They’re colourful, easy to clean and feel light on the feet.

But here’s the truth: comfort doesn’t always mean safety.

Crocs—and many other plastic-based shoes—can quietly leach heavy metals like lead and cadmium into our bodies.

These toxins can disrupt hormones, trigger inflammation and contribute to what many of us with trauma and autoimmune issues already know too well: a leaky, inflamed body.

I learned this lesson the long, painful way.

When I was pregnant with my son in 1998, I developed severe plantar fasciitis.

Back then, most doctors didn’t even know what it was.

By the time I was finally diagnosed 5 years later, mine was one of the worst cases they had ever seen.

Surgery was recommended—but when I talked to others who’d had it done, they told me the pain just came back.

So I searched for another way.

After my son was born, I could barely walk. I crawled on the floor with him, tears running down my face at the end of every day.

I was working jobs that kept me on my feet and when I got home, I was in deep pain doing all the stretches, ice bottle rolls, ice baths, alternating with heat baths and all the home remedies I could find.

My feet are my car. I’ve been a lifelong walker, a runner and an athlete who has chosen to live without a car for the planet.

Losing my ability to walk freely broke my heart.

What finally helped was a mix of electric shock therapy on my heel spurs and torn fascia, deep nutrition shifts and a lot of inner healing work.

The therapy hurt more than my 72-hour labour—but it worked.

I also learned that what I was eating was fuelling the inflammation that kept my fascia from healing.

So, out went the booze, the pop, the “fun foods” that calmed my cytokine storms but kept my body in chaos.

I was born with a sensitive system—raised on mouldy military bases, in a toxic womb, with a compromised immune system—and my body simply couldn’t handle one more chemical hit.

That’s why I no longer slip my bare feet into Crocs—or any plastic-based shoes—without a barrier.

My non-toxic socks are my protection from invisible toxins that can leach into the skin. Our feet are full of sweat glands and capillaries.

What we step into literally steps into us.

If you’ve been dealing with chronic inflammation, foot pain or mystery fatigue, your footwear might be playing a quiet role in your body’s inflammation story.

👉 Watch this short video

Today, I choose natural shoes made from cork, organic cotton or vegetable-tanned leather—materials that let my feet breathe and my fascia relax.

I still honour my feet, grounding every morning, because they carry me through this life one mindful step at a time.

When you’ve lived through chronic pain, you learn to listen to your body’s whispers before they become screams.

De-Stress With Momma Lovey Dee🦶💚
Healing leaky bodies & trauma from the feet up — body, mind and soul — to live in inner peace in a toxic world.

This wasn’t just messy. It was a direct assault on their biology.

🎥 The Dark Underbelly of Reality TV
learn more in today’s toxic Thursday video

This is the hidden cost of entertainment—where human health becomes collateral damage for ratings.

For the millions of us living with:

• CIRS (Chronic Inflammatory Response Syndrome)

• MCAS (Mast Cell Activation Syndrome)

• Mould illness

• Leaky body (a systemic breakdown of barriers from gut to brain)

Watching this is a trigger.
It’s a stark reminder of a world that doesn’t understand the profound toxicity of the chemicals it so carelessly deploys.

💧 What’s in the Goo?

While the exact recipe is a network secret, we can infer its composition based on standard industry slime.
This isn’t food colouring and pudding.
To achieve that consistency, colour and stability for TV, it’s almost certainly a cocktail of synthetic chemicals:

• Petroleum-Based Dyes (Blue 1, Blue 2)
  Derived from coal tar and petroleum. Linked to allergic reactions, hyperactivity in children and potential carcinogenicity.
  When shot onto the skin—especially the thin, permeable skin of the face and into the crevasses like eyes, ears, nose and mouth—they enter the system directly.

• Parabens and Preservatives
  Used to prevent bacterial growth in vats of slime.
  Parabens mimic estrogen and contribute to hormonal chaos.

• Phthalates (Plasticizers)
  Make the slime pliable and squishy.
  Known endocrine disruptors linked to reproductive issues and metabolic dysfunction.

• Surfactants and Detergents
  Create the slippery, foamy texture.
  Designed to break down barriers—exactly what they do to mucosal linings in the nostrils and respiratory tract.

• Synthetic Fragrances
  The “clean” or “fun” smell is a proprietary blend of undisclosed chemicals, many of which are respiratory irritants and neurotoxins.
  
  🧠 The Pathway to Illness:
  Why Symptoms Can Appear Years Later

  For a healthy person, the body might mount a defence and seemingly recover. But the damage is often done at a deeper level.
  
  This is the setup for a multi-system, multi-symptom illness that can take root silently.

  The Immediate Assault

  • Goo enters the eyes → inflammation, potential corneal damage

  • Inhaled into lungs → biotoxins enter bloodstream

  • Swallowed → gut microbiome disruption

  The Silent Storage (Body Burden)

  • Liver goes into overdrive

  • Fat-soluble toxins stored in body fat, nerve sheaths and brain

  • Body walls off poison to protect you short-term, creating long-term illness

  The Tipping Point

  One exposure becomes a pebble in your toxic bucket.

  Years later, a stressor hits—a virus, mould, trauma—and the bucket overflows.
  

  Symptoms explode:

  • Neurological → brain fog, memory loss, anxiety, depression, tingling nerves

  • Immunological → new allergies, MCAS, inflammation, autoimmune markers

  • Systemic → chronic fatigue, muscle aches, joint pain, insomnia
    

  This is the cruel mystery of toxicant-induced illness.
  Cause and effect are separated by years.
  Conventional medicine rarely connects the dots.
  
  🧒 Re-parenting the Inner Child
  

  True detox is a journey back to the self.
  It’s about loving the inner child who was never given the tools—especially the first-born, parentified child who never learned to put their own oxygen mask on first.
  

  It’s about building a life that protects your hard-won peace from the PTSD of childhood trauma.
  

  Your body is not broken. It is burdened.
  And it can be unburdened.

  ✨ My Healing Journey

  I’ve lived my life using root cause healing, autophagy and lifestyle medicine as a holistic personal trainer and healing advocate for over 45 years.
  I never used medicine unless in crisis—because it causes more damage to leaky bodies.

  When no doctor could help me last fall, I healed myself holistically from life-threatening leaky muscles and over 40 other leaky body barriers.
  

  Today:

  • I sleep deeply for 8 hours (no fan needed)

  • My stools are healthy (quickly in and quickly out)

  • My menopause and mental health struggles are gone

  • No anxiety. No depression. No brain fog. No belly bloat. No insomnia. All gone.
    
    If you are ready to stop being a prisoner to a toxic world and start detoxing your tissues and your environment to find that inner peace.

    This is your path out of the maze.

    De-Stress With Dee for inner peace in a toxic world
    learn more in today’s toxic Thursday video