The Home of Fertility with Liz Walton & Helen Zee

Endocrine Disruptors In Daily Life And How To Reduce Exposure deep dive discussion with Helen Zee

• Liz Walton and Helen Zee

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We pull apart what recent documentaries reveal about plastics, endocrine disruptors, and the way “safe” chemical limits fail when exposure adds up across a whole day. We keep it grounded and practical, sharing realistic low-tox changes that can support fertility, IVF, menstrual health, and sperm health without spiraling into fear or guilt.
• mass consumerism as the root driver of chemical overload
• how regulatory silos miss cumulative exposure across food, water, textiles, and personal care
• why endocrine disrupting chemicals matter beyond fertility, including metabolic health
• timing of exposure vs level of exposure, especially in pregnancy windows
• microplastics found in placenta, breast milk, and human blood
• the body’s real detox pathways, supporting liver, kidneys, gut, lungs, and skin
• practical swaps that stick, pantry changes, glass storage, safer bottles
• kitchen upgrades, utensils, chopping boards, takeaway in your own container
• “BPA-free” marketing and why substitutes can still disrupt hormones
• PFAS and synthetic textiles, skin absorption, and simple ways to reduce contact
• baby and child choices, toys, clothes, and gift registry boundaries
• Dirty Dozen and Clean 15 shopping, plus baking soda produce washing
• how xenoestrogens can disrupt ovulation and progesterone balance
• progress over perfection as the only sustainable plan
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Microplastics in the placenta. “BPA-free” labels that don’t mean what we think. Fertility trends shifting in ways that can’t be explained by genetics alone. That’s what sent us down the rabbit hole after watching the Plastic Detox documentary on Netflix and a new infertility documentary, and we knew we had to talk it through with clarity, not fear.

We zoom out to the big picture of mass consumerism and why regulation often looks at one chemical at a time, even though real life exposure is cumulative across food packaging, canned foods, water, clothing, personal care products, and the air around us. Then we zoom in on reproductive health: sperm quality, egg health, pregnancy exposure windows, and what endocrine disrupting chemicals like phthalates, BPA, and PFAS can do to hormone signaling. We also unpack the research and headlines around microplastics detected in placenta, breast milk, and blood, and what that means for parents who are already doing their best.

Most importantly, we make this actionable. We share low-tox living steps that are realistic and affordable: don’t microwave food in plastic, switch to glass for leftovers, choose stainless steel or glass drink bottles, wash produce with baking soda, use the Dirty Dozen and Clean 15, invest in a quality water filter, and focus on supporting the body’s real detox pathways by peeing, pooping, and sweating. We also do a rapid-fire myth check so you can separate good science from clever marketing.

If you found this helpful, subscribe, share the episode with someone who’s trying to conceive, and leave a review so more people can find practical fertility support that actually fits real life.


Helen's details;

website - About ‣ HelenZee.com

Instagram - Instagram

Practical Tips Shared (Helen's Top 10)

  • Don't microwave food in plastic — use glass or ceramic. 16
  • Use glass or stainless steel drink bottles and food storage. 17
  • Wash fruit and vegetables with bicarb soda, not water alone — pesticides are water-repellent. 18
  • Follow the Dirty Dozen / Clean 15 list published annually by Food Standards ANZ. 19
  • Reduce ultra-processed foods and canned foods (BPA lining leaches into food). 20
  • Vacuum, dust regularly, and open windows daily to reduce indoor air pollutants.
  • Choose fragrance-free personal care products; replace scratched plastic containers. 17
  • Repurpose plastic containers (e.g., Tupperware) for non-food storage (garage, hardware). 21
  • Source glass jars from used sauces/condiments — no need to buy expensive low-tox sets. 22
  • Bring your own glass container to takeaway shops. 23
  • Progress over perfection — replace items as they run out, one category at a time. 24

Infertile Documentary - Infertile Documentary - Watch Now

The Plastic Detox - on Netflix the plastic detox - Search

The Dirty Dozen and Clean 15 - The Dirty Dozen and Clean 15 – Which Foods to Prioritise When Buying Organic - Clean + Conscious


Welcome And Why We Care

SPEAKER_01

Welcome to the Home of Fertility, a space for real conversation and expert insights about fertility, healing, and creating family. I'm Liz Walton.

SPEAKER_00

And I'm Helen Z. We are two mums who've walked this path and are passionate about supporting you on your journey. Emotionally, physically, and spiritually.

SPEAKER_01

We talk about it all. Fertility treatment, holistic support, relationships, mindset, and the emotional highs and left.

SPEAKER_00

Because sometimes the missing piece lies in someone else's story, in the quiet wisdom of the body, or in a breakthrough that's finally made for you.

SPEAKER_01

We are so glad you are here. Let's dive in.

SPEAKER_02

Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, wherever you may be in the world. And I'm really excited to have a fantastic conversation today. I am Liz Walton of the Home of Fertility, and I'm very excited to be speaking to my wonderful, beautiful friend Helen Z. And we're going to be talking about, oh, I tell you, the most interesting subject at the moment. Myself and Helen watched two recent documentaries. One's the plastic detox on Netflix. The other is a new one that's just come out. It's the infertility documentary, which also has a wonderful Aussie lady called Lucy Lines in it. And it's talking about our endocrine disruptance, our hormones, what's going on in the supply chain, what's happening to our body, our biology, our genetics, what's happening to our species. And this is a very important conversation. And I want you to understand, this episode isn't about creating fear. It's about creating understanding. There is so much that we can't control in our environment around us. But if more that we understand, it's a case of we don't know what we don't know, but the more we can make informed choices that support our health and our fertility without feeling overwhelmed, the more that we have the choice about our body and what we do and our loved ones, our babies, and everything else, because it's really affecting our sperm, our eggs. And oh, I'm just so excited. But let's chat with Helen because she's awesome. Helen, how are you today?

SPEAKER_00

I'm really well, Liz. It's great to come together yet again to talk about uh things that we are passionate about. And so uh it's really good to be having this conversation and sharing what we can with our listeners. So true.

SPEAKER_02

So I will just want to let everybody remember, you know, the background of Helen. You know, we did the Melbourne Fertility Expo together, which was amazing. But there's so much more to the lovely Helen. She's a holistic fertility practitioner. She's been working in the global pharmaceuticals for the last 20 years within that space, so her knowledge is immense, and it's a highly regulated industry. She has a Bachelor of Science, a degree in Bachelor of Science. She also works with optimizing women's menstrual health. She supports women through all of life's transitions, and she's a relational and a somatic therapist. So there's so much to what makes Helen amazing in this space of knowledge, of growth, of learning. And I'm, well, I'm I'm a fertility practitioner. I work in the area, I'm a hypnotherapist, I'm um do EFT timeline therapy, I um past life regression. So I'm I'm your emotional therapist and uh work with the Unexplained in Fertility, and I'm also someone that's been on this journey. And and so, you know, together we're going to talk about all those different areas. So I think let's let's hear from Helen first because she has the knowledge of how we've got here.

