Toxicologist Reveals The Top 7 Sources of Hidden Toxins In Your Home And How to Protect Your Brain And Body With Yvonne Burkart, PhD

Dhru Purohit
Doctor Yvonne Burkhart. We've brought you back on the podcast today to talk more about the hidden toxins that are in our everyday household products. And these toxins in our products, they're not only burdening our detox pathways and driving disease, they're also potentially increasing our risk of cancer. And a lot of these products are going to shock many people listening today. I know some of them shocked me.

So let's jump into it, starting with one of the biggest drivers of indoor air pollution and toxins for people in their homes, and five reasons why you refuse to use this product in your home. The first product that I want people to pay attention to is something that is pervasive. It's everywhere. Most people have them in their homes. I myself use these for decades before realizing the issues and the harm that they were causing.

Yvonne Burkart
And it's something that I still see people using every day around children, pets. And it's something that we've adopted and it's part of our culture, and people have a sense of emotional attachment to it. And that is scented candles. Scented candles, when burned, are significant sources of indoor air pollution for many reasons. The reason we need to be concerned with indoor air pollution is that what we inhale directly enters our bloodstream and quickly travels to the brain and to the rest of our body.

Dhru Purohit
It's crazy. You know, we had on one of the world's top experts on Parkinson's disease, and he came on this podcast and said there's three primary drivers that he's found in the evidence base. We'll link to his episode below that drive, Parkinson's disease that they've seen over a period of time. And one of them was air pollution, not just outdoor, but indoor. And sometimes the indoor air can be even more polluted than the outdoor air.

And one of the things that's contributing to it are candles. So you have five reasons why scented candles and there are healthy alternatives. We're going to get to that in a second. You've made a whole list of them. There's five reasons, and we're going to walk through each of them.

So the first reason that you refuse to use this product in your home is that candles are a source of indoor pollutants like formaldehyde, benzene and a few others. What are these words that some people have heard of but some people haven't heard of? So these chemicals, formaldehyde, toluene and benzene, these are carcinogens. They're very potent and known human carcinogens. So there's a lot of chemicals in our environment.

Yvonne Burkart
But not everything is toxic. Not everything will cause cancer. But these are known to cause cancer via the route of inhalation exposure, which is exactly what's being liberated from these candles. We're inhaling these chemicals, they're getting into the bloodstream, they're causing harm, potentially DNA damage, and leading to the formation of cancer. And so for a person who's exposed at a young age, for example, a child, if they're growing up in a home where the parents burn candles frequently, there can be an increased risk.

There's actually studies showing that families who burn incense, which are similar to candles, have an increased risk for developing childhood leukemia. That's crazy. You know, one thing that's really clear? Anytime we talk about cancer, it's always good to make sure that people understand. You're not saying that somebody burning a candle, a scented candle, which usually has fragrance.

Dhru Purohit
We're going to get to that in a second. You're not saying that burning this once or twice or whatever is going to immediately cause cancer. That's not what you're saying. What are you saying when it comes to the link between these indoor air pollutants, fragrances, candles, and their potential link to cancer? Right.

Yvonne Burkart
What I'm saying is that not every single exposure will result in the formation of cancer. Cancer takes years or even decades to show up. However, we're seeing it in younger populations, which is abnormal. This is not a disease that I would say historically has afflicted young people, but now we're seeing the incidence of cancer, the age of onset of cancer, shifting earlier in life. So younger people are getting cancer.

And what does this lead to for lifelong prognosis? It's not a good outlook because once you have these cancer genes turned on, your body has a propensity to already have these abnormal cancer cell growth aspects to it. So what we're saying is we need to be careful and aware that certain types of products that we're using have more of a likelihood to contribute to cancer. Those being inhalation toxicants, chemicals that we inhale. Again, they go to the brain, they go all over the body.

And indoor air pollution, air pollution in general, is one of the risk factors for all cause mortality worldwide. Incredible. Thank you for that clarification. Let's continue down the list of these five reasons you gave us. The first one.

Dhru Purohit
Let's go to the second one. They emit pollutants even when they're not lit. Talk about that. This is something that shocks a lot of people because they think, oh, I just want this candle on my mantle as a decoration, as a, you know, household decor piece. Unfortunately, if that product contains synthetic, undisclosed fragrance chemicals, those are still being released even when you're not burning it.

Yvonne Burkart
Burning increases the rate of the release, it increases the amount that's released. But that doesn't mean that the candle sitting there on your mantle is innocuous. It's actually still a source of indoor air pollution. So then, for the sake of me wanting to protect your health, I gotta ask for that candle back that I gave you, and that was a gift from somebody. We gotta move it away from you and me as far as possible.

Dhru Purohit
Again, we're joking a little bit, but we're not. And the part that we're not joking is that this all falls under the idea of taking the precautionary approach. It's actually very difficult for somebody. Cancer is incredibly complex, as are a lot of diseases. It's very difficult to do a study of what does a lifetime exposure to a bunch of indoor air pollutants or other environmental toxins look like.

And it's not just one thing. People have a lot of things in their home, and we're gonna get to a bunch of them in today's podcast. So people know how to protect themselves, but it's very difficult. Do a study long term and see, hey, this thing combined with this combined with that is the exact dosage that is increasing or is actually causing cancer for somebody, if it actually is. So we need to take a precautionary approach, be on the latest up and up science that's there.

And luckily, there are plenty of alternative products that are out there that people can switch to where they don't have to sacrifice the joy of having a nice candle potentially burning in their home. Let's go to the next one that you have here. They usually contain toxic fragrance. Chemicals that can emit carcinogens, can be allergenic to individuals as well, too. So talk about these fragrances inside of candles.

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Yvonne Burkart
Don't let the number, don't fixate on the number and let that scare you. The issue is that they are not disclosing what's in them. And unfortunately, there are known carcinogens, musk chemicals. There are things like benzene and xylene as well that are added to fragrances in addition to endocrine disruptors known as phthalates. And I know that we've spoken about this before on another episode that we did.

Phthalates are extremely pervasive. And the problem with these chemicals is that they actually attach to the house dust in your home. So they become recirculated and we get exposed to them continuously over time until we start to remove them from the home and clean dust, mop, and sweep regularly. Now, you mentioned something really important. You talked about endocrine disruptors on our last episode together, you dived into it.

Dhru Purohit
But for anybody who might have missed that or even needs a refresher, because we all do sometimes. What is our endocrine system and what happens when it gets disrupted? Our endocrine system is basically a series of glands that are all interconnected within the body. There are eight of them, and they secrete hormones in response to environmental stimuli. So things like daylight, night duration, things like that.

Yvonne Burkart
So seasonal changes, our bodies change, the hormone release changes as well in regards to what we're eating, in the stress that we're having in our lives. Hormones basically regulate our entire body. So when we're exposed to endocrine disrupting chemicals, just as the name indicates, they're disrupting the normal signaling of the endocrine system. And what happens there is you can start getting things like, of course, reproductive disorders, cognitive and behavioral problems like ADHD. Autism, as well, has been linked to environmental endocrine disruption exposure, endocrine disruptor exposure as well.

So there, it's very complex. But what we don't want is to have too many of these endocrine disruptors in our lives circulating around and basically wreaking havoc on our hormones. Yeah, we're trying to minimize our exposure. We can't get rid of it completely. We live in a world that has a lot of different environmental toxins that are there, and we rely on things like plastics, and they're going to be often, sometimes in the water and other things we can do our best to protect ourself.

Dhru Purohit
And that's what today's episode is about. But we want to greatly minimize our exposure. That's going to keep us in the best state of health. And that's the idea that we're talking about the precautionary approach of these things. We actually don't know how bad it is having all this toxic soup of chemicals around us.

Is that true? That's correct. Most of the chemicals that we're exposed to now don't have any scientific research or data behind them showing what amount is actually safe. It's quite shocking if you think about it. We're just surrounded by a lot of chemicals.

Yvonne Burkart
But again, don't let that get into our heads and scare us and make us feel like we can't thrive and be in optimal health. It just means that there's more to be aware of that even the people who started creating these chemicals don't even know about. It's so true. And you see that today in the news. We're learning every year, even our government is learning every year, how bad things like pfas are for us.

Dhru Purohit
We're going to get into that topic a little bit later on. But this is about living a low tox life. And we still have two more to get to. One of the reasons of why you refuse to use scented candles in your home. But just tell us really quickly, what does a low tox life look like?

Because that's part of your message that you educate people on, on YouTube. Please, everybody, follow your channel as well as on Instagram. You have some great content there. So we're trying to get people into a lifestyle mindset. And that mindset is a low tox life.

What is that mindset? It's basically doing our best, like you said, to avoid and mitigate these exposures to toxic chemicals in our everyday products. We can't control everything. Things that are happening outside of our homes are just out of our control. But a low tox lifestyle aims at focusing our efforts on mitigating the exposures that we bring into our homes, for example, the products that we're using on our skin, what foods we're eating, the type of water we're drinking, the air quality.

Yvonne Burkart
So one of the big drivers of air quality is pollution. Right. If you're using a lot of scented and fragrance products, like candles, that's going to make your air dirty, basically. So we want to be as clean as possible. But that doesn't mean that we have to avoid all modern conveniences at all.

It's just being more aware and doing our best to avoid further exposure. We're never going to be perfect. We're never going to be no talks. That doesn't exist. That's why I like to use the term low tox, because we want to stay on the lower end of the toxic exposure spectrum.

Dhru Purohit
That's fantastic. All right, let's get to number four and number five here on the list of reasons that you refuse to use scented candles. Number four, some dyes used to color candles are carcinogenic, according to Health Canada. Talk about the dyes. A lot of candles that we see have bright colors that people like to use to match with their home decor.

Pink and yellow and bright purple and whatever. Exactly. So one of the things that people don't realize is these dyes that are being put in these candles are carcinogenic, and then when you burn them, nobody knows if you're actually inhaling that or not. And that's a huge risk factor that I don't think people are aware of. That was a shock to me as well.

Yvonne Burkart
Is great. If you can get a white candle, that's at least less risk than a bright red colored candle. But most candles out there are brightly colored. All right, number five, candles are largely unregulated, aside from the types of glass containers required and fire safety precautions. So you're telling me the glass that is holding the candle is probably more regulated than the candle and the toxic soup inside of scented candles?

Correct. Sounds wild. It is totally insane to think about the container is what's regulated, and the wick. So wix historically contained lead, and when you burn that, then lead is being released into the air. So the Consumer Product Safety Commission of America has regulated the type of wick that you can use.

So it cannot, has to be an unleaded wick. Then the type of glass container is also regulated because if you're putting a candle in plastic that obviously doesn't work. If you start burning it, then the plastic will start to melt. So the certain type of glass is also important. But those are the only components of a candle that are actually regulated by anyone.

Dhru Purohit
That's crazy. Now, you shared something at the beginning of the podcast. You used these products for years, and you've been very transparent on your journey that, and in our last episode together, that you fell victim to a lot of this marketing or lack of education yourself. So once you finally woke up and saw the science of why these products, in this case candles, could be so toxic. Scented candles.

Just so everybody's clear, what did you do? Do you just not use any candles in your home, or did you switch to some better alternatives? I started switching to better alternatives if there's a habit that you're really attached to, something that you really like doing. For example, burning candles. Candles have been around for thousands of years.

Yvonne Burkart
People may use candles to light their homes, to provide heat, to cook with. We're not saying that candles should not ever be used. It's the type of candle that we're now seeing on store shelves everywhere. That's what we need to be skeptical of and question and look into more, because the more widespread a product is, the more mainstream, the more likely it is to contain chemicals of concern. That's the unfortunate reality that we live in.

