Environmental Toxicants And Mitochondria Damage

Kelly McCann, MD

Thanks, Laura, for having me.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Oh, this is going to be a great talk about toxins and toxicants and all the ins and outs of it. You are a functional and integrative physician. You’re an expert in mass cell activation syndrome, mold, illness and chronic infections. And you solve mysteries. You are the doctor that everyone goes to when they’ve seen ten other people and they cannot figure out what’s wrong. Is that right?

Kelly McCann, MD

Yeah, that’s pretty much the case. Yes.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

So you’re practicing in California and we were just talking about this before we jumped on people from out of state can come see you, but they got to come to California at least once, right?

Kelly McCann, MD

Yes, at least once. And then generally have people come one or two times a year after that. I know it’s complicated, but with the ways that the regulations are changing, that’s how we have to do it.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Yep. That’s what we’ve got to do. But at least there’s a workaround. And I know after we get done with this talk today, our audience is going to want to know how to get a hold of you. So we’ll make sure we share that as well. But we’re going to dove right in. We’re going to talk about the main groups of environmental toxicants and how they affect us and the symptoms and the impact on our mitochondria and ourselves, where we can look for them in our lives and how then to make better choices, to do better, because we’re all going to be exposed to toxins nonstop. That’s a given. So can you start off by telling us about the main groups of environmental toxins and we’ll get into how they affect us? And I think you have some fun slides for us to look at some visuals because this is a lot of information, right?

Kelly McCann, MD

Yes, I do. So let me pull up my slide right here. And this helps to have a visual. So it’s really important to understand that some of these environmental chemicals are persistent in their environment, persistent in our bodies. And so these are the ones that are really, really hard to get out of ourselves. Right. In addition to doing all of the things that we’ll talk about, these are the ones we have to work extra hard to get out. And I’ll go through those and then we have the non persistent ones. So these are the ones that should we avoid them? They’re going to go away. But the problem with these is that they are so ubiquitous in the environment that it’s really hard to avoid them. So let’s talk about the non persistent ones first.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

We just talk and we just talk really quick about this picture, the SpaghettiOs saying Save me. So I mean I’m a child of the seventies and that was like a huge treat in my life. If we got that and I and I can remember even being addicted to the taste and the flavor and dreaming about and wanting SpaghettiOs, literally one of the most toxic things we could ever give our children. Right, right, right. So ironic that you have that picture here. Sorry, I have to go there.

Kelly McCann, MD

Thank you. I thought it was really darn cute, right? Because, yeah, they were. They were the food of the seventies and they in the cans, which is lined with bisphenol A, which is incredibly toxic, you know, 90% plus of all of us have BPA in us because we just can’t avoid it.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Yeah. And then just sitting here thinking about those SpaghettiOs and the one or two little meatballs that were in the can, like you would just look at, who knows? Maybe even at that time, it was mystery meat. I would hope in the seventies they were using real beef, but I can remember just wanting those couple little meatballs or hotdogs that were in there. I digress. And we have to keep light of this, right? I mean, this is heavy stuff. We’re being poisoned and we’re going to go through all this today. But what you can count on from us is to keep us laughing and smiling through it.

Kelly McCann, MD

Right. Right. Absolutely.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Okay.

Kelly McCann, MD

Very important. It’s okay. It’s okay. So we all know about pesticides, right? That’s why we recommend people eat organic. The current pesticides that are used today are mostly organophosphate pesticides, which means that they’re non persistent. So there were a bunch of studies where they gave children organic diets and they were able to drastically reduce the amount of organic pesticides in their in their bodies because they were eating organic. So, you know, plug one for organic foods, phthalates, those are your things that make plastic malleable. So this is there are plastic water bottles. Phthalates also can be in perfume. They have sense to them to as well as the volatile organic compounds and the solvents. So those things are highly toxic. And again, really, really difficult to avoid.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

So when people are super sensitive to scents like perfume and candles and air fresheners, it’s phthalates. One of the things that they’re having.

