Got Low Energy? THIS Could Be The Mysterious Reason Why!​

Evan Brand, CFMP, FNTP

Hey, Laura, thanks for having me.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Oh, it’s so good, you are a certified functional medicine and functional nutritional therapy practitioner with an online practice. You focus on finding and fixing the root causes of fatigue, depression, anxiety, digestive symptoms, and other issues. You have 16 million downloads on your podcast. That’s insane.

Evan Brand, CFMP, FNTP

It’s probably closer to 20, but I quit counting and quit updating my bio. But it’s taken a while, that didn’t happen overnight. You gotta realize that’s 10 years, that’s 2012. There was very few of us. Back then, it was like Sean Croxton, maybe Robb Wolf, maybe Mark Sisson. You know, he was doing Mark’s Daily Apple at the time.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Yeah.

Evan Brand, CFMP, FNTP

So that was a different world back then.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Yeah, it’s still impressive, it’s very impressive.

Evan Brand, CFMP, FNTP

Thanks.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Yes. Now you offer at home functional medicine training courses through your Functional Academy of Medicine and Epigenetics called FAME. And you offer these on gut mold and energy issues. So you have a lot of practitioners that go through your work, also consumers of health. So you have a little bit of something for everyone, it sounds like.

Evan Brand, CFMP, FNTP

I try to be deep enough to help the practitioners, but general enough to help the health seekers too. So like we can get geeky, but most people like the geeky because they’ve already been to five, 10, 15 practitioners, most people, as you know, in our space, most of our clients, they’re pretty freaking smart.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

They are, there’s a savvy audience watching this summit right now. So we’re gonna support that savvy audience right now in this talk. You have a personal journey with mold. You are a gut health expert. I’d like today to have you talk about the connection between mold mitochondria, gut health, let’s paint the picture of why it’s so important to support gut health. And can you start by telling us what happened to you with mold and what you know about that?

Evan Brand, CFMP, FNTP

Sure, I built the brand new house was excited to move in, moved in, everything was okay. Then I started getting like histamine rashes, like getting flushing and my blood pressure became unstable. I’d have 50 point swings, like I’d go from like a normal, 110 over 70 to like a 150 over 90 or 150 over 100, which for me is very freaking high.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Yeah.

Evan Brand, CFMP, FNTP

And so I texted a friend of mine. I woke up dizzy, so I texted a friend of mine, Jack Wolfson calls himself, the paleo cardiologist. Awesome dude–

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

He’s on this summit. So catch his talk about–

Evan Brand, CFMP, FNTP

Hello, Jack, if you’re watching me, I’ll watch you, but Jack’s awesome. So I texted Jack, hey man, I’m waking up dizzy. What’s going on? He text back one word in all caps mold. And I thought no way and so I just start poking around in the house and sure enough built on a cross base, bad idea, go down in the cross base. There’s standing water down there. And apparently one of the what’s called a silcock valve. It broke and that’s a like water hose where you hook up a water hose. So we were watering trees, got too cold. Hose froze, busted the valve, standing water down there. And then of course, that’s gonna evaporate up into your subfloor and then create mold issues, which can then get into your ducts and then your AC, your heat kicks on and then it spreads this stuff around. So we figured it out, we remediated the place. Everything was perfectly cured, but just the mental trauma of it was enough for me to wanna get outta there. So we got out of there, moved, we’ve moved several times, we moved a lot. So now we’re in a much sunnier place, which we love. But overall it really put a lot of things that may have been dormant into like an active problem. So I had many tick bites as a kid growing up, playing in the woods. And I used to work at a park system building hiking trails. I had many tick bites, never really had a ton of problems. I mean, some anxiety, depression, gut problems. That’s kinda how I got into all this, but it wasn’t until I got exposed to the mold that I got really sick, like dizziness, vertigo. I quit driving for almost two years because–

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

That’s nuts.

Evan Brand, CFMP, FNTP

I was too dizzy and thank God I’m back to driving now. I’m mostly over it, I’m still excreting mycotoxins outta my urine. So I’m still peeing out some mycotoxin still some evidence I’ve got issues, but I’m so much better now. And so looking back at all the clients I failed with, I go, this is why I failed with them because I was just treating their gut. I was working on clostridium and candida and SIBO and SIFO and parasites and all that. And those people now that we know based on me running hundreds and hundreds of these labs, all the people that are having recurring gut infections that have already been to the SIBO guy and did the SIBO protocol with the antifungals and the biocidin, then the garlic and the, whatever. The reason they’re not better is probably ’cause they have mold and it’s weakening the immune system. And even the lab tells you that on their generic cookie cutter printout. Now they’ll tell you like for example, one mycotoxin called mycophenolic acid. They’ll tell you straight up, this promotes the overgrowth of clostridial and candida. Meaning, if you just treat the infections in the gut and you don’t get rid of the mycotoxins, you will not get well and stay well, you’ll get well and then you’ll relapse after a couple of months and the link–

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

This is so important, Evan, so what’s coming up for me is here you are well established practitioner running very successful practice and programs. And it took this experience with your own health to shift the way you practice. And what’s important here for our audience listening is even those of us in the health space who do everything right, we have our own experiences with toxins. And even though we have very healthy gut microbiomes, it can take us out. So I mean, you’re being very transparent and authentic about this experience. You’re not hiding or holding back you got taken out and you got a schooling on what needed to change in your own protocols as well, which is really amazing. And what I’m hearing you say is that the gut microbiome and mycotoxin infections are very tightly connected and linked. So can you explore more on that?

