Art | Resources
Chemical Free Living
The E-commerce store of the National Toxic Encephalopathy Foundation, a registered 501c3 non-profit organization. 100% of all net profits go to helping the chemical injured and neuro-toxic populations. All products on this site are chosen to be safe for these highly-sensitive people. Product categories include air filters and fresheners. Building materials, bath, beds and bedding, clothing, pet products, food storage, dinnerware and flatware, testing kits, water filters, and more.
 |
Listen to my interview with Angel De Fazio, President, Executive Director, and co-founder of the National Toxic Encephalopathy Foundation (NTEF) |
How Toxic Chemicals Affect Your Brain and What You Can Do to Reduce Exposure
Today my guest is Angel De Fazio, BSAT, President, Executive Director, and co-founder of the National Toxic Encephalopathy Foundation (NTEF). We’ll be talking about toxics that affect your brain, toxics activism, and what it’s like to have your brain affected by toxic chemicals. Angel, the NTEF, and other activists completed an onerous and highly contentious, two-year awareness campaign in 2013 supporting the right for Nevada’s energy ratepayers to opt out of the smart meter deployment. The campaign started in 2011. May is Toxic Encephalopathy and Chemical Injury Awareness Month. For over a decade, the NTEF has conducted outreach throughout the month including numerous proclamations from Nevada Governors, Las Vegas City Council, Clark County Commissioners, and the City of Henderson. In 2010, Las Vegas City Council participated by going fragrance and chemical free in support of creating awareness. Last year, in 2014, the NTEF was solely responsible for one of the Nevada State Offices going fragrance free. The NTEF is a non-profit organization whose core purposes are to provide education and services to the growing segment of the population who are adversely affected by everyday chemicals and toxins in our environment. NTEF-USA.Org | ChemicalFreeLiving.Com
The Toxins that Threaten our Brains
TOXIC FREE TALK RADIO
How Toxic Chemicals Affect Your Brain and What You Can Do to Reduce Exposure
Host: Debra Lynn Dadd
Guest: Angel De Fazio, BSAT
Date of Broadcast: April 30, 2015
DEBRA: Hi, I’m Debra Lynn Dadd, and this is Toxic Free Talk Radio where we talk about how to thrive in a toxic world and live toxic free.
It is April 30th, I believe, April 30th, Thursday, April 30, 2015. And it’s a beautiful day here in Clearwater, Forida. We’ve had some rain this week, but today is a beautiful day.
And we’re going to be talking today about How Toxic Chemicals Affect Your Brain and What You Can Do to Reduce Exposure. There is an excellent website, and if you go to ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com, you can see the description of today’s show and there’s a link there and it’s the National Toxic Encephalopathy Foundation. It’s a big word, ‘encephalopathy’. I had to look up that word, ‘encephalopathy’. It means brain. It has to do with things having to do with your brain.
This is a very well-organized, very well-written site. And if you want to know anything about what are the things that can actually damage your brain or have you not think so clearly or affect your nervous system, it’s all on this website.
And, in fact, I want to just mention right at the beginning of the show, there is an incredible article. There’s a link right on the homepage to this. It’s called The Toxins That Threatens Our Brains. And it’s so clearly written and it’s well-illustrated. You can just read this. It’s so easy to read. And it really shows you exactly what are the chemicals that are causing problems for our brains and our ability to think.
And in fact, our brains run our whole body. And our minds, and there are toxic chemicals that are affecting that. You can just read this article. It tells you exactly what the chemicals are, and so you can take steps to see where you’re being exposed to those chemicals and what you can do to reduce them. And this site also gives a lot of information on that as well.
So my guest today is Angel De Fazio. She’s the president, executive director and co-founder of the National Toxic Encephalopathy Foundation. She’s going to tell us a lot about the chemicals, what her personal experience what and about activisms, what they do. This group does a lot of activism to reduce public health exposure to these toxic chemicals that cause brain problems.
And so we’re going to be hearing about the kinds of things that they do and hopefully, inspire some of you to take more civic action as well.
Hi, Angel.
ANGEL DE FAZIO: Hi, Debra. Thank you for having me on the show today.
DEBRA: You’re welcome. Thank you so much for being here. And I should also mention, also at the beginning that tomorrow, May 1st, is the beginning of Multiple Chemical Sensitivity Awareness Month, and this is something that I know your organization does activities for. But also, we’re going to be talking. I’m going to have some guests around MCS during the month of May as well so that we can really be getting much more awareness about that specific way the toxic chemicals affect us.
So what is your background in education?
ANGEL DE FAZIO: Well, as a kid, I was always playing doctor and my family doctor was pushing me, which I didn’t find out until he retired when I went for my last visit with him. I had told him I was going to become a pharmacist, and he said to me, “You’ll wind up in med school.” He actually offered to get me into his alma mater in Italy. And he had admitted that I was the only patient he would allow to call in because he trusted my diagnosis. He was very, very natural in his treatment.
So in the early 90s, I went to UNLV in preparation to get my Bachelor of Science in Chemistry and planned on pharmacology school. I took one class and was hooked. I always had an interest in physical therapy.
Then in August of ’96, I enrolled at Southwest College of Naturopathic Medicine in Arizona to become a naturopath specializing in their version of orthopedic and rehab.
DEBRA: You’ve had injuries. So tell us about what happened with that. How did you get injured?
ANGEL DE FAZIO: Well, I got injured in a cadaver lab three weeks into school. They were renovating the actual building, so they put us in a temporary building with a makeshift cadaver lab that used a plastic sheet. The formaldehyde was being vented into the courtyard and came into our lecture hall. And then when we got into the new building, the door to the wet lab, the cadaver lab was always open and our lecture rooms had the open door.
So all the formaldehyde permeated us during our class time and unfortunately, they used the cheapest building materials with the VOCs that gave me an ozone generator and in three weeks, my life was destroyed forever.
DEBRA: I understand. So did you notice anything that led you to becoming sensitive or did it happen all at once?
ANGEL DE FAZIO: Well, I guess in retrospect, when I was at UNLV, one of my teachers came down with chemical sensitivity. We were in a new math building. Now, she has left for Colorado and I thought this was a very strange health issue.
So one year after I got sick, another student from that building who is a close friend, got sick. And when I guess, of course, the formaldehyde from the bio lab could have been the low level that started this, that it was under the radar.
DEBRA: Okay! So could you explain to us, in a simple way, what toxic encephalopathy is?
ANGEL DE FAZIO: Well, basically, it’s any toxin that impacts the brain, also known as neurotoxicity. And it seems that the blood brain barrier becomes compromised and what was normally filtered out now seeps it in.
Now, on the website, I’ve got the best definition for neurotoxicity from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders, and it basically says neurotoxicity occurs when the exposure to natural or manmade substances, neurotoxicants, alters the normal activity of the nervous system.
So it can eventually disrupt or kill neurons, the key cells that transmit all signals in the brain, and it can result from substances like chemotherapy, drug, organ transplant, as well as heavy metals like lead, mercury, cleaning solvents, pesticides and cosmetics. The symptoms tend to appear immediately after exposure or they could be delayed. It’s more of when weakness, numbness, loss of memory.
DEBRA: We need to go to break now. But when we come back, we’ll continue, and I’ll ask you some more questions.
You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is Angel De Fazio. She’s the president, executive director and co-founder of the National Toxic Encephalopathy Foundation. We’ll find out more about that foundation and more about how chemicals affect your brain when we come back.
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is Angel De Fazio. She’s the president, executive director and co-founder of the National Toxic Encephalopathy Foundation, and they are at NTEF-USA.org. And you can also go to ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com at any show that you’re listening to and I’ll always have the URL of the guest’s organization or the personal URL or whatever. It’s always there. You can always go to ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com and find out how to reach the guest. You can listen to the show again, you can read the transcript of the show. Lots of information at ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com. And you can always find out who the guest for the week as well.
So Angel, what made you start the organization? When did you start it and why?
ANGEL DE FAZIO: Well, we started in ’98 when I started discovering the impact of the effects to my brain and nervous system. And then, I saw that it was a direct result from [inaudible 00:15:11].
So in the beginning, I spent a lot of time learning and trying to abate symptoms while trying to get accommodations and creating awareness. In 2012, we went and became a 501c3 and the people I brought in with me either are injured or they deal with people who are injured. But I would like to [inaudible 00:15:49] because a lot of people [inaudible 00:15:58] with it, but they don’t see the connection.
DEBRA: Yes, talk about that.
ANGEL DE FAZIO: What I noticed is everybody is having cognitive issues. You feel like you’re drunk or stoned. You’re in a cognitive fog with exposures. You tend to have short-term memory problems in finding the right words, your thought processes are scrambled.
When I explain it to people, I use an umbrella as an example. If you open the umbrella, the top is toxic encephalopathy and what’s soaked underneath are things like autism, ADD, Parkinson’s, fibro, [inaudible 00:17:02] syndrome. They all have an impact on the brain, but they all have different labels. They are subcategories of it. And the problem is, you are always one breath away from becoming injured.
DEBRA: Yes, I totally understand that. What’s the main thing that you would want listeners to know about toxic encephalopathy?
ANGEL DE FAZIO: Well, what tends to bother me the most is that people can’t understand the impact of indoor air quality on their health. They don’t realize that they spend most of their time indoors.
For example, if you need an air freshener in your home or office, don’t mask it. Find the cause of it. Everything you put on your body or you inhale, it goes into your system. There is no escaping it. So the cleaner and greener you can keep yourself, the better off in the long run you are.
DEBRA: I think that applies to everybody. We’re talking today about chemicals that affect your brain and specifically, the nervous system. But I realized many, many years ago that it doesn’t matter. As you’ve said before, these specific illnesses all come back to the main problem of it being the nervous system. I realize many years ago that the root cause of every illness is our toxic chemical exposures.
And even if we don’t know what a diagnosis is, if everybody would just start to live in a more healthy way, and more natural way with fewer toxic chemicals, regardless of what your illness is, it’s going to get better.
ANGEL DE FAZIO: Very true.
DEBRA: Yes, yes. Up to this point in time, what have you and the organization accomplished?
ANGEL DE FAZIO: Well, last year, I forced a state agency to go fragrance-free. I filed the complaint with the Nevada Attorney General’s office and the attorney for the Public Utilities Connection thought she knew more than me about the ADA. And now they’re fragrance-free.
I’ve been working on trying to have stable people to appear telephonically at state meetings. I feel it’s time to stop overt and concerted discrimination of those with certain invisible disability. We have a right to reasonable accommodations. My approach now is either they comply or be prepared for a battle that they most likely won’t win.
Last year, we came up with a lab for people to go and order their own blood test at a discount – things like CBC and molds, allergen, environmental chems, adrenals, stress. My view was if the CBC has determined that pesticides, fragrance, air fresheners are problematic and they’re banned from all of their offices, then it should be enacted especially here in Nevada when everything they cite is the CBC for medical and health issues.
The question is what do they know because they aren’t making public. We created a safer lunch kit program for low income K-6 elementary students.
