Episode #156: Mold as a Root Cause of Mast Cell Activation Syndrome with Beth O'Hara, FND

Welcome to Better Health Guy Blogcasts Empowering your better health. And now, here's Scott, your Better Health Guy. The content of this show is for informational purposes only and is not intended to diagnose, treat or cure any illness or medical condition. Nothing in today's discussion is meant to serve as medical advice or or as information to facilitate self treatment. As always, please discuss any potential health related decisions with your own personal medical authority.

Hello everyone and welcome to episode number 156 of the Better Health Guy Blogcast series. Today's guest is Beth o' Hara and the topic of the show is mold as a root cause of Mast cell activation syndrome. Beth o' Hara is a functional naturopath specializing in complex chronic immune conditions related to mast cell activation syndrome and and histamine intolerance. She is the founder and owner of Mast Cell 360, a functional naturopathy practice designed to look at all the factors surrounding health conditions genetic, epigenetic, biochemical, physiological, environmental and emotional. Her subspecialties are mold toxicity and genetic analysis in the area of mast cell activation and histamine intolerance. She designed Mast Cell 360 to be the kind of practice to she wished had existed when she was severely ill with mast cell activation syndrome, histamine intolerance, neural inflammation, Lyme mold toxicity, fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue. Her mission today is to be a guiding light for others with Mast cell activation syndrome, histamine intolerance and these related.

Conditions in their healing journeys.

Through her Mast Cell 360 root cause process, she discovers the unique root factors affecting each of her clients, building personalized, effective roadmaps for healing. She holds a doctorate in functional naturopathy, a master's degree in marriage and family therapy, and a bachelor's degree in physiological psychology. She is certified in functional genomic analysis and is a research advisor for the Nutrigenetic Research Institute. And now my interview with Beth o'.

Hara. I believe this is Beth's fourth time being a guest on the podcast, which is very rare. She is a personal favorite, a listener favorite. I'm super excited today to have her back to talk about mold illness and its connection to mast cell activation syndrome. Thanks so much for being here, Beth.

Oh, I. It's. It's always an honor and a delight to be on your podcast and I think this is one of the most impactful podcasts I get.

Thank you.

Most of our clients listen to your podcast, so I'm excited to be here and I'm excited to talk about this topic Because I think we can dive into some new information for people.

Excellent, excellent. I'm going to learn some things too. When I think of mast cell activation syndrome, I think of the top contributors being mold. For some people being parasites, I think electromagnetic fields are playing a bigger role. I also feel like viruses can play a role in terms of triggering mast cells in some people. Wondering what you see in your client population, how common is mold as a trigger for mast cell activation? How is it actually triggering the mast cells? And then maybe we can shift into what are some of the less common triggers that maybe people need to consider but may not even know about?

Those are great questions. First of all, we don't know how common it's a trigger, but it's fairly common for mass lactivation syndrome. And one of the things that makes it hard to get this data is, for example, in my own clinic, of course, people come in, sometimes they know they have mold issues, sometimes they don't. But I have yet to test somebody for mold toxins that didn't have them. A lot of people incorrectly think they don't have mold toxins because when they get a mycotoxin test, it might come back at low levels or under the lab cutoff. But most of the people with mast cell activation syndrome are poor detoxifiers. We have to remember that on those urine tests, we're only seeing the tip of the iceberg of what's going on in the full body burden. There was a study that was done with 100 participants. Half had moldoxicity, half did not. Looking at whether everyone has some level of mycotoxins in the urine and concluded that other than a really minuscule amount, we should not be having these mycotoxins show up. When I say minuscule, I mean very minuscule. It's a huge deal. I do think viruses are a trigger. Definitely. EMFs are a trigger. Just the toxicity that we're exposed to, between air pollution we were talking about, the fires and the kind of smoke people are exposed to that we're not used to being exposed to. That triggers the mast cells, that triggers the limbic system, and then even just all the day to day things, there's so many people that I talk to and work with and they're still coloring their hair. And even the most, I did a deep dive into all the hair coloring because my hair is going white. And I wanted to see if there were any truly safe options other than henna. And there aren't. I looked at every possibility. That's called a natural Hair color. They still have chemicals that are major immune issues that are toxic. They're better, but they're not truly non toxic. So many people still use fragrances. That's a huge immune disruptor and hormone disruptor. We've got this whole complex of this picture. Then mold has become this epidemic level, which I know you know, but a lot of people don't realize how huge of an issue mold is now, even beyond just 20 years ago. It's escalated since then. Mold triggers these mast cells through one of these receptors is called the toll like receptor. And that receptor is seeking or sensing viruses, bacteria, candida, different kinds of molds. But that's just one angle of it. These mycotoxins are just nasty. For the course that I did on mold, I did a huge amount of research and diving into the literature on these mycotoxins, and it's been established as far back as the 1980s how these mycotoxins trigger mast cells, how significant they are. Then another piece that might be new for people is that these molds, we can have these mycotoxins in our bodies, and then we can also have mold colonization where the mold grows in our bodies. Just like we can get viruses or bacteria in our bodies, we can get these mold spores in our bodies, most frequently the GI tract and the sinuses. But I've had people who've had vaginal colonization. Skin colonization can get into the lungs, not as common, but when it grows in us, it's creating all of these digestive enzymes. Mold digestive enzymes like proteases and hydrolysis, there's a whole number of them. It's nastier than viruses or bacteria, the vast majority of viruses and bacteria that affect humans, because it actually has to decompose our tissues to get nutrients out of it. That's what makes mold toxicity so significant. While there's a lot of triggers for mast cell activation syndrome, when people have mold toxicity, that can be one of the biggest ones.

Beautiful. Yeah. I think when you say it that way, that really hits home how critical this is and how much of an issue these molds, particularly those that colonize the system, can be. That essentially their job to recycle, or as you said, to decompose. Let's talk a little bit about how you identify the potential for mold and mycotoxins as a contributor to your client's health challenges. What are your favorite tests in terms of external looking at the environment, and then your favorite ways of testing internally looking inside the person for potential clues.

So there are a lot of Options. And different practitioners have different preferences based on what works best for their own practice, their own population, their own protocols. My own personal favorites are to do both the real time and the Great Plains urine mycotoxin test. There are some other ones. Some people really like the other ones. Those are the two that I found the most helpful in my own practice in those urine tests. It can help if people do just a really gentle provocation where if they can tolerate it. Not everybody with mast cell activation syndrome can tolerate glutathione, but even like a few sprinkles of some kind of S acetylglutathione or liposomal glutathione, sometimes it's a little harder for sensitive people. But if they can do just a little of that, you don't have to get into these high doses in the sensitive population. We're just trying to get some of those toxins out of the tissues into the bloodstream that shows up on the urine. That's one option. But people don't have to use that. They can do some sweating if they tolerate sweating with a hot bath, a shower. Not everybody tolerates that. I have some of my super sensitive people just do some manual, really gentle lymphatic drainage. The trick to that is to stay on the surface level and just slide the skin. There's lots of videos on YouTube on how to do lymphatic drainage. That's the combo that I like to use in the practice in terms of that internal testing. There are ways of testing antibodies, but what makes it hard for me with my protocols is I don't know what the actual levels are in the body at this point in time. Have we totally cleared it or have we cleared it, but the antibodies are still there? I find that urine testing the most helpful for what I'm doing. The environmental testing options, again, there's a lot there. But I have my clients start with mold plates from immunolytics. But I have them do it a little differently than what the lab says to do. I have them put the plate on the floor. Floor because mold spores are heavy, so you're going to fall to the floor. And air testing is less reliable because by the time you have enough spores in the to circulate in the air, you've got a big problem. And if you put it on the floor, you can capture a better picture there. And then I have them. The lab says to only send it for analysis if there are four or more spores. I have our clients send it. If they see even a tiny Little speck, because that may turn into two specks by the time it gets there for the analysis. And two spores of Aspergillus or penicillium fuserium. Any of those toxic molds, penicillium, that will show on a mold plate are too much for sensitive people. I have them do that, and I have them do an ermie. I know there's people using the Emma, and that's a newer one. And I know some of the really, really good environmental mold testing companies are using in combination with the ERMI and sometimes the mold plates, but sometimes it shows up on there and sometimes it doesn't. So we need this full picture is what we're looking for environmentally.

