Foods & Mycotoxin Testing: Cleaning Environment

Matt Hyatt-Pratt, Ph.D.

RealTime Labs.

Eric Gordon, M.D.

At RealTime Labs. I have a block there, God knows where. And, but currently he is the director of research and business development at Mold Pros. And today we’re gonna have a really, really informative time discussing the basics of mold and mold exposure and what to do with mold when you find them in your home. So let me start off with that. Tell me a little bit about, you know, what molds are really probably the most concerning when we find them in the environment.

Matt Hyatt-Pratt, Ph.D.

Yeah, also there’s like 300 different molds out there that are pathogenic to humans. And that’s just like a small subset of like 4,000 different molds they’re out in the environment. But luckily for us, a lot of those fall into like different families, like there’s like 30 different species of aspergillus, 15 to 30 different species of penicillium, several different species of Stachybotrys. So these are some of the, like, those are some of the like species that worry me the most ’cause they seem to pop up the most often and produce toxins that are the most potent against human health.

Eric Gordon, M.D.

Right, so many people focus on the Stachybotrys, but the penicillium family and the aspergillus can also?

Matt Hyatt-Pratt, Ph.D.

Oh, very so much. And in some aspects those actually worrying me more ’cause of the infection slash colonization factor that those have that the Stachybotrys species doesn’t because of the spore size. Stachybotrys doesn’t regularly. In fact, people’s call our intestinal track or respiratory track, but you see it quite often with aspergillus and penicillium species.

Eric Gordon, M.D.

Yes, that is a huge topic that we’ll touch on later, but I think it’s so important, especially ’cause you’re coming from the environmental, from looking at people’s homes and what we– And so often the home is inside of us after you’ve cleaned up the outer home. That’s so, and when you decide to look at a house, what type of inspections you think are most useful?

Matt Hyatt-Pratt, Ph.D.

So Roy, I mean, so, I mean, we do inspections with our company here and the way that we do it is we try to do it from the top of the rafters all the way to the lowest point of the home is that, I mean, either being, if it’s just like a concrete slab, or if it’s a basement, we go as far down. And so you have to like go on the outside first, looking for any water intrusions, then you come inside the home and then look again for humidity moisture, you look for different types of like mold growth. You look for bacterial growth, you look for VOCs. I mean, there’s a lot of different aspects through our, to like a proper inspection.

Eric Gordon, M.D.

Right, is the bacteria versus the mold. I mean, essentially since, you know, Dr. Shoemaker has been writing more and more about the actinomycetes has been a huge issue. What’s your experience with this?

Matt Hyatt-Pratt, Ph.D.

So, I mean, it’s definitely a contributing factor to the broader picture and both of them can be caused by like water damaged buildings, especially the actinomyces which is a like a water loving type of bacteria. We do testing for both mold. And so there’s four different aspects we’re looking at here. We’re looking at mold and then their byproducts, mycotoxins. Then you’re looking at bacteria, which like a subset is actinomyces. And then you’re looking at further byproducts, which is the endotoxin. So we look at all four of those different products.

Eric Gordon, M.D.

Okay, and you have solutions for these?

Matt Hyatt-Pratt, Ph.D.

We do, I mean, there’s, well, first you have to like, see, like there’s three different parts here. You have to like first see what the cause is that water? Like, do you have water intrusions from the roof? Do you have a leaky pipe? Do you have like an HVAC that is like causing humidity issues in the home? So then you have to like, do the remediation. So that’s like, I mean, sometimes you have to pull stuff out. We have like bio botanical products that degrade both mycotoxins, bacteria mold and their toxins. And so, especially the, you don’t find any other like companies that degrade mycotoxins the way that we do. Most of them don’t degrade, most companies ignore them altogether. If you can’t see them and they’re out there. So we do like a enzymatic product that degrades the mycotoxins so that they can, no matter what part of the house they’re in, they get degraded so that they can’t like, cause any like effects to the household after we leave.

Eric Gordon, M.D.

Yeah, that’s a huge problem. ‘Cause many times the water intrusion is taken care of, the area is cleaned up, but the mycotoxins have already spread through the home. And if that’s not addressed, you know, even though you no longer have ongoing mold, you can still have persistent mycotoxins so.

