Reducing Endocrine Disruptors in Your Life or The 8 S's of Xenoestrogen Warfare by Send_Nasty_Stuff
Andrew Anglin recently wrote an article about not using soap. I do use soap but for roughly 2 years have been experimenting with ways to reduce plastics and other endocrine disruptors from my daily routine.
This might be a little off topic but I'd like to share out some of my daily hygiene, eating, and cooking/storage routines for people that are looking into this topic.
Ironically what started me on this little journey was a 4chan post from a guy that suns his taint and balls every morning for 20 minutes. I was laughing my ass off thinking it's a troll but someone in the thread recommended Bronze Age Pervert. I started reading his tweets/book and also listened to his podcast. The episode that sent me deeper down the rabbit hole was #14 titled 'Political Conservationism'. Here's the link. Amazingly BAP's initial Caribbean rhythms episodes are still on youtube. I think it's because the thick accent and tangential nature of his podcasting tone is difficult for jannies to wade through and sniff out wrong think (which is probably by design). I strongly recommend BAP's podcast even if his accent and pace is a little difficult to listen too.
For my post I'm going to borrow a structure from this article but will modify it a bit and give my own thoughts and experiences.
Sun
Let's start with the easiest way to improve your health. Get more sun. "The Industrial Revolution and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race." We as modern humans living in the socially engineered industrial west are chronically low on vitamin D. Vitamin D from food is not as potent as sun exposure. If you are very fair skinned aim for two spaced out 10 minute exposure sessions a day. You can double that if it's winter and a low UV index. After a week you can do 20-30 minute sessions and not really experience any burning. Personally I only sun on weekends because of my work schedule but I've worked up to 2 60 minute sessions each weekend day and I have no burning (and I'm very pale skinned naturally). Do not shower immediately after sunning. Do not use sunscreen or tanning products. You can wear a hat and sunglasses but I would recommend no shirt and short shorts or nude if possible. You need as much skin exposure as you can get. Yes this will slightly age your skin but much less if you avoid burning.
Steel
Next one is also an easy one. Work out. Use weights, kettle bells, olympic rings. Aim for full body movements (squat, push up, pull up, running, bench, dead lifts, kettle bell swing, overhead press, Turkish getup). I won't go into excessive detail here because many other posts have been written about this.
Steak
Eat more meat, organ, animal fat, and bone marrow. Make sure you eventually work on improving the sourcing (where it’s from and how it’s grown/raised). Ground elk meat or venison is better than corn fed atrazine laden cows. Wild Salmon is better than farmed Salmon. Free range eggs from bug fed chickens are better than caged industrial eggs from corn fed chickens. However, when you first start eating more meat and less grain don’t overwhelm yourself with too many decisions. Improving food sourcing takes time, research and money and it’s something you should approach slowly. Be careful with ‘organic’ labeling and other terms at grocery stores. Here are a few videos I’ve found helpful.
Grass fed vs grain fed
Labels at the grocery store
In this section I want to talk about other things you can do in the Kitchen. Get rid of plastics if possible. Some are worse than others. Definitely get rid of plastic food storage containers that you microwave. You don’t want heated plastic near food. Don’t re-heat take out in styrofoam. Ziploc baggies are tough to remove from the kitchen but you can reduce exposure by wrapping meat in wax paper before putting it into Ziploc baggies for cold storage. Get rid of non stick pans. The coating flakes and gets in your food. The fumes that come off are toxic (bird owners are warned against using these pans because the fumes frequently kill birds). I use stainless steel, cast iron and glass in my kitchen. I use steel or wood utensils. I use wood cutting boards.
Water quality is important. Try not to store water in plastic or drink out of plastic. If you can live on property with a well or a city on a large aquifer that’s ideal. If not use a good quality reverse osmosis system. Filtration systems very in quality and need changed frequently which many people don’t do. Distillation is as good as well but you will need a large distiller to provide enough water for a family. Berkeley filtration systems are popular but I’ve never used one so I’m not going to comment either way. RO and distillation is better than filtration IMO.
