the home fragrances. Those ones are
super unnecessary. If people are using them because their house smells funky
otherwise, go figure out what’s having a funk and address that. Don’t like cover it
up with Lily of the Valley, whatever I don’t know what people are buying these
days. That’s a very dated like 1970s fragrance. So sorry. But getting rid of those
fragrances completely can lead to a reduction in phthalate metabolites in the body.
So that’s a starting place because that’s an unnecessary use. Then when it comes to
like your personal care products and your household cleaners, use what you have,
finish it up. I’m not the type of person that is like, throw everything out, OMG.
The concern for exposure to all of these chemicals is not individual exposures.
Like, oh no, I was in an elevator with somebody that had perfume on and now my
close mouth, I’m gonna have cancer. That is not what we’re talking about. We are
talking about low levels of exposure chronically over time, over years,
decades. And so the sooner that we can intervene and lower those exposures and keep
them low by maintaining these behaviors, that’s likely where the benefit will present.
And so that’s the scope of the conversation. So ditch the home fragrances, use up
the personal care products and household cleaners that you have, and then when it’s
time to replace them, go for fragrance -free unscented.
always look on the ingredient label, you’ll see the word fragrance, even you’ll see
that on unscented products. This is not a guarantee that the product contains
phthalates, it is just an indication that it might. So you might see products that
have some type of fragrance that’s added and they say it’s phthalate free. You can
choose to buy that or not buy that, that’s up to you. But that’s the general
direction that we’re going with phthalates is getting rid of as many fragrances as
possible, cleaning up our house dust, and then to the degree possible, prioritizing
as it pertains to like food. If you can find something that’s in a glass container,
like a glass tomato sauce or stewed tomatoes or whatever, over like anything that’s
soft and squishy, mayonnaise in a glass jar versus mayonnaise in the plastic
container, it’s a high fat food, phthalates can be pulled out by that, the other
way around, doesn’t matter. Go for glass over plastic when you can and it’s not
possible all the time. It’s just don’t stress about it is my point. Make changes
where you can, but don’t stress about it. So that’s sort of the conversation around
phthalates. And that might be, that’s a tall order in and of itself. And so that
might take somebody six months to tackle all that fine that’s okay again this is a
long game it takes however long it takes and any reduction is better than no
reduction so we all do what we can moving on to this phenols bpa bps bpf i think
one of the conversation points that is often used in a sort of dismissive manner
about the discourse around environmental exposures is to target one specific exposure
and dismiss the harm from that exposure. So for example, thermal paper, cash register
receipts are coded in abyssinals. Sometimes it’s BPA, sometimes it’s BPS,
BPF. These are similar compounds that have similar health effects. A lot of times
when products are marketed as BPA free, that is just marketing,
garbage, because that product still might contain BPS or BPS, which research shows
has the same types of effects. So not better. It’s like a whack -a -mole. They whack
one down and a couple other pop up in their place. And so what people like to do
is they’ll say the amount of exposure to BPA that you get from a cash register
receipt, which you do because when you touch it, If you close your eyes and touch
paper and then touch a receipt, you can feel the difference. Died from thermal paper
being thinner, it’s also like it’s powdery feeling because it’s powdered, and those
are just free BPA molecules coming off. And we do absorb through our hands, not a
ton, but we do. And so people are dismissive of this by saying the amount of BPA
that you absorb from your cash register receipt is minuscule and doesn’t have any
effect. Yes, that might be true. But what if we add the BPA from the cash register
receipt, plus the BPA from the canned food, plus the BPA that you’re also getting
from these other, you took your soup and your canned tomatoes and you put them in
a plastic blender that had BPA and you blended them when they were hot and it
pulled more of that BPA out. Now you’ve got multiple stacked exposures to BPA.
Collectively, do those matter? Yeah, I would wager that they do. We also have
emerging research, it’s not that emerging, but there’s like a field of research
that’s trying to examine the effect of multiple exposures at the same time.
The field of Exposomics, which gets its name from genomics, and the whole like,
we’re going to map our genome, and we’re going to know everything about everything,
about everyone.
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And so we have exbosomics, which is a field that is attempting to, from a very
data -heavy perspective, assess the totality of exposures and the impact of the
totality of exposures. But we study chemicals one at a time, right?
