My guest today is Amy Ziff, Founder and Chief Capidealist™ (someone who believes that world change will come about through harnessing our collective purchasing power on the free market) of Veritey, a website that makes it exceedingly simple to find products and services that are healthy. Amy puts an amazing amount of work into evaluating the products she sells and rates each one for being nontoxic, sustainable, cruelty-free and socially responsible. We’ll be talking about where to start once you decided to eliminate toxics from your life as well as her own process of choosing toxic-free products. Amy is a trained journalist, proven entrepreneur, start-up veteran, and healthy living advocate. She never wanted to work at a women’s magazine writing about make-up. Amy always was looking for ways to make a difference, and to find better ways to live a healthy life. When she became a mom, everything came together. Amy was frustrated by how hard it was to make what should be simple decisions – healthy decisions – for herself and her family. For years as a hobby, Amy has been seeking out the truth about products and their real ingredients. (What companies put in their products can be shocking, including known carcinogens and other toxic chemicals that can cause an array of conditions from asthma to infertility, and which are often not disclosed.) Amy believes you shouldn’t need a PhD to decipher what products are safe to use and which to avoid. Yet the reality is that getting to the truth of what’s in a product can take hours of research and a lot of legwork. Most busy moms and parents just don’t have that kind of time. Veritey makes it simple for people who are time pressed to make healthier decisions. Veritey is about where truth meets healthy living. www.veritey.com

TOXIC FREE TALK RADIO
Where to Start Eliminating Household Toxics

Host: Debra Lynn Dadd
Guest: Amy Ziff

Date of Broadcast: June 24, 2014

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 a beautiful summer day here in Clearwater, Florida. And we’re going to be talking about something simple today. We’re going to talk about where to start if you want to be eliminating toxic chemicals from your life, from your home. Where do you start?

I remember a long time ago when I first started, more than 30 years it’s been now. I had no idea where to start. And there were no books. There were no radio shows like this one. There was no place for me to even ask that question.

And now, of course, we have a tremendous amount of information. Sometimes so much information makes it difficult to decide what do you do first.

I first asked myself this question back in 1986 after I had written my first book, and people were saying, “What a great book.” It was called Non-Toxic and Natural and I listed all these different non-toxic products I had found.

And then people were saying to me, “But where do I start? Where do I start?”

So I wrote my second book called The Non-Toxic Home which put everything in order of what I thought was most important.

But what I found from doing that was that it was hard. There isn’t a hierarchical list that you can’t say this one thing is most important, and this other thing is least important because everything has a different level of toxicity.

But there are some easier things that we can do, things that are easier to do that make a bigger impact in terms of reducing your toxic exposure.

That’s what we’re going to talk about today. It’s where to start. And even if you’ve already started, you might pick up a few tips of things that maybe you haven’t done yet that are things that are important to do.

My guest today is Amy Ziff. She’s the founder of a website called Veritey. Her purpose is to make it exceedingly simple to find products and services that are healthy.

And so she does a tremendous amount of research into her products. I know that one of the things that’s happening now is that to live toxic-free is getting so much more important that there are a number of products and websites that are just popping up, where people who really don’t do their research, just say, “Oh, I just want to cash in on this.”

But Amy is not one of those kinds of people. She really is dedicated to finding out what is the truth about the products, and giving you only a very small selection of products that she has personally researched.

Welcome to the show, Amy.

AMY ZIFF: Thank you, Debra. Thanks for having me.

DEBRA: Thanks for being here. So tell us, how did you get interested in this.

AMY ZIFF: Well, it was a long and a quick and efficient journey all at the same time. When I was nine, I personally had a health crisis, and my mom refused to listen to what the traditional doctors were saying. What ultimately ended up making me well was changing my diet, avoiding certain allergens.

They’re common today, but in the 70’s, this was radical. It was going off of corn, sugar, and gluten.

And then it turned out that I was allergic to a lot of stuff in my home, molds and dander, dust and different mites and trees.

And so I became very aware at an early age that what we surround ourselves with is so impactful to our own health and wellbeing. And it can really make the difference between surviving and thriving.

And so I was surviving.

Then we cleaned up our home environment, my diet, and I was able to thrive.

Then fast forward into my own journey into parenthood. I have three children, and I had my first child, five-and-a-half years ago, and then I had twins after two years later. And one of my twins was incredibly allergic to things that I thought were natural, things that certainly were labeled as such.

I was an eco-shopper, and I went to Whole Foods, when I could, for products. And I thought I was buying really good products for my children. And so I thought, “What could possibly be in these products that could be bothering my daughter? What’s going on here?”

And I have a background in journalism, and also, I’ve been an internet entrepreneur.

So what happened was, the journalist in my started digging and digging and digging, and going, holy moly. There is so much stuff in our everyday products, and especially, products that we’re using on children and babies that is not very natural at all, and is not safe or necessarily what I want to be using for my kids.

And there is no uniformity in labeling, and there’s no way to really know this unless you become your own detective [blues], and really do your homework.

And so that’s what I started to do. And then before you know it, I was keeping those massive lists, and that grew into a database that became the real basis for Veritey, my site, that helps people find, what I’d like to say, the truth in healthy living.

We’re really looking at the truth in one these products are. The bottom line is, I want to use safe, non-toxic products for myself and my family in order to give my children their best chance in life. And as a parent, I feel it’s my responsibility to keep my little ones safe.

And so I don’t want to invite in toxins that are related to anything, any kind of issue. It could be asthma. It could be ADD. It could be cancer later in life, or infertility. It just really spans the gamut.

And now, knowing what we know about genetics and epigenetics, and the ability for these chemicals to be modulators on our genetics and our DNA, we realize, wow, it really does not matter what we surround ourselves, and particularly, in those early years.

So that’s how I got started. I did this deep dive into products and toxins a couple of years ago, and I’ve been non-stop ever since.

DEBRA: Well, it is important to do the deep dive. I’d just like to jump in and say that for many years, especially those of us who are older like me, and have been around for a while, back in the 70’s and 80’s, 1970’s and 80’s, that was in the last century.

There started to be products that were called natural products. And this was at the time when everybody was wearing polyester leisure suits, and plastic was thought to be a really good thing.

And so as opposed to that, then there were these natural products that were not made from better living through chemistry. They were products that were made from natural materials from nature like cotton, for example, or a natural food was any food that didn’t have artificial color and flavorings and preservatives.

That was as far as it went.

And so the only thing about a natural product that’s natural is that it starts as a renewable resource. For most natural products, they then are processed through the industrial process, and various toxic chemicals are added, and various good things are taken out.

And so what comes out at the end isn’t anything like what it started at the beginning.

How many years has that been? 30 years, 40 years, since we started having natural products? As time has progressed, then the natural products have become purer and purer, and they’re now being made out of organic ingredients.

