Ways To Lower The Total Load Of Your Toxin Burden—Talking Toxins with Branch Basics
Many patients may experience lingering symptoms even after adopting new health-promoting behaviors.
When the body can no longer handle the “load” of stressors such as nutritional deficiencies or environmental toxins, the body begins to show signs of that burden. The signs of overload manifest as lingering, unexplained symptoms or ongoing disease.
A healthy home is one where we can go to rest and heal. That can only happen in an environment free of toxic products that pollute the air, suppress our immune system and make us more vulnerable to disease.
Where to start when cleaning up your home’s environment? Check your cleaning products.
Unfortunately, cleaning products are not regulated which means there is no requirement for an ingredient list. There is no safety standard but the EPA does require signal words or warnings on labels of poisonous products such as “danger”, “warning” caution”, “corrosive”, and “dispose as hazardous waste.” I call these toxic red flags.
Many chemicals in cleaning products are considered toxic because they’ve been shown to cause ill health effects such as cancers, endocrine disruption, obesity, developmental problems, respiratory disease, skin conditions, burns, vomiting, nervous system disorders, and much more. Some can even be fatal if ingested, inhaled or absorbed into the skin.
In this video, Marilee Nelson from Branch Basics shares her family’s remarkable healing story along with her method of removing toxins from the home.
Get started here with Branch Basics’s guide to Toss The Toxins
*These statements have not been evaluated by the Food & Drug Administration. These products are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.
Branch Basics is a Wahls Protocol® Sponsor and I use their toxin-free cleaning products in my home. I recommend ordering the Premium Starter Kit because you get the Concentrate, various spray and pump bottles, AND their Oxygen Boost! You create custom cleaning solutions by combining the Concentrate with water. That’s it. When you run low on Concentrate, simply reorder that one product, or opt-in to the subscription service to make it even easier.
Click to simplify your collection of cleaning products and use code WAHLS to get started with 15% off their Starter Kits
Read the transcript below:
Dr. Terry Wahls:
Hi, this is Dr. Terry Wahls, and I am very excited here. I am here with Marilee Nelson, and we’re going to talk about her really interesting and amazing story. And then we’ll have a little back and forth. Marilee, tell us your health journey.
Marilee Nelson:
Well, first of all, I want to thank you for having me. I have been following you for years. I was so amazed at what you have done with using food as medicine, as back in the 70s, I was told I needed to have a kidney transplant, that I would never be able to have children. I had many chronic illnesses, I had exploratory surgery, 11 doctors were on the team. And after the surgery, the surgeon came in and said, “I’m really sorry Marilee, it didn’t turn out like we were hoping. Number one, you’ll never be able to have children, you have extensive endometriosis. And you’re going to need to go on dialysis and have a kidney transplant.”
Well, that was such a shock to me. I was actually going to go premed and was very interested in the medical path but I just looked at the doctor with great respect and I said, “I just cannot be subject to what the medical world has to offer me today. What if next year or maybe five years from now there’s an answer and I have lost my kidney? No, I’m sure there’s an answer.”
And I can tell you at that point I was thinking, “I’m going to find that pill or that therapy that they just haven’t realized.”
I was still looking in that direction but …
Dr. Terry Wahls:
Marilee, I’m going to stop you for a moment because I have severe endometriosis, which I’d had horrible, intense bleeding and cramps, and I thought that was just my lot in life of being a farmer. I was very stoic, just put up with it. When I was trying to have kids, I couldn’t get pregnant after a year of doing artificial insemination. And my physician did an investigation, said I had severe endometriosis, and had surgery and had treatments for that. Now, back to you.
Marilee Nelson:
Okay. I was pretty desperate because I did not want to go down that path. And I was actually led to a doctor in Boston, in a Boston hospital that was using food as medicine with his patients. And there was actually an article in the Saturday evening post about it on the cover. And so I immediately contacted them, and the bottom line is I completely changed my diet. I was a sugarholic, a junk food junkie, I ate in excess. And all of a sudden I was being told this, I had no frame of reference for healthy versus an unhealthy diet. It just came out of left field, but I was desperate. And so I thought, “Well, I might as well try it.”
