In this episode, we highlight how exposure to chemicals can affect our pets and how we can link back to ourselves.
Happy Endometriosis Awareness Month, uterinekind! To celebrate, we have an exciting 'Uterus in the News' segment all about endo. Amazing research out of Japan is showing promising signs of combating this debilitating condition that impacts 1 in 10 people. Research like this gives us hope and direction. But we need to see more funding for research on female bodies.
Are you an animal lover? We can learn a lot from our furry friends, more than you could probably imagine. Whether you’re a dog or cat person, we have a story that will hit home and highlight some important lessons for both you and your pet. Do you feed your pet kibble? Are you aware of how your pet’s system works? What does all this have to do with a uterus? We’re talking about chemicals, yet again.
Yes, even our pets deal with chemical exposure and EDC's. When you can see how your pet reacts to its environment and food over time, you can start to connect the dots on its health and reflect on your own. We want healthy pets so they stay happy and with us longer, but they need us to be healthy too.
Lastly, we end on a hilarious high note! Ever heard of a 250-pound dog?
Thanks for listening, learning, and being you. And join us back here every Tuesday for all things uterus, in service to you, uterinekind.
We can wait for the science to catch up and acknowledge that chronic conditions are on the rise in step with an increase in our chemical exposure. I'm Carol Johnson and this is Hello Uterus.
I had a conversation with a pet store owner about five years ago, and it changed how I live my life. It had to do with Cat. And it has to do with your health, but first uterus in the news,
it's endometriosis awareness Month should be all year. , but really glad for this month and we have some exciting news from Japan on a treatment for endometriosis that isn't a reformulated birth control pill. Scientists found that endometriosis tissue contains elevated levels of a gene called i L eight, which produces an inflammatory protein called interleukin dash eight or IL dash eight.
This made them wonder. Whether blocking I L dash eight could reduce the inflammation associated with endometriosis and slow or even reverse its progression. To find out, the researchers developed an antibody called a M Y 1 0 9 that inhibits i l dash eight and in animal studies, it has proven to be effective at halting the spread of lesions and improving the inflammatory environment that is so bad for our bodies.
This is really exciting news. It also illuminates how important funding research on the female body is. As of now in the United States, 1% of health research and development funds are directed toward female specific. Issues and the female body that are non-cancerous, if you include cancer research, that funding goes up to four to 5% of our overall budget for federally funded health r and d, four to 5% if you wanna include cancer.
There are a ridiculous number of conditions that. Or only impact the female body. And I'm about at the end of my rope dealing with like, you know, the crumbs, the pennies that are tossed our way. We deserve research. And also ps. By funding this research, other understandings will come through that will benefit the male body as well, if that always needs to be.
But for goodness sake, it's 2023. Can we please fund research of the female system? In Japan, they have, and we may have an answer for the one in 10 people living with endometriosis, which is a debilitating, devastating, horrible, horrible disease that is wildly underdiagnosed and wildly undertreated. So kudos to Japan, will keep an eye on this.
And before we dive into the rest of the podcast, I just wanna ask you if you would please subscribe to Hello Uterus and write a review. If you find the content helpful, inspiring Shareworthy, your support helps our podcast grow and reach those who need this crucial health information. Wherever you listen, please head there and like follow, review, and.
We are so grateful for your support and we'll continue to shine a CLE freaking spotlight on female health. Now we're gonna take a quick break and we'll be right back with a story about a cat that helped me connect the dots on chemicals.
Follow the Uterine Kind team and me over on Instagram and TikTok at Uterine Kind.
My cat had undiagnosed chronic diarrhea for his whole short life. Walter was his street. When we adopted him from nine lives, a phenomenal no-kill shelter in the Bay Area. Walter wasn't like the other cats, most of whom were short-haired cats with their life on the street visible in their side eye. You definitely kept some space between you and these cats.
