Uncover The Link Between Mold And Chronic Gut Issues

Introduction to Mold, Toxicity, and Childhood Chronic Illness 0:00

Welcome back to another interview on reversing chronic gut conditions. I'm your host, Sinclair Kennally, and today I am joined by the amazing Evan Brand. I wish you guys had been here before reaching that recording on record. Just had the deepest conversation on all the things that you really want to know about. So we'll do our best to make this awesome to. Welcome, Evan. You are so important to the conversation right now about mold and toxicity and kids and how to keep kids healthy right now and what is really happened to our population and so important to be spreading this awareness.

That's why I really wanted you on this summit. Hey, Sinclair. It's a pleasure. Yeah. Life's crazy. The numbers are crazy. Even the CDC, who people may not feel 100% in love with them, even their numbers are crazy now, which is we're seeing massive, massive incidents of chronic illness in children now that we've never seen ever, ever, ever. In fact, more than half of all kids now are said to have chronic illness. So this is scary. Now, of course, that number changes based on age range, but I'm seeing one year olds with major skin issues.

They're already visiting dermatologist at one years old. Now I'm seeing two and three year olds visiting L.A. doctors and getting tubes left and right and getting put on antibiotics, which damages their mitochondria and sets them up for chronic fatigue by the time they're a teenager and they want to play sports. So I'm seeing this whole spectrum of issues not only from, you know, things being done externally in the food, the water, the air, but internal things like antibiotics, mold, toxins, pesticides, chemicals, heavy metals.

You know, I've said this before in other places, but I'll say it here to just start this off with a bang is that the most toxic people on planet Earth right now, according to me, testing, over 2000 people are children under age ten. So the people in their seventies, eighties that may be listening to this in general on average, they are cleaner in regards to the chemical profile that we run via urine testing. They're cleaner because the first 60, 70 years of their life potentially were relatively clean, the 1940s, 50, 60, 1780s, even into the nineties, relatively low toxicity in terms of glyphosate and these other disrupters to the gut, then you really start early 2000 things really, really change.

We have exponential growth like a hockey stick in regards to hundreds of millions of pounds of glyphosate dicamba 24D, which was a part of Agent Orange, used to defoliant the trees in Vietnam so we could see through the trees to hit the Vietnamese people via the air. These chemicals are now at exponential levels from just a few decades ago and what that's done even in parts per billion levels is it damages the good bacteria in the gut. Now, when you don't have good bacteria in the gut, now you're not producing B vitamins.

People don't realize that your gut is not only the place where you're absorbing. Hopefully if you don't have infections, hopefully you're absorbing your food. But this is also the literal manufacturing plant, if you will, of some of your nutrients. So your B vitamins, a lot of these things happen. There's some really cool magic that happens in the intestinal tract and those B vitamins combine with amino acids. So that you can have proper sleep. So tryptophan you can get it from your diet, you can supplement, supplement, tryptophan.

Well, if you don't have adequate tryptophan and or you don't have adequate B6 because your gut bacteria have been damaged by these pesticides in the food supply, well, now you can't make adequate serotonin. So now you're anxious, you're irritable, you have OCD, obsessive thoughts, negative thoughts. You worry all the time. You have trouble getting to sleep. You need wine, you need cannabis, you need GABA, you need Passionflower or whatever to chill out. And then you wake up in the middle of the night, you don't wake up refreshed.

This could all be linked back to the brain chemistry issue, which came from the nutrient in amino acid deficiency, which came from the disrupted gut microbiome which came from the chemicals. So when you really picture the domino effect of how someone ends up in a psychiatrist office seeking antidepressant or anti-anxiety medication, you really have to go for five, six, seven steps back to identify the toxicity that started this whole thing off. Yeah, I really appreciate you laid that out for folks because I think it's so easy to gloss over this or just to refer to it like, oh yeah, and it's the toxins and then just keep moving.

But when you actually look at what has gone wrong, then you understand why everybody feels like they do so. And you've seen this. You've helped thousands and thousands of people in your practice. And you were saying 50% of the folks who come through are pediatric cases, right? Yeah. It's huge. And I didn't really market myself as a pediatric functional medicine practitioner. I've had friends like Dr. Alyssa Song. She's been amazing. I met her years ago with Mindshare and you know, she really started my kind of interest in kids.

And then, of course, having three children of my own, now I'm forced to be my own pediatrician, essentially, because we've had not good luck with even the more integrative pediatricians. And I've always been a step ahead of them in regards to protocols for ear issues, throat issues, strep, Lyme, co-infections, mold, all the stuff my family's been through. And now that that sector has grown significantly, now I see kids almost every day, whereas before it was like a once a week, once a couple weeks, and now it's every day I'm seeing kids, which I truly love.

Honestly, I've debated doing just pediatrics because I love kids so much. And you know, when you can take a kid who's eight years old and he's the only kid in the neighborhood who can't ride a bike

How Mold and Chemicals Drive Gut Dysfunction 5:37

because he has so much mold toxin in him that his cerebellum has been damaged. That's the part of the brain over here where it helps you with proprioception. Where do you put your feet in space? How do you operate in a three dimensional world? Well, you have to have a good functioning cerebellum to be able to do that. And unfortunately, most of these children, they've had mold exposure from their home, from their mother, through the placenta, through breast milk, through their school, through their daycare, through their church.

And if their bucket's already full of food and chemical toxins, they can't handle this mold on the brain. So they can't ride a bike. And they have balance issues and they don't do as well in sports. So when you can take a kid who's being bullied because he, you know, has to do a scooter because he can't figure out a bike, and then now he can ride a bike and now he's the cool kid, you know, that's awesome. Like that's really rewarding. And so when you take a kid who's three and they, they're nonverbal, they can't speak, and then you do a follow up six months later and the mom is crying not because she's sad, but because she's happy, because the kid says 50 words.

Now, like, that's incredible. That's the stuff that makes me keep going and prevents me from burn out because that stuff is just it's rocket fuel for my spirit. So beautifully said. And I. I couldn't agree more. And you and I have both been through our own journeys of having to heal ourselves from mold, illness, and all the other things and having to heal our families, too. So what I really want to dove into today with you in depth is the the mold and the dysbiosis connection piece, because you're really eloquent on this topic.

