Speaker 1 (00:00:00):
Welcome to The Dr. Gundry Podcast, the weekly podcast where Dr. G gives you the tools you need to boost your health and live your healthiest life.
Dr. Gundry (00:00:14):
Welcome to the Dr. Gundry Podcast. Well, you hear me talk about all the time about putting the right foods into your body, but what about the right air? Yes, that’s right, air. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, indoor air can be up to 100 times more polluted than outside air. And unfortunately, some of the contaminants found inside our homes can cause debilitating health issues and have a tremendous impact on our quality of life. But it’s not all bad. My guest today says there is something that you can do about it. He’s Peter Spiegel, home environment expert and creator of the AirDoctor. And in just a minute, we’re going to share the shocking effects of air quality on your health and how you can protect yourself and your family by taking steps towards a contaminant-free, non-toxic home. Stay tuned. You don’t want to miss this one.
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Tell me what’s your inspiration behind the AirDoctor and how you got into this industry?
Peter Spiegel (00:04:08):
All right. Well, thank you for having me here, Dr. Gundry. I really appreciate it. My interest in air quality started at a much younger age than most people would imagine. As a child, I had really significant and severe airborne allergies. Basically, if it’s in the air, I would be allergic to it. It could be pollen, dust, grasses, smoke, so mold, mold spores. So whatever was in the air, I would be allergic to it, and my allergies were pretty significant. So even at a very young age, my parents would be experimenting with putting different type of filtration devices in my home.
(00:04:54):
As I got older and became responsible for my own health and wellness, I became more and more interested in air purifiers, what’s in the air, what did they do? I also moved around a bit. I was born in New York City and grew up outside of New York City, but I had the opportunity to live in the Midwest, not far from Omaha, Nebraska. I lived in Iowa for a bit of time. And in Iowa, I really developed very, very severe allergies. And for the first time, I had allergies caused by… I mean, asthma. That was caused by airborne allergens. So, then, my interest in removing particles from the air became deeper.
(00:05:41):
I spent some time in Austin, Texas. I lived there for about a year. And in Austin, there’s a phenomenon that they call cedar fever. And in the wintertime, around December, January, right around this time, the cedar trees release so much pollen into the air, it’s literally a cloud of pollen. You can see it in the air. And it causes symptoms that are quite debilitating. And I actually lived there for a couple of years. The first year, I was okay, but then I started developing sensitivity to that.
(00:06:18):
So, all of that kind of informed my interest in air quality, what’s in the air. And as an inventor, an entrepreneur, it was only natural that I would decide to develop air purifiers. I’ve been actually making air purifiers for almost 20 years. I’ve sold 5 million air purifiers. I sold them to all the big-box retailers, the big names, like Walmart, and Target, and Costco, and others that are no longer with us. I was the exclusive supplier of air purifiers to one of the biggest retailers. So, I had a lot of experience in my career with air purifiers, and that brings us up to today in the development of my latest air purifier, the AirDoctor professional air purifier.
Dr. Gundry (00:07:10):
Huh. So you’ve been at this for 20 years.
Peter Spiegel (00:07:13):
I’ve been interested in air purification before most people became interested in and it became a topic of serious conversation.
Dr. Gundry (00:07:23):
Now, I’m curious, people with allergies, bad allergies, as a kid, did you get allergy shots, the whole bit?
Peter Spiegel (00:07:32):
Yeah. I remember being dragged to the dreaded-allergy doctor, which was a schlep from our house, and having to go into this little room and get injections and sit there for an hour. One thing I discovered about allergy shots, and of course, this is a long time ago now, is that they really didn’t do anything for me at all.
Dr. Gundry (00:07:56):
Yeah, you’re right. As a teenager and a college student, I had them so bad, I was getting the allergy shots and one time went into anaphylactic shock. It was great fun.
Peter Spiegel (00:08:09):
Wow. Yeah. I tried it again, actually, later as an adult. And again, I just didn’t notice anything from getting the shots, other than when I would get the shots, for a few hours afterwards, I just felt terrible. I mean, really terrible. And it affected my mood and my energy levels. But didn’t help my allergies.
Dr. Gundry (00:08:31):
All right. Well, enough about you and me.
Peter Spiegel (00:08:32):
All right.
Dr. Gundry (00:08:35):
So, you got into this because of the air quality inside of our homes. So just, come on, how bad could the air inside of our homes be? Give me some examples.