We don’t study them as mixtures. It’s really complicated. But we have found that
when we have two chemicals that have similar effects, together,
the outcome of that exposure is greater than the sum of the individual exposures.
So it’s amplified. And so that’s what I think of when somebody’s like the BPA in
your receipt doesn’t mean anything. And I’m like, but what is it? Yeah, on its own,
it doesn’t mean anything. But I don’t live in a world where that’s the only
exposure that I get, I live in the real world. And so it is, again, this totality
of exposures to endocrine disrupting chemicals, again, in particular in this
conversation, that I think are the most important. So if we’re looking at BPA, BPA
is found in thermal receipts, it’s found in some polycarbonate plastic. Polycarbonate
plastic is the type of plastic that like your Cuisinart food processor bowl is made
out of and your Vitamix that you spent $450 on whatever. That one may or may not
contain BPA, but that type of plastic, it’s also in things like your eyeglasses,
that plastic that is in your eyeglasses is polycarbonate. Are we getting a meaningful
exposure to BPA BPA from our eyeglasses given the context of how they’re being worn
and interacted with, probably not. Bisphenols are also found in canned foods, and so
those compounds can leach out of the can into the food,
and we consume those foods, and then we can get a spike in our BPA levels. The
good news about both of the classes of phthalates and bisphenols is they have very
short half -lives, which means that they are actually metabolized and excreted very
quickly. The half -life is about six hours, rough six to 12 hours for these
compounds. That doesn’t mean that in that time, they’re not kind of turning on and
off some lights that maybe they shouldn’t have. That doesn’t mean that they’re not
messing with things. One, and two, because we’re getting multiple exposures to say
BPA from the canned food and BPA from the receipt all day every day, our exposure
levels to these chemicals are constant, they’re constantly present because we’re adding
them in faster than we can take them, than our bodies can take them out even if
they can do that quickly. And so that’s where we don’t need a detox, we don’t need
a supplement to help get rid of BPA in your body, you just need to lower what’s
coming in. And that’s a behavior change. That’s a change in the things that you buy
and the way you interact with materials. So I am somebody who’s, I don’t want to
say I’m like anti detox because there’s certainly times and places where it’s
absolutely the appropriate medical intervention. But I’m not a huge fan of the like
everybody detox, take all these supplements, do all this stuff. These products make
huge claims about about like, we’re gonna get rid of your toxins out of your body.
Which toxins? Which one specifically? Heavy metals? Because the way you would get a
heavy metal out wouldn’t apply to a phthalate or a bisphenol. So,
behavior changes. So, that means minimizing the consumption of canned foods. You can
find BPA free cans, but again, what are they using? Are they using BPS or are they
using BPF? It’s not a perfect, we’re not aiming for perfect, we’re just trying to
do what we can. So that means not handling thermal receipts too much. Don’t go to
the grocery store with your little kid in the front of the car and hand them the
cash register receipt so they can put it in their mouths and crinkle it up in
their hands as you are unloading the groceries into the trunk of your car, like not
recommended. The bigger impact is going to be for people who work as cashiers, or
who work at a restaurant that are handling receipts all day, every day. That’s a
greater impact. So if you can, in those jobs, wear gloves. If you can’t wear
gloves, wear what are called finger cots, which fingers that you would normally
handle. So like your middle finger, your pointy finger and your thumb, those are the
fingers that you would normally use to accept and give receipts. Finger cots are
like little condoms for your fingertips for anybody who’s like, what does she say?
So that’s fun. You can walk around with a little container of finger condoms. So
those are the interventions. Minimize canned foods, minimize plastic. If you have, I
have a plastic Cuisinart blender, I have a plastic Vitamix, and I still use them.
The general rule of thumb is do not put hot foods in them. Heat can increase
leaching. Do not grind really hard foods. I know you can,
but I don’t recommend it because you are abrading the surface of the interior of
those plastics, which is also going to leach, increase leaching, and migration of
those chemicals. Don’t put them in the dishwasher. Dishwashers are the dishwashing
detergent. It’s quite caustic, so it can damage those plastics. If you put plastics
in the dishwasher or not, they get foggy, and that’s because you’re literally like
abrading the surface of that plastic. And then just in general, minimizing plastic
use across the board in your kitchen, that’s not necessarily a fertility related
thing. Again, this is just a general recommendation. And then the last one is PFAS,
and this one’s really hard. Not gonna go see foot around it. Avoiding PFAS is
really difficult because PFAS are ubiquitous in society. PFAS are these forever
chemicals stands for perimpoly fluorinated perimpoly floral alcohol substances,
PFAS, and they are used in every sector of society,
military medicine, food, textiles, automobiles, weapons,
literally every sector, cook ware. And so the task becomes avoid what’s avoidable.