But with that said, there are certain types of candles that are lower risk, low tox. For example, I did a lot of research looking into the types of pollutants that are released by different types of waxes. I switched first to soy wax candles because that just seemed like the next best thing. If I'm trying to get away from these toxic scented candles, what am I, what am I looking for? Instead, soy based candles were the next alternative.

But come to find out, unfortunately, even though a candle says soy blend on the label, it can still contain petroleum derived paraffin wax, which is the worst type of wax to burn. Wow. So it's quite deceptive. So once I realized that, then I said, okay, well, what's even better than that? Let's look towards the historical candle materials, which is beeswax.

Beeswax is the lowest polluting type of wax that you can burn. Along with the wick, the wick is also important. As I mentioned, there was lead. Historically, in candle wicks, you can get away with using an untreated wooden wick that releases the least amount of pollutants. That's fantastic.

Dhru Purohit
That's good for people to know, you know, a funny anecdote is that my wife loved scented candles. And before, when we were sort of in the early stages of just getting to know each other, before we were engaged and married, she loved to light them when we had dinner. It would set the mood. It would feel inviting. We would host dinner parties, and I slowly would share with her.

I said, you know, sweetie, I don't think these are the best things for you. Let me bring some alternatives. She's like, no, I'm not sure if this makes any sense. And, you know, we've been married now for two years. We've been together since 2019.

So a little bit over four years, and something crazy happened. We went to a party yesterday, a house party that a friend was hosting and graciously invited us over. And when we got in, this friend who was so kind to have us over, there was multiple candles that were burning in the house. Like regular scented candles, not the beeswax candles that were there. And my wife, who's now had years of not being exposed to candles, midway through the dinner was like, it's crazy.

Like, I don't get headaches, and I have a headache right now. I was like, oh, yeah, try drinking some water. Do this. See if that works. And she was like, no, I didn't feel any different.

And then we left. And after about 30, 45 minutes of us leaving, being back at our own home, she was like, you know what? My headache went away. I said, babe, I don't know if this is it, but I wonder. You've not been around scented candles at all, and you just were around a ton of scented candles, and now you're not there, and the headache went away.

So we can't know for sure. But that does seem like a strong possibility in her case. Yeah, definitely. And I think it's very common amongst people, myself included. When we remove these fragrance chemicals from our everyday exposures, our bodies become more sensitive to them.

Yvonne Burkart
But that's a good thing. So it's a process of habituation. When you're constantly smelling something, your brain wants to turn that part off. So it's not constantly registering that you need to be aware of imminent danger, because our sense of smell is part of our survival mechanism. Smelling something bad, of course, it brings up our alert system, right?

We don't want to smell something bad. Same thing with candles. Our brain will turn off those continuous fragrance scented candle pathways in our. Our brains. And when we remove them, we become very sensitive.

And so a lot of people I hear every day say, oh, my gosh, I can smell everything now. I didn't realize. And it's almost as if our sense of smell is being dimmed and muted by all of these chemical exposures. Oh, it's so true. It's like when you are growing up and you eat a diet of processed foods and so much sugar, healthy food tastes not good.

Dhru Purohit
But when you cleanse your palate and you sort of refresh your taste buds and you realize that actually eating healthy gives you a ton of energy, and you don't feel like crap all the time because you're eating processed foods. And you don't get sick all the time because you're eating too much sugar in processed foods. Now, when your palate is retrained, you actually start to love simple foods with a little bit of salt, and you can enjoy the taste. And in the rare chance that you go back to eating some, you know, ultra processed foods, you're like, this doesn't taste good anymore, right? This doesn't taste good.

Yeah. So it's all part of living a low tox lifestyle. So, you know, this idea of why you don't use scented candles plays right into this bigger concept, which is indoor air pollution can highly threaten our whole body. It can go up to our brains. It can make us more likely to have cardiovascular disease, the World Health Organization has found.

And this plays into protecting our lungs. You made an incredible video on YouTube again, we have a link to your YouTube channel below. Please. Everybody follows Doctor Yvonne Burkhardt's channel below, and we'll link to it here in the YouTube channel as well. You made a video.

It was called nine ways to detox and protect your lungs. And one of them was, we've already covered it, getting rid of scented candles and incense in the home. But I want to cover a few more here that we didn't get a chance to touch on. And the first one is actually super simple. And yet so many people do not do this thing.

And it's the idea of taking off your shoes before you start walking around your house. Why is this so important when it comes to detoxing and protecting our lungs? Our shoes basically attract dirt, germs, pollution, fecal material, a lot of nasty stuff that you don't want in your house. And if you're wearing your outside shoes in your home, you're basically spreading that all around. And our homes really do need to be our sort of pure, as clean as we can get it.

Yvonne Burkart
A sacred temple. I like to think of it, because if you, especially if you have a child who's crawling around on the floor, that baby's face and lungs are really close to the ground, their airways, and they're putting things in their mouths. And as a baby, these exposures to things like pollutants, heavy metals, whatever is coming in on your shoe soles can be really devastating and damaging to that baby. It's nuts. I just went to use the bathroom here before we started recording, and I was at the urinal, and I'm just thinking, like, okay, it's a men's bathroom.

Dhru Purohit
Men are not as sort of tidy as women. Right. It's for an office building. There's, like, pee on the floor. There's all sorts of stuff.

I'm trying my best not to step on anything, but imagine as clean as I am, I go into a bathroom, and then now I'm walking into somebody's house, and they don't have. I always take my shoes off, by the way, even if somebody doesn't tell me to. But let's say they don't tell me to take my shoes off. I'm bringing all that stuff into their home, or even worse, into my home. And that's not a good way to live.

Yvonne Burkart
Right. It's invisible. Right. We can't see these pathogens that we're bringing in, necessarily, although you can see fecal material. But that's typically what I always do is remove my shoes.

And if I have somebody coming into my home that's doing service work, for example, I make sure that they put shoe covers over their shoes. Yeah. These little booties, you can buy them on Amazon. You can buy them from your local drugstore. Ask people to wear on booties if they have to keep their shoes on.

Right. So, you know, we talked a little bit about this, but I want to ask you another question. This was number three on the list. Number one was take your shoes off. Number two was candles and incense.

Dhru Purohit
We talked about that. But expanding on number three, which is fragrances, keeping away from fragrances in your house, besides candles, what are the other most common sources of fragrances that are contributing to a ton of indoor air pollution that are then hurting your lungs and hurting your heart and hurting your brain? Scented plugins are probably number two on that list because they're designed to release fragrance into your air. And some of them, you can see a mist. And I've actually moved into a home where the previous owners used a significant amount of scented plugins.

Yvonne Burkart
And there was a residue on the walls where these scented plugins were attached to the wall. Not only that, we had ceiling fans, and as I mentioned before, fragrance chemicals attached to the house. Dust. There was a significant layer of dust on top of the blades of the ceiling fan, such that when we went to replace the fan, all of this dust came off and I smelled the fragrances that the previous owners used two years prior. Oh, my gosh.

Dhru Purohit
That's crazy. Anything else? In addition to these plugins that people use, I don't really see this as much, but are people still using air fresheners around their home? Yeah, air fresheners. They've got those, like, trees that people like to hang in their car.

Yvonne Burkart
That's another example, diffusers. So people are buying these diffusers that have these wooden sticks, and then they release a fragrance over time. If you're not using something that is more, I would say, minimally processed, like an essential oil, then you don't know what's in those fragrance chemicals. Some people can buy just a bottle of an unknown mixture of whatever. Put those reed sticks in there and they'll release these fragrances over time.

And the fragrance chemicals are what are really concerning. Because, again, a lot of these are known carcinogens that we shouldn't be inhaling. We don't need to be inhaling these chemicals. We have to think of these fragrances as secondhand smoke. The same way that we would sort of gasp if somebody was still smoking, especially inside of the home.

Dhru Purohit
Right? Okay, fine. You're addicted to nicotine. You haven't gotten off cigarettes yet. Go smoke outside, have the window open, whatever.

But if you are in a closed home where the air is not regularly recirculating, or even if it is recirculating, it's not being filtered. And you have a ton of these fragrances, you are 24/7 being exposed to these all day. And the fix is simple. Just remove a lot of this stuff. When your house is clean, it actually smells pretty good.

And I actually like the smell of, like, home cooking. When people are cooking at home, that also smells good, too. All that stuff is better for you than being around a ton of fragrances. Let's go to the next one, which actually goes right into something that I mentioned earlier, which is the idea of the importance of opening your windows. Why is opening your windows so key?

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Yvonne Burkart
There's this idea that if you have a significant amount of pollution, the solution is dilution. So what that means is when you open your windows, you're allowing the air outside to exchange with the air inside. Maybe the air outside in some areas may not be cleaner than what's inside, but more often than not, the EPA anyway, has said that indoor air can be three to five times more polluted than outdoor air, which is shocking to a lot of people because people think there's cars and factories and whatever pollution outside. But it's actually worse inside because people don't open the windows. Opening the windows can refresh the air in an average sized room in an hour.

And this is a huge amount of pollution that's going outside, and you're getting fresh air, which is what our lungs and our bodies are asking for. I've tested this firsthand, uh, when I had my last office, and we built a new set there, and there's all this new furniture and things. Even though I'm doing my best, there's paint, even though it's low Voc paint. I've tested using these various devices. I'll link to a couple of them in the show notes, these air monitoring devices that look at different parts per million in the air.

Dhru Purohit
And we've known through the World Health Organization and other groups that are out there and plenty of research institutions, you know, PM 2.5 is very dangerous in particular. And this air monitor that I use actually will give you different readouts, and one of them is PM 2.5 parts per million. 2.5, I believe, is what it is. Particulate matter. Particulate matter.

Thank you for that clarification. And I've seen that even in a room that seemed like new, like a new office, the air quality inside. Even in a city like Los Angeles that is known for having, like, maybe not the best air, compared to other cities out there that are in the United States or around the world, the air quality inside was significantly worse off. And just by getting an air filter in the room, it made a massive difference. I know you're a big fan of opening your windows, which I am as well, too.

If somebody wanted to and had some additional resources and wanted to get a high quality air filter, is that another strategy that will help protect them inside their house? Yes, absolutely. Especially if you remove these sources of pollutants that we mentioned, all this scented and fragrance products burning things in your home. If you have an air purifier, that can help, but you're actually then burdening the air purifier, too. Right?

Yvonne Burkart
So if you're getting an air purifier, the goal is to purify and clean the air. Yes, it is very helpful, especially if you get one that has a carbon filter that will attract the vocs, then the HEPA filter will attach to, or the particles will attach to the HEPA filter, so it'll filter out. It can get down to viruses, bacteria, different types of pathogens. But as you mentioned, PM two five is the most hazardous. So it can actually capture PM 2.5 as well.

So it's been extremely helpful in our home, especially if you can't open the windows. For whatever reason, this next one is starting to become something that more and more people are aware of. But I'd love for you to break it down. It's number seven on the list. I'm kind of skipping around a little bit, but it's synthetic textiles.

Dhru Purohit
Why is it so important to pay attention and make sure we don't have a ton of them around us, in our homes, and ideally not on our bodies. What's the problem with synthetic. Synthetic textiles? Well, first of all, synthetic textiles are generally made from trollium sources. So those will be made into things like polyester, acrylic, and nylon.

Yvonne Burkart
Those are the typical synthetic textiles. Most clothing out there is made out of polyester, almost all of it these days. Especially if people buying from, like, fast fashion, you know, think of any big name brand that's out there that a lot of, you know, young people especially are getting clothing from. Almost all of it has some sort of, you know, polyester inside of it. Even in my own closet, I have products that have polyester inside, right.

