Dr. David Lemmon- Welcome to the Cancer Support Channel. I’m Dr. David Lemmon, naturopathic cancer expert. I’m here today with Tee Forton-Barnes, and she is a healthy home advocate with cancer prevention in mind, owner of Green Living Gurus and Tee’s Organics, and she has her own podcast Green Living with Tee, so we’re going to be talking about toxic chemicals and the relation to cancer and do a deep dive on the molecular pathway today.
So Tee welcome to the show.
Tee Forton-Barnes-Thank you so much for having me. Glad to be here.
Dr. David Lemmon- All right. Welcome.Tell us a little bit more about your story and how you got into focusing on chemicals and detoxing and just how things got started for you.
Tee Forton-Barnes– Yeah, absolutely. So my story is a little different than most people because I was very fortunate to grow up in a household in Buffalo, New York, where my mother and not my father, because he didn’t have a clue, but my mother had a clue.
I’m 61 now and have three older sisters, younger brother, and we grew up in the 60s & the 70s when fast food was on the market and the big thing in households, and TV dinners, and cleaning your house with all these different products. And my mother was way ahead of her time. She was always ahead of her time and she would not allow us to have fast foods.
It was a big thing for us to even have pizza once a week. We had to beg for that. And so. And cleaning our home, we had chores every Saturday and we cleaned with baking soda and vinegar. And that’s what we knew. That’s how we grew up and coming home from school every day. We walked home and we had hummus and carrots and apples with cinnamon.
And it was just what she wanted us to have in our lives. She was. just advanced in that way. But I thought everybody ate that way. I thought everybody lived that way until I started realizing we were abnormal. And then people started calling us the granola heads. And we only shopped at this tiny little co-op that my mother worked in that literally we all shop in still to this day, although it’s 10 times the size, it’s like a little mini Whole Foods.
But so that was something that We knew. That’s all we knew. And when I went to college in 1981, I went to Ithaca College in central New York state. And my goal was to come out of college with I had a major in business and a minor in health, and I had a business plan to open up this big health food store because Everything we shopped at was, you know, tiny little store and you know that health food store as Whole Foods and I had nothing to do with Whole Foods, unfortunately, because I was also a party planner.
I was planning all the parties in high school. I was planning all the parties in college. It became a big industry at the time. I came out of college. I had this job with this party planning company. It was a dream come true. And since then, I’ve had my own business for 38 years. And I’ve been planning events in the Buffalo, Western New York area for that amount of time.
And I’ve done over 700 events. I’ve had a very successful, great career in that. But for 38 years, I have not lost sight of what I set my life out to do and that was really to help people. And I’ve done it for those 38 years. Friends, family, cancer patients, survivors would come to me. I was just known to be that person to talk to.
Therese, she might be able to help you. And it wasn’t a business. It was just something I did it out of You know, the, the love of helping people try to realize what these chemicals in our homes could be doing to us. What my mother taught me, what my grandmother even taught me. And through the last for decades, I have, I have educated myself.
I have taken courses. I have done everything I can possibly do. Without going back to college, which I really did not want to do. And learning all along and studying for the past four decades. But then 2020, I decided at that point, I wanted to really set out for the rest of my life, what I really wanted my true passion.
And that was really helping people get their homes, get their lives to be healthier, but more toxic free. And then 2020 hit and once 2020 hit or COVID, I should say Which I was already on that path of doing that as I, I was lucky I had time to really focus on it. And that’s what I’ve really been doing for four years and diving in headfirst for these past four years and really trying to get people to focus more on
avoiding these toxic chemicals in your food, in your water, in your house, in your products, your personal care products, your cleaning products, and just opening up people’s eyes to what is out there and what could be potentially causing cancer and so many other illnesses.
Dr. David Lemmon- Yeah, it’s challenging. There’s so many. There’s at least 80,000 different synthetic chemicals in our environment, and none of them are tested for safety alone or in combination with each other. So it’s just this soup of synthetic chemicals that we’re swimming in on a daily basis, and we don’t really know what is causing what, but we know that cancer is rising the more of these chemicals get into the environment. So what do you do as a starting point to help a client to start to detox their home?
Tee Forton-Barnes– Yeah, so I typically try to start slow. I don’t want people overwhelmed. It can be overwhelming because we could go through every room and I could, and I do eventually show them everywhere in your house that could potentially be causing some illnesses or, or adding to some illnesses because Whatever you bring into your home, whatever you eat, whatever you put on your skin, whatever you buy, for that matter.
