The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them

00:00:00.000 | - Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast,

00:00:02.240 | where we discuss science

00:00:03.720 | and science-based tools for everyday life.

00:00:05.920 | I'm Andrew Huberman,

00:00:10.320 | and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology

00:00:13.560 | at Stanford School of Medicine.

00:00:15.520 | Today, we are discussing microplastics.

00:00:18.520 | Microplastics are an extremely interesting

00:00:20.800 | and important topic that everyone should know about.

00:00:23.840 | And the reason is microplastics are indeed everywhere.

00:00:27.840 | They're in the air.

00:00:29.000 | They are in beverages we consume.

00:00:31.560 | They are lining the inside of soup cans.

00:00:34.280 | They are lining the inside of paper cups

00:00:37.000 | made to hold hot water, coffee, and tea.

00:00:40.260 | And there are a lot of animal data

00:00:42.360 | and indeed some human data showing that microplastics,

00:00:46.400 | which consist of particles of different sizes,

00:00:49.760 | can be very detrimental to our health.

00:00:52.360 | At the same time, it's important to realize that as of now,

00:00:55.640 | we don't have any causal data

00:00:58.000 | linking microplastics to specific human diseases.

00:01:01.400 | That said, there's a lot of correlative data,

00:01:03.780 | and today we are going to review those correlative data.

00:01:06.120 | And most importantly, we are going to discuss

00:01:08.360 | the various things that we can each and all do

00:01:10.720 | to limit our exposure to microplastics,

00:01:12.960 | or at least to facilitate the removal of microplastics

00:01:17.200 | from our body.

00:01:18.480 | Because, as we'll soon discuss,

00:01:20.720 | you have microplastics in essentially every organ

00:01:23.900 | and tissue of your body right now,

00:01:26.160 | and you are constantly being bombarded with microplastics.

00:01:29.440 | So the challenge for me, and indeed for you as well,

00:01:32.280 | is to frame this topic of microplastics accurately.

00:01:35.600 | It's important that we understand they are out there,

00:01:38.160 | they are in us,

00:01:39.560 | and indeed they can cause serious issues for our health.

00:01:43.440 | However, we also need to take agency.

00:01:45.860 | We need to understand how we can limit

00:01:48.120 | what's called the bioaccumulation of microplastics

00:01:51.000 | in our organs and tissues.

00:01:52.640 | And I don't want to be alarmist.

00:01:54.560 | Today's episode is not about getting you to be petrified

00:01:57.820 | or about developing some sort of hypochondriasis

00:02:00.440 | about microplastics.

00:02:02.280 | It's designed to inform you about what they are,

00:02:04.820 | where they exist,

00:02:06.080 | where they exist in particularly high amounts,

00:02:09.400 | and the things that you can do

00:02:10.680 | to limit their impact on your biology.

00:02:13.840 | Because I think it's fair to say

00:02:15.280 | that we are not going to rid the earth of microplastics.

00:02:19.020 | They are just too pervasive.

00:02:20.780 | Now, the one caveat is that

00:02:22.520 | there are certain populations of people,

00:02:24.020 | in particular people that are pregnant

00:02:25.920 | or people that have young children

00:02:27.540 | and those young children themselves,

00:02:29.320 | that should really strive

00:02:31.420 | to limit their exposure to microplastics.

00:02:33.500 | So by the end of today's episode,

00:02:34.860 | you can be confident that you'll understand a lot

00:02:36.580 | about what microplastics are,

00:02:37.980 | the impact that they are currently having,

00:02:40.140 | some of the potential impact

00:02:41.460 | that people are starting to investigate,

00:02:42.900 | and ways that you can limit their negative impact

00:02:45.140 | on your brain and bodily health.

00:02:47.060 | Before you begin,

00:02:48.000 | I'd like to emphasize that this podcast

00:02:49.780 | is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford.

00:02:52.400 | It is, however, part of my desire and effort

00:02:54.560 | to bring zero cost to consumer information about science

00:02:57.140 | and science-related tools to the general public.

00:02:59.800 | In keeping with that theme,

00:03:00.900 | I'd like to thank the sponsors of today's podcast.

00:03:03.480 | Our first sponsor is Element.

00:03:05.340 | Element is an electrolyte drink

00:03:06.800 | that has everything you need and nothing you don't.

00:03:09.360 | That means the electrolytes,

00:03:10.620 | sodium, magnesium, and potassium,

00:03:13.000 | in the correct ratios, but no sugar.

00:03:15.460 | Now, I and others on the podcast have talked a lot

00:03:17.600 | about the critical importance of hydration

00:03:19.580 | for proper brain and bodily function.

00:03:21.740 | Research shows that even a slight degree of dehydration

00:03:24.460 | can really diminish cognitive and physical performance.

00:03:27.380 | It's also important that you get adequate electrolytes

00:03:29.700 | in order for your body and brain to function at their best.

00:03:32.440 | The electrolytes, sodium, magnesium, and potassium,

00:03:34.980 | are critical for the functioning

00:03:36.380 | of all the cells in your body,

00:03:37.580 | especially your neurons or nerve cells.

00:03:39.580 | To make sure that I'm getting proper amounts

00:03:41.020 | of hydration and electrolytes,

00:03:42.660 | I dissolve one packet of Element

00:03:44.100 | in about 16 to 32 ounces of water

00:03:46.020 | when I wake up in the morning,

00:03:47.180 | and I drink that basically first thing in the morning.

00:03:49.780 | I also drink Element dissolved in water

00:03:51.500 | during any kind of physical exercise I'm doing,

00:03:53.680 | especially on hot days if I'm sweating a lot

00:03:55.660 | and losing water and electrolytes.

00:03:57.740 | Element has a lot of different

00:03:58.860 | great-tasting flavors of Element.

00:04:00.440 | My favorite is the watermelon,

00:04:01.900 | although I also confess I like the raspberry

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00:04:04.860 | Basically, I like all the flavors of Element.

00:04:06.900 | If you'd like to try Element,

00:04:08.100 | you can go to drinkelement.com/huberman,

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00:04:16.380 | with the purchase of any Element drink mix.

00:04:18.660 | Again, that's drinkelement.com/huberman

00:04:21.820 | to claim a free sample pack.

00:04:23.380 | Today's episode is also brought to us by BetterHelp.

00:04:26.540 | BetterHelp offers professional therapy

00:04:28.240 | with a licensed therapist carried out entirely online.

00:04:31.700 | Now, I've been doing weekly therapy for well over 30 years.

00:04:34.640 | Initially, I didn't have a choice.

00:04:36.300 | It was a condition of being allowed to stay in high school,

00:04:38.940 | but pretty soon I realized that therapy

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00:05:40.860 | Okay, let's talk about microplastics.

00:05:43.460 | What are microplastics?

00:05:44.540 | Microplastics, as the name suggests,

00:05:46.220 | are little itty-bitty bits of plastic.

00:05:49.000 | How itty-bitty?

00:05:50.240 | Well, microplastics range in size from one micron,

00:05:53.620 | which is one one-thousandth of a millimeter,

00:05:56.900 | all the way up to five millimeters in diameter.

00:05:59.860 | Okay, so anything in that size range

00:06:01.340 | is considered a microplastic.

00:06:03.220 | Anything smaller than that,

00:06:05.740 | so anything smaller than one micron in diameter,

00:06:08.860 | one one-thousandth of a millimeter in diameter,

00:06:10.980 | is considered a nanoplastic.

00:06:13.340 | And indeed, there are lots of microplastics

00:06:15.820 | floating around in the air.

00:06:17.420 | There are lots of nanoplastics floating around in the air.

00:06:20.060 | There's lots of both of those things in the ocean.

00:06:22.680 | There are a lot of those things in food,

00:06:24.260 | especially packaged food.

00:06:25.900 | There are a lot of those things lining cups.

00:06:28.580 | There are a lot of those things

00:06:30.180 | in everything that we consume, essentially.

00:06:34.020 | So what does it mean to have all these microplastics

00:06:35.900 | and nanoplastics floating around in our environment

00:06:38.220 | and going into our body through fluids and foods, et cetera?

00:06:41.540 | Well, there is some serious concern

00:06:43.940 | because these microplastics

00:06:45.820 | potentially can disrupt cellular health, organ health,

00:06:50.020 | and could potentially lead to certain forms of disease.

00:06:53.220 | We'll talk about the ways they could potentially do that.

00:06:55.660 | However, I want to also emphasize

00:06:57.100 | that your body is incredibly good

00:06:58.620 | at dealing with foreign invaders.

00:07:00.660 | It's very good at getting rid of stuff

00:07:02.260 | that isn't good for it.

00:07:03.640 | However, microplastics and nanoplastics

00:07:05.460 | have been shown to lodge within specific tissues

00:07:07.660 | and stay there for long periods of time.

00:07:10.140 | So you'll notice during today's episode,

00:07:11.980 | I'm going to go back and forth

00:07:13.020 | between the stuff that's really scary

00:07:15.140 | and then reassuring you that we're not sure

00:07:17.740 | whether or not we need to be that scared

00:07:19.420 | about these microplastics and nanoplastics yet.

00:07:21.980 | Okay, what I want to do is give you the evidence

00:07:23.740 | so you can decide how much effort you put

00:07:26.700 | into limiting your exposure

00:07:28.460 | to these microplastics and nanoplastics

00:07:30.180 | and how much effort you put

00:07:31.100 | into trying to rid your body of them.

00:07:33.140 | Okay, I'm not here to paint the picture one way or the other

00:07:36.180 | because frankly, the data just don't line up

00:07:38.740 | with one argument or the other,

00:07:40.860 | that they're extremely dangerous

00:07:42.180 | or that they're nothing to worry about.

00:07:44.240 | Let me give you an example

00:07:45.820 | of something that you might've heard in the media

00:07:47.620 | and on recent podcasts out there that's very scary.

00:07:52.100 | The argument based on what seemed

00:07:53.660 | to be a pretty high quality publication

00:07:55.500 | that you may have heard is that every single week,

00:07:58.840 | we ingest up to a credit card's worth

00:08:01.460 | of microplastics and nanoplastics.

00:08:03.700 | Okay, you might've seen that in headlines

00:08:05.100 | and in other podcasts.

00:08:06.580 | And indeed, there was a paper arguing that.

00:08:09.400 | However, a more recent paper looked

00:08:11.360 | at the quantitative analysis they used,

00:08:13.640 | used a different quantitative analysis

00:08:16.080 | and claimed that they vastly overestimated

00:08:17.900 | the amount of plastic that we ingest every week.

00:08:20.340 | What do I mean by vastly overestimated?

00:08:23.260 | This newer analysis of the same data claims

00:08:25.800 | that the credit card's worth of plastic

00:08:28.420 | that it was argued we consume every week,

00:08:30.540 | well, that was an overestimate by a million fold.

00:08:33.540 | And in fact, it would take 23,000 years

00:08:37.100 | to consume enough plastic to lead

00:08:39.980 | to that credit card's worth of plastic in our bodies.

00:08:42.740 | Okay, so now we have very discrepant data,

00:08:45.300 | or rather we have very discrepant analyses of the same data.

00:08:48.780 | So you're starting to get a picture

00:08:49.940 | of just how confusing this whole field is,

00:08:52.180 | but we're going to parse it a little bit further

00:08:54.360 | by saying that it's also very clear

00:08:57.700 | that microplastics and nanoplastics are everywhere.

00:09:00.980 | Okay, they're just everywhere you look.

00:09:03.060 | In fact, if I were a PhD advisor for somebody in toxicology

00:09:07.060 | or a PhD advisor for somebody in environmental science,

00:09:10.520 | and they needed to have a surefire publication,

00:09:14.820 | I'd probably suggest that they work on microplastics

00:09:17.140 | and go out there and try and find

00:09:18.940 | yet another source of microplastics

00:09:20.740 | and use a better analysis, for instance.

00:09:22.540 | Okay, doing a graduate thesis

00:09:24.100 | isn't just about getting a publication,

00:09:25.600 | but what I'm trying to refer to here

00:09:27.380 | is that wherever people look for microplastics,

00:09:29.720 | they find them.

00:09:31.020 | This is true in our environment,

00:09:32.340 | and this is true in food, this is true in water,

00:09:34.860 | and this is also true for our tissues.

00:09:37.900 | So in the last couple of years,

00:09:40.020 | there's been an explosion

00:09:41.860 | in the number of scientific studies

00:09:43.440 | exploring which tissues of the human body,

00:09:45.940 | so not just animal models,

00:09:46.980 | but the human body contain microplastics and nanoplastics.

00:09:50.600 | Okay, so by examining post-mortem tissues,

00:09:52.960 | that is tissues from people who are deceased,

00:09:55.260 | it's been discovered that there are microplastics

00:09:58.660 | and nanoplastics lodged in the brain.

00:10:01.660 | So if you take the brain of a deceased adult human,

00:10:05.020 | what you find is that they have about 0.5%

00:10:08.900 | of the total weight of the brain from microplastics.

00:10:11.660 | So this is about a teaspoon

00:10:13.780 | of salt or sugars worth of microplastics,

00:10:16.340 | might not seem like much,

00:10:17.900 | but if you think about how little neurons are,

00:10:20.600 | a typical neuron will have a cell body,

00:10:22.880 | this is the area that contains the nucleus

00:10:24.420 | with all the DNA and so forth,

00:10:26.660 | that cell bodies of neurons vary in size tremendously,

00:10:29.540 | they can be as small as five to eight microns across

00:10:33.400 | to as much as, gosh,

00:10:34.540 | I've seen some neurons down the microscope

00:10:36.500 | that are 50 microns,

00:10:40.240 | I've seen some that are 100 microns across,

00:10:42.940 | it depends where you look in the nervous system.

00:10:45.080 | Okay, so if you start to think about a half teaspoon

00:10:48.640 | of powder of microplastics and nanoplastics,

00:10:52.280 | that's a lot of microplastics and nanoplastics

00:10:54.740 | that could be distributed

00:10:55.700 | in lots of different places in the brain.

00:10:57.640 | And a little bit later,

00:10:58.480 | we'll talk about what the potential impact is

00:11:00.440 | of these microplastics and nanoplastics

00:11:02.820 | on the function of particular types of neurons

00:11:05.100 | that may impact things like neurodevelopmental trajectories,

00:11:08.480 | okay, the argument has been made,

00:11:10.400 | I'm not making this argument,

00:11:11.800 | but the argument has been made

00:11:13.320 | that microplastics and nanoplastics

00:11:15.240 | may correlate with things like autism,

00:11:17.640 | may correlate with things like attention deficit

00:11:19.900 | hyperactivity disorder,

00:11:21.460 | I don't actually believe that the data there

00:11:23.840 | are strong enough to make those arguments at all.

00:11:26.280 | However, I will tell you that the presence of microplastics

00:11:29.640 | and nanoplastics in the brains that is post-mortem tissue,

00:11:32.960 | okay, so deceased people taking the brain,

00:11:34.600 | chopping up the brain,

00:11:35.440 | looking at it down the microscope and seeing microplastics

00:11:37.600 | and then quantifying the amount of microplastics

00:11:40.280 | in different compartments of the brain

00:11:41.600 | and distributed across the brain,

00:11:43.840 | that is concerning to me in the sense

00:11:45.920 | that there's enough of it in there

00:11:48.240 | and the function of neurons in the nervous system

00:11:50.100 | is precise enough that you could imagine

00:11:53.280 | given that these microplastics and nanoplastics

00:11:56.200 | are lodged in particular categories of neurons

00:11:58.500 | that do in fact impact things like reward and motivation,

00:12:03.080 | things like movement, et cetera,

00:12:04.980 | that they could be impacting

00:12:06.440 | the function of the nervous system,

00:12:07.880 | but there's no direct causal relationship,

00:12:09.880 | at least not in humans.

00:12:11.280 | There's some interesting data in animal models,

00:12:13.180 | we'll get back to that a little bit later.

00:12:14.680 | So there's microplastics and nanoplastics in brain,

00:12:17.640 | you'll find microplastics and nanoplastics

00:12:19.560 | in other tissues that have a blood organ barrier.

00:12:23.800 | What do I mean by that?

