Toxins, Hormones, & Autoimmunity: Oh My!

Introduction and guest background 0:00

- Welcome to this episode of the environmental toxicants, auto immunity and chronic diseases summit. I'm Dr. Wendy Trubow, MD, MBA. And I'm your host of today's summit, I'm so excited to have my friend Sharon Stills with us today, Dr. stills is a naturopathic medical doctor. She provides comprehensive health care, therapeutic and agnostic services to patients worldwide. She combines her conventional medical training, data driven science and diagnostic tools and a deep knowledge of natural healing, energy, emotions, everything and she effectively identifies and treats health concerns ranging from allergies to end stage cancer and everything in between.

So psyched you're here share and we're gonna have a lot of fun with this conversation because this is one of my favorite passion point, passion play points and I think you two, but before we dive in today we're gonna talk about the role of hormones in uh toxin load and balance. But is there anything you want to add? So the listeners know anything more about. - You know, I'm just I just adore you and I'm just happy to hang out with you and I love that you're hosting this and it'll be fun. - Likewise, right? That's why we have because it'll just be fun.

So okay you're expert in everything and today we're gonna just narrow it into because we're talking about environmental toxicants and how it leads to auto immunity and chronic diseases for me, what's particularly I'll say interesting appointment is just what happens with toxins? I'm sorry with hormones when they instead of act like hormones they act like toxins. So can you talk about that first off? Like what, Why does that happen? How does it happen? - Yeah, I mean it happens for numerous reasons. I mean part of it happens because of what's going on metabolically with us and having an imbalanced microbiome and having stress and we can dive into these things deeper. And then part of it happens because especially with estrogen, there's all these estrogen mimic Urz the xeno estrogens in the environment.

I mean from our body care products to something as un suspect as the receipts you get in the supermarket. - And I never touch those. I'm always like no, I'm good. I know I'm like, oh, you know, let me put on my bio Hazmat suit and then you can hand me the receipt. Yeah, I'm like no, that's good, we're fine. You know? And I remember growing up in my household, like my father would study the receipts to make sure like correctly and now I'm like, you know what, I'd rather have healthy hormones than maybe get a dollar 50 back. So I am so you know, we're just I remember being in med school, many many years ago, over 20 years ago and one of the professors saying we're swimming in a sea of estrogens and these are environmental toxins.

And that always stuck with me that like our estrogen are endogenous estrogen production is

How toxins mimic hormones 2:56

good for us? And I think that's why estrogen should get such a bad rap? Because we don't really differentiate out like oh yes, there are good estrogens that we produce and that we need and that are important for our brain and our bones in our heart and our immune system. But there's all these xeno estrogens, these chemicals and these toxins in our in our society that are that are just messing with our whole system. - And you know the thing that I love on top of that to add on to that is that I don't remember when I learned about this when we talk, we learned about that as you're processing your hormones. Your it goes through phase one in the liver and then it goes through phase two in the liver and at any point in there we can have a breakdown and then it goes to your gut and if you don't poop regularly it's gonna get acted on by the beta glue khurana days and separated from its bound form which makes it no longer water soluble and then you recycle it into your bloodstream and your liver is mad because it already had to deal with it and you store it in your fat.

So what woman is like, oh great, let me put on £5 of fat on my butt or on my inner thigh or my on my arms. Like no woman wants that. No, I don't think any man wants it either. But I think we're prone to it more than men, right? - It brings up such a good point because the beta glue kirana days which is part of what we call our strobe alone, the part of the microbiome that's more specific to the hormones. And so that has to do with our bells and that has to do with our liver and that has to do with our bio flow. And so when we're thinking about hormones, it really broadens the picture because there's so many systems in the body that really need to be moving. And so this goes for chronic disease, this goes for auto immunity. This goes for hormone balance.

