87. Layne Kilpatrick: The Shocking Truth About Microplastics Destroying Young Men's Hormones

What if I told you that an 18-year-old athlete had a testosterone level of 26 - when it should be near 1,000? In this episode of Extend, I sit down with Layne Kilpatrick, a pharmacist with over 30 years of experience who has been sounding the alarm about environmental toxins for years. We dive into the alarming decline in testosterone levels, how microplastics are literally everywhere, and why young, healthy men are showing up with fertility issues that would have been unthinkable decades ago. We also share actionable solutions to protect ourselves and our families. Layne Kilpatrick is a pharmacist and the driving force behind Hormone Specialist. He specializes in breaking down the science of hormones and everyday toxins, empowering both men and women to understand the root causes of hormone imbalances and take actionable steps to restore their vitality in a world filled with endocrine disruptors. We Also Discuss: Why Testosterone Levels Have Dropped 50% in 50 Years The 18-Year-Old Athlete with a Testosterone Level of 26 Microplastics vs. Nanoplastics: Size Matters for Toxicity The Paint on Glass Bottle Lids That's Contaminating Your Water PFAS: The "Forever Chemicals" Found in 100% of Breast Milk Samples The $200 Desktop Solution That Filters Microplastics HEPA Filtration: Why You Need Carbon Filters Too BPA-Free Doesn't Mean Safe: The Regrettable Substitution Problem Paper Cups and Straws: The Hidden Plastic Linings The Four-Step Action Plan to Protect Your Family Today Resources: Persistent Inert Substances Comparison: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1_kDzJzqFQN9m59IxfCtJKgc-n4qAlxgn/edit Thank You for Our Sponsors: IM8: Try IM8 today with a 30-day money back guarantee. You can get 20% off your first order with code DRSHAH at https://im8health.com/discount/DRSHAH. Learn more about Dr. Shah: Website: https://www.drshah.com/ Clinic: https://www.next-health.com/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/darshanshahmd/ Learn more about Layne Kilpatrick: Website: https://www.hormonespecialist.net/ Instagram:https://www.instagram.com/hormonespecialist/

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:03Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Welcome to Extend with me, Dr. Darshan Shah, a podcast dedicated to cutting-edge science, research, tools, and protocols designed to help you extend your health span. Having become one of the youngest doctors in the country at the age of 21, and trained and board certified at the Mayo Clinic, I've accumulated three decades of practice as a board certified surgeon and longevity expert. Over that time, I've discovered that a mere 20% of health knowledge yields 80% of the results when it comes to your health span. We're living in a new era where we are creating a new healthcare system, no longer focused on disease management, but achieving optimal health and vitality. Join me as I interview world renowned experts, offering you a step by step guide to proactively avoid disease and most importantly, extend your health span.

• 0:49Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Lain, thank you for joining me. I'm sorry I stalked you and finally pinned you down to do this.

• 0:56Speaker 01

  Oh gosh, it's my pleasure. I appreciate being with you today.

• 0:59Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, thank you so much. And you know, I've been following you for a very long time and I've learned so much from your Instagram channel and about hormone disrupting chemicals, environmental toxins, and there's so much depth of knowledge you have in this field. And I really appreciate you bringing this to the forefront of my consciousness.

• 1:20Speaker 01

  Well, it's been an interesting ride. Maybe I'll just tell you a little bit about how I got into this.

• 1:26Dr. Darshan Shah?

  That's what I want to know. Like, you know, you're a pharmacist. How did you, how did you go down this rabbit hole?

• 1:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, right? Well, I've, I've been in the hormone therapy area, specialty area for most of my career, actually since my internship, so the whole time. And I just chose early on to, to get deep into the clinical side so that I could support patients in the same way that their practitioner was, you know, prescribing things and the same course and program he had them on, he or she. So that really helped. And then Patients started coming to me first because they kind of don't know where to go these days for hormone therapy. There's a lot of misinformation out there and from some of it's from old studies that have been debunked or the interpretation's been improved, let

• 2:14Speaker 01

  me put it that way. So they would start coming in to me, where do I go? How do I get help with this? And so I kind of start with them, do some screening. And then I started seeing younger and younger people come in to my office, starting, you know, they're looking for help. Their doctors didn't know really what to do with them. And so I'm thinking, this is what's going on here. I mean, hormone therapy, generally, people think of that as sort of a middle-aged kind of issue. You don't deal with that until a little bit later on, menopause for women and, you know, 50s or so for men. Not what I'm seeing. So then I started looking into it a lot more. And then I've come across this research on hormone disruptors. And to me, there's something going on that I think is environmental because

• 2:58Speaker 01

  nobody else has any good answers for it. And so I started, I started posting about that and the followership just skyrocketed, which told me, that made me happy because when I looked at the age of who these people were, they're in that 30 to 40 range. And I'm going, okay, this is making sense now. This is corroborating. There's a real issue here and these people aren't getting answers. So I just dove into it deeper and deeper. And that's, that's how I got into this. But it's been really, really interesting.

• 3:28Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Really interesting. And it's so concerning because I don't think a lot of people in their 30s, and I was one of them, I'll be transparent with you, that I was in my 30s and I was feeling horrible. I had very low energy, lots of symptoms, and I did not even think it could be my hormones until I was 40 and I got a testosterone test and I saw my level was 200 something, way lower than it should have been for someone my age. And even myself, I just wondered like, how can this even be possible? And it's very concerning because now, even in my practice, I see, I see this over and over and over again, testosterone

• 4:07Dr. Darshan Shah?

  levels, men and women, just being in the, in the dumps and also thyroid levels, et cetera. And it's a real problem, right?

• 4:16Speaker 01

  Oh, it is. I'll tell you, this will blow you away. The youngest that I've seen with the lowest level was an 18-year-old, barely 18. This is an athlete. This is, and that's what I'm seeing. I'm seeing typically, you know, these aren't the couch potatoes.

• 4:31Dr. Darshan Shah?

  No.

• 4:32Speaker 01

  He had a total testosterone of 26.

• 4:36Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Oh, my gosh. Wow.

• 4:38Speaker 01

  Yeah. And to give you guys an idea, I mean, we're looking at a young men like that, it ought to be up in near a thousand.

• 4:44Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Near a thousand, right.

• 4:45Speaker 01

  That's what men see. So these testosterones in the tank, I often see these, these younger men when they, they don't know until they come in and they're having fertility issues.

• 4:54Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right, right.

