Living a non-toxic lifestyle with Warren Phillips

Meet Warren Phillips

Warren Phillips, M.S., the Non-Toxic Dad, is a social movement that educates individuals to choose a non-toxic lifestyle. A passionate and energetic individual, he lives by his words and works tirelessly to educate the world about avoiding and removing toxins. Non-Toxic Dad has reached and impacted over 100,000 million people in the last year. During the first 9 + years of his career, Warren worked as a published scientist and Environmental Consultant, cleaning and evaluating chemical and heavy metal impacts on human health and the environment. This work exposed him to these toxins, and he eventually fell ill with an “unexplainable illness.” The symptoms, including chronic pain, weight gain, and anxiety, were so severe that he struggled to find a reason to live. But he refused to give up on himself. After exploring alternative and natural methods of heavy metal detoxification, dietary changes, cellular support, and restoring his health, Warren became ignited with a passion for helping others facing similar challenges. For the past 18+ years, Warren has empowered health practitioners, health experts and the public through education, podcasts, and events. Now living in Utah with his wife and three young daughters, he is grateful for his family’s support as he continues this mission to help others choose a non-toxic lifestyle.

Listen to the episode on Spotify here or on your favorite podcast platform.

Podcast transcript:

Welcome back Dr. Pedram, Shojai urban monk podcast here with an old friend Warren Phillips talking about nontoxic, living, talking about getting through a lot of adversity in life, through faith and talking about where that might need to wobble or wiggle in order to find answers for yourself. Uh, we talk about how to protect your family.

We talk about being open-minded and, uh, gets into interesting places in this conversation. Enjoy the podcast.

Dr Pedram Shojai: Warren, it’s good to see you. Welcome to the podcast

Warren Phillips: yeah. It’s great to be back and, uh, to hang out with a good friend that brings a lot of truth to this world. So I’m looking forward to sharing with you guys.

Dr Pedram Shojai: Thanks, man. Try my best. Um, I gotta, I got a lot of plans for us today. Uh, cause there’s just so much crap out there in terms of clickbait and hyperbole and the sky is falling. Uh, the challenge with that is there’s also a lot that is legitimately wrong. and the chemical industry, the petroleum industry, and all these guys have lobbyists that are out there trying to make this news sound crazy.

Dr Pedram Shojai: Like, Oh, you tree huggers. And there are a lot of really important things that we do need to pay attention to. So I want to, you know, sift through that and make sure we don’t throw the baby out with the bath water on this thing. Uh, but just by way of introduction, um, I would love for you to tell your rags to riches health story just so People understand where you’re coming from.

Dr Pedram Shojai: Like, you know, where are you born, what you did and how you ended up getting sick and clawing back out of it. If you will

Warren Phillips: Yeah, well, let, to your first point, um, legitimacy tree hugging is real and it is good for you.

Warren Phillips: So, so tree bathing, um, you know, so that, that’s, uh, you know, there’s a lot of these, these things that we, we blow off, but they’re actually really beneficial for our health. So, um, and I was that guy, I grew up in the country. I was a country boy. I’m drinking Mountain Dew. Nothing can kill you. Sniffing gasoline.

Warren Phillips: You know, running around in the woods, chewing on bullets, you know, uh, you know, just doing all the wrong things, but doing some of the right things, right. Being outside in nature all the time, doing all that fast forwarding my life. Uh, I went to school to study chemistry and environmental geology, uh, got exposed to all kinds of crazy stuff, even an undergrad.

Warren Phillips: Um, and then moving on to graduate school, I was into the environmental movement, uh, reduce, recycle, reuse. I’m a child of the nineties and that was a big movement and I was, uh, I bought into it. Right. And there’s a lot of, there’s a lot of truth there. Um, still to this day, uh, reuse being the best of them all, right.

Warren Phillips: Which we kind of throw that, that one out and we focus on recycle, but reuse is really where we need to be. Side note, moving forward into, uh, after graduate school, wanted to be an environmental. Cleanup expert, right? I did my master’s on the binding of heavy metals and soils. And I got into, uh, and what’s called environmental consulting.

Warren Phillips: So we were working with the government cleaning up, uh, used, uh, abandoned mines, federal use defense sites, all kinds of nasties. Um, at the same time, I’m still living the standard lifestyle that TV tells us what to do because there really wasn’t internet, there wasn’t influencers. We just believed everything in the grocery store was healthy, that fresh baked bread was delicious, at Albertsons, the, uh, the Mountain Dew was wonderful, the Big Gulp, um, the large, that was really good for you, potato chips, what a blessing, a can of Pepsi was still kind of expensive, so what a special treat, but you loved all that stuff, right?

Warren Phillips: Um, lucky for me, I was kind of a harvester, hunter guy, you know, back in the day, and I was eating some good stuff. But over time, like all of us, and we can talk about your exposure from, uh, the time that you’re conceived and all of mom’s toxins going into you, to the, how you build them up over time, the different lifestyle choices, both contro controllable and uncontrollable depending on where you live.

Warren Phillips: There’s so many, your, your socioeconomic, um, background, all these things expose you to toxins and fill your bucket either more slowly or quickly. Thank you And mine filled up. And then when that bucket fills, um, the suffering begins. Right? When your bucket, toxic bucket fills, suffering begins. Because this is when inflammation and weird symptoms from toxicity, and usually it’s inflammation driven.

Warren Phillips: Toxins in of themselves are pro inflammatory. There’s tons of research showing that they age you rapidly. They’re called geronogens. Right? Lots of research on that. So they’re aging you, they’re stifling your engines of your body, your mitochondria, which slows your energy and causing fatigue. They, uh, cause weird symptoms and inflammation in your gut, where you’re getting gut disorders, uh, make, causing leaky gut, if you’re talking about glyphosate, destroying your microbiome, which I know your audience loves.

Warren Phillips: So it’s toxins are so nasty because they’re hurting your microbiome, they disrupt your hormones, they cause inflammation at the cellular level. Inflammation is the root cause of all disease. So they’re the trifecta toxin, the worst of them being mold, which I was exposed. We did mold cleanups as well. And then the symptoms that you guys can relate to some that you can have for lots of reasons.

Warren Phillips: But the common ones you’re going to see is brain fog. headaches, irritability, you know, your hormones are off. So your testosterone is low, your sex drive, your confidence, uh, feelings of depression. I just got out of a mold exposure, staying at a lake house and I have feelings of depression and I’m actually excited about it because it reminds me of how I felt, how, why am I just want to cry, right?

Warren Phillips: Why am I sitting here and just want to cry? I’m like, you know, and women go through menopause and that shift in hormones is Causes that same reaction, but I got exposed to mold that just makes me want to cry and I’ll have to take binders To help pull those toxins out of my body so that my hormones come back online So that I feel normal again so that I have energy again, so I have confidence again I’m not even a fully confident man standing before you but my heart is so for you I can shift just like moms show up for their kids.

Warren Phillips: They have a job to do They have a purpose and that sometimes can override but soon as that purpose is gone The depression sets in, the sadness sets in, the, the, the self doubt sets in, you know, and then you’re not sleeping, and you’re gaining weight, and you don’t feel like doing anything, and all you can do is take care of your kids so you’re not exercising, and this downward spiral of health to the point where I got, where I wanted to take my own life, I became chemically sensitive, um, not only the weight gain, not only the anxiety, not only the depression, I stunk.

Warren Phillips: I had weird muscle twitching like my neurology. These are neurotoxins as well. Let’s call it four things. They destroy your brain tissue, right? Your myelin sheath in your brain because of indirectly through cytokine storms. But there’s so many mercury obviously, uh, destroys neuro tissues, right? There’s a great video.

Warren Phillips: that you can look on on that, uh, mercury and, um, neuron degradation. I think it’s out of Canada, a study out of a university, showing how these, they just destroy your neurology, right? The very nerve tissues, um, so then your memory goes and leads to Alzheimer’s. So, I was on that path. And, the only thing I can say is, You know, I have a big faith in God.

Warren Phillips: I have, uh, you know, and not everyone has that. So I, I just had these encounters with God’s love that I knew that he loved me and I knew that he wanted me out of this thing. And, um, I learned that swearing was okay because I swore at God a lot and he loved me anyway. Sorry guys. Um, you can get away with that and he’s still going to love you.

Warren Phillips: Um, so just a little spiritual, you know, one too, but, uh, in that I learned that I could really lean into that. And have a belief and faith and every healing, uh, expert out there would say if you don’t have something to live for, something to hope for, a belief, a, uh, a light in the darkness, it’s really hard to get well.

Warren Phillips: And I knew that if I did the right things long enough, I had hope and belief that I would have an opportunity to give back to the world and do what I’m doing now, which is the whole driving point of Non Toxic Dad, partnering with you on Homesick Home, and all the other things that we have going on in our lives, is to take that despair, those hard times, that all of us are experiencing today, whether it’s physically, emotionally, or spiritually, and try to bring some light to it and some hope And that’s what this podcast is about.

Warren Phillips: And this is what, you know, I think both of our missions is about.

Dr Pedram Shojai: want to acknowledge you for the vulnerability that you brought just now. Um, it’s hard. It’s hard as a, as a man, it’s hard as a guy, right? Especially you’re like a Pennsylvania guy, right? I grew up in the martial arts. Uh, you know, environment where, you know, if a guy says, you know, I just felt like crying, the go to is like, what a bitch, right?

