The Effects of Microplastics on Your Health & How to Reduce Them

0:00:04 Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast, where we discuss science and science-based tools
0:00:06 for everyday life.
0:00:14 I’m Andrew Huberman, and I’m a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford
0:00:15 School of Medicine.
0:00:19 Today we are discussing microplastics.
0:00:23 Microplastics are an extremely interesting and important topic that everyone should know
0:00:24 about.
0:00:28 And the reason is, microplastics are indeed everywhere.
0:00:29 They’re in the air.
0:00:31 They are in beverages we consume.
0:00:34 They are lining the inside of soup cans.
0:00:40 They are lining the inside of paper cups made to hold hot water, coffee, and tea.
0:00:46 And there are a lot of animal data, and indeed some human data, showing that microplastics,
0:00:52 which consist of particles of different sizes, can be very detrimental to our health.
0:00:58 At the same time, it’s important to realize that as of now, we don’t have any causal data
0:01:01 linking microplastics to specific human diseases.
0:01:05 That said, there’s a lot of correlative data, and today we are going to review those correlative
0:01:10 data, and most importantly, we are going to discuss the various things that we can each
0:01:17 and all do to limit our exposure to microplastics, or at least to facilitate the removal of microplastics
0:01:18 from our body.
0:01:24 Because, as we’ll soon discuss, you have microplastics in essentially every organ and
0:01:26 tissue of your body right now.
0:01:29 And you are constantly being bombarded with microplastics.
0:01:34 So the challenge for me, and indeed for you as well, is to frame this topic of microplastics
0:01:35 accurately.
0:01:40 It’s important that we understand they are out there, they are in us, and indeed they
0:01:43 can cause serious issues for our health.
0:01:46 However, we also need to take agency.
0:01:51 We need to understand how we can limit what’s called the bioaccumulation of microplastics
0:01:52 in our organs and tissues.
0:01:54 And I don’t want to be alarmist.
0:01:59 This episode is not about getting you to be petrified or about developing some sort of
0:02:02 hypochondriacis about microplastics.
0:02:07 It’s designed to inform you about what they are, where they exist, where they exist in
0:02:12 particularly high amounts, and the things that you can do to limit their impact on your
0:02:14 biology.
0:02:19 Because I think it’s fair to say that we are not going to rid the earth of microplastics.
0:02:20 They are just too pervasive.
0:02:24 Now the one caveat is that there are certain populations of people, in particular people
0:02:29 that are pregnant, or people that have young children and those young children themselves,
0:02:33 that should really strive to limit their exposure to microplastics.
0:02:36 So by the end of today’s episode, you can be confident that you’ll understand a lot
0:02:41 about what microplastics are, the impact that they are currently having, some of the potential
0:02:44 impact that people are starting to investigate, and ways that you can limit their negative
0:02:47 impact on your brain and bodily health.
0:02:50 Before you begin, I’d like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching
0:02:52 and research roles at Stanford.
0:02:56 It is, however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to consumer information
0:02:59 about science and science-related tools to the general public.
0:03:03 In keeping with that theme, I’d like to thank the sponsors of today’s podcast.
0:03:05 Our first sponsor is Element.
0:03:09 Element is an electrolyte drink that has everything you need and nothing you don’t.
0:03:14 That means the electrolytes, sodium, magnesium, and potassium, in the correct ratios, but
0:03:15 no sugar.
0:03:19 Now, I and others on the podcast have talked a lot about the critical importance of hydration
0:03:22 for proper brain and bodily function.
0:03:26 It shows that even a slight degree of dehydration can really diminish cognitive and physical
0:03:27 performance.
0:03:31 It’s also important that you get adequate electrolytes in order for your body and brain
0:03:32 to function at their best.
0:03:36 The electrolytes, sodium, magnesium, and potassium are critical for the functioning of all the
0:03:39 cells in your body, especially your neurons or nerve cells.
0:03:43 To make sure that I’m getting proper amounts of hydration and electrolytes, I dissolve one
0:03:47 packet of element in about 16 to 32 ounces of water when I wake up in the morning, and
0:03:49 I drink that basically first thing in the morning.
0:03:53 I also drink element dissolved in water during any kind of physical exercise I’m doing,
0:03:58 especially on hot days if I’m sweating a lot and losing water and electrolytes.
0:04:00 Element has a lot of different great tasting flavors of element.
0:04:04 My favorite is the watermelon, although I also confess I like the raspberry and the
0:04:05 citrus.
0:04:07 Basically, I like all the flavors of element.
0:04:14 If you’d like to try element, you can go to drinkelement.com/huberman, spelled drinklmnt.com/huberman,
0:04:18 to claim a free element sample pack with the purchase of any element drink mix.
0:04:23 Again, that’s drinkelement.com/huberman, to claim a free sample pack.
0:04:26 Today’s episode is also brought to us by BetterHelp.
0:04:30 BetterHelp offers professional therapy with a licensed therapist carried out entirely
0:04:31 online.
0:04:34 Now, I’ve been doing weekly therapy for well over 30 years.
0:04:36 Initially, I didn’t have a choice.
0:04:39 It was a condition of being allowed to stay in high school, but pretty soon I realized
0:04:43 that therapy is an extremely important component to overall health.
0:04:47 In fact, I consider doing regular therapy just as important as getting regular exercise,
0:04:52 including cardiovascular exercise and resistance training exercise, which of course I also
0:04:53 do every week.
0:04:56 Now, there are essentially three things that great therapy provides.
0:05:00 First, it provides a good rapport with somebody that you can really trust and talk to about
0:05:03 any and all issues that concern you.
0:05:07 Second of all, great therapy provides support in the form of emotional support, but also
0:05:10 directed guidance, the dos and the not to dos.
0:05:14 And third, expert therapy can help you arrive at useful insights that you would not have
0:05:18 arrived at otherwise, insights that allow you to do better, not just in your emotional
0:05:22 life, in your relationship life, but also the relationship to yourself and your professional
0:05:24 life and all sorts of career goals.
0:05:28 With BetterHelp, they make it very easy to find an expert therapist with whom you can
0:05:31 really resonate with and provide you with these three benefits that I described.
0:05:37 If you’d like to try BetterHelp, go to betterhelp.com/huberman to get 10% off your first month.
0:05:40 Again, that’s betterhelp.com/huberman.
0:05:43 Okay, let’s talk about microplastics.
0:05:45 What are microplastics?
0:05:49 Microplastics, as the name suggests, are little itty-bitty bits of plastic.
0:05:50 How itty-bitty?
0:05:57 Well, microplastics range in size from one micron, which is one 1/1000th of a millimeter,
0:05:59 all the way up to five millimeters in diameter.
0:06:04 Okay, so anything in that size range is considered a microplastic.
0:06:09 Anything smaller than that, so anything smaller than one micron in diameter, one 1/1000th of
0:06:13 a millimeter in diameter, is considered a nanoplastic.
0:06:17 And indeed, there are lots of microplastics floating around in the air.
0:06:20 There are lots of nanoplastics floating around in the air.
0:06:22 There’s lots of both of those things in the ocean.
0:06:25 There are a lot of those things in food, especially packaged food.
0:06:28 There are a lot of those things lining cups.
0:06:34 There are a lot of those things in everything that we consume, essentially.
0:06:38 So what does it mean to have all these microplastics and nanoplastics floating around in our environment
0:06:41 and going into our body through fluids and foods, et cetera?
0:06:47 Well, there is some serious concern because these microplastics potentially can disrupt
0:06:52 cellular health, organ health, and could potentially lead to certain forms of disease.
0:06:55 We’ll talk about the ways they could potentially do that.
0:07:00 However, I want to also emphasize that your body is incredibly good at dealing with foreign
0:07:01 invaders.
0:07:03 It’s very good at getting rid of stuff that isn’t good for it.
0:07:07 However, microplastics and nanoplastics have been shown to lodge within specific tissues
0:07:10 and stay there for long periods of time.
0:07:13 So you’ll notice during today’s episode, I’m going to go back and forth between the
0:07:18 stuff that’s really scary and then reassuring you that we’re not sure whether or not we
0:07:22 need to be that scared about these microplastics and nanoplastics yet.
0:07:26 What I want to do is give you the evidence so you can decide how much effort you put
0:07:31 into limiting your exposure to these microplastics and nanoplastics and how much effort you put
0:07:33 into trying to rid your body of them.
0:07:38 I’m not here to paint the picture one way or the other because, frankly, the data just
0:07:43 don’t line up with one argument or the other, that they’re extremely dangerous or that they’re
0:07:44 nothing to worry about.
0:07:48 Let me give you an example of something that you might have heard in the media and on recent
0:07:52 podcasts out there that’s very scary.
0:07:55 The argument based on what seemed to be a pretty high quality publication that you may
0:08:02 have heard is that every single week, we ingest up to a credit card’s worth of microplastics
0:08:03 and nanoplastics.
0:08:06 You might have seen that in headlines and in other podcasts.
0:08:09 And indeed, there was a paper arguing that.
0:08:14 However, a more recent paper looked at the quantitative analysis they used, used a different
0:08:18 quantitative analysis, and claimed that they vastly overestimated the amount of plastic
0:08:20 that we ingest every week.
0:08:23 What do I mean by vastly overestimated?
0:08:28 This newer analysis of the same data claims that the credit card’s worth of plastic that
0:08:33 it was argued we consume every week, well, that was an overestimate by a million fold.
0:08:40 And in fact, it would take 23,000 years to consume enough plastic to lead to that credit
0:08:43 card’s worth of plastic in our bodies.
0:08:48 So now we have very discrepant data, or rather we have very discrepant analyses of the same
0:08:49 data.
0:08:52 So you’re starting to get a picture of just how confusing this whole field is, but we’re
0:08:58 going to parse it a little bit further by saying that it’s also very clear that microplastics
0:09:01 and nanoplastics are everywhere.
0:09:03 They’re just everywhere you look.
0:09:09 In fact, if I were a PhD advisor for somebody in toxicology or a PhD advisor for somebody
0:09:15 in environmental science, and they needed to have a surefire publication, I’d probably
0:09:19 suggest that they work on microplastics and go out there and try and find yet another source
0:09:24 of microplastics and use a better analysis, for instance, okay, doing a graduate thesis
0:09:28 isn’t just about getting a publication, but what I’m trying to refer to here is that wherever
0:09:31 people look for microplastics, they find them.
0:09:35 This is true in our environment, and this is true in food, this is true in water, and
0:09:38 this is also true for our tissues.
0:09:43 So in the last couple of years, there’s been an explosion in the number of scientific studies
0:09:48 exploring which tissues of the human body, so not just animal models, but the human body
0:09:50 contain microplastics and nanoplastics.
0:09:55 Okay, so by examining postmortem tissues, that is tissues from people who are deceased,
0:10:01 it’s been discovered that there are microplastics and nanoplastics lodged in the brain, so if
0:10:08 you take the brain of a deceased adult human, what you find is that they have about 0.5%
0:10:15 of the total weight of the brain from microplastics, so this is about a teaspoon of salt or sugars
0:10:20 worth of microplastics, might not seem like much, but if you think about how little neurons
0:10:24 are, a typical neuron will have a cell body, this is the area that contains the nucleus
0:10:29 with all the DNA and so forth, that cell bodies of neurons vary in size tremendously, they
0:10:35 can be as small as five to eight microns across to as much as, gosh, I’ve seen some neurons
0:10:43 down the microscope that are 50 microns, I’ve seen some that are 100 microns across, it
0:10:45 depends where you look in the nervous system.
0:10:52 So if you start to think about a half teaspoon of powder of microplastics and nanoplastics,
0:10:56 that’s a lot of microplastics and nanoplastics that could be distributed in lots of different
0:11:00 places in the brain, and a little bit later, we’ll talk about what the potential impact
0:11:05 is of these microplastics and nanoplastics on the function of particular types of neurons
0:11:10 that may impact things like neurodevelopmental trajectories, the argument has been made,
0:11:15 I’m not making this argument, but the argument has been made that microplastics and nanoplastics
0:11:19 may correlate with things like autism, may correlate with things like attention deficit
0:11:21 hyperactivity disorder.
0:11:25 I don’t actually believe that the data there are strong enough to make those arguments
0:11:26 at all.
0:11:31 However, I will tell you that the presence of microplastics and nanoplastics in the brains
0:11:35 that is postmortem tissue, so to see people taking the brain, chopping up the brain, looking
0:11:40 at down the microscope and seeing microplastics and then quantifying the amount of microplastics
0:11:44 in different compartments of the brain and distributed across the brain, that is concerning
0:11:49 to me in the sense that there’s enough of it in there and the function of neurons in
0:11:55 the nervous system is precise enough that you could imagine, given that these microplastics
0:11:59 and nanoplastics are lodged in particular categories of neurons that do in fact impact
0:12:06 things like reward and motivation, things like movement, etc., that they could be impacting
0:12:10 the function of the nervous system, but there’s no direct causal relationship, at least not
0:12:11 in humans.
0:12:14 There’s some interesting data in animal models, we’ll get back to that a little bit later.
0:12:19 So there’s microplastics and nanoplastics in brain, you’ll find microplastics and nanoplastics
0:12:23 in other tissues that have a blood organ barrier.
0:12:24 What do I mean by that?
0:12:29 Well, the brain is encapsulated in the so-called BBB, the blood brain barrier, and that’s
0:12:34 because your brain tissue, because it doesn’t turn over across the lifespan, you don’t produce
0:12:35 many new neurons.
