Mold Fragments Q&A with Dr. Crista
Dr. Jill Crista explains mold spore fragments, how water damage and remodeling release them, and why they lodge in lung tissue and trigger asthma. She covers binders like cholestyramine, supplements including NAC and resveratrol, air filtration, and testing methods to detect exposure.
Questions this video answers
Approximately 300–500 fragments per single spore (as stated in the talk).
About 1 million spores per one square inch of a single layer of growing mold (speaker's estimate).
She mentioned 12C, 30C and 200C potencies for silica (homeopathic pellets).
Approximately 93–95% bile recirculation (speaker's figure).
About 2 to 4 tablespoons of added insoluble fiber (as a supplement).
Chapters
Hello, friends. Welcome. Today we're going to be talking about mold fragments. So yesterday was mold spores, today is mold fragments, and then tomorrow we'll be talking about off gas chemicals from mold, what I jokingly call mold farts. One of those chemicals is MPA or mycophenolic acid. So we'll be talking through that tomorrow. Hopefully you can join me live today. Hopefully we'll have a lot of time for questions, so I'll try to remind you guys to ask me questions. But we'll hit more questions today because we don't have as much to cover on mold spores as we did on or on spore fragments as we did on the mold spores. So if you missed the mold spore talk, that's yesterday. That's recorded on my Instagram and it's. We're getting it on my website and getting it up on YouTube so you can re watch it because we covered a lot of detailed information such as what spores could be in an indoor environment and then what kind of color, what food they like to grow on, material, you know, that they like to grow on, basically what's their food. So welcome, welcome. Let's talk spore fragments. So what are spore fragments? This happens when mold has grown and made a colony and then a leak was discovered. So let's say it was a roof leak or a leak behind a shower or a classic one. Probably the second most common home insurance claim is for the little hose to your refrigerator to give you ice and water at your refrigerator leaking. So those are commonly made out of copper pipe. I think a good move is that more and more plumbers are putting that into plastic pvc. And every time you would scoot out or scoot in your fridge, it could kink that and that creates this little drip, drip, drip. So there was a drip. So roofing is a very common reason for a insurance claim. But that refrigerator is naughty. In our family, we just, we just. Oh, that happened to you. Okay. See, we just unhooked it. We're just doing old school, you know, ice trays because it was just too high risk. It's just. And also we talked about yesterday, the refrigerator filters can be problematic because they can host ketomium, which makes Chattaglobacin, which can cross the blood brain barrier and can contribute to brain fog and dementia. This mycotoxin. So I'm so proud of you. You bought a fridge without it? Yes. I mean, that convenience comes with some, some maintenance. You know, get a water sensor and put it behind your fridge. If you guys have this and you can't, you know, unhook it or you know, whatever. You aren't willing to just get a water sensor and put it behind your fridge. Also happened to you and toilet overflowed, right? So I think that's probably, I'd love to talk to insurance agents to see, you know, what is your most common water problem. So I can help to work on prevention and education so that that doesn't happen to you guys. Alright, so mold spore fragments are when a colony had a water source. The water source has been cleaned up, but remediation didn't happen. So now the colony is allowed to go into dormancy. It dries. But I really want to impress on people it doesn't die, it goes into dormancy. A dead spore is a fragment. A dormant spore is a whole spore. And all it needs to know is to be watered again. All it needs is your home to go into excess humidity. So let's say this was trapped behind your shower or something like that. So we had a toilet overflow. Or you have a. Where the shower and the tile meet. There's starting to be a crack there and there's no caulking. And every time the kids have a shower, a little bit of water goes under. A little bit of water goes under. You say, oh my goodness, we just discovered this could be a problem. You caulk it. Now you've taken care of the water source that dries, but it doesn't die, it goes into dormancy. If you don't disturb it, it goes into dormancy. So anytime you have humidity, that room could be problematic because then the humidity can get to that mold and it can go from dormancy to living. All it needs is humidity and moisture. Doesn't need a flood, it doesn't need actual frank water. So that's how people are saying, you know, well, I don't really feel good in