The Hidden Dangers of Mold Toxicity with Jason Earle from Got Mold?

Today on Midlife Conversations, I've got an episode that I was not planning on releasing right now, but I am releasing it early. This is a special edition interview that's for my upcoming live Deep Dive Summit that will be airing at the end of May. However, this interview was so good that I couldn't wait to share it because I think there's a lot of us that need to know about this. We're talking about mold, mold toxicity. What we might not be aware of is happening in our homes, how it could be affecting our health. I didn't want to wait to air it, so I'm introducing it on my podcast right now as a sample of some of the great interviews I have coming for this summit end of May. I think you're going to really love learning from Jason, who founded Got Mold. I believe at the end of this interview you are probably going to be convinced, like I do, that we need to test our homes. All of us need to test our homes. So if that is you and you decide I need to test my, my home, I want you to go to gotmold.com gotmold.com forward slash Natalie Jill. There'll be a free guide there. You can also use coupon Natalie Jill to save on your home testing kit. I myself right after this interview went and ordered a three room testing kit and I'm eager to find out what's going on in my home. It could explain a lot of things with health. I think you're going to love this episode.

Thank you. Thank you for having me and thank you for that, that intro.

So let's back up for a minute. You grew up and I remember you told me sort of off interview. But I want to, I want to bring this up again, how you were as a child. You had all these issues, you were sick and no one knew that this was the cause. What was going on then?

Yes, well, first of all, I think that's very common. It's much more common than I think people think. My situation was many decades ago where mold awareness was non existent. I mean, it was mulch mold, wipe it off. There was just no awareness at the time. But I suddenly fell ill when I was about 4 years old. Lost a lot of body weight in a three week period. I was having difficulty breathing. My parents took me to the pediatrician who said, you should take him to Children's Hospital which has a renowned respiratory clinic and was just about an hour away from our house. And so that's where we went. And the initial diagnosis based upon my Symptoms and my family history was cystic fibrosis. And so that was, needless to say, a devastating diagnosis in particular from my parents because it was a major concern of theirs. My father had lost four of his, his cousins to the, to a CF before the age of 14. So this was their worst nightmare coming true. And I was their only child. So they cried for six weeks while they waited for the second opinion, which fortunately, and evidenced by the fact that I sit here at 46 years old, I did not have CF. I don't have CF, actually what I had was asthma compounded by pneumonia. And when they tested me for allergies, which was one of my formative memories, it's one of the first things I remember. I could still smell the room. Even things put a papoose on you or like a straight jacket for toddlers, you know, with an open back. And then the drug rid on and then they do the ant, put the antigens in and wait for a reaction. And my dad described, he says I looked like a ladybug. My back just was red and swollen with dots all over it. And so I tested positive for every single thing that they, that they checked me for. So the short list was grass, wheat, corn, eggs, dog, dogs, cats, cotton, soybeans. And I grew up on a little non working farm surrounded by all those things, you know, so we are dogs, cats, cotton, soybean, soybean fields to the right, corn fields across the street. And I was allergic to all that stuff. And so I essentially lived on inhalers. And, and, and, and intuitively I, I spent a lot of time outside. I did not spend as much. Even though the basement was where all the fun stuff was. I always felt heavy down there. And my, like the, the weight. And so it was, it was a, it was not, is not. I intuitively spent more time outside, even though theoretically I had a lot more allergen exposure. But that musty smell, that musty smell always, always weighed on me. In any case, I lived like that until I was about 12. And then my parents split up and I moved out of that house and all my symptoms went away.

Wow.

It wasn't immediate, but it was fast enough that my family had chalked it up to adult or rather spontaneous adolescent remission is the term. In other words, they have no idea.

And did you put that together at all initially when you moved that it was the house?

