13: Don’t be fooled... the desert has mold too / Change your mindset to see results

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.

Hey guys. I am recording this on Thursday morning, which is, which is cool because that means that today is the live Q and A day that I've been talking about this week. So I'm excited about that. I actually had a dream about it and using the zoom platform and screwing it all up. So clearly I'm a little like nervous about doing that. So hopefully it all goes well. I'm sure it'll be fine. Anyways, it's. I don't know, it's about 5:30 in the morning right now. I'm kind of doing my normal morning thing, which is standing in front of the red light therapy machine. And I do that for like a half hour and I do a whole body vibration for 10 minutes and I do oil pulling first thing in the morning for my teeth and my mouth. And then later I'll do infrared sauna. That's kind of my normal kind of extracurricular detoxing and healthy living routine that I do. A lot of it is for detoxing from mold. I don't know if I've shared this yet, but I have three mycotoxins that are in my body that I'm continuously trying to work out. And honestly, it's because I do what I do and I go into really sick homes four or five days a week. And so my body doesn't really know that I don't live in them. And so I. I have to continuously try to detox and stuff. So this is all part of my routine. I'd be interested to hear what some of your routines are, if any of you guys are doing some of the similar stuff. I just got the red light machine around Christmas time. I love it. People ask me about it and if I feel a difference or anything, I'll tell you this once I'm using it consistently and then if there's a day that I don't use it, I totally feel an energy dip that day. It's pretty crazy how I feel like it recharges me, which is pretty cool.

Anyway, so that's what I'm doing right now. But I wanted to dive into a couple things for Today's show, the first one is from an appointment I did yesterday, a conversation I had with a client yesterday, and we were talking through her place, and then she just kind of asked me after I showed her some things that were going on. She's like, listen, what if I just move to, like, Vegas or Arizona or somewhere where there's desert, there's not gonna be any problems there, right? This isn't the first time I've heard this question. I've heard this question a lot, and I've actually just heard it as a statement in, like, Facebook groups, like, oh, we're gonna move here because there's no mold in Arizona. Or other people advising people on Facebook. You should move there because there's no mold in Arizona. Listen, guys, there's mold in Arizona. There's mold in Vegas. There's mold in anywhere where you live in a house. There's the opportunity for mold. And, you know, I've done thousands of these inspections to this point, and the thing. And I've done them across the country, too. So I've seen all different climates. The thing that causes 90% of the problems. And this is all, from what I see, has nothing to do with where you live. It has to do with what's going on inside the walls of your home. And if there's been previous water issues and if they've caused problems and if they've impacted the air conditioning system. If you live on a crawl space that has water come under it, it's all about your home and the water damage that's happening in the building. And this happens in the desert, and it happens in Washington, and it happens in Florida. It happens everywhere. Okay. So I just. There isn't this. This magic place that you can go where there's no mold? It's almost like watching some of these zombie movies. What's the movie that. That I was watching? It's like a funny zombie movie. I think it was Zombie. Oh, yeah. Zombieland. And they were going to this compound, like they'd heard about this place that they can go to. And it's like the journey of the character in the movie to go to this place because it's this mythological place where they're. It's safe and there's no zombies. Right? And then they get there, and the whole place gets overrun by zombies because no place is safe. Right? That's. That's the. The. That's what the message is in the movie. And that's the same thing is true here, guys. Like, so what we're dealing With. It's. It's our own doing. It's the way we build our houses. It's the water that's running through them. It's. There's no way to escape that. Okay. There are things you could do to maintain it and be on top of it, but to think that we're just going to leave where we are and go to a house somewhere else in Las Vegas or Arizona or somewhere like that, and that is the holy grail of homes that don't have mold, it's just not true. All right. My. I actually was born and raised in Vegas, which is desert, right? Same thing. Barely ever rains. Gets super hot. Right. These are things that people think are going to stop mold from being an issue. My dad's house had a big mold problem. Why did it have the problem? Because a couple reasons. One, he had roof leaks. He never got his roof fixed. So the roof started leaking. There started to be mold issues that I was seeing in my old bedroom. And I started noticing this stuff when I came back to visit, like, later in life that the roof is having problems. And I would tell him about it and he wouldn't fix it. Right. And that's just what happened. And so I started seeing my old room, and then the other room on that side of the house started having mole problems. You could see it happening also in that house. There was a separate roof leak that was in. By the garage, and that area was really bad. And the roof in the garage, oddly enough. So I'll tell you this quick story about that, just the backstory. So my dad, he. Excuse me real quick. Oh, I was about to sneeze, guys. Whoa. My. My dad passed away a few years ago, and so I was going back a lot to the house. And so ultimately I had to sell the house. And so I sold it as is. And. And every. You know, kind of disclosed everything and. And somebody was willing to buy it. What happened was I was. I was going through and kind of checking and doing all the last checks of the house and everything, and. And I did that, and everything was fine, you know, for. For what the house was. And then the day before the house closed, I just went back one more time. I just wanted to do one more walkthrough and kind of do that, you know, like, goodbye moments of the house I grew up in. And the ceiling in the garage had collapsed because of this roof leak that had hit it so hard. Eventually it just collapsed and it lost integrity. And so, like, the deal had already been closed. There was nothing like, I could do about it. But, like, these people came in, and all of a sudden the roof in the garage had collapsed over the water heater. So there was a leak there. The whole point of that story is that there was a roof leak and it caused a problem. The house was settling weird. So you could see that the walls were separating from each other and. And this was creating pathways for water to come in from the exterior of the house. And so that happened. Guys, this house wasn't that old. This house was purchased when I was five years old. I'm only 38 right now. So at the time, that house was like 33 years old or something. It's not an old house, but these things happen, you know, and that house is in Las Vegas. It's in the desert where there's supposedly no mold. And so I just wanted to share that with you guys because I want us to get our mindsets out of thinking of this, like, magic bullet that's out there and be more focused on, okay, how do we handle this? Right? Like, there isn't this place that we're just gonna go. So we have to do what we can to handle. And it doesn't mean that you have to remediate everything, and it doesn't mean that you have to find everything. But if you're able to decrease your exposure significantly, you know, 50, 60, 70%, it's going to have an impact, right? I mean, you just think of that logically. Like, if you're cutting down the contamination that's coming into your immune system by 50 or 60%, that's 50, 60% less mold and toxins and bacteria and stuff that your body has to process. That's a good thing. You know what I mean? So that was. That was just a quick anecdote from my appointment yesterday.