my house. But we don't have mold. We used to have water leak, we don't have mold. And I'm like, yeah, now you do have, you do have a potential for a mold problem because it's just hanging out there waiting for the next life cycle to start. So I want you to be thinking about mold. Spores are always able to regrow unless they're broken up. So a broken up spore, spore fragments that we're talking about today is when mold has had that colony which took care of the water leak. It dries, doesn't die, it dries. And then let's say somebody decides oh, let's remodel the bathroom. And let's say it's a house that you didn't know had a water problem. And it's like you didn't do any protection or anything because you didn't know there was going to be mold there. And you discover it by doing the bathroom remodel or the kitchen remodel or, you know, fill in the blank. That's now how we get spore fragments. And that's where mold can just break up into teeny, tiny little parts. And we get fragments at a rate of 5, 300 to 500 fragments per one spore. That's huge. So one little inch of a single layer inch of growing mold is a million spores. Remember, this is microscopic. You can see mold. You're talking mold in the million to billion to trillion to gajillions. Okay? So that can make 300 to 500 fragments for every single spore that is on that little square mole. So. So we're talking 300 to 500 million plus one spore for one spore. Okay, so. Or for one inch of mold. So that's terrifying, isn't it? And especially if you are one of those people where you were just doing a bathroom remodel and, oh, my gosh, the contractor found mold, but he said it's no big deal. You know, they cut it out, blah, blah, blah, move forward. Because a lot of construction projects are under this time pressure, and construction guys don't know how dangerous this is, so they'll just take care of it and they'll. That means all those spore fragments just went poof. So if it wasn't done, if that's basically a remediation that was done to your bathroom that you didn't know was a mold remediation, and by not knowing it, that means you didn't do the proper protections. What are the proper protections? First of all, I highly recommend going to Hemichael Rubino for all kinds of remediation. Great advice. He has wonderful, wonderful advice on the remediation side. But proper protection should be sealing the area with plastic, putting it under negative air pressure by pushing air to the outdoors. So anything that's kicked up in that. Hello, my beautiful friend. Mishka. Anything that's kicked up in that remodel, all those fragments that we just talked about, like fragments in the millions from one spore or from one inch of spores, that all gets pushed outside, and that keeps the inside clean. So that's a problem with the spores, because once they go poof, these Spores are ultra small particulate. They fit into the ultra, ultra, ultra small particulate category. So they're not what's called PM2.5, which is particulate matter of a 2.5 micron size. These are way smaller. Fragments are getting closer to the mycotoxin size. So these can stay ever suspended in the air. I'm sure all of us had, you know, bored moments when we were kids. We were looking, you know, at a ray of sun coming through the window, and you see, you know, all the dancing little sparkles. Well, that's fragments that we can see. Mold fragments are even smaller than that. They're smaller than human hair. So this is a. This is a big problem because these fragments are. They can lodge into our respiratory tissues. They can cause what. I kind of borrowed the mesothelioma term and I called it moldotheliomioma. Moldothelioma, because they can lodge in like asbestos. They can lodge into your respiratory passages. They have less chance of doing that because our sinuses. Let me back up. They can lodge into your sinuses, but they have less chance of doing the sinuses, more chance of doing that in the lung tissue. Here's why. The sinuses have snot. You know, the mucus layers of the sinuses are built for engaging with this particulate all the time. And snot is built to digest stuff. It's full of enzymes and salts and things that just break stuff down. So usually in the sinuses, that doesn't become a chronic problem. Now, colonization can happen in the sinuses, but we're focusing on fragments today. We don't typically have, like, a fragmentitis going on in the sinuses just from the fragment exposure. We do see that with lungs. So lungs don't have that same kind of snot layer, because we don't want anything in between the oxygen we breathe and the blood vessels going in. So to maximize the ability to breathe and to exchange oxygen and get CO2 out, the lung tissue doesn't have that slime layer that helps to break down fragments. So they can get in and lodge in like an asbestos. And that means they're in there