D. Deb 0:00
Yeah, so today’s episode on Let’s Talk wellness. Now we are diving into the world of mold. Many of you have heard me speak about mold in the past. It has been a pillar in my own recovery of Ms. And today, I want you to meet a dear friend of mine. Her name is Andrea, and she is part of respirari Labs, but she also has been a consultant in the past for people struggling with mycotoxin illness. Mycotoxin illness is a tragedy, as far as I’m concerned, because it is so under diagnosed and misdiagnosed, because it’s just not well known by a lot of practitioners, certainly in the traditional world, but in the alternative world, it is a newer disorder that people are learning about, and not everyone is extremely knowledgeable about. And I think it really needs to be the forefront of a lot of these undiagnosed or misdiagnosed cases. We see a lot of mycotoxin illness at the

Dr. Deb 1:04
root cause of neurological conditions, ALS, MS, Parkinson’s dementia, Alzheimer’s disease, and if not treated and addressed, these disorders will not improve and sometimes end very tragically for us. So I want to introduce you guys to my dear friend Andrea today, and she will be a wealth of knowledge for you and hopefully put some of your fears at risk about remediation of your home, but also probably bring up some things that you never knew about, mycotoxin, illness.

Andrea
Thank you for those, those very kind words. It’s It’s wild that as I hear stories like yours and mine, so often it’s it’s wild how similar they are. And so these topics are so important to bring awareness to, and I appreciate the work that you’re doing to do that. So thank you for for being here and for letting me be here with you.

Dr. Deb
Oh, you are so welcome. So tell us your story. How did this happen to you?

Andrea 2:05
Got it? So it’s all, it’s all very ironic. In 2017 we were living in a rental home in Robbinsdale, and we were renting as we were kind of getting out of debt. I was a pre med student and starting up my family with my husband, who I who I met later in life, and our two year old daughter, contracted lead poisoning from our rental home. She She was chewing on a window sill, and I thought I bet there’s lead paint on that window sill. How we tested the window sill, sure enough, there was lead paint. Tested my little girl and she had lead poisoning. We weren’t financially ready to buy a house, but we qualified for just enough. My mom is incredibly smart. She’s been a realtor almost 50 years, and she helped us find a home. And so we found a home that we liked and a modest home, but clean and built in the 90s, so no lead paint. And we had, you know, a general inspection, and it didn’t really raise any red flags. And we moved in. So we moved into the home end of October of 2017 two months, almost two months to the date, later, our five year old dog died. She developed a very sudden neurological disorder. It was very rapid and and it was at the time we didn’t, you know, put pieces together, but it’s interesting that I, I somehow knew it was environmental, like I can’t, but I, but I didn’t put the pieces together. Anyways, my Upon moving in, my health started to decline, but as as it is for so many women,

Andrea 3:54
I didn’t connect the dots, because I just had my third child. He was nine months, and I thought, well, maybe this is postpartum. I was experiencing migraines, and that wasn’t typical for me, without being pregnant, and my ears started to ring, I started to experience anxiety that was not typical for me, and it just kind of snowballed from there. And eventually I went into my doctor and I said, I’m having anxiety that’s not typical for me and and for me to go see a doctor over that, if you knew me, you would have to know it was pretty extreme. It was to the point where I couldn’t go to the grocery store and and so it just kind of got worse from there. And then it progressed into migraines that would last months at a time, and my my worst migraine lasted three months day and night. I mean, three consecutive months day and night. And it was so severe that at the time, my husband had to hide the guns in the house because I was I was suffering, and I was begging him to help me die. I mean, if you’ve ever had a migraine, maybe you can understand this. But on top of these migraines that I couldn’t control, I was confused, and

Andrea 5:10
I couldn’t remember my children’s names. At one point, I looked at my oldest son and thought he was my baby brother. There was one day my husband came home and I, I wanted to say to him, did you see the email from Grace’s preschool teacher? And I couldn’t find my words. And finally, I just sat there and started crying. And my sweet, loving, patient husband said, Are you asking if I saw the email from Miss Annette? And I said, Yes, yes, that’s it. So I, you know, we made so many doctor visits and in the ER, and we kept saying to these doctors, you know, she’s, I’ve got this migraine, but I’m confused. And they would do CT scans, well, then it was, you need psychiatric help. You need a psychiatric evaluation. And my doctors were very, very frustrated with me.

Andrea 6:01
In 2000 end of 2019 2020 I believe I was diagnosed with Lyme disease Bartonella Babesia, and that made sense to me. They think that I’ve had Lyme disease since I was a teenager. And that makes sense. I live in Minnesota, and I love to fish and be in the woods and forage mushrooms. So that made sense. We treated Lyme disease out of pocket for about a year, and by that time, I hadn’t worked in two years. I was mostly bed bound. I had inflammation throughout my body. I was dealing with just a myriad of very strange, debilitating health effects. And we’ve never been a one income family, so we were really struggling. My husband was a chef at the time. It was during, he was during the lockdowns. It was during covid And so his his pay was cut. He was working all the time. And then, you know, then we had like, these crazy out of pocket medical expenses. I said to my doctor at one point, because I wasn’t getting wasn’t getting better, I said, I think I might be living in mold. And I I’ve been reading about the Lyme and mold connection, and he was just like, Oh, I’m not really worried about that. The next time I met with him, I said, Doc, I know I’m living in mold. I can, I can see a little bit of it in my basement. And he says, I’m not worried about it. We’ll deal with it later. Well, later never came because we ran out of money. So by the time we figured out that that it was very the culprit was environmental. We were tapped out, and we didn’t have anywhere to go. And so we moved out to a tent in our backyard with our two small children or two dogs, and by this point, I was ready to take my life and and I I listened to your podcast interview, and it was so wonderful. And I love the fact that you mentioned that mycotoxins can cross the blood brain barrier, and this can cause inflammation in the brain, and that’s important to know, because it’s important for healthcare providers, for social workers, for professionals and for folks to know that mold exposure can manifest as mental health disorders. It can look like anxiety, depression, pans and pandas and kids, personality changes, dementia, you know, all of those things. And so, besides the fact that I was suffering, I was just very unwell with the swelling in my brain. And so I I rewrote my life insurance policy, and I was very aware of when it would pay out. I tripled the coverage, and then I plan to, you know, to take myself out of this world. And my thinking was is, I can’t live like this. I’m suffering. But also I knew my home was toxic. I could feel it. And you know, my husband, who’s got a healthy immune system, didn’t, and I knew I needed to get my kids out of this home and so, so we lived in the tent, and I had these plans in mind, nobody knew. And so I said, Well, if I am going to leave my children motherless, I’m going to fight like heck. So I started reading, because my education was in the sciences. I dove into everything I could. I read textbooks on mold remediation, indoor air quality, environmental testing. I reached out to professionals in the industry. Michael Pinto, he’s a wonderful professional and an educator. He sent me a free textbook. I read it cover to cover. I read everything I could on mold toxicity. I read Dr Neil Nathan’s book toxic. All of his suggested reads.

