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 am your biggest fan. Christina thanks for much joining 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 Yes, absolutely.

So she was at a Montessori school, and they had started to notice that she had behaviors that weren't really congruent with the other students that were her age. And so she didn't want to participate in circle time.

Early Developmental Concerns and Regression 1:24

She wasn't speaking, so was having some non-verbal frustrations. I don't think she was ever a biter, but she she's frustrated. She wasn't speaking and able to communicate and she is 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, 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? 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. 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 wasn't worried about autism.

I just worried I'm 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? All these things. So I thought, how am I supposed to remember? So, I 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.

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 very sensical. And so she would say sentences from a movie. I remember there was a particular sentence that she was saying from Finding Dory just randomly. So I would count all those words and I was like, okay, that's 10 words. But I didn't know what echolalia was. Certainly we noticed the frustration and we just kind of thought, well, we don't what we're doing, it's probably our fault, because she go to the parks and she would, when she was ready to go home, she'd pick a fight, basically, because she knew that when you would fight we would we will go Home, you know, 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 you're 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, what the experience was, really looked like in a neurotypical child and things like that. So it kind of happened gradually, and it happened in way that, when the school told us, I'm sure everything's fine.

You know, we don't want to be alarmist. We're trying not to helicopter parents, you know. And so we were just like, okay, fine, well, get it checked out. Because we're also noticing that she's having a difficult time. 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 just alarm, because she'd be screaming.

Chronic constipation, so we were always at the doctor, the regular pediatrician, and they just kept prescribing Miralax, Mirallax. You know that was one of the things, I think that's one thing that helped me find you because it just didn't resonate with me. First of all you read the label and it says it's not for consistent adult use, much less for a child and so I just thought something's wrong. You know something something is really really wrong so mom 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. 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 say, we can't diagnose, but it looked like autism. My husband and I were like, What are you talking about? 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. And we did. We went through all the emotions, all of the emotion. But when we got that report from the school, the next step was to go to the Myers Center, Texas Children's, to get, they're the real diagnosticians that can actually give the diagnosis.

I think I was still in denial because I just thought my only experience with autism was like severe, you know, 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, that i had experienced.

Autism Evaluation and Diagnosis 7:00

So I thought, this is crazy. 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 are just going say she's spirited. She's got a mind of her own. And she'll talk when she is ready to talk and she will say what she wants to say when ready. That's what I thought. My husband stayed home with the baby because we're not bringing a baby to whatever it was for our appointment.

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 is, it 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 the appointment, the diagnostician, she's kind of leading my daughter through several exercises. She's observing her. Right? She is trying to tell her to do things and seeing if she can do them, multi-step instructions, seeing seeing if she responds and talks, you know, these types of things. And so I'm just kind of sitting back and I am just watching.

At the end of all this observation, I go to take my daughter and am waiting for, well, what's the next step? Maybe you're going to evaluate this information, there's going be another appointment, something. So the doctor pulls out her chart and she's got all these squares in it. She's tallying up these numbers and says, your daughter is autistic. 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 and you don't know anything about her. You've seen her for four hours. What you are 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 or 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 is autistic. So I start questioning, because 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? I might have blacked out. I am sure she was very professional. And I sure as she answered my questions, but I can't remember anything that she said. We left that day with the diagnosis and it was just sort of like... 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 services that she needed. But still, we were left with all of these things that just seemed like pain for here.

So frustrated not being able to talk, never being 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 seek and I think that this has so many parents. We would lay down our lives for our own children. If 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. I tend to be a little kind of pushy too and I try to 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 you 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. And you said this to me and I say this, you were like a dog with a bone. I wouldn't stop 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 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' 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, more susceptible to inflammation. so we did some diet adjustments and she slept for the first time.

After we removed milk, she was having like 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 reasons that my husband and I were just like, wow, we're just, not good at this. We're not at marriage, We are not being parents, and we had a really hard time. I mean, looking back, because of course, first we focused on children, Once we moved out of the house, I guess I'm skipping a little bit,

Searching for Root Causes and Genetic Testing 15:00

but when we tested the House, we figured out that it had high levels of toxic mold. When we finally tested, because we were 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. You know, We were just like, oh, this is, This is we made it, you know? We got this beautiful Home and this Beautiful area. So we could not really reconcile that it could have been the house.

That was, You Know, 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 ask 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. Have No Idea what my husband can't remember anything. 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? You know, 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. So depressed.

And that threat of the shame, the guilt and why can't we do this and you know marital things. 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, 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. I just sent it off regular mail, like no urgency. You know, it's like, okay, Dr. K says we have to do this. We'll do it. on this army report. And I'm like, what does this mean? I don't understand what any of this means.

So we ended up figuring out that it meant that the house had very high levels of toxic water damage mold. 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 be our house. I've never heard anybody having this issue.

Children getting sick because of their homes. Like, This Can't Be. She said yeah, I think my neighbor went through that. So she gave me her neighbor's phone number. And I called her neighbor and her neighbour was sick. This was like COVID time. Her neighbour is 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 have experienced, because we also got an inspection done after that and confirmed, You know what the ERMI test showed.

