Mold and the Epidemic in Pediatric Health

For every case of panz and pandas that I've seen, at least one in two have been mold toxicity.

Hello, everyone. My name is Kendra Seymour, and I want to welcome you back to the 2023 Change the Year Foundation Summit. Today I'm joined by Dr. Pejman Kadirai, and he's going to be talking to us about the mold epidemic in pediatric health. Now, this is a topic that's near and dear to me because it was actually my children's declining health that first started us down this path to understanding how our environment can really impact our health. And I have met thousands of parents across the country, across the world, who have found themselves asking some of these same questions about if their environment, if their home, if their children's school is playing a part in what they're seeing, in the health of their loved ones. So thank you so much for joining us today.

Oh, my pleasure. My pleasure. Thank you for having me. And thank you for creating this space where we can share information and hopefully help a lot of people figure out what's going on and be healthier.

Absolutely. But I know they want to hear from you and not from me, so I'm just going to let you jump right into it, because our biggest challenge today would be sticking to the timeframe because there's so much good information you have.

All right, let's do it. Let's do it. Let's get this up. So how do mycotoxins and molds impact children? And what has been my experience, and just as a quick backdrop, really, I had no idea 5 years ago how much mold toxicity would be impactful to the lives and health of the children that I serve. And over the last five years, my eyes have been opened so much that really, out of necessity, I've learned to become at least semi competent in understanding mold and mold toxicity. And everything you see over here has really been a journey to better understand why children struggle with the challenges they do. And, you know, one of the fundamental things that I see and what I share with families is that mold toxins ultimately create a space, a physiological space, where children just don't feel well. And whether you look at it from the angle of anxiety or ADHD or these kids that are just tired, these kids that are just irritable, and they're constantly having meltdowns, and they're constantly reacting. The kids that don't grow, all of these are ultimately a potential sign that there's mycotoxin exposure. And in my experience, a disturbingly large amount of what we Call adhd, possibly autism, for sure. Pans and pandas. For every case of pans and pandas that I've seen, at least one in two have been mold toxicity. So these kids with intense anxiety, neuroinflammation, weird physical findings where they're urinating all the time, their sleep is disrupted, their appetites are disrupted. I have seen mold toxicity do all of this. You show me a child that has severe allergies, the kids that end up in the emergency room with asthma exacerbation, and at least one out of two times I'll show you a kid that has had exposure to mycotoxins driving that. So this conversation isn't just a tiny little conversation. As a pediatrician, it has me terrified because. Not just because of what's happening, but how often we're missing it and how much we can do to prevent this if we get smart enough to understand these linkages and then understand how to mitigate the exposure. This is a published study from about 20 years ago now that did show that there is a correlation between some of the things that we see in children and mold toxicity. So this isn't just my observations. There is actual published scientific information out there. And while we're not going to touch on all of these things, what I want to highlight over here is how many physiological system systems in children get disrupted. Because it's not just one thing. It's not just the gastrointestinal tract, it's not just the immune system, it's not just the micro mitochondria. Multiple systems get hit at the same time. And part of what is so concerning to be about mycotoxins is that they essentially cause dysregulation in multiple areas at the same time, which is why they're so capable of causing disease states that we see. So how common is it? Well, I'm sure some of this is already news to you or not news to you. It's very common, right? Mycotoxin exposure isn't something rare. If you live in an arid place like California, at least one in ten homes have this. If you are living in other regions where humidity levels are higher, these rates climb up to potentially 40, 50%. If you're someone who is lived in an area that has been stricken by flooding, all of a sudden those rates go through the roof with one in five homes having severe contamination. And this is part of, you know, these are the things that have me stay up at night thinking how many poor kids, how many poor families are living in mold? And they just have no idea. And there are studies that have come out that suggest that in areas that are flooded, like part of Louisiana, that rates of autism actually go up two to threefold in. In those regions that are affected by flooding. So this conversation is expansive, and it's significant. And the more we talk about it, the more we learn about it, hopefully, the more we can do to actually prevent it and treat it. How does it happen? Really, really simple. Again, I'm sure all of this has been discussed. You add water to drywall, you get mold. Drywall. The paper that is lining the drywall has mold spores embedded in it. It comes from trees. Trees have spores. You add water to spores, you grow, they grow, they get moldy. But it's not just the environment, right? You also have mold toxins coming in through the food supply. So essentially, you have some amount of burden that is there in the body, and then you add to that the environmental exposure, and that's when problems arise. This is the part that really bothers me because, you know, if this was. If these mycotoxins just would kind of flow through us and it wasn't a big deal, then I probably wouldn't be here. Mycotoxins have been shown to go through the placenta. Mycotoxins have been shown to concentrate in