The Truth About Microplastics.

Microplastics are not just around us, they are in us. These microscopic particles of plastic may be wreaking havoc on our health in many ways, and worsening cancer risk and prognosis is one of them. In this episode, Tina and Leah discuss microplastics and their potential link to cancer, particularly colorectal cancer. They explore sources of microplastics, from single-use plastic bottles to synthetic clothing, and highlight steps you can take to reduce your exposure. They also discuss the difficulties in eliminating microplastics already present in the body and suggest ways to excrete toxins in general. Join Tina and Leah as they shed light on this growing concern and offer practical advice for healthier living.

Things we mentioned (and promised we'd share) in this episode:

Articles and Studies:
Health Risks to Microplastics Pose? (Medscape, 2024)
Harvard Magazine Article on Microplastics 
Washington Post article on microplastics, with a cool graphic!
Microplastics May Be a Driver of Early Onset Colorectal Cancer
Higher microplastics are found in those with Inflammatory Bowel Disease
Faster spread of cancer due to microplastics inside cancer cells 
The actual study showing  microplastics inside cancer cells increase migration
Evidence that "tighter" charcoal filters are better at reducing microplastics than "loose" charcoal.
The blood, urine, and sweat study shows excretion of BPA in sweat
Some lighter fare:
What is a #2 pencil?
How to freeze things without using plastic
Alpaca Underwear exists! And, it's available at Paka Apparel (we have no affiliation)
Merino Wool Activewear by Avala and their instagram account Leah mentioned

Don't Miss

Chapters

• 0:00 Share this episode with loved ones!
• 0:59 Introduction - What are Microplastics?
• 4:07 Health Implications of Ingesting Microplastics
• 5:28 Sources and Pervasiveness
• 8:10 Microplastics and Cancer
• 9:48 Some tips to avoid ingesting microplastics
• 14:00 Corn-based plastics? Better?
• 16:28 Canned foods too?
• 19:20 How to get microplastics. out of your water
• 20:33 Natural Fibers - Alpaca, Wool and Cotton
• 23:54 How can you rid your body of these toxicants?
• 27:38 Wrap up

Transcript

Leah: 0:00

Pass this on to friends. If you've been trying to eliminate plastic in your life and you have a friend or family member who is just really, you know, determined to not give up their single use plastic bottles, you know, pass this episode on.

Tina: 0:13

I'm Dr Tina Kaczor and as Leah likes to say I'm the science-y one

Leah: 0:17

and I'm Dr Leah Sherman and on the cancer inside

Tina: 0:20

And we're two naturopathic doctors who practice integrative cancer care

Leah: 0:25

But we're not your doctors

Tina: 0:27

This is for education entertainment and informational purposes only do not apply any of this information

Leah: 0:33

without first speaking to your doctor

Tina: 0:35

The views and opinions expressed on this podcast by the hosts and their guests are solely their own

Leah: 0:42

Welcome to the cancer pod Hey, Tina.

Tina: 1:00

Hey, Leah.

Leah: 1:01

Microplastics. They're everywhere in the news.

Tina: 1:06

Yeah, I was going to say they're everywhere in every sense of the word.

Leah: 1:08

No, they are. They're everywhere in the news. They're everywhere. Everywhere.

Tina: 1:13

Yeah. Yeah. It, it's finally hitting main street news. I think it's been in the news before, but just not hitting mass media until fairly recently.

Leah: 1:23

Well, as you had mentioned before we started recording, there was that whole thing with the plastic fibers from fleece clothing. Like I remember that from like, is that like 10 years ago or something?

Tina: 1:36

Yeah, I think we heard about it because, um, Patagonia, the brand, Patagonia, saw the problem with washing some of the fleece fibers and the nanoplastics that were coming off of that and going into our environment and started to try to solve for the problem, so I think that they were the first company that I know of, kind of, said, okay, we're going forward. We're going to try to solve this problem.

Leah: 2:00

And you see it, you see it, like if you have fleece blankets or fleece clothing and, you know, I'll run them through the dryer on low. And then you see all of that lint that comes off of them in the dryer. And so what's coming off in the wash.

