Mycotoxins, Dementia and Hormone Havoc

Introduction and Speaker Background 0:00

Welcome back to the Reverse Alzheimer's Summit. I'm so excited and delighted to have Doctor Margaret Christiansen with us today. She's a friend, colleague, an Institute for Functional Medicine faculty member for 15 years. She first became interested in functional medicine 18 years ago when trying to solve the riddle of her and her own family's complex health challenges. Unbeknownst to her at the time. These were consequences of severe toxic mold exposure. She became intimately familiar with chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, autoimmune, hormonal, neurological, and psychiatric consequences of unrecognized bio toxin illness.

A board certified Ob-Gyn for 23 years, her initial boutique functional medicine practice has grown into the Carpathia Collaborative, a large, multi disciplinary functional medicine practice based in Dallas and covering the full spectrum of complex chronic diseases. I've had the pleasure of sharing patients with Doctor Christiansen and her team, and they do an absolutely magnificent job of supporting patients. Her practice provides 360 degree functional lifestyle and nutritional medicine and includes an onsite teaching kitchen, yoga studio and education library.

I would never want to leave given the opportunity that also serves as a site for community learning events. Doctor Christensen is passionate about educating her clients and colleagues about root cause, whole system, medicine. You can see why I'm delighted to have her here today. Welcome. Thanks so much, Heather, and you are doing some amazing work yourself, and thank you for putting this seminar on as much needed. So let's dive in. You know as well as I do that mycotoxins can have a direct impact on the brain not only as toxins, but is as these chemicals that start to promote inflammation and then have these downstream sort of cascade like effects that can lead to certainly brain fog.

And sometimes even dementia. So what are mycotoxins? Well, that's a good question. So, mycotoxins are little chemicals, that come from, the, from toxic. And we're talking about toxic mold exposure. So we're talking about, molds that grow in water damaged buildings, although there are also mycotoxins in foods. So we can we can also talk about that. But the area that I would like to focus on, because most physicians know nothing about this and have really no clue, even, when somebody with this complex illness is in front of them, that it might be a problem.

So mycotoxins are very tiny, fat soluble molecules. They get inside our cell membranes, and our cell membranes are made of two layers. And so they get inside the cell membranes and also inside our mitochondria. Now hopefully everybody who's watching this has learned what your mitochondria are. And that's what's produces all the energy inside the cell. They also have a double cell membrane.

What Mycotoxins Are and How They Affect Cells 3:03

Excuse me double membrane on the mitochondria. Those mycotoxins are little tiny. And they get inside those, cell membranes which have little layers of fat in them, and they disrupt the function. So whatever that cell is, that's that function can get disrupted. And again, as you alluded, we can see, you know, everything from immune system dysfunction to neurological issues to a whole, range of hormonal issues, which is where we're going to focus. Yeah. So let's go into that. How do micro toxins impact hormones?

Well, so again, mycotoxins are incredibly ubiquitous. And again, they're, they're, they're found, everywhere. Both outdoor and indoor environments and, but it's these, the, the toxic kind that including one that's called around, which is found in grains as well as it can be produced by molds growing in houses that, really disrupts hormone function. And there's a couple ways that, there's several different ways that it happens. Number one is that the micro toxin itself can actually look like, an estrogen molecule or testosterone molecule or a thyroid molecule.

So there's there's that piece of molecular mimicry we talk about. So it looks like, like something else in the body. No hormone. So, that is one of the ways. And so can act like a hormone disruptor. The second thing is, we certainly know that, mycotoxins can, directly affect the lining of the gastrointestinal tract there. It's actually toxic to it. And many of our hormones, as well as our neurotransmitters, are being metabolized in our gastrointestinal tract. So if that's going on, then you can get a lot of disruption again, in the, in the hormone production and metabolism, trying to get rid of stuff like that.

You can't because your gut is now dysfunctional. And then, the, the third way that, I really think about, it impacting hormones is affecting what's called the HPA axis. Our hypothalamus, hypothalamic pituitary adrenal gland gland. So, basically the, the, the way our body regulates, from our brain, all the rest of the systems in the body, that can be disrupted, directly. So, for, and again, hypothalamic axis disruption happens at multiple different levels. The first one is just basically inhaling.

