119: Detoxing Mold & Your Immune System Funnel

Hello again, everyone, and welcome to today's show. If you're one of the 130 million people that are dealing with Sirs Lyme disease, autoimmune disease, or other conditions that are impacted by mold on a daily basis and you need to learn how to eliminate that exposure, then you're in the right place. My name is Brian Carr and you're listening to Mold Finders Radio.

So what I was going to talk about today is something I talked about before, but it's been a while since I've talked about it, so I thought I would sort of like refresh it for people.

I've been seeing it a lot. I've been seeing, like, comments of things I've been posting places. I've been seeing a text messages from the mobile phone. I've been seeing it and messages from people in this community sort of about trying to understand, like, how much is enough, how good is good, you know, how contaminated is contaminated. Like a lot of these types of questions. And it's tough, right? The reason it's tough is there is no, first off, not that like federal and local, state standards really mean anything towards health anyway because everyone's so individual. But there aren't even standards on that front, right? So now we're talking about stuff where there isn't really like a standard. Standardize, like you are safe if your level of mold is X. Right. That's kind of the first challenge, right? So there's really no guideline that anyone has to look to. And so when you don't have any sort of guideline, you start thinking that.

Your head's almost like, I don't know where to look. And then you go to like the worst possible option because if there's no guideline, then it needs to be zero. Because apparently if it's anything, I can't find it. Right. And that's not necessarily true. It's just kind of the same situation that we're in because there's no sort of reference points. Right. The other thing is that reference points, even if it was a federal or state level sort of reference point thing, doesn't mean anything anyway because your body is different than my body is different than Taylor's body over here is different than all the other people that are in the group and everywhere else too. Meaning what's your genetic makeup genetically? Are you predisposed to not be able to detox properly? If that's you, then your level exposure probably needs to be lower than someone who's not. Right. That's one piece of it. Have you had previous exposures that have essentially reworked your body's immune response to things moving forward for the rest of your life, which happens. So if you lived in a moldy basement when you were a kid and there were certain types of molds in there, if your body sees that mold, it has been trained to be like, oh, this mold is a bad thing, and it freaks out. Whereas if I walked into that same environment that might have that same old there, my body wouldn't necessarily react the same way because it hasn't been trained to do that for its entire life. Right. For at least a lot of the developmental years of what's going on. So there's another reason why it's kind of confusing. And then the third piece is your current health position. Right? So if you're dealing with other health issues that are already taxing your immune system, then that's less immunity that you have to battle mold things. Right. So there's all this stuff that goes into this equation. It's really complicated. Well, it's not this complicated. It's just. It's. It's complicated in that there isn't a definitive answer of, like, this much of exposure means that I'm okay or I'm not okay. Right. And so the, you know, the analogy and kind of the way that we talk about this stuff is talking about envisioning your immune system and your body as a funnel and the amount of essentially external crap that your body can take and deal with. Right? So there's a lot of different versions of this analogy. It's a funnel. It's a bucket. It's like a leaky bucket with holes in it. There's like, all these different versions of the analogy. But think of it this way. Think of it like a funnel. Your funnel looks like this, okay? The top of the funnel is where everything comes in, and the bottom of the funnel is where everything comes out. Right now, it's slanted like this because your body is having to detox and work on it and pull out all the stuff and do what it needs to do. And this is like your body's filtering process right before stuff comes out. What comes out the bottom is what you' actually detoxing and getting rid of. Okay? So the idea. Anyone who's had a funnel before or used one even as a kid or whatever, you pour stuff in the top, if you pour it in too fast, it can't keep up with the bottom, and then it overflows out of the top. So pouring it in too fast is the equivalent of being exposed to too many things. And if you're exposed to too many things and your body can't process it properly, the funnel overflows and it triggers the systemic inflammatory responses, immune responses, cytokine storms, all the things. There's a lot of different.

