February 9, 2023 - EyeClarity Podcast
Here is a great interview with Jenna Hua who is the Founder and CEO of Million Marker, the only mail-in body toxicity test for BPA, phthalates, parabens, and other hormone-disrupting chemicals. Jenna talked about the dangers of BPA, phthalates, and other plastic chemicals. And how can these chemicals impact our hormones? Enjoy the show.
To contact Jenna, you can DM her on Instagram @million_marker or visit her website: https://www.millionmarker.com/
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SUMMARY KEYWORDS
people, exposures, chemicals, product, bpa, test, plastic, fragrance, paraben, marker, environmental exposure, phthalates, big, offer, impact, expose, hormone disrupting chemicals, important, conceive, hormone
Hello, everyone, it’s Dr. Sam, I’d like to welcome you to my EyeClarity podcast. This is a show that offers cutting edge information on how to improve your vision and overall wellness through holistic methods. I so appreciate you spending part of your day with me. If you have questions, you can send them to hello@drsamberne.com.
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So you are in for a special treat. Today, I’m going to be interviewing a really powerful, wonderful person. Her name is Jana Wah, she is the founder and CEO of million marker. And I’m gonna let her tell you what she does. But she is very transformational. And I was on her podcast not too long ago on Instagram. And I wanted to have her on, I wanted to introduce you to introduce her to you. So Jenna, welcome to the program. Tell us a little bit about yourself which what you do how you got there. And I’m going to turn the microphone over to you.
00:55
Thank you so much, Dr. Sam. It’s a pleasure to interview you and learning from you. I’m extremely honored to be on your podcast. One of my biggest goal, at least one of the mission familiar marker is to disseminate the information and get the public educated about environmental exposures. So my little bit about my background. As Dr. Sam mentioned, I’m the founder and CEO of million marker, and million marker we do we offer a direct to consumer endocrine disrupting chemical, environmental exposure testing, allowing people to understand their exposures and do something about it. How I came to balancing Milan marker, there’s the long history, a little bit of my background, I studied in nutrition and environmental health, during undergrad and graduate school, I was getting really frustrated that we don’t know we don’t really have a personalized way to understand our own exposures. While I’m saying is that your environment, closures is actually accounts for more than 70% of your chronic disease risk.
One of the quotes that we learned is, you know, genetic loads of gun, but environment pulls the trigger. So your environment is extremely important in terms of your chronic disease development, your well being, and there isn’t really a personalized way for people to understand that. So professionally, that’s what I ran into during my research. So I really want to create a tool for people to understand, you know, what’s going on inside of us. Because, you know, given you and I have the same exposure, because we have different genes, we would respond very differently.
And there’s no way of knowing that. And personally, I also I had a lot of fertility struggles myself, and then a lot of the chemical weed tests today, we call them hormone disrupting chemicals, which we can go into later. And these chemicals really impact fertility, they impact metabolism in the impact pretty much every aspect of your wellness and disease causing processes, particularly chronic disease. And I was very frustrated, because when I was going through my fertility struggles, the doctors were just telling me, you know, good luck next time. And because I know I hadn’t, you know, no family history, and we did any tests possible. We couldn’t find out, you know, what’s going on with me. And I asked the doctor, can I do a environmental exposure test? This could be triggering whatever symptoms I was having. All they told me is that good luck next time, and there’s no such tests available. But I know you know, we literally because I studied this, the CDC have been monitoring people’s environmental exposures and chemical exposures. In the last 4050 years. However, the service is not available to the public. So I figured, you know, in academia, since nobody’s reading my papers anyway, I should do something different.
03:57
So you brought it more into the clinical and you’re going right to the consumer and offering different kinds of toxicity testing, is that is that correct?
04:08
Right now we offer mainly just the hormone disrupting chemical test is one only one test but for this test, we cover 13 chemical metabolites.
04:21
And so when a person gets the results, then what’s the call to action? Are you able to support them and navigating the detoxification process?
04:32
That’s our goal compared to a lot of the direct to consumer test which you just get a laboratory report just some numbers. We really want to make sure that our test is actionable. What we do is we ask people to complete an exposure journal before you submit your urine sample, which we asked about their your lifestyle, what food Have you eaten, what kind of packaging material you have use, you know, your food packaging, how many times you’ve eaten out and also what are the products you’re using, what are your household cleaning products?
