Mycotoxins, Dementia and Hormone Havoc

Margaret Christensen, M.D.

Thanks so much Heather and you are doing some amazing work yourself and thank you for putting this summit on it was much needed.

Heather Sandison, N.D.

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 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?

Margaret Christensen, M.D.

That’s a good question So mycotoxins are little chemicals that come 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 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 is 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 our cell membranes and also inside our mitochondria. Now hopefully everyone who’s watching this has learned what your mitochondria are. That’s what produces all the energy inside the cell. They also have a double membrane on the mitochondria. Those mycotoxins are a 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 function can get disrupted. Again, as you alluded, we can see everything from a immune system dysfunction to neurological issues to a whole range of hormonal issues, which is where we’re gonna focus.

Heather Sandison, N.D.

Yeah. So let’s go into that. How do mycotoxins impact hormones?

Margaret Christensen, M.D.

Okay, well, so again, mycotoxins are incredibly ubiquitous, and again, they’re found everywhere, both outdoor and indoor environments. But it’s the toxic kind, including one that’s called zearalenone, 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 several different ways that it happens. Number one is that the mycotoxin itself can actually look like an estrogen molecule or a testosterone molecule, or a thyroid molecule. So there is that piece of molecular mimicry we talk about. So it looks like something else in the body, a hormone. So that is one of the ways. And so it can act like a hormone disruptor. The second thing is we certainly know that mycotoxins can directly affect the lining of the gastrointestinal tract. 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 hormone production and metabolism, trying to get rid of stuff that you can’t because your gut is now dysfunctional. 

And then the third way that I really think about impacting hormones is affecting what’s called the HPA axis, our hypothalamic, pituitary, adrenal glands. So basically the way our body regulates from our brain, all the rest of the systems in the body that can be disrupted directly. And again, the hypothalamic access disruption happens at multiple different levels. The first one is just basically inhaling. You’re breathing this stuff in. These are these noxious molecules that actually melt cell membranes and your olfactory nerve 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 that’s called the limbic system. And the limbic system is what houses the hypothalamus that we just mentioned, and the hypothalamus is getting input from the entire body. But if you have all this inflammation coming in through, I mean, these irritating chemicals that are noxious, that are sending a signal to your brain to say, “Uh-oh, something’s inflamed here. Something’s wrong.” It can really mess up the whole limbic system and create massive amounts of dysfunction. Because these molecules are very obnoxious and toxic, the body has a stress response to it. 

So we’re hitting the limbic system in the brain, which has that hypothalamus regulating all your hormones. It also has the amygdala. Amygdala scanning the environment all the time. “Uh-oh, is something gonna jump out at me, is a tiger 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 race, that feeling of anxiety, that I need to run or fight. And so we see a lot of adrenaline dumping that happens and then cortisol. So adrenaline and cortisol are both produced by the adrenal glands that is being signaled from up here. So if you have distress in your gut, if you have distress in your brain and inflammation, you’re gonna be sending signals that’s creating a lot of, again, distress in the body, then you have stress hormones. And when you mess up your stress hormones, then they’re gonna impact all the rest of the sex hormones in your brain.

Heather Sandison, N.D.

My brain, so just hearing you kind of talk through this goes in two directions.

Margaret Christensen, M.D.

Yeah.

Heather Sandison, N.D.

One, I’m almost like thank you to the brain, right, for protecting us. Because if the message that your body is telling you is to get out of a toxic environment, like 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 is this 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, all 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 equanimity. We don’t get that opportunity if somebody’s in a chronic environment that’s highly toxic. So what do we do about it?

Margaret Christensen, M.D.

Well, let me just kinda first talk a little bit about some of the, again, some of the hormonal things that I can see with this, and then I can walk into talking about the brain itself. And again, you’re talking about dementia and all your work, again, a lot of it is around dementia. And so I totally agree with you. When we’re in constant fight or flight, then we don’t remember. And then also we have difficulty sleeping. 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 this is can be without anything else going on. Now, if you also are a parent or you’re working, and you’re taking care of somebody who’s sick or elderly, or again, you have a relationship that’s falling apart, all that on top of that massive amount of stress hormones, we know impacts our ability to both create and store memories, like you mentioned, as well as even just to learn how to calm ourselves down. But 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 fibrocystic breast changes because you have these estrogen-like effects in some of the mycotoxins. And so that’s been going on. Infertility is a huge piece of something that can happen with the mycotoxins. For men, we see erectile dysfunction, prostate issues. And again, we’ll see a lot of depression and anxiety, just kind of a motivation, and polycystic ovarian syndrome. So the entire range of hormonal disruption that myself as my background, as you mentioned is I’m a gynecologist 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 there 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 that you wanna go ahead and think about.