Mechanisms of it, but that's essentially what happens. So when we think about this and you go back to the questions like, well, how much can I be exposed to? So when we talk about how everybody's body is different, what we're saying is that your funnel is different. Everybody's funnel is different. It's different in size, it's different in shape. Okay? So if we think about the funnel and imagine you have your top side and your bottom side topside is what you're being exposed to, right? This is obviously what we're talking about, right? This air quality, this mold, this toxic, all this stuff. But there's all the other stuff that your body's exposed to. There's pesticides from all the grains and stuff you're eating. There's heavy metals, there's chemical off gassing from, you know, the cabinetry in your house and the cleaning products you use, and all the other stuff that your body has to basically deal with right Now. Keep in mind, all of our bodies are meant to some extent to be able to deal with this stuff, even if there's limitations. Our bodies are meant to be a factory that is able to filter this stuff out. A whole bunch of organs that have specific reasons for why they're there. And part of it is to do all this stuff. The problem is, if we have those things that we talked about at the beginning, that it's essentially making our. Our body system not as optimal as it needs to be. Okay? So the top of the funnel is everything you're exposed to. The bottom of the funnel is your drainage pathway. So this is everything draining out, which. Which is a fancy word of saying your detox pathway. How much is detoxing out the bottom? So anyone who's kind of dug around and looked on, like, how to kind of heal from environmental exposure and stuff, you'll see a lot of the doctors talk about, you know, the first step is obviously addressing exposure, but then the next thing is to open up your drainage pathways. They say to open your drainage pathways because the more open they are, the easier stuff can go through it, and the better you can detox. That's why they're saying this. You have different drainage pathways. For example, peeing is a drainage pathway. Pooping is a Drainage pathway. Sweating is a drainage pathway. So there's different drainage pathways that you have to open. Now, again, back to the funnel, right? Top is what's coming in. Bottom is basically your drainage pathways. So the idea, if you're looking at it like this, is you could have somebody who's really healthy and their drainage pathway is open, right? And they're able to move stuff. You can have somebody whose drainage pathways are really tight. And this could be for a variety of reasons. And it takes so much longer for stuff to drain out to get out. Which then means all this is is a mathematical equation. When you look at this, okay, you could pour in the same amount of stuff in the top with someone whose funnel looks like this as someone's whose funnel looks like this. The same amount of exposure could go into both of those. The funnel that looks like this is going to overflow super fast. The funnel that's like this may never overflow. And that's why you have people that have reactions and you have people that don't. That's the very top line. I mean, I'm not a doctor. And getting in all the mechanisms, that's the theory of why behind people have reactions and people don't. Okay? So when we're trying to go through this and figure this out, there's two goals in this situation. There's two things you have to fix. We have to fix what's coming in the top. Okay. But you also want to open the hole at the bottom. So ideally, what you want to do is almost feel like you're inverting the funnel. That's really what you want to do. You want to be pouring less in the top and you want it to fly out. Right? And if you're doing that, that means your body is processing stuff and you've worked yourself out to an equilibrium with your environment that you can be there and not have these. These bad reactions right now. It doesn't happen over time. It's not a thing that, you know, there's stuff that goes into.

