Dr. Diane Mueller (chronic mold and Lyme specialist) explains how to recognize and escape a moldy house: prefer dust sampling (dust/swabs or ERMI) over air-only tests because heavy, harmful molds settle in dust; work with inspectors who understand mold illness; consider urinary mycotoxin testing to check body burden; and move to a safe environment quickly so detox and symptom reversal can begin. She stresses that many standard inspections miss clinically relevant mold and that lowering exposure below an immune-triggering threshold is the goal.
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Doctor Diane, your chronic mold and Lyme expert here. We're talking today about how to get out of a moldy house. And the first thing to talk about is to make sure you get the right test. The number of times people get air quality tests, humidity tests by inspectors that don't know anything about their mold illness and don't know how to test, and they tell me their house is fine. They had an inspection when they moved in, and their house is actually the number one thing that is making them sick. There's too many of these cases for me to even count. So, so basically, the thing is different. Molds will be in the dust as compared to the air. Dust is definitely the major sample you want to take, because the really bad mold are found in the dust. But if you can do a dust and air sample, that's definitely the best. So you want to be working with an inspector who's going to do these swatches or do swabs or at least get a test called an ermi. ERMI that's available oftentimes online. And so these tests are dust tests. And this is really important because heavy molds, which are the really bad molds, are. Are too heavy to suspend in air. They drop down onto our surfaces in the dust. That's why you need to test. And so because of that, it's gonna be really important that you are working with somebody that can support you with this, that can get these types of tests done. Now, a common thing people will say is, well, there's no house that has a situation where there's totally mold free. Well, and that's true, right? I have looked at possibly thousands of these tests at these points, this point in time, as far as these mold tests. And I don't ever see something that is 100% mold free. That's not what we're looking for. We're looking for mold levels that are low enough that it does not trigger your immune system, that does not trigger the inflammation, that does not trigger your body to break down its proteins to break down and cause the nerve cells to die, which are all things that have been shown in research that mold can do. So we want to make sure that that threshold is low enough that your body is not breaking down from faster than it can repair itself. So that's why we have to get into a clean house. So the first thing is making sure you're doing the correct lab test. Do not think that just because you bought a house and you had mold checked off on your inspection panel that there is not mold there. Even if it's a really good certified person, the number of times people be like, well, I looked for somebody certified in this online and this person was certified and they said they knew about it. No, it is very, very difficult to find a mold inspector that really understands mold illness and can help you. The way that somebody that is trained, the biology in the way that mold affects you and your person in individual way, it's really important to work with somebody that understands that level when it comes to mold illness. So here's the thing that's step one. Step two is making sure you are getting out of your place as fast as possible. If you do indeed have high levels of mold in your house, you can also check your body and you can run a urinary mycotoxin to test your body to make sure you're not. You don't have those toxins in there. But regardless, step one is get into a safe place as fast as possible. Because as soon as you're in safe place, that's when it becomes safe to detox. That's when people don't have MCAS and die. If that's when people actually have their symptoms start to reverse. So the number one thing is take this seriously. If you are suspecting mold, get a proper mold test done and do not think just because you've had an inspection that your house is fine. Because I see over and over and over again cases of this not being true. And the majority of people that have symptoms that are mold related symptoms, especially if you have mycotoxins in your urine, you are living in it. All right, everybody, please do subscribe. If this has been helpful, please do look for my upcoming masterclass where you can ask me questions about this and that is usually free and so look for that in the show notes below and I will see you in another video.
