My guest today is Lisa K. Tharp, founder of K. Tharp Design. Lisa caught my attention when she demonstrated her understanding of design practices that are healthy for people the planet in her design of the award-winning Concord Green Healthy Home. We’ll be talking about how she incorporates toxic-free choices in design and how you can too. Plus, Lisa will share her 5 steps for recovery for people with MCS. K. Tharp Design is a full-service, boutique design firm specializing in luxury level interiors—environments thoughtfully designed to satisfy and delight the senses. Whether designing a relaxed beach house, gracious country home or sophisticated city residence, Lisa loves helping each client find and reflect their own personal style in spaces that are inviting, comfortable and functional. Lisa hit the Boston design scene in 2012, when her first project landed on the cover of Design New England magazine and was broadcast by This Old House Productions. Visual skills, honed from years of filming and photography during Lisa’s first career in video production and brand management (Time Life, HBO, Kraft General Foods) inform her sense of composition, lighting and scale. Inspired by each new project’s architecture, local vernacular and setting, Lisa calls upon classical proportions, modern form, fine art and nature itself to produce work described as “a fresh take on classic design”. She collaborates with architects and building teams on new construction and renovations, and often creates bespoke furnishings, lighting and original art for her clients. www.ktharpdesign.com
TOXIC FREE TALK RADIO
Designing a Toxic-Free Home
Host: Debra Lynn Dadd
Guest: Lisa K. Tharp
Date of Broadcast: February 19, 2014
DEBRA: Hi, I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. And this is Toxic Free Talk Radio where we talk about how to thrive in a toxic world, how to live toxic-free. And we do that because there are so many toxic chemicals out there. But what we need to do is see the world through toxic-free glasses.
I had this idea the other day that it’s like if you were to say walk down the street and only look at people who are only wearing red shirts, you would walk down the street, and you’d be able to see a red shirt because you know what the color red is if you aren’t color blind (but most people know what the color red is).
If you gain the ability to understand what is toxic and what is toxic-free, you can go through the world and say, “This is toxic-free… this is toxic… this is toxic-free… this is toxic.”
And that’s what my work is about, being able to help you recognize what is toxic free and the things that you can do to reduce your toxic exposures and to eliminate toxic chemicals from your body.
Today is Wednesday, February 19th 2014. I’m here in Clearwater, Florida. The sun is shining. And we’re going to be talking about designing a toxic-free home today.
My guest is Lisa K. Tharp, Founder of K. Tharp Design. And I’ve been looking at Lisa’s website. As I’ve been waiting for the show to start, I looked at it before. But I’ve just been kind of browsing through it this morning. Her work has been featured, her toxic-free work has been featured in over a dozen mainstream design magazines in the last two years. He work is beautiful!
In fact, I chose a photo of one of her designs to be on the home page of my website. And she also understands what it means to be toxic-free.
Welcome to the show, Lisa.
LISA THARP: Hello! Thank you so much for having me. And thank you for your nice words about my work. Let me return the favor. Your work has been an absolute gift to everyone looking for information on healthy living. I know I use the Debra’s List regularly when I am checking up on new materials. So thank you for all that you’ve done for everyone.
DEBRA: Thank you, thank you. It’s my pleasure actually. I love doing this.
And you know, when I look at your designs, your test is just my taste. I would design something like that. You choose the same colors and you have the same sensibilities.
But before we get into all of that, tell everybody how you got interested in things that are toxic free. How did you get from being an average person who has no awareness of these issues into doing what you’re doing?
LISA THARP: Well, there’s always a particular pivotal event, isn’t there?
DEBRA: Yes, there is.
LISA THARP: I always, since I was a child, had a great interest in architecture and interior design. But my interest in healthy design came much later. I personally was exposed to toxic and moldy building materials for an extended period of time. And in the years that followed, I noticed that my immune system was really impacted.
And this was followed by losing two immediate family members both younger than me to cancer. And it was at that point I decided something is really wrong and I need to take action. I wasn’t sure at the time how to go about it, but I just started learning all that I could about creating a healthier indoor environment.
And I was frankly astounded at the simple things that are within our power to do. It’s just we need the information.
DEBRA: Yes.
LISA THARP: And so, I took that information and decided to actually build a healthy house, not only for my own family, but also to model best practices, and use as many non-toxic materials as possible. So we built the Concord Green Healthy House. And I figured that so many others could benefit from all the time I spent doing the research and learning. And so I set up a blog, Concord Green, to blog about the journey along the way and feature many of the materials and design features that I was learning about and incorporating into the design.