Evan Brand, CFMP, FNTP

Yeah, well, and then we’ll tie it into mitochondria too. If we just look in PubMed, if you just type in like gut bacteria, there’s a paper here from 2020, it’s titled gut bacteria signaling to mitochondria and intestinal inflammation and cancer. And what they’re discussing is the fact that the gut microbiome can actually signal the mitochondria and the mucosal cells. And so what’s happening is leaky gut could somewhat be driven by this two-way signaling between gut and mitochondria. We think of gut as its own isolated thing. Maybe some people have made the gut brain connection. So issues with like anxiety, depression, fatigue. We see that because we know you make B vitamins in your gut, for example, you make serotonin in your gut, for example. So most people already are in this space or somewhat aware of this gut brain connection. We talk about that, how if you’re depressed, treat your gut. So I had one woman depressed for 20 years. 

She was 90% better with her depression in six weeks of a protocol guess how many antidepressant herbs or nutrients or drugs I gave her zero. All I did is just give her a gut protocol, which I’ve done a thousand times. It wasn’t anything more complex or different than usual, but somehow that was the magic remedy to clear up her depression. And we followed up on it and she’s like, what depression? I’m like, oh my God, this is insane. I’m like, do you realize this? So I think people forget how sick they were. So please celebrate the small wins along the way. But the connection is the mold toxin in chicken or egg, who knows? So you could have been born with mycotoxins these come through the placenta. They do go through breast milk, we know this as well established. And so I’ve tested many children, two, there, four, five, six year olds. I will tell you with confidence, the most toxic people on planet earth right now are children age 10 and below because they’ve–

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Wow.

Evan Brand, CFMP, FNTP

‘Cause they’ve grown up in the world with an insane amount of glyphosate being sprayed, an insane amount of other toxic chemicals, moldy schools, moldy buildings, mold from their parents. And these kids are in big trouble. I’ve got 80 year olds that look cleaner on paper and have better mitochondrial function than five year olds. So I’ve got kids that they’re falling asleep in the classroom and they’re gonna get kicked outta school because of their behavior. And the parents come to me with their hands up, like, hey pediatrician can’t help, what do you do? Well, we look at their gut, but then we also look at mitochondria and you can’t just come in and say, do CoQ10 and ribose and carnitine and PQQ and at other adaptogens. You can’t just do that because you gotta figure out what’s actually damaging the mitochondria and mycotoxins are a huge, huge part of that. But the mold toxins also damaging the gut. So it’s this big triad. So this picture at a triangle you’ve got, or maybe a pyramid, if you will. I mean, I really think mold is like the base of this pyramid and then stacked on top of that or these other tangential problems with the mitochondria, with the gut bacterial overgrowth, with candida. And then of course the very tip top of the totem pole there, you’ve got the downstream effects, which most people treat meaning the depression instead of an antidepressant, you take, let’s say 5HTP or for fatigue, you take your B vitamins and maybe your carnitine and your ribose and whatever. But most people stop there. And I don’t want people to stop there. Like I’m okay with doing natural medicine instead of conventional medicines. Like if you have a headache, here’s to more liquids instead of ibuprofen that’s okay. But you gotta get to the root of the root.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Exactly.

Evan Brand, CFMP, FNTP

And at one point I was so tired, I told you before we hit record, I could literally, I had a steep driveway at my last property. I could literally make it to the driveway down by the creek to the mailbox. But by the time I got back up the hill, I was so winded and mold will do that to you. So to me, this is the biggest epidemic that we’re facing.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

It’s incredible, Evan, I have a mold story myself and I spent 30 years beating myself up for being a failure because I had a mold exposure, couple mode exposures right before my freshman year of college. And my first year of college, all I could do was sleep. And I went to a campus that had a lot of hills and I could barely walk around, it was literally exhausting. And I missed a lot of my classes and I was on academic probation, took me six years to get a bachelor’s degree because I had to retake every single class. I can’t believe that they didn’t kick me out. And I went through this experience, all through my 20s, 30s, and most of my 40s feeling like I wasn’t smart enough, like carrying this with me. And now knowing what I know about mold, I know I had a mold intoxication and I was so sick and it took a couple of years for my body to naturally come out of it. I didn’t know anything about functional medicine. I didn’t have any support. It was just my natural, healthy lifestyle that eventually got me functioning again. Of course now when I tested mycotoxins at age 49, I had them and I knew exactly where they came from. It was unreal, so similar experience. And the point is that this is what mold will do to people. It steals your confidence. I always thought I was a failure because I couldn’t pass my first year of college with flying colors, now I know I was sick.

