" Is Your Candle Causing Heart Disease? Vascular Surgeon Reacts to ‪@joerogan‬"

Chronic limb. What's that word? Ischemia. Ischemia. What's that mean? What does ischemia mean? That can't be good. Sounds terrible. What is ischemia? What is ischemia? Huh? Are your air fresheners causing your cardiovascular disease? So I just was sent this clip of an episode of the Joe Rogan podcast with Dr. Shana Swan, PhD. She's an epidemiologist and she is talking all about microplastics, forever chemicals like phthalates and all of the scented products that we have in our everyday life. And the discussion ends up at one of ischemia and cardiovascular disease. So I wanted to walk through this with you guys and talk a little bit about what's true, what we know, and what we don't because it's a great conversation and it's something that all of us are dealing with in our everyday lives. So without further ado, here is the Joe Rogan experience and Dr. Shana Swan. Yeah. I've heard another thing that's really bad for you is incense. Probably varies with the, you know, what's in it. I wouldn't blanket all incense. I don't, I haven't studied that. Well, let's put that into perplexity. Cause I know candles are bad for you. Scented candles in particular, right? Yes. Yes. There's their aroma again. See, see one of the things that phthalates do is they cause something to hold scent, retain scent. So they're put into perfume and they're put into makeup and they're put into, you know, the things you put on your wall. And so, you know, you, you want something to smell for a long time. You're going to use phthalates. It says burning incense products, smoke and chemicals that can irritate your lungs, worsen asthma and allergies and with heavy longterm use in poorly ventilated spaces may increase risk for heart disease and some cancers. You know, you think incense, you go over someone's house, they do yoga, they eat vegan, they burn incense. They must be healthy. Right. Long-term health risks, repeated long-term exposure daily for years, been associated in studies with increased risk of bronchitis, reduced lung function in children and chronic respiratory symptoms in workers heavily exposed to temple incense. God. Epidemiological studies, mostly in Asian populations with heavy daily use have linked long-term incense exposure to higher rates of cardiovascular problems, hypertension, coronary artery disease, stroke, chronic limb. What's that word? Ischemia. Ischemia. What's that mean? What does ischemia mean? That can't be good. It sounds terrible. What is ischemia? What is ischemia? Huh? A lack of blood flow to part of a body, usually because of an artery is narrowed or blocked, severe or prolonged. The affected tissue could be damaged or die. Oh, great. Oh, wonderful. So you, you, you think about incense, you think like healthy, natural people. Oh, they burn incense. It sounds lovely. It sounds like they're spiritual. Oh, incense. I used to love incense. I used to use it all. So, so you guys on this channel know what ischemia is, right? We talk about it all the time, lack of blood flow to an organ. And I think this is just a great example of how everyday products are now coming into a conversation about peripheral arterial disease and poor blood flow. So let's talk a little bit about what Joe and his guests are talking about in this episode. We are looking at incense and scented products. So they're talking about two different things. We are talking about like the forever chemicals, the PFAS, the phthalates. That's what she is talking about. Incense has all of that plus it also is a smoke or a pollutant. So it has particulate matter. So that is probably more responsible for all of the lung components. And we wouldn't know which of the scents or phthalates PFAS are part of, you know, any ischemia related issues with that. But I think it's important now to highlight what does the evidence show about these chemicals and our environment in, you know, the 2020s and the risk of cardiovascular disease? Because we talk about inflammation and dyslipidemia and glycemia, like all of the lab markers that we test for all the time and how we're optimizing our health. And we don't really spend nearly enough time talking about our environment and the endocrine disruptors and the microplastics. So you guys might remember there was a very impactful article that came out in 2024, New England Journal of Medicine, looking at micro and nanoplastics in carotid plaque, right? So this is the stuff I scrape out of the arteries of people's necks because they've had a stroke or are at high risk for getting a stroke. And they found that people who had microplastics or nanoplastics in the plaque and the arteries had over a four times increased risk of major issues like strokes and heart attacks. So that's a really big deal. Here's the problem though. We don't understand whether the plastics or the PFAS forever chemicals, we don't know if this is causal, meaning the exposure to this particular thing, like your scented candles or your incense is causing the plaque or whether this is an association. People who happen to have high levels of microplastics in their bloodstream are also exposed to high levels of pollution or work stress or something else that we just can't account for. All of the studies that currently exist about microplastics and about forever chemicals are observational and they're not all going in the same direction, meaning there's at least one analysis that has looked at the forever chemicals and actually found an inverse relationship to cardiovascular disease. However, let's step back and take a little bit of a common sense approach to this. If you have a lot of extra plastic stuff in your world, do you need it? Like should you be eating your leftovers out of plastic that went in the microwave? Like that's probably a bad idea. Maybe switch to glass containers. Do you need scented trash bags in your life? Like maybe get the unscented ones that don't have the phthalates that cause that scent to be everywhere. And I don't know, lighten up on those scented candles and maybe on the incense as well. All of these things are things that are really prevalent in our everyday life, but I think they have some potential unintended health consequences. And even though I can't say for sure that any of this is causing cardiovascular disease, we do know that there is some association. And if there's not a huge cost to you in terms of reducing the amount of plastics in your environment and in your daily consumption, probably go ahead and try to do that if you can. And if you're not quite sure what these PFAS, what these phthalate things are, let's just talk quickly about what that is, because these are the chemicals that are used in manufacturing to help soften plastics. They're added to all kinds of our household products and they improve the flexibility and durability of them. As you can see in this helpful infographic here. And the problem with these chemicals is that they kind of mimic our own hormones in our body. And that's why they're called endocrine disrupting chemicals. They actually behave in our body kind of like our own hormones, but they don't cause predictable normal effects and they can displace our own natural hormones like estrogen or testosterone from the native receptors. So we don't know exactly how they disrupt, but we know that there's a big association with exposure to these types of chemicals over time and endocrine problems, whether that's thyroid or sex hormones or adrenal, all kinds of things have been shown to associate with exposure to these chemicals. So the amount that you can reduce them, one of the biggest exposures that we have actually are those thin receipts in the grocery store or Target or wherever, like try not to touch those receipts if you can help it or just don't get one. Get that all online if you can help it, that those rolls of thermal paper actually have a huge amount of these chemicals in them. So if you can avoid these chemicals, that would be great. And here's to your health. So let me know what questions you have. Drop those down in the comments below and let me know what you think about the rest of this episode with Joe Rogan until next time, guys, take really good care.