Exploring the Link Between Mold and Weight Loss Resistance with Michael Rubino

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Hey, this is JJ Virgin. Welcome and thanks so much for joining me. This is Ask the Health Expert. Here I put the power of health and in your hands and give you access to the top people in health and wellness. In each episode, I share safe ways.

To get healthy, lose weight, heal your.

Gut, detox, and lots more. So if you want to get healthy and get off the dieting for life merry go round, I'll give you strategies that will help you look and feel better fast. All right, so. So one of the biggest things that can take your health down are toxins. And you know, we talk a bunch about that in the virgin diet and of course in sugar impact diet, sugar being a huge one. But sometimes one of the things we don't think about are the toxins that could be living in your house. And so we are going to be talking about mold and mycotoxins today. I am really excited about this. I actually just got done with this interview with Michael Rubino and this is information that you definitely want to have. And it was interesting when this all came up because just after the recent hurricane Ian, I was like, you know, we probably should do a retest. Even though we didn't really get hit, I wonder how often I should test for mold. And all the different questions came up and then boom, Michael showed up on my radar. So how perfect is that? So we are going to talk today about air quality in our health and home environments and he'll share a little story about what it has done for his weight and weight loss resistance because it is a real thing. And some of the other symptoms that can happen when you have been chronically exposed to mold. Things like dementia, brain fog, etc. All right, now we also have a really good giveaway for you. He has created a mold hacks guide, the 10 mold hacks you can do to prevent mold in your home. You're going to want to grab that. It is@jjvirgin.com Mold Hacks and he is the author of Moldmedic, which is an expert's guide on mold removal. He's the founder of Home Cleanse, a revolutionary company with the Vision to end the worldwide health epidemic caused by poor, poor air quality and toxic indoor environments. I literally was taking notes during this whole interview about things that I want to make sure that I've done with our home. And I think you will want to. I know you'll want to, too. So I will be right back with Michael. Get your pen and paper out.

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Education should be a right, not a competition. At University of Phoenix, you'll get the best scholarship or savings you qualify for. Simple as that. Explore scholarship options at University of Phoenix. Michael Rubino, welcome to the show.

Thank you for having me.

Well, we have dug into, of course, all the health aspects around this, although not enough. So I am really excited to really get into mold and where it hides and what it does. But, you know, the obvious first question is, how did you get so into this and especially being a role mold remediation expert? Like what? What made you choose this career path?

Are you saying that not every child's dream is to become a mold remediation expert? Wow.

No, I bet it is. It's just very few can do it. It's sort of like being in, you know, an NBA player.

No, you know, it's one of those things, actually. We need a lot more people being interested in the topic, especially as kind of I've gotten into things. I really think it plays a big part of our health, Just making sure that our environment is a healthy environment. And it's something that's kind of gotten lost on us a bit from a societal standpoint. You know, how I got into it is actually my dad's been a restoration contractor since I'm five years old. So I've been around construction, restoration pretty much my entire life.

And restoration contractor is just someone who.

Does a home remodel.

What is that?

So for my dad, it was basically anyone. Anytime someone had a fire, you know, it's one of those tragic things that happen. My dad was typically the guy in the New York City area that would come and fix it. You know, when we have fires, most people don't think about this until they actually experience it. But all of our stuff gets damaged. I mean, the house gets put out with water. So, you know, pretty much everything is lost. There's beams and structural components that are charred that need to be rebuilt. It's this big thing, and a lot of people don't realize that somebody's got to come in and put that back together. So that's kind of what I've been, what I've seen my entire life. But I'll be honest, I wasn't really interested in it until probably later on in life when I started to notice people getting sick. And that's when I became more interested in it. Because the type of person I am, I want to do something that's going to be meaningful. And I think it's kind of what I've stumbled on, I think feels really meaningful to me.

And don't you think that the reason there's not more of you is that this thing still is really not known?

Totally. I mean, I think it's no secret. The American dream is about finding opportunity and then going out and making yourself something of it. And I think that for a lot of people, they don't realize the effects that our environment can really have on our health, both positively and negatively.

