You're listening to Bulletproof Radio with Dave Asprey. Today's guest is going to talk about something that is near and dear to my heart. Well, actually more maybe my lungs. We're talking about toxic mold. She was a functional medicine...
interested party about 15 years ago, and she's trying to figure out why her entire family was basically wrecked. So she's already a successful OBGYN, but she didn't know, it's like, why am I sick? Why is my husband sick? Why are my kids all tired, cranky, and just having weird stuff going on?
And it turns out, yeah, like you've heard from so many people down on the show, yeah, it was a toxic mold issue in her house. So she learned about chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, autoimmune issues, hormonal issues, neurological issues, and psychiatric issues from biotoxin illness. all of which I have enjoyed. Okay, I didn't really enjoy them. But this is something that's affecting 100 million people.
And at least 100 million structures and probably more than that because even if you don't feel it from the structure and if it's moldy, someone there does and then they treat you differently, which is not cool. So we are going to talk about molds with a full-time functional medicine practitioner who knows it because she lived it. And those are always the best kind of people to talk with. And her name is Dr. Margaret Christensen.
Dr. Christensen or Margaret, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for having me, Dave. You know, this is absolutely near and dear to my heart. Oh, my gosh. Really, the past 18 years have been a labor of love on my part to really understand what's happened to my family. And then really to all the clients that I see, understanding that toxic mold is probably one of the most common unrecognized underlying factors for many different chronic illnesses, like you said, the whole spectrum.
It's interesting because I want to go deep on hormones with you. And literally three days ago, a good friend of mine, someone I really care about, who's a fitness influencer online. She's like, Dave, I've been... trying to figure out, you know, why am I gaining weight? You know, I'm a fitness influencer. It doesn't make any sense. I'm doing everything right. And then she finally got a mycotoxin blood panel. And surprisingly, it came back with ocrotoxin.
which is the stuff that I take out of my Bulletproof coffee beans, and xeralinone. Talk to me about hormones and that specific mycotoxin. Tell me about the interaction there. Well, I mean, hormones are a huge issue in terms of what mycotoxins can do to disrupt it. And it happens really in four different ways. Well, I mean, hormones are a huge issue in terms of what mycotoxins can do to disrupt it.
four different ways. One would be a hormone mimetic. So again, it mimics, it's mimicking estrogen, for example, xerolarone, the one you spoke of. actually mimics estrogen. This has been well known in the animal husbandry industries for many, many, many, many years. And so we can have mycotoxins that actually look like and or attached to
thyroid receptors, testosterone receptors, estrogen receptors, etc. So that's one way, this hormone-nometic way. Another way that you can see hormonal disruption is directly through the limbic system. The olfactory nerve, which is the nerve that's in your nose, ends up going directly back into the brain, into the bar of the brain that's called the limbic system.
which is made up of three major parts, one of which is the hypothalamus. So people may have heard about that. That's a master regulatory center of the brain. That's where all the hormones are regulated. If you have inflammation in your olfactory nerve because you're breathing in these terrible toxins,
They're filling up your sinuses. You're all inflamed. That inflammation is actually traveling back along that olfactory nerve. And mycotoxins, by the way, do dissolve cell membranes. They create a great deal of inflammation and disrupt the immune system. So you can get inflammation in the hypothalamus. And again, that could disrupt everything from your menstrual cycles to endometriosis to, again, testosterone in men. We see infertility. We see hot flashes. We see...
Early menopause, super heavy periods, because of dysregulation in the hypothalamus. So that's kind of number two. The third way that we see a lot of hormonal disruption in mold illness is because people get sick. So you're getting sick frequently and often then getting put on antibiotics. Antibiotics disrupt the microbiome in the gut and really disrupt hormonal...
metabolism. We know that much of hormone metabolism is actually happening in the gastrointestinal tract by good bacteria. So if you've killed all those off or you disrupted them, you've got a lot of yeast or dysbiosis happening, unhealthy bacteria. then again, that's going to impact your hormonal metabolism. And really probably the fourth big way that I think about it is also disrupting the hypothalamic pituitary adrenal axis. So, you know, again, this whole adrenal issue.
So the body becomes so stressed, you're pouring out cortisol, you're pouring out adrenaline, and then that can disrupt. And actually back to the kind of the original and the hypothalamus, there's something that's called leptin that's produced in the brain. and leptin receptors become disrupted. So when I see women who say, hey, I've gained 20 or 30 pounds in six months. I haven't done anything different. What's wrong? The first thing I ask...
Has there been a toxic mold exposure? Yeah. Does it smell like a mop anywhere in your house? That's a good one. Has there been water inside your house where it doesn't go? And the answer is shockingly. So often that that's the case. The idea of it sort of breaking the hypothalamus and the HPA, well, the hypothalamus controls the pituitary, controls the adrenals.
Everything sort of gets wrecked when you do that, and it can take a while in order for people to heal, but it seems like it's possible for almost everyone, if not everyone. Do you find people who are just so poisoned by mold, like there's no hope? Oh, there's always hope. There's always hope. Yeah, there's always hope. And again, you know, it's a multifactorial challenge. So the way.
I approach it is I'm not just dealing at the physiologic level, the physical level, of course, you know, using binders and, um, to, to pull things out and upregulating detox mechanisms with things like glutathione. But, uh, I do a whole lot of work on the limbic system because oftentimes people who've had toxic mold exposure, it's not one exposure, it's multiple and accumulative over time. Again, with a lot of antibiotics, a lot of other stressors, et cetera.
And particularly if you've had ACEs or adverse childhood events or major traumas in your life, again, your limbic system, again, that's your fight or flight mechanism in the body. So the limbic system I mentioned is composed of three major parts, the hypothalamus, master regulatory center of the brain.
