#8 How to Survive a Toxic Modern World with Dr. Aly Cohen
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Dr. Aly Cohen is the co-author of the new consumer guidebook, Non-Toxic: Guide to Living Healthy in a Chemical World. Non-Toxic is published by Oxford University Press, and is part of the Dr. Weil Healthy Living Guides. Dr. Cohen is a board certified rheumatologist and integrative medicine specialist, as well as an environmental health expert in Princeton, New Jersey.
She has collaborated with the Environmental Working Group, Cancer Schmancer, and other disease- prevention organizations, and is coeditor of the textbook, Integrative Environmental Medicine, part of the Oxford University Press/Weil Integrative Medicine, Academic Series
In 2015, she created TheSmartHuman.com to share environmental health, disease prevention, and wellness information with the public. She lectures nationally on environmental health topics for elementary/ high schools, colleges/ universities, medical schools, and physician- training programs, and she is a regular expert guest for television, print, and podcasts. In 2015 she received the NJ Healthcare Heroes Award in Education for The Smart Human educational platform and she was awarded the 2016 Burton L. Eichler Award for humanitarianism. Dr. Cohen is working to educate and empower the next generation to make safer, smarter lifestyle choices through the creation of environmental health and prevention curricula for schools nationally. Her TEDx talk, “How to Protect Your Kids from Toxic Chemicals”, can be found on YouTube, and you can follow her health and wellness tips and recommendations on Facebook at The Smart Human, Twitter, and Instagram: @thesmarthuman. Sign up for The Smart Human newsletter, read her latest posts at TheSmartHuman.com, and listen to her podcast The Smart Human. Dr. Cohen lives on a farm in New Jersey with her husband, two sons, and lots of furry friends.
Time Stamps
05:40 Why Dr. Cohen decided to study toxins?
010:30 Household products, chemicals, preservatives, technology (e.g. 5G, makeup, etc.) are often considered to be safe until proven NOT safe––Why??
1900s––Mascara that made women blind
Government agencies do not require sufficient testing of chemicals before they go into cosmetics, food products, and cleaning products. We have a bias for free trade, innovation, and entrepreneurship––safety of products put on the back burner
Safety studies on individual chemicals are EXPENSIVE $$$
012:00 Check the ingredients in your cosmetics for the word “fragrance“––this can have more than 300 different chemicals in it which the company does NOT have to disclose!
014:15 Why aren’t more health professionals on board with the idea that there so many toxic things in our life which contribute to chronic diseases?
Medical education is symptoms-based and is centered around drug treatment, NOT prevention using lifestyle interventions
On average 5 hours of nutrition training in medical schools… TOTAL
Pharma-driven funding for medical schools
18:00 Why there will likely not be a 500 million dollar study on the health effects of soaking your microplastic-ridden teabags into scalding hot water. The precautionary principle.
21:00 Dr. Cohen’s unnecessary Ted talk disclaimer?
24:00 A large helping of pesticides in your morning oats… The dangers of glyphosate (active ingredient in Roundup)
Glyphosate is found in high amount in most grain crops, as it is used as a drying agent (desiccant) sprayed directly onto crops at the time of harvest
Glyphosate is not only implicated in working as an antibiotic––killing off the bacteria in our microbiome which sustains life in our bodies––an endocrine disruptor, cancers, and neuropsychiatric disorders (1, 2)
29:40 Kick the (soup) cans––sorry Progresso. Can’t always fix the system but we, as consumers, MUST vote with our dollars and shift the market towards healthy products as much as we can
31:30 How simple shifts in your lifestyle can drastically reduce the concentrations of toxins in your body
32:35 What the heck does a “safe dose” of a toxin mean? Why the “safe” levels set by the Environmental Protection Agency might be ten-fold higher than what you actually want to be consuming
41:30 How the cleanliness of your drinking water is based off of a law made over 40 years ago…
45:45 The main reason why several researchers and agencies dismiss toxins as culprits of chronic disease… Inflammation, chronic stress, and alien chemicals.
49:30 Why sanitizing everything can actually be harmful, the problem with a germ-phobic society, and why microbes are NECESSARY for life!
56:15 COVIDV-19 has revealed how unhealthy we have become as a population…
94% of all COVID deaths had at least one comorbidity such as high blood pressure, diabetes, obesity, autoimmune condition, etc. (CDC)
The relationship between comorbidity and death is virtually LINEAR. The more health conditions, the more likely you are to have a worse response to the virus
Most of these comorbidities are LIFESTYLE-BASED, meaning you can do something about them with nutritional interventions, exercise, stress management, and more. This will in turn increase your resilience to infections.
Resources
Connect with Dr. Cohen!
TheSmartHuman.com
Instagram: @thesmarthuman
Facebook: The Smart Human
Dr. Cohen’s Book Non-Toxic: Guide to Living Healthy in a Chemical World
Environmental Working Group links