Dave: You are listening to the Human Upgrade with Dave Asprey
ai. I have a confession to make. I know a lot about medicine and biology. What the hell is rheumatism?
Aly: Rheumatism? Rheumatism? Oh gosh. Great question. So rheumatologists, we're all still trying to figure out what exactly, uh, rheumatism and rheumatologists do, but it's basically the joints. I mean, ruma, ruma, the flowing of, um, you know, humors through the body hitting the joints.
And that's originally how rheumatology and rheumatism came about. Greek word. Um, but yeah, so that's primarily the illnesses that affect the joints. It is since that time, back, back, back in the early medicine days, um, it has expanded to infection. To crystal diseases. So there's just a lot of other things besides just arthritis.
Dave: I think you need a rebranding because 95% of people who are medical professionals don't actually know what a rheumatologist does
Aly: they do when they're sick.
Dave: That's a fair point. Uh, and I actually do know, because I've had arthritis in my knee since I was 14. I remember walking outta the doctor's office going, I, I have the diseases of an old person and I'm a teenager and what do I do with this?
And, uh, I say, since I don't have it anymore 'cause I fixed them. But it's, it's such a problem and it feels like there's an autoimmune condition. Certainly for me that was going on. Are toxins causing people to get joint problems earlier in life? I.
Aly: Yes. Um, what we're now seeing, and I say we, but we see, I say we in terms of the studies, the epidemiology around the world, but I say we, in terms of my 22 years of practicing actual clinical medicine, you know, there is just such an uptick in epidemic, really rise in the number of autoimmune diseases around the world.
I mean, in the United States alone, between seven and 14% of the US population has an autoimmune disease.
Dave: And is it that low?
Aly: Um, well, 330 million. You do the math, it's about 50 million.
Dave: Hashimoto seems like it would be. Yeah. More than that.
Aly: Yeah. No, listen, this is something, it's not because we're better doctors and diagnosing, it's because this is happening and it's happening because we are really surrounded in everything we do with a lot of chemicals that are not regulated, not tested, and the ones that are, are found to be problematic, especially for the immune system.
Dave: Just recently. Uh, Bobby Kennedy was online and he said, look, I have my suspicions and my thoughts, but I don't know what's causing all this. And we're gonna get to the bottom of that. Don't we already know?
Aly: You know, listen, the, I'm pissed because I was in medical school for years, um, and training for years, and by the time 15 years ago, I guess that's about right, by the time my dog became ill, and that's how I got into environmental health, he became ill.
And I realized that he was younger and shouldn't have had an autoimmune disease as a dog that Brandt, that breed, that's 15 years ago. And my eyes just completely opened up from that experience. And I think that's what it takes some individually. But what was so jarring to me was that I looked around and said, how did I not know this in med school?
How was I not trained to understand how environment plays a role in human health, whatever it may be. Um. And I think it goes to this idea that, you know, you don't know until it hits your heart. It doesn't, you know, until it affects you, right? People wander around with all the greatest stuff in the world, cosmetics and cleaning products.
But when it affects your heart, when it really gets to you, then you start to explore what's been missing in my training, what's been missing in my understanding. And uh, so yeah, the answer is that we are now unfortunately learning more about environmental health, um, because we're all really either getting sick or having people around us that we love that are sick.
And I point to endocrine disruption and immune disruption. Um, but I focus really even with the new book on immune disruption, which I think people haven't paid less attention to.
Dave: It feels like everyone who's heard the show knows microplastics and synthetic fragrances. They screw up your hormones, right?
We have this huge drop in testosterone. What else are microplastics and fragrances doing to us that we don't talk about enough?
Aly: So I've looked at the chemicals that are even in microplastics. Mm-hmm. Um, and there's a variety of them. Phalates and bisphenols and brominated, flame retardants attached to plastics.
They're used for a variety of reasons and they have lots of things, you know, kind of infused into plastics, which become microplastics that get into our bodies. And of course what you mentioned, all the chemicals that we now know are in our everyday products and because of their ability to affect the immune system.
I've coined the phrase immune disrupting chemicals. 'cause I've already written two books on endocrine disruption. Right. We have. You know, thousands and thousands of international studies supporting the work on endocrine disruption, um, and how hormones can affect, um, a variety physiology and risk for cancers and immune disorders.
But what people haven't seen also is the framing of the immune system around these issues. And we know that, um, for instance, every immune system cell in the human body has hormone receptors including estrogen, testosterone. We know that the brain and the endocrine and the immune system, the neuroendocrine systems all crosstalk and, and they communicate.
And we know that when there's disruption in the endocrine system, there's often disrupt disruption in the immune system because of that connectivity. And so now you can actually start to see science that's supporting the fact that many of these chemicals directly affect the immune system in a variety of ways.
It's not just through signaling, but it's also on the gut microbiome. It's also affects directly from say, benzene and lead and heavy metals directly to cytotoxicity and killing off cells directly. So there's lots of, um, you know, molecular mimicry. There's lots of mechanisms that have been identified, but I think people most wanna hear how they themselves will be affected in a positive way by making changes.
Dave: Okay, so all the chemicals, all the plastics, all the stuff, especially in the us. We've got endocrine stuff, so we're lacking testosterone. Our immune systems are going crazy, all of which is pretty much described a lot in my life. Are we all just fucked?
Aly: Well, um, I say that to my two teenage boys when they run onto the artificial, uh, lacrosse field, but, um, I say it in my head so that I don't ruin their games.
But, you know, here's the thing. Um, we created this pickle.
Mm-hmm.
It's really our job, not just as a society, which I would hope and regulatory, which I won't wait for. Okay. That's the point of all my work is let's not wait for Goodell, let's actually do it ourselves. Um, I believe I've seen in the literature, I've seen in the science, I've shared it in my new book about this topic, that when we change behaviors, we change the destiny of our health.
Okay? We change the destiny of our health. And in the case of what I'm trying to share with people, it's the immune system and the immune immune health, which is tied to cancers as well, and a variety of other issues. So the ideas that we have to take this upon ourselves, the. Literally the changes in, in some of our food quality, in filtering our drinking water, in choosing better products that we put in on and around our bodies actually change the levels of these chemicals in our body, in our breast milk and our urine and our blood.
And that changes the risk dynamic for developing of a variety of chemicals, uh, uh, diseases and illnesses that that come from these exposures. Is there a cause and effect directly? No. In humans, we can't see that entirely because we have so many confounders. But we see this in animal studies. We see this in occupational and epidemiologic studies.
So we have enough to say, we gotta do this ourselves. We have to do it for our bodies and our families and future generations really.
Dave: I know a few people who seem like they're genetically gifted. They can just swim in toxins, they can drink all they want and like, I don't know. I'm thin, I'm happy. My joints don't hurt.
I sleep all night. I'm like, what is up with these people? Are they just genetically better off than the rest of us?
Aly: That is really funny. The first thing that came to mind when you said that is I live in a farming town in, in Central New Jersey. We are, we boast the number one Superfund sites, uh, in the country in my state.
So that's exciting. I think California. Number two, and Pennsylvania is number three. Um, but we live, uh, on, in, in the midst of 200 farm makers. Um, you know, and they are spraying or have been spraying in this farming town for decades. Yeah. Glyphosate and their potato farmers. A variety of things. And it's very interesting, when I was lobbying my, my farmer that has land up, up to our house, um, to swap out his chemicals to discuss the issue, um, I'd bring over organic beer and have a beer with these farmers, and they're in their like seventies and eighties, right.
And they would say to me, well, you know, look, I'm 80, I'm 90, I'm 70. And I said, yeah, but you've had four wives that have passed away from breast cancer, from thyroid disease, you know, uh, cancer. It's, it's remarkable how. What we really now know is that it's kind of a dance who gets ill is a dance between three things.
It's our environmental exposures, it's our lifestyle, and it's our genetics. And what we can control is our lifestyle and our environmental chemicals.
Dave: You're totally right. It feels like there's one more variable.
Aly: Uh oh.
Dave: How healthy was your mom and your grandmother? So it it's a multi-generational, epigenetic thing as sort of like the old, uh, indigenous.