Dr Pedram Shojai: Like, oh, come on, you know, man up. And

Warren Phillips: get that all the time. People tell me that I, I, I sit when I pee and I’m like, you know what I do ’cause it’s a mess otherwise. So

Dr Pedram Shojai: as you live with three daughters and a wife who yell at you because you can’t aim. Um, well, and that’s it, right? Is there’s this, I’m not allowed to emote. And, you know, people try to emasculate you for just being honest about having feelings and look, the go to guy recipe for, you know, I don’t feel, I feel like I want to cry is I need to think about something that makes me angry and go punch something so I could, you know, pull my, pull my way out of those emotions that are uncomfortable and not look like a vulnerable person who’s suffering and, you know, whatever, I’ll get cancer 20 years from now.

Dr Pedram Shojai: But right now I’m not going to look like a bitch. So I just, I just want to honor you for stopping that nonsense. Right? And so look, you went through a lot. I’ve, I’ve known you for a couple of decades now. Like I knew you when you weren’t well, I knew you as you were getting better. And I’ve seen you through repeated exposures, uh, I’ve seen the bumps, right?

Dr Pedram Shojai: And so there, look, when everything’s fine, everything’s fine. I’ve seen you get exposed to a whiff of some chemical and I’ll just look over and be like, damn, what happened to Warren? Right? Like I’ll, I will watch your brain stop working with the chemical exposure. It is, it is. Very. It’s stark. It is very overt.

Dr Pedram Shojai: It is something that I used to notice with patients of mine all the time. Uh, and, and I turned the corner because, you know, Betty would get into an elevator with some dude wearing some Italian cologne and she’d have a migraine maybe for a week. And so those chemical triggers became profound in my clinical practice.

Dr Pedram Shojai: And I realized that people weren’t just making this shit up. And so you having to. understand that this is how you are and this is how your body has kind of, you know, the, the, the barrel is overflowing with toxins. Your body can’t take it anymore. You had to shoot your way out of that being a, you know, a country boy shooting guns and all the crap that came with the archetypes of being a man.

Dr Pedram Shojai: And then you had to kind of go dig deep, get vulnerable, figure out what’s wrong, and then heal yourself. And it’s not a linear path out. A lot of times you’ll hit bumps in the road. So I want to talk about that because a lot of people here, it’s a, it’s such a challenge healing from this because you walk out that door, you’re getting gassed by diesel fumes.

Dr Pedram Shojai: It doesn’t stop coming at you.

Warren Phillips: coming in. No, it doesn’t, and it’s, and it’s frustrating. Um, there is a mental component to it. Uh, where you, if, and this is where the, the psychological side comes in. If you believe it’s going to hurt you, it’s going to hurt you.

Warren Phillips: So, there is the reality of these toxins, and then there’s a belief structure surrounding them. Um, so I had to teach myself, and this happens in the limbic lobe. I’m not a limbic lobe expert. I’ve talked to them to make sure, and researched it, especially in the past, because I’d fill up a gas tank and be like, brain fog again, there goes my day, right?

Warren Phillips: Uh, you try caffeine and, you know, whatever to kind of break you out of it, but it’s, you’re just losing time, relationship, insecurity. And some of that is a limbic response. Especially after you detox for a while. It’s like, what do you mean? I’m still sick after all this time? You know, and I think a part of the healing process is it’s, it is a real trigger.

Warren Phillips: Fragrances are neurotoxins. They cause massive brain inflammation. Um, same thing with gasoline smells and a lot of these things, right? Um, but you can get to the point where you smell, uh, You know essential oil and you believe because it was extracted through benzene it triggers you into a downward spiral But the amount of benzene in there really isn’t enough to trigger your body necessarily and maybe some people in some Circumstances so this this this is this dance of belief and faith that you’re gonna get well and then doing the right things on a daily basis and having You know, I think a lot of the times having the right people around you, listening to the right things, uh, you know, surrounding yourself with individuals that say, you’re going to get, well, God loves you.

Warren Phillips: You’re going to get well, keep working at it, right. It doesn’t feel like it right now. So there’s this, you really have to have, uh, that, that symphony of, of, of sticking to it, right. Doing the right things every day. And we can talk about some of those right things. Um, avoiding toxins as much as you can within your means.

Warren Phillips: You have to be surrounded by people that are encouraging you that you’re gonna get well. Um, you have to fight negative thoughts, cause that’s the biggest detriment, that I’m sick, um, this. You gotta fight negativity, cast them out of your brain. And then you gotta lay on the gratitude. The things that you’re, you’re gratitude, uh, grateful for.

Warren Phillips: Cause there’s hormonal shifts that happen. Right, and so this whole process of getting well isn’t simple. I just named five things you must do to get well. We should write a book on this together, Pedram. You know, the five things of, of detoxification and, you know, avoiding toxins is just one of them.

Warren Phillips: Detoxifying is just another. But you have to have the support, you have to have the faith and belief, you have to get rid of the, uh, fight negative thinking and, and lean into gratitude. Because these all shift your hormones and give you lifts where you need them. Um, and along the way, you know, it, it can be a battle.

Dr Pedram Shojai: One of the things that I’ve really started speaking out against, uh, in the industry, in our kind of health influencer, you know, expert industry is there’s The advice that any good practitioner would give, which is in line with what you just mentioned, right? You know, you have five things and you got to do them all, right?

Dr Pedram Shojai: Uh, that shit don’t sell. Right? And so what happens is the marketers gravitate towards the single vector hail Mary solutions saying no, no, no, no, this pill, this is going to solve all your crap, right? Or just do this one thing. Um, and that’s going to solve all your crap. And so we are also swimming against a sea of click baity misinformation, trying to give people an easy off ramp and man, it’s hard, right?

Dr Pedram Shojai: So you got to. Mitigate the exposure. You have to boost your detox pathways. You have to bring up your faith and your gratitude and all the things. And so all of these things are kind of this juggling act of getting your life to just move better. And one of the examples I use, uh, for a lot of students in my Urban Monk Academy is like, you know, you’re just, you’re dealing, you know, stacks of cards, right?

Dr Pedram Shojai: This one is in the, the stack of healing and benefiting your life and moving upward. And this one is the negative one that moves you downward. And so. Which stack are you going to deal the cards into? And every single day, if you just detox a little more, make a few better decisions, practice gratitude, you’ll start to feel better and move in that direction.

Dr Pedram Shojai: It’s like the wolf that you feed. Um, but when you are overwhelmed with toxicity, when you have psychoemotional stuff and trauma and stress and bills and all this crap, it just feels so difficult to just. systematically kind of bait and tackle in that right direction. That that’s where I want to help our listeners a little bit is what can we do every single day?

Dr Pedram Shojai: What are the stupid things that we got to pull out of our lives? What are the little things that start to get the momentum going? Because once you have momentum, it’s a lot easier to be well without the momentum. It’s treacherous.

Warren Phillips: Yeah, it really can be, you know, so. I wish I could give a simple answer. We can talk about some of the top things, but it’s really is individualized, right? Some people need to move a little bit, a little bit of exercise, some movement, some stretching, some, um, what I like to call functional movement, um, would just, would be an answer.

Warren Phillips: Don’t exercise because you’re too under, you have too much stress going on in your life. So there’s a time to back off. I think exercise is one of those big misnomers and lies that you need to go to the gym and, Um, and now you have anxiety. Now you’re fighting with your, you know, your husband or wife and you’re beating yourself up because you’re snapping at your Children.

Warren Phillips: So you really need to learn balance and be okay with where you’re at. So be okay with where you’re at. You’re not forced to do anything. You’re not going to die, right? Um, you may die if you continue to eat a horrible diet. And that’s where I would start. You know, I would, I would get rid of the pro inflammatory foods.

Warren Phillips: If you’re in a really bad place, right? Right, you remove gluten, uh, just because it can be pretty pro inflammatory. I’m not gonna say, you know, completely get rid of it. There’s emmer wheat, there’s these other ancient grains that are safer. You go to Italy, a lot of people do just fine over there. But, I’m just giving some of the low hanging fruit.

Warren Phillips: If you’re in a, depends on where you’re at. If you’re in a desperate place, you need to make some, big movers, right? There’s things that move the needle a little bit. Like, okay, uh, get rid of it’s an easy one, but get a hard solid wood cutting board versus a plastic one. Microplastics cause inflammation.

Warren Phillips: They’re going to lead the long term disease, but as soon as you get rid of that microplastic cutting board, is it going to change your life? No, that’s a long term play, but changing your diet, massive difference in your life. Pro inflammatory, low, getting rid of pro inflammatory foods, sugars. Grains, flowers, all the things that are sugar or turn to sugar, you know, even healthy grains for a season to really just, that’s going to be a massive needle mover.

Warren Phillips: Your energy is going to come back. You’re lowering inflammation. Toxins are causing it. But if you, one of the biggest inflammatory, uh, problems that we have is what we put in our mouth. And so that’s really going to be a big needle mover. If you make that one, that’s great. Now let’s look at, now let’s look at some of the other things that you’re doing.

Warren Phillips: Another big needle mover is if you have a lot of mold in your house, right? Um, and you have to address that. So the first thing I would do is check my humidity by humidity meter. And if you’re not below 50%, um, humidity, you know, for 80 percent of the day or 75 percent of the day, you’re growing mold in your home.

