Aaron Hartman, MD explains how mold illness creates brain inflammation that blocks recovery, even after removing the mold. He covers therapies like meditation, breathing work, and neural retraining, plus related conditions like POTS and SIBO that complicate healing.
Questions this video answers
Up to 23% of the population.
About 20% of the population.
1 in 12 Americans.
20% of people who visit the GI doctor.
Chapters
So we've been talking about the battlegrounds in Sears Chronic inflammatory response syndrome and where people get stuck. Where are the areas that they don't quite understand? They get stuck. What are the right therapies and a whole host of other things. Well, today we're going to talk about the battlefield of the mind. Many people don't realize that chronic inflammatory response syndrome primarily acts on the brain and causes a lot of brain based inflammation. So one of the things that happens with people with chronic inflammatory response syndrome or mold illness is their brain actually gets on fire. And so they have lots of anxiety, they have short fuses, they have quick response times. All of a sudden the mold issue is more than just the mold in the house, in the apartment, it's more than the crawl space. Your brain is actually on fire and people feel like their brain is on fire. This is the last battleground that people get stuck in. They get 60, 70% better, but they can't get past things because now they have this trauma brain from the mold, the toxins, et cetera, acting on them almost like an assault. So that's what we're going to talk about right now is how to actually overcome this last final battleground and chronic inflammatory response, or in the battleground of the mind. One thing is just to remember that the brain is actually on fire when this is happening. So things that can calm the brain down and lower the cortisol levels become super important. Things like meditation, breathing techniques. There's a thing called dynamic neural retraining which is a way you can actually retrain your brain. It's called brain retraining as well. Some people will do neurobiofeedback, but this needs to be a part of every person who's dealing with mold illness. This needs to be a part of what they're doing. And time and time again see it being the last key, the last piece of the puzzle people need to get over to allow their body to start self healing and self repairing at its maximal potential. But there's even more to that that gets kind of tricky with mold related illness. Things like dysautonomia or POTS play into this. Many times people who have mold related illness will have fast heart rates, blood pressure fluctuations, problems controlling their temperature related to dysautonomia, or they'll have gut issues from sibo. With sibo, it's really interesting to see how the motility, inflammation in your gut and the nervous system in your gut, as well as digestion from your pancreas, can be affected by the Trauma response from the brain. Then there's this idea of hypermobility spectrum disorder, which I've talked about a lot in the past. Hypermobility. One of the interesting things about hypermobility is because the tissues are a little loose and stretchy, it automatically sends a low level of activation back to the brain and elevating the cortisol a little bit. People that are hypermobile, that have mold illness, all of a sudden have that reaction even more. So understanding the people's body, how to do different exercises, pilates, qigong, different core strengthening exercises, and even splints, kinesio tape, dry needling, acupuncture, massage, all these things can actually be types of body work that can actually start help calming the mind down in this trauma response in remote related illness. Sleep apnea is one of the other things I see commonly that can actually make this brain based inflammation worse. People with hypermobility are more prone to sleep apnea and if you stop breathing or have decreased breathing in your sleep, all of a sudden now that causes stress cortisol response. And all of a sudden everything I've talked about gets worse. The dysautonomia gets worse, the autoimmune issues gets worse, you detoxify less and this just feeds forward to causing more brain based inflammation. And finally it's just the idea of a low grade autoimmunity related to the mold because of the stress relates this brain trauma response cortisol, you tend to see more autoimmune responses. So people will have testing that suggests an autoimmune issue. It's not full blown autoimmune issue, but underlying the brain trauma response that all these things can affect. So this is the last battleground and this is where with all these patients that we have to walk through after you've dealt with remediating the house, after you've done lipid therapy, after you've got your HEPA filters in place, focusing on the brain aspect of it. And that's where this gets really fun. But it also gets complicated when you start taking into account things like dysautonomia and dealing with the fluid status in the patient's body, their connective tissue from the hypermobility, their gut sibo stuff. And combine all this together allows us here to actually get patients over the hope and get them healed, get their body back the way it was before. So these are the battlegrounds that we've been discussing with chronic inflammatory sponsor. This is what we see in our clinic here. These are just really great tools. I hope that as you all are learning more about mold and mold related illness, you can realize that it really is kind of complicated. And working with a skilled practitioner that's familiar with not just mold, not just binders, not just lipid therapy, but the whole aspect. And the brain, the mind body connection is huge in chronic inflammatory response syndrome. So I hope this information is really helpful. We'll be posting this on YouTube and other channels as well. If this has been helpful, please share with friends. Because chronic inflammatory response from multivolated illness, it's everywhere. Up to 23% of the population has a gene that makes them more susceptible to it. About 20% of the population is hypermobile. 1 in 12Americans have some kind of autoimmune issue. 20% of people who go visit the GI doctor have some kind of gut issue. And you can see all of a sudden these things are all very, very similar. And connecting the dots is one of the ways we actually help people's bodies heal and self repair. So hopefully this is helpful to everybody. Y' all take care and we'll talk to you soon.