Documentaries That Sparked This Conversation

SPEAKER_02

So, Helen, how did we get here?

SPEAKER_00

Oh uh mass consumerism, full stop. Um, basically mass consumerism, my friend. As you said, you know, we've watched these two uh documentaries and we wanted to dissect them and also give some more information um and practical tips for our listeners. Um, but we also want to be able to share from that place of, as you said, not fear but understanding and advocating for ourselves. Because if we think that they're our governing body is our father or our, you know, our parent and our grandparent that has our best interests in hearts, our our best um interest at heart, that's not necessarily what we are seeing and experiencing in our world today. Now, both you and I are Australian, so we will be speaking from the Australian lens. As you mentioned, uh I've I used to work in global pharmaceuticals. I had a career that spanned um nearly 20 years, and it was a highly regulated industry, it is a highly regulated industry. My job was launching products in injectable drugs that go into hospitals in 78 countries around the world, including takeovers, which also meant that all the printer packaging needed to be um uh redesigned, etc. Now, when a product goes through regulatory approval, and our regulatory body is the TGA Therapeutic Goods Administration, there's the European has its own, the FDA is the American one, Ministry of Health. All these countries have got their own and provinces have their own uh regulatory authorities. For us to get it, for us to get a product on the market, it needs to show with all these clinical studies what it does to the body, but also the contraindications of taking this particular drug and this particular medicine over a long period of time. That is still happens, that is highly, highly regulated industry. But what we are what is becoming not so regulated in the overall effect is the introduction of all these chemicals that have ended up in our food and our supply chain and the compounding effect that this has had and has had on our bodies. Now, we might look at everything, or a regulatory person might look at everything and say, you're allowed 0.1 of a millimole of um phylate or BPA by by um I'm using I'm losing my words, BPA in this product, but it doesn't tell you how many of those products you can actually consume in a particular day. And so when we see the supermarket shelves absolutely laden with plastic, our cupboards laden with plastic, um, across the whole touch points of our life, including what we put on our skin, what we put on our clothes with all these um uh textiles that are now made from recycled plastics and materials, we have a very big problem on our hands. So I'll talk with the TGA regulator regulates medicines and sunscreens. The Australian Industrial Chemicals introduction scheme regulates industrial chemicals. Now, when I was working with all the pharmaceutical products, every single one of those products have what we call a material safety data sheet, which tells us the type of chemical that it is as well as the danger with that particular chemical. Every single thing that goes into this product, right? So there is a governing body for that. There is the food standards of Australia and New Zealand, which manages the chemicals that go in food, and that's regulated. There is the agricultural and veterinary chemicals, um, and they regulate the Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority, which also regulates herbicides. And then we've got the environmental and water authority, which is State Environmental Protection, which is the agency for our water and our waterways. Now, all those things are things that we put on our body or in our body, everything. And so these companies don't talk to each other, they're just in their own silo to say this is what the regulation is for a massive body of water. But if you go to a supermarket shelf and you pick up everything that's wrapped in plastic and plastic upon plastic upon plastic, when you break down everything individually and you go to the food standards ANZ and said, you know, how much phylates or how much polyurane is in this, they're gonna say it's a it's a safe amount, but collectively it is not. And we're also seeing how this is leading to endocrine disruptive hormones and chemicals, EDCs, which are then affecting our endocrine system, which affects so many parts of our body, not just for our fertility. You and I are interested in reproductive health and fertility, and we are going to take that tangent today, but our endocrine system affects so much more than our uh than our reproductive health and our fertility.

Regulation Gaps And Cumulative Exposure

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, I mean, I think when you do watch the documentary, and I really recommend everyone watch both of those documentaries and make sure it's in the show notes. You know, you may come away feeling shocked. I know I did. I think I texted Helen going, oh my gosh. And it's quite overwhelming. But also, I think that's, you know, Helen and I are going to do our best to dissect this. But um, you know, it's the curiosity is our fertility really being affected by this? Is that, you know, we're looking at male sperm and also for us as women, you know, is it really being affected by the world around us? And then what can we do uh about it?

SPEAKER_00

So let's um so on that question, my friend, is our fertility being affected? You and I work in the in the space, we work in this sector. I can honestly say, hands down in my practice, fertility due to environmental factors, has been affected. Yeah. The clients that are coming through, the metabolic disorders that we're seeing. Now, I also come from a lens because I am a fitness professional and a woman's um fitness specialist. So through fitness, through yoga, um, working differently with women's bodies, um as well as menstrual health and conditions that people have. Like this is now all proven science that things we need to work differently with men and women's bodies, but also how things have been affected. Okay. Um so the answer is yes. Anecdotally, I don't need to go and do a research paper and put my name against it to say that fertility is being affected by all the introduction of all these chemicals and and the way that we are living our lives because we're actually seeing it, you know. We do uh hands down. And I'm now 55, so I've gone through a whole different stages of um chemical exposures in my life. So the compounding effect on my body is more affected than when I was younger. And let me bring it in, I was gonna mention this later, but it also works on body mass. Okay, so I'm a tall person, so I've got a lot more body mass than what a little child has. But if we're exposed to the same foods in the same environment, that little baby's body mass is a lot less, and so it is going to have more of a buildup a lot sooner in its body. So it's genetic and epigenetics of how much it can handle with oxidative stress, getting its little kidneys and its liver to process the break down um the toxins and process them through poos and wheeze and sweat, which is how we do it. I'll talk about this more a bit later. Their body is working a lot harder from a very, very young age than what my body did when I was exposed to less chemicals. Right? So um I want to take it. There is a professor Leach who says that we don't know what is a safe level of EDC exposure, endocrine disruptive chemical exposure. But someone by the name of Dr. Andrea Gore, who's an endocrinologist from the University of Texas, her studies have shown, and her research has shown that it's more about the timing of exposure, more so than the level of exposure. And so this is where we're going to talk about reproductive exposure. And this is what we saw in both the plastic detox research as well as the infertility documentary research.

SPEAKER_04

Right.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah.

Fertility Impact And Timing Windows

SPEAKER_04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

So shall I talk about male reproductive health and how a baby in utero, a male fetus in utero gets affected, it's called the phyllate syndrome, and phylate is a chemical that has been shown and proven to affect reproductive um development in males and females, but male fetuses. So if a female, a pregnant woman, has got a large exposure to phylates and she is growing a male baby, week seven to 14, it is shown, and I'm gonna just read the notes here, yeah, that there's male fetuses underdeveloped with the penis and the testes, and what is also known as the anogenital distance, which is the area between the anus to the genitals, is shorter, and they uh they these children have a bigger exposure to prenatal phyllate exposure. That is now a term that is recognized. So what is a phylate? Phyllate is a type of chemical that is used in the industry, it is from the petrochemical industry, and it's used in a lot of um the plastics.