We have to open up all our eliminate Torrey or I call them the among terry's that's an old naturopathic term. But we have to really be focusing on opening up our eliminate Torrey organs and these include the lungs, the liver, the bile. Because I think we often forget about the gobbler in the bio which is so important, the gut, the lymphatic system, the kidneys, the skin. If you're a menstruating woman, the uterus is another way. We are detoxing each each month. And so where I start with patients is assessing and looking at all those organs because if those aren't open and those aren't functioning then we are going to have chronic disease set in because we can't get rid of And so you know the bottom line is it's a toxic place, we're hanging out in now and and it's you know, I don't see it getting any better. I mean and we can kind of bang through all these avenues of toxicity because it's not just the pesticides, it's not just the chemicals in your laundry detergent.

It's it's the wifi, it's the dirty electricity. It's the five G. It's the thoughts you're thinking. It's the stress and the byproducts metabolically of what's going on when you're stressed out. And so I mean, and it's on and on and on and on. It's the food you're eating, it's the water, it's the air like, oh my God, how depressing. I mean, I know every time I go to the environmental medicine conferences, it's always like, oh my God, bring a box of tissues because I'm just gonna be crying because there's so much to be upset about. But on the other hand, there's so much we can do to empower ourselves. It's like if we no, okay, there's a lot of toxins. But what can we do to put ourselves in the best position that were exposed to less and that the toxins we are exposed to that are among trees are working optimally. So we can, you know, it's the difference between why does a room full of five people in a mercury thermometer drops, Why do two people end up with m. S from the mercury toxicity and one person gets

Stress, cortisol, and nervous system balance 6:54

a little sick and two are fine. It has to do with how we handle how we process and how we get rid of toxins that we're exposed to. - Yeah I mean there's a lot that goes into this you've touched on how we live, how we think what we're eating, our movement, our sleep, the exposures we've had. And then I think what you're also touching on is our epigenetic and our our D. N. A. And I remember joe pizano saying you're only 15%. What happens to you is only 15% due to D. N. A. The other 85% is modifiable lifestyle factors and it's like okay so let's dive into some of the things that we have control over.

Right? So you mentioned the thoughts. I know also Ben Azadi is a big fan of managing your thought processes and I'm a huge fan of only asking questions that your brain can answer so that there are none of my patients are allowed to ask what if because I say what if it's super disempowering that always sends you into victimhood. So you have to ask what would I do if or how do I prevent if you can't ask what if? So anyway what are some of the ways that people start to have breakdowns? Right? So the thoughts we've talked about how to stress play a role in messing up our hormone, our hormone balance and excretion. - Well from from a hormonal perspective if we are stressed out, I mean if you look at the biochemical pathways you know Luca corticosteroids. Cortisol stress hormone need to go through progesterone to be produced. And so we wonder why so many women are estrogen dominant and don't have enough progesterone. Well, so many women, so many humans are just stressed out and stress is emotional stress, it's chemical stress, it's biophysical stress, its anatomical stress, there's so many different levels, just like with toxins, there's so many different levels of stress. And so I really believe that stress cause is 99.999%. It has an implication in all chronic illness.

And I see this when I run heart rate, variability, ease on patients and you're all stuck in sympathetic. There's no parasympathetic tone and this has become more popular over the years, like vagal tone and I love that because we've been saying this for over 20 years that chronic illness is an autonomic nervous system disruption and that you have to start there. And so I'm a huge fan of mindfulness and I hope everyone listening goes in google's MBS, our mindfulness based stress reduction. I I was lucky enough to be introduced to this in my 1997 in my first year in naturopathic medical school and got to then study with Jon, Kabat Zinn and Saki Santorelli and they're out of Massachusetts, which is go Boston, go Boston and so I learned very early on, it's like that's how my brain was formed as a thinking physician was that we have to embrace mindfulness and it's not as sexy as getting the right or taking the right pill. You know, we we've all been trained, We want this magic pill and the magic pill actually exists like here in your breath, in your brain, in your presence and to learn how to harness your breath and to regulate your nervous system and to actually be present, is going to provide you with this wonderful platform from which to go on your healing journey.