No, no, nobody did. Nobody did. It wasn't even a thought. And then fast forward a little bit. So I moved out. And then about a year later my mom passed away, actually to suicide. And, and so, and that's actually a relevant part of the story because. And we'll get back to that. And then I got Lyme disease, or I was diagnosed with Lyme disease about a year later. And so major antibiotics, both from the, from the pneumonia and also from Lyme disease. And then I had the series of happy accidents, if you will, or fortunate disasters that led me to Wall street when I was 16, got recruited out of the gas station. So fairy tale kind of a story. And I did that for nine years and had a great career. And then at the end, after the dot com bubble burst, I decided to do something meaningful with my life. And my mom's voice actually echoed, which she always imparted upon me, the importance of service to the greater good, you know, it's contribution to the greater good. She used to have me volunteer at the hospital where she was the director of nursing during the summertime, mostly to keep me from burning the house down, but I think also to impart these kinds of values. And so, you know, as a stockbroker, there weren't many people benefiting from my success, except for the people who own the stores where I shopped. Right. So there was, there was, there was a gap there for me. So I went backpacking. When I was away, I was, I ended up in Hawaii for a spell and, and I was reading a story in the local newspaper about a guy who'd gotten sick from the building where he was an employee. It was a major hotel, Hilton Hotel on Oahu, Waikiki Beach. And he, he, he developed adult onset asthma and all these allergies that he had never had had before. And it was like a deja vu moment. It was immediate for me. I just immediately thought, geez, I wonder if the house that we were living in caused my mold, my, my, my respiratory illness. So I called my dad from a payphone, which probably isn't there anymore, and said, hey, do you think we had mold at Old Trenton Road? And he just, he just laughed at me. He goes, of course we had mushrooms in the basement. Why do you ask? And I said, well, do you think it is what made me sick? And he goes, well, it couldn't have helped if, you know, my dad, you know that, that's. Yeah, right. This is, that's his humor. But it was also very true. And at the time, there was nothing to do about it because again, I'm 46, right. This is only a recent phenomenon of awareness. And so, so in that moment, you know, Some people have a kind of a white light moment or they. An epiphany kind of a thing. And, and that was mine, where I immediately became fascinated with. Not mole per se. Even though it's fascinating and the more you look at it, the more fascinating it is, but rather the impact that the buildings we live and work and have on our house. This is fascinating to me and it's never left me. It's been 20 years now.

So many people will say, okay, I know that musty smell and my house doesn't have that musty smell, or the building I work in doesn't have it. Is that a gauge of how to know if we have mold in a home or is that just when it's gotten so extreme?

It's a really good question. So a musty smell is a dead giveaway of active mold growth. Now you can have dormant mold that does not emit the gases. So the musty smell is the digested byproduct. Just like we produce gas when we digest, mold produces gas, but it occurs outside of it because it's, it a, it's a, the organism digests externally. And so those, those are the metabolic byproducts. Mold burp. Mold burps, if you will. So naturally, if we're not eating, we're not producing gas. At least most of us aren't. And so same thing with mold. So if it's not producing gas, not producing the smell, that doesn't mean you don't have it, it just means it's not currently growing.

Sure.

But if you smell it, boy, that's a dead giveaway. And so that, that's an extremely important thing to track down. And the thing you want to track down is the source of the moisture, of course, right?

Yes.

If you smell that smell, it's not just an aesthetic nuisance. The recent studies around flute fruit flies, because you can't study people with these things, not ethically at least, but they've done really fascinating studies with fruit flies and expose them to the musty smell and they stop producing dopamine, they start flying down and set it to the light, they stop reproducing, they develop locomotive dysfunction. Parkinsonian like symptoms is the way the researchers describe it, as well as mitochondrial damage. So the musty smell is neurotoxic, it's not just an aesthetic nuisance. So it's not just important as a signal, because it is a signal that you got a problem. You gotta track down the moisture problem and find the extent of the issue. But it's Also a source of illness.