Peter Spiegel (00:08:49):
Yeah. Well, Dr. Gundry, we want to feel that our homes are our safe oasis, that when we go inside and come into our home and close the door, that now we’re in a safe place. But according to the Environmental Protection Agency, the EPA, can see this right on their own website, they say that the air inside a home can actually be up to 100 times more polluted, more contaminated than the air outside our homes. So that’s a pretty shocking thing to discover. And there are many, many reasons of how we contribute to our indoor air quality by all the things that we do inside of our home.
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And we’re going to be going into this, I’m sure, in great detail, but just to give some headlines. I mean, many of us have pets and they shed in our homes, they release their dander into our homes. If they go inside and outside and back inside, then whatever they’re carrying in on their feet or their fur, it comes and circulates in our homes. So, we love our pets, but they can be a source of indoor air pollution. We might have gas stoves. We use cleaning products. We have new furniture or even older furniture that might be outgassing. Our homes are made out of building materials that are treated with chemicals. Our carpeting, our mattresses, our personal-care products. These are all things that actually add to the contamination that’s in our home and that are quite harmful to our health.
Dr. Gundry (00:10:35):
Correct me if I’m wrong, with each passing year, our building codes require, literally, more and more insulation in our homes, making them more energy efficient. But that has actually prevented all the normal leaks that would occur underneath doors, through windows, that might actually bring some outside air in more often.
Peter Spiegel (00:11:00):
Yeah. Well, no doubt, the more modern a home is, the more energy efficient it is, the more of a sealed system that it is. And this can be a good thing, or it can be a bad thing, depending on the quality of the air outside your home. The problem is, as Americans, that 50% of us live in cities with bad outdoor air quality. I live in Los Angeles. You come into Los Angeles. And in LA, as sad as it is, out of 365 days in a year, there’s only 50 days with good-quality air. So ourselves living in Los Angeles and other urban areas are constantly exposed to air quality that isn’t good.
(00:11:54):
One thing that I should mention is that actually, even though our houses may be sealed systems, we all have HVAC systems in modern homes. HVAC means heating, ventilation, and air conditioning, and they’re created to bring a certain amount of outdoor air into your home, roughly 20 or 30%. So even if your windows are sealed, your doors are sealed, et cetera, you’re still bringing in outdoor air, which, again, can be a good or bad thing. Now, for people like ourselves who have only 50 good-air-quality days a year, with outdoor air, we’re just sucking that air right inside of our house.
Dr. Gundry (00:12:44):
That actually gets to my next question. If our home environment is so bad, couldn’t we just open the windows? But again, if we live in an urban environment, that’s probably not going to fix the problem.
Peter Spiegel (00:12:59):
Yeah. One of the problems that we have is that urban populations, they tend to congregate around major roads and freeways. And this is actually a huge problem for our health. In fact, 30% of the US population, almost a hundred million people, live within a third of a mile of a major freeway or a major road. And this has very serious health consequences. I mean, none of us want to go and inhale car exhaust, right? It’s a terrible thought. And yet, if we live within close proximity to a major road, and now people believe that… scientists believe that it’s up to two miles, we’re getting fairly high concentration of car exhaust.
(00:13:55):
I don’t want to dwell on this too much, but when cars burn petroleum fuel, gasoline, it creates quite a lot of toxic gases. One is nitrogen dioxide or NOx, and this creates COPD, asthma, leads to heart attacks and strokes. Very dangerous contaminant. It also creates carbon monoxide. 95% of the atmospheric carbon monoxide is caused by car and truck and burning of fuel. And this is… we know how dangerous carbon monoxide is to our health. And then, the sun interacts with these chemicals and creates another compound called ozone, which is a lung irritant. And we have a word for all of this mixed together, we call it smog.
(00:14:57):
So, that’s what we have in Los Angeles. We have the nitrogen dioxide, we have the ozone, we have the carbon monoxide, all combined in our air. And this is a problem for us. Of course, there are some lucky people. The other 50% of the population that lives in areas where good air quality, where opening the windows actually can contribute to your good health, unless you’re someone like me who’s allergic to pollen tree-
Dr. Gundry (00:15:32):
Everything outside.
Peter Spiegel (00:15:33):
… mold, everything outside.
Dr. Gundry (00:15:36):
So, let’s get back to inside.
Peter Spiegel (00:15:41):
Okay.
Dr. Gundry (00:15:42):
Are there areas in our homes that are more exposed to dangerous contaminants than others? I mean, is there a safe spot in my home that I can go to? I mean, where’s the big problem makers?