And so if you are anxious because your mother had estrogen dependent breast cancer and now you're hearing about these toxins and oh my God, and is this gonna make me get breast cancer? Like that's not a good place to heal from. But it's actually as toxic as the exposures that lead to it isn't it is a toxic exposure unto itself. It's the toxic, we're talking about fear and so and it's not to say that, you know, you shouldn't be thinking like that because you how you think. But if you can learn how to be mindful and to observe, wow here I am in fear and you know, just because this happened to my mom, I can live differently. I can make different choices and when you can learn to breathe and settle into the moment and come from a place of curiosity of wanting to learn of being involved, being empowered. Then your healing journey becomes this whole different X experience and you can regain the control that's yours.

You you are the master of your your body. I always tell my patients like you live in your body 24 7. You know, I get to have a visit with you for an hour once or whatever it is. And so you know, Yes, I may be the expert, I just spend more time studying this stuff but I'm gonna partner with you because you actually live in your body and your intuition and what you believe and what you're experiencing is really important. - I think it's so important to you know when we say to patients, ok, either MBS our mindfulness based stress reduction or meditation and patients will inevitably say to me I'm really bad at meditating.

I'm like yeah me too. Honestly I'm just I'm a bad meditator. It's hard for me. I get distracted again, I'm comfortable, I get fidgety, I think it meditating, that's why you practice it right? But the thing that's so poignant and so important to remember is that even the act of breathing out longer than breathing in will activate parasympathetic which is rest restoration, digestion healing. So of course you have to breathe in but breathe out for longer than in because that will tip your scales. You know, think about through the course of a day, taking a deep breath and slowly letting it out, wakes you up, get you grounded and then you know, you can actually test it on yourself, you can feel your heart rate go down.

So I just always thought that was so cool, your heart rate goes up when you breathe in and goes down when you breathe out for longer. - Yeah, I think, I think that's a common thing I hear as well. Um you know, I've tried meditation, it didn't work for me and and it is a practice. It's, I call it the mindfulness muscle, right? And the attention. And we all, I used to be like, oh gosh! People have such bad attention spans now and then I was like, oh well I guess I'm, I'm one of those people to, I need to, I need to pay attention myself because we just trained with the ding, Hear the ding there, the ding, their, you know whats strolling now.

And so it is, it is an act of kindness to yourself to just collect your thoughts and to notice, oh, here I am thinking about what I'm going to cook for dinner or that I forgot to put gas in the car. But I'm going to bring my mind back to the present and then it's gonna happen again and again and again until you practice and commit and consistency. And then slowly it will start to happen where you can stay in the present moment because the present moment is full of magic and beauty and even profound mundane experiences which is such an oxymoron.

But the mundane is so profound and you miss it when you are stressed and then you are secreting all this cortisol and you are messing up the balance of your sex hormones and your thyroids getting thrown out of whack and your immune system is getting thrown off and and you're degrading your bones and your hippocampal area and your brain and your memory and so you can really put it all back to to stress. And so - Can you talk to me about the mechanism by which cortisol throws off everything? I would say to people, you know, your your adrenals and your and your thyroid are like conjoined twins. But the adrenals are the more powerful of the conjoined twins. So they're going to determine where your thyroid goes. So can you talk about how does this happen?

And what happens with our, with digestion and excretion when the cortisol gets involved? - Yes. So I mean if your cortisol is off, your body is gonna have a favorite, you have like a favorite color, Your body has a favorite thing and that's survival. And so cortisol is our survival hormone. And even if it's not the saber toothed tiger survival and it's just the, I have 70 unread email survival, your body doesn't really know the same, which is really a powerful thing to think about because if your body doesn't know the same, then you can really harness the power of your mind to think positive things to heal your body and so you can um you can think about what you want and then you can experience that without even having it yet, and that will pull it towards you.