Even in the seventies, right, wearing polyester pants became trendy. It was like a thing. I know my parents had polyester clothing, for sure. The issue is that every time you move this fabric, it's actually breaking apart and releasing microplastics into the air. So the majority of indoor house dust, now, it used to be thought that it was human skin that we shed, right?

That was the, you know what, what I learned was the house dust that we have in our homes is actually our skin, but it's not true. It's now surpassed by microplastics. Wow, that is wild. You know, I want to say one thing about this. You know, this is an area where I still have products today that I wear on a regular basis that have some polyester inside of them, and I'm looking for the best alternatives.

Dhru Purohit
You know, clothing is so personal. The fit, the brands you like, and I like to be transparent because you're not going to be able to tackle all these things at once. And there might be things that you're just taking a step in the right direction. And along with living a low tox lifestyle, there are also things, lifestyle habits that you can do, which we're going to touch on in a little bit and give a little bit of a refresher on. We covered some of them in our first podcast together.

There's things that you can do. Knowing that we can never fully remove these chemicals that will at least protect our body in the best way, um, that, that we can. Right, lifestyle habits. Uh, just a little preview on that. Some of that is going to be vigorous exercise, uh, eating a cleaner diet, staying away from ultra processed foods, and a few more things.

But when it comes to the topic of polyester, one step that I've taken in the right direction is that I know, because so much of this is friction and also your sort of sweat glands and your sweat mixing with these things. I have moved back to using just, you know, cotton clothing and t shirts and shorts when it comes to, and in some cases, also bamboo clothing, t shirts and shorts when it comes to my workout clothes, because almost all of my workout gear that is sort of sweat resistant, the dry fit stuff that these big companies make, almost all of it, I found out, has some form of microplastics or pfas that it's been treated with. And I thought, you know what, I work out at least three to four days a week. Let me just make sure that my body is not sort of rubbing up against all these things when I'm in vigorous activity. And so that's one little step that I've made in the right direction.

Um, but I'm being transparent that I still have a lot of polyester, I'm sure, in my, in my clothing and in my home. Right. And you bring up a really good point. Part of a low tox lifestyle is also being low waste. So trying to minimize the amount that we're dumping into the environment.

Yvonne Burkart
So let's say we already have polyester clothing. I myself also have polyester clothing. Doesn't mean you have to throw them away. What I'm more advocating for is instead of buying new polyester, maybe try to just wear what you already have. And if you need to buy something new, try to look for the better alternative.

If you need to buy something new. Yeah, that's great advice. All right, a couple more things. On this topic of protecting our lungs and our detox pathways, we have a big one here that's important for everybody. And it's going to be important for all the areas that we're going to be talking about today.

Dhru Purohit
And it is the topic of actually supporting our detox pathways. One way to do that is through a low tox lifestyle, get rid of the pollution source in the first place. But then there's these other lifestyle factors that are there. What are some of the lifestyle factors that you want to touch on on this idea of supporting our detox pathways? First of all, is drinking clean water.

Yvonne Burkart
So our water is polluted. That's just now we need to accept that. So once we start filtering our water, then we're in a much better place. We need water to survive. And in fact, people often ask me, what should I get first, a water filter or air purifier?

It would be a water filter because with air pollution, we can take a lot of steps to remove the pollution. Right. But we can't really remove pollution from water unless we actually filter it. So water filtration is key. Also, like you said, avoiding ultra processed foods in favor of whole foods, unprocessed foods.

And it doesn't matter if you eat conventional foods, if that's all you can afford, totally fine. That's way better. That always, in my opinion, trumps whole. Foods is always better than ultra processed foods. Yes.

Yes. Because there's still vitamins and nutrients and things that are helping to support detoxification, even if there are pesticides in it. Again, we can't avoid everything. Just do the best you can, but try to stay away from the processed stuff because that's where all the toxins are really coming in, a significant majority from the processing, from the ingredients, from the packaging. It's just not an optimal food choice.

Dhru Purohit
The flavors, the dyes. You know, some of these companies here, I'll put one on the screen here, Valerie, if we can stick it on, I'll send you the example. A good friend of mine is Vani Hari, the food babe, and she's made these images popular. Many of the products that we buy here in the United States, some of those big companies that are making these products, like macaroni and cheese or other stuff, they have one version of their product that they make for the US market that has some potentially harmful ingredients that at least have been recognized in the EU. And then in places like England and France and other places in the European Union, they have another version.

You can see it here on the screen here that I'm pointing to. And that's why we just have to be a little bit mindful. Again, we're not telling people to be perfect. We're just trying to do our best that if you steer towards a whole Foods diet, that's going to be a massive step in the right direction of protecting you and your family. Correct.

Yvonne Burkart
And it's really interesting, too, that you mentioned different versions of products because it, the same thing goes across the board also for beauty and personal care products. Europe, significantly cleaner than in the US. But that doesn't mean that we can't find safer products here. It just takes a little bit more effort, but it's possible they're, they're out there. It just takes a little bit of education.

Dhru Purohit
And that's why we're doing today's episode. And, you know, before we go into the next product that we're going to talk about here in a second, that was actually really shocking for me. I want to just take a pause and mention two things. Number one, can you share your credentials and your background here for our audience, just in case the people didn't hear the first episode? And also, number two, talk about your why.

Why are you so passionate about this topic? I have a PhD in environmental toxicology, and what that means is that I have studied how environmental chemicals impact the human body as well as how does our human activities impact the environment. So it's really understanding, mechanistically, how do chemicals cause harm and at what amounts and in what way? In that way, then we can really start to put the pieces together to figure out how we can help our bodies to defend themselves against these toxicants. And part of my research as a PhD student was looking at glutathione.

Yvonne Burkart
Glutathione is a master antioxidant. It protects every single cell from toxic injury, from oxidative stress, as well as free radical damage. So, really important. Another lifestyle tip to mention is just really trying to be mindful to increase our glutathione as much as we can, because a lot of the chemicals that we're exposed to are taking away our glutathione defenses. And so then that's kind of leaving us vulnerable to further toxic injury.

So the more that you can remove the toxic chemicals and support and boost your glutathione levels, the better off you'll be. That's fantastic. You know, let's just double click on that before we get into that next hidden source of toxins in our everyday household products that I. That I can't wait to get into, because it's going to shock a lot of people. Glutathione.

Dhru Purohit
Some people listened and said, oh, wow, amazing. I'm not taking glutathione as a supplement now. I'll start taking it because Doctor Yvonne Burkhardt said it's so important. Tell us why there's more to the story than just that. Glutathione is naturally occurring in our cells.

Yvonne Burkart
We have the ability to make glutathione. We actually found in laboratory studies that if you cannot make glutathione, you will die, period. That's just how life works when it comes to glutathione supplementation. It's highly nuanced because throwing a bunch of supplements at an already toxic or dirty lifestyle isn't really going to help you. What we really need to do is first remove the sources of the toxicants that are robbing our cells of glutathione.

Then we can think about what are the different lifestyle choices that we can implement to increase the naturally occurring glutathione to help our bodies make more, if that right, or recycle it. We don't always need more, more, more, more, more, more, more, because glutathione gets recycled. So if you're helping your body to remove the toxicants, then you're already increasing the amount that gets recycled and the rate that it gets recycled, because it's just not constantly being bogged down by all these chemicals. So I think that throwing a bunch of supplements at the problem is not necessarily the way to go, and it's highly nuanced. And we should also talk to our doctor about that because some people actually cannot make more glutathione.

Even if you were to add all these precursors and start stimulating the pathways, it has a finite amount that you can actually make. So throwing a bunch of supplements at it could actually make things worse, because if you have too much glutathione, it becomes pro oxidant instead of antioxidant. So we don't want that either. Right. And actually, there's a few simple things that people can do to boost their natural production of glutathione.

Dhru Purohit
Can you mention just a couple of those? Yeah, absolutely. So one of them is weight bearing and cardiovascular exercise. So aerobic exercise and weightlifting seems so simple. A lot of people aren't doing it so easy.

Yvonne Burkart
And it's free. You can do it. Um, even body weight exercise, it doesn't matter. Weight bearing and aerobic exercise, movement is key. Right.

And then the second one is eating the foods that contain sulfur. Because the component within glutathione that has the antioxidant power is sulfur is cysteine, the amino acid cysteine, which contains sulfur. So if you provide your body with sulfur rich foods like cruciferous vegetables, meat, eggs, dairy, you can also get it through other types of vegetables. Like I mentioned, all the cruciferous green tea. Matcha is another source that can help increase glutathione.

So you're giving your body the building blocks it needs to make the glutathione through foods. That's how I prefer to do it, because again, the supplement thing is a slippery slope. That's great. Thank you so much. Okay, we're getting into the next product that is going to shock people a little bit.

Dhru Purohit
That is a source of toxins. These are everyday household products. This one was kind of mind blowing. Toilet paper? What the f is going on with toilet paper?

Yvonne Burkart
So toilet paper is something that every single person uses for the most part. I know some people don't use toilet paper and there's options for that too. Right. You can use a bidet, you can air dry however you prefer to do it. Air dry.

Dhru Purohit
That's a little shocking. We got some people laughing in the audience over here. I've never heard air dry. I guess if you're in a tight situation and you don't have toilet paper, that's your only option, right? If you air dry, do not contact me.

I don't want anything to have to do with you. I wish you the best, but don't contact me. Okay. A bidet? Yes.

There's plenty of bidets that are out there, they're environmentally friendly. Friendly. We can link to a couple of them. But for those people that do use toilet paper, which is the vast majority of people, what is the problem with toilet paper? A lot of toilet paper.

Yvonne Burkart
So paper products in general, they tend to be bleached. Right. All the toilet paper you see in stores is bright white, and they're bleached with chlorine. And this creates dioxins, which are carcinogens. And when you think about rubbing carcinogens in your private areas, this is increasing the amount that gets absorbed.

And over time, this can also lead to irritation. And we just don't really understand fully what's happening when you're using these types of toilet papers all the time down there, because the female genitalia especially is highly vascularized in that area. So any type of friction or rubbing is driving the chemicals into the bloodstream. Yeah. So you're not telling, again, people that they shouldn't use toilet paper.

Dhru Purohit
There's actually better alternatives that are out there. Can you just mention what should be people looking for? And also, you have an entire website that you've created, and you've also helped create another website where you list a lot of these products, and it's actually a fantastic resource. I actually texted my wife a few months ago when I first heard about toilet paper not being the best for you. I said, wow, we should switch over to this brand over here that Doctor Burkhardt mentions because she's seen the testing that they do.

So what do you recommend? Actually mention the website that people can go to. And then what should people be thinking about switching their toilet paper to? So the website is theswellscore.com, and we basically created an online marketplace that's a one stop shop for the best in wellness products. So I'm in charge of vetting the beauty and personal care category, looking into vendor documentation.

Yvonne Burkart
So we're asking for their certificate of analysis, looking at contaminants, checking for the purity, and making sure that the product is actually adhering to what they're marketing. So we're trying to get rid of greenwashing, which is a big issue. Right. We don't want to just start promoting products that don't actually check out. So there's a lot of work that goes on behind the scenes to make sure that these products are legit before they make it onto the site.

And so it's something that I take immense pride in being able to contribute to a resource like this, because it's something that I wish I would have had when I first started changing up my products and my lifestyle. And it's very powerful because there's a membership option. So it's basically like Costco, but of the best of wellness products. That's awesome. We'll link to it below.

Dhru Purohit
I love supporting any entrepreneurial efforts that make this whole process of living a low tox lifestyle a lot easier. So on that note, what types of toilet paper would be a better option for people who are trying to pay attention to that? Right. The best option that I have found is unbleached bamboo toilet paper. And the reason is that a lot of toilet paper has actually been found to contain PFAS chemicals because of the water that is used to produce the chemicals, the paper materials that are going into creating the toilet paper.