So with the immunolytics plates, what you're talking about with the 2 and 4 is actually the mold colonies, right. So they have a scale that if there's a certain number of colonies, that it's potentially an issue Dr. Nathan talks about. The reason it's important to send these in like you recommend, is that about half of what grows on them is not necessarily a concern from a human health perspective. So we need to know exactly what is showing up on there. Another thing that I suspect you do and that I learned about recently and actually had a client that was exploring mold on her own, and she did the immunolytics plates, but did a tap test where she had taken like a. A pillow and tap the pillow over the plate and actually had more penicillium on that sample than the lab could even count. And so that's another kind of neat way to try to maybe test some specific items from the immunolytics plates. Have you done that tap testing method with your clients?

Yes, definitely. I really like it on carpet. And shampooing carpets is a big problem because you get the pad wet underneath, and then they can suck the water out of the carpet that they can't get it out of the pad. So then that pad can be wet for like a week. So carpets are usually a place you really want to take a look at. Upholstery, particularly some people like to do thrift store shopping. Gotta be careful with the upholstery, make sure there's nothing in there. People do their pets, and I have two bigger dogs. And, you know, they're big dogs, they like to go outside, they like to roll in the grass, and when it's wet, they roll in the mud. And so they get mold in their fur. And we use that to see how often we need to shampoo them with Some of the mold removing shampoo, like the EC3 shampoo, those kinds of things. You were talking about the mold plates and what can grow in them. You made a great point. They also can colonize. Candida can colonize bacteria. You can grow the soil based molds like Cladosporium and Microsporium that aren't necessarily. They don't release toxins, they can be an issue with mold allergy, but they're not toxic. So I tell my clients, if you see a lot of mold growth on that plate or growth in general, don't panic because it could be Candida falling off. A lot of times it falls off my client's skin onto the plate plates. It could be some bacteria. It could be the soil based mold from kids running in and out with, you know, shoes on in the house. We try to take our shoes off when we come in the house, but you definitely want to know what's on that plate. And immunolytics has great analysis.

The other thing on the other end of that spectrum is that these types of plates, as much as I also think they're a good adjunct to the ermi, I don't think they're a replacement for the ermi and I don't think that's what you're suggesting either. But there are some molds, like Stachybotrys for example, that are really critical that we aren't going to find commonly on these types of plates. My understanding is the growth medium in the plates doesn't really support the growth of Stachybotrys. And so it's another clue, but it's not always going to show the full picture. You talked a bit about the real time test, the Great Plains test. You talked about glutathione. I know there's been some debate about whether or not to use glutathione with Great plains. I know Dr. Nathan originally did. I don't think that he does anymore. Are you finding with your clients that doing a glutathione provocation with the Great Plains mycotox is something that is still helpful?

It's hard to say. So I do ask them if they can tolerate it, to do it before real time and not do it before Great Plains. So if they're running both, I have them do Great Plains, do some kind of sweating or lymphatic drainage, what they can tolerate, and then go on and do some glutathione if they can and do the real time. I've had people who got confused and they got it backwards. And they ended up doing the glutathione for the Great Plains and not the real time with the way I look at it in terms of I'm just looking for patterns across time and how these levels are changing. I haven't found it make a huge difference here, but I try to follow what the labs are are saying is the best protocol.

And do you recommend that your clients stop the consumption of moldy foods before the sample collection or do you think it's better for them to stay in their normal routine?

So I have them stay in a normal routine, but it's also a little interesting in this practice because the majority of our clients do a low histamine diet as well. And that doesn't help everybody with mast cell issues, but it helps a lot because histamine is a trigger for mast cel. And so if you do a low histamine diet, you're going to be off of most the moldy foods anyway. You're taking out your ferments, you're not doing leftovers, you're not doing cheese, they're not doing peanut butter. These kinds of things that tend to have mold in them. There was also a study that looked at whether molds and foods were increasing urine mycotoxin levels. And they had people eating eat a lot of foods with mold. So they did a pre test. Then they had them eat a whole lot of foods that were moldy, considered moldy foods, cheeses and peanut butter and leftovers and the ferments and all of this. And they didn't find increased levels. They actually found the levels went down a little bit. And that made me wonder if the fat tissue was storing more of the mycotoxins faster with that consumption. So I think there's a lot there. We still don't know if somebody has outside of the testing general though, somebody has mold allergy, that's a really good time to make sure to stop the moldy foods.

For people that are interested in that study, I believe it was in the Townsend letter. And so you can find that it was done in collaboration with Great Plains and Dr. Neal Nathan. If I remember correctly, in terms of patterns of which environments you ultimately find are the contributors to your client's illness. When we're talking about mold, do you find it's more the home or the workplace? Or do you find some clients where their home was actually really good, their workplace was really good, and it was some other place that maybe took longer to figure out that really was not suspected initially?

Yes, it's been a Whole combination home is where people think about the most because that's where they are the most amount of time. But for people who work a 40 hour workweek or more, that's a lot of time in a workplace. I have had people who their homes were clean and was at the workplace. Surprisingly, some of the worst workplaces have been hospitals. That's quite a concern for me and for a lot of people for my clients who are hospital workers, another place that's a big contributor, schools. And schools close up for the, usually the holiday seasons, they close up for, for the summer and then they will turn off all of the climate control so you get those humidity levels, building. I've had a number of kids who were getting exposure at their schools and sometimes churches have had people who their exposure was at church. I've had people who finally tracked down their ongoing exposures because they weren't getting anywhere, they were just stuck and so sensitive, tracked it down that it was the parents house they were going to every Sunday for dinner. We've got to think about these things. And it's not that we can't ever have some exposure, but while we're healing, if we can get out of the exposure, it greatly accelerates the healing process. If somebody has daily exposure, it's almost impossible to get well. And that's a hard conversation to have with people. But if people don't have the bandwidth or the funds to do anything else, I tell them get out of the mold exposure, whatever that takes so that your body can start to move forward. Now I can have some exposures and I could be okay, but I can't do long term exposures.

I love that you mentioned schools because I actually think that schools are probably worse than most homes and most workplaces. So sadly, I've seen a lot of teenaged people that were recovered from Lyme and mold and were doing really well and then went off to college and had really serious relapses, had mold growing on the curtains in their dorm or in the classrooms, oftentimes in basements, things like that. And so unfortunately, I agree schools are definitely one to be concerned about. What are some of the key factors that you think have created this perfect storm for mold toxicity?

