SHAWN STEVENSON: Welcome to The Model Health Show. This is fitness and nutrition expert, Shawn Stevenson, and I'm so grateful for you tuning with me today. Tens of thousands of newly invented chemicals are created and released into our environment each and every year. We're talking about chemical compounds that have never existed before in human history, tens of thousands of newly invented chemicals are released into our environment each year.

A recent study that was published in the journal, Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, states that the research community is falling woefully behind in studying the chemicals, pesticides, pharmaceuticals and other novel concoctions discharging into our air, our oceans, our waterways, our soil, and our food chain, now to say that these chemicals are pervasive in our environment is an understatement, and today you're going to learn just how much we're being exposed to these newly invented chemicals, and you're going to learn what is the regulation behind all of these chemicals, and I think you're going to be shocked to find out just how little these chemicals are being regulated as the study was mentioning, the research community has fallen woefully behind in understanding what these chemicals are doing in our reality.

And one of the most pervasive are a category of chemicals known as PFAS. Now PFAS are also known as forever chemicals. Forever.

Forever. Forever. Forever. Forever.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Forever. Now that line was from the movie The Sandlot, and is depicting a time decades back when life appeared to be much more simple, but this was the on-ramp of this movement to better living through chemistry, and seeing the doors just flung open with so many different chemical compounds and countless industries creating new compounds to essentially try to make our lives better, but what are the health outcomes that we're experiencing as a result. And with these PFAS, these forever chemicals, it's become such a big issue now that even major media outlets are doing special reports on these compounds. For example, here's a bit of a segment from CBS and their popular show, CBS Sunday Morning, just a few months ago.

CBS: It's a silent threat lurking where you'd least expect it. In our drinking water, we assume, of course, it's safe, but scientists are warning about a common and potentially dangerous chemical that can survive in the ground and in our water forever.

On a cold winter day, on the Stoneridge dairy farm in Arundel, Maine, Fred Stone was more worried about his cows being cold than himself, Fred and his wife Laura are only the latest generation to work this dairy, it's been in the family for over a century. But since November of 2016, every drop of milk that white gold, that's been a reliable livelihood for generations is now being poured right down the drain.

It's a hell of a waste. Even I can't drink it.

He had no idea the wastewater that the state licensed him to use to fertilize his fields was also swimming with potentially toxic chemicals called PFAS. Now, his land, his cows and yes, their milk are all contaminated.

Had you ever heard of PFAS or any of these chemicals?

Never.

A lot of people haven't. PFAS is an acronym for a family of man-made compounds called Per- and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances. The CDC has listed a host of health effects believed to be associated with exposure to those chemicals, including cancer, liver damage, increased cholesterol, and a lot more.

The chemicals are so highly mobile, they're not only being found in soil and ground water, but in the atmosphere too, in fact, they've even been detected in raindrops falling in some of the most remote areas of the world.

This story is about a new plastic material trademark Teflon.

PFAS chemicals have been around for decades.

Oh, good thing it's Teflon.

DuPont was the first to use PFAS in Teflon, giving us those non-stick pots and pans.

Half of this piece of carpet has been treated with this new finish, the other half has not.

3M used a different PFAS in its once popular fabric protector, Scotchgard. Today, those chemical cousins can still be found in almost any design to fend off oil or water or grease that includes things like pizza boxes, paper plates, rain jackets, ski wax, even guitar strings. PFAS are basically impossible to escape, and scientists say they are likely here to stay.

They are nearly indestructible.

You just can't get rid of 'em. You can't get rid of 'em.

Patrick McRoy, the former deputy director of the advocacy group, Defend Our Health in Maine, explains just why that staying power is so very troubling.

A lot of chemicals when they go into your body or when they end up in the environment, they break down, they slowly decompose PFAS don't do that. Once you put PFAS somewhere, it's going to stay there practically forever.

That means the levels of the so-called forever chemicals can build up and linger in our blood streams forever.

SHAWN STEVENSON: One of the most important things to understand about these "forever chemicals" is that this is bypassing how things naturally work in our environment, which is the human body is incredibly resilient at processing toxicity, processing various exposures. We have so many different eliminatory organs and organ systems and detoxification channels, our liver, for example, is one of the major hubs live-er listen to the name liver, it's one of the primary organs helping us to live, and it's so responsible for metabolizing toxicants.

So for example, we know about alcohol poisoning, we know about what the liver is doing right upfront to try to protect the rest of the body from alcohol exposure it's also responsible for drug metabolism, it's also responsible largely for these chemical compounds that we're ingesting, that we're breathing in that we're drinking and trying to do the best that it can with processing these things, but this category of forever chemicals aren't going anywhere. So, this is why you'll hear today from our special guest that we're seeing in adolescents today in kids, upwards of 98% of kids tested having these forever chemicals in their blood stream.

So yes, this is concerning, but there can't be a problem without a solution, it's two sides of the same coin, there are things that we can do to help to address this to stack conditions in the favor of our families and our communities. Because we're existing here in this glorified snow globe, essentially, if we're talking about living here on planet Earth. So, this stuff isn't necessarily going anywhere, so we can dramatically reduce what we're putting out into the environment with more education. So, we're talking about more responsibility on the part of industry and government regulation, but also what we can do via our exposures and our choices each day to create some distance between these chemicals and our bodies and also really helping to uplevel the functionality of our body's eliminatory detoxification and assimilation system, so that we can be better equipped. Just as we're walking around here in our lives, we're going to be exposed to this stuff, so we want to create a system that is very robust and resilient, and able to do the very best that it can to keep us safe and strong and resilient.

Now, in this episode, you're also going to learn some very strange places that these chemical compounds are being utilized in the industry, and to give you just a little teaser of what's to come in a report published by the Environmental Working Group in January of 2022. So just a short while ago, they shared that new tests are finding toxic forever chemicals in our bedding, in yoga pants and other textiles. So, we're talking about things like carpets, we're talking about our bedding our sheets and our blankets that we're sleeping in, that we're tucking our kids in at night with are absolutely littered with these forever chemicals.

And again, it can be under the guise of trying to reduce the risk of a fire hazard, for example, utilizing things like flame retardants but that advent of things like flame retardants in furniture and in bedding this was during a time when people are regularly falling asleep, smoking cigarettes. Our kids are not falling asleep, smoking a square, all right? A flame retardant, we're talking about actual fire hazard, that's not something that flame retardants are used for, they're used for accidental exposures through close proximity fire situations, and now it's just become something that is normalized for the few in our society now that are making that a practice.

Now, this does not mean that you shouldn't wear your favorite yoga pants. People like yoga pants out here, they like putting them on, they also like the absorbent nature of the yoga pants. It's a win-win in many ways for our society, and we have to pay more attention now to what materials, what chemicals are being utilized in the creation of our clothing, because we don't have informed consent when it comes to this, we don't know. It's so distant from us. And the processing, again, with industry, it's all about more faster quality control, dropping down, integrity dropping down for the means of making a profit, and it is what it is, there's nothing wrong with making a profit, that's not the problem, the problem is the lack of integrity and the cutting of corners that's causing our people to suffer.

Now, in particular, because of the sheer amount of time that you spend in your bed, about one-third of our lives are spent in our bed, in our bedding, the stuff that we're sleeping on, because the sheer amount of time that we spend in our bedding, I believe that is one of the primary things that we can uplevel, that we can improve the quality of our bedding and avoid more of these forever chemicals and other toxicants that generally are coming along with conventional bedding.