Peter Spiegel (00:15:54):
Yeah. Well, I would say that in your home, there are some places that you should certainly be more concerned about than others. One place that I think you need to be concerned about is if you have any gas appliances in your home. Let’s say you have a gas stove or a gas water heater. Until quite recently, home environmentalists thought that it was safe to have a gas stove operating in your home, and that it didn’t really create that much nitrogen dioxide. But now scientists realize that it actually is producing too much nitrogen dioxide to be a healthy home environment, unless you have a really good exhaust over your cooking surface and you’re running it at a high enough speed to really suck the nitrogen dioxide out of your home.
(00:17:00):
So, I would say those are some areas that you need to be more particularly concerned about. And then, like I just mentioned earlier, I would say any place where you’ve just done some recent renovations, any place where you’ve just installed new furniture, a new bed, new carpeting, where you’ve recently painted, these are areas that I would be more concerned about.
Dr. Gundry (00:17:23):
Is there any evidence of how long the new furniture and new carpeting, new bedding leeches these chemicals into our home?
Peter Spiegel (00:17:34):
Yeah. I don’t think there’s a precise science about this, nor is there a precise measurement of what’s an okay dose. Certainly you have it the first day, the first week, the first month, the first six months. Those are going to be the highest concentrations. But actually, this phenomenon that we call outgassing, it can last for years. And that’s why I recommend that, if you can afford it, that you replace furniture that might be older with non-toxic furniture, no-VOC carpeting. If you have to paint your house, make sure it’s no-VOC paint. If you’re going to buy plywood, pressed board, particle board, any of those things, you need to go out of your way to make sure you’re using non-toxic building materials, not-toxic furniture in order to have a non-toxic home.
Dr. Gundry (00:18:34):
So can I go into a furniture store or to Home Depot or Lowe’s and say, “Hi, I want non-toxic furniture, and don’t you dare sell me anything that’s toxic”? Are they going to look at me funny? Or how do you do that?
Peter Spiegel (00:18:50):
Well, I imagine if you go into any of those outlets and you make that statement, that what they’ll tell you is, “None of the products in our store is toxic because we meet all the local environmental laws.” The question is, “Are those laws really protecting you or not?” And in general, I think we know that big business and economics drives how these laws are conceived of and made, and you really are going to need to shop more judiciously and from retailers that specialize in creating these things for a non-toxic home.
Dr. Gundry (00:19:28):
Gotcha. I write about in all my books about the seven deadly disruptors, and one of this main area are these environmental pollutants. A lot of them are petroleum based. And a lot of them, we now know, are endocrine disruptors. And the amazing, sad thing about endocrine disruptors is that tiny, tiny, tiny amounts of these chemicals can have a monstrous effect as a hormone disruptor. And they’re so tiny that even the dear old Environmental Protection Agency says, “Oh no, that’s such a small amount that you don’t have to worry about it.” And yet, we know from now, sadly, very good evidence that even these tiny amounts are major cause of, for instance, our obesity epidemic, if nothing else. And also, what I’ve written about recently is that these disruptors really disrupt our microbiome, our microbiome in our gut, our microbiome in our nose and mouth, and even in our lungs. So, this is something that people are, unfortunately, not very aware of.
Peter Spiegel (00:20:51):
Dr. Gundry, when you talk about endocrine disruptors, it reminds me of one of my least favorite things, which is, people enjoy burning scented candles in their home. I think scented candles are one of the most dangerous things that you can do to make your indoor air quality unhealthy. First of all, these candles are made from paraffin. Paraffin is a petroleum product. You’re burning basically petroleum, knowingly, willingly, in your own home environment. These candles release into the air alkanes and alkenes, which are also found in car exhaust.
(00:21:39):
Then, scented candles, to make matters worse, they’re scented generally with artificial fragrances. And what’s in every single artificial fragrance? An ingredient called phthalates, another petroleum product that is a known serious hormone disruptor. And you’re burning these candles, putting these fragrances into your home. It’s going to affect your children. Very harmful for adolescents as they’re growing up, disrupting their hormones. And these same fragrances, artificial fragrances, they’re in the air fresheners that we use in our homes. Most perfumes use artificial fragrances. Deodorants, all of these things have artificial fragrances made out of phthalate. They’re all significant dangerous hormone disruptors.
Dr. Gundry (00:22:39):
You mean, that wonderful smell of the holidays, the season of Christmas, my spice smells, and my evergreen forest smell that I’ve got the scented… it’s killing me and disrupting my endocrine system?