0:12:38 There are few places you produce new neurons like the olfactory bulb, the dentate gyrus
0:12:42 of the hippocampus, a few places, but these are far and few between.
0:12:45 Most of your brain tissue that you’re born with is the brain tissue that you’re going
0:12:48 to die with, provided you don’t lose that brain tissue through the course of your lifespan
0:12:50 through a head injury or something like that.
0:12:55 The neurons you have when you are born actually are far more numerous than the neurons you
0:12:57 have at the time when you die.
0:13:01 This is important and it’s one of the reasons we have a blood brain barrier.
0:13:02 Nature is very smart.
0:13:06 It designed a barrier so that molecules that might be dangerous to the brain can’t enter
0:13:09 the brain and that’s what the BBB is for.
0:13:14 Microplastics and nanoplastics are making it from the bloodstream into the brain.
0:13:18 This is what I mean when I say they can cross the blood brain barrier.
0:13:21 And if we take a step back and we ask ourselves, “What are some other tissues in the body
0:13:24 that have a very robust barrier from the blood?”
0:13:27 Because a lot of things get into the blood and that’s not necessarily good, but it’s
0:13:30 not necessarily bad if you can excrete those things, right?
0:13:36 We have a lot of detoxification mechanisms that include our liver detoxification, etc.
0:13:39 But if these particles are getting from the blood into the brain, what are some other
0:13:43 tissues that they’re getting into that have these thick barriers or these very stringent
0:13:45 barriers?
0:13:50 As you can imagine, two other tissues that have very stringent blood to organ barriers
0:13:52 are the blood testicular barrier.
0:13:53 Why would that be?
0:13:54 Okay, why would you protect brain?
0:13:55 Well, it can’t renew.
0:13:58 You don’t want those neurons to get contaminated with things.
0:14:01 So you put a BBB in, a blood brain barrier.
0:14:03 You also put a blood testicular barrier in males.
0:14:04 Why?
0:14:06 Well, that’s where the DNA are.
0:14:07 That’s where the so-called germ cells are.
0:14:11 So you don’t want things getting into the testicle and mutating the DNA there because
0:14:14 then those mutated DNA could be passed on to offspring.
0:14:16 Notice what?
0:14:19 Microplastics and nanoplastics can cross the blood testicular barrier.
0:14:24 And in fact, there was a lot of press this last year about microplastics and nanoplastics
0:14:30 being present in every human testicle that was analyzed in, or I should say from, postmortem
0:14:31 tissue.
0:14:34 Likewise, there’s a blood follicle barrier in females.
0:14:36 This is where the eggs come from.
0:14:42 And microplastics and nanoplastics can cross the blood follicular barrier.
0:14:44 So this is why people are starting to get concerned, right?
0:14:48 I suppose we shouldn’t be so surprised that we’re inhaling microplastics given that they
0:14:49 are everywhere.
0:14:52 I should mention that, you know, there wasn’t much plastic around or in use prior to the
0:14:53 1950s.
0:14:58 If any of you have ever seen the movie The Graduate with Dustin Hoffman, this is the
0:15:03 only time you’ll see somebody driving eastward across the Bay Bridge, all right, from San
0:15:05 Francisco, toward Berkeley on the top deck.
0:15:06 It actually runs in the other direction.
0:15:07 They shut down the Bay Bridge.
0:15:08 That’s in The Graduate.
0:15:11 And the other thing that’s in The Graduate is this famous scene, if you’re old enough
0:15:16 like me to remember the movie The Graduate, Dustin Hoffman’s lying in the pool.
0:15:18 It’s after his graduation.
0:15:19 He’s lying in the pool.
0:15:20 He doesn’t really know what he’s going to do with his life.
0:15:24 And this guy comes up to him and he says, “You know, the future is plastics.”
0:15:27 And it became this kind of famous line or pseudo-famous line.
0:15:31 Now that movie takes place at a time when plastics were really booming as an industry.
0:15:36 And indeed, polyethylene, polyurethane, these plastic materials were developed because they
0:15:37 were very durable.
0:15:38 They were long lasting.
0:15:40 In fact, they are not biodegradable.
0:15:46 They’re not broken down very easily if at all and certainly not within biological tissues.
0:15:52 These plastics went from essentially non-existent in the 1940s and prior to in pretty much everything
0:15:57 involved in manufacturing, okay, even in different aspects of surgical implants and things of
0:15:58 that sort.
0:15:59 So plastics are indeed everywhere.
0:16:02 And that started in the 1950s, hence that line from The Graduate.
0:16:07 So it’s not surprising that microplastics and nanoplastics would get into our body, right?
0:16:11 If they’re everywhere in our environment and we’re inhaling them all day, then of course
0:16:15 they’ll get into our lungs and then they’re small enough they can get into our bloodstream.
0:16:18 But as I mentioned, the body has these cleansing systems or these detoxification systems to
0:16:24 remove things, but they’re not removing the microplastics, or at least not all of them,
0:16:27 from brain, testicle, and follicle.
0:16:32 And I should point out that microplastics and nanoplastics are also found in all the
0:16:33 other tissues of the body.
0:16:37 In fact, I don’t think there’s a single investigation of human tissue or animal tissue
0:16:41 for microplastics or nanoplastics where they didn’t get a positive result, meaning where
0:16:42 they didn’t find them in the tissue.
0:16:46 You can find them in not just the upper lungs, but in the lower lungs, so they’re getting
0:16:47 deposited in the lower lungs.
0:16:50 You can find them in the bloodstream from a blood draw.
0:16:55 You can find them in human placenta and you can find them in what’s called the meconium,
0:16:58 which is the first stool that a baby takes.
0:17:04 This is typically taken within the, or the stool is given, given, taken.
0:17:05 It’s taken by the doctor.
0:17:06 It’s actually analyzed for various things.
0:17:08 It contains bile and a bunch of other things.
0:17:12 It’s actually an important indicator of the health of the child.
0:17:18 It turns out that this first stool that happens in the first 24 hours or so after birth, when
0:17:23 that’s been analyzed for microplastics, there too you find microplastics and nanoplastics.
0:17:28 And that’s really got people concerned because what this means is that microplastics and
0:17:32 nanoplastics that mothers are ingesting or that they somehow have lodged in their bodies
0:17:35 are making their way to the fetus.
0:17:38 Now you could say, well, is it really a problem?
0:17:44 Well, a few years ago, it was at least concerning enough that BPAs, and we’ll talk more about
0:17:48 BPAs, bisphenol A, which is a component of microplastics.
0:17:50 This is a known endocrine disruptor.
0:17:53 It disrupts certain estrogen-like pathways.
0:17:55 We’ll get into this in a few minutes.
0:18:03 BPAs were banned from sippy cups in kids and from any food containers for young kids.
0:18:08 So the FDA in the United States, and there are European countries as well, had enough
0:18:13 date on this or enough concern about this to say, listen, we are going to make it illegal
0:18:22 to have BPA-lined sippy cups or food containers for young kids, in part because the BPA is
0:18:25 correlated with microplastics and nanoplastics.
0:18:31 So what I’m saying here is that the government has taken pretty avid measures to restrict
0:18:37 the amount of BPA exposure through microplastics and nanoplastics to young kids, and yet the
0:18:41 fetus clearly is being exposed to microplastics and nanoplastics.
0:18:45 This is why at the beginning I mentioned if you are pregnant or if you have young kids
0:18:49 or if you are a young kid, you want to go out of your way to limit your exposure to
0:18:54 these microplastics and nanoplastics, but if you’re an older adult, you probably want
0:18:57 to do the same and we’ll talk about ways that you can do that.
0:19:01 So I could go on and on about the various tissues besides placenta, in your bloodstream
0:19:04 brain testes, follicle lower lungs.
0:19:06 You can find nanoplastics in the liver.
0:19:10 You can find microplastics and nanoplastics in pretty much every tissue that you look
0:19:11 for them.
0:19:15 The real question is how detrimental are these microplastics and nanoplastics?
0:19:19 And then of course we can talk about where they’re coming from specifically in ways that
0:19:21 you can control and limit.
0:19:26 And when I say control and limit, what we’re really talking about here is yes, trying to
0:19:28 limit your exposure to these things.
0:19:31 If I were to rattle off the different sources of microplastics and nanoplastics, you would
0:19:36 go wide-eyed and you would probably also just say, “Okay, I surrender.
0:19:37 They’re truly everywhere.
0:19:38 In fact, I’ll do that.
0:19:39 Okay.
0:19:40 I can’t help but do that.”
0:19:45 But keep in mind, you do have some control in terms of the end result of these microplastics
0:19:47 and nanoplastics on your health.
0:19:53 So here I go, plastic bags, storage containers, bottle caps, rope gear strapping, utensils,
0:19:57 cups, floats, coolers, containers, rope, fishing nets, textiles, sorry, I’m not laughing because
0:19:58 it’s funny.
0:19:59 I’m laughing because it’s just pretty much everywhere.
0:20:05 Latex paint, coatings, medical devices, automotive parts, tires on the road, degrading, giving
0:20:12 off little microplastics into the air, microplastics raining down from the sky, literally.
0:20:17 White film containers, laminated safety glass, car windshield, oh great, even the car windshield.
0:20:23 Drinking bottles, textile fibers, resin paints, varnish, construction, automotive parts.
0:20:27 Okay, so basically everywhere, these things are everywhere.
0:20:29 So what are we to do?
0:20:37 Well, what we are to do is to limit the long-term accumulation of microplastics and nanoplastics
0:20:38 in our system.
0:20:43 There are ways that we can limit their introduction to our system, but as long as you’re breathing,
0:20:48 as long as you’re walking around, as long as you’re near a road, you are exposed to
0:20:49 microplastics.
0:20:55 So until there’s a huge movement to make better tires that don’t degrade as quickly or to
0:20:59 create filters in our home environments that remove the microplastics, which frankly I
0:21:03 think both of those things are not reasonable expectations, at least not in this lifetime.
0:21:08 Well, until then, what you can do is you can try and limit their entry and accumulation
0:21:09 into your body.
0:21:13 So rather than list off all the ways that you can limit so-called bioaccumulation of
0:21:17 microplastics and nanoplastics at the beginning or at the end of today’s episode, I’m going
0:21:22 to intersperse them at times that are relevant to what I just discussed about how microplastics
0:21:24 get into our system and the tissues they are lodged in.
0:21:29 So I’ll tell you right now that a few ways that you can really do yourself a service
0:21:35 in limiting your exposure to microplastics is to limit your consumption of water from
0:21:37 plastic bottles.
0:21:40 That might seem kind of obvious, but check out these data.
0:21:43 This is pretty wild.
0:21:50 There was an analysis of the number of microplastic and nanoplastic particles in bottled water,
0:21:56 and it was estimated that there were about 30,000 of these particles per liter of water.
0:21:59 And those data stood for quite a long time.
0:22:04 Then imaging techniques for measuring the number of these different particles, in particular
0:22:09 the really small nanoparticles, the ones that are less than one micron in diameter, the imaging
0:22:11 tools for those improved.
0:22:14 And I’ll explain a little bit about that in a moment.
0:22:18 And there was a paper published in the Proscenes in the National Academy of Sciences in 2024
0:22:24 that showed that the amount of nanoplastic in particular, but microplastic and nanoplastics
0:22:32 that are present in bottled water was actually vastly underestimated in that previous study.
0:22:36 Other than 30,000 particles per liter, the reanalysis with better methods showed that
0:22:43 it was anywhere from 110 all the way up to 400,000 particles per liter.
0:22:47 And the average was 240,000 particles per liter.
0:22:51 So that means that the amount of microplastics and nanoplastics in bottled water is actually
0:22:55 much, much higher than we initially thought.
0:23:00 And a very simple way to limit your exposure to microplastics and nanoplastics is to avoid
0:23:05 drinking water from plastic bottles, in particular, plastic bottles that have been heated up.
0:23:08 Now, you might say, well, I don’t heat up my plastic water bottles, right, but you don’t
0:23:12 know what happened to those plastic water bottles en route to the store you bought them
0:23:15 at or en route to your refrigerator, right?
0:23:17 They could have sat in the back of a hot truck.
0:23:21 They could have sat in the back of a loading dock, any number of different things.
0:23:25 Now this is not to say that if you drink the occasional water out of a plastic bottle that
0:23:29 you’re going to harm your health, I’m absolutely not saying that.
0:23:34 However, it’s pretty clear that there’s a lot of microplastics and nanoplastics that
0:23:39 are completely avoidable, at least avoidable in terms of your ingestion of them in plastic
0:23:40 water bottles.
0:23:44 So it makes sense to me why you would want to avoid those also as a consumable and that’s
0:23:45 not very reusable.
0:23:49 I suppose you could reuse those plastic bottles, but most people don’t, at least they don’t
0:23:50 use them for very long.
0:23:52 They get pretty flimsy pretty quickly.
0:23:58 You’re much better off having either a stainless steel bottle or some sort of ceramic mug or
0:24:04 using glass or using some other vessel for water that is reusable.
0:24:06 And of course that is not made of plastic.
0:24:10 And then of course the question arises, how much microplastic and nanoplastic is in tap
0:24:11 water?
0:24:13 And it turns out there’s quite a lot of it.
0:24:17 Now it varies according to location, but there are ways that you can get those microplastics
0:24:20 and nanoplastics out of your tap water.