Kelly McCann, MD

It’s phthalates and the viruses. Yes. Yeah. And oftentimes when people have chemical sensitivity, they also have a massive activation syndrome. There was a study with a woman named Claudia miller, who’s one of the experts in chemical sensitivity and Dr. Afrin Leary, our friend who is a massage expert. And they found that 60% of people who had chemical sensitivity also had muscle activation. So a clue for all those people out there. The other clue that’s really interesting is when you have a specific sensitivity like a smell sensitivity, chances are that was one of the environmental toxicant exposures that triggered your chemical sensitivity. 

So it gives you a little bit of clue what you need to do to try and get rid of those exposures. Oh, interesting. Yeah. And then on the persistence side, we’ve got the older pesticides, like the chlorinated pesticides, DDT. DDT was banned for use in the seventies in the United States, but it still being used in many countries around the world, in developing countries. And it’s persistent. The foods that are highest in some of these DDT pesticides are things like butter because it’s concentrated fat. These pesticides look like fat to the body. And so they get they get concentrated in the fat of mammals, in the butter, you know. So think about people like the Eskimos that eat a lot of blubber as a main source of their their diet. They’re highly contaminated. It’s really very tragic.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Because it’s even in sea animals that they’re eating, right?

Kelly McCann, MD

Yes. Yes.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

It’s in this.

Kelly McCann, MD

Animal.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

It’s expert for people watching this who are from developed countries. So most of our audience is from United States, Canada, Europe, Australia, New Zealand. Are they to be worried about their butter or is it. Yes, it’s even these developed countries because DDT is in the environment, right?

Kelly McCann, MD

That’s correct. DDT has a very, very long half life. And so it’s an all butter and organic doesn’t matter because it’s in the soil, it’s in the it’s in the environment and it’s being concentrated in all forms of fat. So it’s in our fat, too. And one of the challenges, one of the biggest challenges with these persistent organic pollutants is that we can’t get rid of them. Our bodies are very, very efficient. These collect in the liver and the gallbladder. They get dumped into the bile and then they get reabsorbed back into our bodies unless we do specific things to help get them out. So that’s the chlorinated pesticides and PCBs, the PBDEs. Those are your flame retardants. Those are the things that are in, like many of our many of our furniture, our mattresses, flame retardant, children’s clothing, things like that. And they’re very, very, very toxic. The pair of fluorocarbon, these are things like Gore-Tex. It’s on our Teflon pans. So definitely help avoid those. And then, of course, toxic metals and glyphosate. So there it is, the alphabet soup of toxicants. Well.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

There is hope to get these persistent pollutants out of our bodies, even though they don’t break down in the environment. We can get them out of us, right?

Kelly McCann, MD

Yes, we can get them out and we can lower our burden. So let me let me go to the next slide and talk about talk about toxic burden, because, well, let’s try and move to the next slide. Come on. That’s not moving. Okay. Well, let me talk about the toxic burden and I’ll stop sharing my screen. So imagine that our bodies are a bucket. Or actually, I like the the image of a sink and everything that is coming into this sink is impacting our ability to function and how we’re able to detox can be related to the size of the drain. So some people have really big drains and they can get rid of lots of toxicants and they live a long, healthy life and they don’t have a problem. Some people have little teeny tiny drains and then if you think about the shape of the sink, that also is reflective in our in our ability to manage amount of toxins. So if you’re really shallow sink and a very small drain, you’re going to have big problems. And the images, the overflowing water, if you’re putting too many things in so the size of our sink, the size of our drain is dependent upon our genetics, our biochemistry, our history, our life experiences and our exposures.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

So this is and you talk a little bit about how much toxic exposure are we getting now compared to, let’s say, the 1970s when you and I were eating SpaghettiOs and, you know, the food movement was was happening, where are we at now in terms of really getting poisoned? Because I feel like it’s getting worse and worse.

