The Root of the Matter

Is Your House Making You Sick? The Toxic Home Audit with Cathy Cooke

• Dr. Rachaele Carver, D.M.D. Board-Certified, Biologic, Naturopathic Dentist • Season 3 • Episode 21

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In this eye-opening episode of The Root of the Matter, Dr. Rachaele Carver continues the Detox Series with a conversation that goes beyond supplements and diet and straight into your home environment.

Joined by Kathy Cooke, holistic nutritionist and certified Building Biologist, they uncover the invisible toxins hiding in your home, from EMFs and mold to plastics, fragrances, and non-stick cookware.

Learn practical, affordable swaps to reduce toxins, improve air quality, and create a healthier space for you and your family. Whether you are just getting started or ready for a full home detox, this episode gives you the tools and motivation to make meaningful change.

In This Episode

  • What makes your home “toxic” and how to tell if it’s making you sick
  • EMFs explained: why your Wi-Fi and cell phone may be stressing your cells
  • How to hardwire your tech and reduce EMF exposure without living off-grid
  • The hidden dangers of fragrances, parabens, phthalates, and PFAS
  • Mold, air quality, and the importance of regular dusting and purification
  • Smart swaps: cookware, cleaning supplies, beauty products, and furniture
  • Why endocrine disruptors affect fertility, mood, and early puberty
  • Creating resilience through supplements, grounding, sunlight, and stress reduction
  • Budget-friendly ways to move from toxic house to healthy home

Key Takeaways

  • You can’t detox your body if your environment is toxic.
  • Start small; one swap at a time adds up fast.
  • Choose glass, stainless, ceramic, cotton, and essential oils over synthetics.
  • Air purifiers and hardwired internet create a healthier home energy.
  • Prevention is easier and more affordable than treatment.

Kathy Cooke is a holistic nutritionist and certified Building Biologist specializing in environmental health, air quality, and toxin-free living. Through her company Whole Home and Body Health, she helps families identify and remove hidden environmental hazards.

Website: wholehomeandbodyhealth.com

 Instagram: @wholehomeandbodyhealth

Resources: BuildingBiologyInstitute.org

Thank you for helping us reach the top 5% of podcasts in the oral health space! Because of your support, we’re now offering one-on-one consultations for those ready to take their oral health to the next level. 

Check the link in the show notes to book your personalized session and begin your journey to a healthier, brighter smile today.

Here is the link to schedule: https://calendly.com/drcarver-1/health-coaching-consult?month=2025-09



Disclaimer: This podcast is for educational purposes only. Information discussed is not intended for diagnosis, curing, or prevention of any disease and is not intended to replace advice given by a licensed healthcare practitioner. Before using any products mentioned or attempting methods discussed, please speak with a licensed healthcare provider. This podcast disclaims responsibility from any possible adverse reactions associated with products or methods discussed. Opinions from guests are their own, and this podcast does not condone or endorse opinions made by guests. We do not provide guarantees about the guests' qualifications or credibility. This podcast and its guests may have direct or indirect financial interests associated with products mentioned.

SPEAKER_01:

Hi everyone, welcome back to another episode of The Root of the Matter. I am your host, Dr. Rachel Carver, and today to continue our detox series, we're gonna get into the nitty-gritty of how to detox our life. We've talked a little bit about infections and other things in our body, but what about the environment? I think this is a big piece that people miss. We try to clean up our body, but if we're not cleaning up the environment, we're treading water here. So I'm happy to introduce everyone to Kathy Cook, who is a holistic nutritionist and a building biologist. And she's gonna give us some tips and tricks, talk to us a little bit more in detail about all those different environmental burdens that we can when we create awareness, we can do a little bit better and try to clean up our environment as best we can. We all know there's we're never gonna clean everything up 100%, but having a little bit of awareness and making better choices can really help us and especially our children. I think the younger generation today, they're being born full of toxins, and there are more toxins than ever getting into their body at an earlier age. Seeing this as skyrocketing cancers in 20 and 30 year olds, which has before now been unheard of. So welcome, Kathy. Thank you for taking part of your Friday to share all your expertise with us. Maybe talk to us a little bit how you got into holistic nutrition. And maybe some people don't know what a building biologist is. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, thanks, Dr. Carver, for having me on. I'm really excited to talk to your audience about this and glad that you're taking this approach of the environmental piece because, like you said, it's often missed. You talk about the diet and food, and but air quality and EMF, very important. Yeah, so I have a similar story as a lot of us alternative practitioners, in that I was sick for decades and couldn't figure it out. And long story short, I was working in the nonprofit sector for 20 something years, and then my health was getting worse and worse. So I said, I gotta just dive into this full time. So I started to study holistic nutrition. And even then, when my I was my diet was awesome, right? I was detoxing, I was doing the cleanses, and I was getting worse and worse. And so it was around 200 maybe 15 that I started to understand the environmental piece. And for me, it was EMF related mostly. My cell phone and my Wi-Fi were giving me a lot of very strong symptoms: tinnitus, anxiety, insomnia. And when I mitigated those, I started to get better within days. And then I said, all right, if this is happening for me, it's probably happening for a lot of people. So I decided to study at the Building Biology Institute, which teaches us all things air quality, EMF, all toxins. It's all about toxins that we bring into our homes and how we can build better and reduce those toxins that are in our home already. Yeah, so I've been doing that since 2018.