Andrea 9:43
And I, two weeks into reading, I was talking over the heads of the professionals that I had hired, and that was really alarming to me, and they didn’t know what mycotoxins were and and I thought, wow, this is really unregulated so, so I became the professional that we so desperately needed. I recovered my health greatly fresh air and and good food and supporting my detox pathways. And we did remediate our house several times. By the way, the the small bit of visible mold in our basement was extensive. It was throughout our entire basement, everywhere, and it was very, very hidden. We just had no idea.

Andrea 10:30
So by the time I recovered, I found a local company here in Minnesota, and I reached out to the owner, and I said, I want to work for you. And says, Well, I don’t know what you would do. You’re hypersensitive. And, you know, we do inspections and mold remediation, and I don’t know what I would do with you. So I chased him down for three months, and I was, we were about to lose the house, and I knew that this is where, where, where God was leading me to to work. This is, you know, all this education I had this is this was a seed that was instilled in my in my heart, to to work in this industry in some capacity. But how? So finally, after three months, I said to him, I said, Listen, if you don’t hire me, I’m going to show up at your doorstep. So he did. He finally and and the first day of work was kind of funny. He says, Well, there’s a desk. And he says, I have no idea what you’re going to do for me. And so I worked for that gentleman for three years, and I created my role in his company, which was really exciting, because I could use my own strengths, my passion. And so what I did for him was I was, I remember one day he says, I need to make a business card for you. What’s your title? And I’m like, Hmm, how about you know, client advocate and director of education. So what I did for him was I worked to build relationships with doctors like yourself and indoor environmentalists. And that’s really where my passion is, because if we are going to make progress in these environmentally triggered illnesses, we have to have providers like yourself working with indoor environmentalists, and you would be and maybe you wouldn’t be surprised to know that everybody is really compartmentalized, and it’s important that doctors like yourself, you stay in your lane. You know all about the body and how to diagnose the body and indoor environmentalists, they need to stay in their lane. They need to not be giving health advice or saying mycotoxins. What are those? Those aren’t real. It’s in your head and so but it is important to work together, because one thing that I want to impart on anybody that’s dealing with these things is that navigating mold toxicity is is difficult and it can be financially exhaustive.

Andrea 12:48
It requires a multi faceted approach. You have to diagnose your home, not easy. You have to heal your home. You have to diagnose your body, heal your body, and like so many of us know, it’s not covered by homeowners insurance. It’s not covered by health insurance. So you have to go at it very thoughtfully with being very cognizant of your resources. And that’s hard to do when your brain is swollen and and people are telling you like you’re nuts, or your spouse is like, well, I’m fine, you know, I’m fine. I don’t if there’s a problem, you leave. And my husband said that to me at one point. He’s still alive, by the way, and you’re still married to him. Oh, my, it’s molded. Marriage is a topic I like to talk about a lot, because it is, and I want to, I want to make this really clear, it is par for course that not everybody is sick in the home. And what we noticed is once we moved out, we saw things fall away. We saw behaviors from our children fall away. We saw all three of my kid. I have three kids, all three of them had eczema. Never had that issue again. So it affects people very differently. And that that’s par for course, because these mycotoxins, you know, they get into our body, into our bloodstream, they’re very small, and so they cause systematic damage. You got genetic predispositions. Gender plays a role past exposure, so it’s, it’s very typical to see family members react differently. My husband has an immune system like a wildebeest. He is, he is wonderfully he’s a good detoxer. But after we moved out, he he notices, noticed a difference. But if you don’t have your spouse on board, it’s going to be very difficult, because it’s expensive. Things have to be done, right? But

Dr. Deb 14:50
that as well, like so many of our clients, end up their marriages don’t survive. It’s too hard. Sometimes there’s divorces that become very. Ugly, and there’s, you know, fighting over the children, and one thinks the other one is crazy, and it’s devastating. It’s devastating our families. It’s devastating marriages. It devastates the finances, like you’ve said. I mean, I’ve seen people mortgage their homes two, three times over to try to save the home because they don’t want to leave the home and leave it to someone else who will get sick, or they can’t afford to leave, or they’ve invested so much in a remediation, it’s impossible now to leave, because there’s so much invested, they’ll never get their money out of it. There’s so many stories, and I love what you’re talking about, staying in in the lane too, because we get asked all the time, how do I clean up my house? And, you know, yes, we can help tell you where to go and what to do and how to start a process. But we don’t know how to we haven’t, never seen your house as the healthcare practitioner. I don’t know your house. I don’t know what it’s like. I don’t know what you have growing in there. I you know we can tell you things, but sometimes the things that we tell you might make your home sicker instead of better, and it is very hard to stay in that lane. You want to help everyone. You want to give them a place to start. But I agree so much having a good building biologist or environmental specialists come in and really evaluate that the airflow and the humidity and look at the house and see what’s going on, it’s going to save you a ton of money doing that, versus us just telling you to start doing this and this and this.