SPEAKER_02

Okay. So just for the listener to know, I'm gonna pretend that I'm a complete novice and don't know, so that we're both going from each opposite side.

SPEAKER_00

So yeah, carry on. And I'm not an expert, like I'm not an expert, but I have been working with this and researching this and helping my clients and my own understanding for quite a while. So we're just coming talking about the information and also giving more research just to give a bit more um meat to the bones of our conversation as well. Yeah, love it. Love it. Now, the other the other research that has been shown is that in 2020, a landmark study published by the Environmental International Um Society, uh, the paper is from Ragusa et al. which means a number of different people, not just Ragusa, but found that microplastics is in human placenta on both sides, on the side that the placenta faces the baby, and on the side that the baby faces the placenta, which means that it's crossing over, and the placenta is trying to capture the microplastics and try and detoxify that and break it down, or keep it stored in the body. Do something with it, I suppose.

SPEAKER_02

Right in the body. And I one thing I um, when watching the documentary is like you would put something on our skin, cream, whatever it might be, um, and like even if we heat plastic with in the microwave or whatever, it absorbs and then we eat it, and then within what is it, 20, 26 seconds, it's in our blood system. So that's we we absorb it.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, that's how quick it is. Absolutely. And not only in the placenta have we found microplastics of polyethylene, PVC, and polypropylene, but also in breast milk. Okay, that was a study that was done in Rome, Italy. There were 34 healthy mothers where breast milk samples were taken from them a week after birth, and 75% 75% of those mothers and that milk had detected microplastics. So it is passing through our breast milk, also in blood. It's found in human blood as well. Um, yeah, it's everywhere. We are plasticizing ourselves slowly.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, and that like to my mind just blows it the fact that when I was breastfeeding Willow, this is all unconscious, obviously. Yeah, you know, and I know on my fertility journey, that's where I started to realize, you know, change your products, change my creams, change this, change that. But even in doing that, I I did not think about my sofa, my clothes, um, the fact that I'm yeah, just just everything. So even though I did my best, it's still all around us. And I think this is where we have to just understand. And so I'm already going, oh my god, what did I do to my daughter? But yeah, so it's just interesting, isn't

Microplastics In Placenta Blood Milk

SPEAKER_02

it? Or we can do that.

SPEAKER_00

We can so this, you know, and it's not doom and gloom, it's not a one and done. It means that as long as we for all humans, we have to support very healthy kidney and liver function. Okay. So we'll talk about this a little bit later. You know, people think I'll have a detox tea and I'm going to detox myself. It doesn't work that way. Okay. The kidneys and the liver are the organs that are the detoxification organs. So are the lungs, actually, because we breathe in material, we breathe in air, and the little, the little nose hairs will filter it and it warms it up from eight degrees in the morning, that morning breath to being, you know, body temperature when it comes into the lungs. So the lungs are also a filtration machine.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. Machine. Organ, not a machine, organ. But when they get congested, we get a cold, we get mucus, we, you know, we we want to blow into the tissue and snot it out. Every organ in the human body has a detoxification pathway.

SPEAKER_04

Right.

SPEAKER_00

If you are healthy, that just continues going optimally. For a woman's menstrual cycle, her uterus has a detoxification pathway. In other words, there hasn't been a pregnancy, the endometrium has built up, it's not going to be used to feed that new life force. It needs to be expelled from the body.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

So every 28 to 30 days, the uterus is also a detoxification organ. All that the stomach, the intestine, the large intestine, the rectum, right? The colon, everything has its detoxification pathways. So when we keep the human body, our human body, our little baby's body, your growing daughter's body in optimal health, and we try and minimize the level. Now it's called a low plastic diet. Can you believe it? But now we've got low plastic and we've got Diet next to the word low plastic, like that blows my mind. Now the good news is to the listeners, uh, there is um clinical studies taking place uh that have progressed in the University of Western Australia where if you if you minimize your exposure to BPAs, which is the by uh I always blah blah tongue tie that the BPAs, which is a uh major plastic in our uh type of plastic in our um in our supply chain, um within seven days you can decrease the BPAs in your body by 50%. Wow, that's awesome. But that is if you're not adding extra exposure, right? And that is if your kidneys and your liver especially are working more optimally. Yeah, and the way that we detox our body, and I'll use you know my everyday words, which I use in my you know clinic space as well, we need to pee, we need to poo, and we need to sweat. Yeah. Okay. So if we're not pooping very well, yeah, and if we're not going to the toilet and pooping very well, then that material starts leaching back in to the body to go and get reprocessed again. Right, okay. And you know, we we see this with women's menstrual health when they've got irregular periods, heavy periods, um, you're holding the content in there for a lot longer, it needs, it starts to reabsorb, right? Because it needs to go, I'm gonna give it another chance. Let's go through, let's refilter, etc., and go through the body. So the good news is, and I'll say it again, that there's clinical studies that are showing that if you are lowering the level of BPA that you are exposed to, within seven days that can decrease by about 50%. That's pretty awesome. It is pretty awesome. Um, I want the listeners to stay on till the end because we're gonna do some fact. Yeah, we're gonna do some fun things at the end. Yeah, false. What is false, what is fiction, yeah, and what is needs more explanation. So what we can do, yeah. Yeah, we'll we'll we're gonna come into some nice little um little activities as well.

Detox Basics Kidney Liver Pee Poo

SPEAKER_00

So you were talking about clothes before, Liz, and I want to say that 60% of the chemicals are absorbed by our skin. So our skin is a large, large absorption organ, right? And it goes both ways by osmosis. We can take things in, which is why when you put cream on your body, it draws it in, but we can also let um you know sweat out of the body, bodily fluids out of the body. So our skin is a two-way um, you know, epidermis, and it is the largest organ of our body. So the clothes that we wear, 60% of chemicals are absorbed by our skin. Okay, and that also includes what we put on our body. So from you know, soaps to lotions to sunscreens to bloody tanning creams, um, to um, you know, makeup, you know, shampoos, conditioners, etc., etc. So if we can think about how we can minimize exposure as much as possible, it starts with you being at home, right? Where you wash your hair most, where you put your makeup on, where you like the things that you have got choice over, you introduce that and keep that in your life more and more. Don't go looking around, say if I swap my shampoo and conditioners and I and all my makeup, and I know that it doesn't have any of the nasties in there. I don't look for specials unless they're other trusted brands that I know that I can interchange. But there's no way in the world that I'm just gonna look at a catalogue and go, I'm gonna go and get this shampoo now or this makeup because it's on special, because it's a chemical shitstorm. I don't want it anywhere near me. And so now in the clothing industry, there is a lot that you see now that is, and they have big labels on there, like parading it. This is made out of recycled plastics, and this is, you know, um, you know, they give it fancy names, but they're actually synthetic fibers, okay. And I remember this is uh uh maybe last year I wanted to update my underwear and I was looking for cotton and I was looking for natural underwear. And if you go into somewhere like Target, it is so difficult to find cotton underwear now. Everything is recycled plastics, that's what you're putting next to your skin. Yeah, I just saw it. Even on our children, right? Your daughter, like from a very young age, this is what's going to be closest to her skin. And not only that, it is um regulated that all these clothes are sprayed with fire retardants. Wow. Because they're in factories, and if it goes up in smoke or someone there's a there's a fire, it's going to be out of control. And so it is well known in the textile industry that clothes, everything gets sprayed or treated with fire retardant. Wow. Not just our sofas, not just our cars, okay, but the very clothes that we wear. So now by 2030, it is predicted, that's only four years away. 70% of the fibers are going to be uh made out of plastics.

