45. Why Mold Matters: Mold Toxicity Symptoms and Hidden Mold Exposure

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I'm Dr.
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Mark Sue and welcome to the Functional Medicine Reality Podcast.
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Join me and our community weekly as we bring you unfiltered health from inflammation to longevity.
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Real stories, real people, real solutions.
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Experience real life health changes from both patients and practitioners and learn how to turn cutting-edge information into real results in your own life so you can feel better, live longer, live healthier, and be confident and clear in your healthcare choices.
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Let's get real and get results.
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My name is Dr.
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Mark Sue.
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I am your host, as usual.
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Today is going to be a solo episode on why mold matters.
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You've heard that mold is a recurring topic on this podcast.
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Once every four or five sessions, we're doing a recurring interview with the Doctor of Homes, IEP extraordinaire, Mike Schantz.
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He is an indoor environmental professional.
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And today I just want to go in a little bit further into this mold matter, just in a solo fashion, because we're going to start focusing more on mold in a broader scale on this podcast.
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And I'm going to explain why.
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So, first of all, it doesn't matter, right?
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What kind of patient you are, what kind of listener you are, what kind of individual you are, you could be one of three different kinds of folks with your health as it stands right now.
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Number one, you could be a person who's dealing with significant chronic inflammation.
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Whatever that looks like, that's up to you, right?
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That could be the person who is dealing with fatigue and brain fog.
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It could be the person who's got aches and pains, the person who's got IBS, another person who's got all kinds of neuropathy, or all the above, right?
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You just know you feel inflamed constantly, every day, variably, and it is frustrating as all get out.
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On the other hand, number two, you could be an individual who you quote unquote feel fine, right?
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You there you don't think anything's really wrong.
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You may have some symptoms if we really sit get down and really corner you, and hey, you've got to tell me some things that are, you know, could be better in life, but for the most part, you're a more than functioning individual.
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You are giving into your service and into the into humanity through your work, through your through your life, etc.
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You are a pretty healthy individual.
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Thirdly, you could be the person in between.
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You've got some health issues, but they're not, they're not really causing dysfunction.
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You're not having to see a healthcare practitioner of whatever sort, primary specialists on any kind of recurring, recurring basis.
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You might have some common symptoms that are very commonly attributable or driven by mold exposures, okay, or or mold and the toxins that mold makes, that these molds can make.
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Some of these most common symptoms that we can find in data in medical literature are certainly the airway, all right, asthma, recurring postnasal drip, sinus congestion, sinus infections, shortness of breath, fatigue, aches and pains, and neurologic symptoms.
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When I say neurologic symptoms, they could be the pins and needles, the numbness tingling of the skin.
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They could also be brain fog.
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They can be some otherwise unexplained anxiety, mood, ADD or ADHD.
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Okay.
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And I'm not, to be, to be clear here, I'm not suggesting that anyone ever and anyone who has these symptoms has a mold problem.
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But this segues me into the three pearls that I want to just lay out on the table here today as to why mold matters.
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Okay.
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Pearl number one is the mold topic is stealth.
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It is commonly stealth and hidden.
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Now, what do I mean by that?
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It is not easy to identify when someone has a mold issue.
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There are two places where mold can come from, all right?
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Setting the record straight just for a second here.
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Mold is one of two primary forms of fungus.
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Okay.
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Fungus can be broken down into yeast or mold.
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Today we're really just talking about mold as opposed to yeast, and we're not going to get into the whole biologic classifications and all the technical speak, okay?
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But when we talk about mold, there are two primary sources that a person could be exposed from.
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Number one is it is in their environment, which you've heard, unless this is your first time listening to this podcast, you've heard Mike and I talk about this many times, and it will be a recurring theme, all right?
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Mold in the home, mold in the workplace, mold in the school, mold in the public, whatever, gym, library, et cetera, et cetera.
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All right.
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The other source of mold that a person could recurrently be exposed to is inside their body, all right?
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Inside our bodies.