Finally, Don’t eat! Fasting is underrated. In the past all people fasted at some point in the day or year (frequently the winter). We all fast during sleep but modern people sleep less and are therefore awake and eating more often. Our bodies need a break from food. In fact our cells have a cleaning process called autophagy that only activates during fasting. Personally I do OMAD 6 days a week and Once a month or so I do a 48 hour fast. I’ve noticed a lot of improved mental clarity and body composition improvements with fasting. Fasting isn't as scary as it seems because the processes of ketosis reduces hunger significantly. Most people think they will have ravenous hunger pangs but quiet the opposite occurs. In fact, the current suggestion to reduce calories is causing increased hunger through cyclical insulin spikes and crashes. Your body un trains itself from utilizing stored fat as a source of energy when you're constantly eating. Even when you calorie restrict your body doesn't easily go into fat storage mode if you are eating frequently. This video does an excellent job on fasting vs calorie restricted approaches.
STOP Seed Oil and Sugar
I could write my entire post on just this one topic. Seed oil is the name for industrial processed oils derived from rapeseeds/canola, soy beans, peanuts, grapeseed, sunflower seeds, aka ‘vegetable oil’, aka Trans fats etc. In order to make these products ‘edible’ the manufacture has to heat them to temperatures where there chemical structure changes. They use a chemical called hexane in the refining process and they also add chemicals to take the rancid smell away. These oils seriously fuck up your system and cause weight gain. It’s really frustrating to get them out of your diet because they are in EVERYTHING. Many keto and carnivore dieters get fucked over by these seedoils because the minute you try to reduce sugar and grains to improve health you’re stuck with a lot of fat eating and often times dieters get their new calories from seedoil fats. Healthy alternatives to seedoil would be coconut oil, well sourced olive oil (low heat usage), palm oil, avocado oil (in small quantities), grass fed cow butter or ghee, and sourced animal fats (lard, suet, tallow). The main reason these oils are safer is that most of them are high heat tolerant and most of our cooking with fat is high heat (frying, baking, searing, etc). Heating and reheating turns all fats (but especially vegetable oils) into unhealthy fat which is why fried foods from fast food is so bad. The oil is used hundreds of times before it’s changed.
If this topic interests you here are some additional videos/interviews
Nina Teicholtz Interview (she was also on Joe Rogan if you want a less science heavy presentation of the information)
Nice short video on the topic from Analyze and Optimize. They have several on their channel
I’m going to hold off on sugar and grain discussion because that’s a long topic but if you are overweight and unhealthy I’d start there. The nice thing about reducing seed oil consumption is that you naturally reduce low fiber industrially processed grains as a result. Seed oil and processed grains are why low income communities and third world countries often have the contradictory problem of poverty combined with obesity.
Shower
In the bathroom there are several things you can do. Minimize soap usage. Unless I'm covered in mud, I use a small amount of soap on groin, taint, sphincter, feet and under arms. I rinse quickly after lathering. You can read more about AA’s approach to soap here. I occasionally skip a shower day if I didn’t sweat heavily or engage in much physical activity. I use a hemp glove scrubby to physically removed most salt, dirt and sweat. Water is a cleaning agent itself so again soap can be heavily reduced. I only use shampoo once a week. Every other day I use a conditioner recommended by Dr. Jay. Here’s a link to his product recommendations. I’ve used many of them.
Get rid of commercial deodorants. I use salt crystal deodorant. Which is pure potassium alum. It’s a pain in the ass to learn how to use properly but it works. If you work in an office or with lots of people and are worried they are going to smell you one trick I’ve learned is to wear an undershirt and put a traditional deodorant on the outside of the undershirt. Your undershirt catches sweat and can create an odor because it's away from the salt on your skin. Therefore the regular deodorant on the outside of the shirt catches a lot of this sweat and cuts down on odor and musk. The salt crystal when used properly totally eliminates bad odors for 10-15 hours. 6-10 hours if you are sweating heavily. Some people have reported 24-36 hours of odor elimination.
Not all of these products are expensive. In fact salt crystals aka a ‘deodorant stone’ is way cheaper than traditional deodorant. Using less soap saves money. I like emu oil and pine tar or coal tar soaps. If you use pine tar soap it doubles as a relatively cheap alternative to shampoo as well. You can even use vinegar for shampoo. (I would only do that once a week though). Try to find a more natural tooth paste that's fluoride free. I use 'hello' brand. Don’t use perfumes or buy products with perfumes or essential oils.