And I really want to zoom in on how Mycotoxins contribute to specifically bacterial overgrowth candida issues. You know, everybody is zooming in and blaming like, oh, it's the Candida kill Candida. But they're really not seeing zooming out enough to see like what are these underlying root causes, right? Yeah. You and I were talking preshow here about like I need to do another summit because it's been six years since I did my last summit on Candida. And really, I'd probably have to go back and listen.

I've probably sound like a dummy back then compared to what I know now. I mean, I've learned so much in the last six years. It's ridiculous, you know, so 2018, when I really got hit with the mold. And so then I look back at all these cases that I was working on five, six, seven, eight, nine years ago. And what we would do is, you know, I was the gut guy for a long time and I still am, but you know I would work on parasites. H Pylori bacterial overgrowth so SIBO , CFO, Candida these fungal issues and yeast issues and we would have really good success.

But then there was this growing percentage of the population where they would relapse and so they would do really well on the natural medicines we were providing way better than conventional approach. But then two or three months later they'd call back and they'd be like, Hey, like I've got this bloating again or this burping or this gas or this yeast infection or this coated tongue or sugar cravings or brain fog. What do I do? And I'm like, Well, let's just rotators, let's do this and let's do that.

And it worked great. But then we had to rotate again. I'm like, okay, we're on, we're on the merry go round still. And it's like, okay, this is the functional medicine merry go round still far better than antibiotics and all the proton pump inhibitors and other medications that are going to lead to, you know, severe issues later, like, for example, acid blocking medications commonly used in chronic gut issues. That's going to increase your risk of osteopenia, osteoporosis as you get older. So if you fall and break your hip at 65, you might not ever be the same and that could be the path you go down.

So I was going down this natural functional path instead, and then I got sick with mold. And so then I started testing everyone else for mold. And now apparently I'm number one in my state and then like number six or seven worldwide for running the most mycotoxins testing. And what I can tell you is almost everyone's got mold, at least the people I'm seeing now, these are a biased population, right? Because they all have chronic issues. They've been they've been to ten, 20 doctors before they call me.

And so I'm kind of biased. But it appears that the vast majority of the population has mold. I think it's probably the biggest epidemic right now that we're facing as the biggest driver of chronic health issues because it has endocrine system effects. So zearalenone is a mycotoxin that's highly estrogenic. So we see lots of women with breast cancer and other estrogen related issues, you know, PMS in your cycling menstruating age and then massive issue in perimenopause and menopause with hot flashes, loss of libido, vaginal dryness, depression, bone, brittleness, etc.

poor sleep. So there's the endocrine effect of mold. You have the neurological effect of mold. Dr. Dale Bredesen is doing an incredible job of now illustrating the link between mold and Alzheimer's, mold and dementia, potentially mold and Parkinson's. Right. So now we've got the neurological piece of this. You could go on and on into other pieces, but to keep it short for today, we'll jump right into the gut. So so you've got the neurological, the hormonal, and then the gut piece. So it appears that mold is really the bad guy.

At the back in the nightclub, he opens the back door. He lets all these scrubs move in. They're going to tear the place out. They're going to rip stuff off the walls. They're going to just make a mess. That's the bacterial overgrowth, the Candida, the parasites, all the things that I kind of was spotlighting for a while, but I don't see the dude at the back of the club, so he's got the door open still and I'm killing all these bugs and they come back in. I'm like, My God, what do I do? And so now I figured out, if you just get rid of the mold, you will play whack a mole, meaning if you're treating these gut infections, you're going to play whack a mole.

You might kill strep, but then staph remains. You might kill Klebsiella and MorganElla remains. You might kill blasto, which is a parasite. But each pile all right remains because you didn't address their partner. Because h pylori very contagious via kissing, saliva, oral sex, intercourse, etc.. I mean, it's very easy. Doesn't even have to be intimate. You could pass this between your family members to your children. So these infections could be a massive, massive roadblock. But if mold still in the picture, you're never fully going to beat these bugs and stay on top of them.

And so every protocol involving gut health, whether you're doing antibiotics, which I don't recommend or you're doing my recommendation, natural herbal antimicrobials, antifungals, anti yeast, antiparasitic herbs. At the same time, we're always supporting the liver and we're bringing in some sort of detoxification support for the mold. So that could be sweating. That could be clay, charcoal, silica, pectin, huma acid, folic acid, micrornas cla, cilantro, meats. You know, there's a million different options now.

Right? But that's part of every protocol. You know, what I think is really important about what you're saying is helping people to prioritize and understand what what they should be asking for from their practitioners and looking for in their protocols. We give people who are like, okay, I get that. I have mold. I, you know, I heard you on a summit or I listen to Evan Brand or something, but and so what should I go after? Should I go to the mold? H pylori I think I have bigger parasites. I have these neurological issues, you know, can I just wait to deal with the mold until we deal with these things?

It's like learn. Well in a way. In a way. You look at this in a different way.

Why Mold Fuels Relapsing Gut Infections 12:40

Yeah, yeah, I'll comment on that. So. So in a way, the answer is yes, you can support these brain fogged, exhausted, depressed, anxious people. We can support them through the use of specific adaptogenic herbs. Maybe we'll pick rhodiola at a higher dose to provide some antidepressant anti fatigue physical stimulation benefits. We may put in Mother Ward for the grief, the trauma, the heart, palpitation is the irregular heartbeat, the A-fib, those scary things. We may pull in pharma gaba to help settle the nervous system at night so they can downshift and get to bed.

We may pull in Boswellia or Ginger other things to help with that act as herbal inflammatories. Or we may come in and provide electrolytes because mold screws up your electrolyte balance and they have pots. So when they stand up out of their garden, they feel like they're going to faint, will come in and support them for that. And then we might come in, stabilize the thyroid, stabilize the gut, maybe using some anti-inflammatory nutrients for the gut, and then putting in like a professional multi organs, etc..

So we'll try to stabilize them and get them feeling a little better because if you're dependent upon willpower only to get these miserable people out of the hole, they're going to crash and burn. So I try to meet them where they are and then bring them up a good 20, 30%. So they're like, you know, whatever. I'm like, I can actually get out of bed today. I think actually I'm going to stick to the diet and I actually am going to like take my supplements on time and be consistent with this. But if you just throw something at them and you don't help them out of that whole first, at least get them to ground level, they're going to fall back in.