Tina: 2:15

Right. That's what you can see. And a lot of these plastics we cannot see.

Leah: 2:19

Right. So what is a microplastic? Like, I guess we can define What is that exactly? Cause I'm seeing those fibers in my lint tray, but are those microplastics?

Tina: 2:32

Technically, if they're less than five millimeters in length, they qualify as a microplastic. So

Leah: 2:38

That's big. That's big.

Tina: 2:40

It's big! Five millimeters is the size of the eraser head. Like a number two pencil, like the eraser is five millimeters, generally.

Leah: 2:48

Oh, that's what you judge like the size of a melanoma by too, right? The eraser?

Tina: 2:53

Yes.

Leah: 2:53

That's really big.

Tina: 2:55

And a lot of folks, if you're too young and you don't know what a number two pencil is, you can look it up and Google that.

Leah: 2:59

Oh, come on. People know. Here, look, here's a pencil.

Tina: 3:01

I don't think people use them all that much anymore, but yes.

Leah: 3:05

Anyways, we digress.

Tina: 3:07

But yes, it's anything that is less than five millimeters in length. So yes, you can see some of those. Those are microplastics.

Leah: 3:15

And then there's the. Nanoplastic.

Tina: 3:18

Yes. Now nano, by definition is something that is one times 10 to the negative nine. So that's point. Put eight zeros and put a one. That's how small it is. Millimeters.

Leah: 3:31

That's crazy. So that article that I sent you from the Washington Post had a really cool visual and we'll put a link to that. Um, if people haven't seen it. It had a really great visual that showed how incredibly small these micro and nanoplastics are.

Tina: 3:49

And it's confusing because we talk about microns and then we talk about millimeters and they're not equivalent. So it gets confusing really fast. Just know that we're talking about plastics that the eye cannot see. That is a fraction of the diameter of a hair. So by definition, some of these are just not visible.

Leah: 4:08

And the reason we're talking about it is because there have been articles on microplastics and you know, how they're finding them in different organs. And there was an article that was fairly recent about is there a connection between microplastics and cancer?

Tina: 4:24

I think really the big thrust that's hitting the news right now is it's a possible factor in why we're seeing higher rates. of colorectal cancers in younger people.

Leah: 4:36

Right.

Tina: 4:37

The story adds up. I mean, it makes a lot of sense.

Leah: 4:40

Yeah, we were all raised on plastic. I mean I remember like the shift from glass shampoo bottles to plastic shampoo bottles when I was a little kid, you know, and all the plastic toys. And I mean, these are safety features, which is why they were put in place, but it's kind of coming around to not be safe.

Tina: 4:58

Yeah. And the idea that plastics aren't safe isn't a new idea at all. I think we just happen to have the technology in the last 20 years or so to see them, right? They've always been there. They were there in the 70s. They were there in the 60s when we started using plastics more and more and they started to be more pervasive in our environment. But now we can see them. We can measure them. We can look at organs and tissues the bloodstream. and we can actually measure them and that's fairly new. That's just because we have the technology now to do that.

Leah: 5:28

And the plastics aren't just coming from, I mean, a lot of them are coming from things like disposable, you know, single use water bottles and all of that, um, takeout containers, right? With a, yes, I cringe every time I see styrofoam because styrofoam is so rare in at least the Portland area.

Tina: 5:45

Very rare. But then it was rare when I was back here in the nineties here, we didn't see a whole lot of styrofoam. I went. Down to Oklahoma to do my residency and it was styrofoam everywhere

Leah: 5:55

yeah, like Indiana was the same I remember being in the airport and wanting food and it was like this hot greasy like, you know airport food that was gonna be put into a styrofoam container and I was like I'm not gonna eat

Tina: 6:07

and there's something to that, you know for a long time I also took some solace in the fact that it all if I just put water in the plastic It's probably not gonna have that much plastic into it You know, like it's different than putting hot soup or hot coffee into a styrofoam or plastic container To me, that was always like, Oh, gosh, that must leach something. Now even water bottles are implicated.