Peter Spiegel (00:22:58):
Yes, it is. And I’m sure you’re not using them.
Dr. Gundry (00:23:01):
Did you hear that? Thank goodness, it’s after the holidays now. No, I would not use those, but, quite frankly, before I began all this research years ago, that would be the last thing on my mind, that “Oh, I want that fresh smell in my house,” or “I want that holiday smell.”
Peter Spiegel (00:23:23):
Yeah. My wife finds it a very embarrassing because if I go into any room that has one of these plug-in air fresheners in it, I pull it out. We were staying in a fairly nice hotel. I think it must have been in Hawaii. And they had them in the hallways that led to our room. I just kept unplugging all of them, and she didn’t find that to be good social behavior.
Dr. Gundry (00:23:49):
Gotcha. Well, we actually have a colleague who has a child with a lot of allergic issues. I was talking to her recently, and they were visiting some family members for the holidays. They walked into the house and the whole house is filled with these holiday scents. And within, really, half an hour, the child began having breathing difficulties, and it was clear it was these pollutants that she was reacting to.
Peter Spiegel (00:24:25):
Yeah. That reminds me an event. As a young adult, when I was going to college, I used to paint houses to make some money to go to college. When I painted outside, I was generally okay. But then we started doing interior painting, and then I realized I had real sensitivity to the chemical fumes that were in the paint. I started feeling dizzy and nauseous. And that kind of woke up my attention to the understanding that it’s not just particles that are in the air that are creating all these health problems but other compounds in a gas form that are called volatile organic compounds. We can talk about all of those things. But the outgassing are these volatile organic compounds. And like you mentioned, it’s almost all from petroleum products and polyurethane foam and things like that.
Dr. Gundry (00:25:29):
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(00:31:50):
People, like my friend, walk into a room with their child, and their child automatically notices it, you notice it. That’s fine. You go, “Oh my gosh. There’s something going on here.” But what I think you and I are more concerned about is these things that we may not notice. We don’t feel them, but it’s the long-term effect of this exposure. Can you elaborate on that? I mean, I don’t feel anything. Why should I be worried about it? I don’t smell anything. Why should I be worried about it?
Peter Spiegel (00:32:27):
Right. Well, I think there are short-term adverse effects that we notice. I mean, if it’s an allergen, we notice our eyes itch, or we start sneezing, we start coughing. And these are also symptoms that can happen from other common indoor contaminants that we’ve been talking about. You might notice you have itchy eyes, runny eyes, your nose is running, you’re coughing, but you might just notice, “Gee, I don’t have the energy that I should have.” Like you mentioned, it can cause dysbiosis, some digestive disorders. So these are all indications that you have an unhealthy home environment. But then over time, of course, you can develop asthma, you can develop a COPD. It can actually affect your brain function. It affects your cognitive function. And, of course, it can long-term create strokes and heart attacks and even death.
(00:33:43):
And it’s a very interesting statistic that I didn’t mention earlier when we were talking about living near a major road or a freeway. Actually, you have a 10% higher incidence of Alzheimer’s and dementia in the population of people who live within a third of a mile of a major freeway. So you can see that a long-term effect of inhaling these contaminants, both particulate matter and volatile organic compounds, it can really affect your cognitive function. And they did a study right here in Los Angeles at the two major universities. They did it together, USC, the University of Southern California, and UCLA, the University of California, Los Angeles, where they studied high-school students who lived within a third of a mile of a freeway or a major road, and they discovered that they had a lower IQ than people who live farther. So, these effects on our cognitive function, they actually start at a very early age.
Dr. Gundry (00:34:59):
Man. I was just doing some research for my upcoming book, and there’s been a very interesting study looking at house-cleaning workers in, like, hotels, and looking at the pollutants in their blood using the hotel’s cleaners and then replacing those with safe cleaners. And within a week, the pollutant levels in their blood dramatically changed. I mean, they’re doing their job, they need the job, but they’re cleaning the hotel and actually killing themselves with their cleaning agents.
Peter Spiegel (00:35:51):
Well, I think when you bring that up, we don’t think that much about the air that we breathe. We’re very conscious we want to drink pure water, we want to eat pure, clean, healthy foods, but we don’t think that much about the air we breathe and what’s in it. Now, we can live for weeks, maybe even months, without food, and we can live for days without water, but deprive a human being of air and they’re not going to live more than a few minutes.
Dr. Gundry (00:36:31):
True.