What are your personal care products, anything that you put on your body in the last or put in your body? In the last 24 hours, we ask for that, because this will help us to personalize where you exposures are coming from, and the pair this information with your testing results, then we’re able to pinpoint, Hey, these are the possible exposures. And, for example, you might want to like swap out some of your personal care products use a fragrance free product, which will limit some of your exposures. So we will also audit not only the chemicals that we test, but if we see any other problematic ingredients in your personal care or household product, or any other behavior that can contribute to your overall environmental body burden. And we also let you know, so then next time, you know, when you purchase a product, you can purchase a better product, or you can start changing your behaviors and then reducing some of these exposures.
06:02
So in your opinion, how much of this is genetics? And how much of it is environmental? Like what is the difference if two people are exposed to say BPA or paraben parabens? How come one person, you know reacts differently than another. This is depending
06:22
on people’s genetic. So you know how we’re detoxing a lot of these have to do the P 450. system, and then that’s determined by your genetics. So some people will be much more susceptible to these exposures versus others. But we haven’t done like, we don’t have enough research, we have enough research showing there’s a difference. But we don’t have enough research to show, okay, people with this genetic mutation or genetic susceptibility, that over what level of these exposure would oppose an impact. The bottom line is that these chemicals have no business of being your body, they only do harm and then they don’t do any good. So the rule of thumb is you should always reduce these exposures as much as you can.
07:15
So the difference between women and men, what are the big symptoms that women have are the big issues that trigger them to want to contact you and then men what are their issues and why they would want to contact you.
07:30
So a lot of our clients right now are people who are trying to conceive or experiencing unexplained infertility because a lot of a huge part of the research around these chemicals are around fertility. Now we have seen actually more and more research coming out suggesting that these chemicals are not only obesogens, meaning they cause obesity, they’re also diabetes origins, meaning they’re also linked to diabetes. The other thing I think like because pregnancy when people get pregnant, this is like a very special period of people start thinking about what they’re eating, whether exposure are and it was you know, compounded if people are doing IVF which we have seen a lot more and more people cannot couples cannot conceive naturally. So they go through IVF and then people started looking to okay, why am I not being able to conceive? Because we have seen research that these chemicals are linked to fertility issues. So you’re talking about, you know, your regular period in women and PCOS that’s has been linked and any men it’s just dramatic decline of sperm quality.
08:45
Got it? What’s IVF tell us what that is.
08:48
Oh, IVF. So that’s IVF in fertile, infertile. In Vitro Fertilization. Okay, good.
08:58
So, what should we Pete What What should people be aware of in terms of the kind of products they use? This is good for education being proactive.
09:12
Yep. The biggest one, I think like if you put in a big category plastic, would it be number one, I know we have this really complicated relationship with plastic, but I think people need to be more aware. Especially if you’re using you know, plastic Tupperware to store your food or drink your water. Please ditch that and never ever microwave plastic because a lot of these chemicals that we are testing are present in plastic. We also call them plasticizers like BPA and phthalates are one of the two of the major plasticizers have been used today. Some plastic actually contains up to 80% BPA or phthalates. And then you know we can go into a little bit about BPA and phthalates. So BPA is pretty much the poster child off environment chemicals, it’s a actually mimics your estrogen and Thalys blocks testosterone. So, and the that’s why we call them hormone disruptors. So they mess with your hormone. And for anyone you know, who don’t really know what hormones functions are, they’re like the literally like your body signaling system.
Everything or every bodily function is controlled by these hormones. And they act, it’s like such a tiny amount. We’re talking about, you know, one drop of water in like 25 size, the Olympic swimming pool. That’s how much we’re required to, you know, cause an impact. And they work, you know, hormone work seeks is kind of like a lock and key. And they have to match. And they weren’t kind of your whole body kind of work as a symphony. So you don’t want your key to be out of sync. What happens when he’s hormone disruptor comes in, they mess up your lock and key, and then you can think about all the downstream impact. You’re talking about, you know, your fertility, you’re talking about your sleep, your metabolism, and you know, your chances of developing diabetes, obesity, all of these is an autoimmune conditions. All of these are, are linked. That’s why we don’t want people to expose to them. And plastic is a big one because of BPA and phthalates, which are like, pretty much the most well studied, endocrine disrupting chemicals.