Heather Sandison, N.D.

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, it needs to be simpler than that, right? Like how could both things be happening from the same toxin, right? You would expect that you only get heavy bleeding, or you only get early menopause or something like that, right? And so this is, 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?

Margaret Christensen, M.D.

Oh, yes. Yeah. I’m sorry I completely missed the thyroid there. Absolutely. We can certainly see a lot of thyroid issues as well. 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’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 that says, “Hey, make some thyroid hormone.” And then the thyroid hormone goes out into the body and it says to all the little mitochondria inside the cells, “Hey, upregulate your energy production. “We need some energy on line here.” However, if the mitochondria or some membranes have been damaged, then the thyroid hormone may not work. So many people present with hypothyroidism, It’s not just low thyroid problem. It’s like what’s causing that and mycotoxins can be part of it. And let me just broaden the discussion too, beyond mycotoxins too just let’s call them biotoxin because you’re never alone with just one. These biotoxins 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 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 the, in the body and helping to detoxify.

Heather Sandison, N.D.

One of the things I tell patients is like, everyone’s heard of Botox, right? Women, maybe men too 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 it’s neurotoxic for these aesthetic purposes. And Botox is called Botox because it’s Botulinum and toxin. It’s a neurotoxic toxin that is created by a bacteria. And that we’re using, you know in a local area with you know, arguably safe or not. I don’t know. It certainly adds to total body burden if this is something is doing aggressively. And, but it, 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 gonna cause some disruption.

Margaret Christensen, M.D.

Yeah. And that’s huge. And thank you for yeah calling out Botox because I am not a fan. And I, you know, I mean, if it’s being used therapeutically for somebody who’s got migraines or something that’s okay, but there’s actually better ways from a functional standpoint to, to approach that. And it doesn’t yeah. The body doesn’t get rid of it. It just diffuses out of this area. And so it, can definitely create problem. So I think it’s a great example. And what we know and thank you also, just for kind of mentioning when we’re talking about water damage walls there 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 mycotoxin. And a lot of times when people have mold allergies, that’s what they’re, that’s what they’re reacting to is the whole mold and that, and they grow outside, they’re on trees, you know, and you leave your food out enough and it grows mold. So people can react just to the organism itself and the pieces of that to have allergic responses too. 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 a 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 inflammagens 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.

Heather Sandison, N.D.

Well, even the volatile organic compounds rate that you would never wanna breathe in drywall dust and all of and paint. Right? But as those organisms are digesting 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, a water damage building, particularly with the building materials we use this these days is really a perfect storm for exposing people to things that are going to impact their health and lots of ways, and hormonal dysfunction being paramount among them. What are, tell me some of these basic around testing treatment, like if somebody is pretty sure that this is what’s going on for them, where do you start?

Margaret Christensen, M.D.

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, or that that’s a very rough screening test. I like the one that Dr. Shoemakers website and it, it costs like $15, which is a just.. Yeah it’s about, 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 help you kind of there’s to… think about some questions about, oh, could this be a possibility for me? There are some free BCS tests online. There’s a little harder to interpret. And so that’s why I like that. So that’s a very, very simple thing that 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 what a be–

Heather Sandison, N.D.

This is something someone could do from home without a doctor.

Margaret Christensen, M.D.

From, from home. Yes. So again, you can just, you know, you can just kind of start looking at it. And then I like to do urine mycotoxin testing, and there’s several different labs out there. I’m I guess I’m a fan of real time lab. I’ve been, I’ve used ’em all and was a lot of debate that goes back and forth in the community that does this work. But I do like the real time neuromycotoxin testing. ‘Cause the challenge is when you have somebody who’s super sick or very ill or very, a slow detoxer that initial test may come back negative or very low. And it doesn’t look impressive, but it’s just be because somebody cannot detoxify yet. And once I see this every day here in, in this practice, once we start getting their detox mechanisms up and ramped up, then then what we see is their urine levels just go skyrocketting high. And it’s because their bodies finally getting rid of. Either that or your still, you know, you’ve still gotta going exposure. So, you know, that’s, and that’s a whole nother big ball of wax and I can chat about in a second, but so those two things are, the ways that I do it they’re you can do, you can get blood work that looks at antibodies to different molds, and that’s a little bit less expensive than doing the urine mycotoxin screening. 