I studied using food as medicine, I actually became a medicinal cook. Literally, in 10 days of changing my diet, I had such a radical change. And I have never been on over the counter or prescription medication ever since. And that was many, many years ago. And I was completely blown away. I wanted to get on top of the Empire State building, tallest building in the world at the time, no internet, and just shout,”What are we doing? How is it that we could possibly be putting poisonous chemicals and harmful substances in our food that impact our mental, physical and emotional wellbeing?”
I was ready to write a book but my life took a turn. I did become a medicinal cook, I cooked for people with cancer, children with disabilities, et cetera. And I was so focused on food but then I had a child. My 10 year old son was catastrophically chemically injured by a pesticide exposure. And we ended up taking him to the doctor that treated the Gulf War victim [inaudible 00:04:59]. And this doctor told me, “I’m sorry, your child’s brain damage is so severe he will never recover and he will be a bubble boy for the rest of his life. You’re going to have to put him in a single room free of any chemicals, medicate him and control him with shots, et cetera.”
I actually said the same thing to that doctor that I said to my surgeon, I said, “I cannot be subject to what the medical world has to say, I know there’s a way.”
And the doctor was so kind and he had tears in his eyes. He grabbed my hand, he said, “But Marilee, the brain does not regenerate.”
Now, this was before. Science has caught up now with the truth, that neurons do regenerate, the brain can recover. And I told the doctor that, I said, “I’m going to find a way.”
I started looking into some work that was being done by Europeans, and they were working in this field already at that time. But anyway, the bottom line isit was not until I removed every harmful product from my home that my son was able to actually come to a point where he was stable enough to recover. We were sleeping outside on cots, not in a tent because he would react, because he would be too agitated at night to sleep, okay. And so I was laying on the cot one night and looking at the stars and I was thinking, “What have I not done?”
Because I felt like I had done everything I could. We stripped our house, no carpet, no upholstered furniture, et cetera. We were just down to a wooden chair, a solid wood table, four chairs, organic beds, wire baskets for clothes. But that night that I was laying there, I thought, “Get up and go get that box in your closet.”
And what was in that box was perfume, skincare products that I loved that I thought, “I’m just going to put these in a box in the closet and keep them here closed up away until my son recovers.”
All right. I had had that in the house. I removed it, unbeknownst to my son and unbeknownst to my husband because I thought number one, my husband’s going to think I’m crazy. Why would that matter? And I didn’t want to tell my son because I was doing my own scientific type of experiments trying to figure out …
Dr. Terry Wahls:
Oh yeah, I can relate to that.
Marilee Nelson:
Yeah. The next day, I was inside making lunch, and he would come in during the day and spend some time. After about 10 minutes, he goes, “Mom, what did you do?”
And I said, “Well, what do you mean”?
He said, “There’s something different. I’m not feeling agitated like I usually do.”
I said, “Really? Oh, okay. Well, just stay until you feel like you need to leave.”
I didn’t say a word about what I’d done. It ended up he continued to stay, he agreed to sleep in the house that night. And my gosh, I realized, “Oh, this box that was in my house was impacting him.”
But I was second guessing myself, thought, “This is coincidence, this is insane, no one would believe me. They’d think I’m nuts.”
But a couple of days later, I was at the grocery store going down the aisles and I passed the cleaning lot aisle, and I literally gasped and I went, “Oh, my gosh. That’s it. I can smell those cleaning products so strong. And they are not only closed but they’re also sealed. And that’s what’s happening in my house, my little bubble boy is picking up the parts per million, the parts per billion, whatever, that are coming out from those products, just like the ones on the shelves in the store.”