SPEAKER_01:

Fantastic. So you mentioned the biggest ones for you were the EMFs. And this is a hard thing for a lot of people, I think, to wrap their head around because you don't feel it, you don't see it. And this is modern life today. Like we are glued to our cell phones. I remember years and years ago and be like, soon we'll be able to pay for everything with our cell phones. And sure enough, it didn't take long for us to be able to, our whole lives could be in that tiny little machine. So maybe let's start there. Why are EMFs so bad for us?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, you can't see it. And I was a skeptic for a while because I was like, what, you want me to believe in these waves that are through the air? And I didn't get it, but I became so desperate after weeks of not sleeping that I was like, okay, whatever, I'll do whatever it takes. So I just did a trial and turned off my phone and put it in a drawer and unplugged my Wi-Fi. And like I said, within two days, it was like, whoa, my tinnitus is gone, my anxiety is lifted. I slept last night. So it is very difficult because people think that our life depends on it, that we can't communicate. That how am I supposed to get in touch? I can't make a phone call, I can't do anything without it. But I'm talking to you right now through my computer that is hardwired, and I have no radio frequency emitting from it. You know, this is a wired headset, right? I don't have to put earbuds, wireless earbuds in my ears. So I'm not getting any radio frequency from what I'm doing right now. I do have a phone and I use it to get directions to go to my inspections. Pretty much that's it. I check it once or twice a day for messages, and then I make my phone calls through my hardwired computer. So I realize that that sounds really cumbersome for a lot of people, but I just want to show that there are alternatives. And if you have to make a phone call on your cell phone once in a while, fine. But if you're gonna talk to your grandma for two hours once a week, do it through your computer. And there's ways to dramatically reduce your exposure while staying connected to the world, and hardwiring your internet is one of the easiest, best things to dramatically reduce that and avoid wearables. It don't there's so many things we can do where our life stays pretty much the same. Uh, we just need to commit to putting in a little effort into it. But I think it's incredibly important if we want to maintain our health, especially with the younger generation, as we've got more anxiety and mental health issues than ever before. I have no doubt that their phones and the radio frequency and the EMF we're getting from our devices are part of that picture. So I would just encourage people to actually take some of those steps to mitigate. We're not going to live in a cave, we're just going to reduce it where we can.

SPEAKER_01:

It reminds me of last year I was in my children's public high school in the auditorium and seeing all of the routers and like they had two. I was like, why do they need two? There's a massive cell tower right behind the school. And you wonder why the kids are so anxious. The behavior is so issued. Not only their phone, they've got the thousands of other kids, the whole building, it's just it's tragic. And my kids hate it, but I was like, listen, at night, your phones come out into this central location, they get turned off, they are not in your rooms. You cannot have wireless earbuds. I just, and of course, they're teenagers, they're gonna fight me, and whatever. Um, everything in our house is wired, you know. It like you said, okay, you gotta take a little bit of time, but it's not that expensive, and it's so valuable. And there's a lot of things out there we can try to do to mitigate that. But I was talking in the previous episode, we were talking about frequencies and emotion frequencies, you know, that's the same thing. So, what is an EMF? EMFs are there are natural EMFs, right? That are good. Light is a frequency, but these man-made EMFs that come off of our devices have such high frequencies, our body does not know what to do with these frequencies. And I relate it to it's as if you were in a teeny tiny little room and somebody was blaring heavy metal rock at you all day long. That's what it feels like. That's what our cells feel like when we're getting bombarded with these man-made frequencies. And any public place you go, airports, you know, all these things, like you get you're getting an extra dose. So when you're doing these kinds of things, again, like you said, we're not trying to prevent you from being out in society, but what are other things that what can we do to build our resilience? Because I travel for work, I go to a lot of conferences, and I do speaking and stuff. And I go to my kids' school to do whatever they need to do. My kids are in school eight hours a day. So for the EMF piece, we talked about the wired and all that. Is there anything else that you recommend to help us create a little resilience for those frequencies?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, that's a great question because we have to still live in the world. And while there are movements in the country to actually wire schools, that is happening, most of us aren't there, and it's going to be a long time before we get there. So, what can we do to protect our bodies? There, there is supplementation that I think it can be very valuable for a lot of people. One of the ways that EMF affects us on a cellular level is by artificially opening the voltagecated calcium channels, and then you get a flood of calcium ions into the cell, which leads to oxidative stress. While magnesium is a great calcium channel blocker. So for those of us that are in a high exposure, supplementing with magnesium can be helpful. I also like to recommend things like rosemary tincture because it's highly radioprotective. Antioxidants, of course, are going to be helpful. Your vitamin C, glutathione, uh melatonin, which is controversial. I don't know whether you want to take that routinely. But there's actually formulas too that will combine resveratrol or green tea, alpha poic acid, some of these really rich uh antioxidants that can be really helpful as well. There's one product called Ion Shield from Clinical Synergy, which is it clinical synergy? The same company that makes pectasol, which I love. So the Ion Shield is great. I always take that when I have to fly, or I'm gonna be in a high radio frequency environment. So that can all be very helpful. And then, you know, all of the other things that I know that you talk about on your show to keep the body resilient, managing stress, movement, sunlight, grounding, all of these things that just builds the body up so that we can handle more exposure in the long term.

