Ep. 9 - Microplastics & Midlife Health: The Hidden Cause of Inflammation After 50

If you’re eating well, taking your supplements, and doing all the “right” things—but still feeling inflamed, puffy, or off… this episode might uncover a missing piece.

Today, we’re talking about something most women overlook: microplastics.

These tiny, invisible fragments are now found everywhere—in our water, our food, even in our tissues and brain. And while we can’t eliminate them entirely, we can significantly reduce our exposure.

In this episode, I walk you through 5 simple, everyday changes that can lower your body’s toxic load—without overwhelm or perfection.

Because this isn’t about fear… it’s about regaining control in small, powerful ways.

What you’ll learn:

•  What microplastics actually are (and why they matter now more than ever) 
•  How everyday habits may be increasing your exposure 
•  The surprising role of heat in plastic toxicity 
•  5 easy swaps you can start this week 
•  How reducing your “body burden” supports inflammation, energy, and long-term health 

This is one of those quiet shifts that can make a real difference—especially in midlife.

Resources & Links

•  Free Masterclass: 5 Steps to Break Through Your Midlife Confidence Crisis

Transcript

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If you are doing everything right, eating well, taking your supplements, eating your greens, if you are still feeling inflamed and puffy, then this could be a missing piece, a critical missing piece of the puzzle. Because it's not just what you're eating, but it's what your food is touching. Now, microplastics are now being found everywhere in our blood, in our tissues, and most worryingly in our brain, in brain tissue. These microplastics are everywhere, and it's hard to eliminate them entirely from our immediate environment, but we can minimize them significantly. So I am going to go through five everyday habits that you can make a little change right away to minimize your exposure to microplastics. So these little changes actually matter. I've been doing these for many, many years. I've been talking about it for many years, so I'm excited to go over them with you today. This is episode 10 of Tea with Sophie. Alright, so what are microplastics? Now I've been banging on about this since I wrote my first book, Audysy Green, in 2008. This is where I started to really talk about pollutants in our environment, in our water, in our soil, in the air, and how it directly affects our health. And I talked about the body burden that we were born with, which are these forever chemicals, and how to minimize our exposure. And I touched on microplastics, but it's really interesting because since then these microplastics have now flooded our environment really over the last 15 years in such an exponential way that it is something that we all need to pay attention to. We need to pay attention to now, and because these chips are so easy that you can make in your everyday life. Okay, so they're little tiny fragments of plastic, they're so tiny that obviously you can't see them. And they're in the air that we breathe, they're in our water, they're in our food, they're pretty much everywhere now. And once the genie is out of the bottle, which it is, um that you know we can't avoid it um entirely. But what I'm really showing you today is how to reduce the load on your body, and not just you, but it's also your your family, your loved ones, your kids. So let's let's get straight into it. So the big ones are number one would be water bottles. So single-use water bottles are the worst. And these are the ones that you just pick up everywhere, you buy and store plastic, it's a sort of soft plastic, and they do leach these little tiny fragments of plastic into the water that you drink. So we don't want to be doing that anymore. And it's not just the plastic bottle, it's also the plastic cap on the bottle, and particularly when they've been around for a while, so they might have been in storage, they might have been trapped to the store and and the truck was warm, it's when that water obviously is warm, might be sitting out in sunlight in light, and it just starts to degrade the plastic and to leach. So it's such an easy switch just to use either a glass. I always pretty much always use a trusty glass water bottle or a sameless steel water bottle. Easy switch will save you money, and you can fill it at home with filtered water, either with a countertop filter, or if you have a home whole home um filter uh filtration system, but do use filtered water once we're drinking lots of filtered water every single day without the microplastics in it. Alright, number two is takeout containers. So takeout containers, any kind of takeout container, even the cardboard ones, because they may be lined with plastic, they contain obviously these plastics that break down. And the difficulty is with the takeout containers is that your food is often warm when it arrives in the takeout containers, so there's already been some leaching, and then if you reheat it in the plastic container, not great. So at the very least, if you do get a food delivered to your home and it is in a plastic container and you want to warm it up, make sure that you take it out of the plastic container that it came in, or the cardboard one with the, as it's has, as I said, this plastic coating. Um to prevent it leaking, take it out, put it in a glass or ceramic bowl if you're gonna reheat it, if you want to microwave it, really, really important. Um, okay, coffee cups. So you might think, well, it is a cardboard, coffee cup from the store, but it's important to understand that they also are aligned with a very thin layer of