00:12:24.640 | Well, the brain is encapsulated in the so-called BBB,

00:12:27.800 | the blood brain barrier,

00:12:29.280 | and that's because your brain tissue,

00:12:31.360 | because it doesn't turn over across the lifespan,

00:12:33.720 | you don't produce many new neurons.

00:12:35.280 | There are a few places you produce new neurons

00:12:36.760 | like the olfactory bulb,

00:12:37.920 | the dentate gyrus or the hippocampus, a few places,

00:12:40.220 | but these are far and few between.

00:12:42.080 | Most of your brain tissue that you're born with

00:12:44.240 | is the brain tissue that you're going to die with,

00:12:46.020 | provided you don't lose that brain tissue

00:12:47.480 | through the course of your lifespan,

00:12:48.660 | through a head injury or something like that.

00:12:50.320 | The neurons you have when you are born

00:12:52.760 | actually are far more numerous than the neurons you have

00:12:56.060 | at the time when you die.

00:12:57.520 | This is important,

00:12:58.360 | and it's one of the reasons we have a blood brain barrier.

00:13:00.880 | Nature is very smart.

00:13:02.520 | It designed a barrier so that molecules

00:13:04.680 | that might be dangerous to the brain can't enter the brain,

00:13:06.920 | and that's what the BBB is for.

00:13:08.840 | Microplastics and nanoplastics are making it

00:13:11.240 | from the bloodstream into the brain, okay?

00:13:14.160 | This is what I mean

00:13:15.000 | when I say they can cross the blood brain barrier.

00:13:17.880 | Then if we take a step back and we ask ourselves,

00:13:19.720 | what are some other tissues in the body

00:13:21.640 | that have a very robust barrier from the blood?

00:13:24.600 | 'Cause a lot of things get into the blood,

00:13:26.040 | and that's not necessarily good,

00:13:27.180 | but it's not necessarily bad

00:13:28.980 | if you can excrete those things, right?

00:13:30.520 | We have a lot of detoxification mechanisms

00:13:32.440 | that include our liver detoxification, et cetera.

00:13:35.920 | But if these particles are getting

00:13:37.960 | from the blood into the brain,

00:13:39.120 | what are some other tissues that they're getting into

00:13:41.120 | that have these thick barriers

00:13:42.760 | or these very stringent barriers?

00:13:44.400 | As you can imagine,

00:13:46.660 | two other tissues that have very stringent

00:13:48.800 | blood to organ barriers are the blood testicular barrier.

00:13:52.280 | Why would that be?

00:13:53.440 | Okay, why would you protect brain?

00:13:54.680 | Well, it can't renew.

00:13:55.760 | You don't want those neurons

00:13:56.800 | to get contaminated with things,

00:13:58.340 | so you put a BBB in, a blood brain barrier.

00:14:00.900 | You also put a blood testicular barrier in males.

00:14:03.400 | Why?

00:14:04.240 | Well, that's where the DNA are.

00:14:05.840 | That's where the so-called germ cells are.

00:14:07.520 | So you don't want things getting into the testicle

00:14:09.440 | and mutating the DNA there,

00:14:10.800 | because then those mutated DNA

00:14:12.520 | could be passed on to offspring.

00:14:14.820 | Guess what?

00:14:15.660 | Microplastics and nanoplastics

00:14:17.360 | can cross the blood testicular barrier.

00:14:19.760 | And in fact, there was a lot of press this last year

00:14:22.560 | about microplastics and nanoplastics being present

00:14:25.280 | in every human testicle that was analyzed in,

00:14:29.040 | or I should say from postmortem tissue.

00:14:31.280 | Likewise, there's a blood follicle barrier in females.

00:14:34.400 | Okay, this is where the eggs come from.

00:14:36.520 | And microplastics and nanoplastics

00:14:39.000 | can cross the blood follicular barrier.

00:14:41.800 | So this is why people are starting to get concerned, right?

00:14:44.560 | I suppose we shouldn't be so surprised

00:14:46.700 | that we're inhaling microplastics,

00:14:48.120 | given that they are everywhere.

00:14:49.240 | I should mention that, you know,

00:14:50.280 | there wasn't much plastic around or in use

00:14:52.240 | prior to the 1950s.

00:14:53.560 | If any of you have ever seen the movie "The Graduate"

00:14:56.400 | with Dustin Hoffman,

00:14:58.000 | this is the only time you'll see somebody driving eastward

00:15:01.200 | across the Bay Bridge, all right,

00:15:03.440 | from San Francisco toward Berkeley on the top deck.

00:15:05.300 | It actually runs in the other direction.

00:15:06.480 | They shut down the Bay Bridge.

00:15:07.460 | That's in "The Graduate."

00:15:08.300 | And the other thing that's in "The Graduate"

00:15:09.820 | is this famous scene.

00:15:11.080 | If you're old enough like me

00:15:12.160 | to remember the movie "The Graduate,"

00:15:14.440 | Dustin Hoffman's lying in the pool.

00:15:16.120 | It's after his graduation.

00:15:17.920 | He's lying in the pool.

00:15:18.760 | He doesn't really know what he's going to do with his life.

00:15:20.720 | And this guy comes up to him and he says,

00:15:21.860 | "You know, the future is plastics."

00:15:24.440 | And it became this kind of famous line or pseudo-famous line.

00:15:27.600 | Now that movie takes place at a time

00:15:29.400 | when plastics were really booming as an industry.

00:15:31.800 | And indeed, polyethylene, polyurethane,

00:15:33.960 | these plastic materials were developed

00:15:35.980 | because they were very durable.

00:15:37.360 | They were long lasting.

00:15:38.200 | In fact, they are not biodegradable.

00:15:40.220 | They're not broken down very easily, if at all,

00:15:43.440 | and certainly not within biological tissues.

00:15:46.000 | These plastics went from essentially non-existent

00:15:48.560 | in the 1940s and prior

00:15:50.720 | to in pretty much everything involved in manufacturing, okay?

00:15:54.360 | Even in different aspects of surgical implants

00:15:57.360 | and things of that sort.

00:15:58.200 | So plastics are indeed everywhere.

00:15:59.680 | And that started in the 1950s,

00:16:01.120 | hence that line from "The Graduate."

00:16:02.720 | So it's not surprising that microplastics and nanoplastics

00:16:05.740 | would get into our body, right?

00:16:07.480 | If they're everywhere in our environment

00:16:08.960 | and we're inhaling them all day,

00:16:11.060 | then of course they'll get into our lungs

00:16:12.520 | and then they're small enough

00:16:13.760 | they can get into our bloodstream.

00:16:14.920 | But as I mentioned, the body has these cleansing systems

00:16:17.360 | or these detoxification systems to remove things,

00:16:19.560 | but they're not removing the microplastics,

00:16:22.640 | or at least not all of them,

00:16:23.760 | from brain, testicle, and follicle.

00:16:27.000 | And I should point out that microplastics and nanoplastics

00:16:30.960 | are also found in all the other tissues of the body.

00:16:33.560 | In fact, I don't think there's a single investigation

00:16:35.400 | of human tissue or animal tissue

00:16:37.200 | for microplastics or nanoplastics

00:16:38.780 | where they didn't get a positive result,

00:16:40.880 | meaning where they didn't find them in the tissue.

00:16:42.600 | You can find them in not just the upper lungs,

00:16:44.880 | but in the lower lungs.

00:16:45.960 | So they're getting deposited in the lower lungs.

00:16:47.860 | You can find them in the bloodstream from a blood draw.

00:16:50.760 | You can find them in human placenta,

00:16:53.120 | and you can find them in what's called the meconium,

00:16:55.740 | which is the first stool that a baby takes.

00:16:58.680 | This is typically taken within the,

00:17:00.900 | or the stool is given, given, taken.

00:17:03.880 | It's taken by the doctor.

00:17:04.960 | It's actually analyzed for various things.

00:17:06.480 | It contains bile and a bunch of other things.

00:17:08.320 | It's actually an important indicator

00:17:10.000 | of the health of the child.

00:17:11.500 | It turns out that this first stool,

00:17:14.800 | that happens in the first 24 hours or so after birth,

00:17:18.400 | when that's been analyzed for microplastics,

00:17:21.020 | there too, you find microplastics and nanoplastics.

00:17:23.520 | And that's really got people concerned

00:17:25.760 | because what this means is that microplastics

00:17:28.600 | and nanoplastics that mothers are ingesting

00:17:31.160 | or that they somehow have lodged in their bodies

00:17:32.940 | are making their way to the fetus.

00:17:35.840 | Now you could say, well, is it really a problem?

00:17:38.240 | Well, a few years ago, it was at least concerning enough

00:17:41.560 | that BPAs, and we'll talk more about BPAs,

00:17:44.960 | bisphenol A, which is a component of microplastics.

00:17:48.000 | This is a known endocrine disruptor.

00:17:50.240 | It disrupts certain estrogen-like pathways.

00:17:53.240 | We'll get into this in a few minutes.

00:17:55.380 | Bisphenol A and BPAs were banned from sippy cups in kids

00:17:59.900 | and from any food containers for young kids.

00:18:03.520 | So the FDA in the United States,

00:18:05.520 | and there are European countries as well,

00:18:07.800 | had enough data on this or enough concern about this

00:18:10.400 | to say, listen, we are going to make it illegal

00:18:13.600 | to have BPA-lined sippy cups

00:18:16.040 | or food containers for young kids,

00:18:19.800 | in part because the BPA is correlated

00:18:22.760 | with microplastics and nanoplastics.

00:18:25.040 | So what I'm saying here is that the government

00:18:28.160 | has taken pretty avid measures

00:18:30.540 | to restrict the amount of BPA exposure

00:18:33.480 | through microplastics and nanoplastics to young kids,

00:18:36.480 | and yet the fetus clearly is being exposed

00:18:38.920 | to microplastics and nanoplastics.

00:18:41.360 | This is why at the beginning I mentioned,

00:18:42.760 | if you are pregnant or if you have young kids,

00:18:45.660 | or if you are a young kid,

00:18:47.080 | you want to go out of your way to limit your exposure

00:18:49.840 | to these microplastics and nanoplastics.

00:18:51.800 | But if you're an older adult,

00:18:53.760 | you probably want to do the same,

00:18:54.960 | and we'll talk about ways that you can do that.

00:18:57.220 | So I could go on and on about the various tissues,

00:18:59.240 | besides placenta in your bloodstream,

00:19:01.480 | brain, testes, follicle, lower lungs.

00:19:03.960 | You can find nanoplastics in the liver.

00:19:06.360 | You can find microplastics and nanoplastics

00:19:08.720 | in pretty much every tissue that you look for them.

00:19:10.680 | The real question is,

00:19:11.860 | how detrimental are these microplastics and nanoplastics?

00:19:15.320 | And then of course we can talk about

00:19:16.600 | where they're coming from specifically,

00:19:18.900 | in ways that you can control and limit.

00:19:21.620 | And when I say control and limit,

00:19:23.040 | what we're really talking about here is,

00:19:25.600 | yes, trying to limit your exposure to these things.

00:19:28.160 | If I were to rattle off the different sources

00:19:30.040 | of microplastics and nanoplastics,

00:19:31.600 | you would go wide-eyed,

00:19:33.200 | and you would probably also just say,

00:19:35.080 | okay, I surrender, they're truly everywhere.

00:19:36.940 | In fact, I'll do that, okay, I can't help, but do that.

00:19:39.720 | But keep in mind, you do have some control

00:19:42.440 | in terms of the end result of these microplastics

00:19:45.920 | and nanoplastics on your health.

00:19:47.160 | So here I go.

00:19:48.400 | Plastic bags, storage containers,

00:19:50.680 | bottle caps, rope gear strapping,

00:19:52.480 | utensils, cups, floats, coolers, containers,

00:19:54.560 | rope, fishing nets, textiles.

00:19:56.440 | Sorry, I'm not laughing because it's funny.

00:19:58.320 | I'm laughing because it's just pretty much everywhere.

00:19:59.840 | Latex paint, coatings, medical devices, automotive parts,

00:20:02.920 | tires on the road, degrading,

00:20:05.200 | giving off little microplastics into the air,

00:20:07.660 | microplastics raining down from the sky, literally.

00:20:11.860 | Pipe film containers, laminated safety glass,

00:20:14.260 | car windshields, oh, great, even the car windshield.

00:20:17.040 | Drinking bottles, textile fibers, resins, paints,

00:20:20.540 | varnish, construction, automotive parts.

00:20:23.220 | Okay, so basically everywhere, right?

00:20:25.140 | These things are everywhere.

00:20:26.640 | So what are we to do?

00:20:29.300 | Well, what we are to do is to limit

00:20:33.860 | the long-term accumulation of microplastics

00:20:36.700 | and nanoplastics in our system.

00:20:38.680 | There are ways that we can limit

00:20:40.000 | their introduction to our system,

00:20:41.560 | but as long as you're breathing,

00:20:43.340 | as long as you're walking around,

00:20:44.920 | as long as you're near a road,

00:20:46.680 | you are exposed to microplastics.

00:20:49.400 | So until there's a huge movement to make better tires

00:20:52.960 | that don't degrade as quickly,

00:20:54.800 | or to create filters in our home environments

00:20:57.240 | that remove the microplastics,

00:20:58.760 | which frankly, I think both of those things

00:21:00.440 | are not reasonable expectations,

00:21:01.920 | at least not in this lifetime.

00:21:03.720 | Well, until then, what you can do is you can try

00:21:05.660 | and limit their entry and accumulation into your body.

00:21:09.140 | So rather than list off all the ways that you can limit

00:21:11.580 | so-called bioaccumulation of microplastics and nanoplastics

00:21:14.940 | at the beginning or at the end of today's episode,

00:21:16.820 | I'm going to intersperse them at times that are relevant

00:21:19.540 | to what I just discussed about how microplastics

00:21:22.140 | get into our system and the tissues they are lodged in.

00:21:24.820 | So I'll tell you right now that a few ways

00:21:27.260 | that you can really do yourself a service

00:21:29.640 | in limiting your exposure to microplastics

00:21:32.660 | is to limit your consumption of water from plastic bottles.

00:21:37.100 | Okay, that might seem kind of obvious,

00:21:38.820 | but check out these data.

00:21:40.540 | This is pretty wild.

00:21:41.680 | There was an analysis of the number of microplastic

00:21:47.140 | and nanoplastic particles in bottled water.

00:21:50.060 | And it was estimated that there were about 30,000

00:21:52.940 | of these particles per liter of water.

00:21:55.580 | Okay, and those data stood for quite a long time.

00:21:59.180 | Then imaging techniques for measuring the number

00:22:02.700 | of these different particles,

00:22:03.780 | in particular the really small nanoparticles,

00:22:05.740 | the ones that are less than one micron in diameter,

00:22:08.700 | the imaging tools for those improved.

00:22:11.660 | Okay, and I'll explain a little bit about that in a moment.

00:22:13.740 | And there was a paper published in the Proceedings

00:22:15.540 | of the National Academy of Sciences in 2024

00:22:18.140 | that showed that the amount of nanoplastic in particular,

00:22:22.940 | but microplastic and nanoplastics that are present

00:22:25.100 | in bottled water was actually vastly underestimated

00:22:30.060 | in that previous study.

00:22:31.980 | Rather than 30,000 particles per liter,

00:22:34.460 | the reanalysis with better methods showed

00:22:36.660 | that it was anywhere from 110 all the way

00:22:39.740 | up to 400,000 particles per liter.

00:22:43.380 | And the average was 240,000 particles per liter.

00:22:47.660 | So that means that the amount of microplastics

00:22:49.380 | and nanoplastics in bottled water is actually much,

00:22:52.340 | much higher than we initially thought.

00:22:54.980 | And a very simple way to limit your exposure

00:22:57.220 | to microplastics and nanoplastics

00:22:59.540 | is to avoid drinking water from plastic bottles,

00:23:02.580 | in particular plastic bottles that have been heated up.

00:23:05.460 | Now you might say, well,

00:23:06.300 | I don't heat up my plastic water bottles.

00:23:08.220 | Right, but you don't know what happened

00:23:09.420 | to those plastic water bottles

00:23:10.580 | en route to the store you bought them at

00:23:13.140 | or en route to your refrigerator, right?

00:23:15.300 | They could have sat in the back of a hot truck.

00:23:17.040 | They could have sat in the back of a loading dock,

00:23:19.500 | any number of different things.

