Art | Resources
Natural Pest Controls by Professionals
My guest today is Michael Piacenza, Owner, Certified Operator and K9 Handler of Advantage Pest Control in Clearwater, Florida. We’ll be talking about natural pest controls offered by professionals, and simple natural pest controls you can do yourself in your home and garden. His business uses many green and natural approaches, including Integrated Pest Management (IPM); natural products such as minerals, oils, and biopesticides (botanically based); a mix of minimal risk (a classification for some of the safest products) and reduced risk pesticides (many are classified like essential oils) as the primary tool and then synthetics only where and when needed for a specific pest; and baiting wherever possible. Many types of baits are very safe and effective. This would include products that are boron based (think boric acid) and growth regulators (disrupts the molting process). Both are very effective in the battle against subterranean termites; compared to chemical trenching and drilling to create a toxic vapor barrier around the home. Michael is the Author of many articles in local papers and magazines on safer/eco-friendly pest control, education on pest behavior and control, use of K9s in termite detection, and more. In addition he is a licensed ship pilot and captain, he has held multiple senior level positions in multinational data and telecommunications equipment companies, and is an experienced public speaker. www.PestControlNaturally.com
TOXIC FREE TALK RADIO
Natural Pest Control by Professionals
Host: Debra Lynn Dadd
Guest: Michael Piacenza
Date of Broadcast: February 19, 2015
DEBRA: Hi, I’m Debra Lynn Dadd and this is Toxic Free Talk Radio where we talk about how to thrive in a toxic world and live toxic-free. It’s Thursday, February 19th, 2015. We’re getting some of that cold, winter wind down here in Florida, but we’re all surviving. We’re bringing out our sweaters instead of our shorts although I have seen people still wearing shorts in this cold weather. But I like it cold. I grew up in northern California and we had some coldness in winters. I kind of miss it when we have warm, palmy Florida winters.
But anyway, my guest today, we’re going to be talking about natural pest controls. My guest today is an owner of a natural pest control company here in Clearwater, Florida. So he helps people control their pests without using toxic chemicals, toxic pesticides. We’re going to be talking about if you have a pest problem, how you can have a professional come and use natural methods of pest control, non-toxic method pest control to control those pests and how you can do some of these things at home yourself too.
But I just wanted you to be aware that you can call a professional to come help you in a toxic-free way with your pest control, that that is available and we’ll find out about that today.
My guest is Michael Piacenza. He is the owner, certified operator and canine handler of Advantage Pest Control in Clearwater, Florida. Hi, Michael.
MICHAEL PIACENZA: Hello! How are you today?
Debra: I’m great! How are you?
MICHAEL PIACENZA: Marvelous, darling. I’ve always grown enjoying a little bit of a cool weather.
Debra: Yes. It’s probably easier for you to do your pest control when it’s cooler rather than 90°.
MICHAEL PIACENZA: Yeah.
Debra: Well Michael, I was looking at your bio and you’ve been a ship captain and all kinds of other things. How did you get to being the owner of a non-toxic pest control service?
MICHAEL PIACENZA: Well, I wish it was a more exciting story than it is. I was actually just having dinner with a friend of mine who was the founder of this company back in 1989. We were just talking and he said, “You know, I’m looking to retire in a few years. Why don’t you come onboard with me and take over the company in a few years.” I was, “Man! I don’t want to be around all those toxic chemicals.” He said, “Well, take a look at it.”
Well, I did. I did a little research and I found out that there were plenty of ways to do professional pest control without damaging the environment and the customer. So I took down the challenge and that was about eight years ago.
Debra: You’ve been doing this for eight years, so you must have customers who are interested in it. Do you find that it’s easy to make the sale or are people skeptical? How popular is it?
MICHAEL PIACENZA: Well, it’s become very, very popular surprisingly enough. Over the eight years, it has changed considerably. Eight years ago, I would show up and it might be that the lady of the house would say, “I want it to be safe in the house,” then they’d call me off to the side and say, “But I want it deadly. Bring out the good stuff.”
I would put a little bit of Pyrethrum. The smell is terrible, the smell is toxic (but it’s really quite safe) and use that and they’d be happy.
And now, I show up and it might be the man of the house. Here he is, he looks like he just got off of a Harley and he says, “Well, it’d better darn be safe for my dog.”
It’s become a norm and everybody is becoming aware of the fact at we have to live in this environment that we create.
Debra: That’s right. And it needs to be safe so that we can be healthy. So there’s so many things that we can talk about, and we’re going to talk about a lot of things today. But let’s start with the canine unit. So what do dogs have to do with pest control.
MICHAEL PIACENZA: That’s Buddy. Buddy is a termite-seeking dog. There’s been a lot of research over the last decade or so that that is the best ways to detect subterranean termites. And they are the most destructive. They are the kinds that may [inaudible 00:05:53] and trying to find them is problematic. They don’t show themselves when they’re inside the wall eating. They stay inside the wall until that wall gives way and crack unlike drywood termites, the type that people [inaudible 00:06:13] sometimes. They will make a little hole and [inaudible 00:06:17]. So it’s a way of finding the termites before the damage is already done.
Research at the University of Gainesville, the test studies done with some beagles is that they can detect as little as termites.
Debra: Wow!
MICHAEL PIACENZA: They had them go head to head with methane gas meters and the dogs outperformed the professional meters. The methane is basically looking for termite, the blunt part. Termites give up more methane gas than any other creature on the planet earth.
Debra: Wow. So what you do is you go in with the dog and they sniff and find if someone has termites or not? So why would someone call you in the first place? What would be some evidence that would give them reason to call you?
MICHAEL PIACENZA: Well, most of the calls we get are people that are buying a new home. They just want to know ahead of time whether they have a problem before they buy it. There’s an inspection that everybody calls the ‘termite inspection’. The technical name is the ‘wood-destroying organism inspection/report’. That’s for termites, [inaudible 00:07:54], wood decay and that kind of stuff. You’ve got to basically go up and crawl around in an attic and take a screw driver and punch around on the baseboard looking for a hollow spot.
That’s really how you’re looking for the termites. If you can get underneath the house, you’ll look for mud tunnels and something like that. That’s it! It’s pretty primitive.
I was then using something like a methane meter. Not many people use that. We actually have a radar designed for detecting termites on the wall and it can pick up on movement, but it’s a very, very simple piece of equipment and it’s really only good for isolating a small spot.
But having a dog, you could walk around the perimeter of the house and take them into the bathrooms and sniff behind the shower and that kind of stuff, he’s like having an x-ray for termites. If he finds them, he just turns around and sits as close as he can to wherever they are.
Debra: Wow! That’s pretty amazing, that they have that ability to do it and then that they can be trained and tell you where it is. Nature is so interesting.
MICHAEL PIACENZA: It’s amazing, yeah. It’s the same with bloodhounds, drug dogs or anything else because it’s getting him to pick up on a particular scent – in this case, live termites (not dead termites, not the molds that they leave behind or anything like that, just live termites).
Debra: That’s amazing. We’re coming up on break very shortly, but I’ll ask you. So then, if termites are detected, what kind of natural solutions that you have?
MICHAEL PIACENZA: Oh, okay. Well, the traditional approach is then to build a trench around the outside of the house, drill into the driveway and around the pool deck and inside the locks and then pour or inject into the ground these noxious chemicals – the most popular one is Ciprinol, which I believe is banned in China. It’s that bad.
And the natural ways of doing it would be to put in a baiting system around the house and get the termites eating on the baiting system that they take down to the colony and disrupt the colony with something like an insect growth regulator or a neurotoxin or something like that. Even though we’re using toxic, if you use them just as a bait, you’re not expecting hundreds of gallons of it per house.
Debra: Right, right. We need to go to break. That’s what that music. And when we come back, we’ll talk more about termites and other natural pest controls. You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is Michael Piacenza. He’s the owner, certified operator and canine handler of Advantage Pest Control. Their website is PestControlNaturally.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 Michael Piacenz. He’s the owner, certified operator and canine handler of Advantage Pest Control in Clearwater, Florida and his website is PestControlNaturally.com.
He tells me that they sell some of the things that we’re going to be talking about on the website. So if you’re in need of some natural pest controls, you can order them online if you can’t get them in your local area or if you don’t have a professional –
Actually, before we finish talking about termites, Michael, if somebody wanted to hire a professional natural pest control person, is there a website where everyone across the country is listed. Is there an association of natural pest controllers or something like that?
MICHAEL PIACENZA: No, I wish there was. There are sites out there that will reference people to local companies, but there’s not a national site. I actually was considering starting something like that up. But business has been too good and I have been too busy.
Debra: Well, you know, Michael, that’s just the kind of thing I should do, so let’s talk.
MICHAEL PIACENZA: Yeah, there you go. Yeah!
Debra: Yeah, I mean, that would fit right into the work that I’m already doing. So let’s go back to termites. So what would you do if your dog found termites in the wall?
MICHAEL PIACENZA: Well, the first thing I would do is he pinpoints exactly where they’re at. He’ll pick up an activity area, but they live down in the ground. So the main colony could be 50 feet away, it could be underneath the next door neighbor’s house. So the best thing you can do is put in a monitoring system or a baiting system around the house and they’ll start eating that.
The way that the colony spreads, there are three ways. They’ll either swarm and start a whole new colony or they’ll send out foragers. They’re always sending foragers out looking for new wood. And once they find some new wood and they report back, they’ll build a tunnel to that. So the baiting system around the perimeter of the house is the best way to go.
We actually have apartment complexes that we monitor from north Florida down to southern west coast of Florida. So we use the baiting system and when we find activity, then we’ll swap it out with another type of a bait that has an insect growth regulator. They’ll take it down to the colony and eliminate it that way.
If it’s a really, really bad infestation, then we may need to inject into the wall in the area where they’re actively eating to get a quick [inaudible 00:16:52]. But then we’re using a couple of gallons of products instead of a 100 or 150 gallons on a house.
But we’re only talking here about subterranean termites. There’s an entirely different type of termite, which is called drywood. They’re in the south. And all across the southern part of the country, drywood termites are prevalent. And those are the kind where you see a tent over the house and they fumigate it, gas it out. That’s some pretty toxic stuff there.
Debra: It is, it is. Well, you’ve mentioned the couple of different kinds of methods. One of the things that I’d like to do on the show today is talk about – I know that you take multifacet approach. I know there’s several different areas of types of alternatives. I’d like us to cover those just so that our listeners can get an idea of when they go to a professional, the kinds of tools they have available to them.
And as you’ve already pointed out, just because somebody is doing it green or non-toxic, it doesn’t mean that you’re necessarily only using plant-based materials or things that are completely non-toxic, some of it has to do with the way that they’re used – as you said, putting things in very specific spots instead of spraying them all over the place.
So let’s just start with integrated pest management or IPM because that’s something that a lot of companies use. Could you explain what that is and what the basic philosophy is behind there?
MICHAEL PIACENZA: Well, your standard pest control company, the philosophy is come in, hit it hard and hope you don’t have to come back. So they’ll use the most toxic stuff that they can legally use and hopes that this straightens out any problems and not get a call back.
At the other end of the spectrum is you’ve seen a variety of approaches like integrated pest management. Integrated pest management is you’re working with the homeowner to find points of entry and get those sealed up, educating the customer on what the pests eat – maybe not putting the dog bowl or cat bowl out overnight, so the ants don’t find it and in the morning, they’ve got an infestation. Put it down when they’re going to be there to eat and then, put it away, keeping thing sealed up.
Now, some companies, they claim to be safe and use an integrated pest management. They’ll go in and do those types of things. And then if they do have a problem, they hit it with toxic pesticides and they say, “Well, we use them more judiciously” and there’s some validity there. Our approach is to educate the customer and then use eco-friendly products that are either botanically-based.
Some of the safest things that we’ve used are inorganic minerals like lauric acid made from boron and born is half as toxic as table salt where we try to come in a regular basis (we do like a quarterly pest control) and using the safer products. And then we only go to a more toxic product if we have to – and then very judiciously and very targeted for a pest.
So it’s a little bit more time-consuming on our part, but it’s really what our customers are looking for.
Debra: It is! And sometimes, things do take more time. Toxic chemicals are usually like ‘hit it hard’ and have it be done with, but that doesn’t necessarily support life as a whole. It does require more care and more time.
One thing I want to ask you about, I actually don’t have a lot of pest problems because I do a lot of what you’ve mentioned like sealing up holes and things – oh, we need to go to break. I’m so glad I have this music. Sometimes, I get absorbed in talking and I forget to look at the clock.
You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is Michael Piacenza. He’s the owner, certified operator and canine handler of Advantage Pest Control in Clearwater, Florida. His website is PestControlNaturally.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 Michael Piacenza. He is the owner, certified operator and canine handler of Advantage Pest Control in Clearwater, Florida. His website is PestControlNaturally.com.
Now, Michael, during the break, I was looking on your website because I was about to ask you a question, but I found the answer on the website.
MICHAEL PIACENZA: I’m glad to hear it.
Debra: Yeah! So just for our listeners to know this, in addition to being a professional (so he could come to your house here in the local Tampa Bay area), he also has a lot of products and information on the website. And if you look on the menu across the top, it says ‘Tips & Tricks’ and you can find out how to control fleas, roaches, ticks, bugs, flying insects, spiders, bed bugs and ants.
I was just looking at roaches because the thing that I have the most problem with is what we call here in Florida ‘palm meadow bugs’. The first night that we moved here (we don’t have those in California), I walked into my kitchen in the middle of the night, there were these big, brown bugs all over the kitchen. It was just horrible and I screamed because I had never seen so many bugs like that and they’re big. They’re not real pretty.
So what I found was what we really needed to do was fill in the cracks. They were just coming in the cracks. It was just maintenance. The house maintenance wasn’t good.
But then they found their way. And again, I remember, there was a time – I’ve been in this house for 13 years and this is some years ago – they somehow got into the hall closet where I was storing a lot of things like soap with little additives in it, little flower petals and stuff and they were eating the soap because it had the flower petals in it. So they were nesting all over my hall closet.
And I know this sounds terrible. I’m sure I’m not the only person that puts stuff in the hall closet and starts packing it in and you never go in there, you never move things around. It just becomes this storage area. And then, one day, you go in there and you find that it’s full of bugs.
Once, I took everything out, we vacuumed everything out, we took all the bugs out and too away anything like flower petals and soap that would be a food source and I’ve never had that problem again. It totally handled it.
MICHAEL PIACENZA: That’s integrated pest management too. Part of it is eliminating food sources and harborages for the pest.
Debra: Right! So you want to eliminate the food source, you want to eliminate dripping water pipes that give them water and you want to eliminate things like piles of papers and stuff that provide shelter. And you also want to put screens on windows. And if you do those kinds of things, fill up cracks, if you just do that short list of things to make your house impermeable like that and nothing to attract them, that handles many, many pest problems, doesn’t it, just that short list of things?
MICHAEL PIACENZA: I’m sorry, I couldn’t hear the last word you said.
Debra: Just that short list of things, doesn’t that handle many pest problems?
MICHAEL PIACENZA: Yeah, yeah. it does. I’ve tried to tell people, you got to think of pest control in a couple of different ways. It’s called ‘pest control’, not ‘pest annihilation’. It’s not like you can eliminate every single bug. You just want to make sure that you’ve got it under control, so that you don’t have a full-fledge bloom of something in there.
You get one little cockroach in your house, well you probably don’t like that, but they’re going to die of old age, but they’re going to die of old age before they find another one to mate with. So if you can keep things clean and tight without anything for them to eat, you’re better off.
The other way of looking at pest control, professional pest control, I tell people, “Well, think of it like getting your teeth cleaned.” You don’t wait until you have a cavity to go get your teeth cleaned, you have to get your teeth cleaned, so you don’t get cavities.
Debra: That’s right, that’s right. I want to just add (and this may seem like off the subject, but it’s related. I assure you). I recently read a little book. This book is actually is one of those life-changing books. It’s called – oh, I forgot. It’s called the Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up or something like that. It’s written by a Japanese woman for women in Japan who live in very tiny spaces (not like people here who live in very big spaces).
What this book showed me was a different way of looking at how we handle objects in our homes. She was talking about how she goes into people’s homes and she helps them eliminate things – her criteria is only have in your home what you’re using and what you love. Everything else goes unless you store it in the proper way (if you even need to be storing). I started looking at my house in a whole different way.
There are so many things that just sit there and we never touch them. They’re just things that we think we should keep. And that’s where the pests want to live. They want to live behind those books and all those hidden places. And if you only just do the simple thing of having pure possessions and moving them around (because you’re using them) and cleaning the shelf and things like that, that’s a really big thing.
I can really see spiders and things like that that I don’t even see until I started moving things and deciding if I wanted all these stuff in my house even.
MICHAEL PIACENZA: Yeah, I have a philosophy of ‘one in, one out’.
Debra: Yeah.
MICHAEL PIACENZA: If I bring in something, I make sure that it replaces something I’ve already used or I get rid of one or two things now. That’s the way I try to keep things to a minimum.
I’ll tell you, I get calls periodically from people saying, “My pantry is overrun with little, tiny bugs” and usually, it turns out to be weevils that have hatched out of a box of doggie biscuits in the back of the pantry that they bought three years ago that the dog didn’t like. They should’ve thrown it away.
Debra: That’s exactly the point. We buy something. And then we think, “Well, I don’t like this, so I’m going to put it in a cabinet.” And then it just sits there causing problems. It should go immediately out even if you have to lose $10 or whatever you paid for it. It’s better to not have it in the house. I’m finding things and I go, “Why did I even keep this?” It’s because I couldn’t bear to part with something that I had paid good money for. I don’t know where this comes from, but it’s much better to let things go.
