Dr. Cates: Hi there. I’m Dr Trevor Cates. Welcome to the spa doctor podcast. On today’s podcast, we’re talking about how to avoid hormone disruptors in your home. My guest is Dr. Lindsey Berkson, who has been a leader in functional medicine and women’s health for decades. She was a scholar at an estrogen think tank at Tulane University where she worked with top scientists that have discovered how hormones function and dysfunction. Doctor Berkson is now a professor for physicians, pharmacists, and other healthcare professionals for continuing education courses on hormones, nutrition, and the environment. Doctor Berkson has authored 21 books and host The Doctor Berkson Best Health Radio. She had breast cancer 24 years ago and has made remission. Her mission Doctor Berkson now specializes with science based functional medicine tools and working with breast cancer survivors to do the same. On today’s podcast, Doctor Berkson explains how a group of chemicals in our environment called endocrine disrupting chemicals are linked to a number of health issues that are on the rise. She walks us through a typical day and how we’re exposed to these chemicals in our own homes. And she shares practical tips to reduce these exposures and boosts detoxification to help protect our health today and for generations to come. So please enjoy this interview.

Dr. Cates: Doctor Berkson is so great to have you on my podcast.

Dr. Berkson: Oh, I am excited to be here. You know what used to keep human beings down for the whole history of the planet was that only the people in power had the information and the little worker bees, they didn’t know anything. And now with shows like yours, we can get critical information out to the everyday person so they can become empowered and hopefully live a safer life.

Dr. Cates: Yeah, absolutely. Thank you. It’s so true. I love doing this podcast to help get information out there. And we certainly are talking a lot today about educating and being aware. And I know some of this information might seem a little scary to people, but we also have, you’re gonna have some solutions in chips and we’re talking about in the Quran, disrupting chemicals, hormone disrupting chemicals in our environment. So let’s firstly explain what that is. We’ve talked about it some on The Spa Dr podcast that your research goes really deep. You’ve been studying this for a long time, so I’m excited to have you share your valuable information today.

Dr. Berkson: Thank you. Yeah. I wrote one of the very first books on endocrine disruptors, called Hormone Deception. Based on that book, I was invited to be a hormone scholar at the first environmental think tank with all the scientists that we’re putting together, this whole new understanding. So around the 1990s, Lou Gillette was at the University of southern California and they started to discover in Lake Apopka that there were some alligators, male alligators that had really tiny little wee-wees. He actually went out and measured the Phallus lengths and discovered that male alligators were being feminized and other scientists were noticing first in animal life that we were starting to have gender bending. We had University of Berkeley was able to show that atrazine that used to be heavily sprayed on apples if they were sprayed on frogs. They could really make hermaphroditic frogs. They could change sexual preference and sexual reproductive capabilities by exposure to chemicals.

Dr. Berkson: Now normally a hormone is part of your body’s internet system. It sends emails to cells to tell cells what to do. Endocrine disruptors send damaging emails to sell so you don’t get your healthy emails. So endocrine disruptors can mimic what your own body does. Block the hormones. Your body should, the emails your body should send, amplify them. They can fuss with the normal signals or emails that your hormones should send. And the big deal is that hormones aren’t just about sexy and reproductive things. We now have discovered that these hormonal emails, the hormonal physiologic Internet system of your body runs your brain, runs your gut, runs your kidneys, that works in concert with everything in your body. So if they are now we live in a chemical soup where many of these chemicals can, free up your normal hormonal email system. We’re looking at adverse consequences down the road, such as infertility, autism, behavioral issues, contributing to many of the woes that appear to be on the increase. So that’s like a little bit of a summary about endocrine disruption. It’s a very big deal. Um, in January 31st, 2017, Harvard put on a public forum. If you just Google Harvard public form endocrine disruptors, you can get to it. Many of the scientists that I worked with at Tulane, we’re part of that forum and they said there’s three major threats to humanity. The first is nuclear war. Everyone agrees on that. The second is global warming, depends on who you voted for, if you agree on that. And the third is endocrine disruption because it’s affecting fertility, the way you carry a baby to birth the human brain. That’s what my last book was called Sexy Brain because there’s environmental castration and an environmental cognitive decline occurring. So it’s a very big deal that people understand this so they can get some tools to reduce their exposure and keep their family and grandkids and all the future generations healthier as possible.

