There's Plastic Inside Your Brain Right Now

0:03Darin Olien:Welcome to Super Life with me, Darin Olien, a podcast where we explore, discover, and share solutions that promote a healthier life and a better world. Together, we'll ignite possibilities, inspire change, and build sovereignty, creating a roadmap towards a super life for you and for all. Get ready to start living your super life.

0:32Darin Olien:Before we get into today's episode, I want to acknowledge the company helping to support this conversation, Alchemist. You know, most of us spend so much energy thinking about what we put into our bodies. The food we eat, the water we drink, the air we breathe outside. But here's something that doesn't get nearly enough attention. The air inside your home. Here's a fact that floored me. conventional paints, which are petrochemical-based, are off-gassing, endocrine-disrupting chemicals for not just days, for years after they've been applied. This means the walls of your bedroom, your kids' rooms, your kitchen, they could literally be releasing toxic chemicals into the air you're breathing every single day.

1:21Darin Olien:That's why I want to talk about Alchemist. Alchemist is the world's first wellness paint. Their paints are mineral-based, VOC-free, and completely free of PFOS, those damn forever chemicals that have no business being anywhere in our environment, especially in our home. And because the formula is rooted in natural minerals, it's inherently anti-mold, anti-fungal, so there's no synthetic additives needed to perform, nature has already done the work. On top of all of that, Alchemist paint is class A fire resistant, which I love here in Southern California, because guess what? Rocks, i.e. minerals, don't burn.

2:08Darin Olien:So you're not just protecting your family's health, you're protecting your home on every level. No downside. And here's the thing that really speaks to me. Alchemist is cradle-to-cradle certified. If you're not familiar with that, it's one of the most rigorous sustainability certifications in the world. It means the product has been evaluated across its entire life cycle from the ingredients sourced to make it all the way to what happens when it is no longer needed. Nothing is an afterthought with this company. That's a standard most companies never even attempt to meet, but they do. They've rethought the entire formula from the ground up so you don't have to choose between a beautiful home and a safe one.

2:53Darin Olien:We put so much thought into the products that touch our bodies or go into our bodies. It just makes sense to extend the same standard to the surfaces that literally surround us. If you're repainting a room or now inspired to do so, building something new, or just ready to make a healthier swap, check out Alchemist. Go to A-L-K-E-M-I-S dot com. Use the code Darren10, D-A-R-I-N-10. A brand new study found microplastics in 100 % of healthy human brains tested. That has doubled over the last eight years. And the U.S. government just launched a$144 million program to figure out how to get them out.

3:44Today, we go deep on what they found, what it means for you, and what you can actually do right now. This week, picture a plastic spoon, the kind you grab at a takeout counter and toss it in the trash without thinking. So many of those. That spoon weighs about 5 grams. Now imagine 7 grams of plastic, more than that spoon, sitting inside your skull right now, not floating in some industrial wasteland, not in the ocean, inside your actual brain. That's not hypothetical. That's the median finding of a study just published in Nature Medicine. on brains collected from people who died in 2024. And the brains of people who'd been diagnosed with dementia, they had up to 10 times more.

4:44Very interesting. This study just dropped. It's not internet noise. It's peer-reviewed nature medicine led by toxicologist Dr. Matthew Campen at the University of New Mexico. The U.S. government just admitted this is a real big problem. On April 2nd, 2026, the Federal Advanced Health Research Agency launched STMP, Systemic Targeting of Microplastics, a$144 million national program to figure out how to measure microplastics in people and remove them. The CDC is acting as an independent validator. That also doesn't give me much hope because so much money is lost in those things, etc. However, eight years ago, we were talking about this as an environmental issue.

5:45Today, we're talking about this as a human body inside your body issue. And the timeline of accumulation is doubling every 10 to 15 years. plus our advances of how to test it are also advancing. By the end of this episode, you will know exactly what the science says, what it doesn't say, and the three things you can do in the next 24 hours to lower your exposure. That's the point, that I do this stuff. None of which costs more than a normal grocery run. Okay, so the study, the Campin study by Nature Medicine, February 2025. 47 cadaver brains sampled, analyzed through pyrolysis, gas, chromatography, mass spectrometer, the median concentration in the 2024 brains, 5 ,000 micrograms per plastic per gram of brain tissue.