Matt Hyatt-Pratt, Ph.D.

Definitely and the mycotoxins sets are so small. They will cover a majority of the house because they just get picked up by the air flows in the home and get carried around. So that’s the reason why we do, we have a product called Air Guard, that we like aerate throughout the home. And it uses enzymes that we’ve purified from bacteria to degrade the mycotoxins because I mean, bacteria mold are always like in a constant struggle against each other. And that’s the reason why we’ve picked bacteria too. We kill the bacteria, purify the enzymes added to the bacteria. And then the enzymes are the natural combatants that the bacteria use to fight off mold and mycotoxins.

Eric Gordon, M.D.

Yeah, very important. ‘Cause I mean, one of the things that we hate to do is have people have to move completely, you know?

Matt Hyatt-Pratt, Ph.D.

Yeah, that’s definitely not what we want to do. And we have a laundry list of people that come in, have been experiencing sores for six to eight years. We come in, we treat the home and then within like they’re feeling a lot better within a couple of weeks. Now obviously they still have to get the toxins out of their bodies, but not being able to, not be in an environment that’s constantly dumping more toxins into them. That that seems like at least like somewhat have a significant effect on the house of our clients.

Eric Gordon, M.D.

Yes, no, I mean, lowering the load is huge, you know? I think what we find is, you know, and what we hate to see is that so many people, they are colonized and they don’t realize it. And then they wind up having to, they wind up moving from home to home, keep trying to find a safe place when, you know.

Matt Hyatt-Pratt, Ph.D.

Yeah, and that was I part of my earlier research that I did which I published in the Townsend Letter, showing that there are certain like markers that you can find on an organic acids test showing that certain, that’ll will help clue patients and clinicians in, which of these patients are your colonized load. And then, I mean, looking at several thousand mold patients, I figured out about 1/3 of the patients that we were looking at were colonized.

Eric Gordon, M.D.

Yeah, I think that was something that, you know, we all learned from, you know, we, at least we learned before from Dr. Brewer’s work years and years ago when he first, you know, brought that up. Because before that we were often we’re treating people who we had allergy to mold, but we didn’t realize they would at least I didn’t. And we had a long time in treating people who were colonized with candida, you know, okay? Now, but realizing how many other molds could also be colonizing the body and how much toxin could be released with something that took awhile to put together. You know, in retrospect, I wonder why it took so long because we’ve been treating candida since the 70s and we should, it should be obvious. And I think for some people it was, but I have to admit, I don’t think I put it all together that quickly, you know?

Matt Hyatt-Pratt, Ph.D.

Well, there’s a lot of ear, nose and throat doctors that are still like, they’ll treat, they have a patient that has their sinuses infected with like, let’s say aspergillus, and they will treat them with an antibiotic and don’t see any improvement with those patients. And I will see high ochratoxin and aflatoxin in those patients. I’ll see other like markers on the organic acid test. We give them some, we will, let’s say we give them all they’re cleared up within a couple of weeks and where they’ve been like sick for years before that.

Eric Gordon, M.D.

Yes, it is amazing how the right therapy at the right time can make a big difference, you know? The whole concept of colonization, you know, people can argue about, but it’s something we see, you know, and it’s so clear clinically, you know. But I think a big problem has been, is that the allergy world is controlled by the pediatric and internist allergists. And they broke with ENT allergists like 50 years ago. And the ENT allergist realized that molds, you know, like if you skin tests, they don’t show up sometimes for three days, they’re not often IgE related reactions. They’re delayed sensitivity reactions that you can, they take days to show up or you can see with IgE reaction. So anyway, it’s one of the problems of medicine is that we get very sure that we’re right by definition. And we then stop looking at the data.

Matt Hyatt-Pratt, Ph.D.

Yeah, exactly.

Eric Gordon, M.D.

Yeah, very, very hard. But anyway, so when you’re treating the home by so using using the bacterial products, you no longer having to produce things that are gonna out gas and cause more trouble, is that–

Matt Hyatt-Pratt, Ph.D.

Definitely, yes, that’s part of our goals. I mean, we have three different goals here. We want to get rid of the mold, get rid of the mycotoxins, but don’t add any VOCs ’cause obviously we all know that a lot of these mold patients are very like sensitive to all kinds of types of different chemicals. So rarely we don’t add any like type of like surgent chemicals at all though. I mean, nothing that’s gonna out gas.