Yvonne Burkart
There's studies showing now that there's PFAS chemicals in toilet paper, and the worst kind of toilet paper you can use is recycled toilet paper because people recycle. Also, their receipts and receipts are coded in bisphenol a, which is an endocrine disruptor. Then those receipts get turned into toilet paper. So then the toilet paper contains dioxins, PFAS and BPA, which are terrible. We don't want to be rubbing that in our private areas.

So the best type of toilet paper is unbleached bamboo. But one particular brand I found actually did the studies and showed a clean bill of health, at least for PFAS chemicals, one for dioxane and a few other contaminants as well. Do you want to mention the brand? I don't mind giving them a plug. Yeah, sure.

It's plant paper. Okay, amazing. We'll link to in the show notes. And I just want to mention, because part of this is also making this doable for people, right? And sometimes the bamboo toilet paper companies that are out there that I've seen, it is because they don't have scale in the same way that like, you know, whatever the major brands of toilet paper are, it's expensive.

Dhru Purohit
And some households, like, you have a lot of kids, some households, I'm always hearing, you know, mom friends of mine saying like, it's crazy how much toilet paper we go through and how often I have to go and get it. So I do want to mention that the bamboo toilet papers that are out there, they are typically more expensive that are there, and you're making a step in the right direction. But if your family is open to it, there are plenty of sort of modern bidets that are out there. I know there's companies like Tushy and other people that are there that have made fantastic bidets that are gonna be a lot cheaper over the long haul if your family feels, you know, comfortable of switching to a bidet that's there. So I just wanted to mention that note about the economics of some of the cleaner toilet paper that's out there.

Okay. You mentioned something which is super important for women, which is the female genitalia in particular, because you're using these products like toilet paper and feminine hygiene products, period products, they're being used on a regular basis. This is another source of hidden toxins that people are getting exposed to. So what's the problem with the period products and the feminine hygiene products that are out there? A lot of them, nobody knew what ingredients were actually going into them.

Yvonne Burkart
And it was only within the last couple of years that manufacturers started listing the materials on the packages. And in other parts of the world, that still is not common practice. But why did they start? Were they getting pressure? Right?

There was some legislation that happened in the state of New York, and so companies started just printing it right on the container. What is in these period products and in tampons? They've done studies as well as in diapers, and they found things like, again, dioxins from bleaching. There's even benzene and formaldehyde, unfortunately, because of fragrance. And scented period products, which are the absolute worst.

So if you're looking to even improve a tiny bit already, just avoiding the scented products is already a step in the right direction. A big step in the right direction. Avoid scented everything? Yes. Scented products that contain undisclosed synthetic fragrance mixtures.

That's what we're talking about. Essential oils. That's a whole different scenario. But most period products don't contain essential oils. Right?

They contain these undisclosed fragrances. So you have no idea what you're putting down there. So there's plasticizer chemicals. I mean, a lot. I'm speaking specifically on the disposables, which is what most people grow up using.

It's just what's available in stores. It's what your friends are using. A lot of people learn how to manage their cycle from their mom, their sister, or their friends. And so if that's what people are using, then you just kind of go with it. Yeah, we're talking about tampons, pads, all those things.

Dhru Purohit
If you're not using the cleaner options that are out there, you're getting exposed to potentially heavy metals, carcinogens like dioxins, dioxins that you mentioned, volatile organic compounds like benzene, pesticides and potentially glyphosate in some. In some instances, bleach, and again, endocrine disruptors. We keep on hearing this term, and, you know, you mentioned something before which is super important to pay attention to. You know, cancer rates are going up even amongst, you know, young people now. We've made advancements in sort of cancer management, and we've had some experts in this space come on this podcast and talk about the most important things that are there when it comes to how to address and sort of protect ourselves against cancers.

And there's a whole group of things that we actually just don't know. We just don't know. Individual ingredients have been studied to their link in increasing cancers. These are a lot of the carcinogenic items that you've been mentioned in specifically, like rodents and lab rats and other stuff. We just don't have that big human data that's there, but we know these ingredients are not helpful.

So again, this is why we have to live that low tox lifestyle. So what are the options that are there or brands that you would recommend that are available for women when it comes to these feminine hygiene products? An alternative to tampons, something that I have found to be particularly useful, are silicone menstrual cups. Not all silicone is created equal, unfortunately. So there are some nuances there, too.

Yvonne Burkart
Just look for medical grade silicone on the package. But that wouldn't be my top choice. My top choice would actually be reusable period products. So reusable period underwear or menstrual pads. Optimal choice would be organic cotton, as natural and organic as possible, meaning staying away from polyester nylon.

We don't want those types of textiles down there because they're. They contain BPA and other endocrine disruptors. So you're just replacing one source of endocrine disruptor with another. So if you can get away from that optimal choice for me, and in my opinion, is organic cotton period panties and organic cotton reusable pads. If I tell my wife to use reusable pads, she's gonna laugh in my face.

Dhru Purohit
First of all, I don't tell her to do anything, but if I make a suggestion. So is there something that's in between that optimal and there's something that. And if we have optimal on the right hand side, and we have sort of the worst sort of products that are there, which are sold in these big box stores, you see that target, Costco, a lot of them are using organic cotton as part of these disposable products. Is that a big step in the right direction. It is a step in the right direction.

Yvonne Burkart
But again, you still have the adhesives, you've got the plastic backing, so you're not avoiding the bulk of it with these disposables, not to mention the environmental impact that it has. Because once you throw them away, then they start polluting the environment as well. And then that, of course, makes the water quality worse, air quality, soil. So in order to sort of go in the right direction, yes, organic cotton disposables are better than the conventional, especially fragranced. Okay, amazing.

Dhru Purohit
Yes. Fragrance free for all this stuff. You know, this all goes into this larger topic. Again, that is, today's episode is dedicated to, which is minimizing our exposure. That's step one.

When you minimize exposure, because you get educated, you realize, and you start to become the CEO of your own health. You're not letting all these companies whose primary focus is profit, and I have no problem with that. But through that process of only focusing on process on profit, there's not always the incentive to look into how things are made. I was one time in a previous company doing business with a natural flavoring manufacturer, like, somebody who orders different natural flavoring that was there to make a product. And I always thought, like, okay, wow, like organic, natural flavors.

Like, you know, that's going to be good because it says organic. And I asked the company, I said, hey, what is actually in this product? And they said, we actually don't know. And these flavor houses that make them, they consider it a trade secret, so they will never tell us or anybody else. So we have to trust them that it is, you know, something that's good.

We know that it comes from, you know, natural products, but that can mean so many different things. It doesn't mean how it's processed. It doesn't mean, you know, there's a bunch of standards that could be lost inside of it. So many of the companies themselves actually do not know what are in many of these products, which are why. Which is why we have to fight to protect ourselves and our families.

Do you agree with that? 100%. I worked in the flavor and fragrance chemical industry for a number of years. I was one of the few people that had access to the flavor formulations. Just as part of my job, I was in charge of making sure that flavors were safe before they went to market.

Yvonne Burkart
Whatever happened before I got there, I cannot speak on. A lot of flavors were grandfathered in by the FDA, meaning that whatever happened before the FDA started setting these sort of guidelines, or at least kind of providing some oversight into this. Whatever was already in use is considered grass, generally recognized as safe. But nobody really knows if it's actually safe because there's no data behind it. It was just.

It was already being used, so just continue using it. Hey, we've been using this for a while. Who knows if it's toxic or not toxic? That's fine. Just let's keep using it.

Exactly. So grass is a dubious term at best with flavor chemicals. Like you said, nobody knows what's in the flavors. Unless you're doing big business with a flavor house in the millions of dollars per year, they're not going to tell you. They would tell you what's on the hazard label.

So, for example, what do you need to know to tell your workers on what type of protective equipment they need to wear? Is it a carcinogen? Is it a mutagen? Is it reproductive toxin? That's the only information they'll tell you.

They won't tell you the exact chemical names that are in there. And like you said, natural flavors don't even need to come from food as long as it was identified in nature. It could be considered natural if it was created with a natural process that's so ambiguous and so gray. And it was one of the biggest reasons why I could no longer participate in that industry. Well, I appreciate that you had the courage to leave.

Dhru Purohit
We talked about your story in detail in our last episode, if anybody wants to watch that. And that you had the courage to leave, which you also were forced to because your health was declining. Right. But then you set your mission to want to fight for everybody who's here. You know, you're a mom yourself.

You're fighting for moms, you're fighting for family members. You're fighting for people who don't have the ability. You know, the vast majority of people, first of all, they're not even listening to podcasts, right? If you're listening to this episode, chances are you're somebody who has some degree of education and maybe has some resources in your life where you actually can enjoy things in your leisure time, like getting educated and figuring out how to protect yourself. A lot of people that are out there, they're working two jobs, three jobs, just to put food on the table, and they don't have the ability to go super deep on this.

So the more that we make this easy for the people that do have resources, I truly believe in the capitalistic spirit that a lot of people who are listening today, some of those people might go and create a new company ends up scaling, and it becomes a much better version compared to a lot of the toxic options that are out there. So I appreciate your mission and your dedication to this cause. And, you know, again, you put out some fantastic content on Instagram and on YouTube. I want everybody to follow you. Um, just.

Can you mention your handle, if you. If you wouldn't mind? Yeah, it's Burkhardt. Amazing. We'll have that in the show notes as well.

All right, let's continue the tour around the home and talk about everyday household products that are contributing to our toxic burden and potentially increasing our risk of all sorts of diseases that we want to avoid, especially cancer. So the one that I want to talk about next is cookware. What are the worst types of cookware that people should be aware of? The worst type of cookware out there is something that most people have in their homes. If you walk into any store, it's the most prevalent type.

Yvonne Burkart
It's the most easy to use, it's the most convenient, it's the most affordable. Everybody loves it. I myself used it as well. And that's nonstick cookware. Nonstick cookware is extremely.

Of course it's convenient. Right? It's nonstick. That's the whole point, is that it has no mess. It's easy to clean.

What's not to love? Unfortunately, the coatings are made out of chemicals of unknown hazard. And one of them being, actually, this is known PFAS. PFAS chemicals are what's used to make Teflon. Teflon is a type of PFAS.

They've been. Some of them have been phased out, but replaced with other types that are similar. So under the guise that, oh, well, we got rid of some of these toxic pfas, but guess what? They've replaced it with something that's similar. I've heard that there's hundreds of thousands of PFAS type chemicals that are out there.

Dhru Purohit
I read in one report. And why it came up is because the federal government issued a study last year which was in the right direction. We'll put it on the screen above. We've talked about in the podcast where they commissioned a study for local water departments to actually analyze how much PFAS was in their water supply. And this study was all over the news, and it was like over 60% of municipalities found PFAS in their water supply.

But when you dig into the report a little bit further, you see, like, even though that's alarming, that's like the majority of our water systems that are out there. They were only looking for four of the major PFAS. And when I double clicked into it a little bit more and looked into it, apparently there's over 100,000 type of PFAS type chemicals that are out there. That is mind blowing. Yeah, absolutely.

Yvonne Burkart
That's the tip of the iceberg. Right. I think what they were trying to do is to choose the ones that represent the major groups within PFAS chemicals and the ones that historically were the most commonly used by industry. But again, like you said, that doesn't even cover a fraction of what is potentially out there. So I think it's a step in the right direction, of course, but there's so much more that needs to be done, clearly, because it's not covering enough.

