Vital Importance of Clean Air on Health with Erin Kerry and Linda Kreter
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Welcome to Wise Health for Women Radio with Linda Prater. Women are pressed daily to give more, learn more, and be more, often at the expense of mind, body, or spirit. Each week with intriguing guests and topics, we'll bring you fresh ways to view your limited time, encouraging a shift to new, healthier perspectives. Wise Health for Women Radio, helping women thrive. And now here's your host, Linda Prater.

Good morning and welcome to Wise Health for Women Radio. I'm Linda Crater and I'm here with a good friend of mine, Erin Carey, and we're going to talk to you today about the vital importance of clean air. I think we know from we've had wildfires from Canada in the mid-Atlantic, we've all had heat-induced very poor air quality, and we know how we felt during those time periods.

So we will talk today in general terms about why it is so critically important that you do take advantage of clean, fresh air, how to achieve it, and all the wonderful benefits that come from breathing good, clean air and how it's very detrimental when you do not. And I think we all have sympathy when we see things happening differently.

for example, in East Palestine, Ohio with the train wreckage and all kinds of things that happen in our world. So to keep us safe and healthy and keep our systems all on go, that's what our topic is today. Erin, welcome to the program.

Hey, Linda. It's so good to be on talking about this topic. I think it's so, so important to be aware of toxins in our environment and how they affect our health and what we can do to do a better job. I absolutely agree. And it's funny. You and I talked about this before we got together to do this program. And we know everything.

I think instinctively when you're in bad air, you can feel it or when you get a quality alert on your weather forecast. But if you don't know that it helps to increase your brain function, improves your concentration,

It affects everything, your immune system, your hormones, and your specialty, digestive health. Absolutely. And so it makes sense that we talk about this in more detailed terms so that people realize scents, the smells of things, sometimes are detrimental to your health.

Yeah. Yeah. And that's something that we just don't talk about enough, but we are in, we are living in a world where we are exposed to more toxins inside our houses in many cases than outside of our houses. And those toxins include things like fragrance, anything with fragrance, candles, air fresheners, detergents, um,

dishwashing detergent, laundry detergent. I mean, anything that... Body lotions. Yes. I mean, I used to bathe myself in... Should I say it? Bath and Body Works. And...

And we get to know you coming. These days, if I walk, if we're in a mall, which who goes to a mall anymore, but if we are in a mall and I'm with my kids, I'm like, hold your nose, hold your nose as you walk by Bath and Body Works. I do not want you to be around those endocrine disrupting chemicals because that's the thing is a lot of these chemicals, not only does it impact our lungs and the way that we breathe and our respiratory system. And I had a kid that struggled with

asthma symptoms. I personally struggle with asthma and allergies for a long time, but it really makes an impact on our hormones. And we are so many cases of increasing infertility and decreasing sperm counts, decreasing testosterone levels. Yes. And that's, that, I mean, that impacts the human race, right? Yeah. Kind of.

sustainability issue. Right. Yeah. I mean, so the air that we are breathing in is just as important as the food that we're consuming and putting in our mouth. And so it's absolutely, I mean, of primary importance to do what we can to breathe in purified air if we can.

I agree with you. And that's why today is we have an interesting sponsor today. Air Doctor is an air filter system that is amazing. I have two of these in my home and Air Doctor is sponsoring our show today. And it's so funny because I would have told you I had clean air in my home.

But the difference is discernible. I exercise at home indoors with online programs, et cetera. And I'm finding that among the 20,000 breaths you take a day, you want them to be healthy. So I feel like the freshness is really obvious. And the interesting part is it now comes with smart features alerting you to filter changes, which, by the way, last a very long time.

And so it's sustainable. But if you're interested in really clean air and having your house feel a lot healthier, head over to airdoctorpro.com and use promo code WISE. And depending on the model, you'll receive up to 39% off or up to $300 off.

