Mold, Lyme and Other Hidden Biotoxins Affecting the Brain

Jill Crista, ND

Thank you. Thanks for the invitation. I’m excited to talk about. 

Cheng Ruan, MD

Awesome. So, you know, we live in the toxic world right? There’s a lot of toxins that are around that weren’t here just you know, 100 and 50 years ago. Right? And so those toxins can either come from infections that can come from pollutants and stuff like that. Now. I’m in Houston Texas and in 2017, hurricane Harvey wrecked my life. Um got flooded and had to re mediate and and so this topic of mold is a big issue, not just in Houston, but especially after hurricane Harvey. And we’ve had, you know, four other floods after that as well, not as extensive. And so let’s dive into this concept of should we really be worried about mold and if so, how does that really affect humans?

Jill Crista, ND

Right. Yeah. A lot of people think of mold is just an aesthetic issue like, oh it’s just kind of, it looks gross, it makes the paint look weird. Let’s just paint over it or cock over it in the shower or something like that. But it is so much more than an aesthetic issue, mold can affect your health in almost any system. Almost any symptom so just which that you know, that doesn’t narrow it down very well for people, but it’s important for people understand that if you can see mold, it’s definitely affecting you, but it may be affecting you, even if you can’t see it, it could be trapped behind building material. It’s microscopic and mold makes you sick with the spores, the sport fragments, which is when dead or dried. I don’t like to say dead spores because any whole sport can become live again. So when dried mold gets broken up into little pieces that one spore of mold can make up to 500 fragments. So it can make you sick with spores, sport fragments, chemicals that molds creates when it’s just actively living. We can talk about some of those and then the thing that creates most the symptoms in my patient base is mycotoxins and these are intense, made by the mold to compete out other living things, other microbes. So if it finds that sweet spot of a lot of humidity, um a lot of clutter a lot of the food that it likes. It doesn’t even need to be a flood. It can actually just be high humidity that can grow mold indoors. So it doesn’t matter where you live. That could be, it doesn’t matter if you’re in a dry climate or humid climate or you know, on the coast or near a lake or up in the mountains are indoor environments are all pretty much the same because humans tend to like about the same temperature and about the same humidity. We don’t control our humidity well enough. So we are all potential mold farmers just by the way, we build our homes. Yeah. Yeah. I kind of refer to it as like, it’s like in the navy seal of the microbe world, you know, it can just hunker down and wait out in a very stealth way until all of the growing conditions are perfect for it and it can just go, yeah,

Cheng Ruan, MD

Let’s talk about symptoms. What are these symptoms? People are experiencing 

Jill Crista, ND

the most common symptom is fatigue. That’s the there’s a lot of cases of chronic fatigue syndrome that are tied to mold exposure and that could have been mold exposure from 20 years prior. So the mold can kind of move into your body and you become the multi building. So you could be walking around with that multi building in your body 20 years later, 10 years later, five years later and no one’s connecting it to mold. So fatigue is really, really common and that can be for a competitive athlete. Maybe their vo two max is going down and they don’t understand why. So it can fatigue you at any level that you’re starting from. So if you’re starting from kind of your normal standard American diet, sedentary lifestyle, sitting in front of a desk all day and now, you know, sitting in front of zooms all day that fatigue can start to look like. Fatiguing of the most metabolically active uh tissues in the body which of course is the brain, you know, the brain. Then you’re going to see that then as brain fog, cognition issues, learning difficulties, memory difficulties over long standing time, we can actually go into dementia. And we see that with Dr. Dale Bredesen, his work, he calls it inhalational alzheimer’s because you can actually see those micro toxins affect other brain functions. It can cause brain inflammation through the micro glia. The microbiome. 

We can talk about that and anxiety or anxiousness. that’s probably the most common symptom that I see in all my mold patients is that they have some level of I don’t want to say anxiety because that that conjures up an idea that it’s like oh I don’t have an anxiety disorder, I don’t have panic attacks but this is anxious nous. So an inner sense of something isn’t right, like something’s not, I’m unsettled, I can’t rest, I feel anxious and and that may translate into irritability. That may translate into depression. It just depends on which side of the coin you you go, you know, so anxiousness is quite common um in the in the brain, it can also be headaches. We see a lot of migraine headaches, cluster headaches, vision problems. The guys get hit really hard with mold. This is actually what the military uses. They use a vision test to see if their soldiers have been exposed to biotoxin similar to mold and mycotoxins and Dr. Shoemaker has. I’m not shoemaker trained but he has popularized this test and it’s a very effective test because of how hard the eyes are hit. So you start to like you go get your eyes checked and get glasses in two weeks later. Like I don’t know what that eye doctor was doing. These glasses don’t work and you go back and get them checked and you go back and get them checked and you get them adjusted and get them adjusted. That’s mold if that if you’re in that situation then we can see ear ringing very common. So this is all the head stuff I’m talking about, skin rashes. Um and of course sinusitis. So drippy nose, post nasal drip sinusitis. 