DEBRA: I need to interrupt you, I’m sorry. I need to interrupt you because we need to go to break. But we’ll be right back and we can continue talking about this. You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd, and my guest today is Angel De Fazio. She’s with the National Toxic Encephalopathy Foundation. And we’ll be right back.
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is Angel De Fazio. She’s the president, executive director and co-founder of the National Toxic Encephalopathy Foundation, which is at NTEF-USA.org.
I just want to say, again, Angel, just what a fabulous job that you’ve done with this website. It’s very professional and it’s very well-designed and easy to use and well-written. And there’s just so much information on it. I just wish that there was a website like yours for every body system. All of this toxic information all needs to be presented as well as you presented it.
ANGEL DE FAZIO: Well, thank you. That’s very much appreciated. We did spend a lot of time on what we wanted to cover and we wanted to make sure we get every area.
DEBRA: And you’ve done a fabulous job, just a very good example.
So since you’re in Las Vegas, what are you finding is the attitude towards people with chemical sensitivity issues?
ANGEL DE FAZIO: Well, surprisingly, there seems to be more and more of someone who knows someone with the problem.
Now, I was at a state legislative hearing a couple of weeks ago and I was dying in the room. A guy took a bath in cologne. So I complained and the lady they sent over actually had a fragrance issue. So they had learned to deal with that issue. And now, they are accommodating by allowing me to testify by phone.
And we received communications from a lot of people who are in what we call the ‘beginning’ stages. They claimed they aren’t sick, but only a few fragrances bother them. It gives them a headache or they notice they only feel sick at work or their asthma kicks in.
But the problem is they’re really in denial. They thought what they’re showing is – I equate it to someone knocking at the door, a very light rap, and you don’t hear it. Then they knock harder and harder. They just do not want to accept the fact that they’re going to wind up like everybody else who is environmentally ill.
DEBRA: I understand that, I see that and I know over all the decades that I’ve been doing this work, a lot of times people will say, “But I’m not sick right now. I’m not one of those people.”
What I’ve learned is that the people with MCS or toxic encephalopathy, it’s not “We’re not those people.” It affects everybody. It affects everybody, every single person, every man, woman and child on the planet, every animal, every tree. Every living on the planet is being affected by toxics. It’s just a matter of degree and it’s a matter of recognizing it and it’s a matter of knowing that if you’re not being disabled by it now, or being made ill by it now, it’s coming. It’s coming.
What happens is these chemicals that you’re being exposed to build up in your body and they reach a certain tipping point and then you get sick. Or you can be exposed to a whole bunch at once or some over a period of time. I know that I first started having problems with my immune system when I was only 24 years old. That’s not very much of a lifetime to already have toxic chemicals built up so badly that your immune system gets affected by it – and then my endocrine. Even though I live a very toxic free life, there’s a lot of chemical exposure out in the world. There just is.
One of the things that I really admire about what you’re doing is that you’re going beyond saying, “Let’s clean my house.” You’re saying, “We need to go out in the world and make more people aware and make safe environments for everyone.”
So how do you do that? What if somebody wanted to be able to have a public space or the place where they work not have perfume, for example? What would you tell them to do?
ANGEL DE FAZIO: Well, they have no protection because employers are only obligated to deal with the ADA. But if they had a diagnosis and they fit the criteria of being disabled, then they can go and approach HR, et cetera. But without a diagnosis or being declared disabled, all you could do is hope, speak to your fellow employees and see if they will accommodate you. But they’re not required to.
DEBRA: It’s so interesting to me that you say you have to show that you’re disabled in order to be able to do anything about it. Why do people have to become disabled? I’m just asking this as a rhetorical question. You don’t need to answer it unless you want to. But why do people need to become disabled before any action can be taken about these things?
You and I have seen piles and piles and piles of studies which show that these chemicals are toxic. Why can’t we just say, “Look, these chemicals are toxic. We don’t want them in the environment. It will help everybody. So let’s just remove them.”
ANGEL DE FAZIO: Because we cannot compete with [inaudible 00:33:19] and the advertising. All you see on TV is, “You must, in order to attract the opposite sex, wear this or that,” whatever. Your home has to smell like a foyer of all these products.
And so people buy into that. They do not want to have to stand out from the crowd. “Oh, I [inaudible 00:33:56] shower. Am I going to smell good when I deal with people at work?”
It’s just propaganda that they have bought into.
DEBRA: Yes, I would totally agree with. Well, we need to go to break again. When we come back, we’ll talk more about this.
You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd, and my guest today is Angel De Fazio. She’s the president, executive director and co-founder of the National Toxic Encephalopathy Foundation. And their website address is NTEF-USA.org. And in particular, go there and take a look at this fabulous, fabulous article that they’d done about, and let me give you the exact name. It is the Toxins That Threaten Our Brains. And if you just go to the homepage in their website, it’s about halfway down the second column. It’s near the top of the second column. There are so many articles.
So we’ll be right back.
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd, and today my guest is Angel De Fazio. She’s the president, executive director and co-founder of the National Toxic Encephalopathy Foundation.
Angel, what is the organization doing for MCS Awareness Month?
ANGEL DE FAZIO: Well, first of all, we don’t recognize MCS. It’s a catchall phrase. So what we do is we address it as Toxic Encephalopathy/Chemical Injury Awareness Month. And for over a decade, we received proclamations from the governor, mayors of various cities here in Nevada. We actually made the New York Times a couple of years ago when we asked the city to go fragrant-free.
This year, we’re going to concentrate on healthier pregnancies.
DEBRA: That’s good.
ANGEL DE FAZIO: With all of the research coming out about pregnancies, endocrine-disrupting chemicals, air pollutions, we figured pregnant women need to be educated. But we’re also reaching out to veterans because [inaudible 00:40:29] syndrome most of the time is chemical injury. And the problem is, the environmentally-ill appear to have psychological problems when in reality, it’s the chemicals that are to blame that are mimicking it. And once people identify the chemicals and eliminate them, all the so-called psyche issues tend to disappear.
We’re also going to be reinforcing that people need to avoid RoundUp along with using [inaudible 00:41:15] pesticide, pushing for organics in the diet and [inaudible 00:41:25] impacts health especially with air fresheners and pesticides because a lot of people who are injure at work tend to have what’s called pre-absenteeism, which means that they’re at work but they’re less productive.
We’re also pushing for people to eliminate the use of essential oils.
DEBRA: Good. So you have an online store. The organization has an online store called Chemically Free Living, where you sell some products that are not toxic. What kind of products do you sell?
ANGEL DE FAZIO: Well, we walk the walk, and talk the talk about alternatives. So with everything about the EPA, we went for stainless steel kitchen storage containers for our lunch kit program, organic linens, mattresses, mattress toppers water and air filters. I even have incandescent bulbs. My favorite is the reusable ice cubes. I just love them.
DEBRA: What’s a reusable ice cube?
ANGEL DE FAZIO: It’s a stainless steel, one-inch square, filled with distilled water that should pop in the freezer, and then you throw in your drink. So it keeps the drink cold, but it doesn’t dilute it. And then you rinse it off and pop it in the freezer again.
As a kid growing up, we all had mothers who make us popsicles. And so, we found stainless steel popsicle makers.
DEBRA: I’ve seen this.
ANGEL DE FAZIO: I thought that’s some great idea. And even with my [inaudible 00:43:38]. I’m not going to have him get sick. They’ve been partially tested. No fragrances, no [inaudible 00:43:58]. The steels on the stainless steel containers are silicone. It’s just very healthy.
DEBRA: Yes, I see you put a lot of effort in research into this to bring together a collection of products.
We’re almost out of time here. But I want us to talk about the Vegas hotels going fragrance-free. Tell us what you’re doing about that.
ANGEL DE FAZIO: Well, there is one hotel, the Red Rock Hotel, that is not using any of the scent branding. They increased the number of air exchanges. Wow! What a novel idea. So I checked in there for two weeks. They had no idea I was there. I was able to stay in the room, room service was great, their linens had nothing on it. Even addressing my food allergies, their café was very airy, and I asked them to move me and they put me in a closed area. But the other hotels, no. They’re toxic.
A while back, I wrote as a press release that one of the high end properties, the Wynn Hotel, smelled like a well-maintained drier vent. And that was a quote from a travel magazine. They just pumped it in so heavy. They claim to be green, but that’s more towards water and energy conservation. In showrooms, you’re trapped because they close the doors, they pump in the air conditioner and even people who are not sensitive actually taste the chemicals.
But what they do is they use, “Oh! Well, we’re certified.” And so people think, “Oh, it’s healthy.” They don’t understand with re-certification, you can reach a platinum level and not have one single point on indoor air quality.
I even created a toxic hotel list on the foundation’s website.
DEBRA: I think that’s a great idea so that we know which ones are the most toxic. I would really like to see a hotel chain, especially one that has a lot of smaller hotels across the country that travelers are staying in really do non-toxic rooms so that a traveler, especially on business or going on vacations or traveling a lot, that they know if they stay at that hotel chain, they’re really going to have a clean room. And I’d really like to see that happen because it’s really needed. It’s really, really needed.
I used to think about years and years ago, I used to only think about myself. And I thought I have to put myself in this clean, little house so that I’m not being poisoned. And then I thought, “Well, I should tell more people about this so that other people, we can all share information.”
But now, I really think that the thing that needs to happen is that we just need to have a whole toxic free world where all the public spaces are not toxic and the people need to understand how we’re being poisoned, how all of us are being poisoned. And we can turn it around. We can all turn it around together.
ANGEL DE FAZIO: But people do not want to give up their products.
DEBRA: I know. I understand that. And that’s why you have your online store and that’s why I keep showing people that there are great toxic free products that they can use instead. And I know in my life that I needed to have things to replace the toxic products before I would give them up even though I knew they were making me sick.
I remember I finally found this shade of red lipstick that I thought was perfect and that was the last toxic product to go because I just couldn’t give up the color. It doesn’t make sense. But I knew that it was toxic, I knew that it could be making me sick, but I had to have that shade of red lipstick. And I finally gave it up and got to a point where the most important thing to me is health and I’m going to do whatever it takes to organize my life around having good health. And everybody can do that too and have a wonderful life.
So Angel, we’ve only got about a minute left. Any final words you want to say?
ANGEL DE FAZIO: Well, we’re considering this summer doing a fair with kids to teach them how to create their own non-toxic products. I figured teach them young. But the thing is never say never or it can’t happen to you. No one’s immune. And with the increase from olfactory chemicals assault that people in businesses they’re using, it’s not if, but when.
DEBRA: I totally agree. We’re at the end of our time. So thank you so much for being on today, Angel. And again, you can go to ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com and find out how to contact Angel. Go to her website and get more information about this. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. Thanks for listening. Be well.