Well, I like to go to the people who are on the ground doing the environmental mold detection. One of my favorite people besides you to pick their brains is Jeff Bookout and he's an environmental mold specialist. He's really great with the understanding the level of mold that affects really sensitive people that move. Most mold inspectors are going to completely miss when I've talked with him about this. And he's been in this field for a long time, so he's seen this change over time. What he shared with me was that the first big change were the building code changes. We had building code changes in the 1970s and then again around 2000 to make the houses more energy efficient. So by sealing them better so we're not losing all this heat, we're not having to use all these resources to just heat the attic. What happened there. And that was great for environmental improvement, environmental impact. But what happened there was that we started sealing in. When you seal in the air, you seal in the humidity, seal in the moisture. So there's higher humidity in walls than there used to be. And anytime you have humidity over about 50%, there are mold spores there. You're going to get mold growth. It just can draw the moisture out of the air. It doesn't have to be straight water. So that was one factor. Then another factor has been starting to use things like fungicidal paints, which also seem like a great idea. But there is a psychologist whose work I love named Claire Graves, and one of his famous quotes was, when we solve one problem, we create new problems. And so the fungicidal paints were solving some problems. Same with the building codes, creating new problems. And with these fungicidal paints, they seem to be killing off some of the weaker molds, like Cladosporium microsporium, things like this, the mildews. But they're not strong enough for the stachybotrys, the mucor, the Aspergillus, the penicillium. So what's happening is you don't see it growing on the surface, but you're sealing it in behind the paint surface. Then the third big change, and I think this is why we look back and I talk to my colleagues, like talk to my colleagues have been in this field for a long time, or my mentor, your mentor, Dr. Neil Nathan, that we've seen these cases get more complex over time. We've seen this huge bump. He's talked about seeing this huge bump in cases of mold toxicity and the complexity of it, particularly in the last 10, 15 years, even when I started over 10 years ago, the cases have gotten more complex, they've gotten more challenging. People are way more sensitive than even 10 years ago. And when we think back to that, well, that's when we started bringing WI FI routers into our houses. WI FI devices jumped. We started getting smart homes. I went and stayed in an Airbnb and they had the whole house wired as a smart house. So they had WI FI devices on every window so they could monitor remotely, make sure the windows didn't stay open or weren't broken open. All the doors had WI FI devices on them. And it was too much for me. I actually really struggled staying in the house. I spent my whole trip on the lanai out by the pool. But we've got smart refrigerators and thermostats and all these things. The WI fi, what seems to be happening, And I know Dr. Klinghardt's talked about this. Jeff Buchhout has noticed this on his own. A lot of people have noticed this, that the mold seems to be somehow threatened by the WI fi. It doesn't understand or doesn't know how to register that other than it's a threat in that it grows. When mold is threatened, we know that it grows faster and it produces more toxins. Sometimes it produces even more toxic toxins as a defense or survival strategy. And one of the questions I've wondered about is, okay, so if we see that happening environmentally, is that also impacting the mold colonization in our bodies? And I don't think anybody has an answer to that yet. And I hope we can get some studies on this, both environmentally and internally.

Yeah, it would be great to explore further. I know Dietrich Klinghardt suggests that that absolutely does happen. So we need to think about the things that threat that those external EMFs pose to the microbes within us as well. And if they're also upregulating their production of mycotoxins or endotoxins. I mean, it's a. It's a really interesting thing. Unfortunately, I don't know that there's going to be a lot of people that are going to want to fund that exploration, given the communications. Right. Such a big, big part of our lives now. But, yeah, that's very interesting. So are there conditions or issues where you would think it might be difficult to fix, or they might be more resistant to, or recalcitrant to treatment if the mold isn't addressed first? And what I commonly see is people want to jump ahead. They want to start killing their lyme, killing their co infections. They don't want to worry about the mold. So what are your thoughts? Do we need to start there and then what? Maybe some of the conditions where you see jumping ahead really ends up being a mistake 1.

This depends on the population. But if there's mold toxicity, we have to remember that mold is such a huge disruptor to every system in the body. There are piles of research on it with disrupting the immune System and the TH1, TH2 balance, where we need that TH1 balance to be able to kill off bacteria and viruses. The TH2 side is going to ramp up the mast cell activation side. It's going to disrupt the gut significantly. It's going to disrupt our entire hormonal system, the nervous system, huge disruptor for the nervous system. Then people get opened up to all of these secondary things or things that then start piling on top. People get Epstein Barr virus they can't get rid of, and they have all these elevated antibodies to Epstein Barr. I often wonder why there are so many people that get bitten by Lyme ridden ticks and they have Lyme in their bodies. You can detect it on blood testing. They never become symptomatic. And other people have significant Lyme symptoms. And what's happening there with the immune balance then sibo. Some people get rid of sibo like that. They can do one round of SIBO protocol and it's gone. I've had lots of people who've come in and they've done five, six, seven rounds of SIBO protocols and they just cannot get rid of it. Those are clues to me that we're missing something if we can't get rid of something. I've had people come in, have been on five years of IV antibiotics for Lyme. It's like you have to have eradicated most of the bacteria in your body at that point, but there still have these symptoms. What's missing here? And repeatedly, I found that this mold toxicity layer has been the missing piece. Either it hasn't been looked at or it was discounted. Because understandably, a lot of times people look at the levels on those lab tests and if they look low, they say, oh, mold toxicity is not an issue. And I've had a lot of people come in with these tests and said, I was told mold's not an issue. And I say, well, wait a minute, I'm going to disagree here. And then we go through and we address this mold layer and all of a sudden the immune system starts kicking in. They get on the other side of it and they can get rid of the sibo. Finally, they can start getting their hormones back in balance. They can clear the Epstein bar. I have yet that this may change in the future, but I've yet to have somebody who got on the other side of the mold protocol and had to do something specific at that point for Epstein Barr. Again, that may change, but that's just my practice so far with Lyme. I found that in the practice, the population, I see about 30, 40% of people actually clear Lyme on their own as they go through the mold protocol. And that was the true for me as well. I had Lyme and Bartonella Babesia on top of mold toxicity and Sibo, all these other things. And Epstein Barr and my body cleared the Epstein Barr and the Lyme and the co infections. I actually never had to treat it. But other people, if they do still have, they are so symptomatic on the other side of the mold issue. And you don't have this. It's like this wrecking ball hitting you in the face every day. And you get on the other side, you get this wrecking ball away, then the immune balance can start to be restored because we need that immune balance to kill these things off, like Lyme and Epstein Barr. Other things that you asked about. We do want to keep people comfortable as we go along. A lot of times I'll work with people to help restore their sleep to the level we can get it. They may not get it fully fixed, but what can we do to help them sleep again? That may mean relying on a lot of supports in the meantime, what can we do to get the hormones somewhat in balance, knowing that it's going to keep being this moving target until you get that wrecking ball out of the way? Absolutely. Got to work on the mast cells. There are some things like the heme dysregulation that we've dove into previously on podcasts and that many times people have to start working on that and calming that down before they can go a whole lot forward. But it won't go away until you get rid of what's causing it underneath, which a lot of time is mold, sometimes it's lime or metals. Another big factor for people moltoxis here, the salicylates. Not everybody has salicylate intolerance, but if they do, they generally have a lot of trouble with plant foods, especially colorful foods like berries and broccoli. These things are really high salicylate. They have trouble with herbal supplements. There are some ways that we can support that. I know that's a long, drawn out answer, but hopefully that hit what you were going after.

No, it's a. It's fantastic and it shows the complexity of this and also reinforces why it's important to explore that wrecking ball or the mold piece. Early on, I want to dig a little more into salicylates and when we Hear about mast cell activation, histamine. I think many people are becoming more aware of that. The salicylate intolerance piece, though, is a little less commonly discussed. I feel like it's another piece kind of like hypercoagulation that just isn't discussed a lot and maybe is a player for people. And for those people where it is, a player can be a big player. So why is it that we think certain people are intolerant to salicylates? I know aspirin is maybe another clue. If someone takes an aspirin and they react to it, that that's high in salicylates. Is there a direct connection to salicylate intolerance and mold illness? Like, what is it that makes us more sensitive? And then maybe just a couple of the ideas that you have for, for addressing or improving tolerance over time to the salicylates.

