How Toxic Mold Mimicked Autism—and What Happened Next

Podcast Introduction and Guest Welcome 0:00

Your genes hold the answers to your family's overall health. I'm Dr. Paula Kruppstadt, and on the Get to the Root with Hope for Healing podcast, I sit down with experts in genetics, functional medicine, and family care to explore what's really going on beneath the surface so you can stop guessing and start healing. From personalized insights to practical tools, we bring you whole family wellness that starts at the root. Hey there, everyone. This is the Get to the Root podcast, and I'm your host, Dr.

Paula Kruppstadt, and I am joined today by an amazing human being and mother, Christina Greenfield. Christina, thanks so much for joining me today. Thank you for having me. I'm thrilled. You know, I'm your biggest fan. Christina, thanks so much for joining me today. And what we're going to do is step back. And we've kind of had this going back through history and trying to unpack everything. So the first concerns for developmental delay, when were those initially noticed? I think you said Montessori School was the first thing.

Yes, absolutely. So she was, she was at a Montessori school and they had started to notice that she was having behaviors that weren't, weren't really congruent with the other students that were her age. And so she didn't want to participate in circle time. She wasn't really speaking. So she was having some nonverbal frustrations she was, you know, hitting and. I don't think she was ever a biter, but she was frustrated. She wasn't speaking and able to communicate, and she was having difficulty with potty training.

And so they just kind of highlighted for us, you know, I think that you should get her evaluated in order to see, you know, if this is just something that she'll catch up on or if there might be a bigger issue. Okay. Before we go further, when did you all move into the home? that where her development slowed down and actually she stopped speaking. Do you remember the date that you moved into that home or just the approximate time?

Early Developmental Concerns at Montessori 2:06

I think it was that same year, maybe the year prior. It was either 2016 or 2017. Okay. And up until that time, she had been meeting her milestones. She was, yes. Okay. Okay. Then did you notice that So her language was, did she just stop talking? And then these behaviors showed up at Montessori School? I mean, she was our first child, so we didn't really know what we were doing. But I was tracking everything, because I was worried about this. I wasn't worried about autism. I was just worried I was going to miss something.

You go to all those developmental appointments, and they ask you all these questions. And how many words are they saying? And all these things. And so I was like, how am I supposed to remember? So I was tracking these things. And she was meeting all of her milestones up until, you know, it seemed kind of gradual. And so it was not something and because the school highlighted it, it brought it to our attention. And we were like, oh, you're right. You know, she, she kind of isn't talking as much as she used to.

And one thing that the diagnosticians noticed is that she was, she was exhibiting what's called echolalia. which is where she speaks, but she says things that are not really in context, you know, not really sensical. And so she would say sentences from a movie. I remember there was a particular sentence that she would say from Finding Dory just randomly. And so I would count all those words and I was like, okay, that's 10 words, you know, but I didn't know what echolalia was. And so, you know, and certainly we noticed the frustration and we just kind of thought, well, she's, you know, we don't know what we're doing.

It's probably our fault, you know, because she would go to the parks, and when she was ready to go home, she would pick a fight, basically, because she knew that when she would fight, we would go home. So instead of just telling us, I'm tired, I'm ready to go home, she would fight. And so things just got progressively more difficult. But again, not knowing, not having anything to compare it to her being our first child, we were just sort of like, oh man, we're really we're really having a hard time.

And, you know, we knew that potty training was a little bit hard, but again, didn't have anything to compare it to, so had no idea, you know, what the experience was, you know, really looked like in a neurotypical child and things like that. So it kind of happened gradually, and it happened in a way that, you know, when the school told us, we were sort of like, I'm sure everything's fine. You know, we don't want to be alarmist. We're trying not to be helicopter parents, you know, and so we were just like, okay, fine.

You know, we'll get it checked out, because we're also noticing that she's having a difficult time. And I think one of the things that really affected the whole family was just that she never slept. she would wake up every single night, just blood curdling scream, not just a cry, you know, like some children just cry at night. I mean, she would, we would wake up just alarmed, you know, because she would be screaming. Chronic constipation, so we were always at the doctor, you know, the regular pediatrician, and they just kept prescribing Miralax, Miralax, Miralax, and you know that was one of the things I think that's one of the things that helped me find you because it just didn't resonate with me I was like this is you know first of all you read the label and it says it's not for consistent adult use you know much less for a child and so I just thought something's wrong you know something something is really really wrong.

So mom's story noticed it you went through the school district evaluation where there was a diagnostician they just kind of they're not allowed to assign a diagnosis at the school district. So then it looks like, where did you go from there to receive the official diagnosis of autism? Right. So it was December 2017. We got the report back from the school. And they said, I think it was called non-categorical early childhood development. That was the category they put her in. But they said, we can't diagnose, but it looks like autism.