You have to always be conscious of what is this I am bringing into my house? What am I buying to clean my floors with? What am I using to clean my laundry with. So I, most people understand that yes, there’s a lot of toxic chemicals out there, but they don’t understand how many, like you said, over 80,000 of them.
There’s 11 of them that have been disallowed in the United States. In the European Union, there’s over 1100. They’re much more cognizant of these chemicals over in Europe, but we live in the United States. So we have to focus on that and what we have here. And what we have to do is, as citizens of the United States, we have to be in more control of what we are using and eating because the FDA, the EPA, they only do so much and the chemical industry is so powerful and we have to pay attention to everything that we are using and eating.
So to go back to your original question, one of the first things that I do, one of the areas I feel that people can change immediately. The toxic load in their homes and their lives is their laundry room. It’s the first place I start what you are washing your clothes with, which means what you’re sleeping in, what you are wearing all day, what could potentially be outgassing in your home.
And in addition to that, you’re blowing it into the environment as well. So laundry detergent is loaded with ingredients, and so many of them can be toxic, harmful, cancer causing chemicals. And number one ingredient, whenever you look for a laundry soap, the number one ingredient, and this is actually the first ingredient I get everybody to understand, whether it’s laundry soap, shampoo, or anything you use, is the word fragrance.
Fragrance in our industry is considered the other F word because the word fragrance has as was brought on to the market from the 1940s when Chanel number 5 went to our government and said they wanted to have they didn’t want to disclose the ingredients in their perfume. So they needed, it was a trade secret.
So ever since then, that’s how crazy this is that if you have the word fragrance on your product, you do not have to say, disclose what is in that product. It could be fragrance, perfume, or perfume for that matter, suntan lotion, anything. If you think it really smells like coconut or Lemmon or. Lavender or ocean fresh.
Those are all things to get you to believe that those are what they are putting in it. But if the word fragrance is on there, it is something you always want to avoid. It’s the first thing I get people to look up. Always. I get more people sending me pictures. What do you think of these ingredients?
And I don’t even have to look at the ingredients. But when I see the word fragrance, I said, I don’t even need to see. There’s a lot of toxic ingredients. It’s a on the product they send me, but fragrance, you have to stay away from the word fragrance. They have found benzene in fragrance. Benzene is a known carcinogen, not a potential.
It’s known to cause cancer. So there’s a laundry list of chemicals that are in fragrance that people are putting in their laundries. It’s in their laundry detergent that you’re baking, not baking, but. You know, you know, I mean, their clothes in hot water and then in your dryer. And if you’re smelling anything on your clothes all day long, you’re breathing in chemicals.
that is a fact. And that’s not my opinion. I just, that is a fact that those fragrances are made up of hundreds of different chemicals that they do not have to tell you what’s in them. So. That is the first area. And then that, think about it, then your sheets and you’re sleeping it.
I’ve had more people that just think that they have allergies and they wake up or they, they’ve had their, you know, they think they have a head cold in the morning. They think that it’s the pollen. They think I wake up with like a scratchy throat or I can’t sleep while you are, your body is trying to tell you something always.
And as a naturopath, you know that, let’s get to the root cause, what, what could be causing some of these issues that people are having. And that’s the first area that I get anybody to look at because it’s , the most impactful in my opinion, that they can change and decrease their toxic load.
Dr. David Lemmon- Especially the dryer sheets, right? Because that’s just pure fragrance and it just smells like a toxic waste dump when you open up the dryer sheets.
Tee Forton-Barnes– I know. I know. And it’s so hard for people to change. I know. I’ve held so many people’s hands like, listen, you can do it. You don’t have to throw anything away.
Take it all. Take your dryer sheets, which again, you will never find the ingredients on a dryer sheet. Those, look that up online if you don’t believe me, because they can put whatever they want in dryer sheets. That is, those are all chemicals. But, take it all. I tell everybody to wrap it in a plastic bag and tie it really tight, because you don’t want it outgassing in your home anymore.
But, put it outside. Get rid of it for a month or two. Buy something fragrance free. Specifically, that’s the first step you’re gonna do. Do fragrance free. it’s going to take a while because your clothes, your sheets, all are pretty much contaminated with those chemicals. And I mean if it were me and I try to get people to go out and get a new set of sheets and start trying to sleep in those sheets that you wash in much cleaner detergent or laundry soap.
