Dr. Diane Mueller explains how black mold causes allergic reactions like brain fog and shortness of breath, and in about 25% of genetically susceptible people, toxic accumulation linked to neurological damage. Standard home inspections often miss hidden mold, so she recommends professional evaluation and careful remediation.
Hey, in this video, we're going to talk about the question that comes up, which is, can black mold kill you? I get asked this a lot in my clinical practice. My name is Dr. Diane Mueller. I'm a Lyme and mold expert. And let's dive in. So black mold is not great for people, but it is not a problem for everybody. There's a couple different ways we can react to black mold. One is we can have an allergy to black mold. If this is true for you, you can get allergy tested for that to find out. And most likely, you will notice things such as you have sinus congestion and stuffiness and allergy like symptoms when you're home. And then maybe you go on vacation, especially if you go to a dry climate and those symptoms go away. Now, you want to be careful because sometimes you'll go from a moldy environment to another moldy environment, and you'll react the same because you're still around the same problem. But one, for some people, way of testing that beyond the allergy testing is to leave your home, go to a dry environment, see if your symptoms get better. Now, that's from an allergy perspective. Doesn't feel good to have allergies. Allergies can cause shortness of breath and headaches and fatigue and brain fog, all these different things. But really, in the grand scheme of things, from a standpoint of how bad black mold is, black mold is much worse when the body is actually reacting to the toxins that the black mold secretes. So in certain genetically susceptible individuals, and it's estimated about a quarter of the population are genetically susceptible. And in these people, what winds up happening is the black mold will create toxins. And the people that are susceptible cannot detox the toxins. They cannot eradicate them. And so when this happens, when the toxins cannot be eradicated, they build up. And in these people, symptoms can be a lot more serious because of the neurological damage. We actually see that black mold toxins can get inside the brain. They can cause damage to the DNA, they can cause damage to the neurons. They can are now even connected to diseases like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's and ALS in limited studies. So we want to be careful because, you know, really from the grand scheme of it, it's not like black mold. You're going to have one encounter and all of a sudden you are going to probably die. Right. That's not really how black mold works unless there's some sort of free situation. But what will. What black mold will do is actually lead to to so much inflammation and so many disease processes that oftentimes go unnoticed as far as connecting them to black mold. And then somebody might pass on because of this disease process that has a neurological or DNA, say inflammatory component to it like the diseases I mentioned. So that's the answer to if black mold can kill you. It's really not a good thing to have to be around black mold whether you're in this genetic susceptible population, whether you're allergic. Definitely really, really important to avoid. Not all inspectors are the same. Not all remediators are the same. I say this over and over and over again. When you are doing things like purchasing a house and they are just testing air quality and indoor and outdoor air and they're using moisture meters, these are not good tests for mold because most mold is heavy and will not suspend in air and lands on surfaces or gets behind the drywall. And these superficial tests that are done with common inspections even by somebody that is certified are not very accurate. So just take that into account. I go a lot more throughout this channel on inspection and remediation on the, you know, problems with the DIY type of jobs. But I hope you really understand the secret seriousness that can come with mold and with the toxins that it produces. If you need any help getting to the root cause of any health related issues, you can always find information about a free call with my clinic in the show notes. I hope this has been extremely helpful and please do subscribe. Please do not keep me a secret. Please share me with your friends and family. I'll see you in the next one.
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