56: Mold Exposure and CIRS: How to Find the Root Cause with Ariana Thacker

0:00mold only takes 24 to 48 hours. Following water intrusion to start to grow, it can be as seemingly innocuous as single loose nail head on your roof. The person talking to me was speaking English. Like I recognize that these were words I was familiar with, but it was not registering at all. It was like a very bizarre way of a very impressive just how deep you've gone down the mold and serves rabbit holes. Incredible. Yeah, a travel guide for mold would be incredible. And I wish there was more travel options with the air purifiers too, especially with airports too. Just almost every airport I go to is moldy. I suspect there could be mold on the planes optimistic, but I think that that's another gacha moment for some patients. They relocate and then they bring all these contaminated objects to the new home and then it contributes to an ongoing reaction. Welcome back to Take Back Your Health. Today's guest is someone whose story is going to resonate deeply with so many of you because she went from being perfectly healthy to completely debilitated. And the conventional medical system had no answers for her.

1:02Ariana Thacker is a chemical engineer, a former venture capitalist with a portfolio of over 70 companies and the founder and CEO of Moldco. The first clinician led telehealth platform, standardizing mold detox as routine preventative care. In 2022, over the course of just six and a half months, Ariana went from being healthy and active to experiencing debilitating fatigue, brain fog, significant hair loss, weight gain, and mood changes. All traced back to high levels of toxic mold in her Miami apartment. What she discovered on that journey about chronic inflammatory response syndrome about how broken the medical system is for mold patients and about what real healing actually looks like led her to build mold co, from the ground up. Treatment through mold co averages $150 to $300 per month compared to traditional approaches that can cost tens of thousands of dollars. This is a conversation that I know many of you need. Please welcome Ariana Thacker.

2:04I'm excited to bring you this week's episode of Take Back Your Health. Before we begin, could you please take a second and hit the subscribe button, whether you're watching on YouTube or listening on your favorite podcast platform. Subscribing helps me know that you're enjoying these podcasts and tells me that you want me to continue creating them. And I don't want you to miss an episode. Your support means so much to me and I am proud of you for taking back your health. So Ariana is so great to have you on the podcast. Welcome. Thank you Dr. Myers. Excited to be here. Well, so you and I were just catching up. We hadn't met before now, but when you guys reached out, I checked into your company and I was like, oh, this is right up my personal alley and right up the alley of my listeners. So before we dive into the questions, I always like to hear people's stories. Like how did you get to being on my podcast? Like where were you in life that led you

3:05to creating mold co and then being here today talking with us? Yeah, it's an odd journey. So I was diagnosed with something called chronic inflammatory response syndrome or sers. And prior to that, I have always been very healthy, no history of health issues. I would even run stares as my warm up. I was running a venture capital firm as a solo partner. I felt like my life was very much in flow and then just in six and a half months of moving into a unit in Miami, which was full of mold developed sers. And they completely flipped my life upside down. It was an interesting path to getting back to better health and I'd say now I'm on track for even aspirational health, but at the time it was quite trialing. So with mold co, we're essentially building the solution that I wish I had when I was a patient dealing with mold in my apartment and then also after. Awesome. So yeah, I mean, you and I were just talking about I just got back from Costa Rica.

4:05I mean, Miami, hot humid, the beach, everything's gonna be moldy. I mean, I've spent all of my life in the South. I grew up in New Orleans. We had a basement. I mean, New Orleans is already under sea level and we had a basement. South Carolina and the house there had a basement. Grandmother's house, you know, at the time, 150 years old. So I mean, surrounded by mold my whole life, but had no clue into it. But of course, if you're coming from a place like Miami, hot, humidity, a city like Austin, where they're building very quickly. I mean, it's, to me, it's very obvious. Like a lot of places you're gonna go, we're gonna have mold. But how did you, you made your story sound so simple and I read about you. I don't think your story was so simple. You made it sound like, oh, and then I was just diagnosed, but most people just don't get diagnosed. Even a lot of functional medicine doctors. I mean, I'll even talk about myself when I first started my practice. You know, one of my dear, dear friends now is also a functional medicine doctor and I had heavy metal toxicity. So I thought every chronic condition people were coming in with

5:08was heavy metal toxicity and she had had mold toxicity. So she would thought everybody coming in had mold toxicity and then it went until I got mold toxicity that I was like, oh, she's right. Like, so how, I mean, even functional medicine doctors, there are a lot of them that still are not well versed in mold. So can you go a little deeper on your story more about your journey maybe from doctor to doctor who finally diagnosed you? How did they diagnose you? Absolutely. I would say it was this very intricate referral ping pong system that ended up happening. So I went to my PCP. She didn't understand what was going on. Several of my labs actually came back normal. I had slightly low ferritin, but it wasn't really just to find the scope of symptoms I was experiencing from brain fog to fatigue to significant hair loss to IBS type symptoms to cognitive issues where I had to reread emails multiple times over and then later on as I progressed through the illness, I was even starting to slur my words.

6:09So it didn't really represent the scope of symptoms and experience that I was feeling. I went to immunologist, allergist, pulmonologist, neurologist. The feedback was inconclusive. It was just more and more lab testing and imaging and nothing was really making sense. And even when I went to an alternative medicine provider, I was just throwing some supplements and that was the end of that story. So there's a lot of moments of serendipity a friend actually tip me off that it could be mold in my home. Thankfully she worked at a clinic and she saw several similar patients going through the clinic that had a mold journey and she said, you know, a lot of these symptoms that you're describing I see every day in the clinic and it's due to mold exposure. So I told the alternative medicine provider I was seeing at the time and he actually referred me to a shoemaker certified physician and then that physician actually referred me the doctor shoemaker himself. I became obsessive with the subject and ended up reading hundreds of publications

7:11getting in touch with multiple practitioners in this space after making that mold health connection. So I would say it was anything but straightforward but there was a lot of luck and serendipity where I got my diagnosis relatively quickly for the first source. So it sounds like since you were referred to Dr. shoemaker and we'll of course dive much deeper into that and the lab testing and things like that, did they just test your body or did somebody ultimately also test? I don't know if you were saying it was an apartment or a home that you were in in Miami. Yeah, there was a battery of lab tests being done and there was a mold inspector that came in and verified high levels of mold and the home likely due to the HVAC system. There was roughly 34,000 s for us for meter cube versus roughly 2000 s for us for meter cube for the outside controls. For the ser's diagnosis, what was done was a measurement of the different symptom cluster. So as you know, there's 13 different symptom clusters which has roughly 35 different symptoms.

