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Hello and welcome to the Wellness Mama podcast. I’m Katie from wellnessmama.com and I’m here today with a dear personal friend of mine, Dr. Tom O’Bryan to talk about the inflammation equation and how 14 out of 15 of the major killers of humans are related to chronic inflammatory conditions and what we can do about that. Dr. Tom is always so fun to talk to. His goal is to make it easier for us to do the right things for health and he focuses on progress, not perfection. He’s an internationally recognized, admired speaker focusing on many topics including food sensitivities, environmental toxins, and the development of autoimmune diseases. And he’s considered a Sherlock Holmes for chronic disease. He teaches that recognizing and addressing the underlying mechanisms that activate the immune response is a map to the highway towards better health. And we talk about some very specific things he has today, including an event that helps really delve into and figure out where these environmental exposures are within your life and some easy strategies for reducing them. And he shares some very practical tips in this episode. And there are a lot more in the show notes and even more in his event, which is linked in the show notes. I always learn so much from Dr. Tom and really enjoy our conversations. So let’s join him now. Dr. Tom, welcome back. Thanks so much for being here.
Dr. Tom: Thank you so much. It’s a real pleasure to be with you. And every time we’re together, we’re always giggling and laughing about something. So it’s nice to be with you again.
Katie: Well, it’s always a joy to get to chat with you and to learn from you because you have such incredible expertise in so many areas. And I know for this episode, especially, we really share a passion for bringing education and awareness around certain issues that really affect moms and families. And most of the people listening to this podcast are moms. And I know that you have a tremendous heart, especially with a young son yourself, for really helping moms have the information they need to live the healthiest lives possible. And especially for their kids in a very rapidly changing modern world with a lot of new variables that we didn’t face as kids. And I love the new project you’re working on called the Inflammation Equation. And I would love for you to, building on that equation analogy, kind of explain to us some of the variables you’re seeing in practice and the data and in your research of what we’re facing from an inflammation perspective in the modern world.
Dr. Tom: Oh, thank you. Thank you for that question. Yeah, it took me two months to come up with the title. It literally was two months. And it really is an equation. You know, there’s so many parts to it that it can be overwhelming. But I think I’ve gotten the bottom-line principles in a way that brings forth the importance of it, in a way that people understand and are empowered to move forward. That’s the goal, is to move forward.
So the bottom line is that we all, people that are associated with you, Katie, they want to be healthier. You know, obviously, that’s why they’re here. And so they want the information. And we find that, you know, as a practitioner, I often will work with a person and they are very compliant. They get the results that they had hoped for. Their autoimmune disease goes into remission or whatever it should be. And then I hear a couple of years later, they died of a massive coronary. Or they died with cancer. Well, I’m not sure I did my job. I’m not sure I gave them a big enough picture. You know, cardiovascular disease is the number one cause of death in the world and has been for the last 45 to 50 years. I mean, how can that be? Well, we understand we’re not supposed to do this or not supposed to do that, but what are we missing?
What we’re missing is that the Centers for Disease Control tells us that 14 of the 15 top causes of death in the world today are chronic inflammatory diseases. They’re all inflammation. Everything except unintentional injuries. So here’s the way to hold that information. If you pull at a chain, the chain always breaks at the weakest link. It’s at one end, the middle, the other end. It’s your heart, your cardiovascular system, your brain, your liver, your immune system, your skin. It just depends on where your weak link is. That’s where symptoms are going to come. And that’s where an eventual disease will come, wherever the weak link is.
It’s inflammation that’s pulling on the chain. It’s always, and I can guarantee you, almost everyone here today, if you did the right test and you feel fine and you may actually feel healthy, meaning that you have no symptoms right now, your body’s performing very well for your target ranges, but if you did the right test, you would see that some areas are highly inflamed. Because there’s things that we don’t recognize are gasoline on the fire, causing this inflammation. And I’m sure this is not the case for your group but I use this one as an example for moms. Go in the bathroom and pull out the toothpaste and look at the label. Does it say, warning, do not swallow? If swallowed, call National Poison Control Center. That’s our commercial toothpaste that we’re putting a toxin in our children’s mouth. And once again, I’m sure your audience already knows this, and so they’ve got organic toothpaste and things like that. That’s true.