So, cortisol from a thyroid perspective, it's gonna really interfere with the conversion of T. Four to T. Three um which is the active hormone. And so I think of thyroid and the adrenals like a seesaw. So if cortisol and the adrenals are going up, the thyroid is going down. If you're revving the thyroid without paying attention to the adrenal glands, which is why if you are looking to be put on thyroid hormone, you always want to be working with the doctor who's first addressing and supporting your adrenal glands. So you don't further burn them at out.

And so um the adrenal glands, this this cortisol stress. And you have to remember that we talked about cortisol, but at some point you're going to get to a point where yes, you're hyper secreting cortisol, but now your body is like, yeah, I'm done and now you're gonna stop and then you're actually be hypo a drenica hippo cortisol and a lot of times you need bio identical cortisol to let your adrenals kind of go and rest. And so the adrenals are supposed to pick up the slack for our hormones when we go through menopause, which is a big point of why so many women suffer because so many women are stressed.

So many women are burning the candle, not even at both ends, but they're just like burning the whole candle around the whole damn thing is going up.

Detox pathways, symptoms, and toxic burden 17:18

- Just torching, torching all of it. - And so um you know, it's gonna pull your progesterone, it's gonna, you know, so you're gonna start preferentially supporting, you know, the bodies like do I wanna reproduce and have an offspring or do I want to stay alive? It's always gonna pick staying alive. And so because it really is a web, you know, we have cholesterol to pregnant alone and then we have this whole web of all the sex hormones and so one goes low, it pulls on the other, you know, it really is a lot of the pathways are bidirectional um cortisol is gonna thin the gut lining. I mean it's gonna dampen our immune response.

So there's just so many pieces and I'm not saying that fixing your adrenals is the solution to everything. It's just part of the solution. You still have to go in and look at um your thyroid and your sex hormones and support and make sure you have enough cholesterol and you're getting enough good essential fatty acids and that your liver is processing and yes, we have phase one of the liver and phase One to phase Two. A lot of these compounds when they go through the cytochrome P 4 50 system, they actually become more toxic than when they started.

And so we have to make sure we have enough antioxidants on board. And then the phase two pathways, you know, there's salvation, There's your annotation, there's methylation hormones are going down all these different pathways. So you need the right co factors. Then you need to make sure once it's gone through the liver is the bile actually flowing. A lot of people have very sludgy bile and so we need to make sure the bile is flowing. Then you get to the gut and are you pooping and I'm sure you hear this in practice too.

But a lot of times, you know, we've we've kind of lost what the definition of constipation is and you know, patients who don't even complain about being constipated and then when I drill down, they're going to the bathroom once a week or once every three days or once every four days and that, you know, then we're gonna get that recirculation and then it's gonna become toxic. Your your hormones that your body produce that we're helping you are now going to become toxic because you're getting another pass of them rather than them being excreted out, which goes back to what I was saying in the beginning about, we need to make sure. So like for me, the first thing I'm doing with patients is just running through all their among trees and how are they functioning and where do they need support.

And it's not enough to just run a comprehensive metabolic panel and say your liver enzymes are not elevated so your liver is fine. You know we have to do really functional. I do a lot of autonomic testing and looking through the thermography scan and making sure that these organs are actually um effectively draining. And there's lots of different ways to do that. But that's that's really important. You have to make sure with toxins it's like you wouldn't, you know, sweep the floor with the windows closed right? Because then you're just moving it from one part of the floor to the other. You know, make sure the windows are open and the dust is going out the windows or you have a little pan and you're getting rid of it.

And so it's the same thing in our body. And I think we like to jump the gun were such a like you know I want it now kind of society and so we we have toxins. We want to get rid of them. You know, what's what's the binder I need to take? What's the, what's the supplement I need to take. And we have.. - Let's let's talk about this, let's back up and talk about what are the symptoms that people could be experiencing that they then go, oh this could be a toxins issue. Let's look at what are some of the things, I mean I mean I know that this this bucket is massive so we're not going to hit it all.

