How to Protect Yourself from Toxic Chemicals with Dr. Aly Cohen: Rational Wellness Podcast 409

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Dr. Aly Cohen discusses How to Protect Yourself from Toxic Chemicals with Dr. Ben Weitz.

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Podcast Highlights

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Dr. Aly Cohen is an Integrative Rheumatologist and the Founder & Medical Director of Integrative Associates and also the Founder and Medical Director of The Smart Human LLC. She is a Co-Editor and contributor to Integrative Environmental Medicine, Co-author of Non-Toxic: Guide to Living Healthy in a Chemical World, and the new book, Detoxify: The Everyday Toxins Harming Your Immune system and How to Defend Against Them.  Her websites are  AlyCohenMD.com  and TheSmartHuman.com

Dr. Ben Weitz is available for Functional Nutrition consultations specializing in Functional Gastrointestinal Disorders like IBS/SIBO and Reflux and also Cardiometabolic Risk Factors like elevated lipids, high blood sugar, and high blood pressure.  Dr. Weitz has also successfully helped many patients with managing their weight and improving their athletic performance, as well as sports chiropractic work by calling his Santa Monica office 310-395-3111.

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Podcast Transcript

Dr. Weitz:  Hey, this is Dr. Ben Weitz, host of the Rational Wellness Podcast. I talk to the leading health and nutrition experts and researchers in the field to bring you the latest in cutting edge health information. Subscribe to the Rational Wellness Podcast for weekly updates and to learn more, check out my website, dr whites.com.  Thanks for joining me, and let’s jump into the podcast.

Hello, rational wellness followers. Today our topic is toxins, how everyday toxins are harming us, and what we can do about it with Dr. Aly Cohen. Dr. Aly Cohen is the founder and Medical Director of Integrative Rheumatology Associates. She’s the founder and medical director of the Smart Human.  She’s the co-editor of Integrative Environmental Medicine. She’s the co-author of Non-Toxic Guide to Healthy To Living Healthy in a Chemical World, and she’s also the author of Detoxify the Everyday toxins harming your immune system and how to defend against them, which should be published by the time this episode is released.

Dr. Cohen: So, yeah, I’ll hold it up. Even though you didn’t get yours in the mail, I’ll just show your audience in case they’re interested.

Dr. Weitz: Oh, okay. A little grapefruit on the cover there.

Dr. Cohen: No, actually it’s a lemon, so,

Dr. Weitz: oh, it’s a lemon

Dr. Cohen: yellow. Just to kind of stay with the theme, you see?

Dr. Weitz: Oh, okay. Lemon, help us detoxify.

Dr. Cohen: You know, it really kind of inspires fresh, new clean. So yeah, it was a real, there you go. Especially ’cause it’s a tough topic, so, you know, it’s.

Dr. Weitz: So, let’s talk about the most important factor, which is about your pet retriever Truxton, who died at eight four. Of course, I love the [00:02:00] fact that you include your story about your pet laboratory retriever.  We, we had two yellow labs ourselves, so we’re big lab fans.

Dr. Cohen: I mean, I guess, you know, any dog, any pet fan I think would relate to this. I mean, even, I like to say, you know, if it was your kid, your human kid, but I’ll be honest, I think people just are universally in love with their animals. So, maybe not so much their kids, but their animals, but yeah, you know, the, listen, I wouldn’t be doing what I’m doing.  I wouldn’t be talking to you now if it wasn’t for this horrible story about my dog getting sick. Sick. And in short, it was about 15 years ago and it really kicked off a lot of what I’m doing. So he was a golden retriever. He was beautiful. And it’s in, you know, his picture is in everything I do, and he was about four and a half years of age young.

And he got really sick. We didn’t know what it was. We thought he swallowed a, you know, a sock or something as they do. And turns out he had what was called autoimmune hepatitis. So his immune system was [00:03:00] triggered to attack his body, but particularly his liver. And so when we diagnosed him, his liver was like shrunken to like a golf ball.  Wow. Yeah, it was awful and it was chronic, so we didn’t really pick up on anything. And you know, not only is this unusual for dogs, but it’s also unusual for golden retrievers as we found out, and as an autoimmune disease doctor for humans then and now I, it was just remarkably. Sad and ironic and all of the above.  And so as I started to unfold, what could have triggered his immune system towards himself, right? Similar to the way human autoimmune diseases seemed to work. I was looking at his water quality. I was looking at his dog food, whether it was contaminated. I was looking at. The red toy that he always had in his mouth, even while he slept.

