The Critical Role of Detoxification in Mold Recovery

Mold Exposure Can Be Hidden 0:00

A lot of people don't realize they've had mold exposure. So you don t have to remember having a house where there was black mold or it's smelling musty every day. This can happen really covertly. I have just talked with so many people for such a long time where yeah that college dorm did smell a little funky or yeah we had that flood in our workplace environment but they cleaned it up right away or you know the school roof was leaking in the gym but it wasn't my room like so there's all these things that like they will start to think of when you query but, it isn't popping out right so I would say don't discount that you haven't had mold exposure because so often people have.

You've tried everything, you've changed your diet, detoxed, even moved homes, and yet you still feel sick. Headaches, brain fog, fatigue that no one can explain. What if it's not you? What is your environment? Welcome to Mold Microtoxins and More. I'm John Bode. Each week I sit down with experts uncovering how mold, microtuxins, environmental exposures affect your health and what real recovery looks like. Let's get into today's conversation. The information provided on the Mold Pros Podcast is for educational and informational purposes only and is not intended as medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment.

Listening to the podcast does not create a doctor-patient or professional-client relationship between you and the Podcast host, guest, and Mould Pros. The content shared should not be used as a substitute for professional medical advise, diagnoses, treatment, And always seek the medical advice of your physician or qualified healthcare provider with any questions you may have regarding the medial condition, potential mold exposure, or health concerns. Never disregard professional medical advise or delay in seeking it because of something you heard on this podcast.

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Welcome back to Mold Microtoxins and More. I'm your host, John Bode, co-founder of The Mould Pros. On this podcast, we explore real-world impacts of environmental exposures, and not just in buildings, but in the human body. And we talk with experts who are helping patients recover from environmental illness.

Podcast Intro and Medical Disclaimer 2:34

Joining us today is Dr. Eric Wood. Dr Wood is not only a doctor, former professor and has a great knowledge and deep perspective when it comes to addressing complex chronic illness. Some of you may remember we had Dr. Wood on the show several weeks ago and it was a really great conversation. But at the end of the episode, it felt like we just had so much more to cover and we kind of ran out of time. So Dr Wood, glad to have you back. Glad to be here, John. Good to see you. All right. Before we dive in, last time, again, I didn't really touch too much on your recent book.

I'd like to learn a little bit more about that if you can. If you don't mind sharing a bit about the book and really why you felt the need to write it, what the purpose was. Sure. So I published a book with one of my former mentors, Payne McDougall in 2024 now. And this is chronicling the legacy of the work of Dr. William Kelly. and William Kelley was a dentist by training and he found himself dealing with a late stage pancreatic cancer diagnosis in the 1960s. Still today, that is a very odds difficult cancer situation.

Back then it was even worse. And so he was really given very no help whatsoever of overcoming this. He didn't decide to accept that fate. So he really feverishly began to research. This was well before the internet, of course. And so he was going through library journals and microfiche and things to literally try and save his life and came up with a number of ideas that he put together in his protocol, which involved the use of high dose pancreatic enzymes. targeted detoxification, autonomic nervous system balancing, immune system stimulation and more.

And so, because I have done a lot of work over the years, kind of the intersection of environmental medicine and cancer, and I was doing a little work in a place where I couldn't prescribe drugs or do IV therapies directly. I was looking into work in ways to help people that didn't require that and that they could largely do at home because a lot of deep chronic illness care takes time. And so even if people are going to Mexico or Germany to this cancer center or whatnot, their work isn't done in three to four weeks.

That can be a real great jumpstart. But a lot of the foundational pillars that support health need time and consistent effort. And so with that, I found Pamela McDougall and decided to train with her in 2015. And then a number of years ago, she decided that she wanted to try and

Dr. Eric Wood and His Book on William Kelley 5:53

publish this work, asked me to help her write it. That's where the book came from. So that's a little bit of background. But one of the things I do talk about in the books is the high concordance of cancer diagnoses and environmental toxicity, including mold. So the connection to mold becomes very tangible because you see all these elevated toxicant profiles for people and mold, as you well know, is incredibly immunosuppressive amongst other things. And that's not a great fact when you're trying to prevent cancer or if you have it.