And my husband and I were like, What are you talking about? It's okay to pause. It's okay to pause because when we relive these traumas, it's terrible. I also heard you and I think that every parent goes through this where they start to blame themselves and there's a degree of shame because you said this several times. Our first child, we didn't have anything to compare to. So, first of all, thank you for sharing from your heart and I think this is what every parent with autism resonates with because you go through this gamut of emotions.

Yeah, you really do. You really, really do. And we did. We went through all the emotions, all the emotions. But when we got that report from the school, the next step was to go to the Myers Center, Texas Children's, to get, you know, they're the real diagnosticians that can actually, you know, give the diagnosis. And so, I think I was still in denial because I just thought my only experience with autism was severe autism, completely nonverbal, very physical. And that wasn't my daughter. She just stopped talking and she was frustrated, but she wasn't exhibiting the symptoms that I had seen and that I had experienced.

Autism Evaluation and Initial Diagnosis 7:00

And so I just thought, this is crazy. And we had had another child at the time. We had no idea what we were getting into, but we go to this appointment and I just thought, this doctor, they're going to see my daughter and they're just going to say she's spirited. She's got a mind of her own. She'll talk when she's ready to talk and she'll say what she wants to say when she's ready to say it. I mean, that's what I thought. And my husband stayed home with the baby because we're not bringing a baby to whatever it was for our appointment.

And so I went alone. And again, I had no idea what to expect. So I thought this would be like an iteration of appointments because autism feels like a very serious diagnosis to get with somebody seeing your child one time. Sorry, sometimes I can tell the story and I have no issue and sometimes it comes all back. Just take the time that you need. So this is February of 2018 and you're at a premiered children's hospital. The developmental pediatrician is spending about four hours with you and your daughter.

Your husband is at home with your youngest and then Let's talk about what happened in that appointment and what transpired after that. Sure. So in that appointment, the diagnostician, she's kind of leading my daughter through several exercises. She's observing her. She's really observing her, right? She's trying to tell her to do things and seeing if she can do them, multi-step instructions, seeing if she follows them. seeing if she responds and talks, you know, these types of things. And so I'm just kind of sitting back and I'm just watching.

And at the end of all this observation, you know, I go to take my daughter and I'm waiting for, well, what's the next step? You know, maybe there's, you're going to evaluate this information. There's going to be another appointment, you know, something. So the doctor pulls out her chart and she's got all these, you know, squares in it. And she's tallying up these numbers. And she says, your daughter is autistic. She qualifies for the autism diagnosis. And immediately I start questioning everything because I'm like, what do you, what does this mean?

What are you talking about? You know, again, because I was ignorant as to what autism means and what the diagnosis means. I just, it felt like almost just like entrapment. Like you're putting us in this bucket. You don't know anything about her. You've seen her for four hours. You know, what you're describing here is There's several different types of assessments, but the major one that they use to arrive at a conclusion of meeting, you know, level one, two or three from mild to severe autism is something called the childhood autism rating scale.

And it really is just a list of things on a checklist that provides no definition of root cause and you know and I know now that there are so many causes to autism and we found that lurking within your home so but you're sitting there she's telling you you've just received the diagnosis that that she's autistic yeah So I start questioning. So I'm like, well, I don't understand how you can give her that diagnosis in one meeting. You've just met her. She wasn't having a particularly good day. What does this mean?

And there really wasn't, I mean, I might have blacked out. I'm sure she was very professional. I'm sure she answered my questions, but I can't remember anything that she said. I just know that we left that day with a diagnosis and it was just sort of like, you know, there you go. And so after that, I think we took her out of the Montessori school. We put her into the public school because we thought that would be the best accommodation-wise for her to receive some of the services that she needed.

But still, we were left with all of these things that just seemed like pain for her, so frustrated, not being able to talk, never being able to use the restroom. screaming every night you know these these things were just like in my head I was like there's got to be something that we can do something that we can do to relieve this pain you know and then that's where I found your practice I found your office not too long after that I believe. Yeah you know bits and pieces of all of this because when you've had this diagnosis you had actually creating a timeline and this is where we want to kind of draw some some, as we're trying to pull little threads that can be encouraging to other people through the pain of what you guys live through.

You know, life isn't perfect. Nothing's ever perfect. But you, I believe, and this is just part of who you are, Christina. I mean, you are, you seek. And I think that this is so many parents, we would lay down our lives for our own children. You just move forward and you're looking for causes and reasons. You had found us, I believe, in the fall and you'd done an initial genetic review. You know, our sponsor for everything we do comes from a framework of Wired in Genetics and we reviewed those. We did some other tests.

We did micronutrient testing and a lot of other things. And she just wasn't getting better. And I worked with you guys off and on. And then, you know, you saw other things and we were kind of on again, off again. And then. I tend to be a little kind of pushy too and I try to be in a loving way but the thread, the thing that I saw that wasn't improving and you guys also brought your other daughter to see us and she had had just a huge number of infections And so we looked at some immune system issues that we were seeing in both of your daughters with recurrent infections and things like that.

