Low Tox Life

Reece Proudfoot is my brother-in-law and a very clever guy when it comes to regenerative economy design. So, in the face of what seems a never-ending onslaught of ‘big developer power’ coming in and taking from communities, I’ve brought him on to build our community’s sense of agency in our own little corners of the world. We explore: What is a regenerative vs extractive business? What kind of dat...

Feeling like environmental toxins keep increasing instead of decreasing? You're not alone. Pesticides have been big news in Australia lately, for two key reasons: 🔹 The expanded approval of isocycloseram, a PFAS pesticide used widely in berries and other tree crops and vegetables. 🔹 The murky regulatory saga of paraquat - a pesticide banned in 70 countries and strongly linked to Parkinson's dise...

When we think about environmental toxins, we often think about the things in our immediate environments, many of which would mean the home, what we put on our body, or what we eat.  This week, I’m introducing you to a wonderful guest and we're talking about the environmental toxins in our rivers. Just a few generations ago, we could drink from our rivers and our guest today is going to unpack...

If you spend time on an algorithm social media feed, you might have come to believe that parenting is impossible and kids are just not going to be able to thrive, growing up today.  One small problem here: WE are the adults in the room.  So how do we change the stories we’re fed and the realities stemming from this very antisocial ‘food’ driven by the current media landscape and what it...

Dr. Carrie Jones has been educating clinicians and supporting women in their hormonal health for nearly two decades. She's a naturopathic physician and based out of the U.S., but her reach is global and her passion is palpable. What I love about Carrie and why I wanted to have her back on the show after eight years since we first talked about perimenopause together on the podcast is that Carrie is...

Maggie Dent has helped parents around the world through some of our trickiest moments navigating the parenting and caring-for-kids experience.  This week we’re talking about the online world and the latest tech wave, AI, and our kids.  And we’re doing it in Maggie’s signature way that is practical and non-judgmental, helping parents make small, meaningful changes without fear or overwhel...

If you oscillate between pushing yourself and your community to do more to reduce your plastic consumption while also being frustrated that governments aren't doing more to regulate plastic production and make more plastics recyclable on a big scale, today is the show for you. Meet our guest, Lottie Dalziel. Lottie Dalziel started Banish in 2018 with a simple idea: give people a place to bring the...

As we scroll on socials, we are bombarded with all kinds of reasons that screen time is having negative impacts on our lives - from polarisation to self consciousness and comparison as well as eye sight. In today's show with Dr. Meenal Agarwal, an eye doctor, we talk about so much more, when it comes to the effect of spending so much of our time on screens, aka “near focus” or “near work”. She tal...

Many people experience fatigue in their lives. Many people experience issues with their iron levels. It's one of those Goldilocks nutrients. We don't want it too high or too low, and we definitely want it effectively absorbed to the level we need to make the most of it in our bodies for our energy and a whole bunch of other processes. We had two podcasts on iron last year. One of those was with Re...

I'm going to suggest that the best 50 minutes you can spend this week is listening to this week's show with Jeremy Pollack @pollackpeacebuilding who believes we are wired for peace.  Jeremy Pollack, Ph. D. is a social-organisational psychologist, leader in the field of workplace conflict resolution and peacebuilding and author of WIRED FOR PEACE. He is the Founder of Pollack Peacebuilding Sys...

I'd like to think that plastic is an apolitical subject.  None of us want to see our environment or our bodies polluted with this stuff, and so it brings me great pleasure to focus on one of the biggest overlaps of our times: the quest to reduce plastic in our bodies and our environment. We've done a few shows on this over the years, and this week is wonderful. Let me introduce you to Kal Gla...

Jenny Smith @mouldconsultancy has been an HVAC specialist (heating/ventilation/air conditioning) for decades - she’s had clients from NASA to the biggest commercial property developers and even wrote the manual on A/C split system installation for Australia in the early 2000s.  And then there was mould and becoming gravely ill to the point she was falling asleep at the wheel and couldn’t walk...

“Stop and smell the roses” is a familiar phrase, yet today’s guest challenges us to make the “roses” our default mode rather than something we try to remember to do.  Say What?  So… If you feel like you’re trying to stand still on ever-moving ground… Or perhaps, you feel like, on paper, what you’ve achieved should ‘feel more satisfying and less exhausting or lacking’, or that you perhaps...

