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Your AC Is Making You Dumber : 1444 - The Human Upgrade: Biohacking for Longevity & Performance | Wave AI Podcast Notes

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Your AC Is Making You Dumber : 1444

The Human Upgrade: Biohacking for Longevity & Performance

Fri Apr 03 2026

Summary

The Human Upgrade with Dave Asprey

Episode 1444: "Your AC Is Making You Dumber"
Date: April 3, 2026
Host: Dave Asprey
Guests: Representatives from Super Stratum / Homebiotic

Overview:

This episode dives into the invisible yet profound health impacts of mold and mycotoxins in indoor environments. Dave Asprey, self-proclaimed "father of biohacking," shares his deeply personal journey with toxic mold and how it led him to uncover the links between environmental toxins, chronic health issues, and peak human performance. Together with the founders of Super Stratum and Homebiotic, they discuss the state-of-the-art strategies for remediating and preventing mold, highlighting how traditional cleaning methods fall short and why advanced approaches are crucial for health, focus, and longevity.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Dave’s Personal Battle with Mold [(03:04)-(15:19)]

Early Life Exposure: Dave grew up in a moldy basement in New Mexico, suffering from a host of unexplained health problems, including brain fog, chronic strep, OCD, oppositional defiance, arthritis, and eventually chronic fatigue syndrome and potential early-of-life strokes.
- “By the time I was in my mid-20s… I had chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia, which are probably the same thing. Crippling brain fog to the point that I bought disability insurance in my 20s because I wasn’t sure if I could really keep going.” — Dave [04:19]
Discovery and Diagnosis: Multiple failed medical interventions led Dave to functional medicine, where an allergy test revealed extreme mold sensitivity.
- “I had an allergic response to 10 of the top 12 toxic molds out there. And that was like, aha. I get this.” — Dave [05:21]
Health & Performance Link: Mold toxins (mycotoxins) are powerful mitochondrial disruptors, deeply impacting energy, cognition, hormones, and even personality. Dave connects his biohacking ethos to solving his own body's energetic and neurological setbacks caused by mold.

2. Mold: Understanding the Enemy [(15:19)-(20:47)]

Mycotoxins vs. Germs: Unlike viruses or cold germs, mold toxins don’t impact everyone equally. Genetic variability means symptoms and severity can differ even within households.
- “If there was mold in this room right now, depending on the species, I might have one set of symptoms like brain fog or dizziness. And you might say, I don’t feel anything. But you know, two days later I’ve got a rash.” — Dave [10:28]
Widespread Problem: Mold is rampant in public buildings, schools, and even high-end homes.
Chronic Disease Link: There are clear, research-backed links between mold and illnesses like Alzheimer’s, diabetes, cancer, cardiovascular disease, and infertility.
- “There’s thousands of studies that support this... here’s the link between mold and diabetes. Mold and cancer. Mold and heart disease.” — Dave [18:38]

3. Mold & Hormones: Obesity, Estrogen, Fertility [(20:27)-(24:15)]

Obesity Connection: The mycotoxin zearalenone mimics estrogen and is used commercially to fatten livestock; the same environmental exposure makes weight loss nearly impossible for some people.
- “I was getting treated with this mold toxin in my bedroom that was making me obese no matter how little I ate.” — Dave [19:24]
Hormonal Havoc: Mold exposure derails thyroid and reproductive hormones, leading to chronic fatigue, weight gain, and in men, gynecomastia (man boobs). It’s behind many unexplained cases of infertility and miscarriages.

4. Mold’s “Hidden” Symptoms: Cognitive & Emotional Fallout [(21:04)-(32:56)]

IQ Impact: Mold can reduce cognitive performance by as much as 15 IQ points—an effect that is often reversible when addressed.
- “...mold can drop your IQ by 15 points. And you get rid of the mold, your IQ goes back up, and mine did.” — Dave [40:56]
Relationship & Mental Health Troubles: One partner may have severe symptoms while the other feels fine, causing outright disbelief and straining relationships. Mold can trigger rage, depression, ADHD, and even oppositional defiant disorder.
Willpower & Motivation: Studies show mitochondrial dysfunction (often from mold) impairs willpower and motivation, worsening life quality.

5. Mold Remediation Challenges: Why "Rip and Replace" Isn't Enough [(32:56)-(43:22)]

Mycotoxins Linger: Even after physical mold removal, toxic residues remain embedded in surfaces, air, and dust. These mycotoxins are chemically “sticky.”
- “It's really the mycotoxins, it's the leftover. It’s all of these things that get left in the house after [mold removal].” — Guest [32:56]
The “Car Detailing” Analogy: Regular cleaning often only masks or spreads chemical toxins rather than truly eliminating them.