Andrea
You touched on some good points that I want to bring up, because, you know, a lot of people say, Well, Andy, why don’t you guys just move? Well, first of all, it’s not that simple. We’ve lost equity, and I would never leave my home to somebody else. But also, you know, besides losing equity in our home, we’re in debt. I mean, I when I first, when I finally went back to work after two years and I was making minimum wage, but so grateful for that income. My wages were garnished for unpaid medical bills, and which was devastating. But also, my home is cleaner than most people’s, and in that we’ve had friends that were very well meaning, like, Come stay here, and I’m like, house is worse. And that’s something that people need to understand, is there is no perfect house and, and this is not a one size fits all. So you know, there’s, there’s people with, like, wooden foundations as wild as that sounds, no thank you. So there are situations where it’s like, it’s not worth it. But you know, there is no perfect house, and once you’re hypersensitive, you’re hypersensitive, and so I’m a fan of making your home where you’re going to choose for it to be, and then allocating your resources to making that home the best that it can be. There’s a lot of things you can do to improve your air quality. You can invest in a good ventilation system that’s important, putting up a gutter system, getting, you know, good air purification technology, being cognizant of what products you’re bringing into your home,

Andrea 18:21
and that’s really important. And you know, I there’s I want to talk about, about testing the home, because this is important, and it’s often a topic where folks spend really a lot of money that could be better invested. So confusing to people. So when people ask me, I love to read, and I, when I was in school, I loved microbiology, and so I love to read about environmental testing, that’s, that’s what I do on the weekends. I’m a real hoot. But people always ask me, you know, Andy, what’s the best test? And I’m like, Well, you know, I need to test my home. What should what test should I do? And I’m like, Well, wait a minute, wait a minute. And I ask a lot of questions first. And the reason is, is that there is no one perfect test, and each test is going to tell you something different. And also, I’m a fan of very objective based testing, and let me explain. So say, you said, Andy, I need to test my home. You know, what test should I do? I’d say, well, Deb, do you own or do you rent your home? And that’s a that’s a big question, because if you rent your home, your objective in testing, it might be really different than if you own your home. So if you own your home, your objective should be, hopefully, to identify sources of moisture, to identify building defects and to determine exactly what building material is affected by mold, right? It’s like if you had cancer in your body, you you need to know where it is. You to take it out. Now, if you’re renting your home, the objective might be, well.

Andrea 20:00
Well, I know there’s mold here. I know it’s affecting my health. I want to get out of my lease, or maybe it’s for legal reasons. Some renters just want to know is this is my environment a factor? So that’s the first question I ask. But when you own your home and you’re starting the process of diagnosing a home, what you don’t want to do is simply just acquire data points, data points that you that maybe you can’t fully understand, and that, because that can be dangerous, I’ve seen people make very big and expensive decisions based on one test. I mean, leave houses behind and everything they own. So you want to start holistic. A good mold inspector is somebody that knows mold and mold testing methodologies, knows the strengths and limitations of each and then also understands the Building Sciences and the building construction. So they should know changing building codes. They should know the anatomy of the home right, very similar to expecting a medical doctor to knowing the anatomy of the body, so that you want to start holistically, looking at the home, looking at ventilation rates, which is CO two levels, and using thermal imaging and moisture meters and doing a very thorough visual inspection people, people always say, oh, air testing. It’s terrible. It’s terrible. Okay, well, what kind of air testing are we talking about? Are we talking about? Because there’s a lot of them. We can test the air for VOCs and mycotoxins and spores. But typically, when people are gruffing about air testing, they’re talking about spore trap air sampling. And yes, it has a ton of limitations, a ton of them, and it should never be done without the understanding of these limitations. So for those who don’t know what I’m talking about, spore trap air sampling is is done with like a pump at a, you know, at a certain volume, and then they take the samples, and they’re typically evaluated through microscopy, and then they can identify the genera of molds in the air and that can be useful, because A spore of Stachybotrys is going to be representative of long term water damage, but it’s inexpensive, and so typically, the the initial evaluation of a home will involve spore trap air sampling, and it’s a piece to the puzzle.

Andrea 22:13
However, there is a time and a place for for more expensive or focused test. And so about a year ago, my health started to decline again. And I was in the industry now for three years, I had access to more tools and resources than most people, and I was playing that game of, you know, is it perimenopause? Is it Lyme? Am I doing too much? So I traveled, I went away and I and because I wanted to experiment, and I came home, and I was certain that I was being affected in my bedroom. I knew it. And so we started sleeping in a different bedroom, and it was different.

Andrea 23:01
And then we started sleeping in the camper, and I knew it. I said there’s something going on in this bedroom. So had multiple inspectors come out. They used all the tools that I mentioned. They had all the knowledge that I mentioned. They did sport trap air sampling came back clean. They did wall cavity sampling came back clean. We did a dust test that looks at mycotoxins.

Andrea 23:26
Came back clean. There was no issue, but I was really persistent. He said, I know that there’s something going on in here. So then we ran what’s called in AMEA a m, a m, e, a, stands for airborne mycotoxin environmental analysis by respiratory and it came back off the charts. With mycotoxins, came back really high with aflatoxins, triglycines and ochratoxin A and man, I cried.

Andrea 23:54
And by the way, the previous homeowner of our home died of liver and lung cancer at 56 she was diagnosed in January, she was dead by June, and then we bought the house in October. And for anybody listening that that doesn’t know, aflatoxin is a mycotoxin. It is one of the most known and documented carcinogens known to man, and it is correlated with liver and lung cancer, and actually the precise cancers that the previous homeowner died of. So getting that data point was very validating, but we didn’t know where the mold was, and so we took out a second mortgage, just like you just talked about, with an interest rate that made me throw up, and we did exploratory remediation. So we re sided the home, we found mold behind the siding near my bedroom. Thanks to a woodpecker, once the siding was off, we discovered the windows weren’t flashed. Those were moldy. We found a very saturated, moldy sub floor in our master bathroom. We demoed our master bathroom and our bedroom and did the siding. It was very expensive, but we found the mold.

