Newsletter #21: The surprising links between plastic and metabolism, and 11 ways to protect yourself (and the planet)! 🌎
Welcome back! In this week’s newsletter, the Good Swap is swapping out PLASTIC ITEMS for healthier alternatives to support metabolic health.
In this newsletter, I’m sharing:
A brief history of plastic (it’s an astonishingly recent invention)
How plastic has rapidly become a central player in the chronic disease epidemic (with plastic now being found in semen, arteries, lung tissue, breastmilk, intestinal tissue, blood, and more 🤯 )
Why the healthcare system must rapidly take into account plastic’s impact on biology
How we can individually decrease our reliance on plastic for our health and the health of the planet
🔄 Good swap
During my recent trip to Costa Rica with my partner, we were fortunate to visit Corcovado National Park, a pristine and protected 900,000 acres of rainforest on the Pacific Coast, which houses around 4% of the world’s biodiversity. It was jaw-droppingly beautiful.
But despite the monumental efforts of the Costa Rican government to protect this area, a looming threat is creeping in on it’s coastline: hoards and hoards of ocean plastic forming a nearly unbroken perimeter along the miles and miles of protected beaches of this natural wonderland. Even with the huge local efforts to clean up the trash, the plastic is endlessly piling up from the ocean, swept in by the daily tides.
Flip flops, floss picks, toothbrushes, toys, bottle caps, laundry detergent bottles, fishing nets, and seemly endless plastic bottles litter the same space where native species like tapirs, crocodiles, coatis, and pumas are attempting to live and walk.
It was a stark reminder of the incredible interconnectedness of our planet and how my careless decisions here in California can affect precious wildlife all over the world. It had me reflecting on the fallacy and perils of “convenience culture” and the normalization of plastic use and discardable items that is not normal at all.
The experience in Corcovado got me thinking: what is the endgame here? If we don’t individually reduce our production of trash and use of plastic, what do we honestly think is going to happen over the next 50 years? It’s not going to be pretty for our bodies or the earth, which are inextricably linked.
Right now, Los Angeles produces 98,952 TONS of solid waste trash PER DAY. This is one city. In one day. It’s hard to wrap my head around.
When I got home from Costa Rica, I immediately read the book Zero Waste Home to start my journey towards less plastic use and trash creation, and watched a lot of Youtube videos about landfills, which are horrifying.
Amazingly, the author of Zero Waste Home and her family of 4 produce just 1 pint of trash TOTAL per year through simple principles of the 5-Rs, described below. This book was POWERFUL, and I highly recommend it as a way to open the mind to what is possible, even if we don’t get all the way to zero waste.
The Zero Waste framework is simple, and includes the 5-Rs: Refuse, Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, and Rot.
In the Zero Waste 5-R framework, Bea Johnson encourages us (in order) to Refuse, Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, and Rot (compost) to move towards zero trash production. Some examples of each step are listed.
🙅♀️ Refuse (What We Do Not Need):
“Every bit we accept, or take, creates a demand to make more. In other words, compulsive accepting (versus refusing) condones and reinforces wasteful practices.”
The author of Zero Waste Home challenges us to take a vow, TODAY, to refuse single-use items forever. That’s a tall order, but it’s good to start thinking about how that would even look! This means REFUSING to use single-use plastic bags, receipts, brochures, straws, floss picks, utensils, cups, lids, water bottles, plastic food packaging, take-out containers, etc. It also means not eating packaged foods that come in single-serving packaging.
Decline freebies, free promotional items at events, or junk mail.
Avoid products with excessive packaging, like fruits and vegetables that come in plastic clamshell containers or plastic bags. One of the easiest ways to avoid trash in relation to our food is to buy loose, unpackaged produce at the farmer’s market! Buy staples in bulk where you can using reusable bags.
Look out for unnecessary plastic and packaging, and then refuse it: i.e, simply ask your dry cleaner to return your dry cleaning to you without the plastic sheath over the clothes (which ends up in a landfill).
Identify as a compulsive refuser, rather than a compulsive accepter of “stuff.”
📉 Reduce (What We Do Need and Cannot Refuse):
Decrease activities that support or lead to consumption, like leisure shopping, subscribing to consumer mailing lists, or watching TV with advertisements.
Buy in bulk to minimize packaging waste.
Limit the number of new clothing items purchased (“fast fashion” is a monumental contributor to landfill waste).
Choose digital versions of books and magazines over physical copies.
