PFAS Health Effects: How They Impact Your Gut

Author's Bio: Marcie Vaske, MS, LN, CNS

PFAS, what impact do they have on your gut today?

We'll run through what PFAS are?

Where do you find PFAS?

How do they actually impact your gut health?

And then how can you eliminate them as much as possible from your life?

But before we dig into it, I want to welcome you back to our channel, and if you haven't subscribed, please subscribe down below. My name is Marcie Vaske and I'm a functional licensed nutritionist with Oswald Digestive Clinic. And at Oswald Digestive Clinic, we work with many people who struggle with gut health, and so you'll find many videos explaining different topics on gut health. I'm going to link our website here where you can easily make an initial appointment. And if you'd like to learn just more about gut health in general, I'm going to link our free guide, which is Five Ways to Improve Your Gut Health. So let's dig in.

[Video Transcript Below Video - it is the same information]

What Are PFAS?

PFAS are actually known as a forever chemical, and you'll find them oftentimes in common consumer products. They're a synthetic chemical, which can harm not only different systems in our body, but specifically our gut health. What's interesting is that pfas have actually been around for quite a long time. In 1938, there was a scientist and researcher from DuPont who kind of accidentally came upon them when trying to put together some chemical for a refrigerant and what it turned out to be and what we know it as now is Teflon.

So you might be really familiar with the name of Teflon. And over the course of the next 10 to 15 years, it became very common to put this kind of a chemical on different pots and pans because we hear about that a lot because really what pfas are, they are non sticking water resistant and they're also heat resistant.

During the 1940s and 1950s, this particular chemical was used in industrial and consumer products because they are water resistant, heat resistant, and also they don't let things stick to it otherwise known as Teflon. So now fast forwarding all the way to the 2025, we have seen this pfas being used commonly in many things that we may not even been thinking about. And over the course of the years, there's been a lot of research done and scientists are really finding that pfas can oftentimes cause a lot of harmful effects on the human body.

Where Are PFAS Found?

So where are you going to find some of these common PFAS maybe in your daily life? And one of them will be in food and food packaging. So a lot of times you will have, let's say you go to a fast food place and you have a burger that's wrapped in this packaging. This is a water resistant and grease resistant packaging, which has been covered in PFAS. So essentially leaking into the food that you're about to consume. You're also going to find pfas on our cooking wear. As I mentioned the word Teflon, we love it because it doesn't stick, so you can cook anything and if you cook it too long, it's still going to be able to come off that pan easily and be easily cleaned. But remember, as you're cooking it, these PFAS, again, are leaching into our foods. You're also going to find PFAS in household items, so things such as stain-resistant carpets or rugs, water repellent fabrics. So if you have anything like this in your house, which maybe you do because they're a lot easier to clean. And of course we don't want to have stains all over our carpets, so it's become sort of the norm.

But understanding what PFAS are doing, if you're walking around on this every day, again, you're just being inundated by PFAS and a chemical that can cause a lot of issues. PFAS are also going to be found in personal items, and a big one will be waterproof cosmetics. So if you are the one that wears waterproof mascara or even lipsticks, they're going to be covered in PFAS, even foundations while not water resistant, it will be found in those products as well. So you're putting them on your skin and we know how porous our skin is. So again, it's just leaching into our body. You're also going to find pfas on dental floss. So on the packaging, if it says glide, then it's been covered with PFAS. So flossing your teeth, putting your makeup on, wearing foundation all day, it can cause a lot of issues that you may not even be aware of.

You're also going to find it in lotions and in sunscreens. So again, applying all of these products all over our skin, especially when it comes to both of those lotions and sunscreens, it's just leaching in and causing some pretty significant harm not only to our other systems, but specifically our gut health. Now, PFAS will also be found in different industrial and environment sources and also in medical products. So you can see that basically if you have anything that's non-stick water resistant, you may be around them all day long. You may be wearing them on your face all day long.

PFAS Health Effects: How They Harm Gut Health

So now we know what they are, we know where we can find them and how they might be disrupting our life in everyday life, but how do they really harm our gut health? What are the PFAS health effects? And first and foremost, they potentially cause harm to our good flora in our microbiome.

So if we're taking in these PFAS on a daily basis, our gut microbiome is constantly being broken down and over a period of time, if this is happening in addition to maybe the poor food choices or just more processed foods in our diet, your microbiome is really taking a hit. And when there becomes less good flora, there becomes more imbalance flora and here will end up with symptoms that can be reducing our nutrient absorption. It can impair just digestion overall, and in addition, it can impair our immune function.

Now, once the microbiome has been kind of infiltrated with PFAS and our flora is broken down, we do see that they're also causing things such as leaky gut. And here is where pfas are weakening the intestinal integrity of our intestinal tract, and it's allowing more toxins and more bacteria to enter our bloodstream, and we end up with more inflammation and a commonly more autoimmune issues.

PFAS can also put a damper on our metabolic system, and the way that it does this is because it's breaking down our good microbiome, which is very important for regulating our metabolism. And also it can be impactful on just the way that our bile is producing. Therefore, if we aren't making enough bile or our gallbladder becomes more sluggish, we are not digesting our fats very well. But overall, you're having less metabolic function due to the imbalance of your flora in your intestinal tract.

Lastly, we're seeing a connection with our mental health. It's compromising our gut brain connection and how they communicate. In recent studies, it's showing that pfas may be contributing to anxiety, depression, less focus, and a lot of this also comes all the way back to the imbalance of our microbiome.

How to Reduce PFAS Exposure

So knowing what it can do to your gut, knowing what we can find it, it makes some obvious sense on how we can keep this out of our life. And so number one, you can get rid of some of that non-stick cookware. You want to look for PFAS free cookware and really just looking on the labels, you should be pretty clear about what you're purchasing. You want to stick more to cast iron or even stainless steel cookware.

Also, be cautious of your food packaging. If you're watching this, you're probably pretty good eater overall because maybe you do have gut health and you're not going to a lot of fast food places, but that's not the only place that might use non greasy packaging. There could be other establishments that are still using that. So just being aware of what your food is actually coming in can be really helpful. Also, thinking about filtering your drinking water.

Now, PFAS can leach into our body. It can leach into our water in our drinking supply. So having a filtering system at your house or making sure you're filtering your water in some way is going to be most beneficial in reducing pfas. And of course, trying to avoid some of those personal products that do contain pfas such as waterproof mascara or lipsticks that glide on really easily or dental floss that is coated.

Those things are going to be, as I said earlier, going to contain a lot of PFAS. So if you're staying away from those things, you're not leaching pfas into your body every single day and reducing that contaminant greatly. So while it might be difficult to get rid of every single PFAS in your life, it's very important to be most aware, and this is really what this video is about today, because oftentimes we have gut issues and we think, how did this even happen? And maybe it was just chronic overuse of PFAS or having them around your environment.

Final Thoughts

So eliminating as much chemical exposure as possible will help to provide an environment for your flora and your microbiome to really flourish. So I hope this helps you learn a little bit more about just the things around us that can contribute to poor gut health. And as I said, I will link our website down below to make an initial appointment if you're interested, as well as our free guide which is Five Ways to Improve your Gut Health. And don't forget to click subscribe, so you get free videos every week about gut health.

Thanks for watching.

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