Art | Resources
Finding Organic Foods at Affordable Prices
Question from MaryLou Flake
Hi Debra,
I just want to thank you for sharing, I too have gout and fibromyalgia and arthritis they are coming onto thinking it rheumatoid. I am worried the next thing they will be saying is MS. I am trying to use diet to reduce inflammation and head off some of these symptoms and episodes. My husband receives our only income from disability due to seizures and back injury and it is imperative I stay within a food budget. Could you perhaps address the issue of finding organic foods at affordable cost? Thank You for sharing your journey with us.
Debra’s Answer
I’m going to give you a whole spectrum of answer, starting with the easiest and ending with what costs the least money.
First, if what you are looking for are organic packaged foods, then try Trader Joes. They don’t sell online but they are opening stores all over the country now. When I lived in California (where the chain started), they were always the hottest store. Everyone loves Trader Joe’s. They have a lot of fresh and frozen prepared entrees and packaged foods and packaged ingredients, some fresh ingredients, too. A lot of what they sell is organic. But the great thing that everyone loves is the prices are very low compared to natural food stores. I used to shop there a lot when I lived in California, now my closest Trader Joe’s is about 15 miles away. It’s the kind of store people drive to once a month if it’s not near by, and stock up.
Online Thrive Market has 3000+ healthy, natural products, always 35-50% off, delivered free to your door. You get 15% off your first order. You cans search by a variety of different choices such as manufacturer, special diets, made by hand, sourced direct from farmers, certified organic etc. It’s all packaged products you would find at any natural food store, they just cost less. Also personal care products and household cleaners, remedies and supplements. You have to register to look at the site (but it’s free), then with your first purchase you start a fress 30-day trial membership. See how much you save, cancel at any time. At the end of the 30 days, it’s $59.95 to shop at Thrive Market for a year, but the idea is you should save much more than that.
I don’t shop at either of those places because I don’t buy much packaged food.
You can immediately cut your food bill when you buy only fresh ingredients and prepare them yourself at home. Even if you shopped at Whole Foods (the most expensive place to buy organic food) you would still reduce your food bill by purchasing only fresh ingredients. And you will be eating the highest quality food. I just continue to be amazed at the ingredients in packeged foods sold at natural food stores. Even some packaged foods that have basic organic ingredients then have processed salt and flavoring ingredients to make them edible. It’s much better to learn how to cook.
Now once you are in the zone of preparing food yourself from fresh ingredients, here are some options.
Look for a local, independent natural food store. Their prices are often less than Whole Foods.
Shop at your local farmer’s market. Very good prices on local organic food and you can meet the farmers.
Join a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) program, where you buy a share in a farm and then get a weekly share of the harvest. These farms often let you work at the farm too and participate in harvesting and sorting and delivering the harvest. You get a variety of foods and learn new foods you might not know, but come to love. I loved my year eating out of my CSA basket when I lived in California. I wish there was one here where I live in Florida.
Grow your own. Seeds cost only pennies and gardening is great exercise. Nothing tastes better than food foraged straight from your own garden.
Toxic Chemicals and Autistic Children
Today my guest is Kim Spencer, Co-Founder and Vice President of Public Relations at The Thinking Moms’ Revolution. We’ll be talking about how mercury in vaccines and other toxic chemicals can contribute to autism and what she did to reverse his autism. Kim is a graduate of The University of Georgia and worked in Television, Telecommunications and Public Relations before her first child was diagnosed with autism at the age of 2 1/2. After researching his condition, she discovered his autism symptoms stemmed from autoimmune issues exacerbated by his childhood vaccines. Through treatment for vaccine injury, mercury toxicity and PANDAS, his condition has dramatically improved and he is fully included in 8th grade. Since his diagnosis, Kim has been an advocate and activist in the autism community. She has spoken at the CDC, appeared in many media stories, worked as a patient coordinator and autism advocate at her son’s pediatrician’s office. The Thinking Moms’ Revolution began when a group of twenty-three moms (and one awesome dad) from around the world got together online to figure out how to help their children with developmental disabilities. Suspecting that some of the main causes might be overused medicines, vaccinations, environmental toxins, and processed foods, they began a mission to help reverse the effects. And now they are a thriving organization offering much-needed information to parents. http://thinkingmomsrevolution.com
TOXIC FREE TALK RADIO
Toxic Chemicals and Autistic Children
Host: Debra Lynn Dadd
Guest: Kim Spencer
Date of Broadcast: February 26, 2015
DEBRA: Hi. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. This is Toxic Free Talk Radio where we talk about how to thrive in a toxic world and live toxic-free.
It’s Thursday, February 26, 2015. We have a topic today that we haven’t talked about before on this show, which is toxic chemicals and how they affect autistic children or maybe cause autism. Anyway, there is a connection between these two.
This is something that I’ve been hearing about for many years. But I haven’t really done the research about connecting them and have all the data to be able to talk to you about it or write about it.
Today, my guest is the Co-Founder and Vice President of Public Relations for an organization called Thinking Moms’ Revolution. This is a group of people who got together because their children were autistic and they wanted to figure out what was causing it and what they could do to improve their children.
So she’s going to talk to us today about her experience helping her son improve from being autistic by, among other things, removing toxic chemicals from his life. Her name is Kim Spencer.
Hi, Kim.
KIM SPENCER: Debra, how are you?
DEBRA: I’m good. How are you?
KIM SPENCER: I’m great. Thank you for having me.
DEBRA: Thank you for being here. Let’s just start with your story. What happened? How did you find out that your son was autistic? And tell us about the beginning of Thinking Moms’ Revolution.
KIM SPENCER: Well, my son is now 14. He is now in eighth grade class.
When he was born (first child, first grandchild), he had a pretty normal toddlerhood, but there were some things that just increasingly got concerning – not concerning enough because we just didn’t know what we were seeing until he was about two and a half. He was not putting words together. He had a lot of tantrums and some diarrhea. He filled diapers 14 times a day, just some odd things that just were not right.
No one pointed it out to me until we saw a friend at the pool. She saw one of his tantrums where he could wiggle himself out of my arms. He basically sent me to the chiropractor in no time at two years old. She said at two years, a child should put two words together. At three, he should put three words together. She had been a speech therapist in a former life before she was a mommy.
At that point, I thought that’s just a basic rule. At this point, I now know my 18 month old daughter has spoken a paragraph. So that was a very, very conservative way to look for children with issues.
So I went by my pediatrician’s suggestion to ask another professional speech therapist, one that was working. And within 15 minutes, she said that my son had PDD, which is pervasive developmental disorder,
It didn’t take me long before I got the computer (because I had no idea what she was talking about) to look that up and realize that it’s just another name for autism. At that point, that was just terrifying to me. All I knew was the movie Rain Man. That was all I knew.
Over time, I just really started delving in to what was out there on the computer to see what people were doing about this and what was going on here and what this was all about.
DEBRA: Let me interrupt you for a minute. So could you just explain to us what exactly autism is? I think that a lot of people have heard the word, but don’t really know what it is physically.
KIM SPENCER: Yeah. Technically and what the mainstream medical world would say, it’s a check list of behaviors. If you have certain number, say 6 out of 12 of these behaviors, you can qualify for a diagnosis of autism.It would be communication issues, speech issues, those kinds of things, behavioral and just not connecting with the world.
Over my years of experience with my own son and grandson, it’s really more of a medical diagnosis from what we are finding and what is helping our children. Behavioral therapists and therapies can go so far. But when medical issues are addressed, our children get miles and miles better.
For example, my son improves incredibly on just taking away certain foods, wheat and berry, out of his diet, he looked at me like he’s never seen me before about three days off of those foods. Later on in his life, we’ve discovered that pathogens were really an issue. His immune system was really just a mess. His body wasn’t handling pathogens like the typical child would.
For example, he would have these incredibly high numbers of strep in his blood, but not have a sore throat or a fever or a rash on his torso. He started biting himself and being aggressive and resistant. That was a sign that he had stress.
Many other children have displayed issues with yeast and with parasites, bacteria and viruses that lie latent in the body and cause a lot of trouble. So what we found is that a medical approach to what they call today as autism is often times a whole lot more successful than a psychological approach.
DEBRA: Yes, I would agree. Not having any experience with it, I would still agree.
So you got this organization started, Thinking Moms’ Revolution. How did that start? How did you get involved with that? Tell us about the history of that, what you’ve done and when it started.
KIM SPENCER: In the beginning of this, I found an underground of mommies and parents fighting this issue because we get very little help from mainstream and politically. We would connect through Yahoo! Groups. As technology advanced, we eventually found Facebook.
It was really easy just to find these other mothers that were networking with each other, sharing stories of what was working for their kids, sharing stories of what kind of testing and doctors there are out there that actually really truly know how to help and comparing some therapies, all those kinds of things – how to feed your kids when you know you can’t give them wheat and berry and oxalates anymore.
So eventually, through a couple of years of just networking on Facebook, a bunch of moms that I knew were all starting with a new practitioner. We all decided to make a little group to compare. That’s about him. We got to be really good friends. We started to really be just as much as of a social group and a group of sisters than we were mommies to these autistic kids. It was just an extra added layer of amazing friendship.
We all actually met in real life, a lot of us – not everyone, but a lot of us met in real life in an autism conference called Autism One that’s held every year in Chicago.
We all got ourselves there. While we were sitting around one night, one of our more industrious mommies decided that we should all write a chapter and put our stories in a book.
We decided on a deadline. Everybody that had their chapter in at the certain date, they were in. Everybody else, for privacy reasons or time reasons or just taking care of their children just bowed out. Twenty-four of us kind of filled up and shipped out from this little situation. We put our stories together in a book. And Skyhorse Publishing published our book last year.
Since then, we immediately discovered pretty quickly (like overnight) a blog and a Facebook page and a non-profit. All these things that we’ve done since then were going to help us get the message out, 0that there’s help and healing and hope for our kids. Even if your pediatrician or your speech therapists don’t know where that is, we can help you find that.
So it’s just gone from there. Our book is going to come out in paperback pretty soon. We’re planning a couple of other books.
We’re raising money for grants for families to use doctors that they might not otherwise be able to afford and buy things that they need for their kids that are very expensive like the monthly supplements or food or whatever it is they need. And we’re going from there. That’s a whirlwind.
DEBRA: That’s really wonderful. I totally understand. I totally understand and I’m very happy that you’re doing this because it’s a difficult thing and it’s strange. If you don’t know what’s happening, it’s so nice to have other people around that do know what’s happening and can be there to help.
We need to go to break, but we’ll be right back and talk more about this. You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. Today, my guest is Kim Spencer. She’s the Co-Founder and Vice President of Public Relations for the Thinking Moms’ Revolution. That’s ThinkingMomsRevolution.com. We’ll be right back.
= COMMERCIAL BREAK =
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is Kim Spencer, Co-Founder and Vice President of Public Relations at The Thinking Moms’ Revolution. Their website is ThinkingMomsRevolution.com.
So Kim, you’ve indicated already that there are a number of different environmental factors that can contribute to children being autistic. On this show, we’re particularly interested in the toxic chemicals aspect. Can you fill us in about that?
KIM SPENCER: Absolutely. So there’s so much that play here. We could just talk for hours, Debra.
The amount of scientific information that we found over the years of research and for me, the last 10 years is just there, being about how genes and environment are combining to really make a mess of America’s children. We really like to throw it out there. The Thinking Mom’s Revolution just want to make everybody stop in their tracks and think about this, that 54% of American children have a chronic illness. Why is that?
Some people like the claim that we’re looking and paying for the studies that we’re looking for genes and genes have to be at play here. So there’s got to be something that can be found that will just stop and change the world in that department.
