From Mold Toxicity to Healing: A Practitioner’s Personal Story

Introduction to Root-Cause Healing 0:00

really understand the power of if you don't have those drainage pathways open. you can cause some really debilitating symptoms. However, the roadmap forward is energy optimization first. So if you don't have enough cellular energy, you're just drained, right? Like super sick, not having cellular to even drive a detox. Minerals are low or vitamins, things like that. You can actually run an MVX test, which will show you nutritional status to see if that person has enough energy. What their inflammation is like, what their potential parasite and toxic overload is.

But you need energy If you're overwhelmed with chronic health symptoms and still don't have answers, you are not alone. I'm Dr. Javin and on redefining wellness with Dr Javan, we'll be exploring root causes like Lyme disease, mold and parasites and I'll guide you with simple and practical steps towards real healing. Welcome back to another episode from the redefining wellness podcast. I'm your host, Dr. J. Ben Moore. And today I get to introduce Vanessa. She is a acupuncturist, a former survivor of malt mass cell and all the ugly, nasty things that can make somebody not feel well.

And that has brought her a passion and being able to get people well, be able, to listen to them, connect to. Them and just be, able get down to the root of what's really keeping them from being up to, get back on their feet. She works with complex chronic conditions. she has a mindset of the combination of Western medicine combined with Eastern medicine. So she's learned all of your Western medicines, labs and supplements and meds, but She's also learned Eastern medicine which gives her a really good point

Vanessau2019s Mold Illness Story 1:33

of view on how to get somebody well. So Vanessa, thank you so much for joining me today. Thanks for talking me up so well, I appreciate it. I first of all want you just to explain in a couple of minutes here what happened to you because your story is pretty incredible. Yeah and I honestly don't wish it on anybody but I feel as though truly from my heart what I went through gives me and enables me at the capacity in order to have such a deep ability to empathize with clients and also be able to navigate some really difficult stuff.

So what happened to me was mold illness, which is super fun. And as we know, there's all these really fun secondary infections that can come online from mycotoxins. From a very young age, I was exposed to mycotoxin. I had no idea. Growing up, I was in Montana. I grew up in a trailer house, you know, not the best living conditions. And a lot of people do, so no judgment, but those building materials are really, really cheap. They're cheaply made. So I can remember as a kid looking at the windowsill and there's green moss growing.

There's the classic black above the bathroom, right? paint over it and move on. But then as you get older, it's like in combination what I usually see with cases and with myself, you see a history of those exposures over and over again. So you know, fast forward to college, I move into a moldy dorm, had no idea, always tired. Then you go into the summer job, right? So for me, even worked for a motor mediation company. one summer and they sent us in with no gear to get paintings out of this house.

And I'm, you know, young woman at the point and squish up those stairs that have water damage on it and there's mushrooms going on the carpet. So it's like those exposures are so dangerous and sometimes you're just living in a building for a really long time and you get super sick or you got that slow boiling frog sort of issue where little symptoms over time start to progress, or it's one building, a very toxic exposure, and you're down for the count. Mine was more of that slow-boiling frog scenario with multiple exposures.

Then I move into a house, which was very, toxic, then I went down. Within a month, I'm unable to work, unable Massive activation, getting too hot of a shower, feel like you're gonna pass out. I was in that house for three years, didn't know what was happening to me. And I went to all the doctors, you name it, ENTs, doctors acupuncturists, nothing is touching my symptoms and I'm just feeling hopeless. As an acupuncturess, I am trying to utilize a lot of the herbs and medicine that I had known and it was not touching it.

at all. So you fast forward three years of being in a super toxic building, vomiting every day, nosebleeds every, early onset dementia. I'm looking at my daughter and I don't remember your name. Cutting vegetables. That has got to be the most heartbreaking part of the whole story. They've told me this point. Like I've got a three year old and my heart is just him. And I just, I can't imagine feeling that in that moment. Yeah. I mean, even today, it's like, I can almost start to cry because it is fixable.