0:24:24 The best way turns out to be a little bit expensive admittedly and that’s to use a reverse osmosis
0:24:25 filter.
0:24:29 So reverse osmosis filters will get rid of all the microplastics and nanoplastics.
0:24:33 Of course it will also remove some key minerals from the water.
0:24:35 So you’ll have to remineralize that water.
0:24:41 If one looks at the price of reverse osmosis filtration systems, they’re not cheap.
0:24:46 They can range anywhere from $300 to $500 or even $600 for a home unit.
0:24:48 And many of those units will remineralize the water.
0:24:52 So basically it takes the water, cleans out the microplastics, nanoplastics and a bunch
0:24:54 of other bad stuff that you don’t want.
0:24:58 And then it’s going to remineralize the water so that you’re getting enough minerals in
0:24:59 your water.
0:25:03 Now, if you look at the cost of a reverse osmosis filter, I like you, kind of go a little
0:25:06 wide eyed like, “That’s a lot of money for water.”
0:25:11 But if one thinks about the total amount of money one spends in a given year on plastic
0:25:17 bottled water that we consume and then throw away essentially the bottles or even bottled
0:25:21 water from glass bottles, in the habit of trying to drink water from glass bottles.
0:25:24 And when you go out and you buy those, you feel better that you’re not consuming a lot
0:25:29 of microplastics and nanoplastics, but they are very expensive.
0:25:32 So the costs probably line up pretty well.
0:25:36 And when I did that analysis, I realized, well, actually the home reverse osmosis filter
0:25:41 with remineralization actually will save on costs provided that one is good about filling
0:25:45 glass bottles or stainless steel bottles with that water and making sure that, you know,
0:25:47 when you leave the house to take those bottles with you.
0:25:53 Again, I don’t think it’s possible for everyone to avoid all consumption of water from plastic
0:25:54 bottles.
0:25:55 That’s just not reasonable to expect.
0:25:56 Right?
0:25:58 You don’t want to be that person that’s carrying around water everywhere you go to friends houses
0:26:00 at dinner, et cetera.
0:26:05 I don’t think we need to be that concerned about the amount of microplastic and nanoplastic
0:26:06 in water sources.
0:26:09 And certainly you wouldn’t want to avoid drinking water from plastic bottles to the point where
0:26:11 you dehydrate yourself or put yourself at risk.
0:26:13 I’m not trying to create that kind of concern here.
0:26:17 What I’m trying to say is if you are concerned about microplastics and nanoplastics and you
0:26:21 really want to limit your exposure, one of the best ways to do that is to limit your
0:26:25 consumption of water from plastic bottles and because microplastics and nanoplastics
0:26:29 are present in tap water, you’re going to need some way to remove those microplastics
0:26:32 and nanoplastics from your tap water if you’re very concerned about them.
0:26:34 I’m not here to say everyone should do this.
0:26:38 I’m certainly not saying that saying that if you are concerned about microplastics and
0:26:42 nanoplastics, and we’ll talk about some of the reasons one might want to be concerned
0:26:49 about them, well then installing a reverse osmosis filtration system on your home water
0:26:55 might be a good idea and it’s likely to save you costs if you look at it in comparison to
0:26:57 buying disposable bottles of water.
0:27:02 Now there are a lot of other ways besides drinking water from plastic bottles that microplastics
0:27:05 and nanoplastics make their way into our system.
0:27:09 And I can list off many of them, but I’m trying to create a hierarchy here of the things that
0:27:15 are potentially the major sources and the ones that we can most easily avoid and that
0:27:18 are likely to save us costs overall.
0:27:22 So one thing that’s very clear is that there’s a lot of microplastics and nanoplastics and
0:27:23 sea salt.
0:27:24 Who would have thought?
0:27:28 But then you think about it and it’s like, well, this stuff is getting out into the ocean.
0:27:30 There’s a lot of plastic in the ocean.
0:27:33 It’s a super depressing scene when one sees the pictures of all the plastic floating out
0:27:34 there.
0:27:37 In fact, there’s a book that I read in preparation for this episode.
0:27:41 Gosh, it was so depressing, but important for me to read.
0:27:42 Maybe you want to read it as well.
0:27:46 It’s quite good, although it will be a bit of a downer.
0:27:48 The title of the book is a poison like no other.
0:27:54 How microplastics corrupted our planet and our bodies by Matt Simon and I listened to
0:27:59 this book and gosh, it really convinces you that there’s microplastics everywhere, both
0:28:02 on land in the air and in the ocean, unfortunately.
0:28:05 And of course, sea salt comes from the ocean.
0:28:09 So a simple solution to this is if you’re going to use salt and I’m a big fan of salt,
0:28:13 not overdoing it, but salt has its role, right?
0:28:17 It’s a wonderful substance, both for sake of taste and for sake of health.
0:28:21 I did an episode about salt, again, don’t over consume salt.
0:28:22 Don’t blast your blood pressure.
0:28:27 Don’t blow gasket, but many people would do well to have a little bit more salt, especially
0:28:32 if you’re eating a really clean diet, especially if you’re hydrating very well.
0:28:38 Focus on something like pink Himalayan salt or salt that comes from a non marine source.
0:28:39 Okay.
0:28:41 It’s very simple to do.
0:28:42 It’s some of the best salt out there.
0:28:47 It’s not terribly expensive and you would do well to avoid sea salt and get your salt
0:28:48 from those other sources.
0:28:52 In doing so, you’re going to lower your exposure to microplastics and nanoplastics.
0:28:57 There’s some pretty scary pictures of sea salt under the microscope and all the little
0:28:59 bits of plastic that are in there.
0:29:02 You only have to see those pictures once or just hear it from me to make the shift to
0:29:05 Himalayan sea salt and the pink salt is pretty.
0:29:06 It looks nice.
0:29:07 It tastes great.
0:29:10 So that’s an easy, very low cost shift that you can make.
0:29:14 I’d like to take a quick break and acknowledge our sponsor, AG1.
0:29:19 AG1 is a vitamin mineral probiotic drink that also includes prebiotics and adaptogens.
0:29:24 AG1 is designed to cover all of your foundational nutritional needs and it tastes great.
0:29:30 I’ve been drinking AG1 since 2012 and I started doing that at a time when my budget for supplements
0:29:31 was really limited.
0:29:35 In fact, I only had enough money back then to purchase one supplement and I’m so glad
0:29:37 that I made that supplement, AG1.
0:29:42 The reason for that is even though I strive to eat most of my foods from whole foods and
0:29:46 minimally processed foods, it’s very difficult for me to get enough fruits, vegetables, vitamins
0:29:50 and minerals, micronutrients and adaptogens from food alone.
0:29:54 And I need to do that in order to ensure that I have enough energy throughout the day, I
0:29:57 sleep well at night and keep my immune system strong.
0:30:01 But when I take AG1 daily, I find that all aspects of my health, my physical health, my
0:30:05 mental health and my performance, both cognitive and physical, are better.
0:30:09 I know that because I’ve had lapses when I didn’t take AG1 and I certainly felt the
0:30:10 difference.
0:30:14 I also notice, and this makes perfect sense given the relationship between the gut microbiome
0:30:18 and the brain, that when I regularly take AG1, which for me means a serving in the morning
0:30:22 or mid-morning and again later in the afternoon or evening, that I have more mental clarity
0:30:24 and more mental energy.
0:30:30 If you’d like to try AG1, you can go to drinkag1.com/huberman to claim a special offer.
0:30:35 Right now they’re giving away five free travel packs and a year’s supply of Vitamin D3K2.
0:30:40 Again, that’s drinkag1.com/huberman to claim that special offer.
0:30:44 Okay, so we’ve talked about bottled watered sources and filtering your water, we talked
0:30:45 about sea salt.
0:30:50 Another major source of these microplastics that was very surprising to me is from the
0:30:53 lining of canned soup.
0:30:57 I don’t think I’m ever going to eat canned soup again unless I absolutely need to.
0:31:03 Sorry canned soup companies, but there was a study, the study was entitled, canned soup
0:31:07 consumption and urinary bisphenol A, a randomized crossover trial.
0:31:12 I’ll describe a little bit more about what bisphenol A is a little bit later, but bisphenol
0:31:14 A is a known endocrine disruptor.
0:31:20 It mimics estrogen in ways that can activate or block estrogenic pathways.
0:31:25 So it messes up hormone pathways, either by activating them or blocking them.
0:31:30 It can also bind to androgen receptors potentially and cause some issues there.
0:31:34 Bisphenol A or BPA is not a good thing.
0:31:39 Turns out there’s lots of it in the lining of soup cans.
0:31:43 The reason is soup tends to be a little bit fatty.
0:31:47 So even if you get the nonfat soup, it tends to have some lipid in there and it also has
0:31:49 some acidity to it.
0:31:54 And the lining helps maintain the flavor and the freshness of the soup in those cans.
0:31:57 In this study, what they did is they gave people either fresh soup or canned soup for
0:31:59 five days.
0:32:02 Then they did a so-called two-day washout where they took a break from soup and then
0:32:04 they reversed the conditions.
0:32:09 I’ll cut to the chase here because the conclusion of this study is wild.
0:32:14 What they found was that consumption of one serving of canned soup daily over the course
0:32:19 of five days, here I’m quoting by the way, was associated with more than a thousand percent
0:32:25 increase in urinary BPA and bisphenol A. Now that’s urinary BPA, so people are excreting
0:32:26 it.
0:32:27 I want to emphasize that.
0:32:31 But a thousandfold increase in BPA from canned soup, I don’t know.
0:32:34 I’m not alarmist, but I only have to read this once.
0:32:36 Think about my love of canned soup.
0:32:37 Not that great.
0:32:38 Done.
0:32:42 I need some canned soup again unless I’m absolutely starving and I need some soup very, very badly.
0:32:50 My suggestion would be unless you have a powerful reason to consume canned soup, don’t consume
0:32:51 canned soup.
0:32:56 The one caveat being that if you can find canned soup that does not have any BPA, that
0:33:01 is it says no BPAs on the container, well then go at it.
0:33:05 Have as much canned soup as you want, but I should be very clear that a lot of canned
0:33:11 products now say no BPA, but they contain other endocrine disruptors and the amount
0:33:15 of microplastics and nanoplastics in those soups is still unknown.
0:33:21 So part of my hidden motivation of this episode and perhaps the motivation of other podcasters
0:33:24 in the health space that are talking about microplastics now, and by the way, Dr. Rhonda
0:33:29 Patrick did a really wonderful podcast about microplastics just recently.
0:33:30 We didn’t coordinate.
0:33:32 That’s why we both ended up doing it roughly at the same time.
0:33:34 We talked about it afterwards and chuckled about that.
0:33:39 I guess we’re both interested in some of the same themes, of course.
0:33:44 One of the perhaps hidden agendas is that some of these food manufacturing companies
0:33:48 and beverage manufacturing companies will start to include more thorough descriptions
0:33:54 on their labeling of what is and is not contained in the various products such as canned soup
0:33:55 and water, et cetera.
0:34:00 Not just no BPAs, but hopefully some of the other things that are problematic that we’ll
0:34:05 talk about in a moment, such as BPS, which is another endocrine disruptor.
0:34:08 So if you see no BPAs, sometimes there’s still BPS in there.
0:34:09 Okay.
0:34:13 We’ll talk about BPS as well as phthalates, which are something that make plastic and
0:34:16 other containers more durable and more flexible.
0:34:20 And phthalates have been discussed by people like Dr. Shayna Swan, who will soon be a guest
0:34:25 on this podcast and has shown up on other podcasts talking about how phthalates are
0:34:30 known endocrine disruptors in development and likely in adulthood as well.
0:34:35 So I guess my push for you to never consume canned soup again might be a little bit harsh.
0:34:37 That’s just my decision.
0:34:38 Here’s what I’ll do.
0:34:40 I’ll make a bargain with the canned soup companies.
0:34:45 If you all start putting a more thorough description about what is and is not contained
0:34:51 in those soup cans, not just no BPA, but is there truly also no BPS?
0:34:53 Are there no phthalates, et cetera?
0:34:55 Then maybe I’ll make the move back to canned soup.
0:34:59 And of course, most of you have probably heard that you’re not supposed to microwave plastic
0:35:00 containers.
0:35:03 Now you’ll see microwave safe on a number of different containers.
0:35:06 That just means that it’s not going to melt in the microwave.
0:35:11 It does not mean that you aren’t being exposed to microplastics and nanoplastics and BPAs,
0:35:12 BPS, phthalates, et cetera.
0:35:17 So in general, it’s a good idea to avoid putting any kind of plastic into the microwave, at
0:35:20 least if you’re going to microwave food and then consume that food.
0:35:26 The other surprising, at least to me, source of BPAs and BPSs, so these endocrine disruptors
0:35:32 and microplastics and nanoplastics, that’s very robust, is paper cups, goodness gracious.
0:35:36 I would have thought paper cups are safe, but you know those paper cups that you put
0:35:38 hot liquids into and they often have a plastic lid?
0:35:42 Well, even if they don’t have a plastic lid on them, the lining of the paper cup, which
0:35:48 makes those cups durable when you put hot liquids in there, like hot coffee or hot tea, well,
0:35:53 that contains typically, unless it says no BPA and no BPS, it contains lots of BPA and
0:35:56 BPSs, microplastics, nanoplastics.
0:36:00 And so putting hot liquids in there, actually there was an analysis that showed that if
0:36:05 liquid that’s heated up to 100 degrees Fahrenheit is put in those containers, it starts to leech
0:36:12 out, it starts to pull those microplastics, nanoplastics, BPAs and BPS from the cup linings.