You can lock in this special offer by going to airdoctorpro.com and use the promo code WISE. Again, I have two in my home, and I highly recommend it, especially if you have pets, allergies, asthma, etc.

pollen issues in the spring. You know, we've all been through this. So going on to our topic again, Erin, I know that I feel a difference when I'm in clean air. When we had the wildfires smoke this summer, you would walk outside and it was acrid. It would burn your nose, your lungs, your throat. People had some really serious issues. Did you have any of that? Yeah, well, so I...

did not have issues like that, but I live in an area where we have a lot of mold in the air and it's very humid here and I am super allergic to mold. And so my understanding, and I could, you know, this is just from what I've heard, so I haven't really done a lot of research on this. Like I usually research everything before I say it, but my understanding in the fall in East Texas where I live is when mold is really high. And that is when I begin struggling typically. Now I will say

Since I have put an air doctor into my room at night, I don't wake up stuffy anymore. And so I do think that that is a huge impact. But another factor, and I don't know how detailed we want to get into this, but when we think about women going through perimenopause as hormones start to change and as women

progesterone starts to drop, there begins to become an estrogen dominant effect. And what happens is that you start releasing more of your own histamine when your estrogen levels are high in proportion to your progesterone levels. And histamine levels tend to be higher at night. And so many people are waking up at night thinking, what is going on? Why am I waking up? And it could be a histamine issue. It could be

a combination of your own hormones interacting with the air environment that you're sleeping in the, that you're sleeping with and the air that you're breathing while you are sleeping. And that combination can be really troublesome. And so when we're just talking about the impact of air on our health, whether it's outside air, like you're saying with wildfires and toxic spills and things like that, or internally, even in our own bodies, right?

Well, I think in our homes, sometimes you walk into your home or this was a while back now, but I can remember walking inside the house and going, what is that? We have a lot of water bodies near us. I live near the Chesapeake Bay. And so you get a lot of the mold is in the fall here too, by the way, I think it's the falling leaves and some of the allergies and things come up then.

But you also get high humidity in the mid-Atlantic in the summer or inversions where it just stays and stays and stays. And that's where it's really detrimental. And people who want to be outdoors don't feel like it's healthy for them, especially if they have allergies, asthma, symptoms, you know, et cetera. It is not good. But I feel...

found the biggest difference. You're mentioning sleep, which is huge to health and wellness, period.

But it also gives you better mood and stabilizes you a little bit. You feel like you're doing something for yourself. And so I've gotten big into clean air, clean filtered water, all of the things I can do, organic food, whatever I can do for my health. Because if we learn nothing over the last four or five years, our health is our wealth.

Yeah. And you know, and what I'm hearing you say, and I echo this as well, it's, we do what we can to manage our body's response to our external or internal environment. And so whatever we're putting in, whether it's the water, like you said, or organic foods, these things, we want to limit that toxic load. We cannot live in a toxin free world. And I

would argue that maybe it's not healthy to, I mean, humanity has survived because we've been exposed to a variety of all sorts of things, right? Right. Mold, mold has been around for all time. Yes. Like all of a sudden now we're dealing with these issues of people. I mean, there, there are all sorts of groups on Facebook, like toxic mold syndrome and all of these things. But,

But mold's been around forever. Why are people just now responding to these things? It's the load. I think our immune systems are simply not what they were. And there's a lot of interrupters for our immune system in the past five years too. And so I think that all of these things, we do have to take advantage of what we're doing. If you take a look at

At the water, for example, 50% of the water contains plastic and heavy metals and all sorts of things. So does the air. And so if you can remove some of these toxins, it certainly does make your body healthy.

operate a lot better and you know you feel better anyway and I need that serotonin to make me feel good in terms of a sense of well-being and I don't know anyone who couldn't more sense of wellness and health do you

Right. Well, and I think what's helpful, like you're saying, is it when we feel like we're doing something good for ourselves, it stimulates dopamine production in our body. Right. And so even that in itself, it's like, OK, so if I can, you know, we talk a lot about you and I have talked about this before, eliminating emotional stressors and how to manage our stress better. Well, this is the way to manage our physiological stressors.

And just doing that gives us a hit of dopamine, like, ooh, I just did something nice for myself. I'm limiting this, you know, I've got my air purifier, I've got my clean water filter, or I've got, you know, whatever it is, I've got this organic when I usually don't get it organic. And it's just a, it's a little break for our bodies. And that makes us feel,

feel good. Like, okay, I did something kind for myself today. Not out of punishment, not because we're mad at our bodies for acting broken, but because truly we are exposed to so much all the time and it does take a toll. It does. It is funny. I have something that's completely unrelated that I do. I am a green thumb plant fanatic.