• 4:55Speaker 01

  Men are just not.

• 4:56Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Brings it up now.

• 4:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, we're not in tune with our reproductive health. Women have a monthly reminder of what's going on. Men, we don't look at it.

• 5:04Dr. Darshan Shah?

  No, no. And we just kind of live with the symptoms and just assume it's, you know, us being tired, weak, stressed, whatever you want to call it. And we don't deal with it or even check for it. It's just, and just so people can understand, you know, someone might be listening to this and thinking like, huh, is this a problem that I'm experiencing? What are some of the symptoms that you see that your clients came in with and were complaining about?

• 5:31Speaker 01

  Well, for these younger guys, often it's fertility.

• 5:36Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 5:36Speaker 01

  They're just not able. And traditionally, we blame, we blame the woman for that.

• 5:40Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 5:40Speaker 01

  And that's a, that's a big, that should be a big eye opener for people. Men are responsible for probably more than half of miscarriages. Just poor sperm quality, poor DNA fragmentation, low sperm count, low concentration, poor motility. It's, but they don't know. They just don't know this because they just, they can't feel it. So I would say that fertility. And then as, as they get older, they'll find that they're just less responsive anabolically in the gym. These guys are trying hard. And this kid, I tell you, I said, you have my utmost admiration. You're out there doing this against all the odds and all of your, a significant

• 6:22Speaker 01

  disadvantage. All the other athletes out there, I'm assuming have near normal levels, and you're doing this still at, at such a low level. It really is hard. They get fatigued easier. They just don't get a muscular build response to disciplined exercise and resistance training. Cognitive things. Loss of of drive, just motivation. Testosterone makes you want to go out there and do the things that you enjoy doing. And so you're fighting that as well as the physical side of it, lack of response. And it's no wonder most of these guys just, they just give up. And they, as you said, they just live with it.

• 7:05Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right, right. One of the things I find also with younger men in particular is, you know, I think as we get older, we look as erectile dysfunction as a sign of low testosterone. And that's usually what alerts a man in his 40s or 50s to go seek therapy or treatment. In the younger individuals, I find that that's sometimes not part of the symptomatology. And some of the other things that you're talking about, fatigue, inability to put on muscle, weight gain, and that is kind of preserved. And, you know, when I talk to these younger men about about low testosterone, like, everything's working fine down there, doc. Like, I don't know what you're talking about. And I often have to tell them it's, that is sometimes preserved in younger individuals.

• 7:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, you're right. We don't often see that, which is what most people would expect. Sometimes we do, but it's it's amazing how different it is in a younger man than someone that's that's older, because you've got other, you know, circulatory issues that are not as healthy as as younger men. But yeah, no, it's not always apparent from that, from that perspective.

• 8:11Dr. Darshan Shah?

  And the cognitive and the mental aspect is sometimes the most prominent because they, these young men are often depressed. They often are doing poorly in their schoolwork. They're just not, they can't pay attention. I think some of the times they get labeled attention deficit as well. And so these are some of the symptoms that I think if you're younger, looking at your testosterone level could reveal the answer.

• 8:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, for sure. And I'm glad you brought up the the psychological things, too. There's a Psychiatrist that I knew years ago that said, I won't, I won't even consider psychotropics or any psychiatric medication until I look at testosterone. Oh, how I wish more of them were like that. Cause it could be such an easy either rule out or fix. And how much better is it to just give something that you normally have rather than introduce something that, you know, everything's got its baggage.

• 9:10Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah. Side effects and psychotropic medications, et cetera. Right?

• 9:14Speaker 01

  They end up introducing something else and how more, how better treatment, how much a better treatment that would be if they just looked at that. I call them foundational. Hormones are foundational. You've got to make sure that's there. And it's amazing, you bring those up to optimal, how many things just evaporate and go away. It's not a fix all, no question, but it is a bigger issue. And this is, it kind of goes back to what we were talking about at the beginning. We don't have any answer for that. I'm, I really like thinking about root causes. I hate throwing, throwing drugs at things. I tell people I'm a recovering pharmacist. I don't really like to, I don't really like drugs. If they're needed, they're

• 9:55Speaker 01

  needed. But I tell you, there's just, there's a, there's a proper way stepwise to approach this. And it all start with that.

• 10:05Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Exactly. Exactly. So true. And you said that, um, you know, you came down to the conclusion that the environment was somehow leading to these endocrine disruptions, these hormonal issues. Can you kind of expound on that? What were some of the environmental causes that you were seeing causing these symptoms to occur?

• 10:25Speaker 01

  Sure. I would break this down with these, with these patients. Some of them, a couple of them were professional athletes who would go through, back to their childhood, back to puberty, talk about what possible injuries, what was the timing of puberty? How did this progress? And just, I mean, I'm not an endocrinologist. I'm not, I'm not even a diagnostician, but...

• 10:48Speaker 01

  It helps at least to screen these people to try and identify if something is going on, then send them to the right place. But I would just, I would be seeing these things and there just isn't a clear, a clear reason or a clear answer. So I got into the research of Dr. Shauna Swan. She was one of the first people that I read in depth. She's done, she's an epidemiologist and she's done amazing research with phthalates. Phthalates are, are present and they're a plasticizing agent added to plastics to make them more pliable and to improve the properties in whatever direction the manufacturer needs it to be.

• 11:28Speaker 01

  But they don't, they don't bind to the actual components of the plastic. They're just sort of free floating in the matrix. And so as such, they can readily off gas or leak out into whatever medium they're in contact with. And that was one of the, gosh, that was just really eye opening to me, the things that we know about that and why, why that isn't more widespread, that knowledge, especially with pregnant women. Oh my gosh, there's a window, right, of opportunity right there that most women don't, have no idea. If they get exposed to high levels of phthalates, they're going to affect, if it's a male child,

• 12:08Speaker 01

  they will affect that, his progression and formation of genitals, there, even his fertility that can pass on to his progeny. Because it affects germ cells. Only a short period of time when, when this is taking place and it's, there are changes in the brain that are affected, but the formation of, the differentiation of genitals between men and women occurs at that window. And wow, that's something that would be an easy fix. I mean, as long as there's some education around it. So phthalates were one of the first things that I, that I was introduced to. And then as I, as I got into more and more of this, there's this, there's this little

• 12:51Speaker 01

  world out there, people that do this. I realized how many other things there are and how many different ways they can do things and how. Cavalier, we are about it, especially in the US. It's like the motto for most of Europe is, you know, prove it if it's if it's safe. And it's kind of flipped here in the US, it seems like, and it's on to the the consumer. And it's it's prove that it's harmful. Wow. So that lets a whole lot of things on to the market that I'm not saying that these people are necessarily nefarious in what they're doing, but I will say, full throated, they are careless.

