Mindful Chat with The Mold Medic Michael Rubino

you so much for having me. Of course I love you know, different people, you know, in the space of integrative health and just showing some different insights that most people may not know about. And I think that mold is kind of underlooked. But people know about like a general idea, they just really don't have a dive in. So most of the guests, I just initially say, what's a little fun fact that people don't know about you?

nationwide. We have offices in New York, LA, Tampa, as well. And we pretty much just cover nationwide. We're a unique company, which I'll be happy to dive into, which makes us you know, a little bit different than what your traditional restoration companies are.

bathrooms. restoration is something that is really more on like an emergency service basis. And my dad primarily focused on fire restoration. And where I took an interest really was in the mold sector. And I think, really, the main reason, reason why I did that is I saw this disparity between remediation tactics, which were far more in the construction field than they were really in the scientific or medical field.

And I really, I realized quickly that there were some things that we were missing, as an industry. And, you know, basically how that came to be is I would go on meetings with my dad, and there would be, you know, home insurance advisor there that would be there to adjust the claim. And the way they looked at mold, you can tell it was just like, you know, it's not a big deal for us and bleach on it, paint over it, you know, the insurance companies weren't really looking to fix the

problem the right way. And that after Hurricane Sandy, because I'm from the northeast, originally. And when Hurricane Sandy batter, the New Jersey, New York area, I started seeing people getting sick after that, because homes were not remediated properly. Insurance companies took way too long to, you know, handle the claims. And there's just a lot of problems

that ensued from that. And, you know, for about a decade thereafter, I'm still re remediating homes that were remediated, people are really sick, and, you know, seeing the debilitating effects of it firsthand. That's when I realized like, okay, you know, what, I love the idea of being able to help somebody, not just build a nicer kitchen or a nicer bathroom, but really to help solve problems that the industry seemed, you know, slow to

tackle. So, that was when I kind of dove into mold and really started doing a lot of research and looking into, you know, microbiology. And instead of just construction, because, you know, most of the time it was just rip out this wall, you know, and all is good when you do that, but when you look at it, and you know, mold has roots called hyphae that grow into the structure, you're leaving mold behind in the way in which they were looking at remediation

originally. So, you know, I really just started doing projects, working with mold inspectors that were doing progressive testing. You know, really getting Down to the hyphal fragment, you know, pieces of mold, if you will, and understanding how that could could potentially impact somebody in their health, and really getting down to, I mean, just an insane level of

perfection. And it just led down this path where I started working with immunocompromised individuals almost exclusively, because the way in which I was doing things seemed to be the most effective strategy for those subset of the population. But you know, and it led to the mold medic book being written because I wanted to share what I was doing with with everybody who's willing to learn about it, because I think that at the end of the day, we have to move the

conversation forward. And that's what my passion is to this time. I love it. I mean, you're like we just talked just briefly before, and you were saying the connection of mold, you know, maybe in the health field, we know of it, but and then trying to really where it's actually affecting someone in their home, realizing that the quick fix isn't going to be the solution, just like anything else, as we talked about in integrative health, we talked about in in wellness, it's a process, and

it's a work in progress. And it's not a quick solution. So you're trying to go into to an individual's home, and decrease them from these ailments. Now, what kind of ailments Are you seeing with this mold and what

kind of mold is out there? So I would say them and said, I'm seeing a lot of his chronic fatigue, brain fog, cognitive difficulties, skin, rashes, hives, eczema, you know, respiratory issues, difficulty breathing, the onset of a cold that never seems to go away, right, allergy like symptoms,

those are the big ones. You know, when I, when I, I feel like my job really is to connect dots, and I think that's where I've had a lot of success with, I'm looking at different pieces of the puzzle that's already out there. And I'm putting them together, for instance, the EPA and the American Lung Association, both of them talking about particulat, right. And one of the dangers of that one of the biggest dangers of human health is really small

particles. Now, on the EPA website on the American Lung Association's website, you can go on there and Google exactly what I'm saying you'll see anything smaller than 10 micrometers in particle size, happen to suppose the greatest health risk to humans and animals, of course. Now, mold happens to be smaller than 10 micrometers. And so we're not at that stage yet, where we're definitively saying, mold is definitely a health risk. We're

just not there yet. We actually we actually got there in the 90s and started backtracking.

