Shadowing Practice: Your House Is Making You Sick (15 Solutions) - Learn English Speaking with Video

I do do do do do go to Brian's house, go to Brian's house.

Hey, welcome!

Come on in!

Thanks!

Yeah, if you wouldn't mind.

Yep.

Sorry about that, Bri Bri.

Today we're going to talk about the contaminants in your home, and the things you can do to remove them, starting with that which is in your entryway.

to be aware of is the first four steps inside the

house tracks 85% of the outside world's contaminants include leads

and pesticides so the big one here is remove your shoes at the door.

Once this stuff is inside your house it's far more likely to get inside you and your family's bodies.

Okay now we're here you're inside the home welcome friend I'm glad you're here so let's get started.

Toxins and carcinogens drift in through your windows and vents and even your gas stove releases harmful pollutants.

To see how bad the problem is you'll need to measure your indoor air quality with specialized sensors.

Now I have two monitors.

For example this guy gives you something called PM 2.5.

That's a particular kind of toxin and I want to know what it is.

There's also PM 1, PM 10.

I see VOCs on this one.

This guy gives me a much more general number of AQI.

You You can see here the CO2 is high because we had a lot of people in the house recently.

And also it gives me data on the outside.

You can see it's not good air quality today in my neighborhood.

So these are really nice in

that they give me a constant recording of the air quality inside the home

that allows me to know if my air purifiers are working and as we'll get to later, the filter in my HVAC system.

As always, a longevity therapy wherever you go, three steps at a time.

No hands

Alright, let's head on in to the HVAC room This is a MIRV13 filter

So MIRV is a rating of how many toxins your filter is going to capture For this particular HVAC system,

it can handle a MIRV13 But not all HVAC systems can handle that much

A MERV 8 is only going to capture about 30% of PM 2.5, so the higher you can go the better.

But don't go higher than your system is rated, otherwise it will cause problems.

The air filters are a nice add-on, but really your HVAC system should be your first line of defense for air quality.

If you use an air quality monitor, you'll notice the difference within minutes.

Okay, come this way.

While we're talking about air quality and what could be in the air, I'm going to point you to three different sensors.

One is a smoke alarm.

Now even though smoke alarms are common and standard,

three in five deaths from fires in homes are caused from either dead or missing smoke alarms.

So make sure you can find yours and that it's functioning correctly.

This is a carbon monoxide detector, which again is a good one to have.

And then also radon.

So radon is an invisible odorless gas that comes from the earth.

So if you haven't had a radon test in where you're living now, it's a good thing to do to see the data.

It's actually the second most prominent cause of lung cancer behind smoking.

So it really is a meaningful risk and you want to make sure you know where your radon levels are.

Press that test button once a month, listen for the beep, and you'll know you're protected.

We've covered some basics of home Bryonomics, but keep Keep watching for more hidden dangers in your kitchen, bedroom and living room.

Time to look at what things in the kitchen might be damaging your health.

Water is a really big source of contaminants.

Things like heavy metals, PFAS and microplastics.

I've been testing the water out of my tap for years.

I live in Los Angeles and they do a pretty good job.

In fact, after the fires that were here where over 20,000 homes and cars were burned, we were wondering would the contaminants show up in the water?

We haven't seen it yet.

Now that is not to say things are perfect.

These contaminants can still come through the water.

So this is tap water,

this is filtered water, and I have a reverse osmosis water system that does a great job filtering for these contaminants.

If you get a good water filtration system, these reverse osmosis systems cost between a few hundred dollars to over a thousand, but the water is clean.

We test it every month so we have a data sheet on what exactly you're drinking.

Straight from the tap you get over 300 milligrams of dissolved substances.

With reverse osmosis that drops to almost nothing.

You can get these systems online or at hardware stores.

They come with instructions.

For maintenance, clean or replace your filters every few months.

Alright now since we're in the kitchen, let's explore a little bit because the kitchen is kind of a death trap.

Come on let me show you even though I've tried to cleanse my world from plastic, let me show you how much plastic I have everywhere.

Right here, this is a brand new VO2 max device I've been using.

I started using it yesterday and guess what the materials they use to make these things.

Plastic.

This is for HBOT.

Guess what it is?

Plastic.

Now we tried very hard to find non-plastic medical grade technology.

It is very hard.