But there’s still a wide range of what’s called a natural product. And as consumers, we can’t just say, “If it says it is natural that means that it’s safe.”

We can’t say that because there’s so much industrial process behind it.

Certainly, if you have an organic apple on your hand, that’s pretty safe. But if you have something called natural apple pie, it could have anything in it.

AMY ZIFF: That’s right. Natural will have all kinds of additions in food. You can have MSG in natural flavors, for example. So it’s a great way of pointing out that the word, natural, has such a wide berth at this point in time given that there is absolutely zero legislation around what that term means that we can’t really trust it.

And in fact, I remember looking at this Johnson and Johnson cream that I was using on my kids, and it said it was hypoallergenic. So here I am thinking, okay, this one’s safe. Well, it turns out it contains something called DMD hydantoin, and that forms formaldehyde in the bottle.

So I certainly don’t want to be slathering my kids with formaldehyde-based cream.

DEBRA: I have to interrupt you because we have to go to break, but we’ll talk more about this when we come back.

You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd, and my guest today is Amy Ziff, founder of Veritey, and we will come back and talk more about natural products, and how you can get started removing toxic chemicals from your home. We’ll be right back.

AMY ZIFF: It is Veritey. It’s a fictional word that we based on the actual word, verity, which in Latin means truth. So we are truth in healthy living, but we tailored for your life.

So we blended that together, and came out with Veritey.

DEBRA: Oh, I see. I get it. Good. Very clever. I like having that truth in the word. I knew the Latin word for truth, but I was trying to figure out exactly what this word was.

So tell us, let’s go on to talk about where people can start. What’s the first thing you would say?

AMY ZIFF: I’d like to say, start wherever you’re at. And here are my three principles in that. One, keep it real. And when I talk about keeping it real,

I’m really talking about the [inaudible 00:11:20] in your life, from real ingredients into what you are eating and buying. So that applies to your couch, or the foods you’re going to eat.

It should be untreated within keeping it real. Think about you want to get whatever it is you’re buying as true to its original source as possible.

So there are lots of things that go in here, and of course, tons of nuances. But you can really keep this very basic, and just think about this. Keep it real. Ask yourself what [inaudible 00:11:53] in this product. If you don’t know, ask the person you’re buying it from.

If they don’t know, or they give you this exhaustive speech, it’s probably not going to fit into this rule, keeping it real.

Try and keep it unprocessed. And if you can’t get totally unprocessed, minimally-processed.

And the reason why I mention this, it applies to your couch, is that couches are one of the most toxic elements that most of us have in our homes because, of course, there’s a lot of processing that actually goes into furniture. This is something that often shocks people.

So happy to talk about the flame retardants, and how to get those out, but again, it is something to really think about in my rule.

So one, keep it real.

Two, keep it simple. This is where you just think about less is more. Less handling of your products, less manipulating of your products is better. And fewer ingredients does best for it as well.

And again, that’s whether you’re buying a snack bar, or furniture. These complicated compressed woods that have been highly treated are usually also highly toxic in your home. So going back to the basics can really help you on this.

Again, so keep it real, keep it simple, and then this is the key, start with whatever it is you need next. That might be a toothbrush, that might be a desk, it might be a couch, it might be baby food. I really, really mean it.

Start with the very next thing on your grocery list, and let’s start attacking it there because I believe we can create change through shopping.

Women control 85% of the wallet share in this country. And if we don’t start applying what we know to how we shop, we won’t create a new change.

But if we do, wow, are we a force to be reckoned with.

So women, let’s get together. Let’s take that 85% of our wallet share, ad let’s change what kind of products are being made in this country by demanding to know what’s in them, keeping it real, keeping it simple, and starting what we need next.

DEBRA: I completely agree with everything that you said.

AMY ZIFF: Like minds.

DEBRA: Yes, like minds, exactly. Well, what I found in this field is that there really is a truth. There is a truth. And that if we get down to that truth, and we just keep applying that truth, then we’re going to end up in the right place.

And that truth is that for the most part, and I say for the most part because, just because something comes from nature doesn’t mean it’s not toxic.

There are plenty of natural toxic things in the natural world.

But for the most part, people aren’t making products out of things like botulinum toxin. They just aren’t.

AMY ZIFF: Well, you are not getting botox, but it is truth. And the other thing is that nature has so cleverly designed the natural world that most of the toxins are not, and intentionally so, bio-available. It is only the manipulation of them through human interaction that we’ve made a lot of these toxins bio-available. Lead is a great example of that.

So we’ve taken something natural in the world, but it wasn’t bio-available, and we’ve made it extremely bio-available. And now, we have a real problem on our hands with lead that needs to get cleaned up.

And most people are unaware of it, and unaware of how to deal with it. There are a lot of people that I talk to that think that’s going to be a really pressing human health issue in the coming decades, even though we took it out of gasoline, and we got it out of paint. Shouldn’t it be gone?

But all of those houses that were painted in the 70’s with lead paint are now sweltering. So it’s around. You have to be careful.

And that can be scary. Once people get scared about going non-toxic, I think it, very quickly, can get overwhelming, and people want to put their heads in the sand, and just say, “Well, I can’t do it. I’m going to do it like I’ve done before, like my mother did it, like my neighbor does it, and we’ll just keep going forward that way.”

But I’d like to say, please, please, please don’t do that. It can be scary, but you’re not there alone. As you’ve said Debra, there are so many resources nowadays. Reach out. Veritey hopes to be a lifeline in that crazy sea of “what do I dos,” and try and help point you in the direction that could be safer, better, healthier for you. It does matter.

When we look at diseases in this country, and what’s happening with childhood cancers having grown 25% since 1975, one in three kids having autism, one in six U.S. couples struggling with infertility. These are all related to toxins in our environment, and products that we may or may not be using, but are surrounding ourselves with.

Chemicals are, as I’d like to say, they’re uninvited guests to the party of the life that we’re living here. And we’ve got to take control back, and get these toxins out.

I really encourage people, don’t get overwhelmed, know that knowledge is power, and take some control back. You can do it, and you can start it with your very next product that you have to buy.

DEBRA: That’s great advice. I totally agree with that too. Again, great minds thinking alike.

We need to go to break in just about 10 seconds. So I’m not going to ask you another question right now. But when we come back, what I want to do is ask you about you were talking, and I agree, that whatever is the next product that you buy, then buy it non-toxic.

So we’re going to talk about that when we come back.

You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd, and my guest today is Amy Ziff, from Veritey. We’re talking about how to take that first step to start removing toxic chemicals from your life. And we’ll be right back.