Eric Gordon, M.D.

Right, yeah, that’s very important because as I tell people, I have rarely found don’t get it. My population’s a little different, but I still think we rarely find people with significant mold toxin sensitivity mycotoxin, issues who don’t have other issues underneath that are causing problems. Because as one of the questions I wanna get to later is about the different, because all of us are exposed to fairly varying amounts of mycotoxins in the environment. I mean, this is, you know, and a lot of people don’t have symptoms or significant symptoms. It really depends on the person. And that same people, the same people who are sensitive to mycotoxins are often very sensitive to many other environmental chemicals.

Matt Hyatt-Pratt, Ph.D.

That’s very true.

Eric Gordon, M.D.

Yeah, so we usually don’t get there from nothing. So, and how do you feel that we can minimize these issues of mold growth and mold exposure?

Matt Hyatt-Pratt, Ph.D.

Oh, the part of it is like, I mean, so it’s very obvious that maintaining a proper amount of moisture in our home. I mean, keeping up with like, making sure that your roof is properly maintained, your windows are properly maintained. The rest of your home is properly maintained either like dishwasher sinks. So you don’t have any like water damage occurring. But it also like maintaining the humidity. 

Mold likes to grow between 70% or 50% and 80% humidity. So if your HVAC isn’t working properly or you live in an area like Florida, Houston, the Pacific Northwest, that generally has a lot of humidity naturally, you all like make sure that you’re environmental systems are working to like pull out and like maintain, you wanna try to instill more, which pulling like 25% and 45% humidity in your home.

Eric Gordon, M.D.

Right, okay, and do you find more problems in some of the newer, tight houses than you do in the older ones? Or does that seem to make a difference?

Matt Hyatt-Pratt, Ph.D.

Oh yeah, I mean, part of the problems with that as VOCs. I mean, with tighter houses, they aren’t able to breathe as much. So you definitely get a concentration effect of things that are off gas, . For mold, I don’t know if you see as much of a problem for that. It really like stems to like the environmental controls of how well the HVAC is maintaining the proper humidity.

Eric Gordon, M.D.

Yeah, the humidity seems to be the key. Yeah, it’s the water damage is– Now the thing that interests me is that though humidity seems to be key, we often find people in some of the drier states with significant problems.

Matt Hyatt-Pratt, Ph.D.

Oh yeah, I mean Arizona is one of the biggest areas that I cover.

Eric Gordon, M.D.

That’s what I thinking.

Matt Hyatt-Pratt, Ph.D.

Yeah, no that’s half and half of people’s AC is always on in Arizona. So if there’s like a vent that isn’t like working properly, you could have condensation building up, which will then can cause water damage. Or you have a lot of times where it does rain there, you have a leaky roof that can cause water damage or pipes or stuff like that. I’d say like probably 80% to 85% of the mold cases I come across in Arizona or from some type of maintenance issue.

Eric Gordon, M.D.

Oh, okay, yeah.

Matt Hyatt-Pratt, Ph.D.

Pools, I’ve seen, like I once was dealing with, I was consulting with a practitioner who had in their practice was patients. And they had a pool that was actually like pushed up against the house. And some of the water was like leaking out of the pool into it was causing rot behind the son’s bedroom wall. So when we tore that out, I mean, there was so much Stachybotrys behind that wall.

Eric Gordon, M.D.

God, okay. The things we do to relax, but actually one that, you going back to destroying mycotoxins what is your, I mean, there’s been, I’ve heard a lot of pros and a lot of cons on the use of ozone. And what is your thinking on this?

Matt Hyatt-Pratt, Ph.D.

I mean, it’s hard argue against something. I have not seen any evidence either way. I mean, it’s hard for, I haven’t seen any like good studies proving that it was on works. I haven’t seen any good studies that prove that doesn’t work. Just as the chemist, however, I would say that probably not going to be very functional or efficacious against mycotoxins cause mycotoxins have, like, they have two different types of rings structures. They have a hexane ring and have a pentane rein. And both of those are extremely stable structures, which are very hard to break even like high temperatures don’t break them. You need some type of enzymatic, either an enzymatic process or a chemical process to break those bonds.