So the argument again of that is that – I mean there’s no such thing as a genetic epidemic. What we’re dealing with here is this 54% of American children with chronic illness and 1 in 68, which is a low estimate for children with autism, 1 in 39 boys. It’s estimated to even increase to one in two about 2025 if we continue on this trajectory.
So if we can say no way can this just be a purely genetic issue, then of course the environmental trigger has to be there somewhere. But you look around and you think, “Oh, my gosh! What have we done?”
I remember in the early years of trying to get my son better, I swear I could just sit down and just write pages and pages and pages of things that could be concerning to his health and that can be contributing to making his “autism” worse.
So everything from toxic baby bottles to disposable diapers to chemicals in baby mattresses to what was in his formula – thank you very much, but aluminum. I breast fed for eight months, but when I switched server, there it was. What was in my body and my breast milk? Well, moms across America and other groups have discovered that tons of RoundUp is in our breast milk. So then you start talking about the foods and the GMOs and the pesticides and glyphosate, RoundUp and how that could be affecting our children.
And then on top of that, going back to genetic thing, we’re discovering that a lot of our kids, mommies and daddies too, have one genetic mutation, the MTHFR genes. It prohibits a good [inaudible 00:16:57] from being a good detoxer.
All these things are coming from new building materials, emissions from cars, your laundry detergent, your fabric softener, the fire retardant in our beddings and clothes. It’s just all over the place in our house. When all these things go in – and then we’ll add vaccines into that – when all these things go in, how do they get out? And the kids are not detoxing very well.
It becomes a very overwhelming situation, “How do I get my kids to detox better? How do I get the stress out of them? How do I protect them from all this stuff in my home without completely going broke and living in a bubble,” what do you do?
I did work from our pediatrician for about three years. I did a lot of intake on these autism advocates. I did a lot of intake from these families with children with these kinds of issues. I saw a lot of autoimmune diseases and bipolarity actually in the family histories. So that’s a part of it too, just in the family.
Here it comes with the genes again that your family is chronic non-detoxers. How does this play out in the body? Does it show up as autism? Does it show up as lupus? Does it show as bipolar disorder?
DEBRA: I want to ask you about something for a second, hold on. So you’re talking about the children and the families not being good detoxers. Can you give us more information about that, about bodies not detoxing well?
KIM SPENCER: Yes. That’s interesting. After 10 years, I finally started barking at this tree of these genes. There’s a company called 23andMe.com. You send them a little saliva and they send you back with a whole bunch of raw data. The FDA does not allow them anymore to interpret the results to you yet, but there are some websites out there that will interpret for you.
What’s showing up in so many of our family is this non-detoxing gene. Again, it’s MTHFR. It just is this thing sticking out there that’s just saying, “Okay, if you have a problem with this gene that’s mutated, then you are not going to detox, as well as the next person.”
For example, I’ll use my family as an example. When I worked at the doctor’s office, it just became quite clear that there are so many stories of families like mine. My mother has lupus. Her father had a mysterious disorder, lots of eczema, he had a glass eye, he became an alcoholic, was in pain a lot. Now, we look back on it, it makes sense that he probably had lupus too.
My husband’s mother developed epilepsy at age 30. And over the years from the drugs that she’s taken from that, she has also developed lupus. My husband’s father, his parents would take him to the beach when he was a kid in Florida from Illinois just to put him in the saltwater for the eczema all over his body.
My husband and I, weirdly enough, were the healthiest people in our whole, entire family. So we just didn’t really expect any cases. We just didn’t expect to have a child with any of these issues. It didn’t even cross our minds.
My sister has asthma and eczema. She was in the hospital for a week after the MMR. These things just pop up all over our family. This is just the common things that I’ve heard from the doctor’s office.
If we look into everybody’s genetic history, we could probably find this issue with this one gene having mutated with them too. But as we were saying, how does that play out in each individual’s body?
And in Thinking Moms’, on our blog, we started a blog series about this called Red Flag, what are some things that you need to look at in a family history or in a baby before you keep going on with vaccinating and even your typical everyday products from the grocery store for cleaning and et cetera?
DEBRA: We need to go to break. It’s very interesting, very interesting. We’re going to go to break and we’ll be right back. You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is Kim Spencer from Thinking Moms’ Revolution. That’s ThinkingMomsRevolution.com. We’ll be right back.
= COMMERCIAL BREAK =
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is Kim Spencer from The Thinking Moms’ Revolution. The website is ThinkingMomsRevolution.com. They have so much information on their website. They have a great blog. They actually put conferences too, online conferences. Actually, the way I found out about them is they contacted me to come speak at their upcoming conference.
Kim, do you want to tell us about that? I don’t think it’s on the website yet.
KIM SPENCER: Absolutely! We’re announcing any minute now. So everybody can just keep an eye on our blog.
In the last year, we have started doing these online conferences. As much as we love to go to conferences and see each other, it is a real huge strain on families with specials needs for children – financially and to find care for your kids. I mean, the plane tickets are just way too much. So we decided, with the wonder of the Internet, why not put them online?
So we have one coming up that’s called Your Life Detoxified. It is going to be really exciting. We’re so excited. We’re going to have a lot of people from different states and professions talking about how to detox by your home, how to detoxify your body and what different methods there are out there and different things you can try and learn about.
When we go live, with the link to register, we’ll have all our speakers in there. At this point, we’re still juggling that out all around. But just so everybody knows, this is March 27th. It will go on all day. You can watch it live. We give lots of things away and have lots of stories and have all kinds of fun stuff like that if you watch it live.
Also if you sign up at $40, you can watch at any time over the next year on your own time. You can just download it and watch it at your leisure. So that also helps. Instead of being tied to your computer all in one day, you can watch it when you can.
We also have, at this point, conferences on foods where to talk to Stephanie Seneff for example, the MIT researcher who was doing so much about autism and RoundUp and glyphosate. We’ve done energy medicine conference. We’ve done a homeopathy conference. We’re just getting the ball rolling, getting really a good amount of experience under our belts and how to pull this off without a hitch.
It’s been really exciting. We’ve been really excited with the turn-out and with how everything is gone and how easy it is to present all this information to families on the comfort of their homes. So yeah, we’re excited.
DEBRA: I’ll have that information on my website as well. It will especially be on the page for this show at ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com.
KIM SPENCER: Great!
DEBRA: So let’s talk about what you’ve done, what are your successful actions that you’ve done and how they’ve helped your son and some other stories about children being helped by making these changes.
KIM SPENCER: Was it diet change or just health in general?
DEBRA: Diet changes, but also particularly, what are some things that you…
KIM SPENCER: Detox?
DEBRA: With detoxing, things you remove from your home, what kinds of detox methods have you used on his body, things like that? How have you changed the whole scene for him?
KIM SPENCER: Absolutely, yeah. Cleaning up the diet is monstrously huge, even bigger than I realized in the beginning when I removed wheat and berry out of Patrick’s diet.
I wasn’t even getting the whole big picture that everything needed to be really clean and pristine and as local and fresh and organic and as often as I could possibly make it. It’s such a big job, just the food aspect of this.
And there are so many different diets and so many different categories of foods that can cause behaviors in autistic children. Not just taking away wheat and berry, but we talk about the sugar. We talk about the oxalates. We talk about salicylates. We talk about so many different categories of foods that can be a problem.
So that’s just all one big thing on its own. And then on top of that, you’re trying to feed the rest of your family and feed yourself. It isn’t easy, but it’s easier than it was 10 years ago to go to a grocery store and find the ingredients you need for stuff like this.
And then on top of that…
DEBRA: Well, tell me what – I’m on a pretty similar diet, but for different reasons. Over the years, I’ve been looking at diet for a long time. I keep eliminating things and eliminating things. Basically what does your son eat?
KIM SPENCER: What are some – I’m sorry.
DEBRA: What are some of the foods that he eats? What is he eating today?
KIM SPENCER: Oh, the foods he can eat. Back in the day, we were milling our own flour from the organic rice, tapioca, beans. We would mill the flour and make our own waffles and hide stuff in it like green powders or mashed up fruits and that kind of thing so that he couldn’t see anything in there.
We do eat meat, but we keep it local and grass-fed and all of that. Even with chicken, you need meat that’s vegetarian-fed. That’s also misleading. Of course, that means they’re eating corn, which could be GMO and could be crap. So we’re watching out for that.
We’re watching out for the sea foods. We live on the coast. So we’re making sure that we know the source from the area.
We also are participating in local farm bag program where they drop off local and organic stuff every week. And then the farmer’s market, we’re getting to know the owners of the health food stores. We’re just really networking within the community.
There are so many people here really trying getting at what you’re getting at and often times, for different reasons like what you’re saying.
I’m sure diet has been important for my health too because of inflammation and different kinds of stress issues and pain. I feel a pain in my wrist, it happens immediately, just the craziest things. So we all need to be paying attention to this stuff.
On top of the food, Patrick was also mercury-poisoned. Three of his vaccines had 25 micrograms of mercury in it. When we did a heavy metal test on him, we discovered that the mercury level was really high. We detoxed him through IV chelation through his pediatrician.
Also at the same time, we were treating him for mercury poisoning, we were also spending many hours in the hyperbaric chamber for oxygen flooding in the body, which in our scientific looking it up and everything, the idea behind it was to pull out some metals and then flood the body with oxygen to clean up the mess that was left behind. Even if the metals are gone, there’s still a lot of dysfunction in the body.
As time went on, we realized like we talked about before that Patrick had a huge problem with strep. So again, his immune system and his environment were preventing him from handling pathogens as it should. So we started working on the PANDAS is what it’s called, Pediatric Autoimmune Neurodegenerative Autoimmune Stress. PANDAS is the acronym.
DEBRA: We need to go to break, but you can continue when we get back.
KIM SPENCER: Okay.
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is Kim Spencer from the Thinking Moms’ Revolution. They’re at ThinkingMomsRevolution.com. There’s lots of information there at the website about natural things that you can do to help your child if they’re autistic.
We’ll be right back.
= COMMERCIAL BREAK =
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is Kim Spencer from the Thinking Moms’ Revolution, ThinkingMomsRevolution.com.
Kim, right before the break, you were talking about PANDAS. Tell us more about what that is.
KIM SPENCER: He has autoimmune issue. And the pathogen that’s in the body, they pick it up at school, they got it in vaccines, they got it from whoever (a recently vaccinated person). It goes into the body. And what we’re finding is that their bodies are not going to handle it like another person.
So as we were talking about before with the strep with my son, we’ve had this problem with clostridia before. Other people have this issue with any kind of virus, parasites, whatever. Pathogens are just wreaking havoc. You don’t really know they are there. Antibiotics aren’t really killing them, but they’re just chasing them back into the body.
And so what happened with my son is just this reoccurrence of incredibly high strep in his blood. We chased it back with antibiotics, and then it would come back. When it would come back, my sweet child would turn into an arm-biting, frame-breaking, hole in the wall maniac who would not sit down and do anything he was asked to do including homework or getting dressed or anything. It was just amazing night and day, Jekyll and Hyde situation.
We finally addressed it with homeopathy. We haven’t had [inaudible 00:40:26] in about five years, which has been great.
But we saw it so much at the pediatrician’s office that I was working at. When this started happening with my son, we keep hearing more and more proof of these kids with autism coming in all of a sudden with the sudden onset of really, really extreme, aggressive and resistant behaviors.
We just started saying, “Okay. Let’s just test them all for strep.” And there it was! The normal range would be within 100 to 200 and these kids would have these numbers of 700, 800, 900 of strep in their blood.