Yeah.

Which is like, you know, we focus so much on. Hopefully we do, in this show, focus.

So much on what we're eating.

However, you know, I mean, that is one area of your environment. But, gosh, the scariest lecture I ever went to, I went to the American College of Alternative Medicine, and they had a whole thing on toxicity, and they were talking about, you know, outgassing of new carpets and dry cleaning and all of that. But the scariest lecture of all was. Was the lecture on mycotoxins and Mold. And you start to look at and you're like, holy smokes. So let's dig into this. Cause we just bought two houses in Florida. So you can imagine that one of the first things that I did before we closed on the houses was to really look deep into them for any mold issues. And then, of course, here we are in Florida. Couple of my friends during this last hurricane, Ian literally got their homes flooded. And you're wondering, like, can you really actually ever fix that? So I want to dig into all of that. But before we dig into how to figure out if you've got mold, what to do, et cetera, what. Why is this a problem? I mean, what does it do to you? What would be some symptoms? Like, why is this such a big deal for people?

Well, I mean, it's become a big deal really since the 1970s. And for those that don't know, going back into history here in the 1970s, we had Nixon as president. We had pretty much a lot of conflict with Russia and China. And one of the things that we have done in the 70s was we started racing towards energy efficiency. And energy efficiency is this concept where we keep more energy, we keep better use of energy. So things like having insulation, less air exchange from inside to outside, really allowing the energy that we're using to be more efficient. That has led to this new development of an indoor environment and the modern building, if you guys don't know, it's. It's pretty much a lot of spray foam and a lot of tight building houses. So we keep that energy from escaping. But there's a consequence to that and the consequences, whatever is inside with you is going to be impacting you a lot more. Why? Because there's less volume of air. So when there was more air exchange from outside to inside, you had a higher volume of air that you would be breathing in. With that being said, it would dilute some of the contaminants we might have in our house, like chemicals, VOCs, mold, bacteria, mycotoxins, other biotoxins. Now we're kind of stuck with our environment a lot more. With that being said, I've seen this trending problem of people getting more and more sick as to the effects of their environment. And that's really what's been very interesting to me. Mold definitely being a high culprit. Bacteria and mold kind of go hand in hand. But we always look at what the root cause of all this is. Well, the root cause is one, not enough air exchange. And two, moisture. I mean, moisture brings bacteria. It Brings mold. And these types of problems can exist when we have them in our home.

So I've got a couple friends in the functional medicine space who've worked a lot in mold, and I got a shout out to Dr. Ann Shippy and Dr. Jill Carnahan. And then my buddy Dave Asprey actually wrote, did a documentary on it called Moldy Just chronicling some of what can happen to you if you are exposed to mold. What are some of the things that you've seen out there? I know you're more on the remediation side, but if it wasn't causing a problem, there'd be no reason to remediate it.

Right, right. Exactly.

What does it do to someone if they are living in a moldy environment?

So I'm going to tell you one of probably one of the most extreme cases I've seen, just because I think it's important to paint that picture. And then we can talk about what are some of the everyday symptoms that people experience. From my experience, basically we had a woman named Shannon. Shannon was in Florida as well. And Shannon was really sick. She after had several water damage events of which she thought she had properly repaired. She started to have a health decline. I mean, so much so that she was bedbound 90% of the time. Her actual appetite was so dysfunctional that she had to get a GJ feeding tube installed into her lower intestine to essentially give her the nutrients she needed to keep her alive. She was a mother of three, but felt that she wasn't the mother she could be because she was bedbound, because she needed care herself. She was a wife and again had that same feeling. What was really interesting about this was that she was misdiagnosed with 50 different things. She had 100 different symptoms that she experienced. And, and it took her, I think, 40 or 50 different doctors before someone said, hey, have you thought about mold in your home? Have you checked for mold in your home? After working with her, I mean, within a week we found obviously problems in her home within a week of her moving out. And she moved out to this little RV on her property that she rented to get remediation done. And within a week, GJ feeding tubes removed, she's no longer bed bound, she's out walking. You know, I don't want to say she was 100% better in seven days, but I mean significantly better in seven days. And that that tells you how extreme this can be, especially if we let this go unchecked for such a long time. Three years of suffering, you Know, but.