Kelly McCann, MD

It is getting worse and worse. The there are 85,000 chemicals in the environment today. They’re adding about 2500 chemicals to the environment on a regular basis. And this is information from the U.S. government. We’ve only tested about 500 of these chemicals. Well, which is a tiny, tiny portion. And then the the other challenges that we we don’t know the synergistic effects in the human body of all of these chemicals because they’re ten, they tend to be studied one one on one. Right. And really, this is a very toxic soup that we’re being exposed to. And as we’ve mentioned, it’s only going to get worse because industry is not being regulated as much as we would like to limit these exposures. 

And then there’s all these symptoms we might see. And so just this morning, before I jumped on this interview with you, a friend of mine message and said, my son is having seizures out of nowhere and his pediatrician wants to put him on a anti-seizure medication. We did. He’s having a lot of side effects from it. And she said, do you know a pediatric risk neurologist that I can send my son to? And the immediate thing that I said to her is you need somebody who specializes in toxins. So so let’s talk about symptoms, because my mind was like, let’s go look for toxins. If a child is having seizures and the Western medicine solution is let’s get them on to anti-seizure medicine, we’re not concerned about root cause. It’s just is what it is. Here’s the medication that he gets to take the rest of his life. So can you share with me and our audience the symptoms that we’re going to see in people who have toxins?

Kelly McCann, MD

Sure. So my mentor, Walter Cronin, used to share that. It was really it was really a progression. And oftentimes what you’ll see when you’re first like reaching your threshold of of toxic burden is immuno toxicity. What do I mean by immunotoxicity? What do you mean by that? Well, that means your immune system is having difficulty managing things and that can take a couple of different forms. So most of the time you’ll start to see allergies, asthma, eczema, sort of that hypersensitivity type symptoms which which is part of the dysregulated immune system. And as we know, the rates of asthma, allergies and eczema are skyrocketing much, much higher than they were. You know, in the 1970s for sure. And the flip side of that, you’ve got the autoimmune conditions. And so we’re also seeing a drastic rise in autoimmune conditions.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Huge.

Kelly McCann, MD

Huge.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Could you speak into how huge I mean, what were the autoimmune conditions like in the seventies and eighties versus now? I mean, how many then to how many now? I mean, you don’t have to pull you don’t have to know exactly. But just in general, what are we dealing with.

Kelly McCann, MD

Here in general? The some of the studies I don’t remember all the statistics, but let’s say, you know, the rates of autoimmune conditions in general was in the you know, 3 to 5%. It was not as ubiquitous as it is now. Some of the rates now are, you know, as high as 20%. And the increases cannot be explained by genetics. It can really only be explained by the explosion of environmental chemicals.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

I thank you for saying that. Okay. Carry on. More sympathy.

Kelly McCann, MD

More symptoms. All right. So that’s immunotoxicity. Okay. And then the next layer tends to be when people get triggered with chemical sensitivity, not all the time. Not everybody gets chemicals sensitivity. But this is when you have that hypersensitivity reaction that we talked about earlier and some of the things that trigger that the most mold pesticides and the volatile organic compounds, solvents, phthalates, things like that. Then we tend to see neurological problems. And in this category, there are many, many things that can be impacted. So we see increased rates of autism, increased rates of dementia, and Parkinson’s. 

Any sort of neurological condition falls, falls in this category of neurotoxicity. Your friend with the child with seizures could be here. Now, of course, there are lots of other things that can drive that. It could be bartonella, it could be, you know, which is a chronic infection. It could be mold exposure plus a bunch of other things. So that’s where that’s where it is really a medical mystery. And to speaking to this idea like the conventional docs just want to put them on medications. That’s all they know. You know, it’s not their fault. They just don’t have the tools in their toolkit to really go after and look at that root cause. And, you know, to save the kid’s brain, you do need the anti-seizure medications temporarily. We don’t want to damage his brain anymore.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Yeah, I mean, they got him on it, but now she’s thinking, how do we get to the root of this and solve the problem?

Kelly McCann, MD

Yes. And that’s not in a conventional neurologists wheelhouse, for the most part.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

No, it’s not even. Yeah, exactly. So any other symptoms we want to highlight before we go on to my next.