That won’t necessarily happen if you’re only exposed to the mycotoxins. But if you’re exposed to the mold and mold spores then you’ll get more of the sinus symptoms. And people will will describe like sore throat or kind of like congested throats where they feel like the their lymph nodes are kind of swollen all the time. So that’s just to hear we could go all the way down. So there’s gut problems. There’s of course lung problems, breathing issues. Hypersensitive lungs asthma has been connected to mold exposure, specifically the spores and fragments. A lot of guts stuff. We can see cibo dis bio sis, food sensitivities. And then because the mycotoxins are toxins, we’ll see toxin based problems like um chemical sensitivity, sensitivity to fragrances not being able to fill your tank with gas because you get a headache from the fumes. Um Suddenly you find that you’re losing more and more and more foods that are making your gut not feel good or your body not feel good. So as this is like as we’re moving down the chain, you can see that it’s these spores. Its immune problems. Also bladder, that’s one of the most keynote symptoms with mold is irritable bladder. That’s because we get the micro toxins out of our body by peeing them out. We also get a rhythm stool too. So that’s why those two systems are so affected. And then a keynote also on the ski, it’s gonna be itchiness. So if somebody has just kinda I hear all the time, people say I have this one itchy spot, like right here, it might be globally itchy, like meaning all over their body, but commonly when there’s that one single itchy spot, then I know that they have some kind of fungal overgrowth in the body and we go searching them to rule out mold. 

Let me see if I got them all, there’s so many and that’s what makes sense. That’s why it’s getting missed because it’s like it’s kind of like Lyme disease where it’s a great imitator. So um what I did in my practice is I created a questionnaire so that I could determine who these people were. I was starting working with Lyme patients and in some of those line people just weren’t getting better when we would treat treat the infection, you know? Um and I thought what in the world is going on with these guys and in one of those patients they found toxic black mold in his home and that’s when I started doing all the research like, oh I wonder if mold is what’s going on with these other people and these other people and it turned out yes mold exposure. So this questionnaire, if anybody wants, it’s on my website, it makes it so much easier to determine because you get a score. So that because as I just went through all those symptoms, you can see that that didn’t really, that didn’t narrow it down because those are pretty general symptoms that could happen to anybody. So getting an idea of like, ok, lots of people have got problems from other things like, like roundup glyphosate. Um, they have got problems from motility issues and stress and that kind of thing. When is it mold? That’s when we do the clustering of the symptoms. And then see. Yeah.

Cheng Ruan, MD

And what is your website?

Jill Crista, ND

You bet Dr. Yeah. Save you the emails. Right. drcrista.com That’s D R C R I S T A.com If you just do that slash questionnaire, you can get the questionnaire from my book.

Cheng Ruan, MD

Amazing. So I know the people listening to this um, seems like, wow, there’s just a lot of symptoms, you know, that are there. But I promise by the end of this, you’ll know why they’re actually there. It’s actually a lot more simpler than people may think. So we’ll break it down in just a second. But before we we get there, I want to talk about relationships. I’ve seen relationships, husbands, wives, fathers, sons, etcetera, etcetera. Get really destroyed over this sort of an old issue because a lot of people can’t find solutions to it. The doctors aren’t really finding solutions to it. And so it becomes, oh, it’s all in your head sort of thing. And they get prescribed anti depressants, anti psychotics. Now we see that a ton. Let’s let’s let’s talk about how to how to address this in the listeners for a second when you see this, what are some of your best advice for the people going through this Plus their family members and friends?

