If You Do One Detox a Year — Do It Now, And Here’s How

Everyone, I'm Dr. Axe. Welcome to the show where each and every week I dive deep into the science and principles behind how to heal and grow physically, mentally, spiritually, and experience a breakthrough in your health and your life. Today I'll be talking about how to cleanse your body along with your mind and spirit. And so if you're a person knowing you need to cleanse your liver, your gallbladder, your digestive system, your kidneys, your lymphatic system, and your mind and your spirit, then I'm gonna dive into how to do that today. Before I dive in though, make sure to subscribe to the channel and hit the link in the show notes to subscribe to my weekly wellness newsletter to get my top tips for natural healing delivered straight to your inbox. And by the way, the, the content we send out regularly is really phenomenal in terms of a lot of the show notes and ideas, things we cover in the show. So if you want those lists, those PDFs, that free content, make sure to go to the show notes and sign up for that weekly wellness newsletter. Just once a week, you'll get the best of the best content. Content that I put out. All right, well, spring is the season for healing, for renewal, for rebirth. And did you know that in ancient forms of medicine, the spring is believed to be when your liver and gallbladder are the most active? It's when they're the strongest and have the greatest capabilities for detoxification. So if you're considering doing a coffee enema or a parasite cleanse or a colonic or just a cellular cleanse, any sort of cleanse or detoxification protocol, the spring, specifically March through May, is best season to do a cleanse and detox. And I also want to mention, this is true in the medical world, both conventional medicine today, or should I say more functional medicine, and ancient medicine believes this and is aware of this. Also, different religious traditions tend to do more cleansing this time of year. Think about Lent, uh, that's done in, in the Catholic Church, the Orthodox, in some Protestant denominations, and also Passover. So think about what you do at Lent. You give up, you sacrifice, you take those things you're addicted to and you remove them from your life. So, right, it's a form of spiritual cleansing and mental detoxification, dopamine detoxes as well, that you can do this time of year. And so we see this with Lent, with Passover, and this emphasis that this is a season of reflection, of going deep to realize, okay, who am I? What am I called to do? Uh, what, what are the things I need to do in my life to make this next season the best season? So it's learning from the past, it's refocusing on your future, and again, it's this form of cleansing and detoxification, both physically but also mentally and spiritually. And if you're a person who wants the best outta life, you want to get the end of your life and know you've ran the best race and you've done everything you can to be Christ-like, you've done everything you can to be, live the best life you can, then this is an absolutely critical rhythm of looking at your past, seeing what's holding you back, looking at the future, looking at Christ, and saying, "I am going to become a different person. I'm gonna live differently. I'm going to be better." But you can only do that by letting go of the things that are holding you back and getting rid of and cleansing your body of those toxins, of those addictions, that are keeping you from being less than you were called to be. You know, for Christians who observe the Lent season, this represents the spring cleaning of the soul. In fact, Pope Francis says this: Lent comes providentially to reawaken us and to shake us from lethargy. Again, it's sort of this, hey, let's wake up and it's time for a new birth. And if you're a person who's living with shame, with guilt, from— with regret, with unforgiveness, with something that's happened in the past and you haven't let go of it, it's time to let go of it. We'll go through how to do that today. But it's so cleansing and rejuvenating when you can just let go, and then that finally allows you to move forward. If you're not doing that, it's like there's a— there's an anchor around your ankle. You can't run, you can't move forward like you're called to. You know, in pagan traditions, the spring equinox symbolizes new beginnings, fertility, planting seeds of the future, which I think The, you know, those pagan cultures simply got that from something God was doing in terms of the design on earth where, think about it, the leaves shed their leaves and then they sprout something new, right? So they realize there's a rebirth, there's a newness happening. And so they picked this up even from God's own creation. You know, when you look at the ancient forms of medicine, like Chinese medicine, spring is when the liver, it's known as the general of the body, the liver and gallbladder, um, are the most active for detoxification, as I mentioned. And spring is connected to something called the wood element, which emphasizes growth, renewal, detoxification. Ayurveda, very similar, uh, in terms of this is a time when you are supposed to be cleansing. And our bodies naturally flow in season— seasons and rhythms, with spring being the optimal time of detoxification. I mean, think about, um, a woman's cycle. Now that happens monthly, and women should be eating differently based on where they're at on their cycle, whether it's building blood or later on in the cycle, it's actually cleansing and healing. So doing herbs like milk thistle and doing things to actually cleanse the blood. Well, the same thing for both women— men and women when we're talking about the seasons, their seasonal eating. So what are the foods that are in season in spring? Well, it's a lot of things like cruciferous vegetables and green foods and things like that. And so think about green is coming. And so starting to eat more things that are green is what you wanna focus on in the spring. And physically, as I mentioned, the liver is really what you wanna focus on is healing and cleansing the liver. And that tends to be foods that are green and foods that are sour along with a little bit of bitter, okay? So in the fall is when you wanna do more of the sweet, okay? So the fall is like, you think about a bear getting ready to go into hibernation. They're eating honey, they're sort of bulking up a little bit. And so they are eating more I think about Thanksgiving, we're eating sweet potatoes and cinnamon, and those are like naturally sweetened foods. Well, in the spring, if you want to cleanse and purge your body of things, it's sour and it's bitter, okay? Those are the flavors that really activate and empower the liver and your entire digestive system to cleanse and purge toxins that you may have been exposed to over the past, not only year, but years, uh, as well. And so it's really important that you really focus on healing in this way and, and taking the— this optimal time to work with your body. Um, one of the most important concepts of healing in all of ancient medicine is around this idea of circadian rhythms. It's living in tune with nature. What's going on in nature is very tied to us. In fact, if you look at the three main world religions, the three largest religions— Christianity, Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, or not the 3 largest, I would say the 3 largest monotheistic religions. Those religions all believe, and they say in their scriptures, we came from the dust of the earth, we came from mud, okay? But we were created, these physical bodies, from the earth, okay? And then God, in many of us, put his spirit to indwell in us. But that being said, we have this deep connection to the earth. In fact, if you think about this, we have around 37 trillion cells in our body. Well, we have anywhere from a 1:1 to probably a 1:3 ratio of that in terms of bacteria that live in our guts, which aren't really our own tissues. These are tissues from nature that now live in us. And so you have more bacteria and microbes in your body than you do your own cells. So we are created to live really, really deeply connected to what's going on in nature. This is why sunshine is so good for us. Breathing in oxygen outdoors, spending time in nature is very cleansing and healing to And if you're not living in line with the seasons and with nature, you're not living an optimal life. Again, we see this in Judaism with the Jewish feast days. There's a time for fasting and there's a time for feasting. Solomon talks about this in Ecclesiastes, that for everything in life there's a season, a time to mourn and a time for joy, a time for shedding and a time for rebirth, right? So there, there's a time and a season. Well, the spring is the time of renewal. So if you've had things that are holding you back in life, it could be people, right? Maybe there's toxic people in your life. It's time to let them go. Maybe there are, are dietary issues. There's a shopping addiction, there's a food addiction. It's time to let those things go. And so I'm gonna start off here diving into how to physically cleanse your body, and then we'll hit on the mental and the spiritual. As well. So here are the top 10 sources of toxicity today that are holding back your body. Number 1, processed and refined foods with artificial additives. Okay, the SAD, which stands for the Standard American Diet, today is highly toxic. The biggest things you want to pay attention to are, number 1, sugar. Refined sugar has been shown time and time again to be the single worst thing for our bodies. Now I'm not talking about eating blueberries and applesauce or pomegranates or, you know, or even honey, okay, maple syrup. Those things are fine in a diet for most people, okay. I'm talking about anything that just has added sugar, even cane sugar, okay, is not near as good as just doing actual fruit or something like that. So this is a time of season where you want to get rid of especially high fructose corn syrup and, and added, you know, sugar. That's the biggest thing. The second, because what that does is it causes yeast and Candida overgrowth in the body. It causes insulin resistance, so imbalances all your hormones. So it really disrupts the pancreas, the digestive system, the hormonal system. It's very toxic to the body. The second biggest thing are seed oils and bad fats, okay, trans fats. If you are doing soybean oil, cottonseed oil, corn oil, even sunflower and safflower or canola oil, these oils are very toxic to the body. So eliminating those from your diet and replacing those with extra virgin olive oil is probably the best oil, along with, uh, I would say coconut oil. Those are the two oils that in the Axe household we use the most because they're the most cleansing, the most healthy. Extra