You know, and a lot of the people that I see, a lots of cases that they come to me and I just, they're pouring their hearts out. They've been through everything. they've done everything, They have had every supplement. And when you get to that point, you start feeling really, really hopeless. And it's not only that, because you realize in your brain something is really wrong. Something's very wrong, and then you get that you're crazy. You're absolutely wrong that it could just be mold. And that's what I also had to go through was, Vanessa, come on, this is insane.

You're trying to move out of a building, you're tying to get rid of all your content. And I'm like, I try to survive at this point in time. Yes, yes I am.

Multiple Exposures and Severe Symptoms 5:51

So when I figured out, and what happened, what was really cool was I went on vacation, I believe, for like two weeks. So that was the longest stretch I had been away from this house, and I started to come out of it. But the confusing part about mold and mycotoxins is it's everywhere. And so it is in your museum, it in in aquarium, in grocery store. You go to these places and you get hit again, you flare, right? If you're super toxic at that point, going to places where mold is and getting hit so you think it just you.

But when I went back to my house, instantly nosebleed, headache symptoms, like someone had hit me in the head with a bat, came right back and I'm like, I got it, it's the house. And I felt so empowered as a woman. I was like taking my daughter, getting out of here, going to an Airbnb, It's The House. It's the one variable I have not figured out in three years. So I moved and I started to come out of it. And then you get the, you're crazy. That's not what it is. The fun thing about mold is you gets those secondary infections.

For chronic Lyme cases, that's something that I also had to deal with. Massive parasite infections, the journey of what you have to go through sometimes with mold because it's an accumulation and a toxic burden overload. most times, conjunction with more. So in your situation, it was multiple exposures that hit your immune system that drove an overreactive body to end up attacking all kinds of things, led to mast cell symptoms, your body attacking food and different chemicals and smells and perfumes, and your bodies just feeling horrible.

But what you're saying is with mold, there's a lot of things, and if I'm hearing you right, your experience was your immune system got suppressed. And I see this with so many people we work with. When your music is suppressed, you accumulate everything you run into. So it's not mold. It's mold and, the Epstein-Barr 96% of the population has. the lime that you can get from any insect that can bite your body, the parasites that your picking up from just touching the dirt or playing with your kid or the dog, and a lot of times your buddy can defend these things until you're depleted from the accumulation of toxicity, in your case being mold.

So what, when somebody comes in to see you and they have these really complex situations going on, What do you, where do ya start? What you do with them that's maybe a little more unique to you because, you know, so many people out there go to a functional medicine doctor. They're like, oh yeah, we'll run your basic blood work. We'll do a nutrient eval. we will see if you're missing something. Or we're going to do stool sample and see. If you have GI dysbiosis, what do do different? Yeah, great question.

So I think for me it's combination of traditional Chinese medicine principles. so really evaluating what's going on in the drainage pathways. a kidney, is it liver, lymphatic system, spleen, heart, kidney? Things like that, which traditional Chinese medicine is amazing at. If you're backed up, think of it like a sewer line. You've got to unclog that sewer before you start flushing the toilet. If that's the case for a lot of people, there's a standard American diet. There's multiple infections. Like you said, There is mold toxicity.

there is emotional trauma. And like you say, it's not one thing ever. I love to run a total toxic burden. on some folks to see what is going on. So think of it like a fish in a fishtank. Western medicine is gonna look at that and go, well, let's give it different food. Let's get it a shot. Lets see if we can clean it up that way. Functional medicine, is really gonna to look what's in the tank. Like, lets clean the tanks, Lets change the water, Let change rocks, Clean the slime on the Tanks and get that fish thriving again.

Finding the Mold Source 9:39

And then start to work on deficiencies or whatever else. Chinese medicine is pretty much the same. It's looking at deficiency and excess. Excess is going to be that mold, chemicals, toxins, which drive deficiency of the organ tissue. So looking a little bit differently, it's like I love to run tests. I don't like to guess. Then I look at food, air, water. emotional trauma because usually what I'll see with emotional Trauma is you know growing up like in my own case in that house, which was really toxic Your body will remember a mycotoxin strain and it'll stress it out right so increased cortisol years later you potentially get that same mycotoxins stress and Say there's a particular emotional stress that I have occurred which most people do in childhood your brain goes It pings it to that and creates a less sort of resiliency to the strain so you'll see a huge flare.