Eric Gordon, M.D.

Right, okay, and just reactive oxygen isn’t gonna be enough to usually make a–

Matt Hyatt-Pratt, Ph.D.

I would think not, but I don’t have it. I don’t have any, I haven’t seen any good settings to indicate yes or no.

Eric Gordon, M.D.

I was just curious, there’s so many different, so many ways out there that have been tried and that is the problem of our profession is that, we are treating things that are not well understood. And therefore our tools are often not as well proven as we like.

Matt Hyatt-Pratt, Ph.D.

Definitely, and that’s part of my, I mean, that’s always part of my job for the last like seven years is to try to not just make tools myself, but also like help practitioners come up with the best protocols to treat their patients and then like, to figure out what these other tools are they efficacious or not like ozone, like diet, like I’ve been before I started working for The Mold Pros, I was helping like, try to like figure out if their enzyme mix was actually efficacious or not. Trying to like, see, did it degrade mycotoxins.

Eric Gordon, M.D.

Ah, and I’m assuming since you’re there that you found out that it worked?

Matt Hyatt-Pratt, Ph.D.

Yeah, no, I mean, that’s the reason why I’m here. I don’t want to work for a place I don’t believe in. And I found that within 24 hours mycotoxins even like large amounts of them as are degraded.

Eric Gordon, M.D.

I mean, that is really interesting, it is. I mean, just a total aside. Are any of these safer for internal use or are they, or in people, or this would be, you know.

Matt Hyatt-Pratt, Ph.D.

So I’m not gonna say, like, I know that there’s a lot of like animal feed companies that utilize a product that’s similar to ours. So like the grade mycotoxins in their feed, we add some like a slight detergents to our product. So I’m not gonna like tell people to like, please buy our Surface Guard and drink it. But yes, I mean, otherwise pharmaceutical companies could possibly like utilize this for like maybe something like some type of like, binding.

Like adding it to like a binding product in the gut.

Eric Gordon, M.D.

Yeah, might be very interesting. ‘Cause I mean, you know, years ago, before RealTime and Great Plains was really going, we were looking into, you know, the only place we could find mycotoxin testing was from the veterinarian, from the agricultural world. ‘Cause, they’ve been looking at this for a long time, and I always tell people, you know, a cow or a pig is worth a lot more to the farmer than most of us are worth to the system. There’s a direct cost you know. You lose your cow, it’s $10,000. So you wanna be really careful. Unfortunately, people that we think we’re valued, it doesn’t look like it.

Matt Hyatt-Pratt, Ph.D.

Oh, there’s nobody looking out for us. We have to look out for ourselves unfortunately. So finding the proper tools to do that with it’s kind of my, I mean, one of my passions.

Eric Gordon, M.D.

Oh, that is good to hear. I mean, it excites me because we need, I mean, it’s really hard to find scientists who are willing to work in these fields where, you know, you are out, you know, in new territory, so to speak. And at places where, you know, where many people will, you know, I said, especially in the toxicology world, you know? If it doesn’t kill you, it’s probably not a toxin is the way so many toxicology is generally approached. And what you’re dealing with is things that just make people ill and only make some people ill, which is a very difficult thing to prove. You know, it’s very hard. The issue is, one of the things that’s gone on for a long time is the issue of food and mold, the mycotoxins and coffee and various stored foods.

Matt Hyatt-Pratt, Ph.D.

Coffee, corn, wheat.

Eric Gordon, M.D.

Yeah, so how significant is this for our diet?

Matt Hyatt-Pratt, Ph.D.

Well, I mean, I think that there’s definitely like a background level. I mean, having like measure mycotoxins with Great Plains And in real time, I will say that there is a definitely a significant background amount in humans. Neil, Nathan, and I did like a small pilot study where we had about a dozen different clients, abstain from mold containing foods, like coffee, wheat, sugars. I mean, things that we thought like fruit, fruits frequently has amounts of mycotoxins in it. And really we did, so they would offer a period of time. I haven’t, I don’t have the data in front of me right now. So I can’t say how long it was. Then we had them for like about a month, eat those foods, like ex I mean, like probably twice as much as they normally did before. And we didn’t see any like romaine changes from their baseline. So mycotoxins unfortunately for us like to stay on the body because they associate with the bile acids. And so the bile acids in the gut get absorbed 95% of the time. Mycotoxins pretty much are the same way where they will get into the gut. And then about 95% of them get reabsorbed back into the bloodstream.