There was a sign on Walter's Cat condo and it said, I've been brought back three times. He didn't have free rain. He needed to stay locked up. I thought it was to protect him from the bruisers, because let's face it, Walter looked soft, far too soft for the streets. He was a long-haired gray and white Casanova with big bedroom eyes.
I asked if I could hold him , which you know is just the beginning of the end. That began our love affair. We christened him, maestro, and he set out controlling the three of us. My two children and I as if we were the violins, maestro had problems and those problems didn't happen on the streets. He was raised by a cat hoarder.
30 cats in a San Francisco Flat Nine lies. Described his issue as not wanting to go in the litter box, and I thought, well, how difficult can that be? We can fix that, but that wasn't the issue. The combination of stress and diet destroyed his system. Stacey owned a pet store in my town and she taught me in 10 minutes why dry cat food is bad for cats.
I told her about having maestro and how difficult it was to support his digestion and to try to stop this chronic diarrhea, which. I knew had to have been making him so uncomfortable in addition to robbing him of any nutrients that he desperately needed. And Stacy introduced me , you know, at this late stage in my life, back to the idea of evolution.
And she described in just a few minutes how cats' bodies operate. Their intestinal tract is really short. And so in order for them to get. They need to eat food that is packed with fluid, but the fluid can't be liquid. That can be very easily passed through their system. It needs to remain in their digestive tract and in their stomach long enough so that the fluid can be extracted.
And do you know that that is how cats get hydrated? They don't hydrate from drinking. Cats who obsessively drink water are telling you that they're dehydrated and the drinking of the water will not hydrate them because that's not how their bodies are built to access hydration. She also pointed out that they can't process chemicals.
and that in pet food there are multitudes of chemicals, even in the pet food, that people pay ridiculous amounts of money for that, you know, on the bags it says natural and, and no additives and meat comes first, and all of that stuff. It's, it's not accurate. You can just do a quick search on lawsuits against pet food companies to find.
Exactly how detrimental these additives can be to their bodies. And then she finally finished up by telling me that in order for cats to extract the nutrients that they need to remain healthy, this food needs to be slowly digested, not rapidly broken down and excreted. But slowly digested and that the cat's bathroom habits should reflect those of cats that live in the wild.
In other words, their poop should look more like scat and less like human poop. I was like, oh my gosh. Of course, connecting the dots. When I hike on the trails and I see the bobcat scat, it always looks like hair and weird stuff, and like I could pick it up with my hands and it wouldn't be gross. I mean, maybe just a little gross, but not like really gross.
Not as gross as picking up a poo in a litter box that's like, looks like a human poo. It was a remark. Eye opening conversation, but it occurred too late for Maestro. His body failed at age eight, and this should never have happened through a stroke of holy What? My kids and I were at the store next to the pet store and jokingly asked the cashier if they had any kittens for sale.
This was just a month after losing Maestro, and while I thought I might not ever be able to have another cat that could replace him, I of course was desperate to find a cat. And she, she laughed and she said, no, we don't sell cats here. But my mom has two kittens for adoption. Low and behold thinks and Aries.
Two of the most finest, incredible fe lines ever to walk the earth. And we can say that about. All of our cats, big scenarios are now five years old. They eat a raw food diet. This is not dangerous. You can get raw food, frozen raw food that's made for cats. You can also make little sliders of raw food and freeze it yourself, which is.
Obviously less expensive. And the raw food includes things like cartilage and various things that they would get if they ate, for example, a mouse. And on top of that raw food, I shave a freeze dried chicken liver because they need toing. And toing is not. In the raw food and that's it. That's how I feed them.
I defrost a couple sliders. I make sure they're warm, just like it was a fresh kill. , and then I shave some freeze-dried chicken liver on top and they chow down. What I witnessed was remarkable. I have had cats all my life. If they weren't hit by a car, which some of them sadly were one cat died from ingesting a mouse that had eaten poison.