virgin olive oil and coconut oil are probably the two best, followed by probably doing a little bit of avocado oil. Uh, you could do on occasion, not as good as the first two but still okay. And then you could also do maybe beef tallow in grass-fed butter or ghee. Okay, those are the sort of things you want. But these seed oils cause major inflammation of the gut lining and the cardiovascular system, and so it's going to lead to heart disease, uh, and other health problems. And the other thing is, so, so we talked about sugar, we talked about seed oils, um, so that's carbs, the bad carbs and bad fats. The other big thing is things that are just artificial— artificial food dyes, artificial like BHT, a lot of gums, things that are not food, that are artificial sweeteners that are in our food supply. They're not real. So they're gonna be very toxic to the body. And so that's the biggest thing is eliminate the processed foods from your diet. Number 2 is stop eating conventional meat, conventional dairy, and conventional produce. Now conventional meat and dairy are the most toxic of all foods, but conventional produce like the Dirty Dozen also can be toxic. Basically anything that doesn't have a peel on it is gonna be highly sprayed. So think about berries or even like lettuces, like, like romaine lettuce, it's sprayed. It doesn't have a covering. Versus if you buy non-organic grapefruit, it's not as toxic because you're taking off the peel and the inside isn't sprayed. I'm not to say, say it's not still good eating organic grapefruit. It's just not near as important as buying organic beef or organic blueberries. So you want to stay away from pesticides, herbicides, conventional produce. They have glyphosate, which has been shown to damage the gut microbiome. It's been shown to alter gut flora, causing issues like allergies and inflammatory bowel disease and just general inflammation. The second big thing is heavy metals. We see metals like arsenic and mercury and lead and cadmium in our water, food, and environment. And so you want to be careful with foods that are not organic from China, especially like non-organic chicken and non-organic apples that are shipped over from China have been shown to be very high in arsenic. And then a lot of the other You know, think about all the fluoride and chlorine that is found in our water supply. So cleansing out our water is also very important. Number 4 is plastics and BPA. Okay, bisphenol A, um, plastics, phthalates, all these chemicals in packaging and containers you want to stay away from. They're endocrine disruptors. Primarily they cause estrogen, estrogen to rise, which for men, that's going to cause you to have more feminine characteristics. It's going to lower your testosterone levels. And for women, it's linked to estrogen-based breast cancer. So you really want to be careful and go from the plastic bottles to the glass and the stainless steel— much better options. And then indoor air pollution— we've got mold and dust and chemicals that start to build up because it's not outside, things aren't moving. So getting a good air filter, whether it be Jasper, which is one of my favorites— that J-A-S-P-R is a great option to start to cleanse your— this is a filter that my wife Chelsea and I have in our home, and it's great for cleansing the indoor. In fact, it actually Tells you it, it, there's a green light and it shows you how many particles it's picking up. There's an orange or yellow line, there's a red light. So you know exactly what's going on in your home. And it, and it really detoxifies a big, big area, our entire kitchen, our entire great living room. And so that's a Jasper air filter. There's other good air filters, but that's the one I personally use and, and, and I absolutely love. Um, number 6 is pharmaceutical residues or just pharmaceutical drugs. Did you know probably the single greatest form of toxicity today, in all of all our exposures, are just taking medications that your own doctor has recommended? Acetaminophen or aspirin, that's toxic to your body. Birth control, that's toxic to your body. So a lot of these medications— warfarin, Coumadin, that's used to be rat poison— those blood thinners are very toxic to your body. They cause your organs to age. And they— and while they might seem like they help one area of the body, they actually always damage another area of the body. There's not a single medication that doesn't deplete your body of a nutrient. And so it's very important to understand, if you're taking a pharmaceutical drug, do everything you can in your power to switch over to something natural that's more friendly, that the body recognizes, whether it be turmeric or ginger, coenzyme Q10, fish oil, probiotics. Milk thistle, vitex, black cohosh, dong quai, whatever it is, try and switch over to these natural herbals or vitamins and nutrients that the body can recognize and don't have that toxic effect on the body. But again, remember this: of all the things I've talked about, by far the more— the, the biggest thing that's causing people to be sick and ill are medications that are actually recommended from doctors today. Um, the other big thing I want to mention is I want to hit on sugar a second time, but also with alcohol. Okay, did you know that alcohol turns into sugar in the body and also strains the liver in a tremendous way. So the consumption of alcohol and other drugs are very, very toxic to the body. Okay, so what you want to do is— and listen, your body is meant to deal with a certain level of toxins. So if you are going and having wine one day a week, maybe one glass or up to two, for most of you, your body can tolerate a glass of wine a week. Okay, that's, that's not going to be a problem. But if you're drinking it every day, that's not healthy. If you're drinking more than one glass, definitely more than two, that's gonna be very, very toxic to your liver. And the biggest thing it'll start to disrupt is your sleep cycle and your detoxification pathways. And so you wanna be very careful with alcohol consumption. Again, I think a glass of wine once a week or something, and if it's, you're doing it and there's a form of joy and connection and, and, um, you know, I, I think for many people that's okay. Not getting drunk ever, but just enjoying a little bit of wine. But I think when you look at the clinical studies, overconsumption of alcohol decreases longevity. It's very bad for the body. Number 8, stress. Emotional stress and poor sleep impact your detox pathways. Okay, we know this. The biggest sources of toxicity in your life that impact your physical body— stress and poor sleep are very, very high up there. Sleep is when your body detoxes. In fact, specifically between 11 AM and 3 AM— I'm sorry, 11 PM and, and, um, 3 AM is when your liver detoxifies. And that really 3 to 5 AM is when your colon is going to detoxify, and then your lungs right after that. And so you really want to make sure that during those times you are asleep. Um, number 9, synthetic personal care products. The lotions, the deodorants, the makeup that are non-organic are causing your body to be toxic. Um, and so switch to just Switch to natural options. Today it's so easy. It is so easy to go out and buy a natural deodorant, a lotion, or even makeup. I know that there are brands out there. Number 10, non-organic cleaning products with harsh chemicals. This is another one, it's easy. Again, if you are using these cleaning products, these harsh chemicals, I mean, think about it, like there's labels on it with a skull and bones saying, "Do not let your kids get near these." Yet we're spraying them all over our entire homes. And if you got little kids where they're crawling and playing and licking things, and you've got animals, very similar, where it's causing a toxic buildup in their body. And so you're so much better going and buying an organic brand. There's a lot of brands out there. One I personally love and I'm starting to use is called Truly Free, is an amazing option there for those cleaning products. And that's one of the biggest things you could do is simply go and buy organic cleaning products. And again, if you want to know the brand that I recommend and prescribe and recommend for patients, it's Truly Free, has great natural cleaning products. And then I wanna walk you through how to specifically detoxify your body right now And I do want to mention the liver again because it is your primary detoxification organ. You want to filter out toxins, you know, it filters out everything from food toxins to alcohol, even infections like parasites. I mean, your liver is responsible for that, environmental pollutants. So you want to make sure you are giving your liver a diet that's nutrient-dense, full of herbs, bitter foods, sour foods, and supplements. And the first category I want to mention in this season are cruciferous vegetables. Broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, Brussels sprouts, kale, watercress— these sort of cruciferous foods contain compounds like indole-3-carbinol, sulforaphane, glucosinolates, and these help detoxify the body. They also have really powerful anti-cancer properties, really, really powerful. So if you also want to prevent and fight cancer, you want to consume more cruciferous vegetables. And I recommend you eating these cooked. Ideally steamed is best in the spring. So, so buy a big vegetable steamer if you don't have one. Throw in loads of vegetables in there— broccoli, cauliflower, asparagus, carrots, green vegetables like spinach. Steam those and then eat those with a little bit of sea salt, or you could put a little olive oil on them and sea salt, or do what I do. I love hummus with those, so you can make hummus or buy it and dip your vegetables in hummus or a raw cashew cheese, or put a little bit of Manchego on there. But, but, but just get way more vegetables that are cooked, especially cruciferous, because of these powerful cancer-fighting compounds that activate liver detox enzymes. Beets are also amazing. Beets contain, um, betalains along with, um, along with these unique compounds that boost your nitric oxide levels. So it's very cleansing of your blood as well, reduces oxidative stress, causes your, your liver to produce more bile, which aids in detoxifying heavy metals. Carrots are another great one. Carrots are high in beta-carotene, which supports liver function and bile flow. And then probiotics and prebiotic fiber— asparagus, artichokes, leeks— are really good for this. Artichokes in particular and asparagus are very good for detoxifying the liver. Again, leeks are amazing as well this time of year. And then again, just trying to eat seasonally— radishes, very detoxifying— and a lot more green leafy vegetables are also fantastic to do this time of year. I'll touch on more of those in a minute. And