I personally recommend something called Molly’s Suds. Which you can find on Amazon. It’s not typically in a store, but if you’re like, I can only buy it in a store. 7th generation is okay. It’s not the best, but it’s okay. And some people are like, what about, you know, these, these companies that say fragrance free or all clear.
It’s a small step in the right direction if you’re going fragrance free. I do not like a lot of the ingredients on those conventional products, that they are still mixing a lot of chemicals into your detergent, so I do not like to recommend them. But Mollysuds is fabulous. Meliora is another one, but those are a little more advanced for people I know when they don’t hear something mainstream.
But you will, I’ve never had a person come back and say, I need my laundry detergent back. Everybody, after you sleep and you live without this fragrance around you all the time, you will start to realize how toxic it was. And you will make that switch. So some people might be just addicted to that smell.
They grew up with that smell. One of the girls that I, it was hard. She’s like, I can’t give up dryer sheets. I said, just do it for a month. And she did it. And she said, I can’t go back. I can’t believe how awful those were that I was breathing that in every single day. So, and once you understand what’s in them, you know, people think it’s just a great smell that , they don’t realize the toxicity level of it.
So. Yeah, so definitely. I’m glad you brought up dryer sheets and there’s alternative to dryer sheets. I always like to talk about alternatives. The dryer balls work if you use them, you know, properly wool dryer balls. People are like, what about static cling? And eventually, my personal opinion is. Once you get rid of all those chemicals, like I, we don’t have static cling.
I don’t know what it is about the chemicals that could potentially also be adding to the static cling, but there’s a layer of chemicals that it’s very hard to get off your clothes. Eventually you will, but I highly suggest you start there.
Dr. David Lemmon- Yeah. It’s interesting. I haven’t noticed static cling since I grew up in the eighties either. So it must be something that I’m doing or not doing. Eliminates that as well.
So how do you kind of simplify the terminology? There’s a lot about label reading and people say, Oh, if you can’t pronounce the ingredients and foods or things, then that’s the sign. But the problem I have with that is the vitamins and the healthy things are, it looked like chemical names sometimes, like, you know, Gamma tocopherol is the scientific name for vitamin E, and that’s a healthy thing, but if someone was using that as a label reading thing to, to judge whether it’s good or bad, then they might throw out the baby with the bathwater if they can’t pronounce that healthy vitamin name, for example.
So I kind of struggle with using that common, like, if you can’t pronounce it, don’t use it, kind of idea. Do you have, do you kind of use that as a guideline for clients or do you have a different way of helping teach to read labels?
Tee Forton-Barnes– Well, I mean, there’s a fine line there and I understand that. It’s hard.
I mean, I know a lot about ingredients. I will read them sometimes and be like, I’ve never heard that one because there’s new ones coming on the market all the time. And so when it, the most important thing is that you’re not reading the front of the, The jar, the bottle, the box, whatever it is, you have to turn it around.
There’s so much greenwashing, which basically means the company is trying to get you to believe that there’s. healthy ingredients in the product that you are trying to buy. So you have to, you have to turn it around. Yes. Are you going to understand everything? No. But if you’re going to put it on your skin, let’s just say lotions, shampoos, deodorants, all that.
You want to start understanding a lot of the ingredients are the same. There’s, there’s some that, and not all chemicals are bad. You know, they’re out of 80,000. I can’t tell you how many are okay, but they’re not all bad. We, you know, there’s certain things, certain preservative chemicals that, you know, are okay for that matter.
But the amount of chemicals a woman’s. Puts on her body, just on her body. This is not eating. This is not breathing. This is not drinking out of the water fountain over 168 chemicals a day. Typically men, it’s closer to, I think, like 120. So you just want to be aware of like, what is this? Like lotion, you know, there’s things that you’d never that you don’t want to give up.
I’m not giving up my hair color I’m not going gray yet, right but i’m going to find a product which I use something called Madison Reed They it’s a great company that they We’re sick of all the chemicals that were in all these hair colorings that are out there and they fine tuned it so we’re not using all these harsh chemicals on our hair.
So it’s a matter of trying to just adjust some of the things you do. Do I like to use nail polish? Yes, but I’m not going to use nail polish with toluene in it, toluene is a horrible chemical. I think it’s actually a known carcinogen. But I take, like, I take off nail polish. I only put it on if I go to a special occasion.
Let your fingernails, your toenails breathe. But you know, people that I, that I help that They have a certain shampoo. Oh, if it has fragrance in it, you are breathing that fragrance in your hair all day long. Try to go fragrance free. Make small baby steps. Look at the lotion you’re putting on your skin.