And this is one of the reasons that I'm such a big advocate of sleeping on bedding that is free from harmful chemicals, irritants allergens, bedding that's hypo allergenic, that's gentle on sensitive skin. And the bedding that I'm sleeping on, checks all of those boxes, and also, it's anti-microbial it's self-deodorizing, it actually inhibits bacterial growth and creates a healthy sleep environment, plus it's breathable, moisture wicking supports our body's thermo regulation, which helps to improve our sleep quality and to top it all off, this bedding is made from the finest organic bamboo Lyocell. This is a 300 thread count that is as fine as 1000 count Egyptian cotton, so we're talking about luxury here, and in contrast to that Egyptian cotton, this organic bamboo Lyocell only consumes one-third of the water, and no harmful chemicals are utilized in producing it.

Plus, a randomized controlled trial found that mental alertness during the day improved by upwards of 25% for test subjects after sleeping on these bamboo Lyocell sheets and 94% of people preferred sleeping on these sheets. I'm talking about the sheets from Ettitude, go to ettitude.com/model and use the code model15 all together as one, model15 at check out. You're going to get 15% off your entire order. That's E-T-T-I-T-U-D-E.com/model, ettitude.com/model plus, they want to give you a 30-night sleep trial, sleep on them. Think on them, dream on them. If you don't love them, send them back for a full refund, you've got nothing to lose, but better sleep to gain, and again, reducing that exposure to harmful toxicants in one of the places that we spend about a third of our life. So, I'm such a huge fan. Go to ettitude.com/model. Use the code model15 for 15% off your order. And now let's get to the Apple Podcast review of the week.

ITUNES REVIEW: Another five star review titled "Congrats on the evolving success" by BMS Smith15. "Since 2017, The Model Health Show has been evolving its content and platform to further evolve their listeners, I feel so privileged to have known about this show, thank you, Shawn and your team for pouring into this show and keeping the momentum and giving us challenging, inspiring and knowledge-filled episodes, the amount of discipline that's been added to my life is partially due to this show, and I am forever grateful, please continue this great work for as long as you possibly can, and we will do our part in sharing it all over the world."

SHAWN STEVENSON: Awesome, thank you so much for leaving that review over on Apple Podcasts. That hit my heart, I really do appreciate that. And if you have to do so, please pop over to Apple Podcasts and leave a review for The Model Health Show. And on that note, let's get to our special guest and topic of the day, our guest today is Darin Olien, and he's a New York Times best-selling author and co-host of the Emmy Award-winning number one Netflix docu series, Down to Earth with Zac Efron. Darin is also the host of the popular podcast, The Darin Olien Show, and he's the author of the new book, Fatal Conveniences. And on this episode, we're going to be doing a true deep dive into the research from Fatal Conveniences talking about the chemical exposure in our environment related to our food, related to our personal care products, and much more, just again, to have true informed consent and to be empowered in the choices that we're making to stack conditions in our favor for ourselves, our families and our communities. Let's dive into this conversation with the amazing Darin Olien. My guy, Darin, it's good to see you, man.

DARIN OLIEN: Brother, good to see you, man.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Thank you for coming by.

DARIN OLIEN: Always happy to have a conversation with you, man.

SHAWN STEVENSON: We've been talking about this offline for quite some time, Fatal Conveniences, and you've had a series that you've been sharing, and it is amazing, it's one of my favorite things to come across on social media, and to package this up in a book for everybody is phenomenal. Now, one of the things I want to talk about first is here in the United States, according to the BMJ, one of our most prestigious medical journals, about 60% of the average American's diet is now ultra-processed foods, so we're taking something that is so seemingly a "plant-based food" like corn, and then eventually it gets turned into Pops cereal or Lucky Charms, so processed that you can't even recognize where it comes from.

Now, if we have a revelation and we realize that maybe I want to shift the ratio of processed foods in my diet and eat more whole real foods, because of the nature of how we're doing stuff today, very disconnected from tradition, we run into some other issues here that I want to talk about because you highlighted here in the book, and you also fair warning for everybody heads up, you tell the truth, but you also provide solutions, let's talk about when we say, "You know what, I want to eat more fruits and vegetables" and we just go willy-nilly into the market and we are just gobbling up fruits and vegetables, why might that be a concern?

DARIN OLIEN: Yeah, so the way our... Obviously, the string is a big one to pull, but normal conventional mono-cropping, obviously using glyphosate is the number one, and Atrazine and the list continues of pesticides herbicides, so that residue is on certainly, the dirty dozen, the... Think of, use your common sense with this to unpack the understanding that a banana you can peel, so like a pear, a nectarine, a cherry, apple, Romaine lettuce, all that's open to the air, to the water and whatnot. So that has another layer of complexity as we will find how that if we normally just grew things and then ate them way back then, or when then no problem, but we have introduced this kind of play with it in the book, this chemical romance that we have with what's going on in the world and so as these herbicides and pesticides are used, there's residue, and the crazy thing is to help the processing process, not only to help on the herbicidal side, they blast more herbicides right upon harvesting.

So conventional fruits and vegetables have residues of pesticides and herbicides and glyphosate, so that's just one little layer of the chemical side, and now we know that they can't push that down the road anymore, they can't use tobacco industry's idea of like yeah, it needs more studies, if this is safe. Monsanto has been playing games and the Information Act has allowed them to allow people to see that there has been some corruption of them knowing and knowingly having or these pesticides are carcinogenic and endocrine disrupting, just as a couple examples.

So that alone. Now, what can you do? Okay, so people are like, "I can't afford organic." Okay, wash those. So, wash those dirty dozen, so the ones that are exposed, the Romaines and the lettuces and the celeries and those things, wash those and you can use things like baking soda, hydrogen peroxide, there's cool little bubblers of O3 that you can put in a water, and you can get rid of some of that stuff. So at least you're taking away some of the potentials of cancer because it's... They're showing this more and more, as well as the endocrine disruption that's happening, and we'll talk about EDCs more and more and more, but that's kind of the biggest problem, and then as it...

As fruits and vegetables come into the market, so it's easy to be flippantly and say, I wish, number one, I wish I didn't have to write this book, I wish I didn't have to do this, but let's say I can afford organic, but then I go and like, okay, these bell peppers are wrapped in plastic saran wrap, and you're like, what? And so, more and more things are plastic wrapped and any sort of plastic connection in proximity to food is mostly a chelation of those food, of those chemicals and foods like phthalates and things like that, so it's another endocrine disruptor. So now all of a sudden, hey, I'm just trying to eat whole food, but my food has been blasted full of chemicals, it has been wrapped in plastics, which it's petroleum, it's BPA, it's BPH now, it's bisphenols, all of these things, you're now trying to just eat this whole apple, and you've just been hit with hundreds of chemicals at the end of the day. 'Cause it's interesting that on average, a woman uses, not to divert too much, but just to create a little context, maybe a little EDC is not so bad, but on average, a woman uses 12 personal care products, and there's one study that shows over 100 chemicals, another study showing 120 chemicals that they're being exposed to...

SHAWN STEVENSON: On a daily basis.

DARIN OLIEN: On a daily basis.

SHAWN STEVENSON: That are largely untested.

DARIN OLIEN: Largely un... Yeah, so let's set that context. 60,000 to 80,000 chemicals are created every year. Man-made by us. Blasting us in our environment, our homes, our cars, our clothing, our bathroom, our environment, our offices, you name it. So, of those, about 1000 to 1500 are tested at all, and they're then trying to figure out what is the safety limits, and that's already precarious because real world is massively different than trying to figure out some safety in these things. So, think about that, blasting all of these chemicals out, they're only testing about 1500, no agency, NIH, CDC, FCC, EPA, no agency has ever done any cross-reactions of any of those 60,000 to 80,000. None, zero, zilch.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Even when they study and they're studying them in isolation and...