The amygdala, that's your fight or flight center, and then the hippocampus, which is the memory center. So if you've had major traumas in your life or you grew up in very difficult situations, the memory center of the brain is going to remember very small things. And the amygdala is on, it gets stuck in the on position all the time, keeping you in fight or flight, sympathetic overdrive, your adrenaline running a lot all the time, and it can get stuck in that position.
And that makes it very difficult to heal. So I think it's super important, again, when I'm treating, I'm treating sinuses to try and decrease the inflammation in the olfactory nerve and in the hypothalamus. I'm using... I mean, again, if we're talking about really super sick, then I'm using things like nasal peptides, RG3 and BPC-157 that help to decrease inflammation in the sinuses. And then we're having folks do limbic system retraining along with all the other things.
I also use a lot of membrane lipid therapies to repair damaged cell membranes and mitochondria. Talk about that a little bit. So, well, I was just at a conference with the very world-renowned cell membrane biologist. Her name is Patricia Kane. And she really has pioneered the understanding that cell membrane health is absolutely critical to any chronic illness, particularly if you're looking at neurological. And cell membranes...
That's like the skin on the outside of your cells, and we've got 10 trillion cells in our body. And then inside those cells are organelles, particularly the mitochondria. They also have little membranes. And those membranes are made of two layers.
um what are called phospholipids so it's water soluble on the outside and there's little fatty strings on the inside so that membrane that cell membrane should float around um it kind of like having olive oil in between it and then what that way you can pass oxygen and nutrients in and you can get toxins out and energy out of the cell. But unfortunately, that is where the fat-soluble toxins go, whether you're talking about mycotoxins or Lyme toxins or heavy metals.
They get inside those cell membranes on the outside of the cell and inside the mitochondria, and that's what poisons them. So learning how to heal that and using what are called bioactive lipids to help lift out toxins. and replace them with new healthy lipids, including things like linoleic acid, linoleic acid, gamma-linolenic GLA. Those are all important.
pieces in recovery, especially if you're talking about these really very sick folks. It's interesting. I don't want to go too deep into the tech here, into the cell membranes. because we haven't talked about some of the bigger issues with mold, but I just had Paul Saladino on the show, a guy who I, for some reason, just am genetically wired to call James Saladino, even though his actual name is Paul Saladino. We talked in pretty great length about the 1.8% of the fat that's in us that...
that is actually supposed to be linoleic acid and how getting higher amounts of omega-6 acids seems to not be particularly healthy for people. And with mold people- What's going on? See, and Patricia Kane would completely and totally disagree with that. And unfortunately, again, what you have to understand about and learning about fatty acids is that
There are different forms of them. And if you have saturated fatty acids in any sort, then that's the problem. But linoleic acid that's found in things like sunflower seeds and pumpkin seeds... It's a bioactive lipid. It vibrates at a very fast pace, and it's attached to the phospholipid molecule. So you've got...
you've got a phosphorus group, and then you've got these two phospholipids that hang off of it, and you need that linoleic or alpha-linolenic acid. The alpha-linolenic wasn't a big deal, but it was the linoleic acid in particular in abundance that seemed to be the problem, but not the CLA.
CLA was good, but just free form linoleic acid. And I've definitely experienced that when I cut my free linoleic acid, even as a guy who had a lot of toxic mold and still has some sensitivities, but really I'm doing pretty well compared to how I used to be. Well, I have found that it probably is overrepresented in the membranes of a lot of people. Well, but again, those are often processed heated oils.
And that's the difference. You don't want heated oils when you're doing this. This all has to be raw, cold pressed and all that. So anyway, I do use seed therapies. That's incredibly important, again, for hormones. You have to have all of the lipid substrates in order to make good hormones. Okay. I think you're onto something there. Raw egg yolks have been a major part of my healing. Yes. And just for my cognitive performance testosterone levels.
And gee, do you get phospholipids and even arachidonic acid? You do. And even sunflower lecithin from cold-pressed, refrigerated sunflower lecithin granules. It's something that I think is actually really good for cleaning up your membranes, but you don't necessarily want to go out and eat a bunch of sunflower seed oil, which is a different product.
Right. And again, if you understand, and even fish oils, all the fish oils on the market are all heated at 500 degrees. And that's actually changing their bioactivity and changes how they impact. things like hormones. So, um, that's a whole nother eat caviar and ceviche and, um, yeah. Or the, uh, my favorite is the, uh, the, uh, the fish eggs from, uh, from salmon. In fact, the fish oil that I make.
Or krill oils, the case may be, is made from herring roe. We were the first people to put that on the market. It was a waste product before. But yeah, fish egg oil is kind of a good deal. So I'm with you there. Okay. So we've kind of gone deep in cell membranes. What happens to people who...
either have mold and don't know it, which is a huge number of people listening to this, or people who just don't have mold and they pay attention to their cell membranes, what kind of effects do you see? What happens if people who... Either have mold and don't know it, which is a huge number of people listening to this, or people who just don't have mold and they pay attention to their cell membranes, what kind of effects do you see?
You know, again, that just improves everything from skin tone to, again, healthy longevity and, you know, again, mitochondrial function. So your ability to produce energy is huge. And when that's that's that's the problem. All these, you know, Frank, Dave, all and you know this, I mean, all the chronic disease that we see in this country is environmental. And yeah.
I mean, there's a huge environmental component. So we have all these fat-soluble toxins that are getting in our cell membranes and in our mitochondria, creating these problems. And that's one of the challenges with mold toxicity, again, is you may be... You know, like I did, I grew up on the East Coast. We lived in house with basements, you know, several. There was multiple exposures, moldy dorm room in college, you know, cheap apartment. I've had all of those too, right?