Even after several months of trying to remove all plastics from my house, I still occasionally find things like, how did this get in here?

So just be mindful as you go about your daily routines, find plastic and replace it with wood, ceramic, stainless steel, a food grade stainless steel, so you can do it.

But just prepare yourself.

You're going to see that plastic is in everything, especially the kitchen.

But while we're on the topic of materials, you want to be aware of the pans you're using.

You want to specifically avoid nonstick pans.

They can have PFAS.

These are forever chemicals.

They're really bad chemicals.

You don't want them in your body.

One way to avoid that is to use a material that does not have PFAS.

This for example is food grade stainless steel.

You could also use cast iron.

None of these have PFAS.

Okay, let's look at the stove.

So for years, I have a gas burning stove, which is not a good idea.

Here's why.

Using just one gas burner quickly spikes nitrogen dioxide and fine particles.

These are linked to around 13% of childhood asthma cases in the US in the US

and you breed them in every time you cook.

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For a while my chef made the food at their house and they delivered it.

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My current chef comes here and makes the food here so I'm going to replace this gas stove with an induction stove.

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Most people overlook how toxic cleaning supplies can be.

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Scented sprays and air fresheners fill your house with VOCs.

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These are volatile organic compounds that react with oxygen in the air and turn into formaldehyde, which is known to cause cancer.

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I've done my best using various apps to identify the things that potentially are toxic.

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Now, I have to say, I'm not terribly confident in these apps.

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I know from testing foods, for example, organic is worthless.

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I've tested enough organic foods, I don't trust it at all as a label.

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So I don't want to go in to say I want to endorse any products or even the apps, other than I'm trying just like you.

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And perhaps we will get into, so here's my general collection of things, but I do want to say that what we have done for food

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and testing with third party labs and being legit in the testing, I do think we want to do for this because you of course can look at an ingredient label

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that includes supplies or food that tells you one set of things, but testing in a lab reveals an entirely other set of things.

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So I can look at this guy and say, what's on the label?

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But if I want to send it to a lab, I may discover there's a lot more things in there than I thought.

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So I want to be very cautious.

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I don't think we know very much.

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I want to see data and lab results.

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As a vampire, I'm sun sensitive.

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So I have here film on my windows,

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which filters out 99% of UVA and UVB because I want controlled light exposure.

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If I choose to go outside because I want to fill the sun, get vitamin D, play a sport, go for a walk.

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I want to know what the UV index is, what exposure I'm getting and for how long versus

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if it's just filtering through the window all day long I could be getting more than I want.

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UVA is what contributes to aging skin and melanoma risk.

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I have upstairs a multi-spectral imaging system.

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You can look at the age of your face.

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Once you see that you become hyper sun aware.

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Non-tinted glass allows 37% of UVA to come through the window.

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So there's a substantial amount of UVA coming through the window.

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Now I want to be clear I'm not anti-sun.

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I'm trying to educate that if you're in the sun, there is a trade-off happening.

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It will age and deteriorate your skin.

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I personally am trying to optimize for longevity, so I enjoy the sun in the morning and the evenings.

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If I'm out in the day when the UV index is high, I wear a hat, I have an umbrella, I put sunscreen on, so I try to protect my skin from these high UV index times.

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So again, if you love the sun, do the sun.

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The sun is great.

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I just try to have the right amount for longevity for my skin.

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One thing you'll notice is in this house I have hard floors.

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Why?

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Also because carpet has 10 times the amount of dust, allergens, and microbes.

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One thing you can do is have a vacuum with a HEPA grade filter.

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Then vacuum twice a week.

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That will be a great offset to the things it will otherwise store.

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A good HEPA filter on your vacuum removes 99.97% of microplastic particles,

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which helps you avoid chronic irritation and respiratory issues.

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All right, now one thing that's in your house that can also negatively affect your health is light.

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We have a lot of white and blue light in our modern environments, including our homes.

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That can delay sleep onset by decreasing your melatonin production.

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So one thing I have is a low-cost red lamp.

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This guy is maybe $30.

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I have nice natural light in the home, so I rarely turn on lights in the house at all.

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But at night, when it's getting dark, I'll turn this guy on.

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It's enough light to navigate the house.

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It's a really cool vibe.

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It's soothing.

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It's calming.

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I know we're getting ready for bed.