When people have water damage in the house or. Because that's common, too. I know here, as I'm recording this in San Diego, we've had a lot of rain and we get a leak in our ceiling. Whatever. There's a belief, my husband's included, one that will say that is like, oh, well, it's wood. It just dries out. Is that true?

Yes and no. So the wood is fine. Most would, however. You know, I just had a fascinating call with a woman in South Africa, a doctor, and. And she was describing the way her building is built. Old growth, timber, plaster, brick. She's got. Moisture intrusion doesn't really create that big of a mold problem. We build buildings in. In, you know, modern America out of paper mache. And we build out of, you know, green. Green or white pine. You know, like, in other words, very young white pine. And so it's loaded with sugars, loaded with nutrients, Right? And so mold doesn't really like wood. It's too hard to eat. But it loves the sugars, and given enough moisture, eventually it will grow on. On the wood. But what it really likes is it loves Sheetrock, drywall drips, and wallboard. The paper on it is. Is the ideal mold food. It's literally the perfect mold food. It's like a petri dish. It holds the gypsum, holds the moisture like a sponge, and there's paper on both sides. So mold grows very, very nicely, usually on the dark side, because, of course, there's less disturbance and it dries slower. So when you get water intrusion into a cavity, there's two things that you gotta worry about. Number one is the Sheetrock, because it obviously can support fungal growth very, very easily. And by the way, I should mention, this is really good spot to drop this in. Mold grows in as little as 24 to 48 hours after a water intrusion that's not dealt with properly. That's a big deal. The guidance from the EPA says 24 to 48 hours. The industry standard, which is called the IICRC S520. Very important. If anybody ever has to go through this process, I'm sure many of the people who are listening will. That's the standard that is the only consensus accepted industry standards, called the S520. They talk about, uh, in fact, the DAS 500 is the water damage standard. Both of them talk about 72 hours as the. As the mark, right? So if something gets wet and stays wet, if it's porous and absorptive. So that Sheetrock carpet Carpet padding, upholstered furniture, things like that, any of that stuff that will Support fungal growth 72 hours. And you gotta treat it like mold, whether it's visible or not. So it's very important that you react to those things or, and respond to them rather in a, in a, in a proactive way. And so that means removing wet materials before they get moldy. So usually, and I just had a leak like this in my kitchen from an ice stand, you got to cut out the sheetrock while it's wet, believe it or not. And the reason you do that is because you want to get rid of the sheetrock that's damaged so it doesn't get moldy. But also you want to get the insulation that's in there that's wet. Because once insulation gets wet, it never dries. When I say never, I mean like until the dinosaurs come back, it won't dry. So it's in that cavity. And instead of acting like insulation, it's actually a thermal bridge that actually will transfer heat from outside into your house or cold from outside, depending upon what climate you're in. So it's very important to get that cavity open and dry. Dry. You also want to make sure there's no pre existing mold there. So if there's already been a leak there and you're taking that, you don't go. Don't, don't, don't be a cowboy. Right.

How do people do that, though? Like, like you. So for instance, like you have a wood leak or your roof is leaking or whatever, and your wall looks good, your wall looks clean. Do you have to go bust through your wall to figure this out or what do you do?

Unfortunately, the, the right way to do it is to, is to do investigative demolition. And that should be done by a water damage specialist, someone who will put a tent around the work area to control the dust and so that any of the d in that stays in the workspace. Right. Because mold laden dust is what makes people sick.

Wow.