SPEAKER_04

Wow.

SPEAKER_00

70%. So I'm not making this up. I'm just giving you know evidence and stats to our to our listeners. Now, what I want to say is that with these endocrine disruptive disorders, um, chemicals, it leads to obesogens, which means it it makes people more obese. It has metabolic disorders. Um it's now been linked to ADHD, autism, Alzheimer's, just to name a few. And so when people are having conversations saying, well, why are there so many more, you know, um prevalence of Alzheimer's and dementia? And why is there more prevalence of ADHD and and um autism, etc.? More and more evidence is coming out to say that it is um linked to environmental toxins.

SPEAKER_02

And it's just everywhere,

Plastics In Clothes Cans Baby Gear

SPEAKER_02

isn't it? So let's um, because I know within the movies it talked about the plastic industry booming. Yeah. Um what do you let's let's go there. Let's start from how it started. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

And then 120 years ago, plastics, or what looked like plastic film, and acted like what we know plastics to be acting like today, all made out of plant-based materials. Right. And then the petrochemical industry was introduced, and that's when things started changing. And there's a lot of research going in in different polymers and beading that makes this and makes this and makes this, and then all of a sudden, uh, it's in everything. Like even if you see a cardboard container and you think you're getting your food in a cardboard container or a cardboard cup, the inside lining that is so smooth and plastic-like, petrochemical. Right? So that coffee that we keep drinking and that coffee lid that's on top, we are sipping, and don't forget it's hot liquid. So you are getting, and we are getting these chemicals leaching into our body a lot faster. And all of us are sipping coffee cups and plastic. And then we've got and on cans and cans, cans, yes, cans are also um um something to avoid canned food, absolutely, because it never used to be uh filled with um made from those chemicals. It's the process, yeah. It's the process that then leaches into the food. Um if we look at babies, so we talk about we talked about in utero, and we talked about um, you know, male sperm being affected and the penis and the testes, and also animals and the decline in reproductive rate. And you'll see that if anyone watches the um infertility documentary, it also just talks about different animals and dogs, not just humans. Yeah, it goes and proves it's not genetics, it's not just humans, it's actually environmental. Yeah, it's affecting all of us.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Um but if we look at babies, and we spoke about that mass, uh, when they, you know, when they're born, they've got their uh pacifiers and their teething, they've got teething rings, the baby bottles, toys, those baby bottles, um, you know, the teats, etc. And a lot of it is just laden with plastics. And when you see BPA free, don't just naturally assume that you're safe because it's not safe, because they replace it with other chemicals instead that are also endocrine disruptive hormones. So to be sure to be sure, people are now moving to silicon, glass. Bit hard to do stainless steel for baby bottles, but anyway, um, other ways of putting food, um, even for children in little stainless steel containers, etc. So um uh so all their toys, the exposure that they have to plastics and microplastics is absolutely phenomenal. And that's that's even before they've stepped out of the house.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, so we can put on like 300 odd chemicals without realizing.

SPEAKER_00

Well, there yeah, and thank you for mentioning the the number 300, because uh in the uh infertility documentary, it says that by uh by the time a baby is born, uh so within the womb, they've been exposed to 300 at least 300 chemicals. Like that is super crazy. So when I talked about those regulatory authorities, no one is looking at you and your health and the human species collectively as a grand elder to say that we have got a problem with what we are introducing into our supply chain. Yeah. And so the advocacy has to be self-advocacy, my friend.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, we've got to we've got to create the knowledge and um and make a change. Because I think one of the biggest things that I heard on one of the documentaries was, you know, at the end of the day, the the plastics company, like we're not gonna, we can't change the big conglomerates and the big companies. And um they created recycling so that they could continue creating more plastics. Because at the end of the day, plastics will never, they'll always be here because they don't biodegrade. Um so we as the consumer need to do our best to learn, to understand, and to choose what in with a more wiser uh state. Um, because as we slowly change, then the massive conglomerates will slowly change. But I absolutely believe the power of the people. Um and we've just got to learn this stuff. And this is where I I want this to be so informative because um we can't change them, but we can change us.

SPEAKER_00

Look, industrial chemistry is a massive industry now. Like even when I did my Bachelor of Science, it was a subject. I mean, I wasn't interested in industrial chemistry, I was more interested in, you know, human biology, genetics, microbiology, etc., which is what my um, you know, what what I've what I'm qualified in. And like the rate of chemicals being manufactured and created laboratory-wise, and then turning those into products to try and replace natural products, you know, natural products. So it's just gonna get bigger and bigger, right? So we just need to be more diligent.

Low Tox Home Changes That Stick

SPEAKER_00

Shall we come up with some ways that people can help themselves at the moment? I've got a little list here that I can very easily run off that's nice and easy for people. Shall we do that?

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, sure. And it's that whole thing of, oh my God, it's something more to worry about. And you know, how do we have this conversation without creating fear or guilt? And it's um, you know, what are those small little changes we can make? So, yes, do you share those things with us?

SPEAKER_00

It's it's you know, you call it, call it, do it like a mosaic a bit at a time. Yeah, and it doesn't cost a lot of money, like it does not cost as much money as what people think. So, sure, when you I'm talking about what you're in control of in what you bring into your house and what's in your house. Yeah, yeah, what matters most, yeah. And you could start with just your pantry and just go, okay, I'm gonna remove everything out of plastics, I'm gonna find a local store that does bulk purchasing, and I'm gonna go there, and I'm gonna go there with my containers, or you know, things come in paper bags, and I'm gonna get what I need, weighed, come in, and I'm gonna add them in my glass jars. And the glass jars don't need to be these very hyper-expensive, the lotox industry is a very, very growing, very expensive market. And so to make everything look printy in your pantry, you need to get spend $500 just to have, you know, a set of glass containers. No, those glass jars can suffice, right? If you want to really be serious and also be money conscious, when you use your jars of, you know, sauces and uh other things, you keep them and they just become the jars that you label for your nuts, yeah, or your seeds, you know, for your spices. It does not need to be expensive and just spend a month going through your pantry in your kitchen, right?

