Uncovering the Hidden Dangers of Forever Chemicals in Everyday Life

  This week on the Art of Healing podcast, we wade into the world of these pervasive substances; join me, Dr. Charlyce, as we unravel the truth about the 'forever chemicals', PFAS, lurking in common household items and their startling effects on our well-being. Demystifying their origins, prevalence, and the ways they insidiously invade our bodies. As the CDC nudges us toward screening, we're here to arm you with knowledge on how these chemicals might be influencing everything from your cholesterol to your children's birth weight.
Download a copy of the Functional medicine Resources to start your plan now:
"Forever Chemicals" Checklist

This podcast is inspired from this story:
https://abcnews.go.com/GMA/Wellness/video/cdc-urges-blood-testing-forever-chemicals-106506401 


Embark on a critical journey as we confront the daunting links between PFAS and increased health risks, including certain cancers and high blood pressure during pregnancy. Discover how these chemicals could undermine the power of the vaccines we trust to protect us.
But it's not all doom and gloom;
I'll guide you through the maze of testing for PFAS and share practical strategies to reduce your exposure and safeguard your health. Knowledge is power, and this episode is your shield against the unseen chemical onslaught of the modern world. Don't just live—thrive by making informed choices with me on the Art of Healing podcast.

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:53

Welcome back to the Art of Healing podcast. This is Charlize, and thank you for joining me for this week's episode. I want to address something that I saw in the media that I think is very much worthwhile for our time to discuss, which are forever chemicals. I happen to catch a short story and I will put a link in the show notes to the story about forever chemicals, the effect they have on our health and a recent recommendation not a strong recommendation, but a recommendation from the CDC to start screening patients, potentially at random, for their exposure. And this topic isn't foreign to me and for those of you that have looked into or are seeing a functional medicine doctor, maybe not so foreign, but with this story there were a few issues that came up that I think deserve a little bit of attention as far as what we can do to address our exposure to forever chemicals, our risk to forever chemicals and what we would do about that if we had been exposed to forever chemicals. During this podcast episode, I would like to address what forever chemicals are. We'll discuss how we get exposed to them and how they come to be within our bodies. We'll discuss how our body processes those. Then we'll discuss ways that you can be tested for them and resources to look for as far as finding a way to be tested. And then the initial steps that you can take to come up with a plan to reduce your risk right now for exposure to forever chemicals or to have at least somewhere to go if you have been exposed to your where of it you're concerned and the steps that you can take right now as far as making a plan in the future. So what are forever chemicals?

Speaker 1: 2:57

According to the CDC's guide information for clinicians, the term forever chemicals is applied to what are called PFAS. Pfas stands for per or polyfluoroalcohol substances, so we'll stick to this term, pfas or forever chemicals, so that you don't have to suffer through me stumbling through that term again. What these chemicals are are they are chemicals that contain fluorine or fluorinated carbon chains. So it turns out in the world of chemistry these chemical bonds are very, very strong and actually cannot be broken. So in terms of why you would need forever chemicals, they are considered a good thing if you are making certain industrial products cleaning products, products that aren't supposed to catch on fire to protect us. So PFAS will frequently appear in packaged paper goods, carpets, textiles. Common places they may appear are in the coating of cooking ware that is supposed to be non-stick. So by having those PFAS there they contribute to being able to heat up the food without the food sticking to the metal surface of the cookware. Pfas are also found in certain industrial centers or centers where men, humans, do their work. So airports, military bases, industrial processes, anything basically that involves machinery, machinery work, chemical production. So, as we're starting to gather, these PFAS's are unfortunately very common.

Speaker 1: 5:06

Forever chemicals aren't benign, as the thinking had been over the past several decades and centuries that humans have become more industrialized. So, for many of reasons, we either didn't know to look, didn't have a way to look, didn't have the technology to look. So these forever chemicals are being used increasingly in industry and agriculture, pretty much in any kind of human process that requires mass production, because of their ability to make things work better, faster, grease, the wheels in general. But we didn't know until the last few decades the effects they can have on our health. And it turns out, according to the CDC, that these forever chemicals, or PFASs, unfortunately could be impacting our health. Some of the impacts on our health include increasing our cholesterol levels, having an effect on birth weights of babies, maybe causing them to be born smaller than we'd expected, increasing the ability to reduce how well our vaccines work by lowering our ability to produce a good amount of antibodies whenever we take a vaccine. So when you go through the trouble of getting vaccinated and you're trying to boost your immune system, you're wanting to generate a good amount of antibodies, because that means you get protection from the vaccine, but having a high level of these forever chemicals might be preventing that. There is an association between these forever chemicals and certain types of cancers, including kidney cancer and testicular cancer, and some of the evidence is putting a question on whether these forever chemicals could lead to other types of cancer or increase the risk of other types of cancers.

Speaker 1: 6:56

These forever chemicals can cause women to have high blood pressures and may be associated with preeclampsia during pregnancy. And even scarier is that these forever chemicals tend to filter into and get concentrated within the placenta. So as I was researching on this, after I read the study, because I'd heard of forever chemicals but I hadn't really appreciated the impact that they have it appears that one of the body's way of eliminating forever chemicals, because there are a number of ways we can't eliminate them, but for women that are pregnant. Forever chemicals are eliminated through the placenta, so it's a little bit frightening. So that means, at the risk of the placenta in the baby, these forever chemicals are pulled out of the pregnant woman's circulation. There's also a risk of changing the liver enzymes, that these forever chemicals can cause the liver to have trouble with working. That's really important because a fatty liver, metabolic liver disorder, is becoming more common, which seems to be related to diabetic risk but also seems to be related to being exposed to these forever chemicals.