So Amy, let’s just role-play for a minute, and do a little example of somebody’s made a decision that they are going to start with the next product that they buy, and buy something that’s less toxic than what they were buying before.

So they go to the supermarket, or wherever they’re shopping, and they decided that they’re going to buy pickles. So what’s the process to go through to take that step?

AMY ZIFF: So you want to buy pickles, but you’re not really sure how to determine whether your pickles are non-toxic.

So you’re in the store, and the first thing you’re going to do is go to the pickle section, and start looking at different containers.

Now, I can tell you just from bringing up this image of pickles in my mind that one of the things you’re going to notice is color variation on these pickles. So if you flip over the labels, then you want to look for, are there artificial food dyes, or what is free of those.

A lot of the pickles that we get are not actually normal color. The color that seeped into them is from added dyes because manufacturers think that’s what a person expects the pickle to “look like.”

So you look for words, in general, pickles and otherwise—this serves as the catchall, but for things you can’t recognize or pronounce.

So when you see a string of alphanumeric numbers, and it’s like a jumble of letters, [inaudible 00:20:05], they probably don’t have something real in there. That’s a chemical. That didn’t happen in nature.

With pickles, again, you’re going to look for something contains no natural flavors because natural flavors are anything but. They’re a catchall much like fragrance can be a catchall for all kinds of chemicals and additives in your personal care items.

With foods, natural flavor is one of those ones that I’m always wary of, and won’t buy unless I’m really clear on what that is.

And then simple, simple, simple. So the pickles that I like most and my kids just go crazy for have about five ingredients, none of which are sugar, by the way. So it is possible to find. It’s salt, it’s vinegar, it’s some very specific spices, depending on how hot or how not hot, I guess, that I like the new pickles. My husband likes [inaudible 00:21:10].

Some of those spices go up and down. Garlic, usually typical, salt, and water. That can make a really fine tasty pickle.

And that’s what you’ll be looking for.

One of the things you’ll compromise in this is you may not be able to keep those pickles outside of the fridge, and you may not be able to keep those pickles for a year. Things that have no preservatives in them don’t last a long time.

It makes sense. Now, vinegar and salt do act as natural preservatives, so in this case, the pickles were lucky. They’re not going bad anytime soon.

But that said, they may have an expiration date.

So it’s something to be aware of. But I think we’ve all gotten into this mindset of buying in such bulk things that we don’t necessarily even need. It just seems like a good deal at the time. And so we have to reverse that thinking a little bit.

And when you’re trying to buy less toxic, often times you’re not buying in bulk, you’re creating this whole ethos around you of using what you need, and trying to use it all, and using less.

And for anyone out there whose next question is, “But how can I afford it? These things are more expensive.”

I always like to say, when you do this, when you go non-toxic in your life, you start evaluating everything, just like what we did with the pickles.

You’re flipping over, you’re looking at that ingredients list, and you’re realizing, “There’s all this stuff in here.” And then you say, “Maybe I can do without.”

So for people who I go in to their home, and I’m looking at their stuff, and we’re talking through it, they stopped using, I would say, more than 50% of what they had been using. It turns out we don’t need dryer sheet.

DEBRA: No, we don’t.

AMY ZIFF: You can stop spending your monthly allowance that you were spending on your dryer sheets, and put that into a higher quality, essential oil-based, scented laundry detergent, for example. And right there, you’ve cleaned something up.

And baking soda, vinegar, lemon, those things go a long way in cleaning your home. The lemons are pricey, but not really when you stop buying all of these premade things.

And I’m not advocating for everybody making your own DIY. It’s a little bit too far along the path, but there are really good, simple products that you can get that aren’t made of too much more than that that will help you go a long way and detoxing your life because the cleaning stuff that we use in our home is really a significant source of what’s called indoor air pollution.

And our indoor air is 5 to 10 times more polluted than our outdoor air.

So another [inaudible 00:23:48] open your windows every day, people, because that will really help you literally breathe easier. And if you live right next to a road, try and open the windows on the other side of the house or the apartment.

DEBRA: Good. So I want to go back to pickles for a minute because I just discovered something. You can go online and search on pickles label, and all these different labels will come up from all these different brands of pickles. And you could just sit here and look at the pickle labels and their ingredients for as long as you like until you find a pickle that you like.

Now, here’s one. I won’t tell the brand name because I’m going to criticize it. So it has cucumbers, vinegar, salt, garlic, turmeric, natural dill, oil, salt—fine so far. But then there’s sodium benzoate, and that’s a preservative that you don’t want to eat.

We’ve already mentioned artificial colors. I’m looking at another label here with ingredients that are so small, I can’t read it.

AMY ZIFF: Sodium benzoate is one that really bothers me because once you set it, and it jumps out, you will start to notice sodium benzoate is in a lot of your food, and it’s in almost all of your personal care products. There isn’t really enough research on sodium benzoate.

There’s the research that does exist definitely points towards the fact that we need more research because it’s doing some funky things in lab rats.

So I think we have to be very careful with the fact that it’s coming into our bodies, not just through what we ingest, but also through what we put on our skin. We absorb as much as 80% of what we put on our skin.

And suddenly, you have this synergistic effect of a chemical that we don’t really know what it does.

DEBRA: So here now, I’m just picking these labels at random. This one I’m going to mention, this is Bubby’s Cultured Dill Pickles. It’s made from cucumbers, artesian well water, salt, calcium chloride, garlic, dill and spices.

Now, that’s a pretty good one. The thing that I would be red flags for me still is that it’s not organic, so there are pesticide residues in it. There’s also a note on here that it’s non-GMO-verified. So this is not a GMO pickle.

We need to go to break. We’ll talk more about this when we come back. You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd, and I’m talking with Amy Ziff of Veritey. We’ll be right back.

AMY ZIFF: Sure. It’s V-E-R-I-T-E-Y dot com. Veritey.com.

DEBRA: So we’re going to talk about in a minute what you can find when you go to Veritey.com, but I want to say that if all this talk about ingredients, strange-sounding ingredients that we’ve been talking about with pickles sounds like, “What are you talking about?” I just want to say that when I first started learning all of this, and remember, I was trying to learn it in an environment where there was no help at all. Nobody was talking about this subject at all.

I just started with one chemical. I think it was formaldehyde, in fact. And my father bought me a chemistry dictionary. And I looked up the word formaldehyde, and it told what the health effects were, and it told how formaldehyde was made.

The difficult part was finding out where it was in products, which I had managed to do. But that was a different book entirely.

But what I want to say here is you’re going to look at the pickle jar, and it’s going to say polysorbate 80. It’s going to say sodium benzoate. And you’re not going to have a clue what that is. But it’s a good idea if you see those words to just not eat them, is the first thing.