Yeah, one of the good signs that we've used is like, okay, leave your house. Do you get better or worse?

You know, that's a good. That's a good point.

As long as you're going someplace that's not equally moldy.

Right, right. And there's different types of mold, and obviously everybody's inherently different and is going to be, you know, have different types of sensitivities to one or another. But it's very interesting to kind of see all this develop. You know, the average person. I would say a lot of the complaints we get are brain fog, chronic fatigue, weight gain or weight loss, you know, allergenic symptoms, brain degenerative disorders and diseases. In kids, you can get symptoms that may make pans and pandas, behavioral issues. In elderly, you can get early onset of dementia, Alzheimer's. So it's just got a big brevity to this thing. And I think with COVID we learned that no two people are the same. You could experience wildly different symptoms from the same thing. And so it's kind of helped us understand how this can have such a wide reaching effect on us.

Yeah. There's a couple things to add in here. First of all, I never knew that about the 1970s and the energy situation, and that makes a ton of sense. But then you look just at our detoxification pathways, and everyone is genetically different. So some people are really good detoxifiers, and some people are not good detoxifiers. You know, you've got to detoxify through your sweat, your pee, and your poop. And I remember back when I was an exercise physiologist, I had clients who just couldn't sweat. I'm like, holy smokes. You know, now I know how problematic that is. So you have that first part of some people just not being good detoxifiers, or they are just not doing the things their body needs to do to detoxify every day. You know, we all go on these cleanses, but the reality is you're being bombarded every day, and your body isn't just a chemistry lab, it's a history book. And so you look at this and go, all right, so you're living in a house. You maybe you use some personal care products and some cleaning products that have toxins in them, because you haven't. Haven't looked at that yet. Your skin's a sieve on the personal care products. So they're getting in. Maybe you're eating some gluten that's got glyphosate, and you've just painted your walls and put new carpeting in. And maybe you go to the dry cleaner, which it's its own host. I have one of my. Someone who worked in my company, her whole husband's side of the family all were in the dry cleaning business. Every single one of them came down with a horrific disease. I mean, like ankylosing spondylitis, cancers. I mean, just awful stuff. And so you have other things going on. And then it could be just the mold is just a thing that tips you over. Your body can only handle so much, right? And when you. What we see on the weight loss side, because my whole world is weight loss, weight loss resistance and what gets in the way of you losing weight and causes you to gain weight. And I remember early on when I was teaching this course to doctors and I was digging through everything I could find in the library, and what I discovered was that your body, of course, is going to try to store all this stuff because if it's floating around your body, it's wreaking havoc. And if your body can't get rid of it, it's got to do something. And it will store it in your fat tissue because toxins like fat. And so then what your body will do is slow down, it will cool down, it will slow your thyroid so that you get. It will make insulin resistance. In fact, the NHANES studies showed that it wasn't the obesity that was creating the diabetes. It was the. It was the toxins in the fat. They were changing the body's way they handled it, handled insulin became more insulin resistant. So you held onto the fat, held onto the toxins. So. And then you can just imagine it just gets worse and worse and worse. So, you know, this is one of those things that I know. We're going to talk a little more about how to check your house. And I'm thinking clearly, I'm going to need to pull on Jill or Ann and go through how to detoxify mold. And we'll have both those resources too, in the show notes, because they've got great info, but it isn't something you can just pretend isn't happening. You do need to be super duper aware of it. So let's dig into then, like, you know, and again, I just bought two houses and we'd had them checked, but then I was, after a year in, I'm like, do I need to check it again? Et cetera. How, how do we know if we have mold in the house? How does it get there? What do we need to be aware of.