Leah: 6:28

Yeah, so it's those type of like I was saying, like the single use plastics, um, clothing, like we mentioned, the fleece clothing, which is made oftentimes from recycled water bottles, but then they themselves aren't that great. The plastic grocery bags or store bags. It's in agriculture. So to make something to make different fertilizers, kind of be almost time release, they use plastics. It's in organic fertilizers, because if you have cows that are eating things, drinking water, they're picking up plastic from the environment. I mean, it's just it's everywhere. It's so pervasive. It's kind of crazy.

Tina: 7:09

Yeah, yeah. And it can be a real downer to think about, right? It's kind of like environmental pollution in general can be a true downer.

Leah: 7:16

This ties into the last episode where we talked with Christina Marusik about the environmental impact on carcinogenesis. So Yeah, I mean, it's just, it's out there.

Tina: 7:29

Yeah, and there's a lot of things we can do. I mean, the good old reduce, reuse, recycle. We'll get into a little bit more specifics about what people can do. um, we had cups in our office and a patient came in and she said, I can't believe you have disposable cups. And I said, Oh, you know, it's a multi doctor office. I really had nothing to do with the front area. And I, but she said, you know, take it literally reduce first, reuse when you can and recycle if you must. And I was like, Oh, okay. Yeah. Good point. You know, I should be in that order.

Leah: 7:59

No. And that's, I like that. Like it's recycle if you must, like, because that as we'll talk about is also an issue with, um, recycling, but, um,

Tina: 8:08

has its own issues.

Leah: 8:09

Yeah. So. Is there strong evidence that microplastics are causing cancer?

Tina: 8:16

I think the evidence is accumulating.

Leah: 8:19

As are the microplastics.

Tina: 8:20

As are the microplastics and nanoplastics, yes. Um, I think as we continue to look, we're going to see it more and more. Right now we have a lot of animal data. to look at what happens to animals when they're exposed, what's happening to cells that are exposed within the animals when you give the animal cancer, does it affect the growth rate, all that stuff. Um, there is accumulating evidence that the microplastics and nanoplastics are actually possibly causative for some cancers. And I think the data is strongest for colorectal cancer right now.

Leah: 8:50

Right. Because they're finding people with inflammatory bowel disease have a higher amount of microplastics.

Tina: 8:57

Yeah, how about that? I am sure you looked at the same study I did that was the one in China, where they looked at people who had existing IBD, inflammatory bowel disease, which is Crohn's disease or ulcerative colitis. And they looked at the stool of those folks compared to the stool of people who didn't have that condition. And 1. 5 times more microplastics were found in the people who had IBD. And the reason that's important is that IBD is a definitive risk factor for colorectal cancer. So it could be coincidence. It was an observational study, right? Maybe they don't get rid of their plastics. Maybe they did find that they, the people who had higher, higher microplastics also were more likely to have food that was packaged out, be exposed to it through their water sources. You know, they, they tracked it back to their usage and saw that yes, they were more likely to have a more exposure history, but it's an interesting study. Nonetheless.

Leah: 9:47

You know, and it makes me think that you go to your cancer center and you're getting your infusion and you get like a little bottle of water, you know, they, they hand them out. They have like little, you know, plastic water bottle that you get cause you have to be hydrated as you're getting your infusion. So I would say for anyone who's currently going through treatment. Bring your bottle bring a reusable bottle. I know we're, you know, going to talk about things that people can do But that just struck me that like you're getting treatment for cancer Mm hmm, and I mean we're taking the whole like recycling part out of it those like single use bottles But yeah, it's just you know, you're then you're drinking from a bottle I don't know.

Tina: 10:27

I know. I know. And there is no perfect, you know, there is to, to walk through each day without being exposed to or ingesting the plastics is more and more difficult because it's also in our air,

Leah: 10:39

right.

Tina: 10:40

And so that I'm going to be uber downer, but you can take control where you can because you can't control everything, right? And so you have to let the rest go. So you have to be like, I'll just use glass and stainless steel for my water sources when I am out and about. That helps. You know, every little bit helps. Try not to use plastics. Don't use single use plastics.

