Organic Right Up Next to Your Skin: Undies

Perhaps the most important layer in my organic experiment is my undies. Right up next to your privateness, you want no endocrine disruptors or heavy metals. Surprisingly, I found this to be one of the harder items to procure before January 1, 2011 when my experiment begins.

Here in Berkeley, there's a foxy brand called Pact. Check it out. Problem is: I don't know if their printing process is toxic or their dyes. I'm thinking they look rather toxic, but prove me wrong. Pact's undies come in bikini and boy short styles too, and all are 95% organic cotton with 5% elastane. Do I need the elastane? Do you? Will my thongs buckle and stretch out otherwise? Will it destroy my thyroid? I need to research more. But, damn, Pact undies a're foxy, both the boy short above in red, and the polka thong down below.

On Facebook, I got a great tip to check out Good & Fair out of Austin. Here's their website and  blog. But the options are extremely limited. People: where are the thongs?

Another social media friend suggested rawganique, and at first I was thinking: really?

But then I found some goodies, with much more deep awareness of what it is I'm trying to do - no elastic, no lycra, no latex. 

What am I trying to do again? Oh yeah... prove the case for wearing organic!

Get Your Organic Clothes - Today 50% Off

Today when I checked my Groupon San Francisco, I was thrilled to see a 50% off coupon for American Apparel, where you can get organic, domestically-produced and un-dyed cotton undies (men's and women's) plus organic shirts and tanks at decent prices.

As you may know, I'm preparing for my "Year of Living Organically" Challenge - start date Jan 1, 2011. I'm planning to measure my toxic load in December and measure it again one year later after wearing only organic clothing, mostly locally produced, and only organic skin products. We all know to eat organic as a way of reducing our exposure to pesticides and fertilizers in our food supply, but meanwhile we wear pesticides and fertilizers particularly in our cotton clothing such as jeans. And women in the US own on average 8 pairs of jeans.

I bought my darling husband, David Gottfied, some organic briefs. When I presented my find, he gave me a withering look: "You are not dragging me into this, you know."

As a friend stated, I'm going NRDC on you. I'm becoming a reluctant activist. I'm also looking for folks to join me - while I know a year-long commitment is daunting, consider joining me for a month or a weekend. I'm also looking for corporate sponsors in case you have some ideas for how best to support this endeavor. American Apparel, Donna Karan, are you reading this?

Prophet of Bloom: Mystic India Flint

India Flint is a huge inspiration to my work in natural dye with uber-local, bio-regional botanicals. You've heard me rage against the toxins that are in our clothes, and the disconnect between how we eat organic but don't wear organic, the endocrine disruptors in our jeans and kid's pajamas -- but what really captures me about this modern-day mystic is that her clothing and work are just tremendously beautiful.

India calls herself the "Prophet of Bloom" and a botanical alchemist. Her blog is deeply inspiring. She's the author of several books, and this is the one I started with.

What does she actually do, you might ask. She is the champion of dye using local windfall and plants from where she lives in New Zealand. Her home has shifted over the years and has included Melbourne, Austria and Montreal. Her art is gentle and a gorgeous yet ecologically sustainable alternative to toxic synthetic dye.

I think that's her in the photo above. She also does dreamy stitching with her clothing creations.

India features many different techniques in her book - eco-prints from plants (above and below), whole-dyed cloth, applied color, and layered dye techniques (also above and below).

She is a master of shibori and the wrap (see below, so pretty!). I love this comment from her blog, entitled "In-Flight Entertainment."

"what's that you're doing, dearie?"
asked the kindly flight attendant

in the gentle tone usually reserved for
the very young, the very old
or the deeply deranged

"stitching" i reply

"and what will you do with it when it's finished?"

"roll it up with leaves and cook it" i say

flight attendant backs away hastily

This is from her older blog, Prophet of Bloom.

Here's more from her luscious book.

And her "virtual workroom" on her website.

India gives workshops around the world, most recently in Tennessee and Belgium.

I love this work so much that I am planning a trip to learn from her and join her Windfall Project. My first task is to make some fabulous, cozy organic hemp gowns for my integrative gynecology patients using uber-local natural dyes that heal you, such as woad (helps estrogen metabolism), horsetail (cures bladder infections and slows down bone loss) and pokeberry (cleanses the lymphatics).

In the meantime, come join us at my home for a "Natural Dye & Integrative Medicine" workshop on October 28, 2010, from 11-3pm. I am co-teaching with Rebecca Burgess, another brilliant botanical alchemist. Call my assistant, Mandy, if you need more info or details at 510.893.3907 or 888.893.6586.

Botanical Bliss: Wear Organic, Eat Organic

Today I sit with the question: If we are all so clear about eating organic, why are we not wearing organic clothing? Our conventional clothes contain toxic fertilizers/pesticides/herbicides/insecticides, heavy metals, endocrine disruptors, teratogens (causes birth defects) and carcinogens. The question lingers from a blissful day yesterday spent at a "Native Dye" workshop with my friends and colleague, eco-artist Rebecca Burgess, at the California School of Herbal Studies (CSHS) in Forestville, CA (County of Sonoma). 