So at that point, I was working for a pediatrician, we were addressing it with antibiotics, but it was amazing how fast the symptoms would subside when the strep was chased back into the body.
It takes a lot of work and a lot of assistance to the immune system. A lot of different things can be tried to try to resolve this issue. It is definitely an autoimmune reaction to a pathogen.
Some doctors now are calling it PANS, Pediatric Autoimmune Neurodegenerative Syndrome. They’ve taken out the word strep because other pathogens really could be doing this just as usually as strep even if strep seems to be the most common at this point.
So anyway, it’s an interesting little side angle again to what’s going on with our kids. You’re looking at your food and you’re looking at your household toxins, you’re looking at these pathogens that could be an issue, you’re talking about your lack of detox ability from your genetic history. I mean, it just goes on and on with the things that we can talk about when it comes to what’s going on with our kids’ health today.
And I feel like I’ve been talking really fast. There’s a lot of this information out there. I’m really fast and being way too overwhelming for anyone who’s new to hearing this. So I apologize. But there’s just so much to it.
I’ve just seen so many…
DEBRA: There’s so much to it.
KIM SPENCER: … with so many kids in different ways.
There’s just no one – I wish there was one protocol. I wish there was one doctor that was getting it right 100% of the time. I wish essential oils would just fix it all, but it’s just not happening that way.
DEBRA: Well, we live in a world where there are so many exposures. I’ve been doing this, writing and researching about toxic chemicals for more than 30 years. I started because I got sick. What I really found was that it all comes down to the toxic chemical exposures that we have. Even though there are then other things that trigger symptoms, if we were just to rip out the toxic chemicals out of society and so we were not exposed to them any longer, a whole bunch of health problems would go away, just everything.
When I wrote my last book, I researched everything anew. And there are so much more information now than there has ever been. You can now associate every single health problem with exposure to toxic chemicals.
I know it’s a bold statement, but it’s true. It’s just true. You really can’t treat any illness or gain health without addressing the toxic chemicals. You just can’t. I wish that everybody would know this. I really applaud your organization for making it known in the realm of autism.
So we have about five minutes left. Now that you’ve given us a whole lot information really fast, why don’t you say something really slow for our listeners what you’d like them to take away from all of this that you’ve said?
I’ve just been scribbling notes here. I do make transcripts. So next week, we’re going to have a transcript. People who are interested can read about this more slowly. But what would you like them to know about toxic chemicals and autism?
KIM SPENCER: You made an excellent point when you’re talking about your own personal history. As I’ve gone through this in the autism community, I do have to say that there has been people like you that knew that they were sick and started looking for answers for themselves and really started seeing that it is in the environment, it’s in your grocery store and it is at the fast food places and there’s something you can do about it that’s really, really a lot of work and a lot of searching and digging for yourself.
But you guys are the ones that don’t have a dog in the fight, as we like to say, that don’t have the kids and have discovered this for yourself, but it’s the same across the board as it is for your health, as it is for my son that you guys are becoming our best and most amazing allies because first of all, you have a platform. Second of all, you’ve seen it in your own bodies, you’ve experienced it with your own health. What we’re doing with our kids is what you’ve done for yourself. You don’t have a dog in the fight that’s keeping you from 24/7 being able to spread the message and say, “I know how this feels. I know what these people are going through.”
For us in the autism mommy and parent community, that’s really amazing that people like you are joining us saying, “Uh-oh, we’ve been seeing this for years.” I mean, this is like the worst case scenario of what we’re talking about here just as if I was that toxic and I brought myself back, but I wasn’t and have autism. I did not stop from connecting to the world.
I mean, it might hurt, couldn’t figure it out and all that kind of stuff, but our kids in this generation is what’s really showing us that you were right and it’s only gotten worse. We need to buckle down and really, really start paying attention to this. It’s only getting worse, Debra. It’s really sad right now.
DEBRA: I totally agree with you. When I was a child, which is a long time ago. When I was a child, nobody even said the word autism. And we didn’t have all these commercials on televisions about kids with cancer. The amount of the condition of our physical health has gone down dramatically in my lifetime. And we, as individuals, need to do more than ever to make ourselves well.
You can’t take a drug for this. You can’t take a pill for it. It does nothing because if toxic chemicals are poisoning you on a continuous basis, 24 hours a day and you don’t do something about it, they’ll just continue to poison you.
KIM SPENCER: Yes. The drugs are the toxins themselves, exactly.
DEBRA: Yes. So it’s so important to be talking about these things. I really see – the thing that’s interesting to me is that it doesn’t matter what the illness is, but the causes are the same across the boards. And the solutions are the same.
KIM SPENCER: Yes. I agree with you 100%. Yeah. I mean a lot of times we don’t even need – like I’ll have friends that call me or acquaintances that approach us at Thinking Moms’ and say, “I need a diagnosis… where should I take my child? I think he has autism. I need this on a piece of paper.”
I just say to myself, “Why? Why do you need it?” You know what’s going on with your child. You see it with your eyes every day. Why do you need a label when you know what you need to do? You need to go home and really look at what you’re feeding, what you’re buying, what you’re putting into that kid’s body and find doctors that know what to do regardless of the title if it’s ADD or autism or this Oppositional Defiant Disorder, a new diagnosis.
It doesn’t matter. Your kid is toxic. You can do something about it without a psychologist writing on a piece of paper what the name of it is.
DEBRA: Yeah, that’s exactly right. That’s exactly right.
Well, we only just have about a minute left. Let’s give your website again, ThinkingMomsRevolution.com. Do you want to just say something about what people can find there?
KIM SPENCER: Absolutely. So you can find our book on Amazon and Barnes & Noble. We will be hosting a lounge at Autism One in Chicago on Memorial Day weekend.
We are also around the country, hosting showings of Trace Amounts, which is a documentary about mercury and medicine. We are putting out a survival guide pretty soon and a grandparents’ book, a group of grandparent stories.
We’d love to have everyone join us on our Detoxifying Conference on March 27th. The details of that will be on our website at ThinkingMomsRevolution.com very soon.
And we have a lot of stuff on Facebook, although we’re thinking about migrating over to a new more private platform called [inaudible 00:49:46].
So look for us in all those places. We’re everywhere. We want to be everywhere and we want to help.
DEBRA: Great. Thank you so much, Kim. Again, it’s ThinkingMomsRevolution.com. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. You’ve been listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. Be well!
Different Types of Detox
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. We’ll be talking about why it’s so important to detox your body and three different types of detox: liquid zeolite, homeopathic remedies, and sauna. Each method of detox works in different ways in your body and removes different substances, so it’s important to choose the right one. 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
- How to Protect the Environment from Pharmaceutical Pollution by Using Natural Medicinals
- Hidden Toxic Dangers in Common Dietary Supplements
- See More Clearly with Natural Remedies
- Hidden Mental Health Dangers in Common Drugs
- 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
Different Types of Detox
Host: Debra Lynn Dadd
Guest: Pamela Seefeld
Date of Broadcast: February 25, 2015
DEBRA: Hi. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. This is Toxic Free Talk Radio where we talk about how to thrive in a toxic word and live toxic-free.
It is Wednesday, February 25, 2015. Today, we’re going to be talking about detox. We talk about detox a lot, but this whole show is going to be about different ways that you can detox your body.
My guest today is Pamela Seefeld. She’s a registered pharmacist. She prefers to dispense medicinal plants and other natural substances, instead of prescription drugs.
She and I both have a lot of experience with detox, but from different viewpoints. So we’re each going to talk about things that we’ve done and things that we recommend so that you can see the variety of options that you have and see that it’s not just a single detox.
You might want to do different kinds of detox. You want to do a specific kind of detox to remove what you need to remove from your body or you might want to be supporting your detox organs.
There are a lot of things that we can do to help your body, help get those toxic chemicals out of your body. That’s the subject of today’s show.
Hi, Pamela.
PAMELA SEEFELD: Hey, it’s great to be here.
DEBRA: Thank you. It’s great to have you again.
Now, Pamela has so much great information to share with us that I have her on every other Wednesday. Today is Wednesday, so her next show would be two weeks from now.
You can also go to ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com and take a look at her past shows. She has just so much information about drugs and their health effects and what you can do instead of taking drugs so that your body can be healthy, instead of just doing something about your symptoms.
So Pamela, let’s start off. I know that you do things to detox. Why don’t you give us a little overview?
First of all, out of all the possible subjects in the world, how did you come across the idea of detoxing for health? How do you incorporate that in your daily life?
PAMELA SEEFELD: Okay. That’s a really good question. So detox, there can be two ways of looking at it.
A lot of people that are working in health food stores or in the natural nutrition, they use detox products that they think are going to help them. The majority of the products that you’re going to find are going to contain anthraquinone glycosides, which are cascara, senna, rhubarb. These things act as laxatives. They’re habit-forming.
I want people just to – before we even start defining detox in my own personal views about a lot of that, that’s not necessarily detox. If you’re in the bathroom pooping a lot, that’s not great. People come here to meet me and they’re like, “I want to detox.” If I start describing these things that they’re looking for, I’m like, “That’s not really detox, but that’s a bowel cleanse.” That’s something completely different because sometimes, people are not moving their bowels regularly or whatever the circumstances may be.
So it’s important to realize that when we’re talking about detox today, we’re not going to be talking about necessarily going to the bathroom and pooping a lot, and I’m going to give you a bunch of laxatives. That’s not what detox really is.
DEBRA: Yeah. That’s not what we’re going to talk about. We’re not going to talk about…
PAMELA SEEFELD: And I want people to know that because the people who are listening to the show are going to be like, “Oh, okay. I’m going to the bathroom.” That’s not really what it is about.
What we’re looking for in the personal and physical level in the body is that we know that the body, because of the fat soluble pesticides and chemicals that we consume, our subcutaneous fat and the fats around our organs, but most specifically a problematic is the subcutaneous fat (the fat right underneath your skin), this fat is a depot storage location for pesticides, heavy metals. Especially, we’re worried about fat soluble chemicals.
These people that actually spray lawns and things like, people that use RoundUp, people walking by the golf course, you take a walk with your dog at night, buying non-organic produce and not washing it properly, all these things – and even people that are really so contained in their diet, they still get exposed to things just environmentally.
DEBRA: Just environmentally, that’s right.
PAMELA SEEFELD: Exactly.
DEBRA: I am probably living in the most nontoxic house in the world and I have for years. But as soon as you walk outside your perfect house, you’re going to be exposed to things.
So I do things to detox because living in today’s world, you cannot avoid chemicals and have a normal life. You just cannot avoid them 100%.
PAMELA SEEFELD: You go to a grocery store, you go shopping. They spray these places. That’s why you don’t see any bugs.
You have to think about it in a logical sense. It’s not like we have to be scared of this. We have to be embracing it. We have to understand it and move forward.
What I look at it is there are several pinnacles of detox and how to have them. We can just describe each one in great detail.
But what we want to do is we want to use something as a facilitator or some supplement. We want to use some kind of activity, whether it would be exercise or even if it’s doing house work, but ideally something that you’re working up a little bit of a sweat. And then we want to look at maybe even incorporating saunas. I’m a big advocate of that.
So there are different ways you can do that. These things can all work together or they can work singly on their own.
So for me, what I tend to do everyday is I do the Body Anew, which is a homeopathic detox that’s not laxative.
DEBRA: We’ll talk more about that later. You can give lots of details later. But just give an overview now.
PAMELA SEEFELD: Correct. So let’s talk a little bit about these different things that we can do. And let’s just talk from the very beginning what we are looking at as far as chemicals.
There are water soluble and fat soluble chemicals. Water soluble chemicals will go out in the urine and they won’t be hanging around.