the breast milk. And as a pediatrician, what I lose sleep over is what happens to that poor infant, that poor fetus that hasn't even been born, where they are exposed to these mycotoxins in utero, as their organ systems are developing, as their immune system is priming itself, as their gastrointestinal tract is developing, as their microbiome starts forming, once they are born, what happens as all of these key systems start developing and maturing? But then there's this mycotoxin sitting there either already in their system in utero, and now this baby is born. And now every time mom comes to breastfeed, passing a dose of mycotoxins to the baby. We don't have the answers to this. But as you start thinking about what it can do, you realize how significant this conversation becomes. And the reality in today's world is I. I wish it was just, you know, we had mycotoxins, and that was the end of the story. If that was the case, the conversation would be relatively more simple. The reality is we are all exposed to plastics. We're all exposed to chemicals. We're all exposed to pesticides. Like, even if you eat organic foods, you're still getting exposed to some amount of pesticide. And cumulatively, when you add all of these exposures and you add the mycotoxins that happen in utero and in the womb, and now the baby is born into a moldy environment, you get to a place where you start scratching your head. You're like, I actually have no idea. We actually have no idea what happens. What I can tell you from my observations in the research and studies that I have done is that this exposure is probably more significant than we realize. And again, potentially upwards of half of what we call autism, in my experience. A significant percent of adhd, a significant percent of pans and pandas failure to thrive. Other diseases may be partially explained, if not fully explained by this conversation. And once these kids, you have to think about kids in their physiological state, in the sense that you've got this tiny little body that is barely able to detoxify, right? Their microbiome is forming. And when all of this exposure is happening, these poor babies probably lose the ability to handle that kind of exposure. So now the question becomes, okay, like, all of that is fine and great, and yes, maybe this, this all happens, but what does it do? What do these mycotoxins do? And how are they impacting kids as a result of that? So that's. That's what we're going to talk about. First and foremost, the mycotoxins, these mold toxins, are profoundly, profoundly capable of disrupting the mitochondria. What are the mitochondria? The mitochondria are basically our energy production plants, right? They're the generators that take food in, they take fuel in and spit out electricity, which is ATP. ATP is the current of life, right? It is the energy of life. It is what gives us vitality. It's what gives us the ability to function. And every organ system in our body, the brain, the liver, the gastrointestinal tract, every single organ system depends on this energy. And when you stand back from a very simplistic perspective and you look at these poor kids that have been affected, how do they show up? They're just tired, they're dragging. They lack vitality. If there's one thing you can say that mycotoxicity, mold toxicity does, is it zaps vitality. And when you look at these children, the thing that you see in them is that their vitality is down, it's lacking, it's low. And that's because of what these mold toxins do to the mitochondria. And through this, you get disruptions in metabolism, you get this thing called oxidative stress. Which is almost like a cellular rusting phenomenon. So if you can imagine at a cellular level, things are rusting, things are corroding, that is what oxidative stress does. That actually results from the damage that's done from the mitochondria. What's troubling is it's not just that they disrupt the mitochondria. They actually disrupt the repair mechanisms that the mitochondria use to fix themselves, which is where a lot of this damage ultimately comes from. And a lot of the harm results from. It's, it's the mitochondria take a hit. They also take a hit in their ability to repair themselves. Now why is this important, you ask? Like, okay, great, like, yeah, they lack vitality. But is that all? No. The most sensitive organ in the body that is dependent on energy production is the brain. We all know that, right? The brain per gram of mass is the most energy hungry organ in the body. And when you start digging into the literature, what you find is that there are published studies that talk about how in cases of this is frank mitochondrial disease. So this is severe cases of mitochondrial disease. Over half of those that have these conditions present with unusual psychiatric manifestations. And it makes sense, right? If the brain lacks the energy to do what it does, ultimately the organ, this organ, these cells ultimately fail to do what they need to do. And it would make sense that ultimately the brain would start glitching and you would get unusual manifestations. But the conversation gets actually more interesting than that, because it's not just a generic conversation about energy of the brain gets off and therefore you get things. Think about how the brain cells do what they do. How do the neurons do what they do? Everything our brain cells, everything that the neurons do is ultimately dependent on the mitochondria, these ion gradients, which is basically how they send signals back and forth. The collect the accumulation, which is ultimately the chemicals that they release to communicate to one another. Everything that the brain cells do are dependent on the mitochondria. Now, why is that important? Well beyond just the fact that the brain cells can't function the way that they do, and optimally and through that, you can get unusual things. And I believe that part of why people experience brain fog, you know, this, this thing where you just can't think clearly, the memory is off. In some kids, it shows up with learning issues, is primarily because of that. But there's something that happens that's even more interesting