Rebecca was very kind to let me crash the workshop, which she has taught twice before at CSHS, and to speak to the students on the topic of "Toxic Endpoints of Conventional Clothing: Endocrine Disruption, Heavy Metal Exposure & Cancer." My unofficial title: "These Jeans Are Killing Me."

A friend texted me, after hearing the title of my talk, "Look at you going all NRDC on us."

Good point.

After driving at high speed the 72 miles from Oakland to Forestville and dragging my 5-year-old daughter behind me (she was off school for Sukkot) at 7am, I turned onto the long liminal driveway to CSHS.

"Donkeys!" shrieked Maya, my youngest kid, her impatience with the drive a distant memory.

"Yes, Donkeys!" I affirmed. "Or Burros?" I'm not so good at distinguishing the two. Too rounded to be horses. Not llamas. Woah, I'm noticing animals again. We entered sacred space. Hassles of leaving the house so early and traffic on the 101 receded as we both took in the landscape: luscious herbs and flowers, silence, farm animals, brilliants smells and sights of Indian summer in Sonoma.

We parked and walked into the red building ("The Barn") that you see above. I'm a conventionally-trained doctor and never take my kids with me to work. When I did in the past, I get people who look at my young kid, then me, then the kid, then quickly away with a withering sigh.

I walk into CSHS and a group of twenty-something women, all beaming warm and inviting energy at us with shining eyes, greet and welcome us. Estrogen and oxytocin (the hormone of love and bonding) boils over the pot in this place. My daughter grins ear-to-ear and settles right in, ready to make new friends.

I set up our Powerpoint and look for tea - my stainless steel commuter mug needs a refill. There's a big hot water urn in the corner that I spy, but... uh, where's the tea? There's a conspicuous lack of tea bag options next to the hot water. Oh, I get it. All these women were nursing Mason jars filled with steeping flowers and plant bits. Hello, they are Herbalism Students! These peeps are way beyond tea bags.

Rebecca and I finished setting up her steaming vats of natural dye: indigo (naturally fermented) black walnut, coffeeberry, California sage, Madrone, Eucalyptus. Powerpoint begins. Rebecca flashes her slide that is the segue to my brief presentation - how conventional dye causes all kinds of health problems (short list that I've augmented: lymphoma, bladder cancer, asthma, contact dermatitis, hypothyroidism, estrogen dominance), and naturally-dyed clothing actually has healing properties (again, Rebecca's work to which I've added my own thoughts), such as: 

• Pokeberry (see photo below) acts as a lymphatic cleanser
• Woad - contains 20 times as much glucobrassica as brocolli and I hypothesize may improve estrogen dominance similar to DIM (di-indole methane)
• Horsetail - decreases bone loss in women

Radical idea of clothes that heal, not hurt.

Here's Rebecca preparing a pokeberry dye vat for us:

Those pretty berries above got smooshed and made into this gorgeous dye vat - remember this cleanses your lymphatics to work with these berries and wear them.

And here is an organic cotton food/snack bag I dyed with the pokeberry. Take it to the farmer's market next time you're gathering apples or persimmons.

This feels like prayer. My kind of prayer.

Now why bother, you might ask. Great question. Part of my presentation was to take a common toxic clothing item - your beloved jeans and tell the back story of how they were made. In the US, women on average own 8 pair of jeans. I'm no exception and happen to love my Sevens for All Mankind, my Dolces and my Luckies. 

I know there are heavy metals used in getting that pretty denim color, and pesticides and fertilizer used in growing the cotton. Do conventional pesticides and fertilizer act as endocrine disruptors and slow my thyroid and stimulate my estrogen receptors in my boobs? Um, yes. I never really put it together as I did while preparing yesterday's presentation - and to state very directly: my beloved jeans are hurting my health. Here's a few soundbites:

• 2/3 pounds of toxic pesticides and fertilizer are used to make one pair of jeans
• water from conventional denim textile companies is full of heavy metals such as mercury, lead, cadmium, chrome, copper, zinc, antimony
• 7 million pounds of toxic chemicals are used annually for cotton in California alone

If this sounds outrageous, that's because it is. If you need a visual of what you're putting on your skin every time you dress in conventional jeans, try this one. This is from a CNN story published in April, 2010, on the "Blue Jean Capital of the World" -- Xintang, Guangzhou. This textile village produces 200+ million jeans per year. Check out the black nasty water coming out of this village and emptying into China's Pearl River (how sad and ironic that this black stuff is entering a river named for pearls?). I'm not a water pollution person, but as an integrative doctor, I can say that the black muck of heavy metals, carcinogens and endocrine disruptors on your jeans cannot be good for your body.

