5 Signs of Toxic Mold Lurking in Your Home: What You Need to Know

Hey, everybody, it's Dr. Diane, your Lyme and mold expert, talking today about five top signs to really be concerned that you have toxic mold in your house. Now, one of the things I want to make sure you understand is that toxic mold is not just the big bad black mold called stachybotry toxic mold, really. We're talking about mold that is toxic and that releases chemicals, these biotoxins that are toxic to the human body. And there's many different species that meet this criteria in addition to the big, bad classic black mold known as stachybotrys. So sign number one. Sign number one is that you have a multitude of health problems of unknown cause. And I wanted to find this because so many people will get a diagnosis such as fibromyalgia or chronic pain if you have a diagnosis like that, but you do not know the reason behind why your body is doing that. So fibromyalgia is a diagnosis a lot of people like, well, I know what's causing my pain. It's my fibromyalgia. No, you don't. We do not know. In that case, when you have that fibromyalgia, you don't actually know what is driving your body to react that way. So that is what I'm talking about here. So number one is if you have widespread symptoms and you can't understand the reason for it, it's not like there's a hidden parasite that you found or a hidden virus, or, you know, your hormones are out of balance. It's not a recent stress, right? It's like, hey, maybe there's a diagnosis, and I don't know why. So that's number one. Number two is toxic mold produces a lot of different symptoms. It can mimic a lot of different things. But some of the top things that I see that from the physical body that it will mimic is going to be brain fog. So sort of cognitive decline, pain, insomnia, night sweats, and weird neurological symptoms. Right? There's many, many things beyond this, but these are some of the top five. So if you have a lot of those, if you have most of those symptoms, we want to consider toxic mold. So that's from the body perspective. Now, we also want to consider toxic mold. Depending upon what is going on with your home, if you ever have had a water leak, you absolutely want to consider toxic mold as potential in your home. And a lot of people will say, like, oh, well, it. You know, I caught it fairly fast. I caught it within a couple days. Well, some of these molds will grow in less than two days. So if you have a leak going in, and even if you catch it, like, wow, you went out of town for the weekend, it was fine. When you left, you came back, that's enough time for some molds to grow. And you really want to consider that. So if you've ever had a leak, you absolutely want to consider that. If you have any sort of discoloration, if you see any discoloration, we're number four. Now, if you see discoloration anywhere, this could be or like bubbling, right? So this could be, say, bluish or, or pinkish or blackish or grayish or greenish types of tints on your paint, on the ceilings, on the floors, under the cabinets, you really want us consider that there could be some sort of a thing happening behind the wall. Maybe there's a leak behind the wall. You don't know that. You also see this with bubbling paint. So that is number four. Number five is by running an ERMI test, it is worth running this test. If you have the symptoms in point one and point two, it is worth running the ERMI test to see if your house could have mold in it. The ERMI test is a dust test. I like the army test because as compared to a lot of other testing from certified inspectors out there, a lot of certified inspectors, people that you hire when you buy and sell a home, they are doing air samples and they are doing air samples and comparing them to the indoor air versus the outdoor air. One of the problems with this is a lot of the really bad mold are heavy. They do not suspend an air. We find them in our dust. And the problem with buying and selling a home is there's not much dust around. So even if you have an inspector that does a thorough job when you're buying a home, they're likely collecting dust that is almost non existent because your home is clean when you buy or sell, right? So we really need to consider when you're buying or selling a home, finding hidden dust, right? Like tops of mirrors, like that, places like that, where people may have not thought to, cleaners may have not thought to clean. But you absolutely want to run an army test if you think you have symptoms of mold to sit in one and two, because that's going to collect the dust. We're going to collect dust from around the house to see if some of those heavy molds, which are the really toxic ones, actually could have problems and be contributing to the problems that you're having. So I hope this has been helpful. Please do help me spread the word so many people. It's really upsetting to me how many people are living in toxic mold, how few builders are really taking responsibility for this. And apartment complex owners are really taking responsibility for this. So right now, it's our responsibility to find this, to advocate for ourselves, to realize that this can cause a wide variety of health problems. And so, please do share this with your friends and family. Let's get this information out there. Let's keep people safe. Let's help them get to the root cause of their health issues. Thank you so much for listening again. I'm Dr. Diane. Appreciate you subscribing. I'll see you next time.