Written by Christopher Kelly
April 26, 2016
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Julie K: Hello and welcome to the Paleo Baby Podcast. I'm Julie Kelly. Today, I'm very honored and excited to be joined by naturopathic doctor and mom, Julie Walsh, who is the wife of one of my husband's favorite people in the world, Bryan Walsh. I'm very happy to have you. Julie is a blogger and, as I said, a mom and a naturopathic doctor. She blogs over at A Doctor in the House. That's her website where you can find her. Welcome to the show, Julie. Thanks for being on.
Julie W: Thanks for having me.
Julie K: We talked now kind of almost at length before we started recording but we talked about just kind of how our areas of interest overlap. But one of the main reasons I wanted to have you on the show and reading your blog and what you're interested in is you've been on this path to finding the most healthy life possible. And a lot of what you cover and a lot of what you talk about is cleaning out the junk from our everyday life whether it's our beauty products, our household products and really trying to clean up our act in every sense of the world.
Julie W: Yeah.
Julie K: How has that journey been for you? I mean, you started out as an ND. Were you interested, did you know about all of this stuff before you became a naturopathic doctor or did it become more and more important or clear to you as you went through the process and became a mom and -- when did it start, all the bells and whistles go off for you about the fact that our houses and our personal care products might actually be dangerous to our health?
Julie W: Yeah. So, my learning curve was, I don't know, long and steep. I mean, I started out in, I don't know, modeling industry. I mean, that's what I did before I went to naturopathic school. So, I was all into makeup and hair and all this kind of stuff. Then when I went to naturopathic school, I learned that all this stuff was terrible. But basically, my education there was if you choose a product from the health food store, instead of one of these department store brands then you're doing just fine.
And then when I had my first child -- so it's eight years ago now -- I bought a healthy diaper cream and I thought that I was making a wise decision. And then I discovered the Skin Deep database associated with the Environmental Working Group that rates thousands of products of even ingredients for how safe they are and they scale it from zero to ten, zero being safest, ten being most toxic. I spent double for this diaper cream for my newborn that I just wanted to buy the best of the best for and I found out that it was a nine out of then. In other words, like super toxic. So that was really a turning point for me in saying like, hey, I need to learn more about this." Obviously, for myself, for my kids, but then also for my patients because I was recommending people, go to the local health food store and swap out your products.
That was really the first, I don't know, moment that made me really know that we need to know more about what's happening. I think that people are becoming increasingly aware that things have kind of gone awry. We're seeing the increase in this public health issues like cancer and autoimmune disease and learning and developmental issues. Why are we seeing this? And people are thinking about like, "Okay, let's eat organic. Let's avoid gluten. Let's avoid GMOs. Let's exercise some more and sleep more."
They might even be starting to think about choosing more natural products but it goes to the bottles on the shelves. Choose the one with the green leaf on it and that must be better. Or the bottle of shampoo that's made from herbs so that has to be better, let's choose that one. But basically, I don't think that people even know the half of it. And I say that because there's statistics that back that up like 70% of women aged 18 to 64 believe their products are safety tested by the FDA. I thought products were safety tested before they were put on the shelves but they're absolutely not safety tested. That alone, I was like, "Wait a second, they're not?"
And I learned things like, yeah, 80,000 chemicals have been released into commerce since World War II and 90% of those chemicals have never been tested for safety on human health. How is that okay? There's statistics like four billion pounds of chemicals are released into the environment each year and 72 million of these pounds are recognized carcinogens. And again, I hear that and I'm like, "How is this okay?" And we're seeing that these chemicals -- which we're talking about personal products here today -- but they're in our food, they're in our water and they're in our furniture. They're in our pots and pans.
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They come out of cars and they come out smoke stacks. And so none of us are unexposed. And you can't go crazy and live in a bubble but I think what you just want to do is reduce your exposure. So, we're seeing this as a problem not only like we talk about the public health issues but we're seeing it in our environment. I don't know if the people on the call are familiar with indicator species? But basically, these are like the canaries in the coal mine of our environment.
So, they're sensitive species that tell us whether a disease is out breaking, whether there's climate changes, whether there's pollution. So we're having hermaphroditic fish now which are essentially like male fish turning into female fish and like having eggs when they shouldn't. And that's because of those endocrine disrupting chemicals that are in the environment. We're seeing it in ourselves, we're seeing it in our environment and something has to change. One of the stats that really just makes me so sad is that now childhood cancer is the second leading cause of death in children. And that, to me, is like, gosh. Kids are supposed to be healthy. What's going on?
