Dirty Girl: Ditch The Toxins & Feel Freaking Amazing

Introduction to Wendy Tubo and the summit 0:00

Welcome to this episode of the Reverse Alzheimer's Summit. I'm your host, doctor Heather Sanderson, and I'm so excited to introduce you to my friend Doctor Wendy Tubo. She has an MBA. MBA and MD is passionate about helping women optimize their health and lives. As a functional medicine gynecologist, through her own struggles with mold and metal toxicity, celiac disease, and other health issues, Wendy have developed a deep sense of compassion and expertise for what her patients are facing. She's the coauthor of the bestseller Dirty Girl.

Ditch the toxins, look great, and feel freaking amazing. I this is the end of both of our days, and I just have to tell our audience members that, like, I have been looking forward to this all day long because I already know how much fun you are to be around. Welcome. Thanks, Heather. It's so great to be here, especially on this topic where we know how impactful it is and the difference it makes. I'm so I when you said come on the summit I was like, yes, we need to get this word out. Well, you I mean you really get like toxins how big of a deal it is.

And we have people talking about more than people talking about Meadows and people talking about chemical toxicity. And so that's all really exciting to go into the nuts and bolts and details. And yet you kind of put a lot of it back together. Plus you have this personal experience and the lens of women's health. And we know that Alzheimer's affects affect women. It just so much more than men, both as patients but also as caregivers. So understanding the nitty gritty of this is really important.

So dive in. Tell us a little bit more about your personal story, if you don't mind I don't mind. I am I'm pretty much an open book. You can ask me anything. My story has two peaks, so peak one starts with being born to people who had terrible genetics. And I said at one point to my parents, I am delighted that you reproduced, but you really shouldn't have because I got two copies for the MTA, for Gene. I got two copies for vitamin D deficiency.

Wendyu2019s personal health journey and celiac diagnosis 2:12

I got two copies for celiac. So I entered life with a genetic disadvantage, and I didn't know any of that. Of course it was to. I was born in 1970. Like, you know, we were lucky. We knew what a blood count was, right? It was kind of primitive. So we did that. And then, of course, 70s standard American diet. I remember sloppy Joe dinners, and my mom cooked a lot, but it was still still a different flavor, shall we say. And then I remember the advent of the microwaves and the microwavable dinners that came in plastic, and then the low fat craze and the high stress phase.

And so you start to build all this up, and if you fast forward, peek one happens when I'm 35 and I get diagnosed with celiac after being sick for 20 years, and I wasn't so sick that I was disabled, I was just suboptimal, which I think a lot of us can relate to. Like my periods were heavy, I had low iron, so we were like, oh, okay, well, that makes sense. I had low minerals and nutrients, I was fatigued, I was wasting, I had brain fog. But like when you're in brain fog, you don't know that you have brain fog until it goes away.

And then you go, oh my, that was really profound. So that was peak one. I got diagnosed by my husband's mentor who's actually retiring next month. That's really sort of poignant because it's the end of the era. So he diagnosed me. I went gluten free. I started to feel better and then also pretty good until I hit perimenopause, which I actually believe is cruel and unusual punishment. And I'm trying to mitigate it for all my patients because it's so such a potentially fraught time for people. So I hit perimenopause and I'm like, I just don't feel well.

And in retrospect, I had. So in peak two, I had two lead exposures, neither of which I recognized at the time or or kind of one I kind of recognized but didn't realize how impactful it was. And the second, I didn't know until months later. So one lead exposure. My neighbor took his postwar lead paint house down and I was like, shut the windows, I don't want to get exposed. And then I promptly forgot about it. I don't know, busy life, whatever. So a few months later, my hair starts falling out. I'm starting to gain weight.

It's not terrible. I've just gained 3 or 4 pounds and I have a little bit of a rash and I'm like, what's going on? But the hair loss was the thing I noticed. Fast forward another few months and we went to France and it was the trip of a lifetime. And we spent a week right around Notre Dame, right after it burned. So we didn't get to go in. It. And the reason this is important is that right after we came back from France, I gained more weight. So I had gained a total of like 9 pounds after coming home from France, not in France, after France.

And then this rash on my face erupted. I literally Heather wanted to rip my face off and it was on my eyes, my nose, under my chin. I was just a mess. And then my hair loss was like clumps and I now I'm really freaking out and I'm like, oh, perimenopause, man. These hormonal shifts. So I check my hormones, they're perfect. Okay, I check my thyroid. It's perfect. Now I okay, like always start with the god. I do function medicine always start with a god. I do a stool test. It's the best I've ever seen.

I'm like, what is going on here? And I'm stumped. And then I'm listening to the radio one morning and I hear the reporter on NPR talk about how when Notre Dame burned 500 pounds of lead, dust was released into the air. And the closer you were to Notre Dame, the more lead exposure you got and the further away you were, the less you got. And I looked at my husband and I went, I got a lead exposure. I mean, we all got a lead exposure. I took everyone, but it was bad enough that I really had a clinical response.