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So a very low-cost solution, a high yield on sleep quality, and it's kind of cool.

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Try using a dim red LED in your living room and do so two hours before bed.

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It will help your body wind down and prepare for sleep.

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All right, now on the topic of sleep and bedtime routines, let's go to my bedroom, and I'm going to show you a few things I do around sleep quality,

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which relate to toxins and contaminants.

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What you see in the theme here is don't die is an attempt to identify everything in your environment, which potentially reduces your health and quality of life.

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With that frame, everything takes on a brand new meaning.

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Welcome to my bedroom.

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The first thing you're going to notice is it is completely blacked out.

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I've noticed in my own testing of the various places I've slept, either hotel rooms or bedrooms,

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a blacked out bedroom substantially improves sleep quality.

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Now to illustrate how sensitive your body is to light,

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even 10 lux of light can half your melatonin production and fragment your your body is hypersensitive to light.

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So you can see here, this room does not see light ever.

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Now, I'm fortunate to have a bedroom where I can do that.

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A lot of people do not have that opportunity where they have a bedroom that's both their workspace and their living space.

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So do your best.

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If you can't block out your room for some reason, you can also use an eye mask.

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One other thing I do in my room, which is a staple, is I have this noise machine.

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I started doing this because I lived in an apartment next to a road

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and there'd be loud cars all night long, motorcycles.

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I started using this to see if I could smooth out the noise so I wouldn't have these spikes.

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It did in fact improve my sleep so I carried it over to this house.

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Even though this house is substantially more quiet, I don't have loud cars, rarely do I, but sometimes the dogs bark.

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So it has some kind of incremental improvement in terms of improving the steadiness of noises

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and lessens the likelihood that I wake up.

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Now I haven't done

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a robust study on this so just be mindful

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if you try it out try to measure your sleep see

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if it actually works for you but I would say

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that I generally like this as a tool that helps me sleep

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and smooth out the environment you can get white noise brown noise and pink noise

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pink noise is best it's less high-pitched than white noise and has a similar audio signature

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to rustling leaves rain and wind

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and then finally the other thing I do in this bedroom is I have two air filters actually three

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but two primarily this is a commercial grade IQR system I did this

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because of course I spend you know eight hours per night

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in this room breathing this air I wanted to make sure it was really clean.

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So this is probably like overkill for what you need in a residential environment.

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Also for this environment we're trying to have pristine air quality.

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So I have both an air purifier here, an air purifier there, and an air quality monitor.

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So you just want to be mindful that you're trying to track the pollutants of air.

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Now remember you don't have to do all these things.

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A good MERV filter in your HVAC system could be good enough.

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But if you want a quick win, just grab a portable HEPA air purifier for your bedroom.

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Plug it in, let it run while you sleep, and enjoy your deep sleep.

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Now one final thing is people oftentimes raise the question about EMF.

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My team and I are about to study this.

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We don't know what we think about this.

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One thing I do is I keep my router outside the bedroom.

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So I have my phone inside the room.

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I turn off Wi-Fi and mobile and Bluetooth

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so the phone is emitting as little as it can

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but we're going to do a study as a team we're

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gonna figure out what we think about it I'm not quite sure

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if it's a big deal a medium deal or not a big deal

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so I will update you

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when we figure out where we're at on this topic are you guys

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so as you see there's quite a few things you can

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think about as you try to make your home as toxic

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free as possible I want to leave you with this thought okay build systems.

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So that's why for example putting a high MERV filter in your HVAC system is really good.

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You put it in and you forget about it.

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So most of these things you're trying to say systems and habits solve for health.

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That way it avoids you going through anxiety loops of having to do the same thing again and again.

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You see throughout the house I've tried to put this house on autopilot.

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I think about this as my autonomous self.

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All things I did for health I tried to to never make a decision twice.

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Once, system solved.

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Try to avoid feeling anxious about toxins.

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They are everywhere, they're just a part of modern life.

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You can knock out the big ones with the basic things we talked about today.

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It's a step-by-step journey.

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What you're seeing here, it took me five years to build this.

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So be patient with yourself, take baby steps today, and you'll learn more and more.

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And in time, we will get your house to be just as pristine as this one.

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Thank you.

What is the Shadowing Technique?

Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.

Shadowing Practice: Your House Is Making You Sick (15 Solutions) - Learn English Speaking with Video

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