6. Modern Solutions: Super Stratum & Homebiotic Protocols [(33:39)-(43:22)]

Fogging & Decontamination: Super Stratum’s hypochlorous acid fog cleans mycotoxins from all surfaces—even porous materials—without wiping, reaching 100% reduction of ochratoxin in tests.
- “Without even a wipe, just from a fog landing on the surface, there’s 100% reduction in ochratoxin from the building.” — Guest [34:45]
Environmental Probiotics: Homebiotic introduces specific, beneficial soil bacteria into the home environment, competing with and suppressing toxic molds—a “probiotic for your walls.”
- “A healthy home isn’t sterile. A healthy home is just like a healthy gut. You need to have the right bacterial balance.” — Dave [35:58]
Preventive Coatings: Super Stratum endurance coating protects surfaces prone to moisture—especially inside HVAC/AC ductwork—for years, stopping regrowth.
Affordability: These protocols offer solutions that are vastly cheaper than traditional remediation (ripping out walls, replacing HVACs), making true mold prevention accessible for more people.

7. The Cost of Ignorance & The Social Toll [(43:22)-(50:02)]

Financial Stress: True mold resolution often costs tens or hundreds of thousands, crippling to many families.
Education & Empowerment: Spreading awareness and science-backed, cost-effective solutions is critical to prevent the massive personal and societal burden of chronic mold exposure, especially for vulnerable populations.

8. Real-World Application: Houses, Cars, and More [(50:02)-(55:27)]

Car Detox: Mycotoxins and Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) plague cars as well as homes, often causing foggy thinking and behavioral problems (especially in children); Super Stratum's “deodor bombs” neutralize both.
- “Car detailing is not car detoxing.” — Guest [51:53]
Multiple Chemical Sensitivity (MCS): Mold exposure primes the body to become hypersensitive to environmental chemicals; treating both together is critical.
- “Mold is a direct cause of chemical sensitivity…They all have been exposed to mold.” — Dave [52:31]
Comprehensive Treatment: The ideal protocol involves fogging and bombing, vacuuming with HEPA, environmental probiotics, and protective coatings—applied to homes, cars, even RVs.

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

“[Mold toxins] are direct mitochondrial poisons, so your mitochondria can’t do their job. And since that time, I've learned mitochondria are basically the seat of consciousness in the body.” — Dave [06:39]
“You cannot perform at your best in mold, even if it’s not affecting you very much.” — Dave [12:53]
“The Mold Kingdom, in and of itself—it's older than probably anything else here.” — Guest [16:54]
“If you have toxic mold, no matter how little you eat, you will never lose weight.” — Dr. Daniel Amen (quoted by Dave) [23:17]
“...your mitochondrial health controls your willpower. So when people get mold, they lose their energy, and they lose their willpower, and then it just feels like everything is climbing Everest.” — Dave [23:57]
“A healthy home isn’t sterile. A healthy home is just like a healthy gut. You need to have the right bacterial balance.” — Dave [35:58]
“Car detailing is not car detoxing.” — Super Stratum founder [51:53]
“No wonder [the car makes you feel dumb]...By the time you get to where you’re going, your mitochondria freak out. Like, ‘I need more energy because I’m under stress right now.’ So then you get sugar cravings…” — Dave [54:26]

Timestamps for Important Segments

Dave’s Mold Story & Health Impacts: [03:04]–[15:19]
Mold’s Broad Effects & Germ Theory Limitation: [15:19]–[20:47]
Hormonal Disruption & Obesity: [20:27]–[24:15]
Brain Health, Cognitive Impairment, and Relationships: [24:15]–[32:56]
Remediation Strategies & Modern Science: [33:39]–[43:22]
Protocol for Homes, Cars, and Belongings: [50:02]–[55:27]
The Mission: Making Mold Remediation Accessible: [43:22]–[50:02]

Summary Takeaways

Mold and mycotoxins are among the most insidious, under-recognized causes of poor health, affecting everything from brain power to fertility.
Standard cleaning and remediation often miss the real problem: chemical toxins that linger after visible mold is gone.
Science-driven, multifaceted protocols—fogging, environmental probiotics, and protective coatings—now make effective, affordable mold prevention possible.
The ultimate biohack for longevity and consistent high performance starts not with supplements or gadgets, but with a truly clean, biologically safe environment to live, work, and drive in.

For further learning:

MoldyMovie.com — Free documentary on mold's health effects
SuperStratumLabs.com — Products for deep, lasting mold and toxin remediation
Homebiotic.com — Environmental probiotics for your indoor spaces

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Transcript

A (0:00)

You have to remediate. You've got mold growing inside of your walls. We tell people you need to rip that mold out. But like you're saying, it's really the mycotoxins, it's the leftover. It's all of these things that get left in the house after these.

B (0:11)

Mycotoxins are very small particles. They get on everything. And if you move to a new home and I'm going to bring my moldy furniture with me, you will remain sick. So you have to throw away all your stuff.

A (0:20)

What we like to say is car detailing is not car detoxing. A lot of times when you detail a car, you're introducing more chemicals. One of the things that cars have are volatile organic compounds, chemicals that off gas in new cars. None of those chemicals are oxidizers that are strong enough to destroy the chemical. And that's what the building cleaner and the whole system as well as the Yoder bombs are designed to do. Designed to clean up all that chemical contamination without even a wipe just from a fog landing on the surface. There's 100% reduction in okra toxin from the building.

B (0:50)

Wow. You're listening to the Human Upgrade with Dave Asprey.

