You’re working out, eating plenty of leafy greens and the recommended rainbow of fruits and veggies, and doing everything right to live your best and healthiest life. But an emerging field of research is finding that there are things in your daily environment that may be undoing all of that hard work.
Endocrine-disrupting chemicals, or EDCs, can be hiding in your beauty and cleaning products, your cookware, and even the fresh produce you get from the store. These potentially toxic chemicals do exactly what their name suggests: they enter our bodies and interfere with our hormones, the messenger molecules like estrogen and serotonin charged with keeping our biological processes (think your monthly cycle) and internal networks (like your metabolism and sleep cycle) operating seamlessly.
Because EDCs were only identified in the 1990s, they still exist in many of the products we love and use every day, especially in the U.S. which has less regulation of these chemicals than the E.U. Yet research increasingly shows that they can have potentially serious ramifications on many aspects of our health, from fertility and hormonal balance to the development of diabetes and cancer.