Mold Toxicity 101: Symptoms, Testing & Real Solutions

Introduction to Mold and Environmental Toxins 0:00

You know, I think if people were educated properly about their bodies and about how to heal themselves, because really, Dr. Moore and I, we kind of move roadblocks out of the way so the body heals itself. We don't really heal you. Your body heals you. We just remove roadblocks. So you guys can learn and educate yourselves to do this at home, right? It's really helpful to learn how to sweat. People tell me they glisten. They don't sweat. That's not normal. This is Doctor Talks. Real talk from real doctors on the issues that matter to you most.

Dr. Jess, thank you for joining us on the podcast today. I mean, this is going to be a phenomenal topic. Mold toxicity, environmental toxins, and the way that those can affect your hormones, your resilience. So just like your brain fog, fatigue. There are so many people, millions upon millions of people dealing with this. And I know you're an expert, so I'm really excited for this conversation. Yeah, I'm happy to be here. Thanks for having me. So my first question is this, for the common mold person that probably has no idea it's mold, what are some common symptoms?

There's a lot and different people can present in different ways, but what you'll see for the most part are people who classically can't hold their urine at night, it inhibits antidiuretic hormones, so they'll have to get up and urinate multiple times at night. Some of them will present with respiratory symptoms, things like maybe a new onset asthma or shortness of breath, breathlessness, all that kind of stuff. You'll see other people who have like almost like pins and needles, static shocks on the skin.

They often come down with things like brain fog, fatigue, especially if they're genetically sensitive. We see a lot of autoimmunity. Sarcoidosis is linked to mold, thyroid conditions. I've seen a positive ANA for mold. So we see a lot of different correlations when people have been in long-term water damage exposure. Wow.

Common Mold Symptoms and Misdiagnosis 1:58

So you're saying that mold is not just an upper respiratory thing. It's not just a little bit of a wheezing or an asthma. It can be related to autoimmune conditions. It can be related to burning brain and so much more. And I love that you're talking about this, especially as a medical doctor, right? Because what are you trained in med school? Not much. We were taught about things like an aspergillus or a mucormycosis infection, but we were told usually that would be like a cranial infection where it moved from the sinus cavities into the cranium and invaded the blood-brain barrier and was life-threatening.

We weren't told about the gray areas where people maybe could have different symptoms that weren't accounted for that maybe could be due to mold. It was either like allergies or full-on systemic life-threatening infection. with nothing in between and just from your experience being a clinical provider for how many years now? Oh gosh, let's see. I guess I was done with residency, with internal medicine residency in 2009. So I worked as a hospitalist for almost seven years after that. So, you know, I feel like that was the best experience, honestly, when I was a hospitalist.

You see everything and you, I learned even more, I think, in that realm that I did in residency and medical school. Wow. So 2009, we don't have to do the math, but you've been doing this for a couple of years, lots of experience. What would you say, how many people do you think are dealing with some sort of endotoxin mold, environmental toxin issue? It's more than we anticipate for sure. You know, we know that a large proportion of the homes today have had previous water damage up to 80, 85 percent.

And, you know, current homes, we think, especially depending on where you live, I'm in Florida. That's probably worse. The current foams have 40 to 45% of current water damage. So that's a large proportion of people who could potentially be affected. We also know that people are genetically sensitive. We think a quarter of the population or so has a genetic haplotype where their body doesn't recognize pathogen proteins very well, including mycotoxins or mold spores. And so if you kind of add those numbers up, we're missing a big proportion of the people that might have things like chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia and things that we've rule out by diagnosis of exclusion and don't know how to treat them could be something environmental like this.

And then you said genetic haplotype, 25% of the population. And then you said they don't recognize mold. So kind of to break that down a little bit more for us, these are people that have genetic predisposition. So it's a hard genetic in their body. And they basically just are more sensitive to toxins. Is that an easy way to say it? Yeah, you know, these people, unfortunately, you know, Nellis in your body can overcome anything given the right tools, but these people are more the canary in the coal mine.