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We may be carrying this around, and that's a 24-7 every millisecond exposure.
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All right.
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And that is what we sometimes call fungal overgrowth or fungal colonization.
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It's a the there's colonies of fungus growing inside of us.
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Okay.
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And sometimes that internal growth may have originated from environmental outside exposure, all right, from our homes, from our workplaces, public buildings, et cetera.
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All right.
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So that's pro number one.
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It is often stealth and hidden.
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And so much so it's understandable that as Mike and I have talked about, this is a common point of conflict in households where with, say, two married or partnered adults, right?
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I don't see anything, I don't smell anything, I don't know what you're thinking, right?
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That that's often a vantage point that we come across, whether as practitioners for the humans, the doctors of humans, or the doctors of buildings like Mike, we come across this an awful lot.
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The doubt, because I don't see and smell it.
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But no one has X-ray vision to look behind all the walls and look into the vents and look into the crawl spaces and into the attic and et cetera, et cetera, right?
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Uh beyond that, it's also very difficult to assess it in the person's body.
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There are some outward signs, thrush on the tongue, which I commonly find whether dentists are ENTs recurrently, and I'm not judging anyone here, but it is common for me for patients to say, oh, they said I just I must be a mouth breather.
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I must I just have a dry mouth.
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And I'm looking at it going, like, you got a yellow tongue because of dry mouth?
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Yeah, I don't think so, right?
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You so a person might have thrush on their tongue.
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A person might be an individual who's got nail fungus, they might be someone who recurrently has ringworm or jock itch or skin manifestation, all right?
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People who might have recurrent outward bodily signs and manifestations of fungus, it might be reflective of inward fungus that is expressing itself outwardly.
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All right.
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But beyond that, it there are plenty, plenty of people who have mold overgrowth and it is stealth and hidden internal to the body, not so easily assessed and tested for.
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All right.
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What I mean by that, it's there's it's a double, it's a double hit to inflammation to the individual, right?
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Because we're dealing with not just the mold itself, but the toxins the mold makes or the toxins that mold can make.
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All right.
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Yeast and mold can both make various kinds of toxins, and they're called mycotoxins, which you've heard most, most all of us have heard Mike and I talk about this, if if not others besides Mike as well.
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But we talk about this all the time.
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Myco is short for fungus, and so fungal toxins, mycotoxins.
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And so we're dealing with a two-for-one.
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We're not just dealing with, like in the case of Lyme disease, for example, chronic Lyme, we're dealing with a chronic a stealth chronic infection.
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Well, here, it may not quite be an infection in the way we think of like fever, sweats, and chills, and et cetera, et cetera.
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It's a long-standing kind of low, slower burn level of impact, inflammation from this overgrowth or colonization, but they're also spawning, as the young people like to say, they're also spawning off these toxins that are causing other secondary problems, right?
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And that gets me to my third pearl, which is that is is regarding these toxins.
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Now, I don't say these things to gaslight people, but it's it's worth recognizing.
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All right.
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What do I think about when I talk about what am I messaging to my patients about the mycotoxins?
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There's two pieces.
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One is there is there are a group of mycotoxins, one specifically, uh, the group are called tricotosines tricothosenes or tricothosenes, and a specific one called T2 that are actually designated as biologic warfare weapons.
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Now, I could say that purposely to gaslight someone or just to get a rise and shock value, okay?
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If I want to be fair and more scientific about it, because this is the functional medicine reality podcast, all right?
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We're not about just sensationalism, okay?
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There's a whole different matter of dosing, okay?
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If a person is being exposed to some bit of tricothosenes in their environment or possibly even internally, that's a whole different story than when it's being considered usage, uh considered for usage in as a biological warfare weapon.
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Okay, it's it's a whole different story in dosing.
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But the fact of the matter remains, in principle, in chemical nature, these tricothosenes, T2 and specifically, which is the you you can look it up.
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T2 is the the synthetic chemical that is responsible for Gulf War syndrome.
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Uh these tricothasines are that potent, right?