The fat soluble chemicals are the ones that cause cancer, the ones that turn on genes that cause dementia, Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, things that we do not want. We now know that the pesticides that are fat soluble are very damaging to the pancreas and might lead to type 2 diabetes.
So all of these things incorporated, looking at our body, we need to pull out these fat soluble chemicals. The body is very inefficient at removing them.
DEBRA: That’s right.
PAMELA SEEFELD: So that’s really the way we need to look at it. You need to tell people that it’s not about, “Okay. I want you to be in the bathroom. I want you to be sweating in the sun all day.”
It’s about knowing that these chemicals and your chemical load as you get older and you keep storing more and more of these chemicals in your subcutaneous fat, you have a greater risk of cancer. That’s why you see a higher propensity of cancers in older people because they stored.
DEBRA: There’s a word for this. The Centers for Disease Control calls this body burden. They actually measure it. There are reports.
You can go to Centers for Disease Control website. In fact, I’ll put the link to this on the page for this show. You can go and see what they tested, the chemicals that they found in people’s body.
The only way to get that out – I used to think that if I just avoided toxic chemicals that my body would then not have so much overload and it would work better and it would get rid of the overload. But it’s just too much especially if you’ve been exposed for many, many years throughout your lifetime.
You do have this build-up in your body. It needs to be removed in order for you to be healthy. It’s just the reality of today’s world.
PAMELA SEEFELD: Exactly. We know that removing these things and measuring body burden is really important. It’s a good point that you brought up.
Our bodies will not take the stuff out by itself. The net amount that goes when it’s presented – let me explain this.
When it’s first presented to the liver, it’s a fat soluble chemical. Some of it does get bio-transformed. It’s called glucuronidation and conjugation. And the body takes these functional groups. That’s what the liver does.
And the enzymes add carbohydrates or a CH3 group onto this chemical. It basically mixes the water soluble. It changes it and it goes up in the urine. That’s what the liver does. That’s its process.
So let’s say there’s a net amount of 20%. Just to take a figure of one particular chemical, chemical A because each one is different. And 20% of it has a residual amount left in the body.
Once it’s passed to the liver, the body has to do something with it. So what it does is it stores it in the fat. That’s what the problem is, that 20% that didn’t get metabolized and didn’t leave. That’s where the real issues are facing people.
I tell people when I see them – they have cancer and they come to me. I’m like, “Look. We need to get the chemicals out that caused the cancer in the first place.” That’s really what it’s all about. You need to go back to the very beginning.
Those things are still around. That’s really scary for people that have had cancer.
DEBRA: I totally agree with you. It’s just logical to me that if you put things in your body that cause cancer and you have them build up, then eventually that’s what is going to happen. If you remove those things from your body, then there isn’t something there that will cause cancer.
If cancer is a concern, detox is a big deal about ways to prevent that. But just for anybody, if you just want to be healthy. Everybody needs to this. I mean we’re just too overloaded. If you want to be healthy, you need to detox.
So we need to go to break. When we come back, we’re going to talk about specific kinds of detox and about our detox systems because I want everybody to understand that our bodies do have a detoxification system. It’s at work 24 hours a day.
I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. This is Toxic Free Talk Radio. My guest today is Pamela Seefeld. She’s a registered pharmacist who dispenses medicinal plants and other natural substances instead of prescription drugs. We’ll be right back.
= COMMERCIAL BREAK =
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 dispenses medicinal plants instead of drugs.
There’s so much to talk about on this subject. Before we get into it, I want you all to know that you can call Pamela and she will help you choose the right products for you. She’s very happy to give you phone consultation for free.
You can call about yourself, your family and your pets. She helps people get off prescription drugs. She helps people choose natural solutions to best treat whatever is going on with their body.
Pamela. So why don’t you give your phone number?
PAMELA SEEFELD: Yes. You can reach me at my pharmacy. It’s (727) 442-4955. That’s (727) 442-4955.
I would be greatly honored to help you and your family with any questions you might have, detox or otherwise. I handle all medical issues.
DEBRA: She’s really good, very well regarded in my community. She helps me a lot.
Before we actually start talking about the detoxing that we’re talking about today, would you just explain simply how our detox system works in our body?
PAMELA SEEFELD: Okay, good. So basically, the detox system in your body – there are several ways that things leave the body.
When you breathe things out, when you breathe out carbon dioxide, you might also breathe out chemicals as well.
A good example of that is when someone is intoxicated. They’d smell like alcohol in their breath. Actually, it doesn’t happen until about the second drink because of the fact that – it’s the metabolism.
Once it starts kicking over, it ends metabolism in the liver, and then you start breathing it out. I’m just trying to give people some ideas. So some things can come out volatilized in the breath.
Other things come out in the skin, especially heavy metals. That’s why saunas can be very important for that.
And other things that we’re really talking about and focusing on today, the fat soluble chemicals, the ones that we’re really concerned about because of all the disease-causing properties that they have. Those typically will be ingested either we know it or we don’t.
When they go into the stomach and they’re maybe down the food, then they get – immediately, the body takes this. When it goes through the blood stream and it gets absorbed, it gets to the liver.
Things go to the liver. And the liver is basically in our body to protect us against being stupid and ingesting poison. I just want to think about it that way. That’s what we really started doing this for.
When we were cavemen, we were eating things we shouldn’t eat. And the liver would take these poisons and change them and make them water soluble, and it leaves the body. That’s how the liver evolved.
So it’s a cleansing mechanism. And the liver is highly vascularized. It has a lot of blood vessels. You think about it. When you buy calf liver in the grocery store, it’s just all bloody.
So the liver contains the cytochrome P450. These enzymes are highly specialized. These enzymes are very, very smart. There are several different varieties of them. Actually drug metabolism, I specialize in that. I can tell you which drug is metabolizing, which enzyme.
But we’re talking about fat soluble chemicals. They come to the liver and the liver is like, “I got to do something with this.”
Remember we were talking about that net amount that might not be metabolized?
DEBRA: Yes.
PAMELA SEEFELD: Not all of it is going to be metabolized for each particular pesticide, chemical. In the general term, they call it xenobiotics, these general things, these chemicals we’re not supposed to be ingesting, but we do.
And some of it gets changed to water soluble chemicals. It goes out in our urine. We never even think twice about it. The rest of it goes and the body stores it in the fat. That’s what really happens. That’s what the problem is.
People are always concerned about the fish and the salmon and the tuna that they have mercury. You know what? They’re storing it because they’re big fish. They can hold these things for a long time. And they’re stored in the fat.
So it’s the same thing with us. We’re not much different than the fish.
DEBRA: And people are concerned about eating fish that have these pollutants in them. But our bodies have these pollutants in them.
PAMELA SEEFELD: We do the same thing. We store it. It’s the same thing.
DEBRA: Yeah. So one of the things that I think is really important is that people try to lose weight. When they start losing weight, it melts the fat. It puts these toxic chemicals right back in their body.
Instead of storing, they’re now running around in the blood stream.
PAMELA SEEFELD: That is very true. I’ll tell you something.
This transient and very significant increase in fat soluble chemicals launching into the blood stream, I have seen this for people who have lost great amounts of weight with very strict diet. Then they have a breast cancer diagnosis.
I’m not saying there’s a correlation. I’m saying it’s highly suspect. I told different weight loss doctors here in the area that I meet at various charity events and so forth, that you’re doing a disfavor to your client.
I understand. I’m okay with people losing a lot of weight. This is a person decision of theirs. I’m okay with that. But they need to be on a detox mechanism along with that so that they don’t get diagnosed for cancer.
DEBRA: Absolutely.
PAMELA SEEFELD: It’s really, really shameful to give people crash diets and then not tell them about the chemical situations that can arise from all of these being dumped into the bloodstream.
The liver can’t handle it. It eventually has a chance to go turn on genes that cause cancer. It’s a really, really dangerous situation.
DEBRA: It is. And it’s not spoken about enough within the weight loss industry and community. It’s a very dangerous thing.
Also, there’s the kidney as part of our detox system too.
PAMELA SEEFELD: The kidneys are really to flush out things. Let me explain something interesting about the kidneys.
The kidneys are most efficient while you’re sleeping. The reason why you – this is really important for you to be able to understand just the physiology of the body. When you sleep and you lay down, your kidneys are cleaning out all the debris from the daytime that it hasn’t already taken care of.
Your center of gravity changes. A lot of the fluids in your body, they have a tendency to go towards the kidneys. This is the dynamics of a person.
So the water with all the solutes and these things that are dissolved in there goes to the kidneys. That’s why a lot of times people have to keep getting up and going to the bathroom at night.
You feel like when you first get up in the morning, you’ll have to go to potty. The reason why that is – maybe sometimes, people in the middle of the night have to go to the restroom – is because all the water in your body pretty much is going to the center of gravity, which is your kidney, your back. So that’s your lowest point.
So this is a way of removing things out. But the kidneys will not be removing out fat soluble chemicals. They will only be removing out water soluble chemicals. The water soluble ones really don’t have propensity to cause cancer and some of the dangerous things that we were describing.
The kidneys are a good mechanism to get rid of these things, but I really want to focus on these fat soluble chemicals too and also the GI tract, removing these things out that are causative agents.
So this is why I really think – and this is my personal opinion, but I really think just from a physiology standpoint, people should embrace this.
I have done detox probably 15 years straight. I don’t take any time off a bit. I took maybe – about two years ago, I took a few days off because I thought maybe I’d give myself a break. I shouldn’t be doing it consistently. I was really tired. I worked 12 hours a day.
I could tell the difference in my normal body habit. So then I decided that this is just a long-term solution. This is what I’m going to do first thing in the morning.
DEBRA: Yes. We’re going to find out what Pamela does.
I’ve said this before when I’ve been interviewing her, but Pamela is the healthiest looking person I’ve ever met. She just glows with health. This is what you get after 15 years of detox.
You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is Pamela Seefeld, registered pharmacist who dispenses plants rather than drugs.
We’ll be right back.
= COMMERCIAL BREAK =
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is Pamela Seefeld, registered pharmacist who dispenses medicinal plants and other natural substances instead of prescription drugs.
Pamela, give us your phone number again. Remember listeners that you can call Pamela. She’s very happy to talk to you and help you figure out which are the right natural substances to take for your particular physical condition regardless of what it is.
Pamela, what’s your number?
PAMELA SEEFELD: My phone number here is (727) 442-4955. Like I said previously, I would really be honored and happy to help you and your family if you had any questions about what supplements you’re currently taking or if you would like to transition off of any of your prescriptions so I can give you guidance in those directions.
DEBRA: Thank you. Before Pamela tells us about her detox, I’m going to just talk about for a minute about what I do to detox.
As I said earlier, I spent many years thinking that my body would just do it by itself if I reduce my toxic chemical exposure. But then a few years ago, my nutritionist gave me – many of you who listen all the time know that I say this all the time.
My nutritionist gave me liquid zeolite. When I first started taking that, it made a difference for me in the first week.
The first e-mail that I got from one of my readers about using this product was when she got it and she gave it to her father who was bedridden. Then all of a sudden, after about five days, he got up and out of bed, walked out into the kitchen and announced to everybody that he was going to the donut store.
This is bedridden father. He got out of bed and went for a walk to the donut store. And I thought, “Well, that’s just about what my experience is.”
The one thing that people say – they write to me and after about a week, they say, “I feel so euphoric.” They all use that word. I understand because I now call this zeolite euphoria.
I think that what is happening is it specifically works to remove heavy metals first and radiation. These are things that all of us have in our bodies. It’s very effective with that.