Dhru Purohit
So Teflon also, the other thing is, is that even if you use any kind of nonstick cookware that's out there, one important point that you've made in your content is that, again, part of living a low tox lifestyle is not constantly buying new things. So maybe you might have a pan or a situation or whatever. That is a healthier option that's out there. But especially if you have a nonstick pan where it's scratched or you can see the aluminum, that's something that people should throw away today and replace. Why is that?

Yvonne Burkart
Yes, that's a great point. Because as soon as you compromise that coating, as soon as you scratch it, it's releasing PFAS particles into your food. The last thing you want to eat is PFAS, because once it's in your body, it does not leave for years. And just so you know, chemicals tend to leave within 24 to 48 hours. But this, these are staying around for years.

Dhru Purohit
They're forever chemicals. They're forever chemicals, exactly. Because they're extremely stable, persistent, they don't break down. Scientists are now trying to figure out how to break them down from the environment, but we still don't know how they break down from the body, and we're continuously exposed. It's in house dust, it's in water, it's in the soil.

Yvonne Burkart
But again, not to make people feel like, oh, well, what's the point? They're everywhere. There is a point to avoiding further exposure as much as you can. We're not going to avoid it all. But it's the question of, do you want to just lay down, roll over, and just perish, or do you want to give yourself a fighting chance?

That's really what it comes down to. Yeah. And especially where any of these products are being interacted with very sensitive areas. Like, you were talking about our genitalia and putting toilet paper and PFAS right up against it. That's one thing there, versus, like, wearing a shirt that has, like, polyester, right.

Dhru Purohit
That's a higher exposure, potentially, to a more sensitive area. In that same way, when you're cooking with something, it's heat and it's friction. So that seems to be something that people would want to pay attention to to have a better alternative. Where would you rank? If you had to rank to give people a sense of priority, where would you rank?

Making sure that you're, you know, using better for you cookware in terms of cleaning up your entire household? First I'd start with water, then I'd tackle the air. Then I tackle the type of food that you're eating. And then number four would be the cookware. Because if you're buying all these organic foods, whole foods, and you want to prepare home cooked meals for your family, then removing the source of pfas from your home is key.

Yvonne Burkart
So it would be within the top four. What are your recommendations for better or best type of cookware that's out there for people? Stainless steel. So we want to look for stainless steel. Some of it can contain chromium and nickel.

And nickel is. Can be problematic for some people, but for the vast majority of people, it isn't an issue. So stainless steel, cast iron, and solid ceramic or pure ceramic cookware. So the issue with the. Some of the other cookwares is that when you cook acidic foods, so there's heat, there's acid, there's friction, there's time.

A lot of different variables involved there can. That can encourage leaching. So, example for, for example, cast iron, you don't necessarily want to use acids on there because that could actually compromise the cookware. So in that case, then I would use a ceramic cookware, but not the ceramic coated. I want to be very specific about that because ceramic coatings are just a swap for the nonstick coatings.

They have nonstick properties as well, but no one is disclosing what's in the ceramic coating of that cookware. And once it becomes scratched, same thing. Like you said, the aluminum underneath is exposed, and then that's leaching into your food. Mmm. So we have to take a little bit of a measure on the website that you have the swell score.

Dhru Purohit
Do you have a category for cookware that people can go to and kind of find better options? That's actually on my website. On your personal website? Yes. Drevonberkhart.com dot.

Yvonne Burkart
I've listed my favorite types of cookware on there as well. Amazing. So we can link to that if people are looking for specific brands that you recommend. Yes. Okay.

Dhru Purohit
Fantastic. You know, I want to mention another thing to you, since we brought up the topic of microplastics. Uh, anything else you wanted to say about cookware or can I move on to the next thing? I want to mention something about air fryers, please. Because air fryers are so popular.

Yvonne Burkart
They're really. They're ubiquitous. Everybody's using them. And I get it. I mean, they're.

They're awesome, right? You can fry and create crispy textures without using a bunch of oil and fat. And, you know, it's great. And it's also fast. But the problem is a lot of them are made out of plastic.

So you have a heating element inside of a plastic housing. Who knows what's coming off of that plastic when you heat it, right? Well, technically, we do know endocrine disruptors, if you've ever gotten a new air fryer, plugged it in and it smelled horrible. That's what I'm referring to. Not to mention most air fryers inside the cooking basket is nonstick.

So if you can get an air fryer that's made out of stainless steel on the inside. Are there actually air fryers like that? Yeah, I def. I found one. I have one.

So I'm not someone who's telling you, don't air fry. Air frying is great. It's basically convection cooking. Do you have a brand that you want to mention? Sure.

Yeah. Our place makes a great one. Okay. That's awesome. I know the founders of that company.

Dhru Purohit
They actually introduced me and my wife. That's how we met. Oh, wow. Which is so random. They're super sweet individuals.

Shiz and Amir. So that's great. I gotta pick up that air fryer, because we got an air fryer a long time ago, but we never really used it as much. But the first time we used it, we got that crazy smell. It smells like burnt plastic.

Like somebody lit a credit card on fire and put it all around your house like sage. Except it's a credit card, and it was felt like plastic everywhere. We opened up all the windows and the air filter that I use, that I've recommended for a long time. They're a sponsor of the show. You know, full disclosure, I think you're a fan of them, too.

Air doctor. Oh, yes. Love it. Love them. One of the things about it, I have the bigger one in my home, they have a sensor on there.

When the air quality gets bad, the air filter automatically sort of triggers the sensor, and it starts going. And I have a few in my house. Cause I'm really big on air quality being top notch. I have one in my bedroom, one in kind of like the family room area, and then one in my office and my wife's office as well. And the one that's closest to the kitchen started going nuts, and I was like, oh, shit, that's the air fryer, right?

We're trying to make these, like, organic treats in the air fryer, right? I don't know what we were making, but my air fryer's free. My air filter. Sorry. My air filter is freaking out because of this crazy smell.

And then we never ended up using it. So I got to check out the. Our place one. So thank you for that. No smell.

No smell. I can attest. No smell. That's great. Straight out of the box.

Yvonne Burkart
It was great. I've had to, what do I say? Air it out, let them off gas outside. Because some appliances have such a horrific smell. Oh, my gosh.

Dhru Purohit
Well, thank you. So if you have to do that, that's probably a good indication that it's not a good piece of cookware to use. Yeah. Well, I want to get into a topic that we touched on a little bit earlier, and you actually made a. You made a very viral piece of content about this topic, and this topic is microplastics.

And we've mentioned it throughout this interview. Your content that you made was about the dangers of microplastics in something that should be healthy for us, which are tea bags, you know, drinking green tea. In fact, I think you went into a Costco. These are some of my favorite videos that you make. You go into target and you're like, hey, let's go find low tox things.

Or you might go into a Costco or some other store, and you're like, hey, here's an ingredient that's very popular, or here's a product that's very popular. And you picked up a bag of green tea. Everybody's kind of seen this brand that's out there, and you showed that this particular brand of green tea was made with a bag that had nylon, that it was made out of. And you talked about why this is so problematic that a study and a report found that you could have up to 11 billion. 11 billion microplastics, 11 billion to 3 billion microplastics and nanoplastics in a single cup of a beverage of tea if you're regularly using these nylon type of bags that are very common, that are out there.

In fact, they're so common that a lot of the brands that are doing a good job and are making better teas and have better bags, they're actually disclosing that they don't have any microplastics inside. I'm sure you vetted some of them, and we'll talk about that, but I'm going to come back to t and get your comment on it. But since making that piece of content, there has been another big reason that microplastics have been in the news, and it's something that we've covered on this podcast here with my cardiologist, doctor Michael Twyman, and I want to share this with the audience. This is the connection between microplastics and a groundbreaking study that was done where they found a strong association with people who had microplastics and higher levels of plaque in their carotid arteries. I'm going to read here from theconversation.com, who did a great summary.

We also put a newsletter on this. So this is for people who are not familiar with this. So the researchers of this study looked at 257 people altogether. All the patients were already undergoing preventative surgery to remove plaque from their carotid arteries, the main arteries that supply the brain with blood. This allowed the researchers to collect the plaque samples and perform a chemical analysis on them.

They then followed up with the participants 34 months later. Of the 257 participants in the study, 150 of them were found to have the presence of microplastics and nanoplastics, some of these same things that we're talking about in clothing and tea bags, etcetera, in their arterial plaque, mainly fragments of two of the most commonly used PLA plastics in the world, polyethylene used in grocery store bags, bottles like bottled water and food packaging, and polyvinylene chloride used in flooring and then also pvc piping. I might have butchered the pronunciation of that. A statistical analysis of this data found that patients with microplastics and nanoplastics in their plaque had a higher risk of suffering a heart attack, a stroke, or death from all cause compared to those who had no microplastics or nanoplastics in their plaque. The researchers also analyzed the macrophages, a type of immune cell that helps remove pathogens from the body in the patient's arteries.

And they found that the participants who had the highest levels of microplastics and nanoplastics in their plaque also had evidence of plastic fragments in their microphages. Just a spoiler alert, you shouldn't have any microplastics interfering with those macrophages. So the last part here that the article mentions, again, this is all taken from theconversation.com that did a good summary on this is they also looked at whether certain genes associated with inflammation, which can be a sign of disease, were switched on in the participants. They found that the participants who had microplastics and nanoplastics in their plaque also had high signs of inflammation in their genes. First of all, this is mind blowing.

You know, they're literally saying that the more microplastics that you have on the more plaque that those individuals had. Sure, it was a smaller study with 257 people, but when I first came across a study, it reminded me of also the breast cancer study that you talked about on the podcast last time, that individuals that higher toxins inside of their body that they found through these biopsies had these genes turned on inside their body that were associated with, you know, more likely to be turned on for people who eventually got breast cancer. What are your thoughts when you saw this article in the news and you hear me reading the summary here? Well, it's the first evidence linking microplastics to human disease. Before this, there was evidence of microplastics being detected in various human tissues, but there's wasn't an actual disease that was linked to it.

Yvonne Burkart
It was more of a general sense of, well, we know that microplastics and nanoplastics are foreign objects. We know that they can promote inflammation. But this is pretty crazy to think that now it's been detected in the actual plaque that people have once they have this disease state. So it's hard to say. Right?

Did the micro nanoplastics cause this? Did it contribute to it? Well, likely contributed to it, but it could also be an overall toxic lifestyle in addition to all the microplastic exposures together. Yeah, it's so nuts because we literally do not know the extent of the damage of all these different products every year. It seems like we're figuring out something new about how these products can make our body suffer from some of the top killers in the world.

Dhru Purohit
And by the way, for anybody listening, cardiovascular disease, which arterial plaque is obviously deeply connected to, and atherosclerosis is the number one killer on the planet. So if they're finding that these plastics and microplastics and nanoplastics have some connection, we all should be alarmed and we should all be paying attention, I think one recommendation that my cardiologist gave, and I'd love to hear if you agree with it. And then any other recommendations to minimize microplastics. He said, number one, first and foremost, get a filter for your house, preferably a reverse osmosis. And really, unless, if it's an emergency, don't drink out of bottled plastic water bottles, because a lot of those have microplastics.

Many of those cases of bottled water that we see are on hot grocery trucks and delivery trucks that are out there. They're being exposed to high heat. Sometimes they're sitting in the sun in a warehouse for a long period of time with the sun coming through the window. Sometimes they're left outside. We have no idea how much microplastics are there inside of them.

So avoid plastic bottled water, really, unless, if it's an emergency, do your best to be drinking, you know, reverse osmosis at home and when you're out and about, if you can get water in glass or you can get water in potentially, you know, metal containers. Sometimes these metal reusable containers are also available. Another recommendation that I know you would have is avoid plastic tea bags or anything that's hot, that is, in nylon, or some of these other chemicals that are known to have microplastics in them. Anything else that you want to share with our audience about greatly minimizing their exposure to microplastics? The avoidance of processed foods.