And now I’m able to help my clients make their homes healthier too and try and do it as much as possible. I’m always suggesting ways that you can improve the health of your home.
DEBRA: I’m really impressed with how you’ve integrated the whole idea of using non-toxic materials with the other principles of how you design like bringing nature indoors and the colors that you use and vernacular design and things. So give us an overview of what your design philosophy is.
LISA THARP: Well, I do believe that we can learn a lot from our past when things were simpler. When you think about our ancestors, we built with deep respect for nature. They didn’t have the ability to turn on a thermostat switch. So they had to orient their homes towards the warm summer sun on the southern exposure and chill themselves from the northern winds with positioning their homes, your shade trees for summer shade and evergreens for winter, wind protection, these kinds of things.
And those are just examples. That’s a northeast example. Of course, in southern climates, the opposite would be true.
But the idea of our history in building science and in design is very reflective of nature’s realities. And the more we start to move away from that and make things a little bit overly complex, the more difficult things become. And I think that’s true with most things in life.
DEBRA: Yes, I think so too.
LISA THARP: But in design, my designs, I talk about the luxury of simplicity. You don’t need so much. You need to smartly design your spaces so that you have good storage where you need it, comfortable furniture, but no more than what you need. And we set out to try and prove that simplicity can still be lovely and beautiful and comfortable. It does not have to be Spartan.
I also love to reclaim and reuse things that are in good condition and are not moldy, repurpose things. I’ve done antique wood tables as a bath vanity, stuck some things in it for example.
So, my philosophy is that it’s got to be non-toxic (as non-toxic as possible), be a guard at your door and figure out what is safe to bring into your home. Treat your home like your sanctuary which is what it should be.
DEBRA: I also like to take old things and make them new in a toxic-free way. One of my favorite things is I used to be married to a man who—and we’re still very good friends—was very good with his hands. He had all those building and remodeling skills. And that’s how I got my house. He didn’t build it, but he remodeled it.
I needed an island for my kitchen. And so what we did was we just went out. One of the things we love to do was go to architectural salvage and go to antique stores and just see what kind of old, not moldy things, not toxic things, that we could come up and make them into something new.
But the kitchen island in my kitchen is made from an old Singer sewing machine table. It didn’t have the sewing machine in it anymore, but it had these good iron legs. And it still has the pedal on it. And so it’s this great conversation piece. We put a new top on it. And I just love it. I love it!
LISA THARP: It looks great! And it’s one of a kind. And that’s the nice thing about it.
DEBRA: It is one of a kind. It is, it is.
LISA THARP: You have a story and a memory associated with at piece.
Taking as much and putting your own personality and your own interest into your home is the best possible way to create a sanctuary that really reflects who you are.
And the flipside of course is to your point about not moldy. We have to be very careful when we’re salvaging. I got in trouble once on a project using a desk that was antique that turned out to be toxically moldy. The painter, his assistant, accidentally […] spewed lead dust and moldy spores everywhere. It was pretty much a disaster. So, you have to be very careful.
DEBRA: Yeah, you do.
LISA THARP: It’s a good thing to try and reuse things. But you do have to put your health at the first priority.
DEBRA: I think so too. And I think that that’s one of the things. There’s this big emphasis environmentally on re-use. But if we just re-use everything indiscriminately, we will end up running into a lot of toxic things.
LISA THARP: We need to take a break, but we’ll be right back. This is Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is Lisa K. Tharp, interior designer. She’s the Founder of K. Tharp Design. And when we come back, we’ll be talking about some toxic things that are found in interior design, products that we want to watch out for. We’ll be right back.
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is Lisa K. Tharp, Founder of K. Tharp Designs. She does very beautiful toxic-free designs. You might want to go take a look at her website which is KTharpDesign.com.
Lisa, before the break, we were talking about watching out for some toxic things like lead and mold in materials that we might re-use for design. Tell us about some other toxic chemicals that you’ve run into in the past that people should watch out for when they’re considering interior design projects.
LISA THARP: Sure! There are lots of different categories, but we could probably break them down into a few.
One is finishes, so paints and floor finishes are all going to be off-gassing if they’re typical or traditional type products. They will off-gas for a period of weeks, months or even years well after that new paint smell is gone.
There are resins and formaldehyde and adhesives in our furniture if it’s not solid sold. Our kitchen cabinetry, these are all, again, off-gassing and causing issues for the immune system.