0:36:15 So the other day I went across the street and bought a cup of coffee, of course they sold
0:36:19 it to me in a paper cup and I thought, oh goodness, I forgot to bring my mug and my travel
0:36:22 mug, my stainless steel mug or my ceramic mug.
0:36:23 Did I not purchase the coffee?
0:36:25 No, I’d already ordered the coffee.
0:36:26 I didn’t walk back.
0:36:29 What I did is as soon as I got back, I took the coffee and I poured it into a ceramic
0:36:30 mug.
0:36:31 So I’m not extremist.
0:36:34 I’m not somebody who’s going to completely avoid these things, but in the future I’ll
0:36:36 try and remember to bring my mug over.
0:36:38 Some places even give you a little discount on your coffee.
0:36:41 So again, these are cost-saving approaches.
0:36:44 You’re certainly limiting or reducing the amount of waste that you’re creating in the
0:36:48 world so that can only be a good thing, okay?
0:36:53 And the plastic lids, probably a good idea to avoid drinking through those plastic lids
0:36:54 too often.
0:36:58 Again, I want to emphasize I’m not one of these people that’s going to freak out about
0:37:00 drinking a hot liquid through a plastic lid.
0:37:03 These microplastics and nanoplastics are everywhere.
0:37:04 We’re consuming them all the time.
0:37:08 We can remove them from our body and later we’ll talk about ways that you can accelerate
0:37:12 or increase the amount of removal of them from your body.
0:37:16 But if we’re just a little bit more conscious about how they get into our body and we’re
0:37:20 a little bit more conscious about the elevated costs and the elevated amount of trash that’s
0:37:25 going to recycle into landfill and so on, probably a good idea to just bring your mug
0:37:30 with you, your travel mug with you, try and make those mugs and travel mugs ceramic, stainless
0:37:34 steel or some other vessel that doesn’t contain BPAs or BPSs.
0:37:39 Before we move on to talk about what happens when microplastics and nanoplastics make it
0:37:44 into, say, the testicle or the brain, like what the consequences of that is and are,
0:37:49 I want to just briefly return to something that I flew past a while ago and that’s the
0:37:53 analysis of microplastics and nanoplastic particles that are in bottled water.
0:37:57 Remember initially it was thought to be 30,000 particles per liter, then later it was discovered
0:38:03 using better techniques that it’s actually more like 240,000 on average particles per
0:38:04 liter.
0:38:08 How did that huge discrepancy and data arise?
0:38:13 I realize this is not a data analysis discussion, but I want to talk about this just briefly
0:38:18 because it illustrates for you something really important about science, which is as tools
0:38:22 for measurement get better, so does our understanding about what’s going on in our brains and bodies
0:38:26 and it’s a very simple and kind of cool thing related to light.
0:38:31 So you could imagine that the first paper was looking under the microscope at a drop
0:38:38 of water taken from a bottle that was plastic and then imaged the number of little plastic
0:38:39 particles in there.
0:38:42 You’d say, well, there’s a particle and there’s a particle and there’s a particle and there
0:38:45 are tools that can count those particles.
0:38:49 Well, what if you have two particles that are really close together, right?
0:38:53 If you recall, microplastics are anywhere from one micron in diameter all the way up
0:39:00 to five millimeters in diameter, but nanoplastics are less than one micron in diameter.
0:39:04 So how do you know that when you see a clump of stuff under the microscope in that drop
0:39:12 of water that you’re looking at one big piece of plastic versus thousands and thousands
0:39:17 of little pieces of nanoplastic or even just much smaller pieces of microplastic?
0:39:20 Well, it has to do with what’s called the point spread function and I don’t really want
0:39:24 to get into this in too much detail, but basically when you shine light on something, you get
0:39:27 kind of a little hill of light, if you will.
0:39:31 There’s a peak at the center and then it drops off with distance.
0:39:37 The reason why the numbers jumped from 30,000 to 240,000 is not because the researchers
0:39:40 got much better, it’s because the tools got much better.
0:39:43 There are new imaging techniques and I’ll put a reference to this for those of you that
0:39:48 are into this kind of stuff entitled Rapid Single Particle Chemical Imaging of Nanoplastics
0:39:53 by SRS Microscopy, pretty nerdy stuff, but it’s fun if you’re interested in light and
0:39:58 how light can illuminate things and show detail or not detail, but basically what we’re realizing
0:40:02 is that there are a lot more particles of plastic in different tissues, in different
0:40:06 things that we’re ingesting, et cetera, because we’re getting better and better ways of separating
0:40:11 those clumps of light into lots of little clumps of light and realizing, oh, that looked
0:40:13 like one particle, right?
0:40:18 Remember it’s particles per liter, it’s not one particle, it’s 10,000 particles.
0:40:22 Now, you might say, okay, well, what’s the difference between a bunch of little particles
0:40:23 and one big particle?
0:40:25 Ah, there’s a big difference.
0:40:27 What’s the big difference?
0:40:32 Little particles can make it across barriers that big particles can’t.
0:40:37 These little nanoparticles of plastic are especially concerning because those are the
0:40:42 ones that you find in greatest abundance, or I should say, among the plastics that you
0:40:47 find in different tissues, the ones that are in greatest abundance in the brain, the testes
0:40:51 and the follicle, again, these tissues that nature and evolution have gone out of their
0:40:55 way to protect with these very stringent barriers like the blood brain barrier, like the blood
0:40:58 testicular barrier, like the blood follicle barrier.
0:41:01 Those are the ones that are getting across because they’re very, very small.
0:41:05 They can sneak through the little holes in those biological fences.
0:41:08 They’re getting deposited in those tissues, brain, testicle and follicle, and they’re
0:41:14 staying there at least until people die, which in the case of the analysis of postmortem
0:41:17 tissue is many, many decades later, okay?
0:41:21 So I’m not just raising this discussion about ways to disambiguate large particles from
0:41:24 small particles just to be nerdy and technical.
0:41:28 It turns out to be a really important issue with real biological implications.
0:41:29 Okay.
0:41:35 So lots of itty-bitty little pieces of plastic getting their way into tissues like brain,
0:41:39 follicle, testes, liver, lung, et cetera.
0:41:41 What are some of the implications of this?
0:41:46 Now, there are a lot of animal data, data in fish, data in mice, et cetera, that have
0:41:51 explored how microplastics and nanoplastics can disrupt any number of different biological
0:41:58 functions, but it’s probably worth looking at how nanoplastic and microplastic accumulation
0:42:03 in specific tissues is correlated with specific health detriments in humans, even though the
0:42:05 data are correlative, right?
0:42:09 It’s much harder to get causal data from human studies because the animal studies, frankly,
0:42:15 are hard to translate to humans in this case in particular because a lot of the features
0:42:20 of animal biology while similar to human biology, humans are animals, but you get the point,
0:42:24 they don’t correspond so easily when looking at microplastics and nanoplastics for the
0:42:25 following reason.
0:42:29 Let’s say you have a little fish, that fish is a couple centimeters long, and it turns
0:42:36 out there’s, I don’t know, about an aspirin’s size of microplastics and nanoplastics in
0:42:39 that fish when that fish is analyzed postmortem.
0:42:42 You’d say, okay, well, that’s kind of a lot, right?
0:42:49 An aspirin’s worth or an aspirin size batch of microplastics and nanoplastics in that
0:42:53 little fish, and then you look in humans and you realize, okay, well, there’s more microplastics
0:42:55 and nanoplastics, but not that much more.
0:42:58 How much of a detriment is there really going to be?
0:43:01 Can you look at the study in the fish, seeing, for instance, and this has been demonstrated
0:43:06 that you have disruption in neurological pathways, the formation of those pathways, like brain
0:43:09 development is altered, reproductive function is altered, et cetera?
0:43:10 It’s hard to translate.
0:43:13 We don’t really know what it means in terms of humans, so we’ll turn to the correlative
0:43:18 data in humans, and I’ll look to the strongest data, at least that I could find out there,
0:43:21 and there are kind of three major cases that I think are worth highlighting.
0:43:24 The first one is that there was a study done in humans.
0:43:28 This was published in 2021, it was published in the Journal of Environmental Science and
0:43:34 Technology that found much higher levels of microplastics in the stool samples of people
0:43:38 that were diagnosed with irritable bowel syndrome, okay?
0:43:42 Irritable bowel syndrome is very disruptive to people’s well-being.
0:43:45 There isn’t an obvious cure for irritable bowel syndrome, although some people find relief
0:43:50 by improving their gut microbiota, by limiting body-wide and gut inflammation through any
0:43:54 number of different things, improving sleep and eating a low-inflammation diet, et cetera.
0:43:58 This is something that I’ll probably cover in a future episode of the Huberman Lab podcast,
0:44:01 gastrointestinal challenges, that is.
0:44:07 So I want to be very clear, there was no direct causation established, but it was clear that
0:44:14 there were higher levels of microplastics found in the stool tissue coming from people who
0:44:19 had irritable bowel syndrome than in individuals who did not have irritable bowel syndrome.
0:44:23 And while no study is perfect, they included a number of important controls in the experiment
0:44:26 to control for age range and some other features.
0:44:32 So it’s reasonable to assume that the accumulation of microplastics in the gut or somewhere along
0:44:38 the GI tract had somehow led to or related to irritable bowel syndrome.
0:44:41 Okay, now you could also imagine the reverse.
0:44:42 This is very important to understand.
0:44:46 You could also imagine that people who had irritable bowel syndrome perhaps are less
0:44:52 good at filtering microplastics and nanoplastics from the food and liquids they consume than
0:44:54 are people who don’t have irritable bowel syndrome.
0:44:58 So the causality, if it exists at all, could run in either direction or both.
0:45:00 Nonetheless, I think it’s an interesting study.
0:45:04 And if you’re somebody who suffers from gastrointestinal distress, such as irritable bowel syndrome
0:45:07 or otherwise, I think you’d be wise.
0:45:11 Indeed, all people would be wise, but I think you’d be especially wise to take into consideration
0:45:15 some of the to-dos and not-to-dos that I’m covering during today’s episode, such as avoiding
0:45:19 consuming water from plastic bottles, some of the stuff we talked about earlier, avoiding
0:45:25 canned soup and other BPA, BPS containing containers and things of that sort or things
0:45:27 that come from those containers.
0:45:32 The other area where there was some really interesting correlative data relates to reproductive
0:45:34 function and hormone health.
0:45:38 And this is where we can start to get into a bit more detail about BPAs and BPSs and
0:45:44 phthalates and some of their roles in disrupting endocrine, that is hormone pathways.
0:45:49 So there’s a study I’ll put a link to in the show note captions that’s entitled “Uranary
0:45:53 Phthalate Metabolites Are Associated With Decreased Serum Testosterone.”
0:45:57 So that’s in blood in men, women, and children.
0:45:59 This is an interesting study for a number of reasons.
0:46:04 First of all, it emphasizes something that everybody should know, which is that testosterone
0:46:08 plays key roles in men, women, and kids.
0:46:11 It is not the case that testosterone is just present in men and boys.
0:46:15 It’s also present in women and girls, and it plays an important role in everybody.
0:46:19 Okay, it’s involved, of course, in some of the things that we normally associate with
0:46:23 testosterone, such as muscle mass, bone density, strength, et cetera.
0:46:26 But testosterone can be converted to estrogen.
0:46:28 Testosterone is involved in libido in both men and women.
0:46:32 It’s involved in brain development in boys and girls, in genitalia development, and
0:46:33 on and on.
0:46:39 So it’s an important hormone, and it was clear from this study that elevated levels
0:46:45 of phthalates, that is phthalate metabolites, are associated with lower testosterone levels
0:46:47 in all those populations.
0:46:50 They point out, quote, that the strongest and most consistent inverse relationships between
0:46:55 level phthalates and testosterone, that is elevated phthalate metabolites, lower testosterone,
0:46:58 were found among women ages 40 to 60 years.
0:46:59 This is very important.
0:47:05 We saw the episode that we did with Dr. Mary Claire Haver on perimenopause menopause.
0:47:10 She emphasized that perimenopause menopause, which typically sets in somewhere between
0:47:13 one’s late 40s and 60s.
0:47:16 Okay, there’s a huge variation there, sometimes as early as one’s 30s.
0:47:24 That would be early, however, more often in one’s 40s and 50s, sometimes as late as 60s.
0:47:29 Phthalose reductions in estrogen, but also in testosterone, and this has major implications
0:47:35 for creating less feelings of vigor, lowered libido, less recovery from exercise, and other
0:47:37 life stressors and things of that sort.
0:47:42 Now the study also interestingly shows that in, quote, adult men, the only significant
0:47:46 or suggestive inverse association between phthalate metabolites and testosterone were
0:47:49 observed among men 40 to 60 years old.
0:47:51 Now there are a number of different ways that we could interpret those data.
0:47:56 One is that men younger than 40 have high enough levels of testosterone that, or the
0:48:01 ranges of testosterone are great enough in that sample of younger than 40 years old that
0:48:07 somehow that was able to swamp out any reductions in testosterone that were caused by phthalate
0:48:13 metabolites or rather that once men get from 40 to 60 years old, that there’s somehow a
0:48:18 vulnerability of the testosterone pathways to phthalates or, and none of these are mutually
0:48:23 exclusive of course, that the phthalates had built up in those men’s system over a number
0:48:28 of years and then were having their major effects on those men between 40 and 60 years
0:48:29 old.
