Matt Kelly explains how mold and mycotoxins can trigger eczema in children through four pathways: toxins absorbed through skin, mold-induced gut dysbiosis that depletes beneficial bacteria like Akkermansia, chronic infections like Lyme, and food sensitivities. He recommends testing for mycotoxins, tick-borne infections, and microbiome damage alongside standard treatments.
Chapters
We have had a giant influx of mostly mums looking for help with their kids with eczema. And I'm glad they made it to toxic mold answers because mold is definitely one of the drivers. Okay, so let's talk about eczema in kids. Number one. It's awful when you see these pictures and video of these poor little kids. They're in pain, they're itching, it's itchy, they're oozing, it's painful. Skin can get dry or not dry, but thick and cracked. It's awful. It's awful for the child to go through it. It's awful for the parent to try and help them because it seems impossible and it's just overwhelming for parents in general. So let's talk about the eczema, but let's talk about why it's happening. Because when it gets bad. Yes, you have to go to the doctor. Absolutely. It could be a staph infection. The staph in the gut gets high, staph gets in the blood, staph coming out on the skin. Sometimes antibiotics are required to deal with that because you don't want to mess with that. Obviously. Another thing that can happen when you go to the doctors is you get steroids. Steroids can be required to calm the flame, to put that fire out, because these kids need a quality of life. You can't go on just, just feeling like this, right? And that's okay. But you want to make sure that as you're, as you're dealing with the inflammation with the steroids, that it's temporary fix while you're finding out the driving cause. Why is it happening? So that you can work on the root cause to get it down so that you don't have to be dependent on steroids. Because as I'm sure you know, long term steroids are awful. And you don't want to be on topical steroids for a long time because the withdrawal from that you don't want to can be absolutely horrid. So the medical route, antibiotics, internal steroids and topical steroids can be required, but we don't want to stay there long. We want to know why it's happening and deal with that. Okay, so I've got my notes here because I don't want to forget anything on this because this is a very important subject because it's, it's. Well, you know, why these poor kids are like being tortured by their skin. Okay, so mold and mycotoxins, number one. Let's talk about the mycotoxins. Many Mycotoxins are dermatoxic. We think about the toxicity of mycotoxins, we're thinking about inhaling it, about breathing it in. Right? But there are a number of mycotoxins that literally absorb through the skin. And some of these mycotoxins are dermatoxic. So they're toxic. They cause skin cells to just die. Okay. So if you have problematic molds in your home, toxigenic molds at higher levels spitting out these dermatoxic mycotoxins, they absolutely can cause this problem. So I pulled up a research study here on PubMed and I'm going to read you a couple lines here from it. I know not the most exciting thing to watch someone read, but it says perfectly what I'm trying to convey here about mycotoxins in the skin. So it says, among the many mycotoxins, T2 toxins, citrinen, patchelin, aflatoxin B1 and ochratoxin A are known to have the potential to induce dermal toxicity and or tumorigenesis in rodent models, T2 toxins, citrine and patulin, ochratoxin A induce apoptosis. So that's what I said earlier about cells just inducing death in those cells in mouse or rat skin. Patulin, Aflatoxin B1, Ochratoxin A have tumor initiating properties and ochratoxin A is also a tumor promoter in mouse skin. So there we've got five of pretty common mycotoxins that are dermatoxic and can create serious skin issues. So T2 toxin, you're talking Fusarium, citrinens coming from Aspergillus, Penicillium and Menascus. I believe patchelin coming from Aspergillus and Penicillium, Aflatoxin B1 come from Aspergillus flavus, ochratoxin A coming from both Aspergillus and Penicillium. So there's three, four different molds that if you have these problematic toxic molds, these dermatoxic mycotoxins could be in the air, affecting everyone in the home, but especially little ones who are breathing it in and absorbing it through their skins, through their skins, through their skin. Number two is mold. And mycotoxins wreck the gut, which induces skin problems. Right? So take for example a skin problem that we see more like acne. When someone has acne, the first thing we tell them is to get off dairy. We why? Because it can be problematic to the gut. Inflammatory to the gut affects the bacteria in Their gut changes it, so they stop dairy. The bacteria starts to get better, especially if we put them on megaspore or something. The bacteria starts to align back to where it's supposed to be. Then the healthier the gut is, the healthier the skin is. Right. So mold and mycotoxins wreck the gut. So outside of being dermatoxic, it just creates dysbiosis and allows good. It allows bad pathogenic and opportunistic bacteria to go up, which then