Evan Brand, CFMP, FNTP

Well, I can back that up with data too. So like, when you say that statement, people are like, oh, that’s like emotional. She didn’t feel good enough. It’s like, no, this is biochemical too. Because when you look at an organic acid test, you can measure very important things. So everyone listening, if you have it already, you need to get an organic acid test run. And then what you can do is you can have the lab run your mycotoxins on the same urine sample. And the reason the OAT is so amazing is because you can look at mitochondrial function. We ought pull one up, I’ve got some case studies. We’ve got time to do it. Let’s look at one because to me, this is where people are gonna find the answers to their health struggles. Because at the end of the day, that’s the only reason people are here. They wanna know what the heck do I do? How do I feel better? How do I feel more energetic? What do I do? Well, if you haven’t had one, you gotta get an OAT test run because the problem is until you have the data, you’re guessing. So like, if you’ve got mold colonization, meaning your college story. If you had exposure to enough mold long enough, or your immune system was weak enough, you could become colonized. And now you need to use antifungals to treat that. If you just come in with binders like charcoal and clay and zeal light, and other things, people talk about chlorella, you won’t fully get better because all you’ve done is you’ve opened the bathtub drain. That’s the binders, but you haven’t turned the water off. And so to fully get better, you’ve gotta kill the colonization. And that can include treating your sinuses also, which most people miss they’re focused on stuff in the gut, antifungals in the gut. And they don’t fully get better. So let me pull up a kid if that’s okay with you, Laura.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Yeah, while you’re pulling that up too.

Evan Brand, CFMP, FNTP

Okay.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

You know, there’s this important piece also that parasites and bacteria live hand in hand with mycotoxins. So if you’ve got these reoccurring parasite infections, bacterial infections, have you done a check for mycotoxins? Because that may be the problem, right?

Evan Brand, CFMP, FNTP

I had parasites, I had cryptosporidium and Giardia. They were wrecking me. I also had H. pylor and H. pylor is an opportunistic infection. And I think that’s also being driven by mold because I treated the H. pylor. I treated the parasites, but I was still exhausted. And you mentioned the self-confidence, so this is a really messy one, so buckle up. This is a really messy one, this is a three year old. So when I tell you all that, like kids are sick. Kids are sick, they’re not crazy. You know, the parents are like, oh, he’s just bad. You know, he’s just got sugar cravings. He’s a kid, give him the pop tart. No, don’t give him the pop tart, because if he’s got candy to like this poor kid does, you don’t wanna be given this kid a bunch of sugary junk. So how does this all connect? Well, when we’re looking for bacterial issues in the gut, mold, mitochondrial problems, chronic fatigue, and then also mental emotional problems. 

So depression, anxiety, and OAT can literally give you all the answers. So let me just run you through this, how you interpret these. You’re looking for high markers that indicates an issue, low markers, sometimes help. But if you all are watching this, you’re seeing a bunch of HS, high, high, high, high, high, and you can see in parenthesis here, long word 5-Hydroxymethyl-2-furoic This is an organic acid that indicates that this poor kid three years old is colonized for aspergillus, which is the most common mold in a water damage building. You want less than 28, this kid’s at 358. He’s off the charts. I mean, this is almost record breaking. And what happened is his mother told me the story. I treated their whole family. The mother had a house where the tree roots broke through the foundation. And every time it rained, their basement would flood. And so there you go.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Yep.

Evan Brand, CFMP, FNTP

He he’s got candida through the roof, that’s arabinose. All these here are bacterial overgrowth markers. So of course he’s gonna have SIBO. So folks just treating SIBO, you’re missing the OAT. You’re not gonna fully get better unless you fix his colonization. ‘Cause as we talked about.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

The root cause. Yeah, the root cause–

Evan Brand, CFMP, FNTP

Colonization is allowing the bacteria to thrive. Then we get into the brain stuff. Surprisingly, his brain chemistry was okay. You mentioned that you didn’t feel smart enough and all that. Well, we know that mycotoxins directly impact dopamine. So when we see kids in teenagers, 16, 17, 18 years old, and they’re struggling when they transition from high school to college. A lot of it is not just the new college or whatever. It’s because their brain chemistry is so low. And so this kid actually was okay, but a lot of times we’ll see dopamine extremely low. And if you just look in the literature type in mold or mycotoxins, dopamine, we know it directly depletes dopamine, and then you get into nutrient markers too. So we’ll see a lot of B vitamin, B as in Bravo. We’ll see a lot of those deficiencies. We’ll see vitamin C is low. I think you burn up vitamin C quite a bit when you’ve got toxins. So anyhow, but we treated this kid for a while and then we had a new OAT on him. Let me just show you this, ’cause this is really where the magic happens. Remember that page one, how many flags? So here he is age four now, this is a year later. Look at page one.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Look at that? Yeah, of course–

Evan Brand, CFMP, FNTP

We’ve wiped everything out.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

The highs are gone, everything–

Evan Brand, CFMP, FNTP

Except this one here. So 13, so he’s still 4-hydroxyhippuric, this is a bit of some bacterial overgrowth. But in regards to that off the charts, mold colonization is completely eradicated in a year.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

And that bit of bacteria overgrowth may it just be about supporting the commensal bacteria to push that out. You may not even need to do a big killing protocol on him, right?

Evan Brand, CFMP, FNTP

I like the sound of that and yeah, probably so, we use it as base it on symptoms too. So like, if he’s still complaining, then maybe we run some general antimicrobials lower dose for like six weeks and then pull it out and then come in with some receding and then he’s good. But–

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Yeah.