Jill Crista, ND

Yes, It’s so difficult because not everybody responds to the exposure the same way and that is more the rule than the exception. So we see all the time that the what we call the canary, you know, the one that would react first and you know, would have been the one that killed over in the coal mine when the gasses went high. Those people, we need to honor and listen to them because they’re protecting the rest of us. If they are having the symptoms, we have to see them as the canary in the gift that they are, that those toxins and that mold will eventually affect everybody militaries around the world are using mycotoxins for biowarfare. They wouldn’t do that if it didn’t affect everybody right in medicine. We use mold chemicals for immune suppressing drugs. We use mold chemicals for mold mycotoxins as chemotherapy because they’re so effective at killing certain tissues. So if they didn’t harm everybody, we wouldn’t use them, right If if it was like, oh, it’s only this one. And the common areas are usually like somewhere in the 10 to 25% of the population are going to be the people that are going to react first. And I would say react first because there will be reaction of the other ones. And typically it’s going to be women because the mycotoxins are fat soluble and women just tend to have a higher bar fat percentage. Kids do too. And that’s totally normal. Non judgmental. It’s just fact. And so they’re going to accumulate them more so than somebody who has a lower body fat percentage genetics plays into it. Your previous exposure plays into it. Your diet plays into it. So if you have a kid who’s going to school and is eating junky diet at school and the parents are like taking salads to work well, the kid is going to react first and they may react to something like behavioral issues because like you say, people say, this is all in your head. Well, if it’s certain mycotoxins, they are in your head, they do cross the blood brain barrier. 

And even if they’re not the ones that cross the blood brain barrier, there are some that can cause leaky gut, which causes leaky brain and then those micro toxins can get right in there and then we can soak them into our sinuses are sinuses are an amazing place where things can soak into the brain. So more of the ruling exception that everybody reacts differently. And I commonly will ask start to ask the non symptomatic people about some of the other things that we know those micro toxins. So let’s say we found micro toxins in one of their current building issue. If it was a past exposure and they’re bringing that old building with them, then it won’t correlate. But we do start, we do know certain mycotoxins past certain symptoms. And I will start to ask the other family members are you having this? Go on. So a classic one is the mom is sick. We have a kid with behavioral issues and getting sick all the time or not recovering from colds and then the dad is irritable and says these two are crazy because the rest of the kids are fine and I’m fine. And I say let’s test your testosterone and you know what, it’s low all the time. So a lot of these molds are going to reduce testosterone. So the man doesn’t necessarily feel it as a mold symptom but he’s losing muscle. He’s having sleep issues. He’s having irritability and lack of patients. That’s kind of the classic picture. And so we start to make like make those connections. This mycotoxin is hard on the kidneys and the liver or this mycotoxin is hard on the endocrine system, The hormones, Let’s do some testing in those realms and see if you’re being affected even in a tiny way. And sometimes then just doing lab testing you know because their body might not be reacting but we can still see micro toxins. They’re not reacting yet.

Cheng Ruan, MD

So for those who are being um we’re seeing mycotoxins, M. Y. C. O. Toxins not micro toxins. Really common misconceptions about the spelling but the word mike O. N. Y. C. O. Actually means it’s coming from mold. Um And what Dr. Crista said earlier about chemo therapy immune suppressing drugs. So there’s a drug called Michael. Finally it’s actually from mold toxins but that’s not the only one but the word is my CO. M. Y. C. O. So um you know we we now know you know have an understanding of why some people are affected and why some people aren’t. So let me just tell you what I see. Um And we’ll do a back and forth just little observation. So I look at tons of brainwave data E. G. S. Quantity E. G. S and what not. So one of the things I notice is able to were able to pick up the mold effect on the brain pretty effectively. And um what I noticed is that almost every person who are susceptible to mold rice who has come into contact with mold tend to have hypersonic hypersonic means that the transition between awake two asleep so fast that people don’t even notice. And it’s like oh I’m having some brain fog or maybe just a brain fart right and some attention and add a less since we’re seeing something called high beta spikes which basically means that when they get home school they’re gonna be super giddy and not listening to you. Uh you know similar to sort of A. D. H. D. Type of symptoms and then were able to see huge visual processing delays affecting the visual cortex which is the area of the brain that there’s um delayed reception of light information and color information. And then we’re able to also see preferentially um These the areas that are affected are usually the areas that correlate with like chronic sinus disease chronic sinusitis and and and stuff like that. Right From from a data analyst standpoints we correlated correlated that data with symptoms and there’s a there’s a few things that that pop up. So those people with obstructive sleep apnea and upper airway issues and tend to be affected than those without as well. And so on the brain map the the the mold toxicity looks like acute obstructive sleep apnea.

Jill Crista, ND

Yes that’s what people. Then they go get a sleep study. You know I send them for a sleep study and they say no you don’t have you don’t have obstructive sleep apnea. And I’m like yeah but you have you have you know sleep issues for sure. That’s what I love now or rings and things like that that people can track their sleep and it is amazing how you get someone out of their multi environment and the sleep corrects right away. It’s like the body knows that is the most important thing for it to be doing to drain its brain. You know, we drain our brain while we sleep. So if it’s full of toxins and inflammation, that’s you know, the body says let’s get to the sleep stuff, you know? 