But I mean I would vote any auto immunity, any chronic disease. - Yeah, I mean, so I work a lot with oncology. So a lot of patients who have diagnoses I work with and one of the first things we do is look at their toxic levels because I view it as I often use the backpack analogy. So we're all given backpacks when we're born according to our constitution and those of us who have lower constitutions, we get these teeny weeny backpacks, That's me. And so you know, you don't sleep, you get a pesticide exposure, you put amalgams in your mouth, that's it, your backpacks full and eat the wrong thing and now you're back overflowing and that's a disease process. And then there are the historic constitution from a homeopathic perspective, you know who they just detox amazing.

You know, they are the ones who were standing there when the mercury broke and they're like, I'm fine and they are the 120 year old grandma's drinking whiskey, smoking cigarettes on the porch, like never been sick. You know, they eat Mcdonald's, but they just have a very good constitution. And so we have to look at the backpack. So when we have chronic illness, we have to look at what is in your backpack that we have control over. So like if you, if you live on a golf course and they're spraying pesticides and you can't move. All right.

That's going to be a bigger thing to pick, But if you have a bunch of root canals and you have mercury fillings and you have galvanic currents in your mouth and you have gum disease and all, you know, even composite fillings that are filled with B. P. A. That weren't non BPH or you have titanium implants instead of ceramic. Like these are things you can handle and the mouth takes up a lot of most people's backpacks because there's so much toxic things happening in the mouth. So it's often a place I start, I want to look at scars on the body to see what's blocking flow, what's blocking the chief flow, what's blocking cellular polarization, what's blocking the autonomic nervous system.

So there are certain things we can just look at and clear and get out of the backpack. And so toxins is a huge one. And I think I started out by saying when I'm working with a patient who was diagnosed with cancer and so we are looking at heavy metals, we're looking at mycotoxins, we're looking at organophosphate toxins. We're looking at all of these toxins and we have to start clearing them out. So rather waiting till you get a diagnosis to start detoxing. It's good to do now. Like if you're listening to this and hopefully you don't have a serious diagnosis. Well you don't want to get there.

So detoxing has to be part of like brushing the teeth, washing our hair clipping our nails, like detoxing needs to be something that we just accept is part of our daily, monthly, weekly, quarterly, seasonally yearly routines and we have to have something in play because they're coming at us. And so what do we do to get them through? - So let's talk about some of the symptoms people might have because we've talked about the importance of toxins and what like you mentioned cancer. That's that's a huge symptom.

That's a diagnosis. What are some of the other things that people would show up with? - So let's say lymphatic because I think the limp is one of our more most important systems and one of our most overlooked some systems and that's because there's not really away. You can't like run blood work and see what's going on in the lymph, which is why when I run my computerized regulation thermography, I became obsessed with lymph because lymph because it's the only diagnostic tool that actually evaluates the lymph and what I discovered was, wow, everyone's lymph is messed up. Everyone's lymph, you know, is on fire, whether it be your tonsils or your appendix or your neck or your groin or under your arms.

I was seeing so much of it. So I was like, oh my God, this is like a major issue. And so lymphatic congestion can show up as stubborn weight, It can show up as cellulite. It can show up as being fatigued. It can show up as allergies. It can show up as headaches, it can show up as pain in the body. So pretty much any symptom you have, there can be a toxic component to it. So certainly chronic illness, certainly autoimmune disease, certainly even, you know, long Covid now is is an issue with toxicity. And how are you getting or not getting your toxins out? And so there's not really much and even, you know, hormonal imbalance because even you know, not being mineralized if we have um leads, let's say and so it's blocking our calcium and it can be blocking. So there's so many interactions and so I feel like it's involved with everything and that's kind of sad.

I mean it can even be involved with you know, anxiety, depression, like you know, we think about mercury toxicity and Mad Hatter's disease and going so lead can lead to low brain function and depression and so I feel like if you are working with a physician, they have to be evaluating your toxic levels. Like if you really want to stay healthy or reverse a disease process, it can't it can't be like I couldn't imagine not checking toxicity. - You're totally preaching to the choir as I sit with my dirty girl book behind like this is so right up our alley, I'm like I want to do this with everybody.

