Do You Have Mold Toxicity? With Dr. Jill Crista

I'm looking forward to introducing you to Dr. Jill Christa today. She is a naturopathic doctor of over 20 years, and she also specializes in mold illness. This is something that is way more common than I think we usually realize. That's why I'm so grateful that you're here today with us today. Thank you, Jill, for being here.

Thanks for having me. This is such a treat. Thank you. So fun to talk to colleagues about these things because it's like we speak the same language.

Yeah. You and I have known each other, I think, for over 20 years because back in naturopathic medical school at Bastyr, I mean, it's amazing how that time goes by, but, you know, to be able to. I'm so excited for you to have, you know, to see your path over those years and how you've really delved into research on helping. Helping people, but also by helping yourself. So tell us a little more. Tell us more about you and how you got into helping people with mold.

Yeah, I didn't plan on that part. I mean, that's the way that these conditions happen. You know, I moved to Wisconsin, southern Wisconsin. We have woods all around. And that ended up being a hotbed for Lyme disease. And I didn't really understand a lot about Lyme disease, so I became an expert in it to help my patients. And in the midst of working with Lyme disease, naturopathic medicine works so well because finally it's that once you identify the cause, you treat the cause. And so I had a lot of success with Lyme patients because it was like, okay, now I know how to identify it. And now we're really treating the cause. So this is why you have joint pain, insomnia, all the things that Lyme can do. But then there's this little group of patients that just, they weren't responding like the other ones were. And it was definitely the minor percentage of that. And I thought, I must be doing something wrong here. I became an ILAD certified doc. I mean, I did all the training and I didn't know what was going on. And I was also trained in environmental medicine in school, like we are. And that was a passion for me. So we tried the heavy metal toxicity, the everything. And in one of those patients, they found black mold in his home. And when they went in to do the remediation, they estimated it had been since they remodeled 12 years prior to this is a 12 year exposure to black mold. Of course he had a cancer diagnosis. He kept ending up on the wrong side of those Statistics. And I thought, wow, I know it as an allergy thing. And he definitely had sinusitis, but I thought, I wonder if this is what's going on with his gut and why he can't sleep and why anxiety is through the roof and anxiety medication doesn't work and, you know, guts a mess, collagen's a mess. Just all these kind of things. I got into the research and it was just bing, bing, bing, bing, bing. All, all of the symptoms that were his hanger on symptoms were not actually due to the Lyme disease anymore. It was due to this mold exposure. I took that learning and thought, now I wonder if that's what's going on with everybody else in this group. And when we brought inspectors into their home, it was either a current or a past exposure, Significant exposure to mold. That was the key for them.

So you're helping people's Lyme and you end up opening up this whole other underlying reason why the Lyme was happening in the first place.

Yes. Now as we, you know, then, then of course, as a digger and a naturopathic doctor with our toolbox is huge, I was able to really dig into the research, understand mechanisms, create a protocol. And then those people were improving too. So I thought, okay, I think I have this part figured out a little bit. It takes a long time because the toxins are fat soluble, so your body can accumulate them. So it's sort of, it's a detoxification process.

But.

It'S. Then mold has this tricky way of saying, I'm going to induce you to spread the word about mold. So we had mold happen in my own home. It was a three story home. We moved into a relatively new home, was not like an older.

Restored home or historic home or anything like that. It was only a couple of years old and it had hidden mold on all three floors. Oh, no, it didn't smell. That was a misconception that I had. Is that toxic mold smells? Mold always smells. You can tell when you walk in. And I'm a mold canary, so I am like the canary in the coal mine.

You would have noticed.

I figured I would have noticed. And my first thing was just brain fog and fatigue. How many stress situations can we blame that on? You know, I mean, so many things.

Cause fatigue and brain fog. Yes, I know.

So, you know, I thought, oh, yeah, well, I just moved and I just had a loss in my life. You know, all of these things. I was like, it's probably that. And my kids were going into puberty and one of the Molds that we were exposed to was endocrine disruptor, so their puberty was really exaggerated, we might say. And of course, what do you do? You just blame it on puberty and stress and, you know, trying to keep up with life and all. So we explained away all of these little symptoms, and when the flood revealed itself, then I was like, this is mold. Oh, my gosh. It duped me too. And I specialize in this.

That's amazing. And that's the thing. It's so. It really. I find that to be true with the patients in my practice. It's like, sneaky. Like, we have to be. We almost have to have these, like, laser goggles on to see behind that. It's in the. Working behind the scenes causing trouble.

Yes, absolutely. So that's. I had a questionnaire that I developed in practice that, you know, Dr. Horowitz, genius in Lyme has the msids Lyme questionnaire. And I use that as the inspiration to create a mold questionnaire. Because after I found that in those patients, I thought, boy, I better have a model or an instrument to be able to tell when is it mold and when is it Lyme, how to identify it.

Yeah.

So after we found mold in my house, I was like, okay, you're filling out the questionnaire. You're filling out the questionnaire. And we all had high mold risks. And that's when I just felt so duty bound to write a book because the minute we knew it was mold, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, we knew what to do, got on the protocol, got on the remediation. You know, I had all the tools. I just didn't identify the cause. And that's. That's what I'm on this mission. And now, amazingly, Ilads just had a whole day's focus on mold and how mold can look like Lyme and Lyme can look like mold. So I just feel just so excited and proud that, you know, we're bringing this forward. Those of us that are working hard on mold, it's.