All right, so let's talk about the difference between I can't and I won't. Okay? Because those are very, very different things. But I think a lot of times people kind of lump them into the same thing. I was at this appointment earlier this week. It was a couple who are home developers and home builders. And so they're. One of them was an architect, and the other one was the actual construction person. And so they have all this knowledge about how to build homes, which is cool, right? But the problem is that I found a lot of problems. I found a lot of things going on in their home. And then it became very, very defensive because they built their own home. Right? But the backstory on this is that the wife is really, really sick. And the husband understood it, right? And so he's open to this, and he wants to try to fix it. But the challenge is, when I started showing them things that was going on in the house, the response I was getting was defense, you know, and he was framing it under the. Under the concept of I can't, or this isn't possible, or that's not how it works, or things like that. Right. And so, you know, you just. I just took a step back. I'm like, guys, I understand that you built this house yourself, right? And my intention is not to come in here and tell you that you guys did a terrible job or anything. The truth is, the house looks amazing. It's awesome. There's a few things that I found. Right. And there's a few key things that I found that I think are causing a lot of what's happening. It's not the whole bulk of the house, but, you know, the point of me being here is not to point fingers at you and tell you you're doing something wrong. And.

I'm just trying to help. Right? And I think, you know, what's happening, because they built the house and all this stuff, they thought I was attacking them, and they thought that I was telling that they don't know how to do what they're doing. More specifically the husband, probably, than the wife, really, because she. She was wanting to figure out what was going on. But. But, yeah. And so I'm going to give you a couple examples of the I can't versus I won't, or I don't know how to figure it out, or, you know, kind of that mindset. So we were talking about windows. So problems around windows are pretty common. If the window is not properly insulated and it's creating condensation that's happening on the window could also be if the house is sealed up too tight, potentially, and the airflow isn't moving. But basically what happens is that the temperature difference from the inside of the house to the outside of the house gets very different. It's a very widespread in temperature difference. And when that happens, moisture builds up on the window panes, so the glass actually has moisture buildup on it. And then the moisture drips around the window to the window sill and the surrounding window enclosure area. And that's where all of your wood framing is around your window. And then the water soaks into that, and the mold starts growing in all the wood. And depending on how much water has been created over time, it could seep beyond the wood enclosure framing. And actually get into the drywall and some of these other areas. It's a common thing that happens, right? It's not something that is specific to their place. However, I will tell you this. There are hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of homes that I've went into that don't have this problem, okay? This isn't one of those problems that is going to happen in every single house that you're in. It's a problem with the windows that's causing it to happen. Okay? So when I pointed this out to the gentleman, he basically told me that it was impossible for a window not to do that, and then went into a very long discussion about construction and how homes are built and kind of talking down to me a little bit to basically tell me how it's impossible to do that. And my response is what I just told you. I was like, listen, I'm not trying to attack the way that these windows are put in. I've done thousands of these appointments. And I will tell you that hundreds and hundreds of times, there isn't a problem with the windows. It is possible, right? It's not that I can't fix the window, meaning it's impossible. It is that I won't fix the window, right? That was the difference. Okay, so here was another example. So in the same house, they live on a crawl space. They built this house, right? This house was built in 2015. This was a new house, but they built it on a crawl space, which, I mean, if any of you have been following me for any amount of time, you know that I just completely hate crawl spaces for all the problems that they bring up. But this house was on a crawl space, Went into the crawl space, sure enough, there's damp soil down there. There's mold growing on debris that's down there. There's other things. Their H vac duct work is running through the crawl space, which is also a really big issue for your H vac system. So there's just a lot of things happening in the crawl space that is going to penetrate up into the house. The other interesting thing about the air conditioning ductwork was whoever installed the H vac system, they had to attach some sort of wire to the motherboard panel, the air handler unit itself. That