Wow have I got a powerful woman, story and show for us this week. (SA warning) Kerrie Searle was abused when working in the Victorian Police Force, by a senior leader. The experience, and the road to getting justice, left her with severe PTSD, in hospital and heavily medicated.  From this awful time came a powerful healing journey that led to Kerrie realising she ‘understood’ animals and coul...

Catie Gett is a naturopath, author and founder of The Staple Store who has made a radical change to her mission.  One day, a delivery drive of orders when the courier didn’t come, made her reckon with her younger self who wanted to have a big impact and change the world: This wasn’t changing the world, it was catering to a small group of people who could afford “the best”.  In this conve...

Concerned about plastics in the environment? In you?  Today is the story of how two scientists embarked on a journey to bind plastics so our body excretes them instead of absorbing them.  Drs. Nicholas Monsul (Yale University & The Johns Hopkins Hospital) and Dr Eva Berkes (Scripts Inst.) are physician-scientists and co-founders of Quorum Innovations, a biotechnology company working...

This week, I’m joined by Dr Nicole Bijlsma for a deep dive into the invisible threats in our homes and how to minimise risk: mold, electromagnetic fields (EMFs), dust mites, and poor air quality, and how they’re so often missed by doctors and naturopaths alike. Nicole shared her powerful story of turning personal health battles into a mission to educate others, emphasising that exposure history is...

Ever been told “You’re so strong… You’re so resilient” but it feels like you’re not? Well, you could actually just be good at ‘enduring’ and today’s guest wants to help you feel like you can move through difficult chapters and truly feel resilient and strong.  Dr. Suzan Song is a Harvard- and Stanford-trained psychiatrist and medical anthropologist who has worked with families and people faci...

Be prepared to be excited to clean your home. I’m not joking, PJ, this week’s guest will have this effect on you!  So chill, so relaxed, so non-judgemental about your priorities and situation, yet so incredibly knowledgeable and nerdy when it comes to the finer points of what effectively cleaning parts of your home really entails.  PJ Harlow is a long time online friend, both having gone...

Did you know the ocean contributes at least 50% of the world’s oxygen?  We often talk about what’s happening on the land in farming on the podcast - but what’s happening in the oceans, in both fishing and farming, also deserves our attention, as Alistair and I tease out in this show - the parralels are striking regarding what’s going on in both globally.  Alistair Allen has been an activ...

Katie Hendricks is a gift of a human who has been a PhD psychologist and movement therapist since 1975. How special to have her here guiding us in a time where most of us feel affected in some way by the current state of the world and the sense that things are harder in our day to day lives.  We cover movement exercises, pain and tension ‘detective work’ and explore differences between anger,...

Dr Brad Leech, PhD, first joined me on the show (#437) for a discussion to update the record on a common practice when addressing pathogens: “weed, seed, feed” which he believes can cause further damage.  In this episode, we explore Autoimmunity and the 4 main ‘feeder lanes’ into it, drawing on the thousands of hours Brad has spent researching it during his PhD and beyond.  We cover Leak...

Another show to add to the powerhouse handful of shows we’ve done with incredible practitioners over the years on Perimenopause/Menopause transition years to further Women’s Health empowerment.  Dr Ceri Cashell, a Sydney Australia-based doctor, is on a mission to improve perimenopause and menopause support for women everywhere by training as many Drs as she can through her Healthy Hormones pl...

Farmers who are trying to improve our planet and the quality of and accessibility of food from the ground up? Some of my favourite show guests over the years have been farmers.  Nick Holliday of Belvedere Farm here in Australia, QLD, is full-time farming with regenerative principles and providing eggs, pork and beef. He and his family feed hundreds of families each week, through their CSA col...

A solo show with me this week, taking your questions and answering them in this show.  Covering everything from low tox shampoo tricky ‘finding’ factor, through to low tox freak outs when it’s a situation you can’t control, how to cultivate agency in a high tox world, and then questions about histamine, mould, paint, kids and tech and referencing a bunch of helpful resources, past shows and e...