They are more sensitive to breast implant illness if they get breast implants. They are the same haplotype that gets Graves' disease or hyperthyroidism. And then they seem to have a problem with Lyme disease and mold toxicity under the umbrella term of biotoxin illness. So we'll probably learn more as time goes on about these different haplotypes and what they're predisposed to. And I mean, that's 25% of the population. Are there other, say, epigenetic types that can make you more predisposed to?

for sure. A famous one that people have probably heard of is HLA-DQ, and those people get celiac disease more likely than other people.

Genetic Susceptibility and HLA Markers 5:36

There's some other genetic haplotypes, too, that often get things like different autoimmune conditions, in general, strogan's and all kinds of autoimmunity based on different haplotypes. The one I'm thinking of right now is escaping me. If I get to it, I'll bring it back up and tell you. But right now, I'm escaping the one autoimmune condition that actually has a haplotype that I can tell you about right now. I run into people all the time, they're asking me to run epigenetic testing. So they hear from a podcast, they hear from their social media choice that you know, MTHFR, COMT, all these other epigenetic markers is something they should be looking into.

Is that valuable when it comes to mold? You know, it is valuable. A haplotype is more a hardwired, you know, this actual tagging on your immune cells that you're born with. So that's more of a hardwired genetic code. But the epigenetic changes are different. I like to describe those as like a piano and there's certain keys that are pressed or turned on within that piano or genes. So just because you have a certain gene, let's say you have a faster or slow COMPT gene, that doesn't necessarily mean it's turned on.

And so just because you get, you know, 23andMe or whatever genetic testing you're getting done here doesn't necessarily mean those genes are actually activated or turned off or on depending on what they are. So we really have to go with symptomatology. It is helpful to see, especially if people match up with some of the epigenetic markers you may be seeing on their tests. And it is helpful for me. to kind of steer supplementation or maybe the lifestyle changes or diet even that I'm suggesting for them.

Okay. Yeah. And when it comes to mold, I mean, it sounds like with this genetic typing, just HLA-DR by itself, can this explain why sometimes people get that gaslighting situation that happens where they're like, My husband feels just fine, but I don't, I feel bad. Does that explain some of that? For sure, you know, I see this every day. I'm sure you do too. And that, you know, people will come to me and they'll be like, I know there's something going on in my home. I could smell it. I literally start feeling bad the minute I walk into my home, but everyone else is okay.

My two kids, my husband, they don't feel anything. And so they start to almost feel like they're crazy a little bit because we haven't been taught this in school. I wasn't taught this in school. that people have different predispositions and people react differently. We were just told that about certain medications. Hold on a minute. Sorry to cut you off. Yes. You're an MD trained in internal medicine and you're stating that you've never been taught that different people have different genetics that would allow them to have a different response and to an environment of toxin or infection.

Correct. Now, I will say we were taught that about pharmaceuticals, that people have different reactions to pharmaceuticals based on their genetics. And some of those genetics can affect predispositions to autoimmunity, but we were not. taught that certain genetic predispositions could possibly not tolerate certain toxin loads or vaccine loads or pathogen loads? No way. No way would we Uber ever taught that. That's incredible just to think about because if you're going to react to a chemical, which is called a pharmaceutical, why couldn't you react to a biochemical produced by mold or anything else, especially when many medications are specifically formulated, designed based off of the chemical structures of things that are in this world?