than that. You have a region of the brain called the prefrontal cortex. It's the front part of our brain that's important for how we process information. Now, what happens is within this front part of the brain, you have these essentially control cops, these gabaergic neurons. And GABAergic, they release GABA, which slows down neuronal activity, signaling, essentially. It's like the traffic control center of the brain. Now, the traffic control center of the brain happens to be the most finicky area of the brain as it pertains to energy. So if you imagine energy production gets shot. So one, the actual brain cell's ability to signal back and forth and communicate back and forth gets messed up. But now, all of a sudden, the traffic control center of the brain has gone to sleep. It's lacking energy. So now the traffic control center of the brain is suddenly no longer funct functioning at the optimal level. You start seeing this very fascinating thing, which is what they say is impairment of complex information processing. What the heck is that? Right. Complex information processing is sensory information processing. It's ultimately how our brains take information from the outside world, right? Sight, sound, all of the information that comes in and ultimately organize it in a way that we can effectively process. Imagine what happens if that gets disrupted. That sounds a lot like adhd, right? That sounds a lot like learning disabilities. It sounds a lot like autism, right? These poor kids. I can't handle the world. I can't handle the world. The kids that are just all over the place. Impairment and complex information processing. Why I believe that a significant amount of what we call ADHD is actually an exposure to mycotoxins is because of this very thing. And one of the things that's fascinating is when you give these kids supplements to boost mitochondrial function, what happens is suddenly these kids have less of these issues. They are able to focus more, they are able to process more. They're less overwhelmed by the world. And this is to demonstrate the fact that there are studies that suggest that errors in this complex information processing has been found in individuals who have autism spectrum and schizophrenia. So these connections are real. These are not just hypothetical ideological things that we're looking at. These are real, real things that are happening all the time. When you start looking at it, the damage that happens to the brain cells actually goes a little bit beyond that. You can get actual damage to the cell. So apoptosis is basically cellular death. You can get changes in neuroplasticity. And when you look at some of these specific things, this is actually something that happens often in autism. A lot of these things have been described in autism, but there's more. I wish that was it. I wish like that was the only thing that happens, but it's actually not. It turns out that you get massive disruptions to the immune system. There are these things called inflammasomes. And if you were to consider a A to Z process of everything from genetic, the reading of genes to the point where those proteins are now activated and behaving, that's essentially in a very simple form. And I'm a simple guy. I like to understand things in a simple way. If you were to say, what is an inflammasome? It's basically that A to Z process, mycotoxins disrupt this A to Z process of ultimately how the immune system is shaped and formed from the genetic level on up. The sad part, and this is the part that irks me as a pediatrician, when you look at animal studies, we don't know in humans, but in animal studies, when they do mean things like they take mycotoxins and inject it into a pregnant pig and then they look to see what happened in the piglets, they find that moms who were exposed to mycotoxins ended up birthing piglets who had abnormalities in the immune system long after that mycotoxin was exposed or injected into the mother. When you look at things like what happens to children with autism, for instance, not only do moms have abnormal immune systems, the children are born with abnormal immune systems. And in fact, if you are a mom whose immune system is abnormal in certain ways, or you have higher rates of allergies, and we'll touch on that, your risk of having a child with autism is increased two to three fold. Two to three fold higher risk of autism. If you have these findings, this one study is talking about the significant long term implications in offspring such as ultimately these kids going on to develop allergies or other things like that. And one of the most important things to realize is, is that it doesn't take a whole lot to do this. One of the fundamental errors that a lot of people make on the outside of our community is like, well, mold toxins in small amounts don't cause any harm. If you have a little bit of mold in your home, it's not a big deal because that can cause harm. There are studies that clearly demonstrate that non cytotoxic concentrations, small concentrations of these various toxins are enough to change various parts of the human immune system and other organ system functioning. The microbiome is another area that takes a hit. Where does penicillin come from where do most of our antibiotics come from? They came from molds, right? Penicillin came from penicillium. It's a type of mold. When you look at most of our antibiotics, we actually have derived them from mold. Imagine a body that is constantly, every day, getting a small dose of antibiotic year round, day after day, especially if that body is of a little child. Now, it's not just the good bacteria that get altered. When the good bacteria get altered, when the microbiome starts changing, that starts creating a scenario for other bad things to happen. I've had so many patients that came in, they're like, my kid was fine, my kid was fine. He had a little diarrhea, had a little bit of this. He got a dose of amoxicillin and then horrendous eczema showed up. Or all of a sudden he started developing signs of autism. Or my kid developed this condition or that condition. I've heard this so many times. This was a sign that the microbiome was already