C (0:59)

You can be health conscious doing everything right and still feel like garbage. And the reason is almost always the same. Mineral deficiency. And not because you're not trying. Because modern soil is depleted. Crops today have up to 40% fewer minerals than they did 50 years ago. Your food isn't what it used to be. But here's the part nobody talks about. Nutrients don't work in isolation. And minerals and fat soluble vitamins D, A, K and E work together in your body. Vitamin D helps your body absorb calcium. K2 makes sure calcium goes into your bones, not your arteries. You need magnesium to activate vitamin D so your body can use it. Without these nutrients present together, your system doesn't run efficiently. You might as well flush money down the toilet. That's exactly why I created dake and and minerals 101D3A K2E and a full mineral stack designed to work together because that's the only way any of it actually works. Cold plunges, red light, sauna, you can do it all. But none of it matters if your foundation is broken. Fix the foundation. Grab your Dake and Minerals 101 duo@shopsupgradelabs.com and and use code DAVEPOD for 15% off. Today.

B (2:23)

You're listening to the Human Upgrade with Dave Asprey.

A (2:29)

Dave, welcome to me because I'm in your home in Austin, Texas, that's soon

B (2:34)

to be heavily treated for mold, even though don't have a lot here.

B (3:04)

Well, I. I grew up in a basement that had been flooded in Albuquerque, New Mexico. We didn't know about toxic mold then, but I had all the symptoms of mold poisoning. Autism. And mold does not cause autism, but it can be an important ingredient in the recipe for autism. You have to have the right genetics and things like that. And mold also. One of the symptoms of it is chronic strep throat, which I had for 15 years. And chronic strep throat also causes weird autoimmune things and behavioral things like ADHD and something called Pandas, which I had, which gives you ocd. And my favorite one is odd. Have you heard of that? No. Oppositional defiant disorder. And this is when that Rage against the machine song, you know, f you, I won't do what you told me. It plays constantly in your head. And if someone tells you to do something before you can think, you're like, no, you can't make me. So needless to say, my. My Dave's a good boy file was not very big, but Dave's a bad boy file was very high. And so there's a lot of health stuff that came out of that. You. I had arthritis in my knees since I was 14 and just all kinds of health problems. By the time I was in my mid-20s, I had been diagnosed without arthritis, high risk of stroke, and heart attack. I had chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia, which are probably the same thing. Let's see. Crippling brain fog to the point that I bought disability insurance in my 20s because I wasn't sure if I could really keep going. And it's this feeling like you have the pedal all the way to the floor in your car, and it's slowing down, and, like, you can push harder, but there's no more push to give. Right. And so I went to all these functional medicine doctors. I spent hundreds of thousands of dollars trying to get well, and I just wanted my brain to work and fortunately for me, I was a computer hacker, and I started hanging out with people in their 80s and 90s, running the first longevity group in the Bay Area. So I got mentored by the leaders in what is now functional medicine, even though that was just what I kind of did for fun, because I just wanted my brain to work. I didn't want my body to hurt all the time the way it did. So let's say it was a lot of work and a lot of suffering. And when I unpacked all this stuff, I went to a guy in Los Altos, California, in the Bay Area, who's this old wise functional medicine doctor. And he said, dave, the people I treat don't come back. He said, you've been back five times. That's unheard of in my practice. I want to run an HIV test on you because I don't think you have it. You don't have any of the behavior patterns. But why are you not getting? Well, this doesn't make any sense. Of course I didn't have HIV, but I did have an allergic response to 10 of the top 12 toxic molds out there. And that was like, aha. I get this. And along the way, I'm like, oh, I had that probably when I was a kid, certainly all the symptoms of it. And I moved into a place in the Bay Area that had massive water damage in the bedroom. And I got really sick when I moved there. My dog got pneumonia, and my partner at the time gained 30 pounds and got really sick. And we both had this weird brain fog. I'm like, oh, but we moved out of that place. But right after we moved out, I found slimy black mold on the back of the drywall that was where the headboard was because the neighbor's water heater was leaking. I'm like, aha, smoking guns. And then I moved into a place where water would pool underneath it when it rained. I got sicker. And I finally was like, you know what? This is mold. So I learned how to detox. And I'm like, why did no one say anything? And then I realized that there was this small pool of experts who had been talking about mold for a long time. And most of them were kind of mavericks because they're saying, well, why is everyone missing this? Along the way, I became an expert in mitochondrial biology, because when my doctor couldn't help me earlier on, I just fired him. And for four years, I studied energy production in the human body as a scientist, But a computer scientist. I'm like, I have to Solve this problem, because I'm going to die. Or at least I feel like I'm going to die if I don't. So I learned that mold toxins, about 200 of them, are direct mitochondrial poisons, so your mitochondria can't do their job. And since that time, I've learned mitochondria are basically the seat of consciousness in the body. They're much more important than just energy production. They're actually energetic sensors and environmental sensors, and they get stressed by these toxins. And what I learned was that environmental toxins are the worst from toxic mold. But we also eat a lot of toxins that become a trigger. And during this path, I quit coffee for five years. And they were long, dark, horrible years, because coffee is actually really good. And I came back from a trip to Tibet because I studied consciousness and meditation and all. Just. I just want things to work. I don't want to feel anxious all the time. And mold makes you feel anxious and tired all the time. And I drank a cup of coffee, and I felt amazing. It's like the lights turned back on and I'm like, I'm not allergic anymore.