It's so important. And I can. I can relate because here being in the tri state area, of course, is so Lyme is so common, but mold is also really common. And for, you know, all these years, it was. A lot of the focus was on, well, we don't want to miss Lyme and might maybe someone has chronic Lyme or could these symptoms be Lyme. And so we spend a lot of time and focus trying to figure that out and figure out how to address it. And at the same time, you know, it is. There's this often both of them together. And so then a lot of times a person's in the position of thinking, well, what came first? And how do I address them? And it can be very complicated for a person, you know, who may be sort of figuring this out on their own. They might be like, well, it was already confusing trying to figure out what to do about Lyme, and now I'm confused about what to do about molds. So, you know, I'm sure you hear that all the time too. And so how great that. Because what you're talking about at this I LADS conference, for those who are listening, is a conference for practitioners to learn about how to address Lyme. What are the latest studies and practices that are helping people with Lyme, but to be able to then also be educating about mold at the same time. So practitioners can be much more aware of this and be able to guide people, because it can get very overwhelming, especially when you don't feel well. That's the thing. A lot of times when patients have this going on. Right, let's talk about the symptoms of mold. And I think people are going to see how it overlaps with the symptoms of Lyme.

Sure. So it's important to understand what about the mold is making people sick. So mold is kind of recognized by the CDC as an allergy problem, and that's interaction with spores. So if you do like not in my house case, in a case where there are spores getting into the house and not blocked behind building material, then your body is interacting with those spores and then you do get allergic type symptoms. So more hay fever, sinusitis and asthma. But that's like in my practice, less than 25% of the symptoms, majority of the symptoms are due to both the chemicals and the toxins that mold secretes. So happily living mold secretes these. It's basically like I tease its mold parts. You know, it's just like metabolizing and off gassing all these alcohols, which can make you feel drunk just by breathing moldy air. It's like you literally are taking alcohol in through your breath. Aldehydes and VOCs, which can make people really chemically sensitive. So that's a happily living mold. But then mold also secretes these things called mycotoxins, and those are intended to compete out other living things like another fungi or a bacteria or something like that. Because now it's found kind of a sweet spot. It has some humidity, it has enough dust or building material that it wants to eat. And it'll start trying to gas bomb out the other fungi.

Yeah, that makes sense. And I like how you look at it from the perspective of, you know, almost like, if I was a mold, what would I do to make this a happy home for myself? You know, I would. Yeah, like kind of, you know.

And so they're literally trying to set up a home inside our bodies by, you know. Well, they're really setting up a home in our house first.

Yes, Right.

By like spewing out these toxins to try to protect. Protect themselves so they can, they can live happily in our homes. But meanwhile, we're getting exposed to these toxins. We're kind of getting. We're getting gassed by the mold without realizing it because you can't smell these mycotoxins.

That's the hard thing is these toxins don't have any scent at all. They're a toxin. So they, if, if you have a, like trapped mold problem, let's say behind a shower or in your. From your roof, you know, on the other side of your ceiling, but it looks okay from the inside, you can still be getting those mycotoxins because they go right through building material. Then you have toxic air without the spores. And that's where we get into all the symptoms. I'll tell you about, like, there it's Dr. Shoemaker, and I'm not Shoemaker trained, you know, as naturopathic Doctors. We had Dr. Crinian and we had, you know, a different kind of training, but Dr. Shoemaker said that he looks at it like a cluster. And I kind of have that same idea. That's sort of what my questionnaire is all about, is that one of these common symptoms is not going to tell you it's mold. But if you start to see that fatigue is also coming along with. Urinary frequency is also coming along with. Tinnitus is also having some gut disruption and maybe some hormone imbalance and then some anxiousness. I see anxiousness in almost every case, and I'm careful not to say anxiety because it doesn't have to be to the level of an anxiety disorder. It can just be this inner sense of unrest and then that triggers cortisol, because the cortisol, I mean, your body is being so smart. It's like we're breathing poison. We need to get up and get out.

It's trying to tell us instead of signaling, it's like there's this like, almost like this low worry. We could also probably call it like you'd be noticing, oh, my gosh, I'm just constantly feeling this low level stress or worry or anxiousness and it's the body trying to tell us there's an issue. Because that's the thing is I really consider like all toxins. I consider mold toxins to be a stress. Right. It's. I mean, normally when we think of the word stress, we're thinking of psycho emotional stresses, which of course are stresses too. But if it's a toxin, if you start to think of a toxin exposure as a stress because it signals our stress response.

Absolutely. Yeah. And then you don't. It's a hidden stress. So it's not the tiger running at you, but it's the same stress hormones that are being secreted that it's the same stress response. So you can have a very stress adapted person get a mold exposure either through their work or their home or their gym. I mean, think of it in your gym. You're inhaling, exhaling, you know, I mean, it's a great place to get mold toxic or for kids, schools and that kind of thing. So they can go into that completely stress adapted and then be totally maladapted. They can be just so wired and then they try to pin it on something that makes sense. Maybe I'm not as happy in my marriage as I thought I was. Or maybe my kids, I'm not as fulfilled of being a mom. Or maybe I don't really like my job or, you know, maybe if I just clean, like it goes into what you talk about, the superhero mode. I could just clean the house, get rid of, get everything organized and be the master chef and get, you know, just try to organize my whole life, then I won't feel like this. And really what it is, is mold behind the scenes, just making people stressed out.

It reminds me of reactions I'm thinking of, like, and I'd love to hear some of your, you know, you've been mentioning already examples of where people where mold might be hiding that people don't realize it. Like, I'm thinking of a PA of mine who real. She had her wedding dress. You know how you put your wedding dress like in a box and she had it like, I don't know, like on the top of a cabinet. You know, like you put it up.

Yeah.