Like I was really messy after after we came home. And so I tested and I had previously tested and my lead was just slightly positive, but being sort of, not not quick to panic person, I was like, not too bad, right? But this time it was 25% higher and it got my attention. And I said, I really got a clinically relevant lead exposure because I've gained weight that I can't shift. My hair's falling out and this rash is killing me. And my energy wasn't so great. But it's it's sometimes hard to see all that.

So I started to treat. I already knew about the mycotoxins. I did the tests. Like. As we were leaving for the trip in April, I sent off the trip. The test for mycotoxins, so I already knew that I had four strains of mycotoxins. Then I have lead and slightly positive mercury. And then I was retesting. I start treating the LED and then I start retesting for the mycotoxins about eight months later and I was like, well, they also offer environmental toxins testing and glyphosate. So I love data. Let's get the data in for a penny and for a pound.

So I'm like, let's do the whole it's one test. Super easy. So I comes back and I still have my four strains of mycotoxins. I haven't gotten rid of any of them. And then the environmental toxins test shows eight different toxins at high levels.

Lead exposure, mycotoxins, and discovering toxin overload 7:24

And I was like, I looked at my husband and I said, I am such a dirty girl. And then I went, oh, that's the book we got write. Because if I'm like this and another, we've been organic for years. I was on a Candida protocol for years, so I didn't eat sugar. I don't drink alcohol, I don't smoke, I don't I'm like wicked boring and yet right. And yet I have these issues. So that's why we wrote the book, because we got to get the word out. Because these are the things that make us sick, and we can't figure out why we're not who we're meant to be.

I just think about all the women and men walking around with their hair falling out, feeling uncomfortable and lethargic and with a rash and being told by their doctors that nope, your thyroid fine. No cure. Hormones are fine. We did all the testing, we did the most comprehensive testing. And let's send you to rheumatology and let's send you to psychiatry and like we'll send you to the specialists and and like, we'll see if they can do anything. How about it's just an autoimmune problem. Oh yeah. Right. Yeah.

Like we had a patient show up in an office with no hair on her body. Now, the upside is, she didn't have to do any waxing south of the border. Right? I said to her there's always an upside, but she had no hair on her head. And that was really disruptive. By the way, her hair is grown back because she had metals and mycotoxins and Lyme and Bartonella and Bubka. So she's out. We've actually reversed her autoimmune disease. And I think as we layer this on to Alzheimer's, it's really critical to talk about the reversal of disease, because all of these chronic illnesses, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, even insulin resistance, diabetes is type three.

You know, Alzheimer's is type three diabetes because it impacts the brain. And all these all of these toxins stand as these pillars of inflammation. Just chipping away and eroding our health. And that's why it's so important to go big picture, figure it out, start chipping away so it doesn't chip away at us. Start really. And the fact that this could happen to you not even that long ago when you have functional medicine training, right, that there's detective work that is required here. And, when we take that perspective of what's affecting us at the cellular level, what's what's enhancing that cellular productivity and optimization, optimal function, and then what's degrading it.

And when we address things at that level, that's when you get these complex chronic diseases like autoimmune disease. And you know that that, the unresolved whatever the bucket diagnoses like fibromyalgia and IBS and all of these other things, chronic fatigue syndrome and then of course, Alzheimer's. Yep. Two, tell us a little bit more about you mentioned mycotoxins, chemical toxins and heavy metals. Are there others there and how do we test for them where they found okay. So let's back up even a step.

So let's go systematically the buckets of toxins. There's heavy metals. And those are the metals that your body can't get rid of. The ones we really pay attention to are lead, mercury, chromium, arsenic and thallium. Those are the big five. And even within that, lead and mercury kind of take pole position with each other. Those are the, you know, lead. If you've got osteoporosis, you need to look for lead mercury if your hair is falling out, or lead if your hair is falling out. You need to you need to look at these.

Then the next bucket is mycotoxins. Mycotoxins are the toxins that molds put out when you have them in your body, and they can range from everything from respiratory disorders to skin disorders to, it's implicated in brain dysfunction, autoimmune disease. Some of them are cancer promoting agents. It's really and that goes also for the the lead in the mercury in the metals. And then the last category is other. It's kind of the biggest. That's your gasoline additives. That's jet propane fuels. That's perchlorate in your water.

Plastic styrene nail polish makeup beauty products. Formaldehyde from dry cleaning. It's really everything insecticides, pesticides, herbicides, herbicides, glyphosate, which is the most commonly used herbicide in the world. It's pretty hard to get anything food wise that hasn't been contaminated with glyphosate if it's not organic. And even sometimes organic is contaminated because of drift from non-organic to organic farms. It gets sprayed and it drifts. So when you're testing we there's a lot of ways to test.