00:23:20.860 | Now, this is not to say that if you drink

00:23:22.580 | the occasional water out of a plastic bottle

00:23:25.620 | that you're going to harm your health.

00:23:26.980 | I'm absolutely not saying that.

00:23:29.100 | However, it's pretty clear that there's a lot

00:23:32.540 | of microplastics and nanoplastics

00:23:34.080 | that are completely avoidable,

00:23:35.620 | at least avoidable in terms of your ingestion of them

00:23:38.100 | in plastic water bottles.

00:23:40.780 | So it makes sense to me why you would want to avoid those.

00:23:42.820 | Also as a consumable, that's not very reusable.

00:23:45.940 | I suppose you could reuse those plastic bottles,

00:23:47.740 | but most people don't,

00:23:48.740 | at least they don't use them for very long.

00:23:50.040 | They get pretty flimsy pretty quickly.

00:23:52.820 | You're much better off having either a stainless steel

00:23:55.540 | bottle or some sort of ceramic mug or using glass

00:24:00.380 | or using some other vessel for water that is reusable.

00:24:04.280 | And of course that is not made of plastic.

00:24:06.860 | And then of course the question arises,

00:24:08.660 | how much microplastic and nanoplastic is in tap water?

00:24:11.500 | And it turns out there's quite a lot of it.

00:24:13.680 | Now it varies according to location,

00:24:15.820 | but there are ways that you can get those microplastics

00:24:17.780 | and nanoplastics out of your tap water.

00:24:19.940 | The best way turns out to be a little bit expensive,

00:24:22.000 | admittedly, and that's to use a reverse osmosis filter.

00:24:25.380 | So reverse osmosis filters will get rid

00:24:27.460 | of all the microplastics and nanoplastics.

00:24:29.500 | Of course, it will also remove some key minerals

00:24:31.780 | from the water.

00:24:32.820 | So you'll have to remineralize that water.

00:24:35.340 | If one looks at the price

00:24:36.660 | of reverse osmosis filtration systems, they're not cheap.

00:24:40.900 | They can range anywhere from 300 to 500 or even $600

00:24:44.860 | for a home unit.

00:24:45.940 | And many of those units will remineralize the water.

00:24:48.720 | So basically it takes the water,

00:24:50.060 | cleans out the microplastics, nanoplastics,

00:24:52.340 | and a bunch of other bad stuff that you don't want.

00:24:54.520 | And then it's going to remineralize the water

00:24:57.160 | so that you're getting enough minerals in your water.

00:24:59.620 | Now, if you look at the cost of a reverse osmosis filter,

00:25:02.560 | I, like you, kind of go a little wide-eyed,

00:25:04.340 | like, oh, that's a lot of money for water.

00:25:06.300 | But if one thinks about the total amount of money one spends

00:25:08.920 | in a given year on plastic bottled water that we consume

00:25:13.060 | and then, you know, throw away essentially the bottles,

00:25:15.820 | or even bottled water from glass bottles,

00:25:18.920 | I've gotten in the habit of trying to drink water

00:25:20.700 | from glass bottles.

00:25:21.540 | And when you go out and you buy those,

00:25:22.820 | you feel better that you're not consuming a lot

00:25:24.520 | of microplastics and nanoplastics,

00:25:26.400 | but they are very expensive.

00:25:29.040 | So the costs probably line up pretty well.

00:25:31.940 | And when I did that analysis, I realized,

00:25:34.300 | well, actually the home reverse osmosis filter

00:25:36.820 | with remineralization actually will save on costs,

00:25:39.600 | provided that one is good about filling glass bottles

00:25:42.560 | or stainless steel bottles with that water

00:25:44.540 | and making sure to, you know, when you leave the house

00:25:46.000 | to take those bottles with you.

00:25:47.440 | Again, I don't think it's possible for everyone

00:25:50.280 | to avoid all consumption of water from plastic bottles.

00:25:53.480 | That's just not reasonable to expect, right?

00:25:55.500 | You don't want to be that person

00:25:56.400 | that's carrying around water everywhere you go

00:25:58.200 | to friends' houses at dinner, et cetera.

00:25:59.980 | I don't think we need to be that concerned

00:26:02.200 | about the amount of microplastic and nanoplastic

00:26:04.820 | in water sources.

00:26:06.040 | And certainly you wouldn't want to avoid drinking water

00:26:07.940 | from plastic bottles to the point where you dehydrate

00:26:09.680 | yourself or put yourself at risk.

00:26:11.200 | I'm not trying to create that kind of concern here.

00:26:13.560 | What I'm trying to say is if you are concerned

00:26:16.180 | about microplastics and nanoplastics

00:26:17.700 | and you really want to limit your exposure,

00:26:19.340 | one of the best ways to do that is to limit your consumption

00:26:21.720 | of water from plastic bottles.

00:26:23.740 | And because microplastics and nanoplastics

00:26:25.520 | are present in tap water, you're going to need some way

00:26:28.060 | to remove those microplastics and nanoplastics

00:26:30.140 | from your tap water if you're very concerned about them.

00:26:32.680 | I'm not here to say everyone should do this.

00:26:34.620 | I'm certainly not saying that.

00:26:35.980 | I'm saying that if you are concerned

00:26:37.740 | about microplastics and nanoplastics,

00:26:39.740 | and we'll talk about some of the reasons

00:26:41.100 | one might want to be concerned about them,

00:26:44.220 | well, then installing a reverse osmosis filtration system

00:26:48.100 | on your home water might be a good idea.

00:26:51.040 | And it's likely to save you costs if you look at it

00:26:54.460 | in comparison to buying disposable bottles of water.

00:26:57.440 | Now, there are a lot of other ways besides drinking water

00:26:59.800 | from plastic bottles that microplastics and nanoplastics

00:27:02.820 | make their way into our system.

00:27:05.160 | And I can list off many of them,

00:27:06.640 | but I'm trying to create a hierarchy here of the things

00:27:09.120 | that are potentially the major sources

00:27:12.220 | and the ones that we can most easily avoid

00:27:14.640 | and that are likely to save us costs overall.

00:27:18.380 | So one thing that's very clear is that there's a lot

00:27:20.380 | of microplastics and nanoplastics in sea salt.

00:27:23.600 | Who would have thought?

00:27:24.440 | But then you think about it and it's like,

00:27:25.820 | well, this stuff is getting out into the ocean.

00:27:28.380 | There's a lot of plastic in the ocean.

00:27:29.980 | It's a super depressing scene when one sees the pictures

00:27:32.440 | of all the plastic floating out there.

00:27:34.460 | In fact, there's a book that I read in preparation

00:27:36.780 | for this episode.

00:27:37.980 | Gosh, it was so depressing, but important for me to read.

00:27:41.700 | Maybe you want to read it as well.

00:27:42.780 | It's quite good, although it will be a bit of a downer.

00:27:46.220 | The title of the book is "A Poison Like No Other,

00:27:48.580 | How Microplastics Corrupted Our Planet

00:27:50.700 | and Our Bodies" by Matt Simon.

00:27:52.460 | And I listened to this book and gosh,

00:27:55.700 | it really convinces you that there's microplastics

00:27:57.980 | everywhere, both on land, in the air,

00:28:00.540 | and in the ocean, unfortunately.

00:28:02.580 | And of course, sea salt comes from the ocean.

00:28:05.740 | So a simple solution to this is if you're going to use salt,

00:28:08.620 | and I'm a big fan of salt, not overdoing it,

00:28:11.140 | but salt has its role, right?

00:28:13.420 | It's a wonderful substance, both for sake of taste

00:28:15.820 | and for sake of health.

00:28:17.380 | I did an episode about salt.

00:28:19.340 | Again, don't over consume salt.

00:28:21.220 | Don't blast your blood pressure.

00:28:22.540 | Don't blow a gasket.

00:28:23.480 | But many people would do well to have a little bit more salt,

00:28:27.260 | especially if you're eating a really clean diet,

00:28:29.020 | especially if you're hydrating very well.

00:28:31.060 | Focus on something like pink Himalayan salt

00:28:35.340 | or salt that comes from a non-marine source, okay?

00:28:39.140 | It's very simple to do.

00:28:40.900 | It's some of the best salt out there.

00:28:42.340 | It's not terribly expensive,

00:28:44.460 | and you would do well to avoid sea salt

00:28:46.540 | and get your salt from those other sources.

00:28:48.700 | In doing so, you're going to lower your exposure

00:28:50.780 | to microplastics and nanoplastics.

00:28:53.440 | There's some pretty scary pictures of sea salt

00:28:56.060 | under the microscope and all the little bits of plastic

00:28:58.340 | that are in there.

00:28:59.160 | And you only have to see those pictures once

00:29:00.540 | or just hear it from me to make the shift

00:29:02.700 | to Himalayan sea salt.

00:29:04.300 | And the pink salt is pretty.

00:29:05.740 | It looks nice.

00:29:06.560 | It tastes great.

00:29:07.400 | So that's an easy, very low-cost shift that you can make.

00:29:10.660 | I'd like to take a quick break

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00:30:40.660 | Okay, so we've talked about bottled water sources

00:30:42.820 | and filtering your water.

00:30:43.780 | We talked about sea salt.

00:30:45.180 | Another major source of these microplastics

00:30:47.260 | that was very surprising to me

00:30:49.620 | is from the lining of canned soup.

00:30:52.600 | I don't think I'm ever gonna eat canned soup again

00:30:55.380 | unless I absolutely need to.

00:30:57.660 | Sorry, canned soup companies.

00:30:59.160 | But there was a study, the study was entitled

00:31:02.440 | canned soup consumption and urinary bisphenol A,

00:31:05.860 | a randomized crossover trial.

00:31:08.380 | I'll describe a little bit more

00:31:09.380 | about what bisphenol A is a little bit later,

00:31:11.540 | but bisphenol A is a known endocrine disruptor.

00:31:14.700 | It mimics estrogen in ways that can activate

00:31:17.780 | or block estrogenic pathways.

00:31:20.380 | So it messes up hormone pathways

00:31:22.620 | either by activating them or blocking them.

00:31:25.580 | It can also bind to androgen receptors potentially

00:31:29.040 | and cause some issues there.

00:31:30.420 | Bisphenol A or BPA is not a good thing.

00:31:34.240 | Turns out there's lots of it in the lining of soup cans.

00:31:39.240 | The reason is soup tends to be a little bit fatty.

00:31:43.380 | So even if you get the nonfat soup,

00:31:44.660 | it tends to have some lipid in there

00:31:46.300 | and it also has some acidity to it.

00:31:48.940 | And the lining helps maintain the flavor

00:31:51.580 | and the freshness of the soup in those cans.

00:31:53.940 | In this study, what they did is they gave people

00:31:55.800 | either fresh soup or canned soup for five days.

00:31:58.940 | Then they did a so-called two-day washout

00:32:00.820 | where they took a break from soup

00:32:02.300 | and then they reversed the conditions.

00:32:04.460 | I'll cut to the chase here

00:32:05.780 | because the conclusion of this study is wild.

00:32:09.100 | What they found was that consumption

00:32:11.060 | of one serving of canned soup daily

00:32:13.240 | over the course of five days,

00:32:15.180 | here I'm quoting by the way,

00:32:16.380 | was associated with more than 1000% increase

00:32:19.900 | in urinary BPA and bisphenol A.

00:32:22.820 | Now that's urinary BPA, so people are excreting it.

00:32:25.660 | I want to emphasize that.

00:32:27.500 | But a thousand fold increase in BPA from canned soup.

00:32:31.540 | I don't know, I'm not alarmist,

00:32:33.020 | but I only have to read this once.

00:32:34.580 | Think about my love of canned soup.

00:32:36.060 | Not that great, done.

00:32:37.500 | I'm not eating canned soup again

00:32:38.980 | unless I'm absolutely starving

00:32:40.460 | and I need some soup very, very badly.

00:32:42.620 | My suggestion would be unless you have a powerful reason

00:32:47.580 | to consume canned soup, don't consume canned soup.

00:32:50.980 | The one caveat being that if you can find canned soup

00:32:53.860 | that does not have any BPA,

00:32:56.040 | that is it says no BPAs on the container,

00:32:59.220 | well then go at it, have as much canned soup as you want.

00:33:02.420 | But I should be very clear

00:33:04.380 | that a lot of canned products now say no BPA,

00:33:07.460 | but they contain other endocrine disruptors

00:33:10.420 | and the amount of microplastics and nanoplastics

00:33:13.080 | in those soups is still unknown.

00:33:15.060 | So part of my hidden motivation of this episode

00:33:18.620 | and perhaps the motivation of other podcasters

00:33:21.160 | in the health space

00:33:22.000 | that are talking about microplastics now,

00:33:23.460 | and by the way, Dr. Rhonda Patrick

00:33:24.980 | did a really wonderful podcast

00:33:26.900 | about microplastics just recently.

00:33:29.120 | We didn't coordinate,

00:33:30.000 | that's why we both ended up doing it

00:33:31.460 | roughly at the same time.

00:33:32.360 | We talked about it afterwards and chuckled about that.

00:33:34.820 | I guess we're both interested

00:33:36.240 | in some of the same themes, of course.

00:33:38.140 | One of the perhaps hidden agendas

00:33:42.220 | is that some of these food manufacturing companies

00:33:44.900 | and beverage manufacturing companies

00:33:46.300 | will start to include more thorough descriptions

00:33:48.580 | on their labeling of what is and is not contained

00:33:52.300 | in the various products such as canned soup

00:33:54.340 | and water, et cetera.

00:33:55.660 | Not just no BPAs,

00:33:57.340 | but hopefully some of the other things

00:33:59.860 | that are problematic that we'll talk about in a moment,

00:34:01.980 | such as BPS, which is another endocrine disruptor.

00:34:05.220 | So if you see no BPAs,

00:34:06.580 | sometimes there's still BPS in there, okay?

00:34:08.620 | We'll talk about BPS as well as phthalates,

00:34:11.180 | which are something that make plastic

00:34:13.220 | and other containers more durable and more flexible.

00:34:15.820 | And phthalates have been discussed by people

00:34:18.420 | like Dr. Shana Swan,

00:34:19.820 | who will soon be a guest on this podcast

00:34:21.740 | and has shown up on other podcasts,

00:34:23.820 | talking about how phthalates

00:34:25.300 | are known endocrine disruptors in development

00:34:27.620 | and likely in adulthood as well.

00:34:30.060 | So I guess my push for you to never consume canned soup

00:34:34.140 | again might be a little bit harsh.

00:34:35.340 | That's just my decision.

00:34:36.760 | Here's what I'll do.

00:34:37.600 | I'll make a bargain with the canned soup companies.

00:34:39.940 | If you all start putting a more thorough description

00:34:42.920 | about what is and is not contained in those soup cans,

00:34:46.820 | all right, not just no BPA,

00:34:48.140 | but is there truly also no BPS?

00:34:51.200 | Are there no phthalates, et cetera?

00:34:52.900 | Then maybe I'll make the move back to canned soup.

00:34:55.580 | And of course, most of you have probably heard

00:34:57.540 | that you're not supposed to microwave plastic containers.

00:35:00.060 | Now, you'll see microwave safe

00:35:02.360 | on a number of different containers.

00:35:03.660 | That just means that it's not going to melt

00:35:05.500 | in the microwave.

00:35:06.380 | It does not mean that you aren't being exposed

00:35:08.080 | to microplastics and nanoplastics,

00:35:10.340 | and BPAs, BPS, phthalates, et cetera.

00:35:12.700 | So in general, it's a good idea

00:35:14.740 | to avoid putting any kind of plastic into the microwave,

00:35:17.460 | at least if you're going to microwave food

00:35:18.580 | and then consume that food.

00:35:20.060 | The other surprising, at least to me,

00:35:22.460 | source of BPAs and BPSs,

00:35:24.780 | so these endocrine disruptors and microplastics

00:35:26.860 | and nanoplastics, that's very robust, is paper cups.

00:35:31.860 | Goodness gracious.

00:35:32.800 | I would have thought paper cups are safe,

00:35:34.860 | but you know those paper cups that you put hot liquids into

00:35:37.340 | and they often have a plastic lid?