Again, it’s a little bit different. It’s not picking up the actual mycotoxin themselves. It’s seeing whether your body is having an immune system response to having been exposed to aspergillus or stachybotrys or chaetomium or some of these other molds. So, those are some things in that, 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 autoimmune symptoms, I’ve got hormonal symptoms, I’ve got terrible brain fog. And again, I’ve been to see 15 different doctors. Nobody can figure out what’s going on with me that having that in your first in your mind is helpful. Also, I 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 ADD they one’s got chronic asthma. The others 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’s up. That’s when you start thinking, Oh okay, is there something environmentally here going on here?

Heather Sandison, N.D.

Yeah, that’s such a good point. And this kind of speaks to what we were saying before. It’s like not all the same symptoms across everyone, right? It’s not one exposure means one symptom. It’s really this constellation of potential symptoms that are gonna 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? What, what this, like you said about… in terms of your microtoxins, but then testing the home.

Margaret Christensen, M.D.

Well, that’s a big challenge. And what I would highly recommend is, our folks check out isei.org International Society for Environmentally Acquired Illness.org. Because on that site, there’s a lot of good information and they have indoor air quality professionals. There are some tests that you can do at home, but just because they’re negative, you gotta be careful. So there is, there is dust test, and there’s also these mold plates that, that you can put out. I would not purchase any of the mold plates from any of the big box hardware stores or whatever. I would order them from immunolytics.com. And we can put that down there somewhere, but immunolytics.com 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. How do you know, how, how do you as a lay person can, can go around, but also how to hire somebody to come, come look for you. But it’s so important that you have an idea ahead of time of what, needs to be looked for. But the simple things that you can do would be putting out mold plates or agar plates. And then the other is there’s a, a dust sampling test it’s called a swiffer or excuse me, it’s called an ERMI Environmental Relative Mold Index that uses a swiffer, and different companies that do that. I’m blanking on the name of the one I use. I just push the button on my computer. I’ll think of it in a. No, all pros, They’re actually a company that, that come can come assess your house. And they do some re remediation. But with the Environmental Relative Mold Index, you can get a dust sample from around your house. There’s instructions with how to do it, to see do you have some of the bad agar 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 cleaned, but those are two simple things 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 in an office building just getting some of those immunolytics, agar plates and putting ’em 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 gotta do something to address this, can be helpful. Now molds grow in every house, there’s molds everywhere, but it’s the type of molds and if it the wet water damage kind that you’re looking for? And so you want to use either an ERMI test or a agar plates, if you’re gonna 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 some dust sampling to get a better idea. But I think the best thing to do, if you have suspicion of it, you can, you, 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 to help you figure out what are, what’s the next things to do?

Heather Sandison, N.D.

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 interests. So there’s the landlord’s interest. Who maybe is not super excited about having to fix it, the drywall behind the sink or under the floorboards or whatever it is. Right? And they don’t wanna take responsibility or take on the, the liability of paying for someone’s healthcare, especially when it’s associated with this.

Margaret Christensen, M.D.

Yeah.

Heather Sandison, N.D.

And then there’s your interest, right? Like what are the patient in front of us? And certainly you and I share the perspective that like your health as my patient, is what’s the priority. And so we wanna make sure that the environment you’re in is supportive of that health. And so our standards are gonna be very different.

Margaret Christensen, M.D.

Right.

Heather Sandison, N.D.

And there are going to be mold experts on both ends of that argument. And you wanna be careful. You are choosing to engage with the professionals in this space who also have your health as their highest priority.

Margaret Christensen, M.D.

Yes. And that’s why I would suggest isei.org, because these are indoor air quality professionals who have been really spent a lot of time educating in themselves in this arena. I also wanna say that that, 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 standpoint, 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 you’re in, but you want to be ideally for recovery in as clean as space as you can be. And 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, particularly apartments and college towns, and, you know, that’s one of the challenges is there there’s lack of accountability in a lot of, you know, larger apartment complexes, et cetera. 

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 home, and all they did was suction up the water. And, you know I, this is before I knew anything before I knew that, okay, well, it, you know, at, at that point, it probably wicked halfway up the walls and, you know, and it wasn’t until about three months later and all of a sudden just smelled really bad in this apartment, and I was getting sicker and sicker and sicker and having hot flashes and slits. And again, started having all these hormonal symptoms and, and that’s, I ended up going see Dr. William Ray who is one of the pioneers in the whole field of environmental medicine. He’s here in Dallas was, and he, I had the highest levels of trichotoxins he’d ever seen. So it was, so I just wanted to make the point that you can have multiple exposures over a long period of time. I think the other real important piece that goes with mold and mycotoxin exposure is antibiotics. because antibiotics themselves, where did penicillin come from?

Heather Sandison, N.D.

Yeah, it’s a mold. It kills bacteria.

Margaret Christensen, M.D.