And, and I said, okay, so we've got this confirmation, but like, 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 mode means by this point, you know, I dunno what high level means at this. I fully understand why it is, where it's hidden in the HVAC system. And she shares, she sits there and she listens to me. Well, she calls me back, actually, because I leave her a message, and she says, hey, can I help you?

And I'm like, I don't know why I am 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 that 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 nothing togetherness. It was just like parallel paths, y'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. I think within a couple of days, the girls left the House and they never went back. Then we started to go through the process of cleaning our things, getting rid of our thing. Because for as we had a very low risk tolerance, now 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'd created this identity of being able to buy these things, this beautiful house, these nice cars, all this stuff.

And I looked around and I was like, like all of that is money, ya know? And it means nothing. Like it mean 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 every thing that owned. The hardest part was their toys. I remember sitting in their playroom, like surrounded by all their toy and I was picking up each one thinking like are they gonna remember this? Are they going to ask for this, can I risk cleaning it or not cleaning as well as it needs to be, you know, every single toy.

And I got it wrong. The ones that I picked, I, got 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. You know, making eye contact. Her stim was like she would flap her hands. Yes. Too.

Because 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, going through the motions of life, just kind of working out of a fog. 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 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. One of the things that you told me was that. you had gone to one of 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 that, you know, 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 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, it's like it puts a pin in it for other parents who are like, I encourage parents to do this too. It's 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, 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. You had to learned how to interact with this new way of practicing, this way 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.

So we're kind learning together. So, you know, honestly, I don't remember all of the things that she's taken and done. I know that we've done, we have done a significant amount of different type of supplementations based on their genetics and based their symptomatology at the time. Binders have always been part of their routine. PEA has always be part the routine, fish oil has been always part 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 mean, 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, can I please gift you a genetic test? Can I, please, gift to you the ability to go get your child tested? Not, you know, 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. You know 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 different environmental factors. And so it's just like this idea, this notion that every single person can be treated with the same medications on the schedules is just mind blowing to me that we 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. That's actually written in what you're given in your consult. You know, hyperbaric oxygen, it doesn' 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.

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. Oh, by the way, it 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 have an abnormal testing and it's even if we've done other testing, there's something called the genie and shows that, oh, even though you live in mold, but the step one is you must, you have to have a clean environment.

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. 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.

And 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, a lot of times fear comes from being ignorant, it comes not understanding, from not knowing. And so, of course I've learned more throughout the years about what that means and what it doesn't mean. I felt like if that label came back today, I don't think that I would have a fear response. What does she need? You know, how does this help her get what she needs, you know?

But I will say, when we went back and we got another...we went to another diagnostician, it was a private diagnosticians the second time around because she was struggling with reading. And so, we were pursuing, is this dyslexia, dysgraphia?

Leaving the House and Early Recovery 31:00

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 that, she had whenever she got the autism diagnosis and then, 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. I just thought, what I was afraid, of my child not talking. It wasn't the diagnosis, it wasn' the word, but it was putting her on that special needs bus to go to school every day.

And, you know, children get hurt, 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. They can, can tell you what happened, and you've got to send them off in the world and never know. And so having that diagnosis removed, it really wasn't the diagnosis removal that offered me any peace. It was a knowing that my daughter can talk. She can speak to me. And all this time, she was processing things.

You know, I was just locked inside and she couldn't speak. 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 is by virtue of the type of analysis that the doctors went through in order to give her the diagnosis was behavioral. And she had those behaviors, but nobody asked why she has those behavior. So then it didn't allow us to do anything to relieve. the behaviors or the pain that she was feeling, you know, the behavior 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, 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, 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, have no way of knowing that.

I know that if the pattern was similar to someone else where their children was meeting all developmental milestones and then something changed in their environment and 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 Fogran 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 their practice for environmental illness, I'd 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, 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 express how she's feeling and interact on that human level instead of being locked in.

And then what you also mentioned, the other challenges dyslexia, dysgraphia 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 is the foundation and we can modulate the future to do that and 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 do you 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 not have to personally dig in to all of the medical, right? I just tried to do my diligence and tried To all 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 You know, when we bought the other house, we weren't careless.

We had all the inspections, you know. we had, all of 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 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 many noise, There is so fear, So much ego. It's really a strange, strange place. Yeah, but I, my, personality is the one that I just don't, I don' accept that.

And I think that, you know, 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, in any, any way, just I stop and I say, no. Yeah. 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. 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. So why could anyone else do something about? 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 this you live in Texas and your daughter, your family, they're always going to experience this. And I said no.

I mean, full stop, no. You know, God gave me this child for a reason. And it's not my job to sit back and go, oh, that's too hard. Oh, I would rather pick a house based on the countertops. I'm not going to do anything to change. We're going fall right back into the same situation because it is easier for me. Like, absolutely not. So I thought I was going to have to invent something, honestly. I had no idea. But luckily, God kind of led me to the building science, which is really where the power is.