00:35:38.620 | Well, even if they don't have a plastic lid on them,

00:35:40.840 | the lining of the paper cup,

00:35:42.640 | which makes those cups durable

00:35:44.840 | when you put hot liquids in there,

00:35:46.440 | like hot coffee or hot tea,

00:35:48.280 | well, that contains typically,

00:35:50.040 | unless it says no BPA and no BPS,

00:35:52.320 | it contains lots of BPA and BPSs,

00:35:54.480 | microplastics, nanoplastics.

00:35:56.160 | And so putting hot liquids in there,

00:35:58.040 | actually there was an analysis that showed

00:36:00.000 | that if liquid that's heated up to 100 degrees Fahrenheit

00:36:03.220 | is put in those containers, it starts to leach out.

00:36:06.220 | It starts to pull those microplastics, nanoplastics,

00:36:09.440 | BPAs and BPS from the cup linings.

00:36:12.360 | So the other day I went across the street

00:36:14.000 | and bought a cup of coffee.

00:36:14.840 | Of course, they sold it to me in a paper cup.

00:36:16.600 | And I thought, oh goodness,

00:36:17.440 | I forgot to bring my mug and my travel mug,

00:36:19.640 | my stainless steel mug or my ceramic mug.

00:36:22.260 | Did I not purchase the coffee?

00:36:23.520 | No, I'd already ordered the coffee.

00:36:25.040 | I didn't walk back.

00:36:25.880 | What I did is as soon as I got back,

00:36:27.160 | I took the coffee and I poured it into a ceramic mug.

00:36:30.280 | So I'm not extremist.

00:36:31.580 | I'm not somebody who's going

00:36:32.520 | to completely avoid these things.

00:36:33.720 | But in the future,

00:36:34.840 | I'll try and remember to bring my mug over.

00:36:36.800 | Some places even give you a little discount on your coffee.

00:36:38.760 | So again, these are cost-saving approaches.

00:36:40.860 | You're certainly limiting or reducing the amount of waste

00:36:43.840 | that you're creating in the world.

00:36:44.920 | So that can only be a good thing, okay?

00:36:47.880 | And the plastic lids,

00:36:50.880 | probably a good idea to avoid drinking

00:36:52.720 | through those plastic lids too often.

00:36:55.200 | Again, I want to emphasize,

00:36:56.400 | I'm not one of these people that's going to freak out

00:36:58.080 | about drinking a hot liquid through a plastic lid.

00:37:00.680 | These microplastics and nanoplastics are everywhere.

00:37:02.940 | We're consuming them all the time.

00:37:04.360 | We can remove them from our body.

00:37:06.160 | And later we'll talk about ways that you can accelerate

00:37:08.680 | or increase the amount of removal of them from your body.

00:37:12.160 | But if we're just a little bit more conscious

00:37:14.720 | about how they get into our body,

00:37:16.160 | and we're a little bit more conscious

00:37:17.480 | about the elevated costs and the elevated amount of trash

00:37:20.800 | that's going to recycle into landfill and so on,

00:37:24.120 | probably a good idea to just bring your mug with you,

00:37:25.800 | your travel mug with you,

00:37:26.800 | try and make those mugs and travel mugs ceramic,

00:37:29.640 | stainless steel, or some other vessel

00:37:31.800 | that doesn't contain BPAs or BPSs.

00:37:34.560 | Before we move on to talk about what happens

00:37:36.880 | when microplastics and nanoplastics make it into say,

00:37:39.860 | the testicle or the brain,

00:37:41.120 | like what the consequences of that is and are,

00:37:44.580 | I want to just briefly return to something

00:37:46.240 | that I flew past a while ago.

00:37:48.640 | And that's the analysis of microplastics

00:37:50.480 | and nanoplastic particles that are in bottled water.

00:37:52.920 | Remember, initially it was thought to be

00:37:54.400 | 30,000 particles per liter.

00:37:56.280 | Then later it was discovered using better techniques

00:37:58.280 | that it's actually more like 240,000

00:38:01.840 | on average particles per liter.

00:38:04.760 | How did that huge discrepancy in data arise?

00:38:08.560 | Now, I realize this is not a data analysis discussion,

00:38:11.520 | but I want to talk about this just briefly

00:38:13.160 | because it illustrates for you

00:38:14.720 | something really important about science,

00:38:16.520 | which is as tools for measurement get better,

00:38:19.680 | so does our understanding about what's going on

00:38:22.120 | in our brains and bodies.

00:38:23.000 | And it's a very simple and kind of cool thing

00:38:24.900 | related to light.

00:38:26.440 | So you could imagine that the first paper

00:38:29.100 | was looking under the microscope at a drop of water

00:38:32.380 | taken from a bottle that was plastic

00:38:34.680 | and then imaged the number

00:38:37.920 | of little plastic particles in there.

00:38:39.480 | You'd say, well, there's a particle

00:38:40.320 | and there's a particle and there's a particle

00:38:41.920 | and there are tools that can count those particles.

00:38:44.760 | Well, what if you have two particles

00:38:47.080 | that are really close together, right?

00:38:49.040 | If you recall microplastics are anywhere

00:38:51.200 | from one micron in diameter,

00:38:52.940 | all the way up to five millimeters in diameter,

00:38:55.440 | but nanoplastics are less than one micron in diameter.

00:38:59.920 | So how do you know that when you see a clump of stuff

00:39:03.560 | under the microscope in that drop of water

00:39:06.040 | that you're looking at one big piece of plastic

00:39:09.960 | versus thousands and thousands of little pieces

00:39:13.320 | of nanoplastic or even just much smaller pieces

00:39:16.280 | of microplastic?

00:39:17.720 | Well, it has to do with what's called

00:39:19.000 | the point spread function.

00:39:19.980 | And I don't really want to get into this in too much detail,

00:39:21.800 | but basically when you shine light on something,

00:39:23.640 | you get kind of a little hill of light, if you will,

00:39:27.180 | there's a peak at the center

00:39:28.840 | and then it had drops off with distance.

00:39:31.240 | The reason why the numbers jumped from 30,000 to 240,000

00:39:35.240 | is not because the researchers got much better,

00:39:37.680 | it's because the tools got much better, okay?

00:39:40.040 | There are new imaging techniques

00:39:41.840 | and I'll put a reference to this for those of you

00:39:43.560 | that are into this kind of stuff,

00:39:45.400 | entitled rapid single particle chemical imaging

00:39:47.920 | of nanoplastics by SRS microscopy.

00:39:50.240 | Okay, pretty nerdy stuff,

00:39:51.520 | but it's fun if you're interested in light

00:39:53.360 | and how light can illuminate things

00:39:54.720 | and show detail or not detail.

00:39:55.920 | But basically what we're realizing

00:39:58.000 | is that there are a lot more particles of plastic

00:40:01.200 | in different tissues,

00:40:02.280 | in different things that we're ingesting, et cetera,

00:40:04.320 | because we're getting better and better ways

00:40:05.720 | of separating those clumps of light

00:40:07.560 | into lots of little clumps of light

00:40:10.080 | and realizing, oh, that looked like one particle, right?

00:40:13.120 | Remember it's particles per liter.

00:40:16.360 | It's not one particle, it's 10,000 particles.

00:40:18.880 | Now you might say, okay, well,

00:40:20.080 | what's the difference between a bunch of little particles

00:40:22.520 | and one big particle?

00:40:23.680 | Ah, there's a big difference.

00:40:25.400 | What's the big difference?

00:40:26.680 | Little particles can make it across barriers

00:40:29.920 | that big particles can't.

00:40:31.900 | These little nanoparticles of plastic

00:40:34.400 | are especially concerning because those are the ones

00:40:37.480 | that you find in greatest abundance,

00:40:40.060 | or I should say among the plastics

00:40:41.920 | that you find in different tissues,

00:40:43.560 | the ones that are in greatest abundance in the brain,

00:40:46.660 | the testes and the follicle, again,

00:40:48.320 | these tissues that nature and evolution

00:40:50.600 | have gone out of their way to protect

00:40:52.820 | with these very stringent barriers,

00:40:54.340 | like the blood-brain barrier,

00:40:55.320 | like the blood-testicular barrier,

00:40:56.780 | like the blood-follicle barrier.

00:40:58.720 | Those are the ones that are getting across

00:41:00.160 | because they're very, very small.

00:41:01.400 | They can sneak through the little holes

00:41:03.220 | in those biological fences.

00:41:04.960 | They're getting deposited in those tissues,

00:41:06.800 | brain, testicle, and follicle,

00:41:08.440 | and they're staying there at least until people die,

00:41:11.880 | which in the case of the analysis of post-mortem tissue

00:41:14.680 | is many, many decades later.

00:41:16.880 | Okay, so I'm not just raising this discussion

00:41:18.840 | about ways to disambiguate large particles

00:41:21.200 | from small particles just to be nerdy and technical.

00:41:24.080 | It turns out to be a really important issue

00:41:26.480 | with real biological implications.

00:41:29.160 | Okay, so lots of itty-bitty little pieces of plastic

00:41:32.640 | getting their way into tissues like brain,

00:41:35.560 | follicle, testes, liver, lung, et cetera.

00:41:39.280 | What are some of the implications of this?

00:41:40.940 | Now, there are a lot of animal data,

00:41:43.280 | data in fish, data in mice, et cetera,

00:41:46.440 | that have explored how microplastics and nanoplastics

00:41:49.380 | can disrupt any number of different biological functions,

00:41:52.940 | but it's probably worth looking at

00:41:55.460 | how nanoplastic and microplastic accumulation

00:41:58.600 | in specific tissues is correlated

00:42:00.560 | with specific health detriments in humans,

00:42:02.880 | even though the data are correlative, right?

00:42:04.960 | It's much harder to get causal data from human studies

00:42:07.560 | because the animal studies, frankly,

00:42:09.600 | are hard to translate to humans,

00:42:12.120 | in this case in particular,

00:42:13.360 | because a lot of the features of animal biology,

00:42:16.520 | while similar to human biology,

00:42:18.800 | humans are animals, but you get the point,

00:42:20.640 | they don't correspond so easily

00:42:22.440 | when looking at microplastics and nanoplastics

00:42:24.680 | for the following reason.

00:42:25.580 | Let's say you have a little fish,

00:42:27.180 | that fish is a couple centimeters long,

00:42:29.260 | and it turns out there's, I don't know,

00:42:32.360 | about an aspirin's size of microplastics and nanoplastics

00:42:36.240 | in that fish when that fish is analyzed post-mortem.

00:42:39.860 | You'd say, okay, well, that's kind of a lot, right?

00:42:41.940 | An aspirin's worth in a, or an aspirin size

00:42:45.500 | batch of microplastics and nanoplastics in that little fish,

00:42:50.260 | and then you look in humans and you realize, okay,

00:42:52.180 | well, there's more microplastics and nanoplastics,

00:42:54.020 | but not that much more.

00:42:55.580 | How much of a detriment is there really going to be?

00:42:57.780 | Can you look at the study in the fish,

00:42:59.280 | seeing, for instance, and this has been demonstrated

00:43:01.140 | that you have disruption in neurological pathways,

00:43:04.300 | the formation of those pathways,

00:43:05.640 | like brain development is altered,

00:43:07.280 | reproductive function is altered, et cetera.

00:43:08.860 | It's hard to translate.

00:43:10.140 | We don't really know what it means in terms of humans.

00:43:12.620 | So we'll turn to the correlative data in humans,

00:43:14.900 | and I'll look to the strongest data,

00:43:16.420 | at least that I could find out there,

00:43:18.220 | and there are kind of three major cases

00:43:20.360 | that I think are worth highlighting.

00:43:21.500 | The first one is that there was a study done in humans.

00:43:24.480 | This was published in 2021.

00:43:26.780 | It was published in the Journal of Environmental Science

00:43:28.800 | and Technology that found much higher levels

00:43:31.740 | of microplastics in the stool samples of people

00:43:34.260 | that were diagnosed with irritable bowel syndrome.

00:43:37.740 | Okay, irritable bowel syndrome is very disruptive

00:43:40.360 | to people's wellbeing.

00:43:41.940 | There isn't an obvious cure for irritable bowel syndrome,

00:43:44.860 | although some people find relief

00:43:45.980 | by improving their gut microbiota,

00:43:47.700 | by limiting body-wide and gut inflammation

00:43:50.660 | through any number of different things,

00:43:51.700 | improving sleep and eating a low inflammation diet, et cetera.

00:43:54.660 | This is something that I'll probably cover

00:43:55.820 | in a future episode of the Huberman Lab Podcast,

00:43:58.420 | gastrointestinal challenges, that is.

00:44:01.300 | So I want to be very clear,

00:44:02.980 | there was no direct causation established,

00:44:05.200 | but it was clear that there were higher levels

00:44:09.020 | of microplastics found in the stool tissue

00:44:13.020 | coming from people who had irritable bowel syndrome

00:44:15.940 | than in individuals who did not

00:44:17.740 | have irritable bowel syndrome.

00:44:19.100 | And while no study is perfect,

00:44:20.180 | they included a number of important controls

00:44:22.340 | in the experiment to control for age range

00:44:25.460 | and some other features.

00:44:26.660 | So it's reasonable to assume

00:44:28.300 | that the accumulation of microplastics in the gut

00:44:31.660 | or somewhere along the GI tract had somehow led to

00:44:35.820 | or related to irritable bowel syndrome.

00:44:38.460 | Okay, now you could also imagine the reverse.

00:44:41.040 | This is very important to understand.

00:44:42.340 | You could also imagine that people

00:44:43.620 | who had irritable bowel syndrome

00:44:45.460 | perhaps are less good at filtering microplastics

00:44:48.980 | and nanoplastics from the food and liquids they consume

00:44:52.420 | than are people who don't have irritable bowel syndrome.

00:44:54.360 | So the causality, if it exists at all,

00:44:56.300 | could run in either direction or both.

00:44:58.620 | Nonetheless, I think it's an interesting study.

00:45:00.580 | And if you're somebody who suffers

00:45:01.900 | from gastrointestinal distress,

00:45:03.540 | such as irritable bowel syndrome or otherwise,

00:45:06.140 | I think you'd be wise, indeed all people would be wise,

00:45:08.440 | but I think you'd be especially wise

00:45:09.820 | to take into consideration some of the to-dos

00:45:12.060 | and not to-dos that I'm covering during today's episode,

00:45:14.620 | such as avoiding consuming water from plastic bottles,

00:45:18.460 | some of the stuff we talked about earlier,

00:45:19.720 | avoiding canned soup and other BPA, BPS-containing containers

00:45:23.740 | and things of that sort,

00:45:24.780 | or things that come from those containers.

00:45:27.180 | The other area where there was

00:45:28.620 | some really interesting correlative data

00:45:31.260 | relates to reproductive function and hormone health.

00:45:34.440 | And this is where we can start to get into

00:45:35.940 | a bit more detail about BPAs and BPSs and phthalates

00:45:39.540 | and some of their roles in disrupting endocrine,

00:45:42.040 | that is hormone pathways.

00:45:43.900 | So there's a study I'll put a link to

00:45:46.540 | in the show note captions that's entitled

00:45:48.420 | "Urinary Phthalate Metabolites

00:45:50.060 | are Associated with Decreased Serum Testosterone,"

00:45:52.980 | so that's in blood, "in Men, Women, and Children."

00:45:56.180 | Okay, this is an interesting study for a number of reasons.

00:45:59.580 | First of all, it emphasizes

00:46:02.180 | something that everybody should know,

00:46:03.300 | which is that testosterone plays key roles

00:46:05.300 | in men, women, and kids, okay?

00:46:08.100 | It is not the case that testosterone

00:46:09.660 | is just present in men and boys,

00:46:11.020 | it's also present in women and girls,

00:46:13.200 | and it plays an important role in everybody, okay?

00:46:16.180 | It's involved, of course,

00:46:17.180 | in some of the things that we normally associate

00:46:18.820 | with testosterone, such as muscle mass,

00:46:20.940 | bone density, strength, et cetera,

00:46:22.920 | but testosterone can be converted to estrogen,

00:46:25.900 | testosterone is involved in libido in both men and women,

00:46:28.580 | it's involved in brain development in boys and girls,

00:46:31.140 | in genitalia development, and on and on.

