 Hello, everyone, and welcome to another episode of Resiliency Radio with Dr. Dill. Today I have my new friend and a building biologist and expert in environmental toxicity, Nicole Belzma. And we met several months ago when I visited Sydney, Australia for the ACIDS conference. And it was just, I'll tell you, Nicole, your lecture was one of my very, very favorites of the whole conference. It was amazing. And so I'm so excited for the treat that our listeners are in today. Let me just formally introduce you and then we'll dive right in. So Nicole is a building biologist, a best-selling author and founder of Healthy Home Movement in Australia. She established the Australian College of Environmental Studies in 1999 to educate people about the health hazards in the built environment. Nicole has lectured at tertiary institutions for 30 years, has published in peer-reviewed journals, and is regularly consulted by the media to discuss mold, electromagnetic fields, and toxic chemicals. And she lectured in Australia where I heard you and abroad about environmental health issues. Her research explores the impact of environmental exposures on human health and their ramifications in clinical practice. So welcome to the show. Thank you so much. It was so wonderful to meet you and to listen to your story and how we got into and I just see, you know, people like us, it's adversity that gets us into this to realize, especially as clinicians, how can we help these patients? And how our underpinning knowledge and our training wasn't adequate to help? You're so right. And same with medicine and your field. It's like what we were taught really doesn't go to the extent of the calamity that our patients are experiencing. I want to be sure and hold up your book I have of my own copy here. And it is really just, it's healthy home, healthy family. I got mine on Amazon. You can find it anywhere. Books are sold, but I really want to encourage our listeners if they want to know more about you after this podcast that they can get their own copy of the book. Let's start with just your story because, you know, the story drives everything. And I'd love to hear more about how you got into this, especially in the mold and environmental sensitivity. Well, it began as a result of two events at the time I was working as a naturopath and acupuncturist. And I was noticing many of my patients with asthma, allergies, and long-term fatiguing syndrome, including those some autoimmune disorders were not getting better by changing their diet or their lifestyle or giving them a bag full of bi-suiticals or herbs. It wasn't until I actually, we built our, or sorry, we moved into our first home that my husband and I were getting insomnia, sleep disturbances within days, didn't think anything of it. And then in the first 12 months, I felt pregnant, I was 30 at the time and subsequently had a miscarriage, first trimester miscarriage and went on to have 10 miscarriages in this home, which was on half an acre on the river. It was really lovely. My in-laws would refer to it as like a B and B. It was lovely, but there was something drastically wrong. And my neighbour, about seven years into my infertility, I said, has anyone successfully had children in this house that I'm living in? She goes, no. And I went, what, 70 years old? It's lovely. It's a clink of brick. And then I started to realise, I mean, the timing of exposure correlated with when we moved in. And so I started to look at what was happening in the house. And notice we were sleeping on the other side of the wall of the metre panel, adjacent to the metre panel where all the electricity comes in. And I started looking to that and realised there was a magnetic field and during the night as a result of the hot water service kicking in, we're exposed to high levels of magnetic fields. There was a European wasp nest outside of our bedroom window, which in Geomancy is a sign of geopathic stress. So I had a dowser come and identify a significant fault line immediately under our bed. I also noticed we were on a team to section started to measure the noxious gases coming from car exhaust and notice the carbon monoxide levels would triple in our master bedroom closest to the road, even though they'll still within exposure standards. And it took hours to dissipate before the peak hour traffic kicked in. So the levels were often very high, carbon dioxide levels, carbon monoxide, nitrogen dioxide, etc. And to top it off, I'd come home and on occasion the council with their spraying pesticides on our Blackberry bushes because we bought a box Victorian near the river. And I'm going, there's all these factors. You cannot see, you cannot smell that impact human health. So I started to look at the data at the US EPA's website. I was shocked how much information was available on in your air quality that was never translated into a naturopathic degree, into an acupuncture degree and realise that there's a whole element of environmental exposures that are having impacts on health that we're not translating into clinical practice. So I literally spent 10 years researching this of my own back and my husband at the time. I can't believe you're spending all this time into it. I said, I just want to know what causes people's problems. I want to get to the root cause. I'm sick of giving stuff to treat symptoms. I want to get to the cause. And I stopped, I put my pen down and I would do two hour consultations with my clients. And I started to notice, wow, your asthma began when you moved into the house and you can see mold. That's the fifth person I've heard. You know, you have sleep disturbances and you said the meter panels next to your head. And you're the eighth person who said that. So I started to take really comprehensive exposure histories and started to notice patterns. I then walked into their homes and went, oh my God, this this is actually a big thing. And then in 1999, I established the college. 