I would say now my practice are very sensitive people. I don't get the people with mold toxicity who can take six charcoals a day. That's not who comes in the door. So I always have to preface it by this is who I'm seeing in the population I'm seeing. I don't keep stats, but I'd say maybe about 25, 30% of people, maybe 20, or salicylate intolerant. And what can be going on there is salicylates are dependent on three major pathways that are detox pathways. One is glucuronidation, and we did a whole podcast on that as well. And glucuronidation is the primary phase 2 liver detox pathway for the majority of mycotoxins. A lot of times, glutathione is used. But glutathione isn't a heavy hitter in the phase two for molds. It will draw the tox out of the tissues for phase one. But think about how mycotoxins are going to be hogging up all of those enzymes that we need for this breakdown to happen. And another one is sulfation. And oftentimes you can get a clue into how that's working by looking at people's cholesterol levels and then their hormone levels, because cholesterol has to be sulfated to be converted into pregnenolone. And then down that hormonal cascade has to be sulfated to get converted to bile. So if we don't have enough of the sulfation enzymes to be able to do that, then we'll start to get some elevations in cholesterol. That's a Common pattern I'll see with people with some salicylate intolerance doesn't mean if cholesterol is high, people have salicylate issues. It's just saying that if people have salicylate issues, they're more likely to have some elevation there. If that pathway, that sulfation pathway is affected, then glycine is another factor for salicylates in the amino acid conjugation. And mold toxins do use some of all of those. So that's that connection with mold. There are probably a lot of other biochemical connections that I just don't know about or maybe haven't even been studied yet. And why do some people get salicylate intolerance and some don't? It may be genetic factors. It may be what else is happening in their body that's affecting that people then? Well, some of the symptoms people can get are significant ear ringing when they have salicylate. So come and go, as opposed to when the tinnitus ear ringing is that vagal irritation, then it'll usually be a little more steady, but it'll really kick up when they have something like aspirin or they have berries or they have herbs. Herbs. Most herbs, other than parsley and cilantro are very high in salicylates. Things like rosemary and basil and so on. Now, salicylates aren't bad. They have great protective factors in our bodies. And the reason aspirin works is because salicylates are pain relieving. But we can hit this threshold where we can't clear, can cause rashes, it can cause diarrhea, it can cause trouble breathing, tightness in the chest, asthma symptoms. One of the ways to work with this, that a lot of people can easily start, even if they're very sensitive, is to do bicarbonates, things like sodium and potassium bicarbonate. Sodium bicarbonate is baking soda, if somebody doesn't have high blood pressure, can do baking soda on an empty stomach. Bicarbonates help support these pathways that calm it down. They also support mast cells and some of the inflammation that gets triggered by the salicylate. Salicylates can trigger mast cells. They can do Epsom salt, foot soaks. And I have people who are really, really sensitive. They usually start way too high. And salicylates and oxalates often go together because they also use some of the similar pathways. Oxalates need that sulfation. So Epsom salts are magnesium sulfate, and that sulfate is going to help break down the salicylates it's also going to help push oxalates out of the body. So you've got to go slow. You don't want to push the oxalates too fast. So people actually start with a teaspoon and a foot soap. Many people start with a cup and that if somebody sensitive can send them over the edge way too much. And charcoal actually binds salicylates. So even if somebody's sensitive, they could start with some little sprinkles of charcoal.

If they tolerate it so much Gold in just that last answer. I mean, that was fantastic. So things then like Alka Seltzer Gold or Trisalts even could also be helpful. It sounds like calcium deglucarate potentially. In fact, the 1 glucuronidation assist formula that I know you formulated as one of my all time favorites, looking at maybe molybdenum for supporting sulfation. And then you talked about the importance of supporting all of these phase two pathways using glycine. I mean, so many things in there that can be really helpful for people. And it sounds like it really is kind of the bucket overflowing and that if mold is a major piece, if the mycotoxins are consuming a lot of our phase two detoxification capacity, that if we can start to address the mold, the mycotoxins create some buffer in the bucket that we then just by doing that oftentimes can become less sensitive to the salicylates or be able to process them better.

Correct, Exactly. If you get rid of. I always think about if you get rid of the wrecking ball, a lot of things are going to improve. I did want to just briefly touch on. I love the glucuronidation assist formula, but it's not the best for people who are salicylated tolerant because it has things like terastylabine and that's going to be higher salicylate. It has the rosemary. So if with people who are salicylate intolerant, I break those things out for them. Dandelion roots, low salicylate, calcium deglucarate and astaxanthin. Actually client had started that on her own and noticed benefits with astaxanthin.

I think the point you just made is another pearl that people should think about is oftentimes in more sensitive people, it's better to start with single ingredient products, not use these combinations initially. So totally agree. For me that product is great, but for other people it may be something that maybe is a later in the journey type tool rather than starting with it earlier. You've done a lot of work in the realm of genetics, in the realm of Bob Miller's work. I know you're certified in that realm as well. How much of a role do we think genes actually play in mold and mast cell versus our environment and environmental toxicants now essentially being negative epigenetic triggers that lead to unhealthy gene expression? So can we blame it on the genes or is it really more the epigenetic influencers?

Can I say yes, yes to all of the above? I think it's a combination because we're all getting hit by these toxins and these chemicals. But some of us are the canaries in the coal mine, and that's definitely me, and that's the majority of the people that I work with where what's happening environmentally is hitting us first, hitting us harder. So what somebody might be able to do blade plug ins and fragrance, you know, just perfumes and deodorants and all the fragrance in their shampoo, and it may not catch up with them for 20 years and that becomes maybe a cancer issue for them or some other major hormonal or immune dysregulation issue. But for those of us who are the canaries in the coal mine, it gets us right away. We're the people who we walk in. If I walk into a house and they have a Glade plug in, I can calm my system now and be okay for a short amount of time, but I can't be in there long term. So again, if I stare in the Airbnb and they have the Glade plug ins, first thing I do is go unplug them all and stick them in a drawer. And why is that? I think there is a genetic factor to it. Then the other piece of it is going to be things like early childhood traumas and what happened when the nervous system, immune system were developing. So, for example, I was kicked in the head by a horse when I was 9 and had a traumatic brain injury. It was quite significant. Not just the physical injury, but the ongoing neurological piece of it. I've had to work a lot on the PTSD of it. And I've had some pretty severe car accidents that I had to work on the PTSD side that affected my that nervous system immune axis. That's so important, how it's interwoven. I do think there are a lot of genes that are important. I think it's much bigger than we really realize. But if somebody has these genetics and they're in a completely Clean environment, they actually may be fine. I actually knew somebody with mastocytosis, which is a genetic mast cell disorder and it's one of the more severe mast cell disorders. She's the only person with mastocytosis I had ever met that did not have to do medications. But she lived out in the country away from any farms, so there were no pesticide spraying. She grew her own food, she had no EMFs in her home. She didn't bring in new clothes with formaldehyde, those kinds of things. She was chemical free and so that shifted her genetic expression. She had huge amounts of meditation and nervous system type work. We can always think about what also has a positive effect on our genetics. And I have a significant amount of mast cell genetic variants and detox genetic variants. I work on how do I improve the expression side of.

So I'm going to put a plug in here for you because I do think that your nervous system reboot course is fantastic. I took it when you first rolled it out. Now it seems like maybe it was a couple of years ago when that first came out and I think it's great. That really gets into all of the tools that you can use to work on the nervous system. And I do think that setting the stage for healing requires calming down the nervous system. This is another one of those things. Just like mold is a wrecking ball, so is being in sympathetic dominance and keeping the nervous system constantly in a hyper vigilant, overreactive type state. I'll put the link to that in the show notes, but I think that's a great resource for people. We talk a lot about mycotoxins as a major factor, a major contributor to poor health. Many people talk about heavy metals. My personal observation and opinion is that chemicals and pesticides are probably more of an issue than heavy metals for many people. Maybe some of that's because we think about metals and so we have binders and we do chlorella. We do other things maybe that are helping there, but it doesn't seem to me like there's been as much focus on the incorporation of detoxification strategies for chemicals and pesticides and things of that nature. I'm wondering if you find the chemical pesticide detoxification something that's important in working with your client population.

