My guests today are Ron & Lisa Beres. As healthy home experts, building biologists, published authors, professional speakers and Telly Award Winning media personalities, this husband-and-wife team help busy people eliminate toxics from their home with simple solutions to improve their health. We’ll be talking about how to “Change Your Home, Change Your Health in 30 Days.” Lisa is also the author of the children’s book “My Body My House,” and the duo are co-authors of “Just GREEN It!“—simple swaps to save the planet and your health. Lisa and Ron’s TV appearances include “Dr. Oz,” “The Rachael Ray Show,” “Nightly News with Brian Williams,” “TODAY,” “The Doctors” and “Fox & Friends.” www.ronandlisa.com

 

 

TOXIC FREE TALK RADIO
Healthy Home Detox with Ron & Lisa

Host: Debra Lynn Dadd
Guest: Ron & Lisa Beres

Date of Broadcast: August 04, 2015

DEBRA: Hi, I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. I’m fussing around at the moment with technical things. Okay! This is Toxic Free Talk Radio where we talk about how to thrive in a toxic world and live toxic free.

So it’s – I don’t have that page up. It is a date. It’s the 4th of August. Sometimes, I’ve just got all these technical stuff to do and I have to do it while I was coming. Oh, shoot! Okay, we’ll get this right.

So, it’s now the 4th of August and I know who my guests are. My guests are Ron and Lisa Beres. They are a wonderful couple. I’ve known them for a long time. They know so much about indoor air pollution. They now have become media personalities. They give webinars, they give trainings, they give consultations. They know so much about indoor air pollution. They are actually trained and certified in this area.

They’re building biologists.

Today, we’re going to talk about their healthy home detox. They’re about to do a program and it’s called Change Your Home, Change Your Health in 30 Days. We’re going to be talking about that.

Ron and Lisa, I’m not usually this scattered. It’s just I’m having one of those mornings. Hi, Lisa.

LISA BERES: We all do.

DEBRA: Sometimes you have these days where all of a sudden, there are all these things that you have get done. And then, the phone rings and you have to talk to the person on the phone for half an hour. And then it’s noon and it’s time for the radio show.

LISA BERES: It should be Monday, but it’s Tuesday.

DEBRA: It is Tuesday.

Here’s what’s happening, listeners. Lisa and her husband, Ron are both guests on the show today, but Ron can’t make it until later on the show. So he’s going to be joining us. In the meantime, we have Lisa who knows everything. She can say everything.

So Lisa, why don’t you start by telling us how did you and Ron get interested in doing what you do?

LISA BERES: Well, we started this journey about over 13 years ago. Actually, I’d say it’s about 15 years ago at this point. Time flies!

Ironically, I was engaged to Ron about the time that this all happened. So it’s a really unique time for us.

I was working as an interior designer. That’s what I went to college for. I loved my job and I really thought I was living a healthy life.

I do like to share this story because I think a lot of people can relate to it.

I was working out, I was a vegetarian, I shopped at Whole Foods and thought that, “Hey, this is it! This is the end of the story, being healthy.”

DEBRA: Yes, a lot of people think that.

LISA BERES: A lot of people think that. And I am so happy, by the way, that you do what you do because you bring so much awareness on a bigger scale and really educating people about such an important topic.

A lot of people really do. The buck stops there with food. They think as long they’re eating healthy, that’s the end. As you and I know, there’s a whole another segue to being healthy and that’s obviously your environment.

So at that point, I had just moved in. I wanted to move closer to Ron, we were engaged. I found this little charming beach cottage not too far from him. It’s pretty close to the beach. It had just been newly remodeled. So I was so excited.

It had a brand new hardwood floor, brand new carpeting, fresh, new coat of paint. It had a new, cozy gas fireplace. It had new vinyl windows and sparkling white, new thermofoil kitchen cabinets. I was in heaven! I thought that I found the best place you could possibly move into.

So I was working from home at the time and I moved in there. And suddenly – it happened really quickly for me after being there because I was literally in this house almost 24/7. I started getting really severely sick. I could not get out of bed in the morning.

Prior to that, I’ve been pretty energetic. I’m working out even sometimes twice a day. I could not get out of bed in the morning.

