Living A Full Life

Spring Cleaning for Your Body: Eliminating Toxins That Affect Your Health

• Full Life Chiropractic • Season 3 • Episode 18

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The modern world has dramatically transformed from the pure environment of centuries past. Today, we're surrounded by synthetic chemicals affecting everything from our hormones to our sleep patterns—and most of us don't realize the full impact of these invisible threats.

Dr. Enrico Dolcecore breaks down the toxins we encounter daily and provides genuinely practical solutions that don't require becoming paranoid or upending your entire lifestyle. From the surprising truth about indoor air quality (it's typically five times worse than outdoor air) to the chemicals lurking in your favorite scented laundry pods, this episode reveals how everyday choices affect your long-term health.

You'll discover why positioning your Wi-Fi router matters, which three food dyes are banned in Europe but still legal in America, and why even "organic" produce requires special handling. Dr. Dolcecore shares personal strategies he uses to protect his family, including the exact water filtration system in his home and the Mediterranean-inspired alternatives to chemical-laden personal care products.

Beyond just identifying problems, this episode delivers a masterclass in realistic solutions—like which room deserves an air purifier most, how to properly wash produce to remove pesticide residue, and why completely pure water might actually dehydrate you. The guidance strikes a perfect balance between awareness and action without overwhelming you with impossible standards.

Whether you're concerned about your children's exposure to hormone disruptors, looking to address unexplained fatigue, or simply want to make more informed choices about the products entering your home, these evidence-based strategies will help you navigate our unavoidably toxic world with greater confidence and control.

Ready to detoxify your environment without wrapping yourself in tinfoil? This episode provides the roadmap for meaningful changes that protect your health without sacrificing your sanity.

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Speaker 1:

I'm Dr Enrico Del Ciccori, and welcome to another episode of Living a Full Life. This week's topic spring cleaning. More importantly, toxins. We're going to dive right into. All. The toxins around us make you paranoid, so when the episode is over, you're freaking out and you start making some changes in your life. No, that's never the best way to teach or influence anyone. We're going to make you more aware of all the toxins that are out there and I know you've looked out of all these probably 99% of everything I've told you on this episode you've thought of. But we're going to give you taskful ways to avoid these, eliminate them from your life and be comfortable with the toxins that are around us that you just can't control. So maybe bring some peace, but also some awareness into what toxins can do to our hormones, our homeostasis, our chemical balance, our sleep rhythms, our fatigue. These things can live inside of our tissue and it's really important to be aware of them to help both you and your family live a long, healthy life. And that's what it's all about. We'll break this down into environmental toxins, household toxins, food-related toxins, water, clothing, and wrap it up nicely in a bow for you here on this episode.

Speaker 1:

The truth is, the world is not like it used to be 300 years ago. Honestly, 300 years ago farming was the way of life. Everyone cultivated, everyone provided food for their families, everyone worked on agriculture and farms to help sustain their lives. Everyone fed themselves and the extra was given to markets, and that was pretty much the start of free trade and all that other stuff. Then you could get into hunting and pellet trades and things with animals, and then there was some service trades at that time to doctors, dentists, professionals as well. But the world, the environment, was pure. The environment wasn't cascaded with a bunch of chemicals synthetically made by man through labs, as we've developed over time. So what we did is we used the earth as it was. It sounds like a beautiful thing, doesn't it? But things have changed and we've created the industrial revolution, which created a whole new source of pollution aerosols, combustion engines. The air became polluted.

Speaker 1:

The effects of creating chemicals is the synthetic waste that come from them and of course, those are dumped into the water chains and lands. It sounds horrible, doesn't it? Remember being in elementary school I don't know how old you are, but in the nineties and eighties and nineties, and just listening to Louie the lightning bug or the green thumb or Smokey the bear, about teaching, about the environment, and you sat there and you're like holy smokes. We consume a lot of water. We waste a lot of stuff into, we put a lot of waste into the oceans. We pollute a lot into the air. We're creating those black holes, all those things that were taught a long time ago which are not exactly how they work today.

Speaker 1:

But remember that as a kid and just you, have this natural green thumb that grows on you. I think everyone does. Everyone has a green thumb. How much you use it is dependent on your life and what you believe in. But we all think the earth should be clean. We all want the earth to be clean because it's just a natural thought of healthy living.

