Transcript
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Welcome to xtend with me, Dr. Darshan Shah.
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A podcast dedicated to cutting edge science research tools and protocols designed to help.
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You extend your health span. Having become one of the youngest doctors in the country at the age of 21 and trained and board certified at.
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The Mayo Clinic, I've accumulated three decades.
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Of practice as a board certified surgeon and longevity expert.
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Over that time, I've discovered that a.
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Mere 20% of health knowledge yields 80% of the results. When it comes to your health span, we are living in a new era where we are creating a new healthcare.
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System no longer focused on disease management.
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But achieving optimal health and vitality. Join me as I interview world renowned experts offering you a step by step.
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Guide to proactively avoid disease and most.
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Importantly, extend your health span. Thank you for joining me for another episode of the XTEND Podcast. Today I want to bring you another solo sode about how to detoxify the environment that you live and work in. This might seem like an overwhelming topic to many, so I thought it deserved a special episode itself just so we can break down the highest value areas where you can make a big difference in your day to day life. So as I talked about in the last episode with Allison Evans, who is the founder of Branch Basics, I really believe, and many functional physicians believe this, that toxic exposure is definitely the fourth leg of the stool or even the fifth leg of the basics that you need to get right now. We have diet, exercise, sleep, emotional health, and now we have this invisible toxic burden that we're exposed to every single day in our environment that has become a major detriment to our health and we really need to know what to do about it. Now the biggest problem here is that it's invisible, right? We go about our day to day lives, we don't really know we're getting exposed and we don't really feel anything immediately unless there's like a chemical smell in the air or you definitely have recent exposure to maybe a fire like I did here in California, where you could definitely tell that we're being exposed to toxins in the air, in the water and in the environment. Most people however, probably assume that they're not being exposed to toxins because they don't really feel any different on a day to day basis. Now the problem here is that the chemicals that are in our air and in our environment, they are endocrine disrupting and they're also immune system disrupting and both of these can be turned into major problems over repeated exposure. So what can we do about this. And do you even really need to do something about this? Well, as you heard from Allison's story in the last episode, that she was having significant health issues from her toxic exposure. She was having neurological symptoms, he was losing her motor skills, she even had arthritis developing, and she was seeking out medical care. And no one really thought to ask her about what is her level of toxic exposure? And what. Why would certain people in the same environment, maybe family members, not get all of these symptoms, but other people do. And there's a lot of theories around that. But basically, to summarize all of them, everyone has a different level of resilience to the toxic exposure, and they have different levels of exposure. And there are many factors due to this. And, you know, as we age in life, our resilience definitely becomes lower and lower. And there might be toxic exposure that you're exposed to that other members of the family aren't. Perhaps your work environment is different, perhaps you're eating ultra processed food and the other members of your family aren't. So you have this balance that occurs between exposure and also your resilience. And then also how much time do you spend detoxing as well? And detoxing might be just removing yourself from the toxic environment and going to a different one or spending time in the sauna, for example. Now all of these are in balance. And when the balance is thrown off, you start getting symptoms over time. And I can really tell you that, you know, we're seeing a lot of clinical situations now where younger and younger people are having hormonal issues. We see young men as early as their 20s having low testosterone levels. Menopausal type of symptoms are even happening in women at a much earlier age. And so many scientists and physicians do believe that the level of toxic exposure is leading to all of these symptoms. In the last episode, Allison described an analogy of a bucket. You have a certain amount of bucket that you can tolerate of toxins in your biology, and once you spill over is when you start getting symptoms. And the size of your bucket can also be different depending on your genetics. There's a gene that I talk about often in this podcast as the MTHFR gene that can, if present, significantly reduce the size of that bucket. The symptoms of toxic exposure. Allison gave us a really great acronym, ocean, for obesogens, carcinogens, endocrine disruptors, asthmagens, and neurotoxins. And so if you go through each one of those obesogens, meaning you have trouble losing weight, you get inflamed carcinogens, you Get a higher chance of different types of tumors due to these toxins. Endocrine disruptors. We talked about asthmagens having respiratory type of symptoms like asthma or allergies all the time. Runny nose. And finally, neurotoxins. This is toxins that affect your neurons in your brain and your peripheral nervous system so that you get, at the worst, brain fog. You might even have trouble moving like Allison did. So these are all symptoms that you can look out for. But the real key here is just not to wait till you have symptoms. Right? You want to start removing the toxins from your environment right now. So let's talk about 10 practical steps that you can use to detoxify your lifestyle. Number one, pesticides. Pesticides are incredibly prevalent in our day to day life. Why? Because we buy them and we put them on our plants outside the house. We put them in our garden. Maybe a gardener that you utilize or your community utilizes uses these pesticides. And they can also be in shampoos and some of the bug sprays that we have in our home. Now, removing these pesticides can be the most important step that you take. We know for a fact that glyphosate and other pesticides do lead to neurological diseases like Parkinson's and also Alzheimer's disease. And so step by step, eliminating these pesticides can be the first and most important step that you take. And if you look online, you can find non toxic bug repellents. If you are in an area like I live in, we have a lot of ants. And when I looked into this, we were definitely buying toxic chemicals to kill these ants. Instead, now we buy peppermint combined with tea tree oil. And this is just as good, if not better. There's an entire industry of non toxic pesticide products that are out there now that you can look into easily using AI or just google it. And you can find really good replacements that are also pretty inexpensive now, or at least as expensive as the regular pesticides that you're buying. Second on the list is household cleaners. And this is where Allison Evans basically built her old business, Branch Basics, which is the products that I use in my home. But conventional disinfectants, these should all be removed from your home. There's a lot of problems with them. Allison argues that removing germs with soap based surfactants is much more effective than killing them with chemicals that then goes on to create resistant superbugs. And this is a huge problem that we have in the hospitals, for example. So using a soap based surfactant is so Much nicer on the environment of your home. And also it is actually cheaper. Believe it or not, for some reason, the marketing world of these chemical cleaners has convinced us that we need a different cleaner for our windows and our toilets and our furniture. And the reality is, and Allison does this with her product is you just see the same cleaner in different concentrations. And once you know that fact, you can actually cut down the cost that you have to clean your home and your office environment. And everything I'm saying about the home obviously applies to your office. So it's really important to talk to your HR representative about detoxifying the office environment where you also probably spend a lot of time. Next on the list is synthetic fragrances. These are all around us. They contain dangerous chemicals called phthalates that embed themselves in the surfaces of your home. And these can include scented candles, air fresheners in your car, those little green trees that you hang, even drier sheets. These should all be eliminated. You don't need them. And they have dangerous endocrine disrupting chemicals called phthalates that don't need to be in your day to day environment.