I have no idea what the right term is these days. My, I grew up in New Mexico. Uh, so whatever tribe you're from, you, you would say, what does it do for seven generations? Right? Anything that you're doing to the environment or to yourself and seven's a lot. That's probably the right number, but it's at least three.
Right. So you could have adequate genes and your mom grew up super healthy and your dad too. And then that means that you will have one lifetime of resilience. But if you trash yourself, your kids are trashed and then their kids are trashed, and it takes a while to dig out of it. And the whole arc of my work is like, all right, I wanna make sure that I reverse all that stuff in my kids, right?
So I did everything possible, uh, before and during pregnancy and childhood to give them sort of, to climb them out of the clear health thing that I have. So are we creating this class of. Say healthier people, because when people take action from what they learn on the show and reading your book and all of the things, all of a sudden they're starting to go up, even though the vast majority of people are going down.
Do you ever think about the, the, the multi lifetime effects of each work? I
Aly: do, and I think if you have kids, I think you're, you're particularly attuned to this issue. I'm not saying that everyone who doesn't have kids doesn't think about this, but, you know, I'm a, I'm kind of rooted in anthropology and evolution in my training and, um, you know, first of all I will mention that it's, it's really not just mom and grandmom, it's it's dad and grandfather and all of both the male contributions and, and female.
What we think of though, as what you're alluding to also is sort of this vulnerable period, um, of evolution of development, even. Where, you know, many of these harmful to toxins and chemicals that I describe, um, you know, have their, uh, perhaps have their greatest effect, which is the genetic effects, epigenetic effects, really.
And it just argues for the fact that not only do we have to be healthier pre-pregnancy in order to get our bodies maybe ready if we're able to do that. 'cause of course not everyone can predict when they're gonna be pregnant. But then that whole pregnancy period absolutely is something we're discovering.
The placenta actually does not prevent chemicals from crossing over into a growing fetus, um, which includes the body and also the brain of a fetus. And because we don't have those protections that we now see in testing, I mean, you can test the placenta. Even for microplastics, the idea is that we wanna get on board with education.
And that's really why I teach high school and try to teach other doctors about this topic, which they should be getting in med school, but don't. Mm-hmm.
Um.
I think we need to just really educate the next generations of how do we keep our bodies not just, um, thriving, I should say living, but thriving as well.
And it goes to not only the chemicals, but also the nutritional levels, which I know you talk a lot about. Be ha. It's a twofold approach to human health. It's taking away the bad guys. And it's adding in the good stuff. And I call that human fertilizer. So, you know, yes, we have a, a real generational concern here.
Um, but I will tell you as a rheumatologist, having practiced 22 years now that I see more cases of de novo new onset, new incidents of autoimmune diseases, uh, with no family history in their family and also at younger ages than would be expected if you would expect it at all. Um, and I think that really pushed me towards the urgency of this work and trying to get this out there and teaching other people about it because we don't really have the time to drag our feet, to be honest with you.
Dave: Why do you think that known toxic chemicals are legal in. Personal care products and on our crops.
Aly: Well, it all started back in the 1950s post World War ii. We had a real love of new compounds, new industrial chemicals, solvents. Look, we wanted aircraft to fly lighter. So we made, um, um, plexiglass. We wanted, uh, you know, noga hide and rayon and, uh, you know, any number of materials and plastics included that would make our life convenient and perhaps even to reduce the, you know, the use of resources that we were utilizing at the time in terms of stain, you know, steel and.
And wood and those kind of things. But what happened was we, uh, you know, really gave the fox the rule of the henhouse and never really thought ahead, not just to what these chemicals could do to humans, um, but what they could do to the environment which cycles back into the human body. And I talk about that with my, my conversation on water a lot.
But the idea is that, you know, we, we really let the genie out of the bottle and, um, we now have a almost, you know, it's a, gosh, it's estimated around 95,000 chemicals as sort of a going number. And we have about 15, um, hundred new compounds at least every year that get co, you know, um, patented. And, um, you know, it's, it's really kind of.
Too big of a, a, a scale to understand in terms of what we've allowed in without testing or regulation, um, especially testing for toxicity, safety, and even in vulnerable populations like, you know, pregnant women, children, that type of thing. But, um, I, I do think, again, this goes back to waiting for regulation to work at a snail's pace or encouraging it certainly by our dollars and what we purchase, who we vote for.
All these things matter. Um, they really do matter. But when I talk about the urgency from a human health perspective as a physician, I think we need to do this, you know, more on our own and now, and, um, you know, and be empowered to do it. It it's possible. It's, it's doable.
Dave: One of the things that's so shocking is the way, uh, the big chemical industry, they hunted nagas almost to extinction in the 1950s for all the na guide.
Aly: Oh, oh. That I'm not familiar with.
Dave: Naga hide. It's fake.
Aly: Oh,
Dave: do that. Get it. It was, it was a, it was a dad joke. I got you.
Aly: Yes, you got me. I'm like, what? Okay. That's right. I need a drink before this.
Dave: It, it's funny though, because they're kind of marketing it that way. And when you came into my house, which is where the studio his, here in Austin, all the carpets are wool because it biodegrades, um, the blankets you see on the couch, they're sheepskin.
Well, I was a sheep farmer. They biodegrade. I actually have an antique fox blanket, uh, that I found and that will not accumulate in fish that I eat a hundred years from now and I'm alive. So I'm doing my best in my home to have less toxic stuff. But the lights were under. I have all sorts of synthetic crap that make microplastics in the air.
Right. I don't have fleece, but oh my gosh. I'm pretty sure there's some plastic on my shirt. Right. In fact, I know there is. It's plastic. So, so. There's no way to get away from it. I go through this process of how do I minimize, and then how do I make myself more resilient? How do people go about making themselves more resilient given that you cannot get away from toxins in the world?
Aly: Great question, and I think you're also talking about what I talk about when I talk about the four A's of environmental health navigation. Um, the four A's, and I just arbitrarily picked a, but it seemed to work out well, is really number one, we assess, you know, we wanna know what we're surrounded by, you know, in, on and around our bodies.
We wanna assess, we wanna educate ourselves as to where these chemicals are coming from, because the second a is a void, right? We wanna cut off the fountain into our body as best we can. And again, I say this as best we can because no one's perfect. I'm sitting here with colored hair. I told you about my, my boys who play lacrosse on synthetic fields.
I could go on and on. Um, the second a being avoid and swapping, I. Swaps are just as good as avoiding, you're getting rid of a bad thing, but you may find a really safer, you know, a safer, uh, counterpart. Um, the third thing is add. And that goes to the point where, again, you can take away all the chemicals in the world, anything toxic, light, pollution, noise, pollution, stress, whatever.
But you have to fortify the human body. And this goes again to anthropology. Yes. And physiology. You have to put in the nutrients that make us thrive at a cellular level. Um, and that goes to basic nutrition and it goes to clean food. USDA organic is much better choice than conventional because of all the chemicals that go in with your broccoli.
That's sort of an oxymoron, right? So, you know, I describe a whole chapter on, um, what I call nutrient insufficiency and becoming nutrient sufficient. Yeah. And it really plays in, again, at the cellular level of how do you make, um, what we've lived with for millions of years prior to this point in time, right?
We've only had these chemicals in our lives literally about a hundred years. Um, that's 95,000. So how does the body have a chance to evolve and manage these without being pissed? It's a very basic thing, but you can help the body get stronger. You can help the immune system, as I described in the book.
You can help our systems work better by managing detoxifying processes that we already have built into us for millions of years. So, mm-hmm. That's what I want people to harness, not kind of wackadoodle stuff. I'm very much. Lined up with, you know, basic sweating and exercise and stress management and, and nutritional levels and understanding the food system and, and those kind of things.
Dave: There are some people who say, I prefer to get all of my nutrients from my food. Is that a good strategy?
Aly: I think they're gonna be sadly disappointed if they ever looked under the hood, because it turns out that, you know, we're really grossly under, under, uh, nutrify. If you really wanna think. I mean, it's somewhere like 60% of Americans have low magnesium.