Consider more traditional methods of doing things like fermenting vegetables at home instead of buying store-bought in plastic. Another “reduce” method I’m looking into for future parenting is to potentially try the Elimination Communication method with babies to reduce reliance on disposable diapers (which make up between ~1-4% of all landfill waste and can contain harmful chemicals).
Do not buy processed foods that come in individually wrapped containers (i.e., pop-tarts, Welch’s fruit snacks, juice boxes, etc)!
🫙 Reuse (What We Consume and Cannot Refuse or Reduce):
Reusing is the process of utilizing a product in its original form several times to maximize its useful life.
Re-use glass jars for food storage instead of disposable containers! Have a big collection of multi-sized glass jars in your house and use these instead of plastic Tupperware.
Repurpose old clothes into cleaning rags or turn into reusable shopping bags.
Repairing broken items in your house is often as simple as emailing or calling the manufacturer.
Buy second-hand furniture or appliances instead of new ones.
♻️ Recycle (What We Cannot Refuse, Reduce, or Reuse):
“Recycling is an aspirin, alleviating a rather large collective hangover… overconsumption.”
Know by heart what your community can or cannot recycle at the curb, and make sure to recycle in the proper way and bins.
Take electronic waste to designated recycling centers. Recycle used batteries and light bulbs at appropriate facilities.
🪱 Rot (Compost)!:
Compost everything that you can! Did you know that you can compost things like all food scraps, wood toothbrushes and wood combs, loofahs, citrus peels, newspapers, toilet paper (with pee on it), paper towels, paper, toilet paper rolls, brown boxes, eggshells, coffee filters, wood ashes from the fireplace, the contents of your shower drain, dead flies, dead flowers, dead houseplants, dryer lint, dust bunnies, feathers, floor sweepings, fur from dogs or cats, and all yard and grass clippings, along with many other things?
Note: If you send these item to the landfill with your other trash, they will NOT compost, even if the product says “biodegradable.” There are specific conditions required for composting to “work,” and they aren’t found in a landfill!
Composting is INCREDIBLY easy, so don’t be intimidated. You could start today. It is one of the most joyful, awe-inspiring practices that I wish I’d started sooner! The composting system that I use utilizes worms to make composting faster (this is call vermicomposting) and is called Subpod, and I LOVE it, but the company appears to be on a break from production right now. Email me if you’re interested in composting and I’ll share resources.
I LOVE THIS QUOTE! It resonates with my experience! Composting injects awe into every single day as our “trash” transform to soil.
♻️ Why reducing plastic matters
While plastic is now ubiquitous, it was actually only commercialized close to 100 years ago, in the early 20th century - 1907 to be exact. It’s important to realize that plastic is an incredibly recently phenomena, and just like ultraprocessed food, it is an experiment in history that has failed and needs to be relegated to the annals of history.
Since its inception, over 8.3 billion metric tons of plastic have been produced, and more than 350 million metric tons are being produced each year. Sadly, only about 5-6% is being recycled, and the majority ending up in landfills or in our oceans. There is currently a patch of trash floating in the Pacific twice the size of Texas (but by some estimates the size of Australia): The Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Again, what is the endgame here?
Here are some resources about the history of plastic and its connection to metabolic health issues:
🧬 How plastic pollution is connected to our health
1. Plastics have now been found in nearly every human tissue. This includes the placenta (in fact, plastic was found in 100% of placentas in one study), semen, carotid artery plaques, the lungs, intestine, the blood, and even the brain (in mice), amongst other places in the body. The wild part is that diseases are emerging in real-time that are related to plastic and I believe they are going to be much harder to treat and require new modalities that we are totally unprepared for. Our current diet and lifestyle strategies, drugs, and surgeries may not work on diseases related to this new phenomenon of plastic deposition in tissue. The future of medicine will have to take into account the impact of plastic on our tissues and cell biology, and plastic production is increasing rapidly each year.
This paper from Nature Review Cardiology from 2024 shows that 58% of surgically removed carotid artery plaques now seem to contain plastic, and this is associated with much worse outcomes.
2. Plastic is entering the body through every possible route: We can inhale microplastics through the air we breathe, absorb it through the skin from our plastic-based (polyester/synthetic) clothes and personal care products, and ingest it via food, water, and other beverages.
3. Plastic is extremely toxic to produce and breaks down into toxic chemicals that disrupt cellular function. Plastics contain harmful chemicals like bisphenols, dioxins, and other hormone disrupting byproducts that have been linked to cancer, lung disease, infertility, birth defects, endocrine disruption, weight gain, insulin resistance, and many other diseases.
