Video: Mold Illness

Mold Illness

Hi, Dr. Minkoff here. I want to talk a little bit about mold today because I saw five patients this week, all who came in specifically for mold illness. I want to talk a little bit about this because some people—it’s on their radar, and some people, it’s not.

Genetic Susceptibility & Common Symptoms

We know that, genetically, about 25% of the population, if they’re exposed to an environment where there are mold toxins, they will have an illness that can be prolonged and involve multiple parts of their body. They can be:

• Tired
• Have brain fog
• Have pain
• Have GI distress

And a lot of times traditional physicians are not looking for this or don’t really know anything about it.

EMF/Wi-Fi & Mold Toxin Production (Experiment)

In our current environment, the mold seems to be under as much stress as we are, and a very interesting experiment was done where they took two piles of toxic mold and they grew them in an environment where there was a lot of EMF—like regular Wi-Fi.

On one pile of the mold they put around it what’s called a Faraday cage, which blocked the EMF from getting at the mold. They allowed these two molds to grow—these two piles—for about a month and then they harvested both molds and measured the amount of biotoxins that the molds produced: the protected one versus the non-protected one. And the non-protected one produced 600 times the toxin levels that the protected one did.

Why Mold Illness May Be Worse Now

There are very few places across the United States for sure—but pretty much worldwide—where buildings don’t have Wi-Fi. Mold has been with us since the beginning of the planet. You get a leak in your roof or underneath your sink or in your shower—you’re going to grow mold. Probably mold illness is worse now because molds are agitated from the Wi-Fi and possibly other things in the environment. And when they get stressed, they put out biotoxins, and if we’re in that environment we breathe the biotoxins, or they get on our skin, and they can make us sick.

If You Have an Unsolved Illness

So my takeaway today is: if you’ve got an unsolved illness—if you have fatigue or brain fog or you can’t see right, or you’re having trouble with sleep, or your mood is off, or you have arthritis, or GI distress—you might be in an environment which is full of mold. And unless you look for it, probably no one’s going to figure it out.

Get a Qualified Mold Expert

Really, you need a mold expert to come into your house. There are certified mold experts who can come into your house and evaluate it to see if that’s there. Now, some mold experts really know what they’re doing, and some don’t have a clue what they’re doing—so you have to find a good one.

Case Example from Our Office

I want to give an example of that. In our office here, there is a room in the back where I do charts at night, and I noticed—this was about a couple of years ago—I noticed that whenever I was going in there, I came out with my eyes burning and my throat sore, and then after a half an hour or so after I was out of there, the symptoms went away. I thought maybe there’s mold.

I had a mold expert come. He went through the whole building and he said, “Nope, it’s all good.” I didn’t believe him. I had another mold expert come. He went through the whole building and he said, “I don’t see anything in the building at all, but right outside the wall on that particular part of the building the sprinklers are directed wrong and they’re hitting the siding, and there may be mold underneath the siding that’s coming through the wall and making you sick.”

So we cut the bushes back, we redirected the sprinklers, had the carpenters come out, they tore off the siding—there was black mold across the whole lower part where it was wet—and that was the source of the mold. We had it all repaired, siding was put back on, and that room is now fine.

Final Advice

So if you’ve got something that you’re not sure what it is, and it’s been going on a long time, and possibly more than one family member in your house is also not right, get it checked for mold. Because if that’s what’s going on, you can be helped, the mold can be remediated, and you can solve your own problem.

OK—hope this helps. Have a great day.