Transcript #434 How To Reduce Exposure to Health-Harming Toxins in Your Home with Laura Paulisich
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- Find out what’s in store on this Myers Detox Podcast with Laura Paulisich who joins the show to talk about how to reduce exposure to health-harming toxins in your home. Laura goes over the many hidden toxins in the items we are bringing into our homes, and how these toxins are making the indoor air more polluted than the outdoor air. These toxins are causing havoc to human health including obesity, heart disease, cancer, infertility, diabetes, autism and much more. Laura is a passionate advocate for detoxifying your home and started her business, ToxyFree, to help people lessen their exposure to health-harming toxins by sharing the most natural products possible for all of our basic needs in one place. If you’re looking for some great tips on toxin free living, tune into this episode!
- Find out what Made Laura so passionate about toxin free living.
- Learn about some of the key obstacles you might face when trying improve your toxin free living.
- Find out some of the surprising items that are contributing to toxins in your home!
- Learn about some of Laura’s top tips for making toxin free living easy and fun for the whole family.
- Learn more about ToxyFree and the resources Laura provides.
Dr. Wendy Myers: Hi, everyone. I’m Wendy Myers. Welcome to the Myers Detox Podcast. And actually, I’m Dr. Wendy Myers. I’m happy to announce that I just finished schooling and am officially a naturopathic doctor. So I’ll be referring to myself as Dr. Wendy Myers going forward. But yeah, it’s been a lifelong dream. I knew when I was 10 years old that I wanted to be a doctor, and I knew very early on what I wanted to do. I got sidetracked here and there from my passion, what my true calling was. First time I’ve announced that. And so, again, I want to thank all you guys for tuning in every week. And the podcast, really, the audience has been growing exponentially, and I’ve been doing this podcast for almost nine years, eight, nine years now. And we’re coming up on episode 420 or so. So, just really incredibly rewarding, and I just love doing this and educating you guys. And I just want to thank you for tuning in every week.
Dr. Wendy Myers: This week, we have Laura Paulisich on the show, and she is a toxin-free living expert. She’s going to be talking about how to reduce exposure to health-harming toxins in your home. This is a pretty fun podcast. Laura’s really passionate, just like myself, about educating people about toxins and how to make better choices. And so she’s the founder of ToxyFree, and she’s all about helping busy families reduce exposure to health-harming toxins in their homes. She’s the author of three books, sharing her pursuit of toxin-free living, health, and happiness that resulted. And despite starting ToxyFree at the beginning of the pandemic, she’s doubled sales in a couple years, and she’s served thousands of people in their ToxyFree purchases. And you can learn more about Laura and her website of toxin-free resources at shoptoxyfree.com. Just about all kinds of recommendations for all different types of product categories and better toxin-free choices to make. Laura, thanks so much for coming to the show.
Laura Paulisich: What a thrill to be here. Thank you so much, and thank you for all you do to help all of us with toxins.
Dr. Wendy Myers: Yeah, it’s my pleasure. But you’re here to help too. So why don’t you tell us what got you started on your toxin journey and learning about toxins?
Laura Paulisich: Well, it really started when, I guess, in junior high, when I was diagnosed with the autoimmune disease Hashimoto’s, and the doctors just gave me a pill and said, take this for the rest of your life, and you’re on your way. And my mom, who’s a scientist, told me that my thyroid didn’t work, and that affects my metabolism. And I was terrified to eat anything. And I would use my babysitting money to bike to the co-op because I thought anything bought there would be healthy. But fast forward many years. I spent my whole life just really struggling, not knowing what to eat, not knowing anything about food, not knowing how to cook. All I knew was I always felt hungry; it was very stressful. My brain would get hijacked by sugar and the chemicals in foods. And so I thought it has to be this easy, we’re biological beings. There must be a biological answer.
