Your Healthy Recovery
Jan 22, 2024
You just lost your home and everything you own; maybe your neighborhood is flattened. It’s time to recover, but to get through this crisis, you must power up by caring for your health and protecting yourself from dangerous toxins.
Hi, my name is Bill Cullen, and I lost everything I owned and 3 pets in the 2021 Marshall Fire in Colorado. That experience—and my deep friendship with Joel Wish—inspired us to build Bright Harbor so others could recover faster. I’m also a pretty big health dork because I live near Boulder, CO, so you're about to get a heavy dose of practical health advice in the aftermath of a disaster.
To supercharge our knowledge on the subject, we did a webinar with the world-renowned Dr. Mark Hyman to offer advice on staying healthy after the LA fires.
The interview is augmented by this extensive write-up with links to some of the recommended products. Bright Harbor does not profit from the purchase of any of these products.
The key aspects of a healthy recovery include:
Air, water, and soil
Food as medicine
Stress and sleep
Meditation and emotional support
Finding meaning
Air, water and soil
In the immediate aftermath of a massive fire, your top health concerns are air and water quality. The air is filled with harmful things like carbon monoxide, volatile organic compounds, heavy metals, dioxins, particulate matter and many other things from all the burned materials that can cause immediate harm like respiratory symptoms, eye/throat irritation, and headaches. Intense or prolonged exposure can even cause long-term disease like asthma, cardiovascular diseases, and cancer.
While the fire is still burning and for 2-4 weeks afterward, you should wear an N95 mask when outside to prevent inhaling these toxins. Also, close your windows, limit time outside, and do not exercise outside. Run air purifiers (i.e. HEPA) in your home, or at least your bedroom, at night. Check local authorities for air quality updates to understand when things return to normal.
If you need to “sift” the ash on your lot for belongings, debris and ash will be stirred up. You must wear professional protection, including a respirator mask and goggles to protect your lungs and eyes, and a protective suit for your skin. A full face mask should be used for the most hardcore disaster sites or if you will experience prolonged exposure.
When debris removal and rebuilding begins, dangers resurface because the dust and toxins are disturbed. Stay away from the construction site, or use the above protections if you are working in it, and you will be OK. If your clothes were in contact with smoke and ash use Borax to boost the cleaning power of your laundry detergent.
Lastly, get the interior of your car cleaned and replace your cabin air filter. If you are driving around during the time when you need to wear an N95 outside, make sure to set the air to "recirculate".
Sifting through our lot with respirators. We never found Kate’s engagement ring, but we found a few things to hold on to.
Even though authorities may say it’s healthy to be outside, a few localized factors can increase your personal risk:
Low lying areas - If you live in a discrete valley, the polluted air may be trapped
Rain - Rain helps dissipate air pollution
Ash - When cleaning or wiping ash from your vehicles, home, attic insulation, etc. wear at least an N95 mask, or ideally a respirator
Age/Health - If you are an older person or in poor health, be extra cautious and conservative with your exposure
As for water: the toxins in the air can leech into the water supply for months, or even years in the worst cases. Your local authorities may recommend drinking only bottled water, using a water purifier, or boiling your water for a period of time. While you should be careful about your water source, you should still drink a healthy volume of water, about ½ oz per lb of body weight, to stay hydrated to flush out toxins.
If you have been exposed to unhealthy levels of smoke or toxins, you might experience a skin rash, burning throat or eyes, headache, or dizziness. Your body will naturally try to eliminate the toxins through the liver, kidneys, lungs, skin, and digestive system. So, it's important that you support those organs with a healthy diet (covered later), and some additional tactics and supplements can be used for about a month to speed things up:
Steam inhalation with eucalyptus or a neti pot can improve breathing and loosen mucus in the nasal passages. Stubborn mucus can be cleared with the Navage system
Sweating through exercise or sauna can eliminate toxins through the skin, or a bath with epsom salt and lavender is another way to detox through the skin
NAC supports detoxification, repository function, and good glutathione levels
Alginate binds to heavy metals that supports excreting them from your system
Vitamins C / E, and Alpha-lipoic acid are antioxidants to combat oxidative stress
If you don’t know how harmful your exposure was, a blood test from Function Health or another lab provider that tests for heavy metals and toxins can guide your recovery. If you’ve had extreme exposure, seek immediate medical attention, where they may pursue more serious interventions like chelation therapy, or powerful binders like activated charcoal or bentonite clay, which should both only be used under medical supervision.