Speaker 1:

Unfortunately sorry to burst this bubble it's not the way it used to be. We've cultivated lands, we've depleted a lot of the soil, there's a lot of stuff in the air, there's a lot of stuff in the water. It just is the way it is and we have to take it as it is Now. How do we protect ourselves from this type of a harsh environment, hard to control every breath you take, to be clean when you step outside or inside, and all the synthetics that are in your home carpets, hardwood floors, laminate, off-gassing cabinets everything's compromised and made in factories with chemicals, compression wood, all these things, they're not natural. Your home isn't made from oak and cedar and redwood straight from the forests anymore, like they used to be, and that's just the truth. So let's start with the environment. Like the redwood trees, right, you're not even allowed to use redwood anymore.

Speaker 1:

But there's little things. Electromagnetic fields, emfs these are all around us. You can't control this. If you have devices, tablets, cell phones, computers, wifi signals they're everywhere. Wifi signals are in all the stores you go in now. They're in your home, they're in your workplace, they're in the schools. Everyone's got in a school with, you know, 600 kids. There's 600, probably 600 phones or at least tablets or computers or stuff that's being carried around, creating this emf. That's around there. You can't control it. So what do you do to protect yourself? Well, I highly recommend wrapping yourself in tinfoil and just walking around the world wrapped in tinfoil. I'm joking, please don't do that. Nobody do that. Um, you'll look silly. One and two, it doesn't really work. Uh, you just have to understand that the emfs are out there.

Speaker 1:

Now where's the research on emf. Is it truly going to cause cancer? So far so good? No, it doesn't. On a cellular and frequency level, we know that the changes in frequency in airwaves do affect cells. Cells in one way or another, they change their frequency. And what does that do? Does it change their function? Does it make them fatigued? Does it decrease their life cycle? That's the research we're still going on to. There is some good research on high EMF devices like the old iPhones. They were horrible, the iPhone 5, 6, holding them up against your head. There was a huge correlation with brain tumors at that and the amount of heat that was created from these and cancerous cells. So there was that. And there are ties out of Germany, a lot of studies back in like 2010. There was a lot. So is it conclusive? Is it correlative? Is it fact? It's not fact. So that's that's where we're at there with EMF. So don't freak out about EMF.

Speaker 1:

What can you do? Pick a spot in your home for where you have your server, your router, your modem. Keep it away from normal sitting areas. You want to be at least 15 feet away from that. We have ours in the back corner of our home, the only time we're ever exposed to it is if we go use that bathroom in the back. We're probably within that 15 feet range. Otherwise it's there. That's where the signals are coming from, and our bedrooms are on the opposite corner, upper corner of the home. That's me, with what I know, and, to protect my family, that's where I put it. Yeah, there's a part of the house in the upper corner that doesn't get a good Wi-Fi signal. The bar goes down to a three out of four instead of four out of four, but it still works. Who cares? We're all good and that's one way we do it.

Speaker 1:

Microwaves we use a very limited microwave and if we do, it's rare. It's rare. It's once. We I grew up with no microwave in our home. We had those nice kitchen hood fans growing up and my, my parents, um, just never had a microwave until later in life. I think we were close to 200, almost in college before we got our first microwave and we never used it. So microwaves create a crazy frequency there as well. Now most of you don't sit there and put your face up against the window and watch the food cook. So again, how much exposure is there from that? Limiting that as well. We want to limit radiation exposure as much as possible. Microwaves, x-rays, emf devices these things are things we want to avoid. Now, enrico, how do you avoid these things in your life? Well, minimize my use of a microwave. Put the modem in the corner.

Speaker 1:

Even at our office the treatment areas of where we take care of patients we've had an EMF device go around. The whole office is the least almost zero when people don't have their cell phones in there. So when they're getting treated, they're in a zero EMF environment. We have a closed server on the other side of the building where everything runs to, and when you get within 10 feet of that, that's where it is, but no one works or is within 10 feet of that area, which is very cool. We designed it that way. It's got an exit hallway out to the back. No one actually. No one actually spends any time there things we thought about when we developed our office as well.

Speaker 1:

When I go travel and I'm by myself, I don't go through those little TSA x-ray machines. I don't do them. I say, hey, give me the pat down if they offer. When we travel with kids, it's nice, they put you through the metal detector, which is awesome, but that's my way of standing up for myself and being like hey, I don't want that extra exposure, I can control that. I can't control the guy sitting next to me with his cell phone. I can't. I can't smack it out of his hands, even though I want to. So those are little ways of me taking choices in my life to avoid the extra toxins.