B (8:04)

Because every time I drink coffee, an hour or two later, I get like this jitter, this feeling in my chest, like, ah. So day after, I had another cup of coffee, and then I felt the symptoms, and I thought, wait, I didn't get allergic overnight. It's the coffee. So I. I went down this, wow, here's how much mold is in peanuts versus wheat versus coffee. And I found out coffee is a serious mold risk. Food ended up launching a massive coffee company called Bulletproof. And today I run Danger Coffee, which is mold free and contains special minerals that actually bind to toxins. So it's like this whole path of longevity, and I'm a leader in longevity movement, really came from being sick as a kid from toxic mold. At another experience in Palo Alto when I was there where I had a leaky dishwasher. And when we had that changed, my dog stopped eating and I got really sick overnight, all the symptoms returned. And I used to be to the point where I would walk into a moldy building and immediately I would have, like a whole body panic response. Or even worse, I get mold rage, which is a thing I remember one time my kids were kind of young, and I got exposed to mold, and. And I just remember yelling at my kids, like, in a way I would never do. And I'm like, what is happening right now? And of course, I apologize later, but I'm sure it wasn't good for him. Because mold has the ability to hijack your nervous system. Because your body, it doesn't understand that mold toxins, which is different from mold itself, the toxins that mold makes. It's kind of like penicillin is a concentrated mold toxin. That one little pill has a huge effect on your body. If you're getting that absorbed through your skin from your house. But it's not the good penicillin. It's a poison or you're breathing it, man, it's going to mess you up and it's going to have systemic effects. So I just realized I got a problem and I went through and I did everything you could do to detox my body. And I became aware of how important it was to do to look at mold and structures and just to control moisture levels and water. Along the way, I shot a documentary that I funded called Moldy Movie. And it's helped, I'm guessing, about a million people now become aware of mold because no one would believe it at the beginning. So I interviewed a dozen top experts, including Mark Hyman, who had mold poisoning, actually helped him diagnose his mold poisoning because it was so. It feels so random. Different people get different things. I interviewed a dozen high performing people who were just taken offline by mold and a dozen top experts. And you cannot watch. It's an hour. It's free moldymovie.com you cannot watch that and go, oh, mold isn't real. So it's meant for doctors or for spouses who don't believe it. Because what's scary about this is mitochondria are so low level in the body. Depending on which mold toxins you have, they might attack your mitochondria at the lining of your nerves. They're tied to Ms. And Alzheimer's and Parkinson's and cancer and cardiovascular disease and diabetes even, because they're biological dysregulators. But if there was mold in this room right now, depending on the species, I might have one set of symptoms like brain fog or dizziness. And you might say, I don't feel anything. But you know, two days later I've got a rash, right? And so I found a lot of couples were really fighting over it because one of the two has genetics that makes them more susceptible. So they're getting crazy symptoms. And the other one's like, I got a stuffy nose sometimes, but it's just not a big deal. And so you think the other person's crazy until you realize different people get Affected. But one person may get, you know, Alzheimer's, and the other person may just say, I don't really feel anything. But then they get cancer. And today I run a concierge longevity medicine practice along with a top longevity doctor and one of our clients in her early 40s, we tested, and she had serious brain fog. But she has what's essentially advanced Alzheimer's disease. And she's in her 40s with two young kids. And what happened? Their basement got flooded. And she has the very clear signs. We see the mycotoxins, we see the inflammation, we see the genetics that make her susceptible, and we see the brain stuff. That's how powerful it is. But her husband. I feel fine. Right. So I want people to understand this is deadly serious. And the fact that a person in the room with you feels mold and you don't, it doesn't mean that it's not there. And we have the ability to test for it in the environment. We have the ability to test for it in the body today. And the problem has always been, well, what do you do? And you could do what the Bible says. If you go back, I don't remember which chapter and all, but it's Leviticus. Yeah, Leviticus. There you go. It says, literally, if there's black mold, clean everything. And if it comes back in 10 days, burn everything.

B (13:21)

And I remember when I was at the University of California, the library had, like, standing water, and people were complaining about getting sick in it, but it's just like how it is. So most government buildings, most libraries, they're all full of it. And so there's people who know they've been exposed to mold and they just won't go into those buildings. And everyone else who goes in there, they're getting sicker and sicker, and they're spending more and more on drugs, and they wonder why. Their relationships have gone to hell, their hormones are disrupted. All of this can be attributed to mold and mold's additive with all the other environmental toxins and lack of sleep and eating Junk food and all that, but it's a much bigger part of the burden. And the way mold enters the body is by breathing it, by absorbing through the skin and by eating it. And so danger coffee. I lab test the coffee using proprietary methods to make sure that there's no mold in it. And then any home that I own or spend a lot of time in, I test the air, I test the dust, I make sure that I've treated the H Vac system right. And along the way I ended up inventing a probiotic that I could spray around. And it's very affordable and it helps, but it doesn't solve the whole problem. You have to keep doing it. And if it's inside a wall, what do you do? And so I've been searching for years for what do I tell people to do that's affordable? Because ripping out your whole kitchen is kind of an expensive thing. And I've had to do that twice. So you're replacing your H Vac system, very expensive. So what are we going to do about this? Because most people aren't going to do that. And then you're just kind of stuck, especially if you own the home. And so I was really excited when we got to connect because you've got something that I've thinking I have to go invent that. But Super Stratum is like a long term solution for mold and I'm pretty excited about it. But that's the story. And man, this is personal.