DARIN OLIEN: Isolation.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Combined with the other tens of thousands of chemicals.

DARIN OLIEN: Right, so then on top of it, when you're creating products, there is reactions that happen as a result, dioxins, 1,4-dioxin, these triclosan, these kinds of things can happen as a result of chemicals interacting and then it's actually in the product, but since they didn't put it there, it's not on any label. So, it's these reactions, that's just a tiny example that we are thrust into, "Hey man, I just want to eat some whole foods. So, you know, Shawn, I wrote 'SuperLife,' I want people to eat whole food everyday." But the elephant in my room was that, well, we have all of this exposure that's undermining some of the greatest engines of our bodies, our hormones, our endocrine system, how are we supposed to thrive if we're limited at what it is that we're talking about and not aware that these chemicals are blasting us?

And then you ask yourself, come on, Darin, how could they possibly put chemicals in products that would cause us harm? Well, that's called plausible deniability. You know this very well. So, if a company, a person running a company, if they don't test it in their product, they don't know that it's dangerous.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Right, yeah.

DARIN OLIEN: And then, but if you look at other research and other studies, you're going, no, it's dangerous, right?

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yeah.

DARIN OLIEN: No, it's absolutely endocrine disrupting. No, it's showing carcinogenic activity. No, it's showing a hijack of your endocrine system. Oh, it's showing connections to breast cancer. Oh, it's showing connections to endometriosis. Oh, it's showing connections to asthma and respiratory issues.

So, they get this pass... Some of the whole damn thing, dude, is like, we're going to put these products out there, and when it's overwhelming, if it ever comes to that, we'll then test it, we'll then take it out or maybe do something about that, and one of the... So, it's this massive experiment, and one of the gnarly ones that we try to do something for was going back to the pesticides was DDT. So, in 1972, they shut down DDT use. Guess what's in 98.6% of all adolescents today? DDT. In the blood of 98.6% of all adolescents today, so it's a shining example of a forever chemical.

So that forever chemical goes into 9000 different PFAS chemicals and PFAS is Perfluoroalkyl substances or Polyfluoroalkyl substances. And these are cousins of Teflon, which was created by DuPont and Scotchgard and all of this stuff. And so that pan that you've been keeping around that doesn't stick, that's the motherlode of what Teflon was originally used for, and now those are being phased out, but now it shows up in all of these other areas, so all of this stuff, yeah, it's just nuts.

And you and I before we came on here, we were chatting that when you do your research and you do it so well and you present it, I can tell when you're reading it back that you are... You're emotionally, what the f*ck, right? And it's all over in my book too, and I kind of didn't want to hide that, so I'm just going, is this a good idea people? And then when I'm recording them, I can't help, but it comes out of me going, so everyone listening, it's really hard to understand this level of the matrix that a product, most of them that is in your personal care aisles in a cleaning product in your home, the clothing that you're putting on, the laundry detergent, the fragrance in it, the lotion, all of that stuff and a whole lot more. It's hard to wrap your head around that there's harmful, knowingly harmful chemicals that are undermining the quality of your life, and are they acute? Are they ionizing DNA damaging acute like x-ray? No. But the persistence of them and phthalates, bisphenols, they have half-lives of a couple of hours, but the problem is we keep getting exposed to them over and over and over again because they show up parabens, another one, right?

We keep re-applying. Well, we start out with lotion in the morning, and then we put sunscreen on in the afternoon, like paraben, paraben, ethyl parabens and all these different stuffs. So, our body is getting like... It would be like, how would it be if I just slowly just punched you in the nose, just not hard, but I'm just going to tap you in the nose, but I'm not going to stop for 24 hours, and then the next 24, I'm just going to keep doing it. So, these things persist. And the accumulated body burden that they start using now in terms of trying to understand, it moves into this category, and I like these terms that are now coming up, the allostatic pressure of the body, and that is that...

The issue with all of this is, and the 25 researchers I had and the thousands, what feels like probably pretty close to it, thousands of articles and research I had to read to kind of surmise what each chapter is going to be. The astonishing thing is that number one, this is allowed at all to happen, and I think that matrix moment is where the data just says it, but that we have this overwhelming pressure of this allostatic pressure of all of these things all the time that there's not a place that we can go, "Oh, it's that. Oh, it's, hey Darin, I'm just wearing this nice little Lycra underwear. How is that going to kill me?" It's not. It's not. But that Lycra, that plastic, plasticizer, elastane, petroleum, endocrine disrupting, coupled with the lotion that you just put on, coupled with the cologne that you just put on, coupled with the shampoo and the conditioner and the fire retardant you just laid down on your sofa, all of those have endocrine disrupting compounds in them.

So, all of them are adding up to go and stop punching me in the nose man, right. 'Cause if I kept popping you in the nose, your nose is going to be sore after 24 hours, you know what I mean.

SHAWN STEVENSON: After months and years, I'm looking like a bulldog out here.

DARIN OLIEN: So, it's like, so that's the kind of amorphous, invisible elephant in the room of our modern society that undercut my father in the '90s, when he came to me going, trying to tell us, "I'm getting fogged out, I can't think, I can't like". And we were like, what are you talking about? "I can't be around the deodorants and shampoos and conditioners", and here's a high-functioning double master 10-year professor that can't think. And so, he's trying to educate everybody, and I dedicate this book to my dad.

He's trying to educate everyone in his micro-environments, in his space and at his college and things like that, and handing out VHS tapes in the '90s, and his body burden was higher and then come to find out, yeah, he was compromised by his thyroid being annihilated from years of playing around with atomic bombs in the navy. Not so good.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Right. Where did that come from? You see, that is an unexpected statement, but this is something that has occurred for many, many people as well, just being in that vicinity with nuclear weapons, you know people who are... It's a job that carries even a level of prestige, and we think, again, that we know what we're doing and handling these things, and so knowing that, you share this in the book, knowing that his thyroid would be compromised, they knew that then, they're just like, "Here take these pills, we're just going to go ahead and destroy your thyroid and you're good."

DARIN OLIEN: Right.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Right. And then seeing these things manifest where you shared in the book, and I don't want to give us away actually the story of what unfolded with your dad, and again, a big catalyst, I'm sure for you being in this field at the level that you're at, but I wanted to start this off by talking about perceptively, for many of us, there's nothing more wholesome than a nice fresh piece of fruit, right. We're trying to do the right thing, but we're looking at this culture that has the big mantra for time was better living through chemistry, and it being tied into this premise, the name of the book is 'Fatal Conveniences,' where the mission, it's under the guise of trying to feed more people, right? So, let's monocrop and let's use these chemicals, no big deal.

When the truth is, there are many more intelligent and healthful regenerative ways of going about this stuff, but over time, even with a decent idea for feeding people, it gets compromised where people, companies and the bottom line, especially again, if it's driven by, we've got shareholders, and they're the number one thing, if it's a publicly traded company, is increasing that value for the shareholders, and so you start cutting corners and more corners and more corners, and you mentioned that term plausible deniability, it's just like, well, we didn't know. And you're sharing again and again that we do know, and in fact, I want to share this because you brought this up when you were talking about even the plastic containers for our whole foods, you shared some research indicating that the average person is consuming about 200,000 tiny bits of microplastics every year, and research is now indicating that these microplastics are partly responsible for our frightening plunge in global sperm counts, again, endocrine disrupting chemicals and we're just plasticizing ourselves.

Is it not an accident that we live in a society that seems to be really fake, right now, you know what I mean? It's just like, we are what we eat, like for real.