Every one of my other cats, and there were numerous cats in my life, died from a chronic condition like hyperthyroidism or kidney problems. Things that, you know, I just assumed cats got. Cats. Don't just get hypothyroidism. Cats in the wild don't get hypothyroidism. These are endocrine disordered diseases, right?
Starting to connect the dots. I began to connect the dots. I don't have to brush. Spinks and Aries teeth at five years old, their teeth are shiny, white and zero plaque. Their mouths don't smell, their breath doesn't smell. They have no thyroid issues and their poo get this. It looks like scat and it too does not smell.
The only time their litter box smells is if, because I forgot to clean it. The two of them share one litter box. And it doesn't smell. They eat what their bodies are designed to eat. In the case of cats raw food, that includes all the yummy bits that come when one hunts and eats like a cat. And if one is a cat, then that is how it needs to roll.
The thing that's wild is they rarely drink water. The only time they drink water is when the season changes from winter to summer, and it gets almost overnight, very hot, and I don't have air conditioning. And so they ingest more fur if I'm not on top of brushing them. And as a result, they eat less food and then their body instructs them to seek out hydration.
But other than that, they can go weeks without ever touching the fresh water that I put down every day for them because they get hydrated by their food. Bing Cary's fur is as shiny as a polished mirror. I've never had two cats that look so ludicrously beautiful all the time. So where am I going with this cocktail?
pun intended, not even really intended. But let's make it sound that way. I'm going straight to chemicals and processed everything. Over the last several weeks, we have been hearing stories continuously in the news about chemical exposure from the East Palestine chemical spill and the subsequent explosion of those train cars that covered the East Palestine area in dangerous, toxic chemicals, some of which we don't even know.
because when chemicals are exploded, they, they form other chemicals. And getting at the science of this is going to be really hard because the railroad will try to prevent it and, and the E P A may try to prevent it, but the chemical exposure there is a major problem that's going to continue. Could be for decades, a whole lot of chronic conditions for which we have no known cause.
Are being associated with these chemicals. Fibroids associated with the chemicals and hair straighteners, endometriosis associated with endocrine disrupting chemicals, getting at a causal link, being able to directly link chemicals to P C O S and endometriosis. Those are time consuming studies that cost a fortune and the chemical industry doesn't want us to connect the do.
There's a whole lot of people not feeling well, a whole lot of people not feeling well, complaining of being tired, brain fog, skin issues, reproductive issues, infertility, irregular periods, heavy periods, having to cover up skin issues with makeup to hide what they consider to be flaws, but may actually be a sign of a body outta balance.
And the gut punch in all of this is that we have a petrochemical industry that is wildly under-regulated. I wanna introduce you to an acronym that should make your toes Curl grass, g r a S. It stands for generally regarded as safe. You'll find that acronym. Or that phrase repeated throughout research on chemicals generally regarded as safe
What the, what the hell does that mean? You know, generally regarded as safe, unless we're talking, you know, about the endocrine system or the reproductive organs. And in that case, we don't really know because it's not been tested on reproductive organ. Certainly not female, and in most cases, not male either.
Generally regarded as safe as a loop. That enables petrochemical companies and manufacturers of products that use their raw ingredients to get a chemical or a product past the E P A and the F D A, if they even need to go in front of the F D A. Generally regarded as safe is nonsense because the amount of research that's been conducted on the female reproductive system and the things that are sending it wildly out of whack is almost non exist.
Pretty hard to get ahead when you only put 1% of available funding toward Understanding the female system makes me nauseous to think about the disparity there, and it also has me questioning that if, if the Equal Rights Amendment was in fact enshrined to the Constitution, would we then be able to demand equal funding?
I mean, it just doesn't make any sense that, that it's okay, that it's just like, you know, the state of things that only 1% of available research and development funding for human health goes to the female body when we make up half the population. And also when it has been proven that our endocrine system in reproductive organs are more sensitive to chemical exposure.