So, you know, unfortunately, it builds up over time, and then, you know, and then you're getting sick, and you get put on antibiotics for X, Y, and Z, and you don't realize, and you get fungal overgrowth, you disrupt your microbiome, and then you're, you know, in a really stressful job. So it's never one thing. And then maybe you've had a bunch of other exposures to other toxins.
in the house, petrochemicals, makeup, whatever it is. And we're just we're filling up our bucket. And then you have that last exposure. And that's what kind of what happened to me. You know, I was an OB-GYN. I had four kids of my own. So, you know, I'd given them all my good fats. And then I was, you know, staying up. Yeah. Yeah. Delivering babies for 16 years. Those mean little kids will just suck the fat right out of you. The marrow from your bones. That's right.
And that's one of the reasons, again, we tend to see women present very differently than men. And when we had our interview for the MOL Summit, you talked about how do men present. Women tend to present differently with much more likely to have autoimmune issues, again, severe chronic fatigue, some of the fibromyalgia issues.
And autoimmunity, testosterone helps to protect men from autoimmunity. I was very fortunate that I had low testosterone, in fact, lower than my mom when I was 26 when I first measured it. the women's issues from my toxic mold exposure. And man boobs to boot. I was like, gee, thanks guys. You know, I really love that. So if men, you said they feel that testosterone is protective for men, does that mean women who have been exposed to mold might want to start taking testosterone?
Well, I mean, that's certainly something I measure. And I don't just willy-nilly give people testosterone. I know there's a lot of people out there doing pellets. I'm not a big fan. I see all the disasters. Like what's a pellet disaster? Well, you get way high levels. Theoretically, you're not supposed to, but you can get super high levels of testosterone in the body. And then hair falls out, start getting acne, you start growing a beard.
You know, heavy bleeding. And in men, I've had two men who've had splenic infarcts. So their spleens, they've lost their spleens because of their hematocrites went too high. That's their blood count levels went too high. So, you know, so I absolutely I use testosterone every day in my practice, but I'm measuring I'm cleaning up the gut first and the liver first and, you know, making sure everything else is working. OK, so. Awesome.
It's interesting. I've had pellets a few times and I've been on testosterone mostly since I was 26. I went off for three years and I was formulating the Bulletproof Diet just to test whether it would work. But I feel better when my testosterone levels are around 800, and it's very hard to keep mine at 800 at my age with just diet. So I don't mind cheating. And when I used pellets, the levels went high enough, and I started getting...
some hair loss here that I didn't have before. And I was like, wait, was that the pellets or was that something else? So then I did another round of pellets. I'm like, wait, I think that's the pellets. But I've never had it from cream or injections. So there's something about the dose and how frequently you do it and all, which is important. Something that you mentioned when we were talking earlier before the show.
was that there's a 95% divorce rate in moldy households. Yes. Well, this is the... This is Dr. Shoemaker's data. Dr. Shoemaker wrote a very famous book called Surviving Mold. And he's sort of been one of the early pioneers in this whole area. And I know that you've made a documentary with him. And again, he was, you know, just noted, noting that because everybody is sick and very irritable.
And again, psychiatric also. So we can see some severe psychiatric illnesses. And I'm very intimately familiar with that because I have a son who's very seriously mentally ill because of this. So, you know, you get everybody super irritable, not understanding, and or dad is maybe not as sick as everybody else. That's often the case if the home is a problem. Because he may be out working and mom is more likely to stay at home and the little kids are there all the time.
You know, everybody's sick and just irritable as hell and psychiatric, anxious, depressed, bipolar, psychotic, all of those things. And so, you know, when you don't understand why. That's one of the things that households tend to fall apart. One of the things that I see a lot in my practice, again, is that often the women and children are sicker.
And, you know, the dads may be OK. They may be gaining weight. They may be having erectile dysfunction, hypertension, but they're not recognizing that that's part of it. And they don't understand why, you know, why their spouses want to spend all this money and, you know. have to clean up the house with mold and they think, oh, this is BS and all that. So I can't tell you how often I see that. I'm just I'm going way back to when I lived in a really I grew up in a moldy home.
Had all the symptoms as a kid. And then I got relatively cleaned up, pretty healthy, and moved into a place that turns out had mold. I didn't quite understand what was going on. But magically, I gained back 30 of the 50 or 60 pounds I had lost. the person I was with at the time, she also gained a bunch of weight, but started just getting mean. And I'm sure I wasn't a very patient person either, but there was marked personality changes, dramatic nightmares.
To the point that I didn't want anything sharp in the bedroom. Because she would wake up and move stuff around and do things. To the point that one time, I'll never forget this. She got out of the bedroom where the mold was. It was against the wall where a headboard was on the other side of it. A neighbor's water heater was leaking. It was probably Saki Batra's, we believe now in retrospect. And she...
She comes out and she says, how dare you? And I go, what did I do? I'm just like watching TV. And she said, you're turning the lights on and off and all this stuff. And I said, I didn't do it. She said, that's it. I'm done. And she grabs the car keys and storms out of the house. And I'm just sitting there stunned like. What just happened? I don't even know. And I thought, okay, I don't know what to do. Maybe she'll come back. And about an hour later, she stumbles in and she goes,
What was I doing asleep in the car? Wow. Yeah. The entire interaction, she was asleep and she didn't know she was doing it. And I mean, she could have driven. asleep well i mean there's rare cases of that fortunately she didn't but i didn't know because her eyes were open and she was communicating But that is how bad toxic mold can make you feel. And for me, it just makes me super tired and drugged and brain foggy. I can't remember anything. And it makes you angry.
