Toxic Beauty And What We Can Do About It

Introduction and Guest Background 0:00

- Welcome to this episode of the environmental toxicants, auto immunity and chronic diseases summit. I'm Dr. Wendie. Trubow, MD, MBA and I'm your host today, my guest today. I'm so excited. Okay. I'm always excited. But my guest today is Brian Vaszily He's one of the most renowned and respected natural health leaders, researchers advocates for over 20 years. He's helped guide millions of people to research-based natural health solutions. He's the founder of the popular health destination, the art of anti aging with over 500,000 members as well as the founder of purity Woods, which is a fast growing provider of premium quality USDA certified organic skincare products brian. I'm so excited to have you on the summit and I mean especially what we're going to talk about today, So welcome.

I skipped a lot. Right, because you're you and I are the same age. So you have a lot of accomplishments. Do you want to add anything that I missed? - Well, first of all thank you. Um and I'm excited to especially be on this with you. I respect what you do and the light you shed on a lot of important topics that otherwise don't get the much deserved light that they need to be honest, so kudos to you for what you're doing. Um Yeah, you, you know, you really hit the keys. I think I have been in health and wellness sometimes in front of the screen and microphone sometimes behind the scenes helping uh other doctors and researchers become really well known entities as well.

You know, just advancing the cause for over 20 years. And it's very energizing to see where things have gone when I, when I first, you know, really started all this, uh, you know, organic food was considered, uh, you know, hippy dippy and, and, and wacko. And, and now, you know, it's uh, oh my goodness, It's a top seller in walmart. I mean, so what, what a transition, you know? And it's because of folks like you. Um, and especially doctors like you have the courage to go out there and say, nope, you know, the way the medical establishment is today is not the way, um, you know, there's certainly some good, we can't deny that, but, you know, a lot of change still has to happen, but a lot of change has happened because of voices like you and your peers. So I I have such immense respect for you and all your peers who are setting the truth straight, so to speak.

- I would say if I could see so far, it's because I stand on the shoulders of giants right right back at you buddy. So, I mean, you've really been instrumental in the movement of health care of, of wellness health low talks living, no talks living. How, how did you get into it, right? Like what was, I have a million questions for you, but, but really it's like maybe we could back up because you've got a pretty compelling personal story. Can you say just a little bit about, you know, you had a pretty rough childhood and you were a parent at an age that I really was just grateful that I got home after a night of partying.

- Yeah, well, alright, so yeah, as you noted um in the low fifties and the first half of my life as of right now, in fact you could pretty much cut it down. The middle of the first half of my life was quite rough. Um so you know, around my age of nine, my father was a very good man and then he turned severely alcoholic and severely abusive to me, to my sister, to my mother. Um and you, you know, I've long since and I'm happy to discuss that, you know, at some point in this interview, but I've long since done the work forgiven, but that was mighty tough when you're a kid and it created a lot of hardship on top of it.

I grew up in a pretty darn rough, you know, Chicago neighborhood, lost friends to gangs, um you know, to my dad's credit after years of being alcoholic and abusive, he did kick the bottle, He quit, but you know, he still had a lot of bitterness inside of him and it was rough and then he ended up frankly dying slowly for 10 years in and out of hospitals for those 10 years and we were right there with him the last six months of his life, he was in a hot different hospitals straight. Never went home again.

Childhood Trauma and Early Fatherhood 4:27

I watched my mom and his bedside and I really became quite intimate with the medical system at that point. - I don't I don't think this is a badge of honor honestly like who I spent 10 years in a hospital. - You know you know it's which for a young you know you know teen and a young very young man was you know it was it was really sad experience, an eye opening experience. Um You know, so I became as you noted a very young father myself around the age of 20. Um you know that you know my son from that marriage which you know long since ended um is a best friend today, you know it's one of the very few things I think I've done really well in this lifetime has been a great dad and you know I've got you know young guys today um like I said the grown son and uh you know it's a wonderful outcome but the long story short is that it was mighty challenging and I was in some very dark places.

I was depressed, I had high anxiety you know certainly and - Of course you did like you you are there's a traumatic childhood events T. C. E. S. And you grew up in trauma and that not only do you have the trauma of what your dad went through that caused him to be out, but you have your own trauma from being on the receiving end of that and then as rewarding as it is to have a son who's now your best friend at 20 that's its own type of stress and you know, difficulty. - Yeah, my goodness Wendie, we could talk all day and so many traumas within the trauma, you know, there's no doubt about it.

