Your Laundry Detergent Might Be the Most Toxic Thing in Your Life — Branch Basics Explains Why

Hi guys, welcome back to another episode of Biohack It. And what if I told you guys the most toxic thing in your life may not be your relationship, your food, or your diet, but it actually might be your laundry detergent? Yes, my friends, that is the truth. So personal care products and home care especially tend to be the most toxic things we are surrounding ourselves with. And in this episode, we dive deep on how environmental toxins can be the root cause of a Inflammation, fatigue, brain fog, migraines. We have somehow gotten convinced that it's normal to spray this stuff around our homes and around our children and our pets, but we all need to just wake up and really know what we're using. Just go put all this stuff in a box, put it outside, and give your body a break. Sometimes even when it comes to children seeing early signsets of autism and how their bodies cannot detox from their environmental toxins. So we dive deep into this episode about how to make your life more non-toxic and better choices around your environment, but also the cleaning products and the products you use every single day and consume and put on your body and within your environment. So I hope you enjoy this episode. So I have a little test for you guys. Look under your kitchen sink right now, turn the labels back and find out how many products have a caution or danger label on them. Comment below. And then ask yourself, why are you using these products in your home? I'm so excited. I've been using Branch Basics for five years. Love that. And I've seen the journey and the transformation of the products being released and how you guys started and how you added more SKUs and just have dinner with you last night and learn more about you and how you all came to build this brand together while having four little kids. I don't know how you guys do it, but I'm excited to share Branch Basics with my audience and dive a little deeper into the why behind the brand. Okay. Well, I'm so excited to be here. Thank you for having me. So I know Allison was supposed to be here and she couldn't join us, but I know that she healed her PCOS by the brand that you guys created together. So can we tell the audience a little bit about that? Yes, switching to a lifestyle. Yeah, so really, Allison was, quote unquote, the sick one, and I was the healthy one. And we went and lived with her Aunt Marilee for a summer and had our eyes open to all of this, like natural living, the fact that harmful chemicals are in the products we put in on and around ourselves every day. We had no clue. Allison and I grew up completely conventional. So did Marilee. um and allison had her first period in sixth grade and then never had another one and uh so she went to the doctor at 15 put her on birth control said there were thousands of cysts on her ovaries she was diagnosed with bcos um and just said there's nothing you can do come back when you're ready to have children and we'll try and help you um and so she just kind of owned that diagnosis went on living her life you know eating and using conventional products and um fast forward to college which is where we met at the university of texas in austin and we were just best friends and i'm her roommate and i'm watching her body just fall apart like literally losing motor skills i think just things would drop out of her hand um she started having terrible pain from her head to her toes but mainly her neck and back were just excruciating pain to the point where she had to become a student with disabilities, couldn't go to class, flying all around the country, seeing the top doctors, doing, you know, all the scans, all the things. And on painkillers, muscle relaxers, laundry list of drugs, no relief. And so she finally starts talking to her and Marilee about a more natural approach. Marilee was very patient and like didn't try and like come in this in the scene really early on and try and fix everything. She kind of let Allison take her course until she was really ready to hear what Marilee had to say, which was basically, you know, just the products we use in our homes, on our bodies, our laundry detergents, the food we eat can affect our health in very real, you know, major ways. And so she started asking Allison, Merrilee started asking Allison questions like, where were you living when the pain started? Did you recently move into somewhere remodeled or newly constructed? Do you have the pest control come spray your place? Do you clean with conventional, fragrant cleaning products and use fragrant personal care products, et cetera? Give me a three-day diet diary. So Allison does all that, works with Merrilee, changes everything. and for the first time, like felt relief. And also for the first time felt hope, like she was like empowered, like there's actually something I can do versus just going to the doctor, filling out your family history and them saying you're a victim of your genes, basically. And so long story short, we asked Marilee if we could go live with her the summer after graduation. So this is 2008. And I'm just tagging along as like the, you know, healthy friend, but all of a sudden I'm realizing, oh my gosh, never in my life have I gone a single day where I only eat food that's not sprayed with synthetic chemicals, use products that don't aren't, that don't have synthetic chemicals. And I'm actually getting natural sunshine. I'm moving my body, like all these things that we just, that are so simple that we we don't really realize how much they impact us anyway. And I'm no longer having painful menstrual cramps, no longer having dry itchy eyes, headaches, muscle pains, all these things that I thought were normal. And really, I realized all these symptoms that a lot of us have, they're not normal. They're just common. And so we think of them as normal. And so Allison's pain got better. Her cyst actually went away. She wasn't even trying to target that. She was just trying to get her pain to go away. But we literally ate only organic, real food, took a break from our cell phones, no Wi-Fi. It was a dream. And we listened to Marilee consult her clients. So Marilee has been an environmental specialist in nutrition, food as medicine, chef and specialist for years, and helps people build healthy homes as well. And so she consults clients all around the country, no matter what their health issue was, she always kept coming back to these same questions, like looking at people's environment. You know, clean air, clean