DARIN OLIEN: For real. Yeah, and that's you're literally ingesting particles of plastic, right, which are petroleum-based and chemicalized in order just to be created. So, you're ingesting that and throughout the book, almost every direction, the biggest fundamental thing is if we were really trying to undermine our entire human existence, then we are doing a really great job at it, because the sperm counts are plummeting. I don't know if you've seen this, but they normalize the low and then they just keep moving the targets like, "Well, that's normal, that's fine." Right, so men’s' testosterone are down, and the thing that also shows up more and more is the infertility shows up in a lot of different ways. So the over-estrogenized chemicals that buy in to these receptors are sprinting women towards all kinds of from ovulation problems, infertility of having children, endometriosis, painful cysts, breast cancer, all that, and then for men, dude, motility, the ability for sperm to do their job, the amount of sperm, like the essence of all of our human life, if you look at one thing alone, one marker, looking at the infertility.

If you just looked at that, does that indicate to you that that makes no freaking sense whatsoever, because we are literally creating these things and undermining our entire existence in that way, not to mention how powerful these hormones are for our optimized life, right, testosterone is incredibly important for women and men. Strength, of course, bone density, immune system, all of these things, and then that's going away, and then the estrogenizing of society is throwing off this chemical system to such a degree that even in... As I reference in here that we're going to get into that right now, but the EMFs very clearly also showing motility and problems in fertility-wise, and so we're like, wow, so now it's not even a chemical, it's a damn frequency that we're running around with on our phones, we're blasting, where is the WiFi? What's the WiFi password? Da, da, da, da, da. We're not even thinking about this sh*t, right?

The history, dude, the history of electricity, which I dove into and actually I had to pull myself out 'cause it was so fascinating. But just to give a little snippet on that, they knew when they put up the first telegraph, that the frequency and the magnetic field that would come off of those wires, and in proximity of mammals and birds and migratory patterns, they knew then, shit was going sideways, right.

And we'll put a button in that now, but... So, think, that was a telegraph. What's happened since then? From blasting every direction on the planet, these wires... Okay, of course, I'm not saying, "Let's go back and rub sticks together and not have power." But we have to understand what we're dealing with, right? AC current is gnarly, right? It just is. It creates a huge amount of magnetic... Dirty electricity comes up in so many studies with child leukemia. There was a bunch of schools, that in the United States, that were found not even grounded properly, and kids and teachers, tenured teachers, all of them had a form of cancer. So, playing with electricity... So anyway, we'll get to it later, but then just contemplate then jumping into 5G, I want a cellphone too. I'm not going to say that, right. But we got to just pump the brakes, man. Get more studies. Use this stuff wisely. And please, please, please, let us have a choice before we continue. 'Cause it's happening right now, put up 40,000 to 50,000 satellites in our ionosphere, and blast us with radiation without us having a choice.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yeah, this is speaking to informed consent.

DARIN OLIEN: Yes.

SHAWN STEVENSON: With so much of this, it's just like, "You don't have a say in it. Well, this is just what we're going to do."

DARIN OLIEN: "This is just what we're going to do." And then...

SHAWN STEVENSON: And it's under the guise of being for us, but it's not including us as far as education and also our ability to choose other than, right? So again... But this also... And another thing that I love, and I shared this with you before we got started, in every section you shared, basically it's just like, "Okay, so now what do I do when you give some action steps?" Because we are here living in this world, and... One of my favorite parts of the book, you mentioned just our use of plastic bottles, for example. We got the bisphenol A, for example. We know there's study after study after study with it in particular causing issues with fertility. But you say when you were done... And I'm going to read a direct quote from the book. "When you were done with that bottle, you threw it away and it was gone for good. But in fact, there's no such thing as throwing anything away. There's no such thing as away."

DARIN OLIEN: Yeah.

SHAWN STEVENSON: "All our trash, especially the non-biodegradable junk, all our exhaust and effluence, all our residues and run-offs, maybe we can no longer see them, but they're there. They're here."

DARIN OLIEN: Yeah.

SHAWN STEVENSON: We are here on this planet. When we throw something "away," it might be away from us spatially, but it's still here and something has to be done with it. And that's the thing that we're so short-sighted, we don't think about it. Eventually, what are we going to do? We're going to blast trash out into outer space.

DARIN OLIEN: They probably want to, yeah.

SHAWN STEVENSON: You know what I'm saying? It's just like, it's so crazy, the things that we're doing we don't think about. When there are... If it was culturally programmed, just like it's culturally programmed for us to eat ultra-processed foods, if we had a cultural programming to where we were growing food with intelligence and efficacy, and then using the by-products of our food waste for fuel, for example...

DARIN OLIEN: Yes.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Which you were talking about this, this is one of the most close proximity intelligent forms of fuel. We can extract ethanol from food waste, right? And we have these battles again, hundreds of billions of dollars at least, probably we're looking at trillions have been made through... Yeah, absolutely, it's trillions. The gasoline industry, right?

DARIN OLIEN: Yeah.

SHAWN STEVENSON: And the wars that have been caused by that, the seemingly priceless resource. And in reality, there are so many other ways to go about fueling our modern innovations also in ways that are cleaner, that don't advocate war and the destruction of communities. And these policies that lift certain individuals up to these places of prominence, again, where they can start to decide what you're going to be exposed to, what you're going to eat, what you're going to wear, what frequencies... If we're talking about these EMF situations you're going to be exposed to, is putting people in positions of power that oftentimes don't have our best interest at heart.

DARIN OLIEN: Totally, yeah.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Now, this leads me back to our original conversation about wholesome fruits and vegetables. Now, you shared a strategy, especially if we are... And this is according to the Environmental Working Group. They've got the dirty dozen, right? So, these are known to have the biggest pesticide load, to wash these. There's veggie washes, there's baking soda options, there's vinegar options. Yes. And I'm going to say something here. And I'm just... I've got to keep it 100. When these things, just like us, when they're grown in the environment of toxicity, it's integrated into the tissue matrix of that thing, right? So, it's the same thing with us. Even though we see ourselves as human beings to be so evolved and kind of separate from nature in many ways, all of nature has this governing intelligence. That blueberry, that strawberry, has genes as well, and it also has a drive towards growth and development and carrying on its species, right? And to find the right conditions to be able to grow and evolve.

And so, what's happening? What are the epigenetic influences happening when we're utilizing these fertilizers? One of them, you actually talked about as well, pesticides has been used for a long time, and you mentioned how it's kind of... It's essentially been banned as of 2022, chlorpyrifos, but it's still kind of caught up in red tape. And as we know, there's a phasing out process that companies can really take their sweet time. But you shared how chlorpyrifos, widely used pesticide, was notably causing, and you shared multiple studies, essentially birth defects and lowering the IQ of children.

DARIN OLIEN: Yeah. Yeah, I mean, that's one of those, "How is this possible?" And I think it's important to understand because this is a little bit of... Maybe this is the right term for this greenwashing too, that phase out period? If you go back, oftentimes they may press release this stuff and they don't actually do it, right? And so, digging deep on the PFAS stuff, 'cause that stuff is forever chemical and it's everywhere. I saw this too and I'm like, "I'm going to watch these freaking guys," right? So, the big boys like Wendy's, McDonald's, Chipotle, which maybe they will do it or something. But they, yeah, were phasing PFAS out on the wrapping. So, everyone listening, let's watch. Let's watch, and if they can prove it, in the years that they just said. So that's the thing. And even that, and you mentioned there's these... All these subtleties. Let's go back to the DDT thing. We phased that out. Still here.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yep.