barely hanging on by threads. And then we gave a dose of amoxicillin because the kid has an ear infection. And whatever remnants of a healthy microbiome that was there is wiped out. And all of a sudden you get a big mess and such as fungal overgrowth. And that one line at the very end is something that I think should not be overlooked. Our gut bacteria, or the absence of may be involved in the development of mold toxicity. So when these bacteria are harmed, when they are wiped out, our ability to potentially secrete these toxins in the stool and out of the body actually could be altered as a result. And this set of slides is to demonstrate what happens to other things such as Candida when the gut is altered. So when the microbiome is disrupted and when the gut immune system is disrupted, things like Candida that generally don't cause problems suddenly start becoming a big problem, which then start flaring and causing a host of other things. It's not just the microbiome, it's not just the mitochondria, it's not just the immune system. The gastrointestinal tract as a whole takes a hit. Years ago, I couldn't figure out why so many kids that I was taking care of just could not heal their guts. And we were doing elimination diets and probiotics and this and that, and nothing helped. It turns out that the glue that helps keep the gut integrity, these onulin, inulin, zonulin, and tight junction proteins, the glue that helps stick the gut cells together, keep actually gets destroyed when there's exposure to mycotoxins. So imagine all of a sudden, these mycotoxins are basically wiping out the glue, and now the cells are no longer stuck together. That's leaky gut. And this is what we see. We see, ultimately alterations in the gut integrity, and we ultimately get alterations in how the gut functions. And through that, we start getting a problem with all kinds of gastrointestinal tract and systemic related diseases. And that blue box, again, is to highlight it doesn't take a whole lot. Small amounts of mycotoxins over time are sufficient to start causing problems. Why do we get food allergies? Why do so many people have 1,000 food allergies or 1,000 food sensitivities? Because of the fact that the gut integrity is compromised. And that ultimately is part of where all of this comes from. And this is something that I see commonly. People come in and they're like, yeah, I'm allergic to half the world. I'm allergic to more foods than I'm not. And I can eat four foods. And everything else causes me to react. This is the reason why part of where other issues arise is mycotoxins also start disrupting the microvilli, these little antennae that go out that absorb nutrients. So when you look at disruption of the microbiome, disruption of the gastrointestinal tract, disruption of these microvilli, all of a sudden you see why something like failure to thrive, these poor kids that just could not grow for the life of them become more real. And this is just a study that shows different kinds of deficiencies that show up. And one of my telltale signs that a child may have mold toxicity is if their zinc levels or iron levels are basically bottomed out. And there's some of you moms that are listening where you don't understand why your iron levels never go up. Here's the reason why. Minerals do not absorb through the gastrointestinal tract when mycotoxins are present because of the disruption in absorption that they cause. Going to skip this. And part of what I just want to touch on is also what these mycotoxins can do in terms of gastrointestinal disease. This is a study that's talking about how, if you disrupt enough processes within the gut, inflammatory bowel disease can show up. And when you look at, like, why does inflammatory bowel disease show up? Why do these severe gastrointestinal tract problems show up? Mycotoxins could be one reason. Here's one thing that I find really interesting, what mycotoxins do. In terms of the allergy front. Now, what has been demonstrated in the literature is that asthma, allergies, and atopic dermatitis, eczema are something that's actually fairly common with mold exposure, but some people don't entirely understand is what mold toxins do to specifically the part of the immune system called the mast cells. Now, I'm sure a lot of you have heard of mast cell activation syndrome and mast cell activity and some of the things that are associated with that. What a lot of people don't talk about is how mast cells and the histamines that they release influence the nervous system. It turns out that histamine is one of the most powerful regulators of the immune system. The thing that keeps us alert, right, that I'm here talking to you, awake and alert, is we've got glutamate, which is where coffee and caffeine come in. And then there's histamine, which is also why when you take Benadryl, histamine gets dropped down and you fall asleep. Right. So some of this makes sense. But when you start looking at things like, what does histamine do to our food intake? Right. When you have abnormalities in histamine, what happens is all of a sudden, appetite starts going to hell. And I've seen this in so many kids where all of a sudden, yeah, my kid just stopped eating. He just refused to eat, and he would barely eat anything, which is what we see in kids with pans and pandas. Conversely, when I've addressed the histamine issues and resolved the things that were driving that, all of a sudden, these kids are now wonderful eaters. And, oh, my God, his appetite is so huge. And he just finished the second serving of breakfast, and before, he wasn't even eating breakfast. These are the things that we can change. These are the things we can help when we get intelligent enough to understand what's going on. Now, why is this important? Because it's not just that. When you look at what histamine does to the vestibular system, which is our middle ear, and how that middle ear ultimately influences so many other systems, you start seeing this kind of global effect where these kids that can't sit still, that this is them all the time, and you can't understand why your kid isn't sitting still. They're not sitting and still in the classroom. They're