The amount of toxins / poisons / chemical assaults in our world these days is unprecedented. It is coming at us from every single angle, from:
The water we drink
The food we eat
The food that is being to fed to the animals we eat
The stuff in the water that the animals we eat drink
The non-food things in our food
The air we breathe
The products we use for beauty
The sunscreens we slather ourselves with
The products we use to clean our house
The chemical byproducts from the plastic containers we store our food / drinks in
The air fresheners in the Uber ride
The ingredients in the injections given to us from birth
The chemicals in the medications we take
The chemicals in the synthetic vitamins we take
The recycled air on the airplanes we fly on
The chlorine imbedded in our babies diapers
The flame retardants on our furniture and clothing
The polyester (plastic) fibers in our clothing
The pesticides sprayed on the grass in the park
The exhaust coming off cars when we drive down the freeway
The non-native electromagnetic frequencies (nn-EMFs) we are exposed to all day every day
The list is endless and exhausting. And it can get overwhelming real fast!
We have to figure out a way to be aware of the toxins and poisons in our environment WITHOUT letting this fact paralyze us with fear. Nothing good happens when we live in a place of fear. And believe me we do not need MORE stress in our lives if we want to heal our hormones, improve our fertility, and create vibrant health in the long run.
We need to be educated on these matters so that we can then become empowered to make the best choices for ourselves and our bodies and our hormones and our families – WITHOUT becoming a slave to the fear and the angst and the worry that our environments are filled with toxins.
I admit -- I used to let this stress me out big time. I would look at a bottle of water and think only of the BPA that probably leached into the water. I would see a bottle of Lubriderm in someone's bathroom and think wow chemical shitstorm no thank you. I obsessed over the fact that like 80% of the clothes in my wardrobe are laced with polyester and other toxic fabrics.
This is no way to live, y'all! I was so sick of obsessing over ever little thing, over ever little toxin, over ever little ingredient that may or may not make its way into my body and overburden my liver and clog my drainage pathways and definitely harm my future baby b/c my baby is becoming what I'm eating and consuming and slathering on my body and OMG MAKE IT STOP.
If this is you, I invite you to pause. Take a deep breath. Okay now let it out slowly. And just let those toxic (hahaha) stressful thoughts leave your mind for a moment.
This is no way to live. We can be in the know of where toxins hide, where they lurk in our environment, know how to avoid them and mitigate their effects on our bodies, AND NOT LOSE OUR MINDS in the process.
I feel like I'm reiterating this for myself more than anyone haha. It's really okay to use the Lubriderm every now and then. Or drink out of the plastic water bottle when that's all that is available. Or use the toxic mascara because that's the one that makes your lashes look bomb.
ITS OKAY.
I believe that being a smart consumer is the first place to start. Knowledge is power, after all!
Navigating Our Toxic World
MEAT
We know that we should not be eating meat from animals who are injected with a bunch of v a c c i n e s and fed GMO corn and soy. We can avoid these things by buying our meat from a local farmer who does not employ these practices with his animals. This may require some research, some conversations with farmers at your local farmers market, and perhaps some time and planning if you choose a monthly subscription service if you can’t find anything locally. The extra effort is so worth it, I promise!
PRODUCE
We know that pesticides are well … poison, so we should do our best to eat produce that has not been sprayed with the poison. A general rule of thumb is this: if you’re eating a piece of fruit or a veggie that includes the skin (think: strawberries, blueberries, raspberries, cucumbers, etc) – do your best to make sure these are organic. If you’re eating an avocado, a banana, a mango, etc where you’re likely going to be removing the skin prior to eating it, it’s probably okay if these are conventional. I recommend referring to the Environmental Working Group’s Dirty Dozen and Clean Fifteen lists for the most and least pesticide laden crops.
WATER
By now I’m sure many of us know that tap water is not good to drink. Water is foundational to our health! And if we are drinking 8 cups a day, AND cooking with, AND watering our plants with, AND watering our animals with water that is laced with fluoride, chlorine, aluminum, bromide, hexavalent chromium (yeah that cancer-causing contaminant from the movie Erin Brokovich?? Yeah that’s still in our water supply here in California … ) haloacetic acids, trihalomethanes, strontium, pharmaceutical byproducts, etc, etc etc – well you can imagine that this is highly detrimental to our health. I recommend checking out your area’s municipal water supply to see what toxins are allowed in your drinking water and what limits your local government allows. Simply type in your zip code and it'll generate all of this information for you. All this to be said, we need to be filtering our water. There are lots of good options out there to choose from, and I recommend doing some research into what is going to be best for your family and your budget. Water is foundational, and we need to be filtering out these known carcinogenic poisons.