I mean that’s, you know, constant. But I was thinking medi flea and tick collar medications and everything we do with our pets. And as I was looking into what could have hit his immune system, I started to, I. Really open up [00:04:00] a Pandora’s box of inquiry around chemicals for humans in, you know, in our market, in the US market.  And it was eyeopening to find out how little or zero regulation there is in the chemicals or in the products from the chemicals that go into those products that we use every day. And the more I learned. What could have hurt him? The more I realized that we are also, you know, canaries in the coal mine and I was pissed because I also didn’t know any of this, even in med school.  I was never, even though the literature was pretty robust even 15 years ago, there was nothing made mention in all my training, even as an immune disease specialist, that, that are, that chemicals can do this and that there’s no regulations for safety or required safety testing. 

Dr. Weitz:  And by the way, whatever lack of regulations we have now, over the next four years, whatever few regulations are there will definitely be gone.

Dr. Cohen: Yeah, and not only that, you know, I think one of the things I talk about, no matter what [00:05:00] administration comes into play, my argument has always been you can’t wait for these slow regulations, no matter how many good ones come out.  Right. Year and there’s usually only one or two. I mean, even the water regulations where they were getting you know, six per floor alcohol chemicals out of the water system, which is already completely unregulated to be honest. It’s 50 years old in terms of it oversight. And that’s all of our drinking water.  Right? That actually is on hold and it’s only six out of 15,000. For Fluor alcohol chemicals within the class, so right. You could say like, okay, great, we got red dye number three out, but there’s a, there’s literally 1100 or pl or more food chemicals that have not been tested or have been tested and can’t be removed.  It’s a whack-a-mole. So my goal has always been. Don’t wait for anyone. Be independent. Be smart. Here’s some facts that are very simple. Let’s do this ourselves. Let’s make ourselves healthy

Dr. Weitz: and even when they do remove one of these chemicals, they [00:06:00] remove B-P-E-B-P-A. They add in BPS or BP something else, and those chemicals are probably just as toxic or even more.

Dr. Cohen: Yeah. In fact that’s actually absolutely true because BPA, my co-author for two textbooks was Ro is Fred Baum, Saul. He’s a renowned reproductive neurobiologist from University of Missouri. He was largely responsible with his colleagues for getting pla BPA Bisphenol A, which is just one bisphenol out of thousands.

Out of plastic baby bottles in 2012. Then, I mean, and of course if it was bad enough for plastic baby bottles and babies, why aren’t we getting it out everywhere, including our foods? But unfortunately that’s as far as it went. Then they created substitutions called regrettable substitutions ’cause we have to chase after the fact to do the science after.

And that’s by third party academic situations, you know, centers. It’s not by manufacturers being recorded. Required to test for safety or toxicity before they go [00:07:00] into the products that we use every day. And so yes, we are. We are constantly whack-a-mole and BPS one of the most popular regrettable substitutions for BPA has been shown to not only be as bad from a human health perspective as BPA, but even potentially worse.

Dr. Weitz: And is that in baby bottles as well?

Dr. Cohen: So it can be, so the question is, because it can be, we don’t know. There is no proprie, you know, everything is unlabeled. Whether it’s the word fragrance or perfume on our laundry detergent or our personal care products and cosmetics or you know, plastics don’t have a label on them, right?

We’re not required. You know, consumers are not allowed to know what makes up those plastics. It could be phthalates, it could be beast phenols, it could be, you know, sometimes they add antimicrobials, sometimes they add you know, different components to plastic to make it more flexible, less flexible.

Those kind of things. So the idea is that there are some really reasonable, I wanna keep saying this to your audience [00:08:00] because I’m trying to say to people that this, there’s plenty of solutions to reduce exposures. And the reason I know that is because I read the studies that show when you change to say organic diets, that you reduce organic phosphate chemicals and glyphosate in your system.

If you know, change to you know, change out non-stick pans and you get a bunch of things like peral, Fluor, alcohols out of your life. By just making some better choices. Not expensive. You can lower those levels in the body fluids that are tested and so it just makes really good sense if you know you could just swap or change.

And I came up with the four A’s, which we can talk about in order to walk people through that.

Dr. Weitz: So when it comes to plastics, there’s really not a better plastic. You basically need to eliminate plastic.

Dr. Cohen: Yeah. I will say this though, silicone, you know, there are some things that are really hard to recreate, such as baby nipples for their bottles.

Dr. Weitz: Okay.

Dr. Cohen: And the more I’ve discussed this is, you know, with people as much as I can, silicone that’s [00:09:00] medical grade, silicone in American made bottles tend to have no real extreme issue. So I think that, you know, again, everything is a risk benefit ratio. There’s no great recreation for a woman’s nipple besides say silicone, right?

So I. You have to be reasonable about how panicked or scared we get. But you can certainly have a glass bottle that I didn’t have the luxury of having. ’cause I didn’t know better when I had two kids, so, right. You know, the thing is when you know better, you do better. That’s simply what it is.

