In this second episode of a series on toxic products, Dr. Daniel Amen and Tana Amen give you tips to give the personal product supply in your bathroom a makeover. Learn the 10 ways that toxic products disrupt your health, as well as the most effective and easy way to make the gradual shift towards a healthier bathroom, and a healthier life.
Dr Daniel Amen: Welcome to The Brain Warrior's Way podcast. I'm Dr. Daniel Amen.
Tana Amen: And I'm Tana Amen. In our podcast, we provide you with the tools you need to become a warrior for the health of your brain and body.
Dr Daniel Amen: The Brain Warrior's Way podcast is brought to you by Amen Clinics, where we have been transforming lives for 30 years using tools like brain spect imaging to personalize treatment to your brain. For more information, visit AmenClinics.com.
Tana Amen: The Brain Warrior's Way podcast is also brought to you by Brain MD, where we produce the highest quality nutraceuticals to support the health of your brain and body. To learn more, go to BrainMD.com
Dr Daniel Amen: Welcome back to toxic product week. I'm just so proud of you for getting serious, even more serious, and that's totally what scans do for people. People get scans-
Tana Amen: Yeah, they make you nervous.
Dr Daniel Amen: ... and they see it's not quite what you want it to be. You ramp up your brain and that's sort of the whole idea behind The Brain Warrior's Way podcast. You're in a war for the health of your brain. When 60% of the lipstick in the United States sold has lead in it, it's a war.
Tana Amen: But here's the thing. There's so many great ... Well, here's what I found. There's so many great products out there that they feel invigorating. They're all minty and they're nice and they go on nicely. You don't have to give in to that. You can be a warrior. You can buy nice products that work that you don't have to give in to all the departments store brands.
Dr Daniel Amen: Well, and what's interesting, and then I want you to read the review, people go, "Oh, but it's expensive"-
Tana Amen: It's less expensive.
Dr Daniel Amen: "I can't afford it." For example, I use Kiss My Face shaving cream and yeah, it's probably three times more expensive than Barbasol, but it lasts 10 times longer, because the cans not always empty in a week. My travel one lasted me months, and so you can do this.
Tana Amen: Well, and here's the thing. Some of the products are more expensive compared to what, though? Compared to Chanel, compared to Sicily. Those products are really expensive. So some of the natural products, they might be more expensive than say if you're going to a drug store, but they're not more expensive than department stores, so they're actually a little less expensive.
Dr Daniel Amen: And what does it cost right to have brain fog, or what is your cost to have poison?
Tana Amen: And I just find myself using less overall.
Dr Daniel Amen: So read the review and then I've got a couple of lists.
Tana Amen: Okay. So this is from Luke668. "I love these podcasts. They've been so helpful for and my family to improve our life starting with our brains. Between knowledge from the Amens' books and their supplements, we have everything we need to succeed and become better for ourselves and children. I love it. I love it. I love it."
Dr Daniel Amen: Awesome. Thank you so much.
Tana Amen: Yes.
Dr Daniel Amen: So 10 ways toxins poison your brain and increase the incidence of mental illness. One, they decrease blood flow to the brain. They disrupt your endocrine system.
Tana Amen: That's a big one.
Dr Daniel Amen: They impair your immune system. They disrupt the gut microbiome, resulting in leaky gut. They increase the risk of diabetes and obesity. In fact, you're the one that first told me about obesogens that often are common for people who live around the Mississippi River because of the poisons dumped into the river.
Tana Amen: From all of the plants, the chemical plants.
Dr Daniel Amen: The toxins damage your DNA. They impair your enzyme systems. They harm your organs. They alter gene expression, and they damage cell membranes. And this is why this is serious. This is important. So how do you know if your brain is toxic? Like me and Tana, before we got serious about this, if you put toxic products on your body where you're not really reading the ingredients. Do you smoke? Are you around secondhand smoke? Do you smoke marijuana? Do you use conventional cleaning products and inadvertently breathe their fumes? That's why you had mentioned household products. And when you get hand soap that's not clean, every time you put it on your hand, it goes into your body. We think of the skin is a barrier to toxins, but it's not.
Have you been exposed to carbon monoxide, like exhaust fumes? Do you travel on planes more than six times a year? Both of us do that. Do you pump your own gas? We do here in California. Do you live in an area with moderate to high air pollution? I grew up in the San Fernando Valley. We had smog days. Have you lived or worked in a building with water damage? Because that often goes with mold. Do you spray your garden, farm or orchard with pesticides or live near pesticides? Here in California we have the San Joaquin Valley. We produce more produce. I mean, I think eight of our counties produce more produce than almost anywhere in the world, which means we're also loaded with air with pesticides. Do you paint indoors without ventilation? Do you have more than four glasses of alcohol a week? I mean, the list goes on and on and then the end of mental illness, I have this, but the last one is have you had general anesthesia and how many times, and what did you say, 10?
Tana Amen: I've had 10 medical surgeries.
Dr Daniel Amen: My goodness girl, we have work on your brain.
Tana Amen: Yeah. The funny thing is is when I was younger I felt like I bounced back faster and this time I just didn't, so I really felt it. But I wanted to say one thing, too. This is really fun. So this time where I decided to do it, Chloe is 16, and I thought, "Why not get her started young?" She finally was open to it and so we bonded over healthy products. We went and bought some makeup together and I was explaining to her what hormone disruptors are because it's important to me to get her doing it now so she can avoid some of the health issues I had, but also because she can now start thinking about being healthy long before she starts thinking about babies, hopefully long before to start thinking about babies. But she can be healthy, right? You don't want to start trying to be healthy three months before you have babies. You want to start trying to be healthy years before babies, because they're endocrine disruptors, because she's got all the eggs she's ever going to have, but it actually-
Dr Daniel Amen: So say that again. She was born-
Tana Amen: With all the eggs she's ever going to have.