SPEAKER_02

So, can I ask? I've got a whole load of plastic, you know. I think they're like some are Tupperware or you know, kind of like, should I now like as I've you know, part of me is like, oh my god, I spent money on those things. Like, are you now stores or do I throw them away?

SPEAKER_00

What's the what should I do? I used to be a Tupperware representative. I've got a bucket load of Tupperware. This has seen me through university way back then. So I had and still have some Tupperware, but what I'm also doing is using that in my garage. So I've got my nails, I've got my I've got my other hardware, I've got other things that it can store that I don't need to put in my body. Awesome. Okay, like that. So you don't have to throw things out, or if you want to, another thing that I get, you know, as an idea that I also say to my um clients is you know, you can take all your plastics and go to an op shop and then replace it with whatever glassware is there. Oh good idea. There's glassware, there's different sizes of glassware or ceramics. Um, you know, if you want to, you can really be inventive. As I said, you don't need to be these, you know, replace them with these special silicon glass and all this other stuff, etc.

SPEAKER_02

So did you say silicon was okay or silicon?

SPEAKER_00

No, high grade there, there's high grade silicon, which is okay. Right, okay. Right, but not all our products that we see silicon in a local target and coma are high grade silicon, right? Yes, which is for human consumption, being made with other stuff or a lower group uh lower grade silicon. Yeah, but when we're talking about those babies, uh our little precious babies as well, like there's so many products on the shelf that are plastic pouches and those little plastic knobs. But even adults are using plastic pouches for food and yogurt and high protein stuff. I mean, just think of all that leaching that we I mean.

SPEAKER_02

I've got my shake bottle here, and I'm like, oh my god, that's plastic too.

SPEAKER_00

Especially depending on yeah, uh I know my friend. And so then the same thing, then you'll go through your laundry, right? Laundry's pretty easy, and just replace when something runs down, know what you're gonna replace it with. And once you replace it, it's done. You've only done it once, and then you'll you you've got to still pay money to get your cream cleanser or get your uh bench disinfectant, but this time it's gonna be a eucalyptus one, a bositos or something that's a high quality that's very cheap. I'm just putting it out there compared to all these other brands that charge you a bloody fortune. So you can really and truly, once you replace it, you replace it so you're not throwing money away, you're just investing your money in a different product. Yeah. And it's not that much more expensive. Yeah. You can really choose wisely. Yeah. And then the same thing with your skin, your body, your makeup, and that is a damn good start. Okay.

SPEAKER_02

Another question. Um, like I've noticed I've got a drawer, and again, I think some of them are Tupperware. I'm so sorry, Tupperware. Um, but like they're big plastic spoons, like for serving spoons. And I've noticed I've even got a potato masher and my whisk. So much is now plastic. So, really, what's your suggestion with that to slowly next time buy the metal or yeah?

SPEAKER_00

Go, yeah. And even if you go again, if you want to go into op shops, etc., people would be giving away old school stainless steel mashes, yeah, and whisks. Yeah. And um, you can also uh uh invest in um uh utensils that uh that are wooden. So they're they're pretty big on the market at the moment. They are, yeah.

SPEAKER_02

I I've got a whole load of bamboo stuff, which I'm like, okay, that's okay. Yeah, tick.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, well, but I will also say that say with um uh chopping boards, don't go for bamboo because it's treated very heavily with chemicals to be able to get it to act as it needs to act. And they're pieces that are joined together by industrial glues. Oh so I if you're gonna go for a um uh uh chopping board, yeah. I mean, you're gonna pay for it, but ideally you want like an artisan one, which is a slab of wood that's been, you know, polished and cut to size, because wood is antimicrobial.

SPEAKER_02

Well, it's interesting you should say that because I know they're teaching my daughter and also my friend, you know, that um the only thing to have is um either plastic or your glass or metal chopping boards, which I find for me not as liking. So but wood, I'm good. So I'm glad you say it's anti. Wood, wood, wood.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. Thank you. It's antimicrobial. So it actually pulls the microbes into the wood and then it dries them out. And then, you know. Okay. That's a good top tip. Whereas if some of the um steel-looking ones and the titanium ones, etc., they are also treated with a lot of chemicals to get them to behave and pop them in a sheet. Right. Right. And so you're not to know. And then when you're cutting and anything that that cuts through plastic, cuts through even metal or stone. Well, stone, I think, is good. Personally, stone is good too. Um, like natural stone, yeah, you're actually gonna have your microbes growing in those cuts. And with metal, it stuffs up your knives after a while.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

So I mean, I would personally be trying to go for wood, which is what I've got, or um, yeah, and utensils. I've updated a lot of mine. Yeah, I need to do that to the woody wood ones as well.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, and again, slowly, slowly. I like going into the shop. I like that.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Go, go. You will be, it's amazing because once you know that you've got your radar on something, things open up.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

You know, things do open up. And it's like, oh wow, I never would have looked at this and now it's everywhere. And yeah, do it for yourself. You've got to advocate for yourself and your family.

Kitchen Upgrades Utensils Storage Takeaway

SPEAKER_00

Um, avoid canned foods. I'm gonna go quick. Avoid canned foods. We've spoken about swapping plastics to glass or stainless steel. Like if people want to be really diligent and they've got their favorite takeaway food shop. When you pop in an order, say that you're gonna go down there earlier, have your glass container, and they put their takeaway food in your glass container and you take that home. Okay. I've been known to do that. Uh-huh. I've been known to do that. Even in the back of my car, I've got a uh a shopping bag that's got different containers. Uh-huh. So I will rather have it there and go, I'm going to go and get my takeaway, but I'm going to go, I'm going to wait around for it for 10 minutes. Yeah. I'm going to go to get it delivered to my door. I'll rarely get it delivered to my door. But I'm going to give them my bowl. They're going to pop it in there. I'm going to take it home and I'm going to eat out of that bowl. Okay.

SPEAKER_02

That's a good top tip. Yeah. Just slowly changing our habits.

SPEAKER_00

Top tip. Um, not eating fooding plastic, eat more fiber so we can poop it out. Yeah. Do more exercise so we can sweat it out.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Really invest in a water filter and a good quality. I need a water filter. Water filter, like you know, one that has the sediment clays, etc.

SPEAKER_04

Yep.

SPEAKER_00

And the silica in there, that is most important for the filtration. Water is just so important. So we would definitely be prioritizing that. Hydro well as well.