You'll yell at your kids. You'll yell at your spouse. You'll blame everyone because the body's looking for what's causing it. I'm happy to hear that data. I didn't realize that was a Shoemaker number. It does wreck relationships. The number of employees I've had over the years who've had toxic mold and just kind of gone off the rails. They get really sick.
emotionally reactive they don't show up for meetings or if they do show up they're just acting bizarrely and it's not their choice to do it it's not because of them it's not a moral issue it's a it's like someone's drunk right you know but when you're drunk you get to choose to drink and enjoy it. But there's none of that. It's just the stuff. So I'm glad that you did the Mold Summit because...
It's one of the things, if there's nothing obvious going on with someone, like if you're eating cheesecake and french fries every day, all right, we get it. We can work with you. But if that's not it and you're actually doing all the things that are supposed to work and you're just feeling like garbage and things are not working. You have to check this out.
Well, you know, Dave, this comes back to, again, the brain and the limbic system, again, and what part of the brain becomes on fire because of this. So if you have sinuses that are full of, again, mold and you've got all this inflammation that's impacting your front. frontal lobes, that's the area right behind your forehead, and or again, the limbic system, and you're creating anxiety. I mean, one of the very common symptoms is anxiety.
that doesn't really have a source and uh so you're anxious all the time you can't sleep sleep disruptions and insomnia is another huge symptom of this and so It makes sense. But now there's so much data looking at things like, again, psychosis and bipolar.
And even, you know, again, schizophrenia. So I'm very familiar with all of those things. And then you look at, you know, little children and you're talking, you know, autism and spectrum disorders. You're getting all this chronic brain inflammation. going on, that can just show up in a lot of different ways. It can be behavioral issues, psychiatric issues, and neurodegenerative diseases, including Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, you know, autism. So all of those.
All of those things are important. And Mary Ackerley is a psychiatrist who speaks to this and the whole mold rage issue on the toxic mold summit. And again, how common this is, this mold rage. And, you know, it's just, yeah. The mold rage thing. I mean, I've done all kinds of neurofeedback. I'm generally a pretty chill guy. Like, I'm, you know. kind of at peace most of the time and all. And maybe three years ago, I went for a bike ride with my wife and the kids.
I didn't realize it, but this was at a quarry where the soil has been disturbed, and there's something growing there. It was a real rainy, nasty British Columbia fall day with moisture everywhere and all. I started yelling at the kids for like writing too far ahead. I don't even know what it was for. And I'm like, what that, like eventually I kind of recognized this and Lana was like, Dave, what is going on? I'm like, I don't really know, but it was like a drug.
Literally, like a drug. And I'm like, why am I so angry right now for no apparent reason? My kids are like, what are you doing, daddy? I'm like, I don't really know. But I realized, okay, when it's super moist, I just don't go near there because there's something bad. I don't know if it was an industrial thing, but something changed the biome of the earth right around there. And I'm kind of afraid of the place now.
because I don't like feeling that way. But I generally don't have those symptoms anywhere. I can go to a place, I can sense it's moldy, but there's a few species that get me. And some people would say, Dave, you're a delicate flower, snowflake. How common is this stuff? Because those people, they make me want to kill. Just kidding. But, you know, am I the 1%? Am I the 20%? Or more? Oh, my gosh. Yeah. No, I mean, it's a large percentage.
Around this time of year, you might notice your skin is dry or dull or irritated. It's because cold weather disrupts your skin barrier. That's the shield that keeps moisture in and environmental stress out. If your skin barrier gets disrupted, you can get accelerated aging in your skin. The longevity scientists at OneSkin have a solution with their skincare products. They developed a new peptide called OS1 that works at the cellular level to strengthen your skin's barrier.
In lab and clinical studies, their skincare products, OS1i, OS1 Face, and OS1 Body, increased skin barrier function and improved hydration for those different kinds of skin. Those are the two most important signs of stronger, more resilient skin.
OS01 is also proven scientifically to reverse skin's biological age, and that works by targeting zombie cells in your skin that can cause wrinkles or sagging or thin skin. If you're into longevity and you want your skin to look like you're into longevity, Check it out. Oneskin.co slash Asprey and use code Asprey15. That'll give you 15% off your first order. Stuff works. Am I the 1%? Am I the 20%? Or more? Oh my God.
Gosh, yeah. No, I mean, it's a large percentage. I'm not going to put a number on there, but I can just also just speak from personal experience. You know, again, my former husband, yeah, was just... irritable and you know angry and yelling and that that was not his modus operandi at all and then yeah right and then you know at the time when all this was happening this was actually 18 years ago um
My son was nine, and he was having hallucinations, and he got diagnosed with psychoses not otherwise specified at age nine and put on an antipsychotic. And he was having, you know, ADD, ADHD, asthma, allergies. Again, these are all symptoms in children. I just wrote a blog about, again, how does this show up in kids? And, you know, so got, you know, put on all those medications and, you know, finally was off the...
But then at 18, 19, he had he started having other psychotic episodes and then got diagnosed with schizophrenia and then ended up living. And this is before I knew I knew it took me eight years to figure out. after living in this house where everybody was sick you know what was going on and by that time my kids were already in their teens and you know
As you know, your parent, when your children and your teens, they're not interested in listening to anything you have to say. And by this time, also, my husband and I had divorced because of, you know, again, unbeknownst to all of this, you know, and so.
But he's 28 now. He's been hospitalized over 20 plus times. And, you know, we know that one of the things that happens when you get mold toxicity, it suppresses what's called your innate immune system. That's the part of the immune system that actually goes after viruses and bacteria.