11:28
So what are some other hormone disrupting chemicals that people should be aware of besides the plastics,
11:36
so there are many, but I, when we touched on, I think it’s really important for people to know that they can do something about it. It’s actually actionable. There are chemicals that we don’t have a lot of control off, we call those persistent chemicals. It makes avoiding persistent really important, but at the same time is we should really, we can do something about these transient chemicals. So what we’re talking about BPA phthalates. There are others like paraben, which is a common also a hormone disruptor and a common preservatives used in personal care products. Another one is oxybenzone. All of these are really well studied oxybenzone has been putting sunscreens and sunblock is a chemical UV blocker. Hawaii actually banned oxy benzene or bends on phenol because it kills coral reef. Just remember, you know, like anything kills the aquatic life. It can’t be good for for humans. But we actually call these transient chemicals, which means that your body actually have the natural detox system to get rid of them if you eliminate your exposure.
However, there’s a whole class of other chemical We call those persistent chemicals people might have heard about peep us the Forever chemical that’s in your Teflon pans, that’s your like nonstick pans or in your waterproofing outdoor clothing. That’s a harder one to deal with that one, you can only prevent your future exposure. But once you expose to those things, they actually stays you know, body for a long time. So you can’t get rid of them. Like you know, if you screen like our if you test your blood and my blood today, both of us we’re still have DDT showing up. DDT is a pesticide that has been banned for more than 30 years. But because it’s persistent, it just lives in your body. So you basically just like don’t want your body burden load to keep growing. That’s why you want to avoid these exposures. And then you definitely want to avoid transient exposures, because that’s something that we can do about
13:37
it. Yeah, I mean, I think there’s so many people who I deal with that have autoimmune disease, and the inflammation is off the charts. And just to get them to have an awareness that they may be exposed to these hormone disrupting chemicals is is a big, big task. So your detect and detox test kit, tell us about that. Yeah, that’s
14:07
the urine we call it detect and detox the tech. Part of it is obviously help you figure out you know, what are your levels and how you compare with others. And then the detox part is wanting you we want you to change your behavior, start reading labels, start using better products, because these are things you can really really control. Because a lot of these products are in our everyday products we use for example, BPA is being obviously plastic we talked about right so in plastic water bottles, if you use plastic Tupperware, change that to glass to change that to stainless steel. And also never ever touch we see your grocery store we see your gas station received that email to you because the coding of that receipt actually expose you to BPA and also canned food and canned drinks.
You know canned food now you can kind of see like a BPA free on your, on your kin, but drinks is something that people don’t really think about. You know, if you drink a ton of like carbonated water through or beer on that kid, you will get that exposure. And what’s more is that even though BPA has been banned in baby bottles and some of the other products, manufacturers started using BPA alternatives, so you could get VPS VPS, they’d can literally swap a letter, change it from BPA all the way to BP Z. And it would have the same impact but not more. So this makes avoidance really important. So if you can, you know, use your glass water bottle, use your ceramic cup, stay away from anything plastic and never ever microwave and stay away from Camp food if you can’t. So that’s, that’s BPA. So for Thalys. There are two kinds of Falaise one of the fat eights using plastic that actually makes plastic really flexible. So think about your saran wrap, right so we see people using saran wrap like a cupboard on everything. And then sticking to the microwave. So anything contact with that wrap, heated up, you’re gonna get exposure that’s gonna leach into your into your food. And the sound is the other kind of value.
We call them low molecular weight value that’s using a lot of personal care products. The biggest like most useful strategy we always recommend people to do is read your product label and ditch that fragrance. Anything anytime you see fragrance in your ingredient, you can look up or your product you flipped it over. Anytime if a fragrance in your product, ingredient label probably 99% of the time it is going to have valleys. And also don’t be fooled by you know, people will say okay, I’ll I’ll buy like unscented, unscented is actually a scent. So make sure you go fragrance free. Sometimes manufacturer will also label like aroma. That’s that’s exactly the same thing. So don’t get fooled. And I also want people to pay attention on you know natural fragrance because a lot of people use essential oils and other thing. We basically have no control over the supply chain, we don’t know what product is contaminated versus not.