But there are so many features like that that we don’t know because it doesn’t make us sick. I’ll give you an example. We know that for every one person that has a wheat sensitivity and they’ve got gut problems as a result, yeah, I get a little bloated, I get a little gas or a little bit of cramping, but it goes away. I’m fine. For every one person that gets gut symptoms, there are eight people that don’t get gut symptoms, yet their immune system is still aggressively fighting wheat. They get brain symptoms or skin symptoms or thyroid symptoms. They don’t get gut symptoms. So when they eat the food, I feel fine when I eat pizza, you know, or whatever it should be. They think they’re fine because we think if you eat a food that’s bad for you, it’s going to affect your gut. And if you use that as your determining criteria, you’ll get it right one out of eight times. But if you look at Mrs. Patient, your immune system is the armed forces in your body. It’s there to protect you. And there’s an army, a navy, an air force, the marines, a coast guard. We call them IgA, IgG, IgE, IgM, cytokines. There’s different branches of the immune system. They’re just there to protect you. So the question is, what is it trying to protect you from? Because it’s your immune system that produces this inflammation that pulls on the chain. And eventually you’re diagnosed with Hashimoto’s thyroid disease. And you were fine three months ago, but now you’ve got an autoimmune disease, as if it just happened. No, it’s been developing over time.
So the question is, what is your immune system trying to protect you from? So if you want to know if a food is good for you or not, as an example, you ask your immune system. You just have to make sure the tests you’re using are the most comprehensive tests that are available. But you ask your immune system because you feel fine usually when you eat the food. So you can’t tell by how your gut feels as to whether it’s okay for you or not.
Katie: That makes sense. And that’s a staggering statistic that 14 out of 15 are related to chronic inflammatory conditions. But to me, this is also good news because that means we have within our control some of these variables to shift that and to change those outcomes. And I love your perspective on this, especially having been through autoimmune disease and now not having any markers of it. I love to always use the chance to remind people, too, these symptoms are messengers. Our body’s always on our side. And while they can be frustrating, it’s not the symptoms themselves that are the problem. That’s actually our body clearly communicating with us in a way that it’s trying to tell us either what it needs that it’s not getting or something is affecting it that it needs to not have. And I love that you have such data and clarity on the approach of this. What are some of the common environmental toxins that we’re seeing in the modern world?
Dr. Tom: The most common one that we’re seeing, if there’s a test called the Total Tox Burden by a lab called Vibrant Wellness. And it looks at many of the toxins that are common that we’re exposed to. And the most common that we’re finding, there’s two. The first one is the mycotoxins from mold. That is so extremely common now. And people don’t know often that they’ve got mold in their house or mold in the work environment, and they’re breathing the spores of the mold. You know, in Alzheimer’s, my goodness, there’s five different types of Alzheimer’s, and 60 to 65% of all Alzheimer’s is called inhalation Alzheimer’s. It’s what you’re breathing that’s going right up to the memory. The olfactory nerves go right up to the memory center of the brain to identify threat or friend, our sense of smell. And so when you’re breathing an inflammatory compound like mold, which you can’t smell, you can’t see it, then the result, you create more inflammation in the memory center of your brain, killing off brain cells, killing off brain cells.
And here’s a statistic that’s startling. And then I’ll go back to some of the other environmental triggers. Blue Cross Blue Shield published in February of 2020, and no one paid attention. It should have been on the front page of every paper in the country. But that’s when the virus came out. And so everybody was focused on the virus. They published and said, we’ve got a real problem here. In the previous four-year period, there was a 407% increase in the diagnosis of Alzheimer’s in 30 to 44-year-olds. In four years, 407% increase in women and men of childbearing age. It’s like, and it’s because there are so many more toxins that we’re exposed to now and the vast majority of Alzheimer’s is called inhalation Alzheimer’s. It’s what we breathe that’s triggering that.