So it just goes into your body as a little particle, zeolite, as a natural mineral. You can take it in drops or in a spray. It goes in your body, and it just starts collecting these heavy metals and radiation.
After about a week, it’s removed enough that you just feel like something has lifted off of your body. That’s where I think this euphoria comes from.
Now of course, you don’t feel euphoric all the time. I’ve been taking it for three years or something like that.
But I just take it everyday because everyday, I’m going out in the world and breathing car exhaust and being exposed to radiation and all of these things that you can’t avoid when you leave your house. I just know that I’m protected. I’m going to take it for the rest of my life.
I also take other things. We’re going to be talking about saunas. I’ve done saunas. But everyday, I take a homeopathic remedy that Pamela takes everyday. She gave it to me. It’s called Body Anew.
So tell us about Body Anew because I don’t necessarily see the same. I don’t feel better in the same way that I felt when I started taking zeolite. But I know that it’s working to strengthen my body. I think it makes a big difference for me.
So tell us about how that works.
PAMELA SEEFELD: Yes. So the Body Anew – and that’s the best support that I’ve been using for about 15 years. It has three bottles.
One bottle works on the GI tract. It’s not laxative, so you’re not in the bathroom. It does work on the GI tract. One works on the lymph gland, which is a 40% increase in the lymphatic drainage. And the other one works on the liver. It regulates the glucuronidation and conjugation, the things that I was describing earlier as far as how it works in the liver.
So these three bottles, you just drop – the prescription amount or the dose – the effective amount is 30 drops of each bottle. But I don’t start people with that. In fact, my daily maintenance dose is 10. We would want to start people with 10 drops of each bottle and then work up to 30 within a week or two.
If someone has cancer or you want to treat something that’s a severe illness, then we definitely want to start them up at a higher dose right away pretty much. But the average person, they start with 10.
What I like about it is – I was talking about the dynamics of the kidney when we get up in the morning. You have to think about it. In the morning, we’re starting fresh. The kidneys have done their assignments for the evening.
What I do every morning, my personal regiment that I really enjoy – the first thing I have when I get up in the morning is I squeeze a fresh lime. And I put it in water and drink it. I think that it just alkalinizes the body. If you try doing that, it’s just very refreshing. You feel great.
Then I take the Body Anew. I put 10 drops of each bottle. I put it into a water bottle. I am a fan of doing an alkaline booster because that makes the detox work even better.
So the normal pH of your water is going to be between three and a half and seven and a half, 7.8 or something like that. That’s the Zephyrhills water, the tap water, these kinds of things. People have special bottled water. Maybe you have a special water filter. That’s the pH of most of those waters.
Even Kangen Water goes up to nine. Alkalife goes to 13. That’s the highest pH I found for any product. I’ve tried several different ones.
So doing these and sipping it while I work out – I mean I’m an exercise fanatic. I don’t expect that of everybody, but I do 30 miles everyday on a stationary bike.
DEBRA: Wow.
PAMELA SEEFELD: Yeah, 30 miles. It’s a little over an hour. It’s a long time. I guess that I’m a cardio junkie, but that’s okay. That’s okay, right?
DEBRA: That’s okay.
PAMELA SEEFELD: Yeah, I know. So that’s my routine. I’m not expecting you listeners to embrace that craziness, but it’s something that I really enjoy. It’s the highlight of my day.
And I do have a very large sauna at my house, the five-person sauna, but I only have it for myself. I’m lucky I’m all by myself. I don’t have anyone telling me where to spend my money.
It’s a big sauna. It’s very nice. I go in there probably two or three times a week. I heat up while I’m working out. But you don’t need to have all this fancy stuff. You can even be doing stuff while you’re on the yard or in the house.
Most of my patients, I have them drinking the Body Anew over a course of several hours a day. I only do it over an hour, but I’ve been doing it for long. That’s the reason why I really think that this is a very effective tool to removing the fat soluble chemicals that we’re talking about in the subcutaneous fat.
I also believe because of the fact that this localizes to the fat and takes these chemicals out, it kept my weight down significantly, regardless if I work out. This makes a big difference in people’s weight.
Most people I see who started that, they normally lose about 10 lbs. just from doing that. The chemicals are in the fat. If you’re going to pull chemicals out of the fat, you have to take the fat out.
So that’s what happens. It starts dumping fat. So, it’s very specific.
DEBRA: We were talking earlier about losing weight without doing a detox or detox products. So when you start losing weight, it’s starting to handle those chemicals that might be coming out with the fat. It’s a much safer way to do it.
PAMELA SEEFELD: Correct, if you start a new year’s resolution or you’re going to a doctor that’s giving you a specific diet, any of these times, if you’re losing weight, trying to lose weight. But even if you don’t want to lose weight, this will help significantly.
DEBRA: We need to go to break. This is Toxic Free Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is Pamela Seefeld.
She’s a registered pharmacist who dispenses medicinal plants instead of prescription drugs. She does have a website, BotanicalResource.com, which also has a phone number on it if you missed it. You can go to her website and get that information.
Give her a call because she can help you with whatever is going on with your body. We’ll be right back.
= COMMERCIAL BREAK =
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is Pamela Seefeld, registered pharmacist who dispenses medicinal plants and other natural substances instead of prescription drugs. We’re talking about detox.
So these hours go by so fast. Before we get to the end of this show, I want you to talk about saunas specifically. I know saunas have been used for a long time.
Tell us what specifically a sauna does, why you should use sauna for detox. And also, how do you choose a sauna if you want to be using sauna at home?
PAMELA SEEFELD: Okay. Those are excellent questions.
Why I like saunas? It’s because the chemicals, specifically heavy metals – chemicals can come out from the saunas. There are two mechanisms that the saunas work.
When you are in a sauna, your heart rate goes up because of the heat, because you’re sweating. It’s the diaphoresis. That mechanism takes fat soluble chemicals out of the subcutaneous fat and dumps them into the bloodstream. As a result of that, your metabolism goes up.
If you’re in a 130 degree sauna, 130 or 140 degrees, if you’re in it for an hour – I don’t recommend doing that if you’re not used to it. But you can burn up to 600 calories in an hour. You burn up a lot of calories. How are you burning up the calories? You’re dumping the fat. That’s what’s happening.
So if you spend a significant amount of time in saunas, your heart rate goes up quite a bit. That’s why it’s not good for someone that has hypertension. So saunas are excluding people with hypertension that’s not controlled.
That’s important to talk about right now. No one that has hypertension, that’s not taking the medicine and taking the homeopathic or something for it, has any business being along through time in a sauna. I think I should just warn people about that.
It’s a very good way to detoxify on that standpoint. Then also, the heavy metals are stored underneath the skin. We know that in saunas, they measure the sweat. And they do an HPLC analysis of what’s in the sweat of people in saunas. There are a lot of heavy metals that come out to the sweat.
So there are two mechanisms in the sauna. We have the mechanism of the heart rates being brought up. It’s like bringing up your metabolism. It’s like you’re going for a workout. Your heart rate is going up because you’re sweating. As an effect, you’re also getting rid of the heavy metals.
You’re actually detoxing on two levels. You’re detoxing the fat soluble chemicals and heavy metals out of the sweat. We know this to be true.
I’m a big fan of infrared saunas. I think that they have higher penetration deeper into the fat soluble tissue into the skin. They’re much easier to take care of.
I’m sure they still probably do sell the saunas where you have to use the rocks in mill water and that sort of thing. But I have an electric infrared sauna. It’s really nice because all you do is just turn it on.
It has a CD player and a radio in it. So it’s nice to just relax because you hear music. You just relax and then fall asleep for a little bit.
So it’s a very good thing to do. I think working out prior to getting into the sauna makes it even more advantageous to have this detox really be significant. That’s a big thing.
So you have a sauna. You preheat the sauna. You go in there, and you just lay in there.
It’s not the same as if you’ve already been working out and then you already got a sweat working up. When you do that, going after you’re sweating, it’s taking over from where you worked out. And you really mobilize a lot more chemical at that same time.
Also, we know that if you’re exercising first and then you go into the sauna, you get into what’s called demargination of the white blood cells. You get a transient increase in white blood cell activity, which imparts a significant increase in your immunity. So it’s a good way to boost up your immune system.
DEBRA: So if somebody couldn’t install a sauna and work out equipment and whatever in their homes for whatever reason, a lot of gyms have saunas.
PAMELA SEEFELD: Absolutely.
DEBRA: People go and get inexpensive gym membership, go do their work out and then go be in the sauna. That would be a good way to detox chemicals out of your body.
PAMELA SEEFELD: Absolutely. We look at affordable ways for people to do this. A lot of gym memberships, they have, “Join. The first month is free.”
I’ve had my sauna 10 years. It was just something I bought myself a long time ago for the birthday present to myself.
It’s just one of those things that I really had wanted and had saved up for a long time, and then I decided to get it. It’s crazy because really, it takes a big area of my house. It takes the whole room, almost of one bedroom.
When people come over, they don’t know what a sauna is. People come over and they’re like, “Is that a playhouse?” I go, “Really? I don’t have children. What do you think this is? It’s a sauna.” They’re looking at it, “What is a playhouse in the middle of the room like though?”
This is a sauna…
DEBRA: I was thinking I could put a sauna in my garage. I don’t actually have an empty room, but I have an empty garage.
PAMELA SEEFELD: You could put it there.
DEBRA: Yeah.
PAMELA SEEFELD: The small ones almost look like a coffin. They’re tiny, and you can sit in there. Those actually are pretty reasonably placed.
And I can tell people too that a lot of people think about exercise equipment and saunas as house things. Sometimes people buy these things, but they never use them. I’m sure that happens.
I’m not next to the situation. How many people buy exercise equipment in the beginning of the year and never ever use it? It’s the place…
DEBRA: Many, many, many, many.
PAMELA SEEFELD: I would say probably about 75%. That’s a reasonable estimate.
DEBRA: Yes.
PAMELA SEEFELD: You probably can find a sauna used on the internet that was probably never even sweated in, that someone bought and had the – They were trying to do it. They really wanted to do it, but they didn’t use it.
That would be my best bet instead of paying a lot of money for a brand new one.
DEBRA: What a good idea.
PAMELA SEEFELD: I’m telling you that there’s a lot of saunas. Sometimes, people are like, “I have a medical spa here.”
I talked to the people into the licensing for this. These people open these different establishments. And then they go out of business. They change their mind and they close up. And they buy all the stuff, and then they have to sell it.
So you can definitely find these things very inexpensively. Someone had purchased and their plans didn’t work out for the massage establishments or whatever it was. That’s where I would steer your clients.
If you do the Body Anew and even if you’re doing house work and sweating a little bit and then get into the sauna, you’re going to see significant effects in the way you feel.
And what I like too is for rheumatism, there is no better treatment than a sauna. Several of my clients are with osteoarthritis and rheumatoid arthritis. When they’re in the heat, they feel tremendously better.
I know for myself just from being a hard runner for a long time and biking a lot, when you go to sauna, all of your muscle pain goes away and your bone pain. It’s very significant. The heat is very nourishing to the body.
DEBRA: Yeah, I love that heat. I just love it. I loved the other day.
It’s been pretty cold here as you know because you’re just right down the street from me. Just all of a sudden, the sun came out. I’m just feeling that warm sun on my body. It was just really nice. And I love sitting in the sauna and just getting warm all the way through my body.
PAMELA SEEFELD: When you think about it, it’s going very deep into the body. It’s really heating up the subcutaneous fat and allowing things to be released.
It’s very helpful for the body to facilitate these other products to use this in conjunction with the sauna. Big difference in how you feel. Big difference.