And then my hormones started going crazy. I literally stopped having my period for a year. I’ll get into that in a minute. And then I was having chronic sinus issues. I was chronically fatigued. It was just a nightmare. This was supposed to be the happiest time of my life. I was engaged and planning this wedding. I just felt horrible all of the time. My stomach was bloated. I was just a wreck.

So I started researching and began researching. And that time, there really wasn’t the information that’s available now. So I had to really dig and I stumbled across building biology. And I started connecting the dots. I started realizing that my symptoms were directly linked to these chemicals that are in our home.

And every single thing I mentioned in the home was off gassing chemicals that I was being exposed to in a really high dose. I was severely having reactions to that.

So as I started connecting the dots, I ended up becoming a building biologist. I studied that for quite some time. But during this process, I was, little by little, changing my environment. So I would start with one thing, and then go to the next thing, and then [inaudible 00:06:43] water and then air and then bedding and all of this.

It took about a year. I forgot to mention this. This is extremely important. In this process, I visited at least a dozen doctors. I visited everyone from acupuncturists to chiropractors to MDs to naturopaths, you name it, endocronologist. I went to everyone and every kind of doctor because I wasn’t getting the answers.

So I’d go to one doctor and he’d try to load me up with prescriptions. This doctor wanted me on this. I was never getting better. No one could explain why these things were happening to me. Especially, with my period, they’d say, “Well, you just need to be on the pill. That will fix it all. Let’s just mask yours symptoms with more medications.”

I actually did do that for a year because I got so desperate. I felt horrible. So I did go back on the pill for a year. And guess what? My period stopped even on the pill. So I knew something was really wrong.

As I didn’t make the changes to my home – it literally took me about a year. But after that my health did a complete 180. I was healthier after all of that than I was when I started.

DEBRA: That’s my experience too.

LISA BERES: Is it? It’s amazing because I didn’t really know much about detoxing your body and how these chemicals could affect us.

And so as I cleaned up my environment and cleaned up myself (I did detoxification through this), I literally became a different person. Ron and I looked at each other and said, “Are you kidding me? We have to do something about this.” We have to create a business or something where we can help other people because people don’t realize that their environments are directly affecting their health. They’re just thinking about –

DEBRA: That’s my experience too. As I started getting well, I figured all this out. I was doing this even earlier than you. I was doing this in 1978.

LISA BERES: Wow! I wish we met earlier.

DEBRA: That’s when I started. It was in 1978. I had no information at all. There wasn’t building biology then or there wasn’t me. I couldn’t read my own books.

LISA BERES: You couldn’t time travel to the future.

DEBRA: I had to go and just sit in the library and look in industrial journals and things to find where the chemicals were. I had a clue it was the chemicals, but there was no information. And by the time I dug up all of this information and I started removing these chemicals from my life, my home, I felt so much better I said, “I have to tell people about this because nobody was talking about it. I had exactly the same response.

LISA BERES: Yes, they look at you like you’re crazy. Definitely, one doctor offered me anti-depressants because I cried in her office. I was so at the end of my rope with nowhere to turn. I felt so overwhelmed. I literally got a little weeping moment, nothing crazy. And she said she could prescribe me anti-depressants. And that made me cry even more.

DEBRA: Listeners, listen to how vibrant, alive and energetic she is right now. I’m sure this is not how you were at the time.

LISA BERES: No, not at all. And I don’t take anti-depressants.

It’s crazy. And I think that western medicine, that is the underlying theme. It’s, “Hey, let’s just give you a pill and make everything better.” No mention of side effects and no mention of how these medications are loaded with so many other things that can cause problems. At the end of the day, they’re just masking, so they’re never really curing anything anyway.

DEBRA: Wow! Great story1 Very much like a lot of other people, and aren’t we fortunate that we found this out because I think there’s a lot of people who are suffering from this and not knowing what it is. And of course, they go to the doctor and the doctor doesn’t know what it is either. So that’s why we talk about it here.

And we’re going to go to break. When we come back, Lisa’s going to tell us about some of the toxic chemicals that she found in her home and their health effects.

You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is Lisa Beres. Her husband, Ron, is going to be on with us later. He’s off at another appointment at the moment. 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 Lisa Beres of Ron and Lisa Beres. And they are media personalities who go on TV and radio and speaking engagements, and tell the world about toxic chemicals in the home and how they can make you sick, and how you can get well by eliminating them from your life.