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They have that potential of potency.
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All right.
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Number two is that these these mycotoxins are immune suppressive.
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They are immune suppressants.
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They weaken your immune system.
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So somebody might be out there thinking, well, duh.
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I mean, if anything causes chronic inflammation, then wouldn't that weaken your immune system?
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Yes and no.
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Okay, we could I could on an absolute basis just say no.
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When we talk about inflammation, we're talking about the immune system being revved up and in constant activity, sort of stimulated, in fact, chronically and many times overly so.
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Here, we're talking about the immune system actually weakening.
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All right.
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Let me give you an example of just how legitimate this argument is.
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There is a specific mycotoxin called mycophenolic acid.
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And that is effectively used as a prescription medication.
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There are two prescription medications used to purposely suppress the immune system.
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Why?
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Because they're used in patients who have had organ transplants or and and perhaps other conditions, but the most common one that I'm aware of, because I don't actually use these medications, and I've don't know if I've ever seen one of them written, and the other one I've seen extremely rarely.
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But they are a form of there's a precursor to mycophenolic acid.
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It gets converted into mycophenolic acid in your body, and it's intentionally trying to suppress your body's immune system so that if you've got an organ that you've received as from a donor, you don't want, we don't want that person's immune system attacking that organ.
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We want that person to receive and live with and be at harmony with that organ.
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So we're gonna like re- reduce the immune system enough that we have shown in in medical research and data that we can suppress the immune system enough to live at peace with this foreign organ in our bodies, right?
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So think about that.
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There's a there's a there is a mycotoxin that we may be exposed to from from mold sources, whether in our home, our our workplace, our school, et cetera, or from inside our bodies, just in organically, because we were carrying that kind of mold inside of us, that in principle can be immunosuppressive enough that it is used as a prescription medication for organ transplant patients.
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Now, again, I'm not here trying to gaslight people.
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It is not the same to say I've got one unit of this mycophenolic acid that I'm exposed to from this mold in my home versus I'm taking a prescription medication that may be a hundred, a thousand, ten thousand, a hundred thousand fold of these number of units.
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Okay, the dosing is totally different.
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But in principle, you just got to understand that.
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And I'm just of the mindset recurrently, we don't know what we don't know.
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What level of mycophenolic acid is has what kind of impact on our immune system.
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And we have seen, I would just say flatly, we have seen myself, my colleagues, whether at RootSeek or the colleagues I rub shoulders with and network with and learn from and learn with, we have seen patients where their immune system improves when we reduce and remove these fungal toxins and the fungal sources that are making those toxins.
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Now, lastly, on this topic about immune suppression, number one, I'm sure most anyone is thinking, oh, okay, well, so that I'd get sick less.
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All right.
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Or at least I'd I'd like to believe as an outcome that if I address this, then I'll be, I'll be sick less.
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So if I'm a person who I get colds a lot, I get recurring sinus infections.
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I'm on antibiotics recurrently for that.
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And sometimes they work, sometimes they don't.
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All right.
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A lot of people relate with this stuff.
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Why do they sometimes work and sometimes they don't?
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Because it's not always bacteria.
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Sometimes, many times it's it's fungus up in the up in this nose, nasal and sinus cavity.
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And it is hard to identify that.
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And it is not something we think about as primary care doctors and usually even as specialists in conventional medic America, despite the decades of data and research that many people, the a meaningful percentage, if not majority of people who have chronic or recurring sinusitis have fungal element.
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A fung a piece of their condition is due to fungus in the sinuses.
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Okay.
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But that's another day.
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We've I've referred to that on another podcast.
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But again, just bringing that back to the picture here.
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The fungal toxins, these mycotoxins, yeah, they can lead to immune suppression and someone might get sick more often, but it's not just about how often I get sick.
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There's two other big pieces for me.
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Number two is the impact of immunosuppression on cancer development.
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All right.
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Now, again, this is translational, this is functional, this is not conventional medicine.
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I'm not trying to gaslight anybody.