Julie K: I find that a lot of people get overwhelmed by this because they feel like -- everybody wants a magic bullet. Whether it's for their health or any problem they have, they just want a magic bullet. And so when you say, oh, there's always chemicals in our personal care products and in our environment that are causing these problems, people just want to blame it on that. I don't think it is 100% anything. I think there's lots of confounding factors that are leading to these problems.
But I think it's also overwhelming to people, this word chemicals. I think people are almost becoming slightly apathetic to it because they just feel like it's so much I can't -- there's nothing I can't do about it. They just feel like it's overwhelming. But I think from what you've written about and what you talked about, it sounds like we can make some really impactful changes to our routines and our habits and the things that we buy and make a difference in how much exposure we have to this. Like you said, all we can do is really try to reduce it.
But what is it about these chemicals? What makes them so dangerous and why should people really be concerned about the chemicals in these products? What chemicals specifically, not specifically, maybe specifically, but just like groups of chemicals? You mentioned endocrine disruptors. What kind of health problems are we seeing in people or the people that are using in your practice? What kind of problems are they presenting?
Julie W: Well, I see a lot of fertility patients in my practice and I think that's the main thing because people are having a really hard time for the first time ever really having babies and they're going to these fertility clinics and spending thousands and thousands of dollars trying to fix a problem but where's this problem coming from in the first place? And that's a huge one. There's preservatives. There's many problems with preservatives. And there's heavy metals. There's many problems with heavy metals.
And I think that the bigger -- I don't know. These things have, like heavy metals, for example, they've always been in our environment. You can find heavy metals in the fossils of fish from long, long ago. But now, it's the amount. And what's changing now from what existed a long time ago -- and I'll still hear people say it now as, "Oh, it's only a little bit, so it can't really be that big of a deal." And that is just ancient, dates back to the 1600s and Paracelsus where the dose makes the poison. So, if you have a lot of something it makes a difference but if you only had a little bit of it, it doesn't.
And that could not be more wrong. And we're proving it in our own science. If you think of the NuvaRing that prevents conception at .35 parts per billion -- and just to give visual of one part per billion, it's one teaspoon of red food coloring in an Olympic sized swimming pool. So, that's tiny. Albuterol, asthma medication, 2.1 parts per billion prevents an asthma attack. Like just little bits of something can make a difference. We're kind of learning that now. And then on top of that, you know how the body works and how hormones and things are released into the body into tiny amounts and that's how chemicals are used to receiving chemical signaling in the body. Tiny amounts make a cell do something.
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Cells are smart. The body is smart. So, if you were to overdose the body with really large dose of chemicals, a lot of those cells would just shut down as a protective device. So, we can't even activate our own protective devices and shut down with these tiny amounts of chemicals. And now we're learning that these small amounts of chemicals actually, the combination of many chemicals is causing a problem. One chemical plus one chemical doesn't equal two chemicals anymore but it can equal more and it can turn on, for example, cancer causing pathways in the body when they aren't classified as carcinogens at all.
There's all these new research coming out and solid. I mean, you can look up the Halifax project on gettingtoknowcancer.org or any of these things. It's solid that these chemicals are an issue. Back to what chemicals are an issue, I would argue many of them. And what's interesting is the European Union in the personal care product industry, back to them, the European Union banned 1400 chemicals, Canada has banned about 600 and the United States has banned 11. Why? Why are we getting all these chemicals unbanned in our products? And that, as a mom, makes me mad.
Julie K: Yeah. It would make you mad, definitely.
Julie W: I wouldn't know what's in there. What am I putting on?
Julie K: Yeah. I think there's this huge misconception that if it's on the shelf it must be safe. Because I think people who put a lot of faith and trust in government organizations to protect us from these things, when really their interest seems to lie more with protecting the companies who make these products as opposed to the people who are consuming them. I think recently, one of the more eye opening things was the Johnson & Johnson baby wash and soap was found to have high levels of a known carcinogen and people just couldn't believe it.
