Could Your Symptoms Point To Mold?

Welcome to the Summit 0:00

Welcome to Mold, Mycotoxin and Chronic Illness Summit. I'm your host, Dr. Ann Shippy. I really want to welcome you to my summit. I've brought together some of my most esteemed colleagues with huge hearts, brilliant minds to help you on your journey, to elaborate on how you can heal from toxic mold and chronic illnesses. I'm so grateful to them for taking their time to be part of this summit, and I think you will be too. I really didn't want to become known as a mold doctor. There's so many other things that I do in my practice, and I didn't want to be just taking care of patients with mold,

Why Mold Matters as a Root Cause 0:52

but I really found that it's such an important part of really delving into the root cause for many of my patients as to what is causing them to be at home. And it's not surprise ing because between 50 and 80% of buildings are or have toxic mold in them and a lot of times it's not visible, it's hidden. People don't realize that there's been some type of water intrusion and mold growth. So we're talking about millions of people being affected. And most people don't understand how toxic mold affects them or that some of these toxins are used for things like biological warfare and immunosuppression.

So it really is an important aspect for us to consider as a root cause when we're looking into almost every illness. And I think you'll get a really good feeling about that. The importance of it. Through the summer, I met with many of the experts that were including. So treatment can be really complex. We are all so uniquely different.

Common Mold Exposure and Prevention 1:58

But there are ongoing themes of puzzle pieces that you can put together by listening to the the speakers. And ideally you'll get to the place where, like some of the speakers are focusing on prevention with getting into mold again, when one actually was just dealing with the tropical storm hurricane that came through her area. So I hope this information helps you to understand how to improve your health and become resilient. And then I will be having a mold cause so if you want to dig deeper and have more of my insights on how to put together a plan to recover that will be available to you.

So if you're still wondering, hey, could mold be part of what's causing my symptoms? I'm going to delve into that for a few minutes. All right.

General Physical Symptoms 2:51

So we all can affect almost every system in the body. Some general symptoms are fatigue, weight loss or weight gain, hair loss. That really got to me when I was originally dealing with mold, severe body aches, joint pain. Feeling thirsty and drinking a lot and yet being dehydrated. Sensitivity. So many things, including sound and light sensitivity to touch. I think it was also one of the things that really affected me dizziness, night sweats, not being able to regulate your body temperature either.

Running from too hot to too cold quickly or insistently. Often respiratory symptoms are involved that really not always. I got an appreciation of this and a totally separate mold exposure that I experienced with adult onset asthma,

Neurological and Cognitive Effects 3:40

but it can range from asthma to shortness of breath, cough allergies, sinus infections, nasal polyps. My mother actually just was de saturating her oxygen was going down. Any time she started walking. We fixed the mold in her house and her oxygen saturation got better and she got off oxygen. And then you'll notice that this patches the longest. The neurological symptoms mold mycotoxins are very, very challenging for the nervous system. So it ranges from headaches to the circulations where there's a little tiny muscle jumps and all kinds of neuropathies ranging from just feeling weak to having pain in the nerves with numbness and tingling as well dizziness and vertigo.

Many, many people complain of brain fog, so just really feeling like they're not thinking clearly, but also to the extent of cognitive decline and memory loss, not being able to do simple math. So computational skills, lower executive function, including decision making. It's also been linked with ADHD and ADHD and autism. In some patients it can also in some patients cause a tremor. It could be the cause of a tic. I'm going to share a case with you in a few days.

Respiratory, GI, and Immune Issues 5:07

I had a patient that recovered from having pretty severe tics. Then often I see some like level of depression, anxiety and OCD, irritability. Just having such a short fuze that you get frustrated or angry very quickly. Poor depth perception is real. I've had a couple of patients have car accidents because they just couldn't see determine where their car was in relationship to other cars. Insomnia and even waking up not feeling rested. Generalized weakness. Autonomic dysfunction is the system that helps your blood pressure to adjust to the environment, whether you're sitting, lying down, standing, and then some people even have some seizure like events.

Gastrointestinal symptoms are very common, ranging from heartburn, nausea, even vomiting, diarrhea, constipation, and then some people will actually just have the dominant pain along with bloating and then not absorbing their nutrients very well. Malabsorption. Many people get sensitivities to food, and it's even involved in inflammatory bowel disease for some people. So that would be Crohn's and ulcerative colitis. Immune dysfunction is very important. Almost everybody has some upregulation of inflammation in their body and that upregulation can even lead to autoimmune disorders.

But then it also can be suppressed and show up with low

Other Systemic Effects and Closing 6:40

white blood cell count called leukopenia and low platelet counts. Thrombocytopenia. And then recurrent infections just not being able to have that microbiome and immune system keep the organisms in check. And then there are other symptoms that have been related to to mold and mycotoxins, miscarriages, birth defects, hormone imbalance. And we're going to probably talk a lot into hormone imbalances. And then some people will have problems with their isolation pathways that lead to nosebleeds and easy breathing bruising.

So I hope this gives you some idea of the breadth of the ways that mold and mycotoxins can impact the human body and be able to start to see that this is such a worthy area to delve into to help, you know, if this is what's causing your illness and help you to get better. Thank you so much for joining me.