So we always recommend people to go fragrance free to avoid that Thalys exposure. So always read your label go is fragrance free. And then when it comes to paraben, it’s the same thing. So many products will label paraben free. The only place that we haven’t seen there aren’t a lot of good products is these over the counter creams and ornament. So hi, we have a lot of clients using hydrocortisone cream for their eczema or for rash. That’s one area that we have not seen that a product formulated without paraben. But there are, you know, many different kinds of parabens so they’re not all created equal. So if you see in your ingredient label, if there’s like a methyl paraben versus like say, a butyl, paraben ditch the butyl, because that’s a lot more toxic than the metal. And then same as you know, oxybenzone Filipino, like, make sure you read your ingredient label and not having that ingredients in there.
18:14
Got it? So it sounds like not only do you offer product recommendations, but do you also do counseling as well? Yes. So
18:23
what we’re trying to do is sometimes people you know, just the report is enough, but many times people want a little more hand holding. So we always offer additional counseling to help them you know, for example, go through your report or if you have any questions about the product you’re using, you can always reach out to us. We don’t do like say room by room, we can refer you out, you know, if you want to audit your entire home. We don’t have the capability of doing that. But in general, we will help you go through a product and then help you understand your exposures and also what are the steps that you should be taking to reduce these exposures?
19:01
Okay, this is such great information. So Jenna, how do people get in touch with you? I will definitely put your contact info in our podcast notes. But what’s the best way that people can start to connect with you? Yeah, people
19:17
can message us on our Instagram we’re pretty active. That’s why we invite you to like you know, talk or Instagram live because we think you know, it’s it’s a whole it’s has to be a holistic you can’t just like detox, right? Like, detox is not the only thing there are so many aspects like eye health, you know, gut health, all of these things are really important. So people can DM us on Instagram, they can sign up to our newsletter. We also have a lot of resources on our website, where we because education is really the key. You don’t even have to buy a test but definitely get yourself educated to start avoiding these exposures. Yeah, sign up to our newsletter. We will always want to bring the latest free Research to people. And if you have additional questions that fill out the form on, on our web page, we’ll get your question answered.
20:09
Okay, well, everybody, I want you to follow Jenna, what is the name of your Instagram page?
20:18
We are million under score marker. Yeah, check us out. It’s a bit of a mouthful. But I think once people, you know, kind of understand like, what, why we named ourselves right? Like, then then it’s a little bit easier to remember.
20:34
Well, you do a great job marketing, and I love your, you know, the guests that you have, and, you know, just the passion and mission that you’re putting out there. And I’m also a firm believer in the toxins that we are exposed to. And, you know, in our, our where we live, we built a straw bale house in the early 1990s. And we don’t use any cleaning products at all would have any toxicities. And, you know, we shop at farmer’s markets, and, you know, we’re very awakened aware about it, but still, plastic is everywhere, and even water bottle or, you know, your deodorant or your shampoo. So we need to awaken because this plastic issue is just killing us. So, I’m so glad you’re, I’m so glad you’re doing this. Any final words you want to share with us before we end,
21:35
I also want to let people know, you know, when you start purchasing good products, it’s not only good for you, it’s actually good for the environment, because a lot of these chemicals that we don’t want you to use, they also really badly environment. And he’s you know, especially for people who have, you know, trying to conceive brain the next generation or having, you know, grandkids, like, you’re really doing good for the next generation by stop using these chemicals. And the same time, you know, we want people to become conscious consumers, you can’t actually vote with your dollars by getting good products. You’re also sending a signal to the manufacturer and to the policymakers that hey, we actually want Safer Chemical policy, we want a better product because ultimately I kind of feel that I wish we don’t exist, that we don’t really need to make this product, this really shouldn’t be the burden of the consumers. Like the when a product is being being sold in the market. It should be safe and yet like we have to be worried because we right now we don’t have a lot of safe product.
22:40
So true. And so what value you’re creating for humanity. So I want to thank you so much for sharing your your expertise with us and I know we’ll get together again. Keep up the wonderful work and I’ll see you down the road. Thank you so much for having me. You bet.
Thank you for listening. I hope you learned something from the EyeClarity podcast show today. If you enjoyed the episode, make sure to subscribe on iTunes or Spotify and leave a review. See you here next time.
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