Dave Asprey grew up in a flooded basement with toxic mold during the 1970s-80s and attributes decades of health problems to it: childhood asthma, arthritis at 14, OCD, Asperger-like symptoms, chronic strep throat requiring 15 years of antibiotics, and severe weight gain to 300 lb by age 23. He links the mold's estrogenic properties to hormonal disruption and metabolic damage.
I grew up in a basement that had been flooded, that had toxic mold, and I didn't know it. And no one knew about that in the '70s and '80s. And I had childhood asthma, arthritis diagnosed when I was 14, ODD, oppositional defiant disorder, and OCD, Asperger's syndrome, rashes, 15 years of antibiotics because of chronic strep throat, which is a symptom of toxic mold, weird nightmares and dreams, all kinds of behavioral things, brain things. Immune things, autoimmune stuff. By the time I was 23, I hit 300 pounds. When I was 26, I was diagnosed as having lower testosterone than my mother, which is not a great goal. And I mean, you've, you've seen how much extra skin I have, Rob. You, you helped me with the no-cut facelift, and we took a bunch off my low back without any scars, which is cool. So I just had this whole spectrum of crazy neurological and immune things, and mold is a major part of that. The reason I was so fat and had those giant man boobs, which is 10,000 times more estrogenic than human estrogen, and they give it to cows to make them fat on 30% less calories. So, you know, it, it was very biologically disruptive and it took me a long time to figure out what's going on.