water, clean food, like so important and just helping people create a healthy home. And so we were just soaking it all up and we were like, our friends and family need to know this. Everyone needs to know this. We want to put Merrilee's brain on the internet. But so really Branch Basics is like a lifestyle education company first and a products company second. Like we have so much information on our blog and our social media and that's our passion is just to help people create healthy homes and live healthier lives. So it's amazing to know that you can reverse PCOS by just changing out your dish soap, you know, like changing your soap alone will help the toxin burden load in your system go down. Right. So many of these products have endocrine disruptors and there are studies that show even just three days, the Hermosa study showed three days of not using products with parabens and phthalates and triclosan dropped those levels to over 40%. Spring cleaning looks a little different in my house these days. It's not just about organizing my closets. It's about what I'm actually bringing into my space, especially as someone who cares deeply about my metabolic health and lowering overall toxin burden load. I've been using Branch Basics for almost five years, and it's just one of those swaps that totally makes sense to me. I used to have a whole cabinet of different cleaners, all with ingredients I couldn't even pronounce. And the more I learned about hormonal health and environmental toxins, the more that started to bother me. So I switched. What I love is that everything is built around one powerful concentrate. I dilute it to clean my kitchen, bathrooms, laundry, floors, even produce and makeup brushes. It's plant-based and mineral-based, fragrance-free and made safe, certified, which means it's screened against known and suspected harmful chemicals that we do not want in our homes or in our bodies. It feels aligned with how I live. I'm not extreme about everything, but I am intentional. And this is one of those small shifts that adds up day in and day out. If you're doing a reset in your home, I really encourage you to look at what's under your sink too. Branch Basics is available at Target.com, Target in-store, Amazon, and of course, BranchBasics.com. You can get 20% off at BranchBasics.com with code BiohackIT20, which is B-I-O-H-E-C-K-I-T 20. After you purchase, make sure you tell them you heard about them from our show, because a clean home should actually feel clean also for your body. I, when I was younger, prior to like my mom developing cancer and stuff, I had suffered from ovarian cysts since I was like 14, 15. One of my ovaries was reconstructed. I was constantly inflamed. I was put on birth control, but nobody really knew what was wrong with me. I would get migraines. I'd feel really tired. And it wasn't until six years ago that I even discovered functional medicine. And I came across Dave Asprey and his books and all this stuff that I was like, wait, I think I'm a product of my environment. And a self-functional medicine doctor, and he's like, not only do you have candida and all this stuff, you have a lot of inflammation in your body. And then around the same time that I discovered Ranch Basics, I started alternating my cleaning products, my dish soap, my laundry detergent, my personal care products, and I started to feel better. So what you're describing with Allison is the things that I started going through in my body. I've never, thank God, touched wood since I was like, since eight years ago, ever had an ovarian cyst again. I have not had a migraine. I don't have like mood swings. My sleep improved and I can track it because normally I wear an aura ring and have an eight sleep at home. So all the things that you are saying, a hundred percent, it is you are an environment of your lifestyle. It is because each woman detoxes differently. So our detox pathways also vary depending on genetics, depending on trauma, depending on a stress response. Some of us are able to release toxins more easily and some of us hold on to toxins a little bit more so which is why maybe you and Allison might have had the same levels of toxins in your body one knew how to get rid of it and one's body needed that extra help and push absolutely we all have different constitutions and detoxification abilities I always tell people think about Aaron Brockovich the movie you know they were all exposed to the same toxic water and not everyone had the exact same reaction at the same time so don't think oh I'm fine because I've used this my whole life and I don't have any problems, you know, like, and, and who's to say one that you're fine, because like I said, a lot of symptoms are actually not normal. They're just common. But then what, what happens next year in five years or in 20 years, you know? And Merrily, I didn't even tell her story, but Merrily's story is so powerful. She came to learn all this because she grew up, stayed in her American diet and then in her twenties had exploratory surgery because she was always sick. doctors couldn't figure out what was wrong and they saw that she had really bad kidney damage and was like going into kidney failure and horrible endometriosis told she was never going to be able to have children well she just refused to kind of have surgery without exploring other options found out about food as medicine and went all in like threw out everything in her pantry in her fridge and switched to only organic real food and ate a medicinal diet did not cheat and literally in 10 days like reversed her kidney damage and so she saw the power of food well fast forward 10 years later her son was exposed to high levels of pesticides um chloridane and some banned and uh others legal at the time But he literally went from being a coordinated athletic brilliant little boy very like well-behaved to hardly being able to lift his head off the pillow, having rages, uh, some days being super light and sound sensitive others, you know, running circles up around the place and you'd bring a bag in from walmart and he could be in the back of the house and his lymph nodes would swell so he was reacting to like every trillion levels so he's like the canary in the coal mine you know telling when there's something harmful around and so she stripped their house completely of like basically everything but like organic mattress some wooden chairs, but he still could only be outside. His detoxification system was so, so shot and, um, his brain damage was so extensive. Doctors actually said he would never recover