thank you for having me topics on humans and environmental health yes yes that's just special that's my specialty so i'm just by training i'm a medical doctor my rheumatologist which is an autoimmune disease specialist  trained in internal medicine as well and then i went on to do two years of training with dr andrew weil so i'm an integrative medicine specialist as well and then beyond that i kind of fell into environmental health and what that means is really how not so much how the environment is kind of having its problems warming and rights of other issues but how the environment affects human health and what how these changes that man has man and woman have come up with over the last several hundred if not a couple thousand years  e really changed the biology the chemistry of human beings and also the risks of different diseases such as autism and risk for cancers and endocrine disrupting disorders thyroid disease so tying that all together i look at human beings very holistically and try to figure out whether their diagnosis or their symptoms are related to their environment just as much as if it's related to side effects from medication or stress but also sort of how the world is affecting and causing changes in human body you have it all together and thank you very much for explaining all of that in that's what it's a great of medicine is correct yes because a lot of times we look we as humans right now i'm talking to you too we look for the quick fix so we don't feel well or we go to the doctor well i will speak for myself if i don't feel well i'm going to try to get to the root cause right but most people will oh i don't feel well i'm going to make a doctor's appointment they will go and what does the doctor what is the typical n d do medication oh yes when they say you wait an hour for me appointment they see you for five minutes and then they pull out th prescription pad and there's a take this to your pharmacy oh well call it and go you and it's a drug the side effects are enormous yes and in fact western medicine and you know as much as i use all western medicines when they're necessary because many of them work beautifully and they're they're wonderful inventions that have change human health over you know generations but you know the reflex in our culture is really again to get the get things done quickly with least amount of work and pop a pill and it all goes away conventional western medicine is wonderful however it's limited and it's limited in that it doesn't provide other means of healing that we know exist and have been around for over five thousand years chinese medicine writer vatican medicine acupuncture guided imagery stress management sleep sleep hygiene so you know in terms of whole body health and really why people feel lousy it can be a disease but it can also be a whole host of white noise that we just don't even want to deal with like our stress and right in our  t and even the chemicals that we use every day because they actually contribute to poor health and because most chemicals that we interact with everyday plastics and personal care products they don't smack in the face they don't give you a rash right don't say is that they've never been tested before they're put into the commercial market honus of different plastics different objects you know even the computer cases your table the laminate floors shower curtains we don't know what's in them but they can be made up words i just move on the chair they can be made upwards of thousands of chemicals for instance fragrance fragrances anything in laundry detergents anything in scented candles way way way we can have hundreds of poles and you don't even know what those going to i'm working with the prison regional high school in the head of science for regional schools and we're trying to do another pilot project which we did last year which is to go in with products like you know body spray and all the things that the kids are using and really show them how to not only check the chemicals and the toxicity level of those chemical those products but help them to choose better because it's not just to say you should be scared this is horrible for you right these are how they work and you're doomed it's really to say listen this is why they're important why you should know about these chemicals and what we can do about it so what about the purview though i mean colognes and should we all number five your most expensive perfumes in the world have thousands of unknown chemicals to us you know i know a lot of people just like you know a lot of people you make friends when you go shopping to the counters and so the next time i see my perfume specialist who says that this particular thing is and i won't call it or a this particular perfume is all natural ingredients no such thing as all natural ok all natural is really a misnomer it's a marketing ploy ok no standards by which the word all natural can be used on any products including food products the only thing that has any teeth in this country for in terms of any oversight on k is the word organic organic and even within organic depend on the packaging and where the word organic is and how much of the ingredients are actually organic will allow that manufacturer to put the label on the oversight gee correct dr egli do you know how many people don't know what you just said i'm yeah well when i first figured this out or found out through when my you know we had my dog die side and i had to figure out why he was saying rice crying and i started learning about plastics and that kind of thing but when you know you know it's like you know when sure you're aware of this kind of information you sort of can't go backwards you can move forward right forward slowly right what i recommend that is right you don't want to get overwhelmed and that's kind of how i spit information out in slow reasonable practical cost effective terms so what are you telling people i'm just fanning what do you tell the women that love their favorite per feel so all i say is for instance i'm wearing perfume but i'm wearing perfume that i looked at through an environment a website no way and another reason why the smart human exists is to give people information on the resources the tools doctor you can go to resources tab and you can see what places what websites that i recommend writers at their quality one of the best websites that i use often for information and i actually work with them they're a nonprofit in washington d c called the environmental working group and they're a fantastic group of people mostly toxicologist that have created this this database called the skin deep database and you can actually put in your your products your personal care products and surprise  status and it came up as a level seven which is more toxic because it goes from zero to one and i was going to say ok and i gave up this nail polish for a few years having known that information and i switched to a different brand that had a lower rating and then all of a send i looked again and it had well three which is not perfect of course