Kelly McCann, MD

Oh, yes. So I’m not done.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Okay.

Kelly McCann, MD

We’re going to talk about neurotoxicity and then you have endocrine toxicity. And so this can be any sort of neurological I’m sorry, endocrine dysfunction. So think about the rates and rise of infertility, both male infertility and female infertility. Think about the diabetes epidemic that’s happening. And even more simply, thyroid issues. So many women especially have hypothyroidism or hyper, hyper or hypothyroid.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

And I will say even like a subclinical that’s not recognized by Western medicine, if the test is normal, your doctor is going to tell you everything’s good. But that’s not necessarily true.

Kelly McCann, MD

Correct? Correct. Yeah. A lot of elevation of reverse T3 and difficulty with conversion from T4 to T3, which in my experience has been environmental toxicants. Mercury drives that conversion problem. There’s a lot of other things that do that, and they’re all in the realm of this world that we’re talking about right now.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Right, right. Okay. What else?

Kelly McCann, MD

That’s kind of it. So you can have dysfunction in all of these systems. You can have all of these problems. But that’s one way to really think about it as you’re progressing. So, you know, if I think about myself, I was an allergic kid, right? And now I’ve got a little bit of autoimmune. Well, I’ve reversed it. So but you know, as we progressed, that’s how things happen.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

And then so we talked about symptoms and then there’s the really downstream big problems that happen like cancer or like Alzheimer’s like type, you know, Parkinson’s, like advanced heart disease. I mean, so that is what’s down the road when we don’t solve this.

Kelly McCann, MD

Correct? Okay.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Yes. And then everybody here listening. I mean, we’re on the Mitochondria Energy Summit, so being full of toxins is just an energy suck.

Kelly McCann, MD

Yes. Yes. Very simply put, it’s an energy suck. What’s happening biochemically is a little different.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

But yes. Which is the perfect segue way into my next question of how do these toxins impact the mitochondria specifically because our mitochondria, as everyone knows, watching the summit, are making the majority of our energy so connected for us.

Kelly McCann, MD

Okay. Many of these environmental chemicals damage the mitochondria, right? They can either cause oxidative stress, increase free radicals, which will then go into the cell and damage the mitochondria directly. It can also damage the membrane of the mitochondria and you know, if you’ve had people talk about the structure of the mitochondria, that membrane is super, super important. The way that we make energy is by passing electrons back and forth across that membrane. And if the membrane is dysfunctional and damaged, the you literally can’t pass the electron across and the complexes don’t work at all. So that’s really simply how it’s happening.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Super simple, right? Thank you for kicking the ball. We’ve got all these, you know, high level researchers and PhDs on this summit who spend their lifetime looking at a microscope at mitochondria and explaining the high level. But thank you for making this so simple because it doesn’t have to be hard.

Kelly McCann, MD

It doesn’t have to be hard.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

It doesn’t have to be hard. So what about other organelles? So, you know, we’re talking about mitochondria here being affected by toxins, but there’s other organelles in our body that we actually really aren’t talking about on this summit. And and and they’re being affected, too.

Kelly McCann, MD

Absolutely. So I’ve just recently become reacquainted with another organelle called the Peroxisome. And I have to tell you, this little guy is so important, especially if we’re thinking about the membranes, right? So the membranes of ourselves, the membranes of the mitochondria, the membranes of all the other organelles in the cell are dependent upon this little paroxysm. Tim, to break down and make the are the the lipids that we use to make our might to make our membranes. And there is a special kind of fatty acid lipid called the plasma allergen that is made exclusively by the peroxisome. And plasma allergens get deficient when people get Alzheimer’s.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Oh, wow.