I mean, I posted several things about it on Facebook and a lot of girl friends just couldn't believe that that -- because it's a trusted family brand. Like people have been using it for time in memoriam. Johnson & Johnson is just like a name that's associated with baby soap and baby smell. And they just couldn't believe that would be allowed to be sold if that had a known carcinogen. I have people actually angry with me because I was insulting a brand. This is so weird. There's kind of this blind faith that they wouldn't put it on their shelf if it wasn't safe.
And I think also which is another kind of standpoint is really dangerous, is that this whole idea that the science is settled. And I'm seeing this more and more and it's really frightening to me as somebody who identifies as a scientist and that being my background and seeing other fellow people who graduated alongside of me and are also scientists taking the stance that the science is really settled on some of these issues especially in relation to the immune system and endocrine system and we don't even get into vaccines but in that whole realm I just feel like that standpoint, "oh, the science is settled," or, "oh, if it was really terrible, the FDA wouldn't put it on the shelf or wouldn't allow it to be on the shelf." That's really, I think, a really dangerous place to stand and not get burned.
Julie W: Yeah. And, I mean, and more -- The information, again, I just kind of continued to learn on this but there hasn't even been a federal law governing the personal product industry since 1938, of this multibillion dollar industry. It's one and a half pages of federal law. It's like the Wild West out there. Anybody can put anything on these products and they are. We always think of drugs or brands and the target brands and stuff like that. I've learned that with preservatives, for example, it's like somebody can -- to make a product, you can buy aloe to go into that product that has tons of preservatives in it.
But because you're just putting aloe into your product that you're making, all you have to list is aloe on that label and you can put something nice in there that somebody would like to see like Rosemary extract. It's like a preservative booster kind of a thing. All products have to have preservatives. You can go on to a health food store, I can go on the health food store and find these things that say preservative free and they can't even be preservative free.
Julie K: No.
Julie W: I mean, of that one and a half pages, one of them is, if it has water as an ingredient, it has to have preservatives. So they're listing preservative free and that's just false. They're in there.
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Julie K: Yeah. We've been learning that too. I mean, we've interviewed lots and lots of people for my husband's podcast and he's interviewed Thorne, which is a supplement company, and they take great care in all of the ingredients that they use in their supplements but one of the things that we've learned from them is that what a lot of other supplement companies won't tell you is that you buy bulk ingredients from a supplier for your supplement.
And like you were saying, if you buy ingredient A and it's just one of your ingredients in your supplement, you don't have to list the things that are in that ingredient. So, if they cut it with milk products, dairy products or other allergens, you don't have to list that on your label. So, there's just tons and tons of ways that things that you think that you're avoiding could still be in the products that you're buying because there's so many loopholes for labeling and creating these products that these companies are very well aware of. Even though they're so poorly regulated they still had to get around the few regulations that there are for labeling.
So, you really just can't be too careful. So, what do we do? I mean, how do -- In your experience and when you're working with people, what are some of the easiest ways for people to get started detoxing not only their bodies but their homes from all of that?
Julie W: Yeah. Well, one of the first places that I send people is to that EWG website, ewg.org, Environmental Working Group. There's Skin Deep portion of the website and I tell them just to take a look at their products. What products are you using every day in your home, what products are you putting on every single day, just take an inventory. What are you putting on your kids? And it will take you a little while. They have an app to go through these. Just to get a basic idea of like what are we using?
Like the EWG, that website, though they have many, many products, they don't have a lot of them. So, if they don't have your particular product, you can choose some of the ingredients off the label and look up those ingredients and see the safety testing for those. So that's one that you can just take a look. The thing is there isn't all information out there on these products so sometimes it will say something like data is limited. So that's like one -- that's a good place to start but then you kind of have to look a little bit further than that because I would say if you do a clean sweep and try to use everything like two, zero to two really is where you want to live with that, those kind of readings, and you get rid of all the rest, that's a really good first start.
If there's anything that they could cut out from using, like for me, when I first went on this quest, it was like, "That's it. I'm cleaning my house. So, vinegar and baking soda." That only lasted a really short time because though I wanted to not use any products once I learned this and how you couldn't trust the industry and all this stuff, I also didn't want my house to smell like vinegar and not be clean. So, from there, it was like I had to look in a little bit further and find out like choosing a few selected companies that you could actually trust just like -- you guys mentioned Thorne. You do it with the supplement industry. We do the same thing.
