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Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC, has served thousands of patients as a Nurse Practitioner over the last 22 years. Her work in the health industry marries both traditional and functional medicine. Laura’s wellness programs help her high-performing clients boost energy, renew mental focus, feel great in their bodies, and be productive again.... Read More
- An overview of the most important toxins you need to know about including ’forever chemicals’, and what to do about them
Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC
Welcome to today’s fresh new lineup of speakers on the mitochondrial energy summit. I’m your host, Laura Frontiero. And today, I’m going to do a quick talk on the 10 most common toxins stealing your energy. Now, we have several experts talking about toxins on this summit. So be sure to watch all the talks, especially the ones about mold, heavy metals, glyphosate, personal hygiene products, and food. And since you are here watching this summit then I know that you find yourself feeling drained or tired, or even though you might be getting enough sleep, eating right, exercising, and keeping your stress levels low, you still might feel tired. And that is the frustrating thing because the cause of being tired might be something invisible and hidden in your environment. So there are a lot of toxins out there and there are 10 common ones that are probably inside of your body right now and they are contributing to feeling tired all the time. But do not worry, because we have lots of information for you on this summit and I have got your back in this video. I’m going to share with you how to recognize and eliminate these toxins so you can start feeling like yourself again. So here is the thing even if you are doing all the right things, toxins are everywhere, and like I just mentioned, they are invisible and they are also very harmful, causing serious damage to your body’s cells, mitochondria, your organs. And not only can they cause fatigue, but they can also lead to all kinds of other symptoms like brain fogginess, respiratory problems, and tons of other health issues. So let’s take a closer look at the 10 most common toxins that very likely could be contributing to your symptoms and how you feel right now in this moment.
So the first on our list here is heavy metals, and these are things like lead and mercury and cadmium, aluminum, and exposure to these metals really does contribute quite a bit too nervous system symptoms like headaches and fatigue, even muscle weakness. And you are exposed to metals through a whole host of ways food, air, and water. And we do have a wonderful talk from Wendy Meyers on this summit covering metals and how to get rid of them. So be sure to check out that talk. Next up is pesticides and herbicides. They are used on produce, obviously for growing and they can make you feel completely wiped out and sluggish. In fact, the use of the herbicide glyphosate is actually at an all-time high. Actually, I asked Stephanie Seneff off when I did her interview, do you say it is glyphosate or glyphosate? And she said it is glyphosate. So if you have ever wondered how to say it, it is glyphosate. But anyway, glyphosate use and levels are at an all-time high, even though it is been connected with cancer and proven to cause leaky gut and cellular dysfunction. Wipes out your mitochondria. Even though we know that there is even a famous court case of someone winning against glyphosate manufacturer Monsanto for being a contributor to this person’s cancer. And even though we know that farmers keep using it because the government keeps approving it. So catch the talk that I do with Dr. Stephanie Seneff. She is one of the leading authorities on glyphosate, and she is here on the summit with a special talk for you. And she also talks about another toxin called deuterium. So make sure you catch that.
Okay. Number three, is air pollution a super common toxin? Obviously, we are breathing air all day long and the air we breathe is filled with toxins like aluminum and other heavy metals. Surprisingly, believe it or not, we breathe in a lot of our metals. Also toxins like carbon monoxide and nitrogen oxides that cause respiratory problems and fatigue. So if you do not already have an air purifier in your home, this would be a great next step to help you and your family reduce toxin exposure. So, you know, there are several great air purifiers on the market. My favorite is American Made Austin Air. That is Austin like the city in Texas. And it is, I like it because it is a metal unit and it does not need filter changes very often. So it is not off-gassing plastics and it saves you money in the long run because filters are long-lasting on this one. Now, it is much different than the air doctor, which is made of plastic, also made in China, and needs a lot of frequent filter changes. So Austin Air is the one I love.
Okay, number four is food. So food additives like artificial colors and flavors and sweeteners, they are often found in pre-made foods that can really disrupt your energy level. And I’m talking way beyond fast-food drive-thrus here. I know if you are watching this summit, it is unlikely that there is very much fast food, or drive-thru food in your life. And I bet you gave it up a long time ago if you used to eat fast food. Well, disclosure, I was a Taco Bell junkie at one point in my college life. I used to work late at night in a bar, and I would get off at 1:30 in the morning and go through the Taco Bell drive-thru while I was starving because it was open. So, you know, that took a long time to break but thankfully I did. So what I want to highlight here, though, is not the fast food, because chances are you are not eating that anymore, but it is the prepared convenience foods that are sold in what I would call healthy places like restaurants that advertise, you know, farm to table fresh or health food stores that sell ready-made meals. So look at the labels. Chances are if you are obviously you can not look at a label in a restaurant, but you can ask questions.