Warren Phillips: And at least if you get a dehumidifier, you’re going to knock down the amount of mold being grown in your home. And that’s going to pull down the biotoxin load, the mold spore load quite a bit. And that’s going to have a huge lift, right? Um, and then maybe take some binders while you’re trying to figure this out.

Warren Phillips: That’s really going to help because you’re pulling these toxins that are causing once again inflammation in your body. So that’s a big needle mover. What’s another big needle needle mover fragrance. That’s is that’s hazardous waste in your home. So everything that says fragrance or perfume, move that out of your house.

Warren Phillips: That’s going to be a massive needle mover. So those are three things that can make you feel really well just by eliminating those three things, right? Okay. Uh, And those are big ones, right? So I’m just trying to keep it simple.

Dr Pedram Shojai: Yeah, I like that. And, and I would give folks who aren’t feeling well and you know, there’s this one point of understanding right that, Hey, I, I got triggered and sometimes it takes a while for my patients to turn that corner, um, of self awareness and say, okay, hold on a second. I’m suddenly moody, I’m sad, I’m depressed, and I’m in this like weird downward spiral or my head hurts or my neck is getting tense and all these types of things.

Dr Pedram Shojai: And so it without training. A lot of times people just go, Oh, I don’t know why it was me versus saying, hold up. I wasn’t feeling like this 25 minutes ago. What happened? What did I just expose myself to? What did I eat? What did I smell? What did I touch happened that triggered this? Now it could have been what Betty said on the phone.

Dr Pedram Shojai: It could have been the gluten cookie. It could have been the, the skin cream you’re not aware of, but just stopping to say, hold on a second, I was a different person half an hour ago, and now I’m in this, this state. So what was the trigger? External, internal, whatever it is, what was the trigger? It could be, Hey, I’m just starving and my blood sugar, um, uh, crashes.

Dr Pedram Shojai: Can’t, can’t handle this. But then for me, what I end up doing with patients, um, it’s really simple, but just basic stuff is, okay, how about this? If it’s a immune reaction or if it is a liver toxicity issue, then there’s a couple of simple things to do. How about this? If you feel that way, first stop, instead of saying, woe is me, I’m going to go call somebody and say something I’m going to regret is have one big tall glass of water and go out in the sunshine for five minutes.

Dr Pedram Shojai: Right? And that might just be. The quick, let me gather myself intervention to then say, okay, what now? Let me think again. Let me clear my head What can I do to figure out how this happened to me? Right? So what are some of the things that weren’t because that look I’ve known you for a long time. We go way back What are some of the things that happen for you that trigger you to?

Dr Pedram Shojai: Think, okay, I got to stop. I got to take a breath. I need a minute.

Warren Phillips: a minute. Yeah, I mean, if it’s a conversation and I’m not adapting to the stress of the call, and I noticed that I’m reacting right instead of, uh, calmly, you know, great leadership as a father, as a, as a husband, you know, when you’re in line, because you can pretty much handle anything.

Warren Phillips: And if you bring it with love and with confidence and kindness, and, uh, you can handle just about anything in any rough scenario. But if I know that. Yeah. Yeah. Um, I’m starting to react. I know that there’s a root cause problem, you know, I’m not sleeping well, I’m drinking too much caffeine, uh, there’s lots of root causes and it makes me switch how I do life moving forward, but in that moment, I, I do do the outside.

Warren Phillips: If I’m fatigued, um, outside in the sunshine, even in the winter, just getting outside, uh, it resets the sunshine, right? It will reset kind of like your circadian rhythm and let you know, hey, you know, cortisol, hey, I’m ready. world. Um, it’s sunshiny and I need to be out and alive. And so there’s these natural chemical triggers that can happen through sunshine.

Warren Phillips: Also grounding. Um, if I’m not feeling well and I’m fatigued, there is massive science around this. I really dug deep into it because I, it makes so much sense. But when you come from, like, I don’t come from this, You know, natural health background, right? I am a good old boy, you know, you didn’t go to the medical doctor unless you, your leg was cut off, right?

Warren Phillips: Um, I did try the medical route, by the way, you know, ten different physicians, uh, psychotropic drugs, all that, right? It made me sicker and worse and more constipated and, you know, all the things, but grounding is a, it’s like taking, you know, just make it up, like eating, you know, 10 boxes of blueberries, right?

Warren Phillips: It’s that powerful of antioxidant effect on your body. It has disease reversal effects as well. So grounding is very, very powerful. Now, here’s the misnomer. Everyone is selling grounding, grounding pads on your bed. Now you’re grounding in an electric field. So you’re becoming a lightning rod for all the electric fields, we’ll just say EMF, that’s around you, just to keep it simple.

Warren Phillips: And now you’re loading your cells back up with oxidative stress, right? Where when you ground away from a magnetic field on the earth, in a park where there’s not power lines and, you know, You know, a bunch of EMF, now your body is able to discharge and you’re able to recharge like a battery. And it literally can be life changing.

Warren Phillips: So when I’m not, when I’m sick and not feeling well, I take, kick my shoes off and I’m outside, right? Get off the phone, I walk, I pray, I meditate, I do some gratitude. Um, and I get into my garden right now, I’m getting more exposure to microorganisms that my body needs to thrive to have good mitochondrial energy and function.

Warren Phillips: There’s no way to get them unless you’re in the dirt, you know, in a healthy, regenerative type soil, which is a big thing that I’m into now is putting the healthy bugs. You can actually collect them right from out in nature and put them into your garden and then they’ll grow, right? Because that soil, right?

Warren Phillips: And this is another thing that can help you if you have a little garden. You live longer, right? You’re exposing yourself to soil organisms. It gives you an excuse to take your shoes off, and the food that you’re eating is going to be micronutrient dense, because if you have good soil and you build it over the years, those bugs, those nematodes, bacteria, fungus, break down and create poop that the plants can uptake that have the minerals in them.

Warren Phillips: So, it’s a great benefit. Get back to gardening. I just, kind of a side note, because that’s, that’s where I’m at.

Dr Pedram Shojai: I listen, I can’t tell you how many times I talked to Warren where he’s outside in his garden and I love it. And as soon as I connect, and if I’m like still indoors, that immediately triggers me to say, get outside. Right. Get outside. We have our own garden, you know, walk around wherever it is. I want to be outside same time.

Dr Pedram Shojai: So a couple of things you said, I want to come back to one, um, I’m not going to get on the soapbox, but I will mention it is, you know, we live on this beautiful, miraculous happenstance, uh, you know, environment that allows for life and water and plants and, and the blossoming of life. Uh, and we want to go to Mars.

Dr Pedram Shojai: Uh, the earth is beautiful. More times than not, the answer to your problems getting out into nature is the answer to your problems and the problem with saying go out to the park and take off your shoes, uh, is twofold. One is make sure the park isn’t sprayed by pesticides. And if it is, I’ll give you a resource to go after the municipality that has been taken over by the chemical industry.

Dr Pedram Shojai: Uh, but two,

Warren Phillips: cheap. They’re

Dr Pedram Shojai: that’s too cheap. I got nothing to sell you. The grounding pad makes the cash register ring. So the entire health and wellness industry has also been usurped by saying, I can’t just tell you to go eat well and stand outside because there’s no money to be made. So you know, buy this thing, buy this gadget, right?

Dr Pedram Shojai: And so that there’s a lot there. The thing that I want to come back to though, so that’s me on the soapbox. Sorry about that. Um, the thing I want to come back to though, is you had mentioned mitochondrial efficiency in the microbiome. One of the things that I’ve noticed with people who are toxic is that there is this energy economics issue.

Dr Pedram Shojai: One, the detox pathways are working over time. Liver is trying to conjugate, you’re doing all this work to get this crap out of your system and you don’t stop it from coming in. So you’re just getting punched all the time and your body is just working all the time. But number two, the oxidative stress That comes from toxins, the disruption of the electron transport chain all the way through it, toxins interfere with complexes one through four of the electron transport chain, literally where energy is synthesized and manufactured inside the cells of our body gets compromised by these toxins.

Dr Pedram Shojai: This is not speculation. We know this, and it also damages the mitochondrial DNA. Of the body. Our energy producing faculties. So you are in a very real sense, burdening your system with toxins that your liver is trying so hard to get out and simultaneously bringing down the ability to produce energy so that you don’t have the raw currency to push this crap out.

Dr Pedram Shojai: And you wonder why everyone is drinking quad espressos or drinking Mountain Dew and doing all sorts of crap to try to feel better because they don’t have energy and without energy you can’t even think straight, let alone detox. So I just want to get your, your opinion on that and just get some of your counsel on that for our listeners.

Warren Phillips: Yeah. So when I got sick, I didn’t know what the what the root cause was. But if, if I tracked it back based on, I mean, I had a physician coaching company where we taught doctors about this stuff for 15 years and then I’ve continued that education and just listened intently. So when it comes down for me where the bottom fell out was you would call it mitochondrial, uh, uh, There is a diagnosis for it, but just say mitochondrial, um, deficiency, right?

Warren Phillips: Um, I had a mitochondrial disease, um, triggered by toxins. It just, once it wipes out your energy, it takes 4 ATP, adenosine triphosphate, to produce 1 glutathione, which is one of your, that’s your body’s natural antioxidant. And there’s tons of products that you can buy, right? Nanacetylcysteine, you can buy the six different forms of glutathione.

