My guest Larry Plesent is the Founder of Vermont Soap, He began making organic soap products because his own body was “reactive” to toxic chemicals in common personal care products. He’s now written a book called The Reactive Body Handbook, which tells what he’s learned over the past 20 years about surviving in our artificial toxic environment. Vermont Soap makes “100% natural and non-toxic alternatives to the chemical based personal care products now in general use, including; handmade bar soaps for sensitive skin, anti-aging products, 100% natural shower gels, castile liquid soaps and non-toxic cleaners. Most products made by Vermont Soap are certified to USDA organic standards. Larry is also a writer,philosopher, restaurateur and farmer. www.debralynndadd.com/debras-list/vermont-soap

 

 

TOXIC FREE TALK RADIO
How to Live with a Reactive Body

Host: Debra Lynn Dadd
Guest: Larry Plesent

Date of Broadcast: March 27, 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 Thursday, March 27th 2014. I’m here in Clearwater, Florida—and actually around the world because this radio show is broadcast via the Internet. Every place, everybody gets Internet. And you can listen to all the shows in the archives 24/7 as well as live shows (like right now) Monday through Friday at 12 noon Eastern.

Today, my guest is Larry Plesent. He’s the founder of Vermont Soap. But here’s today not to talk about soap, but instead, he’s here to talk about his new book called The Reactive Body Handbook.

Now, this is actually a free book. You can go to the website and you can download it immediately for free. So, everything that we’re going to be talking about today, you can go get this book for free and see what he has to say about this.

It’s actually a brand new book. I think that it was just posted this morning or yesterday. You can go to ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com and look for the How to Live with a Reactive Body listing of today’s show. And in that paragraph, there’s a link to the Reactive Body Handbook. Just click there, and you can get your free copy.

Hi, Larry.

LARRY PLESENT: Debra, great! Thanks for having me on again.

DEBRA: You’re welcome. Thanks for being here. This is a subject that I’m very interested in. And I know it’ll be valuable to a lot of people.

So, you started your business, Vermont Soap, because you have a reactive body and you needed to have some soap that you could use yourself.

LARRY PLESENT: Absolutely! Well, soap and every other product.

DEBRA: Every other product, yeah.

LARRY PLESENT: I figured I was the ideal guinea pig if you will. So, I tell people, “Well, I formulate for myself. I have an extraordinarily sensitive skin. So, if it can get past me, you’re most of the way there.”

And then, I have some other people who are also part of our initial testing of new products. And their skin sensitivities go in different directions than mine, so we can get a good picture of how sensitive skinned people will handle it.

DEBRA: Well, tell us what is your definition of a “reactive body.”

LARRY PLESENT: Oh, boy! I’m so glad you asked.

DEBRA: I know! You were just waiting for me to say that.

LARRY PLESENT: Can I read right from the book or is that cheating?

DEBRA: No, you can read from the book.

LARRY PLESENT: See, now that I’m a published author, even if it’s a free book, I can quote from my book. We have a chapter here called What is a Reactive Body?. I’ll have to start right in:

“You know the old practice of bringing canaries down into coal mines? Mining, coal mining especially can release large amounts of the natural gas methane. And methane displaces the air we breathe. Without necessary amounts of oxygen from that air, humans are toast in a matter of minutes.

The canaries were brought down to sing as the miners worked. And they were more sensitive to the drop in oxygen levels than humans are. They would be the first to suffer from the lack of oxygen, and they’d stop singing.

This gave the miners a couple of minutes of notice to get the heck out of dodge and possibly save their coal-mining lives.

Now, reactive bodied people are like those sleeping canaries. We notice molecules before other people do. Reactive bodies feel and perceive the world more intensely than most.”

So, if you’re a reactive bodied person, if you’ve ever suspected that you indeed feel the world more intensely than most people around you, you’re correct. It’s not narcissism.

“This hyped up sensitivity increases the risk of becoming over-stimulated. And when you become over-stimulated, you become exhausted. You wear yourself out. And then, we become short-tempered with those we love. ”

You hear that? Reactive bodies are easily over-stimulated because they feel the world more intensely.

“A reactive body is not a psychosomatic illness as some people—and even many professionals—believe. And as I like to say, if they have a reactive body, they will not talk so foolishly.

DEBRA: I agree!

LARRY PLESENT: Now, let’s keep it real simple. Debra, you’ve heard me say it. I see it this way. Having a reactive body is kind of like having body asthma. Think of it, body asthma.