Anyway, we need to go to – no, I thought I heard the music, but we need to go in 20 seconds, so I won’t ask you the next question. But to see something else on the website, PestControlNaturally.com, Tips & Tricks and there’s a promotion about services and – wow! There’s just so much information here.
We’ll talk more with Michael when we come back. You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is Michael Piacenza, owner, certified operator and canine handler of Advantage Pest Control in Clearwater, Florida. His website is PestControlNaturally.com and 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 Michael Piacenza, owner, certified operator and canine handler of Advantage Pest Control. His website is PestControlNaturally.com. It’s got a lot of information there. If you are looking for how to control a pest around the house naturally, this is a good place to look.
So Michael, we talked about integrated pest management, we talked about baiting. So if you’ve done all those things to remove the things that attract the pest inside your home, but you still need to use something like a powder or a spray or something in order to kill the pest, talk to us about natural products.
And also, I know that you also talk about using minimal risk and reduced ris pesticides. Let’s talk about those classifications of risks as well.
MICHAEL PIACENZA: Alrightee! Well, the first thing I’d like to say is that a lot of people, when they’re trying to go safer and more natural, the first thing they want to jump to is a repellant. A repellant can be beneficial. We sell a snake repellant. And that’s great. You just sprinkle water in the outside of your house and it’ll repel snakes. It’s cinnamon and things like that. It overpowers the snake’s sense of smell.
But if you start using repellants in your house, you may just be moving the bugs from one place to another and exacerbating your problem. Most of the time, what you want to do is you want to use something that the bugs aren’t even going to notice like simple boric acid.
We sell BorActin, it’s called. It’s just a very safe boric acid. You sprinkle it very lightly. The bugs walk through it. They get it on their feet and their antennas like cockroaches or ants. And then they grew themselves and all that does is it shuts down their digestive enzymes or protozoas and then they just starve to death. It’s made out of salt and boron and boron is in your one-a-day vitamin with minerals. So it’s pretty safe stuff.
Then there are other products that are neurotoxins. And as soon as I say that, everybody’s hair on the back of their neck will stand up, I’m sure.
Debra: Yes!
MICHAEL PIACENZA: But there are different types of neurotoxins. There are some that will affect humans that don’t have long-term negative effects. Pyrethrum are not very bad for people. You wouldn’t want to just keep breathing it in all the time, but used lightly and in certain areas, it works pretty good. And it actually has a little bit of repellant in it.
But there are other neurotoxins that are plant-based that only affect neurons that are in insects. There’s some really good patented products by EcoSmart and [inaudible 00:42:07] – I can’t remember the name of that company off the top of my head. Essentria is one of the products. And that’s still safe. It falls into the classification of ‘minimal risk’. That’s a new a classification that it’s like the safest products. It’s so safe that it’s exempt from the EPA regulations.
Debra: Oh!
MICHAEL PIACENZA: Mm-hmmm… the EcoSmart product used to have a product line called the Exempt product line and that’s what it is. The Exempt products are in that minimal risk.
And then one step above that is what is called the ‘reduced risk’. That falls into the category very much like essential oils. Our essential oils are found super, super safe, but there are some natural products out there that can kill you too. You know what I’m saying?
Debra: That’s true.
MICHAEL PIACENZA: But it reduce the risk. They call up and they say, “Do you do all-organic?” I’m like, “Well, my safest products are inorganic minerals, but let’s get together and have a cup of organic hemlock tea and talk about it.”
Debra: That’s right.
MICHAEL PIACENZA: They’ll be like, “Hemp?”
Debra: Even water, even if it’s the purest water, you can drown in water, you can eat too much salt. Toxicity is a relative thing.
MICHAEL PIACENZA: So it’s just finding the proper gradient. What level do you need to take care of the problem and is the problem going to be – is the pest problem more toxic than the cure? These roaches and rodents, it can transmit all kinds of different diseases.
Debra: Yes, they can. And that’s actually a very interesting point because there are some insects, which are beneficial bugs and other insects which are toxic in and of themselves. You don’t want to have pests around your house that would cause you to get sick any more than you would want to have toxic chemicals around in your house. You don’t want to get sick.
So what are some of the household pests that people really do need to be concerned about controlling because you don’t want them to harm you?
MICHAEL PIACENZA: I get calls all the time from people saying, “I’ve got this terrible, terrible bug. It has these big claw thing in the back of it.” It’s just called an earwig. It looks really nasty. But they are very beneficial bug. An adult earwig can eat up to a hundred pinch bugs in one day. And pinch bugs are what kills off a lot of the grass here in the late spring and early summer by piercing the grass and sucking the juices out of it.
So you’re going to come in and put pesticide down on the lawn to kill of the pinch bugs because somebody put pesticides down too early and killed off all of the earwigs that would’ve eaten them anyway!
Debra: That’s a really good point because in our culture as a whole, we’re so ignorant of all these relationships in nature. We should know that earwigs eat pinch bugs and we should know how those cycles of life work and use them as part of our pest controls and not be destroying them. We end up destroying those cycles and then we want to spray toxic chemicals because we’ve destroyed the cycle.
If you’re moving away from using toxic substances in every area of life, there’s so much to learn on the other side about the possibilities of how we can do things better.
MICHAEL PIACENZA: It’s just a very delicate balance. People try to do things around the house themselves and I’ve got to give them a lot of credit for the attempt, but a lot of times, they end up doing more harm than good. They go out and they cut their grass too low. And now that they’ve cut it too low, so the sun can hit down to the soil. It dries out the soil, they need more water. Weeds could get in there and get germinated, so now you’ve got to spray it with herbicides. The grass is now [inaudible 00:46:45]. It’s susceptible to a few grubs, mole crickets or pinch bugs eating at it or if it was thick and lush and healthy and it’s got lots of good nutrients, it would be able to withstand that attack without having pesticides on it. And it all started with just cutting your grass too short.
Debra: Yeah. And those are the kinds of things that we don’t know in our culture. Those are like the wisdom things that we don’t carry around with us. We just have this other way of just spraying toxic chemicals on everything.
Having those points of wisdom of knowing the actions that we should take that give a result that leads to life-thriving is part of what’s so fascinating about the work that I do because it’s not all about just identifying toxic chemicals. It’s finding what the other solutions are. I think that as more people can see this different way of viewing life, then we’ll all be healthier and the planet will be healthier and all that.
You’ve done such a great job of putting all these information together. I know I’ve known you for a while, some years and I see more information. They’re well-presented and everything. I just think you’re doing a fantastic job.
MICHAEL PIACENZA: Oh, thank you.
Debra: So we’ve got about a little less than two minutes left. Any final words you want to give us?
MICHAEL PIACENZA: I would tell people, I would elaborate on what I was saying, try to do it yourself is very honorable, but you’ve got to do a lot of research. You might just be better off to hire a professional. Spend your time doing the research to get the right professional.
There are a few little things that you want to look for. When you call up and you are looking for a new pest control company, ask them lots of questions. If they’re not going to spend the time on the phone to answer these questions, they offer to come out and meet with you and discuss things, you’ve probably got the wrong people. They’re probably just going to throw toxic pesticides at it and just go for the bat.
If you’ve got a company that advertises once-a-year pest control, I’ll bet a dollar to a donut (that’s what my dad used to say) that they’re not using the eco-friendly stuff.
Debra: Yeah, yeah. Well, thank you so much for being on the show. If people want to call you up who live in other places – I mean, you’re my local natural pest control operator, if people want to call you for advice from other places, is that okay for them to do that?
MICHAEL PIACENZA: Yeah, I would say, first check out our website. There are many, many how-to videos on there that answers a lot of the frequently asked questions. And sometimes, after launching the video, they’ll see different products and they can actually buy the product right there on the website and be able to take care of the stuff themselves.
Debra: Thank you. We’re running out of time now. Thank you so much. You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. Be well!
Making the Switch from Toxic Light Bulbs to Natural Light
My guest today is Andrea Fabry, toxic free blogger and owner of Just So Natural Products. Following a health crisis in 2008, Andrea and her family discovered the wonders of natural living. We’ll be talking today about the health effects of artificial light, the healing benefits of natural light, and how to bring more natural light into your home and life. Andrea is a former journalist and the mother of nine children ranging in age from 29 to 13. She is also the founder and president of momsAWARE, an educational organization designed to empower others to live healthy in a toxic world. www.it-takes-time.com | www.justso.com
TOXIC FREE TALK RADIO
Making the Switch from Toxic Light Bulbs to Natural Light
Host: Debra Lynn Dadd
Guest: Andrea Fabry
Date of Broadcast: February 17, 2015
DEBRA: Hi I’m Debra Lynn Dadd and this is Toxic Free Talk Radio where we talk about how to thrive in a toxic world and live toxic free.
Well, it’s cloudy outside today here. I’m in Florida and I know some of you on the east coast that are listening are going to have lots of snow today and so we’ll see. I love having a big storm but I know some of you—we have hurricanes here in Florida. And when that happens everything is down, so my sympathy is to those who of you who are going to be in a big storm and any damage that happens today, but here we’re just going to get a lot of wind and rain and it’s nice to see mother nature up there doing her thing.
Anyway, today we’re going to talk about light. Oh, it’s Tuesday, February 17th 2015 and we’re going to talk about light, the difference between artificial and natural light and how that affects your health and what you can do to get more natural light in your life and the health benefits of that.
My guest today is Andrea Fabry. She is a toxic food blogger and owner of Just So Natural Products. She’s been on the show before and you might want to listen to the previous show too in the archives at ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com. She has nine children and they all live without toxic chemicals. I’m going to let her tell a little bit of her story and how she got interested in natural light and the toxicity of light bulbs. She and I are very parallel in our experiences and we had something happened to our health and then started looking around for the toxic chemicals. So she has done a lot of research as well.
Hi Andrea.
ANDREA FABRY: Hey Debra, how are you?
DEBRA: I’m very good. How are you?
ANDREA FABRY: I’m great. Thank you.
DEBRA: All right, good! So tell us a little bit, I know that on the other show that you told us your whole story about how you got interested in toxics, but tell us a little synopsis again.
ANDREA FABRY: I can do that, yeah.
DEBRA: Give us a little synopsis, but then take the story in the direction of how you got interested in natural light. Why are we talking about this today?
ANDREA FABRY: Great!
DEBRA: And what led you down that path?
ANDREA FABRY: Well, it started in a very dark place in our life ironically and that is we had a toxic exposure in our home. When we moved in to it in the year 2000 and didn’t figure it out until 2008. And at which time we’ve left we had some serious structural errors that led to this hidden amount of toxic mold at high, high level. We improperly remediated it and blew it all through the air vents and so on and so forth. But we did have nine kids living with this throughout that time and all of them were impacted including myself and my husband so we had a brand new start in 2008 an unfortunate one and ended up moving from Colorado to Arizona.
At that time I just had this desire to have my kids outside and we were seriously ill. I figured out within several months that just leaving our home would not go to result in full recovery. If that was even possible, I didn’t know. We were very drawn to the desert and the sunshine without really knowing why. And as I look back for us that was a very good move certainly not necessary in order to get healthy but that’s our story.
And in the last years so particularly I’ve been very intrigued about lighting and over all electromagnetic steels and the type of what electrification has done not only in our society but to our family. And then how do you live in a world like ours without just completely abandoning it.
We live with technology and it’s been great! Look what electricity brought us, but unless we’re aware of some of the health implications I don’t think we can be on the offense as much as we really need to be.
DEBRA: I totally agree with you.
I don’t remember the second when I started studying natural light but it was many, many years ago. Well we’ve been living with fluorescent lights from all the time and back in the days when I was first became aware of this we had old tubes that flickered and I just noticed that when I was in a room that had those kinds of lights especially public places that I didn’t feel as well as if I was outside in the natural light and then I noticed that different kinds of light bulbs made me feel better or worse and just putting them in the lamp at home.
And that the color of light even makes a big difference, like I really don’t like being around bluish lights and then I always kept the warm light bulb and I just started learning about it. And we’re going to talk more about this later in the show ‘cause we’ve both been reading the same books I found out and this is a very fascinating subject.
ANDREA FABRY: It is! Oh, go ahead.
DEBRA: Well, I was just going to say, let’s start with natural light because I know one of the things that you said to me this, that you wanted to about why you don’t wear sunglasses anymore and let’s just start with the sun, not the indoor lights. Let’s just start with the sun.
ANDREA FABRY: Yeah, good.
DEBRA: I did a whole read research project about sun protection and because people are always asking me what’s the best sun tan lotion. But it’s not just about sun tan lotion; it’s about being exposed to natural light. So you tell us Andrea, why is it important that we’re exposed to natural light?
ANDREA FABRY: Well it’s just natural which of course your whole program is about, and we have lived with the sun since the beginning and for many generations. Upon generations, we’ve lived well under the sun and with the sun. And I think we have an unnatural fear of it.
Now, I do have a respect for the sun and it’s not to be taken likely, no pun intended that it has hazardous qualities. Too much of a good thing can be too much of a good thing but the bottom line is natural light has a full spectrum of light and when we turned artificial we immediately cut some of that and what we’re most afraid of is the ultraviolet light.
But I think what we understand even intuitively, sometimes you go outside and maybe you’re not feeling well and you just sit in the shade and I feel better. Well there’s a reason for that, that’s it is nourishing even small amounts of ultraviolet light.
We had a baby who was jaundiced, one of ours and this was back in 1994 and of course, I knew nothing about any of this. But you know what is the number one recommendation or treatment for jaundice? It’s light. Put your baby near the window. And it’s the blue light particularly that kind of dissipates the chemical that gets stopped up by the liver and excreted so it’s a very healing thing.
And we know this, and this has been known for many years so when you stop and think and pull back, I think it’s not surprising that sunlight is a good thing. We just don’t know how much or how to do that at also because we just moved from outdoors to indoors and so we’ve needed to create light and build buildings without good windows and ventilation and all these.
We’re spending a lot of time indoors and then we get into a car that has glass and then we wear sunglasses. We have almost cut ourselves off from something that is inherently good and to erase the balance. We can talk all about that but I just think respect versus fear is a very different thing.
DEBRA: I totally agree with you. And if you’ll really think about—first I just want to say that the other day it’s been cold here. Well it’s winter of course, but still, it’s generally very mild here in Florida. And so it’s a big deal on a day like today when we get this big wind down from the north and it gets cold and we get a storm like this but which hasn’t happened yet but I see the wind rustling out my window. And it’s been kind the cold and then other day, just yesterday, I was walking down the street and I happened to be in a place where the sun would shine and like right on the spot I just stood there in the sun and felt the warmth and it felt so good.
ANDREA FABRY: Doesn’t it?
DEBRA: It does. You just go, Mmm sun and the light.
But I have something else to say about the light and sun which I’ll say right after the break.
You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd and my guest today is Andrea Fabry and we’re talking about toxic and toxic free to light.
We’ll be right back.
= COMMERCIAL BREAK =
DEBRA: I’m Debra Lynn Dadd and my guest today is Andrea Fabry, a toxic blogger and owner of Just So Natural Toxic Products. Actually like me, she alerts people to toxic dangers and in fact the way I found out about her was because one of my readers put a comment on something I wrote that was a link to Andrea’s site where she has done some research, which I didn’t know that about toxic chemicals in immersion blenders.
ANDREA FABRY: That’s a fun topic, isn’t it?
DEBRA: It is. But it’s not light so we’ll keep that for another day.
Anyway, what I wanted to say about the sun is that if you look at life, any aspect of light and the basic of life like a seed. A seed will not awaken until it has the sun. It needs sun and water and then plants live on sunlight. Sunlight is just so important and so does it makes sense that our bodies needs sunlight too and will we have a benefit from that? Yeah.
ANDREA FABRY: Well, you know..
DEBRA: And to take that from the sunlight, well I don’t know what that is.
ANDREA FABRY: Right. Well what you just said is so intuitive. The plants depend on photosynthesis, we know and understand and just have it translated to our own bodies.
All life really does depend on the sun, just so many questions about how and how did that work out and that so I think, but the person that really inspired me is when he mentioned the plant is John Ott who lived in the age of 91 and died not too long ago and he really was a pioneer in this whole field and he came up on it.
Accidentally, he had discovered with one of the leaders in time lapse photography, Walt Disney utilized his photography for his efforts. He was so fascinated with how light impacted plants and especially got seeing it in time lapse form. But his own story was he had a weekly TV show, he’s very busy with Walt Disney in time lapse photography but he had arthritis.
One day, he broke his eye glass and found himself working out in a garden, he lived in the Midwest. He’s outdoors more, didn’t have his glasses because they were broken and he felt better. He noticed that his arthritis improved and said to his wife “We need to go to Florida next week. I want to see if what I’m thinking is true.” and she said “okay”.
And they spent the next week on the beach without his glasses. His arthritis dramatically improved and that really changed his career then towards light and health and utilizing all that he has understood about time lapse photography and just studying this and then writing about it in several books, but basing it on the idea that we’re not that unlike plants.
DEBRA: Well, I think I’ve been studying nature for about 30 years and people know me for saying toxics but in my free time I study nature. I’m really interested in nature. And what I see is this commonality that it doesn’t matter what species, whether it’s a plant or an animal, that there are common factors that are needed for life to exist and sunlight is one of those.
It completely makes sense to me that we need to have a certain base line of natural light. It’s like a fire, I mean really it’s like fire. Fire can warm you and cook your food and things like that. If harnessed and used wisely, it can be very beneficial but it can also be very destructive.
ANDREA FABRY: Yeah.
DEBRA: Even water is that way, you can drown in water but your body can’t live without water. It really is finding the optimal use of these natural elements, not too much and not too little,but just right.
ANDREA FABRY: Right.
DEBRA: Goldilocks and those three bears.