Andrea 25:00
So I’m telling this story because it’s important to understand the limitations of a non invasive inspection. There are going to be situations where you cannot know there’s mold there until you take it apart. So So I was grateful for this EMEA, because it was the only test and and remember, I ran a number of tests in that room. It was the only one that confirmed what I was feeling. And so, by the way, that that test is through respiratory labs, and I chased them for a year and begged them to hire me, and they just did. So thank you. I’m a proud new addition to respiratory labs, and I’m very happy to be there because this this test, it’s the technology is new, and it’s very exciting, but it’s very sensitive, but it’s important for folks to know that there are limitations to non invasive inspections. And if you have somebody that is in that situation where they feel it, I trust your gut. I’ve never been wrong.

Andrea 26:03
We’ve always found it. And if you’re feeling stuck, what I tell folks to do is, I’m in Minnesota, so our time is limited on to do this, but in the summer, put up a tent, get out of your home as long as you can.

Andrea 26:18
When you travel away from your home, the minute you walk in the door, and I still do this, walk around your entire house, immediately use your nose and and smell the house, because we become nose blind. It’s a long it’s crazy. We become Noah’s blind within I do within minutes, and my husband calls me the nose. I’ve got the sniffer. But when you take yourself out of an environment, that’s that’s how I figured it out. The first time I went to see my best friend, and we’re struggling with my health, and we didn’t we knew about mold, but we didn’t think it was our issue quite yet. And I traveled away. I came home after a week, and after 10 minutes of being home, I said to my husband, I said, it’s the house, it’s mold. So just a tip for anybody that is feeling stuck, yeah, and say too.

Dr. Deb 27:19
Like every house has a smell to it, right? Every house has its odor. It’s stuff. But you’re right. When you’re sensitive, you know, it’s molded. It doesn’t always smell musty, that’s the other thing. It doesn’t always smell musty, it doesn’t smell moldy. It doesn’t smell like old grandma’s basement or old grandma’s house. It can smell like so many different things, but you are so right. I remember after I had my sinus surgery and had the fungal ball removed. And he said to me, you’re going to be really sensitive. So if you walk in some place and you you smell something, get out right away. Go flush your nose. And we were on our way back, driving back from Atlanta, and we stopped at a gas station, get gas, have a potty break. And I took two steps in this building, and I turned around and walked out. I said to my husband, where is my nasal spray? Like I was so paranoid, because I had just had sinus surgery four days before that, and it smelled instantly, and I knew it, and it’s just one of those things where you go, I’m not going back there. I’m not taking the risk. I’m not even going to go in there to pay and go to the bathroom. I made my husband go in there and pay for everything. And I said, let’s stop someplace else so I can go to the bathroom. Because I’m not I’m not doing it. And you do become very, very sensitive. But the I think the biggest thing is to trust your instinct. Amen. Yes, many times people will say, like, I knew this, there was something, but I didn’t know what, and I couldn’t do this, or I wish I would have done that. And you really just need to trust your instinct on these things.

Andrea
I would agree. And you know, I ask a lot of questions I work, and I’m not running my consulting business right now because I’m very excited about the work I’m doing with respira. I truly but in my consulting work and I I help people just take a step forward. So I ask a lot of questions, but I’ll ask, does your house smell musty? And oftentimes people will say, well, sometimes, and the reason is, is that when we smell a musty odor, what we’re smelling is called a microbial, volatile organic compound, or an mvoc. So these are primary metabolites of mold, where mycotoxins are secondary metabolites. So primary metabolites, for those who don’t know Are, are metabolites rendered by a life sustaining process where secondary metabolites are it’s like the like the mold switch blades. It’s It’s defense mechanism and and mycotoxins are not alive, but m VOCs are commonly known as mold farts. But what’s the reason that we don’t always smell them is that VOCs will off gas more readily in environments of high heat and humidity. So people will say, well, our basement smelled musty, but I started the dehumidifier, and now we don’t smell it. And I want to be really clear.

Andrea 30:00
Or you’re mitigating the odor, you’re not removing the issue. And so in our basement was the same it was. It would smell musty or earthy in the summer, but not in the winter when it was really dry. So it’s important to to understand that. And if you smell a musty odor, there’s usually a source somewhere. And by the way, I believe you’re in Wisconsin, I’m in Minnesota, and basements are they’re such an issue. But people will say, Well, I we have a really icky basement, but we don’t go down there. And I’m sorry to say but the basement is a very important aspect of your indoor air quality, and that’s because air moves. It’s called the stack effect. Air moves from areas of high pressure to low pressure. So besides air moving through pressure differentials, you also have your HVAC system, so great that you don’t go down there, but that air does. So if you have a crawl space that’s not encapsulated. If you have a icky, scary basement, you’re not going to have a healthy home. So I don’t care how well you seal it up, that’s it’s really important to make sure that the the biology in your basement is is very good. So

Dr. Deb 31:15
I think another myth that I’d love for us to talk about is new homes, right? Um, no, I will hear people say, and I did it too. I have a new home. There’s no way my new house can have mold. And I remember getting ready to go for my sinus surgery, and my ENT said, You got to test your new home. And I’m like, my new home is, like, four years old. It was built in three months. It doesn’t have any problems to it. And sure enough, my kitchen tested positive for mold. And I was like, What in the hell? This is a brand new house, and we had a building biologist come out, and she did all the testing everywhere. Found a couple of little spots on some floor joists in the basement. Nothing that was Major. But we were like, where is this coming from in the kitchen? It made absolutely no sense to us. It ended up being our countertop. We didn’t do granite countertops. We had the typical laminate type countertop, and it was in the press board underneath. When we got underneath there, we could see a white film on that press board, and we swabbed it out, and sure enough, it was moldy in there and had it taken out. And I always like, you were talking about smells, I would come into the house and I would be like, What is that smell? And I couldn’t put my finger on it. It wasn’t a musty smell, it wasn’t a nasty smell. And my husband would say, I don’t know what you’re smelling. And he has no sniffer. I have a sniff. Vince, that’s the same thing. And so I said to him, I said, here’s the thing, we know, this has mold and I’m going to have this surgery. Why don’t we just take the countertops out and see if the smell goes away? And he’s like, Are you kidding me, Deb, do you know how big of a feed that is made of this huge island of huge kitchen? And I’m like, just put them in the garage. If it doesn’t change the smell, we’ll bring them back in. We put them in the garage, and literally, within 24 hours, the smell that I always smelled in a particular spot in the kitchen was gone in 24 hours. And we left it out there for a couple of weeks, and the smell never came back. We had our building biologist come back. She retested stuff. There was no mold in the kitchen anymore. So we replaced the countertops. Never had the problem. But who on earth would ever think you would have mold in your countertops? I would have never thought that