You have to just choose some companies that are really solid. And sometimes that takes some digging but if you can just fine a handful of things to use that you can trust and rely on for your selves, for your home, for your kids, then that's easily the way to go. And then you can just continue to use them. Sometimes they'll sell out.
Julie K: Yeah. It was what I was going to say. As we found, we have to keep paying attention to these companies because--
Julie W: Exactly. You definitely have to keep paying attention. But it's worth it. Because what happens in the home? It's like we put these chemicals and we clean these products and we think that they go away. But guess what happens when you run a bath for your three-year old in the tub and you just cleaned that tub with something, some super gross chemical product? Well, your three-year-old is bathing in that product.
It's been chilly until just recently around here and so the windows are closed. And so if you spray these chemicals in your house, they remain in your home. They can't even get out from the windows. There's plenty of research to back up indoor air quality is more toxic than outdoor air quality.
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So, it's like people think their homes are super clean and these chemicals just magically vanish. But they don't. They hang around. And with personal products, it's like -- okay, so women, moms, we don't get all dolled up every single day. But the average woman puts on about 12 products on their body like deodorant, toothpaste, whatever they use in their face, soap, shampoo, conditioner. Some of them use perfume which, if you're listening to this and you still do, just--
Julie K: Please stop.
Julie W: Please throw it away right now.
Julie K: Please stop. It's your public service announcement.
Julie W: Yeah, exactly.
Julie K: I can't stand it.
Julie W: They even leave their house in the morning, they're putting on hundreds of chemicals on their body. It's like you don't even think about it. Like what am I housing right now today on my body? What are these chemicals doing all together? So, back to what to do about it, check the EWG, do your research, find a few trusted products. And the reason really you want to go with the trusted products is that whole transparency issue. There's not a lot of people doing a lot of honest things. I don't think there's good people in the world. But in certain realms I think that has to do with sales and money. There's just--
Julie K: Right. I was just going to say where there's money to be made, you should definitely be on your watch and careful. And I think there's also just a lot of confusion out there and I think -- I get a lot of push back on certain things from certain people that aren't necessarily part of the same health minded community or just a lot of push back when they think that there's just a lot of phony information out there.
And I tend to agree. I think there is a lot of misinformation out there especially when you come into the realm of kind of natural remedies or substitutes for some of these products that we would recommend that people try to avoid. Because I think people get excited about things and they maybe -- We also talked a little bit about how whenever there's a multilevel marketing kind of campaign you have to take everything with a little bit of a grain of salt and do your own research and stay kind of on the defense about whether or not there's enough transparency and enough trust there to really go with those products.
But I think what happens in that situation is you get a lot of people that get excited about a product and they want to disseminate information really quickly and I think sometimes people just tend to reiterate and recite what they're told to say without ever really looking into it themselves. And that's dangerous for a lot of reasons. But one of the reasons I wanted to tap this conversation was because I think the main message to take away from this and I think the goal of a practice like you have and a practice like we have is we want people to take ownership of their health.
We want people to learn and educate themselves enough so that they can call BS when they see it. But also not throw the baby out with the bathwater, right? Like there are some really good things out there and I think essential oils is probably -- This is probably a really great place to talk about essential oils. I think there's a lot of benefits from them. There's a lot of really great things about them. There's a lot of great ways that you can implement using them in your home and in your life.
But they're not curing cancer. They are not that magic bullet that I think that a lot of people want them to be or claim that they are. And I think that that's a really important point is that you have to do your homework on this stuff. But if you see one person saying something negative about or saying something about essential oils that you know aren't true or saying something really glowing about some product and you just know that it's not this magic bullet, it doesn't necessarily mean that it's not something you should use or you should avoid. But you have to do the work for yourself. You have to find what's true for you and use them appropriately.
Julie W: Well, and it's really hard because now we have the internet which is like -- They say it's the era of information. It's the era of confusion because anybody can put whatever they want on the internet and just a quick little truth bomb about essential oils is like I had a long history of looking at them, considering them then kind of getting into them, experimenting with a lot of them from multiple different companies.
And like after years of never really getting down to the truth of the matter on most of them and that industry is super messy as well, I found a few would work for handful of things but like my take home message with essential oils is like they're boosted up to be way more than they are. I think they're fantastic for diffusing in your home and making your house smell good and swapping out like a glade plug in.