And if you're a guy listening to this and trying to find a reason to care, I have one word for. Prostate, consider your. Consider the rise in prostate cancer. We are living in a toxic soup of chemical exposure and we're being gas lit. That all is well at Uterine Kind. We talk all the time about connecting the dots, and that is the purpose of our symptoms Tracking and diary app.
It helps you spot the issues, see the trends, and connect the dot. And we jam it full of education so that you can be an authority on these topics because without you being an authority in that doctor consultation, you are at the whim of the opinions and the knowledge of that particular doctor. And this is not meant to disparage doctors.
The conditions that impact females are often treated in silos and people aren't connecting the dots. Medical education has a lot to do with it. Bias has a lot to do with it. And also the way our, our gynecologic healthcare system is structured has a lot to do with it. So while we talk about conditions and diagnostics and treatments, and we get to hear from experts on this show.
There's this one thing that tugs at me daily, and that is that all of us together still lack access to research on the impact of environmental factors, mainly chemicals on our endocrine system and reproductive organs, and we are exposed to these toxins daily. Some of us are exposed to well over a hundred chemicals daily if you live near any.
Manufacturing facilities, or if you work in any manufacturing facilities, even if you work in a hospital, honestly, if you work in a hair salon, if you work in a nail salon, uh uh, there's not very many places today that could be considered relatively safe from a endocrine disrupting chemical standpoint, are inundated with them.
We're inundated with. They are everywhere. And we are also seeing an accelerated rise in chronic conditions that are endocrine associated. So we as people and patients need to be coming at this issue from a common sense perspective. While we wait for science to bypass lobbyists and get to studying the impact of chemicals on the female body, you know, when I think about all of the chemical exposure that's out there, I wonder is it possible that our bodies are capable of effectively metabolizing the hundreds of chemicals that we are exposed to each day without any damage to our organs and systems?
Like what is the likelihood. I'm going with not at all likely, and that's why I told you about Walter a k a maestro because his little body. Was not able to metabolize the chemicals that he was exposed to in the really cheap cat kibble food that he was fed for the first five years of his life. And stress also complicated his life and exacerbated the conditions that he was dealing with.
I imagine he probably had a lot of inflammation. I don't even know what he died. The doctor said that his heart was enlarged and that it just gave out. Could have been anything. I didn't. I just took him home and buried him. I didn't do an autopsy cause I didn't need an autopsy. You know, at that point in time I didn't need an autopsy.
And then certainly since raising bank scenarios for the last five years and seeing how they. With zero health issues. Binx has thrown up once because she ate a piece of a plant and it scared her so much. She jumped back three feet. These cats, like they, they just, they have no issues and I believe it comes down to eliminating.
The exposure to chemicals because their bodies have not evolved to eat like a human on a bad diet, and our bodies have not evolved to be able to metabolize the hundreds of chemicals that we are exposed to. I told you about grass, the acronym that is super problematic. That is a loophole that enables companies to get products passed in 162 days and for a hundred thousand dollars.
You got 162 days and a hundred grand, you too can come up with a chemical and get it through the epa. . But the E P A then responds to their directive to study these chemicals and especially chemicals that are known or su suspected to be endocrine disruptors. And the E P A comes back and says, well, that's just really expensive.
And it's like, it's so long to do that, it'll cost $1 million a chemical and it'll take six whole years to do that research. So wait a second, so I can get a chemical approved. Use in personal care products or food or whatever with a hundred grand in 162 days. So it's, it's totally easy to approve the chemical, but it's really hard to study if it's toxic.
this is, we are living in some backwards times, but. It doesn't take having an MD or being a scientist, having a PhD, being a toxicologist, it doesn't take that level of education and experience to connect the dots. Our bodies are telling us that what we're doing to them, Isn't comfortable isn't working.