There are some other things that are considerations that are not materials, per se, but the way our houses mechanically work. Is that okay for me to get into?
DEBRA: Sure, go ahead.
LISA THARP: So, any time we have things that are off-gassing, it’s affecting our indoor air quality. But the bigger problem is that we are then spreading the indoor air quality issue around.
DEBRA: Yes, do talk about that. Do talk about that.
LISA THARP: I point specifically to the wonder of forced hot air and central air conditioning. This, to me, is a central problem in our modern day house design.
During the oil crisis of the ‘70s, we started trying to be energy efficient without understanding the need for fresh air, so we ziplocked up our homes and tried to seal them tight.
Then we turned on the forced hot air and central air conditioning. And now we’re blowing whatever particulates, whatever off-gassing, whatever fumes that are in our space. We are now making them airborne and easy to breathe. It is my feeling that that is one of the main reasons why asthma rates are so on the rise in this country.
Furthermore, the duct work itself is typically a breathing ground mixture of dust and air conditioning condensation. So even if we don’t have a mold problem anywhere else in the house, we are probably breathing one in the duct work, and again, spreading it around by turning on those systems.
Also, another modern convenience is that we’ve attached our garages to our home. And sometimes, we’re even sleeping in rooms above our garage. You just don’t want to be sharing indoor air with car exhaust. And that’s pretty hard to avoid unless you’re not parking your car in the garage.
DEBRA: I don’t park my car in the garage.
LISA THARP: Okay. In fact, a lot of people don’t do that.
DEBRA: But another thing that I see (because one of the things that I do is I go to people’s homes and do a toxic assessment of them and tell them what’s toxic and what they can do about it), a lot of times what I see in homes is that the air intake for the central heating or air system is in the garage. And sitting next to this air intake are pesticide cans and cans of paint and things that are giving off fumes. It’s going right into the house.
LISA THARP: I mean, things that we grow up just assuming it was okay—the gasoline, the open can of gasoline for the lawn mower—all these things that we got used to growing up in a time when plastics were big and polyester was the miracle fabric, these are all things that we got accustomed to. Of course, you put pesticides on the lawn; that’s how you get a green lawn.
So, it’s a bit about stepping back and saying, “Let’s go back to a simpler time and see what we can learn.” Can we use simpler materials? Can we use simpler materials for our mattress? Does it have to be filled with polyurethane foam and flame retardant that we’re breathing in every night? Or can we use organic cotton, wool, natural latex? These are all options for us that are all healthier than the typical mattress products that are being sold to us.
So, it’s about stepping back and just really thinking. And once you do that, it starts to become quite easy. And then it’s just a matter of looking around and saying, “What resources are available to me? How do I substitute out the toxic floor finish for something that’s safe—or the paint?” It’s just a matter of making a little bit of advanced planning, preparation. And then you can solve most of these problems pretty easily.
DEBRA: I find that it’s pretty easy to solve them too. And I’ve been doing this for more than 30 years. And 30 years ago, it was a lot more difficult to find these products. But now today, there are of course specialty products that you have to get online or from a specialty boutique store. But even places like Home Depot and Lowe’s, you can go and buy a less toxic paint or some of these supplies.
I have a rug in my hallway, a 100% wool rug, that I just bought at Home Depot—not ‘just’, I bought it 12 years ago at Home Depot. But it’s not impossible to find these things in mainstream stores now. You just need to know where to be looking and what to look for. Things have changed a lot.
LISA THARP: And there are two levels of action. The first is the building envelope itself. I don’t want to minimize that. Not everyone has a chance to build a house from scratch. They have an HVAC system currently in their home. And so people say to me, “Well, what do I do with my existing situation?” There are things one can do and we can talk more about that if you like in some detail. But the things that have to do with the building envelope are more complex. But again, there are things even there that you can do even without leaving your current home.
DEBRA: I find that too. In fact, I love to take old houses and fix them up.
We need to go to break. But we’ll talk about all the great things that you can do with the building envelope and inside the rooms when we come back with Lisa K. Tharp. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. This is Toxic Free Talk Radio.
We’ll be right back.
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. And my guest today is Lisa K. Tharp, Founder of K. Tharp Design. Her website is KTharpDesign.com. She does beautiful toxic-free interior design.
So Lisa, let’s talk about design now and the solutions that you’ve come up with. We could talk a lot about toxic chemicals and safer materials. But first, I want to ask you how, if at all, does design choices play into being a solution for making things less toxic?