but certainly is something that i could at least think about whether i wanted to go back to it right and that's what this market is about it's what i you know really encourages it's not you know you're bad if you did this or you're bad and you you know incorporating new ones that really add to positive health so let's talk about prescription drugs because millions of us take them home like personally but sometimes we have the house for them right so do they do they help us do they hurt us in the long run so first we have to start by saying there are per prescription drugs that have saved lives period ok and they do ok every single day ok and so i think when we do a blanket analysis of not only integrative or you know all chemicals are bad which is not true all medications are bad i think the problem is is that we're really not attaching ourselves to someone or something or some resource that can to get in there and you need to get in there and yeah and so you have to this way out well we have great medications but we sometimes use them without doing the hard work and then we get the side effects from those drugs that are unnecessary just in the work like dieting and nutrition and eating haze iraqi without having to take the pills like this you know once for cholesterol because my haven't been able to manage what i don't ironically right is not to say that even doing everything right you're going to be without a medication right at least you should try to to do that so tell me why all the chemicals important i mean we need them ok so why have grown into a society you know listen we've been evolving for over four point five million years and so all of a sudden in the last one hundred fifty to two hundred two hundred years we now have  eighty seven thousand chemicals on our market they're not managed they're not tested for health and safety especially in children in young teenagers and in the elderly and so now we have all these chemicals because they're making our lives easier in terms of the convenience of plastics and you know spare a lot of our natural resources and making things faster quicker better you know what i think we've done is kind of come full circle in our understanding that because they weren't tested many of these chemicals for cell for safety risk we're now seeing the result of results which is ongoing low dose exposures to many of these chemicals that haven't been vetted and really do contribute to risk and what's really scary is that they also cross the placenta of the human placenta right and what we're seeing is that many of these chemicals really pollute to the fetus before the baby even gets out of the mom's body and so it really argues to teach young people early so that eventually if and when they ever want to have children re that they make good choices to keep their bodies clean as possible it's not perfect there's no perfect way to do this but right so many things we can do under the regulations against the use of those chemical well it depends on what chemicals when you're talking about every day packaging of food how can continue to control f certainly wonderful for using food grade stainless steel and right last sticks that you really can you know everyone should get rid of their plastics as far as i'm concerned they don't get more time everyone should get rid of their plastics if they can because there's no reason if you have other options on the market that are reasonably i mean these are all reasonable option ok but let's let's let's let's back it up just a bit when we go out yes and we go to a restaurant like i know i have date night with my husband tonight and there's a couple around here that were in princeton just so you know but there's a couple around here that when you add those farm to table restaurants they don't give you a plastic they give you a pair way behind with a plastic lining usually it's two with a dog and a cat and a husband so i have to manage a lot and there's not always running around with my bowls and my you know stainless steel and my glass when we do take out or we pick up you know it depends on how aggressive you want to be ok because you have to measure and weigh out your practical lifestyle and choices that really make your life function again with what you're contaminating your body and your kids bodies with and so i'm really not a dramatic person when it comes  to my god cut this advice that out as much you know you're going to die it's not like that you want to do the best changes over time that you can do now when you go out and you take out i mean you can go as far as picking up with glass and bowls you know i'm considering that with one of the restaurants that i use on with every other day or once a week they know me i know them if they want to think i'm crazy that's ok always so tell me what you're going to do so i'm planning the all out be going to order and yes so i'm actually going to probably bring you can narrow it down to something that means something to you like a restaurant that you really have a good relationship with i think that's a reasonable way to go you can't do this all the time and i think listen you've got to start with your home ok those are all and yet make up and perfume and what your high heating your stuff up at home with you know choosing steam or bags when you can cut them and put them in glass yes very important sailors feel stainless steel looking through your personal care products for you and your kids and just kind of exchanging the mout it's really not that hard once you do it you're done you've got your twelve cosmetics that you use and you know men usually use about six on average a day women are up to about twelve and teenagers yes about fifteen yeah so again this is the market i'm trying to reach the writers of the kids that really can move the market they have great tech skills they know how to use apps they have great body awareness this is the time when you want to teach them a whole sort of things about their body but this is one of them is how to keep your body as clean as possible from chemicals the smart human i it yes i'm doing that now you are i'm actually because i found a need for it you know there are yes out there that have severe asthma and allergies they may be managed on some inhalers they may be managed medications but never looked into their home you know maybe the quality of their water is abnormal they're drinking from well water maybe perhaps they have water bedding dry cleaning has anyone gone through the cupboards and kind of look through some of the products and what's in them personal care products someone's going to see my face yeah i mean and i got to do that and it's not about judging i mean i have kids and i do things you know my house is not perfect no one should you know you walk in with a bag and you just know i come in and i start educating as we walk through the house  really a together project and it's you know well if this doesn't work well let's try this you know and just using the resources i also work with the builder who has been wonderful and we go into homes that are