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But in principle, no doubt, full conviction on my part, if my immune system is weak, I'm going to be at more risk for cancer.
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That that's just fact.
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That's what happens as we age.
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As we age, our immune systems get weaker.
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If I am over 50, as I am, and many of us are, all right, our immune systems are weakening.
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And they're weakening more so than when we were 40 or 30.
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We are progressively in a weaker state.
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I don't need extra help weakening my immune system from more mycotoxins, right?
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I don't need to be more risk for more infections, pneumonia, whatever else, and cancer.
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All right.
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I've got plenty of help with my bot my body naturally aging, okay?
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And that's for another time as well.
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But cancer risk, I just in principle, okay, this is not some kind of there hasn't been a study on this per se that I'm aware of, but in principle, I certainly have concerns that, and it's not something we can necessarily study out one-to-one directly, but a weaker immune system, we are going to be at more risk for cancer.
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And third and lastly, as I just alluded to a second ago, is just aging itself.
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All right.
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The definition of in aging is effectively, we could broaden that term to inflammaging, which is a medical term.
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It's mostly used in research, regard, and this is regarding the fact that aging is a direct consequence of chronic inflammation.
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And in this case, when we say inflammaging, we are talking about the production of zombie cells, all right?
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Cells that we make that we didn't make properly, because we're constantly making new cells every day, every second.
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And those new distorted dysfunctional cells that we made don't auto-explode.
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They don't blow up, they don't die as they're pro they should have been programmed to do when they're not made correctly.
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And so now we have these half-functional, half not functional cells that are often termed zombie cells.
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Again, not for today.
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That's in the longevity health bucket.
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But we are, as we're getting older, we make more zombie cells, we have more inflammation, and suppressing the immune system only serves to enhance that aging process.
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Do you want to, do you have a want to age more quickly than you already are?
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I doubt it.
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I certainly don't.
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All right.
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So the immunosuppressive effect, yes, infection potential, but also cancer risk driving phenomena as well as further acceleration of aging.
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These are the three top things in my mind when I'm thinking about with immunosuppression.
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And it's usually more about my concerns about number two and three than number one, because the patient can tell me automatically if they're I've already known if the person is someone who gets sick often or not.
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All right.
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So there you go.
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Why mold matters?
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It doesn't matter if you are, again in wrap-up, whether you're a person who deals with chronic inflammation of whatever sorts, okay, which I that's where my heart lies is for those folks because there's a lot of suffering.
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But you could also be a person who completely, quote unquote, feels fine, or you could be a person who, hey, you've got some things here and there, but they're nothing to run to the doctor about, quote unquote, as people say to me.
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Uh they're they're like seem like common problems, some respiratory stuff, recurring congestion, post-synxual dripping, fatigue, some aches and pains, neurologic symptoms of various sorts, whether mental emotional health or physical health with neuro neurologic mechanisms, all right.
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You could be any of those three types of patient profiles.
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And and mold can be a factor.
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Mold can matter in any of those individuals.
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In the person who feels fine, it's more that, hey, those people we've seen as chronic who are dealing with chronic inflammation and really suffering, they didn't start that way.
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They didn't, right?
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Some people, it just seemed like it came out of left field rather suddenly.
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Other people, it was a slow burn and it was a development over multiple months or even a couple of years or more.
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All right.
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But the exposure isn't a thing until it is, right?
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If you've if a person's got mold in their home, not everyone will be destined to having a problem, but a good percentage will.
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And hey, if you're lucky enough to not at the expense of someone else in your household, but if you are a person who your partner, your spouse, your unfortunately your child, your parent is dealing with chronic health issues, and there's a discovery that there's a mold exposure issue in the home, and you aren't symptomatic in some kind of meaningful way, you just were handed a gift.
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You just were handed a gift to address something preemptively, preventatively, if you will.
00:18:10.279 --> 00:18:25.480
This is like longevity health, effectively, to have identified a problem that you can nip in the bud when it comes to your case, and you don't have to deal with the evolution, the the likely potential or likely evolution of health consequence for you down the road.