Okay. Not long after that, I really started thinking, “Oh, my gosh. mericans are all living in homes with this low level chemical soup or high level, that they have to detoxify 24/7. They’re trying to recover from serious illness, 50% of the American children and adults now have some chronic illness. We’re going to doctors, we’re taking pills, we’re doing therapies. And it’s just like people cannot recover.
Dr. Terry Wahls:
And we’re losing ground.
Marilee Nelson:
And losing ground. And so that’s what I was thinking as I was recovering my son, and it took seven years. And he fully recovered, super recovered in fact. He ended up going to the Naval Academy, he ended up going into Naval Air. He was a Naval Air liaison between South Korea and China. He’s brilliant. But he went from when he had the exposure, he could not even spell a three letter word or do simple math, and he was a math prodigy before the exposure. And so it took a long time, a lot of movement therapy, as movement is food for the neurons, et cetera. And he just completely recovered. He’s a miracle child, it’s a phenomenal story. But because his situation was so dramatic, I learned how important these very small exposures are to people in our homes. And by word of mouth, never did I advertise but people whose children had been poisoned were calling me. I started getting calls from all over the country later from people with chronic illness that were having problems. And I started this process that we’re now calling Toss The Toxins, where you go category by category, removing these harmful products from the home so that the body can say, “Oh, thank you for doing that. Now, I can get to the business of healing. I’m trying to sleep every night but I’m in all this toxic chemical soup.
This is where we are now. You remove that and all of a sudden, you have this pressure taken off the immune system. And I have seen such amazing recovery from people with chronic illness, from children with autism, all across the board, adults, et cetera. It’s an amazing discovery to just think maybe the most important thing may not be that thousand dollar therapy you’re doing, but it’s the chemicals in your food, it’s the chemicals in your products that you’re having to deal with.
Dr. Terry Wahls:
We don’t want to give up our yummy foods to which we’re addicted. And a lot of companies have spent huge amounts of money to get us addicted to our technologies of course, and to convince us that we have to use all these personal care products because our skin smells, our mouth smells, our vagina smells, and that we got to put all this product on our skin because our skin’s going to get old and wrinkly. And people don’t realize that there’s a lot of stuff in those products that are really quite toxic.
Marilee Nelson:
That’s absolutely true. One thing that was so interesting is that when I got down to a baseline of I cleaned out house, of course I had to find non-toxic substitutes, but what I found out in that process is that when I would bring in a non-toxic product to the house, my son might be in the kitchen, and couple of minutes after bringing it into the house, he might have a migraine headache, he might have his lymph nodes swollen up like bee bees, he might be crying because he’s become so sound sensitive, et cetera. And so I said, “Oh, my gosh. I’ve got to start studying what these ingredients are that are in these non-toxic products that are causing problems.”
Very quickly, I found out that the preservatives being used in 99% of those products were neurotoxic and actually EPA registered pesticides. And so as this all unfolded, I was just so dumbfounded. But it led to a very deep dive into studying the ingredients and what makes up products that we’re using.
Dr. Terry Wahls:
And how products get into a generally regarded as safe list.
Marilee Nelson:
The standard is not good enough.
Dr. Terry Wahls:
Yeah. Yeah, that is definitely … It becomes very difficult for even people who are trying to be very, very conscientious. What is safe to use? My personal approach with personal care products is less is better, less is so much better. But let’s walk through your approach and we can talk about the reasons that toxins might be a problem from your point of view. And I’ll fill in any gaps that I think you might be omitting here but in your experience, what are the toxin related illnesses that are so prevalent now?
Marilee Nelson:
Well, you want to know the illnesses are that are so prevalent?
Dr. Terry Wahls:
The illnesses and the kinds of symptoms that people here in the US and globally are experiencing, that you think are related to our toxin exposures.