As the local Chief Medical Officer in Guarngzhou, Dr. Tony Lu, states, this black muck is full of chemicals that may be: "neurotoxic, carcinogenic, they disrupt the endocrine system. They cause cancer of different organs."

People, we have alternatives. We are on board with organic food, but let's take the next step and get mindful about what we put against our skin, and especially the skin of the most vulnerable among us, fetuses in utero, babies, children. 

Here are a few more pics of the brilliant Rebecca Burgess, spreading the good word. 

Let's find some foxy organic cotton jeans, colored with natural dyes. My Seven jeans now hold less appeal, Now, I'm eye-ing my Lululemon brightly-colored yogawear in a whole new way. 

If you're worried the alternative is not pretty, check out some of the samples from our workshop yesterday.

While it's true that I'm a relative beginner at changing out my wardrobe, Rebecca is much farther along of the path. She writes a gorgeous blog, and walks the talk - she now wears for the next year clothing that is sourced and dyed with local resources within a 150-mile radius. The experiment is called "fibershed" and I can't wait to check her heavy metals before and after. So much fun for this integrative gynecologist!

Hormone Imbalance: Symptoms

After many requests, I am re-posting this from my other blog as it is consistently the most popular and my patients seem  to love it. It does not include enough questions related to leptin- and insulin-resistance... more on this in future blogs.

-- SG

How do you know if your hormones are out of balance? I combine a careful history of what my patients are experiencing, their nutritional status, level of activity/lifestyle and sleep along with symptom questionnaires and testing. If any part is left out, we may miss the root cause of the hormone imbalance.  Dr. John Lee's books are helpful with understanding symptoms, and I will provide those below with some modifications I've made.  If you are taking the questionnaire, check off any symptoms that you experience from each symptom group, then we'll integrate at the end.

Symptom Group 1: 

PMS?

Anxiety?

Cyclical headaches (menstrual or hormonal migraine)?

Insomnia?

Early miscarriage?

Lumpy or painful breasts?

Infertility?

Symptom Group 2:

Vaginal dryness or irritation?

Painful sex?

Bladder infections?

Night sweats

Hot flashes

Poor memory?

Depression, especially with lethargy?

Low libido?

Symptom Group 3:

Bloating and/or puffiness?

Abnormal paps?

Rapid weight gain?

Breast tenderness?

Mood swings?

Heavy bleeding?

Depression with anxiety?

Migraines?

Insomnia?

Brain fog?

Red flush on face?

Gallbladder problems?

Weepiness?

Symptom Group 4:

Number of checked symptoms for Group 1 & 3 combined

Symptom Group 5:

Acne?

Polycystic Ovary Syndrome?

Excess hair on face/chest/or arms?

Hyper- or hypo-glycemia and/or unstable blood sugar?

Thinning head hair?

Infertility?

Ovarian cysts?

Midcycle pain?

Symptom Group 6:

Low libido?

Debilitating fatigue?

Unstable blood sugar?

Brain fog?

Low blood pressure?

Thin or dry skin?

Intolerance to exercise?

Brown spots on skin?

For assessment, tally the total number of symptoms in each category.  If you have 2 or more symptoms from a grouping - you may have the following diagnosis. I recommend you sort this out with an integrative physician.

Group 1:  Progesterone deficiency.  This is the most common hormone imbalance of all ages.  Best approaches are to optimize diet, reduce synthetic hormones if you are taking any (including birth control pills) and add bioidentical progesterone if appropriate.

Group 2:  Estrogen deficiency.  This is most common in menopausal women, especially skinny minnies.  Dietary changes and herbal therapies are often helpful as a first approach.

Group 3:  Excess estrogen. We see excess estrogen when women are taking synthetic estrogen, too much bioidentical estrogen (estradiol, estriol, tri-est), or are exposed to environmental xenoestrogens.  Xenoestrogens refer to the 700+ chemicals in the environment that act like endrocrine disruptors in the body, usually by binding the estradiol receptor.  Xenoestrogens have estrogen-like effects such as fertilizers, pesticides and lauryl sulfates.

Group 4:  Estrogen dominance.  Usually caused by not having sufficient progesterone to balance estrogen.  Causes vary from not enough progesterone to too much estrogen, or as is common in premenopause (age 35-50):  low estrogen but superlow progesterone.

Group 5: Excess androgens or male hormones.  Often this is caused by insulin and/or leptin resistance, and we can reverse this with dietary changes and supplements, but other approaches are effective as well.

Group 6:  Cortisol excess or deficiency.  Most people need a laboratory test to differentiate.  This is caused by adrenal fatigue which results from chronic stress.

I find very few women survive work and kids without some degree of adrenal fatigue.

There also is interdependence among these different hormonal systems with each other as well as with neurotransmitters.  For instance, estrogen acts like a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor and helps mood in many women.  Also, if adrenal hormones are off, this can interfere with conversion of T4 (inactive thyroid hormone) to T3 (active form of thyroid hormone).

For all of these conditions or for further information, I recommend consulting an integrative physician in your area such as those in this database.