Yvonne Burkart
Because the packaging that the foods come in as well, those start to break down. And what I want to reiterate, or really just shed light on is the fact that plastics inherently are not. They are stable. They are created to be stable. Right?

They're. They're not created to quickly break down. That's why they're so persistent in the environment. So we can't expect them to break down in our bodies. So for one of those things, is also avoiding a ton of packaged foods because there was a recent consumer reports study showing the levels of microplastics in certain types of foods.

And lo and behold, ultra process had the worst, the highest levels. And that's not surprising. Yeah, absolutely. Oh, man. A lot of things to be mindful of.

Dhru Purohit
But the goal, again, is because I know some people are listening here, very intently listening. They're both feeling excited because we're empowering them with this information. Maybe some things that they didn't know about, but there's also part of them that's afraid. And they feel afraid because they're like, why should I even bother. These things are everywhere.

I know you've already touched on this, but I think it's important to touch on it again. Just tell us what you want to say to that person who feels that way. It might be difficult and it might be scary at first to think about all these chemicals that are impacting your health. But if you have ever dealt with any type of chronic health issue, any type of fertility struggle, and I speak from personal experience, then you will understand the true value of your health. And if you know how precious your health is, it's the only thing that we have really separating us from death is our health.

Yvonne Burkart
So if you are afraid, just remember that there are so many things you can do to help your body. Just do the best that you can. If you want to give yourself a fighting chance at having a life and health that is radiant, it is absolutely possible. Despite the polluted environment that we live in. It really is not something to bury our head in the sand over and just really give yourself a fighting chance.

If you care about your health, if you've got a family, if you've got kids, especially, just think about your future generations. Yeah. I want to also add, I've been trying to minimize the toxins in my life for 20 plus years now, ever since I started changing my diet and becoming aware of this world and slowly going down the rabbit hole of this, this content. And I want to say that I don't really spend a lot of time thinking about it anymore. Once you've made some basic changes in your home, once you understand that, how do I protect my water?

Dhru Purohit
Make sure I'm getting clean water. You have filter recommendations on your website which we are linking to in the show notes. Once you understand, like, how to make sure your air is clean by getting rid of these scented candles and other indoor air pollutants, potentially, you know, of course everybody can open their windows. That's free. And then if you can afford it, a high quality filter is a.

Is a great addition. Once you cover a lot of the basics. Once you clean up your diet, you have a good workout routine. You're not thinking about, you're not obsessing about these things every single day. In fact, the most amount of time that I spend on this is in preparation of, you know, our interviews together because I have to remind myself about the latest literature and the science.

I'm not worried about these things. I don't live my life in fear about these things. I'm not freaking out because I know that I'm majoring in the majors. I'm largely avoiding ultra processed and highly processed foods and my diet is mostly made up of whole foods. I'm getting adequate amount of protein in my diet, which I've learned is an important part of making sure to protect skeletal muscle mass and protect my lean muscle mass as I age.

I'm getting a ton of phytonutrients by having a diversity of different fruits and vegetables and in some cases, some supplements that I've added into my diet. I take a few supplements that are there that are important for me that I've personalized with the integrative and functional medicine doctor that I, that I work with. And, you know, I generally avoid a lot of these toxins that we talk about sometimes. And this is a really helpful tip for anybody who's listening. When I go and I travel to a hotel or an Airbnb, I will often email them in advance and I'll say, hey, listen, can you not use fragrance fabric softeners when you're cleaning the sheets?

I just tell them I have allergies or my wife has asthma. Can you do a checklist of these things? Can we make sure some hotels these days are actually offering even air filters inside of the hotels that are there? So I'll have a little checklist. When I travel.

I'll shoot an email. Sometimes they can do it, sometimes they forget, sometimes they can't do it. And you go into an Airbnb and there's febreze sprayed everywhere on everything. And you know what? You do your best.

You don't let that stop you from having a good time and enjoying the special occasion that you're celebrating with your family. You open the windows and you continue to live your life. Right? I travel and I'm in a lot of ubers. Right.

Sometimes there's an air freshener in the back and I just unplug it and I put it on the side or I ask the driver, can I take that out and can you put it in the glovebox? And other times I don't feel like making it a big issue because I can tell they're in a bad mood and I don't ask about it and I just lower the windows. So my bottom line is that even as somebody who's in this space, who lives as much of a low tox lifestyle as anybody that I know, I'm not thinking about this on a regular basis. It's not consistent. Consuming a lot of my attention, most of my attention and energy is focused on living life and having fun and spending time with the people that I love and doing great work that's there.

And so I am not thinking about it. And I want to promise you that if you're used, not used to this world and you're just getting educated in the beginning, it can feel like a lot. But once you get the basics, you really are not thinking about it all the freaking time. Is that your experience as well, too, separate from the work that you do on this as an educator? 100%.

Yvonne Burkart
Because once you get the basics down, it just becomes part of your lifestyle. You don't even have to think about it or put effort into it anymore. It just becomes part of your normal routine. And I kind of like to think about it like this. A lot of people come into this hearing everything all at once, and they're like, oh, my gosh, it sounds like the weight of the world is on my shoulders right now.

Think of it kind of like the pyramid, right? What are the basics that you need to know right now? What are going to. What are the things that you can do that will make the biggest impact? We mentioned it.

Filter your water. Avoid drinking bottled water. Filter your air if you can. Remove the fragrance products. Eat whole foods.

Very basic, very minimal. Get diet and exercise keyed in, and you're pretty much on your way, at least for the most part, to a better, better path. Don't really get bogged down by which type of carpet do I use and what kind of window treatments and all of that. One step at a time. That's what I really want to encourage people to do.

1ft in front of the other. One step at a time. Like you said, don't major in the minors. Think about the big impact. Things that we need to tackle first.

Get really good at that, and then the rest of it kind of becomes effortless. Now, with all that being said, there are some evidence based things that are bonus things that have been shown to help protect the body even a little bit further. Now, they're not going to be available to everybody, but generally speaking, I know that my audience is curious about these, and they want to be educated about them because they would rather spend money on some of these solutions that we're going to get into in a second versus, you know, blowing money on some luxury handbag. Not that it's a choice between either or, but they prioritize their health and their longevity. And one of the number one things that's out there that you've talked about before, and many people have talked about on my podcast previously, is sauna.

Dhru Purohit
And you have a couple different types of sauna. Infrared and traditional sauna. Why are you excited about saunas as a potential bonus intervention for people? I love that you called it a bonus intervention because the key is really to sweat. That's the basis of all sauna, right.

Yvonne Burkart
The purpose is to induce sweating. And there was a series of elegant studies that was conducted showing that within sweat, there can be the metabolites or breakdown products of environmental chemicals that we've been talking about. BpA, phthalates, flame retardants, organo chlorine, pesticides. So a lot of the things that we've been talking about addressing and mitigating, we might already have those in our bodies. And so how do we get them out?

Right. Is the lifestyle and all that other stuff. Right. But once you get all that figured out and you can get into Asana, then that is really going to help you get to the next level, is, like you said, it's a bonus. It's not necessarily everyone needs a sauna, right?

It's, if you can, great. And if you can't, then just start sweating. Start moving and sweating. Make sweating normal. Just get used to sweating.

I think it's. It's really an interesting point that somebody brought up to me once, which is during the summer, we naturally sweat because it's hot. Right. And it's during these seasonal changes that I think we should connect to how our bodies normally behave, which is sweating. So turning on the air conditioner all the time, being indoors all the time.

It's not necessarily how humans historically evolved. Right. We were outside, we got sunlight, we got fresh air, we had our feet to the ground, and we sweated. That's great. I know in Denmark, Finland, a lot of the nordic countries, sauna saunas are so pervasive.

Dhru Purohit
In fact, some of the big studies on the benefits of saunas showing a reduction in all cause mortality. And these are like large studies, like thousands of people that are part of them, because so many people use saunas there. I heard an interesting fact, I think it was from Doctor Rhonda Patrick, that the control arm was people who were going to the sauna twice a week, and then there was people who were going to the sauna, I believe, four to five times a week. And those are the individuals that in that particular landmark study that was there. I might have gotten the facts a little bit wrong, but we'll link to it in the show notes.

Those were the individuals that had the biggest all cause mortality improvements that were there. And some of individuals that have been on this podcast like Doctor Susanna Sonberg have turned this into a protocol that people can follow. Most of the data is not on infrared, but again, as you mentioned, anything that helps you sweat is a step in the right direction, even if it's not a sauna, just vigorous activity. So most of the data is on traditional saunas. And I believe that they have to get up to about 180 degrees for about 20 minutes.

And doing that anywhere from like two to five times a week is something that can, at least from these studies, be extrapolated to benefit individuals if they want to do that. Now, the great thing is a lot of like, gyms today have saunas. So maybe your gym that you're already part of has a sauna. I know a lot of YMCA's which are low cost gyms that are available to people. Those have saunas.

And I've even heard friends that have gone into kind of like a little bit of a pool. A friend that has a bigger garage will volunteer to have the sauna at their place. And with a small group of like two or three people, everybody chips in and buys a sauna and you get access to it. You know, I have friends that have done that, that give the garage code to them, and you don't have to go in the house and bug the family. Another thing is, if you are in the market of Asana, this is a little plug for a company that I've invested in that I'm so passionate about.

It's called true medicine. True medicine is designed to help people spend their FSA and HSA dollars towards wellness products. So they have gone out there and they've made it easy. So there's like $40 billion that are in these FSA and HSA accounts. Do you have an HSA or FSA account?

Yvonne Burkart
Yeah, totally. Yeah. And there's money that just sits there, and people know that you can use it for chiropractic and acupuncture. But a lot of times people are about to make a big purchase, like a sauna or an eight sleep or maybe an air filter, and they actually have gone to these brands and set it up so that you can use your HSA and FSA dollars, which is essentially using tax free money to go and purchase. I'm an investor in the company.

Dhru Purohit
I love the CEO. Cali means he's been on the podcast. They have an entire list of products on their website, saunas and a bunch of other stuff that you can purchase with FSA and HSA dollars. So that's another hack of how you can essentially get a sauna tax free, available to you. So we'll link to all those things inside of the.

Inside of the show notes. Okay, we're moving from saunas to. Are there any other bonus things that you want to highlight for the audience that once you've hit the foundationals that these are potential nice to have? So we mentioned saunas. Is there anything else that you like to help protect your body, help you live a low tox lifestyle or support anything that you've talked about in today's episode?

Yvonne Burkart
Yeah, I like these very simple type of hacks that some people like to call them. But just cold, plunging, exposing your body to different temperatures, can help with the adaptive response. And I think it's really interesting to know that some of these can actually influence how our body detoxifies chemicals. So it's just once we've removed, we've got the basics down. We want to get to the next level, maybe.

Sauna would probably be my top one. And I've started doing. And if you can't afford a cold plunge or you don't have access to one, then just take a cold shower. I mean, it's pretty simple. I like to keep it simple because.

Because otherwise there's more of a barrier to entry. Yeah. The tougher that you make things to do, people won't do it. So we gotta keep it simple. So I wanna move from these bonus things that you mentioned, like cold plunge sauna, which can be great for people.

Dhru Purohit
They could be a splurge. But again, the goal is just sweating activity, even taking a cold shower, cold bath, these things could all be potentially helpful. So I wanna switch from those to a few hacks that you've talked about in some viral videos that can help additionally protect us from some of the toxins in our environment. Let's go to the first one here. It's about hacking your rice to protect you from a potentially, well, actually a known carcinogen, a known toxin in rice.