6:49That's roughly seven grams of plastic in the average brain. That's right. That's over a spoon, a plastic spoon in the brain. A plastic spoon weighs five grams. This is alarming. Brain had 10 times more plastics than the liver or the kidney tissue. Dementia brains had 10 times more plastic than non-dementia brains, with notable disposition in the cerebral vascular walls and immune cells. Most plastic was nanometer scale, two to three times the size of a virus, small enough to cross the blood-brain barrier. That's the issue. The accumulation curve, so these nanoparticulates load in the brain tissue has increased 50 % in the past eight years.

7:54Doubling time appears to be 10 to 15 years. This is happening inside our generation, not over centuries. The update, the new 2026 research found microplastics in 100 % of healthy brain samples and 99.4 % of diseased brain samples. This kills the maybe only sick people have them argument. Healthy brains have them too. The question now is dose and biological effect. This is what we need to know. the detection methods are still being standardized. That's literally what the first phase of STOMP is funding. Correlation is not causation. We don't know that yet. We don't yet know whether plastics cause dementia or accumulates more in the already damaged tissue.

8:54Some experts argue the absolute concentrations may be overstated until the measuring methods are firmly validated. But the trend is happening, and the mechanistic plausibility are no longer in serious dispute. Dementia association in the Campbell data is 10 times higher of a plastic load. The particulates concentration in the cerebral vascular walls. This is the blood vessels in the brain and in the immune cells. The mechanism plausibility. So chronic low-grade neuroinflammation is already one of the leading hypotheses for cognitive decline. Plastics aren't inert. They're not just merely ride-alongs.

9:50They appear to be driving inflammation in the vessel walls. Microplastics carry a lot of hitchhiker problems. Phthalates, BPAs, PFAS, flame retardants, and the list goes on. They are a chemical soup. These are endocrine disruptors with well-established effects on testosterone, estrogen, estrogen balance, thyroid, and sperm quality. found in the placenta and the testes in prior studies, the next generation is without a doubt being exposed before they're even born. This is not a wellness issue. This is a structural pollution of the human body issue. The plastic industry has externalized a cost onto every single one of us, our kids, and even the unborn.

10:49We're now paying it in our brains. And this, we're only talking about the brains. It's in many other tissues. Okay, so what can you do? What can you do right now? Drink properly filtered tap water. Not bottled. Certainly not plastic bottled. Because the bottled water test found 240 ,000 plus plastic fragments per liter on average. The majority are nanoplastics that are breaking through the blood-brain barrier. The best filter to filter out microplastics is reverse osmosis. This removes 99 % of the microplastics down to 0.0001 microns. And budgets are not much of an issue. A couple hundred bucks, AquaTrue, you can get a discount.

11:50I've pushed them to give you a discount. Go to mysuperlife.com, go to AquaTrue and get yourself an RO filter. Get yourself, hell, get yourself a SuperLife glass bottle and be done with it. That's why I put these, made them super easy for people to get. So here's the other thing you can do.

12:11Darin Olien:I'd like to take a moment to mention my amazing sponsors, the company Body at Shakeology, my baby, who I helped to formulate way back in 2006. Most people think of a protein shake as a quick fix, but Shakeology, because I know, was built with a completely different intention. It's superfoods. It's nutrient density. It's a superfood nutrition shake where quality actually comes first. I know this firsthand. When you talk about the quality story, we're talking about a refusal to take shortcuts. While most of the industry uses generic blends to cut costs, every single ingredient in Shakeology literally is individually researched, vetted, and sourced from global partners all over the world who meet the strictest standards of purity and sustainability.

13:05Darin Olien:We're talking about seven layers of testing. These are not just words. This is actual. From the raw ingredients to the finished bag to ensure that what's on the label is exactly what's in your glass. There are no artificial sweeteners, no fake flavors, no compromises. It's measurable quality that evolves with science. Experience the difference for yourself. I still drink this every single day. Head to Shakeology.com and use the promo code Darren O, D-A-R-I-N-O, one body, B-O-D-I, for 15 % off your order. That's Darren, D-A-R-I-N, the letter O, the number one body, B-O-D-I, to get 15 % off. I can't wait for you to try it.