That's a little nutshell about that background of the book. Thank you. I think that's just fantastic. It's amazing work. Having had family members who have gone through leukemia, that sort of thing, just knowing the wear and tear, the prognosis, it can be really challenging for everyone involved and that those protocols are modalities of treatment. And just the cost for these cancer drugs today is just off the charts. So that's a fantastic place to start out today actually. Before I forget that I will Where can individuals find the book?

If they were like, what's the best source? So they can find it on healthable, which is a health platform that has many great resources on it. Healthable.com. And then they could also find in on Amazon. Okay. Perfect. I'm perfect. Everything's on Amazons. That's great. Well, let's go ahead and delve into today's conversation. Hopefully this works well as we've kind of put some things in some buckets, some chronic health issues, and I thought I'd like perhaps to get your thoughts and opinions on those particular items and then how, if at all, there is an environmental component to some of those conditions.

And so we talked about cancer a little bit. Let's dig into that and some immune dysfunction and autoimmunity and those sorts of things. Let's talk about if there is some of that causal relationship, and then also, why is that missed so much in medicine today? There are a lot of reasons, John, but part of it is just the structure of the system and the fact that most providers don't have the training, Too often the system is looking for relatively quick fixes on things that can be easily prescribed and don't really require a lot of time to suss out.

And so when you're dealing with chronic exposures and long-standing issues that have taken, you know, at least months, if not years to sometimes decades to develop, you don't have time to do the deep detective work. And then also because the system tends to be very specialized and people tend to sort of siloed in particular areas, I don' think there's enough cross understanding between some of the intersecting sub-fields, like in ecology and nutrition and environmental toxicity and more. And so, in order to help people with complex chronic illness, you do need to know quite a bit about quite different areas.

And that is, I think, a big piece of it. Also, the tendency to jump towards symptom suppression rather than understanding what are symptoms telling us, and then working backwards to figure out what's going wrong is another facet of that. trying to quickly act on symptoms and help people feel better, but suppressing symptoms in the long run doesn't usually work out so well. And in fact, a concept in naturopathic and integrative medicine is suppression usually just makes it go more subterranean and then it has to go and come out in an even bigger and more profound way.

So we don't want to just suppress symptoms away because they won't really go away. They just will show up in another way. We have to actually get to the roots of dysfunction. And so I think all those different and more factors figure into that. Good. When we talk about in the oncological side of this, the cancer side is really interesting for me. Are there particular molds or micro toxins that you have seen that are, you know, aflatoxins is one that obviously gets tagged with liver cancers oftentimes, but are there other micro-toxin that's you see that is problematic as it relates to cancer diagnosis?

I think so many of them are problematic because they don't just have one mechanism of damage. there's the immunosuppressive quality to many of them. There is the free radical generating property to so many them and for those unfamiliar, free-radicals are these unpaired electrons in our body that go around and try to steal other electrons from other areas and it causes instability and damage in the body. So that's part of it. Also, some of the surface they don't appear to be as bad, but then they work in sort of covert other bad ways, like zeorelinone, which upregulates the estrogen access and can promote potentially more hormone-driven cancers.

So there's many, you know, trigo thesines, the aflatoxin, ochratoxine, gliotoxin. I mean, there Unfortunately, a lot that mold produces and none of them do us any favors and most of the work in multiple damaging ways. And for those that are listening, we talked about Zirilinone, that is a Fusarium-based mycotoxin. So that's the molds that produced that. Then we have, I would talk about trichothicines. That's obviously stachybotrys or black mold. that we all hear so much about. But when we talk about ochratoxins and gliotoxins, and aflatoxin, that's penicillium and aspergillus related molds.

Why Chronic Illness and Mold Are Missed 12:40

And those molds are, excuse me, related microtoxin. Those molds really super common. Now, not every species of aspargills or penicellium will create those toxins, but it's important to understand those toxigenic species. So it makes a lot of sense. Also talk about tick-borne illness. Oftentimes, we attend ILADS, I think. that that's the International Lyme Associated Diseases Conference. We've done conferences every year for probably 10, 12 years. That's a great conference, but there seems to be a correlation between mold exposure and tick-borne illness.