Speaker 1: 8:21

Forever chemicals are not naturally occurring. They're occurring from man-made activities, industrial applications primarily. But for those of us living in the world, we're getting exposed to them from several sources. So from our water, and according to the CDC, the biggest concern would be, of course, if your water source is coming from someplace that's got many industrial complexes or many chemicals products are being produced. Again, living near places such as military complexes or airports, there's a concern that these forever chemicals could be part of the soil as a result of these man-made activities. It seems to be less of a risk as far as airborne, although the CDC does make mention of those that would have or are working in industrial complexes working in industry where they could have high exposure or these products could be getting into the air that breathing them in could be a risk factor for ingesting and accumulating forever chemicals in the system. And then let's say I mentioned soil, water. And then for children, it appears that the risk of exposure and retention of forever chemicals may be higher because children just you know, by accident especially young babies with a tendency to ingest and put things in their mouth, as well as with older kids who might be concentrating these chemicals because of their relatively small body size, but they may be consuming amounts of food somewhere near what an adult would consume, so they might actually be getting more by a concentration effect.

Speaker 1: 10:18

The CDC's recommendation was to encourage or increase the number of people who are being tested, potentially testing at random. When I did a little bit of digging, what I'm interpreting is the CDC is recommending possible community-wide testing. So you know, doing community-wide assessments which might be done similar to what can be done now, which is done now, which is testing sewage drainage, waste materials from a large amount of humans. That can be done for COVID testing, because COVID shed in stools and I'm assuming what they're referring to is possibly doing like a community-wide testing of wastewater, waste materials for the amount of forever chemicals that might be within the community. So it is possible to test for your personal level of exposure or contamination with forever chemicals. The CDC recommends testing in the blood work, which is possible through a simple lab draw. You can also do similar testing through a collection of urine.

Speaker 1: 11:29

During the media clip that I'll be attaching, one of the sort of challenges that were presented, where that testing for forever chemicals is not covered by insurance and that testing for forever chemicals may not be easily attainable or doable for most people. So it is true that insurance likely won't cover for testing for forever chemicals. And what got my attention with this story is this is important, of course, and it's unfortunate, but when we're looking at how we're getting our health care, it is important to remember that if you're using your health insurance, health insurance as well as the traditional doctor's office, really have to stick to certain algorithms and paradigms and protocols so that something has to pass through a number of testing evidence-based testing that has to be larger volume before insurance will cover for the test. Is this necessarily right? It is what it is. I'll put it that way. It is what it is, but what I will share with you that, as far as testing for these forever chemicals is doable, it is affordable if you work on a plan or even through this podcast and your show notes. I'm actually making a cheat sheet or a resource sheet so that you can assess your own risk and decide what to do next, and maybe it's something that you can plan for even if you don't have the cash immediately available. You can make plans to get your testing for forever chemical exposure in the next few months.

Speaker 1: 13:16

In this story that was covered in the media, the last part that really got my attention and really got me to thinking I should get out some information here is once you do the test, what do you do? There are no clinically proven treatments for this. There's really no plan, so there's nothing you can do about it. That is wrong. That is absolutely wrong. There actually is something you can do about your exposure to forever chemicals and helping your body heal from it. So the first thing you can do is actually just having learned what forever chemicals are in this podcast. The next step you can do is download my freebie, which I will give you some resources as far as developing a plan for knowing if you need to be tested, finding a way to get tested and then knowing what to do after you've been tested.

Speaker 1: 14:13

I believe that the way the story was reported was there was nothing you could do as far as the traditional allopathic realm, in which we do appeal for an ill. So that's true. So if you do the test for forever chemicals and it turns out that maybe you were an army veteran and you worked in a military base and you did a job where you were exposed to a high amount, and you might be in your 40s or 50s now and you're aware of being treated for abnormal liver tests, high blood pressure, kidney issues, and you're wanting to dig deeper, then you absolutely should dig deeper. You actually should. So then, what you do after that, there is something you can do. So I am recommending that you have a look at my resource sheet that I'm going to create for you and from there you can make a decision if you feel that you should be tested for forever chemicals, and I'll put some links as far as resources. You can find a healthcare practitioner or a physician that you can obtain those tests. My practice is open, so you can work with me if that's something that is viable and doable and licensed in the state that you live in.

Speaker 1: 15:33

But the first step would be learning what the chemicals are, having listened to this podcast, knowing that you might be at risk of exposure to them, knowing where to get tested, and then developing a personalized plan that would include a number of things, not just one thing, so probably addressing your organ function, your body's ability to eliminate. Addressing your nutritional needs, what you might be deficient of or anything that might be driving more inflammation or might make you unable to release toxins. Addressing specific steps you can do to aid in your body's ability to detox. There's actually many things that you can do, many steps that you can take to eliminate unnecessary, forever chemicals in your body, and then having a plan to follow up on that. So if you'll make sure to check the notes the show notes for this episode you'll see a link that you can find the resources that you'll need. It'll be a PDF that you'll be able to download.

Speaker 1: 16:46

We will get back together in a week or two for the next episode. I am so grateful for you joining me for this episode and, as always, you can sign up for my weekly newsletter, in which I will email you a copy of the podcast and the other resources that go with this and other ways that we can stay in touch. Thank you so much. Oh, and if you have a chance, feel free to send a rating or rate me on whatever platform that you're listening to, because it always helps for a small podcast if folks that are going through can see if this podcast is worth listening to. Thanks so much. Have a great week. Bye.