Detox Your Life: The Dangers Lurking In Your Food, Water & Air

Introduction to Nathan Crane and the Summit 0:00

Hey, everybody. Glad you're continuing to watch our Plant Based Cancer Solutions Summit. And today we have a very important part of the summit that we're going over with, with Nathan Crane here as our guest. Let me tell you a little bit about Nathan and what we're going to be talking about today. So important for putting this holistic picture together. And of course, what I mean by that is all the factors we can do in our own personal lifestyles to improve our health, because our health, because we are responsible for own health and making the right choices in our life.

And that's what we're talking about with Nathan today. So Nathan is a natural health researcher, as a huge amount of knowledge and experience, is a certified nutrition health coach and an influential leader in this wellness industry. He has an Amazon number one bestselling author and multiple award winning documentary filmmakers, which embodies his commitment to advancing health, performance, and listed healing. He serves on the board of directors of the Belgian Ski Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to research into natural cancer solutions.

And he's also the founder of Better Life, a health and wellness company offering holistic supplements. And throughout his career, Nathan's been get significant recognition for his tremendous, empowering work, including the accolade 2020 Outstanding Achievement Humanitarian Award and the Outstanding Community Service Award from the California Senate, and more recently, Beyond Hollywood's Top Independent Creators. 2025 by film. So I've been, you know, know Nathan as a friend, as a colleague. And we've worked together on a lot of different projects.

So today he's joining us, and we're going to talk about factors right around our life, in our own household that can either help or hurt our future health, particularly with risk to cancer. And people are practicing cancer promoting and using pant canceling foods and elements every day, and they should be somewhat aware of that. So let's help bring this type of awareness that you could help us with. Absolutely. Doctor Furman, thanks for having me.

Hidden Household Toxins and Cancer Risk 2:06

Thanks for putting on this summit. This is this is so important that we're getting this information out to people because there's so many hidden cancer promoting factors that we're surrounded by every single day. And we don't realize it, right? Between the foods that we eat, the thoughts that we have, and especially some of the things we're talking about today is the toxins, the hidden toxins that are literally in our kitchen, in our refrigerators, in our home, that are contributing to chronic inflammation, that it contributes to endocrine disruption, that are contributing to DNA damage and mitochondrial damage, which we know all of those are underlying cofactors that proliferate cancers throughout the body.

So I know what I wanted to share with folks today was what are some of these toxins? Where are they hiding? And then what can we do about it? Right. How can we get them out of our body? But more importantly, how can we get them out of our life? Because we can flush out the toxins from our body. And we do that with diet and nutrition supplements and sun and a lot of different things we can talk about. But if we just keep pouring gasoline back into our body, right, we can clean these things out. And then we go out and eat cheeseburgers and French fries and, and processed foods and keep putting in heavy metals and toxins and parasites and create this environment for cancer to explode.

Then, you know, we're fighting a losing battle. So we've got to get at the root, and then we've got to do what we can to help the body heal. And so what we'll do is I'll just share some toxins that are prolific in most people's homes. And remembering these names is not important, because I'm going to give you a couple key strategies to basically eliminate all of them. Okay. So that's that's going to be a key thing. I will name them. You don't need to write them down. You don't have to worry about it.

Because what I'm going to share with you is how to get rid of all of them. But there's a common toxin, so I'll just go through a few. There's a lot, but let me go through a few to give people an idea of what I'm talking about here. Right. So there's a common toxin in our dish soaps, detergents, conditioners, shampoos, body wash and lotion, which these are things we're putting on our body every single day, often in large amounts because we're putting whether we're washing the dishes, we're taking shower, we're washing our clothes, we're cleaning things.

It's constantly going on our skin, and we know what goes on. Our skin goes into our body, and what goes into our body affects our cells, affects our DNA, affects our mitochondria. And so one of these chemicals that is super nasty. So really long name but it's just known as MCI. It's methyl known tongue twister. Say that ten times fast but MCI. And so it's an active ingredient that like helps fight against fungus yeast bacteria. The problem is studies have shown that high concentration of this can cause endocrine disruption, and it can even cause chemical burns, allergic reactions.

