How To Reduce Toxic Exposure At Home Without Going Extreme | Dr. Darshan Shah | Be Well Moments

0:00Dr. Darshan Shah:Welcome to Live Well, Be Well, a show to help high performers improve their health and well-being.

0:10Dr. Darshan Shah:You said not putting toxic things into your home or toxic things into your body. You know, most people wear deodorants, most people wear perfumes, most people wash their hair with silicons and things. You know, we wear makeup, we wash our clothes sometimes in strong chemicals. we put bleach in the home i think these like daily things like most people would struggle to think about alternatives or they think about well no i want to smell good so i don't care i'm going to wear that perfume because i love it like how can you navigate this to reduce the because i think people may not even just be aware of how much is in their home yeah it's a lot of toxins in our home and most of the toxins we get are from our home believe it or not and so you really need to look at all the products you're using, specifically your cleaning products for your clothes and for your home, and try to find non-toxic versions of those.

1:07Which is wool. Okay. So for example, like we're, we think that we're supposed to have a different spray bottle of cleaner for our glass and another one for our furniture and then another, and they need to smell really good and they need to have antibacterial in it. All of those things are very negative and you don't need a different cleaner for everything. So there are companies now that make non-toxic cleaners. For example, there's a company called Branch Basics and all they have is one cleaning product. And you just mix it in different concentrations for your windows, for your furniture, for your countertops, and you just use that.

1:44And it works great. And it still smells good. And it's still, it is non-toxic. And you don't want to kill all the bacteria in your home because when you kill all the bacteria, you're still going to have some bacteria behind. Those are going to be the strongest bacteria and those are going to replicate into now you have strong bacteria that you cannot kill throughout your entire house. And so you have to have that balance. So instead of killing all the bacteria, you just want to like wipe it off and get rid of it and get it out of your house, not kill it all, okay? And so it's really not about antibiotics antibiotics or antibacterial cleaning products, stay away from those and try to find non-toxic versions.

2:26And there's different, you know, all over the world now people are making non-toxic cleaning products because we realized finally that our cleaners are really causing a lot of health problems. And the other big thing I would say is a lot of people have in their home anti-pest products, right? Like sprays for ants and cockroaches and all these things. And those are very flies very toxic right and there are non-toxic products for those too believe it or

2:54Dr. Darshan Shah:not peppermint repels a lot of bugs really yeah i'm the worst i'm always like yeah i don't want that fly yeah you're spraying this chemical into the air then you're breathing it and it's not good for you yeah right yeah that's actually that's just made me see i'm see even i'm not aware of this this is the thing i took once all the time and then i'm like oh yeah i was spraying that all over myself the other day. Oh, yeah. That's a problem. It's a problem. Yeah. And so I think once you realize you can start doing the research, you can figure this out. And it's not that hard, actually. I would say the other big hidden danger that we have, and this, I think, is going to become a major, major problem in the next decade, so you should know now, is microplastics.

3:38Dr. Darshan Shah:Oh, yeah. We did a big episode on this. You did. Great. Yeah. People need to listen to that episode. They do. Yeah. It's scary because I didn't want it to be a fear-mongering episode. No. That was the thing. And there was a lot of things. I mean, a lot of it was from kitchens, you know, like your chopping boards and making sure you air your home correctly. Like all of their quite actually simple solutions. Simple solutions, right. But it's just the awareness. But I think the worry about it is people can switch off because it sounds so scary or like there's no hope. And we're surrounded by so much of it that it's like, well, what can we do?

4:09Dr. Darshan Shah:But there's actually a lot that we can do. There's a lot you can do. It's a Pareto principle. There's 20 % of the actions that will detoxify 80 % of your life. So there isn't an unlimited list. There's probably like 30 or 40 things that you need to do. You don't need to do them all today. But if you do them like maybe one a week for the year, then in one year you will completely detoxify your life better than 85, 90 % of people out there. And your body can do the rest. You know, your body is made. It's an incredible machine. You have this liver, the most complicated organ that exists in us. Why do I say that?

4:44Because every organ in your body, except for your brain and your liver, we have a medical replacement for, but we don't have it for your brain or your liver. Okay? And so your liver is so complex because it can find toxins, it can get rid of them in your bile and your stool, and the rest of it you can get rid of in your sweat, by hydrating yourself well and going to the bathroom. You can get rid of toxins, but not when you're overwhelmed with toxins. You just can't catch up.

5:12Dr. Darshan Shah:Thanks so much for listening. To hear the full episode, there's a link in the description.