8:13So that lit up for ser's, there's also the biomarker testing. So C4A, MMP9, TGF beta one, MSH, all of that lit up too as well as the HLA haplotype and the VCS contrast sensitivity test. So all that together confirmed the ser's diagnosis also paired obviously with the mold exposure in the home. So that's how we came to terms with that. Surprisingly, several of the other lab tests through conventional medicine came out normal. Yeah, I mean, that's sort of this typical story. I mean, in my practice, I saw lots of people that have had, you know, ser's and mold toxic mold exposure. I mean, you and I were talking, I think most my listeners know I've lost everything to mold three times and I have had, you know, multiple exposures in my lifetime. And, you know, I tell people, a lot of times and people never find it in their homes and it sounds like without me diving deep that really what somebody did was actually air trapping or, you know, spore trapping test. And so often those come back normal for a lot of people

9:17and, you know, and it's really these micotoxins that can cause the real problems. And so I tell somebody, when you have a test like yours that came back so vastly positive, you know you really have a problem, right? Because most people don't come back positive because what they're missing is checking for the micotoxins and that's where the real issue is, right? Yeah, you nailed so many great concepts. So the air sport trap sampling cannot be relied upon. We actually prefer environmental dust testing just to make sure that the exposure is what it indicates. But also it's mapped to health data and that report that you end up receiving through an environmental dust test typically gives you a low medium high score as well. So you can understand how relatively moldy your home is. There's also other tool set inspectors use like a thermal gun. They look at a lot of the visual and sensory cues like visible mold, earthy, musty odor, peeling paint, consistently high indoor humidity above 60%.

10:19So I absolutely don't rely on just air sport trap sampling even like some of the heavier molds, like black mold for example, tenses settle further down. So the air sport trap sampling technique is usually three feet up above the ground. So it even misses some key species. And there's just a lot more nuance there. Yeah, we're definitely going to dive deep into all. So I mean, I think the take home point is that you were actually pretty, you were obviously early in your journey, right? You know so much more now because of the company that you founded, but you were lucky that back then, if you want to call it that, that someone was able to identify through conventional, what we would consider at this point, conventional traditional mold testing, right? And so I think the point is a lot of people go get that and theirs comes back negative. And so yes, it's important to have a company like how you guys do it so that you're actually getting accurate testing. Let me ask you another question real quick before we dive into some of these things,

11:20were you living alone or was someone else living with you? I was seeing someone at the time. So he was spending a lot of time in the home and he actually developed symptoms as well. Oh, he did. Very similar to mine. One big difference though, he actually experienced rapid weight loss. I experienced rapid weight gain. I know we women is so not fair. Me too. That's what I have to do. I was terrible. I was just like, how did I gain so much with no change to diet? How does it even happen? Again, in some perspective, you were lucky here that you had a partner that was beginning to have symptoms. I was saying to you, I've gone through this three big times, one time alone, which frankly is the easiest way in some ways to go through it because I just threw everything out and didn't have to worry about anybody. Well, I had a dog, a 13 year old dog. Who very interestingly we had moved into this house and she started having incontinence right away. And I felt drugged in the house, like literally drugs,

12:22like couldn't get up drugged. Like, I don't know how much more to describe it other than I felt drugged. And of course, she was 13. So the vet's like, oh, she's just old. Well, the day we moved out, the incontinence was never there again. But, well, basically I was alone. Then I did it one time with a husband and he had no symptoms. And I said, I'm out of here. This is the ultimate. I'm literally moving out. And we had just gotten married. I'm like, I am moving out. You can come or you can stay. But my life depends on this. I've got to get out. And then I did it again with a child. And that was the hardest. But in those, nobody else had symptoms. And that is another thing. I'd love to hear what you said. But you tested your genetics. I have the genetics, too. I don't clear it. But frequently, only a force that the people have the genetics. And so frequently, other people in the home don't have symptoms. And then women tend to be the more fragile. And so we get gas lit that like, we're the problem and that there is no problem because everybody else in the household

13:23has no symptoms. So it sounds like in a certain kind of way, I know it was a terrible thing to go through. But you had some things that I don't always see in patients that helped you maybe get diagnosed a little bit more quickly. Absolutely. I'm so happy you're bringing this up. The canary effect is very real. And this is why we emphasize the importance of testing your home. You're living in this microbial world, which is completely invisible. It's often impossible to know unless you had serves. And then you're getting re-exposure, often very sensitive to re-exposure, to know if mold is really in your home. And I loved your earlier point as well. It's not just mold. There's also the micotoxins. There's the VOCs, the cell walls, or fragments. And what's emerging now in serves research largely led by Dr. Schumaker is around the role of Latino bacteria, as well as endotoxins, and their prevalence in water damage buildings, too. So we know it's not just mold. It's this whole microbial stew that's happening that's

14:23often invisible and how it impacts the individual in the home is quite unique to the individual largely based on that genetics, which, to your point, it's about a fourth of the US population. So we really emphasize just testing the home to make sure that it's not mold at the root cause. If someone is experiencing the symptoms we mentioned. So we both keep going back and forth between, I personally like to distinguish mold from toxic mold, because there's mold everywhere in our environment. And I feel like the people that walk out and they start sneezing, that's a mold sensitivity or mold allergy. So I personally like to define it sort of toxic mold versus regular molds. And then now we've moved into this, Sir, CIRS, Chronic and Plamatory Response Syndrome. So maybe can you walk us through the spectrum of those things and what they encompass? Yeah, absolutely. And our take at mold co is that the treatment approach and the diagnostic approach for CIRS does not depend on whether the mold was toxic or not.

