From Straight A’s to Anxiety and ADHD Diagnosis in One Semester: Our Physician Assistant’s Mold Story

I’m almost 100% sure that my environment contributed to that. You know, Dr. B always says this. He’s like, when I get a young person across from me and they’re like I have extreme anxiety, he’s, like mycotoxin test.

I was seeing that pattern more and more often. These young adults go off to college the first time and it’s usually a college in the southeast where mold is ubiquitous.

It’s a little bit of everywhere. And these dorms are extremely, extremely old. And dorm’s inside the classroom buildings, the gyms they’re going into.

They’re spending a significant amount of time. Welcome to the Deeper Healing Podcast. I’m your host, Danielle Howley. This is for everyone who’s been dismissed, misdiagnosed, or told to just live with it and refuse to accept that answer.

You’re gonna hear amazing patient recovery stories, raw and real in their own words. People who found answers after everything had failed them. You’re going to hear from medical experts we trust that are pioneering new approaches to healing the body because we deeply know we’re designed to heal.

Let’s dig in. Hi everybody, I’m so excited. Today I have Alex Fitzpatrick from Deeper Healing. She’s our physician’s assistant. she has been deeply trained with Dr.

Bowerschmidt. We are going to go after a topic today that makes moms crazy. And that is mold in schools, mold and colleges. Let’s just go right back to, Alex has a really personal story about that.

So I attended a university in Florida. My freshman year, I moved into one of the oldest dorms on campus. And right off the bat, you knew it was mold-filled.

It was, You could smell it. You can actually see it, and the worst part was that the walls were actually cinder block. There was a mold growing on the wall, meaning that at that point it’s in the HVAC.

So, and I was never really an anxious or someone who had a lot of distractions or brain fog. After my first semester in living in that dorm, I always diagnosed with anxiety, ADHD.

And yeah, your first-semester college is definitely a learning curve. But I felt pretty resilient up until that point. In high school, I was working two jobs, taking college classes, doing two different internships.

So I feel like college was a PCK going the first month. By the end of the semester, really anxious and really brain fogged. And now looking back at it, almost 100% sure that my environment contributed to that.

You know, Dr. B always says this. He’s like, when I get a young person across from me and they’re like I have extreme anxiety, he’s, like make a toxin test.

I’ve seen that pattern more and more often these young adults they go off to college the first time and it’s usually a college in the southeast where mold is ubiquitous and these dorms are extremely extremely old and dorm’s aside the classroom buildings the gyms they’re going into.

They’re spending a significant amount of time the libraries oh my gosh the library I was studying in for eight hours a day was definitely one of the older ones.

And I’m very suspicious of Mullen that one too. Definitely, we spend all this time looking into colleges and investing in our future. But I think we set aside what that environment that we’re moving into what could potentially could be affecting our brain when we are asking it to work at the highest power possible day in a day.

I remember a few years ago, we had a young girl come in and she was at a college in Columbia, South Carolina, and, she, was very, very sick. And so we find out it’s mycotoxin illness.

She goes back to school. she knows it is the dorm, She starts talking to everybody else. Literally, everyone in the room had sinus infections, chronic illness, all the stuff, the anxiety, brain fog.

So she starts telling all of the kids. The parents all get together, they start complaining to the university. The building was so, so bad that it had to be demolished.

It was literally the next year. They were the last class that lived in that building because it was not remediatable. And then look at even the apartments.

Like even, let’s say you get, you’re in a good dorm, but now you got to go into the college apartments. So it’s a chronic problem, not only just that year one where you’re in the dorms, but also, you know, the apartments after where there’s the slumlord college, I just put the college kids through.

I don’t maintain the places. You really want to notice the musty smells, absolutely. The quick growing. How do you, if you leave a piece of bread out and it is molding in a day or two, Ding, ding, you have spores all over your place.

And that doesn’t even cost you anything. That’s not even doing a mold test. Of course you can do a real mold, test a, real air test, what would you say some of the signs are straight off the route that a parent needs to like look at that?