Kelly McCann, MD

And what I think is happening is that the paroxysms get damaged, just like the mitochondria gets damaged. And if you can’t make these phospholipids that you’re are your building blocks for your cell membranes, things don’t function at all. So it’s really profound.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

What comes up for me is how much we don’t know and understand about the complexities of the human body. And at the cellular level. The good news is that we’ve got all these experts here talking about cellular health, which is what’s missed in the Western world. I mean, I spent over 20 years in western medicine and never once talk to people about their cellular health at all. I mean, it’s just we learn about it in school, but then it’s not part of our practice.

Kelly McCann, MD

Yeah, not at all. I remember going through medical school and residency thing. Why did I spend so much time learning about all these things that are not relevant to what I’m doing? Writing prescriptions, sending people for surgery? Like, that’s crazy. I know. Now it all comes full circle and we’re falling in love with the mitochondria and the organelles.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

And it’s so important. It’s so important. Okay, so let’s we’ve unpacked, you know, these different types, these categories of toxins, the symptoms and how it affects the mitochondria. So now where do we go looking for toxins in our lives? So let’s start creating solutions for people now who are watching this interview. Where do they find them and what do we do about them?

Kelly McCann, MD

Okay, so one of the first things that you have control over, of course, is your diet and choosing healthy organic foods as much as possible.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

But you just freaked me out about butter like now butter anymore. My organic butter.

Kelly McCann, MD

You can’t I mean, yes, here’s the thing. I eat butter is not a health food. Sorry.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

So putting butter in our coffee is not healthy.

Kelly McCann, MD

No, no.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

It’s all the keto people. You’re all the keto people right now are crying. I’m sorry, you guys.

Kelly McCann, MD

Sorry. You can use coconut sauces. It’s not the same, but it’s going to be healthier for you because you’re going to avoid those persistent organic pollutants.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Thank God I love butter.

Kelly McCann, MD

Okay. I know. And you know, for all those people who like eating lots of fatty meat, breakfast, lunch, dinner and all your snacks, you may want to rethink that just because of all the persistent organic pollutants in the that fatty meat. Now, I am not a vegan, I am not a vegetarian, and I don’t find that those diets are healthy for the vast majority of people who are chronically ill. We need that protein, but you just have to balance that out and the lots and lots of vegetables and we can talk about the, you know, all the benefits of all those vegetables because those are the things that upregulate your detox pathways and actually have been shown things like many of the green leafy vegetables. Some of the Chinese vegetables will upregulate corella and chlorophyl those upregulate your detox pathways and help get those persistent organic pollutants out of the body.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

An argument for eating plants. A good.

Kelly McCann, MD

Argument. A massive lots of plants.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Yeah, I mean, I’m definitely carnivorous. I feel lousy if I don’t have animal products in my body. I know it. Like I’ve tried to eat vegetarian before and it’s just awful. I know something about me, my DNA, the way my body works. I need animal. But I also am a huge plant eater. They I have to have those, too. My body craves it. So. So what I’m hearing is and I just make sure everyone understands, even if you’re eating organic grass fed, you know, grass fed, grass finished organic hormone free antibiotic free meat, you’re still going to get those persistent toxins coming in because they’re in the environment they were when all those pesticides were used in the seventies. When did they go away? In the eighties.

Kelly McCann, MD

In the seventies, yeah. They were.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

It’s in the soil. It’s in the feed that our animals are eating. So it’s getting into their fat. That’s the really critical thing for people to realize here, because I know people are thinking, well, I eat organic. I’m good.

Kelly McCann, MD

Yeah, yeah, you’re better here. But we live on the planet, right? So so that’s where a lifestyle of detox is really going to be important. Okay. What are some of the other things that we can do? Pay attention to your personal care products. Use the healthiest, nontoxic personal care products as much as you can. There are wonderful resources out there. There’s the environmental Working Group, you know, EWG.org. They have a whole database called Skin Deep. And you can go there with all of your products and look them up. And you know, if it’s greater than a three, you kind of got to toss it out.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

They also have an app called Think Dirty that you can put on your phone. It’s not as as comprehensive, as skin deep. I think, though, I think the online computer version is goes deeper than their app.