ANDREA FABRY: So true.\
DEBRA: Anyway, so tell us more about what you learned about natural light from the health effects of them, like health benefits of natural light.
ANDREA FABRY: Yes, and going back to John Ott and his glasses broke, I can imagine somebody say “What, we just can’t wear glasses?” No, again, they help us see but his point is that if you can spend some time just even sitting in the shade, without any type of any filtration in the form of glasses or sun glasses. And that’s of course if you refer to why I don’t wear sunglasses unless I need them for safety when I’m driving or such.
So it’s not an either or. It was just very new for me to think that it’s okay for me not to wear glasses and be outside And because again,your eyes just unencumbered experiencing natural light, that doesn’t mean you’ll look into the sun at two in the afternoon. But I can stand in the shade without any type of barrier and gain health. That was just really new for me and it’s funny because I had lost my glasses as well and I stopped wearing them around the house. I didn’t even think about it. Wow, I don’t think I need these as much as I thought I did.
And before I knew it I was only wearing my glasses to drive and even then hardly I was seeing much better and I didn’t need reading glasses. My eye sight has improved over the last four or five years. I still need glasses to drive at night there’s no doubt, but they’ve improved. And not by anything I’ve been trying to do, they’re just better and that was just kind of good fortune and I just tried living a little less with my glasses and found it beneficial but that goes back to John Ott and what happened with his arthritis, like I just wow!, so again, the benefit of just natural light. We do live with windows which are slight barriers but that’s better than complete darkness.
DEBRA: Yes.
ANDREA FABRY: So it’s all in degrees and just knowledge along this line can be helpful because it doesn’t mean you need to throw out your glasses or never wear sunglass. It’s just presenting that idea that could for 15 minutes I experience natural light even if it’s cold or even if it’s cloudy during the day.
DEBRA: Right. And I’ll just throw in that I live here in Florida, of course you all know that, and so we do get a lot of sunlight but I learned that it’s much better to wear a wide burned hat and be able to get the natural light than it is to wear sun glasses because the sun glasses block the beneficial things. So I don’t wear sun glasses either. I have one in a lifetime.
We need to go to break.
You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd and my guest today is Andrea Fabry and we’re talking about light.
We’ll be right back.
= COMMERCIAL BREAK =
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio I’m Debra Lynn Dadd and my guest today is Andrea Fabry. She has a wonderful blog with lot of toxic-free and toxic information and is the owner of Just so Natural Products and you can go her blog at it-takes-time.com and her Just so Natural Products are at justso.com
So Andrea, we’ve established our need for natural light so then, when we go indoors, what happens when we start being exposed to artificial light?
ANDREA FABRY: Well again, there’s so many aspects to this, but one of the first things that introducing indoor light and electrification was enable us to be productive at night whereas before, it is just candle light and there wasn’t whole lot you could do. You just went to bed and you woke up with the sun.
Our bodies were very rhythmicly in-tune to the natural way of living and this presented an immediate hazard if you will, even though it enable us to do a lot more and be more productive and so forth.
So that’s probably the first thing that goes is that natural rhythm and so—but again, I’m grateful for shift workers and people who are able to work around the clock. It never means that I can’t do my job or I have to go back to that. It’s just having this knowledge helps you really live in a healthy way whatever your schedule.
So understanding that artificial light can easily stimulate the Melatonin, or rather suppress the Melatonin so during daylight, we don’t get the Melatonin. That’s very low during the day and then the Melatonin helps us sleep at night. That’s how the rhythm goes and artificial light disrupts this and so you can be wide awake at one in the morning if you’ve been around a lot of artificial light and probably you’ve noticed this, even with our e-readers, can emit this artificial light that keeps us awake. But we don’t necessarily make that connection.
And of course, we can talk more about the types of light bulbs, but understanding the rhythm and the Melatonin and so forth is huge in helping yourself at least adapt and create your own rhythm that will work for you.
DEBRA: It really is because everything in life—again we get back in nature—everything has its cycles. And things aren’t the same all the time. Even in the midst of summer, in the most part of the earth, you don’t get 24 hours of light and there’s always the other side of it, the balance.
And so for us to have so much light in the hours that should be darkness, and remember, there’s more light in the summer and less light in the winter, and our bodies have evolved being accustomed to that change in light so if we take away that cycle, how disruptive is that?
ANDREA FABRY: Right.
DEBRA: Yes. And we don’t even think of those terms. So the first thing you write is the cycle.
Now, considering that, after that then we’re looking at light bulbs in the house. What are the light bulbs?
ANDREA FABRY: Is there anything more confusing than the light bulb IO?
DEBRA: ‘I-O’ think so!
ANDREA FABRY: I get anxiety just walking, of course I am under fluorescent light in the store, but the fact of trying to figure out all these different light bulbs—the good news is, we have a lot of choice and there are incredible things happening with light filtrations in light bulbs so don’t discount that there are good options for you in whatever setting you’re in.
Just know, for those listening, if you don’t feel well under fluorescent lighting, there’s good reason for that and like you mention the flickering, it’s a whole different mechanism, fluorescent lighting than an incandescent bulb. And John Ott, in his research back when found that they were weakening to the whole system. So, you’re not crazy if fluorescent lights aren’t a good fit for you.
The good news is there are some full spectrum fluorescent lights available. For our family and our house, we’ve gone with just the old-fashioned incandescent bulb. There’s LED, there’s halogen. Halogen is an extension of an incandescent. LED is probably since—you know we’re phasing out of incandescent over all because they’re not energy efficient. I guess I would choose, personally just opinion, LED over fluorescent, but the…
DEBRA: I would too.
ANDREA FABRY: …full spectrum fluorescent lights are an option and then there are other ways to cope with fluorescent.
Just to know, the bottom line is that those are tough and they can’t create disruption in the system and you’re not crazy for that, but the way I view light bulbs is this. I just try to use a little artificial light if I can, which means I try to really be outside and I—grant it. I live in Arizona in the summer, that’s not easy and I don’t want to be out in 110 degree heat in the middle of the day, but it’s sunrise and sunset, those are great times to experience natural light and in the winter, I know you’ve got some listeners here and it’s like dark a lot and it’s really cold and I do empathize with that.
But you know, 15minutes all bundled-up, just giving your eyes some exposure to natural light can do wonder. And I think we know that from seasonal aspect disorder. A lot of people get more depressed in the winter. Well, there is reason for that.
DEBRA: There is, absolutely.
So I have taken the same strategy as you, which is to spend as much time outdoors as I can but I spend a lot of time working at my desk. And so, I’m looking at the behavior screen a lot of the time, but I really try not to do that 24 hours a day, that’s the first thing. But the other thing is how I use light in my house.
We’re going to be coming up on a break in less than a minute, but I’ll get started talking about this because I’ve vey consciously decided number one, no fluorescents. All the light bulbs that I have in my house are either incandescent or halogen and there’s these little tiny bulbs. I don’t even know what they are, but I need to look that up. I need to look that up and find about.
But the point that I tried to make in my house is to let in as much natural light as possible. So where I’m sitting in right now, even though I have this big 27-inch computer screen, it’s in the context of 17 feet of windows. And..
ANDREA FABRY: Yeah, that is such great point Debra.
DEBRA: And so I have this light pouring in. And I know that windows block natural light, but we’ve all been growing plants in the window. Everybody grows herbs in the windows so if they grow, there’s enough sun. There are some things coming through.
We’ll talk more about this when we comeback.
You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio I’m Debra Lynn Dadd and my guest today is Andrea Fabry. Her website is it-takes-time.com. We’ll be right back.
= COMMERCIAL BREAK =
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio I’m Debra Lynn Dadd and my guest today is Andrea Fabry. She’s the owner of Just so Natural Products and she’s got a great blog at it-takes-time.com
And before the break we were talking about what I do in my house. And I was trying to get as much as natural light in as possible.
One thing I do not like, I just do not like overhead lights and so I have very few of that in my house. And the lens that I have I rarely use. I use the hall light, but I mostly put just task lighting and I just put a light where I’m sitting or a light where the job is, like I have a whole row of halogens around my kitchen sink and I have a good incandescent light over the stove. But even at my desk I have my computer and I can see that, but I just have one task light. The whole room is not full of artificial light. It’s just light coming in from the outside.
And I also used skylights in my bathroom. I remodeled my bathroom and I put a big skylight over the shower, so if it leaks, it leaks into the shower. But it has never leaked. People are worried the skylights are going to leak. I’ve had skylights in several houses and I’ve never had them leaked, but it brings so much light into the bathroom that the only time I turned the light on is at night.
It’s just this judicious use of light bulbs also saves energy, but also you don’t have to illuminate every corner of your house, just where it needs light.
ANDREA FABRY: Ones idea in less can be more and just going to bed earlier, you’re just going to expose yourself best to artificial light.
With knowledge come a lot of power and a lot of change in the way you make decisions. And that’s huge to have a skylight light in the bathroom. It’s so needed when we have water, plumbing, and all those issues, how great is that? You just alluded to the one of the great things about natural light and that is disinfecting, and one thing…
DEBRA: Yes it is. It is!
ANDREA FABRY: Yes. And a lot of that is the UV that we’re so afraid of.
I just put laundry if I dry laundry in a dryer in a dark setting like that works, only the electricity that’s doing that versus putting my laundry after I washed it under the sun, it smells so much cleaner.
DEBRA: I want to ask you a question about that because I would love to put my laundry out, but every time I’ve done it everything just get stiff. Does yours get stiff? What do you do about that?
ANDREA FABRY: I don’t have the answer to that except that sometimes, I’ll just—right before it’s really totally dry. Put it in the dryer for maybe 10 minutes.
I have a friend and she doesn’t own a dryer and she got five kids. So, I’m where you are Debra, I’m like, “I’ll do it when it works for me and find a way.” But I have my dryer, but she doesn’t. And she said, “We just get used to the stiff when I fold it and that stiff inside it kind of loses up. I’m good with little technology here and there, but the idea of how much better it smells is the disinfecting property.
DEBRA: Yeah, I mean, bring sun in to anything and in the right amount and it’s going to be really good.
So any other tips about how our listeners can make the switch from toxic light bulb to natural light?
ANDREA FABRY: Well, again, I think the light bulb information is very valuable and I think that’s brilliant about overhead light, I agree with that.
Less is more and I think more is table lamp. But all that is to me is, that’s really fun to study and learn about and change. But in terms of taking this type of information and not being overwhelmed, I just go back to the basics of living, clean food, clean air, clean water, and I would take this —I’m just more drawn to the outdoors than I was before and that change was in me.
I was living in Arizona behind my computer writing about health for a long time before I really thought about that. Except that inside me, I don’t want to be at the computer this much. And every free moment and even in the evening, I just love what I do, I love the internet, I’m all about technology so…
DEBRA: I love it too.
ANDREA FABRY: Yeah. I love it!
So there’s a lot to be said about health and enjoying what you do so I think I found my calling in life and I love it, but I also knew that there was just a lack of balance. So, just the idea of 15 minutes in natural light, if that’s to take away for a discussion like this, that’s going to do so much. And add in, maybe I won’t have my contacts in or my glasses on for that 15 minutes is changed and just that alone.
I am convinced in John Ott’s book; he showed a progression of a little girl who had a tumor in her eye. She lived in the Midwest and it was the winter. And it took a year and they—there was a doctor, a friend of his, and he shared the case study and the photograph. And this is leading to answering your question here.
So Midwest, winter and this tumor, she moved away from processed food—this is I think the 70s or the 80s—more than what we have now, and just 15 minutes a day, 4 times a day, through the winter and all year, it took about a year but the progression or progress with her eye is pretty astounding and I find—well, I’m happy for her obviously, but for all of us to know that just small amounts of time in natural light can do that much to boost our health. I think that’s encouraging.
DEBRA: I think it’s very encouraging and I would add to your 15 minutes a day of sunlight, to use that 15 minutes to go for a walk. I think that even people like—I wear glasses and I know a lot of people do, but I think most people could go for a walk without their glasses especially when you’re wearing them for reading or driving or something like that. I can walk without my glasses and I think that that lets them in, your natural light, but then also it gives you a little exercise. It gives you a break, you get outside and if people would just do that—there’s just basics about health.
ANDREA FABRY: Yes, the simplest things, yes.
DEBRA: They’re basics. It’s like you need to drink water, you need to eat clean food, you need to have sunshine, you need to have natural light, but natural light is one of those.
And we have so much attention to healthcare costs and people are having these strange diseases at earlier stages and there’s so much health care cost, there are side effects of all these drugs, and yet people are looking to more drugs and what kind of technological things can they do when they’re not doing the basic things like getting natural light. And it’s just…
ANDREA FABRY: You know I have a couple of tips if you—if this is a new idea to go for a walk without your glasses, this is new for me. And one tip that I would give and I have read, and this is obvious too intuitively, and that is not to strain your eyes to be looking as far as you can look because it’s an adjustment to be without your glasses even for that amount of time outside. And my suggestion and this doctor also suggested don’t strain your eyes when you’re trying this. Look at what’s close to you. You’ll be able to see that. So that’s just a small thing that can make it more relaxing and beneficial.
DEBRA: Yes, yes. There are all these programs I haven’t done in and done with those, all these programs about how to give up your glasses by doing these eye exercises and things. And it just starts with—I’ve read over and over that your glasses actually make you not see as well and so I don’t wear glasses all the time.
In fact, I went to an eye doctor because I needed to get a pair of glasses for driving and of course, they want to give you glasses to wear 24 hours a day. And that’s like, “No, thank you.” I’m just going to wear my reading glasses when I need to read and the rest of the time, I can see well enough to be able to see what I need to see.
ANDREA FABRY: Yes.
DEBRA: I don’t have to wear glasses on 24 hours a day. Then I can just let my eyes rest and be in their natural state instead of straining to see through this glass. That’s part of health too.
ANDREA FABRY: They found like simple concepts but in today’s world they really aren’t like they’re foreign and when you…
DEBRA: They’re just not known, yeah.
ANDREA FABRY: Yeah, and the thought that I could through a day and not wear my glasses five years ago was so shocking to me. But something felt good about that or right, and it is. It’s like you said, sometimes it’s the simplest change.
DEBRA: This has been very enlightening. Good to talk to you Andrea. We’re at the end of the show we only got about 30 seconds left, so thank you so much for being on the show.
And again, I’ll give your website addresses, it-takes-time.com—with hyphens—it-takes-time.com is Andrea’s toxic-free blog and justso.com is her natural products website.
I’m Debra Lynn Dadd…
ANDREA FABRY: And Debra, as always, I sure appreciate all that you do, all the pioneering you have done in this field. It’s just great, great to be with you again.
DEBRA: Thank you so much.
This is Toxic Free Talk Radio I’m Debra Lynn Dadd.
Be well.
Detoxing Aluminum Through Your Skin in a Simple Way at Home
My guests today are Elizabeth and Michael Fessler, Founding Partners of Herbalix Restoratives. They make exceptional skin and hair products, some of which detox aluminum from your body as you sleep. Their products are designed to support skin functions with pure, natural and organic ingredients that cleanse and revitalize, while feeding the skin and hair vital nutrients. Today we will be focusing on their detox products. We will be talking about how aluminum enters your body and affect body function, and how topical detox can free the body from aluminum so it can function properly. Elizabeth is Presdent and CEO of the company. She earned a Bachelor of Science in Marketing Degree followed by an MBA in Materials Management. She worked for over thirty years in the medical and pharmaceutical industry. Michael has an extensive background in science and engineering with a focus on creating healthy manufacturing and work areas. While studying at San Diego State University, he participated in a marine study of sea urchins as a food source with the National Science Foundation that has been added to the collections of the Library of Congress. While working in his family’s industrial chemical company in sales, engineering and management positions after college, he developed custom chemical formulations and detoxification procedures. Concern with the environmental impact of toxic materials in the workplace led him to start a contracting business that specialized in detoxifying both commercial and residential properties, including remodeling projects for persons with chemical sensitivities. He now develops safe manufacturing processes and pure ingredient formulas for Herbalix Restoratives body, hair and skin care products. www.herbalix.com
TOXIC FREE TALK RADIO
Detoxing Aluminum Through Your Skin in a Simple Way at Home
Host: Debra Lynn Dadd
Guest: Elizabeth and Michael Fessler
Date of Broadcast: February 12 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 12th. The sun is shining here in Florida. I think that spring is on its way. We have a very interesting and different kind of show today because we’re going to be talking about aluminum.
Aluminum is one of those heavy metals. We all know about aluminum pans and things like that. I think we all have an idea that aluminum is toxic, that you don’t want to cook your food in an aluminum pan. My guest today has done so much research on aluminum. She sent me piles of information about aluminum – different types of aluminum, health effects of aluminum. But also, she and her husband make products that allow you to detox aluminum through your skin while you sleep.
This is a different way of detox that I have never heard of before, but it specifically detoxes aluminum and maybe some other heavy metals. We’ll find out as we talk to her. But even if the only thing it does is remove aluminum from your body, that’s a huge, huge thing as you will see. I just have never seen so much information about aluminum all in one place and they’ve done a fantastic job.
So I’m just going to introduce her right away, Elizabeth Fessler. She’s one of the founding partners of Herbalix Restoratives. I understand that her husband, Michael is scheduled to be on the show, but I’m not sure he’s there on the phone. Elizabeth, are both of you there?
ELIZABETH FESSLER: Yes, we are.
MICHAEL FESSLER: Yes. Hi, Debra.
ELIZABETH FESSLER: Good morning.
DEBRA: Oh, great! Hi! I’m glad you’re both there and I’m so happy that you’re on the show. I want to learn more, so much more about what you’re doing and I want all my listeners to know this too. Just really excellent research you’ve done. I just have to admire you for that.