Try to find something a little less toxic. Go to the health food store. Go to Whole Foods. Ask them. Look and see. Not everything is perfect. Not everything is great out there, believe me. You know, even at Whole Foods, sometimes I look, but they’re pretty good. I look at some of the things I love going in there and just looking at labels and just reading everything.
But you’ll go to your, everybody’s got a little, most people have a little health food store co op and you know, that is around and so there’s so many knowledgeable people out there at these stores that know the product lines and there’s just, we are very fortunate now because there are. So many different options out there for whether it’s makeup, hairspray, shaving cream deodorants that are not full of all of these chemicals that are getting into our system.
So it’s just making baby, baby changes, baby steps towards the right product. And not throw, don’t throw out your deodorant, but look at it. I’m using antiperspirant, which is horrific. Look into some new deodorants, which is a lot out there. That Native is one of them. I mean, I have, I, I list a ton of that different products on my website that either people have told me about, or I’ve read about, or I’ve used.
So there’s just making steps in the right direction towards changes in your life.
Dr. David Lemmon- Exciting. So after the laundry room, and I guess. Under the category of fragrances that covers a lot of rooms with candles and air freshener sprays and all those kind of things that’s all fragrance right?
Tee Forton-Barnes– Yeah candles are bad candles you have to pay attention to because if you’re burning candles in your home that are unnatural as in chemical fragrances in the, in the candles.
So now you’re heating it up, which is even worse. And if it’s a lead wick and you’re burning chemicals, In the wax with a lead wick. I’ve known people to do this where they have black soot on the wall or on the ceiling. I’ve had to, I mean, some people are really addicted to candles and they can’t get rid of them.
There’s, there’s healthy ones out there. Fontana is one of them that makes candles with pure essential oils and not chemically derived scents. Unfortunately, a lot of the candle products are made overseas over in China. So you just have to be careful.
I mean, pay attention. If it says made with soy, if anything’s made with something, you have to be careful. Made with is like, okay, it’s made with, but what is it also made with? So those are some. Some things you have to pay attention to made with essential oils is people think, Oh, essential oils it’s made with, but they, the law is it only needs 2 percent essential oils.
They can put in there, you know, 150 other chemicals. So again, you have to read the label. What is it really made with? And if it has the word fragrance on it, do not buy it or parfume or perfume, as I mentioned before,
Dr. David Lemmon- so that’s part of the greenwashing is to add a little bit of essential oils. So they can say that, but then they have the other fragrances and chemicals on the back.
Tee Forton-Barnes– Exactly. Exactly. Yep. Made with natural ingredients. If it is that on there. I wouldn’t even buy it. Personally, I kind of laugh at products that say made with natural ingredients. I turn them around often. I’m like, Oh my gosh, they say aloe 1 percent aloe. It’s like, it’s, it’s unfair to us as consumers.
Unfortunately, that’s the way it is, but we have to take our own health into our own hands and realize that we have to pay attention. We can’t trust these products. companies that are marketing to us. And now they’re using, you know, like brown paper labels make you think like it’s made from the earth or natural products, you know?
So those are just things that , you have to pay attention to. It’s fragrance on food is like it’s natural flavors. And natural flavors, they do not have to tell you what’s in natural flavors when it’s on a food label. So it’s a lot. It’s tricky. It’s very hard for us as consumers.
It’s mind boggling to me that they get away with it, but it’s just. Pay attention, start reading everything that you buy and what are those ten long words that are going on your skin or going into your body some way or another. Our skin is our largest organ so I try to pay attention to anything I put on my skin.
I use a lot of coconut oil, organic coconut oil, I put on my skin. At night we do, on my body you know, it’s oily so you gotta be careful but it’s, cheap and it’s easy and I know it’s safe for me and it’s good for me.
Dr. David Lemmon- Yeah, olive oil is great, and coconut oil, and castor oil, are all healthy oils.
Tee Forton-Barnes– Exactly.
Dr. David Lemmon- So where else would you go after the laundry room? Is the kitchen the next?
Tee Forton-Barnes– Well, my second thing, first is the laundry room, second is cleaning supplies. And because cleaning supplies are used. Some people use them daily. I think people over clean, but the cleaning industry, which is pretty much tied to the laundry industry, is, I mean, you walk down that aisle.
They want you to buy 12 things. This is for, you know, the counter. This is for the floor. This is for your walls, whatever. I mean, and then think about when you do walk down that aisle what you’re smelling, all the outgassing of all those products are just all chemicals. Coming into that aisle from all those products.