So that’s the most common, my experience, is mold. After that plastics, the plasticizers are extremely common. I just read a paper that came out a few days ago in the New England Journal of Medicine that when they look at people who have had carotid artery surgeries, and because their carotid arteries were getting plugged up, and they analyzed some of the material that they take out of those arteries, when they find plastic in the carotid arteries, these people have over a 400% increased risk of stroke in the next five years. So, you know, these plastics are just accumulating and they’re so prevalent in our bodies now. It was two months ago, that the research came out, we’ve known about microplastics for quite a while and about water bottles and things like that. But technology now, they have laser technology that they can identify nanoplastics, which is a billionth of a gram. And they just published a paper in three of the largest water, commercial waters available, one-liter bottles. They looked at three of them. And the average in three of them was over 240,000 nanoparticles of plastic in each bottle. 240,000 in each bottle. This is what we’re drinking, trying to drink healthier water. We’re buying bottled water because it’s supposed to be healthier. But the plastics are a problem. It’s a huge problem. So the most common I’m seeing is mold. The second most common is plastics.
Katie: Wow. And I’ve written about plastics before, but I know that nanoplastics is a whole new world that we’re just beginning to start to understand. And it makes sense that those would be, pour into our bodies and have an impact, especially when they’re that small and can be moved around the body so easily and accumulate in the body so easily. What are some of, you mentioned like Alzheimer’s risk at a younger age, and that’s pretty staggering statistic in people that young. And I know statistically across the board, we’re also seeing a rise in all chronic health conditions, even in children. So what are some of the ways that these environmental exposures are affecting our children specifically?
Dr. Tom: Well, the first, it affects their brain. These plastics, these nanoplastics go right through the blood-brain barrier. And we have four different immune systems in our body. You know, the main one is in our gut. Most people have heard that 70 to 80% of the immune system is in your gut. That’s because that’s where most of the toxins come in or came in for our ancestors. So they developed the immune system to protect them. And we’ve inherited that immune system.
But there are four immune systems. There’s one in your liver, there’s one in your bloodstream, and there’s one in your brain. Well, the one in your brain is the most powerful of all of them. My analogy is, you know, the one in your gut, it’s like the sheriff in town, in the old western towns. He’s got a little six-gun on his hip, walks around to keep the peace, you know, with his little six-shooter. The one in your bloodstream are special forces. Those are antibodies. And they’ve got high-powered laser-scope rifles. But the one in your brain is called the glial system, they fire bazookas. They don’t mess around. If anything gets through the blood-brain barrier, they take it out immediately to protect the brain.
The problem is that these microplastics and these nanoplastics go right through the blood-brain barrier into the brain, activating your immune system, trying to protect you from this foreign substance. So you get this recurrent inflammation generation in your brain because there’s more of this threat coming in and more of this threat coming in again and again and again. And so that’s the most common that I’ve seen.
You know, there’s bacterial and viral infections that kids get also, and they’re up a little bit. But I believe, and this is my clinical experience, I haven’t seen a paper, research paper that came out this boldly to say it, but I will. And that is the incredible rise in autism as an example. When I came to practice on Valentine’s Day, 1980, autism was about 1 in 10,000. Now, depending on what paper you read, 1 in 36, somewhere around that range. With boys, 1 in 28, 1 in 26. Incredible, incredible increase that these brains are just not functioning properly. And it is always, you always, let me say that differently, it is always inflammation. Without exception, it’s always inflammation that is fueling the dysfunction that we have in our bodies.
And when we understand that it’s inflammation, then the obvious question is, where is the inflammation coming from? And so when you learn how to detox your home, as an example, NASA did this because the astronauts were going loopy in space. And, you know, they never talk about this with the press, but Houston, hello, shuttle, can you repeat that, please? And the astronauts would repeat what they said, and the people in Houston would just look at each other like, what? And they found out that they weren’t thinking properly because of the amount of phthalates in the air from all of the plastics in the space shuttle.
So NASA funded the studies. How are we going to clean the air? And they funded the studies on houseplants. And two six-inch houseplants in a 10 by 10 room, these little houseplants, absorb over 74% of the toxins in the air. And so, you know, if you have eight rooms in your house, you go buy 16 little house plants. And we give you the handout that’s got the pictures of the house plant. Oh, I’ve seen those before. They’re not expensive. And you put house plants in your kid’s room and in the living room and in the kitchen and in the bathroom so that every room in the house has house plants that will reduce the amount of these toxins in the air that you can’t see, you can’t smell.
