Dr. Rob Brown | Our Toxic Homes, Conscious Living, & Feng Shui

00:00 Embrace yourself, because you're about to dive into another free first hour episode of the Higher Side Chats. And we just want to let you know that whether your looking for a companion through your paranoid insomnia, entertaining yourself through one of life's mundane activities or trying to ward off the internal screams from all those sad smothered souls around the office THC is here and you should know that every episode of the higher side chats has an entire second hour for plus members Sign up at thehiresitechatsplus.com and you'll get years of Plus Show archives, lifetime forum access, a special invite to Greg Carlwood's monthly joint sessions MP3s of THC music bonus episodes tour videos and 10% off t-shirts grinders and whatever else ends up in The HireSite Store It's $8 a month that you won't miss so become a plus member and treat yourself in these troubled times always action packed and commercial free

00:51 Which means you'll unfortunately never hear my voice again. 1930s President Franklin Delano Roosevelt addressed the nation through a series of radio broadcast known as the fireside chats His aim was to reassure the society would recover from its troubled times From 1930 and I deal with a different kind of fire For a new era of worldly frustration we offer a- I'm Greg Carlwood These are the hireside chat

01:30 Alright Hiresight Chatters, back in the saddle again from sunny San Diego. I'm Greg Carlwood and I wish I could say it's a beautiful day in the neighborhood but the reality is that our modern lifestyles are on very shaky ground Many of us are largely living on corporate frankenfood drive-thru dinners and glyphosate soaked crops working extended hours under high stress for low wages breathing bad air drinking contaminated water wading through EMF waves and wanting just a bit more from our so called civilized society We can complain, we can wish for better or we take the time to fortify our homes. The only real thing that we control. I mean what's the point of knowing society's dirty secrets if we don't act on them and construct a better life for us and ours? Because the revolution dear people will be individualized

02:17 And here today to help us armor up our humble abodes is the good doctor Rob Brown. Dr. Brown has been a diagnostic radiologist for over 25 years who has worked in private practice and academic centers like NYU Medical School and the Cleveland Clinic Foundation, he survived cancer climbed Kilimanjaro and written one hell of a book called Toxic Home Conscious Home A Mindful Approach to Wellness at home And in it, he gives you all the tools you need to beat back the beast and live your best life. So bend-the knee people for the MD on the mountaintop, The good guidance guru, The toxic life corrector and conscious life director Dr Brown! Welcome to THC! Thank You Greg it's a pleasure to be here

03:00 Well, thanks for doing it. This is a real treat I found your book while looking for more ways to get into the solution side of things because our environment and lifestyles are so toxic We've heard this for decades already with no signs of it getting better on a large scale So my thought was we really need more individualized guidance and we need to start taking responsibility for how we live. And your book really hits home, no pun intended. And the title really does say it all but just to get this party started maybe you could tell the listeners a bit about The Journey because so many people go through the medical system and they tend to come out with more faith in it rather than less. And clearly a lot of self-education had to come into play I would think right?

03:44 Oh, absolutely. Yes I finished my training and one of the first things that happened to me was I suffered a knee injury before I went to Kilimanjaro as you mentioned in the introduction and i did the conventional medicine route with an orthopedic surgeon who was going to prescribe me Celebrex and then recommended an arthroscopy and I didn't want surgery and I was gonna go on this trip I'm a colleague of mine who's wife was the distributor for company that sold these magnets and he asked if i had an open mind with a willing to try them.

04:21 And at the time I thought I knew all there was to know about medicine. In fact, I was doing a fellowship in San Diego actually at UCSD in musculoskeletal radiology and so I really thought that I knew quite a bit about orthopedics and how to treat things when he offered me magnets I thought well this is ridiculous you know? How could magnets heal you but I put those magnet on them they healed me to make a long story short I felt the effects within hours without any medication and up with no arthritis. And i healed from these little magnetic discs in that really open my mind to the possibility, what there was more to health care than pharmaceuticals and surgery which is of course what medical doctors are trained to do in school

05:10 That crack the veneer of the egg shell that i had developed during my training and since then i've done a lot of exploration with different types of medicine everything from acupuncture in chiropractic to energy medicine self healing with the mind magneto therapy all kinds of things just try to push the envelope to see what's possible How do we relate to treatment and care beyond what were offered by conventional allopaths? Yeah, life is a funny thing. One little experience with something like magnets can really open the door because it's always well if I had the wrong ideas about this what else out there might have the wrong idea about and it's It's a powerful thing when people have that

06:00 happen and in your book you cover a lot of ground water air food cleaning products sound smell light and even function way it really is a full spectrum guide to living better of course we know we have a lot of problems but how do you diagnose the typical american home today what sort of shape dc the average family being. Most people are what i would call unconscious they're just not aware of what the bringing into their home. They live for entertainment in a most of us are just living to be entertained and we really don't put any thought into what we do everyday and what were exposing ourselves through the choices that we, will have the ability to make but we talk soft you know where bombarded by advertisement we are fed ads