right? Yes, we're not building bubbles around our houses. So you will have some mold come in. But to say mold is ubiquitous, is really unfair. And here's why. Because there are, there's a big difference between some mold spores coming in naturally from outdoors, and a mold infestation of your house, right. So if you have the opportunity for mold to grow, which we all know, mold requires

water. So if you have various roof leaks or other leaks, and water intrusion, things like that, that creates the opportunity for mold to grow. Now, once that colony is growing inside your home, it's producing more particles, right? That you're breathing in more than you would if you were outside. So to say that mold can't make people sick, because it's everywhere. That statement alone is just unprofessional, because it doesn't, you're not looking

at the full picture. You know, anything in life, you can take a fragment of something and argue that one little brain without looking at the big picture here, I feel like time exactly where we're at in the air professional community.

We're still in the infancy stage to understanding all the effects of indoor pathogens, mold, etc. And we need a lot of help from the medical community to because those kind of go hand in hand You know, you need the professionals like me to say molds a problem, we definitely need to be more aware of it. You also need the medical community to say that exact same thing. mold is a problem. We see it impacting patients all over the

country. And once we have enough agreement there Do you start to see some changes in laws and things like that? So if we if we kind of go back to like smoking cigarettes, and and, you know, look at that it took us 50 years to say, maybe we shouldn't smoke cigarettes probably a health risk. Right, right. Yeah, there's definitely a need in the policies to change a little bit more, because I feel like all they talk about is black mold. And it's like, there's more than black mold.

And you I don't know how many there are, there's probably hundreds of mold species that 1000s hundreds of 1000s. See? And you know, yeah. Yeah, we know very little about everything, right. So you make a really valid point, like, we have this phrase called toxic black mold. And that's referring to a species called Stacie. doctress. Right? And yes, we

know, it's a toxigenic mold. But there are other toxigenic molds, that what there's one that called chaetomium, it also grows typically in chronic water damage. But then there's, again, this confusion about mold in general, you can have species of mold that are not themselves toxic, but can produce something toxic, called a mycotoxin, which is a toxin produced by a fungus.

So once you have a mold species, whether it's toxic or not producing a mycotoxin, the byproduct becomes toxic, right, that enters the body and can disrupt the immune system. So, you know, it's it's very interesting. And I always look at both sides of the coin, right? There's an argument that someone said, Well, you can't really know that the house is, you know, making you sick. It could be the food you're eating because mycotoxins can be in coffee, it can be in food, etc,

right? And that argument is right. But yeah, mountain concentration, right? The concept, right has to be a lot more extreme for it to just be the one dose so that route, a house is going to have a lot higher concentration, odds are the handful of peanuts that you've ate, that could have had some mold is not going to produce the amount of levels of mycotoxins that you would encounter through a mold problem, right, whether at your

home or work. So we make these like, counter arguments, for whatever reason, I don't understand why we can't just say, hey, look, we take 20,000 breaths per day, let's make sure our air quality is really well, so that we don't have these types of issues. I don't understand why we can't make these suggestions to be more mindful. without opposition, I guess it's you probably experienced a lot in the medical community to Oh, I do I mean, you know, it's,

compromised take me to like one patient or one client that you've had and tests that they've done with our medical provider or, or the connecting of dots that you're saying.

That's real time labs. That's the house that there's one out of New York, and I will I will think of it before the conversation ends for sure. That does that the urine testing. And there's also a new technology that, of course, is in Europe, that has given us some access to out of Germany, and that's the epi genetics testing. I don't know if you're familiar with that. But

analysis, right? It doesn't technically cover the the rule 1101 evidence law and you can't trace it back to what the true cause was. Right? So it makes it difficult to definitively say that, hey, the house was making them sick, which prevent into, okay, we need to fix the house. And so I think we need to just get get down to the basics in that regard so that we can start to say, with with a definitive proof, this is what is causing the issues. This is the laws that need to change

