Non-Toxic and Healthy Living Should Not Be This Complicated

A rejoinder to every health podcaster and influencer who wants to sell you supplements and "bio-based" workout clothing.

Last year when I visited San Francisco, my friend generously invited me to crash at her beautiful home. I walked into the front door of her hillside house, pulling my rolling suitcase behind me, and right into a scene.

A group of people were lounging around the dining room table that overlooked the Bay. They were recovering from a party the night before, and within seconds asked me if I wanted a Vitamin B shot. I recoiled.

“Like a needle shot? Ah, no thanks,” I said. Usually I can pull off a quick, witty quip. But this time I was so surprised that I found myself at a loss. Is this what people are doing now? Injecting themselves after parties?

A half hour later, seated at the table, I found myself rebuffing a woman who was pitching me on the value of getting a full panel of tests run to find out my “numbers.” Blood tests, urine tests, bone density tests, tests to find out my hormone levels, and more.

This woman was an investor in at least one women’s health startup, and because I write about the topic of toxic chemicals in fashion, she thought I would be aligned with her worldview. She wouldn’t take a, “That doesn’t interest me,” for an answer.

“Don’t you want to know where you stand so you can manage your health better?” I remember her saying. “You can find out exactly what needs to be improved and then get a nutrition and supplement plan.”

Setting aside the fact that I can’t afford a $5,000, 6-hour battery of tests just for funsies, I didn’t think it would actually improve my physical health — or my mental health.

“I’m not tired, or in pain, or depressed,” I told her. “If I were, I might consider it. But, I’m good right now.” I knocked on the table, cognisant that this could and probably will change at any point. “It doesn’t seem like a good idea to get all these tests. What if I get a ‘bad’ number? Am I supposed to spend a lot of money to fix it even though it’s not impacting my quality of life?”

At the root of this rather tense debate (sales pitch?) were two women with completely misaligned philosophies on healthy living. I just don’t like this strategy of over-anxious, expensive, fussy health management. It’s the kind of healthy living that requires apps, tests, appointment, supplements, regimes, diets, bizarre foods, and monitoring. It requires a knowledge of dozens of cryptic acronyms denoting molecules and health factors, and more active management than a hedge fund bro on Adderall.

But in all my conversations with researchers, my spelunking through the latest science, my readings, my vulnerable conversations with my healthy, sick, and recovering friends, and my personal health journey, the most effective strategy that has emerged to detoxify and improve one’s health seems to be to simplify.

To de-tox, one must de-accumulate, pare down, clear the mind, the shelf, and the schedule. To detox, you don’t have to complicate your life and empty your bank account. You can just… let go.

Follow the Money

There’s not much many to be made in advising people to not buy stuff.

Unless you’re Michael Pollan, bless him, it’s nigh impossible to monetize the advice to eat the kind of whole foods you can get in your local grocery store. How does one profit off of rolling your eyes at supplements? How do you make a living telling people that they are doing fine and don’t need to nutrient-maxx or track all their numbers via some device and its proprietary app?

So instead, what we get are podcasts that host a series of longevity and anti-aging experts (who’ve clearly been hitting the filler and botox), with ads in between for buccal troches (wtf) that promise to help alleviate brain fog, calm your mind, and boost productivity.

Once, at one of my book readings, I had to shut down a man who stood up in the Q&A to brag about his health institute that would detox patients from PFAS using electromagnetic therapy. Not today, sir. Another time a perfectly well-meaning woman asked me about foot soaks to draw microplastics out of the body. That was new to me. If that was a thing, I would have expected to see at least one headline saying, SCIENTISTS DISCOVER A METHOD OF PULLING MICROPLASTICS OUT OF THE BODY. In fact, scientists are still at the phase of just identifying where microplastics are in the body. (Inside your brain, lungs, and blood, in case you’re wondering.) I wondered which influencer was pitching that one.

I recently attended a panel that included Dr. Carmen Marsit, a scientist from Project TENDR, an organization that advocates for protecting children from toxic chemicals that can harm brain development. He was asked by an attendee if there is any research on regimes that eliminate microplastics from your body.

“No,” he said. (I’m paraphrasing here.) There is no way to detox your body from microplastics, and anyone who tries to sell you a detox treatment or diet for plasticizer chemicals is lying to you. Some of these chemicals like BPA and phthalates will naturally leave your body via urine. But you don’t need special supplements for that.

