The Cumulative Chemical Burden: Unmasking Fragrance, Parabens, and Phthalates

Welcome back to Crunchy Stewardship! In Part 6 of our Fertility Series, we are grabbing our morning coffee (at 8:00 AM!) and diving into the personal care products we use every single day.

Did you know the average woman applies 12 personal care products before she even leaves the house? That adds up to a staggering 168 chemicals layered onto your skin daily. Today, we are breaking down the "Cumulative Chemical Burden" and looking at three of the biggest endocrine-disrupting culprits in your bathroom: Phthalates, Parabens, and Fragrance.

We explain how these specific toxins mimic estrogen, suppress testosterone, and confuse your reproductive system. But don't panic—our bodies are incredibly resilient! We share how quickly your body can detox from these chemicals once you stop using them, and we give you a budget-friendly, stress-free plan for swapping out your products over time.

Plus, Katie makes a hilarious connection between modern food additives and Clark Griswold from National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation!

In this episode, you'll learn:

• The Psychology of the "Crunch": Why food engineers design snacks to be loud, and Katie's realization about Clark Griswold's actual job.
• The Cumulative Burden: Why a single exposure to a chemical isn't the problem, but the daily layering of 168 chemicals is.
• Phthalates (The Plasticizers): Where they hide (from yoga mats to recycled clothing) and how they impact sperm motility and premature ovarian aging.
• Parabens (The Preservatives): How these synthetic preservatives mimic estrogen and disrupt the crucial hormone spikes needed for ovulation.
• The "Fragrance" Loophole: Why the word "fragrance" or "parfum" on a label is actually a legal hiding spot for hundreds of undisclosed chemicals—including phthalates designed to make scents stick to your skin.
• The Clean Bathroom Challenge: How to audit your bathroom and make budget-friendly, non-toxic swaps only as you run out of your current products.

Resources mentioned:

• App: Switch Natural - https://www.switchnatural.com/switch-natural-app
• App/Website: EWG (Environmental Working Group) - https://www.ewg.org/skindeep/
• App/Website: Bobby Approved - https://www.flavcity.com/bobbyapproved/
• Book: Feeding You Lies by Vani Hari (The Food Babe) - https://amzn.to/4ccZZ7l

Chapters:

00:00 Welcome & Early Morning Brain Fog
02:05 Fertility Focus - Pthalates, Parabens, Fragrance
03:23 Random Revelation Crunch Factor
06:48 Cereal Crunch and Kellogg Stories
12:30 Cumulative Chemical Burden
18:18 Fragrance Sensitivity and Mouth Breathing
21:34 What Are Phthalates
23:43 Plastics Clothing and Home Exposure
27:39 How Phthalates Impact Male and Female Fertility
31:41 How to Detox from Phthalates Quickly
36:53 Parabens: The Estrogen Mimicking Preservatives
41:09 Why High Estrogen Disrupts Ovulation & Testosterone
45:31 Fragrance Means Hundreds of Chemicals
49:24 Essential Oils vs Synthetic Fragrances|
59:11 Clean Swap Challenge

Remember, whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God (1 Corinthians 10:31).

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FREE How to Afford Non-Toxic Living Workbook: https://crunchystewardship.com/how-to-afford-non-toxic-living

Transcript

Speaker 2 0:03

Welcome to Crunchy Stewardship. I'm Chrissy Roach.

Speaker 3 0:06

And I'm Katie Fiola Jones. We are cousins on a mission to honor God by stewarding our health spiritually, mentally, and physically.

Speaker 2 0:14

From ancestral nutrition and natural remedies to biblical finance and holistic health, we are digging deep into how God intended us to live.

Speaker 4 0:22

So grab yourself a raw milk latte and join us as we unpack the ins and outs of crunchy stewardship.

Katie 0:35

Hey friends. Welcome back to Crunchy Stewardship. We are actually recording probably the earliest that we have ever recorded and so Chrissy and I a little tired. It's only, it's it's 8:00 AM It's so, it's not like crazy early, but it's pretty early for wanting to turn your brain on in this way and think hard thoughts. But I feel like both of us are here. I mean, Chrissy, I don't know how you're going to do today. You're basically on vacation and waking up early, which for me is like a special kind of tired'cause I'm like in

Chrissy 1:14

I am, well, I'm flying home today, so lazy mode is turning off by the end of the day, so we're just turning it off a little bit early and

Katie 1:25

be fine.

Chrissy 1:26

that's just how it is. great. I'll take a nap on the plane.

Katie 1:30

In our and he will shine through

Chrissy 1:34

Indeed,

Katie 1:36

you Lord for No, we'll be fine. We're excited to get to record. We, we just know the importance of getting these episodes out and we just want to continue to get them out on Fridays for everybody yeah, so that's why we're here and making sure that we get these episodes recorded for you guys.

Chrissy 1:55

and sometimes that means recording at weird times a day in not the best mindset. Morning mindset is hard, but that's okay.

Katie 2:05

So bear we are continuing in our fertility series and going to be jumping over to talk about. things today kind of combined,'cause they're pretty similar. uh, fragrance, parabens and phthalates. And you'll notice in our conversation there will be some similarities to our last week's conversation, which was,

Chrissy 2:33

About PFAS.

Katie 2:34

the name? Oh, yeah. PFAS. Thank you. I'm like, there we things. And so there's like some similarities because they're all different forms of chemicals, but we're going to talk about specifically how these three things are disrupting our endocrine system and what kinds of impacts they're having on our fertility specifically. And there are differences to each of them and where they, where we find them in our household and daily products and things like that. So we felt like it was important to separate them into a, a different category or a different podcast today. And yeah, we'll be going. Deeper into those things, but we do, Chrissy is going to bring us our random revelation today. Take it away, Chrissy.