B (21:04)

It's crazy what happens with your hormones with mold because mold also will disrupt your thyroid and your thyroid gives you energy every day. So now you're like, I'm so tired. I just can't do Anything. And then you have massive amounts of estrogen and suddenly you have man boobs, which I had for much of my life. Don't have them anymore. And it's. It's so sneaky because that level of estrogen is. Is just bad for everyone, and it's not the good estrogen. And it turns out I don't have a liver that makes the right stuff to detox that. But knowing these things was important because otherwise I would have just been, well, I guess I'm kind of a fat slob. And no matter what I do, it just doesn't work. And one of the things that was, well, validating for me is I interviewed Dr. Amen from Amen Clinics, who's done more brain scans than what I know. He was part of me discovering what had happened when they. I was in Wharton Business School and I was failing out of my classes. I thought, man, maybe I'm actually dumber than I think I am, right? And I'm trying hard, but it's just nothing works. Like there's no memory there. And I was being exposed to mold at the time. So I went and I got a brain scan where they inject radioactive sugar, and then they look at metabolic activity in the brain. And I remember going to the psychiatrist and he kind of looks at me and he's like, oh, tech bro wants Adderall. Like, we've seen this before, right? Because a lot of people wanted to do Adderall and I didn't want Adderall, but it's not a very nice drug. But. But I got the scan and I came back and he just looked at me so different and he said, dave, inside your brain is total chaos. You have the best camouflage I've ever seen. I don't know how you're standing here in front of me right now, because there were huge chunks of the front of my brain, the prefrontal cortex, where there was zero metabolic activity. And when Dr. Amen looked at the scan, he said, dave, you had mold toxin induced brain damage. And the good news here is I got a scan 10 years later and it's gone. I fixed it. You can fix it. You're rid of the toxins and you can fix your biology. And today I'm on the board of directors of Amen Clinics. And Dan Amen's become a good friend. But in that interview in Moldy Movie, he said, if you have toxic mold, no matter how little you eat, you will never lose weight. And so you're like, wow, I'm super emotional. I yell at my spouse, I'm puffy, and I'm fat all the time. I have dark circles under my eyes. I have weird rashes. I keep getting. Getting sick. You know, I yell at my family. I don't like myself. And I feel like at the end of the day, I can barely put one foot in front of the other. Well, it's because these toxins, they're affecting where energy comes from. And there's two studies directly showing that your mitochondrial health controls your willpower. So when people get mold, they lose their energy, and they lose their willpower, and then it just feels like everything is climbing Everest. Like, it's just. It's too much. And so you kind of get paralyzed in your life. And, like, I can't even pay my bills. I know I should, but I'm just so tired. Yeah, right.

B (24:24)

