 While you're getting ready there, I'll just say, hey everybody, great, hopefully you're joining us from all over. Tell us where you're at. Please feel free to share. You're going to hear all about mold and the virus and everything you want to know. We've got some questions prepared, but if you guys put questions into the chat, we'll take a look at those and we will try to answer most of them. But I am so excited to have two awesome friends here today. Dr. Ellen Antwon, her husband Scott and her are fully functional and fine health care. Is that right, Ellen? Yes. Awesome. And we go way back. We had a really cool meeting with IFM and just found that we connected on so many levels, spiritually, mentally, physically, and functional medicine-wise, so we've been just great friends and it's so fun to see across the country. She's in Indiana, I'm in Colorado, but we love sharing tips and being there for you guys. We also have a special interest in mold and Lyme disease and these complex chronic illnesses, so thanks for joining us. And then John Bodie of the Mold Pro, we've got a mold expert on board, so we're going to hear from him a little bit about your house and your questions and other things. So Ellen, I'll turn it over to you for a moment here. Yeah, I'm just, I'm busting right now because I've been excited all week. I know it's such a crucial time right now for people to get this information and I'm really thankful to both of you, just good friends of mine and Jill, you're just so amazing, well-known prolific writer and speaker out there in the community doing amazing things and I just thank you for your time to be able to be here with us and my community and John, thanks for your friendship, thanks for your expertise, really thankful to have both of you here. So again, this is meant to be a question and answer, but just a really relaxed conversation. Our goal is to give you guys information and hopefully some measure of hope and healing, which is really important to me. And so I'd love to start right now with just a little bit of background on me. I got really sick years ago with Jill, you helped me with years ago with mold-related illness. I'd love to hear a little bit about your own personal journey, Dr. Jill and also you, John. Why are you both interested and involved in mold? Yeah, so thanks for asking, Ellen. And after this, I want to hear your little story too, so we'll all share. Mine goes back to 2013, Boulder had a massive flood, had no unbeknownst to me. My office was two stories up, basement flooded in my office and there was a lot of starchy batteries growing, I started getting shorter breath, rashes, tea, brain fog. And I had no clue how mold could affect the system. I think in the back of my mind, I thought there may be an environmental trigger, but I really ignored it. And I have such compassion for those out there that have had stories or have your own experience because I think it's almost universal that there's a degree of denial in the beginning because it's overwhelming. And we'll talk today about some of the emotional triggers with mold and the trauma and all that. But the interesting thing for me is I was in denial for a while until I started getting really, really sick. My office manager now will say, oh my gosh, Jill, I thought you had gotten your cancer back because I had cancer at 25. It was that bad. Bottom line is I found out I had mold and I was like, oh my goodness, what do I do? I mean, we're not trained even in functional medicine. We did not get good training in what to do with mold. So we did both of us. I had to really dive in and learn like, how do we treat this? What do we do with our patients? So it came from a really very real place. And it took about 12 to 18 months to get kind of through the worst part of it. So it's not an easy process. Yeah. So, John, what about you? Why you went from, you know, financial world, Fortune 100 companies to mold, inspection, and remediation. What's that story about? Yeah, it all started. Thanks, Dr. Anton. It all started with the real estate bust and in acquiring properties, looking at properties that were foreclosures and a lot of those properties had mold issues. And that's what brought us into that particular world. And as we got into it, we quickly realized that really traditional mold remediation doesn't service those that have mold health related issues. And so we started connecting with a few doctors and they started learning more and more about mold illness. And that's what took us down the path about 10 years ago. Yeah. So, Jill, you said you wanted to hear a little bit about mine. So, you know, I started my career in emergency medicine and then through some other family health issues really dove into functional medicine. So I was practicing functional medicine, you know, feeling the best I'd ever felt. And in when was it 2014-ish? I started, you know, I went to a regular spinning class. I normally go to all of a sudden, I feel like I'm going to pass out. And over six to 12 months, I had this workup for this, you know, my heart racing, walking up a flight of steps, exercise. I wasn't able to ride a bike or do anything that I normally could do. Really thought I had had a heart attack or something else that was silent. And became so ill, I lost 20 pounds and I developed significant chemical sensitivities. I couldn't go outside. I could smell somebody smoking a cigarette like three blocks away. And, you know, I remember calling you saying, Jill, I either have mold illness or I have Lyme disease. Help, I need somebody to help me. And so, you know, thus began my journey into this and really dove in. And since then, a large part of our focus and our practice has been to help people who are ill from mold. And the reason why I wanted to do this is because, you know, the statistics of homes that are water damaged is pretty significant. And, you know, the government agencies, World Health Organization, state that somewhere around 50% of all homes have had some water damage and or mold growth and 85% of all other buildings like hospitals and schools and other things have been, you know, damaged by water and therefore have associated mold growth in them. And so it's a huge issue. And Dr. Jill, I'd love for you to talk about, I know what I see in my practice, but I'd love for you to talk about in your experience, what do you see as symptoms that people present to so that people that are home right now we're in these environments and they're wondering, do I have mold illness? Like, what are some of the things that people present to you with? Yeah, and you can sort chime in too if I forget anything. But, you know, the number one thing is the brain. I would say most frequently there's some degree of foggy thinking, brain fog, trouble with retention of new information. You have to read over things twice. Sometimes word finding, which is pretty unique to mold where you want to say cat and you say dog instead. You're like, where did that come from? I used to remember when I was typing an email, the words I would type the wrong word and I was like, that's strange. I didn't mean to type that word. These weird, bizarre brain things that really does affect the brain. Other things would be just fatigue in general or foggy thinking and as far as just feeling like sleepy, drowsy. I always joke, I think molds have personalities. So each of the molds has a constitution of the types of microtoxins they produce and water damage building was just like this slew of toxic soup. So what's interesting is each person and even people in the same environment or even other people with other types of like a home or workplace or other mold exposures, they can present very differently. Often it affects respiratory system. So cough congestion, shortness of breath, sinus pressure congestion. For me, I had read really irritated eyes and skin rashes