Chrissy 3:23

So, uh, funny, the way I found this red number revelation is because I, uh, pulled a typical Katy and I was not prepared with my random revelation of the week.

Katie 3:35

I.

Chrissy 3:35

And so I really just googled crunchy, fun fact. And the very first thing that came up was from, um, Google Gemini. It says The sound of a crunch increases the enjoyment of food because it stimulates both taste and hearing. And I read that and I was like. Oh my gosh, that's so true because if you think about like eating a pate potato chip versus eating, we're yogurt. You know, like the enjoyment of that food is so incredibly different. Like think of how you feel after eating a singular potato chip versus after eating Greek yogurt. You know? It's just such a different feeling and it makes so much sense that food companies would use that to their advantages. Like if you think of modern snacks. They're all crunchy. You know, we've got Cheez-Its, we've got crackers, we've got chips, we've got pretzels. Like, all of these things are very crunchy items. And if manufacturers and food companies understand the fact that a crunch increases your enjoyment of the food, and they can use it to their advantage by making you want more, to make it more crunchy. And I was trying to think, I was like, okay, potato chips are really crunchy. You know, they, they give you that sound, the, the sound that drives me crazy. Actually, I can't stand it. But that's a personal problem. Um. As if anyone listening to this podcast knows me, I, I'm literally the person, like in Bible study or even in church, someone will be clicking their pen and I just gently reach my hand over put my hand on their hands in their lap and I look at them very gently and I say, stop clicking your pen, please. Um, it is kind of funny, I, I took my friend's name tag out of her hand a few weeks ago because she was like flipping her name tag over her finger. And, um, I took it from her because it, anyways, that's besides the point. Um, so I was thinking about food that we find in nature, like food that God created directly from the earth. And the Crunchiest food item I could think of was an apple. And I was like, honestly, I. When you think of like coming in from outside in the summertime, it's hot, you're thirsty and hungry. Taking a bite of a cold, fresh, juicy apple is so satisfying. Like in that moment I would not want yogurt. I would want an apple. Similarly, like sitting poolside chips are very satisfying. And so, yeah, I, I think that's just an interesting thing to, to keep in mind is that like manufacturing companies definitely use the crunch aspect to, um, make us enjoy their food more so than we would if it was soggy.'cause nobody likes a soggy chip. Let's be honest.

Katie 6:48

I don't know why I was remembering this random fact, but one of my favorite Christmas movies is National Lampoon's Christmas vacation. I don't recommend it as a family movie. There's, um, language in it and there is some just and things. Um, so it's not really like a very wholesome Christmas movie, but it's quite hilarious. There are just some scenes in there that just. me because they're just so funny. Anyway, for those of you who are familiar with the movie, you may or may not remember that Clark Griswold, who is the main character, a job and it, I only noticed it probably not this Christmas, but it was the last Christmas I believe.'cause we watch this one, it's, it's my Christmas movie of choice. Every year Wes' is Elf. And so we usually watch those two Christmas movies along with other ones. But Christmas vacation is my choice and we usually watch it. And last year. I realized for the first time what Clark Griswold's job was, and you may or may not have noticed it before, but he is, and I looked it up because I wanted to know the specific title. He works as a food additive designer and he, um, is specifically a chemical engineer for a company that produces food preservatives. He is most notably recognized for inventing a non-nutritive cereal varnish, crunch enhancer designed to prevent cereal from getting soggy in the milk. And it's just so funny because. I would've never thought about that in the past that like, oh, his job is basically making things more addictive. But though, the previous Christmas I was like, oh my gosh, Wes, did you hear that? He is part of the problem? And it just, I went on this whole thing about how funny it is that that was his job. And so then this year when we watched it again, I was like, I don't know if I could support this show if this is his job. And he's the person that's making the cereal more addictive for kids and things like that. It was just, it's so funny. But anyway, there's like only a couple scenes in there where they talk about it, but it just, it really stood out to me. And so today, with your fun fact, I was thinking about c Clark Griswold and his crunch enhancer that

Chrissy 9:23

That's so funny. Wait, is this like a character in the movie? Like the character's job. But it's not, he's not a real, well, obviously he's a real person, but like his, the person's job in real life is not

Katie 9:40

it's just the, the character's job. Clark Griswald is the, like dad, the, the main guy in it. And there's like the, all these scenes about him, like getting his bonus for the year. And so you see him in the office, like talking with his boss and other coworkers. And there's only a few of them. Like, it's not even the main point of the movie, but it is a point about him getting his bonus. So they have some scenes about him in the office talking about his crunch enhancer that he developed at this cereal, this like food engineering company. And I'm like, oh my goodness, I've never noticed this before because it wasn't on my mind before, but now it is. And think it's really funny.

Chrissy 10:22

That probably is a real job though, somewhere in some way, shape or form.

Katie 10:30

Kelloggs, and I am sure, well, I I know that they're, um, downstate, um, in, uh, battle Creek, Michigan, which is where my grandparents were from, and that's where Serial City is. And Vni Harri actually on my, my, kind of like the kickstart to my Crunchy journey, I read a book by Vni Harri, um, called Feeding You Lies. And then I ended up like following her on Instagram and on social media and, and joining her email list. And very early in my crunchy journey. She was doing all these protests against Kellogg's and their food dies in Children's Foods and she rallied up a whole group of people from across the US to go down to Serial City, basically Kellogg's headquarters. I actually don't think that Serial City specifically exists anymore, which was more of their tourism thing. And I had been there as a kid and I loved it. And you would see like the process of serial being made and you get to like, you know, Tony the Tiger was there and all these fun things. It was like a big museum.

Chrissy 11:36

Okay. Honestly, that sounds like a blast. I probably would've loved it also, be horrified by it now,

Katie 11:43

Exactly.

Chrissy 11:44

that would've been so fun.