Well, I think it gets there because typically water is the main culprit. But living in Florida, I live in Florida too, by the way. We have what's called high humidity almost year round humidity, for those that don't know, is a moisture content in the air. So if we have a lot of moisture content in the air and our indoor humidity reaches 60% or more for at least a period of 24 to 48 hours, we're in that danger zone where mold can start to grow. So things like in Florida, you want to dehumidification systems, you want H vac systems appropriately sized so that they're working as they're intended to pull that moisture out of the air. You all want to really maintain the home to prevent leaks. A lot of people don't realize we should be checking our roofs every year, checking our doors and windows every year, making sure that the structural integrity is good and there's not active water intrusion, so we can make the repairs ahead of time instead of when it's too late. Plumbing leaks happen as well, of course, that create this issue. What's really interesting about mold is we have over 100,000 different species that we know of. You know, there's about 36 of them that we know of. From a built environment standpoint that typically happen with water damage. Things like Penicillium, aspergillus, stachybotrys, Catomium stachybotrys. For those that don't know, that's like the toxic black mold that you hear the media talk about. But it's very interesting to see because for so many years everybody tested the air, right? It's like, well, if I want to check my air quality, I test the air, right? That would make sense, except for the fact that air testing, for those that don't know the technology, it really only tests about a three foot radius. And I found that really interesting because the further away you test from where the problem is, the less likely you are to find that there's a problem. So that kind of brought this whole new technology into development by the EPA. In about 2015, they released what's called the ERMI, which is the relative Moldiness Index. Now, what's interesting about the index itself is it's not perfect, but what I really love is the PCR technology behind this index. And for those that are listening, I think we've all known what PCR is after Covid, and essentially it's looking at the DNA of what's there and how you actually test for this in a home is you test the dust. And so we're like, wait a second. So we're not testing our air anymore, we're testing our dust. Why is that? Well, because whatever is in the air is eventually going to settle where our dust settles. And so if you want to know what you're exposed to, you're actually better off testing your dust to see what you're exposed to. Now, if you've ever sat down on a sunny day by the couch near a window and you saw that ray of light peer through and then you saw that fun stuff floating around, that's our dust. And what's interesting about toxins and mold is they actually bind to our dust once they settle with our dust. So how do they really impact the body? Well, because we're breathing in our dust and we're breathing in what's in our dust at the same time. So that's what I've really started to figure out over the past few years. And so now it's become. Wait, wait. It's not just about remediation. It's also about cleaning. Because if we just remediate our wall, what about all the mold and toxins that have been created as long as the mold was in our wall? And what about the mold in our H Vac too? Right? A lot of these things don't get addressed in the typical sense of remediation. So it's become more than just remediation now. Now it's about how to create, recreate healthy environments. And that's kind of the journey I've been on over the past decade.

Well, okay, we're going to take a quick break, but like, now I have more questions. Now I have more questions from what you just said. So we will be right back. Hang with us.

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Okay, so you talked about cleaning and it made me think of one of my dear friends who's a doctor who an integrative psychiatrist who had massive mold issues. She lived in Marina del Rey, California, and she told Me, she had to throw everything away. Like all of her books, her clothes, everything. Now is that the case or could she have washed things or like, you know, I heard that I'm like, holy smokes. You know, furniture, like just got rid of everything.

Well, I would say that most, most things can be cleaned. Like certain things, you know, are porous. There's no guarantee that you're going to get everything out of porous contents. And I think that's really the, the big problem there. But what's really interesting, like how I look at all of this, I think that it's a two part problem. Typically once you get, once you get that toxicity, you then become sensitized. It's like your fight or flight response kicks in. And then it's like you, Norm, you would go to place where you have a normal level of mold and suddenly you're reacting. So there's, there's that problem that I think Dr. Jill and Dr. Ann Shippy helped solve for folks. And that's like kind of like detoxing and, you know, opening back up these pathways. You mentioned earlier about sweating. I have a funny story about that because I was detoxing back in January and it took me seven days of sauna work to actually start to sweat. That's how much my pathways were blocked myself. So, you know, it's really interesting to see how all this, all this comes together. But health is holistic. It's a whole ecosystem. It's not just, you know, one thing or another. And I think that's what we're learning.