Um, I think it's almost 70% have low, or it depends on what you consider low vitamin D, right? Vitamin D levels. You would see doctors are saying. You know, a level 30 is fine. I would argue against that. People still
Dave: listen to those doctors. I thought that was an for, I hope so. 'cause
Aly: I'm one of those doctors.
So under 30 is
Dave: your recommendation? Well,
Aly: no, but one of the doctors that balances science and you know, there are plenty of good clinicians that are really, you know, exploring and trying to do better from what they did not learn.
Dave: That was such a good politically correct answer. Like, wow, what is the appropriate healthy level vitamin D for most people?
Is it 30 or greater?
Aly: Oh, it's greater. I know what is, it's greater. Oh yeah, no, I'm on board with you on that. Um, you know, so the normal lab core quest, all the conventional labs right, are 30 to 100, which seems an enormous, like big stretch Yeah. Of what we consider normal. But technically what we now know is that being at a higher, having a higher blood level of vitamin D three, um, really should be upwards of high normal.
So 60 to 80, 60 to 90, 70 to 90, not over, because then you get parathyroid hormone issues with calcium balance because that's part of the parathyroid thyroid gland. But, but really, d is so critical to the immune system. It's so critical, thank you to prevention of autoimmune diseases and immune disorders.
It's so critical to heart disease and, and, uh, brain development. So, you know, I think. It's a sexy one. We all like to talk about d um, and a lot of people are doing a little bit better, but it's not how much you take, I found with patients. Mm-hmm. It's what the blood levels show, and that varies with gut microbiome absorption.
And it varies with comorbidities, it varies with a lot of medications that block it. Yes. So because of that, I look at the blood levels as a sign of success, not how much I give someone
Dave: as a standard said. And you hear that practitioners listening to the show. I know there's tons of you, and by the way, I'm working on a way to get CE credits, uh, for listeners because it's time that this kind of knowledge gets out there and it's, it's not there.
And the old anti-aging paradigms and, you know, the old medicine stuff, it, the 70 to 90 level has been something I've recommended for 20 years. And some doctors freak out and you're like, like, well, I'm looking at joints, I'm looking at immunity, and this is really important. And so if you're listening, get a vitamin D test, it's 50 bucks.
Um, I found out by doing this that I need to take about 15,000 IUs a day for my biology to get my levels up.
Aly: Yeah. I'm at seven.
Dave: Yeah.
Aly: I mean, and, and I eat really pretty well. I mean, like, again, it's this, and I will tell you, I've gotten into a pickle where I thought I did everything right and I got it wrong.
Iron. I was iron deficient because I ate such a narrow diet without red meat. Um, I know you'll love that one. Um, and no spinach, but I really had such a narrow diet.
Dave: I recommend spinach, silk. No,
Aly: no, no, no. I'm okay with spinach as long as it's USDA organic. I just like it really.
Dave: You just like oxalates that suck minerals from your bones.
Well, you know, one of those people, the
Aly: volume of, of. Spinach would be enormous to in my, in my world. But, you know, listen, everything is about balance. Everything is about moderation. Mercury
Dave: is about moderation and balance. Oh,
Aly: please. Come on now. I, I could go off Yeah. And see, I told you I need a drink. I told you I need a drink.
I'm just messing with, but I know you are. But you know, the idea is, look, I, I found out and I actually created a CME about this, you know, 'cause I teach University of California. Yeah. And some of these, um, doctor programs that, um, you know, that even it was very humbling. Even doctors who think they get it right, who feel very, very well educated.
And I, I like to think I am. But you know, I learned very quickly that my iron had been dropping over six years. Oh wow. And I never trended it. There's not even a tab on, uh, my lab, uh, service to do that. And long story short, my hair started coming out. Oh, wow. And once you know it, there's an association. And so when I hear about, you know, menopause, which I'm sort of jumping into with gusto.
Yep.
Um, and, you know, um, you think about stress, certainly I lead a busy life is a lot of people do. But one of the things I really never associated with hair loss was iron deficiency. Right. And then I drink tea all day
Dave: full of oxil just like that, spinach.
Aly: And guess what happens? The tannins block iron absorption.
Dave: Interesting. So
Aly: I had a really nice trifecta, um, and I learned from it and I fixed it. But I mean, I again, when it hits you here
Dave: mm-hmm.
Aly: Or it hits your trusses, your hair and you gotta do podcasts, you better start figuring it out
Dave: for your life. And you're a very well educated and you teach doctors. Yeah.
Right. And it took you a while to unpack this. How would a listener's guy, I have hair, is it cortisol? Is it estrogen? Is it DHD? Is it iron? Is it copper? How would they know?
Aly: Oh, you need an environmental health survey And assessment one. I actually have it in the book as well. And the idea is, look, it's not just one thing.
I did 14 vials of blood to figure out why my hair was falling out.
Mm-hmm.
And um, it was such a fascinating deep dive. And I think, look, does everyone need 14 vials? I think you need a smart practitioner who can narrow it down so you're not bled out. But I think because there are so many reasons why people can have as one example, hair loss as opposed to say joint swelling or, you know, rash.
You need a detective, you need detective work. And that's really what rheumatologists have been doing. But now you layer in environmental health and nutrition training and all that. Then you've got a lot more to look at in a much more educated way, I think.
Dave: What are the three most likely things people are using that would be contributing to their hair loss?
Aly: Contributing to hair loss? Mm-hmm. Oh, well, let's see. I'm not a dermatologist, but you know, I look at autoimmune diseases when I think hair loss. I think of, you know, lupus. You know, lupus is one of the biggest, you know, um, or rising autoimmune diseases, um, around the world. This is, we're not, we're global now.
So it's not just isolated to the us. We know that, you know, lupus has, as a component of its many physical symptoms, um, is hair loss. And, you know, of course I ran a panel on that as well. Um, and, but I think also, you know, hair loss, as I mentioned could be stress. Um, there's something called telogen effluvium I learned about, which means, you know, a stressor even three months prior to hair loss.
That was fascinating. Um, you know, but it's also associated with, with, you know, um, anesthesia, it's associated with medications, it's associated with, um, again, iron deficiency. I think people don't, uh, and I'm not talking, interestingly enough, I'm not talking about an hemoglobin and hematocrit a, a typical CBC.
Mm-hmm. Um, because I even asked my dad about this, who's been practicing medicine 60 years as a nephrologist, and I said, Hey dad, you know, what would you do if someone had hair loss and had a CBC that was normal and hemoglobin hematocrit? And he was like, oh, well, all our patients are really tired. And, you know, you know, it was more of a, he didn't necessarily feel the instinct to do the ferritin and the iron deficiency.
Mm. Or the iron panel. And because of his patient population and what his norm was. But I think you have to dig deeper. And that's another component of doctors I think, that are learning all this information, is that they have an interest to dig deeper or so to speak, go to the upstream potential because I said, why am I anemic?
You know? Then you have to go higher to, you have to go. Where is that coming from? You know,
Dave: it's crazy. And there's a sense of overwhelm. Like I had an episode, uh, last year about the iron curse and too much iron will trash your body. Not enough iron will trash your body. And there's all these complex interactions between iron and copper.
And did you take vitamin C with your beef or did you not take it? 'cause that helps with iron absorption. And I know listeners are going, this is just too much. Like I don't even know if I have too much iron 'cause I don't know which lab test to get and I can't afford the lab test anyway.
Aly: Right.
Interesting.
Dave: How do we get out of this?
Aly: Uh, well you buy my book and you read about nutrition. Um, I'm not gonna lie, I even have codes in there for routine screening for cancers that every primary should be able to just order through co conventional labs and using their health insurance. I even have tests for metals and like literally drawing it into the medical Western medical world.
Yes. Please hand these codes to your doctor. These are the ICD 10 codes. They will be covered. With this coding. And if they're willing to, they may not be experts, I wouldn't expect them to, I don't hold that against them, but I would expect maybe an interest in moving further if the ab, if the labs are abnormal.