And I asked you at one point to go ahead and test the interior of your home. And so I'd like you to start there from what we discovered in your home, because we both kind of looked and it was late 2020. And not only did we find that your daughter who had been diagnosed with autism also had some circulating antibodies to her brain, but you finally tested your home. And you said this to me and I say this to you. You were like a dog with a bone. I wouldn't stop it until you tested. But there were other things happening in your household like with you and also your husband that were a little concerning.

So let's go back to what we found out about your house and what you discovered and what action you took then. Yeah. So, I mean, I think, you know, when we got the autism diagnosis, we, again, didn't have anything to compare it to. We didn't have any kind of firsthand knowledge of what it meant, so we felt like we were blind with it. And then we met you, we did the genetic testing, we found out that they had some predispositions to be, you know, more susceptible to inflammation. So we did some diet adjustments, and she slept for the first time.

After we removed milk, she was having a significant amount of milk. She slept, but we were still in that house. And like you said, things were not improving. Having the new baby, getting the autism diagnosis, stressful jobs, all these things. were all the, all the reasons that my husband and I were just like, wow, we're just, we're not good at this. You know, we're not good at marriage. We're not good at being parents. We're not good at this. And we had a really hard time. I mean, looking back, because of course we, you know, first we, first we focused on children and then Once we moved out of the house, I guess I'm skipping a little bit, but when we tested the house, we figured out that it had high levels of toxic mold when we finally tested.

With all this information coming into us, we had both grown up in more of a traditional medicine system. We had never met anybody who had environmental illness. We didn't even know what that was. The house that we were in was a beautiful home.

Searching for Root Causes and Genetic Testing 15:30

We were just like, oh, we made it. We got this beautiful home and this beautiful area. So we could not really reconcile that it could have been the house that was a major contributing factor. Christina, did the house, could you see any visible mold at all? No. Did it smell normal? It smelled normal. And we asked other people, because we were like, maybe we got used to the smell. But we asked friends and family, we're like, did you ever smell anything? Did you walk into our house and think it smelled musty?

Was there anything? And everybody said no. Okay. So there were no visible factors. And so you can imagine just like our whole reality was just turned upside down because first of all, I have no idea that my child's, you know, what the label is that she's struggling with. I have no idea why my other child is continuing to get sick. I have no idea why my husband can't remember anything. I have no idea why I'm so angry. You know, I mean, none of it made any sense. And so it took, it did take us a long time to follow your instructions and test the house.

Cause we were like, why, what is this? I so identify with you when you're going, we're not good at this. Why am I so angry? I was a completely different mother with my first two children. I was so angry. I was so depressed. I lived in a water damaged home and that thread of the shame, the guilt and why can't we do this? And you know, marital things. So. You are not alone and I just want to thank you for your vulnerability of taking the deep dive into this because this speaks to so many people who are listening to this and people don't like to air their dirty laundry because out of our pain.

Now I'm going to let you jump back in. You asked you're in this beautiful home. You made it, you know, but your husband can't remember things. You're pissed off and angry. You've got two kids who are struggling with recurrent infections. And oh, by the way, your oldest daughter ended up with tubes, multiple rounds of antibiotics. In addition to the autism label, your youngest daughter ended up with PE tubes and lots of respiratory tract infections too. And now let's go back to when you decided to make a big fat change and move out.

Yep. So it was right before Christmas when we tested the house. And again, I had no idea what we were doing. So I just sent it off regular mail, like no urgency. I was like, okay, Dr. K says we have to do this. We'll do this. And so we sent it off, no urgency. We get the test results back. And there's a lot of red. on this army report. And I'm like, what does this mean? I don't understand what any of this means. And so we ended up figuring out that it meant that the house had very high levels of toxic water damage mold.

And again, we're looking around going, where? I don't see it. Where? But God sent us a series of angels, you of course being one of them. But I ended up calling somebody who I call all the time for advice and support. And I said, have you ever heard of anybody who's going through this? Because now we're just like, this is just crazy. This can't be. It can't be our house. I've never heard of anybody having this issue. I've never heard of children getting sick because of their homes. Like this can't be.

And she said, she said, yeah, you know, I think my neighbor went through that. So she gave me her neighbor's phone number. And I called her neighbor and her neighbor was sick. This was like COVID time. Her neighbor was sick and she said, I can't talk, but you can talk to my friend, Emily. And she gave me this woman, Emily's number. So I call this random person, Emily, and I tell her, you know, what we've learned, what we've experienced, what we've, because we also got an inspection done after that and confirmed, you know, what the ERMI test showed.