Andrea
that’s, I mean, besides your story, that’s, that’s the first I’ve heard that. But yeah, answering a phone at a remediation business for three years, I heard a lot, and I would, I would typically get calls from people that would say, Well, I’m seeing I have these weird health issues. I’m seeing this doctor. They think I’m being exposed to mold. And I, you know, then I’d ask about their house. Well, it’s not my house, it’s a brand new house, yeah, and I won’t say who, but there’s a builder, a very big builder, and I got calls from people in their homes frequently. One of them was a young woman, and she lived in my area, and I was talking to her, and I said, Gosh, it sounds like you have mold illness. And she goes, I can’t. My house is nine months old. And I said, and so she ended up doing an inspection, and there was mold throughout the house, I mean, Deb throughout the house, and it was very hidden. So what would folks need to know is that these houses go up so quickly, and a lot of lumber comes from the lumber yard, moldy, then it’s encapsulated, then it’s sitting out in the elements. We were in a small town in the west of the suburbs in Minnesota, and it’s just blowing up. And my kids are so funny. They just finished the second and third grade, and last year we had a neighborhood like just pop up right next to us. And my kids are so funny. Mom, you should stop by and give those families your card, because did you see how fast those houses went up? Mom, it’s raining. Do you see all that lumber there? So you have your bad building practice.

Andrea 35:00
You have subcontractors. I mean, I roofed houses when I was in college, you know, and I didn’t. I was great at shingling, and I was strong as heck, but I didn’t have any, you know, building knowledge. And so it’s, you can’t trust a new home. And oftentimes, I’m telling you some of these ticky tacky houses. So for anybody that’s in a new home, this is what I tell them, is, is be very acutely aware of when your warranty is up, and then get a very, very, very, very thorough inspection prior to that warranty coming up, because if there is an issue, then you can, you know, it in the bud, but it’s I’d be terrified to build a house, and eventually we will, but I’m going to keep it small and simple, because I see what can happen. But the age of the house really doesn’t doesn’t matter. It’s not a factor, in my opinion and experience. And sometimes those older houses, they breathe better. Sometimes they were just built better. So unfortunately, I wish it was that easy, because we were just, yeah,

Dr. Deb
we forget a lot of these building materials that are it’s not just traditional lumber. They come from other countries. They sit on a boat for months at a time. They’re sealed up. They’re, you know, if they’re using some things that have been sprayed with chemicals. Now you don’t just have mold. You have the chemicals. And we forget that people that are mold sensitive are EMF sensitive. They’re voc sensitive. They’re normally sensitive. So all those new home smells, quote, unquote, are VOCs that houses problems. We’re all on Wi Fi these days. Nobody wants hard wired, which makes the mold in this even worse, there’s so many things that can make your illness and your symptoms 10 times worse than what they could be, but we just have to educate ourselves well,

Andrea
and thank you for mentioning that, because, just like we should look at the health of our bodies holistically, right? Because health isn’t just an absence of disease, right? It’s so much more than that. But the same with the home. You don’t want to get so hyper focused on on mold, because it’s like carpet. Carpet is one of the most toxic things you can put in your home. VOCs are. I react to VOCs much like I do with mold, but also these VOCs will will work synergistically with molds and gram negative bacteria and endotoxins can kind of create their own toxic compound. And so when you are buying furniture, mattresses, especially, you want to make sure they’re green guard gold certified. So if you like, say you’re shopping on target.com you can go under the the product details, and something that is green guard Gold Certified will be rigorously tested for VOCs. And if you haven’t heard of that, Deb, I’ll, I’ll send it to you, because that’s that. It’s very important. Oh my gosh, laundry detergent. Laundry detergent is one of and and scented items. I know that you’re going to have listeners that are going to yell at me for this, but diffusing essential oils, it puts particulate matter in the air. Voc is, yes, I’m a fan of essential oils, and I use essential oils, but I never diffuse them. So there’s so many ways to to compromise your air quality. So it’s important when you’re considering your resources. You know that you you look at your home holistically and also your health, and don’t get so hyper focused.

Andrea 38:30
I’ve seen people. I talked to a woman once, and she was giving me gruffs. I can’t believe you stayed in your house. You’re never going to get well. And I said, Well, I’m doing pretty good, you know. And and she was so hyper focused on mold, and she would just leave everything behind, and I’m talking to her, and she’s drinking a Mountain Dew and eating fast food, and I’m just like, oh God, like, so it’s important not to get hyper focused, because it is not just mold, especially when we’re talking about environmental factors, is there’s so much, so much more to it.

Dr. Deb
So I think that’s a great thing for us to touch on, too. Is what do we get rid of and what do we not? Right? Well, that’s a great topic. You know, Dr Schumacher would say, everything has to go. You have to live in a tent. You can’t do anything else. You can’t sort of, you know, nothing can stay, nothing can come back in and and I think we’ve changed our thought process from that a little bit, and for a variety of reasons, we have much better testing, much better treatment of stuff, more knowledge of things these days. So what are some of the recommendations that you make for people about things? Because we love our things?

Andrea
Yeah, no. Thank you for bringing this. This topic up because it’s really important. The topic of content is a it’s a personal one, and it’s also a contentious one. And so we’ve remediated our home probably seven different times. Now, for anybody that’s like, oh my gosh, first of all, we did everything wrong the first way, which is why I’m here. I’m trying to teach people not to make the mistakes I made. I also wanted.