So let's talk about if you presume, I always say to someone are you human, of course they say yes, right? So if you're human and you're living on this earth, you can presume that you have a toxins issue. So then the question for me is always, what can we do about it? So that we tip the scales for health. So what are the things that you would say to people, what are the lowest hanging fruits that you would recommend people work on? - So there's a lot of low hanging fruits. And, and there, you know, I'm just thinking about um, my, my son's boyfriend, his birthday's coming up and I was like, what do you want for your birthday?

And he's like, I want us to all go get tattoos and I thought that sounds like fun. I never got a tattoo, but then I'm like toxins, toxins. - Toxins and they impair the sweat actually they where there's a tattoo, you don't sweat in that skin, which means you don't detox no tattoos. If you already have them, you got them, but don't, don't get it's mercury and its lead and I'm like, no, we can't do that. So they, they're, they're everywhere. So low hanging fruits. I mean for starters have a shoelace house, take your shoes off at the front door. So you're not tracking in pesticides and things that you have walked upon, like everyone can do that.

You know, I think that's how they roll in Japan, right? Like no one wears shoes. So you know, I have, I have a nice little bucket, you can pick your, your bootie socks if you want to change into something.

Practical ways to reduce exposure 28:30

But like shoes stay outside, especially if you have young Children, you know, I have two granddaughters and their, you know, they live on the carpet and the floor and so forth. Um you know, think about the products you're using, like think about the things you have a choice over. And so I always say like if it's, if you've seen it advertised on tv, forget about it, you know, you don't want it, you want to get products that are like from the farmers market or that are at the health food store and even then you have to look because it's very easy to be like, oh not tested on animals and sulfate free and you think great and that is great.

But you really have to be looking at your ingredients, - Right? I mean there's a whole slew of ingredients you don't want. So I always say to people pick either environmental working group EWG.org, which has an app or think dirty and don't be like me who sees a product gets excited, buys it and then he says, oh I should have tested that, oops, and then I go test it. So before you buy a product tested environmental working group they reviewed thousands of products, like close to 100,000. So you can look it up and say, oh actually this isn't all that good for me before you buy it or once you buy it, check it and then don't buy it again if you if you like me and got white green wash it's called being green washed where companies can make any claim they want and they can say anything and you as a consumer get snookered I get snookered a lot so don't be like me, don't get snookered. - Yeah I totally agree.

And I think you know I test glyphosate levels on all my patients and I know there's always been like should I eat organic? Not organic? It is I. B. S. Or not but I can tell you now I've been testing glyphosate levels for quite some time. And I can always tell like my patients who have low levels they really eat organic and keep organic and patients who don't, they have higher levels of glyphosate and it's not to say that the patients who are eating organic don't have any. They still have a little but it's not nearly as much. So I do think eating organic making sure your meats are grass fed and finished because that's another way that they get you where they're like oh yeah they're fed but then they finish it off with grains and so forth. - The grains have been treated.

The problem is the grains have been treated with glyphosate and some of them were gonna we actually have an episode on glyphosate in this summit. So and so well we won't steal their thunder. But when you think about the impact that glyphosate has on your microbiome, the good bacteria, the risk of cancer, the microbiome of the soil, It really would behoove you to stay away from it wherever possible. And that's why living on a golf course is so bad because it's inevitably sprayed with with life state.

So you want to be careful. - We used to live on a golf course, it was very pretty, but very toxic. So we get out of there. - So okay, so we have three things. So so far we have 31 take off your shoes before you come in the house to eat organic and three watcher products, the products you choose have them be as clean as possible. What else would you recommend for people? - So, you know, filters like filter your water, filter, your shower, filter your air and your air conditioning filter, you know everything. And so that's something that's very doable that you can do. You know, you want to make your house like as safe a haven as possible because you spend a lot of time there.

