10 Toxic Household Products (You Should Banish from Your Home)

Hey guys, Dr. Axe here, doctor of natural medicine and founder of draxe.com. Today I'm going to be talking about obesogenic products. These are toxic chemicals that are found in your house that can actually cause your body to store body fat and not lose weight.

It can also really affect your body and how you burn fat and even really disrupt hormones in your body like leptin and ghrelin, which actually tell your body if you're full and cause your body to burn fat to lose weight. So again, you may be doing different types of diets out there or trying to lose weight through exercise, but if your body is highly toxic, it can keep you from losing weight.

So in this video, I'll be talking about the top 10 household items that you may not be aware of that are causing your body to store fat. And then I'm going to be giving you some natural things you can do using things like essential oils and herbs and natural products To help you get rid of these toxins in your house and in your body. So let's start off here with number 1, bleach.

That's right, bleach has toxic fumes. It actually increases your risk of COPD by 24% to 32%. It's known to cause asthma. Also, it actually increases your risk of pneumonia, breathing difficulty, coughing, and many other health conditions. You know, when you cause toxicity Of the respiratory tract and liver, which is what bleach does.

You know, your liver is actually responsible for breaking down and digesting fats in your body, processing them. So when you cause more liver toxicity, there's problems, as well as when you affect your lungs and circulatory system. Your lungs and your liver are 2 of your largest detoxifying organs. Bleach is bad for the body. So let's talk about what to use instead. Number 1, lemon essential oil.

Lemon oil is very fresh. It contains a compound called d-limonene, which is very cleansing to whether you're trying to clean your shower, your appliances, your bathroom, but lemon oil is the ultimate oil for that. And I also like tea tree oil for that as well. Also using white distilled vinegar.

So my wife Chelsea and I, we have a spray bottle at home where we have lemon oil, tea tree oil, white distilled vinegar, and this is what we spray down our shower with. It's what we spray in our kitchen as well, our bathtub. Also here, listen to this. Oxygenated bleach with A rating on Environmental Working Group, so you can get oxygenated bleach.

But just to say in general, white distilled vinegar and essential oils like lemon, that's where you want to go. And again, you know, it's really important to remember this that when your body is toxic, it makes it more difficult for your body to lose weight.

If you're a person who's just trying to lose even the last 5, whether it's lose 50 or 100 pounds or lose the last 5, you got to get rid of these obesogenic toxic compounds that are found in your house. Number 2 here, antibacterial chemicals. This is including antibacterial hand soap, antibacterial toothpaste, cleaners.

These are— and actually even the hand sanitizers that are antibacterial, these actually have been linked to microbial imbalance. So here's what they do, they actually kill off the good bacteria in your gut, increasing your risk of leaky gut syndrome, which can also cause autoimmune disease over time. It's also linked with thyroid disease, muscle weakness.

Replacement chemicals as well can be dangerous. So you want to stay away from these antibacterial products. In fact, the Environmental Working Group came out and said that it's actually one of the worst things for your body and it's found in a large amount of our personal care products today. Here's what you want to use instead. Just use regular castile hand soap, okay?

Just the real deal soaps that people were using. 20, 30, 50 Years ago, Castile soap is a great one. Coconut oil pulling, if you're using a mouthwash that's antibacterial, stop using that. What I'd recommend instead is make your— do oil pulling. You take a tablespoon of coconut oil. What I do is I actually use a few essential oils as well.

I'll use a little bit of myrrh oil or even a little bit of clove or a blend of something like clove and cinnamon and rosemary and orange like the old, you know, Thieves or that type of thing. But again, oil pulling is great. You swish it around in your mouth for 5 to 20 minutes. I typically do my oil pulling when I'm in the shower.

So while I'm in the shower, I just swish around the coconut oil and essential oils and then spit it out after 5 or 10 minutes there in the shower. Next thing, natural toothpaste. It's great making your own natural toothpaste. I do this by combining baking soda, coconut oil, and essential oils, or just buy a natural toothpaste. But you can check or Google search or YouTube online.

Dr. Axe toothpaste recipe. I've got some great ones there online to really help whitening your teeth. We have some for mineralizing your teeth you can check out there. And then alcohol or essential oil-based hand sanitizers, those are great. In fact, Chelsea and I carry around frankincense and lavender wherever we go.

If we go into a public restroom, we just use essential oils on our hands with some water rather than the antibacterial soap because who wants to kill off the The good bacteria in your gut. We want to keep our gut and our microbiome healthy. Number 3 here, scented candles and air fresheners. Highly, highly toxic.

They contain compounds like benzene and phthalates which have actually been linked to cancer, asthma, birth defects, kidney damage, migraine headaches, skin sensitivities, neurotoxicity. These scented candles and air fresheners are bad and what you want to use instead is natural candles and essential oils. In fact, Chelsea and I have 2 or 3 essential oil diffusers in our home.

We have one in our living room, one in our kitchen, and one in our bedroom. And so, you know, before bed we diffuse lavender and chamomile. In our living room, you know, depending on the season, you know, during the Christmas time we're diffusing things like fir oil or cinnamon and orange, you know, things that are very festive around the holidays. But those are also very cleansing to the air.

So again, we use a lot of essential oils. Also, you can use things like beeswax candles, which are great as well. So natural candles and essential oils, the way to go to naturally freshen your air. There is one— listen, if you need to freshen something, let's say like the garbage disposal, what we do is we put like lemon oil down there and tea tree oil and baking soda.

So baking soda and essential oils, great for killing off any type of odor there as well. All right, number 4. Talcum powder. Now, talcum baby powder was actually linked to, in a recent clinical study, to ovarian cancer. And actually, there are millions of dollars of lawsuits.