• 13:31Dr. Darshan Shah?

  You're responsible.

• 13:32Speaker 01

  Not looking at what what this could be possibly doing to people. And so that kind of approach leads to all sorts of things that we just don't have answers to. Testosterone levels are 50% what they were 50 years ago, dropping by about a percent a year. That affects fertility, and it's not it's true of women, too. So somebody's got to have an answer here, but nobody's coming up with it. So.

• 13:55Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, it's mind blowing. So these phthalates are chemicals that are added to plastics to give them certain properties. He had these have never been tested, they've just been thrown out there to the public. They're ubiquitous, they're in everything now because they've been in plastics for so long and plastics are everywhere. What are some of the other chemicals that are kind of mixed in with plastic that people should be aware of?

• 14:18Speaker 01

  Well, there most people have heard of BPA, bisphenols. There's that class. There's the polyfluorinated alkyl PFOS, PFAS. Those are, talk about ubiquitous, they'll they'll do samples and tests on on they did one on breast milk and women, 100% of those tested had PFOS in the breast milk. It's it's in the water, it's everywhere. And this is, these are things that that waterproof, like waterproof clothing, stain resistant carpets or or furniture, raincoats, fire retardants.

• 14:53Speaker 01

  Those kinds of things, takeout boxes, pizza boxes, so that the grease doesn't soak through the pizza onto your upholstery in your car. That just gives you an idea of how they get to be everywhere. And so, yeah, those are a couple of others. And then, of course, plastics, microplastics.

• 15:09Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah. So plastics come with chemicals added to them that have severe effects, I think, not just hormones, also to your immune system, to cognitive function. There's a lot of effects to these that have been shown in studies, but also effects that we don't even know coming from these chemicals out of the plastics. And then the plastic itself can also be an issue. And we're hearing a lot about microplastics. You're talking a lot about microplastics. I'd love for you to kind of maybe just first define what is a microplastic and how are these all over the place? And how do we find them?

• 15:45Speaker 01

  Sure. Well, let me just tell you, there's a couple of kind of interesting factoids about this. Let me catch people's interest. The calculated exposure dose of microplastics from plastic bottled water was 22-fold higher than that from tap water. Now, I recommend filtering tap water, and we'll get into that a little bit later. But then there was also a study in France, out of France here. See, I think it was a Journal of Food Composition and Analysis, just like last month, where they found it, they tested some beer, they tested wine, they tested soft drinks, and I think, and I think water. And they found it higher in glass. So that kind of, because there's been all kinds of studies that show it higher in plastic.

• 16:28Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 16:28Speaker 01

  Well, in examining it further, they found it was from the paint on the lid. It matched. So, anyway, that's just a little interesting aside.

• 16:38Dr. Darshan Shah?

  That's an important point, because, you know, just because you're drinking out a glass bottle doesn't mean you're safe now, because the lid is a problem, right?

• 16:46Speaker 01

  Yep. Yeah, I know. It's just, like, we come across that all the time. Oh, my gosh, now there's this we have to worry about. Now there's this. But you've got to think that way.

• 16:54Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 16:55Speaker 01

  You've got to think critically.

• 16:56Dr. Darshan Shah?

  You have to think critically about everything that you're putting into your body. What's, what is being housed in and stored in as well?

• 17:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. So interestingly, drinking water and beverages are second in their, as a source of microplastics to the, actually to the air we breathe. We get more exposure and more microplastics in the body as an entry point through the air we breathe than, than what we drink. I, I thought that was interesting. And it's important to note here that, that in, in animal studies, I'll, I'll qualify that, microplastic exposure has, has shown that there's a link to inflammation, there's a link to immune response, hormone disruption, and metabolic, so, you know, lipid and, and energy metabolism. So those,

• 17:46Speaker 01

  those are there. And evidence is emerging that we're seeing that it's also coming up as an obesogen, in other words, making us resistant to weight loss. That's, that's something that is interesting when you look at charts, you'll see that obesity and the introduction of plastics kind of track along together. You go back 50, 60 years. Just saying, there's, there's a lot to this. So, microplastics are these materials that are broken down, microplastics considered down to 0.1 microns. And to give you a reference, there are, a human hair is about 70 microns. A nanoparticle is anything below that. So

• 18:27Speaker 01

  that, that's a definition of, of, uh, microplastic. If you think of them, if you think of plastics like as a mineral, let's say gold, for instance, and gold's a good example because it's soft. It will, at, over time, I mean, if it's sitting buried in a vein under, you know, 200 feet of soil, it's going to stay just as it is. If it's rolling down a creek bed, it's gonna, it's going to break off these little micro particles, and pretty soon it's a dust, it's gold dust. It never goes away, though. There's a finite amount of gold on this earth. And that the comparison to microplastics is, is really good here because they similarly

• 19:08Speaker 01

  will never go away, but the big difference is, we can make more, and we are, by the hundreds of tons each year. So just think about that sort of accumulating, that's, and that's what we mean when we talk about microplastics.

• 19:22Dr. Darshan Shah?

  So these, these microplastics are 0.1 microns, and anything smaller than that is a nanoplastic? And so microplastics, they can go all the way up to a millimeter. Is that correct? Is that?

• 19:38Speaker 01

  Sometimes they're bigger than that. It's absolutely shocking. Some the size that they'll find sometimes like in their gut.

• 19:43Dr. Darshan Shah?

  That's crazy.

• 19:44Speaker 01

  Like embedded in the wall of the gut.

• 19:45Dr. Darshan Shah?

  And you could see, you could see these sometimes in the gut. I've seen pictures of arteries where they're in the artery as well. But how small does it have to be for it to get absorbed into the bloodstream? And how does that kind of affect where the particles end up in your body?

• 20:03Speaker 01

  Okay, a good question. They're, they're, when they're smaller, a nanoparticle, it impacts things in a number of ways. One, they're, they're more reactive because there's more surface area. So the, the charges and the, the characteristics of that particle now can interact more. Another reason is they can penetrate biomembranes, like they can penetrate the blood brain barrier. Nanoplastics, like a point, point one, it can absorb through the, the alveoli in the lungs at 2.5 microns.

• 20:33Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Wow.