and histamine types of it can often trigger mast cells. So you'll have like rashes that are unusual, more food sensitivities. What else are you seeing? Yeah, so for me personally, and it was funny that you said that I consider myself somebody who's pretty on top of things and in the midst of my illness, I remember leaving my car keys in my car, car running garage down, got in my house and it was probably two minutes and I'm like, oh my goodness, I just left my car running with the garage down in a house with five kids in it. Like what, and you know, that was so unusual for me. As I mentioned, the multiple chemical sensitivities, I couldn't stand any fragrance. I've had air hunger. So to me, it first started with I couldn't, I lost exercise tolerance. Then I felt like I couldn't breathe at all. Even, you know, I would do that all day long, you know, take a deep breath. So John, I know, you know, you're not involved in patient care, but you do have patients that are calling you. And so do you, do they express to you any symptoms or things that they're seeing that are different than what Dr. Gill and I just mentioned? We hear much of the same complaints, drowsiness, brain fog, forgetfulness, itchy eyes, upper respiratory. One of the telltale signs is that when I leave the environment, I leave the home, we're out on vacation, we're out at work, I feel much better. And it's worse when I'm back home. So that's one of the things, or some of the things that we hear frequently. Yeah. So we're all home right now and this is the main reason why I really wanted to have this conversation, because Dr. Gill, you and I are seeing these people all the time. And, you know, things are a bit different, because right now people can't leave their homes. And, you know, I'm concerned about that, because the first thing we tell people is get out of that environment until you can either take care of that environment or be somewhere else entirely going forward. And so, you know, why do you think right now some people might be experiencing more symptoms, perhaps, because of this pandemic? What are your thoughts on that? Yeah, so I've been surprised. I've probably had a half a dozen people call with new onset, what they think might be mold related, because all of a sudden where they used to spend, you know, 50% of their time outside the house, they're 90% of the time inside the house. And so if they suspected there might be an issue, then all of a sudden it's a much bigger issue. And especially if it's cold or snowy, like we've had up and down today is 70 degrees. It's beautiful here in Colorado. But like last weekend it was snowy and 32. So in those days it's harder to open up your house and get the airflow in and you're spending a lot more time in that environment. So if any of you are at home and all of a sudden you're experiencing these new onset, brain fog, focus, concentration, skin issues, of course respiratory issues are confusing. We'll go into that in the virus interview, how you differentiate. But it tends to be more of an allergic than an infectious type of thing and how you would know that is again the rashes, the red itchy irritation. The, it might be like, like you said, the air hunger. I often see like a cough or a sinus pressure or congestion. So if you wake up in the house where you're having mold exposure, you might wake up with a headache or congestion. Whereas if you go to a hotel or go to a friend's house or somewhere else you wake up and you feel more clear. So like how you wake up is a big indicator of if you're feeling poorly, I think. John, any comments on that? Yeah, I think I agree with 100%. Now that we're in the home war, it gives us an opportunity to really look and see if we have issues in the home. We're just more aware we spend more time in the home than what we did maybe five, six weeks ago. So it gives us a good opportunity to really do some inspection ourselves and find out what our environment has for us. Yeah, so how do we know if we're getting exposed to mold? What do you tell people? How do you know? Yeah, and I'd love for you to chime in too because you're such an expert on this. Often if there's a musty smell, that's a guaranteed volatile organic compounds from mold or musty. So often we're like, oh, it's just a musty smell in the basement. Well, that's a pretty good guarantee that there might be an issue going on. You might notice sometimes when we do testing, which we'll have John, who our expert talk about environmental testing, I won't touch on that yet. But when people do testing, they often have differentiation of levels of mold from the basement to the upstairs to the parts of the house. And so based on that, you can often feel worse when you go down into the basement versus upstairs or if your bathroom's upstairs and your master bath is a problem, which a lot of houses are. You feel worse when you're in your bedroom or when you take a bath or a shower or some people even in the shower will get kind of rash your histamine. That's often from the mold that's being aerosolized as they use the shower, the drains, whatever else. John, maybe you can comment a little bit about the house environment and how they might be able to tell rooms in the house or where they suspect there's an issue. So say someone has symptoms. And of course, we want to hear about inspection and all those things, but what if right now they're stuck at home, they can't get someone in their house and they think there's mold? What suggestions would you have for them to do right now, John? Yeah, so you get on a couple of great points. High impact areas or moisture areas, bathrooms, crawl spaces, basements, those are areas that if you smell, and if you go back to inspection 101, it's olfactory and your nose is the first clue. So when you smell those musty odors, that's a good indicator that you may have an issue. So there are some things you can do at home from a DYI standpoint to do some testing. You can certainly reach out to an IEP, environmental professional, and get some phone consultations as well. Most of us are sure to be willing to help out via phone during this time. Yeah, with video chat, do you feel like you could actually look at someone walking around their house and help them without being there in person? Yes, we do rely on some customer photos at this point in time. We're actually still out in the field doing inspections today. We're obviously still covered up with PPE and masks and gloves and those sorts of things to protect our employees and our clients as well, but we have some really neat technologies rolling out in the next two weeks, which will enable people to send us live videos from their home into their particular projects. But yeah, there's some things that we can do today and we can handle a lot of things over the phone before any IEP doesn't onsite. Yeah. And I would say this is, sorry, go ahead. No, no, go ahead. I was just gonna say this is a perfect time. We are home right now and lots of times we're in and out running around so busy and this is a perfect time while you're home to start looking around your house for areas that may be a problem. So lots of people aren't going into their basement necessarily looking in call spaces. Lots of people don't even notice that they have stains on their ceilings from water leaks that may be small, tiny leaks because they don't have active water coming through but all of a sudden you look up at your ceiling and you see some stain that wasn't there before. And I know that we've had some crazy hailstorms here recently and a lot of people are getting some water into their homes that way, looking around your windows and seeing if the seals are broken. I know personally for myself when I was sick one of the issues was actually my washing machine that was a front-facing washer and it just every time I opened it you could tell from