Right. I mean, it's so logical now when I hear it that it sounds silly that I have to say, you know, we weren't really taught that. That was not stressed in school. And if it was, it was one or two sentences that was breezed over. I mean, you have to think, we were given, you know, like four to six hours of nutrition in school. So why would we be taught genetic predispositions to anything other than pharmaceuticals? And one of my goals with this podcast is to help redefine medicine and people to understand so much more about their options,

Where Mold Hides in Homes and Daily Life 10:10

right? Like medical doctors right now hold most of the power within medicine. And then we get a few people that have come to my clinic that are just really frustrated because they haven't gotten answers. And I'm like, hey, look, your medical doctor was trained in this. They save lives really, really well. If you have a broken arm, don't come to me. Go to them, go to the ER. But it's interesting because I mean, I wasn't even completely aware of that fact. And I talk to docs all the time of just some of the limited pieces of education and schooling.

I mean, I went through chiropractic school. I've gotten master's work in biomechanics, kinesiology, and it's just there's so much information out there that we all need to learn to be able to push that next person across the finish line of feeling well. So You know, I wanted to really dive into that question because it's something I hear so often that whether it's a doctor, a husband, a grandma, a grandpa, that just doesn't understand why you're sick in a house, whoever you are that's listening, and someone else isn't, and you gaslight yourself because you're like, they're okay.

So if you're listening right now, Every person has a very unique makeup, a makeup of stresses that have happened to them, traumas they've been through, genetics, both hard and epigenetic. They also have a unique response to food and who's in their lives, whether that's the dog they love, their best friend, their husband, their wife, or some sort of human parasite that we run into that's sucking the life out of us. Well, if you're listening, just think. If you have symptoms, they're real. Let's get to the bottom of those things.

Find somebody who's gonna be the detective, like Dr. Jess here, because she's a detective. I've known her for a little while. And if she can't find the answer, she puts on that Sherlock Holmes persona and gets going on it. So, all right, we've talked about symptoms of mold. We've talked about genetics, a little associated with mold. But when it comes to mold, you said, you know, a lot of buildings have it. Where else can mold come from? For sure, it can come from certain food. We see it come from food.

It can come from what water you're drinking to. Reverse osmosis machines are really notorious for growing mold if you don't clean them out well. So food and drink, it can come from any sort of place that you're in, not just like your home, like schools. work, all that kind of stuff too. And they can be absorbed through the skin, breathe in through the nasal passages. There's a lot of different entry ways for mold to enter the body as well. So, and by the way, the haplotype I was thinking about before was HLA-B27 for ankylosing spondylitis.

Yeah, so as you can see. There it is. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I've seen some people come in that were diagnosed with ankylosing spondylitis, and then as they remove themselves from toxic environments, the inflammation comes down and symptoms regress. I personally know someone who reversed it. So I know it can be done. If one person can do it, it can be done. Now, that's the key here. It's like, let's give people informed consent to make their own medical decisions and take their own Life's back. There's so many people out there.

They're just, I mean, relegated to, hey, this is how it is. This is how I live. This is what's going on. I'm like, stop, no. You can, because I had Lyme Z, that was pretty sick. You can overcome it. And not only can you overcome it, you can thrive. In my mid thirties, I was doing CrossFit. I was at a gym with a bunch of really good guys. And I was keeping up with the guys that were in the top 1% after having Lyme disease and tearing muscles and being fatigued and having hormone crashes. So like it can be done.

I just, I want to push that out there for everybody that listens, like keep the fight up. Now, all right, so it can be in food, water. I know I've done some Instagram reels where I post like the picture of somebody pulling the plug out of their huts, their Stanley, whatever brand it is. I don't even know. And that plug has mold on it. I'm like, you've been drinking mold for how long? Of course it's going to make you sick. I've had clients that came into me. They're like, no, I'm good. My house is clean.

This is clean. We've tested everything. I'm telling you, we tested everything. One day I was just going through my brain, racking my brain. I'm just asking a hundred questions. I look client, um, work with me here. I'm going to ask you a million questions. Give me yes or no. And we're going to run through them all. If I figure out where the mall it's coming from. And I finally got to, do you drink out of the same thing a lot? And they're like, yeah, I got this water bottle. I'm like, do you wash it regularly?