So I have a ton of plants, tropical leafed ones that have big leaf surfaces. And so those are good for your health in terms of reducing toxins. And it's also just pleasurable to have living things among you. And I swear people come into my house and they'll say,

this is so peaceful. And I think, well, plants are a very inexpensive way to decorate large areas. If as long as you keep them alive, but there again, you've mentioned groups. There are many groups on Facebook that will help you become less afraid of planting. How many times have you heard, you know, I can't keep things alive. Sure. You can, you just have to know a little more. So the more, you know, the more you can improve your,

the indoor air, the outdoor air, and your responses to all of that. I love that. You know, I love how you mentioned plants because I am that person. I am that person who used to say, now I used to live in a big city. We didn't get a lot of indoor or outdoor sunlight coming in through our windows. It was just a smaller environment. There wasn't a lot of, you know, an area to even grow plants if I wanted to. And so I would kill succulents. It was that bad. But

Since I have moved. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Succulents are pretty hard to kill. I have a couple plants. I've got three plants in my house. One has been going strong for a little over two years. One for just about two years. And then one I got a snake plant. I guess it was in the spring of this year. You cannot kill that.

I hope not. I don't know. You really can't. I promise you. Well, they've been going strong, but I'm so excited. I really want plants in every single room because of the air purification that you're talking about. And we change our air filters as much as we remember to. And I've got my air purification system in my bedroom, but I know that's not enough, you

I want more air purification. And I wonder, do you think it's the same if we put fresh flowers in our house as it is for plants? I've been wondering that recently. I don't believe so because oftentimes they're fragrant, they've been cut, and they can often, if you're not really careful, can get moldy water. Have you ever poured out the water in your flowers and it's kind of swampy? So I think your fresh ones that you pick out of your garden and bring in, those tend to last longer. I'm a big proponent of...

of cutting forsythia in the spring before it blooms and having it, apple blossoms or forsythia bloom inside the house. But in terms of air quality, no. But in terms of joy, yes.

Cut flowers are marvelous. Yes, yes. I've got some zinnias right now that I'm keeping strong, just having them out. And it's just nice to have something pretty to look at. And I think about when we have beautiful things of nature in our house, how that decreases our stress hormones. Yes.

I mean, petting a dog can do it too, but just having beautiful things in your home that are from nature when we are living in a world where we just don't get outside as much as we probably want to. I mean, right now you and I are not outside recording this. We're inside. I don't think we could do that. We could try.

but I don't think the Wi-Fi signal would work. Yeah, but nature's so healing. It's so soothing and it just can help to really decrease our stress response. And when we have managed cortisol levels, then that helps us to better respond to any kind of a stressor, whether it's that external emotional stressor or that physiological stressor like histamine load. Right. Talk about, because this is really where you specialize, the effect of clean air on the digestive system.

It helps you to process foods more efficiently. Oh, absolutely. Well, I think about one of the most essential parts of digesting food is getting oxygen, breathing through your nose. And just when you're eating, so many of us, we inhale our food because we wait too long to eat or we get fast food that has been chemically engineered to hook our neurotransmitters. So we just like shovel it in because it tastes so good in the moment, right? But when you can really sit down

and enjoy a meal and breathe in through your nose. Right. Doing it right now. I have to remind myself all the time to breathe in through my nose because that oxygen, and especially if it's good, clean oxygen. Right. It's helpful to improve blood flow. And we all, and men, if there are any, if per chance there's a man listening to this, men want good blood flow for many reasons. I know our producer's listening. So you've got at least one.

Yeah, right. But we do, we need good blood flow for our brain health. And so when we are breathing deeply, not only does it help activate, you know, just the salivary enzymes that help to digest our food and that oxygen goes in to help create more of a balanced environment for digestion. It also improves our brain health. It also tells us to be more alert to whether we are fasting.

or whether we want more food because you've turned off those hunger signals. And so then our food can get broken down and our nutrients can get digested and absorbed the way that they're supposed to. I think most people that I see just as a health coach have a digestion absorption or a

some kind of imbalance in that gut microbiome that's really making an inhospitable environment for digestion. So that creates all sorts of problems mentally, as far as how our neurotransmitters are produced and the chemical messages we receive. And yeah, it can definitely all start with, are we breathing? And then what kind of air are we breathing when we're breathing? Well, and

Well, and how we're breathing. You know, mindful breathing, as you said, remind yourself to breathe through your nose. But when we're stressed, when the cortisol is flowing, when we are breathing rapidly and shallow, you don't want to live your life shallow and quick. You want it to be mindful as much as possible. The other thing is it calms you when you breathe slowly.