But if you ever see the sunlight coming through the window at that right angle and you see the dust in the air sometimes, that’s what you’re breathing. And all of that often has toxic components in it from the plastics. If the kitchen cabinets or the nightstand next to the bed are not solid wood, they’re pressboard. Pressboard is soaked in formaldehyde that out-gasses into the air for years. You can’t smell it. It’s minute amounts. And there’s no evidence that that amount that you smell is toxic to you. There’s no evidence, but it accumulates in your body over the years. That’s so very common.
Another source of health plans for young girls and young women. Nail polish. It’s the phthalates in nail polish that harden the polish. And within four to five minutes of applying nail polish, the phthalates are in your bloodstream. And there’s no evidence that the amount of phthalates that are in your bloodstream from applying nail polish is toxic to humans. There is no evidence. And that’s how they got away with this, with allowing these chemicals into the human body. Well, there’s no evidence that the amount of phthalates that leach out of nail polish into the bloodstream are toxic to humans. That was the regulations that were passed. They spent millions and millions of dollars to pass what’s called the Toxic Substance Control Act. And that is the guidelines at the federal level for chemicals to be introduced into our environment. You have to show that it’s toxic to humans within 24 hours. It’s not.
But give me a five-year-old girl that paints her 10 little fingers and 10 little toes once a week for 25 years. Now she’s 28, 30 years old, and now she wants to get pregnant and hopefully have a healthy pregnancy and a healthy delivery. Chicago, 2016. 346 pregnant women. In the eighth month of pregnancy, they collected urine and they measured for five phthalates. There are many, but they measured five, including BPA, the one that many of us have heard about. And they put the results into fourths, the lowest amount, the next, the third, and the highest. They followed the offspring of those pregnancies for seven years. And when the children turned seven years old, they did Wechsler IQ tests on them, the official IQ tests. There’s not much in medicine that’s all or every, but this was every, Katie. Every child whose mother was in the highest category of phthalates in urine during pregnancy compared to the children of mothers in the lowest category, every child in the highest category, their IQ was seven points lower. 6.7 to 7.4 points lower than the kids whose moms were low in phthalates, every single one of them.
Now, that doesn’t mean anything to people until you understand a one-point difference in IQ is noticeable. A seven-point difference is a difference between a child working really hard, getting straight A’s in school, and a child working really hard, getting straight C’s. This child doesn’t have a chance in hell, excuse me, of ever excelling. Now just Google phthalates and neurogenesis, nerve growth. Here come the studies. The higher the phthalates, the more inhibition of your brain cell growth. So mom who started as a little girl applying nail polish, if her body didn’t detox and get rid of it and it accumulates in the body over the years, along with all the other sources of phthalates, like credit card slips, I never touch a credit card slip. When they bring the slip to the table to sign, I put my nail to hold it down, and then I sign it, and I leave it there. I never pick it up. Because when you hold a credit card slip, the amount of bisphenol A in your bloodstream within three or four minutes goes up by over 200%. Right away, it’s in your bloodstream. And so I take a picture of the credit card slip with my phone. With my iPhone. So it’s on my iPhone. I’ve got a record for my accounting, but I don’t pick it up. You have to learn the little things like this to do.
And that’s what our event is about, you know, is about talking about all these exposures and then what do you do about it? And when you hear the scientists talk about this. I went to seven countries and interviewed over 60 scientists, the world leaders on this topic. And when you hear it, first, it’s a little startling to hear, but then you hear what to do. Oh, that makes sense. I can apply that principle. And in six months, you’ve turned things around. You know, you’ve gotten glass storage containers instead of Tupperware. Because your plastic storage containers leach phthalates into your food. And the list goes on and on. You’ve got houseplants in every room. You’re using organic nail polish and shampoos and all of that.
Katie: I love how you always know the data and can really support the things you’re explaining so clearly. And people are probably seeing me post on Instagram. I have a recent houseplant addiction. So this is actually great news. I’m like, this is now a doctor-approved addiction. But I have houseplants all over my house, mainly because also bringing nature in is a very happy thing for me. And I just see them and feel grateful all day. But that’s great to know that they really do have a well-documented effect on indoor air quality. Because I’ve talked before about indoor air can be more toxic than outdoor air. In fact, it often is. And so this is an easy way to bring both beauty and clean air to your home.