That's why a lot of these things people will put on their skin. Sometimes they don't realize when they're having skin issues. After a few years, that is very often from so many of these toxins that are in their body care products and cleaning products. There was even the European Commission Scientific Committee on Consumer Safety banned the use of MCI in products that stay on your skin. Here in the US, we still allow a lot of these chemicals that Europe has banned. So we have to be diligent about this, right?

But this is in our soaps, detergents, shampoos. There's another toxin. You probably don't know about triclosan. A lot of the viewers don't know about this. This is a registered pesticide. And it's an antibiotic antibacterial agent that's added to soaps, hand cleansers, dishwashing liquids, and even toothpaste and tooth whitening products. So you think you're cleaning your teeth and you're whitening your teeth, and yet you're putting chemicals into your mouth and in your body, right? Yeah. It's supposed to help reduce bacterial contamination and make your mouse and and cleaning liquids smell better, but it's also an endocrine disrupting chemical.

It it has been shown to lower our estrogen and androgen levels. And it's been shown to affect our thyroid hormone levels. And it's been shown to increase the risk of cancer. In 2016, the US, US, the FDA banned the use of triclosan and hand soaps, and this was after companies failed to prove that it was safe and effective. But even with the FDA ban and the high risk of the ingredient, there are many products that still contain the chemical today. That's one of the problems is we think the FDA is here to protect us, but companies just come out with new chemicals and toxins and preservatives every single day.

And even if it gets banned, it takes years before it ends up out of the products. And there's already 20 new chemicals that are in the products. So there are studies that have shown that are close and can lead to inflammation of colon, which can lead to colon cancer, a whole bunch of nasty stuff. There's another one that most people know about but still don't avoid. What I found out SLS sodium laurel sulfate right foaming agent found in most personal care products. Have people tuning in. If you go look at your hand soap, your shampoos, your body washes, you'll see in almost all of them SLS or sodium sulfate.

Well, when you look these things up, the problem is, if you go Google most of these things, a lot of them will say, oh, this, this is safe. And the problem with that is when they look at is a chemical safe or not one they're looking at, you know, in a micro dose used in a very small amount by itself.

Plastics, Microplastics, and Heated Containers 7:31

They're not looking at when you're using this every day, multiple times a day, in multiple products over years on end with 30 or 40 other toxic chemicals combined with it. They know that in large amounts it's very toxic. It's neurotoxic, has organ toxicity, skin irritation even can contribute to cancer, endocrine disruption. But they say, oh, it's such a small amount. It's not going to do those things. But we never use these chemicals and toxins in isolation. Right? They're always in a chemical soup that we're swimming in 24 over seven.

And so if it's on your lotion and it's in your toothpaste and it's in your hand soap and it's in your detergent, that's washing your clothes and it's in your cleaners, right. That's 500% more than what they're saying it's being used for. And then it's also added, on top of all these things that people are using 24 over seven. Then it's in the shampoo and then right, it's the thousands of different toxins all combined. So it's not so they can't look at one individual. Yeah. Yeah. And they won't. Right.

And what about the plastics. What about not only putting water and plastics, but what about plastic utensils and plastic wrap and plastic gum. What are those sheets. And cutting plastic cutting boards. What about that stuff? Does that contribute a lot to. Yeah. Like there's there's a toxin called benzo known. Right. Which is like a UV blocker that's often used in plastic packaging. And this can leave residue especially. And this is also found in like sunscreen lip balm, nail polish. But it's classified as a carcinogen and an endocrine disruptors.

And we know anything that's going to mess up our hormones is going to potentially contribute to cancer. We also know anything that's going to cause inflammation. It's going to potentially contribute to cancer. There was a study on this in rats and mice that showed it had carcinogenic activity, primarily cancer proliferation. There was a 2018 study that they did on zebrafish that showed of can damage. The central regulation of hormones like this is just one tiny toxin in a whole soup of toxins that make up plastics and so plastic.