Dr. Weitz: Right. Why don’t you talk a little about a little bit about your personal journey and you talk in your book about how you were used to drink tap water and eat cheese whiz and McDonald’s breakfast at a plastic containers on your way to work.

Dr. Cohen: You know, listen, I, and I color my hair so you know your audience and you might be saying like, what is she talking about? But the fact is that there’s never a time in your journey that you can’t make changes that make a difference. And when I talk about patients, even in the book and I give cases, [00:10:00] there are people that are just fatigued and we walk it through and tie it back to some of these exposures that may be high levels in their blood, not just autoimmune diseases and eczema and psoriasis and migraines.

We’re talking about. Quality of life. I did have a really ugly journey, you know, from when I was a child. I mean, I used to, you know, break into Flintstones vitamins with my brother and we used to like, you know, eat the whole bottle and we would eat like, you know, processed foods and, you know, cereals on the kitchen table where we’d play games with all of the classic serials.

And so. You know, I always say if I can do it, anyone can do it. And I’ve watched my levels in a variety of ways over the years. I’ve watched, you know, the studies and I want people to know that it can be done and that you know, it’s not as complicated. It’s not as overwhelming when you put it in the right perspective.

Dr. Weitz: For those who don’t understand the connection between autoimmune diseases like truckin, autoimmune liver disease and [00:11:00] toxins, can you explain how toxins play a role in as triggers for autoimmune diseases?

Dr. Cohen: Yeah, so let me go back to basics. We have been evolving as humans on this planet for over 4.5 million years.

And all of these synthetic chemicals that I’m referring to that are often called toxins ’cause we now know a lot more about how they work chemically in, in you know, in, in science, in, in the lab, but also in animals and now also in humans. These environmental chemicals that we use, so many synthetic, there’s about 95,000 is sort of the going number.

Have only been introduced into the human existence over the past 75 years. So we have millions of years. Our bodies have been really eloquently creating this immune system. It’s meant for surveillance. It’s meant to protect us from infections and a variety of natural environmental exposures.

Then here comes all these chemicals that are, [00:12:00] you know, human made. And really look foreign to the human body’s really beautiful immune system. So the body is doing what it’s supposed to do. The problem is that we just have too many chemicals all at once. No way to evolve. No way to manage entirely.

It goes to the idea, and again, I’m gonna walk people back on how to reduce those exposures so no one’s overwhelmed. But we have a link between these exposures and a variety of health issues, and I’m coming at it now. I used to come at it from just the hormones and endocrine disruption framework, but now I’m coming at it from the immune system framework because of the work I do clinically.

We now know that between, you know, somewhere between five and 14% of the American population is suffering from some type of autoimmune disease. There’s about 80 of them classified, but but the, it’s an epidemic and we are starting to see, and I’m starting to see along with a literature to [00:13:00] support it, people developing autoimmune and immune disorders at much younger ages than anyone would’ve expected.

And with no known family history of these illnesses, which means that there’s a very strong environmental component and also means that we can work to remove that environmental component.

Dr. Weitz: Can you give us a little more science about how autoimmune diseases can be triggered by environmental toxins?

Dr. Cohen: Sure.

Well, there’s several mechanisms, but it also has to do with the type of chemical. Because there’s so many, there’s heavy metals, there’s bisphenols, there’s phthalates, there’s, and how

Dr. Weitz: do those different chemicals affect the immune system differently? I.

Dr. Cohen: Well, you know, there it has a lot to do with what science has been discovered.

You know, we have okay science to discover, but we know, for instance, BPA, which is sort of the first endocrine disrupting chemical that was first established and identified. That’s [00:14:00] become the grandmother grandfather of all of these chemicals because we know the reason they’re calling them.

Endocrine disruptors, and I call them immune disruptors, but the idea is that I

Dr. Weitz: noticed you mentioned that in your book and you seem to distinguish between immune disruptors and endocrine disruptors.

Dr. Cohen: Yeah, and to be honest with you, again, it’s reframing because we know that every immune system cell, and there are th you know, really thousands of different types from the innate and humeral immune system.

They have receptors for estrogen and androgens. They have receptors for variety of the hormones, so they work. They crosstalk to each other. They are connected by their communication skills. So the immune system is actually not separate from the endocrine system, but you know, what we’re starting to see is number one there’s mechanisms like molecular mimicry where some of these chemicals.

Actually make the body they’re very much similar to self antigens. So components in the human body where the immune system, where it’s directing [00:15:00] itself towards an outside chemical actually gets confused and starts looking at some of the tissues in the body that looks similar, and that’s called molecular mimicry, similar compounds and setting off a trigger.