remember, sour foods— lemons, limes, and grapefruit— these are high in vitamin C. They also aid in the production of glutathione. Apple cider vinegar. So remember, sour and bitter, sour and bitter this time of year. Apple cider vinegar, a tablespoon before meals. Fermented foods like sauerkraut is super powerful. Miso and kimchi and coconut yogurt is great. And then Granny Smith apples, they're green, they're sour as well. There are studies showing, or ancient philosophies as well, that, that apples, whether it be applesauce from Granny Smith apples or apple juice, actually softens gallstones. And helps people detoxify their gallbladder this time of year. And then again, the green leafy vegetables— dandelion greens are the best, along with mustard greens, but also kale and spinach are fantastic. These are high in chlorophyll. They help neutralize toxins in your blood and body, helping you detoxify those. And if there is a time of year to start juicing, it is the spring and summer. Now, I don't recommend a lot of high sugar juices except for a little bit of beets and carrots, but really this is a great time of year to do celery juice. Celery is very, very high in electrolytes and promotes hydration. Also bile production, has a little bit of that bitterness as well. So if you ever are going to do— harness the benefits of celery juice, the spring and early summer are the best time to do that. And I also mentioned these, uh, bitter foods, they also have benefits for glycemic control, for weight loss, and for helping reverse insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes. So this is a time of year also to purge and get rid of that weight that you might have put on during the holiday season and start to do a lot more bitter foods. Really focus on, if you want to cleanse this time of year, doing lighter meat products like wild fish is ideal this time of year, along with bone broth. So wild fish, bone broth, lean chicken like chicken breast, and then also doing a lot of vegetables. Okay, so think about lean meat, especially wild-caught fish, bone broth and lean chicken breast, and then loads and loads and loads of steamed vegetables. And then also things like beans, uh, you can do like hummus. Those sort of things are going to be very cleansing, healing. Lots of bitter, lots of sour is going to help you heal, detoxify, and cleanse in a powerful way this time of year. And now I want to jump into the most cleansing and healing herbs this time of season. And there was a quote on a hepatology forum, and here's what it said. It said, Lifestyle changes are the primary approaches for prevention and treatment of liver diseases. Since the ancient times, herbals have been used for the preventative and therapeutic purposes of detoxification, including killing cancer cells, reducing inflammation, and having an antioxidant-like effect on the body. And my first and favorite herb for detoxification is milk thistle. Milk thistle contains a powerful compound called silymarin, and it has actually in studies regenerated liver cells. So it not only helps cleanse the liver, it actually regenerates the liver itself so the liver can better do its job. Really, you know what's even better than an herb doing something for you is when a liver causes the organ itself to heal and function better so it can detoxify what's going on within your own body. So milk thistle is my favorite, single favorite herb for detoxification. My next favorite is probably dandelion. Dandelion is even more potent. I think milk thistle can be used year-round. Dandelion, you, um, you— it's a little bit stronger and direct in ways than milk thistle and less regenerative, but, but stronger more directly at flushing toxins. So it really is the ideal herb to do in spring when you really want to do a more serious detox. Schisandra berry, this is an adaptogenic herb used in Chinese medicine that supports both phase 1 and phase 2 liver detox and has tremendous benefits for longevity. If you want to add years to your life, look younger, feel younger, schisandra is powerful. Turmeric really is more cleansing of the blood but also can help cleanse the liver some. And then digestive bitters like gentian herb, burdock, artichoke, these stimulate the release of digestive enzymes and bile flow, which will naturally help your body cleanse things like heavy metals and parasites and other things, other toxins you've been exposed to. And then just some recipe ideas or some ideas here for spring: make a dandelion milk thistle tea or a liver cleanse tea. You can easily buy these online and just drink 3 bags total a day. Just put it in a big thing of water, drink it throughout the day. You can also do some cucumber and mint water, uh, or even strawberries in there that are organic. Okay, but do like a refreshing um, you know, beverage like that regularly to support kidney detoxification. Beetroot juice, add that to a smoothie, um, is great as well. And so these are some ideas just to enhance your, your spring detoxification. Again, 1 tablespoon of apple cider vinegar before meals. Just, just lemon or lime and water. One of the ancient Ayurvedic cleansing techniques was when you wake up in the morning, have a glass of warm water with a squeezed lemon or lime in it. Very detoxifying. This is a time of year where I typically don't like a lot of raw foods most of the year, but if you're going to consume salads, spring and early summer are when you— your body can most tolerate salads. Now, if you have inflammatory bowel disease or low body temperature, you just don't want to do salads. You just want to keep focusing on the steamed. But if you've got a fairly good digestive system and not low body temperature, autoimmune disease, then adding in some salads, especially arugula, beets, grapefruit, extra virgin olive oil. Um, those sort of things are going to be very cleansing and healing this time of year. Um, you can also do soups that are detoxifying. You can do smoothies. I like to do things like you could add in pineapple and spinach and cucumber and mint into smoothies, which are very cleansing as well. And also remember, hey, let's cut back on the alcohol, okay? Hey, 1 to 2 glasses a week of something that's a very clean dry farm wine, hey, you're probably going to do okay with that. But doing alcohol more than a day a week is going to tend to be just very toxic to your body. And also remember, when you're detoxifying, you want to increase your hydration. Drink more water. Take at least your half of— half your body weight in water and drink that daily out of a stainless steel or glass container. Now, one question I actually get around detox, around spring, as well as around coffee enemas— I do want to say, I do think for some people, especially if you have cancer, or it's the spring right now, doing coffee enemas can benefit your body. They aid in liver detoxification and your body releasing more bile. So I think doing it a few times— I don't think doing it constantly all the time is good for you. I think it will deplete your body too much. You can over-detoxify. But I think if you are going to do it, it's the best time of year to do. And also, this is probably the best time of year if you're going to do a fast, okay? Um, we know that biblically around Passover and around certain seasons, um, people fasted and people fast today. And so I think there's a combination of fast— and let me say this as well, I do think intermittent fasting or fasting even a day a week throughout this Lent season or up until mid-June, there are big benefits there. And you may do what the early church did, um, and they took either just Wednesday or Friday, maybe it's one day a week, and they would fast until dinner. Okay. And you take that time and you spend more time in prayer, more time connecting with God, more time reading your Bible, and you just take more time and just realizing, God, I rely on you, right? I want, I want more than this physical bread. I want your bread you sent in the form of Jesus, and I want that. Okay. It's the meal that heals. It's the Eucharist. It's communion, right? And so I think this is the time of year where fasting has tremendous benefits. I do want to mention there's a great study from this in, in the, uh, in a medical journal on aging. And, and they actually get into— and they basically say that autophagy is what happens when you fast, okay? And autophagy is when your body recycles, um, things within your body. So it allows for— when you recycle, uh, your, your body takes the things that are bad, gets rid of them, and keeps some of the parts, and then uses them to rebuild new and healthy cells. And so, and this has benefits for fighting neurodegenerative diseases, cancer, infections, inflammation. And so there are benefits of doing fasting this time of year more than others. The fall, you got to be real— fall and winter is when you need to be most careful with fasting. But the spring and early summer is when your body can tolerate it the most if you are planning on doing a fast. And again, I love the fasting where maybe you're just— maybe it's a 10-hour window, maybe you just eat breakfast a little later, like 8 AM, and you try and eat an early dinner, and then you just don't snack outside of that. And there are loads and loads of benefits there for fasting, um, or even doing up to, you know, an 8-hour fast or so. Or, and, or take, pick 1 to 2 days a week where you don't eat until dinner, and there are a lot of benefits of that for some people. And it's been done for, you know, by Christians and Jews for a long period, and other, other, uh, you know, spiritual practices as well. I also want to mention another, you know, exercise can be incredibly healing this time of year, especially walking in nature. You know, nature is healing. And so just, just hiking, you know, um, going out and hiking by yourself or with a friend where you're having deep conversations and you're just enjoying each other's company. And then every, every once in a while, if you're walking by yourself, just stop and just go, take a deep cleansing breath between once or 3 times.. And also spend some time in prayer and just gratefulness. Look around, look at nature and just say, God, thank you. Thank you for these trees. Thank you for your amazing creation. Just be inspired. Try and put yourself in a state of awe and wonder. It's cleansing, it's healing to entitlement and lack of gratitude and the heaviness of the world, just being in nature. And so when the things are budding, it's so healing this time of year to just walk in nature. Now, just walking outside your home, walking outside and just walking through your neighborhood or wherever you live, that's amazing as well. But if you can walk around trees in nature, even more healing and empowering. Starting to sweat a little bit more, getting an infrared