I always look at emotional trauma and nervous system work. You're looking at external therapies too, so castor oil packs, sauna use is probably the best for pulling out mold. And using a lot of those ancient principles, so like organ meats are going to feed and nourish organ tissues on the backside of mold illness too. So I look at a of the food therapy a little differently than say some of practitioners. And then I'm looking at nervous system. Are there radioactive elements in the water? Is there certain strains of molds which are more dangerous to the brain or the nervous systems?

And really tackling the sinuses, collar-up infections, because those can play with mold quite rapidly too. So if you don't address the sinus, that's going to create and drive full-body inflammation. We're looking at everything. It's never just one variable, like I said. I love it. You know, when you went through there and there's a few questions that just popped into my mind that I wanted to ask is, you've got mold, You personally have experienced this with living in mold. And how do you help people to avoid being stuck in more, right?

So somebody comes in, they're like, man, I might have mold you run a toxin panel on them. you find mold? How do figure out where it's coming from? Yeah, great question. So air samples are typically really unreliable. I did four or five of them in my own case. If you're great, everything's fine, no problem. You run an ERMI sample, E-R-M-I, a dust collection sample. And that's going to show you the total compilation of what's gone on in that building. So it could be 20 years ago, but you breathing in ozotoxin A.

That's gonna go right through your central nervous system. Brain inflammation, feeling dizzy, you know, pots. Pans, pandas, and kids, some of those things can be from a dust collection sample, which is much more reliable in my case. I like mold dogs. Sometimes you can get a good building biologist in there to see what's going on and then good mold inspector. But you got to do your research because it's trying to find much like a car mechanic. Everybody's a little bit different. So you really got do some research, but I really like dust collections samples because mold is going to grow on surfaces, not in the air.

Just to add a few comments there, because I like what you're saying. I agree, air samples don't work super well because the mold mycotoxins, which is the toxins that are in the air, the spores, sometimes they're heavy enough that they just fall to the floor. That's why dust is on the So things like stachybotrys, which is a black mold, it's just simply too heavy to float through the air. So when you see black molds, you'll see like little crumbs and just stuff on the floor, but that's the spores and that the toxin which won't be in the area.

Air samples don't love them, But you mentioned building biologists or an inspector. And if you were to go find a building, biologist or inspector, is there certain things that you would recommend that they do that? You ask questions about as a perspective know, person to hire them.

Detox Pathways and Testing Strategy 13:42

Do you want them to do cavity searches or moisture meters? Like what things you put in that category of like should be done? Yeah, so a good building biologist and or any sort of inspection company is going to be really thorough at your inspection. So they're going come in and they are going spend quite a few hours. You know ear samples are 20 minutes, four or five hundred bucks. Anybody else that's really qualified is going to come in and they're going thoroughly search. So they can be pulling out refrigerators, you know, sources of water.

They're gonna be getting into the crawl space, into HVAC system, maybe doing tape, air. visual inspections, moisture meters. They're going to be putting that on the wall and getting into the cavities themselves with cameras to see what's going on. Some of them have mold dogs, so they're trained specifically to find black mold or under a subfloor, things like that. In my case, what I think was going was the crawl space. was super, like a very high moisture place. And so there's a huge tree outside.

The roots had gotten into that. Where was the HVAC pulling all the air from? From that crawl space. Sometimes you'll see bacteria too co-host with fungus. Indoor mold is going to compete differently than outdoor mold. Those indoor molds are really going You know, plumbing that vapor or those mycotoxins because there's other bacteria or there are other mycotoxin strains in the building too. Anybody that's really thorough, you know of course five star reviews, but getting into that space and really doing a thorough inspection I think is the best thing.