Dr. Weitz: Isn’t that really one of the main mechanisms how toxins trigger autoimmune diseases?

Dr. Cohen: Well, it’s one of many because here’s some other ones you might wanna hear about. So for instance,

Dr. Weitz: okay,

Dr. Cohen: tell us the gut microbiome. You know, our gut microbiome, which a lot of people have heard about. I’m sure your audience has heard some people, of course, about it, and you do.

But the gut microbiome is the largest immune system in the human body. It’s about 24 to 26 feet of bowel. And the inside lining of this tube, so to speak, is the microbiome. And so there are effects on the microbiome, not only directly that knock off good guys and some of the really healthy bacteria and microbes, but there’s also cytotoxic effects in terms of the immune system on the inside lining.

So there’s not only a kill off, but there’s also potentially an immune triggered response. It [00:16:00] also, the microbiome. Can get leaky where it lets some of these chemicals across the lining of the gut and into the bloodstream where it kicks off, you know, sort of a whole mechanism of immune disruption. So we have a microbiome issue, we have a molecular level mimicry but we also have sort of what’s called, you know, a homeostatic response with t regulatory cells.

There’s a variety of cells in the human body. And there’s a sense of homeostasis and maintenance of the immune system, which can get dysregulated by some of these chemicals in different classes. So there’s a lot of different mechanisms, different properties for each chemical.

Dr. Weitz: Can you tell us a little more about that third mechanism?

Dr. Cohen: Well, there’s t regulatory cells, their T cells, right. And their job is really to watch the cytosol and all the cellular components and keep maintenance. Keep maintenance, right. And so, so, so it’s considered to be an issue when some of these chemicals lower or disrupt t regulatory function.

It’s also [00:17:00] part of, you know, antigen presenting cytokine response. I’m saying these words, hopefully everyone can understand them, but they’re all components of the immune system that work together to fight enemies. And so when these chemicals set off something that disregulates that normal healthy immune process, that’s where you can get self attacks.

That’s how you can get you know, a dysregulation of immune system issues, not even if it’s to self. So we have other things.

Dr. Weitz: Have you run the lymphocyte map? Test from Dr. Bani. That would be an interesting way to look at T regulatory cells and this whole,

Dr. Cohen: no, I haven’t done that. I, you know, my, here’s the thing, there’s so much work out there, but the fact of the matter is that whether or not people become sick or have clinical symptoms is really a dance, not just between.

Their genetics, but also their environment and also their lifestyle. So humans are not great Guinea pigs when it comes to testing a lot because of all the confounders. So, you know, [00:18:00] I tend to tell people, and it’s come, you know, I’ve come full circle 15 years from being crazy and wanting to test and do everything I could.

To saying, you know what? It’s a lot of money to spend on testing. Let’s put the money into the solutions. And so I’m all about what do we do to actually reduce exposures? We wanna think about drinking water quality and getting a really high quality. I. Filter for our drinking water. ’cause we know that’s such a major source.

I think underrated contributor to human health that people aren’t thinking about is water quality. We sort of take it for granted, but a reverse osmosis water filter underneath your kitchen sink is $275. Now, there’s a, and it’s 150 and we know

Dr. Weitz: about so many of the toxins that are likely present in the water.

Not only all the chemicals that are not supposed to be there, but we know that they’re adding chlorine in Los Angeles, adding chlorine and ammonia, and they’re adding fluoride.

Dr. Cohen: Which, [00:19:00] you know, I’m not a big fan of fluoride. But we do need certain basic population health additions in order to not have, you know, going back to the 18 hundreds, right?

So we need the chlorine, but the problem is that no one, or we are not particularly attuned to removing those once they’ve been added to the water system. So in other words, there are detergents and chlorine and a bunch of things that are not removed naturally from these very old, outdated systems, these water treatment plants.

By the way, that serve 85% of the US population. And the problem is what we need to do is clean that water when it hits our home, sometimes 30 miles from the treatment plant going through PVC piping, going through lead piping. So think about all the water transient contaminant, contaminants that can get in.

So that’s the idea behind controlling things when it gets to your home, the point of use. So that’s just one aspect of chemical prevention and removal. And then there’s also. What we choose for quality of our food. You know, USDA [00:20:00] organic has become incredibly accessible from big box stores if you’re buying frozen USDA organic foods because frozen USDA organic I.

Sold by everybody, but also cheaper in price. Maintain all of their nutritional value when they’re flash frozen, and also have the benefit of not having thousands of pesticides that are allowed in conventional farming. So there’s lots of ways you can wash conventional farm, you know? Yeah. There’s

Dr. Weitz: a much smaller number of pesticides allowed in organic foods.

Dr. Cohen: For sure and genetically modified ingredients as well.