Speaker 1:

Air quality is another thing, about environmental. It's said that inside the home our air quality is almost five times as worse as going outside. Crazy For those of you with allergies. You're like no way man. Inside is way better, but outside, because of the off-gassing from carpets, woods, laminates and just stagnant air, there's just not enough airflow in our homes. The air inside is actually more contaminated each breath you take than stuff outside. So two things. One, air purifiers in the home play a huge role on this. Cleaning filters every three months the way you're supposed to with with the better quality ones is really good Taking out as much microbes from the air as you possibly can, having good airflow, opening up your windows every now and then in the summer, cleaning with clean chemicals. So don't off-gas. You don't want what's it called Fabuloso and stuff on the floor that off-gases forever. You can have that scent in your house for a week after using it, using clean, vinegar-based things that don't off-gas, and that's it.

Speaker 1:

It had plants in the home. My father, being from Italy, had all these plants in our home all the time spider plants, lemon trees inside the home in Calgary, alberta. Pull out a map right now, find Calgary on the map and you'll see the Arctic very close to it. So I don't know how. My dad had a green thumb. He built a glass greenhouse in the back of our home and we had like a suburban home in the backyard glass and he would grow tomatoes, beefsteak tomatoes, lettuce, spinach, kale, onions, carrots and tomatoes as big as like softballs. I swear one was a soccer ball. I remember being like eight years old holding this thing Maybe it's because I was eight. Bowling ball it was a tomato and he used horse manure from the farms.

Speaker 1:

So you think this stuff is branded into you one way or another. It really is, but sometimes we have to think that way to keep things clear. So, an air purifier if you can't get a whole home, one or multiple ones they're annoying put them in your bedroom. That's where you spend a lot of time at night. You spend anywhere between six to 10 hours in your bedroom a day. Keep that air purified. That's another way to help the most of your time. You're spending a third of your life in your bedroom sleeping right. Keep that air clean and then make sure you spend a lot of time outside. That's always great too. That's environment Getting into pesticides and Roundup and all these things we spray on our lawns.

Speaker 1:

I do nothing. I do nothing. Moving to Florida, the grass that we have here is considered crabgrass up north. It's stuff we used to pull and kill and it was considered a weed. It's people's lawns here, so I don't care for it much. So no, I do not put chemicals down. I do not fertilize it. I don't care whether it lives or dies. If it doesn't survive, then it probably wasn't supposed to be there in the first place, right? The environment usually takes care of it. So I don't have the greenest lawn and I don't care for that, but I'm not going to put stuff down where my kids and my dogs run around, right? So that's another thing there.

Speaker 1:

Back in the day, ddt, pesticides, herbicides these things were sprayed, no problem. People used to drink and use. They used to use a petroleum for a hair product. The guys back in the 60s they slicked their hair with Vaseline. No, it was a petroleum based thing. They were getting like weird cancers DDT malformities, cancers and tumors, lymphoma from Roundup and mesothelioma. These are lawsuits that happen up to today 2025, from exposure from these types of things that cause serious disease like cancer.

Speaker 1:

We know chemicals can be bad. We know this Really. What chemicals are good? None, all of them can store up and cause problems in the body. It may not cause a tumor and kill you, but chemicals can build up and cause fatigue, malaise, fibromyalgia, pain syndrome, joint pain, audio immunity issues it can't which ones, I don't know. Let's not get into that, but that's why we're doing this podcast as a PSA.

Speaker 1:

So in the house, what you want to do is the cleaning products. Number one we talked about that Ammonia, chlorine, formaldehyde. These things got to stay out of your home. You want to use vinegar, baking soda, non-toxic cleaning brands. That's the best way to go about this Minimize the chemicals there. Then we have things like in the shower, shampoos and hair products. We want to stay away from sulfates, parabens and silicones. We want to use more sulfate-free shampoos and organic hair care brands so that the stuff that you shampoo your hair every day with, every other day or whatever it is for the rest of your life, is minimizing the toxin exposure on your body. Then, of course, the topicals we put on our skin the lotions, the creams, the perfumes, the colognes, the topicals, the cosmetics. We need to make sure that parabens, phthalates and synthetic fragrances are avoided at all costs. They're just tainted with a bunch of chemicals to give them that texture, that absorption and that smell that you may or may not like. So we want to use organic oils, fragrance-free products and essential oil blends.