I can’t even walk down it. That was the only time I was happy that I wore a mask during COVID that I wore down that aisle. But seriously, that’s, those are all chemicals outgassing. So those are primarily cleaning products, right? And they want you to believe that you’ve got to use all these cleaning products to clean your home.
I, well, first of all, I, I grew up, I told you with vinegar and water and baking soda, which is still how I clean, but I created my own, I don’t think I told you this, but I created my own all purpose cleaner that I love essential oils, essential oils have natural antibacterial antifungal antiviral products in them.
So I created , a line of Tee’s organics that I use as an all purpose cleaner. And that’s what it is. I use it for everything. So but there’s a lot of, there’s a lot of, thankfully, there’s a lot of products out there now, same thing, that instead of using all of these chemical companies products that are using different, like, ingredients that you are spraying on your counter, spraying in the air in your home, using on the floor, your pets, your kids, your fingers, their fingers are touching, you’re breathing them in, they’re lasting in your home.
Your indoor air is now polluted with all of these. And the EPA actually has said that our indoor air quality in our homes is anywhere from two to a hundred times more polluted than the outdoor air. This is one of the reasons why, because of all these products that are being used in our homes. And then take into account that so many homes are now airtight windows.
They want you to, you know, conserve energy and there’s nothing being circulated. So cleaning products is the next area that I try to get people to look at. The industry tries to make you believe you have to spray all these things to kill germs. And We clean with Castile soap, which is basically just plain old soap, Dr. Bronner’s, and then my all purpose cleaner of vinegar and water and baking soda and essential oils. So it’s, and, and the other thing is, and I’m sure you can vouch for that too. Some of these chemicals are killing off good germs. People are so germaphobic. But unfortunately, we need, you know, some of these good, good back things in our bodies that we don’t want to kill.
And they weaken our immune system for that matter too. So. Cleaning supplies is definitely secondary. I do the same thing. I’m like, let’s get a tub. Let’s get all your cleaning supplies outside and let’s start fresh and let’s start there. So that’s something, again, it’s, unfortunately people think your house has to smell like Clorox for it to be clean, but unfortunately I feel like personally, I think that’s making your house more dirty just from bringing more chemicals into your home.
Dr. David Lemmon- Yeah, it’s amazing what just plain water will clean. I think 99 percent of the household cleaning, even just the toilet brush from the toilet and water will get any of the rings and any of the stains off of the toilet and you can mop with pure water. You can wipe your counters with the rag and pure water. You don’t need any. Any natural or artificial chemicals on it
Tee Forton-Barnes– Nope. And I bring up Dr. Bronner’s all the time. They’ve been around over a hundred years. They have a whole line of pure castile soap. It lasts forever. I use it for, you know, all my cleaning that I do. So besides my, you know, all purpose cleaner, but you don’t need all these other products and, and talk about all the plastic that’s being used in these products, it’s being thrown out and ended up in our landfills and ended up in our oceans.
So it’s, it’s, it would be a step in the right direction to try to start there as well.
Dr. David Lemmon- Do you have any experiences with clients of stories of their health problems clearing up after doing a home detox?
Tee Forton-Barnes– Oh, absolutely. Headaches go away sinuses, you know, I’ll bring in, I’ll often bring in if they’re local, but if they’re not, I suggest they go get an indoor air quality monitor and we look and see what
chemicals we are detecting. So we’ll start. I, I love doing that because it’ll, it kind of opens up their eyes to, wow, look at all these chemicals that VOCs and different areas. But I show them, you know, it’s very simple to me where they’re coming from. So then I do that, I help them with that sometimes.
And then I’m a big, big believer in a air purifier. And we have them in our home. We have one in our bedroom, we have a kitchen, we have one in the living room. And I just want the cleanest air possible that we can be breathing in our home. There’s so much pollution out there. Pollution can be brought in from the outside.
And so getting clean indoor air. That way is a huge benefit to everyone’s health as well. And there’s some simple steps that people can make sure their air in their homes are as clean as possible. Some people don’t know that they have filters in air conditioning units.
Those are window air conditioning units that you have filters. You can clean if you have a whole house unit as we do with forced air. You want to change those filters if you have ceiling fans, you absolutely wanted to wash those ceiling fans as much as possible. Get that dust off of there. So you’re not blowing it around.
Take your shoes off when you come in the house. So you’re not trancing in pesticides and herbicides that are all over the place. Unfortunately, outside, those are some simple things. Dry cleaning. If you’re. Bring it home dry cleaning. Don’t leave it in your car, first of all, because those are typically dry cleaning is loaded with chemicals inside those plastic bags.