Yeah, I, I get in my, I have a sunlight and sauna shout out to Connie Zak and we literally get in every single morning. Now our new routine is we meditate, we do Dr. Joe Dispenza meditation in the sauna, and then we go get in a cold plunge, which I hate. However, it makes a big difference. But I am convinced that, you know, detoxification is one of the single most important things we have to do with everything going on. I mean, it's like people tend to think of it as like the food you eat, but that's just the tip of the iceberg. So if someone wanted to test, then they wanted to test their home, well, how would they go about doing it? Especially? Do they need an expert? Can they do it themselves? What do they do?

So I think it really depends. You know, I think the first thing that people should do is test themselves, and that's by testing the dust. It's way more affordable than hiring in a professional to do it. There's a lot of reliable labs out there that can help process this data. Now, it's PCR technology, so we can rely on it. We know that it's effective, and we're taking that and we're analyzing the DNA of what's in our dust. I think that's.

Does it matter where the dust is in your. Like, what if the dust is way far away from where the mold is?

So you want to get like a composite, meaning you want to collect some dust from each room in your house. So you just get a screen of what you're being exposed to. Much like when you're not feeling well, you go to the doctor. The doctor's like, okay, let's screen, screen you and let's see what could be it. Right. This is a great screening tool of what am I exposed to and what's in my house and is it abnormal? And I think from there, the data that it tells you then sets you back up for this process of. All right, now I got to figure out where this is coming from. And from there, you might want to bring in a professional for help on that. But I think for so long what we've done is we've brought in professionals who then have taken like an air sample in the center of our house, and then they've given us this false sense of security, like, everything is fine. Well, sometimes that's the case, but sometimes everything is fine within that three foot radius at that exact moment. But more should have been done to really check. And I think that's the key. It's switching how we've been doing things in the past to a new and better way of doing things to really be safe.

And where does one find these tests and what do they cost?

So one example is you can go to like thedusttest.com, but you can also Google different mold labs across the country and you can find different, what's called ERMI or PCR testing for the home. Something like this costs somewhere around the $250 price point, which if you've ever gotten an inspection, they're around $1,000. So you're about 25% of the cost, cutting out the middleman and testing yourself for the very first time.

Well, and it's more accurate. It sounds like from what you've just told me. Now I'm wondering how accurate our tests were. Were that we did when we bought our houses.

Well, I'm gonna, I'm gonna send you one and we're gonna find out for sure.

Oh, boy. Okay. And then how often should you be doing this? Is this an annual thing or just have you had like, you know, especially if you live in Florida, like, or any. I mean, you look at most places like, you know, Florida's humid, but you know, then you've got. Seattle and Portland are wet. So like, how often should you be doing this?

I mean, my personal opinion is I do it every year, you know, for less than 10 cents a day. You know, you can make sure that nothing has changed inside of your home's environment. You know, I think we need to switch to more of a proactive mindset when it comes to our home and our built environment. Because typically we don't do things until there's a problem, until it's too late. And that's when it costs the most. You know, when we find out that there's some abnormalities earlier on, you know, that small little pinhole leak can be repaired pretty quickly. But once it starts gushing and gaping into a massive problem, that's when things start to really take a turn. And now we have big remediation costs and big medical costs all at the same time. So personally, I think once a year to be proactive is probably the best step forward.

Because when someone comes in. So let's say that you, you find that you have mold. So then you bring in a company and they do the remediation. Does insurance even cover this? And what do they do when they do remediation and what should they be doing?

So the insurance company doesn't always cover everything there is to cover with respects to remediation. And it's a very complex topic, but essentially when you insure a home, you, they insure what is considered a covered loss. That's the term that's used to describe what you're, what they're going to cover for you and what they're not. And a lot of the problems that we have in our home are not covered, unfortunately. Like if our basement starts leaking, that's considered water seepage and that's not a covered loss. But if a pipe breaks in our basement, then it's a covered loss. Right? You see how there's semantics that really define what's covered and what's not covered. And for most of the problems that I find, they're not so obvious. They're hidden behind a wall and they might have been happening for years. And the statute of limitation is it had to have happened within the last two years or it's not covered. So it brings apart this whole complexity to am I covered? Am I not covered? And typically people end up getting covered for some of the problems, but not all. So now it becomes a big, you know, maintenance or renovation issue that they have to confront all at once.