So if you test the blood you can't really test the blood for the toxins necessarily. It's very hard because you'd have to do one at a time. So we tend to use urine testing for all of these. You can test for blood for the metals. Arsenic is the only one that tells you what's what's stored. It's kind of weird. Arsenic you can't test if you had an acute exposure except through urine. The other ones, you can test acute exposure for lead, mercury, cadmium through the blood. But that only tells you the last 4 or 6 weeks.

It doesn't tell you if you had an exposure ten years ago and you're storing it in your bones, organs, fat. You know, people say, oh my God, I can't lose weight. I'm like, that's because you've got toxins in your fat. You're not going to lose any weight until you get rid of the toxins. Your body's protecting you. It's pretty nice. It's not in your brain or your thyroid or your ovaries or yes, where it's in your home, except it is in your brain because your brain has a lot of fat in it. And so the brain does uptake toxins.

So going back to how we test.

Types of toxins and how testing works 13:12

So the we tend to do a provoked test and a baseline test for the for the metals. The reason you do the baseline is to look and see if you've had some acute exposure. And then the provoke test we use something called DMCA which pulls the metals out, binds to them, sticks them in the urine, and then you measure it. It's not an exact science. So it's not like, you know, if your level is 84, then it's exactly 84. It's not like that. It's it's like you're you have high levels or you aren't registering for any.

And then we need to figure out what's in the middle. So it's not the Holy grail, but it's a good guidepost. And then the mycotoxins also we do provoked urine testing using glutathione and then a hot either bath or sauna. Kind of cool. Just make yourself hot, wait a half hour and pee. That's the test. And for some people, this provocation process can be a little uncomfortable. How do you help support them through it? So one is by managing expectations, right? So I say to people when they're doing the metals test, you can feel one of three ways you can feel nothing.

In which case we have no early response notification that you probably have metals we don't know. We're going to wait for the test. You could feel like a truck ran over you. Terrible. Worst day ever. And in that case, you've got metals. Congratulations. You've got metals, right? Because because you're having that reaction. Your body's telling you, oh, you probably have metals. And then we wait for the results to see how high they are. And I'll say something about that in a second. And or you could feel amazing.

And I that was a harder one to recognize because for myself, I felt amazing every time I did my metals test. And I used to tell people I always felt really great when I did it. And then one day I went. I always felt really great when I did it. That's because I had metals, and when I did it, it was doing it. It was detoxing me. So I felt great. So. So you can feel one of three ways in prepping people for you might feel crappy. Most people recover within a day. My mom on her first test slept the whole day like she was able to get up and pee, but otherwise she slept and she slept overnight. And the next day she's fine.

She had metals. So, so you can feel all different ways when you're doing the testing. I was going to come back to something, and now I've forgotten what it was. I'll think of it at some point. We'll think of it. Yeah. I'm sure if overall the impact of toxins that our health and you alluded to like this, this brain connection because our brain is made of fat and so many toxins are fats soluble. But overall, what are things that we would expect if we have high levels of toxicity in our and our body?

Let's back up a step, Heather. Because we can't talk about toxins without talking about the innate function of someone's body, because by the time toxins get to be an issue, either it's because you have crazy levels of them and your body is just completely going haywire, or it's because the rest of the system is dysfunctional and your body is crying for help. Either way, it's a cry for help. So you have to look at what's your genetics, what's your epigenetics where your grandparents and your parents super stressed?

Did they go through a famine or a feast? Did they have some trauma? Those things impact our genes. Turning on or off. Do you eat a standard American diet which is full of omega six fatty acids, highly processed, very little natural food and greens and omega threes? Or are you eating an organic diet that has minimally processed? And of course, there's a huge spectrum there. So where are you on the diet spectrum eating spectrum, not diet. Do you sleep? Are you stressful? Do you have good relationships?

Kind of like Dan Buettner healthy zones that the blue zones, those matter because your balance impacts your response to the toxin. So first you have to make sure that the foundational things of your health are well cared for. And then you look at toxins. But for example, you can have these toxins for years. But if you got a parasite or had some kind of infection or had an inciting event, the body can no longer compensate and it sets you back so you start, you start to notice symptoms. As you age, it gets harder for the body to be resilient, and so it takes longer to recover.

We're not as we don't. We don't dance with insults as quickly, as easily as we used to. So it's more impactful. Where do they come from? You describe Notre Dame burning down and you hear the destruction of old buildings around you. Yes. And that's one potential exposure. What are other common exposures that people come into contact with on a day to day basis? I should just say before I answer this question, it's horrifying. Okay. Like it's when you start to really think about it, it's horrifying.