0:48:32 I do find it interesting that the major effects were observed in both men and women 40 to 60
0:48:36 years old and the interpretation of those data that makes the most sense to me at least
0:48:41 is that there’s a cumulative effect of these phthalates over time that reveals itself at
0:48:46 least statistically in men and women once they reach 40 to 60 years.
0:48:48 So what are these phthalates?
0:48:53 Well, these phthalates are things that are included in plastics that house liquids and
0:48:59 foods that we eat or that we cook with or that simply exist in our environment and are
0:49:02 getting broken down and that we’re inhaling and then are making their way across the blood
0:49:07 testes barrier, follicle barrier or into any number of other tissues.
0:49:11 Those phthalates are there of course to make plastic more flexible and durable but they
0:49:12 are known endocrine disruptors.
0:49:19 Dr. Shana Swan has done beautiful work showing that young animals and potentially humans
0:49:25 who are exposed to phthalates from things like pesticides in particular can actually
0:49:32 have a fairly major disruption in what’s called the inogenital distance, okay, withhold your
0:49:33 chuckles.
0:49:38 The distance between the penis and the anus in people that have been exposed to phthalates
0:49:41 or mothers of boys that have been exposed to phthalates, those boys are born with a
0:49:47 shorter penile to anal distance, okay, typically it’s of a certain distance and there’s a
0:49:54 correlation with reduced inogenital distance that is a external marker, okay, it’s not
0:49:57 that that itself is necessarily a bad thing.
0:50:00 That’s not what we’re saying here but that’s an external marker that can be measured in
0:50:05 mice and there are some studies that are exploring that in humans as well that correlates with
0:50:10 a number of other things including lower sperm counts, reduced sperm motility and things
0:50:11 of that sort.
0:50:16 Sometimes the bisphenol A and BPS are known endocrine disruptors.
0:50:18 I talked about this a little bit earlier.
0:50:22 They’re known to bind to estrogen receptors so they mimic estrogen.
0:50:27 Sometimes they activate those estrogen receptor dependent pathways so they literally mimic
0:50:29 estrogen.
0:50:34 Sometimes they block those estrogen receptors so the estrogen cannot have the normal role
0:50:38 of docking in those receptors and causing their normal functions and BPA and to some
0:50:43 extent BPS and potentially phthalates can dock to androgen receptors as well.
0:50:46 Sometimes referred to as testosterone receptors, androgen receptors.
0:50:51 So the point is that BPAs, BPSs and phthalates are not good for endocrine function and they
0:50:57 are present in basically all plastics unless it says no BPA or all phthalates removed.
0:51:02 They’re present in herbicides, et cetera and they’re of real concern and it’s very
0:51:07 clear as I mentioned earlier that you can detect microplastics in human testes and I
0:51:12 didn’t mention this earlier end in semen and it is now very clear that that’s correlated
0:51:16 with reduced sperm counts and lower sperm motility.
0:51:20 Now I also want to be very clear, remember I’m not an alarmist, I want to be clear that
0:51:25 just because sperm counts are significantly lower in people that have a certain amount
0:51:30 of microplastics and nanoplastics potentially in their testes or that they’ve been exposed
0:51:33 to does not necessarily mean that they’re infertile.
0:51:37 It is true that total sperm count and sperm motility, forward motility being an important
0:51:44 indicator of sperm health are correlated with one’s ability to fertilize an egg.
0:51:49 This was covered in a quite long but quite detailed episode that I did about fertility
0:51:53 in both males and females, their number of things one can do to increase sperm counts
0:51:57 or to at least limit sperm count depletion, their number of things that one can do to
0:51:58 improve sperm motility.
0:52:01 I encourage you to check out that episode, I’ll provide a link to it in the show note
0:52:05 captions, in fact I’ll link to the specific timestamp in the show note captions that gets
0:52:07 to those particular strategies.
0:52:12 But the point here is that microplastics and nanoplastics are found in human testes and
0:52:17 that’s correlated with reductions in sperm count and reductions in sperm motility.
0:52:21 I’d like to take a quick break and thank one of our sponsors, Function.
0:52:25 I recently became a Function member after searching for the most comprehensive approach
0:52:26 to lab testing.
0:52:30 While I’ve long been a fan of blood testing, I really wanted to find a more in-depth program
0:52:34 for analyzing blood, urine and saliva to get a full picture of my heart health, my
0:52:40 hormone status, my immune system regulation, my metabolic function, my vitamin and mineral
0:52:44 status and other critical areas of my overall health and vitality.
0:52:47 Function not only provides testing of over a hundred biomarkers key to physical and
0:52:53 mental health, but it also analyzes these results and provides insights from talk doctors
0:52:54 on your results.
0:52:58 For example, in one of my first tests with Function, I learned that I had two high levels
0:53:00 of mercury in my blood.
0:53:04 This was totally surprising to me, I had no idea prior to taking the test.
0:53:08 Function not only helped me detect this, but offered medical doctor informed insights on
0:53:13 how to best reduce those mercury levels, which included limiting my tuna consumption, because
0:53:17 I had been eating a lot of tuna, while also making an effort to eat more leafy greens
0:53:22 and supplementing with NAC and acetylcysteine, both of which can support glutathione production
0:53:27 and detoxification and worked to reduce my mercury levels.
0:53:30 Productive lab testing like this is so important for health, and while I’ve been doing it
0:53:34 for years, I’ve always found it to be overly complicated and expensive.
0:53:38 I’ve been so impressed by Function, both at the level of ease of use, that is getting
0:53:44 the test done, as well as how comprehensive and how actionable the tests are, that I recently
0:53:47 joined their advisory board, and I’m thrilled that they’re sponsoring the podcast.
0:53:52 If you’d like to try Function, go to functionhealth.com/huberman.
0:53:56 Function currently has a waitlist of over 250,000 people, but they’re offering early
0:53:58 access to Huberman lab listeners.
0:54:04 Again, that’s functionhealth.com/huberman to get early access to Function.
0:54:07 Today’s episode is also brought to us by Eight Sleep.
0:54:10 Eight Sleep makes smart mattress covers with cooling, heating, and sleep tracking capacity.
0:54:14 I’ve spoken many times before on this podcast about the critical need for us to get adequate
0:54:17 amounts of quality sleep each night.
0:54:20 That’s truly the foundation of all mental health, physical health, and performance.
0:54:24 One of the best ways to ensure that you get a great night’s sleep is to control the temperature
0:54:28 of your sleeping environment, and that’s because in order to fall and stay deeply asleep, your
0:54:32 body temperature actually has to drop by about 1 to 3 degrees, and in order to wake up feeling
0:54:38 refreshed and energized, your body temperature actually has to increase about 1 to 3 degrees.
0:54:41 Eight Sleep makes it incredibly easy to control the temperature of your sleeping environment
0:54:45 by allowing you to control the temperature of your mattress cover at the beginning, middle,
0:54:46 and end of the night.
0:54:49 I’ve been sleeping on an Eight Sleep mattress cover for nearly four years now, and it has
0:54:52 completely transformed and improved the quality of my sleep.
0:54:57 Eight Sleep has now launched their newest generation of the Pod Cover, the Pod 4 Ultra.
0:55:03 The Pod 4 Ultra has improved cooling and heating capacity, higher fidelity sleep tracking technology,
0:55:07 and even has snoring detection that will automatically lift your head a few degrees to improve your
0:55:09 airflow and stop your snoring.
0:55:13 If you’d like to try an Eight Sleep mattress cover, go to eightsleep.com/huberman to save
0:55:17 up to $350 off their Pod 4 Ultra.
0:55:22 Eight Sleep currently ships in the USA, Canada, UK, select countries in the EU, and Australia.
0:55:25 Again, that’s eightsleep.com/huberman.
0:55:29 Another study that got people’s attention that I think is worth mentioning, which relates
0:55:33 to microplastics, nanoplastics, and cardiovascular disease.
0:55:36 This was a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2024.
0:55:40 So this is a fabulously good journal.
0:55:46 And what it found was that polyethylene, which is a component of many plastics out there,
0:55:52 were detected in the carotid artery plaques of, in this case, 150 patients, which is approximately
0:55:55 58% of the ones that were included in the study.
0:55:58 And they also found using a technique called electron microscopy.
0:56:01 Today’s fun, because we get to talk about different types of microscopy.
0:56:05 Electron microscopy allows you to look at things that are smaller than a micron.
0:56:09 You can look all the way down into the nanometer range, right?
0:56:13 You can start breaking up that one-one-thousandth of a millimeter into nanometers, and you can
0:56:17 start to see things that are really, really small.
0:56:21 And in this study, electron microscopy showed that there were these jagged-edge foreign
0:56:29 particles among the plaque macrophages of these cardiovascular plaques, okay?
0:56:31 Macrophages are part of the immune system.
0:56:33 These are cells that go in and try and eat things up.
0:56:34 They’re kind of like little ambulances.
0:56:39 Later, we’re going to talk about microglia, which are the brain’s resident microphages
0:56:42 or microfages, depending on where you live and how you like to pronounce it.
0:56:47 The point here is that when using a technique like electron microscopy that allows you to
0:56:51 look at really, really small stuff, it was very clear that the plaques that form these,
0:56:54 you know, basically occlusions within the arteries, these are not good.
0:56:58 This is one of the reasons you want to eat properly and do cardiovascular exercise and
0:57:01 take great care of yourself, et cetera.
0:57:06 Electron microscopy made very clear that there were little plastic foreign jagged particles
0:57:07 deposited in some of these plaques.
0:57:09 Now, were they the cause of these plaques?
0:57:14 Maybe they contribute to some of the occlusion caused by those plaques, unclear.
0:57:20 But it’s reasonable to assume that they form part of the physical substrate that could
0:57:24 occlude blood flow through these arteries, which of course leads to cardiovascular events,
0:57:26 which of course are not good.
0:57:28 So I’ll put a link to this study in the show note captions.
0:57:32 Again, these are correlative studies in humans.
0:57:33 Correlative studies are only that.
0:57:35 They’re just correlative.
0:57:38 But I’m trying to provide a patchwork of things that suggests that it would indeed be a good
0:57:44 idea to try and limit your ingestion or at least facilitate the removal of microplastics
0:57:47 and nanoplastics from your system.
0:57:51 Another reason to do that relates to the so-called PFASs, okay?
0:57:55 These are a group of chemicals sometimes referred to as the quote unquote forever chemicals,
0:57:59 because they are very long standing once they get into your system.
0:58:03 These things have names other than PFAS, which is an acronym.
0:58:08 Things like perfluor alcohol, things like polyfluor alcohol, I don’t know how good my
0:58:13 pronunciation of those is, but if you look up the PFASs, as you’ll see that these things
0:58:17 are known to cause liver damage, they can damage the immune system.
0:58:21 They are considered forever chemicals because they are not broken down.
0:58:23 They last forever.
0:58:27 Then again, some of the other components of microplastics and nanoplastics are also known
0:58:28 to last forever.
0:58:33 So you’re starting to get a picture of these little tiny bits of plastic, some tinier than
0:58:36 others, depositing themselves in our tissues.
0:58:38 They’re everywhere out there.
0:58:42 They are most prominent in certain sources, but they’re going to get into our system.
0:58:44 Now does that mean that we can’t get rid of them?
0:58:45 No.
0:58:46 We absolutely can get rid of them.
0:58:50 In fact, we have a number of different ways that we get rid of toxins and foreign invaders
0:58:51 in our body.
0:58:53 Some of those include the immune system, right?
0:58:57 Even if you have just some sort of foreign object like a splinter, your immune system
0:58:58 has a reaction to that.
0:59:01 Typically, you get some pus around, it’s an inflammation, and that pus and inflammation
0:59:06 is part of the process of isolating that foreign intruder, that splinter, and then eventually
0:59:10 creating some tissues that extrude it or allow you to extrude it.
0:59:14 You of course also have what’s called your adaptive immune system, which doesn’t just
0:59:19 react to the presence of something foreign, but creates antibodies, which can combat that
0:59:20 and so on and so forth.
0:59:25 So your body has these, frankly, miraculous ways of dealing with foreign intruders of
0:59:31 different sorts, but it does seem that microplastics and nanoplastics can deposit themselves in
0:59:33 their tissues and stay there.
0:59:35 Does that mean that you don’t have any chance of getting them out?
0:59:36 No.
0:59:38 You have a liver.
0:59:42 Your liver, yes, contains microplastics and nanoplastics, very likely if you’ve been alive
0:59:47 for any amount of time, but it also has what’s called phase one and phase two detoxification
0:59:52 processes that allow you to break down and get rid of certain foreign products, including
0:59:54 microplastics and nanoplastics.
0:59:58 So let’s talk about liver detoxification and some of the things that can facilitate liver
1:00:01 detoxification that you actually have control over.
1:00:02 Okay.
1:00:05 So let’s talk about liver detoxification.
1:00:06 The liver is such a cool organ.
1:00:08 It does so many cool things.
1:00:11 It’s not just about detoxification, by the way.
1:00:14 It does all sorts of things related to blood clotting.
1:00:16 It’s just an amazing, amazing organ.
1:00:20 We should probably do an entire episode about the liver and not just eating liver.
1:00:21 I’m not a fan of eating liver.
1:00:27 I do it every once in a while because I’m told it’s nutritious, but let’s talk about
1:00:29 the living functioning liver.