And things like Lyme. Well, he got Bartonella that, again, has never been officially diagnosed, but I know that that's what he has because he had all the striae. And so, I mean, and, you know, again, this is what we're seeing is all these psychiatric patients. You know, I mean, Shoemaker talked about it. He said, you know, if you went into any psych ward and started doing mycotoxin testing on folks, you know, you'd get 80, 90 percent positive. I would guess 90. Yeah. And in prisons?
Prisons themselves are terribly moldy, which drives violent behavior, but the people who go to prison, 85% of them have brain dysfunction, and a huge percentage of that is caused by mold in the environment. It's like we've got to have clean schools and clean...
You know, places of employment and things. Well, and, you know, and this landlords too need to be responsible, you know, and if you have, you know, if you're a slum landlord, you've got these crappy housing and again, and you are, you know, a lower income person and you don't have the ability to. build something or live in a nicer space. And again, we see so much housing that is just...
terrible and poor air quality. Like you said, the schools, the same thing. So, you know, to me, there is a there's a much bigger picture here that that needs to be addressed. And this actually brings back to COVID, too, which, you know. We're not talking about the fact that air quality impacts the immune system in the lungs. So if you're living in a polluted city or you've been breathing in a bunch of crap or you're living in a moldy apartment or house or works.
and you're breathing that in and you're suppressing the innate immune system in your lung and you're activating the adaptive, that's the thing that produces all those cytokines that everybody's learned about. Everybody's learned that word, cytokine. So your adaptive immune system starts pouring out cytokines and antibodies. And that is why those are the folks that are really susceptible to getting super sick from mold.
People with chronic inflammation, which there's a very high correspondence. You live in a moldy house. You're likely to have chronic inflammation of one sort or another. And are you going to be in the 20% who get symptoms or the 80% who don't? you're likely to be an 80. And maybe people are triggered by arguing about those numbers. Pick whatever numbers you want. The majority of people don't get symptoms. I will put it that way.
And I think mold would be one of the biggest things I'd control for if I was to just pick for that. And, you know, there's ways to go about doing that, too, in terms of improving the air quality in your home and air filtration. And, you know, there's some simple things that can be done to help that.
This is also tied back to neurodegenerative diseases. So you have your autoimmune issues, you've got your psychiatric issues, and then you've got your neurodegenerative diseases like Parkinson's, ALS, MS, Alzheimer's. And mold is one of the big triggers that are underlying some of these things. But the good news, Dave, is that you and I both know that there's a lot of things that we can do to heal ourselves.
I don't want to freak everybody out. So I'm so happy that you just named pretty much all of the neurological diseases. Most of the research on those... that I could find, that's a lot of it, went into my book called Headstrong, which is about mitochondria and the brain and increasing cognitive function. Because one of the things you do to increase cognitive function is you stop doing the things that give you neurodegeneration. And magically,
Brains that are performing really well don't degenerate as quickly. Like who would have thought? It's very advanced science. You know, cause and effect. But let's talk a little bit more about... So give me the woman hormones symptoms we kind of touched on, but I want like there's just a list for listeners. Sure, sure. Okay, we can start with infertility. And super heavy periods, endometriosis, uterine fibroids, bad PMS, breast tenderness, early menopause, night sweats, hot flashes.
Those are all pretty common. And then weight gain. I mean, weight gain is a big, it's a huge one. Okay. I think those are the, yeah. It's the big list for women. So if those are going on, you might want to check your air in your home. And what about for men? What's the difference? Again, so with men, we like to see things like hypertension, cardiovascular issues, blood pressure. Again, they can have both weight gain and weight loss. It just depends kind of on...
the genetics there. And we'll see, again, a lot of headaches, brain fog, just fatigue issues, and erectile dysfunction. Those are pretty common with men. And again, disrupting testosterone. Night sweats are another thing I used to have that were so bad. I don't get night sweats anymore. And it's exceptionally rare for me to be exposed to mold in my food or in my environment because I know how to control it. I know I sense it. I'm like, I'm not going there.
But every now and then it happens. I'm like, oh, I remember like this. This was my life as a boy and as a teenager. Just like terrible drenching night sweats. And that's all gone and I can bring it back. You didn't mention restless leg syndrome either. Oh, yes. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. For men and women, right? That would fall in the neurodegenerative disease category. And absolutely, restless legs can be a big one. Mine get turned on if I eat food that has mold in it.
My legs start to twitch. I'm like, oh, yeah, I remember that. But it's gone the next day if I take binders. And it's fascinating. Well, and, you know, then I also mentioned cancer because, again, so cancer. Mold and fungus and yeast and candida play a huge role here. And I don't know if you've ever heard Doug Kaufman. He, again, he's got this fabulous talk called, you know, what if cancer is fungus?
But with mycotoxins, there's, for example, a mycotoxin that's called mycophenolic acid or MPA. That is actually used in people who are getting bone marrow transplants. to kill their immune system before they're getting a transplant from somebody else.
You have suppression of the innate immune system, which is going after viruses, bacteria and abnormal cells like cancer cells. So this part of the immune system is not working. You may be missing, you know, again, those bad guy cells that are out there. And then this guy, this part. immune system the adaptive is what's so firing all these cytokines off and antibodies off so again but a lot of it has to do with genetics uh so
I think that those are really important pieces. So if you're looking at breast cancer, uterine cancer, again, all these hormonal cancers, I want to know. I've had several women with breast cancer. And it turns out they were in very moldy, incredibly moldy environments. So I think, again, if you have cancer, any kind of immune system suppression, you absolutely have to be in a house that has very clean air quality as part of your recovery.