Katie 11:45

it is

Chrissy 11:46

It's like Disney

Katie 11:47

yeah, that is

Chrissy 11:49

really fun as a kid now as an adult. I'm like, Ooh,

Katie 11:53

of people down there and I was like, Hey, I know that place basically. And. That was kind of wild. But yeah, serial city, it was pretty cool. I heard that it doesn't exist anymore. Like they had to close it down or something, I don't know. But it was really fun at the time and I really

Chrissy 12:09

did, did Vannie? Hari shut it down?

Katie 12:15

but that would've been funny if like she was the reason,

Chrissy 12:18

she's like, shut this down.

Katie 12:19

I think a lot of families would've been upset too because it attraction and I have great memories with my grandparents going there as a kid. So, yeah. But you go.

Chrissy 12:30

transition into our actual episode for today. We're not going to parabens, f FLYlights, and fragrances. Now, these three, they are three completely separate items that are put into, um, a lot of personal care products like shampoos, conditioners, lotions, makeup, things like that. Um, but they're all separate in their own special ways. So we are gonna go through each one and talk about why it, um, is important to, or what exactly it does, how it works, and then the effect that it has on our bodies, um, when we use it now. It's important to remember that using a product with a single paraben or a single phthalate or a single fragrance is not going to immediately kill you. Obviously, we're all still living and we've all used these products. Um, it's also not going to immediately make you infertile, as we all know, we have plenty of friends who love Bath and Body Works who get pregnant right away without even blinking. Right? And it's important to remember that these products do not work individually. By them, well, individually, by themselves, they all impact our endocrine system. So our hormone systems in general. But when you put them all together and you use them frequently, it creates such a burden on your body. And that burden is what is causing the infertility, the endocrine disruption, the issues. It can even probably affect your mental health. I don't actually know, but I'm pretty confident it probably can just because it's all connected. Um, so it's the burden of using so many of these multiple times a day that is causing, um, the problems with our endocrine system. So Katie, do you wanna start off with, um, talking about phthalates?

Katie 14:39

idea of, um, kind of that burden, but it, I've heard stories of people who have removed even just small amounts of products that have any of these, you know, endocrine, disrupting, of like chemicals. And when they actually remove certain things, they, they start to feel relief pretty quickly. And like when, when Christy's talking about this like, burden that your body, like that accumulates in your body, it's basically like this cumul cumulative effect. You know, there's, if you're exposed to these items, even at low doses, but frequently, uh. like continuously sending your body a signal to throw your hormones off. Like about this last week, how, um, the PFAS will confuse your home hormone system, your endocrine system, and so it'll like tellt your body to start producing certain hormones and not produce other hormones. Or it thinks that it's producing hormones, but it's not. And, and so if you continuously, use a shampoo or a deodorant or, like anything that has, like a fragrance in it on a regular basis, it's like giving your body that signal multiple times to, to do something. And so it's like pushing a button over and over in your body saying like, yes, go, go, go. So it's like on, on, on. not necessarily like ever pushing the off button.

Chrissy 16:14

and because this came to mind and I wanted to make sure I had the numbers correct, so, EWG did a study on, um, how many personal care products people use throughout the day. And their study came to the conclusion that on average, the average woman applies about 12 personal care products to their bodies throughout the day. So if you think about a personal care product, think you wake up in the morning, you take a shower, shampoo, conditioner, body wash, shaving cream, right? Then you get outta the shower, you put on lotion, that's five. You wash your face, six toothpaste. Seven. You put on some foundation, eight concealer, nine. Um, then you wash your hands. 10. Okay, so that's already 10 personal care products that you've used. Oh, mascara probably has stuff. And deodorant. Boom. There's 12. Okay, so you've just used 12 personal care products and you only got ready for the day. That's it. Those 12 personal care products on average have upwards of 168 chemicals in them. So if you think about the cumulative burden that you are putting on your body every single day, just by getting ready for the day with all of these products that contain parabens, phthalates, and fragrances, the burden that you're putting on your body with 168 endocrine disrupting chemicals is astronomical. And so if you think about that, like even just changing one or two things at a time, like we've said before, as soon as you run out of your shampoo, change it to a shampoo that doesn't have fragrances or phthalates or parabens in it, like a more natural version. As soon as you run outta your body wash, switch it out. And slowly but surely, like. Katie said this is one of those things that you can actually see and feel a difference in your body when you change your personal care products. I, I notice it, I don't know if you notice this, Katie, but I notice it a lot in my sinuses, like with eating sugar and having more fragrances on me and around me. I like, can feel more pressure in my sinuses, like in my face almost. And it's like the inflammation in my face. I don't know what it is, but I can definitely tell a difference, um, when I've been exposed to more chemicals throughout the day than when I haven't. So just wanted to add that little 2 cents there.

Katie 18:56

mine's usually like When I smell, like when somebody has a very strong perfume or lotion or they're, uh, they use like the scent pods in their laundry, and so then their clothes smell very strongly. I tend to get headaches if I'm exposed too long, if I'm, if I'm hanging out with that person and we're sitting next to each other and I'm just like, oh my goodness. But I, I really my best to respectfully distance myself from those people when I do smell that, or if I notice that they have really strong scents on them. And so I. Move myself slightly further away and honestly even just breathing through my mouth versus my nose. So maybe it does have to do with sinuses because when I, when it does come in through my nose, I feel like it goes straight to my brain quicker, which I actually do think that is true because the whole thing with mouth breathing, when you breathe through your mouth versus your nose, your brain doesn't get oxygen as quickly, um, when you breathe through your mouth versus your nose. And so that's why the whole mouth breathing thing is a, a thing in the crunchy world. And you want to use something like mouth tape, which Wes Jones, my husband has been using mouth tape lately and he's been enjoying it, it sounds like. But his mustache is one of the bigger challenges at this

Chrissy 20:26

That's wild. My husband could never, max, could never, he has a deviated septum. He would actually probably suffocate. I know. I don't really know how I would have, I would love to talk to somebody about mouth breathing and deviated septum and like how those go together.'cause if you quite literally can't breathe out of your nose, like don't have an option.