Marilee Nelson:
Well, we have an exponential rise in degenerative disease for sure. And everywhere from children having asthma, that is the number one chronic illness in children, we’ve got the autism spectrum disorder, we have the sensory processing disorders in children. We’ve got childhood obesity, we have childhood depression. We have in the adults, the neurological, the neurodegenerative disease, MS, yes, Alzheimer’s, dementia, adult onset diabetes, juvenile onset diabetes. I’m telling you, across the board, I believe this issue of chemical exposure in our food and in our products is impacting that. And I see that very clearly when my clients remove these toxic products from their diet and their homes, their symptoms resolve very quickly many times.
Dr. Terry Wahls:
And I think we could look at the symptoms, the level of irritability in rage that we’re seeing in our schools, in our workforce. I think part of the increased violence that we see is tied in part to the irritability that people have and our difficulty that we have with that self calming, that impulse control, the fatigue, the brain fog, more difficulty with problem solving, with managing the complicated relationships that we have to manage in our work environments and sometimes in our family environments, that we are just less effective individually and collectively as a society.
Marilee Nelson:
Absolutely. We are losing our ability to not only adapt to the natural environment, but the emotional. Like you’re saying, we don’t have enough bandwidth anymore, this reduces our bandwidth to cope. And as I watched my son unravel from this … And as I said, I’d bring in products … And you mentioned the emotional aspect, he would go into rages. And temperamentally before this exposure, he was the most calm, obedient, just responsive child. And he would just become defiant, angry, depressed. It was unbelievable to watch what [inaudible 00:19:07].
Dr. Terry Wahls:
Now again, for the audience, the biologic reasons these things can occur is that most of our brains are inhibitory. We are calming our brains, we’re slowing down the processes. I’m seeing the context that this stuff is happening. I know to be calm, to be responsive. And if we can’t get that inhibition, we are much more likely to be reactive, angry, explosive angry and rageful. And I think of the children and the adults that are having problems with their mood, with anger issues. This lack of inhibition by the brain is part of that. And certainly, we have to consider poor diet absolutely is part of that, toxin exposure is also part of that. Yeah, we got to clean up the diet. Where do we begin this process of like, “Okay, I’m having these chronic health challenges. I’m having these mental health challenges. I’m having these autoimmune challenges. Maybe toxins are part of the issue.”
How are you helping your clients through this?
Marilee Nelson:
All right. First of all, I always want to know what their outlook is on this whole subject. And I will say, so many people that have come to me will say, “I’ve done everything. I eat well, I use non-toxic products.”
But through my questioning, I find very quickly that there is such a lack of understanding of what really is a healthy diet, what really is a healthy product. Obviously, people are very stressed when they are sick. They’ve got a lot on their plates. I found for me, it ended up being just a wonderful process. I used to call it just simple subtraction and addition, take something out and add something in. We now call it Toss The Toxins. I start with pesticides in the home, that’s one of the most toxic products we have. Depending on what part of the country you live in, you’re going to have more or less in the house. But I would say to my clients, I tell them the concept that, “We’re going to remove products that are impacting your health and inhibiting you from healing. We’re going to do it step by step. We’re going to do it in a way that it does not cost money, in a way that it doesn’t have to challenge any other person in the family, because we’re not going to tell you right now to throw them away. We just want them out of the house so they’re not impacting your air quality.
The first thing I would do with people is I say, “We’re going to get a box, we’re going to go through the house and get all the pesticides out.”
That’s Raid, that’s ant sprays, that’s insect repellents, lice treatments, et cetera. You’d be amazed at all of the pesticides that people have they don’t realize that they are. We get those out and then the next thing we take out are the cleaning and laundry products. And pesticides, cleaning and laundry products are such a huge impact, such a huge impact on our air quality that once you remove those, many times people have such a rapid response that they’re motivated to, “Hey, let’s go on to the next step.”
What I do, we’ll go through, we’ll get the cleaning products out, the laundry products out. If they have an attached garage, we’ll put those products that they don’t want to throw away for the time being in a sealed container. Ideally, we like to go to a detached garage or an outbuilding because your garage also impacts your home’s air. After we move the cleaning products, we go to fragrance products. I have people get a box, they go through and they take out their scented candles. And people are very attached, they were addicted to these fragrance products. Just getting people to get that perspective, “This is a challenge. I want you to take this Toss The Toxins challenge, get them out of your house. Let’s just see what happens.”