SPEAKER_02

And can you talk about heating in plastics, heating microwaving in heating plastics? What's yeah, can you share your thoughts there?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, um, minimize it. Minimize it as much as possible. You uh use it for your heat packs, you know. Yeah. Yeah, that's it. That's what I was talking about. I was after. Yeah. Um, chemicals are known and compounds are known to get leached from the microwave and the um containers into the food.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. So if you do heat it in glass or ceramics, correct? Yeah. Or not microwave at all, personally.

SPEAKER_00

And again, the biggest thing now is the PFAs, which is the forever get known as forever chemicals in our clothes. I'm not even going to talk about the big brands that have been taken for um uh class action, right? Using high levels of forever chemicals in their food, which includes lycrass, sportsware, a whole heap of stuff. And these forever chemicals means that they do not break down.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Even when they get into our bodies, they do not break down, they need to be passed through our system. So, you know, if anyone is interested, just do a search on PFAs, PFAS, class action. It'll show you all the companies that have been um uh taken to courts about their practices. And recently I I also read how Jamie Oliver took McDonald's to the High Court, and it is showing that he's not considered human food. It can be classified as human food because of the processes and the bleaching that they use to try and make something look like something.

SPEAKER_02

Wow, okay. I'll put that in the show notes. It is here, right?

SPEAKER_00

It is here. Yeah, and you know, these franchises are still operational around the whole world. So we've got to really, really advocate for ourselves. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02

Um, yeah, with that invest in a sorry, with that invest in a really good water filter. I think that was good. Beware of our personal care products, start just changing, choosing better overnight. Um, and um I know that we always think it's really us women, but really it's affecting men's sperm quite massively, yeah, so much. And it that is also in the two videos uh movies as well.

SPEAKER_00

Right. And the thing that the thing it's good that we're talking about reproductive health again because like you know, we spoke about the in utero stage of um male reproduction forming, which is seven to 14 weeks, and it's very similar. It's the same for females, but they develop all their eggs right when they are in utero. So the problem that we're seeing is um women have, you know, if I use a term, have got all their eggs in one basket right from the get-go, right from in utero. And so the more exposure, there's more likelihood over a period of time of having more and more exposure in their body mass growing up, which then has oxidative stress, and um endocrine disruption, which means hormonal disruption. And this is what we get to see in menstrual health uh imbalances as well as delayed fertility, infertility, metabolic X disorders, PCOS, which is polycystic avarian syndrome, which has now been relabeled as polymetabolic avarian syndrome, um uh um endocrine syndrome because it affects many areas of the body. So you and I both know in our work, and I know that I do in my menstrual health optimization as well as um female fertility, where I educate on the way the body works with estrogen and progesterone through the follicular phase, which is the first half of the menstrual cycle, and the luteal phase, which is the second half of the menstrual cycle. And the first half of the menstrual cycle is in its simplest terms. I'm going to talk very simply here. Estrogen is a main hormone that takes place in the follicular and ovulation stage, and progesterone is the main hormone at play in the luteal phase, and then we've got our menstruation where we're bleeding out, and we start the cycle all over again. Now, with estrogen, we've got our natural estrogen that we produce through the brain, through um the ovaries as well, um, and also you know, through our hormonal receptors. Now, we can also get phytoestrogens, which is phyto is a Greek word coming from my Greek heritage. Phyto meaning plant. And so it's like soy and flaxseed are high in estrogens, and they can be great for people going transitioning through perimetopause and menopause, right? But not when everything, you know, not when we're in that the younger parts of our lives. And then we've got xenoestrogens, and xeno is xeno, and xeno is foreign, it's another Greek word, and so this is where the canned foods that we're talking about and the leaching has xenoestrogens.

Xenoestrogens Menstrual Cycle Fertility Effects

SPEAKER_00

All these other products that we talked about have an effect called a xenoestrogen. It means that it takes on a very similar um uh chemical structure to estrogen, and our body has no idea if it's natural, if it's come from a plant, or if it's come from these foreign chemicals. So our body is processing high estrogen levels, and what happens when we've got high estrogen levels, it's called the feedback suppression. So the pituitary gland and the hypothalamus will say, We want you to ovulate, you're in your fertile years, we're gonna squirt your body with these particular hormones so you can build um, we can mature an egg in a follicle for ovulation. Now, when the estrogen is very, very high, the feedback loop to the brain says no follicle stimulating hormone, no, especially no luteinizing hormone, which means that ovulation may not take place. Or that corpus luteum, which is a part of the structure after ovulation has taken place, that becomes progesterone. That corpus luteum, which is the shell of the egg that is just passed through and ovulated, that starts to produce progesterone. And when we've got very, very high of estrogen, the brain says you're not going to produce progesterone from the corpus luteum, which means that even if a woman gets pregnant, she will have uh won't may not even detect that she's pregnant because there's not enough progesterone to keep that um embryo and that very first part of the cycle going through to be able to grow that baby. Okay. So this is how women's reproductive health can get affected by the excessive estrogens and the endocrine disruptive disruptive chemicals that are in there as well.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

So I also want to just say, look, if you are pregnant and you're listening to this, um, you know, don't I I want to allow yourself to, you know, this is about reassurance, and we're giving loads of practical steps because we don't know what we don't know. And there was so much I didn't know until I watched this, which is why I was like, right, Helen, let's do something. And this is the conversation. And if you are going through IVF, um, you know, both myself and Helen support people with that. There, we've also been sharing, and we will share some more realistic changes that we can do during a treatment um to reduce unnecessary exposure. And for me, my fertility journey was where I started to learn about detoxing because I had no idea until I had to have an idea. So, yeah. And then Helen, I know you do a lot to do with babies. Yeah. Uh we'll come back. Uh, I'll just finish this, then we can go back to what you, you know. So, what would be some easy steps that parents can do for their babies and young children? So we'll go back to your question first and then we can answer that.

SPEAKER_00

No, no, no, we'll do the babies children, and that is just do your research online and go in and just get the toys that are made from natural, you know, natural equipment, natural fibers, etc. I mean, uh, you know, if we follow Steiner, if we follow follow Montessori, we they encourage, you know, the wood, the felt, the the fibers, they're the things that we want those toys to be in the house. And we've got to be diligent. Like, even if you want to have a gift registry for your baby, be diligent and get people to buy toys that are not going to be plastics and you know, the really cheap stuff. Like be diligent, advocate for your baby, just say, please give us money instead, or buy from here, or this type of toy, or what have you. That's what we need to do is really and have a look at the clothes. Go for the organic cotton. Don't go, um, you know, they're our children are our future, they are worth it. So do your research on on that, definitely. Um I wanted to also say that, and it involves children once you start feeding them as well as ourselves.