Evan Brand, CFMP, FNTP

I tell you, it’s magical what you could do with an OAT test and–

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

You know I, one thing I wanna share here while we’re talking about this, I studied with Dan Kalish for a year on OAT and gut and all those things. And one of the things I learned from him and I’m sure you’d agree with this is when you kill the first layer of gut bugs, there’s other gut bugs that have kind of been hanging out, waiting for room to play. Like the big bullies are gone. So now the ones that were smaller will come out and start to colonize ’cause there’s room for them. So you might have to go through waves of gut killing. I think that’s really important to say right now because people think it’s a one and done thing and it might not be, that you may need to go back in again and get the next wave, would you agree with that?

Evan Brand, CFMP, FNTP

Absolutely, so that’s why I like you so much because you worked with Kalish, I love Kalish. So Kalish has been a mentor for a long time for me. And one of my buddies, Dr. Justin, we’ve done a lot of podcasts together and Kalish is the man. I love Kalish, that dude has transformed this planet with his knowledge and education on this process.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

He transformed my practice and my life. And actually I tried to get him on this summit. He was too busy right now during this timeframe. We’ll get him on the 2.0 version, but–

Evan Brand, CFMP, FNTP

Cool.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

He’s incredible so if any of you practitioners or health seekers, if you have an opportunity to learn from Dr. Dan Kalish, he’s literally creating a legacy of practitioners who really understand functional medicine at a much deeper level.

Evan Brand, CFMP, FNTP

Yeah.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

He’s amazing, yeah.

Evan Brand, CFMP, FNTP

Yeah. So he got me into the O you know, Kalish talk to me about the O years ago.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Yeah.

Evan Brand, CFMP, FNTP

I had him on my summit, my podcast, and I’m like, man, I gotta go all in. So now this is standard procedure. I won’t even see you as a client unless you’ve got an it out a mic because it’s so critical for me to help you.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Yeah.

Evan Brand, CFMP, FNTP

I don’t wanna guess. If people have already built up a supplement graveyard because they’ve guessed, they heard on this webinar, this podcast to take this or that. And they’ve got 20 supplements. They don’t know what the heck it’s doing and they don’t feel any better. And so when you have the data, you can be so laser focused and you can use less supplements. So like this kid, we only did like five things. Like it, wasn’t an intense protocol.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Yeah and so for the mold protocol, in addition to supplements, why don’t you tell our audience, what are some of the lifestyle things that you have them do? And it works for kids too. Yeah, what are you recommending?

Evan Brand, CFMP, FNTP

Well, Petri dishes, number one, because they’re cheap and they’re relatively effective. They’re not perfect, but Petri dishes are a way to get a good sample on your breathable air and spores typically fall to the ground. So you can get these Petri dishes for less than 200 bucks. You could test the whole house. And so we use Immunolytics, which is a company out of New Mexico. It’s a friend of mine’s company. His name is JW, he runs the show, he’s awesome. You could do the Petri dishes. And after an hour of leaving these out, you put the lid on, you send them back to the lab and then you get a report and you’ll get a health score. And we look for single digits, many homes that we see are 20, 30, 40 colonies. Sometimes the lab analysis person just gives up and they’ll just mark it too numerous accounts. Then you’ve got a big problem.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Yes.

Evan Brand, CFMP, FNTP

So we like to test kids schools. We like to test the husband and wife, their master bedroom. We like to look at their office, where do they work? Eight hours a day at the office. And so Petri dishes to me are one of the lifestyle strategies because you can’t get well in a sick home, no matter how good the protocol is. So this woman we talked about with her little boy Thomas, until she fixed her basement, which she did thank God, until she fixed the foundation, she was never gonna get better, I told her, look, if your rate of exposure is greater than your rate of detox, you’re not gonna get anywhere. You might tread water. And so luckily she followed through, she fixed the home and that’s why her family got better. And her son got better. So I think a lot of people are stubborn and this is not on purpose, mold makes you stubborn. And what I mean by that is there was a time where I was just compelled to go to like a bookstore. And it’s just full of paper and full of mold. It’s like, I just wanted to seek out the mold. Now this is weird, okay. I’m gonna go off the rails a little bit. But like, I think there’s some mental, I don’t… You may have seen this in one of the nature documentaries before. There’s a particular fungus that does something in the ant and the caterpillar. There’s like a psychedelic fungus that mind warps the answer something, it has something to do with the cordyceps mushroom. Anyway, I think mold has some mind bending qualities to it.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Heck, yes it does.

Evan Brand, CFMP, FNTP

Yeah, so I was compelled to go to those places. So my advice it’s weird because I’ll get clients that like they’re into antiques. They wanna go to like used bookstores. They wanna play like old instruments, like this old moldy guitar that I got in the 50s. It’s like, I don’t know. So my advice is you gotta be diligent about avoiding re-exposing yourself. I didn’t go just like I didn’t drive for a while. I didn’t go in most buildings. I would let my wife do the shopping, I let her go in. I just stay outside and get fresh air because I’d go get re-exposed. And then I’d be dizzy for several hours after exposure. I mean–

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

You know, when you get it, you get it and also when you travel and you go to hotels, you know it, right?