like a fish hook. And that can cause persistent irritation of that tissue and that tissue. And they can kind of know, work their way into the cell. That tissue is similar to mesothelial tissue. So you can have somebody who has fragment exposure is their only exposure, and they start to develop lung symptoms. And that could be anywhere from a chronic dry cough to an irritating cough. Like something where they're talking. They just have to kind of always. There's a sense of having to clear their throat or their lungs all the time. And that can move all the way into asthma. So spores and spore fragments are highly correlated to developing asthma, especially if you had that exposure when you were a kid. So now what do you do with these fragments that are stuck in there? These guys are more potent than spores at inducing inflammatory cytokines. We've heard about cytokines with COVID So this is like the inflammatory cascade of our immune system that is out there to kill bugs and clean up garbage. Well, this is a garbage. This isn't a bug. It's not a living thing. This isn't a spore, a dormant spore that can grow and become an infection. This is a broken up spore fragment. So it's garbage. So our body says, oh, well, we handle clean up garbage by burning the dumpster, basically. And that doesn't work when you have a thing that can fish hook in like asbestos. So we have to help it out a little bit. One of my favorite things for doing this is resveratrol. Resveratrol is shown in studies on asthma to reduce asthma exacerbation and reduce how often someone has to hit their inhaler. Resveratrol is just like wonderful for these irritated lungs. It also helps you detox mycotoxins. So it's like one of those things where we're doing multiple things, multiple mechanisms of action with one thing. What else though? You have to start to tell the body to kick that stuff out. Like kick it out, kick it out, kick it out. That's not part of our cell system. So I have two things that I love to use for this. Number one is called silica. These are both homeopathic remedies. I didn't put this in my book because there's just so much. So maybe in round two, version two, I almost had episode two, what is it called anyway? Number two, Break them all. Number two. So this is all information from my book, Break the mold. You see the book hopefully back there. This is silica and it may be spelled silicia depending on. I don't know if you can see this. Okay, so silica at the health food store, it's going to come in a blue tube like this typically. So this is from boron and you can see it's uber cheap like that. At least back when I bought this remedy, it was 539. It's amazing. Like there's no drug for this, but there's homeopathic remedy and it only costs under 10 bucks. So it's going to come in a little tube like this. And you can look for something called silica and you can also look for something called letum or ledum. And these are available at the health food store. The key with homeopathy, these are nanoparticles of the thing. So this is a nanoparticle of silica, the element. And you can see I have like it written for my kids. Slivers. It's also really good for slivers. So it's good for getting out fragments. It's amazing. And same thing with lettum. It can get little pokey things, things that have gone through your skin and that will help the body engage and find wisdom around. Oh, oh, we have a foreign particle that's going through our outer barrier. We better start to push that out. So I love to use this in combination with vitamin C, which will help to move the. It keeps the mucous layer of our body thin. And nac or N acetylcysteine to help to also like a mucolytic, it's going to help to move. It works really well for the vid. So, you know, same kind of thing. Like it's a foreign something that we want to get out of there. So you can. The key with homeopathy is you take it away from all things by mouth. These are done under the tongue and you don't want to touch it. So there. The way that you decant this is kind of tricky. Like you turn it upside down and then when you twist it, the little pellets will come down and then you take that capsule. I usually use three capsules or three pellets at a time. There's no magic formula with this you could take with homeopathy, it's like knocking down Dr. Dominoes. The dose on here, 12C or on here, I think this is 30C. No, that's 200. So 12C and 30C is what you can get at the health food store. Perfectly fine. The dose tells you how many dominoes you can knock down. So I can knock down 12 dominoes with this. So I can get my body 12 steps farther than it was with a 12C. Whether you take the whole bottle or three pellets with a 30C, you're going to get 30 dominoes knocked down with one dose. Whether you take the whole bottle or whether you take three pellets. Why do we use three? Because they