I know you also started this episode with the example of toothpaste. And this was one of the reasons I actually ended up developing a toothpaste for families was reading that poison control label and realizing I didn’t want that anywhere near my kids. And that there were actually safe alternatives that outperform the toxic ones when they actually are compared side to side. So, I love that you talked about that as well.
And you touched on some of the big categories. But I would guess many of the moms listening are hearing this and going, oh, wow, two things. How do I avoid these things? But also I heard hope in your message, which when you said even in just six months we can start to turn this around. So I think that’s important to remember as well. All is not lost. The body is infinitely capable of moving toward better health at all times. So what are some strategies, especially in really curating our home environments, to create a safe place for our kids? That they can reduce their exposure to all these things you’ve explained.
Dr. Tom: Really good question. And to your houseplant topic, you know, one of the lead authors of the NASA research, he wrote a book, it’s on Amazon called How to Grow Air. And you say, what? Grow air? Yes. Just go to Amazon and you order the book and you don’t need to because we’ve got all the handouts for you. But if you want to, you go there and you learn all the science behind why these plants are so beneficial to bring the healthy outside world inside.
But if the, one of the, I don’t know, I guess it’s a challenge for me that I’m always the one that is talking with the wake-up attitude. You know, it’s like, wake up. Wake up! And it can be overwhelming, and I know it is. That’s why the subtitle to my most recent book, You Can Fix Your Brain, the subtitle says it all, and we emphasize this so much in the Inflammation Equation. And the subtitle was Just One Hour a Week to the Best Memory, Productivity, and Sleep You’ve Ever Had. And that’s the secret of success.
You tell your family, listen, every Tuesday night after dinner or every Saturday afternoon or whenever it is, you know, you pick a time. Don’t bother me. I’m going to spend one hour and I’m going to learn a little more about how we can be healthier. And then you go back to one of your previous episodes on storage containers, kitchen storage containers, right? And you look for the glass ones or you go to my book. I give you three URLs, Miles Kimball and Amazon and whatever the third one was. And you say, oh, those are okay. Oh, I like those. And you order three round ones and two square ones and one for the pie. You pay with a credit card. It took an hour. You’re done for the week. But never again will you poison your family with minute amounts of these toxins unknowingly because you’re using glass storage containers.
And then next week, you look at houseplants and which houseplants to get. And then next week, it’s organic makeup. And then next week, it’s organic shampoos, but just one hour a week. That’s it. And in six months, you see someone that you haven’t seen for a while and say, wow, what happened to you? You look so young and you look great. What happened to you?
And that’s what happens for everyone if they operate from progress, not perfection. If you think you have to get it all right today and be perfect, you’re going to, excuse the analogy, but throw the baby out with the bathwater. You do one step at a time. It becomes a habit and part of your life. And then you go on to the next step. And that’s the secret to success. And we emphasize that every day. We talk to Bruce Lipton about this, about the secret to success in implementing lifestyle changes. We’ve talked to a couple of other of our experts on this. So that people, we recognize how easy it is to be overwhelmed. And that’s why we take the extra time. Here’s the baby steps you start with. Just start here. And then notice down the road how much better this is. Then go to the next step. One step at a time.
Katie: Yeah, I think there’s such wisdom in that because I know there’s even studies in psychology showing that leads to greater long-term change than if someone tries to make a massive wide-scale change all in one day, that’s very likely to not work out for the long-term. Whereas those small baby steps that compound over the course of years can make such a dramatic difference. And even small tips, like I love your one about, and just wanted to highlight, like take a picture of your receipt because I have found even from a tax perspective, my accountant prefers this because now they’re all in one digital file on my phone versus this box of receipts he has to sort through. And I think people often don’t realize there are big levels of things like phthalates in those receipts. And that’s just one easy way that you’ve removed that whole entire exposure.
I think another important part of this, as we go through those baby steps as parents, I think is to involve our kids in the process of that and educate them, not in a fear-based way, but in a way that they can understand their environment better. Same thing with their food choices, with their lifestyle choices. If we can give them the tools to make great decisions about that from a young age, because of course they won’t always be in our houses. They won’t always be under our care. And so I feel like that foundational knowledge will serve them throughout their whole lives. And I know you have a little one as well. I would love to hear how you are building that education from him in a young way. I know you walk the walk and you model this as well. But any tips for parents on really bringing the kids into the decision-making of those conversation, so they get to integrate these things as lifestyle habits as well.