Now, asthma, by definition, is a pulmonary (lung) condition. It’s characterized by the inflammation of the bronchial lining. But a reactive body is essentially a body in which every part and system has the potential for inflammation and hypersensitivity.

Now, when something molecular—and this is a molecule-based way of looking at things—when something molecular triggers you, you might, if you’re worn down, experience a flare-up.

Now, the symptoms of a flare-up may or may not include histamine-based reactions (like true allergies), runny nose, […], et cetera, hypersensitivity to aromas—that’s very common. But also, it affects people emotionally. There’s the possibility of mood swings. Suddenly, you’re feeling claustrophobic. Mood swing, bipolar behaviors will come out, anxiety and panic. If you can’t breathe, you start to have anxiety and panic and general hypersensitivity to anything that might pose a threat to your metabolic well-being and balance.

Now, the flare-up eventually subsides. But the hypersensitivity, they linger on for days (and for some people I’ve talked to, even weeks after a flare-up, an episodic flare-up). You can just feel your hypersensitivity go up.

And after a flare-up, you’re left feeling spent and emotionally wrung-out.

Now, I believe that reactive bodies are following a normal human mechanism. I think this is a normal thing.

DEBRA: Yes, it is. I agree. I agree.

LARRY PLESENT: It’s normal.

For example—and I know you and I have talked about this—we all know somebody who’s drunk too much of some alcohol, right? “Tequila,” they go, “Oh, don’t even say the word. I feel nauseous.” So, one night, they had a big night out. They got very sick. And now, their body can’t even stand the smell of the stuff. And I’ve known people get nauseous just from talking about it. I say, “Wow! I had a sip of some amazing tequila” and they start grabbing their belly.

This is, in fact, the same principle as a reactive body response. And as I like to say, it’s your body’s way of saying—the basic premise of this book is your body is trying to talk to you. But we’re distracted and we don’t get all the messages.

DEBRA: Well, I agree with that. Our bodies know when there’s something wrong. And in all the research that I’ve done about toxic everything, in the world of toxicity, symptoms are signals to you.

LARRY PLESENT: That’s right.

DEBRA: It’s like the body is saying, “Wait!” I’ve never smoked cigarettes or anything else. But I know from watching other people that the first time you smoke a cigarette, you cough. Your body doesn’t like it. You have to keep smoking and smoking and smoking, so that you can smoke without apparently having symptoms. And then, you smoke too much, and then you’ve got emphysema and cancer and all those things.

But the point being is that your body will tell you almost immediately when you—like smoking a cigarette for the first time—are exposing it to something it doesn’t like. But what happens is we get exposed to some toxic chemical or some food or something, and then we don’t pay attention to the symptoms and the signals, and then we eat it or smoke it or whatever again, and then we stop paying attention. We’re exposed to so many things that are causing these symptoms that we can’t distinguish them even. But our body is just getting worse and worse and worse, until eventually, there’s some kind of breakdown and our bodies get overloaded.

LARRY PLESENT: You’ve got it! That is the essence and a good summary of my conclusion of 20 years of living in a reactive body.

DEBRA: When I used to work with people who were chemically sensitive—I mean, I still do as a consultant. But I used to work at a doctor’s office. We use to explain it by saying there’s like a water bottle or a rain barrel. You can be exposed to all these things, and they keep building up and building up and building up. But it’s that last drop, you put in the last drop, and you start overflowing. And that’s when you start being hypersensitive—that’s the word that you used.

LARRY PLESENT: That’s when you’re filled up.

DEBRA: When you’re filled up and your body just can’t take anymore.

So, we need to take a break, and then we’ll come back and talk more about this. You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio.

I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is Larry Plesent. He’s the founder of Vermont Soap, but he’s also the author of The Reactive Body Handbook which is what we’re talking about today. We’ll be right back.

= COMMERCIAL BREAK =
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. And my guest today is Larry Plesent. He’s the founder of Vermont Soap and author of The Reactive Body Handbook. And you can get a free copy of this instant download.

Just go to ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com, look for Larry’s smiling face. He’s the guy with the hat on. Just scroll down the page where it’ll say “How to Live with a Reactive Body.” You’ll see Larry. And in the middle of that paragraph, you can just click on The Reactive Body Handbook and get your free copy.