You see it frequently. Now, tick borne illness frequently is associated with bacteria. So why is mold and so commonly found together, and is there a role that mold exposure plays? Well, there is a really important concept in integrated medicine to understand, which is called the health of your terrain. And the terrain is the internal environment that can be robust and vital and disease resistant, or it can weakened and diseased prone and breaking down. And so when they have done studies previously where three people are bit by a tick that is a carrier for Lyme or other types of tick-borne illnesses, not everybody contracts.

So why is that? One of the ideas in integrated medicine is it depends on the resistance of host, and in our case, that's the human, right? So, how is the immune health? How is the regenerative capacity? How's the nutritional status, right? You know, we were mentioning before that mold is so immunosuppressive. It also increases inflammation and damage, so if you've had that happen or currently having it happen, you can think of it essentially as an item that's weakening the resistance of the host.

And so it's not like there's, I think, some magic comorbidity of mold and lime happening altogether all the time. But when you get mold exposure and then potentially you do get bit by an insect carrying this, you're much more likely to get it and then have it linger and not be able to fight it off. And so I think that's where the concordant shows up. Okay. You know, if you have something that is already suppressing your immunosurveillance and ability to fighting it of, you are much likely more to have and to not get rid of it.

So the other thing I would add to that, is that many of the symptoms they both can instigate are also very overlapping. because they are both biotoxin illnesses. And so they create a lot of similar symptom pictures. So that also can cause one to be missed or kind of throw people off the track for quite a while. Well, that makes a lotta sense. There is this concept that we all have a certain amount of toxic load ability. It's the scales, right? So we can turn around we can handle so much and then all of a sudden when it gets to be just a little bit more and that kind of those skills, that teeter-totter kind goes this way, then that's when kind the wills fall off.

Is that an accurate dumbed out version of that? It's the concept of threshold. What can your body handle and what pushes it over the edge? And we all, to varying degrees, have a capacity to handle, but then we also have the capacity of being overcapacitated. And so, that is also a movable target, depending on what's going on in your life, where you are in the life cycle, you know, a variety of different variables. So, it's a magic number, quote unquote, for everybody, and everybody has it. With the way modern society is and people having so much on their plates and high stress loads and everything else, a lot of the foundations that keep us well have been eroding for quite some time.

So that undercuts us, you know, whether we're talking about the chronic sleep deprivation problem that we have, the compromised food supply and poor eating habits.

Mold Toxins, Cancer, and Tick-Borne Illness 17:28

not enough activity, unresolved emotional stress, existential world stress. I mean there's so many layers that You know, we're not schooled very well in how to care for ourselves for the long run. Like how do you care yourself so that you can live and be well till you're 90, right? That's not a class in school. It's something we learn from our pediatricians or really anybody and generally parents and, you know generations old habits have been dying out and peering out. So we don't have a lot of great wellness tips and more and more people are looking for that and they're trying to take more responsibility and that's great but we don't get a comprehensive education on it and not undercuts everyone.

Well hopefully that tide is turning a little bit as we get back to you know there's more awareness more education today and I think there has been in the past so hopefully, that is trending the other way. Circling back before we close out on Lyme, we do work for a lot of clients. A lot our clients that have Lyma disease are chemically sensitive. So why, you know, at the mold pros, obviously we'd do mold testing, but we actually come in and do a lots of chemical sensitivity testing. We'll test for formaldehydes or like benzene and those sorts of things because those individuals typically are hypersensitive to that.

Do you find that to be common with your Lyme patients in general? And mold, yeah, to varying degrees, but sometimes to the extreme degree that this could happen. So again, when you unpack the physiology, what's going on, and you understand some of these conditions, both tick-borne illness and mold-based illness can really compromise circulatory perfusion of oxygen. So you don't get the deliverance of oxygen to the tissues and whatnot, and you clear the waste away because of bacterial debris, mycotoxin debris etc.