Leah: 10:59

Don't microwave or heat anything in plastic. And you have to be careful when you're defrosting something. So if you get like a package of meat or something and it's in your freezer, first of all, that action of freezing it creates You know, there's a chemical reaction that can leach the plastics out into the food. And then when you defrost it, it's the reverse, right?

Tina: 11:21

Right.

Leah: 11:22

So, if you can, if you purchase something that's not frozen, if you can like repackage it with something, wrap some butcher paper around it, and then seal it. In something. I mean, I don't even know at this point. Like, ah, it's so crazy. I'm like, I'm so overwhelmed. Prepping for this was so overwhelming.

Tina: 11:42

It is overwhelming. And that's why I said you do what you can and then you have to let go. Because I mean, in this latest Medscape article that you and I were talking about before we started, Medscape states plastic contains. So what you're talking about when you wrap the meat or the whatever food in plastic or somebody puts their leftover chili in a plastic container, plastic itself contains over 10, 000 chemicals, many of them carcinogenic substances and endocrine disruptors. So. The plastic is one thing. It has issues, you know, that we are going to continue to talk about. And then the plastic also contains other chemicals that have ramifications on our health. And so avoiding the plastic, you also are avoiding those 10, 000 chemicals that are possible to come along with it. And again, we talked about this in our last episode with Christina about how this isn't really tracked for safety. There's a false sense of safety when we're given something in the public. This must be okay. And that's not the case when it comes to human health and safety. The onus is on proving the toxicity, not proving the safety.

Leah: 12:41

Right.

Tina: 12:42

So, I think that's a, that's a really important place to start from. That helps us understand how we got here.

Leah: 12:48

Yeah, we got here from convenience, right? I mean, that's kind of, you know, the advent of plastics was such a revolutionary thing at the time, but, yeah, it's becoming very inconvenient, isn't it?

Tina: 13:02

That would be an interesting, that would be fascinating, uh, I'm sure there's been books written on it, I haven't looked that up, but, you know, Bakelite was kind of the first one, what, about a hundred years ago, and then from there we kept, Improving quote unquote our plastic usage and plastics are for the most part derived of petroleum products. So it's also an outlet for some. Petroleum products that, finds a market in plastics. And so that's a big reason we have so many plastics today.

Leah: 13:25

Right. Yeah. And I think that is an issue with recycling is that people think, oh, well, I recycle my plastics. All of these plastics are going to be turned into new plastic. And that's not always the case. Only about 5 percent of recycled plastic gets reused. And one of the reasons is you're not going to get as strong of a plastic from a previous plastic and the other reason is cost. It's so much cheaper to start from scratch and make plastic than to go through the whole procedure of recycling it.

Tina: 13:59

Interesting. You know, we have the capacity to make biodegradable plastics. The technology exists.

Leah: 14:06

Like from corn and stuff like that?

Tina: 14:07

Yeah, from corn. And so.

Leah: 14:10

And there's so much corn out there. Well, like they should use it for some, you know, they should use it for something besides like fillers and dog food. I mean, like they should use it for something that's going to be better in the long term.

Tina: 14:21

Well, that's an interesting thing, right? The reason we do have it as a filler and we have so much corn is because our growers need a market. when I say our, I mean, especially in the United States, we have a lot of corn growth and it needs a market and the end market. ends up being our gas tanks and as a filler in a lot of different foods and, and chows for various types of animals. But this would be a much better market, right? This is a win, everybody wins, the environment wins, we win, there's less toxicants, there's less microplastics.

Leah: 14:49

Yeah.

Tina: 14:50

I feel like I would much rather be wrapping my food in a, even if it is not perfect, it would be a better option because it wouldn't end up as microplastic. I'd rather be doing that than putting it in my gas tank, where I'm arguably losing about 10 percent of my miles per gallon.

Leah: 15:04

Right, right. So, Were there other things that we wanted to cover before we talk about things that we can do to decrease plastic use?

Tina: 15:14

Um, what we can do to decrease its use?

Leah: 15:16

Well, like, like, you know, like, like, how can we help to get rid of plastic, both from the environment and can we get rid of it when it's in our body? Um, like you mentioned, one of the issues with ingesting these plastics, Are the phthalates and the BPA and so you see a lot of packaging that now says BPA free and phthalate free. That's not the whole picture because there are other BPs.