Got it. All right. So then the next question I wanted to ask you is. You mentioned opening up detox pathways, making sure things move. Is there a path forward you usually see for people? Because if it's a complex situation and let's say you've already got them in a safe environment, they're no longer in mold, and you opened up the detox path ways by giving some milk thistle, some Tudka, you did castor repat coffee and all these things you talked about, is there path for that you typically see helps people to succeed because so many people that walk into my clinic, they really struggle to get well, right?

They've been to 20 other people and it just seems like maybe the order of operations or something else is holding them back. So order operations is really crucial. And again, in my own case, I did everything backwards. I've had a million Hertz reactions and thank goodness because you really understand the power of, if you don't have those drainage pathways open, you can cause some really debilitating symptoms. However, the roadmap forward is energy optimization first. So if you don't have enough cellular energy or you're just drained, like super sick, not having cellular to even drive, a detox, so minerals are low, or vitamins, things like that.

You can actually run an MVX test, which will show you nutritional status to see if that person has enough energy, what their inflammation is like, and what potential parasite and toxic overload is to. So you need energy first. Secondly, you want to go for those parasites. Parasites are really stealthy and they are, really fun secondary infections that come online when you have any toxicity in the body. So they need a food source, rope worms, hook worms tape worms flat worms. Those are all going to be kind of classic things that I see clinically come out of folks, but they're going hold onto up to 80% of their volume and other toxicity.

You got to go for those guys first. Then you get into mold because mold is going to debilitate and cripple both legs of the immune system. It's going be offline for most folks. That total tox burden is gonna really reflect if you have mycotoxin strains, then you go after environmental toxins, heavy metals, and then lime can kind of play, you know, at the end or in the beginning because it acts like a parasite. So I can kind of sometimes rotate lime herbals in beginning if somebody has neurological issues or things like that or at end.

I usually tackle that lastly and then energy optimization again or maintenance much like car. You're doing these things periodically to keep your body healthy. So get as much energy as you can. I do have a question there because sometimes I've tried to help somebody get energy and it causes a bunch of reactions because they have really, really sensitive cellular health, right? So their mast cell, their SERS, or multiple inflammatory reactions are happening. And they call it a HERX. And I'm like, well, you took a single granule of a binder.

I think you're getting symptoms that are similar to HERCs, but I we should call this something different. The cell danger response is what it is for mitochondria.

Energy First, Then Parasites and Mold 18:30

But that's a little down the rabbit hole name. So it's what I call just a histamine response. Do you see sometimes at the beginning when you are trying to upregulate cellular energy, an issue where their body starts to overreact? Yeah, I've had some folks react to one drop of things, sunlight, you know, even doing some of the nervous system protocols just to start can flare people. And so it's not uncommon. I mean, multiple cases where you give somebody, one exercise, say that vibration plate. So we'll stand on a vibration play 30 seconds.

They're in a flare for five days. Hmm. Or you'll give them one drop of a homeopathic and it's to them and their nervous system, it is a full danger response. So in those cases, you really have to move slow and sometimes you have go around and open other doors first. You could have do just maybe a little bit of mast cell activation, sort of calming herbals like quercetin. Exist is a great one, but you really have to work with that individual case. So it's not a cookie cutter thing. And in a lot of cases, there's so many practitioners that'll move clients through protocols that have been just deemed by the clinic.

Like this is what we're going to do first, A, B, C, D. In my experience, what I do is everything's customized. It's unique to that person. And so you really have to work with their body and where it's at, whether that's just focusing on water or, hey, let's do a little bit of maybe red light therapy for 30 seconds to see if we can get some cellular enhancement going, dry brushing, you know, very gentle things that could start to move the needle so that we then get into it with supplements or stabilize other things are going on in this person All right.

Well, I mean, that's just something I run into so often. It's becoming such a question mark now because it seems like since COVID or COVID vaccinations or whatever it was that happened, the amount of mast cell and histamine issues is absolutely off the charts. And which brings me to the next topic I wanted to bring up for you is because I posted an Instagram post and I was shocked at the number of people that said, yep, my symptoms started after COVID. and my histamine and hormone connection is just broken.