And remember, some of the capillaries in our bodies are barely wider than a red blood cell. There's a lot of extra room for garbage, so to speak, in the pathway. So that can be a complicating factor. Also, these toxins take a lots out of us to metabolize them. Microtoxins, endotoxin from bacteria, we all have to process them all through the liver biotransformation pathways. And those pathways run on nutrients like glutathione, amino acids, different D vitamins, et cetera. And a lot of times those get very depleted too.

So if you think of the analogy of your sink is getting clogged and you never get it drained out and it's too clear, try to put more through it, right? It's not going to work because you don't have the capacity to. And so when then people get smaller exposures to gasoline vapors at the gas station or perfume at The Macy's counter or detergents in the grocery store aisle or whatever it is, it wouldn't bother the average person who might not have a huge mycotoxin or bacterial toxin load. But for somebody who's in that boat, and they have that going on, well, all of a sudden, to them, it is a big deal because their capacity to process is so masked out already that a little bit more isn't a bit for them.

You've cleaned, repainted, and replaced filters. And still, you're not getting better. Headache, fatigue, brain fog? The doctors can't explain it, but your environment can. At The Mold Pros, we specialize in uncovering what's hidden in plain sight. Our environmental testing looks beyond surface mold, identifying bacteria, volatile organic compounds, and even microtoxins in the air that you breathe. Then we correlate those results with your clinical data, showing how your space may be affecting your health.

Next, we use our patented remediation process to safely remove toxins, restore balance, and prevent them from returning. It's more than just a cleanup. it's a science-based system designed to help your body heal by healing the environment first. If you're ready to breathe freely again, visit TheMoldPros.com and schedule your free consultation. Because wellness doesn't start in the doctor's office, it starts where you live. Well, that makes perfect sense. We had a client a couple of years back that had major mold problem.

And we didn't do the mold work at all, but we did go in and do some testing on it afterwards to make sure that the molds situation was. was handled correctly. And it turns out there was some small thinnings, they got that address, but our client actually removed, Dr. Wood, everything from the home, literally kitchen cabinets, flooring, drywall, took everything down to the studs, spin well into six figures on his own. Then once he got the post-test clearance, then they built everything back. His family finally moved in after maybe seven, eight months outside of the home.

And then they were, they couldn't live in the house. They had problems again. I said, I don't think it's fungal and we didn't have any micro toxins. We did that. and I think its probably VOCs. Let's test for chemicals. they said I dont think so. Well about a month or two later, the call back said okay, would you come test the chemicals inside of our home? And we test over 500 different chemicals in that particular test. and came back loaded with all the new lacquers, all of the engineered wood from the furniture, the sofas, everything.

The chemical load in that new home was something the family couldn't tolerate. It was off the charts with formaldehyde. So he went from one issue to another. So yeah, I think it's important. It's not always just mold. There are other environmental contaminants that need to be sussed out, right? Yeah, for sure. Some of my most challenging mold people over the years, they tend to more triggered by the chemicals in a particular space than even if it is a little bit moldy. Like if a particularly woman I've worked with for a long time, like a candle will do it.

just a single candle lit in a hotel room, or if they've sprayed the hallway with cleaner solution, just to wipe down surfaces.

Toxic Load, Thresholds, and Chemical Sensitivity 24:18

It can be a real, real challenge to calm down the cytokine and inflammatory storm that can get set off in some of our sensitive people. And that MCS situation can a rough one. And it's compounded by the fact that we don't have the chemical regulation that need on so many levels, whether we're talking about personal care products, home goods, building and how we ventilate, all of it. The importance of choosing low VOC paints and greener products of various types. I know a colleague and friend of mine from naturopathic school, I remember him telling me that he'd had a chronically ill woman really struggling.

They were doing so many things to get her well. And the linchpin of what it was holding her back was her off-gassing mattress. Every night sleeping on a mattress that was off gassing was keeping her sick. Once she got rid of that mattress and changed out her pillows to not have any petroleum derivatives and other things, progress was like, duh. Yeah, it doesn't surprise me. we have an ability to push. regulation and formulating of consumer goods and other things by our mindful purchasing of what we choose.

And so I always tell people, it's not even just about your life and you need to do this for your health, but the more and more people are aware of this and choose products that are not giving you collateral toxicity issues and always bad for the environment in one way or another. It's going to force the industry to evolve more like that because we can't wait for regulation. Regulation takes way too long. You're going get stick in the meantime if you're waiting for it. So you have to get educated yourself and then make better choices.