Eric Gordon, M.D.

Right, and as long as they’re bound, you’re not gonna see them in the, oh, that’s a good kind of goes into the question of one of the testing. I mean, if you don’t mind, well, this is an area that I’ve really always been intrigued with. I have different stories in my own head to explain why I prefer one, you know, looking at mass spec data, which gives us definitive mycotoxin data. And you can correct me if I’m wrong, this is my story. And where, if you’re using a Eliza test, you might get both bounded and unbound mycotoxin or.

Matt Hyatt-Pratt, Ph.D.

Well, there’s three different categories that you’re looking at here. You got unbound, unmodified mycotoxins. You have bound mycotoxins then you have modified mycotoxins, which are like, mostly when you’re talking about modified, you’re talking about the cytochrome P450s.

Eric Gordon, M.D.

Right, they partially metabolize, yes.

Matt Hyatt-Pratt, Ph.D.

Yeah, partially metabolized. So mass spec can only look at things that how you like teach it to look at. So in most of the time you only can teach it things so you can get your hands on. And most times you only can get your hands on unmodified, unbound mycotoxins. So you’re looking at like, ochratoxin A, you’re looking at your aflatoxin M1, I mean, you’re looking at like things that you can get from like a, kinda like a chemical company that is the standards. Then some mycotoxins when they’re passing through the body, when they leave, the percentage of them are like bound to unbound is probably, maybe about either like, even are maybe like slightly, like more on the unbound, like ochratoxin and gliotoxin. But then like your tricos and your aflatoxin, like tacos is in the paper. And the literature indicates that about like 85 to 90% of tricos are bound or modified before they leave the bodies. So that could, like, it could definitely like have like a, will skew your numbers. And when you’re looking at like micro are, when you’re looking at like mass spec data, so and then like for person to person, their percentage is of bound versus unbound could be different as well.

Eric Gordon, M.D.

Depending on their metabolism, yeah. I mean, I guess one of the, you know, again, operating with stories is unfortunately where I think most of us are in this field still. ‘Cause we just don’t have enough data.

Matt Hyatt-Pratt, Ph.D.

Yeah, no, definitely. That’s a major issue on my part too.

Eric Gordon, M.D.

Yeah and when I, in the story that I worked with in my head is that when that, if you you’ll have less, you may have less trouble if you can bind at least immunologically, I mean that way. And I wonder if this is true, this was Dr. Shoemaker’s when he first, I mean, when we first started talking about, you know, mold a lot, like in the early 2000s, there okay. He was using, we were thinking in terms of, immune binding of an antibody binding to some of these mycotoxins is way they were neutralized.

Matt Hyatt-Pratt, Ph.D.

But mycotoxins are neutralized through a couple different processes. You got glutathione is the number one by far process. Sulfation is number two. Glucuronidation is number three antibodies really don’t play as they there’s two areas, antibodies don’t really, there’s not really a motif for mycotoxins to like, cause an immunological response. So it’s hard for the immune system to recognize them and to form an antibody against them. And secondly, the mycotoxins obliterate the immune system anyways. They knock out multiple, they knockout T-cells they knock out innate immune response. I mean, you could just say, I mean, there’s like several different drugs that are made by the traditional medicine companies that their main job is to pretty much wipe out the immune system for people that either have lupus or have like some type of like organ transplant. So, I mean the immune system played a very small role in the removal of mycotoxins.

Eric Gordon, M.D.

Right, I think we had that story early on because it seemed that people developed more sensitivity to after they had Lyme. And it seemed to be like they had a high level of, you know we could also see elevated , which is a little immune suppressive cytokine. And so that’s what, but obviously it’s probably happy at another level. There’s other things that the immune, that the change in the immune system after Lyme that produces a change in our biochemistry that now we’re more sensitive for some reason to the mycotoxins. because.

Matt Hyatt-Pratt, Ph.D.