The other challenge that we're experiencing right now with plastics is the microplastic explosion. I saw a study earlier last year that came out where they were. They found hundreds of over 100,000 different, over 100,000 pieces of microplastic in a single bottle of water. So it's not so much like the plastic itself, right? Plastic. And it's not just BPA free, actually. In fact, like it's other plastics besides BPA. So BPA nothing. Yeah, yeah. The problems is not just BPA, it's all the other chemicals that make up the plastic.

And it's not just the plastic itself. It's very often the packaging and bottling process. So when they if you ever and people can go look this up on YouTube later, how they actually put water and make the plastic bottles, how they feel it, well, they heat the plastic to its shape with the water inside while it's heated, and then they seal it. And so the heat process like number one, if you use a microwave, you should stop it right now, literally microwave. We are radiating our food right. And then putting that in our bodies.

But number two, if you're microwaving anything in plastic, you are releasing massive amounts of those chemicals from the plastic right into your food. So anytime it's heated, it's releasing the chemicals. It doesn't. You know, plastic is like a very expandable and toxic thing, especially when it heats up. And so a lot of our products that are that are packaged in plastic, they get shipped in, you know, heat country. And so what about, you know, even though what about the little bit I mean, we obviously we're not going to drink water and plastics.

People pour like, you know, hot coffee into cardboard cups that are lined with plastic. It's it's you know, Starbucks is drinking. It's tremendous amount of plastic in fish. It's in fish too. But what about just using a plastic spatula or cooking on a plastic tray, or cooking, putting your plastic utensils, plastic silverware, plastic plates? Is that is that little contact enough to get plastic particles in our own body?

Stress, Fear, and Emotional Healing 11:40

Or it has to be in a food that's been packaged in plastic? You know, I don't think we have enough. I haven't seen enough data on that to like, absolutely say, hey, using a plastic fork, you're going to get plastics into your body. I do know using plastic cutting boards, for example. Cutting board. Yeah. Board. You're getting microplastics cutting off that board right into your food. So a wooden cutting board is essential. Plastic silverware. It's like, hey, you're traveling, you don't have any other silverware.

You don't have access. Like, I wouldn't worry about it, but I wouldn't store my food and drinks in plastic. Right? I would use glass. I would use stainless steel. I wouldn't store it in aluminum either, because aluminum is a heavy metal, and that actually leaches into the liquids, and that aluminum is very toxic to the body. We know that it's toxic to the brain. It's toxic. It's a neural endocrine disruptor, is toxic to our liver. And so like the little bits of but I also try not to use plastic as much as possible just because it's so wasteful.

It is unsustainable. And it does go even if it's not. Even if that plastic forks not hurting my body, it's going getting buried somewhere in the earth and leaching those chemicals in the earth in effect, or dumped in the waterways or dumped in the ocean water. Right? It's going right into our water and putting chemicals into our water, which is killing our fish, which is killing off the the river life, the aquatic life, the sea life, which is damaging the planet, which then comes back to us in another way.

We then, you know, whether people are eating fish or they're drinking water, it is coming back and then polluting your body that way. So limiting plastic by as much as possible is a really good idea. Yeah. And of course we have the number one exposure to cancer causing toxins to the heterocyclic means and polyatomic hydrocarbons, which mostly from barbecue, grilled foods, cold breakfast cereals, you know, things that are cooked a lot and those things that are cooked a lot are also put in plastic containers to.

Right. And the combination of heat and plastic people is stone. But in any case, heterocyclic amines and poly aromatic hydrocarbons are not just in grilled and barbecued meat. They're also in overcooked cereals and processed foods and processed carbohydrates as well. Overcooked cereals I didn't that's. References. Yeah. What's an example of that where they overcooked cereals. And then you get the heterocyclic amines. You know those Kellogg's and those types of cereals like Fruit Loops and Cheerios and stuff like that, you know.

Yeah. Oh my gosh. Yeah. I mean, that's I mean, obviously we avoid those foods completely for myself, my wife, my kids and our clients because they're processed full of sugar. There's absolutely no nutritional value in it. Right. So yeah wipe with that. I mean, when we're talking food, I mean, you are the master on food. We, you know, through our work with conquering cancer and through my books and everything, it's like I always reference your work and g bombs specifically as the foundation of how we should think about eating. But.