I mean, mold laden dust is, first of all, the dust itself. Gypsum wallboard, gypsum dust, construction dust is very, very fine. If you've ever done any sort of sheetrock work in your house, you'll know that dust gets everywhere. Well, guess what? That the mold spores travel along very nicely with that stuff. And so the combination of the construction debris and the fungi is enough to knock anybody down. So fungi laden dust is something that needs to be managed very, very carefully. And so I suggest that people not do this kind of work on their Own. You know, I hate to say it, but most mold work, once you get past that 24 to 48 hours, you crest into professional services. So further guidance on the 24 to 48 hours. This is really important. Water damage is free or cheap to fix water damage when it's really your first leak. So if you had a bunch of leaks there, you have to. You can't look at this as the 24 to 40. If you've had leaks there, you probably already have a moisture. You probably already have mold. But if it's a virgin leak, first time this has happened, if you address that quickly, it's either free or cheap. So in other words, free would be you do it yourself. You rip out the wet stuff and you let that cavity dry, and you check that cavity. By the way, it's a really good idea to get a moisture meter. Everyone, every home should have a moisture meter, ideally with pins, pin type. And you can check sheetrock, you can check wood. Very, very important tool for most homes. And most homes don't have one. Then. So. So if you. If you rip it out yourself, then you've saved yourself a lot of. But some cases, it's too big, Right? Right. A lot. So then you call your insurance company or you call a water damage. If you don't have. If you don't have. If you don't want to pull the home, homeowner's insurance rip cord, because that can cause a lot of other ramifications. But you want to get a water damage specialist in there that will take out that wet, wet stuff and dry those areas.

Okay, you do that.

Insurance will cover that.

So, Jason, if I'm hearing you correctly, like, if you have a water leak in your roof or in the wood or whatever you're saying, you're saying, you can't just go deal with that. Like, you got to check the drywall around that because it could all be growing in there. And I think most people are skipping that. I know we for sure have skipped that for sure.

And it's. And it's very easy to skip it because you think, ah, it's not so bad. It's a little area. You know, it's not that big of a deal. But. But first of all, actually, let me back up. The first thing you gotta do is fix that roof.

Yep.

At the end of the day, mold is not the problem. Mold is a symptom of the problem. The enemy of a healthy building and the enemy of healthy occupants is moisture. It's very simple, right? It's very Simple. And as soon as you have that imbalance that occurs, mold grows very quickly. So mold is just the symptom. Mold is like an alarm, if you will. Mold is the alert that when you smell that musty smell, look at it as an alert. You're being told, there's an imbalance in the building. Now go find it. Right. People think mold is so evil, but actually, if mold wanted to kill you, you'd be dead. Fungi is much smarter than we are. But. But it also sends you a signal. It lets you know, hey, there's a. There's an imbalance here in the building. So let's go figure that out. And if you leave that be, it will grow from an aesthetic nuisance into cancer for the building. Really, if you think about it, wow, Right. The bill. The building materials start to rot. It becomes. It's a lot like. Like cancer for the body. Look at the building as. The building has a lot of systems in it that look a lot like a body. Right. It's got a H vac system, which is like respiratory. You've got the electrical system, which is like the nervous system. You've got the. The siding is a lot like dermis or skin. The insulation of the walls a lot like fat. You know, where's the immune system? Oh, we're it. We're the immune system.

Wow.

You know, and so when a building gets sick, we get sick. When the building heals, we heal. There's a real relationship here. I don't look at buildings the way most people do, which is just these boxes that we live and work in. I look at the building, buildings as an extension of our immune system. It's an exoskin or an exoskeleton, and the health of that exoskin and the health of that exoskeleton is your health. If that building is unhealthy because there's an imbalance, because there's a microbial imbalance, a moisture problem, the occupants will suffer. And when that building is corrected, the occupants will also reach equilibrium. There's a mutualism, there's a symbiosis.

It makes sense how you explain it. So it's just like when you heal your body, you have to treat your environment as a whole, because you could do all the things to your body. But if you're in an environment that's toxic or creating this, you're going to have bigger issues. Issues.

That's right. It's true Root cause stuff.

Okay, so how does. And I don't want to get too off Track from testing and what we need to look for in our home, because that's important, too. But what are some symptoms that people should be aware of? Because, like, I know some people will say, oh, well, I don't have allergies. I don't. So it's not that. But what. How else can mold present itself as a problem in your body?