sauna exercise, doing a little bit more cycling, swimming, jogging, those sort of things where you're sweating a bit is really great this time. If you're doing something like a, like, like a class that's warming, like a hot yoga or something, I I know different people have different thoughts on those spiritual practices, but hey, if you're a Christian, praise God when you're doing it, okay? But again, my point there is, is, um, you want to sweat a bit, okay? Now is a good time to really start sweating more. Getting a mini trampoline or rebounder promotes lymphatic movement and circulation, so that's fantastic. And then taking a bath at night in Epsom salts and baking soda. So Epsom salts are high in magnesium, which detoxifies your liver. Baking soda is cleansing from the acidity that can— we can be exposed to. And then certain essential oils as well can be really healing this time of year as well. And, um, and so do those things, do all those things we're talking about and cleanse your body. Um, all right, I want to talk now about cleansing your mind and then spiritually cleansing. And by the way, this is the most powerful form of cleansing. We talked about some really great ways to cleanse using herbs and foods. But what we know based on the Bible and what we know based on ancient forms of medicine like Chinese medicine, Ayurveda, Greek medicine, Middle Eastern medicine, all these forms of medicine, is, is that your mental and spiritual health impact your physical health as much as anything. I can tell you from taking care of tens of thousands of patients, and patients with really serious issues like cancer, inflammatory bowel disease, autoimmune disease, dementia, that when I think about a patient I have who has been diagnosed with cancer, oftentimes those people are coming out of a season, or if they've had major emotional trauma in their past, oftentimes from things like their parents, and it's still impacting them today. I can tell you, with a patient with inflammatory bowel disease, if they go and eat a pizza, uh, that has gluten and processed dairy and everything, it'll wreck their gut. But oftentimes they'll come in and see me and their guts are wrecked, and I'll say, what happened? And they didn't eat the pizza. You know what happened? They were having stress at work or stress in their marriage, or they were under a tight deadline. Something like that had happened. Okay. And so mental clutter— and it's not just the stress, it's clutter, mental clutter, accumulating too many things in your house. You know how stressful that is when you have too many boxes or things on your desk? And there's still many studies around this, that if you don't have a clean tidy space, it is a constant form of stress. Negativity of people you're spending time with. Do you have relationships? It could be a spouse, it could be a boss, it could be a coworker, but you have people in your life that are negative and pessimistic about everything. These build up. If you think about it like this, okay, you've had trauma from your past, okay, bad relationships with your parents that are bothering you today. Then you've got negative coworkers, then you've got clutter around your house, and then you've got deadlines at work, and then you're hurrying to run your kids to practice. You know how many different forms of mental stress that is that can contribute to anxiety, depression? Or sometimes people just try and, you know, get through it with just being positive, but they're still under stress that entire time. And did you know that there are studies show that these sort of issues are connected to morbidity, dying early, and even non-alcoholic fatty liver disease. You know, I've seen a lot of patients in my lifetime, they've come in with liver disease and they've never drank, or they don't drink, they're not drinkers. How could somebody get fatty liver disease when they eat a clean diet and they don't drink alcohol? It's because according to ancient medicine, and even modern science is proving this now today, that if you have a lot of negativity in your life, if you have unforgiveness, things have happened in the past and you've never addressed them, and you're a generally negative person, it makes your liver sick. Okay, anger, resentment, envy of others, unforgiveness, it all builds up toxic— it, it causes liver toxicity and makes you sick. So we need to detoxify from these things. And according to an article published in Psychology Today, actually it was a study that was originally done at at the University of Cincinnati. And here's what they said. They said, "Spring cleaning your living space, according to our research, improves mood, decreases stress, and heightens your creativity. Simply put, a clean room reduces distractions that get in your way of performance on a wide range of tasks." So Ethan, just having a more tidy space in home, doing spring cleaning, having a garage sale, or selling your things on Facebook Marketplace, but just getting rid of anything extra, having that more minimalistic approach is good for your psychology. Some other forms of mental cleansing I wanna mention, I love forest bathing. I mentioned walking in nature earlier, but there are studies in Japan that have found that if you, the more time you spend in nature, the more your cortisol drops. It promotes calmness, it refreshes the mind. Helps with lower blood pressure, it fights mental illness, helps improve your sleep. All those things happen just by spending time in nature, whether you're sitting in it or walking in it or playing in it. The more time you spend in a forest or in your backyard around trees, the more healthy you are. Walking barefoot outdoors, listening to birds, okay, just doing these sort of things are so healing. And the other thing is getting at least 15 to 20 minutes of sun a day, even if the sun isn't out, just outdoor light on your skin is very healing, healing, and helps regulate, we know, your circadian rhythms. So all these things are very healing for your body and encourage and, and have a number of benefits. So walking in nature. Now there is a study published in a medical journal and here's what it says. A 50-minute walk on a forest path results in positive positive effects on anxiety, perceived stress, and working memory. Aim for at least 30 minutes of exercise each day, even if that means taking walks outside in, in your neighborhood or doing that at home. So just spend more time outdoors. Even 30 minutes outside walking around your neighborhood is healing. But again, the best is if you can ever go hike in a forest or around numerous trees, is very healing and cleansing. And the other thing we mentioned earlier is mental decluttering. Um, look at your spaces, your bedroom and your living room, in your office, those areas where you spend the most. Block off 2 hours or a half a day and say, okay, I am going to go at this thing and I'm going to create a pile and get rid of everything I possibly can. Chelsea and I did this recently. There actually is a company and we could— we bought— it's not a garbage can, it was like a big— I don't know what it is, like a sack that was like 6 garbage cans. And we took all of our boxes, just a bunch of stuff, and we just threw it out there in this box and they came and picked it up. So we did that recently. We had our Goodwill pile. So we got, you know, all the clothes we went through, even for the girls and, and those sort of things. We put those in the pile. But we're doing this right now, going through this brain cleaning exercise. And when it's done, you feel the sense of just release, of cleansing and healing. You know, the very famous now Marie Kondo, she has a quote quote from her life-changing— her book, um, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up. And she says this: letting go is even more important than adding in. And it's so true. By the way, this is true in everything in life. Like, I— in running a business, what you don't do is just as important as what you do. Because what you don't— what, what you keep doing that you're not letting go is keeping you from doing things that are even better, right? It's this idea of the good is the enemy of the great. You might keep some things that you consider good, like these relics from your past or your parents or whatever it is. But if you're not going to use it in the next year, or it doesn't bring you a great sense of joy, you need to get rid of it. And you could bless someone else with these things frequently as well. If you're not using it and somebody else could be, there is a great benefit in being able to bless others and a great blessing to you by being able to give something as well. This is a great time of year as well to use natural scents and essential oils. Lavender, lemon, rosemary, eucalyptus, things that are purifying and cleansing to the air. You doing that and getting a home air— house air filter, just cleansing the air, or opening up your doors when you can and letting this clean, clean air come on through is great as well. Now I want to mention for cleaning out your mind, here's a really powerful exercise as well: journaling, writing things down. Here's a few things I would recommend that you write down if you want to heal your brain. Number 1, what are things that still bother you today that have happened in the past? Write that down. Write down the story of your life just a little bit, maybe even a few pages of, okay, where you grew up, what things have— what were the most impactful things in your life, both both negative and positive. Okay, so write down things that still bother you today, things that have happened in your past. It could be regret, shame, guilt. Somebody did something to you, you did something to someone else. Write those things down. Write down the story of your life, the biggest positives and big negatives that put you where you're at today. Write down people you need to forgive. Might even be yourself, might be God, likely others. Write down people you need to forgive. And those things you just haven't let go of. And then write down what are your goals for this year and beyond. What's your future vision? Like, what does the best vision look like? By the way, this is the time of year where you should be able to cast a vision for your life and then set goals in place based on that vision and make sure it's what you want. Because oftentimes you might say, I want to drive a Ferrari, or I want to have a second home. Okay, but what do you want your life to look like? Like, for myself, when I think about my life, like Chelsea and I right now, I get— this brings me so much joy and I'm so excited to talk about this. Chelsea and I right now, we bought 10 acres and we're building a homestead. And so we're going to have ducks and chickens and a couple mini cows. In fact, we have a farm. I didn't even know