And I said, okay, so we've got this confirmation, but have you ever heard of somebody becoming autistic because of living in a house that has apparently high levels of toxic mold? I don't know what toxic mold means by this point. I don't know what high level means at this point. I don't fully understand why it is, where it is hidden in the HVAC system. And she sits there and she listens to me. Well, she calls me back, actually, because I leave her a message. She calls me back. And she says, hey, can I help you?

And I'm like, I don't know why I'm calling you. And then I tell her everything. She ends up telling me that she had the same experience and that her son was also diagnosed with autism. And they found out it was a result of them living in a house that had high levels of toxic mold. They left, and he began to heal. And the symptoms that he had became relieved. And so, you know, at this point, again, this is just God because at this point, my husband and I were having such a hard time. We couldn't agree on anything.

We couldn't talk about anything. We were basically just two people living together trying to support these children that were constantly sick and struggling. But there was no teamwork. There was no togetherness. It was just like parallel paths, you know. We were each doing a job. And so I go to him and I tell him that this stranger told me that she experienced the same thing and that it could be the house. And again, we were agreeing on nothing. But in that moment, he just said, We have nothing to lose.

We've already lost. And so that was all it took for us to decide that we were leaving the house. And I think within a couple of days, the girls left the house and they never went back. And then we started to go through the process of cleaning our things, getting rid of our things. Because for us, we had a very low risk tolerance. Now suspecting, you know, highly suspecting that it was our house that had impacted our children. We were looking at all the things that we had, you know, we had created this identity of being able to buy these things, you know, this beautiful house, these nice cars, all these, all this stuff.

And I looked around and I was like, like all of that is money, you know? Yeah. And it means nothing. Like it means nothing compared to my daughter. So we threw away most of everything that we own just because we were like, I'm not willing to risk it, you know? Probably about like 90, 95% of everything that we owned. The hardest part was their toys. I remember sitting in their playroom, like surrounded by all their toys. And I was picking up each one thinking like, are they gonna remember this? Are they gonna ask for this?

Can I risk? cleaning it or not cleaning it as well as it needs to be, you know, every single toy. And I got it wrong, the ones that I picked. I got it wrong. It was the first thing that we agreed on and probably the hardest thing that we had ever done up to that point. deciding that we were going to just get rid of everything and leave. But within probably three months, people started noticing that my daughter was different, my oldest daughter, that she was more responsive. She was talking and it wasn't echolalia.

She was, you know, making eye contact. She wasn't stimming. Her, her stim was like, she would flap her hands. Yes. She wasn't stimming as much anymore. And then progressively, it was just like the veil, you know, lifted. Yes, Christina, as you're describing, you know, basically you and your husband just putting one foot in front of the other, you know, going through the motions of life, just kind of working out of the fog. But. blindly hoping as you get out of this house with the words of encouragement.

I think of your friend to Emily and I really want to interview her for the podcast because I believe it's Malachi's message that they had actually lost

Discovering Mold in the Home 23:00

a baby in utero at 26 weeks. Their home was so water damaged, their baby died in the womb and was delivered with anencephaly. And so their personal pain and just changed what they do and how they do it. Now let's go back. Now, when Elsa, you said almost like, well, I used her name. You gave me permission before to use her name. One of the things that you told me was that you had gone to one of the pediatric neurologists. And the last time that Elsa had been there, she had not said anything, but it was about a year after that.

And Elsa stood in this neurologist office and said, Don't you remember last year when the red bird kept flying into the window and she was recounting, she could verbalize, and I think for this guy, this neurologist, it just blew his mind. He'd never seen anything like it. Down in Texas here, we have these cardinals that seasonally will just hit glass and fly into it. She had remembered everything that had transpired, but it was like her little mind was unlocked when you got out of the previous house.

So you just shared this. Now, life isn't perfect. I mean, she still struggles off and on with constipation off and on now. And there's other things we know that will cause that. Genetically, if we have mitochondrial issues and things like that, But you went a step further and you had the school district retest her. and that right there I mean it's like it puts a pin in it for other parents who are like you know I encourage parents to do this too it's like they've been assigned a label of autism go back to the school district and have them retest because if we don't have objective measures to say what's happening but it didn't happen overnight you said so over the course of three months or so it was like a veil was lifted and then You used things intermittently like binders.

Do you want to talk a little bit about that too? Sure, yeah. We've just followed your advice on the medical piece and I'm so grateful that we were connected to you and your office so early on in the journey and that y'all You know, you met us where we were in every moment. We were trying to learn functional medicine. We had to learn how to interact with this new way of practicing, this new way of seeing doctors, new recommendations. And I think when we started to see you, it was kind of newer for y'all at the time, too.

