Recognition and Resolution, Remove Mold To Thrive

Jaban Moore, DC

You know, for me, it was a trial by fire, right? So I was 25 years old. I was healthy. I was a former all American athlete. I was Probably in the best shape of my life at the point when I got sick because I was no longer competing. I was just enjoying life and living as healthy as I could I suppose, to eating cleanly and working out, not for an athletic performance purpose, but for health and my, my health just crashed and I didn’t know why and going from doctor to doctor to doctor continuing to get a pitch of here’s a medication or here’s a supplement or here, you know, that just happens when you’re 25. Yeah. Yeah, I was getting old, you know, it was, it was a little bit of pain and brain fog and those things that erectile dysfunction hit, that’s what really triggered me to, like, search out what was going on because honestly, I was, I was just like brokenhearted thinking like I wanna have a family and a midwestern boy. So you know, like I’m raised to think okay, you, you go to college, you get a job, you have a family, you have kids like that was my path. And I was like, this is gonna be a problem. Like, am I ever going to have a family? So that’s what really put me on this path. And I finally, after years and lots of different opinions found the right one which was more of that root cause it was Lyme Disease. It was worked through that and then bodily functions, pain, brain fog. They all started getting better and you know, now it’s my mission to be able to give that gift to as many people as I possibly can.

Edward Levitan, MD, ABIOM, IFMCP

Yeah, that’s great. Unfortunately, it’s the wake up call for a lot of us that really does it, which is good and bad, I guess, has its moments. All right. So we’re going to talk today about Molden Mycotoxin. And can you tell us a little bit about why are we talking about it? I mean, it’s just, it’s just some little thing over there that’s maybe a little black. Why would we care?

Jaban Moore, DC

You know, it’s funny you say it like that cause I remember back to my first couple years in practice where I had gone through my Lyme journey. So then I came out and practice like I wanna, I wanna be a lyme doc like I want to work with those people and help them. And I remember someone saying something to me about molding. But yeah, I haven’t seen much about mold. You know, I kind of blew it off and then I was like, I’m sure it could be something but I just haven’t seen it. That’s what, that’s kind of what I say. And then all of a sudden I kept getting people that kept getting sicker and sicker and sicker. And I started looking at patterning and this is a little before the big mold craze that I feel like it is kind of there now, even though the mold craze is probably for us, it’s not necessary for like the whole world, right? Like we hear about mold a lot but mold is this, this wrecking ball is what I call it. 

It is so powerful, it is so strong and it’s so hidden because it’s hard to put a finger on it because it’s either non visible. You can’t see it because inside of a wall you don’t necessarily always smell it, but it is a neurotoxin and neuro inflammatory toxicity. It shuts down your liver, your mitochondria. And I’ll tell you this as a guy that went through lyme, I would rather deal with Lyme disease all day than deal with somebody that has mold as far as the fact that it’s just more difficult. Like I do love working with more clients now, but it’s just lime is easier because mold. You gotta talk about where you live or have you lived? Are you in a safe environment today? What food are you eating? We get to talk about with mold. You know, what’s your genetic factors that may make you more sensitive to mold or where you’re going into hotels? And I mean, just to put this out there for people, mold has been used as a bio weapon in an immuno suppressant medicine. So that’s how powerful mold can be.

Edward Levitan, MD, ABIOM, IFMCP

Don’t forget kids in school houses and schools.

Jaban Moore, DC

Oh, gosh, that’s the thing that really kills me. You know, I’ve got a kid that was in school and she was depressed and anxious and cutting herself and nauseous and, and losing weight and then she started developing O C D and food avoidance is, and I mean, the list could just go on, I could just talk and talk and talk and we’re trying to figure out these multiples and the parents were whatever it takes kind of parents. So they tested their home, immaculate. Perfect. I went to school and it was 10 times higher than the top of the range. And it hurts me because that we just started, it hurts me at the school and that’s a type of mold test using dust collection for those that didn’t know 10 times higher when she moved out there. Within three weeks, her neurological symptoms were cut in half.