Voting with your pocketbook, if the demand shoot, just going back and buying organic things, you stop and think back 10 years ago how difficult it was to find good organic items. And now it's much more available simply because there's a much higher demand. So there is an incentive for the market to do that. As we talk about this testing and understand what's going on in the environment. Obviously, that's something that we're very passionate about. We've been saying for decades that the restoration industry and mold assessors really don't do an adequate job for those that have some of these complex health issues.

So, you know, I've, been on that soapbox for, for 17 years now. From your perspective, can you share how you feel differently? I know you've seen it. We call them pump jockeys. They come in, grab an air sample, and they leave. That's it, they don't really spend more than 30, 40 minutes inside of a home. What is your take on environmental testing? Does it matter to you? Are you able to use the data that a good IEP or indoor environmental professional is able provide? does that help you in how you treat your patients?

And does it get to maybe better outcomes quicker? Well, as you well know, John, a spore capture in the air, ambiently floating around, is not going to be representative of what all residue is in a house. And also, it's not just the spores that we're looking for. Spore counts will give you a sense of, has there been a bloom lately from a given mold problem? And is it elevated comparative to outside? Which is important to know. But spores generally are heavier than air. They will settle over time unless you kicked it up with a fan or, you know.

But it's the mycotoxins from the molds that are what are driving illness and reactivity for people, not the spore as a whole. And so if you're measuring just spores, it is like you are measuring the wrong thing by and large. The vast majority of indoor air professionals are not doing mycotoxin residue assessments. And so I'd lost count at this point of how many patients over the years have said, oh, I've had testing and it came back fine. It's like, well, what did they actually test? Let's take a look at actually what that is.

Right? Because unfortunately too often people are getting a false sense of, you know, safety. And then when you have them do something like an ERMI, it hurts me too, et cetera, and you're looking at mycotoxin residue and then quantifying it in relative moldiness or safety, It can often paint a different picture. So that is, I think, the biggest challenge, in one, educating people on the difference, and two, just the reality of the industry of what's common practice versus really what should be done.

I agree a thousand percent. The approach, there is value. Air testing gets kind of a bum rap. It has its limitations as does every sort of testing. So certain molds, you know, for example, ironically, I have a pretty good mold allergy, so I get this histamine response if I'm in a moldy building. And that's not just molds that create mycotoxins, right? That's just any kind of mold in general has the protein is going to affect me in that way. Obviously, we're talking about chronic illness, and we have certain species, as we mentioned kind earlier, for example, aspergillus or penicillium species that can create those mycotoxins.

I think that's a really important data set. conversations about VOCs, I think that's also a really important snapshot to understand what's going on inside of the home.

Environmental Testing and Better Data 30:48

That way, if you have what we try to do is we tried to layer that testing with a air surface inter-cavity sample testing at that genus level, that spore trap level. And then you go with PCR to find out if there's a pathogenic species and then layer it with the micro toxin test and see, okay, are they actually producing those micro toxins? Um, and in understanding what the chemical load is in the home as well, it gives us a pretty good idea of what's going on. Do you, are you able, kind of the last part of that question was, does that help you having that data set and get to a better outcome for your patient?

Well, I think the more we know the, more, we're not having to guess or just omit understanding. So I would say generally yes, because also like, it's extremely rare for people to have that kind of testing you just referenced when they come and see somebody like me ahead of time. So they're not coming in with knowing the majority of what's going on and if there's other bacterial, you know, mysis and other things, bothering and what the VOC level from all their different personal goods that they purchased, along with the mycotoxin load and spore count, it's usually just the spores count.

But for instance, like from a clinician standpoint, if you have a sense of, you know, there's all these VOCs and other things going on, You can certainly titrate your protocol to being a little bit more comprehensive or aggressive or whatnot, or maybe not so much if there isn't as much going. And then also, depending on what you can assess from your person, your client or patient, genetic testing, looking at their detox pathways, their burden of other things, doing a good intake and getting a sense of are there sort of red flags in their past that will likely really bring up their toxin exposure, like if they were a smoker or grew up in a house where parents smoked or had a ton of mercury fillings or lived on a Superfund site or something like that, which happens way more than people realize.