And so we were kind of learning together. So, you know, honestly, I don't remember all the things that she's taken and done. I know that we've done, you know, we've done a significant amount of different type of supplementations based on their genetics and based on their symptomatology at the time. Binders have always been part of the routine. PEA, I know, has always been part of the routine. Fish oil has always been part of the routine. So there are some consistencies there, but it's always been aimed at trying to bring down their inflammation and consistently watching their markers, which I love that it's such a targeted approach.

I'm older now, so I don't have a whole lot of friends that are having babies, but anybody that I interact with that's having a baby, I'm like, can I please gift you a genetic test? Can I please gift you the ability to go get your child tested? If we can understand that just from like a cultural perspective, we're all different from a background perspective, even siblings that grew up in the same house were different. We experience the world in a different way. Why don't we accept that each and every one of our bodies is different?

And it responds to different triggers, it responds to different environmental factors, it responds to different medications differently. And so it's just like this idea, this notion that every single person can be treated with the same medications on the same schedules is just mind-blowing to me that we've ever accepted that. I love the fact that with your practice, we've been able to take a really targeted approach for each person, both of my children. Well, what you just said, too, is what we have all experienced with allopathic or Western medicine.

The only treatment is this consistent applied behavioral analysis with no unique variants. I mean, that's kind of an overgeneralization, but it's like occupational therapy, physical therapy, speech therapy, feeding therapy, and it is what it is. Diet doesn't matter. There are no other alternatives. And that's actually written in what you're given in your consult. You know, hyperbaric oxygen, it doesn't do anything and all these other things. Christina, what I think is so unique is that because of what you and your husband experienced with your girls, that led you on a different path and now what you do is making such a change and it's impacting so many lives and it's it's been a blessing to me because I would say not a week goes by that I'm like call this lady Conscious Healthy Home, Christina Greenfield and oh by the way you know it's so encouraging that parents can lean into this.

Now not every child with autism has biotoxin illness but it is a huge piece. Environmental medicine is something that every single person has to have And I think too that that's where a lot of folks in our practice too, if their child isn't getting better and they have autism and they have not and they have an abnormal abnormal testing and it's even if we've done other testing there's you know something called the genie and it shows that oh even though you live in mold but the step one is you must you must you must you have to have a clean environment so Yeah, where did that lead you?

I would like you to encourage everyone by, you know, giving us a picture of where your daughter is at right now, because there's all these moms and dads listening that It is so hard on a marriage when you have a child who let alone is not neurotypical, but autistic, not speaking or just parroting things. So, and getting angry and then that's affecting the marriage. So. Tell us about where she's at now and then unpack what that led you into. Sure. I think this has been a journey for all of us. I'll go back to the beginning of the story.

When we first heard that sentence, your daughter is autistic. We were scared, you know, and, you know, a lot of times fear comes from being ignorant. You know, it comes from not understanding. It comes from not knowing. And so, you know, of course I've learned more throughout the years about, you know, what, what that means and what it doesn't mean. And I felt like if, if that label came back today, I don't think that I would have a fear response. I think that I would have a response of just, okay.

what does she need? How does this help her get what she needs? But I will say, when we went back and we went to another diagnostician, it was a private diagnostician the second time around because she was struggling with reading. And so we were pursuing, is this dyslexia?

Leaving the House and Early Recovery 31:00

Is it dysgraphia? Is it dyscalculia? What's the struggle? And it was that diagnostician that said, you know, realize that she doesn't have any of the symptoms that she had whenever she got the autism diagnosis, and then, you know, subsequently removed that diagnosis. And it was a mixture of feelings by that time, because again, we had learned more, and I wasn't so afraid of the diagnosis anymore. And I just thought, you know what? What I was afraid of? I was afraid of my child not talking. It wasn't the diagnosis, it wasn't the word, but it was putting her on that special needs bus to go to school every day.

And, you know, children get hurt, you know, they're out on the playground playing, but only a parent that has a child that can't talk knows how scary that is. Yes. Not being able to articulate it. Yeah. Yeah. They can, they can't tell you what happened, you know, and you've got to send them off in the world and you never know. And so having that diagnosis removed, it really wasn't the diagnosis removal that offered me any peace. It was just, it was a knowing that my daughter can talk, she can speak to me.

And all this time, you know, she was processing things. She just, you know, it was just locked inside and she couldn't speak. And now she's telling us the stories and the things that she remembered. Yeah, she did have the autism diagnosis removed, but I think, again, that's because that's by virtue of the type of diagnosis or the type of analysis that the doctors went through in order to give her the diagnosis was behavioral. And she did have those behaviors, but nobody asked why she had those behaviors.

And so then it didn't allow us to do anything to relieve. the behaviors or the pain that she was feeling, you know, the behaviors that resulted from the inflammation, which is pain. And so it's been a really, really interesting and challenging journey for us. And also because, you know, I have met many autism parents in the course of this, and I understand how fiercely every one of them wants to protect their child. In our case, it was behavioral, it was environmental, and a combination of genetics.

