Episode 11: Support Your Liver, Support Your Thyroid: Making the Switch to Non-Toxic Cleaning Products
This topic is so important and so simple all at the same time. This is a message that I continue to go back to because I want to be sure that the message is out there– that the information is available to as many people as my little voice can reach. Because it's too important to our health and it's EASY to fix.
I don’t want anyone to say “I didn’t know!”... so you’ll keep hearing me talk about what I’m talking about on today’s episode, and that is that the chemicals that we encounter each and every day in the products that we use in our homes, on our kids, in our personal care, in our laundry- all of it- it has an impact on your health.
And specifically, if you struggle with hypothyroid issues, then you need to tune in and make shifts accordingly. Non-toxic cleaning should be part of your hypothyroid healing journey.
It wasn’t until I struggled for months that I came across the important information that I’m going to share with you today– that the things that we use in our homes have an impact on our actual HEALTH… and on our own thyroid health.
In this episode, we’re talking about everyday toxin exposure, especially in our cleaning routines… we’ll look at what chemicals are impacting our thyroid health and how they’re doing it, and of course, I have a few simple shifts that you can do to start making an impact in this area today.
Glad you're here,
Sarah
Resources Mentioned In This Episode:
Adrenal Dysfunction Assessment: bit.ly/thyroid-tools
Products and Tools to Support The Adrenal Glands & Healthy Cortisol Levels: bit.ly/thyroid-tools
Disclaimer: Information shared on this podcast and any referenced websites are not to be taken as medical advice or to be used as a diagnosis or treatment plan for any medical condition. I’m sharing my educated opinions & experience but nothing shared here can be taken on a one size fits all basis and we always recommend you do your own research, talk to your own doctors and practitioners, and take full responsibility for any health & medical choices you make.
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Want to read this episode instead? Here’s the transcript!
Harmful Effects of Chemicals on Daily Life
This topic is so important and so simple all at the same time. This is a message that I keep going back to over and over again because I wanna be sure that the message is out there, that the information is available to as many people as my little voice can reach, because it is so important to our health and it's just too easy to address. So I don't want anyone to say, I didn't know. So you'll keep hearing me talk about what I'm gonna be talking about on today's episode, and that is that the chemicals that we encounter each and every day in the products that we use in our homes and on our kids and in our personal care and our laundry, all of it, it has an impact on your health, on your family's health. And no one is looking out for you and your family on this topic.
Just because the products are on the shelves in the store, it does not mean that they've been tested for long-term safety. And so it's up to you to be the gatekeeper for your home, for your own family, for your own body. And specifically, if you struggle with hypothyroid issues, then you need to tune in and make shifts accordingly. I wish I knew this information at the very beginning of wrestling through my own thyroid issues, but I didn't. I just, I just didn't know. I was totally unaware of the, really, the impact of chemicals on my health period. Definitely unaware of the connection between chemicals and what was happening in my liver, totally unaware of the connection between my liver health and my thyroid health. And really at that time, I was unaware that thyroid issues were really what I were at the root cause of what I was dealing with.
So maybe you've been in that same boat. It wasn't until I struggled for months and months and months that I came across some important information that sort of connected all those dots together. And I'm gonna share that with you today. And that information is that the things we use in our home have an impact on our actual health and that that actual health in a lot of ways, our thyroid health is one of the, kind of the first line of defense there. The first thing to go down, which also means kind of the encouraging side of that is by simply addressing this issue of reducing our toxic load. We can really see some big time shifts in how we are feeling when we're dealing with hypothyroid issues. This has a big impact on our own thyroid health and actually on our children's health and our family's health overall.
So in this episode, we are talking about everyday toxin exposure, especially in our cleaning routines. We're gonna look at what chemicals are impacting our thyroid health in that area and how they're doing it. And of course, I have a few simple shifts that you can do to start making an impact in this area today. Before we jump in this week, I've got a quiz I wanna point you to. It's called the Toxic Load and Liver Function Quiz. I love these little quizzes that I've created for you because they offer just a quick assessment tool that allows you to kind of see what your symptoms are, what you're dealing with, and what they're connected to, specifically if you're someone who is dealing with thyroid issues and unraveling those, there's such a web of subjective symptoms that can make it hard to discern where you need to start, where to put your efforts.