LISA THARP: And when you say “design choices,” are you talking about interior…
DEBRA: I’m not talking materials. I’m not talking about materials, but I’m asking—I don’t know the answer to this question. Is it possible that making choices that have to do with design choices could then reduce a toxic exposure? I’m thinking of, for example, if you put a window on a south-facing wall, then it would help bring in heat, and you would have to use less light bulbs.
LISA THARP: Oh, okay, building design.
DEBRA: And so both in the building design and in choices that you might make with furnishings, are there design choices that could be made that would give a less toxic result? Maybe you would make a choice to use a material that you wouldn’t have to then paint or something like that.
LISA THARP: Right, right. Yes, absolutely. So, on the building envelop itself, if you research just a little bit about passive design, you’ll understand that heating and cooling as much as possible without mechanical means is the best way to go.
DEBRA: I agree.
LISA THARP: So yes, if you’re in a northern climate, most of your windows should be on the southern side of the house. If you can build large shade trees that are deciduous so they drop their leaves in the winter so they get all the sun in, and they shade the home in the summer time, that’s all great.
So, as much as you can do passively as possible…
And then, mechanically, I would do everything you can to avoid blowing systems. I recommend hot water radiant or radiators. This is under the floor, the radiant; and radiators, there are modern radiators that are nothing like the steam clunkers that you think of at your older homes. I would make sure that you order them uncoated because some of them are coated with epoxies that continue to off-gas when the hot water heats them.
For air conditioning, ceiling fans are a wonderful choice—box fans, portable fans. But if you do really want air conditioning, I recommend either putting in a window AC unit here or there or using the newer ductless air conditioning. These are mini-splits, they’re called. All of these are detailed on the blog that I was writing that’s at ConcordGreen.Blogspot.com. There are articles on all of these choices and resources to learn more.
DEBRA: I’m going to go look at that, your article, especially about air conditioning because I’m faced with an air conditioning dilemma at this point in time. Living in Florida, you really have to have some kind of air conditioning half of the year. And it has as much to do with humidity as heat.
When I moved into this house, I had an old clunker air conditioner that kind of has been on its last leg ever since.
And right now, I don’t have air conditioning. It’s fine because it’s winter. But my thermostat went out and I’m going to have to get a new thermostat. But soon, I’m going to have to get a new air conditioning. To get a whole house air conditioning is thousands and thousands of dollars. And I’m really looking at what can I do instead of that.
LISA THARP: And you’re inviting all sorts of problems that we covered earlier in this conversation. The important thing too to avoid in any sort of air conditioning mechanical system is antimicrobial coating which have become very popular. Kenmore still offers the window unit that does not have those antimicrobial coating which are being used as big marketing slogans, but they’re not good for us.
DEBRA: They’re especially not good for us. I’m going to be writing about those soon.
LISA THARP: So, if you’re heating and cooling as much as possible, passively then, with smart mechanicals, bring in as much fresh air as you can. Open the windows if you’re in the heat of summer, in the early morning and late that night, to kind of flush the house. If you have the means to add in an energy recovery ventilator, that keeps the temperature from going out the window, but it brings fresh air in. You can also attach filters to it, HEPA filters, for particulates and carbon for off-gassing and fumes.
Those are all, again, mechanical things you can do to keep that fresh air coming in that we used to get automatically when our windows were draftier and our doors were draftier.
DEBRA: Yes, yes.
LISA THARP: The other thing I tell people is attics, not basements. If you want bonus space in your home, look up, don’t look down. Basements are notorious for humidity and mold. You do need to dehumidify in your basement. Even if you don’t have flooding, you need to ventilate it. And that can be as simple as hooking up a bathroom-type fan with some sort of small exhaust that’s got a screen on it so nothing, no one crawls in. Ventilate your basement.
And then, do everything you can to disconnect that basement air from the rest of your interior space. So if folks have interior doors to their basement, I tell them to weather strip all around it, so that any sort of moisture air is not really mixing. You’re trying to minimize the sharing of air from your main living spaces to your basement.
And then, there are all of the wonderful non-toxic materials that are out there now. “Green,” I learned, does not necessarily equal healthy. In fact, some of the most difficult insulation choices you can have in your home would be closed cell insulation. It’s the pride and joy of energy efficiency. But it will give you headaches and all sorts of other nasty impacts if you’re at all sensitive.