Dr. Weitz: Now that big pharma, now that big agriculture has gone into organic they keep lobbying to have more and more things allowed in and still call it organic. I.

Dr. Cohen: Yeah, it’s not a perfect system. You’re right, Ben. It’s not a perfect system, but it’s the best thing and the only thing we actually have, yeah, food system when it comes to, unless you’re growing your own food, which I applaud, unless you know your own farmers, and you can discuss that with local farmers, which I [00:21:00] applaud local farmers and supporting them.

But for the rest of us, mere mortals, you know, we’re stuck to supermarkets and I think understanding how frozen organics work and the fact that they’re better in terms of food transit and loss of nutritional value, right? It really is becoming, in my opinion, unfortunately or fortunately, the ideal way to get produce.

Dr. Weitz: Yeah, so we gotta eat organic. We need an under the water reverse osmosis water purification system. What are some of the other toxins we need to get rid of?

Dr. Cohen: Yeah. So we love our personal care. I got two teenagers. Come on now. I mean, you know, we love our cosmetics and personal care products. It’s really simple now, in fact and free to look up products that you put on your skin.

Feminine care products doesn’t take long. And basically it’s just a scale system like environmental working group. They have an app called Healthy Living Clear is a wonderful app, Yuca. Think dirty. They [00:22:00] often, you know, they really do use a lot of the same database, which is great. But we have this really nice ability to look up products and see whether we can choose better, you know, whether there’s options and whether we can choose better.

And we can do that for cleaning products too. We can either make our own, which I put in the book, a bunch of recipes for cosmetics and also cleaning products. We can also choose better if we have a vetted resource. And that’s what I want people to have is the resources that make sense, that are overseen, that are evergreen and that’s the best way to share information is the resources themselves.

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Dr. Weitz:  Has removing toxins had an impact on your rheumatology practice? Have you seen patients improve their autoimmune conditions and maybe even reduce or eliminate drugs by removing toxins?

Dr. Cohen: Yeah. And thus the inspiration for the book.  I mean, I’ve been a rheumatologist now for 22 years. I’ve seen every medication come to play. I use the medications. I’ve seen things evolve for two decades, and I can tell you that when people implement. Lifestyle and make sure that they’re reducing those exposures, which naturally, again, trigger immune system issues even on a low level scale.  And this is for people who are either preventing diseases in the first place or people who are managing chronic. Immune and autoimmune dis you know, disorders there is absolutely benefit to the way you know, we can do this and [00:25:00] reducing those exposures. But there’s another piece which I want your audience to know ’cause I created something called the four A’s and that was to help navigate some of the teaching programs and high school students.  And it was the simplest way I could, you know, put together the messaging. The four A’s are number one, assessing. I have a, you know, environmental health survey, 50 questions, really simple in the book, just to get people an idea of what to be thinking about and assessing their own body and their environment.

The second A, is avoid or swap and avoid means, look, do I need 10 different cleaners for my kitchen? We’ve been marketed to that. We need a door cleaner and a hand, you know, a sink cleaner and a. Carpet cleaner. It’s like, come on now. Right? So that’s how many of the chemicals get into our homes, but also get into our bodies and our pets.

So you wanna assess, but you wanna avoid the ones you don’t need and then swap to somes that are cleaner, better, safer. You don’t have to make your own all, you know, you can always buy them safer. The third, which is key, [00:26:00] is add. So we have to add in nutrition to offset some of the. Epigenetic changes.

That’s another mechanism. These chemicals work is on the genetic level in terms of their epigenome proteins. We wanna offset the harm from these exposures even when we don’t even know they’re happening. And that has a lot to do. What we feed the human body nutritionally. So if you add in sweat, you add in good quality sleep, where you’re cleaning out some of those chemicals through the glymphatic system while you’re sleeping.

All anthropology. If you’re adding in nutrition, if you’re adding in, you know, reduction of stress and the list goes on, that’s the best combo is avoiding and getting rid of toxic trigger triggers and then adding in some very basic stuff. And then the fourth A is allow, which is. Life is life. You know, I want my hair colored.  That’s my choice. If I want to, you know, travel and I don’t have access to what I need or want at [00:27:00] home, that’s life. It’s the fluidity of life. Birthday cake. It also allows people to not be so restrictive in their lives that they work against themselves.

Dr. Weitz: So I want to dive a little deeper into, you were talking about immune disrupting chemicals.  So some of these chemicals, you said lower T regulatory cells. What are some of the other impacts they have on the immune system?

Dr. Cohen: So for classes like the per Fluor, Al alcohols, which are the Forever chemicals that have a Fluor, right?