Um, but let me let me get to the, you know, the good part of the story is that it is particularly powerful women who saved my life. Um, and I mean literally saved my life and then helped me thrive in life on top of it. Certainly my angel of a mother, my sister, certain teachers who were all female and really stood by me um, later years, you know, my wife today, But the bottom line is that, you know, I'm I'm not just sitting here surviving today, but truly thriving in the most important regards. And aside from myself, it's largely attributed to tribute.

Both, you know the word I'm trying to say. Yeah, the a word to two powerful women and you know, so fast forward a bit and. - Wait, wait, no, no, we can't fast forward. I have a question. Just my kids all went to a Jewish school when they were growing up. So they, this is how they talk, they say I have a question. That's how they talk. So I have a question before we move on because you can lead a horse to water, but you cannot make a drink. So when you've grown up in that type of rough situation, it's comfortable, it's easy, it's it's what, you know, to just keep doing that.

So what was that moment where you said, Okay, I've used up that persona, I'm done with that persona and we're gonna pivot now to being a persona of someone who makes a profound difference in the world, changes the lives of others and and and just put my stuff in the rear view mirror. What was that moment? - Yeah, you're looking for the pinpoint moment, interesting for the year. Like, there's something happening there kind of, you know, there was, you know, so there was pretty much, I can't say exact moment, but so I'm a young father, my wife at the time, um and I are both going to college full time nonetheless, while we're both working full time nonetheless and being a parent, so I'm quite busy my whole perspective. I had done some college before that, I was a very different college student. You know, after that point, I was also fortunate to have some eye opening, particularly literature based classes and something, you know, along the route. I'm, I, you know, I used to write novels most of them. I'm glad did not see the light of day, that 1 that was published many years ago, it was a very small press still out there.

But you know, I so I've always respected great literature and it was at some point, you know, during, uh, you know, certain period there were clicked on me that I needed to do some serious work of forgiveness, some serious work of forgiveness. Because even at that time, I had been going to all kinds of doctors, trying to understand what was going on, particularly with my gut, I was having some very severe gut issues and they put me through all the tests and they couldn't quite pinpoint what it was.

Um but I did, I knew I had this high anxiety, I knew that was all going on inside of me. And and then, you know, somewhere in there, there was a series of light moments. Um so I went through different types of inner work and guided work through different types of therapists to do forgiveness work of my father. And I finally and really truly did forgive because I understand his story. For example, now I'm not going to again go into every detail his life reads like a novel that you wouldn't believe he was a couple of quick points, he was a spy for the US in World War II. He was in Germany as a spy for the US posing, I believe as a German fell in love with a woman there, that he thought was a German, she turned out to be a Russian spy. They fell in love.

They were going to get married after the war, but one day she was disappeared. He never saw her again. He lost his first very first wife because they got into an argument. She was stepping out of the car, truck, slammed into her and killed her in his second marriage before my mom, who was married to final 25 years of his life and that marriage, he had two boys, one of them was hit at the age of 13 and killed by a car. So he had all kinds of trauma and he never dealt with any back in those days. If you went to a therapist, you were considered crazy and it was frowned upon.

So he took it out on the bottle and ultimately took it out on us. So I went through all that work of understanding and deep forgiveness. And guess what happened? I started a thriving and be true story, All of these mystery symptoms inside of my gut disappeared. - You know, Louise Hay talks about that a lot like all of your physical things. Do you correlate with something in your body? So if you have, it's so proposed, right? You had stomach issues, You can't stomach what was happening. It's totally a proposed right?

And then you start to accept it and no longer resist it, you're no longer in the, in the stage of can't stomach this, you've moved on to forgiveness. And yeah, it is healing. - It's healing and on top of it. So you know, I um you know, started after college, you know we have these jobs we don't necessarily want to have, but you know we're trying to work our way and at that point I was in marketing communications for a firm that I won't name by name, but it's big and it was in the pharmaceutical industry.

So I saw I saw a lot of things on the inside there um that that I didn't want to see, but I saw them, I happened to be in meetings with a lot of the top executives. There was a meeting between and this is gonna sound odd and it was odd to me even at the time there was a meeting between top executives in the in the pharmaceutical oriented company and and executives from a very prominent food company. What are they all doing in the same room having meetings and discussion discussing co initiatives. And there was a joke shared in there that

Forgiveness, Healing, and Career Shift 11:51

really really talk about, you know turning my gut, you know the joke was something along the lines of, you know, the food guy said, you know, you know the pharmaceutical guy said you keep making them sick and we'll keep giving them, you know them the pills to get them better along those line and then ha ha ha left and I'm like I'm in the wrong place and I was literally in tears. I had seen what my father endured and my mother at his side endured in these hospitals and I'm like, man, that that that joke said it all, you know, I tried to you know, not too soon after found my way out of there eventually, not too long thereafter.