DARIN OLIEN: So that pesticide, all those pesticides, those forever chemicals, man. You're way late, man. You're so late. What are you doing? 'Cause you exposed... And you made a good point, because we have to give these solutions and not hang people too much, but yeah, if we're going to be 100% real, Darin and Shawn probably ain't washing that conventionally grown anything, 'cause we're not buying it, right? So, there's a Dr. Shana Sharma, and she started to get into the EDCs and how this is not just you, this is starting to knock on that epidemiological door, right? These things, these persistent chemicals... DDT, it's persistent, it's in your body. It's like I said, over 98% of the blood of our precious children of something we were doing in '72 is affecting your kids, and affecting in vivo, in the utero, it's on us. And then that EWG did that study where there's over 200 chemicals in the umbilical cord of children being born.

So, I don't... Again, I wish I didn't have to write this book, but I had to write this book. My dad from the other side is going, "Darin, you're going to write this book." But it's for us to look at this stuff honestly because you can come up with any denial in your head. You can listen to me right now, " Oh, that's bullsh*t. That's not real. They couldn't possibly put harmful chemicals." Good luck, okay? Go find some of these studies that are in the book and read all you want. But it's here, it's happening. So, if we don't look at this stuff, we can't change anything. You're a prime example of that, looking, digging out studies and going, "We need to know what's happening," because trying to live optimum-ly and just trying to live life, our meat suits, our biology, and our chemistry is here. You can come up with any idea you want, but that EDC and that PFAS, and that carcinogenic material, that 200,000 microplastics of plastic that you're consuming every year, you're consuming it. And it is affecting you to varying degrees.

And like I said, the accumulative body burden is different for everybody. But this is where my optimism lies in... We have 8 billion of us. We have eight billion people. We always have and always will have the numbers. So if you and I keep having these conversations and letting other people learn and expand and grow and become aware, then they're going to tell their family, they're going to tell and alter their buying patterns, they're going to tell, "Oh my God, I didn't hear that, I didn't know about this EDC in this product, I didn't know about the EMF in this thing, just keep that away from your head and still use your phone." This conversation of awareness needs to happen just like living honestly in relationships. Share what's going on. It's for closeness to happen underneath all of it. That's what I want. I want people to have a level of freedom from this thing that we didn't have a choice in.

Kids are being born with chemicals that the mom has already been exposed to. You and I were born into a chemicalized version of the world. I love the modern world just like everyone else, but I take levels of awareness and precaution to minimize, knowing absolutely, that this is stressing my body out. It's just stressing my cells out. These are altering chemistry in my body. So, if I can continuously minimize this stuff, then that's the goal because we don't know. How do you know that your migraine isn't from the laundry detergent that you did? Because I watched my dad. I watched him having reactions to this. But then we go to the doctor, "I get this migraine... " And they don't do anything about your environment. The home is also your second skin. You're lying on these mattresses; you're cuddling up to these... The beddings. You're cleaning your house with good intention, whatever chemicalized soup that is. Your formaldehyde is off gassing from your couch. All of this stuff, from the glues in your floor to the paints, if we become aware of this stuff, we start to have the agency of pulling back our power, gaining that power, gaining that strength, relieving our chemistry, our biology, our cells from this burden. That is just...

Why it's here? I don't know. If that was the question, I very clearly just... You said it. Shareholders require a certain level of fiduciary duties, right? And so that modern-day world has moved the god, a false god of profit and power, over the agency of health, sovereignty, strength, beauty, expression, and an infinite list of living a life full of joy and happiness and love. You're being hijacked slowly and surely by your glands, your master glands of your body with exposures that are in our world. I don't know why. I don't know how the hell. I always love... PFAS is getting a hell of a rap right now, thank God, like Simply Orange. As you can probably... As you write many of these, your great books, you're doing all this research, you're trying to stay up on it, and it's a moving target because there's more research that comes out all the time, and you got to go, "I got to turn this in." And as I already turned it in, and all this info came out, there was Simply Orange, which is a product of the Coca-Cola Company, it had...

SHAWN STEVENSON: The good folks at Coca-Cola.

DARIN OLIEN: Good folks at Coca-Cola. 200 reported PFAS chemicals showed up in that product. 200.

SHAWN STEVENSON: In a wholesome glass of orange juice.

DARIN OLIEN: In a wholesome beautiful glass of it. And only upon another agency testing, it flagged it, and then, you know, the good side of social media, it blasted out there and they put pressure on them to make a change. This is playing out in front of us, right? And the Toxic Safety Act that was initiated from PFAS... You'll find this funny. PFAS has been getting a bad rap, it should be, because it shows up in lipstick, mascara, other beauty products; it shows up in clothing, a shirt that doesn't want a wrinkle, PFAS. Stain-repellent in your carpet, PFAS showing up on everything, right? And it's also in our blood, high statistics of over 90% showing up in PFAS in our blood. And it's playing out in front of us.

So, these organizations pop up and they say, "Oh, now the government's going to step in and give this agency the authority to regulate it." You're like going, "What? Well, what about the FDA? What about the USDA? What about the National Institute of Health? That was their job. So now there's pressure, now you're popping up another satellite organization to do the job that was supposed to be done? What?" It's the most bizarre Twilight Zone I ever see. And as I look each one of these men, from a simple one to a dental floss that has PFAS, and you're putting it in your mouth, and it was directly connected to kidney cancer, just so it slips easily between your teeth. And they don't have to tell you that this sh*t's linked to cancer. Bizarro!

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yeah.

DARIN OLIEN: Right?

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yeah.

DARIN OLIEN: So, dude. And at the same time, on the drive... No sh*t, on the drive over here, I get a call from a buddy, and they're going through some massive changes so I'm not going to call them out. This is not a negative way, it's actually very positive. He owns a very large company that is a material science company that uses a lot of alternatives to plastic, one of the biggest in the world, creating alternatives and working with all the big boys, McDonald's, Walmart, Pepsi, right? Tide's changing, companies doing great. And I tell him... This plant-based company reached out and they wanted me to... All these meals, they wanted me to look at them and I looked at them and I'm like, "Umm, what's the container made out of? That's plastic." I'm like, "Guaranteed, you have phthalates in your food. I can't support it." So, I called my buddy, "Hey man, there's this company... " He goes, "Yeah, PFAS is easy to change." 'Cause he's a material science guy. "It's just lazy," right? He goes, "Oh yeah, we're playing of all kinds of different resins and algae’s and stuff." It's just PFAS is really good at its job. It makes things slippery, it makes it oil-resistant, so it doesn't leach into the packaging and all that stuff.

And it's heat-resistant, so it doesn't break down, it just absorbs into your food, but... The package is good. So largely, I look at this too from my brain is systems, and these legacy systems that want to profit, that have always done this, and we put liquids in plastic. Just pause for a second. Let's just think about drinking water out of plastic. I guarantee you, if I interviewed anybody and said, "If I gave you a choice to drink water out of this plastic water bottle or a glass bottle, what do you think the commonsense choice would be?

SHAWN STEVENSON: Obviously, glass.

DARIN OLIEN: Obviously, glass. There is a burden on people because there's not another choice. There was actually a study done on this that people feel stressed when you actually ask them, they don't have a choice, they go to the airport. I want water. I don't want to... I think you had a story about that where you... You go, "I'm not drinking on that." So, you actually dehydrate yourself and actually made yourself a little worse which I applaud. 'Cause that's something I would do. Funny that I remember that, but that it becomes the system of laziness that we are the effect of. That's... As I'm driving and I get to talk to people every week, literally every week, and big... And I talked to the head of sustainability at Visa. This guy... Their clientele is 2.8 billion users. So, I'm going, "You're excited about this space? Let's talk." And I talk to my buddy on the way over, "The material science doing good things for the world at big scale." And the rumblings that's happening. I'm not talking like greenwashing ESG stuff, because there's a lot of greenwashing.