Katie 20:50

yeah.

Chrissy 20:51

Yeah.

Katie 20:52

in that situation. I would choose to live you know, breathing through my mouth and needing to say, okay, I don't want to, I don't need these other health benefits breathing through my nose. I'd rather just live, uh, yeah. Well there's a lot of, there are a lot of like health benefits and things when you breathe through your nose versus, versus your mouth. And I think it'd be cool to do a whole episode on like dental, like a, a topic about dental stuff, because that is, I've, I've learned a lot recently

Chrissy 21:25

I will add it to the list of episode ideas.

Katie 21:28

Yay.

Chrissy 21:31

Yes.

Katie 21:33

Great. So I'm gonna read this sentence to you because, uh, I am not an expert on these things, and we often have to look up specifics on these topics because oftentimes, like for me, when it comes to this crunchy stuff, I just remember things like Fs are bad. And that's all I remember, but I'm like, could I answer like why and how they're bad specifically off the top of my head sometimes, no, no. I just remember the, the most important fact of like, folates are bad. Don't, don't use them. These are, you know, and just generally where I find them. So I'm just gonna read this sentence that Tates are, plasticizers used to make plastics more flexible and are widely used in cosmetics, lotions, and food packaging. They are notoriously anti androgyny. Is that how you say that word, Chrissy.

Chrissy 22:28

Androgenic

Katie 22:29

Thank you.

Chrissy 22:30

like against androgens.

Katie 22:32

Yes, that Meaning that they interfere with male sex hormones. though they are heavily, they do, they do heavily impact female fertility as well. So I think that satellites are often considered, like, so when you. Uh, a yoga mat, for example. Yoga mats are nice and squishy and flexible, and they're soft and fluffy. Um, so if you think about like any kind of like plasticy material kind of like that or anything that is okay. I think phthalates, and I don't know this for search for sure, so maybe Christy as, as I'm saying this, you can look it up. I think phthalates are also in many clothing things that are plasticy because it, it does give it a more flexible soft bends. So look that up while I'm, while I'm talking because I'm, I don't know and I don't wanna stand by my word on that, but I know they're in yoga mats for sure.

Chrissy 23:29

The answer is yes. They are commonly found in clothing, particularly synthetic fam fabrics like polyester printed graphics, artificial leather, and plastic based elastics like spandex.

Katie 23:43

hard because I used to be in the crunchy space, not, I wouldn't even say crunchy, I was more in, in my twenties, um, than I am now

Chrissy 23:56

you started using like reusable, like beeswax plastic bags for your sandwiches and things. Before I even knew what beeswax was.

Katie 24:06

Yes, is, were, there were a number of factors. My sister-in-law also is very earth conscious, and we just had lots of conversations over, um, my early years of dating Wes and marriage, um, and everything. And so my sister-in-law definitely had an impact of that, where we would just talk about like ways to reduce, reuse, recycle. And I loved that. I loved that, you know, reusing and reducing and recycling would help save me money. I loved just the idea that it was, um, reducing just the waste in the world. And so I loved finding things that were made with, uh. Uh, recycled plastics and, and whatnot. Anything that was recycled. And it was like, this is made from a hundred percent recycled water bottles or whatever, you know, when you see that on marketing. And so loved doing that. But now since then, I have realized that it introduces moreth to my system because oftentimes you need to add these chemicals to make the, to break down the plastics and to keep them soft and usable for other products, so, such as putting them in clothing. So if you ever have like 100% recycled shirt or whatever, that will be full of those chemicals, unfortunately. And so. realized that, I had these dish towels that I was gifted, that were made from recycled water bottles. I, I think they were, they were made from recycled something, but it's that fabric where it's like soft, but you can kind of tell it's not something like cotton. so it's, it's got kind of a different feel to it. But there are a lot of things like that, that I had around my house that I'm now realizing we're introducing these chemicals to our household, but also microplastics in general, which we'll talk more about microplastics too, um, in a future episode. But all these recycled products have these cellulites in them. And so I was realizing that we were. Heavily exposed to it in our household. So I've been slowly getting rid of things. Towels was actually like dish towels for us was really easy to get rid of because we have so many of them. I don't even know why, but it was like one of those things where I'm like, we just have a lot of random dish towels. I think maybe because they make good gifts, and so I'd get like ones with like chickens on them because everybody always gets me stuff with chickens on them and like just, I don't know. Anyway, so I was, I

Chrissy 26:38

Wait,

Katie 26:39

of a

Chrissy 26:39

speaking of chickens, did I see that you got baby chicks?

Katie 26:47

post We, we used Family Album and Chrissy's on our family album and then we post pictures of Malachi there.'cause we don't put'em on social media and. There was a picture of him with chickens. Yes, you are correct. But no, we have not gotten them yet. Um, those were just at the farm where we pick up our milk every week. They have baby chicks right now. And so I brought him in so he could see. He literally, Chrissy picked up a chicken by its wing and was like chicken. It was how he says chicken. And he just was like holding it. I was like, Mel, like I know. Don't pick it up like that, because he saw me holding them and like, you

Chrissy 27:21

Oh,

Katie 27:21

him how to pet them. But of course he tries. I couldn't believe he caught it too. But he got it.

Chrissy 27:27

impressive. I was really surprised. I was like, did they really get 20 chickens? That's crazy.

Katie 27:35

had there too.

Chrissy 27:36

Wow.

Katie 27:36

lot. But that

Chrissy 27:37

Okay, sorry, that was a little side comment.