Like the child might be affected by mold because a lot of parents are like, well, we know our house is clean, but then they’re seeing all this stuff, even like let’s say younger kids, elementary kids.

So many of the schools are just a mess because maintenance is like with all of us, our homes, I’m sorry. I asked you a question and then I kept talking.

But it’s like school ends in May, starts up in August. They’re kind of like, oh, we’re shutting everything down. on the condensation, the HVAC, keeping the humidity levels at the proper, you know, thing and not just turn it off, turn on.

I think a lot of the dorms do that. They just turned it on, turned on fresh paint on walls. Yeah, absolutely. in terms of living environments or quality of the environment in college.

There’s not a heck of a lot out there. living events for college students. I accidentally found one study that was done back in 2009. It was actually done in Western colleges, so not even a more favorable mold environment like we have here in the Southeast.

But it was 40% of students reported visible mold in their dorms, another 30% leaks, floods. And I think we’re not naive to say that once a student goes into a dorm, They want to live their college life.

There’s, so I think pulling them out of that environment, I that plays into the emotional side of things too. You’re wanting your student to have, or your child to, have the best college experience.

So some things you could do to mitigate or negate as much as possible some of the living environmental exposures. It’s making sure you have a really, really good air purifier.

you can only fight your battles so much. If your a child who absolutely wants to Live in a dorm, they’re gonna live in it. You’re absolutely right. I had two things that came up, I remember my friend sent her daughter to, it was a Texas school.

When she got in to the dorm that she was assigned, in the corner, there was bunk beds. And when she went in a corner there’s this big box in that corner and she’s like, what is this box where my, literal her daughters head was like under the box.

They were like oh that’s the wifi for the floor. She was like, absolutely not. My daughter’s head is not going to be under the Wi-Fi box for the floor.

Now, I don’t know that a lot of parents would have even known to question that. I mean, maybe people are getting more Yeah. More informed about the EMFs and the high frequency stuff.

So I think there’s two things to look out for. One is look at the vents, you know, look what’s coming in. Obviously look for smell. Yes. Look for must.

We have a great mold course that is kind of really goes into a lot of the things, but humidity levels, maintenance on the dorm, asking questions. You know those parent groups are amazing.

Hey, my kid’s going in so and so dorm. Obviously, the older buildings could be more affected. Obviously if you’re sending them to a Southeastern school, you are going to want to be having that conversation.

And I think the more parents that push back on the colleges, they’re going get more vigilant about maintaining the buildings properly. So it is sort of a one-two punch.

But obviously if smell anything, if see anything. Air purification is huge. We have all the air purifiers that we like. There’s a lot of air-purifiers aren’t even good.

Well, there’s a lot of gimmicky and marketing ones that they have pretty marketing and pretty packaging. We have that happening a lots. Same with the EMF remediation.

On the deeper healing site, we’re always trying to help people just get the best possible value. If you go to the shop button, it’ll say, you know, clean water, clear air, and it will say all different levels.

Even if you’re just in a college dorm and you just want clean, water and a little air purifier, We, have them. we have the small ones. Also EMR for mediation, If they’re in a dorm, there’s going to be high levels of WiFi.

WiFi definitely has a big effect on the body. There’s lots of science on that. And there is a whole other podcast about that, but back to the schools.

So I didn’t realize there was a lot of documentation on K through 12. Yeah, there’s actually a pretty decent amount. And that’s where it kind of leaves the college students high and dry.

I mean, you’re also dealing with a lot of institutions that bring in a lotta money, so they don’t wanna actually publicize out there that their students are living in or attending classes in moldy buildings.

And again, it’s one of those things where you’re not going to be able, I mean, in that one case, they were able to make the needle move and do a full demolition to that building.

But in a lot of cases, you are not able really get out of that living situation. So I think the biggest thing you could do as much as possible is get a good air purifier, water filtration.