Tina: 15:42

My answer to that is if it's a plastic that says BPA free, I have a little bit of don't believe the hype in my head. It's just because we haven't named and blamed the next chemical compound that's going to leach out of that plastic you know, I feel like this is an area where we substitute the unknown for fact. So we don't know what else is in that plastic. It is turning out that there's other chemical compounds besides BPA that is leaching and not good for our health. So, your best bet, if you can do it, is to use glass. I mean, I use a lot of recycled glass in my house. I don't want to tell you how many old peanut butter jars we have in the cupboard.

Leah: 16:17

I have the same. No, I, I am always like, you know, setting aside the good jars. You know, there are good jars. Yes. There are really good jars. Um, and then I also buy the ball jars. Those are really nice too. But you have to think about canned food, right? That lining of a can is typically BPA. And there's BPA free, but. I don't always know what, I, I forgot to look to see what the lining is and BPA free. Yeah. That's another big use. And then, the bane of my existence is, um, I don't even know the name of it, uh, plastic wrap, right?

Tina: 16:50

Oh. Like Saran Wrap?

Leah: 16:51

Well, we don't want to say name brands, but yeah, just like Saran Wrap. Um, I hate that stuff, but it's like, sometimes you're just like, God, I really need it. And so, a substitute for that would be, Those wax that wax covered fabric kind of those wax..., you know, and you can make those I've seen that on Instagram They have little videos on YouTube and stuff yeah,

Tina: 17:12

there's the ones that look like a shower cap But for your bowl,

Leah: 17:15

there are some like that But there also are just these folded used to be able to get them at Trader Joe's. They're just folded like these wax covered Fabric that you can kind of put around your food, maybe throw a rubber band around it or something. But we used to use that to wrap our cheese, which we bought in plastic, took it out of plastic and then put it in beeswax.

Tina: 17:34

I know, right? Right? There's certain foods that I don't think you can get without using plastic. I mean, what if it's off season and you want to buy some berries and they're frozen, you're going to buy them in a plastic bag.

Leah: 17:43

In a plastic bag or even just the plastic clamshells that they come in.

Tina: 17:47

Oh, the clamshells are one of the worst because often you can't do anything with that. That's just This is my conundrum. There is a vegetable conundrum that I often have at the store. The conventionally grown fill in the blank lettuce is sitting there just by itself. Nothing is wrapped around it. It's conventionally grown. It's just sitting there waiting for me to buy it. And then I'm like, Oh, the organic lettuce, I'd rather buy organic, but there it is in a clamshell plastic container. This happens with blueberries. It happens with tomatoes. happened with mushrooms? It's like, wait, why is the organic all wrapped up and plastic and the conventional not? And then I'm, I'm at a loss of exactly which one is the best one to buy.

Leah: 18:24

I know. And I saw somebody on our, our buy nothing group on Facebook for my neighborhood. Uh, they were looking for those clamshells to start veggie starts.

Tina: 18:33

Okay.

Leah: 18:33

And I'm like, well, that's a great use of it. But then you're like doing a veggie start out of plastic.

Tina: 18:39

Yeah.

Leah: 18:41

So, and I do that too. I use the, you know, if I buy a start, I reuse those little pots and they're plastic. And I'm starting to see more and more people online building wood things to do plant starts with. But yeah, I've, I am completely guilty of using plastic jugs and whatnot to start my veggies for my garden.

Tina: 18:58

Yeah. Yeah, yeah, again, I think the key here is you do what you can and then you let go.

Leah: 19:05

Yeah, the letting go part is hard.

Tina: 19:06

It is, it is.

Leah: 19:08

For some of us.

Tina: 19:09

But you have to know that you've done everything you can and then forgive yourself. I mean, perfection is not really the goal. You do your best, you know.

Leah: 19:16

It's to reduce, to reduce the impact. So the other thing is water. Make sure your water is filtered. So reverse osmosis will definitely clear out those micro and nanoplastics. Activated charcoal will, I believe those filters greatly reduce it. I don't think it eliminates it completely.

