Mycotoxin Symptoms: How Hidden Mold Exposure Causes Brain Fog and Fatigue

Welcome to the MedMatrix method podcast. My name is Koulsey from one of the co-founders of Med Matrix. Uh in this podcast, we talk about some of the best of functional medicine. We're joined here today by Dr. Rose. Uh just so you know, nothing on this podcast is medical advice. All right. Um and today we're going to be talking about toxins and mold, right? So, how these things affect quality of life, what we do as a functional medicine practice to help patients get things that aren't supposed to be in our body out, um, and everything else you need to know. So, um, Dr. Rose, for those who don't know you, uh, could you explain just a little bit about your background and, you know, what you know about toxins and mold? Sure. Um, yeah, I'm a naturopathic physician. I've been in practice for 20 years. Um my specialty for the majority of that time has been gut health, digestive health. Um a big part of that uh kind of inherently is all sorts of infections. So that might that includes bacterial, parasitic, um and micotoxin or mold, you know, mold toxicity. Um all of those things kind of really affect the gut. So, it's when I'm meeting with somebody for the first time and trying to diagnose what's going on. Um, that always has to be kind of a big part of the picture. How often do patients actually have mold and toxin toxins in their body that are disrupting their health? Um, I believe fairly often. Um, you know, we are in Maine. There's a lot of old houses, but I think it's actually kind of doesn't matter where you live in this country. Um, because there's so many different um, sources of microtoxins. So, [clears throat] mold is kind of the species and then mold puts out mo puts out toxins. um or a certain species of mold will put out a certain toxin and that's called a miccotoxin. And so um I think um almost every time that I've tested for micotoxins, something's come up positive on the test. Um, and I think that the vast majority of people who have at least a low level of micotoxicity um, obviously are not getting tested, right? I think a lot of I think there's a lot of people walking around with symptoms, signs related to um a micotoxin infection um and don't [clears throat] realize it um and don't even know that it's even a possibility to get um tested for it. So, it's just part of I mean, yes, we can get some microtoxin exposure from our foods, but the vast majority of people that I've seen, it has to do with their physical environment. So, um a [clears throat] house that they either currently live in or they used to live in or an apartment, um even um work environments. So, there's a lot of I have a fair number of teachers who work in school buildings that are pretty old. Um, sometimes it's obvious that there's mold, there's been water damage. Um, you can look up on the ceiling panels on a drop ceiling and there's clearly been water damage. Um, or you walk into a bathroom and there's either a smell or there's literally black mold. But a lot of times in buildings, it's it's been plastered over, drywalled over. It's it's behind something. So, you don't actually see it. Um, but it's still affecting your health. Oh man. So, um, what are like some of the most common symptoms of that people deal with when they have mold exposure? Yeah, I mean really miccotoxins can affect everything. Um technically can affect everything from the kidneys to the lungs to um uh even to skin uh nervous system gut. Um probably what's you know the classic symptoms are more respiratory right? So the classic symptoms are kind of um like chronic nasal congestion, chronic um stuffiness. Um, I have one patient currently, this is a teacher actually who I think we've kind of like finally nailed it of like why she's been having these symptoms, but she's basically um been having uh unexplained uh nasal congestion, headaches, fatigue um for probably nine months now. And it really presented like allergies initially or like kind of a weakened immune system. um she didn't feel any better in the months during the summer when she um wasn't in the building at school, but I think her her immune system, her respiratory system had become so kind of compromised during the school system. She'd also had COVID, which I think was kind of a final insult. And that even over like a 3month break, she really couldn't recover. So you'll see everything from chronic headaches to fatigue to um uh you know that kind of like either either a cough or other respiratory symptoms. How often do do patients in the conventional medical system have issues with um mold and microtoxins and these issues go you know are swept under the rug or misdiagnosed that you see probably fairly often I think. Um it's easy to say oh you might have like a you know a dustmite allergy or um you I mean again these are like five minute visits that people are having with their doctors and so um it's the easiest is for the doctor to basically tell them to take claritiners or tech you know classic like over-the-c counter antihistamine and send them on their way. Um and again not really kind of it takes time, right? It takes time to to to like ask the questions and um you know the chronicity of it. How long has it been going on? What's your work environment? what's your how you know what is it all of the all the things um and the advanced testing that we do for to see about exposure micotoxin mold exposure micro miccotoxicity those are not standard labs right that's not something that you're going to get kind of I don't even it's not really in their toolbox it's in our tool it's in our toolbox but not their toolbox yeah why is that for people don't know it's not it's not part of their training Um I mean