That's not the case for everyone. And so somebody asked me one time, they were like, do you think every autistic child has experienced environmental illness? And I said, I mean, I have no way of knowing that. I can just, I know that if the pattern was similar to someone else where their child was meeting all developmental milestones and then something changed in their environment and then they weren't, that I would very much look into it. I'd like to thank Fagran Genomics for sponsoring our podcast.

Without knowing what your precision genetics are, you don't have a roadmap. So please log on to our website, schedule a welcome call, and see what the Wellness Blueprint can do for you. That's the premier and proprietary genetic panel that Fagran has allowed us to create. I think you were very appropriate in saying that I would say in our practice about because we check every child in our practice for environmental illness. I would say as high as 95%. of our kiddos. We need to do a statistical analysis of a vulnerable genetic makeup for developing environmental illness, but that doesn't mean they're going to.

And you know what you had mentioned too with the diagnostician, you know, it wasn't so much the label being removed It's wanting her to be able to interact in life and to advocate for herself and to express how she's feeling and to interact on that human level instead of being locked in. And then what you also mentioned, the other challenges dyslexia, dysgraphia, dyscalculia, dyscalculia, some people say, is that that is a sign of methylation, which we find very, very commonly in autism, but it's different for everyone, and everyone is unique, and I so appreciated what you said.

It's true, the gift of genetics, it's kind of like, it is, it's the foundation, and we can modulate the future to do that. I so appreciate your vulnerability and now what you do. So tell us about Conscious Healthy Home and how this experience has changed your life and what you do now for people. Absolutely. Well, I mean, I was able to found this business because I'd found you as a doctor and I was able to kind of not have to personally dig in to all of the medical, right? I just tried to do my diligence and tried to follow instructions as well as possible on the medical side.

But it still left, you know, the next question, how do I get my family out of this and make sure that we don't find ourselves back in the same situation because When we bought the other house, we weren't careless. We had all the inspections. We had all the different people come in, and everybody assured us that everything was normal. And it wasn't, obviously. So my next question was, how do I get us out of this? And how do I make sure we don't find ourselves back in this problem? And so people were...

There's so much noise once in the mold community. There's so much noise. There's so much fear. There's so much ego. It's really a strange, strange place. Yeah, but I, my, my personality is the one that I just don't, I don't accept that. And I think that, you know, I've, I've been a lawyer for, for 15 years now. And anytime I sit across the table and somebody is trying to intimidate me with fear or with, you know, in any, in any way, I just, I stop and I say, no. Yeah. I love that. I love that. Yeah.

And that was my experience in the mold community. And I don't think anybody was out there wringing their hands maliciously thinking like, I'm going to trick this lady. But I do think that there was a significant amount of people. And this is not just mold, but this is a human nature thing. When we experience something terrible, You want to almost normalize it for yourself by telling other people that this is normal. This is not something that you can do about it because you couldn't do anything about it.

So why could anyone else do anything about it? And so that's where kind of the unintentional, I think, fear mongering comes in. But someone said, you just have to accept this because you live in Texas and, you know, your daughter, your family, they're always going to experience this. And I said, no. I mean, full stop, no. God gave me this child for a reason. And it's not my job to sit back and go, oh, that's too hard. I would rather pick a house based on the countertops. I'm not going to do anything to change.

We're going to fall right back into the same situation because it's easier for me. Absolutely not. So I thought I was going to have to invent something, honestly. I had no idea. I thought I was going to have to invent something, and I was ready. But luckily, God kind of led me to the building science, which is really where the power is. And I encourage everyone to kind of understand this, and this is why I started Conscious Healthy Home.

Diagnosis Removed and Ongoing Healing 38:00

was to help empower and educate people as I was learning, because originally we were gonna try to build a house. Now again, this was COVID time, so that, you know, it didn't end up working out, but you know, God's plans are better than ours. And so while we were trying to build a house, I was desperately trying to learn. I was just digging into everything and trying to figure out how do I guide, you know, this team? How do I build this team? How do I guide this team to make sure that we build a healthy home?

And I was trying to educate other people kind of just on Instagram, you know, along the way. And then people started asking me questions, you know, and they started asking me, you know, very, very specific questions for their own projects. And I just thought, you know, again, from a lawyer's perspective, I was like, well, there's a liability here, you know, and me not fully understanding all their projects and trying to give them advice, you know, just on Instagram and so. And I always tell people to do your diligence, you know, don't get your information off of Instagram and Facebook, you know, it's not, those are not, you know, necessarily vetted sources.

And so, you know, me saying that, and then also giving information on Instagram and not having anything else, you know, to give people, I thought I need to really make this legitimate so that I can provide people the type of assistance that I wish that I'd had, you know. So I became a building biology advocate. I studied with the Building Biology Institute. I became a certified passive house builder. Passive house is a building methodology that focuses on the building envelope and on ventilation, mechanical systems.