Andrea 40:00
Tell people that I made improvement in my health with every remediation effort we did not get all the mold in one swoop, and I and a step forward is just a step forward. So if you’re feeling overwhelmed and you know you’re staying in your house, a small step forward is a step forward. But the first, the first time and second time we remediated, I got rid of everything, and it was devastating. And and by the way, I think it’s dangerous to tell people, because I was right when I was diving into this, people like, you have to replace everything, couches, everything, everything, everything, everything, plus fix your home. And I otherwise, you’re not going to get better. It’s all or nothing. And by the way, that’s when I started to feel hopeless and made the plan to, you know, do what I was going to do. So that’s dangerous. The path forward is not the same for everybody. So pertaining to contents, this is how I talk folks through this number one, is it sentimental? Does it have Is it is it valuable to you in your heart, or does it hold value? Because the first thing that you should do, I’m somebody that I need to be taking steps forward all the time, all the time, and so if you’re waiting for remediation or a second mortgage to go through, purge your items, the last things that you have to deal with, that’s going to save you time and money. So just it’s a great remediation. Is a great time to say. Does this serve me? Do I need it? Because we live in a time of we’re just need so much stuff.

Andrea 41:28
Non porous surfaces can be cleaned. Okay, you don’t. There’s mycotoxins. Don’t get absorbed into things. I have a piano that is my whole life, my whole heart, I’m not getting so and by the way, there are surface tests if you do have a valuable piece of you know, maybe it’s grandma’s piano or something that you really love that’s valuable, we do have a surface test through respira, and they you can order these tests by yourself, by the way, which is incredible, but and then I would say, clean it. Try cleaning it, if you can. Now, this is going to be really different for for everybody, because I have friends that are way more sensitive than I am. And so when we were doing things, I put everything in bins and put them in the garage that I I just didn’t have time to deal with. And then once I started emptying my toxic bucket and kind of getting back to my baseline, what I would do is I would set up outside, and I’d open each bin, and I think, you know what? I didn’t even I forgot I had this. I’m just going to get rid of this.

Andrea 42:36
And then I would pay attention, oh, I’m reacting to that. I’m going to try to clean this. I’m still reacting. Now I’m going to get rid of it so there is no one size fits all. And honestly, we’ve been through seven remediations. We’ve got three kids. We are we’re buried, we’re upside down in bills. If we were to get rid of everything each time, I don’t know where we would be So, and that goes back again to you have to be how we speak out of both sides of my mouth here, you have to be cognizant that there’s these tiny terrorists, and they’re very real. But you also have to be realistic. And so I can you imagine, like, Well, we had a water event. Everybody. Get rid of all your toys kids. We gotta read, you know. And so after the third and fourth and fifth remediation, I was like, I’m a big fan of microfibers. I go to Costco, I go into their automotive and I have a big stacks of them. And I just, I always have a bucket of mild soap, whatever you want, water and microfibers, and I’m just, I always clean like that, so don’t the path forward is going to look very different for different folks. Some folks have a some folks have a wonderful husband, like I do. Some people have a lot of money. Some people don’t. Some people have family. And so you have to look at your situation, look at your resources, and make a path forward.

Dr. Deb
So that’s great. That is great. I love that. And I too, you know, I made the mistake and been that provider that said, if you don’t get rid of everything, you’re not going to get better. Because that’s what we thought 15 years ago, you know. And now I say the same thing that you do, you know, let’s look through it. Let’s we know, things can be cleaned. Some things might not be able to be but just like you said, Bin it up. Try it later, when you’re better. You know, certain things that you don’t look at, you don’t use that have been in the basement for seven years. Okay, you probably don’t really need those things. You haven’t unboxed them in seven years. Why would you unbox them now, you know, now we take a very different approach today than we did 15 years ago. And we do see people, they get better. They don’t have to get rid of all of their things. We have different treatment modalities now, you know, you can fog your house with a dry vapor, fog now that we didn’t have. Four, which can help a ton, but there’s so many different things available. It’s incredible how that’s changed. For sure,

Andrea
there’s one thing, so one thing that we didn’t do, and it wasn’t because I didn’t want to, it’s because we, we just didn’t have any money. We replaced all the kids beds. I wasn’t monkeying with that. Yeah, but we did not replace ours, and it wasn’t because I didn’t think it was important. We just didn’t have the money, so we vacuumed the heck out of it. And after our last this was just recently, my shoulder was my towel is in. My shoulders just terrible, terrible. And seasonal allergies is just the histamine dump. But my shoulders were killing me. And I said to my husband, I said, I think we need to replace the bed. And he goes, Well, what if it’s not what if it’s not part of it? And I said, well, we need a new bed. Anyways, you know? I said, and in beds get so icky. And so we did. We were we got a different bed. I’m sad to say that we at the time, because this was recently, right after our our second mortgage and huge remediation. We didn’t buy one that was low VOC. But that’s another thing, like, if you’re going to replace these things, you want to, it’s equality. But I’ll tell you, after we bought that new bed, I noticed a huge difference. And I’m just like, Oh my God, I’ve been sleeping in a contaminated bed. So if you’re on the fence about anything, your bed, man like that would be a good one to replace. So and it’s, I know it’s expensive, but even me not being able to buy one that was green guard gold certified, I already feel better.

Dr. Deb
So that’s we did the same thing when we tested our new house. We had a brand new mattress, and my ENT said, You got to test your mattress. And I’m like, Oh, come on, really. I just bought this thing. And I made the mistake when we bought the bed. I should have taken it back within the time that I had, because it was a little too firm and I was uncomfortable with it. So I got a nice little foamy mattress topper to stick on top the mattress. Never thinking that that was going to create moisture and take all of that in and make the mattress have mold in it. I didn’t realize that. And so we took the mattress topper off, tested the bed. The bed was full of mold. It was awful. And we had just spent, I don’t know, three, $4,000 on a brand new mattress. And and then we got to talking with the the guy who was coming to swap our mattress out. And he’s like, you might not have to get rid of that mattress. And I’m like, Are you kidding me? It’s full of mold. He’s like, I bet you it’s your mattress foam topper, not the mattress. And he taught us about the foam topper and how you never put that on there. And so we we took the mattress, did the same thing, took it out of the house for a while, let it air out, and waited about two months and retested it. And sure enough, the mold was not in the mattress. It was actually in the foam topper.

