← Culture Apothecary with Alex Clark
Culture Apothecary with Alex Clark
How One Mom Beat a Hidden Mold Infestation—Step by Step! | @organimama
01:11:22
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- [00:00]
A
You're a regular mom who discovered toxic mold in your home.
- [00:04]
B
Our home had 600 times the safe level of one of the worst, most toxic molds called Catomium globosum. Anywhere that smoke can go, mold spores and mycotoxins can go. If you see or smell something that gets labeled as mildew, that means actively growing mold in your environment, they're exactly the same thing. It's a term that has been used by contractors and landlords for many decades to try and gaslight people into thinking that the serious mold problem in their home is not actually a big deal.
- [00:57]
A
In 2022, my guest thought that she was just dealing with a sick baby. What she didn't know was that toxic mold was silently turning her life upside down, making her infant dangerously ill, forcing her out of her home and wiping out nearly 80% of her belongings. Today I'm sitting down with Kristen aka Organimama on Instagram to talk about how she uncovered the truth, what options actually exist when mold is discovered, and how to support your body through detox and recovery. She learned this the hard way so you don't have to watch this episode on the real Alex Clark YouTube channel or culture Apothecary on Spotify. Pause and leave a five star review letting others know how this podcast has impacted your health or your family. Please welcome Kristen AKA Organimama on Instagram to culture Apothecary. You're a regular mom who discovered toxic mold in your home. What were you seeing in your child that made you think something is not right here?
- [01:49]
B
Well, we already had a non toxic lifestyle so we had looked into pretty much all of the different things. We had her tested for allergies. We thought surely she would come back with positive allergy testing and it was all negative. So we're like, something else has to be happening here that doesn't have to do with toxins in our home or allergies or anything like that. But she was dealing with hives, eczema, food intolerances that we thought maybe were allergies and they weren't allergies. And I thought what the heck could possibly be causing skin problems in my infant that I can't solve? And that started the entire journey for us.
- [02:24]
A
Take us back to the moment where you realized this wasn't just normal sickness. What clicked for you?
- [02:29]
B
I think I started googling like baby acne when she was a few weeks old and I even texted a picture of her face to a few of my friends being like, did your babies have this? And some of Them said, oh, that's just normal baby acne. But as I'm, like, on WebMD, googling things, looking up, like, baby acne and baby eczema, it was clear that this was more than just the normal skin adjusting to the outside environment. Like, she was very, very reactive. And then she started having serious reactions to all kinds of foods through my breast milk as I was nursing her. And we couldn't figure out, why is she so reactive to all of these foods. I had to cut gluten, dairy, soy, egg, nuts, oats, because she would just break out in hives or horrible rashes when I would ingest those things and then nurse her.
- [03:16]
A
What were the doctors telling you and what did that make you feel like as a mom?
- [03:20]
B
Well, we only really saw an allergist, and we also had a holistic nurse practitioner that we saw, but I was already holistically minded enough at that time that we weren't seeing, like, a pediatrician. And my husband was in medical school, so he had a decent amount of knowledge at the time. And I think both of us, when we kind of put our brains together, we're like, there's more going on here than just normal baby stuff. And our nurse practitioner, when I first mentioned, like, maybe it's an environmental thing. I wonder if we maybe have mold.
- [03:47]
A
Mold.
- [03:47]
B
She was like, I don't know a lot about that, but you definitely could be onto something there.
- [03:51]
A
Were you ever made to feel like you were overreacting because we weren't really.
- [03:55]
B
Interacting with a pediatrician? Not really from the medical community, but by our friends, There definitely was some of that.
- [04:02]
A
They were like, this is your first baby. You're just freaking out.
- [04:06]
B
Yeah. And especially once I started questioning if we had mold in our home, and I started doing a lot of deep dives into what that could mean and what the result of that might be for us. I don't want to say all, but a lot of the people that were close to us had a lot of skepticism about how mold could really be causing that much of a problem. When our house looked normal, were the.
- [04:26]
A
Only signs that something was amiss going on with your daughter? Or looking back now, were there red flags even with the health of you and your husband?
- [04:33]
B
There were all kinds of things going on with both of us that we did not realize until we had left that home. So my husband was having chronic migraines, which he just assumed that was due to him being in med school and studying all the time and not sleeping a whole lot. And we had a new baby so he thought, oh, this is probably just normal, like stress from med school. That's probably why I have all these headaches and I was having trouble sleeping. I also had a really bad postpartum experience with postpartum rage and anxiety. And I thought, oh, this is normal. Didn't realize I was depleted and living in mold at the time. But those were things that we did not realize until we had left that home and suddenly felt a million times better.
- [05:12]
A
What are people getting dangerously wrong about? Mildew.
- [05:16]
B
Mildew?
- [05:19]
A
Is this like a fake made up word?
- [05:21]
B
When people talk about mildew and they say, oh, it's just a little mildew, they are gaslighting you. If you see or smell something that gets labeled as mildew, that means actively growing mold in your environment.
- [05:34]
A
So I didn't know that. I thought mildew and mold were two separate things.
- [05:37]
B
They're exactly the same thing. It's a term that has been used by contractors and landlords for many decades to try and gaslight people into thinking that the serious mold problem in their home is not actually a big deal.
- [05:50]
A
Jeez. So, okay, did you smell mildew type of smells in your home ever?
- [05:54]
B
Yes, we did. And we thought, oh, it's just a little mildew. Because we have kind of an older home. It was built in the 1980s and, like, not super airtight. And it. It got a little musty, if you will, when the weather got warmer in the Midwest. We have like four distinct seasons because we were living in Indiana at the time. And when it started to get into the spring where it's raining and getting warmer, we smelled kind of that, like, mildewy, musty smell and just really didn't know to think twice about it because we thought, oh, that's just normal in an older home. But we were so wrong.
- [06:25]
A
Yeah. And I think it's interesting, too. You're in the mid or you are currently in the Midwest, and you were also in the Midwest with this home with mold in it. And a lot of times people that live in more humid climates are kind of told it's normal to have a little mold. That's just normal part of living where you live.
- [06:40]
B
That is so sad.
- [06:42]
A
What is the most harmful piece of advice that you hear people repeat after mold exposure?
- [06:48]
B
Probably something along the lines of like, oh, it. It's not a big deal, and it can't really impact you that much. And if you're not around it, then it's probably not impacting you anymore. Which is not true because mold can colonize in the human body and wreak havoc on your system for decades after being exposed to it. So just because you're not living actively in a moldy environment right now doesn't mean that somewhere you lived in the past might not have exposed you to mold. And you may still be very sick now from mold exposure in the past.
- [07:17]
A
Because I think a lot of parents are like, okay, all we just have to do is move. And then their kids are still experiencing symptoms or like, what is happening. And it might be that another thing.
- [07:23]
B
That people don't really realize is that if you live in a moldy environment and the that mold is systemic throughout your home, your belongings are contaminated with that mold. Anywhere that smoke can go, mold spores and mycotoxins can go. And so if you're living in a moldy home and then you're like, well, we're going to leave. And because there's mold, and then you take all of your possessions out of that home and move into a new home that's clean, you've just contaminated your new home with all of that mold. And then if there's a water source or if there's high humidity in that new home, that mold that's on your stuff can just recolonize and keep growing.
- [07:58]
A
Why do so many inspectors and contractors and landlords misunderstand mold?
- [08:04]
B
I have a lot of beef with most of the people in the mold industry because I would say, at least from my perspective, about 90% of them are doing it the wrong way.
- [08:12]
A
You found out that there's a right kind of mold test and there's a wrong kind of mold test. What are they and what are the differences?
- [08:18]
B
This definitely sparks a lot of controversy, especially for people that are in the mold world. But there are different ways to test your home, and one of the more common ways, one of the more cost effective ways that probably a lot of your listeners have done before, is air sampling, where they will hire a local inspection team to come in, and the inspection team will say, okay, we're going to test your home. We're going to do air sampling. So they set up this big machine where they run this filter and it collects a bunch of air for a while, and then they go and analyze what they found in the air. I would never recommend this as the first method of mold testing for anyone because it's just not giving you the full picture.