Edward Levitan, MD, ABIOM, IFMCP

Yeah. Isn’t it scary? So, let’s talk about that. I mean, yeah, I don’t know how many kids I’ve seen that either have mold or lyme that not a PROzac deficiency. That it’s scary how many people, how many kids are on medicine when they really have something going, real, going on. So it hurts my heart. So let’s talk about how do you test? Because that’s not that easy either.

Jaban Moore, DC

No. So for me, it’s a multitude of different processes. So I’m gonna take all your symptoms. Of course, I’m gonna see what those symptoms are with mold. A lot of times symptoms can be vast. They’re gonna cause those fatigue and brain fog symptoms, anxiety, even to the level of like paranoia or disassociation. I see a lot of brain symptoms with mold. So I look at the symptoms and the assessments but then when it comes to the lab testing, which is, I think the target, your, your question was going toward there’s different testing like Ritchie Shoemaker came out with which is the C four a.m. S H V I P. These are different blood labs that are markers oftentimes you can I associated for people when I’m trying to explain it to inflammation markers or immune system markers. So you’re looking for a change in those, those pieces inside your body. But then there’s also urine testing where you can test for different particles coming out through urine. 

So you’re looking to save for a mycotoxin, which is a particle that mold releases. And that mycotoxin could be named Okra toxin A. And we’re looking for that in your urine. And that’s one way to do it and none of the testing is perfect by the way. But then the last way that I use is using organic acid testing. And there’s a few organic acids that have been now correlated with different types of mold colonization or mold inside your body. So you can find Aspergillus or for Siri in those forms in the body that way. So those are kind of my more direct ways. But then now being that I’ve been doing this for years and I just see a lot of patterns. 

I love finding patterns if I look at an organic acid test or any sort of testing that is directed toward mitochondria. And if I see suppression in your mitochondria, the first two things that come up in my brain is, is this person living in a place where they’re drinking radioactive water, which about half of the United States is. If you look at EWG.org, just go look and see what’s in the water supply, you might find uranium raid on those sorts of things. They’re living in a basement that’s full of raid on or mold. 

Those are my two go tos when I see a lot of suppression and mold. So if your organic acid test has more than 2-3 markers, that’s one of the first places I’m gonna start just looking into for you to go. Is this something that’s possible for that person? So those are some of my favorite ways to test for mold. None of them are perfect because if your body is too stressed out and it’s depleted for minerals and you don’t have the ability to detoxify at the time or maybe you moved out of mold. So now you don’t have fresh mold coming in. That urine test might be negative without some provocation. I don’t love provoking. It is something that can be done, but I don’t love to provoke because sometimes if you provoke now you send that client into a detox reaction. So there’s a lot of different things that a person can have done for them to find mold. Just make sure you find a good practitioner that understands what they’re doing with these tests and how to interpret them for the conditions that you’re in. And that’s the biggest importance. I tell people with mold testing, like you can’t find it. You just need to get the right practitioner to help you get there because depending upon your body and its strength, you have to test differently.

Edward Levitan, MD, ABIOM, IFMCP

Yeah. How so that’s inside the body, which is phenomenal. And as far as I know, I think you do need a practitioner provider. Most companies don’t allow from the, directly from consumers. If you see some black mold and you’re worried about it. You were talking, what are the ways we can test our house? What are the ways? How, what kind of tests can we do? Because that’s should we be worried by a little patch of black or is it, or because we had an ice dam or musty smelling basement? How do we know? It’s actually maybe it’s just a little musty maybe, but it doesn’t necessarily have to have mold. So, how do we know?

Jaban Moore, DC

Yeah. So testing the home, first thing I’m gonna say is do not call the guy down the street that does all the real estate tests, right? I have a hobby. I like to do a little real estate on the side because it’s somewhere that I can put my hands on when it, when it comes to like, you know, investing, I don’t like the stock market and here’s what I have found real estate type mold inspectors job it’s just let you sell your home. So when they come in, they drop air test at the center of your room and one room of your house and that’s it and it comes back negative. It doesn’t really mean anything because you mentioned black mold, black mold is heavy. So the mycotoxins that are released are heavy. 