So let's go systematically. So when you're looking at the metals, if you're if you're focusing on lead and mercury, the lead comes from lead pipes. And there are still 10 million homes in the United States that have lead pipes. So if you have lead pipes coming into your home, that's a huge source of exposure and then lead paint. And now nobody likes the window sills. I know that however you're living in this house and as it settles, the places where the walls meet, the other walls or the ceiling or the floor, there's grinding going on, you know, it's grinding against itself and that's dusting the paint.

And the lead gets into dust that we inhale, we eat, we touch, we absorb. So those are the sources for lead. Mercury is there's a lot of sources, but the biggest ones are fish and fillings. So those mercury fillings that are silver are 50% mercury by weight. And they never stop off gassing. They any time you eat or brush your teeth or drink something, they're off gassing. So that's a constant source of exposure. And then fish, you know, especially I think you're out in California and everyone eats sushi.

So of course that ahi tuna is delicious and that ahi tuna has enough mercury in it for about 6 to 12 weeks of exposure on one serving. And a lot of people are eating it 1 to 2 times a week.

How toxins affect health and common exposure sources 19:36

So the exposure is tremendous. And then the parallel thing that's going on is we're all stressed and we're not not resting enough, and maybe we're not eating as well as we should. And then detox gets shut down. So we're not only getting more exposure, but our excretion is impaired and then everyone's constipated. So you have to poop it out. So there's all these layers. So that's the metals the mycotoxins are from two large sources. One is buildings. I live in Massachusetts. Everyone has an old musty basement, and those are huge sources of of mycotoxins.

And then foods, grains are really contaminated because they sit and they're wet, and then you eat them and the micro toxins don't get killed off by the processing. They just get concentrated by the processing. So you eat them. And then you also mentioned that you can harbor fungus. Yes. In your sinuses and get get that can be creating mycotoxins. Yeah. Just for fun. Yeah. It's totally horrifying. And then there's the environmental one. So as I mentioned, like this was a good excuse to start pumping my own gas because my gasoline fume additives were high and I was like, I don't really want to be exposed to those either.

So, I'm going to get an electric car when my car is up for assuming that we can get cars, because there's kind of a shortage, but anyway, going for an electric car as opposed to gas because of the exposure. But here's the downside. New cars have like 300 chemicals in them. So when you look at plastics and Vox, new cars are a huge source of off gassing. So, you want to filter your car? We actually got my daughter a new car back in November, and I was like, you have to have a filter and it's going to run anytime that car is running, you need to run it.

When I got my new car, my mom was horrified because I just rolled all the windows down and I kept them roll down for like a week or two until it stopped and I stopped smelling it. Yeah, mom was saying, you know, it's going to get something's going to happen. I was like, no, no, it's way better to just get all the junk out of there. It's so and so. People love the smell of a new car. And I think it's it makes me on a gag. Yeah. I used to love the smell of a new car. And now, because of that emotional response, I don't love it.

Construction sources. You know, anything in construction is a huge source of toxins. So the VOCs in the paint, the VOCs in the stains and the varnishes, the plastics that we use, the the chemicals in the particleboard, it just sort of goes on and on what you clean your house with, these are all sources of it really goes on and on. Dyeing your hair don't do it. It's bad for you. Or use a supernatural one because like I said, this can affect every aspect of our lives and especially this day and age where there's hyper consumption and, you know, we're we're burning through a lot of things, whether it's plastic or consumables, things we eat, things we put on our skin, as you've mentioned, and yet we hide it.

You can kind of pick your poison, right? When you're aware of certain things, you can decide you're empowered to make that choice. And so instead of just allowing all these toxins in and kind of saying, oh, well, it's too much. So I'm not going to think about it, I'm not going to do anything about it. We can make this decision to have at least lessen it. Not that any amount is good, but at least we can start to decide, okay, I really want my nails done. So that's what I'm going to do. But I'm going to forego getting my hair done and I'm going to switch on my cleaning products.

Yeah. I think you bring up a really great point. So it's never no matter where you live in this earth, you're exposed to toxins. So it's not about no talks, it's about mitigating your exposures. And I always say to people, start with food. You do it three times a day. Maybe more. So let's get what's going into your body as clean as possible. That means organic, grass fed grass, finished flesh, organic vegetables and fruits, not too many fruits because they're sugary, more vegetables and then limited starches and grains.

Don't drink alcohol because it impairs your body's ability to get rid of toxins and then don't eat sugar, because same issue. It's creating an inflammatory problem. So start with that. Just master food and then yeah, there's a lot of ways that you can peel it off. So it's tempting to be like, oh forget it. I can't deal with any of it. But what you want to do is pick one thing. So I always say pick food and then for women, men use fewer products than women. So for women, pick the product you're running out of, whether that's your now nail polish or your mascara or your facial toner, whatever it is or your toothpaste, whatever you're running out of, go to Environmental working group or think dirty and look it up.