because this was before we knew about neuroplasticity. And how old was he at the time? 10. So before we knew about neuroplasticity. And so she was again, refused, refusing to believe that that was the only way that that was you know his diagnosis forever and so they slept outside not even under a tent like in the open air because he would react to a tent um no matter what the weather outside yeah i mean literally just under cover or in the open air um on a cot and she was racking her brain like thinking why is he still getting agitated when we go inside like i feel like i've cleaned everything out. And well, she thought about this one box of products that she had kept. So this box of her favorite perfumes and nail polishes and products that she put away thinking, I'll take these out when he's better. Well, she was like, I mean, really is, I doubt removing that one box is going to make a difference. But she did. And she didn't tell her husband or her son. And the next day was like a huge turning point for his recovery because it was the first time he was able to be in the house. He was like, mom, what did you do? I'm not feeling like I need to go get fresh air. And she realized the next day she was at the grocery store and thought, oh my gosh, the cleaning aisle, you can smell the cleaning aisle and all of these bottles are sealed and closed. So everything is releasing these volatile organic compounds into our air, creating this chemical soup, you know, all the time that our bodies have to detoxify. And so anyway, that is really kind of the basis of our whole mission is helping people create a healthier home and using products that are truly human safe. Like not just a little bit of preservative here that's not for you or a little bit of synthetic this, like truly human safe on every level. Pet safe, kid safe all around. You know what you said about her having endometriosis? So endometriosis, I've interviewed so many OBGYNs and fertility doctors and all for the show. Endometriosis and PCOS is a metabolic disorder. And it's when your blood sugar levels are not regulate it. But your blood sugar levels in order to stabilize as well, besides just approaching your eating and stuff, you have to be able to detox correctly. So exactly why Branch Basics is the solution in this way is because all of these little toxins, oh, your toilet cleaner, your floor cleaner, your detergent, your dishwasher, all of it adds up. And all of a sudden, your biggest organ is your skin. It's absorbing all these synthetics into it. And it does not know how to get rid of those toxins from your body. So not only endometriosis and PCOS, the food is medicine part is so important because that stabilizes your blood sugar and it helps your metabolism and all that stuff and regulating everything. But then in order to also sustain that and lower inflammation in the body, you need to have a clean environment to survive in. So it's not that, oh, it's negotiating, I'll do this, but I'm not gonna do this. It's the entire ecosystem that needs to start changing around you. Exactly. And if we're constantly exposed to these chemicals, not only the accumulation, but the constant exposure. It's like, think of if you have a cut, if you keep irritating it every day, it's not going to heal. But if you get out of its way, it is designed to heal. Our bodies want to heal. Our bodies want to run in the direction of healing. But we have to allow them the energy to be able to do that instead of bombarding them with these harmful chemicals every single day. For everybody listening, they might be like, I don't even know where to start. So what are three steps to detox your home, which are easy places for people to start without getting overwhelmed? Yes. Okay. So our thought is that you start with pesticides, cleaning products, and fragrance. Okay. Okay. So pesticides and cleaning products and fragrance are some of the most toxic chemicals that are allowed in homes, that are used in homes, and even stored in homes. A lot of times we're not even using them, and they're just sitting there. And even now in Florida, they might be passing the law that glyphosate is going to be allowed to be put onto our products. I don't know people in all my Miami community listening to this show. I don't. I wish you love and light at this stage. I don't know what else to say. Exactly. We just, I mean, at this point, we just have to be aware and do the best we can. But, I mean, even just canceling your exterminator, like using organic, integrated pest control management. there are things that you can do where you do not have to have the synthetic pesticides in your home okay and then two cleaning products so look for an ingredient list if there's no ingredient list that's a red flag right there so there's no federal law that requires cleaning products to disclose their ingredients really so a lot of these brands don't have like a list behind it yeah so like some of these you know brands that we all grew up with like you don't you look at that box you're not going to see a full ingredient list. And even in California, where there are more transparency requirements, they still don't have to disclose the proprietary fragrances. And why is that? At this stage of the game, knowing how harmful these chemicals are to us, the government hasn't said you need to disclose everything that is in that bottle. It is down to the consumer at that point if they choose to purchase that new product. Exactly how it should be, right? There's no transparency. And so we have to be aware. And we need to know what we're bringing in our homes. I mean, most of us don't know what we're spraying on our counters and mopping our floors with or washing our clothes in. And we're absorbing and inhaling these chemicals. And so it's up to us to look for an ingredient list and know what we're using. And then look for that single word fragrance, because fragrance, as you know, I'm sure, can hide hundreds, if not thousands of different chemicals that are endocrine disruptors, neurotoxic carcinogenic you know asthmogenic obesogenic like it's just wild that we um you know that the stuff is allowed yes um so fragrance a huge red flag um look for words like warning caution i mean sorry caution is normal like you have we have to like obviously caution children to stay away from it not to drink it not to get in your eyes but like the words that you want to look for more warning or danger because those are those signify that they're harsher chemicals that are more dangerous so um those are kind of like the red flags to look