So yeah, I want people to have the tools and the, the resources. Okay. To be able to figure out more about their bodies. I,
Dave: I love your answer. It's subject like, buy my book, but it's a real answer. Your book is called Detoxify. And here's the thing. You and I, even though we have access to lab tests beyond almost anyone on the planet, to be honest, like you're a doctor, you don't even have to go around doctors to order lab tests the way I do.
I just work with a ton of them. But the idea here is you can get anything you want, but we still have to process all the data and all that stuff. So, you know, from clinical experience, I know from all the things I've done, there are best practices. If you wanted to just cut out massive problems, reduce your exposure to the worst toxins.
And that's gonna make everything better without even having to know what's going on in there. And then if you have a specific problem, you start ordering labs and you do have the toxin labs that you'd wanna look at to see what's going on in there. And that lets you allocate your dollars for lab testing effectively.
Aly: Yeah, no, this is, I'm trying to give people the playbook. I'm trying to think about, you know, their finances. I'm you, I, I didn't know where I was going with this 15 years ago, and then I figured out the playbook and I'm just trying to help people get answers. Now I will say this, you know. Labs are one thing.
Interpreting the labs are a bigger issue, right?
Mm-hmm.
Okay. So, you know, it's kind of like, who's your messenger? Right? Who do you learn from? You know, I trained with Andrew Weil. I love what he does. Right? You know, he's found
Dave: the show. He's a great guy. He,
Aly: yeah. These are people that I, you know, I really have, you know, bought the Kool-Aid.
I mean, drank the Kool-Aid. I mean, I, I just love his work and I, and a lot of other mentors. The idea is that who is going to interpret those laboratory lab tests is critically important to whether you panic and listen. I will say this is just the same for Western medicine. If I tell you how many, um, people come to see me with a positive a NA.
Dave: What's an a NA?
Aly: So, an a NA is a screening test for a lot of autoimmune diseases. It covers quite a few of them, not just in the rheumatology world, um, GI ones such as Crohn's and ulcerative colitis, ulcerative colitis, you know, um, Hashimoto's for thyroid autoimmune disease, um, even autoimmune liver disease.
The idea is that how you interpret an a NA can be the difference between someone freaking out, panicking and crying for three months until they see a rheumatologist, which by the way is the average wait time to see a conventional rheumatologist because they're getting fewer and far between separate issue, but something very concerning, at least to me.
Um, or saying, Hey, listen, one to 40 tighter, one to 80 tighter, one to even one 60 tighter. Which are the levels that goes higher and higher with no clinical issues on a good exam and a good history? You're fine lady. You're fine sir. You know, those are really important distinctions and so interpretation of labs, be it chemicals or be it western, you know, levels of western testing I think is really kind of important.
So you gotta be thoughtful about who you choose.
Dave: I recently ran a panel, uh, for environmental toxins and there's a whole bunch of 'em out there and I take in my coffee, uh, plug for danger coffee. Uh, I take some things that binds to environmental toxins. I grow, well, I did grow a lot of my own food, but I'm very selective about what I eat.
And I don't eat fake stuff and I, I do all the things most people wouldn't even think about when I travel to reduce my exposure. And I did really well. I had mildly elevated levels of glyphosate, just touching the edge of yellow and mildly elevated for atrazine, which pisses me off. That was also just touching the edge of the yellow zone and everything else was essentially zero.
Which is really hard to do. Right. But,
Aly: or maintain, let alone, yeah. Get one hit. Right. But,
Dave: but what the hell, like, like I'm still going glyphosate and atrazine and I don't think that there's anywhere on the planet unless they only live on their farm and never travel. I'm on airplanes half the time. Right.
So that's, you know, even harder. Um, what would I do if I wanted to have less glyphosate in my body? And I don't eat anything with glyphosate and I don't drink tap water.
Aly: So it just occurred to me, I think I left out the fourth a. Which is pertinent to this point. Um, so again, the four a's were assess, avoid, add for nutrition, but the fourth was allow, allow, allow, refuse to allow.
Yeah. I, yeah, I mean, listen, you can go nuts. This is why I'm saying like, you know, I've been on the ledge. I did this for 15 years and I was certainly on the ledge very early on when I was so shocked by all this. And I've come down a few notches because life is life and we travel and we have kids on lacrosse fields and we color our hair and, you know, there's a lot of, look, I'm traveling to come see you, right?
Mm-hmm. And, um, travel is really a hard process because you have so limited access to what you're normally surrounded by in your home. Um, but you have to make exceptions. That's the allow. And so the idea is when I get home, I'm gonna sauna. I'm gonna run more. I mean, I just exercised this morning to get a little bit of my travel chemicals out.
But the idea is in terms of glyphosate or any number of 95,000, we could talk about BPA and canned foods that you could cut out. Um, you know, there's a variety. Water is a big issue. As I say, when you travel, you could try to go nuts and really work hard to, to make yourself so, you know, perfection is never going to be, um, where it's at, in my opinion.
It's just not a reasonable goal and it takes away valuable energy resources from other things we can do. Low hanging, f excuse me, low hanging fruit.
Dave: That point in your book about allow might be the most important point. And the reason is that I've seen people lose their mind over perfection. And uh, for instance, on a sleep score, I've been tracking my sleep for I think 18 years now, right?
Yeah. And if every morning, oh, my sleep score wasn't as good as I wanted, oh, I'm gonna feel like crap today, I would go crazy and it can actually fire your amygdala. And then more stress actually increases autoimmunity. So bottom line is no one on Earth is gonna be free of toxins because the earth is full of them.
And we can fix that. It's gonna take us probably like 50 years if we put all of our resources, which we want 'cause of, you know, all sorts of reasons. So from that perspective, do you have enough resilience for the level of toxins that you're exposed to? And if you do, you can do this weird thing called Choose Danger, which, yes, that is the coffee company name and it's, I choose danger because who knows what I might do.
Like I know that if I go skiing that I have enough muscle that I can probably handle this even though I might hit a tree and die. Right. And I know that, okay, I'm gonna drink, you know, the water from a can with BPA and the lining 'cause it's the only water there is and I'll be just fine because I can manage it.
Yeah. And it's that kind of resilience we have to build into all of us. And step one, from what I believe is detoxify, get the toxins out because they stop all of your resilience from happening. So you reduce those as best you can. And your book is kind of the guidebook on how to do it right. And it's kind of funny, you come at this and you're like, well, I work on joints.
And you end up at the same point, well get rid of the damn toxins. Yeah. 'cause it's not just your joints, it's your brain, it's your hair, it's your skin, it's everything. Yeah. Okay.
Aly: Yeah. I mean, and so, um, you know, we were talking earlier about having kids and I have two teenagers and you have kids and, you know, one of the biggest, I think, um, gifts that I can give to them as a parent is perspective.
Mm-hmm.
And I really try to extend that to my patients who have no perspective of medical stuff. Why would they, I have no perspective on it. And my computers, if someone comes in and says they're all trash, I'd be like, okay. You know, the idea's perspective is just so critical to motivation. You know, resilience.
And when I was thinking, when you were saying the word resilience, did you mean at this physiologic level? Did you mean at the mental health level, at the, you know, the gumption level? I wasn't quite sure, but I know what you're saying. And the idea is that, you know, you have to balance perspective of the big picture problem with, with really vetted changes that we'd be high yield.
So that again, you're, you're handling the stuff that has the largest load into your body. I think of water as my number one, you know, topic that I like to bring to people's attention because I think we spend an awful lot of money and time, uh, publishing books and, and doing stories and conferences about food.
Mm-hmm.
Which of course is valuable, but people don't also see things like water. And when I think of high yield perspective type topics, I think of high load, I think water, food, I. Certainly. Mm-hmm. And then we can get into others like food packaging and other things that we may or may not control.
Dave: When I talk about resilience, I, my model in biohacking is that resilience starts inside each cell with cell membrane integrity and function.
And then it resonates up through all of your biological systems. And then it gets to emotional and then it gets even into spiritual resilience. Mm-hmm. And there are different aspects, but all of them are easier if your biology works. Right. Right. Which means let's get rid of the toxins because then the cells can do their job.