• 20:34Speaker 01

  In the stomach, 150 can be absorbed, looser junctions in those cells. But so, and obviously the more, the more particles you get, so in nano, nanoparticles, they're going to be spread out more in the cell, on the earth, in the wind. This is why they're everywhere. They're, they've been found in the Arctic snow where man has never set foot. That's how they get everywhere. They're just, just teeny tiny.

• 21:01Dr. Darshan Shah?

  They're tiny and they just go everywhere. And in our body, I mean, I, I mentioned that I saw an article where they had done a dissection of a artery and they found microplastics in the artery wall. Where else do they end up in our bodies?

• 21:16Speaker 01

  Oh gosh, they're in the blood, blood clots, breast milk in, in large abundance. Because they prefer to be in the plasma. That's, that's where they circulate around in the plasma. Semen, testicles, lungs, heart, brain, carotid artery plaque, right here. And that's a common test for, for assessing cardiovascular risk. You know that they found that patients that had, they found plaque lodged in that, in that plaque, were found to be four and a half times more likely to have a cardiac event in the next three years. So there's not a lot of data out there that show the effect, that was a human study, by the way. Yeah. That show effect on humans. And so a lot of people kind of dismiss it that way.

• 22:01Speaker 01

  Peter T is a little bit that way. Well, we don't have good data. It's hard to measure, and he's right. It is hard to measure nanoparticles in the human body, especially in tissues. But when you've got anything like that circulating around, and it, well, if it shows risk like it did in the carotid artery plaque, I don't know, I don't know why we would wait. It's, you're not going to get really good studies because what are you going to do? Introduce somebody with microparticles and, or nanoparticles and say, we want you to be in this study. You might have, you might have a dose of nanoparticles in, which could cause some problems for you, but we need to see how you do compared to someone who doesn't have it. Sometimes all we're left with is epidemiological studies.

• 22:43Speaker 01

  And we can look at like urine levels too, and that, that can help. So it's, it's hard, but I hate dismissing it because, well, we don't have a lot of good data yet. We have things that are like it. Uh huh. And we talk about those for a second. My gosh, this, it's not without precedent to have a, what they call a persistent inert substance. Yes. In the, in the body. Think about, think about coal miners, black lung. Right. That's carbon. That's inert. That's not going to dissolve and break down. So what happens is it gets in the lungs and it's in small enough little dust particles that it can get into the, into the lung tissue, the alveoli there.

• 23:24Speaker 01

  Think of those as like a bunch of, a bunch of grapes with a lot of surface area. About 90 tennis courts is about how big the surface area of your lungs is. So that gets in there. The immune system recognizes that, well, it doesn't recognize it. It says, we don't know what this is, so you need to leave. So it does its macrophage thing and surrounds it and tries to isolate it and digest it, but it can't because. It doesn't, enzymes don't work on it.

• 23:52Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 23:53Speaker 01

  So it just keeps circulating around. It's working and trying and the whole time it's creating inflammatory responses and trying to recruit everything it can to do it. And then finally, it just says, all right, well, if I can't get rid of you, I'm going to isolate you. And I'm going to like build a cocoon around you and just make it so you can't do anything and we can't do anything. Nobody can do anything with you.

• 24:15Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yep.

• 24:16Speaker 01

  Well, so it sits there in the lungs and forms fibrosis, scar tissue around it. Well, that's black lung disease.

• 24:24Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 24:25Speaker 01

  We see it with asbestos. We've seen it with silicone, silica dust, rather, not silicone, silica. That's volcanic ash, things that are minerals like that. So it's not without precedent. Have we seen this kind of inflammatory fibrosis formation with microplastics? I don't think so. I don't think we've seen it yet. But should we wait?

• 24:46Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 24:47Speaker 01

  You know, I think the stakes are pretty high here.

• 24:49Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, absolutely. I mean, and you provided me the nice chart, kind of comparing these, and I'll put that chart in the show notes.

• 24:57Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 24:57Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Carbon and silica. And if we assume that our body, I mean, we don't have to assume this, we know this, that our body does not recognize plastic as something that is supposed to be inside of our body, it's going to have a similar response, this inflammatory response, which also leads to cancer, right? An overactivation of the immune system can lead to cancer as well. It's going to have a very similar response to the, that we've had to carbon is your point, in colonizers' lung. And so why wait to accumulate that level of plastics in our body before we start trying to avoid it, correct?

• 25:38Speaker 01

  Avoid it or do whatever it is that we can do. And you know, there's several approaches to that. But yeah, absolutely. I mean, one of the, it's, it's effects on hormones, maybe we could talk about that for a second.

• 25:49Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, I'd love to. Before we do that, can our body eliminate these microplastics? Does our body have mechanisms to eliminate the microplastics?

• 25:57Speaker 01

  Well, it does. They're not very Efficient.

• 26:00Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 26:01Speaker 01

  And so as such, you can have these particles circulating around for, you know, really long half lives, months to years. And the reason for that is because, I mean, how does the body normally eliminate these things? They get, they get surrounded and or tagged by the liver with, with with an aura or something that helps the body recognize it as we want this out. The liver, after doing that, dumps it back through the bile duct into the GI tract. But it can be reabsorbed is the problem. It's so small that it can be reabsorbed. So some of it is eliminated that way in the stool. Some is eliminated through the kidneys. But again, you can, you can reabsorb through the kidneys as well. You can filter it out and then reabsorb

• 26:41Speaker 01

  it back in. And that's what happens. Other than that, the macrophages are not, they don't have an effective enzyme to break it down into, I mean, there's these long polymers.

• 26:50Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 26:51Speaker 01

  And break it down into its constituent parts. It just, it just, we don't have it. So it tends to be in the plasma when it's circulating. And so the ways they say you can get rid of it are, you can get rid of it by giving blood or menstruating, same idea.

• 27:09Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 27:09Speaker 01

  You can, by giving plasma, that would be even better because that's where it kind of focuses in the, or wants to be in the bloodstream. Or plasma foresis.

• 27:18Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 27:19Speaker 01

  Have somebody actually wash your plasma or remove it. These things tend to want to grab on to, to proteins in the plasma, like sex hormone binding globulin, for one, and all sorts of others. And as you're aware, I think you have some of those in your clinic.

• 27:33Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 27:34Speaker 01

  I don't know that any of these are really sustainable.

• 27:37Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 27:38Speaker 01

  They're, they're expensive, some of them. And, and you can't, you can't give blood, you know, regularly without some effects.