spray the remedy on this. And so we want to make sure some remedy is at least on these pellets. So to not touch it. Then you just take the cap off and then you dump that under the tongue, right under the tongue, and hold it under the tongue at least a minute. And then you can chew it up after that. So you want to be taking homeopathy away from anything by mouth. So. So brushing teeth, water, chewing gum, smoking food, any kind of liquid. So 15 minutes before you take your remedy, and for 15 minutes after you give your body that half hour window where it can absorb the frequency. I love homeopathy because it's frequency medicine. And that's where we're heading in the future is the frequency like I'm sending you right now healing frequency, because I care about you and I want you to feel better. You're receiving some of that. That's moving through me and my healing intent. This is same with homeopathy. It's just healing love in a bottle. And the magic is picking the remedy for the. For the. The problem. So the silica cough is gonna be like you have a hair on the back of your tongue or in your throat. And so people do this like, you know, like trying to cough. And you may feel that down in the lungs. So I just wanted to share that because mold spores are. Fragments are a bugger and you could be having these kind of mold problems. Oh, here's the other thing. Mold fragments can also secrete mycotoxins. So if it was a competitive environment where that mold was growing, that environment then will have more mycotoxins because that's the mold competing with each other. And those fragments will be carriers of those mycotoxins. The other thing is managing air filtration. I have my favorite air filter for mold. Both the IQ air and the Austin air are good as well for knocking down particulate. In my particle counting testing, air doctor did not pass molecule way not passing. Like molecule doesn't even pass HEPA filtration. So get yourself your own tools and, you know, test out the companies and their claims. However, none of those handle. The problem with fragments and spores that happens with filtrations is that they will take on the spore and the fragment and then that itself can become a petri dish to grow more mold. So I like Intellipur. You can go to my website. I have a video of the particle counting test. There's also a long YouTube video of me interviewing the president of Intellipur asking all the questions. So whether you choose it or not, it gives you a. What are the questions I should be thinking about like maintenance, you know, cost of maintenance. It's not just cost of the machine, which is, you know, that's a huge investment, but it's also cost of maintenance. How easy is it to maintain? Like, will you put it off and put it off and put it off? And then that filter is no longer really doing its job because it's pain to maintain. How loud is it? How many cubic feet per minute does it move? So do you have a good match? I personally have one for my whole home, which, you know, I bought with my own money. This is not me, like, because I get free machines or anything. I have one for my home. And then I have a problematic area where I have a sump pump in my basement where there's not a treated cement floor. So it's always kicking up particulate. So I put a compact one in that room, and I'm monitoring it all the time with my particle counter. I just love my particle counter. Okay, so I want to make sure to take a break. I talked about air filtration. Yeah. Okay. I want to get to questions today because yesterday we did not get very many questions done, and I got kicked out because of an alert we had. I lost everybody's question. Okay, so we're back to the fridge. Didn't even think of this when discussing mold with my patients. Okay, I think that's about the water. It's all about water alarms and monitoring. Monitoring, monitoring. Yes. Mold Mentor, llc. She's at moldmentor. Great resource for information on mold. Alrighty. And personal stories. That math. Yikes. Yeah. 300 to 500 fragments for one spore. What are the best binders to take for mold toxicity? And if there's more than one, is it okay to take several kinds at one time? So you're going to get a different perspective from me than probably other people because I'm naturopathically trained. Mine kind of goes along with Dr. Shoemaker's recommendation of using coldestyramine. However, I don't typically use that unless it's an emergency, unless we really, really need to get someone's levels down. I start with insoluble fiber. If my patients can handle it, that's where we start. Insoluble fiber is a good bile binder, and that's basically in an inhalational exposure. So you breathed it in, it's crossed to your bloodstream, and now the mold is mold. Mycotoxins are moving around your bloodstream. Your kidneys can piece some of that out, and they do a