The environmental governance stuff of big companies trying to do things, there are some real things going on, but there's also a lot of greenwashing. Greenwashing is a whole another thing, misleading labels, misleading brands, giving you a beautiful picture of an evergreen forest while you just took down evergreens to make the napkins that you're buying and then blasted them with chlorine in the process to make them beautifully white. And it's just this insanity. So, I'm optimistic that we can wake up people one thing at a time, and that big industry, the more awake we are, the more there is a market, right?

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yeah.

DARIN OLIEN: And so, I vetted... The last third of this whole damn book is vetted companies. I tried to do my best, hopefully, things didn't slip through, but I tried to do my best in giving people healthy choices from all of these different things I talked about in the book. It's very hard to do. It took a huge amount of time, a whole another group of people to help me get through all that stuff. So, it's not to say, don't live your life. Live your life and I want you to live it more powerfully and detox yourself from the delusion, number one of these systems, these systems are failing us, but that we have numbers on our side. And we can make a hell of a change.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Wow. Detox yourself from the delusion. That's powerful. That's the most important detox.

Got a quick break coming up, we'll be right back. When people see you, the first thing that they see is your skin. We truly do wear so much of what's happening internally on the surface of our skin, and it just makes sense because our skin is a protection around what's happening internally, but also our skin is a huge component of our nervous system. When we are fertilized at the very beginning of our lives, the egg meets the sperm, one of the first things that develops is our nervous system and the outer most expression, the seeds of our skin being developed. And again, that makes sense because our skin helps us to sense and to modulate what's happening in the world around us. We don't all have to have Spidey senses to understand that our skin is picking up information from our environment and distributing that information to our brain and nervous system. But what's happening with our brain and nervous system moves outward to our skin as well. It's a deeply intimate connection, and this speaks to how stress can impact our skin health, but also how we're building our skin from the inside out.

Now, if we want healthier skin, our obsession as a society has been about topical treatment, trying to move things from the outside in. But the reality is, to really make big changes with our skin health, we need to work from the inside out. And this starts with things that are nutritive and nourishing to our skin, but also nourishing to our nervous system. A randomized double-blind, placebo-controlled trial published in the journal Complementary Therapies in Medicine, utilized green tea extracts for four weeks. And at the conclusion of the study, participants showed a significant reduction in acne precursors and skin irritation versus the placebo group. Again, this is a randomized double-blind, placebo-controlled trial, demonstrating something remarkable about green tea.

Another study, and this was a meta-analysis of 20 studies demonstrating that compounds in green tea have been shown to be effective in treating and reducing acne, dermatitis, keloids, and rosacea, among other skin issues. There's something really interesting about green tea. Part of it is the phytonutrient concentration found in green tea, and another part of it is the impact that it has on calming and supporting our nervous system. Green tea is incredibly rich in L-theanine. A research published in the journal Brain Topography, found that L-theanine intake increases the frequency of our alpha brain waves indicating reduced stress, enhanced focus, and even increased creativity. And the very best form of green tea that is most concentrated in L-theanine is Sun Goddess matcha green tea from Pique Teas. Shaded 35% longer for extra L-theanine and is crafted by a Japanese tea master and there are less than 15 in the entire world.

It is the first quadruple toxin screened matcha for ensuring its purity and efficacy. There's nothing added, no preservatives, sugar, artificial sweeteners, and any of that other nonsense. And when you combine that with the BT Fountain formula from PIQUE that contains proven ceramides and hyaluronic acid that reduces fine lines and wrinkles that boost skin elasticity, provides deep hydration, you can see visible results within two weeks. Go to piquelife.com/model, that's P-I-Q-U-E-L-I-F-E.com/model. You're going to get 15% off plus free shipping for life with one of their new exclusive subscriptions. Plus, some of their packages actually come with a frother and a beaker so you can actually make your tea with ease. I love my hand frother, I use it every single day to make my drinks for myself and my family. Highly encourage you to check this out for better skin health, better health overall. Go to piquelife.com/model. Now, back to the show.

Just to circle back one more time to the food piece. That's one of the things that we definitely connect on, our love for food, great food and getting great food into people's hands. And just with everything in life, there can't be a problem without a solution. There's really two sides of the same coin. Oftentimes a problem presents itself, and we are forced to innovate, to think differently, to be more creative. And so, that's what we're seeing right now, and even platforms like this existing as a counterbalance to the conventional narrative that has so many of us sick. The thing is we don't need a study to see how unwell we are as a species. Just look around, we're not doing okay.

And then if you look at the data, something that was rare just a few decades ago, if we're just talking about the advent of obesity being normalized, we have over 70% of our citizens are now overweight or obese. And this being an underlying risk factor for all manner of... Are leading cause of death in this country. This kind of pro-inflamed state and then we're introduced to, for example, an issue with an inflammatory condition like heart disease or a viral infection. We are pre-inflamed as a species. And so, here's the thing, when you mentioned, and I want to circle back to a couple of things. But number one, in talking about food, one of the things that we can do, yes, Dirty Dozen washes stuff. Also invest in better stuff, invest in the organic when you can. Also, there are little pivots you can make, even buying some stuff frozen that might be more cost effective. That's organic. Going to farmers markets.

DARIN OLIEN: Totally.

SHAWN STEVENSON: I'm a huge fan of that. And moving here to LA, you'd think again, just in the busyness of city, there are farmers markets all over the... There's one on a mall parking lot on Tuesdays. It's right off... Literally, right off the highway. And it's just like, damn. But it's right there, you know what I mean? And so, that part and even dare I say, having the audacity to maybe grow something yourself, you know what I mean? You shared in the book this transition, this fatal convenience to like, give me the food. No work involved with me. We're such a large percentage of Americans were farming of some sort, not just Americans, but just period worldwide. And now it's dwindled down to a fraction...

DARIN OLIEN: 2%.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Of our population who are involved in the production of food. And so, maybe this is a return to that and because it's such an important part of our life to have a little bit closer proximity to where our food is coming from. Maybe that's the ultimate thing it's calling for.

DARIN OLIEN: It's the ultimate. How much does that give you that? It starts wiping away obesity, heart disease, cancer, inflammation that you said. It wipes it away. You take your... And you can grow a lot in not a lot of land. Even if you want to play with it and start talking to some plants, put it on a windowsill if you don't have a lawn. But that piece is so important because just the custody of shipping things around. You're increasing nutrient density by... You could look at least by 40%. At least by 40% nutrient density. Instead of getting your kale, your spinach, your pomegranate, maybe you want to throw a pomegranate tree in the backyard. You are eliminating the exposure of chemicals, but you're increasing nutrient density. As we know, food is available, but the nutrients aren't. So, we're overfed and starving nutrient-wise. And food sovereignty, man, if we just went back to... Think about this, there's 47 million acres of lawn.

SHAWN STEVENSON: That's a lot of lawn.

DARIN OLIEN: And what are they doing? They got their freaking sprinklers on. I'm not saying get rid of all of your lawn, but imagine if we got... If we converted half of it and you grow a tomato, you got too many, you can't eat it. You got to start giving them away. That's the abundance of life and of nature. You put one pomegranate seed in the ground, you get 70 pomegranates and then you crack open one, you got 700 seeds. Talk about compounding interest, right?

SHAWN STEVENSON: Right. Wow. Stacked in our favor.

DARIN OLIEN: It's stacked. If we divorce her, nature, then you're adding to the side effect of your life again.

SHAWN STEVENSON: There's no prenup.