Toxic Free Lifestyle As The New Medicine
My guest today is Naturopathic Doctor Tina Christie BSc, ND. She lives and practices in Ontario, Canada, and is producing a summit in May called “Lifestyle is the New Medicine.” I will be speaking about how the toxic free living as a lifestyle and how it can improve your health. We’ll be talking about lifestyle as medicine, what a naturopathic doctor uses for treatment, and how she incorporates toxics reduction and detox in her practice. Helping others through naturopathic medicine is Dr. Christie’s great passion. She was accepted immediately out of her undergraduate program at the University of Toronto (Bachelor of Science, Biology/Chemistry) into the naturopathic program at CCNM and graduated in 2001 at the top of her class. www.themindbodydoctor.ca
TOXIC FREE TALK RADIO
Toxic Free Lifestyle as the New Medicine
Host: Debra Lynn Dadd
Guest: Dr. Tina Christie
Date of Broadcast: April 28, 2015
DEBRA: Hi, I’m Debra Lynn Dadd, and this is Toxic Free Talk Radio where we talk about how to thrive in a toxic world and live toxic free.
It is Tuesday, April 28, 2015. You can probably hear I have a little stuffy nose. Well, there’s just stuff going around here, allergies, people coughing and sneezing. It’s raining today. But even though I have a little stuffy nose and a little sinus stuff going on, I’m still feeling good in here in doing my radio show and living my life. And even though stuff’s going on in my body, I still have the strength, the stamina and interest to be able to continue life and not just lie in bed.
I think that’s one of the benefits, one of the results of living without toxic chemicals because – sorry, I just got a little distraction there. That’s one of the benefits of living without toxic chemicals because your body gets strong, your immune system gets strong, all your body systems get strong because they’re not being destroyed and/or made weaker by toxic chemical exposures.
So today we’re going to be talking about actually living toxic free as a lifestyle. And we’re not going to talk about it exactly today. I’m going to be talking about it at a summit that’s coming up in May. I don’t have the dates right in front of me. I think it starts May 7th, but that’s a wild guess. And I’m going to be speaking on May 10th about a toxic-free lifestyle, what is a toxic free lifestyle?
We’re going to touch a little bit on that today. But what we’re going to talk about more is the whole idea of lifestyles as the new medicine. And when my guest contacted me and asked me if I would speak about lifestyle as the new medicine, how perfect, because that really is what I’ve been talking about for more than 30 years, is to look at how you’re breathing and how that affects your health.
And just like you take a medicine because you want to relieve symptoms or make your body healthier if you’re sick or whatever, you can do that with the choices that you make in your life, with the foods you eat, with the things that you have in your home, with the things that you’re exposed to. Everything has either a negative effect, a non-effect (it’s just neutral) or it has a beneficial effect. And choosing those beneficial things to create our lifestyles with I think is the perfect thing.
So my guest today is Naturopathic Doctor Tina Christie. Hi, Tina.
DR. TINA CHRISTIE: Hi, Debra.
DEBRA: How are you doing?
DR. TINA CHRISTIE: I’m great, thank you. How are you? You have a little sniffle.
DEBRA: Good. I have a little sniffle. So as a naturopathic doctor, what would you tell me to do?
DR. TINA CHRISTIE: Well, if you’re feeling good, if your appetite is good, your energy is good, it should go pretty fast. Stay away from sugar completely.
DEBRA: I stay away from sugar all the time.
DR. TINA CHRISTIE: That should boost your immune system by up to 50% for up to five hours. No sweeteners, no sugars, lots of water, lots of sleep.
DEBRA: I think what’s going on here actually is that my body is detoxing because on Saturday, I started taking a new homeopathic remedy for kidneys. It’s a kidney detox homeopathic remedy. And ever since that time, I had a headache and my nose is running. And all of those things I recognized as detox symptoms. So that might be what’s going on.
DR. TINA CHRISTIE: It sounds like it could be. Are you drinking lots of water to help?
DEBRA: Lots of water, lots of water.
DR. TINA CHRISTIE: The other thing that can help if you’re feeling good energy-wise, nothing too intense, but to get some exercise even if it’s just a nice walk. When you move, you drive more blood to your liver. And so you get more detox effects that way as well.
DEBRA: I didn’t know that. Well, thank you. I’m actually about to go sit in a car for six hours. I have to drive across the state of Florida sideways all the way to the other coast, pick up something and drive back. But tomorrow, I can go for a walk. That’s a really good idea.
DR. TINA CHRISTIE: So much for that advice today.
DEBRA: So how did you get to be a naturopathic doctor?
DR. TINA CHRISTIE: Well, I always wanted to go into medicine. I was one of those little kids that said – I remember my grandmother saying to me when I was five, “Are you going to marry a doctor when you grow up?” And I said, I’m half-Italian so I said, “Nana,” which is Italian for grandmother, “Nana, I’m going to be a doctor. I’m not going to marry a doctor.”
But I grew up with a lot of health problems. I had a lot of infections, lots of antibiotics, tired all the time. My mom was always taking me to the doctor.
And then when I was 17, I started having a lot of stomach pain, higher up kind of stomach pain. And I got diagnosed with something called gastritis. It’s not an ulcer, but it’s an irritation of the stomach lining where an ulcer is a more of a hole. I was only 17 and I had prescription medication for bad menstrual pain, which I took occasionally. And that can cause it.
And so I thought, “Wait a second! I took one pill. And now I have this problem. And now, I’ve got another pill, and I’m 17 years old, where is this taking me?” And in a big, emotional moment, I said, “That’s it. I am not going to medical school. I am finding something different.” It was one of those huge, emotional reactions, but it really was a turning point for me.
And from there, as silly as it sounds, I went to the public library where I lived and took out a whole bunch of books on everything that I could find that had to do with natural healing. And that’s how it started.
DEBRA: Wow! I hear the story over and over and it’s always a different illness or a different symptom. But usually people become interested in natural healing because of something extraordinary that’s going on with their body and wanting to heal that. And so right there, at the beginning, you had this idea of lifestyle as the new medicine. But you didn’t say, “I’m going to take a pill. I don’t want to take a pill.” You said, “Let’s find out what to do.”
So tell us more about the summit and this idea of lifestyles as the new medicine.
DR. TINA CHRISTIE: Well, the summit is 22 speakers, all talking about different aspects of the way we live. The idea is that I see so many patients that are living in a way that they’re not eating healthy food or they’re stressed out and unhappy all the time or we want to lose weight, but watch four hours of TV a day. Their lifestyle is just beating their body down and beating their health down. And then they go looking for a solution.
If they come to me and they’re in that mindset of, “Let me just find a solution to compensate for everything I’m doing,” they’re probably coming to me for a supplement or that there’s a food they can eat. You read studies, “Oh, eat blueberries. They’re so good for you and they cure all these things.” But that’s not the way it works. It’s not the way it works.
One of the examples I like to give patients is to say, “What’s the one thing you could do to make your relationship really strong?” One thing. And just do that.
Well, there is nothing. It’s a constellation of things. And lifestyle is the same way. We’re living longer than ever today. Most people are going to live to the late 70s or early 80s. I think men, the average lifespan is 78, and for women, 83. But the difference is how are we going to live.
I saw my grandmother lived to one month before her 99th birthday. And for about 20 years before that, she sat on the couch. She was tired. She had arthritis, horrible arthritis in her knees. She did crochet a lot for the last couple of years. She had such bad arthritis in her hands and she couldn’t even do that. She took naps and she watched TV.
DEBRA: To me, that’s not the way to live. I’m older than I used to be and I’m looking at how many years do I have left, but how many good years do I have left? How many more years do I have to complete the work that I want to do in terms of toxics and all the things?
I want to go see the Aurora Borealis live. And how many more years do I have while I can still do that?
And so I’m really revving up my health care in terms of what I’m doing myself to make my body healthy and exercising more and really maybe giving more emphasis to doing things that I wasn’t quite doing as well as I could be doing to take care of my body because all of a sudden, you get to an age and it’s like, “Well, okay. Everything is going to start falling apart unless I do something.”
We need to take a break. But when we come back, we will talk more with my guest, naturopathic doctor, Tina Christine. And I’m at her upcoming summit called Lifestyle as the New Medicine. And we’ll be right back.
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd, and my guest today is naturopathic doctor, Dr. Tina Christie. And she is hosting a summit called Lifestyle as the New Medicine, which is coming out in May. I’m going to be speaking on Sunday, May 10th, about Toxic Free Lifestyle as the New Medicine. And you can go to ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com and scroll down the page and you’ll see a place where you can sign up. I’ll just tell you to go to ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com, you’ll see the place to go there. I’ve got a big picture there of me and Tina. And you can just click right on there and you can sign up to hear me speak about toxic free lifestyles as the new medicine.
So Tina, I know that toxics play a part in your treatment. As a naturopathic doctor, what kind of things are you seeing in your practice that are the results of toxic chemical exposure?
DR. TINA CHRISTIE: I see a lot. One of the big things that toxins do is slow down thyroid. They either slow down thyroid function itself or they slow down how well your body makes active thyroid hormones. I see people being tired and sluggish. I often see people who want to lose weight and while that’s fine, they want to lose weight because they feel gross in their body, is often the word they use. I find that fat is a build-up of toxic chemicals. Because when I detox people, they don’t lose a lot of weight. They maybe lose a couple of pounds of fat and they say, “Oh, I feel great. I still want to lose some weight but I don’t feel gross anymore.”
So it was the toxin build-up. Just fatigue, sluggishness, for a lot of people, it causes skin problems as well. Eczema, psoriasis as well, but especially eczema and acne. Often your body is pushing a lot of toxins through your skin.
I find that it can affect mood as well. When your body is so burdened down by toxins, you’re really not running at your peak. And it’s the stress on your body, and that can pull your mood down. And it can also add or promote weight gain, just going back to the weight piece for a second. But I also see joint pains. Often, toxins, when they’re not really being pushed through our skin tissues, people can have body aches, joint pains, they can settle in our joints. And they can also disrupt our digestive system and cause digestive upset, bowel problems, poor digestion.
So it really runs the gamut and that’s actually one of the reasons why I wanted to have you on the summit because if you’re overloaded with toxins, no matter what you’re doing, it’s going to pull you back down.
DEBRA: See, listeners. Listen to her say that because I say that every day. If you’re overloaded with toxins then you can be doing any number of treatments in order to try to feel more healthy, but the toxins are still pulling you down. You just can’t get well without addressing those.
DR. TINA CHRISTIE: And that there exactly, Debra, is the thought process behind lifestyle being the new medicine. That it’s not the treatments you do. Yes, you may need treatment, but that’s not the crux of it. It’s how are you living, first of all.
DEBRA: And it’s so interesting to me. If you’re trying to empty a bathtub but you have the faucet on, you can’t ever empty the bathtub because it keeps filling you up and filling you up. And it’s the same way with lifestyle because if you’re having a lifestyle that’s a faucet just pouring water into the bathtub all the time, then when you’re trying to get well, which would be to empty the bathtub, then you just can’t because there’s all these stresses on your body of all the negative things that you’re doing in your lifestyle. And if you fix the lifestyle, then you actually don’t need so much treatment.
DR. TINA CHRISTIE: It’s true. It’s absolutely true. And I see that, I’ll change someone’s diet, I’ll do some detox, I’ll get them sleeping better, and half of their probems or 75% of their problems sometimes, depending on what they’re coming in with, go away.
DEBRA: Yes because so much of it is just what we’re eating and what we’re exposed to in our home.
So what kind of things do you do for detox for your patients?