Talk to us about this. Yeah. Arsenic can be found in rice because rice plants are notoriously good at sucking up arsenic from the soil, up to ten times more than other types of grains, like wheat, for example. And if you eat rice regularly, like me, I eat, I love rice, then this is something that you might want to consider adding into your cooking process, or let's say, changing your cooking process. Growing up, I never did this.

Yvonne Burkart
I never heard of this type of cooking, and that is parboiling. So there are some studies that came out showing that just by washing the rice, you can remove maybe 10% of the arsenic because it's water soluble, but you can take it even a step further. So I always wash my rice anyway. So until the water runs clear, and then what you do is boil some water, pour your rice in there, parboil it for five minutes. What does parboil mean?

Means not cooking it all the way. Okay. Just boiling it for a short amount of time. So partially cooked? Partially cook your rice, then drain out the water.

Then, in the study, they found that it removed over 70% of the arsenic from the rice, which is pretty amazing. Evan, that's huge. Because arsenic is bioaccumulative, it means that once you're exposed to it, it also has a hard time leaving the body. They like to accumulate heavy metals in general, and arsenic is a heavy metal. So what you want to do is avoid eating it in the first place.

And if you eat a lot of rice, again, this is something very simple to do once you get used to the process. So what I'll do is I'll start a pot of boiling water. I'll wash the rice once it comes to a boil, pour the rice in, boil for five minutes, dump that water out, and then you let the rice cook in the residual water. The paper actually said to add water back in, but I found that it made the rice too wet, and I didn't like that, so I didn't add any water back. And a lot of people commented and said, we've been parboiling our rice for as long as I know.

And I thought, oh, this must be a cultural thing. So it was really cool for me to learn how other cultures are cooking rice. At least in my vietnamese household, we did not ever do this technique. But I've definitely changed the way I cook rice. I parboil it.

I don't use a rice cooker. I actually use a pot on the stove. So it. It's very easy. Once you get used to it, it's super easy and awesome.

Dhru Purohit
That's awesome. And you have a whole video where you kind of walk people through this. So we'll link to that. Everybody can go to the show notes and check it out. Another area, which is a hack.

That was something that you talk about in response to a very viral news story about a particular chemical that was found by the environmental working group that is quite dangerous to the body. And in particular, this chemical, which I'm going to have you talk about in a second, was found in high concentrations in a few products that people especially eat for breakfast. Can you talk about this chemical and what products it's been found in and how people can protect themselves from it. A lot of people like to eat oatmeal for breakfast oat products. And over the years, like you said, EWG has done a lot of work to uncover what's actually happening in the food supply.

Yvonne Burkart
So years ago, the issue was glyphosate. Glyphosate is the active ingredient in roundup. It is now being recognized as a human carcinogen that actually, unfortunately, or actually, fortunately has, the issue has almost gone away, especially if you eat organic oats, you can avoid the glyphosate, because glyphosate is not allowed in organic agricultural products. Now, they found Klormaquat, which is a new, unfortunately, chemical that's being added to food. The EPA recently approved it.

It was not approved for use in food before. It is not allowed in Europe. It was used traditionally to a growth, a growth regulator in plants. So it keeps them from getting too tall. The issue with oats is that if the oat plant gets too tall, harvesting becomes more challenging and more difficult.

So they sprayed it with cloroquat to keep the plants from getting too tall and snapping off and whatever, causing issues with the processing. But then the klormiquot is now in our food. Wow. And I think it was even, like, in a lot of any products that have oats. So, like your standard, sort of like Quaker oats and that sort of thing.

Dhru Purohit
But the thing is, you can, you don't have to stay away from this food completely. Just by switching it up a little bit, you could maybe reduce your exposure. So. So what should you be switching it up to? Just get organic oats.

That's it? Yeah, organic oats. Because chlormyquat is synthetic, it's not allowed to be used in organic products. So if you want to avoid cloramiquat and glyphosate, then USDA certified organic oats specifically. Fantastic.

We'll link to that video as well. You know, you and I were chit chatting a little bit earlier. In addition to your own story of how your health suffered, you had mentioned that you've even had some family members that have gone through their own health challenges. And at the beginning of the podcast, I was mentioning that indoor air pollution and outdoor air pollution is something that we all want to be paying attention to. Because I learned from one of the top researchers in this space who's been on this podcast before, Doctor Ray Dorsey, that it was one of three things that was highly linked.

Two from the research group that they've put together at University of Rochester that has investigated the origins and the sort of accelerants in the environment that are causing this major spike in Parkinson's disease. They found out that one of them was air pollution, indoor and externally. Could be from factories, could be from the second item, which was pesticide exposure. Individuals who live nearby farms. We've had one of the top researchers in the world on MS multiple sclerosis who's been on this podcast.

Her name is Doctor Terry Walz. She's actually gotten a grant from the multiple sclerosis foundation. This is actually a crazy story. She, when she first started talking about the literature of things that have been linked to things that might be creating neurological issues and therefore be potentially linked with, correlatively with multiple sclerosis, the multiple sclerosis foundation got wind of her giving these talks. And she's a professor at like a university and she's a veteran, veteran administration, she's a doctor at the VA.

They actually banned any group from having her talk at their multiple sclerosis meetups. They banned. They said you're banned. So she went from being banned to like ten years later when she had published all these incredible studies and done this incredible work, and she developed this protocol called the Walls protocol. She was awarded a million dollar grant from the same organization that banned her to continue to study the link between environmental toxins, diets and other things and its relationship to multiple sclerosis.

But anyways, the reason that I brought her up is very similar to the work of Ray Dorsey. She feels that a big contributor of her ultimately having multiple exposures that gave her multiple sclerosis. And she had a very bad version of it. She feels it was growing up on a farm. She literally used to go and mix a big gallon, five gallon drum of water and hand mix it with her hand and mix the pesticides in there.

She would use her hand to mix the pesticides. And she thinks that that's a big part of why she ultimately ended up getting multiple sclerosis. She has no way to prove that, but she thinks that's one contributor in addition to those things. Indoor air pollution, outdoor air pollution, bad air quality in general, pesticides. Another thing that this Doctor Ray Dorsey and his team have identified is in particular these extremely toxic chemicals that are used in the dry cleaning process.

And one of them was all over the news recently because the FDA finally listened to some of the researchers who have been making noise about this. And doctor Ray Dorsey, I've actually brought you a copy of his book here, and I want to connect you to him. It's called ending Parkinson's disease, a prescription for action. They have been raising the alarm, and him and a lot of his colleagues, EPA finally listened, and I believe they banned. Last year, they banned one of these ingredients that's used in dry cleaning.

It's called tetrachlorohydrine, something like that, but still, the problem is that there's a sister chemical, which I'm going to butcher if I try to pronounce, but it's chlora something, tetrahydrine, whatever. And even though one of them is banned, the industry is still using this other ingredient. And it's one of the main reasons that he tells people that try to minimize your use of dry cleaning as much as you can, or it's worthwhile to pay a little bit of extra money and use green or eco friendly dry cleaning solutions that are out there. Is any of that on your radar at all, or do you recommend to people as well, too, to minimize dry cleaning exposure? Yeah.

Yvonne Burkart
Dry cleaning is something I actually stopped doing. So whenever I buy clothes, which is pretty rare nowadays anyway. I don't buy anything that's dry cleaning because I've actually had family members who owned dry cleaning shops and suffered from chronic diseases. This was long before I even studied toxicology. I was a, you know, a middle school student, and I already saw these health effects, and I could smell the chemicals.

It was just not pleasant. So I already knew intuitively early on that dry cleaning is not a good practice. And so once I started learning about the chemicals that are being used, anything that has a chlorine in it, just chloro. All of the chemicals that you've mentioned, chlorine is, if you look on the periodic table, is one of the most electrophilic elements. The more electrophilic, the more reactive.

The more reactive, the more toxic. So this is a connection. If you see something, for example, fluoro is also highly electrophilic. That's PFAS, right? The f in PFAS is fluoro.

So anything that's highly electrophilic is something just kind of keep on your radar. Chlorine, fluorine, those types of the chemicals, bromides. So just kind of to jog people's memories a little bit, if you hear these terms, chlormaquat, right. We can start to draw these connections and you'll start to notice, oh, there's a lot of these types of chemicals out there. Wow, super important.

Dhru Purohit
You know, a lot of people are aware. And there's especially with COVID happening and other stuff and a lot more work from home in general, maybe people are not going into the office as much so they don't have to wear sort of things that you would traditionally have to get dry clean all the time, like suit and ties. The office space has gotten a little bit more casual, but people are still washing their clothes at home. And a lot of the solutions that are out there, even brands that we see at Whole Foods, they may actually not be that much better for you than some of these more popular brands that you get at Costco and Walmart. Talk to us a little bit about greenwashing when it comes to these eco quote unquote products that a lot of people are using to clean their clothes at home.

Yvonne Burkart
So greenwashing is the practice of using deceptive marketing to make consumers believe through the brand, the colors, the names, the pictures that you put on a product, the types of words that you use, like natural, plant based, is to lead consumers to believe that a product is healthier, safer, or more eco friendly than it actually is. So it's deceptive, it's misleading. And the problem is that most consumers, myself included, don't necessarily understand that this is happening all the time. And you see, oh, look at this free and clear product come out. It doesn't have the colors, it doesn't have the fragrances.

But what's in this product exactly? Is it safe for me or not? It's hard to tell without actually reading the ingredients list. And that's really the missing link that nobody learns in school. It's not taught in school, but it's something that now we know.

The issues with so many consumer products out there is really boiling down to what's in it. It's the ingredients. Are there favorite types of more better for you, better for the environment solutions when it comes to, let's say, you know, the detergent that you'd be using to wash your clothes. Yeah. So one thing to avoid are fragrance detergents and fabric softeners.

These, again with the scented and fragrance products. Earlier in this episode, we talked about what are the sources in our homes of air pollutants, again, is also the laundry detergent that we're using. The fabric softener, the dryer sheets, these scents and fragrances, they're against the skin. We're breathing them in. They get released into the environment.

So if you walk around your neighborhood and you smell the scent of laundry detergent coming from your neighbor's house, at least I have experienced this it's pretty crazy. Almost every house I walk past, I can smell it. Yeah. I'm probably the only home in the area that isn't using it, I would guess. But some of the better options would be something that doesn't contain the fragrance, that doesn't contain the optical brightener.

So if you get the bright white, whatever they market, it's a blue detergent. That's actually, it's a trick. It's an optical illusion. It's a brightener. It just makes it look brighter, but it's not actually brightening.

Dhru Purohit
And it's actually, it's not actually brightening. And it's also bad for your body. Right. And the environment, because a lot of these don't biodegrade, so you wash them away and then they just stay in, in the water that goes into the environment. But not only that, there was a series of studies that showed that even when you do, like, extra rinsing with your laundry, the residues of the laundry detergent aren't completely removed from your clothes.

Yvonne Burkart
So if you think, oh, it's been rinsed away, it's washed away, it's actually not, it's still on the clothing. Are there any brands that you would recommend that are out there or people can go to the website? Yeah, it's on my website. One of my favorite ones is Meliora. It's non toxic.

It's made with very minimally processed scent. I don't use any scent or fragrance laundry products. And it's actually also plastic free, so you can get it without a plastic container. It comes in powder form. It's great.

Dhru Purohit
And your website's a great resource and your content's a great resource. I even learn things about products that I regularly use. You know, when I travel, we would often pick up these, you know, Doctor Bronner's little soaps that you would use and they're kind of like an all purpose soap. You can wash your face with it, you can use it as a body wash. Some people use it as a shampoo.