That's a great question. And before I dive in there, thank you for the plug on the course and I just wanted to share briefly why that's so critical because it's easy to think I'm not stressed or I don't have nervous system issues. But I have yet to meet somebody who didn't have some kind of limbic or vagal dysregulation, who has chronic health issues. And their mast cells at every nerve ending and the immune system and nervous system are interwoven. Also the nervous system, the state of the nervous system is going to govern whether our body will allow us to detox. And if people are sensitive, it's absolutely critical. It's at least 50% of the healing process.

I 100% resonate with that as well. I mean, limbic system, vagal nerve, you know, those were all areas that I needed to do a lot of work. And I think we need to do ongoing work. Right. That that work is never done. It's a, it becomes part of our daily routine lifestyle, just kind of maintaining the state of our nervous system with all the things we deal with every day.

Absolutely. And it's, it's more than just finding a meditation video on YouTube. And I have a lot of people come in, they're like, well, I'm doing these binaural beats on YouTube and I do this breathing practice and I go to yoga. I'm like, that is great. Absolutely, keep doing those. But in what we're doing and where you want to go, we specifically have to work on that limbic and that vagal nerve. And there's very particular programs that help with that. But general yoga breathing practices, your general breathing practices or videos on YouTube aren't going to reboot it. I just want to really encourage people. That's often a missing piece going to the chemical and pesticide. I do check everyone for pesticide and different types of chemicals in their system. I like using the Great Plains, the GPL talks. And what I'm looking for is how much exposure are they getting, particularly through the air, the water and their lifestyle. So the first thing I always do is how do we get rid of the triggers? And I had somebody who they. She had a very, very high level of acrolein, which is quite toxic and it comes from burning things. So I don't work with very many smokers, but people who are smokers will have high levels of that. But we figured out for her she wasn't a smoker. It was coming from her wood burning stove. Then I started realizing these other high levels of acrolene that I was seeing on the west coast were coming from these fires that people were exposed to the smoke all summer long. And there's so much that shows up in our water. I've even had people come in from Austria and the Netherlands and all kinds of European countries where they work hard to have clean public water. And there is no clean public water anymore. They're still having, even in those European countries, these chemicals show up for them. So having a really good water filter, having a really good, some air filtration for most people is very helpful for their health. Something that's easy to overlook. Then we recheck and see where those levels are. A lot of times they'll clear out if people are drinking enough water. Because these are water soluble, they're not fat solubles like the mold toxins or the heavy metals. So they often will clear on their own. If not, things like humic and fulvic acid can help. And those are nice binders for those.

We have known for many years that mold is a small part of the toxic soup that's found in water damaged buildings. Testing for mold, I think has really become kind of a surrogate marker for water damaged building sickness rather than mold illness. And so I think there's become a little bit of a focus on mold illness. But what we really are looking at is something much bigger than that. And so more recently there has been the suggestion that mold and mycotoxins may represent a smaller piece of the puzzle than we originally thought and that a bacteria called actinomycetes maybe is playing a significant role. And so I'm wondering, do you have your clients test for actinos? How commonly do you find them? And do you maybe have some clients where mold doesn't appear to be an issue, but maybe the water damage building kind of presented more with this bacterial overgrowth? And then if that is present, does that change your treatment approach at all?

I'm really glad you asked this. It's a great question and it's something that we're not really talking about again. So we focus on mold because that's easier to test for. But when we've got water damaged building, we have all kinds of other stuff growing the environment too. We've got bacteria that can produce different types of toxins that can be just as toxic. And I do have my clients do environmental mold tests for actinomycetes as well. I have them do both the ERMI for the mold and add on the actinomycetes. I have had a few cases where I just intuitively knew somebody had mold exposure in their home because of how stuck they were and sensitive and nothing was working. And they'd had mold inspectors come out. This person had had three different mold inspectors come out had. Had ran mold plates, nothing had shown up. Had run two ERMI test, nothing had shown up. And I on a hunch said, let's look at this actinomycetes. This was the first time I'd looked at it about three years ago. And it showed up on there on the actinomycetes. And that only grows in water damage. So if there's water damage, that's going to grow the actinomycetes. There's also mold. You're just not picking it up on those tests. And it was found to be under the carpet. That's why the mold wasn't showing up, because the spores were all under the carpet. I think that is helpful. I don't know of any way to test our bodies yet for these biotoxins from the actinomycetes. I'd love to know if anybody does know how to do that. But I found that what we're doing for the mold toxicity seems to come clear it in people. And it doesn't change the protocol going forward, but it helps us locate the environmental issues for sure.

I'm going to throw out several questions now around cell danger response and then just let you kind of run with it for a couple of minutes. And so wondering, what have you observed in regards to the cell danger response in your clients? Are the majority of your clients stuck in one of the cell danger response phases like CDR1? Is there something specific that you do to kind of move them through those stages or phases of the cell danger response? And then I want to hear a little bit about some of the things that maybe we might think are good things to do. But if we're kind of in this cell danger response, that can potentially backfire.

Yeah. So I know your listeners are familiar with the cell danger response because you've done some great podcasts on this. And for anybody who that might be new, just very briefly, and this will only barely scratch the surface, but cell danger response is a biochemical process our bodies go through. When we've reached we've crossed a threshold of what our bodies can keep up with from a toxic burden, from a viral or bacterial pathogen burden or chronic stress, trauma or injury. Any of those can push us into this, what's called cell danger response. And then we get this whole cascade of biochemical changes that actually changes our methylation process. The cell membranes harden, our bodies increase histamine, increase mast cell activation, decreased vitamin D production. All of that's actually protective, starts to slow down and in some people dramatically impacts the heme pathway can cause that subclinical periphery in some people. But we have to remember that this was a survival mechanism. Cell membranes harden to keep viruses and bacteria from getting in and infecting the cells. It's keeping somebody alive. And with the sensitive population, people are stuck in that cell danger response. What's happening with these sensitivities or where people just can't seem to detox? If we can't detox, if we're a poor detoxifier that's also protective. Our bodies want to put the toxins into the tissues so they're not circulating in the bloodstream. Another thing that happens is this heavy metal sequestering into the tissues again, so it's not circulating. So that's where we get these heavy metals building. And the vast majority of people I work with, I don't know that I've. I mean, I maybe worked with less than 10 people that weren't stuck in cell danger response. But how, how to support them, first of all, is we actually have to communicate down to the cellular level that the body is safe again to start to turn these pathways back on and be able to detox. And that may sound bizarre, like, how do you do that? One of the biggest ways that you do that is you get out of toxic exposures, you get out of toxic relationships and situations, and then you get out of anything else that might be harmful to you. You get out of the chemical exposures. That's why I look for the chemicals. Because if we can get the chemical load down, then it's going to help the body feel safer. And our bodies are monitoring our nervous system and our mast cells are monitoring everything we come into contact with. So every molecule of air that we breathe in and chemicals that we breathe in, every piece of food that we eat, all of that's being sensed and monitored. And then on the relational side, in terms of toxic relationships, or sometimes people have to settle their ptsd. And I don't recommend that people go and do go back to their past when they're dealing with these issues and chronically ill, because your limbic system doesn't know the difference between telling you this trauma story again, or I'm working on my trauma today, or I'm back in it and it's happening again. So that can actually worsen people when they're going back to the trauma work when they're chronically ill. You got to get stronger, get your body healthier, and then you can do that. But there are ways to settle PTSD without going back to the event, all of that and doing a lot of nervous system work, limbic and vagal communicates down to this biochemical level that we're safe enough now to start to turn these things back on and start to heal. I support them with that nervous system work, support them with the mast cell calming as well. Get that settled down. Then you ask what may not be a good option or can backfire. This is where some people do just great with Things like methyl B12 and methyl folate and they feel amazing, they feel really good with phosphatidylcholine. But other people, if they're stuck in that cell, danger response, even little bits of methylfolate, methyl B12 can backfire because we're pushing against where they are in that cell. Danger response, we're trying to turn that methylation process back on before the body is ready. Some people do terribly with phosphatidylcholine early in and that can be because you're trying to soften the cell membrane and push the toxins off the cell membrane while your body is intentionally hardening that to protect you. And same thing with trying to do. Some people do fine with heavy metal detox, but some people, it's terrible. And one of the first things when I was chronically ill, somebody tried for me was a heavy metal chelation, IV chelation. And it made sense and it was what she knew to do and it worked for so many other people. But I felt like I had acid coming out of every pore. It was one of the worst experiences of my life. And it went on for two weeks. And that again is because I had too much toxin load. I couldn't handle it. I just couldn't handle anything else being dumped into my bloodstream. That's why this order of operations is so important to be really thinking about what order we're doing things in, why we're doing them and the right timing swear of a lot of people, they come in, they're like, why aren't we doing CoQ10 yet? That's the mitochondria support. Well, we're not ready, not there yet. We're going to get to that down the road, but it may backfire. That said, as practitioners and notes, the same for you, we have to either err on being too cautious or too aggressive. And in this population that I work with, and you work with a lot of sensitive people, I'm going to always err on being a little more cautious than to take the risk of setting somebody back for a couple months because we pushed too hard or we pushed against the.