Dr Daniel Amen: All of the eggs in her ovaries she will ever have.
Tana Amen: Right. But she's turning on or turning off genes that are either promoting disease or promoting health and wellness now so she can actually affect what's happening to her child now, what will happen to her child now.
Dr Daniel Amen: And most parents don't know, and often I've heard with my addicted population is, "Oh, I didn't drank or I didn't do drugs when I was pregnant. As soon as I found out I was pregnant, I stopped."
Tana Amen: But the two months it took you to find out.
Dr Daniel Amen: And when does the baby's brain start to develop in utero? Week three, When they don't know. And so when the baby's brain is just starting, it could be bathed in drugs, alcohol, or now we know ... I mean, who knew? I didn't know this ... toxic products that can be harmful to the baby's DNA.
Tana Amen: Well, and that's why there's a whole area of medicine, preconception medicine that starts focusing on helping women become healthy a couple years before they get pregnant. And one of the things they really focus on is hormone disruptors, avoiding hormone disruptors, including product. So it's really important the products you put on your body, the products you use in your home. They want you to get rid of all the toxic products in your house. The classes that I took at A4M, that was a big focus, so things like air fresheners, candles, they want you to get rid of all of that stuff.
Dr Daniel Amen: So where do our listeners start?
Tana Amen: So it can get really pricey if you do what I did and just go crazy.
Dr Daniel Amen: Throw everything out.
Tana Amen: I told you when I saw my schedule, I was like, "This is going to cost you a lot of money," because I was like [crosstalk 00:08:55].
Dr Daniel Amen: We just told them this was not expensive.
Tana Amen: Well, it doesn't have to be. So what I would do is start with the most toxic things. That's why I'd recommend starting with getting the app think Dirty. Start scanning your products. That's what I would start with. And the ones that score an eight or nine, start with those. Now you're going to be shocked at how many score an eight or a nine. So the ones that I would start with are the ones that you're putting on your body or spraying in the air, okay? Those are the ones I would start with.
Dr Daniel Amen: And if you keep the toxic ones, get the children out of the bathroom when you spray.
Tana Amen: Right. So hairspray, counter spray, sunscreen, those are the ones that are usually really, really toxic. So I would get rid of the ones that you put on your body or spray in the air, then slowly start getting rid of the rest of them. So if they score a five or six, hold off on those. You can hold off on those until you run out, and then start replacing them. That's what I would do.
Dr Daniel Amen: So the number one thing we want you to do is read the labels. Start reading the labels, and I'm going to give you a list of things to look for that are toxic, and one is acrylics. So artificial nails, the acrylics are actually neurotoxins.
Tana Amen: Oh, and I need to say something about that. So right now ... No, I have to because it's really important. So right now gel nails are a really, really popular thing, but I have to tell you something. When you start to see, a lot of women don't realize this, they soak your nails in the nail polish remover to get the gel off. They wrap them, right? Women don't realize this, that nail polish remover, that acetone is really bad for you. And actually, it should be obvious because what that does is it causes the nail bed to separate from your actual skin. It's like, "Hello. That's obviously bad for you. That's why they're wrapping it so that it's not just exposed." Those are really not good for you. Oh, and by the way, 100% pure ... No, I'm excited about this. They make a nontoxic nail polish. It's crazy. And they're really pretty and they work.
Dr Daniel Amen: Acrylics. Aluminum in your antiperspirant. Formaldehyde. I mean, formaldehyde, really, that preserves things after you're dead. Fragrance. Oxybenzone is an endocrine disruptor.
Tana Amen: Sunscreen, see?
Dr Daniel Amen: Parabens, endocrine issues, breast cancer, developmental problems in kids, reproductive problems, allergies. Phthalate, which are actually banned in Europe. Polyethylene glycols. Triclosan. It's an endocrine disruptor. Lead should be obvious. I use the table in The End of Mental Illness with permission from one of my favorite books by Joe Pizzorno and The Toxin Solution. You can do this, it starts with information, but brain warriors, they're armed, they're prepared, and they're aware of the evil ruler strategies to increase the risk of mental illness.
Tana Amen: So two more brands that I like for makeup, Kosas and Ilia. They're actually at Sephora. Sephora does have a green section. On Think Dirty, they actually have a green section for Sephora because it's such a popular place to buy makeup. So this doesn't have to be hard. So share what you know about green products. Let us know what products you love for household products or makeup or skin products.
Dr Daniel Amen: And did you learn one thing? I mean, just like parabens. Post it on any of your social media channels, #brainwarriorswaypodcast. Go to brainwarriorswaypodcast.com. Leave us a review. We'll enter you into a raffle. We love, as you can tell, reading reviews. We're grateful that you are becoming a brain warrior, too.
Tana Amen: If you're enjoying The Brain Warrior's Way podcast, please don't forget to subscribe so you'll always know when there's a new episode. And while you're at it, feel free to give us a review or five star rating as that helps others find the podcast.
Dr Daniel Amen: If you're considering coming to Amen Clinics or trying some of the brain healthy supplements from Brain MD, you can use the code podcast10 to get a 10% discount on a full evaluation at AmenClinics.com, or a 10% discount on all supplements at BrainMDHealth.com. For more information, give us a call at 855-978-1363.
