Design Your Well Life

Toxic Burden

• Natalie Ellis • Season 1 • Episode 2

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Welcome to Design Your Well Life. Today we're talking about your body's toxic burden and how to get an idea of what is going on inside of you. I feel like this is a crucial first step that most of us are missing right now. How many of you have been to your doctor for your annual health checkup? It's the beginning of a new year. Have you already done it this year? Did you do it at the end of last year? If you have good for you, but what did that consist of? They probably took your weight when you got there, along with your blood pressure and your heart rate. Then they ask you how you're feeling. If you have any concerns. They examined your abdomen, your skin, ears, throat, lymph nodes, and depending on your age, they might've ordered a CBC or a CMP to check some basic blood counts. And maybe a cholesterol check. These are all great and good for you for at least getting this done. But this may not give you a full picture of your health and what your body is actually doing inside. Do you know, your current risks for disease development? Are there heavy metals in your blood? Do you know, if your microbiome is healthy? We need to dive in deeper today, and I have some specific things that you can do to get a picture of the real health that your body is in. So, as I mentioned back in the first episode, I believe that we are like a cup. We have a certain threshold of what and how much our bodies can handle before it overflows. Our bodies are absolutely incredible. Always cleaning up after us. But if we keep adding to our load day by day, eventually it's going to lead to chronic disease or other illnesses. Little fact, did you know that in 2024, the CDC determined that 129 million people in the US have at least one major chronic disease. That's almost half the population. By 2030, they expect it to increase to 170 million people. That's a huge part. And I was one of them. Another analogy that we can use is from a documentary that I recently watched about Interface Carpet it's called Beyond Zero. We'll talk more about carpet and other home products in the future, but one of the points that was made is that we are exceeding the capacity of our planet. And they referenced a story about the reindeer on St. Matthew's island. Stuart McMillen wrote a comic back in 2011, illustrating an event that took place on one of Alaska's remote islands. So in 1944 29, reindeer were released on St. Matthew's island. The island had an abundant food supply to sustain a certain number of reindeer. However, by 1963, the population of reindeer had ballooned to 6,000. This was way too much for the island to sustain, and by 1966, so three years later, there was no available resources to support that many reindeer on the island. And in a matter of months, 99% of the reindeer died with only 42 reindeer left. And no other resources to sustain life. By 1980, the population was completely gone. The island was only so big and the resources were only so many. So I want you to think about this in terms of our bodies as well. Just like the cup that I referenced earlier, are the things that we're introducing into our body, more than what our personal island can sustain? Are we exceeding the capacity of our bodies with the products that we consume. I think the answer is yes. I remember when I first realized that my cup was overflowing, I had constant fatigue, my symptoms were spiraling out of control. And that's when I started digging into my own toxic burden and it changed everything. So the great news is it's not too late. This is where we can design a better life. Be better informed and just get things under control. So to do this, we need early preventative measures. Things that can inform us and keep our cups from overflowing. And I like to think of prevention as the key word here. Too many of our doctor's appointments are for early detection. Not necessarily prevention. By working on prevention, we can keep issues from beginning and get an early detection, if something starts to develop. But what should you even go and check? What things are affecting us negatively or positively? So I'm going to walk you through. There's several tests that I highly recommend. A lot of these you're not going to find at your traditional practitioner's office. And if you do, you might spend up to$15,000 to get these workups. But there are some incredible innovators in the industry. And they've created ways that you can track your health and personally be in charge of your body and what it's doing instead of being acted upon by the environment around you. This will create an opportunity for you to be empowered and make empowered choices. And actually have the tests to back everything up. So I want to be clear, everything that I'm about to reference are things that I've personally used and I've found success with. These companies do not sponsor me. I don't have any personal affiliations besides the fact of being a consumer and using them for my own healing process. So the first I want to introduce you to is Function Health. This is a personalized health testing platform and it uses AI powered learning to improve health. So the company's mission is to