Get some data. Maybe you hit the jackpot and you pick something good. That'd be cool. It rarely happens, but I did pick one thing that was good in my makeup that I didn't have to fix. So I was like, okay, cool. So like, check it out. Maybe you did a good job, and if you didn't, then that's the time to level up when you're running out. So it can take you two years to get rid of all your products because of perfection. Right? Right. I think that we have to keep that in mind, that it's not about everything being perfect.

It is shifting the trajectory, going in that direction later on in each of these pieces, on top of the last. Yes. Yeah. And being nice to yourself. Right. Like we're so, so we're so unkind to ourselves. And that, I will argue, makes a state of inflammation because you can have a thought. Imagine this thought. You're driving and you think that car is going to hit me. You instantly have a chain, a domino chain of things that happens where your adrenals kick in saying, oh my goodness, you have a surge of cortisol.

The cortisol tells your liver, oh, guys, detox not a priority right now. Focus on survival and getting sugar stores out of the liver so that we can have quick energy to run from the lion. It also tells your gut, we don't need to be digesting right now because we're about to have a crisis here. A lion is coming to eat us, right? We're super primitive. So same thing happens when you have these mean thoughts about yourself, you know, oh, I'm so stupid. It's really unkind. It's set off that same chain of events.

Your body experiences it as a stressor and the same things happen. Cortisol goes up, detox goes down, digestion goes down. There's thoughts. Yes it is. Any type of toxin can create a toxic environment. So toxic thoughts are just as bad for you because they're shutting your system down even faster. It never, you know. So I say it's horrifying. So that's why I'm like, just chip away at one thing, right? Just do one thing. And so I screw things up all the time. Heather I'll tell one on myself. Like, I was so proud of these little pods that I got for my my dry clean, not dry cleaning my laundry.

I mean, I have four kids. We go through a ridiculous amount of laundry detergent, but I was like, oh, look at me. I got these little pods. I didn't actually check to see that they were good. I was just like, they're good for the environment because there's not a lot of plastic packaging, right? I forgot to check about the ingredients. So one day I wake up and I go, I never checked on that. Oh, oops. So I check on it and it wasn't terrible, but it was not where we wanted to be. So I was like, okay, well the the the delivery is renewing next month, so I'm just going to cancel the delivery and we'll switch over to this other brand.

I found Aspen Clean, which is EWG certified. I love them, they have everything and they have autoship. So I don't even have to like think too much about it. But but the take home message here is not that I found Aspen Clean, although that's a great brand. The take home message is don't spend any time when you screw it up berating yourself for screwing it up. Your humanity's going to happen and you get busy. We're all busy. Be nice to yourself. Just say, okay, I'm going to try to remember to check it next time and let's fix what I didn't do perfectly this time.

Nobody died, you know, and it was tides were better than tide, right? Like right. You had moved in the right direction being based on like, previous decisions before understanding all of this.

Reducing exposure through food and daily choices 28:00

So even just going in that direction makes difference. Everything matters. So be nice to yourself about it. And then there are things that we can do on the level of, you know, just this acceptance rate. We're all going to be exposed to things that we know nothing about, that we have no control over. Right? So that's going to happen. What can we do to support our natural detox processes? I love this question. Okay. So you are what you eat, right? So you are what you eat. So so there's two parts to it.

One, the body loves minerals, nutrients. Spices. The body loves these things. It supports detox. The body loves parsley and cilantro. The body loves flesh. So you can eat your way to supporting detox. It doesn't have to be this fancy stuff, you know? It's like add add a little scoop of of Asian or East Indian spices. These can support detox. Make sure you're adding we had falafel night last night and I had three bunches of of parsley of organic parsley. And I was like, you know, you think about it, we're eating the falafel and it's parsley.

So here we are. We're supporting phase one and phase two detox just by eating. So I can attest to the fact that you live this because I had you go with you and you were eating this amazingly gorgeous, beautiful salad that you had brought and packed, and really, you had put a lot of effort into making sure that you were nourishing yourself in a really healthy way when the rest of us were like, oh, screw it, we're out. We're going to eat whatever at night. Well, the one thing I'll say is I have celiac.

And so I'm pretty sensitive to cross-contamination. And because I was speaking the next day at that conference that we were playing at, I just didn't want to be off my game. And I have said food is a priority, so we always travel like I never here's when a hot tip. I never leave home without food. Literally. I never leave my house without food because I don't want to be stuck somewhere and be hungry and then eat something that I am that doesn't work in my body. And by the way, I never say like, this is a bad food or you're a bad person.

It's not in the realm of morality, it's in the realm of what works for me or doesn't work for me. So I don't like how I feel when I eat certain foods. So I got a lot of peer pressure for this. Like people would say, well, why aren't you eating the dessert? I'm like, I don't I don't feel well when I eat it. Forget the gluten, right? It could be gluten free. I don't feel well when I eat sugar. And, by the way, when you have metals, sugar loves the state of inflammation and chaos that metals create.