Yeah. You know, what's surprising to me is they're the only other person I've heard say that that's our a core foundational piece of our practice. And I cannot believe how many practitioners are essentially telling a sick person's body, I'm going to add to your to do list, even though you're already on the back foot, your Krebs cycle is all kinds of messed up. You do not have enough mitochondrial function to do this. I'm just going to pile on work for your body right now with the supplements we're giving you.

But if it's all natural you know well said that that's that's a beautiful way of you describing it and that's exactly what's happening because I'm seeing these protocols that are 3040 supplements long from chiropractors, naturopaths, other people and, you know, number one, the thing that always bugs me is the protocols are never, well, like designed in a way that they're easy to do or easy to read. It's like four pages. I got a client yesterday. She came from a naturopathy and a chiropractor put together a functional protocol, the actual nutrients, and it looked pretty good, but it was four pages.

This lady had to flip through every morning and it's like in small font, like four of these two times a day with breakfast, but not 30 minutes before, 30 minutes after. And I was like, I'm going to condense this to one table. It's going to be on one sheet, is going to take up half of one page. And everything we need to do is on half of one page. And like that alone, you know, she was ready to cry. She's like, Thank God. So, you know. Why are you doing that to brain foggy people alone? There's not going to be a success strategy here.

And then think about, you know, for practitioners listening, think about how that's going to affect your numbers, your reviews, your outcome, your amount of referrals you're getting. So practitioners need to wake up to this as well because you know, if you want to have a successful practice, you have to make it easy, you have to make it streamlined and you have to make it effective. And if it's not those things, you're not going to get a referral. And so these people are going to give up on you and they're going to say, no.

You know, Dr. Johnny here gave me 40things I could not possibly keep up. And I spent five grand and now I'm pissed. I think this is the piece where you and I, having been so sick, each of us. So we have the ability to stand in some issues and remember what that's like. I think that's part is really crucial, honestly. Yeah. I mean, you know, there's blessing in the suffering, right? I think that I probably would not be as good at what I do if I hadn't suffered so much because every time I go to recommend something, I'm like, How do they feel with me?

Throw in this, Adam. Let me give him a little backstory here, and I'm going to tie it into me how I needed this and how this got me through. And people love that. They like that more than than anything. Yeah, I think it's so important. I always tell people, I want you to be I want to be irrelevant in your whole journey as soon as possible, which means you've got to learn what every tool is doing and why. You know, you got to be the CEO of your own help. And I can be a consultant or a navigator, and you still got to drive the bus.

Okay. We agreed. And I want to tie this back to the gut here, because, you know, what's also happening is that the trauma itself of being sick, I think, can get locked in certain places in the body. There's many books about this that, you know, the body keeps the score and many others about these locations, if you will, of where traumas are being located. And and I believe the gut is one of the big top places where these traumas are being stored. And that doesn't necessarily mean some type of abuse.

Okay. I'm talking the trauma of being sick, meaning doing the doctor's visits, waiting in the waiting office, doing the scans, doing the MRI's, the X-rays, going. I mean, it's a lot to deal with that system. You get a bill a year later and the insurance started out like it's a lot. So, you know, I encourage people to really check in with themselves on that. And maybe you need to go sit under a tree and listen to the birds doing this. Maybe you can do this while you're watering. If you have some flowers, if you don't go buy some flowers, outdoor water, your flowers plant some lavender.

You know, you can integrate smells into this as well. So if you'd like to bring in some orange essential oil, the lavender would be great. Rosemary, do something to try to activate these different parts of the brain. You know, there's a there's several companies out there that do like neurofeedback for children and they integrate smells into their therapies. And so I've kind of, you know, borrowed some of these ideas in regards to smells activating the brain. And what I find is if people bring smells in it, then like downshifts the nervous system to where they can recognize, Oh, wait, I am traumatized from that hospital stay, that E.R.

visit, etc. and I'm going to let that go now because I'm on a new path now and we're choosing to go a different way. And this is an empowering path. This is not a fear based path. This is an encouraging path. This is a path that someone else has done before. This is not crazy. I will be okay. I will be able to get my way out of this. And that's an important shift to make, because if your nervous system is still stuck in fight or flight and you're trying to go into a protocol, I'm not going to say it won't work because I'm sneaking little things in there to work on your nervous system.

Right? Right. You know, I need you to play ball with me, too, and I need you to do the work. So take a frickin bath. Like how simple. You know, I asked women all the time in their forties. 5060s. When's the last time you take a bath, would you believe? It's like one out of 100 women actually sit down and take a bath by. Why? Why are you ladies not taking bass? You can't be that busy. Come on. My little intimate question that saved my life when I was really sick. So when's the last time you took a bath?

I get in a hot tub every night, so. And it's hydrogen water and it's structured. So I get, like, a water treatment on the way to bed. Oh, okay. That sounds phenomenal. I'm proud of you. Okay, well, the average answer is never. And so. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Take take your little speaker in there and, you know, put on some some classical. I really like Handel. If people are looking for a classical, you know, composer handle Handel, he's amazing. You know, Bach is kind of too dark and heavy for me. And so Handel is just incredible.

So, so look up him. Find like a three hour. You could look up water music from Handel. That's an incredible one to put on and and I want you to really shift out of this chronic state that you're in, because it's a vital piece to healing your gut because of the impact of the stress hormone on the gut barrier. So you could be gluten free, dairy free, grain free, you could be working on the best probiotics, the best antimicrobials. But if you're just raving, raving, raving 9000 R.P.M. and that engine, you're eventually going to blow a gasket.

And that means you're going to mess up your gut barrier because of your chronic stress, your repressed anger, etc.. So integrate smells, take a bath, listen to classical, get a massage. I mean, these are simple things that go a long way. Yeah, I totally agree. And I actually love what you just laid out because I really wanted to talk

Stabilizing the Nervous System Before Deep Detox 21:00

about neurotransmitters next and their relationship to the gut. But before we do, I just want to tie this in a nice package here, because what we're really talking about is how trauma lives and persists in the gut. And it's not just bad things that happened to you in the past. It's the trauma of living through being ill. Right. And one of the fascinating statistics that I really caught my attention about this is how your lymphatics, you know, the mesenteric. So in the gut, the lymphatics in the gut can actually scar from trauma and stress.