empower people to live healthier lives by providing full, comprehensive lab testing. And they give you a report with actionable insights. This company was founded by several people, including Dr. Mark Hyman, Pranitha Patil and Jonathan Swerdlin. I have been a member of Function and I actually enrolled my entire family for the last year and we have found incredible value in this resource. We're going to continue to use this. Function tests 113 biomarkers in your blood work. And then has a medical doctor evaluate the results based on your personal health background that you provide to them. Your primary care doctor does not pull 113 biomarkers once a year, let alone twice a year, which is actually what Function does. Twice a year, they do full blood analysis to really understand what is happening inside of you. You get a comprehensive report of what biomarkers are in range. And speaking of range. Do you know, what that means? Being"in range" is an average of the general population and what their results are on that test. So, I don't know about you, but I would rather be at the optimal range where I should specifically target my biomarkers to hit, instead of an average of what the rest of the population is. Which again is exactly what they give you at Function. They'll tell you the average range and then the optimal range that you should be in. They'll also tell you which biomarkers are out of range and which ones are improving as you continue to do bi- annual tests and track those biomarkers. One of the other results that function gives is your biological age versus your calendar age. I was excited to learn that I'm 10 years younger biologically at this point. Some of the other biomarkers that they test are auto-immunity, blood, electrolytes, environmental toxins in your cells, your heart health, heavy metals in your blood, kidney function, liver function, metabolic function, pancreas, your stress and aging, thyroid, nutrients, and your urine. I want to give you an example here. So if you get your cholesterol checked by your PCP, your primary care physician, they will likely test your HDL and your LDL and your triglycerides. However, a great standard for checking your heart health and your lipids also includes Apo B, lipoprotein a) C reactive protein and the patterns, sizes, and ratios of all of these markers. As well as the HDL, LDL and triglycerides. Dr. Mark Hyman actually does a great job of explaining this on a podcast that he recently aired with. Dr. Marty Makary. It's episode 1001 and I'll link to it in the show notes. I love that Function really looks at the whole picture and not just a few of the pieces. So I'll put a link for Function and the notes as well, and I'll put my reference code in there so that you won't be on their waitlist. At the time of this podcast, the cost for a full year of Function is$499. And all of your biomarkers are checked every six months. So I feel it's a great price considering all that it covers without having to run these expensive tests and approvals through insurance. Now while Function gives you a comprehensive test for biomarkers. Genova Diagnostics has a great food sensitivity test that I use. This one, you will need a provider to order, but their website can also link you to providers who can do this for you. So food sensitivity tests are very controversial right now. I know several physicians that don't believe they give you accurate information. Actually I met an allergist, who like the first rheumatologist I went to, told me that he didn't think this route would help me at all. And I shouldn't even consider them because it was such a new technology. However, I have used this as part of my healing process and during my food elimination phase to help guide what I needed to remove from my diet. So the IgG and IgE antibody panels are blood tests that measure antibodies to commonly consumed foods and environmental allergens. The body can react to foods in a lot of different ways. So what's the difference between IgG and IgE. IgE are allergies. They usually affect a person immediately within a couple of hours, couple of minutes. There are permanent allergies and cause mast cell activation. It stimulates a histamine response in your body, and that can include hives, stuffy or itchy, nose, sneezing, itchy, teary eyes, vomiting. Stomach cramps, diarrhea, swelling, shortness of breath, wheezing, and anaphylaxis. If you've ever gotten a skin prick test, this is probably what they're measuring. These are what people usually consider as allergies and things that they're not tolerable to. However IgG are sensitivities that can have a delayed onset, but can stay in your system and circulate for up to 96 days. They activate and form immune complexes and have symptoms like gastrointestinal, headaches, your joints can ache, skin rashes, fatigue, behavioral problems, and I personally found they would cause flare ups from my auto immune diseases. Several conditions have actually been associated with food sensitivities, including leaky gut, irritable bowel syndrome, major depressive disorder, migraine headaches, skin rashes like exzema, joint aches, autoimmune diseases, Crohn's disease, and obesity. So for me, foods that I considered healthy, like carrots, eggs and tomatoes were actually causing a