around that. So you can then lobby for change. That's why I kind of said, like, I feel like we're at that 20 year stage at your cycle of smoking cigarettes, right? Like, we know, it's bad, we have a very good hunch that it's bad for us, but we haven't really dialed down, you know, there's a lot more study that's needed, essentially, to kind of push

things forward. So, um, we kind of we got sidetracked a little bit, it's okay, I was kind of, and then, you know, a story of like, someone you know, or so one of the most interesting cases that I'm working on now is a woman named Shannon. And she actually using her name. She's okay. Yes. All right, perfect. Yeah. Yeah, she's, she's, she's gonna be doing some podcasts with us to kind of share her

story. Shannon, Shannon, located out of Florida, was actually on a feeding tube was mold the cause of her being on a feeding tube? We don't know for sure. But we do know is that mold definitely exacerbated her condition. And here's why I feel comfortable saying that, because we found after doing testing of the home, we found pretty toxic levels of mold exposure inside the home. This is way more mold, she was breathing inside her house than she would outside

times. Right. So within a week of recommending that she moves out of the house, she rented an RV, he put an RV on our property, within one week of moving from inside the house to inside the RV, about 15 feet away from the house, she was able to start eating on our own again and got the feeding tube removed. So you know, is that a coincidence? Maybe. But doubt, I don't know. I don't know the reason I I can see where you're coming from it. So hear me on

the provider side, right. So we do a test, we test for mold, we may think that may be a success susceptibility. There may be other tests, and I might look in the GI map. But their g her gi gastrointestinal tract is probably been disrupted and inflammatories, leaky gut things that might have, you know, been disrupted from all of that mold exposure? And of course, she's not going to want to eat, you know, being removed from that environment might have decreased her inflammation, inflammatory

response. And that could have I mean, is it a yes or no, but it does sound coincidental. Also, her overall psychological brain fog might have changed, so then it might have given her mood better. So when I look at it medically, it does make there is a similarity, or at least I don't say coincidence, but there could be a definitely a coli, you know, correlation. Yeah, you know, it's the reason I speak in jargon like that is because obviously, people look to pick

things apart. So I want to say yeah, of course, you always have to say, okay, possibly the coincidence. I don't believe in coincidences. It was a big coincidence that Yeah, after she moved out, she might started feeling better. Um, she's not 100%, of course, but just kind of started that road to recovery. She's with a doctor, the doctor is seeing, I mean, amazing improvements, improvements that they that they really cannot explain. Right,

right. Other than your, how long you're living in the house, this is miraculous, right? So when I look at cases like that, and I have cases like that, all over the place, there's a case in New York, where a woman who used to be a triathlete is has been restricted to a wheelchair, you know, has been exposed to toxic levels of mold when testing the house, bought another house trying to escape that problem, that house has mold. So she's in a situation where she needs to

remediate to move on. And, you know, her doctors pretty sure that the environment is definitely impacting her, the levels kind of line up with what's going on inside of her body with what's going inside of the home. And, you know, she's gonna perform remediation, and we'll see I can tell you with over 1000 cases of working with people after remediation, they

start to feel better. Maybe it's a maybe it's a huge coincidence is 1000 times over me I personally think that based upon the research that I've done when you connect the dots, and abundance of particles, doesn't matter what they are, that can be vo C's could be heavy metals, you know, formaldehyde, mold, of course, bacteria, anything you have an abundance of particles of your breathing in your body is working overtime to remove

these particles. Yeah, immune system isn't is an overdrive and so you're gonna get that inflammatory risk.

importance of it. So I like that you've been on this call, and that you're talking with us about this? Because I think people need a little bit of a wake up call that no, it's not just in our heads, or someone isn't just thinking, it's an idea to at least bring up the conversation? And does it matter about location? Cuz you're saying New York, Florida? Can you have no issues anywhere? Yeah, you can, because unfortunately, from the second house is built, it starts to

decay. It's just the basic, this is the basic law of physics here. So

months or years. So if you have a week, and you don't repair it properly, or you're not practicing prevention methodologies, by maybe doing some inspections of the home annually to make sure everything looks like it's in proper order. How as the house decays, it settles right, you have some cracks that that that occur, and water makes its way in