Dr. Weitz: The P FOAs and the P Oass,

Dr. Cohen: yes. And they’re about 15,000

Dr. Weitz: and the, these include Teflon pans and flame retardant chemicals and

Dr. Cohen: aim guard chemicals.

So they’re really pervasive in our lives and we often don’t even think about it. So it’s the non-stick pan, it’s the raincoats, it’s the po, you know, the backpacks on our kids. Beyond furniture of course, because people don’t wanna stain their furniture. I used to spray my couch when, you know, 15 years ago.

[00:28:00] So, the

Dr. Weitz: chemicals that we’ve been having sprayed all over our forest in California due to the fires.

Dr. Cohen: Yes. And it turns out, believe it or not, ’cause I had to do a lot of work in terms of. California fire exposures, not just air quality, but also what they’re spraying is it turns out that those dropped colored chemicals are actually not as harmful as people might think at first blush.

So I just wanna leave that with your audience too. I

Dr. Weitz: did hear that they made ’em somewhat safer. Do you know exactly what the details are?

Dr. Cohen: You know what? I didn’t prepare that for this talk. Okay. I’ll tell you, my general gestalt was that I was more surprised than anything, and that also that they’re supposed to have a certain, like 300 feet away from any bodies of water.

And there’s a lot of restrictions and yeah,

Dr. Weitz: forget about

Dr. Cohen: that. Not to say that’s gonna save anybody, but listen, you know, you have to stop the fires and so what’s available? Available, and then it’s a matter of how do you manage that exposure. Like if I were to travel. How do I, how would I come home and what would I [00:29:00] do?  It’s the same idea is that life is life. And so the per Fluor alcohols, as an example, lower the immune system’s ability to to create antibodies. So for anyway, for vaccinations or anything you’re intending. To stimulate the immune system, it suppresses the immune system. So we know that is one of the major findings from the Perl classes as a general rule.

But you know, so there’s a variety of mechanisms. And again, BPA, all of these chemicals can affect

Dr. Weitz: receptors, so you might be able to inject them into patients for autoimmune diseases.

Dr. Cohen: Well, you know’s

Dr. Weitz: kidding. I dunno

Dr. Cohen: about that. But I mean, look, that’s probably not a good idea. It’s just, you know, look, there’s upregulation, there’s downregulation depending on the chemicals, right?  There’s half life of these chemicals and how long they stay in your body is a really useful tool. ’cause BPA is only six to eight hours. So you can actually, and there are great studies that we talk about in the book and also sharing here. That when you give up canned foods [00:30:00] or you swap, or you try to reduce, you’re also lowering exposure to BPA, which is mostly in the lining of cans.

It’s the epoxy resin. So there’s so many useful hacks that I want people to know. And

Dr. Weitz: basically the shiny coating and cups and all kinds of other things too. Right,

Dr. Cohen: right. Well, there has to be some degree of protection on paper or else it would be soggy.

Dr. Weitz: Right.

Dr. Cohen: You know, so, you know, when I travel I use my, like, you know, stainless steel.  We have soccer players and lacrosse players in my house, so I use the three gallon stainless steel, you know, for lacrosse matches over the weekend. Like, it’s just a matter of getting into the groove of simple swaps and behavior changes. My kids never microwave in plastic because they’ve been. You know, kind of cultured into that.  You know, they could, they swap things out of plastic into glass and stainless steel. When they heat and cook up they look up their products as teenagers. That’s an important part of what they know and what I teach in high school. So,

Dr. Weitz: On the [00:31:00] same, similar topic, the endocrine disrupting chemicals, I heard you say we typically think of these as.

Estrogen estrogenic substances. But I’ve heard you say that they’re also testosterone mimicking and thyroid mimicking. So can you talk a little more about how some of these chemicals that we think of as estrogenic may also have other hormonal effects?

Dr. Cohen: Sure. So we have lots of different hormones, not just estrogen, even though estrogen and androgens or testosterone are very common to talk about, especially in this day and age, right?

But we have lots of hormones, which are signalers. I mean, hormones are basically chemical messengers that get stuff done in the human body and have been doing so for millions of years. So they’re very conserved, meaning you only need a very little amount of any hormone to do its job, and that’s to save energy over evolution and.

Insulin, you know, which manages glucose and throws it into the muscles to chew up thyroid hormone, which is [00:32:00] critical to metabolism and IQ in children, for instance, and growth and development you know, other fertility. Components other comp, you know, hormones that we need. There’s enormous number of hormones that we use.

Cortisol. These are just a few that can be disrupted. And disrupted, meaning, you know, receptors go up, receptors go down, the signal gets created, signal gets reduced. There’s mimics that look just like estrogen or insulin or thyroid. Hormone or not? I mean, so the disruption can apply to a lot of different components that have been discovered about these chemicals, but we know that disruption is the problem.