Safer Choices For Babies And Kids

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, the Australian body every year brings out a list of foods called the Dirty Dozen and the Clean. Ah, yes, yeah, yeah, yeah. Dirty Dozen, Clean 15. Now, it has from the year prior all the foods which are called the Dirty Dozen, the 12 foods that have got the highest exposure of chemicals through agricultural practices. And the clean 15 are the ones that you know you can eat, wash well. And I would always wash fruit and vegetables with bicarb soda. It helps penetrate not just the water alone. Because if we think about it, if we just wash our fruit and veggies in water, it's not going to get rid of the chemicals because if farmers spray their crops, every time it rains, they need to go out and spray things again. Yeah. It is water repellent. So we need to use bicarb soda. And you can go on the internet, it'll give you some really good information about the ratios depending on what you're going to be washing and how long to wash it for. Recently, so we are um uh recording this on the 22nd of July in 2026, and in recent days, the ABC and BBC have done a lot of coverage on strawberries and berries, all right. Why it's becoming so dysregulated that the agricultural chemicals and the glycos uh gly, losing my words, glycophosphates are going up by f up to 500%. And what do we feed our children from a packet? We literally take a packet of Driscoll strawberries and berries, open it up and say, here's a healthy snack, and it is downright unregulated. And berries are white and things like broccoli, things that have got crucifucus and like really tiny crevices will hold on to those agricultural chemicals, pesticides, herbicides, a lot more than something that is rounded. Yeah. So look up the clean 15. What I do for my clients that I'm working with fertility, they get put certain things sent to them as pictures, they have it in their notes with guidelines about what they should look out for and what to focus on when they're in a supermarket.

SPEAKER_04

Okay.

SPEAKER_00

So I take some of that away for them. Actually, do the work for them. Use a clean 15. Here's photos of this, his photos of that. Pull it out when you go shopping, just go for this, go for this, look for this, look for that.

SPEAKER_04

Right.

SPEAKER_00

Okay. Awesome.

Dirty Dozen Produce Washing And Berries

SPEAKER_00

Did we want to do the rapid fire about true, false, or too much information with someone?

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, I think we'll do that, but I've got a question. Um uh, another one that's come up on my notes, which is a bit of a myth busting one, which is where I just want to ask what your thoughts are. You know, social media tells us everything is toxic. How do you feel we, the layperson, can separate good science from very clever marketing?

SPEAKER_00

Oh my gosh. That's a really good question. And I, you know, I'm a scientist, right? I I studied it, I have it in my practice. So even though I'm a holistic practitioner, my I have got a science mind. So I actually know how to how to um sift the wheat from the chaff, so to speak. I know what to look out for, I know what reason what's research, and I also know what's glorified bullshit. Um I would just get people, it only needs to happen once or a few times, and then you just top up your information as information comes through. Yeah. So just spend some time studying it in the background. And when even when you do your searches, you just say, landmark studies, most credible searches. Give me the cliff notes and start to uh have just uh read those to yourself and educate yourself and go, okay, this now makes sense to me. Right? The internet's great for that, right? You've got your you know, so much information out there. But if you say research papers, if you say I want research papers, I want cliff notes of those research papers, uh that you'll be whatever your subject is, if it's for baby stuff or if it's for BPAs or if it's for endocrine disruptive chemicals, just give yourself just a little journey. Yeah, that is the best way. Yeah. Even when you see it on the socials and there's a big fat statement, you take that statement and you pop it in and start clarifying that with what the research is.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, and question it, I think. Just question everything.

SPEAKER_00

And I think even for some of the um uh what uh but I will say that there's some research that is biased, like you know, we watch the infertility documentary, they will see how they fudge some stuff, and then they're actually trying to discredit some whole life body of work.

SPEAKER_02

So for a number of sources, yeah, and look, and if they're an influencer, doesn't also mean that they know.

SPEAKER_00

Okay, closest to nature, you can't go wrong. Closest to nature, organic, yeah, closest to nature, textures, textiles.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, you can't go wrong with that. Yep, absolutely. I love that. Thanks, Helen. And uh look, we're all living in the real world, we're all doing the best we can. So take a breath, everybody. And I know look, the big companies were unlikely to change them overnight. And so we're just looking at how we can make some healthier choices without becoming overwhelmed. And I've got here Helen's top 10 practical tips. Shall I read them out and then we'll do the fire? The quick one.

SPEAKER_00

Top 10 practical tips. Have I given you top 10 practical tips? Oh, yeah, the healthy, the healthy, yeah, go for it.

SPEAKER_02

It's got don't microwave food in plastic, use glass, stainless steel to drink bottles, store leftovers in a glass, wash fruit and vegetables with bicarb, reduce ultra-processed foods, vacuum and dust regularly, open windows daily. Um I know this might not be always possible, but these are ideas. Choose fragrance-free products where possible, replaced scratched plastic containers, um, you know, put them in the in the garage and buy something better for your food. And look, just aim for progress over perfection, which I think is is good. What do you think, Helen?

SPEAKER_00

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_02

So then we had um where was our where was our 20? Was it the 20 questions?

SPEAKER_00

No, no, it was just a little rough. Yeah, like true or false, or too much, you know, yeah more complicated than that. It's like glass or plastic.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. Yeah. So some of these we may have already said, but we'll go, okay.

Rapid Fire Myths And Facts

SPEAKER_02

Factor factor fiction, Miss Helen. Um okay. Plastic chopping boards are worse than wooden ones. True. Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. Glass is always f safer than plastic. True. Okay. Organic food is always healthier. True. All right. Detox teas remove toxins. False.

SPEAKER_04

Ah, really?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. It's the liver and the kidneys that we need that that remove and process and break down and um our um uh toxins of our body, the detox tea that just runs through the stomach won't necessarily do that. Right. Oh, that's really good. It can, you know, it has an assisting capability, but it does don't think that by just having detox teas and not taking care of your liver function, your kidney function, you know, being well hydrated, um, and minimizing exposure of crap in your life. Yeah, uh, if it's if it's sluggish, it ain't gonna be removing it, it's gonna be storing onto it and recycling it.

SPEAKER_02

Right, yeah, no, good point. Love that. You can sweat out toxins. Yes, true.

SPEAKER_00

So we were gonna poop it out, pee it out, sweat it out. So exercise lots to to break a sweat, and again, kidney and liver.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, yeah. BPA free automatically means safe.

SPEAKER_00

Balls they are replaced with BPSs or BPFs, which are also endocrine disruptive chemicals, as well as phylates. And so this is where we spoke about male reproductive health being affected by phylates. Yeah, BPA. I I yeah, there are some safer plastics, and I'm not I'm only just getting to know these myself. So I'm I'm still um, you know, um wanting to learn more and do my own research. But you know, we want to replace things with glass, stainless steel, and safer plastics like 2 HDPE, 4 L DPE, and 5PP. So these are some of the acronyms that you're gonna be seeing more on products, and it's just a matter of just keeping up and going, okay, this sounds scary, but it's actually not, it's a safer, higher grade plastic. Okay, well, I start.