Let it air outside before you bring the dry cleaning inside and again, don’t let it sit in your car. So it’s outgassing there. So simple little things like that that anybody can do that are going to help your indoor air quality.
Dr. David Lemmon- Yeah, that’s one of the challenges is dry cleaning has the word clean in it.
And so people assume that it’s clean, but I, heard a study once about there’s this discrepancy of wealthy women having higher incidences of breast cancer than, than lower income women and after all the matching for controls and trying to figure out and do the detective work of why that would be the only thing that the researchers could come up with was the dry cleaning that the wealthier women were doing more dry cleaning on a regular basis and having extra chemical exposure and that was probably what was contributing to the higher incidences of breast cancer.
So it’s interesting that researchers are trying to find out those things and those little clues like dry cleaning and either not doing dry cleaning at all and not getting the clothes that need that or, or at least outgassing and letting him sit in the sun on a clothesline or somewhere. To get rid of some of those chemicals before you bring them in.
Tee Forton-Barnes– Yep, absolutely. And you brought up researchers. There is so much research being done right now on this topic of chemicals and our health and cancer. There’s an abundant amount. I actually sat in on a webinar on Friday, which was fascinating. And they did 25 years of research that they did on studying people’s blood and the levels of chemicals in them.
And then how many ended up getting cancer and other illnesses. Basically the summary was, it’s very evident that chemicals are causing so many of these illnesses, so much more research to be done. And the researchers that came on one was over in Asia, China, actually. He said that, which was alarming to me, he said, one thing we don’t know that’s startling to them is that the chemicals they’re finding in people’s bodies, how they’re all mixing too.
So, that is something that they’re going to do more research on, but nobody really knows. You know, if we put in 168 chemicals on our body a day, how do we know all these chemicals? You know, interact with one another. We don’t know. So my biggest thing that I try to get people to do is to reduce it as much as possible.
You can’t get rid of it. You can’t go be toxin free. Nobody can be. but you can eliminate it as much as possible and do it in the places that you feel comfortable and that are easiest. You know, in the kitchen get rid of all your plastic storage containers, buy glass, buy stainless steel I’ll your cookware, if you’re using any kind of Teflon or what’s it called?
Non stick. Thank you, Therese. Non stick cookware. Be very careful of that because those are chemical, specifically if there’s any scratches in those non sticks, that is a chemical. sure sign that you want to get rid of those because those are opening, those are openings for the chemicals that those pots and pans are made up that are potentially getting into your food.
So switch to stainless steel, switch to cast iron. I know it’s harder to clean, but it’s not that hard. It’s better for your health. So there’s just, areas where you can make the changes. I know some people that I’ve helped with getting toxins out of their homes. They can’t give up something like, well, you don’t have to give up everything.
You just try your hardest at slowly making changes in all these different areas that you can possibly reduce your toxic load and don’t get overwhelmed. Try to do it slowly and you will, Most people then go on a path of, wow, this is, you know, you start to make two changes, three changes, then you’re, you’re out, you go down that rabbit hole, as I say, but it’s fun and you can have fun with it.
And there’s so many people out there like you and your podcast and other information out there that can help you and guide you through it. You know, through the course of becoming more into becoming a low toxic household.
Dr. David Lemmon- Yeah, it can get really overwhelming. And if you think about it too much, it can cause, you know, constant anxiety on a basis of, Oh no, no, no.
But do you have any other tricks or tips for helping people to relax and just kind of do their best and not worry about the rest?
Tee Forton-Barnes– Do your best. That’s the key. Pay attention. Definitely look at bottles, cans. What are you spraying? The fragrance industry has made us think that everything has to smell a certain way.
That’s a perfume industry, multi, multi billion dollar industry. They are leveraging and, and, and Washington all the time. I’ve seen it. I’ve read what they’re doing. I know what they’re doing. It’s it, they don’t want us thinking that these, these fragrances are bad for us. So, you know, Febreze. I mean, horrible what’s in there that people are spraying.
And I mean, you just have to pay attention to whatever you’re using in your house. And some people are like, well, I want to, I want some type of scent in my home. I like, I can’t get away from it. Start looking into essential oils in the diffuser. I sometimes will just take cinnamon and orange peel after we’ve eaten orange and I’ll boil it up on the stove and The scent is wonderful.