DEBRA: What about rebounders?
PAMELA SEEFELD: Pardon me?
DEBRA: Rebounders.
PAMELA SEEFELD: Yes, rebounders. Yes, of course. Rebounder as exercise is excellent because you work all the muscles in the body because basically, you’re working your core too.
You’re jumping up and down. You have to maintain balance so you don’t fall off. So rebounders are excellent.
I’m a big fan of low impact rebounders or low impact because basically, I like a little trampoline. Stationary bikes and regular bikes are really good.
I used to run a lot. I am not a big advocate of time people to run so much. I mean I think running is really fun. I really do miss it, but my knees are starting to bother me. I really think that you want to preserve your knees and your hips for when you get older so that you’re not ending up with lots of disability and pain.
So low impact exercise is worth – also swimming is an excellent form of exercise. Maybe you will do the rebounder and then you go into sauna. But if you do that with the detox products at the same time, as far as your energy level and your mental clarity, there’s no comparison to not doing it that way. The Body Anew actually goes into the central nervous system. It goes into the brain.
So if there are heavy metals in the brain – you people have read about people eating too much tuna fish and then having memory problems and so forth. This goes into the central nervous system. You really want something that penetrates into the brain and cleans up the body.
I’m telling you that I probably sell 100 kits a month. I have these excellent, excellent results. So people come back and say, I’ve never felt better in my life.
So it relates in the detox part. You were discussing the same situation, the zeolite. You really want to be using some of these tools because they are available for you. They work very well, and they don’t have side effects. That’s what you really want.
DEBRA: That’s exactly right. They don’t have side effects. I know what the zeolite – I take the Body Anew. I’m not as familiar with it as Pamela is.
But with the zeolite, anybody can take it. Even newborn babies can take it. Pregnant women can take it. If you’re planning on being pregnant, you should detox your body first so that you are not subjecting your baby to all those toxic chemicals.
Older people can take it. Anybody with any kind of illness can take it. I mean there really aren’t any limitations. And it’s affordable. It’s something that just anybody could do. The Body Anew is affordable.
When I’m talking about expensive treatments here, we’re talking about things that anybody can do. It’s just drops. You just take them. They don’t taste like anything. You put it in in whatever you want to put it in that you’re drinking, and you just drink it. Then it does its thing as you go about your day with a little or no discomfort. I say it that way because I have no detox discomfort on zeolite or Body Anew.
Some people do have detox symptoms from taking too much or not drinking enough water, but you can detox completely comfortably. Everybody should just do it.
PAMELA SEEFELD: Absolutely. Let me say to you that the detox products are coming at the base of the pyramid. A lot of times, I add other things. There‘s something called Radiation Plus that removes that radiation.
I use a lot of DesBio. There’s a thing called Detox III that actually removes out plasticizers. So people are really worried. They have a history of breast cancer in the family and they want to remove plasticizers out of their body, their incidental plasticizers.
Maybe they’re doing everything correctly as far as avoiding warming up in plastic or drinking out of plastic, but you still get…
DEBRA: I have to interrupt you because we’re out of time.
PAMELA SEEFELD: Oh, no.
DEBRA: I’m going to come see you. Pamela and I are having lunch today.
So I’m going to see you soon. Thank you so much.
You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. Be well.
Make Your Own Mattress
Today my guest is Deborah Brenton, owner of DIY Natural Bedding. We’ll be talking about how you can make your own custom mattress with the materials she provides, and why you should. Deborah is a foodie, a forager, and strongly believes in living a natural life. In 2010 she began looking for mattresses for her children, but the only type available contained a whole host of chemicals. Her Do It Yourself attitude kicked in and she gathered resources to create her own mattresses from scratch. She soon realized that other people share her natural living convictions but lack resources in the bedding market. DIY Natural Bedding was started with this goal in mind: to provide affordable, natural and chemical free bedding products. Deborah now offers natural components that customers can use to build their own mattresses, toppers and pillows. Her products include wool from local farms, 100% natural latex, and GOTS certified organic fabric. She also offers sewing patterns for those who would like to save a dime by sewing their own mattress ticking and custom latex cuts for any DIY furniture project. www.diynaturalbedding.com
TOXIC FREE TALK RADIO
Make Your Own Mattress
Host: Debra Lynn Dadd
Guest: Deborah Brenton
Date of Broadcast: February 24, 2015
DEBRA: Hi, I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. This is Toxic Free Talk Radio where we talk about how to thrive in a toxic world and live toxic free.
It’s Tuesday, February 24th, 2015. It’s February 24th already. This year is just going by so fast. It’s just so fast.
Anyway, we’re going to talk about beds and mattresses in particular and how you can make your own. I know that seems like maybe an impossible idea, but mattresses are such – they’re so important because we spend a third of our lives lying on a mattress.
If you have a toxic mattress, you’re going to be exposed to all those toxic chemicals while you sleep every night. They can really affect your health. So many, many people have been realizing how toxic regular mattresses are and looking for natural mattresses.
So when I first was starting looking for a natural mattress 30 years ago, there was no such thing. There were futons, very thin little futons. I managed to find a used mattress that was made out of not all the toxic things, but not natural either. It was in the back of a mattress store. Somebody had brought it in as a trade. And I said, “I’ll take that one.”
But I’ll tell you when I first started considering that I needed to get rid of my toxic mattress, the first thing that I slept on was – I went and got a roll-away bed that had a little pot that has springs on it. And then I piled up cotton thermal blankets on top to make it a little softer.
I rolled up a cotton towel and put it in a pillow case, and that was my pillow because I was not going to sleep on my toxic mattress anymore. I couldn’t just go down to the store like you can today and buy a non-toxic mattress or a natural mattress.
So what we’re going to talk about today though is the fact that you can make your own mattress, how you can do that and where you can get materials.
I know that some people are very sensitive to various different materials. And it’s difficult even to get a natural mattress that some people can tolerate.
So there’s no reason why you can’t make your own mattress, why you can’t choose the materials that you want and either put it together yourself or have somebody make it for you. So this gives you the greatest freedom of choice in terms of have a mattress. You get complete control over it.
So my guest today is Deborah Brenton. She is the owner of DIY Natural Bedding. We’re going to find out how she came to come up with such ideas making your own mattress and having a business around it. She’s going to tell us all about it.
Hi, Deborah.
DEBORAH BRENTON: Hi.
DEBRA: I should call you Deborah to distinguish you from me who is Debra.
DEBORAH BRENTON: Yes. And my middle name is Lynn as well.
DEBRA: Really?
DEBORAH BRENTON: So I grew up as a DLD as well. My maiden name was a D. So I resonate with those initials.
DEBRA: And I have a friend, a man who is a friend, his initials are DD also. So when we initial things back and forth to each other in e-mails, it’s always DD and DD.
Anyway, it’s good. So how did you get interested in the idea of making your own natural bed?
DEBORAH BRENTON: Sure. We started with our family and our kids. We had two young daughters at the time and said, “Well, we get a chance to buy a new mattress.” We want to move them up into a bunk bed and mattress-buying purchases don’t come around all that often, “so let’s do this right.”
We didn’t know what right meant at the time, but we started researching. And we started looking around and looking at why people chose organic mattresses because they didn’t want to have some of the flame retardants that companies put in commercial mattresses.
So as we were looking at organic mattresses, we realized they were completely out of our price range. As most young family starting out, it’s difficult to make the choices you really want.
So we said, “Well, I can make anything in the kitchen. Surely, I can try my hand in other areas of our home.” So we said, “Let’s make our own.”
And we found some. At the time, there were available cotton futon cases and some wool bedding and some natural latex. We put that together. It was very easy to put together, to just zip everything in there.
We said, “This idea is really good. Maybe other people need this idea. We can’t be the only people out there who want to make these natural choices, but can’t afford it. What if we could enable people to have these natural choices at wholesale rates or upholstery rates? To do-it-yourself could save them a dime or two.”
DEBRA: Right. I think it’s just wonderful that you’ve done this.
So how did you start – I’m always interested in the aspect of you doing something unusual as a business. How did you get going doing that?
I’m hoping that other people will take the initiative to start businesses that fill in the gaps of things that are needed and not yet on the market.
DEBORAH BRENTON: We started very small. We had just refinanced our house. So we started with the one mortgage payment that we didn’t have to pay. That funded the first purchase of six inches of natural latex.
We worked out of our home to invite people to know us, to trust us, to suggest to them that we trust them to make their decisions as well. And part of that model has also enabled us to keep prices down or to keep our cost down by working in our space. We dedicate it to things that we show.
So lots of phone calls, lots of reading online. If you’ve never been on the Mattress Underground, I highly recommend that site for research.
DEBRA: Oh no, I actually haven’t been on that site. Okay.
DEBORAH BRENTON: Yes. It’s just a forum that runs, but the leader of the forum is pretty knowledgeable. It’s a good place to start.
DEBRA: Good. I’ll check that out. So you’ve done a lot of research. Tell us about some of the toxic things.
I know I just spoke in general at the beginning. But what are some of the toxic chemicals that people should really – they haven’t already decided that they need a natural mattress. Why should they be using a natural mattress?
DEBORAH BRENTON: Okay. So with this question, we could just start with the burn test, right?
DEBRA: Yes.
DEBORAH BRENTON: So the story goes. Interrupt me if this gets too long, but the story goes that back in the 70s, everyone was lighting up lots of cigarettes in the house, in the bed and mattress. Fires were increasing.
The government said, “There are too many cigarettes. Big cigarettes need to make the cigarettes safe so that people don’t keep burning themselves down.
They said, “Well, let’s do something else.” All the big tobacco companies got together and formed their alliance and lobbied for burn test.
Now, all upholstery and furniture and bedding are required to pass a flame test. Two tests, cigarette test where they put a cigarette under a sheet and see how fast your product burns. And another test is the burn test where there’s an open torch on the top and the sides of the mattress. They see how fast it burns, how quickly the flame extinguishes, how much smoke it produces, things like that.
So because of those laws that were in place long ago, companies put things on their mattresses, be it directly putting, spraying the mattresses with chemicals or be it using a barrier fabric that is made of synthetics to pass the burn test.
So when we say you can buy everything in parts that have not been treated with any chemicals, what we mean is that we are selling you a part of a mattress. We’re not selling you a whole mattress. We are selling you just part of it. If you choose to assemble it that way, great.
That does mean that we don’t put any of the bromines, and we don’t put any chlorinated Tris. We don’t put any PBDE. We don’t put in Firemaster 550, no boric acid. We don’t put any of the bromines. The list keeps going because a lot of these flame retardants that are put into upholstery and bedding are proprietary. So we can’t really know all of them.
DEBRA: Yes. It’s just brilliant that you’re doing it that way.
We need to go to break. When we come back, we’ll talk more about natural mattresses and unnatural things that are in regular mattresses, not the natural mattresses. This is so interesting.
You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is Deborah Brenton. She’s the owner of DIY Natural Bedding. The website is DIYNaturalBedding.com.
We’ll be right back.
= COMMERCIAL BREAK =
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is Deborah Brenton, owner of DIY Natural Bedding. That’s at DIYNaturalBedding.com.
So Deborah, if somebody is considering making their own bed, what should they consider as to whether or not they can do it or not?
What are the kinds of skills you need to have? Let’s start with that question.
DEBORAH BRENTON: Sure. Well, you’d be surprised of how simple it is. You need to pick out. You make a few choices. And then you need to zip them all together.
So the first choice you make is what you want to put in. We call the cases ticking. You unzip them. You can have one foot wool in it. You can have one foot of puddle pad on top. You can have just organic, get the organic cotton one. You can…
DEBRA: So you’re not just selling – I went to your website, but I guess I missed this point. You’re not selling fabric to make a mattress. You’re selling the case.