That’s it. Or reduce what’s avoidable. And there’s plenty that’s not avoidable. And
so what that means in our day to day life is in the realm of cosmetics,
we do not wear or buy long wearing lipstick or waterproof mascara because those
products likely contain PFAS chemicals. Anything that’s floral in an ingredient is an
indication that you likely have a PFAS chemistry in there. So long wear lipstick,
not recommended, waterproof mascara, also not recommended, but they can sneak into
other products as well. In terms of the textiles, this is again,
I’m making, I’m telling you where they are with the full knowledge that like, not
everyone’s going to be able to do something about this stuff. So again, it’s
information, it’s not intended to freak anyone out. But like couches, upholstered
furniture, those fabrics are often treated with stain -resistant chemicals. Anything
ScotchGuard -esque, those are PFAS chemicals. So don’t intentionally
waterproof textiles that you have with any spray that you would be spraying on
yourself. This also is, you know that, I don’t know what it’s called, it’s called
Rain -X. The stuff you put on your car windshield so that the water beads off, very
likely PFAS chemistry that is doing that. So PFAS chemicals add oil resistance and
water resistance to products. That also means that they’re in cookware. So non -stick
cookware has PFAS chemicals. The more scratched that that cookware is,
the more those molecules of PFAS are leasing into the food that you’re eating. So
if you have non -stick, time to get rid of them, throw them out. I don’t even
recommend donating them because then somebody’s gonna get it in a thrift store or
whatever and then you’re just passing the buck to someone else. So unfortunately,
this is a just throw it out. Replacing cookware doesn’t have to be expensive. Sure,
if somebody wants to go out and buy like titanium stainless steel, really expensive
cookware, go for it. But The basics are stainless steel, cast iron,
enameled cast iron, glass, carbon steel, which is like cast iron, just very thin and
light. Those can be really inexpensive. This is, I’m very conscious of not
positioning these solutions as like, here’s a $500 red light device or sauna that
you have to buy or $6 ,000 Wim Hof, ice dunk, biohacking situation,
we’re really just looking for practical accessible solutions. So you can look up your
water quality report to see whether or not your water utility is monitoring for PFAS
in the water. We did have some regulations that were brand new at the end of the
last presidential term. We had new regulations to regulate six PFAS chemicals,
there are 14 ,000. So the six that we have the most data on, we don’t know some
of those chemicals we don’t know anything about, so we can’t test for them. And
those regulations just got a pause or got thrown out under the Trump administration.
So we don’t know if those regulations are actually gonna be enacted. It was a
really wonderful thing to celebrate for those of us that know about PFAS chemistry
and the health harms and so it was snatched away from us as a protective public
health measure along with many other things unfortunately. If you have PFAS in your
water I think that there are other places where you can database that you can find
this out if you don’t know and you can’t find it out you can test for it it can
be expensive but testing consumer testing available. TAP score is the company that I
recommend. If you do have PFAS in your water, I recommend filtering it. We’re not
aiming to buy plastic water bottles. That’s not it. We’re going to filter our
drinking water and you’re going to be looking at like a multi -stage under sink
filter that’s got like multiple canisters of filtration media.
That’s what’s been proven to be the most effective that in reverse osmosis
filtration, which might be overkill for a lot of people, like your Brita water
filter is not going to do anything to remove PFAS. It can be a little bit tricky
to remove. And we just do the best that we can. PFAS are, like I said, they are
ubiquitous. And so we do what we can. We don’t have data yet as to whether or not
these interventions are truly impactful. The most impactful way to reduce PFAS levels
in the body is to donate blood and plasma. But that’s not a reasonable
recommendation, especially when that blood and plasma just gets moved into the
donation stream. So we are literally just passing on PFAS to whoever gets that blood
or plasma. It is not a sustainable solution, but it is a evidence -based one. So
that’s kind of, it’s a lot. I know I just spoke for like a good 10, 15 minutes
just then, But that’s kind of where we spend our time,
not obsessively, but just like, hey, my shampoo is running out. What can I find
that is fragrance -free? And maybe that requires a little bit of emotional
negotiation, because we love our scents. We love our laundry detergents and our dryer
sheets and all that. And so we have to pick and choose what do we want to do and
what do we not want to do, but those are big needle movers.