Dr. Cates: Right. Um, it’s so important and I think a lot of times people hear the word hormones or hormonal health. They’re thinking estrogen, progesterone and testosterone only. And that a lot of times people think, Oh, if I’m not trying to get pregnant or if I’m not, um, you know, I’m not trying to have babies or something like, then it doesn’t really matter because my hormones are fine. But they impact us in so many ways and yes, they do impact our cycle. Women cycles and fertility. There’s also a lot more that our hormones play a role. And you touched on some of it when you’ve mentioned something like autism, people are probably thinking, what does that have to do with hormones, but our hormones play a such a big role in our health and in a number of ways, right?

Dr. Berkson: Your hormones real, your brain, they totally rule your brain. Your hippocampus is the physiologic analogy. If your soul, that’s where you really live. You have the most blood flow. Each cell in the hippocampus has the highest concentration per cell volume of Mitochondria. When a cell needs energy, it gets it from these organelles called Mitochondria. So your hippocampus really kind of runs who you are and it’s got receptors, which is how a hormone delivers. It’s email two receptors completely flush for estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, oxytocin, and many other hormones. In fact, the one study, it was a group of studies called the Cashe County studies out of Utah where they were following people before they had dementia and followed them. It was called a prospective study across time to see who develop dementia, what reduced the incidents of dementia by 50% nothing else has ever been able to do that was if a woman had been taking estrogen for at least 10 years because the hippocampus is run by estrogen, so from a very early age, your brain and even in the womb, you’re brain is affected by hormones. And if a woman during pregnancy or right before pregnancy is exposed to a lot of hormone disruptors like she drinks a lot of cokes or even a bubbly water out of cans that have the lining of Bisphenol a, we now know that that has an effect on the baby’s genes that help makes the baby’s brain. Those babies have a higher incidence of autism and all of these effects are what’s called transgenerational. One woman’s baby can be affected. To this by the way that she lived. And then even if that baby doesn’t have any more exposures, which we know all of us do have exposures, the next three to four generations are continually exposed. So this is a legacy that’s passed on. So we must say the buck stops here with information from shows like yours to give us some tools with which to protect our genes and our signaling systems and the legacy of the generations to come.

Dr. Cates: Okay, great. Thank you. And let’s kind of walk through a typical person’s day, starting from the morning when we wake up, just to give people an idea of all the different ways that we’re exposed.

Dr. Berkson: Okay. I just need to add one caveat. So one of the most important studies ever run was a set of studies called the teen studies put on by the EPA and they put little monitors on a representative sample, a little under 4,000 Americans to monitor their exposure to endocrine disrupting chemicals. Where do we get this stuff? And they publish their data was very intricate, longterm study over 10 years and they discovered that the bad news is, is that most of our exposure comes from our very own home. The good news is is that most of our exposure comes from our very own home because we have, we’re masters of our home, most of us and we have control over that, so the biggest exposure they’ve discovered was in the bathroom in the morning. It starts with the shower. You actually are exposed by standing under a shower for a number of minutes to more water than you’ll ever drink throughout the day.

Dr. Berkson: And we become all more mindful about ingesting water, but many of us are not mindful about the water we’re exposed to in the shower. There’s a lot of birth control pills and hormones in the water there. There’s organic material that when it’s combined in a swirls around before it comes out of the spout that makes trihalomethanes carcinogens and your pores are opening up wide under the heat of the water and you’re taking it in, buying a $50 Berkey shower filter and then changing it every six months helps reduce about 95% of that exposure. It’s an easy fix. You step out of the shower, everyone always says, do you hop in the shower? But no one ever says, do you hop out of the shower? I’ve always wondered about that. And the, you start using personal care products and already your pores are wider opened than normal because you’d been in the heat and the average teen is exposed to 16 to 19 endocrine disrupting personal care products.

Dr. Berkson: If they’re not buying green products in the bathroom and the adults a little bit tiny, less than that, but that kind of starts your day in an endocrine disrupting way in an endocrine disrupting way. We’ll keep the doctor on your way. Not a way. So that’s part of the issue. Um, we also track a lot of what’s outside of the house into the house on the bottom of our shoes. So we talk a lot and there’s been intricate, elegant studies about cleaning, pet pause and cleaning your own shoes four or five times, rubbing it on a mat outside the door in four or five times, rubbing it on a mat inside the door. Cornell did a whole bunch of set of elegant studies just doing that, reduces a tremendous burden of chemicals. But a study came out last week was published in Environment and Buildings and it really blew everybody’s mind because a lot of contemporized homes are energy efficient, which means that the air is tightly held within the house.