So tell us, how did you get interested in – well, let’s just start with your company. You have a company that makes personal care products, but you didn’t always make what you’re making now I think. How did you get started?
MICHAEL FESSLER: Well, I’ll answer that first. Back in 1999, a retired neurosurgeon by the name of Dr. David B. Maline, he asked me to find products that he could use, body care products because he had allergies to soaps and lotions. He was desperate to find something he could use and he asked me if I would help him.
With the help of an herbalist, Judity Pillsbury, we developed a line of products that were without synthetic chemicals and petroleum. She also brought into the company a preservative that didn’t have any methylparabens. It didn’t use a paraben. We found this is one of the main problems for people with allergies.
So we developed this line of organic products. Everybody in the family could use it without having any chemicals be absorbed into their skin.
DEBRA: Well, 1999, that was a long time ago. Nobody was doing that then.
MICHAEL FESSLER: Yes.
ELIZABETH FESSLER: That’s absolutely correct. And there still isn’t a preservative that we know of out there that doesn’t have some form of a synthetic chemical whether it’s a paraben or carbomer. What they do is the keyword, they always look at buzz word being now. It’s the ‘paraben’. So they’ll try to replace it with something else. All of them are toxic and none of them are beneficial.
We are priding ourselves on being able to create this particular preservative that is not only 99% effective in killing all the major microorganisms required, but to called a preservative that is a living preservative that actually prevents the good bacteria from being destroyed.
DEBRA: So taking a look at your personal care products, even if you didn’t have the detox effects, the benefits, I should say, of someof the products that you created, you really have just about as pure a line of personal care products as I’ve seen. So you’ve done a really excellent job with that.
What made you then interested in being concerned about aluminum and creating these products that remove aluminum from your body?
MICHAEL FESSLER: Well, what we first found out, Debra is that we looked at the underarm and the antiperspirants and we decided to get into that market, making a product. We found these ingredients (the kelp, the coriander, the olive leaves) and in the developing, we actually found out it worked better to use at night time to clean out the underarm.
We actually did a clinical where subjects used this and compared it to antiperspirants. They used tape strippings to test the tissue. They were able to measure the amount of aluminum in each of our underarms. And from that, we understood we were really pulling the aluminum out of the body through the underarm with our detox deodorant because aluminum is a weaker salt than iodine found in kelp and thee alum salts are driven up into the body from antiperspirants. So while we were looking at this aluminum, we said, “Why is all these aluminum coming out of the underarm?” We kind of back tracked from that and that’s what developed our interest in looking at aluminum because it’s so plentiful in air, water and food.
So while we were looking at this aluminum, we said, “Why is all these aluminum coming out of the underarm?” We kind of back tracked from that and that’s what developed our interest in looking at aluminum because it’s so plentiful in air, water and food.
DEBRA: And especially, just about everybody in America (and all over the world probably) on a daily basis are just putting aluminum on our skin, under our arms every time we use an antiperspirant.
I don’t use antiperspirants and I’m assuming that you use your products, so you’re not putting aluminum under your arms. But everybody who’s using these standard antiperspirants are just giving themselves a nice, good dose of aluminum, which goes right into their underarms. It goes right to their body through their skin.
MICHAEL FESSLER: Right! And there’s actually more as we started to investigate. The underarm is connected to the brain, it’s connected to the subclavian lymph node from the thyroid. The gums under our teeth, drain out through the underarm including the breast tissue.
So when we stop the function of the body from draining, you’re backing up all these cellular waste back up into the brain, the thyroid and the breast.
And that’s what we started to see when we started to open up the underarm. We’re getting phone calls and people are saying, “Well, this is cleaning up. This is different. I don’t have the breast pain” or, “I don’t have the headache like I used to. Why is that?”
So we actually had to back track from the underarms. It told us how important the underarm is, to clean it out and not to use a foreign agent in the underarm.
DEBRA: I know a lot about sweat being one of the major pathways of how the body detoxes – of course, people sitting in saunas and things like that. I knew not to use antiperspirants so that you wouldn’t be stopping your body from sweating. But I didn’t know about these specific areas that you’ve just talked about.
And of course, the underarm where you’re sweating so much would be a major area that the body would be using for detox. I would’ve never thought of the underarm as being a major detox organ. You can sweat from any part of your body, but especially your underarm. That totally makes sense to me.
MICHAEL FESSLER: We just think of putting something on our underarm and being on our way. We’re kind of embarrassed by our odors. But those odors actually are indicators that there’s something going on in the body or of what we ate.
We actually use thermography to see some of the blockage between the breast and the underarms and we could see the changes in the circulation. So it’s really important.
In fact, we know the bottom part of the underarm is connected to the draining of the breast. And so when we put on an antiperspirant, it’s going to seep down and close off that area, which is really vital because the more and more we use a foreign agent like an antiperspirant, the more it’s going to seal off the ability of the breast to be able to force out the excess fluid that it doesn’t need.
DEBRA: This is amazing! You’re explaining this so well. I’m just astounded by your research and putting this all together. It’s exactly the right direction.
We need to go to break. You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guests today are Elizabeth and Michael Fessler. They’re the founding partners of Herbalix Restorative, which is Herbalix.com where you can find their exceptionally pure personal care products and also, the specific detox products that we’re going to be talking about later on this show. So stay tuned. We’ll be right back.
= COMMERCIAL BREAK =
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guests today are Elizabeth and Michael Fessler, founding partners of Herbalix Restoratives. Their website is Herbalix.com.
So let’s talk about aluminum now. Why is it such a concern? Most people think that it’s just found in antiperspirants and if they don’t use the antiperspirants, they don’t have to worry. And especially, I was looking at your material and it says the natural antiperspirants made from alum contain the same aluminum. So can you explain? You also sent me a very long list of all these different types of aluminum. Tell us about aluminum and the different types where people are likely to get it into their body.
ELIZABETH FESSLER: I would like to begin with is to say that we are now living in an era of aluminum overuse.
DEBRA: Yes.
ELIZABETH FESSLER: What that means is it’s ubiquitous in its use. It’s found in everything. Dr. Chris Exley is from Keel University and he’s the world’s foremost authority on the impacts of life on earth. There are no positive benefits to anything living (including humans) to have aluminum in their body. It’s an inorganic transitory metal. It comes in many forms and it’s the third most prevalent element on earth. It binds with other metals, as well as viruses.
What this really means is there’s no way of escaping it. You take anything out of the soil, you’re going to have aluminum in it. Once it’s out of the soil and we separate it from the ions, it becomes toxic. It’s ubiquitous. It’s found in air, food, water, fertilizer, body care products, automobiles, medicines and the list goes on and on. They keep using it – and more and more and more.
It binds with other metals as well as viruses and it depletes the calcium in the cell. It’s a pro-oxidant. And we all know what that means. The oxidative stress just by this metal damage cells and the tissues.
It bio-accumulates in the body. This is the most important piece. It bio-accumulates. We can’t get it out. It gets in, it goes into all tissues and it’s stored. And it’s not just from the antiperspirant as we’ve mentioned before.
DEBRA: I just want to say that I’ve been doing this work for 30 years, more than 30 years. And when I first started, my basic premise was, “Oh, there’s these toxic chemicals in consumer products. If I just find the consumer products that have the toxic chemicals and then don’t use those and the consumer products that don’t have the toxic chemicals and use those instead, then I’m going to be okay. I’m not going to have these effects that I was having from toxic chemical exposure.”
And now at this point in time within the last few years since I wrote my last book, it’s very, very clear to me that you can avoid and you should avoid as many toxic chemicals as you can identify and find and see that there are safe alternatives for.
But the way things are, we cannot escape toxic chemical and heavy metal exposure. It’s in everything. And detox is so mandatory because as you’re saying, these things get lodged in your body. Aluminum and lead and all these other heavy metals, they’re all bound up in the ground. Industrial process take them out of the ground, spread them all around and our bodies are not designed to be able to process them.
And so anyone who is not detoxing is becoming a storehouse for aluminum that we’re talking about today – and other heavy metal. That’s the way it is. And so it’s important. I cannot stress this enough. It’s so important to detox.
MICHAEL FESSLER: Debra, can I give you a couple of examples where most people don’t even realize – and I’m sure you’ve seen our partial aluminum list. Aspirin can contain 11% aluminum salts.
DEBRA: Wow!
MICHAEL FESSLER: We also found out that the genetically-modified corn and wheat is grown in soils that are full of aluminum because a regular corn or wheat seedling could not survive because the aluminum kills it so much. So that’s why the transfer of the aluminum into these plants now get into our cereals, they get into the pasta, they get into the pizza, they get into everything. Detoxing, as you’ve said, is the main way to kind of keep it from accumulating.
DEBRA: Yes, yes. Exactly. We need to go to break in about two minutes, so tell us about some of the health effects if people have aluminum in their body? How is that harming your body?
MICHAEL FESSLER: Well, probably the latest that we found is from the Canadian government. The cereals are probably the fastest way. They’re so full of aluminum in the corn and the sugar that the first place they found that in mice when they fed aluminum in the water with mice, it went to the liver.
So the liver is getting impacted. We’re finding everybody’s liver is probably the biggest storage unit for aluminum in our body. When that happens, the end result is we start to put on more fluid edema in our body, which translates into obesity.
So these are some of the ways that aluminum affects us. It’s over in three diseases like breast cancer. They found it in the cyst, in the tumor a large amount there. The prostrate is another area where heavy metals accumulate.
I think Liz want to chime in here.
ELIZABETH FESSLER: Yeah, I just have two more to mention. The National Library of Medicine has over 2000 references to the adverse effects of aluminum. And the National Institute of Health classifies aluminum as a neurotoxin, which adversely affects the blood brain barrier and may cause damage.
We also know that it’s used as an adjuvant in vaccines and there’s a lot of concern about this, that the amount in a vaccine impact the child much more rapidly and readily than it would an adult human. And because of that, there can be an imbalance to the amount of aluminum that’s actually getting into their brain.
DEBRA: Wow! It’s everywhere and I can see how it could contribute to so many different illnesses because it hits fundamental things. If the liver is so occupied with collecting the aluminum and then it just sits there in the liver, it’s not detoxing the rest of your body.
We’ll talk more about this when we come back. You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guests today are Elizabeth and Michael Fessler. They’re the co-founding partners of Herbalix Restoratives. Their website is Herbalix.com. When we come back, they’re going to tell us about their specific detox products that will remove aluminum from your body while you sleep. We’ll be right back.
= COMMERCIAL BREAK =
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guests today are Elizabeth and Michael Fessler, co-founding partners of Herbalix Restoratives. That’s Herbalix.com.
And before we talk about your detox products, I just want to ask you how can people measure the levels of aluminum in the body. I know that a lot of times, I talk to people about detoxing, they say, “Well, I don’t have any heavy metals in my body. I don’t have this in my body, I don’t have that in my body.” They just don’t know. So if somebody wants to test, how do they do that?
MICHAEL FESSLER: Well, that’s a great question because when we did the detox deodorant, we used lab work that used mass spectrometry. And today, the doctors use blood, urine and hair analysis, but we found out it’s not really capturing the true amount in our body.
There’s a French company that is now just entering into the American market here that has developed a portable mass spectrometer that actually tests through the palm of the hand, the skin, the bioavailability of our minerals, our heavy metals. And it’s this actual machine that we’ve been finding if it houses how much aluminum.
Aluminum, for the French doctors who have been working with this is the biggest problem they’re dealing with. It’s even worse here in the United States. So that’s how, if somebody finds somebody with the Oligoscan. I think in the next year or two, you’ll see more and more of those come in because the blood and the urine, lab work is just not capturing these heavy metal.
DEBRA: How do you spell that, Oligoscan?
MICHAEL FESSLER: O-L-I-G-O-S-C-A-N.
DEBRA: That’s amazing! I think I should look for one of those.
MICHAEL FESSLER: Well, yes. And we can provide the information. The company found we were removing metals. They tested our products. So they sent us a machine to test on other people. They use it for clinicals, which is quite an exciting adventure for us lately.
DEBRA: Wow. Wow! So many new and wonderful things in the field of toxics. We’re finding out more and more. When I think about the last 30 years, now we know more than ever and people are more interested than ever and more research is being done than ever.
So tell us about your detox products. I’m sitting here on my desk and I’m so interested that you have a detox deodorant that people can just put it on like deodorant and while they sleep and it removes the aluminum that antiperspirants have deposited in your skin. And then you also have one, it’s a breast cream. And you have one that called Belly Freedom that you put on your belly fat. So you’ve got us covered here. And then we also have a soap. So tell us all about these.
MICHAEL FESSLER: Well, the night time detox deodorant. We call it Mrs. Plumber. You put it on at night time and you can actually put it on the feet because that’s another area. The feet get dried out, it can pull from the feet. So the feet and the underarms and actually, the hands are the terminal ends for getting rid of a lot of heavy metals and cellular wastes.
Now, we found out with thermography that with the Sentinel Breast Cream in conjunction with the Detox Deodorant where you could see the changes of the breast fluids being corrected and making it symmetrical in getting rid of the fluids and restoring the natural flow in the breast.
We’re not going to get into, but we can see some things like the amalgams in effect, that the can be pulled into the breast tissue. And so these are things that a little further, but knowing that the breast cream and detox deodorant work in conjunction with each other.
ELIZABETH FESSLER: Yeah. And it’s important to make certain before you use a breast cream that you have clearance in the underarm because there can be some movement that can be a little uncomfortable in the beginning if there’s no way for you to get rid of those released fluids.
What’s really great about that is actually what we’re addressing in the breast cream is the build-up of calcification, which becomes fibrocystic breast conditions. And we know through this ozonic effect, it’s the salting in and salting out, calcium has been displaced by the aluminum because it’s a higher form of salt and that’s why we have calcification.
And the other part of that is iodine found in kelp is a better salt and a higher form of salt than aluminum, so it actually gets rid of the aluminum and allows your body to opening up the channels to get rid of the aluminum. And behind that aluminum comes all the other toxins that are prevented from being released as it’s blocking or plugging.
DEBRA: So once the aluminum is removed, then do these products work for other heavy metals?
MICHAEL FESSLER: We do have indications that if you put it directly over an organ like the liver, we have detected throughout the whole body a reduction in nickel and cadmium and some other heavy metals. So it’s kind of exciting for us, but we’re right in the midst of a clinical on that one.
ELIZABETH FESSLER: Yes, and we use other ingredients that make it more potent. As you go down the list (first, the detox and the belly fat and the breast cream), they have a larger and larger list of ingredients. The deck is very large because it includes the anti-inflammatories, things like magnesium and selenium and dandelion roots and throw in the castor oil.
What we’re really doing is we’re creating the ability for the body to pull and also absorb some of these nutrients at the same time and get the blood flow going to the visceral fat areas where there is no water. And by creating this effect, we’re actually allowing the body to correct the condition that’s causing the visceral fat build-up and the toxic.
DEBRA: So did I understand you to say that you should use the detox deodorant first and then use the other two? Should you be using them like one by one or altogether? How do people use these?
MICHAEL FESSLER: We actually have a lymphatic chart and we usually start with the detox deodorant on the feet and the underarms for about three days to a week. And then when you put the others in, when these fluids start to move, they will get down to the feet, they will get out of the underarms because those are our main sweating areas at night time.
DEBRA: Good! And can you just explain briefly because we only have about – oh, no! We don’t. We’re going to go to break and then I’ll ask you another question. You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. We’re having a very interesting conversation today with my guests, Elizabeth and Michael Fessler who are the founding partners of Herbalix Restorative. Their website is Herbalix.com. We’ll be right back.
= COMMERCIAL BREAK =
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guests today are Elizabeth and Michael Fessler, co-founding partners of Herbalix Restoratives. Their website is Herbalix.com. We’re talking today about how you can detox very toxic aluminum from your body.
I wanted to make sure we explain what is the process that is being used when the body is really moving – I think you call it skin chelation. How is that similar to what happens when you use a sauna to pull toxic chemicals out through the skin?
MICHAEL FESSLER: Yeah, actually, it’s very similar with a sauna, a swim in the ocean or some form of heat. It helps dilate the skin or it can sweat, artificially sweat and get rid of a lot. So it’s the same method of using the skin to pull the metals that are stagnated. There are 20 lbs. of skin in all of us approximately. And so using these products by osmosis with the kelp, it’s a better salt than what’s in our body. The weak salts would be like aluminum. So it will be attracted to go to the skin.
And at night time, you can wear it for six, seven or eight hours and it can keep working where we can’t stay in a sauna for eight hours, we can’t go swimming for eight hours because it’s just too much on the skin. This is a safe, convenient way to absorb the aluminum salt and to help the skin clean out.
DEBRA: When I think about putting lotion on or a cream on my skin, does it go into your skin? Does it get all over your sheets? I know what people are thinking, “Is it going to be gooey all over the bed?
ELIZABETH FESSLER: You know, this is what we suggest because we are creating poultices. Those are sticky and tacky and they remain on the skin. That’s one of the reasons why we say wear it at night. It also works better at night, but for some people, just to understand that it needs to stay and you don’t want to really have a lot of clothing.
So we suggest that you leave something on the cover of your skin, something light and something that will keep it warm and also something that you don’t mind if it got stained because a lot of the staining are going to come from what you’re pulling through your skin. That’s something that you want to happen, but you don’t want to ruin anything that you own that you like.
And then you’ll find later on in the evening if you’re uncomfortable, you can remove that clothing if it’s bothering you. But certainly, at the beginning hours, you want to have some kind of cover to protect.
DEBRA: That makes sense. So like a t-shirt. If you’re using the deodorant, wear a t-shirt. And then for the other ones, you could just wear a tank top or something just so that there’s something between your body and your bedsheets. That makes a lot of sense.
ELIZABETH FESSLER: Right!