00:46:33.340 | So it's an important hormone,

00:46:35.240 | and it was clear from this study

00:46:37.660 | that elevated levels of phthalates,

00:46:40.700 | that is phthalate metabolites,

00:46:43.020 | are associated with lower testosterone levels

00:46:45.100 | in all those populations.

00:46:46.980 | They point out, quote,

00:46:47.940 | that the strongest and most consistent inverse relationships

00:46:50.580 | between level of phthalates and testosterone,

00:46:52.440 | that is elevated phthalate metabolites, lower testosterone,

00:46:55.460 | were found among women ages 40 to 60 years.

00:46:58.620 | And this is very important,

00:46:59.460 | if you saw the episode that we did

00:47:01.260 | with Dr. Mary-Claire Haver on perimenopause-menopause,

00:47:04.860 | she emphasized that perimenopause-menopause,

00:47:07.460 | which typically sets in somewhere

00:47:09.460 | between one's late 40s and 60s,

00:47:13.380 | okay, there's huge variation there,

00:47:14.900 | sometimes as early as one's 30s,

00:47:16.820 | that would be early, however,

00:47:18.460 | more often in one's 40s and 50s,

00:47:20.840 | sometimes as late as 60s,

00:47:22.540 | involves reductions in estrogen, but also in testosterone.

00:47:27.820 | And this has major implications

00:47:29.740 | for creating less feelings of vigor,

00:47:32.700 | lowered libido, less recovery from exercise,

00:47:34.980 | and other life stressors and things of that sort.

00:47:37.540 | Now, the study also interestingly shows that in,

00:47:39.920 | quote, adult men,

00:47:41.020 | the only significant or suggestive inverse association

00:47:43.700 | between phthalate metabolites and testosterone

00:47:46.340 | were observed among men 40 to 60 years old.

00:47:49.400 | Now, there are a number of different ways

00:47:50.460 | that we can interpret those data.

00:47:51.620 | One is that men younger than 40

00:47:53.500 | have high enough levels of testosterone that,

00:47:55.940 | or the ranges of testosterone are great enough

00:47:57.860 | in that sample of younger than 40 years old,

00:48:01.500 | that somehow that was able to swamp out

00:48:03.380 | any reductions in testosterone

00:48:05.140 | that were caused by phthalate metabolites,

00:48:08.540 | or rather that once men get from 40 to 60 years old,

00:48:12.940 | that there's somehow a vulnerability

00:48:14.500 | of the testosterone pathways to phthalates,

00:48:17.100 | or, and none of these are mutually exclusive, of course,

00:48:19.740 | that the phthalates had built up

00:48:21.380 | in those men's system over a number of years,

00:48:23.980 | and then were having their major effects

00:48:26.220 | on those men between 40 and 60 years old.

00:48:28.460 | I do find it interesting that the major effects

00:48:30.300 | were observed in both men and women, 40 to 60 years old.

00:48:33.380 | And the interpretation of those data

00:48:34.700 | that makes the most sense to me, at least,

00:48:36.500 | is that there's a cumulative effect

00:48:38.160 | of these phthalates over time

00:48:39.940 | that reveals itself at least statistically

00:48:42.460 | in men and women once they reach 40 to 60 years.

00:48:45.820 | So what are these phthalates?

00:48:47.840 | Well, these phthalates are things

00:48:50.060 | that are included in plastics that house liquids

00:48:53.780 | and foods that we eat, or that we cook with,

00:48:56.260 | or that simply exist in our environment

00:48:59.100 | and are getting broken down, and that we're inhaling,

00:49:01.020 | and then are making their way

00:49:02.220 | across the blood testes barrier, blood follicle barrier,

00:49:05.020 | or into any number of other tissues.

00:49:07.180 | Those phthalates are there, of course,

00:49:08.700 | to make plastic more flexible and durable,

00:49:10.860 | but they are known endocrine disruptors.

00:49:13.340 | Dr. Shana Swan has done beautiful work

00:49:15.180 | showing that young animals and potentially humans

00:49:19.100 | who are exposed to phthalates

00:49:20.980 | from things like pesticides in particular

00:49:24.660 | can actually have a fairly major disruption

00:49:29.020 | in what's called the anogenital distance, okay?

00:49:32.260 | Withhold your chuckles.

00:49:33.420 | The distance between the penis and the anus

00:49:36.180 | in people that have been exposed to phthalates

00:49:38.220 | or mothers of boys that have been exposed to phthalates,

00:49:40.320 | those boys are born with a shorter penile to anal distance,

00:49:44.700 | okay, typically it's of a certain distance,

00:49:46.820 | and there's a correlation with reduced anogenital distance

00:49:51.180 | that is a external marker, okay?

00:49:53.780 | It's not that that itself is necessarily a bad thing.

00:49:56.840 | That's not what we're saying here,

00:49:58.040 | but that's an external marker that can be measured in mice,

00:50:01.100 | and there are some studies

00:50:02.820 | that are exploring that in humans as well,

00:50:04.700 | that correlates with a number of other things,

00:50:06.400 | including lower sperm counts, reduced sperm motility,

00:50:09.980 | and things of that sort.

00:50:10.880 | Likewise, BPAs, the bisphenol A and BPS

00:50:15.220 | are known endocrine disruptors.

00:50:16.820 | I talked about this a little bit earlier.

00:50:18.100 | They're known to bind to estrogen receptors,

00:50:20.020 | so they mimic estrogen.

00:50:21.700 | Sometimes they activate

00:50:23.880 | those estrogen receptor-dependent pathways,

00:50:26.220 | so they literally mimic estrogen.

00:50:28.120 | Sometimes they block those estrogen receptors

00:50:31.520 | so that estrogen cannot have the normal role

00:50:34.160 | of docking in those receptors

00:50:35.660 | and causing their normal functions,

00:50:37.020 | and BPA, and to some extent BPS,

00:50:39.320 | and potentially phthalates,

00:50:40.900 | can dock to androgen receptors as well,

00:50:43.460 | sometimes referred to as testosterone receptors,

00:50:45.460 | androgen receptors.

00:50:46.700 | So the point is that BPAs, BPSs, and phthalates

00:50:49.440 | are not good for endocrine function,

00:50:51.540 | and they are present in basically all plastics,

00:50:54.240 | unless it says no BPA or all phthalates removed,

00:50:57.580 | they're present in herbicides, et cetera,

00:50:59.540 | and they're of real concern.

00:51:01.020 | And it's very clear, as I mentioned earlier,

00:51:03.520 | that you can detect microplastics in human testes,

00:51:06.740 | and I didn't mention this earlier,

00:51:08.100 | and in semen, and it is now very clear

00:51:11.060 | that that's correlated with reduced sperm counts

00:51:13.640 | and lower sperm motility.

00:51:16.100 | Now, I also want to be very clear.

00:51:17.740 | Remember, I'm not an alarmist.

00:51:19.360 | I want to be clear that just because sperm counts

00:51:22.280 | are significantly lower in people

00:51:24.080 | to have a certain amount of microplastics and nanoplastics,

00:51:28.020 | potentially in their testes,

00:51:29.420 | or that they've been exposed to,

00:51:30.520 | does not necessarily mean that they're infertile.

00:51:33.080 | It is true that total sperm count and sperm motility,

00:51:35.920 | forward motility being an important indicator

00:51:37.640 | of sperm health,

00:51:38.480 | are correlated with one's ability to fertilize an egg, okay?

00:51:44.600 | This was covered in a quite long,

00:51:46.640 | but quite detailed episode that I did

00:51:48.680 | about fertility in both males and females.

00:51:50.820 | There are a number of things one can do

00:51:51.880 | to increase sperm counts

00:51:53.040 | or to at least limit sperm count depletion.

00:51:56.000 | There are a number of things that one can do

00:51:57.280 | to improve sperm motility.

00:51:59.240 | I encourage you to check out that episode.

00:52:00.600 | I'll provide a link to it in the show note captions.

00:52:02.240 | In fact, I'll link to the specific timestamp

00:52:04.280 | in the show note captions

00:52:05.120 | that gets to those particular strategies.

00:52:07.400 | But the point here is that microplastics and nanoplastics

00:52:11.280 | are found in human testes,

00:52:12.520 | and that's correlated with reductions in sperm count

00:52:14.680 | and reductions in sperm motility.

00:52:17.160 | I'd like to take a quick break

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00:55:25.500 | Another study that got people's attention

00:55:27.280 | that I think is worth mentioning,

00:55:28.920 | which relates to microplastics, nanoplastics,

00:55:31.860 | and cardiovascular disease.

00:55:33.620 | This was a study published

00:55:34.540 | in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2024.

00:55:36.540 | So this is a fabulously good journal.

00:55:38.900 | And what it found was that polyethylene,

00:55:42.780 | which is a component of many plastics out there,

00:55:46.300 | were detected in the carotid artery plaques of,

00:55:49.660 | in this case, 150 patients,

00:55:51.060 | which is approximately 58% of the ones

00:55:53.620 | that were included in the study.

00:55:55.300 | And they also found using a technique

00:55:56.800 | called electron microscopy, today's fun,

00:55:58.680 | 'cause we get to talk about different types of microscopy.

00:56:01.040 | Electron microscopy allows you to look at things

00:56:04.120 | that are smaller than a micron.

00:56:05.780 | You can look all the way down into the nanometer range,

00:56:08.800 | right, you can start breaking up that 1/1000th

00:56:11.480 | of a millimeter into nanometers,

00:56:13.480 | and you can start to see things

00:56:14.440 | that are really, really small.

00:56:16.100 | And in this study, electron microscopy showed

00:56:19.360 | that there were these jagged edge foreign particles

00:56:22.540 | among the plaque macrophages

00:56:24.900 | of these cardiovascular plaques, okay?

00:56:28.480 | Macrophages are part of the immune system.

00:56:30.920 | These are cells that go in and try and eat things up.

00:56:33.600 | They're kind of like little ambulances.

00:56:34.800 | Later, we're going to talk about microglia,

00:56:36.720 | which are the brain's resident microphages,

00:56:39.520 | or microfages, depending on where you live

00:56:41.480 | and how you like to pronounce it.

00:56:42.760 | But the point here is that when using a technique

00:56:45.640 | like electron microscopy that allows you

00:56:47.000 | to look at really, really small stuff,

00:56:48.680 | it was very clear that the plaques that form these,

00:56:51.680 | you know, basically occlusions within the arteries,

00:56:53.620 | these are not good.

00:56:55.060 | This is one of the reasons you want to eat properly

00:56:57.380 | and do cardiovascular exercise

00:56:58.700 | and take great care of yourself, et cetera.

00:57:01.220 | Electron microscopy made very clear

00:57:03.060 | that there were little plastic foreign jagged particles

00:57:06.060 | deposited in some of these plaques.

00:57:07.620 | Now, were they the cause of these plaques?

00:57:09.560 | Did they contribute to some of the occlusion

00:57:11.700 | caused by those plaques?

00:57:13.020 | Unclear, but it's reasonable to assume

00:57:16.700 | that they form part of the physical substrate

00:57:19.760 | that could occlude blood flow through these arteries,

00:57:21.900 | which of course leads to cardiovascular events,

00:57:24.620 | which of course are not good.

00:57:26.580 | So I'll put a link to the study in the show note captions.

00:57:28.460 | Again, these are correlative studies in humans.

00:57:31.660 | Correlative studies are only that, they're just correlative,

00:57:35.080 | but I'm trying to provide a patchwork of things

00:57:36.880 | that suggest that it would indeed be a good idea

00:57:39.280 | to try and limit your ingestion

00:57:41.540 | or at least facilitate the removal of microplastics

00:57:44.900 | and nanoplastics from your system.

00:57:46.940 | Another reason to do that relates

00:57:48.680 | to the so-called PFASs, okay?

00:57:51.600 | These are a group of chemicals sometimes referred to

00:57:53.520 | as the quote unquote forever chemicals,

00:57:55.520 | because they are very longstanding

00:57:57.360 | once they get into your system.

00:57:59.560 | These things have names other than PFAS,

00:58:02.000 | which is an acronym, things like perfluoroalkyl,

00:58:05.440 | things like polyfluoroalkyl.

00:58:07.960 | I don't know how good my pronunciation of those is,

00:58:10.140 | but if you look up the PFASs,

00:58:12.040 | you'll see that these things are known to cause liver damage.

00:58:15.560 | They can damage the immune system.

00:58:17.500 | They are considered forever chemicals

00:58:19.520 | because they are not broken down.

00:58:21.140 | They last forever.

00:58:23.300 | Then again, some of the other components of microplastics

00:58:25.740 | and nanoplastics are also known to last forever.

00:58:28.620 | So you're starting to get a picture

00:58:30.300 | of these little tiny bits of plastic,

00:58:32.620 | some tinier than others,

00:58:33.980 | depositing themselves in our tissues.

00:58:36.220 | They're everywhere out there.

00:58:37.900 | They're most prominent in certain sources,

00:58:40.220 | but they're going to get into our system.

00:58:41.860 | Now, does that mean that we can't get rid of them?

00:58:44.160 | No, we absolutely can get rid of them.

00:58:46.500 | In fact, we have a number of different ways

00:58:48.060 | that we get rid of toxins and foreign invaders in our body.

00:58:51.180 | Some of those include the immune system, right?

00:58:53.700 | Even if you have just some sort of foreign object,

00:58:55.700 | like a splinter, your immune system has a reaction to that.

00:58:58.300 | Typically you get some pus around it, some inflammation,

00:59:00.260 | and that pus and inflammation is part of the process

00:59:03.020 | of isolating that foreign intruder, that splinter,

00:59:05.700 | and then eventually creating some tissues that extrude it

00:59:09.420 | or allow you to extrude it.

00:59:10.820 | You, of course, also have what's called

00:59:12.660 | your adaptive immune system,

00:59:14.240 | which doesn't just react to the presence of something foreign

00:59:16.760 | but creates antibodies, which can combat that,

00:59:19.000 | and so on and so forth.

00:59:19.960 | So your body has these, frankly, miraculous ways

00:59:23.640 | of dealing with foreign intruders of different sorts.

00:59:26.760 | But it does seem that microplastics and nanoplastics

00:59:29.760 | can deposit themselves in their tissues and stay there.

00:59:32.920 | Does that mean that you don't have any chance

00:59:34.560 | of getting them out?

00:59:35.720 | No, you have a liver.

00:59:37.920 | Your liver, yes, contains microplastics and nanoplastics,

00:59:41.380 | very likely if you've been alive for any amount of time,

00:59:43.320 | but it also has what's called phase one

00:59:45.540 | and phase two detoxification processes

00:59:48.280 | that allow you to break down and get rid

00:59:51.020 | of certain foreign products,

00:59:52.120 | including microplastics and nanoplastics.

00:59:54.400 | So let's talk about liver detoxification

00:59:56.720 | and some of the things that can facilitate

00:59:58.680 | liver detoxification that you actually have control over.

01:00:02.000 | Okay, so let's talk about liver detoxification.

01:00:05.200 | The liver is such a cool organ.

01:00:06.800 | It does so many cool things.

01:00:08.260 | It's not just about detoxification, by the way.

01:00:11.160 | It does all sorts of things related to blood clotting.

01:00:14.140 | It's just an amazing, amazing organ.

01:00:16.120 | We should probably do an entire episode about the liver

01:00:19.680 | and not just eating liver.

01:00:20.640 | I'm not a fan of eating liver.

01:00:21.920 | I do it every once in a while

01:00:23.880 | because I'm told it's nutritious.

01:00:25.920 | But let's talk about the living, functioning liver.

01:00:29.420 | There are two types of liver detoxification processes, okay?

01:00:33.960 | So this is not about detoxing your liver.

01:00:36.080 | You may hear about detoxing your liver.

01:00:37.380 | That's a whole other discussion

01:00:39.240 | I don't want to get into, at least not here.

01:00:41.960 | There's type one and type two liver detoxification, okay?

01:00:44.280 | There's type one, so-called phase one liver detoxification

01:00:47.560 | is also called the oxidation phase.

01:00:49.600 | It involves something called cytochrome P450 enzymes, okay?

01:00:53.600 | So enzymes are involved in the breakdown

01:00:55.760 | of different things.

01:00:57.200 | It converts toxins into less harmful components

01:01:00.040 | that ideally are excreted from the body, okay?