Speaker 1:

I remember my grandmother from Greece used to make her own cream. It was a lemon and olive oil-based cream. It was thick and she used to put it on. She wasn't too oily. After it was great. It was a crazy mix. It was a great, it was a great mix. I got to find that recipe from one of my aunts or something but that. And then this lemon based cologne or perfume or what a baby, baby oil or whatever it was that I used up until I was like 12 years old.

Speaker 1:

This, this lemon based thing that was. That was great. And. But that's Mediterranean, right Mediterranean, thinking of using the land and using the resources that they have around them. There you go.

Speaker 1:

So food we got to talk about food a little bit. Food-related stuff. Pesticides and herbicides are sprayed on everything. When you buy organic as well. Here's one thing to get away from it In order to get USDA organic or Canada organic branding, you have to have an organic farm for at least three years to qualify meaning that you haven't used pesticides or herbicides into.

Speaker 1:

They actually test the soil. The soil is considered clean, has minimal levels of this stuff, and you get your USDA brand. There you go. Now this farm can say they grow organic strawberries, organic spinach, whatever it is. Once it's picked and put into a box or a container, they then put it into the back of the truck. Guess what they do in the back of the truck before they drive off? They spray it for pests. Kind of defeats the purpose of growing all that stuff for six months on an organic farm. It's very notorious in the United States. So once they get because this truck's got to drive a hundred miles to a distribution center where that stuff's going to be saved for a little bit, stored and then put into the distribution line to deliver it out Certain produce goes out quickly, other produce can be chilled and other produce can be frozen, and that depends how fast it gets to your table.

Speaker 1:

Strawberries, berries, all those types of things get to your table actually quite quickly from the time they're picked. By the time you pick them up at Costco, they may have been picked 10 days ago, seven days ago, pretty quick. That's awesome turnaround there. But other things like oranges and avocados, may have been picked a little bit longer ago. Okay, but again, we want to buy organic first, and then two.

Speaker 1:

When you get your produce at home, soak it in uh, in some water for at least five minutes. That should get a little bit of the surface off and you can rub it and dry it, and that gets a little bit more off as well. If you're peeling stuff like oranges, bananas, you're good, the peel comes off, you're eating the center of it. You just want to make sure that your fruits and stuff is probably not gmo or anything like that. As best, best as you can. People, good luck finding all this stuff. I'm just giving you the facts here. The big problem with the pesticides and herbicides is the glyphosate that's in it. Too much exposure to this has been linked to different types of cancers, from breast cancer to lymphoma, to prostate cancer, even pancreatic cancer. So be careful with glyphosate. Buy organic when possible and just wash your stuff.

Speaker 1:

Artificial dyes and preservatives this is actually the question that's been coming up with a lot of parents recently. That actually spurred me to do this podcast was dyes. Rfk just removed a certain red dye that's no longer to be used in the United States. It's been banned across Europe for years. If you look at Froot Loops in the United States versus Canada or Europe the vibrant colors of Froot Loops those dyes are all illegal everywhere else. You can't get something to be a bright blue or a bright red in Europe or Canada because that's just not a legal dye. That's been removed as well. There's lots to do with that and remove more. But the risks with dyes is that they're linked to behavioral issues and allergies. So giving these to kids, you may notice behavior issues. You may notice inflammation.

Speaker 1:

The thing here is just to avoid foods with the big three that I call them Red 40, do not buy anything with red 40. It's the most inflammatory and reactive to the brain for whatever reasons. We can get into biochemistry later. Yellow five and blue one those are the three that actually give that strong colors. They look cool in candy, a red Sour Patch Kid or a red Skittle, but that's why they have those vibrant colors is because the dye is so concentrated. That's why they have those vibrant colors is because the dye is so concentrated. So instead, choose whole foods and natural foods. That's the only way around.

Speaker 1:

The dyes, processed foods and additives are there as well. Common chemicals like MSG, aspartame, hydrogenated oils these things can cause inflammation, behavior issues. They can agitate you as well as an adult. So be careful with these things. Cook from scratch, if you can, and read ingredient labels carefully and just avoid these things. Aspartame has been renamed a few times but directly linked to stage three diabetes, which is Alzheimer's dementia. It leaves this film on the brain. It's insane what aspartame did and the studies on it in the early 2000s Kind of crazy there. Msg is a neurotoxin. It can cause lucid dreams, agitation and some people that are sensitive to it. That's monosodium glutamate used in like barbecue rubs, salted foods, chinese foods They've been notorious with that with all their sauces that they use. But a lot of places are MSG free as well, which is great.