But when you are in the store, you can look at the label and you want to look for preservatives and colorings and soy and sugar and seed oils and all these additives. And unfortunately, some of our big chains here in the US that are very popular for healthy food like Trader Joe’s or like Whole Foods or Sprouts, you still need to look at labels because they sell foods that are advertised as healthy. The best thing you can do is minimal ingredients if it is already pre-made and that you are, you know, preparing food in its natural form on your own at home and batch cooking and, you know, something along those lines to save time. And if you have, I can hear the histamine intolerance, people saying I can not batch cook because I have histamine intolerance. And if it is I can not eat leftovers. Yes, you can. You just have to batch, cook and immediately freeze in portions. So you cook a big batch of soup and or stew or whatever and you batch it into portions, throw it in the freezer immediately, and it stops that growth of histamine problem in the food. So you can do it. It just takes some, you know, some setup and organization to be able to do it. I used to do it all the time when I worked in the clinic. I would take my food with me every single day. Now I work, you know, in a virtual practice from home. And so my kitchen is down the hall, so I do not need to do that. But when I did work for the biggest health maintenance organization, HMO in America, I brought my lunch every day and I would batch, cook and freeze and just pull it out and it would be defrosted by lunchtime and I would eat it that day.
Okay. So number five is mold mycotoxins which are a common toxin found in homes and workplaces. This causes a lot of problems, respiratory problems, headaches, and fatigue. In fact, it is, I would say, known, not just theorized or expected, but known that 50% of schools, colleges, hotels, office buildings, stores, restaurants, you know, other public places are also infested with mycotoxins. So that means that we are working in sick buildings. We are sending our kids off to school in moldy environments. We are living in sick buildings. You know, you think about when kids go back to school, everybody gets sick. And we think about how, oh, you know, there is just around other kids. That is why they are getting sick. But I would also venture to say that they are back in their moldy classroom that is been closed down all summer, that did not have the A.C. on, and that mold went crazy in that building while everything was closed down. And now everybody’s picking up respiratory infections when they go back to school in August and September. So just a thought. We have a great talk from Jaban Moore on mold and mycotoxins, so be sure to listen to that interview on the summit.
Okay. Number six is cleaning products and I’m talking things like bleach and ammonia and other chemicals that are toxic and they cause fatigue and headaches and respiratory problems. In fact, if you look at your laundry soap, your dishwasher soap, your hand soap labels, I bet you can not pronounce or identify most of the ingredients. Now, I’m a big fan of clean cleaning brands. I like branch basics. I like truly natural. On my website, you can find a link to my trusted partners people who write who, who make products, who I trust. And those are some good products for cleaning. We use them and my house gets really clean with them, so I’m very happy.
Okay, number seven is your personal hygiene products. I’m talking things like toothpaste and makeup and deodorant and lotion, shampoo, perfume, feminine hygiene products, tampons, and maxi pads. All of these things can potentially contain harmful chemicals, and those chemicals leach through your skin and right into your bloodstream. And then that causes a disruption of your gut microbiome, your mitochondria, your immune system. So on this summit, we have Brian Vaszily, he is the founder of Purity Woods, and that is a safe, clean USDA organic skin line. I’m wearing the lotion right now. Today, I use his line of skin products every day and you can find a link to his skincare line on my website laurafrontiero.com on the Trusted Partner Page. You can also find a clickable link to my website at the bottom of this page where you are viewing the video now.
Good skin care is really important to me because I turned 50 this year or last year at the end of last year, so I did not want to do it. I say this year because I had a big giant birthday party in January, which was 2023. We delayed my birthday party due to Christmas, but it is really important to me because I have always had really great youthful skin and I really want to keep it that way. I want to keep my skin looking amazing and so high quality, good skin care is important for that vanity metric. I’m not ashamed to say it, but it is also important to me because I know that my skin will absorb literally everything I put on it, and I know that that will go directly to my organs and to my cells and cause me to become tired and set me up for chronic health conditions later on for things like breast cancer and Alzheimer’s. And this is what I want to avoid. So skin care is really important to me. I do take my skincare very seriously. Okay. So number eight, and by skincare, I mean oral hygiene. All my hygiene care, very serious about sourcing good products.