Cheng Ruan, MD

Absolutely. And and on the couple other interviews on the summit, we talk about this process um of lymphatic drainage and detoxification and a lot of people with like narrow palates and upper airway issues and gum disease and stuff like that tend to have literally like impaired draining of toxins from from the brain which we now call Glyn fanatics. The lymphatic system lymphatic system similar to the lymphatic system actually is able to, you know sequester a lot of the toxins coming in. And so what happens we see in people are just continue toxin build up and that’s why it mimics a lot of other disease, disease and disorder, especially in mental health, you know as well. And so one of the things I noticed, I don’t know about you is that a lot of people waking up with the neck pain even before the mold exposure. So there’s there’s issues that were there previously and then they get hit with mold and then all these other issues kind of accentuating.

Jill Crista, ND

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I I say that mold just finds your achilles heel and runs with it. Yeah. And in Children who are raised in moldy environments, they do get that they called the allergic faces, which is you know narrower and more protruding nose. And you know more mouth breathing and they will develop narrower palettes. So part of the treatment is not only addressing colonization the sinuses, but working with a holistic dentist can work to broaden that pallet out so we can get some not only increased airway but also increased lymphatic drainage from the brain.

Cheng Ruan, MD

Right? And then those kids and even adults with like tongue ties as well um have the tongue tethers so much to the bottom of mouth. They can’t really occlude the top palate. So there’s less air coming to the nose unless they’re coming to the nose means there’s less nitric oxide being produced in nitric oxide is a natural detoxer and the mitochondria stimulator. So it helps people regenerate. And this is why um this this simple fact is is one of the main reasons why, you know, I think mold is such a big issue. It’s not really talked about but let’s dive into why is it not talked about. I didn’t learn this in med school residency. Why is this not talked about and why is this something that is kind of pushed aside by a lot of, a lot of doctors and people.

Jill Crista, ND

It’s our system, our system based on randomized controlled clinical trials. So you I just talked about all of these drugs that we use. Mycotoxins for for oncology or cancer fighting for immune suppression. We know they are carcinogenic. We know they’re toxic. We know they’re Terada genic meaning they cause birth defects. There’s a lot we do know about them. And so what that does is it puts it in a class of we can’t purposefully medical ethics wise we can’t purposefully expose people to the toxin to figure out what gets them better because the ultimate solution for any toxic illnesses avoidance. You know just don’t be exposed to it. Well in cases where you have been exposed to it or is especially if your sinuses are colonized you’re continuously being exposed to it right up to your brain, right up writing that olfactory bulb you know and breathing them in. So if you’re already colonized you are being exposed to them. So but we can’t create a craft to study where we purposefully expose people to figure out what gets them better. So there are no that’s what I get a lot of kickback from from doctors. They’re like you know I’m on a mission to expand the definition of mold related illness. If you look on the C. D. C. It’s all spore based stuff allergies. Asthma hypersensitivity pneumonitis sinusitis okay there’s a lot more going on with mold illness and the because medicine isn’t saying mycotoxins are a problem because we don’t have randomized controlled clinical trials. 

Now the industry? The indoor environmental professionals also say, well then that’s not a problem. We don’t need to test for those. So it’s been really fun now to see things like real time lab where they have mycotoxin dust testing. I wrote about that in my book. That is a wonderful forensic test to find out if you have mulled brewing or if it was brewing at one time to the point where they were making micro toxins. You can test this in your environment. We now have the ability to test it in a body as well in different ways. Each test kind of has its strengths and challenges. And so we try to match the test to the patient and what they have going on and what question we’re trying to answer. And now we have ways to test the and the more we can validate that. I’m working with a group to validate my questionnaire and we’re working to try to tie certain symptoms to certain mycotoxins. The more data we get that’s going to be more observational retrospective I think will be better that we’re never ever going to be on the randomized clinical control part because we can’t. That’s medical ethics.  So it’s not taught, 

Cheng Ruan, MD

right? Bureaucracies. 

Jill Crista, ND

Yeah, 

Cheng Ruan, MD

let’s let’s stop here and create some hope. 

Jill Crista, ND

Yes.

Cheng Ruan, MD

Um let’s talk about treatment, prevention and all that stuff like that. Um, what is your approach into treatment and how do you decide who gets what?