1:00:33 There are two types of liver detoxification processes.
1:00:34 Okay.
1:00:35 This is not about detoxing your liver.
1:00:36 Okay.
1:00:37 You may hear about detoxing your liver.
1:00:42 That’s a whole other discussion that I don’t want to get into, at least not here.
1:00:43 There’s type one and type two liver detoxification.
1:00:44 Okay.
1:00:49 There’s type one, so-called phase one liver detoxification is also called the oxidation
1:00:50 phase.
1:00:52 It involves something called cytochrome P450 enzymes.
1:00:53 Okay.
1:00:57 So enzymes are involved in the breakdown of different things.
1:01:02 It converts toxins into less harmful components that ideally are excreted from the body.
1:01:03 Okay.
1:01:06 Type two or phase two liver detoxification.
1:01:09 Again, this is not detoxification of your liver.
1:01:15 This is detoxification by your liver is also called the conjugation phase of detoxification.
1:01:19 It involves enzymes that attach molecules to toxins.
1:01:20 Okay.
1:01:26 It makes those toxins water soluble and easier to excrete from the body in the form of urine.
1:01:27 Okay.
1:01:30 It neutralizes reactive intermediates from phase one.
1:01:31 Okay.
1:01:36 Phase two detoxification work together during phase two of liver control detoxification is
1:01:42 where toxins are broken down and those broken down components are prepared to be removed
1:01:43 from the body.
1:01:44 Okay.
1:01:51 It is thought that the liver plays a primary role in the removal of microplastics and nanoplastics,
1:01:56 BPAs and BPSs and by the way, I realized I didn’t say this earlier and I should have.
1:02:02 These BPAs and BPSs are sometimes chemical components within the microplastics and nanoplastics.
1:02:06 They sometimes attach themselves to the microplastics and nanoplastics.
1:02:07 I should have said that earlier.
1:02:08 Forgive me.
1:02:14 The microplastics and nanoplastics can act as what are called vectors or carriers of things
1:02:18 like BPAs, BPSs, phthalates and forever chemicals.
1:02:19 Okay.
1:02:20 I should have mentioned that earlier.
1:02:26 So type two, that is phase two of liver control detoxification is where these toxins that
1:02:32 are in the body and potentially these microplastics themselves and nanoplastics themselves are
1:02:36 not necessarily broken down because some of those things can’t be broken down, but where
1:02:38 they are prepared to be excreted from the body.
1:02:43 And we have some degree of control over phase two of liver controlled detoxification.
1:02:49 Again, I’m calling it liver controlled detoxification so that this doesn’t get misconstrued as
1:02:54 detoxing your liver, which frankly is a very controversial topic and may not be possible
1:02:55 at all.
1:02:58 Although simply by saying that I’m probably going to get attacked, but here we’re just
1:03:02 talking about your liver’s ability to break down and remove things from your body that
1:03:05 you frankly don’t want in your body.
1:03:10 One way that you can enhance phase two liver control detoxification processes is by increasing
1:03:15 your intake of something called sulforaphane, which is present in cruciferous vegetables
1:03:18 such as broccoli and cauliflower.
1:03:24 Now is there enough sulforaphane in cruciferous vegetables such that you could eat reasonable
1:03:28 amounts that you wouldn’t have to overeat cruciferous vegetables in order to get this
1:03:32 enhancement of phase two liver detoxification processes?
1:03:33 Potentially yes.
1:03:36 The animal studies that were carried out, so this would be in rodents like rats, used
1:03:41 supplemented sulforaphane at dosages that were comparable to the amounts of sulforaphane
1:03:48 that a human might ingest from a large serving of broccoli or a large serving of cauliflower.
1:03:53 So this could be a few cups of raw broccoli or raw cauliflower, although frankly, if you’re
1:03:56 like me, that basically translates to gastrointestinal distress.
1:04:00 I can’t tell you how many times I’ve gone to a party and there’s some like, you know,
1:04:03 broccoli and cauliflower or maybe with some dip or something like that.
1:04:06 I usually avoid the dip because I’m not really into dips, but we’ll have a few pieces of
1:04:08 broccoli and boy, does that disrupt my gut?
1:04:10 I don’t know about you.
1:04:11 And most things don’t disrupt my gut.
1:04:14 That’s not something that I struggle with.
1:04:17 I prefer to cook broccoli and to cook cauliflower.
1:04:22 If you cook broccoli and cauliflower lightly, okay, so you don’t just, you know, turn into
1:04:23 a complete mash.
1:04:27 You don’t boil it such that a lot of the nutrients are leached out into the water around it.
1:04:31 So if you do sort of a light boil or a steam or something like that, or you pan, pan cook
1:04:35 it, maybe in some olive oil, this is making me hungry by the way, you’ll still maintain
1:04:40 the sulforaphane in those cruciferous vegetables, meaning it’ll still be beneficial to you.
1:04:43 Now some people, including me, don’t tend to eat that many cruciferous vegetables.
1:04:44 I don’t know why.
1:04:47 I just somehow don’t make it a point to shop for them enough.
1:04:49 I ought to.
1:04:54 For people like me, or perhaps you’re in the same boat, you can supplement with sulforaphane.
1:04:58 And what you’ll find is that it’s sold by various companies and it’s available at a
1:05:00 quite wide range of dosages.
1:05:04 You’ll see, for instance, two products similarly priced.
1:05:07 One product will contain 50 milligrams of sulforaphane.
1:05:11 The other product will contain 225 milligrams of sulforaphane.
1:05:16 Now if you go to what I consider a really excellent website for thinking about and evaluating
1:05:20 this kind of stuff, which is examine.com, I’ve talked a lot about this site on the podcast
1:05:22 before.
1:05:28 On examine.com, they talk about the translation of the rodent studies to humans, and here’s
1:05:29 what they say.
1:05:36 They say supplementation of 0.1 to 0.5 milligrams per kilogram of sulforaphane in rats has been
1:05:39 noted to be bioactive, just bioactive.
1:05:44 They’re not getting specifically at removal of microplastics or nanoplastics.
1:05:48 And they translate that to a human dose of, okay, if you’re a 150-pound person, then that’s
1:05:54 going to be anywhere from 1.1 to 5.5 milligrams for that 150-pound person.
1:05:57 If you’re a 200-pound person, that’s approximately my weight.
1:06:02 I think right now I’m sitting somewhere around 215, so about 100 kilograms, 215, I don’t
1:06:03 know, somewhere in there.
1:06:05 I’ve been stood on a scale in a while.
1:06:09 It’s 1.5 to 7.2 milligrams for a 200-pound person.
1:06:14 Now then you think about the typical dosages that are found in supplements of 50 milligrams
1:06:19 per serving versus 225 milligrams per serving, and in either case, you realize that that’s
1:06:22 much, much higher than what’s being discussed here.
1:06:29 So what that says to me is that I would probably go with the lower dosage, although, according
1:06:33 to examine.com, they say, quote, “These low quantities are likely attainable through
1:06:36 Rob Broccoli or cruciferous vegetable products,” so that’s great.
1:06:40 What this means is that you don’t need to supplement with sulforaphane if you’re willing
1:06:41 to eat Rob Broccoli.
1:06:46 They’re specifically saying Rob Broccoli or other cruciferous vegetable products, while
1:06:49 higher dosages may be further beneficial.
1:06:51 So this is still a bit of a vague space.
1:06:54 I realize there’s some discrepancies in what I’m describing here.
1:06:57 I said you could lightly cook the broccoli or cauliflower.
1:07:03 That’s my read and understanding of sulforaphane, that it’s not broken down at low temperatures,
1:07:06 but perhaps you just decide to eat it raw if you can bear it.
1:07:08 I can’t, so I don’t.
1:07:14 You could supplement it if you choose what dosage, well, that depends on your weight,
1:07:18 and it seems that in any case, most supplements are going to more than cover the amount of
1:07:23 sulforaphane that’s described here, translated from the rat studies.
1:07:29 So in my case, after researching this episode, I opted to start taking 50 milligrams, 50
1:07:33 milligrams of sulforaphane per day, and see how that goes.
1:07:38 I guess it’s fair to say that I’m sufficiently concerned about microplastics and nanoplastics,
1:07:40 given that I’m 49 years old.
1:07:43 All my biomarkers seem fine, but hey, I’m always interested in doing something for my
1:07:46 health or to promote my health, that is, if I can.
1:07:52 And it’s pretty clear to me that if one’s thinking about liver control detoxification,
1:07:59 both for sake of offsetting or removing BPAs, BPSs, but also other potentially toxic metabolites
1:08:04 from microplastics and nanoplastics and other environmental factors that taking 50 milligrams
1:08:08 of sulforaphane per day, perhaps can be beneficial.
1:08:10 So I don’t think it’s necessary for everybody.
1:08:14 In fact, I think everybody should probably be getting some cruciferous vegetables in
1:08:17 their diet anyway, at least once a week or a couple times a week.
1:08:20 So if you’re not interested in supplementing, that would be the route to go.
1:08:24 If you are interested in supplementing, I’ll provide a link to this particular location
1:08:29 in the examine.com page so that you can translate some of these dosages to your potential sources
1:08:32 of supplemental forms of sulforaphane.
1:08:38 The other way that microplastics and nanoplastics can be excreted from the body is in the bowel.
1:08:43 And one way to potentially increase the amount of microplastics and nanoplastics, BPAs, BPSs,
1:08:49 phthalates, and forever chemicals, those PFASs from your body is to make sure that you’re
1:08:51 getting enough dietary fiber.
1:08:56 Now, most people can do that simply by eating a fair amount of fruits and vegetables, which
1:08:57 I always make a point to do.
1:08:59 I also ingest starches, okay?
1:09:00 So I’m not pure carnivore.
1:09:05 I think it’s like rice, like oatmeal, I like fresh pastas, although it’s mainly rice and
1:09:09 oatmeal for me these days in terms of starches, plenty of fruits and vegetables.
1:09:11 That’s something that I just really make it a point to do.
1:09:13 Why is fiber good at doing this?
1:09:16 Well, it can bind lipophilic molecules, okay?
1:09:21 It can bind molecules that are able to cross cell membranes.
1:09:26 And earlier we were talking about the fact that BPA and BPSs mimic estrogen and combined
1:09:30 estrogen receptors and potentially to androgen receptors as well.
1:09:36 Keep in mind that one of the reasons why those so-called steroid hormone pathways, I know
1:09:39 people hear the word steroid and they think performance enhancing steroids, but no, turns
1:09:44 out that testosterone and estrogen are both steroid hormones.
1:09:47 One of the reasons those are interesting is that because of their structure, they’re able
1:09:52 to bind cell surface receptors and have effects on those cells.
1:09:56 And they are also able to pass through the hormones, okay, here I’m not talking about
1:10:02 BPAs and BPSs, but the hormones testosterone and estrogen can actually get to the nucleus
1:10:07 of cells and can control gene expression.
1:10:12 These steroid hormones, testosterone and estrogen work in a very coordinated fashion to create
1:10:16 what we call secondary sex characteristics, which are the characteristics of the external
1:10:23 body and brain changes and internal changes all over the place, right, ovaries, testes,
1:10:26 et cetera, that are what underlie what we call puberty.
1:10:31 And that’s because these molecules can actually control gene expression.
1:10:35 So when we talk about these molecules like BPAs and BPSs impacting these pathways like
1:10:39 estrogen and androgen pathways, this is serious stuff because what you’re doing is you’re
1:10:44 potentially activating or blocking pathways that are involved, not just in the function
1:10:48 of those cells, but actually the genes that those particular cells express.
1:10:53 And this is particularly concerning for any kind of hormone dependent cancers, right?
1:10:57 It’s perhaps not surprising to you based on what you now know about how hormones work
1:11:02 with gene expression, et cetera, that many tissues that turnover cells a lot, such as
1:11:08 the testes, right, producing sperm pretty much throughout the lifespan, the follicle
1:11:14 and eggs, right, breast tissue, right, these are common sites of cancer, okay, there are
1:11:18 other cancers that can form of course in other tissues like the pancreas and brain, et cetera,
1:11:23 but tissues that turnover quite a bit because of the involvement of the cell cycle and because
1:11:27 cancer is among other things, a dysregulation of the cell cycle and an overproduction of
1:11:29 cells that we call tumors.
1:11:34 Those are pathways that are particularly vulnerable to endocrine or hormone disruption.
1:11:38 And this is why there’s additional concern about microplastics and nanoplastics, perhaps
1:11:44 increasing cancer rates in particular in tissues like the ovary in particular, the testes in
1:11:48 particular, any tissue where there’s a lot of cellular turnover.
1:11:54 So the point here is that eating broccoli, eating cauliflower, potentially supplementing
1:11:57 with sulforaphane, here I’m summarizing a bit what I talked about earlier, avoiding
1:12:03 drinking water from plastic bottles, maybe getting a reverse osmosis filter, avoiding
1:12:08 those diabolical canned soups, I had no idea about these canned soups, or ensuring that
1:12:11 the canned soups that you’re eating are safe in the ways that we discussed earlier, avoiding
1:12:16 sea salts, avoiding, I’m throwing a few other things in here that I haven’t mentioned yet,
1:12:21 avoiding nonstick pans, trying to cook mainly with cast iron or ceramic and making sure
1:12:24 that those are BPA, BPS and PFAS free.
1:12:28 Just look at the packaging, do a little bit of homework there and get this one.