- [08:54]
A
So I had my friend Ryan from Test My Home come, and he did a mold test on my apartment that I was living in, and I had had water damage. So I was Very curious to see if there was mold growing in my floorboards, under the wood flooring in the kitchen. And there was. And, you know, he's down there, you know, basically mimicking steps and things coming up under the floorboards and catching those spores to test. And it was severe toxic black mold under there. Okay. So I knew it, sent all of that, sent the documentation to the landlord. They were like, well, we're going to do our own mold test. And they had an air person come and they tested the air. They did the cheap way. And they're like, well, there's no mold spores in your air. I'm like, you have to get down there and, like, mimic, like you're walking on and what comes up when you're walking on that, which I'm doing every day. And I said, you know what? Because they don't want to let me on my lease. I wanted to get out of my lease. And they're like, we're not going to do that. We're not going to grant that. If you want to pay to break your lease, you can. I said, yeah, I'm paying to break my lease. Goodbye. So I left. But that pissed me off. I was like, you guys don't know what you're doing, and you need to remedy the situation completely. Take up all this wood flooring, clean it before someone else moves in. Now, I don't know if they did that, but that's the kind of creepy, shady stuff that landlords will do.
- [10:04]
B
Oh, absolutely. The renting industry when it comes to mold is horrible.
- [10:09]
A
Yeah.
- [10:10]
B
And I. I honestly feel so heartbroken for all the people who are stuck in moldy rental situations and feel like they have very little power over their. Their situation, especially if they didn't know about mold when they initially started renting and then come to find out there's mold in their apartment or their rental home and it's making them sick. But they didn't think to look at the rental agreement having some kind of mold clause in it. And so, generally speaking, when I'm talking to renters and people are asking me for advice on what should I do as I'm, like, stepping into a new rental situation, I say, look at your contract. Make sure that there is a clause in there that allows you to take control of a sit if there's an environmental problem like mold or asbestos or something like that in your home where you can hire your own testing to be done, and then you are able to break your lease if you have tests come back that you ordered that are Showing a toxic hazard in your, in your place.
- [11:03]
A
What is the difference between visible mold and mold that isn't visible?
- [11:08]
B
Well, it takes millions and millions of mold spores in a colony for that mold to become visible to the human eye. So I think a lot of people assume that just because they can't see mold in their home means that there's not any. But it actually takes so much mold for even the tiniest little dot of mold. Like, we've all seen it, right? You've, you've probably seen it in your shower or maybe even on the outside of your home. You've seen like a little spot. You're like, oh, that's a little mold, like maybe on your window sill. That means there are millions and millions of mold spores in that one tiny spot. And so people wrongly assume that if they can't see anything in their house, that their house is totally fine. But mold can, can grow and it can be clear even sometimes too. So just because you don't see black mold in your home doesn't actually mean that your home is mold free. And also, there's a lot of homes that are making people sick that have mold that is hidden. So it may be behind your drywall, it may be underneath your floors or your carpet. It could be the lumber that was used to build your new construction home. In fact, we recently just bought a new construction home in the Detroit area and we went and looked at a dozen new construction homes and almost all of them had visible signs of water damage. Brand new homes. And out of like the dozen homes we looked at, there were only two that we didn't see any signs of water damage. And that includes like going down in the basement and looking up at the lumber that they have. Like the unfinished basements with the visible lumber. You can see most of the boards are just covered in mold.
- [12:35]
A
And do you think that comes from sometimes like builders setting out wood and then it rains on it or something and that's why that's happening?
- [12:42]
B
Yeah. Unfortunately, in our modern day world, with the speed at which new construction homes are going up, they don't have industry standard practices to dry everything out properly. And so a lot of times you'll have lumber that's coming right from the lumber mill and it's already wet there. And then they just immediately frame it and then close it in with the drywall as quick as they can to knock out as many houses as they can. And what you're doing is you're just making people chronically ill because you're closing in all this mold behind people's drywalls and the homes that we live in today are designed to be very tight.
- [13:12]
A
People do not open their windows.
- [13:14]
B
No.
- [13:14]
A
If I could give like one tip for people to do to improve their health dramatically. I don't care what climate you live in, I don't care what time of the year it is. Half your windows open at least 20 minutes a day. If it's raining, if it's snowing, if it's boiling hot outside. Even in 118 degree Arizona heat, my windows are open at least 20 minutes every single day. It could be early morning or night.
- [13:34]
B
Unless your outdoor humidity is insanely high. Because humidity is one of the most common ways that people get mold in their homes. And they don't even think about it. Because so important indoor humidity, if it's over 55 or 60, mold can just grow on your walls just like straight up. If your indoor humidity is consistently above 55, 60, like if you're getting into this the 60s or the 70 even. And so people that don't have humidity control in their homes, where the indoor humidity is matching the outdoor humidity, you're getting this in a lot of southern states, right? In the United States, Florida is one of those ones that's especially hard for humidity control. You can almost guarantee that they're going to have some level of mold problem in their home if it's consistently over that 60%.
- [14:19]
A
So for those people that it is a little bit trickier to have your windows open for long periods of time with the humidity. Do you think that they especially should consider things like air scrubbers in their home?
- [14:29]
B
Two things really that go hand in hand for mold prevention is going to be, you know, heparated air filters and also dehumidifying around the clock because you want to see that that humidity level inside your home between like 40 and 55% between 40 and 50 is really perfect.
- [14:51]
A
My neighbor's pet ferret tried to burn her house down last night. She walks in, he's at the stove like, I'm a man now. Smoke everywhere, alarms going off, total chaos. I told her, look, if he wants to start acting like an adult, you need to start with hygiene. First learn to brush, then make the dinner ferret. Because if that ferret had zebra, we wouldn't be here. Zebra makes clean personal care products that actually work. Let's start with teeth. Their toothpaste and floss are free from fluoride, microplastics, all the junk you don't want. They even have toothpaste tablets, chew brush done. It foams up. It's easy. Kids actually ask to brush. And they just launched a birthday cake flavor for the kids, which is kind of genius. Suddenly brushing isn't a chore anymore. It's a dessert with a toothbrush. Half the battle is just getting kids to the sink, right? And this has them lin up like it's a birthday party. Now the other thing Zebra keeps clean is deodorant. It goes on completely clear, not chunky, not sticky. No chalky armpit situation. It's aluminum free, paraben free, fragrance free. And they've got two options, with baking soda or without, depending on your skin. So yeah, start with hygiene. Once the teeth and armpits are handled, then we'll talk about letting the ferret cook dinner. Go to yay zebra.com use code Alex for 10% off. That's yay zebra.com code Alex for 10% off people act like stress is fake, like your nervous system is just being dramatic. Meanwhile your body is clenched, like it's bracing for impact at all times. Here's the science part. Acupuncture directly stimulates your nervous system. It shifts it out of fight or flight and into rest and repair. People think acupuncture is wackadoo. It works. Studies show it helps regulate cortisol, it increases circulation, it releases endorphins and reduces inflammation. That's not vibes, it's biology. California Mobile Acupuncture is a Christian acupuncture company that takes that science and brings it into your home. No traffic, no waiting rooms, no over stimulation before you even lie down. Each session is personalized and may combine acupuncture with cupping, gua sha and bodywork, all evidence backed tools that improve blood flow, reduce muscle tension, support immunity, and help your body remember how to heal itself. And you don't need a babysitter because it's right in your living room. They're trusted across Los Angeles, Orange County, San Diego, the Bay Area, and now San Scottsdale and Phoenix. Because people actually feel the difference when they get acupuncture regularly booking is simple. Just text or call 949-228-9588 or visit California mobile acupuncture.com or Arizonam mobile acupuncture.com plus get $50 off your first treatment when you mention this podcast, just text or call 949-228-9588. Why are infants and children especially vulnerable to mold exposure?