Jill Crista, ND

Yeah, that’s a great question because this is individualized medicine, you know, we just talked about everybody reacts to it differently so everyone needs a slightly different treatment. But when I sat down to write my book I was just looking at my total process and realized wow I kind of have a process. You know, I kind of have a way that I do this and the way that I came up with in my mind my visual mind was this is kind of like peeling an orange. You know, you have to do the outer layer completely and then you can pick and choose the sections on the inside. So I have five basic steps. The first one is Avoidance which I just talked about. 2nd is fundamentals, then protect, then repair and that’s protecting repairing from all of the ways that mold can make you sick and then fighting back the fungus. So what happens when you’ve been exposed exposed to a mycotoxin and mold environment is that the immune system starts to reduce to the point where you can’t keep the fungus away? You know, we all have fungus in our sinuses, You have it in yours. I have it in mind, healthy people. Sick people, it isn’t the mere presence of the fungus in the sinuses. It’s that the sick people who’ve been exposed to water damaged, building their fungus is now making mycotoxins so they have mycotoxins in their nasal washings where healthy people do not, people chronic fatigue have mycotoxins in their nasal washings, healthy people do not. So what we need to do is fight back the mold, the good news is avoidance, takes care of 50% of the cases and we see this from occupational studies probably works more if you’re it’s where you work rather than where you live because you’re not sleeping in it because we do so much repair when we sleep. But it’s the happy news. It’s a coin flip, you know that half of the people that get out of that multi environment, their body does all the rest of the rebalancing themselves, half of the people need some treatment. And so Step two is fundamentals is all the stuff you do and I do that. 

We talk about like kind of like in naturopathic medicine, we call it basic treatment guidelines, you know, getting your sleep regulated on a circadian rhythm, getting your diet corrected, finding the diet that’s right for you. The timing of eating, that’s right for you is intermittent fasting, a better meal plan for you moving your body some kind of spiritual or energetic practice, all the things, you know, get some counseling if you have trauma, you gotta work through. So that’s fundamentals and then and water water water water is so important. The kind of water that we drink. I’ve found that things that more structured water helps bump these toxins out a lot more effectively. So the fundamentals, this basic treatment, you know, basic clean living when we do that. Yes, I think I’m not an expert, but I love it. I have a structured water machine for myself and it’s out of all of the things that I’ve ever done other than hyperbaric oxygen therapy. It has created such profound improvement in my energy. And so I experiment on myself 1st and I’m working with, you know, kids with pandas and pans and it is amazing, you know, that helps them detox and sleep better. And all the things that we’re looking for. So structured water is, there’s a great book um by I’m gonna mess up his first name Gerald Pollack. And it is the fourth phase of water. So water can be liquid, it can be frozen, it can be steam. 

And then there’s this fourth fade, which is structured water and what this is is basically if you, it mimics what water does when it bounces down a brook with rocks or comes over a waterfall or crushes over as waves, it organizes, it charges and organizes this water to become what they call an exclusion zone loves itself. It loves to be with itself. So if we give it the opportunity to charge enough and to bring more hydrogen, it’s basically two oxygen’s and three hydrogen instead of H 20. And so we can get an actual, I probably said that wrong because I think there’s another H in there. Um that’s why I said I’m not the expert in this. So I’m just but this water will start to stack on itself and it loves to be with itself. And what that does is it creates this beautiful toxin free hydrogen hydrogen water that doesn’t allow anything but water in there and it helps to hydrate our body in areas that are really difficult to get hydration to micro toxins can get right in through the cell wall. They can get right in through into the mitochondria. And that’s why we use glutathione a lot for treatment because the mitochondria just get completely glutathione deficient. Because that mycotoxin is sitting there When you add structured water, we can get that water into the cell. We can get that water to places where it will be allowing in nutrients but not allowing in toxins or actually in some cases shoving those toxins out of the body. Yeah and those that are expert and structured water are probably listening to me and just cringing like 07, she got so many things wrong. But that’s the idea is it’s the 

Cheng Ruan, MD

end goal. End goal is something that’s pure something that repels a lot of toxins with negative charges, right? It’s physics. It’s actually it’s very it’s relatively easy to understand when you understand that there’s there’s repelling forces and attraction forces attract each other and then the toxins also have a charge especially mole toxins have a huge negative charge on the outside, they’re not able to penetrate that from places.

Jill Crista, ND

So it’s so cool.

Cheng Ruan, MD

I’m also not a structure of water but I’m glad we’re talking about. It’s one of the simpler things to actually do.

Jill Crista, ND

Um totally. Yeah. I mean when people look at the cost of machines to do this I say how many how much money you’re spending on supplements every year. You know that we could you can get rid of a lot of them. But just by getting the water you know I’ve seen the sickest of my mold patients are drinking reverse osmosis water. There’s no life to it. There are no minerals to it and it just dehydrates the body. So I’ve said forever spring water. Spring water. Spring water. It’s harder and harder to find clean spring water anymore. So now using a system that will filter it so we get clean and then structure it which is mimicking a spring.