And then you're saying, look, I feel so good, I think I'll be resilient. But if you are cratered, like I was in my twenties, and your mitochondrial function isn't there, and your levels of toxins are off the charts, I had heavy metals. I had, uh, toxic mold and a bunch of other stuff going on. And so you just don't have any energy.
So you're not resilient emotionally or physically. Uh, thus antibiotics for 15 years and broken microbiome and you get like stuck in all this stuff. Um, and fortunately I was able to climb out of it. Um, but knowing what that feels like and knowing what it's like to carry an extra a hundred pounds of weight, um, I don't wish that on anyone.
And so that resilience, like, I've got this and if it's a health problem, I've got this. Mm. And then the definition of biohacking change the environment around you and inside of you. So you have control of your biology. 70% of the environment inside you is water, and a huge amount outside of you is water. I would say
Aly: 85.
Yeah, no, you're right. You, you're getting right to the point. If we don't get this right, we're made up of water. If we don't get this right, what is the point? I mean, I go to gyms where they have, or even my hotel body wash, shampoo, conditioner. I'm thinking, I just worked out and I'm gonna put this stuff back on my body at the gym or back in my hotel room.
So I bring my own stuff, you know? Oh yeah. The, the idea is that if you are just allowed to see better. You don't have to do necessarily better. You can do it in your own pace. It's a journey for everybody. 'cause it was still a journey for me. Like I'm still working through things that go into my life that I just didn't even think of.
But it's kind of like getting new glasses on.
Mm-hmm.
Right. It's like you're seeing the world in a very different way. It shouldn't panic you. It should be something that you incorporate. So it sticks. It's not a diet, it's about lifestyle changes. And so, you know, you live and learn as you go. You get one accomplishment, you do well, you feel better about it, and then you layer in another.
And really it's a timetable for every individual because everyone has different lifestyle obligations and, and, and time restraints and financial restraints. Your point is, is very well made. If you don't take away the funnel of chemicals into your body, it doesn't give the rest of your cellular, cellular processes a chance to function.
And then again, if you don't have the nutrition, chicken, or the egg, mm-hmm. You can't get rid of some of the stuff that's either getting in there or already in there. So it's just a very two-pronged approach. Take away the bad stuff, add in the fertilizer, the human fertilizer, and we can go into that. But I think we agree on a lot of the same fer fertilizer.
Dave: What do you do for drinking water when you travel to reduce toxins?
Aly: Uh, I wish I got this down better. Um, I think as I move, so, so let me just say this. I bring my stainless steel container to the airport.
Dave: Ah, but is it nickel free?
Aly: Uh, I think it is. It's actually lead free actually, from what I know from people who test them.
But yes, listen, you can't go too crazy, but it doesn't have a plastic flippy straw.
Dave: Oh, that's cool. Yeah, I don't, you know,
Aly: components that are on stainless steel make it sort of obsolete in some ways, but you know, then you have to dump the liquids before you go through security, which is
Dave: dumb, which
Aly: is dumb.
But wait,
Dave: you're a doctor, can't you say it's medical liquid?
Aly: Um, not quite. Have
Dave: you tried?
Aly: Uh, I have not tried. I've
Dave: seen some people get through with that. I've tried it. Medical
Aly: liquid. Boy, that's a, that's a pisser. I don't really know if I'd ever tried that, but it's just, you know, look, it's the water I created home with my reverse osmosis and, you know, very affordable for your audience who's listening.
You don't need a whole house filter. You can do one right underneath your kitchen sink. I shout on mountaintops about this. That's what I
do.
Um, and by the way, I don't know if you, fun fact about, um, nephrology and my dad, I'll throw this in reverse. Osmosis was the technology for dialysis patients in the seventies when it's first invented.
And it was because the pore size of this material was so small, it caught single celled organisms like bacteria and, and, and mold and yeast and um, and viruses. And it was so incredible back then. But these huge tanks, which now still exist in dialysis units, 'cause I visit them, they are now. Offered to everyone else for all of the vast number of compounds that were bigger, that got caught in the same net.
Yes.
And so I think when people understand that little bit of history, it's so compelling that we are now all able to afford a reverse. Osmos. My system was $275.
Mm-hmm. I've
won at the office, what have you. But, um, I forgot the original question, but anyway, I mean that, I just wanted to share, what do you do with
Dave: water when you travel?
Oh.
Aly: Okay,
Dave: so you like reverse osmosis? So do I. And I travel
Aly: with, I bring it to the airport, I drink it all down. And then unfortunately, um, I was really getting into this mode of looking at bottled water, which I don't want to have to do bottled water ever, but it is really kind of what we're left with in the sense that there's not a lot of glass made products.
But you can on a bottled water by the way. Um, look at the ingredients. Mm-hmm. And the ingredients will tell you how that water's cleaned. So it will say reverse osmosis or purified by distillation or municipal tap. Can you believe that? Yeah, I've seen those before. But then there's also Phillips stations that are in airports
Dave: mm-hmm.
Aly: That use carbon block technology and I've looked them up as well.
Dave: And I feel like those are a better choice now 'cause you have all the plastic bottles which are full of all sorts of things you don't want. Uh, and if you can find a Phillips station, even though it's not reverse osmosis the way it should be by law.
Uh, they, uh, at least carbon block will pull a lot of things out.
Aly: Great. Great point. And, and actually I just switched over. It saves you money because you don't have to keep buying bottled water, but, you know, a single liter of a plastic bottle contains upwards of 240,000 microplastics.
Yeah. And
another study showed that up to 90% are nanoplastics.
So we're talking about systems that are not yet ready for prime time. Most filters, even reverse osmosis, have some issues with this.
Mm-hmm.
Um, but, um, I have converted myself to doing what, what you're talking about too is just really filling up at, um, at filling stations and, and looking to see that that helps at least not the microplastic component of it.
Uh, well at least you reduce it, but I'm saying you don't have the aggressiveness of reverse osmosis.
Dave: What about when you're in hotels, what do you do?
Aly: Um, so I really try to find a local store that might have, um, glass bottled water.
Dave: Do you wanna hack for that?
Aly: Yeah.
Dave: Okay. I just made a decision about, about three years ago, like I'm spending half my life in hotels, which is not a longevity strategy and I'm doing it 'cause I think it's helping people.
Um, there's all the crap they put in the air and fabrics office and cleaning
Aly: products. When I walk in I'm like, hit by all these chemicals and I'm just like, but
Dave: yeah. And I'm actually working with a, a few different hotel companies. We're having conversations about, um, co-designing rooms that are actually not just healthy, but beyond healthy, that upgrade you.
So, you know, fingers crossed on that one. But what I do is, I, you can do this yourself, but because, well, I'm very lazy and very busy, I ask my assistant to do it. You go to Instacart and you have a case of glass bottled water delivered to your room. Now it usually is gonna cost like $25 for a case of San Pellegrino.
Okay? And glass bottles, if you were to buy one bottle of San Pellegrino from the hotel, they're gonna charge you like $18 for it, right? And I go through four or five bottles a day, 'cause I'll brew my Dan coffee in the morning using Sand Pellegrino because I don't wanna use tap water, right? So five bottles a day would be as much as I pay for some of my rooms just for the fricking water.
And I, I would go to a hotel that would deliver glass bottles cost effectively. And I think we're gonna see a shift over the next three years where more and more people don't want plastic. So hotels will respond. And we could actually go back to the way it was when I was a little kid where the Coca-Cola bottling plant would just recycle bottles.
It's not like we couldn't do it 'cause we already did it. Uh, since that hasn't happened yet, I just say I'm the annoying guest at the hotel and I always tip the guys, you know, five, 10 bucks because they brought the case of water up to your room and then I'm done. And I don't think about it anymore.
Aly: That's a great hack. I used to tell people when I post, um, because I have a platform which called the Smart Human, which, you know, I do like, you know, all my education on, on that. But
Dave: does Monsanto run the dumb human? I'm just wondering.