And the diet is so important. But, you know, one of the toxins we should talk about. And then I'll give a solution. I don't want to leave people hanging. Right. So I'll make sure to get solutions for all this because I could name I literally name hundreds of toxins and where they're at. And it's just getting people aware. But the other toxin that we know contributes to cancer in the body is not a physical toxin. It's an intangible toxin, and it's a toxin of stress, of anxiety, of fear. And how that contributes to cancer in the body.

Is it down? Regulates our autonomic nervous down, regulates our immune system by activating a sympathetic nervous system response in. The problem with that is that we need our immune system to be highly engaged and highly activated, highly, highly intelligent, to be able to go and find those cancer cells, to eliminate them, to clean them up, to reduce inflammation. And if our nervous system specific, our immune system is downregulated, and then we're in this constant fight or flight or freeze mode, our immune system can't do what it needs to do very well.

And so dealing with stress, dealing with anxiety, dealing with fear through meditation practices, qigong, yoga, breathwork, prana, all these things. We now have a tremendous amount of science on this show that they absolutely reduce not only the mental emotional stress, but the physical stress on the body that they absolutely upregulate our immune system, that they absolutely support our bodies in fighting cancer. To me, this has got to be a foundational practice that people implement every single day.

A lot of the cancer conquerors that I've interviewed over the years, what helped them in reversing stage three, stage four cancer is, was they adopted some kind of mental emotional healing practice. They they did forgiveness practices. They did deep meditative practices. They did whether it was going or yoga or morning and evening meditations, gratitude practices, but a daily practice to help regulate our nervous system, activate our parasympathetic, which puts us into rest, digest, regenerate, repair, and allows our body to then fight those toxins, those toxins of stress and fear and anger and resentment.

It's compliments, diet and everything substantially. You know, it makes me think about foundational and medicine is to get people afraid with these screening tests. They're worried, they're anxious, they're looking, they're going to doctors to get testing, and then they find something, even in something incidental or something relatively minor. The raw scare could be cancer. They're thinking they're just. And then once you have a diagnosed with cancer, your life is you're completely agitated. And what's saying here that being relaxed, being at peace, being fearless, living your life to enjoy the world around you.

All these things are very important to our health and at times, and it's like we're geared in our society to live in fear. And that's the foundational medical practice, that of living a healthy life and protecting ourselves. We've been kind of joined onto this religious belief system that going to doctors and getting tested, looking for disease, and catching it early is going to be what's going to save us. That has and that chronically agitates people and makes a little chronic fear. And the overall effect of that type of way of thinking and chronic screening is most likely overall detrimental to a person's long term health and cancer development.

I agree, we don't actually see it supporting longer, you know? Yeah, they say we're catching cancer earlier and getting treatments sooner, but you don't actually see quality of life improving with that. You don't see very much. You know, the problem with kind of the conventional model and how we say we're successful is we say we're successful. If somebody lives past five years, right, from a cancer diagnosis, that's that's kind of success in the medical eyes.

Patterns of Exceptional Healing 18:38

It doesn't matter if during that five years your health plummeted, your life got worse. You lost your hair, your immune system is damaged. Now, you have autoimmune disease and heart disease, which actually heart disease is the number one killer of cancer patients. And so when we're going through these conventional therapies, we're actually damaging the immune system, damage the mitochondria and even proliferating cancer because we know chemotherapy radiation in the clinical data show us that they are carcinogenic by nature.

They literally cause cancer, right. And so this kind of, oh, we're successful. If somebody lives past five years, I want to say we're successful. If one the cancer stops growing or starts regressing or you start seeing improvement. But two that somebody that the quality of life doesn't deteriorate but in fact either remains or improves. Right. Yeah. We call it healthy life expectancy, which puts together how long we live and how and how much we're enjoying our life. And that's gone down. And we have one of the worst scores of any country in the world.

But of course, what I'm saying is that with all the effects of what we've done with modern medicine is that we're not living longer and our healthy life expectancy has gone down, not up. So whatever we're doing, it's not working. We're not winning the war, it's not working, and we're all focused on the wrong syllable, if you know what I mean by that. The label. Exactly. And you see it firsthand with your patients who come to your, you know, center and so forth. And I see a firsthand in our clients that when they actually implement all these things, we're talking about a whole food plant based diet or cleaning up the the toxins out of the water and so forth, all this holistic approach to emotional healing, we actually see quality of life in most people improve.