Because you don't need it all the time. And she realized that there had been a drip dripping into the wedding dress box and the wedding dress box was full of mold. The whole thing was destroyed with mold. And she somehow found it one day and realized that it had been exposing her to These mold toxins for who knows how long? And so it can be. It just kind of reminds you. Like, that made me think, okay, it's good to kind of clean out your closets every so often and kind of investigate a little bit, because, you know, that could be a decade sitting there without realizing it.

Realizing it. And that can happen behind, like I said, showers. A really common thing is roof leaks, of course, Especially if it's just one of those little ones and it's just like a drip, drip, drip. Only when it rains, maybe it dries out and then you don't have a mold problem. But mold can grow within 24 to 48 hours. Wow. Typical thing with a roof leak is where it drips enough, but then there's not enough air movement in the attic to dry out. And then it drips again, and it drips again. So it can be this real slow progressing problem. The other one is a refrigerator line in my house. And for my patients, I say just disconnect it. Two reasons. It's the number two reason for mold claims, for insurance, because they do get little pinholes in them and they can be that slow. Drip, drip, drip as well. And if it's on a second floor, then it's going to be just going down into the floorboards, under the refrigerator, and into the story below.

And also because I tested a bunch of the refrigerator filters, and the filters themselves can host a mold that causes dementia.

You know, use that for your ice. You use that for, you know, filling up all your things, like to go to the gym again. Like, how many people just, like, hit the fridge and fill up and you're not gonna.

It's not like you move your fridge and look behind it ever.

Right?

So it's like it could just be sitting there and you don't realize it's happening behind or under it.

Mm, yes, that's common. So I. Anyone that's been affected by mold, I mean, we become very vigilant about, not that you were saying, cleaning out closets, but, like, everything needs space and air movement. So so many people become minimalists after this, which is very freeing. You know, I mean, it is one way to. To convince yourself. It's like, do I want to keep this or do I want it to maybe make me sick someday? You know, So a lot of people are like, nope, we're just gonna have air movement.

Move it out, move it out.

Bath toys. That's another one. Keurigs. Keurigs.

Or.

Really, because it's just water sitting there, I found in my One of my blenders, like, at the round. The seal of the blender can get. Because you're say you're using it all the time water, but it doesn't fully dry. And I'll find it. I finally am just like, okay, I'm replacing that blender because it starts to get moldy around there. But I've also a lot of people find it in their air conditioning units, right?

Yes, that's.

And sometimes some people don't. See, like, if your air conditioning unit is like in the attic or the basement somewhere, you don't look. You don't realize it.

Well, and they're making them because they do get moldy. They're now making them different. The trane just changed the way that they're structuring it. So you don't have to completely discharge the Freon to clean your furnace filter. And that's what you would have had to do is to bring someone that's a H vac specialist discharge the Freon clean. And so, you know, people aren't doing that. Never. I'm not. You've never cleaned my furnace filters. You know, but the mold inspector that I work with, she said we test them all the time. And so many of them have black mold.

Wow.

Just because that's a really humid area and it's usually going to be in a place that doesn't have a lot of air movement except its own humid fan, you know, so. Yeah, that's. Now we've just terrified everybody.

Well, that's the thing. It just makes you realize, like, okay, yeah, like it's worth it to kind of. Especially if you're having some symptoms, you want to. Yeah. Investigate a little bit and just be a little bit more on top of where. Where is there water potential Water.

Or where.

Lack of air movement in your home. And. And maybe even. I mean, I kind of think. Maybe put it on the. I think of it on my to do list, like when I'm going to change my water filter or my air filter. Okay. Change the furnace filter and do a little bit of maybe, yes. Spring cleaning, so to speak, at different times a year to just check and see, hey, where might there be some mold hanging out and some patients. I'll say. Now, it's. I mean, your questionnaire, really, it makes me think everyone should be doing that questionnaire because it's so often missed. But what I find myself doing now is, I'll say to patients, you know, to start with, I'm like, have you seen mold? Do you think there's any Possibility of mold exposure. And what would you say? I mean, because these mold toxins can stay in our bodies a long time, sometimes patients will say, well, I don't see any mold in my house now, but five years ago or 10 years ago I know I had mold exposure. And that's still significant, right?

Very significant, yeah. Not only from the storage of the toxins, but the intention of the toxin. The message that the toxin is sending is I want to kill you. Basically, I want to take over this space. So that's what it's trying to tell the other fungi and bacteria in that water damaged building or in that humid area. So if you think about what that intention says to our flora, so our sinuses, our respiratory passages, our gut, every time you switch, swallow them down, that our own flora is getting a message that says I'm unsafe. And so our own flora will start to make endogenous toxins to compete out this offender that wants to come in and that's immune suppressive, those are all immune suppressive things. And they wear away that mucus lining. All the protections we have there, like snot, you know, like all the goopy stuff nobody wants to talk about, you know, that all gets changed in not only the immune system, but just even the snottiness of our snot, I'll put it that way. And so you can get more congestion and now it becomes a petri dish for that sick building to come and move into you. And so many people can leave the building, but they have already become the sick building. So they're bringing that sick building with them everywhere that they go, in their sinuses, in their respiratory passages and in their gut. And that's why I think treatment is so important. It's not just trying to bind and get toxins out. We have to put, you know, that basically the toxins are being made by a factory in your own body. So that's where I use antifungals and things that protect the body from those toxins and getting the flora rebalanced and back to feeling safe and part of a community and in a more microbiome kind of giving way and commensal way rather than a biofilm way.

Well, I love how you're transitioning to really say it's possible to address this, you know, yes, it's. First of all, it's important to acknowledge that how common it is and to realize, oh my gosh, this might be happening for me. But the point of that is that means you can then start addressing it right away and help your body recover and start to take steps so that you're, you know, it's not, you know, having this chance to cause trouble in our bodies. Because, I mean, that's the thing is as you're mentioning, I mean, sometimes it is like, you know, can be chronic sinus infection. You're mentioning mucus linings. That's in our sinuses, that's throughout our digestive tract. That's also in the bladder.