Larry, you have a statement in your book that I want to make sure that we say in big letters—like you did in the book. And that statement is:

“It’s not that I am broken. This stuff is bad for me.”

LARRY PLESENT: This stuff really is bad for me.

DEBRA: It really is bad for you. And I want to really just emphasize this because so many people with this condition, they think there’s something wrong with them, like “the environment is okay. There must be something wrong with me that I’m getting sick from the environment.”

LARRY PLESENT: Right! “My friends are eating poison and breathing poison and driving in poisonous vehicles…”

DEBRA: “They’re all okay. What’s wrong with me?”

LARRY PLESENT: “They seem to be okay.”

DEBRA: “They seem to be okay. But what’s wrong with me?”

I want to make that everybody understands that if you’re getting sick, you’re normal. You’re healthy. Your body is responding the way it’s supposed to respond. And what we need to do is have a less toxic world to live in. We need to live in less toxic homes. We need to use less toxic products like Larry’s soap products and all the other products he makes and all the products that I talk about on my website and all the products that my guests talk about. These are the things that will make us healthy. What’s going on with the world at large is these things that are making us sick.

And so let’s just say that together again.

DEBRA: It’s not that I am broken. This stuff is really bad for me.

LARRY PLESENT: It’s not that I am broken. This stuff really is bad for me.

It’s so true. And it’s so liberating to say it. Yeah, just say it out loud yourself. You’re not broken. You’re beaten up, but you’re not broken.

DEBRA: But you’re not broken. There’s not something wrong with your body.

LARRY PLESENT: No, there is…

DEBRA: It’s the world.

LARRY PLESENT: No, your body is acting differently than other people’s bodies by and large because reactive bodied people are still a very small percentage of the population. Although, increasingly, as people are overloaded with the—we use the word “toxics.”

You know, I’d like to define that a little more narrowly if we could.

DEBRA: Okay, good. Go ahead, let’s talk about that.

LARRY PLESENT: So, I like to say that I’m a natural formulator. I work with tens of thousands of molecules that are found in nature. They’re all found in nature in these useful little bundles (like vitamin C isn’t found in itself. It’s found in a bundle of bioflavinoids. And that’s how your body uses it too).

But as I say, human minds are restless minds. And because we can, we think that means we should. We’ve gone ahead and we’ve synthesized/created hundreds of thousands of molecules that never existed in nature before (or only for a few seconds, excuse me. Maybe they were burned up or something. That’s the end of it).

And not only that, we’ve created these new molecules and we’re pouring them all over the soil, the food, the air, the water.

Now, even natural things—think about it, this is something that maybe people don’t think about that much. For example, metals—copper, lead, all the metals that we use to build our civilization, nickel, aluminum—these are always found bound up in ores. They’re always tightly bound to other things, so that they’re inert because nature seeks to be leveled, to be even, to be inert (just as water seeks its own level. It’s the same principle).

So, we come along and maybe take some aluminum, and we blast that aluminum ore with all kinds of electricity to blast out the so-called impurities (everything that’s not aluminum). And now we have pure aluminum in our hands that hasn’t existed for 2 ½ billion years on this planet—even longer, since this planet was made.

So, here we are. Did we create something new? No, it’s aluminum. It’s an element. But is it its natural state to be found that way?

DEBRA: No, it’s not. See, this is the point. This is the whole point of industrialization. I’m glad that you’re talking about this.

What industry does is it takes all these raw materials and it purifies them. And so not only do we have pure aluminum, but we have pure sodium chloride instead of natural salt, and we have pure sugar instead of sugar cane, et cetera, et cetera.

Our bodies don’t like those.

LARRY PLESENT: Exactly!

DEBRA: It’s not the way it is in nature.

LARRY PLESENT: Exactly! We’re designed to use everything in a bundle. Too much pure sodium chloride is unhealthy for us. But sodium chloride found with all of the other trace minerals that are dissolved […]

DEBRA: Yes!

LARRY PLESENT: And that’s the point.

And now we see a lot of nickel poisoning. As I’ve been researching the roots of Alzheimer’s disease […], everything that I see points to metal—not just aluminum, but all metals (possibly discounting iron because it’s taken up much differently).

And I talked to chemists who have said, “You know, people are paranoid about aluminum and that it might lead to Alzheimer’s disease. I’m not paranoid about aluminum.”

I say, “You’re not?”

“No.” He says, “No, when you look at its reactivity, how your body would deal with it,” he says “I’m not really paranoid about aluminum.”