Kelly McCann, MD

Yeah, but the app is great when you’re in the store and you’re looking for a product and you can actually scan the barcode and figure out. Right, right then and there. Is it an eight and do I put it back or is it a, you know, a three and therefore I can use that. So personal care products really, really important. Most women use 12 personal care products a day or more and.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Guilty.

Kelly McCann, MD

Because. Exactly. I mean, God, you know, put our faces on like looking good.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Yeah.

Kelly McCann, MD

Yeah. And so all of those things on our skin, the phthalates, the the parabens, those are all potentially problematic. So we really need to be careful and educated about our personal care products, other things to think about. What are you cooking your food in? Are you cooking your food in? Teflon nonstick pans really.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Really.

Kelly McCann, MD

Bad. Those pepper flora carbons that are in the Teflon, those are probably the hardest toxicants to get out of the human body. And what happens if you keep your Teflon pan longer than you really should and it’s got scratches in there every single time you’re using that pan, it is poisoning you. So please, please toss out your nonstick pans, though.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Here’s the thing there’s even some fancy brands that claim that they’re safe. I mean, you can spend a couple hundred dollars on a pan and they claim that they’ve got a technology that’s better. But unfortunately, it hasn’t been researched and they’re very tight lipped about what their proprietary product is. So it might not have some of the main chemicals that we’re highlighting here, but it might have other ones that are related that just aren’t, you know, regulated right now.

Kelly McCann, MD

Right. Which is even scarier.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Yeah. So what should people be cooking in?

Kelly McCann, MD

You can cook and cast iron. You can cook in stainless steel. I know it’s pain to make eggs and stainless steel that just kind of sucks. But a good old fashioned iron skillet, your cast iron would be really good glass. You remember those old glass pots that they used to have in this house that would work too. You could cook in glass. Yeah.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

So ceramic. What about the ceramic? Nonstick. So there’s some nonstick green considered green pans.

Kelly McCann, MD

I think that those are better. I need to do a little bit more research. I have heard that they’re also potentially problematic too, so I’m not sure about those. We need to do a little bit more research.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Yeah. And the other issue is a lot of these clean pans have an aluminum core. And that is also a problem because we don’t know how much of the aluminum is coming through the safe, nonstick surface. I am using air quotes, a seasoned cast iron pan. You can cook eggs and it just has to be well-seasoned, right? Is a thing. Oh, small boxes.

Kelly McCann, MD

Lots of oil and. Yeah. Okay, so so cooking. We talked about that and then obviously don’t heat anything in plastic. Ideally don’t store your stuff in plastic because that plastic is going to seep into your food.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

This is a whole issue. Okay. So you guys, I mean, you can go and get frozen bags of rice, organic rice at Costco or Trader Joe’s, and they instruct you to put the plastic bag into the microwave to cook your rice. Or what about cooking the Thanksgiving turkey in a plastic bag in the oven for cleanup? Or what about putting plastic liners in your crock pot to make it? I mean, there’s so much wrong with all of that. I mean, people don’t think about where. Oh, I don’t heat my Tupperware in the microwave. But I just gave you an example of a whole bunch of other places that plastic is coming in that people don’t think about.

Kelly McCann, MD

Yes, yes, absolutely. So try and avoid that. The other thing to think about, too, is every time you go to Starbucks and you get your cup of Starbucks and you drink it out of that little fancy top, you’re getting chemicals then, too, right? Yeah. And it’s being it’s heated as well. And you know that that cup is just not a cup. There’s chemicals lining that cup to get it from really having problems.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Combusting and breaking down in your hand from the scalding hot coffee. And then what about your coffee makers that have a little plastic cup of a serving of coffee that you put in and make one cup at a time?

Kelly McCann, MD

Yes and no.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Pods. Aluminum and plastic pods. It’s just.

Kelly McCann, MD

Right.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Unreal.