Warren Phillips: And they’re helpful. Don’t get me wrong. But your body actually produces them, but it needs 4 ATP to produce internally your natural number one antioxidant bar none inside your body. It’s a little HS group. It actually binds as a negative charge. It’ll bind heavy metals, it’ll bind other toxins, um, and neutralize them essentially and then pull them out of your body safely.

Warren Phillips: So, if you can’t manufacture that, you’re in trouble. You can’t detox. the spiral just keeps going down. You need ATP to sleep. You need energy to sleep. You need energy to cause peristaltis so your gut can discharge all the toxins in your gut. So all those things happen. I had mitochondrial dysfunction and so I couldn’t poop, right?

Warren Phillips: I didn’t have energy to work out. I couldn’t detox. Right? That’s probably what caused my facial and muscle twitching. That could be neurotoxins as well, but you just have, you need ATP for everything. And when you can’t make it because of toxins, everything falls out. Here’s the good news. Here’s the silver lining.

Warren Phillips: I think, and you correct me on this one, I think it takes about 7 years to turn over your cells. You’re making new ones and new mitochondria every day. Right? Now you’re gonna make, what’s, this is what toxins do, is that when you’re replicating Um, and you have a damaged DNA, it’s gonna rep, it’s trying to kill itself through autophagy, right?

Warren Phillips: So, this is where aging comes in, this is a little side note, but this is really interesting stuff, so pay attention. When you get toxins inside your cell, your body, uh, wants to kill that cell, and make a new one, through autophagy. The problem is, you’re driving that so quickly, cells can only replicate so many times, so that replication ages you.

Warren Phillips: You’re shortening your timeline and your skin is getting wrinkled more faster because your body’s saying toxin I don’t want to replicate this, you know, this cancerous this this nasty cell So I’m gonna make a new one right and it causes more cellular senescence, which is not good It’s the death of that cell and moving it forward.

Warren Phillips: So your body knows it’s smart. So this is why you detox. This is why you get outside. That’s why we’re grounding and lessening that burden because as your body, you give it an opportunity to heal. So when someone says, how long does it take to heal? Seven years. Cause I got to turn over those healthy cells.

Warren Phillips: And that’s when things start getting fun again. You’ll notice the energy coming back. I have more ATP. I can sleep again. My diverticulitis and constipation went away. So it took me time. But your body wants to get well. It can make new cells that have healthy engines. And you start eating right, doing all those things.

Warren Phillips: So this is the hope. I never shared this before, but this is the hope. Is that your body knows what it’s doing. It’s gonna get rid of the bad. You’re not stuck in mitochondrial deficiency and energy, you can make more ATP, your body’s every cells are different. You’re gonna have this about seven year turnover of these transcripts.

Warren Phillips: What is it a trillion cells like I don’t even know the number it actually has changed over for the last five years But we have so many of these things and we will get well when you do the right things That’s the that’s the excitement That’s what I’m trying to say here is if you start removing Toxins and doing the right things and putting the right things into your body and eating well You will get healthy over time.

Warren Phillips: But if you’re living in a moldy home, there’s just It’s too many toxins for your body to to To get out so that you can make healthy cells. Again, it’s

Okay, quick interruption here to say, if you haven’t seen the series yet, go to home. Sick home.com. We’re doing a free screening. You could watch the whole thing for free. Uh, we talked about a lot of the things that you need to be mindful of the things that could sneak into your house that can cause harm to you and your family that you may not be thinking about.

Homesick home.com. Back to the podcast.

Dr Pedram Shojai: I really appreciate you not bullshitting my audience, right? Seven years. That is not six pack abs in two weeks. Seven years is a sane, reasonable expectation of someone who’s lived three, four, five decades or beyond piling on the toxins, living in a world full of stress. turning over every cell in their body to be a new person.

Dr Pedram Shojai: Right? And so the hyperbolic promise of all these marketing folks that are just trying to promise the world are missing it. Now.

Warren Phillips: Now

Dr Pedram Shojai: Is it going to take seven years to feel better? No. When I start pulling toxins out of people’s environment and start helping push their liver conjugation and all the things that you could do as a functional medicine practitioner, start feeling better within a week or two.

Dr Pedram Shojai: And then every week incrementally, it’s like, Oh wow, you know, my sex drive came back. Oh wow, this is better. Right. And so it doesn’t take seven years to feel better. But the problem is kind of the proverbial, you know, well digger, right, is, you know, Two feet down. There was no water. I, you know, went over here, went over here.

Dr Pedram Shojai: I went to this influencer. And so people are just not patient enough. to realize that it takes time to dig and really turn this over. So I want to pivot now and get into some brass tacks because you, uh, you know, when you started doing this stuff, you were more of kind of a, a B2B helping practitioners understand how to do what you ended up doing.

Dr Pedram Shojai: Figuring out how to do for yourself. Medicine was not helping you. Wellness industry was not helping you because you’re a geologist. You created your own zeolites and experimented on the, the, the workshop of your own body and got better, uh, through a lot of trial and error through a lot of research and science.

Dr Pedram Shojai: So you have been just, I’m saying this for the benefit of the audience. Warren’s been helping doctors help patients for a very long time. And. I was one of the, the few, but there were many folks, uh, over time that were just like, man, you got to get your voice out there. You got to get more public. You need to speak because, uh, your story matters.

Dr Pedram Shojai: And so he became the non toxic dad and now has a gajillion followers and you know, is, is out there as a voice of his own. And I’m proud of you for that, by the way, I’m very proud of you for that. Um,

Warren Phillips: easy, bro. Like, it’s not my personality to, I don’t get all excited, you know, um, but

Dr Pedram Shojai: No, listen, you’re an introverted faith based guy who would rather be with his wife and daughters. Like I get it. It sucks like having to pull yourself out and do all this stuff, but you’re trying, you’re helping a lot of people. So I appreciate that.

Warren Phillips: Thank you.

Dr Pedram Shojai: So let’s turn the corner because there’s a lot of stuff out there and I want to play real versus fake hyperbole versus you should worry about this on stuff that

Warren Phillips: I like this. Let’s play this game.

Dr Pedram Shojai: So, so this is where, you know, there’s some, there’s probably some easy ones and then there’s some ones that probably are a little more complicated. So let’s start with, uh, I’ll give you a couple of soft pitches here. Uh, plastic Tupperware, plastic food storage. What’s the skinny.

Warren Phillips: Yeah, bad. You know, it’s a petroleum product. They put phthalates in them to stiffen them or make them flexible. They’re just way too many hormone disrupting compounds in there. Now, is it going to be the biggest needle mover in your life? No, um, even I would say drinking clean water would be a, it’s not going to be an instant needle mover, but that’s, that’s a pretty big needle mover there, but you know, relative to plastic, but an easy switch to glass, it’s going to save you money.

Warren Phillips: Um, you can buy this stuff used, you can get it at Costco, but switching from plastic over to glass is a, is a great move. Um, but plastics are bad. There’s microplastics. We know microplastics again, cause inflammation at the cellular level. Um, even if you can’t measure them like and see them at the microscope, there’s nanoplastic particles, um, inside that plastic and they’re just, they’re all through your body and your body can deal with some of them.

Warren Phillips: Um, but it is, it is real, you know, plastics, bad plastic clothes, bigger source of exposure. And that’s somewhere where I’ve really leaned in. You can see where I get a little more energy. It’s like, I couldn’t believe. Like, almost two years ago, I was still wearing 50 percent plastic, polyester, cotton blends, very soft, loved it, you know, and then I’m like, when I start reading the research, which is coming out in droves and lawsuits and all of it, that microplastics are getting absorbed right into your skin, there’s phthalates, there’s lead in these, these toxic materials, so plastics, bad for long term health, um, and longevity and anti aging, carcinogenic, you know, decisions that you can make for your life to avoid quite a bit of suffering.

Warren Phillips: Big fan of removing plastics.

Dr Pedram Shojai: so one thing that really kind of broke my brain on that. Conversation. Uh, we, we did a series called homesick home, which, uh, you know, I invite you all to see. Um, but the part of the story that. Didn’t get talked about as much was because the plastics are petroleum based products, it makes them flammable.

Dr Pedram Shojai: And because they’re flammable, then the legislation said, Oh, we need all these fire retardant chemicals on that same shirt. Cause God forbid you catch fire and the manufacturer gets sued. So now there’s this kind of double down on chemicals between the plastics, which are apparently bad enough and the fire retardant chemicals that are, are now being sprayed in addition to the plastics, uh, being exposed to your skin to keep you from, from catching fire.

Dr Pedram Shojai: So let’s talk about those flame retardant chemicals.

Warren Phillips: retardants. Um, that that is real. That increases your cancer risk dramatically. Obviously, it’s another toxin and has all the same effects. Uh, so you’re gonna find those a lot in mattresses because of the foams. That’s a requirement. Now, the public is getting more aware. So some of these are using less toxic versions of flame retardants now, but they’re still putting them on baby crib mattresses and most of them are getting removed and using safer ones because moms are getting upset.

Warren Phillips: This is a baby and babies are now being tested full of flame retardants. Mom’s full of flame retardants. Mom’s milk is full of flame retardants. It’s like it’s it’s an overwhelming again, a chemical regulation. When I got bill got passed, Someone just made a billion dollars, right? When this vaccine gets passed, it might cost them a billion to make it, but it’s 6 billion, you know, um, return.