slower and with more deliberation. That intentional breathing, we constantly hear mindful breathing. And I can do that most of the time. But these days, I'm making sure that, okay, that wasn't supposed to happen. So when a stressor hits, the first thing I do is

is kind of close my eyes, lift up a prayer and breathe deeply a couple of times. And it's amazing how calming that is. And then I tackle the problem. Yeah. Yeah. I, you know, I,

I even think about not to overly spiritualize things, but for any listeners who do happen to have, who have heard the story of Adam and, and how God breathed air into his nostrils. I find that pretty fascinating. He didn't breathe air into his mouth. He breathed into his nostrils and nostril breathing is where we really, we stimulate our vagus nerve and we help to support brain health. All those things that I talked about helps to relieve stress.

And I find that fascinating. And even if you think about babies, when they're little, like I mentioned my youngest with respiratory issues, one of the complications with RSV, he was eight weeks old and he was hospitalized at Children's Hospital, was his nose was so stuffy he couldn't breathe. He didn't know how to breathe through his mouth. Well, and then they can't nurse either. Right. And so we just...

from birth, it's like we learn to mouth breathe. And I wonder if that is kind of a survival stress response that we learn because we are not, we're not born breathing through our mouths. We're born breathing through our nose. And that is the kind of breathing we're supposed to be doing. But when we don't have pure air, when we are exposed to a ton of toxins and then that seasonal allergies and all of that, well, then we can't breathe through our nose. So then we're breathing through our mouth and that creates more stress and

And then the cycle just perpetuates. It really does. And I think in our zeal to get rid of germs, we forget that good bacteria and bad bacteria all help build our immune system. And so by over cleaning bacteria,

All sorts of things. There's a wonderful book that my daughter was reading when her children were little and I loved it. It's called Eat Dirt. Have you read that? I haven't, but I know what you're talking about. It's very, very good because if we over anesthetize everything, antisepticize, whatever the word is, um,

we're not giving ourselves the ability to build our immune system. So you don't want it too clean. And you don't want, I have yet to find an unscented cleaner, you know, for countertops and things. So I tend to use vinegar. Vinegar is great for cleaning. I use vinegar and it reminds me of Easter eggs.

I'm old school where we put tablets in water and vinegar. But it's a happy sense and it dissipates sense too. Didn't know if you knew that if you ever have meat spoil in your refrigerator, put a bowl of vinegar in it and it will take it away or clean your oven by heating up in a metal pan, of course, some vinegar and then

clean it with the steam instead of these harsh cleansers that are not good for you. Well, you know, they've done studies on people who have done household cleaning for 20 years. They have reduced lung function equivalent to smoking 20 cigarettes a day. And that is because the household cleaners that we use are so toxic to breathe in. So now I, when I first heard that many years ago, I was like, good, I don't like cleaning anyway, but that's not what we're saying. Yeah.

It is especially dusting because we have to, we want to make sure we're dusting up any of the mycotoxins that are caused by mold or anything else that's in the environment we want to clean. But it is important what we clean with. And like you said, vinegar, another one company I really like is Branch Basics. I'm not, I don't know if you're familiar with them, but they are pretty incredible at creating non-toxic products.

cleaners. And then I usually go to environmental working group. Now I've heard that they were bought out recently, but I still, um,

think that most of the products that they put their seal of approval on are very clean products. And so that's what I use. I do the same thing for laundry detergents, although that one is really tricky. That's hard to do. Yeah, that's a hard one. It is a hard one. It is funny too, because the number one thing that is in our food is glyphosate or Roundup.

So I use 15X vinegar in my garden. I have a gravel driveway and the weeds love a gravel driveway. But I use this 15 times strength vinegar and it does a wonderful job and it doesn't cause environmental damage, which is also important.

But it's funny, when you start to look for things that are not as toxic but do the job, they do exist. We've just been really sold on a lot of things that are very damaging.

And the glyphosate is in all of our foods. I mean, it's frightening. Oh, oh, and I could tell you, there's plenty of research articles. I'll pull one of them right up here. It says that it creates, and this is the pesticide that is used on most all crops, including wheat, sugar. And it's in our soil.

Yep. And it creates an imbalance in gut bacteria. It reduces bifidobacteria and lactobacillus. So this is why I say everybody needs to be taking a probiotic with that. It inhibits liver enzymes needed for detoxification. It creates deficiencies in minerals like iron, cobalt, molybdenum, however you say that, copper. And then it also creates deficiencies in tryptophan, tyrosine, methionine.