DEBORAH BRENTON: We are selling both.
DEBRA: Okay.
DEBORAH BRENTON: If you want to sew your own case, we have the pattern available. We have the zipper. Where can you find 300 inches of zipper in one piece?
We sell all our mattress quality fabrics by the yard so that you can make your own. If those are your skills, go for it. If you want us to sew it, we will sew it. We won’t assemble it, but we will sew that for you.
And then we saw the natural latex labs. We get all our wools from local farms around us where I can ask the farmers questions about how they treat their animals, what they feed them, where they graze and how they treat them when they have illnesses. So we like to support the local food movement that way, as well as to give our customers quality wool.
DEBRA: So then, you sell all the materials. So the very simplest thing to do would be to buy the case and buy the stuffing and have it arrive at your doorstep. And then you can stuff it with whatever it is you want. You stuff it yourself and that’s it.
DEBORAH BRENTON: Yes. Put the ticking on your mattress. Lay your latex labs on top of it. Zip it shut, and you just made a mattress.
DEBRA: Wow. That’s so easy.
DEBORAH BRENTON: Yeah. Those are great.
DEBRA: Yeah. I didn’t realize. When I looked at your website, I was thinking, “Okay. So here’s the fabric, and here’s the zipper. You can sew it up.”
You probably provide the thread too because it needs a special kind of thread. And then, you would do all that work. But no, you just zip it up.
DEBORAH BRENTON: Well, you can. Some people have those skills that not everyone does.
DEBRA: Not everybody does.
DEBORAH BRENTON: We put the DIY to the ones who can do it.
DEBRA: Yeah. I wouldn’t want to sew. I mean I can sew rudimentarily. I can’t say that word.
But wow, that is extremely appealing to me. If I didn’t already have a wonderful mattress that I love, I would immediately order from you because that’s so easy and so affordable.
DEBORAH BRENTON: Yeah. And our wool mattress is neat. I shouldn’t say “our wool mattress.” We sell wool beddings, as well as what we call wool flakes.
So before the wool is aligned into the nice sheet, that cotton bedding, it’s in this fluff. And you can make a wool mattress by taking one of the ticking and some of the beddings on the bottom.
Throw in the wool flake in the middle because that’s the less expensive process. It hasn’t been combed yet. And then top it off with another smooth wool bedding and zip that shut. Then you pretty much made your own wool mattress. Then you’d have to tuft it.
There’s more than one way to use the supplies.
DEBRA: Well, it’s good. Why don’t you go over what the different materials are? We’re going to need to go to break, but you can just start with this question.
I was really impressed at how careful you were about choosing your materials. I’m aware of a lot of different mattress makers. Some of them are more or less stringent about the materials that they choose to make their mattresses even if they’re natural. But you have very, very excellent materials.
Of course, somebody could also buy your case and put whatever materials they want to buy from some place else in there as well. If they have their own local wool that they want to use, it’s all very – you buy whatever pieces you want, and then you do whatever you want with them. It’s just amazing to me.
So tell us. So you have three basic things. Start by telling us more about your role because you don’t sell cotton, but you sell wool.
DEBORAH BRENTON: You’re right. We chose wool to sell over cotton because it’s so resilient. Cotton can only bend so many times before it breaks. It gets very firm.
Wool is an interesting fiber. Microscopically, it’s a hollow fiber and it is spiral-shaped.
Its hollow shape is interesting because that where its leaking moisture comes in. It can absorb your body heat, your body moisture while you sleep. Then as you roll over, it now can let it dissipate into the air.
If you sleep under the wool, you will like it as a comforter or you will like a wool jacket. That hollow fiber can keep your heat next to you, thus providing your insulation.
Its spiral shape is really interesting because that makes it very flexible. As you compress it when you sit on it or lie on it, it doesn’t just bend causing a break in the fiber eventually. It just stretches. It can do that for a long, long time. So grandmother’s wool mattress can still be re-fluffed and reused because wool is so strong.
DEBRA: Yes. That’s been my experience. When I first started sleeping with natural beds, they actually were not wool beds. Nobody was doing wool beds.
I started with a pretty thick cotton futon on the floor. It was the most uncomfortable thing I’ve ever slept on in my life. It was a cotton futon on a wood floor.
I think they’re designed to put on tatami mats or something I think in Japan, which are not as hard as wood. So here you have this Japanese technology coming over here to America. I put it on wood floor. It was horrible, very uncomfortable.
When the first wool beds came out, I got a wool mattress that was very thick, 10 inches thick. It was comfortable, but I couldn’t lift it.
And now, I have layers of wool mattresses on a wood slab bed. That seems to be the best thing to do as well.
We need to go to a break. When we come back, we’ll talk more about the materials that are available to make mattresses from. And you can make your own mattress.
You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is Deborah Brenton from DIY Natural Bedding. That’s at DIYNaturalBedding.com.
We’ll be right back.
= COMMERCIAL BREAK =
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is Deborah Brenton, owner of DIY Natural Bedding. That’s at DIYNaturalBedding.com.
Deborah, I want us to keep talking about wool. Especially, you talked about the difference between farm wool and organic wool. I’d like you to talk about that because you say some very important things on your website about this.
By the way listeners, she’s got a lot of information on her website about the materials, far more than we can cover talking about it today.
Deborah, tell us about farm wool.
DEBORAH BRENTON: Sure. Let’s see. Farm wool.
When I pick my wool, I go around the farms in my area. I talk to the farmers and I ask them, “What nutrition do you give your sheep? Are they allowed outside in the sun? How are they’re treated when they’re sheared? Am I going to be finding an excess air in my wool because the shear was too quick when shearing it? Do you gather the Merino wool?”
That means that I should be on the look-out from using. Really, I just want wool that the farmer cares about the animal. So he gives them natural food, grasses, hays.
When they need deworming, do they give them diatomaceous earth instead of popping some other pills? What goes into the sheep affects what comes out of the sheep. The quality of the wool is affected by that.
We get our wool from all sources of different sheep. They’re all nice wool. These farmers do not grow short hair coarse wool crops. They grow wool that is nice enough to be spun into yarn. The wool is tossed. The fibers are long. There’s a variety of colors. There’s white, brown, black and grey.
It feels good. And it also has that satisfaction of knowing that this animal was cared for, maybe not quite like a pet. But yet, it was still very thoughtfully cared for and not just raised for money.
DEBRA: The thing that I so love about this is your personal connection with it. So often – on your website, you talk about that organic certification is useful when I can’t certify the farmer myself.
I wish you would just put that sentence in bold and have flashing lights all around it. I think that that’s so important.
The difference between you being there actually going to the farm, meeting the people who are growing the wools, seeing the sheep. The difference between that and looking – I’m not saying this certification is bad, but this is just a different level. It’s a different level of knowing that you went yourself and looked and that you didn’t rely on a piece of paper that’s certified.
Again, I’m not saying that certification is a really bad thing. They’re very useful for knowing that a product needs a certain standard. But it’s just that there’s something different about you going and checking it out.
I read all of these on your website. And I see and I listened to you, talking to me today. I see that you’ve done your homework. You know what you’re talking about. You know what questions to ask. You going and checking out the farmer is just as good as if that farmer had an organic certification if not better.
The questions have been asked. The farmers are doing the right thing. And you’re right there with your own eyes seeing that they’re doing the right thing. That all comes across to me.
My wool is actually from a similar situation where I bought my bed from Shepherd’s Dream in California. I’ve known Shepherd’s Dream for more than 20 years, from when they were first selling futon patterns like you. That’s how they started.
When they started their organic wool certification, I actually went with them. They talked to the farmers, and I sat with them – they have organic certification – in terms of what they thought that it should be.
So I know exactly where the wool comes from in my bed. It’s actually so nice for me every night to be thinking about those sheep. I know how they were cared for. I know where they’re from. It’s just a lovely thing. It’s just a lovely thing to have that level of knowing what your ingredients are.
DEBORAH BRENTON: Yeah. In fact, the mill that provides them with all their wools provides much of the US with their wool. But they also provide our puddle pads from the sheep. So everyone knows where it’s come from.
DEBRA: Yeah. It’s a lovely way to make a product. It’s a lovely way to do this.
I’m going to look at the clock for a second. Okay. So tell us about latex. Tell us about latex in general and your latex.
DEBORAH BRENTON: Okay. So we work with natural latex. That means that it is a foam made from rubber or from latex.
Latex is – you see it everywhere. You go outside. You pick a dandelion, and you see the white stuff and you see latex. You see lettuce and you break it open, you’ll see latex [inaudible 00:32:50].
It’s just that those small plants are not generally commercially viable. There are different small amount of latex.
So the latex for Robert today is growing in the jungles where there is a particular tree, the Hevea brasiliensis. It’s a tall. It now had become known as the rubber tree.
There are ways to make synthetic rubber out of petroleum. That’s not the type of latex that we provide because we prefer to stick with as natural as we can.
So the foam that’s made from these rubber trees that we use ends up being 96% rubber and then 4% foaming agents. For a manmade product, I think that’s pretty good.
So natural latex, we have it inside of different densities. That means you can pick your firmness or you can combine firmness to create a pillow top layer or something firmer. Or you can put a soft layer underneath a firm layer to create a more contemporary spring-like feel.
But the five densities really give you a lot to work with. It lets you choose your height. It lets you choose how you feel. And natural latex is neat through the way it absorbs your pressure point.
So you lie on the mattress and your pressure points are where the deepest parts of your body. They create the most pressure. And because of the compression modules, the latex actually compresses underneath you to some extent.
It doesn’t spread out like if you were lying out on a water bed, the water would just go to your edges. But here, it actually creates the support underneath you. So it’s able to move completely out of the way where it needs to and then just keeps a fast response time up for the areas that don’t need to be pressured.
And this latex, it’s not like a memory foam. So we call it a fast response foam. So you roll over and the latex is ready to support you in a new spot.
You don’t have to crawl out of a valley that you’ve made because it’s not heat-sensitive foam. It doesn’t hold your heat and harbor it like a memory foam mattress would. So it’s a very different sort of foam.
DEBRA: Yeah. Good. So there is also – explain about the difference between Talalay and Dunlop.
DEBORAH BRENTON: Okay. So there are two processes or you could say there’s one process and a variation of it. The Dunlop process is the…
DEBRA: I’m sorry. I have to go to break really quickly I think. I get to talking.
You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. We’ll be right back.
= COMMERCIAL BREAK =
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. Today, my guest is Deborah Brenton, owner of DIY Natural Bedding. That’s DIYNaturalBedding.com.
Before the break, we were talking about latex. Deborah, I like you to tell us about the difference between organic latex and natural latex.
DEBORAH BRENTON: Okay. The differences are very few. The differences are a label pretty much. The formula seems to be the same with the manufacturers. The product is the same. The plants are similar.
The difference would be that you have someone certifying that the company has been a responsible company in the way that they produced, that their water outflow has been reasonable, that they have treated their workers reasonably that they have been paid their wages and not required to work too much.
From what I hear, it’s likened to any papers. A dog of a true pure breed at papers is financially worth more money than the same dog without papers.
It produces primarily the same product. So we choose to go with natural latex because if the product is still 96% rubber – I mean you can’t get any less rubber than that, any more rubber than that and creates a foam. It still has to be light and airy.
Then why not choose just plain old natural? Why require an extra process that will take up more financial commitment on the company? Why not just give people what is readily available that is good enough?
DEBRA: Good. That’s a very good answer. So then, the other key part of what you offer in terms of materials is the fabrics.