having new renovations look at their paint and we look at their floor and then we look at the air ration and all these different aspects of building projects that are so valuable because you know these are the this is the the chemicals that can irrigate into the home you have to really know what your air quality is you really need to know top of it to make it shiny that you have to leave your house with five days all the way yes sure you care exactly and there are better choices we did some renovations in our house and took a little longer because we vetted out every single thing that went along with each step of the project ok and it doesn't have to be that way for everyone but that's what our learning curve was and my older and it's been really a great learning curve that's the ideas you want to put thought into right you're going to be living in your home and spending upwards of twelve to fourteen hours a day in your home raving in your  yeah you want to really make sure that the cleaning products that they use in your workspace are good quality i actually pay for my own and my medical office was the one that is part of the hospitals in the building system is chemicals that i just don't approve of so cleaning products i cleaning i have a cleaning service at home and she uses what's there she telling me what to bring right so you know what you probably won't be hired by my family because you need to come in and tell us what's good what's not but i want to go i want to change it now i want you to talk about your work with children in high school students a little bit and then your pilot project with dr andrew weil what so what are while not working on this project i'm actually writing a textbook for it's geared towards a practitioners but it is wonderful for people who really want to dive into they won't be out for another year and a half ok that's an excellent and then of course the book that i'm writing is an actual guidebook for everyday people which i'm in the process of getting published at this point and  moving forward with that but the idea is the even my hints that i give out in the book are going to be i give them out during the postings and on my website ok the pilot project came out of my disappointment having lecture to probably over four hundred physicians of different brand rounds and different hospital systems and trying to let them know about environmental health and chemicals and really didn't get the response that i was hoping for which didn't surprise me given that we are in a really tough medical you know environment at this point so i realized if doctors are not really listening or not taking the time to really educate their parents that their patients writes this topic or aren't buying into it for themselves or whatever the reason is little communicated to a rally so i said to myself you know what after a few years of doing this because there's a lot of these chemicals in medical equipment and put in all these plastics that go into little little babies and you know into our intensive care units so i decided that i think the market is really younger people because they're aggressively looking into ways to make themselves healthier prettier safer you know they already jester proactive they have the wherewithal to do it and so last year i went into princeton the high school and did a series of lectures for various age groups and collected data and found out that the kids really want this that's they were this they want to you know they want to learn about these personal care products they want to learn about this information and so now we're expanding it and this year i've been meeting with the with various people good science and superintendent for princeton regional schools and there's such excitement about it so we're going to try to get some grant money for funding a series of lectures and they're going to try to move it i'd like to move cohen dot com that's my medical web site but for the smart human it's the smart human dot com and the e mail address is info at the smart human dot com i also list on the web site a series of you know services that we provide because it's expanded people have been reaching out from all different areas doing legal work you know for people who have been exposed to various chemicals or train derailments and you know chemicals so it's been a really interesting who's been figuring out that this is meaningful yeah i mean even today there was an a rticle in the l a times regarding how the environmental causes of cancers are more than just bad luck and so that there's a real pro and it is an area here that we can take advantage of so it's really the smart human dot com and a leak on mt dot com  things that you can share with us really a question really great great reason to the reason i'm doing this is really because of these high yield information that i can get so essentially number one i would really move away from cooking and plastics heating and  plastics transporting hot foods and plastics if you can start in your home it's the easiest place that you can control even your cooking utensils many of them are also plastic and don't want to forget that they handle all stainless steel and you can change up these as well  steel and one thing people don't know and sometimes my family forgets that they will use this and then which you know it's woods bamboo they put it in the water no they put it in the dishwasher which is a no no no would yeah you're not supposed to that's just yeah it's going to ruin the texture of the wood and it wasn't as i get that clean because it's more of right but so number one is definitely the move away from plastics you know if you can avoid canned foods i mean you certainly does socio economic issues but you're right you have to be very careful about that but you know frozen foods tend to be just as expensive as canned foods now and if you can buy frozen and have the wherewithal to keep frozen it's much better they haven't taken that plastic coating that sort of the metal from the food ok they have never taken that away so every time you have a food from a can you have a mixture of b p a within them and there's been great studies showing this from harvard school of public health you see my face because i'm thinking about my coverage now in the and you are again except i have tons of organic cans that i got rid of because many of the organic companies still use canned so ok you're sort of defeating a little bit of the purpose so number one move away from from cooking in plastic move to processed food there's all sorts of bad things snuck into processed foods and trying to eat things as they come from you know the ground or with as least processing as possible is really the best way to go fast food yeah you know the thing is you want to be smart about it have options now in wright the smart human dot com it offers all of the you know the services i provide but also resources interviews podcasts a lot of are there is that i get so so you know it's kind of like you are a great resource if you want to get right to the nitty gritty but also my