lot of internal inflammation, which created a systemic problem for me. Other foods like beans and nuts that some other people don't handle very well, work great for me. I was able to use these reports and cut out the specific foods that caused me a problem. There are so many diets that work for some people and not for others. I believe part of this is based on our ancestors and where we originated from. Some have a gut that can handle one type of food and others, not so much. You may also be dealing with leaky gut and your body is reacting to food that is getting through the lining of your intestines. By testing these sensitivities in myself. I was able to figure out what foods were a green light for me. Other foods that I needed to temporarily eliminate and some foods that my body was just going to react poorly to no matter what. It helped me take a lot of the guesswork out of my elimination diet and made it easier to know what foods to work back in and when. By getting the inflammatory foods out of my diet, my inflammation began to go down and my body began to heal. And when that happens, you may be surprised the other things that you've been tolerating as normal for your body. They actually start functioning a lot better. The one, I was really surprised that was less earwax, go figure. When you order this test from Genova Diagnostics. They will send you a card and a finger stick. It's important to be really hydrated so that your blood can flow easily. I even did a few jumping jacks to get my blood pumping to my fingers. And then after pricking my finger, I filled the card that had about 15 or 20 dots. And each of those, a couple of drops of blood. After mailing it in, they sent back a report that had a list of 240 foods and how my body reacted to each of them. Very empowering. I'm going to continue to take this test to see if fixing my leaky gut also helps resolve some of the sensitivities that I was having. I love experimenting with things like this. So I'm going to continue to take this test. The next thing I want to introduce you to is a company called Viome with a V. If you haven't heard already the Greek philosopher, Hippocrates is credited in saying"all disease begins in the gut". And I also believe the key to health and wellness begins in the gut as well. With 70 to 80% of our immune cells being present in the gut. There is an interplay between the intestinal microbiome and your immune cells. I'm guessing most of you have probably heard about the gut microbiome, but may not have a clear picture on exactly what it is. The microbiome is a diverse population of trillions of microbes with thousands of different species that are in the lining of your gut, as well as in your mouth. They play a key role in the daily operation of our bodies. We need them and we need them to be healthy and flourishing. I think Dr. Gundry's book, Gut Check, does a really great job about breaking this information down and making it easy to understand. However, there are several things that I don't fully agree with in his book. So I would recommend you do your own research and always use your own discernment that God has given you. So, how do you know if you have a flourishing rain forest or a depleted desert of microbes in your gut? You may have tried taking prebiotics and postbiotics, but are they helping? Or are you unknowingly killing off your microbiome, making your body more susceptible to sickness? Dr. Gundry cited a study from Duke University that showed a single Splenda packet kills 50% of normal intestinal flora. That's a big deal. Your microbiome health in addition to other systems are exactly what Viome tests. You'll get a tube in the mail to collect your saliva, another card to collect some drops of blood. And a kit to test your stool sample. How else are you going to get to know what's really happening in your gut? Viome literally tests top to bottom. You will get some health scores, including cellular and energy efficiency and gut health, your microbial diversity, how it's interacting with different systems in your body. And Viome will tell you what your personal superfoods are. You can also make custom mouth lozenges. And formulate supplements to specifically target your system. I haven't personally tried the supplements yet, but I love the data that they provide. At the time of this podcast, the Full Body Intelligence test is what I recommend, and that's$399. I will put a link to this in the show notes as well. A little bit of information. If you decide to not go through, one of the companies mentioned above and you prefer to get the testing done from your doctor, it may be tricky to get insurance to pay or for your doctor to prescribe that many labs without there being a direct medical issue that they're looking for. And it may require you to pay some out of pocket anyway. This is actually another topic that really frustrates me when we're discussing prevention versus early detection. I would think that insurance companies would want to go one step further than providing early detection tests like mammograms and annual exams. I think they should be using the technology that we have. Just like the companies I mentioned to provide testing and resources to truly get a full sense of personalized wellness in everyone. And then