pushes good bacteria down. And that chaos in there directly creates skin problems. So that's number two. Oh, and the bacteria that we look at that can especially talk to skin problems in kids like eczema is akkermansia, which is, you know, has to do with the mucosal layer in the intestines. And the lower Akkermansia gets, the more often we see people with Crohn's, because as that layer is destroyed, inflammation goes up. Crohn's. It's not really. I wouldn't say it's Crohn's. I would say it is an autoimmune condition, but it's triggered by mold and mycotoxins. Right. So you've got Akkermansia and you got faecally bacterium prosnitzi. I always go say pros Nazi. Don't say Nazi. Nitze Prosnitzi. People say F. Prausnitzi because it's a little easier. But that one also is a big bacteria that we're looking at in relation to eczema in kids. So when they have any stressor on the gut and these bacteria, which are like canary in the coal mine, get messed up, get really pushed down, you know, like in the gut. Zoomer. We've got like a couple hundred markers. These two bacteria should be around 18, 19 or so. And I've seen them in one child all the way down to zero. I've seen kids at one or two. So we see these markers and we know that there's a serious problem in their microbiome and we can connect these to eczema. So then we have to start working those back up because there's a direct relation from certain bacteria to the health of the skin. So that's number two. So number one again was mycotoxins are dermatoxic, number two is mold. And mycotoxins disrupt the bacterial balance in the gut. Number three is Lyme. And any other chronic infections can wreck the gut. So Lyme and co infections always end up affecting the gut. And for the same reason that we talked about. Number two, get these infections that create chaos in the gut. The bacterial balance starts going upside down and backwards which then can be reflected in the skin. And number four is food sensitivities. Food sensitivities is kind of the low hanging fruit, which is nice to have some low hanging fruit because if the child's reacting horribly to some food and their body is creating antibodies against it and it spikes inflammation and chaos in the gut which then is reflected on the skin. So if we do a full food sensitivity panel, find those foods that are bothering them, take them out now, the gut stops reacting so crazily the inflammation goes down some and the skin starts getting better. But the question is, why are they having food sensitivities? Usually it's taught nothing causes food sensitivities and allergies faster than mold and mycotoxins. But like I said with number three, it can also be Lyme and other infections. So these are kind of layering on top of each other. But that's the four main drivers of eczema in kids, in my opinion. It could be something else, it could be mercury, could be another heavy metal that they acquired through something pokey. I won't get into that too. But these are the main drivers. But the good news is we have great labs for testing these. Number one, if we're when we're looking for dermatoxic mycotoxins, we run the urine mycotoxins lab. And I'll put some links to these labs here as well. Number two, we're doing the tick borne testing to look for Lyme and co infections in case that could be the driver of the stress in the gut. It's wrecking the microbiome that's coming out and being reflected in the skin. That's a finger prick. So finger prick, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip on a paper card. And we have that. Number three is the gut zoomer. That's the most advanced stool test on the market. I use Vibrant America for that. I'll put a link for that as well. You can take a look at the sample report. But that's what gives us no other lab that I know of gives you all those bacterial markers, as many bacterial markers, like 150 different markers or something just in bacteria. That's where we're looking at your opportunistic and pathogenic bacteria. That's where you're looking. We're looking at your good bacteria, your bifido, your Lactobacillus. See what levels they're at? They're at. We're also checking that Akkermansia and your Facilobacterium Pros Nitze. Okay, so that's why we need that data. And and lastly is the food sensitivity panel, which is also a dry blood spot. So finger prick, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip. And it comes back with the body's response to different foods, so you can pull those out that are creating inflammation and chaos in an effort to start getting the skin to calm. All right, I know I went over my three minutes here, guys. These videos are usually short, but eczema is just so awful for the kids. It's so awful for the parents trying to take care of their poor kids whose skin is just going crazy. So I went way over. I'm nine and a half minutes, guys, here. But hey, if you're being affected by eczema, your kids are being affected by eczema. You needed this information. I hope you found this helpful. If you need help, feel free to reach out to me.
Do you have questions about mold in your home or body? Book a consultation with Matt, AKA the Mold man, to guide your home and body to the next level of heal.