Laura Paulisich: So, I started researching everything I could about cooking, nutrients, and food. And when I found out that I would always feel hungry until my body received the nutrients that I needed, it was just like, I turned the light on to a different life. And I was like, oh my gosh, this is not about me. It’s not that something’s wrong with me, or I’m just not getting the nutrients. So, it totally changed the purpose of food for me. Food was no longer soothing or entertainment. It had a real purpose, to nourish me with those nutrients. But then, it was hard to find nutrient-dense food. You just can’t go to the grocery store. Because I had learned that even grass-fed beef from the purest farmers, the selenium can be different based on Western Canada versus Eastern Canada.
Laura Paulisich: So, it was hard to find food. And then, after that, I didn’t want anything messing with those nutrients. So, I started thinking, well, what am I going to cook it in? What am I going to store it in? Because I continued to read and found out that toxins in our environment block our endocrine system. I’m like, well that goes against the whole point of all this effort. So, I just kept examining everything to protect those nutrients because they were changing my life so much for the better. I just felt so nourished for the first time in, well, that would’ve been like 38 years, 39 years of living. So, I was willing to do anything to protect those nutrients.
Dr. Wendy Myers: Yes. I’m glad you mentioned that because so many people go to so much effort to eat an organic diet and healthy food, and they’re kind of missing the boat on this toxin influx that they get in so many different areas. That’s why I do the show. I try to educate people about what they really need to be thinking about to address their health and not just with the food. And so, what were some of the obstacles that you encountered on your journey to detox your life and improve your health?
Laura Paulisich: Yes. As I said, the first was just finding nutrient-dense food with our diminishing soil, how my favorite people in the world are regenerative farmers who are providing us such nutrient-dense food. And then really just the cookware. It just goes down the line. Then, what do I store the food in? What am I brushing my teeth with? And putting that in my mouth and gums, flossing. Then I learned what I put on my skin. 60 to 70% goes into the bloodstream. So, that’s what I’m eating. So, if I’m putting all this effort into the nutrients for food, then I want to be mindful of what goes on my skin. So, the bedding, the towels, the clothing, I just kept going. And there’s still today, it’s getting better, but it’s still very difficult to find. This is not readily available, just like the food. And that was part of the reason why I wanted to make the information available and the products available, because I’m like, what busy mom could search 10 months for a plastic free pan or something.
Dr. Wendy Myers: Yeah. It can get really overwhelming. Especially when you start learning about this stuff, you’re like, wow, what I’m cooking in, what I’m storing my food in, what my, like you said, your sheets, and it just goes on and on and on and on. So, it’s a pretty big learning curve. Can you talk a little bit about being overwhelmed when people are learning about how to detox their life in their homes?
Laura Paulisich: Yeah. The thing that I would encourage everyone listening to is to just return to our natural states, so when we do that, we’re rewarded. We are so rewarded. I always think about this, like with our biggest leaders. I’m like, what if they were doing this? They would’ve superpowers. Because it’s just, everything feels better, tastes better, smells better. Life becomes so meaningful, and your belongings have a purpose. People are doing it with food. And so they have the skill about thinking about what they’re eating and where it comes from, and it’s just transferring that skill to other things they’re bringing into the home.
Dr. Wendy Myers: And so what were some of the things you were surprised to find toxins?
Laura Paulisich: This was just recently, and thankfully I’d already switched to everything as natural as possible. But I just recently learned nylon floss, a lot of it has a Teflon coating on it. Just things like that. Designer handbags have obesogens, wallpaper, vinyl, baby toys, just everything. Those were very surprising to me. Dish soap. The things that I had been taught all along, you just put those in your grocery cart every week because they’re necessary. If I can be people’s Guinea pig, it’s possible to survive without all those things, and that’s more freeing.