HOME ENVIRONMENT
I swapped my conventional cleaning products years ago for non-toxic things such as white vinegar, baking soda, clays, and citrus fruits like lemons, limes and oranges to include in my cleaning. It felt like an easy place to start. I understand this is not the most convenient thing for many families, but it was something I was willing to try and it’s worked out nicely for us. Now this is not to say that I don’t ever pull out the Dawn dish soap for a tough-to-scrub pot or pan, or a good deep cleaning on my stove top; I just use them sparingly and only when I really need them. We also have not had Glade plugins or Febreze or anything like that in the house for years. Fragrances are very toxic, partly because the manufacturers do not have to disclose what they use to create their proprietary scents, therefore they can include pretty much anything they want because of loopholes in the law. We opt for simmer pots and non-toxic candles for scent in our home.
BEAUTY PRODUCTS
Check out this post I wrote on chemicals in our makeup. It’s pretty sobering to see just how many chemicals are lurking in our beauty care products, the things we lather our bodies with every day of our natural lives pretty much. The average woman puts 208 chemicals on her body throughout the course of a day. This is INSANE!! And when you understand that many of these chemicals are known endocrine disruptors that wreak havoc on our delicate hormonal systems, it becomes pretty apparent that we need to avoid them. Hormonal harmony is hard to achieve when we are slathering ourselves with chemicals and fragrances that are known to disrupt the hormonal cascade. I opt for cleaner beauty products like Araza Beauty, Beautycounter, natural hair care options from SubLuna Botanicals, Kossma Beauty, The Golden Secrets, and good old fashioned organic coconut oil for my body. All this to be said, I do still love number 91 lip matte from Sephora for a night out. It's all about balance, babe!!
P H A R M A C E U T I C A L S & SYNTHETIC VITAMINS
It’s an inconvenient truth that pharmaceutical products, including regularly prescribed medications and va c c i n e s, contain ingredients that are known to be harmful to the human body. Some ingredients are documented carcinogens (cancer-causing). While there comes a time and a place to weigh the risk and benefit to taking these products, we do need to be aware of these chemicals’ presence in the products we consume. When we are aware, we can make truly informed decisions about our health. This applies to synthetic vitamins as well. Many are derived from coal-tar and petroleum. This is why its important to consume whole food and herbal based supplements from a trusted practitioner. If you’re having a daily Centrum Silver from Costco or Amazon, you’re likely getting a mass-produced toxic product from some other country with zero quality control that’s been processed through coal tar.
EMFs
This is a big one in this day and age because of the roll out of 5G, our endless connection to our smart phones, Wifi, smart TVs, smart houses, etc. Everything is smart these days! Can’t we just have some unintelligent things?? Remember our razor flip phones and t9 texting and AIM?? Man I wish we could go back to those days sometimes! We need to protect ourselves from the onslaught of these EMFs because they are highly damaging to our cells and we are literally inundated at every which way in life. This may mean things like turning your Wifi off at night, turning your phone on airplane mode when it’s not in use, using wired headphones instead of those ear buds which have super high EMF emissions, eliminating Wifi all together and opting for an ethernet cable, using a Blushield in your home, using shungite pyramids near your work space if you’re on the computer all day, using a Defender Shield when you know you’re going to be using your laptop, not wearing your phone on your body, etc. EMF toxins are harder because we can’t see or feel this radiation, though some sensitive individuals can feel it.
Ways to Mitigate Your Toxic Burden
Pooping daily
Lymphatic Drainage (rebounding, bouncing, walking, dry brushing)
Raw carrot salads
Castor oil packs for liver support
Detoxifying herbs like milk thistle, hawthorn, garlic, burdock, nettles
Colonics
Binders like shilajit / fulvic acid
EMF protection devices
Now that we know the big areas to look out for, I want to reiterate that its so important not to let this knowledge of poisons everyyyywhereeeee in our environment stress you out to the point of feeling paralyzed.
The sad reality is that our environment is toxic. No, we shouldn’t have to pay more for an apple not to have poison sprayed on it. But here we are. It’s beyond annoying, it’s actually criminal if you ask me. But this is our reality.
Instead of getting hung up in the minutia of toxins being in every corner of our environment, do what you can to reduce your exposure and support your body’s ability to detoxify wherever possible.
Tell me below – what are some ways that you’re lowering your toxic burden?
Yours In Abundant Love and Health
Xoxo,
Emily 😊