He says, “You know what I’m paranoid about?”

I said, “No…”

He said, “Nickel.”

I said, “Why is that?”

He says, “Your body needs a little bit of nickel. There’s actually a requirement for it. There’s a nutritional requirement for nickel. There’s no nutritional requirement for aluminum. So your body goes, ‘Oh, nickel, yeah! I know that stuff. Good stuff.

Oh, I’ve got too much of it? Let me store some for later. Where are we going to put this stuff anyway, body?’ And there, you start to get into problems.”

We wouldn’t normally uptake as much nickel as we do these days. We don’t even know we’re getting them.

DEBRA: Well, as you were talking about taking the metals and things out of the ground and blasting them and then having them in their pure form, also, I think that there’s a reason why nature has hidden some things underground like petroleum and coal and metals and things like that. They don’t belong in these huge amounts on the surface where the plants and animals and humans can get to them.

LARRY PLESENT: Well, that’s a very interesting point. All of nature did not evolve to live on puddles of petroleum.

DEBRA: No.

LARRY PLESENT: We’re on a very, very narrow band which is only about an inch and a half deep of the soil which is where most microorganisms, most life live. It’s a narrow, little piece of our world.

DEBRA: That’s so interesting.

We need to take another break, but we’ll be right back. You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. And my guest today is Larry Plesent, founder of Vermont Soap, and author of The Reactive Body Handbook. You can go during this commercial break to ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com and click on The Reactive Body Handbook. Look for Larry wearing his hat and get your own free copy. We’ll be right back.

= COMMERCIAL BREAK =
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. And my guest today is Larry Plesent. He’s the founder of Vermont Soap and also the author of The Reactive Body Handbook, a new book that has just been released.

I think we’re the first ones to hear about it. You can go to ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com and download it for free. Just scroll down the page until you see Larry with his hat on. And right next to it, it says The Reactive Body Handbook. Click on that and you can get your free copy.

Oh, I know what I want to ask you next. Tell us how you discovered that you had a reactive body.

LARRY PLESENT: Oh, that’s a great question. How did I discover I had a reactive body? Nothing worked! I was broken.

DEBRA: It’s broken!

LARRY PLESENT: I was broken. I had the worst depression of my life. It lasted three days, Debra. It was terrible. And then, I woke up on the fourth day. I looked at myself in the mirror, and I had this big sad [frown] on my face and I said, “Alright!

Enough of that.”

DEBRA: I should tell you, all listeners, that I have talked a number of times with Larry. And I’ve met him in person. And he is always one of the most cheerful people that I’ve ever met.

LARRY PLESENT: Thank you. You have to be. It’s a choice.

DEBRA: You have to be.

LARRY PLESENT: It’s a choice.

And let me just say just to kind of side step your question just for a minute (and then we’ll get back to it). Having a reactive body means—once you recognize it, you take off the blinders, you go, “Oh, okay. I’ve got this reactive body, fine”—it means that you’re in training.

In fact, I’ve used that line. “What do you do with that big pile of kale on your plate?”

“Well, I’m in training.”

“What are you in training for?”

And I look up […], “Brother, life.”

You have to have a sense of humor. First of all, you’ve got a whole negative cascade of hormones when you’re feeling down. And you get an all positive cascade of hormones when you’re feeling up. So, the cheapest way to live a long, healthy, happy life is to practice being positive.

And by the way, what that means is—in case you’re wondering—it doesn’t mean you don’t get annoyed, you don’t get upset, you don’t get angry. It means you let it go as quick as you can.

DEBRA: You know, my grandmother, she would tell me not to frown and not to get angry. Well, you’re going to get angry.

But the point is that people who are down all the time, she said, “When you get upset, it’s poison to your body.” She actually used that word. She said, “Getting upset, getting angry, being negative is poison to your body.” And it does release, as you’ve said, negative hormones in your body that depress your body, your physical body.

LARRY PLESENT: Well, as a middle-aged man in business in America, I watch other middle-aged men around my age in business eating up their arteries with worry and stress.

DEBRA: Right!

LARRY PLESENT: Where are you going with this guy? You’ve got to live every day. Great! You’re 70 years old. You sell your business, you cash out. And you’re walking wounded the rest of your life. You’ve eaten yourself up. That’s not winning.

DEBRA: No, it isn’t. And we also know that a lot of chemical exposures actually make you feel depressed, so it’s more difficult.