And I encourage everyone to kind understand this, and this is why I started Conscious Healthy Home.

Healing Progress and Ongoing Support 38:00

was to help empower and educate people as I was learning, because originally we were going to try to build a house. Now, again, this was COVID time, so that, you know, it didn't end up working out, but, God's plans are better than ours. And so while we're trying to built a House, I desperately trying learn. I just digging into everything and trying figure out how do I guide this team, how to I build this, team how I would guide the team to make sure that we build healthy home. and I'm trying educate other people kind of just on Instagram, along the way.

And then people started asking me questions, you know, and they started to ask me, very specific questions for their own projects. And I just thought, 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, just on Instagram. I always tell people, too, do your diligence. Don't get your information off of Instagram and Facebook. those are not necessarily vetted sources. And so me saying that and then also giving information on Instagram and not having anything else 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 had had.

So I became a building biology advocate, I studied with the Building Biology Institute. I've became certified passive house builder. Passive house is a Building Methodology that focuses on the building envelope and on ventilation mechanical systems.I became 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 this 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, I try to encourage people to just put their egoes to the side because I think, 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, afraid, angry, litigious. I think we are the only ones that can help people. That's something that I just reject. So with Conscious Healthy Home, my main focus is helping people to build the teams and to create the documents that are sound so that the whole team knows exactly where we're headed when we are building a home for families. And so, that starts from finding the site, finding architects, and finding builders. They also help people work through remediations because even the remediation industry can be very confusing because the mold inspectors are finding mold and they are writing the protocols for the rem mediators and removing the molds, but nobody is asking why the mould 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 symptoms of inflammation. The mold was the symptom of a building defect, you've got air infiltration or exfiltration, or a leak, a compromise in your building envelope, but just removing the mold doesn't stop it from coming back if you don't identify the source. So that's what I have been able to help people as well, just kind of work through those confusing times and make sure that their investments are well-placed and that it's not going to reoccur for them, not gonna happen again, whether that is a new home or remediation.

And then interestingly, I'd have people reach out and they say, well, 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 healthier home. So I created a program, a certification program for that because I looked around and there was nothing. There's green home and 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, outside their scope. They're trying to help, again, it increases their liability whenever they're speaking outside of their scopes. So help them understand what is appropriate or not appropriate to say and when they should be resourced and pointing to other resources for their clients. 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.

Thank you so much for providing that for us. It's been really great, very well received. 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 are all human being and I think we all want the same thing and have to put the egos aside and there protocols that help us get better.

But again, we're all human beings and we are all individuals and someone may be doing a certain protocol but they might need a little twist that's not

Founding 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 breathe clean air and you don't want to 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 wanna thank you so much for sharing your daughter's story. And I'm just gonna come back to the fact, and because this is something too that you may not recall it, but I recall, 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 car, your school, you church, anywhere you are 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 where the mold was. If it's in your HVAC system, you just have to think about the air. It's a closed system. So that means the area that's your home is going through that system where mold and microbial growth is and it getting on you and everything in the house. And so where you have porous items and you people who have compromised systems or maybe they've even been diagnosed with SIRS, then you to be very, very careful because you can't really clean a couch cushion, for example, a headboard that has the tufting and all that kind of stuff.

Anything that's porous. I mean, unfortunately, children's toys, you know, the stuffies and stuff. 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 is impossible. You have to have everything perfect. But I would say you just have think about your toxic, the bucket that your body can hold And if you're in an environment that's constantly bombarding you with toxicity, whether that to 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 is where you start to get the symptoms, the anger, rage, constipation, brain fog, hormonal imbalances, all those things. Waking up in the middle of every night. Every night, yes. 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, there is a multi-step process for cleaning your belongings, as you the ones that you would even want to take with you.

And I know that some people are just like, well, I can't, not have, you know, the things and I understand. I mean, when we moved into the, we ended up living with my parents for a while. We moved in to a rental. When we had no furniture, 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 had mattresses on the floor. So I know it's hard to get rid of your things and I what it means to live without a dining room table.

You have to kind of conduct your own risk analysis based off of the people that are living in the home, what the experience is, and how quickly you expect to see results or want to results. But not cross-contaminating your space is very important. You know, I appreciate sharing that I've experienced the same thing. I mean, 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 That's terrible. 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 is now 11 years old. She's 11. Right. 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 join.

Christina, thank you so much. So much for your time. 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. 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, you know, even if your not a parent, your allowed to struggle with your own personal health too and that's also important. My belief is that, we are all perfectly and wonderfully made.

God chose to give us the building blocks that we have, as individuals. you've got gifts and you 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 seek a little bit better, and every time that you get to an environment that's a bit more 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 heel 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 is doesn't need. Thank you for your time. Again, for all of you, we thank for listening to the Get to The Root podcast. I want to thank our sponsor, Fagran, who 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.

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. Thank you, Dr. K. I appreciate you. Take care. Bye-bye.