You know, a doctor uh and I had heard about me, I had heard about him, he was he was small time at the time, very few people knew about him, but he said, you know, I had this big vision and I could tell he was kind of crazy, but also kind of brilliant and uh you know, I'm not going to say much more, but the doctor was jomar cola and you know, so I helped in the very earliest years, you know, build Mykola.com long ago now we're talking 2001, 23, you know, um you know, and a lot of people know where, you know where that's gone and you know, for better or worse, it's immense and it's immensely influential. So, you know, from that point forward I started working, helping others, you know behind the scenes. And then I turned myself into because I had a lot to share into more of a personal growth brand and had a big look out of that and then I went behind the scenes again. So they're about five years ago, I was frankly at a crossroads, okay. And um like I could do a lot of things here now, but I have been noticing how Wendie these powerful women in my life, my mother, my sister and my wife, others as they're hitting these milestone years, forties, fifties, sixties, seventies, this big pervasive, nasty myth of getting older, how it was impacting even these powerful women and and and and their mindsets.

And I'm like, you know, what is that myth? What is that prevalent mindset? It's that getting older equals becoming undesirable, incapable, doomed to suffering and disease over the hill. As the joke goes, the problem is it's not funny because I mean, you know, it could be funny I suppose, but it really is real that the mind so many people's And and especially impacts women are hit hard by this toxic belief that now I hit 40. It's downhill. And the problem is that that translates into our perceptions, our mind set translates into our health and our physical health as I myself experienced, with not. you know, being able to forgive for song and finally doing so. And I said, I know exactly in honor of these women who saved my life. I know exactly what I'm going to do because everything that all of these really famous doctors and researchers that I've gotten to known, well, some are friends, I've helped, some, everything points to the opposite.

You know, these years, the golden years, the middle age years. - The crone years, they're actually known as the crone years, which sounds terrible, but it's really when you have your wisdom. - It is and they ought to be on all levels the best years lives. And I said of course that's what I'm going to do. I'm bringing forth all of this research in the most understandable way possible and I'm going to just simply share it with the world. So that's what I've done over the art of anti aging, you know, through blog articles of course are giant now, which I'm so grateful for some it's reach, you know, hundreds of thousands of people and so on and so forth.

So that's the origin, you know, story in a medium length version. - So before we transition to really the meat of what we're talking about, I think, you know, this is this is about environmental toxicants, Autoimmunity and chronic diseases. This is the summit people are on. But I think that we would be remiss if we didn't stop for a moment and highlight the true toxicity of anger, resentment, fear because you saw how transformative it was. And so, you know, there are times when I say to someone, you know, I can't help you until you get out of your marriage job home, whatever that is because it's so toxic that it's just overriding everything.

So I just want to point out that forgiveness is not passive, it doesn't occur to you, you did it forgive as a verb. And so you might still have some feelings with people, but if you're angry with someone. So I was very angry with my husband when our first business closed and I realized I had three choices. I really only had two, but I had three. I could stay and torture him. Right? How many people are in unhappy marriages? I could stay and forgive him or I could get out and the stay and torture him.

I didn't want to teach my kids that. So that wasn't really an option. So I was like, okay, either I forgive him actively or I get out. Those are the only two options here. And I was like, well, we got four kids. We just, we're about to go through bankruptcy. Like I think I'm gonna stay and forgive him because we're stronger together, right? But it's an act of will. And there are times after I forgave him that I still had some feelings like of course I was sad that our business closed and God, we lost everything and we rebuilt.

But the forgiveness itself is so transformative. And before we get to the stuff you put on you, you gotta look at the stuff in you. So I just want to really highlight that. - So well said, first of all, thanks for sharing that. That's powerful. Um, yeah, you really must address, we can call it a lot of things the mental slash emotional toxins before you can do real work on any other level, including like I said, the belief if you believe that, hey, I'm getting older? So of course, you know, my skin's gonna go, my body's gonna go, my brain guess what's gonna happen.

Your brain and body are going to go. - But I reject that just for the record. I reject that. I'm meant to, you know, get more and more decrepit over time and die without my mind. I reject that. - So it's, it's these beliefs. It's, it's um, you know, emotions that own you, you know, there's nothing wrong with any emotion, you know, so it's not like anger is bad. No, it's just who owns it. Do you own that and work through it or does it own you and frankly destroy you? - Yes, So, so, okay. I mean you and I are on the same page.