LARRY PLESENT: That’s so true.

DEBRA: So, I think for myself, I decide to be happy. I think it’s very easy to just go around not being cheerful and…

LARRY PLESENT: Oh, it’s a habit.

DEBRA: Yeah.

LARRY PLESENT: It’s a habit to be cultivated. It absolutely is.

And I’ve talked to people who are generally happy people about this. I said, “So, how did you arrive at this state? Were you born this way?” And one woman said—again, her grandmother taught her. She said, “Wake up with a smile. It doesn’t cost you anything. It’s just as easy to wake up with a smile on your face as a frown.”

DEBRA: Absolutely! I totally agree.

So, tell us. How did you discover you had a reactive body?

LARRY PLESENT: Sure! Let’s see. I couldn’t use anything. I guess it was really about the soap. I could put up with only washing my hair once a week or something like that and chronic, strange scalp issues that I had and all kinds of reactions.

But it was when there was no soap left that I knew about it that I could find that I could use. And for me, that kind of pushed me over the edge in a way.

I don’t know if I’ve told you this story last year. I hope I didn’t. But I was in a country fair in Vermont. I think it was 1990 or 1991. I found some goats milk soap. I took it home. I’ve used it. And this contact dermatitis I’ve had for eight years on my arm went away after the third day. I said, “Well, there’s either something magic about goat’s milk or there’s something magic about farm soap, the process of making this kind of soap.”

And it turned out, as far as I can tell, there’s nothing magic about goat’s milk, but there’s everything special about making handmade soap (which it takes a month to make a bar).

So, I looked at that. I said, “Well, here’s a craft item.” It’s hardly available in any stores back in 1990, 1991. I couldn’t find it anywhere. I said, “Well, hey, I know! I’ll be the guy who takes this handcrafted item, perfects it and starts making millions of bars, so everybody who has sensitive skin can use it.” It’s the process of making it that’s different than making other kinds of soap. You get a very, very mild bar.

So, I said, “Well, that’s it! I’ll make soap the rest of my life. That’s great.”

So, after about eight years into it, I felt like that I’ve taken it as far as I really could for what I was doing with bars, bar soaps.

So I began formulating. My goal became (and continues to be) to replace every single item in your household with non-toxic, effective and cost-effective products that you can buy factory direct. And that’s what our mission is. We replace yucky stuff with yummy stuff.

DEBRA: Yeah! And you’re doing a really good job with it too.

LARRY PLESENT: Oh, I know! You’re the same. Thank you so much. I appreciate that.

And we have a new completely—I have to say it’s completely unscented. But soap does have a mild soapy aroma. You can’t get rid of that completely. We quadruple filter it and carbon filter it. We do all kinds of things. It still smells a little bit like soap.

So, when I say “unscented” or “scentless,” that’s what I mean.

DEBRA: Well, I think that “unscented,” the general term of “unscented” means that there’s no added scent. I think that there are some people who think that unscented means that it has no smell at all. But you really can’t get away from—

This is an interesting, ironic thing. If you make something out of natural ingredients, it’s going to have its own scent from the ingredients—its own smell. The only way to get something that smells like absolutely nothing is to process it industrially. And so you have these products that smell like nothing that are made out of petroleum and crude oil. And then, you have things that are natural that have their own smell.

LARRY PLESENT: …which is usually something nice.

DEBRA: It is usually something nice. I don’t mind something that has a smell that’s natural. I don’t mind. I mean, at this point, I’m able to use products with essential oils. I didn’t used to be able to do that.

LARRY PLESENT: Oh, yeah, that means you’re healing.

DEBRA: Yeah, yeah.

So, we’re going to take another break. You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest is Larry Plesent. He’s the founder of Vermont Soap and the author of The Reactive Body Handbook. You can go to ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com and click on The Reactive Body Handbook link, and get your own free copy of this book. It’s a good book to have. 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 Larry Plesent, founder of Vermont Soap and author of The Reactive Body Handbook which is free. You can download it instantaneously from his website. You can just go to ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com and click on The Reactive Body Handbook link to do so.

Larry, you mentioned so much information on this book. You talk about not only what is a reactive body, but the science behind the reactive body, what triggers flare-ups. And you also have a lot of suggestion on what you can do to make your body less reactive. So, let’s talk about some of those.

LARRY PLESENT: Oh, yeah. This is a handbook.