The best way to get microplastics, nanoplastics, and endocrine disruptors out of your body is to not ingest them in the first place. That’s pretty near impossible, given the ubiquity of plastic. But it’s not complicated to understand, and you can reduce your exposure somewhat by knowing that plastic = bad. Natural materials, by and large: good.

Eat Real Foods, Not Too Much, Mostly Plants

I went down the 2010s version of this wellness path: the clean eating wave.

When I graduated from college, I had severely disordered eating, experienced frequent acid reflux that felt like a heart attack, and had 20 extra pounds on my 5’2” frame. (And when I say ‘extra,’ I mean that I had 20 more pounds than when I graduated from high school, and 20 more pounds than I have now. Don’t come at me.)

Searching for a way to fix my body, mind, and the binge-purge cycle I was in, I went down two parallel tracks.

One was reading well-researched books by journalists that illuminated the gargantuan marketing apparatus behind processed foods, while attending yoga at a small studio and meditating in order to get acquainted with my body and mind. They advocated for eating whole, unprocessed food that comes from nearby farms. Simple.

The other track was paying for juice cleanses and e-book diet regimens, tearing complicated recipes involving almond flour and avocado out of health magazines, and buying clean-eating cookbooks written by lithe, blonde influencers.

I bought bottles of supplements that I couldn’t ever bring myself to finish. I spent a lot of money on expensive, exotic, superfood ingredients that I could only find at health food stores a 25-minute subway ride away. And then I spent a lot of time trying and failing to figure out how to use these ingredients before they went rancid in my pantry. I rolled raw vegetables up into sad lettuce wraps, and then found myself spooning almond butter straight into my mouth later that day for the sheer caloric density. I tried to like goji berries, I really did.

Did I have any allergies that warranted this strict and expensive regimen? Not really. I just trusted that if the recipe called for coconut sugar and matcha, then there must be a good health reason for both.

I suppose I had to go through that phase, because a few good things did come out of it. When I cut milk out of my diet, my keratosis pilaris (small red bumps on my upper arms) went away, as did most of my acne. The last day I had a Coca-Cola, at a fried seafood restaurant in Cape Code, I had a terrible attack of acid reflux. That was a clear sign; I never drank soda again. One juice cleanse really did seem to knock something loose in me that led me to drop that five final pounds over the next few months — not sure if that was a physical or just a mental reset.

But the most nourishing and helpful changes I made during this time were about avoiding ultra-processed foods, checking in with my body, and keeping things simple. When I didn’t think too hard (or at all) about the exact nutrient profiles, calorie counts, or “good” or “bad” food, and just enjoyed a cheese board and pasta dish with my Italian boyfriend until I was full, my urge to binge subsided. My acid reflux resolved, too.

It wasn’t the supplements, juice cleanses, or diet regimens that saved me. It was walking past the bodega and deciding I didn’t want or need a sweet snack. It was averting my eyes from advertisements for junk food and plastic surgery. It was releasing my need to control, track, and punish my body as if it were a piece of machinery.

Less truly was more. The more I simplified, the better everything got. I got good at cooking basic recipes from simple ingredients. I started saving time and money.

Don’t Stress

About a decade ago, one of my best friends became mysteriously ill. She was exhausted, with brain fog that made it almost impossible to function, and she had to drop out of grad school and move in with her mother. She finally got a diagnosis of Chronic Lyme after a year of tests.

This was back when the existence of Chronic Lyme was heavily debated, before Long Covid forced doctors to acknowledge similar invisible illnesses like Chronic Fatigue. She struggled to get better. Even the doctor that diagnosed her didn’t have much to offer for effective treatment. So she fell in with a holistic doctor that gave her a regimen of a dozen daily supplements, and put her on a diet so draconian and fussy that she had to spend almost her entire day grocery shopping and cooking her own meals.

We talked frequently about her entry into the world of clean beauty and non-toxic living. She had gone from never thinking about the chemicals in consumer products to thinking about them constantly, fearful that toxins were contributing to her debilitating fatigue. This went on for another year.

Then she tried a program called Dynamic Neural Retraining System (DNRS). On the way to the in-person program in Canada, she was pushed in a wheelchair in the airport from gate to gate. On the way back, she walked from one end of the Dallas-Fort Worth airport to the other on her own. I remember that day, because she called me from the airport, crying tears of happiness.