So, question the necessity of each chemical that’s coming into your home. Do I need to seal my dining room table or is it fine—you know, that more patina’d look?
Check for any allergens. A lot of people are allergic to the terpenes found in various species of wood, so you do need to seal it. But seal it with something that’s non-toxic.
Be like a bouncer at the door. “You can’t come in unless you meet certain criteria.”
DEBRA: Yeah! I like that. I like that a lot.
LISA THARP: And one of my favorite lines—and I don’t get paid by them to say this. ECOS Organics is a line from the UK that now manufactures here States-side. And they have not only in my opinion the best non-toxic paint, they also have non-toxic floor finishes. They have sealers, radiator paints. Their line is terrific.
DEBRA: Yeah, I had them on. I interviewed with them. And they are! I love their line too.
LISA THARP: Oh, great.
DEBRA: We need to go to break, but we’ll be right back. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. And I’m here with my guest today, Lisa K. Tharp, Founder of K. Tharp Design. And that’s KTharpDesign.com. And you’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. We’ll be right back.
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is Lisa K. Tharp, Founder of K. Tharp Design. And we’ve been talking about how to create toxic-free interiors, designing a toxic-free home.
Lisa, we’re in our last segment now, so we only have a short period of time. But I want to make sure that you get a little bit of time to talk about the design aspect, the furnishing aspects as well as the building envelope. And then, there’s another thing that we want to talk about later as well. So let’s get this all in.
LISA THARP: Okay! Well, I think the first thing I tell folks is to remove wall-to-wall carpeting if at all possible.
DEBRA: That’s the first thing I say too!
LISA THARP: Go with bare floors. You can paint them. You can seal them with the non-toxic varnishes, tile floors, concrete floors. You can do beautiful things. So that’s a major area to hit right away. I use all natural textiles whenever possible. I avoid stain treatments. I use solid wood furniture or unfinished, untreated wicker.
And I can just send the paint to the manufacturer and have them put non-toxic paint on things.
I love using upholstery that is either slip covers so it’s washable, removable cushions, and washable covers.
These are all great tricks of the trade to make sure that your home is both comfortable and also safe.
DEBRA: Yes. And there are a lot of materials now. As I’ve said earlier, 30 years ago when I started, it was really difficult to get these things. But now, you can get them. Everything that you could need to do an interior in your home, you can do in a toxic-free way. Wouldn’t you say that’s true?
LISA THARP: Absolutely!
DEBRA: It’s pretty easy.
LISA THARP: It just takes paying attention to it, doing a little bit of research, tapping into all of the folks out there who are moving in this direction with furniture lines and finishes, et cetera.
DEBRA: And even accessories and pillows and all those kinds of little things. I would say that there’s really not a limit on what kind of design you could create and doing it toxic-free. It’s not like you have to do it all in beige or anything like that.
LISA THARP: That’s absolutely true. You know, a lot of green design was very modern-looking. And again, with the Concord Green Healthy House, I set out to try and show that healthy and green design can also look very traditional. I mean, it’s a very fairly traditional vernacular with a bit of a fresh twist in places.
DEBRA: It is very traditional, yeah.
LISA THARP: You do not need to be limited. You just need to do a little bit of extra homework. Anything is possible.
DEBRA: I would totally agree.
So, you put together, on your blog, five steps for chemical sensitivity recovery. And I thought that we should talk about that because not only does it apply to people specifically who have immune system problems, but it really is—the points that you put together, I completely agree with. And I think they apply to anybody who is needing to recover from any kind of chemical damage. And that’s just about everybody who lives in our toxic world. Some people are more recovered than others, but we’ve all been affected.
So, let’s just go through those five points.
LISA THARP: Sure! I mean, it’s the belief that, just like with the architecture, the return to nature. It’s the belief that your body is powerful and that your immune system knows what to do. Why are we having all these epidemics of life-threatening food allergies and hypersensitivity and autoimmune disorders, all sorts of things? It’s because our immune systems are a bit on overdrive or they’re overburdened.
So, it’s all about taking a few simple steps to unburden the immune system and let it do its own job. And I’ve seen amazing recoveries time and time again.
So, in step one—which is what we’ve been focusing on—is creating a safe home environment that allows your body to begin a healing process.
Step two is physical. Your body was designed to work. And even if you’re bedridden, start doing little things in bed that you can do to make yourself stronger. Build up to walking each day, getting outside and getting as much fresh air into your lungs and sweating and absorbing that sunshine. These are critically important parts to the physical aspects of your healing. You’ll be stronger, you’ll be calmer, and you’ll sleep better.