better job of that. If you have bioflavonoids, especially if it's ochratoxin, but then the rest goes to your liver and the liver packs it up in bile and the bile gets moved to the gut where. Why do we have. We recycle a lot of bile. I want to tell the story we normally then we would bind that bile so that you poop out that mycotoxin with the bile. Bile is recirculated about 93%, 93 to 95, depending on who you are. So why do we do that if there's toxin in there? Well, we didn't do that in a toxic world. Our bodies were designed when it wasn't so toxic out here. And that's designed to hold on to our fat soluble vitamins like vitamin D, vitamin A, vitamin e, vitamin K, CoQ10, some of our fatty B vitamins. But unfortunately with the toxin exposure, we want to get rid of or interrupt that bile recirculation. So the whole point is to absorb and bind bile so that you poop out that mycotoxin with the bile. So there are. Dr. Neal Nathan is in his book Toxic, which is a great book, has much more of a precision approach with, with mycotoxins, saying that, you know, with certain mycotoxins you want to use certain binders. For me and my patients, what I found is that as we were detoxing them, different mycotoxins would show up and then they just bought like three bottles of different things and now they have to go on different things, you know, three bottles of other things. And it just created kind of chaos and fear. And I'm not about that. So if you are a precision person, I highly Recommend Checking out Dr. Nathan's book Toxic. That's going to fit your personality much better. I'm more of a squishy nature path. So not that I'm not scientific and precise, but I'm also trying to feed, like catch the most amount of mycotoxins as possible in one fell swoop. And that is with insoluble fiber. Some people don't tolerate that. So then we have to move to precision or then we move to other things that bind bile. And from studies where people are missing their gallbladder and they have too much bile, they found that steamed kale, steamed mustard greens and steamed collards picks up bile at almost like 30% of what cholestyramine does just with steamed greens. Aloe also is a specific binder for aflatoxin, but I've used it for other types of toxins and I've seen the levels go down. So for gliotoxin, I've seen it go down for. I'm just grabbing all the toxins in my head. Citrine has come down. Ochratoxin, tetaglobacin, satratoxin, trichothecine. So aloe is a really nice, beautiful. It's, it's gentler, so it's a slower roll, but it's not as constipating. And it's also an immune modulator so it's going to be healing the, healing the tissue at the same time. So there you just got like my long bile spiel. For insoluble fibers, I like to use about 2 to 4 tablespoons of added fiber. Remember using food as medicine, so it's not just eat it, you've got to do it like as medicine. So it's a supplement, something you do in addition. And then anytime I'm about to put my patients on antifungals, I'm going to preload and then after the antifungals with something like a charcoal. So like activated charcoal or if they also have EMF sensitivity, I'll use Takasumi supreme by supreme nutrition. I'd like a blend of that's called Fiber Flow from Wise Woman Herbals for people who get really constipated. So if we've tried insoluble fiber and they can't do it, then we try the fiber Flow because it has some bitters in there that'll help things move along. What's the best way to test for remaining spores etc after remediation? UK not so specialized. That's building questions is not my area of expertise. Definitely check out Oldfinders and he has Mold Finders Radio is a wonderful podcast that probably can answer that question. And I know in the UK you guys are, I'm coming there actually to talk. So hopefully we'll get more doctors and they'll pressure more indoor inspections. Okay, no visible mold at this rental, but still sick. How can I find out if there's mold spores in my air? Visible mold in other buildings Here again, I would check out Oldfinders for those questions about buildings I have. My patients generally use a combination of dust for mycotoxins and then an ermi. But you need to have an expert to look at that ERMI because an ERMI score is not reliable. But that's typically what we're doing just for a, a rental where you're just trying to see like is this an okay place for me to stay if you're not trying to find like, where is it and how can we remediate and all that kind of stuff if you're just like, is my rental okay with me? That's what we will start with. Is it okay to take amphotericin pills orally for severe colonization? Depends on you and your liver. So that's a. I can't give personal medical advice, but amphotericin is a little hard on the liver. So I start with things that are gentler and see if we can move the needle. But colonization