DR. TINA CHRISTIE: Well, first of all, the foundational stuff. So I get the chemicals out of people’s lifestyle. I get the chemicals out. I try as much as possible to have people switch to organics because there’s a lot of chemicals coming in.
Sometimes I do these tests and they show that organic food or regular produce, you test the outside of the produce and say, “Oh, it doesn’t look like there’s a lot of chemicals on there.” But these plants have had chemicals sprayed on them from the time they were sprout. It’s not just going to sit on the surface. It’s going to be absorbed into the inside of the plant.
So you can’t just test the outside and see what’s there.
DEBRA: That’s right. But also, they’ve done studies which show that if you stop eating regular food and switch to organic food, that it takes as little as three days for the pesticides to no longer be in your body. That there are some pesticides, it’s a whole group of, toxic chemicals on some of them last for a long time, but other ones, they flush right through your body.
So if you continuously are eating pesticides, you’re going to continuously have pesticides in your body. If you stop eating them, in three days, you’re going to have a lot less pesticides in your body. That’s all it takes.
DR. TINA CHRISTIE: Amazing.
DEBRA: I was really amazed when I read that. Because the changes can happen so quick. The changes can happen so quick.
DR. TINA CHRISTIE: They can. It’s fantastic.
So I get the foundation going first. If there’s food sensitivity or food intolerance, I take those out. If people aren’t sleeping, you produce so much extra stress hormone when you don’t sleep. And that is a toxin in and of itself. The more toxins your body has to eliminate, the slower everything goes.
So it’s not the very first step I do with people in terms of doing a detox because I want to make sure, again, we’re turning off the bathtub tap before we try to empty the bathtub.
DEBRA: And let’s just stop right there because we need to go to break. And you’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd, and my guest today is naturopathic doctor, Dr. Tina Christine. And she’s doing Lifestyle is the New Medicine Summit, where I’m going to be speaking on May 10th, and we’re talking about lifestyle and toxic chemicals, and what she does as a naturopathic doctor.
And we’ll be right back.
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd, and my guest today is Dr. Tina Christie. She’s a naturopathic doctor and she is putting on a summit called Lifestyle is the New Medicine, which is coming up in May. I’m going to be speaking on May 10th about creating a toxic free lifestyle. And it’s a very good interview. At the summit, they pre-record it. The interviews are then played during the summit time. And it’s a really great interview. I was really pleased with how it turned out.
So Tina, so after you get the basics in about detox, then what do you actually do to help the detox process?
DR. TINA CHRISTIE: For the detox process, I’ve bounced around between different things in the past. There is herbal detox. You can do homeopathic detox. But the one that I’ve settled on the most that I see some of the best effect is a detox that uses, it’s like a protein shake. It’s a powder that contains protein powder as well as a variety of nutrients that support the detox pathways.
Because there are two different pathways. Our detox pathway isn’t actually just one pathway, it’s two pathways that hook up.
DEBRA: Tell us about those.
DR. TINA CHRISTIE: So they’re a little tricky. The first pathway and the second pathway don’t necessarily, and a good percentage of people, they don’t go at the same pace. And it’s not uncommon especially for people who are unwell into any degree that the first pathway goes either too fast. The first pathway goes really fast and the second pathway goes normally. Or the first pathway is normal but the second pathway is slow.
DEBRA: So what are these two pathways?
DR. TINA CHRISTIE: Pardon me?
DEBRA: What are the two pathways?
DR. TINA CHRISTIE: They’re called phase 1 and phase 2. And in between them, whether the second one is slow or the first one is too fast, in between, stuff can build up. And the stuff that builds up in between phase 1 and phase 2 are very bad. It’s actually worse than the toxins before your body started detoxing.
It’s a little crazy. And the stuff in between phase 1 and phase 2 causes more damage than the toxins before we started detoxing them. So we still want to detox these toxins. They can’t stick around. But if they get halfway through, if they get through phase 1, and then they sit there because there’s back-up, phase 2. And phase 2 can’t keep up for whatever reason, it’s going to cause more [inaudible 00:29:43] free radicals, it can damage DNA, it’s associated with increased risk of cancer and just overall toxicity.
So the protein powder that I use are the protein shakes, let’s call it, has a variety of nutrients in them. And there are some different companies that make these. And they also have extra nutrients to support phase 2 and to make sure that phase 1 doesn’t go too fast.
DEBRA: So could you describe what phase 1 and phase 2 are?
DR. TINA CHRISTIE: So phase 1 is, it takes the chemicals in your system, or the toxins, and it starts to break them down, but it only goes halfway. Before your body can actually eliminate them through stool and urine, they need to be broken down further.
DEBRA: Then that happens during phase 2.
DR. TINA CHRISTIE: Yes, and that happens during phase 2. But there can be a bit of a backlog, almost like traffic on the highway when there’s like a bottleneck. One lane is closed, so you get home 40 minutes late.
DEBRA: I totally understand what you’re talking about. So how would somebody know if that was going on in their body?
DR. TINA CHRISTIE: They wouldn’t. There’s no specific sign that, “Oh, I have a slow phase 2.” Some people may notice but they just don’t seem to process toxins. Say they’ll do a detox that their friend did. And they got really sick right away. The friend felt amazing and they just feel really, really sick. Or they get a detox reaction and instead of lasting for a day or two, they’re two weeks into their detox and they just feel like they’re going downhill. They’re not getting any better. And if anything, they’re getting worse.
I have a slow phase 2, and if I try to detox and I don’t support that phase, this is how I actually got into really this way of doing it, I don’t support that phase 2. Anything that detoxes me, my skin breaks out in about an hour, two hours. And it does not slow down. It’s not one of those temporary healing reactions.
So people may notice that. There’s something going on when they try to detox. It just really doesn’t go well.
DEBRA: I have heard this from people. And I’m sitting here with this headache after I started taking this detox product and I know that’s a symptom of detox. But this makes sense what you’re saying. So what is the product that you like?
DR. TINA CHRISTIE: The one that I like, it’s by a company called Metagenics. And it’s called Ultra Clear Plus. Lately, I also use Ultra Clear Plus PH. They put some extra potassium in there that’s alkalinizing. Because when you alkalinize, it helps your body remove toxins a little bit easier as well.
And there are other companies that make these detox protein powders as well but I got into this one years ago and I know that it works well, and I know what to expect from it. And it’s the one I use for myself also. So I also like to stick with what I know works and what I know is going to give a good, predictable result.
DEBRA: Good. Now, is this a professional product or is it something that people can buy and use themselves?
DR. TINA CHRISTIE: It’s mostly sold just through professionals. Some health food stores have professional-run staff that bring it in. It’s not necessarily the best thing for people to do themselves, in case there’s another factor in the way. Remember how I talked about, to set that foundation for people first. If there’s another factor in the way and people detox, for example, if someone’s not having good bowel movements and they detox.
DEBRA: That’s a very good point. Another thing I say a lot. Go ahead.
DR. TINA CHRISTIE: They’re probably going to feel worse because you’re dumping all these toxins into your colon and then you’re soliciting there and you’re re-absorbing it. I’ve actually seen people feel a lot sicker if they’re not having proper bowel movement. Or heaven forbid, if anyone is a smoker and they decide they want to detox anyways, and I’ve had smokers come to me and say, “Can you detox me? But I don’t want to quit smoking.”
That’s like having five bathtubs in one.
DEBRA: Wow. Talk about messing up the phase 1, phase 2.
DR. TINA CHRISTIE:Yes, no kidding.
DEBRA: Wow. Well, I would say if somebody wants to detox and they smoke, they first thing they should do is stop smoking.
We have to go to break. So we’ll talk more about this one when we come back. You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd, and my guest today is naturopathic doctor, Dr. Tina Christie. And she’s putting on a summit in May called Lifestyle is the New Medicine. And you can go to ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com and sign up. It’s free. It’s free to attend the whole two weeks of 22 lectures by people like me who are talking about their special part of the lifestyle as the new medicine. And you can just go to Toxic Free Talk Radio and sign up for free and you can hear me on May 10th.
We’ll be right back.
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd, and my guest today is Dr. Tina Christie. She is a naturopathic doctor and she’s putting on a summit in May called Lifestyle is the New Medicine. And I’ll be speaking on Sunday, May 10th, about toxic free lifestyles as the new medicine. But there will be 22 speakers in all who will be talking about different aspects of things that you can do to help your health yourself.
Okay, so before the break, we were talking about doing a detox and you were talking about a product that is only available to professionals. So I have two questions. One is, if somebody wanted to detox at home, and we’ve talked about on the show about different types of detoxes. But if somebody wanted to do something without going to a professional, what would you recommend?
DR. TINA CHRISTIE: Well, first of all, if they want to detox at home, to set that foundation. Go on your website, all the chemicals and products you mention. Just by having less chemicals come in, your liver detoxes, that phase 1, phase 2 that I’m talking about, 24/7. If that stops, you’re in liver failure.
So when you have less toxins coming in, now those processes in your liver have more resources to deal with the toxins that are sitting in your body. So a natural increase in detoxing what you’ve got in your body will happen, again when you turn that bathtub off. So switching out the toxic products, switching over to organics, and then something called dry skin brushing helps your skin draw off more toxins. Exercise drives more blood to your liver. Drinking enough water. There’s a lot of people who don’t drink enough water.
DEBRA: And how much do you think they should drink?
DR. TINA CHRISTIE: It’s an ounce for every two pounds of body weight.
DEBRA: So I don’t know how much that would be. So you basically would take your body weight and multiply it by two, and that’s how many ounces?
DR. TINA CHRISTIE: No, take your body weight and divide it by two. And that’s how many ounces. So for the average, 140, 150 or so pound person, you’d be looking at about two liters a day.
DEBRA: And how much is a liter? I’m asking these questions because I know the listeners, many of them are not going to know what a liter is.
DR. TINA CHRISTIE: You know those regular-sized water bottles you buy for 99 cents or something like that at the, and I’m not a fan of plastic bottles, that you buy at the corner store? That’s half a liter. So it would be four of those.
DEBRA: So I just figured out if you divide your weight by two and then you get a number, and then you divide it by eight, that’s the number of cups you need to drink.
DR. TINA CHRISTIE: I’ve never actually done that. I always have a one-liter bottle sitting on my desk at the office. So when patients say, “Well, what is that?” I’m like, “Okay, this is a liter. Drink two of these.” That’s a good conversion.
DEBRA: So you’re in Canada though. Don’t you have metric there? So everybody knows what a liter is?
DR. TINA CHRISTIE: What do you guys go in there? Ounces?
DEBRA: Ounces and quarts.
DR. TINA CHRISTIE: I’m so sorry. I talk in pounds but I also talk in liters. So I’ve got one foot in each camp because we also do kilograms here for weight. But I don’t do that. So yeah, 140-pound person, let’s say, divided by two, that’s 70, so that would be 70 ounces.
DEBRA: 70 ounces. That’s right. And then if you wanted to know how many cups that is, then you divide it by eight. So that’s about, I’m doing it my mind here, so that’s probably nine cups. It’s four cups to a quarts, so that’s about a half-a-gallon.