And it becomes very difficult to drain and function properly in the gut itself when you have this trauma based scarring there, you know, so anything you can do to support the nervous system and exotics as you go through that process, like what you're talking about is extremely accessible. You know, people can do what you're laying out. How do you approach that scarring? Are you talking, adding like limp lymphatic support herbs like cleavers root or you're adding systemic enzymes like lumbar? Okay, kinase. What are you talking about?

It depends on the stage of healing. Right? So when we look at it from the beginning, we just got to get it ready. Draining, like if you're not pooping, you cannot work on your lymphatics. Like get real, you know, you've got to be, you've got to have the exit pathway open because otherwise you're just going to back up everywhere else in the body. So, you know, I think there's an order of operations to it, you know, getting the bowels moving. If they're not getting, you know, they're got a little bit of motility going first, bringing up the mitochondria support.

And then you can bring in things like, you know, Manchester Red Road, I like Baluchi and Sarah Pepitas positives. Those are great to really get at that scarring, especially for women who have like fibroid issues and stuff also kind of that's cool. So so you're going rectal with the lumbar kinase. Yeah, because you know, it's a lot to get that kind of stuff to the stomach acid and you know poor dysregulated digestion, you know that's a crapshoot anyway so. Mm. That's cool. Yeah, it's pricey but it's great.

She's referring to and she's referring to an earthworm derived enzyme. So it's an incredible tool and I think everybody should pretty much be on it if they've had the virus or injections like you really need to maintain healthy Kogi ability. So healthy blood flow and that's a critical tool for that. As beautifully said. Okay, so let's dove into your thoughts on neurotransmitters and the relationship to healthy gut function and what what goes wrong in that neurotransmitter gut access when we have mold driven issues in the gut and you know, what's the cascade effect there?

Well, there's a cool paper specifically about okra toxin. So okra toxin is probably one of the most common mycotoxins that we see. And it comes from the mold, aspergillus and aspergillus is one of the most common molds that we see in water damaged building. So this is a paper I mean, this is really old, but I mean, very valuable. This is a neuro toxicology journal in 2006. It's just called acute neurotoxic effects of fungal metabolite okra toxin. Long story short, what we found is that the part of the brain that makes dopamine is damaged by okra toxin.

And so this is a rat study or a mice study. But the people that I'm seeing clinically that has this, they're abbreviating it as okay, they have a depletion of their dopamine. So when we do a urine test and we measure mycotoxins, we can directly correlate the mycotoxins that they have to their brain chemistry issues. And everyone that has oak toxin, which is almost everyone anyway, they all have low dopamine. And so these are the people that have lack of energy, lack of drive, lack of focus, lack of concentration.

They get easily bored, like maybe they're literally scrolling on tick tock while they're listening to this talk. It's like, put that down for a second in focus and if you can't focus, then you need help with dopamine. And how do you do that? Well, you got to get the mold out of you. So it will stop depleting your ability to produce dopamine in the brain. But then also you can supplement specific amino acids like tyrosine, or we can use DL phenylalanine, which act as a precursor for the catecholamines.

These are the building blocks of your brain chemistry and you could significantly change someone's mental focus, clarity and function within just a few weeks. And this is what I was telling you earlier, is that we got to get people out of that hole first, get them to ground level. These are one of the tools you used to get them to ground level. So then they feel focused enough to stick to the frickin protocol to get themselves better. Oh, I love that. It's just so practical and I really don't care about being a leading edge scientist and leave that to the people that can put the studies together.

I want to see people get well and it needs to be really, really practical and doable. Name in a man and you know, I've heard some controversy about this whole the gut serotonin thing. We talk about 90, 95% gut, you know, where serotonin is made. And and somehow that doesn't correlate to the brain serotonin. I really don't get lost in the weeds of that stuff because like people can they pick you say one study, somebody else throws another study in your face and says you're you're wrong. Here's what I do.

I just focus on the clinical outcome. Like if I was just a scientist guy and I just did podcast and all that and I wasn't working with people one on one, then I probably get a little bit worried and and maybe fearful that I'm missing something because this new study came out and oh, crap, we need to rethink everything, right? Every year it's like we have to rethink everything every year and everything just feels so ungrounded. But I'm grounded in the results, so I feel like I will always want to be in the trenches with these people because, you know, a paper may say this and it goes viral, but then I see the total opposite clinically.

I'm like, Well, I'm going to keep doing this because it's working. And so I just encourage people to to not give up and to not get bogged down at a certain point. You got to you got to close pub bed. You got to close Google Scholar, you got to close science daily. Whatever you're reading, hearing, listening to. Eventually you got to just stop and just trust someone who's done this before and let them guide you because you're going to wear yourself out. I mean, these clients sometimes are staying up till 3 a.m.

researching and then they're burned out and then they've got 50 like debate questions like, well, I heard this and read this and saw that and it's like just it's okay, I'm going to guide you. Yeah, I think that's really well said. We have to stick to practicality steps here. You know, we look at like clinically what are the stages of healing, especially when you have complex gut conditions. And I also really invite people to get a little smarter about the scientific industrial complex. Who pays for those studies? Why?

Why are universities getting underwritten for certain projects versus other ones? You're not going to see studies on some of the most important things that Evan and I do in our practices, because there's no money in it for anybody else to be made because you become independent, you become a success story instead of a customer. And, you know, there's a lot about this medical industry that requires customers to not get well. So there's there's a little bit of discernment that needs to go into that.

I can't stand when people interview me and they're like, Well, if you look at the literature like, okay, well, who pays for the literature? And are you helping people get well right now? That's what I want to know. Yeah. And you know, there are some good papers out there. Luckily, I don't know who paid for them or how they existed, but like Rhodiola, there's a paper on it talking about fatigue. I don't remember the number. I mean, we could look it up, but we'd bore people. But they take this amount of tired people and they get placebo here and they give Rhodiola Rosea, also known as the Golden Root, one of my favorite adaptogenic herbs.