You're breathing that you're breathing this stuff. And these are these noxious molecules that, that actually melt cell membranes. And and your olfactory nerve is right here in the back of your nose and in the back of your sinuses. And it goes directly, there's a little nerve. The olfactory nerve goes directly back into the part of the brain is called the limbic system. And the limbic system is what houses the hypothalamus we just mentioned. And the hypothalamus is is getting input from the entire body.

But if you have all this inflammation coming in through, I mean, these irritating chemicals that that are noxious, that are sending a signal to your brain to say, oh, something's inflamed here, something's wrong. It can really mess up your whole, the whole limbic system and create massive amounts of dysfunction because these, molecules are very, noxious and toxic. The body has a stress response to it. So, again, so we're we're hitting the limbic system of the brain, which has the hypothalamus regulating all your hormones.

It also has the amygdala, amygdala scanning the environment all the time. Oh. So I'm going to jump out at me. Is the tiger going to come out in here. So the amygdala gets turned on and it's sending the fight or flight signals down to your adrenal glands. Make adrenaline. And of course, we know that adrenaline causes the heart to raise that feel, anxiety. Do I need to run or fight? And so we see a lot of adrenaline dumping, that that happens and then, cortisol. So adrenaline and cortisol are both produced by the adrenal glands as being signaled from up here.

So if you have distress in your gut, if you have distress in your brain, and inflammation, you're going to be sending signals.

Hormonal Disruption from Mold Exposure 7:31

That's creating, a lot of again, distress, distress in the body, which then, you then you have stress hormones. And when you mess up your stress hormones and they're going to impact all the rest of the sex hormones and your brain, my, my brain. So just hearing you kind of talk through this goes in two directions. One, I'm almost like, thank you to the brain, right, for protecting us. Because if you're being if you're if the message that your body is telling you is to get out of a toxic environment, that's a good thing, right?

And yet, on the other hand, if we get caught in this pattern, we know that if we're always in a fight or flight pattern, we don't create memories, that it's just the type of thing that sets us up for dementia later on in life. And so we want to have a nice balance. And what you keep saying is like dysregulation, right? Like we're not getting this nice balance, this happy balance of I right there is something threatening you. So you need to run away or you need to fight back, or you need to do whatever you need to do to resolve the issue and then come back to that, like equanimity.

We don't take that opportunity when if somebody is in a chronic environment that's highly toxic. So what do we do about it? Well, well, let's, you know, let me let me just kind of first talk a little bit about some of the, again, some of the hormonal things that, we can that I can see with this and then we'll and then I'll, I can, walk into talking about the brain itself. And again, you're talking about dementia and, so, you know, and, all your work, to a lot of it is around dementia. And so I, I totally agree with you.

When we're in constant fight or flight and we don't, we don't remember. And then we also also we have difficulties sleeping. So, so many people who've had toxic mold exposure, they just wake up and they just feel anxious all the time. They've not slept well. They keep waking up. They can't fall asleep. And and this is can be without anything else going on. Now, if you also are a parent or you're working and, or, you know, you're taking care of, somebody who's sick or elderly or, again, you have a relationship is falling apart.

All that on top of that, that massive amount of stress hormones we know, impacts our ability to to like, create and store memories, like you mentioned, as well as just to even just to learn how to calm ourselves down. So, but from a, from a hormonal standpoint, you may see things like in women, we'll see super heavy periods, endometriosis, uterine fibroids, a lot of breast tenderness or fiber specific breast changes because you have these estrogen like effects and in some of the mycotoxins and, so, so that's been going on.

Infertility is a huge piece, of something that that can happen, with the, with the mycotoxins for men, we see erectile dysfunction, prostate issues and again, we'll see a lot of depression, anxiety just kind of a motivation. And, polycystic ovarian syndrome. So the entire range of hormonal disruption that, I myself, as my background, as you mentioned, is as an Islamic oncologist in my original life, but now I realize when I go back and think about some of the clients I used to have back then, it's like, oh my gosh, I think it was probably a mold situation that I didn't know about.

So, again, if you are having both early menopause or, super heavy bleeding or hot flashes and sweats, and you don't know where it's coming from, it's something to, that you want to go ahead and think about. And that's also something to consider, right? You just named like almost every female dysregulation that can happen in terms of a cycle. And in the Western traditional kind of medical paradigm. And we want to it needs to be simpler than that, right. Like how could both things be happening from the same, toxin.