Those things are linked to good mental health when we have them. When they're not available, we don't have dopamine. We don't have serotonin. We don't have our feel-good neurotransmitters. It can also inactivate vitamin D3. Right, which is so essential to keep being healthy. An immune system. Yeah, it's...

When we go down that road, it's really scary in terms of how much we don't know. But I hope that our listeners do pick up on, take a look at an online search for glyphosate roundup. Take a look at what's in your foods. Read the boxes. How much is natural ingredients and how is not? In fact, if it's in a box,

it's probably not good for you. It's processed. So one of the things that I always say is I shopped a perimeter of the grocery store. Yeah. And you know, that's, that's basically what I do. And that we have farmer's markets, at least for now, winter, no, but farmer's markets for now. So you try and put all these wonderful organic, if at all possible foods on

In you, because everything else is pretty doctored up. Not that you can avoid it all, like you said earlier, but what you can avoid is super helpful. Yeah, we can only do that. I'm so sorry to break in. It's funny. Another one of my guests was talking about how wash your clothes if you buy new clothes, wash them before you wear them.

And a new car, we all quote, love the new car smell. It's toxic. Oh, it gives my oldest a headache. She can't be in a new car without a headache. There you go. And then the number one thing that takes the longest time to detox is

is a mattress, a new mattress. I believe that, yeah. That and those dryer balls, or not dryer balls is what we do want, the wool dryer balls, but it's the fabric softener. That is one of the most toxic. The fabric sheets. Yeah, you don't want them. We want to get rid of those. And there are alternatives to all of this. So like instead of the sheets,

Get some wool balls instead of whatever tie you've been using. You can get, I mean, now I've heard of people making their own. If you really want to get creative, you can make your own, but there are brands that are safer to use. Same thing with cleaning products, same thing with shampoo and conditioner and just lighten the load. You don't have to eliminate every, we didn't even get to talking about cookware. That's a whole other hot topic with Teflon, right?

I hope everyone knows about the side effects of Teflon at this point. Yeah. I actually went back to old school and cast iron. Oh, I love cast iron. I just use a lot of butter. Oh, well, and that's so... Butter helps with mineral and vitamin absorption. And so it's like all these things... But all those years they said don't use butter. So I'm laughing because do your own research because...

You're not going to get fat by eating fat. It's not the way it does. You will if you eat the wrong carbs and that kind of thing. So that's a whole other show. Well, and I would also argue that our fat cells are incredible at storing toxins for us. Oh, yeah. And so I think that

I don't know if we necessarily have an obesity epidemic. I think we have a toxin epidemic. And I think our fat cells are real smart at storing those toxins. And that's why even, you know, a lot of our popular really quick weight loss interventions that we have right now, my concern is that if people are not activating phase three detoxification, which means they're going to the bathroom regularly and sweating and doing all the detoxing well, then those toxins are just going to circulate and get stored in vital organs instead of stored in the fats.

cells. So that's something to be aware of. Well, you're also bringing into play exercise, good nutrition, hydration. I mean, the things that we know probably don't need to be said, but I think they do because we forget. I know I'm better at the office because my giant mug is right here and I go through four of those a day on a weekend when I'm out in the garden or on a walk or something. I don't have it with me as much. So

Your habits can change depending on the day of the week, don't you think? Oh, yeah. And I think that that's natural and that's okay. We have different energy expenditures every day. That's why I never say to eat the same way every day because you have different energy expenditures. Therefore, you need different energy coming in. So, you know, good hydration, sweat a little bit, take walks, be in nature, enjoy some sunshine, just the basics and rest.

do what you can to slow down and rest and, you know, have some stillness in your life. Like these are the things that I'm constantly trying to remind myself to do. We all do. Those things matter. They do make a difference. You know, Erin, thank you for coming on with me today. I know that we both feel strongly about health and wellness and, and being our best selves as much as possible. And I think we often forget some of the more mundane things that,

like breathing. So I'm very grateful to airdoctorpro.com forward slash wise for allowing us to have this show that is focused strictly on breathing clean air. And so we hope you learned something today and we certainly enjoyed bringing it to you. So make it so much fun. It's so much fun. It always is. We will have to do another one on laundry detergents. Yeah, right. And scents.

But make it a great week ahead, and we'll talk to you next time. Thank you for listening. Thank you for tuning in today. You can find more shows at wisehealthforwomenradio.com.