for for cleaning products and of course there's like resources like environmental working group bwg where you can go put in your products and see what rating they get we recommend actually using skin deep to check ingredients yeah i was going to tell you what sort of an app do you love to use and because the skin deep is actually a little stricter um more than yuca more than the healthy okay then the ewg's healthy cleaning guide so there's ewg there's this one called yuca which people were using so you're saying skin deep is one of the stronger ones yes more like if you're going to use environmental working group we like to use the skin deep more so than the healthy cleaning guide just because it's a little you know right it should be safe enough to put on your skin you know um okay so cleaning products and a lot of cleaning products i don't know if people realize but have disinfectants or pesticides as the active agent. So these chemicals are designed to kill, right? Like that is what CIDE means. C-I-D-E means to kill. So these pesticides are designed to kill, and they are the active agents in some of these disinfectants and sanitizers. And so they don't discriminate. Like they don't know to keep our healthy bacteria safe and only kill the bacteria. And so not only are we wiping out our healthy bacteria, but we are also creating super bugs, antibiotic resistance, and then also obviously exposing ourselves to harmful chemicals that can accumulate in our bodies and affect our respiratory system, et cetera. So we have somehow gotten convinced that it's normal to spray this stuff around our homes and around our children in our pets, but we all need to just wake up and really know what we're using. So that is cleaning products as well. And then number three, fragrance. So fragrance is not only in cleaning products and personal care products, but it's in everything now. I mean, literally like kids markers and stickers, shoes. So go around your house and look for fragrance, candles, plug-ins, air fresheners, diffusers all that stuff and we always tell people look we don't we're not telling you you have to throw everything away right now you know like i get that's a lot but put it in a box like it can't hurt to just go put all this stuff in a box put it outside and give your body a break so our bodies are amazing and they adapt so a lot of us grew up with all this stuff since we were little and so we don't think that it affects us but once you get it out of your environment and give your body a break then you'll get the red flags and the signals from your body saying, oh, wait, no, actually. You're doing the right thing. I feel better. Yeah. I actually. Great job. Yeah. You'll probably get a migraine or start sneezing, coughing. Especially when your body's clean. Those symptoms are good because it's your body giving you the red flags that it's designed to give you. You know about the cleaning products and why they're also so important. So just three days ago, I was flying back from Argentina and I was on the plane and I saw somebody post a study. They basically said people that regularly use hand sanitizer have a higher risk of developing certain cancers. And it's exactly what you're saying because the ingredients in those products don't know the difference between good and bad, just in there to kill. So when you disrupt your microbiome levels and you're consistently using like, you know, sanitizers three, four or five times a day. and again I don't want to name brands but there's some very very common like widely used brands and you see them at the hospitals and stuff as well they're actually more detrimental to your health than they are beneficial exactly and so when you and I were having dinner last night I was like can branch basics not do like a clean sanitizer that we can travel with on a plane or something we don't even need sanitizer we will never end up doing a sanitizer because we just want people to use soap and water yeah and and remove the germs so even if you had travel size open water if you had like a wipe. Yeah. And just like you remove the germs instead of trying to kill them. Yeah, exactly what you said. I want everyone to realize that spraying your home with these products doesn't actually make you healthier. It can actually make you more vulnerable to getting sick when we wipe out our good bacteria. And, you know, and I get that there are safer ways to use them. So, I mean, that is the main thing. Obviously, people, if you are ever going to use them, like make sure you have ventilation, make sure you're, you know, not exposing your, your young kids and you're not immune compromised and all that. But the best thing obviously is to get them out. You know, I love that analogy. If you step on a tack, you don't leave the tack in and go to the doctor. You take it out. You remove the source of the problem. So obviously that's number one best approach. You guys know me. I'm very intentional about what I put into my body. So when I kept hearing about NAD in longevity conversations, I did my research. NAD supports how our cells produce energy, repair themselves, and our levels naturally drop as we age. I started using Roe Nutrition's Liposomal NAD Plus because it's practical. It's liquid and it fits into my daily routine easily without the hassle of an IV treatment or injections. It's exactly how I like to biohack Simple and consistent If you want to check it out head to roe nutrition rhonutrition and use code biohackit for 20 off To my audience it might be so shocking that their clean products that they buying at the grocery aisle or whatever their popular supermarket might actually be full of neurotoxins. It might be causing a lot of their health issues, even though it's labeled clean because of all the greenwashing that goes on in the industry. Yeah, it's so confusing, especially if it's sold in a health food store. You think, oh, surely it's good. Surely it's safe. But no, it's, there's a lot of them that still contain endocrine disrupting chemicals, especially fragrance. Look at that, look for that in every product you buy because it's sneaky. And you know, we've been told, oh, if you can't read an ingredient list, like if you can't pronounce the word and don't buy it, but fragrance seems so innocent, right? Cause you understand that you can easily read it. But people need to know that that hides, you know, so many chemicals. clothes. But I think the biggest thing is that people just assume if it's on store shelves, any store shelf, even a conventional store, that it's been tested for