Dr. Berkson: So they measured what was going on in modern air in these brand new homes. If you had your homes built in the five to 10 years, they discovered that most sheet rock is made of Gypson, which is recycled material and has a high mercury content. There’s no safe level of mercury. People are trying to take it out of their amalgams and out of their mouth. It’s in the home and it’s all heavy metals are endocrine disruptors and they all put you at higher risk of breast cancer. They also found that these engineered click woods, we’re all getting wood floors. If you don’t get solid wood floors, anytime you use any kind of glue, there’s urea formaldehyde in that. Even though there’s carb to regulatory levels that keep it down in the salesperson will tell you what we, we’re really in sync with California, which is such a mindful, stringent state. It all synergizes and there’s an additive effect throughout the day where the levels go very, very high. So to protect yourself, you only want to use solid wood floor. Don’t want to use carpet. You want, if you already have that in your home, don’t worry. Get free standing air filters like Iq air filters that they use at MD Anderson Surgical theater and it cleans out your air and open up windows even in the window, winter all throughout your home to move to ventilate, move stuff out of your house. Now when you get in your car, the big deal of exposure of your car is if the garage is attached. When you start the car, pull it right out of the garage. Don’t let it sit while you’re fussing through your person going through everything. Because a lot of the chemicals in the fuel go right underneath the door, separates your garage to your home.

Dr. Berkson: And within a few minutes, Cornell found that those chemicals are up in the master bedroom. When you park your car, Park your car in the garage and let the doors stay open a few feet. If you’re in a dangerous area, just a few feet for five to 15 minutes will out gas a lot of that heavy chemical out into the um, street and to the community where it just becomes a smaller amount in a big set of air. But when it goes into your home, especially if you have young kids or you’re going to get pregnant in the near future, all these chemicals add up.

Dr. Cates: Yeah, I mean that was our, um, that’s amazing. Wave only just like talked about part of the day. Right. And that’s just the home and we’re haven’t even talked about food and drinking water. Um, and, and so that’s just, it’s, it’s just overwhelming and we are trying to do a good thing by being more environmentally friendly. And those materials that you’ve talked about of going Mark Green and greener homes, more sustainable energy saving, there’s, there’s a lot of focus on that. But I, and I think that a lot of people think that it’s, it means the same as being healthy, being healthy for your healthy home. But unfortunately it doesn’t necessarily mean that. And I, I know I was looking at redoing the flooring in my home and I would talk to

Dr. Berkson: It’s huge, it’s huge. I had a flood recently and trying to find really healthy flooring that you can afford. It’s been stressful.

Dr. Cates: Yeah. This pretty much, I think the only thing is like you said, hardwood floor, which is really expensive.

Dr. Berkson: Well, I found, you know, this is what saw I’d been just do, I just had a flood and I have to replace 1300 square feet of floor and the insurance company only covered a small area because there was rug there before, which was an organic rug, but it still bothered me. I finally found that Bruce Hardwood floors have solid wood floors. If you buy the salad, Wood’s not the engineered woods and of all things, Home Depot sells align of Bruce Hardwood floors that are affordable. It’s still more than the $2 99 cents a square foot that you get at Florida core lumber liquidators or any of these other places. You know, it’s about $4 you could get some good wood for $4 a square foot where the environmental places are mostly five to six to $10 a square foot. So there are some answers. Right now I’m living with subfloors till I figured this whole thing out because you inhale all of that and it makes really a very big difference. I just want, it’s such a big deal. When I first came out with this book, even my best friend was upset. She didn’t want to read it. It was too dooms day and now she won’t buy anything without using the environmental working group App where you can snap a picture of a product and figure out where it’s assessed. Because you know, we’re at the age where a lot of our friends are getting cancers and she really cares. But when, so I was a scholar at the think tank of the scientists who care about this issue. And for 33 years they put on an estrogens in the environment conferences. The last six or seven years, we’re called E. Dot. Hormones people started to get so upset about all this information that there’s almost no way, there’s so much in our food, so much in our water. The air is surrounded by all of this chemicals that if the evening dinners, the heads of environmental health science universities from all of the major universities, we’re starting to get drunk because they were so absolutely upset that there was no way back. So for the very last conference, because the center for bio environmental research, that was the name of the thinktank closed down a few years ago for the last conference, John McLaughlin, my mentor said, forget all these doomsday, we’re going to just put in calls for papers and presentations for remediation for solutions. Let’s see what’s out there for answers. And we got scientists from all over the world giving such amazing answers where you can turn the worst things around lake Apopka where Lou Gillette first found the feminized alligators, they’ve cleaned that entire lake up. Now there are answers, but of course government and regulatory bodies have to get on it and consumers call for that. But once again, you have so much control over your own home where a lot of your major exposure comes from, which is why shows like this are absolutely invaluable. So don’t get absolutely upset. That’s the first part of awareness. Then realize that you can take action and there is hope.