• 27:45Dr. Darshan Shah?

  They're not regular enough to eliminate all this stuff. I mean, we do plasma foresis in our clinics. And yes, it does eliminate all the plasma and the microplastics being in the plasma is eliminated. But, you know, how often are you able to do that? The expense, the time?

• 28:01Dr. Darshan Shah?

  I think we'll go over solutions a little bit later. But before we do that, I, I think, you know, one of the things I was really surprised by is, I understand that some of these chemicals like phthalates and BPA are endocrine disrupting chemicals and they disrupt our hormones. But I was surprised when you said that microplastics can actually affect our hormones as well. So I would love to a little bit of clarity of what's the mechanism of how microplastics affect our hormones?

• 28:26Speaker 01

  Okay, well, actually, it's it's very much related to to those plasticizers, those the phthalates and the and the BPA and PFOS and things that that come in sort of a stowaways. So now, this is where this is where the surface area becomes critically important. I I don't like it. This is my own thinking. I haven't I haven't seen anybody address this, but it stands to reason. Think about think about a ball, say, this size. Um, it's a, I don't know, like a croquet ball or something like that. And think of the surface area of that ball. Now, now, think of if I if I had that same ball, the same mass, but in a thousand balls,

• 29:11Speaker 01

  it would fit in that same space. That surface area goes up exponentially.

• 29:17Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Oh, yeah.

• 29:18Speaker 01

  That means you have all that much more disruption or hormone disruption or chemical exposure to the outside from that surface area. It just exponentially multiplies it. So that's that's a a big concern and issue for me. The other side of it, just from purely plastic, the plastic presence, is its immune response. That immune response is going to affect hormones. It'll get in there and it'll affect thyroid. It'll affect testosterone, estradiol production. That just just because of the inflammation and the the cytokines and the chemotaxis that it it causes to happen, that just the body just cannot operate in that constant state and do what it's supposed to do.

• 30:00Speaker 01

  It's a it's a metabolically expensive process and immune responses. And when it's going on all the time, it's no wonder you're beat. You're you're just fatigued. So that's what I have for you on that.

• 30:15Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, no, that that's an excellent explanation. And I think, Elaine, it's it can get overwhelming for people listening to this, that there's plastics everywhere. They're getting in through every hole in our body and it's causing all of these problems, inflammation and hormone disruption and obesity. And I I think there's a tendency just sometimes throw your hands up in the air. And say, well, I can't do anything about it. So I'm just going to keep drinking out of plastic bottles. And so I, I, I, I think you and I are both very solution oriented here because there are things that people can do that can reduce their exposure exponentially. And I love the way you kind of frame this, like, what are the entry points of microplastics into our body?

• 30:56Dr. Darshan Shah?

  And how do we, knowing that those entry points, how can we mitigate our exposure? And once you mitigate your exposure, you're, you're way ahead of the game on, on the, on the problem here, right?

• 31:07Speaker 01

  No, for sure. You gotta be, you know, I, I hate being the guy, the chicken little guy that's running around saying the sky's falling, sky's falling. And just get everybody in a panic. And it's like going to a movie that where the hero dies, you know, nobody wants, nobody wants to go see that show. And I'll tell you, it's, there are things that can be done. And it's important to know what those are so that you can feel like, okay, I can, I can do one of these things. I can do that. I can do that. I can remember that and do it when I can. That's what you've got to do. Like, but when we're talking about things in the, uh, the kitchen, for example, or something as simple as takeaway containers from, from fast food outlets that are styrofoam.

• 31:46Speaker 01

  Okay. Heat, styrofoam, oil, not a good mix for leaching things out from that container into. So take some glass containers and just keep them in your car. So when you go and you, and you get takeaway, um, tell them, put it in this, would you please keep your container and just put it in this? And then you've got it in your car in glass. It's, that's it. That's a quick and easy little swap thing you can do.

• 32:10Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yes.

• 32:11Speaker 01

  Don't warm up anything plastic in the microwave. That increases, the things that increase the leaching are heat, friction.

• 32:20Speaker 01

  What else? Of course, the, the nature of the, of the type of plastic resin. We're better, better types than others. So yeah, up so up for glass containers or stainless steel in the kitchen. Wooden cutting boards, not plastic. Just think about, all you have to do is take your knife and run it edgewise across the top of your

• 32:37Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 32:38Speaker 01

  Onto a black piece of paper. If your cutting board's white and just look at the particles. That's just what you can see.

• 32:43Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 32:43Speaker 01

  That doesn't take a million dollar study to, to show you, I'm, I'm eating that.

• 32:48Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yep, we all have.

• 32:50Speaker 01

  Connected to my food that I'm eating, sponges, you can, rather than, you know, the sponges that are, that are yellow and then have that green abrasive layer on the others, the one side, you can get them that are made from ground up walnuts.

• 33:03Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Oh, really? I didn't know that.

• 33:05Speaker 01

  Yep, and so, just little things like that, when you're, that, that's gonna reduce, I don't know, some people scrub vegetables and stuff with them, but most people do dishes with them, but it'll also reduce plastics you're dumping into the water. Okay, so, there's a couple of ways to think about this, you've got to think about yourself, and then you've got to think about the bigger picture, and preventing continued being part of the problem, it's sort of like being in a driving rainstorm, if someone were to tell you, now, you get wet, you're gonna stay wet for, for two years, and you're gonna be all panicked, and we have, how are we gonna stop this rain, how are we gonna, you know, no, you've got to, you've got to worry about getting an umbrella, okay, let it rain over there, you can't do anything about that.

• 33:50Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 33:51Speaker 01

  But you've got to stop the exposure to yourself, and unfortunately, that's where you have to, that's where you have the most control, your own micro environment, in your kitchen, there's, you know, look for, we talk about clothing as well, or things in the house, when you look at, we talked about air being the primary source.

• 34:10Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 34:10Speaker 01

  Well, yeah, too, everybody's done this, take a, take one of those real high intensity flashlights they make these days, you can really zero the beam in, and just walk into the room, and look at that in the air, get what you see there, I've done this before and after running my HEPA filtration tube, by the way, and it's dramatic, it's dramatic, that's what you're breathing, and where does it come from, well, somebody will say, well, we've had dust in the air for millennia, what's the problem here? The problem is, in your house, that used to come from all natural fibers, cotton fiber, wool, linen, bamboo, things, I don't know, things that, that are natural, and the body can do something with.

• 34:49Dr. Darshan Shah?

  True.