Peter Spiegel (00:36:31):
Right? Because the air and what’s in the air is basically the fuel that fuels all of our cellular functions. And so, we think very casual about breathing, “We inhale and exhale,” but we’re not thinking what’s happening with that air. It goes into our lungs, and then it goes into our blood, and it circulates to every cell in our body, every organ in our body. And I feel bad for these hotel workers because their blood levels may be going down within a week. But what about the damage that happened at the cellular level in [inaudible 00:37:16] organ of their body? I like to say, “We humans, we’re very, very big consumers of air.” Every day we inhale 70 liters, 70 quarts… I’m sorry, 70,000 liters-
Dr. Gundry (00:37:34):
I was going to say.
Peter Spiegel (00:37:35):
… 70,000 quarts of air. That’s the equivalent to 70 bathtubs of air. So we should really be concerned. If we want to live a clean, healthy life, we really need to be concerned about the quality of the air that we’re breathing.
Dr. Gundry (00:37:51):
Some of these… this particular study, they’re being exposed to VOCs, volatile organic compounds. So, what do you do about these guys?
Peter Spiegel (00:38:04):
Yeah. Well, volatile organic compounds are very tricky because they’re chemicals in a gas form, so you can’t see them. And there is a way to remove them from your air with a air purifier, but it has to be a very special kind of air purifier. When most people think about air purifiers, they’re thinking about getting the particles out of the air, right?
Dr. Gundry (00:38:31):
Yeah.
Peter Spiegel (00:38:32):
We talked about that. Pollen is a particle, dust is a particle, smoke is a particle, even bacteria and viruses are particles, and they’re particles of different sizes, from very, very small, very small to larger particles. And a high-quality air purifier can remove the particles from the air, but they won’t do anything, a regular air purifier, a filter-based air purifier, to remove these volatile organic compounds. To do that, you need an activated carbon filter, and not just a little flimsy one, but you need a filter that’s filled with a substantial amount of activated carbon because the carbon will absorb those contaminants from the air, and then they become deactivated over time. And so you also need to regularly change the carbon filter in order to remove them from the air.
Dr. Gundry (00:39:33):
I remember I used to see commercials on TV or in… that “Look at all the particles that this filter trapped.” And that’s a good thing, right?
Peter Spiegel (00:39:45):
That’s right.
Dr. Gundry (00:39:46):
But, what you’re saying is, that’s only one part of the problem.
Peter Spiegel (00:39:52):
That’s right. I mean, when I was selling air purifiers to these big-box retailer store, and as I mentioned, I sold over 5 million of them, those big-box retailers, they’re very, very price sensitive. So you won’t see an air purifier being sold for over $200. And the one where we sold exclusively to… I think we sold a million and a half air purifiers just to that retailer, they wouldn’t sell anything over $100. When you think that a retailer is making a 40% margin, that gets you down to $60, and then the company wants to make a margin, and then you have the cost of goods and your overhead. So you wind up having maybe $35 to build that air purifier. And that air purifier, you just cannot build an air purifier at that price that could include a substantial activated carbon filter. In fact, I don’t know any retailer in the United States where you can purchase a air purifier with an adequate carbon filter in it. You really have to buy it online or from a specialty retailer.
Dr. Gundry (00:41:08):
Okay. That’s a good place to go. Actually, I got one more question, and then I want to talk about air, doctor.
Peter Spiegel (00:41:14):
Okay.
Dr. Gundry (00:41:17):
What about essential oils and essential-oil diffusers? Is that different than these scented candles, or is it buyer beware?
Peter Spiegel (00:41:31):
Well, Dr. Gundry, I think you’re going to regret asking that question.
Dr. Gundry (00:41:34):
Oh, no.
Peter Spiegel (00:41:35):
And the reason you’re going to regret it is because my company, Ideal Living, not only manufactures air purifiers but we’ve been doing a lot of work recently with essential oils. This is a topic that I like to speak about, and I won’t turn this into a discussion on essential oils, but I’ll just start at a very high level.
Dr. Gundry (00:41:57):
Okay, great.
Peter Spiegel (00:41:58):
Essential oils should be exactly what those two words describe, essential oils from trees and plants and flowers. The problem is, one, how were those essential oils extracted: were they extracted in a natural way or were they extracted using synthetic chemicals and compounds that remain in the essential oils? How were those plants grown: were they grown organically or were they grown with pesticides and toxic chemicals? And three, are they really essential oils?
(00:42:46):
If you go on amazon.com, you can buy a pack, their number one-selling essential oil. It’s five large bottles of essential oils for $10.