Yeah. And I think to your point, what we're sometimes doing is we're taking our human brain and we're trying to outsmart the innate intelligence of the body. Right. The body is doing what it knows to do to protect us at that point in time. And we're trying to do exactly the opposite. And that's where we get into these, these problems. And so I like your approach of being very sensitive, being very cautious in this realm. Even things like the limbic system work with DNRs. That's another area I think it's really important for people to understand. Certainly there are some people early on that benefit from doing some DNRs so that they can tolerate more supplements, other interventions. But the real gains that you get from something like DNRs. That program is still built on a platform of environmental awareness. It is not the case that Annie Hopper would say, well, if you're living in a moldy house, just start doing DNRS and don't worry about your mold. Right. Her program is built on the fact that you are doing other things to make the environment also supportive of your healing. I think, sadly, that's one of the places where the DNRS message has gotten a little confused in the community where people think that, oh, she's just saying if I just do DNRs, everything's going to be fine and I don't need to do other things like fix the mold in your environment. And that's not the case. So I think that's an important piece for people to understand. So you've created this eight step approach to mold that includes identifying the mycotoxins through testing the nervous system support, low histamine, potentially low lectin diets, improving elimination with a focus on hydration, addressing constipation, supporting the mast cells using these targeted binders, while we're also supporting detoxification and then potentially incorporating tools for colonization and biofilms later in the process. So let's talk about some of these areas. Do you find that people need to calm the nervous system tonify the vagus nerve, start the limbic system, work to increase tolerance to your treatment, Knowing that the bulk of that work, like we just talked about, really still has to be done on this environmental awareness platform? And what are maybe some of the clues that you look for to suggest that a client really would benefit from work in this area? What are some of your favorite tools beyond maybe DNRs?

I do recommend that all of my clients do some nervous System work limbic and vagal. And I love for the limbic side, either DNRs or Gupta program. And then on the vagal side, there's so many options. And that's the thing is to hone that to what works for people. And that's what I built in that nervous system course is a roadmap. People can step themselves through and go, okay, I have this many nervous system symptoms. I need a limbic program and I need this many vagal programs and so on. But what I'm looking for is sensitivities. Are there food sensitivities? A lot of people think that these food sensitivities are immunoglobulins or histamines or things like that. And those may be in there. But a lot of our food sensitivities are the nervous system just getting hypervigilant. And then because they're muscles at every nerve ending, the nervous system is constantly communicating the muscles back to the nervous system and they fire off of each other. So look for sensitivities to that, to chemicals. I look for things like somebody who is going to startle if you stood behind them and said, hey, are they going to jump a little bit? There's all kinds of clues like how the uvula, if the soft palate will go up and down when somebody says, ah, ah, ah, ah. And then there are clues that I look for when I'm on with them. And I'm looking for things like the tone of their voice and how constricted is their throat or relaxed, how soft are their eyes, how soft is their face. A lot of people are quite tense and rigid and that's an indication of the nervous system. Or they talk with their, you know, their throat is really tight and like this. And so I look for any of that because as the nervous system changes, you get these very visual clues in somebody and auditory clues about their voice, how do they move, how are they talking about things, how anxious are they about starting? Things that are quite easy and slow and simple. And then this eight step approach, if somebody's sensitive, this order is so critical. I just really want to encourage people. Some of my clients come in, they're like, when am I going to start binders? When we're going to start detoxing. And I want people to, they usually come in flaring and they're pretty intense in their symptoms. So when you start detoxing, you're going to get some ups and downs. I want to, I don't want people having ups and downs when they're already at the top of what they can handle. Just want to bring this down a few notches. With the nervous system work and the mast cell supports, I'm looking for it to come down to a level where then the up and down waves with the detox is much easier for them and more tolerant for.

So then we move on to removing the source of the exposure as an early step. Wondering if you find that most clients can remediate or do you find the majority of people need to move to really move their healing forward? Do you find that fogging solutions work or do we really need to get at the source of the mold as the primary effort there?

That's a great question. And it's very easy for people to begin become, I'm going to say, traumatized with the environmental mold. I mean, our home is supposed to be a place of safety. And then we find out, oh, it's not safe. But I do find in my practice about 99% of people can remediate. It's rare that somebody moves. And usually the only time they move would be they're in an apartment building in the management's not going to do anything to improve that environment for them or they live in an older home and. Or it's just the extent of the mold is so much it's going to cost more to remediate than to move. That makes sense to move, but most people remediate.

All right, so then let's talk about the next piece here, which is a low histamine low lectin diet trial. I think many people are familiar with low histamine to reduce inflammation. That can really help with symptoms. What are some of the maybe more commonly missed high histamine foods? And then in your experience with your clients, how much of a role do lectins really play?

Histamines are one. I almost hate to say this, but most of the high. Most of the histamine lists online have a lot of errors in them. They say things like, well, walnuts are fine, but walnuts are histamine liberators. Or they'll allow fresh fish. But fresh fish, if it's been sitting in the meat counter, is one of the highest histamine foods you can get. There's actually something called scromboid poisoning that is histamine poisoning that comes from fish that has been sitting for too long and fish that has to be frozen on the boat. So that's a common one. I never order fish at a restaurant unless my histamine bucket is quite low. And I'm going to take about 10 to 12 DAOs. Then I might have fish or seafood at a restaurant that's a common one. Make sure if you're histamine sensitive, you're using really well researched list. We have a good one. Dr. Janus Joneja is really good. There's a list called the Sigi list. S I G H I. It's a Swiss list. Healing histamine. Really good information there. Those are great sources. Other commonly missed are leftovers. People don't realize how quickly histamine builds in leftovers and food from the bacteria. Beef and bison are generally aged if you can get them unaged and frozen after slaughter. But the meat in general is a big one for people. People are probably commonly aware of things like the strawberries, the pineapple and so on. Then the lectins that I think plays a bigger role than most people realize. But a lot of people are not interested tackling it. Just working on lower histamine for some people is enough. So when I'm working with people, I'm taking into account all kinds of factors including what's their lifestyle, how many kids are they cooking for, what can they take on right now. And lectins are plant proteins that are going to be in the types of fruits and vegetables that are found naturally that were found in North America. These are your nightshades, like your tomatoes, your peppers, your potatoes, your beans and legumes, squashes, pumpkin, these all have lectins. Most of the grains, quinoa is a seed, but also wheat, corn, rice. White rice is lower, but brown rice, it can definitely play a role when we have cardiovascular issues, autoimmunity, GI issues. So I might encourage somebody to do a low lectin trial. It's a big deal for me. I get joint burning and pain with lectins. Other people don't notice anything. They don't know exactly outside of that what's what. But we do know those lectins also trigger the toll like receptor that I talked about before on the mast cells. And I think it's more of an issue in mold toxicity may improve when people get the mold toxicity handled.