• 34:49Speaker 01

  But when it comes from your couch, from your drapes, from your, your carpet, from vinyl plank flooring, all of these things, and your clothing.

• 34:59Speaker 01

  Throw it into the air and then it settles into dust around your house. All of that stuff, you have, this is why you have to filter the air in your home.

• 35:09Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 35:09Speaker 01

  So that, that would be one of the main things that I would leave with people is you've got to, you've got to keep that air clean with a HEPA filtration system, which will take out down to, won't take out necessarily all nanoparticles, but most of what's in the air is, is, is a micro, honestly. So it'll take up to, I mean, it'll take down to point one microns, the HEPA filtration system.

• 35:32Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 35:33Speaker 01

  So that's important.

• 35:34Dr. Darshan Shah?

  That's a really important point.

• 35:39Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Hi, Dr. Shaw here. I want to take a minute to talk to you about cellular health. So in my clinics, I've actually seen 30 year old people with cells that look like they're pushing retirement. And I've also seen 60 year olds with cells that look like they're 40 years old. So what's the difference? It's really about how fast their telomeres are breaking down. Your cells you see are like phones and they have limited cell phone battery. Poor sleep, stress, processed foods, all of these things can drain that battery way faster than it should. So this is the reason why I partnered with IM8. IM8 powers that cellular battery. It's not just another multivitamin. It's a comprehensive 92 ingredient formula

• 36:20Dr. Darshan Shah?

  designed specifically for cellular health and longevity. I'm talking 900 milligrams of vitamin C. That's like 20 oranges worth of DNA protection. The clinical dose of CoQ10 that you need to power your cellular engine. You also get zinc, selenium, vitamin E, alpha lipoic acid. All of these work synergistically for cellular repair and protecting your telomeres. So instead of taking a handful of pills every day and all these supplements, IM8 actually gives you everything that you need in one scientifically formulated system. And this isn't just a theory anymore. IM8 had partnered with Oxford University, the International Space Station, San Francisco Research Institute, and they've done studies and they've gotten

• 37:03Dr. Darshan Shah?

  this NSF certified to truly power your health. Most people are aging twice as Possibly should unfortunately. You don't have to be one of them. Try IMA. I actually have a discount secured for you if you go to drshah.com/IMA or go to im8health.com/discount/DrShaw and you can get 20% off with my discount code DrShaw. You can also find the link below.

• 37:31Dr. Darshan Shah?

  What about, you know, I think about the particles in the air and like you said, like you run around the flashlight inside and you could see all the particles in the light beam. What about just even opening the window?

• 37:41Speaker 01

  I think that's good because honestly, the air outside is much cleaner than what's inside.

• 37:45Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, exactly. People don't realize that.

• 37:48Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 37:48Dr. Darshan Shah?

  In most places, the air outside is cleaner than it is on the inside. Maybe not in New Delhi, but in most other places.

• 37:55Speaker 01

  Oh, here's another really easy hack, Dr. Shaw. There's, if you take your furnace filter, the chances are you're using one that that is less efficient than you could be. You see them? They come now in like four inch sizes and a lot of furnaces now have a big slot for you to put that filter in there. So get the biggest that your furnace will tolerate and you have to look at the specs because you can burn up your blower if it's if it's too big or too much for your for your system. But buy one that is that has a carbon filtration component to the filter. That that will catch 95% of hormone disruptors

• 38:34Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Oh, incredible.

• 38:35Speaker 01

  in the in the air. Now, it's still not as good as a HEPA filter, so I still advocate those throughout the house. HEPA filtration, you got to keep circulating that air through those through those HEPA filters, but that's a that's an easy one. And they're not that much more expensive than regular filters in your car, too. Cabin filter in your car. Get a carbon, one that has carbon in it.

• 38:54Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Okay, okay. That's great advice. I have not done that actually. And I think that's, I have a air filter in the room that I sleep in. My kids have an air filter. And we also, and then we keep the windows open, the living room and kitchen for the most part at night, we close the windows. And we use this one called Lykan Air, which is really good. But it's something You know, it's an investment, right? I mean, but I think it's a very, very good investment because it's not just the microplastics and the chemicals is if you're filtering a lot more out of the air. And where I tell people is where do you spend the most time? It's in probably your office where you work and your bedroom where you sleep. Buy two air filters for those two areas and then you you've cut out a lot of the problem.

• 39:39Speaker 01

  Yep, absolutely. And you've got to, there are things to look for. There are certain brands that I like. I don't know. I like the, I like the Allen brand. I don't have any connection to those folks, but I just, I've, I've done a reviews on a lot of these different

• 39:52Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 39:52Speaker 01

  systems. And I also like people to understand what are the, what are the factors that I take into consideration here? One, it's got to be HEPA, of course, HEPA filtration. It's got to have a carbon component in that because you can get HEPA filtration without activated charcoal is another way of saying that. You want to look at the price of those filters because that's your consumable. That's your ongoing expense. You want to make sure that it's, it's not too loud. That's another factor that makes people not use them. I know, I can't stand the noise. Okay. You look at, measure the decibels. I mean, usually those, if they don't say what that is, then ask them. Those are, those are all important factors. And that it's big enough to handle the cubic foot area that you're expecting it to clear.

• 40:38Speaker 01

  I, I like that with, Allen has these different, different models and they're, they're not expensive, really. I mean, I don't know, a couple hundred dollars. There's a range, obviously, because they're small and then there's the bigger ones, but make sure that it's, it's adequate. You're not overworking it. And then, of course, change your filters regularly.

• 40:54Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yes.

• 40:55Speaker 01

  Don't be the guy that goes in there after a year and you go, oh, crap. Ivan, this was in my air? Yeah, yeah. And it still is now, dude. Replace it.

• 41:07Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Well, you know, one thing that we forgot to talk about was the solution on the water that we're drinking. How do we, how do we get our water cleaned of the microplastics, these chemicals?

• 41:17Speaker 01

  Very good question. You've got to filter that water and it doesn't matter if it's from a well or it's from a city source, wherever it's from, you've got to have a reverse osmosis system. You could also do it, you can also use distilled. There are systems that use that, but they're a little more tedious and there's a little more to them. But the most easy convenient way is to use a reverse osmosis system that you can install under the sink, has its own dedicated spout. You want to get one also that, I think the better ones are tankless, because then it's not sitting there being stored in plastic.