Aly: Well, you know, it came out of the, the insult I thought from the Dummies guides and, um, idiots guides.
I really didn't love that. So I was just epiphany. I'm gonna you too. I'm gonna name everything. Thus smart human people think I'm talking about myself, but I'm not. I'm talking about the audience. Yeah. Um,
Dave: it's such a very respectful, I always hated that, you know, the Complete Idiots Guide too. I'm like. Why would I read that?
Because I don't think I'm an idiot. There's some things I don't know. But yeah, I
Aly: don't know. I felt like it was self-deprecating and reminded me of, of, you know, childhood trauma or something. But, you know, here's the thing. Um, I used to tell when we used to go to for families, we, you know, family vacations, you know, they always spray and clean so much the room that you walk in.
And I said, you know what, I'm gonna just try calling to the hotel and just say, you know, asking the cleaning service not to use any chemicals because I have kids that are allergic and for some reason that actually appealed to people as opposed to, I'm the crazy mom who's into environmental health research.
Could you not do the chemicals? And then they throw in a couple extra just to, to annoy me. But I mean, that's smart. It's just something about children appealing to children, to, um, people about children's, um, sensitivities. Okay. That I think is, is worth exploring because it certainly motivates, um, you know, when you call ahead and you do those things, I think it can be helpful.
So it's just a little hack, but it's similar to yours. Thinking ahead. As part of your daily, where you move through life, which rooms work? Mm-hmm. Um, I have cleaning products that I buy from my cleaning service at my office for my medical office. Um, those are choices I've made. I had flooring put in that wasn't carpeting, it was ceramic.
You know, those are choices I've made. I think that, again, you layer them in, you bring them into your life, they work great. If they don't, you move on. But you constantly are kind of surveying what you put in on and around your body in a reasonable way.
Dave: Do you trust the EPA about drinking water standards?
Aly: Um, do I trust the EPA? The EPA? I think. Has its challenges, um, and has been, uh, not successful in its goal, I believe, of keeping our modern day population healthy.
Dave: Oh my gosh. Are you gonna run for office someday? That was such a non answer.
Aly: Well, you know, listen, I walk a fine line between the science and the reality.
Um, and, and sometimes the reality is the science, of course. But, you know, here's the thing. Let me give you an example. We have in our, our water system, okay? 160,000 wastewater treatment plants across the us Yeah. That serve about 85% of the US population for drinking water. Okay? The other 15% is well water.
Mm-hmm. People, right? Suburbs, you know, farms, school districts, that type of thing. Believe it or not, these 160,000 wastewater treatment plants that serve so many humans actually only followed the law of the Safe Drinking Water Act from 1974
Dave: because we knew so much back then.
Aly: You know, we knew so much the thought.
We always think we know so much. Right. You know, who are we kidding? Every, every generation thinks, but you know, the idea was that was certainly before the heavy hitter chemicals and all of the flux of chemicals started coming out. So we didn't know what we didn't know. Um, the problem is unfortunately is that that law hasn't changed in 50 years.
Wow. And we have 91 chemicals under that law. Only 91 chemicals. And we can look it up. Everyone in your audience can look them up. Only 91 chemicals are looked at for levels remediated and have to be fixed. Okay. The problem is we have 95,000 that potentially get into our water systems, plus the detergents, the fluoride, the chlorinated chemicals, the PVC piping or the lead that gets to your home.
Okay? So we only have one opportunity to clean that water on a routine basis, and that's when it hits your home, the point of use. And so, again, EPA, it can restrict, I think now we have six PFAS chemicals that are potentially, um, going to be removed and added to that 91 chemicals list. Um, but it may not move forward, and that's just way too small compared to the 15,000 PFAS chemicals that actually could get into your water as an example.
Dave: Is there any city in the US where you would drink tap water
Aly: willingly? No, because it's a federal law and that covers ev So when people tell me, and I write about this in the book, you know, I used to live in New York. I trained in New York. I, oh, the bagels are great. It's all about the water.
I think
to myself, well, I'm not sure if I would agree with that being the only value of the, uh, New York City water.
Um, I like their bagels though, but I will say that everything in this, every, every, uh, wastewater treatment plant for every state in this, in this country actually follows that law. So it's, it's, again, a non-issue when it comes to choice.
Dave: It feels like restaurants are a major source of toxin exposure.
Mm-hmm. How many restaurants use properly filtered water to wash or prepare food? I, I opened the first all grass fed, no bad oils restaurant in LA about 10 years ago. And I insisted on filtered water for everything we did with high-end expensive filters and people who bought the food. Never knew it increased my cost a lot.
I don't know that I could, you know, charge more for it, but I just wanted people to feel good when they ate it. So if you go to a restaurant, you're getting bad water in your food and it was on your food, what other chemicals are people getting from restaurant food they wouldn't get in their home?
Aly: Well, again, you know, you made me sad 'cause I wanna go out to some nice restaurants here.
And so again, this is balance between, you know, quality of life and fear. Um. Yeah, I think it's a great thing that you did that because it meant something to you Yeah. To infuse that, um, that change into the work you do. And with the restaurant, um, there's exposures everywhere. I mean, how do we not know that the chef behind, you know, in the kitchen is using a non-stick pan, you know, to they're not
Dave: supposed to, but,
Aly: right.
But I, I, you know, we've got these a, these components. You know, first of all, I think that we should be fixing our homes first. Um, we should hold ourselves accountable first, um, because we can do so much again. That's what the whole book is about. That's what I teach, you know, my students and, and online, we have so much more power than we think we do to reduce these exposures.
We really do. And so, for instance, those pans would be an issue. You know, look, laundry, I mean, uh, dish washing detergent, that's a whole uphill climb for me. And I. Tried to figure it out. Right. And it wasn't so complicated after I had the right resources, which everyone needs correct vetted resources. Um, but there's so much you can't control when you go out of your home, which is why 80 20 rule, try to make your home one of the cleanest places.
My workplace happens to be very clean 'cause I'm very conscientious. It took time to do that. But I think we need to do our, our business in our home, try to make that the example and then we can start to, you know, move into other areas of our lives.
Dave: I like to not eat takeout because of the plastic trays.
I know what's in those microplastics and endocrine disruptors and I'd rather just eat there. Uh, and. Do your best to just eat real food, but you don't really know what you're getting in any restaurant. So when I'm at home, I usually cook at home because I can get the good stuff. If you could ban three common household items or cleaners or, or other things people do, what would your top three most toxic things to remove be?
Remove
Aly: cleaning products, number one. Okay. Because not only are we marketed to in such a crazy way mm-hmm. Keeping up with the Joneses, you know, you need a door cleaner, you need a carpet cleaner, you need a surface cleaner. You need a window cleaner. You need a drain cleaner. I mean, even just hearing that list makes me feel silly.
Right? I just use
Dave: like water and a little bit of soap. Am I crazy?
Aly: Yeah, no, you're not crazy. Um, water soap, um, white vinegar, um, real lemon juice, real lemon essential oil. But make sure it's really not with alls, um, you know, sea salt for scrubbing. I mean, going back generations to people who, our grandparents who never had these chemicals.
They also in many ways live longer because they didn't have a starting point with those chemicals like so many of us do. And those chemicals, whether it's cleaning products, um, whether it's personal care products, which which can now vet pretty reasonably with lots of different apps and app and websites, you know, they end up in our homes in dust.
Dust is one of the biggest harbinger of, of chemicals. We, the great studies on this actually.
Dave: Mm-hmm.
Aly: Um, so again, stopping the flow into your home is similar to stopping it in your body.
Dave: Okay. But you can just be like, I wanna ban cleaning products and personal care products. 'cause I think that wouldn't work.
So can you be more specific cleaning products? What is the most evil cleaning product people work with? Oh, you don't have to name brands. I
Aly: think we need to be careful bleach. Um, even though we like to have bleached up toilets and all that, we have to be careful bleach because it can turn into, um, Sion and, um, components that affect the thyroid.
So we now know that, and again, that's an example of chemicals coming into your body through ex through products we love, but then also not having enough iodine in our thyroid nutritionally
Dave: Oh yeah. To
Aly: offset some of the health effects that come from very. Everyday products.