So we know that, you know, this is a path that is very helpful for people. But I want to go back to something you said. You actually said, you know, courage and courage is so important. There was research done by Doctor Diane Pearlman, who's a PhD, who just wrote a paper called Patterns of Exceptional Healing. And she and her colleagues discovered about 12 different patterns on all the cancer patients, that they looked at all the case studies and put together these patterns, what they call exceptional healing, that were commonalities among patients who had the most success in healing their cancers, or what people call spontaneous remissions.

I call them intentional remissions, right? When we change our diet and lifestyle and then the cancer goes away, that's very intentional. It's not some random, spontaneous thing, but, you know, the medical establishment calls them spontaneous remissions. And so when she studied them, there's 12 I want to share a few that people should write down and think about every single day, because these are the patterns of exceptional healing. One of them is, is courage, like you said, in the willingness to face oneself and persevere and make major life changes.

Because all those things to face what's going on inside me, my own belief systems, my own negative thoughts, my own self-sabotaging beliefs. But also, what am I doing with my diet? What am I doing with exercise? Like to face that it requires courage. We need that willingness to face it and accept it and then to make change. The second one, a second one is and these aren't in any order, is introspection. So exceptional recoveries usually includes some kind of inner work. Like I talked about meditation, dealing with unresolved loss and grief, doing grief work therapies, reconciling long standing conflicts, forgiveness.

These are very common among people who have had spontaneous or intentional remissions. And there's another one that's really important is expression of emotions. And there's a lot of research that has shown that withholding emotions or holding them inside, not expressing them, not dealing with them actually as they bottle up can cause a lot of problems. So we need to be able to express those emotions properly, whether, like I said, is through therapy or grief work, but that's also positive and negative, where it's love or anger, grief or joy, sadness or hostility, playfulness.

And then a really important one I'll share that I share with most cancer patients is that, above all, an extraordinary recovery seems to be predicated on finding meaning and purpose in life, having a deep reason to live. If you don't really have a strong reason to live, it's going to be hard to make those changes. So if you can really think about it every day, you know, I'm here. I got to be here for my grandkids to see them grow up, to help them, to be a guide for them. Or, you know, I still have this book I have to write, this work I have to do in this world.

Or, you know what? I'm not ready to leave yet. I've got family things and work things and this and that. I've still got things I want to do. I want to travel. If you have a strong reason to live. And usually the stronger. The reason comes from a perspective of wanting to help others. If you write service to others that helps you have such a strong reason, you know, and that's not just with cancer. I mean, my experience over the last 30 years of working with people who have food addiction or have to change habits is the ones that successfully changed their habits and are able to make the transition to a healthy diet and start living healthier are ones who have some passion about helping others and taking good care of their own health as a role, as a better role model and their identity.

Now they develop more passion for living and it helps them take better care of themselves. It's just in all aspects. So true, so true. They can get that. As we started this conversation, like 20 minutes, 30 minutes ago, you go back to the things that they can do back in their house, that to help get those things out, go back to, you know, let's make it more practical in the last five minutes now, okay. What they can actually put into action. That's perfect. So the number one thing you can do, and if this is all you do, this will address so many of the toxins were exposed to every single day.

Practical Steps to Detox the Home 24:18

And it sounds so simple because it is right. Often the most powerful things are the most simple things we can do. The number one thing you can do is buy all of these products certified USDA organic period. If you do that, if you buy a dish soap that is organic, if you buy a laundry detergent illustration, a toothpaste, you know, and usually like what I use is in one soap I can use for, you know, shampoo, body wash, dish soap, laundry detergent. There's usually, you know, you can use basically an organic Castile soap.

I love Doctor Bronner's, for example, but there are some other options out there. If you buy an organic product that you're going to put on your skin or in your body or use around the house, that alone will reduce 80% or more of those chemicals you're exposed to. Number two is if you don't want to be buying those. And actually the cheaper way is to make your own, which is so easy. Do it yourself. At home, you can make cleaners literally out of take a little bit of baking soda, a little bit of vinegar, put it in some water, make that your spray and that can be your cleaner.