They drop to the floor, they don’t float across the air to get to this air testing machine. Now, some molds do. But if you take an air sample against a wall versus in the center of the room, there is a significant difference and the amount of mycotoxins that are found. And a friend of mine has done this, that was an inspector. He’s like, I’m gonna put one in the middle of the room and then put one touching the wall and, and in the middle of the room it’s clean, touching the wall. It was like burn the house down so very different there. 

So I don’t like air testing. I prefer dust, cloth sample testing like an er, me or hurt me if you want to be on the lower end of cost. So those are a few $100. If you want the best option, you call a building biologist which is gonna come in, they’re gonna do dust samples, they’re gonna do moisture meters, they’re gonna have, which is like an infrared gun they’re shooting at the wall so that you can actually see if there’s some sort of moisture issue. They can do dampness checks in, through like the light socket where they test the inside that wall. They can do air samples that way also. And they’re gonna do multiple different samples around your home, not just in one singular room, but of course, when I just said all that you probably like, well, of course, that’s gonna cost more than the dust samples. So, with my clients, I often start with that, er, me test which is a dust sample. We do a dust sample and I’ve come up with my version of the rules. This is not an army rule, but I say if you have a giant house, you can do more of them. So every 1000 square feet we’re gonna do another army. So if you live in a mansion, I’m sorry, you’re going to do a few more. Yeah, it’s just part of the deal, right? Your electric bill is higher. So is your army cost? And that’s just where I’ve gone with it. And that gives me a good idea because then I can get a concept as long as you did the test, right? Which is pretty simple. 

Find dust. That’s about 4 to 6 weeks old. Wipe it up, make sure it’s really, really like black on the rag. So if you’re, you know, one of those neat freaks like my wife is, we’ve got to make you wait a four week period of time. So I can get some dust from you and then send it in and then I’m gonna go in and I’m gonna read it and I’m gonna say, okay, there’s probably mold here. I’ll help you to understand how to do a little bit of a visual look. Right? Maybe you can find it. Sometimes you can’t. Usually people that are coming to me have already done the visual piece. Then we send in somebody that’s professional to inspect and find that.

Edward Levitan, MD, ABIOM, IFMCP

Yeah. No, I think that’s to find it. It’s not, not easy but well worth it, especially if you’re having trouble. So I mean, okay, so mold is great. So if you have mold, everybody is affected, right? Like they’re all, everybody’s gonna get sick. Everybody’s the whole families. You can’t be just one person can it?

Jaban Moore, DC

It can be so with mold, you know, some of the other pieces of the pie when I was mentioning earlier, you know, like genetics and, and sensitivities of things and, and just how depleted your body is. So there’s genetics that we associate with people that might be a little bit more susceptible to mold toxicity. Some of those are the HLADRG, which is a genetic type where your body just doesn’t tolerate mold was I think maybe the original reason it was found. But I feel like these people are also more sensitive, even chemicals and other toxins in the home. Then you can look at maybe epigenetic testing. You can look at if methylation is poor, then you’re probably going to be a little bit more susceptible also to mold toxicity, but it goes even deeper than that. So I said I start going through histories. 

Yes, genetics play a role, but it’s also your bucket, right? So, the analogy of if you have a bucket and your bucket is empty, you can tolerate more toxins, stressors, whatever it is before your bucket fills up and overflows. If you already have lime and IBS from, who knows, parasites or if you have a lot of trauma in your past or you work a job where you just don’t sleep enough or you eat like crap, you know, that amount of stress eventually adds up and mold can just push you over. So a lot of times I’m looking at a family and it seems like at least in my experience you’re bigger, more muscular people tend to respond less to toxin issues and infection issues than you’re more slender, thin people. And this does not mean that it has to be that way. It just seems like I don’t get a lot of big muscular men coming in when they live in the same house as their Much thinner, smaller wife and the wife is the one with more issues. Now, testosterone, I have seen some talk of plays a role in that, but I’ve also seen as a observation in my clinic, the men that I see are tend to be more slender, not 100%. I’ve definitely seen a couple of guys that were more muscular, but it does seem like the people that have more muscle, maybe that muscle helps to detox them more effectively. 