2005, I became nationally accredited so that government accredited training and established the building biology industry, which is a two year full time course that teaches people to walk into buildings and identify potential hazards in the home from meth. Drugs are a huge problem now with vaping and everything. That's a whole new story. Pests, allergens, dust might like the amount of people with allergies in their home that are allergic to their pets. And they don't even know it. They've never done type one hypersensitivity reactions. And they've got asthma allergies, hay fever directly associated with their animals. It's extraordinary as a clinician. I'm thinking, how could I have not asked about this? Mold is the biggest thing we do. And of course, electromagnetic fields, which is a nightmare because we're bathed in these manmade frequencies and they're having serious health effects that, unfortunately, are not obvious because the latency periods are so long. Yeah. So, wow, first of all, just wow, because you just give us such a great overview. And I had no idea what you went through personally. But like we started before we started recording, we were just saying so often the suffering and difficulties in our own life is a driver for that, especially if you desire to learn like you and I both do. And it ends up being a huge blessing as awful as it was because here you are, this incredible expert. And like I said, I've heard a lot of environmental experts and you were not only just fun to listen to, but so, so knowledgeable on so many levels. And what you said is so true. I know our people listening are understanding this. We can do all the herbs and the ivies and the supplements in the world. But if your environment is toxic and you're swimming in toxic soup, I like to say it is just a huge thing. And it's also somewhat insidious because we can be in that place and not have a clear idea that that's what's affecting our health. Absolutely. And this is why your lecture was so powerful, listening to your story, especially in relation to pesticides. When I published the first paper as part of my PhD on environmental chemicals and its impact on human health, remember my supervisor going, just write a paper on that and I looked and went down multiple rabbit holes for months. Oh my God, I don't know where to start. But pesticides came up as the worst associated with neurodevelopmental disorders at one end, neurodegenerative disorders at the other. The problem with environmental chemicals is that it's not like you've been run over a bus and your arms hanging off and you need surgery and you go, oh, it was the bus, it was the accident. The problem with environmental chemicals, as you said, they're past in utero, they're insidious to show cause and effect is very difficult, if not impossible, because you've got synergistic effects, multiple toxicants on top of gene variants, like stress and trauma. And then you have the phenotype you see sitting in front of you as a clinician. It's really difficult. And that's why, especially with fertility, to me, fertility is the cornerstone of toxicity. I think as fertility rises, we're really just seeing toxic load simultaneously rising, affecting it and that fertility starts with our grandparents. So we need to reduce our toxic load immediately. We need to, as a global audience, is to reduce our microplastics, our global pollution, the way we affect the environment ultimately affects us. So that's the challenge as clinicians is, how do we get that message across? Because it's already in us. And a good example was when I went to my integrated GP recently, I did the GPL tox test and looked at my chemical profile and he said, Col, MTB is really high in your system, methyl, tetrabutyl ether. And I'm going, oh, my God, it has to be coming from when I fill up my diesel car at the bowser at the petrol station. And when we mapped it to my gene variants, it's like I'm homozygous from my incapacity to deal with that chemical in phase two. Yes. So I need to, who would have ever thought, as a clinician, how would I have known that without testing, that I need to wear gloves, I need to wear a mask, or even better, get my teenage kids to fill up the petrol and to fill up the gas. Yes. I'm not doing it because my load is high and that's ultimately impacting how I deal with other environmental chemicals. But this is the thing, this is the challenge we have as clinicians in this space. Gosh, I love that you mentioned that because that's one of the ones I see most commonly on the GPL talks is the empty, and we get it all kinds of ways, but whether it's exhaust from fuels or filling or gas tanks. Interesting, I had a little story of maybe years ago, I live in a condo and my end of the condo is over a hot tub and like an outside area with a outdoor natural gas fire pit. And somehow we, no one knew this, but it was leaking. And just the way the winds were blowing and my window was open, I was getting massive benzene from this natural gas right through my window. And I did that, I was starting to feel bad. And I thought it was mold. I ended up doing that urine test and my benzene was, you know, off the charts level high. And we ended up finding the gas leak and figuring out that correlation. But so fascinating, those little things, I just didn't feel well. And I remember one night specifically, I was so not feeling well. And back then I had my dog who passed away since and I was like, I had this intuitive sense. I was feeling so sleepy and so unwell. I thought it was mold and I literally was like that night I need to get out or I'm going to pass out. Like I'm not going to do well. And I went to my office to work as soon as I got to my office, I felt 100% better because I've been seeing the transient, you know, kind of exposure. But it was so interesting. And that's me and you who are experts and all these patients. So let's go to you. You're now in building biology, you're teaching, you're doing so much great work. But think about like as if you're talking to a patient, what kinds of questions would you ask for the listener? What kinds of things should they think about in their environment? Where would you just give us kind of an overview of the kinds of things that maybe they're not thinking of that could be affecting them? The most powerful tool we have is the exposure history and the timing of exposure is very important. So going back when your your symptoms developed, when you start to get unwell, what was going on at the time? Did you move house at the time? Did you change jobs? Did you buy a new car? Those questions are important. When it comes to water damage buildings, what's become clear is not seeing visible mold and not smelling anything doesn't mean your home is not water damaged. Unfortunately, if you can't see or smell mold, some of the worst homes, I can't see or smell it. I walk in and it's clean. It's not dusty. I think this is going to be an issue and the lab results come back in a terrific. But what was interesting that did correlate was when they moved into that house, the asthma or allergies developed or got worse or their