Dr. Wendy Myers: Yeah. And that’s why I had my daughter. She goes to a Waldorf school here in Mexico because they don’t use any plastic on anything. They’re just using natural materials, like wool and using clays, in class. And everything’s natural because you don’t think about, like our environment, it’s just everything is plastic, and you’re touching that and maybe drinking from it and doing all these different things. I think people don’t realize how much it’s impacting their health and the health of their children are much more vulnerable than us as adults.
Laura Paulisich: Yes. And just touching, tapping, touching anything plastic, it sheds the microplastics, and it falls to the floor, and our pets and babies and small children are the ones ingesting it then. So, they’re even more at risk just because they’re there on the floor with it. That is such a cool school, oh my gosh.
Dr. Wendy Myers: Yeah. It’s great. She’s learning. The school is taught half English and half Spanish. So, she’s fluent in Spanish now. I wish I could say the same thing about myself. But another year, I’m going to be fluent. I’m practicing. I think people don’t realize that they ingest the equivalent of a credit card in microplastics every week. A week.
Laura Paulisich: One week, I always think about that and how it’s found now in our lungs in addition to our blood and even in utero. And we don’t know what the effects are. There are a lot of effects.
Dr. Wendy Myers: The reason I’m doing this show is to educate people about these toxins that are causing so many of the health issues that we’re seeing through chronic health issues, heart disease, hypertension, non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, and diabetes, especially. Toxins are contributing to that in a huge, huge way. And so that’s why I’m doing the show. Lots of info on my website about that.
Laura Paulisich: I love how you talk about obesogens. People are spending so much time, money, effort, and energy on weight control, and it could be the toxins they’re not even aware of.
Dr. Wendy Myers: Yeah. And also beating themselves up.
Laura Paulisich: Yes. The shame, the guilt, yes.
Dr. Wendy Myers: It’s like you’re fighting this uphill battle when toxins are affecting your pancreas, your blood sugar control, and your ability to ingest nutrients. You get cravings because you’re not digesting the food you’re eating. So many, dozens, and dozens of factors that-
Laura Paulisich: I know. I learned that wrinkle-free sheets have formaldehyde which causes insomnia, which if you’re not sleeping, then your body can’t work anyway.
Dr. Wendy Myers: You’re stressed; you’re not sleeping. There are a million different ways these toxins, directly and indirectly, cause us to be overweight. So, it’s not just the food that people are eating. It’s not just their keto diet or high-carb diet. The diet’s just not enough to lose weight. Is there anything else that listeners should be aware of that you’ve kind of discovered in your toxin research?
Laura Paulisich: I always just go back to trying to recognize nature in whatever we’re surrounding ourselves with. So, another thing that’s really surprising is clothing. And the dyes that go into clothing. And even though some really big companies have made this great effort to be more sustainable and green, having any fabric gold or using plastic in it is worse because it has broken up the plastic already. So, then it’s becoming microplastics even easier. And anytime we dry the clothing, it’s going out into our air and ending up back in our food. And clothing is really a big thing to think about. Just so I’m always questioning, like where does this color come from, and what exactly is the fiber? And that would be another one, the sheets, the mattresses. I’m really hoping that that’s changing with the fire retardants requirement on mattresses because, in our country, that’s how people are used to sleeping, and that’s really scary too.
Dr. Wendy Myers: And it seems to make sense that there was such a high smoking rate seen in the ’70s or whatnot, and that rate was certainly going down now. But people are falling asleep with a cigarette in their hand. That’s why they made this law, smokers falling asleep and the hand go down and like, and poof, they’d just go up and smoke. But it’s like the whole population has to suffer in ingesting these fire retardant chemicals that are so carcinogenic and obesogenic and interfere with hormones just for the small population of smokers. Even if your mattress is flame retardant, your sheets, and your blanket aren’t. So, it just kind of doesn’t make a tremendous amount of sense.
Laura Paulisich: And I remember listening to an expert in our country talking about the disposal of mattresses, televisions, carpets, just what every house is filled with. Those are considered toxic waste, and that’s what we’re surrounding ourselves with.