So I'm a big proponent of what you do 80% of the time because when I first got into all of this, I kind of like swaying way out there and you know, I was a little zealous and crazy 30 years ago and that's toxic to So when you are afraid of everything, when you're unwilling to do anything that's not healthy, that's toxic thinking and so you want to be balanced and so in your house you know E. M. F. S. Are a huge source of toxicity that we can't see. So I believe that some of the biggest sources of toxins are the ones we can't see.

It's E. M. F. It's the thoughts we're thinking. And so it's the chemicals that are sprayed. Like I always I always say you know you can go to the store and you can see a nice apple and it's not organic and you're like well looks great and I'm going to eat it. But if you went to that farm and you saw them spraying and the cross and skull bones on these pesticides and then they were like oh would you like an apple? You'd probably be like no I'm not interested. But we we lose we get a disconnect because we we just see it in the store so we have to remember like where did this start out and what's on it and do we want that in our bodies.

So I I think filtering our water making sure our E. M. F. S. R. As mitigated as possible. You know getting someone in checking is your electricity dirty using meters having good cell phone hygiene. I mean the cell phone is you know it's become like our our mate right? We were all addicted in love with our cell phones and it was only gosh, I mean I remember when I first started medical school in 1997 excuse me, I was the only person in my class who had a cell phone and I only had it had a 30 minute plan and it was just for emergencies because I had my two kids and I wanted to be reached and so that's not that long ago and it has really come like wow, where where they're indispensable but you can't be up to to your head.

Even earphones are bringing the toxins so you want to be on a landline as much as possible if you're using your cell phone, you want to be using it on speaker, You certainly want to get it out of your bedroom. You want to turn off your wifi at night, you want to make sure that you personally our grounding, that you are taking advantage of nature and you are hugging trees and you're putting your feet on the floor and you are watching the sunrise without sunglasses. That's something I have learned to do this year because I'm Sunglass queen and I've been really training myself to watch the sunrise and not rely on my sunglasses because my eyes get sensitive. Um I mentioned the teeth.

But that that's it's funny because my my oldest son is a physician as well, he became a naturopathic doctor a few years ago and so he will often call me to discuss cases and I'm always like, did you look in their mouth, what's in their mouth? You got to get their mouth cleaned up and then after. And he's like, you sound like a broken record. And I'm like, well this is, this is how it works. Did you look but did you look in their mouth? So now he's like, oh, I looked in the yeah, they're going for their mercury safe mercury removal. If you're getting your mercury moved, it's got to be with the biological dentist who does it safely and you need to be prepped, make sure your Monk teres are open before and after.

And so that that's such a huge, huge part of our toxicity lays within our in our dentistry, so that I always am harping on that. Um you know, even the clothes you wear, like cotton is a highly sprayed crop, so buying as much as you can organic cotton, not not using polyester and um fabrics that are toxic. What are you sleeping on? Are you you know, and so, you know this this list is getting big quick and so it's easy to get overwhelmed. So, you know, you know, you like some people are just like, I'm diving in this is my new project and in six weeks, like their whole house is going to be detoxified and others, you know, whether it's just the way you work or the way you know what finances can afford, you like just take it piece by piece by piece and you can start, you know, I like to start in the bedroom. I think the bedroom and the kitchen and then of course the bathroom because you can use really harsh cleaners in the bathroom.

But really get in your bedroom to be a safe healing space because that's when you are going to activate your glimpse fanatics, which is the lymph of the brain and the central nervous system and the cerebral spinal fluid. And that only gets activated when we get into this deep sleep and we have to go through cycles. And so sleeping and making sure you're detoxing your brain because if you don't sleep you're not detoxing your brain. It's unfortunately as simple as that. And so that is another really important piece. So I remember my son again but when he just started I'm like I'm taking you to environmental medicine conference.