I really have not had someone that didn’t have such a response that they ever wanted to go backwards if they were chronically ill and they recovered. Anyway, we go through the fragrance products, and fragrance products are something that really need to be addressed because these products have chemicals in them that are asthmagens, think about the children that are sleeping 24/7 in … They’re surrounded by their clothes. Fragranced, asthmagens, asthma, the number one chronic illness in children. These fragrances are carcinogens, they’re neurotoxic. Think about all of the kids and the people with mood disorders et cetera, they are hormone disruptors. We have [inaudible 00:25:06].
Dr. Terry Wahls:
Okay, have we covered the cleaning products, personal care …
Marilee Nelson:
Fragrance products. Yeah, [inaudible 00:27:47]. The scented candles, even scented trash bags, scented toilet paper, that’s huge. If you think about where a scented toilet paper is used, the very most sensitive skin, there’s such a possibility of the skin just drinking up the chemicals from that. Any scented feminine hygiene product, those are very toxic. We want to get all of that out of the house.
Dr. Terry Wahls:
And then food.
Marilee Nelson:
Yes. And then personal care products, plastics and food. Absolutely. After working all this time in this arena, I feel like what has happened for our diets is we’ve lost the ability to deal with a wide variety of foods. We’ve got people now just doing a carnivore diet. They can do no vegetables. They’re reacting to the oxalates, they’re doing FODMAP, all these different diets, which we’re having to go to. What I found is very important is to first identify the chemicals in the food, get those totally out, because you can go gluten free and casein free and be taking in many harmful chemicals because those products are full of gut disruptors, additives, et cetera. And if we just say, “Oh, this is gluten free.”
No, that’s not enough. The removal of the chemicals and eating real food is a very big first step we need to take. And I find this, that if you have removed all the products in your home and you’re only using safe ones and you’re eating real food, you are able to widen your diet because your body now has more capacity.
Dr. Terry Wahls:
Now, how do people get these chemicals out of their food?
Marilee Nelson:
Read the labels.
Dr. Terry Wahls:
Okay. And what should they be looking for when they’re reading those labels?
Marilee Nelson:
Any type of additives, dyes, emulsifiers, that’s going to be your gum, soy lecithins. Any ingredient on a food list that is not your apples, oranges or whatever. Also, we want to use all organic, no GMO. We want to use as pure and high quality food as possible. People say that’s expensive, and I say what’s expensive is having a degenerative disease, suffering and that agony. When you have the energy, when your body is operating at optimal, it’s so worth it.
Dr. Terry Wahls:
Disease is the real expensive one.
Marilee Nelson:
Yes.
Dr. Terry Wahls:
And then containers.
Marilee Nelson:
We definitely go through a process with our Toss The Toxins with plastics. And we target food first because the food takes up the plastics they’re stored in. We recommend putting your food in glass and no plastics. The hard plastics, those are the ones that contain BPA. We recommend that people are mindful of how they use their appliances. For example, BPA is going to be in products like your blender if it’s a plastic blender, your coffee maker, et cetera. We look to find appliances that are a stainless steel coffee maker, avoiding that plastic. Plastics, when they come into contact with hot food, more of the plastic goes into it. Plastics, when they come into contact with a water bottle. If you shake it, that agitation also increases the ingress of the plasticizers. We want to have wise use of our plastics if we have to have them. In other words, if you feel like you have to have a plastic bottle of water, don’t put it out in your hot car and let it get hot because that’ll bring more into it.
Dr. Terry Wahls:
Bring more in. And then if you are going to store food in your refrigerator, glass.
Marilee Nelson:
Yes.
Dr. Terry Wahls:
And if you store it in your freezer, what’s the advice there?