Evan Brand, CFMP, FNTP

Yeah, I looked at a house the other day, just, it was not new construction. I typically only buy new construction, but I thought, man, this house is cool, cool area. Let me look at it. It was built like five, six years ago. I walked in. By the time I got to the other side of the house, I’m tipsy. I’m like, there’s a big problem in here. It couldn’t smell much, but you could feel it. And so I think people just need to try to tune into their bodies. And if you feel weird, you get tired or you get angry. So I work with a lot of children on the spectrum. And a mother last week told me they went to a new church and halfway through the service, their son starts hitting and biting and screaming and crying. And they pull him out of the church and take him outside. And he immediately recovers. So I think people need to do a good analysis of where do they spend time. If you’re going to this church service every week and you’re flaring your child, it takes time to recover from that flare.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Right and then the child gets labeled as problematic. If you don’t have parents that are savvy about this and paying attention to it and working with a practitioner who can test for it. And you guys, it’s so easy to test, it’s a urine test. I mean, you can test mycotoxins on a kid, super easy. You don’t have to draw blood. You don’t have to do anything invasive.

Evan Brand, CFMP, FNTP

Even for very young kids, there’s a pediatric collection bag we can use and they can do that. So we’ve tested one year olds with success.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

I mean–

Evan Brand, CFMP, FNTP

I’ve seen some crazy stuff, even in a one year old where they’ve got skin issues, right? You hear a lot of babies with eczema and this kind of thing. And mom’s trying to do this whole homemade coconut cream and whatever on the kids. Like, no, you gotta fix this kid’s gut. Kids are born with a leaky gut, which is normal to absorb breast milk better. But if they got a big load of mycotoxin through that breast milk, you’re further damaging your baby’s gut. So I don’t wanna tell you stop breastfeeding, but I’m gonna tell the moms, hey, we gotta get you all cleaned up.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

I think it’s really important that we’re talking about this. ‘Cause I feel like mycotoxins are the big missing piece in a lot of functional medicine practices and protocols. It’s just been rampant people not being able to get well, because this hasn’t been evaluated. And it’s interesting, I always find that people say, oh no, no, no, no. There’s no way that I’ve been exposed to mold. There’s no way, there’s no way I’ve never lived in a moldy house. And I would say to that, you’d never know, I have an expert on this summit. His name is Brian Carr and he is a mold remediation specialist. He has a company for mold remediation and he explains how you don’t have to have an active, wet, moldy situation happening to have mold in your house. It could have happened before you ever owned it. It’s dry now, but those dried particles are there. And anytime a draft of air goes over it, or anytime it gets a mouse runs over it in your walls, it gets moved and gets into the air flow. And now all of a sudden there’s mycotoxins in your space. So another thing is people. I feel like people feel like I’m dirty, if I have mold in my house and I don’t want that. And then I think the other piece is people think it’s gonna be really hard to deal with. So I’m just gonna put my head in the sand and pretend it’s not there. We’re not gonna test for it because it’s gonna be expensive and a lot of energy.

Evan Brand, CFMP, FNTP

You are so accurate, and this is why marriages fail. And fortunately, I’ve saved a lot of marriages because I say, get your husband on the call, get him on the call right now. Because usually it’s the woman who’s sick, she’s gained weight, she’s got thyroid problems. She’s got no sex drive and you know, maybe there’s some emotional problems too, anxiety, depression. And so maybe she drinks wine at night to try to just make herself feel better. The husband thinks she’s crazy. He’s busy off working, she’s maybe a stay-at-home mom. And then they argue about it and I get him on the call. I’m like, look, dude, I’ve got the urine test right here. She’s off the chart, she’s colonized. There’s exposure somewhere, you gotta figure it out. And you’re correct, so it’s, they think they’re dirty. They think that it’s too nasty, like, oh, that’s embarrassing. We have mold, ooh, that’s embarrassing, right? And then also it is, it’s the fear of the money of having to fix it, remediate it. It’s the fear of having to move, sell your house and do all that. But look, you don’t wanna wait until you get a cancer diagnosis. We know that mycotoxins directly impact various types of cancer. So specifically one of the most prevalent locations on planet Earth for liver cancer is actually in Guatemala. And if you look into the study on this, they tied it directly to the massive amount of moldy corn tortillas that the Guatemala people eat.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Wow.

Evan Brand, CFMP, FNTP

So just look up this study type in like liver cancer mycotoxin, you can read about this. So there are foodborne toxins that come from grains, moldy grains. The vast majority of exposure is from a water damaged building, but you don’t wanna wait until you get that liver cancer diagnosis to then try to do something about this. I had a woman in Oregon, she had a 2.5 million house brand new, beautiful house filled with mold off the charts. Every room was too numerous to count, the lab tech even called me. He’s like, dude, you gotta get this person out. They gotta evacuate. And guess what? She didn’t wanna do it. Her husband didn’t believe the lab. This isn’t true, we don’t see anything. We don’t smell anything, there’s no mold here. This is a brand new house. I’m like, your wife is literally dying. You know, this is a woman who previously had breast cancer. I’m like, you can’t play around with this stuff. You gotta get the heck outta here, they didn’t listen. They never did a follow up call with me. I gave them the answer they didn’t wanna hear, which is you gotta leave and they didn’t wanna do it, so.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

It’s crazy, people are more attached to their things and they’re fancy home than getting well. And also, I would say that if you had your home inspected before you bought it for mold and all they did was like a quick little air test. Chances are you’re going to miss and listen to Brian Carr’s interview on that. It was fascinating because he talks about how that doesn’t work.