They pulled me out of massive depression in my twenties, massive fatigue. So there's a paper on it and it's like, this stuff is incredible. And you'll find a Lutheran Siberian ginseng, you'll find licorice papers in glutamine papers and GABA paper. So there are there are cool things there, but but yeah, you're right. And there's a big incentive in sickness, unfortunately. And like, you know, I had a family member in pharmaceutical sales and apparently cancer drugs have some of the most significant markup of any drug there is.

I think it's somewhere I've heard don't quote me or come after me people, but it's like 10,000 X markup. Like a vial costs this much and it's sold for 10,000 X. I mean, just crazy stuff. Oh, that's depressing. Yeah. Yeah. I'm only all I'm advocating for is discernment, right? When we're looking at this research and to really focus and work with the practitioner that gets you. So on that note, because you're this is really your line here, I want to talk about treating mold, colonization naturally.

Yeah. What are some of the steps that you recommend people look for in?

Trauma, Lymphatics, and Gut Recovery 29:30

Sure. So I talked to Dr. Neil Nathan. He wrote a great book called Toxic. He's an MD older guy who's been doing this longer than me. And we had this talk, I wouldn't call it a debate, but we had this talk. And and, you know, he kind of acted like that itraconazole, fluconazole, myostatin, these typical prescription antifungals, anti yeast agents would be required to address mold colonization. Mold colonization. The idea here is that you've been exposed long enough, a big enough amount, and or your immune system was weak to where you're now growing it.

You're colonized is a simple way to put it. This could be in the sinuses. It could also be in the gut. So these drug agents, we also did a podcast with Dr. Andrew Campbell. He's another M.D. and he's a big fan of, I believe, Itraconazole for this. He works with a lot of breast implant illness. I see tons of breast implant illness clinically as well. That's one of the main locations of mold colonization, by the way. So one of the important questions on my intake form for all new clients is do you have implants of any kind anywhere?

And a lot of these sick women coming in with 70 symptoms, they have implants. And I tell him, you got to go and get them out. And they say, well, you know what, if I don't want to be flat chested, I've had all these kids and I'm like, I don't know, do you want to thrive? I'm like, I'm trying to help you thrive. So I don't know. It's a tough I don't know the answer to the flat chest part. But I will say this, that the amount of suffering I've seen from breast implant illness is huge. And so when we look on this test, the organic acids in the urine, you're spitting out these fungal metabolites.

And that's the cool thing. The urine provides so much data in terms of your brain, your nutrients like, you know, pee is just phenomenally data rich. And so with that, we can see if you're growing or colonized with mold and then we tie it to the implants or we tie it to the previous house or the condo or the vacation home or the Mexico trip or whatever. And then we come in with herbal antifungals that we put up the nose and into the gut. And I have countless case studies before and after completely eradicating the colonization, not using a single pharmaceutical antifungal anti yeast agent.

So I could tell you that not only is it possible it's extremely effective to do this naturally, and the side effect profile is virtually nonexistent, maybe a little more brain fog as you're killing it, you know, maybe a little more anxiety or depression as you're killing and or detoxing, maybe some more fatigue, maybe some mold rage, some irritability, short fuze. But most of those symptoms were already there when you started. So if it changes, you know, we're okay with that. Yeah. Yeah. That's so important to make that distinction.

So what would you say to folks who feel like they're working that pathway right now and are still struggling or haven't made progress? But you see some of the common mistakes people make in treatment. MM Well the dosing is the tricky thing because a lot of these people, they become very, very sensitive. They either develop some sort of histamine intolerance or massive activation due to these triggers like mold. And so sometimes you run into the issue where someone like I had a woman yesterday, she can only handle one drop of a tincture and she's supposed to get up to 60 drops.

And I'm like, Honey, full dose of 60. You're at one week. We got to get you up there. And so, you know, I say it in a loving way, but I'm like, we got to settle your nervous system down. Like your mouth cells are going crazy. You're totally stressed. You've got all this real estate, financial debt, it out on your plate. Like we've got to work through that because that's affecting this. And if you want me to get better and help you get better in that timeline I gave you, like we got to try to ramp it up a little bit.

So so there's that category of the population where they're stuck at extremely low doses because they're so sensitive, because they're so triggered by their own personal life and toxicities. And then you have the other end of the spectrum. It's the guy who never complains his wife drug him into this. He feels fine. Even though he has erectile dysfunction. He's on Viagra, he's on blood pressure medication. He's on acid blocking medication. Yeah. He can't sleep. He's got a big belly. He's £40 overweight.

He's going bald. His skin looks terrible. He's got dark circles under the eyes, but he's quote fine. So those guys, it's hard to pull information out of them women. You you open up one question. They could take 20 minutes to answer men. It's like one sentence. It's like, I didn't notice much. I'm like, Well, on your labs, we've significantly fixed the bacterial overgrowth. Your brain chemistry is way better, your nutrient levels have doubled. You're not deficient in glutathione anymore. Your mold levels have dropped 80%.

You sure you don't feel anything? Let's check in on this list here. Are you depressed? No, I'm depressed anymore. Oh, okay. So we've reversed your depression. Okay, great. Moving on. How is your weight? I lost about £25. Oh, okay. So you lost £25 and you had that belly since, you know, after college. Okay, cool. How your sleep? I can't complain. Oh, well, before you couldn't sleep terribly and you were exhausted. You remember that? Oh, yeah, I guess you're right. So. So that's the thing I have to work through.

It's either the sensitive one here or that guy. And then in between, there's some lovely, you know, cases that are easy. But the mistakes I'm seeing because I don't know if that really answer to the mistakes, I would say, are probably lack of detail meaning like so Mercedes they did a recall, two and a half million Mercedes got recalled for mold growing in their HVAC system. Yeah. So like if you've got mold in your car and you're blowing that out your vents and you've got, I don't know, hour two in your car every day, like that's something we've got to fix and address.