So you often have Candida going along with it. So I'm like a Candida profile and it bugs the living daylights out of me. I don't want to be like out of off my game. So food is a huge priority. I never leave home without it. I always make sure, okay, you can find healthy food at well, where were we? We were somewhere in the depths of Pennsylvania in like the middle of nowhere. I could not find any fresh food in the grocery store. That was the only time I was ever really shocked. But that's 1 in 1,000,000 you can almost always find, you know, even just lettuce and chicken and and vegetable and a tomato.

Right. You can find the basics. It's not perfect. But yeah, food is a huge priority. And I always like to get two for one. I think Shilpa talks about two for one. So you know, artichokes have high, high fiber and they support detox as do chickpeas have fiber. So that supports your gut health and detox parsley supports that. So I try to at fermented foods support the the the gut and digestion. So I try to get things in that are not only tasty but can serve a dual purpose for, oh, this is like helping me detox where the food is medicine.

Yes, food is medicine. So you can, you know, if you're super sick, it's hard to eat your way to help. You often need help with with additional nutraceuticals, but food is its own nutrient dense possibility. Yeah. And then do you incorporate sweating or and lymphatic like what other things do you do to help people support this. So so I'm a huge fan of Everything's Better Than Nothing okay. And what I mean by that is in an ideal world, everyone's going to be like the, the, the Norwegians and the people in Europe who go and they do.

Everyone has a sauna in their basement. That's the ideal, right? Not moldy basement. Yes. Yes, exactly. So everyone's going to do that in an ideal world, but in so in an ideal world, yes. So when I turned 50, it was during Covid and we were going to take a trip to Italy, except it was Covid, so we didn't do that. And so instead we took that money and we finished our basement and bought a sauna. And it's been the best purchase ever because you can actually sweat. Your skin is a tremendous detox organ.

So, so sweating will get rid of toxins, but not everyone can finish their basement and put in a sauna, you know, takes up space. So let's start with, okay, there's portable saunas that pop up. They're like these little pop up sauna pods, and they range in price from like 150 on Amazon, which is not the best quality. But we'll get you through to like 1200 or $1500. And some of the specialized vendors these are these are fantastic. Right. And and so everything that gets you sweating is better than not sweating at all.

I have at home I have a sauna blanket. So unless you have a sleeping bag and it folds up, it's it's a vinyl that's low velocity, low EMF and I can just wipe it out and it folds up so that I can put it away in the closet. And I can just take it out and put it on the floor. You know, something that's not gonna burn from getting hot, and it's so easy. I love it. So I at this stage, I get in at about once or twice a week. But it's one of those things that because it's easy and because it it works and it I think it was 450 or $500.

So it's not free. But I've had it for a few years. It still works. It works great and it's easy for me to do so. I actually do it. Yes. And let's talk about sort of what can you do at home if that's not realistic. You can do Epsom salt foot baths, you can do Epsom salt, full body mass, you can do dry brushing. I mean a dry brush is like ten bucks. You can do a dry brush. What that does is it gets the lymph flowing that starts to move. Lymph drains your body. So that starts to move the toxins. You can go for a walk.

Supporting detox with sweating, sleep, and lymph flow 35:00

If you don't sleep you don't detox. So make sure you sleep because that space, the spaces in your brain start to separate when you sleep and get to deep sleep so that your brain can actually drain its toxins out of the brain. So even sleeping is an impactful detox behavior. But yeah, there's a huge spectrum of what you can do, and everything that you do is better than nothing. That's the message is like, you don't have to be perfect. That's only on the Hollywood movie screen is perfection, right?

It's not like that. That's not life. Well, and speaking of every everyone, everyone poops. So hopefully. Right. So you mentioned constipation. What do you do if a patient tells you that they're constipated, they're not moving every day? I'm, I'm really into poop. That's going to be one of our books actually is all about no pooping. But that's like our third. We have another book about the joys of being perimenopause and how to maintain your relationships healthily as you transition. One day my husband talked to me while I was having a really bad hot flash and I was like, dude, do you value your life?

I've been like a really bad hot flusher. I don't care what the question is, stop talking to me. That's the next book. And then the one after that is all about pooping, because let's drill into this. We've mentioned phase one and phase two in the liver. So let's drill into it for the audience. So phase one your liver takes some substance that needs to get out of your body that is fat soluble and converts it into what's called a toxic intermediate. I don't know why it does that. It it does it okay. It's just the way it is.

And that toxic intermediate basically generates free radicals. So your body's like hot potato. Hot potato. You want to deal with that. Phase two. You take that toxic intermediate and you bind it to a methyl group, a glucose serrano group, a glutathione group, a sulfur group. You bind it okay. The take home message is you bind it, and when you bind it, that makes it water soluble. Now, the things to know about phase one and phase two, phase one is really fast, especially women. We're like really good at phase one.