I'm like, no, no. Does it sit out in your hot car? Oh my gosh. They went and looked at it and they basically, what do we do? I mean, we had it tested. I can't remember the process we went through. I think it was like a Petri dish kind of thing. And he tested it and just mold everywhere. And they're like, really? That? Uh-huh, yeah. It's crazy, you know, people don't think, and there's certain tasks we recommend if you think it's in your home, but there's places it hides that people would never think.

I mean, under walls and under floors and above ceilings and behind washing machines and dishwashers and fridges and it just can be in all the weird places. You see bubbling in your wood and cracks. That's usually water damage. So there can be hidden clues or hints here and there in a house, right? If someone that's very sensitive in your life smells it or claims that they feel bad there, you should really listen because usually those bodies are never wrong. They're more accurate than are testing.

And if you need to get testing, who do you recommend or what do you recommend for an expert, like a good mold test? Because I know that in my clinic, we do not recommend just throw an air tester in the middle of a room and call it good. No, and a lot of people do do that and then upload that and I'll be like, oh, I'm, you know, and if they can be get really expensive, actually, if you're not if you're not careful. So I like to recommend a do it yourself test that you can do at home.

Testing for Mold, Bacteria, and Toxins 16:50

And it's called an ERMI test. So a relative multi-index test, environmental relative multi-index test that basically lets you do it yourself with swabs and sweeping and things and turn the test in yourself. And it's pretty affordable as far as a lot of testing goes, especially if you recall someone professionally, it's going to be a lot more affordable than that. And I just come to find that it standardized the testing for me. And so I kind of know what to expect. And we also, I also really like them because they can look for gram positive bacteria called actinomycetes and an endotoxic gram negative bacteria, which we think about mold, but we often miss these two and the other toxic bacteria make people really sick, just as sick.

And I actually had a patient who had bladder cancer and his home was full, like, I mean, it was like 10,000 times more endotoxic bacteria than what it was supposed to be, which was contributing to his cancer. And he's still in remission now after he moved out. So, you know, that endotoxic bacteria is very deadly as well. And actually, in my studies, some of the new studies coming out show it's even more prevalent. in water-damaged homes than mold. So it's like, you know, sometimes if he's like, gosh, I've tested, but there's still something.

Don't forget about those two as well, I would say. And an ERMI test, I like EnviroBioMix, like real-time labs. For the body, I love a vibrant mycotox test or total tox test, which looks at mold-heavy metals and environmental toxins. So that's kind of the evil triad there we like to look at sometimes. And then it's also interesting because there's some blood markers you can look for too with mold. And even some testing in the blood that looks at how the immune system flares up if it's allergic to mold.

And so there's a number of different ways that you can test and look and compare. And it's really nice to test where you live and where you suspect mold against what's in your body. So you dove in a mold a little there, but you brought in the Atenomyces, which is this new, I say new, it's probably three, four, five years it started to gain popularity here. Dr. Richie Shoemaker brought it up. I know that I've dove into the. Envirobiomics test associated with it's in my season. And I add, of course, army to that because it's such a big deal.

I just had a client that I was working with. She was in Canada. And we ran all the mold testing, it was all negative. She's extremely sensitive to everything, just start reacting to everything around her. And we found Pseudomonas at such high levels in her house, she had to vacate. Fortunately, it was a rental, which was good. And after vacating, I mean, I'm not going to say health was good, but it allowed us to start making progress before we were just stuck. I mean, she was reacting to magnesium.

She was reacting to salt in her water. She was becoming so restricted, it was almost nothing was going to be able to be used. When you're running these tests, are there home solutions that you've seen to be effective? Do you have to treat the tenomyces for the person inside their body? What are you learning about this? Yeah, actinomycetes is just, it's a grandpa set of bacteria. So a lot of our herbal solutions still work against it. But yeah, for the people who are sensitive, you can see sometimes on a gut zoomer or maybe a GI map, you can see actinomycetes because it's a soil-based bacteria.