01:01:03.680 | Type two or phase two liver detoxification.

01:01:06.560 | Again, this is not detoxification of your liver.

01:01:08.840 | This is detoxification by your liver.

01:01:11.720 | Is also called the conjugation phase of detoxification.

01:01:15.740 | It involves enzymes that attach molecules to toxins, okay?

01:01:19.800 | It makes those toxins water soluble

01:01:22.260 | and easier to excrete from the body in the form of urine,

01:01:26.360 | okay?

01:01:27.480 | It neutralizes reactive intermediates from phase one, okay?

01:01:30.680 | So phase one and phase two detoxification work together

01:01:33.480 | during phase two of liver control detoxification

01:01:36.640 | is where toxins are broken down

01:01:39.880 | and those broken down components are prepared

01:01:42.040 | to be removed from the body, okay?

01:01:44.520 | It is thought that the liver plays a primary role

01:01:47.280 | in the removal of microplastics and nanoplastics,

01:01:51.480 | BPAs and BPSs.

01:01:53.280 | And by the way, I realized I didn't say this earlier

01:01:55.400 | and I should have.

01:01:56.380 | These BPAs and BPSs are sometimes chemical components

01:02:00.680 | within the microplastics and nanoplastics.

01:02:02.720 | They sometimes attach themselves

01:02:04.640 | to the microplastics and nanoplastics.

01:02:06.320 | I should have said that earlier, forgive me.

01:02:08.400 | The microplastics and nanoplastics can act

01:02:10.520 | as what are called vectors or carriers of things like BPAs,

01:02:15.240 | BPSs, phthalates and forever chemicals, okay?

01:02:18.600 | I should have mentioned that earlier.

01:02:20.080 | So type two, that is phase two

01:02:22.240 | of liver control detoxification is where these toxins

01:02:26.840 | that are in the body and potentially

01:02:28.440 | these microplastics themselves and nanoplastics themselves

01:02:32.580 | are not necessarily broken down

01:02:34.240 | because some of those things can't be broken down,

01:02:35.720 | but where they are prepared to be excreted from the body.

01:02:38.280 | And we have some degree of control

01:02:40.440 | over phase two of liver controlled detoxification.

01:02:44.160 | Again, I'm calling it liver controlled detoxification

01:02:46.940 | so that this doesn't get misconstrued

01:02:48.900 | as detoxing your liver,

01:02:50.840 | which frankly is a very controversial topic

01:02:53.340 | and may not be possible at all.

01:02:55.200 | Although simply by saying that,

01:02:56.540 | I'm probably going to get attacked,

01:02:57.600 | but here we're just talking about your liver's ability

01:02:59.720 | to break down and remove things from your body

01:03:02.720 | that you frankly don't want in your body.

01:03:04.880 | One way that you can enhance phase two

01:03:06.640 | liver control detoxification processes

01:03:09.040 | is by increasing your intake

01:03:11.200 | of something called sulforaphane,

01:03:13.760 | which is present in cruciferous vegetables,

01:03:15.900 | such as broccoli and cauliflower.

01:03:18.580 | Now, is there enough sulforaphane

01:03:20.440 | in cruciferous vegetables

01:03:22.480 | such that you could eat reasonable amounts,

01:03:25.100 | that you wouldn't have to overeat cruciferous vegetables

01:03:27.140 | in order to get this enhancement

01:03:29.040 | of phase two liver detoxification processes?

01:03:31.920 | Potentially, yes.

01:03:32.760 | The animal studies that were carried out,

01:03:34.040 | so this would be in rodents like rats,

01:03:35.800 | used supplemented sulforaphane

01:03:38.240 | at dosages that were comparable

01:03:39.920 | to the amounts of sulforaphane

01:03:41.940 | that a human might ingest

01:03:44.120 | from a large serving of broccoli

01:03:46.560 | or a large serving of cauliflower.

01:03:48.620 | So this could be a few cups of raw broccoli

01:03:50.800 | or raw cauliflower.

01:03:52.040 | Although frankly, if you're like me,

01:03:53.720 | that basically translates to gastrointestinal distress.

01:03:56.440 | I can't tell you how many times I've gone to a party

01:03:58.840 | and there's some like, you know,

01:04:00.200 | broccoli and cauliflower,

01:04:01.560 | maybe with some dip or something like that.

01:04:02.960 | I usually avoid the dip 'cause I'm not really into dips,

01:04:05.120 | but we'll have a few pieces of broccoli

01:04:07.000 | and boy, does that disrupt my gut?

01:04:08.560 | I don't know about you.

01:04:09.660 | And most things don't disrupt my gut.

01:04:11.520 | That's not something that I struggle with.

01:04:14.480 | I prefer to cook broccoli and to cook cauliflower.

01:04:17.280 | If you cook broccoli and cauliflower lightly, okay?

01:04:20.120 | So you don't just, you know,

01:04:21.640 | turn into a complete mash.

01:04:23.280 | You don't boil it such that a lot of the nutrients

01:04:25.320 | are leached out into the water around it.

01:04:27.280 | So if you do sort of a light boil or a steam

01:04:29.380 | or something like that,

01:04:30.220 | or you pan cook it,

01:04:32.000 | maybe in some olive oil,

01:04:32.920 | this is making me hungry by the way,

01:04:34.360 | you'll still maintain the sulforaphane

01:04:36.200 | in those cruciferous vegetables,

01:04:37.960 | meaning it'll still be beneficial to you.

01:04:39.960 | Now, some people, including me,

01:04:41.800 | don't tend to eat that many cruciferous vegetables.

01:04:44.280 | I don't know why.

01:04:45.120 | I just somehow don't make it a point

01:04:46.880 | to shop for them enough.

01:04:47.760 | I ought to.

01:04:48.600 | For people like me,

01:04:50.680 | or perhaps you're in the same boat,

01:04:52.440 | you can supplement with sulforaphane.

01:04:54.680 | And what you'll find is that it's sold by various companies

01:04:56.880 | and it's available at a quite wide range of dosages.

01:05:00.480 | You'll see, for instance, two products,

01:05:03.200 | similarly priced.

01:05:04.680 | One product will contain 50 milligrams of sulforaphane.

01:05:07.760 | The other product will contain

01:05:08.840 | 225 milligrams of sulforaphane.

01:05:11.280 | Now, if you go to what I consider

01:05:13.280 | a really excellent website for thinking about

01:05:15.480 | and evaluating this kind of stuff,

01:05:16.760 | which is examine.com.

01:05:18.000 | I've talked a lot about this site on the podcast before.

01:05:21.020 | On examine.com,

01:05:23.560 | they talk about the translation

01:05:24.920 | of the rodent studies to humans.

01:05:27.220 | And here's what they say.

01:05:28.640 | They say supplementation of 0.1

01:05:31.240 | to 0.5 milligrams per kilogram of sulforaphane in rats

01:05:36.240 | has been noted to be bioactive.

01:05:38.360 | Okay, just bioactive.

01:05:39.420 | They're not getting specifically

01:05:40.880 | at removal of microplastics or nanoplastics.

01:05:43.080 | And they translate that to a human dose of,

01:05:46.320 | okay, if you're 150 pound person,

01:05:48.520 | then that's going to be anywhere from 1.1 to 5.5 milligrams

01:05:52.520 | for that 150 pound person.

01:05:54.200 | If you're a 200 pound person,

01:05:56.160 | that's approximately my weight.

01:05:57.480 | I think right now I'm sitting somewhere around 215.

01:05:59.360 | So about 100 kilograms, 215, I don't know,

01:06:02.080 | somewhere in there.

01:06:02.920 | I haven't stood on a scale in a while.

01:06:04.920 | It's 1.5 to 7.2 milligrams for a 200 pound person.

01:06:09.120 | Now, then you think about the typical dosages

01:06:12.160 | that are found in supplements of 50 milligrams per serving

01:06:15.720 | versus 225 milligrams per serving.

01:06:17.920 | And in either case,

01:06:19.000 | you realize that that's much, much higher

01:06:21.520 | than what's being discussed here.

01:06:22.800 | So what that says to me is that

01:06:24.960 | I would probably go with the lower dosage.

01:06:27.780 | Although according to examine.com, they say, quote,

01:06:31.560 | "These low quantities are likely attainable

01:06:33.520 | through raw broccoli or cruciferous vegetable products."

01:06:35.720 | So that's great.

01:06:36.560 | What this means is that you don't need to supplement

01:06:38.700 | with sulforaphane if you're willing to eat raw broccoli.

01:06:41.720 | They're specifically saying raw broccoli

01:06:44.160 | or other cruciferous vegetable products,

01:06:46.740 | while higher dosages may be further beneficial.

01:06:49.200 | So this is still a bit of a vague space.

01:06:52.120 | I realize there's some discrepancies

01:06:53.680 | in what I'm describing here.

01:06:54.880 | I said you could lightly cook the broccoli or cauliflower.

01:06:57.720 | That's my read and understanding of sulforaphane,

01:07:00.360 | that it's not broken down at low temperatures,

01:07:03.520 | but perhaps you just decide to eat it raw

01:07:05.760 | if you can bear it.

01:07:06.840 | I can't, so I don't.

01:07:08.580 | You could supplement it if you choose what dosage.

01:07:11.560 | Well, that depends on your weight.

01:07:13.800 | And it seems that in any case,

01:07:15.880 | most supplements are going to more than cover

01:07:18.400 | the amount of sulforaphane that's described here

01:07:20.760 | translated from the rat studies.

01:07:22.980 | So in my case, after researching this episode,

01:07:26.180 | I opted to start taking 50 milligrams,

01:07:28.460 | five zero milligrams of sulforaphane per day.

01:07:31.940 | I'm going to see how that goes.

01:07:33.660 | I guess it's fair to say that I'm sufficiently concerned

01:07:36.340 | about microplastics and nanoplastics,

01:07:38.820 | given that I'm 49 years old.

01:07:40.380 | All my biomarkers seem fine, but hey,

01:07:42.180 | I'm always interested in doing something for my health

01:07:44.440 | or to promote my health, that is, if I can.

01:07:46.180 | And it's pretty clear to me that if one's thinking

01:07:49.620 | about liver control detoxification,

01:07:52.080 | both for sake of offsetting or removing BPAs, BPSs,

01:07:56.640 | but also other potentially toxic metabolites

01:07:59.580 | from microplastics, nanoplastics,

01:08:01.260 | and other environmental factors,

01:08:02.860 | that taking 50 milligrams of sulforaphane per day

01:08:06.300 | perhaps can be beneficial.

01:08:07.900 | So I don't think it's necessary for everybody.

01:08:10.660 | In fact, I think everybody should probably be getting

01:08:13.240 | some cruciferous vegetables in their diet anyway,

01:08:16.140 | at least once a week or a couple of times a week.

01:08:17.860 | So if you're not interested in supplementing,

01:08:19.700 | that will be the route to go.

01:08:20.580 | If you are interested in supplementing,

01:08:22.040 | I'll provide a link to this particular location

01:08:24.340 | in the examine.com page so that you can translate

01:08:27.220 | some of these dosages to your potential sources

01:08:29.660 | of supplemental forms of sulforaphane.

01:08:32.580 | The other way that microplastics and nanoplastics

01:08:34.540 | can be excreted from the body is in the bowel.

01:08:38.200 | And one way to potentially increase the amount

01:08:40.820 | of microplastics and nanoplastics, BPAs, BPSs,

01:08:43.180 | phthalates, and forever chemicals,

01:08:44.980 | those PFASs from your body is to make sure

01:08:49.460 | that you're getting enough dietary fiber.

01:08:51.460 | Now, most people can do that simply by eating

01:08:54.900 | a fair amount of fruits and vegetables,

01:08:56.560 | which I always make a point to do.

01:08:58.060 | I also ingest starches, okay?

01:08:59.600 | So I'm not pure carnivore.

01:09:01.260 | Things like rice, like oatmeal, I like fresh pastas,

01:09:04.860 | although it's mainly rice and oatmeal for me these days

01:09:06.660 | in terms of starches, plenty of fruits and vegetables.

01:09:09.420 | That's something that I just really make it a point to do.

01:09:11.160 | Why is fiber good at doing this?

01:09:12.900 | Well, it can bind lipophilic molecules, okay?

01:09:16.340 | It can bind molecules that are able to cross cell membranes.

01:09:21.220 | And earlier, we were talking about the fact that BPA

01:09:23.740 | and BPSs mimic estrogen and combined estrogen receptors

01:09:27.820 | and potentially to androgen receptors as well.

01:09:30.780 | Keep in mind that one of the reasons

01:09:32.740 | why those so-called steroid hormone pathways,

01:09:35.980 | I know people hear the word steroid

01:09:37.240 | and they think performance enhancing steroids, but no,

01:09:39.700 | it turns out that testosterone and estrogen

01:09:41.500 | are both steroid hormones.

01:09:44.100 | One of the reasons those are interesting

01:09:45.540 | is that because of their structure,

01:09:47.380 | they're able to bind cell surface receptors

01:09:50.220 | and have effects on those cells.

01:09:52.460 | They are also able to pass through, okay, the hormones,

01:09:56.020 | okay, here I'm not talking about BPAs and BPSs,

01:09:57.900 | but the hormones, testosterone and estrogen

01:10:00.060 | can actually get to the nucleus of cells

01:10:03.900 | and can control gene expression.

01:10:06.980 | These steroid hormones, testosterone and estrogen

01:10:09.660 | work in a very coordinated fashion

01:10:11.380 | to create what we call secondary sex characteristics,

01:10:14.380 | which are the characteristics of the external body

01:10:17.420 | and brain changes and internal changes

01:10:21.020 | all over the place, right, ovaries, testes, et cetera,

01:10:23.660 | that are what underlie what we call puberty.

01:10:26.860 | And that's because these molecules

01:10:28.500 | can actually control gene expression.

01:10:31.020 | So when we talk about these molecules like BPAs and BPSs

01:10:34.060 | impacting these pathways like estrogen

01:10:35.860 | and androgen pathways, this is serious stuff

01:10:38.280 | because what you're doing is you're potentially

01:10:39.740 | activating or blocking pathways that are involved

01:10:43.020 | not just in the function of those cells,

01:10:44.820 | but actually the genes that those particular cells express.

01:10:47.780 | And this is particularly concerning

01:10:50.100 | for any kind of hormone dependent cancers, right?

01:10:53.160 | It's perhaps not surprising to you

01:10:55.220 | based on what you now know about how hormones work

01:10:57.300 | with gene expression, et cetera,

01:10:58.860 | that many tissues that turn over cells a lot,

01:11:02.420 | such as the testes, right, producing sperm

01:11:05.340 | pretty much throughout the lifespan,

01:11:07.540 | the follicle and eggs, right, breast tissue, right,

01:11:11.460 | these are common sites of cancer, okay?

01:11:13.500 | There are other cancers that can form, of course,

01:11:15.620 | in other tissues like the pancreas and brain, et cetera,

01:11:17.860 | but tissues that turn over quite a bit

01:11:20.580 | because of the involvement of the cell cycle

01:11:22.340 | and because cancer is among other things,

01:11:24.460 | a dysregulation of the cell cycle

01:11:25.980 | and an overproduction of cells that we call tumors.

01:11:28.780 | Those are pathways that are particularly vulnerable

01:11:31.640 | to endocrine or hormone disruption.

01:11:34.020 | And this is why there's additional concern

01:11:35.700 | about microplastics and nanoplastics,

01:11:37.700 | perhaps increasing cancer rates

01:11:39.900 | in particular in tissues like the ovary,

01:11:42.740 | in particular, the testes, in particular,

01:11:45.660 | any tissue where there's a lot of cellular turnover.

01:11:48.760 | So the point here is that eating broccoli,

01:11:52.300 | eating cauliflower,

01:11:53.220 | potentially supplementing with sulforaphane,

01:11:55.460 | here I'm summarizing a bit what I talked about earlier,

01:11:57.380 | avoiding drinking water from plastic bottles,

01:11:59.620 | maybe getting a reverse osmosis filter,

01:12:02.260 | avoiding those diabolical canned soups,

01:12:05.780 | I had no idea about these canned soups,

01:12:07.500 | or ensuring that the canned soups that you're eating

01:12:09.260 | are safe in the ways that we discussed earlier,

01:12:11.020 | avoiding sea salts,

01:12:12.340 | avoiding, I'm throwing a few other things in here

01:12:14.980 | that I haven't mentioned yet,

01:12:15.920 | avoiding nonstick pans,

01:12:17.700 | trying to cook mainly with cast iron or ceramic

01:12:20.360 | and making sure that those are BPA, BPS and PFAS free.