I’m so happy you touched on that. And I am not talking the crappy little Brita. A good water filtration system. Actually, Berkey makes a pretty good travel on top of the counter one.

It’s a really decent one, clean air, water, two big S things. I like to preach clean food too, but I think that’s hard to get by with a college student.

We’re talking to people who are going to be interested in students. One of things that comes up all the time, I’ve had numerous parents say, my kid’s got a lot of food sensitivities.

Obviously, we treat food sensitivity all of time. They’re gluten free, they’re dairy free or whatever it is. They wanna opt out of the food plan. These schools are not allowing it.

You gotta eat the Cisco crap that we’re offering. It is really hard. My daughter went to the University of Tennessee and she’s a good eater. We raised her.

Like we eat, we try to eat really good. Most of time, 80%, 80-20 rule. When we get there, she like, mom, it’s just so bad. The food is gross. And you’re paying a lot of money for this food plan.

So parents, fight the fight with the school. You can say your kid has food sensitivities. It seems like it’s pretty much mandatory year one. I actually ended up giving my daughter extra money, and she went to Trader Joe’s.

She literally had healthy food items, healthy snack items in her dorm, in our little fridge, because she’s like, I can’t eat this junk all the time. And it was so, so bad.

And it was a chronic thing. The parents, a lot of the parents were complaining about it on the group. And I don’t think I’m not throwing University of Tennessee under the bus.

They’re all doing the same things. It’s a mandatory food plan freshman year. So healthy food is really tough. Plus it’s like first time they’re free, they were on their own.

I think we’re not able to say that, you know, it’s not just your environment that’s causing, this potentially newfound anxiety, brain fog, rashes, acne.

It’s a lot of it too. I mean, your independent for the first time. it is a a of emotional stress. Another thing is too, is that your new environment will put a lotta new microbes.

lot of new bugs. So your immune system is going a thousand miles an hour. We also have, needless to say, probably alcohol exposure going on. I mean, between the poor food, the questionable environment, new stress, it’s important to take a step back and try and fix the things that you are able to fix.

Number one, obviously being clean environment. Good air purifier, good water filtration. I think stress management is probably the next best thing. That you could adopt a couple of different coping mechanisms or things that you would bring yourself out of that fight or flight.

Because once you’re in that fighter flight, there’s no time for rest and repair. Forget about your immune system repairing itself. Forgot about you brain function, functioning at 100%. So yeah, I thinks those things are the biggest things to focus on when going to college when you can only do so much about…

your physical living environment. So for preparation, I would say biggest things that I’d do, and I’m just thinking back when Kenna went to college, is I sent her with a really good water pitcher.

That was really easy. It was a good, good filter. I do like the smaller, the stainless steel travel wand. And I also sent here with the EMF remediation, which was just a little plug-in thing.

The other thing that I did was try to help her with the food. Like, what are some easy things that you can have that are healthy and sort of nutrient dense?

And, you know, if you’re eating the junk at the cafeteria, okay, but Alicia got some good things in there too. I center with some really good, like, complete foundation, just a really powder, easy to put into just, a glass of water.

The other thing that I did was I just really checked out the dorm and I Did a little bit of research in advance with the you can do it through niche or join the family groups.

It’ll say like class of XYZ school. And that’s where a lot of the parents are having conversations about what they know and what the upperclassmen have told them.

So just try to get them in the best environment possible. And if it’s a disaster, request to move. Just demand a move, this isn’t going to work. The K through 12 thing, so that’s the college thing.

That’s like all really easy things you can do. All of those resources are on our website. I just talked to someone this morning. There, they were like, I don’t know if this school has mold.

And I won’t even say the school name. It’s a local school. Its a newer school, newer built school and I haven’t really heard a lot of complaints about that school in particular, but her daughter has had extreme anxiety.

They did the mold test. Her mycotoxins were really high. Their home came back clean. What they realized was she was taking a longer block class in a trailer and the trailer was the culprit.