And liver health is so important to thyroid health as we're gonna talk about today. So simply by making some changes to support your liver, it really can impact how you're feeling. And so this little quiz will kind of give you an idea of how high on the priority list addressing your toxic load and incorporating some of the gentle detox practices that I teach should be. So you can head to the link in the show notes or go to bit lee slash thyroid tools and take the toxic load and liver function quiz and see where you're at. This is also a great tool to come back to from time to time to see what gains you've made in resolving some of these symptoms over time as you start to incorporate some different low level interventions and simple shifts. So you're gonna wanna head to bit lee slash thyroid dash tools and take the short quiz, assessing the symptoms that are keeping you from feeling as good as you want to be as you move through your days.
Welcome to the Natural Thyroid Fix. I'm Sarah Geisinger, a holistic lifestyle and nutrition coach and former hypothyroid mom who has reversed her thyroid disease using a natural approach to thyroid health. Trust me, I know what it feels like to move through the life in a brain fog, needing a nap by mid-afternoon and constantly be cleaning the hair you've lost outta the shower drain. Do you know what I'm talking about? If you're here, I bet you do. So if you're ready to reject the notion that this tired hypothyroid life is as good as it gets and start implementing simple natural strategies to live a vibrant symptom-free life, then this is the podcast for you. Let's dive into today's show.
All right, welcome back. I've got to say I, I love teaching about this topic and I love teaching about it for a lot of reasons. I think that probably the thing that I love most about it is it is one of the things that I teach that is literally, it is so easy to make changes in this specific area, the area of the connection between toxic load, the impact that has on our liver health, and then thus the impact that has on our thyroid health. It is so easy to make shifts and changes in toxic load, especially in the area of like household cleaning or household products, because it's just about making some swaps, right? Just making some little changes. And especially if, if you're a mom, like I'm a mom, sometimes making these like lifestyle shifts, where're like, you know, you're ripping snacks that you've learned are not ideal for your kids, like out of their hands feels like you're torturing them <laugh>.
But like with cleaning products, nobody cares. Like no child is attached to which toilet cleaner you're using. No husband really cares what you're wiping down the counters with. It's great. It's like minimal resistance. And so I love that. And I've also gotta say, I'm actually really encouraged too in this area because of just the number of brands that are now widely available that are low tox or, you know, chemical free or non-tox, whatever you wanna call it. And that just was not happening 15 years ago. I, I mean, when I first started moving in this direction, I had to work real hard to find cleaning products that didn't have ingredients that I was trying to avoid. And so it's encouraging to see that people care about this. And so even if you maybe aren't doing everything, maybe every cleaning product you have in your home that you're using consistently doesn't fall into the non-tox category, the low tox category.
But I think that lots of people have a general awareness that this is important. You know, we vote with our dollars, right? We communicate to companies about what is important to consumers and that I think it's very evident over the past 15 years that this is something that matters to people because of the continuing evidence that is out there of the connection between low level, regular everyday toxin exposure and health issues. And, you know, there always are gonna be companies that are trying to hop on the green cleaning bandwagon. There's always gonna be more companies that are offering quality non-toxic products. And so that's encouraging. And so keep reading labels, keep asking questions keep requesting that your local stores carry better brands and things like that. And hopefully by the end of this podcast, I hope you'll feel just a little more equipped to kind of do that.
But just know this is this is kind of, this is a move that is happening in the consumer marketplace. And so that is encouraging because I, my hope is that we start to see a reduction in the health problems that are caused by consistent chemical exposure. So anyhow, man, I could go down like four different rabbit holes just in the beginning talking here, but what I really wanna do today is talk about specifically different chemicals and different household cleaning focused products and ingredients that are problematic. Talk a little bit how they impact our body and some shifts that you can make to move away from those. Now, I'm not sure where you're at in, in life, but what I find in the women that I work with is motherhood starts to shift. Well, it shifts like everything, right? Like radically shifts every, everything in our life.