All right. Now, you've talked about hormones in men and women and what it's doing. You've talked about the neurological aspects of it. in terms of all these neurodegenerative diseases. And I feel like we've covered most of the psychology side of it, or maybe psychiatry side of it as well. And so there's neurodegeneration and there's the behavioral side like schizophrenia and ADD and ADHD. Is there anything in that list there that you think we didn't hit on?
that people ought to be aware of? Because there's hundreds of thousands of people who are going to listen to the show and a lot of them are kind of scratching their head going, well, maybe I got into biohacking because something wasn't right. What else would be on that list of neurological stuff to check out?
Again, any kind of tremors, weakness. Yeah, yeah. Tremors, you know, weakness, unusual pain syndromes as well. Oh, chronic pain. Yeah, it's a major trigger. You get rid of the mold, the chronic pain goes away, right? Every pain doctor listening. And there's like a lot of pain doctors listening to the show.
Yeah, you guys need to treat mold and use a little bit of light therapy and the normal stuff you use topically and it will go away. Like it's a part of the thing. This also comes back to one of the areas that we did not touch on is our chronic infections like Lyme.
you know, co-infections, chronic bacterial infections, excuse me, and viral infections. So when you're suppressing the innate immune system that is supposed to keep, if you've gotten bitten by a tick sometimes, you know, sometime in your... your lifetime. The immune system usually keeps that in check. But if your innate immune system is suppressed, then you are much, much more likely for that Lyme to start expressing itself or its co-infections like Bartonella, Babesia, Ehrlichosis.
And if you talk about weird neurological symptoms and pain, again, oftentimes you'll see that mold-Lyme combo. And for all the people out there who have Lyme and have been treating for Lyme for years and years with antibiotics and stuff, where is the mold? Look for the mold first. Yes, thank you. Yes, look for the mold first. And I'm part of an organization that I would encourage even all the lay people to join. It's called ISEAI.org, International Society for Environmentally Acquired Illness.
And so it is all of us practitioners who are working in the realms of chronic environmental toxicants, including mold and Lyme and its co-infections and looking at. How do these things interact with one another? And it's huge. And unfortunately, many people with Lyme have been treated for years and years and years with antibiotics. They're not getting better. What do the antibiotics do? Well, they're destroying your microbiome and they're destroying and impacting your mitochondria.
And, you know, and it's really been and they've been living in a moldy house the whole time. Yeah. You mentioned some stuff earlier about air quality. So let's say someone's like, yeah, I kind of had a leak behind the sink and I really fixed it. There's a little bit of black.
fuzz poking out. How do you go about making the air safer than it is, even if it's not perfect? Especially if you're at home all the time cooking. Well, the one thing you don't do is go after it with bleach. Because that is... That's not a good idea. Ideally, you get professionals in there to take care of it because you can make yourself super, super sick trying to do it yourself if you don't know what you're doing.
Again, I have a lot of resources on the Mold Summit that if you are going to attempt any kind of little DIY, that can help you out. But please don't just get in there with a bottle of, you know. Clorox and start bleaching stuff. I just saw a Clorox commercial after a flood and all of these... walls were being sprayed down with Clorox and I was just appalled. Anywho. It works great on non-porous surfaces. So if it's on your shower, right, if it's on tile.
or metal or something, you can do it. But if it's drywall, unfortunately, if there's water in it, it's going to soak in. And once it soaks in, I promise you that when you kill most of mold, what comes back is pissed. Yes, yes, there you go. It grows really, really well. Hydrogen peroxide is a better option. And then there are also some citrus-based...
antifungals that are better. And then again, professionals, there's a lot of chemical fungicides, so you don't want to use those. You want to use... It's a very concentrated hydrogen peroxide is one of the ways that professionals utilize to clean things up. So anyway, I would recommend...
that you have very high-quality air filtration in your central HVAC system. Again, that is also one of the places that it hides, that mold often hides, is particularly in the supply plenum if you have central heat and air. You can use also ultraviolet lights shining directly on the air filters. That can also help decrease the load. But for a lot of people, I just have them have in their house, make sure that they have high...
quality air filtration units in the bedrooms, so that making sure that when everybody's sleeping, that you've got the best air quality possible. And we didn't even touch on EMFs, but that's a whole other piece. electromagnetic fields that are coming off all of your electronic stuff. And the new frequency in particular, that's a really big deal because it really impacts cell membranes.
And so that is another simple thing that you can also do to improve, quote, air quality is making sure that at nighttime, again, while you're sleeping, that you've turned off your Wi-Fi router, that you don't sleep with any cell phones near your head. I'll be trying to turn off all the electronics in your bedroom, all of those things. So those are some of the things that are simple to help clear up. And studying mold people is interesting.
Because if you've lost 90% of your cell membrane function, maybe it's not quite that much, but I feel like it was that much. And then you do something that changes things by 1%, you'll feel it. Because 1% in a normal person is 10% for a mold person who's at the bottom. And so you can sort of say, no, that actually does work. And a lot of the reasons that I know some of the things work where studies come out five years after I share it, I'm like, yeah, I know.
Because you can observe it when you're down that low. And once you maintain that level of awareness, even when your system works pretty well like mine does, I can still feel the subtle variations in bioenergetics. And I don't mean like... quantum woo bioenergetics i mean mitochondrial function oh today my mitochondria are at 100 today they're not and it's there's it's just a whole menu of things that you can sense when you've felt
the shift from that so yeah i do all of those emf safety things that's good and i i think it's worth it's worth paying attention to that now you talked about high quality air filters I've had a couple different companies that I recommend sponsor the show. In fact, we'll probably end up having one of them come in on this one. I'm also going to throw my hat in the ring for HomeBiotic.
which is the probiotic mold cleaner. It's a company I started five years ago because I just got so tired of, you know, you move into a nice house and then mold sprouts. And you're just like, ah, what just happened? So I do inoculate my home with a probiotic. I spray it around. And we have a new test kit for mold as well with homebiotic. So people can test their home.