Dr. Cates: Right? And I do include a whole section on us and my book clean skin from my fan and the clean body section. I talk about some of the things that you’re talking about taking your shoes off before you coming at the door instead of instead of, you know, wearing your shoes and bringing tracking and everything. Using a water filtration systems for both, for drinking water and for shower, home, bath, that all of that and alternatives to cleaning products and home products. And there was a lot that we can do. I want to talk some more with you. Okay. I just have to say this for these, these tips as you’re going through like actual solutions because that is, that’s how we’re going to change this is to actually come up with the solutions rather than just talking about the issue.

Dr. Berkson: Well, because I had all this flood, I had to look at the floors and I dove into my pantry in the nooks and crannies and I found all these months, my strappings and I was horrified and we discovered that there was a space around a pipe where mice were getting in. So they said, oh, well you have to get this sprayable. It’s installation. Go over to home depot. I lifted up the can and the chemical content took the whole entire side of the can. Well, that’s what everybody does to block calls. So what we did instead for like five, six bucks was we just put steel wool all around that piping and put a little screen and just screwed the screen around it. We totally kept the mice out with an alternative, low tech, inexpensive answer. Don’t take the answers from the professionals that are giving you a can with a whole list of chemicals on them. Don’t spray your homes for bugs. Those pyrethroids that are the natural chrysanthemum chemical additive, they’d been shown in a number of the environmental journals since 2006 seven and eight to cause learning disabilities and anger issues in young kids because this an endocrine disruptor that affects your kid’s brain. So when something comes up in your family and you’ve got a bug, you’ve got a hole in the wall, you’ve got, you need new floor. You got to take the time to just look for natural answers that will expose your family to less, not more.

Dr. Cates: Right. And, and then also the, um, you know, we talk about hormones, we’re also at plays a role into, uh, other big issues with that are common in America, which is obesity and diabetes, right? So those are other, um, a lot of hormones impact those dizzy, those issues, health issues as well. So, I mean, I, it really, when you start to reduce the toxins in the environment, you start to look for solutions and alternatives. It, I mean, really if it’s important for all of us, it’s not just a certain group of people or a certain certain genetic predispositions, it’s really all of us.

Dr. Berkson: I think that’s so true. You know, depression and anxiety are really some of the biggest issues and they’re happening more and more in our children. Okay. Oxytocin is the hormone that makes you feel good with the world. It’s one of the reasons it’s a birthing hormone. It’s not just a contract. I’ll hormone to make the uterus contract for birth or the milk to let down for lactation. It helps the baby feel right with the world when it’s gone through the shock of birth. And many of these chemicals are oxytocin disruptors. And I’ve been thinking and many your neurotransmitters that give you the feel good feelings, follow your hormones. Estrogen, testosterone, progesterone around like little puppies. They’re all intertwined. So a lot of our mental issues, excuse me, that we’re having today. Not all, everything’s multifactorial, but I do believe that the endocrine disruption phenomena is playing a huge role into so many people being trigger, angry, unhappy, okay. Anxiety and depression in our children is skyrocketing as it is around the world. But it’s worse than America and our kids, 10% of our kids have been documented now to have Attention Deficit Disorder or somewhere on the autism spectrum more than any other country. And we use more chemicals and eat foods and plastics more than any other country. Okay.