constantly all over the place. Adhd. Adhd, I believe, has its origin in histamine. Histamine has its origin in mast cell activation, which ultimately mold Toxins are highly capable of disrupting. And when histamine gets disrupted, you get vestibular changes, which is basically our balance control center changes in sensory gating, which is ultimately how information comes in. So you get a double hit, the traffic control center of the brain gets compromised, and histamine itself changes how information comes into the brain. And studies have shown that it's not just a generic conversation, sound processing. These kids that get overwhelmed because the environments are too loud, body awareness. These kids that are clumsy, constantly running into things, the kids that won't eat because the smell of the food is overwhelming them, these are all signs of a histamine imbalance. And when I see this, the first thing that goes through my mind is, where or how has this child been exposed to mold? Because when you start linking things together, it starts making sense. There's one other piece that I want to touch on within the nervous system, and that is this immune response that mold toxins trigger. So they can activate the microglia, the neuroglia, in a really significant and powerful way. Why is that important? Well, it turns out that one, these microglia have been tied to a lot of unusual things, including pans and pandas, no cd, and possibly autism. But where this becomes important is ultimately what these microglia do in terms of changing parts of the brain. So the amygdala is one part of the nervous system that ultimately controls our fear response. And when you have activation of these microglia along with the mast cells, you. You get a disruption in the amygdala. So the core primitive brain centers that are ultimately there to help us gauge what we should be afraid of or not helps us understand how to assess threat in the world gets disrupted at a fundamental primitive level. When, what do we see in kids with autism? What do we see with kids in pants and pandas? Everything is causing them to have this remarkable reaction where they feel threatened by everything under the sun. This is part of potentially mold toxicity. And you get unusual things that I touched on earlier. In addition to that, changes in working memory. So kids having struggles learning math, attention problems, executive functioning, memory issues, et cetera, et cetera. Why this is also so important is we could prevent all of this. We could reverse. And I've had hundreds of kids that did not have any executive functioning. Parents had to literally sit with them and walk them through how to do a homework assignment. They could not even put on their own clothes. And four to six months later, the kid is doing all of it on their own to the point where their parent is like, I Don't even recognize my son. I can't believe that he is doing all of these things on their own. This is the beautiful part of this conversation. We have the ability to change this for all of these kids and frankly, for many adults, and give them their lives back, give them their ability to succeed and thrive in life if we can just get to a place of having the understanding and wherewithal to see how this all comes together. One of the final things that I want to share is another telltale sign of when I become concerned of mold toxicity is these kids that have weird motor tics where they're just ticking. And we don't understand why some of these kids have abnormal EEGs. Mold toxins can trigger all of these changes. So you've got the kid that has some sensory issues and they have some motor ticks, plus or minus a change on eeg. We have to think about mold toxicity because they could do all of these things. And this is the beautiful part of this conversation. This is the part that has me excited about being here and having these conversations and sharing this information, because we have the opportunity to make such a difference. We could prevent this. And God bless Kendra and all of these remarkable people at Change the Air foundation because they're working so hard to make change so that people don't have to be exposed, or if they're exposed, they're helping to drive policies so that they can come out of it and be healed. Here are some signs, if you're an adult that you may be exposed. You may have some brain fog. You may have some memory issues, this chronic fatigue. And then on top of that, weird other aches and pains. But those two things in particular, to me, stand out the most. Adults are like, yeah, you know, I just thought, I'm a busy mom, and I've got two kids, and I'm just exhausted all the time because of my kids. And, yeah, you know, my memory over the last three months has just gone to hell, and I can barely remember my own phone number. If you are having these things, start paying attention, because we could prevent this. We could reverse this. Working with the right practitioner, you could actually make change. And here's some other signs, common signs that you could look at to see if this is happening to you. But more important than anything is what we need to do together and why I'm so fortunate and blessed to have been connected to Change the Air foundation and Kendra and Brandon and all of these remarkable people that are working tirelessly to bring about change because we need to become More aware. We need to do more research. We need to start improving the tools that we have. And I know that they are working tirelessly on all fronts to bring about change. And through that, God, I can't even begin to imagine how much disease and suffering and disability we can prevent first and foremost and secondarily, how much we could restore in reverse by understanding this and coming together to really bring about change. Here's some of my information for those of you that are interested. I thank you for watching. I thank you for listening. I thank Kendra for allowing this conversation to take fold because together we can change things. Together, with your support of Change the Air foundation, we can really bring about change. And I'm grateful to be here to share what I know.