DEBRA: It really is a handbook.

LARRY PLESENT: You’re supposed to walk away with specifics.

DEBRA: Yeah, I mean this isn’t just theoretical. This is really Larry’s chronicle of his 20 years experience living this way and what has worked for him.

So, tell us some of the things that have worked for you that made your body feel better.

LARRY PLESENT: Oh, great! So I’m just going to run quickly down through the list.

DEBRA: Good!

LARRY PLESENT: First of all, maximize nutrition. No empty calories. I mean you’re in training here. There’s no room in your training diet for empty calories. You are maximizing nutrition. And that’s a systematic way of life. It’s an ongoing process of improvement.

So, if you’re just starting that journey, you can start by saying, “You know what? I’m just going to cut out dessert. That’s a really good thing. And I’m going to replace those calories with nutrition-packed calories and, along the way, taking supplements” like the good stuff that you have, Debra. And there’s a huge difference in supplements as people will find. It really makes a difference. So there, right there.

General good advice any grandmother would have given you—fresh air and sunlight. Lots of fresh, lots of sunlight.

DEBRA: I agree. I agree with everything you’ve said.

LARRY PLESENT: Of course! And water, try to get the best water you can. And anybody who has spent any time around me knows, I am vehemently, vehemently, I’m extremely against plastics in the food and water supply. There are no good plastics. People always ask me, “What’s the better plastic?” Well…

DEBRA: There are none.

LARRY PLESENT: There are none. We can give you plastics that have less phthalates. And phthalates basically are miracle growers for cancer cells. Or we can give you plastics that don’t off-gas phthalates, but they off-gas things like bisphenol-A.

DEBRA: It just destroys your endocrine system. And when your endocrine system goes, that’s it.

LARRY PLESENT: Oh, yeah, besides the fact they were estrogenifying our population which is very, very strange. It’s a very strange thing.

So, get the best water you can.

And while we’re on water, Debra, I don’t know if you’ve ever heard me say this—we’ve had a couple of conversations—that I don’t travel well?

DEBRA: No, I’ve never heard you say that.

LARRY PLESENT: Oh! I don’t travel well. Reactive bodied people do not travel well. It’s basic. You have strange foods, strange smells, strange carpet preservatives, all kinds of weird things, the air fresheners. God help us!

But I would go and I would go to conferences—I’d go down in New York City, for example—and I’d come back, I’d be sick for two weeks. I go away even for a couple of days, come back—

Now, I started coming back covered with rashes all over my torso. Quite frankly, I thought I had staph-A. I thought I had MRSA. I came back from Africa, I was sick for a month. And it turned out—one of the things wrong with me anyway—was that I’m highly reactive to chloramine.

It’s not new, but it’s new to most municipalities. A lot of municipalities are switching from chlorine or free chlorine to chloramine because it makes the water taste better.

DEBRA: Actually, I think it’s because it lasts longer. As the water goes through the pipe, it has to travel for miles to get from where it’s being delivered to your house. And so the chloramine actually lasts longer to continue to hold the disinfectant quality.

LARRY PLESENT: Yeah! It works better.

DEBRA: It’s chlorine and ammonia. It works better.

LARRY PLESENT: It also almost put me in the hospital.

DEBRA: Well, it also kills all the fish in the aquarium.

LARRY PLESENT: —and kill the fish in the aquarium. And if you brew beer with it, there’s a poisonous reaction that occurs.

You can look that up on Wikipedia.

So, I went away to—Debra, I’m at an organic farming conference eating organic , farm fresh foods, and I have a complete collapse. I had a flare-up. My immune system collapses. My whole body breaks out in a pulsating red rash.

Well, guess what? I was drinking the water and I was bathing it. And by the second day, people were saying, “Hey, Larry, you look really healthy. You look really strong. Have you been working out?” “No, I’ve been working in the woods.” “Hey, that’ great, okay” to my neighbor who came over and he said, “Look, I’m a trained EMT, and I’m making the call. I’m taking you to the emergency room.”

I said, “No, the doctors can’t help me.”

He said, “Do you need a glass of water?”

I said, “No, that’s probably what did it.”

And then, I finally came to realize that, in fact, it was the chloramine.

Mind you, I’ve been working in Monrovia, Liberia doing some volunteer work the last few years. And it turns out, they disinfect their water lines with chloramine as well which explains why I kept getting sick.