But the second thing is that you just start with just one product or one chemical, and you just start. And then as you start looking at more labels—I know what sodium benzoate is because I’ve seen it so many times. And just start seeing it.

AMY ZIFF: Yes, you get better and better.

DEBRA: And you get better and better the more you read the labels, and you start recognizing it. If you just say, “I’m going to learn sodium benzoate. I’m not buying any products with sodium benzoate,” and then what you’ll find is, I think you’ll find you just won’t go to the supermarket.

You’ll just go over to a natural food store instead, which doesn’t mean that 100% of the products there are okay. You still have to read the labels.

But you’re not going to find sodium benzoate in most products in a natural food store. There’s going to be a whole list of things. You’re not going to find in a natural food store that you will find in the supermarket.

So you can do things like read a lot of labels, but you can also do things like you can come to my website and look at Debra’s List. And just go to ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com, and look for shop in the menu. You can go to Amy’s site.

We both already have products that we’ve done the label-reading for you, that we’ve chosen these from our expertise. And so you don’t have to start over again.

And so if you’re looking for food product ideas or what kind of shampoo to use or any of those things, you can just go to my site or go to her site, and see what we have to say because people are already reading the labels for you.

AMY ZIFF: That was one thing that I really learned, Debra, was that. It was hard to find—when I started, I didn’t know about you at the time, unfortunately, so I was really having trouble finding someone who had done this before. But as I’ve gotten deeper and deeper into this, I do find that there are other resources.

You get better at it, and you start, as you say, recognizing things, then you get a little bit more sophisticated. And the reason why our symbol is an onion is because this whole thing is constant. And even today, I’m still learning. And I’m sure you still are.

DEBRA: I’m still learning.

AMY ZIFF: I moved cross-country and my goal was to create a non-toxic home, and sadly, I was made aware that doesn’t exist, and that’s an impossibility. But I have probably pretty close to have created as non-toxic as it can be in this day and age. And then I know what to fight back with against the toxins, what kind of plants to surround myself with, and all that.

But that has been a real process. And so you start where you are, you start to make it [inaudible 00:30:52]. And then you get better at it, and you realize the connection, and that we are living in an ecosphere that is totally connected, and that your whole world is you can’t just reduce the toxins in your home without starting to think about what you’re ingesting.

So you mentioned GMO’s when we left off with the pickle. That’s really an important, I think, if you’re trying to avoid toxins, to try and start getting out of your diet. And they are everywhere.

For sure, nothing with high fructose corn syrup is going to pass the test anymore because that is pretty much guaranteed to be GMO. Canola oil goes on that list because it’s a genetically-engineered product.

It can be shocking. Things you think or thought were healthy turn out—this is rewriting that book, so it is really important to lean on people who’ve done this before, so you don’t have to shoulder all that burden. And know that every single thing you do to make a difference in your life, to be a less toxic, to reduce your chemical footprint, I often say, when you’re doing that, everything makes a difference.

That is good news for your body because our bodies are made to detox.

DEBRA: Every single thing that you do, don’t think that a jar of pickles is too small. Start with a jar of pickles.

AMY ZIFF: No, it makes a difference.

DEBRA: And tomorrow, you get organic ketchup.

So what I’d like to do, we only have about five minutes left of the show, could you just give us a couple of suggestions of things that somebody could just walk into a store and buy, and have it be less toxic. I would say, go to a natural food store, and buy anything that has the organic label on it. If you can see the USDA organic symbol, and just look for that, and buy something that has that on it.

So what’s one thing that you would say that for somebody to go find a non-toxic product?

AMY ZIFF: I would say some of the biggest things—I tend to look at this in terms of in your home, what are the biggest things that you could get out and replace. With [inaudible 00:33:07] things, it’s a little bit different, Debra, from starting in store, but I’ll tell you why I’m getting there.

So I think about the most important thing you can do to support your body is create a healthy boudoir. Get a bedroom that isn’t off-gassing.

And so if I were going to the store, I’d be thinking about, “What’s in my bedroom? Maybe I’m not ready to throw out all my furniture and start over.”

And that’s probably a good thing. But you want to think about what’s touching you every single night. You spend a third of your life in bed, generally.

The statistics say. Eight hours of your day is going to be in bed and asleep.

Well, make sure you’re using a laundry detergent that you’re breathing in and out that’s going to be non-toxic.

DEBRA: Good suggestion.

AMY ZIFF: Now, I’m going to the store to get my non-toxic laundry detergent, but there’s still many claiming all kinds of things. What do I do and where do I look?

Again, this is where you keep it real, keep it simple, and this is what you need, but look for a brand. And often times, this is a generalization, but if you’ve made it to a health food store, they’re going to have stripped out a lot of things from this.

So you’re not going to see the Tides and the Whiffs of the world. You’re going to be seeing some alternate brands. And they do span the gamut. I personally really like the Ecos, the earth friendly products brand. You can get it free of scent, or you can get it scented with essential oils.

I think they’re pretty good and clean.

Seventh Generation is not perfect, but you know what? They’re so much better than others that I think. They’re good.

If this is sounding really complicated and overwhelming, you could go to a service like Honest.com, and order direct. Their products, again, not perfect, but the truth of the matter is, if you’re using someone like Honest.com, you’re still so much better than 95% of what’s out there.

DEBRA: That’s exactly right.

AMY ZIFF: I want people to feel that they can do this, that they can start, that they can make differences in their lives.
Perfection is something we can all strive for, but it’s really hard to achieve in any aspect of our lives, including going completely non-toxic. So make it easy. Go easy on yourself, so that you feel good because you know what, there is proof that when you buy something that’s good for you, and good for the environment, maybe they’re 1% for the planet, and giving back, that makes you feel good, and you get an endorphin rush.
“Now, that product actually works.”

And you continue to use it, there’s a whole cycle of goodness that’s happening for you, for the world, for everything. And that’s what I love.

DEBRA: And you should take whatever step you can take in the right direction. I didn’t start off with the most non-toxic products. I started off saying, “This is what’s available. This is what I can afford. This is what I understand.”

And now, I’m pretty sophisticated in my choices, but it took me many years to learn this. It took many years for the market to start catching up. It took many years—

AMY ZIFF: You were the pioneer.

DEBRA: Yes. Thank you. I was.

AMY ZIFF: You were. And now, it must seem really easy when you look out at the world. You’re like, “This is nothing.” You are so lucky.

DEBRA: It is. People who are starting now are very fortunate because other people came before. Yes, there are possibilities.

At this point in time, there does exist a non-toxic solution for everything. It’s just about knowing about it, and some of those things you need to make yourself. But you can eliminate so many toxic chemicals. And I’m going to have to stop talking because the show is going to be over in two seconds.

Thank you so much, Amy. You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. Go to ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com to find out more, to listen to past shows, to find out what’s coming up, and even listen to this show again. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. Be well.