Right. You would expect that. Oh, you only get heavy bleeding or you only get early menopause or something like that. Right. And so this is, you know, you mentioned at the very beginning that a lot of doctors don't understand that this is going on. And that's part of why is because it's quite confusing, right? You can get lots of different manifestations of the same toxicity. What about the thyroid. Is the thyroid affected here. Oh yes. Yeah I'm sorry I completely missed the thyroid there. Absolutely.

You know, so we can we can certainly see a lot of thyroid issues as well. But again, both from molecular mimicry, going on as well as just from the direct toxicity itself. A lot of people don't realize that, thyroid hormone works in the body because it tells our mitochondria to make energy so that that's how thyroid hormone actually works. So it's being produced here. Again, the brain is sending a signal from the hypothalamus, sends it to the pituitary gland, sends it to the thyroid gland and says, hey, make some thyroid hormone.

And then the thyroid hormone goes out into the body and it says to all the cells, and all the little mitochondria inside the cells. Hey, upregulate your energy production. We need some energy online here. However, if the mitochondria or cell membranes are been damaged, then the thyroid hormone may not work. So. So many people are present with hypothyroidism. It's not. It's it's not just one thyroid problem. It's like what's causing that? And, mycotoxins can be, can be part of it. And let me, let me just broaden the discussion to beyond mycotoxins to just let's call them bio toxins.

Because, you're never alone with just one. These bio toxins are fat soluble. So again, they can all get into cell membranes. So whether we're talking about pesticides or, Lyme or any of the co-infections or chronic viral infections, also they can get inside that cell membrane or heavy metals, or just a lot of the chemicals that we're dealing with. And then you throw toxic mold in top on top of that, which is, just is so disruptive, that we have that total body burden idea in the body. And, so what we do to help remove toxic mold can we can also is helping with everything else, in, in the body, and helping to detoxify.

One of the things I tell patients is like, everyone's heard of Botox, right? Right, right. And if women maybe meant to inject a toxin into their forehead to paralyze the muscles. So this is we know that this is neurotoxic. In fact, we're using it because we're neuro, because it's neurotoxic for these esthetic purposes. And Botox is called Botox because it's botulinum toxin. It's a it's a neurotoxic toxin that is created by a bacteria. And that we're using, you know, in a, in a local area basically, you know, arguably safe or not, I don't know, it certainly adds to total body burden if this is something someone is doing aggressively.

And but I think that that illustrates for people like, oh, this is I get it now. Right? Like there are molds that live in the walls of water, damage buildings that create toxins. That might be something like the neurotoxin I inject into my forehead, and that if I'm getting this consistently, if I'm breathing this in day after day after day, of course that's going to cause some disruption. Yeah. And that's huge. And thank you for calling out Botox because I am not a fan. And I, you know, I, I mean, if it's being used therapeutically for somebody who's got migraines or some that that's okay.

But there's actually better ways from a functional standpoint to, to approach that. And it doesn't. Yeah. It the body doesn't get rid of it. It just diffuses out of this area. And so it yeah, there's definitely create problems. I think it's a it's a great example. And what we know and and thank you also just for kind of mentioning and when we're talking about water damage walls, it's it's more than just mycotoxins. So I mean you have you actually have the mold, bacterium itself so that the actual mold that's producing the mycotoxins and, and a lot of times when people have mold allergies, that's what they're, that's what they're reacting to is a whole mold.

And that and they grow outside their own trees. You know, when you leave your food out enough and it grows mold so people can react just to the, the organism itself and the pieces of that to have allergic responses to. But what's different about the mycotoxins is that they are directly toxic to mitochondria, to cell membranes, to DNA, and so it just kind of brings it up, another level. And inside the, you know, water damaged wall, besides growing molds, there's also other kind of bacteria and other kind of debris and dust and what we call inflammatories things that, that create inflammation. So, when you're treating you're not just not just trying to remove the mycotoxins, you're trying to deal with the whole big ball of wax.

Well, even the volatile organic compounds, right? That you would never want to breathe in drywall dust and all of and paint. Right. But as those organisms are digesting that, that building material, they're releasing those things into the air that you can potentially be absorbing and inhaling as well. So yeah, it's really just this perfect storm of water damage building, particularly with the building materials we use.

Thyroid, Bio-toxins, and Total Body Burden 16:58

This these days is really a perfect storm for exposing people to things that are going to impact their health in lots of ways, and hormonal dysfunction being paramount among them. What are tell me is some of these basics around testing treatment. Like if somebody is pretty sure that this is what's going on for them, where do you start? Well, a simple place to start is you can take an online VCs test or visual contrast sensitivity test. That's a very rough screening. Challenge. It's a very rough screening test.