Dr. Wendy Myers: It is incredible that those are considered toxic waste.
Laura Paulisich: I know, I know.
Dr. Wendy Myers: TVs have a lot of metals in them and things like that.
Laura Paulisich: They talked about because it’s plastic around all of the electronics that it’s such a fire hazard that they have to really douse it with fire retardants. And then the other thing too, I would recommend or encourage people to do is things that are natural, like flowers. You would think, oh my gosh. But 80% of our cut flowers in the US are grown outside of the US. And so they’re required to be sprayed when they come in, and most of them are being grown with pesticides, which are harming the workers. They stay on the plant and flowers, they’re harming the forest, and then they’re in your home as well. So, things that you would think would be natural have to be investigated too.
Dr. Wendy Myers: You have to uncover so many stones, like your candles-
Laura Paulisich: All the candles.
Dr. Wendy Myers: The air freshener, your beauty products. It’s just exhausting.
Laura Paulisich: Oh my gosh. Anything with fragrance, just run the other way.
Dr. Wendy Myers: Throw those dryer sheets out, please. Those things are so disgusting. I’ll take the static cling. I’ll take the static cling. I don’t need all the oils on my towels that make it, so they don’t absorb water after I shower. I never understood. They have hundreds of chemicals, and it’s crazy.
Laura Paulisich: Very. Like forever chemicals too. The great thing is that it’s a fun adventure, creative, and involves everyone in the family. It’s way more fun. You save so much money, and it just feels so good not to be contributing to all of that anymore. The freedom that you get from this, it really is returning to a birthright of true health, true happiness. And until you experience it, it’s like you didn’t even know you were missing it. So, that’s why I’m always shouting it from the hilltops.
Dr. Wendy Myers: It’s kind of like a fish in water. You don’t know until you know that you live in a house that has chemical soup. But I like how you put that. It’s very positive. Because I think people can feel really overwhelmed or feel like they have to spend a lot of money and there’s just a lot to learn. So, how do you make this more easy and fun for people?
Laura Paulisich: Like I said, it is like an adventure. I’m gathering; I’m out hunting and gathering for what I want to nourish myself and my surroundings with. And like I said, life gets really simple and pure and so beautiful because the food tastes more delicious, real food. Real clothing just nourishes and feels good, and people are always saying, “Oh my gosh, that’s so pretty.” And so it’s even an unexpected, unique style. Plant dyed clothing is one of a kind, no matter if it’s artisan made. And just having really high quality, very few belongings, it uncovers the life that you’re meant to live. So, it’s like you can really serve your purpose and experience what your life was meant to be hiding under all those belongings.
Dr. Wendy Myers: Yeah. Yeah. I like how you put that because I think people deserve to feel good. They deserve to have help, that it is our birthright. And there’s just so many, I think, irresponsible companies and corporations that are polluting our environment. We’re not being protected, and we really have to take that responsibility for ourselves. And it can be looked at like joy and something fun and something that you feel really, really good about rather than something that could be overwhelming. It’s like a fun project. It’s a lifelong project.
Laura Paulisich: It is. Yes. And the other thing is when you think about how used to consuming we are, we have no problem getting our credit cards out and exchanging and paying for things. That is the power. We are really truly voting with every dollar and cent that we consume and spend, and those companies are going to listen. So, it’s like all of us. We all have the power to change the direction of things. And everything is connected. Toxin-free for me was about my health, but it accidentally was minimizing and plastic-free and no longer contributing to climate change, all of that. It’s all so connected. And it is really joyous and uplifting to be a part of that.