Probably more guys than, you know, girls. Girls have, women have more like specialized products for everything. Guys just usually like one thing. But something interesting that I learned about Doctor Bronner's that I thought actually was a very, you know, healthy for you, better for you brand, clean brand, is that in general, they do have a version that you recommend. But in, but because of the lack of the lack of transparency, the version of their product that you recommend the most is the unscented version, because the rest of their products all have scented.

So it's the unscented baby version. I think it's like the. It's used for, like, babies, like the baby wash. That was surprising for me to learn that this brand that I always thought that was super clean. And I'm sure it is a lot cleaner than a lot of the brands that are there.

Still, the fragrances inside of it could be a problem. Right. They make excellent products. They make great soaps. Very, like you said, all purpose castile soaps, bar soaps.

Yvonne Burkart
The baby unscented one is the one that I would use if I needed some soap like that. And I was surprised that when I read the ingredients on some of the other varieties, for example, the almond scented, it didn't actually contain almond. It contained fragrance. Almond fragrance. So when I asked the manufacturer about this, they said that they cannot use almond oil because almond oil contains cyanide, which is true.

But instead of labeling it as what it was, which was a different type of oil, not necessarily synthetic fragrance, but a different type of oil, that I found that to be misleading because when you label it as fragrance, then the brain automatically says, this is undisclosed synthetic fragrance. This is a red flag. Instead of saying what the oil actually was, because they used a different type of oil that smells like almonds but isn't almonds. So they didn't want to label it. It was a little bit of a gray area, kind of confusing situation.

But what I'm hoping to see is more transparency, just labeling what the actual ingredient was, because a lot of consumers are confused by this, myself included. Yeah, we're all confused about it. And also, you know, we're not trying to throw Doctor Bronner's under the bus. This is an industry wide issue that's going on, even for a lot of people who genuinely think that they're doing the best job that they can and they are making better for you products that are out there in the world. And Doctor Bronner's, which has been around forever, has been a big leader in that.

Dhru Purohit
You know, I have no affiliation with them, but I've used their products for a long time. I know that they're probably, their heart is in the right direction and they're trying to make the right decisions. But this just goes back to the idea that a lot of people are just undereducated, even the companies themselves that are making these products. And this is a big part of like, hey, let's all get educated together. Not so that we freak out, not so that we live in fear, but that we can actually protect families, protect individuals, and get out of this trend where chronic disease is rising every single year and things are getting worse and worse.

Younger and younger individuals are getting diagnosed with cancer type two diabetes. These endocrine disruptors, young women, are getting their periods at younger and younger ages. I've heard from clinicians that are friends of mine of seeing young women in their, like six, seven years old getting their period in some instances because they're being exposed to so many. Their theory is so many endocrine disruptors in the environment. And of course, in many of these instances, their diets are really bad.

So this is kind of like my friend Casey means said it best said, we don't want to freak out, but at the same time, we want to freak out because Rome is on fire. And when something's on fire, you raise the alarm, you pull the alarm and say, guys, listen, we don't want to panic, but we need to understand that our house is on fire and actually take measured steps to do something about it. Right. I couldn't agree with you more because it's, it's at a point, a tipping point where it could go either way. It can go really, really bad, or you can do your best and try to head in the positive direction.

Yvonne Burkart
Because we're seeing now just population wide disease rates, like you said, are going up. Sperm counts are dropping. Kids are getting, period, earlier. Not only that, but women are going into menopause earlier. So premature menopause, menopause is also an issue and also with men.

So it's across the board for men, women, and children. We do need to raise the alarm bells. We do need to spread awareness, education, but it's really important to spread the solution as well. And that's really my goal in everything that I do, is educate on the problem, why it's important, and what we can do going forward, so that we don't have to stay in a fear based panic mode, because that is not conducive to health at all. Stress is so toxic.

Dhru Purohit
Yeah, stress is so toxic. We don't want fear. We don't want panic to set in for sure. Um, Doctor Burkhardt, as we wind down here, I thought it would just be nice to remind our audience, for those that heard the interview, but I know a lot of new people are listening to this interview. Just remind them a little bit about your own personal health journey, some of the challenges you went through.

And how are you feeling today? Well, thankfully, I'm feeling amazing today. So I think that's, that's what I want to address first is I feel younger, more vibrant, more energetic, more level head, more clear headed than I ever have in my life. And it's all thanks to a low tox lifestyle. But I wasn't always this way.

Yvonne Burkart
I grew up with a very conventional american lifestyle. In fact, we were low income in our household, so we couldn't afford a lot of things. We tried to cook food at home as much as we could, but there were processed foods, there were contamination incidents where I grew up, and it just was part of the hand that I was dealt. And as I got older, I started having more health issues once I reached puberty. And I really suffered for a long time, and doctors couldn't help me, and they just kind of sent me away with, you know, the pill.

So I got on that for a long time. And then what that caused was unknown damage to my body until I was in my late twenties and I wanted to have children. And then that's when things started really starting to fall apart. I had health issue after health issue. I tried everything that they told me.

I went to six, seven different doctors, couldn't find the solutions. And I was really at just a breaking point. The lowest I had ever felt. The worst I ever felt. So I look younger now than I did ten years ago.

Then I. Yes, I. Absolutely. There's a side by side picture, and some people can't believe that was me, how bad I looked. But I just want to give people hope.

I'm a living, walking, breathing testimonial that a low tox lifestyle actually works because I was able to recover my fertility. I have two healthy children. We don't have any chronic diseases, we don't have allergies, and we just do the best that we can. I don't try to control the exposures they have at school because I can't. I just do what I can at home, and I educate my children so that they can avoid the pain that I went through because of what we didn't know back then.

But now we know. Yeah, in many ways, you became a whistleblower because you were somebody that worked for a lot of these companies, making a lot of these different products that are out there. And part of your story that we didn't touch on here is that you partially feel that you got sick because you were working in a facility where you were exposed to a lot of these chemicals. Can you just mention that briefly? Yeah.

The work environment where I was. I was working in a flavor company, and just above my office were chemistry labs. And so I don't know the air quality. I wasn't thinking about air quality back then, but my office, I constantly had to wipe the surfaces because of how much dust there was. And dust, of course, we don't want to be breathing in dusty, dirty air.

And so I have no idea how much of that contributed to the health issues that I had. In addition to the stress of being in a new job, moving to a new place, we all have life challenges, right? Things that happen when you change to a new career, for example, a new job, move somewhere that's stressful on the body. But on top of that was the toxic burden I had from my entire life, childhood, everything. Because toxic exposure actually begins before birth.

As soon as the sperm meets the egg, toxic exposure begins. That's technically known as, like, day zero, right? And the toxic load that your parents have, we somewhat inherit that. So what your grandparents were exposed to can affect you, right? And so we.

What? My goal is to really empower people to know that the changes that you make today benefit not only you, but your future generations on so many levels. Because once you start to educate yourselves and your family, then you start to uncover what are some of the issues that. That we can really just address on a day to day basis. But the health issues that I struggled with, I believe, were the result of the environmental exposures I had in that particular office building.

There was just a lot of chemicals being used in that building. That's incredible. Well, I mentioned it before, but I just want to give you so much gratitude for having the courage to question your income. You know, it's. It was.

Dhru Purohit
It was how you were making money, was working at these flavoring houses, and you were questioning things it's very difficult to do. Sometimes when somebody's an expert in something and has a PhD behind their name, they think that they might know everything about it. But you had a little bit of an insider, outsider view, and on top of that, your body was struggling and you were dealing with your own health issues. But not everybody is able to make the switch to at least ask the question, to say, hey, maybe these things aren't as safe as I thought I was. Let me dig into it a little bit more.

So, first of all, having the courage to question is huge because our audience and the hundreds of thousands of people that follow you on Instagram as well as YouTube have benefited incredibly. You know, we talked about this a little bit before we recorded, but our last interview together has over, like, 1.2 million views. And there are hundreds of comments on there of people feeling like they have finally been red pilled and woken up to the fact that there are so many different toxins in our environment and we have to not give up control to these companies. Instead, we have to be the CEO of our own health. Not in a way that's fearful, not in a way that we're panicking, but to make conscious decisions and say, you know what?

Maybe I'm not going to have these products that have more exposure than what I need. Maybe I'm just going to not have candles in my house. Maybe I'm going to filter my water because I can't necessarily trust my local municipality because they're overburdened and they're not even testing for things like PFAS or other, you know, harmful ingredients that are there. So, on behalf of my audience and all the people that are watching this interview today, and all the people that follow you, I want to acknowledge you for your incredible work and service and commitment to this space. Thank you so much.

Yvonne Burkart
I mean, it's really meaningful to me, especially because as someone who has training in toxicology, it was, I would say, orders of magnitude more difficult for me to question what was going on because I was all in. I was all in on the system, on how things were working. There's no way that everything that we've been told is essentially a lie. It's no way. There's no way that we are human guinea pigs.

There's no way that none of this stuff has ever been tested. I just could not believe it. As a toxicologist, I could not believe it. And so it really, I think, extended the period of time before I started to make the change. But then once I started making the changes, then the improvements were rapid because it was as if my body was just screaming for help, like, please help.

And I know a lot of people are out there, they're feeling the same way, that they just need something, something to hope for. And there's so much hope out there. That's what I want, really, people to remember is there's so much hope. Don't give up. One little change a day, 1% better, 1ft in front of the other, and just do your best.

Dhru Purohit
Yes, do your best. And you're making it easy for people to do that. If you wouldn't mind, just mention again your website, the swell score website, and how people can continue to follow you, also on YouTube, where you're making a lot of great content. I know a lot of people are watching today on YouTube, so just mention those things. Of course, we have the link in the show notes.

But it's a good reminder for if you're listening right now, you care about this topic, you want ongoing education on it. Anytime Doctor Burkhardt finds out about something interesting or amazing, she typically makes a video out of it. So you want to be following her if you care about this topic. So where do people go to follow you? My website, Drevon burkhardt.com.

Yvonne Burkart
You can also check me out@theswellscore.com we actually created a special discount just for the viewers and the listeners of your podcast, which of course I'll send you the link and also on Instagram. E. Von Burkhardt and same handle for YouTube. A little TikTok action. Are you on TikTok?

I do have some videos on TikTok, but I haven't been active there as much. And yeah, so you can find me mainly on Instagram but also on YouTube. I love making YouTube videos. Going really deep on one particular topic. That's really my passion.

So thank you so much for this. Well, you do a great job. Doctor Burkhardt, thank you again for joining us on the podcast. Thank you so much. It's been amazing.

Dhru Purohit
Hi, everyone. Drew here. Two quick things. Number one, thank you so much for listening to this podcast. If you haven't already subscribe, just hit the subscribe button on your favorite podcast app.

And by the way, if you love this episode, it would mean the world to me. And it's the number one thing that you can do to support this podcast is share with a friend. Share with a friend who would benefit from listening. Number two, before I go, I just had to tell you about something that I've been working on that I'm super excited about. It's my weekly newsletter, and it's called try this.

Every Friday. Yes, every Friday, 52 weeks a year, I send out an easy to digest protocol of simple steps that you or anyone you love can follow to optimize your own health. We cover everything from nutrition to mindset to metabolic health, sleep, community, longevity, and so much more. If you want to get on this email list, which is, by the way, free, and get my weekly step by step protocols for whole body health and optimization, click the link in the show notes that's called try this. Or just go to druprowit.com.

That's dash Rupurohit.com. And click on the tab that says try this.

Toxicologist Reveals The Top 7 Sources of Hidden Toxins In Your Home And How to Protect Your Brain And Body With Yvonne Burkart, PhD

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1: Introduction

2: Scented Candles as Pollutants

3: Dangers of Fragrances

4: Protective Measures

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