safety. Yeah, they have your back. And that is just not the case. I think with the beauty of AI and technology, you have grok, perplexity, chat, Claude, you can literally now go through a grocery aisle and it's going to get to the point, in my opinion, where you actually can take a picture and drop it and be like, is this clean or not? How non-toxic is it? So I really urge moms if you're doing your grocery shopping, Even prior to heading to the store, take some of your favorite products that you're using day in and day out, especially if you have kids and pets and stuff in the house, and check the ingredients prior to you leaving. And then tell the AI to find you clean alternatives from that grocery store in that aisle that might be a better swap for you. And I think that is the way to do it. It's like kind of using technology and AI to your advantage. Because now instead of you being like you are, right? You have four kids. Allison has four kids. You guys are tired. You're overwhelmed. you're building a business, the last thing you're going to freaking do is be like, I'm going to go and check everything. Right. Exactly. Yeah. So the best. Well, go ahead. No, I thought the best cheat would be using technology to our advantage is to be like, how can we as busy founders, busy moms, busy family women use this to our advantage to make sure we're giving our family the best. I love that. And I think one of the beautiful things about products, at least, is like once you change it, you don't have to think about it all the time. Like with food, you've got to think about it multiple times every single day. but with creating a healthy home and turn you know apart from the food it's like once you get your products you're done and that's one of the beautiful things about our our concentrate model is it allows you to get rid of a bunch of different cleaning products at once and not have to go look at ingredient lists for an oven cleaner a glass cleaner an all-purpose you know so the fact that you can use it for so many uses is amazing just like really valuable because it helps you minimize and not have to have 20 different cleaning products under your sink. Right. And just like not only and you know that the source of it is incredibly clean. It works. It's effective and it's non-toxic. And that exactly the fact that you said it's effective. Like that's what's so fun about our job is like the fact that we were able to create a product that is truly safe but also actually works like as well or better than conventional cleaning products. And so like we don't feel like we have people have to decide you know do I want efficacy or safety. Like you truly can have it both. Are there any brands that you've seen in this space since you guys have kind of started and it's been a while and you guys have this huge community and so many people love you and use you like I do. Have you had people who tried to copycat, you know, and try to like piggyback off this wave that you made for clean, non-toxic home products? Yes. But I mean, hey, come on, do it. The more power to you. Like we want people to have more options. We want people to be healthy. We are not trying to be the only ones. Like we want to raise the bar in the industry. We want people to try and copy us. So the fact that this is becoming so much more aware than even when we started so many years ago, 15 years ago, is amazing. Like I love that there's so much more awareness. But again, the problem is the confusion with the greenwashing and all that. So it's up to the consumer to really know what you're using. But yeah, I mean, it's kind of flattering, you know. Yeah, same time. You know, and going back to the greenwashing, right? You and I were talking about this at dinner a little bit. I thought that this would really be the next four years of change. I thought we could really alter the way we're kind of blanket labeling, greenwashing, holding supplement companies even accountable for the claims that they're making and the product that they're churning out. I thought our food systems would improve. I thought so many things and kind like stepping back and i'm the first one to say this i i've been a little bit disappointed to be like if we really just stand back and look at all the promises that we were made that would come into effective change and what's actually happened there's a very big gap between that and this is why i tell people this is why i started the show right to advocate for yourselves do not trust the government to do your homework for you they're not going to do it for you they're all for profit every single one of them i don't care who you vote for it's the same bullshit and at the end of the day. And I say it's the same for like stores, everyone's out for their bottom line. And so you might have, you know, this incredible grocery store that opens up next door and down the block from me and they're like, Oh my god, we're completely clean and stuff. But if they have to make more profit, and they have external investment, and they have a VC firm breathing down their neck, they're going to make a cut on your behalf to be like, well, at least it's 80% clean and not the 20. So this is why if you have technology at your fingertips, you have AI available to advocate for your damn self. Yeah. Well, I love that. And it's true. Like, we have got to take, you know, our health into our own hands. And I mean, I think one of the biggest tragedies, I guess, is just that we have allowed the government just to tell us what we should do instead of taking ownership. Yeah, be like, hi, we trust you so much. Yeah. You know, 2020 taught us nothing. We're sitting here and like, we trust you guys so much. Our own health, our own bodies. Yeah. And it goes across like at the end of the day, I don't think necessarily, especially when I look at the Western world, and you and I spoke about this at dinner last night, when I look at some of the Eastern countries and I'm spending so much time in the Middle East versus like we look at the West itself, how much government and organizations and structures are actually caring about the average civilian and what they're going through and actually fixing the health of the residents and the people who live in this country at that governmental level is not much. because if you think about it, people come in, they have four years in office before they know it, halfway two years in, they have to like re-campaign to keep themselves elected. How much work is actually being done? And so I am really for having a platform that helps people make their