Dave: So we would replace bleach, say with peroxide.
Aly: Um, peroxide is probably reasonable in limited amounts. I don't see how that would be a problem. Um, I don't typically have that around. I remember that from med school and, you know, bloodstains. But the idea is that, you know, white vinegar, um, is it remarkable in terms of its cleaning ability? Isopropyl al alcohol, you know, talking about infection, covid, I, I ran around with, um, a spray bottle of isopropyl alcohol, sev sure.
70% alcohol with the other component. When you look at the bottom ingredients, other ingredients. Yeah, correct. And I, I really employ everybody to look at cleaning products, look at cosmetics, and look for what's called other ingredients hidden down at the bottom on the side. Because really that can hold up to 98% of the contents of that process.
99, actually,
Dave: it's funny, it all these people buying dumb sanitizer, I'm like, just get spray 70% alcohol. It does the same thing. It goes away quickly. It doesn't make your hands smell like something gross. Um, and perhaps the funniest thing I've ever seen about this, yes, I go to Burning Man. I'm guessing you don't, um, someone, why would you
Aly: guess that?
Dave: I, I I don't, you just don't
Aly: have to. Another rug if other side of me that's, that's not, you could, oh, I think you
Dave: might have a closet burner here. Uh, somebody at Burning Man put up a hand sanitizer station with a sign on top that said clearly lube and all the, the people who just reflexively smear chemicals on their hands all the time would do it and then rub their hands and they're, they're in the dust going, oh my God, what did I just do?
So that's my sense of humor, but
Aly: I like that. I like that. What,
Dave: what we can all do if you're, if, if you're concerned about things, 70% isopropyl, no fragrance. When you talk about bleach, I think bleach is incredibly useful and everyone should have a bottle of unscented bleach on hand in case you run out of clean water.
Because in an emergency you use a few drops of it to make water so it doesn't have parasites. It's safe to drink. It's like a prepper thing. Try to go online and order Clorox without fragrance in the bleach. It's very hard to find plain old, boring bleach. And they're adding these endocrine disrupting things.
And it kind of makes me sad because bleach should smell like bleach, not flowers. And I don't know why we're doing this. It, it kind of drives me nuts because I, um, I got to be friends with a. The past, uh, president and CEO of Clorox and feel, um, and you'd like what? Like, that's like a, you know, that's not a good company.
The guy was actually very environmentally minded and was working for the good guys. I would say his name was Beno. I think he might be on the border chairman now. And we had this great conversation and he's like, look, we've reduced the amount of plastic and trash bags by 30%. Like we're working on making things better.
Right. And we have, you know, we've had this whole big thing of, of chemicals and all that. And um, since that time I've noticed it seems like there's more fragrances since he was on the ahead of things. So sometimes getting our leadership more conscious about this is important. Hmm. And then you have other brands like ecos.
I've been out to the ECOS factories, I've talked to their, their lead research and development team and gone into the labs and looked at what they're doing to have no microplastics, at least in some of their things to reduce packaging waste and to not have artificial things in. I'm like, this is like, this is pretty legit.
Right. So there are some brands that are better than others. Mm-hmm. All brands will greenwash. You can't trust any of them until you really go deep on it or you find people you trust who will do the going deep for you. Are there any brands, like major brands that are more likely to be clean than others that you've found?
Aly: Well, I, you know that I do a lot of academic work, so I never talk about brands or endorsed products or companies, not That's
Dave: for an endorsement. If you went to Whole Foods or, yeah,
Aly: no, I just, I have to say it, it's Jewish Guild. I have to say that because you're not
Dave: getting paid by anyone.
Aly: Yeah, yeah, exactly.
And that makes my work and what I do legitimate, in my opinion. Um, you know, but look, there are problems within even individual brands. Um, you know, Burt's Bees, for example, maybe 10 years ago, very, by the way, very, you know, reasonable brand, but. Owned by Clorox, but, but they had, um, they had a couple lip balms that had coloring in them that gave them a ding and made their, their, um, you know, there was some Mercury found like 10 years ago.
The idea is that every company, even within the brand, can have a potential problem. For instance, you know, Axe Body Spray, when I teach high school students, I bring in bags of. Stuff from the local big box store. And look, you'd be surprised, even like the, the brown nail polish is actually a one on EW G's skin deep database.
Mm-hmm. But you know, the clear is probably 10. You know, it's very interesting to let these kids work through these products on their own, look them up and look at alternatives and even X body spray, depending on which scent had a different rating.
Mm-hmm.
Um, because of the phthalates, which we know extend the length of, um, you know, the, the scent longer and make it have a longer shelf life, but are associated with a whole host of immune disrupting.
Mm-hmm. Uh, chemical issues and endocrine disrupting. Um, but, you know, looking for things without fragrance would be a very good start to anything. You know, because we know with the word fragrance, we know there can be upwards of 300, whatever number of chemicals, typically phthalates that are in the word, uh, perfume or fragrance on anything, whether it's laundry detergent, whether it's cosmetics.
So the idea is if you take that away, you're taking the risk of of, of lots of untested or even tested that are problematic chemicals outside, you know, out of your body. Mm-hmm. You know, from being put in. So, you know, I think the less is more, keep it simple, stupid, less is more approached. I talk like this all the time because I feel like we are so oversold, um, with antimicrobials and the triose, sand families and Microban and bi, you know, we're so oversold on the cleanliness issue again, marketing, brilliant marketing, that we have to step back and get a little dirtier and have a little bit more, um, exposures so that our immune system gets a little hardier.
I'm not saying. To salmonella and e coli and any number of, you know, measles, what have you. But I'm talking about in general, for people who, otherwise not immunocompromised, we should really be thinking about, um, the less products, the less chemicals, because we know too, too little and too much about them.
At this point. When
Dave: I asked you that question, I started thinking like, what would I ban? I would ban all air fresheners because they have no health benefits whatsoever. They usually hide something like a, a musty, moldy smell or something you didn't want anyway. Or a sink
Aly: full of dishes. Like, I don't even understand the marketing on that actually.
Dave: Yeah.
Aly: They're like, no, you could dance around a sink full of dirty dishes, but we're gonna spray the air. Um, why don't you just clean the dirty dishes?
Dave: And, and it's like the plugins like, oh, look, I'm con I'm, I'm just suppressing my testosterone all the time. Thank you. And then you have the things that the Uber drivers, and if you drive an Uber and you're listening to the show and you have a green little pine tree hanging up, your balls are shrinking.
If you have balls like it, it's that big of a deal. And if you ride in an Uber, I very politely, I have a great, uh, whatever writer rating. I'm like, Hey man, those things give me a migraine. Could you just put it in the glove box? Like, I don't wanna breathe that. And they're like, oh, yeah, no problem. Right. I.
And if you act all entitled and rude, they'll probably, you know, it won't end well. But, so I, I would just give rid of those because they are only attacks on society. Second thing, any personal care product that has perfume or fragrance in it, because not only are you screwing up your own testosterone and immune system, as your book talks about.
You're doing it to other people, right? So you don't have a right to make me smell your pretty perfume or your ax body spray any more than I do to you walk around covered in skunk oil or something that you wouldn't like it. It's, it's actually rude to make yourself smell.
Aly: You know, in California there used to be, I don't know if you remember all the, uh, magazines that you would almost like open up and they would stink, right.
With fumes that were terrible getting sold. Terrible.
Yeah.
You didn't even have to open them up. Actually, they would just stink from the, the newsstand. And I believe in California, they was the first surprise, surprise, which we love California for doing that stuff. They banned, um, fragrance in magazines in the state, um, under, I think it's under the Civil, uh, disabilities Act.
Um,
Dave: I didn't know that. Thank you.
Aly: Because really you're, and I say this, even when I posted on Christmas and, and, and holiday gift giving. You are giving the gift of harm. Yeah. If you not thinking a little bit more deeply into the candles and into all the smelly things, the pumpkin, pumpkin spice and you know, listen, I get it.