DR. TINA CHRISTIE: What I’d like to encourage people to do, let’s say you’re going to have 10 cups a day, is not to try to get 10 cups. If you got a fill a cup up to 10 times, most people aren’t going to do that. Unless you’re really diligent. But then I don’t know if that is really sustainable because it’s a lot of thought all day long.
DEBRA: I’ll tell you what I do. What I do is I have a big, I don’t even know, it’s more than a quart, glass bottle. And in the morning, I fill that up and then I drink that, and then I make sure that I drink two or three of these throughout the day. And I just have it sitting on my desk. So I’m just sipping water all day long. This is part of my lifestyle.
DR. TINA CHRISTIE: And that’s perfect. That’s what I usually recommend. Get a big container, let’s say, it’s going to be about half of what you’re going to drink for the day. And then set a time. By lunchtime or whatever, it needs to be empty. And then you fill it up at lunch. And then it needs to be empty by the time you, if you work in an office, by the time you leave the office.
DEBRA: I think that’s a really good plan. It’s not about drinking water randomly. It’s about making sure that your body has enough water. And so once you figure out what that amount is, then if you set up a little program to do that every day, it starts becoming second nature. I don’t even think about it anymore. I just fill my water bottle. But you have to figure out how much water you need in the beginning and then do something so that it just becomes part of your lifestyle.
DR. TINA CHRISTIE: Yes. Perfect. It’s all about lifestyle. And once you start drinking, once people start drinking throughout the day, they’ll feel thirsty first thing in the morning and they’ll feel thirsty when they get home at night because once you have more water, your body also craves more water.
And we talked about exercise. Saunas are a great way to detox. I don’t want to tell people to go out and get certain products because people tend not to be the best, the clearest, shall we say, judge of where they’re at and if the detox is the right thing to do. And there are a lot of these things that are sold in health food stores like ‘three-day detox’. It takes three days when you’re using herbs, it takes three days to get your liver working to upregulate or to up those detox pathways. It takes three days. So a three-day detox is going to do nothing for you.
DEBRA: Well, I totally agree because as you mentioned before, detox is a 24-hour process for your body. For me, it’s not about are you going to do a three-day cleanse in the spring, go on a detox diet for a week. We need to be supporting our detox functions.
And so my next question is going to be, when should somebody get a professional involved? Because I think that there are things, I recommend the people to take liquid Zeolite because I know that it just takes toxic chemicals out of your body. It’s not about supporting your liver or anything like that. These zeolite particles just roam around and pick up the chemicals and they come out through your kidneys.
And so I think that there are things that everybody can do. Toxic chemicals can leave through your skin, and through your liver, and through your kidneys, through the lymph system. There are so many things and it seems like that at some point, if you can find somebody who knows something about detox like you, that maybe it’s a good idea to go to a professional to get help with the specific type of detox that your body needs and is ready for.
DR. TINA CHRISTIE: Yes. If you really want to get things done right, you should see a professional, and especially if someone doesn’t feel good. If someone is not feeling well, their health isn’t well, I would say, don’t mess around with. In the health food store, people who work in health food stores, they have some education but they’re often reading books. Someone with a good amount of experience that can really help you isn’t working in a health food store.
DEBRA: Good point.
DR. TINA CHRISTIE: Because they just not. I went to school for eight years for this. I’m not working in a health food store for a minimum wage or whatever it is. That’s ridiculous. It’s just not going to happen.
And they don’t know you. They don’t know overall what’s happening with you and if there’s anything else to take into consideration. Sometimes people, they feel great and they’re just really healthy and they want to optimize and they tinker around with this, and they tinker around with that. As long as you’re not high risk for anything, that’s probably okay. But if you don’t really want to tinker, you just want to optimize and you want someone to set you on the right path, then find a good practitioner and find someone who is willing to education so that every time you want something, you don’t need to go running back to them because they’re the only ones that know what you’re doing. They’re educating you.
So many of my patients e-mail me. I haven’t seen them in a couple of years. “Oh, I wanted to do that detox again. Can I do exactly what you told me last time?” I will say, “Yes, has anything changed?” They’re like, “No, I’ve been feeling great ever since. I stuck to the plan you told me.” “Well, great. Go ahead. Do it again As long as there’s nothing else has come up.”
Because they understand how to read their body and what’s going on with their body.
DEBRA: Right. That’s absolutely important. So we’re getting to the end of the show. And I want to make sure that I don’t cut you off mid-sentence in about 45 seconds. So is there any final words you’d like to say? Tell us something more about the summit? Really now, we only have about 30 seconds.
DR. TINA CHRISTIE: The summit is across the board, what it looks like to live a healthy lifestyle. Society is not set up for you to live a healthy lifestyle. So it’s something you need to learn apart from looking out into society in general. And we also have a Facebook page. We’ve created a community of people that are also interested in this. So you can get a lot of support around your new lifestyle.
DEBRA: Good. Well, I’ll sign up for your Facebook page. And you can go to ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com. And you’ll see the information there where you can sign up for free. And then you’ll be on the mailing list. That’s the end of our time so thank you so much, Dr. Tina Christie. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. This is Toxic Free Talk Radio. Be well.
Vulcanized Rubber
Question from M Carter
Hi Debra,
I use hermetic glass jars with glass lids to store dry goods in the pantry. The seal on these is vulcanized rubber. Is there anything to be concerned about with the vulcanized rubber—it doesn’t actually touch the food, but I have to touch it to open and close it, and I also wasn’t sure about offgassing. I was also looking at some shoes with vulcanized rubber soles, and wondering if that would be a safe shoe material. Thank you!
Debra’s Answer
Vulcanized rubber is natural latex rubber heated with sulfur. It’s used to make everything from seals on glass jars to rubber bands to automobile tires.
Here’s an article from the Centers for Disease Control about the health effects of vulcanized rubber:
http://www.cdc.gov/niosh/docs/93-106/
I don’t use products made out of recycled rubber tires, but I do use glass jars with seals and rubber bands and don’t consider those to be major sources of toxic exposure.
Bed Frame
Question from Tania
Hi Debra,
Hi Debra! I had a quick question for you. We want to buy an affordable bed frame for my son’s mattress. What do you think about this one from Ikea? Many thanks!!
http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/S29011673/#/S99019576
Debra’s Answer
I actually love IKEA because they have so many great products with simple designs made from natural materials. But you have to look for them carefully.
Fortunately, they give you all the materials used.
Here is the Product Description for the one you chose:
Bed frame:
Solid pine, Stain, Clear acrylic lacquer
Slatted bed base:
Bed base slats: Beech veneer, Birch veneer, Foil
Ribbon: 100 % polypropylene
Slat holders: Synthetic rubber
Bed base: Beech plywood, Birch plywood, Solid beech or birch
It has a finish and synthetic rubber
Here’s another bed base called Tarva
http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/70261268/
It’s Product Description says: Solid pine. That’s it. Solid pine.
So check the Product Descriptions and choose one that is as plain as possible.
Non-Leaching Stainless Steel
Question from Shelly Pollard
Hi Debra,
Hi Debra. I’m wondering if you are familiar with S’well bottles. They are made in China although their site claims to be responsibly made there, out of “non-leaching, non-toxic, 18/8 stainless steel” and claim to be able to keep liquids hot for 12 hours and cold for 24 hours.
They appear to be a good company but my main question is around the stainless steel – can it really be non-leaching?
Many, many thanks for your help with this.
Debra’s Answer
To the best of my knowledge at the moment, it doesn’t make sense to me that some stainless steel leaches and some doesn’t.
Resolving this question is on my ongoing list of research questions.
I personally don’t use stainless steel for food or beverage storage. I can taste the metal.
Zippers on Clothing
Question from Stacey Santoro
Hi Debra,
So I was just washing some new sweatpants for my son, and I saw that both pockets have zippers. I only buy 100% cotton clothing for him, but it never occurred to me that other parts (buttons, zippers) could be an issue. Could the zippers and/or buttons be a problem?
This may really be a stretch, but could zippers (metal) conduct EMF’s? I think I read not to purchase a bed with metal coils, so should we avoid metal zippers on our body? Am I crazy?
The 100% clothing items I buy for my son are also Oeko-tex certified. Does this make the zippers/buttons okay?
Thanks so much!
Debra’s Answer
Well first, it turns out that metal mattress springs don’t conduct EMFs and I doubt zippers would either.
As for the Oeko-tex certification, it’s for textiles. Find out if the certification is for the fabric or the garment. If for the fabric, the accessories wouldn’t be certified. If for the garment, they would.
I don’t know if Oeko-Tex does garment certification. It’s more than a five minute search to find out.
How to Protect the Environment from Pharmaceutical Pollution by Using Natural Medicinals
My guest today is Pamela Seefeld, R.Ph, a registered pharmacist who prefers to dispense medicinal plants and other natural substances instead of prescription drugs. In celebration of Earth Day we’ll be talking about how popular pharmaceuticals pollute the environment and natural medicinals you can take instead that biodegrade. Pamela has more than 25 years experience choosing and sellling top quality medicinal supplements, so she’s seen it all. Pamela is a 1990 graduate of the University of Florida College of Pharmacy, where she studied Pharmacognosy (the study of medicines derived from plants and other natural sources). She has worked as an integrative pharmacist teaching physicians, pharmacists and the general public about the proper use of botanicals. She is also a grant reviewer for NIH in Washington D.C. and the owner of Botanical Resource and Botanical Resource Med Spa in Clearwater, Florida. www.botanicalresource.com
LISTEN TO OTHER SHOWS WITH PAMELA SEEFELD
- Vaccines: Harmful or Necessary?
- Evaluating A Study and Testing a Test
- Seven Deadly Drugs
- The Hidden Dangers Affecting Your Heart and How You Can Protect It Naturally
- What We Can Do About Cancer
- The Power of pH
- How to Protect Your Health From Toxic Mercury Dental Fillings
- Pharmacology 101: How to Use What Pharmacists Know to Take Supplements to Best Advantage
- Are You Heading For Kidney Failure? Natural Remedies Can Help
- How to Keep Your Blood Vessels Open and Flowing With Supplements
- How Inactivity Leads to Illness and Drug Use—And How Exercise Can Get You Off Drugs and into Health
- Hidden Toxic Dangers in Common Dietary Supplements
- See More Clearly with Natural Remedies
- Hidden Mental Health Dangers in Common Drugs
- Different Types of Detox
- Getting Off Prescription Drugs with Natural Remedies
- How Natural Remedies Could Have Saved A Life
- Natural Alternatives to Sleeping Pills
- Natural Back Pain Treatment Options That Work
- How Toxics Age Your Body & What You Can Do to Stay Young
- You CAN Lose Weight—Even if You’ve Had Difficulty Losing Weight Before
- Calcium—Is There Really a Deficiency in America?