Andrea
And thank you for letting me know that, because we have we, you know, we bought an RV, and thank God it saved our life. And the mattresses in these RVs are, it’s torture. Oh yeah, they’re bad. We got one of those home mattresses, and I remember, like, yeah, thinking of X and like, I feel like I’ve read this, and that’s what’s in this. So be a good excuse. I’ll say to my husband, we have to get a new mattress. We’ve Yes, yes.

Dr. Deb
The other thing he had said is, if you’re going to do them, put them inside of an allergy cover, because then it keeps the moisture off of your mattress.

Dr. Deb 48:27
So when you’re sweating, it’s keeping it off the mattress, and then it won’t get the mattress moist, and then they won’t be breeding toxins. And so we were happy. We were able to save the mattress, but I didn’t sleep on it. We stuck it in a spare bedroom that nobody ever sleeps on anyone anyway, so maybe one person every two, three years comes and sleeps here. So we were like, oh, we’ll just stick it in there. That’ll be okay. And we ended up, we did the same thing, bought a new mattress, just because I’m like, You know what? This is my brain. I can’t be sleeping my head eight hours a day or six hours a day against something that’s moldy when it’s my brain that’s having problems. I’m like, I just can’t do it. And right? I would really encourage patients, like, when you’re thinking about being sick, think about that. Like, is it worth you risking cancer? Is it worth you risking ALS or Parkinson’s or MS or or these types of things, by not treating and dealing with the mold, because that is eventually what your fate is going to be if you don’t deal with this. And I think that’s the scariest part for people, you’re not just going to get mass cell you’re not just going to be sick. You will develop one of these diseases when it tests

Andrea
and stage mold illness. And thank you for for knowing that and for bringing that up. I was just in the I just went to San Diego for the International functional medicine conference, and I got to meet these folks at healing ALS, amazing folks. And they their, their mission is to, you know, just to show people.

Andrea 50:00
All of these different factors and that this can be dealt with, and they’re very set on looking at mold. And I knew this. I knew als was, you know, could be connected to mold, because I have people. I’m an advocate in my personal life too. I have a group called Minnesota mold illness right now. It’s just a Facebook group, but I have people in my community who have lost spouses to ALS at a young age, and then they started getting sick and realized they’re in mold. But I mean long, long term mold exposure like my the previous homeowner of my house, I don’t know if she was hypersensitive. She was here for 20 years, but she died very young of cancer. And so, you know, people say, Gosh, Andrea, I’m so sorry that you have this hypersensitivity. I’m not. I’m a woman of faith. I believe it’s a gift from God, because I would do anything to keep my family safe. And for me, it’s like a sixth sense, and it’s like, oh, something’s wrong in here, and and because of that, my family will, you know, will always be in safe environments. Because and I want to make this really clear, because some people just are not grasping this.

Andrea 51:06
Just because I’m hypersensitive and you’re not doesn’t mean that this isn’t affecting you. And yes, maybe you’re not feeling symptoms, or maybe you’re not connecting them, and your bucket isn’t full yet. But I want to make really clear these, these, these athletes, mycotoxins are carcinogens, neurotoxins, hepatotoxins, you know, all of the above, and they will lead to cancer, to dimension, Alzheimer’s and and it’s just not worth it. I always tell people, like, if I’m going to fill my toxic bucket, it’s going to be with like,

Andrea 51:39
pizza. Yes, exactly, a little pizza, yes, maybe yes, maybe a little tequila, you know, something fun. But and, and, and also, for the people that I’m I very ironically a mycology enthusiast. And if you could see my home a little better, you’d see I have mushroom figurines everywhere, which is ironic, but people really like to simplify mold Well, Andrea, molds everywhere. Absolutely. Mold has we use mycotoxins and and antibiotics and and and mold and fungi play very, very important roles in our world. However, yes, mold is ubiquitous. You will always have mold spores in the air. That’s just fine. That’s a normal fungal healthy ecology. However, you should never, ever, ever, ever have active mold growth and water damage anywhere within your building envelope. And I don’t care where it is. I don’t care if it’s in your attic. I don’t care if it’s way behind your wall or behind your siding. You Yes, mold is ubiquitous. We’ve got that, got that, but, you know, it’s usually these husbands are like, molds everywhere. My wife is nuts. It’s like, yes, but you should not have active mold growth within your building envelope, period, period, and that means your work environment too. Yeah, and school, schools,

Dr. Deb
oh, my God. A whole conversation about schools, every school is toxic. It just is. I mean, let’s think about it. They’ve all been built over 50 years ago. The majority of them there. They don’t have a lot of money to build them properly. They don’t have the money to maintain them properly. Things happen all the time. I cannot tell you how many teachers I see that are sick with mycotoxin illness. See that a lot too. Oh my gosh. It’s terrible. It’s terrible. And the kids, we wonder why they can’t learn. We wonder why they can’t think, why they can’t sit still. Well, hello, they’re in a toxic environment for eight hours a day breathing this toxins and the toxic chemical solutions that they use to clean with. Yes, yeah. I mean, we could go on for hours.

Andrea
No. And it’s an important it’s an topic, a topic that’s close to my heart. And I was actually just on a panel with a gentleman called Patrick Lee. He’s got an organization called Clean Air for kids. His kiddo would go to school, fine, and then he would have to come home in a wheelchair some days. And he went to the he went to the school board, and, you know, they did their test. He said, Well, elevated Aspen, my boss at respiratory labs sent him our mycotoxin air test. I love this. And he wore the sampler, and then put the pump in his backpack, and they took a sample incognito, and it came back with mycotoxins. So they pulled the kiddo out of the school, put him in a new school, tested that school, the kid’s Wonderful. Now he’s not sick anymore. But this they were just on the news. This is a really interesting story, and this the school district is, I think it’s in Illinois, I think somewhere in the Midwest. But there’s all these kids at this school that are sick, and the school’s not doing anything, and they’re, you know, and they’re not taking this mycotoxin testing seriously, because they’re like, well, there’s no regulations. Wait, what’s a mycotoxin? And it’s just like, at all. But, and we did the same thing at our we have. Great. We live in a small town. We love our teachers, we love our principal, but we had them test the school, and they did. They were so gracious about it. But my kids are reacting to something, and my little girl, she’s just a canary mom, I was dizzy today. I had a headache and and we don’t and we don’t know if it’s the chemicals, because it’s my husband too. My husband, that was the I’m fine, got the doors there now. He’s like, something’s amiss in the school. I’m like, Oh, tell me about it.