They smell fine. I used to have a drawer. I talk about it in my book. I used to have an entire drawer after I got married. I at a new house. I was about to start a family and it was like playing, you know, house. You wanted your home to smell nice. It was part of that badge of starting a family for me. Um, and the entire drawer was like ocean breeze and strawberry fields.
And I remembered the day when I was learning this material. I remember the day I took the whole drawer and dumped it, and I did that with cosmetics and all the samples I got in the perfume section of Macy's, right? Mm-hmm. You learn and grow and as you learn and grow, you change. And I think being flexible.
Really is key and And your whole life has been flexible, right?
Yeah. I've
been trying to be more flexible too. I think when sometimes you get older you get a little bit more inflexible, but I guess I'm inflexible for the things that I think will harm me. But I think you have to be open-minded to how to change and change will have really great results if you do it in the right way.
Dave: There's a medical concept, you know very well, triage. So you have a bunch of people from a car accident come into a hospital, well, which are the ones that need attention now? Where if I, if I change something, I can do it in the amount of time that I have and it it'll meaningfully improve outcomes. And then like, oh, there's a guy who stubbed his toe, right?
I don't have to deal with that guy. Now he can wait and maybe I'll never get to him and he'll limp home like, and it's okay. Right? So when I'm looking at removing toxins from my environment, I kind of do the triage things. What are the things that make me feel awful right now? What are the things that suppress mitochondrial function and testosterone and thyroid function that are at high levels that are easy to fix?
Well, let's put those at the top of the list. And if you just look at it like that, I'm never gonna get to the middle or bottom list. It doesn't matter. I just got 80% of the problem solves by doing 20% of the work. And I think your book detoxify. You do a great job explaining why you should pay attention.
Like if you're listening to this and you have fabric softener in your house, you can pause the episode or just keep listening and then walk over, pick it up, and throw it in the trash and take it off your grocery list. You do not need that ever, and it only harms you right. There's one more thing that we haven't talked about.
That would be number three on my list of things that, yeah. What would I ban? Synthetic fleece.
Aly: Ugh.
Dave: Yeah, talk about that.
Aly: It's a shame because I have a couple fleece things in Rome and listen, it's hard to avoid. Yeah. It is so damn soft. I mean, I have to say, listen, it is so damn soft, and it gets softer and softer.
I mean, I feel like I'm, I'm wearing a puppy, you know? Mm-hmm. But here's the thing, you know, those are microplastics. They do get into the washing machine, water. They do drain just like draino and all these horrible chemicals. I think I just untrained a, a, a clog in my home before I left. Where does all this stuff go?
This stuff goes out. Mm-hmm. It goes all the way through our water system. It goes into our lakes and our oceans, our aquifers, and it cycles back into us. And again, you could say, I'm gonna have fleece, but I'm gonna get an RO filter. That's one way to solve the problem, but it's not really helping the universe.
It's not helping the ecosystem at large. So I have cut back on fleece. I don't buy new fleece. Mm-hmm.
But
every time you wash, you know, you are contributing to the microplastic problem. I don't think everyone's thinking about this, but again, you do things if it makes your heart feel better. You did that with the reverse osmosis water in your restaurant.
I think that that's the kind of way we have to sort of lead in some ways by example as well. I share this with my kids Yeah. And students. And, um, again, we wanna planet our planet. I, I'm, I'm about to speak at their school for climate change for, um. You know, for Earth Day, and I'm bringing in the concept that what you do to our planet will cycle back into our bodies.
We're seeing that with air quality and air pollutants. We're seeing that with water and water pollutants. Um, we're seeing that with EMF radiation. My kids and all their friends, I walk into the school and they all have laptops on their groin, on their crotch. Um, I mean, or their phones. The girls wear 'em in their bra.
I mean, the idea is not to say don't have a phone and don't have a computer. It's just use them wisely.
Dave: Put 'em on airplane mode. If they're near your distances, they're near your boobs or your balls or your ovaries. Yeah. You really don't want a phone there.
Aly: Yeah. I mean, so that's kind of the point is that there's lots of things that will affect us, that, that cycle back.
It's very cyclical and, um, you know, even light pollution, noise pollution, there's, and it all creates noise and stress. So we, we have to really be thinking how do we take back anthropology? How do we take back our evolution a little bit and go back to when it was sort of less sim, you know, less toxic.
Dave: Yeah.
Aly: But smarter.
Dave: It's something that's possible. And, and there's things that, that people probably wouldn't think about. We talked about water. Uh, there's also air in those fleece. If you dry a fleece in your dryer, it fills your home with microplastics that you breathe that bypass a lot of these things and get into your lungs.
So you wouldn't know this when you walked in unless you're paying attention. The carpet that we're on is wool. And wool. Carpets can be expensive. Or if you look around, uh, online, they're actually not substantially more expensive than a medium quality synthetic rug. And my audio guys, thanks aj. They're filtering out the low hum in the background that is an air filter, which means we're not breathing any dust, even from the wool rug.
And I'm like, okay, I set myself up. So I got increased resilience from those things and they weren't that hard to do. And once I did them, they just always work, right? And that means that I can take more hits when I got on an airplane. And, and this idea that okay, we're, we're gonna do, yeah. It's,
Aly: it's a balance.
Yeah. It's a balance. What you do at your home is 80%, 90%. Then you go out into the real world and you have to, you know, deal with what life throws at you.
Right.
And I agree. I mean, look, I live the same way. I get my hair colored, but I've been doing this for decades. It's something I want to continue for the moment.
I may change, but I'm also filtering my water and I'm eating organic and I've chose out my personal care products carefully. I wear a lot of stuff that you could see, but they're all vetted. Everything's vetted for at least the lowest toxicity that I can find. If I get a massage, I take baby massage oil from, that's EWG one two, the massage.
Place so that I can have them use my stuff. I mean, it's, I take my nail base coat to a nail salon to get, if I'm going to get my nails done, which is not that often, but when I do, I want the coating closest to my skin to be the least toxic. So there's little hacks throughout your life that once you get into them, they're not more expensive, they're just more thoughtful.
Dave: A big part of of what I teach is perfection is unachievable anyway, right? Right. So if you're going to use one unit of suffering, or of effort, or of work or of dollars, it should give you the best results, right? Because you're gonna do it anyway. So if you're gonna brush your teeth at night, do you use toothpaste that introduces a potent thyroid disruptor called fluoride?
Or do you use a toothpaste that reverses cavities better than fluoride? Without fluoride, it was the same amount of time brushing your teeth. You might spend a dollar more on the toothpaste. I dunno. It depends on which brand, but Okay. It, it was no net additional anything other than one better choice. And your book is full of better choices and the book is called Detoxify and it's by Ailey Cohen.
And thank you for coming to Austin and being on the show and spreading an, an important message for pregnant women, especially for teenagers. Mm-hmm. Like if you're a teenager now, you are fucked if you do not control your toxins. I just have to tell you this, you,
Aly: you call my kids,
Dave: you won't have the hormones that make you powerful and make you go out into the world and change things and build a tribe.
Literally, I. The fragrances you're using make you wanna play video games and sleep in and just kind of be a zombie and you wonder why you're anxious, like cut out the body spray. I'm not even kidding. And so you've got all this stuff in there. It's scientific, it makes sense. You're a real doctor. Uh, me, I'm an unlicensed, uh, biohacker.
Uh, so you can't take away my license for speaking the truth. Uh, but thank you for doing the hard work of both treating patients and then teaching doctors, which is really important. And then teaching us on the show and just writing the book. It's a lot of work.
Aly: Thank you, Dave. It was a pleasure to be here.
I really look forward to it. And now that I've met you and had this conversation, I'm just, I'm thrilled. Thank you for having me.
Dave: You're welcome. And give me a URL for your book. Do you have one?
Aly: A URL? Oh, well, the smart human. Okay. Everything I do is the smart human, um, dot com or the smart human on any of the social media feeds.
So
Dave: cool. And just to know, guys, I'm the dumb human in case you're wondering. I'll see you on the next episode.
See you next time on the Human Upgrade Podcast.