The easiest thing is actually fixing the top part. Less stuff in the top means who cares what my bottom is? Because if I'm getting less in, then my body is going to be able to catch up and do its thing. Right now the thing is challenging about the top is there's expense to that right now, what's going on? So mold in my house, I have to remediate somewhere else. So there's a lot of things that go into the top, but it's honestly the easier thing than now doing all the treatments and all that stuff to try to open this stuff up, right? That's why all the doctors say, the first thing you do is this, right? They don't say the first thing you do is this, because this can take a really long time. So if you're just slowly, slowly, slowly opening this thing up, but you're still pouring in all kinds of stuff at the top, it might take a long time before you stop overflowing, depending on how much stuff is coming to the top. The quickest way to stop a problem is to stop it from originating in the first place. It's the same thing in a house. Get rid of the source and don't try to fix it. On the back end of the source is still coming. That's how you. That's how the doctors are wanting to treat your body, too. So this is kind of the general funnel concept of your immune system. And this is where this whole question comes up of. Of how clean is clean, how contaminated is contaminated, how much stuff can I be exposed to? What, like, how far do I have to go? How extreme do I have to be when it comes to, like, moving from one space to another space or bringing my contents or my items with me, or do I have to throw this out or not throw this out? Right? All of those questions, think about this, right? And when I'm saying that if your health position is in a. Is not in a great spot, and your funnel at the bottom, the hole at the bottom is pretty tight. And the way that you can understand that is, one, I mean, if you're working with a doctor, they can give you a sense of that. But two, are you super sensitive? Are you, like, do you notice these sensitivities really quickly? Are your reactions severe? Are they fast? Are they severe? Do they stay for long periods of time? Most likely this thing is low, right? And so what that means is that you have to be more cons. I guess, should I say more aggressive in what you're doing to protect yourself from exposures, Right? As opposed to someone, let's say, like me, I had or have a buildup, and I had a mycotoxin buildup last time I tested. But for the houses that I've been in, my doctor was like, I'm shocked that your levels are as low as they are, because she knew every house I've been in because they were all her patients, right? So she's like, I know where you've been. For your levels to be this low, like, yes, we gotta work on this. But I'm actually like super happy. This is showing me that your pathways are really wide open and you're processing this stuff really well. So for me, do I have to be as aggressive if I'm moving or if I'm remediating or if I'm cleaning to say I have to get rid of 100% of everything I own? For me personally, probably not, because my reactions don't mirror that response. Right. So you kind of have to look at it as this thing. It's kind of going back and forth. And if your reactions are more severe this way, then your response becomes more severe this way. If your reactions are less on this side, then your response to those reactions could potentially be less on this side. So it's almost like you're balancing a scale and you're always trying to find like this equilibrium that's going on. If you are severely impacted, your scale goes like this, right? So then to get this to come up, you have to remove a bunch of weight from this side, you have to remove more from that side to get to here. For me, my scale probably goes more like this. So for me, I don't have to remove as much of the exposure stuff on top in order for the balance to come. Okay. So think of it as a balancing act with how your body is responding and what your reactions are to, how extreme you need to get with your treatment plans, your how much of the house you're. You're actually going to remediate, how much of your stuff you're actually going to throw out versus attempt to clean. It's all this balancing act. Everybody's balance is different. So you got to figure out how much you're being tugged one way and then you're going to have to optimize that on the other side to get yourself back even. And then eventually what you're doing is that on this side, through longer term health treatments and fixing the body and opening the bottom of that funnel, you're making it so the weight on this side isn't as heavy anymore, more. So instead of it just going straight like that, you'll get more to like where I am. Right. And when you have less stuff pushing you down on this side, you don't have to be as aggressive on this side to meet it in the middle. So that was just a, just a quick thing I wanted to throw out there before we get started today because I've just been seeing for some reason more of it this week kind of similar questions, you know, all that stuff. So I just Wanted to throw that out for you guys, for you to think about to help you sort of visualize like what your next steps look like, how aggressive you need to be and what you're comfortable with doing. Because at the end of the day, there is no test that's going to tell you exactly how aggressive you have to be in terms of like the environmental stuff, right? I could test your house all day. We can find that you have all kinds of stuff in your house that is a piece of it, of an equation. Your body's the other piece of the equation. The solution of that equation is then what goes into the scale, right? So, so that's what's triggering all of this stuff. So there's pieces of it. And so you need to, we need to like, understand kind of the, this equation. And then when you see sort of where you're netting out and this whole thing that's going on, then you start thinking about, okay, where, where's my comfort level in terms of what I'm going to do and how aggressive I'm going to be. Now, one thing that is not on this equation, that is a huge part of your decision making process is your mental state and your emotional state. Okay. So you can have like, you could be in my situation where you're kind of like this, right? Where maybe I started and this wasn't me, but let's say I started here. And then some time has come and I've kind of elevated a little, so my body's recovering a bit. I can handle more. Which means I don't have to be as aggressive on this side, right? Well, physiologically that might be true, but there's this whole other component on the mental side of what's going on. You know, you want to call it ptsd, you want to call it whatever you want, but basically you've been harmed by something and now you have either a fear of it or you're overprotective of it moving forward, right? So you have this whole other thing that goes into play. So there are times when I'm talking to clients and they're like deciding if they should stay or move in their house. And I'm looking at the stuff that's going on in their house, I'm like, honestly, this is pretty fixable. And in the grand scheme of things, from an expense standpoint, like, I've seen way more expensive things that have to get fixed too, right? So like, this isn't like the worst thing to maybe think about, like going down this road and trying to fix this stuff, but they've been so damaged from an emotional standpoint and the toll that it's taken, I could kind of see. And so then I asked him this question, like, hey, listen, if we remediated the house and you came back in, would you be able to go to sleep at night and not think in the back of your mind that there might have been something that we missed? And if they answer no, then I think that they should move because they're not going to trust it. They're always going to think there's something in the house that's going on that's impacting because it's had such a big impact on their life up to that point. And if you can't kind of reconcile that, then it doesn't matter how good the remediation is. It doesn't matter that you're not being exposed to anything. The emotional piece and the trauma that's been attached to that is going to trigger all very similar types of responses throughout the body, too. So there's the trauma component that comes into it, as well as just what's going on in the house in general. So those are some things to think about when you're thinking about next steps. And everyone's at a different point right now. Some people are just getting started. Like Mark, I think, is your first time coming in that I've seen you. So some people are at the beginning, some people all the way towards the end. We talked to Carol last week who's basically wrapping up and she's done and she's at a point where she's ready to go back in. She doesn't have that kind of. Kind of the emotional piece that I just talked about. So she's good. She's ready to go in. There's people who are in the middle. There's questions coming in where you can tell that the emotional trauma portion of what's happened with some people in the group is really, really extreme and severe. And at that point, you have to add that to the weight that's on the scale. You have to add it. Right. It's not only what your body is doing, but it's also because this side is what do I need to do to make myself be able to be in a suitable situation? The environment's one piece of it. What do I have to get rid of? What do I have to throw away? The other piece is mentally, can I be here? What do I have to, like, do I do I trust this jacket to come from here to this house? Right. Maybe the Jack is totally fine. But if you don't trust it, then you need to do more in order to get yourself here right? So those are things to think about.

So that's it for today's show, everyone. Thanks so much for tuning in. If you enjoyed the show, please take a moment and subscribe and give a rating wherever you get your podcasts. It'll help spread the word to those who really need it the most.