- It’s Cold and Flu Season—How to Support Your Immune System and Why You Shouldn’t Get a Toxic Flu Shot
- How Eating Fruits and Vegetables Help Your Cells Create Health
- Toxic Psychiatry and How to Have Mental Health Without Drugs
- Why You Should Take Fish Oil and How To Choose the Right One for You
- Medicinal Plants Can Replace Toxic Drugs
TOXIC FREE TALK RADIO
How to Protect the Environment from Pharmaceutical Pollution by Using Natural Medicinals
Host: Debra Lynn Dadd
Guest: Pamela Seefled, R.Ph
Date of Broadcast: April 22, 2015
DEBRA: Hi, I am Debra Lynn Dadd and this is Toxic Fee Talk Radio where we talk about how to thrive in a toxic world and live toxic free. It is Wednesday, April 22nd 2015, it is Earth day, so happy Earth Day. But it’s also the second anniversary of this show Toxic Free Talk Radio.
I’ve been doing this for two years. I counted it up and it’s 295 shows that I’ve done. Now there are the live shows and then there are also shows that are broadcast sometimes. Well, at least, twice a week. It’s a replay, usually it’s twice a week, not any more than that. But it’s 295 unique individual live shows in the last two years. I’m pretty proud of that and they’re pretty wonderful. If you go to ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com, you can listen to all of them. They’re all right there and there will be more.
And I have this show booked up usually about three weeks in advance. I just have a steady stream of people either contacting me to be on the show or people that I’m finding just in my normal, everyday work activities. It’s really one of the highlights of my daily life, to come and be here with you on this show. I’m glad that it’s going so well and I’m glad people are listening and I’m glad that people are coming and being guests. It’s just wonderful activity for me.
So today my guest, since it’s Earth Day, we’re going to be talking about an environmental subject. Actually, all week has been environmental subjects. Some are replays. We had a new show yesterday about building soil in your garden and around the world actually, what you can do to restore soils around the world. And today we’re going to be addressing the subject of pharmaceutical pollution in the environment and how, when we take drugs, whether over-the-counter or prescription drugs, what happens to those drugs after they’re no longer in our bodies and how they go into the environment and what kind of harm that they cause.
Now before I introduce my guest who was going to tell us what we can do to reduce the amount of pharmaceutical pollution that we put into the environment, I want to just give you a little background about how much this really is a problem.
I’m looking at a document called Pharmaceuticals in Wastewater Streams: Disposal Practices and Policy Options in Santa Barbara which was done by Donald Bren School of Environmental Science and Management at the University of California, Santa Barbara. This is a whole study that they did on this subject actually in 2007, but this is all still going on now.
What they said is – I’m going to read some of it and paraphrase some of it. If you want to know about this subject, this is a really good document to look at. They said, “Recent advances in analytic technology have lead researchers to discover trace amounts of pharmaceuticals in wastewater effluents,” that’s the water that comes out the other end of the wastewater, “…the wastewater effluents, rivers, lakes, and groundwater. They are finding pharmaceuticals in rivers, lakes, and groundwater.”
“Pharmaceuticals have also been detected in soil samples and fishes. Based upon this wealth of published occurrence data, it seems probable that most, if not all, urban wastewater is contaminated with pharmaceutical compounds differing only in the type and abundance of the substances present.”
And then I go on to talk about how this is a problem to the aquatic environment because pharmaceutical compounds are specifically designed to affect biological organisms. They said that if environmental concentrations are below acutely toxic levels – and what that means if something is ‘acutely toxic’, it’s something that’s going to cause harm right now today like you drink gasoline and it would kill you.
They say, “While environmental concentrations are below acutely toxic levels, the main concerns are the chronic,” that’s long term, “…or synergistic effects.” Synergistic effect is how things combine together and then what happens when you combine them. So I’ll tell you this sentence again.
“While environmental concentrations are below acutely toxic levels, the main concerns are the chronic that’s long term or synergistic effects of the cocktail of pharmaceuticals humans have created in the water. And occurring disruption is the most widespread and documented effect that pharmaceuticals have on aquatic organisms.”
And they talk about the feminization of male fish in waters treated with wastewater effluents and the development of antibiotic resistance and there’s a whole list of things here of how the aquatic environment is affected.
But they also affect us humans because the water that is coming out of our tap is coming from the environment, those environmental waters that are being contaminated, and so we get those pharmaceuticals, we get drugs, prescription drugs and over-the-counter drugs in our tap water.
Now, you can remove those by using a water filter, but there’s no water filter on all the aquatic life. There’s no water filter that can protect the environment from these drugs. So while we can protect ourselves, we can’t protect the environment. The thing needs to be done is to not put them there in the first place.
So this report says, that “pharmaceuticals reach the environment be it two pathways, excretion from humans and disposal into the wastewater treatment system, which is not equipped,” the wastewater treatment systems are not equipped, “to remove pharmaceuticals.”
Now this particular study focuses on the disposal pf pharmaceuticals and what to do. But what we’re going to be talking about today is what we can do instead of taking drugs, so that these drugs don’t go into the environment and they don’t go into our water system.
And my guest, of course, is Pamela Seefeld who is a registered pharmacist and I have her on every other Wednesday because she knows so much about the subject. And so today, we’re going to be talking about some drugs and some natural things that we can do so that when they go into the environment after our bodies have excreted them, they don’t cause harm. Hi, Pamela.
PAMELA SEEFELD: Hey, it’s great to be here. Congratulations on your show, this is wonderful. What a great anniversary.
DEBRA: Thank you, that was a really long introduction, but I had to explain why we’re doing this.
PAMELA SEEFELD: No, I think it was very, very timely and very good.
I stumbled on a list of what they’re seeing most often in the water. As far as what you’re talking about, the contamination, antibiotics and anti-depressants are at the top – and anticonvulsants and estrogen, beta blockers (from blood pressure, and cholesterol lowering medication). Those are the top six they see. But of course, the benzodiazepines like Xanax and Ativan, those are the particularly ones that are problematic.
Actually, when I was looking at the information about wastewater treatment, apparently, conventional waste treatment does not destroy the medications. These medications are also resistant to photodegradation, meaning that they persist in the streams, like you were saying, and in the rivers. So, they don’t degrade in the presence of light. Where some things will breakdown, they don’t because they’re artificial compounds and they’re not recognized in nature.
DEBRA: That’s a really important point. But before we talk about the drugs, it just occurred to me, would you explain to us what happens when you take a drug and it goes through your body. Why is it even coming out the other end? Isn’t our bodies absorbing them and using them?
PAMELA SEEFELD: Correct, right. So there are different types of metabolism routes when we swallow pill. It goes into the stomach, and there, you have those acids. It gets broken down and then it gets absorbed into the bloodstream. It goes to the receptors or the place of location where it’s supposed to take place. And after that particular period of time, it can go to the liver. Some drugs are actually eliminated unchanged meaning they don’t have any kind of metabolism. They are eliminated unchanged almost totally and they go out to the urine or the feces.
Other drugs go to the liver and they’re changed into, what’s called metabolized. What the metabolized are is especially when something is fat soluble like [inaudible 00:10:30] anticonvulsant, an anti-anxiety medicine, an antidepressants, they have to be eliminated with metabolism.
DEBRA: We have to interrupt you because we have to go to break and then when we come back, we’ll hear more about this.
You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio, I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is Pamela Seefeld. She’s a registered pharmacist who prefers to dispense medicinal plants and other natural substances instead of prescription drugs. We’ll talk with her more when we come back about pharmaceuticals and how they affect the environment.
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio, I’m Debra Lynn Dadd and my guest today is Pamela Seefeld. She’s a registered pharmacist who dispenses medicinal plants and other natural substances instead of prescription drugs. And Pamela, we’ve failed to – hmmm, the music is still playing. Can you hear me, Pamela?
PAMELA SEEFELD: Yeah, absolutely.
DEBRA: Okay, good. It’s not you. I thought I’m not being heard.
PAMELA SEEFELD: No, no, no, no, no, no. It’s good.
DEBRA: Okay, good. So I just want to take a minute before we continue to talk about our pharmaceuticals, I just want to take a minute and really introduce Pamela because I didn’t do that at the beginning of the show. And as I said, I have her on every Wednesday because she knows so much about drugs and natural remedies and how things work in the body. I’ve never heard anybody explain things the way she explains them to her clients and to us on the show about how things work in the body. It’s just so fascinating to me.
So, she has a botanical pharmacy here in Colorado, Florida called Botanical Resource and she has a little med spa as well there. So you can get massages and facials and all those kinds of things. And her website is BotanicalResource.com. And she is very happy to talk to anyone at no charge about how you can stop taking your prescription drugs, so those.
Pamela, you want to tell us about that and give your phone number.
PAMELA SEEFELD: Yes, so I’ve been doing this for quite a long time, probably 25 years. Basically, what we do here is we have natural products. We have homeopathic supplements that are medical grade. And if you have any questions about the prescriptions you’re on or if you want to transition off of those prescriptions into natural products or homeopathic medicine or if you are at the verge of needing to get on a prescription medication, I’ll be most honored and grateful to help you and your family address those issues especially even mental health, which I do quite a bit of it as well.
And you can contact me at my pharmacy here in Clearwater, 727-442-4955. I would be very grateful to help you with any medical concern you may have.
DEBRA: Thank you so much. She does a really good job. All the doctors around her know her. She’s very well-known and respected for the work that she does. I’ve just seen people just get off their drugs.
This is a show about toxics. But drugs, prescription drugs and over-the-counter drugs, they are synthetic substances made from petroleum, the same substances that is used to make toxic chemicals and they have toxic side effects. And so I do consider that drugs need to be something that we remove from our lives in order to be toxic free.
All right, before the break, I had asked about what happens when a drug goes into your body, why is there something left that gets excreted and then goes to the environment?
PAMELA SEEFELD: Correct! So we have these different pathways. And let me explain, a liver contains enzymes, which you collectively call the cytochrome P450. Why is this important is because they have them all cataloged. They know exactly which enzyme metabolize which medication. And sometimes, actually, these enzymes, if you have one medication that you take in that inhibits the enzyme and another one that’s a substrate of it or it gets metabolized by it, you can actually change the way things are metabolized and that’s where the drug interactions come in where a lot of people end up very, very sick.
That’s why it’s important, if you have any questions, you’re taking multiple medicines, I will be glad to go and make sure that’s not a drug interaction if you’re not responding correctly or if you need to get off of them.
So what’s happening with these enzymes is that they’re very active. They’re upregulated for different people depending on their age and also just their genetics. But when the drug leaves in the metabolism, you take a fat-soluble drug (which something that goes to the central nervous system into the brain like all these psychiatric drugs), then this is the propensity of the drugs that we’re seeing – the antibiotics, of course, but the antidepressants. There are a lot of antidepressants in the water and the anti-anxiety drugs like Xanax and Ativan.
So these things go into the metabolism, they go to the liver. A lot of these live the Benzos, which is the Ativan and Xanax, they can eliminate pretty much unchanged. So you’re getting a lot of drug itself (not metabolites, but drug) into the feces and into the urine that is going into the wastewater systems. And that’s the reason why they can’t seem to get these things up because they really don’t have effective means to remove these medications out the water supply.
Of course, once these things are discharges, they go into the streams, they’re affecting aquatic life. But also, they’re affecting people because now they are testing it and it’s rampant in the water everywhere.
So what does this mean for people?