I can chat with you for hours about this stuff. So we're going to transition to the most destructive yet little known source of toxins and how you can easily bypass it because this is a sweet spot for both of us and you've actually put it into action. So, so of course I have to understand what was do we give people the punchline or we probably have to. - Give them the punchline punchline. Alright, so the punch line? So the most destructive physical because I think we just discuss other aspects. The most destructive physical toxins are those indeed found in personal care products and cosmetics now, does that mean that the toxins found in the air and the water and the food and you know are not equally or potentially equally as prevalent.

No part of the reason that the personal care products and cosmetics are the most is because it's widely unknown still just how prevalent and potent they are. - Well also how much we're using right by the time I get out of the house I view If I wash my well I do that at night but if I wash my hair and condition it and shave and wash my body and then do my makeup and I mean this is like 50 products by the time I get out of my house probably more. - Yeah. Well you're slightly above average in that regard. If that's true for you because the statistic is on average Women use 12 personal care products a day.

It does often seem higher you know to me to even for myself. - Maybe it's not like it's more than 12. - You know I feel the same way I'm like but again is average. So um and by the way in those 12 products there are an average of 168 different chemicals. Another statistics we'll start with some some whoa statistics in the European union and actually about 40 other countries they have now banned over 1600 chemicals from cosmetics and personal care products here in the USA. They have banned 11. - You know Brian I was just researching recently about the E.

P. A. Which was founded, what year were you born? I was born in 70. Okay we were born the same year. I knew he was this evening. So so the E. P. A. Was founded the year that we were born. And in the 1st 14 years they banned nine things and they haven't banned anything since. Exactly there's two marginals on that and that's ridiculous. It's unbelievable. I mean it's not just ridiculous. It's outrageous. They also they also rely on companies to self report. So why would you ever report to the E. P. A. You think there's a problem with your product?

- So in 1938, long before we were born, the FDA passed the last substantial legislation regarding you know the cosmetics personal care products industry. And long and short of it is that the legislation said self regulate you guys are on your own. We trust you be good and that's it. There's nothing substantial passed since then. It is this is another reason it's the most dangerous source of toxins because it's a wild West. You literally can put anything you want anything at all in a product whether it's for your face a cream for your face for your hair shampoo, soap.

You know under your arm deodorant, whatever it is you can put whatever you want and you can Get it on a shelf and sell it and you can say it's natural even when it's not oh yeah, you could even call it, you can use the word organic if you have a single organic ingredient in there, you can say organic because you're not lying, you might be bamboozling people but you're not lying because maybe it contains organic whatever along with 30 synthetic ingredients you can say and do a lot. You can put it on the shelf now. Of course these companies are not stupid.

So what they're going, they're not going to put ingredients in there that are immediately toxic to you. - We're gonna wait till you get really sick. But you don't attribute it to that. - Right? Exactly. I mean they're going to do it in micro, you know, doses I guess we'll call it of all, these you know average of 168 different chemicals a day so that it's going to contain all of these not required to really test anything. They have reluctantly in some cases kind of sort of tested certain ones. I mean, but what are they looking for? Nothing happened to the rat in the short term.

You know, we're good. I mean they're not talking long term, they're not talking middle term and here's the thing if everyone remembers chemistry class including whether you struggled through it or not, you'll remember that what happens when you put one chemical with one chemical together? It creates a different chemical now. What happens when you put 10 chemicals in the product all together? It creates a host of chemicals. What happens when you put 12 different personal care products a day on average with 168 different chemicals together every single day in your body, about 60 or more percent of which are penetrating into your body day after day, week after week, month after my decade after decade.

What happens? - It's not been studied because there's too many permutations and variables. They cannot study this, just like they don't. There's been no studies on this drug with this drug. There's too many permutations and variables and that's only two drugs. So you're I mean you're really highlighting and I think you said it beautifully that we don't view it this way. But all of these products are actually like food because our skin eats them. And so instead of thinking of it like a beauty product, we need to think of it as a food.

- Absolutely. When do you know if people take nothing else away from this conversation, please remember you got that grocery cart, you're pushing it down cosmetics aisles, you're pushing it down personal care products aisles, you are pushing it down a food aisle. Those are food aisles. Those are indeed food aisles when you you know, we tend to think of skin as something like,

Why Personal Care Products Are a Major Toxic Exposure 24:27

you know, a fashion accessory. You know, we're trained to think that way and push to think that way, but it's the largest organ of our body. It's the front line of our immune system. It's got its own microbiome, you know, of, of different beneficial bacteria, which don't really appreciate by the way, all of these chemicals that are put, you know, um, and so when you put something on your skin, it's not on your skin, it goes into your skin. Some of the chemicals go deep beyond your skin into your bloodstream and they are shot around your body.