So sometimes they'll catch it on some of those tests. And I've seen it in the red before on people. And that makes me always go back and look at their house if I see that. So yeah, it's the same thing. Usually the people who are gonna react to this are really sensitive. And they're gonna be the canaries in the coal mine that in my experience, and what you just touched over it too, is that it's really hard to get them to even open their detox pathways, their drainage pathways, to be able to calm down the inflammation, to be able to move even a step forward until they're out of the exposure.

And so it's no different with actinomycetes. And so, and yeah, they have to really, it doesn't embed quite like molds forests do into forest things. So that's the good news in my experience is that you don't necessarily have to get rid of all your forest things with that one. Okay. And I mean, can this grow off of say like my two-year-old, can it grow off of his spilled cup in my kitchen that's on my wood floor? You know, it would have to, the water would have to seep into the wood, get down into the lower levels and really sit there for, you know, I'd have to look up the time to growth with actinomycetes, I don't know right off the bat, but you know, with things like gliotoxin, that's a mycotoxin that grows within 24 to 48 hours.

So it's really fast. And depending on the mold, what's there, like it's wet, what's growing there, it really determines how quickly it can be a problem. I haven't seen actinomycetes be as fast growing necessarily, but I can't quote you on that because I don't know exactly. I have to look it up. Yeah. But mold can grow pretty quick. I know there's been cases with clients I've worked with where A dog pees in a room, no one knows it. A kid spills stuff, no one knows it. It sets, mold grows. And of course, that's not like a consistent long-term slow steady growth where it's going to be all over the entire room.

But those little amounts for somebody that's in that room cannot be problematic. For people who are super sensitive, it can be. And sometimes I wonder, gosh, are they just so traumatized or full of toxins that they can't take any other exposure whatsoever, even if it's just a brief amount of mycotoxin spores being made in a two foot by two foot area in their house?

Remediation, Leaving, and Finding the Source 23:08

And so for me, it goes back to why isn't the body resilient? Yes, some people have genetic predispositions, but I do feel like you can reverse epigenetic changes when you start to empty someone's toxin bucket and get to the root cause for them. So I don't think, although people are sensitive, I don't think normally if someone is balanced that they should react to a spot that small in their house. But yes, it happens. It happens. Well, we'll definitely be getting to some solutions once we get a little further in.

I just wanted to point that out because I do have clients where a tiny amount can bother them. Of course, I agree completely. It's a compounding effect. That wasn't the thing that was the only piece that took them down. There's other pieces. I know in my own personal home recently, I've had two little spots that I've had to have cleaned up myself, had a little tiny leak when I had a new roof put on, they stuck a nail through and didn't seal it. So then slow drip, just slow. I had to pull up a hole out of my roof, two foot, three foot by three foot, something like that, as far as the sheet rock.

Fortunately it was just dripping, so we just sealed the nail and we're good to go. So it was easy for me and then it's a blessing there. But another one, my uncle, I have family that enters my house all the time. I love supporting my family that way. I've had them since I was in my very first place I ever bought. And I'm here in the Midwest where I bought a townhome, right? So really inexpensive before the pandemic. So things were a little less expensive back then and not as nice part of town. It's a little tiny thing, right?

My aunts were done having family dinners at their houses. I'm like, y'all need primal trust now. Y'all wear yourselves out trying to make it too perfect in your home. So by the way, for those listening, if you need to make your house so perfect that it is a job and it stresses you out where you don't even enjoy a family dinner, consider checking on your nervous system. So my aunts did that, they stopped having the dinners and so I was like, all right, I'll have them, whatever. So we all went to this tiny, tiny little condo and this tiny little bitty, itty bitty condo.