With that, you can get an ERMI test, which is a way of testing what's in the air versus what's on surfaces with the tests that I have, which is a genetic test for mold, which is interesting. When you get all this together, either you have a problem or you don't and then you want to be preventative and a lot of people can't afford to move or you're in the middle of a lockdown. What you're saying is have professionals clean it if you can. If not...
I just want to warn you, not you, but warn listeners. When I was filming Moldy, I had a film crew of young, strong, camera-wielding guys. And then we had our producer. And actually, the guy who did the music is Eric Troyer from Electric Light Orchestra. So I got to travel around with him for a while and hear stories about Meatloaf and all the other guys he's played with. That was a fun movie. Anyhow, we're...
We're going to this place and we put on full-on Tyvek, like the stuff you'd see when you fly with COVID. Full Tyvek suits, duct tape, the arms, gloves, full respirators. Okay. Camera crew does the same thing, everything in baggies, and we go into this incredibly moldy house that's being essentially repaired, although it should have been demolished from my perspective. And...
So I'm in there, you know, we're tearing stuff down, we're getting camera shots of all this stuff. And afterwards, I'm wrecked. I'm like, man, I'm so tired. Like, I just, I do not feel good. I can't focus. You know, I'm kind of in another land with all of the protective gear. Now, okay, fine, I'm sensitive. But the young guys who have up till this time thought mold was BS, you know, they're healthy, they're young, they're not, you know, in the HLA-DR genome type to be mold sensitive.
All of them that night were like, man, I feel like I'm hungover. I didn't drink. And all of them were like, you know what? You're right. I thought you were nuts. I can feel it. And that was with protective equipment. That means that if someone listening to this, you are in a house that's making you sick and say, oh, I saw the mold. I'll put on a, you know, a zip up suit and a respirator or probably a sock, the way they're saying, you know, masks do stuff.
It's not going to protect you very much. And if you can get someone who's not susceptible, who's not sick, who has the right equipment and the right technology to go in and clean it, it's worth it. And if you can't, just understand everything you're wearing. Take a shower when you're done. you know bind your toxins do do what you can and uh sinus rinse sinus rinse yes sinus rinsing is that that's a huge a huge
piece that's very simple to do. And I don't know why they're not recommending that for COVID prevention at the same time. I've been wondering that too. In fact, I'm going to tell you guys, Google the bulletproof. I think it's on my Dave Asprey blog, but Google bulletproof or just Google Dave Asprey sinus rinse. I'll put a thing up here. Okay, you can get a neti pot. Neti pots are dumb. Okay.
A neti pot is this expensive thing. Sorry if you love neti pots. And you like a little teapot. You pour it in one nose and out the other. Okay. The yogic way of washing your nose, you take... Warm water, and ideally it's clean water, not just from the tap because you can get weird parasites in your nose that way, so you should boil it first. You take salt, maybe xylitol if you want it for the bacterial stuff, and a drop of iodine.
You bend over at the waist like a dippy bird and you stick your face in a bowl of it and then you snort. And you drink the water up through your nose and it comes out your mouth. Don't worry, you won't choke. You fill your mouth up with it and you spit.
And you do that a couple times. The suction creates a current along, and okay, I was one week away from sinus surgery when I started going down this, and I did not have sinus surgery. This is when I was maybe 28. And this is what saved my brain and my sinuses.
And it's literally, you just snort, spit, snort, spit, snort, spit. It's very erotic for your partner to watch you do that. Okay, don't do that. But like that, oh my God, what a difference. I'm happy you talk about rinsing the sinuses. When I fly.
I don't get sick because my immune system is used to flying and I have T-cells that work and antibodies and I'm regularly exposed. At least I was before this lockdown that reduced immunity for everyone. But I always do that when I get to the hotel because it works. Thank you for making me think of that. Well, and again, this just kind of comes back to the whole idea that chronic sinus infections are...
really they're fungal. And, you know, if you are being given antibiotics over and over and over again, that's just crazy. It's a fungal problem. And Dr. Donald Dennis is an amazing ENT. that I interview on the summit, and we have beautiful pictures of surgeries that he's done, but he's using something that's called amphotericin, which is an antifungal special rinsing.
And it's a special device to get into all the sinuses and rinsing people. And overnight, you have practically cures of some neurodegenerative diseases, some psychiatric issues, et cetera, from people with chronic sinus infections. Where's he based? He's in Atlanta. It's a really big deal, the fungal stuff and the sinuses. When I was a week away, I read this old book called Sinus Survival that talked about neti pots, and I ended up finding about the yogic thing later.
The difference for me was 15 years of antibiotics every month for strep throat and then sinus infections. Oh, my God. Yeah, that's, boy, and you talked about, again, increased risk for weight gain and cancer. I mean, that much antibiotics. I had everything. The UN, yeah. And that's why when people are saying, well, you know...
How are you going to live to 180? I'm like, look, if I can do what I'm doing with that kind of just a complete shit show in my background, I know the causes because I had to hack it. I had to do what I did to get the knowledge that I have.
But the fact that it's out there and you can see someone, you walk in, you're like, this place is moldy. And that person is grossly obese. That person, their face is exploding with those subterranean pimples that are caused by inflammation, not by anything else. And that person is wheezing. All of this, it's...
just right there. But people don't know. So I think your mold supplement is going to spread a lot of knowledge about this because two of my companies have mold at their core. A lot of the bulletproof supplements work really, really well for people with mold. They work fantastic for people who don't have mold.