part of our training and our mission is root cause medicine and so we are fortunate enough to have these tools. These are not new tests. These are tests that are you know really valid have been around for a while. Um there's a lot of science behind them. Um very reputable labs that are running them. Um but it takes it's just another specialty, right? It takes training. It takes um ongoing continuing education by the provider um just to kind of stay current and it's just not part of the conventional medical training or it's just not part of that model. Okay. So, what are like some what are some of your favorite um treatment protocols that you've used in the past and maybe if you could share any um patient stories of uh other than just getting out of the environment where you're being exposed to mold, what are some of your favorite protocols to actually like detox the body, get things like mold and toxins out of the system? Yeah, I mean that what you said is the most important. Um because we can kind of do a whole detox protocol, but if the person is still living and or working in that environment, you know, you're you're you're going to have a hard time with [clears throat] because it's just a continual insult. So that does have to happen. Um but I really like taking it in kind of a phased approach. So making the first step is really making sure that um those those amuncttories those modes of elimination are optimized. So making sure that um the person is having regular bowel movements. They're not constipated. Um they're able to kind of persspire easily. So we detox naturally primarily through the stool, the urine, um the sweat and the breath. And so if those are clogged in any way, the treatment protocol can backfire. So um really just kind of making sure that that that's happening. Um and hydrating really well. And then kind of you can bring in that initial phase of binders um which again is just kind of capturing those toxins um and um getting them into a place where they can easily be be eliminated primarily through the stool. Um, and so that could be bentonite clay, it could be choleasty, it could be um charcoal and just kind of depending on the person and their sensitivity, you know, going um slow and and low, right? So, you know, smaller amounts, take see how they respond and then you can kind of build that up. Um, and then, um, I usually do kind of some broadspectctrum anti- fungals. Um, and um, again, depending on how well they tolerate it, we do that for a little while. Um, but it's really supporting the liver, supporting the kidneys, maximizing those detoxification pathways. So that can be like glutathione is one of my favorites that can be done um with IV therapy. That's ideal is to get kind of regular IV glutathione um as well as like vitamin C and other things that are going to support your own amunctaries. So kidneys and liver being the primary ones um of course as well as the the um the bowels. So really helping the body do it and get rid of it on its own. Um, yeah, those are those are some of my favorite tools. And then, you know, at the end then we're kind of like wherever they've been affected, has it been the respiratory system? Has it been the gut? We really can target those systems um with specific medications, specific um neutrauticals that are going to kind of do the repair part. If someone has mold exposure and they've noticed, you know, they're pretty certain that mold is playing a role in their health. Um, when should they just or I guess to phrase this better? Um, what are we able to do as like a functional medicine practice other than because you know someone could go and just find the detox protocol online, Dr. Google, there's so much information out there. what's the advantage of actually coming to a practice like MedMatrix um if they're you know concerned about something like mold. Um I think that you know we call it in medicine we call it like a differential diagnosis and so it's having the the benefit of coming to a practice like this is that we have the time like we have the time and the attention and the expertise to to look at the whole the per the whole person their whole life. So again, what's their work environment? What's their home? You know, what where are they living now? Where were they living? Um and what are kind of the what's the likelihood of um mold exposure? What are their symptoms? What organ systems are being affected? And we we kind of rule out a lot of other things and potentially address um a mold exposure and micotoxicity. And then we have the ability to do a lot of advanced testing. And there's even within micotoxin testing, there's different labs that do it. They test for different miccotoxins. And so, um, because of our training and because of our experience, we can kind of figure out for this specific individual what test makes sense. Maybe we're trying to decide between like a micotoxin exposure and um some other kind of infection, some other kind of like bacterial infection or some kind of um I don't know some kind of attopic dermatitis or depending on where their symptoms are, what parts of the body, we can do we can do several types of advanced testing at once. um get the results back, interpret it, review that with the patient, decide like, oh yeah, well, in your case, you know, okrtoxin A that is quite elevated and that's most likely due to that apartment, that old apartment that you lived in and you kept asking the landlord to, you know, fix the mold problem in the bathroom and they never did. How far back can mold poisoning go? Like if I imagine it could be Yeah. It could be a child that like grew up in a moldy house and the person's now an adult and they've just been living with it. Really? Wow. So you've met