And the first case was about this really sick patient and it turned out it was from their um their mattress. Yeah. Right. And so the mattress was off gassing and formaldehyde. All sorts of nasty stuff. And they were very sick. And so you know, we have to think about our mattress, our pillows are pillowcases are pajamas, all of these things that often we just take for granted but we really need to be thinking deeply about, especially the bed. I mean I hope you're spending a third of your life in bed, right? You're getting a eight hours of sleep because we need that eight hours to get enough of the cycles of the rem cycles to actually detox our brain. And so sleep is such a key piece in healing as well as stress reduction. And so, you know, you need, so maybe a mattress is not a low hanging fruit that were up the tree.

Now we're I think we're at the like we're at the ornament on the tree at this point. So another, let me give you one more low hanging fruit because it's once you're sweating, you know, embracing sweating in your life. And you know, if you're like, yeah, I don't like sweat. But I mean sweating, whether you're using an infrared sauna, you're going to hot yoga, you're using hot and cold, you're taking a bath, you're drinking some diabetic tea that's gonna encourage sweating. But this is if you are not sweating, like no one ever comes to me and puts chief complaint not sweating.

- But actually they say it is like, I don't sweat anymore. And I'm like, oh buddy, that's not good. We need to get your sweaty. - That becomes like the top of my to do list for patients. So you want to be sweating, it's away, we release toxins, it's a way we stay healthy. The skin is like our third kidneys and if you're not sweating, that's not a not a good sign. And so figuring out how you're gonna bring sweating into your life and getting, I mean, I love hot yoga, like, I feel like hot yoga, there's no sweating, like hot yoga. So, but that's not for everyone.

So, infrared saunas, you know, even just a fun active time in bed with your partner can can induce a nice sweat or going to the gym or whatever it is. You know, I do a lot of contrast hydrotherapy with patients and that's another good way to get sweating going on. And that's a low hanging fruit that's like using towels and hot water and so everyone can do that. - These are these have all been, I mean, you know, the thing about it is we could riff on this and go back and forth for a long time, but you've mentioned a lot of really critical things, your, your food, your air, your water, what you sleep on, what you put on your body, your products, your thoughts getting sweating.

I mean, these are all critical for health. So these are awesome. So, I think even if people started with that, that's a hugely impactful. So, what I would then say is I know that anyone listening to you would say, oh, she's great, how do I reach her? So, can you tell the listeners, how would people reach you? - I'm Dr. Sharon Stills, you can, you know, finally under that name on social media, you know, drstills.com is my website, I host the podcast for the bio regulatory medicine institute, which is the science of self healing.

We talk about lots of good stuff on there and and I just want you know like yeah you're

Where to find Dr. Stills and closing thoughts 40:30

saying she's great, I want you to know I'm human too and like you know I go to restaurants and sometimes I eat an organic food like you know, I think I eat seed oil at a restaurant the other day and we don't really talk about seed oils and that's you know an important thing to avoid. But again it's what you do most of the time and if you are going out and there's nothing organic like just enjoy it, be present with the people you're with or if you're just having a date by yourself and like enjoy the food, enjoy the community, enjoy your surroundings because that is going to give joy and health to your life and if you are eating or using something that um you know I went to a hotel the other day and I didn't bring my own shampoo, I use theirs and I didn't freak out. I just thought my hair looks good, great. You know my hair feels good.

I feel awake now, you know because it's not what I do all the time, but if I would have been stressed about oh my God there were toxins in that it might have had sodium laurel sulfate. That's a carcinogen. Oh my God what should have, like that's going to lead me down a very bad path. So make good choices most of the time and and be present, learn to breathe and find joy and that's gonna that's gonna serve you a very long way in the direction of health. - That's great. So do your best and don't sweat the rest. Yeah, so I mean this has been amazing.

Sharon. Thank you. Thank you for coming on this episode of the environmental toxicants, auto immunity and chronic diseases summit. Because I think this was a wealth of information for people, they know where to find you. And just to close it out, I would say thanks for joining us for another episode of the summit. We hope you have a great day.