Marilee Nelson:
Well, we like to go in glass if you can, you can freeze certain liquids et cetera, in glass. Silicone little packets are good.
Dr. Terry Wahls:
Okay. And then how do you decide what ingredients are going to be safe, that if I’m going to be using them for my personal care products, cleaning, that would be safe in food?
Marilee Nelson:
For products used in the home, we have a vetting process. I like people to be their own expert. And it’s not perfect but first of all, you can look for certified products, MADE SAFE certified products are the highest standard you can get. If you see a product and it says MADE SAFE on the label, you know that it’s been vetted to the nth degree. A way I’d like to look at products otherwise, is to go to EWG Skin Deep.
Dr. Terry Wahls:
Okay, Environmental Working Group is EWG. And skin deep is …
Marilee Nelson:
That’s their division that looks at products that go on the skin. And what I like to do, rather than look at the product itself, because you can type in a product and get a rating but you’re not really seeing all the ingredients. What I like to do is have people look at the last ingredient, type that ingredient into Google at plus EWG Skin Deep, it will show a rating of 1 to 10. And for our Toss The Toxins process, we say toss all products that have a rating of three or more, so one and two. If it’s rated one or two, that’s safe. And so let’s say you have a product and it’s got a lot of ones and twos, but, “Oh, my gosh. It’s got fragrance.”
And you’re going to look at EWG Skin Deep, it’s going to say a seven. Or it’s got an isothiazolinone and you’re going to look at EWG and it’s going to say it’s got a seven. But maybe altogether because of other ingredients, it’s rated pretty good. But I say a little bit of an ingredient is too much. We now know through epigenetics that even small amounts of an ingredient can turn on and off the genes. I say find a product that does not have an ingredient over the two, that’s how we vet. And of course for me, there’s a few ingredients that are rated a one or two that I tell my clients avoid. For instance, potassium sorbate is one of them, sodium benzoate is another one. I found over the years that people were reacting to those preservatives, and they are rated in one or two on aaaEWG skin deep, just for an example there. It’s a really easy way to do it because I’ll tell you what, if you start at the end, interestingly enough, which is the smallest amount of ingredient in a product, many times at the end you’ve got the preservatives and some of those ingredients that are going to have high ratings. Plus, if you see the word fragrance, you just know, just toss it. You don’t have to waste time pretty [inaudible 00:37:48].
Dr. Terry Wahls:
It’s going to be problem. Yeah.
Marilee Nelson:
Pretty soon, you’re pretty good at looking at, spotting, go, “Okay, that’s out.”
And I just say, you just don’t really realize how much these ingredients impact you until you remove them. And that’s the beauty of this process that we do, is when people remove them, literally we have resolutions of serious long term chronic illness resolved pretty quickly.
Dr. Terry Wahls:
Do you have a couple of success stories that you can share for us?<
Marilee Nelson:
Absolutely. I had a woman contact me from Houston, Texas. She had a six year old boy. She was crying when she called. She said, “My son’s school has called me, they want to up his medication for controlling him.”
He was very hyperactive. And then she started telling me all of the problems he had. He was failing in school, he had eczema so bad, he was scratching till he bled at night, he had asthma, he was on an inhaler, he was overweight and being made fun of by his friends. They couldn’t control him, he was just so belligerent, et cetera. Along litany, and she wanted to talk to me about food. Well, I saw this woman had so much on her plate and I said, “Listen, let’s go undercover. Let’s have you remove products from your home. And you don’t have to worry right now about making him eat broccoli or whatever we want to do with him, let’s see what will happen if we remove the chemicals.”
Well, her husband was really upset because he said, “Why should we do this? We’re going to the best doctors in the country. How can this lady help us?”