chronic fatigue like symptoms developed or got worse or they had a bathroom renovation which had significant hidden mold hidden in the cavity because the waterproof membranes were failing. And then they the builder ripped off the chiprock and drywall and then exposed all this toxic mold throughout the home that then caused cross-contamination and that's when they got sick after the renovation. So I've noticed over the years that there's key questions that really make me think it could be mold and the big ones are if you've got asthma and or allergies or chronic upper or lower respiratory tract infections or long term fatigue regardless of the diagnosis of MS or whatever else you have that's not alleviated by rest and it correlates with when you moved into the home or you got a water damaged car or moved into a water damaged workplace and you're better away from those environments. Think potentially mold. Definitely think mold and 90% of the time that rings true. So if you see visible mold and odor then that's just another way of escalating the risk that it could be that. But if you don't see visible mold or odor it could still be a significant issue. And what's become clear is that until we test the whole house which is a sample every room the roof void the subfloor if you don't do extensive testing you don't you can't identify where the moisture is coming from whether the roof is contaminating a habitable space whether the drainage problem is causing the problem in little Johnny's room. If you only do one or two samples you don't get a picture of condition what we call condition one two and three in the house. So it's best to put the money into the testing so you know you've got baseline just like a clinician the GPL tox test those tests are critical to exclude serious pathology and identify potential root causes then you can get the remediated come and do the proper work. Otherwise what happens is you get a restore or remediated coming in fogging and doing patchwork that doesn't work and often exacerbates the issue. Now if it's due to something else like methamphetamines or grow labs or clandestine drug labs which is becoming more of an issue. Apparently talking to in Sydney for example one of the largest restorers in Australia he and he estimates about 20 percent of air B and B's or 20 percent of rentals including B and B's are contaminated by methamphetamines. That's huge. I said you can cook and manufacture drugs within six or seven hours now using the steam method unfortunately. So air B and B's are often used to do this. But of course just smoking in those environments can contaminate within three smokes. So this is a huge concern and that can imprint into the wall. So how would you know as a patient or clinician? Well the symptoms are massive behavioural changes within days of moving in where the kids become like psychotic. Their whole behaviour changes, skin rashes, headaches and sleep disturbances and they're happening within days or weeks whereas mould illness tends to happen within months and years. So the timing and how quickly those changes happen especially with the skin rashes and the headaches and the behavioural changes is makes me think it could be more there's something that could be a drug related in the home. If it's electromagnetic fields, sleep disturbance are the major symptom that we're looking at. Tinnitus ringing in the ears, headaches, sleep disturbances and they tend to find that they can pinpoint where in the home that their symptoms are worse. Milder tends to be more cross-contamination. EMFs, it tends to be much worse in this room on getting a headache and sleep disturbance are just prolific. So if sleep disturbances aren't due to stress, trauma, relationship issues, coffee, exercising late at night, all those other issues then think electromagnetic fields, especially if you've got any Wi-Fi enabled device in the bedroom. Hey, everybody, I just stopped by to let you know that my new book, Unexpected Finding Resilience Through Functional Medicine, Science and Faith is now available for order wherever you purchase books. In this book, I share my own journey of overcoming life threatening illness and the tools and tips and tricks and hope and resilience I found along the way. This book includes practical advice for things like cancer and Crohn's disease and other autoimmune conditions, infections like Lyme or Epstein Bar and mold and biotoxin related illness. What I really hope is that as you read this book, you find transformational wisdom for health and healing. If you want to get your own copy, stop by readunexpected.com. There you can also collect your free bonuses. So grab your copy today and begin your own transformational journey through functional medicine in finding resilience. So let's talk about EMFs. What are for the people who don't a lot of you who listen to me know what they are. They put me talking about, but let's kind of go back to basics. What are they? Where would they be in a house? Let's talk all things to do EMF so powerful, especially related to kiddos and kids exposure. Yes, now EMFs is one of my favourites and most concerning because it's ubiquitous now man-made electromagnetic fields. Now we've evolved on what we call the terrestrial radiation, which is the Earth's magnetic field, the sun. We have the Schuman resonance that exists in the atmosphere because of all the lightning strikes and thunderstorm activity happening across the planet at any given moment, which creates a voltage in the atmosphere that's similar to our alpha state, which is in our brain waves and meditative state. Now, when we electrified the the Western countries, of course, in 200 years ago, it created what we call extra low frequency or 50 Hertz, 60 Hertz, which is basically you have your building wiring coming into the house and you plug all your devices in in the US using 60 Hertz, which means 60 wavelengths passing per second. Now, in in theory, these shouldn't this creates electric and magnetic fields that only becomes a problem if you're sleeping near a high magnetic field. So if your bed is adjacent to a fridge where the motor is going on and off where it's cooling during the night, it's creating a magnetic field into your bedroom in the other side of the wall and then, you know, expanding, contracting, etc. If you're sleeping in a meter panel where all the current is going through all the electricity and all the circuits and switchboard, all the current is going through, which is a movement of electrons that creates a magnetic field. So