So just pay attention to what you’re using in your home because you’re potentially are breathing it in. And you can start eliminating those toxins from your house.
Dr. David Lemmon- And what books or other experts have you learned the most from over the years?
Tee Forton-Barnes– Oh, the laundry list of books that I have. Oh boy. So I have a bunch of people that I love to I follow. Erin Brockovich I have to talk about because I love her. She is a just, Unbelievable what she’s doing out there. She really is pushing still in the water industry, but she she is fun to follow. And I just happened to watch her movie the other night, which was fun again, Erin Brockovich, and she’s still fighting.
For the rights of people and the water that we drink and the chemicals that are, are out there. And so, but she’s got a book that she wrote called Superman’s Not Coming. That is something I, I was telling my husband after the movie, he’s like, you really enjoyed that movie. I said, I feel like. I’m, I’m her.
I feel like I’m doing what she was doing. I feel like I’m out there trying to help people see that there is some bad things on the market that we should not all be paying attention to and eating and drinking and putting on our skin. Because that’s what she did. She fought for the people of that one town and she won.
And I just feel like I’m, I always feel like I’m her. I love her. I look up to her and that is probably the number one person that I really. I admire for what she did. She really put her neck out on the line. And I sometimes feel like I am too, because I’ve done this for a long time. I know people have thought I was absolutely crazy.
And now they’re all coming back to me. Like my college, my college housemates for that matter said, you know, you, You were always teaching us things back then, and we thought you were a little crazy. And now, of course, you’re not the crazy one. Now we’re paying attention to everything you said. So, and then there’s, there’s so many great books out there.
Carey Gillam, Carey Gillam used to be writer for Reuters and her job was to cover Monsanto and Monsanto would, wine and dine her, flying private planes all over the place. And then she started digging into what Monsanto really was doing and she, started turning on them and writing not what they wanted to hear.
And the chemicals that they were putting in primarily Roundup and then they tried to get her fired. I know she had her family threatened. Well, I give her so much credit. Because she stood up for her rights. She ended up writing two books. I think she has out there now. This one is called Whitewash and it’s the story of the weed killer, cancer and the corruption of science.
So she’s fascinating to follow as well. So, and I’ve interviewed her on my podcast as well. So she’s definitely, I suggest you check her out. She’s definitely somebody that I admire and She’s, got young family and she’s fighting for our rights out there and trying to get rid of glyphosate and Roundup and there’s another chemical that she’s, she’s now pushing forward to be eliminated in our in our, I think it’s in a weed killer again too.
So those are two. I could probably give you 20 more.
Dr. David Lemmon- That’s one of the other challenges, when you mentioned chemicals and that just reminded me of like the BPA-free idea is such a common thing and all these plastics but then it’s become this buzzword to sell more products that are BPA free but then what they’re replacing the BPA with is just as bad or or worse so if it’s still a plastic then you have to just be really cautious about that BPA free concept and still use the glass or the stainless steel whatever you can because the bpa-free doesn’t mean healthy.
Tee Forton-Barnes– That’s right. Right.They found another chemical besides bpa to use.
Absolutely. That’s a really good point. You know, I had my, my urine tested, I don’t know, 15, 20 years ago by Silent Spring in Massachusetts. They don’t do that anymore, but there are a lot of other organizations that does do it. And I want to know what was in my system.
Why bpa? And I’m like, bpa, I don’t even. Use plastic. How am I getting BPA in my body? So, and at that time they, they were anal, you know, they’d get on the phone with me. It took about five minutes. She said, all right, walk me through your day. And I said, well, we have coffee in the morning. It’s like, hold on.
What do you drink coffee out of? I said, a mug. What do you make it out of? I said, a coffee pot. It’s like, walk over there and open up the coffee pot. It’s like, what do you see inside? I said, Oh my gosh, plastic. It’s all plastic. She said, yep, it heats up right when you, that hot water that pours into your coffee, all plastic.
And I was like, wow. So those are the things you just have to pay attention to. Little things like that that we now drink we use a French press. I don’t drink much coffee I’d like a half a cup a day or a cup and we use a French press. I know one of my clients ended up getting say drink a lot of coffee, but they ended up getting a stainless steel coffee pot coffee maker And they’re on the market.
So it’s little things like that, that I had no idea, didn’t even have a clue that I was drinking coffee that was basically heating up the plastic and BPA was in my coffee. So and BPA, you definitely do not want in your system. And that was, I eliminated it, had my, urine tested again. And the levels were like way down.