06:51 and other information that companies are providing us because they're making a profit off of these products, of course. And so most people are unconscious. They have no idea what they're exposing their to every day and homes were filled with toxins in all the categories you mentioned then that's why I pretty much divided it up into biochemical toxins and then electromagnetic toxins and energetic toxins was the end of the book. Yeah I think that there's a lot of people out there who can appreciate the raw truth that sometimes we're playing two hours of xbox watching 2 hours and netflix and yet we say were too busy to find a good air filter for our home or something like that it is a sad state of affairs but you are right we are living to be entertained and not i don't know if that's what we're meant to do here but

07:47 One of the subject areas that I found most useful is your section on food preparation, cooking and storing food because i'm definitely trying to eat better and make more meals at home but you can have all the organic grass-fed foods you want there are still a lot of ways to hurt yourself even after you've gotten good ingredients right? Absolutely yeah we have the generation ahead of us that suffered a lot of my suffer with alzheimer's disease and other neuro degenerative diseases which, a lot of people believe associated with aluminum and copper toxicity. And what's one of the most common things that generation did well they cooked on aluminum pots and pans in the rap to all their food with aluminum foil

08:32 One of the things that i first discovered when i was working on this book with my aluminum foil had a strange rainbow pattern and made me think you don't want touching my food. And the more i researched that i found that the aluminum actually leeches out of the foil into the food when you wrap it especially if the foods acidic or hot. And so one other thing that i have been doing for years is no i would make spaghetti and i would have sauce on it then i would wrap it up to put in refrigerator, and I would wrap it in aluminum foil. And so this acidic tomato sauce was then leaching aluminum from the foil as it's sitting there on the refrigerator, and then I would put it in the oven with the aluminum foil still on it. An again, the increased temperature causes further leaching. So that is something most people are not aware of, yes, the materials we store our food or wrap it in, its not inert. These materials including plastic wraps

09:30 and conventional wax papers that are petroleum-based, you're getting this stuff into your food. It may alter the taste it may not but you're still ingesting these chemicals into your system and they get absorbed Yes, I know about these aluminum concerns. I definitely think about them quite a bit. I've tried to cut out my addiction to soda for a lot of reasons but one of them is acidic beverages and aluminum cans but I stupidly didn't think much about aluminum foil. I know some people who when they're putting a tray in the oven, they wrap it in aluminum foil first, I guess to keep drippings from going everywhere? I don't know but that seems like really counterproductive if you're trying to do right by your body

10:18 So the simple fixes just wrapping it with an unbleached parchment paper before putting the oil on it. And it was very interesting this past holiday weekend that was looking for some recipes on the internet and i came across one and the woman who is telling her audience, before you put this dish in the oven, put unbleached parchment paper on it followed by aluminum foil. And she explained how the acidity of the sauce would then leach aluminum from the foil and I thought wow that's great! You know the message is really getting out there because this recipe was published in 2018 and I had spent a whole year like traveling around trying to tell people about this because people don't know about it." There was a big concern about aluminum in vaccines well we're ingesting aluminum

11:04 You know, you mentioned cans. Actually the cans are lined with BPA so that's another toxin that we could discuss but the aluminum in the cans is actually protected by a thin layer of bisphenol A it's an endocrine disruptor and so soda and beer in particular can become contaminated with that chemical And I've heard you talk about BPA, obviously we see all these bottles and plastics that are marked BPA-free but that's kind of a bait and switch because there is many other chemicals that don't have the target on them like BPA does. They just use those instead it doesn't mean they're better for us Exactly when the media picked up on bisphenol A being an endocrine disruptor in estrogen mimicker

11:53 There was this big effort to make BPA-free bottles, BPA free containers in plastics because everybody's drinking out of these plastic water bottles and the BPA was leaching into the water. And so we've got these epidemics breast cancer is increasing and gynecomastia in men's increasing and everybody's obese That's one of the things you can get from too much estrogen in your system. And so, is there a link from the BPA in the plastics? Quite possibly! So what do these companies do? The plastic manufacturers replace BPA with BPF, BPS and similar compounds which are not BPA technically and so they can say that the bottle is BPA free and yet these chemicals are also estrogen mimickers and endocrine disruptors

12:44 So it'll take another X number of years before they too become a concern in the media or perhaps there's just fatigue at this point and people don't care anymore. You know, that's kind of what happens right? Well, I don't put it past people to give up in frustration when dealing with this kind of stuff because there's so much to deal with and it never really ends. And similarly to the BPA issue, to return to cookware a little bit we have PFAO-free labels on a lot of cookware and then similarly they just switch it for other chemicals but...I've heard you talk about some of these coatings on pots and pans can

13:27 emit enough i guess it high temperatures they can admit enough fumes to even kill a bird. Yeah, the PFOA. You know if you had a Teflon pan and you had a bird in the house If you heat the pan too high these chemicals are emitted from the pan and they can kill a bird Exactly if you have a bird in the house And I think that some of the packaging may even say don't keep a bird in the kitchen if you're cooking with this pan It sounds ridiculous But we actually had a bird so it became an issue But I don't recommend non-stick coatings at all. I like titanium, the anodized aluminum pans as long as they're not chipped or nicked are fine and some of the ceramics are okay Again a lot of these materials you may have some products that are good and others that are not You really have to do your research And then once you get a product you like you know you have it That's it! You don't worry about it anymore