- [17:28]
B
Well, it's and children are more susceptible to mold than men and so a lot of times in families, you're going to have women and kids that are symptomatic from a mold exposure. And you maybe have a more skeptical husband who's not symptomatic. So he doesn't necessarily agree that mold might be the problem because he's like, well, I feel fine. This is really, really common because women and children, like, our immune systems just function a little bit differently than men. And a lot of times men's this like toxic burden level. It's, it's bigger before they start to become symptomatic. Right? And so women, children with very like, I don't want to say weak immune systems, but just smaller immune systems can be more heavily impacted by these toxins. And the thing that people don't understand about mold is there's two elements of toxic mold that can impact the human body. There's the mold spores, right? The actual organisms that can float around in your air, that can be absorbed into your lungs. They can colonize in your nasal passages, in your gut. But then there's also the mold has this defense mechanism where it's a living organism. So if it feels attacked, if it feels like it's being stressed, or like if there's an outside source, like a mold remediation company that's coming in and spraying chemicals on it, it's going to enact its defense system which is releasing these very toxic gases called mycotoxins. It's both the mold spores and the mycotoxins that people need to be aware of. And most people have no clue what mycotoxins are.
- [18:56]
A
Right?
- [18:56]
B
And so you have people saying like, oh, I care of that mold in my house by putting bleach on it. Well, actually, that's a terrible idea. You never want to try and kill mold because what you're doing is you're enacting its defense mechanism and you're causing that mold to break into mold fragments, which are more easily absorbed into the human body.
- [19:13]
A
That was literally my next question was, why shouldn't you use basic cleaning supplies or bleach on mold?
- [19:19]
B
There are ways to clean mold that's on non porous surfaces relatively safely. So if you have, when I say non porous, I mean things like metal or glass or sealed wood. Those aren't absorbent surfaces. And so if mold is growing on top of them, there are ways to very carefully remove that mold. But the process should never be with the intention of killing it. Mold should never be killed. Mold should never be killed. Okay. It's a terrible idea because if you come in with things like bleach. Not only is bleach very toxic to the human body, I know you've talked about that on this show before. When you come in with bleach on mold, like a dark mold, you see mold in your shower, like, I'm gonna bleach it. Google told me to do that. What you're doing is you're basically doing the same thing that somebody would do when they go to get their hair bleached blonde. You're changing the color, and maybe you're killing the colony per se. But what you've also done is you've caused that mold to release mycotoxin gases into the air and poison you. And you've also caused that mold to break into dead mold fragments, which will float more fluidly through your air. It's more likely that those fragments will cause harm on your body because they're smaller and more potent.
- [20:33]
A
Is there good kinds of mold?
- [20:35]
B
Absolutely. There's. There's all kinds of molds. And not all molds are things to be feared. It's water damage molds that you want to be aware of, Ones that are growing on sources of leaks, humidity, water vapors, drips, or floods. Those are the things that produce these toxic water damage molds that release these harmful mycotoxins. There are lots and lots of molds in our natural world. Mold has been around probably since God created the world. And there's plenty of molds that are in everyone's home that are of no concern. If you think about just all of the molds and algae that grow outside, it's no different. You're going to have all kinds of mold in your home, and not all of them need to be feared.
- [21:19]
A
Which test did you end up doing that gave you the answers about the mold?
- [21:23]
B
Instead of doing something like air sampling, what we chose to do was we worked with a holistic mold consultant to do a dust test. There's a lot of different kinds out there. The one I like the best is the ERMI test. So what you do is you basically take a Swiffer pad and you're collecting a dust sample from around your home. There's certain areas that are off limits, like you're not supposed to collect dust in your bathroom just because of the way that it can skew the sample a little bit. But you're supposed to collect dust from your main living areas, like on tops of doorways, in your family room, your bedrooms, etc. And then you ship it into a lab and then they analyze it. And what they're going to do is they're going to tell you all the molds that they found, both common indoor molds, the ones you don't need to worry about, and the toxic water damage molds that they found. And they'll give you the name of each mold that they found and how much of it. And that's how we actually found out that our home had 600 times the safe level of one of the worst, most toxic molds called Ktomium globosum.
- [22:19]
A
How in the world did you put it together? You know, my kid has these mysterious allergies. I think I should get a mold test done.
- [22:26]
B
Instagram.
- [22:27]
A
So you saw other people talking about this?
- [22:29]
B
Yeah, I saw other people talking about it. About how their child had chronic health symptoms, specifically skin related issues, and they figured out that mold was a factor in it. And so I told my husband, hey, we need to get our house tested for mold. And he was like, you're nuts. And he was a med student at the time. I asked him once, how much do you learn about mold in med school? He said, maybe one slide in one presentation. Like, they don't know anything about it. It's a relatively new topic and there's just not a lot of research, like long term research that's been done yet on toxic mold and, and the human body. There's some, it's an emerging subject. But like, traditional health care providers have probably never learned anything about it. So I had to embark on a journey of learning it and becoming an expert on that topic myself if I wanted to actually figure out if that was the problem.
- [23:22]
A
So when you were told that Your house had 600 times the safe limit of this toxic mold, what was the remediation plan given to you?
- [23:30]
B
So it was really tough. And I think one thing to acknowledge is nobody is financially prepared for a moment a devastating mold situation like this. And so we were faced with a couple of different options. And I really recommend that anybody who is navigating a potential mold problem works with a holistic mold consultant. There's a few really great ones out there. And the one that we worked with helped us look at our test results and think through the plan.
- [23:55]
A
What are some of the names of the ones that you trust? Because, like, how do you even know which remediation companies are scams or not?
- [23:59]
B
My favorite person in the entire world is PJ Harlow. She. I have, I have complete faith in her. And we've worked with her on three different homes now. So our first home, and then we bought a Home. After our whole mold situation, and then now the home that we're in, she has walked us through all of that process, and she's one of the few people in the industry that I truly trust. And she also has personal experience with chronic illness from mold and works a lot with women.
- [24:24]
A
What did she advise you to do?
- [24:26]
B
Every single person's situation is different. So I think it's important to precaution and say that just because we did one thing doesn't mean that that's. That's the best route for everyone else.
- [24:35]
A
Yeah.
- [24:35]
B
And so I think it's important to disclaim that. But given the level of severity of our daughter's health symptoms and the amount of that ktomium globosum that we had, we spoke with several different inspection inspection companies that she recommended we chat with, and we were quoted seven to $10,000 by each of them for a proper inspection on our home, given the home's history and structural setup. Because we had a crawl space. Crawl spaces are notoriously bad for mold problems.
- [25:06]
A
So is that where you found your mold?
- [25:07]
B
Yes.
- [25:08]
A
So what was going on that was causing the mold in the first place?
- [25:10]
B
There was a leak from the H vac that was going down into the crawl space right by where the air intake for the H Vac also was. And so mold was growing on the wood in our crawl space. Right. Where all the air gets sucked in and blown through the entire house.
- [25:25]
A
Oh, my gosh.
- [25:26]
B
So that's.
- [25:27]
A
It's covering all of your belongings.
- [25:29]
B
Exactly. And so that was a huge factor in how we proceeded because we realized that there was mold on all of our stuff.
- [25:37]
A
And when there is mold on all of your stuff, like if you're being told you got to get rid of all your things, you can't even sell it and recoup the money. Right. Because it's. It's with mold. So what do you. Do, you have to take it to a dumpster?
- [25:46]
B
It's. That's exactly what we did.
- [25:48]
A
Oh, my gosh. So how much of your belongings did you have to get rid of?
- [25:51]
B
80%.
- [25:51]
A
80%. What did you get to keep?