Well, I mean, mold is. Is the great mimicker in many ways. It mimics a lot of other illnesses. It also is the exacerbator. What it does is mold has a, you know, typical. Typical mold symptoms are upper respiratory. Right. Sneezing, itchy eyes. You know, some people have hives and dermal reactions, things like that.

We had that in one. In one house we lived in. My husband had that for. It was clear that we had mold because of that with him.

Right. So that. That's a typical. Okay, that's. That's a classic sort of, you know, chronic sinusitis is mold related, according to the Mayo Clinic, 97% of cases. According to the Mayo Clinic.

Wow.

And so, obviously, asthma attacks and wheezing and those kinds of things. Those are. Those are. Those are primary concerns. And then you also have, like, toxic responses to these things where you've got a toxic load. And this is usually not caused by mold, but rather, mold is usually the straw that breaks the camel's back. So there's already a toxic load. You know, whether it be from the VOCs in our house or poor diet or genetic predisposition to difficulty detoxifying. There's lots of different reasons why people end up reaching a certain toxic threshold and mold toxins as well. And not just the mycotoxins, which is the stuff that everyone talks about, but the musty smell, which are. Some people are actually, in fact, Joan Bennett, the woman who. Who spearheading all that research with the fruit flies, she wants to call the microbial VOCs, which are called the musty smell. She wants to call them volatoxins instead of. Because they're not really technically mycotoxins, but they. Because they are neurotoxic and they're volatile in the sense that they're gases and they cause neurotoxicity. She wants to call them phylotoxins. So these things all accumulate. Right.

Okay.

And so then. And then what happens is it manifests as. As so many different symptoms. It brings out autoimmune disease. It's very common thing. So people have an autoimmune issue, and they've had their. The predisposition, their Whole life. And then this brings it to the side.

That makes sense. Okay.

And then when you. And then when the, when the mole problem gets corrected and the rest of the body, the rest, the equilibrium is able to be achieved through other detoxification, suddenly, next thing you know, that stuff simmers back down. Right.

So, so you could have an underlying anything. So any autoimmune, I would imagine. And so maybe, or like, and then you're saying that's going to bring the symptoms up higher and escalate it faster than if you were not exposed to that.

We see this all the time. I mean, with things like arthritis, with, you know, with stuff that's kind of nebulous again, fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue syndrome.

And could it affect like blood sugars? Could it affect like, what other things could it affect?

Well, I mean, there's evidence, there's certainly evidence that mycotoxins impact your digestion. Okay. But, but that's usually from eating moldy food. And so.

Got it.

But by the way, I should mention also that everyone's worried about mycotoxins. And if you're taking mycotoxin tests, whether it be through real time labs or Great Plains or any of these guys, and you get a big mycotoxin readings look in your house, be very vigilant about that. But also understand that that could be a legacy thing. That could be from your, it could be from your office, it could be from the house that you used live in. It could be where you. From, where you grew up. I mean, this stuff sometimes can really hang out for a long time. And a lot of the doctors don't know how to interpret this data. But the, the other thing is you have to look in your pantry. Mold in food is the primary source of exposure for most people. And, and there's really interesting data on this. There was a group of scientists that just recently went and looked and they, they tried to debunk some data that came out of the United nations saying that 20% of foodstuffs or 25% of foodstuffs are, are mycotoxin contaminated. They Wrong way higher. With imported grains. 60 to 80% imported.

60 to 80%. Oh my goodness. Gosh.

So this is. Yeah, no, it's a big deal. So that's imported grains. That's, you know, quinoa, rice, rice, wheat. We just learned that Ukraine's the, the breadbasket of, of the, of the planet. Right?

Yeah.

And so, so when they put all that wheat on a boat or if it gets stuck because of what's going on right now? Well, that stuff gets moldy. Right. This is not coming over in climate controlled containers. Also spices, nuts, dried fruits, coffee, which as we know from Dave, Asprey. And bulletproof. Right? All that stuff.