Dr. Gundry (00:42:56):
Wow.
Peter Spiegel (00:42:58):
I can pretty much guarantee you there is not a single essential oil in any of those bottles. And when we were doing our research into essential oils, we tried to buy essential orange oil in China, were all these inexpensive oils are coming from. We could not find one source of authentic orange oil in China. It was all synthetic. So, that’s the first thing, and I guess you could say, “Yes, buyers beware.” But if you can find an organically-grown or wildcrafted, certified essential oil, and we sell those at Ideal Living, then that’s something that you can safely put into the air, and that has health-promoting qualities.
(00:43:49):
Now let’s talk about diffusers. So, you take the essential oils, you put it in an essential-oil diffuser, you add some tap water. Tap water. And now you’re diffusing the chlorine, the chloramines, the trihalomethanes that are in the water, maybe Chromium-6 or arsenic. And you’re diffusing that into the air along with the oils. And if you let that water sit, what grows in sitting water? Mold. And now you’re diffusing mold into the air. So, at Ideal Living, we developed a diffuser, called AromaTru, that diffuses the pure, organic essential oils directly out of the bottles. It atomizes it. So you don’t have any of those hazards. So, that is a very long and probably unexpected answer about essential oils. And although they may be mood-altering and uplifting and have some health benefits, none of them will do anything to purify your indoor air.
Dr. Gundry (00:45:00):
Aha. Okay. But can it give a nice scent to my indoor air?
Peter Spiegel (00:45:04):
Absolutely.
Dr. Gundry (00:45:06):
All right. So, you’ve been manufacturing air purifiers for a long time. You’ve supplied millions to big-box store. You obviously know what these things can do and what they can’t do. So, with all of that in mind, why did you create the AirDoctor?
Peter Spiegel (00:45:25):
Sure. Well, in 2019, I sold my big-box air-purifier company. In that sale… When you sell companies, sometimes you have a non-compete. And I carved out with the company I was selling to that “I wouldn’t sell to big-box retailer stores. I would only sell direct-to-consumer for X number of years,” and that “I would make high-end medical-grade air purifiers.” It was something I always really wanted to do. I wanted to make an air purifier that I would want to use in my own home, that I would want my friends and family to use. And I wanted to make it at an affordable price because at the time I started working on AirDoctor, an air purifier with the features that I wanted to include in AirDoctor and the performance, they would sell for between 1000 and 2,000 dollars. And I just felt that “That is not something that’s affordable or accessible to most people,” and I really wanted everybody to have the opportunity to create a healthy home environment. That’s why I developed AirDoctor.
Dr. Gundry (00:46:48):
How big a space will this take care of?
Peter Spiegel (00:46:51):
Sure.
Dr. Gundry (00:46:51):
Now, I might say, I have this in my office in Santa Barbara, and actually quite attractive in my office in Santa Barbara-
Peter Spiegel (00:47:01):
Thank you.
Dr. Gundry (00:47:02):
… because in Santa Barbara, interesting, where our offices are, we have baseboard heating and we actually have no air conditioning. So, Santa Barbara is… for lack of a better word, I’m two blocks from the ocean, so it’s very humid. And mold is an interesting issue. And certainly the office, before I had the AirDoctor, if I was gone for a few days and open it up, you could smell them and you’d say, “Oh.” And there actually isn’t any way to put air conditioning into these offices. So, this is a great invention for me.
Peter Spiegel (00:47:43):
Thank you.
Dr. Gundry (00:47:45):
So, in a home, where can I put it, what’s it going to treat, does it treat the whole home?
Peter Spiegel (00:47:51):
Right. Yeah. According to the CDC and the FDA, who started talking about air purification in indoor spaces, especially as it relates to COVID-19, they recommend that you circulate the air 4-6 times per hour if you want to maintain a healthy environment and, in this case, prevent the transmission of COVID-19. So in order to achieve that 4-6 times circulation, it really depends on your room size and how powerful… how much air that machine can move.
(00:48:42):
And for that reason, we actually have three models of AirDoctor. Because we don’t want people to pay for more than what they need for a particular room, we want to make it affordable, so we basically have small, medium, and large air purifiers.
(00:49:01):
In the air-purifier industry, there are lots of abbreviations and acronyms. One of them is an acronym called CADR, which means clean air delivery rate. It’s an industry standard that lets you know how much of different contaminants are removed from the air, we’re talking about particle contaminants, in a particular period of time in a particular-size room. Almost every air purifier publishes these CADR ratings. And if you want to know what size room that air purifier is sized for, you take that CADR rating and multiply it by 1.5. 1.5.