- [25:55]
B
So I mentioned earlier, like, porous and non porous. So it was the stuff that was non porous. Wood, sealed wood, glass, and metal. Pretty much that's all we kept. So we discarded all of our upholstered furniture, almost all of our padded clothing. We were able to put clothing that was less than half an inch thick through a very intense cleaning protocol and whatever survived that because some stuff shrunk or like disintegrated. But whatever survived that we were able to keep. We discarded all of our baby items because of how sick our daughter was. So all of the little mementos that we had from her six months of life, her rocking chair, all of her baby clothes, her cloth diapers, every single thing we threw away. And it was after chatting with our mold consultant and looking at those results and talking with her, she said, I would recommend you get out. Because we only had about $2,000 in our bank account at that time. We could not afford the proper kind of inspection or a remediation. And the other thing too is we were asking these inspectors, how much do you think it would cost us to have a proper holistically minded remediation done on our home? And they said, 20 to $30,000. And I said, there's no way we can do that.
- [27:04]
A
I think that's relatable. I think the majority of Americans have only a couple thousand dollars in their bank account, and if they're told that they've got a devastating mole situation and you've got to get rid of all your stuff, how in the world did you and your husband then, in that situation, figure out where you're gonna live, pay to stay somewhere, plus rebuy all of your furniture, your clothing, your child's toys, your baby items? Like, what did you even do?
- [27:26]
B
It was horrible because this is like.
- [27:27]
A
Losing everything in a devastating fire. I mean, does insurance help at all?
- [27:31]
B
Not if it's not an event. So if it's a water event, like a flood or a pipe bursting, and you can target exactly when an event happened, oftentimes home insurance will cover some or most of it, but in this case, we had no idea how long that leak had been going on. And it we couldn't target it to a certain event or time. And so home insurance did not cover any of it. Honestly, to answer your question, we got down on our knees and prayed because we had no idea what we were going to do. My husband was in med school, he was busy studying, taking exams all the time. I was postpartum, struggling with a six month old, and we fortunately had family nearby that was willing to take us in, but we learned about contamination, and so we didn't want to contaminate our family's house with our moldy stuff. And so we literally left our home with the clothes on our backs, went straight to Target, bought new clothes, changed into those new clothes from Target, and then moved in with our family. And we only were able to salvage about out, like I said, 20 of our stuff. And then we had to figure out what do we do from here, because we have testing that shows that our home is moldy. So we, if we're gonna sell our home now, like, and try to just ditch it, we have to disclose that there's a mold problem. So what did we, what do we do? And that was a really, really hard situation to be in.
- [28:43]
A
So what did you do?
- [28:44]
B
Ultimately what we did is it's, you know, hindsight's 20 20. It's very, very hard to look back and know what we would do in that situation now. But what we ended up doing is hiring a and remediation company. Not what I would have done if we were staying in the house, but in order to legally sell it, we needed to legally handle the mold problem. So we had a conventional company come in and remediate the crawl space, which is what on paper you would need to do to sell it. Now, morally, I struggled with that decision because I was like, this is the only thing we can afford. You know, it's costing like a thousand dollars instead of 10 or $20,000. And there very well could be mycotoxins that are released from this type of treatment and mold fragments flying. I prayed heavily over whoever moved into that home after us, that God would protect them. But part of the reason why we decided not to try and stay in the house was the inspection. Companies that we talked to said, even if you go through a full remediation because you're on a crawl space, you are likely to have moisture issues again.
- [29:44]
A
I would have sent an anonymous letter after they were all good moved in, said, hey, listen, you don't know who I am, but I know your situation. You need to go do this. Right.
- [29:53]
B
And you know, I will say, like, like I don't know, if I had all the money in the world, we would have handled it differently, but we were stuck. And it was a single man who moved into the house.
- [30:03]
A
Yeah.
- [30:03]
B
And so I felt a little better about that. I'm not sure that I would have been so thrilled if like a family with children had moved in after us. But because it was just like a dude, I'm like, he's more likely to, to like make it through.
- [30:15]
A
You know, Indianapolis, right?
- [30:17]
B
Yes.
- [30:17]
A
Well, hopefully it was one of my ex boyfriends, so. Oh, I'm kidding. How long did you have to live with to like get enough money for you to then get on your own again?
- [30:30]
B
So the sale of our house actually helped because we had a little bit of Cash. And our house had appreciated over the couple years that we had lived there. So we actually had a little bit of money from the sale of the formerly moldy house. Hopefully no longer moldy. But we didn't. We don't know. We sold it. And then we lived with family for four months. And what's crazy is that within, like, two to three weeks, Weeks of moving out of that moldy house, my daughter's symptoms completely went away. Like, gone completely. She was able to tolerate all foods. She no longer had hives. She no longer had eczema. And even other symptoms that we hadn't even recognized were symptoms of mold went away.
- [31:08]
A
Like what?
- [31:09]
B
Like puffy, red, swollen eyes and dark circles underneath her eyes.
- [31:13]
A
Whoa.
- [31:13]
B
We thought that was just, like, what she looked like. Yeah. And then she changed. Like, her personality got happier. She was able to suddenly eat better, she was sleeping better, better bowel movements, all this stuff. And my husband and I immediately started feeling better after we moved out, too. That was crazy.
- [31:30]
A
His headaches went away.
- [31:30]
B
His headaches went away. I started sleeping better, and my postpartum experience got way better.
- [31:34]
A
What was the emotional weight of choosing health over financial stability?
- [31:40]
B
It was tough. And I'll be honest, a big part of my story is just that push and pull between me and my very holistic leaning and then my husband going through the conventional medical system. As a doctor, we have a. We have lots of fun conversations. Conversations.
- [31:56]
A
I bet you do have some good debates.
- [31:58]
B
I love him, and he's great, and he is very humble, and he's very open, and I'm so appreciative of that. And we need more doctors like that. But it was really tough. And I think, looking back, if I could just encourage myself with anything of where I was at at that point is, keep going. You're doing the right thing. And moms that are listening to this will know, like, you will go to any extreme to take care of your child if they are unwell. Like, we will do anything thing.
- [32:22]
A
What was the hardest thing to throw out?
- [32:23]
B
The rocking chair. I had spent hundreds of hours nursing her and rocking her to sleep in there every single day. And when we evacuated the house, I didn't know that this was going to be the case. But the morning that we left was my husband's birthday. We left the house just as soon as we woke up and went straight to Target. But I didn't realize I was never going to step foot in there and see any of that stuff again because we just didn't know what the plan was. Going to be. And he ended up going back in in a hazmat suit with friends also in full ppe to sort through the belongings. But I never stepped foot back in there and I think that's, that's like grief I will always carry with me. And we, we do relate our mold loss to fire all the time. Yeah, except the main difference between losing your house to mold versus losing your house to a fire is that most people do not understand. If you lose your house to mold, they're like, well, why couldn't you just like wash your stuff? And we're like, you, you don't understand. It's more complicated than that.
- [33:22]
A
Realization. Recently, my winter aesthetic is a small mouse in hibernation. I want to burrow. I want quilt stitched by someone with love. I want a fire going beeswax candles lit in a hot mug of cinnamon apple cider that I'm gonna sip for hours without finishing. And for that lifestyle, you need the right candle. Natural sloth. Beeswax candles are what you light when you've rejected hustle culture and embraced rodent peace. These are made safe, certified non toxic clean burning beeswax candles with wooden wicks so they crackle like a little fireplace while you emotionally retreat from soc. They're handmade in Texas, small batch veteran owned and scented only with pure essential oils. No fake fragrances, no hormone disrupting nonsense, no mystery chemicals quietly ruining your nervous system. Beeswax burns cleaner than regular candles, meaning less soot, better air in a home that smells warm and cozy instead of mall candle aisle. Natural sloth also makes soaps and room sprays safe for families, kids, sensitive people and fellow winter mice. Use code alex@natural sloth.com for 15% off. That's code Alex@naturalsloth.com for 15 off. Valentine's Day is a month away. Don't delay. Whether it's for your wife, your best friend, your mom, or your kid's teacher. I had this moment recently where I realized my house is actively trying to kill me. Not dramatically. Quietly. Dust, mold spores, cooking smoke, chemicals, whatever is floating around in the air like a low grade curse. Our homes weren't designed for clean air. Actually, they often make us sick. It's called sick building syndrome, which sounds fake, but it's very real. That's why Jasper exists. Jasper is the first air scrubber built specifically for home use. It is commercial grade power, the same level used for wildfire smoke, mold and disaster cleanup. But it's designed to actually look good in your living room. One perfectly engineered Size big enough to clean your air, not a tiny little plastic box. It has smart sensors that detect ultra fine particles PM 2.5 from dust, pollen, smoke, cooking and mold. It removes VOCs from paints and cleaning products and it filters wildfire smoke, cigarette smoke, pet dander odors, everything. And I am telling you there's never been a bigger hit with my audience. Cute servatives are obsessed with Jasper. From ending husband snoring to deeper sleep for new moms to cutting kids sickness time in half, it is wall to wall. Five star reviews from you guys go to Jasper Co. That's J P R Co Use code Alex for $400 off. That's Jasper Co jrco code Alex for $400 off. How did this impact your nervous system and sense of safety as a mom?