It's causing an imbalance in our systems and that results in chronic conditions. Chronic conditions don't just sprout up like mushrooms on a forest floor. There is a cause. Our bodies are, are like perfect machines. They're incredible. They're actually way more incredible than perfect machines because they're, they're infused with so many different things that a machine lacks.
One being a heartbeat and life and a brain, and a personality, and a soul, and a right to live a high quality of life without being. Poisoned. It is unlikely that we have evolved to tolerate toxic chemicals and when, when we consider what the E P A suggests is a level at which exposure is safe and doesn't cause harm, that's at the individual chemical level.
What about considering layered exposure to multiple chemicals, some of which can create additional chemical? Our bodies in metabolizing these chemicals create additional chemicals that that may or may not be problematic in our bodies. We haven't evolved to metabolize them. According to the Cleveland Clinic, the most common reasons for chronic inflammation include autoimmune disorders such as lupus, for which there is no known cause, and where your body attacks healthy tissue body doesn't do that unless there is a reason.
and other reasons for chronic inflammation are, get this one. Exposure to toxins like pollution or industrial chemicals, and then untreated acute inflammation, right? So if you get an infection or an injur injury and it's not treated, then that can become really problematic. But when you look at something like endometriosis, Which is an inflammatory disease.
It's a very comfortable common sense leap to make from toxic exposure to toxic levels of exposure to pollution and industrial chemicals and. Endometriosis, an inflammatory condition, fibroids directly linked to these chemicals. Chemicals in hair straightening products create fibroid growth. Lots of these conditions for which there are no known root causes are inflammatory, so I am begging you.
I am literally begging you. I would get down on my knees if I wasn't afraid that it would be difficult for me to reach the mic here and beg you. I'm begging you. Look at your exposure. Toss plastic bottles. Don't use them. Toss your Nalgene, toss plastic bottle, you know, single serving plastic bottles. Use stainless steel and cast iron for cooking.
Get rid of plastic spatulas and plastic tools for stirring your pasta water and, and get this. I just learned this this week and I connect dots every day. I learned something new every day. I learned this past week that you should not. Put salt in boiling in water that you boil to cook pasta, and you should also not bring it to a boil with the lid on, and you wanna know why?
Because when you leave the lid off, chemicals in the tap water can be boiled out, which is better for your health. But using salt, especially salt with iodine in it creates a chemical reaction that creates chemicals that aren't good for. So don't add salt to your boiling water. They recommend that you just salt your pasta afterwards.
If you wanna have a little sprinkle of salt in your pasta, go for it. Or Parmesan cheese, because that has a little salty taste to it. But don't boil water with a lid on it. You want those chemicals to be released from the water. You don't wanna ingest them. The layers of chemical exposure are really important to consider, and eliminating them.
It's not. It's really not, especially when you understand what they can do to your body, which is the one thing that you need to stay on this planet. So it's super, super important for us to be connecting the dots while we wait for science to catch up. I am so, so grateful that you are with me on this.
Together we can come up with really easy ways to eliminate chemical exposure, and then we can also hold organizations accountable like the E P A for keeping things safe for us. I mean, it's just, it's enough. It's enough of profits over human health. It's enough of. Needing 5,000 products in a grocery store that are all supposed to be considered food and, and none of them are.
They're like, you know, a pinch of wheat flour and then 5,200 chemicals that make it taste like something. Yes, I'm thinking about Fruit Loops right now. So we can do better. We have to because the, these conditions are outta control. And guess what? The healthcare system isn't gonna be able to handle it when the cases of diabetes are, are too double.
In the next several decades, our health system will be devastated, so let's not get there. Let's just get really loud and demand research and demand that companies be held accountable and that the E P A actually do what it's supposed to do, which is investigate these chemicals, not cozy up and trade kisses with the petrochemical industry.
Okay, we need ending on a high note more than ever. And this one is hilarious, so stick around. We'll be right back.