is a big deal. And if you're not treating your sinuses as long as well as your whole body, the antifungals, then your sinuses are just going to continue to seed the colonization in your gut. But yeah, amphotericin would be lower on my list. I would, you know, start with like an intraconazole if we're going to the drugs nystatin intracontazole first. But lots and lots of plants can do it. And that's. I cover all of that with doses and, you know, cautions and all of that in my book Break the Mold. Quick question about your book, A Light in the Dark. Do you have to tame the flame before you beat the bugs or can you do both at the same time? In a lot of kids we can do both at the same time. Yep. It doesn't have to be, you know, tame the flame and wait for a month or anything like that. But in some kids, they're so triggerable and their flares are really scary. They get, you know, self harm or harming others and that kind of thing. So then we really work on taming the flames. So it really depends on the kid. But all of the chlorophor can be done at the very same time if you have a kid who's pretty stable. I've been having rosy cheeks for a year. Not bumpy red. I believe it's from lung stuff. It could be, but also histamine. Histamine is very common to get like a little histamine response. Interesting because I have substantially more sinus issues than lung issues. So that would be pretty consistent with a mycotoxin exposure that over time has reduced your local mucosal immunity to the point where now mold is able to move in, we'll say. So you have fungal overgrowth and now all of your. What used to be the microbiome of your sinuses has become pathogenic biofilm. So when I see sinus more than lung, I know that there's been less of a fragment problem, more of a mycotoxin problem. And. And spores that are trying to move in daughter has been flaring and we've been giving scutellaria and antioxidants. Awesome. Yeah, you might want to check into also the information tame the flame. In my new book, A light in the dark for pandas and Pans. There's a lot of good inflammatory calm about that. What about mullein for the lungs? I love this question. I use it a lot. I also use red clover when somebody has. Yes. So I'm a huge Mullen fan when someone has that kind of lung irritation from a mold exposure. Awesome. Just got that from you yesterday. I'm not sure which one. Do sensitive people tolerate resveratrol? Well, yes, this is a very well tolerated, very well tolerated supplement. It's the deep purple color. So if somebody can tolerate like wild blueberries, that's where I would start in a super sensitive person. And then we concentrate that. So then you have a blueberry only smoothie and see how you do with that. And then I move to liquid resveratrol. Like Apex has one. Apex Energetics. There's one called Reserve Age. It's got resveratrol plus a couple other of those kinds of deep purple. Deep purple, thanks. Okay, that starting with liquid helps because then you can. You can test it. Tiny, tiny, tiny bits. I have silica. It's a miracle cure when I have acne. I love that tip. That's a great tip. It makes so much sense. Cool. Thank you for sharing that. Got the intellipur and hate it. Uh oh. We'll have to understand why. Some people have reported that it has kind of a chemical smell. So if you're really chemically sensitive. And that again will point me to your liver. Take care of your liver. All right, so we are at time I she's saying don't buy the big intellipur. Buy the smallest one. The tall one has injured me. And if you touch it, it turns off. I would have your doctor check into testing your ADH and your antidiuretic hormone and your blood osmolality. It sounds like you're not hydrating at the cell level if you're that electrical. It's very common with mold. Someone says I can handle the pitch sound of the intellipur, but not for many of the others. That's the key is like the sound to have it at the cubic feet per minute. Cubic feet. CFMs. Cubic feet per minute, I think is what it is. That you need to actually exchange the air. They usually have to be on the highest. Yeah, the highest setting. One more what types of mold colonize the gut? Everything you can get in an indoor environment. And that's a big. That's a big deal. If they're in a competitive environment and there's a lot of mycotoxins, they reduce your immune, immune system's ability to keep the mold from moving in. And you can become the moldy building, which is how you can be sick from a moldy building. That was a 10 year prior exposure, but you're still struggling today. So colonization is a big deal. That's why I'm a big proponent of antifungals. But put it at the right step. So to learn the steps, check out my book, Break the Mold. And tomorrow we're going to be talking about mold farts, including mpa. All right, talk to you later, guys. Bye.