I became a healthy materials advocate. Now I'm an advisor for the International Well Building Institute and the Air Advisory. You know, I found my way into these places, into these rooms where people collaborate, you know, and people are not divisive. They're collaborative. everybody's always learning and they admit that, you know, and of course there are still egos along the way, but, you know, I try to encourage people to just put their egos to the side because I think, you know, when it comes to the built environment, I think the people that have a seat at the table right now, the only difference between them and people who have experienced environmental illness is that they are speaking with a unified voice.

Whereas some of the people with environmental illness are, you know, we're coming from all different directions. We're scared. We're afraid. We're angry. We're litigious. We think we're the only ones that can help people. We're the only source of information, you know. And that's again, something that I just reject. So with Conscious Healthy Home, my main focus is helping people to build the teams and to, you know, create the documents that are sound so that the whole team knows exactly where we're headed when we're building a home for families.

And so that starts from finding the site, finding the architects, finding the builders. They also help people work through remediations because even the remediation industry can be very confusing because the mold inspectors, they're finding the mold and they're writing the protocols for the remediators and they're removing the mold, but nobody's asking why the mold was there. And one of the most important things that I tell people is that mold is not the defect. Mold is a symptom, much like when my daughter stopped speaking, that was a symptom of inflammation.

Mold is a symptom of a building defect. You've got air infiltration or exfiltration or a leak or a compromise in your building envelope or all of the above. But just removing the mold doesn't stop it from coming back if you don't identify the source. So that's what I've been able to help people as well, just kind of work through, you know, work through those confusing times and make sure that, you know, their investments are well placed and that it's not going to, you know, not going to reoccur for them, not going to happen again, whether that's a new home or remediation.

And then interestingly, I, you know, I'd have people reach out and they say, well, you know, that's nice that you're helping people build new homes, but I have no interest in that. I just want to find a real estate agent that can help me find a healthier home. So I created a program, a certification program for that because I looked around and there was nothing, you know, there's green home and there's energy efficiency, but there's nothing that's tying the health and wellness of a human who's living in a home back to the integrity of the house.

And then also, you know, I've seen where real estate agents have unfortunately put themselves in compromised positions by advising on things that are, you know, outside their scope. They're trying to help, again, but it increases their liability whenever they're, you know, speaking outside of the scope. And so help them understand, you know, what is appropriate or not appropriate to say and, you know, when they should be resourced and when they should be pointing to other resources for their clients and and things like that.

So that's what we do with the Conscious Healthy Home Realtor Certification Program, which you're one of the master class providers and everybody has loved your class. So thank you so much for providing that for us. It's been really great, very well received. I am so, you're welcome for that. And that was a real privilege for me. I love what you had to say about, oh, we live in Texas, let's just accept it. No, I mean, and what you said too, there's a verse of scripture that says, perfect love casts out all fear.

And when we find ourselves moving into that, which, you know, we're human beings and we do the other about ego and, and disagreement, there are so many brilliant people in this space. And it's like, we're all human beings. And I think we all want the same thing and we have to put the egos aside and there are protocols that help us get better. But again, we're all human beings and we're all individuals and someone may be doing a certain protocol, but they might need a little twist that's not

Building Conscious Healthy Home 43:00

written into the protocol. And we do. The pride, the egos have to be laid to rest. We do know that you have to breathe clean air. And you don't want to be breathing things in and getting it in your skin and everywhere else. And for all of us who have, chronic inflammatory response, which is biotoxin illness. It's a lifelong journey and managing exposures all along the way. So Christina, I want to thank you so much for sharing your daughter's story. And I'm just going to come back to the fact and because this is something too that you may not recall it, but I recall it is that we had done initially Your daughter's, it was the equivalent basically of what we now call our wellness blueprint.

It's a proprietary, well, we put the pieces together to make our proprietary genetic panel and she just wasn't improving. And I mean, there were teeny little wins, but nothing drastic. And so I wanna use that as just a thing. We take pieces, and when you're breathing air that's compromised, and it doesn't have to just be your home, it can be your car, your school, your church, anywhere you're exposed, and then cleaning the belongings. Can you just really quickly just state how important it is for people, once they get into a cleaner environment, to clean their belongings?

to as they take things along. Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, I think that some of it depends on what, you know, where the mold was. If it's in your HVAC system, you just have to think about the air is, you know, it's a closed system. So that means the air that's in your home is going through that system, you know, where the mold and microbial growth is, and it's getting on you and everything in your house. And so where you have porous items and you have people who have, you know, compromised systems or, you know, maybe they've even been diagnosed with SIRS, then you have to be very, very careful because you can't, you know, you can't really clean a couch cushion, for example.

you know, a headboard, you know, that has the tufting, you know, and all that kind of stuff. Anything that's porous, I mean, unfortunately, children's toys, you know, the stuffies and stuff. I have known some people, I didn't think about this when we went through it, but some people have, like, removed the stuffing, you know, opened the stuffy, removed the stuffing, and then they feel comfortable, you know, washing it and then putting the stuffing, you know, new stuffing back in. But if anything is porous, there is the potential that you can cross contaminate the space that you go into, the new space.