So these get a lot of bladder symptoms.

This is the places where people notice it. Right. So it might be sinus issues, it might be allergic issues, it might be digestive symptoms, and it might be sort of chronic urinary issues, too. Right?

Absolutely. Yep. And in women, we can see menstrual issues. Same thing. You know, the vaginal cavity is mucus lining, so, you know, you can get more. More unstable or the wrong pH, which can be very HPV promoting, you know, so all of those areas are really important to support.

So it becomes where. Sorry about that. I was thinking that, like Lyme we were mentioning, but really, even to some degree, like you mentioned, hpv, there's Epstein Barr virus, any other kind of, I would think chronic or reactivating viral infection, say shingles or others. We should be thinking, I'm always thinking, where is the stress that makes the person susceptible? And that stress might include mold toxins as a stress that's like making your mucosal lining susceptible. But also the mold is disrupting our immune function. Right. So now we're less able to fend off viruses and bacteria.

And it also can affect our nervous system. So now it's like creating this vicious cycle of disruption, not just on these mucus linings, but in our hormones, in our nervous system. Right. And then it starts to affect the kidneys and so on.

Yeah. And some of the mycotoxins are actual endocrine disruptors. Every mycotoxin is a little bit different. You know, I'm talking about them in a general way of discussing, but there's.

A whole bunch of different possible endoxins.

Yeah, mycotoxins. And so these bees that are endocrine disruptors, they're tied to infertility, birth defects, menstrual cycle abnormalities, and for men, actual degradation of the testes. So we can see a lot of andropause as well by being exposed to this endocrine disruptive, basically gas in your air, you know, indoor toxic air.

I've seen this.

Never think yet. I mean, who would connect? Like, wait, because I'm breathing this in. I have testicular atrophy or because I'm. Because I'm breathing this indoor yucky air at the restaurant I work at. That's why I'm having fertility issues. I mean, we just don't connect things that we breathe. We soak them in. We're sponges.

That's a good way to think about it. Yeah. We absorb this. Do our lungs, do our skin, and it's getting inside our bodies and then causing these disruptions. And I've definitely seen. Because I help a lot of patients with fertility, too, and I've been really shocked the times when a case where they're trying to get pregnant, even with IVF and they're struggling. And we finally do a mycotoxin panel, and we're like, oh, my gosh, here's all these nicotoxins sitting here.

Yeah.

As soon as I guide them through getting the mycotoxins out, they have a successful pregnancy. Or I have men who come in and they have. They're actually noticing. They're like telling me. They're like, I can tell a difference in. There's something going on. One case in particular, he was getting. We figured out he was getting exposed to mold in his car.

Oh, yeah, Moldy cars. That's a problem.

That's another place it can hang out.

Especially after Sandy in your area, because people weren't aware, you know, they weren't really thinking about the fact that a car can get moldy. And yeah, we had a whole case of east coasters that ended up with car mold. You know, so you usually don't think.

Of changing the air filter in your car, but that is something that can and should be done. Change your air filter in the car and get it. Maybe even get a higher grade air filter in your car to make sure that it's filtering better for you because it's. Yeah, that was an eye opener. But I think this is such an important point that these mycotoxins, we call them, can show up differently in different people. And it can be something that you may not have really put together or realize. They've also been associated with autoimmunity and cancer.

Right. Yeah. So all the mycotoxins together, if we think about the areas that they affect, they are oil or fat soluble. So if you think about the parts in our body, as a doctor, when you hear fat soluble, we're thinking about all the doctory things. Normal people are thinking about booty fat or love handles and that kind of thing. But when you're a doctor, then I want to Help your listeners think like a doctor. Fat soluble means your brain. It can soak into your brain, your bone marrow, which can affect your immune system. We have visceral. All of our organs are covered by this little layer of fat that's meant to help us with metabolism. It can soak into that. And so you can actually get that sort of pear shape or, you know, like someone can look like an alcoholic just by breathing moldy air. So then what's that going to do? That's going to affect your immune system and your immune function. The other thing is these mycotoxins. Most of them are wired to disable our immune system at the gene level. So they the mold. When I talk about mold and Lyme, if you take a 10,000 foot view, Lime needs you alive because it's sort of like it's bacteria, but it acts like a parasite. It needs you eating and growing and doing, metabolizing that kind of thing. For it to survive, mold would just assume compost you, so it doesn't care if you survive it at all. And so when you think about that, like in the whole mold line combination, what do I treat? At least start with mold if it's there. Some people don't even need very harsh Lyme treatments because now we've addressed what mold is doing, which is trying to rewire you to be wimpy, to not be able to defend yourself against the mold, which as you said, just makes it you not be able to defend yourself from all kinds of different things. So the number one thing that we see with low immune function, so people who have really on labs, hypogamma, globulinemia, that's this condition where you basically have not enough immune cells. Well, that's one of the things that mold can cause is a reduction in your T cells and B cells. B cells are our memory. So you might have already had mono as a kid or you already had chickenpox or maybe even you had the vaccine. You can lose those memory cells when you've been exposed to mold. And so you have to fight it all over again. It's like it never saw it ever before. It's just incredible. Yeah. And then the number two thing we see with hypogammaglobulinemia is autoimmune disease. Autoimmune. The way that I think we're trained is that it's immune overwhelm. It's an immune system that's exhausted or undernourished or something else is happening with it. Attention is being taken away to something else. And so we'll see that with mold as well. So we see increased infections, increased chronic infections, chronic infection recurrences and autoimmune diseases just from air. Wow.