• 41:53Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 41:54Speaker 01

  And then you want, you want to get some good food grade silicone tubing rather than plastic tubing as well. But then you also want to add minerals back. When reverse osmosis, it takes everything out, including minerals that are, that are healthy and that also make the water taste better. So you want to, there's a, there's a filter like at the, at the last that adds that back in. And you want to get one that's, that's got that too. But yeah, that's, that's really important and critical. You, you cover, you cover water and air. You're good.

• 42:26Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 42:27Speaker 01

  I mean, we got to look at, we, we got to look at good enough here sometimes, rather than perfection.

• 42:33Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 42:34Speaker 01

  And that helps people also not to get lost in the, I can't do this. This is just overwhelming.

• 42:39Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right. I completely agree with you. I think some of this just doesn't cost anybody too. It's just changing your thoughts around, you know, opening the window versus keeping the windows closed all the time in your home. That doesn't cost you anything, but it's just a mindset to get into about, about avoiding toxins, avoiding microplastics and just being more mindful about it. I think it's, it's important. But some of these things cost money. But you know, I just looked this up today. You can get a desktop reverse osmosis system with a remineralization cartridge for $200 now. And just putting one of those at your work and at your home, if you, if you don't want to spring for the reverse osmosis

• 43:23Dr. Darshan Shah?

  under the sink could be, could be an alternate as well. However, I did find a $200 under the sink reverse osmosis system too. And I think a plumber would probably charge $150 or something to install that. They're, they're not difficult to install. It's not a big investment for a big, a big outcome, right?

• 43:41Speaker 01

  Oh, for sure. And I would say too, be careful because when what tends to go go down with price is the speed that it filters. So look for that and make sure it can be big enough for your family. If you're just one or two people in the house, then it's it's different. But yeah, you can often get away with spending much less just because it takes longer to filter, you know, a certain amount. So you want to maybe put some in the fridge in a pitcher or, you know, accumulate some if you're having guests for dinner or something. But yeah, that's a that is one factor that will affect price. Yeah. But yeah, you got it. And you can even buy these things that are portable. You take with you when you travel.

• 44:16Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah. So we got number one, which is air. Number two is water. Number three, I think we mentioned is just the plastics in our kitchen, right? All the cutting boards and the plastic storage containers, getting rid of all of those. And the way I look at those is it's a lot of these are just one time replacement costs, right? You get rid of your plastic stuff, you buy the wood and the and the glass, and then guess what? They're reusable. And so you can use these over and over again. I think one place where's plastic sneakily enters into our life is the so called paper cup that we get served our coffee in.

• 44:55Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Talk about that a little bit.

• 44:57Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 44:58Dr. Darshan Shah?

  And the paper straws too. I just read this today.

• 45:02Speaker 01

  Well, tell me what you read. I'm curious.

• 45:04Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, I mean, you know, it seems evident now that I think about it, but the reason water or a fluid can flow through something that's paper and not disintegrate it is because there's some plastic lining in it. The paper straws have a have a coating on the inside that allows it to last longer. And the same with paper cups that you can find at your, you know, local Starbucks. They serve you this hot coffee and that's leaching microplastics, leaching chemicals into your coffee.

• 45:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, exactly. I was I was wondering if you were gonna tell me something new about what something that makes it stronger. But yeah, those those things that they're a water barrier. So they're gonna be some sort of PFOS probably to to make it be water resistant. It's the same thing with cans, believe it or not. A lot of cans have linings and especially if the contents are acidic. And lots of things are these days. So does even tomatoes, vegetables, those are pretty acidic. A lot. It used to be BPA that a lot of places places use, but now a lot of them have taken that out. But here's the thing you have to watch out for. Here's this, oh, is this this, what do they call it, greenwashing?

• 46:17Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 46:18Speaker 01

  People, people, they know they have to address this because it's getting increasingly important to people. So, yeah, we don't, we're BPA free. We have BPS in there, but we're BPA free. And so, okay, well, there's a term in the industry that they call regrettable substitution.

• 46:34Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right, right.

• 46:35Speaker 01

  Wow, really? We didn't realize that BPA does the same thing that BPS, or sorry, yeah, BPS does the same thing BPA does. Really? You didn't look at the structures of these things? I mean, just just just the structural activity relationship there is it's not even deep chemistry. They look the same, they're probably gonna do the same. So you gotta watch out for that. I just try and avoid. You can't always, but I I buy in glass containers whenever I can and obviously buy fresh whenever you can. So the other thing for food is buy organic whenever you can. And whenever you can, make it be domestic organic, not foreign, imported. They're not the same standards. I could do a whole talk on this.

• 47:16Speaker 01

  But also, if you can avoid things that are wrapped in plastic, you can't always. And and listen, don't don't everybody go and be depressed all about that. You do what you can, but but as you know and understand what factors into this, you can go, all right, well, I know there's a farmer's market on Friday, every Friday afternoon. I may just go there. You're not gonna get wrapped in plastic there. You may not get organic, but to me, just as good as you sit and you have a conversation with that farmer and ask him how, what his practices are.

• 47:45Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 47:46Speaker 01

  Some of them just can't afford the seal. They can't afford the organic seal. But they're conscious of it because that's what people go to a farmer's market for. So as you know, these things, you begin to do them when you have the opportunity and as you can afford it.

• 47:58Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right, exactly. You know, your whole point about BPA being replaced with DPS. Have you ever seen John Oliver's segments on PFOS?

• 48:07Speaker 01

  No, I haven't.

• 48:08Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Oh, in Google list. John Oliver has a show on HBO. It's a comedy show where he reports on real news using comedy. And he's had a few segments on PFOS. One back in twenty one, twenty twenty one. He did an incredible segment on the industry and how they literally, there's so much corruption in this industry of chemicals and how it's spewed out into our environment. And he did a really good job talking about it. I'll send you the link later, but you can just Google.

• 48:41Speaker 01

  Love to see it.

• 48:42Dr. Darshan Shah?

  John Oliver and PFOS. And he's done three or four segments on PFOS. And just how ineffective our government is on dealing with it, how the, you know, the regrettable substitutions happen as you describe them is just a chemical, the chemical industry's way of tricking us into thinking they're doing something once they, it's just really circumventing the regulation. It's just mind blowing, you know, and I think each and every one of us need to become aware. We need to take matters into our own hands and protect ourselves from these. And I love your umbrella analogy. Yes, this stuff is everywhere, but if you have an umbrella, you're protecting yourself from most of it.