SPEAKER_01:

That was great. Yeah, I like that. I'm gonna look at that ion shield. That sounds great. And rosemary, I didn't know that about rosemary.

SPEAKER_00:

So rosemarinic acid. There's some good data on the radioprotective abilities of rosemarinic acid. Pretty fascinating. That's great.

SPEAKER_01:

And I think we we underappreciate how much herbs and spices really do for our body. That's really where most of our antioxidants come from, right? Is these herbs and spices.

SPEAKER_02:

Yep.

SPEAKER_01:

Do not be shy. We all can love salt and pepper, but please don't be shy with all the especially because so many of us, if we're running around, maybe not eating the most balanced meals. If you have some of these herbs in your in your pantry, sprinkle a little bit on them. Yeah, but grass-fed steaks.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, absolutely. All right, so that's great. So we know, okay, EMFs are a problem, and like you said, they're you know, we recognize this, the science is there, right? The FTC, they lost that big lawsuit. Okay, it takes so much time to move bureaucracy. So that's what we can do as citizens, trying to protect our kids and ourselves, which is great. What's another really big environmental toxin you think that uh impacts us?

SPEAKER_00:

Gosh, there's so many, but often mold, of course, is huge, but I really want people to think about what they're bringing into their house. I have a colleague who says the front door is your biggest filter in your home because you're bringing you are bringing in the furniture, the carpet, the nonstick cookware, the cleaning supplies, the body care, all things that the majority of what's on the market contain parabens, phthalates, PFATs, all of these chemicals, which are endocrine disruptors and other things that most of us can easily change. So I really want people sometimes the EMF might be overwhelming, or going down the mold rabbit hole is super overwhelming. But for those of us that are like, I just want to make some changes, cool, get rid of your nonstick cookware. Please get rid of your nonstick cookware. Use carbon steel, use stainless steel, use glass. There's options. You can even find, I have found uh glass cookware at the thrift stores, uh cast iron, like you can do it pretty inexpensively. You can get a cast iron pan at Walmart for$10 or$15. Like, these are inexpensive, easy ways to make immediate changes. I really would love for people to look at their body care and see if it's got phthalates or parabens or fragrances. There is a I am in a war against fragrances with Americans. It is not going well because people do not want to get rid of their fragrances.

SPEAKER_01:

Anytime I post the worst, I'm like 100% kids, and I was like, wait, I keep throwing them away and they keep reappearing. Where are you getting the things?

SPEAKER_00:

Yes. I post a reel on Instagram about fragrances, and you would think that I said, I'm Satan. Like the hate that I get is mind-boggling. People don't want to do it. But a clean home has no smell, and fragrances, cognitive issues, asthma, endocrine disruption, it's real. And we can easily change this. You can get shampoo with essential oils if you really love that smell. That would be way better, and it's easy to find. The moisturizers, one of my favorite moisturizer face care lines is Anna Maria Skin Care, which is fat Anne Marie Skin Care, which is fabulous, and it's all essential oils, and it smells amazing, heavenly. So there are better options. So I want people to really think about what are they buying, what are they bringing in? Cleaning chemicals, a whole other thing. Cleaning chemicals is even more of an issue because it's got all of these chemicals, and you're spraying it on the counters, and then you're touching the counters and you're consuming it. So not only are you inhaling it, but peripherally, you may be ingesting it. And kids walk on babies walking on the floors, or your pets, and then the pets are licking their paws. Like it is a very serious thing that does not get attention, like you said, and we can change these things easily. So I would love for people to pay attention to that.

SPEAKER_01:

I keep that important. And I think again, start in the kitchen. I like the idea of let's start in the kitchen. This is where, like you said, the counters, the cookware we're using. This is we know nutrition is so important. We want to try to minimize what we're putting in the body. Not only getting rid of the nonstick, okay, these have these PFAS, which are forever chemicals. There's so much information about there and how dramatic they are. I don't know all the statistics, but you have one little scratch in your nonstick pan and you're giving off thousands and thousands of these chemicals. That's getting in these are the things when they're called forever chemicals, that's because your body cannot, even if you had the most robust detox and elimination system, these things, it's very hard. I remember I did a test one time and it showed uh DDT in my system that was banned three years before I was even born, and yet my body had overwhelming amounts of DDT in my system 40 years later. So it's run, and again, for children especially, their immune systems aren't fully developed until age three. So any synthetic interventions in that first three years, you gotta be, and like I said, a lot of babies are already born with their immune systems shot because of what us as moms we've been living in this toxic world. So important, if you're making your own baby food or you're buying baby food, please don't buy baby food and plastic, right? Plastics are terrible, they uh they're another like these forever chemicals, they are so convenient, obviously. But that's the second thing I would say is remove the nonstick. And there's some there's a great company called Our Place. I replaced all my nonstick with this ceramic our place that has been tested all up and down, and it's fantastic. If I had another one that was terrible, it was not nonstick, but this has been really good. But I no food and plastic ever. When if we get takeout sometimes, and I love Indian, I immediately take it out of that plastic and put it in glass. If there's anything left over yet, it would it's convenient to just put the top back on and put it on the fridge. But no, no, if there's anything acidic or fatty, that's going to even more leach out the plastic even more. Do not buy ketchup in plastic, mayonnaise in plastic. So think that acidic and fatty things will leach the plastic even faster. So we'll replace all of the just no more plastic. You can buy so many like reusable stuff for kids, snacks and stuff, reusable silicone stuff.

SPEAKER_00:

All there, there's so many, like so many elemental, yeah, yep, yep. So many easy options that exist.

SPEAKER_01:

Exactly. Yeah, so those are my two biggest things in the kitchen, right? Is it's uh no more plastic and and no more like the nonstick. We don't even have a microwave anymore. It broke one day. It was really interesting because it broke, and the one in my office broke within a week of each other. And I was like, you know, the universe is telling me how we create all these toxic byproducts, and so my kids find it annoying, but they're used to it now. Okay, we have a toaster, we have an oven, okay. So maybe it takes a few extra minutes to cook everything, but and no food tastes good in the from the microwave. We all know that, and then and for the cleaning, like you said, things like baking soda, borax, vinegar, like there, you can find a million uh recipes online to help you clean, less expensive, less waste if you buy a glass container and you make your own. And again, people like I'm too busy for that. I get it, I am a super busy person, but one day I just said, What is my goal here? Like, if I really want to be healthy, I need to live this way. If I and I bought glass containers and I'll just make my own. And there's some companies that'll give you little concentrates and you can you can do it that way. But um, you also want to think about the environmental impact with all these things we're throwing, all the plastic we're throwing. Classic bottling, uh it's it's terrible. So reusable all again, all over. And the beauty products. So I think what you said is that is my biggest pet peeve, too, is the fragrances. And it's and now you say it's easy to find. I find it actually very difficult to find products without because now and they'll hide it, right?

SPEAKER_00:

Because they'll say you might see parfum, parfum, yes, they should fragrance.

SPEAKER_01:

Anytime you see fragrance, and this this kind of bothers me because sometimes the label will say no phthalates, but they list fragrance, and I'm like fragrance like I'm not sure that's true. Yeah, but it's interesting, and then then they won't tell you what the fragrance is because it's proprietary, they get around the legal thing proprietary. So again, I I find it challenging. One of the shampoos I like is Shea Moisture. That I don't some of them might have some, but in certain ones I like that and looking for the fragrance free. But for having teenage girls, I have two teenage girls, they want all the they'll watch all the social media and they get all and yeah, I go into Target and I'm like, oh my god, like even the natural brands, yeah, yeah, right. Yes, I just finished reading a book about Coco Chanel on her Chanel number five, the preeminent. And I was like, I wonder, because I told my kids, I said, I will, if you want to have some kind of perfume, like I'll buy you a real one. I will spend the money to buy you a real one because I don't I'm concerned about you guys developing and all that stuff. So but even and I was like, I wonder if it's the original formulation because it was manufactured in 1921. And they said the reason why it lingers is because she had aldehydes added to it, so it doesn't have phthalates, but it does have these aldehydes, which might not be perfect. But then I did find, but then again online, yeah, I looked up toxin-free perfumes, and I found one that had a little sample, so I ordered it because I was like, well, if I can find one that the my kids will like, maybe I can stop finding bed in bed bath and beyond stuff. So phthalates we know are related to fragrances. What are parabens and why do we have to be worried about that?

SPEAKER_00:

Parabens are put into a lot of products for the consistency and uh preservatives to for the uh to keep the product uh shelf stable and uh all mixed together and uh the consistency of the product. Uh, but they can be endocrine disruptors as well. And when we're talking about endocrine disruption, uh we're thinking our that's our hormones, right? Uh for those that don't use fancy words. So our thyroid who doesn't have thyroid issues and adrenal issues, our sex hormones. There's a big uh epidemic of infertility in this country, and uh I actually teach some health classes at my local hospital once in a while, and one of them is a puberty class, and early puberty, early breast development. It's almost normal, it's normal now, it's common, it's not normal, but it's very common because we're exposed to all of these endocrine disrupting products, so it's very problematic. Uh if especially once we become the age where we want to start reproducing and have a family, and we have to go through IVF and years and years uh trying to get pregnant, like that's stressful, it's expensive, it's heartbreaking. And if your body's saying, I can't get pregnant, it's probably saying I'm not healthy enough to carry a child and produce a healthy person. So, of course, anyone who wants to have a child, like I fully support that, but it's stressful because we're trying so hard to force this to happen. And are we ha are we gonna have healthy kids? Like it's very difficult. So just another simple chemical that they're putting in the products that can unfortunately over time and chronic exposure can lead to big issues.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, and those are the things that are prominent in the plastics too, which is why I'm like really against those as well. And I think you make a really important point. Um both of my sisters had fertility treatment, and they're they're in their 40s, so I think it's getting, but now you see the young, and I just like all their friends. It was like, yeah, it's just the common thing now. And it's my own daughter who I know all of this, and I've been very good about stuff in my house. She, my younger got her period at 11. 11. I was like, oh my god, and I was so not prepared. My other daughter was 12 and a half, which is I think a decent age, and again, frightening to me because I knew this and I minimized all of this, but yet still we live in this environment. We used to travel on vacation a lot, so she was still getting exposed to a lot. But it yeah, again, very common. And yes, we have Ivy and we have all these great things, but it is a signal to our bodies. Yeah, it's something in this my daughter said to me, Oh, mom, you're so old. I want to be a young mom. I was 30 when I wouldn't consider myself old, but yes. And I said, you know that you know, all those that bad oils on those French fries you're eating, right? It takes seven years for that. If you never ate another French fry, it would take seven years for that to get out of your system. So I'm like, So you gotta think about that. If you want to get at 25, you gotta start right. If she wants to be younger mom, you gotta clean up your act now. I was like, you may feel fine now, but I'm telling you guys, you gotta clean up the act here. Yeah, because these are the formative years, right? When the hormones are all developing, and this is when they're into all the junk food and all and all the products, and oh my gosh. I never knew any about that stuff. We didn't have social media when I was a teenager, and yeah, with makeup and then this and then that. And I'm like, I'm like, I get it. I would like I'd rather you never touch that stuff, but if you're going to, let's look for the alternative. Yeah, absolutely. And like anything, the more people the reason I do this podcast is I want to create awareness, and I think the only way we make real change is with our dollars, right? So you can go and you can fight bureaucracy all you want, you're not gonna get very far because it's really at the end of the day, it's all about the dollars. So if we start buying more of these natural, look at all these natural food brands that are getting bought up left and right by the big food companies every day, right? Because whoa, people are gluten-free industry, it's a billion-dollar industry now. It barely existed 10 years ago. Yeah, people start demanding. So if we start demanding less toxic products, we start using our boats and buying these more natural things, then there's everything has to shift, right? And but so many people again aren't really aware of how all these things impact us. And again, it's not the one thing, right? My kid, if they eat oh, it's fine, but they eat the french fries, then they have the perfume, then they have the makeup, then they're on and on. The bucket, that's how I explain it, right? Your bucket is getting full so fast, and it's so much harder to treat something than it is to prevent something.

SPEAKER_00:

Yes, yes, yes, prevention, it's all about the prevention.

SPEAKER_01:

And again, it's challenging, but again, the more we're all aware of this and we start making better choices about the foods we eat, the products we buy, the things, then then we're gonna start to make a real that's exactly it, and that's what I really like to stress with people too, because like you said, they get people are super overwhelmed.

SPEAKER_00:

Like, I gotta get rid of my whole house. No, the next time you go to buy shampoo, get a fragrance-free option. But the next time you go to if you need a new pan, whatever, get the carbon steel or whatever it is. So one thing at a time, and then a year from now, you're gonna go, Whoa, I made a ton of changes. So, you know, and then there's the people who are like, Nope, doing it all today. Awesome, do it. But we don't, yeah, it's one step at a time. I don't want anybody to get paralyzed with overwhelm. So we just do one thing at a time and it adds up fast.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

What about maybe furniture? Let's say somebody's redecorating a room. What do they want to think about? Do they need to be considered what type of furniture they buy, what kind of flooring they buy? What about feet? There's a lot of different things.

SPEAKER_00:

Furniture's tough. That's the toughest one, honestly. Because you can get a mattress or well, mattress, uh couch that has latex cushions and cotton or linen covers, but it's Gonna cost you six thousand dollars. If you can do it, fabulous. Most of us aren't in that position. I actually have a futon for a couch, which is a really decent option. It's cotton, it's all cotton futon, and the frame is wood. I totally understand that that's not gonna meet the aesthetic for the majority of people, but you can find some that look very nice and fit with a minimalistic look. Um, and you can put uh nice covers on them for someone that can do that. Awesome. So I honestly the couches and the chairs, that's the biggest challenge. So we can do our best there.

SPEAKER_01:

And then you know that is like letting it, let's say you get it, let it sit outside or in your garage for a few days and really try to off-gas it's that off-gas it.