SPEAKER_02

I have a feeling those will all start to come out now.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02

Natural products are always better. True. Yeah, one plastic water bottle won't make a difference.

SPEAKER_00

If you say that three times a day, I don't agree. But if you are pretty much on a low-tox living, uh one plastic bottle of water is okay. You know, you're healthy, your body will, you know, process what you take in.

SPEAKER_02

Thanks. Air pollution can affect fertility. Yes. Yeah.

unknown

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

So that's why we say open the windows.

SPEAKER_00

We see it. Like if we go into uh around the world into high dense polluted countries, and you know, we've got China that was a landmark, uh, not a study, it's actually evidence. Yeah, um, you know, fertility rates are so affected because of the air pollution, you know. I've walked into Kathmandu, um, and you can't see anything like you just clogged up with toxicity. I mean, then this a lot of this is petrochemical toxicity as well, right? Because of all the industrial industrialization and what gets spilled out and spewed out into our atmosphere. Um, yeah. Wow. There's a reason why people wear hazmat suits and masks, yeah, masks and look like space people when they're working with um air quality and pollution.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. Yeah. Men should care about this just as much as women. True, true, true, true, true, true, true.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

Our bodies, men and women. Um, yeah, the more we, I suppose, become aware and choose healthy for ourselves, for our children, I think the more it's gonna help us, isn't it? It's too late to make changes once you've started IVF. False.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

Never too late. Never too late.

unknown

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

Every day is a new day. Yeah. To make new choices.

SPEAKER_00

And you know, and even and even more so because there's so many um hormones that are given through IVF, it's a big load on the body.

SPEAKER_02

It is, yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Like they are disrupting the natural hormone cycle, which is really what endocrine disruptive chemicals do as well. So let's let's reflect it from this perspective as well. So going in and doing um low detox, a low tox home and low tox environment is really, really very, very important when you're going on your IVF journey.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

I hundred percent recommend you make it a priority.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. Awesome. And then the last one, perfect is better than progress.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, false. Progress, progress, progress over getting one thing perfect.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. Okay. And that was our quick fire round. Well

Progress Over Perfection And Closing

SPEAKER_02

done. Thank you, Helen. So as we sort of finish and close off, um, I suppose the reflection is looking back on my own fertility path. Look, I didn't know any of this. Um, part of me wishes I had. But I also know, you know, there's no point blaming myself. And this conversation isn't about blame. I don't want any of you to blame yourself because you didn't know. I didn't know, we don't know. So um, none of us created this environment, but it's all about informing ourselves so we can make that next choice to be a little bit healthier than the last one. And I think that's what I'm trying to do every day, you know, from especially from here forward, what can I do? I remember changing around just yesterday. I changed around my cupboard, so my plastics were now on the top, getting more glass, like glasses, and I'm gonna do what you said, Helen, from now on, you know, I'll might move those into the the garage and whatnot. So craft room.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, thanks. Like you've got a craft room, buttons, zippers, like anything that is for storage that is um not food related. Yeah. And what about your reflection, Helen? Uh my my reflection is you you start small, just educate yourself, and it's not as difficult and overwhelming as what some people might think it is, and then they don't start at all. Yeah. Because it's just the choices that you make. As soon as you replace something, you stick with it. Yeah. And just have your second or third alternative, and it's not so hard. Yeah. Like as soon as my washing liquid or hand liquid runs out, I know what I go for in the shops. I just get that. Um I won't always wash my hands with these very cheap soapy things. I'll wash my hands with water and I won't actually put soap that I know is in, you know, shopping centers and in, you know, really nasty, nasty stuff. I make a choice, you know?

SPEAKER_02

It's kind of like going back to our nana's time, isn't it? Let's just make it all a bit more simpler.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And it is, it's it's it's it's you start off uh in sections, you know. You can do your pantry first, go to your op shops, do a co-op with other friends or people in your community, and um just slowly start from there and stick to it. Wherever you can, bring your food in your own containers. If you're gonna eat out, just enjoy it. Enjoy what you're gonna eat out. But just try not to have so much packaging that you get and we get and feed ourselves and our babies from these plastic pouches. It's just incredible what we do and what we sip. And um, find your places around your area that has bulk foods. Yeah. You know, bulk nuts or your shampoo conditioners, etc. Local markets are fantastic for that.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. Um, yeah. Yeah, I like what you say, all of the plastic jars, uh, not plastic, the glass jars from now on, keep them, and those can now be going in the cupboard. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00

The little tiny things. You've got a little bit of leftover sauce from what you've cooked, you put it in glass, put it in the fridge and label it. Like, yeah, a little bit of leftover bolognay sauce, a little bit of broth, whatever it is.

SPEAKER_02

So, Helen, if you could leave every listener with one message today, what would that be?

SPEAKER_00

Advocate for yourself wherever you can.

SPEAKER_02

I love that.

SPEAKER_00

Because the grandfathers of these big organizations are not doing it for us. No the grand elders, you know, the ones that we think are responsible for what we put on our plate and our bodies are not responsible. So we've got to make our choices. There are alternatives out there.

SPEAKER_02

And I think that's it. We have the power. We have the power to make those changes, to create action, and to make a better world with better choices. So, really, the power, you know, this is about really not feeling the victim, but now creating the power is within us.

SPEAKER_00

And that's that's right. And you just go living your life in the things that you like to do instead of warring and stewing every time you're gonna go and do a supermarket shop. Yep.

SPEAKER_02

Yep. Thank you, Helen. Thank you for this awesome conversation today. And um just being able to, and I've loved hearing quite a lot of your top tips today of you know, just really practical stuff. So thank you. And for all of you listeners, you know, do share this. And if there's something else you want to ask us, reach out to Helen, reach out to me, you know, whatever we can do to put you into the right place or answer the questions or refer you to someone, please, you know, how can we help you make those choices? So thank you, Helen.

SPEAKER_00

Welcome, welcome, welcome.

SPEAKER_02

So, with that, beautiful beings and listeners out there, you know, every every little step that we make to create to be healthier is awesome. And the power is within you. And within that, sending you lots and lots of love, and you just take care of yourself.

SPEAKER_04

Bye.

SPEAKER_00

Thanks for joining us at the Homer Fertility. We hope today's episode brought you clarity, comfort, and connection.

SPEAKER_01

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SPEAKER_00

And if you'd like to connect or share your story, find us on Instagram and Facebook at Australian Fertility Summit.

SPEAKER_01

Remember the missing piece might be waiting in a story. Your body's wisdom, or something new, just made for you. Take care, and we'll see you next time.