Katie 27:39

Farmers and they live So anyway. Yes, so I mentioned that Tates. Specifically do, um, impact male sex hormones. Um, and so I learned that pholate inhibit the production of testosterone in the, I don't even know what these are letting cells, Chrissy? Uh

Chrissy 28:06

Lay dig cells. I think those are like the, if you go back to like our male fertility episode, when I went through the anatomy and physiology of male fertility, I left out big fancy words like this because they just make it more cumbersome and difficult to remember, but I'm pretty sure those are like the stem cells that sperm originate from. Mm-hmm.

Katie 28:35

Well, then that's a big we want those to work properly. So if the tth are inhibiting production of testosterone there, that would make. A big impact to male fertility. Um, and obviously this does lead to in the sperm concentration. Um, it says that it also leads to poor, um, sperm motility, which is basically how well, um, they can swim and they need to swim well in order to fertilize an egg. That's important. And then they also impact the morphology, which is the shape of each of the sperm, which if you're not familiar with that, I did kind of talk about that in that episode Chrissy mentioned. So you could go back and listen to that if you haven't checked it out. Um, they also induce oxidative stress, which can cause DNA damage within the sperm itself. So that's really, uh, important. And then in female fertility for women, phthalates interfere with, that word, Chrissy. You don't even know how to say it.

Chrissy 29:47

I had to look at it It's the production of steroid like, um, hormones in our body, so like cortisol and estrogen.

Katie 30:00

you. You explained to us how those are related. Cortisol and estrogen in our previous episode. So this can disrupt the normal development of ovarian follicles, which release the eggs. And then high levels of folate exposure have been linked to an increased risk of endometriosis. I actually do know that word, and it impacts and alters the menstrual cycle and. Um, diminished ovarian reserve, which is basically a premature aging of the ovaries, which that is really interesting hearing that now and saying this out loud, because I've, don't even remember who it was, but a friend back in Colorado, I remember she had talked to me about how she had like premature aging of the ovaries, and

Chrissy 30:54

It's so funny. I had a friend with that issue also, and she said she had to take some sort of, um, hormone supplement something because her doctor essentially told her she was going into menopause at like age 20. Yeah. I.

Katie 31:10

too, like even if you're not getting pregnant, like if you're past the point of wanting to get pregnant, so maybe you're in your thirties or forties, but you're not necessarily ready for menopause. This the tth things like this will. Impact your hormones in such a way and your body in such a way that it can trigger pre menopause. So that is, didn't even think about that. That's pretty intense and also a big deal because mean, ugh, menopause. Anyway, that's what folates do. Um,

Chrissy 31:45

did wanna touch on, so you mentioned, you mentioned specifically with the male fertility section of phthalates, that they induce oxidative stress within the body, which can cause DNA damage within the sperm itself. So oxidative stress in the body causes DNA damage across all of the cells in the body. It's not just the sperm or the eggs. Um, and one of the beautiful things is God created antioxidants. And so an antioxidant is a food that you can eat to prevent oxidization. Oxidization. Yeah. Um, so it's an anti oxidizer. So. Um, it prevents the oxidation or this DNA damage of the cells. So foods that have, um, antioxidants in them are like a lot of berries. So blueberries, strawberries, raspberries, which remember those are very important to get organic. And if you're not gonna get them organic, you need to make sure you wash them and baking soda and vinegar before you use them because they have a lot of glyphosate on them. But that's beside the point. So, um, lots of fruits and vegetables have antioxidants in them, and I think pomegranate is also a really high in antioxidants. And so those are some foods if you are trying to cleanse your body from these phthalates and things like that, um, you can incorporate berries and things and fruits and things that, um, can help to reduce the effects of these phalates pretty quickly in your body.

Katie 33:21

you should look this up too, because I don't actually know the answer. Can you

Chrissy 33:27

I am just the Google Queen today.

Katie 33:29

huh?

Chrissy 33:30

I said I'm the Google Queen today.

Katie 33:32

You are, you're You're really like sometimes when I'm looking things up, it's not as quick. Well, okay. Here's what I would like to look up is these three things, t thalates, parabens, and fragrances, like how they can be detoxed from our system. Because like you were saying, like antioxidants can help with removing the phthalates from our system, which is great. So I, I, because for something like PFAS, which we talked about last week, they are considered forever chemicals, which they're called that because they accumulate and they're very, very extremely difficult to detox from your system. There are some ways, but it's like, again, they're forever, they're going to kind of build up and stay there, which is really bad, and which is why you really, really wanna work hard to eliminate those. But I think for these, you can detox them, right.

Chrissy 34:25

Yeah, so actually the first thing that comes up on Google when you ask about a detox is just says, avoiding these chemicals for 28 days can pretty much detox your body. Um, new, new fertility says that they said avoiding packaged food for three days resulted in a 66% drop in BPA level. So that's microplastics, not necessarily, um, parabens and like that, but they're all

Katie 34:57

too.

Chrissy 34:57

okay.

Katie 34:59

plastics, but it's like the plastics.

Chrissy 35:02

Yeah. So it really sounds like just avoiding them, just detoxes your body because thankfully enough, they're not like PFAS where our bodies can't. Process them. Like our bodies process these out pretty quickly'cause they recognize them as a toxin and so, um, it gets rid of it very fast. And so just avoiding them can cleanse your body of these chemicals very, very quickly.

Katie 35:30

There we I'm kind of curious if there's, similar to something like heavy metals, which can be encouraged to be detoxed from your system through something like an Epsom salt bath. Does that make sense?