Now, you’re selling GOTS-certified organic fabrics. So tell us why you made that choice and what that is.
DEBORAH BRENTON: Sure. There are few different standards out there for organic fabric, organic textiles. Most of them just require that the majority of the cotton used in the product have been growing organically. So 51% of the cotton could be growing organically.
The GOTS standard takes it away above that. Now, it says that not only the growing procedures have to be organic, the warehouse has to be certified organic, the processes used on the fabric, the dyes, the finishing, the weaving. Everything has to be certified.
India produces 60% of the world’s cotton. And ours is not – I mean I can’t just go over there. I can’t go over there and say, “Well, is there a pesticide running off in your crops?”
So I do rely on a certification in this point because I know that the certification requires the manufacturers to say that their product is only 95% organic.
Or is it like our cotton? Is it actually 100% organic and 100% cotton? The law technically says you can say it’s organic cotton even if it’s just the majority cotton. So it could be 49% rayon or something else.
So I like that the GOTS is clear. I like that I can talk to my suppliers and I can physically ask them questions. If I wanted to, I can actually trace where the cotton came from, what farm it was growing on, [inaudible 00:43:58] standards that it matches every ball of fabric with the grower.
DEBRA: I’m looking at your fabrics. One of the important reasons why it’s necessary for you to exist as a bedding supply place is that here you’ve got organic cotton for [inaudible 00:44:19] fabric that is 97 inches wide.
DEBORAH BRENTON: Yes.
DEBRA: And first of all, you’re not going to go into any fabric store that I know of and find any GOTS organic fiber.
But secondly, even if you found GOTS organic fiber – and the only other place I know of where people can order GOTS fibers to do things themselves with it is from France.
So here you are in America, you’ve got GOTS organic fibers. It’s 97 inches wide, which is what you need in order to make a mattress.
I can’t imagine putting together a better collection of materials to make a bed out of. You’ve done a really good job.
DEBORAH BRENTON: Thank you. Yeah, we have to be very careful, like you said, about sourcing it. Just provide people with choices that we’d want to make ourselves.
DEBRA: So earlier, you were talking about – at the beginning of the show, you were talking about price. The price ends up being less than if you were to buy a mattress.
Of course, when you’re purchasing a mattress that somebody else has made, you’re paying for labor. Whereas when you make it yourself, then you put in the cost of labor as your time.
But also I think it’s most important for a lot of people listening not so much how much it costs, although I’m sure a lot of people are on a budget and want to get the most affordable mattress they can. The most important thing is to have these fantastic materials that are so organic and not toxic.
I forgot what I was going to ask. So does it end up – I guess the point I want to make is that people think that organic and certified and all those things are much more expensive.
If you’re going this route of doing it yourself, does buying all the mattress pieces and putting them together – does it end up costing more or less than an average toxic mattress?
DEBORAH BRENTON: I would say definitely it costs less. The DIY component is pretty big. It saves us a lot of costs, but we pass on the savings to the customers. So yeah, there’s a lot.
If you went on and bought the king size natural latex mattress – let’s say it was just a nine inch mattress. It would be surprising for you to pay $2500 for that.
Use our parts. Make your own. And you’re probably looking more like – depending on your choices of course – $1500, $1700. So that’s at least a 30% saving there.
DEBRA: That’s a big difference.
DEBORAH BRENTON: Yeah, it is. I think it’s rewarding. I don’t think people can put a monetary value on the value of participating in your choices. I mean you’ve spent time, you’ve spent energy.
If you’ve found us, you have invested yourself into this purchase and then to actually assemble it. I mean that is rewarding to say, “I am sleeping on something that I have chosen.”
DEBRA: Yeah, I know. My husband and I – many years ago, we made shaker chairs, four shaker chairs for our dining table out of a kit. And we love the seats together.
And it’s just so – even to this day, I look at those chairs, and I remember the experience of making them when I sit on them and the love that goes in it. It’s so different to have something that you’ve made with your own hands.
DEBORAH BRENTON: Yeah.
DEBRA: Yeah. I could just now imagine a couple making a mattress for themselves and how beautiful that would be. Gee, this is so lovely.
DEBORAH BRENTON: Yeah. It’s good to take your own space into your will.
DEBRA: Yeah. What a lovely thing that you’re doing.
We only just have about a minute left. So is there anything you’d like to say that we haven’t covered?
DEBORAH BRENTON: Well, I don’t know. We are a small business. That means that while we may not have certain systems in place that a large business might have, we do have a lot of personality here.
So you call. You will talk to me. You e-mail, you get me. We have showrooms that we set up in people’s homes. I have one in Minneapolis and one here in Lafayette, Indiana.
You come and you get to talk to us. We will answer any question we can. If we can’t, we will find you the answer.
So that’s one of the benefits of being a small business. We aren’t so far distant from you. We’re still people too and we can work with you.
DEBRA: You know the answers. One of the things that happens today is that you go into a big box store, and you got people who are cashiers and they know nothing about the product.
And dealing with a business like you, you’re an expert, you absolutely know your product and everything that goes in it, all the way down to the shape.
Anyway, thank you so much Deborah for being on the show. Again, the website is DIYNaturalBedding.com.
I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. This is Toxic Free Talk Radio. You can go to ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com to learn more about other shows, listen to this one again, read the transcript.
That’s it for today. Be well.
Dental Floss
Question from Matt Carter
Hi Debra,
I know you posted before that you use a Hydrafloss and I am looking into getting one, but in the meantime am looking for a safe dental floss option. I have found two types of floss that are unwaxed nylon (POH and Dr. Collins) would these be the safest options in terms of regular floss? I also looked into some wood pick options instead of floss but was concerned if the wood might have been treated with anything. Thank you!.
Debra’s Answer
All flosses I’ve been able to find are made from nylon, so these are as safe as any others. The things to watch out for with dental floss are the waxes and flavorings.
When I used to use floss, I tried using heavy cotton sewing thread. Worked just fine.
Plaster-Weld
Question from Beverly Shutes
Hi Debra,
The popcorn on my living room ceiling is cracked and falling down. I have found someone to repair the ceiling for me and they have stated that once the popcorn is scraped and removed, they coat the ceiling (which is poured concrete) with a product called Plaster-Weld. http://www.larsenproducts.com/plaster-weld-2.
They stated that it smells terrible for a couple of hours and request you leave, but then the smell goes away. It is necessary to bond the plaster to the concrete. After application, they skim coat, prime and paint (Benjamin Moore Natura no VOC paint).
The MDS for Plaster-Weld is here: http://www.larsenproducts.com/download/plasterweld_msds.pdf
I’m not sure of any alternatives, but I try to keep things as chemical free as possible for my baby and I. Do you have any thoughts on this product?
Debra’s Answer
The MSDS states that the health effects are minor irritation, but the product should be used in a well ventilated area.
My experience has been that many products have odors and offgas during application, and then when dry can be completely inert.
I agree you should leave while it’s being applied, but once it is dry, I don’t see a problem.
Readers, any experience with this product or alternatives to suggest?
Intellibed Mattress Again
Question from Jorjia Blom
Hi Debra,
This bed is supposedly non-toxic:
http://www.mommypotamus.com/favorite-non-toxic-mattress/
Have you heard any feedback from anyone with MCS regarding this product?
Debra’s Answer
Supposedly is right. Here’s what I learned about this bed: Intellibed Mattress
Has anyone with MCS purchased one of these beds?
Car Outgassing
Question from Chris Condon
Hi Debra,
I have a question about cars outgassing. Many people who are chemically sensitive buy used cars in preference to new to avoid the new car chemicals. Do cars that have been driven in hot climate outgas faster and better than cars driven in cold climates? And how about humidity? Do cars outgas better in humid than dry climates or vice versa? I imagine that if you want to buy an outgassed car you might be better off going to Tuscon or Phoenix, where they have fierce summer heat combined with low humidity, buying it there and driving it back home, provided Phoenix and Tucson are not too far away. I would assume a car driven in the Arizona summers would outgas its chemicals faster than anywhere else.
From past experience I gather than the chemicals put into leather are much more toxic than the chemicals put into cloth automotive upholstery. Worse still, based on my own experience, leather never completely outgasses its chemicals, so that buying a used car in preference to new is not a satisfactory solution with respect to leather, because no matter how old the car is, there are always some chemicals still coming out of the leather. (I once had a beautiful Saab, but was still having allergy problems while driving it even when the car was 7-8 years old and supposedly completely outgassed. )The best solution for chemically sensitive people is to avoid cars with leather upholstery altogether and stick to cloth. But if you can suggest some way to completely outgas leather, I might change my mind on leather.
Debra’s Answer
Car interiors outgassing is one of the most difficult challenges for MCS. I’ve written about this before, so will just answer your question and summarize.
Yes, a car in a hot climate will outgas faster than one in a cold climate. Your logic is correct.
I’m not sure I would agree that the chemicals in leather are worse than the chemicals in cloth. I much prefer the leather myself, but everyone is individual with MCS.
Things I have done to minimize exposure from car interiors are:
- Use an air filter such as the Foust Auto Air Filter
- Install a sunroof so the fumes can rise and escape without bringing car exhaust in through the side windows being open
- Reupholster (yes I’ve done this—reupholstered the bucket seats in a sports car with cotton canvas.
Filling Cracks in Concrete
Question from Suzanne Foster
Hi Debra,
I have removed the carpeting from my bedroom and bathroom. The concrete floor has several large cracks in it from where the building has settled. Is there any non-toxic product to fill the cracks?
I am very sensitive to smells and will not be able to move elsewhere while and after it is done.
Thank you so much for all that you do.
Debra’s Answer
First, here’s an article that outlines the basics of filling cracks in cement: WiseGEEK: How Can I Repair Cracks in Concrete?
It says to use a siliconized latex concrete caulk or concrete patching compound. Both are likely to contain some toxic ingredients.
But you can follow these instructions and just use regular concrete powder mixed with water for the patch.
A lot of concrete crack fillers are designed to fill concrete cracks outdoors, thus the toxic ingredients for waterproofing. But indoors you don’t need this.
If you need to, put a thin “skim coat” of concrete over the entire floor so the crack repairs will not be visible.
Wrinkle Treatments
Question from Kiki Li
Hi Debra,
I recently read your book Toxic Free and have been doing my best to transition into living a chemical free lifestyle. I work in the beauty industry and was an avid Botox and dermal filler client which I have stopped doing since reading your book.
I would like your opinion on the safety in terms of toxicity of treatments such as thermage and fraxel which uses radio frequency and lasers.
Also I assume without saying that Botox and dermal fillers are unnatural and toxic but I would like your confirmation as well.
Debra’s Answer
You don’t have to look far to find information on the side effects of botox injections. Just search on “botox health effects ” and you’ll get warnings from The Mayo Clinic, WebMD, drugs.com and other mainstream medical sites.
Botox is a drug made from a neurotoxin produced by the bacterium Clostridium botulinum called botulinum toxin. A neurotoxin. That means it’s toxic to the nervous system. When you get a botox treatment you are just injecting a toxic substance into your body.
There are three types of dermal fillers, each with their own health effects. Here’s a good article on WebMD that gives a breakdown of available wrinkle fillers, their basic ingredients, how they work, and their pros and cons: WebMD: What you should know about wrinkle fillers.
If you want to reduce your wrinkles, it’s best to use a natural product, such as Touchstone Essentials’ Super Serum I personally know people using this all-natural product and I’ve seen dramatic changes in their skin. You can see a before and after picture.
There are other natural skin restoring products that reduce wrinkles by nourishing the skin topically and from within. Better to choose one of those.