Speaker 1:

Water We've done an entire podcast on water. We need to filter the water. Just because we use municipal water or well water does not mean it's clean. It's filled with fluoride, chlorine and heavy metals. These things have to be pulled out of it. A whole house water filtration system is a must. It doesn't mean you have to soften it. You can soften it if you want to help your pipes and all that and your units in the office longer, but that's not important. It's the filtration system that's important. Then what we do in our house. We have that plus a reverse osmosis underneath the sink that pulls everything out, 100% of everything out of the water. You have pure water and then that pure water goes through a three-stage filtration system to put back calcium, phosphate, magnesium a couple of metals that you need in order to not become dehydrated. If you drink pure H2O with nothing in it, it'll actually dehydrate you because it's the minerals and salts inside of the water that actually hydrates you. They're called electrolytes and those things are really important as well. So strategies use high water quality filtration system.

Speaker 1:

I like Aquasana very affordable. I've got no affiliation with them, but Aquasana is great. They're across the entire country, you can get them anywhere and their filters are relatively priced and $40 for a filter. Change twice a year Pretty simple stuff, I love them, they're absolutely great. Change twice a year Pretty simple stuff, I love them, they're absolutely great.

Speaker 1:

Plastic bottles man. What has happened with water? Right, plastic bottles. So we take water, we filter and then we put it in plastic. This is going to contaminate with BPA and other endocrine disruptors which give us estradiol byproducts inside the body which are like false estrogens. This is why we're seeing especially boys at a younger age, developing a weird overweight pattern gynecomastia, gynecomastia, fat deposits, weird distributions on that and that's because of a spike in estrogen at a young age. So use glass or stainless steel or these containers that can be reusable as well. It's also environmentally friendly to not use these plastic bottles. There you go.

Speaker 1:

Clothing and fabric Things to think about. Polyester, nylon and spandex often contain chemicals that leach into the skin just because of the way to make those fabrics stretchy like that. So the strategies on this is just more organic cotton, wool, bamboo fabrics. Stay away from the nylons. Good luck, ladies, with all your workout pants and Lululemons and all that. But remember we're putting this stuff on our body, especially the tight ones. They're tight to your skin. You're giving yourself no chance. Skin's like I got to breathe man. So I'm just going to pull in all this nylon and off-gassing chemicals right into the skin here. I guess I got into my crotch and hopefully we have good reproductive organs later in life. That's great. So this is the truth. Same with the guys you want to wear, you know, a Lululemon fitting underwear. Well, okay, We'll see how the next generation turns out.

Speaker 1:

Common chemicals, optical brighteners, synthetic fragrances this is laundry detergent we're talking about here. So how we wash our clothes, the softeners, anything with a high fragrance in it, is filled with chemicals. You have a high VOC concentration in Tide. All the pods that have the extra smell to them gain commercials. Oh, it smells so great. Yeah, you breathe that VOCs into the lungs. It causes a lot of toxic buildup as well. So fragrance-free that's probably step number one. Just switch to a fragrance-free, even if it is a major brand, go with that. And then, when you want to step it up a notch, go to plant-based detergents that really have little to no ingredients in them except the soap binders that are in there. There you go. That's a lot, isn't it?

Speaker 1:

So we got you thinking about cleaning your shower, your topicals, your environment, the air, and these are all toxins that build up and cause a whirlwind of emotional endocrinology. You know, hormone disruptors, emotional behavior disruptors in kids, agitation, fatigue and even can flare autoimmune conditions. In many, many people it comes from the toxins. Like I said, you cannot shield yourself or wrap yourself up with tinfoil and go into the world like that, but you just need to be cautious and mindful of the things that you have options on. And the things you have options on is, with your dollar, what you buy First. If you buy clean, you're setting yourself up for success as far as toxins and when you're in the environment, there's not much more you can do. Can't walk around with a gas mask around all the time, it's just the way it is. But the good news is air purification, water filtration and spending your dollars wisely can keep you healthy and your family healthy for a long time. Just be mindful, make a couple changes, stay healthy, stay well and we'll catch you next week.

People on this episode

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Dr. Enrico Dolcecore

Host
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Dr. Christine Hafer

Co-host
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Dr. Crystal Corona

Co-host