As for soil, the main concern is if you have a garden in the fire zone. Immediately dispose of all actively growing produce and root systems, and replace 12 inches of top soil with new soil. Parks and yards directly in the fire zone should be avoided by kids until authorities complete soil remediation, or until authorities say it is is safe to be in those areas.
Food as medicine
It turns out that food is medicine, and in the aftermath of a disaster, you want lots of the healthiest stuff. This is no time to throw your healthy diet out the window. Your body is under extreme stress, so filling it with processed foods, sugary snacks, and alcohol is like putting mud in your engine when you need to race the Daytona 500! Avoid unhealthy intake because it will trigger your stress, cause inflammation, and make you more susceptible to getting sick.
Simple, healthy meals like an omelet on a bed of greens and a bowl of fruit are not hard to make and go a long way in supporting your energy, attitude, and detoxing.
You should eat whole, unprocessed, nutrient-dense foods to power your stressed body now more than ever to support your natural stress-reducing and detox pathways. These include many fresh vegetables, fruits, lean meats or fish, nuts, avocados, and seeds. In particular, some foods support removing toxins from your body. Cruciferous vegetables such as broccoli, cauliflower, brussel sprouts, kale, as well as garlic, onions, and lemon water are incredible helpers in this regard. Gut-healthy foods like kimchi and probiotics are great as well. Herbs such as ginger, turmeric, and green tea are phenomenal and can be taken as supplements or added to a smoothie.
Speaking of smoothies, let’s talk about them. Are we crazy for talking about fancy smoothies at a time like this!? Actually, no, because chugging down some green goop can be the easiest way to bulk up on ultra-healthy food. Smoothies can be prepped the night before and drunk on the run in or between the hectic tasks of taking care of your family and coordinating your recovery. Aim for 75% dark leafy greens, some fruit, seeds like flax and hemp, and water or veggie juice for the liquids. Dr. Brooker Golder, another well-published function medicine expert, has amazing smoothie recipes on Smoothie Shred. If you don’t have a high-power blender, ask your friends to buy one from Facebook marketplace or put it on your Amazon wish list… your friends will support your health if you ask them. I'm so passionate about this I recently started a non-profit called Blender Funder to provide used blender kits to families to fight chronic disease, and I'd be happy to send fire victims a kit if you can't locate a blender.
Making green smoothies at night so you can have healthy food the next day with no excuses.
For general healthy meal support, it can help to ask your community to help you with a Meal Train focused on delivering fresh, homemade, or restaurant-grade food as often as needed.
Stress and sleep
Stress, anxiety, and potentially sleepless nights affect disaster survivors just as much as the physical disruption to their lives. I slept only 1 hour per night for the first week after my disaster. My mental acuity plummeted, and I became delirious. Prioritize putting your phone down 1-2 hours before bedtime and charging it in a separate room, pause social media, and turn off the chaos on TV. You need to unplug from the constant stress to allow your mind to calm for 7-8 hours of sleep. This is one of the most potent things you can do for your physical and mental well-being.
Only drink caffeine in the morning. Having caffeine later in the day may affect your sleep because its half-life is 6 hours, and ideally, you can pass 2 half-lives (so only 25% remains in your system) when you try to sleep. Other sleep tricks are turning lights down low before bed, eating dinner at least 2-3 hours before bed, reading a chill book, and not doing intense/stressful activities later in the day.
Taking care of 8-month-old twins exasperated our sleep deprivation and stress. We got creative and fashioned homemade bottle props to speed up feeding so we could sleep.