I always say, not only should should you be able to eat a personal care product if it's ultimately clean, but I would prefer to eat certain personal care. I mean I started certain foods that have the same toxins versus personal care products. Why? Because when we eat something by mouth, there are more filters in the way to potentially get that toxin out, including gastric juices inside of our bodies and so on and so forth. When you put it on your skin, there's very little barrier to these horrible chemicals and indeed many of them do penetrate. Now, the argument again that the big industries would make is, hey, again, it's just such minute quantities and we study those quantities and they're not doing anything. Finding good if you're going to use deodorant one day out of your entire life and that's it. But you use deodorant along with all these other products every single day it's called bio accumulation.

You know, and these are, these are chemicals that are carcinogenic, potentially carcinogenic and known carcinogenic endocrine disruptors, potential endocrine disruptors, meaning essentially they disrupt your hormones as well as more minor. I mean neurological issues terrible for people with Ottawa. Mean I mean you can go on and on here. - Well what you're taught when you're talking, I'm really reminded of glyphosate because glyphosate has been studied as a single agent and we're gonna be, there are other interviews in this where we're gonna be talking about glyphosate in particular.

So people should tune into that. But what's horrifying is that when you use it with something else it actually gets more toxic and and so it's been classified as a probable carcinogen. Except the problem is that the stunt the runways of the studies are too short to really see that full impact. But it looks like it's implicated in a lot of liver lymphocytic cancers. It's horrifying. It's honestly horrifying. Now let me let me ask you a question Brian what I'm I'm always interested in. What was the moment. Right?

So you know, you're living your life, you're doing your thing, you decided to get into contributing for pay it forward. But what was that moment when you like wanted to throw up in your mouth that all of these products were so disgusting? And you needed to do something about it. What was that moment? And what happened? How'd you figure that out? - Well we go way back in time there. so you know I was one of these um I wasn't really you know ever dressing anything on hippy dippy. So I'm not calling my butt but considered very hippy dippy because we're talking for me at least it was back in the very early two thousand's again, you know say what you will about you know Joe McColl, there's a lot of controversy, I say the name and I don't know you know, but but there's he shot a lot of light on stuff as well and I was the guy you know helping to put him out there but also digging deep into the research.

So very early on I started seeing not not only in foods, oh my God the water, oh my God the air, you know, especially inside homes. Um wow. And then I, you know started you know with with personal care products and it started putting two and two. You got this is this is long before there was any light really shadow almost like they were very early pioneers on this, which is wonderful that you know that and they were really out there alone. Um you know, so when I would talk about this back then I really got the looks and and the like what are you talking about?

You know, you're right, all that kind of stuff. So it was quite early on in terms of becoming more and more aware of all this and it was it's hard to, I mean, you know, the we could talk more about this Wendy, but you know, I get asked all the time. Well, how do you determine if the product is safe or safe enough? I will ultimately tell people, thank goodness, there are some certifications out there that are independent that are worth looking for USDA Certified Organic, certainly being one of them on personal care products and cosmetics, which what do you recommend? Because there's a Yeah, there are, there's certain state certifications if you're in, for example, Europe or elsewhere in the world, there's eco cert and some others their varying levels. But let me tell you this, there way better than than nothing. Um you know, the USDA Certified Organic is a pretty strict. Um And and so far from what?

And I followed it closely, so far, not quite tainted with any crap to be frank. That that would would make one wary. So, so do look for those certifications. However, there are certain again, 1600 chemicals banned in the European union that are allowed and using products here, nobody, not me and I'm a geek who studied that have got of this stuff, nobody's gonna know how to look for. 1600. And by the way, there's even more chemicals beyond 1000 that are terrible. Alright, so nobody's going to know how to scan an ingredient label and say yes, yes, yes, no, no, no, you can't do that. So they're.

But one simple trick I've learned is look turn it around and look for this one word fragrance. Does it say fragrance? If it says fragrance or the synonymous sent or if they're being fancy parfoon put it back, walk the other way or run the other way. Why? Well um that could mean any of dozens to hundreds of different chemicals. The company is not required to disclose what those chemicals is because it's because it's their trade secret to give it that special addictive fake scent that we've all come to associate with quality and effectiveness. So if something smells like fake I don't know strawberries or lab fake lavender or somehow we've been programmed to think that's effective.