- [35:55]
B
It was really tough. And I think that the nervous system is one of the things in the human body that is the most impacted by a mold. Devastation like this is you. You are changed as a person. And the other thing that happens is when you're stuck in a moldy environment, it's kind of a snowball effect where you're stuck in mold. Your body is being impacted by the mycotoxins, the mold spores, whatever is colonizing in your body. And it kind of depresses your nervous system to the point where you feel stuck. And mold is high associated with depression and anxiety. And so if you're stuck in mold, it often can make handling that mold situation feel impossible because of the way it's impacting your nervous system and your whole body. It changes your brain chemistry to not only have to fight through all of that to handle a mold situation, but also to get out of it and have to process what did I just go through and where do I go from here and how can I be a good, good spouse, a good mom, a good human being, a good Christ follower? After all of this, it is hard. I went to counseling and I heavily leaned on my Christian community for prayer and support other mom friends because I was falling apart and it felt like an impossible situation.
- [37:08]
A
How did your marriage withstand this amount of stress?
- [37:12]
B
It was honestly really tough and my husband and I say to each other all the time that we would never wish mold on anyone. But we are really grateful we went through it because it strengthened us so much. We were young, we'd only been married for a few years. We had a brand new baby. He was in med school. I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my life. There was a lot that was up in the air at that time. And then to get hit with this loss of all of our stuff in our home was devastating. And I'm really, really grateful that we were able to turn to Jesus in that time together. And honestly, looking back, I'm like, if we could get through that, we can get through anything because we know that we have the Lord on our side. And it was was prayer and trust that God had a sovereign plan for us that helped us get through it.
- [37:55]
A
When you left, did you experience fear, anxiety, or were you just feeling like, hyper vigilant?
- [38:02]
B
I think it was all of the things. I think I felt like, yeah, I'm an awesome mom because I'm like taking steps to heal my, my baby and me. And like, we're getting out of here, you know, we're kicking the can on this place. At the same time, I was terrified of what's coming next, like, where will we live? How will we be able to pay for things? How are we going to be able to make it? Is. Is my husband going to be able to pass his next exam? Like, I had so many fears, and I think that if anything, it taught me that I don't really have control of my life. Like, there are things that I can try and manipulate to work out in my favor, but ultimately God is in control and he worked out the situation in a way that I could have never anticipated. And we actually found a home in our budget that was completely free of mold. And we tested it and it came back clean. And we had the most beautiful two and a half years living there. We were all completely symptom free. I was able to have a home birth there for my second baby. And it was just such a redemptive experience to live in a home environment that didn't feel like it was unsafe. Because there is nothing as hard as feeling like you come home to your safe place, your oasis, and. And it's poisoning you.
- [39:12]
A
So what were you doing in the home buying process to make sure that you didn't get a home with mold?
- [39:17]
B
Again, so many things. I have lots of tips for people who are wanting to buy a home that's mold free. There's a lot of things that I wish people knew in this process, simple things really, but a couple of red flags, things that we absolutely would not consider. One was crawl spaces because they just are so notorious for moisture problems and, and unfortunately, there's only so much you can do to remedy that and you're likely to run into more moisture issues in the future. So we were only considering homes on slab or with an unfinished basement. And the reason why I say unfinished is because finished basements also very commonly have moisture issues that are hidden behind the finished walls. And so we were only considering something where we could fully see what was happening in the. In an unfinished basement or on a slab. Ideally, the perfect kind of age for a home is between five and 10 years old. And so homes that are older than 10 years, there's just more time there that's it's more likely that some kind of water event has happened. Right. Like a flood or a leak or an overflowing toilet or something like that. And then homes that are newer than five years oftentimes haven't existed long enough for all of the potential problems to show up. And so we were looking for something in that 5 to 10 year range and we found a home that was 8 years old, and that's that one we ended up buying. But there's other things to look for. Like a complicated roof line is actually something you want to avoid because the more points and curves and turns on a roof line.
- [40:45]
A
Oh, that. See, I love that stuff because I like weird houses.
- [40:47]
B
They look amazing.
- [40:48]
A
Like tons of character. Like spooky weird. Yeah, I love that.
- [40:52]
B
But there's just so many more points of contact in that roofing setup for water to be a problem.
- [40:59]
A
Yeah, that makes sense.
- [40:59]
B
And it's also harder to maintain a roof that's complicated. So like an. A frame house. Perfect. You know? Okay.
- [41:06]
A
Okay.
- [41:06]
B
And then other things too. Is like you want to look at the grading of the yard. So if the house is kind of sitting a low point and there's yard that slopes up around it, that's generally a sign that water is going to be running down toward that house when it rains. So you want to see that the grading of the yard is sloped away from the home and that there's not shrubbery right up next to the house because you don't want to have vegetation, like plants or bushes growing right against the house. There should be like a two foot gap there so that when those plants need to be watered, you're not spraying water right on the base of your house.
- [41:37]
A
House. Oh, wow.
- [41:39]
B
I never in a million years would.
- [41:40]
A
Have thought of that.
- [41:41]
B
Yeah. Crazy, right?
- [41:42]
A
What does detoxing from mold actually mean?
- [41:44]
B
It was a different situation for me than it would be for somebody else because when we moved out of mold, I was breastfeeding and then I was breastfeeding all up until the point that I got pregnant again. So I never went through a period. Of time where I wasn't breastfeeding or pregnant for the last four years. And so ideally you don't want to be doing any kind of heavy detox of your body when you're are pregnant or breastfeeding because you don't want to, you know, pass toxins on through breast milk or to the baby in, in your womb. For somebody that's not in that situation, you can take a more aggressive approach to detoxing from mold. But there's a few things to consider and I would highly recommend that anybody who's wanting to detox from mold, first of all, should no longer be living in a moldy environment because that's the best thing you can do to detox your body from mold is get out of the mold. You can't really fully heal heal from a mold exposure if you're still actively being exposed to it. There are ways to support your body while you live in mold and make it less impactful. But overall if you're wanting to like really heal, you need to be removed from that environment. But there are gentle things you can do, like different herbs and supplements that can help just with gentle detox and cleanse, especially supporting the liver during that post mold season that are great. Also you want to consider that mold can colonize in the nasal passages and in the garden gut. And so you want to support your gut. Obviously this is a no brainer, but like a great nutrition plan, focusing on whole foods, avoiding things like processed sugar and seed oils is great just for supporting that good gut health, getting good probiotic foods, all the things that people generally know.
- [43:17]
A
Well, hopefully they do if they listen to this show or you have not been listening very well.
- [43:21]
B
Exactly. You guys better know gut support, eating the right kinds of foods, that's really helpful, especially for, for just cleansing out anything that's colonized there. For your nasal passages. Saline rinsing is really helpful. And in fact I usually keep like nasal saline rinse with me when I travel in case I'm staying in a hotel room that might have mold or if we're going to stay with a relative that might have mold in their home. Most homes and most buildings have mold in them. So that's just a regular exposure that I kind of assume is going to happen to me at this point. So nasal rinsing can help help just flush anything out that wants to try and stick in there. And then there's more intense mold detox protocols that you can do. But I really recommend working with a mold literate practitioner for that. I Don't love the idea of people just going out willy nilly and trying to detox without knowing exactly what they're doing.