Dr. Tom: You bet. You bet. We have rituals that we do, you know, in the morning. We have morning coffee and fresco, which is a little bit of diluted watermelon juice with some probiotics in it for our son. And my wife and I have coffee. And in the evening when we’re going to sleep, we do, we live in Costa Rica, so we do a scorpion check. We always check the bedroom for scorpions, you know, and only two or three times in four years have we found them. But great. But so we do scorpion check. And Daddy, you didn’t look over there. Oh, thank you. And then sometimes, now Gio reminds me, my son reminds me sometimes if I forget, Daddy, did you turn off the WiFi? Oh, thank you, Gio. Yeah. So we turn off the WiFi at night. And that’s a little thing that you can do that helps them to understand this is a tool that we use, but when you don’t need it, you don’t want that energy around.
And I’m sure you’re familiar with the studies that were done, kids in school, where they planted some seeds in soil in two different containers. And one they put in a room right next to the router for WiFi. And the other in another room, same kind of room, same kind of sunlight. Everything else is the same. And the one by the router barely grew anything at all. But the one in the other room just flourished. So having kids understand about Wi-Fi toxicity is so we start that with our son this early and it’s when we turn off the router at night. All these little things that we talk about. And we have Contigo coffee containers, you know, to keep. And I make the coffee in there in the morning. But, when we pour into the cup, the top of the Contigo is plastic. And I don’t really like that. So I never fill it up to the top. And then when we’re pouring it into our coffee cup, we unscrew and take the top off and say, nope, no plastic for me. Thank you. And so our son hears us doing that, and he’s starting to get the idea about plastics.
Any little thing that you can think of to bring them into the equation. And what I’m finding, I’m learning from my wife because she’s really good at this. She’s talked to our son since he was born like he was a little adult. You know, she does it, and I fell prey to being a little more, oh, hi, you know, like that with him at first. Now I talk to him more like a little adult, but for the first year or two, I was not. And he understands so much. They’re so smart. And if they’re given permission to express themselves, I’m startled by what comes out of him, how observant he is of things that I sometimes miss. So the more we talk to them about the things that are important to us, the more they absorb and will implement in their lives.
Katie: I absolutely agree. One of my parenting first principles is that from the moment of birth, they are already their own infinite autonomous being. And I get the extreme joy of walking their childhood with them as their mom, but they’re already infinite beings capable of so much. And I think it’s a gradual, beautiful process during childhood to, like you talked about, learn to hand over that autonomy to them in a way with a good foundation where they can make solid decisions. And I see again and again, and I’m blown away by the ability of kids to make amazing choices, especially when they’re given great information to build those choices from. And that beautiful hand-off, my older ones now, I’ve got one who’s almost 18 and just seeing that hand-off sort of happen in the full way and him step into adulthood has been a beautiful and a little bittersweet as his mom process. But I think it’s awesome to hear. I think you’re doing it right from the very beginning. And you’ve mentioned your event a couple of times. I want to make sure we have time to really talk about that as well. And of course I will have links in the show notes, but can you walk us through what that’s going to be and everything that’s included and where people can find it?
Dr. Tom: You bet. You bet. It’s the Inflammation Equation, and it’s theinflammationequation.com/wellnessmama. And it’s one hour a day, about an hour a day, a little more, a little less for eight days. We really condensed it down to tell a story every day. And my friend and partner, Tom Malterre, and I will do a little summary at the end. Could you believe when Dr. Bland, the founder of Functional Medicine, said that a negative thought, is just as powerful stimulating the immune system as exposure to the SARS-CoV-2 virus? Whoa.
And then we interviewed a woman who had completely put her multiple sclerosis into remission. And she was in a wheelchair, unable to walk. She had eight lesions on her brain. And now she’s symptom-free and had two lesions left on her brain. And we asked her, what was the most difficult thing for you to accept that you had to change? And she paused for a minute. And she said, toxic relationships and how the emotional side of one’s health can have such a profound impact on your health and well-being. That you stimulate so many stress hormones when we have toxic relationships that will pull on the chain, creating the vulnerabilities that we develop. And so every day is these aha moments. Hopefully that people will have an aha moment, how it might relate to them. And then here’s the things you do for that. You know, to begin to be more aware and to begin to shift. And once again, it’s always progress, not perfection. Just take some baby steps, head in the right direction.