Wow.

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Well.

And that means to me too that as we solve the mold, then we can reset these genetic expressions and you can really shift your whole health, you know, because it's, if it's having all of this influence, then once we solve the mold, you're going to have a positive influence in the other direction and be able to really, you know, improve your fertility, improve your, your hormone balances and your immune system function and you know, really shift your quality of life. And so, you know, that's the thing is that there's a lot of information about how to address mold, which is, I'm glad that there's more and more information available, but I think it can get confusing and overwhelming, which is also so grateful that you have written your book. First of all, you can see it in your background the break the five tools to conquer mold and take back your health. Which is super helpful for anyone listening who just wants a simple guide through all of the information that's available for addressing mold. But also you've created a practitioner course which I've completed and I think it is such a huge resource for practitioners because practitioners can do your course online so from their home or their office. And you go through all this research into understanding the mycotoxins, how to test for them, and we can talk about that a little bit here too. But we can test for these mycotoxins to help us understand is it mold that's causing an Issue where you know and therefore how to address it. And then you go through all the research on how to address mold from a conventional perspective, but also from a naturopathic perspective, and to really realize that there are so many tools in natural medicine that can help us address mold. And one of the things that I always love that you emphasize both in your course and in your book, is that our food and our kind of, like, daily care of ourselves is a huge starting place. Right. Tell us more about that. Like how just realizing how we can take better care of ourselves and what we can get from our food and our diet and what not to get from our food and diet can help us with the mold.

Yeah. Well, I'll do the bad news first. The no, no stuff. Things that. So if you did become the moldy building, you probably have fungal overgrowth. So it doesn't mean you necessarily have to have a candida infection. But people tend to have fungal overgrowth. And so I therapeutically, which all of this, these recommendations as naturopathic doctors. I'm so glad you said that about the genes and everything. You get to get your life back. You know, people can recover, you can get all these foods back. And the way I think of it with mold, well, if mold can change genes, that means we can change them back. You know what I mean? That means that potential is there, and so we just have to engage that. So the no, no foods then, for me, are the things that will induce that fungal overgrowth or things that are fungus. So, like mushrooms. I take my patients off that initially kombucha. I get a lot of heat for that because we feel like, wait, that's supposed to be so good for you. But I have so many molds of people that crap crave it, because I think it's the fungus saying, yeah, I take people.

You have to distinguish that message, because that's the thing, is once fungus is inside of us, it sends signals through our nervous system to essentially feed it. So it gets confusing because you're thinking, oh, I feel like I want to eat this or drink this. But you have to kind of realize, hey, is this the mold or the fungus talking here?

Right, Right. Or is it my intuition? Yeah. And that can be really hard to. To figure out. And so it's easier to just get rid of them, and then you can start to add them back, you know, with reintroduction. So I take away those things, the things that are going to grow fungus, which is sweets, carbs, you know, pretty much, it's good clean eating. But yeah. Other things that are fungus, so cheeses and mushrooms, that kind of thing. And then things that are mycotoxin contaminated in our food sources. And there are certain things that are going to be a higher rate of having contamination from mycotoxins, like corn, soy, peanuts. Peanuts are so moldy. And grains. So I kind of go, you know, I have a whole diet thing, which you learned in the class, which is this is why these things are on the list. And that's going to change all the time based on how if someone's eating organic or if they're eating in season and those different things. The. Yes. Foods are the fun ones to talk about because we learned from animal medicine that they're adding these things to feed to protect the animals from the possibility of eating moldy food. Rather than correcting their moldy food. We just.

Right. You're like, we're still going to feed the animals moldy food. Okay. We'll just put something in there to try to block it. Okay.

Please. Yeah. Such an amer or such a human way to handle it. But what it tells us is that even if you are exposed to mycotoxins, which is what they're assuming in these animal studies, this protects you. And that's things like high, high, high amounts of good fats. And I think that that's the biggest thing someone can be doing if they are exposed to mold is get good quality and a ton of fat. And that goes counter to so many things that we hear about diet less so now, you know, paleo and keto, which is so fun to see that happen. And then veggies, veggies, veggies, veggies, veggies. Every color of the rainbow in studies can have a mycotoxin protecting effect or reparative effect every color. So I try to have my patients eat every color of the rainbow every day. And if that's not possible because you may not like squash or carrots or whatever, then we can supplement with that band. So if you're really bad at a certain color band, then we can just add that in a supplement. But food is ultimately the best medicine because there are things in that food, these phytonutrients and chemicals and messengers and all these things that we're going to figure out. As we can do more testing and our science gets more sophisticated, I think it will be that whole food will be the only way to go. And a supplement is just supposed to be a supplement, not the food itself. Yeah, but those are two easy things to do. Lots and Lots. I say copious, clean, Correct. Fats. So a lot of organic or wild fats. And then veggies. Veggies, veggies, veggies. And no one can go wrong with that.

Yeah, that's, I think, really recognizing that. So basically, you're swallowing the fat and the mycotoxins. So people understand the mycotoxins are. They're coming in, say, through our skin, through our lungs, and then they. They have to go through the liver and into the bile, which goes into our intestines. So if the fat is coming through the intestines, then it's gonna. The mycotoxins are gonna kind of get stuck in the fat. And to be able to go out through the stool. Right. It's like kind of catching those mycotoxins on their way through, so they can't get reabsorbed. And there we're kind of helping encourage to get them out of our bodies. But it's interesting, as you were talking about the animals, you know, getting exposed to mold in their feed, you know, it's kind of obvious. We go, well, of course we don't want to. Why would we want to continue feeding the animals moldy food? But at the same time, sometimes we have to remind ourselves that one of the key first steps is to make sure you're not currently still getting exposed to mold.