own decisions. And you don't have to listen to the show and agree with me. You don't have to agree with the founder I bring on. You don't have to believe in the expert. All it is is having conversations to give you options to educate yourself so you can decide what works best for you and your family. I love that. And exactly. I just want to get people thinking. That's it. Like, because most of us don't think about the products that we're using and what's actually in them. We just look at the front of the label or the packaging or, you know, what the functionality is. But we need to. And it's really serious and it's important. And I mean, I could tell you story after story of customer that has come to us just like crying, telling us their story of how, what they've learned from our blog or from using our products. and how it's changed their life in very real ways. In our house, we have dogs. We're big dog lovers. My ex-husband and I, one of our dogs, she was a pet and she would get a lot of rashes and hives all the time. They're sensitive to food so we change out the food, all this stuff. This is prior to me getting fully into this non-toxic world and changing stuff out. She would get these hives. Her paws were getting really agitated. We're like, I don't know what's going on. We've changed out our food. We're not giving her chicken because bully breeds are very allergic to chicken. So I'm like, what's going on here? Lo and behold, I was like, listen, we're cleaning our house with all these toxic products. I think there's something that she's allergic to her environment. She's having a reaction to something in the environment. You know, the pet beds, we're washing them every two weeks, all that stuff. So when I changed out what we were cleaning the floor with to a mix of branch basics with white vinegar alone, changed out to laundry detergent, changed out to what I was cleaning their bowls with, their food bowls with and their water bowls with, she stopped having this like reaction on her paws and the hives that she was developing. So even animals, forget people, right? Absolutely. Are so sensitive and susceptible to what we put in the environment. And if you look at the lifespan, they did a research study on this. If you look at the lifespan of dogs and how it's gone down from back in the day, dogs to live up to 20, 25 years. And now dogs are like surviving anywhere from like a seven to 10 years. And you're like, that's top line. It's a food that they're eating. Back to what you said about detoxing. It's the food in the kibble that we're giving them. It's a shit. It's environmental toxins that we're putting into their body through the cleaning products and detergents and all that stuff. And their bodies don't know what to do with them because they were like wild animals. And number three is we're over vaccinating our pets. It's the same thing with humans, right? It's the same thing going on. And so I'm like, if you focus on these three things and you can be more attentive to it and do the best that you can within wherever you live, your budget, the school system, your kids are in, whatever you can manage in your economic environment and just make smarter choices. Although I will tell you white wine vinegar to clean a floor is way cheaper than a lot of other stuff. And it's cleaner. We literally use our products as a vehicle for this mission, you know, like for this message, exactly what you're saying. Like, I don't care if you use Branch Basics. I want you to just get all the other harmful stuff out. Like use hot water, use vinegar, use lemons. I don't care. But also don't get Branch Basics and put it next to the unhealthy ingredients. Exactly. because then what's the point because exactly what is the point um yeah i i think the biggest thing is just give your body a break it's like an elimination diet like you got to remove all the harmful stuff and then slowly introduce the new things and see what you react to because i i totally get how like i showed up to marilee's and i could not tell how strong my laundry detergent smelled and she's like oh well we're gonna have to like air this out because you're I'm so used to it by this point. And so once I, you know, unmasked from it all, then I could realize how strong it was. But so many people are like, I don't get what you're talking about. Like, I don't smell this. But it's like, once you give your body a break from it, then you will see how strong it is. I can challenge anybody listening to this show that if you did your blood work and you looked at your inflammation markers and then went into your, for a month and they could do this. Look at your inflammation markers, be like, okay, day number one, and I'm going to remove the toxic cleaning products that I have in my house. So, floor cleaners, detergents, dishwasher, all of that stuff. Remove the personal care products to become clean, non-toxic personal care products. And just eat organic whole foods for 30 days. I'm not even asking them to do more than that. And you document your sleep quality, your energy levels, and just how your skin feels and even looks hydrated and how you look and feel. and then go 30 days after and run literally your labs again, you will be shocked at the amount of inflammation. And this is a science test, right? People can take this on their own accord, but I can give them a guarantee. And if that does not happen for you, I will personally mail you a box of branch basics as a gift. So this is literally me challenging the community to be like, go out and do it and see for yourself within 30 days what a difference it will make. So absolutely 100%. And look, even 10 days. So we did this. We took three people to a hotel in Austin. We basically created like a little mini non-toxic room. So a little mini non-toxic environment. So we brought in our own bedding, like all organic cotton that had only been washed in Branch Basics. Everything was fragrance-free. The towel, you know, organic cotton towels, only washed in Branch Basics. Clean personal care products, filtered water. Let's see what else. organic organic cotton clothes and then it was right down the street from an organic restaurant so an organic macrobiotic like medicinal restaurant so literally for 10 days of doing this and we encourage them you know obviously to get natural sunlight in their eyes in the mornings and ground like walk barefoot on the earth and exercise Literally I telling you oh my gosh I on the results Pesticides VOCs parabens All of it. All of it dropped. Yeah. In 10 days. And so, yes, I 100% back