Evan Brand, CFMP, FNTP

It doesn’t, yeah those little air samples, they suck it out of the middle of the air column. But like we say, a spores fall to the ground. So even a Petri dish test in general is gonna be better than those.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Yeah, for sure, for sure. So let’s give people hope and talk about the healing process. So you go through a gut protocol, you probably have some good tips on other things that people can do besides supplements. They can support their gut health and their mycotoxin removal with some lifestyle activities as well. So what do you recommend for adults? What do you recommend for kids in terms of food, in terms of sauna in terms of everything else that you would do to support removing mold?

Evan Brand, CFMP, FNTP

Yeah, saunas are a game changer. You just have to go slow and steady with those because mold and mycotoxins just like lyme or co-infections like Blattella and Babesia. Those can all trigger mass cell activation. So MCA for short. And if you have activated mass cells, these are a type of white blood cell that releases histamine and Triptease and a bunch of other inflammatory cytokines. So if you have sensitivity to fragrances like laundry detergent, dryer sheets, that stuff bothers you. You’ve probably got some level of mass flow issues. I certainly did. I mean, I could not be within 50 feet of someone with like tide laundry detergent, it would wreck me.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Yes.

Evan Brand, CFMP, FNTP

So that stuff is poisonous. So please free and clear everything. If you are not already gone of all synthetic fragrance candles, do it today, now because these synthetic fragrances they’re aggravating your mass cells. And if you’ve got mold, your mass cells are already aggravated. So if you have histamine intolerance and food sensitivities, and you keep restricting your diet further and further, you’re missing the bow, it’s likely not the food that’s the problem, it’s that your immune system is so dysregulated and so aggravated from your bucket being full of toxins, that the food just put you over the edge. So for a while, I would get headaches from avocado. It wasn’t the avocado that was the problem. It was that my bucket was so full of histamine from the mold exposure that I couldn’t handle in avocado. Now I can eat it and I’m totally fine.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Yeah–

Evan Brand, CFMP, FNTP

And for children, you mentioned children, same thing, getting these kids on good organic meals, because we know glyphosate, even in parts per billion can damage the good microbes in the gut. There’s some cool research coming out, now it’s a bit early, but on probiotics actually converting mycotoxins into something less damaging to the kidneys in the brain.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Wow.

Evan Brand, CFMP, FNTP

So ochratoxins is produced by aspergillus. So it’s not mold that makes you sick, it’s the mycotoxin they produce. It’s like a mold fart and they do that because they wanna stake their claim. So like aspergillus wants that piece of the drywall. And so it farts out ochratoxins and then you’re the innocent bystander, okay. So that’s the actual mechanism. And the ochratoxins damage the mitochondrial membrane, it’ll damage your kidneys, which is why you’re up in the middle of the night to go pee. It’s not because you’re old, it’s not your hormones, it’s mycotoxins. And then also the brain, we know that the ochratoxins damages, the cerebellum, which is why you get some of the proprioception issues with vertigo or dizziness and disorientation. So binding all that stuff up, getting it out. You also brought up sauna. Yes, these are all important tools. The sauna though, it can make you worse. I remember the first time I went in my infrared sauna, I did like 30 minutes at maybe 140 degrees Fahrenheit. And my heart was racing, I didn’t sleep that night.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

So yes, start low and build up you get 140 right off the bat.

Evan Brand, CFMP, FNTP

Yeah, so it’s too hot and it was too long. And so if you get dizzy, you get woozy. Please get out of the sauna, it can be helpful, but the sauna can aggravate your mass cells. So you may need to do something like quercetin or per-leaf or other nutrients to stabilize those mass cells before you get in there, because it can create a histamine response. Now I’m totally fine and sweating is a learned response. Many people can’t sweat when they’re very toxic. So that’s okay if you don’t sweat.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

I was the human anomaly who could exercise and not sweat. And I was so proud of that and looking back, I’m like, oh, that was really bad.

Evan Brand, CFMP, FNTP

Me too, me too, all my friends sweaty at the gym when I was in the body building, I wouldn’t sweat. And I thought I was like, better than them for some reason. Like my body could handle the exercise better. No, that was a bad sign.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Yeah, that’s a bad sign if you don’t sweat, no good.

Evan Brand, CFMP, FNTP

Yeah.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Yeah.

Evan Brand, CFMP, FNTP

So long story short sauna can be helpful. Cold can be helpful. So there’s some cold springs around where I live. I go in those cold springs. My brain is never more clear than after cold exposure. So yeah, that’s helpful.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

And if you don’t have a cold spring, you might be able to find a cryo center near you where you can go do a quick blast, a whole body cryo. And if you don’t have that, you can fill a bucket with ice water and dump in it or take a cold shower. They even make cold, like hot tubs, but cold tubs now that you can have at your home that are just cold.

Evan Brand, CFMP, FNTP

I’ve seen those, they’re getting crazy. I mean, they’re like five, 10 grand for some of these fancy ones, so.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Yeah and you go in it three times a day. So imagine having a hot tub and a cold tub at your house.