VOCs that it was full of mold and mycotoxins and so it's a perfect opportunity for people to take this time and inventory those areas and I know, John, you talk about doing things like measuring humidity and other things are there some other things in the home that people can do like that? What would you suggest to, you know, you talk about the HVAC system kind of being the lungs of the house and so what are some things that people can do in their homes right now to determine if humidity is a problem or some other issue? Yeah, great, great. So it's a real basic thing. So we can break molds down into two categories. One being zero-filic, which means dry-loving. The other being hydrophilic, which means water-loving. So a common misunderstanding, people think we have to have a water leak in order to have a mold problem and that's simply not the case. So aspergillus and penicillium are two types of molds which are associated with cerebral toxin production. Those molds can thrive with just high humidity. So go into amazon.com and getting a very inexpensive hygrometer, less than $10. They're fairly accurate. It's a great way of making sure you manage your relative humidity within the home and so that's the first step. For HVAC systems, that's where a lot of those zero-filic molds, as you mentioned, it is the lungs of the house and so it can be our best defense. It can also be our worst enemy. So making sure we get those things treated and scheduled maintenance. Good filtration, good MERV 13 filters is what we recommend. So there's some things that we can do while we're at home now during this COVID timeframe to protect ourselves as best as possible. And I would love to add in, Ellen, I want your comments too. I'm not the environmental expert but because I treat patients and the critical piece of them being called is for them to be in a fairly clean environment. So I know that no matter how many supplements or IVs or treatment protocols that I give them, if they're still in a massively moldy environment, nothing I do will really change that. So one of the things that probably the biggest take home from all of us is if there's an exposure, you really have to take care of that. You need someone like John or some of our other experts that are out in the field that will help you figure that out because us as doctors, we have to know enough to help you but we're not the experts on the environment. But what I wanted to talk about, Ellen, is like practical things that I see so common and for you too. So common things that I see for patients. First of all, if I just ask my patients, do you have any mold in your house? 99% of them will say no. And then another percentage of them will even tell me, no, I had an inspector come in and they said everything was perfect. So I cannot tell you the number of times where I clinically see microtoxins in the urine. I see blood abnormalities. I see symptoms consistent with mold exposure. I see an environmental change like they move to a new house and the things change. So I see the pattern that makes the argument that there's probably mold. And then they say, nope, there's no mold, we had an inspection. Sometimes it takes two, three, four, five inspections before they find the problem. Hopefully people like from your team, John, they don't get that from you or any of the good ones. But sadly, there's a lot of poor inspections or things that are just hidden. So the kinds of questions that I ask are this and the kinds of places that I find for our patients. Master bath is a big one because if there's leaks or cracks in your grout, if there's a crack in your shower tub, if there's any space where that grout is not sealed, you can get water under the tiles, under the tub. And the construction now is so quick and so put together fast, a lot of construction defects lead to problems here. And we should have epoxy or silicone around the edge of the tubs. Most construction doesn't include that kind of waterproofing. So we're kind of set up. So master baths are a huge issue. Under the sink, look under your sink. I found in my own condo here, which is now clean. I had someone put in a new garbage disposal and for about seven days it drip, drip, drip. It leaked a small little six inch circular square or circle under my counter, under my sink and found out there was aspergillus growing there and then it got into my air. And so we had a big mess from a tiny little leak. So look, check regularly under your sinks. I would recommend you buy these mats. You can buy very cheaply online that fit under your cabinet and they have a water sensor. So under all my cabinets, I have these plastic mats, rubber mats with water sensors. So if I were to get a leak, it alarms immediately so that I know because most of us don't go under our sink and check every day. So those are places master baths. Your laundry room is huge because like Ellen said, if there's water sitting in the gasket of the front loads, which most of us have, now the newer ones are made so that you can clean them out and they are tilted. The old washing machines were flat. So water could sit in that drum and collect and create mold. And then the rubber gasket would also collect mold. There was a big lawsuit. And so now most of the washing machines, they've just got a new one. They are tilted so that the water drains out and the gasket's much more open so that you don't have the mold exposure there. But your front load washers, any leaks in your lines. So your kitchen, your fridge, your hoses to your laundry, all of these things that have water hoses, if there's any leaks in the walls, those are big issues too. So laundry room, under sinks, master bath, toilet leaks. And you can look around cabinetry. You can look around your tile floor and you can look at walls. You can see spots where there's been water damage. So you actually can do the same thing in inspector dozen and just look at these things. Just like Ellen said, look at your ceiling, look for little leaks. I go into hotel rooms and I look at the tiles. I look at the bathroom. Because a lot of times it's visible and pretty obvious of old water damage. So you can do a lot of this yourself. The humidity, John, I wanted to ask you for sure. What numbers are they looking for to keep the, I know different environments like Colorado versus Miami, but what would be the highest humidity you'd want to see in a house for it to be safe and likely to not have mold growth? Sure, sure. And I'm in South Florida. So we have humidity all day long, every day. The EPA, we follow the EPA recommendations. The guidelines from the EPA state, you wanna keep the real difficulty between 30 and 50%. And it's okay if it bumps up above 50% for a while, that's fine. We open up our back sliders and the humidity will elevate a little bit. We close them back up. And then hopefully if your HVAC system is working properly, it'll pull that moisture out of the air and get you back below where you need to be. Cool. And two of the things that come to mind there, and Ellen, I wanna hear from you too. I'm not trying to dominate you. No, you're good. This is my wrong answer. So I wanna talk about the HVAC system and why that is so, so key. But the other thing, I just had to laugh a little straight. So my office is 11% humidity. What do you think about that? Pretty low. It's like dry, right? Dry skin, dry hair. Yeah, dry and like one of my staff was like having a little dry throat. She's like, oh no, do I have the virus? I'm like, no, it's 11% humidity. Let's get some humidity in here. So it's all good now, but we had to laugh because 11% is pretty darn low. We're like, I think we're okay for mold. So the HVAC and again, Ellen and John, I'd love for you to talk about this, but often HVACs or intake valves are close to crawl spaces. Crawl spaces are notorious for mold. And if it's not sealed, it's a lot of times