up what you're saying. I love this challenge. And this is where I really urge people to be their own. You're just going to our practitioner, traditional medicine doctor, and they're like, you know what, this is bullshit. So fine, go test it for yourself and see, because the proof is in the pudding, right? When you see your markers drop like that, when you see your toxin burden load go down, you know, there's at home testing that you can sign up with companies like Vibrant, this company that I use, and you can check your full on toxin burden load and see each level go down, aluminum, this, that, and the other. Then you're like, obviously I'm going to believe in it because I feel better. It's in the data. and also I can feel it in my body. So it does work. I just did a test recently. It's actually gone to my functional practitioner and I forgot to text him to be like, can I have my results now? Because we have this whole protocol. So you know Body Bio and I love this brand. I swear by them. So they have the PC, Fosletetalcholine. And essentially we had the supper club. We did it at Gary's Breckhouse House and we said, okay, we're going to give you a vibrant lab test and you guys are going to all go home and check your toxin burden load. And then we're going to build you a protocol for the next 30 days. We're going to ship you the products that are going to help you. Okay. And you're going to test yourself after. That's going to help support detoxification and cell membrane health. And so we're getting people who came to that dinner to do this right now and check for themselves how that works. So we gave them the Vibrant test. Okay. Gave them the products to help support them with the detox. And we're like, don't believe that. Let's check for yourself. Okay. So when do y'all get the results? Hopefully. Well, I've done my test recently. So I should be getting my results like now and I'm going like kind of on the protocol. I take PC all the time though. But I was traveling a lot. But people who've never done this, the levels are just shocking. So, oh, filler, like in the next two weeks, we'll get that original batch of people who sent in the test. Because it's been two weeks since the dinner. Took it. Got the results. Went on the protocol. And we'll be seeing in the next two to three weeks what the results come back. Because then we're sending them another test and say test again. Yeah. That's so exciting. Well, one of the biggest things I think people need to take away is that we don't have to chase all these expensive equipment, whatever. It's really just about getting back to basics. Giving our body good, clean food and nourishment, clean air, clean water, getting all the noise off, letting our body rest and digest. Yes, exactly. Go into sympathetic. So, yes, our nervous system reset. So I think one of the things that I think people tend to do a lot is like, okay, what can I add? You know, we're like, no, it's all about removal. Removing it. The power of removal. Elimination. Yes. So I think that's just really important for people to understand because if you're going to spend money and all this effort and time on all these wellness trends or gadgets, then you're undermining your efforts if you're living in an environment that is that's toxic yeah you know like if you're laying your head on a pillow at night that is wrapped in sheets that are all washed in harmful detergents then your body that alone is a battle yeah your body is not resting and rejuvenating and repairing and healing it is having to detoxify and work all night you know so all the time that's huge i also was really excited to see you guys go into target and go kind of mainstream, right? I think it's a big movement happening that you see big conventional stores like the Costco's and the Target start to pay attention to the non-toxic demand that people want to see non-toxic products. So how is that for you guys? Yeah. So Target is actually having a huge initiative on health and wellness. And we just had a meeting recently and they were big about that. And yeah, it's really exciting. I mean, we've, we stayed direct to consumer for years because we want that customer relationship. We want to be able to educate. And like I said, we have tons of information on our blog and newsletters. So we wanted to build our following before we went in to Target. So we're not just another product on the shelf, you know, like people know that who you are, your community values, what you stand for. Exactly. So it's been really successful. I mean, thankfully, we've been the number one cleaning product in the natural category since we've launched. And we're, we have some new exciting things ahead very soon. So what do you think you guys will release next that you haven't when it comes to the SKUs or product offerings? In retail or just anywhere? Any. Like what has excited you guys to be like, you know, we're missing this one thing that needs to be added in? Yes. Okay. Well, people have been asking for years for dish soap. Okay. So I actually just spray my dish. Like when I'm hand washing, I just spray my dishes with our own purpose. And I love that. I've been doing that for like 15 years. Yeah. But pods or like a... So we have the tabs on the dishwasher already. So those are plastic free tabs and that's what i used to just yeah they dissolve right in it's clean but i'm talking about like a you know like a gel dish soap that you squeeze and like you know use at the sink and so that is very exciting i think our customers will be very excited about that and then we are going to expand our laundry line as well so yes very exciting and i think laundry is one of those things that people are always like oh i need a scent because my gym clothes are sweaty and smelly or my teenage boy's son's clothes are smelly. But I'm telling you guys, a lot of these fragrances just cover up the smells. You want to actually deodorize. You want to get rid of them. And so anyway, I'm excited for just expand our laundry line. We're going to pull a little rapid fire myth busting. Okay. Myth. Vinegar and water is enough to kill everything. True or false? False. because vinegar and hydrogen peroxide is actually your best bet. You don't want to mix them together like in the same bottle, but studies have found that if you spray hydrogen peroxide and then spray vinegar from two different bottles and wipe that is equivalent to bleach. Wow. So, yes. Myth. If it's fragrance-free, is it safe? Is this a lie or is it true? Not true. Look at the other ingredients. Like fragrance, yes, is one of