mini cows were a thing until a few years ago. And Chelsea's like, we need to get a mini cow. And I'm like, what are you talking about, a mini cow? And so you guys probably know this, there's like these little cows, and we're going to do those for milk. We're also going to do sheep. And then we were building a big greenhouse with a garden on this 10-acre property. We're actually about to get a dog. We need a Great Pyrenees dog mix. And, um, and so we are— so, so me even visualizing this and thinking about like me going out with Arwen in the morning. And by the way, this is the story I tell her. She said, Daddy, will you tell me a story tonight? So when I tell her stories, sometimes I tell her about the farm. I say, okay, Arwen. All right. Arwen and dad, you know, mom asked us to go out and, you know, get a bucket of milk and to get some eggs and to go pick some fruit. And so I walk her through us walking down a little stone path and we're going to the beehive and we're getting honey and we're getting— so, but me even like, it brings me so much joy and excitement. It's very cleansing and healing to me. Like when I think about, hey, maybe I'm in a stressful state right now. Well, hey, I'm so excited to go to this farm or, or that we're building this farm and we're moving towards this. But my point there is, is like, you know, Have that vision for your life. What are you excited about? Write down some goals. It's very healing, but write it down. By the way, that's the single biggest thing— write it down and reflect on those things. Here's another big thing is your habits. You become your habits, okay? And so write down what are those things that you're maybe addicted to and that you know are not serving you well in life. It could be an addiction like pornography. It could be a shopping addiction. It could be a sugar addiction. Um, it could be a gossip addiction or a TV show that's not serving you well. What is alcohol? Write down what are those things that you are spending— here's another big one that almost all of us are guilty of: scrolling. Okay. This dopamine addiction, fine, just you're on 3 hours a day on social media constantly and TV, just devices. So write down what your biggest addictions are, okay? And then write down habits that are going to replace those. Rather than scroll, I'm gonna, I'm gonna read my Bible, okay? Rather than on, uh, you know, Sundays doing this, we're going to start going to church. Rather than listening to this music that I know isn't healthy for me, I'm gonna listen to praise worship music. Okay, rather than eating this big thing of dessert, I'm gonna keep doing this ice cream, I'm gonna switch to dark chocolate. Okay, write down these— what your bad habits are, and write down the good habits you're going to start doing instead. And then here's the next thing: align those with your goals, have a vision for what that's going to look like, and then put it in your schedule. Okay, schedule that time. And I want to transition into the power of spiritual healing and spiritual cleansing. And before I do that, there is a, a medical journal. It's actually called the Journal of Religious Health. And here's what they say in terms of even how our spirituality impacts our mental health. It says numerous researchers report that people who have higher spirituality show better mental health and adapt more quickly to health problems compared to those who have lower spirituality. Groups who write spiritual diaries 5 to 7 times a week had significantly higher scores relating to spiritual growth and psychological well-being than other groups. So I think just having the awareness of God and the divine and knowing this life isn't purely flesh and blood, but it's spiritual, that alone even improves your health. A couple last things I wanna mention before we dive fully into spiritual cleansing is meditation. Now, meditation can be both spiritual or can even be a mental exercise. But there are studies showing that visualizing and clearing out the old energy and becoming with light and renewal is powerful. I actually did this technique with, with somebody where we talked about like, hey, imagine your life and like, what is some of the baggage there? Okay. What is some of that energy that's sort of taking up your life? Like he, like I was in a room and it was like, okay, you know, this and this. And for you it could be, well, I went through this divorce, or I hurt this person in my past, or this person hurt me, or, um, whatever it is. Okay, I did this thing that was wrong. Or— and you have those things that are just sitting there with you. You can visualize you're clearing their bags and you're just, you're putting them out, you know, you're just throwing them out. And maybe you're doing that with Jesus and he's helping you do that, right? I think there's real benefits there. I think there's also benefits breathwork. Okay, this is something that it can be very cleansing and healing for a lot of people, is just deep breathing techniques. And basically it's this, it's so simple, and it takes 2 minutes, but it's basically deciding, okay, I'm going to breathe in for 5, for 3 seconds, hold for 1 second, breathe out for 7 seconds, something like that. And just breathing fully in and out of your diaphragm, and that resets your nerve system that supports cleansing and healing. All right, so now let's discuss spiritual cleansing. And this is really an oftentimes in a way as well, a way to reconnect with your faith and your purpose. And I think about my life and, you know, I grew up with amazing parents. Um, and, uh, I went to a Christian school through 8th grade. Then I went to public school and public college. And, and, um, I've had times in my life where I think about where I was really deeply connected to my faith, especially when I was younger. And then early in high school, and then I had this time in college where I believe I kind of, I'll say kind of I fell away and stopped focusing on my faith in the Lord and really felt a great sense of emptiness and had kind of a spiritual renewal, rebirth when I was around 20, 21 years old and really focused deeply on God. And you know, all of us have times and seasons of sort of up and down in our connection to God, but this is a time of year where when you look at the church and you look at the Jewish faith, this is a time of really reconnecting with God and making sure you're really, um, really connected there. And, and so for, for myself, this is a good time again to let go of things of the past, to reconnect to God, and, and also remembering spiritual— it's not just about spirituality, it's about relationship. It's having a deep relationship with our our Creator in doing that is so fulfilling. It's so empowering. It's not just being aware that there's spiritual forces out there, because, because there are, that could be used for positive or negative. It's realizing that there's a God that loves you and cares for you and pursues you and does everything he can to give you the best life possible. We, we just have to reciprocate, um, that love in return. And so having that awareness I think it also helps us overcome spiritual stagnation. That's what I'll say. I think that when I look around for, for there, there's a lot of people that are Christians where maybe their faith is just stagnant. Okay. They have a general belief in God, but I think they might believe him to be sort of a grumpy old man far away. That's maybe condemning. And so who wants to hang out with a dad like that? Or who wants to be connected with a person like that? Nobody. Um, and so for, for me, I think one of the most important things you can do to start to cleanse yourself spiritually is reorient and redefine the truth about who God is. Because if you don't know who God truly is, um, you're not getting to the root of the issues. This show is all about getting to the root of the problem. You can do spiritual cleansing, you can memorize Bible verses, do those things. Those things can be good. But they're, but they're not getting to the source. And that is understanding who Jesus is and who God is, that they're one and the same, and that that person loves you more than anyone else. And that everything you see around from the stars in the sky, when you sit there and look at the stars, one thing that should come to your mind is God did that for you. He created this world for you. And so for somebody to create this world for you, that helped you, maybe send you your spouse. That gave you a physical body where you can breathe in air and you can exercise and you can enjoy the taste of chocolate and coffee, right? Like, so I think the more that you can study about who God really is, and so, and it's sort of these limiting beliefs around saying, okay, this is who I think God is, whether I say it out loud or not, this is actually who I think my spirit thinks he is, and this is who I know he is, and reframing your idea about knowing him who God is, is one of the most spiritually cleansing and empowering things you could ever do. Okay? So, so that's the first and foremost thing I would say. If you really want to do, follow spiritual cleansing and renewal and healing, uh, there's a quote by A.W. Tozer and he said something to this degree. The most important thing about you is what you believe about God or about who God is. Okay? And so what you believe about God is the most important thing about you. It's a big— it's the thing that impacts you the most. You know, I just read a great book recently and it's called God Has a Name by John Mark Comer. That's a great book to read. There are a lot of other good books, um, I think related to who God is, you know, um, The Jesus I Never Knew by Philip Yancey. That's a great book. So, so there are some really great books you could go out there and read and help you cleanse and heal spiritually, um, in that way. And so I would consider, uh, consider doing that here as well. I also want to mention here, spiritual cleansing, this idea of both Easter and Passover, the symbolism and the reality of what happened. You know, these traditions based on the historic, historic events are rooted in renewal and moving into a new season of hope and purpose. Think about this, what the resurrection represents. It's rebirth. It's a time of embracing new beginnings and letting go of past burdens. Think about the idea of what Christ did. Christ died for us. His blood was shed that we could be born again, that we could have eternal life. It's a, you know, um, that Jesus is having a conversation with, uh, I believe it was Nicodemus or one of the Pharisees, uh, one of the spiritual leaders at the time. And he said, you know, you need to be born again, you know? And so that, it's this idea that's very much in line with this. And it's only like a seed that falls from the tree and that dies, then can create a