Absolutely.

If you start doing all these things to help yourself move it through, yes, that's good. But if you're constantly still getting exposed, then it's kind of like you're just standing still.

You're not moving ahead, and you're actually walking backwards. You're losing ground. There's no amount of air filtration and good diet and supplementation that can protect you from the mycotoxins that you're breathing in. I mean, that. That is a number one, and we learned it from Dr. Kernighan. The first three steps in any toxin exposure is, number one, avoidance. Number two, avoidance. Number three, avoidance. Like, that's how important it is. And I gotta tell you, I mean, you know, after you write a book and you kind of become known for treating something, when I've consulted with people who've seen really, really talented doctors, doctors that have taken my course, and they are also shoemaker trained, and they're also limelitered, and they're doing all the right things almost all the time, it's because the patient is still being exposed to mold. That's why they're not better. Wow.

That's the main thing that gets missed.

Yeah. Yeah, and that's a difficult thing to do. You know, there are. If people are wondering, I can share a resource. Mold Finders Radio. They do all about building stuff and there's episode after episode of free information and they have, like a method you can. If you're thinking this is a problem for you. So let's say you want a one. Now that you're listening, you're thinking, I wonder if Old is my deal. You can go to moldquiz.com and you can go through the symptoms. It's just easy. Ten questions. If it says yes, you may have mold and you think it's your building, then you can go to Mold Finders Radio. And that's all about the building stuff. Yeah. I'm a doctor. I'm good at bodies. I'm not good at the building things. And be careful if your doctor tries to take that on with you, because we just don't know enough. Unless your doctor is trained in buildings and all of the things, we just don't know enough. And that's when it's time to call in the expert experts for that. Because in occupational studies, 50% of the people that leave that exposure are fine.

Wow. Be on that side of that coin flip. I mean, that means it's a coin flip. If you're a mold canary, like I am, and like the people that are in my membership, you're going to be the person that leaves that building and you feel a little bit better, but not all the way because you now have become the moldy building. But just think of that 50% of the people, the number one treatment, and the only thing they had to do was get out of the equipment. Exposure.

Yeah.

And it can be as elegant as that.

And so it's, like, important to just. Yeah, that's why it's important to identify it and then find. Because it can be hard to find a really qualified person to help you. Like so many times people say they had someone come check and said, oh, no, don't worry. But really, it. When we test them for mycotoxins, we can see the mycotoxins in a urine panel. So if we see that there's mycotoxins in your urine, that means you're getting exposed to them somewhere.

Yeah. And we don't know then if. If it's endogenously. And so that's why a lot, you know, as doctors, we take more data points than just a mycotoxin test. So we can see is it consistent with all the other things that I'm Seeing on your blood work.

Yeah.

Because you don't want to have them then spend a ton of money on investing a house, investigating a house, when it could have been their past exposure.

Right.

But yeah, I mean, it so often is a current exposure that is tipping someone. The symptomatic people, you know, where you. You're doing everything that seems right, everything that works for all your other patients, and they're not getting the same results, then there's something else going on in their environment, which is stealth infection or something.

And I think you're pointing out why it can be so helpful to work with a practitioner, because then you can have someone who's evaluating your symptoms, making sure you have the right evaluation and testing to see, hey, is this currently really an issue for your health? Is it. You know, and how can we systematically help you address it? From diet, like we're talking about, to the right kinds of binders and the right. And one thing you also emphasize in your. In your course and in your book is that even though it's tempting, I would say it's so tempting to want to just go pounce on this mold and fungus and kill it. You know, it's so tempting to be like, let's just kill it and get it out of here. Believe me, in some ways, it's like, as soon as you find out something's there, that's the way we start thinking is like, let me get it out of my body, get rid of it.

Yeah.

But the thing is, is that's not the best approach. It's. It's one of these things where it's. It's almost like this paradox that I hear you talk about where we. We need to help your body be ready before we start killing it. And we also oftentimes need to start with low doses and way lower doses than you might expect to. Just basically, I almost think of it like we need to get ready and then sneak up on the fungus to kind of edge it out without. Because if we go pouncing on it, it'll get angry and it'll make us feel worse. It'll backfire on us and could make you feel worse before getting you anywhere.

Yeah. And fungus in particular. And we see this with Candida, it tends to go to the mind, you know, it tends to hit you in the mood, and people can feel very anxious, very depressed, desperate, you know, and we don't want to put you through that. Now, there are studies where we show if you expose aspergillus to an antifungal, like Ampotericin B, it will kick up its production of mycotoxins a hundred fold to defend itself. And that could be happening in your body. You don't want to do that. And there's something about that fungal world different than bacteria, different than parasites, that can really just hit your mental game hard. So, yeah, I'm very careful. And that's what the fat's doing too. The fat is sort of cushioning all of your nerves. You know, it's cushioning that's myelinating. It's helping you protect that nervous system so that you don't have to have such a severe stress response. When we start going on the antifungals.

Yeah, that's the thing, right? It's like how to like, if we don't do anything that's stressful, if we go too much, that's going to be more stressful. So we have to. Whenever we're addressing mold, we need to find this like, kind of like non. A pathway that doesn't create more stress, but actually helps us resolve the situation.

As efficiently as possible. And I think, you know, your resources are just so valuable in helping people do that, especially because you've been through it yourself and you've helped so many people through it. You've. You've kind of seen all different angles. And I, I know that you also offer this, as you mentioned, a membership where people can access. Have access to you online on a regular basis to ask you questions and connect with you in their. As they're in this process of recovering from mold.