And he actually went out of town and she started doing what I was asking her to do. The bottom line at the end of this process, the husband called me crying, telling me how he did not like to come home from work every day. I was crying when I think about it, that he was afraid his son was going to be a criminal because they could not control him. The child had completely flipped, he was now making A’s, he was controlled, his asthma was gone, his eczema was gone. He was sleeping. It was a complete revolutionary change in his life. And it is heart warming but also heartbreaking to think of the children that are suffering like this, the parents aren’t even seeing who the real child was. And that was what that father was grieving about, was that for six years they had looked at this child as being hard to control, undisciplined, [inaudible 00:41:02]. Nobody liked him, he didn’t have friends. And now, he’s just this calm, cool … Like you said earlier, he had the ability to stay calm and cool because he was not being impacted by what I call these crack drugs that we’re surrounded by. That’s one example.
Dr. Terry Wahls:
Our brains are mostly inhibitory. And when we interfere with that inhibition, then we run the risk of terrible mood problems, terrible anger, terrible rage and violence. I’m so glad for the dad, the mom and the little boy who can now grow up to be a successful young man someday.
Marilee Nelson:
That’s exactly right. And asthma, I’ve had so many people who had children on inhalers. And one mom in particular that I think about, as she told me at the beginning, “I am a clean freak. I have to spray my … ”
And I don’t like to say names of products because I’m here to raise the awareness of the goodness in products.I don’t want to put any product down, but she was spraying a very toxic product every day all over the surfaces because she was scared for her family. And I kept trying to tell her, “Stop doing that and let’s see what happens.”
Because she had removed everything else but she was so tied to this product. Finally, she said, “Okay, I will stop over the weekend. I’m not going to do it.”
That was what was needed. That product in her house, she may have had two or three bottles scattered around, but it was enough to keep her child’s asthma going and unable for her to heal. It sounds so maybe impossible but I’ve seen it so many times and I’m just so confident. We just say, “Just try it see what happens.”
Dr. Terry Wahls:
Just begin, one step at a time. And so at a really high level, first step is to take out the pesticides. Second step is to go through the fragrances.
Marilee Nelson:
The cleaning and laundry products.
Dr. Terry Wahls:
Cleaning and laundry product. Third step are the fragrances. Fourth step is the foods.
Marilee Nelson:
Personal care.
Dr. Terry Wahls:
Okay, why don’t you do it in order, since I am not getting the orders correct here?
Marilee Nelson:
That’s okay. Personal care products and then we do plastics. And I actually go through the PFAS chemicals too but whenever I feel like a client’s ready, will go to food. And a lot of people want to do food first. And of course, food is absolutely important, but sometimes doing this where you don’t have to think about it … Food, you’re thinking about your breakfast, lunch and dinner. And this is just one time, let’s just get them out and it’s over with. It’s simple, it takes pressure off of people. And like you say, as these things are removed, the body is more able to go into that homeostasis, that balance. And you have more capacity, you have more capacity to actually think about changing your diet, et cetera. I also go through the electromagnetic field spectrum, magnetic fields, electric fields, high frequency radio frequency fields, reducing those exposures as well.
Dr. Terry Wahls:
Now, if people want to come work with you, do you have a process where that can happen?
Marilee Nelson:
Well, our goal is we are creating a course, it’s called Toss The Toxins, where people can go through this category by category, where they will have the information explained to them why to give them the motivation. And so that’s where our focus is now. I have information that I can send right away that helps them to go through, look at all of our articles and just learn about why they’re doing this and what to take out. But it really is very simplified. The very most important thing for your healing may be something you can do in an afternoon, doesn’t cost money, and you’re done with it, you don’t have to think about it again. And that’s because typically, if you really understand what you’re looking for, you can go through your house, remove these things relatively quickly and make that dramatic change in air quality.
Dr. Terry Wahls:
And where do people find you?
Marilee Nelson:
Dr. Terry Wahls:
One more time.
Marilee Nelson:
Dr. Terry Wahls:
And you have some cleaning products? Do you want to touch briefly on that before we conclude?