00:18:25.640 --> 00:18:25.960
All right.
00:18:26.120 --> 00:18:27.400
Again, the three pearls.
00:18:27.480 --> 00:18:35.160
The mold issue is a commonly a stealth or hidden problem, whether stealth are hidden inside your body or stealth or hidden in the buildings that we live in.
00:18:35.319 --> 00:18:38.600
And again, I'll refer to podcasts Mike and I've talked about, and we'll talk about again.
00:18:38.759 --> 00:18:44.039
It's not to say that there's such a thing as a an absolutely mold-free home or a mold-free body.
00:18:44.200 --> 00:18:44.759
That's not the case.
00:18:44.920 --> 00:18:46.600
It's a gradation, it's gray.
00:18:46.759 --> 00:18:52.039
But just diagnosing a mold problem, a source, is often stealth or hidden.
00:18:52.200 --> 00:19:03.880
And just because we don't see it or smell it in the in our environment, in our buildings, just because we don't exhibit jockic or nail fungus or meaningful thrush, recurring thrush, that doesn't mean it's not there.
00:19:04.200 --> 00:19:04.600
All right.
00:19:04.840 --> 00:19:12.759
Second Pearl, it's a it's a two-for-one win when we find and address mold and mycotoxins because we're dealing with both the mold and the toxins they make.
00:19:12.920 --> 00:19:17.480
And thirdly, when it comes to the toxins, it is it is worth remembering and recognizing.
00:19:17.640 --> 00:19:37.160
These can be really potent as reflected by the fact that A, it is a category are listed as a biological warfare weapon, and there's a yet another, they they all have immunosuppressive effects as reflected by a particular mycotoxin, mycophenolic acid, which is used as a prescription medication purposely to suppress the immune system.
00:19:37.319 --> 00:19:38.680
So that's the quick review.
00:19:38.840 --> 00:19:49.960
You know, the the wrap-up here is that um this is a topic that's it is something that is a bread and butter topic for for myself and a lot of uh my colleagues who here at RootSeek, especially.
00:19:50.120 --> 00:19:52.440
I've been on the on the board.
00:19:52.600 --> 00:19:54.440
I've had the privilege to be on the board with Mike.
00:19:54.600 --> 00:20:00.840
He's been on the board longer than I have, with the International Society of Environmentally Acquired Illness, I-S E A I, right?
00:20:01.079 --> 00:20:02.840
I-sea I.org.
00:20:03.160 --> 00:20:06.440
A lot of great material and information there, a lot of tons of free material there.
00:20:06.519 --> 00:20:29.319
If you go there and look under get help and look especially under the the webpage for the environmental, uh for the IEPs and from the environmental side of things as opposed to the human help side of things, you know, um, the practitioners who are the doctors of homes as opposed to the doctors of of people, you'll find a lot of free downloadable resources about quite common questions that we get from people who have mold in their homes.
00:20:29.559 --> 00:20:31.000
Should I keep or throw away this stuff?
00:20:31.160 --> 00:20:39.480
You know, how do I what are first steps in making an educated decision about who to work with as an inspector or a remediator and things of that nature?
00:20:39.640 --> 00:20:39.960
Okay.
00:20:40.200 --> 00:20:46.519
ICI was born, this organization was born out of the the Russian shoemaker community, the SERS community, if you've heard of those terms.
00:20:46.759 --> 00:20:50.039
A lot of kudos, kudos, kudos, and credit to the founders.
00:20:50.200 --> 00:20:50.440
Dr.
00:20:50.519 --> 00:20:55.480
Mary Ackerley, a very highly accredited physician, Harvard and Hopkins trained, Dr.
00:20:55.559 --> 00:20:57.319
Keith Bernstein, as well as Dr.
00:20:57.400 --> 00:20:59.960
Sonia Rappaport, the three founders of ICI.
00:21:00.200 --> 00:21:00.360
Dr.