– I really appreciate you going through the different categories and what we can do.
I mean, obviously it is a lot, but you know that whenever you, like whoever clicks
on this, like talking to each conversation, like we all, we know, we know that it’s
gonna be a big kind of wake up call. And of course, there were some of the things
that you mentioned in there that I could improve on a little bit. Like I’ve got it
pretty dialed in, but there’s always other things that you could be doing to
improve. And what I really liked about what you said was that you positioned it as
like the goal is reduction. And I think that that’s key. And somewhere in there,
you were talking about how our bodies can get some of these chemicals out relatively
quickly. And so it’s really not about that one time that you touch the receipt or
whatever, it’s really about looking at the day to day, your repeated exposures and
where are those opportunities to reduce your chronic exposure? Yeah.
And I feel like the way you framed it is really, really helpful. It’s very
practical. It’s obviously evidence based. And it really shows us what we’re actually
dealing with. Like, it’s a pretty big, like Tiger to Slay or whatever you want to
call it. – Yes. – But at least you know what you’re dealing with and then proper
way to go about it. ‘Cause if you don’t know that, then I feel like you’ll be
stressing about the wrong thing. And I feel like that might be a big part of your
message. – Yes. Like I said, everybody’s at a different place. Everybody has a
different budget. Everybody has a different like mental bandwidth to even spend 10
minutes thinking about this. And so this is where like perfect is the enemy of
good. We can that applies to a thousand different things. And so we just want to
get to good. But we do not want to try to try for perfect. In my life, I swapped
out my conventional mattress for an organic mattress. But it took me like seven or
eight years to do that because I was a really big ticket item. Those are expensive.
And so I had to save for that. And it was like, when I did have extra money,
that wasn’t the priority. And And so I didn’t lie in my conventional mattress every
night and being like, “Oh no, I’m slowly dying.” That’s not the vibe, right? We’re
just trying to make practical changes, modifications to our daily lives in ways that
support minimizing exposure, but that don’t add stress because stress is also toxic
if we want to use it in that way because stress contributes to 80 % of chronic
illness. And we are all stressed. It is 2025, anybody who’s like, “I’m not
stressed,” I’m like, “You’re either lying or you’re not paying attention to anything.”
And so we all have a stress burden. And if worrying about toxic exposures is adding
to that burden, it’s time to take a step back and say what’s a very small thing
that I can do and I’m gonna forget the rest and I’m just gonna move forward. And
we do what we can. And I wanna stress that, again, we’re not trying to and we
shouldn’t be fearful of exposures to things that we know or we suspect might have
harmful chemicals. This is where the like organic food, conventional food conversation
comes in i support consumption of organic food as do many of the top researchers in
the field of environmental health and. A lot of the positioning around organic food
and i was guilty of doing this in the early years that i was having this
conversation is it’s using that always never language. Or fear mongering to the point
where people are like well if I can’t buy organic raspberries. I’m just not going
to eat raspberries. And that’s not it either, because we have plenty of evidence
that the regular consumption of nutrient -dense fruits and vegetables, regardless of
whether how they were grown, has net positive benefit on every single health outcome
metric. 97 % of men and 90 % of women in this country don’t eat enough fiber.
If we just solve that problem, raspberries, by the way, have the highest amount of
fiber of, I think, any fruit, coincidentally. If we just got solved that problem,
rates of chronic disease would go down. So there are really big needle movers in
the public health conversation, and that’s not smoking, eating your fruits and moving
your body, like those are the fundamentals. Beyond that, for folks that are already
doing that and they’re still having some kind of health issues, that’s when you can
slide more into the minutiae and say like well maybe I need to be eating a little
bit more of these foods and less of this other food and maybe I do need to be
cleaning up my environment more. And so I think that the more balanced and pragmatic
way that we can view this conversation while still taking some action,
we’re all gonna benefit from that. And we just are not gonna benefit if we’re
stressing out and freaking out about every exposure. – I mean, I couldn’t agree more.