DEBRA: Yeah, yeah. So what else would you like to say that we haven’t talked about. We still have about five minutes left to talk.
MICHAEL FESSLER: You know, the funny name we made for the belly cream, we view it as a detox, but this doctor actually discovered (she came into our building and helped us develop this product) that when you cover from below the rib cage and the whole stomach area, the belly cream helps to go and clean up the lymph nodes. We have a lot of lymph nodes in the stomach.
But the liver, because of the fatty liver, the fat is on the outside closer to the stomach wall. So it’s easier to do that, access it via the skin. So a lot of times, trying to internally cleanse, at first, this brings the toxicity back into the liver or the organ. So this form of ability to purge, it’s better to use at the skin. If it’s been night after night, we can actually get that liver soft.
We actually had people that we tell them to tuck it right into the right rib and feel the liver. If there’s tension in the liver, they’re a good candidate for that product. But it works throughout the whole body because once the liver starts to function its full function, it starts to remove a lot of fluids in the neck, the fingers, in the different parts of the body. So the liver, it’s very important to keep the aluminum out of it.
DEBRA: I totally agree with you. I think that certainly, Belly Freedom is a cuter name than “liver something.”
MICHAEL FESSLER: Well, if we said something like a ‘liver cleanse’, I don’t think anybody would figure that one out. We had to make it kind of…
ELIZABETH FESSLER: …cute.
MICHAEL FESSLER: …a cute name, a BFF to get people to – but once they use it, they understand.
DEBRA: Yeah, that makes sense to me because the liver is there and you can very much focus the detox on the liver by putting it in that area rather than detoxing your whole, entire body. Just say, “Go to the liver and put it just right there.”
So do people really get rid of their belly fat by using this?
ELIZABETH FESSLER: You know, that is a side effect, yes.
DEBRA: It’s a side effect.
ELIZABETH FESSLER: Yes. What happens is you’ll find that there are a lot of changes in the body – as I’ve mentioned, the inflammation. And it may not start with the belly, but it’ll start with other parts.
The thing about the brain is it decides for you where it’s going to work first. So you may notice maybe in the size of your joints, your knuckles, your fingers, your leg. You may have more flexibility. Certainly, sleep patterns will start to change. You may find that you’re going to the bathroom more than before and we want you to do that, all of those things.
Even bad breath in the beginning because you can express through your breath at night all of the toxins that have been stored in that tummy. What happens is many times, the build-up of fat actually interferes with our digestive process.
DEBRA: Wow! This is such a fascinating subject. So let’s see, what else can we ask you? There’s so much to talk about, wow! Let’s talk about aluminum some more so that people really understand more about the health effects. What more can you tell us that we haven’t already talked about?
MICHAEL FESSLER: I think that when we started to research aluminum – and we called Dr. Exley in England and he invited us to go to the aluminum conferences, we were able to sit and share the information about the aluminum toxicity and aluminum as an metal estrogen and how it interferes in so many different ways.
So collectively, we were able to and still do collect sources of aluminum from air, water, food and medication and we’ve effectively seen where it stores in the body from all these aluminum in folks because they’re telling us. What do we do because it’s not regulated by the government? There’s no way that we can harness it like we do mercury and lead. So it’s something that we individually have to address if we’re going to live with it.
So as you’ve said, the detoxing becomes a part of a daily routine, just like brushing your teeth. The fact that we have the Oligoscan and we can see our levels being reduced, so we know how effective it is that one has to detox because it’s just so plentiful.
So you just don’t want aluminum to stay in the body especially for women because they’re a little more acidic. And in physics, acid and aluminum likes to cluster a little bit more, so that’s where the alkaline really helps because it helps to break up the clustering.
And that’s why our products are on the alkaline side because they help the skin to break up the bindings of what aluminum can do.
ELIZABETH FESSLER: And one other thing, women has more fat because we have breasts and that is where we find breast cancer on the rise. It’s the toxins that hide. It’s the purpose of that. The brain says, “Well, I’m going to put the toxins there because it’s not as essential for living.” But eventually, the toxic build-up becomes dangerous to our health and that’s where we find the diseases start to develop.
Aluminum is stored in every tissue, in every cell of the body. It alters the function of the cell because it depletes the calcium in cells. And without the calcium, we don’t have the proper function in the cell because cells depends on sodium, potassium and calcium. Something as basic as this can have an effect and that’s where break down occurs.
DEBRA: Amazing! Everything that you’re saying, I’m just sitting here thinking, “I haven’t heard most of this before.” But it all makes sense to me based on other things that I’ve read about other chemicals. You just think of aluminum as being such a – you know, we wrap our food in aluminum foil and all these things.
I was looking at your list and so many of these different types of aluminum are used in food packaging. And I was thinking if people just didn’t eat packaged food, they would eliminate a lot of their aluminum exposure. And that’s just one thing right there.
Well, thank you so much for being on the show today. I really appreciate you taking the time and sharing all these wonderful information with us. Again, my guest today have been Elizabeth and Michael Fessler. Their website is Herbalix.com. Thank you again!
ELIZABETH FESSLER: Thank you, Debra.
MICHAEL FESSLER: Thank you, Debra.
DEBRA: You’re welcome. You’ve been listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. You can go to ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com to get more information. Be well!
Getting Off Prescription Drugs with Natural Remedies
My guest today is Pamela Seefeld, R.Ph, a registered pharmacist who prefers to dispense medicinal plants and other natural substances instead of prescription drugs. In our last interview, we talked about my brother’s death from prescription drugs. Today we’ll talk about how natural remedies can act as a bridge to move away from taking prescription drugs and their side effects. 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
- Different Types of Detox
- 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
Getting Off Prescription Drugs with Natural Remedies
Host: Debra Lynn Dadd
Guest: Pamela Seefeld, P.Ph.s
Date of Broadcast: February 11, 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 Wednesday, February 11th, almost Valentine’s Day. It’s February 11th, 2015.
We have a beautiful, early spring day here in Florida. My office is what’s called a Florida room here, which is a room that has big windows. It’s got 17 ft. of windows. I think it’s 17 ft. or something like that. And as I do the show, I just look out the windows into my beautiful backyard with oak trees and birds flying by.
In the spring time, I have this whole bank of beautiful azaleas right under my window and they’re starting to bloom. They’re just starting. So for the next two weeks, we’re going to have beautiful azaleas. And so spring is starting to be here. Even if you’re in the snow in Florida, it’s starting to be spring.
So my guest today is Pamela Seefeld. She’s a registered pharmacist who prefers to dispense medicinal plants and other natural substances instead of prescription drugs. She’s been on many times before. I have her on every other Wednesday because she has so much information and prescription drugs. Even over-the-counter drugs have so many health effects.
The last show we did – actually, two weeks ago, we did a replay because I didn’t do any live shows last week. But a month ago, we did a show about how prescription drugs just undermine your health over a lifetime of taking them. We did that because of the recent death of my brother from prescription drugs. So if you haven’t listened to that show, you might want to take a listen to that one.
But today, what we’re going to talk about is how to get off prescription drugs and also other types of drugs that are over-the-counter or even recreational drugs or psychiatric drugs that often, you can’t just quit. Natural remedies can be used as a bridge between taking these drugs and being off of them.
So welcome, Pamela.
PAMELA SEEFELD: Hey! It’s great to be here.
Debra: Thank you. It’s always nice to have you on. I always like talking about this. You are a – wait a minute, I have to find the word. I keep forgetting it. What’s the word? It’s pharma—
PAMELA SEEFELD: Pharmacognosy.
Debra: Pharmacognosy! That’s right. I have it here in the description somewhere. There it is right there. So I always love giving that word because I’m very happy to know that there is a whole field called pharmacognosy that is just about the healing power of plants.
The word itself, pharma-, that’s a drug, but cognosy means information, intelligence. It really describes what a plant does. A plant has its own intelligence. It can work with your body and all of the nature intelligence that happens between different kinds of natural things. it’s so different from what a drug is.
So with that said, let’s start talking about how people can get off prescription drugs with natural remedies. Let’s start with psychiatric drugs.
PAMELA SEEFELD: I just kind of picked a few different things and then we can just expand upon that. Anti-depressants, we’ll go through that category first. So if a person has some depression symptoms, they go to the doctor and the doctor give them most commonly something called an SSRI, which is a serotonin reuptake inhibitor. These drugs include Zoloft, Paxil and Prozac. They’re very commonly prescribed.
And in fact, many times, in most cities here in the country, they test positive for these in the water supply because there’s so much of it.
It’s in the tap water now.
Debra: That’s just amazing!
PAMELA SEEFELD: Yeah, it’s in most municipalities – that and cholesterol lowering drugs and estrogen from birth control pills and from women taking estrogen. Those three things are found ubiquitously in water supplies around the country.
Debra: Another reason to get a water filter.
PAMELA SEEFELD: Exactly! That’s exactly right. That’s exactly right. Well said.
So let’s say that somebody has depression and they go on these medicines. And then what happens is the original instance that they were depressed about maybe passes (maybe they lost a loved one or something like that) and then they end up staying on these things for long periods of time.
So to avoid this, basically, most of the time, the physician won’t re-evaluate at any point coming in the future. They’ll basically just stay on it and maybe even the person thinks that they need this medicine because they’ve gotten so accustomed to it.
The neurons, when you start taking these medicines away, there’s a process that takes place and it’s called neuronal retreat. What it does is the neurons start to retract from where they’re branched out. And so that’s what explains the transient amnesia for some people, the anxiety, the sleep problems, all these things that gets them anxious and make them think that they can’t get off the medicine
So there’s a physiological change in the brain that takes place taking these things that needs to be addressed before you take them away.
So a lot of the times when we look at the brain and we talk about taking away anti-depressants, first and foremost, we need to say, “Okay, what’s going on in the frontal cortex where we do our thinking and reasoning?”
The brain is folic acid and it’s made of omega 3 fish oil. So what I normally do for people if they’re trying to come off of these, what we normally would say is that, “Okay, to avoid these electrical impulses in the brain, this foggy thinking, the anxiety, all these side effects that happen when you first try and take the medicine away, what we want to do is we want to refurbish the brain. And at the same time, we really want to use Body Anew, a homeopathic detox to just clean out all the stuff in the body that might be contributing to it.”
So really, the hallmark of taking away an anti-depressant would be first and foremost is to say, “With the depression that you had,” you kind of go back and look, “was that issue resolved?” If there’s an underlying depression, that can be a problem.
But what clinically is shown (and there’s been studies with this) is that if you used a product called OmegaBrite – OmegaBrite is a fish oil, it’s a 7:1 ratio of EPA to DHA. It was developed by Dr. Andrew Stole. He’s a Harvard psychiatrist. He did a double-blind placebo-controlled trial with Zoloft, which is the anti-depressant we are discussing. And in the trial, it was actually better for depression than Zoloft. That’s very, very important for people to realize. Think about that.
There is a fish oil developed by a psychiatrist. He’s a doctor he lectures worldwide. He’s very famous. He’s at Harvard University. This is his product. He has a patent on it. He did the study, the clinical data that show that this works better than Zoloft. That’s very important for your patients and the people that are listening to this show. Don’t you agree?
Debra: I do. So explain why it’s better to take this natural remedy than taking the Zoloft. Why is it better for your body to do that?
PAMELA SEEFELD: So omega 3 fish oil, I’m sure there’s somebody perhaps listening to this on the computer or on the radio and saying, “Well, I take fish oil. I know about fish oil. I take that every day.” Well, there different concentrations of EPA to DHA. The 7:1 ratio that Dr. Andrew Stole has patented and he did the studies on is the one that shows to be the most advantageous for depression.
The reason why you would want to use a natural product instead of the anti-depressant is that the fish oil itself does not have these long-term side effects and you would want to be on omega 3 fish oils anyway because we know fish oil turns on over 300 different genes in the body, it works effectively against cardiovascular disease, cancer, anti-inflammatory. So it’s doing all of these other heart-healthy things.
We look at heart disease being the no. 1 killer in the country. We know that this is something that is really, very important. In fact, isn’t this American Heart Moms? They wear red…?
Debra: I think it is. I was thinking we should be talking about heart, but I wanted to talk about this…
PAMELA SEEFELD: It is! These all coincides with it because you only want to know that omega 3 fish oils, it’s imperative for the brain function, but also, it’s so significant for the heart.
In fact, when people do studies on omega 3’s and they radio-label it, so they can see it lighting up in the body and they do PET scans, in the very beginning, if you just started taking omega 3’s and maybe you haven’t been taking them in a long-term basis, the heart takes up quite a bit of it. It concentrates and it’ll light up. So it’s really important to know that sometimes you have to saturate these areas.
Debra: We’ll talk more about this when we come back. We need to go to break. You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest is Pamela Seefeld. She is a pharmacognocist, which is a special field of the study of medicinal plants. She’s also a registered pharmacist who can dispense drugs, but she likes plants better. She’s telling us today about how you can take plants instead of drugs. We’ll be right back.
Pamela, before we go on, please tell the listeners how they can reach you. Pamela has a business and website called Botanical Resource at BotanicalResource.com, but the best thing to do is to just call her up on the phone and she will talk to you about whatever drugs you’re taking and tell you what you can do to get off of them.
She can also help you with any physical condition you have or your children or your pets and she’s happy to do that free. So give her a call. Pamela, tell everyone how they can reach you.
PAMELA SEEFELD: The number here is 727-442-4955. That’s 727-442-4955. I would be greatly honored to help any of you or your family member with any questions you have about your medications. Perhaps you want to get off of medications or you know it’s coming and they want to prescribe you something. I would be most happy to help you with that selection and prescribe something that’s natural for you that would be very effective.
Debra: She’s very good and she’s very well-known here in this community where I live in Clearwater, Florida because she’s helped so many people here. All the doctors know who she is. All the doctors I’ve ever talked to know who she is and she’s just very well-regarded. So take advantage of the help that she can give you.
Alright! So let’s go on. We were talking about anti-depressants.
PAMELA SEEFELD: Correct! So we were talking about using something that has effectiveness. Someone might say they want to take 5-HTP. I think it’s 5-HTP is good. It turns into serotonin. Maybe they want to take other kinds of natural mood boosters. That’s fine. But if you’re really trying to get off of a prescription, you want to definitely have some kind of meditation that is really going to work.
The thing that you need to do is use specifically and foremost the anti-depressant fish oil by Dr. Stole if you really want to come off the medication. So I would tell you that that’s the most effective medicine that you could use .
And with that, we know that folic acid works specifically to remyelinatethe outside of the nerves. High dose folic acid (and I usually use 5 mg.) is very specific to – it binds to serotonin. There are five serotonin receptors in the brain. It binds to four of them. So you get natural anti-depressant activity with folic acid.
Most people know folic acid as being something that’s used when they’re pregnant and they’re trying to protect against neural tube defects. Why do we take folic acid when women are pregnant? Because they want to prevent these specific birth defects that take place and those are in the brain. We know that it has high affinity for the brain and it’s very specific to refurbish those areas.
So you would be taking this for a cognitive boost, so to speak, preventing against neurological decline, preventing against dementia, preventing against Alzheimer’s, all these other things that maybe someday, you’d be concerned about and that you’d be taking these same products as well.
So I think it’s just all-encompassing to take the high dose folic acid. Take the OmegaBrite and you take these at the same time as taking the anti-depressant for about two to three weeks and then you start breaking, just putting the anti-depressants away. I’ve done this hundreds of times and it works very well.
Debra: That’s so great. That’s so great. Well, let’s talk about pain because there’s so many people that are in pain. Isn’t this one of the top reasons why people start taking drugs in the first place?
PAMELA SEEFELD: Correct. Pain is a very important subject and I think we really need to spend some time on that. So what happens is somebody gets in a car accident, they lifted something to heavy, whatever happens with this train or they doing backyard work, whatever happens. All of a sudden, they’re injured, they go to the doctor, they give them a narcotic and they start becoming addicted to the narcotic. We know opiates have tolerance and dependence, so after a while, you need more medicine, you need to take it more frequently and you need to get higher dose.
So that’s the problem. I think sometimes when people have an injury and if they were to realize that eventually, it’s going to set them up to this long-term addiction, they really would have second thoughts of embracing the medicine in the first place. I really think that’s true of a lot of people.
Debra: Yes.
PAMELA SEEFELD: But we look at it and we say, “Okay, there are different kinds of pain.” And actually, the new studies show that someone who has a back injury has a far better outcome if they use heat, physical therapy, massage and using anti-inflammatories, very specific doses for a period of time (maybe Ibuprofen or Naproxen). The trick with these kind of things if you have an injury is to take them three times a day with foods for let’s say five days, seven days or something like that.
This basically gets inflammation down. They found that the people that actually the anti-inflammatories on a scheduled basis for a short period of time have a far better outcome. They’re back to work. They’re feeling better.
We see a lot of this. I’m not against this. There are lot of workmen who gets comp, right, where someone gets injured. They go to the doctor and they get narcotics and there’s a high propensity for these people not to return to work. And so we lose a lot of productivity because basically, they’re not getting better, but then too, there’s an impairment issue with the narcotics, correct?
So they’re taking this on a long-term basis. It’s not going to be a week or two. They’re going to be on this for months, maybe years.
So if you have a back injury, I’m not saying you can’t be on narcotics. I’m sure a lot of people who are listening are maybe on pain medicines and want to get off of them, but you need to look and see where it’s working.
It’s working in the brain. It’s called a centrally-acting pain medication, right? And if you have a fresh injury and you want to have the highest outcome and get back to your regular schedule (you’re working out, you’re going to work), you really need to embrace some anti-inflammatories and maybe some muscle relaxants first and foremost before you ever touch a narcotic.
Debra: Because a narcotic only decreases pain. It doesn’t do anything to help heal your body, right?