So Lisa, what are some of these toxic chemicals and what kinds of health effects do they cause for people?

LISA BERES: Oh, boy! I wish we had more than an hour. It’s not enough time to list them all. There are so many. I want to talk about some of the ones that are most prevalent inside of our homes and the ones that made the biggest difference for me.

Indoor air, in general, I like to call the umbrella of the home. Basically, if you can clean your air, you’re really covering a lot of the things that fall under it. So when we talk about toxins in flooring or carpeting or paint or bedding, well that’s all permeating into our indoor air. So if we can clean up our air, we’re addressing a lot of the problem.

Indoor air, it can have everything from biological contaminants like mold and pollen and pet dander to bacteria to chemicals. It can have flame retardants. It can have VOCs, volatile organic compounds. I know you know this.

DEBRA: No, you’re talking to the listeners. They need to know.

LISA BERES: I do like to say this because we hear the term VOCs a lot especially this paint, but people don’t really know what that is. So I’ll just give you a quick rundown.

So VOCs, they are volatile organic compounds. And at room temperature, they off gas, which means they vaporize into the air into a gaseous form. We breathe in these chemicals. So a lot of times, especially in our homes, we can’t smell these. We definitely can’t see them. But we are, in fact, breathing them in.

And that’s what happened to me. I didn’t know that I had all these chemicals I was breathing in in the home. VOCs can include really dangerous chemicals, many of which are carcinogens that cause cancer. Some of the chemicals are formaldehyde, xylene and toluene, benzene, trichloroethylene, ammonia, acetone and the list goes on and on and on. And so, our homes basically are a toxic brewery.

As the green building craze happens – that was a good thing for energy efficiency. It saved on our electric bills. But what happened is the homes became very tightly sealed and these chemicals really got trapped within our homes.

So back in the 1970s, the average air exchange in our home was once every hour. So we were getting a new fresh exchange of air once every hour. Today, it’s once every five hours. People aren’t opening their windows and they’re definitely not purifying their air like they should. So we’re literally breathing in and these chemicals are getting circulated through our HVAC systems.

DEBRA: Maybe if we didn’t have the whole energy thing happen, so that we tightened our homes, that these chemicals might not have ever concentrated to the degree, so that we wouldn’t have the whole field of what’s now called indoor air pollution.

It wasn’t called that. When I started, there was no such field.

LISA BERES: None of this existed.

I can’t even imagine your journey because I felt like doctors looked at me like I was crazy. So back in 1978, I’m sure they were like, “What is this person talking about?” It’s nice to know that there are so many amazing doctors now that do address this.

But yes, that’s a great point. The tightening of the building envelope has definitely addressed that. But you know what else? There are so many more chemicals on the market today. We’re talking about over 86,000 chemicals [inaudible 00:17:35]. And of those, less than 200 have ever been effectively tested for health. And that’s according to the president’s cancer panel.

I think people also don’t realize that. They think that if something is for sale at the store, then it must have been approved and gone through rigorous testing. There you go. It’s, in fact, safe for you to bring into your home. That couldn’t be further from the truth.

Cleaning products, for instance, are largely unregulated. It is a multibillion-dollar industry, and they don’t, by law, have to tell us what’s in the product. So they can list a couple of the ingredients or none of the ingredients or all of the ingredients. And they’ll often the use the term “fragrance” to hide hundreds of chemicals.

So people really need to be educated and really need to learn how to understand labels and know what to look for and what to avoid because this is how we can get trapped into bringing chemicals to our lives and our families unknowingly.

DEBRA: One of the things that really astonished me when I started studying this was the labeling laws are so different for different types of products. And the ones that are most toxic, cleaning products and pesticides, are not required by law to list their ingredients. But they are required to give these signal words like “caution” and “poison”. It was supposed to give you some degree of how toxic they are.

But many, many years ago, I read a report that said that these aren’t even correctly applied. So the most toxic products we have have the worst labeling and the least opportunity for us to know what’s really in them. I don’t think that’s right. I think that needs to be changed.

LISA BERES: It so needs to be changed, Debra. I am so with you on that.

The Toxic Substance Control Act was actually formed in 1976. And this is the problem. 80,000 of the 86,000 or something crazy like that (maybe it was 60,000) chemicals are grandfathered in, which means they never went through any testing.