If you had a leak, you got it fixed, but you haven't really double check to make sure everything's okay in your home. You're just assuming that little target air purifiers good enough like that might not cut it. And then you still have alcohol five nights a week that might not cut it. Or you take a trip and you drink tap water and now you've got new gut issues like that has to be addressed. So I think it's just the details, to be honest with you, like most people can handle the low hanging

Neurotransmitters, Dopamine, and Mycotoxins 35:40

fruit, the probiotics, the nutrients, the mitochondrial support and all of that. But it's the really the extra details or potentially turning over a rock we haven't turned over yet. Like, for example, we had a woman yesterday who we suspected it was just mold, but she grew up in Ohio. And, you know, that's like one of the tech capitals of the world. And her symptoms just sounded too weird. She had extreme sensitivity, EMF sensitivity and, you know, chemical sensitivity and other things. And so luckily she listened to me.

We ran the panel and she showed positive for Bartonella. So Bartonella is a bacteria that could totally derail your mold recovery because it's a bacteria that comes from mosquitoes, ticks, fleas, lice, spiders, and that bacteria can live the capillaries. And so it'll create neuropathy and numbness and tingling and anxiety and depression and mood swings and irritability and mold can do a lot of that, too. So we were pursuing mold, but a year end she hadn't gotten better with some symptoms. And so then we looked there and now we go, Oh, there's Bartonella.

So I guess the mistake said in a shorter way is missing something. That's a mistake because that that one bacteria is going to significantly remove the cap on her results. So on a scale of 1 to 10 without finding in fixing the bartonella, we might have got her up to a six out of ten. Now that we found Bartonella, we're going to get her up to at least a nine. Yeah, that's such a great point. And I love the way you lay that out there for everybody, because I think that happened to so many of us. For me, I added extra years onto my journey because I didn't know what I was missing and it's so common.

So it's why you really need to choose your practitioner for care. Please be super discerning, expect more out of them. And I think, we only have time for one more question and I really want to zoom in on something you mentioned earlier that's so important, especially post injection post-COVID and that's Marcel just regulations. So. M.K. Yes, so activation syndrome, talk about the relationship between that set of symptoms and molds and what people should be thinking about for specifically in terms of that.

Yeah, well, let's look at a visual real quick because this will help, right? Pictures, a thousand words. So the mass cells in your body are everywhere. I mean, you've got them in your sinus cavity. This is why if you get exposed to someone's laundry detergent and dryer sheets like I smelled this morning, dropping my kids off for school, those fragrances, toxins, chemicals, mold, etc. can activate these mouse cells. And mast cells are in your gut, which is, you know, you also have ace2 receptors in the gut.

So viruses can create lack of a better word, flares, if you will. More or more accurately, the term would be it can create granulation of the mast cell and picture these green little buggers on this image here as the granulation. So toxins, infections, all of those things can essentially poke more holes in DIC regulate this mouse cell more. Think of it as a balloon full of histamine and triptans and other inflammatory cytokines and all of these things we're talking about create more of a release from the mass cell.

So the mouse cells are supposed to be pretty chill, but in the modern world, the mast cells are not chill because of the onslaught of these various things from the air, food, water, viruses, laboratories, etc. And now these mass cells are really pissed and so you're leaking histamine out of these things all the time, and that's going to cause flushing anxiety, chemical sensitivity. MF Sensitivity, mood issues because histamine is also a neurotransmitter. When most people listen to this and I say histamine, you think allergies, right?

But it also affects the brain quite a bit. And so these are the cases where people just they're kind of off their rocker. They have no patience. Their fuze is extremely short. And this is not a rare occurrence. By the way, I suspect the vast majority of people with a chronic illness have some level of massive activation, and there's not really a good test for this. This is more of a clinical diagnosis. Looking at the issues, matching it to the symptoms, and then coming up with a plan. If you come in and stabilize the mast cells like have a formula that I use called histamine nasal support, it has Perea Leaf, it has good douchey tino spore quercetin.

If we use something like that in a season there, if we use that and then they're better, they're less reactive, they can tolerate higher doses of supplements, etc. They're less MF sensitive. They could be around wi fi again without having a headache, those sort of things. Then we know, okay, good. It was my cell. Now we've calmed it down. Now let's fix the triggers so the mast cells can stay calm. But this is just to be clear. This is in effect. So like if you just pursue mass cell Marcel Marcel, because there are some mass cell experts out there, if you just pursue that and fix that, that doesn't mean you're necessarily better in the other categories.

Okay. It's kind of like if you. Got a root cause. Yeah, it's kind of like if you had diarrhea and you go and take something to stop the diarrhea, did you truly fix the diarrhea? No, because you just stopped it from happening so you could stop these mast cells from firing by stabilizing them using nutrients, natural antihistamines, prescription antihistamines. But you still got to work backwards to what really set this whole thing off in the first place. And that's, I think, another mistake where people get stuck or they end up on this plan that they're afraid to get off of because they can't because the plan is more of a Band-Aid, which is a natural Band-Aid better than a pharmaceutical Band-Aid, but still a Band-Aid.

Yeah, that's a really well, that's a great way to put it. So let me say one thing real quick. Last thing. Okay. This is important. Ketamine. Ketamine is an incredible tool. So it's an anesthetic. It's been around for a long time. There's a lot of clinics popping up everywhere. You can price shop on this. Typically, a nurse, psychotherapist are on staff. You get an I.V. 1 to 2 hours. I've done a podcast on it. You could look it up. Even brand ketamine talked about it for an hour with a lady named Dr.

Stephanie Coleman, who runs a clinic on this. And it's an incredibly transformative tool to reset the nervous system like no other tool I've ever seen. Ever. So this is something that you may need to integrate if you're just really, really stuck in the hole. Awesome. Yeah, I think that's a great point. I mean, there's a lot of gems that we covered today for folks who are suspecting, well, toxicity experiencing massive activation syndrome. And it really stuck, as you describe it in the hall.

Natural Mold Treatment and Common Mistakes 42:00

I need to get back to ground level in order to do the deep healing in there. Practitioners are skipping that chapter, so thank you so much for your wisdom today. Evan. I just love your heart and your commitment to your patient population and really spreading the word about this piece. It it's it's a scary thing to look at our population today and look at how fast people have gotten sick. But the good news is the tools are there. We just need to up our game as practitioners and people need to get more discerning about how they're spending their time getting well.