SPEAKER_00:

Yep, yes, let it off-gas for a few days for sure. And then you can also put a little baking soda on it and vacuum it or put little carbon pouches. It's not gonna be a huge difference, but it'll help a little bit. But mattresses, for some reason in the last five, ten years, the green mattress industry has exploded, which I find very interesting. So you can find healthier mattress options all over the place. Why that hasn't extended fully into the couches, I don't really know. But there's a lot of really good options for mattresses. Again, you could do if you're on a budget, you can do something like a cotton futon or wool. Uh I have a latex mattress, 100% latex, with a wool topper. Uh there's um nature pedic, which is a very popular mattress brand, there's avocado. Uh there's a lot of options for mattresses out there that people can do. And then uh otherwise, if we focus on solid wood, tables, desks, kitchen table, chairs, great options. And then carpet. Carpet is the other thing that I would love it if people got rid of. I just actually moved into a new location and there's carpet here. That's I couldn't manage that. But what I'm doing is buying very big area rugs that are cotton to put over it so that I'm minimizing what's in the air and my skin contact, which can be helpful. And I have air purification, air purifiers. So if you've got carpet and you can get rid of it, that would be one of the best ways to improve your overall air quality. And then what you want to replace that with hardwood, always a great option, always probably the best option. If you can't do hardwood, you can think about something like cork, which would be better than carpet. Cork is gonna have some adhesives in it, but it's better than carpet. Marmoleum is a great flooring choice for bathrooms or kitchens. So marmoleum is looks like linoleum or like an old vinyl, but it's made with flax and natural materials, so it's not toxic. And there's some really cool, really high-end designs, so it can look really nice. And then we've got like the engineered hardwood or the vinyl planks. They're better than carpet, not ideal, but I would definitely recommend them over carpet. The vinyl planks are gonna delaminate and flake off over time, not great for the environment, but from a chemical exposure point point of view, way better than carpet. So depends on your budget and what you can do, but those would be my options.

SPEAKER_01:

So you mentioned air quality, which is a big thing that and we spend so much of our life indoors these days that uh and air quality is something we don't think about. But maybe talk to us a little bit about what you think. Should we all have air purifiers as their way to test for our air quality and again why it's important?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, air quality is huge because we eat one to three times a day. We drink, I don't know, 60 ounces of water a day, but we breathe non-stop. So uh it's awesome that we're paying attention to our food and what we're drinking, but what we're breathing is a much bigger volume of toxins. So uh air quality is uh huge because it's uh we're breathing it in and it's going directly into our circulation. I think most people would benefit from having air purifiers in their home if we live in a city. If we live out in the woods and our house is built of wood and natural materials, maybe we can get by without it. But these days, most of us need it because our air is unfortunately not great, and we have all of these things in our house that we've been talking about. So there's a lot of air purifiers out on the market, and they may use some fancy marketing terms. We've got ions and photocatalytic jargon, blah, blah, blah. You don't need any of that. You need a HEPA filter and you need carbon. That's it. The more simple, the better. HEPA is gonna capture particulate down to 0.3 microns or smaller, which would include your mold spores, some viruses, bacteria, dander, the in some of the larger particulate dust. What's in our dust? Heavy metals, all of these chemicals we're talking about, mold spores, bacteria. So we really need to do a better job of keeping our dust load down. That was a segue, but back to the filter carbon. You want a large amount of carbon because that's gonna capture the VOCs or the volatile organic compounds. So those are the only two things that I recommend. And then that's gonna help to filter the air, especially for people that are in wildfire areas or dense populations where we need more of that. Another thing that uh brings me a lot of hateful comments, but I'll mention it anyway, is our candles and our our scented that we just Febreze and such? Yeah, the Febreze and the Glade plugins and all of these things that we're trying to do, the reed diffusers, but even the candles, even uh your audience probably knows well, I don't use scented candles, but I use one that's made of soy and essential oils. But the problem is we're not supposed to heat essential oils, that's not great. If you are using essential oils on a high ozone day, like orange or a citrus, you can create formaldehyde. And when you're burning a candle, you've got particulate. You're burning particulate, which you are then inhaling, which is not awesome. If you want to do a candle once in a while, fine, but don't do them every day. Incense, pretty toxic stuff. So we need to be really careful about even the natural options that we're choosing. I prefer to limit those because of that particulate that we're breathing. So, yes, for all of these reasons, air purification, I'm a big fan of that.