it's unusual. It's quite uncommon to have problems just because your building is wide. That's not normally a problem. The only time is if you're sleeping near the meter panel or sleeping on the other side of the wall of a fridge or an inverter, which, of course, is converting some energy into electrical energy if you have solar panels. The other one is high voltage transmission lines and power lines. If you're in close proximity, a lot of good data since 79, 79 by word, time and leap are that sleeping, being in close proximity to power, high voltage power lines within about 400 meters, double the risk of childhood leukemia in the first 15 years of life. So you need to be living there for a significant proportion of your young life to increase, escalate that risk. The real problem was in 2000 onwards, when 3G was introduced, it's a digital technology, which is man made a man made technology is very different to natural electromagnetic fields because it's pulsed and it's modulated, which means it carries information on the waves. And this seems to cause more biological effects. Most of the research on electromagnetic fields and health effects come from mobile phone technology in simulated lab conditions, which do not reflect real case scenarios. So most of that evidence is actually not helpful and shows, you know, it's about 50, 50, whether it can cause brain tumors, blah, blah, blah. But in fact, it doesn't reflect real life scenarios. So that's the interesting thing about looking at the data on electromagnetic fields is that this is actually doesn't reflect what consumers are exposed to real life scenarios are hard to do with electric with scientific studies because you've got so many confounding factors that you have to consider. So recently, I did a randomized control trial on the impact of a baby monitor on healthy adult sleep. Now, I just have to say, we heard this, we heard you present this and this was where I literally jaw dropped and I'll let you just finish it. But I'd like stay tuned. This is so powerful. The fact that you did the study. Yes. So I did this four week study, no funding. And the reason I did the study because my supervisor said to me, Col, what are you seeing at the ground level as a building biologist with electromagnetic fields? And I said in Somnia, I see so many kids and babies that don't sleep that end up in mother baby units because they've got baby monitors, which are meeting very high levels of radiation in the form of radio frequencies. He said, well, let's do a study on that. So we did a four week, I did a four week study. The first week was baseline where I got the client to measure their EEG waves at the end of seven days and their activity, activity, which is moving in bed and heart rate variability and do sleep diaries just to get baseline. In the second week, I then put a baby monitor in their bedroom next to their bedhead for seven consecutive nights, which was double blind. I didn't know if it was on. I had an IT technician fiddle with it. So the screen was not working. So they didn't know if it was on. I didn't know if it was on for seven consecutive nights. Then they did at the end of the seven days, their brain waves, heart rate variability, et cetera. In the third week, we had washed out because I know with electromagnetic field exposure, there's a histamine response as we saw many of these chronic environmental issues, histamine responses, mast cell activation, blah, blah, blah. So wash out. And then the fourth week, the baby monitor was put back into the room again, double blind. So in the second and fourth week, the baby monitor was in their bedroom. One of the weeks it was active, one of the weeks it was not active. And when we collated the data, it became clear that the EEG waves were statistically significant in non-REM and also their clinical sleep diaries were also statistically significant. And this was 12 participants. The heart rate variability wasn't statistically significant. But if we had 30 participants, it would have been. So it was reaching statistical significance. Anyway, I've submitted it to eight journals who have rejected it. Many of these journals have kept it for six or seven months. No, I can't submit it to any other journal or the journals were viewing it. And the reasons that they've come back with are so ridiculous, like your sample size was too small. Now, if it was that small, they should have told me in the first week and just moved on. I then ironically recently looking back at those journals going, well, they've recently published a paper around RCT with 10 participants in the same journal, but won't submit mine. And my three supervisor going, Coli, this is a really controversial paper. You've shown a baby monitor, which is designed to be in the bedroom, has had a clinically significant impact. In fact, it reached clinical insomnia in four of the participants within seven days. Wow. It's too controversial because this device used 2.45 gigahertz frequency, which is pretty much most of your Wi-Fi enabled devices. So therefore, Wi-Fi enabled devices should not be in bedrooms and should not be in adjacent rooms because they can impact sleep significantly. And sleep is the cornerstone to health. If you don't get sleep right with any of your patients, they will never get full recovery. They just can't. So to me, this is why it was an important research I did because I had a hunch that this was a problem and was able to do that, but I'm still in the scenario of submitting to journals. And no surprise because, like you said, that even with a cell phone and some of that stuff, I was so thankful that you can comment on when France just came out with a ban of the iPhone 12 because clearly there was an issue and it sent shockwaves because no one else has ever talked about that. Do you have any comment on that specifically because in that device and let's talk about cell phones and kids and that whole realm? Yes, exactly. So the exposure standards are completely inadequate. They're based on thermal heating effects. So basically they use what's called a SAR rating for devices that are developed to be next to your person. So cell phones, blue tooth, thick bits, frackers, etc. So they basically put a cell phone next to a plastic mannequin's head that reflects a US soldier, 100 kilo US soldiers head and then see how much it heats the tissues, which is ridiculous because we know how electromagnetic fields affect the body at a sea level and they cause they act on voltage gated calcium channels in the cell