new tree, right? So it's this idea of rebirth. Passover, very similar, a celebration of freedom and liberation from oppression. It's the symbolic breaking free of things that enslave you. So both celebrating this Easter, the passion of the Christ, the resurrection, celebrating that, celebrating the Passover in these ways are very Healing and empowering. This is happening this time of year. In addition, I want to talk about a few other things that are so important to cleanse spiritually, along with, again, the primary of knowing who God is and celebrating and reflecting on Christ dying in his resurrection. And that same thing, the Egyptians, uh, and, and the Israelites being set free, meditating on those truths and what happened. In addition, let go of those addictions like we we talked about earlier. What are the things holding you back? What are the destructive habits? Also the destructive relationships. We become who we surround ourself with. Write down the 5 people you're spending the most time with. How toxic or good for they are on a 1 to 10 scale. Are they redeeming, empowering, encouraging, or are they toxic to you? Spend more time around those empowering people. Get rid of the toxic people in your life. Now obviously if it's a spouse, then, Pick 4 other people, okay? And do your best to just love them and love them and love them and rub off of them in that way. Create those new nourishing habits like prayer, meditation, service to others. One of the best times to do this is in the morning. I do a spiritual triathlon. I say everything I'm grateful for, and I praise God. I pray and I read my Bible, okay? Doing that is so, so powerful. And then here's another big one. Forgiveness of all of the emotional feelings or states that we can be in that are toxic to the liver. Unforgiveness and resentment towards others are the worst. They're the absolute worst and most damaging for the liver, gallbladder, for your entire detoxification system. You know, there's a saying, and it's Unforgiveness is like drinking your own poison. You're wanting to hurt somebody else, yet you're hurting yourself. And what I've had to do in my life— and I'll share with you, I had this happen recently— I, um, when I had my spine infection, I didn't walk for a year. So this was about 2, 2 years, 2 and a half years ago. I had a practitioner, a doctor who did that procedure on me and caused my infection. And I had to forgive him. I had to forgive myself, by the way, because I blame myself. I said I should have knew better, I should have waited, I shouldn't have— all of these things. Um, sometimes you have to forgive God. Sometimes maybe there's other people involved. But my point is, is that unforgiveness is like drinking poison, okay? You think you're giving someone else the cold shoulder or whatever, you're hurting them, you're really hurting yourself. And the Bible is very clear about this, and so is medicine. Unforgiveness is killing yourself, okay? It's damaging yourself. So write down who you need to forgive, no matter what they did, no matter how horrific it is. Forgive them. I remember reading a book when I was going through what I was going through, and it was The Hiding Place, and also reading some, some more information about Corrie ten Boom. And Corrie ten Boom in a concentration camp, lost her father and her sister and her best friends, all the people she loved most in this world. And later on, I think I remember reading that there was a prison guard at the place where she was, and she had the opportunity to forgive that person. Isn't that crazy? The person that essentially was part of killing her family, she was able to forgive them. And so think about that for yourself, is like, no matter what's happened, being able to forgive that person move on, whether that's reaching out to them and letting them know, hey, I was hurt in this instance, but I wanna let you know I don't have any hard feelings. And it works both ways. Maybe you have been hurt by somebody and you need to forgive them, and maybe you've hurt somebody and you need to go and ask forgiveness from them. I'm really big on this. You know, I have hurt people in my life and I have been hurt by people, and I try and be the person in both instances to go and create reconciliation because that's the only way to heal. Just simply sweeping it under the rug. The problem just gets worse. And by the way, I mean, you know, ancient medicine shows this, that if you just— if you have feelings of resentment or disgust or unforgiveness or whatever it is towards somebody else and you just let it go the entire time, it's making you sick. This happens so often with our parents. So often, if you had a parent who showed favoritism or was negative to you or said negative things, again, going and having that conversation with them and whether they reciprocate or not, just letting them know, hey, you may not think you need it, but I forgive you. And I wanna let you know that I was hurt by that. But I know that, you know, and you, and you can also let them know, I know that wasn't your intent, but you know, and, and, and, and there's something so cleansing and healing about being able to go and address those things that still bother you today. And so if you can do that, it is incredibly healing. And I would even imagine like once you write down those people you need to forgive and you forgive them, Just imagine what's happening. Your liver, your gallbladder, your lymphatic system— you have like this brown and black sludge in them and they're letting go. Have you ever seen a toxic liver, the picture of it? It's brown. It's like this brown. It is like, uh, it's like rotten versus it's this bright, vibrant, like red, like wine. It's like this reddish maroon color when it's healthy. And so, you know, imagine it going to this bright, like a heart beating, like this bright, vibrant red, uh, from this brown, disgusting color of basically rotting. If you are harboring unforgiveness, once you let it go, it's very healing to even visualize what you're doing in that moment. There's a meta-analysis, which is a study done on multiple, uh, studies, and they did this on forgiveness interventions. Here's what they found in the study. This is on 15 controlled medical studies on forgiveness. Here are their findings. Forgiveness had a tremendous improvement for depression, for anger, for hostility, for boosting mood and relieving stress. I would write those things down as well and then do something cleansing. Again, the visualization, sometimes washing your hands in water and then washing them off like you just went through something or going down to a brook or river and washing your hands in that way. And of course we know baptism does this, right? Baptism in the Christian faith is this idea of a rebirth and cleansing. And if you're a person who needs that rebirth and cleansing, I'd encourage you, go get baptized. Maybe you've never been, or maybe you wanna do it symbolically a second time. Maybe you just feel like you need that in your life. That's a powerful thing to do this type of year as well. And the last thing I wanna talk about here is spiritual fasting. Again, there are so many things we're addicted to today. So many things, especially devices, our computers, our cell phones, our pads, our, uh, online shopping, online gambling, sports, all of these things that are taking up so much of our time. And I think all those things are fine in small amounts, but I would write down what those addictions are and then write down what you're gonna replace them with. And again, the more time you can spend in prayer, in meditation, in gratitude, in a Bible study, in a growth group, going to church, something like that that is cleansing, or, or per self, personal growth, self-development exercise. But writing those things down that are going to allow you to become a radically improved person one year from now, write down what those things are. And I would encourage you really consider a digital detox. Okay? Look at how many hours you're spending a day on your digital devices. Your phone will tell you that. And cut it way down. Or just say, hey, for this month or for this Lent season, I'm going to completely cut out, you know, this, this social media platform or this amount of Netflix, or I'm only going to do 1 hour total of each a day. I'd encourage you to do that because it's so powerful to do this time of year as well. Well, so in this episode, I hope you enjoyed it. I really love talking about healing in body, mind, and spirit because I know in taking care of so many patients and even knowing myself how healing it can be to focus not only just on physical healing, but mental and spiritual healing as well. And I would encourage you to, again, write things down. Write down what are some of those foods you need to eat? What are some of those foods you need to remove? And so much about this is if just, you just think about this, what do I need to get rid of? What do I need to then replace it with? Okay, what do I need to get rid of in my diet? What do I need to add into my diet? What do I need to get rid of in terms of tox hold poisons or these sort of things? And what do I need to add in? What do I need to get rid of to help my mental health? Maybe, maybe clutter especially. And what do I need to add in its place? And what do I need to get rid of spiritually? Maybe it's unforgiveness, maybe resentment, maybe incorrect thoughts about God. And what do I need to replace that with? Um, prayer and meditation, those sort of things. And if you can do that, your body is gonna go through a powerful, not only cleansing process, but transformation process where you'll literally become a new person. Well, hey, I wanna let you know that this episode was sponsored by Truly Free. They make powerful, non-toxic cleaning supplies that are family friendly. And I wanted to bring on the CEO and founder of Truly Free, because he has an amazing story and so much insight to share with us about chemicals and our household cleaners and the impact they have on our health. And again, remember, we want to get rid of these toxic cleaning supplies and do something all natural. And probably the best brand out there is Truly Free. Hey, if you want to learn more, you got to listen to this interview with the CEO I did just now with Truly Free. Take a listen to this interview. All right everyone, so I'm here with Stephen Ezell. He is the founder and CEO of Truly Free Home and Truly Free, some of the world's most powerful plant-based, non-toxic cleaning and laundry solutions. And he created Truly Free Home in 2015 to make family-safe, all-natural cleaning and laundry products more accessible. And the reality is, we just covered, there are toxins all over our home. And so this is an incredible mission So, so excited to introduce and welcome Stephen to the show.