Dr. Cates: Absolutely. So I want to get back to personal care products a little bit and, and understanding what are the, some of the ingredients. And most of the skin care products out there that are the biggest issues. And, and why, why, what is actually going on with those?

Dr. Berkson: Well, you probably could do this even better, but for example, parabins, um, are not good because parabins or endocrine disruptors and there’s a lot of things like Edta, there’s a number of different factors inside these products that act together to actually boost some of your tumor suppressor genes. So they have carcinogenic activity. So you have endocrine disruptors mixed together with DNA disruptors and it’s a recipe for disaster and you’re putting it all over your skin. We know you absorb all this through your skin because a lot of women take hormone replacement through topical delivery mode. So, also there can be, you know, if you, Oh, if you hold up the label and there’s so many chemical polysyllabic terms that you don’t even know what many of them mean that you know that you’re getting a huge whallop into your bloodstream. There was, aPakistani journal article that showed that some of the chemicals that they fed chickens to grow, which are similar to some of the care product chemicals, when they fed them to mice within six weeks, they developed hormone patterns that were exactly like polycystic ovarian syndrome. They would block the progesterone and elevate the testosterone within six weeks of consumption. So whatever you eat or you take on your skin has an immediate action and just a very few days. So if you’re putting on sunscreen, if you’re putting on skin lotion, if you’re putting on lipsticks, a lot of lipsticks contain lead to stabilize the pink and red color. And even though, organic lipsticks cost more money, you’re swallowing that every time you eat and red dyes have been linked to an increased risk of breast cancer. I wrote about that in hormone deception.

Dr. Berkson: So the dyes and colors that also come in the personal care products. But one of the things to answer this for me, you know, it’s difficult to ship things in glass. You can’t do it. And so most personal care products come in plastic. So how do you, and so you have these clean, pristine ingredients, but they’re in plastic. So how does that all work? I’ve, I, it’s a conundrum I think, but how does that work?

Dr. Cates: It is a, it is a conundrum because when you, when you ship glass or when you put things in glass, and especially with having, um, you know, we said we ship all of, you know, horsing, all skin care companies, we have to ship products, right? I mean I guess if you make your own and you keep them in class and that would be ideal. Right? But, um, it’s, it’s so, it’s expensive. It’s because of the weight you’re having, you’re using more fuel to transport it, all of that, those, those issues. And so, and then also then we used to have some of our products in, um, and glass and people would, they would break all the time and say this issue, is there something that you do to block it? Is it the right Ph so it won’t take it or keep it out of the heat? Cause it’s Mo, what do you do for that? Well. And one of the things too is, the other thing with plastics is then most of them are not recyclable. The majority of the skincare products that you see on the shelves aren’t recyclable plastic. And so that was one thing I learned too is it has to be recyclable plastic, plastic.

Dr. Cates: How did you figure that out? How did you figure out a recyclable good for you? I mean that’s like huge cause that’s going to be the wave of the future with plastics. So how did you figure that out? I’m impressed.

Dr. Cates: Well and well when I went to go to the packaging company where they have in their, they have these warehouses with all the different containers that you could choose from. And I went in and I said, so where’s the risk? 100% recyclable containers and this huge, huge room full of containers. And she points to this one little shelf and said that’s it. So you mean all of these products in here, they’re not recyclable and she, no. And she said, well part this part, like she would take them apart and she’d be like, well this part is recyclable but all this outer part is not and I don’t think people know that. So that is, you know, something we looked at. Now as far as the plastics getting into the products, we’re just hoping that people use them up quickly and I mean we’re using the products is there as stable as possible so that you are not getting any of that? The valleys, the plastics in the product.

Dr. Berkson: I think that’s so smart. If you buy a plastic personal care products, you need to use it within a month and then buy a new one later that you need to constantly renew it. One of the biggest things that ever happened at two lane at the think tank was one of the scientists discovered that if she took plastic container and washed it in the dishwasher with regular harsh detergent, not the kind that you buy at whole foods or the green can, you can buy it many different grocery stores now that it would cause little teeny scratches in it that you can’t see. And when rodents prep that we’re pregnant, we’re fed that water, they’re next generation were infertile and this made, we had TV cameras come in and everyone, this was big, big news. So you don’t want to have plastic laying around for a long time. You don’t want to use all those products that are underneath your sink that had been sitting there since 1942 before we’re all, you know, we’re on to something. You want to use them up. So it’s the, you have to use up your product pretty quickly and that will protect you better.
Dr. Cates: Yeah. And hopefully we can find, we can get more classics that are actually lined with some, like, like a glass lining or something. That is, that protects the products. But I mean right now we’re kind of limited with the, what’s available to us.