Evan Brand, CFMP, FNTP

It’s a good idea, now it won’t get out mycotoxins but it can certainly help. You know, you see online, you’ll see videos of guys on, Instagram and stuff, jumping in these cold plunges. Like it’s the miracle cure for everything. I just wanna be clear, that’s not gonna treat the gut infections. That’s not gonna get the mold toxin out. So please don’t fall for some five, $10,000 sauna cold plunge setup because it’s way cheaper to buy activated charcoal. It’s like 10 bucks a bottle and that’s gonna pull the mycotoxins outta you. So don’t get lost in the weeds because there’s always some new sexy product. That’s five to $20,000 that’s gonna be the miracle. And it’s not necessarily.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

No.

Evan Brand, CFMP, FNTP

So exercise, as you mentioned, you can sweat for free. You don’t need a sauna to get better. So please don’t think like, well, this is only for the rich, I get that comment when I recommend like a sauna. Well, you gotta be rich to do all these things. Like no, a lot of this stuff is free or cheap. Like don’t go in the moldy building, do an outdoor activity instead of going to the moldy library.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Yeah and also I’ll say on the cold, just while we’re talking about this and we are in the mitochondria summit, so your cold therapy is gonna be more supportive to your mitochondria than it is to eliminate mold. And you need that ATP energy production. So your immune system can work on clearing the mold as you do all those healthy things. So that’s like a supportive strategy for your mitochondria.

Evan Brand, CFMP, FNTP

Absolutely and getting the mold out, protects the mitochondria because they’re directly damaging the mitochondria. And then of course all the toxins that come from the dysbiosis, that’s no good either. So when you look up chronic fatigue and mycotoxins guy named Dr. Brewer did a study on this, he ran a chronic fatigue clinic. 96% of his patients with chronic fatigue had at least one mycotoxin.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

It’s incredible, I think of everyone that I test, I mean, I test, I really encourage my clients to do mycotoxin testing and I don’t think I’ve ever had a test that had nothing. I think every single person has at least one, if not multiple. The other thing I wanna say here as we wrap up real quick, we could talk forever, but I think it’s really important for people to understand that mold is literally trying to kill you. So when you have parasites in your body, they are living off of you. They eat first, they are using you to survive. That’s what a parasite does. Mold have a primary goal of returning organic matter to the Earth, that is what they do. They are trying to kill you, that is the purpose of mold. If you think of something decomposing on the forest floor, the last thing that happens after the bugs get to it and everything is mold brings it all the way down to nothing. And that happens to be you’re living, breathing, being with an immune system. So it’s having a hard time killing you, but that’s what it’s trying to do. And I think that’s really important for people to understand this is mission critical. When you said, don’t wait until you have cancer and you have all these other health problems. Mold is literally trying to kill you.

Evan Brand, CFMP, FNTP

You’re freaking me out, Laura. Now I feel like a big log in the woods, rotting away into saw dust.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Well, we can help prevent that, can’t we, Evan?

Evan Brand, CFMP, FNTP

Yeah, yeah, we can and you know, it’s very difficult to live in a bubble, but JW at the lab, he’ll tell you that he was called bubble boy because he tried to avoid these toxins. And so, like I told you, there’s a lot of buildings I avoid. If I go into a restaurant and I smell it, I leave. If I go into a store and I smell it, I leave. I just don’t mess with it anymore because I know it could potentially set me back for days to weeks. Now I’m so much better now I can typically recover from an exposure within minutes to maybe an hour. But when I was extremely sick, if I went in a bad building, honestly, it would take me two to three days to recover. The brain fog was so intense. And so I encourage people go do whatever bio hacking, brain supplement, nootropic you want? I wrote one of my first books that was published on nootropics. So essentially brain vitamins, but I’ll tell you, I don’t care how much huperzine and carnitine and the tyrosine and you’ve got vinpocetine, you’ve got all these other neutropenics. So you can take those and those will help with blood flow. Like Geno can help the micro circulation in the brain. However, you gotta fix the root cause. So that money you spent on the brain supplement, you could have spent on binders instead.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Absolutely, absolutely, I think what comes up for me is oftentimes in functional and integrative medicine, we’re swapping one medicine cabinet for another. So you’ve got a prescription medicine you were using over here in the allopathic space. You’ve got these symptoms, so now we’re giving you a supplement for that symptom, but unless you’re exploring the root cause and really digging in, which is gonna take some time and investment, but it’s totally worth it, then you will never solve the problem completely. You’re just swapping a prescription for a supplement to solve a symptom that’s caused by something bigger.

Evan Brand, CFMP, FNTP

True, think of that lady I told you earlier, she was depressed for 20 years. She got 90% better in six weeks. I gave her no antidepressant herbs. Now, typically I may come for those palliative tools like rhodiola, that may be a great antidepressant herb, but in her case I didn’t need it, I just fixed her gut.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Yeah, we’ve got a great toolbox. I really think it’s important to give people wins and to help them feel better. ‘Cause it helps with motivation to keep going. Like people gotta win, right? They gotta start feeling a little better so that they can show up in their lives and show up for themselves. So we use a lot of these supplements to help you feel good so you can keep going, I’m sure you’d agree.

Evan Brand, CFMP, FNTP

Absolutely, you should see my cabinet. I’ve got all kind of tools, I’ve got the immune stuff. I’ve got the adaptogen stuff, I’ve got the energy stuff, the brain stuff, the bind… I mean, it’s all like, my family calls it. Evans, apothecary.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

You should do a Facebook live or something on, hey, come over to my house and see what the practitioner has in their cabinet. People love it when you do that.