have our providers help coach choices and resources to manage and prevent disease. But this is a discussion for another day. Okay. So now you have some basic tests to understand your body's current level of function. And a list of a few things to work on. How do you go about making decisions and choices on what to eat and what products to use? I have a few resource suggestions that I'm going to take you through. I've compiled things that may be the drops, filling your cup from each of the Design Your Well Life categories that we're going to cover this year, mind, body environment, spirit, and relationships. So today let's start with a few things from body and environment. Here a few studies about some key ingredients that you'll find in products that we should definitely watch out for. Warning. This item's consumption has been implicated in obesity, metabolic disorders, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, cancer, depression, and cognitive impairment. No, I did not just read a commercial with side effect warnings for a new drug. It's what excessive sugar intake has been claimed to do. And artificial sweeteners are just as bad. A study from nih.gov found that higher consumption of added sugars is associated with a significant increased risk of cardiovascular disease. Participants consuming 10 to 25% of their daily calories from added sugar had a 30% higher risk of dying from cardiovascular disease compared to those who consumed less than 10% of their daily calories. We've got to cut that sugar out. In addition, a study from US, San Diego Health found that high fructose intake can damage the intestinal barrier leading to increased gut permeability. So this is leaky gut. It's the condition that allows endotoxins to enter your bloodstream, and it makes inflammation and contributes to the development of nonalcoholic fatty liver disease. If you begin reading food labels that you pick up, you'll find that most foods will have some type of added sugar in them and a lot of these names can be disguised. So, let me give you a few to watch out for sucrose, fructose, maltodextrin, dextrose, barley malt, cane juice or cane sugar, invert sugar, and rice syrup. There's also a bunch of artificial sweeteners that you need to watch out for and these are things like aspartame, sucralose, saccharin, acesulfame potassium, neotame, erythritol, xylitol, mannitol, maltitol, and steviolglycosides It's a long list. And when you're looking at ingredient labels, it can become overwhelming. So a really easy step to take: I personally try to stick with as simple of ingredients and as whole to the natural source as possible. Like organic local honey and organic maple syrup in small quantities. Otherwise, grab yourself a piece of fruit. Let's talk about seed oils. Did you know that producing seed oils involves a long chemical heavy process? Let's break it down step-by-step. Seeds don't naturally produce oil for us. First seeds are cleaned, dehulled, and then mechanically pressed to extract the oil. Then to maximize the yield after they press them a solvent like hexane, which is a chemical derived from crude oil. Is often used to extract the remaining oil. Hexane is a colorless liquid with a strong odor. Then the oil needs to be refined. The crude oil contains phospholipids that are removed by mixing the oil with either water or acid and then centrifuging. Fatty acids are also now present in the oil. And those are neutralized by using an alkali solution of sodium hydroxide, that forms soaps that are then separated from the oil. Then it needs to be bleached to remove pigments and impurities. And finally, it's deodorized to remove all those things that could affect the flavor on the odor. Makes me want to have some seed oil right now. The big thing to be cautious of is seed oils have been linked to a lot of inflammatory diseases. Some of the worst offenders have been coined the name, the hateful eight. Easy to remember, and they include sunflower oil, soy oil, cotton seed oil, safflower oil, corn oil, grape seed oil, rice bran oil, and canola oil. We're gonna get into this deeper in the future episodes, but the takeaway for today, I recommend trying as much as possible to stick to olive oil, avocado oil and coconut oil. On to glyphosate, which is essentially Roundup. Glyphosate is a widely used herbicide that is actually applied to dry out crops before harvest. So this pre harvest application is intended to dry out the crops all at the same time. They use it on wheat, oats, barley, and it makes it so that you can harvest faster. Instead of waiting for all the crops to dry out naturally, they want to be able to harvest the field in one, go. So the issue of this is that it leads to glyphosate, residues that remain in the harvested crops, which then enter the human food supply. So in the United States that EPA Environmental Protection Agency. Has established a certain tolerance level for glyphosate and how much of the residue and various food products is okay. Conversely the European Union, the EU has taken a more cautious approach. So while glyphosate is approved for use in the EU until December of 2033 it's application, as a pre harvest spray to control the timing of the harvest is absolutely not permitted. The NIH published research that