DEBRA: Yes, what does this mean for people?
PAMELA SEEFELD: Well, it’s a possible risk of cancer. That’s what I think.
DEBRA: Well, what about – I know that I said earlier in the show that the amounts that they’re testing are below the acute toxic levels, but they are in the degree that they can have a chronic effect. So what if we’re drinking in our tap water every day in addition to the chloramines and the fluorides, and all that stuff this, as I’ve said, a cocktail of unknown pharmaceuticals, how is that affecting our body?
PAMELA SEEFELD: Okay, that’s a very good question. Let me explain. I like to use the analogy of homeopathic medicine. I use a lot of homeopathy. And what is homeopathy? Small amounts of an agent that you’re using to treat somebody, that’s what it is.
So we’ve done it a hundreds of times. Well, what’s the difference between that and the stuff you get in the water? None. It’s the same thing. They’re getting drugged and you’re getting drugged because we know that these work on small, small amounts.
DEBRA: That’s right, but what people are getting are antibiotics and antidepressants and all of these things. They’re going into our bodies whether we want them or not. I just think that that’s such an important point because you have to get a doctor’s prescription to get these or you can just drink them out of your tap water.
PAMELA SEEFELD: Correct, and really, there’s no consent.
DEBRA: There’s no consent and there’s no control over dose, is the thing. No control over those.
PAMELA SEEFELD: Correct! These substances, when you have substances that work like estrogens in the body or work like drugs in the body, the have a term. The terminology is called xenobiotics. It’s something that you don’t expect to be taking into your bloodstream, into your body, but you are taking them in and is changing the way your hormones act. And also, it’s changing the way the dynamics of the genes fire off.
I wanted people to think about it. Maybe there’s someone who’s skeptical who says, “Oh, it’s just in the waters. No big deal,” but the fact that I want you to think about it is it’s a homeopathic medication, a medication you didn’t want to take that you now have to take because you earned the regular water supply. This is where the problems are.
There can be organ damage from prolong exposure. Some people do not tolerate medicine. If they’re getting these in the small amount and they’re getting it in a chronic level – acute means you have to go to the hospital, you’re very sick, you need medicine. Chronic is different.
DEBRA: It’s a long time building up, but it doesn’t have to take that long before it builds up.
We need to get a break and when we come back, we’re going to talk about some specific drugs that we’re putting into the environment that are harming the environment and what we can do instead so that we’re not taking and excreting those drugs out into the environment and into the other people’s tap water.
I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is Pamela Seefeld. We’ll be right back.
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is Pamela Seefeld. She’s a registered pharmacist who, instead of drugs, likes to give natural medicinals. So we’re going to talk about what now are some natural things that you take instead of prescription and over-the-counter drugs? We’re going to focus especially on these top drugs that are the once being found in the environment. So take it away, Pamela.
PAMELA SEEFELD: Okay. Well, first of all too, I want to mention, if you want to pull the chemicals out and pull these drugs out, I’m a big fan of using Body Anew, which is a detox product that pulls out nickel, cadmium, lead, mercury, pesticides, and it removes chemicals out of the fat. You have to realize all these things here are fat-soluble. That’s why they’re able to come back into the body and cause these issues because if they’re water soluble, they wouldn’t keep coming back in. So that’s important for people to know.
DEBRA: Wait, wait, wait. Before you go on, I just want to make a point about this. Fat-soluble toxics, whether they’re drugs or anything else, they accumulate in the fat, correct?
PAMELA SEEFELD: Correct.
DEBRA: So then, when you do something like lose weight or exercise or do something that’s start melting your fats, then those stored toxics and drugs then melt and go back into your system.
PAMELA SEEFELD: That’s exactly right. And that’s when toxicity can take place. You can even get that with fat-soluble vitamins A, D, E, and K. If you’re taking huge, huge amount and they’ve been stored in the fat, you go on a crash diet, you lose a lot of weight, you can end up in liver failure.
So that’s why it’s important to really know the balance of the vitamins you’re taking, if you’re taking any medications.
And I’m a big fan of using Body Anew because we homeopathic detoxification, it goes to the fat and it starts dumping the fat, but it does it in the controlled manner that upregulates these functions in the liver. I was talking about these enzymes the P450 and also something called glucuronidation and conjugation, which changes the composition of the drug to remove it out of the body. These are really hallmarks of just taking these inside of your body regardless of whether you control what you’re consuming or not. That’s really important for people to know.
DEBRA: Yeah. It’s like we’re walking around – the CDC, the Center for Disease Control calls it body burden. And so it’s just like we’re carrying around this storehouse of toxic chemicals and drugs that we’ve taken in the past or drugs that we drink in our tap water. We’re just carrying them around until our fat releases them into our body in some unexpected that we don’t even know when that would be.
PAMELA SEEFELD: I think that’s right. If you think about it too, you know what, older people, why they get so much more cancer, the propensity is higher than younger people, it’s because they stored all of these for such a long period of time.
DEBRA: Yes, yes.
PAMELA SEEFELD: People need to realize that. It’s not like this person is elderly, she lived a long life, she’s 90 years old. Why do you think she’s ending up with these diseases? It’s because burden load in her body, in her fat is pretty high.
DEBRA: Yes. That’s what happens. The toxics accumulate until they get to be too much and then you get sick. Anyway, let’s talk about drugs, but I just wanted to make sure that everybody understood why this is so important. What we’re about to tell you…
PAMELA SEEFELD: These are really, really important points. So I’m just going to talk about antidepressants. We will just talk one drug class at a time. I just want people know that the average woman here in the United States is on five prescriptions and the average man is on four. That’s just average. That’s a lot of prescriptions. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been told that, “I’ve had things arranged with the hospital. I’m supposed to go talk to different groups.” Especially the colleges and things around here, their faculty is in so many medications. Their budgets are out of control. I’m trying to tell them there are other things they can do. It’s really a crisis.
So you have a huge amount of percentage of the population in antidepressants. Let me tell you, antidepressants, the serotonin reuptake inhibitors, the antidepressants, they have a response rate of less than 30%. So if there was any other category, let’s say it’s a heart condition, and the drug responded less than 30% of the time, would they even bother to use it?
DEBRA: No.
PAMELA SEEFELD: It makes no sense. But all these people are not on all these antidepressants. They’re accumulating in the water supply. They’re causing all these problems.
Antidepressants, if you look at what’s going on with serotonin in the brain, Omega-3 is specifically eicosapentaenoic acid. If you use a product like OmegaBrite, which is designed by Dr. Andrew Stoll who’s a Harvard psychiatrist, he did double-blind, placebo-controlled trials with Zoloft, the the trial is actually better than Zoloft using that particular fish oil, which is an EPA/DHA of 7.0:1.
So there’s things you can do other than these medications. You really need to look at that and think to yourself, “Can I possibly use something other than something that’s damaging the environment and also, might be even more highly effective?” That’s important. Let’s face it. If you’re taking a supplement or you’re taking a prescription, you want an outcome. You’re taking it for a reason you’re doing this.
And also, high dose folic acids, there are five serotonin receptors in the brain. It binds to four of them. These things are inexpensive and they’re pretty readily available and they’re very effective and the data’s there. It’s a no-brainer. And also, the cardiovascular benefits from taking both of those are superior. So you’re getting all other things as well.
And heart disease is the number one killer of women in the countries. You would be taking some of these things anyway, just maybe different amounts.
I think people need to realize there are options and it’s not all about medication. That’s really the hallmark of this. Antidepressants being rampant in the water supply is really preventable.
DEBRA: Yes, it really is preventable. This whole thing about drugs and the water supply is totally preventable. So tell us about another one.
PAMELA SEEFELD: Okay. So, let me talk a little bit about anti-anxiety medications and specifically, the class of benzodiazepine. And this is where the Swedish study was done. This was very interesting with benzodiazepine. They found low levels of psychotropic drugs, specifically benzodiazepine, and they found that it changes the way the fish behave, affecting the balance of aquatic life.
And what they did is they found that this fish in Sweden, they were just charging the water like they do here and there’s high amounts of benzodiazepines, which the water dose here as well, the fish were swimming in the water and they weren’t scared of the predators. So they were just there basically waiting because they were chilling out because they were drugged.
This is really, really important. People need to think about this. If it’s affecting the fish, it’s affecting us too. You’re being drugged. And like I said, consent is not being given. You’re consuming these things and you don’t know if the toxicity, but also it’s affecting your mental health. You have a right to know what’s coming into your body. Fish were so equally affected. Go ahead.
DEBRA: I was thinking while you were talking that fluoride is another one. They intentionally put that in the water. It has a whole list of other health effects, but we don’t have any consent about that either. That’s something that we can filter out, but that fluoride is going into the environment as well from the wastewater.
That’s something nobody ever talks about. They talk about the health effects of fluoride, but we’re fluoridating all those fish too.
PAMELA SEEFELD: Well, we are. I think it’s really important that people realize – and there’s a common statement I said at the beginning of our talk here – that photodegradation, a lot of things in nature, if they’re not meant to be in the water, they will degradate in the presence of light. These drugs do not. That’s really important to know. That’s why the waste treatment products, they can’t use light and they can’t use other things to take it out. They have nothing to remove it.
DEBRA: Yeah, it just won’t biodegrade and it doesn’t biodegrade in our bodies and that’s why it makes us sick. Yeah, exactly.
Well, we need to go to break. wHen we come back we’ll talk about more drugs that are accumulating in our water supply and what we can take instead of these drugs, so as to be healthier ourselves and have a healthier environment. We’ll be right back.
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is Pamela Seefeld. She’s a registered pharmacist who prefers to dispense medicinal plants and other natural substances instead of prescription drugs. She’s here to tell us today about what we can do instead of taking prescription and over-the-counter drugs in order to solve whatever our health problems are without putting toxic drugs into the environment where they are accumulating and hurting aquatic life.
So Pamela, tell us more about different types of drugs that we can take instead.
PAMELA SEEFELD: All right, very good. So I’m going to focus on antibiotics for a minute because antibiotic resistance – and I still work in a hospital, so I can tell you that there’s big problem with resistance to antibiotics and having the good options for patients.
When people are on antibiotics – let’s just take an example like a sinus infection. The sinuses are very sequestered cavity and that’s why people that sinusitis, you keep going back and getting courses after courses of antibiotics and it doesn’t get any better.
There are certain infections in the body that just takes a long time to clear up. A lot of times, people have viral infections and they don’t need antibiotics at all. But what I will explain, let’s say you have a minor infection – I’m not talking about someone who has been in a car accident. They might need antibiotics because they have cuts. I’m talking about just routine stuff. You have sinus infection, you may have some bronchitis, you have a little cellulitis, some inflammation on the skin. In place of antibiotics or if you’ve been on antibiotics and they weren’t just responding, I’m a big fan of a plant called Andrographis Paniculata.
DEBRA: Can you spell that? Spell that, spell that.
PAMELA SEEFELD: Let me get the exact spelling here off the internet because I think people really should know about this. They haven’t used this plant before. Here we go, it’s A-N-D-R-O-G-R-A-P-H-I-S and the second word is, P-A-N-I-C-U-L-A-T-A, Andrographis Paniculata.