Chrissy 35:44

I think so, um, I wanna say that a foot detox, um, which remember you should not do a detox if you're pregnant. You should only do detoxes if you're not pregnant and children should not do detoxes. But, um, I'm pretty sure a foot detox. So I think warm water, apple cider vinegar, ginger. There's one other ingredient I wanna say, like lemon juice or something like that. And then you soak your feet for like 30 minutes, can actually detox heavy metals and things from your body through the pores of your feet because the pores of your feet are very big and pores. And so, um, those products can pull a lot of toxins and heavy metals out through your feet. But I know clove is also really good for detox, but there's specific ways that you are supposed to use it in for detox purposes. So maybe we could do a whole detox episode. That would be fun. Stay tuned. guys. We're adding that to the list of episodes two. Okay, let's move on to parabens. Um,'cause we are starting to run a little bit short on time with how much we've been talking. Alright. So parabens, um, some ways you can identify parabens in your products is often they have the full word parabens in the word. So methyl paraben, propyl paraben, beyl, paraben. Um, it literally says paraben in it. It's a preservative that they use in cosmetics and personal care products to prevent the growth of bacteria and mold, which makes a lot of sense. Um, Katie, do you, did you as a kid ever do like paraben wax on your hand? I was thinking about that and I was like, we had a whole like hot wax thing at home and my sisters and I would dip our hand in the hot wax and then pull it out, let it dry and dip our hand in and again, and let it dry until we had like probably 20 layers of paraben wax on our hands, and then we would wait for it all to dry and just crunch. It was great.

Katie 38:06

I

Chrissy 38:07

Did you do that with us?

Katie 38:08

no. Well, yes, it's not pair of bin wax, it's pair of fin with an F, F, F, so

Chrissy 38:18

You know, it probably still has parabens in it though.

Katie 38:20

It probably because I

Chrissy 38:25

Okay, fine. I,

Katie 38:26

Wait, I

Chrissy 38:26

can't go off on the wax.

Katie 38:31

soft solid, widely used for candles, lubrication and moisture ceiling. yes,

Chrissy 38:40

So

Katie 38:40

from

Chrissy 38:40

petroleum, Good, good. Essentially. So what I'm saying is valid that we used to soak our hands and feet the most porous parts of our bodies in this hair fin wax, and I'm sure we probably got a lot of toxins from that. That's okay. You know what, we're still alive anyways. The way that parabens work in our body is they work on the process. Um. Known as estrogenic activity. So, um, they're weaker than natural estrogen that is produced in the body, but they mimic, um, that estrogen and they bind to estrogen receptors, which essentially means that the body is interpreting that there's more estrogen than there actually is. And so it's gonna stop releasing as much estrogen. So this is one of those that, like one single use of a paraben is not going to affect all of your estrogen receptors and turn off your estrogen processing, uh, or creation for good. It's the burden, the cumulative burden of using so many parabens is what's going to trick your body into thinking that it has enough estrogen. And so then it decreases the release of estrogens in the body. Which is no bueno. So for female fertility specifically, um, it tricks the hypothalmic pituitary gana gland or the hypothalmic pituitary gonadal axis axis in the brain. Um, which as I said before, into thinking that there's already enough estrogen. So then it, prevents the body from creating more estrogen and this can actually, um, disrupt hormone spikes. So I don't know. I think I mentioned it before, the new fertility tracker that I got called a needle. It's not sponsored, but if a needle is listening and wants to sponsor us, by all means we would love it. Um, so it's one where you can actually track estrogen, progesterone, follicle stimulating hormone and g luteinizing hormone throughout your cycle. And it's really fascinating to see the spike of estrogen on one day. And then the next day you have the spike of LH and FSH, and then both of those go down and then slowly but surely progesterone starts to rise. And so if these parabens are interfering with that estrogen spike, then the whole rest of the hormone cascade is just gonna be off. Um, because it kind of all comes down too. That estrogen spike to start off with. Um, and then specifically with men. So men don't have as much estrogen to begin with, but estrogen is still important in a man's body. And so having this extra ex estrogenic activity or the body thinking that there's es extra estrogen can suppress testosterone production, um, and per and impair the creation of sperm. And so, um, that's similar when we talk about how men who are overweight, um,'cause estrogen is a fat soluble hormone. So men who are overweight tend to have higher levels of estrogen and therefore lower levels of testosterone and higher likelihoods of infertility. Um, and so we see that a lot specifically with men who carry a lot of their weight in their hips. Um, and their body kind of starts to look, take on more of a female figure, so to say. Um, that means that can, that's just a physical sign of they have really high estrogen in their body, and so they probably have really low testosterone and therefore low sperm counts and swim abilities motility. But swim abilities is more fun to say

Katie 43:00

Swim

Chrissy 43:00

when it comes to sperm.