plastic to prevent um the the hot liquid leaking out, basically. And when it's coffee or tea, it's really hot. And so it's the heat that accelerates this leaching, these teeny little invisible fragments of plastic. And so the answer is just take your own coffee cup, your reusable coffee cup, to the store, and many coffee shops incentivising you a little bit of a discount, even if they don't just take it with you. It's just going to be healthier for you and your family, get your family to do the same. And and uh I mean honestly, save money and brew your own coffee and tea at home. You save so much money by doing that. Alright, another one is tea bags. So, even some really great brands, some of my favourite brands of tea, unfortunately, they'll they'll have a loose tea um choice, and then they'll have a bag choice, but some of them come in little nylon bags, and it's the little nylon bags that bleaches plastic into your hot tea. So lovely, healthy-ish hot tea may not be so healthy if it's got lots of little plastic fragments sitting in there. So, my I mean there are lots of uh unbleached tea bags that aren't plastic that you can get, but my top choice is to use these loose leaf tea because generally it's gonna be much better quality, and then you can purchase little unbleached tea bags and make your own tea bags. And again, you save money by doing this because even buying very high quality loose leaf tea, you're gonna save more money than you would buy um getting your hot tea at a coffee shop. Alright, next up is cutting boards and kitchen utensils. So the cutting boards, particularly the plastic ones, not a great idea because you're cutting into it, you're chipping into it. So you're you're disturbing the surface, the coated surface, and and little teeny fragments are getting into your food. And if you're eating really healthy food, you don't want plastic in it. And then think about your spatulas, particularly or any of your utensils that are being uh that are being exposed to high heat. So that would be spatulas, primarily I use or uh spoons, but I use spatulas a lot, so they're always going to be wooden or silicone. That is going to be a much, much safer choice. Um, you know, you never you basically never want to heat plastic. That's that's just a rule of thumb. Just think yourself I'm never going to heat plastic and keep that top of mind as you go about your life. Um, next is air and dust. So there's a lot of microplastics in our home, in our air, and in our dust, and in household dust, all those little dust bunnies that we inhale. And it's actually not just microplastics, there's all the different pollutants that are in the home, the VOCs, um, there's there's um little tiny particles that come off our electronics, our TVs, etc. And so all of these pollutants gather in dust in household dust, these little dust bunnies. And if you have pets who are very close to the floor, I've got little dogs, and they're inhaling all of that, or children or grandchildren who are crawling on the floor, it's become even more important to give it to dust but really vacuum with a really good hepa filter. Invest in a very good vacuum with a really good medical-grade hepa filter and vacuum, I would say honestly twice a week. And I'm a bit obsessed with vacuum, and I have to say, I kind of love vacuum, um, as bizarre as that sounds, but you want to vacuum not just the floors, but you know, use those attachments that come with the vacuum to do blinds and fans and get in corners and particularly around your TV console, but really get obsessed with with getting up all that as much of that as you possibly can. Um, so all of this is not about perfection, it's not about fear, it is about lowering the daily burden on your body. And it is one of those missing pieces for so many women who feel like that they're doing everything else. Because the heavy lifting piece for bringing down inflammation, and as a board-centered nutritionist, it is going to be diet. It is going to be what you eat and what you drink for sure. That is the heavy, heavy lifting piece. The next piece that I would say for heavy lifting piece of bringing down inflammation is going to be regulating your nervous system and bringing down that stress response, and then we go to exercise and then we go to sleep. So all of these lifestyle pieces are so incredibly important. And I talk a lot about these on all of my episodes on YouTube and on my podcast. But this is something that I want to touch on because it's something that we can't all do every day. It's one of those little things that we go, okay, this is an area, an easy, quick fix area that I can take control of right away and inspire others in your home to do the same. So just start small, pick one to two swaps that you are going to commit to. Um this week, it might be I'm just going to, that's it, I'm done with plastic water bottles now, we are done as a family, it's such an easy swap. Or it might be, you know, I'm just going to I go to the coffee shop, it's something I enjoy doing. And so from now on, I'm going to take my copper and I'm going to invest in a really lovely stainless steel cup, and that's going to be my thing. So maybe just start with a couple and work your way up from there. And, you know, if you want the bigger picture of how I talk on a much deeper, deeper levels, mind, body, soul level about inflammation and how it affects us and for honour on a on a fundamental level, then you might want to check out my my five step masterclass. And I'll even go to SophieLuliano.com forward slash podcast, um, or I'll link to it in the description. But that's it for this episode. Keep microplastics out of your life as much as you possibly can, and I'll see you next week.