there's still dirt in the crawl space. And it's often next to an intake valve or your HVAC system. So if there's mold growing in there and you don't know what the crawl space has and there's no barrier protection, you're setting your home up for a problem because you're basically pulling air from that moldy space and throwing it around your home. And again, I'd love you guys' comments on this, but what I've seen over and over, even in my case is when you go in and you clean up the remediation, you remediate an area, you clean it up, you barrier it, wall it off, you take care of the mold, take out the particles. If you don't clean your HVAC after and clean your entire home with a fine particulate clean after, most of our patients who are sensitive are still sick. So Ellen, I'd love to hear your thoughts on that. No, I was gonna add, you talked about common places and I will tell you to add to your list. I completely agree, bathrooms, kitchens under the sinks, all of that. But I also see basements. We have a lot of basements in Indiana because it's tornado area. And people's basements are often very humid and they're not aware. They don't have dehumidifiers going. And so particularly in storage areas in basements, people have boxes stacked. And it's not until we have somebody like John and his team come out where they move a box and the whole back of the box is moldy. One of the things that I also tell patients to do, and this is like a time to do it, but I find that molds are often on horizontal flat surfaces. So you may, again, I agree with you, my patients say, no, I don't have a problem. I don't have a mold issue. But if humidity is high and they're not aware, you actually get under a piece of furniture and look underneath and kind of have to get on your hands and knees. This is why we like the inspectors to do all that because they know the places to look. And a lot of people are surprised. We've had in the past the faucet outside your home that you would connect a hose to. Well, in Indiana, it gets cold, right? Things crack. And so there's actually water that has gotten in behind the wall that you would not know. You don't see anything. We've opened up the wall and it's black. So this is where doing thermal scanning that I know a good inspector would do. And so to speak to the inspection piece of it, which we'll get to at some point, it doesn't involve, I agree with you, it doesn't, we've had people who said, oh, I have my house tested. Well, they may have only had air sampling. We can talk about why that alone is not adequate most of the time to find a problem. But in regards to the HVAC system, again, and the treatment, I have the same issue. I have a lot of patients in my practice who do find an area of their home that's moldy. They get it remediated and it may be properly remediated for that walled off and they have it properly remediated, but they remain sick and it's often because they really do need to treat the home. They haven't tested for micropaxins and they haven't adequately treated the entire home. So that's my experience as well, Jill. It's typically not, they're not gonna get better if it's just one area that they've remediated and taken care of. The whole home typically has to be involved. Yeah. Dr. Jill touched on a great subject, which is crawl spaces. And we find that the vast majority of crawl spaces are problematic. There's hydrostatic pressure. Hello. Oh, no, did we leave them? There we go. Oh, there we go. All right. Dr. Jill, I had some audio difficulties, but Dr. Jill touched on crawl spaces and that's a key area. We find the majority of crawl spaces are problematic. Typically they're below grade. Oh, no, we lost her again. Oh, no. There we go. Yeah, there we go. All right. So we'll try this again, crawl spaces. That's an area that's usually problematic. They're below grade and therefore hydrostatic pressure pushes water into those crawl spaces. There we go. So all crawl spaces should be encapsulated and not only just with a vapor barrier, but also should be vapor-taped and seamed up where moisture cannot come up from the ground. And that encapsulates should go up the foundational walls as well so that moisture doesn't push in through the concrete or through the cinderblock walls. Very important item. Yeah, that was one of the things that I actually learned from you and your team because I've, you know, oh, sure, get your house and, you know, your cross-base encapsulated. And then when I actually saw pictures of what you and your team were doing where it was going up in the cinderblock wall or whatever part of that wall, you know, I didn't, a lot of people just have it over the dirt and I think that's adequate, but it actually does have to go all the way up the wall so that the moisture won't come through that way as well. I have a lot of people are asking about testing and so I don't know if you want to talk about, like, were you, because that's tons of questions on the board, what do you do? Testing, C4A, HLA. I would love to know kind of where you go. I can share my opinion, but why don't you talk about testing if you want to talk about it? So testing right now while we're home or in general? Let's talk about in general, if someone were to come and suspect mold as a physician, what would you do to check them for mold as far as the testing? Yeah, so from my perspective, every patient that comes into our office, we do a comprehensive history physical exam. We can talk about some of the things we see on physical exam on some of these patients and often the history involves these symptoms that we already talked about. And so when it comes down to testing, again, everything we're doing is pretty comprehensive and I try and everything that I do not to be pigeonholed and just look at one thing. So often we're doing a deep dive into people's bodies but specifically for mold and mycotoxins, I do do blood work testing that does look at some inflammatory markers and markers of their immune system, including C4A, C3A, TGF beta, VEGF, MMP9. I personally don't do genetic testing anymore, HLA testing anymore because for me, I don't think it changes my management and I only like to do testing that really is gonna change what I do, whether you're a person with a dreaded or not, you can still be sick, so to me it doesn't really change my management. So I do quite a deep dive in blood work. I do really like to get urine mycotoxin testing done and I have a way that I do it and probably very similar to you to make sure that the results that I get are adequate. Often these people are poor detoxifiers, so in my experience, just collecting a small sample of urine without really preparing their body to adequately detox and get a good enough sample, often they will show none or fewer than you might get if you did it in the way that really optimizes detoxification. Usually we use glutathione if they're able to do that, otherwise there's some other things that I would recommend. I often am doing a nasal swab to look for marcons or multiple antibiotic-resistant coagulase-negative staff as well as fungi, so a fungal culture and there's a whole slew of other things for doing to look at gut health and immune health and lots of other things, those would be the basics and I do recommend, this isn't involving their body, but from our office, I am sending people home with a dust sample test kit where they can do dust mycotoxins as well as looking for mold PCR from our home as well. So that's an overview, but again, it's personalized to the individual. That's a great, gosh, I totally agree on all fronts. Do you do visual contrast testing in your office too? Again, I do, but I will tell you, so 92% of people who have mold-related illness theoretically should fail, so 8% of people can still pass and have mold-related illness, at least that's what's reported. I will tell you that I've found