Dr. Wendy Myers: Yeah. Everyone listening is making some efforts to improve their environment, home, and health and detox. But what if someone in their family is resistant to what they’re doing or kind of not in agreement? Do you have any strategies for that? Because I know for me, my ex-husband, I became really passionate about detoxing my home and using certain detergents, and he just didn’t give a crap about that at all, which is why he’s my ex. No, but it’s okay. But I would want to use natural laundry detergent, then he’d want to use Gain and then detoxify the whole laundry area. And my clothes would smell like, I didn’t want that perfume that interfered with my hormones, and I tried to educate him about it. He was a brilliant guy, but he just didn’t care. I’m like, “Don’t you care if your testosterone lowers?” And that’s how you get guys’ attention, I think, is to talk about testosterone and maybe their penis. The testosterone lowers. There’s going to be trouble down below. That seems to be my experience, trying to get people’s attention.
Laura Paulisich: I see this every day, almost by the hour. This is happening to everyone where there’s resistance, and it’s usually coming from the husband and or father or sons. But there’s this great book called Slow Death by Rubber Duck. Have you seen that?
Dr. Wendy Myers: No, I think I have heard of that. I need to check that out.
Laura Paulisich: Rubber Duck. Yes, it’s so cute. But the men are in Canada, and all they’re doing is just looking at the top 10 worst toxins. That’s it. There are thousands, and they’re coming. One gets dysregulated, then they pop up another one. It’s endless. So, they were only looking at the top 10, and they were terrified. They were learning that it is true, that the testicles do not descend, and there are things that are happening.
Dr. Wendy Myers: That’s a huge problem with people being born like their testicles don’t descend, or they’re very small. Their penises are smaller because they’re so estrogenized by their environment in utero because they’re pesticides in plastics and other estrogenic toxins.
Laura Paulisich: And they just cleaned out the big, these toys. They were like, talking about a home makeover. It happened overnight. They were just like, “Get this away from my son.”
Dr. Wendy Myers: Yeah. Anything you’re trying to convince someone of, you have to find their currency.
Laura Paulisich: Yeah. My heart goes out to the males, especially in our country, because I feel like it’s a really neglected population. I think females have kind of an advantage because we’ve always tried to be attractive, just the women that I know. And so, like starving ourselves, not eating things, is just really pretty normal from my generation. So, they are used to feeling hungry. Whereas the men I’ve noticed are hungry, which is a basic need, and they get something to eat, like “I don’t want to feel hungry.”
Laura Paulisich: And so, I just feel like they’ve never been nourished. And the thing is if they could see from down the road of what happens, life is so much simpler, you save so much money. You don’t have to get in your car, fight traffic, go to the store every week to buy these things you’re bringing in, and life is just so much more fun and easy and tastes better; it smells better. If they knew what it was like, the men would be leading this whole charge because I think it’s something that all of us were born into. So it sounds expensive, it sounds hard, it sounds foreign. And it’s just like, don’t trigger me with these things like just give me what I’m used to. And I could be all wrong about that, but my heart goes out to them because I just know that they would love it more than the women would.
Dr. Wendy Myers: Yeah, yeah. What are your resources for helping people live more toxic free? Do you have a list of resources somewhere on your website to get people started?
Laura Paulisich: Yes. Yes. That’s what ToxyFree is. That is my passion, bringing this to people. If there were ToxyFrees everywhere, which we have everything online, if people had access, if it was available, it would just be so much easier. I’ve spent, like I said, nine months trying to find a plastic free pen, and I found it, and it’s amazing. And it’s the only pen you’ll ever need. 61 billion disposable pens just in our country are in landfills right now.
Dr. Wendy Myers: I never even thought about the pens. I never even thought about them. There are just so many sources.
Laura Paulisich: Yeah. And you don’t have hundreds of them just in your drawers. Life is so much easier and simpler, and it’s tidier; you don’t have mental distractions. All of this really brings in all of those minimalist rewards. And oh my gosh, my husband, he should be the spokesperson because he’s like life is so easy, it saves so much money, just by making our own.