I like the one at Doctor Shoemaker's, website. It's going to cost, like $15. Which is super, but, yeah. So that's about 15 bucks, I think, to do it. And, but what I like about it, is, that it has a lot of questions that it's asking you to, to help you kind of, there's it's a think about some questions about, oh, could this be a possibility for me? There are some free tests online. There's a little harder to interpret. And, so that's why I like that. So that's a very that's a very, very simple thing that's looking for any type of neurotoxin.

So that doesn't just mean mold, but it's an idea that okay, something is impacting my, tiny little capillaries, little tiny blood vessels in the back of my eyeballs that, are feeding my nerves, which is impacting how I'm perceiving fine gray lines. And that's got to be something someone could do from home without a doctor from home. Yeah. So you can you can just, you know, you can just kind of start, looking at it, and then, I like to do, urine mycotoxins testing, and, there's, several different labs apps out there.

I'm. I guess I'm a fan of real time lab. I've been I've used them all. And, there's a lot of debate that goes back and forth in the community that does this work, but I do like the real time, you're in medical toxin testing because, the challenges when you have somebody who's super tight, who's super sick or very ill or a very a slow detox or that initial test may come back negative, or very low and it doesn't look impressive, but it's just because somebody cannot detoxify it. And once I see this every day here in this practice, once we start getting their detox mechanisms up and ramped up, then, then, what we see is our urine levels just go skyrocketing high and it's because their body is finally getting rid of either that or you're, you know, you've still got ongoing exposure. So, you know, that's an that's a whole nother big ball of wax, and I can chat about it in a second.

But, so, so those two things, are the ways that I do it there. You can do you can get bloodwork, that looks at antibodies to different moles. And that's a little bit less expensive than doing the urine mycotoxins screening. Again. It's it's a little bit different. It's not picking up the actual mycotoxins themselves and seeing whether your body is having an immune system response to having been exposed to Aspergillus or stack trace or titanium or some of these other molds. So, so those are some things about it.

But a lot of times it really has to do with putting it together in your head. Well, I've got neurological symptoms. I've got I've got autoimmune symptoms, I've got hormonal symptoms, I've got terrible brain fog. And again, I've, I've been to see 15 different doctors. Nobody can figure out what's going on with me. But having that, having that in your first in your mind is helpful. Also, I meant to, meant to say in the beginning is if you have a lot of family members and everybody's sick in a different way.

So if your kids are sick, they have A.D.D., their one's got chronic asthma. Yeah. There's, you know, constantly getting ear infections. And then mom is so tired she can't move, and her hormones are all screwed up, and dad's just irritable as hell, and his blood pressure is up. That's when you start thinking, oh, okay. Is there something environmentally here going on here? Yeah, that's such a good point. And this kind of speaks to what we were saying before. It's like it's not all the same symptoms across everyone, right?

It's not when one exposure means one symptom. It's really this constellation of potential symptoms that are going to affect different people at different ages or different genders or, you know, different diets in very different ways. And so it's hard to sort of triangulate and say, okay, this could be mold. What about testing the home where this, like you said, about well, and turn it into a mycotoxins. But then testing the home. Well, that's a that's a big challenge. And what I would highly recommend is our folks, check out I sca I talk international society for environmental acquired illness um.org because on that site there's a lot of good information and they have indoor air quality professionals.

There are there are some tests that you can do at home. But just because they're negative, you got to be careful. So there is, there's dust test and there's also these mold plates that you can put out.

Testing for Mold and Environmental Exposure 22:08

I would not purchase any of the mold plates from, any of the big box, hardware stores or whatever. I would order them from immuno clinics.com, and, we can put that down there somewhere, but immuno lytic scum, they're, they're, they're professionals in this arena. And, they can really help you out. And actually, on their website, they have a whole thing about how to look at your house, you know, how do you, as a layperson, can go around, but also how to, hire somebody to come look for you. But it's it's so important that you have an idea ahead of time of what what needs to be looked for.