higher numbers of people that actually pass that are mold-ill and again, I only do things that really change the outcome. I don't know that I've seen in my experience that that's useful because people can still be sick and test fine or they can not test fine and be better. So I've found it to be a confusing piece and not super helpful. I was doing a lot of it. Sometimes I'll start to get an idea. It's more supportive in the beginning if it ends up being, if they fail being a positive result, but I don't use it to follow typically going forward. Yeah, I think we're similar on that too. I do like to screen because it's free compared to the other one, but I agree, if you have a high suspicion, because I remember when you mentioned mycotoxins in the urine, when I first started testing with the old technology, I had several that were negative and they were so moldy, later we found out, so it's the same idea that if they're really porty-tox fires, you can't really count on one test. All the time on my blog online, I'm sure you've heard this as well, what's the one test, Dr. Jill, for mold? And I guess whether it's your home or yourself, gosh darn it, I wish there were one test, there's not. And that's why whether it's inspection on your home, you need multiple ways to look at that, whether it's inspection on your body, like Dr. Ellen and I do. You need to have a doctor who's looking at the big picture because one test won't do it. I wish it were. But a great doctor with a good clinical history, I find most of the time clinical history, I have a really good idea. And I'm really wrong. Eventually I find out if it's mold or not, and I'm always on target. I'm sure you too, Ellen, as you see those patterns. So a good doctor who knows how to take history can be your best ally because history is actually hugely important in that. You gotta ask the right questions, for sure. So yeah, what are your thoughts, John? You know, those are great comments. And the same thing applies to the home. If we understand mold illness is environmental illness, so a great physician is the same as a great IEP. And we come in and we perform multiple types of testing, whether it's PCR testing, air sampling, surface sampling. Just as you mentioned, microtoxin testing for the body, you can, a good IEP can come in and do environmental microtoxin testing. So a happy path is gonna be if an individual has aflatoxins in their body, you test the environment, and if we have aflatoxins in the environment, then we know causation or have a pretty good idea where it's coming from, but leotoxins or trichose or whatever the microtoxin may be. So they're very similar parallels to what you want in the person versus the environment structure. Excellent. Yeah, Jill, you know, if you suspect molds in your patients, well, before we say that, what can we do right now? Cause I'm doing some things for my patients. So we just talked about in general, right now people are like, wait a minute, I'm home. I can't go to the doctor and get all these things done. You know, for me, I, fortunately, I think you're doing the same. We have the ability through technology to be able to do these remote appointments, which I think are really important. And, you know, I just feel like it's such a gift that we can see people and sometimes even do some physical exam and take a really adequate history and do a little bit of a physical exam. Of course, I like to put my hands on people, but it's not possible right now. Oh, I'll have them say, let me see your tongue, or let me, you know, like I'm looking at things. Right, like, you know, and I've said, oh, you've got some yeast overgrowth. Yeah, like I'd love to do that. And then we do have the capability to do some testing. So the urine testing for microtoxins, we're able to send that out to patients. We can do nasal swab, you know, sometimes there's hormonal dysregulation and inflammatory markers and we can do some finger stick blood tests like send them test kids home where they can test themselves and send it off and we'll get the results. And then again, we can do the dust testing from home and, you know, send them those kids to start on that process and do a little bit of visual inspection and then, you know, reach out to, you know, John and his team or somebody else local to them to get that done. So I don't know if you have anything else to add that I'm not thinking about. We could be offering people while they're home right now. Do you have other things that you're doing right now? Who wants to talk a little bit about like, what could you start to do if you suspect treatments that are safe? I want to talk about that. And I want to shout out, first of all, I'm watching the stream and everybody listening. And I can't see the stream on my end, so you'll have to do it, it's very cute. Hello, and like, hello, Greg Weatherman's on, one of our favorite IEPs out there. It's a hello, Greg. A couple, a naturopathic friend of mine. So you guys have some experts in the feed that are watching here as well. So stay tuned. Hi everybody. Yeah, I actually asked them to comment if they'd like as well. So stay tuned. What can you do practically? Binders are core and so is detox. So let's start with simple things. Simple detox is actually not about pills. So you want to incorporate daily things like dry brushing, infrared sauna, if you have access. If you don't, you could do Epsom salt baths at home. You could do coffee enemas. Anything that will enhance your detoxification that you can do at home is going to be helpful here because it's like if you have a bucket full of toxins starting to hit the top level and the water flows over, you're going to be symptomatic. So really what we do in clinic, Dr. Ellen and I, and what you can start to do at home is relieve the pressure, relieve the water level in your bucket. And again, ways you can do that Epsom salt baths, even this dry brushing before your shower if you don't have an infrared sauna. Sauna is great, but right now unless you have a gym or a home sauna, you may not have access to that and that's okay. Other things you can do are binders. There's lots of over-the-counter binders that are very effective at binding these toxins. I tend to find for things like apllotoxin and ochrotoxin, which are common with aspergillus penicillin species. The charcoal, the clay, those are very effective. And you can get well without prescription binders. There are prescriptions like colostyramine and well-call that are effective. I'd say about 50% of my patients get well without prescription binders and those can be harder on the gut and cause more constipation and bloating and symptoms. Charcoal's especially good for stachybotry's toxins like trichocythanes. So when you get those really nasty ketomium stachybotry's and those T2 toxins which are immunotoxic, they're nephrotoxic or lung. So for the medical technology that means they're harmful to the kidney, harmful to the lungs, harmful to the brain, harmful to the immune system. These guys are really nasty. You know, ketomium, I mentioned personalities, ketomium in my personal experience is what I call the narcoleptic mole. So whenever I get exposed to ketomium, I'm like, I wanna fall asleep immediately. Other options, Ellen, we're at home. What can people start to do? Yeah, so I love you talking about detoxification and how it's not necessarily a prescription and or a supplement. So I always talk about detoxification as we pee, we poop, we sweat, we exhale. Your livers constantly going through bio transformation. We have lymphatic drainage and I consider sleeping and dreaming a mental detox. So we need to hydrate. So we're flushing our kidneys. We need to make sure we're moving our bowels regularly and a lot of people don't know that you should be having at least one bowel movement a day, if not several bowel movements and if you're not, simple