- [44:14]
A
What would a mold literate practitioner look like? Like, is that a naturopath or what do you recommend?
- [44:19]
B
Yeah, it could be a functional doctor who has experience working with people who have mold toxicity. It could be a naturopath. There's a lot of different one out there. It could be a certified holistic health practitioner. There's. There's a lot of different people out there who have a lot of experience working with mold patients. But the other thing that literally anybody can do that costs you nothing to help support your body during that detox phase is keeping your drainage pathways open. So the two main ways are pooping and sweating. So making sure that you're having bowel movements at least once, if not two to three times a day and then trying to switch sweat at least once a day. That is your body's most natural, effective ways of detoxing from any toxins.
- [44:59]
A
What role did diet play in your recovery?
- [45:01]
B
Well, I would say that diet was already something that we had a pretty heavy focus on in our home. But I got a lot more serious about seed oils at that point because I really wanted to help just lower the levels of inflammation in my body.
- [45:14]
A
And the best way to control seed oil exposure, by the way, is cooking at home.
- [45:17]
B
Exactly.
- [45:18]
A
It is not eating out. That, that's really it. Because people are like, well, I just don't understand. How am I supposed to avoid this when I eat out? I'm like, that's the point. Like you're, we shouldn't eating out, number one, you're going to save so much money. People complain about like the grocery prices for real, you know, organic food or whatever. And I'm like, how often are you eating out? Because if you eliminate that and you're cooking at home, you are going to save oodles of money. Not door dashing and all of this. I think that's where a lot of the costs are coming from for people.
- [45:43]
B
Absolutely. Yes. And I would say around that time was when I got really serious about learning to cook. And even with very little money in our bank account count, we were still able to afford groceries to cook at home, mostly organic at that point to where we were eating probably 95 of our meals at home.
- [46:00]
A
Where do you like to grocery shop to find really inexpensive organic food?
- [46:04]
B
I try to do bulk things, actually. Costco randomly has a lot of good bulk organic fruits and vegetables and meats. You can find for cheaper than you would find at a place like a Whole Foods or Sprouts or something like that. But even like your local grocery store, if you know what you're looking for. For in the Midwest we have like Meyer and Kroger and they do have a lot of organic options. You just have to kind of know what place to go for what things.
- [46:27]
A
What are the potential health repercussions if somebody knows definitively that they've got mold and they delay remediation or moving?
- [46:36]
B
It's so tough. Like mold exposure to toxic water damage. Mold is linked to pretty much any symptom that you could think of. So there are. Are people that have had mold exposure that have experienced anything along the entire gamut of skin problems, mental health struggles, infertility, miscarriage, even Hg in pregnancy. A lot of times is linked to mold exposure. So like that extreme nausea and vomiting in pregnancy. And then you also have all kinds of like chronic illness that's linked to mold, like pans and pandas, Lyme disease, fibromyalgia. I had interstitial cystitis for several years, which I was able to heal from completely naturally with lifestyle change. And I do believe that looking back on my life, the root cause of that was most likely mold exposure from multiple homes.
- [47:28]
A
What is that?
- [47:29]
B
Interstitial cystitis is basically like having a permanent urinary tract infection, but there's no infection present.
- [47:35]
A
Oh my gosh. I've never even heard of that.
- [47:38]
B
It started on my honeymoon. Yeah.
- [47:41]
A
Could you not have sex on your honeymoon? Really?
- [47:43]
B
No.
- [47:43]
A
Oh my God.
- [47:44]
B
For a couple months after either. Because I was so sick and so you could not.
- [47:48]
A
You're like, it feels like I have a uti, but like there's nothing.
- [47:51]
B
Yeah. I had multiple UTI tests done and they all came back as no infection present.
- [47:56]
A
That is the craziest thing I've. I've never heard of that ever.
- [48:00]
B
Yeah. So this like interstitial cystitis is like inflammation of the bladder, the urinary tract, the urethra. And some people get it more in their bladder, some people get it more in their urethra, and it is heavily linked to mold exposure.
- [48:13]
A
That is absolutely crazy. Well, you were obviously able to. You were able to do something because you were able to get pregnant.
- [48:17]
B
Yes.
- [48:17]
A
So you kind of got it under control, but you were still living in the mold.
- [48:20]
B
Well, actually, you know what's crazy is I was able to fully heal from interstitial cystitis before we moved into the moldy house. So I think that's maybe even a word of encouragement for people is, even if mold is causing sickness or illness for you, there are things you can do to support your body to just overall reduce your inflammation and. And lower your toxic burden, even if you still are exposed to mole.
- [48:42]
A
So what were you doing?
- [48:43]
B
So I changed my entire lifestyle. Age 21, I got married, got on my honeymoon, suddenly started having these crazy symptoms. Felt literally so sick. I was in college still. I thought I was going to have to drop out of college, and I started researching. I. I went to a urologist and said, here's all my symptoms. I've been dealing with this for several months. Months. I had multiple tests done. And he came back and said, well, it looks like you have interstitial cystitis. Here's a pamphlet for you of things that might help you. Good luck. And I was like, screw that. And he also told me that most people who have interstitial cystitis deal with it for their entire life.
- [49:19]
A
Oh, my gosh.
- [49:20]
B
He said, there's no cure. And I said, bet. Yeah. And so at that point, I was not really immersed into the holistic health world, and so I decided to learn as much as I could. Age 21. This is, like, crazy, right?
- [49:32]
A
This is awesome.
- [49:33]
B
Yeah. I'm in college. I'm like, googling, like, does gluten cause inflammation?
- [49:37]
A
You know?
- [49:38]
B
And I start, like, trialing different things with my diet. Cutting out gluten, cutting out sugar.
- [49:43]
A
So did it hurt to pee?
- [49:45]
B
Every time you peed, I was sobbing.
- [49:46]
A
Oh, my God.
- [49:47]
B
Sobbing.
- [49:48]
A
And so you start doing these things. You're cutting out different foods. And I'm assuming also, are you changing the types of products you're using on your body and stuff?
- [49:57]
B
Absolutely doing that.
- [49:58]
A
How long did it take for your. For, like, it burning when you peed and stuff to go away?
- [50:02]
B
Two years. Years. And within two years, I never had another flare. So my last flare, I think, what, lasted maybe 24 hours, and that was in 2020. And it's been. I haven't had a single flare since then. So shout out to my urologist, who told me that I would have it forever. Yeah, look at me now.
- [50:24]
A
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- [52:47]
B
Yes.
- [52:48]
A
Eliminating all of these endocrine disrupting products, products from our life that is so healing yeah, it, I had to go through like some aisle yesterday at Target to pick something up and I had to walk through. I was getting a hair dryer for somebody and I had to walk through like the body care aisle and I was like, it was just like I was being assaulted, like, because I'm not around that stuff anymore. It is so uncomfortable to breathe that in now. And, and all of those bottles are capped.
- [53:14]
B
Yeah.
- [53:15]
A
And I think that's important. You don't realize that when you're around that all the time. But even being around capped, enclosed cleaning products and products that are filled with synthetic fragrance, you, your body picks up on it like an alarm system, like, get me out of here. It is so poisonous.
- [53:31]
B
And that's a great point too, I think for people who are living in mold and maybe are listening to this thinking, well, I think I maybe have mold in my home, but there's really nothing I can do from a financial standpoint about it right now. There are a lot of ways you can support your body even in the meantime, even though it's not the same as fully getting out of that environment. Environment. Removing toxins from your home is one of the most important things. And that is one of my biggest passions that I spend a lot of my energy educating people on. And that's how I really started. My entire platform was talking about how removing toxins from my home healed my chronic illness that was incurable. So if you're living in mold and you're still using conventional cleaning products, conventional beauty products, get that stuff out of your house because that is only increasing your toxic burden, increasing your inflammation levels. And then, yeah, if you're living in a place that's not too humid, open your windows, get fresh air in into your home. And you can also try to reduce dust. That's a really big thing that people don't think about because mold lives and feeds on dust.