15:25You can develop CIRS through a wide variety of different biotoxins present in a water damage building. So we don't really distinguish that. Even Dr. Schumaker mentions there's probably hundreds of different types of microbes that you're exposed to, even if you're testing or the inspector's really picking up on one or two key species. So we really don't look at it at that granular of a lens. And there's also not a lot of health data yet to support how each individual mold impacts human health besides a lot of the like carcinogenic molds. And I would still say it's like very early research as in terms of how it impacts SirS specifically. We're actually looking to expand that research. So we've amassed thousands of whole blood samples and detailed patient history forms, which includes some of that environmental exposure and more. But as I mentioned, it's like hard to distinguish because it could be hundreds of these different microbes that you're exposed to. And we don't really have a great way to determine that. So I still think it's pretty early in the field

16:26to really isolate certain species and the health impacts for for Serres. But something to note with just a distinguish between an allergy asthma and fungal infections, those tend to be pretty acute. Once you're in the environment, then you have that flare up in symptoms with Serres. That happens too, but it's persistent. What ends up happening is that your first line of defense goes haywire your innate immune system, that leads to chronic inflammation. And then you have that ongoing system-wide chronic inflammation in and out of the environment still. So that's what makes Serres a little bit more unique than allergy asthma or fungal infections when it comes to mold exposure. I mean, I was saying, as terrible as it was, you and I were discussing how I built this house that was intended to be bombproof, moldproof, everything proofs, it's pumice, steel, glass, and where I had to have, you know, ceilings, I have dins, glasses, my ceilings,

17:27but I have no wood in my house. And then they put my dryer vent in correctly and didn't follow the engineer's plan. So I had, it was an elbow, like an L going very high. And so condensating down was water, a little trickle, and but what was coming through was dryer vent. So I had the perfect storm for mold. And then what happened is over time the mastic at that elbow broke down and literally dropped one drop of water on my floor. And then we opened it up to see what was going on. And then mold spores went everywhere, but this is really the only place I was not overseeing the build and the only place that I could have had mold because I had a water source and I had a food source. But my point of all of that is to say, as I'm now like, what was my point of that to say? Oh, so it happened six months into my build. I mean, we had moved in, it was six months. And of course, I was, you know, beside myself

18:28that this was happening, but then I thought to myself, literally the fact that this happened now, saved my life because it's those small trickles that do not rear their head that are ongoing. So every time it was cold enough outside to create condensation and we used the dryer was warm air coming through this condensation was happening. So it was getting fed constantly, right? And those are the death bombs for people like me and you, these small, undetectable, repeatable leaks, right? Like that's a thing that if it had never come through the ceiling could have been up there for 20 years and then suddenly, you know, I'm on my deathbed trying to figure out why. You are 100% right and this is underlining the point around doing environmental testing of the home because you just don't know. It can be in a completely new build. Mold only takes 24 to 48 hours, following water intrusion to start to grow. It can be as seemingly innocuous as single loose nail head

19:29on your roof and then you have a rainfall event and then now you have water intrusion going behind your walls. You just don't know where or how the water intrusion even happens and sometimes it's in the building process where materials are left outside in the rain and now you have a new build that's essentially pre-baked with mold, especially if you're using organic matter, wood, paper materials, et cetera. So you just don't know and it just underlines, most of all times over, the importance of just checking the home and doing regular inspections. And I think that's one of the misnomers and that I had to really talk to my patients about because it's like, oh, I'm in a new home. Or my house is X millions of dollars or my house is this big. There's no way or I clean all the time. And it's particularly in Austin. I mean, we looked at a lot of houses and the wood would already be the wood would come from wherever it rains a lot and somebody puts a tarp over it and it's just creating.

20:31I mean, we literally had looked at a house that was already had the beams up and just hadn't been finished out and there was black all over everything. And then the way they build the houses now, they then put the tie vac around it in a hot humid place like Miami, Austin, it's just, it's already there and you haven't even had a leak in your house. Or the people say, oh, it was just, you know, something got installed wrong or it was just one quick thing, you know, and that's what I think people don't, don't realize. Absolutely. And very common areas that are often overlooked like the basement, the crawl space in the HVAC system, especially if you've never inspected or cleaned out your HVAC system and especially if you're in subtropical conditions or areas of high flooding risk because even high indoor humidity consistently above 60% can promote microbial growth in the home. It doesn't necessarily have to be water intrusion

21:31in the way that you're imagining it, like having an aggressive hurricane or flooding event. There's just so many different ways that this can happen to the home and finding it earlier versus later just saves a lot of headache. And dollars, unfortunately for homeowners, the eventual solution is remediation. You can't just relocate and force the landlord to try to repair the issues. You ultimately do have to make that investment remediation. So flagging the issue sooner versus later is very much in your favor. I mean, I personally would recommend anybody in a Miami Austin area have dehumidifier. So I actually ended up going through a lawsuit through with my house because of what happened. And they made some comment because I own a house in Austin. Well, in Austin, the humidity in your house is whatever I said, no, it's not. They're like, do you have dehumidifiers running 24-7? I said, yeah, I do. They're sitting there going down the drain at my house

22:31and I haven't said it 30% and I pay a very large electrical bill for a house that I'm not in overly often. And I have that for that very reason. Like I tested the house when I moved in, there was no mold and I didn't want any to grow. So I think people just don't even think about that. That's a very important fact about if you are living any of these places that you don't even have to have a leak, just the fact of how humid they are in there, you're going to end up in a situation with mold. Absolutely. You're, as you're saying, it inspired another thought that I wish I knew this at the time on the vents, on the HVAC system, there was visible dust, just coating it, like caking the vents. And that should have been such an obvious sign. There's also this very earthy, musty odor. I actually thought it was a cigarette smell, but not quite maybe wafting in from a neighbor's unit, but no one said that they were smoking. So any of these unusual odors paired

23:33with some of the signs mentioned, definitely worth investigating further. It's likely a mold or other type of microbial issue in the home. Right. And then another thing about AC units, I mean, I have many splits in my house here in Santa Fe, and I did that very intentionally to not have an HVAC system. Because also the problem is that once you get mold one place because it's all has ducts and vents, and it's blowing all over the house, it's impossible to not get mold in every other place of your house. So that was intentional here with the idea that if I ever did have a leak in a particular place, that hopefully it would remain wherever it was instead of spreading throughout the whole house. Absolutely. Let's get back to mold co. So I have this entire experience that you've had, like what I would call any just amazing person in the world. You took this horrible experience that you had and said, there's got to be a better way.

