Daily Tip #20 Hidden Toxins in Plastic Containers
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VARSHA: [00:00:00] You could be eating clean, working out, and sleeping well. But if you're still heating food in plastic, you may be sabotaging your hormones without even knowing it. Today, I'm exposing the hidden toxin in your kitchen that could be hijacking your energy, your fertility, and your metabolism.
Plastics aren't just storage containers. They are made with chemicals called BPA, phthalates and xenoestrogens . These are substances that literally mimic your body's natural hormones, particularly estrogen. The problem with plastic containers is that these chemicals from the plastic can leach into the food, even if you are just storing it in the fridge, if you heat your food in a plastic container in the microwave or pour hot food in the plastic dish or leave a water bottle out in the heat, then this can amplify the amount of chemicals that leach into your food or drink.
When you eat or drink out of these containers, you're also intaking those chemicals.
They go through your digestive tract and because they chemically look similar to natural estrogen, they can actually bind to your estrogen [00:01:00] receptors.
Because your estrogen receptors can't tell the difference between your natural estrogen and the fake plastic imposter. F rom a functional medicine standpoint that can lead to estrogen dominance. In women, this can cause heavy cycles, PMS mood swings and even infertility. For men, it can lower testosterone because it disrupts the estrogen testosterone balance leading to gynecomastia,
fatigue, brain fog, and decreased muscle stamina. Your other hormones can also get disrupted over time with chronic exposure to these chemicals in the plastic, leading to thyroid disorders, insulin resistance, weight gain, fertility struggles, and even certain cancers,
Here's the hopeful part. Your body is resilient. When you cut back on exposure, your liver and detox systems start clearing out these disruptors. Your hormone balance can begin to reset. Your metabolism will start working for you again, and you'll start to see some of the weight come off if you've been struggling with that.
And the easiest first step is ridiculously simple. That leads me to today's daily habit challenge, [00:02:00] and that is to not heat your food or beverage in plastic. Use a glass container instead to heat your food in the microwave.
I realized that a lot of glass containers have plastic lids, but just leave that plastic lid off.
You also want to be mindful that you're not leaving plastic water bottles in the car, or just avoid drinking out of them. Get a stainless steel or glass water bottle instead because when you leave a plastic water bottle and if it's hot outside, it will cause more chemicals to spill into your water or other beverage.
You also wanna avoid washing the plastics in the dishwasher because the heat from the dishwasher can also release some of those chemicals, so even if you use them later, more can leach into your food.
If you have a bunch of plastic containers and it's not doable for you to replace all your plastic containers with glass, make sure that you let food cool down before you put them in the plastic containers. J ust empty out the food [00:03:00] from the plastic container before you heat it again. and I realize if you do have glass containers, that they can start to be heavy, especially if you have several containers of food that you take for lunch, but just think of it as muscle building.
Even if you don't avoid plastics elsewhere, just avoiding heating your food can really make a dramatic difference. Because every little s tep you can take, can count. It's impossible to avoid plastics a hundred percent in the world we live in today, but every little reduction in exposure really will make a huge difference because it reduces your overall daily toxin load.
I hope this was helpful. Leave a rating or review as that helps my podcast be more discoverable to other people so they can benefit from these daily habit challenges. Please follow, subscribe. Thanks for listening or watching, and Have a Fantastic Day!