01:12:24.660 | Just look at the packaging,

01:12:25.720 | do a little bit of homework there and get this one.

01:12:28.100 | This is a really surprising one,

01:12:29.620 | or at least it was surprising to me,

01:12:31.300 | carbonated water, okay, mineral waters.

01:12:34.060 | A few years ago,

01:12:35.220 | there was an analysis of different popular forms

01:12:37.780 | of carbonated water,

01:12:38.960 | which is sold in glass containers, okay?

01:12:42.080 | It turned out that Topo Chico,

01:12:44.940 | which I happened, past tense, happened to love,

01:12:48.960 | Topo Chico had 9.76 particles per trillion

01:12:53.800 | of these PFAS, these forever chemicals, okay?

01:12:56.680 | That was an analysis done in 2020.

01:12:59.580 | Perrier, 1.1, San Pellegrino, 0.31.

01:13:05.120 | So we're comparing 9.76 versus 1.1 versus 0.31,

01:13:10.120 | which tells me I'm avoiding Topo Chico.

01:13:14.100 | I might even avoid Perrier.

01:13:15.560 | I'll probably drink San Pellegrino.

01:13:18.700 | I'll probably buy a Perrier

01:13:19.860 | and drink a Perrier every once in a while.

01:13:21.620 | I'm not crazy about carbonated water.

01:13:23.340 | By the way, this was an analysis by Consumer Reports

01:13:26.540 | and it caught some attention,

01:13:28.500 | such that the Coca-Cola company,

01:13:30.420 | which makes Topo Chico,

01:13:32.200 | said that they were going to fix this problem

01:13:34.300 | and they claimed, okay,

01:13:35.880 | I don't know if they've done this, all right?

01:13:37.280 | I don't want to get the folks at Coca-Cola angry with me.

01:13:39.600 | Coca-Cola claimed that by 2023,

01:13:42.040 | they were going to cut the amount of these particles in half,

01:13:47.000 | but that would still make them 4.5 parts per trillion,

01:13:49.560 | still much higher,

01:13:51.040 | at least four times higher than any of the other brands.

01:13:53.040 | So I have to be direct.

01:13:54.960 | I'm just speaking from my own experience and choices.

01:13:57.840 | Until I see data that Topo Chico has reduced the amount

01:14:02.300 | of these foreign contaminants to basically less than 0.31,

01:14:07.300 | I'm going with San Pellegrino or Perrier.

01:14:10.160 | Okay, I don't tend to drink a lot of mineral water,

01:14:11.840 | but given that you're ordering it in the glass,

01:14:14.860 | in a glass container, that is,

01:14:16.080 | given that these things are not particularly cheap, right?

01:14:18.900 | And that you have choices,

01:14:20.420 | you could either decide to avoid carbonated water altogether

01:14:23.920 | or if you're going to be smart about it,

01:14:26.400 | you probably want to avoid the ones

01:14:27.800 | that contain more of these foreign contaminants

01:14:29.920 | because of their ability to get lodged

01:14:31.940 | in different tissues in your body.

01:14:33.180 | So that was very surprising to me

01:14:34.380 | that you would have these forever chemicals

01:14:36.220 | in carbonated water.

01:14:37.780 | What it tells us is that the water going into those products

01:14:42.780 | contains either microplastics, nanoplastics,

01:14:47.400 | PFASs from other sources or something.

01:14:49.860 | And so I think that we should all be aware of this.

01:14:53.240 | If you're going to drink carbonated water,

01:14:54.920 | probably going with a Perrier or San Pellegrino

01:14:57.400 | would be better than going with Topo Chico

01:14:58.840 | because even though they've halved

01:15:00.060 | the amount of these forever chemicals in there,

01:15:03.460 | it's still quite high.

01:15:05.120 | Okay, so I've mentioned some to-dos

01:15:07.460 | to reduce your microplastic, nanoplastic,

01:15:09.600 | PPA, BPS, and PFAS exposure,

01:15:12.380 | such as ingesting cruciferous vegetables,

01:15:15.260 | potentially supplementing with sulforaphane,

01:15:17.820 | trying to avoid drinking out of plastic water bottles.

01:15:20.240 | There are a few other things.

01:15:21.780 | I'll just list off here, keep it relatively short.

01:15:24.460 | Talked about making sure you're getting enough

01:15:27.240 | dietary fiber, I talked before about using a glass

01:15:31.420 | or steel vessel and reverse osmosis water,

01:15:34.000 | using Himalayan salt, avoiding sea salt.

01:15:36.480 | The other thing that you can do,

01:15:38.600 | oh, and I mentioned using cast iron and ceramic

01:15:41.420 | as opposed to nonstick cookware whenever you can.

01:15:43.920 | And if you're going to microwave food,

01:15:46.160 | making sure that you're doing that on plates

01:15:48.280 | or in containers that does not,

01:15:50.360 | or do not contain plastic of any kind,

01:15:52.440 | even if it says microwave safe.

01:15:55.140 | The other thing is to sweat, okay?

01:15:58.300 | We vastly underestimate or downgrade the power of sweating.

01:16:03.300 | Sweating is an incredible mechanism.

01:16:06.380 | Now, I realized that as soon as somebody says,

01:16:08.840 | "Sweating is a great way to remove toxins from the body,"

01:16:12.040 | that a bunch of people out there get really inflamed,

01:16:14.340 | pun intended.

01:16:15.700 | I'm not saying that.

01:16:16.680 | What I am saying is that there are a number

01:16:18.760 | of different ways for foreign products to leave the body,

01:16:22.400 | including urine, feces,

01:16:24.380 | but including sweat, okay?

01:16:26.860 | So I'm not saying that's going to detox you completely.

01:16:29.580 | That's not what I'm saying.

01:16:31.220 | Okay, I don't fall into that camp.

01:16:32.600 | However, there are a number of beneficial aspects

01:16:35.740 | to sweating.

01:16:37.140 | And also there are a number of beneficial aspects

01:16:39.140 | to doing the things that make you sweat.

01:16:40.620 | So I've done entire episodes about deliberate heat exposure.

01:16:43.180 | So things like sauna done anywhere from once a week

01:16:46.580 | to four times a week.

01:16:48.140 | Pretty impressive data in terms of reducing

01:16:50.340 | all cause mortality, improving cardiovascular function.

01:16:53.180 | It's also for most people pretty pleasant

01:16:54.820 | to sit in a sauna.

01:16:55.900 | If you don't have access to a sauna, taking a hot bath,

01:16:58.740 | not so hot that you burn yourself,

01:17:00.060 | but a hot bath that also will activate

01:17:02.680 | some of these same pathways.

01:17:04.580 | Things like hot yoga,

01:17:05.740 | things like going out for a run in a hoodie.

01:17:08.020 | Trying to get your body to sweat pretty robustly

01:17:10.620 | at least once a week is a good idea

01:17:13.740 | for all sorts of reasons.

01:17:14.980 | Also just your ability to thermoregulate.

01:17:17.060 | By the way, for those of you that don't sweat much,

01:17:19.220 | sweating is actually something that you can get better at.

01:17:21.960 | That's right.

01:17:22.800 | You can get better at sweating by what?

01:17:25.220 | By sweating, by exposing yourself in safe ways to heat.

01:17:28.540 | And I talk about that

01:17:29.380 | in the deliberate heat exposure episode.

01:17:31.500 | We also have a newsletter on deliberate heat exposure.

01:17:33.760 | I'll put links to those in the show note captions

01:17:36.260 | and those explain safe ways to encourage sweating.

01:17:40.300 | Why am I talking about this?

01:17:41.300 | Well, sweating may help remove some of the things

01:17:44.180 | that are attached to microplastics and nanoplastics

01:17:46.700 | that can act as endocrine disruptors.

01:17:48.780 | It's very, very unlikely that the microplastics

01:17:51.060 | and nanoplastics would actually be removed

01:17:53.000 | as whole particles in sweat.

01:17:54.560 | I think that's very unlikely, frankly.

01:17:57.400 | What's more likely is that the microplastics

01:17:59.320 | and nanoplastics aren't really getting removed from

01:18:01.840 | or broken down within our body at all.

01:18:04.020 | They're getting lodged in these different tissues

01:18:05.680 | but the stuff that's on them and in them

01:18:08.520 | is potentially causing some of the biological harms

01:18:10.920 | that we've talked about.

01:18:12.440 | And so removing those more robustly

01:18:15.280 | is what sweating is about.

01:18:16.840 | It's what consuming cruciferous vegetables is about

01:18:20.060 | and so on and so forth.

01:18:21.360 | So those are a few more to dos.

01:18:23.160 | The other two don'ts, or I should say don'ts,

01:18:26.840 | are things like avoiding consumption of packaged food

01:18:29.780 | or food that's packaged in plastic.

01:18:31.600 | Now, this is tough to do.

01:18:33.000 | You know, I love berries, for instance.

01:18:34.520 | I love blueberries.

01:18:35.660 | I'm what you call a drive-by blueberry eater.

01:18:37.760 | If there's blueberries in a bowl,

01:18:38.600 | I just kind of like sweep them up by the fistful.

01:18:41.000 | So if there are blueberries on the counter,

01:18:42.580 | you're probably not getting very many.

01:18:44.720 | I'm getting most of them.

01:18:45.960 | I love blueberries,

01:18:48.400 | but I noticed that I was starting to accumulate.

01:18:50.520 | And of course, I recycle those blueberry containers

01:18:52.960 | that are those plastic containers.

01:18:54.760 | One way that you can avoid plastic packaging

01:18:57.480 | is go to farmer's markets, bring your own bags,

01:19:00.140 | bring your own baskets.

01:19:01.080 | I love that the farmer's markets,

01:19:02.180 | they have those cardboard containers.

01:19:03.680 | Of course, some of you may be shouting,

01:19:04.920 | "Wait, but those are colored green

01:19:06.240 | and the coloration is a problem

01:19:07.500 | and they have the microfibers with the..."

01:19:09.240 | True, but probably better than plastic containers

01:19:13.340 | that they use now in the grocery store

01:19:14.880 | for pretty much every fruit and vegetable, okay?

01:19:17.380 | So solution is either farmer's markets

01:19:19.800 | or trying to bring your own bags to the grocery store.

01:19:22.760 | I know this is starting to sound kind of hippy-dippy,

01:19:25.320 | but these little things make a big difference over time.

01:19:27.980 | You're reducing your plastic waste,

01:19:29.360 | you're reducing the amount of plastic exposure

01:19:31.520 | of the fruits and vegetables you eat.

01:19:33.100 | This can correspond to a real difference

01:19:34.760 | in the number of microplastics and nanoplastics

01:19:36.840 | and the bad stuff that comes with them that you ingest.

01:19:40.000 | And again, most of the time,

01:19:42.040 | these things are going to save you cost

01:19:44.040 | as opposed to introduce new costs.

01:19:45.840 | The other don'ts that we haven't talked so much about

01:19:49.020 | are to reduce the number of clothes that you purchase.

01:19:53.140 | I know this might seem like,

01:19:53.980 | "Oh my God, where's this all going?"

01:19:55.600 | But it turns out that one of the major sources

01:19:58.000 | of microplastics and nanoplastics are the microfibers

01:20:00.920 | on clothing that come off in washing machines

01:20:03.440 | that then get distributed into the oceans through the water

01:20:06.840 | or that escape into the air.

01:20:09.460 | There are a number of ways that you can trap those.

01:20:11.160 | There are the things like the guppy bag that you can,

01:20:13.120 | I love the name, the guppy bag that you can buy

01:20:15.040 | at pretty low cost.

01:20:16.440 | You can find those easily online

01:20:18.120 | that will trap some of that stuff.

01:20:19.760 | There are filters that you can put

01:20:21.080 | within specific washing machines.

01:20:22.680 | Some places actually require this now

01:20:24.480 | that capture those microfibers.

01:20:26.560 | These microfibers, when I first heard about them,

01:20:28.420 | I thought, "Oh my goodness,

01:20:29.260 | "are we really talking about microfibers in clothing?"

01:20:31.560 | Well, just, I don't know, wear 100% cotton clothing.

01:20:33.600 | But then you find out, because I read this book,

01:20:35.880 | this scary book, and it is scary.

01:20:38.560 | It does kind of bum you out

01:20:40.000 | when you start reading this stuff

01:20:41.080 | that when you read "A Poison Like No Other,"

01:20:43.780 | how microplastics corrupted our planet and our bodies,

01:20:46.800 | you find out that so much of the waste

01:20:49.040 | that exists in landfills is clothing

01:20:51.440 | that people have discarded.

01:20:52.440 | And there was nothing wrong with that clothing.

01:20:54.400 | The clothing has dyes, it has little microfibers.

01:20:56.600 | This stuff gets into the environment,

01:20:58.680 | gets into the oceans.

01:21:00.320 | Here's the simple solution to all this.

01:21:02.280 | It turns out that we replace far more clothing

01:21:07.080 | than we need to.

01:21:08.360 | Okay, this is actually a great relief to me

01:21:10.040 | because I love few things more, in terms of clothing anyway,

01:21:15.040 | the feeling of a T-shirt that I've worn many, many times,

01:21:18.300 | and it's really, really soft and kind of worn down,

01:21:20.340 | that kind of distressed look T-shirt.

01:21:22.420 | Even though that might be fashionable to some people,

01:21:24.100 | to some people it's not,

01:21:25.000 | I love the feeling of a really worn down, soft T-shirt.

01:21:29.180 | Even the ones that have a little bit of, you know,

01:21:30.780 | sort of a jagged toothing along the collar.

01:21:34.020 | Now, some people might loathe that.

01:21:35.720 | They only want the pristine T-shirt that is super crisp.

01:21:39.180 | That's not me.

01:21:40.020 | I know I own a few of these black button down shirts,

01:21:42.720 | and indeed the same ones, I use them over and over again.

01:21:45.260 | I do own a fair number of them,

01:21:46.700 | but I use the same ones over and over again.

01:21:48.580 | And I think that's in keeping with this other recommendation,

01:21:50.960 | which this book, "A Poison Like No Other" said,

01:21:53.300 | could make a major dent in the amount of microplastics

01:21:56.480 | and nanoplastics that are out there in the environment

01:21:58.420 | that we end up ingesting,

01:21:59.620 | and that the other animals on the planet

01:22:01.780 | who are so very important end up ingesting

01:22:03.980 | and potentially suffering from.

01:22:05.580 | And that's to simply not buy or replace

01:22:09.040 | so much of our clothing,

01:22:09.880 | but to reuse our clothing.

01:22:10.940 | Now, the argument has been made,

01:22:13.620 | and they counter it in the book.

01:22:15.060 | Well, then you're just going to wash

01:22:17.080 | the same clothing over and over.

01:22:18.380 | You're going to break down those microfibers

01:22:20.260 | and introduce those dyes and things

01:22:21.580 | into the ocean, et cetera, into the air.

01:22:24.180 | But it turns out that when you reuse the same clothing

01:22:27.500 | and wash it over and over again,

01:22:28.940 | you actually see a diminishment

01:22:30.580 | in the amount of microfibers and the amount of dyes

01:22:33.220 | and things that you extract from those clothing over time.

01:22:36.060 | Okay, so now in some odd way,

01:22:38.620 | we're talking about clothing purchases

01:22:40.640 | or non-purchases in this case on the Huberman Lab podcast.

01:22:43.620 | But, you know, in researching this episode,

01:22:45.800 | I discovered that these are a major source,

01:22:47.920 | if not the major source of microplastic

01:22:51.300 | and nanoplastic particles in the environment

01:22:53.800 | and landfills, ocean, air, et cetera.

01:22:56.240 | So while none of us, I believe none of us

01:22:59.360 | are going to go out there and create a tire

01:23:01.120 | that doesn't degrade as quickly as current tires, right?

01:23:03.920 | Most of us don't have the capacity to do that.

01:23:05.760 | Let's face it, we got to get around in vehicles.