Thank you so much. I always love our conversations together because I think you're so right. With knowledge comes power and with power comes the ability to change your circumstances. And if it's okay, I have a few follow up questions. I know we're getting on time, but one of the things I know many years ago when our journey first started, if I had only had someone connecting the dots or telling me that, you know, the colic, the acid reflux, the failure to thrive, the eczema, the food allergies, the, the finicky nature, the sensory processing, the eds, the everything we were diagnosed with. If someone had said or asked a question that said, why are these children experiencing this? I think about how much time could have been saved. And it wasn't until our PANDAS diagnosis with our oldest that I was like, well, enough is enough. There has to be something more going on here. I know when I started I wasn't taken seriously by a lot of my children's practitioners. And so what advice do you have for someone out there listening parents out there, if they're like, okay, I see these things in my kids and I want to rule out environmental factors or I want to talk to my doctor. What advice do you have for them when it comes time to approach their pediatrician or their healthcare practitioner so that they can start exploring this?

So I think that's a really great question. And the first thing I would say is it really depends on your practitioner. There are some practitioners that are so open minded and they're willing to learn and they're willing to consider things that they don't know. And I mean, honestly speaking, if six years ago someone came up to me and said, hey, you know what mold toxicity can cause X, Y or Z diseases? I would have been like, I don't know, I Had no idea. And it was actually one of my families that had me be like, hey, could Mo be a problem? Like, I have no idea. I don't know what the hell is going on with your kid, but I have no idea. Let's learn. The other scenario is you have a provider that either they're so overwhelmed by what they have to do, or they're just really rigid in their way of thinking, where it's really hard for them to wrap their head around this possibility. And you all know your practitioners well enough, if they're open to it, take them. Feel free to share this video with them. Take them one or two. You know, there are a lot of published papers out there. Once you start looking at them. Dr. Neil Nathan's book on toxic, which has to do with mold toxicity. Take them information, talk to them. They may be open to it, in which case you've got the perfect ally right there. They may not be open to it. And if that's the case, that's okay. There are hundreds upon hundreds of physicians that are very versed, incompetent, and capable of understanding mold toxicity and are out there to help you. And all you need to do is just look for them. If your provider is one of those who's just not ready to have that conversation.