13:57Stop heating food in plastic. Stop buying food that is in plastic. Microwave in any form with plastic is no good. Orders of magnitude, more particulate release happens when you heat plastic and it is touching your food. It transfers to the food. So do not cook, use microwave with plastic. Replace plastic Tupperware over time. Do it right away. Glass, stainless steel, ceramic, all of those things. Make sure you get the ceramic and everything else without PFAS and other weird coatings on it, especially you want to use this if you're heating things. Avoid recycling. Avoid recycling of plastics, especially when it has to do with your food, especially on the bottom of the plastic code 3, 6, and 7 are pretty malleable and they will leach in.

15:05So PVC, polystyrene, all of these things are the highest phthalates in BPA loads. Ditch plastic tea bags altogether. There's very, very, very few companies that are not using plastics in their tea bag. I know this is shocking. Don't use tea bags, please. A single nylon slash PET tea bag of brewing can release 11.6 billion microplastics and 3.1 billion nanoplastics into one cup of tea. If you take one thing away from this, it is that. Ditch tea bags. Unless the company is proving it does not have plastics or any other weird chemicals in it. Use loose leaf paper only bags. Use loose leaf and stainless steel, those little trappers of loose leaf.

16:09You can do that. No problem. Coffee, avoid pods at all costs. Avoid these damn pod coffees that are in every hotel room. all of the stuff that is heating plastic under pressure, go to French press, pour over unbleached paper, stainless steel espresso, all of that stuff, you can eliminate this incredible high amount of nanoplastics in your body. Soluble and insoluble fiber, 30 to 40 grams a day helps to combined particulate matter of nanoplastics and supports the gut transition, adequate hydration, regular bowel movements, getting that out of the system, sweating, of course, saunas, get your exercise, direct microplastic elimination.

17:04Sweat is not yet proven 100%, but sweating mobilized lipophilic toxins, the toxins that surround the plastics that travel with them. You can get rid of them, the phthalates and everything else. Reduce oxidative damage from what's already there. Polyphenol plants. Eat as much color as possible. Blueberries, herbs, dark cacao, green tea, Of course, loose leaves and sprouts. Get your sulforaphane broccoli sprouts. Go to thesproutingcompany.com. Get the best sulforaphane-producing sprouts on the planet. Sprout your own, and these can help the glutathione and glycine and all of the anti-cancer enzymes, all of that stuff you can create for less than, for a few cents, really, 25 cents, whatever the number is, you can get a fresh glass-filled sulforaphane broccoli sprout-rich plants that you can have on your countertop within days.

18:23Omega-3s, omegas, flax, chia, freshly ground, these things help to dampen neuroinflammation pathways. So for 50 years, the plastic industry told us, hey, man, this is safe. Have you heard that before? And that recycling was the answer. And it was great. Recycling was always a marketing thing. Less than 9%. It's actually the number has dropped. It's probably more close to 5 % to 7%. We need to stop this plastic craziness altogether. The same play book of tobacco, leaded gasoline, forever chemicals from PFAS, all of that stuff is all a lie. Okay. So what we can do is stop using this stuff. And here's the part that should make us furious.

19:19This is the most basic of fatal conveniences, disposable cups, man, plastic wraps, single use, everything. This is where our modern world is really hitting us really hard and we can do something about it. Okay. So what you can do is if you do nothing else this week, walk to your kitchen tonight, today, open the cabinet where the tea is. And if there's plastic mesh and you can't even tell. It's probably plastic woven into the tea bags. You can rip those open and then still have your tea, but use stainless steel and use a swap and save yourself billions of microplastics a day if you're consuming the tea.

20:10So there's a lot of things you can do, like I said, with the water. If this episode has shocked you, moved you to change, that's the point. Make sure you make the change. Share this episode with others so that we can stop, we can take our sovereignty back and not have all of this exposure just happening to us. We can make a choice. Send your questions, more of us to our team at superlife.com. Also, if you want to go deeper on many of the subjects, I'm going deeper on Patreon. So you go to Patreon, go to Super Life, and jump in for only a few bucks a month. We dive in. So your body is not a landfill just to have the industry of this world dump on you.

21:01You are not powerless. And the smallest, most boring decisions You can alter what you drink from, what you store food in, what kind of water you take, the water that you're seeping your herbs with for tea. You can do it. Choose better. Choose well. I love you. And I'll see you next week.