I was a minute off.

This show is over at 12:56 and 30 seconds. It’s now 12:56. I ended at 12:55 and 30 seconds. So we do have a few more seconds. But what I want to say is that people should do what they can. Every step helps, and you can go to Amy’s website, Veritey, I don’t have it right in front of me, V-E-R-I-T-E-Y dot com. And you can go to ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com, and find out more about products that you can choose that are toxic-free.

AMY ZIFF: Go non-toxic. You won’t regret it.

DEBRA: And this is the end of the show now. Thanks, Amy. This is Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. Be well.

My guest today is Martin J. Blaser, MD, author of Missing Microbes: How the Overuse of Antibiotics Is Fueling Our Modern Plagues. We’ll be talking about how the massive increases in the developed world of “modern plagues”—such as obesity, type 1 diabetes, asthma, allergies, esophageal cancer, celiac disease, Crohn’s disease, ulcerative colitis, and autism—are related to loss of diversity of the complex—and crucially important—ecosystem of microorganisms within our bodies on which we all depend. As diversity diminishes, our immune systems are compromised, and we become much more susceptible to new infections. And this loss of micro-organism diversity is due to the use of wide use of antibiotics and products that contain antibacterials such as triclosan. Dr. Blaser has studied the role of bacteria in human disease for more than thirty years. He is the director of the Human Microbiome Program at New York University, the former president of the Infectious Diseases Society of America, and has held major advisory roles at the National Institutes of Health. He cofounded the Bellevue Literary Review, and his work has been written about in many newspapers and journals, including The New Yorker, Nature, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal. He lives in New York City. www.martinblaser.com.

 

 

TOXIC FREE TALK RADIO
How Antiobiotics and Antibacterials Are Compromising Our Health

Host: Debra Lynn Dadd
Guest: Dr. Martin Blaser, MD

Date of Broadcast: June 12, 2014

DEBRA: Hi, this is 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, June 12th, 2014 and I’m here in Clearwater, Florida.

We are having a very interesting show. I don’t like to say that, because I think all the shows are interesting. But this one is unique and different and it’s something we’ve never talked about before.

My guest today is Dr. Martin Blaser. He’s written a book called Missing Microbes: How the Overuse of Antibiotics is Fueling our Modern Plagues. We’re going to be talking about all these different illnesses that look like they’re separate and distinct like obesity, type 1 diabetes, asthma, allergies, esophageal cancer, celiac disease, Crohn’s disease, autism.

All of these, he says, are related to the loss of the diversity of the complex and crucially important ecosystem of microorganisms in our bodies. Every function in our bodies depends on these microorganisms, and these are being killed off by things like antibiotics and anti-bacterials.

So that’s what we’re going to talk about today. I think this is going to be very interesting. Welcome to Toxic Free Talk Radio, Dr. Blaser.

DR. MARTIN BLASER: It’s great to be here.

DEBRA: Thank you so much. I think your book is so interesting. And when I saw it, I thought we’ve never talk about this before. This is not something I have ever seen, and yet it seems so remarkably simple and obvious. How did you get interested in researching this?

DR. MARTIN BLASER: First, before I answer your question, which is a wonderful question, I wanted to just say that listening to you – you know, here’s a guy who’s saying all of these diseases are due to a change in our microbes. To me, it sounds quite grandiose.

But actually, I think it’s true. I’m going to try to explain why I think it’s true and tell you from the beginning that at this point, it is a hypothesis, but there is more and more support for the hypothesis.

So the story began in two different places. The first place is that many years ago, I was working for the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta in their Enteric Disease Branch. That’s the branch that deals with infections to the intestinal track. And I was the Salmonella Surveillance Officer of the United States. I was involved in studying salmonella.

At that point, we were very concerned about antibiotic resistance in salmonella because more and more salmonellas were not being easily treated with antibiotics.

And at that point, more than 30 years ago, I learned that most of the antibiotics used in the United States are used on the farm. They’re not used for people. They’re used on a farm. In particular, they’re used to fatten up farm animals. It’s what’s called the ‘growth promotion’.

In the 1940s, farmers found that if they fed their livestock low doses of antibiotics, their livestock would gain weight and they reduced their feed more efficiently. This is much more profitable for farmers. And that’s why the use of antibiotics is still extensive on the farm and why it’s continued, because of the strong economic motivation.

DEBRA: Okay. As we’re talking about that, let me just say something about that first. As you’re talking about that, I’m thinking back to my teenage years when I was given low doses of antibiotics for acne. I think that that’s the standard treatment. Of course, I gained weight. I just think of all these people who are on antibiotics for different reasons and obesity.

DR. MARTIN BLASER: Yes, exactly. So you’ve skipped a little ahead of me, but we’re going to the same place.

And so about 10 years ago, a light bulb went off. I thought to myself, if farmers are feeding antibiotics to their livestock to make them fatter, what are we doing to our kids? Could there be an unintended consequence of all the antibiotic use that our kids are getting?

And another thing that the farmers found is that the earlier in life they started the antibiotics, the more profound the effect, suggesting that early childhood was particularly important.
And now, I will skip forward and tell you that over these last 10 years, we’ve been doing experiments in mice and other laboratory animals to ask the question, “Do antibiotics change the development of the mice? Do they change how obese they’re going to be?” And the answer is yes.

We have done a whole series of studies. We had a big paper that was published a year and a half ago in Nature that shows that giving antibiotics to mice changed their body composition. They had more fat. They changed their metabolic pathways in their liver. So we have more and more experimental support that this hypothesis is actually correct.

DEBRA: Wow! I’m just stunned to hear this. When I think about the billions of dollars being spent on people trying to lose weight, not to mention the personal way that people feel being overweight and the health effects of being overweight, this is something – this is the first time I’m hearing this, and I read a lot.

DR. MARTIN BLASER: It’s interesting, because I’m a physician. In fact, my specialty is infectious diseases. And as infectious disease doctors, one of our main occupations is to oversee the use of antibiotics in ill people to consult with other doctors with people who are really sick.

And of course, we love antibiotics. I want to say that I love antibiotics. I wouldn’t want to live in a world where there were not antibiotics because from the very introduction in the 1940s, these drugs were miraculous. There were people on the brink of death who were saved because of antibiotics and disease that were untreatable were cured with antibiotics.

And as a result of that, we all considered that antibiotics were miraculous. Because we couldn’t see there were some minor and infrequent side effects that basically, they were safe. So everyone, myself included, gave antibiotics a clean bill of health.

Little by little, the medical profession and the public began using antibiotics more and more and more for milder and milder conditions – not just the conditions that were life-threatening, but for mild conditions like acne or to prevent acne. Now I’m not saying that acne can’t be terrible, but it’s certainly milder than a case of spinal meningitis for example.

