As featured on Healthy Rebel Speaks Out with Dr. Kelly McCann

You wake up, take a shower, slather on your favorite moisturizer, grab your coffee in that convenient to-go cup, and head out the door. By 8 AM, you’ve already been exposed to hundreds of chemicals that didn’t exist when your grandmother was your age.

And here’s the kicker: these invisible invaders might be the real reason you’re struggling with weight, autoimmune issues, hormonal chaos, and that persistent brain fog that makes you feel like you’re losing your edge.

If you’ve been doing everything “right”—eating organic, exercising religiously, taking your supplements—but still feel like your body is working against you, this isn’t about willpower. It’s about toxic load.

The Sink Analogy That Changes Everything

Dr. Kelly McCann, a leading expert in environmental medicine and founder of the Spring Center, shared with me a powerful analogy that explains why some people seem immune to health problems while others struggle despite their best efforts.

Think of your body as a sink. Some lucky souls are born with enormous sinks and huge drains—they can party like rock stars and die peacefully in their sleep at 90. But most of us? We have shallow sinks with narrow drains.

When you reach the top of your sink and can’t detox fast enough to get the toxins out through your “drain,” that’s when the overflow happens. That’s when the symptoms show up—the autoimmune flares, the stubborn weight gain, the hormonal disruption, the chronic fatigue.

And here’s what’s truly alarming: our sinks are overflowing faster than ever.

The Explosion of Environmental Chemicals

When Dr. McCann first started practicing environmental medicine, experts talked about 85,000 chemicals in our environment. Today? We’re dealing with hundreds of thousands of chemicals that we’re exposed to daily.

“The patients who show up in my practice are sicker, they’ve been sick for longer, they have more symptoms,” Dr. McCann told me. “Fifteen years ago, people would come in with some irritable bowel symptoms, and we’d put them on an elimination diet, remove gluten, give them gut-healing supplements, and they’d be good. These days, people come in so much sicker—even young children—and it takes so much longer to heal.”

As a registered dietitian nutritionist in Sarasota, I’m seeing the exact same pattern. The clients who walk into my practice today aren’t just dealing with “I need to lose 10 pounds.” They’re battling multiple systems gone haywire—digestive issues, hormonal imbalances, autoimmune conditions, and neurological symptoms that seem to have appeared out of nowhere.

Your Day in the Life of Toxic Exposure

Let me walk you through a typical morning and show you where these invisible threats are lurking:

6:30 AM – The Bedroom: You wake up on a mattress that’s legally required to contain flame retardants—chemicals so toxic they’re linked to hormonal disruption and neurological problems. You’ve spent 8 hours with your face pressed against these toxins.

6:45 AM – The Shower: That hot water releases chlorine and disinfection byproducts—compounds linked to bladder cancer. The steam carries these chemicals directly into your lungs.

7:00 AM – Getting Ready: Between your shampoo, conditioner, moisturizer, makeup, and fragrance, you’ve just applied 12-15 personal care products loaded with phthalates, parabens, and hormone disruptors. Your skin, your largest organ, absorbs them all.

7:30 AM – Coffee Run: That innocent paper coffee cup? It’s lined with bisphenols—hormone disruptors that leach into your hot beverage. The plastic lid adds microplastics to the mix. And that receipt? Coated with more bisphenols that absorb through your skin.

8:00 AM – You’re Not Even at Work Yet: And your toxic load is already accumulating.

This isn’t fear-mongering—it’s reality. And it explains why traditional approaches to health and weight loss programs in Sarasota often fall short. We’re not just dealing with calories in, calories out anymore.

The Autoimmune Connection That Changes Everything

Here’s where this gets really personal for many of my clients dealing with autoimmune conditions, especially those seeking nutrition for menopause in Sarasota.

These environmental toxins trigger autoimmune responses through two main mechanisms:

1. Molecular Mimicry: Some chemicals look so similar to your body’s tissues that your immune system gets confused. It sees the toxin-tissue complex as foreign and attacks—but your healthy tissue gets caught in the crossfire.
2. Toxic Attachment: Heavy metals like mercury love to attach to your thyroid. When your immune system encounters this toxin-tissue complex, it treats the whole thing as a threat and begins attacking your thyroid tissue.

This explains the explosion of Hashimoto’s, inflammatory bowel disease, and other autoimmune conditions we’re seeing, especially in women navigating hormonal changes.

The Diabetes Deception

Let’s talk about something that might blow your mind: sugar isn’t making America diabetic.

In Dr. McCann’s textbook on environmental medicine, there’s a revealing chart that plots sugar consumption against chemical release and diabetes rates. While sugar consumption has been gradually increasing since the 1970s, the diabetes epidemic didn’t explode until environmental toxicants—obesogens—started flooding our environment.