I use this almost exclusively. There’s a product from Cardiovascular Research called [inaudible 00:41:02] and that’s a medical version of this. I use this a lot. When someone comes to me and says, “Every time I travel, I get really sick… I’ve been two courses of antibiotics for my sinus infection and it’s just not getting any better,” what this particular plant does (and there’s a lot of clinical data behind it), it prevents cytokines or inflammatory components from feeding into the inflammation of the infection itself.
But what this does is it actually makes your white blood cells boost up and it goes after infections. So instead of taking an antibiotic, which they really are guessing and they don’t know which one’s going for what infection, they’re just like, “Oh, let’s just try this (most of them, they have no cultures), this particular plant is excellent alternative to medication because when you can take it – I usually recommend each capsule is like 500 milligrams. And so maybe two or three times a day, if you actually have an infection, you want to treat it.
But say you’re worried about getting sick, it’s flu season, it’s cold season, you get sick easily during certain times of the year, just take one or two a day just as a preventative, so you don’t get sick. But I use this routinely to treat urinary tract infection, sinus infections, bronchitis, where someone is just like, “I don’t want to be in the antibiotics,” or they’ve been at them and they just weren’t working. So this makes your own immune system go after the infection. That’s really what you want. You want to boost that up in an effective manner. And this is much different than taking vitamin C and taking [inaudible 00:42:20] and a bunch of other immune boosters. This acts like medicine.
I’m going to tell people they should really embrace this product. It works great.
DEBRA: Yes, yes. Well, I think it’s just that most people don’t know about it, but now they do.
PAMELA SEEFELD: The show is here to inform, right?
DEBRA: That’s right, we’re here to inform. I’ll just mention that if you’re having trouble finding this product and wherever you are, Pamela sells all these things that she’s taking about at her botanical pharmacy. You can just call them or you can go to a website, but they do orders over the phone.
So give the phone number again so that if people are interested in this product or anything else that we’re mentioning, she has all the correct brands that she’s been working with for over 25 years. She knows they work, she sees them working in her patients.
You can just give her a call and order tight over the phone. What’s your phone number again?
PAMELA SEEFELD: Yes, the number here of Botanical Resource is 727-442-4955. That’s 727-442-4955. And as Debra had said, the consultation’s free. We do keep a charge [inaudible 00:43:31]. So if you want to have a quick call on the phone, you have an infection that you want to address or any other prescription medications you want to address, I can do it over the telephone. We just mail things out. I’d say 90% of my business is mail out. We do a lot of the work right over the telephone.
DEBRA: Yes, yes. And if this sound like, “Well, how can this work? It’s not a drug,” it never hurts to try. I always say these products don’t cost very much compared to drugs and you can save a lot of money if you find that they work for you and the only way to find out if it works is just try it. If it doesn’t, you only lost very little.
We still have about six minutes for the show so give us another alternative.
PAMELA SEEFELD: Okay, for medication, if people are taking the betablockers specifically, people are taking medication for hypertension –
Hypertension is a pretty common problem. I use some homeopathics that have cardiac glycosides. And then there are homeopathics that have hawthorne in them. And if we take that protego complexes, what I normally use, if you take that probably once or twice a day, normally it will lower the bottom number of the blood pressure, the diastolic blood pressure. It will lower at about 20 points.
So if people were trying to transition off their prescriptions for their hypertension and they’re looking for alternatives, also, time-released vitamin C, 1500 milligrams of a 12-hour release vitamin C twice a day will lower the top number of the blood pressure, the systolic blood pressure about 20 points as well. So a lot of times, people are like, “I don’t want medications anymore,” just taking those two simple things for about four or five days, you see a nice reduction of the blood pressure and it’s pretty consistent.
So there are really effective things. The data is there that really can bring the blood pressure down without taking the betablockers in all the different medications that they have for that. So that’s another thing that’s very, very effective.
DEBRA: Good. Give us another one.
PAMELA SEEFELD: Don’t forget about cholesterol medicines. If you’ve got everybody running around taking statin medication, you can use probably cosanol, which is really good. Red rice yeast works really very good.
And in a lot of people too who are taking this maybe in turn to get the triglycerides down, fish oil brings down your triglycerides 30% every month just taking Omega-3’s. So that’s an excellent alternative.
And don’t forget too, we were talking about the anxiety medications, the benzodiazepines, passion flower is an excellent, excellent, alternative to benzodiazapines because it works on the same receptor, but there’s no tolerance and dependence. They don’t become addicted to it. It has very, very good outcomes. And normally, we use here prescription quality in the label. It’s very strong. I used that to transition people off of the benzodiazapines and quite effectively. So that’s an excellent, excellent alternative too.
I can tell you too about estrogen.
DEBRA: Okay, tell us about estrogen. Yeah, keep going.
PAMELA SEEFELD: Estrogen, if you look at it, you can take wild yam, which works the same way as estrogen in the body. It does the same exact thing. It doesn’t have the side effects of taking an estrogen pill. That’s really important to know that. And also, taking wild yam will also help for the vaginal tissues as well.
So you don’t have to be in estrogen when you go into menopause and perimenopause and postmenopause. You have to realize, this estrogen, going into the water supply, is affecting the males in our culture a lot because they’re drinking this and they’re becoming feminized and their skin. They [inaudible 00:47:03], which is breast tissue. A lot of this can be related to the estrogen in the water. And this is really a dangerous possibility.
So I want to reemphasize that these things store in the fat and you might want to use a detox product to take them out. I can’t say that enough times. Not only that too, when you use something like Body Anew, you end up losing some weight sometimes too because it’s taking it out of the fat and of course the fat is where you’re storing all these things. It’s a depot forming your body. You want to facilitate this going on.
If you do any kind of exercises at all, even if it’s just walking, it even moves things out even quicker. That’s what I like. I drink it when I’m exercising in the morning. I think that that’s the best thing. But even if you didn’t exercise at all, if you drink it over a course of several hours a day, it’s just going to keep pulling all these stuff out of your body. It’s very, very efficient. And the good part about it is you’re not in the bathroom, it’s not that kind of a detox.
DEBRA: Now, I take it every day. Pamela takes it every day. You’re even taking it for 15 years or something like that?
PAMELA SEEFELD: A long time. Yeah, a long time.
DEBRA: I take it every day and it’s just like an everyday support for your body in a slow, but sure way to start getting those toxics out. It’s totally comfortable. I have no discomfort from it at all. Our bodies just have so much more toxic stuff in them than just our normal body systems can handle. Our bodies just can’t handle it. Everybody needs to do something to detox and Body Anew is a good homeopathic way to do that.
Also, Zeolite is a good thing to take. But these different things, these different products actually work on different things. Zeolite is really, really good for heavy metals and Body Anew takes out some other things. And if you just do different things, sauna, all these things, put them all together, we could end up being a lot healthier.
So we’ve only got about a minute left. Any final thing you want to say about this?
PAMELA SEEFELD: Yeah, I just wanted to let people know that these are things you can control. You can’t control what’s in the water you’re drinking unless you can filter and stuff, but you’re exposed to these things periodically through the day and through your life, but it’s important to realize that these things can be carcinogenic, they can cause disruption of the endocrine system and disruption in your body and taking them out of the saunas, with exercise, but really, with Body Anew, trying to get rid of some of these fat-soluble chemicals, not only for today, but I would tell you to look ahead in the future when you’re elderly, you don’t want to have these chemicals hanging around and putting you at risk for these horrible diseases.
DEBRA: Right, thank you so much, Pamela. And again, give your phone number again, so that if people want to get any of these products, they can just call you directly.
PAMELA SEEFELD: Yes, please call me here at Botanical Resource at 727-442-4955.
DEBRA: Thank you. That’s all the time we have. You’ve been listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. Be well!
Dish Drying Rack
Question from Lauren Carter
Hi Debra,
I am a big fan of your site and have come here for lots of valuable information on many occasions.
I am looking for a dish rack and would prefer to find one that is plastic-free or mostly plastic-free—I have seen stainless steel ones, but they all say they are rust-resistant. I don’t want the item to rust but I am concerned about what they did to make it rust-resistant.
I also am having trouble finding a wood dish rack that is unfinished (so I can finish it myself with an organic oil) and I am concerned about bamboo because of the potential formaldehyde I have read it could contain. Do you have any suggestions that might work? Thanks so much!
Debra’s Answer
I personally use a wood rack. Mine appears to be unfinished. I think the last one I bought was from IKEA.
I don’t think there is formaldehyde in natural bamboo. There may be formaldehyde in bamboo flooring from glues and resins used, but I’m pretty sure you are not going to have formaldehyde in unfinised bamboo.
Readers, any suggestions?
New homes vs. Older homes
Question from Stacey Santoro
Hi Debra,
I am looking to find a better neighborhood for my family. I love our house, but our street is right off of a 4 lane, busy, fast moving street.
Our house was built in 1985, and it’s a pretty well built home. I also like that the bedrooms have no ceiling lights so I assume this means less wiring or lower EMF’s (but I really have no idea if I’m correct about that). Unfortunately we do have oil heat, and abut a private golf course, but other than that, I’m happy with the house.
When looking at other homes, does the age of the home matter? I found one that is the ideal location, however, it is 2 years older than my house (1983) and I wonder if I should not look at homes older than mine. Do I need to worry about pipes, older fixtures, etc., with older homes (possibly more lead, etc.)? I also worry about maintenance costs.
I thought homes built in the 1980s would be safe from lead paint at least, but I mostly see, “lead paint: unknown,” on the homes’ MLS/listing sheets even for my home and others built in the 1980’s. I also found another home in a lovely neighborhood that was built in 1994, which clearly states there is no lead paint. This home also has gas heat. So, what is important when looking at houses?
Of course my father states that older homes are better because they are built with better materials…I don’t know! I just want the safest house for my small children!
Thanks so much, again!
Debra’s Answer
This is a tough question because there are pros and cons regarding toxics in both older and newer homes.
I generally opt for the older home because they are better built and the problems are easier to fix. The hours I have lived in for the past 14 years was built in 1940.
The main problems with older homes are lead paint and gas heat, and sometimes mold. The benefits are good construction, it’s been around for a long time so materials are aired out, real hardwood floors, wood or old plywood cabinets in kitchen and bath.
In my current house, gas heat is not an issue because I live in Florida. We have a unit with an air conditioner and heat pump. There is a small amount of lead paint on the exterior window frames. But I would rather fix a lead paint problem than the problems of new houses.
New houses are just very poorly built. The contain a lot of particleboard in hidden places that reek formaldehyde. It’s in cabinets, subflooring, inside doors…to fix a particleboard house means ripping out almost the entire interior.
When I lived in California, my ideal time period for a house was the 1960’s. These houses still had hardwood floors, but had electric heat instead of gas. I don’t know if that holds true elsewhere.
If you don’t want gas heat, you can always remove it and install whatever you want. It’s just a lot more difficult to remove all the particleboard.
Old houses can require more repair than newer ones, but once you’ve made the repair you have a home that will last. Newer constrution is just not well built.