Boy, this brings a whole new meaning to the plea. Mom. Dad, I want a puppy in China, in rural China. Thank goodness a family adopted a dog. And it was just the cutest puppy, fluffy, big feet, just a fuzzy white chest and black shiny hair, and this cute face and these little ears. And it was just the cutest fluffiest puppy you have ever seen.
And then it grew up to be a bear
I can't, oh my gosh. The family called the police after the puppy, which they raised for two years as a puppy. I'm gonna have a hard time not, I'm not gonna be able to get through this story. They've raised this bear as a puppy. I'm serious. And, and then it packed on 250 pounds . And they were like, yeah, I, I don't know.
I don't think this is a dog, dad. It was not a dog. Instead, it was a rare and threatened Asiatic black bear. These black bears are so cute. They look like if you've ever seen a dog called a bvi, Which I had one. They also look like bears when they're puppies and they have black shiny hair and they have a white patch of fur on their chest.
And this. Puppy slash bear looked exactly like that. Only bigger, really big and just cute as a button. And I can't help but thinking like this is one of those like Disney stories or something where if I was the child in that family, I would be thinking about my puppy slash bear for the rest of my life and I would be desperate to connect back to that puppy bear and go on living our fabulous, happy life together as kid and puppy bear.
And of course, you know, the bear would probably eat me and. You . And actually in most Disney stories, you know, bad stuff happens to the women anyway, so it would fit right into that. But you know, I really would just feel like, oh, can we have this reunion where like, I run up to the, to the edge of the woods and I hear rustling deep in the woods.
And then I hear the thunderous beating of hooves as this giant Asiatic black bear runs and scoops me up and licks my face. And you know, cuz I raised. Puppy bear as a puppy for two years, we've all had an animal. I mean, you have an animal for two days and you are just, you are stitched to the hip of that creature for the rest of your life and beyond or the rest of its life and beyond.
So I feel really bad for this family, but what what a hilarious and, and potentially frightening situation. And I just wonder like, did any of their friends, I mean I, they lived in rural China, which can be very rural, but like did friends come over and be like, Hmm, yeah. I don't know. I just, it's maybe a bear, not a dog.
Did you ever think of that? Cause you know how like dogs develop that like dog butt and this, this one just developed the. Fair, but so cute. So be careful. Make sure that when you adopt a puppy, that it is in fact a puppy. So thank you for listening. To Hello Uterus to this episode where hopefully I am able to help you connect the dots on the importance of eliminating our exposure to toxins because our human body has not evolved in order to metabolize them, and it's something that I learned with the help of maestro.
Rest in peace. Dude, you were the best cat. Until Big Aries and, and just be, you know, continue to take excellent care of yourself. Really. You deserve it. You deserve it. It's not punishment. It is like, it feels so good to make good choices for our bodies. So I wanna thank Angel for producing this podcast and Marielle and the whole team back at Uterine Kind.
We are now in the Google Store and we are still awaiting apples green light. Although everything will be fine, it just takes them a little bit of time. So hopefully this week you can download the Uterine Kind app@uterinekind.com. It's device agnostic. You can even use it on your library computer. And the reason to download it is because now more than ever, it is crucial.
That we have our own medical record of our symptoms. We need this data in our doctor appointments as evidence of our experience. And we may also need it in a court of law, and that's really unfortunate, but it's the direction that we're gonna have to take in order to take a stand. Against toxic chemicals in our food, water, air, and our personal care products and other products that we use.
So definitely check out uterine kind.com and you can follow us on at Uterine Kind on TikTok. It is a very engaged community there and we take some quick, deep dives into very cool stuff. And we are also at Uterine Kind on Instagram. We'll be back next week with another episode of Hello U. Till then be well, be cool, be kind.
The Hello Uterus podcast is for informational use only. The content shared here is not used to diagnose or treat any medical condition. Please ask your physician about your health and call 9 1 1 if it's an emergency. And thank you uterine kind for listening.