• 49:19Speaker 01

  And that's where you start. You've got to, first things first, okay? Do what you can first and then, and then you begin to work on these other bigger things as you can. You can't, you're not going to be able to go clean the Pacific Ocean of that plastic raft that's supposed to be floating around out there somewhere. But you can, you can protect your family. You can protect your, your home. It becomes another phrase in this, in this circle that I move in is called precautionary consumption.

• 49:44Speaker 01

  And to me, that goes right along with my motto at Hormone Specialist of gearing you up to tell the world, I decide. You cannot outsource blindly and without thinking anymore and think that somebody's looking after you and it's got your back. No, you've got to assume that they don't. And if you see a ingredient list with your, you know, you need to take a nap before you finish reading it, then there's probably some issues there. You might want something simpler. Glass containers, metal lids, without paint. We just changed our omega-3 fish oil to metal capsules. The timing was perfect from this study, but without

• 50:24Speaker 01

  paint. You start thinking about these things and realizing, I hate to say it, but, and this is the kind of discouraging part about it, is you just can't trust anymore. Corporatization of all of these things have made it so that they, you understand, they have to look out for shareholders' interests and their bottom line profit. But they can't discard your health. And it's never been a better time. I love seeing these grassroots, small businesses come and putting these clean things on the market and doing really well. I love seeing that.

• 50:56Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, that's, it's so true. It's amazing to see people finally taking matters into their own hands and, and really just, like you said, stop outsourcing your health to government organizations that really are hobbled and can't do much about it. So.

• 51:13Speaker 01

  Hey, if I can, I did forget to mention, we talked about water filtration.

• 51:18Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yes.

• 51:19Speaker 01

  You really ought to, when you're looking into the one you're buying, make sure that it's rated for removing PFOS.

• 51:26Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Ah, okay.

• 51:27Speaker 01

  Because it's not necessarily, whatever NSF code that it has, it doesn't necessarily include that unless they say it. So you'll want to do that because you're going to spend a few hundred dollars for this, so make sure it does everything you need it to do. I forgot to mention that.

• 51:42Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Oh, I'm so glad you mentioned that. Yeah, thank you.

• 51:44Speaker 01

  Should I mention a brand that I've used? I don't know.

• 51:47Dr. Darshan Shah?

  A brand of water filtration?

• 51:50Speaker 01

  A filtration system. You can take it out if you wanted this, but I use Water Drop.

• 51:56Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Okay, no, I'd love to hear what you use, Water Drop.

• 51:58Speaker 01

  They've got a good, they've got a good tankless under the counter, and you've got your variety of speeds, like I need it to do this much in this amount of time. And they've got no. No plastic, even the housings of the filters are metal. So these are all things that are, they're hard to find. I believe me because I've looked and I've looked and I've looked, but I like those folks. And again, I don't, I don't have any affiliation with them. I don't, I just like, a lot of people will ask what's, because it's exhausting out there looking for this stuff, you know?

• 52:31Dr. Darshan Shah?

  It does, yeah. I'm glad you've done the research for all of us and we will put links in the show notes to all the, to the recommendations that you have. So just to wrap it up, Wayne, you know, this was an incredible deep dive into the world of microplastics. So I hope people take it to heart and really understand that they can do something about this. From a 30,000 foot view, how do we view this whole issue? Just give us a summary.

• 52:55Speaker 01

  Okay. I would say, I like people to leave with four things here that they, that they can do and will be the most effective at making a difference. The one is you got to filter your water. And we've talked about what kind of filtration system you need there. Either reverse osmosis or, or distillation to get all those, you know, bad actors out of there. Filter your air. We talked about that too. So water and air, buy organic fruits, fresh food whenever you can, as much as possible. And try and avoid the plastic, plastic wraps, plastic wrap that you have at home. Get, get some that at least say that they're bisphenol free. That takes out BPA and BPS.

• 53:39Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Okay.

• 53:39Speaker 01

  You can buy plastic wraps, stretch wraps that are better than others. Okay. So look for that. And then, you know what? Redo, just try, this is the overall, how I'd like to somehow impact the outside from underneath my umbrella. Try and reduce your plastic use, especially single use plastics of bottles, Walmart flags. I call them that because that's what they end up in the trees.

• 54:04Speaker 01

  Single-use bags like that, just carry these things with you, even for your produce. You can, and you have to get into the habit of, okay, I gotta take my bags in with me and use that. But as you begin to think about all of those things, that's how you can make a difference for the bigger picture and feel better about yourself. And you do when you're doing that, you know?

• 54:22Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 54:23Speaker 01

  Carry those containers in your car. When you're at the restaurant, it's too late and you, or you got takeout. So carry those things so you'll be prepared. It just takes a little preparation. So those four things, filter water, filter your air, buy organic whenever you can, plastic-free, and do your best to reduce plastic usage whenever possible. Just think, could I, is there something else I could buy that wouldn't be plastic? Because that's gonna be around for your great, great, great, great, great grandchildren.

• 54:49Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, absolutely. Lane, thank you so much. This was an incredible deep dive into the world of microplastics and really appreciate all the knowledge you've given me and given us on this podcast. Where can people learn from you more?

• 55:02Speaker 01

  So my presence on social media is under Hormone Specialist on Instagram, TikTok, YouTube. That's, that's probably the best place to, to access my stuff. And I do regular, regular features on toxins, on, you know, these hormone disruptors, how this can affect us, but also what can you do about it? How can you, how can you increase your protection and be, be more precautionary in your consumption? So I hope that's helpful for folks. Seems to be a lot of people really started following when we started talking about that stuff. So there's some concern out there about it.

• 55:37Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Absolutely.

• 55:38Speaker 01

  Thank you for the invitation. I appreciate it.

• 55:40Dr. Darshan Shah?

  I really appreciate you doing this. Thank you so much and look forward to doing this again sometime. We have a lot of topics we need to dive into.

• 55:46Speaker 01

  Let's do. I'd be, I'd be happy and willing.

• 55:49Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Great. Thank you.

• 55:50Speaker 01

  Okay. Bye-bye.

• 55:54Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Thank you so much for listening to the podcast today. Please remember to subscribe if you liked this episode and give us a good review and share a link with your friends. It really helps us support all of our efforts. I also want to remind you that the information shared on this podcast is for educational purposes only and is not intended to replace professional medical advice. Diagnosis or treatment. Please consult with your healthcare provider or physician before making any decisions or taking any action based on what you hear today, especially if you have any underlying health conditions or on any medications. Your doctor knows your personal health situation the best, and it's always important to seek their guidance.