Just like we've been programmed to think lather must mean it's really working. Those are all chemicals in this case though. You don't even get to know what those chemicals are. But I can assure you. And the E. W. G. Environmental Working Group has done research on this. I can assure you it's not good what they're hiding behind that. So it's kind of a litmus test. Put that thing right back if it has fragrance or perfume on it you know so there are a few guidelines like that you know most importantly is to look for these independent certifications which again are not perfect but are far better than than any of the alternatives.

- I mean I don't know if you know this, but I move a million miles a minute price. So I'm always like, okay, I gotta buy this, I got to buy this. And, and I really do try to slow down enough to stop and look at the E W G. I have the app on my phone, so I have no excuse. You know, like, and, and I think it's really important for the listeners to recognize, right? When it's, if you have unlimited funds and unlimited personal assistance, then sure, level up everything immediately and go. Always go by the cleanest. But you know, we live in the real world.

And so what you want to start with is what a, what are you running out of B? This is where forgiveness comes in. I I was so proud of myself. I bought those little laundry pods. Came in, environmentally good package. I was all excited. I was like, look at me. And then God, six months later by I went, oh, those are not really clean. Actually, when I looked them up, they weren't clean. And then I went, okay, well, I only have like two more weeks to use and then we're gonna move along. So it's very easy to get green washed. So, so one level up as you're going use environmental working group and forgive yourself, right?

Because this is just a game of life. And if you don't forgive yourself, it creates a state of stress. That's bad for you. It's actually worse than the product. So finish up what you oh we're so by the way, - I'm glad you brought that up. I was about to and you did it meaning the worry is worse than any of the toxins. If you find yourself stressed out because oh my God, all of my personal care products are are polluting my body. That's not the point. The point is any step you can take is usually has more profound effect than you can imagine just eliminating.

I have my own little rule, you know, for personal care products and cosmetics and it is the closer it is to your body and the more it stays on your body. Those if you have to choose beyond what you just said, which is when you're done with it. You know, the product now go try to find a cleaner version, which is great too. But if you have a choice between moisturizing cream or deodorant or versus shampoo, I'm not saying that the chemicals in shampoos are not good for you. I mean that they're good because they're not and I'm not saying some residues left behind, but this is on and off relatively quickly. It's less impact.

Whereas a cream sitting on your face or deodorant sitting under your arm by design slowly leaking in all day long, all night long. Those are the ones you want to move out first and foremost because you're just eating more of them, it's eating you're eating them through your skin. And just like if you eat a whole bunch of food that might be laced with pesticides, you're gonna want to focus on that first before you eat the food. You know, focus on food you rarely eat or - Prioritizing. You're really talking about prioritizing the list because I mean, I don't know about you, but we were not, my house is like a circus. I think it's kind of like yours.

You got a bunch of kids have a bunch of kids, a circus. We're always running out of something. So, so prioritize the things that you're leaving on your face, your hands, your armpits because I mean think of it, you have all these lymph nodes right here and especially for women, your it goes right to your breasts. - So, and that's a very, very first one. I would use it over and then I would move on to anything sitting on your face, you know, all day long. - My kids are like, I don't let them use antiperspirant.

Let's talk about antiperspirant, right? The antiperspirant shuts down your poor. So you don't sweat, which sounds really nice and romantic except you detox through your skin. So if you're not sweating, it's a problem. So I'm like, sorry guys, you can be stinky and sweaty, just wear deodorant and here's an organic one, - Right? Exactly. I could geek out all day and tell you all the horrors of deodorant, but you just hit it on the head. You know, you're not supposed to shut down your body's ability to sweat, including under your arms. It is how you're getting rid of toxins.

You know, I mean the thing is with these toxins is really like a double or triple whammy when when you know through the skin because again your your skin's one of its main jobs is to protect your health. It's the front line again of your immune system and it does a tremendous amount of work. You know, moment by moment, day after day of shielding you from so many things that you don't want inside your body. So now you're putting on toxins and making its job so much harder because now I can't focus on you know, stuff out there. It was originally intended to shield you from now it's you know, it's like kind of doing - Crazy making this crazy making actually because you you're absorbing the toxin then your liver has to delete it and sorry, process it, get rid of it most of the time, poop it out.

But guess what? You sweat it out too. So then you have to excrete it through your skin. You're literally doing double duty craziness. What are some of the other things that people want to look out for? We've we've talked about the parfums/ fragrance. - Well again, so I mean again, we could talk all day and I do not have committed to memory. 1600. - Oh my God no. - I can tell you you know there are some others that are quite prevalent that you want to look mean. Trickle sand comes to mind. You might have you called, what is it? 2016. Trickle sand was a big deal in the news and you know it was in all these um antibacterial hand soaps and finally you know they banned it but guess what? They only banned it from hand soaps.