It’s not working smoothly as it should.

Dr. Weitz: Okay. So let’s see. How do we get rid of these toxins besides eating organic and avoiding using some of these toxic chemicals in our homes and our personal care products?

Dr. Cohen: So, again, going back to this assess, you wanna kind of walk through your world, your life.

You can’t always control everything. If you’re a [00:33:00] commuter to some town where it’s very, you know, the air pollution is poor, you can put a filter in your car. But the idea is assess what you walk through so that you can avoid. Swap. And then adding in these components are really quite important. I overemphasize in the book all of these physiologic mechanisms that humans have had for millions of years, such as sweating.

Sweating does a really great job of removing the toxins in our blood. We have kidneys that we wanna support. We have a liver that we wanna support through some of our cruciferous vegetable choices. There are certain foods that I talk about that really support upregulation of the compounds and the chemicals and the process of re, of breaking down chemicals into safer components to eliminate.

But we also have probiotic foods and prebiotic foods that you can eat to actually help the gut microbiome from that angle as well. So there’s lots of different ways to contribute to your body being more functionally you know, more functional in terms of what it’s exposed [00:34:00] to. So it’s not a loss. We have plenty of ways to do this.

Dr. Weitz: What about specific strategies to detox?

Dr. Cohen: I run every day, or if I can, it’s raining today, but I also wear lots of layers because I, and I look silly when it’s 80 degrees out and I’m wearing a hat and you know, a jacket because I’m actually trying to sweat more. I’m trying not to cool off.

Of course, I’m well hydrated and I wouldn’t recommend this for anyone who has a heart condition or any cardiovascular issues but I become well hydrated before I do this, and so. I want to utilize my body’s ability to sweat as much as I can. I don’t wanna cool down ’cause it’s not just cardiovascular, it’s toxin removal, it’s detoxify.

Dr. Weitz: So. So infrared sauna is a good strategy.

Dr. Cohen: I. Well, I’ll tell you this, if you really want my opinion on infrared, I’m not, there’s so many different types, okay? I don’t know how the quality works. I don’t know if you’re getting EMF radiation that you need, don’t need. There’s [00:35:00] also been some data that I wrote about in one of the textbooks a few years back that there was a question of whether or not there was a higher rate potentially.

I say potentially for precancerous lesions of the skin because the radiation goes a little bit deeper than just the epidermis. So for all of that, I haven’t, I’m not trying to scare anyone away from a process they like, but I think in my opinion, I would rather utilize sort of, kind of established physiologic mechanisms like.

Old fashioned sauna, sweating, you know, whenever you can with extra layers. Sleep is such a critical part of chemical clearance. Toxin clearance. It’s not just about feeling refreshed. It’s really about giving your body enough time and the ability to just. Wash out some of these chemicals while we sleep, this is getting more and more attention.

So I think those are all components of lifestyle, integrative medicine, even functional medicine that we can embrace emotionally.

Dr. Weitz: When is the Ailey Cohen detox shake [00:36:00] coming out?

Dr. Cohen: Shake. Oh, I don’t do products. I’m really, you know, because of all the academic work that I’m doing, I appreciate you asking that.

It’d be, I could probably make a killing telling everyone they’re gonna die if they don’t drink my shake. But I actually really have chosen at this stage, and hopefully for a lot longer not to promote any products, because I wanna stay legitimate in academics. That’s my legacy. I wanna get this into schools nationally.

And so I’ve chosen not to do that.

Dr. Weitz: I, you know, I was looking at your recommended supplements and I’m like, I where’s NAC? Where’s glutathione? Where is liver support? Where, you know, multi, there’s Vitamin Fish, oil vitamin D and probiotic. I’m like, that’s it.

Dr. Cohen: Well, that’s it, because this book is mainstream to everyday people.

Okay? There’s so much more that you could layer on. Look, I have patients who come in on 30 supplements. I don’t necessarily agree with that at all. You can over, [00:37:00] you know, supplement yourself. I see it all the time. And you can have, I. Bad supplements that add to heavy metals and liver toxicity. We’re seeing this all over the place.

People are just thinking supplements are benign. They’re not, and especially if they’re not vetted and high quality ones. So when I did my chapter on human fertilizer and what I believe every human from an anthropology perspective should be on it was not so much how many products. It was the right products and the right.

Quality, not just of food and water, but of supplements or else you can actually get into more harm than good. So, you know, I think that the effort paid towards quality was really what I was trying to achieve. Not, you know, how many could you throw into your cart and push, you know, go, especially ’cause it, they’re everywhere.

It’s a billion dollar industry and most of it is just total junk.

Dr. Weitz: So there’s no supplements that can benefit detox really.