So in 2010, the Center for Disease Control did a study of antibiotic use in the United States. What they found was astounding to me. They found in the United States for outpatients, not even including people in the hospital, for outpatients, there were 258 million courses of antibiotics prescribed in that year. And that’s in a population of 300 million people. So what that meant is that in 2010, there were five courses of antibiotics prescribed for every six people. This has been going on year after year after year.

And the CDC looked at the data by age. And you can extrapolate that and say that the average child in the United States by the time they’re two has had three courses of antibiotics. By the time they’re 10, they’ve had 10 courses. And by the time they’re 20, they’ve had 17 courses of antibiotics. That’s the average child. That’s across every child in the United States.

These numbers may seem high, but they’re entirely consistent with many other studies that have been done. None had been done on this big a scale. So this enormous antibiotic use and nobody has been paying attention to what the consequences could be.

DEBRA: We’re going to need to go to a break in about 30 seconds, so I’m not going to ask you another question because I don’t want to have to interrupt you.

But I think that this is incredible. It’s just another taste of having there be an industrial product that people look at as being a miracle. And then time goes by – not even just a miracle, but something that’s not harmful. Time goes by, we start seeing that it has profound effects.

We’re going to talk about this when we come back. You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd, and my guest today is Dr. Martin Blaser, M.D., author of Missing Microbes: How the Overuse of Antibiotics is Fueling our Modern Plagues. You can go to his website and find out more at MartinBlaser.com. We’ll be right back.

DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is Dr. Martin Blaser, author of Missing Microbes .

Dr. Blaser, I want to just back up for a minute now that we know where the story began. You talk about the microbiome. Explain to us what that is.

DR. MARTIN BLASER: Yes, certainly. So the microbiome is all the microbes that live in and on the human body. That’s a very big number of microbes. In fact, if you take a census of all the cells in the human body, 70% to 90% of them are microbes. Only 10% to 30% are human cells. So we are mostly microbial cells.

And that’s the way it’s been since time in memorial. We got lots of our microbes from our moms, and she got it from her mom, and so on and so forth, all the way back. In fact, ever since there had been animals on this planet, which is about 500 million years, they have had residential microbes living in them.

We now know that most of these microbes are beneficial to us – beneficial or neutral. But in depth, they’re beneficial. They do important things for us. They help protect us against invaders. They help train our immune system. They help us digest food. They make vitamins for us. So the microbes that had been living with us are there for a purpose. They help us live.

DEBRA: I think that most people, if you say microbes, they think that they’re in the intestines, but where are some places in your body that they might be?

DR. MARTIN BLASER: Well, the biggest group are in our intestines, but they’re in our mouth, they’re in our skin and our ears, eyes. In women, they’re in the vagina. So we have been living with these microbes since time immemorial.

And one of the things that have happened is that because infectious diseases have been so terrible like cholera and tuberculosis and typhoid fever, the public has always been fearful of these tremendous plagues. I’ll call those ‘our ancient plagues.’ The advent of sanitation and antibiotics had been a godsend. So we have now controlled these ancient plagues.

We, as a society, have become germaphobic. We think that all microbes are bad like cholera and plague and tuberculosis. Of course, some of them are, and we are at war with those guys. But most of the microbes in the human body, most of the microbes in the world are neutral or beneficial for us.

And that’s a greater level of sophistication that I try to bring out in Missing Microbes . The the whole title of Missing Microbes is that we have lost some of our defenders. We have lost some of our friendly organisms that help our babies grow up and develop normally – develop normal metabolism, normal immunity and maybe even normal cognition.

DEBRA: So it seems like that there needs to be a balance between protecting ourselves from the harmful microbes and not destroying the good microbes.

An example that I frequently give is that when we drink tap water that has chlorine or chloramine in it, it’s put there for a reason because it was found that it was needed to do that so that the harmful microbes that might be in the system or even in the pipes.

Often, people will ask me, “Why did they put it chlorine and the chloramine at the water treatment plant? Why don’t they just leave it out and then the water can come to our house clean?” Well, they have to put it in because the pipes that the water goes through are contaminated with all kinds of microorganisms that could get in the water and then cause us harm if we drink that tap water.

But then, we drink that tap water (I filter my water and I’m always telling people to filter their water), but if people don’t filter the chlorine or the chloramines out of their tap water, they drink the antibacterial, chlorine or chloramines, it goes into their intestines at least and starts killing off the beneficial bacteria.

So how can we protect ourselves without destroying ourselves?

DR. MARTIN BLASER: That is really the question because the chlorination of water was a tremendous advance in public health. We have clean water. We can turn on the tap, and we know that that water is safe to drink. But in many parts of the world (in India; in Africa, and parts of Asia), we can’t. And people are becoming ill, they’re dying for many kinds of diseases because of dirty water.

So as you say, we have to find the right balance between things that protect us against pathogens but, don’t do in our beneficial organisms. Again, this is one of the themes of Missing Microbes .

I want to point out (because there’s so much to talk about and so little time) that I gave you the figures for the United States in antibiotic use. And a few months after that paper was published by the CDC investigators, a group in Sweden published their use of antibiotics. I first want to point out that, as I think all your listeners know, Sweden is a small country with a high standard of living. The Swedes are at least as healthy as we are and they are using 40% of the antibiotics that we’re using at every age.

When our children at three had four courses of antibiotic, they have had 1.4. When our kids have had 10, they’ve had 4. So there’s no epidemic of childhood deafness in Sweden or early childhood mortality. They’re doing just fine. What that implies is that at least 60% of the antibiotics we’re using are unneeded.

So one of the things I’m calling for is the much more judicious use of antibiotics. Use them when we really need them and don’t use them the other times. That requires education of doctors and it also requires education of the public that antibiotics are not free. They come with cost, biological cost.

And when people bring their kids to the doctor and the doctor says, “Your child doesn’t need an antibiotic, those parents should feel relieved, not deprived.

DEBRA: Yes. I remember many years ago (I don’t even know how many years ago it has been now), I remember being told that if I take an antibiotic, that I should eat yogurt to restore some of the bacteria, the beneficial bacteria that’s being destroyed by the antibiotic.

I don’t know that that’s even commonly known even now, but it was something that I was told a long time ago. Nowadays, I would probably say, “Take a probiotic or drink Kombucha tea or something like that to restore the flora in the gut after taking an antibiotic.” But always, it would be preferable to do something else instead of taking the antibiotic.

But as you said—we need to go to break. So let’s just go to break and come back. You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I know there’s so much to talk about. I just want to go on and on.

You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is Dr. Martin Blaser, M.D. He’s the author of Missing Microbes and we have lots to talk about. We’ll be right back.

DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is Dr. Martin Blaser, author of Missing Microbes .

Dr. Blaser, right before the break, I said something you wanted to jump in, so go ahead and give me your answer.

DR. MARTIN BLASER: You talked about what you should do after you take an antibiotic. Should you take yogurt? Should you take a probiotic? Should you take some special teas?

Most of that is folk wisdom. Very little of it has been studied. It’s not clear to me whether that’s any better than a placebo. I think we are going to learn through science, we’re going to learn what organisms we have to give back after somebody takes an antibiotic.

One of my theories is that every time somebody takes an antibiotic, of the thousands of species that we have in our body, a few go extinct. And the next time, a few more go extinct.

Now, what’s the chance that that’s true? There is some support for this idea because we know if we compare people in the United States with people in developing countries, we’ve lost diversity. We have just a smaller census of different kinds of bacteria than they do.

So what’s the chance that taking one or two organisms in yogurt are going to restore our diversity? Once it’s gone, it’s gone.

DEBRA: It’s not. It’s not. think that people don’t really realize that yogurt has very few strains of…

DR. MARTIN BLASER: Yes, very few strains. But let me just say…

DEBRA: And if you’re taking a probiotic, it’s very few strains as well.

DR. MARTIN BLASER: The same, exactly. Let me just say that I eat yogurt everyday. I love yogurt. But I eat it because it’s delicious. And I think it gives me a lot of nutrients. But I don’t think it’s helping my microbiome. It’s neither helping nor hurting my microbiome. I think we need to discover the organisms that we’ve lost and replace them. Maybe, we’ll be giving them to our kids in the future.

DEBRA: Wow! As you’re saying this, I’m thinking about what you said in your book that mothers pass on microbes with their children in various ways when they’re born. And if the mothers don’t have those microbes, then the children don’t have them from the beginning of life.

And if they were taking antibiotics and continuing to lose and lose them and lose them, that if the things that we’re doing thinking that we’re replacing some of those are not necessarily lining up with what we’ve lost, then I can see how the pool of diversity of microbes is just getting smaller and smaller.

DR. MARTIN BLASER: Yes. A number of years ago, we speculated that this loss of microbes, this loss of diversity is actually cumulative across generations, that each generation of moms has fewer microbes to pass onto the next.

And again, we’re finding evidence that this is true. That was the theory, but we’re beginning to find evidence that this is true.

And that’s very alarming because the recent suggestion is that we’ve lost perhaps a third of our diversity. It’s silent. You can’t tell when somebody has lost their diversity. The only way we can tell is that we have all these diseases that are rising.

We come back to my original grandiose idea. Let’s just say we have 10 diseases that have risen dramatically since World War II. You’ve mentioned them, obesity, juvenile diabetes, celiac disease, inflammatory bowel disease, asthma, food allergies, peanut allergy, and the list goes on.
So either each of those is rising independently and each has its own cause or there’s one commonality, something that is underlying all of them. The one thing that could fit that is big enough to encompass all of them is changes in the early life microbiome, the microbiome that our babies are developing with, that are choreographed to help our normal development, and that we have been inadvertently changing.

One of the things you mentioned was about birth. My wife, Maria Gloria Dominguez, has been studying this for the last few years. She’s been studying the difference between babies born vaginally and by C section.

So we humans are mammals. For the last hundred million years, all mammals are born by passes through the birth canal. They go out through their mom’s vagina and in the process, they’re picking up their mom’s bacteria. They’re covered with bacteria, they’re swallowing the bacteria. Those become the founding bacteria to help them start their life.

So this is what mammals have been doing for 100 million years including us. Then we started doing C sections, which again are an incredible operation. They are life-saving sometimes for babies and for moms, but we’re doing more and more and more.

So most recently in the United States, we were up to about 32% of babies now born by C section. That’s one baby out of three. In Brazil, it’s about 50%. And all over the world, C sections are rising.

What Gloria has shown and others is that the microbiota, when the baby is born vaginally and by C section, is quite different. So all these kids born by C section are not being born with the normal compliment of microbes passed from mom the way they were back in the old days. This is what I point out in Missing Microbes . Just because something is common, it doesn’t mean it’s right.

DEBRA: I totally agree with you. As you’re talking, I’m getting this picture of like a science fiction movie and the future of people fighting over the microbes that they’re supposed to have when they’re born. Because we don’t pass them on anymore, there’s like this secret stash of the microbes that you’re supposed to have and that everybody is supposed to get one of these capsules at birth.

DR. MARTIN BLASER: Actually, we’re hoping to develop that stash. We’re hoping to understand what are the microbes we’ve lost, what are those missing microbes, develop them and give them to kids.

There’s an organism I’ve been studying for about 30 years called Helicobacter pylori, which was first discovered as a pathogen causing ulcers and stomach cancer. We were involved in those studies on stomach cancer as well. The more we studied it, the more it became clear to me that this is one of those ancient organisms that are disappearing. That was my first missing microbe. And I thought, “If one microbe that is an ancient microbe is disappearing, probably there are others.” That’s the where the whole idea came from.

But in 1998, in the British Medical Journal, I predicted that doctors of the future would be giving H. pylori back to children. So far, nothing has happened. And I think it’s actually still too early because we still have to do a lot of science to understand this, but it is my belief that that will be coming. We’re going to be giving H. pylori and other organisms back to kids so that we can get the early-life benefits of those organisms and maybe then eradicate the organisms later so we don’t have the late-in-life cost.

DEBRA: Well, people are already taking probiotics and prebiotics. So this is just more biotics. We need to go to break again. But what I want to ask you is (and we’ll look at the answer when we come back) do you have any idea how many microbes we lost to this?
We’ll come back and get the answer from Dr. Blaser who is the author of Missing Microbes . You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd, and we’ll be right back.

DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is Dr. Martin Blaser. He’s the author of Missing Microbes . Before the break, I asked him if he knows how many microbes we’ve lost.

DR. MARTIN BLASER: Yeah. Thank you. We can only estimate, but there was a very nice study that was published about two years ago now in Nature comparing the microbiomes of healthy people in the United States, Africans and Malawi and Amerindians in Venezuela. This is led out of Jeff Gordon’s lab at Washington University. Gloria Dominguez and Rob Knight participated in this study.

And what they found is they took a census of how many species were present in the gut, really a fecal specimen from healthy people. In Africa, it was on average about 1400 species. In the Amerindians, it was about 1600 species. And the people in the US, it was about 1200 species. So from that estimate, we’ve lost between 15% and 25% of our diversity. A more recent study by Maria Gloria and colleagues suggests that maybe about 35%.