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Or you can put them in a cleaning product if you want but chances are if that product has vinegar and water in it, you don't have to buy that $40 bottle of essential oil just to add it in there to make it smell like lemon because chances are that lemon scent is not going to stay around at all after you spray and clean that surface and the vinegar is the only thing doing the work. They're a nice add on. If you have like a lot of extra money and time and you really want to dabble in these things, I think that it's fine. But don't feel like you have to get roped into some kind of like monthly auto ship of them and the world is going to die if you don't have every single one of--
Julie K: The kicker for me, when I got into it, the kicker for me was when I got the book that came with it for recipes. And they're literally -- Basically, so what it is, is like a dictionary of ailments. And it's thick. It's like a two-inch or three-inch thick book. And it's a dictionary of ailments. And literally, every recommendation for every ailment is essentially the same.
Julie W: Well, and there's 20 choices. So, you have to buy 20 essential oils to figure which choice works for you. And that's like 20 times $40 a bottle is a lot of experimenting and a lot of money just to figure out that actually none of these work. And by the time I bought them on, I wouldn't even have that problem anymore. It was too messy for me. And I like transparency. I like something that I can trust. And I'm a busy mom. I don't have time to be ordering these crazy supplies and whipping things up and hoping that they work. I need the truth. I need straight up. I need efficiency.
Julie K: I need answers. Yeah, yeah. And I think that's another good rule. I mean, especially if you call BS on something or you're an active participant in your health and you ask questions and they're not willing to answer your questions or they can't answer your questions or they snow you with information, that's a red flag. I'll let people go to your blog and read your post on calling BS on essential oils because I think that that's a really great read.
But, yeah, I think that it applies to a lot of different things. I think it's just an important kind of foundational understanding that you should have as you're becoming your own health ambassador, is be willing to ask questions, be willing to look for transparency, be willing to do your homework and really try to find companies that you can trust. I think there is -- Like you said, we're busy. But this is important, right? It's your health. You have to be responsible of it for the rest of your life.
So, put in a little bit of work to really find the stuff that works for you and then you probably won't have to do that again for a while. You can usually stick with something for a little while, at least. For women specifically, one of the biggest things that, when I work with women, the biggest hang up is makeup. It's that routine. Not necessarily with moms because I feel like a lot of moms I know have thrown that routine out of the window. It takes too much time.
There's a lot of women that I work with that that's like their one thing. It's their hair products and their makeup, that they're not willing to part with. And I don't blame them because I struggled with acne and all kinds of problems for a long time so I had major self conscious issues about my skin and I used to really cake on makeup to just cover it. I just didn't want to see it. I didn't want to think about it. And if it was covered I felt like I could leave the house. But I didn't feel like I could leave the house without it.
And I tried lots and lots of different products. Some of them were "natural" or healthier than others. And they just didn't work. They didn't feel good. Or they made my problem worse. So, what do you do? How do you approach that? How do we get women to think differently about their makeup and what products do you recommend?
Julie W: Yeah. So, that's huge. I mean, you're saying that and so many women that I saw are like flashing through my brain because I have that conversation with them all the time. They're like, "Well, I don't want to look like I work at a health food store." And like in the mom realm, yes, many of us have given up leaving the house looking like a beauty queen but we also don't want to leave the house looking like a mom.
Julie K: No.
Julie W: We don't want to have dark circles under our eyes and like have our hair all disheveled, have snot on our shirt. We'll probably have the snot on our shirts but at least we can look--
Julie K: I'm really tired of the guy at the coffee shops asking me if I'm tired.
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Julie W: Yeah. We're like, "Of course, I'm tired." But you don't want to look like a mom. You want to be a mom but you don't want to look like one. So, I'm all for moms feeling good about themselves. And I kind of came back to this myself because I have four kids and, I don't know, I feel like when I was about two and half kids deep, I was just like tired. I didn't want to get dressed and look good anymore. But I found that when I invested that two minutes in the morning to myself to brush my teeth, wash my face and maybe put on a little under eye concealer and a little lip gloss, I feel better. I brush my hair and I'm like okay. It just made me a better mom to just, I don't know.
Julie K: Self care is huge. I mean, it's really, really important. That's another thing that like I preach to women. Like you have to take time for yourself.
Julie W: You really do.
Julie K: Yeah. If that's the routine that makes you feel like you're taking care of yourself, that's good but I would really prefer that you didn't put a bunch of toxins in your face while you're doing it.