Definitely. And what's so precious about that is that everybody's there to help each other as well. It's so hard because it's more the norm than the exception, that every person exposed to mold expresses that in a completely different way. And some people don't get sick at all. So the classic story is you have one or two kids in the family that are acting out another kid who's totally fine. The mom is sick and the dad is fine. And so you can say, well, how could that be our house? Some of us are fine. It's these other weirdos.

Well, that's the thing. Sometimes people get. Feel dismissed because one person's like, well, I feel fine and what's wrong with you?

Yeah, yeah. So that's. It's nice to have support. If you are that person in your family who is the inconvenient, sick person, just have someone else that can, can relate. And so it's just really beautiful to see that community support. You know, it's not just me, the Grand Pumbaa out there, you know. Well, my opinion is this. It's like everybody is on the forum. It's sort of like Facebook, how we interact inside the forum. And so there's just a lot of support and help, and it's really cool to see. And these. I mean, my brain can only hold what my brain can hold. These guys now, it's this collective hive mind that has so much knowledge and experience. It's really cool. Wow.

Oh, that's. That's so awesome. Thank you so much, Jill, for everything you do with this. Is there anything else you want to share today that you haven't mentioned already?

I don't think so. I mean, if you. If you love your doc and you think it's mold, have them take my course, and then they can be mold literate, and you can work with the doc you love.

Oh, that's a good point. Yeah. Like, because it's in this. Yeah, this. Your practitioner training can be for any practitioner. And then they're going to get all these details about how to help you with your case. And. Or you have also a listing of practitioners who've taken your course. And so then they may be able to help, you know, to be able to find someone either local to you or. A lot of these practitioners work virtually. Like, you know, I help people from all different parts of the country in the world who are dealing with this. So you can. You can. That's the thing. You can work with mold from a distance a day. It doesn't have to be something that you see someone in person.

Yep, absolutely. Yeah. So that's on drkrista.com, you page down to the bottom. Find a doctor, and that'll list the more literate practitioners that have trained with me and have me at their disposal for going through cases like we've done and trying to get them to, you know, the whole teach you to fish sort of an idea. And if you do ask your doctor and they take it now, you've just helped all the other people in their practice. Because now that doctor is saying, oh, that person has mold, and that person has mold.

Well, once you. Once that you start to. I mean, for sure, like, once you start recognizing these symptom patterns all the time, I see it way more. I can identify it way more accurately just right away, like, okay, this might be mold. We got to do some more investigating here and find out if that's part of what. That's part of your case, because otherwise it could be. Yeah. You could be doing a lot of good things for your health. And, you know, probably already you're maybe helping with your diet and you're, you know, doing some good supplements. But if this mold is still, if it's still an exposure or the toxins are not being taken care of, then it's going to be hard to be able to move forward on some of your other health issues. And that's the thing is, you know, also in your book and in your course, you cover all different herbs and nutrients and antioxidants and there's so much we could go into. But I just want people to know that there are so many tools that are there and there's actually been quite a bit of research to help us because they've been researching for animals that are exposed to mold. We can interpret some of that for human use in terms of helping us with mold. And it's. And I see it's amazing to me, like in the cases where I've been able to help a person with their mold toxicity and recovery, it's amazing. Now it can take some months. It's not like, you know, a two week thing. It's. It can take, you know, some months of recovery. But then you look back and it's like, wow, you know, this has made such a difference. Oh, a common one that we were mentioning allergies, but one of the ones that really, when I see a lot of mast cell activation or histamine issues, like sometimes it's skin rashes along with like eye swelling and chronic infections. And then a lot of times the chronic urinary symptoms, it like that whole histamine activity. I've really, in my mind now when I see that, I start thinking, where is the mold? Because.

It'S so commonly associated.

Yeah. Mold is one of the chief mast cell activators and so commonly the cause behind someone with that mast cell excess. And they can have mast cell problems that aren't skin at all or allergic at all. It can be something like a gut problem reflux, because we have histamine receptors in our stomach. So it can be histamine and not really be something that we would associate as an allergy and not on the.

Outside, but on the inside. And then you're like, yeah, why won't this, you know, say leaky gut? Or when I'm checking a stool panel or. Yeah, you're like, where is this leaky gut coming from? Where all these extra food sensitivities and you feel like you're reacting to everything you eat and and then, you know, you're like, oh, this is why is because there's, you know, something causing your immune system and your histamine to be trying to protect you.

Right. That's what it is, is you know, that because they are so fat soluble, they can go through our skin layer. That's where mast cells hang out. They're there to protect us from invaders. And so it is. It's such an easy induction of that system because now you've taken the. It's the perfect system. You know, it's like the fat soluble toxin which goes right through the skin. I mean, that's why we put on lotion, because it goes into our skin. I mean, that's the whole idea. And that's where the mast cells are. And they're like, oh, here's another one, here's another one, here's another one. And so there's that constant induction of that system. And then you have somebody who was never allergic to anything is now, you know, at 35 or 40, allergic to grass, their pet dust. They have to have a special pillow cover because they're reacting to the dust in their sheets. You know, I mean, like, they start becoming allergic to everything. And it was really mold at the, at the base of it. Not that people can't be allergic to all those things, but if you were never allergic to those things and now you're starting to develop one allergy after another, losing food after food after food. Yeah. Now we go look in.

Well, I think that, like you're saying, it's like when you start to realize that this is a, you know, maybe recent onset. So then you can go, oh, maybe, you know, this is a more recent exposure. This started. Started adding up. But there's, you know, also cases where it. It could have been years ago and.