Maybe testosterone plays a role that, that anabolic muscle tissue. The growth hormone plays a role in there when you’re working out. So just looking at people and understanding honestly, the more stressed you are, the more your genetics are shifted toward poor detoxification or the less healthy lifestyle, the more likely mold is gonna be a problem and it can be five people in the same house and only one of them gets hit first. Now in the long run, when I start looking at the labs of the whole family, you see it coming for the other people. It just may take a lot longer.

Edward Levitan, MD, ABIOM, IFMCP

Yeah, that’s without a question. The canary in the coal mine is really people are that and then, then the rest. So if nobody, everybody says it’s all in their head and then everybody starts getting a little worse and worse. So not, not great plan. So is there anything to do about this like or are we once we get it supposed to mold? What can we do? So when you ask, is there anything to do with this?

Jaban Moore, DC

Yes, there’s always something to do. I’m that guy like you always can take a step forward. Depends on where you, where you are. Right? Like, if you’re extremely sensitive, if your body has gotten to the point where you are multiple chemical sensitivities, you don’t wanna, you don’t leave your home, even though your home is toxic because other toxins hit you and they make you feel worse. Like there’s those people that I work with all the way up to, you know, I’m on a scale of 10, 10 being like I’m not getting out of bed, you’re like a two or three, right? The people that yeah, they don’t feel well, but they’re not all the way there. The first step is you gotta find a way to be in a safe environment. That is my first step that I work with clients on and that is find the mold. Let’s take care of the mold or let’s get away from the mold. That process can be simple or complicated depending upon your situation. 

And that’s a whole deep dive that you could spend an entire hour on the steps of that. But it also comes into, you gotta eat healthy food is not full of pesticide. You’ve got to drink clean water, you gotta put clean hygiene products on your body. So that safe environment is step one from there. Once I know that you’re in a safe environment, that’s when we start talking about, well, do you feel safe in your environment? Because when somebody told you that you unbeknownst your home was making you sick, right? That can create a lot of fear and anxiety which stresses the body. So then we start working on the nervous system in the brain. We start really making sure that the nervous system, the brain is addressed so that your body comes down out of that fight or flight that it was living in because living in mold for some people feel like they’re living in a war zone because their body is under strain and stress all the time. Every breath that they take. So then calming the nervous system down becomes a piece where I go. Okay. So safe place. Let’s figure out if we can feel safe in the new place or the place you’re in currently, once it’s clean and then we start opening up drainage pathways so that the toxins can start to come out of your body by normal physiological function. And we’re helping it with things like brushing Castro pack sauna coffee enema supplements those sorts of things after I do that because a lot of people like, wouldn’t you turn on the mitochondria or get the energy up? Like if I do that too early without opening the drainage, then we flush toxins by turning the energy system on, but they run into a clogged up system. 

So then the drains are all clogged up and then just re circulates. So I open up that drainage, then I go to the energy system. And then we start dealing with the infections or the sequestered mold and toxin that the body is hidden trying to survive. So as we go down this journey, it’s step by step on purpose because this allows the body to come out of the healing without having as many major hurts, timer detox reactions. And it makes sure that we don’t leave behind the nervous system or some other process because I get a lot of clients in my clinic. There have been other places and they did heavy duty detox for a year. 

But nobody talked about the nervous system and the nervous system will clamp down on your detox pathways in your liver and just not let anything happen very well. So this journey needs to be operated with a path in mind. I call it the road map. But the biggest piece that people get confused because sometimes I’m like, well, we can do some of these at the same time, right? Like we can stack them. It just depends on where you are and, and it’s having the consciousness of understanding that you do need to tap into each one of these pieces. And sometimes it’s just a question like, do you feel safe house your nervous system? Are you jumpy? Like, no, I feel great. I’m calm, I’m relaxed. I’m just, just chilling. I just don’t have any energy. I’m like, okay, well, maybe your nervous system wasn’t hit like your body handled it okay. We’ll check that box for now.