- [54:28]
A
Yeah.
- [54:29]
B
And so if you have a home where your laundry is piling up or you don't clean your surfaces regularly, it's really important if there's mold in your home and you are stuck to clean as effectively as possible, as often as possible. Like HEPA rated vacuums are super important. And air filters, because that's capturing, capturing the small particles of mold that could be in your air. So especially if you have things like carpet. Carpet is horrible, horrible, horrible, because it captures those mold spores, those mycotoxins. Also just other nasty stuff in your home. VOCs, pollution, smoke, dander, all of that. So vacuuming every day with a HEPA rated vacuum super important. Filtering your air with the right kind of air filter, the levoit air purifiers are not going to cut it. Something that's operated at least, least if not even better. And then also just keeping up with piles of laundry, keeping up with wiping down your surfaces, having non toxic cleaning supplies on hand. I love Branch basics for wiping things down.
- [55:30]
A
Well, it's funny you bring up dust because when I interviewed Allison, the founder of Branch Basics, that episode was so incredible. If you've not listened to that episode, you should. We're not only talking about Branch Basics. She just gives so many free helpful tips for cleaning your home that eliminate, eliminate, you know, sickness. And one of the things she said that nobody thinks to do is vacuum your walls.
- [55:51]
B
Yes.
- [55:51]
A
She's like, you've got to be regularly vacuuming your walls for the dust and stuff, which is making people super sick. And then, yeah, molds, collecting and whatever. There were so many free helpful tips, even if you don't buy Branch Basics that are in that episode. So I'm glad that you like.
- [56:05]
B
I love Allison. Yeah. And also even wet dusting, because people often think, oh, I should just dust my home with like a dry duster. What are you doing? You're spreading it everywhere. And what, like 15 of it is actually getting on your duster. You need to spra down, get your duster wet so that the dust will stick to your duster and then wash it off really well so that you're not just spreading it all through your air. People don't think to do that.
- [56:29]
A
For the mom who just found mold suspects she has mold or is totally in denial because she's just overwhelmed. What kind of encouragement do you have for her?
- [56:37]
B
First of all, I just want to encourage people to take a breath. It can feel so, so overwhelming to realize that your home might be poisoning you in this way. And, and especially for moms who we're already so overwhelmed and juggling 50 million things at a time to also have to be combating the idea that my home might have toxic mold and I might potentially have to spend thousands of dollars on this and lose things that I love. And also I want to take care of my kids. And I also don't want to rush this by doing it the wrong way. That's a lot. That is a lot. And my heart just goes out to moms that have been through or are going through what I went through because I know how devastating and overwhel overwhelming it can be. And so I would say one of the best Pieces of advice I can give is don't rush anything because it can feel like this emergent, immediate thing that you need to take care of and handle right away. But really a proper, holistically approached mold process should be minimum three to six months and for some people, even longer. It is really important that you hire the right team. I really recommend hiring a mold consultant to work with you because there's just so many decisions that, that are hard and heavy to make and being able to have somebody neutral who can come in without all this emotion and help you walk through things one step at a time. What inspection company do I hire? Should we remediate? Do we want to stay or do we want to move? How much of our stuff do we need to decontaminate and how do we go about decontamination? How do we find a new mold free place to live in? That is a lot to just juggle yourself. And most people are going to miss things because unfortunately, like, majority of remediations fail the first time. And so you don't want to just hire any remediation company. You need to be working with the kinds of remediation companies that are handling things the right way. They're not coming in and scraping mold and spraying it with chemicals and fogging your whole home. I'm really against fogging, and most people have that done because not only does can fogging disrupt that mold and cause that defense mechanism to release mycotoxins, it can also break mold into fractures fragments and cause those mold fragments to still hang around, even if they're saying, oh, it's gonna kill it all. Okay, maybe it's killing it all. But you still have dead mold fragments potentially hanging around. And oftentimes those fogging chemicals are super harmful for your home's microbiome and your health.
- [59:00]
A
Are you a coffee drinker, Matcha? Okay, because I was gonna say, you know, I'd be curious what your recommendations were for coffee, because coffee. Coffee has a lot of mold in it, and mycotoxins, if it's not organic and mold free and mycotoxin free. And so that's something that a lot of people drink every single day, multiple times a day, and they're just upping their toxic load and they don't even realize it. And so especially for somebody who is, say, mold survivor.
- [59:25]
B
Yes.
- [59:25]
A
I feel like making sure you're not drinking conventional coffee for a while would be smart.
- [59:30]
B
Your Starbucks is probably filling your body with mold. Hate to break it to you. Yeah, mold free, mycotoxin free. Organic coffee is really important and actually similarly for peanuts. So if you're actively in a mold exposure and you believe your body is ill from mold, you should be avoiding peanuts.
- [59:47]
A
Okay.
- [59:47]
B
Peanuts are one of the most moldy crops, along with coffee beans.
- [59:51]
A
So what if it's organic?
- [59:52]
B
Organic maybe lessens the risk a little bit, but whether or not it's sprayed with pesticides doesn't necessarily change how moist and moldy they can get.
- [60:02]
A
Do you believe that it is a biblical duty for mothers to prioritize health in their home?
- [60:06]
B
Yes, I do. I think so. But if the health of your home becomes more important to you than the gospel, then you're doing it wrong. Because really and truly, if our purpose on this earth is to bring glory to God, that doesn't necessarily equate prioritizing your health. God could call you to live in a moldy home. And that's something that I have to think about is my family actually lived overseas in Thailand as missionaries. And I'm sure that our home over there had moisture issues because it was open, open air. And so there was that crazy high humidity in a tropical country. And I actually had really bad mental health problems when I was a senior in high school living over there. And looking back, I really have no doubt that that probably had environmental factors like mold in our house. But did God still call us to go be there and do that for that season? 100%. And so there is an element of going back to scripture and asking God, what is. What is your will? For me, is it to stay in this moldy home right now and do what I can to support my kids, but be financially wise about my money and not go into debt over leaving my home because it's moldy? That might be the wisest decision. And it's such an individual thing, you know, because for some people, you can't really love God and love others to your full capacity if you're so burdened by chronic illness.
- [61:35]
A
So when you are home shopping, what are a couple of the things again, that people should ask before purchasing a home so they don't find themselves in this situation?
- [61:43]
B
If you're being mold conscious when you're purchasing a home, I really recommend that you actually write a clause into any offers that you make that allows you to back out after mold testing if the results are are positive. And so that's what we did for both of the homes that we've purchased in the last few years, is we had our realt add a clause into our offer saying we will be testing this home for mold in the way that we want to during the inspection period, and if it comes back above these levels, we have full rights to rescind our offer. And we actually had to do that on a house. So we went in and looked at it. This was when we were initially house hunting after the first home had mold in it. We probably saw 20 homes during that time. And again, very similarly to our house hunt for a new construction home home. We only saw two homes out of 20 that didn't have visible water damage.
- [62:33]
A
Wow.
- [62:33]
B
And so the first one that we found that didn't have visible signs, we walked through it, we liked it, we put in an offer, and we had a. A clause in there that allowed us to back out. And the owners seemed not bothered by that. We thought maybe they would push back on it. But I think because they also probably knew nothing about mold and had never seen mold in their home, they were like, oh, mold testing. I'm sure it's fine. Well, well, we did a mold test on the home, and it came back with a huge hit for black mold. So it must have been either in the attic or behind the walls somewhere. And so we told them, hey, the mold test came back positive. We need to back out. And they were not happy about it. And we had a little bit of a battle with them of like, no, this is our right. We put it in the contract, but ultimately we were able to back out.
- [63:15]
A
Wow, that was smart.
