10 Ways To Minimize Your Overload

With so many routes of exposure, even simple changes in your everyday life can minimize your body burden. What’s important to remember – because ANY change can be hard – is that you can do this over time. You don’t have to dump out all of your cleaners and products right this minute. Use what you have and, as you run out, slowly replace them with new, less toxic versions. It’s about progress, not perfection when it comes to living a cleaner, greener life.  If you choose any of these actions 80% of the time, you will make a BIG dent in your exposure.

Here are my top 10 ways I keep my exposure to a lot of unnecessary chemicals as low as possible.

1. Use less toxic personal care products.
   • Use one of the resources on our toolkit page like:
     • EWG’s (Environmental Working Group) Healthy Living App – In OVERLOAD, I used alternatives rated 4 and under.
     • MADE SAFE Certified Personal Care database
     • Campaign for Safe Cosmetics
2. Use less toxic household cleaners.
   • Use one of my favorite resources like:
     • EWG’s Healthy Cleaning database – In OVERLOAD, I used alternatives rated C or above.
     • MADE SAFE Certified Household Cleaner database
3. Buy organic versions of the Dirty Dozen. An annual list of top pesticide-use offenders created by EWG since 2004.
   • 2020 Dirty Dozen –
     • • Strawberries
       • Spinach
       • Kale
       • Nectarines
       • Apples
       • Grapes
       • Peaches
       • Cherries
       • Pears
       • Tomatoes
       • Celery
       • Potatoes
   • 2020 Clean 15 – You don’t have to buy every food organic!  There’s also an annual list called the Clean 15 which are the conventional fruits and veggies with the lowest amounts of pesticide residue. That’s how I keep my food bills lower and can feel good about what I serve my babe.
     • • Avocado
       • Sweet Corn
       • Pineapple
       • Onion
       • Papaya
       • Sweet Peas Frozen
       • Eggplant
       • Asparagus
       • Cauliflower
       • Cantaloupes
       • Broccoli
       • Mushrooms
       • Cabbage
       • Honeydew Melon
       • Kiwi
4. Eliminate bottled water & minimize single-use plastics. Single-use plastics are bad for the environment in general. Hard stop (aka, enough reason to stop drinking the stuff now). While studies are ongoing to see what chemicals are getting in our water from the plastic bottles they sit in for who knows how long, in who knows what temperatures. And, if you need another reason, bottled water is also 3000 x more expensive than tap water.
   • Grab a reusable water bottle instead. Utilize FREE tap water because it’s what a lot of that bottled water you pay for actually is anyway!
5. Avoid/replace nonstick cookware. Even if it says it is made without PFOS or PFAS, replacement chemicals are being treated as equally problematic by the EPA.
   • Use silicone baking molds, glass and ceramic dishes for baking and stainless or ceramic pots and pans.
6. Minimizing/avoiding artificial fragrance. Thanks to trade secret rules at the FDA, though a company has to disclose what ingredients are in their products, if it is a proprietary “fragrance” then those specific ingredients don’t have to be listed. Dozens, if not hundreds, of chemicals can hide under the generic word “fragrance” in one product ingredient list.
   • Try a cleaner fragrance line like Michelle Pheiffer’s Henry Rose or search Sephora’s clean fragrance lines made without phthalates, parabens, and formaldehyde.
   • Use essential oils instead!
7. Avoid receipt paper/BPA lined cans. So they took the BPA out of sippy cups because consumers made a stink about that exposure route, but unknowingly 9 out of 10 thermal receipts we touch are coated in BPA that goes from our fingertips into our bloodstream.
   • Just say no to receipts or ask your big box store to switch over to BPA-free receipts. They exist – Trader Joe’s uses BPA-free receipt paper so why can’t everyone?
8. Avoid styrofoam and putting hot food into plastic containers. Not only is styrofoam largely not recyclable, but when hot food is put into it and into plastic containers, it leaches into your food. Same goes for reheating – place it on a plate or in a glass container for the cleanest option.
9. Exercise and/or sauna 2-3 times per week. Sweating out the toxins you are exposed to is a big help to moving them out of your body. I love a good sauna sweat sesh 20-30 minutes, 3 times a week.
10. Eat phytonutrients and take supplements that enable your body’s natural detoxification abilities. Think about the colors of the foods you eat – try to get as much green, blue and purple in there to help your body’s chelation (conversion of metals and chems into an excretable form) with their antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties.
    • Ask your physician or health care advisor about supplements you can take to increase the efficiency of your body’s natural detoxification pathways.