Hair care products sit on your scalp all day and soak in. Use them sparingly or not at all. To avoid using hair gel I have a routine. After I dry my hair and comb it into shape I then get dressed to allow it to dry more. After dressing and letting my hair sit in the desired shape I use a homemade mix of bees wax, coco butter, lanolin and jojo oil. I rub a small amount and apply it using a hair dryer to spread on my hands then into my hair. It is 50 plus percent wax so you need the heat. This holds my hair in place all day (unless it's super hot outside which I normally have a hat on anyway.) It's taken me a while to get the mixture right but it's not greasy or wet looking at all. My hair looks a little like this all day. I can make it look like this as well if I need it too. All with a little wax and coco butter. A boar bristle brush helps in this process as does a quality comb from a maker like Kent.
Sauna
I’m not against sauna but I think some of the benefits are exaggerated. Even if the benefits were great it’s not something that easily fits into my life so I go without. I find that you have to find ways to get these habits into your routine or you just won’t stick with them long enough to see the benefits. If anyone wants to ‘sell’ me on sauna I'm all ears.
Supplements
I don’t take any. Healthy eating is my ‘supplement’. I occasionally use aspirin if I have a headache. If I were to take a supplement it would be steroids. Steroids if used properly are not as dangerous as the propaganda in 90’s made you think they are. In fact many men today are chronically low on testosterone compared to our forefathers. The modern world is constantly assaulting out endocrine system and if you need testosterone to get to healthy levels you should take it. ‘Healthy levels’ of test is also a highly politicized topic. Long story short the (((medical industry))) takes a sampling of the current male testosterone average every 10 years and sets that as the new health ‘normal’. Well that means the low test becomes the new normal. Normal by modern medical standards is something like anything above 200 ng/dl (which should be considered chronically low). Average in the past was well above 600 probably more like 700-1200 plus. I can’t even imagine what average test was in the classical world.
Here’s a starter article on test with some age range charts if you’re interested in the topic. The charts used in the article are from 1996 and if you looked at average in 2021 you’d see they are already significantly lower even from only 25 years ago! Imagine what 50 or a 100 years of industrial living has done!
Sleep
Focus on improving sleep. If you're having trouble sleeping. Force yourself into a schedule. Also try sleep apps, or smart watches that chunk your sleep in 90 minute windows and give you a safe time to wake up. If you don't use these apps and set your alarm for a random time you can wake up in the middle of a REM or Deep sleep session which destroys the effectiveness of sleep and can make you groggy all day (even if you slept for 7 or more hours). I aim for about 7.5 to 8.5 hours and reduce electronics, bright lights and blue screens as I get closer to my normal bed time. This lets my body start sending signals that I'm getting tired and cuts down on going to bed and laying awake for long periods. Increasing exercise will also increase sleep quality as will not consuming caffeine 4 hours before bed or 1 hour from waking. If you consume caffeine immediately in the morning it dehydrates (you're already in a dehydrated state when you wake). Additionally it breaks the rhythm of natural waking. I sit and read for an hour and drink water before I consume coffee and never use sugar in my coffee. The S's all work together and if you're a bad sleeper but work on other areas of your health your sleep will improve. In fact poor sleep is a sign of things going on in other areas of your health.
edit 1. Other things I like to do for improved health that I might make future posts on (if interested): clothing (zero drop shoes, underwear), skin care (oil cleanse method, masks, dry brushing), micro workouts, kettle bells, meditation, obesity theories: CICO vs Lipophilia vs ROS hypothesis, and hiking/running/hunting.
edit 2. Sites and youtube channels I like
http://raypeat.com/
Low carb down under
Ivor Cummings - D is for Debacle
Robert Lustig
Gary Taubes
Supernormal Stimuli - Your Brain on Porn and Junkfood
Dr. Jay
Dr. Saladino
Blogger Adam Kosloff's old defunct low carb site
https://www.westonaprice.org/
edit 3. Notes on beer. Try to reduce consumption. Avoid binge consumption and if you have to drink beer look for less commercialized brands and brands with a reputation for minimum ingredients (German beers are famous for their minimalism). Try to pick beer varieties that are low on hops. Hop oils are estrogenic. There's a reason some of these 'new' males that consume IPA beer daily are also literally growing tits. I prefer Bourbon as it is lower calorie and of course no hops.
edit 4. I'm now using a few supplements daily although I don't go too crazy. I'm using lions main for cognitive improvement and ashwagandha for cortisol reduction and testosterone. I've heard good things about cruciferous veggies and supplements for estrogen reduction but haven't tried a protocol yet.
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