4. Microplastics directly cause inflammation in the body. Studies have found that microplastics in the body can cause inflammation, contributing to diseases like inflammatory bowel disease and insulin resistance.
5. Plastics contributes to oxidative stress and mitochondrial dysfunction. Exposure to microplastics can lead to oxidative stress and immune system disruption, and there is emerging evidence that they are directly leading to mitochondrial dysfunction.
Our mitochondria create the energy to power our cells and our lives. Plastics disrupting mitochondria means plastics are dimming our life force.
In short, plastic is promoting the trifecta of Bad Energy that I speak about in my book, Good Energy.
The good news is that nearly everything we use that is currently plastic can be easily swapped out for something that is not plastic. But it takes being aware of how much plastic creeps into everything we do.
Some ideas for swaps, below (I have no affiliation with any of the companies linked):
Clothes and bedding: Use clothes and beddings made from organic cotton, bamboo fabric, hemp or recycled materials. Check out this article from The Good Trade for recommendations on organic cotton t-shirts, and this article from Going Zero Waste for sustainable bedding options.
Personal care products: Opt for biodegradable soaps and shampoos made from natural ingredients without harmful chemicals. One of my favorites is the Dip Color Safe Shampoo Bar for Every Day (fragrance free), which is plastic-free and I compost the paper packaging.
Toothbrush and Brushes: Replace plastic toothbrushes and hair brushes with ones made from bamboo like Brush with Bamboo.
Floss and Toothpaste: Instead of plastic flossers, go for a wax floss like Dr. Tung’s Smart Floss or Bamboo based floss in a glass jar. For toothpaste, try something like fluoride-free Bite, which are pellets that come in a glass bottle.
Razors: Plastic razors also have a huge environmental impact. Something like Leaf Razor Kit which uses high quality recyclable materials would be a better option that plastic razors.
Food containers: Swap plastic tupperware for glass. The cheapest and easiest option is to have an assortment of glass jars in your pantry that you store food in, although there are many glass food storage container brands on the market now with bamboo tops.
Drinkware: Swap plastic drinkware or water bottles for glass or stainless steel. I like Kleen Canteen and Tronco. I also love using reusable glass or metal straws! These are the ones I have.
Baggies: Swap plastic bags for reusable silicone bags. I absolutely love Stasher bags! They last forever.
Paper towels: Swap paper towels for reusable dish cloths. I haven’t used a paper towel in years.
Kids’ toys: Get used toys and books from other parents or opt for toys that are made of wood or organic fabric for your little ones, and opt for less. Check out this article from Sustainable Jungle for some ideas.
Supplements: If you use supplements, support companies that use sustainable packaging (this is one of the reasons I love and work with WeNatal and Timeline).
Instead of plastic, opt for reusable or biodegradable materials and packaging! Here are just a few simple examples I use in my life that I love!
For more ideas on sustainable living and plastic-free swaps, check out these blogs (there are probably thousands of other great resources, but these are a few we came across in researching for this newsletter! Reply and share your favorites!):
My take👇️
Our current use of plastics is a disaster and is contributing to our metabolic disease epidemic and resultant chronic disease epidemic, as well as environmental devastation. Our overconsumption of material “stuff” (a lot of which is plastic) in recent history is correlated with humans getting more depressed and more sick, and plastics are now being found all throughout our bodies, in nearly every organ, creating more severe illnesses that will be harder to treat. In our digital urban world, we are more disconnected than ever from nature, are deluded by media and marketing into believing consumption is happiness, and there is a mass extinction of biodiversity taking place right now on our planet that will increasingly have terrible consequences for human health, since everything in the natural world is inherently fully interdependent.
So what should we do about it? Here are a few thoughts, and my plan for myself… First off, I personally need to do so much better. I try, but I’ve become clear in working on this newsletter that I haven’t been trying hard enough. So a key part is to always keep learning and educating ourselves. Choose non-plastic swaps throughout our lives and refuse single use plastic. Go outside a LOT and continue to spend drastically more time having meaningful experiences in nature and in the sunshine (we currently spend 93% of our time indoors as Americans 🤦♀️ ). Eat real, unpackaged, fresh food from the farmer’s market for the vast majority of our intake. Reflect regularly on core values and then create a specific plan to live more in accordance with them, which would probably lead us to spend even more energy learning, creating, moving, and spending time with loved ones rather than scrolling or buying disposable material items. Get involved in advocacy, speaking up, and voting in accordance with our values. And of course, staying extremely optimistic and allowing our minds to imagine and visualize the brightest possible future for all beings, because negativity and hopelessness will get us no where.