Yeah. And to any parent listening, my advice to you would be to trust your gut. If something's not lining up in your opinion, then trust your gut with that. And I change the Air Foundation. We're building out our resources. We'll have other talks, hopefully with you in the future and other practitioners that you can use as resources. We're hopefully going to be launching our Dr. Outreach program in the upcoming year. So it's important that as a. As you advocate for yourself, that, you know, you trust yourself and trust your gut. One of the questions I have, too, is, and we see this quite often, and I saw this in my own family, people say, well, if it were something like mold or something related to. In my environment, we would all be sick in the same way. But it doesn't work like that with mold toxicity. So why is it that people in the same family with similar genetic makeup have different symptoms?

It's complicated.

That's a big question. That's a whole talk, right?

Yeah. You know, it really boils down to our physiological makeup. There are those who are constitutionally very solid. You know, why do some people drink a gallon of alcohol every day and nothing happens to them? And another person drinks one drink once and their gut falls apart. Why do some People smoke, chain smoke for 100 years in their 98, and laughing at everyone else, and then other people are just exposed to small amounts. It ultimately has to do with, you know, the integrity of our gut and various physiological and genetic things that influence that. Our mitochondria, our liver's capacity to handle detoxification, the immune system, and how it's wired. What I can tell you is those people that we consider the hsp, the highly sensitive individuals, for whatever weird reason, I'm one of them, my daughter is one of them. The vast majority of my patients are all HSPs. HSPs are physiologically wired differently. And when you look at the constitutional makeup of these individuals, for the most part, it's not 100%, because there are plenty of mold impacted patients and people who are not. But if you look at as a whole, the propensity of these highly sensitive individuals to ultimately be impacted by mold is, in my observation, generally higher. And I think that has to do with a host of genetic and other physiological factors that make them physiologically more vulnerable. And to your point, generally speaking, only one in four people, at most one in two are affected. And what I see in my patients is usually there's one child who's really sick, there's one parent that's kind of not feeling well. Sometimes the parent is also really sick. But usually it's one person who's really sick. Another person may be kind of not feeling well, brain fog, fatigue, but otherwise okay. And then there's one or two people who, like, there's nothing happening to them, and you wouldn't even know there's anything going on.

Yeah, I think. I think that's what's challenging sometimes for people, because it's not. It's not like, oh, somebody, we all get the flu and we're all sick and we all have similar symptoms, or it's. It's a little trickier than that. So definitely requires more detective work. I know in our situation, I had one kid with one set of symptoms, the other kid, completely different set of symptoms. And then I was told that I was just a tired mom, and my husband traveled 95% of the year, so he was never home. So, you know, we kind of hit all the, you know, ranges, so to speak. So just to kind of wrap things up, if. If there are health care practitioners listening, what message do you want to give them about what you're seeing in your practice and what you're seeing in the larger scale of the environment and the impact it has on our Health. What would you tell them?

I mean, I would start by just saying, stand back and just ask questions and just, just, just become curious, say, why, why do these things happen in the children that I serve? And how can I explain what it is that that's thing? Because as practitioners we all see it. The thing is that a lot of times we just brush it under the rug, right? Oh, asthma just happens. ADHD just happens. Autism just happens. Inflammatory bowel disease just happens. Some kids just have failure to thrive. If you get to a point where you're willing to ask the hard questions rather than saying it just happens, why is this happening? And then you stand back and you start looking at the larger construct of the family and you see like, oh, mom has chronic allergies. There was a perfect scenario where I had a dear family of mine come in yesterday and the older child was having issues and I looked at the parents, I'm like, so how are you guys doing? Yeah, I've had chronic allergies and sinus problems for the last three months, non stop. I'm like, oh, that's weird. Become curious, become open, start asking questions and just allow yourself to start looking at what's there. When we do, when you do, you start seeing that the things correlate where it's not just the child has eczema, the child has eczema and asthma and oh gosh, brother has some weird adhd and my God, mom is chronically tired and she's having a hard time. Get out of bed. As you start seeing these things and you stand back and saying, okay, how does this all come together? What could be causing all of this for everyone? And what is the one simple explanation that can explain everything? Right? Occam's Razor. The simplest, most clean explanation is typically the right explanation. And if you not to say mold is everything for everyone by any means, but if you start looking at this and you start seeing the linkages, then asking like, maybe this is mold, maybe this, this family is being affected by it. Let's find out how real that is. That's how we can make change. Yeah.

Well, thank you, thank you again so much for being here. I look forward to. I know we're going to do some more follow up stuff and work together through Change the Year Foundation. So I'm excited for that and for everyone listening, do us a favor, if you found this helpful, like follow and share us, send this to a colleague, a friend, a family member, help us raise awareness because we really want to help you make that connection between your health and your home. Thank you so much, and we'll see you next time.

Thank you.