membrane to result in calcium influx, which results in downstream effects, namely oxidative stress and of course resulting in low grade systemic inflammation. So to put an exoplastic dummy's head that doesn't have cell membranes is ridiculous. It's all based on how much it heats your tissues before it can actually cause adverse health effects. We know over many over 2000 papers have shown oxidative stress with radio frequency exposure and radio frequencies is the radiation emitted from all your Wi-Fi enabled devices. So that's really clear, but the people who are developing this standard ignorant international commission for non-ionising radiation protection in who are a non-governmental private organisation in Germany are dictating to Western countries or Western countries are adopting this method, knowing that most of their panel members have strong ties to telecommunications. And there was an interesting report by Buchner and Ravasi about the ties of all these, you know, small group to telecommunications. That Australia is following protecting their interest, of course, protecting their interests. So this is the thing with environmental exposures is when you start unpacking, why is everybody impacted by environmental exposure? It's because the exposure stands are not adequate. They're done in compromise with industry. Did you turn what's practicable in a workplace that doesn't impact economic activity? And that's where, you know, my building biologists, as they come to terms with that in the course, they go, Oh my God, how can that happen? This is the way the world works. This is capitalism. It's about dividends for shareholders. I know I'm cynical, but what can we do about it? We have to get the revolution at the ground up. We need to teach consumers they have to take control of their own health because no one else is going to be doing that. The exposure stands for chemicals, electromagnetic fields. They're just not adequate. Yeah, we are in the US with the EPA, and I've often taught that we just can't count on them because they're not doing the synergy of the chemicals. They're not doing the step that just we have to take it into our own hands. And also the only way that we can actually make change, whether it's through politics or grassroots efforts or just teaching our doctors and our clinicians and our building biologists. This is where it starts is awareness. So three things came to mind as you were talking, first of all, kiddos. Why are kids and their head size and their body size a bigger deal than adults and also distance? Just explain for the people who don't understand that the distance principle and even the basic. So basically children and the effects of UMF's distance and what can we do with distance to make this a little bit easier or better for us? And then also our regular household routers and ways that we use it. Let's talk about those topics for practice. So the good news is a lot you can do to reduce your exposure a lot. Children are uniquely susceptible because their skulls are thinner. They have more moisture or water in their brains so that that attenuates radio frequencies when they're using a cell phone it's going across the whole brain as opposed to just part of it, et cetera. Their cells are rapidly dividing. You know, even with mold, their lung capacity doesn't happen until you're 20. Yeah. So, you know, I don't think about like a dog or a crawling child they're on the floor with that dust, with that mycotoxins. They get so much more exposure. I'm sure you've seen two like sadly dogs in houses sometimes get the sickest with mold because they're on the ground with the dust inhaling and ingesting with babies. Absolutely. So I mean, this aspen aspergillus penicillium takes about six to eight hours to fall. So all the fungal particulate load is on the surfaces. That's why carpets, the reservoirs, the archaeological dig site of the entire house sitting right there in the breathing zone of the infants right there. So they're at the highest level of exposure with the least lung capacity to deal with it. So yes, that's that's a whole thing. OK, so I know. Sorry, back to you about that. And then what about distance, Wi-Fi in the house, cell phones as one of the major culprits? All right. So when I go in, whenever my building biologists go into a home, this is how I train them. I say, OK, the client has an issue with the smart meter, but the reality is the highest level of exposures occur with the devices closest to your person. And that's going to be your cell phone. So let's start with that. Now, I love my cell phone. I love the fact I can run my business anywhere in the world, not stuck to a desk. But I know I make an informed choice and I know how to reduce my exposure. The reality is most patients can't make an informed choice because they don't understand what's going on. So when you use your cell phone, text instead of call, keep it away from vital organs, your brain, your breasts, your reproductive organs is very, very important. Try and use a landline phone that's hard white. If you can or Skype is better or VoIP, would it be better? Text instead of calling. If you're going to call, then keep it at a distance. So put it on a desk and use loudspeaker that's going to reduce your exposure by at least 90%. So keep it away from your brain. Hardow's research is showing 30 minutes a day for more than 10 years, doubling the risk of gliomas and acoustic neuromas. So the concern is these gliomas are increasing significantly because the latency periods, we're right at the door of these latency periods. So two of my close friends in their fifties were diagnosed two months apart from grade four glioma this year. Like it's horrific. It's horrific, you know. You shared something at the conference about, was it 2012 where things shifted with the technology so that we're on that 10 year threshold? 