Most Replayed Moment: Are Your Household And Beauty Products Secretly Toxic? Dr Yvonne Burkart

Steven Bartlett (0:04)

Knowing what you know.

Surely it's built up a bit of, I don't know, a bit of a... If I knew all that you knew, I think, about toxins in our environment, I would be A, a really annoying person at every dinner party. And B, there'd be a certain sense of, I guess, emergency and urgency to me, because I'd be looking around at all my friends and I'd be, if I understood the consequences of them drinking from that plastic container or putting that product on their face, I feel like I'd try to be shout at the world to tell them to stop. Do you feel a sense of that? You directly witnessed the impact that making these changes and detoxifying your environment had on you. Do you feel a sense of like, you know, ugh?

Yvonne Burkart (0:49)

Absolutely. I mean, I can't even tell you how much passion it has ignited in me to be able to share this information and spread it as far and wide as possible because it's literally affecting every single person on this planet. And I do find it sometimes challenging not to call someone out and say, hey, be careful with that. But, you know, I think it comes from being a living example. And I found that that is much more effective at being a living example instead of telling people, don't do this, don't do that, showing them what's possible. Look at what happened to me. Look at my journey. Look at the benefit that I feel. And then once you start removing these things and making these simple swaps, it's about simple, small, incremental shifts that anyone can do over the long term. Because it's really about, it's a marathon, not a race. It's not about, you've got to throw everything away and you've got to hide under a rock. Because I tried that and it didn't work. And it caused more stress. And stress is harmful. So being a living example, empowering people with information, educating about the problem but coming with a solution.

Steven Bartlett (1:59)

You mentioned cancer is one of the downstream consequences of living in a toxic environment. And we talked about how sperm quality has reduced over the last couple of decades. When we look at the stats around cancer, are there any stats in particular that you think are most clearly associated with us living in such a toxic environment? One of them that always brings to mind is breast cancer, because I think I read or heard that breast cancer is on the rise, or has been rising for the last couple of decades. And when you look at the Western world versus something like a tribe in Africa, they don't see the same levels of breast cancer.

Yvonne Burkart (2:36)

Yeah, that is definitely a concern because cancer historically was a disease of age, aging. It wasn't so common that you see cancer in your 30s, 40s, and even 50s. Now, we're seeing a shift. The window is moving earlier and earlier. Cancer incidence, like you said, breast cancer incidence is definitely on the rise. I myself never knew anyone that suffered from breast cancer or survived it until I hit my 30s. Then I knew five people that had it, including two people that I worked with in the toxicology lab.

Steven Bartlett (3:11)

And what are your suspicions about the root causes of this rising cancer?

Yvonne Burkart (3:15)

I definitely think there is a huge environmental component to it, because a lot of what was believed decades ago was that disease and cancer incidence had to do with your genes. You were just genetically predisposed. You were unlucky. But in actuality, what we're seeing now is that the environment plays such a massive role in whether or not you actually have cancer. So just because you have the predisposition to developing breast cancer such as the BRCA gene doesn't mean you'll get it. It really depends on your lifestyle and how you lived, but also how your ancestors lived. Right? We talked about the multi-generational effect of these chemicals depending on how your ancestors lived, how your grandmother and how your mother lived could predispose you to this.

Steven Bartlett (4:07)

And have there been any studies that show the impact of these sort of everyday chemicals on cancer risk?

Yvonne Burkart (4:13)

Yes, and that's something that is, I don't want to say that it's exciting, but I'm glad that we finally have proof. I don't want to see these studies. I hate seeing this, actually. I'm really angry that people have to suffer with cancer because it's so preventable. There was a study recently that looked at removing certain ingredients from beauty and personal care products. So, women without any history of breast cancer were asked to remove these ingredients from their products for 28 days. So, that's very short, four weeks, right? They took cells from the breast tissue. They were all normal. They measured the amount of breast cancer gene expression. After 28 days, they took another sample. So, after 28 days of removing these ingredients, they took another sample and they saw that the breast cancer gene expression dropped.