Spices and nuts.

Spices, nuts.

So how do you, how do you, how do we know? Like, this is crazy.

It is crazy. And so this is why it's very important to source your food locally as much best you can.

Okay.

Right. This, this idea of buying food from international sources only. Ma, there, there's local sources for a lot of the stuff that we're buying overseas. Right. You don't need to buy foreign rice, you don't need to buy foreign wheat. You don't. It's just not necessary. But we do, because that's what's cheap and that's what our big food companies are using. Because it's cheap.

Sure. Well, I'm also thinking, like a lot of people listening to this, they're, they're more conscious. Like, and then maybe they're not eating wheat, they're not eating processed foods, but then you're saying things like your spices and your nuts. Like, you're like, wait a minute, this is, you think you're being healthy and. Wow.

Yep. And it gets better. Right? So check it this out. Wine, applesauce, tomato sauce. Why? Because they take the ugly fruit that they're not going to sell at the store that's already moldy, and they throw it in the bucket and then that bucket sits there for a bit. Right, Got it.

Because there's probably a certain amount allowed in or whatever that's considered safe.

Yep.

That's crazy. So how do you test your food? How do you know? Like, how do you guarantee it doesn't have it?

We don't have, we don't have the ability yet to do that. There's a company called Allergy Allergy Amulet that's, that's working on some cool stuff using some technology that lets you scan food for gluten and some other. But. And, and so ultimately we'll probably have the ability to scan food for the, for the compounds that we call mycotoxins. But the, but right now we don't have. So the best advice is no sugar, no grains. That's the good advice anyway. Right? Good advice anyway. But it's in particular particularly good advice for anyone who's trying to avoid, avoid mycotoxins and, and mold and food. And you want to stay away from, you know, like I said, I hate to say it because I feed my kid Applesauce, you know, he loves that. But you limit the things that lend itself to that kind of. That kind of food processing.

I would have never imagined that all those things. Because you would think you would see it on there, like, oh, well, I would like cheese. You see. See it on there, and you throw it away or you cut it. People. Some people cut it off. I don't. If I see mold on fruit or cheese that's going in the trash, I don't want any part of it. By the way, is it okay to cut things off of that, or is that just as bad? Like, I've always thought, if it's already on the food, you don't want the food.

Well, it depends. A soft cheese, you don't want to. You don't want to keep soft cheese if it's got mold running through it. If it's. Unless it's designed to be that way. Blue cheese, rockefurt, stuff like that. Right? That is mold. That is penicillium rockefurt. It's literally. We find that stuff growing on sheetrock. So make. I mean, that same strain will grow on your walls as well as it will grow and.

Makes sense.

And dairy products. So, yes, you don't want it. But fruit. Fruit you can cut off in most cases.

Okay.

Soft cheese you should throw away.

You can cut off and then cut that off.

But. But hard cheeses you can cut off. So you should toss.

Yeah, soft toss hard. Okay, so back to the house thing, because, again, I think this is like, a huge. You know, like I said, my husband's like, you have got wood, we have wood. It dries out. There's no issue. And now you have me thinking totally differently. How. What do people do? And I'm assuming this is why you developed a test like, how do you know without taking apart your whole house?

Well, I mean, that's. That. That's it. Right? So you. I always say you're the best mold test. First of all, you're usually the best mold test. And by the way, there's no perfect mold test. You know, we made the best one available. But that doesn't mean it's still not a silver bullet. There is no silver bullet. The same way there's no silver bullet for human testing. I always. I compare the body to the two buildings all the time because the metaphor plays all the way through. There's no test that you can take for yourself. If I said to you, natalie, you know, I don't feel well, you're my doctor. I don't feel well. Test me. I don't feel well.

No, there's no, like there's so many different angles. You can go, yeah, right.