Number eight is water. So I want to share that. Water contamination is common and municipal water is not just because it is a municipal water does not mean it is safe. There are a lot of chemicals and levels of chemicals that are okay to be in your municipal water. So the first thing, if you if you are drinking refrigerator-filtered water, you are still drinking municipal water. This is water filter on your refrigerator is not the same as a water purifier. So the first thing after an air purifier, of course, is a water purifier, which is more important. They are both pretty important, I would say. But I would say first, get an air get a water purifier, then get an air purifier. So get your water purifier and get this dialed in. So reverse osmosis, you know, something like a turkey is better than a refrigerator filter. You can distill water and re mineralized it and restructure it. There are ways to restructure your water. That is what we do in my household. We distill and then re mineralized and restructure the water. And that is the cleanest, most pure water that we can have because the distiller will get rid of radioactive elements like radon and uranium, whereas reverse osmosis will not always, and surely a refrigerator filter will not, and also a Berkey filter will not necessarily get rid of those radioactive elements. I’m pretty fairly certain on that. So dial in your water because that is where you stop drinking your toxins basically.
The number nine is volatile organic compounds. Now this is something that off gasses or goes into the environment from your furniture, your flooring, your paint on the walls, your, you know, the mattress you are sleeping on the when you are in your car, your car interior they off the gas and you inhale them and sometimes you to feel immediate symptoms. So if you get into a brand new car and you get a headache, that new car smell that is all organic compounds off-gassing if somebody sprays a perfume and it immediately gives you a headache makes you feel sick that is usually some kind of biopsy or even phthalates in that, you know, I can notice. So for Christmas, I have to say Christmas I’m like, damned if I do, damned if I do not. So the real Christmas tree harbors mold. And every year that we bring a real Christmas tree into my house and this is a family tradition for us, a Christmas tree. When we bring a real Christmas tree in, I suffer from bad allergies and respiratory stuff. And it is mold. It is probably mold in the tree. That is the problem. I mean, think about it. These Christmas trees are cut, you know, months in advance and go into cold storage and then you bring them out and they are in your house and mold is already set in and starts to grow or grows in cold storage. The damned if I do, damned if I do not. The scenario is the artificial Christmas tree that we bring in it off-gasses, volatile organic compounds. And I can smell it when we pull that tree out of its box. One year I bought a really beautiful one on sale, you know after Christmas was over. And even though we have had it for, I do not know, probably ten years, when we pull it out of the box, I can smell the off-gassing plastic. So it is like I can not win unless we just do not have a tree, which is, you know, that makes my husband and my daughter sad. They want their Christmas tree. So it is a real thing. This is why I have air purifiers in my house.
Okay, number ten, number ten is the forever chemical called PFA. Now it gets confusing. I’m going to try to make sense of this for you. So PFA is short for per or poly floral alcohol substances. Now that is a family PFA, this is a family of thousands of human-made substances and they are nicknamed the Forever Chemicals. And the reason is they do not break down in the environment. They have been widely used since the 1940s. So that is a long time we are coming up on we are coming up on 100 years of these being used, believe it or not. I mean, we are in 2023 right now. It is 83 years, 80 years-ish. So it is the 1940s when they showed up. So 80 years we have had these and they are in a whole bunch of our everyday consumer products. So the reason they are used is because they have a stain repellent and a nonstick benefit, which is why they are in everything. So the furniture is sprayed with these rugs and carpets. So think about when you get this non-state special fancy. DuPont is one of the manufacturers, and 3M is another manufacturer. But you get this DuPont stain resistant, right? How critical is that when you are in your carpet shopping? You know that it is one of the selling points when you are buying carpet if you have ever carpeted your house. So think about outdoor gear, you know, for sports and hunting and, you know, outdoor stuff and waterproof clothing. So think about skiing and snowboarding and hunting and, you know, anything that you are doing outside, you want waterproof clothing, paper packaging, food packaging. And then the famous one that we all know of is cookware. Your pots and pans that are nonstick, it is in your mattress again, it is a, you know, a stain resistant. It is used in electronics and even in firefighting foams. So in industry, it is also used in metal finishing and plating and hydraulic fluids, and some semiconductor manufacturing. So it is everywhere and it is estimated that every human in a developed country has this in their body. We can not escape it.