Yeah, it was a snake, and it bit you. Like, I got paralyzed, but then you'd see it. But if you're getting paralyzed over the course of a month or six months or a year, it's so slow that we just don't pick it up. And. And your immune system, it's really good at finding bacteria, and it can even find, like, a fungus growing in the body sometimes. But what mold does is it takes out the immune system, which is why most people have Lyme disease. If you look at it, they actually have mold poisoning. You get rid of the mold, and the lyme resolves. Because 95% of people have the Lyme spirochete in their body. They don't have any symptoms. Only the people who get mold get Lyme. And I'm talking about research from UCLA when I say that. Not saying there isn't Lyme disease, I tested positive for it. I also just had mold. And treating Lyme didn't work. Treating the mold worked. So people oftentimes have mold as an underlying cause of another disease, Even things like kidney stones directly tied to mold. And the mold that's very common in environments is OTA or ochratoxin A. And OTA is also the most common mold in coffee. And since I've been exposed to OTA in multiple homes, I can feel mold in the coffee. And it turns out 28% of people have a mutation that makes them more susceptible to mold. And it's in the HLA Dr.4 part of your genetics. And this is A mutation that is really good. If there's a famine or if there's maybe you're Northern European or you're part of whatever, wherever you're from. And your job was to go to the neighboring village and then basically take an arrow in the back and not bleed out. So your blood clots quickly and then be exposed to the microbiome of all the stuff you're stealing, right? And then not get sick from that because your immune system is highly active. And then go home, enjoy the spoils of war, and then do it again, right? If your people have been doing that for a while, you're much more likely to have these genetics. And we can measure it now. And those are the people who tend to get really sick because your immune system goes, there's an invader. I don't know what it is, but I'm going to get really inflamed, I'm going to get really irritated, right? And because we're good on famines with these genetics, we recycle our bile, which is a fatty substance. And mold toxins primarily dissolve into the fat in your tissues. So the longer you're exposed, the more it gets into your brain, the lining of your nerves, and all the cell membranes made out of fat. So I like to have this picture of a glass of water and you put two drops of blue food coloring in, and at first they're just on the surface and then they slowly spread. That's what mold toxin does inside the body. So when you want to remove it from the body, it takes a little bit of time because you have to add more water to wash out the stuff. So you increase fat turnover, you increase detox pathways. And we know how to get people well from mold. But it can still be expensive. It can take time. It takes much less time now than it did 20 years ago when I was doing it. But would it be better if you just didn't get it because your house was built right? Because you took a few steps, even if you didn't build the house to just protect yourself and protect your kids by going to the high risk areas, checking them real quick, and then spraying them with something. So if the sink drips underneath it, which most sinks do at some point, let's not have a problem there, right? Let's go to the place around the window where it's always a little bit moist. And let's just make sure that nothing ever grows there. That's the goal. So you never have to go through all this detox. You don't have to lose your energy, you don't have to lose your fertility. And there's something else about fertility that I found in my research about mold that is shocking and disturbing. See, the people who really understand mold are farmers and ranchers. So they measure the mold in food that they feed their animals. And they will not feed moldy food to animals that are going to get pregnant or are pregnant, because the number of miscarriages goes through the roof and they can't make any money. But what they will do is the three months before they sell the animals, they'll feed it the moldy food because they don't care if it gets sick as long as it's not dead. So we're actually getting mold in industrially fed meat. But those farmers know about mold infertility. And right now we have a fertility crisis where a lot of people can't get pregnant or they can't carry a healthy baby. And mold is a major culprit. And the other thing that's weird about mold, if it's in your home, in your workplace, in your car, which is a major source, what you end up doing is you get the mold and then your toxic metals go through the roof like mercury and lead, because mold is disabling detox pathways. So now everything else in the environment gets worse and worse and worse. So it's additive. So I'm like, let's prevent the problem. If, you know you have that one room in your house that smells a bit funky, but you just open the window like, no, not okay. And I couldn't tell people what to do. I'm like, well, you could run a little ozone, which is hard to do and expensive and it kind of works. But with the technology that you have at super Stratum, it's like, no, you can actually treat that room fully and kill everything, right? And after everything's dead, you can hit it with some home biotic, you can hit it with permanent coatings that super strata makes that completely protect the moisture prone surfaces. And maybe you're going to look at your air conditioning and figure out why there's moisture in there. But if you were just do that, that whole like, set of dominoes that happens in your health over time, it stops and it saves you at least tens of thousands of dollars in, in getting well, and sometimes hundreds of thousands of dollars. And it could be the difference between having a healthy baby and having no baby at all. And like this, this is fundamental and it's cheap compared to the costs of having mold. So let's get this to the point where every public structure gets treated with this because we're worth it. And all of our homes are that way. And the sad thing is there is a correlation between income and mold. And that said, I have a friend with a 34 bedroom house he had to just basically move out of because it was built wrong, has mold. But if you're in a mobile home, you're in an rv, you're maybe living in your car, like you're in a house that's had no maintenance for a long time, there's a guarantee that there's mold, and some of it you're not going to even know about or be able to fix. But now there's a cost effective way to do it. And this is something that is kind of personal because one thing that mold does do, and I have Dr. Amen, who's scanned more than a million brains and is a leading psychiatrist with, I think, a dozen New York Times bestsellers, a credible guy. He says straight up that mold can drop your IQ by 15 points. And you get rid of the mold, your IQ goes back up, and mine did. So I'm not as dumb as I was. So, man, this is a big deal. And so there's all kinds of things you do to make your life better. I mean, I'm the guy behind intermittent fast fasting and cold plunges and red light therapy, and I do all those things. But I would spend all of my money on getting mold out of my house before I would do these other biohacks that cost money. The other thing that mold does, massive disruptions in sleep. One of the symptoms that you're in a moldy environment is weird, vivid nightmares. So if you move into a new house, you're in a Airbnb. A lot of those are moldy because they turn the AC off when no one's there. And you wake up like, wow, I had the craziest dream and it was so real. And there was something trying to kill me. And like, I don't normally have that kind of dream. That's your body going, I am sensing something, but I can't tell what it is, because mold toxins are. They're very tiny molecules and they look a lot like cholesterol because they're fat soluble. And your immune system is generally primed to find a big fungus or a big bacteria, but not a tiny little molecule that kind of looks familiar. So they get around the immune system, then they get into the immune cells and all the other cells and they start poisoning the cells. So the body's like, I know that I'm sick. I know something's wrong. I can't tell what it is. And it's trying to tell you, like, something's off. And then you wake up and your eyes are puffy and your voice is hoarse, and you just can't get out of bed, and your body hurts, and maybe you get a nosebleed. I used to have 10, 15 nosebleeds a day all through my childhood because of the mold, and I'd have bruises for no reason. Are you walking into walls? No. I don't know why I have a bruise. Because frequent bruising is a cause of this, because it's damaging your circulatory system. So all these things add up. And I have not had a full ability to tell people, here's what to do in your home other than throw a match in it and make sure you have insurance. And that's where super stratum comes in.