patients, you've heard of patients who have had mold exposure as a kid and their their body wasn't able to get it out on its own for decades. Really? Okay. Yeah. Um what when is um so is that the case with all mold? um cases where if you have it to a certain level, your body's just not able to get rid of it or there is there's something else, you know, going on where um people's, you know, your body isn't imbalanced enough to get get these toxins out. Um or is it like if you have mold, you got it. You need to, you know, come come to someone like some practice like MedMatrix. No, it's always a mix of how um how your specific body, how your metabolism operates and how like if um if it's if you've been able to detox it, eliminate it on your own or for whatever reason, your genetic makeup, your lifestyle, your environment over the years, whatever has kind of, you know, uh your nutrition status, you're not eliminating it. Um, and you know, how long was the exposure? Was this like, you know, um, it was really you were only exposed for a little while and or you lived in this house for the first 20 years of your life. That's going to make a difference. Um, so some people, um, again I it comes a lot of it comes back to kind of your your natural detoxification pathways, your um, how regularly you can kind of eliminate stool, urine, sweat. Um, if those things are stuck, you're most likely going to be more affected by mold exposure or microtoxicity. Okay. What keeps one like so how does the teacher in the room get mold exposure but maybe the students don't like how come some people what can you do to make your body stronger to um you know so if you are exposed to things like mold that you your body gets rid of it um so you're not the person who um or at least your body is just as resilient as possible. Yeah, good question. Um, well, I mean, it's going to sound a little boring, but it kind of comes down to the same thing, like how strong is your immune system? Um, you know, what's your nutritional status? And, um, so what are the things like people can do like actionable things? And then maybe even things we can do at MedMatrix to boost that even more. Um, if there's like if there's mold in the classroom, there's mold in the classroom. And if there's not a way to kind of get out of that then actionable things um I would say would be um for immune support it would be like adequate zinc, vitamin C um uh and hydration min you know minimizing your sugar intake like all of those things are kind of supporting your immune system. So there's not these like additional insults while you're living in this moldy environment. Um, and eating enough fiber, hydrating well, taking magnesium citrate so that you're pooping every day. Um, those are actionable things. And um trying to think um I mean if you is the question like you know you're you have mold exposure and you want to prevent kind of toxicity. [clears throat] Um, I was thinking more along the lines of, uh, yeah, like you're you might be around places that have mold. Like what can you do now to make sure you don't get uh, you know, mold in your system to a level where it's negative having a negative effect in your health? Yeah, I guess I'm just going to say the same answer, which is just so if the mold is one thing that you can't control, focus on the things that you can control, right? So you can control kind of avoiding these additional insults to the immune system um like viral bacterial etc like other types of infections and the best way that you can do that is to like maintain a strong immune system. So coming in and getting those that you know every other week you come in you get an IV drip with you know immunity you get like your glutathione your vitamin C you get your vitamin mix um your amino acid mix like just keeping things boosted in that way making sure that your serum vitamin D level is high enough um so coming in and getting your blood work done so that you know what your baseline is and then getting the appropriate uh prescription so that your D level is high enough. Um, keeping like every all your systems strong enough so that you're just less vulnerable to any kind of insult, including a miccotoxin insult. So, what are some other things that mold can throw off? Like, let's say I have mold exposure. Is that going to affect my sex hormones? Is that going to affect my thyroid? Is that going to affect obviously it's going to affect your immune system? What are some of the other um, you know, areas that it's going to throw off in your body? Yes. So I think depending on the specific species, the specific micotoxin species um and how which organ system different organ systems can be affected um as well as like everybody has just individual chemistry. And so, um, uh, yeah, with long-term exposure, definitely thyroid and once you're kind of in the hormone or the endocrine system, you know, a thy anything affecting the thyroid is there is also most likely going to, you know, in one way or another affect the sex hormones. It'll affect the um, u adrenal hormones, including cortisol. So, everything's super tied together. and um the vi all these organ systems just affect each other way more than I think we give them credit for. Can you share um a patient story? So someone who came in with symptoms like what were their symptoms? Maybe what did they tried? Maybe if they did go to see a normal doctor what what happened there? What what were the symptoms? What testing you did? And then what you found, what the plan was and then where they ended up. to the whole timeline. Um yeah, so this was a patient who um [snorts] uh had been dealing with it was basically um it had been about [clears throat] a year that he had been dealing with um like chronic