14:26 Right i have heard some of those ceramics on the cheaper side they do contain a lot of chemicals or binders are heavy metals that kind of thing so yeah gotta be careful exactly it's hard to just say you know this category is 100% safe we really are fortunate to have the internet at our disposal that we had so much information that we can access any time. Of course there's a lot of misinformation and we have to be aware but as long as you put the time into research reputable sites, you really should be able to make choices that are healthier than others. And since we're on the subject, are there resources that you trust? That you go to for health data on consumer products

15:12 You know my favorite website is the wg the environmental working group they have put together all kinds of lists for everything from kitchen products to personal care product suntan lotions. All types of home cleaning products it's an excellent site and they offer ratings for all types of product that you can find them it's an excellent resource That is great, I hope people do start using that and you know we talked a little bit about the bait-and-switch with chemicals and labeling is wrapped up in this as well. We find out one chemical's bad they stop using that slap a big happy label on it and I've heard to talk about this across other industries even outside of food that people might not realize each industry has its own

16:01 requirements and definitions for certain words like the word organic means basically nothing outside of food is that right. That's right in the personal care products industry they can throw out the word organic, all natural and it means absolutely nothing so you have to have a legal definition and so i know that by and find study this working on i think she just put out A bill to try to get more requirements for labeling a personal care products the person care product safety act. I think in march she put that out there and hopefully it'll pass but there's very few labeling requirements for personal care products

16:45 There's no way to know what you're putting on your body. And I think, you know...I'd like to be an optimist in this respect. I don't think that the companies initially were doing this to poison everybody. I don't believe that was the initial intent but i think back when these formulas were created that the general understanding was the body is basically impermeable to a lot of these things And we're solid, right? So you put something on the skin and it's gonna like what ornoducts back. It's going to brush off or wash off without realizing that were actually absorbing these chemicals but now that we know that they really need to get over the inertia of just

17:27 Keeping the status quo and improve the formulas reduce the number of chemicals that we're all being exposed to because We're getting sicker as a population, right? It's not a financial thing. And it's not just about attacking the industry. It's about keeping our population healthy mm-hmm and with these big corporations once they Have gotten set in their ways. It's very tough for them to pivot it's much easier to just cover things up and Lie, and all that kind of great stuff And we keep giving him our money well

18:03 But I also want to get into the whole energy section of your book. It's almost a book on its own, but you cover light sound electromagnetic fields feng shui and more and energy is much more abstract thing some is measurable and some isn't but just talk about energy in spirit overall this is often overlooked component why should we be giving this more attention than we do how does it become priority for you i think the most easily applicable. component of this section of the book is that, are the health effects of light and EMF electromagnetic frequency on the production of melatonin. That's something scientifically proven and it's something that people can really understand because our immune systems keep us from getting sick they keep us from coming down with the flu The immune system protects us from developing cancer

19:05 Because we have natural killer cells that get distributed through the body and eat up cancer cells as they're appearing. And so if your immune system becomes depleted or inefficient, then you get sick Now what we've discovered is, we live in a society now where we have this artificial illumination that we all live in either during the day. Most of us are living indoors under fluorescent lights or LED lights and then we go home and put on TVs and watch laptops and other screens. We have indoor lights and then we go to sleep and we have lights in our bedroom maybe people sleep with the TV on

19:45 They've got illuminated displays on their alarm clocks. They may sleep next to the cell phone or a Wi-Fi router I should go into a little bit of the physiology, but i'll just try to make it as simple as possible The brain has a gland in it called the pineal gland and the pineal gland receives information indirectly from the eyes And even if the eyes are closed the eyes can sense light which is a form of electromagnetic radiation. If you're familiar with the electromagnetic spectrum, it goes all the way from very low fields that we have with radio towers and cell phone towers and it goes all the way up through X-rays and gamma radiation and all this is emitted from the sun except that our atmosphere takes out the harmful components of the UV spectrum in x-rays and gamma rays so we basically get heat and light from the sun

20:43 And our bodies, like all the other animals on the earth use the night and day cycle. Our bodies are in sync with it they're supposed to be anyway and it's called a circadian rhythm and one of the effects that we have is we produce this hormone called melatonin The pineal gland produces it And so if your light-dark cycle gets screwed up, your body doesn't produce melatonin. So you need to have a predictable light dark cycle in order to properly produce melatonin We're learning more and more about melatonin all the time we know it's very very important for the immune system In particular, the production of natural killer cells which protect us from cancer

21:30 So the people who are not getting proper sleep because their night-day cycle is screwed up, they're getting sick more often. They're coming down with cancer more often and there's a lot of studies that have shown this so what we need to do is to get at the understanding that you need to have full spectrum light during the day so that your brain knows it's daytime and then at nighttime you need to have darkness not only darkness, but you have to eliminate all sources of electromagnetic frequency from your bedroom. Because the brain it'll sense light but it also senses EMF and so the pineal gland if its receiving EMF which travels through your skin and it will go through your bones that will hit your pineal gland Your brain will think that the sun's out

22:25 So even though your body sleeping and you think that you're sleeping if your brain is receiving emf or a background light through your eyelids. You not gonna produce melatonin so that's something that we have to try to tell people turn off the wifi router or take it out of your bedroom as far away from bed room is possible, turn off the lights make sure there's no ambient like in your bedroom and before you go to sleep You should not look at an ld screen or a blue light for these fluorescent lights are led lights so all of those forms of illumination.