2003 with 3G, when they introduced that into a digital frequency, that's when we started counting 15 to 25 years is the latency periods for these brain tumors. We're right at that doorstep and it's already shown before to be occurring. Now we know after 60 that the incidence rate is much higher, it's doubled in Australia. People over the age of 60, their incidence of gliomas have doubled in the last 10 years based on the research. But now in their fifties, it's very, very concerning because of that latency period exposure. So what was interesting is one of my girlfriends who was diagnosed this year, the neurologist had said to her, I don't know what's going on. We're finding so many young people with this type of tumor and we have no idea what's going on. And I said, it would be the cell phones, I think. Let alone let's not talk about the jab and blah, blah, blah. But the cell phones in terms of using that before 15, from the cradle to the grave, that's never happened in a generation before. We are, they are the guinea pigs. The generation, this generation is the guinea pigs for man-made electromagnetic field exposures and we're now seeing the downstream effects of that in their pretty bad. Wow, and you're right. I just, I remember so vividly, this was like 10 years ago, but seeing a case study of a woman who held her cell phone in her bra and the tumor outline of the cell phone in her breast. And that was my friend, this is a decade or so ago. And I remember thinking, oh, we are in for trouble because again, and we know the glucose metabolism changes as we get that close to the head. And so there's a few little scenarios. I just have quick questions about, one is I, in my home, I have the meter to check radio frequencies and the thing that shocked me was my Sonos system, which is a system that is sound, right? It's a speaker system. I don't know if you have the same thing in Australia, but it's a really, really high quality sound with wifi, right? It was off the charts, like hundreds of thousands of hertz that was coming out of that. And do you see it bigger than anything else in my house? Any comments on sound systems that are wireless? Yeah, absolutely. My ex, when I go there, he just leaves up the road, we get on like an awesome fire. And so when I'm there with the kids, et cetera, and he's got the Sonos system, I just got my safe and sound meter. And I said, I need to test this because you're all not sleeping. And I think it's the electromagnetic fields, you know, just done research on it. Kids go, Mum, you don't know anything, Baba, my God. It's a nightmare as a parent. I've got three teenage kids, just shoot me. And yelling a lot of the time, yes sweetheart, you can use that device, but the only caveat is I'm gonna have the safe and sound with the highest volume at the same time, going while you're using it. Mum, you're driving us insane. Going back to my ex, he had a Sonos system. He had two routers and it was over a million microwatts per square meter. It was enormous. I said, you've got to turn this off. If you forget to turn it off, get one of those timers. You know, when you go on holidays, you can put your lights on on a timer. It goes on at night, so it looks like someone's in the house. Connect that to your router, so it automatically turns off without you having to think about it and turns back on. Anyway, he hit three days later, he goes, oh my God, I can't believe it. We're sleeping better. And I'm going, yeah, hello. Like I'm being sung these for ages. Radio frequencies affect sleep because it tracks the point into thinking it's daytime. And that has huge effects on hormones, immune system, gut, everything, everything. So yes, the Sonos system he had, it was a night. So I just- That's what was shocking to me because I have an office at home and again, I don't have a lot of other Wi-Fi devices, but I was like, oh, this is a big deal and people need to know it and myself included. Yes. So what we would do is turn everything off and then turn one thing on at a time with that device. And there's some really good devices on the market that I think the Safe and Sound Pro is the best. That's the one I have. Exactly, Safe and Sound Pro. So if you're listening out there, this is a device that measures radio frequencies. It's the one that I have and you're mentioning is Safe and Sound Pro. I have no affiliation, but it's a good one. I wish we did, we should get- I know, right? The other question was, obviously, I'm in Boulder, a lot of environmentally conscious patients and people, which I love, but solar panels and electric cars have been an issue for some of my patients. Do you wanna talk about how that works with electromagnetic radiation and what if you were gonna do solar panels, how you might do it safely or just tell us about that because that's tricky, I think. This is what Magda Havas and her research on dirty electricity is important because what we've found was if when people install solar and inverters in their house, people who are electrically sensitive can no longer live in these homes. The reason appears to be that it creates high levels. The inverter converts solar DC energy into AC electrical energy and it seems to create high levels of dirty power, which is high frequency spikes that are traveling in the building wiring throughout the house. So it's not just the inverter. It seems to be this dirty electricity, which are high frequency spikes from 60 Hertz right up until the gigahertz range in fractions of a second, riding along all the wiring in the building and it seems to be riding on the electric field. So the electric field can come out about 1.2 meters. So wherever there's wiring in your walls, some of you've got this dirty electricity riding on the, in the air about a meter from the wiring and now these people are getting tinnitus, headaches, sleep disturbances and they'll often say, I don't know what's going on but I can only sleep in the middle of the room. Right. Well, that dirty power. Let's see, it's like, yeah, in the middle. Yes. Electric cars, would that be similar? Like some of the oldest? Yes, batteries and magnetic fields are a big issue for a lot of these patients. It's a reason why I don't have an electric car. Now, if there is a possibility with solar panels, if it's wired correctly, if the inverter is away from the property and you're using correct social shield and cabling in a meaningful way to reduce the dirty power riding along the house, there is a possibility but of course it's going to be more expensive and you need to find an expert who will be able to do that. But this is the issue. And in my book, this push towards sustainability, the green movement, it has to be done but unfortunately it's correlating with far worse adverse health effects for many patients because they're living in tight homes like plastic bags that have full of condensation and mild by their first winter in a new house because the water vapor can't go anywhere. Secondly, they're importing furnishings from Asia or other countries full of flame retardants and formaldehyde. And now that they live in a tight house, it's reprinting and causing high levels of chemical exposures that didn't happen in older homes. And