Yeah, amen to that. We could do 2 hours together. Can I comment on the practitioner thing or we got to go. Absolutely. Do it. Okay. Okay. So, you know, practitioners are people too. You know, we have our own issues with ourselves because that's likely why we got into this, because we were suffering and we wanted answers. And, you know, we have children that can wear us out and we're focusing on the kids and all of that. So just try to give back the same love that you expect. I mean, it's the golden rule, right?

That that's what it that's what it boils down to because, you know, I see the good, I see the bad, I see the ugly, you know, these people that can't help the way they are because they're so sick and angry of being sick and angry and so sometimes you get these novels, novels, novels of symptoms. I mean, as long as the Bible. Yeah. And then they want you to tell them what to do next via email, and then. That's not possible, guys. Okay. Let's set some patience here. And then and then if you don't reply or if you reply like simple or like you don't give them the answer they want to hear and you don't write a Bible back then there's an issue.

And so these things, as you know, get tricky, get complicated. So just talk with them, talk with your people, talk this stuff out. It's easy in the digital world to want to just hide behind your keyboard, your screen and voice, to text all your anger, but have these heart to hearts like this if you can face to face like that. And you'll find that a lot of your issues worries, things like that, get settled pretty quick. Yeah, that's a really beautiful point to end on. We've been really intentional about who we take into our practice for this reason and our students.

We train everybody up in our marketing before we even let them in. Like there's no whining in our forums, there's no blaming the practitioners, there's hey, we're on the same side, we're working on this project together and you're taking full responsibility so that we can hold the container and help you or you're not ready yet. And that's okay to but you know, there's a fine line between service and burnout. And that line is, you know, what you make of it. It's about one hair thick. Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

So if I'm going to come at this with all the depth of my love and strategy and commitment, then and then I require that in return from our students and our clients. Which is which is beautiful, that you're doing that now. Could you do the other thing, though? Could you put a wall up completely, turn yourself into a soulless, heartless robot and maybe last a little longer? Yeah, but that's not what people need and not what people want. People want that heart. Like my wife yesterday was listening, I guess, to some of my calls, and I came out after work and she's like, God, you were really passionate today.

And I'm like, Yeah, have to be. And so that was kind of cool that she was paying attention to that. That's so nice. I love that. Yeah, this is so this is really interesting. And one of the I had two clients last month that really kind of contrasted things very intensely and this this actually sparked a couple of new, new policies in our practice. Oh, one of them was an amazing woman who is a real go getter. She was like basically a professional, sick person. For a couple of decades, she's been through a ton of surgeries, every natural and allopathic practice there is, and it all started with mold for her and Lyme as a kid that went undiagnosed.

She has made so much progress in the last six months with us. She's like a whole new person. And then she had to take two trips, one for work, one for family. Both were high mold environments, and she crashed. And while she was crashed, she had to say goodbye to a very close member. And she was actually with this woman as she passed through. And the the confluence of these events really sparked a very real suicidal experience for her, where she was like, what is the meaning of this life where I made so much progress?

Finally, I thought I was out of it. And then, you know, these things happen. And the veil just felt very thin for her between worlds at that time. Now, she came to us in her next session presenting this problem, and she had total responsibility for she said, I need help. I need help. I have been suicidal for the last few weeks. I, I wanted to be your star client. And I feel I am I made so much progress and I'm in a really scary place right now. And she took full responsibility for it. It was easy.

It was effortless to witness that and be there with her, you know? Well, no problem. I got her through that up and out of it and on to the next chapter because we fixed the crash, we changed protocol. Boom, boom, boom. You know, gave us some new nervous system support tools. Didn't cost me any energy because she took full responsibility for her experience. Now, not a client went into a mass sell spend blamed us. We got the volume, the novel. You made me do this, you blah, blah, blah. And was like, Oh, okay, we're going to settle you down and we're going to support you through this crash and then you're going to exit our practice because my nervous system is cannot handle that email coming in at 930 at night.

And you expecting a response? Because I'm not available to anybody else if I don't respect my own energy boundaries and I'm not. It's hard. I can't take the fall for you, you know? Turns out, you know, she made some interesting choices on Memorial Day weekend. There was drinking. She went right into a parasite full moon crash and she wasn't taking responsibility for it. Okay. All right. It's hard. It's hard. Oh, the for the other woman. Hopefully she does pull out of it. But she'd be an incredible candidate for ketamine because and that was actually in Dr.

Nathan's book, The Toxic Book, about ketamine. He not he didn't write it, but another doctor wrote the little ketamine section in there. And, you know, that's what got me interested in trying. It was you know, it had mentioned because I've seen that as well. And I'm like, okay, what do I do? This is scary. Like, do you call the suicide hotline? Like, what do you do for these people? Right? Like, this is crazy. When they're threatening that, they're going to end it if you don't fix them. Like, that's scary.

So I wanted to see it because it was sad that it could take the suicidal feelings. Thoughts, let's say ten is hand me the gun and one is nothing. It could take someone from a ten to a one or a zero in one session. So I tried it and it's true, and I've seen it clinically time and time again. So if someone is at the end of the rope like that, literally, then would be a good tool to hopefully save them from that. A great point. Thank you for underscoring that. I think that's really important right now.

I mean, I was suicidal so many times in my own healing journey. I'm not afraid to talk about that. I think it's really important to demystify this piece. Mold can do that to you. What do you think it was for? You think it was mold? I know it was mold. And I also know that it was my mercury amalgam fillings. Because I did an improper detox, I still had one amalgam filling left and I high dosed cilantro tincture and, you know, tossed back a handful of color. Ella and I immediate I was in the kitchen standing in front of the knives and I had to run out of the kitchen and throw myself into the couch because my immediate instinct was to pull out a knife and stab myself with it wholly.

Isn't that insane? Yeah. Oh, my God. I'm telling you, those those toxins will really cause a lot of things. So typically there's there's quite a few different ones I use, but we'll use like some herbal antipsychotics during these type of episodes like that because yeah, it's, it's crazy the stuff I hear, you know, people like I just had this feeling, oh,

Mast Cell Activation, Ketamine, and Emotional Safety 50:00

one quick story. I know we could go 2 hours. Sinclair, come on. You got to make this interview longer, okay? So. Okay, we just have to keep going. All right? All right. So during a mold lyme detox protocol with a man in Colorado, he owned a contracting company, and he apparently was up on a commercial building that he was working on. And he was two or three stories up under construction. I was his head is. Yeah, he walks, he survives but he walks to the edge of the building is like that looks really nice down there.