B (35:28)

So in healthy soil, there's always fungus, and the environment requires fungus. And most fungus is pretty harmless. In fact, we eat a lot of mushrooms. Right. The problem is when it gets in homes that it's usually the 200 or so toxic species, maybe even up to 400, that are out there, that make toxins that are really bad for us. They love wet paper, which is what drywall is made out of. So if there's humidity, even from body, just body humidity, or from cooking or from taking showers or from just cold air and it's hot and moist outside, and San Diego's just a whole mold bomb because the whole place is moist from the sea and everyone's air conditioned, and like, this stuff happens. So the issue then is if healthy soil has fungus, that's not the bad stuff. Why? And it's because it has about nine species of bacteria that live in the soil that naturally compete with the mold and keep it in check. Sort of like you get too many deer if you don't have some predators that eat the deer. So then they're in balance. And what we have in our homes today is we have people really sterilizing as best they can, and then the mold just goes crazy because most of what people are doing doesn't work at all for mold. And so now it's like, I got no competition. So we identified these nine species of mold, and you can mist with homebiotic, which restores those nine bacteria that live in soil. So then they get into the home, and then they compete with the mold. And their job is to actually eat the roots. The hyphae that come out of a mold spore, they'll eat those as they come out. Right. And some of them can even eat some of the mycotoxins. So now you have a natural competition. So a healthy home isn't sterile. A healthy home is just like a healthy gut. You need to have the right bacterial balance. So it's the world's first environmental probiotic, and you just mist it around. It's not terribly expensive. The problem is, if you have a lot of mold and you haven't done the cleanup first, it's like, oh, I planted some nice seeds in the middle of the weeds. It's not going to make that big of a difference, especially right away. So this idea that you come in with super stratum and you sterilize, you get rid of everything, and then you restore these healthy bacteria, and they'll live for quite a while there. And then you coat all the areas in the home and where you want no bacteria and you want no mold with a super stratum coating. And then you end up with, like, incredibly strong protection in some places. And everywhere else, you have this, like, cleanup crew bacteria that are in the home. So my plan for this property, which I just acquired, is we're going to go through and we're going to fog everything. Right? And I tested the place. It had one species of mold that makes some toxins, but it's not high levels. But I could see some mold on the air conditioning vents where there was condensation. So we've already cleaned that off. But I know the H Vac has an issue because there was. It wasn't properly insulated. And so we found that. So I'm replacing the parts of the H Vac that were rusted through, replacing where the water leaked on the floor from condensation in the attic. And then we're going to bomb everything. So now I'm going to have sterilization up there. We're going to do a little bit of home biotic mist up there, and I'm going to coat all the high risk surfaces and that's going to provide amazing protection. But the one area in every home I've ever lived in that has the biggest problem is the inside of the ductwork and the inside of the ac. So what we're going to do is we're going to go through and spray. After we clean them, the vents, we're going to spray the inside of them with super stratum's coating, which is perfect because it lasts for a decade, possibly more. Nothing will grow in those vents, even if there's some condensation or something like that. And to me, that's precious. And this is so cheap. I've spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on mold remediation for my homes, and this is not much money at all to work with super stratum. And I know that every surface in this home will be mold free, the air will be mold free, and it's not expensive compared to anything else I've ever done. So I'm incredibly stoked about this. And then one of the other things I'm doing is the home that I'm in now had high humidity levels because of an AC problem. So just the air was wet for a while. So that creates the potential for mold or mycotoxins. And one thing that happens so often, and this is tragic, okay, you have a home, you've lived there for a while. You have books, you have a bed, you have couches, you have all your things. And then like, oh, no, I have mold. Well, these mycotoxins are very small particles. They get on everything. And if you, okay, I'm going to fix my health. I'm going to move to a new home and I'm going to bring my moldy furniture with me. You will remain sick. So you have to throw away all your stuff. Most people with mold, you already have job stress, there's financial stress. Everyone has financial stress right now. And you're going. So you're telling me I'm going to have to sell my house or I'm going to have to rent a new place, which is expensive, and you want me to throw away all my possessions that aren't, you know, metal or stone or glass or plastic. Like, I can't afford that. So what the heck would you do? Well, what I'm going to do to make sure that I have A perfectly clean environment is all the things from my old home. We're going to also fog or bomb those with super stratum. I'm going to treat them with home biotic as well. Right. I'm going to HEPA vacuum them to make sure that there's no particles left. And I'm salvaging all the things that have been exposed to a higher level of humidity than you want. And what I do now, which is funny because this is in, this is in moldy movie and I just wasn't doing it in my old home, is have a humidity gauge and you want around 50%, maybe 45% if you're too high or too low. Mold loves to grow, so there's a good range. And I was up to 65% in the old home, which was the problem. And if I'd have just looked at a gauge or put one in because I was lazy, I didn't do it. And I'm actually working with another company we're going to talk about at some point that has humidity monitoring kind of built into your health monitoring. So the goal is, I don't want to think about it. I want to know my home is safe. This is a one time thing I'm going to have to do and I'll probably touch it up again with foggers and I'll do home biotic every quarter or something like that, just in high risk areas. But this place will be the cleanest home I've ever lived in. And yeah, I'm going to run air filters too because, well, you should do that anyway. I live in Austin, we have cedar and things like that. And I'm going to make sure that there's no dust in my home because dust is the single biggest way mold gets in your body. So I'll make sure that I vacuum or more to the point, probably my house cleaner will. But I'm going to use a HEPA vacuum. But the amount of protection that I would have had even in the place I was living before when the humidity levels rose, if I'd have treated that Homo super stratum, it would have radically reduced my risk. So perfection is not required. You just want to set yourself up for success. And if you have to remediate mold, you may have to remove some stuff. But the super stratum treatment with multiple products and adding some probiotic at the right stage, it's the lowest cost way to minimize risk that I can think of. And that said, if you have drainage, rains pooling under your house, your foundation's always wet. Your carpet is sogging. You have to deal with the water, but. But for most of us, fix the roof leak, get rid of the moldy stuff, Super Stratum everything, bomb everything, fog everything home, biotic everything, vacuum everything. And it's not going to destroy your bank account. And that's the gift. Because otherwise mold is a massive financial hit. Between the health and the home, it can easily be a quarter million dollars. And who has that?