So, get the best water you can. And best of luck with it! Know what your water department is putting in your water. It may be stranger than you think.

DEBRA: That is really important. As long as you’ve bought yourself—I’ll just say that if you go to ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com, I have a little ad over in the right-hand corner that says “the water filter I use in my home.” And it really is the best water filter that I’ve found in 30 years.

I used to say to people, “Make sure that you test your water first and get the right water filter for your water.” But this filter actually removes everything.

LARRY PLESENT: My web guy bought your filter.

DEBRA: Oh, great!

LARRY PLESENT: When we work together at his home office, I drink copious amounts of water from your filter.

DEBRA: Oh, I love hearing that. Well, did you get one for yourself, Larry?

LARRY PLESENT: Well, unfortunately, at home, we have our own well. I know everything that goes in there.

DEBRA: Oh, great! Well, I’m glad you liked the water. I’m glad you liked the water. Everybody that I know, everybody that comes to my house and drinks it buys one.

LARRY PLESENT: Well, Jackson said it’s the best water filter he’s ever seen. Him and his wife, especially his wife, have reactive bodies.

DEBRA: I’m so glad to hear this. Yeah, it really is.

LARRY PLESENT: And I hope they don’t mind. I just said a name. It doesn’t indicate…

DEBRA: Yeah, they won’t know who Jackson is.

LARRY PLESENT: But this is a wonderful couple that has Lyme Disease. They are battling Lyme using the exact, same technique (and others) that I use to keep my reactive body functioning.

DEBRA: Well, you know, a long time ago when I was first struggling with this exact, same thing myself many years ago and I started studying, my logic was, “If the industrial toxic world has made me sick, there must be some other alternate universe where things would make me well.” And I started looking at all the different ways, all the things that you’re talking about—how could I remove the toxic chemicals, how could I eat healthy and get good nutrition.

And what I discovered was that if you really look to nature, if you really look at the basics of what supports life, there’s a way to be healthy that applies that is the antidote to any body condition. Anything that’s wrong with you, if you do these handful of things, you’ll get better.

LARRY PLESENT: You know, I can almost feel the audience saying, “Now, come on, Debra, what about cancer? I need to go and get radiation to cure cancer, right?”

DEBRA: No, no. Actually, what you need to do is stop causing cancer, then your body will heal. And I really have researched this. I really looked at it. And so I decided that I was just going to live this way regardless—I wasn’t going to wait to get sick. I mean, my immune system was already shot, but I rebuilt my immune system and I’m in the process of rebuilding my endocrine system. And I can tell which body systems have been affected by my body.

But the answer to everything is that you get the chemicals bond, you eat organic foods, you get nutrient-dense foods, you exercise, so that you can move things around in your body, you get good rest, you breathe clean air, you get some sunshine, and you’ll be healthy.

LARRY PLESENT: Everybody’s grandparents who came over from the old country would be very happy to hear you saying that.

DEBRA: But it really is the answer to everything.

LARRY PLESENT: Time-tried and true advice. But it’s getting harder and harder to get food that actually is nutritious or water that’s actually safe to drink and air that’s actually safe to breathe.

DEBRA: That’s right. That’s the problem. That is exactly the problem. I mean I could fill my house with your products. We could all fill our houses with your products. But then we walk outside and the air is not fit to breathe.

I was reading something (and I think it’s going in my newsletter next week) about the number one environmental problem—air pollution.

LARRY PLESENT: Well, yeah now that there’s radiation blown around.

DEBRA: Yeah, that’s right. And so not only do we need to just—I mean, we just can’t go to some Garden of Eden spot on Earth that isn’t polluted anymore. It doesn’t exist. And so what we need to be doing is we need to be doing things that get the toxic chemicals out of our body that we can’t […]

LARRY PLESENT: That’s right. You have to continuous. It’s not just you do a big cleanse. And I’m not telling people to over-cleanse over-fast or any of that stuff. But certainly, Debra, you’re exactly right. You have to get what’s in you out.

There are some really good methods for that.

DEBRA: I have to interrupt you though, Larry. I hate to do this. But in a few seconds, the music is going to come on and the show is going to be over.

LARRY PLESENT: You have to have me back on!

DEBRA: I will, I will. But I want to say thank you for being with us.

LARRY PLESENT: Well, thank you, Debra.

DEBRA: Larry’s book is The Reactive Body Handbook. You can go to ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com and download it. We’ll talk again soon!