So in your steps before we get into binders and more targeted detoxification, we really want to focus on hydration and resolving constipation. Both of those so critical. What are your favorite hydration and constipation resolving strategies?

It's amazing to me, I ask everyone who comes in the practice how much water are they drinking? And many of my clients are actually quite health savvy like your listeners, they know a lot. They're already gluten free, they're already dairy free. Most of them aren't eating corn. And then I'll say, well, how much water are you drinking? And let's say they weigh 140 pounds and they're getting in about 30 or 40 ounces of water a day. So hydration for me is really filtered, clean, good water can be herbal teas. Anything that's not caffeinated counts and half of our body weight in ounces of water. So if somebody weighs 140 pounds, you're looking at 70 ounces of water. That's my big one. For the hydration. I. I would love to be able to use trace mineral drops and things like that. But a lot of my clients don't tolerate those early in when they do, I think that's a great way of improving hydration. And then later on when you can address that cell membrane, that's great at helping the hydration actually get into the cells on the constipation side. That's very common. Much more common in the people I work with than loose stools. There's the obvious. Magnesium can be very helpful in sensitive people. I actually have them start with magnesium oxide and I've gotten a lot of flack for that from other practitioners. We're on the same team. And why would you do magnesium oxide? It's not absorbed.

That's why.

Exactly. That's why. Because they're really sensitive and they're not tolerating magnesium getting into their bloodstream. And that's the one magnesium they can tolerate. And it works for constipation. Magnesium citrates higher histamine in mast cell population. Some people do fine with it, but I don't tend to use it because it's more likely to be triggering things like those vagal nerve stimulations. Both from a signaling perspective. I love brain tap. It's like safe and sound protocol. The vagal exercises, osteopathic cranial work, any of these things, frequency specific microcurrent that you got me into, these things can help. Then there's a product called Parasym plus that's been very helpful for motility. It's fairly simple. There's not a whole lot in it. It doesn't work for salicylate intolerance, but it improves the vagal tone and can help. Those are some of my go tos along with the hydration fibers can help. There's lots of things people can do.

Beautiful. Next step is to stabilize the mast cells before we start getting into binders. And we could do a whole podcast. That's your wheelhouse. But what are some of the maybe top two or three or four interventions that you're finding most consistently helpful for your clients in terms of stabilizing mast cells?

Some of my favorites are perilla seed extract, the really good mast cell support, the bicarbonates like the Trisolt you mentioned, or just baking soda if the blood pressure's not high. Potassium bicarbonate, that's one of my favorites. And quercetin, if people don't have the salicylate intolerance. I love a form called ISO quercetren because it's 18 times more bioavailable than regular quercetin. And people who are sensitive often will do better on that form because they don't have to take that high amounts. Each capsule is 33 milligrams, but you're getting a great effect. Most of my clients who are very ill do end up getting through their prescriber, some very low levels of mast cell stabilizing medications. And I used to be very opposed to this if we could at all avoid it. And what I've learned is in the mycotoxin detox, people get through so much faster, so much better. They're easy to come off. And those can be things like famotidine. That's generic for Pepcid. Ketotifen works for a lot of people at low, low dose, which would be more like 0.1mg or 0.25mg and an H1 blocker. If somebody could tolerate something like Claritin or Allegra, sometimes they have to get Claritin or Zyzole as a compound if they have trouble with those inactive ingredients.

Now we talk about binders. Back in episode 122, we talked about precision binders. Wondering if that's still the general strategy that you use for figuring out the right binder for the right client. What are some of your favorite tools there? And then if someone is still constipated, do they need to hold on the introduction of those binders? What if they maybe can't tolerate the binders? So talk to us a little about your current binder strategies.

Well, we did a full reboot of the binders and went back to the research again, and I put that in the mold course. But some of my favorites, I start people usually with activated charcoal because most people can tolerate it and it's gentler. But I have People, sensitive people. I never have them start with a whole capsule of something. If we can get around it, have them do sprinkles. And for me, sprinkles mean a few granules on food or in water, just a tiny, tiny bit. Charcoal works for aflatoxin, works for the eniatin. B seems to work for chattaglobacin, works for ochratoxin, steric metocystin, trichothecenes. So it works for a good number. Doesn't get xerola known, doesn't get gliotoxin. From the research we found, I like bentonite clay. It works for most of the mold toxins. I just recently found some research evidence that it probably works for ochratoxin, but it's stronger. I have people start with again, tiny sprinkles. Or if they're using the Yerba Prima liquid, do a little drop tip on bentonite clay and chlorella. Don't just buy anything. Those are easily can. Can contain toxins. So the bentonite clay, the mediclay is a good brand. The Yerba Prima is a good brand. You might have some others that you know are good. Then the Chlorella Biopure has really clean chlorella. I use a company sometimes called Lidkey L I D T K E. But you've got to make sure that chlorella was grown indoors. And sometimes I've seen people get in a lot of trouble getting chlorella from a health food store. And it was grown outdoors. And then it can contain mercury. People often will do fiber called Propylmann and that's in products like there's one called Colon Protect. There's a couple others. Zymogen makes one. Saccharomyces boulardi is one of my favorites. Well, call Zeolite and then L Rhamnosis. And they all have these different targeting because these chemical structures of the mycotoxins are quite complex. And some of them are weaker binders and some of them are stronger. And if you can really target all of the binders, if you tolerate them for that mycotoxin, you're going to clear much faster and do much better than if you. I don't see anybody clear mycotoxins just doing one or two binders, unfortunately.

I love that you can tell your depth of knowledge with the binders is so deep that when you talk about each binder it's almost like you're talking about your children and their personalities and all of the details. So another area that you get into in your steps, then Is exploring the phase two detoxification pathways. Supporting detoxification, opening the drainage pathways to support extract excretion of toxins, optimizing our inherent ability to detoxify. Talk to us about a few of your favorite tools for supporting detoxification and drainage more frequently.

Well, drainage definitely the lymph supports, things like. And we had you on my Facebook live and you talked about so much information on drainage. So people should watch your talk on that. You're really an expert there on the drainage. Things like some manual lymphatic drainage movement, castor oil packs. Those are all very helpful if people can tolerate it, even some massage. But a lot of mast cell people don't do well with massage in the phase two pathways. My favorite supports are the glucuronidation supports. If somebody like we talked about before has salicylate intolerance, we'll do calcium deglucarate. We'll do some dandelion root extract, will do some astaxanthin. If they can tolerate it. Then the glucuronidation assist. It was formulated for glucuronidation support. The thing with glucuronidation is some of the herbals upregulate. There's 13 glucuronidation enzymes. And the research showed some of the herbals will upregulate, some will downregulate it. We pick the herbals that will support upregulation of gluconidation across the board. And the others, other than what we just mentioned were rosemary, pterostilibine and ellagic acid are helpful for that.

In our last few minutes together, let's talk a little bit about the colonization and biofilm piece. How do you determine if a client is colonized and potentially needs some support? And then what are your favorite tools for fungal colonization? And then do you always need to get into the biofilms or do you find that for some people that's not necessary? How do you approach that as well, once you've addressed the colonization or while you're addressing colonization again, for people who.