Cheng Ruan, MD

So cool  with a lot of our systems hijacked and we just want to take it back. You know this is 

Jill Crista, ND

a lot of hijacking 

Cheng Ruan, MD

actually does it for us. It’s great. And so but let’s talk about some other treatment especially focus on inter nasal treatment. I want to kind of get into this my thoughts and as well the word inter nasal for those of you listening basically means treatment of things that you put into your nasal cavities. Um So why don’t you start on that? 

Jill Crista, ND

Yeah. When Dr. Brewers study in 2013 or 14 when they looked at the difference between a sick person and a healthy person when I was just saying we all have fungus in our sinuses. But the sick people they found mycotoxins there and that’s when I just like I have been missing a part of treatment for my multi patients. You know they were getting better but it’s like this you know and frustrating and timely and costly and I’m impatient. So when I read that I thought oh my goodness the sinuses are a complete blockade for these people to be getting better and it made total sense to me it made all kinds of things make sense. Um Why the brain you know because like I was just talking about the olfactory bulb that’s a that’s a brain nerve that reaches through our nose and through our the mucosa. So the lining of our sinuses that reaches down so that we can smell well those bare nerve fibers. Mycotoxins can just blew right up in there. So there’s this is a place where we don’t have a blood brain barrier. And so if you have colonization meaning you’ve become the multi building. So the micro toxins over time turn your happy sinus microbiome into a competitive pathogenic biofilm situation I call it bad guy biofilm. Um When you have that in your sinuses now you are your own micro toxin factory. You’re continuing to send those micro toxins back into your brain. That makes good decision making. Pretty tough. That makes keeping your move balanced, pretty tough. That makes having good sleep pretty tough because because you know we’re supposed to breathe through our nose while we sleep. 

The body says no no no no no wake up wake up, wake up you know don’t don’t sleep your every time you breathe you’re giving me mycotoxins, wake up and so you get a lot of a lot of this you know sleeping above the covers as one of my patients says. So by treating this I’ve done in the fight phase the fifth phases is whole body antifungal to try to get the body’s microbial balance set. Again. I wasn’t using inter nasal tell you read that study and when I added them people got better boom so much faster. It was astounding to see the difference that that makes. So yeah we can use all kinds of different things in the nose for the less nasal e affected patients. Um We might just use probiotics. Maybe all they need is a little boost in their normal microbiome for others that are more sick. We might use pharmaceuticals antifungal in their nose so they do a nose spray or they do a neti pot or these really cool machines that’ll you know push push it out one knows and now the other nostril now. Savage. Yeah. Yeah and then there’s no reason ever. And rhino or rhino clear. I’m I’m forgetting all the names of them but all these different devices that basically atomize stuff up into the nose. We can use ozone, we can use essential oils. We can use honey. Manuka honey is fantastic. And one of the best ones in these times these covid times is pro palace because it has activity against that as well. It’s an anti fungal and anti bacterial and anti viral. So you’re getting all of that colonization taken care of because rarely is it only a fungus problem when we get the nose? Mm.

Cheng Ruan, MD

So earlier you said you do use antifungal but be clear antifungal. Don’t treat the mold issue. It just decreases your overall fungal species so your immune system can can do the rest of the work or and so um let’s let’s talk about at home things that people can kind of do. And one of the things I always talk about is inter nasal treatments. But I regularly recommend like you can put litt So we’ve been working with the mullet population for for a while in the practice. Um So we started working um with an E. N. T. Doctor to actually look at um turbinate hypertrophy. So for those who don’t know like shelving units in our face that filter things out. And every one of these patients has severe turbinate hypertrophy. And a lot of times they’ll need science classes to open some of these areas up and reduce the turbinate size, not by stripping like the mold of the biofilm, but by taking away what’s called the southern coastal layer. So he just has a little more room for the air to go in at night time and find that that that created this massive difference. But while they’re doing that, he’s also telling them to do the nova and and Neti pots beforehand. And afterwards we’re noticing a lot of these people got better much faster. And then when they do some of the inter nasal treatments afterwards, whether it’s for based probiotics and stuff like that, things just got, they get a whole lot better. And so I think this, this idea that our body really requires, um, very patent airway into our sinus cavities and stuff like that is just remarkably important for, for all disease states now. And then we looked at Lyme disease data and we found the exact same thing. And then now if you look at the latest studies done on coronavirus, they’re finding the exact same thing. And so the correlation here is these are all toxin based illnesses that are there. And so the reason why I think a lot of, there’s a lot of symptoms are correlated with it is because it’s just the way that our body sequesters toxins in different ways. Um, but if we’re able to, to have this idea that hey, we’re yes, you can try to get rid of the mold as much as possible. We’re in Houston, it’s almost impossible here. But also halfway to to figure out if your body is able to handle these these toxins. I think that’s where the sweet spot is and and that’s why I don’t want people to like kind of lose hope and stuff like that whenever it comes to to mold issues because there’s there’s the solution. It just takes a lot of work to get there, you know.