In fact, I had woman a few weeks ago who You know, pancreatic cancer case and turns out, you know she's native and she grew up on a reservation and the reservation was largely over an area where in the 19th is they had sprayed immensely with arsenic trioxide to kill off grasshopper plagues during the dust bowl. And so this area was just. saturated with arsenic and all their water supplies. We looked up the nearest town to where she lived and still to this day, even after they did, you know, supposed remediation in the eighties and nineties and took it off of the Superfund site, the level in water is a thousand times the recommended maximum safe level.

Decades later. Yeah. This is three decades later after it was removed off the cleanup site. So it's, and this is not an isolated incident, unfortunately. Like I can think of multiple people in my practice right now that have some version of that kind of scenario. And so. There's so much more going on. The more I know, or someone like me knows, just the more we can try and go deep and do as much as they need. Because it's never just a label that comes into your office, like the official diagnosis, John.

There is always more is going and so you have to do the digging. as to what's the backstory and what is led up to this point and somebody never asked about. And sometimes the clues go all the way back to their infancy or in utero. So, you got a lifetime to understand of a given person, sometimes when you're really trying to suss out what do they need. So in addition to author, professor, doctor, we can add detective. Well, that's usually how I describe myself when he doesn't understand what I do is actually I just I say I'm a detective, like if you've ever watched Sherlock Holmes, or Dumbo or whoever, you know, Angela Lansbury and murder she wrote, whatever, if your detective you look for clues, right?

And so that backstory for a given person, can go all the way back to in utero and earlier. What were the parents doing? What was their life like? And you got to build the picture. It's like getting the background of the puzzle to start to show, and then you fill in the pieces. And then, you really start have things come into focus. So, I can tell you in that particular case, she had no idea. The number of people she knew with cancer and relatively rare cancers from an incidence standpoint in the general population was horrifying.

horrifying. And so I was like, go back and tell everyone in your community because you guys are being poisoned. You don't know it and nobody's talking about it. The remediation certainly that was done was not adequate. So you can look at these on micro and macro levels, but just in the house with going back to your original question, What is all going on, right? Is there a big EMF storm in the house from all the ambient Wi-Fi and dirty wiring? You know, that happens a lot in older homes too. So people are getting all this radiation as well.

And there is some interesting research suggesting that EMf may potentiate mold growth as Unfortunately, it's not that simple and sometimes that can just overwhelm people and so a key thing that I try to do and it is a moving target for different people is How do we break it down into bite-sized pieces so that you don't just feel like your head is spinning nonstop and you just have an unending list to work on? But unfortunately, there usually is a lot more than people realize going on. We see that a light.

I mean, it just, It's so overwhelming. And the last thing that people want to, um, understand the, all these health issues with them or their family. and then it's like, okay, now there's issues. With my home. Then it was just almost the straw that broke the camel's back. But happy path for us is and for a lot of our clients is when say you do that, that a clinical about urine test. say for mycotoxins, someone's positive for opotoxin A and to be able to go into the home and say, okay, yep, we do have aspergillus and penicillium and yep we actually have high levels of oprotoxan A in your environment.

Let's figure out why it's there and let's find out how we get it removed and cleaned up appropriately to get them back on the road to wellness. That is definitely our happy path and that's what we're here to do. I want to pick your brain on. So my, my bride of 39 years really has, we've been on this gut health thing for the last two years. I always have the Costco thing of antacids and all this other good stuff and GERDs and All that good. And so that's been something that I've spoken with as long as I can remember, but let's Talk about gut health.

Gut Health, Leaky Gut, and Mold 38:40

I've read so much that the gut is the second brain in the body and all that. Is there a connection with mold exposure? I know a lot of moldy buildings and gut help at all. Well, mold certainly isn't doing our guts any favors to begin. It can certainly instigate heightened permeability issues. So that's where the intestinal wall has too much of capacity of things passing through it. It should be more like a lock and key kind of gate situation on a dam. But if it's been damaged from mold, but many other things, you know, chronic use of NSAIDs, antibiotics, or diets, there's a lot of thing that can damage.