Even there, I can just remember back and there was little bits of mold that would get in. And I'm just like, man, why in the world would people not feel well if they're in the room that it was in? So I'm just thinking back to myself, like that was 2013. And I had no idea about mold back then, no clue. No way. And fast forward to where we are today, I'm like, wow, there's There's these little bits of mold, but to finish my story is they stuff happens. So I've had family enters in my house ever since my uncle threw a two liter bottle into a cabinet at the very bottom that I never get into ever.

Oh no. And it leaked for like a year when I got in there to put stuff. Cause my son was getting a little older and I wanted to put like baby stuff in there. There was just this big old chunk of mold in the bottom of the cabinet. And I was like, Oh, Little mushroom bloom. Little mushroom bloom in there. I was like, what the heck is going on? So I had a crew come over and, you know, kind of tarp it off and do it the correct way. They cut it out and unfortunately it hadn't gotten anywhere else. It was just the bottom of the cabinet.

And then they had to build a new bottom of the cabinet, but you know, it was contained. But that little amount, that could affect somebody that's sensitive. And it can be just that simple and easy to miss. guess, 1,000%. And sometimes it's a lot more than you think. You'll see a dot on the surface and start looking behind a wall and it's everywhere. And unfortunately mold is insidious like that. So you were talking about ERMI test and you said that's the systematic approach that you use is getting this test because you can test the same thing over and over again and you're able to read it.

But if they do find a positive ERMI, what is your type of recommendation from there? You know, it depends on each person and their situation. It really does. I try to take each person's own life into consideration before I make recommendations, but I actually prefer when people can leave rather than remediate because remediation is so expensive, thousands of dollars, and not every remediation company is created equally. And so we run into a lot of problems, people who say they understand about mold or water damage or different bacteria that can grow in water damage homes, but they don't.

And it often can become a racket. When people are renting, it's much simpler to get them out. Sometimes if they're open and find somewhere that's a little safer for them. So I've really had issues with people who've spent so much money before, before they came to me. And then I'll see them and their house wasn't properly remediated. It's still a problem for them in their health. And it's just, it's really heartbreaking when you're, your protocol and your treatment plan can't go on because people can't afford to have their house remediated.

They have to leave. Yeah. I definitely ran into a few people over time that it was just an incredible amount of mold that was keeping them from moving forward.

Children, Neuroinflammation, and Mold Clues 28:38

I will say, I'm kind of 50-50 on that one myself with clients. I I run into a spot where it's like, if it's really, really bad, then you probably should just leave. Yeah. If you've got to ask Vagelis Pinnacoloides, we want that to be below 100, and you're at 59,000, like I saw one time. Of course, we're getting out. If you're at 250, I'm like, maybe we could just remediate this one. Like it's not too huge because getting to a place that's better than some of those marks is hard. So I do go back and forth and then it comes down to like, are you in a place where you can get a remediator that's quality?

Do we have a previous, we keep track by the way, for like our clients, if you find a remediator, you're like, yeah, they did it, it works. We got a post-ERME bag, we see that it works. And we're like, okay, I like them. We'll put them on a list. And if we can make a referral, even though it's like, you know, we don't get anything out of it, but it's, it's getting you to somebody that at least did a good job for someone else that's been with us. I'm more likely to say, okay, we could maybe salvage this.

Same. I mean, you want people with good in this industry with good testimonials and results. Yeah. I mean, I've definitely had somebody that I just talked to this week and it was heartbreaking. Your son, um, it was very neurotypical until they moved into this house and now he's not behaving neurotypical. Yeah. And she remedied the house twice now has had two different inspector groups come through and it was clean to her knowledge. And I found mold in our total toxin test. And I just said, something's going on.

Is there mold somewhere else that he's going? That's where that, she's like, no, he stays home all the time. I was like, well, I, you know, I don't want to make you do another test, but it's been a year since your last one. That was a building biologist. And can we do another one? So we ran an ERMI. As for those pinoculoides, it was 2,500, should be below 100. Oh my gosh. And I was just like, I mean, she was defeated when she messaged me back. And we just chatted with each other through the messenger on the software we use.

