Welcome to Straight Talk on Health. I’m your host Dr. Chet Zelasko. Straight Talk on Health is a joint production with WGVU in Grand Rapids MI. With a PhD in exercise physiology, I’ve been teaching people how to improve their health through diet, exercise, and supplementation for over 30 years. I look at the science behind all the headlines and social media, and let you know whether it’s something to consider or not. You can check out other things that I do on my website Drchet.com and sign up for my free emails.
Let’s begin this multi-topic Straight Talk on Health with a question from a listener. It’s actually a social media ad for shirts made from hemp but it has a very unusual approach. They use a big band approach with a singer that’s a mix between Sinatra and Dean Martin. The look is mid 1930s and the graphics depict men and big business from that era. The villain is big oil, the victims are farmers, and the issue is everything made from plastics, especially clothing, is going to kill you or at least make you sick, decrease your sperm count if you’re male, and destroy the drinking water with the chemicals that they shed. The question was any truth to the potential health challenges
They had text over the music video with some statistics. Let me give you a run down of the text from the ad.
Polyester ain’t what you think. It's crude oil heated into toxic sludge at 500°F, then extruded into threads. Studies suggest when you sweat, it sheds nanoplastics.
From Toxicological Sciences: microplastics in 100% of blood samples.
From the University of New Mexico: plastic in testicles, 23% lower sperm counts.
From UC San Diego: 93% of performance shirts contain PFAS.
Let’s look at them one at a time. Is crude oil heated to make plastic? Not exactly. They are at least a dozen different chemical reactions, combined with much higher than 500 degrees, then purified before it pulled to make plastic threads for clothes.
Sweating microplastics? The molecules are too large to fit through sweat pores so that’s false based on recent research.
Microplastics in 100% of blood samples? That’s been true for a long time so nothing new there. What is not clear is what harms it can cause in the various organs.
Sperm counts and testicles. Some of the New Mexico research is actually from that Tox Sci paper. Sperm counts? Another article from a Lancet affiliated journal based on about 110 subjects from all over China. Nothing was statistically significant which means the results are meaningless.
I’ll give them the PFAS in sports performance gear. PFAS are found in the blood of every US citizen that has been checked.
The next part was about getting back to hemp as a source for clothing. Here is part of my answer to the questioner.
I always hesitate with this type of video because the root core is a conspiracy perpetrated by some evil corporation, very much like the bulk of political ads that are running currently as I record this. What the video did not say was that by the 1930s, cotton had replaced hemp as it was softer for clothing and required less processing. Hemp was marginalized to rope and other industrial uses by the time synthetic clothes from oil products were introduced.
They also didn’t mention that the Feds at that time could not ban drugs so they decided to tax it. They did place hemp into the marijuana category so it was heavily taxed right out of production. When the law changed in the late 60s, hemp was allowed again. It was not popular because it had the same manufacturing issues—which have been solved by now. So the ad is deceptive as hemp was going away all by itself and the problem was cotton, not oil.
As for plastics, the word is still out on whether it’s hazardous as clothing. While the research is progressing, my guess is that with our exposure to polyester clothing—you’re probably not old enough to remember all the polyester clothes from back in the 1960s—we would have more health issues than we currently have. I think the use of plastics in the food industry is the real culprit but it will be years before we find out. As for me? Synthetics for workout gear, cotton for clothes, and glass containers for food. As for the ad? Just like most quasi health conspiracy ads. Let it go.
Want to know what I learned the other day? Let me preface this by saying that like many people, I really have to want to know something before I look it up. For decades, I’ve been talking about soluble and insoluble fiber. It took close to 35 years before I asked the question: Soluble in what? Stomach acid? The answer makes a person, especially me, feel really ignorant. It means soluble in water. Soluble fiber absorbs water and expands. That adds bulk to the stool. Psyllium happens to both soluble and insoluble fiber. Other soluble fibers would be dextrin, inulin from the chicory root, and acacia powder to name a few.
Insoluble fiber is not soluble in water and therefore goes undigested. It’s typically found in the outer shells of beans, the bran from wheat, and the skins of many fruits and vegetables. The simplest grain where you can notice the insolubility would be corn. It seems to appear in our stool unchanged. But the carbohydrates inside the shell are broken down and absorbed but the shells are visible after a bowel movement when you’ve eaten whole corn. I prefer to say that I’m not done learning yet but really? That’s a rookie mistake. Ground flaxseed, almonds, and inulin are my favorite sources of fiber any type.
Here's something you may not know. Vitamin C wasn’t isolated until the late 1930s. We knew that the lack of something in citrus and other fruits caused a nasty condition called scurvy. Scurvy causes muscle weakness, joint pain, fatigue and even loose teeth. Anything that’s a connective tissue suffers without vitamin C.
Sailors were particularly prone to scurvy as fresh fruits and vegetables were not usually part of the food stores on ships in the 1600s and later. The did find out by happenstance that limes and oranges seemed to prevent or treat the symptoms of scurvy. That’s why they sometimes called sailors Limey’s. But it still took hundreds of years to identify the active ingredient as vitamin C.
One more thing about vitamin C. Vitamin C in plants is the same molecule as ascorbic acid. The source doesn’t matter, natural or man-made. What does make a difference is that with a lime or orange, you also get many phytonutrients which can have even more benefits to the body. But vitamin C is ascorbic acid.
One more tidbit. You may hear the words genotype and phenotype in health updatesand wonder, what does that mean. I know I did years ago. Genotype refers to your genes, and there are genes that are responsible for everything your body can do, Many genes have mutations, some serious, most are not. Like the cilantro gene. If you have one version, you may love it. I have the mutation and cilantro just tastes like soap to me. Phenotype, on the other hand, is what your environment, both internal and external, has done to influence your genes. Most of us have a thrifty gene, one that wants us to store extra energy as fat, But it is only expressed if we consume too many calories. That’s an example of phenotype.
That’s all the time I have for this episode. If you like this podcast, hit the share button and tell your friends and colleagues about it. Until next time, this is Dr. Chet Zelasko saying health is a choice. Choose wisely today and every day.
Toxicological Sciences, Volume 200, Issue 2, August 2024, Pages 235–240