indicates that glyphosate exposure may alter the gut microbiome. And potentially lead to health issues like anxiety and depression. The herbicides impact on the beneficial gut bacteria could have full systemic consequences. There was another article from the EWG called"Breakfast with a Dose of Roundup". And then they have a part two that's called"Roundup for Breakfast", states that weed killer, glyphosate, was found in all 28 kids cereals that they sampled. So, how do you know if glyphosate is in the food that you're buying? This one is a little trickier and we really need to impress upon our Congress that it is not okay to use this in harvesting for our crops. When I go buy food, I try to research countries where glyphosate is banned and purchase organic products from those areas. I'll add a link to the articles from EWG that will give you a little more information. Now you'll find a lot of controversy about these items where some will say they're not harmful to you. But I always advise to consider how close to its most natural form is the item that you're going to eat or use and how much has it been processed? My recommendation, always choose an item that is as close to its whole natural form as possible. Let's talk about a few things you may be using in your environment now. Teflon. Teflon is toxic. It is even known to kill birds. Please, please, please get rid of all your Teflon pans. Teflon and other nonstick surfaces can get to temperatures where the coating actually breaks apart and it emits toxic particles and gases linked to hundreds, perhaps thousands of bird deaths each year. And a number of human illnesses as well. It only takes about three minutes to reach a temperature on the stove where the non-stick surfaces are creating six toxic gases. One of which is a chemical that can be lethal to humans at low doses. Another EWG article states, the government has not assessed the safety of nonstick cookware. According to an FDA food safety scientist."You won't find a regulation anywhere on the books that specifically addresses cookwares". Although the FDA approved Teflon for contact with food back in 1960. Based on a food frying study, they found higher levels of Teflon chemicals in hamburger that were cooked on heat aged or older Teflon pans. At the time the FDA judged these levels to be of little health significance. I don't want these toxins in my kitchen. Personally, I use three different types of pans when I cook. I love a traditional cast iron skillet that's been seasoned with olive oil. It may be a little heavier than you're used to. But it cooks evenly. It creates a great sear on meet. And can go directly into the oven and if it's seasoned well, it will wash and clean beautifully. I also use stainless steel pans, especially for boiling and making sauces. And lastly, I've been experimenting with the new ceramic coated pans. The two companies that I love for these are Caraway, or Our Place. Now ceramic coated pans definitely takes some getting used to you. Can't use metal spoons or spatulas that will scratch them, but they cook and clean up well with very little oil. I know it's going to be hard to get away from the Teflon where food just slides out and moves around really easily without sticking, but it's really worth it to learn how to use these other pans to cook from and get the Teflon out of your kitchen. Now, what do you know about microplastics? Plastic actually doesn't break down and disappear like other things. Instead, it keeps getting smaller and smaller and breaking into tinier and tinier pieces. Again, according to EWG, when these pieces shrink below five millimeters in size, about the width of a small paperclip, they become, what's known as a microplastic. And when these microplastics become smaller than a micro meter, they're called nanoplastics. Nanoplastics are actually small enough to breach the cell barriers in our body. Now these plastics have been found everywhere. Including all over inside of our bodies, stomach, lungs, blood vessels, and more. And depending on how the plastic was made, there may also be toxic chemicals within these microplastics. These microplastics mess up your gut biome. And are known to lower sperm, quality and testosterone and impair memory. When you start trying to cut plastic out, you will realize that everything has plastic and it's actually really hard to avoid. I'll help you learn about products in future episodes to use instead of plastic, but for now at least try to cut out all the plastic that you heat your food in. Even those paper plates. Paper plates are coated with a bioplastic or petroleum-based plastic to keep food from seeping through. So look for paper plates with no coatings. And those cups that you use for hot drinks and coffee. Same thing. They have a coating of plastic. So step one. Don't heat food in plastic. So finally, let's do a quick touch on skin. It is the largest organ in our body and responsible for keeping us safe as a protective barrier. However, it can also absorb a lot of chemicals that are applied topically. Things like fragrances and oils are really quick to absorb more so than other products. There are even chemicals added to products to make the skin absorb that product faster or at a higher rate. Once absorbed those chemicals