Jill Crista, ND

Yeah. And it can be easy, you know what I mean? By using a systematic approach and really targeting the tissues that need it the most like I write about in my mold book, you know, when people say what should I take for this, what should I take with that? I’m like well first we have to understand what’s the most important nutrient for your body and that is oxygen. We can go without food. 30 days water, three days oxygen air, three minutes. What do you think is the most important thing we should be focusing on? So that’s why I focus on this. You know, one of the, one of the key things for shrinking terminates is to expand that pallet, having an expanded palette will reduce terminate size as well. So having the dental sinus, you know, having that address is so important for for wellness, like it creates this massive interference field for for improvement. And I experienced that in practice after reading Dr. Bruce study and then applying that and now that has just gone on and on, you know, just proves itself over and over again all the time.

Cheng Ruan, MD

Right? And what’s the name of your book by the way?

Jill Crista, ND

Break the mold. That’s my mold book. And I have should be out by the time this comes out. My new book called A Light in the Dark for pandas and pans.

Cheng Ruan, MD

I think it’s right behind you 

Jill Crista, ND

accidentally. Oh, how did that get there now?

Cheng Ruan, MD

Yeah, replacement. Yeah. So so so and the last the last thing that we really touched on before we jump off is that um we how does like actual brain injury and concussions kind of factor into this this whole picture because that’s a risk factor itself as well. Right.

Jill Crista, ND

Yeah, I am so glad you talked about that. Yeah. So any kind of Tv. I and it doesn’t even have to be, you got conked out unconscious. This can be small bumps, they call it sub concussive if you have repeated sub concussive hits. So the classic, you know, soccer ball heading um sports, you know, football across that kind of thing. Motor vehicle accidents, slips and falls on the ice. I mean you don’t have to be an athlete to have something like this happen. What that does is that puts the brain into a state of inflammation that gets kind of stuck turned on and that’s that we’re learning now a lot more about the microbe leo, which is the brain’s immune system. Our brain is two thirds immune system. One third thinking parts, that’s wild, isn’t it? It’s like now that tells you what’s the most important thing that our body has decided that protecting our thinking parts is so important that we’re going to dedicate more tissue and cells to that. The problem is when you’ve had a T. V. Eye or something where which which chemicals can cause it, you know, mycotoxins can cause basically looking like you’ve had a concussion. But if it’s a true blunt force trauma happens, those micro Julia can get triggered into the on phase and they’re supposed to, if they’re not in a soup of inflammation, they’re supposed to then when their job is done, trigger off into the off phase and and then die and then let a new non triggered cell come into its place. Well, if you have a soup of mycotoxins or a soup of inflammation because your body is loaded with mycotoxins. 

Once that micro glia guy gets turned on by joking my pandas book, I call them the monkeys of the mind because normally when they’re not triggered there just swinging around the branches of the nerve system in the brain just looking for garbage and eating it up, they do a really good job of keeping our brain clean. But once they get triggered and that trigger could be trauma to the head or chemicals they get turned on and then there’s no not enough anti inflammatory in the brain to turn it off and get it out of the way. And so they just sit there and scream like a monkey stuck in the tree and the other monkeys come over, what are you, what’s going on? And then those monkeys get triggered and stuck in the tree, they lose their appendages, they can’t move around anymore. And so you get these localized areas of inflammation in the brain and I’m sure you’re seeing that on your scans that are really classically associated with where mycotoxins can go in the brain. So if you have a previous concussion, you have previously kind of triggering double micro glia and then you add the mycotoxin and that easily triggers them. Conversely, if you have a lot of micro toxins in your brain because of the exposure you have is one of those that can get through the blood brain barrier. Now you have that soup of inflammation that that blunt force trauma turns on the microglia and they get stuck and they recruit others and that’s how we turn into a pandas and pans.

Cheng Ruan, MD

Right? Right, so for those of you listening to this, so this is supposed to happen or immune system supposed to do that because if it didn’t, we would basically be dead if our immune system didn’t trigger these things to happen. So a lot of times, you know, we’re um I think, I think we feel like we can get through it. I’m gonna power through this. And I challenge everyone not to ignore your symptoms because the later that gets dealt with the worst it becomes as well.