24:34There's got to be a better way for people to get the help that they need. So why don't you tell us the approach at mold co to help patients uncover what's going on with them? Yeah, thank you so much. We try to answer three key questions. So one, am I even being exposed to mold? We do the environmental dust testing. Two, is mold impacting my health. So we do the key biomarkers. And that's really tied to Dr. Schumaker's research. He's been pioneering biotoxin illness for the last 30 years. He coined the term chronic inflammatory response syndrome. He identified the biomarkers. He identified the treatment known as the Schumaker Protocol. And then the third question we help answer is how do I get better? And that was us translating Dr. Schumaker's work into a streamline virtual care setting. So we have our own in-house specialized providers. We have white glove, concierge care, in a portal. We deliver medications directly to your door. And we've done this in a way that's about a 10th to 100th of the cost of what you would otherwise

25:36pay in a brick and mortar clinic. Just having gone through the journey personally, it's so expensive, inefficient, time consuming. There's a lot of, I would say, guesswork where you're being thrown a lot of supplements and ideas. And none of it's really helping or really yielding at all. So we wanted to cut through a lot of that noise and save just tens, if not hundreds of hours of research and likely thousands, if not tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of dollars spent into something that was evidence-based, holistic, and everything a patient would need from their starting of the journey. Am I being exposed to mold too? How do I get better? Well, let's walk through each of those three steps, if you don't mind. So the first one you talked about was testing. And you and I kind of covered that a little bit in the beginning. So traditional testing for mold is a spore trap test. And then what you're doing is a dust test. So maybe start with letting our listeners know

26:37what are the pros and cons and what are the differences of those two types of testing. Yeah, absolutely. I'll start first with how a dust test works. So it's a cloth that you DIY, it's at your home. So that's a big pro. You're not having to hire an inspector and go through that whole process. So you wipe down different surfaces in the home to saturate that cloth with as much dust as you can. If you want the fidelity of which room is it coming from, you can do cloth by cloth room by room. Typically, we recommend just one cloth for a 2,500 square foot area. We typically recommend wiping down 10 different surfaces. And there's some additional instructions like don't wipe down the mold directly and don't wipe by windows. So we send that into our third party lab for a DNA PCR testing where we then tell you what fungal species are present and how prevalent they are. And then you have that low medium high score that comes with that.

27:38So that's how the dust test process works. You're real quick. Can I add in a question? So for the naysayers, right? Because I begin went through a lawsuit. So I call myself pretty much an expert on this now. And through every aspect of it. And I did prevail. But for the naysayers that say, oh, those molds are also outside. So of course, if you have your windows open, of course, if you're bringing your shoes inside, of course, you would have this in your house. I would say you would need an outdoor control to really compare the two. But there are certain levels of mold being present where it is just so beyond what's outside. And that low medium high score was actually mapped to about 1,000 different homes and how patients respond to their indoor environment. So if you're not reactive outdoors, but you're reactive indoors, and it's a really high score,

28:38it's hard to point that to just mold getting wafted in from outdoors. If you want to be extra certain, you can do an outdoor control with the cloth. We typically don't see that happening, which typically just investing in what's indoors and getting that low medium high score map to health data. So many homes are above medium and usually in high that we're seeing. Just because of how prevalent mold is here in the US, it's roughly 50% of homes that have mold, water damage that is likely to cause mold and dampness as well, so that high indoor humidity. So most likely it's the indoor environment that's at a problematic level if you're getting a high score. My understanding, because I was very fortunate, it doesn't matter, I did have a small leak before we moved in. And then it was in the wall in a pumice creep. And so I had my mold inspector come. And he did some testing. He didn't tell me, but he just did it and saved it,

29:42which saved me in this lawsuit. And then when the other leak happened, the species that were there were vastly different. And my understanding is some of these things can be found in the environment, but some of them are very specific to water damage buildings. And so I was showing ones that typically are not out in the environment and they are more specific to a water damage building. And so it was for those two things, well, I mean, it was a host of other things, but that was really the gacha moment was like, no, we have a baseline and this wasn't there before. And these molds are not typically seen in an environment and they are more typically seen in a water damage building. Yeah, absolutely. And Irmy is just one type of dust test out there developed from the EPA and then you get a relative moldiness index with that too. And that includes the 36th top mold species most commonly found in indoor environment. So that's such an excellent point.

30:43It's quite rare to see those specific mold species at high prevalence outdoors. It's very much an indoor mold due to water damage. Absolutely. And so then sounds like you guys then do on the patient themselves, the Richie Shoemaker labs. Do you do any, there's also micotoxin testing, different labs that do urine, do you do both of those? Or do you really stick with just Richie, Dr. Shoemaker's labs? We're expanding our lab offering at the moment. We don't do the urinary micotoxin test for a few reasons. It's hard to tell what's ingested versus inhaled to our understanding the far majority of the population. It's gonna light up that specific test. So it's not really diagnostic for us in any way and it also doesn't answer the more important question, which is mold driving these health issues or not. With the pattern I would expect to see at the immune inflammatory and hormonal level.