I really like how you kind of make sure to get into the nuance of this topic
because it can be overwhelming. It is overwhelming, right? Like this is a really
overwhelming topic if you actually sit down and think about it. So it’s really
important that we ground it in real evidence backed information, strategies that are
actually gonna make a difference and finding that common ground so that you’re not
basing what you’re doing on the worst case scenario in your head. You know what I
mean? – And the social media like hype because that the sensational, yeah,
like watch your feet a 100 % like the sensation or don’t get off of it entirely
like the over like here’s the thing social media currency is clicks and engagement
that’s where rage bait content comes in where people are posting stuff like with the
intention of like getting you pissed off so that you’re going to be a keyboard
warrior and click click click away in their comment section because that boosts their
engagement and if they monetize their account or if they sell products that gets
more eyeballs on them. And so they don’t often care that they’re actually hurting
the conversation. They might actually know that in some cases. But this overly
sensationalized presentation of the toxics conversation is something that is really
upsetting to me because it is a reasonable person would look at that level of
obsession and like overblown science and go, “That’s crazy.” And therefore,
by association, anything that is discussed on the topic that is adjacent to that or
parallel to that, i .e. toxins, is also absurd. And I’m just going to be dismissive
of the whole thing. And so it really damages the very legitimate, very long -running
pile, massive pile of evidence and dismisses the work of the thousands and thousands
of environmental health researchers and scientists because you’ve got some clown on
the internet telling you that your yoga pants are gonna give you cancer.
No. And so I really like for my students as health professionals,
this is something that I’m trying to teach and impart at every level of like,
we don’t do that because that hurts the conversation and unnecessarily scares and
overwhelms people. And then the one of the other reactions aside from the people
that are like, oh no, I have to do everything and I have anxiety and I’m
overwhelmed or the people are like who are just completely dismissive because the
clown who’s doing it is a clown, right? So this is the landscape of this discourse
on social media is really disturbing to me. I mean,
on the one hand, I’m always like the weird optimist in the sidelines like the
annoying one that’s like that. But so I would say But potentially, they say if
someone’s, like all news is, no, I’m trying to think of a phrase where they talk
about, like whether or not they’re talking about you in a good way or a bad way,
at least they’re talking about you. – Yeah, like no publicity is bad. No bad
publicity is no good publicity. – Yeah, I mean, I think that there’s a lot of value
in the fact that people are talking about it and having the conversation around how
to talk about it is probably better than not having the conversation about it. So I
feel like at least we’re here and at least a lot of people are now aware of it,
but I I understand your Perspective given that this is like like right like this is
you’re in it like you’re so I’m in it. I’m fully in it Yeah, it’s it’s so
frustrating to have I Think one of the challenges when you’re in it because I’m in
like I’m not in the toxin conversation to the degree that you are I’m in like the
first time in this conversation. So like when I’m in there There’s so much nuance
that I want to be part of the conversation. The average person just is very black
and white because they’re not in it. They don’t know all the different complexities.
So I’m really happy that we were able to go through this. I feel like I learned
so much. I’m so excited to share this conversation. And I know that my audience is
really going to appreciate it. Like I said, my audience doesn’t need any convincing
that the toxins are there. And the practical solutions that you shared are amazing
and very grounded, and I know that they’re going to appreciate this so much. So I
would love to invite you to share a little bit about you, where the listeners can
go to learn about you, learn about your work. You mentioned your work with other
practitioners, share that as well, and anything exciting that you have on the
horizon. Cool. So yeah, for folks that just want some kind of everybody accessible
information, they can go to Instagram. I’m there at Environmental Toxins Nerd. There’s
plenty of content in the feed to scroll through and learn little snippets of
education and action. And if you happen to be a health professional of any type,
you can just go to my website, which is my name, LauraAdler .com, and check out the
courses that I have there for again, for health professionals of all types. And I’m,
I think I share this before I’m in the middle of rewriting my big course. And so
that’s like a six month endeavor that I’m very excited about because it is pushing
a lot more of this nuance and sort of delicate nature of this conversation. So that
health professionals have a solid information base to be able to them share this
with their audience. So That’s it for now. – Love, love, love it. Well, for anyone
who’s listening on the go, we will make sure to link all of those places to our
show notes page. And Laura, I just wanna thank you so much for being here. This
has been such a great and informative conversation. So thank you so much. – Yeah,
thank you so much for having me. – Thank you for listening. If you enjoyed today’s
episode and you’re wanting to share it with a friend or you’re wanting to grab any
of the links that we talked about, head over to fertilityfriday .com /586.