Dr. Cohen: Oh no. I mean, I think food is medicine. You get NAC can come from food, you know, you glucosinolates and [00:38:00] sulforaphane and there’s, fiber is a binder. I mean, I really want people to understand that if you can do food as medicine, which we’ve been doing for millions of years, that is your number one choice.

And that supplements can be great. And I talk about them because life is busy. Right. But those should really work their way down from the highest quality, highest yield and what should be in them. And I talk about that in the book. I even have a 21 day plan. I You didn’t get your book. I’m so bummed.

’cause I would rather you hold this up than me. I sound like a used car salesman. But you know, I did a 21 day plan, right. And I. How it was gonna resonate. ’cause you never know what you’re gonna get. When people read books and you know what stands out, that plan is getting a lot of attention. ’cause it’s so easy.

It’s day one. You,

Dr. Weitz: so what is your preferred dietary approach? Is it plant-based? Is it paleo, is it low carb? Is it what.

Dr. Cohen: Yeah, I talk a lot about the science behind Mediterranean diet. But what I also make mention in the book, which I [00:39:00] think is important to understand, is it’s not just how much fats and carbs and protein, it’s the quality of that Mediterranean diet.

And in fact, when a study was shown that was done it was showing that a regular conventional Mediterranean diet can be just as toxically loaded as, you know, a conventional diet. And that there, that inflammation really comes from reducing the chemicals and that was what stood out. It’s the clean diet that’s actually supersedes even just the big macros.

And so the ideal would be a Mediterranean diet, which is the most science behind inflammation reduction. We have plenty of good work on that.

Dr. Weitz: So just for those who are listening who are not sure, what is the Mediterranean diet?

Dr. Cohen: Mostly plant-based in terms of sort of the bottom of the pyramid, which by the way, is in the book, which I hope I can dig up real quick.

Pyramid. Pyramid, okay. But it’s gonna be sideways and bigger ’cause this is a galley. But [00:40:00] needless to say, what I want people to think is that it’s basically an anti-inflammatory diet with mostly fruits and vegetables on the bottom. But high quality and organic or cleaned with baking soda and vinegar.

In other words, removing pesticides even if you don’t buy organic or have access to them. I also put on the bottom that the containers that we cook in and store make a big difference, and that we’re forgetting not just about the food quality, but also thinking how we cook in what we cook, in what we store, how we clean our produce.

All of that should be layered into a pyramid when we’re talking about what we consume, because those packaging chemicals can be very harmful. Plastics, non-stick chemicals, phthalates, all of that. And then working our way up, we’re getting into sort of clean protein, less red meat, less alcohol, high quality, you know, chocolate and desserts that are, you know, as much as we can get.

Organically because of heavy metal components as well. And so [00:41:00] it’s basically quality. It’s a pyramid on quality, but mostly Mediterranean is nuts and seeds. Omega-3 fatty acids really high quality. You know, olive oil almond butter, almond oil, those are the oils that tend to be healthier.

Not trans fats, not processed foods, and sort of working our way up the pyramid in terms of the treats that we want, but we have to do it in a limited fashion.

Dr. Weitz: Okay. So I think those are the questions I had prepared or any other things that we haven’t covered that you think are important for our listeners to know about.

Dr. Cohen: Yeah I hope people will embrace, if they’re interested in the book, they can also follow me on the Smart Human with Dr. Ailey Cohen, where it’s on TikTok, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook. I have a podcast that I have environmental health experts, the people who actually create the science that makes it into the headlines.

And I also have courses and is

Dr. Weitz: that what your podcast is called? The Smart Human.

Dr. Cohen: Yep. Everything’s the smart human. And [00:42:00] also I have courses that I’m starting to throw up on the smart human.com webpage. If you’re interested in learning about heavy metals or pesticides or drinking water. I’m putting together as much material in small, reasonable courses as people are interested in.

So, you know, feel free to check those out or follow or check out the book, which I hope people will really appreciate.

Dr. Weitz: That’s great. Thank you so much, Hailey.

Dr. Cohen: My pleasure, and thank you so much for having me.

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Dr. Weitz: Thank you for making it all the way through this episode of the Rational Wellness Podcast. For those of you who enjoy listening to the Rational Wellness Podcast, I would very much appreciate it if you could go to Apple Podcast or Spotify and give us a five star ratings and review.  As you may know. I continue to accept a limited number of new patients per month for functional medicine. If you would like help overcoming a gut or other chronic health condition and want to prevent chronic problems and wanna promote longevity. Please call my Santa Monica Weitz Sports Chiropractic and Nutrition office at 310-395-3111 and we can set you up for a consultation for functional medicine and I will talk to everybody next week.