So I mean like what, let's do a physical. Well, that's an inspection, right? And then based upon what you find, let's do some testing. But you don't just test, right? And that's what people want with mold. They just want to test. And I have to remind them that they don't have that for bodies. Why do they have, why do you think they were going to have that for buildings? You know, there's a lot more money in buildings tests and body tests than there are in building tests. There would be one of those tests if you could do that, but there can't. There isn't. So, so you can't and so we don't. So what you have to do is you have to rely first on the, on, on your God given senses. If you see something, smell something or feel something, do something, what does that mean? If you see any sort of discoloration that's similar that, that, that indicates moisture intrusion. If you see discoloration that looks right, those small dots and everyone's seen mold growth. So you can tell, you know, usually it take a good flashlight will also tell you, you can, you can, you can shoot the flashlight across the mold and you can see it's, if you go straight at it, you can always see. But if you shoot across it. So if you see something, you're looking for any signs of moisture intrusion, any signs of fungal growth, blistering, pain, trim pulling away from the walls, these are the dead giveaways, right?

Okay.

If you smell something, right. We talked about the musty odor. That's a very, very clear indicator, right? If he smells damp, you know, musty or some people call it musky, but it's, you know that mold odor is a clear indication. That's where you need to start really looking for where the moisture source is coming from. And then lastly, if you feel something, and feel something is very personal, everybody's got different, a different response to, to these things. Some people end up with headaches, nausea, dizziness, fatigue, difficulty concentrating, general general malaise. Some people have allergic sensitivities, some people again have their autoim stuff flare up. But if you know when your building is doing something that's not right, at least you should be cultivate that. Right? The idea is that we do have, these senses are powerful and if you use those senses, that's your first step. Then if you're, if you, if you if you've identified that there is a reason for concern, then there's a bunch of different things you can do. We actually have an ebook on our website which, which allows people to, to do their own inspection. You can hire a professional, which will cost you, you know, a thousand bucks or more to have a qualified professional come over and they're going to do an inspection and then collect some. There are do it yourself products. We make one that allows you to test the air using the same device the professionals use. That's not a replacement for a professional, but it's a really good first step. And then you start to develop a picture. Because if you can use your senses to develop the first couple of, you know, one data point is not actionable. I smell it. That's not actionable. Where's the moisture source? You start to assemble. I smell it, I see it, I feel something great. Some samples, I got high spore counts. You start to develop a picture of what's going on. Yeah, unfortunately, mold remediation is still something that needs to be done by professionals. So at some point, if you have that problem, depending upon whether you're renting or whether you own that changes everything. Right. Which direction you're going to go. And, and really this is not about remediation because that's a long, That's a whole podcast, quite frankly. That's a whole interview. Just the, the permutation that you can go through. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But the initial diagnostics, you know, what we need to do is get people to start trusting themselves and, you know, trust your intuition, trust your senses, but then get the data. Right. So that's why I say trust your senses. And then, and then test, test, don't guess. They say that a lot in functional medicine. Same thing here. Test, don't guess, don't guess.

I do want to circle back to one thing you said at the very beginning of this session. You mentioned about your mom and you said there's a connection there. What did you mean by that?

Yeah, thank you for bringing that back around. So my, my experience with, with mold, initially I thought, well, I was the one that got sick. But, you know, she was clearly sick, she was clearly ill in many ways. And it wasn't until 15 years later that I was, you know, working with Dr. Joan Bennett and working with the fruit flies.

Sure.

And actually it was 2008 when, when this kind of came together for me when Brown University did a study and they looked at 6,000 homes and they had, they had people report their general quality of life. As well as the conditions in the building. So self reporting. Right. But it's a big study, 6,000 and, and so what? They found a direct correlation between mold and dampness indoors and depression. And I thought, wow, I mean, geez. I mean. And so they couldn't, they couldn't connect the dots. In other words, they couldn't say, well, this mold exposure caused the depression. Right. But rather what they posited was potentially that people who report a mold problem that has not been corrected yet and are reporting a low quality of life may very well feel disempowered. Right. In other words, if you've got a mold problem, you can't fix it. That means you're probably struggling with some things.