DARIN OLIEN: No. No. Yeah, so it's like, if you have any plot of land, good for your kids. And also, schools, playgrounds, plant some food. Kids will learn some of the most practical stuff ever and they will thrive. Every kid loves getting dirty and learning how to grow food. And so, we could with that 47,000 acres or 47 million acres of lawn, keep your watering system, just plant food. We could eliminate food... For sure, food insecurity and be sovereign here in the United States again, as an example or anywhere. So yeah, your expression of finding the... Know your farmer, pay your farmer. 'Cause it's like a credit card. You're in a delusion of like, you're buying something. You got to pay for it. And so, if you buy cheap, the 60% of the ultra-processed crap food that most or most of it. Isn't it 60% most of our calories now or...

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yeah. For the average adult. For children, it's 67%.

DARIN OLIEN: More, right? God. Imagine that if you're investing into healthy food, your credit card bill of those diseases that will happen. You have to pay the debt. As a parent, it's like, don't use this... I don't know about you, but I've heard people say, "Well, they're kids. So just feed them this and that and throw the tater tots in the oven and... " It's like, yeah, they have more resiliency on one hand doesn't mean to feed them poorly.

SHAWN STEVENSON: It's the cultural phenomenon. It's the culture. Because again, there's a space to understand, you got a lot on your plate, and you just want to get the kids fed that whole thing. But what if we had a culture where that wasn't normalized? Where you don't have so much stress and so much time away from them and from food? And like you just said about the lawn phenomenon, that is a really remarkable slide of hand. Like get your white picket fence...

DARIN OLIEN: Totally.

SHAWN STEVENSON: And nicely manicured lawn, growing food. We want this appearance of prestige...

DARIN OLIEN: Totally.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Without the inability to feed yourself. And so, what an incredible gift to give children, a skill to give them. Give them the skill of being able to feed themself over, I would argue, learning their multiplication table. Except if the multiplication table came to multiplying food.

DARIN OLIEN: Yes.

SHAWN STEVENSON: When you started to share the numbers within the pomegranate seeds, it's just like, that's where this can be applied.

DARIN OLIEN: Yes.

SHAWN STEVENSON: But most importantly, learning how to feed oneself I would think that's a pretty high rung of priorities. But in our culture, again, we're going into the things that are very superficial versus real education about how do I take care of myself, my body, my mind? How to relate to other people in a healthy fashion? We were talking about this again before the show, about ROR, return on relationship. Being the most important...

DARIN OLIEN: Totally.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Thing, especially today where AI. I'm not talking about Allen Iverson; I'm talking about artificial intelligence. It's not even knocking on the door. Artificial intelligence is in your house. And right now, it's more important than ever to double down on relationship, community, with real people because, wow, it's getting a little bit sketchy. And so, I want to ask you about this. You devoted a section of the book to personal care products, and as soon as you said it, because you mentioned, "This for me is one of the most remarkable because the name." Again, it seems so wholesome. Personal care, personal care. And when you mentioned floss, this is something, again, we want to make sure that we don't have stank breath. We want to make sure that we're taking care of our teeth, that's the thing that's conditioned into our culture. And at the same time, what are we using? And so, with that floss, you mentioned the potential of having these forever chemicals going in between your teeth and your gums are incredibly...

Their ability to absorb things is remarkable. And so, that part but also you mentioned, you're not going to find out what the coating is on your floss. They don't have to tell you because it's considered a medical device. Using these loopholes to manipulate and to essentially poison people and not give informed consent about what they're consuming, what they're putting in their bodies. Again, this is not to say, don't take care of your teeth. We're just talking about being more aware of what we're actually using.

DARIN OLIEN: Yeah, these things are littered with these loopholes that don't allow... It's not on the back, you can't see it. Like if a mom, all the mama bears out there who would do anything to protect their children, if you looked in the dental floss and saw PFAS and then a little asterisk by it, known to cause cancer, would you give that to your kid?

SHAWN STEVENSON: Probably not.

DARIN OLIEN: Do you want that kid to floss once, twice a day with that carcinogenic string? Should be just string. I did. I just obviously got rid of that and I use a clean organic cotton that has a charcoal in it, it's a great anti-bacterial, and I just wet it before I put it in my mouth, and it slips fine. It's just things like that, but the loopholes show up in so many different ways, which is crazy. Like, okay, it's a medical device.

So, some lobbyists convinced DuPont can just let anything happen with what's going in your mouth. How the hell is that possible? Well, it's possible. It's there, right? And then you have things like, continuing on that slant, you have trade secrets. And this goes into the fragrances and all of that stuff. As soon as you say it's a trade secret, there could be hundreds of EDCs and carcinogens even within that. So, there's all these loopholes that show up that... And I dedicated a whole part of my book on fragrances because it shows up everywhere in the personal care. Not so "caring," right? So, these fragrances are littered with this stuff, and you have no idea. Fragrance. That's all you see. Parfum. That's all you see. But then you have no informed consent, zero, because someone who made the choice for you said it's a trade secret, we need to protect their secrets, we need to protect... Someone worked really hard to come up with that formula, and then that formula is an IP for their company, so we have to have it as a trade secret. We can't... I understand that. I formulated some products. You don't want to let out all your secrets. But those secrets got to be safe and clean if, you know? You can't have these known issues in them.

So yeah, personal care is a persistent one. Because on average, 12 products, and of those, a woman using 12 products every day. And of that, we're talking 100 to 126 chemicals that you're exposed to every day. That's just personal care, right? The layers of this stuff, when then you lay down at night, what's that mattress made out of? Oh, those stain-resistant sheets, you got? Damn it! They have PFAS and plastics in it now. Get rid of those things. And clothing as a side and material, second largest polluter on the planet.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yeah, and you cover all of this in the book eloquently, and studies to affirm everything, there's so much research that went into this. And it's really important to provide people with empowerment, so that we... Again, you're providing that informed consent that you would think that these alphabet agencies would be doing for us. But the reality is they're not, and it is what it is. So, we've got to double down on our education. So, I encourage everybody to pick up a copy asap of Fatal Conveniences and get yourself educated. And also getting educated on higher quality choices, because another one of the things you talked about is toothpaste, just staying in that same vein of personal care. And it's literally... There is these warnings on the box or on the tube saying "Contact poison control if consumed," right? It's like telling you it's poison, right? And also, they say use a pea-size amount, but then on a commercial they're putting like... It looks like a sundae. They're making an ice cream sundae on the thing, and so that's what I did, always ice cream sundae...

DARIN OLIEN: Yeah.

SHAWN STEVENSON: On the toothbrush.

DARIN OLIEN: And you're swallowing it... Every kid, even us, you swallow it.

SHAWN STEVENSON: You can't not! Did we not just talk about how absorbable, especially through your... The tissues inside of your mouth. There are sublingual drugs and all these things. Your mouth is absorbing it, period. Just because you don't swallow, you're absorbing it, for sure. And you're inherently going to swallow some as well because you got to swallow.

DARIN OLIEN: Right.

SHAWN STEVENSON: You know what I mean? So, it's just... It's so silly. It's just the little loopholes to be able to...

DARIN OLIEN: Loopholes. And then that opens up... Open up that tube of fluorine, right? The fluoride. And that whole scam a-lama ding dong, right?

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yeah.

DARIN OLIEN: It's like... How is it that they convinced... It's a very... I didn't even get into this, but I've read so much that now I have these little PICO stories in my head about all of the research and... Just a little back story, there was a community here in the States, it was in the Dust Bowl, and this area just accumulated most of the topsoil and it had... It turned into a very mineral-rich area, and everybody had amazing teeth. That was the genesis of it. And somehow, they nailed it, thinking that it was the fluoride. And they convinced this whole... Us. It's even in our water. It's a proven neurotoxin, right? I have studies, and they're showing that IQ points of children going down. That's just IQ, people. Is there pleomorphic effects? Keep in mind. We are also limited in our vocabulary of how detrimental every one of these chemicals are of the thousands and thousands. And then they said, well, from a by-product of the aluminum industry, the by-product of pesticide, they have fluoride. And they use fluorine gas, by the way, to create PFAS. And they've convinced us to put this sh*t in our mouth and drink it. What the hell is going on?