31:44So we're just not a fan of urinary micotoxin test in general today. Like if the field has just so much more research and data to support that test, we can get on board and we're always open-minded in light of new data. But for right now, we think it's a pretty expensive test for the clarity that patients get. So it's typically not when we would recommend. Our future lab offerings though are gonna expand beyond the standard Shoemaker labs cause there are a number of other labs that do typically light up in these patients even though it's not diagnostic for SARS. For example, we see elevated levels of thyroid disease and Hashimoto's. We also see reduced T regulatory cells. We see nutrient depletions. We often see co-infections in these patients too. So I would say we're more so going down that road versus looking into the urinary test for our patients. And so for those not familiar with Dr. Shoemaker's labs, I know it's a lot, but can you, you know,

32:46for what you feel comfortable, walk us through what they are and more importantly, what each of them is telling us? Yeah, absolutely. So we look at C4A, which is a compliment and it's tied to the biotoxin illness pathway. It also lights up with bacteria as well. So standalone, these markers are not specific for mold exposure. However, when you have a collection of the markers that I'm about to go through, that it tends to be more sensitive and specific for SARS. We're not aware of any other illness that has this unique pattern that we see in SARS and these are the biomarkers that Dr. Shoemaker identified. So C4A usually lights up when there's some sort of microbial exposure happening. We often see MMP-9 lighting up too. So I'm upregulated and that's an inflammatory cytokine. We see MSH quite depleted, almost undetectable, like less than eight when you get your labs done. And we like to think of MSH as master regulator hormone

33:47that's tied to circadian rhythm. It's tied to pain. It's even tied to frequent urination. So when that's depleted, it's pretty high signal for SARS roughly, it's in the 90s. I would guess 94% of our patients have low MSH levels. We also see VEGF dysregulated either pretty low or pretty high. Normally we see fairly low. Even though early Shoemaker research indicated that it's a third to third, a third low medium high. We tend to see more low than medium and high at this time. We also see dysregulated, antichliatin antibodies at a higher prevalence than normal population, which means that there's this gluten sensitivity that's happening. And that actually happened to me as well. I noticed that I was quite reactive to bread and cookies and I was like, dang it. The things I love to eat so much I can't. I get very chemically sensitive. Like now I can walk down. I don't like it, but I can walk down the, you know,

34:50the aisle of laundry detergent at Target or walk in a home depot. But I mean, I remember standing in a Target just in the clothes aisle when I was so, so sick. And I was like, I can't even be in here. I was like, oh my God, I am one of my patients. Like I get so chemically bothered when I'm going through a mold exposure. Yeah. And we definitely see that in more severe mold cases or serves cases to be more specific. So when patients walk down, they can't walk down the laundry detergent aisle. They can't have more than three different types of food groups. They're unable to tolerate adult doses of medications even when titrated. Yeah. And all of that. Yeah. Literally it was like a diet of like, you know, rice and I can't, like when I was sleeping on a, I was a lot in tub listeners, but I told you how I was so sick of sleeping on a balcony because I couldn't even be inside an apartment for a month. And it was like, I can't even remember what I was eating. But it was like three foods, rice being one of them, like white rice being one of them. Yeah, absolutely.

35:52I never, I never was that chemically sensitive, but walking in homes or buildings with mold there would definitely be a flare up in symptoms. Brain fog, I wouldn't start even slurring my words. It was hard to process information. There's one moment where it was, it was pretty surreal. Like I could tell the person talking to me was speaking English. Like I recognize that these were words I was familiar with, but it was not registering at all. It was like a very bizarre way of being in the world. So yeah, and I just remembered one or actually two more biomarkers I wanted to highlight as well. Absolutely. TGF beta one, which we tend to see quite elevated. And just a note on TGF beta one, we don't, we do not use the recent reference ranges, which was more recently updated. It's way too high. The clinical reference range for us is closer to 5,000.

36:52If you're going through lab corp, right now it's closer to 22,000 and the publisher reference ranges that patients get. So that's an interesting note. And also the HLA haplotype testing too. So that's the genetics susceptibility. It's on chromosome six and there's three different alleles that we test for. You get one from mom, one from dad. So if you're susceptible, or if you have two susceptibilities and both of your parents are impacted, and that ties into the canary concept we spoke about earlier with a small asteris. So 95% of CERS cases we see, those patients end up having one of those genetics susceptibilities, however, there is still that 5% of patients that develop CERS that do, that does not have that genetics susceptibility. So it's not granting you automatic immunity. It's just highly likely you're going to be just fine. Once you're out of the environment, we tend to see those patients recover relatively fast

37:55and often just getting out of the environment is the only step they need. Hi there. If you enjoyed this episode and you are looking to go deeper, perhaps you want one-on-one health coaching, the ability to order lab testing, both conventional and functional. Maybe you'd like to ask me a question or be in a community of supported like-minded people. Well, all of that is available to you in my inner circle. It's called Dr. Myers Inner Circle. I show up every month teaching and hosting live one-on-ones. I have a dedicated health coach who's there to help answer questions and guide you in the right direction. You have a community of supportive people cheering you on, as well as a dedicated library of all of my guides, my protocols, and lots and lots of content, as well as exclusive interviews just for you. So if you are looking to go deeper and meet me and ask me a question,

38:56I'd love for you to join my inner circle. It's only 37.99 a month, less than a dollar a day, if you'd like to join for six months or even a full year, there's special pricing for that. So come join me over at Dr. Myers Inner Circle.com. I look forward to meeting you. I look forward to answering your questions and of support to you. Again, that's Dr. Myers Inner Circle.com. And I'll see you there. Take care. If you know me, you know that I do not put my name behind anything unless I actually use it myself. So when I tell you that I have had a sunlight in sauna for the past 16 years, I mean it. It is one of the wellness tools that I use very consistently and have for the last 16 years. So most of us do the basics right. We eat well, we move, we sleep. That's exactly where you should start. And if you've done all of that

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42:00And then, so that's testing, and then where treatment? Where do you go? How do you guys approach your treatment? Yeah, we offer a few prescription treatments. We also offer just a couple of evidence-based supplements as well. We try to keep it lighter touch for patients. We really subscribe by this more minimalist approach to supplementation. So on terms of the prescription treatments, which everything's overseen by, or as specialized providers who are trained in this approach and overseen by our medical director, Dr. Scott McMahon, who's considered one of the world experts. And of course, Dr. Schumaker's are founding physician too. So the medications we offer are a prescription binder, an FDA-approved medication called Colisevlam. Here used off label to be clear for this use case. And that's typically the first step that patients start on. And the way that works is that, and there's a few different theories for how this works.