00:21:00.440 --> 00:21:07.480
Neil Nathan has been a prominent member of ICI in the past and a big face of the organization, has contributed so much.
00:21:07.559 --> 00:21:09.000
And there are many, many others.
00:21:09.160 --> 00:21:09.400
Dr.
00:21:09.480 --> 00:21:18.440
Joe Carnahan is a known individual in the in the online space who has been a long, long-standing charter member of the organization and long-standing member of the board.
00:21:18.600 --> 00:21:31.079
I've I've learned from so much from all these individuals, and they've paved, paved the way and set the foundations for the organization, but also for this community at large of practitioners and patients who are wrestling with mold illness.
00:21:31.160 --> 00:21:34.840
And ultimately, the organization's intent is to train other practitioners.
00:21:34.920 --> 00:21:44.039
And we've got some finally now in the near future, we have some really exciting stuff coming forward in in regards to further more standardized training of practitioners.
00:21:44.120 --> 00:21:45.960
And so we're really looking forward to that.
00:21:46.120 --> 00:21:50.600
And I've been a privilege, I've been privileged to be a real big part of that project.
00:21:50.840 --> 00:21:53.720
And so, yeah, this is again, this is very aligned.
00:21:53.799 --> 00:22:09.799
This topic is extremely aligned with who I am professionally, my colleagues, and it is it is just one of the two big beasts, if you will, that are commonly, commonly seen, almost predictably seen in people who are dealing with various forms of chronic inflammation and health suffering, right?
00:22:09.960 --> 00:22:11.720
Lyme and mold, mold and lime.
00:22:11.960 --> 00:22:26.519
There's a reason when people are suffering and don't have diagnoses, don't get help in the conventional world, that when they go online, they commonly find lime and mold, mold and lime as the two bigger dominant players in their illness condition.
00:22:26.759 --> 00:22:28.120
So more to come.
00:22:28.279 --> 00:22:32.840
And Mike and I will continue to do our back and forth discussions.
00:22:32.920 --> 00:22:40.039
We're going to go through some, we're going to delve into some case studies in the near future, as we've done once before, I believe, once a lifetime anyway.
00:22:40.120 --> 00:22:43.079
And and uh and so yeah, be looking out forward for more.
00:22:43.160 --> 00:22:49.160
And I'd encourage you to pass this on because this is such this discussion, this topic about why mold matters.
00:22:49.319 --> 00:23:00.039
It's not feel free to be a gift to someone else and pay it forward because this is something that statistically is way more common in our country than we realize it to be.
00:23:00.279 --> 00:23:07.160
Certainly ex exponentially, infantismally perhaps more common than we recognize it to be in conventional medicine.
00:23:07.240 --> 00:23:34.440
And uh again, it's our it's our privilege here at at RootSeek and at the Functional Medicine Reality Podcast to be part of the awareness campaign, if you will, the awareness effort to spread the word and let people know so um there are more people who can get better faster and who can find hope in their suffering, or in the case of longevity health, to extend their life in a both quality and duration manner so they can keep thriving for longer.
00:23:34.680 --> 00:23:35.640
So again, I'm Dr.
00:23:35.720 --> 00:23:36.360
Mark Sue.
00:23:36.600 --> 00:23:37.720
It is my privilege to be here.
00:23:37.799 --> 00:23:45.160
Um appreciate all the feedback and the encouragement that I keep receiving from folks about this podcast.
00:23:45.400 --> 00:23:46.600
We'll talk to you next time.
00:23:46.840 --> 00:24:01.400
If you have any, as always, if you have any want for a second opinion in functional medicine consultation, especially with the chronic inflammation kind of conditions, we are more than honored and privileged to be able to be part of your journey at RootSeek.
00:24:01.559 --> 00:24:03.960
You can find us at rootseekhealth.com.
00:24:04.120 --> 00:24:05.799
Rootseekhealth.com.
00:24:05.960 --> 00:24:07.079
Talk to you next time.