Julie W: Yeah, exactly. And if you put that stuff on your face or your perfume or your lotion and then you snuggle with your baby, you'll get that stuff on your baby and that's a really important developmental time when they're that little. You don't want to get that stuff on them because it really is bad. So that was my thing. And what you said of trying things at the health food store, that was me. I tried them and I was like, "This is horrible." It was expensive and it doesn't work. Forget it. I'm going to go back to this other stuff.
And then I found a fairly new company, Beautycounter, which you talked about the MLM thing. They're not MLM but they're direct retail. So, they allow people to sell their stuff but they're also sold in retail locations, which gives that third party validation as it's not some crazy thing that can't be sold in a real store. But I found Beautycounter because they were education first, product second. So, they were really out there educating people the problems with having metals, the problems with the industry, the reasons why we all have to change this kind of stuff.
And so they were associated with the EWG so like I absolutely love and trust. But then they had the second pillar, the additional, like their crazy safety meticulous standard that I hadn't seen anywhere, and that was performance. So they, also on their team, they have a real makeup artist who does make-up for people in Hollywood and has to have them look good. And so they have to -- the products have to be super safe but then they also have to work. And if they don't do both of those things then they don't become products.
I learned that it took them three years to put a lipstick out because they couldn't pass both of their own standards and I knew that this was the company for me because that's how I am. I won't do it if I'm not doing it great. So, I started playing around with their stuff and it was fantastic because I could choose -- I don't do my face like crazy every day but I could choose a couple of things that I could use that made me feel good about myself that worked and that I knew were non-toxic.
I love their make-up line. They have a shampoo and conditioner. I don't know if you've ever used the natural shampoo and conditioner but I've made that mistake way too many times and then I always went back to my multiple paraben-containing toxic soap that I would use on my hair. But Beautycounter has a fantastic shampoo and conditioner. They have a baby line. I don't get crazy about any one company usually but when I see the work that they're doing and how they're not just trying to be a great company but they're trying to change the industry and move the needle in the right direction for everybody, they're doing cool work. And I aligned myself with them. That's my answer to make-up. It's my answer to make-up, like I said. It's my answer to shampoo. It's my answer to my kids' line. It's a company that I can really trust.
Julie K: Yeah. That's good to know. I mean, I feel like -- That's what caught my attention about them was that I really -- I like the education that they were doing and I like that that was the way that they were leading the conversation with people as opposed to the selling. Because I think that, I hope that that is what really moves the needle for people. I hope that that's what gets women to buy these products, is that they become educated, they understand the importance, they do their homework and they realize that if they come across a company that's putting that much energy, effort and money into the research and into the education piece, then like we talked about with the supplements and like finding other companies that you can trust, then that was probably a worthy company to look into and to at least to give it a try.
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I just started trying out some of their stuff and I'm pretty happy with it. I'm very hesitant to get back into a makeup routine because I feel like I just have an unhealthy relationship with make-up. But at the same time I'm a mom of a two-year old and the dark circles are no joke. And I'm going to be in a wedding in a couple of weeks and I'm just like I've got to figure out what I'm going to put on my face. And I feel like a lot of good has come to my skin. My skin is so much better than it ever was after changing my diet and changing a lot of stuff about our lifestyle and removing a ton of toxic chemicals from my life. But at the same time, yeah, for those special events or just wanting to just walk out of the house feeling a little put together, I tried having a little bit, yeah, of under eye concealer and some lipstick does wonders for self esteem.
Julie W: It really does. I mean, I have a four product morning routine and that is I do the touch of concealer pen. I do a little of their Dew Skin because it has an SPF to it. I put some bronzer on because I have some super pale German skin going on. And then I put on a little bit of their lip sheer and I'm done. It takes me less than two minutes. I usually have at least two kids on the bathroom asking me questions while I'm doing this. But that makes me look like and feel like a person every single morning. So I'm like, that's good.
Julie K: Yeah. I agree. I've been trying some of the lotions and the soaps and stuff like that for the face and I've been really happy with them so far. Because I get asked so many times, as you do too, like what can I trust? I'm constantly looking for the stuff that I can recommend to them because I know how hard it is to find companies and products that you can trust. So I thought that I better give them a try myself. So, I'm glad to hear that you're aligned with them and that you're really happy with that stuff because it's really difficult to find sometimes.