No, I definitely think that’s true. And I think there’s definitely some like interplay between mycotoxins, mold and Lyme. I’ve come across a lot of patients doing the antibody test for Lyme, they come up positive, but don’t have any symptoms. But the ones that I see, they have symptoms generally have the combination of mold and mycotoxins and Lyme together. So I think it’s still like weakening of the immune system by the mycotoxins allowing the like Bartonella, and other bacteria is still like propagate to like elicit some type of Bart or illicit immune response.

Eric Gordon, M.D.

Yeah, you know, it’s yeah, okay. I think it was just over time because we really saw the line as being old, but that’s the pro is that yeah. The line was there not because you know, your body, again, many of these bugs we live with these are not like, you know, like Neisseria meningitis there’s things that you know, you get the bug, you get really sick. Lyme, Bartonella and herpes viruses. You know, these are things that we can live with and often do until something else happens to the system until the immune system is derailed a bit. And I guess, yeah, the mycotoxin could be a very, very makes sense. This is our experience yet when people start. But I was seeing the pathway the other way that usually people are exposed to mycotoxins throughout their life and then something happens and then they’re unable to tolerate it.

Matt Hyatt-Pratt, Ph.D.

I mean, I think that, I see, I see that a lot too. And it’s kind of like, I’ve seen a lot of patients where I consider them though, like editors of a cliff, and then they hit something either like a life event or they get sick. And then I just like drop off the cliff right away. It really depends on like how much glutathione your body has at any one time. And if you hit something that causes your body to need a glutathione or other detox properties for something else, or it doesn’t make it as much, then the patients can get sick awfully fast.

Eric Gordon, M.D.

Yes, that seems to be the experience. So this is, you know, and so the bow is, so basically it really doesn’t matter which test which form of test we’re using too much. I mean, you’ve looked at enough of these tests to say that generally when there is low levels of mycotoxins, it’s probably not a problem. And when there are high levels, it’s very highly likely that the person is gonna to be symptomatic.

Matt Hyatt-Pratt, Ph.D.

Yeah, I mean, it’s very true. I mean, you don’t, you generally, it just depends like what’s which tests you’re looking at and how they like set their like reference ranges. I mean, the reference ranges could be different from either test as long as they like are consistent. And you look at a lot of different patients. You should be able to like, distinguish your sick patients from your like well patients using those reference ranges. I mean, every once in a while, you come across one of these patients that we just talked about that is like on the precipice of like, they have a lot of mold and mycotoxins, but they’re not exhibiting symptoms yet. Sometimes it’s a spouse, somebody that I’m like dealing with that had got like some type of major chronic illness and the spouse has lots of mycotoxins, but dealing with it. And there’s a genetic aspect to this.

Eric Gordon, M.D.

Oh, yes, yeah. ‘Cause I mean, it has to be because I mean, this so much of this is his background, but I guess in the past, until we started closing our houses in, it would be less of an issue. But I mean, I still wonder about the world. I mean have you thought much about, you know, more primitive living conditions where there’s obviously, not a lot of airflow in some structures and a lot of mold and yet, do you think there was a lot of mycotoxin issues or do you think it has more to do with how we’ve sterilized the environment?

Matt Hyatt-Pratt, Ph.D.

Well, yeah, here’s obviously, so there’s two there’s, that’s a very good question. And there’s multiple different prongs to it. A we’re introducing a lot more chemicals to our environment that we ever had. Those all are taking up. I mean glutathione that we produce is a finite amount, these VOCs are sucking up that finite amount. So our ability, our load gets slower. Part B, is that the way that we’re building our houses are dramatically different than the last 50 years. We went from, like, I own a house that was built in 1920s. It’s almost all concrete and plaster. Now we’re doing a lot of like sheet rock or using drywall. We’re using a lot of like, Gypson. We’re using a lot of materials that mold loves to grow off of. And so that’s one of the other reasons why I think that we’re seeing a lot more whole people being affected by mold in their homes.

Eric Gordon, M.D.

Ah, okay. Yeah, that change is big. Yeah, sheet rock is like lunch, I guess. Well, the thing I was thinking it was is also there’s now that the houses are tighter, there might be less variations, so there’s less natural selection. I need to get one mold, it can really grow.

Matt Hyatt-Pratt, Ph.D.

It’s possible.

Eric Gordon, M.D.