But, you know, there's sometimes a little ingredient or a little change. I took out the OTA because it's causing, you know, cell responses from the coffee and all. So I believe so much and no one has yet put together a mold summit. I was thinking of doing this for like the last five years, but it's so much work to do a summit.
And my team just wasn't up for that and all the other things we're doing. So you finally went out and did the interviews beyond just the one documentary's worth that I did. So I think for people who are listening to this and have mold issues, they need to check out your Mold Summit for sure.
for those people who follow functional medicine, I've interviewed a number of the top names in functional medicine. Most of us have gotten into functional medicine because of mold exposures. And, um, and I covered the, every single spectrum in depth of what we just talked about, psychiatric neurological. Children, we didn't cover chronic infections, you know, parasitic things, the whole ball of wax, both. And how does it show up symptomatologists symptomologically?
And then what do you do? What are all the different approaches from very basics to very advanced things like using. I'm going to get nasal peptides, et cetera, and things like IV ozone, IV vitamin C, too. Those all can be helpful. And then also we also cover how do you assess a home and or building and then what do you do and how do you remediate and how do you remediate safely?
And then, you know, again, also the people who have severe multiple chemical sensitivity, POTS syndrome, again, chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, any of the mystery illnesses, I guarantee you a huge piece of it is mold. Well, thank you for going out there and saying it. And I love it that you can say it. You've got that MD after your name.
It is possible without even knowing what the cause is, which is funny because Doug Kaufman, we mentioned earlier, you know, know the cause is the name of his body of work in his books. But even if you don't know what the cause is,
you can hack your biology because you say, if I do this, does it work? Yes. And then the cause, you can say it's caused by leprechauns, it's caused by quantum woo, or it's caused by mycotoxins, right? But you can actually test each of those things and see which one it is. And I feel like we have enough knowledge about this mold causes a direct inflammation from its...
essentially cells. And this mold makes a toxin that does this via this pathway and triggers this cytokine. So now there's so much science here that you can no longer ignore it, but you can say... oh, there's no mold here. I'm a landlord. And oh, I didn't want to put in the expensive air conditioning, those stuff that has a UV light and an ionizer, etc. Now, there's an issue though.
Maybe you wanted to put it in, but no one will rent your building if you do. So if you make a clean building, yikes, you might have no tenants because we have an expectation that our buildings, that our rent is dirt cheap.
And we're not willing to pay for quality. And we have an expectation that our food is dirt cheap and we're not willing to pay for quality. So you're going to get moldy food. It's called storage toxins and field toxins. You're going to get moldy buildings unless you go for a smaller place that's clean. Unless you eat less meat, but it's grass-fed and mold-free. And the thing goes on. So I hope this drives people to say, look.
I'd rather have less but good instead of more but crappy. And that would change the world, just that way of thinking. Amen. Now... What's your long-term goal with the Toxic Mold Project? By the way, toxicmoldproject.com is the summit that you're putting together. Are you going to do this annually? This is the second time I've done it. And I don't... Let me get through this one and I'll tell you. Yeah, I think people don't quite understand how much work it is. It's a lot of work.
I'm going on almost 800 episodes of Bulletproof Radio, and you could look at that as an 800-episode summit where I'm finding experts and interviewing them, and I do two a week, every week, and have for years. But it's a team of several people and a process. And I don't do the launch thing that you do. But man, you have to care about something in order to do it. And you deeply care because it messed with your kids.
It will mess with my kids, it will mess with my marriage, it will mess with my, you know, my former husband has Parkinson's. So it's, you know, this is a big deal. It's near and dear to my heart. And, you know, I guess if you're asking me what is the bigger goal, a lot of it is just – awareness and you know and then what do we need to do at a public policy level to improve air quality and improve apartments and improve schools and improve you know there is this is a huge piece so
So all of you out there listening, all the teachers, I want the teachers speaking up and learning this because they're often very affected. Yeah, teachers are some of the sickest people because the schools are some of the sickest. And those kids who just can't behave in class, I was one of them because you put me in a moldy classroom.
And of course, you know, it's not because the kids are bad kids. Well, there's that little Johnny. He was bad. But everyone else was good. You know, that's just kind of how it works. Okay. Well. I want to say thanks for being on Bold Proof Radio. Thanks for the work you're doing with the Toxic Mold Project. And people can check that out. And I'm really wishing you the most success with this and just with getting the word out there because I think you're doing great work. Oh, thank you so much.
Tune in, everybody. It's free August 17th through 23rd and then the following weekend. But there's so much great information in there, including a wonderful interview with Dave. that we hope that you'll consider actually purchasing it to keep it because the material is so dense and so big.
A Human Upgrade, formerly Bulletproof Radio, was created and is hosted by Dave Asprey. The information contained in this podcast is provided for informational purposes only and is not intended for the purposes of diagnosing, treating, curing, or preventing any disease. Before using any products referenced on the podcast, consult with your healthcare provider, carefully read all labels and heed all directions and cautions that accompany the products.
information found or received through the podcast should not be used in place of a consultation or advice from a healthcare provider if you suspect you have a medical problem or should you have any healthcare questions please promptly call or see your healthcare provider
This podcast, including Dave Asprey and the producers, disclaim responsibility for any possible adverse effects from the use of information contained herein. Opinions of guests are their own and this podcast does not endorse or accept responsibility for statements made by guests.
This podcast does not make any representations or warranties about guest qualifications or credibility. This podcast may contain paid endorsements and advertisements for products or services. Individuals on this podcast may have a direct or indirect financial interest in products or services referred to hearing. This podcast is owned by Bulletproof Media