This law has literally not been updated since 1976. So I know so many people in the grassroots movement are trying to get this changed, but they’re going up against big corporations who don’t have the vested interested in doing this because they don’t want you to know what chemicals are in your products. They want to put them in there and confuse you.

In fact, I know you’re familiar with EWG, the Environmental Working Group. They created their Cleaners Database. They have actually over 2000 different brands of cleaning products.

For consumers and especially anybody listening who’s like, “Hmmm… I have this product. I wonder because they’re not listing all the ingredients,” you can actually plug in the name of your cleaning product and find out the toxicity rating. And they’ll tell you how hazardous it is and what’s in it.

But they also created what’s called the Hall of Shame. And these were the worst offenders of all in the cleaners. I got to tell you this because this blew my mind when I read it. Comet disinfectant powder, the green powder (and I actually used this growing up because I had to. I was doing my chores. It’s crazy), they literally found that it emitted 146 different chemicals in their testing. Some of the chemicals were thought to cause cancer, asthma and reproductive disorders. And the most toxic chemicals that they found were formaldehyde, benzene, chloroform and toluene. Some of those are carcinogens. And they were not listed on the label.

DEBRA: Wow! That’s just wrong.

LISA BERES: It’s wrong. And it’s shocking. I really want to stress that because these are name brand cleaners that people are using and trusting.

And then Febreze air effects. People spray this thinking they’re cleaning the air. Actually, they’re just contaminating their air with more chemicals. That was shown to release 89 air contaminants.

DEBRA: Wow!

We need to go to break but we’ll be right back. We’ll talk more with Lisa Beres and her husband, Ron, is coming up too. You’re listening to

Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd, 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 Lisa Beres. And also her husband, Ron, will be here, I think, in the last segment. And we’re talking about healthy home detox.

Now, Lisa and Ron have a new program called Change Your Home, Change Your Health in 30 Days. And you can go to their website. I’m going to read it to you, but it’s long. You can also just go to ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com and I’ve got the link there. You can just click right through.

You can go to TinyURL.com/HealthyHomeSignUp, and you can sign up there for a free webinar which will tell you more about it and give you some information about how you can clean up your home. And you can find out about how to sign up for their Change Your Home, Change Your Health in 30 Days.

I think it’s great, Lisa, that you’re doing because I know you. I know you’re an organized person and that you have all the information. Putting it all together in a program so that people, together, you can help each other make these changes in your life, I think, is absolutely great.

LISA BERES: Thank you. That was the goal. And I know you’ve done such a great job with your books doing that as well. Because we both were in a situation where we didn’t have tools to turn to, I thought, “Mine would be great.”

We made it 30 days, but you can take it as long as you want. But if you want to finish it in 30 days, you can. And it goes through 12 modules.

So it goes through pretty much every room of your home. And we covered kids, how to grow healthy kids, your kitchen, how to detox your kitchen, pets, your bedding, your air, your water. So many things that obviously, we aren’t going to be able to cover today.

We try to make it fun because this is really overwhelming and in depth, intricate topic. When we talk about our homes, there are so many elements that comprise our homes. So we go through each. It’s digestible bites of information and you’re not really overwhelmed. You go at your own pace. So that’s really the goal.

DEBRA: That’s very good. So tell us some of the things that people can do.And I just want to say that Lisa mentioned earlier that they’re really focused on indoor air pollution. I think that that really is like a basic thing. You could change the water that you drink, you could change the food you eat. But you still got this air going on 24 hours a day.

And so that’s a segment of life in and of itself that you need to handle. And there is so much that’s involved in it that it really is important to learn it and do it, and then be healthier.

So what are some of the things, give us some examples of tips that people can do or things that you’re going to be talking about in your course?

LISA BERES: Starting with indoor air, obviously, implementing an air purification system in your home, it’s literally essential today. I don’t even think it’s negotiable. You need to do that.

Opening your windows, really letting your home breathe like homes used to is great. We can’t always do that depending on where we live and the time of year. And now, it’s allergies. Over 60 million Americans have allergies today. So that’s not always an option. That’s why I’m a really big proponent of air purifiers.

If you’re on a budget, there are air purifiers that you can buy that aren’t going to break the bank. There’s really an air purifier in every price points.