It's still in aged creams and it's still in all kinds of products. I'm like wait a minute, wait a minute. You know it's bad and so let's get it out of the soap but let's keep allowing it and everything else. It's crazy on that one sand. I mean you know uh what else comes to mind? Um sodium laurel sulfate, sodium laurel sulfate, two very similar sounding chemicals. You know they were there for a lot of people, they are allergies in the first place.

How to Spot Safer Products and Avoid Greenwashing 37:27

But you know there's worse on that formaldehyde comes to mind, you remember formaldehyde from biology class, you're you're a doctor, you're quite familiar with formaldehyde and what it can do right? Um that is allowed in and quite prevalent in all kinds of cosmetics and it is not a suspected carcinogen, It is a known carcinogen. You know so watch those labels for that. I think a lot of people have heard of the parabens. Um And there's different. You know parabens they all start with something space parabens.

So you gotta watch labels closely for that. Methyl paraben um has been associated with breast cancer and other cancers. Um phthalates. I mean you know there's there's finally yeah that's starting to get a well deserved negative spotlight frankly. I mean it's it's a lotion shampoos. Uh it's shown it causes harm to Children's brains and it's still Loud and so many products. Um yeah I mean I can geek out all day here on so many of these ingredients that you I wish I wish I could make everyone aware and I try to do top 10 lists and all that type of stuff. But then I'll see him.

I got I left that one off that one off and that right. The point is that there are so many that's the problem. That's why this is the most destructive, you know source of toxins to people who are in good health, much less people you know who have different immune issues and any type of diseases because you can't decipher all of that. Which is why again I say to people, please try to support the organizations were doing and it's hard work of making products that are truly you know like USDA certified organic or eco cert certified in other countries. Hard work.

You know you mentioned that was very kind of you that I have a a personal care specifically a cosmetics company focused on healthy aging. You know, eliminating, you know, the appearance of lines and wrinkles and all that. There are great natural ingredient out there that do that. There really are. - Was that your motivation Brian for for developing purity Woods was to like bring natural beauty into everyday life? - Well, you know, I'll tell you the story on that. I was gonna conclude with telling you, I can tell you personally because I work closely with the formulators on on our products, um, which are honestly exceptional products.

But it's really hard. It's really hard to create truly and all of our products are USDA certified Organic. It's not easy because you got to think of things like shelf life, making sure that, you know, germs. Um, you know, don't, you know, occur in so you've got to find natural ingredients that do all these things. It's hard work. I don't care if if everyone listening, you know, you know, comes to us for their amazing, you know, anti aging cream or go somewhere else. It's USDA certified Organic. All I'm saying is please, you know, give your business to the organization that is putting USDA certified deodorant out there in toothpaste and this and that because it's hard work, but it's so worth it for your health and it's a way of showing the marketplace.

Huh? That's where I'm rewarding from now. Yeah, yeah, yeah purity would so you know, so now I've got the art of anti aging and and you know, I'm so honored that we're reaching so many people, purity would story is a little more personal in the sense that I noticed crow's feet around my eyes. You were getting pretty bad one day. - It's always personal. Look dirty girl. It's always personal. - Yeah. You got it. And then I talked to my wife and she's like, yeah, my R two. We both had crow's feet. So I'm like, you know, I know a lot about ingredients and what they can do the good stuff.

You know, natural ingredients out there. I'm like, I know exactly what I'm gonna go look for. I want a product with this, this this and this. And then I started researching other ingredients I might want in a product that can really help. And I already knew what I didn't want, which was all these toxins. So I went searching for that right product. And in that case for that, I could not find anything not here in this country. Let me. - You know, all great inventions are solving a problem. - Exactly. And and so the first customers of our age came to be called The age defying Dream Cream were me and my wife.

And it worked and it worked like wonders. - Testimonial on your own website. - Well, I wasn't even, you know, I mean it was now playing with the idea, huh? You know, I could launch this, but I wasn't certain of it. And then I saw how that worked and I'm like I be an injustice, I want to put this out there, that is exploded. You know, So now we've got we've only got you know five products in the line because I will not put anything out there that doesn't have really nature's most effective ingredients that I know of and that all the, you know, for me letters and researchers I have that work with me know of and that is not also truly, truly not greenwashing wise but literally clean for real us. So it goes through an process and I want people to really understand what that means with USDA certified Organic in this case it's more expensive actually for I can't claim it's immensely more, but it is more expensive because it means not only does it not contain, you know, these toxic ingredients in the product, but it means the products that we do have in there also have to be raised organically, no pesticides, no herbicides and glyphosate. You know, so it's it's a tough process and then we have to prove it to this independent organization.