01:23:08.820 | All those tires breaking down,

01:23:10.060 | not a whole lot we can do about that.

01:23:11.540 | We're inhaling all that stuff,

01:23:13.240 | but we can make the decision to use the clothing

01:23:16.620 | that we've got for longer periods of time.

01:23:18.580 | Is it really necessary to keep buying more and more clothes

01:23:20.740 | and replacing the old clothes, throwing out the old clothes

01:23:23.540 | or even donating those old clothes?

01:23:25.560 | Who knows?

01:23:26.540 | I'm all for donating clothing after you're done with it.

01:23:28.980 | But now I have justification

01:23:30.900 | for just keeping the t-shirts that I have,

01:23:32.740 | making them softer and softer and softer over time.

01:23:35.840 | And I should mention that of course,

01:23:37.800 | when you wear clothing

01:23:39.480 | that is shedding these microfiber particles,

01:23:42.480 | you're ingesting or rather you're inhaling more typically

01:23:46.660 | the microfibers and the microplastics and the nanoplastics

01:23:49.680 | and all the bad goodies that go with them.

01:23:51.920 | As I say that, I think we need to be fair

01:23:55.000 | about what that means and what it doesn't mean.

01:23:57.240 | I personally just don't see myself going around

01:23:59.720 | and looking at labels,

01:24:00.560 | finding only a hundred percent cotton

01:24:02.020 | with no microfiber shedding, no dyes, et cetera.

01:24:06.180 | I mean, there are a lot of things that are now introduced

01:24:07.760 | to even a hundred percent cotton clothing

01:24:09.780 | that make them a little bit more water and stain resistant.

01:24:12.540 | It's very, very difficult

01:24:13.860 | to find such sources of clothing, right?

01:24:16.420 | I know they're out there, but they're very difficult to find

01:24:18.700 | and they're quite costly in many cases.

01:24:20.820 | If you happen to know of some true low cost versions

01:24:23.180 | of those things,

01:24:24.020 | please put those in the comment section on YouTube.

01:24:26.820 | But I think we have to be realistic here.

01:24:29.060 | Plastics were introduced in the 1950s.

01:24:31.220 | They are everywhere.

01:24:32.420 | They are in our clothing.

01:24:34.580 | They are in tires.

01:24:35.540 | They are in medical devices.

01:24:36.700 | They're just everywhere.

01:24:38.140 | The point of this discussion today

01:24:39.700 | is not to try and eliminate plastics.

01:24:42.020 | I don't think that's reasonable.

01:24:43.260 | I don't even think that would be useful

01:24:44.900 | relative to the incredibly powerful use of plastics

01:24:47.740 | in just about every industry.

01:24:49.900 | There's always a trade-off with these sorts of things.

01:24:52.340 | And I acknowledge that.

01:24:53.660 | What I'm talking about is trying to limit your exposure

01:24:56.260 | and trying to buffer yourself against this bioaccumulation

01:25:00.540 | in ways that can protect your endocrine system,

01:25:03.020 | protect your brain, protect your cardiovascular system,

01:25:05.420 | protect your liver,

01:25:06.540 | protect the organs and tissue systems of your body

01:25:09.020 | so that you can thrive as much as possible.

01:25:11.420 | So there are some other not to dos or things to avoid.

01:25:15.140 | Microwave popcorn turns out to be a major source

01:25:17.220 | of these things.

01:25:18.060 | Basically any bag or container,

01:25:20.540 | canned bag or plastic that has a lining

01:25:23.220 | that prevents oily stuff from staining it

01:25:25.420 | and getting through such as microwave popcorn,

01:25:27.980 | very likely is a source or I should say a rich source

01:25:31.140 | of microplastics, nanoplastics and endocrine disruptors.

01:25:33.700 | Does that mean that if you have some microwave popcorn

01:25:35.420 | every once in a while,

01:25:36.260 | that's going to screw up your estrogen

01:25:37.420 | or testosterone system and make you infertile?

01:25:40.020 | No, I don't believe that.

01:25:41.420 | These things are all a matter of dosage,

01:25:43.820 | exposure over time and so on.

01:25:47.100 | Toothpaste and plastic tubing,

01:25:48.620 | another rich source of microplastics,

01:25:50.140 | nanoplastics that people ingest.

01:25:52.060 | Of course, because you're putting it in your mouth.

01:25:53.740 | When I did the oral health episode,

01:25:55.240 | I talked about some tooth tablets.

01:25:57.300 | I've become quite fond of these.

01:25:58.740 | I have no financial relationship

01:26:00.060 | to the company that makes these,

01:26:01.500 | but these are two tablets

01:26:02.740 | that include something called hydroxyapatite,

01:26:05.140 | which is great for the remineralization of teeth

01:26:07.700 | 'cause it turns out your teeth can fill in little cavities

01:26:09.500 | that start to form and overall tooth health.

01:26:11.820 | It's also great for travel 'cause first of all,

01:26:13.540 | these things come in a glass jar, so no plastic.

01:26:15.780 | You take the tooth tablets and you just chew them up

01:26:17.500 | and then you brush your teeth.

01:26:19.140 | It's great because you don't have to worry

01:26:20.420 | about how many ounces is going through the screening process

01:26:24.240 | at the airport because it's not a liquid.

01:26:27.120 | It's not a paste.

01:26:28.340 | It's a tablet.

01:26:29.180 | They're super convenient.

01:26:30.100 | I love those.

01:26:30.940 | We'll probably link to those in the show note captions,

01:26:32.460 | even though I have no relationship to the company.

01:26:34.060 | I'm just a big fan of that sort of thing,

01:26:36.060 | the convenience and the fact that it's housed in glass.

01:26:39.220 | But as I say all this stuff, right?

01:26:42.180 | Avoiding drinking out of plastic.

01:26:44.400 | Don't turn over your clothing so much.

01:26:46.960 | Wash your clothes, but don't purchase

01:26:49.540 | and throw away clothing too much or more than is necessary.

01:26:53.280 | Avoiding sea salt, these kinds of things.

01:26:55.540 | These are all just choices for you in the buffet of options

01:26:59.540 | of ways to reduce your microplastic,

01:27:01.660 | nanoplastic ingestion and exposure

01:27:04.660 | and the bioaccumulation of those things over time

01:27:08.220 | and to increase in the case of things like sulforaphane

01:27:11.220 | and sweating, et cetera, and to increase the detoxification

01:27:14.340 | and removal of some of the more harmful products attached

01:27:16.860 | to or within these microplastics and nanoplastics, right?

01:27:20.580 | I certainly don't expect anyone, including myself,

01:27:22.980 | to start living a life free of microplastics

01:27:25.960 | and nanoplastics.

01:27:27.080 | To do that, you'd probably have to leave planet earth.

01:27:29.240 | I know certain people are developing plans

01:27:31.080 | to enable us to do that, even if we're not astronauts.

01:27:33.840 | And frankly, when you get out to Mars

01:27:35.760 | or you get it into outer space,

01:27:37.440 | those microplastics and nanoplastics,

01:27:39.060 | based on everything I've learned

01:27:40.760 | and how incredibly sneaky, small, and pervasive they are,

01:27:44.860 | well, they're probably in outer space as well.

01:27:47.680 | Now, the final thing I want to touch on

01:27:49.160 | is the potential role of microplastics, nanoplastics,

01:27:52.600 | BPAs, BPSs, and forever chemicals on the developing brain.

01:27:56.480 | And this is an area that I'm very familiar with

01:27:59.520 | because much of my career,

01:28:01.160 | I've focused on brain development, neural development.

01:28:03.800 | And one can find a lot of papers out there

01:28:07.520 | about the potential neurotoxicity of micro and nanoplastics,

01:28:11.360 | certainly the established neurotoxicity of microplastics

01:28:14.760 | and nanoplastics in animal models

01:28:16.400 | and the potential neurotoxicity

01:28:19.120 | of those things in human tissues.

01:28:22.160 | Now, of course, because this animal literature

01:28:24.360 | and some correlative human literature

01:28:26.400 | have been out there for a while,

01:28:28.080 | the media and some people in particular

01:28:30.640 | have become concerned about

01:28:33.360 | and have mentioned the potential role

01:28:35.000 | of microplastics, nanoplastics,

01:28:37.120 | and the bad goodies that attach to them or come from them

01:28:40.920 | in potentially causing neurodevelopmental disorders

01:28:44.560 | such as autism and ADHD.

01:28:47.760 | I want to be very clear.

01:28:49.080 | I went into this literature, I read this review.

01:28:51.200 | It's a quite nice review.

01:28:52.080 | The plastic brain neurotoxicity of micro and nanoplastics.

01:28:56.840 | And sure, there's a lot of animal literature

01:28:59.520 | showing for instance,

01:29:00.600 | that there's a disruption in certain enzymatic pathways

01:29:03.560 | within neurons in particular,

01:29:05.200 | and this is the one that intrigues me the most,

01:29:06.920 | a disruption in what's called acetylcholine esterase.

01:29:10.120 | Acetylcholine is a neuromodulator

01:29:11.880 | involved in neuroplasticity, in attention,

01:29:14.360 | among other things, levels of alertness,

01:29:16.520 | a number of things,

01:29:17.520 | including control of the so-called neuromuscular junctions

01:29:21.240 | that allow for us to move our limbs.

01:29:25.040 | Acetylcholine esterase is involved in the degradation,

01:29:27.640 | the breakdown of acetylcholine in the synapse.

01:29:30.160 | So neurons release acetylcholine into the synapse

01:29:32.360 | where it can have an effect on muscle

01:29:34.280 | or it can have an effect on other neurons

01:29:36.040 | if we're talking about within the brain.

01:29:38.200 | And indeed, there's a fair amount of evidence

01:29:40.880 | showing that microplastics and nanoplastics

01:29:42.840 | are correlated with reductions in,

01:29:45.080 | or just changes in acetylcholine esterase activity.

01:29:48.280 | Now it is true that where acetylcholine is released

01:29:51.080 | in the brain, it can impinge on dopamine circuits

01:29:53.440 | that are involved in reward pathways and movement.

01:29:56.200 | But I want to be clear,

01:29:57.540 | people have taken some of those findings,

01:30:00.840 | translated them to the correlative data in humans,

01:30:03.840 | and have started to link the presence of microplastics

01:30:06.520 | and nanoplastics, in their words, not mine,

01:30:08.920 | in their words, to neurodevelopmental disorders

01:30:11.720 | such as autism and ADHD.

01:30:14.000 | And while there is some evidence

01:30:15.920 | that some of the behavioral components

01:30:19.120 | or cognitive components of autism and ADHD

01:30:21.800 | may increase in line with increases in microplastic

01:30:27.560 | or nanoplastic exposure,

01:30:29.120 | the data there are still, in my opinion, very, very weak.

01:30:32.280 | So in my opinion, it's far too early to conclude

01:30:34.920 | that microplastics and nanoplastics have any role

01:30:37.960 | and certainly not a causal role

01:30:40.320 | in the development of autism or ADHD

01:30:42.840 | or other neurodevelopmental disorders.

01:30:44.620 | That said, the presence of microplastics

01:30:46.880 | and nanoplastics in placenta

01:30:49.040 | and in that first stool from babies,

01:30:51.520 | which shows us that those microplastics and nanoplastics

01:30:54.320 | are getting into the developing fetus,

01:30:56.320 | well, that does, I think, raise level of concern,

01:30:59.240 | and it certainly should motivate pregnant women,

01:31:01.340 | as well as people who have newborn kids

01:31:04.200 | or are going to have kids

01:31:05.680 | to look around their home environment,

01:31:07.640 | think about the things they're putting into their body

01:31:09.800 | or the vessels they're using to ingest liquids,

01:31:12.000 | to ingest foods,

01:31:12.840 | and to start limiting microplastic and nanoplastic exposure,

01:31:16.940 | certainly during, but also perhaps before pregnancy

01:31:20.300 | and after pregnancy when one is breastfeeding.

01:31:23.700 | So the point here is that we can't draw a direct relationship

01:31:26.620 | between microplastics and nanoplastics

01:31:28.380 | and neurodevelopmental disorders.

01:31:29.740 | I don't think it would be appropriate at all to do that.

01:31:32.480 | However, given that microplastics and nanoplastics

01:31:35.680 | have these issues, both from their own breakdown,

01:31:38.580 | their presence, right,

01:31:39.740 | their own structural presence can be a problem,

01:31:41.740 | the chemicals within them can be a problem,

01:31:43.560 | the chemicals that attach to them

01:31:45.140 | can be a problem potentially,

01:31:47.140 | I think learning to limit our exposure

01:31:49.820 | throughout our lifespan,

01:31:51.660 | learning to reduce the bioaccumulation

01:31:54.300 | through detoxification and excretion pathways

01:31:57.540 | using the various approaches that we talked about,

01:31:59.340 | and certainly to pay extra attention to those things

01:32:02.580 | around the time of, meaning before, during,

01:32:04.780 | and after pregnancy is especially important

01:32:07.700 | because we just don't know all the things

01:32:09.420 | that these chemicals and these plastics are doing,

01:32:12.160 | but none of them seem to be very good,

01:32:14.660 | at least not in terms of the ways

01:32:16.180 | that they impact our brain and bodily tissues.

01:32:19.220 | Okay, so today we've talked a lot about microplastics,

01:32:23.040 | what they are, where they're found,

01:32:24.820 | how they get into our body,

01:32:26.380 | where they get lodged within our body,

01:32:28.580 | what they potentially do in our body,

01:32:31.220 | none of which is good.

01:32:32.780 | Some might be innocuous, some might be bad,

01:32:35.260 | none of which, at least as far as I know, is good,

01:32:38.060 | and some ways, both through some to-dos

01:32:41.860 | and some to-avoids, that we can increase our excretion

01:32:46.300 | or our breakdown and removal of the bad stuff

01:32:49.580 | on and in microplastics and nanoplastics.

01:32:53.300 | And I realized that even though we covered a lot of things,

01:32:57.180 | we also just scratched the surface.

01:32:58.620 | For instance, we know that receipts

01:33:01.900 | are rich sources of BPAs, okay?

01:33:05.140 | So if you are somebody who handles receipts a lot

01:33:07.320 | for your job, probably best to use nitrile gloves, okay?

01:33:12.260 | Not latex gloves, but nitrile gloves.

01:33:14.800 | Those are going to protect your hands.

01:33:16.360 | If you're somebody who purchases things,

01:33:17.860 | maybe just say, "No, thanks.

01:33:19.260 | "I'll take the electronic receipt," or "No receipt."

01:33:21.720 | Okay, however, we need to be reasonable here as well.

01:33:25.000 | Does this mean that if you touch a receipt

01:33:27.000 | that you're going to screw up your testosterone

01:33:28.480 | or estrogen?

01:33:29.320 | No, but you probably don't want to be rubbing those receipts.

01:33:31.680 | And it's very clear that if you use sunscreen

01:33:34.200 | or lotions of any kind on your hands,

01:33:36.240 | you handle receipts, it can increase the access

01:33:38.500 | of those BPAs to your bloodstream.

01:33:40.360 | And if you're somebody who handles receipts a lot,

01:33:42.280 | well then, probably best to use those nitrile gloves.

01:33:44.560 | The point here is that there are a lot of different sources

01:33:46.680 | of these BPAs, BPSs, PFAS, so-called forever chemicals,

01:33:51.200 | microplastics, nanoplastics.

01:33:52.920 | I also would just encourage you to do your research.

01:33:54.800 | Look at the cans that you drink from.

01:33:57.480 | Ensure that they don't include BPAs.

01:33:59.560 | Look at the different things

01:34:00.600 | that you cook with in your kitchen.

01:34:02.080 | Try and cook from cast iron or ceramic.

01:34:03.680 | And if you don't, look at the other pans and cans

01:34:06.840 | and things in your environment

01:34:08.280 | and see what your likely exposure to these BPAs, BPSs,

01:34:11.800 | and forever chemicals is, and make choices accordingly.

01:34:14.920 | That's what today's episode,

01:34:16.480 | and frankly, this podcast is about.

01:34:18.020 | It's about you being informed and making the best choices

01:34:20.580 | for your mental health and physical health.

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01:36:38.480 | Thank you once again for joining me for today's discussion,

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The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them

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