Tina: 19:33

Yeah.

Leah: 19:34

So, but make sure that you are getting filtered water in a glass or metal jar or container.

Tina: 19:40

Yeah. There, there are some websites tracking, which filters are best out there. And of course they end up trying to sell you their filter kind of thing. But in, in the aggregate, when you look at these various websites, it looks to me like the tighter the charcoal, the better the filter is for these plastics. So that, you know, like a loose charcoal is going to let more plastic through than a tight charcoal. Yeah. Cool.

Leah: 20:00

Like a Brita or pure filter that kind of, you know, you shake and it kind of rattles around in the little plastic container, um, you and I both have Berkey filters and Berkey no longer makes the filter for the container, but those are those very compressed carbon filters that can really, really greatly reduce the plastic.

Tina: 20:19

it's one of those things that I would like to do more research on because I could use another one besides the Berkey because it's so slow because it's gravity fed. Yeah. So I'd like to hook one up to my sink. So maybe if we do that, I'll, I'll put a, a little summary of what I find on our webpage.

Leah: 20:33

As we started off, you know, talking about Patagonia and clothing, I think trying to find natural fiber clothing is another really important thing. Um, alpaca wool is fabulous. It's warm, like most wools, like if it gets wet, it's not, it's not going to chill you, you know, the way that cotton would. Um, but yeah, alpaca, if you can find things made from alpaca,

Tina: 20:57

You're just you're a fan of the alpaca.

Leah: 20:59

I'm a fan of llamas and alpacas But when I read about and you know, I have been gifted Multiple things that are made from alpaca wool.

Tina: 21:08

Wait, can you make underwear out of them?

Leah: 21:10

I think so probably and then You can make, like, it's very, it's really breathable. Like, you can actually hike and, you know, run and all of that in, in this, in this wall.

Tina: 21:21

Because, okay, here's the thing, I'm, like, laughing because the only thing I really have seen in alpaco is sweaters and gloves and scarves and such. And so, I think of underwear as, like, something we should get that is not going to have microplastics because we wash it a lot. We go through a lot of it. It's kind of one of those, all year round you use it.

Leah: 21:40

Are you thinking like of the spandexes and stuff that are in underwear?

Tina: 21:43

I'm thinking underwear across the board, yeah. I mean, obviously cotton is not going to have the microplastics as much. But yeah, there's all sorts of materials. Polyesters.

Leah: 21:51

Yeah, I would just say try to stick with natural fibers. And if you find workout clothing that's made from either merino wool or alpaca, yeah, definitely go for that. I'll have to look into the underwear thing. I think there is! No, I've seen on Instagram, I swear I've seen um,

Tina: 22:06

I'm just laughing because

Leah: 22:07

wool underwear!

Tina: 22:09

Because I think of it as so warm, so like, you know, like wool. I think of it like wool.

Leah: 22:14

No, my, my friend's son actually has come up with a company, I think it's pronounced Avala, Avala? I'm not sure how to pronounce it. But they, um, they make merino wool t shirts for running. And so he's got, we can link to his Instagram. But she's been a friend of mine for a really long time, um, but he has, he does these videos where he approaches people and races and says, okay, we'll run three miles and after a mile and a half, we'll switch shirts and you'll wear my shirt and tell me which one you prefer. It's, it's kind of, it's great marketing, but anyways. Yeah, so you can run in these shirts and they're cool and breathable, stretchy, so I think there is underwear. I'm going to look online, but I, I, I swear, cause you know, Instagram will just start like throwing ads at you. So my phone's probably listening to me and so I'll start seeing all the underwear ads.

Tina: 23:09

Well, a lower bar might be just to buy cotton though, right?

Leah: 23:11

Yeah, yeah.

Tina: 23:12

100 percent cotton.

Leah: 23:13

That's what I usually do for my underwear. But bras are hard to find in cotton. Yeah, I agree. Okay, so we've covered clothing, we've covered water, food we kind of covered in terms of trying to reduce, you know, like, I mean, I don't want to say favor the places where you get takeout where they Don't use plastic, or styrofoam, because in some places you're not going to find that.