I think, generally, you do get what you pay for when it comes to these air purifiers. Some of them are only going to filter up to 3000 square feet. Some of them will filter just a few hundreds. At a minimum, have one in your bedroom and your kid’s bedroom. Children, especially babies, definitely need to be breathing in good air.

In our program, we go through all the air purifiers and break them down and tell you which ones aren’t good. There’s actually some on the market that product ozone and that can actually be more toxic to your health. So knowing what to avoid and what to look for is super important.

And then, you know what? If you’re at a really tight budget, then you can actually get plants, certain plants. NASA did a study and found there were 50 indoor house plants that normally produce oxygen, but actually remove chemical vapors and toxic gases from the air we breathe. It’s fascinating.

DEBRA: That was really fascinating, they do. I don’t remember the numbers off hand, but I calculated out how many plants you would need and it was a huge number.

LISA BERES: It is a huge number. To effectively clean your air, it’s one every hundred square feet. So if you have a large home, you’re going to have a lot of plants.

It’s not going to replace your air purifier by any means. But these plants, what’s really fascinating is each plant was different, and some remove benzene, some remove formaldehyde, some remove the trichloroethylene, xylene, toluene, ammonia.

And so you can pick the plant based on what you need. Certain ones are better for your bathrooms, certain ones are good to have by your bed.

That’s great too in an office situation. If you’re in a cubicle and you can’t do anything about your air, you can put some plants at your desk and at least try to keep that area better, giving you good, clean oxygen and also absorbing some of those chemicals that are common in an office situation.

DEBRA: I totally agree with all that.

LISA BERES: There’s a lot we can do. Changing your furnace filter, that goes without saying. But yes, so many people are not doing that. 41% of homeowners are not doing that frequently enough. And so really getting in the habit of changing all of your filters, changing your air purifier, your furnace filter, your water filters.

You may have to get on a schedule of making sure you’re doing that because these can cause more harm when these start to get backed up with bacteria and things like that if you’re not changing them.

DEBRA: I totally agree. And I also think that indoor air pollution is such a big subject. And it’s so critical because of these gaseous chemicals that are in the air that just go right into your body so quickly.

The first thing I think people should do is get an air filter because it takes time to handle your carpets and your bed and all these different things that you need to change in order to reduce the indoor air pollution.

But just putting an air filter right from the start, you start protecting yourself right away.

LISA BERES: Exactly! I think that’s such a good point because we talk about you want to have organic bedding and you want to have organic sheets and you want to do all these great, expensive investments. But if you’ve got that air purifier that’s absorbing some of those VOCs and formaldehydes off the bat, you can actually weight and stagger these projects.

You’re probably familiar with this study that they did in the Journal of Environmental Science and Technology where they found the average home has 400 chemicals. Some of the chemicals are toxic, some were untested. And so this is just what’s going on in America across our homes.

DEBRA: It is. I know it sounds fantastic or unbelievable to some people because you look around and you go, “Well, I don’t see anything” and you say, “I’m not sick.” But the thing that’s so key about this is it’s not about getting sick like being exposed to bacteria and getting a cold. These are chronic exposure chemicals. It’s like you can smoke cigarettes and not be sick and then suddenly, get cancer.

It’s that kind of chemical where they build up in your body. And as they build up and build up and build up, then somewhere down the road, you’re going to get an illness that’s really a major illness. And it’s changing your DNA and all these stuff. You can’t see it, but it’s there. And then one day, you get sick.

LISA BERES: That goes back to, you mentioned, the labels on the cleaning products, the warnings, the danger and the caution. Those are literally there just for the acute symptoms. Is the chemical going to burn your skin instantly or are you going to have a reaction right away?

But nobody labels products about the long-term health effects.

DEBRA: No, they don’t label them at all. Not at all, not at all.

We need to go to break. When we come back, I’m hoping Ron will be there with you.

LISA BERES: Yes, he’ll be here.

DEBRA: Okay, good. So you’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guests today are Ron and Lisa Beres. You can go to their website, TinyURL.com/HealthyHomeSignUp and get more information about their program, Change Your Home, Change Your Health in 30 Days. 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 Ron and Lisa Beres. They are healthy home experts, building biologists, published authors, professional speakers, and Telly award-winning media personalities. Actually, we have an interesting topic here. So is Ron there now?

