Hello, I'm Dr. Jeremy Lam and this is Dr. Carrie Lam and today we're going to be talking about xenoestrogens.
So Dr. Carrie, what are xenoestrogens?
So, xenoestrogens are kind of like synthetic estrogens.
They look like estrogen in your body,
but they're actually not the same as the real hormone estrogen would be in your body.
Xenoestrogens can be found in a lot of daily products in our environment,
things that you might be using every day.
What they do is they actually sit on the actual estrogen receptors in your body
tricking your body into thinking that estrogen is actually on the receptor and making it act like estrogen.
What actually ends up happening is then your body thinks you have a lot of estrogen and you go into an estrogen dominant effect.
I see. That's not good at all.
So, here are some of the common sources of xenoestrogens and maybe you can tell us more about it.
Organochlorines, where can you find those?
Organochlorines are in a lot of women's products.
They're also in chemicals like bleached chemical products that you might be using.
When I say women's products, they can be in cosmetics,
they can be in shampoos.
So you have to just make sure when you look at the label, make sure you see all the ingredients,
and if you really don't recognize the name,
it could be one of these xenoestrogens that we're talking about.
Okay and what about non-organic foods? Do they inject xenoestrogens into these type of foods?
Well, it's not necessarily an injection,
but the pesticides that they spray the fruits and vegetables with.
Pesticides have been shown to have a lot of xenoestrogens in them and they basically coat the fruits and the vegetables.
So you have to be careful in buying nonorganic foods.
Some of you might have heard of 'Clean 15' and 'Dirty Dozen'.
'Clean 15' means you can buy these fruits and these vegetables that usually have a thick rind around them.
You don't have to necessarily get them organic because they’re protected on the inside.
Verses 'Dirty Dozen' are usually the fruits and vegetables that are very thin-layered outside of them.
So they have to put a lot of pesticides on them so the bugs won't eat them.
So, for example, like berries and peaches have a lot of pesticides on them
and you have to make sure you get those organic.
Okay. How about plastic products?
Do plastics have xenoestrogens?
Plastic’s one of the biggest things that contains xenoestrogen and it's all around our life.
You have to make sure you drink out of nonplastic water bottles.
So, the BPA can be- now everyone knows BPA’s bad so they say BPA-free, but how about BPF and BPS?
They act just as similar in the plastic industry just as BPA-free, but they still use BPF and BPS.
The best is actually to use a metal or a ceramic or glass bottles to drink out of and to heat up your food in also.
Okay, and how about laundry detergents? A lot of them have a lot of chemicals.
Do you have an alternative that people can use at home instead of buying detergent?
Maybe some type of a natural laundry detergent?
Yes, I mean, what I use at home also would be just regular vinegar and baking soda.
You can combine both of those.
It creates that bubbly reaction to actually clean your clothes naturally at home.
Canned foods, do they actually have xenoestrogens?
Oh, yes.
They're definitely lined with a lot of xenoestrogens.
What was the name of the canned foods, inside they’re lined with?
They're lined this BPA.
Yes, they're also lined with BPA. So really limit your canned food intake.
You would be surprised that even your receipts from restaurants or from cash registers also have xenoestrogens,
so if you don't, try not to touch those receipts.
So I think there are xenoestrogens basically everywhere in our world.
We're not saying that you just have to avoid every one of them,
but it's just being aware of them and making some choices to decrease that xenoestrogen contact.
So then you can become less estrogen dominant and become healthier.
Okay, so that's our subject about xenoestrogens.
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and how you’ve kind of avoided them and natural ways that you have avoided xenoestrogens.
That will be really interesting to us.
This is Dr. Jeremy Lam and Dr. Carrie Lam and we're empowering you to take control of your health.