(00:49:46):
So, AirDoctor has a CADR rating of around 350. If you multiply that by 1.5, then you know that roughly, in a 475 square foot room, it will circulate the air 4-6 times per hour. That’s for this model. Then we have a smaller model, and then we have a much, much bigger model for open spaces. So, we have a model for home offices, your guest room, your kids’ rooms. We have a model for master bedrooms, and then we have a much larger model for open spaces.
Dr. Gundry (00:50:32):
If I’m getting one, where do I put it?
Peter Spiegel (00:50:36):
Well, I would suggest if you get one, you’re probably going to want to put it in your bedroom because you know that that is the one place that you’re going to continuously spend a certain amount of time every night. And that’s where most people start, by putting one in their bedroom.
Dr. Gundry (00:50:55):
Now, the nice thing about this, you’re moving a lot of air, and I can feel the air, but you and I are sitting here talking and we literally can’t hear this.
Peter Spiegel (00:51:07):
Right. This has been running the whole time that we’ve been speaking. And that’s a really important thing because if an air purifier is noisy, then you’re not going to run it and you’re not going to get the benefit of it. So, AirDoctor is built with a very, very high quality motor and fan. We call it a WhisperJet fan to give it a nice name. And every one of our AirDoctors have that type of fan so that they run at a… they’re very, very quiet.
(00:51:37):
And there’s other features that we have in AirDoctor that are quite unique. I mean, I mentioned that, in addition to a particulate filter, it has the carbon filter. But another very important thing about air filters, air purifiers, is they have to be sealed systems. What I mean by that, if you go into a big-box store and you take the cover off the air filter in the store, you’ll see a filter in there, and you’ll notice that there’s gaps around the filters, like, a quarter inch around the filter. And what that means is, instead of the air going through the filter, it’s just going to go around it. Takes the path of least resistance. So, you want to have an air purifier that is a completely sealed system, which AirDoctor is.
(00:52:25):
One thing I also want to mention is the quality of the filter that removes the particles from the air. And that gets us to the second acronym of this conversation, which is the word HEPA. You see this word HEPA associated with air filters a lot, and HEPA means high-efficiency particulate air filter. These HEPA filters were actually developed during the time of the development of the atomic bomb to capture radioactive particles. And at that time, the particles that the scientists were most concerned about, because they’re very hard to capture, are these particles that are 0.3 microns. We didn’t really talk about microns yet, but that’s a measurement of small particles. And a large micron particle is actually pollen, it can be 10 microns.
(00:53:24):
To put that into perspective, a human hair is actually about 30 times bigger than that. So these are very small particles. And the pollen is a larger particle. Mold spores is a fairly large particle. Dust is a slightly smaller particle. Smoke, cigarette smoke is about 1 micron. Then you have things like viruses. Unfortunately, viruses is 0.06 microns. And these HEPA filters, they were designed to capture particles down to 0.3 microns.
(00:54:13):
So, as the science has evolved and as scientists have discovered and learned that the smaller the particle, whether it’s virus or ultra-fine smoke, or even ultra-fine dust, these are the particles that actually penetrate deepest into the lungs. So, there’s a newer technology, which we call UltraHEPA. And UltraHEPA actually captures 99.99% of particles down to 0.003 microns. So it’s very, very important another thing to look for, is an air purifier, especially if you’re worried about creating a healthy public space, with an UltraHEPA filter.
Dr. Gundry (00:55:00):
So just somebody saying, “I’ve got a HEPA filter,” that’s not going to do it for a virus?
Peter Spiegel (00:55:08):
It’s not what I would want to have in my environment, and I would want to make sure that it’s an UltraHEPA filter and it’s a sealed system.
Dr. Gundry (00:55:18):
All right. So, let’s wrap up. Are there other things that ordinary people can do, that we haven’t talked about, to improve the air quality in their homes?
Peter Spiegel (00:55:32):
Sure. Well, I think that prevention is always the best thing that we want to do. So, certainly, don’t let anybody smoke in your home. We talked about fragrances and candles. Don’t use them. If you’re going to use cleaning products, make sure they’re all-natural cleaning products. If you’re going to buy a new bed, make sure it’s a non-toxic bed. Latex is a really great choice. If you’re going to buy furniture, make sure it’s no-VOC furniture, no-VOC carpeting, no-VOC paint. If you can afford it, replace your gas appliances with electric appliances. So, these certainly are all things that you can do. And, of course, I would recommend in every room of your house where you spend the most time, put an AirDoctor air purifier in that room.