Yeah. Right. It came from penicillin, the mold penicillin. And how do antibiotics work? While they work by attacking the cell membrane of the bacteria and getting into it and helping 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, they’re getting ear infections, they have autoimmune issue. 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 then candida, whatever you wanna call it itself can produce mycotoxins called gliotoxins. 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.

Heather Sandison, N.D.

And then this also speaks a little bit too. Why do I have symptoms? But my husband who sleeps 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 exactly what you’re describing. Right? Well, you weren’t together your entire life, so you didn’t have all the same exposures. 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 mold toxicity symptoms, of the muscle activation of more debilitating symptoms in patients who also have a lot of childhood trauma. Is that what you see as well?

Margaret Christensen, M.D.

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 overactivation and your adrenals are on all the time, and you’re constantly in the spider flight. And it’s very hard to heal and recover when you’re in that. And then that makes you more vulnerable. And interestingly enough of 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 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–

Heather Sandison, N.D.

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.

Margaret Christensen, M.D.

Absolutely.

Heather Sandison, N.D.

What’s interesting is all of these things that we’re discussing, you know, alcohol toxicity, potentially traumatic brain injuries all of these things, depression, anxiety, these are the setup for dementia.

Margaret Christensen, M.D.

Absolutely.

Heather Sandison, N.D.

The perfect brain, you know, the terrain, this is setting up that brain terrain to go towards a cognitive decline. So tell me, let’s go there. What do you see clinically in terms of that connection between microtoxins and dementia?

Margaret Christensen, M.D.

It’s huge. I can’t tell you, I had this one, couple that their adult children brought in and they were, I think they’re both in their eighties and you, they, they walked in the.. I mean, they walked in my office and I could just smell, they smelled musty and both of them, he had Parkinson’s and was, you know, losing and she was pretty far gone already with her, with her dementia. So, I mean, I see this every single day. Again, everybody’s I 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 you know, 41 years old and I couldn’t find anybody’s names. I couldn’t put two sentences together just trying to do something like, okay, wash my hair and changed my clothes. There were so many steps involved. I was walking around in a fog. And so you can see here I was at 40, you know, so you can see if you have that cumulative happening and that those exposures, how that’s gonna end up impacting your brain in the long run.

Heather Sandison, N.D.

Oh terrifying.

Margaret Christensen, M.D.

Yeah.

Heather Sandison, N.D.

So again, with, what do we do to get out of this? What does treatment look like?

Margaret Christensen, M.D.

Okay, well, that’s, so I, I have four simple principles that I have just folks fall because it’s such a big, complex ball of wax, and you really have two patients that the person and the environment living environment or working environment whatever. It can be overwhelming. So just trying to keep as simple as possible. I start with clean food, clean air, clean water, and a clear mind. So we just, we start with our diets of trying to go to, a whole food foods, mostly vegetables, lots of good fat that’s incredibly important and organic. As organic as you can get it, is important because again, roundup 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 a situation or environment, getting a high quality air filtration device, that’s a HEPA filter and maybe getting a HEPA vacuum as well can be helpful and putting, putting one of those in your bedroom and sleeping with it. And again, putting one in all the kids’ bedrooms. So, so that’s important. So clean food, clean air, clean water, same thing, our water supplies is, is full of 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, you know, just something as simple as a BRITA, that’s not the best, but it’s a place to start is important. Stop drinking outta plastic bottles, by the way, you know, if you’re gonna…

Heather Sandison, N.D.

Stainless, glass, ceramic.

Margaret Christensen, M.D.

Yeah. Yeah.

Heather Sandison, N.D.

I tend to recommend the Mountain Valley. This is only going to–

Margaret Christensen, M.D.

That’s a great one. Yeah. I like that one too.

Heather Sandison, N.D.

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.

Margaret Christensen, M.D.

Yeah. You’re getting bulky filter or whatever I have. I’m, you know, 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 that alkalinizes my water and filters it again. So–

Heather Sandison, N.D.

Put some minerals back in.

Margaret Christensen, M.D.

Yeah. Right. So any who I think so in 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 just super anxious. They have maybe have mass cell issues. They’re having a hard time sleeping. And that limbic system dysfunction tends to be self perpetuating. It keeps us in overwhelm. And so a absolutely doing work that helps in limbic system retraining. And there’s several different programs out there. There’s also some devices about it. Neil Nathan’s book Toxic has some very very good stuff in it that can be–

Heather Sandison, N.D.

And there will. So for those of you interested in diving deeper in this, there is an interview with Asha Gupta of the Gupta Program. So head on over to that one to take an even deeper dive, but also know that Dr. Christensen and I, I, I joke with my patients lovingly that I essentially won’t work with them if they’re not willing to do DNS or Gupta, because I think it’s so crucial to full recovery.