You can start to have overgrowth happen. And what I do see with a lots of people that have had mold exposures is it tends to recruit friends. Um, you know, whether, intentionally or not, anything is an indirect kind of situation, but I see a lot of concordant candida overgrowth and certain pathogenic bacteria that overgrow. And so, again, because it's weakening the immune system resistance and causing damage and heightening inflammation, when you do that, you tend to have other bad things happen.

So doing microbiome assessment, doing protocols to fix the gut in terms of the interface and what we call leaky gut, changing the speciation of bacteria as appropriate, getting rid of candida overgrowth. Sometimes there's other parasites at play. You just have to see what's going on in the case in front of you and then act accordingly. But mold can certainly, I think, heighten the risk. of gut problems especially if you're getting routine exposure for all those reasons. Yeah it's kind of interesting how there's I know of one company that you know we go through we do this gut health check right so it starts orally so we'll do a swab and with saliva and then they do the blood the sample and then a fecal sample.

And then they go back and they say, okay, here's what's good in your system. Here's how we can improve your biome, what is going on there. So you prepare toothpaste, lozenges, the whole nine yards to get yourself back to where it needs to be. I think we're going year two. It does make a difference, I can tell you for us anyway. Last thing, kind of moving up the nasal passages from the gut. Let's talk about MarCons. So we hear a lot about Markons and we've had some episodes where healthcare providers have talked about marcons.

Can you explain in layman's terms, what are marCONs and how it can impact individuals? Mold exposure for a lot of people, like we were just talking about with the gut, can cause dysbiotic growth, right? And because there is an immunosuppressive quality to it, one of the things that it can do in the sinuses, unfortunately, is encourage the growth of pretty stubborn bacteria. And so, marcons refers to particular resistant type of bacteria to certain types of antibiotics. But it's not the only infection that we see in the sinuses.

Sometimes that people get with mold exposure, we'll see others like Klebsiella overgrowth, Citrobacter overgrowth, sometimes other like fungal colonization as well. But, it happens pretty commonly. So, if I were to wager a guess, I'd say probably about 80% of mold exposed people that have had substantial exposure. They'll have a positive mark-on result and that just really just gives them chronic on and off misery, because it's a sinus infection that's never really fully clearing, it can kind of ebb and flow up and down, and sometimes it gets worse, sometimes a bit better, but they never feel completely clear, they often complain of stuffiness, post-nasal drip, maybe sinus headaches, eye pressure, things like that, that you would think fits with the sinus infections, they're not being cultured in traditional medicine.

Like they just don't want to do culturing these days and ENT and other forms in our experience. So we're running these tests all the time for people to look at what's going on in the sinuses. And then you got to deal with that as part of the overall workup for somebody who's dealing with you know, mold exposure is this is a piece of it too because you don't want to leave an unaddressed sinus infection or mold colonization or all the above for obvious reasons. Right, right. That would make sense.

You know there's so much to this and really kind of one of the main takeaways I hope is how all these things are One is complex, but it's interrelated. They can cause another and so on and forth. It's really about taking a very holistic approach and understanding what's going on, and then the resolution. And it can't be overwhelming to individuals. I mean, we talk to folks every day whose heads are spinning and they just don't know where to turn, it seems like it is too much. If you had maybe one or two things that you would say, I'd like to leave you with this.

What would those things be if for a listener?

MARCoNS and Sinus Colonization 44:28

A lot of people don't realize they've had mold exposure. So you don' have to remember having a house where there was black mold or it's smelling musty every day. This can happen really covertly. I have just talked with so many people for such a long time where Oh yeah, that college dorm did smell a little funky or yeah we had that flood in our workplace environment but they cleaned it up right away or, yeah the school roof was leaking in the gym but it wasn't my room. Like, so there's all these things that like, they will start to think of when you query but, it isn't popping out, right?