But the simple things that you can do would be putting out mold plates or agar plates, and and then the other is there's a dust sampling test. It's called a Swiffer. Or excuse me, it's called an army, Environmental Relative Mold Index, which uses a Swiffer. And, and, and there's different companies that, that, do that I'm blanking on the name of that or the one I use. I just push the button on my computer. I've, I've think of it. This is maybe or, no more pros. They're a, they're actually a company that that can can come into your house and they do some remediation.

But, with the, with the Environmental relative Mold Index, you can, get a dust sample from around your house. There's instructions on how to do it, to see, do you, you know, do you have some of the bad guy molds and, you know, fairly high levels? There's a lot of, caveats with that. It can it can pick up old stuff that's been there for a long, long time that hasn't been clean. But, but those are two simple things that, that, that you can do to at least kind of start moving if you're living in an apartment or something like that, or you're an office building, just getting some of those analytics, agar plates and putting them out, and then collecting and then having it grow something three days later that you can show somebody like the, you know, your landlord or your whoever you're working with to say, please, you know, we got to do something to address this, can can be helpful.

Now, mold is growing. Every house. There's there's there's there's molds everywhere. But it's the type of molds. And if it is, is it the wet water damage kind that you're looking for? And so you want to use, either an Army test or agar plates if you're going to do it for yourself. There's also air sampling. There's, a couple of do it yourself. Again, sampling air. But I wouldn't just use air sampling all by itself either. I think you have to use air sampling with some agar plates with, with some dust sampling to, to get a better idea.

But I think the best thing to do, if you have suspicion of it, it can you can you can use some of these things to help figure out, okay, where is it coming? Or, you know, is there a problem here that needs to be further looked at, but you probably really need a professional to come look and and and help you figure out what what what's the next things to do. Yeah. So I think one of the things people don't realize is that this isn't cut and dry, but there's lots of different interest. So there's the landlord's interest who maybe is not super excited about having to fix the drywall behind the sink or under the floorboards or whatever it is.

Right. And they don't want to take responsibility or take on the liability of paying for someone's health care, especially when it's associated with this. Yeah. And then there's your interest, right. Like whether the patient in front of us and certainly you and you and I share the perspective that like your health as my patient is what's the priority. And so we want to make sure that the environment you're in is supportive of that health. And so our standards are going to be very different. Right.

There are going to be mold experts on both ends of that argument. And you want to be careful that you are choosing to engage with the professionals in this space who also have your health as their highest priority. Yes. And that's why I would suggest ICAO reorg. Because because these are indoor air quality professionals who have never really spent a lot of time educating themselves in this arena. I also want to say that that and to, that this is a fat soluble toxin. So you could have had multiple exposures over multiple years, which is kind of what happened to me. I grew up on the East Coast.

We had a basement, you know, that used to, you know, get wet and damp and always smelled kind of musty, there and, you know, lived in a bunch of different houses, you know, a number of which had different water leaks and, but it wasn't until, you know, probably the 10th exposure on my, my standpoint, that, that I got really sick and so did my family. But we had built it up at that time. And so it may not be the current space that her in, but you want to be ideally for recovery in as clean of space as you can be.

And we'll we can segue into that in a second. Because again, you can build it up over many years. I mean, dorm rooms are terrible. And in a lot of colleges, apartments and particularly apartments and college towns. And, you know, that's one of the challenges. Is there, there's lack of accountability in, in a lot of, you know, large apartment complexes and etc. that's actually one of my one of my big mold exposures was when I was living part time in an apartment that got flooded and, you know, it was like three inches of water in the carpet when I came, came home, and all they did was suction up the the water.

And, you know, I this is before I knew anything before I, I knew that. Okay. Well, you know, at that point it probably worked halfway up the walls. And, you know, and it wasn't until about three months later and also just smelled really bad in this apartment. And, and I was getting sicker and sicker and sicker and having hot flashes and sweats and, again, started having all these hormonal symptoms, and, and that's, I ended up going see, Doctor William Ray, who's who was one of the pioneers in the whole field of environmental medicine.

He's here in Dallas. And, I was, and, he, I had the highest levels of trikafta since I'd ever seen. So, it was, so I just wanted to to make the point that you can have multiple exposures over a long period of time. I think the other really important piece that goes with moldy mycotoxins exposure is antibiotics, because antibiotics themselves. Where did penicillin come from? Yeah, it's a mold. It is kind of. Yeah. Right. It it came from Penicillium the mold penicillin and and how do antibiotics work?