Edward Levitan, MD, ABIOM, IFMCP

Yeah. So how do you? So, I mean, I’m most of the time when I see mold, it’s never just mold, right? It’s nice to talk about just mold. Isolated incident that, that you get out of mold. You open up pathways into the nervous system and you’re done. But most of the people that are susceptible to mold have methylation issues. Some of them have Lyme disease parasites. How do you determine what, what comes first, what to do? How do we go?

Jaban Moore, DC

Yeah. So as I went down that road map, it was safe place, feels safe drainage and then usually it becomes a little bit of mitochondria, which for me, mitochondria encapsulates, you know, get the deficiencies in the sodium potassium and B vitamins, the, the different things that would address some of the mitochondrial work there. And then the detox piece for me, that is just this huge wide open place where we have to have the test because mold is such an immuno suppressant that when you live in a basement, that’s actually part of my story. I lived in a basement. I felt like I was like super human until I moved into this basement. And then I moved in this basement and then I’m not getting strong as fast. I’m a little bit more tired and I’m starting to get sick a little more often. And you know, you just start slowing, your body starts slowing down and that’s also your immune system. So then maybe I got bit by a tick when I was a kid, I was always outdoors. So then lime starts growing because it was there in the background. But my body had it under control. And then parasites, parasites are everywhere. Like if you touch the dirt, touch your mouth, you could potentially get a parasite. 

If you eat food, food, just not meat, not vegetables in general, like just food as a whole. Not one specific category. People like, well, if I eat raw meat, I’ll get parasites. I’m like, well, if you have vegetable, there could be a sport on the vegetable too. So if you eat food, you get parasites and here’s the thing, don’t be afraid of food. If you have a normal functioning bowel, an immune system, you’re probably gonna be okay. So you eat the food, it goes down and hits hydrochloric acid, your, your bacteria in your digestive tract, which are specifically trained. There’s ones in there. I did research on this one time for a summit and there are named bacteria like lactobacillus, 5743. Don’t look that up. It’s not the real one, but I just remember it, all these numbers behind it. And it was like, protects against. 

It’s like they’ve actually identified that a good bacterial floor protects you. Unfortunately, We take a ton of antibiotics as kids. At least I did when I was growing up. That was just normal for 80s, 90s babies. We, we stress way too much decreases. Our hydrochloric acid medications. My cousin was skiing just recently and, got a bunch of acid reflux once he comes home and do a bunch of items which just shuts off all the acid that’s protecting you. And then he goes and eats food and, you know, now you’re unprotected. So, parasites are all around us. So, and mold just suppresses your immune systems where all of this it makes you the perfect host for everything. So, for me, at this point, when I know we have mold, I’m like, okay. So we will have Candid East. That’s a for sure thing. It grows overnight. Like, and I figured this out because I used to do live blood cell analysis in my clinic and on a, on a microscope slide, put it on there, looked in it. 

There wasn’t a lot of Canadian, there’s no yeast. I’m like, okay, cool. And then, and then I forgot to take it off because, you know, you just forget sometimes you come back and it’s still on the TV screen because I had hooked up to a TV screen and it’s covered in east and it’s been 30 minutes. I’m like, holy crap. So if you remove the immune system, yeast just grows, that’s what happens with, with, with mold in the body, you just grows out of control, you’re gonna have a little bit of bacterial. This bio sis, it’s just something I see almost universally with old clients. Lyme isn’t on every person. Probably have a parasite. It’s just part of it. So then I run further testing within that organic acid test. I mentioned earlier. It’s gonna tell us about some bacterial overgrowth. It’ll tell us about some yeast. And if I want more information, I love like a tick two point oh panel from vibrant America, which just has 100 different organisms, all the lime and co infections and viruses, yeast Michael plasmas. So that gives me a really broad picture of infections. I’ll be honest, I don’t always run that sometimes when I see chronically bad mold, I see some bacteria in my O test. I go look, here’s the deal. What we know about you right now is from the testing. We have mold yeast bacteria. I like to do some toxin panels, you know, this part of the summer, right? Toxin. So I run an environmental toxin, heavy metal panel through hair. And I go we’ve got environmental toxins and heavy metals. If I just line this up on my road map, we’re gonna have to work from the start. I’m gonna do some gut work. 