And I was like, you know, let's try something different. Instead of using that same inspector, let's maybe try a mold dog. You know, she got a blessing. So the mold dog was being followed by an environmental microbiologist. Oh, interesting. It just happened to be this day, just happened to be this inspection that this person was bringing along a team. And they found that the remediation didn't pull enough of the material that they were remediating. So you're supposed to go two foot from the last time you can possibly see water or damage or growth.

and they did not go far enough out. Oh, I see. It's like not getting the margins and cancer, actually. Yeah. So it was still there, still producing. I am praying that we're going to have a positive test once that's removed, because this mother is a trooper. I mean, she would do anything for her son. He does show some positive experiences from my prokane IVs and neuro therapy. But yeah, he's been pretty stuck with seeing a lot of different people because maybe that's it. Maybe that was the sticking point.

Yeah, for sure. I mean, there are so many nuances in homes and it's so subjective with who looks at your house and what they find and what they see.

Preparing the Body for Detox and Drainage 32:18

Even in cutting things out, you guys can hear they have to get all the margins or you can still have the water damage creep up and start spreading again throughout the plaster of the house and insides of the house. So it's just really, you have to really get lots of recommendations. You have to really do your own research. You have to be on top of this because the medical conventional world is not yet. What would trigger you to think about mold? Now, one thing we didn't talk about that I want to place in there before we move on is children.

I know you don't see as many children, but anytime I talk about mold, I want to make sure that the parents hear kids. So you mentioned frequent urination. If your kids pee in the bed or frequently they're urinating, definitely possible for mold. Kids, you know, they don't know how to communicate pain or depression or anxiety. So maybe they're raging. Maybe they're ODD, ADHD. All these diagnoses that have been given to children a lot of times can be tied back to problems. So PANS-PANDAS is autoimmune encephalitis that happens to the brain.

So this means your body is triggering immune responses by causing inflammation in the brain. It can come from mold. I ran a little baby study in my clinic where I just went back and looked at the results of 100 clients. 98 of them of the clients that we had mold testing on that were PANS were positive. Yeah, it can reactivate. That's our major immune hit. So parents, if you've got kids that are misbehaving, having mental health issues, eczema, stomach aches, growth issues, take a look at mold as a possibility.

Not saying that's it, but just take a look at it. It might be a potential piece. Solutions. Everybody wants no solution. We've been talking about this for a little while now and we've got everybody worked up about it. Is this mold? Is this me? So we're getting testing for them. What are some solutions for the physical body? Because we talked about the home a little bit with mold. Yes, so my thing is I really like to prep the body before any sort of detox. So I'll spend a month or two with people really making sure that they're ready to go through, you know, as enjoyable as a detox can be anyway.

So, you know, we don't want you guys to suffer. And so I've done a lot of my homework in the past years has been how do I make this a more pleasant experience for people who are sick. And in that experience, I've learned, we've mentioned it here in Glazer, it was the nervous system. So if you don't feel safe in your body, it's really hard for me to help heal that body. If you don't feel safe in your environment, it's really hard to heal in that environment. And that means with people you're married to, people you're hanging out with.

If you feel like you're walking on eggshells all that stuff has to be addressed right and even prior trauma from childhood can play into this and keeping people in that flight or fight or even dorsal freeze where they can't make decisions and the body doesn't really function like it should doesn't release chemicals and endorphins and neuropeptides like it should when your autonomic nervous system is off kilter. So I really calm that down. So I like things like GABA. I like things like methylation, B vitamins, SAMe.

You know, things to really calm people down. I like turmeric a lot. At least work to calm down inflammation in the brain as well for people. So because you can't heal if you're anxious. The other, the next thing is opening drainage. So really make sure you can poop every day. You can sweat within 10 to 15 minutes in a sauna. Your liver and viral are moving and flowing and your filters are working properly in your body. Because if we kill things off like mold spores and you can't poop and you can't sweat and your liver isn't filtering properly, you're going to recirculate those toxins and then feel like you have the flu and probably not want to work with me anymore.