eventually. And if it goes unnoticed or unchecked, it can kind of result in a problem where you start having, you know, growth, whether it's bacteria, developing, you know, making its way into the area, because sometimes water passes through animal proteins. Sometimes, you know, you have drain leaks from a drain pipe, which could accompany bacteria. Now you have bacteria and bacterial toxins, you could have

mold growth, right. So all of these things lead to indoor pathogens, which again, create these particles that become aerosolized and are our breathing zone, enter our body, and cause adverse health reactions. It's not rocket science, you know, I didn't become a doctor in microbiology to figure this out, I just started connecting the dots,

right. And I think we just need to really create the awareness around this and kind of change the thinking with the way we build, maintain and restore homes, I think if we do that, there's a lot of prevention that can be done, that can really change this whole thing. Because I think a lot of the issue people have is, you know, maintaining a house can be costly, and I get that. But there's a way to build the house in the first place where, you know, there's not as much

maintenance needed. I think we're kind of focus so much more on energy code these days than we are on, you know, building, building a house that's meant to, you know, decay, if you will, that has these preventative measures in place, that can slow the decay down or that can, you know, as one barrier breaks, there's another barrier behind that, that doesn't allow water to intrude things like that. If we start building with that in mind, we're definitely going to have a

healthier populace. There's no doubt in my mind. And that's because we know that particles, any particles, eventually do overload the immune system. I mean, you you make a great point. I mean, I think what it is, is part of it is awareness, right? That initial awareness and getting more people to understand what it is and how it's affecting us health wise, and then you're saying, you know, Building Better Homes and then restoring those homes that are older?

There's definitely a need. I and I haven't dived much into your book yet. But I will. Would you like to share a couple tips in your book or mindful way to for the audience? Before you go?

of sealant used. When you're doing a renovation, you know, make sure that your bathroom is built properly with a waterproofing membrane behind the tile. People don't realize that grout is porous so water actually does make its way behind the grout. If it doesn't have you know, if it isn't built with that in mind and have something that kind of signals towards the drain. Yeah, you can have mold starting to grow in

the cavity behind the tile. And so you know, it's it's things like that, that I think we We need to be mindful of when we're looking at, you know, just making sure we have the best air quality we can have, you know, there's no no harm in making sure that we're building better. we're restoring homes better. Yeah, you know, and things like that. No, I love the fact of what you're, you know, those little tips because I feel like every little step to kind of get you to where you need so that

you can breathe better air. I just like I mean, I've seen more and more of this mold,

that people can reach you? Or if you have any upcoming events, and then you have a new book called The mold medic, but I, you know, I'd love to, for people to reach out, I'll have the links, but you know, how would you like to share with the audience before you go to anything else. So the best way to connect with me would be on Instagram, I'm very active there, I do a lot of cool tips tricks to avoid mold in the first place on there. Every day

I'm releasing something. My goal is to really prevent, you know, mold from growing in the first place. You know, that, if I can accomplish that, and just societal shifts there, that will be amazing.

on. I mean, we reached out to each other through Instagram and through your team. And yeah, I think that they do need to read your book, you know, look, look online, I love that Instagram has all these different, you know, ways that you can put these tips on there. So I'm going to be checking it out. And I'll put all the links online. I really appreciate you being on the show. Is there additional one little anything additional that you'd like to add in? Before we go?

Yeah, I would just say, you know, in terms of being mindful, I really appreciate you having me on your show and creating this climb where you know, we really can educate people and I leave you with this be mindful of air quality. I think that it's something that hasn't even been on our list of things. It's, we've always been I need to drink more water, I need to exercise, eat better food,

right. But now we need to really, if we want to be health and wellness here, we have to look at air quality as a piece of the puzzle. So be mindful of it. Don't neglect it. And I think that your health will improve as a result. I love it. I mean, we have to breathe a breath. Like you said, What is it? 20,000 I I don't even think I knew that. 20 so I thought it was around 20. So yeah, that's but the fact that 1000 drops per day. Yeah, see, think about that. Our breath that we breathe

each and every day. If it's not clear, then you know, we're bringing in all this this mess.