Yeah.

You got a landlord that won't do it, or you don't have a budget to fix it if you've got the capability to do so. There's a lot of reasons why someone would be depressed, living in a moldy building, feeling. And that, that, so that for a long time sat with me. And Then Joan Bennett, Dr. Joan Bennett @ Rutgers, began doing the fruit fly experiments and she identified that they stopped producing dopamine. They got depressed. And so that changed my whole view on this, which is that the musty smell, by the way, causes fatigue, difficulty concentrating, cognitive impairment, all sorts of stuff, sleep disturbances, mold rage. These are well established byproducts of exposure to, chronic exposure to mold. My mother was living in that house. She was also an alcoholic. But the question is, was she self medicating against that? Right.

And what came first?

Yeah, which came first. Right. So, so, so I firmly believe that, that the, that that mold problem was an underlying variable in her and her, in her demise. And so, so in many ways my mission here, you know, is driven by my own personal experience. But not just mine. Right. I mean, I really do think that my mother's depression was, was, was directly related to the conditions in the building. And it was a combination of chemical and also the disempowerment. Yeah, there were a lot of things that she couldn't get fixed there. She didn't have the budget, she didn't have. So there's a, it's a, it's a rat's emotional rat's nest, but it's also a chemical reality. And so it's very important. Anyone listening to this, if you've got a musty smell and you feeling, you're feeling emotionally dysregulated, take action, take action on this. Literally, it's a matter of, it's not just your Lungs. It's not just your, it's this, is this, is this, is this holistic problem. It affects you neurologically, physically, emotionally and otherwise.

Well, Jason, this was phenomenal. I have so many more questions. I'm going to have to have you on for a part two, especially about the remediation because now I got to go dig into my house and make sure I don't have a mole problem here. And I'm sure people listening are like, okay, wait, stop, hold the phone. I have symptoms, I have things going on. How do I check? Where do they go? Where do you want them to go? So they can order your kit? Because I'm ordering one stat. I need it in my house. I need to know. And by the way, do you recommend you test your house first? Test your body first? Does it matter? Like what do we do first first?

Okay, so first of all, I always, I think that the environment is the most important variable. Right? You got it. You got to make sure, get, get your moisture control. Moisture under control and, and, and, and know what's in your air. Right? I mean we got the five, four basic air, water, food, shelter. Shelter's obvious. You know, we need one of those. Food you can live without three weeks, water you can live without for about three days. And then water, air you can live without for about three minutes. And yet of all those four things we think about air the least. And so we need to bring our focus back, back to that. Right. Okay. In terms of how to, how to get in touch with, with me or with us. So we created a welcome page@gotmold.com it's actually gotmold.com Natalie Jill and if you go there, you'll find that we put an ebook there, a free download. It's 46 pages of inspection checklists and FAQs and really, really useful stuff for anyone who's beginning their mold journey. We get a lot of positive feedback about that. It will actually take you for a journey through your own home. You'll see things that you've never seen, seen before.

Sounds so good. Okay, everyone's got to go there. So we're going to go to gotmold.com forward/natalie Jill and they'll see that there. And even had to have a coupon. Natalie Jill 10.

That's right. For people. That's right. And so that's also posted there. And, and you can link right out of there to, to, to the shop page if you want to take a look at the kits. We sell one, two and three room kits. And also refills so people who buy a kit can retest their air for, for, for less in the future here. And so, yes, it's gotmold.com nataliejill and then nataliejill10 in case anybody wants to just go straight to gotmold.com and take a look. And that gives you a 10% discount.

Amazing. And we're going to have to plan do a whole nother episode on remediation. Hopefully I don't need it in my house, but we're going to have to have a lot more questions there. Thank you so much.

Thank you so much for having me.