When healing, I like to remember that our paleolithic bodies haven't truly evolved to deal with the stuff of modern life.

What was created to help us, have unintended effects, its effects only observed and documented in recent times?

When moving towards a cleaner lifestyle and better brains, better kids, better fertility...

There are things we need to be aware of that may be putting a spanner in the works.

When there is healing and recovery to do, why make it harder for our bodies?

In 15 years of practicing medicine informed by the study of environmental medicine, these are the greatest needle movers, and in a healing regime, is key to have a hygiene practice with.

• Electromagnetic radiation

Most of us won't feel the effects, but the most sensitive of my patients have reported symptoms such as sleeplessness, fatigue, brain fog reducing when they have had a practice of hygiene around turning off their wifi, or using ethernet cables. Just because we don't sense it doesn't mean it's not affecting our cellular processes. So when trying to optimise health in the home, this is one aspect to think about. Especially with babies in the home where their skulls aren't as thick to shield from radiation. Have a think about bluetooth, 4G and the likes as well. It gets esoteric when you try to look up the relationship of EMFs and parasites, moods and the immune system...

• Endocrine-disrupting chemicals mess with our hormones.

The most common ones mimic the effects of estrogen in our body. Thus estrogen dominance in men and women is increasingly common. Watch for anything labelled "fragrance" and even expensive perfumes and posh candles can be the culprit and even moreso car air fresheners.

EDCs have the highest impact while a baby is in the womb, and YES, it passes into breastmilk, affecting the future fertilities of our babies.

• Vegetable oils

Soy bean, Corn, Peanut, Canola, Rice bran...

Misleadingly labelled as "heart healthy", this could not be further from the truth.

Vegetable oils are almost always extracted using hexane, deodorised and ultra-refined.

Not only may they contain adulterants, they are pro-inflammatory to the high omega-6 content and lack the living energy, and nutrients and omega-3s from fruit oils such as coconut, olive oils, ghee, butter from grass-fed cows and fat from well-reared animals.

Restaurants and hawkers almost always use the cheapest vats of vegetable oil blends, so one of my first steps in getting someone well is getting them well supported to prepare meals at home.

This is a quick win, seen in energy levels, reduced bloating and better poops.

• Amalgams ie metal tooth fillings are just bad news, no matter how non-admitting the dental industry can be. Just thank god for the move towards composites and tooth coloured fillings.

They aren't as inert as once thought. The human bite exerts a huge shearing force and vaporises the metals at each chew. So you get vapours every time you chew, and more when it's hot food.

In my clinical practice alone, the correlation of amalgams and thyroid, pituitary and breast disease was huge. It makes complete sense since the lymphatic drainage of the saliva are very near these organs.

Once metals are giving problems, a protocol of prepping the body's foundational detox pathways in order to then safely remove it and recover from it, is a longer process than just going to any dentist and asking for your amalgams to be swopped out to tooth-colored fillings.

Do not do this. I've seen perfectly well people get chronically sick from just this procedure.

Hope you've learned something in this little series!

Let me know if there's anything I can help clarify, or if you have a topic you'd like to hear my take on!