Wellness Unmasked Weekly Rundown: Microplastics Breakthrough & RFK Jr. Backlash
04:22 Share

This is LeVar Arrington from Two Pros and a Cup of Joe. The Toyota Tundra and Tacoma are designed to outlast and outlive, backed by Toyota's legendary reputation for reliability. So get in a Tundra with the available i-Force Max Hybrid engine, delivering exceptional torque and towing capacity. Or check out a Tacoma with available off-road features like

Crawl Control. It can take you beyond the trails. Toyota trucks are built to last year after year, mile after mile. So don't wait. Get yours today. Visit buyatoyota.com for deals and more. Toyota, let's go places.

Residents at Brightview Senior Living Communities enjoy enhanced possibilities, independence, and choice. Brightview Dulles Corner in Herndon and Brightview Great Falls offer vibrant senior independent living, assisted living, and memory care services through various daily programs and cultural events.

Chef-prepared meals, safety and security, transportation, resort-style amenities, and high-quality care. Everything you need is here. Discover more at brightviewseniorliving.com. Equal housing opportunity.

Ryan Seacrest here. When you have a busy schedule, it's important to maximize your downtime. One of the best ways to do that is by going to ChumbaCasino.com. Chumba Casino has all your favorite social casino games like Spin Slots, Bingo, and Solitaire that you can play for free for a chance to redeem some serious prizes. So hop on to ChumbaCasino.com now and live the Chumba life. Sponsored by Chumba Casino. No purchase necessary. VGW group void where prohibited by law. 21 plus terms and conditions apply.

Homes.com has collaboration tools to help home shoppers search, share, and discuss home shopping with family, friends, and their agent directly through the site. Though it was fun to get that email from your husband about that three-bedroom in the hills, to which you replied via text that you would never live in the hills and you'd like to find a three-bedroom closer to the beach, to which he replied, why are you so uncompromising? A fun way to spend an afternoon, but we think it's just a tad bit easier our way. Homes.com.

We've done your homework. Looking for a better soda that still hits the spot? Meet SunSip.

A soda with benefits. The perfect fun summer bevy. It's got all those classic flavors, plus gut-healthy prebiotics, vitamins, and minerals. Trust me, you'll want to try this. Shake your phone to get an exclusive offer to buy one SunSip, get one free. It's perfect for beach hangs with your besties or backyard barbecues. Enjoy SunSip all summer long because life's sweeter when you sip better. Pick up a can of SunSip at Harris Teeter in the produce cooler near HealthAid Kombucha.

I'm Dr. Nicole Sapphire, and this is your weekly rundown. Let's dive into the top three stories making waves right now.

The first one, a glimmer of hope in the battle against microplastics. New research out of China suggests that certain gut bacteria, specifically a strain of Bifidobacterium, may be able to actually break down the microplastics inside our body. Yep, you heard that right. Maybe the key to ridding microplastics is how healthy and active our gut bacteria are.

Microplastics, they're found in our water, our food, even in the air. And they have been linked to bodily inflammation, hormone disruption, and even cancer risk. But these newly discovered bacterial strains seem capable of degrading small plastic particles, well, at least in lab models.

Now, it's early days, and this hasn't been tested widely in humans, but if future probiotic therapies could help detox the body from plastic exposure, that would be a game changer. For now, we have to continue minimizing our plastic use, especially in our food packaging, and we need to make sure we're focusing on our gut health with fiber-rich food, whole food diets, prebiotics, and probiotics.

Next up, an explosive claim from HHS Secretary, RFK Jr. On the Tucker Carlson podcast, RFK Jr. alleged that the CDC is actively hiding vaccine safety data,

including potential links between the hepatitis B vaccine and autism, citing an apparent 1135% increase in autism among certain vaccinated infants. Now, this figure that he cited is based on his own interpretation of an old study that wasn't even peer-reviewed. And he accused the CDC of cherry-picking the cohorts or the people that were included in the study. Now, it's worth stating clearly the current consensus

The current consensus based on massive amounts of peer-reviewed finalized data is that vaccines do not cause autism. So his comments are inciting frustration among the scientific community because the very thing he's accusing the CDC of doing, not being wholly transparent with data, he made these wild claims on a podcast and he didn't put forth any evidence to support it.