SPEAKER_01:

I agree. I have them in definitely my kids' rooms with their uh all their fragrances everywhere. Um try to keep them. We live in the woods, but I still, again, because of everything that they're exposed to, right? You know, we try to keep their windows open as much of the year as we can. We're in the northeast, so it gets a little cold in the winter. But get it, and even though we built a new house, we have the fresh air circulated, but I don't need I don't think it cuts it enough. We actually bought all these monitors and we're like, ugh, still the quality can be problematic. I'm also a huge proponent of clean air because, like you, I really like how you said that non-stop, we're breathing stuff in. How many people I can't tell you how many people I see in my practice with enormous tonsils. More than half, more than half of my patients. Really? Yes. And your tonsils is immune tissue, right? That that if we're not breathing through our nose for whatever reason, if it's clogged or we have allergies, right? Tonsils have to collect and filter. And even if you aren't breathing through your nose, that tonsil still is as a filter. And I had a family, it was interesting, they all happened to be in on the same day, and all four of them had these huge tonsils. And I was like, what's going on with the air in your house? They were using a wood-burning fire place. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So great, guys. Yeah, you can use it, but open, get some fresh air going too, maybe some air purifiers. But again, that's a sign of toxin accumulation. When your immune tissue is getting is that swollen, working overtime, that's that that's a problem. And again, we dismiss it. And again, we live so much of our life indoors around all these scents. And yeah, in the carpet. Yeah, carpet's one of the one of the worst. Even for my kids, we have wood flooring, but I'm like, no more even rugs. I'm like, you can have a wool rug, but or cotton, but I'm like, yeah, too much of that is so much is too much, it's like synthetic. So I think that's a really big one and should be high on the list of making sure that the air is as pure as possible. I also like what you said about the keeping the dust down. That's why I love my roomba. I'm too busy to when I go to work, hit the on button. I don't know. So get it done for me. Big proponent of those kind of things to help us when we're not around to do it, because that's where a lot of the mold lace and mold is such a problem. We want to talk about a rabbit hole, but it is a major immune suppression and really a lot behind chronic strep throat infraction, behind when people have worsening Lyme disease, it's often because you have mold. Yes. So that's problematic. So anything we can do again, the keeping the fresh air, keeping the airs filtered, trying to minimize it. Because a lot of times mold as a build-in biologist, you can probably say a lot of mold's invisible. It's obvious when you see the black mold in certain areas, but it's when it's behind behind the walls, you don't know it, you know, but you're still reading it.

SPEAKER_00:

Which it usually is, and very difficult to find. Even most my work, most of my work these days is mold inspections because there's not a lot of us, not a lot of us willing to go into a crawl space with snakes and spiders and rodents, and it's a dirty job, but it hides very well. And yeah, you don't see it, and so it's a real problem, and it's gonna continue potentially to cause you a lot of symptoms until you find it and remove it. And there's no magic spray, there's no magic fog, no magic spray, no magic air purifier that's gonna resolve that. It has to be physically removed.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, and that's a thing I think a lot of us don't really. I mean, my husband used to fight me for years because always in testing and things, all uh mycotoxins always come up for everybody in my family. And I was like, oh, mold's everywhere. I'm like, I understand, but mold also becomes toxic. Yes, it's everywhere and it's part of our natural environment. But now, because of all the other chemicals in our house, mold creates mold is it's everywhere, but when it gets angry and threatened or whatever, it creates more of the toxic. So all these bacteria and fungus and all these, this is all part of nature. But it's when they get exposed to some toxic thing that they become more toxic, that their byproducts become more problematic for us. So parasites, all these things have been around since millennium beginning of time, but now they're much more problematic because of all these other toxins in the cumulative, and um, and so that that's what we really need to think about for years. Like my husband painted our whole garage with mold-free paint, whatever it was, which is great, but then the ceiling in the garage, you can see with all the scenes of the uh I was like, Okay, and that's where our cars are, and we're in the cars every day. And I was like, you know, can you please that to fix this? And so the borax and all this up, but I'm like, uh, and painted over it, but I'm like, I don't know if that's really gonna solve yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

I mean, it's not yeah, physical removal is the only real solution, and um yeah, it's a beast. The whole topic of mold is a beast, and it is everywhere. And I I get that comments from other inspectors or remediation companies because they call me extreme and over the top, and I'm like, I'm just following industry standards, yeah. But it is everywhere, but not in those quantities we find it in our house. So you're not gonna see a wall full of stachybatris out in nature, so that's the difference. It's the quantity, and it's not regulated from the ecosystem. It doesn't have sun and wind and bacteria to manage it, so it's growing out of proportion to what is natural, and that's what people, a lot of people aren't really factoring in.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, that's important. Yeah, so we've talked about some EMFs and our plastic bookware and our fragrances and parabens and our furniture. As we're wrapping up here, is there anything that maybe we missed that people should be aware of to think about?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, one thing that a lot of us aren't thinking about is our clothing, which I think is really important. Actually, everything I have on right now is cotton, all like 100%, 95% cotton, 5% Hispanics, whatever. But these synthetic clothing, I would love it if people would start making choices towards cotton or linen or silk because they're microplastics and we're wearing them, and we are getting chemicals from them when we put them on our skin. And then when we wash them, they break down into microplastics and put more microplastics into the environment, into our waterways. So that's one area that has a lot of opportunity for improvement. And I'm not telling people to go get rid of everything they own right now, but the next time you need a new shirt, maybe you choose a cotton option versus polyester or rayon or whatever it is.