Evan Brand, CFMP, FNTP

Oh, I’d have to bring out the Tupperware. I mean, there’s quite a bit. And some of it is failed experiments, full disclosure, so.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Yes, yes, you have a graveyard of supplements. You no longer use too, I’m sure.

Evan Brand, CFMP, FNTP

I do.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Me too, this has been amazing, Evan, any final words as we close for today, tell us where we can find you, tell our audience, where they can get ahold of your, their do it yourself programs, or if they want to have a consultation with you, how would they do that?

Evan Brand, CFMP, FNTP

Sure, I would just encourage people to keep going. I know when you look at the news, which I try not to do much anymore, it seems like the world is ending. We’re living in apocalyptic times. It’s this shortage and food shortage and chip shortage, and you can’t get a car and the housing is too expensive and the market’s crashing. And like you can screw up your nervous system with all of that. And a friend of mine, Dr. Marker Christensen. She told me that I would not heal even if I had a perfect protocol. If I didn’t fix my nervous system and we didn’t get into that too much today, but the impact of mold mycotoxins on the nervous system is real. You will get stuck in sympathetic because what’ll happen is you’re amygdala grows in size and sensitivity after you get exposed to this stuff, meaning you’re gonna be frazzled and startled more easily. You’re gonna be quicker to anger. You’re gonna be quicker to just emotional intensity.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Yep.

Evan Brand, CFMP, FNTP

And so you have to do brain work. So brain retraining like brain meditations I do or recommend the Gupta or Gupta different pronunciation, same thing. I’ve interviewed him. His name’s Ashock great guy. He does some meditation program. So where you can help your brain. If I’m on my game and I’m doing these brain retraining exercises, I’m less reactive to buildings. I’m less reactive to fragrances. I’m less reactive to supplements. So there’s a direct connection between the sympathetic, parasympathetic balance and what you can achieve. So if you’re in fight or flight and you’re watching CNN all day and you’re doing this mold protocol, good luck.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Yeah, good luck.

Evan Brand, CFMP, FNTP

You gotta get rid of that. You gotta break your TV because if your nervous system is stuck, you’re not in a healing state, okay? And so your mind and body have to know, it’s okay, I’m safe, I’m safe, I’m safe.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Yeah.

Evan Brand, CFMP, FNTP

And until you get there, you’re gonna struggle. So that’s my last piece of advice is do something to nourish your nervous system. My wife this morning, so my oldest daughter was sick and my wife was stressed about it. And she said, babe, my chest hurts. And so I gave her some herbs, try to chill her out a little bit. But then we went for a walk on the beach and then she went swimming and she goes, hey, guess what, babe? My chest pain was a six outta 10 this morning. Guess what it is now, a zero. I’m like good job, honey. And so all she did is go for a swim. And so I think that we get so caught up in these symptoms and we go through these negative thought loops. I’m so miserable, I’m never gonna get better. I’ve already tried everything, I’m screwed. This is doom and gloom for me, you gotta break out of that. And it’s very difficult and I’ve been at the bottom. I’ve been at the depths of hell with my own issues. And so I just encourage you to know there is light on the other side, look at you, you have an amazing recovery. You look amazing for 49, by the way.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

I’ll be 50 in a couple months, crazy, right.

Evan Brand, CFMP, FNTP

Oh, it sucks, so.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Yeah, good recovery.

Evan Brand, CFMP, FNTP

So you’re living proof that like you can pull through to the other side and be successful–

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Totally.

Evan Brand, CFMP, FNTP

In your life and so that’s my pep talk. And then if people wanna reach out Evanbrand.com is my website. I have functional medicine training courses on there where you can learn how to look at labs. Like I showed you today, how to look at your own labs. Look at case studies like yours and make protocols based on what you’ve learned in the course. Many people get better without ever doing a consult with me, but I do offer consults as well. I have a one-on-one practice that you can reach out, and book a call if desired.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

That’s so good, thank you so much, Evan. And also I will say thank you for bringing up sympathetic versus parasympathetic. Of course we have some amazing speakers on this summit talking about that. Check out Jody Cohen, we have a lot of brain speakers. Peter Conn comes to mind. So check out those interviews as well. And so glad that you brought that up at the end. Very critical.

Evan Brand, CFMP, FNTP

My pleasure, Jody is so awesome. So yes, that be a good talk.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Yes, she is, she has quite a story. She lost a child and really worked on herself to bring her nervous system back into balance. That’s not no easy thing. If she can do it, anyone can do it. It was a highly traumatic loss of a teenager. So really crazy story. But she’s proof that you can heal and you can bring your system back into balance.

Evan Brand, CFMP, FNTP

This is true, we love you, Jody.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Yeah, I know, we do love Jody. All right, well thank you so much, Evan. Thank you for being here, we appreciate your time, your generosity, your wisdom to the world. Keep doing what you’re doing, ’cause you’re changing it one life at a time, thank you.

Evan Brand, CFMP, FNTP

I’m gonna keep going, thank you.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

You take good care now.

Evan Brand, CFMP, FNTP

Bye.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Bye.