Tina: 23:36

No, I know.

Leah: 23:37

And I don't know if you can bring your own container and say, can you put this, I mean, that's such an Oregon thing, right?

Tina: 23:41

Oh, that'd be so Oregonian.

Leah: 23:43

You bring your glass container and say, can you make my food in this?

Tina: 23:47

It's, it's like the Portlandia episode where they went and met the chicken at the farm.

Leah: 23:51

No, yeah, that's, that's truly like a, like a Portland thing. So I guess we'll talk about if there are ways of, you know, eliminating it from our body. And the short answer is no.

Tina: 24:03

Yeah, that's the problem. This is why you really want to reduce it. As in incoming because there's ingestion routes, right? We've talked about this in many episodes in the past. You can only ingest so many ways. You can only eliminate in so many ways. You know, there's routes into your body, your mouth, your lungs, your skin, and there's routes out your body, your stool, your urine, your sweat, your breath, and that's it. That's all you got. You got routes in routes out. And if it goes in and it doesn't come out, it's in you somewhere. I mean, that sounds like an oversimplification, but that's basically what we're talking about. Unless we can break it down, unless we can actually digest it or dismantle it, so to speak.

Leah: 24:41

And we can't.

Tina: 24:42

That's the problem with plastics. Yes.

Leah: 24:44

Yeah, but the endocrine disrupters can potentially be eliminated

Tina: 24:50

Those are chemicals.

Leah: 24:51

Right that are in the plastics

Tina: 24:54

...that are in the plastics, right. those would be some of the 10, 000 plus chemicals that medscape talks about being in the plastic and us ingesting it due to leaching into whatever we're, drinking or eating from the plastic.

Leah: 25:05

And I was reading that a way to help to reduce those chemicals is through sweating. There was a study looking at ways of reducing some of the many chemicals that go along with plastic, and sweating can help to eliminate some of them. And so, like you just said, I mean, it's just making sure that you're, I don't want to use the word detox, but making sure you're Body's pathways of elimination are working. So make sure you're pooping, eat your veggies, your plant foods, right? Your fiber, um, your nuts, your brightly colored foods to get all of those polyphenols. Um, make sure you're having daily bowel movements, regular bowel movements.

Tina: 25:50

that's one of the Roots of, like, foundational measures of health is normal bowel movements every day. So when someone tells me every other day is the normal since they were young, I still say, let's still shoot for every day if we can, because elimination is so important in our current environment.

Leah: 26:05

Right. Yeah.

Tina: 26:07

And a lot does come out that way.

Leah: 26:09

Mm hmm,

Tina: 26:10

which is how they did the study in China measuring the microplastics in the stool, right?

Leah: 26:13

Right, right, but yeah I mean that and I think I you know I have seen things I didn't read about them because I was diving so deep into all of this As you were but I mean there are apparently some studies looking at Resveratrol and curcumin to help to reduce these phthalates and you know other chemicals So, I would just say incorporate those foods, make sure that you're getting turmeric in your food, and you're getting those dark purple y grapes, the peanut skins, um, you can go back and listen to previous episodes. Did we do one on resveratrol? I think we did, I remember the peanut skin thing from the,

Tina: 26:52

I, you know, we did talk about peanut skins in resveratrol, I do remember that way back when, that might have been in season one, but um, color, color, color, follow the color in nature.

Leah: 27:00

Yeah.

Tina: 27:00

It's always the case, and those pigments are where it's at. They all upregulate our ability to, um, get rid of these toxic substances in our cells. So we actually pump them out. So if you could picture a cell as having pumps on its membrane, what goes inside can sometimes be pumped out. What increases the number of exits or pumps to get that junk out of our cells is some of these bioflavonoids that you're talking about, polyphenols and such. And it's, no one needs to name anything, just follow the color, eat berries, eat orange, eat yellow, eat blue, you know. Black beans, whatever. Just follow the color and you will be ingesting the good stuff.

Leah: 27:35

And you'll be getting fiber.

Tina: 27:37

And

Leah: 27:37

there's fiber. Anything else? I was trying to end on an up note, and I always think that talking about berries is an up note.