You've got lots of stuff on your page, on your site, about how to make these changes. So, I definitely think that it's important that people go to your site and do some homework and reading because you've got lots of great suggestions on their for detoxing the home, detoxing your personal care routine. Are there any other top three things that people should think about in terms of detoxing and making these choices for themselves and their family? Like the biggest defenders that are kind of in the home or big things that people should worry about as they get started trying to figure out how to detox from all of the stuff.
Julie W: Yeah. We talked about looking at things and figuring out if they're safe or not. And I think another thing that you can really do is look at something and decide do I really need this or not? Do I need this extra product? Do I need to clean with this? I buy one all purpose cleaner from a company called Biokleen and I ordered it off Amazon. They rate cleaning products on A through F on EWG and it's an A. it's very low as far as toxicity. And I use that for everything.
So, I put that in the spray bottle. I can clean my floors with it. I can clean my toilets with it. And that alone, I mean, I go to people's houses or even before I even knew about this, we had so many cleaning products. You don't need all that stuff. I think it's figuring out if you really actually need this is a good way to cut things out too.
Julie K: Yeah. I love their products. I use their laundry detergent and their all purpose cleaner. I love it because it's concentrated so you can just buy one bottle of it and it last a really long time. It's fabulous. But, yeah, I think that's a huge, that's a really great, great point. It's just kind of evaluating why we have -- So, a lot of this stuff is just inherited. Like you watched your mom clean with it and so you feel like you have to clean with it.
It kind of goes back to the food thing. Like I'm always telling people you need to go back to eating kind of what your great grandparents ate as opposed to what you maybe saw your parents or even your grandparents at this point. And it's kind of the same thing. I guarantee your great grandmother didn't have a cupboard full of cleaning products. You probably had baking soda and some vinegar.
[0:40:03]
That was probably -- And she could have given you a million different recipes for how to whip up stain remover and things like that from just a few things. So, I think it's a little bit about getting back to basic.
Julie W: Yeah. And people, like somebody maybe listening to this and be like, oh my gosh, I have to go crazy with this and like just go full tilt crazy reading and researching, getting rid of things, swapping these out. And you can't do that either. And I always put it on my patients like this. In business, there's income generating activities and non-income generating activities. I think in health, there's health generating activities and non health generating activities.
So like a healthy level of assessing what's in your home and what's in your life is good. But obsessing over of it, taking 50 books out from the library, signing up for every single newsletter under the sun, making yourself crazy with this stuff is not health generating. You're causing yourself anxiety. You're taking up space of probably cutting out time that you could be working out or going outside or spending time with your kids or whatever it is.
That's my warning. Don't go too far with this. Do your homework. Get yourself some good solid products and call it a day. You don't have to invest crazy amounts of time and energy in whipping up your own products, on make-up and everything, because that just gets nutty. It's not sustainable.
Julie K: Yeah, yeah. I like that message on your site about not being perfect because I think it's a real danger, another real danger of our internet, information society is that kind of pressure for women to have all their shit together and get all of these things like exactly perfect and exactly right. And I think the more important thing is to get it right for you and for your family and I don't think you have to be perfect in every single category. I think we can all be a little bit better but we don't have to be perfect.
Julie W: Right. Little steps, little things that you can do. Choose one thing this week or this month that you're going to try to swap out and just go from there.
Julie K: Yeah. I think that's all really, really good advice. And I'm sure we could continue to talk for probably hours and hours but I'll just have to have you back. It was really great talking to you. Where can people find out more information or find out how to work with you?
Julie W: Yes. So, they can go to adoctorinthehouse.com. That's where I have information about my practice. I have information about Beautycounter. If you do want to know more about Beautycounter and you decide you want to take a step into the right direction and order something and you do order from me, just send me a quick email through that contact form on my website and I'll send you a little free price just for saying thanks for listening to this podcast and supporting safer products in the industry. Yeah, and feel free to reach out with that contact form any questions. If you want a question that you have that you want to address, that's usually where a lot of my blog posts come from, my community who are like, "I want to know about this." And then I'll do a blog post about it.
Julie K: That's great.
Julie W: It's a great way to stay connected.
Julie K: Wonderful. I really appreciate your time today and talking with you is a really fun conversation and I hope we can do it again.
Julie W: Yeah, me too. Thanks so much.
Julie K: Okay. Thanks, Julie:
Julie W: Bye.
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