Well, they work by attacking the cell membrane of the bacteria, and getting into it and, and helping to break it down. Well, our mitochondria look like bacteria. And so, oftentimes, again, what happens is somebody who is sick all the time, they're getting chronic sinus infections, are getting ear infections. They have autoimmune issues. They just feel like crap all the time. Their guts all messed up. And they're taking they're getting infection after infection, bladder infections, pneumonia, bronchitis, ear infection, one after antibiotic after another after another after another.

So now not only do you have external exposure to molds, but you also have internal fungal overgrowth and, and the candida, whatever

Why Some People Get Sicker Than Others 29:38

you want to call it, itself can produce mycotoxins called galena toxins. So, that is a very common problem that we'll see yeast or fungal yeast overgrowth in the same setting as we see mycotoxins and, mold exposures. And so we when we're treating I'm dealing with both of those things. And then this also speaks a little bit to why why do I have symptoms. But my husband who sits in the same room and is exposed to pretty much the same things, why does he not and or my wife, you know, it goes both directions.

And a lot of this is, is exactly what you're describing, right. Well, you work together your entire life. So you didn't have all the same exposure as maybe you were exposed to something in college or in childhood. Then what is your antibiotic use? What is your antibiotic history like? What sort of colonization might you have that they don't? And also this adverse childhood events, the aces scores. And you mentioned, you know, we started this conversation talking about the limbic system. And so how that limbic system is regulated even from that early developmental stage seems to have a big impact.

I certainly see higher rates of more toxicity symptoms of of the mast cell activation at a of more, debilitating symptoms in patients who also have a lot of childhood trauma. Is that what you see as well? I would completely, would completely agree with you. Yeah. You know, childhood and or adult trauma and, we see that because that's already creating a much heightened state of and limbic system over activation, and your adrenals are on all the time, and you're constantly in this fight or flight and, and it's very hard to heal and recover, when you're in that.

And then that makes you more vulnerable. And interestingly enough, growing up in a moldy situation or in poor housing is much more likely. You're much more likely to end up with, again, adverse childhood events, violence, again, psychiatric behaviors. I didn't even touch the psychiatric aspect of this, but that's another huge piece of it. And so, the mold itself can cause hallucinations, because it creates so much anxiety and that feeling of anxiety that people self-medicate with alcohol or drugs and, again, get into that bad cycle of behaviors.

And then, of course, when you're under the influence and you're likely to perpetuate, you know, bad behaviors and, and then add a potential, I mean, add a potential head trauma from, like, abuse or something to this story. And now, I mean, it just gets really bad really quickly. And you can see how this just snowballs. And what's interesting is all of these things that we're discussing, alcohol toxicity, potentially traumatic brain injuries, all of these things, depression, anxiety, these are the set up for dementia.

Absolutely. The perfect brain. You know, the terrain. This is setting up that brain terrain to go towards that cognitive decline. So tell me a let's let's go there. What what do you see clinically in terms of that connection between mycotoxins and dementia? It's huge. I can't tell you. I had this, one, couple that their, their adult children brought in and they were, I think they're both in their 80s and they, they walked in the hat. I mean, they walked in my office, and I could I could just smell.

They smelled musty. And both of them, he had Parkinson's and, was, you know, losing that. And she was pretty far gone, already with, with her, with her dementia. So, I mean, I see this every single day. Again, everybody's kind of this terrible brain fog. I can't find my words. I mean, this was me, too. And, you know, here I was at at, you know, 41 years old, and I couldn't find anybody's names. I couldn't, I couldn't put two sentences together. Just trying to, trying to to do something like, can wash my hair and change my clothes.

There were so many steps involved. I was walking around in a fog and so, you can see in a hedgerows of 40, you know, so you can see if you have that cumulative happening and that those exposures, how that's going to end up impacting, your brain in the long run. How terrifying. Yeah. So again, what do we do to get out of this? What is treatment look like? Okay. Well, that's, so, I have four simple principles that I have just folks follow because this because it's such a big, complex ball of wax, and you really have two patients that the person and the and the environment, living environment or working environment, whatever.

It can be overwhelming. So just trying to keep it's as simple as possible. I start with clean food, clean air, clean water and a clear mind. So, so we just we start with our diet of trying to go to a, Whole Foods, mostly vegetables, lots of good fats. That's incredibly important. And organic. As organic as you can get.