Margaret Christensen, M.D.

Yes.

Heather Sandison, N.D.

And resilience.

Margaret Christensen, M.D.

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, 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 doctor to doctor, to doctor, and everybody’s just telling you, you’re crazy, there’s nothing wrong with you. Here’s your antidepressant,

Heather Sandison, N.D.

Which almost creates PTSD in and of itself.

Margaret Christensen, M.D.

Yeah. 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 up some positive, uplifting, nourishing literature of whatever daily readers of some sort doing guided meditations, or if 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 our, we have a negative brain bias. Maybe somebody’s talked about that before, but we tend to amplify whatever’s negative of, and we downplay whatever’s positive. So we wanna 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 function medicine 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 DNS or Guptu program, I found there’s a, there’s a, another one that’s too that’s, If you’re a very faith based person, very Christian person, then 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. I mean, 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. ‘Cause as we both know that we can’t, we gotta work with the mass cells that are just firing off like crazy. And that’s really coming from the limbic system dysfunction. So.

Heather Sandison, N.D.

Right. Exactly. And so have you seen people get better?

Margaret Christensen, M.D.

Oh yeah. Oh my God. Yeah.

Heather Sandison, N.D.

Every day, right?

Margaret Christensen, M.D.

Yeah myself included. Yeah.

Heather Sandison, N.D.

You you’re, those would be living testimony to this.

Margaret Christensen, M.D.

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 fell into functional medicine. And all I did was at that point, I didn’t even know what the problem was, I just change change my diet and start taking some nutrients, you know and then genetically I found out, well, I’m a very slow detoxifier and I’ve got some epigenetic stuff that’s happened. And so just some basic nutrients, B vitamins and magnesium, you know, if you’re not doing those things right there, you, that’s something you can do and plenty of water and movement. And it wasn’t until I had a re-exposure actually. So my mold exposure got me into functional medicine because I was super chronic fatigue. Didn’t fibromyalgia, 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 reposed really super sick again. And at that point I needed a whole another level of stuff ’cause I didn’t know I was living in it. And…

Heather Sandison, N.D.

Gosh! Its like–

Margaret Christensen, M.D.

Yeah. So yeah, so you know, but I see this every day. I mean we have, gosh, God bless. I had this darling young lady, she was probably about 16, 17 who had terrible like pandas type symptoms and was flapping around all the time. And she was severely OCD and she had terrible PoTS syndrome too, which we didn’t even mention. That’s where you stand up and you basically, your blood pressure drops to nothing and your heart rate goes up and you, you kind of faint. And yeah so we just started doing all the stuff that we do for detoxification 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, my gosh, I have so many fertility stories that, that I could tell you about, you know, just cleaning up mold outta somebody and their fertility comes back with their brain, you know, for sure the ability to… Yeah.

Heather Sandison, N.D.

Yeah.

Margaret Christensen, M.D.

I talk really fast so

Heather Sandison, N.D.

How exciting.

Margaret Christensen, M.D.

Before it was like this.

Heather Sandison, N.D.

Great. Oh, wow. Well thank you so much for sharing all of this. I want people to know where you got the name of your clinic.

Margaret Christensen, M.D.

Oh sure.

Heather Sandison, N.D.

I just think it was such a cool story.

Margaret Christensen, M.D.

Sure, 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 the Carpathia that comes along, picks everybody up and starts asking the right questions.

Heather Sandison, N.D.

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?

Margaret Christensen, M.D.

Yeah. Yeah. So I was a host of the Toxic Mold Summit and we’ve had lots of people view that, if you want something to really kind of just dive in your brain new to this, you need some help molddetoxdiet.com. I did with Dr. Gale Clayton and myself. We put that together and we talk about just again, how 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 get so many that I have well trained, fabulous people working with me. We are 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 gonna be doing some large online group coaching for this particular issue.

Heather Sandison, N.D.

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 Dr. Margaret Christensen, M.D.’s resources, get that mold detox diet and get started because you absolutely can heal from this. And if you are being exposed to mold and you have some cognitive decline, there’s a very high likelihood that that’s, it’s a big, big, big contributor. So we wanna get rid of it. And the resources are out there to get you better. Dr. Christensen and–

Margaret Christensen, M.D.

And I’ll just put in a plugin that part, part of the recovery can be actually the use of bioidentical 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 smidge testosterone, or a smidge estrogen. So it’s a whole process.

Heather Sandison, N.D.

Thank you. Yes. Wonderful wonderful. Thank you so 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.

Margaret Christensen, M.D.

Thank you.