So we’re gonna address bacteria parasites and start, we’re just gonna do that because I need to make sure that your colon is clean so that anything that I flushed through, you is gonna make it out and I just start working my way back up the body. So I go from parasites, the bacteria to mold to heavy metals or environmental toxin, depending upon the levels for you is where we’re gonna go from there. Yeast is going to be down at the bottom unless it’s just trying to moderate it. I’d never start with it because again, I think it’s going to re grow really fast if you have all that other stuff in there and I personalize this to every single person. And I’m just trying to give my like general concept of what I see, but that’s kind of the order that works for a lot of people. And it’s just based off the labs that we run because mold is such a wrecking ball to your immune system. We’ve got to do a bit of a clean, just clean house. We just gotta clean almost a little bit of everything.

Edward Levitan, MD, ABIOM, IFMCP

Yeah. I mean, the thing that I want to kind of emphasize, especially for people listening is yes. This, these things are prevalent. Mold is everywhere. And if you have a ice dam, if you have moldy mold, you will, some people will significantly have issues can get lime, you can get parasites. And the answer is there is an answer though. That’s I want to leave people with that is that there is hope that there is an answer that finding the right practitioner can take care of the majority of things as long as they’re willing to do the work. Of course, if they’re staying in their multi home, we both know that that doesn’t really help,

Jaban Moore, DC

Makes it really hard. And that goes against the first tenet of safe place that I have right there. Right. It’s like I put together this roadmap because I’ve been sitting around just trying to think like, how do I communicate to clients in a way in which they see the map to health because sometimes it feels so overwhelming when you are sick. I mean, not only is your anxiety already high and your brain fog is already high, but then I drop all this information on you in a new client exam and you’re like, I got all this other stuff.

Edward Levitan, MD, ABIOM, IFMCP

Right. Well, not only that, but regular medicine doesn’t says this is all not correct. Let’s put it that lightly. You’ve been to 10 2030, 50 doctors or providers of some kind and they have given you something different. So why should I trust you? This is, there’s no quick fixes. I always say I’ve left my magic wand at home. I keep forgetting it. So it’s good to take time. So yeah, it’s one of those. Yeah, with patients with the right provider with this there is hope you can, you can do a lot. So I’m really glad you’re on this journey because there’s so many people that need the type of help that you provide. So it’s amazing. Thank you. Where can people find you?

Jaban Moore, DC

So I am like I said a virtual, you said I was a virtual doctor. So I work with anyone all around the world. We’ve got people in several different countries. And the easiest way to find me is just type in Dr. Jaban Moore, Dr. Jaban Moore into Instagram, Facebook, tiktok website. I tried to make it pretty simple. I’m on all the things so just look us up and I’m not produced free content on all those places all the time cause I literally just want people to be able to have an opportunity to make an informed decision to know that they aren’t stuck where they are. It’s not just in their head and have that opportunity to search out and, and find true health because I was there where I didn’t feel good and I didn’t know why. And I just wanted an answer, like just give me an answer so I can start working on something. So it’s a passion for me to, to educate people as much as I can.

Edward Levitan, MD, ABIOM, IFMCP

It’s amazing. Thank you for doing the work because it’s so needed. Anything else we should talk to our listeners about anything else that we’ve missed?

Jaban Moore, DC

I just really want to reiterate what you said is there there is always a chance to get better, have faith, have hope, do the work. It’s not always easy and it’s not going to always be fast. Sometimes it can take a year or two depending upon the state that you’re in. As long as you keep taking steps forward. I’ve seen people go from wheelchairs, from bedridden from, you know, at the end of the rope to back to vibrancy and it just takes time, effort and a clear path. So keep fighting.

Edward Levitan, MD, ABIOM, IFMCP

Yeah. And I add one more thing to that is it’s a unique path because everybody’s gonna be different. There is no one path that’s gonna be the same for you as another person. So you get, everybody’s gonna have to walk their online. So, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. So this has been another episode of the Environmental Toxicants, Autoimmunity and Chronic Disease Summit. I’ve been your host, Dr. Levitan. We’ve had the privilege of having Dr. Jaban Moore on. Thank you again.

Jaban Moore, DC

Thank you.