Mycotoxins, Brain Fog, and Dementia Risk 34:48

It is, is important because again, round up and, glyphosate, which is what's in all of our food, is a neurotoxin and exacerbates all this. So clean food, clean air. So, even if you're still living in, in a situation or environment, getting a, a high quality, air filtration, device that's a Hepa filter and, maybe getting a Hepa vacuum, as well can can be helpful in putting putting one of those in your bedroom and sleeping with it and and putting one in in all the kids bedrooms. So, Yeah. So that's important.

So, clean food, clean air, clean water. Same thing. Our water supplies is, is for all kinds of crap, and all kinds of medications and, so at least having a water filter that you can put in your refrigerator, that will, and, you know, just something as simple as a Brita, that's not the best, but it's it's it's a place to start. Is is important. Stop drinking out of plastic bottles. By the way. You know, if you're going to. Stainless glass. Ceramic. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, I know I, I tend to recommend the mountain valley.

It's. This is only going to. It's a great one. Yeah, I like that a bigger and bigger challenge, you know, as time goes on because our water is so contaminated and not to get too bogged down in the depressing part, but doing what you can to make sure that you're getting the cleanest water. Yeah, it getting Berkey filter or whatever I have, I'm, you know, I'm I'm I'm blessed enough to have a whole house water filter. And then I have an under sink filter, and then I have on top of the, you know, on top of the thing, I have something on alkalis as my water filters it again.

So minerals back end. Yeah. Right. So any who, I think so. And clean food, clean air, clean water and then a clear mind. So because this is so overwhelming and anxiety producing and people are, what we call limbic again, they're super anxious. They have maybe have Marcel issues that are having a hard time sleeping. And it that limbic system dysfunction tends to be self-perpetuating and keeps us in, in overwhelm. And so, absolute, doing work that helps in limbic system retraining. And there's several different programs out there.

There's also the devices about it. Neil Nathan's book toxic has, some very, very good stuff in it. That kind of thing. So for those of you interested in diving deeper in this, there is an interview with Ashok Gupta of the Gupta program. So head on over to that one to take an even deeper dive, but also know that Doctor Christiansen and I, I joke with my patients, lovingly, that I essentially won't work with them if they're not willing to do a DNR or Gupta, because I think it's so crucial to full recovery.

Yes. And resilience. Yeah. Well, and it that also speaks to the, the neuroplasticity that you've been working with is that, you know, and particularly if you've grown up with it, you know, a lot of aces or adverse childhood events, and or very negative situation and a lot of negative self-talk. And, or you've been going from doctors, doctor, doctor, doctor, and everybody's is telling you you're crazy. There's nothing wrong with you. Here's your antidepressants and it creates PTSD. And and of itself. Oh, there.

Oh, there is no question that half of what I deal with is PTSD from being through the medical system, you know, and being, you know, ignored or made, you know, or dismissed or not heard whatever. And so, I think, you know, having some type of daily practice of some sort that is meaningful to you, of quieting your mind, whether that's, doing a little bit of journaling or, again, reading, some positive, uplifting, nourishing literature of whatever, daily readers of some sort,

Treatment Principles: Food, Air, Water, and Mind 38:38

doing, guided meditations or you have to be if you have the ability to just sit and meditate, then that's even better. But, having, a little, quiet time and learning about neuroplasticity and the need to focus on gratitude, what's right in my life, what are my strengths? What are my gifts? What, you know, how do I get through this one day? One day at a time. And, really focusing on the positives in our lives because we have a negative brain bias. Maybe some of these talked about that before, but, we tend to amplify whatever is negative and we downplay whatever's positive.

So we want to do the. Absolutely the reverse. And that's what I, do with my, a lot of my clients, too. And I'm actually a certified functioning as an health coach as well. And health coaching is all about, what's right with you, what's right with you, and what is the level of perseverance and hope and faith and your love of learning and your your gifts and your humility that, that have gotten you through up to this point. And how can we amplify those instead of focusing on what's negative. And that's part of the brain retraining, whether you're doing like you said, the Diana Ross or Gupta's program.

I found there's a there's a another one that's two. That's if you're a very faith based person or a Christian person and you can do that one. There's also devices that we can use to to help. Acupuncture is also something very useful for calming things, down. And acupuncture beads can be left in your ears to help keep you. Down. Having less, traumatized cranial sacral therapy can also be very useful for helping to get you out of that fight or flight and calming down your limbic system, because as we both know that we can't, we got to work with the mast cells, that are just firing off like crazy.