RON BERES: I am here, Debra. Yes, thank you for that intro. That was very nice.

DEBRA: You’re welcome. Thank you for being here. It’s nice to have both of you on.
So Ron, I don’t know if Lisa told you but we have a special topic for the two of you to discuss together.

LISA BERES: I did. I filled him in.

DEBRA: So listen, what we’re going to talk about now is about husbands and wives and toxic chemicals. I hear a lot from women, especially, “I want to clean up my house, but my husband doesn’t believe me. My husband doesn’t care about this. My husband thinks it’s all in my head.”

I want Lisa and Ron to talk about how they’re working together as a team to have a healthy home and to be supporting each other and reducing your toxic chemical exposure. So I’ll let you guys decide where you’re going to start.

RON BERES: Lisa, I’ll jump in because I know you’ve been speaking here. I do want to say, I was not that husband, but I was that fiancée.

I have absolutely been that.

I did not really know what was going on and I have to say I came from a very traditional background, worked in Corporate America, I met the girl of my dreams, Lisa, on the phone right now. And so we were very excited. We just started our relationship. She moved into a home that was really nearby where I lived. And that’s when things got a little bit weird.

I have to admit, I did not see what I see now. My eyes were wide shut, quite frankly, because through Lisa’s experience, she was feeling chronically fatigued (I think you guys went over this earlier)…

DEBRA: We did.

RON BERES: And so, it wasn’t that I didn’t believe Lisa, but it was frustrating because I wouldn’t fear, feel this or hear this. I really was that guy initially. But through the process of just – as Lisa was discovering things, and she was getting better, and things we’re making sense to me, I really changed my path there, and I can tell you, it does happen.

There usually will be a skeptical spouse at first because let’s face it, they can’t physically see what’s going on. And it’s multi-layered. Particularly, if there are a lot of things that can be bombarding or affecting your health (and in Lisa’s case, that was definitely true) from, you mentioned the air quality.

I’ll tell you a funny story. Our first few months of dating, one of the first things Lisa wanted because she just moved into her home was an air purifier. She started…

LISA BERES: For my birthday, yes.

RON BERES: For her birthday. And I was like, “Wow,” which is great. It could have been more expensive than that. So we got her an air purifier.

LISA BERES: Not a very romantic gift.

RON BERES: Yeah, first year relationship. Needless to say, it’s been quite a journey. And even some of the initial literature and things that

Lisa was reading to better educate herself and before we became building biologists, I didn’t really accept it at first. And ultimately, I’m living and breathing it now.

We are so inspired by how Lisa turned around with her health that at that time, we wanted to go to the rooftop and just preach and shout, “This is what happened. This is so great.” Especially me too, I didn’t initially know what was going on.

So we made it our mission to go out there and educate people. I know you’ve been doing this for a long time too, Debra. It’s great to speak to you again. We always admire the great work that you do.

DEBRA: Thank you.

RON BERES: So we did books, then TV, then speaking engagements. We even had a retail business. And so we really just absorbed ourselves in being the best we can be to not only help us but other people.

And fast forward to today, we are now working together in a business that is focused on healthy living, and it’s awesome. It’s great. We have learned through the years (and Lisa, you can attest to this), don’t want to totally hog the conversation here but how to work together effectively.

And so, we’re both partners here. I think the key to really working together effectively is to make sure that someone is heading a particular project or someone takes a leadership role in something else and the other person has a leadership role in another area. And then it blends together and gives someone that detail power and everyone feels comfortable. But it does take a little time to do this.

DEBRA: I totally agree with that because I know in my relationship, if he’s in charge of something like the garden for example, and I’m in charge of something else, like the home, then each of us gets to be in a leadership position instead of just having one person be the dominant thing. And then we trust each other, and we help each other and everything gets done because we’re both leaders. And I think that makes a huge difference in a relationship.

LISA BERES: Yes, I really do, trusting each other. We all have different talents too. So honoring the talents that each person has and letting really bring that to the table and shine. And I think the trust factor goes back to really even – anyone listening who is going through a situation where they’re sick and their spouse doesn’t believe it, which is usually the woman.