23:04 Tell the brain that the sun still high in the sky and it delays your production melatonin. I'm a lot of sense yes important to sleep in darkness and in emf free environment but a lot of us during the day obviously we have to go to work and probably Probably only a fraction of us have control over the lighting within that work environment, but some might. Of course we do have the weekends off so when we are inside you know we have incandescent bulbs halogen LED is there a proper artificial light to get for the house like what's the best what's the worst when it comes to some of these bulbs?

23:44 There are full spectrum lights and the new LED lights, a lot of them emit a bluish frequency so that should be sufficient. The ideal bulbs are full spectrum lights they're called full spectrum or go out during the day if you can take Even there's a 20-minute walk in the middle of the afternoon if you're busy, you know at work You can't get out just 10 15 minutes. Just to hey that the Suns out, you know It's daytime, you know? Yeah I got friends who will take any excuse for us another smoke break so Doing it for their health

24:23 So, LEDs you mentioned. This is curious because I hear they're quite bad. Just to list a few things that I've heard when using LEDs... You might end up with increased cellular damage and decreased repair and regeneration They can exacerbate chronic disease of all kinds by promoting mitochondrial dysfunction That sounds pretty bad, Doc. Are you trusting some LEDs? Are they not all created equal? Well, the technology is changing... When I wrote the book The Light and Vogue was CFLs, a compact fluorescent lights They emitted UV radiation and were dangerous The best were the incandescent bulbs Just the regular bulbs But because of the energy inefficience they phased them out but they were the best type of bulb for indoor lighting

25:18 You know, some of the LED lights I don't particularly like them but in terms of melatonin production. I believe the effect is your brain knows that it's a form of radiation that your brain perceives as being like a bluish tint of light you know there aren't that many options you go to these lighting stores and you have fluorescent lights you have LEDs and there's not much else to choose from Yes sometimes there's just no great answer and you mentioned the emf soup that our bodies are in the wifi cell phone smart meters what about dirty electricity are you concerned about just. Access electricity coming off of the devices that were around this is something that isn't talked about quite as much i've measured the dirty electricity it doesn't travel very far some people are electric sensitive and they really

26:15 they can react to even very low amounts of EMF. And so like a dirty electricity would be, I would consider very low background level most people are not going to react to that it's not like having a cell phone in your pocket or having a Wi-Fi router in your kitchen or in your study or in your office To me thats much more significant exposure to EMF than the dirty electricity with that being said if you're electro sensitive There are things you can put in your outlets to clean up the dirty electricity some people shut off the main power to their house while they're sleeping, return of the circuit breaker so there's no electricity running through the walls and all other sleeping. Some people don't wanna sleep in a bed with a metal frame because the metal frames conduct electricity or frequency anyway

27:05 So I guess it depends on really what you need. For most people that's not going to be necessary, but if somebody is electro sensitive then yeah they've got to keep peeling away the levels of exposure that they have until they get to a point where they can live without having any sort of symptoms. Right and on the subject of finding out what we need apparently you can even hire a local building biologist to assess our EMF environment? I hadn't heard of that! Yeah, and they're finding that EMF also can exacerbate mold toxicity. So there are some types of mold that are reacting to EMF and they can become more virulent I guess and Mold is really becoming a terrible problem for many all over the country In fact, I'm going to a mold conference next week but there's a great concern about mold toxicity and EMF having a synergistic effect on

28:02 Yes that's sad to hear and it's frustrating because i think so many of us are in rental environments and so we're very limited on what we can even do obviously a lot of landlords they work with the lowest common denominator or they want to put in the minimal amount of effort or expense into improving the quality Of your living environment and a lot of people have this well, I can't see it. I'm not going to think about it attitude because they know that coming to the landlord with some of this stuff is Not gonna mean a whole lot. Yeah, that's terrible you're right It's just the reality of it and on the subject of cell phones. I heard you make uh

28:46 Creative comment that you know we've all notice they're making the cell phones bigger maybe thats by design cuz they say were not supposed to put them in our pocket though of course we just have to because that's how do you carry stuff around and i'm not gonna fanny pack it up imma put that thing my pocket but, maybe there trying to make that more difficult so they can avoid the backlash that will happen when none of us can have any kids. I know, right? It's true. Well, I carry my cell phone in my hand if i put it on my pocket and put it on airplane mode and I recommend that all of your listeners do the same you should not put your cell phone in your pocket with it turned on

29:26 easier said than done well not really i mean it is quite simple to push that button but then you don't get your calls you don't get your text you don't get that dopamine hit from the little red thing coming up yeah but there's a pleasure in just being able to walk around without being able to be contacted, you know? Well yea and then your wife screaming at ya do you no answer your phone I see on the damn thing all night. You can't answer it But, you know that's life. So I also wanted to ask you on this sort of subject about microwaves. I've always been skeptical of them and stopped using mine a while back it's quite easy to just reheat things in the traditional oven but do microwaves concern you?