And that's really coming from the limbic system dysfunction. So. Right. Exactly. And so have you seen people get better? Oh yeah. Oh my God. Yeah. Every day. Right. Myself included. Yeah. And you're the living testament to that. Yeah, yeah. So, you know, I had to close my practice. I had, you know, sick family members. I couldn't put two words together. I took two years off. I still wasn't better. And it wasn't until I actually found a functional medicine. And all I did was at that point, I didn't even know what the problem was.

Was just change my diet and, and start taking some nutrients, you know, and then genetically, I found out why I'm a very slow detoxify and I've got some epigenetic stuff that's happened. And, so just some basic nutrients, a, B vitamins and magnesium, you know, if you're not doing those things right there, that's something you can do. And plenty of water and, and movement and, it wasn't until I had, re exposure, actually. So my mod exposure got me into functional medicine because I was super chronic fatigue, didn't fibromyalgia.

I didn't know what was wrong with me, and all I did was change my diet and add some nutrients. And I got way better. And then I got re-exposed really super sick again. And, at that point, I needed a whole nother level of stuff because I didn't know I was living in it. And, I was getting. Yeah. So. Yeah. So, you know, I but I see this every day. I mean, we have, gosh. God bless. I had this, darling, young lady, she was probably about 16 or 17 who had terrible, like, Candace type symptoms and was flapping around all the time.

And she was severely OCD, and she had terrible Potts syndrome to, which we didn't even mention. And that's where you stand up and you basically your blood pressure drops to nothing in your heart rate goes up and kind of thing. And, yeah. So we just started doing all this stuff that we do for detoxification and, and, this this is a young woman who was too anxious to be able to go to school, and all that. And now she's off in college, she's driving, she's, you know, so, Yeah. And the fertility. Oh, my gosh, I have so many fertility stories that I can tell you about, you know, just cleaning up, mold out of somebody, and their facility comes back with their brain.

You know for sure that the ability to, Yeah, yeah, you can talk really fast. So. So that's. Well, how exciting. It was like this. Great. Oh, wow. Well, thank you so much for for sharing all of this. I, I want people to know where you got the name of your clinic. Oh, sure. I just such a cool story. Carpathia collaborative. So the Carpathia was the ship that rescued the survivors of the Titanic? So we have the Titanic of Western medicine just treating the tip of the iceberg and foundering because it's not paying attention to all the stuff that's underneath the surface.

And so we have a Carpathia that comes along, picks everybody up, and starts asking the right questions. I love it. So where can people find out more about you? Are you still currently taking patients? And you also have a summit yourself? Yeah, yeah. So I'm, I'm, I was the host of the Toxic Load Summit. And, we've had lots of people, view that, if you, if you want, something to really kind of just, dive in. You're. We are brand new to this.

Recovery Stories and Where to Learn More 43:48

You need some help? Mold detox diet.com. I did with Doctor Gail Clayton and myself. We put that together. And we talk about just in, just basic, simple, approaches, and, so I would suggest there Carpathia collaborative. To see me, you have to see one of my other practitioners, first, I, I get so many that, I have, my, I have well-trained, fabulous people, working with me. We're a wonderful team. We have a collaborative team. That's why we use the word collaborative. We meet every week. And so I'm seeing and hearing about, clients, even though if I haven't seen them personally, and, Yeah.

And then I'm, Stay tuned. I'm going to be doing some, large online group coaching, for, for this, for this particular issue. Fantastic. Wonderful. I'm so glad to hear it. You have created some really fabulous resources for people to learn more about this. So I encourage anyone listening. If you're curious, please do, look for Doctor Margaret Christiansen's resources, get that more detox diet and get started because you absolutely can heal from this. And and there if you are being exposed to more and you have some cognitive decline, there's a very high likelihood that that is a big, big, big contributor.

So we want to get rid of it. And the resources are out there to get you better. Doctor. That and I'll just put in a plug in that part of part of the recovery can be actually the use of biochemical hormones. Whatever we've messed up, we need to identify and fix that. And that can really help in your recovery. Whether I'm giving you progesterone or a little bit of testosterone or estrogen. So it's a whole process. Thank you. Yes. Wonderful. Wonderful. Thank you so much for being with us here today.

It's always a pleasure to connect with you, and I'm so grateful for the work that you're doing in the world. Thank you. For.