Katie 43:02

Yeah, I as you were talking about like estrogen increasing in men, I wonder, so there's the pesticide called atrazine, which we'll talk more about pesticides and, and, we'll, this one will probably come up in our conversation, but the, the pesticide, um, atrazine has like documentation of changing the gender of frogs. And so I wonder what exposure to atrazine like men having more estrogen in their system, like what that combination does to a man. And, you know, it just makes you question like a lot of the gender dysphoria that we have happening, uh, in the world right now, kind of a combination of these things all really impact something like that. And it, again, it's kind of, it's that. body burden, like all of this compounds together. So if you have the pesticide exposure plus phthalates and fragrances and PFAS and microplastics and your nutrition is really poor, it just creates this inside your body of confusion of like, what, what signals am I supposed to be sending to my body to say this, and what am I supposed to tell my brain? And so you wonder why so many people have things like gender dysphoria or, uh, even like, again, Chrissy, you were talking about the very beginning. Like I'm sure a lot of this impacts our mood. Well, we have so many people who struggle with things like depression or even just like mental fog. Like how many of us deal with fog every day of just waking up and being like, I just kind of don't wanna do today. Like, I struggled with that yesterday, but I think it was more weather related for me. But you just consider all of these. Chemicals and toxins that we're exposed to. And then you look at the world today and you just wonder, and you, and you can just see it, like you just, you could start to see, oh yeah, this is real. Because I do know some people who are like, oh, this is kind of all conspiracy theory, it's whatever. But I'm like, this is literally science. So I don't know, like there are science, like there's documentation of these things. In fact, I, I, when we do our one, I'll link to the study that shows like the gender changing frogs when they're exposed to atrazine. So anyway, let's talk about our last one, fragrance, which is probably the most obvious to. and experience because you smell it, you literally will smell this chemical and you know that it's there. Whereas something like parabens and phthalates, you just, you kind of know based on they show up in things. Like again, when you think of phthalates, you think of like flexible plastic and it's used in, um, cosmetics and lotions to kind of make them more silky and smooth. But for something like fragrance, you smell them before you ever know that they're actually there. And so whenever you see the phrase fragrance or parfum on an ingredient label, it's not just a single ingredient that is being listed there. We've mentioned this before, so you've probably heard this conversation, but fragrance or parfum is like code word for saying that there's probably hundreds of. chemicals all creating that one scent that you are smelling. And so it's like this chemical warfare that is happening your body when you are exposed to these toxins. And so reason that we're able, or we not, gosh, we, but I guess we as like a country, the

Chrissy 46:56

A society.

Katie 46:58

A society. why we're able to um, companies can do this because there are of like these, the trade laws, um, just allow it to allow people to hide what actually makes up their product. And so it, it, it just, it feels really, it's frustrating because you think that there's a lot of. Like clarity or like you feel like these companies are being open about their ingredients.'cause you go and see the list and you're like, everything is really clean and healthy. But then there's that word fragrance or parfum even on something that's like an organic based product or on something that's labeled clean or eco-friendly or whatever. Like when you see that packaging, you think, oh, it's going to be fine. But then they have this one ingredient and even it might be listed as like the very last ingredient on the list, which means that it's the smallest use of that product. But still you, you have no idea what is under that umbrella of fragrance that makes it be that smell. And so you just, you have no idea what chemicals you're being exposed to.

Chrissy 48:21

Yeah, it's kind of like the natural flavors of the personal products world. Like we've talked about it before, like natural flavors is a way that companies can hide a lot of petroleum based or, um, natural gas based products in their foods. Um, because so long as it quote comes from the earth, then it's natural. Um. But personally, I don't want to be drinking natural gas or petroleum, even though that comes from the earth. Um, I don't even want to be eating or drinking anything in that's derived from that, you know? And so, um, fragrance is very similar to that. And like they can take a lot of things that would not, when you would look at it, you'd be like, oh, I don't want that on my skin. But they can hide it within the word fragrance. so keep that in mind.

Katie 49:24

So Found was I've always, I've always known, and not always, I have known in recent years now that fragrance is this code word for chemicals, but I didn't actually know what those chemicals were that made up the fragrance. And I learned that a major part of these fragrances are actually made up of phthalates. And so, again, going back to our thalates that we just talked about, are often made up of many different folates. So it's like a hidden form of them. One of them, um, called, and I'm, I'm gonna just butcher this, but we'll just say it. It's, it's known as DEP. It's. Dathyl Phthalate. Oh, Dathyl Folate. Okay. That wasn't as hard as it, it looked when I was about to say it. I was like, okay, here we go. Dathyl Athol. So it's heavily used as a solvent and a fixative in fragrance to make the scent bind to your skin and last longer in the air. So you think of things like. Uh, Febreze or any of the scents that you spray around the house to make it smell pretty. Or you think of candles when they burn the scents and your house all the sun and smells like cookies, and you're like, I didn't even bake cookies, but now it smells so delicious in here. Or you just think about when you rub lotion on you and the scent stays there for a long time. is the folate, dathyl phthalate. So that is just a chemical then that is like binding to your skin and just sitting there, which is wild to think about that it's ah, that we could just do this. So on the flip side, if you love having scents and smells and beautiful things in your home like this, there are ways that we can have different fragrances and, and beautiful smelling things in our home. They just won't last as long as something like a chemical fragrance because they don't have this Tite in them. So if you use things, um, why am I forgetting the name?

Chrissy 51:51

Because it's 9:00 AM

Katie 51:57

Oils, essential oils. There we go.

Chrissy 52:00

I didn't know what you were going for. I was like, I could start naming things off, but.

Katie 52:07

of like dropping the essential oils. You know, like, okay. Anyway, anyone listening can't see me doing my crazy hand gestures, so they don't know what I'm trying to say either. Uh, anyway, essential oils, you think about essential oils, they smell really nice and very strong right when you use them. But they tend to just have a diluted smell quicker. Like, or if you use them in homemade personal care products, the scent won't last as long. They'll smell really nice right when you use them because they are very potent and strong. But again, they won't have that chemical in them that will make the fragrance stay there. So, I mean, I even think about when you walk into someone's home when they've just cleaned their house with cleaners and you have that like pine saw scent and