So there is two PFA as PFA esses that have been banned or restricted and that are PFOA S and PFOA. Now those stand for really long chemical names that are very hard to pronounce. But PFOA, PFOS, and PFOA have been banned because of their toxic, persistent, bio-accumulative effects. But I will tell you, there are concerns about others on which there is less toxicity evidence available because they have been less studied. So yeah, they are banning these two big ones and they are still using a bunch of others. Just because we do not have the data on it hasn’t been studied. So it is not that it is safe, it probably is not. So this is a big concern when we turns out that when we ingest them through our diet or water, they can cause some pretty bad health effects PFOA is a suspected endocrine or hormone disruptor and a possible carcinogen, and PFOA has been linked to fertility problems. And we have a huge problem with fertility on the rise. And then several PFOA chemicals, especially PFOA, have been linked to increased risk for breast cancer as well. So again, they are called forever chemicals because they do not break down in the environment. However, we can get them out of your body with proper detox support. So do not worry, there is hope. So I have covered the top sources of toxins. Now we all know that these toxins can sound pretty scary but do not worry, because we can eliminate them from your body we can boost your energy and we can get you started with feeling better.
So I will give you a few tips before I end this talk today. So first, I already alluded to some of this, but eat a healthy diet, rich in minimally processed foods that come directly to your plate from the earth. So with minimal processing. So choose organic produce organic farm meat whenever possible to avoid pesticides, herbicides, hormones, antibiotics, flavorings, dyes, preservatives, you know, all those things. The second thing is to use natural cleaning products that are free from harmful chemicals. I already gave you some tips on that. Third, swap out your personal hygiene products for clean alternatives. Focus first on the ones that stay in your body all day, like deodorant or makeup, or lotion. You know, swap out soap last if you are if it is overwhelming to you because you just you rinse that off your body right away. But the stuff that is on you all day long, make sure you switch that out first and you know, thanks products a fourth. Think about cleaning the air in your home or office or car with an air purifier.
Also, I did not mention that houseplants will cleanse the air for you. Plus they look nice and they add, you know, decorators’ touch, and then I already mentioned drink your purified water, getting off the fridge filter, and then swapping your toxic cookware and storage containers for a clean solution. So right now, today, go into your kitchen and throw away your plastic storage containers. Those you should definitely get rid of and go for glass. You can get some good options at some big box stores like Costco or, you know, Target or Walmart or wherever you can get housewares, get some glass. And then the final thing I would say is, you know, consider a detox program that includes supplements and other natural methods to eliminate toxins from your body in a safe and proven manner. It is best really to have a practitioner help you with this since there is a right and a wrong way to detox your body. And this is something that many people on the summit specialize in this. I specialize in this. I will be teaching some classes even after the summit is over, teaching you how to do this. But if you are feeling tired and you suspect toxins may be a culprit, my message to you today would be, you know, do not wait any longer.
Get in contact with me or the practitioners who are teaching you on this summit. And, you know, for the past few days, you have been learning all kinds of new tools to help you solve your symptoms. And you are also hearing from experts all over the world who have the ability to help you. So look for the practitioners who resonate with you and be sure to connect with them afterwards to get the help that you need. I will be hosting a Live Easy Energy Reset three-week journey in a few weeks. I will be going live on Zoom with participants each week and we’ll be doing a deep dive into toxins, gut health, mitochondria, energy. It is all wrapped together. It is all-important is the energy reset is available for you to purchase when you get your all-access pass to the summit. If you already bought your access pass to the summit, but you did not get an easy energy reset because you did not know if you wanted it. And now you are thinking, Wow, I would really like to spend three weeks with Laura. If you want more information on how to get either long-term access to the summit or an easy energy reset. Just email [email protected] and the team will help you get it all sorted out.
They will give you a link to purchase Easy Energy Reset and you can come spend three weeks with me. Also, stay tuned after the summit finishes airing because I will be hosting a series of masterclasses to get you more information on your favorite topics from the summit, including how to get functional lab testing, to look for toxins in your body. Also, how to work with me from nearly anywhere in the world. I have a virtual practice. We do a lot of detoxing people and helping them get more toxins and metals and environmental toxins out of their bodies. It is one of the things that I love to do most with people just to see them come back to life and feel so good and have their energy in their brain function. And what I hear most is I’m back to my hobbies. I’m back to, you know, enjoying my work. I’m spending weekends, enjoying my family and not recovering all the time. So I look forward to hearing from you as well. Now you can find me at Laurafrontiero.com There is a clickable link to my website near the bottom of the page where you are watching this video. And until next time, take good care. Bye now.
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