But specifically surrounding this topic, many, many women, when they become moms, they start to look at what they're using in their homes because there's this awareness that we have this small new like fresh little being that has, you know, never been exposed to any junk and we don't wanna be the ones to mess that up, right? <Laugh>, I dunno if that's really our perception, but we just have this sense that we should be using different laundry detergent that isn't as harsh, that we wanna just be careful about what we're using around the baby cuz their systems are so delicate and small and new. And that's true. I was, I was like that. I don't think I even really thought about chemicals and what I was being exposed to at all until I had a baby. And so, like many new moms that I work with, I started reading more and more about what was in different things, learning from more experienced moms that I was connected with who were just like way further down the crunchy bandwagon.
And I just started making swaps to things that were a little bit better, or at least I thought they were things like Mrs. Myers Laundry soap. I remember instead of getting the whatever, I forget what the name of the baby laundry soap that like everyone tells you, you have to get because it makes babies smell so good. Instead of getting that I got the Mrs. Myers version, which in hindsight, I now know that that's just about as chemical-laden as <laugh>, the stuff that I was trying to avoid to be more gentle because of there, there's not a whole lot of regulation in what is in cleaning products and companies we know are not always real good at being transparent. Yeah. So I have since learned that Mrs. Myers is not really a better choice. It's one of those greenwash brands making you believe that you're choosing a less toxic brand, but it's still got a lot of ingredients in it.
That's problematic. Anyway, I started making swaps and at least having an awareness that I needed to start making moves away from chemicals. And that, that for a lot of women, especially new moms, is a shift that starts to happen right around that time. Right around that time too for me is when I got sick, all the symptoms that would eventually kind of pile up and be pegged back to Hashimoto's thyroiditis, that it was still a couple years away from actually being diagnosed with that. But it was that around that time when my symptoms started really popping up and I felt like I was playing whack-a-mole with symptoms and bouncing around to lots of different doctors trying to figure out what the heck was going on. And I wish I could say that the connection between toxic load and chemicals, that awareness, started to come around right around them.
But it didn't, it took a lot longer for me to really learn that. And, and digging into my own research, reading different books that pointed me to different studies that pointed me to different online resources and whatnot to help me start to understand the connection between liver health, thyroid health, and then the connection between toxins and what was happening in both my liver and my thyroid and how that was impacting my body. And so that took a, a, a little bit longer and a lot more research until I really understood the way that environmental toxins sort of gather in our body and impact our health. What I learned was I used to blow it off and just think this is just marketing, it's just people like clever people taking advantage of people wanting to do, have some sort of like <laugh> non-toxic superiority complex, if that's even a thing.
Just some clever selling of a product or maybe like fear mongering. But the list of, it's a pretty extensive list of health implication that comes from prolonged everyday chemical exposure that's really well researched and it's really well documented and is much more out there than it was a long time ago. Anyone can find that information by doing a quick Google search. And I actually oftentimes encourage people to head to pub med, which is a, like a, it's kind of like a database of all studies that are out there. And you can do a quick search for literally any he health issue. You can think of asthma and chemical exposure or toxin exposure or maybe you know, a specific chemical that you wanna find out. You can search that, that's actually even better because the studies are oftentimes they use like the specific chemical names.
Common Household Substance Attacking Your Thyroid
So if you know one of those, but even just putting in like chemical exposure and asthma or chemical exposure and thyroid disease, you will find studies that have researched that and the, the connections are there. So it's not just marketing, there are health implications from that come from prolonged everyday chemical exposure. That's just the reality. And the, another reality is, is that all of our bodies are different. We are bio-individual created uniquely unique <laugh> from each other. You know, there's obviously there's similarities and there's through lines and connections, but we all have different abilities to handle toxins because of our genetic capacity. We are all able to handle toxins at some level. Some people are just able to handle more than others. But the research does suggest that people who are dealing with hypothyroid are likely at that point because of an autoimmune disease. And part of that autoimmune disease shows a decreased ability of the body to effectively move toxins out of our body.