Warren Phillips: So you always have to look at when something gets passed, how much money is it making? We’re the wealthiest country in the world and we’re the sickest country in the world, right? Um, we have a lot of stuff, but we don’t have a lot of happiness. We don’t have a lot of health. Italy, New Zealand, Switzerland, they laugh at us, right?

Warren Phillips: Because our, I feel like our priorities are wrong. Again, I’m getting on a soapbox. These things are outlawed in other countries, a lot of it. So, literally, uh, they’re showing up everywhere.

Warren Phillips: They’re slathered on your airplane. Um, they’re slathered on your couches, right? Unless you get wool wrapped or a safer option. So they’re everywhere inside of our home. We’re not being told about it. They’re in all of our electronics, right? Um, so there’s flame retardants everywhere. And that new smell on your computer, I think it’s pretty The chemical you’re smelling is maybe bromine, but essentially flame retardants.

Warren Phillips: And these things are getting in your body. So I off gas things. I’m always trying to avoid toxins, right? And I don’t do it in a fearful way, but flame retardants are going to be in all your electronics. They’re going to be in all your couches, right? There’s things you can do. Like some people will put their new couch in their garage for six months before they do it, right?

Warren Phillips: Before they, they bring it into their home. So there’s, there’s, it makes life complicated. Um, But, you know, if you go with all natural materials, um, organic beds are, um, The price when I used to get them they were like five six thousand dollars You can get a good one for fifteen hundred dollars now So the price point has come down because the market’s getting bigger and bigger manufacturers are able to do it You know at a massive pace and they’re not some of them aren’t charging more because they actually freaking care They actually care about humanity These businesses are out there like I believe still an american dollar right and that we we vote with our dollars Because money moves You know, everything, you know, where energy goes, money flows, right?

Warren Phillips: So if we’re focusing on a healthy lifestyle, that’s what I love about Instagram and tick tock and social media and Facebook, um, podcasts like this is that we can awaken people, um, and, and create a movement. And I think this is something that everyone can agree on. retardants are. are sickening and don’t even talk to me.

Warren Phillips: I’m going to get mad if you say, Oh, it’s a little bit of this and it’s just a little bit and you need to drink so much of this to get sick and have so much glyphosate and so much aspartame. And it would be this massive amount. No, you’re missing the point. These small amounts of toxins build up each and every day inside of you.

Warren Phillips: And there’s a cumulative effect between the lead in your chocolate. That’s not being regulated between the. The, uh, plastics and polyester in your tampons that are absorbing into your body, causing inflammation. Um, the phthalates in your perfume and in your, your cleaners and your detergents and all these toxins and they’re just loading you up.

Warren Phillips: eroding your health and it’s okay because if you drank a lot of it had a lethal dose it would take a lot it’s called the LDL the lethal dose right we’re talking about the the small doses that 100 percent may not kill you in the moment that are slowing down your mitochondrial energy, that are aging you at the cellular level, that are making your cells work harder, that are inflaming your gut, that are causing indigestion, and we’re using commercials on TV.

Warren Phillips: If you watch the Olympics, someone wants to eat donuts, and he’s like, I can’t eat the donuts. Heartburn. Oh, here’s an Alka Seltzer pill, right? So let’s forget about the very thing that’s making you sick, and here’s, here’s an Alka Seltzer to take it. Right, because you want to eat those doughnuts and you want to, but you’re afraid to eat the doughnuts because you’re afraid of that heartburn.

Warren Phillips: You change your diet, you’re going to get rid of that heartburn, right? That’s the message we need to share because whether it’s formaldehyde, right, in your cabinetry or in your perfume, there’s formaldehyde smells or formaldehyde that’s a little bit residual in your toilet paper or the microplastics in your toilet paper.

Warren Phillips: Like all these little things add up and create this Cumulative, slow, energy robbing, mitochondria effect of toxins that are slowing down your life and your ability to love and create and connect to nature because you just want to sit on a couch and you’re just barely surviving. Who’s talking about this, right?

Warren Phillips: We can focus on all the politics, all the global warming, all that stuff. There’s real problems over here. But the problem that we all face that I think we all can agree on is that these toxins We can’t continue this lifestyle. Why do you think there’s this movement? People are waking up regenerative farms and communities I’m looking at other countries to move Because I, I just don’t know if America is going to get it fast enough and I want to live to 110 so I can keep preaching this message alongside great people like you and so many others in this industry that actually really care.

Dr Pedram Shojai: Well, you know, the, the challenge is there’s nowhere to run. There’s nowhere to hide because when America can’t do it, the American lifestyle has already been exported to much of the world. Internationally, there are a lot of countries that are like, Oh, those guys got it all wrong. And they’re pushing back and saying, we don’t want that lifestyle, which to me is heartwarming because they’ve figured out that, you know, our morbidity or mortality or obesity, you know, we’re not, we’re not winning.

Dr Pedram Shojai: Right. We have more aircraft carriers. Right. But that’s not, that’s not the only KPI here. Um, one of the things that I learned. When making the homesick home series was, you know, people were considering the home as the second skin, you have your first skin, which we’ve been talking about, and I have a couple of points on that that I want to come back to.

Dr Pedram Shojai: And then our second skin, which is, okay, so what’s my bedroom look like? What, what are the toxins in my environment looking like? So. As we kind of go from inside out, I want to revert back inward because you had mentioned something deeply personal. I mean, I don’t think it gets any closer than tampons, right?

Dr Pedram Shojai: Um, you know, something that you’re, uh, a product that’s being manufactured by God knows whom, who you, you know, that, that is being inserted inside of a female’s body. Right. And so I want to talk about two of these areas that are just so close to home for men and women, which is tampons and synthetic materials for underwear where you are exposing your genitals to the plastics, the flame retardants, and what God knows what else is on these things and what we know about the level of exposure as close to home as it gets right.

Dr Pedram Shojai: Uh, and as close to our vasculature as it gets that most of us have not even thought about. I’m just blindly bought the stretchy underwear and use the dumb tampons, right?

Warren Phillips: Yeah, we thought it was safe, like everyone thinks it’s safe, right? And I, like my, uh, the gal that cuts my hair, she watched my video on tampons, she’s like, I just grabbed Tampax.

Warren Phillips: I had no idea. Um, but you can see a lot of these brands are now making organic cotton, right? They’re, they’re jump, the big companies have jumped on. Instead of even buying out smaller companies and, and taking them over, they’re literally putting organic cotton. However, they’re not 100 percent organic cotton.

Warren Phillips: They’ll say the, the cotton, they have a cotton core. But, the, there’s still polyethylene, right, uh, there’s still plastic, right, let’s say, um, on there. So there’s this greenwashing effect, and it’s all about price point, right? And if you make one little change that’s not perfect, you can save yourself ten cents.

Warren Phillips: And that ten cents at high volume, you know, per box is millions, if not hundreds of millions of dollars over time. And so this is where the, the games play. Um, but, um, Tampons, uh, it’s real, right? These, there’s studies showing about the microplastics. There’s definitely, uh, a host of, uh, of toxins that, um, can absorb into your body, right?

Warren Phillips: And there’s this big viral videos going on, heavy metals, right? With tampons. It went everywhere across the internet. Um, it brought a lot of awareness, but here’s where it’s not as, as, uh, as nasty as you think. The lead levels in non organic cotton. We’re um, elevated in my opinion, right? Based on, you know, what’s really going to get absorbed and not arsenic.

Warren Phillips: Not as bad, but arsenic is showing up and even organic cotton. Um, but not, not at levels that are concerning because these heavy metals are everywhere. That’s what, that’s the excuse. Um, but it’s also the problem, right? Is they’re not being regulated in our foods, heavy metals or in our tampons. They are in like.

Warren Phillips: Yeah. Somewhat in supplements, right, because of Prop 65 kind of forcing, uh, that angle, but the foods aren’t, um, supplements a bit, and, you know, uh, all these lead is showing up in, uh, cassava flour because it’s a high lead, uh, root, it’s a root vegetable, right? So here we are circling back around, right, to, to, to, uh, These things are horrible for your body.

Warren Phillips: Some experts now I’m not a, uh, a hormone expert, but they’re saying that it’s, it’s better just to let it flow right with a pad. But you want to make sure when you purchase that this is a hands down easy switch for women, women to make, uh, there’s no way you want to put this plastic nasty hormone disrupting thing inside of you, right?

Warren Phillips: That’s in the, one of the most highly absorbable areas in your body. Like if you want to get something into you quick, it’s like a suppository, right? When you put it in your, your bum, right? It’s very similar. There’s so much blood flow. It’s so, uh, just so rich with cellular everything. And it’s going to absorb so quickly and make it throughout your body.

Warren Phillips: It’s just a place that you want to keep. safe, right? This isn’t like breathing a little bit of toxins. This is direct connection to your body, to your blood that’s gonna absorb right in you. This is worse than putting a toxic cream with a little bit of, you know, uh, You know, XYZ toxin, um, in your face cream, let’s name one, like ethyl benzene or, uh, you know, ethyl benzyl, blah, blah, blah, right?