30:09 They do i threw my microwave oven out five or six years ago. It's funny that one of the things that people are just refuse to do it with a microwave and they say oh well i just use it to reheat water but i don't know what the microwave is actually doing to the water So, you know one of the things that when you start talking about energy and frequency and water carries frequency. And so if you're going to blast it with microwave energy what are you doing for the frequency or the water? What then is that doing to your body when you ingest it? It's a different level of thinking about just water but I think it has potential health effects

30:54 Now, I read some early studies that were suspicious that microwaves could cause disease and they were squelched at the very beginning of a technology. And the scientist who wrote it was discredited which is common you know? That happens over and over again unfortunately but to me it was concerning and I personally never liked the taste of food that's been microwaved Even the taste of reheated water heated up water. I didn't care for it It always struck me is just kind of a hmm What am i eating here and so? I don't recommend people use the microwave, I just like a conventional oven and arrange yeah

31:35 Yeah, well there's definitely texture issues with the microwave if you've ever made meat it comes out rubbery and breads just inedible. I don't know why we still label this as something that is more convenient because it doesn't seem that way to me. Well, I wanted to read this quote from the book on the subject of technologies and reporting that might not be so favorable but But you say, the tendency for industry to promote new technology at the expense of human health is nothing new. Consider that the danger of radiation was known in 1927 yet it wasn't until 1970 that radiation boxes which allowed children in shoe stores to see their toes wiggle inside other shoes and were marketed as providing the best possible fit were finally banned in 33 states

32:29 As a radiologist, I find this particularly disturbing. And that's kind of interesting because I never even heard about something like that kids were putting their feet in boxes and getting these little x-rays, I guess, that we're looking at the fit of their shoes but it's a great example because I don't think a lot of people know about that and clearly it shows a near 40 50 year delay in actually doing something about exposure Right. Most people refer to the cigarette and tobacco industry in cancer as the go-to for Industry causing disease and not willing to admit it But I thought being a radiologist that I would talk about this pedoscope is what it was called because yeah, it's unbelievable That's what we allowed for so many years Even though we knew that radiation caused cancer Yeah It's a curious thing and

33:25 So i know you've taken an assessment of your house you gone around and kinda tried to find tune it did you find anything that maybe wasn't so obvious or something that surprised you there was putting off more than you thought it would add the time, i had a portable phone system. No people don't have those anymore but this was a portable phone system that had some satellite phones. And the base that had the recording you know the paper quarter or whatever it was record the messages within the kitchen next to the sink and whenever i would do the dishes i felt this low level of anxiety you know what's just a very subtle feeling of an easy list when i would do the dishes in there for years and when we did the mf

34:13 Evaluation of the house that phone emitted a very powerful in math that just went through out the entire first floor of the house because it was communicating with all the satellite phones and that surprised me. You know i then unplugged wasn't admitting emf only when it was on you so it was admitting emf twenty four seven So I unplugged it and then of course it stopped. And then, I was able to wash the dishes and I didn't feel that anxiety anymore which is very interesting because it was subliminal you know what I mean? It wasn't something that I really gave any thought to. I didn't like washing the dishes. That was just one of these things I couldn't wait to get done with a task but that was interesting

34:58 Also the wifi router i had it in the basement but it shot up through the floors and so even when i was trying to sleep like i said earlier in this session. I was being bombarded with the mf while i was trying to sleep from the wifi router well i know you mentioned that prospect of turning off, the breaker even just one for the bedroom have you experimented with that No but what i did do is put the wifi router on an appliance timer which is a nice effects. You know one of those plans that you use for lights when you leave the house, the wifi router clicks off when i go to bed and it turns back on when i wake up and so when im sleeping there's no wifi in the house

35:47 That is probably great advice. You don't need it when you're sleeping have it shut off at midnight At the latest I mean right, you know, you should do it with the sunset basically It seems but still that's something yeah absolutely, you know They say a half an hour if you turn it off a half an hour before you go to sleep If you stop looking at a laptop or a cell phone screen and a half an hour before you go to sleep Then your circadian rhythms and your melatonin production should be okay. And you mentioned that subtle feeling of anxiety, your feeling doing dishes around the phone. That is why it is so important to have some mindfulness I mean, I know that's such a trendy buzzword that means almost nothing to a lot of people but if you spend time every day to think about how your feeling You can sort of identify those little nuances and maybe make adjustments other than just ignoring it Right

36:47 Yeah, such an important thing. And on the subject of energy, let's get a little more esoteric with it and talk about feng shui. I've always been kind of interested in feng shui from a distance. I appreciate the idea of energy flow in the home and working to perfect it. Of course when you're moving from lease to lease every year becomes hard to focus on but what are some of the major principles of feng shui? How did she really start to unravel how important this is It was a process i received the couple of books on fun way back in i think it was the nineties when it was popular. I never read them look interesting i might have flipped through the pages that i put on my shelf there got to work but i had some interesting events happen in my life that were very negative and auspicious is the word they use in function right

37:41 Had some financial stuff happening in work stop the relationship all kinds of things were asking when my life at one point and i started looking for answers like what on earth is going on here. And that's when I picked up the function way technique and started looking at it, add it so about yes bringing energy into your home or into your life and having a move within your home in a controlled fashion And so there's different techniques of how to keep the energy flow from moving like simple things like reducing clutter. Properly positioning furniture and you don't want to have the energy exit the house too soon so things like closing the lid on a toilet bowl which is a place where the energy leaves the house or through windows it