Marilee Nelson:
Sure, yes. Well, our products, I say they’re products with a purpose. They’re actually a vehicle for our mission to create a healthy home and diet revolution. And our concentrate model enables you to replace every single toxic cleaning and laundry product in your home, from window cleaners to oven cleaners. And it’s safe and it’s mild enough for baby skin and even for removing eye makeup. Our products are absolutely effective but most importantly, they’re human safe. That was our goal, and it took us over two years to formulate and I think it was around a hundred iterations. And we tested each iteration with sensitive clients. We tested the iteration for its effectiveness because who cares if it doesn’t bother people? But if it doesn’t work, nobody’s going to buy it. We worked and worked to make it both effective and not to be an eye irritant, not to be a lung irritant, not to be a skin irritant. Once we got a formula where my very most sensitive people could love the product, we then went another step and we got third party independent testing where we took the product and put it in contact with human like skin and eye tissue. And the CEO of the company actually called me and he said, “Marilee, how did you do this formula? We test Fortune 500 companies and no one has ever tested like our control.
In other words, our product tested to be 100% not a skin irritant, it tested just like their control. It’s not a skin irritant, it’s not an eye irritant, we have that verification. We got MADE SAFE verified, which I said is the most strident and strict certification. And we really want to set a standard in the industry, by raising everyone’s awareness about how little bits of these chemicals do make a difference. The dose makes the poison toxicology model is really outdated now that we have the science of epigenetics that shows a little bit of an agreement …
Dr. Terry Wahls:
Could still be a problem.
Marilee Nelson:
… does make a difference. I’ve seen it in such detail with children, with adults, and the resolution of symptoms by removal. That’s what our product is designed to do, is provide something that is effective that people can use, that can replace all those cleaning products. Sometimes people have maybe 20, 30 or more in their house. You get a box, remove them, your air quality’s better. And when you have something immediately that’s safe to use … And I’ll say this right now, if someone doesn’t want to use our product, use a do-it-yourself or find another one. The key is remove those harmful products and learn how to choose safe ones.
Dr. Terry Wahls:
Well, this has been fabulous, I learned a lot. And everyone who’s listening, what I want you to do is down below, tell us what are the key things that you have learned today. What are you going to try? I love doing these interviews, this is how you learn about the products that I love and that are part of my own personal wellness routine. Again Marilee, thank you so much for joining me today.
Marilee Nelson:
Well, thank you so much for having me, it’s such an honor.
Marilee Nelson
Marilee Nelson is a Texas-based Environmental Consultant, Building Materials Specialist, Certified Bau-Biologist, Certified Bau-Biology Home Inspector, medicinal cook, and co-founder of Branch Basics. She is on the Advisory Board of Documenting Hope as the materials specialist. Her personal experience and professional research tie the exponential rise in degenerative disease to exposure to environmental stressors – harmful chemicals in our food, air, water, and products, as well as the increase in exposure to electromagnetic fields. Marilee has spent nearly thirty years as a dietary and environmental consultant for clients who are chemically sensitive, mold injured, EMF sensitive, or chronically ill. She is on a mission to inspire, motivate and empower people to take proactive charge of their health and experience the transforming power of eating real food and creating a truly healthy home. She lives in the Hill Country with her husband and enjoys playing the piano, spending time outdoors, and visiting her grandchildren.
Branch Basics:
Branch Basics is a mission-driven company that offers two products that facilitate the removal and replacement of all harmful cleaning and laundry products in the home. This saves space, time, energy, and money and gets people off to a good start in creating a healthy home. We have a one-stop shop starter kit for all your cleaning needs. It comes with our MADE SAFE certified Oxygen Boost Powder, which is a whitener, brightener, stain, and odor remover. It also comes with our cleaning Concentrate. The concentrate is a human-safe, fragrance-free plant and mineral-based cleaner. It is strong enough to clean an oven yet mild enough to remove eye makeup or wash a baby. The formula is MAFE SAFE certified, and third party verified that it does not irritate the eyes, skin, or lungs. The Concentrate is diluted in reusable bottles and mixed in different ratios for various cleaning purposes. This versatility simplifies your life!