43:00This is just the most common theory, is that it binds to the different toxins that are present in the body, and then you secret that out when you poop. So that's Colisevlam. There's also colostaramine too. Yeah, that's what I'm. I've taken that before. I now, I mean, I've, of course, formulated supplements for my company based on my experience. So I have a product called Coconut Charcoal Complete that I recommend. I mean, because there is like artificial sweetener in those prescriptions, at least there were when I was using them. In the same hotel. For colostaramine off the shelf, the generic version, yes, definitely. Unless you get it compounded, but there's still always like fillers even in compounded medications. And some patients can't tolerate the prescription binder. So they often start with the more natural solutions, because what ends up happening is that it's a little different than a Herk's reaction. There's an intensification that happens

44:02where it's like turning up the dial on their existing symptoms. And we see that in the minority of the patients that we accept at Moldco, just because we're, we only accept 75% of patients who apply, by the way, we're so, so the opposite of a pill mill, we want to be very certain that we can work with the patient and get them to better health. So we start with colosteval inverses, colostaramine for a few reasons. One, colostaramine tends to have worse side effects in patients. It's just a more intensive binder. And also we tend to see the same results over this fan of treatment. I know there's a lot of information online that, oh, colostar means the stronger, better binder, but over the course of treatment, they tend to have the same results. We see that in our patients, we see that in clinical practice through the providers we work with. And lastly, it comes in, colostevalam comes in a tablet

45:03versus an oral suspension. And colostar means kind of gross. It's pretty gross. Yeah. And it's hard to travel with a tub of, like I'm going to call it gritty sand. Like orange, fake, you know, is disgusting. I mean, it's chalky. It has a terrible taste. It has, you know, fake sugars in it. Yeah. I mean, I used to grow early on before I had a product, you know, but once I had a product, I stopped using it on people. But yeah. So I'm absolutely. Yeah. That's cool that there's a pill form now. Yes. For colostevalam, it's a tablet. You take it two to three times a day. And it's with a meal as well versus colostar. I mean, you have to take it in between meals, which makes it hard to time. Like, OK, is this exactly X hours between my lunch and dinner? So it helps with scheduling. We also have an EDTA-based nasal spray. And as you're fully aware of, Marcon's is common in these patients as well as biofilm formation.

46:04I still think we're in the, we're on the cutting edge of really understanding the nasal microbiome. There's so much more research to understand there. Our current understanding is that Marcon's colonizes the nasal passages, which is an antibiotic, staphlic caucus, bacteria, or resistant staphlicoccus bacteria that grows in the nasal passages. And there's this more recent research points to higher Marcon's or presence of Marcon's driving down MSH levels, like unclear if that's causation or correlation. But what we see in these patients is if your Marcon's positive, then you tend to have low or undetectable MSH. The last medication that we offer is VIP peptide. That's on the 503A category one list on the same list as aloe vera and melatonin. So it wasn't part of that recent FDA discussion or excluded at all. And it's a naturally occurring neuropeptide found in the body

47:05and it's also a medication that's been around since the 70s. So those are using as the nasal spray as well? Yeah, it's also a nasal spray. I've done it before. I've done the Schumacher Protocol. You've done it. You have interviewed him 10 years ago or something. Yeah. Oh my gosh. Yeah, please say hi. Yeah. Oh, yeah. OK, so that's what y'all do, prescription-wise, and then supplement-wise, what are you doing? Yeah. And we're going to build out our supplement offering a lot more. We're just collecting as much data as we can because we want to make sure what we offer is really evidence-based for service patients specifically. That being said, we hear all the time of patients really having benefit from a number of different supplements, too. The one we recommend to almost all of our patients is a high dose of mega-3, typically for 30 days. There's also some nutritional deficiencies that we see in these patients like vitamin D, sometimes low-fairitan, and more.

48:06So we sometimes advise on that. It's a little bit lighter touch. Some of our patients end up just figuring out their supplements externally or with another health care provider for their case. And I would say the last thing we advise on, too, is diet and movement. As you know, when you have serves, it's really hard to exercise. And it's not really recommended to hit the gas pedal on the treadmill or really intense weight lifting. It's really more like movement and then progressive resistance over time. So we provide that guidance as well as how to have a low amylose diet, which is the diet that Dr. Shoemaker recommends for patients. And that's usually just one month adjustment in lifestyle for food. And tell us why low amylose? What we've seen in clinical practices that it helps lower MMP-9 levels and eliminating starches may have an effect on the leptin levels, too.

49:08We often see patients shedding that extra weight that they put on when they're in the environment. So this is Dr. Shoemaker actually wrote a diet book, surprisingly, and a nature book. He's like such a polymath. But he just saw that the low amylose diet tends to be the most effective in these patients. And I'm sure there's going to be so much more research coming out on keto diet and carnivore and more. So we're tracking all of that, too. Well, if I may, I will just expand on some of the things that you've said that after working with thousands of mold patients, myself, and being one. A lot of these people, myself included, or GSTM1, have SNPs. And so they don't have glutathione. It's another reason that they get into this boat. And so typically what I'm using is an acetylated glutathione, as well as I have a product that's liver support, which is all the precursors to glutathione. And then the coconut charcoal binder complete.

50:08So simply my personal opinion over here, there's missing something to help these people excrete the toxin. I mean, you're binding it, but a lot of these people have detox issues, and they're not excreting it. And so that's part of the problem that I've found personally and professionally. And then a lot of these patients have candida overgrowth as well. And so, yes, putting them on a ketogenic diet or at least a very low carb diet, I've found whether that's helping the actual serves in some kind of way. I mean, we do know that fasting and ketogenic diets can help with inflammation. So perhaps it's working on that mechanism, or maybe it's also working on the mechanism that they also have an overgrowth of candida or yeast in their gut or somewhere else that that type of diet helps with. Absolutely. I would love to see our company expand across multiple indications over time.