38:32 A lot of it has to do with the design of the house and how the house is constructed, but it's also the colors you choose. The furniture placement and things that you put around the house are objects. And so one of the things that people can kind of maybe take from this is the idea of symbols You know, a lot of us put symbols in our house. They have special meaning for us. They don't necessarily have the meaning for all people when I talk about this in class. I'll talk about the Star of David, for example or the crucifix, the cross without Jesus on it just across those two ancient ancient symbols Of course most of us have religious associations with but they actually represent very very basic

39:18 Ideas and concepts that are spiritually oriented that go way beyond their religious origins. They're much older than that And so i can even just be like a trophy you know that your kid one or a badge some type of badger something that honors you. And so the placement of symbols in the home is very important because u wanna keep positive energy you want to have this symbol represent something that's possible but not be hurtful to somebody else who's on the phone, So i tell people you know if you have two children and one is successful at sports on the other isn't well then putting this accessible child trophy in a common room is gonna be hurtful potentially to the other trial. And so it doesn't belong there in the common rooms should be welcoming everybody in the home

40:11 And then the trophy can go in the child's bedroom or a corner of a room whatever is designated for the one who successful. And so in order to create an environment where everybody in the home is feeling peace and joy, it's the ideal. At least in the common areas. The kitchen, the living room, then the TV room, the playroom wherever people congregate and there's more of a yang energy or active form of energy Yes i interviewed doctor jacob leberman not long ago and he talked about kind of this exercise of course we all know that the reason we see objects is because light is bouncing off them, add heat kinda has a philosophical idea will trust the light.

40:58 and address what you see because how often do we see something like dishes in the sink or laundry, and we look at it. And it gets our attention clearly. And then we just dismiss it and I'll deal with that later. Of course then you go through that process maybe four or five times before you actually deal with it. You're creating a lot of negativity mind, a lot of stress over that where you just addressed what you saw that you know needs addressing. Maybe you could stave off a little of that stress and you'd be better off for it Well that's being present. You know we talk about the presence of mind, Eckhart Tolle wrote The Power of Now and do you ever read that book? I know of it! Yeah it was an excellent book and it talks about the importance of being present which is what you're describing so yes if you can bring your awareness to the present That's really the moment in time where you have the ability to make decisions. You can change the course of your life in an instant right In the present...in the now

42:00 And so if we're going through life and we're always focusing on something that's going to happen or something that did happen, We're missing life effectively. And so the idea is the more you can spend your time in the present then the more you are living You are actually enjoying life, experiencing life and that is really when you are most powerful Right it's an empowering thing to understand that so many people have the victim mentality or they just have this go with the flow attitude because religious authorities governmental authorities, they all kind of make you feel quite powerless and there is a real psychological benefit to realizing you do have a little more power than you think can you can control your environment more than your led to believe.

42:51 Yes, your people say well what is power and my children so what does it mean to be powerful? We are ultimately all powerful really you have the ability I believe To actually create your own reality. And so that's where the book gets very esoteric within the presence we have the ability to create with our thought and And we bring experiences into our lives and so if you dismiss that if you give it up to somebody else. Instead of being a creator of your own destiny you're gonna be upon in somebody else's destiny right

43:29 Yes, I've had some kind of occult advocates or occult practitioner researchers on and that's kind of their attitude. A lot of people might have this impression that all that stuff is scary and evil leave it alone And some of these people have expressed those same feelings as well if you don't kind of learn your own mind and learn the layers Of it in the subconscious and the power that you truly have sometimes Someone else will put you to use if that's what you want because you really don't have any choice between those two take control of your own life or someone will do it for you'll be a call again someone else's machine. Yeah vacuum demands to be filled

44:10 If you have empty space in your calendar, it's gonna get filled. Right? If you don't have anything to do for the day all of a sudden something is going to happen and you're gonna be busy That's just the way it works A vacuum demands that So if you don't put forth the energy To create something wonderful in your life You'll be a victim Subjected to whatever else is going on around you It's kind of like being in an ocean I like to think of consciousness as being Like an ocean and there's all these currents, can you have the ability to just kind of bob up and down? And let the water take you where it's gonna take it or you can swim. Mm-hmm I like that analogy and To return to Feng Shui a little bit what is the feng shui Bagua this is the basic map right the bag one map yeah aqua oh

45:01 So function is all about balance and there's something called the lotion square where if you add up all of the dimensions in a go either diagonally or up and down it all equals i believe that was thirteen camp i think the numbers thirteen any case. It's the same idea for the house except that you're not using numbers are using the elements and so there are five basic elements. And function where you got earth you've got metal you've got water you got fire i have got what is the five basic elements that your working with in your home to create harmony

45:42 And depending on how your home sits on the cardinal directions, you know east north south and west. The different rooms in your home will correspond to one of those different elements and so the idea is to balance the home with those energy centers. So an example would be your southern facing room would be the fire element and your north facing room would be the water element And so to kind of emphasize those in your home for the fire element you would wanna have windows lights the color red orange or yellow things that make you think of energy and heat maybe an oven fireplace stove your kitchen.