Kelly McCann, MD

And, you know, not good for the environment either. So to make coffee the old fashioned.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Way, I love to make a pour over. You know, I travel with a stainless steel pour over, then I and I have a little kettle that I bring with me when I travel and I heat water in my hotel room and I do a pour over and I literally have my whole coffee set up. And at home, same thing we do, you know, press or pour over or some way that is clean.

Kelly McCann, MD

Very nice. Good job. With some of the other places that people don’t think about house dust, house dust is so toxic. Think about it. You’re going on a walk outside all of the the pesticides that people are spraying on their lawns, that herbicides are being tracked in on your foot, your shoes, and you walk into your house and then in your house where what do you have? You have flame retardants in the foam cushioning in all of your furniture, and you have the plastics and the microparticles from all of your electronics. And all of that gets in the dust. And so the dust is filled with phthalates and pesticides and God knows what else. 

So one of the most important things for reducing your environmental chemical exposure for yourself and your family is to vacuum on a regular basis with a good HEPA vacuum and dust, but not just with like a Swiffer or some sort of cloth that is moist. So it can really get those particles up. So you may want to put a couple drops of liquids, soap in some water. You can add some vinegar there, too, if you want, and then wipe things down with the with that mixture to really get as much of the particles and the dust and the chemicals in the dust out of your environment and.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Vacuum under your bed.

Kelly McCann, MD

Yes. So those are some things you can do. Certainly, air filtration is going to be really important to one of the other exposures that we didn’t really talk about that’s huge is air pollution. So the closer you live to a highway, the more air pollution there is not just from the car exhaust, but from all the brake pads. So that that dust of the brake pads, that’s rubber chemicals, you know, really pretty toxic for us, too. So filtering your air with a good air filtration system is going to be important. You can get a whole house, you can get individual smaller units. That’s really important. And then, you know, by the same token, water filtration is also really important.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Okay, this Is I mean, I know people are feeling like, oh, my gosh, just so much. Is there hope? Like, how how do I.

Kelly McCann, MD

Yes, so it is completely overwhelming. When I did my fellowship in Environmental Toxicants, it was like, oh, you know, by the end of the year, I was thoroughly depressed. But you can do this in bite sized chunks, right? You do not have to make all of these changes today. But if you say, okay, you know, this month I’m going to clean up my personal care products and then next month I’m going to buy better cooking utensils for my myself and my family. Right. You don’t have to do it all at once. And then down the road, I’m going to get an air filter. But there’s a lot that you can do in making these healthier choices. You don’t have to do it little by little. You don’t have to do it all, all at once.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

And we do even talk about cleaning products. Those are all so right.

Kelly McCann, MD

Right.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Yeah. And so slopping them out as you run out, go get something. Well, you know what I’m seeing now? So I go to every time I’m at Target is a target right down the street from me. And I go and see like what’s available in here in terms of clean products. And there’s a lot of advertising that people are advertising that their products are clean and they are so not that advertising is so tricky, they are literally tricking us. So I picked up some shampoo the other day just to look at it and it says, we have, you know, ten or less ingredients in our product and they write what the ingredient is and then they explain what it and they explain it in common and common language. But the ingredients are still toxic, even though they’re make they’re describing it in a common language that you can explain. It’s such tricky marketing.

Kelly McCann, MD

Yes. Yes, it is really problematic. And, you know, here’s the other thing to give yourself. Give yourself the grace of like making the best choice that you can with the information that you have. You know, you can’t beat yourself up. You just have to move forward and make a better choice. I mean, I’ve had patients who have been diagnosed with celiac disease and then, you know, ten years into it, they realize, oh, there’s gluten in my shampoo and conditioner, right? They can’t be themselves, that you can’t beat yourself up. You have to just do the best that you can.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

I working with a client right now who just who just figured that out, she was like, oh, I found where the gluten is coming from. It’s in like a skin product or a shampoo or something she was using. Yep. I mean, you got to look at these things. If you’re if you’re showing on your labs that you’re persistently reactive to gluten, it’s coming in somewhere. If you are gluten free, 100%, your immune system will simmer down and it won’t react to it. We won’t be able to see it in the lab testing, but if it’s there, you are being exposed somewhere. 