Vinegar is one of the best cleaners. You can use around your house. And yeah, it smells strong for a minute, but then the smell goes away. What you've done is you've just disinfected. Baking soda is fantastic as well, and neither of those are toxic for your body when you're using them as cleaners. These are great. You know, for you, we'll put baking soda in the sink, water. We'll fill the sink with water and put baking soda in it to like, rinse vegetables to get the bacterial vegetables. And then we'll put it into the other sink to rinse it again.

And then we'll then put it away in the refrigerator again. It's also great for reducing radiation exposure. So like I used to live in New Mexico and there was a real issue of with the nuclear facilities that was up there of literally nuclear waste leaching into the groundwater, and it was being tested and then that groundwater was going into people's homes. And so there's a great way to you take a bath with a couple cups of baking soda. And it will not only relax your body, but it will actually help pull out radiative radiation materials out of your body, heavy metals, toxins, things like that.

But yeah, we can use vinegar. We can use baking soda. You can buy organic products, toothpaste that don't have any of these chemicals. I actually often use a tooth powder or I use a doctor, Jerry, which is actually one of the only scientifically studied toothpaste on the market that has been proven to improve the microbiota of our mouth. Because, remember, we don't just have microflora microbiota, a microbiome in the gut, we also have it in the mouth. And so all of these toothpaste and mouthwash we're using to try and kill all the bacteria, that's like basically like taking an antibiotic to kill all the bacteria in our gut, you know, damaging.

That is, we need a healthy, thriving microbiome in our mouth. And so we want to use natural toothpaste and tooth powders that help nurture that. And so it's better to use no toothpaste than to than to kill everything. Because we know we form the nutrients, the nitric oxide. All these things are formed with the food, with the bacteria, with the saliva when you chew everything. So that would be that. And then I would say two other things that are really important just around the house, because you're not going to change, you know, you're not going to go and change.

All of most people will not be able to change all their cupboards, all their flooring, all their carpets, all the stuff that are literally emitting massive amounts of VOCs, volatile organic compounds, formaldehyde in your cupboards, flame retardant carpets that are great for, you know, hopefully not catching on fire, but are terrible at sending so many toxins there that you breathe. So for the air and for the water in your home, two things are essential. And these are actually very affordable. One is a good water filtration system that you put under your sink.

So at least you're drinking and cooking water is not filled with fluoride and chlorine and heavy metals. You get that out. And literally 2 or 300 bucks you can get a good under the sink, you know, reverse osmosis Moses. Yeah. Filtration. And that's going to clean up most every toxin out of your water. And then your air. You can get a good air purifier like Air Doctor or I love this study from NASA where they found that one plant. So a living plant like this one behind me here, one plant per 100ft² in your home will clean up majority of all the VOCs that are coming in your home.

Aloe vera is one of the best at doing it, but they all do a good job. But they also are beautiful. They're living. You interact with the soil, which is really good for getting soil bacteria into our body, which we need, and they produce fresh oxygen for us to breathe. And we know we need good, clean, fresh oxygen to help our bodies fight against cancer. So if you think water, air, let's clean those two things up. And then organic products that we're putting on our skin, in our bodies, in our mouths and makes them do it yourself home cleaners, and you're going to eliminate 8,090% plus of these toxins you're exposed to every single day.

And of course, don't send your clothing to dry cleaners. Even if they say organic. Actually, it's still a lot of chemicals. That's one of those organic ones where they can say organic, but it doesn't actually mean organic. It means organic in a different term. So those are still very toxic actually, unfortunately. So yeah, dry cleaners avoid as much as possible. Well, Nathan, thanks for being part of this summit, really contributing a tremendous amount. And obviously we're going to have more of these sessions.

And I want with you talking to me about some further issues moving forward in the summit. So, okay, get to work, everybody clean up your environment. And of course you just healthy as you can. All right. Take care. See you in the next session. Thanks. See ya. Thanks a lot. Nathan. Appreciate it. My pleasure.