Yeah.

Wow. All right, so now mold versus mycotoxin. What?

Like let's.

What's the difference between these two?

Okay, so myco means of a fungus. So mycotoxin, a toxin of the fungus. Mycotoxins are produced by mold. Mold. Not all species of mold produce mycotoxins, or at least that we know of today. Science is ever evolving. But we do know that there are certain species of mold that produce toxins. Now, if you look, the actual fda, they have set thresholds of acceptability for mycotoxins in our agricultural supply because it's a big problem in grains and in food. But the EPA has not really set any thresholds of looking at it from an indoor perspective, which is where we're trying to push the industry forward. Because the reality of it is, if we know it shouldn't be in our food because it's toxic to humans and pets, well, it shouldn't be in our homes either. And basically what causes mycotoxins to be produced? Well, when mold feels threatened, it's their self defense mechanism. Just like how a skunk sprays you when they're threatened. Well, mold produces mycotoxins when it's threatened. What makes mold threatened? Well, other mold, for one. So you may have Aspergillus and Stachybotrys fighting for the same real estate in your wall cavity right from that window leak. And you're just an innocent bystander to that. So you have chemical warfare going on inside of our walls and ceilings. There's also some studies suggesting that all of this wi fi and wireless technology could also cause some issues where mold might feel threatened, because it's essentially new radiation that has been developed in modern times. And I think there's probably other things too, that we're just not aware of yet. But it's really interesting how we're kind of the innocent bystander in our own home from some of these things.

So the mycotoxins in grains, I know that peanuts are a big one. Coffee's another one. Are the levels that they're saying are okay really okay?

You know, that's a good question. Are they really okay? I mean, ideally, we want as little as possible. Right. Or none detected. You know, I think that we have this complex issue between trying to balance economies with health. Right. And if you look at what the EPA and what the FDA do, that's literally what they do. They just balance this. How do we make things healthy while being economical? I surely think that we can do better on almost all fronts, but I think that they set a threshold of what they feel is reasonable, and if they went lower, that it may impact certain farmers and other things. So it's a very delicate balance.

Jill Carnahan actually tells the story of this because she grew up on a farm and her dad, she talks about the mycotoxins in the grains and the levels that there were, which got her sick, of course, you know, and you just wonder with this shift into plant based eating, if we're going to exacerbate this problem.

Well, it is highly possible that that would happen.

Right.

Because as we shift more into plants and we have this issue with mold and mycotoxins that we know of, that really contaminates our food supply. This is a big problem. I mean, I think it's something that we have to kind of put our foot down as a society and say we don't want mycotoxins in our food in our homes. We want to care more about what goes into our body both every time we take a breath and every time we take a bite. And I think if we do that, we're going to be a lot better off.

Yeah. The big question with the food is, how would you know? There's no stamp, there's no nothing. I know the coffee that I've used for years, that's one of the things they do, is look for mycotoxins, because coffee's such a crop of mycotoxins. And from everything I've heard, the US Requirements are lower than what they have in South America and Europe for mycotoxins.

Yeah, lower. It's really interesting. You're right. I mean, there's a lot of different issues, especially in coffee. I too buy coffee that test itself for mycotoxins. But that's only because the coffee company itself is going through that laborious process to do it themselves. The FDA doesn't require that. Right. And so you have all these companies, I don't want to mention any names, but a lot of the big box brands that you see in the supermarket, they're not testing for mycotoxins. There's a threshold set by the fda. But if we think that they're going to every single plant and shop across the world to verify, I think we're a little mistaken there. Right. That the resources weren't there.

How do we know if that threshold's even okay, if your body's a history book. I mean, maybe for someone who's detoxifying really well and doing their sauna and everything else, but someone who's already got, you know, mold issues, that could throw them over the top.