We’re talking about flame retardants, arsenic, fat-soluble toxins like PCBs, and older pesticides. Many of these chemicals were actually banned in the 1970s, but they’re persistent—they don’t break down. They’re still in our environment, and now they’re joined by hundreds of thousands of new chemical compounds.

As someone who provides diabetes management programs in Sarasota, I see this connection daily. Clients who can’t lose weight despite perfect adherence to traditional diabetic diets often see dramatic improvements once we address their toxic load alongside their nutrition.

The Fertility and Hormone Crisis

For women seeking menopause nutritionist services in Sarasota, this toxic load issue becomes especially critical. These environmental chemicals are endocrine disruptors—they interfere with your hormonal symphony.

Dr. McCann shared a powerful example: a 40-year-old patient trying to conceive had normal glyphosate levels while living in LA. After relocating to Colorado, her levels went off the charts, and her first question was about her diet. Dr. McCann’s first question? “Do you have dogs?”

The glyphosate was coming from neighborhood lawn treatments, tracked in on her pets’ paws. This is how pervasive these exposures have become.

The Mast Cell Connection

One of the most alarming trends Dr. McCann is seeing is the increase in mast cell activation syndrome—affecting 17-20% or more of the population.

Mast cells are part of your immune system, designed to identify threats and sound the alarm. But in an increasingly toxic world, these cells start perceiving threats everywhere—in the air you breathe, the healthy food you eat, even in safe environments.

If you’re experiencing multiple symptoms across multiple body systems—GI issues, skin problems, brain fog, anxiety, hormonal disruption—this might be what you’re dealing with. As a licensed nutrition counselor in Sarasota, I’m seeing this pattern more frequently, especially in highly accomplished women who can’t understand why their bodies seem to be rebelling.

Your Action Plan: Fighting Back Against Toxic Overload

Here’s the empowering truth: you have more control than you think. Nobody’s going to take care of you and your family like you will. Not the government, not even well-meaning healthcare practitioners who lack training in environmental medicine.

Phase 1: Stop the Inflow

Food and Water:

• Choose organic when possible—it dramatically reduces pesticide exposure within days
• Ditch the non-stick cookware (those “forever chemicals” never leave your body)
• Stop drinking from plastic bottles, especially ones with screw tops
• Avoid heating food in plastic containers
• Install a reverse osmosis filter under your kitchen sink (more cost-effective than buying bottled water)

Personal Care:

• Throw out those Glade plug-ins and artificial fragrances immediately
• Choose fragrance-free personal care products
• Look for “clean” makeup and skincare lines

Home Environment:

• Remove shoes at the door
• Vacuum and dust regularly (dust contains concentrated toxins)
• Invest in a quality air filter
• Consider an organic mattress without flame retardants

Phase 2: Support Your Body’s Natural Detox

This isn’t about crazy cleanses or parasite protocols. Your body has sophisticated detox systems—we just need to support them:

Movement and Sweating:

• Regular exercise moves your lymphatic system
• Infrared sauna therapy helps eliminate toxins through skin (different from exercise sweat)
• Aim for daily movement and regular sweating

Nutritional Support:

• Green leafy vegetables increase toxin excretion
• Cruciferous vegetables upregulate liver detox enzymes
• Colorful fruits and vegetables provide antioxidant protection

Targeted Supplements:

• Vitamin C and D for immune support
• N-acetylcysteine (NAC) as a glutathione precursor
• Liposomal glutathione for cellular protection
• Phosphatidylcholine for cellular repair and toxin removal

The Bottom Line: You’re Not Broken

If you’ve been struggling with unexplained symptoms, stubborn weight gain, or chronic health issues despite doing everything “right,” you’re not broken. You’ve been swimming upstream against an unprecedented toxic load.

This isn’t about perfection—nobody’s getting to zero toxic exposure. It’s about reducing your burden enough that your shallow sink stops overflowing.

As someone who provides one-on-one nutrition coaching in Sarasota, I see the transformation that happens when we address toxic load alongside traditional nutrition interventions. Suddenly, that stubborn weight starts moving. The brain fog lifts. The autoimmune flares calm down. The hormonal chaos settles.

Your body wants to heal. Sometimes it just needs you to stop poisoning it first.

Ready to start reducing your toxic load while optimizing your nutrition? Contact me to discuss how we can create a personalized plan that addresses both your toxic burden and your unique health goals.

Want to hear the full conversation with Dr. Kelly McCann? Watch the complete Healthy Rebel Speaks Out episode here. For more information about environmental medicine and testing, visit Dr. McCann’s website.

Bonni London, MS, RDN, LDN, is a registered dietitian nutritionist and founder of London Wellness in Sarasota, Florida. She specializes in helping accomplished women overcome the frustration of doing everything “right” but still struggling with weight, fatigue, and health issues.