Aren'T familiar with this term, colonization is where you can breathe in or swallow the spores. They can't even colonize in the ears. I didn't mention that before. Colonizing. The vaginal canal, where it's actually growing, can grow on the skin. And some ways to figure this out. One is to have people do the microbial organic acid test or just a full organic acid test. Either way. And there are some markers on there for aspergillus and Fusarium colonization, but that's not fully comprehensive, so it can miss it. It only has a few markers on there that can show that kind of colonization. But you may not have those metabolites that it's testing. And there's no way to test for some of these other ways of colonization. But about 70% of the adults that I work with have mold colonization. About 30% of the children, though it's less common in children, they've had less exposures. They haven't been hit multiple times. One of the other ways to tell is if somebody is. They get the binders on board. They do, you know, they've stuffed themselves through. So they do the nervous system, they do the mast cell work. They get the binders on board. They're targeted for what they're doing. They've done those for about six months. And they do a little of this phase two detox support. They do some drainage, and they're feeling remarkably better, just significantly better. Then they're probably not colonized. And we just finish out and, you know, they don't go on. But if somebody gets there and maybe has some improvements, sometimes they don't have any improvements. At that point, we have to remember that that mold growing inside us can be releasing all kinds of mold toxins. So even if we're in a completely clear environment, we've become internally a mycotoxin factory. And then if there's mold allergy, that's a whole nother layer, and the immune system's reacting to the mold growing inside. So then we do have to go on and do the antifungals. There are herbals that are helpful. Holy basil is very gentle. Things like garlic. There are combo formulas like candobactin. It's been helpful. There's the bioseedin. That's helpful, although in the sense of population, they sometimes can't do that bigger blend. Most of my clients do work with their prescriber. I'm not a prescriber. I just do consulting. But they work with their prescriber to get some prescription antifungals. Things like amphotericin B, as an oral form is not absorbed. It's not concerning like the IV form. But a lot of practitioners aren't familiar with the oral form. They get nervous about doing it orally because the IV form is quite toxic, but it's not absorbed. It's like nystatin. It's not well absorbed, and it usually helps with the gut. It's not systemic. Things like Sporonox sometimes are helpful. For people if it seems more systemic and those are some of the more common ones. If there's candida, Nystatin and diflocan are often used.

And then how commonly do you feel like you do Also then need to address biofilms.

If they have the colonization, then I'll do some really gentle biofilm supports. I may start them with something easy like lumbrokinase. I love Holozyme is my favorite enzyme and that can be done for biofilm as well. And start really gently and then as they get stronger, they might do something like interphase.

Beautiful. Yeah. You introduced me to Stephen Wright and his products I think are fantastic as well. So one wrap up question before we then talk about the course and then get to my final question because I know you have clients to get to. What does recovery look like for clients? Can most people get back to to a normal life? Do they need to always be careful about mold exposures? And then what is the average recovery time? What percentage of people do see improvement in their health following this program that you've put together?

Those are great questions. I'm so glad you asked them. Recovery usually is quite significant for people. I have had everywhere from people who were just brain fogged, run down, they were, were achy, they were tired, their guts were a mess. They were able to get on the other side of it and really feel great. I remember one person in particular got back to running marathons, which was one of her loves. I've also had a lot of people who were significantly affected. I remember a young woman who was having 20 seizures a day. She was in a wheelchair. She could not make full sentences. She could not handle more than 15 minutes of listening to words. And she wanted to go to college. She was able to get the seizures entirely stopped. Out of the wheelchair, speaking, talking, communicating cognitively. At her age, which was early 20s, and able to go back to college. There's a lot that people can do. It's not everything for Everybody. Sometimes it's 100% of the puzzle pieces, sometimes it's 80%. Sometimes people have other things they have to go on and handle, like Lyme or they may have. I've had this significant neck injury that was affecting my nervous system and my cerebral spinal fluid drainage that I had to get fixed and addressed. So there's others, you know, for some people, other pieces. But it's usually a game changer for people. Big game changer. And many people fully recover, I would say, I mean percentage of people that are successful. I'd Say the vast majority, I don't keep stats. But the big linchpins on whether people are going to recover aren't actually the program itself. It's usually whether they can get out of environmental mold and they're diligent and they do that. How much do they attend to and how much do they put into working on their nervous system and have they had significant traumas and are they going to do what it takes to calm down? The PTSD side of that, I find that those are the big pieces. If people, as far as do people need to be careful about mold exposures? It depends on the mold allergy. And they can use things like ldi. I think you've covered that on here to help with the mold allergy. And then we don't want to get sick again. But I did have to rent an Airbnb in Florida to get some of my neck issues handled with procedures. I had to get down there. I was down there twice and there was mold in there. I was more inflamed after the second trip, but I did fine. I did it. But I'm not going to choose to go someplace that's super wet like that if I don't have to.

So many good things in this conversation. This is one I'm definitely going to go back and listen to and take some notes from. This is a tip of the iceberg of all the information you put together in your Mast Cell 360 Precision Mold Masterclass. Super excited about that. I know you have a discount offer for people that are listening to this show and just want you to tell people a little bit about the course and what they can expect to learn from it.

Thank you so much. This is one of my children. I worked really on this for about three years and laid out step by step what sensitive people, people with mast cell activation, people who are getting stuck and they're just having trouble detoxing. How to step yourself through step by step in this eight step process. It's a big course. This is not a little course. It's going to take several weeks to a few months for people to get through. We had a lot of requests for two levels, so we made it in two levels. One's the basic level. It's for people who are real beginners. They don't know the stuff. They don't know where to start. They get overwhelmed easily. It's about four hours of materials. There's a workbook that you fill out as you go along to help you get your stuff organized and it teaches you how to customize that program for what you have going on. Then I have an advanced level that's for more like your listeners, people who are much more savvy. They know some things about themselves. They're looking for breakfast breakthrough. They understand some things about how these pieces work together. They're podcast listeners. They love the summits and things like that. And that has over nine hours of material, lots of in depth information, stuff that I've never released. Way more detailed than what we went into here today. Also has a workbook to step yourself through. A lot of practitioners also do that course and we're doing 10% off for your listeners. It's a special for you. And so I believe your coupon code is better health.

My last question, what are some of the key things that you do on a daily basis in support of your own health?

Well, I have my frequency specific microcurrent hooked up right now that you got me involved in. I do something for my nervous system every day and I do some limbic work and then I do something for my vagal nerve every day. Might be brain tap, might be safe and sound protocol. One of the biggest things that I've really integrated this year, Scott, is spending some time in nature every day. And I'm blessed to have this beautiful woods behind her home. And I go back there and sit and listen. I'm not just sitting, but I'm listening to nature that's deeply calming on a way that some of the other nervous system supports don't actually get to. They do other things and I'm slowing down. I'm actually now that the mold course is out, I'm slowing down and that's helping my health a lot as well too.

Beth, this is such a great conversation. I admire you. I respect you and your work. I just, just have so much love and appreciation for everything that you do. You really do make a difference in the world and in this population of people that are really struggling with these conditions to really help minimize their struggle, minimize their suffering and just really honor and respect you so much. So thank you.

Thank you. You make me tear up. You're one of my favorite people and your podcast has changed my life. So I appreciate you having me on.

To learn more about Today's guests, visit mastcell360.com that's Mast cell360.com Masscell360.com thanks for listening to today's episode. If you're enjoying the show, please leave a positive rating or review as doing so will help the show reach a broader audience. To follow me on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or MeWe, you can find me the there as Better Health Guy. To support the show, please visit betterhealthguy.com donate to be added to my newsletter, please visit betterhealthguy.Com newsletters this and other shows can be found on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, and Spotify.

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