Like I was saying earlier today still they're quite strict. There hasn't been any bend. I'll be honest with you Wendy, I'm a bit worried. Um now that organic is becoming so widespread in walmart and you know like are they going to try to you know, bend down the rules almost and they have the power to do so but still I can tell you today, listening to this wonderful event right now, when you are doing USDA Certified Organic products, no matter who they are, you can be pretty sure they're way cleaner than most anything else out there. And then a quick point because you brought up greenwashing and I want to make sure that people know exactly what that means.

We were talking about it earlier, you can get away with saying virtually anything about your product, not going to the big companies do this, but a lot of boutiques unfortunately do this and they say it's organic, it's natural, it's all natural. It's, you know, whatever it is, wild crafted. A lot of marketing phrases, they do it because it catches people and it works. But unless you see some independent certification or you know how to turn that label around and really make sure it's truly just natural.

Please don't fall for that. - Well, I get green washed all the time. You know, I'm moving too fast, I'm like, oh, I'll buy that. So I always go to Environmental Working Group E W G I have the app. There's also think dirty. So those are the two things I I intend to use E W G more, I'm just more comfortable with it. But those two are great for looking at that. And it's so funny, like, think about even especially how hard it can be to get to source good ingredients, right? So that, that point about the USDA organic is really poignant because if it's organic certified, it means it's organic head to toe, which is which is really, really mean, and that's a certification.

So environmental working group will certify products, there's the organic certification, but you know, it does sometimes take some work for people. - It's work, it's work to find, you know, some of them, although thank goodness, it's becoming more prevalent on shelves even today. Um you know, purity Woods is a relatively young company, but as you noted to start again, that's fast growing. I mean, I'm so I've been around, you know, against 26 I've been behind a lot of, you know, very cool product launches of different sorts, you know, of all sorts honestly, especially with our age defying night cream and the age defying dream Cream, the the amount of feedback that's pa positive is it warms my heart?

I mean it's immense amount of positive feedback and warms my heart because we put a lot of work into those products. And there's a larger message that I guess you could say it teaches people which is to become hyper aware of toxins in your life in general, you know, and don't fall for the B. S. In any realm where they're trying to bamboozle

Purity Woods, Organic Skincare, and Closing Thoughts 45:57

you or sway you, you know with marketing and you know, become an expert yourself at least insofar that, you know, to look for these things across the different spaces. Again, not just in personal care products, but also in food and also in air and you know, just to become so it's like this, this small, you know lessons people are like, wow, this really actually works and works wonders or it feels like wonders and this can branch out because there's still this, this belief out there um that some things can't be as good if they're if they're truly natural or truly real.

- You know, I mean think about your food when your food is grown organically and it has to defend itself against the pests. It actually has higher antioxidant and nutrient value, the value is higher. And so I mean the thing about this is so amazing is or horrifying I would say is once you've seen the impact and the negative, both negative and positive from the toxins and the lack of toxins so negative from toxins positive from lack of toxins, you can't unsee it, you cannot go back right, can't say, oh, you know, and it's funny because we did took a vacation to a third world country and honestly I said to my husband, I feel like I have to recover from this because it was so toxic. The air, the water, the food, it was so toxic.

So once you experience it, it's very hard to go back to how you used to be and I mean I'm a product of the seventies and we ate sloppy joe mix for dinner. Like it wasn't wholesome Wonder bread was in Framingham where I grew up. Wonder bread is my hometown. You would drive to the mall and it's, we all roll down our windows because you can just breathe in the smell of wonder bread. It's such a distinctive smell. That's where I grew up. - Okay then. Yeah. You know that well and we do, we put baby oil on our skin and went out in the sun and baked and so many wonderful things. - Amen to that brother.

So, yeah, So, okay, you and I could do this all day. Right. Um, so I think we'll bring this to a close and, and I mean, look, we we'd love to have you back on because you're just a fantastic resource for people. So let's close this up by saying thank you for listening to another episode of the environmental toxicants, auto immunity and chronic diseases summit. Our guest today or my guest today is Brian Vaszily, who's the founder of the art of anti aging and also purity Woods, which is a fast growing skincare product line.

And Brian, thanks for being here. - I really enjoyed it. I knew we'd we'd resonate, you know, we speak the same language. So it's been a pleasure and an honor. Thank you. - Thank you