So that's what... Even me saying it, my energy comes up around it because it's like... It's insane. But there are some really easy solutions. Don't buy that stuff, right? Buy something that's clean. We got some great products in there, easy to switch over. Filter your water. For people that may get overwhelmed, some of the kind of the way I think about it is start from within and go outwards to make some changes. So, like as you're opening your mouth, like you just said, you absorb so much and then you'd swallow it and then absorb more. So, water, clean your water. It turns out that PFAS is delivering... Water is delivering most of the PFAS to people, right? So, clean your water.

SHAWN STEVENSON: It's the universal solvent.

DARIN OLIEN: It's exactly, it's like makes it slippery inside your body and helps you to create cancer. So, RO system, reverse osmosis your water. Everyone always ask, just add some unrefined salt over a good vetted clean electrolyte, and then you've eliminated that problem, right? And then we talked a lot about food today. So, look at your food. Heavy metals and PFAS and chemicals are showing up in all of this ultra-processed food, so start to eliminate the ultra-processed food. Get the whole food that's not wrapped in plastic. Try to grow some of your own... Get to the farmer’s market. So, as you're opening your mouth, start there as a fatal convenience, and then as you're slathering things on your skin, then start to change those things, and wiping deodorants with the ammonia salts that are linked to breast cancer. Just start... Don't get overwhelmed. I'm overwhelmed that our society has allowed this to happen. But like you, you're a pragmatic person like me, let's face it, so that we can change it.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Boom. Boom. My Guy, can you let everybody know where they can find a copy of Fatal Conveniences?

DARIN OLIEN: Yeah, so everywhere where you can buy books, darinolien.com, and you can have links to Barnes & Noble, Amazon, you name it. And yeah.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Where can people follow you as well and just kind of stay up to date?

DARIN OLIEN: Yeah, so darinolien.com, and then Darin Olien on all of the social.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yeah, like I said, I love your Fatal Conveniences series. You talked about... You put a lot into the book obviously, but there's so much more. There's like you just said, there's these stories that couldn't fit into the book, and so you share a lot of those things, and it's so fascinating to see and eye-opening, and I'm just grateful that this education is getting to people. So, you're a superhero in this field, man. I appreciate you so much.

DARIN OLIEN: I appreciate you, man. Love you, bro. Thank you.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Love you too. Let's go. Darin Olien everybody. What's said is that you don't know what you don't know. And many of us are literally born into these conditions where we are inundated with things that are slowly degrading our health and we simply don't realize it. But here's the rub. Once we become aware, now the choice is up to us whether or not we're going to continue that exposure. Now, today's episode, I want to reiterate this point, this is not about being neurotic. We're going to be exposed to things that have factors that are detrimental, but we just want to do the best that we can, stack conditions in our favor, lower our toxicity load. So, if there is a favorite product, if there's a certain cologne or perfume that you like, and it's just like you just you love it. But now you've switched over from using the Johnson & Johnson's Baby Lotion and you're using organic coconut oil. You've lowered that toxicity load and all of those chemical compounds. Again, many of these endocrine-disrupting chemicals are found in conventional lotions, including Johnson & Johnson's Baby Lotion. It's supposed to be for babies, but we want to smell good, you want to smell like a baby, right?

And not realizing, again, we are just rubbing these toxicants, these endocrine-disrupting chemicals into our skin. And our skin eats. Our skin is absorbing this stuff. And so, we switched over. We've done that. We switched over and eliminated toothpaste that have fluoride and/or other toxicants, and we've got a high-quality toothpaste. Maybe it's not perfect, but again, we're lowering that toxic load. And so, if you want to have a deodorant that is more robust, a more conventional deodorant, but you're doing all these other things. It's not about doing everything perfect. It's about making choices that move us forward, that make us feel good, that stack conditions in our favor, and also there's a degree of choice here that's always evident.

We don't want this information to cripple us. Because many of us go through this phase. We find out about all this stuff and it's just like it's debilitating. We go through a phase of disbelief. We go through a phase of anger. We go through a phase of revolting. You might swing to the pendulum. You're not doing nothing for your body like, "f*ck the shower!" Right? "I'm not putting soap on my body. I'm not doing anything for these pits. I'm natural just like my ancestors." Well, when people came across an opportunity to wash their ass, historically, they washed their ass, all right? It's not foreign that our ancestors were doing this practice. But today we've swung so far to this sanitized life, this ideal of cleanliness, that we've become disordered in our thinking. And we've destroyed our microbiome in many ways, from the microbiome of our skin to the microbiome within our bodies. And really, so many different areas of our...

We've largely talked about the microbiome of the gut, but there's a skin microbiome. There's a microbiome of your mouth. What are we doing to ourselves when we're swigging around Listerine? That sh*t hurts. I remember using Listerine as a kid, at first the Cool Mint came out, right? And that was a legit like, "Wow," 'cause it's so like hit you with that refreshing coolness. But prior to that, they just have the brown Listerine. That brown Listerine, just as soon as you start swigging it around, you felt like you were being mummified. You felt like you were going backwards in time to a time when the pharaohs were dominating things and you're stepping up, knocking on the door of a pyramid. You just felt like instantly ancient. Now, do we want that experience under the guise of improving our health? Is that necessary to punish ourselves with nasty brown Listerine? Or is our body trying to tell us something like, "Hey, this is not actually good for you. This alcohol is destroying the microbiome of your mouth, the delicate microbiome that is needed for you to really sense your environment, to sense the quality of your food." Or does it not matter anymore because the quality of our food has been compromised so much as well?

So, these are all things to consider. This does not mean that we can't use an upgraded form of a mouthwash, but it's being more intelligent in our choices. Because they exist, and that's the good news. The good news is that there are individuals that are listening to information like this, that are learning information like this, and they're creating solutions. They are a fan of mouthwashes, and they find out just how damaging these old school mouthwashes are with the belief that this is going to improve our dental health. And they're like, "You know what? I'm going to create a new company, and I'm going to create a beneficial mouthwash that supports a healthy microbiome, but also helps to clean the environment, maybe reduce the presence of pathogenic bacteria." So, people are springing into action to create companies and to provide better choices. Now, are we going to dial in that perfect thing? Probably not. But this is not about being perfect. It's about progress, all right?

So, I hope that this episode helped you to progress in your education and your thinking. Please share this out with your friends and family. You could share this directly from a podcast app that you are listening on. Sharing is caring. And of course, you could take a screenshot of this episode. This is what I love. Take a screenshot of the episode and share it on Instagram. Tag me, I'm @shawnmodel. And tag Darin as well. It is spelled D-A-R-I-N. It's got little pizazz on the spelling of Darin. Tag him as well. Let him know what you thought about this episode, and I appreciate that so much. We've got some epic master classes and world-class guests coming for you very, very soon, so make sure to stay tuned. Take care, have an amazing day, and I'll talk with you soon.

And for more after the show, make sure to head over to themodelhealthshow.com. That's where you can find all of the show notes. You could find transcriptions, videos for each episode. And if you got a comment, you can leave me a comment there as well. And please make sure to head over to iTunes and leave us a rating to let everybody know that the show is awesome, and I appreciate that so much. And take care. I promise to keep giving you more powerful, empowering, great content to help you transform your life. Thanks for tuning in.