unit was on the roof, but all the ductwork was running through the bottom of the house. So what they did is that they cut a hole in a duct line under the house and then ran the wire through the duct all the way up into the motherboard of the air handler unit that was on the roof, and that's how they ran the wire. Well, the problem with that is that they cut a hole in the duct line. It was a return duct line. So that's where the suction is. The suction, the sucking of air is coming from. So they cut a hole in that duct that's in the crawl space surrounded by dirt and mold and other things, and they ran it up. Now, when that air conditioning system turns on, they're going to be pulling all of that crap that's down there into the air conditioning system, because the hole that they cut is in a hole where the line is sucking air in. So all that's going to get moved up into the air conditioning system now. So I bring this up to them, talk to them about my, you know, the issues with the crawl space. Talk to them about what's happening with that air conditioning system and how I'm afraid that it might be impacted because of. Of the pathway, that the air in the crawl space has a direct line to the air conditioning system now. And he looks at me, he's like, I'm not changing the way I build my houses. I'm building houses on a crawl space, and the ductwork is going under them. Again, this. This was not an attack on the build. This is explaining what's going on in their home and. And to care less, or to tell you I could care less how they build the homes that they sell. Right? It's not my. It's, you know, I can only impact who I can impact. You know what I mean? And so it was like he thought I was trying to tell him that he has to change his entire business. And he's getting very defensive again. And he's basically saying, I can't build a house that has ducks going through the walls. Well, yes, you can. Right? You can build a house that has duck going through the walls. What's the problem? It's more expensive and it's more time consuming. So you won't build. Build a house that runs your duct through the walls instead of under the house. Right. You can build a house that's not on a crawl space. But what's the problem? It's more expensive because you actually have to pour concrete, and concrete's really expensive. So instead of doing that, you put the house on a couple stilts, put some plywood under there, and it's like a third or 25% of the cost. So you can build a house with no crawl space. You just won't build a house with no crawl space. And and again, it's fine. Right. Like I'm not telling him that he's doing that. He needs to change everything that's to going. Going on. The point of the story for you guys is how are you thinking about your own situation? Are you thinking about it similar to how this person is thinking about how he's building his house? Right. Is there something that you tell yourself that you can't do that when you think about it? You just really won't do think about that. Because we can make a lot of change in our lives in a lot of different ways. We're not just talking mold and stuff here. We're talking a lot of things. Right? Right. This is like self improvement stuff. You could do a lot of change and a lot of growth by taking a look at yourself and understanding the internal language that you're using with yourself and how it's limiting you. Okay. So there's, there's so much information on this stuff out there. A lot of it you could look through through meditation can help you with this stuff. But even if you're just researching self talk and self language and the limitations of that, that's a lot of the, of the dialogue and the language I was getting. And we all do it. I'm guilty of it too. You have to be cognizant of the thoughts that you're putting through your mind. And it could help you avoid that in a lot of different aspects of life. But when it comes specifically to your mold situation, think about what you tell yourself you can't do versus asking yourself, how can I do it? Right. This is, I think I've mentioned this before. This is the concept in Rich Dad, Poor dad, the book Rich Dad, Poor dad, where it's really talking about the mindset of I can't versus how can I? Right. So I can't make. In that book, it was about making money. I can't make X amount of dollars. Where the other side of the coin was, well, how can I make X amount of dollars? And then it opens your minds and think of possibilities. Right. And all of a sudden there's options and there's things that are going on. If you immediately say I can't, you shut it down and you will never, ever, ever do it. Okay, so I can't versus how can I? I can't versus I won't. Right. These are very different statements that completely change our mindset on stuff. And it's something that we could change pretty easily. So.

Yeah, you know, keep that in mind. It's something I think about when, how I, you know, with how I talk to myself in my head. And I've spoken with other people, you know, other successful people, entrepreneurs, you know, you know, folks who have found success, success in whatever it is that they're trying to do. And a lot of it has to do with their mindset. And that's one big piece of it.

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.

Sam.