They just sort of get trapped in there. And when toxins get trapped in there, when our detox systems like, you know, our kidney are livered, the the detox pathways, when they cannot effectively get the junk out of our bodies, that's when the health issues start to stack up in a number of different ways. I talk about this often, but the idea, the, the i I love the idea that we have a, we all, each of us has a toxic load bucket and the size of your bucket is dependent on many different things on your genetics, on your lifestyle, on trauma, on other health challenges. There to be so many things that that would affect the, the size of your personal toxic load bucket. But for the most part, if you are someone that is dealing with hypothyroid issues, then your toxic load bucket is smaller than the average bear <laugh>, I'm sorry to tell you.
And so here's the deal. Once that toxic load bucket fills up, your health becomes compromised. And so that's when things really start to kind of, the wheels start to come off. And so this, and the way that you fill your toxic load bucket is just a drip at a time. I'm sure there are people who live next to major chemical plants that probably have, like I always think of like Aaron Brockovich, there's the Aaron Brockovich situations where those people in those communities are really dealing with major chemical exposure. Their buckets are like full, right? But for the rest of us where you don't have some like direct thing that you can say, yes, that's a chemical exposure, we are all filling up our little toxic load buckets, a drip at a time, one little exposure at a time, one little product at a time. And so it could be you clean the toilet with bleach and some harsh chemicals and swirl that around and breathe all that in.
Well the boo there's another little drip in your bucket. And then you take a shower and you use some products that are laid in with synthetic chemical perfumes and parabens and s sls and other things that are not great and they get absorbed through your skin. And so then boo boo, you get another couple drops in your bucket and before you know it, that bucket fills up and your health, you start to notice some health issues that you might accept as normal because they're so common. But here's the thing, just because they are common does not mean they're normal. And there are a lot of times where we can address things by just rolling back the level of toxic load that we are carrying and, and encountering each day. Don't get me wrong though, before that bucket overflows, there's little bits of damage kind of happening with each drip, but we just don't actually notice it because we think it's normal, not a big deal.
It's normal to deal with pain. We're getting older, it's normal to be tired, we're getting older. It's normal to have skin irritations because life <laugh>, those are things that we just kind of tend to brush off until the, the symptoms stack up and we're like, all right, something's, something's going on. The goal is to consistently kind of clean out that bucket <laugh> to, you know, through supporting gentle detox, nothing crazy, gentle daily detox and then make lifestyle shifts, especially in the area of non-toxic cleaning to stop the bucket from filling up again. Slow down the drip, slow down the source. When we're talking about toxic exposure, it's important to remember that we are constant, like we live in the world. Say this over and over again. We live in the world, we're constantly exposed to chemicals all the time, and many of these chemicals do have an impact on our thyroid.
But here's the deal, we can't control everything. This is not a call for you to create a perfect little non-toxic bubble and never leave it that is unreasonable and not healthy. It's not good. And so I don't want to instill a spirit of fear in you around these issues. We just make an impact where we can make an impact, we control what we can control, and then trust that our bodies are designed with a detox system that can handle the rest. As long as we do our part of making sure that it is not overburden and overtaxed, which we can do that we can control that control the controllables, we can do that. There's a few main ways that exposure to toxins really does impact the thyroid specifically. And I wanna talk about that because I just want you to have a good understanding. It's sort of the mechanisms that can impact what's happening in your liver, what's happening with toxins and how this is impacting the thyroid.
Effects of toxic chemicals on human health
So one is just simply kind of bogging down the liver. Creating congestion in the liver. And the liver plays an incredibly important role in taking an inactive form of thyroid hormone called t4, which is largely what your thyroid makes. And then your liver's job is to convert that into t3, which is the active form of thyroid hormone. And so that active form of thyroid hor hormone is what your cells then absorb. It is what makes your, makes everything work well, makes you not have hypothyroid symptoms that you might commonly deal with. And then another main way that toxins impact our thyroid health is that our thyroid actually can store some heavy metals and toxins in the thyroid and that can eventually inhibit its ability to produce thyroid hormone to begin with. Plus it also the toxins can bind to thyroid hormone receptors that are in our cells.