46:29 And things that are on the northern side would be, like I said, the water element. So you would have blues and greens perhaps a water feature like a water sculpture You might have artwork that displays water or some type of water theme And so you play with these different types of elements in the home and create something called the Bagua map It's a harmony of the different elements Yeah it sounds kind of complex but it really isn't when you see the map and you just think about overlaying that with your house and getting a simple app that gives you the cardinal directions in, can you just map out from there i guess. Yeah its a process you know when it's important to be conscious when you're going through the process because then of course your becoming much more aware of your environment

47:22 Right and so that's part of the process is becoming aware where is south in my house where is north, where is west it becomes more than just a direction to become source of a certain type of energy. And they also talk about poison arrows what are those how do we avoid those So poison arrows are, they're elements of the room that jut out. For example if you had a corner in the room that was kind of protruding into the center of the room If you imagine the energy coming and sliding along the walls it would then kinda form a plane that would then bisect the room Or if you had bookshelves that were open and you have like these slats of wood And they didn't have any sort of frame to conceal them

48:13 You can imagine if you had some type of energy on those boards and it would move into the center of the room as sheets of energy, as opposed to being rounded and billowy. It would be like sheets. Does that make sense? It's very abstract. Well these types of energetic movement are called poison arrows because they create disharmony They make you feel ill at ease And so the idea is to soften them and you can soften them with pieces of fabric some type of deflector like a wind chime or something that's gonna hang from the ceiling, or up some type of rounded potted plant it's going to be in front of it.

48:56 Anything to take the eye off of the poison arrow. So when you walk into the room, you don't see this open shelving UC maybe some type of sculpture that's in front of it blocking and deflecting it Interesting. We should really maybe just think about the energy flow as water flow and just things that would disrupt its flow, should probably be either done away with or those edges dulled I mean poison arrow mentally symbolically thats a pretty easy concept to gather no sharp edges in the house essentially what they tell kids

49:32 Yeah, and feng shui means wind and water so that's a good way to look at it. Yes! And of course you write about the power of meditation and its importance and you say that candle meditation is your favorite Why is that? What have you gained from the practice not only just meditation but this emphasis on candle meditation When i stare into a candle and i go into a trance i really get out of this realm. I really going to the zone i definitely get into deep meditative state and i find that My mind doesn't wander nearly as much as if I'm doing some other form of meditation, but. I do believe that any type of meditation is fine it all brings you to the same place and it's such a personal choice but for me I do I love the candle meditation.

50:26 I might have to try that because i've definitely tried to dedicate more time to meditation, and got a couple of good apps that just keep me in the routine but counting breathing? I don't know. I only get so far it seems like sometimes get relaxed but I'm definitely not having any lift off for sure maybe uh... maybe the candle meditation is what it is you're just Fire is an interesting thing. So you're really just staring into the flame of the candle and letting that take all your focus, and letting all the other thoughts drift away? Is that the gist? Yeah, you stare into the blackness of the flame, and you just kind of go into it... And you put your mind there, and everything else should just disappear. If you do it right, you really don't even see anything else at that point. You look into the black of the flame

51:18 It's not that you lose your site but you are no longer seeing if that makes sense it does she do a correctly. When you get into that state when you get to a certain level you can then put something. That you've pre decided into that space so let's say i want to create some experience of my life, i can then have a symbol but i've been drawn on the card or that i can think about and then when im in that space i can bring that simple up until my mind and see with my minds not mine is it becomes clear

51:54 And the longer you hold the focus my understanding of my experience is more likely it is that you will manifest that experience wow. Wow i love hearing about the power manifestation a lot of people still tend to dismiss it because it just seems like, the ultimate power it seems Like we're basically aladdin's genie if we wanna be it just seems quite strange and you know the old phrase of it sounds too good to be true at sometimes is. But i've seen some some things that allude to it as well maybe i haven't cultivated it to the highest heights but there something there,

52:35 So we have talked about a lot of toxins today, a scary amount even and it almost does feel like a full-time job to take on all these different elements but as they say knowledge is power if you act on it. So I hope people do that and You've just done a lot of really impressive research. You put together this full spectrum guide to a healthier home and I'm sure the people appreciate it Do you remind them where they might be able to follow your work? See the added material on your blog or anything else that you might have going on That would be good to tell them about Sure, my blog and website is robbrownmd.com The book is available from my website It just links you to Amazon its available in Amazon and also Barnes & Noble

53:22 And I think the apple bookstore or iTunes, i think you get it there too. And they can follow me on Facebook and Twitter. I don't post too often only when I have something to say. Why? Yeah! When your listeners... They can sign up for my website and I do send out a newsletter every now and then again when there's something important to disseminate Perfect. Well, thanks again for taking the time and for dedicating your career path to helping people and fighting back against the big machine I definitely salute you for it Thanks a lot and take care out there Thank you so much Greg It was a pleasure You got it The power of Christ compels ya Hiresight Chatters closing out the month in style Dr Rob Brown

54:10 Killer book, really great section by section breakdown of the poisons and toxins in our homes and what to do about them. I know that sometimes these practical kinds of shows can seem a little repetitive maybe like we're going through the same Rolodex of issues But I always try to keep that in mind and make sure we're getting a good amount of new content in there. And for me, the real value here is in the cooking and food prep parts as well as the feng shui stuff. And I just think Robb is a good guy, good energy. We had some laughs but he's also very knowledgeable and detailed about his material so definitely all good ingredients for producing an enjoyable and informative podcast