It’s usually the woman saying her husband doesn’t believe it because we have more body fat, we store toxins more. We’re more susceptible to these things. Plus, we’re in the home more as a general rule of thumb.

And really, really trusting that because Ron went with me to these doctor visits and had to hear the doctors say, “We don’t know. We don’t know. We believe you’re having these issues, but we can’t find the problem.” And so that makes you feel insecure when you’re going through it. And Ron really stood by and said, “We’re going to figure this out.”

I think as a spouse, you really need to do that. You need to have ultimate faith in what your spouse is saying.

We just did the Dr. Oz Show actually a couple of months ago. It’s the same, exact situation. They had mold in the home. The wife and the daughter were the ones with the most severe reactions. The husband was really skeptical. He didn’t believe it. And it caused them to divorce.

DEBRA: It does, I hear this.

LISA BERES: And so this can really destroy your relationship. So you really have to trust your partner – and not even your partner, any of your family members – and just believe that what they’re saying is true and really stand by them because they need support.

DEBRA: They do. They absolutely do.

Many years ago, I was engaged to a man that I didn’t marry. And this was when I was first learning about all of these things. I would go to his apartment. It was an apartment in a renovated big, old house. And so it had a lot of toxic things, especially the heater was a freestanding heater with an open flame. You could see the flame burning.

And so, I didn’t know what all the toxic chemicals were then. So, I would go there and I would get sick and I would get upset and we would argue. None of these things would happen when we weren’t in the apartment.

And so finally, we broke up. Several years later, he found me and he said, “I have to tell you that you were right all along about the apartment making us sick.” I kept saying, “There must be something going on in the apartment.” And he said because he got much sicker after that.

And this is before I knew anything.

I’ll tell you something because this is so horrible. It was the bathroom. They had put in a shower where they had just made a frame and then they had cemented the walls of the shower. And they didn’t put any tile. They painted it. And it was very small. And so every time I would take a shower, I’d get paint chips all over my body.

So finally, one day I said, “I’m going to take all this paint off.”

I took very toxic paint stripper, the most toxic paint stripper. I took off all my clothes and I got in the shower, this little tiny shower that you could barely stand in, no ventilation and I’ve got toxic paint stripper. I put it all over the walls to loosen up the pain and then I’m standing there with a razor blade scraping it off in this little box full of toxic fumes. People do this all the time.

LISA BERES: They do it all of the time.

DEBRA: I know. I look at things that I used to do and I’m just horrified.

LISA BERES: It’s amazing. Like you said earlier, I don’t know if you had exposure or symptoms at that time, and maybe you did, maybe you didn’t, but I have similar stories where there was a lot of toxic exposure. Maybe you didn’t get a symptom at that time, but this is about the long-term symptoms.

Just because you used the products that was toxic and you didn’t have any symptoms doesn’t mean it didn’t affect your body.

DEBRA: That’s exactly right. And that’s what makes this so difficult. Over the years, I really found that what I need to do is objectively look at the data and say, “This causes cancer. This causes this. This causes that. And these are the chemicals I’m not going to have in my life.” I understand it that it’s these chronic exposures that build up and build up and build up. That’s why it’s so difficult to say this chemical led to this symptom.

LISA BERES: It’s still hard to pinpoint. That’s why it’s so hard for people to say. Out of sight, out of mind. “Oh, I know that has a carcinogen in it, but whatever.” They’ll use it anyway – from cosmetics to cleaning to home products. You name it! I guess you can’t emphasize it enough.

Even pregnant women you’ll see pregnant women remodeling their nursery. Babies today are being born with 287 chemicals already in their blood. We even had an advantage over that. We came in, I’m sure, with less chemicals. How about this new generation that’s already coming in with some many chemicals? How soon are they going to have the effects of exposures?

DEBRA: Well, we see it already that people are getting illnesses that they didn’t use to get until they were 60, they’re now getting when they’re 30.

Anyway, we’ve only got about 20 seconds left. So I just want to say thank you so much for being on the show. I’m so excited about the work that you’re doing. Again, listeners, you can go to TinyURL.com/HealthyHomeSignUp to find out more about their new program which is Change Your Home, Change Your Health in 30 Days. Thanks, Ron and Lisa. Bye.

RON BERES: Thank you, Debra.

LISA BERES: Thank you so much.

RON BERES: Thank you.