things like magnesium citrate or buffered C powder are things to help you move your bowel movements regularly. Lymphatic drainage, you know, we have lymph nodes. You know, we think about those as swollen glands but we have lymph nodes from the top of our head to the bottom of our feet and I love that you talk about dry brushing. I've got a blog post on that. You can read on my website to see how to do that but another thing you can do is get in a hot shower and turn it cold and go hot again and cold again and kind of do that. That stimulates lymphatic drainage and specific to the liver. I love using things like glutathione and acetylcysteine also helps to make glutathione in your body if you have access to that. Some people can't take glutathione making sure you have all the nutrients necessary for your liver to do the biochemical processes it needs to and then really working on getting enough sleep making sure you're getting seven, at least eight hours of sleep a night and if not working on sleep hygiene and then you can, especially people who are moldy, struggle. Like I was one of those people, that was another symptom, another symptom that we can add to that list is insomnia, like up till four in the morning and felt wide awake. So as opposed to the narcolepsy piece of it, I was like wide awake. So yeah, I don't know, did I answer that? So detox sauna stuff, I wanted to touch base because I know both of you and I, I don't have a big wooden sauna at home. I've got a portable sauna and there are some infrared sauna blankets and things that I know both of us talk about. And those are things you guys can order right now if you want to and you know, they're expensive but relatively inexpensive compared to a big box sauna that you could get shipped to you during this time if you do want to sweat and work on that part of detox as well. Love that. And maybe just for those who don't know, I'll explain really briefly why this is so important, why the liver gallbladder. So there's this thing with a fancy name called enteropathyc circulation. And what happens is when we have toxins there coming into our body, this could be chemicals, mold toxins, variable toxins in our environment, our liver is our detox organ. In Switzerland, when we go to the Swiss mountain clinic for detox, we call it the queen. We need to treat the queen well because the queen is so important and the liver doesn't get any respect. It's kind of a danger field. I don't get no respect because it's like liver, whatever, but liver is so precious. She's the queen. So we want to treat the queen well. And the reason for that is liver has phase one and phase two. It takes a toxin metabolite and transforms it. It's called biotransformation. It transforms it into an intermediate. Intermediate is then transformed from phase two into an end product that gets excreted into the bile. The bile stored in the gallbladder which sits right here under the liver and it stores that. It stores cholesterol and bile acids. Bile acids are emulsification ability for these fatty and water-soluble toxins and then that's excreted into your gut so that when you have a bowel movement you eliminate some of that. However, our body's really efficient. So our ability to recycle bile with toxins is about 95% effective. And why that is important is because if we don't stop that recycling it's so efficient that we recycle toxins and it's like a miracle round over and over again just going through. And then the people genetically that have difficulties are even more efficient. So they have trouble excreting the toxins. So when we throw in and talk about binders and agents to actually, they have this charge, clay, charcoal, zeolite, glycomannins, colostyrimine, et cetera. These things all have a charge to them that grab on the toxins and they escort them out. And some people as they're getting well it's interesting they can have re-exacerbation of symptoms because these aren't like a vise grip. They're more like a magnet with metal filings that are being pulled along the desk. So some of them little fragments get staggered behind and those can actually re-exacerbate symptoms if you go too heavy on the binding. But that's the reason we talk about binders and glutathione because we wanna support the queen, we wanna support the liver with those things like NAC and glutathione, all the things that support her processes and other things like lipoic acid and magnesium and glycine is a rate limiting factor including B vitamins. Yeah, B vitamins, methylation, broccoli, any sort of sulfur-based vegetable. So tons of things there. And as we support her then we wanna pull those toxins out through the gut. And that's why like skin excretion would be through sawn anytime we sweat, we excrete toxins through the skin. Kidneys support them through hydration because a lot of our toxins are water soluble and can go out through the kidneys. And then through the gut we wanna make sure that you have binders and that your bowels are moving. Those are all the processes of eliminating toxins and it's like a daily, daily, daily process to just decrease that load. Yeah, and so John, we're talking about the body and all these ways to decrease the load. I wanna get back to you and talk about, so we're concerned or we've identified something or we think we might have an issue. I wanna talk about, I want you to tell people what the different types of testing they can do and then maybe a few tips for things that they can do on their own right now before they have somebody like yourself come into their home. How do we evaluate accurately and then treat? You bet, you bet, thanks. So we'll start with a couple of things we can do why we're at home now. We always approach things from a, we call it the three M's. Moisture, mold, and mycotoxins. So the first thing is too, let's address any moisture issues in the home. We're gonna have springtime rains and that's gonna pull more moisture. So the first thing you do, go around the exterior of your home, make sure that all your downspouts, everything pulls moisture three feet away from the foundation. Then you can take a look at your crawl space, make sure that your crawl space isn't capsulated as we've discussed. Cardboard boxes in basement. Cardboard boxes are just, it's fast food for mold. Molds need three things to thrive. It's complex carbon compounds, oxygen, and sufficient moisture. So we recommend this time of year, do your spring cleaning, get rid of your cardboard, use those poly totes, that's a good step. I had your HVAC service, those sorts of things. Those are all things that homeowners can do to help keep from having guys like me come to the home and address the mold problem. From a testing standpoint, I'm really the big fan of the EMMA test that you mentioned earlier. It's something that's easily done at home by a homeowner. We recommend a sample off of the HVAC filter because that gives us a really good indication of inhalation risk. And that test will also tell us 10, toxogenic fungi, aspergillus fumigatus, flavus, et cetera. And then also it's a panel of 15 microtoxins. Usually that test takes about five to seven business days to get the results back so that something can easily do now, send it off, give results, and understand what a fungal situation could be and what a microtoxin situation could be. Thanks, John. And you know what, we'll be sure and put links, I'll put those in there to the EMMA test, to John's site. So we'll make sure and try to add these if I can't right now, I will. Just a comment, so this is the million dollar question. I think in the last 10 minutes, I wanna shift it. So COVID is happening, we're in the midst of a pandemic and I don't know that we have the answers but I wanna talk about Dr. Ellen and I'll try to give my opinion. What do you think about the risk of someone has mold exposure in the virus? Any