and substances will enter your circulation and potentially affect your internal organs and systems. Remember, it's the liver and our kidneys that are responsible for cleaning up these absorbed chemicals. A significant number of products that we use on our hair and our skin are full of parabens. Research shows that parabens can disrupt hormonal function by mimicking estrogen. And potentially leading to reproductive issues, developmental disorders, and an increased risk of cancer. I'm going to give you some resources to help you discern what is in the products that you're using. So the first is Switch Natural. This is an app and it is a paid download, but I think it's extremely worth it. You can take a photo or scan the ingredient label on a product. This is mainly for skin and household products. Not necessarily food. And it's going to tell you what toxins are in that product and why those toxins may be harmful. So, for example, I scanned the laundry detergent that I used to use, and it pops up with three chemicals that are toxic. And they ranged from causing reproductive and developmental disorders to cancer and DNA damage. I now use a completely different clean laundry detergent. But I use the app, Switch Natural for absolutely every product that I put on my body or use in my house. Another feature of this app is it gives recommendations of a similar product as to what you're scanning that is more clean. Now FYI here, the products that Switch Natural recommends have to be registered with their app in order to show up. So that means there may be a lot of other great products out there and available that are really good and clean to use, but they just haven't registered with the app yet. So I've personally found a lot of great products, both on the app and other companies that are beginning to produce more and more clean products. In future episodes, I'm actually going to take you through top brands that I love. Favorites that I have and ones that really work well for me and help you keep identifying what you need to look for on labels. Now I've referenced several articles today from the EWG, the Environmental Working Group is a nonprofit organization that conducts research and advocates for human health and the environment. Their work focuses on toxic chemicals, drinking water pollutants, corporate accountability, and consumer goods. The EWG's, mission is to provide research that helps people be able to make informed choices so that they can live healthier lives and live in healthier environments. So you'll find the EWG verified mark on a lot of different products and that means that that product meets the EWG standards. However, as I mentioned in the very first episode, you need to be empowered to choose what you will actually accept to have in your products. Even if one of the products is verified by EWG or another group. EWG has an app that is called EWG Healthy Living, and it gives ratings on over 200,000 personal care, cleaning, and food products. So I still encourage you absolutely read those labels, understand what is in the products that you're using, but besides Switch Natural, this EWG Healthy Living app is another great resource to see what's available, what's out there and what's in the products that you're using. So another cool tool with EWG, is you can input your zip code to ewg.org/tapwater and it will let you know what chemicals and toxins are found in your local drinking water. So I input my zip code into this website and actually found 20 contaminants. Which seven of those exceeded the EWG health guidelines. Now, some of the contaminants are considered legal. But legal does not necessarily equal safe. Getting a passing grade from the federal government does not mean the water meets the latest health guidelines. And actually, did you know that the legal limits for contaminants in tap water haven't even been updated in almost 20 years? In the drinking water, where I live, it contains arsenic, hexavalent, chromium, chloroform, cyanide and radium among many others. I know this can be scary when you look it up and it's hard to know what to start doing. I would encourage everyone to use a water filter. And we'll do a deep dive into different brands and what to look for in water filters in future episodes. But as you can see, all of these things we talked about today are great examples of what we need to start becoming more and more aware of. I hope you found the information in today's episode helpful. Next time we're going to take a look at elimination diets and uncover surprising ways they can help lower inflammation. You won't want to miss it.

Natalie:

Thank you for joining me on design your well life. I hope this episode inspired you to take a step toward creating a life that truly supports and uplifts you. If you enjoyed today's episode, I'd love for you to subscribe, leave a review and share it with someone who might benefit from these insights. Don't forget to connect with me on social media for more tips and inspiration. I'd also love to hear your thoughts, questions, topics, or products you'd like me to cover in future episodes. Until next time, remember the power to design your well life is in your hands. Take it one intentional step at a time.

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