And basically that prevents the cells from being able to uptake the thyroid hormone that may be present in our bodies. And if it can't bring the thyroid hormone into our cells, then really our cells don't feel the benefits or the difference from having the right amount of thyroid hormone. And so this is all the ways that toxins can impact that. You let me talk about these over and over again cuz they do have an impact on thyroid health. And again, it's so easy to make a change. I just can't tell you about how making small shifts in this area of toxins and supporting our body in gently detoxing every day can really impact how we feel when working through thyroid issues. And so I wanna highlight a couple of the top offenders in this category of toxins and cleaning products and encourage you to start making some changes in that area specifically.
Endocrine Disrupting Chemicals
So first I'm gonna list out some of the things that you wanna stay away from, but you also need to know that cleaning companies don't have to even put everything on the label in their products. There are just certain things like fragrance that don't have to be broken down to reveal the actual ingredients. So most toxic chemicals fall into three categories. The first one is carcinogens, which are, which they call, these are the things that cause and promote cancer. The second is endocrine disruptors. And these are the ones that we most often associate with problems with thyroid health. And so these mimic human hormones and they cause kind of false signals within the body and lead to issues like infertility, premature puberty, thyroid issues, miscarriage, menstrual issues, anything that we might associate with hormones. Endocrine disruptors are the things that are, they're kind of connected to that because of the mimicry that happens there.
And then the third are neurotoxins and neurotoxins are chemicals that affect brain activity and cause issues like headaches and memory loss. So yeah, these are things that we don't want to be exposed to consistently. Okay, so the first area that you are gonna wanna look at is in the area of air fresheners. And so fragrances, even things that are marked unscented, sometimes you can smell that there is even a scent to unscented things, but these can oftentimes trigger things like asthma or allergies. And there's a number of studies. The environmental working group has some great research here reviewing about 2000 different household cleaning products in 2012. And they found that 53% of cleaning products contain ingredients that are harmful to the lungs and 22% of them contain chemicals known to cause asthma. And most of these are all connected to like air freshening and fragrance type of things.
You're gonna wanna avoid those. The second thing is fabric softeners and dryer sheets, the fragrances and the other ingredients that are used to make both of these things, both fabric softeners and dryer sheets in your laundry. These are again connected to all sorts of health issues including lung issues, lung irritations, allergies and then the fragrance is also most of the time is containing some endocrine disrupting chemicals. Additionally, just cleaning products in general that have artificial fragrances. Sometimes it's the harsh cleaning products that can be problematic, but other times it's just the fragrance too is can also be, it's kind of like a double whammy. And so cleaning products that have both harsh chemicals and artificial fragrances, that's kind of a one two punch. The the next one is antibacterial products. And these ingredients they use, these are things that are used to kill bacteria in, especially in antibacterial hand soap.
They can cause the development of drug resistant superbugs. And so I don't know if you've seen stories on the news where there's like things that are anti antibiotic resistant because we've kind of over sterilized our world and so that can be problematic too. The next one are corrosive drain cleaners, oven cleaners, and toilet bowl cleaners. These are pretty dangerous because I mean these, these are the things that most likely have a warning label, like a pretty strong warning label on your, on the label. And those ingredients can cause severe burns on the skins and eyes. They cause lots of hormone issues. They have neurotoxins in them. And so having those corrosive really harsh cleaners is just not great. Bleach and ammonia is the next one. These separately, these, these, these two cleaners produce fumes that have high levels of toxicities that especially to the eyes, nose, and throat and the lungs.
And so they definitely should be avoided if you are someone or you live with someone who has lung issues, but also combined together. They have chemicals that are known to cause problems with hormones when consistently used. Additionally, we have talked about products that create suds, that, that are really sudsy. And there are a number of ingredients that are known carcinogens that, that are things like dioxin which is known as a lot of times DEA or T or sodium LA sulfate and P EEG compounds. Those are known carcinogens that can kind of collect and kind of gather and get stored in your organs. And so those can cause some long-term health issues because they, they kind of just get stored up in your body and your body has a difficult time to move them out. And so you wanna try and avoid those.