DEBRA: And you need to exercise. You need to move your body in order for your body to process and excrete the toxic chemicals that are already in your body. This is a critically important part.
LISA THARP: Again, it’s just doing what your body was meant to do.
And then, step number three is nutrition. It’s feeding your body the things it was meant to it. The old “eat your vegetables” couldn’t be more true. Organic vegetables, the more you can put those into your diets and take out the inflammatory foods like dairy, gluten, and processed foods, replacing caffeine and alcohol with water, and ultimately, taking a quality probiotic to restore gut health—
In olden days, they talk about how the gut is the center of an individual’s health. And it remains true to this day.
So that’s a critical, important piece—especially with people who have had illnesses, they probably have been on antiobiotics, which is taking away their own digestive track’s ability to fight off disease and chronic illnesses. This is the way to restore that fighting power back into your own body.
DEBRA: I agree.
LISA THARP: Number four is medical. And this is one where you should rule out anything else that might be going on. For many people, it’s food allergies or Candida albicans which is an overgrowth of yeast that is fed by the typical American diet of carbsn and sugars. It could be leaky gut. It could be something else. You should just make sure that you run at least the testing for food allergies and Candida to rule those out.
And if they are present—some people think that the majority of Americans have Candida albicans, there’s yeast overgrowth. Once you clear that up, you’ll be amazed at how much better everything else is working.
DEBRA: I would agree with you. I think most people have it. I think toxic chemicals, especially in food and water (we’re drinking chlorinated water or water with chlorine or chloramines on it for disinfection), it kills all those microorganisms in your gut, and then Candida just grows and grows and grows. And most people are drinking that water, and they don’t even know what’s going on in their gut.
So, the whole thing about gut restoration is I think a key factor to the whole recovery from the chemical damage in your body. Our poor bodies, I just want to say that if you’re being exposed to the typical amount of toxic chemicals that goes on in this country, it’s like an onslaught into your body.
So it really is this two-pronged approach of reducing the amount of chemicals you’re putting into your body, getting those toxic chemicals out of your body. And the third thing is this whole restoration project. It really is like a body restoration project.
LISA THARP: It is! And that leads us to the fifth step, which, I’ve always wondered, why do some people react so much more significantly than others to the same onslaught of toxicity. Why do some people have just much more extreme situations?
Usually, it’s because they’ve had one serious exposure that hyper-sensitized their body. This led me to the fifth step which is the mind-body connection.
For a long time, I rejected this idea. I though there are physical symptoms that people are experiencing. There’s no way that this is a mind-connection issue. But then I saw several people I trusted who had claims of chemical sensitivity full recovery through brain retraining.
And the idea of brain retraining is that we train the brain conditioned trigger of physical symptoms that result from a prior toxic exposure, the idea that the ancient part of our brain, the fight-or-flight instinct also is attuned to having been exposed to some toxic chemical or mold or whatever it was that got you to be sick in the first place, and the brain recognizes even minute amounts of that in your future and tries to flood your system with adrenaline and re-trigger those same physical symptoms even if you’re not in any real harm at that time.
And so there are programs out there, brain retraining, that actually try and stop the vicious cycle of your brain overreacting, triggering the adrenaline, developing the physical symptoms, and wearing own your immune system. And that, I recommend people check out as the fifth and last step in the full recovery program.
DEBRA: I agree that that happens. It’s like putting your hand on a fire, like on a hot stove, for example. So you put your hand on a hot stove, then your mind or your brain, however you understand it, it records that. It says, “I need to warn you, the next time you come near a hot stove, to not put your hand on it or you’ll burn it.” It’s just that same kind of mechanism.
And so you get exposed to these toxic chemicals, then your body can react even in the future to very minute amounts to exposures, and it multiplies. It does have an effect. The mind and the body are interconnected. So I completely agree that the mind has a factor in this.
I’m not saying that people who are sensitive to chemicals or who have a reaction to chemicals that it’s completely psychosomatic. These are toxic poisons. These chemicals are poisons. Recovering from our toxic world really is a multifaceted approach.
And that’s the end of the show. My goodness!
LISA THARP: Okay! Well, thank you very much for having me.
DEBRA: This has been Lisa Tharp. She’s at KTharpDesign.com. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. This is Toxic Free Talk Radio.