1:12:33 This is a really surprising one, or at least was surprising to me, carbonated water, mineral
1:12:34 waters.
1:12:38 A few years ago, there was an analysis of different popular forms of carbonate water
1:12:42 which is sold in glass containers.
1:12:50 It turned out that Topochico, which I happened, past tense, happened to love, Topochico had
1:12:56 9.76 particles per trillion of these PFAS, these forever chemicals.
1:13:05 That was an analysis done in 2020, Perrier 1.1, San Pellegrino 0.31.
1:13:14 We’re comparing 9.76 versus 1.1 versus 0.31, which tells me I’m avoiding Topochico, I might
1:13:19 even avoid Perrier, I’ll probably drink San Pellegrino, I’ll probably buy a Perrier and
1:13:23 drink a Perrier every once in a while, I’m not crazy about carbonated water.
1:13:28 By the way, this was an analysis by Consumer Reports, and it caught some attention such
1:13:34 that the Coca-Cola company, which makes Topochico, said that they were going to fix this problem,
1:13:38 and they claimed, I don’t know if they’ve done this, I don’t want to get the folks at
1:13:44 Coca-Cola angry with me, Coca-Cola claimed that by 2023 they were going to cut the amount
1:13:50 of these particles in half, but that would still make them 4.5 parts per trillion, still
1:13:53 much higher, at least four times higher than any of the other brands.
1:13:58 So I have to be direct, I’m just speaking from my own experience and choices, until
1:14:06 I see data that Topochico has reduced the amount of these foreign contaminants to basically
1:14:07 less than 0.31.
1:14:12 I’m going with San Pellegrino or Perrier, I don’t tend to drink a lot of mineral water,
1:14:16 but given that you’re ordering it in the glass, in a glass container that is, given that these
1:14:21 things are not particularly cheap, and that you have choices, you could either decide
1:14:26 to avoid carbonated water altogether, or if you’re going to be smart about it, you probably
1:14:30 want to avoid the ones that contain more of these foreign contaminants, because of their
1:14:34 ability to get lodged in different tissues in your body, so that was very surprising
1:14:40 to me that you would have these forever chemicals in carbonated water, what it tells us is that
1:14:48 the water going into those products contains either microplastics, nanoplastics, PFAS from
1:14:53 other sources or something, and so I think that we should all be aware of this.
1:14:57 If you’re going to drink carbonated water, probably going with a Perrier or San Pellegrino
1:15:01 would be better than going with Topochico, because even though they’ve halved the amount
1:15:04 of these forever chemicals in there, it’s still quite high.
1:15:10 Okay, so I’ve mentioned some to-dos to reduce your microplastic, nanoplastic, PPA, BPS, and
1:15:16 PFAS exposure, such as ingesting cruciferous vegetables, potentially supplemented with
1:15:20 sulforaphane, trying to avoid drinking out of plastic water bottles, there are a few
1:15:21 other things.
1:15:27 I’ll just list off here, keep it relatively short, talked about making sure you’re getting
1:15:32 enough dietary fiber, I talked before about using a glass or steel vessel and reverse
1:15:37 osmosis water, using Himalayan salt, avoiding sea salt.
1:15:41 The other thing that you can do, oh, and I mentioned using cast iron and ceramic as opposed
1:15:46 to nonstick cookware whenever you can, and if you’re going to microwave food, making
1:15:51 sure that you’re doing that on plates or in containers that does not or do not contain
1:15:55 plastic of any kind, even if it says microwave safe.
1:15:58 The other thing is to sweat.
1:16:05 We vastly underestimate or downgrade the power of sweating.
1:16:06 Sweating is an incredible mechanism.
1:16:11 Now, I realized that as soon as somebody says, “Sweating is a great way to remove toxins
1:16:15 from the body,” that a bunch of people out there get really inflamed, pun intended.
1:16:16 I’m not saying that.
1:16:21 What I am saying is that there are a number of different ways for foreign products to
1:16:27 leave the body, including urine, feces, but including sweat.
1:16:29 I’m not saying that’s going to detox you completely.
1:16:31 That’s not what I’m saying.
1:16:32 I don’t fall into that camp.
1:16:38 However, there are a number of beneficial aspects to sweating, and also there are a number
1:16:40 of beneficial aspects to doing the things that make you sweat.
1:16:45 I’ve done entire episodes about deliberate heat exposure, so things like sauna done anywhere
1:16:50 from once a week to four times a week, pretty impressive data in terms of reducing all-cause
1:16:53 mortality, improving cardiovascular function.
1:16:55 It’s also, for most people, pretty pleasant to sit in a sauna.
1:17:00 If you don’t have access to a sauna, taking a hot bath, not so hot that you burn yourself,
1:17:04 but a hot bath that also will activate some of these same pathways.
1:17:08 Things like hot yoga, things like going out for a run in a hoodie.
1:17:14 Trying to get your body to sweat pretty robustly at least once a week is a good idea for all
1:17:17 sorts of reasons, also just your ability to thermoregulate.
1:17:20 By the way, for those of you that don’t sweat much, sweating is actually something that you
1:17:21 can get better at.
1:17:22 That’s right.
1:17:25 You can get better at sweating by what?
1:17:28 By sweating, by exposing yourself in safe ways to heat.
1:17:31 I talk about that in the deliberate heat exposure episode.
1:17:33 We also have a newsletter on deliberate heat exposure.
1:17:40 I’ll put links to those in the show note captions, and those explain safe ways to encourage sweating.
1:17:41 Why am I talking about this?
1:17:46 Well, sweating may help remove some of the things that are attached to microplastics
1:17:48 and nanoplastics that can act as endocrine disruptors.
1:17:52 It’s very, very unlikely that the microplastics and nanoplastics would actually be removed
1:17:54 as whole particles in sweat.
1:17:57 I think that’s very unlikely, frankly.
1:18:01 What’s more likely is that the microplastics and nanoplastics aren’t really getting removed
1:18:04 from or broken down within our body at all.
1:18:07 They’re getting lodged in these different tissues, but the stuff that’s on them and
1:18:13 in them is potentially causing some of the biological harms that we’ve talked about.
1:18:17 Removing those more robustly is what sweating is about.
1:18:21 That’s what consuming cruciferous vegetables is about, and so on and so forth.
1:18:23 Those are a few more to-dos.
1:18:29 The other two don’ts, or I should say don’ts, are things like avoiding consumption of packaged
1:18:31 food or food that’s packaged in plastic.
1:18:33 This is tough to do.
1:18:34 I love berries, for instance.
1:18:35 I love blueberries.
1:18:37 I’m what you call a drive-by blueberry eater.
1:18:41 If there’s blueberries in a bowl, I just kind of like sweep them up by the fistful.
1:18:44 So if there are blueberries on the counter, you’re probably not getting very many.
1:18:47 I’m getting most of them.
1:18:51 I love blueberries, but I noticed that I was starting to accumulate, and of course I recycled
1:18:55 those blueberry containers that are those plastic containers.
1:19:00 One way that you can avoid plastic packaging is go to farmers markets, bring your own bags,
1:19:01 bring your own baskets.
1:19:03 I love that at the farmers markets, they have those cardboard containers.
1:19:06 Of course, some of you may be shouting, “Wait, but those are colored green, and the coloration
1:19:11 is a problem,” and they have the microfibers with the — true, but probably better than
1:19:16 plastic containers that they use now in the grocery store for pretty much every fruit and
1:19:17 vegetable.
1:19:22 So the solution is either at the farmers markets or trying to bring your own bags to the grocery
1:19:23 store.
1:19:27 I know this is starting to sound kind of hippie-dippy, but these little things make a big difference
1:19:28 over time.
1:19:29 You’re reducing your plastic waste.
1:19:33 You’re reducing the amount of plastic exposure of the fruits and vegetables you eat.
1:19:36 This can correspond to a real difference in the number of microplastics and nanoplastics
1:19:40 and the bad stuff that comes with them that you ingest.
1:19:45 And again, most of the time, these things are going to save you cost as opposed to introduce
1:19:46 new costs.
1:19:52 The other don’ts that we haven’t talked so much about are to reduce the number of clothes
1:19:53 that you purchase.
1:19:55 I know this might seem like, “Oh, my God, where’s this all going?”
1:19:59 But it turns out that one of the major sources of microplastics and nanoplastics are the
1:20:05 microfibers on clothing that come off in washing machines that then get distributed into the
1:20:09 oceans through the water or that escape into the air.
1:20:11 There are a number of ways that you can trap those.
1:20:14 There are the things like the guppy bag that you can, I love the name, the guppy bag that
1:20:16 you can buy at pretty low cost.
1:20:19 You can find those easily online that will trap some of that stuff.
1:20:22 There are filters that you can put within specific washing machines.
1:20:26 Some places actually require this now and that capture those microfibers.
1:20:29 These microfibers, when I first heard about them, I thought, “Oh, goodness, we’re really
1:20:31 talking about microfibers in clothing.”
1:20:33 Well, just, I don’t know, we’re 100% cotton clothing.
1:20:38 But then you find out, because I read this book, this scary book, and it was scary.
1:20:43 It does kind of bum you out when you start reading this stuff that when you read a poison
1:20:47 like no other, how microplastics corrupted our planet and our bodies, you find out that
1:20:52 so much of the waste that exists in landfills is clothing that people have discarded and
1:20:54 there was nothing wrong with that clothing.
1:20:58 The clothing has dyes, it has little microfibers, the stuff gets into the environment, gets
1:21:00 into the oceans.
1:21:03 Here’s the simple solution to all this.
1:21:08 It turns out that we replace far more clothing than we need to.
1:21:14 This is actually a great relief to me because I love few things more in terms of clothing,
1:21:15 anyway.
1:21:19 The feeling of a t-shirt that I’ve worn many, many times and it’s really, really soft and
1:21:20 kind of worn down.
1:21:24 That kind of distressed look t-shirt, even though that might be fashionable to some people,
1:21:25 to some people it’s not.
1:21:30 I love the feeling of a really worn down soft t-shirt, even the ones that have a little
1:21:34 bit of jagged toothing along the collar.
1:21:35 Some people might loathe that.
1:21:39 They only want the pristine t-shirt that is super crisp.
1:21:40 That’s not me.
1:21:44 I know I own a few of these black button down shirts and indeed the same ones, I use them
1:21:45 over and over again.
1:21:49 I do own a fair number of them, but I use the same ones over and over again.
1:21:52 I think that’s in keeping with this other recommendation, which this book, A Poison Like
1:21:57 No Other, said could make a major dent in the amount of microplastics and nanoplastics
1:22:01 that are out there in the environment that we end up ingesting and that the other animals
1:22:06 on the planet who are so very important end up ingesting and potentially suffering from.
1:22:11 That’s to simply not buy or replace so much of our clothing, but to reuse our clothing.
1:22:15 Now, the argument has been made and they counter in the book.
1:22:18 Well, then you’re just going to wash the same clothing over and over.
1:22:22 You’re going to break down those microfibers and introduce those dyes and things into the
1:22:27 ocean, et cetera, into the air, but it turns out that when you reuse the same clothing
1:22:32 and wash it over and over again, you actually see a diminishment in the amount of microfibers
1:22:36 and the amount of dyes and things that you extract from those clothing over time.
1:22:41 So now, in some odd way, we’re talking about clothing purchases or non-purchases in this
1:22:46 case on the Huberman Lab Podcast, but in researching this episode, I discovered that
1:22:52 these are a major source, if not the major source of microplastic and nanoplastic particles
1:22:56 in the environment and landfills, ocean air, et cetera.
1:23:01 So while none of us, I believe none of us are going to go out there and create a tire that
1:23:05 doesn’t degrade as quickly as current tires, most of us don’t have the capacity to do that.
1:23:06 Let’s face it.
1:23:10 We got to get around in vehicles, all those tires breaking down, not a whole lot we can
1:23:11 do about that.
1:23:16 We’re inhaling all that stuff, but we can make the decision to use the clothing that
1:23:18 we’ve got for longer periods of time.
1:23:22 Is it really necessary to keep buying more and more clothes and replacing the old clothes,
1:23:25 throwing out the old clothes or even donating those old clothes?
1:23:26 Who knows?
1:23:31 I’m all for donating clothing after you’re done with it, but now I have justification for
1:23:36 just keeping the t-shirts that I have, making them softer and softer and softer over time.
1:23:41 And I should mention that, of course, when you wear clothing that is shedding these microfiber
1:23:48 particles, you’re ingesting or rather, you’re inhaling more typically the microfibers and
1:23:53 the microplastics and the nanoplastics and all the bad goodies that go with them.
1:23:57 As I say that, I think we need to be fair about what that means and what it doesn’t mean.
1:24:01 I personally just don’t see myself going around and looking at labels, finding only 100% cotton
1:24:06 with no microfiber shedding, no dyes, et cetera.
1:24:09 I mean, there are a lot of things that are now introduced to even 100% cotton clothing
1:24:12 that make them a little bit more water and stain resistant.
1:24:16 It’s very, very difficult to find such sources of clothing.
1:24:20 I know they’re out there, but they’re very difficult to find and they’re quite costly
1:24:21 in many cases.
1:24:24 If you happen to know of some true low-cost versions of those things, please put those
1:24:29 in the comment section on YouTube, but I think we have to be realistic here.
1:24:31 Plastics were introduced in the 1950s.
1:24:33 They are everywhere.
1:24:34 They are in our clothing.
1:24:35 They are in tires.
1:24:36 They are in medical devices.