A (44:41)

Oh, my mold story. Well, I didn't start in mold, as most of us don't. I was in. I was a musician, I was a songwriter, DJ. I did that for 10, 15 plus years and I was living in Los Angeles and I had actually started the company. Funny enough, I knew and I had enough friends who had been sick. Unbeknownst to me at the time, I had a partner who was extremely mold sick. I had no idea about mold. I watched her just be sick all the time. Couldn't get out of bed, hormones, couldn't eat Anything, and tried to be as supportive as I could for the time that we were together, but it was. It ended very traumatically for her and a lot of mental health issues. And that was really kind of my first. Oh, is this what this is? And as I had started the company, I was actually in another relationship. And unbeknownst to us in the time, the home we were living in in Los Angeles, which is very, very common in LA because of how leaky all the buildings are and how dry the climate is, it was a toxic home, and her health cratered extremely quickly. She had had exposures as a child, and again, it ended even more traumatically. And I had a lot of the same symptoms that. Or some of the symptoms that you were describing, the adhd, it was a lot of brain. I called the psychiatrist and it was like, oh, great, another musician who wants Adderall? And I was like, I don't want Adderall. I just don't know why I can't sit and focus and finish. And I don't know why. Everyone in the house. One girl who lived in the apartment got appendicitis and lost her appendix after the vaccine. You know, gut issues and doctors and all the usual suspects. Funny enough, however, it wasn't until two to three years into building the company where we realized, wait, mold isn't really maybe the problem. Maybe it's mycotoxins and there's no solution. I was actually. I'd helped many, many people at that point, and I was working with a customer who had a very crazy mold story and had become very educated through it. And she looked at me one day and she said, you know, you lived in that house, too, like all these people that you're. You know, the message that you're carrying to everyone about mold exposure, maybe you should look in the mirror a little bit. And it was really the first time where I had gone, oh, because as, you know, as big as the elephant is in the room, you think to yourself, oh, I'm fine, and you see everyone else. And that was really the, you know, the lens that I had until I kind of made that realization. I went back to that home, I knocked on the door and I brought a mycotoxin test in and I tested the home, found trichothicines, and, you know, started to piece the whole story together and realized that as I was building this company, you know, first because you just want to build a company, and then you start to discover things. I realized that my mission of the company had developed in my own life. It was the very thing that I was dealing with in all my relationships. It was the thing I was dealing with in my own, you know, my own life as I was working through certain mental health issues. And then that kind of began. You know, what my journey was of getting my health back in order and in the lifestyle, you know, because I've got to practice what I preach as well. And there are many times I don't do it, but that is the intention, you know, where I am now. I've seen how it's affected my life. I've seen how it's affected, you know, many people in my life, including my wife. Now, we just had an issue in our home, and she had an issue in a place that she was in. So, you know, it is one of those things. You don't want it to dominate your life. Right? It shouldn't be. The story of your life is avoiding mold, but at the same time, it touches everyone. And if you don't have that part of your life in integrity, if you're not aware of water damage and the environments that you live in, if you're not thinking of your health, you know, in these terms, then you can get in a really tough spot. And, you know, I'm looking back on it probably in the same way that you are. I see it as a blessing in the sense that it's given me all this knowledge. It created super stratum. It brought us here to the table. And I talk to so many people from mothers who are living in their garage with their children for years because they can't go into their home, but they can't afford to move, and they can't get a job because they're too sick to elderly. I had a poor woman who messaged me who had just tried everything, and she thinks she's dying and her brain's gone and she doesn't have a place to go. And, you know, I hear these stories from the World Series pitcher who loses his home to the people that can barely scrape enough money together to get by. And the truth is, like you're saying, when you have the right information, when you do the right things in the beginning, you don't get stuck in these situations or. Or you are much more likely to avoid these situations that completely ruin your life. And so we want to spread the education of what needs to be done right and what you're missing. What are the mistakes that people are making when they're trying to fix these problems? And we want to give people solutions that are effective. Number one, that don't cause more issues in their sensitive bodies and are affordable tools that they can use to get them from that $15,000 remediation where they ripped out their basement to a home that's actually healthy for them to live in. And that's what Superstram is meant to do.