PAMELA SEEFELD: That’s exactly right. And when you take a narcotic (you’re taking oxycodone or hydrocodone, Vicodin, Percocet, all these types of things), when you take that, there’s no solving taking place – none, zero. What is it doing? It just blocks your perception of pain in the brain. So you still have the injury, you still are sore, it’s still inflamed, but your perception or your thinking of it is gone.
Debra: So then you might go out and play a round of golf or whatever or whatever activities you like to do and you’re just aggravating the injury.
PAMELA SEEFELD: Exactly! That’s exactly right.
Debra: …because you’re not having the perception. This is one of the reasons why I don’t take pain pills. If I have a cold or something, I don’t take drugs because they cover up awareness of what’s really going on with your body and I want to know if my body is getting well, I want to have a real perception of what’s really going on in my body so that I can do the right thing to help support its healing. And when you take narcotics, that all goes out the window.
We need to go to break again, but we’ll be back and talk more about this. We’re also going to be talking about sleep aides. We’re going to cover it today. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. This is Toxic Free Talk Radio. My guest today is Pamela Seefeld, registered pharmacist who dispenses medicinal plants at her business called Botanical Resource. That’s at BotanicalResource.com. When we come back, we’ll tell you again how you can call her and get her personal advice. We’ll be right back.
PAMELA SEEFELD: Yes, just call me here at my pharmacy. All consultations are free and I’d be very happy to look at what you’re taking and see if there’s something else, an alternative. I’ve been doing this for 25 years. The number here at Botanical Resource is 747-442-4955. Please let me help you, I’d be glad to.
Debra: Yes. And tell her that you heard her on the radio, so she’ll know. So we were talking about pain killers.
PAMELA SEEFELD: Correct. And your wording is really great, talking about you want to know and have the perception of the pain, so you know not to be reinjured or that you might be harming yourself. People really get their mind around that. Blocking out the perception of an injury is not the solution because what’s going to happen is first of all, you might become addicted to the medicine, which is highly likely. Secondly, you’re not really solving where the problem is because the pain reliever is blocking the signal from your brain to the injury.
So you really want to start using anti-inflammatories. If you don’t want to use Ibuprofen and Naproxen and these types of things that are over-the-counter, curcumin (standardized turmeric) works excellent. It’s a COX-2 inhibitor. It works like Celebrex. It’s a very strong anti-inflammatory. And don’t forget omega 3 fish oils. Taking these things on a scheduled basis three times a day, taking curcumin, which is a really great product with with boswellia and turmeric, these things work in tandem and are actually better than medication. You can do this.
Let me point out something else too with the narcotics. It’s not only with the addiction and the poor outcomes, which they see with an injury, also, if you’re losing lots of Ibuprofen (like a lot of these athletes are popping Ibuprofen for injuries because they have to keep in form, a football player perhaps), those have a high activity for damaging the kidneys and a lot of these people end up in kidney failure. So people need to realize these are not innocuous products.
Debra: No, but they do. They take them like candy.
PAMELA SEEFELD: Yeah.
Debra: But I also want to mention that particularly for pain, if there’s been an injury or even – I’m trying to think. I’ve been in a couple of car accidents. But just in the everyday wear and tear of life, you can end up having aches and pains (you’re sitting in chair wrong for two hours and things like that), I think massage is great and it’s not even something you take. It’s so helpful for getting rid of those pains and actually healing and moving things back to the right place and getting the tension out of the muscles.
And so we could think outside of the box altogether here when it comes to pain. That’s why I like to feel my pain. That’s why I like to feel my pain, because I know it’s gone.
PAMELA SEEFELD: Well, yeah, exactly. The whole idea is that behind this, if you have an injury – you’re going to be injured at some point in your life, maybe not so severely, but you’re going to lift something heavy, you’re going to do something, you’re going to get in an accident. This is inevitable for everybody. Everyone’s got strains and pulls.
But it’s how you solve the problem and the methods that you employ and what you take, that’s where it’s going to improve your whole outcome. One time that you end up taking narcotics for a back injury or for something that happened, that may be could’ve been treated with some homeopathic muscle relaxants, with some fish oil, with some anti-inflammatories that have the same kind of data, that does show it blocks COX-2 or blocks eicosanoids that cause pain and doing this in a natural manner and having high effectiveness, there’s an empowerment to it as well. You’re not going to be addicted to these things and you’re not going to run the risk of having kidney failures as a result of taking too many of these what are called NSAIDs (non-steroidal anti-inflammatory agents) that are either prescription or over-the-counter.
These are real risks. People need to realize – even myself from a pharmacist’s perspective, I really have to question whether all these people really need these things and they wouldn’t have done better with some natural products in the beginning.
Debra: Yes, I agree. I totally agee. Okay, good! So should we move on to sleep aides?
PAMELA SEEFELD: Yes, I think that’s good. So, sleeping and anxiety. We just picked up two common problems that people have and that they might reach for a medicine during these issues.
Sleeping, a lot of people have sleep issues. That’s a pretty common thing. I still think people should rule out sleep apnea. Sleep studies are really important. The doctor can address that. Some people do not breathe consistently when they’re sleeping and as a result, they don’t get to REM sleep.
But say the person is pretty healthy, it doesn’t look like they have a sleep issue besides the sleep apnea and they want to go on something for sleep. They’d go to the doctor and he gives them Xanax or Ativan or Valium. The person is taking this drug (it’s called a benzodiazepines) and maybe they’re even taking some during the day for anxiety. When you’re taking these medicines, we know that these medicines have tolerance and dependence just like the narcotics. So sometimes, you need more medicine. After a while, you become addicted to it. There’s a physical and a psychological addiction. You think you need it and you also physically need it. I tell people, “Before you go down the road of taking benzos, you need to realize that this is a long-term game.”
You really can get away with using a medical grade passion flower, which is a partial agonist to the receptor, the benzodiazepine receptor. So when you have agonistic activity on there, it actually can take the place of drugs and it can actually take the drug off.
Say we have somebody that’s been on a benzo and they want to come off of it, what we’d normally use is a high dose folic acid to start repairing the brain. We would also use a calming fish oil. I normally use Pro-DHA and Pro-DHA 1000 because that’s going to start taking some of the anxiety away and it has a calming, focusing effect on the brain.
Those products typically are DHA to EPA, 4:1, some place in that range. And when we do that, with the passion flower, what it’s going to do is it’s going to start actually repairing the brain itself as far as the areas where you go into sleep. But the drug and the passion flower, they’re going to both hit the receptor and as a result of it, it kind of fakes out the brain and the brain is not going to know which medicine is actually on it. And that’s the beauty of it.
So you can take passion flower and tolerance and dependence are not side effects with it and you get the same outcome as in taking a benzo.
Debra: And I’ve experienced that because you’ve given me passion flower and I wasn’t taking any kind of sleeping pill drugs before that, but my ability to sleep is sometimes better and sometimes worse, but it’s getting better and better.
When I took the passion flower, I noticed that I just went to sleep right away and I slept all the night and then I woke up and I felt fine. And after a while, I just forgot to take it – and a while was maybe two or three weeks…
PAMELA SEEFELD: Yes.
Debra: I just forgot to take it and I just kept sleeping. So something shifted by taking that for me. I think its’ a really good idea for people to get off sleeping pills.
PAMELA SEEFELD: Well, it is.
Debra: Yeah, yeah. Why don’t you tell us again your phone number? We’re coming right up on the break.
PAMELA SEEFELD: Yes. So if you’d like to reach me here at my pharmacy, please call me at 727-442-4955. I can do any type of medication, not even limited to the ones we’ve discussed so far today.
Debra: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is Pamela Seefeld, a registered pharmacist who dispenses medicinal plants and other natural substances instead of drugs. Her website is BotanicalResource.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 Pamela Seefeld, she’s a registered pharmacist who dispenses medicinal plants and other natural substances instead of prescription drug.
Pamela, since this is National Heart Health Month or whatever it’s called, let’s talk about what kind of medicines are people taking for heart problems that maybe they shouldn’t be taking and what they can take instead.
PAMELA SEEFELD: Well, elevated cholesterol. That would be something that would be important to realize. Cholesterol lowering medications, especially statin medications (Pravastatin and Simvastatin, all these different medicines), they have very specific side effects. When I see a patient that’s on these, the two things you have to really worry about liver damage and you have to worry about something called rhabdomyolysis.
Rhabdomyolysis isa severe attack on the muscles and it causes muscle weakness. Sometimes people don’t realize they’re having it. They feel like they’re just a little sore, maybe they overdid it.
I have clients of mine that used to like to golf all the time and they can barely lift up their arms now because the rhabdo, people don’t understand that in some cases, in many cases sometimes, the muscle damage is permanent.
What the medical establishment has done (and I understand their thinking behind that) is that when they put someone in a statin to monitor their liver enzymes, they see them every three months, they take a blood test to see if the liver enzymes have elevated. So most people have that comfort level that’s, “Okay, they’re checking my liver enzymes, everything is fine,” but actually, that’s not fine because by the time they catch the problem, sometimes the liver enzymes do not come back to baseline.
I don’t know if people realize it. There are two very important side effects with this medicine. I have seen people come in that are having severe muscle weakness and I told them, “You know, it’s probably your statin medication. You need to take what they call a ‘drug holiday’. Take a few weeks off from it and see how you’re feeling” and all of a sudden, the pain goes away.
So this is really important to realize that it can be overlooked sometimes and your healthcare practitioner might not cue into that because you might shake your pain with lots of housework, athletic activities and things like that.
So for cholesterol, most people know about red rice yeast. That’s really a very common medication. And that actually works. It’s a small dose and it works like a statin just like Mevacor, but it’s a very, very lose dose. But if somebody has a history of liver problem with the regular prescription cholesterol-lowering medicine, red rice yeasts, these are not candidates for that. And I’m not even a big fan of lowering cholesterol anyways.
Debra: Why is that? Why, why?
PAMELA SEEFELD: The reason why is because – and actually, there was a study I just read today that said that the different associations in this country are not recommending eat a low cholesterol diet. They found they don’t need to be taking cholesterol out of their diet.
The reason why is that cholesterol is made by every cell in your body. And if somebody has uncontrolled inflammation and their cholesterol level is elevated, then sure, they’ll have risks of cardiovascular disease because the inflammation allows the cholesterol to stick to the side of the blood vessel.
So if inflammation is controlled, then you really don’t need to be lowering the cholesterol because what’s happening is it’s an inflammatory process. Most people don’t realize that.
And also, too, a lot of people, blood sugar being mildly elevated (it could be in the 90s or even close to a hundred), it still says ‘normal range’. When they pull their blood draw, the doctor doesn’t really acknowledge the fact that the sugar is turning into cholesterol. So you have to look at two things. If you really think cholesterol is a problem, it’s not. The problem is uncontrolled inflammation or elevated fasting blood sugar and both of those things being present can put you at risk for a cardiovascular event.
People are looking under the wrong rock. We’ve got several rocks there. We’ve got the rock of the sugar. The next rock is is your cholesterol elevated and is there inflammation. For the heart to be healthy, we know that very specifically, we want to do some kind of physical exercise. I don’t care what it is. Walking is pretty good. And eating halfway decent. Mediterranean diet is what they’re really proposing most commonly now because they know there’s the nuts, the vegetables, the fish. All these things have heart healthy implications.
And really inflammation is the key. If people’s inflammation is not down (and fish oil can bring the inflammation down and turmeric can bring the inflammation down), what I would tell to see that you have the healthiest heart and have the best outcome, whatever you’re taking, make sure that your doctor, when he does the split draw orders some inflammation markers – a c-reactive protein, oestrogen, sed rate. There’s a bunch of them. You can just ask your doctor, “Please, can I have some inflammation markers on my blood draw.” And if you see that they’re elevated , you know you have to do something about it. That is very, very important.
And in fact, the doctors (or the cardiovascular doctors at least) are doing c-reactive proteins pretty routinely, but your regular doctor might not do it.
Debra: Well, I’ve never had anybody do those. I’ve never seen that on a blood test that I know of. And in fact, I just want to say this just because this just happened to me last month. I get blood tests every three months and I go to the same lab every time and cholesterol is one of the things that I get checked. And all of a sudden, I thought, “You know what? The doctor didn’t say anything about my cholesterol.” I went and I look at the lab test because I always ask for my lab test – and you know, I had them back for eight years.
PAMELA SEEFELD: Exactly!
Debra: I looked on my blood test and there was no cholesterol on the blood test. Now, I know my doctor ordered it and the lab just simply didn’t do it. So you need to make sure when you go in and get your lab test that all the tests that were ordered get done.
PAMELA SEEFELD: Exactly!
Debra: That’s our tip for today.
PAMELA SEEFELD: That’s a very good advice. And if you are concerned, you have heart issues in your family since these things run in families, but also if you have a high stress job and you’re anxious all the time (a lot of people, their anxiety levels are pretty high nowadays, just people trying to get everything done), stress definitely increases inflammation.
We know that when people are stressed out, they start putting on belly fat. It allows levels of fat to be deposited much more effectively. And it elevates the cholesterol, it elevates the blood sugar. Knowing your inflammatory markers and to see if they’re elevated, that’s a very, very important piece of information. And if they’re not doing that, you can call me here and I can talk to you a little bit more about what it entails.
But I think a lot of people are being poorly served in that sense. If we’re looking at the heart health, folic acid and fish oil are very important – good diet, exercise every day. All these are so important. But you need to know if you’re dealing with inflammation. That’s kind of like a stealth killer.
If you have inflammation that’s so high – and these markers are non-specific, but they’re very, very indicative of inflammation that’s taking place in the whole body, but we’re particularly concerned about the blood vessels because when inflammation is in the blood vessels, they become sticky and it allows all these different things to start sticking to them. That’s what really causes cardiovascular disease.
If you can treat the inflammation with some natural products and if you know you have elevated inflammatory markers, you have tools to do something with that. I think most people are missing that.
Debra: I think so too. So if people need to lower their inflammation, how would you do that naturally?
PAMELA SEEFELD: If somebody has an elevated CRP, I would tell them that I usually use an anti-inflammatory called Tramiel. It’s a homeopathic product and that’s really good because it works for the muscles, but it works more on a cellular level. Omega 3 fish oils are excellent at lowering CRP. If you have an elevated CRP and you wanted to get it down quicker, you need to do it more than once a day, maybe even like with each meal or something like that, omega 3’s. And I would say probably 5000 mg. a day to try and get that number down.
And don’t forget turmeric. I’m a big fan of turmeric. Turmeric is an excellent anti-inflammatory, very specific. It works just like Celebrex, which is a prescription. It’s a COX-2 inhibitor. And some products even has boswellia in there. But fish oil can do quite a great job on this particular problem. But like I said, you need to just probably take it three times during the day to really have complete effectiveness.
Debra: Yeah. Yeah, good. Well, we only have a couple of minutes left. That is such good information today. You always give good information. I always learn something when I have you on this show and I’m sure my listeners do too.
So tell us again how you can help them and what your phone number is.
PAMELA SEEFELD: Yes. So if you are interested in coming off of your cholesterol lowering medicine, your anti-depressants, narcotics or if you have any kind of an issue for you or your family or a loved one, I would be very helpful in helping you come off of these things and I’d be very grateful to be able to do that for you.
You can reach here at Botanical Resource at 727-442-4955. Let me help you look at your options and see what you can do. You can even email me your blood work and I’ll go over it with you and tell you if there’s something that I see coming now or in the future. You can triage these problems and avoid going on medicines altogether ever.
Debra: Yeah, this is a very interesting thing that Pamela does because she can look into the future, she can look at your blood test and tell you what is already developing. You might not see the symptoms right now, but you can see what’s coming in the future and what drugs that your doctors are going to prescribe for these things. She can stop these things with natural remedies before they happen by getting to whatever the disorder is in the early stages.
I think that’s really fascinating. I met someone else this week actually who can do that too by looking at blood tests. It’ s amazing what your blood can tell you.
She’s a wealth of information, a lot of help here. She also has a whole shop here in Clearwater. So she can ship to you whatever it is that you need if it’s not available to you locally. She can just take good care of you.
So we just have a few seconds left. So I’m going to just say thank you once again. Pamela will be on…
PAMELA SEEFELD: Yes, thank you.
Debra: You’re welcome. Pamela will be on again two weeks from now. And you can also go to ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com and listen to past shows if you want to. This is Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. Be well!
DIY Natural Bedding
Question from cheseldm
Hi Debra,
I found this company on line and thought you and your readers would be interested. I am not connected with this company. Just interested in creating a non-toxic home.
P.S. Thank you for your wonderful website. It has greatly help me and my husband.
Debra’s Answer
Oh this is great! Thank you! I’m going to put this on Debra’s List.
DIY Natural Bedding is about letting you have your mattress and pillow your way. They have all the natural materials (including GOTS certified organic fabrics). They have patterns so you can get materials and make your own mattress at home, or they will sew it for you. You choose and control everything.
Mattress fill is latex or wool, more choices for pillows. They even sell the notions, like zipper by the foot.
I just spoke with Deborah and she’s going to be a guest on Toxic Free Talk Radio on Tuesday, 24 February 15. Listen live or play the archived recording.
Nontoxic dresser and night stand
Question from L Budin
Hi Debra,
I would like a list of furniture manufacturers who make furniture that is free of carcinagens and toxic odors. I am asthmatic and have gone thru two different sets of bedroom furniture that I now have to discard. Help!
Debra’s Answer
I don’t have a list of manufacturers, but you probably have some nontoxic wood furniture right in your own community.
Look in the yellow pages for “unfinished wood furniture.”
I have purchased most of my furniture at unfinished wood furniture stores. Most of the pieces still don’t have any finish on them—just bare wood. But you can finish them yourself with any nontoxic finish.