Cases where I'm working with, say, breast cancer, helping support with breast cancer treatment and recovery. And then we realize, oh, there was this mold exposure five years ago and the toxins are still around and the immune system still disrupted. And so then we want to go through the process of. Usually they need to get through the cancer treatment first, and then. And then we can really help them do the mold recovery to prevent recurrences.

Yeah. Although there have been a couple case studies and one is my patient where we put them on antifungals and the tumor shrank like crazy.

Wow.

Do host some of these toxic molds as well.

So some you can do while they're.

While they're talking to the oncologist and just see you know, depending on what kind of treatment they're on. And it is amazing. I mean, the change is dramatic. When mold was also part of that story.

Wow.

Breast cancer, too. The other thing about breasts that can be moldy is breast implants that can be a really common endogenous source of mold.

Wow.

It is a very common problem with the older breast implants, the ones that are just silicone. Very common. So that's another thing where the avoidance in that case is explantation.

It's just a factory, and it's going to find other places in the body. There's the director of my micro labs, Dr. Andrew Campbell. He was one of the first people to identify this. And, you know, it just wasn't talked about. And he was saying, what is this multiple chemical sensitivity. Sensitivity. So we thought it was the chemicals, we thought it was the silicone, but it was the mold.

Isn't that something? Well, it just. It just makes me, you know, like, I'm always trying to find a way, because we don't. I'm sure we don't want it to feel stressful to people, but we want them to just have an awareness that. I mean, I think we now have much more awareness that we live in a world with bacteria. Like, we're not sterile. We have bacteria in us, on us, every, more cells in us than we are. And at the same time now to realize that, you know, our environment really includes mold exposure too, in addition to so many other things, viruses and so on. Right. These are all these different microbes. So we just realized that it's. The mold is part of our environment. And if we. If we ignore it, then it can be an issue. But if we're aware of it and we can, you know, be, you know, be, you know, being careful with what. With our environment and what we're exposed to. And then if. And when you do get exposed to it, help your body recover from it. That's how you can maintain your health. Whereas, you know, that's why I'm so glad to be able to have this conversation with you, to just, you know, raise awareness about it and say, hey, okay, this is a part of our environment that if we. If we know this is going on, then we can be more proactive about making sure it doesn't have to have a negative effect on our health.

Yeah. And then you're not running around looking for other things and maybe going on biologics which have their own risk factors. You know, I cannot tell you how many people I've heard from that hearing my, you know, little blogs, I do these one minute or less videos. I am so validated. I feel so validated. And now I've realized, you know, like from an Ms. Patient, I hear from a lot of people with ms, they have, and it was really, it was a mold diagnosis and saying, you know, knowing about what you taught me, I was able to stay off those medications that have really high risk factors of getting like tuberculosis, tuberculosis and all these other things. They were able to stay off these biologics because they kept digging, they kept looking and they kept digging and they were hearing things that were validating their experience. And I think that's just so, so important that people keep snooping. You know, your body is so smart. It might not be mold, but it could be something else. So keep snooping.

Yeah, I think that's such a. It reminds me of a case of a, I think about an 8 year old girl who came to my practice with a diagnosis of juvenile rheumatoid arthritis. And we started snooping and found that she was getting exposed to mold at her school.

School. Yeah.

And as soon as she moved and changed schools, the rheumatoid arthritis went away.

Wow.

So talk about being able to like identify it and, you know, shift your environment and then the whole immune, the way the body responds and the immune system just shifts.

Yeah.

I mean, what a difference for her life to figure that out.

I was just thinking that, I'm like, you've saved her life, you know, that, that, that what was ahead for her was not, you know, it's just a story that, well, once you get that JRA diagnosis, it just goes downhill from there, you know, and yeah, you broke that mold.

Yeah, it's, it's, you know, it's exciting and it's sometimes these things that almost seem invisible to us, you know, like, but it actually, you know, is. And it's not tested on common tests. So you're gonna, even if you're going to your regular physical exam and your, you know, regular blood work, they're probably not going to see it.

Yeah. And likely not. And I'm so glad you said that because a lot of people are given an IgE allergy test to mold, and if it's negative, meaning it looks normal, they're told, no, it couldn't be mold. Well, the problem is that that only will happen at a certain level of immune deficiency. And if you're being exposed to the mold spores. But if you are, like in our case, everything was behind building material. The spores weren't making it out, but it was growing up all of the walls. So we were getting mycotoxicosis, but IgE allergy tests were completely normal. So, yeah, it doesn't mean that you don't have a mold problem if you have a normal allergy test, unfortunately. So, yeah, like, I'm glad you said that because the testing right now is not a standardized care kind of thing. But I'm hoping with the incidents that we're seeing, OSHA said between 25 to 50% of buildings in the US have had enough water damage to host toxic molds.

25 to 50%. Well, I was going to ask you how common. That's a huge amount.

It's huge. And we're the way we're building our buildings now. I mean, I know where you live. It's really cold still. And I have a house going up across my field here. And they built right through the winter. They built right through the rain. There's this kind of overconfidence that because we've, you know, treated and pressed forward and all these kind of things that we can just, you know, go right through any kind of weather, whatever. And that's really setting the stage for mold growth in homes. Wow.

Wow. Well, thank you again so much. I mean, I really encourage anyone who's listening, who wants to to learn more to get your book Break the Mold. I love that. And also to go to your website, which Christa is spelled without an H. It's C R, I, S, T A. So anyone who's listening, it's DrChrista.com and I'll put a link as well so that you can find it if you're listening to this podcast. And again, oh my gosh, what a joy to get to chat with you about this. Such a resource of information. Thank you for everything that I've learned from you because you're then helping my patients. And so I'm just feel great sharing my gratitude from them. And yeah, thank you again so much for being here with me today. I really appreciate it.

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