Stephen, welcome. Excited, man. Looking forward to the conversation.

Well, you know, I just spent some time going through all these toxins in our home. I mean, they're absolutely everywhere. And I don't think a lot of people realize, actually, I'll tell you a quick story. I didn't tell this during the episode. I did some blood work back, this is probably 15 years ago or so. And I had, actually, now it was actually more like 20 years ago. This was when I was in medical school training before I opened my practice. And I ended up on my blood work having these levels of ammonia and things really, really high. And I couldn't figure out why these toxins were so high. And I realized I had gone, I mean, I had a water filter, almost everything I was using was nontoxic. My roommate at the time and I were using conventional dishwashing detergent.

Sure, sure.

And literally what was coming out of the dishwasher was, I looked up on this blood work, where could I be exposed to this? Well, I was always in the kitchen food while the dishwasher was going. So just that little exposure, that one exposure, was causing toxicity of my liver, my organs, my cells, my whole body. So most people don't realize that they have chemicals all over the place. Let me ask you, when you created this company, was there anything in particular that you knew that was really maybe the most devastating people— that people think that people were using on a regular basis causing toxicity?

Laundry detergent.

Really?

Yeah. See, the conventional laundry detergent stuff, the blue goo, the green goo you get at the store, is chemically engineered to leave a film on fabrics for two main reasons. The reason why they're blue or green is because they leave this blue hue or green hue on the fabric. So under ultraviolet light, you know, artificial lighting, it tricks the eyes into believing that your clothes are brighter than they really are. And the second reason is to carry fragrance. Because fragrance is naturally soluble. But when they carry it with all these thick viscosity, you know, suds makers and so forth, those chemicals leave that film. And those UV brighteners and those perfumes, they could be hundreds or thousands of different ingredients, and we don't know what the effect is in the human genome. So when we— the largest organ of our body is our skin, and our children and ourselves If you're, if you're going to the store buying this blue goo, you're literally like bathing in it all day long. So as you perspire, as you're living your life, under your armpits, behind your kneecaps, the place where we should be detoxifying, we're making micro bubbles, micro suds. The same way, you know, you run out of dish soap at home and you add water to just kind of get through and it keeps sudsing up. Well, those suds carry on the fabrics, they carry and we rehydrate them and they get absorbed into our bloodstream. So laundry is the most toxic place in the house. The laundry room is so incredibly toxic. Now if you look at like oven cleaners and things like that that are extremely caustic, really toxic, right? So from an acute perspective, those chemicals are dangerous, but not many people are spraying themselves with oven cleaner. But you know, humans, we're wearing laundry chemicals, we're sleeping on them. You get out of the shower, your pores are open, hot shower and all you're rehydrating these chemicals and you're rubbing them into your body. So we have such incredible exposure to laundry chemicals, number one. The second place, like you're talking about, is the dishwasher. One, because the laundry machine, right, it goes down, it goes down the drain, and you have these residuals that are sitting on fabrics. But in the, the dishwasher, it's actually exhausting through the front of the wash— of the dishwasher. So we're inhaling these chemicals, and a lot of the conventional dishwasher chemicals are designed to leave film so that they're nice, squeaky clean. But there's actually chemical on there, there's residue designed to be on there so that they are squeaky clean, but they're not left— there's stuff left behind.

Yeah.

So we learned all this stuff. I said, we got to do something about it, right? So I'm an entrepreneur. I said, we have to, we have to change this. So that's what we set a mission off to do. And, you know, now Truly Free is one of the largest non-toxic chemical manufacturers in the country. But it started off with a dream because, like, either this is going to be done with legislation or Or it's gonna be done through entrepreneurism.

Yeah, well, I love it. Just to hit on what you shared there for everybody to walk away with is, if you're gonna replace two things in your house, you wanna replace your laundry detergent and your dishwashing detergent. I mean, think about it, you're eating off these plates too. I mean, you're putting it in your mouth, your kids, all of these things, and these chemicals remain on there. And I've actually seen this big trend recently, and actually I started doing this years ago, where when I buy new clothing now, for the most part, I try and buy wool, organic cotton, bamboo, and that's pretty much why I try and—

linen, add linen to the—

yeah, yeah, what I try and wear right now. But, um, but you know, what you're sharing is even more important than that because again, just the amount of chemicals and the things you're sharing are—

take apart like the, you know, the, the plastics that are in synthetic clothing. All— most all synthetic clothing, especially if it's made overseas, is sprayed with flame-retardant chemicals, and you can't wash them out. Yeah, right. They are forever chemicals that are baked into the clothing. So yes, like, switching your clothing to non-toxic, like, sustainable fibers is super important. And we have to make sure we're not dousing them with all these crazy chemicals, right, that are hormone disruptors, endocrine disruptors. They're just really dangerous things, and there's zero regulation.

Zero. Yeah, I mean, the biggest way we're being exposed to these things is what we're putting on our skin. You mentioned our largest organ, what we're breathing in. You know, another thing that I know that I've heard you discuss are a lot of these, uh, you know, um, what are those called? You know, the, the, you know, the plugins that, you know, the perfumes, those sort of things that people have in their house. And I remember, you know, walking in places like Bed Bath Beyond or, you know, the, these candle companies.

Oh yeah.

And I mean, if I walk past one of those in the mall, I literally feel sick.

People, you go into the mall, there's the perfume aisle, the candle shop, the body shop. I gotta be careful what names we mention here, right? And people immediately get headaches. Like, people get sick. Why is that? Well, it's because the fastest way to pass the blood-brain barrier is through the nose, right? And people, we get triggered, right? So we're, people are, we're breathing in these chemicals They're triggering a response. Years ago, we did a study, and I took a dirty rag. I went to the— to Bed Bath Beyond, was still around. I bought two perfectly new Egyptian cotton towels. I took one out and I wiped it on my truck on the way out in the parking lot. I took the dirty rag and I sprayed it with the leading laundry detergent fabric softener. I went to the mall and I said, please pick A or B, which one's cleaner? 70% of people, hundreds that I talked to over two days, picked a dirty rag. Almost everybody picks up the fabric, and when they're examining what's clean, they smell it. And literally, that olfactory sense of smell usurps the, the cognitive mind of, this is literally dirty, but it's cleaner because it smells cleaner. So this is a psychological— this is psychological warfare. People will choose a dirty rag just because it smells better. It's, it's really wild.

Yeah. Wow. You know, one of the things I know that my wife is very conscious of is her skincare routine. Sure. You know, so she— and she's very committed to buying, you know, organic, completely natural makeup, skincare, all those things. But, but a lot of women aren't necessarily that fully conscious of that or maybe don't realize how damaging that can be to their body. How many chemicals on a regular basis are women exposing themselves to when they— well, the skincare and everything else?

Cleveland Clinic, Mayo, all the major hospitals done the study now. I mean, Mayo found years ago that the average umbilical cord of a healthy baby born— okay, so this is a healthy baby, full-term— that the average child has 400 household chemicals in its umbilical cord blood. We're talking about a perfect, created, God-made being that has not smoked a cigarette, hasn't washed a dish, hasn't put on sunscreen, nothing. That is a perfect child in vitro and is born with over 400 household chemicals in its cord blood. How to get there, right? It's through environmental exposure, right? Whether people were eating these chemicals, we're wearing these chemicals, we're breathing these chemicals, it's non-stop. There we are under— but we have been since the '30s and in biochemical warfare, right? And again, this space like this, especially household cleaners, there's no— there's very, very little regulation. We have shipped tens of millions of products to families all over the world Nobody's ever knocked on my door to verify what's on a label is true. Like, I mean, we, we, we go— we're the— I believe we're the most— one of the most transparent companies in our space, like trend-setting transparency, yet nobody ever verifies. Now, in the food industry is a little different, right? You have USDA. If there's a food manufacturing plant, you know, there's, there's agents there to verifying is what's on the label is true, like slaughterhouses, etc. There's some oversight. There's no oversight in this industry. And there's dozens of loopholes in the USPTO, United States Patent Trademark Office, where you can group lots of chemicals together, list it as fragrance, and don't even have to disclose to the end consumer what are you putting on them.

Wow.

Now you could take one ingredient, right? So like in the EU, there's almost 12,000 chemicals that are banned for import, export, or manufacturing. In the US, there's 12.

Yeah, yeah. I remember I almost started a skincare company with Jordan Rubin once. We were going to do like a food-based skincare and use honey and a number of things, essential oils in there. And I remember looking at the standards of the EU, the European Union, versus the United States, and it was not even comparable. Not even comparable. I mean, you know, we, you know, over this past year, I've been really involved in the Make America Healthy Again movement and doing things with getting, you know, food dyes banned and BHT and all these other things. And I think those things are important, but I think what's equally important is doing what you're doing and also looking at, there are just so many things that need to be banned. And we're talking about hundreds of chemicals, if not thousands of chemicals that need to be banned right now. And so hopefully RFK Jr. and his team can get to this sector as well. We're pulling for him.