Everything I didn’t buy at an unfinished wood furniture store I bought used at auctions or salvage stores. My desk where I write every day is an old oak library table from Stanford University that was taken apart and was sitting in pieces at a salvage yard. All the edges were frayed but it was a beautiful table. My husband sawed the edges off and put an edging of purpleheart wood and a nontoxic finish. It’s the most gorgeous desk in the world. $50 for the desk and I don’t remember how much the purpleheart wood was, maybe another $50. So $100 and lots of love. I should take a picture…
Fumes from Maytag Gas Range
Question from sttlove
I purchased a new Maytag gas range, but have been unable to use the oven because the fumes make my eyes burn and give me a headache. I called the company and they said it is a coating and it needs to burn off, but it still hasn’t. I suspect that it is the insulation inside the oven that is bothering me.
Would an oven that doesn’t have self-cleaning be less toxic because it would have less insulation and coatings inside?
Are there any recommendations on a gas oven brand or model that is less toxic?
Or, should I continue on my hunt for a used one that has finished its off-gassing?
Debra’s Answer
You’re best bet is to get a used oven that has finished outgassing.
The last oven I bought was a Whirlpool gas range that was a floor model. It had been sitting there quite some time and when I brought it home there were no odors of any kind. I think it was because it had been sitting out on the floor for months.
Mattress fill is latex or wool, more choices for pillows. They even sell the notions, like zipper by the foot.
Safe Scents: It’s OK to Use Real Aromatherapy Products
My guest today is Claudia Cusani, Founder of Sage Canyon Botanicals. She makes bodycare products from organic botanical ingredients and her signature blends of real aromatherapy using essential oils—”curative plant essences that gently promote wellness.” We’ll be talking about how natural fragrances can be healing, unlike synthetic scents, which can be harmful to health. Claudia was a professional singer until fifteen years ago, when she took a detour from her music career to follow an avid interest in alternative medicine and the study of therapeutic massage. She obtained her license, set up shop, and built a practice where the use of soothing botanicals and essential oils became an important adjunct to hands-on therapy. She found they clearly enhanced her clients’ well-being and overall treatment results. The profound beauty of essential oils was a siren call for Claudia. Enchanted by their fragrances and intrigued by their vast clinical applications, she delved more deeply into the study and practice of aromatherapy and began to create her own essential oil blends. To someone like her, with allergic sensitivities who could not tolerate commercial skin preparations, candles or room sprays, these beguiling essences offered a fresh new world of possibilities. She decided to share her passion with others by handcrafting 100% natural and organic products using her favorite personal aromatherapy blends. And Sage Canyon Botanicals was born. www.sagecanyon.com
TOXIC FREE TALK RADIO
Safe Scents: It’s Okay to Use Real Aromatherapy Products
Host: Debra Lynn Dadd
Guest: Claudia Cusani
Date of Broadcast: February 04, 2015
DEBRA: Hi I’m Debra Lynn Dadd and this is Toxic Free Talk Radio where we talk about how to thrive in a toxic world and live toxic-free.
It’s Wednesday, February 4th, 2015. And today we’re going to be talking about fragrances and scents, and what’s good and what’s not good.
I know we talk a lot about synthetic fragrances and scented products and how they can cause a variety of problems and there are some people who, I know, are listening today are extremely sensitive to fragrances and there are other people who are wearing really strong fragrances and are probably making them sick and they don’t even know it.
Synthetic fragrances are something that we need to stay away from. But on the other hand, natural fragrances are something that can actually be beneficial to us. But on the other hand –
I remember many, many years ago when I first started learning about the dangers of synthetic fragrances and I started trying to avoid them (which was difficult, it’s a lot easier now than it was then), but at that time, I remember going to a little shop in San Francisco – I don’t think it’s there anymore – but what they did in that shop is they sold unscented products and then put custom fragrances in them for you and they were all natural essential oils.
I could make up any fragrance that I wanted. I was so excited because I knew what I was trying to avoid was this synthetic fragrance, and here are all these natural lovely natural things to choose from.
And so what I came up with my shampoo was a combination of vanilla and mint and it was so wonderful! So wonderful! I’ve never seen that in a commercial product that they made it for me and I just loved it. I realize that there were many fragrances that I could enjoy as natural fragrances and they didn’t make me sick.
Some people I know who are sensitive to fragrances do react to even in natural fragrances, but that’s their own, individual reaction. And I want to make sure that in a world where we need to watch out for synthetic fragrances, that we also aren’t throwing the baby out with the bath water and thinking that natural fragrances are harmful as well because they aren’t and in fact they can be healing. And that’s what we’re going to talk about today.
My guest is Claudia Cusani. She’s the founder of Sage Canyon and she makes body products from organic botanical ingredients. She has her own blends of real aromatherapy essential oils, curative plant essences that gently promote wellness.
Hi Claudia!
CLAUDIA CUSANI: Hi Debra! How are you?
DEBRA: I’m very good. How are you?
CLAUDIA CUSANI: Fine, thanks. And thank you for having me on your show today.
DEBRA: You’re welcome.
Tell us something about yourself. How you got interested in working with aromatherapy?
CLAUDIA CUSANI: Well, my story is sort of twofold. I started my life as a professional singer and music was my first love. After graduating from high school, I attended Berklee College of Music in Boston and then moved to New York City, which was my home base for several years while I gigged at various points on the map.
I enjoyed it very much. The music world is fascinating; the business, not so much. The ability to express myself musically and bring joy to others was wonderful, but there was a subtext to the story that was eventually to become one of the main factors in my journey to Sage Canyon.
And that is that I have always been a physically very sensitive person. I was a sickly child. I was constantly unwell with respiratory and ear infections, fatigue and intestinal problems.
I grew up in a home like a lot of people do where people smoked cigarettes and ate processed food. We had a wonderful dog that I couldn’t get near because he’d make me sneeze. The bed sheets were washed in Tide because that’s what everybody said made them clean, but all they did was make me itch; and on and on and on.
These problems carried on into adulthood with constant manifestations of what I eventually came to understand where reactions to unhealthy aspects of my environment. During my childhood, I had loving parents, but I was a child during a time when nobody was really connecting those dots, as you have mentioned, between our environment and what we ate and the state of our health. There was very little guidance as to the root of these ailments.
DEBRA: Yes!
CLAUDIA CUSANI: So in my early 20s, just on my own, as a way to try to heal myself, I started to try to connect the dots for myself and I began to utilize holistic medical approaches like acupuncture and massage therapy, and I made efforts to eat more healthily and tried hard to avoid environmental allergens to whatever extent that was possible.
But it was like a full-time job; it wasn’t easy for lots of reasons. We’re all surrounded by them. And especially then, at a time when there was less consciousness about it, you just felt silly talking about it.
And this was a time in my life during which I was singing in nightclubs all the time. It was just a challenging space for a singer with multiple allergies. People’s perfumes gave me a sore throat, cigarette smoke would drift up on the stage during performances, and the smell of the chemically-treated carpet would stuff me up before we even got started.
It was really sort of a landscape of unwellness for me, not just in those nightclubs, but in the world at large because there are so many toxic components in the environment.
So anyway, my passion for singing and songwriting carried me through to the year 2000. Then I finally decided that I’d had enough of the craziness of life in the music business, and decided to plant some new roots and began to study something that I had been fascinated by for many years, which was therapeutic massage.
So I sort of felt a calling to understand more about it, how massage therapy works beyond just the relaxation aspect, and how I could help others with it. And also there was an element of how could I perhaps help myself within the practice of massage. And you know what they say, you teach what you need to learn. It was a time for me to perhaps do some healing of my own and to set aside my lifelong occupation with music and let something else into my life that I felt might be very valuable.
So I enrolled in a massage school here in Los Angeles, where I had moved from New York in 1990. I studied lots of different therapeutic massage techniques, as well as aromatherapy and topical anatomy.
And after graduation I set up shop. I set up a small day spa. I built a practice where the use of pure botanical ingredients became a very important adjunct to the massages. It was in that context that I began to work with essential oils.
Discovering essential oils was for me like stepping into a wonderful, fragrant wonderland which I didn’t know had existed previously.
DEBRA: Yes. I have [inaudible 00:08:21]
CLAUDIA CUSANI: I’m like, “Really? I can smell these things?” And that’s because as a person with lifelong allergies, I couldn’t get anyone near scented candles, room sprays, moisturizers, body lotions, perfumes. Scented anything would just make me run headlong in the opposite direction.
And likewise my skin has always been very sensitive. I wasted more money over the years than I’d like to recall on face and body products that I had to toss immediately because they caused negative reactions.
And since it is estimated that 60% to 80% of what we put on our skin is absorbed directly into the bloodstream, I had to wonder exactly what was transpiring beneath the surface when these things were applied, and I felt defenseless. I didn’t know at that point prior to my discovery of essential oils what my alternatives were. So I didn’t use make-up, I rarely used body lotion, et cetera.
So the recognition of Mother Nature’s healing plant essences — essentials oils — and on the flipside of that, the realization that most of the scented products that I’d encountered previously were really unhealthful and unworthy imitations, this was truly life changing for me.
DEBRA: I could imagine that.
CLAUDIA CUSANI: Yeah! And these were things I could actually inhale without fear of reprisal, and things that my body not only tolerated well, but actually benefitted from.
So that’s how it happened. I was really inspired by this discovery and also, by the use of other botanicals like pure carrier oils, et cetera. And the remarkable healing benefits of essential oils and these botanical ingredients and the fragrances, this just really turned me on so I began to seriously explore their uses within the context of my massage practice.
And I began to observe very consistently that the essences, the essential oils and the pure botanicals really enhanced my clients’ treatment results and even enhanced my own health. I was able to do a treatment without walking way going “Oh, now I’m all itchy and stuffed up from handling something…”
DEBRA: Yeah. We need to go to break. Hold on. Hold on, Claudia. We need to go to break.
CLAUDIA CUSANI: Okay.
DEBRA: We’ll talk more when we come back.
You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio I’m Debra Lynn Dadd and my guest today is Claudia Cusani. She’s the founder of Sage Canyon and she’s made some wonderful aromatherapy products that have safe fragrances in them. We’ll talk more about that when we come back.
= COMMERCIAL BREAK =
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd and my guest today is Claudia Cusani. She’s the founder of Sage Canyon and she’s made some wonderful body care products with safe fragrances as opposed to the toxic synthetic fragrances.
Claudia, I’ve read a lot of your website and so I know that you did some research in the past about these synthetic fragrances and that you make a very clear statement on your website that your product has contained absolutely no synthetic artificial or petroleum-based ingredients.
Can you tell us some other things that you found about fragrances, scented products that made you so adamant about not using them?
CLAUDIA CUSANI: Yeah. Well, one of the things that I found out is that these synthetic fragrances – let me back up here. There’s a lot of what they call ‘greenwashing’ that goes on in the health and beauty industry, where they say, “Oh, this is all natural… it has pure fragrance.” The bottom line is that there are no hard and fast regulations from the FDA that prevent companies from writing copy that is misleading in that industry, and a lot of that happens.
What it is is that a lot of times, people are buying these things that are called aromatherapy or aromatherapeutic, and they’re anything but. If they actually read the ingredients, they’ll see that they’re not made with pure essential oils. They’re made with catch phrases. They’ll use terms like ‘parfum’ or ‘fragrance’. And what these are, are synthetic fragrance molecules, which are basically chemicals concocted in a lab somewhere.
They’ll make one saying, “Oh, this one we want to smell like French Lavender… this one we want to smell like Himalayan Cedarwood.” They just make tons of these things, but they’re basically synthetic chemicals and lots of them have been tested and found to have suspected carcinogens and hormone disruptors. And some have never even been evaluated for safety. And that goes not just for the synthetic fragrance molecules that are used in these products, but lots of the other ingredients too.
Basically, these types of synthetic fragrance molecules have been known to cause the kinds of allergic reactions that people, they then think, “Oh, this is because I’m allergic to roses or I’m allergic to lavender.” But, they’re not…
DEBRA: Right. And they’re not allergic to those things. They’re allergic to the synthetic.
I just want to explain this word, ‘synthetic’. I think one of the things that happen is that a lot of words get used and people don’t really know what they mean. So whenever you hear the word, ‘synthetic’, what that really means is that this is made from basically, crude oil, the stuff they make gasoline out of the oil that they put in your car.
This petrochemical stuff that gets made into all these other products, what they do is they get that crude oil and they separate it out into different carts at different temperatures. And so some of it is very light and what is called as solvent. It’s very light and that they can make it into all kind of things. They’re just taking those molecules and combining them in different ways to make these things and they are things that our bodies don’t recognize. They’re man-made molecules. You put them in your body and your body goes, “What is this?”
Whereas our bodies have been designed and have the experience of millennia being around roses and lavender and all those things in nature and it’s designed by – I will just call it – ‘nature’s wisdom’ for lack of a better term as opposed to man-made industrial molecule that your body just can’t recognize. And so it thinks it’s a foreign invader. It causes all kinds of problems.
Some synthetic chemicals actually substitute themselves for other substances we actually need. Like fluoride for example will substitute for iodine I think it is (I would have to work that up) in your thyroid. So instead of getting the nutrition of the iodine, what you get is this synthetic fluoride molecule.
Things like these are happening with these chemicals all over our bodies all the time and so it’s really, really important. Anything that is synthetic. That’s what’s going on with this. That’s why it’s so important to know where the synthetic chemicals are and avoid them and know what the natural things are and use those because nature has very powerful human qualities. And if we bring those elements into our vibes, it helps our bodies.
CLAUDIA CUSANI: Absolutely! And this goes to the issue that people are being led down the primrose path – no pun intended – with the term ‘aromatherapy.’ Although aromatherapy can literally be said to mean therapy through aroma or scent, in true practice, aromatherapy utilizes only pure essential oils. And today, there are about 300 different essential oils in general use.
So authentic aromatherapy for instance, it goes beyond the ephemeral effects of a pleasant scent. Thanks to the remarkable curative powers of those essential oils, aromatherapy yields a bounty of physical, mental and emotional benefits.
That is not happening if you’re picking up a bottle of lotion from the shelf that says, “Hey, aromatherapy!” and it’s just basically synthetic fragrance molecules. In fact, you’re really harming yourself even more as opposed to helping yourself. It’s very devious. It really makes me quite angry when I think about it.
So I say buyer beware, read labels, avoid synthetic ingredients. If it says ‘parfum’, or ‘fragrance’ or ‘natural essence’, none of those things are valid if you’re looking for true aromatherapy. And these are the things…
DEBRA: So what should people look for on a label that is valid?
CLAUDIA CUSANI: In terms of fragrances and scents, the only thing that’s valid is if it says, ‘100% pure essential oil’ or ‘therapeutic-grade essential oil.’ The point is, if it doesn’t say pure essential oil, if it says anything else, any other similar type terms, it’s not essential oil. And it happens all the time.
They now have this thing called ‘nature identical’ oils, which is another bunch of synthetic fragrance molecules that people are buying and putting in their products. I mean, it’s really insidious.
DEBRA: I really think one of the most difficult parts of my job over the years has been the difficulty in labeling and the terminology that people are using. And I just think that we should have the truth in labeling. Truth in labeling is what we need so that we can…
CLAUDIA CUSANI: Oh, I agree. I totally agree, and it’s not happening right now in this industry.
DEBRA: No, it certainly isn’t. We need to go to break but we’ll be right back.
This is Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd and my guest today is Claudia Cusani. She’s the founder of Sage Canyon and we’re talking about safe scent versus toxic scent. We’ll be right back.
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd and my guest today is Claudia Cusani from Sage Canyon and that’s sagecanyon.com. It’s very easy to remember, sagecanyon.com.
Claudia, tell us, your line of products, you have bath and body products and then you have things for the home like aromatic sprays and then you have skin care and remedies. All of these are based around your signature scents that are all aromatherapy.
So first, tell us about the scent part, so that people can understand why a signature scents. What difference does it makes which fragrance they choose?
CLAUDIA CUSANI: First, let me say that most of the products are based around our 10 signature scents. A couple of them are not, like the Rosewater Toner, the Natural 10 Pain Relief Balm, the Full Circle Soap. Now these are all aromatherapeutic and they use essential oils, but they’re not part of the signature scents schema. But most of the products are — the oils, the butters, the soaps, the scrubs, the sprays.
The thing about our signature scents, basically – you know I’m an artist. I come from a place of liking to create aesthetically pleasing things, composing music. One thing I found when I started playing with essential oils, this was like a whole new avenue for me to express my compositional self, make these nice compositions.
And what it grew into for me was because I have both the side of me that wants to really help facilitate wellness in the world and the artistic part, the signature scents became the forum where I could deliver optimal healing synergy in a beautiful aromatic bouquet. We want to operate on both levels. We want people to be really pleased and go, “Wow! That smells amazing.” And also say, “Gee, and it really works too.”
The signature scents we have (there are 10), they’re more than just captivating fragrances because they each contain up to 15 different powerhouse essential oils, between 10 and 15. So they are synergistic aromatherapy blends.
And why that’s different is that most aromatherapy products – even when they’re using real essential oils – the blends are typically 3 to 6 different essential oils, more simplistic. We use higher numbers of essential oils and that does create a synergistic effect. The sum is greater than the whole of its part in terms of what it does. It creates a more compelling aromatic complexity and also enhances therapeutic value.
Then when you get to the actual scents, they break down into different emotional and physiological effects. The simplest way I could think of to describe it in our literature and on the website is in terms of what I call “mind/body benefits.”
Each signature scent has corresponding mind and body benefits. So let’s say, for instance, the Lavender Embrace, this has about 15 different essential oils. The main ones are lavender, neroli and rosewood, and the mind/body benefits there are calming, uplifting, and balancing.