You know ’cause I just think like outside it’s harder to get, you know, a pure mode, you get, there’s so much competition amongst different molds for the resources yeah. But so this is, I think the really exciting things that I’m hearing from you are one, we have ways of cleaning up mycotoxins without having to burn your house down.

Matt Hyatt-Pratt, Ph.D.

Yeah.

Eric Gordon, M.D.

Okay, now, and this also means that you can preserve your furniture and clothing, ’cause that’s the big issue what to do. So you could use these enzymatic products on furniture and clothing.

Matt Hyatt-Pratt, Ph.D.

Yes, we do, all the time.

Eric Gordon, M.D.

What about on paper? You know, like books and things of that sort of, have you had as much success with that or is that?.

Matt Hyatt-Pratt, Ph.D.

We have done, we have used a lot, I mean, we fog it into the paper where, so it’s not like getting the paper wet. So we have had experienced you using our fogging and stuff. I mean, our devices are people that have like Tupperware bins and other like boxes full of documents they’ve been saving for decades. As long as they’re like mold isn’t directly growing on it, then we can like save it. Sometimes these things get damaged in floods and stuff, and they have like actively growing the aspergillus and Stachybotrys and penicillium growing on it. That’s a little bit more, it’s pretty much unavoidable we have to like get rid of those, but we try to save as many household items as we can. We have a good track record on that.

Eric Gordon, M.D.

But that’s really exciting because just to have that option, I think that’s really good for people to realize. And secondly, that we don’t have to be as worried about our food and that’s something that I mean get, you got a problem with food for lots of reasons, but don’t worry about the mycotoxins if, you know, I mean, if it’s relatively fresh. I guess if it’s been sitting for a week, you might have some old issues. Yeah, okay, that’s really good. And also just emphasizing how important glutathione and the sulfation pathways are in you know. Because we are expected to live with mycotoxins at reasonable levels, you know. When you see, I just says, let me just want to, one other question about exposure, you know, usually there’ll be one person in the home that’s really symptomatic and other people will have less symptoms. Some of them, none. Do you find the same level of mycotoxins in the urine, in the whole family or is it really seemed to be higher in the person with the symptoms.

Matt Hyatt-Pratt, Ph.D.

It’s all over the place. ‘Cause like you got to understand that like, when you’re like measuring mycotoxins in urine, you’re measuring excretion levels. So you would almost have to like take like three different samples over like maybe like I get every, I got one sample, a month and then maybe you’ll get like more of like a baseline, because especially in the person that’s sickest, their microtoxin excretion could be going like up and down from day to day, fairly like wildly. Or it could be just like hardly any at all, because they’re not producing any glutathione or sulfation pathway might be all gunked up. So it’s kind of hard to like tell. I’ve seen it all over the place and these type of families.

Eric Gordon, M.D.

Okay, yeah, ’cause I mean, one of the things I’ve thought about is that, when you’re looking at mass spec, you’re really, if it’s been so faded, then it’s not gonna show up, right? Yeah, so we’re still looking at it. So basically all you’re seeing with the mass specs is the unbound mycotoxin. That’s the only thing that you can see.Right, so when we see, you know, occasionally, I mean, more than occasionally frequently, in people who are significantly symptomatic, we’ll see like 10 times the upper limit of normal of those. And I mean, in fact, when I only see, I mean, just from your clinical experience, you have, you, you got to look at more of these tests than anybody that I know of. ‘Cause I often will not kind of think ads probably, if clinically I’m not super concerned if I see like a low, if the upper limit of normal is like 7.6. And I just see that, I don’t think it’s a big deal. Only start really worrying when I see multiples of upper limit of normal, you know? Yeah, okay, ’cause then there’s just so much variability. If people were only built like a little more standard, they’ll be a lot–

Matt Hyatt-Pratt, Ph.D.

I know what’s wrong with us? When I’m doing a consult with a patient and a practitioner I’ll generally like to do what I call the multiplication effect where I will multiply the results versus their symptoms. So there’s been some patients in the past where they have like all the like household symptoms of mold and microtoxin exposure, like brain fog, like maybe like, I kinda like Parkinson’s like symptoms, fatigue, but they’re like, mycotoxins are really low. Well, I put them on like some like NAC glutathione for like a month or two retest. And some of those patients we see like really high values later. So you can’t always like take the results. I mean, higher results are always higher results. You can’t like ignore those, but lower results. Sometimes you have to like pay attention to the patient as well.