SPEAKER_01:

So, yeah, a lot of opportunity that we could do better there. And I think the most important thing, if nothing else, at least let your undergarments be 100%. 100% like my kids, isn't it? There are a lot of brands out there. My girls, they're teenagers, they want cute underwear, they don't want granny panties. There are a lot of companies where you can buy one. I even got some on Amazon. Just look for 100% organic cotton underwear. If you're gonna spend money, you can't replace the whole wardrobe just right. Please buy the underwear and bras that are organic and cotton.

SPEAKER_00:

100%. Yeah. Yeah, that's another industry that's exploded randomly. Like, why are we focused? But a lot of options for undergarments. Yeah, yeah, perfect.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, good. I'm glad you I'm glad you brought that up because uh when I I met a new gynecologist and I was like, I I want to find more comments. Do you know some more common initially? She gave me a bunch of things. One is oh, is it my heart place something? I don't know. If I'll find it, we can add it to the notes. But again, yeah, you just type in to your Google search, right? Organic content. My husband replaced all of his all the cotton and yeah. It does, it makes, I think it's these little things that can start to move the needle, especially if you're somebody who's had a lot of health issues, right? And you've done the nutrition thing and the supplement thing, you got to start looking at the bigger picture here. You know, we talked about emotions too, but now again, let's look at the environment and what's thing. So maybe you there's 12 months in a year. So maybe your goal can be all right, this month I'm gonna I'm gonna change out all the plastic containers and make everything plastic. Throw away all my plastic water bottles, please. Oh my gosh, drink out of plastic water, yes, much water, which is not acidic or fatty, but still over time, like it's just not anytime it's exposed to heat, you know, it's going to they're gonna start breaking down. Like you said, the impact on the environment is just we need to stop that. Think about our future generations and not making them have to clean so much of this up. Use risk reusable bags, like when you go to the grocery store, please, please get one. It's great. And I I have ones I give to all my health coaching clients, fold up into a tiny little ball and granted you're gonna need more than one, but at least you always have if you're running in to get something quick, you always have that right there. And then when you know you're doing grocery, you take your ones. And I really wish the biggest thing for me is I really hate at the supermarket, and everything is still there giving you receipts. So that's another thing. There's a lot of BPA in receipts. Most of the cycles, right? Choose not to take the receipt if you can, right? Take a picture of it if you might like at a restaurant. If you need the receipt, just take a picture instead. Do not idea. Great idea. I wish there was an option at the supermarket. Like, I don't want a receipt, but it's like a three-foot-long receipt that I just put in the trash, and I'm like, ah, it makes me cringe every time. I'm like, I just don't want the receipt, and I'm making more, and the trash can is full of receipts. And I'm like, what a waste. Or even I love going in the supermarkets now where the they have uh at Stop and Shop where we are, they have the little gun and you can go around and bag stuff as you go. I swear it saves about 30 minutes when you shop. That's cool. Even they with produce, you can weigh your produce and you can get a little sticker with me too. And I'm like, why can't I scan that? Like, I don't need the sticker. Can we stop this stuff? Because that's plastics, too. But anyway, there are these just little things that we can do to try to make an impact on our life and the greater global society as a whole. And the more that we are aware of this, like I said, like you said, like all these industries are exploding now because people are demanding it. And so that that is our power. A lot of us think, what can I do? I'm just a little Joe Schwo in western Massachusetts. But again, it it's these little things that do make an impact. Yeah, and sure. So anybody can do anything if you put your mind to it. So yeah. Thank you so much for taking your time today to come and teach us all. I learned some good things today and love it when I always learn something new. So I'm gonna go. I've been growing rosemary on my porch. I think I'm gonna go grass. Oh perfect, put it on my lunch for my sandwich for lunch.

SPEAKER_00:

Excellent, excellent. Good.

SPEAKER_01:

Thanks everybody. I hope you really enjoyed this whole detox series. As always, you can always reach out and contact Kathy. If somebody is looking for more information or maybe learning more about what a building biologist does, and maybe they're concerned with mold. Like you said, there aren't that many building biologists out there. And I know I've searched for some, and living in Western mask in the middle of really hard to find there. What is a good resource?

SPEAKER_00:

Yep. So building biology institute.org is a great place to go. You can find many building biologists. There's not one in every city. Um, many of us travel. I travel pretty extensively for inspections. If you can't find someone locally, you might be able to reach out to one that can travel to you. But the Building Biology Institute has a lot of free resources that are definitely worth checking out. You could look at my website, which is Whole Home and Body Health, my Instagram page, which is Whole Home and Body Health. And I've got most of my reels, I try to provide tips for people rather than oh my god, mold is gonna kill you or EMS is gonna kill you. Do this instead of this, or maintenance tips for your house, that kind of stuff. Like you said, prevention is key. So yeah, those are good resources. Another one, uh, change the air foundation. I'm a strong advocate for. They're a great resource for air quality and mold. So yeah, that those are all good places to start.

SPEAKER_01:

Great. It's a wonderful place to get started. I know your um site has some really awesome information. So, again, thank you so much. I hope everybody has a great rest of your day, and we'll catch you on the next episode. Thanks.