of course all this push towards, you know these batteries and solar creating problems and wind turbines and infrasound for people living in close proximity is an issue. So what's made a political level is often not thinking about the downstream effect to environmentally sensitive clients. And I want to make it really clear, these environmental exposures impact all of us. Probably one of the best things I did in my research was interview the top environmental doctors in Australia, New Zealand. And one of them said to me, Col, do you know in my environmental exposure patients with chronic fatigue, very few of them get cancer. I said, well, why is that? He said, because they're the canaries in the mind. They walk past the perfume store and go, oh my God, I'm getting a headache. My body's saying it's poison. So they leave the scene. You and I go there. We'll die of heart disease and cancer. But these patients don't, you know because their body's so finely tuned, they're warning humanity. There's something really wrong here. And instead of listening to them, we've put them into a psychology boat, a boat, you know, diagnosis of mental health illness when in fact it's an environmentally induced mental illness. Do you know what I mean? I so know what you mean. Terrible. I can't tell you, I've written a lot about multiple chemical sensitivities or even mass selectivation, which are both really highly related to the environment. Most of the blog comments are, you can tell they're just so like, I've been told I've been crazy forever. And finally, you're validating my illness and making me understand that this is actually a medical issue and this is real. And that makes me even more sad because these are maybe the, in a way, they're the wisest people in our, you know, like the most advanced of humanity. And we're putting them, like you said, and saying, oh, it's functional. It's in your head. It's, you need an antidepressant. And the truth is, I think this is actually signaling to all of us what we need to do. Thank you for talking about the environmental stuff because that is such a tricky thing. I'm all about environmentalism. And yet I see that if you don't do it right, there is a harm of these electromagnetic fields and people are just aren't aware. So I'm glad that. Exactly. So I mentioned in terms of reducing exposure to EMFs, the phone, but the second most powerful way is to look at your bedroom and to remove any Wi-Fi enabled device, including your cell phone, away from a sleeping environment. If you can get sleep right, then you can normally have enough resilience to deal with any other environmental onslaught. So the bedroom becomes the most important room in the house because we spend 22 years of our life there. So mattress, the bedding is important. I'm always amazed how old people's mattresses are and full of stains. And if there's a history of their partner on chemo, well, all of that chemo is in the mattress and they're absorbing it dermally. So these little things like that make such a big difference to the outcome to patients feeling better. So always start with the bedroom. Oh, love that. And so let's switch back in our last few minutes on mold because that's such a huge topic. First of all, I think you were the one who quoted again when I heard you in Australia about how many leaders of vapor we actually produce as human each day. And let's just think about like talk to a person who maybe doesn't have a massively moldy home, but they want to prevent mold in their home and stay healthy. What would the average person need to do every year, every month, every like, what are some of the practical things that we can do to prevent mold growth and to make sure that our homes are safe? Well, maintenance is the most important thing. I think, especially in rentals, you need to be clear in that agreement or contract who's responsible for maintenance. Because if it's not maintained, the person living in there is going to be impacted by it, not the landlord. So maintaining, making sure you're removing leaf litter, keeping the stormwater system clear, getting rid of leaf litter in the gutter and the downpipes adequate, having enough downpipes to move high levels of water from the roof into the stormwater system, checking the stormwater pits are actually clear. Getting rid of vegetation in close proximity to the house that is causing this. But inside, thinking about water vapour management, each person is equivalent to around 10 litres of water vapour per person per day. So that comes from bathing, breathing, washing and cooking. You're breathing out and adult breathes out about three litres of water per day. So if you've got two people in a small bedroom and you've got condensation on a cold surface like a window, it means it's not coping with that water vapour, which is probably either coming from your breathing or if you've got a humidifier, which is pushing steam out. That's a disaster. Don't have humidifiers in the house. So what you need to do then is either get into a bigger room or if it's a bunk bed with kids, ideally get one child out of there. If that's not possible, then there's two things you can do to prevent that. It's to bring in a heater to add about 15 degrees to stop what we call dew point. So by heating the surfaces in the room, when water vapour hits a cold surface, it's not going to condense because the surface is warm enough. The other one would be to introduce a dehumidifier to pull out moisture. Now, to me, when I see condensation on windows, I know the ventilation isn't adequate, especially in bathrooms. So I say to clients, get a commercial industrial exhaust fan that's vented to the atmosphere. So it's pulling moisture out, not just into the roof, but actually out through the roof outside. If you can reduce the water vapour in the house, that will significantly stop a lot of the condensation related mould that we actually see. So in the kitchen, when you're cooking, where does that exhaust fan go? Is it to atmosphere or is it just recirculating the moisture that needs to be addressed? And of course, laundry. The big one is washing clothes. Each basket of wet clothes you have is equivalent to an extra five litres of water vapour per day, per load. So in wintertime, I ask my clients, how do you dry your clothes? Do you put them outside? Do you put them in the house? Because if you put it in that room, you're going to have 15 litres of water vapour coming up. And if you don't heat that room, then it's going to hit cold surfaces and condense. So a