Dr. Berkson: The nice thing is that women do tend to process ballots in Bisbee and all life through their body faster than men do. Yeah. So it’s interesting. That was a little factoid for one of the presenters that at different, mmm. Study session was presented at one of the conferences. But you can move this stuff through you when you have regular detox. So detox needs to move mainstream and part of your life. But so is the plastic that your using recyclable?
Dr. Cates: Yes. 100% recyclable. Absolutely. Yeah.
Dr. Berkson: Yeah. That is everyone should buy your, your care skin for line. That is so important. You know, there’s a big thing that came out two, three days ago that these young, I think Asian students discovered that they could take cactus and make a plastic product that was then recyclable and it’s going to be a big news. So with that forward thinking that you have, that’s huge. And if we care about the planet, besides the great ingredients that are safer and healthier, that is a big reason to move and work together with you and what you do.

Dr. Cates: Thank you. Thank you. So another thing that that concerns me and that you know, I think it’s important to talk about is the combination of all of these chemicals in our bodies and that that actually is research that hasn’t been done very much. Right?
Dr. Berkson: Well it’s so interesting that you say that. You know, common sense says we live in a, um, huge chemical soup and there’s gotta be a lot of synergistic activity and attitude activity. So my mentor, Dr. John McLaughlin, is considered one of the fathers of endocrine disruption because the model friend to cringe disruption was diethylstilbestrol the first synthetic, most powerful estrogen ever invented by Sir Charles Dobbs given to pregnant women as a prenatal vitamin for almost 36 years till it was labeled a class one carcinogen. And Sir Charles Dobbs went on to create the field of plastics. So he took the molecular structure of estrogen and he made that the basic structure of plastics, which is why they have so much estrogenicity. So John figured out the des Story, which is a whole nother conversation. Um, and he wrote an article that he published in science about the additives city and synergistic, synergistic behavior of living in a world with so many chemicals at the same time.

Dr. Berkson: At that time in history. His research couldn’t be replicated at that time and he almost was, his career was almost ruined because it’s a big deal in science. Your data needs to be replicated by another independent laboratory for it to have legs, for, to have some power. And He, and he had to go almost done on antidepressants. It was a very big deal. This happened in this career and now article after articles are coming out when people have more sensitive machinery and analysis capabilities to show that yes, indeed. And it’s only common sense when you have a whole bunch of chemicals, they can all make things work worse together and they can have impact on each other. And we don’t know very much about it, but we do know that because that makes sense. And even though John in the beginning was the first person on the front lines that was vilified, we do know that the more you can reduce exposure from morning till night and from preconception to seniorhood, the better and safer you shall be.

Dr. Berkson: It’s a dictum that makes common sense without making yourself crazy. And one of the things I say in hormone deception, so you don’t get absolutely discombobulated and stressed out, is that all you have to do is improve yourself about 25 to 50% you don’t have to be perfect. They looked at the sperm of Danish farmers and they looked at farmers who were organic and eight of percentage of their diet is organic food. And they looked at motility and shape of sperm, which are the hallmarks of sperm health. And then they looked at farmers who weren’t organic and weren’t eating any organic food. And these studies, which I talk about in hormone deception showed that if they just a 25% of their diet is organic, they had much happier, healthier, better shaped, better swimming around, better motility, sperm. You didn’t have to eat 100% of the time organic. So I say to people, don’t get so stressed out. If you try and be 100% perfect, you’re going to let everything go and say forget it. It’s too much. But if you just each week do a very few number of things that are doable, manageable, then take a breath. It’s improving everything.