So that’s the other thing to be cognizant of is just any place we’re spending a lot of time. Just had a Tennessee family talking about their daughter was a gymnast.

She’s in a big warehouse. she’s like, you can see the black stuff coming out of events and a of the kids are getting very sick and they’re just wiping, wiping all the mats down.

But she like there’s literally, You can the stuff on the mat. Sometimes in those cases it’s obvious, but sometimes everything looks okay. And you know, it is not.

That is the age-old problem with mold. So I would say look for the symptoms in the children. Extreme anxiety, neurological tics, unexplained rashes, real brain fog.

Brain fog? I’ve seen a lot of acne too, surprisingly enough. Our skin is like our third kidney. Whatever we’re detoxing is through the rear, through your skin, whether it newly diagnosed eczema, hives, acne, even hair loss, hair thinning and hair lost is another big one.

But I think going back to another thing that is highly overlooked outside of school and home is buying your child their first car. A used car is usually a huge source of mold.

Really? Yeah. Yeah, okay. Especially, too, if it’s a questionable used car history, there’s water damage. A really big primary suspect of water damaging cars is those back windows that don’t actually go down and also through the sunroof.

Okay, well, I’ll tell you a personal story. My daughter had a Jeep with this Skylight, which when she moved to college, she left open overnight. huge rainstorm, filled the car with water, literally an inch of water.

And I like literally freaked out. I’m like, that thing’s going to be full of mold in two seconds. So I am like do not go to school today. Go take the care.

You need to go get it professionally, vacuum dried out, then when we finally got it all dried heck out of that car. So ozonator, really good tool. Do not breathe it in, but you literally just let the ozone run in the car while no one’s in it.

And then we got rid of all the carpeted mats and we bought the weather tacks. Got the whether tack for the card. We were on it and the cart was okay. But how many kids probably, I can think about my own sense, they probably wouldn’t even told me.

that they left the skylight open. They’d be afraid they’d in trouble. But I’m sure a lot of cars end up, like you said, in the used car lot. So definitely look in for the…

I mean, I would go by scent in that case. Does it have that mildewy smell? Does that have… Sometimes you can kind of see. I think you could obviously test it.

You can always take a sample of anything and get a mold test done. But I actually would, even going through all that, I would not have thought about buying a used car.

I just wouldn’t have though about it. If you don’t know the history of it, and I’ve had a couple cases where they work from home, they don’ t leave their house.

It’s not like they go frequent a gym regularly or a coffee shop regularly. They swear up and down their home is clean and then come to find out it was actually their car was the source of them.

I mean, if you’re driving your young kids around in a car that potentially has mold, then you are exposing them to that too. So an ozonator might be a really big tool for that and just killing the spores.

I think Dr. B said too, changing out the air filters in cars, which I didn’t even know that you had to change out air filter, but specifically asking them the change of the filter too So for those of you who are like, okay, I feel like I have mold exhaustion.

It’s okay. We’re all living, we’re living in Charleston in a very humid environment and we are all very on top of our mold in our personal lives. But we live normal lives, We drive cars, live in homes, go to restaurants.

Not everybody is mold sensitive. Mold exposure is not good for anybody. I think the numbers are 50% of buildings are not well, 25% are the population.

It’s highly sensitive. So, I mean, Dr. B says this all the time, you can have a family of five, two are not doing well, the other three are fine. They always use that as an argument of like, it’s not mold, we’d all be sick.

That’s a myth. We’re going to repeat that again. And that is a map. Not everybody has the same biology and the If you wanna know about your body burden, we have an incredible free quiz on the site, What’s My Body Burden?

It’s free. What is cool is you get an instant report. Like literally, you just put in your answers, takes about five minutes. You’re gonna get in instant reports and then it’s gonna give you all the resources.

It is a total DIY, it’ll have the guidebook, the links, all of the things. So, that’s a great resource for free. Keep an eye on your children, keep an eyes on the college.

Be proactive. Just be proactive with the schools and with your child going off to school and also, honestly, for the apartments. I mean, my daughter’s out of state.