Warren Phillips: The things you can’t pronounce, right? That’s going into your, it’s your, it’s your first skin. Everything you put on your skin, it’s your largest organ, it’s just same as eating it, sometimes worse. Right? Sometimes worse. So get rid of that stuff and then just use 100 percent cotton, everything. And if it doesn’t say 100 percent cotton, and then if you don’t check and it says the cotton core, you really got to watch that because when you go to like Walmart, they’ll have the 100 percent organic cotton, but it’s just the core.

Warren Phillips: So don’t be fooled on that. Now, underwear for men. Um, this is a crazy kind of conspiracy story, but it’s real. They did a study on men, Um, because they wanted to control population and have some way to control, because this was in the nineties, we’re worried about overpopulation. I guess it’s still a thing, right?

Warren Phillips: That people really are worried about. And they wanted to, they did this study. How can we get men to become infertile? It’s easy with women. We got the pill and you know, all these other methods, but we have nothing for men besides a vasectomy. Right? So they did a study with polyester underwear slings and they put them on these men.

Warren Phillips: And 100 percent of them became infertile. And what they found, it wasn’t just, and this gets into like kind of energy medicine, it was not just the heat. It’s this electrostatic charge of this synthetic material that changed something in the, the transport of testosterone and, uh, your hormones and it, it offed something down there.

Warren Phillips: I don’t know, they don’t really know, but it’s some electrostatic charge that was created that made them infertile as well. Now, fast forward to more science, polyester underwear, so it’s not just the heat, we know about heating up your boys and causing infertility. There’s this electrostatic charge, when they took the underwear off, same thing happened.

Warren Phillips: They repeated this study later, um, on dogs, and female dogs, and male dogs, same response. And they tested cotton underwear versus polyester, 100 percent infertile in the, in the male dogs and female dogs, and then cotton. no infertility challenges. So just changing the fabric on a dog from a natural material to a plastic synthetic, something that doesn’t belong on your body material.

Warren Phillips: Changed the fertility of the dogs 100 percent of the time, same thing happened in that male sling study, right? And I’ll tell you, it was hard to find that sling study. I could not find it. I had to hire someone to go and, and print it off. Because it was, it literally said for population control. No one wants to, to hear that.

Warren Phillips: Someone would run off and, you know, and, and take that in a, in a big direction, right? I’m not. I just think they’re honestly doing the study. Um, are they trying to depopulate the world? Um, I don’t focus on those things. I try to focus on helping people. So that’s how powerful a switch in synthetic clothing to natural.

Warren Phillips: So what else is wearing a synthetic shirt doing? Because you’re getting electrostatic charge. Um, you’re putting a different energy frequency into your body. And there’s people that study this stuff and say, these synthetics are robbing us of energy, of our frequency. There’s all this new science coming out.

Warren Phillips: And quantum is. It’s definitely, uh, of getting some more science and, uh, um, growth. Um, in, especially in the last couple of years, as consciousness is rising up, um, there’s, there’s a big movement happening. You know, there’s, there’s things going on. So I’m getting off, uh, Um, females and males, if you want to, this is a big switch, especially if you have infertility issues, um, hormone disruption, just change your underwear, right?

Warren Phillips: There’s great brands out there now that are a hundred percent cotton. If you get bamboo, you want to get lyocell, um, bamboo because they’re more environmentally uh, non toxic. Um, organic lyocell is really what you want, right Emma? Lyocell? Yeah, lyocell. Emma’s, Emma’s just fact checking me over here, I’m a fact checker.

Warren Phillips: So bamboo is okay. 100 percent organic cotton is great. There’s a guy’s brand called nads. Uh, they sent me some free underwear. They have a little bit of spandex in them. Um, you know, uh, you really can’t get away with that, but it’s mostly in the band. So there’s, there’s lots of brands out there that are fighting for this, using this new information and bringing solutions, man, that was a little longer than I wanted to go, so let’s move

Dr Pedram Shojai: No, that’s fine. That’s fine. Uh, appreciate that. Um, if you can share the studies, that’d be great. I’ll put them in the show notes for the

Warren Phillips: Oh, absolutely. Like I can, the one’s a PDF. Like there’s no link to it. I literally had to have it scanned. Um,

Dr Pedram Shojai: that’s fine. We’ll just put a link to the PDF. I just want my folks to be able to dig. Um, cause you, you brought something up that I think is really important to talk about. Um, and I’m really happy that the world is, is, is kind of turning over. You mentioned all the studies that are happening in the realm of quantum now, where, you know, it used to be just like bullshit, right?

Dr Pedram Shojai: It’s like,

Warren Phillips: yeah, I mean, I, I thought it was right. I mean, it was all the, I always, my new saying is the, the woo woo was true. True. Right. And, uh, it’s, it’s humbled me and it’s really humbled me.

Dr Pedram Shojai: Well, and the thing is the woo has been true for thousands of years, but it’s also where you can make.

Warren Phillips: can make unsubstantiated claim

Dr Pedram Shojai: claims and in the realm of belief, people just believe you. Right. And so it happens in all the religions. It happens in the woo medicine. Um, but it also happens in, in fake science where you just falsify your data and call it science and people believe it, right?

Dr Pedram Shojai: And so

Warren Phillips: talk

Dr Pedram Shojai: is up for grabs. And so I like to put the studies and let people discern for themselves. But the, the woo to your point. Is, you know, like for me, I used to always say, look, if someone’s talking about quantum physics and they don’t have an advanced math degree, walk away. Right? Because quantum physics is very complicated.

Dr Pedram Shojai: And, you know, these guys, you know, selling crystals, talking about quantum physics, most of them are full shit. So, you know, there’s just, you have to be a discerning consumer out there, but now there’s all sorts of really interesting science coming out on quantum physics. And it’s like, huh, yeah. Would you look at that?

Dr Pedram Shojai: Right. And so, you know, it’s just, it’s an

Warren Phillips: see the quantum entanglement is a yin yang? Did you see that? Like, you probably knew that, um, because of this is, this is your area of expertise. But that blew my mind.

Warren Phillips: Like, how can that be coincidence? I think, uh, Who was talking about that? Um, you know, one of the big podcasts, um, was talking about it and it just, I’m just like, Oh my gosh, like, are

Dr Pedram Shojai: well, this

Warren Phillips: me? Like

Dr Pedram Shojai: this is tangential, but this is something that I will stand by all the time is we’ve had millions of very, very intelligent people who have dedicated their lives for thousands of years to turning their attention inward and reporting the, the states of consciousness and awareness and the observations that they’ve made by

Warren Phillips: understanding the

Dr Pedram Shojai: understanding.

Dr Pedram Shojai: the states of consciousness and awareness internally, and then reporting back and then collaborating and corroborating on their shared experiences. So there is an incredibly potent body of work and research that’s been happening in monasteries around the world. And so when, when thousands and thousands of Taoist masters So, yeah, the essence of reality is, you know, this dynamic dance between yin and yang.

Dr Pedram Shojai: You can’t poo poo that, and now quantum entanglement is showing the same thing. Great. Right? It doesn’t mean don’t meditate until it’s all proven, it just means be discerning.

Warren Phillips: I mean, what you, you, uh, found me on the back end of doing some breath work, um, some really deep breath work for the first time where I let myself go and, um, really just unblock some of my, uh, my blocks, some of my belief structures that we’re holding back, just a breathing, like a tool, uh, an ancient tool that is highly effective.

Warren Phillips: That’s been ousted, uh, out of, uh, out of America, right. For the most part, and the, the energy that comes out of me. The bad energy that flows out of me into the earth, I like to do it out in nature and just off gassing that stuff. I’ve gone, and this is another intimate moment that I’ll share, I, I was in a place of anxiety.

Warren Phillips: One session of breath work, and I don’t know if this is, it’s like one of those things, here’s a testimony. You know, this is not going to be like this for everybody else. One session of breath work, anxiety never came back. Like I was literally trying to fish and on a trip and trying to enjoy it and I was having all these crazy thoughts I mean, do I need to detox?

Warren Phillips: Do I need to go on a round of Saito and get some of these heavy metals out? What do I need to do? What’s wrong with me? You know, and my buddy, you know said hey Let’s let’s do some breath work set me up next to the stream where the stream is running. So you’re getting all kinds of Ions that are moving through the rocks and it’s called the hyporheic zone, I think, and where the water moves underneath the ground, um, next to a stream.

Warren Phillips: Remember my old chemistry background, the hyporheic zone. Sonya Nigley, she did some study on that. Throw some, throw one out to a PhD that I used to work with. Um, and when I did that, I, I connected to God. I felt his love. I felt the connection to nature. Um, I got wisdom, you know, from whether it was from God or from my unconscious mind and things that I’ve read.

Warren Phillips: I’m not, I’m not pushing any agenda, but the experience was, incredible and it made me a better father. Um, I had downloads of information. I cried like, holy cow, what a release. Um, and depression, anxiety gone, right? One session of breathwork, a tool that’s been used for millennia that I just finally got access to in the last couple years.

Warren Phillips: How sad is that? Right? How sad is that? And we’ve shared this with numerous friends because they trust us. You know, and I’m very careful with what I share and friends that are going through divorces and, and other friends that are dealing with, uh, anxiety disorders, almost complete, well, in the moment, complete healing just by doing some deep breath work through your mouth.