How to Avoid Endocrine Disrupting Chemicals
So I wanna give you a few things that you can do today to start moving the needle in this specific area and then ultimately in how you feel. Now these aren't gonna be like all you need to do or have like massive impacts all at one time, but that's the deal when you're approaching thyroid issues, really in any kind of health issues from a holistic perspective, these, these wins come as a culmination of small steps combined together to create a massive impact. Okay, so the first thing that I would encourage you to do is start in your laundry room. The products that you use in your laundry are with you all the time. They're on your clothes that you're wearing all day, they're on your pillowcase that you're sleeping on all night. They're in the shower with you on a washcloth and then your towel. And we're just super exposed to what's in our laundry detergent and the products that we use in our laundry room. So make a change. This can be overwhelming.
I know you definitely wanna make sure that you're making a change to avoid fragrance, but if you need some help kind of having some recommendations for some of my favorite products that you can swap in your laundry, then you can head to bit dot lee slash thyroid dash tools. And there are both bundles and individual products to kind of do some making over of your laundry routine without having to get bogged down in the ingredients and the labels and the researching of all hard things to say that shouldn't be in the products you use. So I've got some great options linked for you there at bit lee slash thyroid dash tools. The second thing you can do is to move your multipurpose spray and the products that you use to mop your floors, make a swap right there. These products are probably your most used cleaning products and the easiest to swap.
And again, they're especially easy to swap if you have some kids or some family who might be resistant to these shifts that you're trying to make in, in sort of in the direction of a more holistic lifestyle. So in this one, you know, you're not asking your kids to give up their craft mac and cheese or something, or you're not asking your husband to switch to a different toothpaste, but cleaning products like probably nobody cares in your family. And so there's gonna be no resistance there for you, but it makes a big difference because it's probably something you're using so often. If you wanna do something cheap and easy, you can mix together white vinegar and distilled water in a spray bottle and then boom, you've got a great non-toxic counters spray. If you hate the smell of vinegar, you can add a few drops of essential oil and if the vinegar thing just doesn't work for you I've got a number of products linked at bit dot lee slash thyroid dash tools that includes my favorite essential oil based cleaner concentrate that you can use diluted in a spray bottle as like a counter spray, but also in a bucket or to like mop the floors or do the baseboards or whatever.
I love that having one product that can do multiple things in a concentrated form. Additionally, I love having some Norwex cloths on hands for like a quick counter wipe and cl cleaning appliances. I have some of my favorites linked there too at bit Lee slash thyroid tools. The third thing is to just avoid fragrances and the store bought air fresheners. And so this goes for all the products, the, whether it's laundry, soap, or counter sprays. If you can avoid fragrance, then you're gonna be on your way to making some non-toxic swaps and especially the store BART Air fresheners. And I know we all want our homes to smell good, but things like Fabrice and plug-in air fresheners and even some candles, they're just packed with endocrine disrupting chemicals, not to mention other health issues. So find another way to make your house smell good, like take out the trash regularly, throw an orange peel down the garbage disposal, simmer pot of water with some cinnamon or apple peels or lemon and rosemary spragues.
You can diffuse essential oils or make like a fabric refresher spray with distilled water and essential oils and spritz it on all the things. Again, I have my favorites linked up at bit.ly/thyroid-tools. You can grab those there. My last thing is don't get overwhelmed. Any moves you make to reduce your toxic load are good moves. It doesn't have to be a complete overhaul, just move the needle. Either way, you're making a move in the right direction. All right, so there we have it. Be sure to click on the link in the show notes or go to bit.ly/thyroid-tools to take the toxic load quiz and grab some of the recommended products that I have linked up there for you. You can grab all that at bit.ly/thyroid-tools. I hope that you are able to apply some of these things and make small shifts towards feeling healthy and good and non talks, because I believe when you do it that way, when you focus on doable lifestyle shifts, living a symptom-free life is totally possible. And I want that for you.
Real quick before you go, if this show has helped you in some way, then I know that it'll help others too. So please head over to iTunes, subscribe, and then leave a review so that more women can find health and healing too. And do you know that you can have an incredible impact on the women who deal with thyroid issues in your circle? Yep, that's right. All you have to do is take a screenshot of this podcast, tag me @natural.thyroid.fix, and post it in your stories. Let's light a path for all the other hypothyroid mamas looking for hope and healing, and to just feel like themselves Again, I'll look forward to connecting with you over on Instagram until next time on the Natural Thyroid Fix.