51:10And I think that comes after the lab testing expansion. Because we do see patients reporting SIBO and NCFO and various tick-borne illnesses, as well as getting some gut support, too. So expanding across all these areas is very much on the roadmap and really exciting. I hope we were able to just do all of that in the most evidence-based way possible to help patients. Also, affordably, too. Because when you go down all these different rabbit holes, it ends up just costing a lot of money. So I'm excited to find a way to have this just be as affordable and accessible for patients. And I just remember that I forgot one other mention. We do see high levels of histamine in these patients. And we do recommend anti-histamines, too. This is from our bio bank data. Roughly 40% of patients have an overexpression in histamine. Primarily, our female patients, interestingly,

52:13maybe that has to do with the lower levels of testosterone. We're still trying to understand that some more. But we also advise on over-the-counter anti-histamines, too, for our patients. So that's exactly what happens to me. That's how I can tell when I'm immold is that I get, you generally can't see it, but I get a histamine rash. That's exactly what happens to me. If it's really bad, they will feel like my skin is on fire. And I just feel hot in my skin is on fire. And you're just like a cool bath is the only thing. I have a productist's design. And yes, if it's very severe, I'll even take over the counters. But that's very common for me. And that's what happens. Most people just think, oh, your sunburned or your tan or something's like, no, I am having the most, god-awful histamine response here to mold. Wow, yeah. And sometimes the over-the-counter and a histamine stone solve the issue for patients. Sometimes they need to go towards prescription.

53:13We sometimes see patients on Chromalin or just something more intensive to help mitigate that response. Yeah. You may not have tried it. Yeah, it's very impressive just how deep you've gone down the mold and serves rabbit holes. Incredible. Unfortunately, but no, I mean, it's like you. You know, it's like I said, I just was in a hotel in Costa Rica. I got exposed and it just made me realize, I mean, one of my exposures, not that I count, is my three, you know, having lost everything. But one was a, was actually a hotel in Mexico. And I will say at the Fairmont, my Acoba don't ever go there. Why? It was so, so bad. And when I got home, I tried to wash all my stuff and everything and it would not come out. And so anyway, I sent my mold inspector down there, but they knew, they didn't know he was coming, but they knew that I was complaining that there had been mold. So they cleaned this room with a fine tooth comb. And he still said it was the worst place

54:14he's ever been in his life and it's a mold inspector. And he did the, did the light and he found mold growing on inside of a picture frame in the room. So that's how bad it was. But since that, that time, I now have a whole system for traveling to protect my stuff. One being that I don't take anything nice with me. I literally like buy clothes at Target to travel in. If I'm worried, like going to Costa Rica, like a beach, like that, not my everyday travel, but if I'm worried and haven't been somewhere. So my point of this is, it actually don't remember my point of this, but I just got home from Costa Rica and so as soon as I got home, it just made me realize, like, oh, I'm gonna do a podcast on how to travel safely if you're worried about mold. And I do generally, I always stay in a new hotel. It does not mean that it's not gonna be moldy, but it at least helps your chances. Like we already discussed how things can be moldy or in this place, I mean, it seemed like the walls

55:15were actually like a pumicecrete type of wall, but the humidity there is just so high that that's what happened. After two years, the place already got moldy. Yeah, a travel guide for mold would be incredible. And I wish there was more travel options with the air purifiers too. Just as like an extra safety net, I often just turn off the AC system when I'm staying in a hotel and like you book new, I travel with my binders too, just to make sure that I'm detoxing. You know, pro-photically. Yeah. Yeah, there's just so many additional stats that you have to think about. And then I'm also researching like, do any of the reviews talk about mold or a weird odor or water damage? So I'm talking about different platforms. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, maybe you could create something that's like, you know, is there mold here or something in this hotel? And I actually, because where we went, which is Nosara Costa Rica, it's actually very, very popular right now. And this was a brand new, very nice hotel right next

56:17to the beach. In fact, we had some friends from Austin. We didn't end up seeing them because we didn't know that we're there at the same time. So it's very popular. And so in my podcast, I said like, I'm not trying to throw the hotel under the bus, but I just feel like I am going to mention the name because, you know, people may go stay there. Like it's a very popular place. And the other room they actually did off, it's a very small hotel of nine rooms and they did offer to move me. But that room was right on the corner and you would hear, you know, motorcycles and stuff going by all night long. And so in this place, the living room is where it was really bad. The bedroom was not as bad. So that's why I made it, you know, work because I was like, we just closed the door to the bedroom. I turned off the AC in the living room. And then we were out and gone most of the time. But yeah, I mean, I'm just, I don't have time to write reviews. So I'm not like the review person, but yeah, I mean, it would be nice. But I think that most, you know, a lot of people are not as sensitive to us.

57:18I mean, the average person would have walked in this room and been totally fine. So I mean, not the one in Mexico, but yeah, in this one. I mean, again, that one in Mexico, I had no, there was no room to change to it was after Christmas and everything was completely booked. And we were in Mexico, like I couldn't just get another hotel. But anyway, yes, I mean, I have a whole system. I mean, I do have a mold guide that we've created. So I certainly can link that for the listeners, but maybe I'll convert my podcast into how to travel safely. But there isn't a right way. I don't think, you know? I, yeah, and especially with airports too. Just almost every airport I go to is moldy. I suspect there could be mold on the planes as well. It's hard to know, but yeah, it's just when you're traveling, you're probably getting exposed. Totally. I mean, it, there was this flight from Austin that they used to have a direct flight here.

58:19It was one of those cheap airlines. I can't even remember a legion. And everybody would complain about it because there was like these old military planes. So there was no carpet in it and the seats were like pleather and they wouldn't recline. I was like, I love this airplane. It's like so clean because the seats are pleathered. There's no carpet to get moldy. You know, I don't care about it. It's an hour flight who cares about your seat reclining. I mean, I really recline my seat as it is. So absolutely, and that was one of the things I was saying on my travel is like before I even take a hard case suitcase, but before I even come in the door, I've wiped the entire thing down with alcohol. Like think about the wheels. I mean, most people don't think about this, but think about the wheels on your roller board, going through all those airports and all that stuff. And then people just bring it straight into their house and put it in their closet with everything else. It's like, no, thank you. I'm not doing that. Yeah, absolutely. And same with the poorest materials when folks relocate after mold exposure, like the clothes, stuffed animals, bedding, mattress, furniture, rugs, purses, even.

