Do you eat canned food? Drink out of plastic bottles? Eat farmed fish? Drink tap water? Use dryer sheets?

These are just a few sources of the nearly 1,000 synthetic hormone-disrupting chemicals out there, and unfortunately we can’t really avoid all of them altogether. They are everywhere.

Last week I talked about how more than 70,000 synthetic chemicals have been developed since the advent of chemical warfare in World War II.

In the 1990s, endocrine disruptors were discovered to be among the worst of these chemicals, yet their use proliferates even today.

However, knowledge is power, and the more you know about endocrine disruptors, the more you’ll know about what to avoid.

The first thing you might need to learn, though, is just what an endocrine disruptor (or hormone disrupter) is, and the harm it causes.

Endocrine disruptors are chemicals that can interfere with our body’s endocrine system and produce adverse reproductive, neurological, developmental, and immune effects in humans as well as wildlife.

Many of them are xenoestrogens — synthetic chemicals that mimic estrogen, the female hormone.

An example of wildlife being affected by xenoestrogens is how some male frogs are turned into females by the pesticide atrazine. These formerly male frogs are even able to lay eggs!

Endocrine disruptors are in things you wouldn’t even think of, like grocery store receipts. Avoid handling them as much as possible, especially the front.

These chemicals are harming our country’s economy, in the form of healthcare costs from diseases caused by them. Another thing that’s really frightening is the loss of IQ points due to endocrine disruptors. They can cause or exacerbate all kinds of mental imbalances, from brain fog to ADHD and depression.

And of course, eat your Micronized Purple Rice powder every day! Made from the heart of the purple rice grain, it takes 60 pounds of purple rice to make one pound of MPR. It’s made from an heirloom strain of purple rice that’s from northern Thailand, one of the cleanest areas of the world, where no GMOs are allowed.

This amazingly healthy food will help to ameliorate the damage caused by environmental toxins, but you can help your body heal even more by educating yourself on endocrine disruptors and how to avoid them.

Here are 5 things to get you started on this quest to learn more about endocrine disruptors and how to avoid them.

1. Avoid Glycol Ethers

Rats exposed to this awful chemical, commonly used in cleaning products, paint, and cosmetics, experienced shrunken testicles. Glycol ethers can also cause infertility or cause damage to an unborn child.

The way to avoid it is to look at labels and avoid anything that contains 2-butoxyethanol (EGBE) or methoxydiglycol (DEGME).

2. Use Natural Cleansers

Phthalates and triclosan are nasty chemicals found in antibacterial soaps, laundry detergents, and other cleaning products.

You can easily avoid these nasty (and unnecessary!) chemicals by making your cleansers from scratch. It’s easy. Just go looking on Google or Youtube.

3. Watch Out for BPA

Bisphenol-A (or BPA for short) is one of the worst. It is found in thousands of foods that come in bottles, jars, and cans.

I always advocate for staying away from packaged foods altogether, and this is one of the reasons! BPA is found in the linings of food cans, the lids of glass jars for pickles, baby food, etc., and aluminum beverage cans.

4. Don’t Assume Your Beauty Products Are Safe

Again, you can make many of them yourself, in which case you *know* you’re avoiding harmful chemicals. But if you don’t want to do that, you can look for more natural brands.

Also check labels for fragrance — this “catch all” can include more than 3,000 chemicals, often including phthalates.

5. Give Up Junk Food

We all know junk food is no good for us, but maybe you don’t realize quite how bad it is. If a “food” has an ingredient list as long as your arm, full of chemical names you can’t pronounce, then you have no business eating it.

• Avoid packaged foods.
• Buy organic, to avoid pesticides and herbicides.
• If you’re going to eat meat, look for grass-fed beef, pasture-raised organic chicken and eggs, and wild fish.
• Eat your veggies. Cruciferous veggies are especially good for detoxing your body of estrogens.
• Avoid soy. Almost all of it is GMO.

Do you have any insights you’d like to share about avoiding endocrine disruptors? If so, please let me know in the comments below!