Andrea 55:32
But who knows, because we’re so sensitive now. And my husband jokes with me, goes, first of all, you have to stop reading, because we’re not going to be able to eat anything anymore. You’ve taken the joy out of our lives. And he, he says so very lovingly and jokingly, but he, you know, he, he blames me for the US being so sensitive. He goes, You just, you know, you require such good air quality in our homes that it’s hard to travel and go anywhere else, so we do a lot of camping.

Dr. Deb
Yeah. Well, I think there’s some truth to that. The cleaner our bodies get, we are more sensitive. We start to notice more things. And I will tell patients that all the time, when you start dumping the chemical load and your buckets getting lower and lower, you will notice when you go someplace that you don’t feel bad. Because when you feel bad all the time, you don’t pay attention to it. It’s your normal. So now that you’re starting to feel better and you don’t have these exposures, you’re going to notice things and pay attention to them. It’s important.

Andrea
And I would agree with that, because this issue in my bedroom, that was our last remediation.

Andrea 56:32
It was always there. And I really struggle with that, because I’ve made progress with every remediation, and I’m like, How did I not know, but it did. It snuck up on me, and again, my health started to decline. And so my husband said to me, we finished. I mean, it was a really expensive remediation, and, oh my and that year we had to buy a new truck. Our furnace went out. I’m just like, Okay, Lord, that was three, yeah, send a winning lottery ticket. We said to me, goes, Well, do you think we got it all? And I’m like, probably not. You know, there’s probably more. But and for people that think I’m nuts, my house is it, is it feels better than most houses, I would really does, but you’re not going to heal your home overnight, and that’s okay. And so if you’re feeling if you’re feeling hopeless, I want you to know that there is hope. Mold. One thing I just I want to say before we end things, because it’s close to my heart, and I know this because I talked to a lot of people, and I think it’s important to open this dialog. Mold can cause suicide ideation, and for me, that’s what it does, and I’m very aware of it, and it’s it’s interesting, and I have some wild theories behind it, but it can cause thoughts of hopelessness, and there is hope to be had. So if you are feeling that way, please reach out. You can reach out to me, and but there is hope to be had. These things are not they’re not hopeless, and it no matter where you’re at with your resources. A step forward is a step forward, and there’s so many ways that you can take a step forward. We are not wealthy people. We’ve never been wealthy people, not even when we started this journey before we spent all this money on remediation. And I feel very good today, so please don’t lose hope and and it’s knowing that mold can do this, you’re three steps ahead of the game. Truly, absolutely.

Dr. Deb
Andrea, tell us a little bit before we leave our conversation today, tell us a little bit about respirari Labs, what they what you guys do there, and how it can help some of the people that we’re talking to today. You got it first.

Andrea
I want to say that if I won the lottery today, I would still be with respiratory labs. And I want to make, I want to make that very clear, I’m not making big bucks in this job. So respiratory labs, first of all, the technology came out of Australia. There was a couple researchers back in 2016 and 17 that that said, These people are nuts. There is not mycotoxins in our air, it’s in our food. So they created this, this air test to prove people like me wrong. And then they were like, Oh shoot. So that’s where the technology came from. My boss used a wonderful man happy to say that he was a remediator in Portland, Oregon for many years, and he would see families. He would do everything right. He’d pass all the tests, but he would see families remain sick, and it’s because, again, they weren’t addressing mycotoxins and remediation. So in 2022 he sold his business. He tried to retire, and then this, this laboratory in Australia approached him with this technology, so he came out of retirement. It’s fairly new in the US. It’s been around about three years. I’ve been working with it in the field in my last job, so I have more experience with it, not just in my own home, but in the field. And it’s wonderfully sensitive. I.

Andrea 1:00:00
And it was the only test like, I’d go along with inspections, and I’d say they feel pretty good in here, and the air test would come back clean. And then I’d go another environment, so I’d be like, I feel a little off in here, and it would come back actionable. But what’s great about it is we have a do it yourself option. So no matter if you’re got a lot of people in northern Minnesota that don’t have access to good inspectors, maybe they just need a data point to start the process right. Because I want to be clear again, environmental sampling is just a data point. So if you ever do get a test that is actionable, it’s a piece to the puzzle. You need to have a diagnosis. But anybody can go online and order these air tests or surface tests at respiratory labs. Respirare is Italian for to breathe, but it looks like resp, resp for rare, but it’s, I’m happy to be with the company. I think that it’s going to change the industry. I think it’s going to change the mold paradigm, because the sample collection meets international standards, which I won’t bore you guys to death, but that could mean big change for legislation, policy reform, but I’m really excited by it, and I and again, I want to reiterate that there’s a number of environmental tests on the market, and there is a time and a place for every single one. And yes, I work for respirar labs. I think it’s great technology, but I might not recommend those tests to you, depending on what your objective is. And again, that’s that’s really important. So figure out what what you want to do with that data point, and then pick a test. So yeah, that’s awesome, yeah.

Dr. Deb
Well, thank you so much for your time today, this was a great conversation. You are so informative on this, and your story is just so wonderful. I mean, you’ve been through a lot, but you’ve come out of it in a very positive way, and I appreciate your honesty and vulnerability in sharing some very, very sensitive issues. And I know our listeners can relate to a lot of the points that you’ve talked about, and I think it’ll make them feel comfortable they’re not alone, and just that they have resources out there and not give up. It’s It’s really wonderful.

Andrea
Thank you Well, and thank you for creating a platform for me to tell my story and for continuing to spread awareness. I’m very grateful for the work you’re doing so well. Thank you so much. Thank

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Dr. Deb

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