Now, that being said, RFK Jr.'s comments tap into real public frustration over lack of transparency and regulatory capture. Agencies like the CDC should release all safety data, not just what supports the narrative. Trust comes from transparency, not censorship. We learned this the hard way during COVID.

And finally, an important update from the FDA this week. They have officially revised the safety label for mRNA COVID vaccines to more specifically and clearly reflect the risk of myocarditis and pericarditis following the vaccine, especially in young males age 20 to 29. Now, this is not new information. Cases of post-vaccine myocarditis have been tracked since 2021,

But the FDA's labeling is more detailed and it emphasizes the risk. Because if you remember back in 2021,

Anyone who spoke about the cardiac inflammation after these vaccines and questioned whether these younger people, especially younger males, should be getting the vaccines, they were deemed charlatans, T-vacs, conspiracy theorists. How do I know this? Well, because I was one of them. I was outcast from the scientific community. I lost friends over this.

The one-size-fits-all approach has finally been questioned, and it's time we evolve our vaccine guidance to reflect age, sex, individual risk factors, and prior immunity. Medicine is never static, and neither should our public health messaging be. As physicians, we must support vaccine safety, but also demand honest, independent oversight. I'm Dr. Nicole Sapphire, and this has been your Wellness Unmasked Weekly Rundown.

Thanks for listening to Wellness Unmasked on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow Wellness Unmasked with Dr. Nicole Sapphire and start listening on the free iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts and we will catch you next time.

This is LeVar Arrington from Two Pros and a Cup of Joe. The Toyota Tundra and Tacoma are designed to outlast and outlive, backed by Toyota's legendary reputation for reliability. So get in a Tundra with the available i-Force Max Hybrid engine, delivering exceptional torque and towing capacity. Or check out a Tacoma with available off-road features like

Crawl Control. It can take you beyond the trails. Toyota trucks are built to last year after year, mile after mile. So don't wait. Get yours today. Visit buyatoyota.com for deals and more. Toyota, let's go places.

Residents at Brightview Senior Living Communities enjoy enhanced possibilities, independence, and choice. Brightview Dulles Corner in Herndon and Brightview Great Falls offer vibrant senior independent living, assisted living, and memory care services through various daily programs and cultural events.

Chef-prepared meals, safety and security, transportation, resort-style amenities, and high-quality care. Everything you need is here. Discover more at brightviewseniorliving.com. Equal housing opportunity. At homes.com, we do whatever it takes to get you the in-depth info on local schools you won't find anywhere else. Things like student-teacher ratio, test scores, school programs, and sometimes that requires attending school recitals. So...

That's my son. Isn't he terrific? Yeah, a real prodigy. Homes.com. We've done your homework. Looking for a better soda that still hits the spot? Meet SunSip.

A soda with benefits. The perfect fun summer bevy. It's got all those classic flavors, plus gut-healthy prebiotics, vitamins, and minerals. Trust me, you'll want to try this. Shake your phone to get an exclusive offer to buy one SunSip, get one free. It's perfect for beach hangs with your besties or backyard barbecues. Enjoy SunSip all summer long because life's sweeter.

When you sip better, pick up a can of sunset at Harris Teeter in the produce cooler near health aid kombucha. Welcome to the W where elite athletes are redefining the game of basketball from buzzer beating shots, jaw dropping defense and logo threes. The WNBA delivers nonstop action and world-class talent. Every game. These athletes don't just play the game. They elevate it. The biggest stars, the brightest age, AT&T WNBA all-star 2025 WNBA.

comes to Indianapolis July 18th through 19th. Tune into the game July 19th at 8.30 p.m. Eastern Time on ABC.