55:00 and I took the Bagua Feng Shui map and dug out a compass myself, and really tried to see what the deal was with my own living space. And funny enough... My front door faces southeast which according to the Bagua map is ruled by the wood element! And funny enough i have a nice natural wood front door! And I'm The Carlwood so how fitting? and the corresponding energy sector is money and abundance. So boom goes the dynamite! And let's stack it up, I also just recently found out that i live a mile from a commemorative plaque on the site of the Navy's first international radio transmission

55:45 And, I didn't know this but FDR used to do his fireside chats from Coronado also here in San Diego. I found that out years after starting the show that played off of that very same name and i hate to say this because it probably sounds pretty annoying but I tend to stumble into synchronicity good energy and good magic completely subconsciously or unconsciously And then if I actively try to do something magic or energy related, I find that i'm second guessing myself and probably overthinking it. It just doesn't seem to flow as elegantly as things that I sometimes do on accident like embodying the correct element in a building that just happens to face the right direction according to an ancient eastern practice I never consulted before

56:41 and then investigated when it's definitely too late to do much about. And that's life, right? I guess happy accidents but as Dr Brown said feng shui is a lot more than just your front door it is a process of continual refinement so you can always improve your energy flow and why not put some thought into that I've definitely seen the links between physical clutter and mental clutter, which is enough for me to think there's something behind the feng shui stuff. Also plus people probably noticed that i uploaded a second show earlier today that is a plus member bonus episode no free hour

57:24 Just a one hour thank you show for those PLUS members who keep me well fed. And it's with Dr Sam Milham, who is probably the world's leading authority on dirty electricity and he has done a lot of great work on occupational hazards and damage that workers have incurred due to corporate neglect or ignorance if we're going to be fair But they definitely don't fess up when the reports are done either, so there's that. But it is an informative show on a lesser-known environmental hazard and I put it up first today because in this one, in the Plus Show, I actually asked Dr. Brown about dirty electricity And I wanted The Plus People to have that context of a whole episode dedicated to it If you like my interviews, I hope you're already a plus member but this might be a good time to think about it

58:15 Either way, back to the cooking stuff. I'm sure i'm not alone in using old pots and pans and seeing the scratches on the inside of them and thinking... Ehh..I don't know if this is safe or not but I don't actually go retool my kitchen! Hopefully this episode fuels some of us to do that If we think we should And I am also convinced that avoiding aluminum in every possible way Is really important And if you have people in your life that use a lot of foil or are guilty of any of the things we talked about today, get them Dr. Brown's book. Have them listen to this. It's not nearly as extreme as other THC episodes can be but it's pretty crucial advice So overall for us here it's been a pretty health-heavy month with Today Show and The Dirty Electricity Bonus Show and Doctor Stephen Hussey and Doctor Gerald Pollack

59:12 And I do think the water stuff is about way more than just health, but man six shows this month four with doctors. Can't tell i'm trying to dial up the experts and tone down the wild speculation? Obviously everything isn't ebb and a flow but I did put some thought into that this month if you want to make a convincing case maybe spending time with people who've looked at things professionally for two or three decades is a good idea Also think that members of the conspiracy culture can be a little harsh in their judgments and i thought there was a little bit of a need to remind some of us. That there are good people who start in the machine get out and then try to educate us the right way and i think before doctors we spoke with this month are great examples of that

1:00:08 I think it's important to not be anti-intellectual when forming these arguments, especially if we want to expand our viewpoints beyond our own already convinced inner circles. And i also didn't leave out the fun stuff entirely—the esoteric, the speculative, the occult, egregores in Antarctica... well balanced, I would say! But that's not really for me to decide and so I should thank you for listening As for today's show, a couple other subject areas that we got into for the Plus People second hour were the nuances of increasing your manifestation abilities, getting better water in the home, purifying water with your mind. Why should open up our homes rather than seal them off?

1:00:59 the importance of houseplants and a section I really loved, What You Should Know About Glyphosate. He's very knowledgeable about glyphosate where it came from how it got into everything and just how screwed we are but also drove home the importance of getting some veggie wash. I got some veggie wash now my wife thinks I'm getting a little crazy with this stuff but it's happening So worthy content for armoring yourself up against the toxic system we're stuck in. Dr Brown is a little more kind to the creators and distributors of these toxic products than I would be, but he's a respectable person and i'm a pothead extremist And if his approach is more palatable for average people then so be it We just want our friends and family healthy

1:01:54 However the message gets to him. So thank Dr Brown for his dedication if you get the chance and I'll see you soon! Your move toxic touting corporate criminals petrochemical product pushers and poison arrows of our energetic lives your fucking move Well they tie that yellow ribbon round the oak tree They've worn out all their prayer in there all along Thought they were rooting for the home team As they're sent to the game and torn apart We twist this tourniquet upon the pipeline That it carries all the pain and looms As we blindly clap in cheer from the sidelines It's clear Otto is intrigued from the restart And that's where they found me In a life cemetery A smoking gun in my hand

1:03:04 down for end of THC The Arrogant Scream They took that faded ribbon off the oak tree, poured out all the hope in their hearts. Long thought I was doing how I'm lying in a pool of my blood and that's where they found me In the cemetery A smoking gun in my land of the free

1:03:58 Sing with me And that's where they found In my cemetery A smoking gun in my hand Now I'm damned from the land of THC The Americans scream And that's where they found In my cemetery A smoking gun from the land along with me

1:05:01 I can't scream