Dr. Cates: Yeah, absolutely. So the big things, the big takeaways here are to reduce your exposure to toxins, air, water, food, your home, personal care products, all that, all of the things you have control over are the places to start rate. Just reduce your total exposure. And that’s gonna make a big difference like eating organic, putting a filter in your shower. Like you mentioned air filter in the home. Just some basic things that that can help reduce our exposure. And then you also mentioned detoxification, right? So, and we want to make sure that our detoxification pathways are working really well so that whatever, we can’t avoid whatever, we are still exposed to it because we can’t avoid 100% that we are doing everything we can to help our bodies. Right. So what do you recommend as far as detoxification?
Dr. Berkson: Well first of all, if you read hormone deception, I give all these things. I take you on a tour of your, your home, your office, your supermarket cart. I talk about detox. Detox is real. We’ve been doing it in firemen. They’re the most exposed profession that we have. And a lot of times they’ll go into burning buildings and they get cognitive decline and very ill and we want to get them back on the job. So they’ve started detoxing firemen in the 1950s and publishing that data, which is what I’ve used to really be the foundation for a lot of my mmm, detoxification programs because those were studied. They were used in humans. They were proved to be effective. They got these guys back on track. So there’s many different things you can do. Short detoxes, big detoxes. You just have to constantly detoxing because you’re constantly exposed. Like a one little simple thing to do is before you work out, take a little bit of B vitamins because that’ll make your bloodstream move faster, to move more things out as you sweat. And if you take a little bit of modified citrus Pectin, it’s a powder. It helps disassemble a lot of these chemicals that are stored inside your fat cells. And um, if you mix it with a tiny bit of Stevia and water because it doesn’t taste all that phenomenal, but with Stevia kind of blocks the taste. Just one little scoop of that in water a day is very, very gentle detox throughout the day. Don’t use nonstick cookware. Don’t buy furniture with the non stain fabric because all of those things are shown to have that. But yeah, if nothing else motivates you, my gang, a two lane, yeah.

Dr. Berkson: Combine their efforts with Harvard researchers and they did this amazing article that they published in plus one in February, 2017 and they took a whole bunch of women. You know, the biggest battle we have his weight, right? The biggest battle is it’s harder to lose weight in 2019 that it was in, I’m 1980 much harder for many of us, not all of us. So they took a whole bunch of women, put them on a weight loss, sensible diet, like a Mediterranean style diet with some exercise. Got the majority of these ladies to lose weight. And then they measured a number of endocrine disruptors in their bloodstream. The ones they chose were nonstick cookware and flame retardants, by the way, there’s a lot of flame retardants in the ocean and fish. It’s been everywhere. You know, it’s not just in mattresses. And the women who had the highest level of these chemicals in their bloodstream, okay, gain the weight back the fastest and gained the most back. They were the Yoyoers the most because their endocrine disruptors, were making their fat cells act nasty. So a number of endocrine disruptors today are called obesogens. Bruce Blumberg was a biologist, in southern California at UCLA that has come up with this term. I interviewed him for Hormone Deception. He’s actually just written a book on the obesogen effect. So if you want to stay thinner longer or beat the battle of the bulge, you also got a detox. So you have to get the stuff out of you that’s already in you and decrease your exposure to the stuff. So just not using nonstick cookware is a big start. That’s big that nonstick cookware aerosolizes when you heat up the pan and everyone in your family is inhaling it and it’s making all of your fat cells act against your efforts. So these are things, if you just know, you know, if nothing else will invigorated and motivate yeah. You to try and decrease exposure. The idea cause we get the most exasperated with how difficult it is to lose weight. And that’s also helpful if you detox along with weight loss on a regular basis, you tend to have much more management over the size of your waist.

Dr. Cates: 100%. That’s so, so true. And those components and nonstick cookware and the stain resistant chemicals and, and furniture, those are the ones that are really hard to remove from the body, right? Those are the ones that really stick around and they stay in the body more so than like you mentioned pthalates, some of these other components.

Dr. Berkson: Well, you know, so all these chemicals are lipophyllic. They love oil, they love fat. That’s why they stored in fat cells. So often in times when you do a detox, you’ll add a lot of really healthy oil to your detox, like olive oil or sesame oil. You’ll add while you’re doing the detox, really healthy oils throughout the day and make sure you’re not taking in bad oils. And that helps pull those chemicals along with something like modified citrus pectin out of your cells. You literally can kelate them out of your cellsand get rid of them through your feces and your urine. So it’s possible to do it, but you want it, you want to have really a good oil intake. Avocados, olives and olive oil and things. I’m not sure. Coconut oil craze is really big. It’s not, it’s not a bad oil, but it’s not one of those oils that helps you detox. I don’t think there’s anything, honestly in my opinion that can take the place of a cold pressed virgin organic olive oil. So I’m a big fan of using a lot of that. There’s so much data on olive oil, helpful on multiple levels. But the big thing is it also helps detox.
Dr. Cates: Great. Awesome. So this has been so fascinating. We can talk, I, I could keep asking you questions. We could talk forever.

