About ➜ About Interior Medicine

About Interior Medicine

You can click on the bolded statements for more information.

About Meg

Hi! I’m Dr. Meg Christensen. I founded Interior Medicine in 2021. My mission is to help prevent disease by promoting healthier home environments, and do it in the most transparent, researched, and balanced way possible.

I am a licensed, board-certified Naturopathic Physician, have been WELL AP credentialed, hold a Healthier Materials and Sustainable Buildings certificate, and a Bachelor’s Degree in Biochemistry and Biophysics.

You can read a little (or a lot) more about my mission, story, and philosophy here, if you’re interested.

How I Fulfill My Mission

I think you deserve a resource for your own home that is as transparent, researched, and balanced as the ones that exist for the commercial world (like the International Well Building Institute, the Parsons Healthy Materials Lab, the International Living Future Institute.)

In my goal to offer that to you, I use constant questioning, remove as much of my own bias as I can, and do my best to explain nuance and provide context.

I constantly question both the claims I see, as well as my own assumptions. When a company advertises something as “non toxic,” I don’t take their word for it. When I see popular ideas repeated over and over again, I ask where the idea came from in the first place (and sometimes find they’re just not true — plants purifying the air, CertiPUR being healthy, or PEVA being super toxic, for example.) I also check my own assumptions, to make sure I have evidence to back them up, and that they’re not outdated — aluminum is not considered a cause of Alzheimer’s, as I feared it was in the early 2000s.

To remove as much of my own bias as I can, I created material scales that keep my product ratings consistent, and fully explain the rationale for each scale so you can see exactly how I came up with it. I also choose to label every product I receive affiliate income from, because of course money can influence a more positive review of something, and I think this public disclosure forces me to be more neutral.

Finally, maybe most importantly, I aim to provide nuance and context. Some examples: yes, there are so few endocrine disruptors in this one particular scented candle that it is unlikely to have a negative effect on you, but! if it’s one of many, many scented products in your home, that logic won’t hold up. Yes, a polyurethane foam and polyester couch is basically 100% plastic or petroleum-based, but! in the context of the rest of your healthy lifestyle habits and tight savings account, it’s something you shouldn’t worry about. And so on; these grey areas are harder to navigate and certainly less catchy than absolutes, but I think it’s a very important practice in the “non-toxic world,” which tends to veer toward extremes — either outright dismissal, or an overwhelming sense of fear that every toxicant is something to be completely avoided.

About My Language

A quick word about how I use the terms non-toxic, chemical-free, and toxin:

I understand that there is no agreed-upon definition of the term non-toxic, and that everything, even water, is made of chemicals, so nothing is truly chemical-free. Likewise, I’m aware that toxin refers to a natural substance like a plant poison or venom, whereas toxicant is a more accurate term for the chemicals in products that have a negative health impact. I choose to use these words anyway because they are currently the most culturally agreed-upon, descriptive, and accessible terms that allow people to find the information they are seeking. Some people really care about this terminology, so I’m letting you know!

If someone had described my website to me 15 years ago, I would’ve rolled my eyes. Here’s what changed:

I grew up skeptical and relatively conventional, suspicious of organic food, natural cleaning sprays, and anything else that could be considered “fussy.” But, my mind started changing when I saw how invisible molecules could change lives, working at the local pharmacy as a high school student. Specifically, I saw that microscopic chemicals in anti-depressant pills could change people’s moods. To learn more, I read Molecules of Emotion by Candace Pert, and I was hooked. Until then, I had thought I wanted to be an Interior Architect, but I decided to major in Biochemistry and Biophysics instead. Spending four years learning about tiny molecules is likely what makes “toxins” more life-like for me to this day.

My Story

While in my last term of undergrad, I learned in an environmental medicine class about pet birds dying when people cooked with non-stick Teflon pans. Teflon is made of PFAS, and when PFAS were released into the air, birds inhaled them and died. It was thought, even back then in 2007 (!), that PFAS may also be carcinogenic to humans (which of course, now we know they are). Just after graduating, while shopping for groceries one evening, I saw a non-stick Teflon pan with a pink Breast Cancer Awareness sticker on it, the pan company promising to donate some amount of the cost to cancer research. I didn’t know what to do about it in the moment, but it felt like a bookmarked memory I’d eventually figure out.

At that same time, I was studying for the MCAT and working as a clinical research coordinator at the hospital. After a conversation with an elderly patient recovering from a stroke in the ICU (he was widowed and mostly ate frozen dinners) the physician I was with prescribed Plavix, a blood thinning medication. Which is good!! But for weeks afterward, I couldn’t stop thinking about the patient’s loneliness and his microwave meals, both of which are stroke risk factors. I thought that drugs just weren’t enough, and this experience slightly opened my mind about naturopathic medicine (then I learned that Naturopathic Doctors were licensed and board-certified primary care physicians, could prescribe a full formulary of medications, and were covered by insurance, which was the ultimate mind-changer.) I wanted to find a way to prevent strokes from happening, and learn a more holistic way to treat them if they did, so I applied to NUNM and became a naturopathic doctor.

After graduating, I was working in oncology at another hospital, this time with people donating their bone marrow and stem cells to strangers with cancer. While there, I learned that early-onset cancer was becoming more and more common, and that researchers were finally warming up to the idea it might be related to environmental toxins. I also learned that less than 10% of cancer research funding in the US is used for prevention trials. When I was curious if we could participate in the few that did exist, I learned the trials generally didn’t pay well— focusing on new immunotherapies and chemotherapy combinations brought in more money. I get it, we all have bills to pay, even hospitals, but theconcept made me frustrated. I’m not “anti-Big Pharma” — it saves lives. A full range of treatment options, and innovation, are incredibly important. But, I imagine if we invested as much into cancer prevention research as we did treatment, we’d save a lot of lives that way, too.

In the evenings then, I was taking online classes in Architecture and Interior Design. It was 2020 and lockdown gave me time to wonder about my Ghost Ship— the alternative life where I was an Interior Architect. It was fun, but while choosing materials for one of my design projects, I noticed that stain-proof couch upholstery was made with PFAS, just like that Teflon pan was. I wondered if I could more effectively do my small part to help prevent cancer by choosing a couch made without these carcinogens for my (imaginary) client, rather than waiting for preventive research to become more lucrative. The more I learned, the more I was convinced I might be on to something. I started Interior Medicine in early 2021 as an evening hobby. Since then, it’s become a (more than) full-time endeavor— thanks to you— and I plan to keep improving and growing it as long as possible.