the biggest offenders, but there are others. And so you don't want the ethoxylated alcohols, the harmful pesticides, preservatives, et cetera. Myth. You need bleach to truly disinfect a bathroom. And what is the alternative? Myth. Give me some real ones. False. Sorry, false. Yeah. No, you do not need that. Again, we do not need to try and kill germs. We need to try and remove them. So cleaning them with soap and water or, you know, even baking soda. just removes the germs. You don't need the bleach. Right. I have loved chatting to you and having dinner with you last night. I'm just excited. You know, for me, it's been really special to brands that I personally bought, used in my home, have changed my health, products that have changed my family's health, things that I have been using for so long to be able to sit down with founders on this journey and interview you guys and get to know your backstory is so special to me because your products help change my life. and I always recommend it to friends. And so that's a really like special piece about I think having this show and running it now is that I have access to people like you. And from like going down to, you know, Googling you online and finding you on Instagram and ordering your products from Instagram shop to now have you sitting in front of me is really, really special. Oh, I love that. I'm so glad you did that and found us because this is so special to get to sit here with you and getting to know you last night. I loved it. And I meant to tell you actually, your story with your mom is very similar to merrily's story as well she lost her mom to cancer when she was in college and she made it her mission to try and help people you know so that they wouldn't suffer and a lot of these products we just don't realize they're creating unnecessary suffering toxic soup in your body and especially for women right we look at our like i had almost gone into perimenopause so i don't think i got to tell you last night but i went on this whole like holistic fertility journey realizing in my early 40s that i my body was under so much stress I was aging so fast, not because I looked dead, but because my cells on a cellular level were so chronically inflamed. And this started in my mid-30s and started just getting ramping up and ramping up. And then I had to make all these switches, cleaning out, removing the toxic cleaning products, cleaning out our produce. So just organic was not good enough. Just grass-fed wasn't good enough. Now we look for grass-fed and grass-finished. We look for smaller farmers. We look for regenerative farms. cleaned up our dairy, started really looking after my personal care products. And I promise you the proof is in the pudding. Yes, I'm really manic with work and I'm traveling all over the world and that takes a bit of a toll on my health. But on the flip side, my health has improved. My inflammation markers have gone down. My biological age has shifted. I feel better. My HRV has improved, which is another metric that you can monitor and see how your body's actually responding to stress and inflammation. So I can only go off based off what I personally have also tried. And this is why like a brand like Branch Basics is so important. It's a one-stop solution. It's a one-stop shop. It gives you what you need without 20 different bottles to go through because that's overwhelming, right? I don't want to be like looking for 20 different things. And the same thing is more brands need to be coming up with solutions like that to make our lives easier. And guys, if you're listening to this, please use AI. AI is your best friend. For now, until he tries to kill us, which I'm worried about as well. But you know, there's a documentary that just came out that I actually have to walk but the trailer basically said that there's a I think it was Sam Altman or somebody that said in the documentary that it's 20% likelihood that AI may kill us but 80% we might have utopia so we're here with 80% and I'm like okay but while we have it let's just make the most of it let's use it to our advantage yeah let's manage our lives guys so but thank you for flying down and coming on the show and having dinner with me last night and hopefully Allison comes on for round two yes for sure we would love that thank you thank you Guys, so I just recorded an episode with Alison Love, who's one of the founders of a brand that I absolutely love called Branch Basics. And during that episode, I was thinking about it. I was like, why don't we put things to the test? I always bring you brands and products that I love. But what about really putting things to the test? So one of my favorite at-home diagnostic testing companies is Vibrant Labs. They're also a partner of ours at the show. and I wanted to give one lucky winner of Vibrant Labs toxin burn load test that you guys test your own toxin burn load that you guys test, that you guys test your own toxin burn load yourself. You see the results and then we will mail you. The same lucky winner gets a box of Branch Basics because environmental toxins are one of the biggest contributors to your inflammation and to your health issues and you don't even know it yet. So we're going to clean that stuff out And then I'm going to send you a box of one of my favorite supplement brands, Body Bio, that really supports cell membrane health and detoxification on a cellular level. And then after the month goes by of you using these two brands, Body Bio and Branch Basics, I will send you another vibrant test. And I want you to test your full toxin burn load and inflammation markers prior to taking and introducing the cleaner environment and better brands into your ecosystem before and after and test it out for yourself. So comment below if you want to be that lucky winner to be this living science experiment that I think you guys should do because I did it on myself and I was shocked by the results. So comment BMG below and we're going to pick a winner at random and maybe that could be you and then send us over your address and I will be sending you out these products. My team is doing, what is it? My team is doing this little, my team is also going to be doing this challenge with us. So I want to see in 30 days if we can revamp your health, reduce your environmental toxin levels and reduce inflammation in your body and have you feeling better. And guys, as always, we appreciate your support. So please don't forget to like, comment and subscribe and share our show with anybody you think would enjoy our content. Thank you so much. Thank you.