Soon after, she sent out an email blast to her loved ones:

The DNRS program is based on the idea that traumas (in my case the bacterial infection from neurological Lyme) cause injuries to the part of the brain called the limbic system, over activating the "fight or flight" response. The limbic system begins perceiving non-harmful stimuli as potentially life threatening, resulting in a constant "fight or flight" response, which leads to illness and other dysfunction. My practice will work to change the way my limbic system interprets and responds to stimuli. Neuroplasticity based interventions have shown remarkable success with physical conditions (e.g., strokes, brain injuries) and psychological impairments (e.g., post traumatic stress disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder). Current evidence suggests that Lyme disease is associated with a maladapted “fight or flight’ response that is mediated by the brain. My focus over the next 6 months or so will be on rewiring my brain and regulating this chronic response.

She went on with instructions on how to help her healing, such as not asking her about her symptoms or engaging in stressful conversations about politics. One point stood out to me:

I will not obsess about food. I will still eat gluten, dairy, and egg free [she had been intolerant to these foods since college] but will not obsess over other limitations. I will not obsess over avoiding toxins or think about their negative affects on me or the environment, so please don't send me articles about the latest environmental study or toxin exposure.

So it seemed like the more she obsessed over having the perfect diet and avoiding toxics, the worse she made her Chronic Lyme.

Does this mean toxic chemicals aren’t ‘real?’ Not at all. Just like there is a limit to how much news you can consume and stay sane, there’s also a limit to how deep in the weeds you can get on toxic chemical exposures and stay functional in the modern world.

By the way, DNRS seems to be very helpful to people with chemical intolerance.

Everything in moderation, including health regimens.

This is my fridge. That’s my own fire cider on the top shelf. Don’t judge me for my plastic-packaged Vermont chedder snacks.

Just Do the Best You Can

As the years progressed, I simplified things even further. I got rid of all my non-stick pans and cooked in stainless steel. I started lightly fasting only because a routine of drinking tea in the morning and waiting until lunch to eat felt natural to me. During the pandemic, I realized that synthetic workout clothes were making my body break out, so I switched to merino and cotton. I stopped getting my nails done and just buffed them to a shine. I never restocked my anti-aging creams and potions. All of this was as much about quieting the inner voice that said, “People will like you better if you look a certain way, if you buy the right things,” as it was about living sustainably.

As I became physically healthier, my mental health improved, too. I attracted people to me that loved me for me, instead of for my ability to sculpt my features into a glossy facade.

Many, many companies have attempted to hijack and monetize the natural movement by creating complex workarounds, such as certified organic microwave meals, synthetic fibers that are (supposedly, not really) biodegradable, “green” Teflon pans and “sustainable” PFAS-based water resistant coatings. These are all greenwashing bunk. Don’t buy them. Don’t trust them.

Many influencers have attempted to monetize healthy living by making it complicated and difficult: raw vegan diets, 10-step beauty routines, complex recipes with weird ingredients you can only buy from them. I mean, how do you get from enjoying yak butter tea in the Himalayas to selling packaged MCT oil for coffee? No thanks!

My rules are easy to understand. Avoid plastic. (Even if it says BPA-free.) Pare down the beauty routine. (Even if the brands are “clean”). Avoid fragranced products. (Even if they’re in Whole Foods.) Clean with vinegar and baking soda. Avoid processed and junk food. (Even if it’s vegan or certified organic.) Avoid synthetic fashion. (Even if it’s vegan or plant-based.)

Also, don’t worry about it too much if some of these things sneak in while you’re living your life.

I still trust Western medicine. Without it, I wouldn’t be alive — my appendix ruptured in 2017 and I had to have five days of antibiotics. I followed a gut health recipe book that involved a lot of chicken broth and got everything back on track. I got my Covid shot and it kept me from getting sick several times. I’m on my third IUD because it keeps me from getting pregnant and I don’t have any side effects.

But I also only take Advil if a headache or soreness are really interfering with my ability to function. I take zero supplements. I drink a lot of tap water — my only “functional” drinks are kombucha and tea. I try to visit the farmers market, but if my weekend is too busy, I’ll just buy my sourdough bread and veggies at the grocery store. My beauty routine takes five minutes. I do a half hour of weight lifting or yoga to a streaming video a few times a week. I buy my cotton t-shirts and panties online, and go thrifting with friends for interesting fashion. I sleep in cotton sheets.

None of it is fancy or expensive, but I feel fine. Actually, I feel better than fine! I feel strong and serene. I don’t need to shower my body with expensive things or obsessively track it like a distrustful helicopter parent in order for it to thrive.

I’m nice to my body, I trust my body, I listen to it and respect it. And in return, my body takes care of me.