(00:56:36):
Another thing that you would want to do, if you’ve got an HVAC system in your home, HVAC systems all have filters in them. Those filters are really made to protect the equipment. They’re not made to purify the air. But a lot of people, that’s surprising, even in our own office, they don’t even know they have HVAC filters. You need to change those HVAC filters regularly. In most homes, they’re visible in a wall or in a ceiling, but in some homes, you actually have to go up into an attic where the HVAC system is. And there is now ways to upgrade those filters. There’s another acronym called MERV, which applies only to HVAC filters. And even for that one, I have to look at my crib sheet, that stands for Minimum Efficiency Reporting Value. But in any case, there are these MERV filters, and most furnace filters have a MERV rating of 4-6, and you can actually buy these HVAC filters with a rating up to 14. And it just happens that the AirDoctor company has just launched a line of the highest-rated MERV filters that you can purchase, MERV 14, and they really will do a nice job of helping to improve the overall air quality in your home. Of course, they don’t remove the volatile organic compounds, they can’t remove the ultra-fine particles, but they can help create a healthier home environment. That’s another thing you can do.
Dr. Gundry (00:58:25):
All right. So, now it is time for the audience question of the week. This one comes from Debbie on Apple Podcasts. She asks, “Thank you, Dr. G, for all the great tips. I had one question about the episode on lemons not helping with acidity. So not necessary for your water, but what about a teaspoon with green tea to help with absorption of EGCG,” which many of you hopefully know is one of the active polyphenols in green tea that you’re looking for.
(00:58:57):
Well, one of the things that’s interesting about polyphenols and absorption that I’ve written about in the last couple books is that polyphenols in general are very poorly absorbed, and we actually require our gut microbiome to eat them and then make those compounds absorbable. But there is a trick that many of you may have seen on some of the supplements, including some of my supplements, of adding a component of black pepper, which is called BioPerine. And BioPerine actually aids in the absorption of polyphenols like ECGC. So, you can put the lemon in your green tea, and if you like lemon in your tea, please do it. But in terms of getting absorption of those components in green tea, you’re better to actually sprinkle some black pepper on it. And actually try it. It’s really fun and delicious. But that’s a great question, Debbie.
Speaker 5 (01:00:00):
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Audio (01:00:33):
Hey, this is Dr. Drew, and I’d like to invite all of you to subscribe to The Dr. Drew Podcast. We are very proud of what we’re doing there at that podcast. I am interviewing some of the most interesting, well, people you could ever want to talk to. Just whatever I find fascinating, whether there’s a smart person or an expert in a field that I’m interested in, or maybe I’m not even interested in, I’m only interested because I’ve heard them speak and become intrigued. I think you’ll be intrigued, as well. We get deep into topics that are quite important to the current age. Things like cognitive dissonance, cognitive distortions, how does our mind work, we talk about everything at The Dr. Drew Podcast that is of real relevance. We get all the way into deep physics and all sorts of stuff. But trust me, it’s all very accessible, it’s very interesting. Headaches, if you’re even interested in learning about headaches, we get there. We go to the interesting topics of the day. Please join us at The Dr. Drew Podcast.
Dr. Gundry (01:01:27):
Finally, it’s the review-of-the-week time. This one comes from Joe on Apple Podcasts. He said, “Dr. Gundry is the absolute best. His recommendations have worked wonders in my life. Change is noticeable in just a few weeks after following his dietary recommendations. Dr. Gundry is at the top of the list. I cannot recommend this podcast more.”
(01:01:50):
Joe, thank you very much. The check is in the mail, like I promised you, but this is why we do this, because people see a change. And this is why I still see patients six days a week, because I’m like a kid in a candy store, poor analogy, but I get to see exciting changes every day. And when I get a letter like this, I know that we’re making a difference. So, why do I keep doing this? Because I’m Dr. Gundry, and I’m always looking out for you.
(01:02:22):
I hope you enjoyed this episode of The Dr. Gundry Podcast. If you did, please share this with family and friends. You never know how one of these health hacks can completely transform someone’s life when you take the time to share it with them. There’s also The Dr. Gundry Podcast YouTube channel, where we have tens of thousands of hours of free health insights that can help you and your loved ones live a long, vital life. Let’s do this together, because I’m Dr. Gundry, and I’m always looking out for you.