Eric Gordon, M.D.

Right, and I’m so glad to hear you say that because you know, and I’m so glad that Neil did that ’cause you know, Neil works with us back in, I dunno in 2009 til 16 or so. And, we used to, I mean, that was one of our big, big discussions is food going to effect this, you know, these levels? And I had the same questions with Marc Faletti, you know I mean we’ve gone over and over this, you know? And did you guys get to publish what you did this or it wasn’t or, you know?

Matt Hyatt-Pratt, Ph.D.

No, he didn’t unfortunately. I don’t have access to the data any longer.

Eric Gordon, M.D.

Okay, ’cause this is like one of those, that was a great question. I mean you just helped a whole lot. ‘Cause we think about this every day, you know, I mean like is food going to change the results? And it’s nice to say basically not significant.

Matt Hyatt-Pratt, Ph.D.

No, not significantly. Maybe like maybe like 20 to 30% at most.

Eric Gordon, M.D.

Yeah and like, right.

Matt Hyatt-Pratt, Ph.D.

Yeah.

Eric Gordon, M.D.

And that’s really important. And also, you know, ’cause like I think one of the thing that makes this difficult is people often confuse or mix together mycotoxin effects from mold allergy effects. And they don’t realize that if they have allergic responses to mold, then the mycotoxins or the molds that are, mold and mycotoxins on the food may make a difference, may make a significant difference, you know. But when we’re talking, but with the real, you know, straightforward mycotoxins we can at least eat more comfortably now, which is nuts.

Matt Hyatt-Pratt, Ph.D.

Yeah, I mean, luckily the USDA spends billions of dollars a year measuring mycotoxins in our foods. So that’s one good thing about the government is, they are measuring mycotoxins.

Eric Gordon, M.D.

Make sure the levels don’t go to the point where it will hurt most people. Yeah, which, which is great. So yeah, I’m just really excited. I said, I should’ve called you years ago. You would’ve answered a few questions for me.

Matt Hyatt-Pratt, Ph.D.

Oh, I’m happy that I could answer them today.

Eric Gordon, M.D.

Really, thank you and best of luck. And I’m also excited that you know, that there’s processes out there that I wasn’t aware of that can allow people to have a problem with a mold in their homes and be able to move back in safely.

Matt Hyatt-Pratt, Ph.D.

Yeah, I mean, that’s what I, I’m just trying to like help people and doing whatever I can.

Eric Gordon, M.D.

Yeah, that is great. Really a pleasure to talk to you. And so the name of the company you’re working with now is called Mold Pros?

Matt Hyatt-Pratt, Ph.D.

The Mold Pros and we actually have, The Mold Pros and we have a website which has a blog on it. We have a doctor’s finder on it. So if you’re like suffering from mold and don’t have doc. Don’t know who need a do– If you have like a regular traditional doctor, and you need like a mold specialist? We have a finder on our website. Either that can be like, you can search by zip code or you can search by for telemedicine as well. So we have like a lot of like telemedicine doctors that are on our list as well.

Eric Gordon, M.D.

Wonderful, that is just so helpful for people who are– ‘Cause finding doctors who have an understanding or respect for these kinds of issues is not easy because you know, the insurance companies have worked very, very hard to destroy the credibility or the issue that airborne or house, that airborne molds is a significant health issue or mycotoxins are significant health issue. It is very difficult. And I’ve read papers by some really good docs who just do their best to disparage this and they don’t look at the patients. That’s not okay. Is that once you meet the patient and you get them out of the environment and you change it and you see the person well, you can’t be denying that mycotoxins and molds are a significant health issue for many people. But until we change, until we had to get to medicine, that’s based on believing the patient rather than just believing the test, we’re in trouble.

Matt Hyatt-Pratt, Ph.D.

Yeah.

Eric Gordon, M.D.

Yeah. Anyway, thank you again, it’s been a pleasure to chat with you and I’m sure we’ll talk more.

Matt Hyatt-Pratt, Ph.D.

Yeah, no, definitely. Thank you very much for having me on.