Warren Phillips: How cool is that? And Pedram is like, oh yeah, yeah, you got to do that stuff to survive Warren. I’m surprised you haven’t done it. You know, so this is why your work is, is so dramatically marrying the work that I’m doing. It’s because you got to have this emotional detox. And, you know, in the past we would send you to a therapist as, with, with doctors, you need to go to a therapist.

Warren Phillips: You need to get some root cause, know, uh, what, what’s triggering you, what, what happened to you? What’s your trauma? Like all this stuff. But what’s amazing, I believe, and, and I want to ask you this question, can I release through breath work, can I release trauma from my childhood? Yeah,

Dr Pedram Shojai: can. Trauma informed therapy. I mean, breath work is one of the most profound internal technologies that has been with us for thousands of years. And this is, you know, I, we never talked about this publicly. I think it’s worth doing here for a minute is

Warren Phillips: I never talk about this stuff

Dr Pedram Shojai: No, no, so

Warren Phillips: right? It’s, it’s, it’s real. Like I’m being vulnerable by sharing that. Like. You know, it’s hard, right? Cause this isn’t, this isn’t non toxic dad is everyday, you know, systems, his protective systems that he’s created in his life to make himself feel safe.

Warren Phillips: Cause that’s what we all want. We want to feel

Dr Pedram Shojai: mm hmm. Well, I just I’m gonna I’m gonna bring this out because I also you’re you’re a good Christian You’re you’re a church going Christian guy And it’s one of my things that I actually, you know Admire the most about you is that you are a true good Christian dad and you help a lot of people and you’re what I know Jesus would have wanted Right.

Dr Pedram Shojai: And I’ve watched you over the years, surround yourself with fake Christians, people who pretend to be Christian that judge each other and cast stones and, and are not behaving in the way a good Christian would, but, you know, go to the churches and do the thing. And one of the issues with, um, kind of fake Christianity is, you know, it’s, uh, it’s a business.

Dr Pedram Shojai: And there’s also a lot of judgment. It’s like, where are you talking about? Energy and breath work. That’s the devil, right? So here I am a knighted hospitality night. I’ve studied with the best of the best in Christianity, Judaism, Sufi, all of it. And I’m a student of the arts. And people are like saying, well, that’s, you know, that there’s the devil, right?

Dr Pedram Shojai: But they’re ripping each other off and calling themselves good Christians all the time. And so let’s call it spade a spade, right? There’s a lot of judgment. and stone throwing in the religious circles that make a good Christian say, well, you can’t do breath work. Uh, Jesus went and did breast breath work all around Asia

Warren Phillips: usurped

Dr Pedram Shojai: suddenly you can’t do breath work.

Dr Pedram Shojai: That’s the middleman getting involved, right? So I just think that these organizations have been usurped by people with agendas. And Jesus would want you to feel better, pure and simple. And Jesus loves you. Right? And so Warren, I’ve seen you tiptoe around this stuff because you’re afraid of being judged by fellow Christians.

Dr Pedram Shojai: And now you’re just.

Warren Phillips: I, yeah, I, I want to be careful, right? Because I’ve also seen other people lose, uh, family over going too far into the woo woo, right? And that becomes their new, uh, God and new consciousness, right? And it, it can shift you. So my, my family is everything to me.

Warren Phillips: Like one thing I do, uh, brag about, you know, it’s not always going to be having perfect health or doing everything perfectly or having the perfect business or, you know, being the perfect leader. But, um, the fruit of my family is something that I hold so dear and every decision I make affects that, right?

Warren Phillips: Who I hang out with, what events I go to, what I listen to. What music I listened to, what podcast I listened to, everything influences and program to you. So what do you want to program yourself with? Right. This is what I hope. Uh, you and I can bring to the table is like, we’re very careful, right? Um, you know, I, I don’t want to bring fear.

Warren Phillips: I don’t want to bring that stuff because fear can hold you back from doing the right things. And yeah, a lot of that was trauma that I had to work through. And, you know, everyone’s my favorite saying, everyone’s thinking human, right? I think people start with good intentions, all of us, but things get off, right?

Warren Phillips: Every, every type of faith and church, it turns into some level of business and you get rewards, uh, in your psychology for having that church and it’s stressful and you’re dealing with people. And one of my good friends, not a good friend, but a friend and acquaintance, um, was under that pressure and wound up cheating on his, his wife.

Warren Phillips: And he’s one of the largest churches in the world. Right? And, you know, so there’s, and now he’s taking that for good, right? He’s sharing that story. So no matter what faith you’re in, um, you know, I think there is this consciousness that’s happening, and I think people are waking up to a lot of this stuff.

Warren Phillips: But we want to be safe, right? And we create safety. And I think the church, uh, Christians and otherwise, creates a lot of safety. I’m here in, um, LDS land, right? And there’s a lot of safety inside of those inside of those walls, and they’re beautiful people, right? Um, outside looking in, it’s just definitely not for me, but it’s creating this safety.

Warren Phillips: And for me, it was, it’s the same thing, Pedram. I think what’s hard is, okay, If I only reads this stuff, do this stuff and do what everyone tells me to do, whether it’s a medical doctor, whether it’s my pastor, and you believe everything they say is true, I don’t think they would want you to believe that.

Warren Phillips: Some medical doctors will, maybe some pastors would, even a priest, but there’s good people out there that want you to question. And I think we need to question as, as humans, we need to question the medical doctor, stand up for, for what we feel. Let’s talk quantum. Let’s talk what God’s talking to you, mom.

Warren Phillips: Right? Let’s talk energy that’s that’s in your heart that you’re coming from this your heart’s more than just a muscle, right? It is it has it if it feels it has it’s getting spoken to by energy That’s why we don’t like EMF and all this stuff. We have to listen to our heart. We have to listen to our gut We have to listen to our unconscious Well, I guess it’s our unconscious mind or your, your, your third mind or what your spirituality and listen and not just trust everything that’s being thrown at you by these experts, whether it’s me, Pedram or anyone else, you really have to, to grow.

Warren Phillips: You have to take steps forward. You can’t stay in your bubble forever, right? Because that bubble is going to burst. You have to grow. You have to take risk. It’s easy for me to say as a, as an athlete, that’s how I grew is self discipline and pushing it and, and being wrong all the time and trying to refine and get better.

Warren Phillips: Not everyone has that personality. That’s why I’m doing what I’m doing because I’m not afraid to jump in, but when it came comes to your faith, dangerous waters, right? You can get off track, but you can’t believe everything that’s being told to you because it was told to them by someone else, right? So can you be brave enough to listen to a Pedram, right?

Warren Phillips: Who may think differently than you, or a warrant about toxins who may think different than you. Can you, you take that information, let it settle inside of you, and see if you can make a decision based on that. It took me no, no lie, it probably took me three years to try breathwork. Three years. That’s how careful I was.

Warren Phillips: And it changed my life. Right for the better and my wife’s and our relationship and my children see a difference in me Right all those things because I was scared but it took me time non toxic dad all american javelin thrower You know someone who’s not afraid to take risks entrepreneur if it took me that long How can I judge you for not trying something?

Warren Phillips: I can’t we all have our own journeys our own paths, but be brave enough To try something new in your diet toxic removal breath work You know, and watch your life change. I promise you it will.

Dr Pedram Shojai: I want to, I want to speak to that plunge right there because I think that that’s where a lot of people go awry. Trying breath work is an incremental step to seeing where you’re going. Maybe your beliefs were a little stifled and maybe this can help you and worn out an experience of that. But a lot of people, when they break the rigid framework, whether it’s a religious belief or a medical, you know, gestalt that they’ve bought into, then are suddenly, you know, On a different side of the spectrum.

Dr Pedram Shojai: It’s like nobody said, try breathwork and then join a polygamy cult. Nobody said, try CoQ10 and then ayahuasca the same weekend, right? Like people just break the dam and then end up saying, well, now I have no foundation and I can’t think for myself. So now I’m like all woo. Or I’ve left my religion or, you know, now I’m going to, you know, now it’s all coffee enemas because, you know, I, I now believe something different.

Dr Pedram Shojai: And so, you know, don’t lose your critical capacity to think and discern just by incrementally improving yourself. Right. And I think that’s where, and this is a completely different context, we could do a different show on it, is when you start breaking the lines of your belief systems, whether it’s

Warren Phillips: help

Dr Pedram Shojai: In personal development or religion, um, there has to be a stop, right?

Dr Pedram Shojai: There can’t just be like, okay, well, I’m no longer, I questioned my Christianity. So now I’m a, I’m a pagan. Like, you don’t got to go there, man. You could just be an open minded Christian. You can be listening to your medical doctor and not. Putting poisonous tampons in your body, right? And so there is this really squishy middle ground of just making better decisions.

Dr Pedram Shojai: That doesn’t mean giving up who you are. And I’ve seen so many people just flip flop and lose themselves in that. And it’s just this weird American psychology thing that we can dissect with experts that know about this better than you and I probably do. Right. Um, but I think you and I have both seen it in our worlds.

Warren Phillips: it in our works. Know that you as a person is brilliant, that you have a beautiful mind, a beautiful heart and soul, and know that about yourself.

Warren Phillips: This is where positive self talk would come in, right? If you don’t have positivity, I mean, if you have hormone dysregulation, it’s hard to have positive outlook, but if you know that you’re brilliant, if you know that you’re kind, um, and you really speak to really who you are as a person and, and, and embrace that, it’s a lot harder to be manipulated or to go off the deep end, because you don’t have to.