So I really try very hard to prep people within two months. Once you've gone through the prep, the detox is actually a lot shorter because your body's already kind of opened up and released a lot of mold spores in the bile and the liver when we got it working again. So the actual detox is much shorter than I used to detox people. And that includes binders, which are sticky things like haemoconfulvic acid and zeolite bentonite clay, or even activated charcoal that just stays in the gut. And these are sticky and they pull things out and mop up toxins and pathogens that we're killing off.

And that can make people's symptoms a lot better too. And then, you know, you poop out those bound up toxins or pathogens and we get them out of your body. And that's really the roadmap to success. There's nuances and differences with people here and there, but everyone has the same organs and the same similar nervous systems. Okay. Well, very specific, direct and bullet pointed there to walk through that process. Now, is that something you think people should be doing at home on their own? Cause I always have to ask that question.

Yes, you know, I think if people were educated properly about their bodies and about how to heal themselves, because really, Dr. Moore and I, we kind of move roadblocks out of the way so the body heals itself. We don't really heal you, your body heals you. We just remove roadblocks. So you guys can learn and educate yourselves to do this at home, right? It's really helpful to learn how to sweat. People tell me they glisten, they don't sweat. That's not normal. Um, you know, we, I'm sorry, guys, if you're high within 10 minutes of 15 minutes of a good workout or a sauna, you should be sweating.

And so that's one way to release toxins, not just cool down. Um, you know, if you're not pooping two to three times per day and it's not normal, you know, really start to look into that and pay attention because your body's giving you a small warning sign before there's a full on label given to you.

At-Home Healing, Prevention, and Closing Thoughts 38:08

Um, and you can triage a lot of this at home, right? I mean, you can walk. 15 minutes after meals to regulate your blood sugars and move your lymph. Right? These are small little things you can try to have good sleep hygiene and get enough sleep at night where you feel rested and not hit by a truck in the morning. So really when you come to us, we're just optimizing these things that you could do too. Alright. Yeah. Well, Jess, any final departing conversation you want to have about mold here? I know there's so much and it's affecting so many people.

Any last bits? Yeah, you know, I know people get really hopeless and they feel extremely victimized as they should when they've had a lot of run-ins or moved everywhere and their mold seems to follow them around. You know, guys, if that's the case, I just want you to know that please don't get down and out on your body and please don't get hopeless because it's really hard to heal a body you hate and you don't feel safe in, as I mentioned. So your body is just warning you. And when we get you out of fly or fight, make you feel safe, you can heal.

And if you haven't looked at that approach before, I encourage you to please look at that approach and be honest with yourself because everybody deserves to heal and feel better. Love it. Paul Jess, thank you so much for joining me today on this podcast. How do people find you? Absolutely. I put a lot of free health information out online, so I'm very active on Instagram, so dr.jes.md. You can find me on YouTube, Dr. Jessica Petros. And then I really also have an online membership where people can learn to beat our invest doctor called WellnessPlus at WellnessPlus.com.

And then you can work one-on-one with me, actually. If you don't want to do it yourself, then there's an option to do that. And that's drjess, dockerjess.health. And just for everybody out there, you meet with my team first to make sure we're a good fit for each other, and then you can see me. But I really enjoy what I do, so I love helping everyone out there. All right. Thank you so much. Thanks for having me. Thank you for tuning into Doctor Talks. We hope today's episode has enlightened and inspired you on your path to optimal health.

Each day is a new opportunity to make choices that empower your well-being. For more insights and strategies, subscribe to our podcast and visit our website, www.doctortalks.com. Stay connected, stay healthy, and join us next time on Doctor Talks. from real doctors on the issues that matter to you most.