I was on the verge of a breakdown from lack of sleep and stress until a close friend recommended to me a few supplements to calm me down. If you need this kind of help, below are a few supplements you can take on an ad-hoc basis to support your parasympathetic nervous system. I would recommend trying 1-2 for a few days or a few weeks, based on your needs. These are all very safe to experiment with.
GABA regulates neurotransmitters and promotes relaxation, and you can take it any time of day. It worked wonders for me and is a good place to start. You can also get it combination with L-theanine, which is a mood regulator and good for mental clarity
Lions mane is also great for a mental acuity boost, and you can also get it in a tasty coffee
CatecholaCalm, Kaana, and Ashwagandha are adaptogens that promote relaxation and are great for calming down before sleep
Melatonin / sleep aid complex will help if you need something a bit more intentional to get to sleep
*Note: You may want to avoid prescription sleep aids and chemical mood regulators like benzodiazepines if you can. These drugs can leave you severely groggy or dizzy in the morning, can be addictive, and can do more harm than good.
Meditation and emotional support
Meditation, deep breathing, and calming yoga are free (or cheap) ways to pause and reflect on your situation. This is a time to be honest with yourself and your new reality, and meditation is good at quieting the mind to find this clarity. If you don’t know where to start, there are plenty of YouTube videos, or entire platforms like Ziva, Calm, and others to guide you in the right direction.
You may need to seek professional counseling or therapy, depending on how you are dealing with the trauma. Most large disaster zones offer subsidized or free counseling that you can take advantage of. Not everyone needs this, so you need to self-assess.
For sure, this is not a time to be alone. Connect with neighbors, friends, family, and the community to grieve, help, and share your experience.
Schools were closed for a few weeks after the Marshall fire, so we shared parent duties with other families to create time for figuring out our recovery.
Finding meaning
Lastly, there is a less scientific, but still impactful aspect to the health recovery: finding meaning in something bigger than yourself. Whether it’s music, religion, family, or a hobby, you have to find something to get you through this moment. For me, music has always been the steady beat in my life. Soon after the disaster, I realized music spoke to me like no one could, and it helped me process the complex emotions. Timeless music like Box of rain by the Grateful Dead, Operator by Jim Croce, and Blackbird by The Beatles were my therapy. I wish I was by the Avett Brothers has lyrics about fire that enraged me, but captured my confusing feelings at the moment - and wow those lyrics are stunning. The Lumineers released Where we are just two weeks after my disaster. My close group of neighbors connected over that song, and one of them, a talented singer, played it live for us many times since in intimate gatherings. These things give you meaning beyond your near-term problems, carry you forward, and stay with you forever.
The Beatles Blackbird lyrics in the kids “Fairy garden” in our town a month before the fire.
I also found deep meaning and thrived in speaking with long-lost friends who came to my rescue with help, donations, and hugs. These friends and family reminded me they cared about me, even if some of them were physically far away. People came out of the woodwork. Someone literally gave me the winter boots off of their feet! Someone printed us large canvas prints of our family to brighten up our rental. My favorite story though is about our kids. We had twin 8-month-old baby boys at the time of the fire, and my wife’s breast milk supply ran dry immediately—the literal effect of stress. And, of course, we lost all of our frozen milk stored in our freezer. Can you believe that a local group of young moms found out about our situation and scurried across the Denver metropolis and sourced four months of excess fresh breast milk for us? There are no words to describe these acts of heroism; only tears and inner gratitude can process them.
Our freezer full of donated liquid gold from angel mammas!
Your recovery will be terrible and beautiful all at once, but YOU WILL IMPROVE WITH TIME. If you avoid toxins, power up your body with healthy foods, and support and calm your mind, then you can show up for your family and community when they need you most. I made it through, and I didn’t have any of this advice. Now, you are well equipped to learn from my trauma and dominate your recovery with confidence and in good health.
With love and support,
Bill and the Bright Harbor team
p.s. If you are passionate about this topic, you can connect with me here.
The Cullen family for Halloween 2024: total chaos and always moving forward!