Phase two is slower. So you often have more production of these toxic intermediates. Where do you put them? Your fat. So you get all these women who are like, I can't men stop eating diet soda and they lose 10 pounds women. We stop eating, drinking diet soda and nothing happens. That's because we are slower at phase one. We store fats and we store toxins in our fat. So now you put this bound, water soluble toxin that's no longer toxic, but you still need to get rid of it. You put it into your poop to poop it out.

Your poop is water soluble. If you're not pooping, there's an enzyme in your gut called beta glucan. It's think of it like a scissor enzyme. It comes around and it separates the toxin from the binder. Don't don't forget hormones are toxins in our body. So you separate these toxins and from their binder, when you separate them, what happens? It's no longer water soluble. It can't stay in the poop. It goes back in the bloodstream and the liver. I think if the liver was a person, it would be a face palming person.

Like I already dealt with you. Now I got to deal with you again. But I have all these other toxins I have to deal with hang out in the fat until, like, it's like, you know, the waiting room. Fat is your waiting room. Hang it in the fat until I can get to you. But of course, because we're exposed to all these toxins and we're stressed and we're busy, you never really get to it. And then you just keep building it up. So if you don't poop, you separate these toxins from the binders, circulate them back into your body.

For women in particular, this is deadly because your estrogens are on their way out of your body. You have now recycled toxic estrogen, and that raises the risk for estrogen dependent cancers like breast cancer, uterine cancer.

Constipation, phase one and phase two detox, and gut health 39:00

These are an ovarian cancer. These are not good for you okay. So it's like so the reason it's so important to poop is if you're not pooping it's sitting there. It's getting recycled. You can inhibit beta gluconate is. And what you want to do is move the poop along. Because your poop is a huge way to get rid of waste toxins. Yeah, an essential way to evacuate that. And so do you have people try maybe exercise hydration the where the first understanding that every 24 hours you must have a bowel movement.

If you're not, you need to see a doctor do something about it. Yeah, I remember learning about the oral anal reflex and med school. I thought it was hysterical because every time you eat, you're supposed to poop. And I was like, by that point, I was already well into my, like, celiac development, even though I don't think I had it fully. But I was on my way and I was already constipated, and I was like, who does that? Like, I didn't know that. So I remember learning that. I mean, this is 25 years ago, so you should eat and poop.

That's how it goes. Because the mat eating stimulates the got to move. So okay, maybe that doesn't happen for everyone yet, but the goal is at least once within 24 hours, if not 2 to 3 times, right? And it should be like a pipe that just plops in the toilet with not a lot of splashing. Not bunny poops, not not floating, doesn't fall apart. It's like a lot of rules about poop. But even just get to poop. So then the question is what can you do? And there's a ton you can do. So you start with I would call this low hanging fruit, but it might not be low hanging fruit.

So start by eliminating processed carbs and sugar because those throw off the balance of the gut and replacing those with high density, nutrient foods that have high fiber. Okay, so increasing your fiber content can be really impactful for people. And it should be, soluble fiber. If you're constipated now you need to make sure for chia, like if you're going to drink chia seeds you need to soak them beforehand because otherwise it'll make it worse. You don't want it. These are things that pull water into the gut, so you want to give it enough water so that it doesn't make it worse.

So fiber magnesium is very helpful. If you take too much magnesium, you're going to have diarrhea. It's okay. Just take less okay. Colon hydrotherapy. That's basically like a monitored enema where they're monitoring the pressure in the colon to make sure that it's safe as they systematically empty it out. Exercise abdominal massage. There are, aloe. There are tons of things that can promote the gut to move, but you first have to take away what's causing it not to move. Do you have bacteria that are pathological?

Do you have do you need probiotics? There's so many causes. So this is the plug where I say, okay, see a functional medicine doctor, you're not an island. Don't go it alone. Okay. Like do it and do it as a team so that you can figure it out. But you do need to start with the gut and fix that poor little gut, because it can't do its work if it's out of whack. No. And then what about other organs in the location? Do you have any tips for how to get those optimized? Oh, tons. So I mean, it's all stuff.

This is where people are like, oh yeah, I'm done with her. Don't drink alcohol. It's bad for you. That's the point. It's really an unpopular. But if you need to drink alcohol, okay. Especially if you're female. We don't process alcohol the same way men do. So it's throw. So a guy drinks a glass, you know, we go out to dinner with your partner, and if it's male, female and you go, okay, your partner has a drink, you're going to match them and then they have another drink. You match them. Nope. You should be at like 50 to 25% less than what they are.