1:24:38 They’re just everywhere.
1:24:42 The point of this discussion today is not to try and eliminate plastics.
1:24:43 I don’t think that’s reasonable.
1:24:47 I don’t even think that would be useful relative to the incredibly powerful use of plastics
1:24:50 in just about every industry.
1:24:52 There’s always a trade-off with these sorts of things.
1:24:53 I acknowledge that.
1:24:58 What I’m talking about is trying to limit your exposure and trying to buffer yourself
1:25:03 against this bioaccumulation in ways that can protect your endocrine system, protect
1:25:07 your brain, protect your cardiovascular system, protect your liver, protect the organs and
1:25:12 tissue systems of your body so that you can thrive as much as possible.
1:25:15 There are some other not-to-dos or things to avoid.
1:25:18 Microwave popcorn turns out to be a major source of these things.
1:25:24 Basically any bag or container can bag or plastic that has a lining that prevents oily
1:25:28 stuff from staining it and getting through, such as microwave popcorn, very likely is
1:25:33 a source or I should say a rich source of microplastics, nanoplastics, and endocrine disruptors.
1:25:36 Does that mean that if you have some microwave popcorn every once in a while that’s going
1:25:40 to screw up your estrogen or testosterone system and make you infertile, no, I don’t
1:25:41 believe that.
1:25:47 These things are all a matter of dosage, exposure over time, and so on.
1:25:51 Toothpaste and plastic tubing, another rich source of microplastics, nanoplastics that
1:25:53 people ingest, of course, because you’re putting it in your mouth.
1:25:57 When I did the oral health episode, I talked about some tooth tablets.
1:25:58 I’ve become quite fond of these.
1:26:02 I have no financial relationship to the company that makes these, but these are tooth tablets
1:26:07 that include something called hydroxyapatite, which is great for the remineralization of
1:26:10 teeth because it turns out your teeth can fill in little cavities that start to form
1:26:11 and overall tooth health.
1:26:15 It’s also great for travel because first of all, these things come in a glass jar, so
1:26:16 no plastic.
1:26:19 You take the tooth tablets and you just chew them up and then you brush your teeth.
1:26:23 It’s great because you don’t have to worry about how many ounces is going through the
1:26:29 screening process at the airport because it’s not a liquid, it’s not a paste, it’s a tablet,
1:26:30 they’re super convenient.
1:26:31 I love those.
1:26:33 I’ve got a link to those in the show note captions, even though I have no relationship
1:26:34 to the company.
1:26:37 I’m just a big fan of that sort of thing, the convenience and the fact that it’s housed
1:26:39 in glass.
1:26:44 But as I say all this stuff, avoiding drinking out of plastic.
1:26:47 Don’t turn over your clothing so much.
1:26:53 Wash your clothes, but don’t purchase and throw away clothing too much or more than is necessary.
1:26:55 Avoiding sea salt, these kinds of things.
1:27:01 These are all just choices for you in the buffet of options of ways to reduce your microplastic
1:27:08 nanoplastic ingestion and exposure and the bio accumulation of those things over time
1:27:12 and to increase in the case of things like sulforaphane and sweating, et cetera, and to
1:27:16 increase the detoxification and removal of some of the more harmful products attached
1:27:20 to or within these microplastics and nanoplastics.
1:27:26 I certainly don’t expect anyone, including myself, to start living a life free of microplastics
1:27:27 and nanoplastics.
1:27:29 To do that, you’d probably have to leave planet Earth.
1:27:33 I know certain people are developing plans to enable us to do that, even if we’re not
1:27:34 astronauts.
1:27:38 And frankly, when you get out to Mars or you get it into outer space, those microplastics
1:27:43 and nanoplastics, based on everything I’ve learned and how incredibly sneaky, small and
1:27:47 pervasive they are, well, they’re probably in outer space as well.
1:27:52 Now the final thing I want to touch on is the potential role of microplastics and nanoplastics,
1:27:56 BPAs, BPSs, and forever chemicals on the developing brain.
1:28:01 And this is an area that I’m very familiar with because much of my career, I’ve focused
1:28:03 on brain development, neural development.
1:28:10 And one can find a lot of papers out there about the potential neurotoxicity of micro
1:28:15 and nanoplastics, certainly the established neurotoxicity of microplastics and nanoplastics
1:28:22 and animal models and the potential neurotoxicity of those things in human tissues.
1:28:26 Now of course, because this animal literature and some correlative human literature have
1:28:32 been out there for a while, the media and some people in particular have become concerned
1:28:37 about and have mentioned the potential role of microplastics and nanoplastics and the bad
1:28:43 goodies that attach to them or come from them in potentially causing neurodevelopmental
1:28:47 disorders such as autism and ADHD.
1:28:49 I want to be very clear.
1:28:50 I went into this literature.
1:28:51 I read this review.
1:28:52 It’s a quite nice review.
1:28:57 The plastic brain neurotoxicity of micro and nanoplastics.
1:29:02 And sure, there’s a lot of animal literature showing, for instance, that there’s a disruption
1:29:06 in certain enzymatic pathways within neurons, in particular, and this is the one that intrigues
1:29:09 me the most, a disruption in what’s called acetylcholine esterase.
1:29:15 Acetylcholine is a neuromodulator involved in neuroplasticity, in attention, among other
1:29:20 things, levels of alertness, a number of things, including control of the so-called neuromuscular
1:29:25 junctions that allow for us to move our limbs.
1:29:29 Acetylcholine esterase is involved in the degradation, the breakdown of acetylcholine
1:29:30 in the synapse.
1:29:34 So neurons release acetylcholine into the synapse where it can have an effect on muscle or can
1:29:39 have an effect on other neurons, if we’re talking about within the brain, and indeed,
1:29:43 there’s a fair amount of evidence showing that microplastics and nanoplastics are correlated
1:29:48 with reductions in or just changes in acetylcholine esterase activity.
1:29:52 Now it is true that where acetylcholine is released in the brain, it can impinge on dopamine
1:29:58 circuits that are involved in reward pathways and movement, but I want to be clear.
1:30:04 People have taken some of those findings, translated them to the correlative data in humans, and
1:30:09 have started to link the presence of microplastics and nanoplastics, in their words, not mine,
1:30:14 in their words, to neurodevelopmental disorders such as autism and ADHD.
1:30:19 And while there is some evidence that some of the behavioral components or cognitive
1:30:27 components of autism and ADHD may increase in line with increases in microplastic or
1:30:32 nanoplastic exposure, the data there are still, in my opinion, very, very weak.
1:30:37 So in my opinion, it’s far too early to conclude that microplastics and nanoplastics have any
1:30:43 role and certainly not a causal role in the development of autism or ADHD or other neurodevelopmental
1:30:44 disorders.
1:30:50 That said, the presence of microplastics and nanoplastics in placenta and in that first
1:30:54 stool from babies, which shows us that those microplastics and nanoplastics are getting
1:30:59 into the developing fetus, well, that does, I think, raise level of concern, and it certainly
1:31:04 should motivate pregnant women as well as people who have newborn kids or are going
1:31:09 to have kids to look around their home environment, think about the things they’re putting into
1:31:13 their body or the vessels they’re using to ingest liquids, to ingest foods, and to start
1:31:20 limiting microplastic and nanoplastic exposure, certainly during but also perhaps before pregnancy
1:31:23 and after pregnancy when one is breastfeeding.
1:31:27 So the point here is that we can’t draw a direct relationship between microplastics and
1:31:29 nanoplastics and neurodevelopmental disorders.
1:31:32 I don’t think it would be appropriate at all to do that.
1:31:38 However, given that microplastics and nanoplastics have these issues both from their own breakdown,
1:31:42 their presence, their own structural presence can be a problem, the chemicals within them
1:31:47 can be a problem, the chemicals that attach to them can be a problem potentially.
1:31:54 I think learning to limit our exposure throughout our lifespan, learning to reduce the bioaccumulation
1:31:58 through detoxification and excretion pathways using the various approaches that we talked
1:32:03 about, and certainly to pay extra attention to those things around the time of, meaning
1:32:09 before, during, and after pregnancy is especially important because we just don’t know all the
1:32:13 things that these chemicals and these plastics are doing, but none of them seem to be very
1:32:19 good, at least not in terms of the ways that they impact our brain and bodily tissues.
1:32:23 Okay, so today we’ve talked a lot about microplastics.
1:32:27 What they are, where they’re found, how they get into our body, where they get lodged within
1:32:33 our body, what they potentially do in our body, none of which is good.
1:32:36 Some might be innocuous, some might be bad, none of which, at least as far as I know,
1:32:45 is good, and some ways, both through some to-dos and some to-avoids, that we can increase our
1:32:51 excretion or our breakdown and removal of the bad stuff on and in microplastics and
1:32:58 nanoplastics, and I realized that even though we covered a lot of things, we also just scratched
1:32:59 the surface.
1:33:05 For instance, we know that receipts are rich sources of BPAs, okay?
1:33:11 So if you are somebody who handles receipts a lot for your job, probably best to use nitrile
1:33:16 gloves, okay, not latex gloves, but nitrile gloves, those are going to protect your hands.
1:33:20 If you’re somebody who purchases things, maybe just say, “No thanks, I’ll take the electronic
1:33:21 receipt or no receipt.”
1:33:25 Okay, however, we need to be reasonable here as well.
1:33:28 Does this mean that if you touch a receipt that you’re going to screw up your testosterone
1:33:29 or estrogen?
1:33:33 No, but you probably don’t want to be rubbing those receipts, and it’s very clear that
1:33:37 if you use sunscreen or lotions of any kind on your hands, you handle receipts, it can
1:33:40 increase the access of those BPAs to your bloodstream.
1:33:43 If you’re somebody who handles receipts a lot, well then, probably best to use those
1:33:44 nitrile gloves.
1:33:50 The point here is that there are a lot of different sources of these BPAs, BPSs, PFAS,
1:33:52 so-called forever chemicals, microplastics, nanoplastics.
1:33:54 I also would just encourage you to do your research.
1:33:57 Look at the cans that you drink from.
1:33:59 Ensure that they don’t include BPAs.
1:34:02 Look at the different things that you cook within your kitchen.
1:34:06 Try and cook from cast iron or ceramic, and if you don’t, look at the other pans and cans
1:34:11 and things in your environment and see what your likely exposure to these BPAs, BPSs and
1:34:15 forever chemicals is and make choices accordingly.
1:34:18 That’s what today’s episode and frankly, this podcast is about.
1:34:22 It’s about you being informed and making the best choices for your mental health and physical
1:34:23 health.
1:34:26 If you’re learning from and/or enjoying this podcast, please subscribe to our YouTube
1:34:27 channel.
1:34:29 That’s a terrific zero-cost way to support us.
1:34:34 In addition, please subscribe to the podcast on both Spotify and Apple, and on both Spotify
1:34:37 and Apple, you can leave us up to a five-star review.
1:34:41 Please check out the sponsors mentioned at the beginning and throughout today’s episode.
1:34:43 That’s the best way to support this podcast.
1:34:47 If you have questions for me or comments about the podcast or guests or topics that you’d
1:34:51 like me to consider for the Huberman Lab podcast, please put those in the comments section
1:34:52 on YouTube.
1:34:53 I do read all the comments.
1:34:56 For those of you that haven’t heard, I have a new book coming out.
1:34:57 It’s my very first book.
1:35:01 It’s entitled Protocols, an operating manual for the human body.
1:35:04 This is a book that I’ve been working on for more than five years and that’s based
1:35:07 on more than 30 years of research and experience.
1:35:13 It covers protocols for everything from sleep to exercise to stress control protocols related
1:35:15 to focus and motivation.
1:35:21 Of course, I provide the scientific substantiation for the protocols that are included.
1:35:25 The book is now available by presale@protocallsbook.com.
1:35:27 There you can find links to various vendors.
1:35:29 You can pick the one that you like best.
1:35:33 Again, the book is called Protocols, an operating manual for the human body.
1:35:37 If you’re not already following me on social media, I am Huberman Lab on all social media
1:35:38 platforms.
1:35:42 So that’s Instagram, X, formerly known as Twitter, Threads, Facebook, and LinkedIn.
1:35:47 And on all those platforms, I discuss science and science related tools, some of which overlaps
1:35:51 with the content of the Huberman Lab podcast, but much of which is distinct from the content
1:35:52 on the Huberman Lab podcast.
1:35:55 Again, that’s Huberman Lab on all social media channels.
1:35:59 If you haven’t already subscribed to our neural network newsletter, our neural network newsletter
1:36:04 is a zero-cost monthly newsletter that includes podcast summaries as well as protocols in
1:36:07 the form of brief one to three page PDFs.
1:36:13 Those protocol PDFs are on things like neuroplasticity and learning, optimizing dopamine, improving
1:36:16 your sleep, deliberate cold exposure, deliberate heat exposure.
1:36:21 We have a foundational fitness protocol that describes a template routine that includes
1:36:25 cardiovascular training and resistance training with sets and reps all backed by science and
1:36:28 all of which, again, is completely zero cost.
1:36:33 To subscribe, simply go to HubermanLab.com, go to the menu tab up in the upper right corner,
1:36:35 scroll down a newsletter and provide your email.
1:36:38 And I should emphasize that we do not share your email with anybody.
1:36:44 Thank you once again for joining me for today’s discussion all about microplastics and nanoplastics.
1:36:48 And last but certainly not least, thank you for your interest in science.
1:36:53 [MUSIC]