This newsletter barely scratches the surface of the plastic and trash issue, but hopefully it provided some new tips and info for you. Reply with your thoughts - I read every email!
Sending you good energy 💓 ,
Dr. Casey
👀 In Case You Missed It
📚️ Join the book giveaway!
Avery Books and Penguin Press are giving away copies of Good Energy AND The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt!
These two books are powerful to read - TOGETHER as they tackle some of the most important issues of our time. The issues that very well may determine whether we persevere as a species… or not.
My book Good Energy provides a novel framework for understand the chronic disease epidemic skyrocketing across the lifespan - from children to the elderly - as a metabolic issues, that is easily solvable.
The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt explores the collapse of youth mental health in the era of smartphones and social media and shares the four simple rules that can help us restore a more humane childhood with moments made away from our phones.
The combination of our biochemically damaged bodies and brains by our toxic food system, which then gets inundated with constant damaging inputs from social media, gaming, news, and more from technology, are together destroying human capital. This is what these two books TOGETHER speak to - and more importantly - offer solutions to. Read them and share them like our future depends on it.
How to enter:
Like Avery Books’ post on Instagram - link to the post is here.
Follow @avery_books and @penguinpress on Instagram.
On Avery Books’ Instagram post here, tag a friend who helps you live your best life in the comments.
NO PURCHASE NECESSARY. US residents only, aged 18+. Ends 11:59PM EST on Thursday, July 25, 2024. See official rules here: https://bit.ly/avery_pp_sweeps
🧪 My Genova Metabolomix+ Nutrition Test results are out!
My wonderful friends Michael Chapman and Patricia Devers from Genova Diagnostics joined me on Zoom to go over my Genova Metabolomix+ Nutrition Test results. I learned so much for our conversation and I am so excited to share it with you!
Check out the YouTube playlist here for short clips from our conversation as well as the full recording of our chat.
Order the Metabolomix+ Nutrition Test and use my code CASEY10 to get 10% off the test price: https://connect.gdx.net/products/nutrition
📑 Good Energy on Athletech News Report
I am so honored to be included in Athletech News’ The Business of Prevention Recovery Longevity Report 2024 under the “Doctors Weigh In on the Longevity Boom” section.
Read the full report here.
☀️ My Morning Routine on Good Gear
In this episode, we talk about exact lifestyle, exercise, and nutritional interventions for sustainable weight loss, the impact of metabolic health & Ozempic on fertility, what causes weight gain while you age, and more.
Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, or watch on YouTube.
🥗 My Metabolic Health Collection with Daily Harvest!
Back in May, I curated a Metabolic Health Collection with Daily Harvest. If you want to eat to support GOOD ENERGY and are tight on time, this is a super easy way to do it!
This collection includes ORGANIC nutrient-dense REAL FOOD bowls and smoothies with fiber, protein, antioxidants, and micronutrients that help support blood sugar levels - SO simple, filling, and DELICIOUS 😍 My favorite Daily Harvest items are included in this collection!
They are also offering new items including the gluten-free and dairy-free Butternut Squash + Cauliflower Mac n' Cheeze 🧀 . The cheesiness of this mac n’ cheese comes from nutritional yeast and includes butternut squash, sweet potato, and cauliflower. One serving packs 10g of protein!
Fun fact: Much of Daily Harvest’s unique physical packaging is COMPOSTABLE, so my worms get to eat, too! 🪱
Place your order using my code DRCASEY for 15% off your first order over $100 (before tax/shipping).
🚺️ Sign up for Almond ObGyn’s PCOS Program and Group Pregnancy Care
Almond ObGyn is doing something special: bringing functional medicine together with ObGyn care to improve outcomes.
They have a program that goes deep on PCOS to truly understand the root cause, run the necessary testing, create a personalized treatment plan, and then work with you over time to actually create lifestyle change. This is a dream come true - it's refreshing to see people building better solutions in the ObGyn world. It is so needed. If you're struggling with PCOS and live in California I would check them out - AND, their PCOS care is virtual, too. 💻️
Learn more about their PCOS Program here.
They are also releasing midwife-led group pregnancy care, which research shows can improve outcomes. I'm a fan of reducing the risk of over-treating in pregnancy and focusing on education and lower intervention care options. If you're pregnant or planning to be soon and live in LA - they just opened a waitlist.
Learn more about their Group Pregnancy Care here.
So wonderful to spend time with the incredible founder of Almond, Tara Raffi!
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