She’s looking for an apartment. And I was having that conversation. You’ve got to be aware of mold. You’re like, do the smell test, look at the corners of the shower.

Is it dirt or is there mold? Ask the girls that are moving out. Like, is it really moldy in here? Kenna’s apartment was brand new. There was so much everyday black.

It was just a layer of black. I don’t know that it was mold. But she was like, mom, every day, it’s a brand new building. She said, I have to wipe off the counters.

And I was, like okay, well, that’s either debris from construction that is flowing through the ducts or it is mold, so I got her an air doctor and she’s in a 7 by 11 room.

Mom, when that air-doctor went on, she’s like, all the black stuff was gone. She’s, like I stopped coughing. I was sleeping better and all of the Black stuff in my room was done.

When she would go out into the main area, it was there again. Like it, was literally, It was running throughout. So, but at least she had a very safe place to sleep.

And what I let, one thing, wait, what was the air doctor? Air dog. The one that I liked about the Air Dog is I knew a kid is not going to change the filters.

It was a self-cleaning where you had to take out the mechanism and you can clean it and put it back in. And she was pretty vigilant about doing that and she’s like, it gets so full.

So there’s a lot of things you could do. Deeper Healing is here to support you and absolutely, if you suspect that you are suffering from mycotoxin illness now or your child, we are here for you.

Not only can we help you clear it out, through low dose antigen therapy, I think that’s one of the coolest things that we offer, it will give a most sensitive person a lot more bandwidth to live a normal life, be able to go out to dinner and not be in a total panic.

I always say not to living in bad environment, but at least you can control everything and if you go you’re inevitably going to be a building that has a problem.

and you don’t want to be so reactive. So LDA gives people, whether it’s food sensitivities, mold sensitivites, chemical sensitives, just gives them a lot more runway in their life.

Huge, huge, amazing treatment. It’s inexpensive and gives lifelong benefits. I always have to give them plug for LTA. I feel like we love LDA. It’s a beautiful, one-size-fits-all.

You don’t have to figure out what you’re truly sensitive or allergic to. There’s over 300 different very, very good and antigens, and even the most sensitive people who truly do experience anaphylaxis have actually tolerated it very well versus allergy shots and whatnot.

So it’s beautiful one size fits all. We don’ have it figured out. Or doing titrations up, titration down. So I think the things that we do really well is A, we figure out is it a problem or not.

B, We know how to clear it out of the body safely. And then we’ll retest to make sure you’re clean. We’ll give you all the resources for how-to avoid it.

Then we will also give more runway for a lifetime of being less sensitive. So we definitely have the whole package. If you are like, I never come into deeper healing.

I’m never going to be able, the power of deeper. Healing is coming here. We have a full comprehensive mold course with five modules that walks you through all of it.

So wherever you. In the world, if you’re dealing with this or you suspect you dealing. With it, we have something for you to help you and stay well out there.

Everybody. People are probably like, wait a minute. I remember the first time that I deeply understood LDA was Dr. B said, Danielle, if you know anybody who has a life-threatening peanut allergy, they need to know about LDI.

It could literally save their lives. And I was like, wait a minute. That’s when I started really digging into what it was. It’s amazing. So that’s a resource on our website.

You can look at that. Healing services, immune rebalance, LDA therapy, and also I’ll put it in the show notes. Stay well, stay mold free. Thank you, Alex, so much for today.

Don’t panic, everybody. Just be well informed. Bye. We hope this episode inspired you. Here’s how to go deeper. Visit deeperhealing.com to become a patient.

Online we have loads of courses and a free toxin quiz. Subscribe and please, please share this with someone who needs it. It’s always that one on one support that really gets people to find deeper healing.

Remember, this is educational content, not medical advice. The information shared here should be discussed with your own personal healthcare provider.

If you’re excited by listening to the medical experts or the personal recovery stories on here and you want to start your deeper healing journey, go to deeperhealing.com and start the process.