Chrissy 52:55

like

Katie 52:55

really strong. And it's like, you just know like those, it's, there's that T pholate, the ethyl phthalate is in there and it's just clinging to everything. And I, now that I know that specifically to, I'm gonna be like, Malachi, don't crawl on the floor. Don't touch that. Don't put that in your mouth. You know, it's just, ugh. It, it's wild. I it's everywhere, okay. So with the fragrances, because these chemicals are not disclosed, they can just say, you know, fragrance, it's, you don't know what's being, all the chemicals are. So Dathyl, pholate is one of the many chemicals that is made up of, or Yeah. Makes up fragrance. Um, but there is, there are so many others and there's kind of this like cumulative impact. So we, you have the extra phthalates in the product probably as well, because they already added them to it. But then they have these secret tth, folates and other secret chemicals that we don't know what is in them. And you apply them directly to your skin or into the air that you're breathing and they absorb into your bloodstream. And then. with the tth and with the other chemicals that we've talked about, block your hormone receptors. They mimic certain hormones, and so they're just going to confuse your system to, to tell it, to do certain things or to not do certain things. And so you're, you're basically altering the way that your hormones are produced in your body, um, and the way that they are working and metabolizing throughout your body. And this all disrupts your endocrine system impacting your fertility. And I feel like fragrance is probably. for me, it was one of the easier, well easy slash not easy. It was easy in the sense that I was like, okay, anything that has a really smelly smell, I just kind of was like, I'm not gonna use these anymore. And that was really obvious to me when those were like what those things were, because I'm so used to smelling them around my house. But the reason it was so hard to get rid of was because there were so many of them. Like everything, like I said, like cleaners, candles, our soaps, our lotions, our deodorants, like everything we use that smells pretty, all has fragrance in it. And so all has these chemicals and, and, I think what's sad too is that I have learned that a lot of these quote unquote clean products also have fragrance, which is probably the most. Disappointing because you're like, oh, I'm going to spend money on this thing that's supposedly supposed to be better for me, but then yet it still has all these chemicals, and that's frustrating,

Chrissy 56:02

I, uh, listened to a podcast, I think sometime last year, and it was a woman who created a actual clean line of deodorant and she said that one thing that's really hard for her business is when you go through and smell, you know, everybody takes the lid, the cap off and smells the deodorant before they buy it, right? Um, she just can't compete with the deodorants that have fragrance in them because she's not using fragrance, and so her deodorant just doesn't smell as floy or as strong or as quote unquote nice as some of these other deodorants. So she said that actually hurts her business quite a bit because she's not willing to put fragrance in her products.

Katie 56:52

I don't know where, I read about this in a book, but it was how Fre to be so smelly, and it was, I think it was in a book, and

Chrissy 57:06

Well, wasn't it supposed to? It was originally didn't have any smell to it. It was just an odor eliminator. Yeah.

Katie 57:15

they learned, so they, and I'm sure the original formula without all the scents was probably not something you'd wanna be spraying in your house anyway, because what it did was capture all of these smells and it could Yeah, eliminate them somehow. I don't even remember how, but they would, they did all these testing things with people where they would. Spray it in a house where a lady had like 20 cats and it just obviously smelled like she had 20 cats in her home, but it like eliminated the smell of the 20 cats. And so they found out that this product really did work, but then they were having a really hard time selling it to anyone because again, it had no smell. It had no scent, it just eliminated bad odors, which was good. It did what it was originally intended to do. then, I don't know, I think they tested it with, with some smells or something like that. And then eventually they learned that. Uh, like ho like stay at home moms especially, or just moms in general, loved being able to spray it like around the house. And it kind of gave that house a finishing touch after you've cleaned everything and it's like, okay, now I'm gonna do my Febreze and spray it all over the room. And once they added the scents to it, and you, like, if you remember those commercials ago where they would spray and they would go, they'd take that deep breath, ah, and like they have like this happy smell and you could just, you could see them smelling things in then all of a sudden when they added all those scents, then they were able to sell them. And now it's such like a popular product and household product nowadays. I used to use them, I love them. And they didn't originally have all of those fragrances, which is really interesting. But I wonder what the original formula was like and if it was better for you anyway, so.

Chrissy 59:04

It is a long lost formula that has been buried, I'm sure. Yep. All right. Well we are nearing the end of our episode, so I hope you guys learned something new today. Um, and I would challenge you just as an action step from this episode, is to go through your bathroom and identify all of the products with parabens, phthalates, and fragrances in them. And I'm not saying throw them all away immediately. I'm saying develop a plan on how to swap them out when you run out. Because as Katie and I have said before, we are all about making clean swaps that are financially feasible. We don't want to go broke trying to get healthy because so many gym bros saying you gotta go broke to get healthy. And that ain't the truth. So we are challenged for today. And we will post this in our Monday challenge that is posted every Monday on our Facebook group. Crunchy Christian Mamas on a budget. Um, so if you wanna join us over there, go ahead, follow us, join our group. We would love to hear how you're doing at swapping out your products and things like that. But our challenge for this week is go through your bathroom and identify the products with parabens, phthalates, and fragrances in them, and develop a plan on how to swap them when they run out. Um, swapping them with cleaner ingredients, um, cleaner products overall, um, we've mentioned before you can use EW G'S website to, um, find clean ingredients. You can use Bobby approved to find clean products. And what's the last one that I really wanna download that I keep forgetting the name of? Switch Natural.

Katie 1:01:00

So it's, it's like a one it's like, be something like$20, which sounds like a lot, but it's one time. It's not like an annual subscription. And what's nice about it is you don't have to scan barcodes, you actually scan just the ingredients itself. And so it uses AI technology to read. The ingredient labels and tell you what's wrong with any of the ingredients in there, if there is something wrong. So that's the one challenge I have with EWG and Bobby is that you often have to be able to actually scan the barcode and then if it doesn't have that product in the system yet, it's like, oh, sorry, we don't know anything about this. And you're like, wait, what? So that's one thing that's nice. And you can do, you can like take pictures of something online or like Chrissy does often, she sends me pictures of her products and she's like, will you scan this for me? And so I can, I just need a photo basically of the ingredients in order to me

Chrissy 1:01:53

Yes.

Katie 1:01:54

products or the ingredients are in that product. So it's kinda.

Chrissy 1:01:57

Yep. So those are some three resources that you can use to fight, figure out if your products are good for you or not so good for you. And so we challenge you to see if you can go through that and figure that one out. Until next time, thanks for listening to Crunchy Stewardship, and remember that whatever you do, whether you eat or drink, do it all for the glory of God. See you next time.