So we’ve talked a lot about making healthier choices here. And for people who are feeling a bit overwhelmed about this, I mean, I know we all live with people in our homes, too, that aren’t necessarily watching this interview. I mean, people watching it are ready to take action. Right. And then if you go and just change your, you know, your husband’s body wash and shampoo and shaving cream and everything, like here, you’re going to use this now they’re going to revolt. They’re going to revolt. You have to enroll people in your life to making the changes. So how do you help people with this? How do we do this so that our kids, our teenagers, our families, our loved ones are significant? Others start to make the change also?

Kelly McCann, MD

Well, probably the same way that you’re doing it as you’re watching this, you’re educating yourself. You know, you can’t expect somebody else to watch a whole a whole long video or a whole summit. Right. That’s not that’s not realistic. But you can bring resources to them and say, hey, you know what I was reading on environmental working Group, here’s a, you know, two minute read about something. 

And I’m making these changes and I really think that we should make these changes. And you engage them in conversation. You share with them as you learn. I mean, my patients who have been doing this for a long time, their families are now involved because they’re sharing that information as they’re learning. And we love to share information that we learn and we get excited about it. So, you know, hopefully your enthusiasm for making these changes, positive changes, will translate into your family and your loved ones getting involved, too.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Yeah. And I find that if you work on yourself first and you start to resolve your symptoms, your family members are going to notice, Oh, you have more energy than you used to. Oh, you’re not as moody as you used to be. Wow. You’re waking up. You know, you’re sleeping through the night now. You’re not an insomniac getting up in the middle of the night and wandering the house. I see things are changing for you. I see this works. Maybe I’ll do it too. So work on yourself first.

Kelly McCann, MD

Yes. Yeah. Good advice. That’s all we have anyway. That’s all we can do is really work on ourselves.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Oh, yeah, totally. And it will help enroll your family members into what you’re. I’ll have what she’s having. It’s working.

Kelly McCann, MD

Right.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Okay. So like I mentioned at the beginning of this talk, you work with complex cases, mystery cases as people who have seen lots of practitioners and can’t get well. How does our audience get a hold of you? And you also have something exciting coming up. I mean, I know it’s launching this week, but it’s going to be available, fully available by the time people watch this interview because, you know, we film this a little bit ahead of time when people are watching it. So tell us what you have coming up and how we find you.

Kelly McCann, MD

Okay. I have a brick and mortar practice in Southern California, as you mentioned, that’s the spring center. So it’s the springcenter.com. And then I also have an online business, which is DrKellyMcCann.com on the online business, you have a course which is targeted towards our mass cell patients. But really it’s great for anyone who lives on the planet because it’s all about environmental chemicals. And so we do a deep dove into where are these chemicals lurking? What are the habits that are going to be most dangerous for you and how to change them and really what to do about all of these chemicals. And so if this conversation was intriguing to you and you want to learn more, I think that my course will be very, very valuable for you.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

I think it will be, too. And so I would encourage everyone to go get access to it. Thank you so much for being here and for shedding light on this and being so easy to understand and easy to talk to. I know our audience really appreciates this. You know, I’ve been in the interview business here for a long time and. The interviews that people love the most are the ones that they can take action on right away. And that gave them the most information. And you’ve done that today. So thank you so much for pouring into our audience and thank you for the work that you do and for being, you know, working in a brick and mortar is a labor of love, right? Seen patients day in and day out. It would be so much easier for you to just sell online programs, do it yourself. So for people like you who are still seeing people face to face in a world where everything has gone online and you don’t have to anymore, I just want to thank you for that because we need you.

Kelly McCann, MD

Thank you.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

We need you.

Kelly McCann, MD

Well, this has been delightful. Laura, thank you so much for inviting me and for all you out there. Good luck.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

They are going to get their solutions. We are committed to this. Everybody is going to make it through this. All right. Thank you so much. And until next time, they take care. Bye now.