Tina: 27:46

Yeah, yeah, I'm trying to think. Um, the only, the only good news is we're looking at it now. I feel like 10 years ago, we were kind of too early on it. It was happening, and it was increasing. But now we see Harvard Medicine coming out in their magazine. They just talked about microplastics being everywhere from trash to dust to fibers to cosmetics, They went, into it in great detail and Medscape just came out. So that means that the doctors and the other healthcare practitioners are being told about this and how it poses an actual health risk.

Leah: 28:16

Yeah, because it's also, I mean, it's a cardiovascular risk, right?

Tina: 28:19

Huge. Think of it this way. They are so small, some of them, If you inhale these particles and they're less than 2. 5 microns, which they are in the air sometimes, they go through your lungs, just like. Your lungs are supposed to do, they absorb things and go through your lungs into your bloodstream and they can cross through the blood brain barrier. So when you have things crossing through the blood brain barrier that shouldn't be there, that's no bueno. Because the brain doesn't have as much ability to protect itself, so we need to protect it.

Leah: 28:45

Or eliminate, right? I mean, what's the pathway of elimination for the brain?

Tina: 28:49

Glymphatics.

Leah: 28:50

That's a whole, that's a whole nother episode.

Tina: 28:52

Yes, glymphatics are amazing. It's a lymphatic system dedicated to the brain, and if somebody just puts that into Google Images or whatever, and you see how the glymphatics basically look like waves in an ocean going over your brain tissue, kind of bringing away the debris, the protein aggregates, and the junk that shouldn't be in your, in your CSF or your brain tissue. So that's why hydration is really important and sleep is really important because that's when your glymphatics clean things out. That's a whole nother, yeah, episode, you're right.

Leah: 29:18

So, yeah, if you're still listening after this episode

Tina: 29:22

I know. God bless you.

Leah: 29:24

Yeah. But, um, yeah, we'll definitely have links. In the show notes and pass this on to friends. If you've been trying to eliminate plastic in your life and you have a friend or family member who is just really, you know, determined to not give up their single use plastic bottles, you know, pass this episode on.

Tina: 29:44

And again, this is just like I mentioned to Christina. Um, in our last episode, this is not about a political issue, a left right issue. It's not about anything except our health and the health of our children and generations to come. Right now, the cancer rates are much higher in people under 50 years old, and they're skyrocketing. And we think That among the multifactorial reasons, this is one of them that's really highly implicated because it's around the world and so I think we can all agree no matter where you are in the political spectrum that cancer in general and certainly cancer in children and young people. Should be high priority to do something about

Leah: 30:20

exactly.

Tina: 30:21

It's a bipartisan issue. It's not about the environment. It's about our health

Leah: 30:24

Well again, if people haven't listened to the episode that we did with christina She's the author of a new war on cancer and it's all about the environmental impact On cancer. You can watch it on YouTube. We have a YouTube channel and we tend to put our interviews. Maybe this episode will go up. We don't know yet. I haven't decided. Um, I'll talk to the video editor and see what they do. But we do have videos of our interviews. We've been putting them up on YouTube. So go there and watch it. And if you like what we're doing, if you like what you're hearing. You can buy us a coffee. The link is in the show notes. Um, we really appreciate it. And it helps us to pay for all of the apps and sites that we need to do to produce this. We're not making a profit off of this. This is purely out of love. And yeah, we would love for a couple of coffees from a person or two.

Tina: 31:22

And if you head over to YouTube, don't forget to hit the subscribe button because that helps us out a lot and it helps other people find us. So

Leah: 31:28

yeah, I think as of this recording, we have 54 subscribers, which doesn't sound like much because there are people who have millions, but for us, it's pretty good. I was happy. I was happy when we got 10. So

Tina: 31:42

yeah, you got to start somewhere.

Leah: 31:44

Yeah. So, on that note, I'm Dr. Leah Sherman.

Tina: 31:47

And I'm Dr. Tina Kaczor.

Leah: 31:49

And this is the Cancer Pod. Until next time. They're everywhere. Everywhere