59:23I've actually left a lot of my poorest things in a storage unit in Miami, and I haven't visited it since I got sick. Just fingers crossed, maybe one day I can still keep those things likely not. I'm not so optimistic, but I think that's another gotcha moment for some patients. They relocated and they bring all these contaminated objects to the new home and then it contributes to an ongoing reaction. Absolutely. I tell everybody to go somewhere and take nothing. I mean, in each of my mold exposures, I literally left with nothing and went to target, bought new clothes, and got a new mattress and slept on the floor. And so, you know, just literally started. So in my house here, when this happened again, it's like everything in this house is brand new. I literally have a vase and a little wooden statue that I can tolerate that I gave my mom who has passed. And those are the only two things that I have that have any meaning or any value personally because everything else, you know,

1:00:25is molded. I too have a storage unit, not of any of my stuff that I've kept from my mold exposures because I've just learned to let go of stuff. But, you know, I have like my mother's art and sentimental things of my mother's that I'll never be able to tolerate, but I pay for a storage unit because I don't, it's sentimental and I don't want to get rid of it. But yeah, I mean, that is the biggest thing for people is taking a bunch of stuff with them. And so that's why I now travel with like, even I travel with a little pleather person, it goes in the wash when I get home like everything. With it? Yeah, so it's great. Yeah, I mean, it's, I actually were building this house as it was going through that mold and mex, that thing in Mexico. And so I added an extra washer and dryer in my garage for this very reason that if I got exposed, I didn't even have to wash this stuff in my house. I mean, I understand everybody can't do that, but like this was a moment where I felt really grateful that I had that foresight to do that because that's what I did in this situation, washed everything. I'll say one more thing about travel just for people

1:01:25because I buy these hefty jumbo Ziploc bags and I put all of my clothes, that's what I pack in. And it's awesome because it's their plastic bags Ziplocs, it protects your clothes and it sucks out the air. So it folds them down. So if you don't know this, this is my own system that I came up with. And so then in like in this particular situation where we were, I could tell it was moldy. So I kept everything in the bags. In fact, I realized we were in our bathing suits all the time and we were just wearing like two or three outfits. So that's all I kept out. And then I left everything out in these Ziploc bags closed inside my closed hard case suitcase. So 90% of what I took didn't end up getting exposed. And I learned that the hard way from that other trip where I was like, oh, it's not so bad or you know, I don't, whatever. And then I literally had to throw everything I had taken on that trip away. What?

1:02:25Whoa. The things, the lengths we have to go to. Well, back to you in moldco. So where, well, actually before we part ways, what are three things you would recommend our listeners do to take back their health? I would say take our free assessment. We have some of the more common symptoms and signs of environmental exposure in the home. And it also comes with a free guide too, which was put together by our team and reviewed extensively by our clinical team. So we're big on free resources. Those are two really valuable free resources on top of our blog. Part two, I would say if you're at the point where you're not sure if you're getting exposed to mold or if you're not sure if you have the symptoms and some of the signs, if mold could be at the root cause of the health issues, it's worth investing in lab testing. We actually offer a $56 lab panel for the top three markers that are off due to mold exposure, MMP9, MSH,

1:03:25TGF beta one. And that test is at cost for us. And it's just a limited time in which we're doing that. And I would say lastly, really try to invest in finding a great inspector for your home if the environmental test has lights up and your labs are lighting up. Some of the things to look for are in IIC or ACAC or NORME certified inspector. They should really know their stuff. They shouldn't be moonlighting as a mold inspector as part of a pest company or doing it part time. They should really, really be living and breathing mold to properly assess your home. So those are my three immediate tips. And the first two are available at moldco.com. It's spelled how you think, m-o-l-d-c-o.com. And do you all offer that people can order lab testing? Do people have to sign up with you guys and a physician or can people come to your website and just order lab testing?

1:04:27Right now it's an easy checkout experience. A physician does write the lab requisition, but we automated that in the background. OK, cool. I mean, just for me personally, when I go to lab corps because they overcharge you so much, I end up having to pay a lot. And when I had my clinic in Austin, I had a great situation with a local lab. But unfortunately, lab corps is the only one that does a lot of the shoemaker labs. So yeah, go ahead. And we actually use lab corps, but we got really reduced price. No, of course, of course. Yeah, I mean, it's awesome that you have that. And then my last question was going to be, where can people find you? So you've said it. But if you want to, if there's any other way, like show stroll or anything for you personally, where people can find you, yeah, our Instagram's pretty fun. We post a lot of great educational content there. So at the mold company is for our Instagram.

1:05:30And if you can't find something you're looking for on our website or just need help or have any questions, you can reach out at support at moldco.com. We're very responsive. We have a whole team just dedicated to answering patient questions and connecting them with resources. So please don't be shy in reaching out. Awesome. Well, that was great. Thank you so much. I'm glad that you turned your lemons into lemonade and are helping people on this journey with mold. So thank you for what you're doing. Thank you so much, Dr. Myers. It was great to meet you. You too. Thank you so much for joining me on today's episode of Take Back Your Health. I hope this conversation gave you real actionable insights that you can bring into your own healing journey. My mission is simple. Conventional medicine failed me. It is my mission to not have it fail you too. So if this episode was helpful for you, please share it with someone you know who is currently being failed by conventional medicine.

1:06:30Together, we can reverse chronic illness. And please take a second and hit the subscribe button so that you never miss an episode. I would greatly appreciate it if you left a review. Your support means the world to me. And it also helps this podcast reach more people. And finally, I'm excited to announce that if you are looking for more personalized guidance, I want you to know about the Dr. Myers Inner Circle. This is my private members only community where I host monthly live Q&As. There's special interviews not seen anywhere else a full content library, special discount on my favorite products, and the ability to order functional medicine labs as well as schedule a consult with one of my dedicated health coaches. And most importantly, you have the support of a community of people who truly understand what you're going through. They get it. As always, you can find additional tools and resources

1:07:32at doctorammyers.com or on my social media at Dr. Amy Myers. And if you're looking to purchase supplements or protocols created by me, head over to Amy Myers MD.com. You can find all of these links in the show notes. I am so proud of you for taking back your health. Stay informed, stay empowered, and I'll see you next time on Take Back Your Health. Take care.