So that’s a lot. That’s something that’s quite measureable. In a sense, this is like the global warming inside of our body. It’s the same kind of thing. Global warming has been happening for some time, but we didn’t wake up to it until it was well on its way. And that seems to me, that that’s what’s happening with our missing microbes.

DEBRA: So I want to make sure that we talk about antibacterials, because things like triclosan is just in everything. I went to buy a pair of scissors at an office supply store, and there was only one out of six or seven options for buying scissors that didn’t have anti-bacterial on the handle of the scissors. Tell us about that.

DR. MARTIN BLASER: Antibacterials are everywhere. They have two purposes. One purpose is to protect the scissors so that the scissors will last longer because bacteria and fungi, they cause decay of many things. So it makes some sense.

But part of it is that they’re also in materials that we use to so-called “protect” us. For example, they’re in toothpaste. The problem is that we Americans were exposed to millions or tens of millions of times everyday to these anti-bacterials, which we would predict would have an effect on our microbiome. But nobody has really measured this. We have no idea what the consequence is. But we need to know.

I will note that about two weeks ago, the State of Minnesota banned triclosan. They said you can’t use it in things that go into products for people anymore. That won’t take effect until 2017, but it is a first step. I think we really have to understand what are they doing to us, because they have just crept up.

Another thing we do is we put on all these antibacterial lotions on our hands. We think that we’re protecting ourselves from germs. There are times to use those lotions. When you’re in the hospital, you don’t want the transmission of dangerous antibiotic-resistant germs. During flu season, we don’t want the flu spreading from person to person. Hands are important.

But those two things together represent probably less than 5% of all the times when one could use the hand thing. And the other 95%, we’re just slathering it on by the millions.

My question is, “Are we doing more benefit or are we doing more harm?” By trying to get rid of bad organisms, we may be actually hurting our good organisms, depleting our good organisms that one day we’re going to need.

DEBRA: I totally agree with you. We just talked about this before earlier in the show, but I just want to say it again, because I think it’s a really important point. And that is when we’re talking about these microorganisms, they’re not like a system of our own body. They’re like something that is symbiotic with us, yes? Am I understanding this correctly?

DR. MARTIN BLASER: Yes, they are symbiotic with us, but you can also think of them in essence like in other organ of our body like a kidney or a liver because they are doing many different kinds of functions for us like our kidneys or our liver. Increasingly, we think of it as an organ, which just gives you a sense of how important we think they are to our health.

DEBRA: My mind is just twisting around trying to comprehend this because I have studied – now this is going to sound strange maybe, but when I was writing my last book Toxic-Free, I realized that I really didn’t know what were the organ systems in my body.

As I started researching, I was finding that they aren’t very well explained and there aren’t books – I mean, I think if you would ask people on the street what are your body systems, they wouldn’t be able to tell you. And yet, we need to be aware of what they are, because toxic chemicals are damaging each one of them.

And I really am seeing how the microbiome of our bodies – I love that word – the microbiome of our bodies, whether it’s an organ or a symbiotic ecosystem of its own that is working hand in hand with our bodies, they are performing functions. And without this microbiome, we wouldn’t be able to live, our bodies wouldn’t live.

And so we do need to consider what are the toxic chemicals, what are the factors that are destroying it since we need it.

DR. MARTIN BLASER: This is why I wrote Missing Microbes . I wanted to explain these ideas to the public, because explaining it to the medical profession – and I speak quite frequently to doctors and scientists trying to get these viewpoints out. I have to say that in general, they’ve been very well-received. But that’s not enough. We really have to change the comprehension of normal people about all these things that we’re doing.

Everybody thinks that antibiotics are free, that antibacterials are good for us. It’s much more complex. And if we can change the dialogue in the doctor’s office so that parents say, “Can we avoid giving antibiotics?” rather than, “My child must get an antibiotic?” we’ll be getting some place. Again, we know that we’re doing so much, much too much in many areas.

DEBRA: If somebody’s listening to this and they’re saying, “What can I do to maybe restore some of my microbes?”, what would you tell them?

DR. MARTIN BLASER: I say the first thing is to prevent further damage, prevent more decline of your microbes. The restoration is going to be more complicated. I don’t know that we have the state of science today to do that.

I’m hopeful. That’s what we work on in the lab, come up with the real probiotics that we’re going to be using in the future to restore those missing organisms. We have several candidates that we’re working on in the lab that we think that we’re going to be giving especially to kids.

For adults, it’s more complicated. We’re mostly concerned about how kids develop because so many of the important diseases, their roots are in childhood. If we can catch the root, then we can prevent a lot of diseases.

We know obesity begins in the early years of life. So somebody may become obese when they’re 25 or 35 or 45, but there’s a lot of evidence that the first five years of life are the critical time for when that’s developing.

DEBRA: This is so interesting to me, because for me weight has been an issue in my body my entire life. And it’s not about what I eat or what I don’t eat or how much exercise I get. I can do all those things and my body still doesn’t lose weight.

DR. MARTIN BLASER: We’ve known for 50 years that how your body forms in the first few years of life will determine a great deal about a person’s ways.

DEBRA: This is actually such a relief to me. So we’ve only got about two minutes left. So is there anything you’d like to say in closing?

DR. MARTIN BLASER: There’s so much I’d like to say…

DEBRA: Another five hours…

DR. MARTIN BLASER: I want to come back to the tremendous use of antibiotics on the farm because as a result of that, antibiotics are getting into our food, the meat, milk. In some communities, antibiotics are in the drinking water because the water intake is downstream of the ethylene from industrial farms.

Millions of people are getting exposed to trace levels of antibiotics. What are the consequences? We don’t know. We need to know. And probably we need to stop it because all these antibiotics we use on the farm ultimately are affecting our human ecology. That could be another thing that is causing the depletion of our diversity.

And we need that diversity, because the good guys help protect us against invaders. They’re our coastguards. If we deplete them, we become susceptible. And I discussed that in a chapter of Missing Microbes , that I call Antibiotic Winter. It’s a very bleak thing, but we need to prepare. Otherwise, we’re going to be in trouble.

DEBRA: Wow! I need to say something, because I can’t have dead air time.

Listening to everything that you’re saying, I understand the magnitude of what you’re talking about because I could say everything that you’re saying about all the toxic chemicals that I’ve researched over the past 30 years where there are these fundamental things that underlie everything. One of them is what you’re talking about, about losing our microbiome.

Another thing is all these toxic chemicals that are destroying every one of our body systems. It all underlies everything.

Anyway, I’ve only got about 10 seconds. So I’m just going to say thank you so much, Dr. Blaser. His book is Missing Microbes . You can go to his website at MartinBlaser.com. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. This is Toxic Free Talk Radio. You can go to ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com and listen to this show again, listen to the other shows, find out what’s coming up. Be well.