I'm sorry. 25 to 50% of what they drink is what you should drink at the max. So if your partner's drinking 2 to 3 drinks, you should be drinking max one because you're not processing it as well as they are. So it impacts us more. And that shuts down detox. Because don't forget your liver supposed to be detoxing you. But now it's like, oh, I got to deal with this toxin because this is a toxin. Alcohol is a toxin. So try not to re tox as you want to detox. That's what I say to people. So sweating.

Don't drink alcohol. Don't eat sugar. Try not to be a stress ball. Have good relationships, eat high quality food. These are the basics, and they're very impactful. So it sounds like, oh, just eat good food. But no, you really can impact your health. You can eat your way to health. Amazing. That's it. That really is so hopeful and so empowering. And we've seen that certainly with reversing dementia, I think 50% of the work is dietary changes. It's what you're putting into your body and an ideal world.

It's an organic ketogenic diet. Most of the time. And then adding in as your keto adapted, adding in those great foods, some fruit, some sweet potatoes, some starchy vegetables, but really keeping it paleo even if you're not in ketosis. Yeah. And, that alone does so much healing. Yeah. Wendy, I couldn't thank you enough for being here and sharing your expertise and wisdom. I want to make sure our audience knows how to find out more about you. I would love that, Heather. Thank you. And it's been a pleasure to be here too.

So all of my social media is Wendy true bombed and my first name is spelled funny. I changed it when I was 13 because I had a best friend who was Wendy, so I didn't want we didn't want to have her name the same spelling. So it's NDE true bio MD and that's on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter. My company, which is where we see patients, is five journeys and that's five journeys.com. And we also have Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram for the company too. And then we have a podcast of our own which is called the Five Journeys Podcast, Live Like You Matter.

And that's all about we explore everything about health, where it's really how do you get healthy and and no, wait, I have a free gift for the audience. Did I mention that? No, it has a free gift. Okay, so we're all about how do you detox your life and get rid of toxins. So we put it all in a guide because we get this question a lot. Like what can we do? What can we do? So we put it in a guide and it's free for the listeners. It's on our website five journeys.com/promo. And that's the guide to detoxing your life.

Alcohol, relationships, and practical detox habits 45:36

And Coming Soon is the first chapter of our book that you can read online, but the website's not live yet. But that'll be, Dirty Girl detox.com. It's coming soon. Excellent. You know, you kept saying we. And I just want to point out that your husband have, like, this power dynamic, this loving, amazing relation ship and that I think fortifies us, right. Like that. Those relationships build that resilience when hard things come up, when when life gets tough or when there are toxins present you like whether they're environmental or in relationship, relational or those there's mental, that mental chatter.

You guys have this just incredible relationship and and you really live it. So seeing that is inspiring. Thank you. We really try and I will say it hasn't been all sunshine and rainbows. I mean, we've been together for 22 years and we've had hard times. And I think what underpins it is a commitment to how do we be our our best selves together. And and who can I be for you that will build you up. And I am not naturally someone who is good at relationships. I'm someone who's kind of like, I grew up an only child.

I'm like a loner, you know, I'm just kind of doing my own thing. But he really gets me into partnership. And it's been a practice. But. And it's a practice, it's not. It's not necessarily like, oh yeah, it's amazing. Every day. Sometimes I'm like, why did I marry you? But even being able to say to him, I can't remember why I married you, I'm so annoyed with you right now, sort of defuzes it and goes, okay, wait, that's why I married you? Because I can say that to you and you don't get hooked and, like, stuck on any of the of the.

Oh my God, she's going to leave me. No, I'm not going to leave you. I'm just irked. I'm perimenopausal. You're irking me right? It's like but but healthy relationships are really critical. And if your relationship isn't healthy for you and you've done everything you can, it's time to get out. That would be my my vote, my plug for like, have it work for you or and find a new find something that does work that is fulfilling. There are so many inspiring relationships in this Alzheimer's community, right?

So many really dedicated spouses. I see that over and over again, and people who I see in my clinical practice who do the best have that amazing, incredible

Where to find Wendy and closing remarks 48:00

partnership, someone that's there to support them. And so just a testament to, to you doing that, even though I know it's not always easy. And also to our patients and the people who show up and do that and, and put the work in because it is it's so worth it and it is so healing. That's huge. Wendy, thank you again for joining us. It's been always it's always fun to see you. It's fun. I can't wait to play with you more like I know we've got lives on the calendar and then reminding everybody dirty girl this.

Oh yeah, it's on Amazon. I forgot to say that. Sorry guys. Don't type in Dirty Girl. That is a good. No no no, don't type in Dirty Girl unless it's dirty. Go detox or dirty. Go with my name because you're going to get all kinds of you get porn. Like you don't want that. Well, maybe you do, but you're not going to get the book if you just type in Dirty Girl on Amazon. You use Dirty Girl Detox. Unless you're looking for different kinds of thrills, correct? Wendy. Thanks again. I'm going to let you go.

I know you have four kids and you're on East Coast time. Yes. Thank you. Yes.