rhinitis. So chronic runny nose um and somewhat chronic fatigue as well. Chronic and then this kind of lowgrade like like a cough like an like a just an irritated non-productive cough. Um [sighs and gasps] he um is a traveling nurse and he had been stationed um at his previous job somewhere in the Midwest and there it was had something to do with um industry like in like um something having to do with the soil or the I can't remember the specifics but basically he was like living in this area with all this construction and all this um dust and he somehow knew that there was like these like um in the dust were these like micotoxins. Okay. Um and he had been you know he's in the he works in the conventional medical community. he'd seen doctors and I think he was one of those ones that they had just put him you know for the chronic rhinitis and the chronic cough he was put on Zerek um you know kind of a it's an antihistamine and um nothing was really working um and so we did run a micotoxin profile and it came up positive in my recollection there were two um species that were elevated that were higher than normal. Um, [clears throat] and so we so I started him on, you know, one of these kind of phased approaches of like that I kind of described earlier where just made sure that he was eliminating really well um and um really well hydrated and had him kind of cut back on alcohol and caffeine and sugar. U made sure he was, you know, physically moving regularly, exercising. That was like phase one. And then we moved into the binder phase. Um, and that was for about like five to seven days. We had him had him just do binders. Um, and then we moved into kind of the detox protocol. So, he was coming in for like IV glutathione, vitamin C, little NAD, just again really optimizing the liver's normal detoxification pathways. Again, this case was maybe a little bit easier than some because he was no longer exposed, right? He was living in a completely different part of the country um uh in a pretty brand new apartment. We really there was really no reason to think that there was any current exposure. Um and kind of slowly through this process, his symptoms started to dissipate. So the rhinitis kind of cleared up. Um and um there were some other immune boosters thrown in there as well, I think. Um but um with that, you know, with that testing, with that support, um he kind of got back to normal. So I would call it a success. What like what would you say the general amount of exposure would have to be for someone to get micotoxin poisoning? or is it really that much of a range where you can't say? I don't think walking I mean, how many times have you walked into a basement and it's dank? That's mold, right? Hopefully that's not where your bedroom is. Um, so we we come across it all the time. Um, we might we might interpret it as musty or dank or stale, but that's mold. Um, and that isn't really that shouldn't really throw you. Now, I do have some patients who are extremely sensitive and they feel like, and they might be right, they feel like they've they kind of have this ongoing um they have a real history of having had like a micotoxin exposure. They have other another kind of dysregulation in their immune system. And so they are like they walk in to I'm thinking of one person in particular can walk into a restaurant and walks right out because she can just smell it. Right? So that's that's that's an individual kind of picture and and chemistry for the majority of us who don't have that level of sensitivity. Um brief exposure is not going to really be harmful. Um but if you where the room or the house or the apartment where you sleep, so just the number of hours spent kind of inhaling um those spores is going to affect you. Um and then then and then your work environment as well. So I don't So it's really it's repeated or ongoing exposure I would say not um you know you go to your friend's house and their ping pong tables in the basement and you spend an hour you're probably fine. [laughter] Okay. What is your advice to anyone who thinks they have mold poisoning? Yeah it's same thing. I just feel like we have these tools here at MedMatrix with like this. It's just advanced testing and it's like more information the better, right? I mean, we can guess and we can suspect and um but I think you know you can get your house tested, you can get your work environment tested. Um and I think there's growing awareness um among like HR departments and hopefully landlords about the importance of that. So I think that can be kind of um really good information and empowering to be like when you actually see that there is mold and what v what species um and if whether or not that's a possibility. Um the fact that we can do these urine tests that can show us exposure or show how your your specific body and your chemistry has been possibly affected. your metabolism has been affected by mold exposure, like why not test for that? Um, and get this and get the specifics. And so, um, I guess that's that's my take-home that would be my take-home message is like there's all this information, there's testing, there's treatments that are outside of that conventional medical knowledge base, and it's worth kind of asking for that and pushing for that. Cool. Well, thank you so much, Dr. Rose, for joining us today. Uh, if you're, uh, someone who's not yet a client listening to this and you would like to become a client or are interested, um, just go to the website, click get started, and you'll be able to set up a call with one of the patient coordinators. And yeah, for everyone who tuned in, thank you so much. If you enjoyed this, share it with your friends, family, like, subscribe uh, for more. Have a good night everyone.