thoughts on that that you have as far as that's a million dollar question? What's my risk if I've had mold exposure if I'm recovering from mold? Am I more at risk of the virus, am I less? Any thoughts on that at all? Yeah, so we know that being mold ill makes people immune compromised to some degree, right? We see patients that have immunoglobulin deficiencies as a result, we see people that have reactivated infections in their body and so from my perspective, what I'm seeing in my office absolutely having mold and chronic exposure can have a negative impact on your immune system. Interestingly, mycotoxins, mycophenylic acid, cell sept is from mycotoxin and it is a potent immune-suppressive drug that we get people so we know that mycotoxins and mold are immunosuppressive so I do think that the risk in those people is for people that are sick from mold are somewhat immune compromised and some more than others and unfortunately I do think they're at higher risk for getting sicker from the virus should they become exposed. Thank you, Dr. Allen, because again, that's a million dollar question and I think everybody's asking. I have a few thoughts on that so totally agree with what you're saying but I will say this is just my pure speculation theory. I don't know for sure but I will tell you I have some ideas. There are some people come in my office with limer mold or these kinds of categories that when I ask them, when was the last time you had a cold or flu and they'll say, I never get sick, I don't get colds or flus and yet they're chronically very, very ill. With those types of subsets who's never got a cold or flu for five years, they never get sick with cold or flu but they're chronically ill with mold or lime. I believe their immune system is so suppressed that in the case of something like COVID-19, what happens is that virus triggers an immune cytokine response and it's actually that immune response that our body creates with IL-6 and TNF-Alp and some of these cytokines that are inflammatory that creates some of the damage. So if they really have such a suppressed cytokine and immune response, I think they may not have as much of number one, a serious illness with the virus should they get sick and number two, less organ and end damage because they're actually so suppressed that that cytokine storm doesn't happen. So there's a chance this gives you guys hope if you're listening. Some of you may be actually protected because it's your own immune response that creates a lot of damage. Now both Dr. Ellen and I have been talking kind of behind the scenes about some theories. We're not gonna talk about that today, but it's about oxygenation of the blood and some other things that are actually happening with this virus. Can't wait to read what you're writing, Ellen, and I'll share mine as well because I think we're talking about the same thing. Yeah. Just stay tuned for both of our articles, right? Yes. But the other side of this is people with mass selectivation syndrome and some of these really severe overactive immune systems, I think they're actually at risk, maybe more at risk. Now again, this is just my theory. I'm gonna be really careful to say, I don't know, but I've seen enough to know mechanisms and my theory is that there are certain subsets that are more at risk, that are hyper reactive. The ones that produce a lot of cytokines and have measurable cytokines or have mass selectivation disorder. But then I think on the other side, some of those with such a suppressed immune system might actually be protected. What's your- That is such an interesting theory. The ones that I see that are so immune compromised, like you said, I agree with you. I have a lot of people that come and say, I don't get the common cold, but they're so sick from what they already have that, you know, yeah, that's interesting. And I agree, mass selectivation patients are likely going to experience worsening symptoms. I love that. Yeah. And I'm so excited. Again, I know you're gonna be writing and I am too. And I think it's gonna be very similar. We can share on each other's pages the information, but I will tell you guys, it's a sneak peek, stay tuned. It's all about hypoxia. It's all about lack of oxygen delivery to the tissues. That's where this is going. And as we find more information, we'll share it with you, both Dr. Ellen and I, there's a real important mechanism here that up until recently had not been acknowledged and it's gonna change everything. So stay tuned. Yes. So my husband, Dr. Scott, just did a podcast with Ari Whitten and I think it was released today. So people can go out and look at that. Awesome. We'll share that, Ellen. That'd be exciting. So I just wanna make sure before we, because I know there might be a couple questions there, but anything else, John, that you would add, you feel like we need to talk about before we maybe go to some questions that people have. And Jill, I can't see any, so you're gonna have to, I don't know why I can't find anything on my side. So. So on the COVID front, just recently out, all this is very, very new. Really exciting news is that environmental testing or the coronavirus is now available. And so check with your local IEPs or industrial hygienists. That environment can be tested as well to determine, we know that the virus hangs around longer on surfaces and it's a positive negative type of test taken with a swab sample and it is a PCR test. So that is now out and available for IEPs to go out and sample. Awesome. And again, we'll try to make sure that you two get me links that you wanna share, I'll make sure and share them. For all you guys, I'll try to add links to this. You can come back later and check it out. A few of the questions, Rachel's asking, what type of home is ideal if you're sensitive to mold? Condo, new build, older build or slab? John, that might be a question for you. What any recommendations? Because this is all- Yeah, you know, that's a great question. We get that all the time. So actually the majority of our work is newer construction. The way we build houses today, they're much tighter. You don't breathe as well. And so much of the work we do is new construction. So it's really a difficult question to answer. I personally would shy away from multifamily. I prefer single family because we don't share common walls that way. And so I think you have a little more control. But I think just any home, whether it's an older home or newer home, if it's maintained properly, I think you can live fine in either one. It's just all about proper maintenance and get into a normal fungal ecology and keep it that way. Thank you, John. Just want to mention, beautiful naturopathic friend, Dr. Chalice, mentioned castor oil packs. So if you don't know how to do those, you can find that online. It's a great way to support liver. And then Gail asked, do you recommend using Tudka to flush the liver? Have you used that, Dr. Ellen? Yes, I do use Tudka in my patients. That and often I use it with some ox bile to help in digestion and also help with that processing. So do you use that in your patients as well? I do, yeah. I find there's so many liver things. So that milk, this little NAC, like hook acid, selenium, those are core, but then some of these can be really helpful to add on. Someone else is asking about calming down mast selectivation. This is really calm. This is a whole other lecture, but we could just try to talk about it. I would love to do it. We could do that on another one. Great. And you definitely see like I do with mast, like with mold tends to be a huge trigger of mast cells. So often it's not a mastocytosis or like a blood cell disorder, but it's like this triggering of your mast cells from a toxic exposure and mold tends to be really common. What would be maybe some of the just top a few basic things you might try with mast cell, Ellen? Yeah. So