And that applies both on emotional and mental levels as well as physiological, although that’s a big topic and really too much to get into. I could document that for anyone who’s interested in more information. I could go into detail about what that means.
And each one, let’s say the Mystic Rose, the mind/body benefits there are pacifying, heartening, and sensual; the After the Rain, stimulating, balancing and focusing. And again, each of these blends has between 10 and 15 essential oils. And they each have distinctly different scents from each other.
So it’s a really interesting collection of scents that have a lot of depth and have a lot of value therapeutically.
DEBRA: Are there any therapeutic oils that help your body detox?
CLAUDIA CUSANI: Yeah. There are many. When you say detox, you mean in terms of a mineral bath soak? For what type?
DEBRA: No, to help your body eliminate toxic chemicals.
CLAUDIA CUSANI: Well, the reason I ask is because some aromatherapists (and mostly European ones) would say, “Hey, it’s okay to ingest essential oils.” I don’t recommend that. I’m not a proponent of that. Basically, the detox would come through application through the skin or inhalation.
So for instance, juniper berry is very clearing, very detoxifying. Patchouli is very purifying, basil is very purifying, bergamot, on and on. Lavender is probably the most therapeutic essential oil there is.
So let me ask you. What specific type of detox method are you referring to or do you have in mind?
DEBRA: Actually, there’s a lot of different ways to detox and we talked about different things about that and a lot of different things that could be detoxing your body.
There’s like metabolic detox where the waste produced by your cells in your body could get some support, but there’s also specifically, the way toxic chemicals get removed from your body that some toxic chemicals need very specific things. Other ways that you can support your body to detox toxic chemicals would be to support the organs and the system functions that help remove the toxic chemicals like for example, the liver.
CLAUDIA CUSANI: The liver, yeah.
DEBRA: Anything that you do to help the liver helps detox. Anything you do to help the kidneys helps detox. Anything that you use to help the lymphatic system helps detox. And so I was just wondering if there were aromatherapy scents that would help those things.
CLAUDIA CUSANI: Yeah, there are. It’s a large topic, but of the top of my head, I would say that cardamom is really good for relieving indigestion, so therefore that might help the health of bile and therefore, the health of the liver. So there are a lot different things that could happen.
Carrot seed is also known as what they call a hepatic. That’s the type of oil that supports the liver function. Carrot seed does that.
These things are really very much put together in blends that aren’t necessarily – I don’t have a blend at this point, let’s say, that says, “Hey, you have a liver congesting problem, so use this above all others,” because these blends are a little less specific – a little less specific meaning, they’re not remedies, except for the Natural 10 Pain Relief Balm.
What I have coming down the pipeline soon, what we’re going to be releasing are more remedies and they are going to be much more condition-specific. They’re going to be basically roll-on remedies, a formulation of essential oils in a base of jojoba oil and they will address different conditions like liver congestion, insomnia, sinus problems, et cetera.
The signature scents themselves have various effects, but to the extent that there are lots of different oils in there, it’s sort of an overall effect of the type that is listed in the mind/body benefits as opposed to the remedy effect, which requires a higher level, a higher concentration of essential oils in the product. You know what I mean?
DEBRA: I do. And we’re going to go on break and when we comeback, we’ll talk more about this. You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd and my guest today is Claudia Cusani. She’s the founder of Sage Canyon and that’s sagecanyon.com. We’ll be right back.
= COMMERCIAL BREAK =
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd and my guest today is Claudia Cusani. She’s the Founder of Sage Canyon and that’s sagecanyon.com where she has this delightful products with these wonder little fragrances.Claudia, I’ve been looking at your website. I read a lot of it before, but I also look at websites during the break. I’m looking at your Full Circle soap and it says that it’s made from recycled botanical ingredients. What are recycled botanical ingredients?
CLAUDIA CUSANI: This is an interesting story, and a true story. My significant other, my partner of 17 years, is a real ‘do-it-yourselfer,’ among other things. He makes his own biofuel to power his diesel car.
DEBRA: Claudia, I just need to say that you are so much like me because – I just can’t believe it – because we both come from being professional musicians, we both had sensitivities to chemicals and my husband and I had a bio fuel. He converted a Mercedes and ran it on vegetable oil. And then he took several trips across the United States in this car just stopping and collecting vegetable oil and then driving on to that as far as we could go and then fill up with more vegetable oil.
CLAUDIA CUSANI: Oh, my God! That’s so funny! And we do have a lot in common. That’s really funny. Brian also has a…
DEBRA: And I sing and you sing and we both sing, you know.
CLAUDIA CUSANI: Yeah! It’s great! I’m really glad that we connected. So Brian has, he has a Mercedes and he actually collects the oil from an organic café nearby where we live.
DEBRA: Oh, that’s wonderful! Organic vegetable oil.
CLAUDIA CUSANI: Yeah! And they save it for him. He has a big, huge 55 gallon tub over there. They save it for him, he picks it up. He has a still. And I guess you know the routine since your husband did it.
DEBRA: I know it, yeah.
CLAUDIA CUSANI: It’s great! And so as you probably know then, the actual natural distillate that’s produced through that biofuel process is glycerin, and in this case, it’s 100% pure vegetable glycerin because it comes from vegetable oil that this café used. And then…
DEBRA: Oh, this is so cool! Wait, wait. Let me interrupt you for a second because this is so funny.
Remember earlier we were talking about what synthetic is and how they take the crude oil and they distill and it makes all this different parts of it.
CLAUDIA CUSANI: Right.
DEBRA: Now, what we did is we just took straight vegetable oil and put it in the car, but what you’re doing is you’re actually making bio fuel. And so in the same way that that industry takes crude oil and distills these things out, you’re taking the organic vegetable oil that’s left over from French bars and stuff and he’s distilling it and purifying It and all that and then you’re using it to make soap. How brilliant was that?
CLAUDIA CUSANI: It’s so cool! I mean, it’s great! He filters it several times. And so it’s purified. And then what happens is that the glycerin goes into a separate container. It‘s like this big block of gelatinous brown stuff. It looks like brown Jell-O.
And with that, he adds distilled water, we eventually add essential oils. We do have to add potassium hydroxide because you can’t have soap without potassium hydroxide, but it’s okay because none remains after the soap saponifies. It’s saponified for 12 weeks.
The bottom line is that it is so amazing, this soap. Because it has such a very high glycerin content – glycerin, as you know is a humectant, so it actually draws moisture from the air to the surface and it leaves your hands really super clean, but yet utterly soft, hydrated.
I use this soap all the time. Sometimes I don’t even feel like I need to use any lotion or body butter afterwards. It’s 100 % biodegradable. It’s 100 % synthetic-free. It contains no detergent, foaming agents, dyes, artificial colors or fragrances. It’s great for sensitive skin. It has no fillers.
I mean, it’s really amazing stuff. It’s really, really effective.
DEBRA: I love this! I love this story. I just love this. I wish you would put this on your website because it’s so cool.
CLAUDIA CUSANI: I’m going to do that. I’m going to do that in the form of a blog post. I have a blog page which right now is a little too hidden. It’s on the bottom left.
DEBRA: It’s hidden. I had a hard time finding it.
CLAUDIA CUSANI: Yeah. I’m going to have the site redone a bit so that things are a little more accessible. I’m going to put that story on it, because I know it just sounds very mysterious from the little blurb that’s on the product page.
DEBRA: And make that you put a link to that blog post right here where you’re selling the Full Circle soap.
CLAUDIA CUSANI: Oh, yes! I will, I will. That’s a great Idea. It’s really amazing stuff.
You probably can relate to this. Sometimes I tell this story to people and women might go – especially women, I hate to sound sexist, but they go, “Eeew, how is that good? It comes from gas.” Well, it’s not gas, but it’s hard to understand. A lot of this stuff like everything else about this topic is about education. It’s about educating people.
DEBRA: It is, it is. And that’s why we’re here. That’s why I do this show, to have education and to show all the different ways where you can be toxic free. It takes a while to learn this stuff.
I remember when I first started learning it more than 30 years ago, I just sat down with a chemical dictionary. That’s where I started.
CLAUDIA CUSANI: Wow!
DEBRA: I would look up some chemical that I knew like formaldehyde and then it would tell me that formaldehyde was made from blah-blah-blah, and then I can look up those chemicals. I’d look on product labels and I would say,”What’s this? What’s this? What’s this?” That’s how I came to know all this stuff after 30 years. It’s just because I can’t stop saying “What’s this?”
CLAUDIA CUSANI: That is a huge undertaking, but we’re so glad that your did undertake it and work with it because we need people like you out there who are advocates and willing to bring this stuff to everyone’s attention on a very consistent basis.
DEBRA: Thank you. Thank you, thank you.
So we only have about five minutes left. The shows always go by so fast. I want to make sure that if there’s anything that you haven’t said then, that you got the time to say it.
CLAUDIA CUSANI: One of my favorite taglines for our company is, “Satisfy your mind as well as your senses.” What that means is that, yeah, you want a good smell, you want a good skin feel, you want to feel nice after you use the product or after you smell it, but you also want to know that what you’re actually using is helpful and not destructive.
And to that end, read labels, educate yourself and try to raise other people’s awareness whenever possible also, and make informed choices. Basically, if you wouldn’t eat it, don’t put it on your skin. If you wouldn’t eat it, don’t spray it in the air. Essential oils notwithstanding — I don’t recommend eating those.
The point is, everything else that you use, it should be like whole food in a way. It should not be a list of unpronounceable ingredients that are really not doing any good. They’re doing more harm than good.
So I would say read labels, educate yourself, make informed choices because this is really a serious problem. The level of toxicity in the world is a problem for each and every one of us as individuals, it’s a problem for the planet and we need to raise our consciousness together to make a dent and get this down to a manageable level. Hopefully one day, we won’t be living in a toxic world.
DEBRA: That’s my goal. So let me ask you one last question about your products. This question actually came up.
I have ToxicFreeQA.com. People, my readers and listeners ask questions about products. And one of the questions that came up was, “Should you use body oil or a body lotion or body butter? How do each of those affect your skin in different ways?”
CLAUDIA CUSANI: Well, here’s from my point of view in term of our products. We have two products right now, a bath and body oil and a body butter.
The body butter is a more concentrated skin treatment for really dry skin areas. It can be used on any dry skin area. It provides a barrier. It’s incredibly nutritive and emollient and it works beautifully. But that’s something you don’t necessarily need all over, more for the areas that you identify as being dry skin on your body.
Bath and body oil, on the other hand, here’s why I make the body oil, which can either be used in a bath (and I know a lot of people aren’t bath takers), but you can also use it when you get out of the shower. while your skin is slightly damp. You put the oil on, very little. A little goes a long way. Because there are no fillers, it’s fairly concentrated.
The difference is that, when you’re using our product, the body oil, it’s just a few, very pure, very high grade botanical oils – avocado, jojoba, sweet almond, there’s some natural vitamin E in there. And these are extremely highly nutritive oils that are absorbed really, really well, so you don’t get that sense of oil just sitting on your skin.
I don’t recommend using any lotion or any oil that contains mineral oil because it’s just occlusive. It just sits on your skin and your skin doesn’t breath. It’s not all bad, but it’s not bringing any benefit to your skin. So all the ingredients we use are actually beneficial in various ways.
Now the only other thing I’ll say about lotion versus oil is that we’re currently developing a lotion, but it will be what’s called anhydrous. All of our formulas are anhydrous. That means we don’t mix oil with water in any of our formulas. The reason we don’t do that is because we don’t believe in using artificial preservative systems, which are just another collection of chemicals that are added to products.
DEBRA: Claudia, I need to interrupt you. I’m sorry because we’re coming to the very, very end of the show and I just wanted the time to say thank you so much.
CLAUDIA CUSANI: Oh, Thank you.
DEBRA: Claudia’s website is sagecanyon.com
You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. You can go to ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com to find out about another shows, listen to past shows, listen to the show again and read the transcripts. So, ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. Be well.
Which Is More Important to Use on Skin: Organic Moisturizer/Lotion or Organic Oil?
Question from Craig
Hi, Debra. This is Craig. I contacted 3 USDA organic companies regarding the question: “For the skin, is it more important to use a organic moisturizer/lotion, or an organic oil?”
Badger Balm: http://www.badgerbalm.com/
Terressentials: http://www.terressentials.com/
Herbal Choice Mari: http://www.herbalchoicemari.com/
Hi, my name is Craig. I have a question. My skin is more of a dry/sensitive type.
For the skin, as a man, what products would work for skin that is a dry/sensitive type, and is it more important to use a organic moisturizer/lotion, or an organic oil?
Thank you for your time.
Craig Fri, Jan 16, 2015 at 7:55 PM
Hi, my name is Craig. I have a question. My skin is more of a dry/sensitive type.
For the skin, as a man, what products would work for skin that is a dry/sensitive type, and is it more important to use a organic moisturizer/lotion, or an organic oil?
Thank you for your time.
To: Craig
Hi Craig –
Great questions! In return, I have a few questions for you. What kind of skin products are you interested in? Ones that moisturize? Cleanse? Products used for shaving? Sunscreen? The reason I ask is because we have a large selection of skin care products that work a little differently from one another. As a whole, I would say that anything in our Unscented line would be great for dry/sensitive skin. Also, given that it is unscented, it lends itself to being gender neutral.
In regards to lotion vs. oil: with lotion there are the added ingredients for product stabilization as well as for the lotion itself. With oil, you’re basically cutting to the chase and using the base ingredients for moisturizing your skin: oil + essential oils. In our Body Oils, the main ingredient is Jojoba Oil, an oil that most closely mimics our skin’s oil, thus allowing the body oil to be absorbed into the skin fairly quickly.
Hope this helps! Feel free to follow up with any additional questions.
Your friendly Badger,
Caity
Caity Stuart – Customer Service
W.S. Badger Company, Inc.
custserv@badgerbalm.com | 800-603-6100
www.badgerbalm.com
To: Cust Serv Inbox <custserv@badgerbalm.com>
Thanks for the reply. I’m more interested in moisturizing.
Cust Serv Inbox <custserv@badgerbalm.com> Mon, Jan 19, 2015 at 2:00 PM
To: Craig
Hi Craig –
Again, I would stick with the Unscented line. If you’re wanting something for the face, the Unscented Face oil is a great everyday moisturizer. It is best used when after a shower or cleansing of the face. It is also beneficial to use at night before bed as an overnight treatment.
For the body, I would go with the Unscented Body Oil.
Let me know if you have any additional questions!
Your friendly Badger,
Caity
Caity Stuart – Customer Service
W.S. Badger Company, Inc.
custserv@badgerbalm.com | 800-603-6100
www.badgerbalm.com
#2 Terressentials:
Craig Fri, Jan 16, 2015 at 7:51 PM
To: terrehelpdesk@mailworks.org
Hi, my name is Craig. I have a question. My skin is more of a dry/sensitive type.
For the skin, as a man, what products would work for skin that is a dry/sensitive type, and is it more important to use a organic moisturizer/lotion, or an organic oil?
Thank you for your time.
terrehelpdesk@mailworks.org <terrehelpdesk@mailworks.org> Sat, Jan 17, 2015 at 4:55 PM
To: Craig
Hi Craig —
Many people with sensitive skin just rave about our Fragrance-free line
of products (http://www.terressentials.com/fffacialcare.html). You
could try the Fragrance-free Gentle Bath Gel (made with organic olive
oil castile soap and moisturizing oils) for washing the body and the
Fragrance-free Facial Cleanser for the face. For daily moisturizing, we
recommend our Fragrance-free Facial Lotion and Body Lotion; for deeper
moisturizing of face and body (perhaps overnight), the Fragrance-free
Moisture Cream (pure, organic shea butter) is great.
Our organic Cocoa Butter Body Oil is great when your skin is warm and
damp, right out of the shower. Whether you use a body lotion or oil (or
our super-moisturizing Body Cremes) depends on your personal preference,
but the lotions do have certain healing herbal extracts (such as green
tea and lady’s mantle) that are not contained in the oils. Check out
all of the ingredients on our website.
I hope this information is helpful. Thanks for your interest in our
products.
Mary
Terressentials
Last is Herbal Choice Mari: Nature’s Brands:
Craig Fri, Jan 16, 2015 at 7:37 PM
To: Service@naturesbrands.com
Hi, My name is Craig. I have a question. My skin is more of a dry/sensitive type.
For the skin, is it more important to use a organic moisturizer/lotion, or an organic oil?
I’m looking at the organic jojoba oil. http://www.naturesbrands.com/hcm/organic-jojoba-oil.html?gclid=CMGxsaXimcMCFdcUgQod8jMAGg
Thanks for taking the time to read this.
Natures Brands <Service@naturesbrands.com> Tue, Jan 20, 2015 at 11:12 AM
To: Craig
Hello Craig,
Thank you for your inquiry. The organic jojoba oil works very well for dry skin; however oil seeps into the skin very quickly and a cream will slowly release its moisturizing oils. It is good to try both to see which one will work best for your skin.
Hope this helps,
Customer Service
Over 150 Certified USDA Organic health and Beauty Products
Natures Brands
www.NaturesBrands.com
Service@NaturesBrands.com
Toll Free 1-888-417-1375
Tel 210-599-1109
Debra’s Answer
ADHD linked to pesticide exposure
From Debra Lynn Dadd
New research from Rutgers University has now associated a common pesticide with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder in children.
Apparently, pyrethroid pesticides may alter the development of the brain’s dompamine system, which is responsible for emotional expression and cognitive function.
Read more: Environmental News Network: ADHD linked to pesticide exposure
Pyrethroids now constitute the majority of commercial household insecticides. Heretofore they were considered to be generally harmless to humans in low doses.