Laura Paulisich: And we have classes like this too. We just put a class out called, Do It Yourself Everything. And it is because over 10 years now, I just found it easier to make my own cleaner. And so I’ve been using the same glass bottle with infused organic vinegar and organic lemons. And we just spray that on everything, and we’re alive. I haven’t had to go to a grocery store in years and haven’t contributed to the plastic waste. Now, a really cool thing is that we buy our lemons from a farmer that we’ve developed this relationship with. And so she’ll send us a box of lemons, and we’ll make it for the year, and we just sit together and cut those up and talk. It’s all done in about a half hour. It’s so easy, and we’ve got a year’s worth of it.
Dr. Wendy Myers: Oh, that’s great. That’s great. Yeah. And it’s so much cheaper and so much healthier. I think they don’t realize how easy it can be to also make your own beauty products, make your own lotion. It’s fun. It’s a good activity to do with your children or your sister or what have you.
Laura Paulisich: Yes. And then developing the relationships, like we’re supporting those farmers. They’re like family now, and all of it feels so good. So, I’m rewarded over and over with that.
Dr. Wendy Myers: Yeah. And so what are some of the other resources? You mentioned you’ve done research, and you have suggestions for people for different product categories and things.
Laura Paulisich: Yeah. So, I don’t think there’s anything else like this in our country for sure. So ToxyFree, just the intention, is to share everything I’ve done in this 13-year obsession, I guess you could call it. It talks about the food. We sell food. We sell all the cookware, olive wood utensils, and clothing. It’s all there, and we have classes in consulting. It’s kind of like coaching in the products. So, even just reading through the descriptions, you start thinking about things, “Oh, I’d never thought about that.”
Laura Paulisich: And nature has so many solutions, like, for instance, a comb, just a simple thing like a comb, a natural comb was almost always made out of reclaimed horn. And so the horn acts as a natural antistatic, and it distributes the oils more naturally down your hair. Well, a plastic comb has a mold, and they get little snakes, and they actually tear and damage your hair. So, just something like that, it’s just a return to the artisan-made comb that’s beautiful and will last your whole life, and you’ll keep track of it. Yeah, we have hundreds of products.
Dr. Wendy Myers: Fantastic. That’s so helpful because when I first started my journey doing this, you’re just like, “God, how many hours do I have to spend researching Q-tips,” or natural Q-tips or find the store that they’re at, read the reviews on them.
Laura Paulisich: Yes.
Dr. Wendy Myers: Like every tiny thing, your makeup or whatever, you want to make the right decision and what you’re buying. It takes a lot of time, energy, and research to find the right things that work for you. And sometimes you just have to buy something that doesn’t work. I’ve got a lot of natural conditioners and other natural products that don’t really perform like their toxic counterparts that we really like. But they are out there. So, that’s great that you’ve done a lot of this footwork already.
Laura Paulisich: Yes. Yeah. And I definitely knew all along that I wanted to share that with others because time is so precious, and it’s hard when you are bringing beautiful offspring into the world.
Dr. Wendy Myers: Yeah. And what is your website again?
Laura Paulisich: It’s shoptoxyfree.com, and toxy is with a Y.
Dr. Wendy Myers: Okay, shoptoxyfree.com
Laura Paulisich: Yep.
Dr. Wendy Myers: Okay, fantastic. Laura, thank you so much for coming to the show. That was really fun. And so everyone, go check out Laura’s website, shoptoxyfree.com, to learn more about all of her product recommendations and DIY, making natural products and things around your house. And I’m Wendy Myers. Thanks for tuning in to the Myers Detox Podcast, where every week, I want to bring you people from all walks of life to help you on your detox journey and help you make healthier choices, and educate you about why you need to be living more of a toxin-free life that will pay huge dividends in your health because you deserve to feel good. So, thanks for tuning in. I’m Wendy Myers at myersdetox.com. Actually, Dr. Wendy Myers now. I actually just became a naturopathic doctor. So, that’s the first time I’ve announced that now. So, guys, thanks for tuning in, and I’ll talk to you very soon.