So, I would say don't discount that you haven't had mold exposure because so often people have. And especially if you do have heightened allergies, like when we had one of our iterations of problems in our Florida house, the last time the reason I knew we have a problem is my allergies got a lot worse. I normally don't have allergies. A ragweed allergy that's not so bad. But I was having to take Zyrtec every day, which I never do. And I you know, what's going on. So sure enough, we found another problem.

Chronic allergy, asthma, suppressed immunity, other things that just don't seem to add up. I would not stop there and think about what could be behind this because again, people aren't ever getting that detective work done. That's one thing I'd leave people with. is don't discount it. And then as we were talking about before, it's not even just mold. It's like, what is all off gassing in your house? So start educating yourselves about cleaner and greener products for your own family's sake, for the environment's' sake.

It's going to pay off on so many levels. And even if you don't have a mold problem, you do want these chemical exposures because in some ways they're quite similar to depleting your nutrient reserves, taxing the system. Some of them can be carcinogenic or endocrine disrupting or other things. A lot of there are a lot things that we can do and raising awareness and then starting to act as you know, like with anything where we begin. Yeah, very good. I would I wouldn't pile on maybe one thing and that's This is such it's a taxing journey sometimes for people to go through this and so whether they use the bold pros or companies similar We always encourage individuals to make really good data-driven decisions.

Find out what's there. Just as you talk about doing the detective work for the body and the history, do that same detective in the home so you understand what that exposure is like. We frequently said that, you know, bad data is actually worse than no data. If you get somebody that comes in and says, Do you report earlier? Nope. Everything's fine. We did an air test and you're good to go. And then how long does that add to their recovery time? Because they went cheap and didn't get the good data and then really find out what was going on.

Final Takeaways and Contact Information 47:48

Great. Yeah. I see it all the time. You know, not even just with, you know mole testing, but with just people being misdiagnosed or not diagnosed, right? Cause they were told like a classic example is, some of the standard Lyme testing right. Really or, efficacy and we'll miss a considerable portion of cases. And so then people are told, no, You don't have Lyma or you don' have artinella. When in fact, when you do more sensitive testing or provocative challenges or whatnot, They do, right? And so, you know, that was my mother.

She was missed for almost a year, a decade with undiagnosed Lyme disease until I kind of got pulled into the fray and understood the degree of what she was suffering with because she kind was keeping it to herself. And sure enough, when we did some better quality testing, She had Lyme and we thought back where she got it and probably my cousin's wedding out in Washington state. And that had been, I think, like nine years prior to when we diagnosed her. Unfortunately, it just happens all the time in different realms.

But having more awareness on your own behalf of some of these things, you don't have to be the doctor, but having awareness of what it could be and just having these ideas can sometimes save people an immense amount of time, pain, money and suffering. Yeah, very good. As always, this is just fantastic. I really appreciate you carving out time to do this again with us. For those that are watching on YouTube, we will post all your contact information, but to put you on the spot, how is it best to get ahold of Detective Dr.

Eric Wood? Can you share phone numbers, websites, anything like that for those who are listening today? Yeah, there's two phone number on a website. The website is drericwoodnd.com. People can book a free 15-minute discovery call if they just want to discuss what's going on for them or a relative and see if it's a good fit to potentially work together. And then we could talk about a larger appointment, but that's kind of a no obligation way to connect. Of course, you can email as well. The business line is textable.

Lots of ways to reach out, you know, Facebook page as well. So any of those, any those work. Perfect. We'll have a link on our website as. Well, so if someone were to go to themoldpros.com and go find a practitioner, we'll make sure that your information is there and we can direct them. Hopefully that that's helpful. Make sure we get folks connected with you one way or the other. So thank you very much. I appreciate you being on today. And for those listening, if you know of someone who could benefit from learning about the effects of environmental exposure, please share this episode with them.

Remember to follow us wherever you listen to your podcast. Your reviews and following us is greatly appreciated. It helps with the work that we're doing. As always, healing doesn't happen in a vacuum. You're body and your environment both matter. Thank you for listening. I'm John Bodie, and this has been another episode of Mold Microtoxins and More. You've been listening to Mould Micotoxin and more with John Bode. If you're ready to take the next step towards a healthier home, follow the show and visit themoldpros.com for your free consultation, because clean air is the first step to true healing.