Totally.

So, yeah, it's frightening that there isn't actually any you can do to tell that. But I will say that, you know, it's why I took peanuts out of the virgin diet when I started to look at that one, because it's one of the more mycotoxiny crops, and corn is one and coffee's one. So, I mean, it was where I first learned about it was from my buddy Dave Asprey, because he had mold issues. And so that's where it came from. How effective are things like air purifiers? Is that something that we. We should all have in our house, too, to help with this, or is that just kind of putting a bandage over a big gaping wound?

Well, you know, it can be both. Right? It can be effective, and it could also be a bandage. And it's like any other tool out there. You have to use it properly. My favorite air purifiers are one that does the whole house. And so they typically go in the H vac unit. They do two things. They protect the H vac unit from getting contaminated because they block small particles from entering the unit. And they also are filtering, you know, the lungs of the home, if you will, the H vac system itself. Those. Those are much better, in my opinion, because they do two things at once. You know, they're obviously, sometimes that's. If you're renting or, you know, you don't want to install something into the unit for whatever reason, you know, you get the plug in ones. But what they're doing is they're essentially putting a vacuum inside of a room or inside of your home. They're trapped. They're filtering the air. They're trapping out some of the particles that we're breathing in. So there's definitely effective for that. But if we have all of these problems all over the home and we just buy air purifiers, that's not necessarily going to solve our problem. So it's just really just making sure people are aware of that. I get people that are like, hey, look at my levels. They're off the charts, and I'm not feeling well. And I'm like, well, I could see why. You know, you have some pretty big problems there. They're like, well, you know, I think I'm just going to get some air purifiers and I'll be fine. And it's like, well, I really don't think you should go that route. You know, I don't know that you'll be fine, to be truthful. So it's interesting, you know, it's important that people have the right mindset. Like, we can't heal when we're living inside the problem. And I think that really needs to drive home to folks because some people's places are really bad.

Yeah. Wow. So I. I've got to go check and see if we've got an air purifier in our H VAC system. Just made a note on that one. So you have a freebie that you're giving everyone, and I'm going to put it@jjvirgin.com mold hacks. And it is 10 mold hacks you can do to prevent mold in your home. Which I hope now that you've listened to this, you're like, okay, I definitely need to and want to make sure that I'm doing that because, you know, having had so many friends who've been so sick with mold, I see the. I see what it can do. And it was interesting, Michael. We were moving out of our house in Rancho Santa Fe, California. We'd been renting the house and it had an area outside the house that was damp and water would just sit. And we're going to move, and I'm taking out my dresses out of one of the back closet near that room, near that area. And there is black mold. And I'm like, holy smokes. You know, like. And fortunately, we were far enough, hopefully away from it. I didn't notice a thing health wise, but maybe if we'd lived there longer, but it's like, it's. It's, you know, it's pretty scary that this stuff going on. So definitely something to be aware of. We'll be testing our houses. And I'm assuming you have the test stuff in the. The mold hacks guide.

Oh, yeah, definitely.

Good, good, good. Because honestly, you can be doing everything else right, but if you are getting hit with this, this can take you down. And I've seen it happen. And it's like really, really frightening. And then it takes a while. You get super sensitive.

I mean, even. Even myself, after, like 10 years of exposure, I mean, I. This. The past year and a half to two years, I started gaining weight like wildfire. And, you know, it's interesting because if you see my wife, she's Healthy and fit. And I eat the same things. You know, we eat, like, literally lots of vegetables, protein, really, no sugar or carbs, like, almost never, right. And it's just really interesting how all of a sudden I started gaining all this weight. And the second I started detoxing, I think I lost like £35 in two months. I mean, it was crazy. I'm still on this journey myself, following a lot of the tips that you promote that are very effective. But it's really interesting because, you know, I would have never thought just because it wasn't happening to my own home, but even with masks and everything else, you're not never 100% protected. And I think that made me realize, like, detoxing is really, really important, you know, because otherwise you can do everything else right and still have a problem.