And I think what's really interesting is that some people think, oh, it's intimidating to them to try to pursue a healthier home because they just think it's impossible. You have to have everything perfect. But I would say, you know, you just have to think about your toxic, you know, you have to think about your bucket, the bucket that your body can hold. And if you're in an environment that's constantly bombarding you with toxicity, whether that's VOCs or EMF or mold or microbial growth or mycotoxins, whatever it is, or all of the above, your bucket is totally full and then it's spilling over.

And that's where you start to get the symptoms, the anger, the rage, the constipation, the brain fog, you know, the hormonal imbalances, all those things. Waking up in the middle of the night every night. Every night, yes. And if you remove yourself from that environment, but you take your things with you, you're not helping your body to be able to relieve that toxic burden as fast as if you, you know, did not take the poorest things, only took the things that you could adequately and thoroughly clean.

And there's a whole, you know, there's a multi-step process for cleaning your belongings as you know. the ones that you would even want to take with you. And I know that some people are just like, well, I can't, I can't not have, you know, the things. And I understand. I mean, when we moved into the, you know, we ended up living with my parents for a while. We moved into a rental. We moved, we had no furniture. We had mattresses. We like, we went and bought the cheapest mattresses you could buy and they were on the floor.

You know, as parents of two, both professionals, you know, we were, we had mattresses on the floor. So I know, I know it's hard to get rid of your things. And I know what it means to live without a dining room table, you know? So I know that it's hard, but you just have to, you have to kind of conduct your own risk analysis based off of the, you know, the people that are living in the home, what the experience is and you know, how quickly you expect to see results or want to see results, but not cross-contaminating your space is very important.

You know, I appreciate sharing that I've experienced the same thing. I mean, I've lost so much and still haven't replaced some of those things. And then we've discussed this before that my downtown Houston office was water damaged and we're involved in some litigation because it, it's just devastating. So. terrible. I, you know, people out there know you are not alone. There's a lot of grief, but what is the price? The price is not allowing your bodies to be sick forever and to get your children back.

And in your case, having your daughter, she's, she is now 11 years old, right? And what grade is she in? She is in fifth grade. And I tell you what, she's a beautiful little firecracker, able to articulate many things, just a joy to be around. I know I get snapshots. Kids are on their best behavior when they come to see me unless they're sick. But what a joy. And Christina, thank you so much, so much for your time. So how can people get a hold of you? Sure. People can, you can send me an email, Christina, no H-C-R-I-S-T-I-N-A at conscioushealthyhome.com.

You can find all my services and resources on my website.

Advice for Families and Closing Remarks 49:00

I have tons of free resources there to help educate you and just kind of point you in the right direction of what you need to do from an environmental perspective, conscioushealthyhome.com. You can also find me on Instagram, Facebook, it's conscioushealthyhome. Yeah, and if I could just leave with one last thing, if you'd grant me just a couple more minutes, but I just want to say for all the parents out there that are struggling, or even if you're not a parent, you're allowed to struggle with your own personal health too, and that's also important.

My belief is that we are all perfectly, wonderfully made. God chose to give us the building blocks that we have as individuals. You've got gifts and you've got potential and, you know, I'm going to oversimplify but all we have to do is to support. the environment to the extent that we can. You don't have to seek perfection. You just have to seek a little bit better. And every time that you get to an environment that's a little bit better, you give yourself more of an opportunity to heal and become the best version of yourself.

But what I've seen from my personal experience and what I know is that God made us to heal, and it's just our job to figure out how. Christina, thank you so much. That's what we echo here. We are fearfully and wonderfully made. Our bodies are meant to heal if we give it what it needs and we take away what it doesn't need. So thank you for your time. And again, for all of you, we thank you for listening to the Get to the Root podcast. And I want to thank our sponsor, Fagran, who carries our, has allowed us to create the proprietary wellness blueprint.

that it's a roadmap and it gives you the tools that you need to move forward. And then if we can create an environment to allow our bodies to heal, that's what this is all about. And the hope that your child can recover so much of what has been lost or never had, never gained if they're struggling with an autism diagnosis. Thanks again, Christina, for your time. Thanks. Thank you, Dr. K. I appreciate you. Take care. Bye-bye. Bye. Thanks for joining us at Get to the Root with Hope for Healing. If this episode helped you, follow and share it with someone who needs it and leave a review.

It helps others find us too. For a free consultation, visit our website at GetToTheRoot.com with a number two and schedule a welcome call. We'll see you soon.