Katie: I’m so glad you brought up that example. And I love your mentality of progress, not perfection. I think that keeps us focused on the positive and the movement towards something good rather than the fear and the movement away from something bad. In fact, at an event last year, someone who was doing TikTok videos came up and wanted to record a video. And the question I was given for this video were, what are the worst things we can put in our body? And I listed fear, guilt, and shame as some of the worst things we can put in our body. And I think the person wanted Roundup or gluten or sugar or whatever. But I explained that if we’re in those states, if we’re afraid of everything we’re exposed to, if we’re living in that fear, we could be on the most, quote unquote, perfect diet on the planet. We could have everything dialed in and be taking all the supplements. But if we’re approaching everything from that perspective, it’s not going to benefit our body as much as it could. So I love that you guys even delve into that side. Is this an event where people could watch with their kids as well if they wanted to, especially if they have older kids who are interested in learning?
Dr. Tom: Oh, there’s no reason why not. Yes, you bet. And we try to make it, you know, I do analogies like you pull at a chain, it breaks at the weakest link. We continually try to make it because I know the topic is an overwhelming topic, how to change the direction of your health. It’s an overwhelming topic. So our goal is to make it as aha as possible. Aha, oh, I understand that one. And then to have patience with yourself, you know, to take it a step at a time. And for young children, I don’t know. I’m not sure about that. But, you know, if someone’s in the teenage years, I think for sure they will understand and grab this. And some things will stay with them, hopefully be kind of catalytic. Well, I’m not going to use nail polish, but I might want the organic nail polisher, you know, whatever it might be. But yes, yes, I would suspect.
Katie: Well, and I find with teenagers, sometimes even just hearing the same things they’ve heard from me from another source can help it integrate a little better because they do have a natural little bit of autonomy happening from parents in those teenage years. So I love this as a resource for kind of whole families. And I already have a list of key takeaways from this episode. I’m putting those in the show notes for you guys at wellnessmama.com, including giving myself permission to get even more houseplants. But any other key takeaways or baby steps people can start with that you want to leave people with today? And of course, I’ll include the link so they can really do a deep dive through your event as well.
Dr. Tom: Yeah, thank you. The primary takeaway message is that our environment is fueling our disease. That’s the primary takeaway message. And the most common source of environmental trigger is what’s on the end of your fork. So learning what foods work and don’t work for you is really important. But now our air and our water and our homes, there’s a lot to learn. And once again, it’s progress, not perfection. And you just start with the baby steps, one thing at a time. And in six months, I’m not exaggerating, in six months, you look different. You’re down a belt size or two, or you’re a dress size smaller. There’s more life in your skin. There’s more vitality. And people say, what happened to you? And you say, well, you know, I got rid of my plastic storage containers. I changed out my cosmetics. I’m using organic shampoos. I got rid of that silly toothpaste that’s call national poison control if your child eats it, right? And I just started doing this and this. And they look at you like, wow. And they’re overwhelmed by all the little things that you can easily say you’ve done over the last six months. So if there’s one takeaway message, it’s understand there are many things to look at, but you do it in baby steps so it’s digestible and easy to implement. And accumulatively over time, there is no reason why you cannot arrest and reverse the direction of any disease, whatever it is.
Katie: Well, I love that to end on a note of such hope and optimism and have a much deeper understanding of what we’re facing and really practically how to start improving that equation for all of us. And Dr. Tom, it’s always truly a joy to get to talk to you. I’m glad we got to have this catch-up and get to record it this time. Thank you so much for your time. It’s truly a pleasure for you to get to chat with you today.
Dr. Tom: Thank you so much for the opportunity.
Katie: And thank you as always for listening and sharing your most valuable resources, your time, your energy, and your attention with us today. We’re both so grateful that you did. And I hope that you will join me again on the next episode of the Wellness Mama podcast.
If you’re enjoying these interviews, would you please take two minutes to leave a rating or review on iTunes for me? Doing this helps more people to find the podcast, which means even more moms and families could benefit from the information. I really appreciate your time, and thanks as always for listening.
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