It is. It is literally early on in my career in weight loss, I was fortunate. I took a group of women to away for a week. And everything back then was the bank account model of weight loss. You know, if you want to lose weight, you need to create a 500 calorie deficit a day, and you will lose a pound and a thousand, you'll lose two pounds, which sounds awesome if we were a math equation, but we're not. And I was under this. The idea that these people were paying me all this money, money to cheat. I was like, why is this? You know, because. And when I took him away and saw that when I tightly controlled everything, some people lost weight and some people gained weight, I was like, all right, clearly something else is going on. And. And it's complicated. It's not just one thing. But, you know, I had a gal go and get. She didn't tell me she was going to do this. She, behind my back, went and did a gastric bypass. Now it didn't work. And I said, I could have told you it didn't work. It wasn't going to work because your issue wasn't eating too much. Your issue is you're toxic. We've got to reduce, and this isn't going to help there. You know, if anything, now we've got more problems because now you can't absorb the nutrients that are going to help you detoxify. Now we have to, like, really deal with this. So it's just an important thing, important reminder for everybody that again, your body is not a bank account. That, gosh, I still see that model of weight loss coming up. And while calories count, where they come from counts more. But you have to look at your whole body and what it's doing and the hormone responses. And it is so clear cut that if you are being barraged by toxins that your body, in fact there was a Dr. Tremblay I think out of Canada, did really interesting research all around this and how your body just starts to hold on and cool down and keep it in to protect you. So, you know, just look beyond it. Don't fall prey to the latest juice cleanse that will make you worse, not better. You know, it's like you don't need.

To bombard your body with sugar.

That's not going to help you. You actually need amino acids to detox. And you know, a sauna is a, and especially an infrared sauna is amazing because it's with a lot of these things they store in your fat in order to get it out of your fat, especially these, these chemicals and mycotoxins you need to get into it with these infrared penetration.

So there you go.

That's amazing. Thank you so much. Hopefully we haven't scared people, we've empowered people with all of this. And I want to remind you again, jjvirgin.com moldhacks and you will get Michael's 10 mold hacks you can do to prevent mold in your home. And I thank you so much for the work that you do and hanging out with me today.

Likewise. So appreciative of everything you do and thanks for having me.

All right, one more quick reminder. First of all, was that amazing or what? Again, in the show notes, I'm going to include links to one of my very best friends, Dr. Ann Shippy, who is a mold expert along with another amazing woman, Dr. Chill Carnahan. Incredible experts on mold toxicity. And Dave Asprey did a movie, a documentary called Moldy. It is literally when I first met him and he was telling me about the mold in coffee, the mycotoxins. That's where I started to learn all about this to begin with. And he had major mold issues which is what drove him to search for coffee that he could lab test to make sure it did not have mold in it. And that's where bulletproof came from. So we will have all that in the show notes and remember, you will be able to grab the guide as well and you will definitely want to get the 10 mold hacks you can do to prevent mold in your home. And you get that@jjvirgin.com moldhacks all right, if you've not yet subscribed, it's simple. Just go to subscribe to JJ.com and while you're at it. If you leave a review, I would be so happy. Thank you. Thank you. All right, see you next time. Bye.

Hello listeners. This is Ann Bogle, author, blogger and creator of the podcast what Should I Read next? Since 2016, I've been helping readers bring more joy and delight into their reading lives. Every week, I tag all things Books and Reading with a guest and guide them in discovering their next read. They share three books they love, one book they don't, and what they've been reading lately, and I recommend three titles they may enjoy reading Next. Guests have said our conversations are like therapy, troubleshooting issues that have plagued their reading lives for years and possibly the rest of their lives as well. And of course, recommending books that meet the moment. Whether they are looking for deep introspection to spur or encourage a life change or a frothy page turner to help them escape the stresses of work, school, everything. You'll learn something about yourself as a reader and you'll definitely walk away confident to choose your next read, with a whole list of new books and authors to try. So join us each Tuesday for what Should I Read Next? Subscribe now wherever you're listening to this podcast and Visit our website whatshouldireadnextpodcast.com to find out more.