In fact, baby powder manufacturers paid out $700 million in lawsuits in 2017 alone because of talcum powder and the other chemicals found in baby powder today, okay? They actually dry out mucous membranes, cause lung damage.

What you want to use instead is simply an organic cornstarch-based diaper powder or again, for female vaginal issues, improve— you want to improve the health of your microbiome. You want to get to the root cause of these issues. Typically, when women are having those issues, it's caused by excess dampness in the body. That's according to TCM, traditional Chinese medicine, and Ayurvedic medicine.

So what you want to do to dry up dampness, you got to get rid of the wheat products, the dairy, The processed sugar, get those out of the diet. You want to consume more warming and drying foods, things like artichokes, beets, dandelion greens. So, or just look up bitter foods online and start eating more bitter foods.

In addition to that, lots of organic meat and vegetables and then herbs that help dry up that dampness, pau d'arco, oregano, cinnamon are very, very good herbs for drying up that dampness and astragalus. Okay. Is a very good herb. You can do those as a tea or supplement, really help with those instead if we're talking about internally.

But again, for babies, as we're talking about that, cornstarch can be good. All right, number 5, dry cleaning chemicals. You know, we know dry cleanings contain PERC, which are highly carcinogenic, especially to the kidneys and nervous system. They're actually banned in California or they are scheduled to be banned by 2023.

Now, here's what you can use instead, use green dry cleaning alternatives Wet cleaning or liquid carbon dioxide cleaning. You can look up green or organic dry cleaning in your local area. Number 6 here, vinyl. You know, vinyl is not the best thing to use. And also, we could get into, you know, the glues used in our homes. If you are building a home and you can avoid using it, you should.

If you are remodeling, you want to use real wood or real linoleum or tile, or even cork flooring can be great. Hemp shower curtains. Can be good as well. So again, there are actually some natural things you can do. So shower curtains is a big area for this you can do instead. Number 7, VOCs, okay? VOCs are highly toxic to the body. They've been linked to asthma and cancer.

And these are found— VOCs are found in the paint in our walls, but also especially laundry detergents, okay? Your laundry detergents and the dryer sheets is where you're going to get a lot of these VOCs. Instead, again, just go buy organic when you're shopping at a natural health food store or online. Look for organic dryer sheets and organic washing and laundry detergents.

Just switch to those instead. All right, number 8 here, flame retardants. You know, these are chemicals you want to stay away from. And these are found primarily in baby cushions and baby car seats and a lot of baby products. So again, what you want to— and actually found in really large amounts in mattresses. That's probably the number one place you're going to find flame retardant materials.

So if you're going to buy a bed, make sure that it does not have these chemicals. You know, buy organic bedding, organic cotton bedding. There's actually several good brands out there. I think there's Naturepedic is a good one. There's IntelliBed. So there's a lot of good bed companies that don't have flame retardants. In their mattresses.

So again, go organic or chemical-free when you're buying a mattress for you and for your kids. Pesticides, okay, this is a no-brainer, right? But when you're consuming meat, especially that's non-organic, you're getting high doses of pesticides, antibiotics, and growth hormones and steroids. And so you want to stay away from all of those chemicals.

And so as much as you can, eat organic, shop at your local farmers market, ask them, hey, are you pesticide-free? But going organic in general and pesticide-free is really important for your overall internal health and it's much better for the environment. And then, hey, nonstick pans.

Listen, PFOAs, okay, these are carcinogenic and they've been linked to thyroid disease, high blood pressure, infertility, low birth weight, kidney damage, testicular cancer. This is found primarily in cookware, right? A lot of cookware today. You want to use stainless steel pans or cast iron. If you go to my house today, you're going to see lots of stainless steel and cast iron.

That's primarily what we're using. Ceramic can be good as well. But again, cast iron tastes really— it creates really good flavoring in your food, but that's the biggest source here of these PFOAs is these types of pans that have those. So again, you just want to make those switch there.

And listen, if you're asking, well, how do I get things to keep from sticking, the real secret is you use quite a bit of oil. Yeah. Coconut oil, avocado oil, or ghee when you're cooking. You first put that in the pan, you let it warm up for about 3 minutes on medium heat, and then you can put in your eggs or your food. And typically, you're going to have less stick that way.

Listen, it's great when things don't stick, but you know what's worse? This, right? It's creating more toxicity in your body, causing you to store body fat, and keeping you from reaching your goals and losing weight. Remember, you want to stay away from all of these different chemicals that are found in a lot of our home cleaning supplies, our personal care products.

Again, number 1, switch to essential oils. I just recommend, you know, buy just those main oils, lemon oil, tea tree oil, peppermint oil, you know, use these frankincense and lavender, you know, use these oils on a daily basis instead, you know, whether you're making Shampoo or toothpaste or laundry detergent, you can do it all with essential oils and vinegar, coconut oil, and baking soda.

Pretty much cover your bases. And if you want to learn more DIY recipes, just search Dr. Axe DIY recipes or Dr. Axe toothpaste or Dr.— you can find— I have created recipes and replacements for all of these things that I've shown here. So I want to say, hey guys, I hope you've enjoyed this live video.

Hey, if you're not subscribed here, Make sure to subscribe here to my Facebook or YouTube channel and Instagram here as well. I've got a lot more content coming out teaching you how to use food as medicine, how to use essential oils, and the best herbs and foods to help transform your life. Hey, thanks for watching. Hi, Dr. Axe here.

I want to say thanks so much for checking out this YouTube video and also don't forget to subscribe if you want to get more great content on things like herbs, essential oils, natural remedies, and how to use food. As medicine. Also, check out more of our content on my YouTube channel. Thanks for watching.