Dr. Berkson: Well I love answering them.

Dr. Cates: So we’ll have to, we’ll have to have you back on another time. But we wanted to do a good overview today. So tell everybody where they can learn more about you, where they can get your book and, and get, you know, just by more information following you on social media.

Dr. Berkson: So I’m, I’m very active on Facebook at Dr. Lindsey Berkson and it Data Key, Lindsey Berkson. I’ve got a private and a professional very soon I’m opening up a membership and my Facebook postings, which I have been doing religiously every day for 12 years is going to go private and um, because I’ve been doing all of this as, because I love to serve even though I’m not a servant and I also have a radio show, doctor Berkson’s best health radio and I interview, I just interviewed Dr Bredesen who is reversing Alzheimer’s and I also have shows where I just talk about what’s going on in the news and because I’ve been in practice over 40 years and written 21 books and I’ve had radio shows most of that time I also have a degree in radio and TV besides medicine at you tend to see a bigger picture with all this data coming out and you have all these fascinating little stories of pay Chanson bumping into the scientists that came up with that theory. And like Corbin came up with the evening primrose theory and I was at the conference where he first years ago, it was 43 44 years ago where he first proposed that theory and debated Donald Ruden and got to hang out with Dr. Horivan and a lot of women with menstrual cramps just go on evening primrose oil and they never have a menstrual cramp again, all based on his work. And he’s not with us anymore today. So there’s a lot, no substitute for experience and having been around for a long time. So I kind of seed a lot of my blogs and my radio shows with that kind of thing. But what I mainly doing is, my main gig these days is I teach as a professor for a four M, which is one of the functional medicine certification programs and Bcca. So I teach once or twice a month around the world. I’m going in two weeks to Toronto to talk to a few thousand pharmacists. So if you’re in an area where I’m lecturing, it’s always nice to kind of hop in because it’ll be hours during the day and then you can come up and say hello. So I’m trying to make myself available as more and more of my colleagues pass away and there’s only so many of us that have been in the field since its beginning. So I like to be available. So stay tuned for my membership. You can go to my website, DrLindseyberkson.com and sign up for free on my membership ship site and then find out when things are happening. And then every now and then I send out an update and I try and mix it with what’s going on with things that are happening that are pertinent for you.

Dr. Cates: Okay, great. And we’ll have those links up in the show notes too to your website. And um, so it’s been so fascinating. Thank you so much for all that you’ve been doing and all of your research, your dedication to this, this, this field. It’s, it’s so vital and important to really clean up these, these toxins from our environment, from our bodies so that we can be healthier. Not just now, but for many generations to come.

Dr. Berkson: Well, I love that you’re doing the show because there is hope, but only if we all take action. And I love what you’ve done with your products. I don’t think there’s anybody else who’s done that. I mean you, we should be shouting from the, the rooftops because that’s what we need to do is have people with that sense of responsibility and accountability for doing that. So good for you. So I learned that by being on your show today, I always learn a few pearls myself after trying to share some. And we’re all women and we love blinging jewelry. So I love when we’re just stringing together the pearls and making all this fabulous art, which is really living life more as an art rather than a total struggle. So thank you for what you do too.

Dr. Berkson: All right, thank you.

Dr. Cates: Hi. I hope you enjoyed this interview today with doctor Berkson to learn more about her. You can go to the spa Dr Com, go to the podcast page with her information and you’ll find the links to her book, her website in the show notes while you’re at The SpDr.Com. I encourage you to join our community so you don’t miss our upcoming shows on The Spa Dr. Also, if you haven’t taken the skin quiz already, then I encourage you to do that. Just go to theskinquiz.com and it’s a free online quiz. You can take it, learn what information your skin’s trying to tell you about your health and what you can do about it at theseskinquiz.com and I invite you to join me on social media or on Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, youtube, and you can join the conversation there at The Spa Dr.is where you can find us at.And the wprd doctor is abbreviated Dr and I’ll see you next time on The Spa , Dr. Podcast..