- [63:16]
B
I really recommend we worked with our mold consultant during that whole process, and it really is a great idea. Idea to have somebody again on your team who can help you think through red flags of a home. Even when you're just looking on Zillow at a listing or redfin. There are things you can look at in the photos that can help you think through if this home has a lot of potential for water damage. Like, if it's a home that has a crawl space and that's listed on Zillow, we wouldn't even go look at it. And also if it had venting that ran through the bottom of the main floor floor. So if it was like a home on a slab or a home on a crawl space and the air vents were on the floor of the main level and not the walls or the ceiling, we actually wouldn't go look at it because ducting that runs through the floor is oftentimes more likely to be pulling in outside humid air and potentially having mold problems. So we would only consider homes that had, like, air vents or ducting that ran through the walls or the ceiling, man.
- [64:12]
A
I'm gonna tell you what I have done. I don't even know what number of episodes we've done now on Culture Apothecary. You are one of the best, best people that knows your stuff and so many helpful tips that, like, I have never thought of ever in my life and would never know to, like, ask these questions or look for these things. So I think that this is going to go down in Culture Apothecary history as one of the most important episodes and helpful educational episodes that I've ever done. Because, I mean, how many people are suffering from mold and they don't realize in their home?
- [64:43]
B
Most. Yeah, the.
- [64:44]
A
Most of Americans are. Are dealing with this, and they don't understand why I'm so sick. Nothing I'm doing is getting better. You know, I bought this prote powder and I did this supplement, and I'm still sick. And it's like, you have mold. I feel like I got a message or something in the last couple months of somebody being like, you know, my kid, my toddler's hair is falling out. Her hair won't grow, and all this. I said, have you tested for mold? She's like, no, we don't have any mold in here. I was like, well, you should just test it anyway just to be sure. Sure enough, she test the mold was growing in her toddler's crib. Literally the crib. And she's like, well, I just threw the crib out, so I should be fine. I'm like, so this is so serious. And people just do not take it seriously enough. So you are doing work. I hope you know that. And you're doing such a good job. So you have a whole, like, course that will help somebody step by step, figure out exactly what to do.
- [65:32]
B
Right.
- [65:33]
A
Can you talk about that in your website and your Instagram?
- [65:35]
B
Yes, yes. So you can follow me on Instagram at the Organa Mama. And I have a lot of information on mold and low tox living as well to help lower your toxic burden with easy swaps at home. But I have the Organ Mama's Guide to Mold, which is a video course that people can watch through at their own pace. It's a kind of like watching through Instagram stories, the format. So it's like these short little videos that are set up into different chapters that cover all of this. So, like, what is mold like from. From the very foundation. What is it and why should you care about it? What are the health symptoms that are associated with mold? What should you do if you suspect mold in your home, how do you hire the right kind of team rather than a team that's going to make your home more unhealthy? And then what are tips for supporting your body when you live in in mold? What are tips for house hunting? What are tips for healing from mold afterwards? And we're even adding a bonus chapter of what to do if you have a major water event in your home. Like, how do you handle that if your basement floods or your toilet leaks over? How do you handle that? And this is all just information that I have gathered through my own personal research over the last four years, and I think it's information that every homeowner and renter should know.
- [66:43]
A
And how much is this?
- [66:44]
B
15.
- [66:44]
A
Oh, that's so, yes. Okay. No brainer. If you could offer, offer one remedy to heal a sick culture, physically, emotionally, or spiritually, what would it be?
- [66:52]
B
Turn your eyes upon Jesus.
- [66:54]
A
That's a good one.
- [66:55]
B
I believe that with my whole heart because you can do all the healing you want on your body through every means possible. You can get out of all the moldy homes, you can take every supplement, you can do every detox protocol and get in all the steps. But if you have not met Jesus and turned your heart toward him, your eternity is not going to be a healthy one.
- [67:15]
A
You have a podcast episode everyone needs to listen to.
- [67:17]
B
Yes, Actually, it just dropped. It's me and my husband telling the entire story of what we went through with mold in like, complete detail. Like, over an hour of us just, like, laying out the whole thing with him. So getting his perspective on it too, which I think is really helpful.
- [67:32]
A
That's good for the skeptical husbands.
- [67:34]
B
If you have a skeptical husband, go listen to it. It just dropped. And then we also have episodes coming out where I talk with a home building expert on how to prevent mold in a new construction custom build. And then I have an episode as well with the holistic mold consultant that we worked with, where she talks through a lot of these same things from her perspective, which is super informative.
- [67:55]
A
What's the podcast called?
- [67:56]
B
It's the Organa Mama podcast.
- [67:58]
A
Before you go, you live in Detroit. I have to tell you something. So I travel so much for this job, interviewing people or speaking places, whatever. And one of my pride and joy, little fun things I get to do is every time I'm in a new city, I like to find like the coolest organic farm to table restaurant to try. Okay. Last time I was in Detroit, which is a couple months ago this fall, I Went to this place called Sylvan Table.
- [68:20]
B
Okay.
- [68:21]
A
It is by far out of all the places I've been. I mean, New York City, Louisiana, whatever. One of the best, if not the best organic regenerative farm restaurant I have ever eaten at. Every single dish was phenomenal. The mocktail was phenomenal. It was like, knock your socks off. And they're like growing their own produce right there. It's all. It's all local and it's beautiful restaurant and it is, like, worth all the date nights, trust me. And they do really cool events there. Just look it up. Just go to their Instagram, their website, Sylvan Table, Sylvan Lake, Michigan or something right outside of Detroit. So now I want you to go and then I want you to tag me on your Instagram and be like, I went, Alex Clark recommended, and it was 10 stars, like she said.
- [68:58]
B
Okay, so Sylvan Lake Table, Sylvan Lake.
- [69:02]
A
Michigan, I think is the little town Table, but Sylvan Table is the restaurant. I don't know these people. They probably, for all I know, they're like super Democrat and they like hate the show and they're gonna be really mad that I recommend recommended, but I don't care.
- [69:13]
B
It is the best.
- [69:14]
A
Whoever they are, it is the best food service experience. The servers are like all gung ho on organic. Like they're. They want to talk to you about all the things. Like, it's just a really good experience. So I just have to say that because I don't know anyone else from Detroit.
- [69:26]
B
Okay, well, like, we'll be going there. You'll. You'll find out about it first. Okay, good.
- [69:31]
A
Okay. I have to say that. Okay. Thanks for coming on Culture Apothecary.
- [69:34]
B
Thanks for having me.
- [69:38]
A
I've done multiple episodes on Mold, so if you go way back before we were called Culture Apothecary and we were called the Spillover, I did an interview with non toxic home builders. So this couple in Texas actually will build a non toxic home from the ground up. And they gave tips on what to look for when you're building a home to avoid mold. So I would go back and listen to that episode. They also had tons of just really helpful tips for like paint selections to do for your home if you want to paint, or cabinetry and different things like that. So even if you're not building from the ground up, but you are renovating. You want to list to that episode. I also interviewed my friend Ryan from the company Test My Home. That is when we were doing Culture Apothecary it was from last March. I believe that episode is extremely pivotal if you are dealing with a mold problem or you're just trying to make your home less toxic because he talks about air quality and what to do there fragrances in your home, all sorts of things. So test My home is a great company if you are looking for a company to use. They came and tested my apartment and were wonderful and they discovered some mold that was growing from water damage under my floorboards that I was able to present to my apartment complex. Very critical stuff here. This is no joke. I hope that this episode encouraged you to actually do something about it. If you know that you do have toxic mold or if you suspect that you have mold, please get tested and find out for sure and get out of there. It is crucial. You could have lifelong health damages and I really don't want that for you or your kids. Please leave a five star review if this episode episode really helped you out. We put new episodes out twice a week, Mondays and Thursdays at 6pM Pacific, 9pM Eastern, anywhere you get your podcast or real Alex Clark on YouTube. We're trying to heal a sick culture physically, emotionally and spiritually. I'm Alex Clark and this is Culture Apothecary.