clothes condensing dryer is brilliant because it automatically pulls the moisture out of the clothes, especially if you can't put it outside. Other sources are things like fish tanks. If you live in a humid environment and you bring a fish tank into a room, that could be just enough to cause high levels of water vapour and condensation. So that can definitely be traumatic. The other one, of course, is water events. If you have a leak, an overflow of a bath or a tub, you've only got 48 hours to dry it. If you don't dry it within 48 hours, you're going to get microbial growth. And what's important with mould to understand is fungal spores are everywhere, from the Arctic to the Antarctica. They're meant to be everywhere because their nature's greatest decomposers. So in a normal, healthy home, you can have up to 500 spores per square inch in a normal, healthy home. The mould isn't the problem. The problem is growth. When you have liquid water sitting on a surface for more than 48 hours, or if you have high levels of water vapour and humidity in excess of 70% relative humidity for more than 48 hours, the spores sitting on all the surfaces will start utilizing the moisture in the air to grow. And when they grow, like humans, they release enzymes to break up the substrate or the surface they're in. So the fungi is more like humans and plants because they can't photosynthesize, they have to release enzymes. But in the process, they spew out fungal particulate like spores and hyphae full of mycotoxins. And when you breathe that in, that's when you get sick. So you've got to prevent the growth. And the only way to do it is to get to the source of moisture. Wow, you are such a wealth of knowledge. A couple of little last-minute questions is here in Colorado, our humidity's actually really low. Would there be, usually my condo runs from 25 to 30%, which is pretty low. Yeah, which naturally, but would there be any other issues with that too low? Because I agree with you as a humidifier, and I don't like to think about that. What's advice for low humidity situations? Yeah, so anything below 30 is not good. It dries out all your mucus membranes, eyes, nose, mouth, respiratory tract. And they need to be moist to trap allergens in particulate matter. So ideally, you want to keep it between 40 and 60%. If it's below that, you would need to bring in a humidifier to raise it to help with your respiratory system. That's very important. If you could keep it between 45 and 55%, you'd stop allergies, asthma, everything. So that would be the ideal scenario. Okay, and do you have any advice if you need a humidifier like in this dry climate, of what kind of, is there anything that you could do to make that water safe? Like would you put essential oils in it or anything at all? The main thing is to clean it out regularly. And I would, because any moisture left in there is going to support microbial growth, whether it's bacteria and or fungi. So I would say to get a hair dryer and dry it out completely is best. Yes, tea tree, you can lift this time. They're probably the strongest in the oily, probably the strongest essentials. But if you're chemically sensitive, you'll be able to, that isn't going, hey, that's an essential oil. You go that way. And if you're a petrochemical, you go in glucuronidation pathways. It doesn't do that. It's all toxicity to the liver. So I love essential oils. And I can use them because I'm not chemically sensitive. But if you are, even that could be an issue. Wow, this is so great. I knew you'd be one of my favorite guests and you did not disappoint. Truly, Nicole, thank you for the work that you're doing in the world. My last question is back in the day where you had that tragedy of all the miscarriages and you really didn't know until all of your research, what was going on. What advice did you wish you would have known? What one bit of advice do you wish you would have known then? Wow. Well, I did have kids. I said to my husband at the time, there's something wrong with this room. We've got to get away from the meter panel. We moved to the back bedroom. He very reluctantly moved to the back bedroom because of the ensuite side. I just said, sweetheart, you're never going to have sex again. So I'm going to the back bedroom. Two minutes later, he's moving a four-poster bed. What advice? You know what? There was, I think I see now the beauty in me going through that. I would never establish the industry. I would never have moved into environmental medicine. And as hard as it was, you know, sobbing on the floor after my 10th miscarriage and going, I can't go on. I can see the beauty in that. I don't think there's anything anyone could have said, apart from not saying, gee, it was meant to be, you had a miscarriage, that I couldn't cope with that anymore. There's nothing. I see now, like you, adversity as a clinician is a powerful part of empathy and understanding what other people go through. And because I'm passionate, you're passionate, I'm very grateful that I do something that I would do with no money because I love it so much, just like I know you would. Oh, your energy comes through so right and clear. And again, your wisdom is so powerful. This is literally one of my favorite podcast episodes. So thank you truly for all the wisdom and wealth you bring. And thank you for letting me come and visit you in Australia. I hope to come back one day. The loitling was so good. Can I also mention I've got a course coming up in February, a short course for clients with mild illness and electromagnetic fields to help the population understand the terminology and to prevent these issues. So I'm looking forward to launching that on my website. Yes, and tell us where I was going to ask you that. Lastly, where can we people find you? I want to hold this up again. Everybody make sure and get a copy of this book. It's such a great resource. You can find it anywhere you buy books. Healthy Home, Healthy Family. And where can people find you? Where can people find the course? I'll be sure and link to this if you're listening as well. BuildingBiology.com.au is my personal website and the college website you can see on my screen, Australian College of Environmental Studies for training. But yes, my personal website will have a lot of information and I have a newsletter as well. So thank you so much. We will share that and be sure and stay tuned. As you can tell if you've been listening, Nicole is amazing in heart and soul and wisdom. And thank you again for coming on. Thank you so much, Jill.