a lot of my patients end up being on anihistamines. And some of them, even though I don't love them, are over the counter, Allegra, Zyrtec type things, because they're quite ill. I use more natural, if I can, with quercetin. And so I tend to try quercetin products in my patients. A lot of patients with mast cell don't tolerate glutathione. So it can really cause more of a glutathione, mast cell activation. So I tend to not use glutathione, but end up using NAC in those cases. I use trying to think of my mast cell stabilizers, gastrochrom and ketodifin and other things that some of those have to be compounded. So I use a lot of things that just depends, but the primary thing when I tell all of my patients, we have to address the primary issue. They're not gonna get better if we don't address the trigger. And in this case, it's often mold and mycotoxins. So true. So there's a lot of questions about labs. And I could tell you just briefly, and then Dr. Ellen, if you wanna comment, and there's three main labs that do mold in the urine, mycotoxins, I'm sorry, mycotoxins in the urine, and they're all good, I use them all. Real-time labs has been around a while. Great Plains labs does this, and so does Vibrant. I find them all helpful. There's several companies that do ERME and one company that is EMA. John, do you wanna talk just a bit about where they might go for ERME testing and EMA testing? Sure, sure. There's several labs that, as you mentioned, they go out and perform the ERME testing. Micrometrics has been around for a long time. Dr. Lin and his lab, they do a great job. The EMA test, that there's only one company that I'm aware of, or lab that I'm aware of, it actually does environmental microtoxin testing. And that is Real-time Labs out of Carrollton, Texas. These are the labs that produces the EMA tests that we talked about earlier. Excellent. Any other comments on testing? Companies are, I think they're bad. Okay. Oh yeah, no, I do the same ones that you do, so yeah. And then someone else asked, if there's mold in the closet of a room we don't use in the door shut, will that protect us? Looks like you answered that one. Yeah, that's a great question. So, what we have to think about is that mold is living on the structure, right? So, even if it is not a mold that produces toxins, you probably don't want something living on your structure. The ostrich approach, it doesn't go away on the cell and so it needs to get addressed one way or the other. Also, if it's xerophilic, you can have sporalation, so it'll spread. And we talked about the HVAC system being the lungs of the house. You don't want that getting into the ductwork and spreading throughout. And mycotoxins are super tiny, right? So, I mean, what is it, 0.1 microns and they're what, 100 times smaller than a size of a piece of hair. So, you may think it's in your closet, but those mycotoxins are really getting underneath the door around the frame and actually getting into your HVAC like you talked about. So, I typically tell people to keep it in their environment and not address it. I typically tell people it needs to be addressed. And then we want to understand why it's there. Something had to occur in order for that growth to be there. So, I think that's important to understand as well. I love that because just purely like spraying something on the moldy spot unless you really take care of it, find the root cause. It's kind of like if you put a band-aid on the patient for a treatment, you don't find the root cause. It's real important to find, get an expert in there, find the root cause, treat the root cause, and then treat your body to get well. So, what last bits of advice would you give Ellen and John as we close it out today? What's your any little last bits for people with the pandemic and mold and any thoughts? You know, for me, I'm really passionate about providing hope and healing. I think this is a profound time of feeling loss and stress and even grief over some of the things that have been lost and that they're experiencing. And so, I feel like I want everything that I say and do to be something that does provide some hope and healing. And I hope that this conversation was. I think that there are things that people can do that we talked about today. Use this opportunity when you're home to really evaluate your space. There are things that you can do, small things you can do to really evaluate your home space. The beauty is you are home and you can take this time to inventory even your own belongings and start getting rid of things that you don't want that may be creating a problem for you. And I think that there's the beauty of technology that you can reach out to Dr. Jill. You can reach out to myself. You can get the best of our evaluation as the best of our ability remotely right now and start some testing and that there is healing that comes and I know that personally and as sick as you might feel right now, there is absolutely a mountaintop on the other side of this valley and that's what I'd say. I love that. John, how about you? From an environmental perspective, any last minute tips from you? Wow, that's a tough act to follow. I would agree as well. This too shall pass. We'll get on the other side of this. We'll take the opportunity to make the best of it. Understand your environment. Reach out. If you have questions, most IEPs have a passion for helping individuals and so reach out. Haven't worked with you collaboratively. It's not always a big problem. Most of us are really willing to understand what you have and provide some guidance. So I would encourage you to do that. You're not in your situation alone. Yeah, thank you. Yeah, thank you. Well, first of all, I love the comments. Love that. Interesting, all of us are considered essential right now so we're kind of available. So whether you need a medical consult or an environmental expert, those industries are available to you right now and again, whatever safe way that you feel like accessing virtually or otherwise, it is available. So that's kind of exciting. One thing I want just housekeeping, if you guys have questions, put them in the feed. Some of you will be listening to the recording in the next 24, 48 hours or more. So we'll stay tuned with that and try to jump in. Dr. Ellen and I both with answers to your questions. So feel free to type those in comments and we will come back and make sure to answer those and I'm sure John would be available as well. Thank you for joining us. I would agree with Dr. Ellen. Even in the midst of the most difficult times there's always blessings and I don't know about you but like the way my life has flown down in certain areas has been such a huge blessing because what I feel like is the neatest thing we can take out of this is my circle of activities got real small and now I get to decide which of those things that are no longer relevant do I wanna make sure that they stay out and which things do I wanna add in? So like time walking every day and meditation and prayer, I wanna have that when I'm out of the pandemic. Maybe all the travel that I used to do, I don't wanna do quite so much travel when I'm out of the pandemic. There's things that you have the opportunity now to reevaluate and again, you're in your home. You have more time. You might have reevaluate what am I gonna do about the situation or this health condition and now's the perfect time to kind of take stock and really decide what do you wanna keep and learn from this because there's lessons even in the midst of the suffering and difficulty. I love that, absolutely. What can we learn during this time about ourselves and extend grace to yourself and others? Yes, yes. Well, thank you for joining us. I'm sure we'll do this again, Ellen, this is a blast. I loved it. Thank you, John, for joining us and thank you, everybody. Have a great evening.