I hope that you enjoyed today’s episode with Laura. I feel like we covered so much
ground. I mean, there was so much that we talked about today. Laura took some time
to really go into this issue and provide a lot of context. And I mean, I do think
that this audience is well -versed in the issue regarding toxins. So I do feel like
we get it. We know, first of all, that there is a connection between toxins and a
variety of different health issues. That’s certainly not something that we need to be
convinced of. And we also know that there is something that we can do about it,
especially for those of you who use menstrual cyclotrading, whether you use it
personally or whether you use it with clients. That is one of the ways that we can
really gain insight into what’s happening. So it’s not always super obvious initially,
but if you are working with a client who is kind of heavily exposed to certain
toxins and does start to make different changes, learns a little bit more about the
different sources of toxin exposure and starts to clean up their beauty routine and
clean up their household cleaning products and then start to kind of move towards
more natural alternatives in a variety of different areas. Often we see certain
things shift on the cycle. We start to see hormones normalize a little bit, and how
do we tell if hormones are normalizing? When we look at the menstrual parameters, we
look at the different aspects of the menstrual cycle on the chart. We also look at
symptoms. And so one of the great things about charting is that we can actually see
some of these tangible results. So I think another really important focus was
practical strategies. It can be a little bit intimidating to hear about all these
things that we can do because I’m sure that at least most of us, I know even
myself included, there were certain things that Laura mentioned that I’ve done quite
a bit towards this aim, but there’s certain things that she mentioned that I haven’t
necessarily done yet. So I think one way to look at it is also like a process
instead of just a destination, a process that unfolds over time. So you kind of
start with the lowest hanging fruit. Like if you’re using scented products, you kind
of finish those, you don’t have to go and like throw them all out, but you kind
of work through those products. And then as you replace different products, replacing
them with non -scented alternatives, alternatives that are more on the clean side and
then doing a bit of due diligence as you go about this journey to ensure that the
products and brands that you’re using are free from these chemicals and those kinds
of things. But I think Laura and I both hinted at the fact that, I mean,
I know for myself it wasn’t this overnight thing where when I learned of all this,
all of a sudden I threw out everything I had and the next day was using all clean
products. And I started my journey on this road decades ago when there wasn’t even
a good selection of natural care products. I was starting my journey when there
wasn’t entire aisles full of alternative products. There wasn’t entire stores full of
all of these different products. And back then some of the products didn’t work. So
you would have these like so -called natural products but they didn’t work properly
and it was still difficult to clean. So I do think that there’s a lot of
positives. I mean, one of the negatives is that there’s probably more chemicals out
there now because every year, corporations come out with new thousands of new
chemical formulations. But on the bright side, there’s a lot more alternatives now
for those of us who are wanting to improve our routines. If you’re wanting toxin
-free menstrual products, if you’re wanting toxin -free cleaning supplies, if you’re
wanting– there’s a lot of options now. And even regular brands will sell products
that are free of dyes and fragrance. So you don’t have to search as hard anymore
to find products. It’s still a challenge. I’m not saying it’s not a challenge, but
we can look at the bright side and recognize that there’s a whole industry of clean
products now. And so it’s typically easier to find things that are non -toxic and
actually still work. So with that said, like I said, I hope you enjoyed today’s
episode. If it resonated with you, if you can think of someone who would really
love this information, feel free to share. So the share link again, fertilityfriday
.com /586. With that said, I hope you have a wonderful week weekend whenever you’re
tuning into the show. And of course, as always, until next time, be well and happy
charting. If you’re loving the podcast and you’re ready to apply fertility awareness
strategies in your women’s health practice, then I know you’ll love our Fertility
Awareness Mastery Mentorship. It’s a nine -month immersive experience that will
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so there’s still time to reserve your spot. There’s no other program like this
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