So I was happy about that. But those are just, you just have to pay attention to things, you know, like that too, everything that you’re drinking, what are you drinking? Have your water tested. , we could sit here and talk about an hour on water too, because our water in the United States is not
great and news reports just came out about the piece past chemicals, which I’ve been following for many, many, many years scared about what’s in our water where I am in Buffalo. We have horrible water just because of the Great Lakes. It’s all comes to the Buffalo area and anything goes down the toilet flushed in it.
Pharmaceuticals pesticides, herbicides, you name it. So we have a reverse osmosis system, which is probably the next thing I would have talked about would be your water and making sure you have a reverse osmosis on your water tap. And if not a reverse osmosis, get the best thing that you can. I think they have some, even some table or Small units that you can use to get rid of some of the chemicals in your water.
And I drink so much water every day, so I’m pretty adamant about that.
Dr. David Lemmon- Wow, there’s so many things we can do.
Tee Forton-Barnes– I know. Slow, take it slow. One step at a time. Environmental Working Group. If everybody doesn’t know about that, look at Environmental Working Group. They have a lot of resources on there, but look up, you can look up what’s in your water.
If you just put, plug in Environmental Working Group, comma, water, you can then put in your zip code and it’ll tell you what’s in your water.
Dr. David Lemmon- EWG. org, is that?
Tee Forton-Barnes– Yep, EWG.org, yep.
Dr. David Lemmon- So they have the the Dirty Dozen and the The Clean Thirteen of the most Pesticide filled fruits and vegetables that you have to be sure to get organic and correct that.
So that’s a really useful list to take with you shopping and all that, that good stuff.
Tee Forton-Barnes– Yes, absolutely.
Dr. David Lemmon- So it can be a really overwhelming subject, but just basically putting that filter in your mind if it smells toxic, if the names of the chemicals on the back of the product sound toxic, if it’s not natural, if it’s not pure water, it’s not essential oils, do your best to get it out of the home and then don’t don’t stress about the rest.
Tee Forton-Barnes-That’s right. Take it slow. Don’t overwhelm yourself. And you can have fun with it, I always tell everybody you will start having fun with it and you can’t stress over it. You will start realizing that you start educating yourself on it all and start realizing what other great products are out there and try to have fun with it.
Dr. David Lemmon- Yeah, it’s an adventure. You can just put on some music and have a cleaning party and get it out of the house.
Tee Forton-Barnes– Yes, absolutely. And you know, some people are like, well, it’s going to be more expensive. No, you’re going to save money. You do not need 10 things to clean your house with. You do not need all these products that they want you to think you need to buy to do everything.
So take it slow and you, you’ll have fun finding some new products that are out there.
Dr. David Lemmon- And the more your health gets better, the more energy you have and the more brain fog lifted and you start to feel better and think better and that’s more fun too.
Tee Forton-Barnes– Yes. Yes. I feel, you know, I always, a lot of the people that I work with, they sleep better, less chemical because your body’s constantly trying to fight these chemicals off.
Your immune system, you might not be as, you know, getting colds all the time, and your body is, you’ll start feeling a lot better. A lot of people don’t know they feel bad until you start feeling better, and some of the, starting to eliminate these chemicals, you might start feeling a lot better.
Dr. David Lemmon- Yeah, that’s one of my challenges with patients and clients is, Oh, I’m just getting old. Oh, it’s just, it’s just age. It’s like, no, probably not. I know a lot of really old people that are really, really healthy. So I think it’s more, your toxins are building up and you need to just get it out of your body and get it out of your life and then you’ll start to feel 10 or 20 years younger.
Tee Forton-Barnes– I agree.Absolutely. Absolutely.
Dr. David Lemmon- Well, it’s an exciting journey and thank you so much for this amazing introduction.
Tee Forton-Barnes– You’re welcome.
Dr. David Lemmon- If anyone wants to learn about you and your products and services. Where can they go?
Tee Forton-Barnes– They can go to thegreenlivinggurus.com. All my social media links are on there under shop, you’ll see all the things that we offer and suggest to people.
And I’m pretty accessible. You can, you know, reach out to me on the website. If you have any questions, I’d be more than happy to answer them.
Dr. David Lemmon- Thank you so much,Tee it’s been an amazing interview and wonderful talking with you and getting to know you at this time. And we will talk with you next time.
Tee Forton-Barnes– Absolutely. Anytime. And thanks for having me on.
Dr. David Lemmon- Your’re so welcome. Take care. Bye bye.
Tee Forton-Barnes– Bye bye.