Like they just they feel like their hormones are way off and they're always reacting to everything. Do you know if there's a connection to hormones and the histamine response that you have to deal with within your clients when you're working? Yeah, so I usually always go back to root cause again. So, you know, the main synthesizer of hormones is going to be in the liver, like what's going on in liver. And then you'll ask them to like, what going with your periods? Sometimes that's a mess with female clients, or you will see super low testosterone in males, but what crippling that?

Where is it getting hung up? And that's usually in the liver. So when I'm looking at an evaluation, I am going, do you have clots, painful cycles, low testosterone, libido issues, brain fog, because all that is getting congested in a liver? With COVID, it's the cherry on top to toxicity. Again, like me moving into a building that was super toxic, That was just the cherry on top to whatever else was going on for many, many years prior with the accumulation of pesticides, herbicides.

Histamine, Hormones, and Toxicity 22:06

You know, Febreze candles, I was eating Oreos as a kid, no big deal. You see that accumulation and toxicity and that has to go somewhere. That has be processed by something and you see those huge hormone issues when there's toxicity. So it could also be environmental toxins, you know putting toxic makeup on for years, lead, mercury, cadmium, that all gets in the body. Your liver has filter it, your kidney has a filter too. Those very delicate organ tissues and when those get hung up. Oh, man. You're looking at the train wreck years later, especially if you get COVID cherry on top.

Well, I think this has been really informational and just coming for somebody who's lived it, breathed it recovered from it. Which is the cool thing. And then on. Top of that now is able to give back and support people. A lot of the times what I run into is someone gets sick. They get a passion for being able get well because They can't do anything. They're stuck. And then they want to help others, but once they're well, it's just such a heavy burden to carry because when you're serving other people.

When you're listening to them and you are taking that energy and trying to help push them along, your memory of what it was like to be able to go out and now support and serve people after that, there's just not as many people out there that are doing that as people that intend to because it's such a heavy burden and your level of connection and empathy and desire and knowledge It just exudes. So I'm just excited for people to get to see you. And I hope that this podcast helps more people find you because I know that you are truly authentic and truly here to help heal people.

Is there anything else that You just want to tell people that may help them on their journeys that you experienced because you've walked this path. Yeah. And thank you for saying that. Like I really appreciate you and just having me on the podcast. I just wanna say to anybody out there that like I was in such a bad place, like, I nearly almost died. from mold and what it did to my family, it ruined my and I just see a lot of marriages crumble underneath the effects of chronic illness and it does not need to happen.

And so for me and my journey, for anybody out there that is just feeling absolutely crushed and hopeless and like, you know, army crawling out of this scenario that they've been in maybe for five years, 10 years 15 years however long it's fixable.

Hope, Recovery, and Closing Remarks 24:39

Code word for the day, it's fixable, and there is a way out. There is way to healing. And then the other side of chronic illness, like really give back. It's such a beautiful thing and I would have never envisioned this for my life had it not been for mold. So I have a healthy relationship. let's say with my gotoxins and mold because I understand it was just doing its job. It's trying to degrade building material and it looks at you as the same but a lot of this stuff is so fixable and people suffer for so long and don't know what's going on.

So give functional medicine, Chinese medicine herbs a shot. it's a little bit different way of thinking. I'm not going to lie but there is a trajectory and a pathway forward and my blessings and love and deepest empathy for anybody going through this journey. Cause I don't wish it on anybody, but the other side, it's absolutely amazing. It's beautiful. My life is fantastic compared to what it was five years ago. Amazing. Well, I just want to thank you for jumping on here. Honestly, this is a testament to recovery for my clients, your clients.

Everyone's clients that are dealing with these just incredible burdens. You can't overcome it. And we need more of these stories out there of the, I've been there, done that, overcome it. I'm on the other side. We need those stories because I know when I was on my journey and same for you, having hope is hard sometimes. Thank you so much for jumping in here and having a conversation today. And I will get this posted out so others can see it and for everybody listening. Can't wait to see you back on.

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