Yep, we're pulling. Again, I think, living a very greensteading, homesteading life, I feel like the the closest gator to the boat is always what you put in you, right? So like food, nutrition, supplementation, etc. Like, like that is definitely where the focus should be. And I think right behind is what do you put on you. Yeah. And skincare, lotions and potions and all these creams and cosmetics, I think is the low-hanging fruit. And many people are talking about that, but not many people are talking about the household chemical industry, right? Cleaning. Because you are putting those things on you and nobody's talking about it.

Yeah, I remember reading a study a few years ago that talked about how much more toxic our indoor air is than our outdoor. I mean, there, there are times when people are saying, you know, and this of course happens very a lot in California, LA, some of those areas. But I remember even in Nashville here, a couple summers ago, we had a, you know, a, a, uh, outdoor air, um, stay in your homes, you know, signs when you're driving on the interstate, those sort of things. I remember thinking to myself, okay, you are on this sign, you're saying it's 2 to 3 times more toxic than normal outside. But our indoor air is always much worse than that. So for most people, even if it's toxic outside, they're probably still better being outside.

Household textiles, like when, when somebody— and we just built our dream house, we built the most non-toxic, truly free house, I mean biohacked house you can imagine, right? And even down to like, what are the ingredients in paint? What are the ingredients in carpeting? What are the ingredients on drapery? What are these forever chemicals that are sitting on everyday textiles? That are completely like out of sight, out of mind. But we're breathing these things in, you know. We buy these beds and you, you know, unzipper the bed and it just like grows, right? Like, what chemicals are in these beds, in these pillows? We're having our children put our heads on these pillows. We don't even know, and we can't know. There's no obligation under— for any of these companies to disclose what chemicals they're putting in these products?

Zero.

Yeah, it's completely the fox's garden henhouse.

Well, I know you've studied and researched this for so many years and helped so many people by, you know, your amazing products here at Truly Free. So we mentioned— I want to give people the other big one. So if somebody is saying to themselves in a ranking order, okay, number one thing I know I need to switch out in my house is my laundry detergent. Myself, my kids, my family, we're putting this on our body, we're smelling it.

It.

It's literally covering us. That's number 1. Number 2, dishwashing detergent. We're eating off of this. We're putting the forks and spoons in our mouth. So that's number 2. What would be number 3, 4, and 5 if we have our top 5 list on things?

Air quality, for sure. Unequivocally, air quality, right? So people put these plugins and these different, you know, candles and so forth. What happens to the respiratory system when we have all of these fragrance and perfumes we literally have no idea. Now, you can take one ingredient that, you know, in its raw state may smell like toxic sewage, 'cause it is. But when it's like, you know, diluted in parts per million and, you know, mixed with almond oil, it may smell like, you know, toasted hazelnuts. And people want this hazelnut fragrance, but you don't know like the source ingredient. And we don't know, we can't know, 'cause it's all wrapped up into trademark law. So you gotta get rid of these crazy candles and all the scents absolutely, positively have to get rid of these things. But then there's all these other ancillary products.

Like, no, what do you do instead? If somebody's saying, you know what, like, I want to have a nice fragrance in my house though, what would you recommend?

So there's a couple things that we do at home, right, depending on the time of year. So if you take a couple cinnamon sticks, some— and an apple, and literally just throw it in the oven on 200 and slow roast an apple with some cinnamon, now you actually have food so you can actually eat it later. But for like 6 hours the entire house smells like a toasted apple pie. That's literally safe, right? So, you know, we have, you know, we live in the north, you know, so during this time here, you know, the wood stove and the fireplace is going. So like essential oils, right? So you've got, you know, different things like that. So there's ways to bring like pleasant smells in the house without having to add all these synthetic ingredients. So that's like, you know, some really interesting— you could do that with oranges, you do the citrus, you do a lot of different things. On the stove, you know, boil, you know, boil some oranges. Yeah. Oh my gosh, like the whole house smells like an orange grove and it's safe, right? And then we'll literally take that water because now that— and then we'll like literally feed that to our chickens. So now the chickens are getting all these really awesome polyphenols from— so like, so nothing goes to waste, right? I think, but like the whole like permaculture movement is not just in food, it should be in our life too. Yeah. So, um, so we do lots of different things like that. We have a lot of content and kind of hacks at home on our blog as well.

That's so great. What would number 4 be in terms of things that people need to switch out?

It's the ancillary products. So like laundry detergent is one thing, but laundry is a big category because people think about stain treating, you know, you think about like getting rid of static, clean, you know. There's a reason why there's all these, you know, viral videos of like repelling mice with the— with dryer sheets. Yeah, mice aren't stupid, right? They're not dumb. The reason why it's a great mosquito and mice repellent is because they don't want to die. So you have little, like, living organisms that will, like, flee in the face of a dryer sheet. Wow. But yet we put them all over our clothes. So, like, dryer sheets, wicked toxic stuff, right? So that's one thing you definitely don't want, right? There's other ways to reduce static. We have a really cool product that we actually free slaves. We have— it's called our Dryer Angel. We, we We liberate women out of slavery and they get sustainable jobs making Dryer Angels for us. Wow. Right, so it's a really, really cool product. So I would say dryer sheets. So we've got air, all those ancillary products. Next thing in the house for sure is lighting, right? People get really wrapped up around LED lights. I know it's not, we don't sell lights, but you know, I'm really excited, RFK, we just, like, we're now allowing incandescent lighting to be back in the United States again. The, the lengths that we just went through to get lights, like incandescent lights, in our new house was insane, right? And all my— all the builders, like, I was crazy because I didn't want LED lights in our house. So we should really limit LED exposure in our house because it really messes with circadian rhythms, sleep, and a whole bunch of things. So, um, those are my top 5. Wow.

Well, those are big. And I think one of the things that I love is that this doesn't have to be that difficult. They're just simple, simple things you can go and switch out. Again, top 2: laundry detergent, dishwasher detergent. And where can people go to find out more? Or I know one of the things you offered, which was so kind of you, is a discount where people can go and get some of your products. Where can they go to do that?

Well, you can obviously click the link in the, in the description of the show here. Um, but trulyfreehome.com is their, you know, epicenter for all of our cleaning products. And we've just launched trulyfree.com. Which is a decentralized social commerce platform where great brands like Truly Free Home and others can build a relationship with customers. And we put more money in the wallets of everyday people than any other place in the history of the web.

All right guys. And Steven was nice enough to offer everybody just a massive diff— discount. Uh, the discount is this: 100 loads of laundry or the equivalent of 30% off your first order. All you have to do is go to the show notes. You can click the link in the show notes. And get this massive discount, or go to trulyfreehome.com/axe. It's A-X-E. Put in the discount code AXE, A-X-E, and get 30% off or 100 free loads of laundry here. And remember, do not miss out on the laundry detergent. We talked about the dryer sheets. We also talked about your dishwashing detergent. If you want to get the cleanest, most non-toxic, healthy home products for healing your home, keeping your family safe, all natural cleaning and laundry products, make sure to check out Truly Free Products. And again, you can get that massive discount, 30% off or 100 loads of laundry by going to trulyfreehome.com/axe or just click the link in the show notes. And when you get the page, put in the code Axe for 30% off your first purchase. Stephen, thanks so much for coming on, man. It was great.

Yeah, man.

Excited. And I love what you're doing. Again, I think it's such a need today. And I think about like, I've got two daughters at home. I've got a 1-year-old, I've got a 4-year-old. When they put on clothes, I don't want them to be covered in chemicals. Like, I want them to be completely non-toxic, as healthy as possible. And we use your products, we love your products. And so knowing that my two little girls are safe, my wife, my family, our dog, you know, I got a dog running around our house licking everything. In fact, I just recorded a parasites episode too, and, um, I talked about how my And anyways, one way that kids get parasites is their dog licking their feet. No doubt. Anyways, a whole nother— that's a whole nother discussion. But anyways, I want her to be totally chemically free, though, all the girls, my whole family, and my patients. And so, man, so, so grateful for you coming on today. And the other thing I love about what you do is that when people buy your products, they're doing things like setting women free from sex trafficking and helping people, just amazing mission there. Appreciate that, you know, that as well.

So thank you so much. Amen. Appreciate it, man.

Yeah, again, Stephen, thanks for coming on. Well guys, want to say thanks so much for listening here to the Dr. Josh Axe Show. That was Stephen Ezell. He's the CEO and founder of Truly Free Home, and amazing, amazing non-toxic cleaning products. And remember, listen, this spring is the time to clean your home, clean out your mind, clean out your life, clean up your diet, and live your best life. I can't wait See to you on the next episode.