Jill Crista, ND

And then there’s there’s the the endocrine fallout. Um I have a peer reviewed article that I wrote for a publication, it’s on my website, if anyone wants to see that there’s a table in there I created, which is all of the hormones that having a brain injury can affect. Because if a lot of our hormones are controlled from our brain and people don’t think about that. You know, they’re like, oh, it’s an ovary thing or a thyroid thing. Well, those are taking orders from what’s going on upstairs.

Cheng Ruan, MD

Yeah, there’s a recent study looking at this fine oy sinus sinus for those who don’t know, it sits right in front of your pituitary gland. The pituitary gland is the master switch for all hormones in the body, from thyroid to the adrenals, testosterone and progesterone etcetera etcetera. And there’s there’s this correlation that those people with chronic sinusitis basically filling up with gunk, not necessarily mold, but any mucus and gunk tend to have abnormalities within the pituitary that you can actually see on the M. R. I. Whether that could be shrinking, whether that could be at norma’s basic little tumors that’s that’s going on them. And so this is brand new and it’s and it’s um and it’s shocking how coral live it is. But I think it’s not shocking because we understand that this finale sinus is just part of our paranormal sinuses that’s involved in detoxification and organisms sequestering and that why would our hormones wanna be balanced? Right? Our bodies like hey shut down so you don’t die. And that’s why we’re seeing so much like you know hypothyroidism and and a lot of sleep disturbance and stuff like that don’t like don’t die but don’t sleep trying to fight off something, right? And it becomes this sort of downhill spiral that we see a lot of people into you. But but it’s it’s um it’s becoming more and more apparent now over the last couple of years and I’m glad we’re talking about getting out there. You know. 

Jill Crista, ND

Yeah. Yeah. I’m so impressed that the research that’s out there that’s that’s part of what I’m doing now is trying to translate the research into clinical practice and getting you know teaching doctors and that kind of thing because it’s it’s out there. The researchers know it and they keep doing more and more sophisticated research which I haven’t read the study. So I’m really fascinated. Thank you for sharing that. But it makes sense. And this is probably my favorite cranial bone ever. It’s just so beautiful. It’s you know shaped like this butterfly and you know, it’s a beautiful and very complicated bone. Um but yeah, that that’s um it all is playing into it. Like you said the lime and the coronavirus, that’s all our interface with that is our first field is the sinuses are airway. 

Cheng Ruan, MD

Absolutely. Well, last question I’m gonna ask you then we’ll jump off is what do you know, now that you wish you knew at the beginning of your professional training, 

Jill Crista, ND

Wow. One thing I’ve got like 40, Oh, what do I wish? That is a great question. I think I probably breathing. I mean I know I mentioned it to patients a lot and before we had the science science about it, I always felt like I was mentioning stuff just kind of, you know, and it’s really important that you breathe. You know, I didn’t have the confidence to be like, listen, this has to get a Addressed. Um, and now, you know, mindfulness and and some breathing techniques have come up and we have more research and the aura rings and all of those things. I wish I would have had more confidence on pushing for the simple things like we were talking about the 333, you know that it’s like it doesn’t matter what supplement you’re taking if you’re not breathing.

Cheng Ruan, MD

Uh and and the concept of breathing and breath is reverberated throughout this entire summer. It doesn’t matter if it’s a neurologist psychiatrist and what not. Yeah. And and it’s, it’s everyone sort of aha moment. I was like, wow, we didn’t talk about breathing if enough. And every, every brain in the mental health disease state and disorder and mold is no exception and lime is no exception either independence. So thank you for coming around. It’s been an excellent discussion. I want to talk to you for a long time now and um so real quick, how can people find you? So your website is drcrista.com.

Jill Crista, ND

yep. You got it. D R C R I S T A.com. I have a lot of information about mold on their video blogs that I put out nice and short for people with brain. Um so you can learn a lot and you know, and obviously this summit is gonna be incredible for people.

Cheng Ruan, MD

Yeah. And you have a questionnaire on your website too, right? 

Jill Crista, ND

Yes. The question, the mold questionnaire is there, they can get their mold score and it gives them a probability of like, is this tipping toward mold or not? And then you have some idea whether you need to go down that road.

Cheng Ruan, MD

Well, amazing. Thank you for all the resources. Thank you for your expertise and everyone um this is Dr. Jill Crista I appreciate everyone for listening. Thank you.

Jill Crista, ND

Thank you