I think I'm going to go for it and luckily he did not. And so obviously his wife, you know, emails, calls, frantic, etc., he told me that he almost jumped off the building today. And so we look at his protocol and, you know, we have things what I think are incredibly dialed in. I mean, this is incredibly unusual, the way I stabilize adrenals and everything, right? This is like totally out of character for for one of my protocols and in apparently he wanted to, quote, get better faster. So he 10x the dose of the lyme tincture.

So let's say I had him at two drops or two squirts of something he was doing 20. So he literally was doing ten times more than what I told him to. And I was I suspect it was likely just massive, massive die off from the Borrelia. And I was like, dude, don't ever do that again. Let's turn the dose down and then let's add this herbal for, you know, for these feelings. And luckily he has never been like that since. But it it gets dicey quick that mold and toxins and mercury. Holy smokes. I'm so glad you're sharing this, too, because this is a there's a very real emotional frequency that comes along with your neurotransmitters getting messed with by these toxins.

They come with, they pack such a punch. And it's why you cannot go to a practitioner that's had like a idk lation weekend seminar ends like hey let's let's flush out that mercury real quick. That's not how this works. You are playing with fire and you need to actually really set the groundwork, prepare the body, and then really emphasize safety all times and pre educate your clients and patients what to expect. Like my people who are the best fit for us in our practice and our students are very aware of the emotional component that comes with the root causes.

And while they're experiencing it and sometimes there's no shortcut out of that, you know, you got to pull through it, support the mitochondria, settle the nervous system down, settle the muscles down, get through it. But your what you have control over is remembering that your response well for your experience. Right. And that you do have options and like, okay, this is not necessarily me. This is not my story about life. I've been poisoned and I'm having a really logical response to that. That that's I mean, how simple is that?

I've been poisoned. Yeah, well, it's hard to recognize that when you're in the fog. Yes, it is. It feels normal if what? It felt natural for you to take that knife and do that. It's like, yeah, just just a knife. Yeah. And I don't mind telling you, when I was detoxing mold, I would step out into traffic. We were right in the downtown Ashland, Oregon area. I was like, That's where we lived. And it was really cute, very quiet town, but it was a big highway running through it. And so to get home, you know, we I would have to cross this highway.

And I stepped out in front of trucks more times than I could count. I would have to yank me back. It just so it felt natural. It. It did. And you were hoping they would just plow you down? Yeah, hopefully smokes. I believe it is so. And you know, I'm not like the biggest gangster when it comes to detox. I'm really not the toughest cookie out there. I'm I'm inherently a wuss and I'm inherently a little lazy about self care. So if I can get through this, I know everybody else can do. Oh, yeah, yeah.

It's just it's an alignment process. It's tuning back into the to the world. I mean, you and I could be totally stressed because this is a lot of heavy stuff we're talking about today, and we're just talking about it nonchalantly because we've been through it. But for other people, this conversation may be freaking them out a little bit, but I'm looking right outside my window here and there's a male and female cardinal right here on this Magnolia branch, and my wife had these little red flowers.

I forget what they're called, but they had died off. And then now they came back. So that's pretty the cardinals checking him out. And then on the floor, on the ground right here is my lavender. It's growing pretty well. So that's cool. So if you get overwhelmed in your journey and you think I'm going to be plowed by a truck or take a knife or jump off a building, well, try to find beauty in the little small things like that, like hummingbirds, like we've got a lot of hummingbirds coming around right now.

Those are little magical, you know, natural, natural fairies, you know, animal fairies that can they can help you through this. You're so right about that. And it's so cool that you're saying that because that's available to everybody. You know, sometimes you can feel really alone in this process and you can't afford a therapist or you don't have one that you like or you can't reach your practitioner right now. So what are you going to do? Like you can you can actually always reach nature. And that's what I used to do, is to look outside the window and go, okay, that tree has a lot of leaves on it.

That tree is doing pretty well. Okay. Okay. I really like that tree. That tree is really healthy. And I would just do this little meditation because I didn't have any resistance to nature. Yeah, yeah. A lot of resistance to God. God, you left me for dead. You know, I was not in a great space mentally, you know, but I had no resistance to nature. And it's a great way to let in well-being. Yeah. I mean, some of my hardest days that I've ever had, if I was in the woods, I remember one time I was sitting down at the base of a cedar tree in the woods and there was just nobody around.

And totally quiet. And out of nowhere, a wood thrush landed right in front of me and just started seeing if anybody looks up the wood thrush song. Just a beautiful song. I get goose bumps talking about it and it just serenaded me. And I don't know what, like what I did to deserve it, but it just totally pierced right through? My everything. And I was like, Huh, okay, all right, all right. We can do this. Let's, let's stand up. Let's, let's keep the day going here. How about so beautiful? It's a great story to end on.

I hope you get a lot out of listening to Evan and I unpack these hidden drivers of chronic conditions. And I hope that you out of this, you take away feeling seen and that you are not the only one struggling through these pieces and that there's absolutely relief to you on the other side of some deep work. And to keep it up and to be discerning about your next choices and to know that you are so worth it and we are both rooting for you. Amen. And Sinclair, thank you. It's a true pleasure being with you.

You're one of the I mean, truly the best conversationalist. I do tons of interviews, and you and I just always have a blast together. So thank you so much. You're you're doing an amazing job and it's a great mission if people want to check me out Evanbrand.com that's my site so podcast it's there and we'll have Sinclair on there as well it's it's free you know coming up on 12 years worth of podcasting so a lot of stuff there for you guys are consultations the. Name of the podcast. It's just my name, Evan Brand Show.

Okay. Spotify, wherever you want to go, I've got functional medicine, training courses for health seekers and practitioners. I've got business coaching for practitioners. So I've got a lot of tools to try to help multiply my my brain. It's so great to see you again today. Thanks for spreading the word, being such an advocate. My pleasure.