Warren Phillips: Right? When you kind of know who you are, you’re starting to take self responsibility. You know what? My marriage sucks right now because of me. I’m working too much, right? I’ve had to do that, right? I’m not being a good dad right now. It’s because I’m too focused on other things and I’m, I’m masking, you know, my own pain.

Warren Phillips: Um, you know, by working all the time, you know, all the things that I had to do, right? And learning how to be present. Right? I, you know, just all these little, these little nuggets, but you have to believe in yourself. You have to take some self responsibility, and that takes time, and that takes risk, and I know it can be hard.

Warren Phillips: But I always just tell people, just trust that you’re a, an amazing human. Trust that God loves you. And that’s, not everyone believes God loves them, right? How horrible is that? Right? That is foundational for me. No matter what I do or where I go, I feel that presence. I, I don’t know about everybody else, but it’s, it’s the most powerful energy that I can feel on a day to day basis without it.

Warren Phillips: Um, when I’m, when I’m physically bankrupt, when, you know, life is tough and things are hard and not going my way, like, I have rats in my garden now, not just squirrels, not just the apocalypse of grasshoppers coming through and, you know, I know some people this year gave up on their gardens in Utah because of all these things.

Warren Phillips: I didn’t give up, you know, but it’s like, what else could go wrong, right? I have, you know, all these things like, and these little things add up, right? I’m not being silly, like it, you know, all these hard things. But above all of it, above all of it, there’s this love, right? That energizes me. That gets me on this call even though I wasn’t doing that great today.

Warren Phillips: That pushes me forward that says, you got a, you got a mission here. You got a, you got a purpose. You’re loved. You’re a great dad. You’re getting better. Look at this opportunity you have with a good soul like Dr. Shojai to impact and talk to lives. Let’s go. Let’s get this done today. And I feel that energy.

Warren Phillips: I feel that, that, that. That love, that encouragement, it’s like the best dad on the planet, you know, that’s safe. And that’s the very thing that gets me through, and helps me make better decisions on a daily basis, and keeps me sane and alive, to be honest with you. So that’s, that’s my superpower that I tap into, and I think a lot of different people tap into that different ways.

Warren Phillips: I’m not saying my way is the perfect way by any means. But it’s, it’s my truth and it, it’s the fuel and it’s, it’s proven itself true over and over again, no matter what trial or tribulation has come my way. Um, it’s always made me better on the other side.

Dr Pedram Shojai: polyester underwear.

Warren Phillips: I am not wearing polyester underwear. I’m all organic. I even switched to organic jeans. These are organic jeans now. So I’m, I’m getting like super crunch, you know, I’m, I’m, I’m getting rid of it all and just, you know, going all cotton, simplifying my wardrobe, just. You know, just making things easier. It’s not like I’m complicating it by getting rid of synthetic fab fabrics.

Warren Phillips: I’m actually making my choices very narrow and making my life simple. I don’t have to, I just wear the same pack t shirt, you know, almost every day now, and I don’t care, you know, I hope you still think I’m sexy everybody, but I don’t, I

Dr Pedram Shojai: they’re going to tell you when you smell anyway, so

Warren Phillips: they will. Yeah. My kids tell me when

Dr Pedram Shojai: tell you. So I’m going to, sum this up just because we’re out of time and I love talking to you. Um, Whether it’s your connection to God, whatever that is to you, or to the web of life, that is nature, that grounds you, connects you, and puts you back into that place of flow.

Dr Pedram Shojai: Environmental toxins have proven time and time again to intercept our ability to commune with the Earth. microbiome of the natural environment. They disrupt our microbiome, which is our connection to nature and all of life. And they also break our ability to produce energy so that our lights can be on and we can live our lives fully. So stop poisoning yourself is something that I think we can both say with conviction and create an operating system in your day to day life that just weeds this crap out of your life garden and creates an environment that is more and more natural and less and less disruptive to the flow of your biology.

Dr Pedram Shojai: Would you agree with that statement?

Warren Phillips: I wish I could say things as simply as you, but yes, that’s beautiful. It’s really well said. And I a hundred percent agree. Like here’s the Warren version of that, the non toxic dad, none of those, nothing synthetic in your, in your body, um, coming in, whether it’s meds, plastics, your body doesn’t recognize it.

Warren Phillips: It’s foreign to your body. It doesn’t help you. It only hurts you. So get rid of the things that aren’t part of your God given biology that work with your biology that are actually working against it and see your life transform. Lean into what your body actually can use for energy, for health, for life.

Warren Phillips: What were you designed to interact with, with community, which has been disrupted, even worse, let’s, I mean, that’s a whole nother topic, like we’re so disconnected from community, um, and all the things that we need to be healthy and happy have been provided for us, you know, to quote a scripture, if God’s going to take care of the birds of the air, how much more is he going to take care of you?

Warren Phillips: I know that sounds kind of elitist, but, um, I don’t believe it’s true. I believe it’s on the same plane. Right? Someone who can read, right? It’s just saying that everything is taken care of, and you’re going to be taken care of too, you know, um, and folks that live in nature, we’ve, I’ve been to Africa, uh, folks living in nature, and they’re, they’re healthy, they’re happy, you know, um, and they’re living off of nature.

Warren Phillips: Now there’s extremes and there’s poverty in the cities, but in the woods, these, these native tribes, of course they have their trials and tribulations. But man, the difference, the straight teeth, the energy, it’s that you can teach them English in a setting. That’s how fast their brains work. The level of brilliance is, is extraordinary because they’re connected and live in harmony with nature.

Dr Pedram Shojai: Love it. So Warren, I’m going to, once I get the show notes, I’m going to ask you or your team for some of the studies that we referenced because I really encourage my listeners to dig in, look at the stuff. learn to think for yourself, learn to be discerning so that you’re not just told how to think, but you learn how to think and then you think for yourself.

Dr Pedram Shojai: Um, also I invite anyone listening to this to check out homesickhome. com. It’s a series that, um, I partnered with Warren, uh, to produce all about the crap in your home that you probably weren’t thinking about that could be Um, making you sick, go to homesickhome. com, uh, there’ll be a free screening, uh, link for you there.

Dr Pedram Shojai: We produced it. We spent a lot of time doing it and it’s free for you to watch. And if you need more help than you get more help, but get the information in your life so that you know how to think about the things coming in, impacting your first skin and your second skin, which is your home. Warren, how can people find you?

Warren Phillips: people find you? Um, non toxic dad all over social media, non toxic dad, non toxic dad dot com. Um, you know, and I myself or someone on my team will get back to you. We’re very responsive. I tell my team, these are other humans that need help on the other side and they need to be cared for and they need to be loved and not judged and met where they’re at.

Warren Phillips: So no matter where you’re at, whatever question you have, we and myself will do The best we can to serve you and to help you because, uh, you know, I’m turning 50 this year, and I’m really set on having an impact on you and helping you move forward and making some of these decisions together and not giving up.

Warren Phillips: Right. But pressing forward together and being encouraged because we all need it. And I hope I can be that some of that voice for you. So that’s how you find me. Love

Dr Pedram Shojai: it. Warren Phillips, personal hero of mine. Thank you for being here. I’m looking forward to seeing you again.

Warren Phillips: God bless, guys. Bye bye.

Hope you enjoyed that podcast as much as I did. Warren’s a great guy. He’s a good family, man. He’s working for you in your family. He’s out there doing what it takes to help get this message out because he was so sick. And. If he could help you avoid. Having the painful exposure that he had, uh, is part of his mission. So check out his work at the non-toxic dad. If you haven’t seen the series home, sick home.com. It’s great. Um, I produced it myself. I can testify to the fact that, you know, it blew my mind and I learned things years of being in this industry. I learned things I did not know, and I do things differently after watching that series, homesick home.com. So you in the next episode

learn more

Get access to the Urban Monk weekly Newsletter for free

Sorry. This form is no longer accepting new submissions.

Get started on your wellness journey today!

Get expert guidance from Dr. Pedram Shojai and connect with a supportive community

Trending Now

you may also like

Physical Signs You’re Emotionally Overwhelmed

The health industry in the Western world is one of the strongest profit machines ever invented. Thanks to Nixon’s 1973 Health Maintenance Organization act, doctors, health insurance companies, clinics, and hospitals could begin to function for profit… And the diagnosis game was never the same.  Privatizing pharmaceuticals meant that emphasis

Dr. Perry Cammisa Whole Body Vibrations Podcast Blog

Our metabolic systems are fast learners. Sometimes, they catch up to what we’re doing so quickly, we start to see plateaus in our workout goals. Your metabolism doesn’t want you to lose weight – it wants to conserve your energy and live the lifestyle it’s become accustomed to. So we have

Is Low Energy Really Just a Pitfall of Advancing Years?

At a certain point in the Western world, it can feel like your doctor has given up on finding solutions for the creaks and strains your body experiences with growing frequency as you age. Have you ever heard your doctor say, “Ah, yes, that’ll be happening more now that you’re

Dr. Pedram Shojai

NY Times Best Selling author and film maker. Taoist Abbot and Qigong master. Husband and dad. I’m here to help you find your way and be healthy and happy. I don’t want to be your guru…just someone who’ll help point the way. If you’re looking for a real person who’s done the work, I’m your guy. I can light the path and walk along it with you but can’t walk for you.