Expert Explains Black Mold Exposure Symptoms & Signs of Toxicity! The Best Ways to Detox Your Home!

Podcast Transcript

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All molds are inflammatory especially to the the population that is particularly susceptible to these inflammagins and soif you are doing all the right things you’re you know eating well you’re exercising you’re meditating you’re getting your eight hours of sleep you’re thinking good thoughts you’re doing all that stuff but you’re in a moldy environment you will undermine all of the progress it will take down uh even the strongest of us you know even superman power in your purpose the c60 way on today’s episode we are going to meet with my friend jason earl who is a man on a mission jason is an entrepreneur a father a husband and a self-proclaimed indoor air quality crusader jason is the founder and ceo of got mold

 And the creator of the got mold test kit the realization that his moldy childhood home was the underlying cause of his extreme allergies and asthma led jason into the healthy home business in 2002 where he left a very successful career on wall street over the past two decades jason has performed countless sick building investigations he’s solved many medical mysteries along the way and he’s helped thousands of families recover

Their health and their peace of mind jason has personally helped me and my family understand the negative impacts that mold can have on our health you see we’ve been fighting lyme disease uh for several years now and i can tell you it is no fun uh moving out

 Of a moldy home or a moldy work environment can be one of the best things that you can do to start feeling better in a very short amount of time jason has been featured on good morning america extreme makeover the home edition the dr oz show entrepreneur wired and so much more today i am honored to introduce you to my friend jason earl i hope you enjoy this conversation as much as i did for those folks that are interested in optimizing their health why is understanding mold a critical component to helping us improve not only our

Longevity but our overall well-being well uh there’s a a bunch of reasons for that first of all um air is one of these strange things it’s hiding in plain sight right so we’re surrounded by it but

 It’s often an afterthought when it comes to the environmental exposures that we have so if you look at the four basic human needs and some people might even argue five basic human needs if you include sunlight so air water food shelter and of course sunlight you know you can live without shelter for a long time you can live without food for a few weeks you can live without water for a few days but you can only live without air for a few minutes and yet this is something that we think about very little unless it’s you know smells bad tastes bad or we don’t have enough of it and so what’s what’s interesting about that is that despite the fact that it’s the thing that we think about the least

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It happens to be our single largest environmental exposure so we breathe 13 to 15 times a minute which comes out to about 20,000 times a day and if you do the math on it it’s kind of wild it’s 2,000 gallons which is enough to fill a swimming pool and then if you do the further math 30 pounds of air is your daily consumption 30 pounds of air if you can get your mind around that and so if you drink your recommended eight glasses of water that’s a half a gallon that’s four pounds if you eat four three meals a day that’s about four pounds of food

 So you got about eight pounds in food and water and yet you’re breathing 30 lbs of air so in weight alone it’s a massive exposure but in terms of volume it’s orders of magnitude so it’s extremely important that we get that clean and clear because think about those 20,000 breaths as 20,000 doses right if you take 20,000 doses of anything it better be good that’s first second of all um mold is is highly inflammatory many people talk about mold in in terms

 Of its toxicity and that is important because certain molds do uhproduce toxins in fact beyond mcotoxins the musty smell is in fact neurotoxic so you don’t have to have micotoxins to have a toxic exposure to mold it’s a very important point you don’t have to have one of the the molds uh that people talk about all the time stackers and kitium for example uh to have a a real problem but all molds are inflammatory especially to the the population that is particularly susceptible to these inflammagens and so if you are doing all the right things

 You’re you know eating well you’re exercising you’re meditating you’re getting your eight hours of sleep you’re thinking good thoughts you’re doing all that stuff but you’re in a moldy environment you will undermine all of the progress you’ll you’ll cap it you’ll be it’s essentially kryptonite so in due time it will weaken everyone some

 

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People more susceptible than others of course and some people are are more abruptly affected but uh it will take down uh even the strongest of us you know even superman so you just said a few words that i want to make sure we get a little help clarifying and defining because i don’t think everybody knows so you mentioned micotoxins and neurotoxins could you give us some definition around like what are those and why should we care sure so well micotoxins are the what they call secondary metabolites so uh that’s another kind of uh technical word but metabolites are the byproduct of of metabolism um so the byproduct of

 Digestion really and so micotoxins are the toxins that some molds produce uh sometimes specifically when they’re under threat or where there’s a sort of a competitive environment and they release these mostly to subdue competition uh so you know mold cares about what it’s eating on the surface that it’s growing on and so it will release these toxins to keep other microbes from growing there the most famous one by the way just as a quick side note is penicellin so when dr alexander fleming discovered penicellin

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It was because uh he had gone out to lunch and left the plate off of one of the petri dishes where he was growing strepacus so a spore errant spore landed on the dish and grew a colony and then there was a little moat around this green fuzzy colony when he noticed it a day later and so he called that mold juice that was the technical term i guess back then but we now know of that as penicellin but it’s actually a micotoxin that’s excreted by penicyium so micotoxins and and antibiotics are actually uh the same thing in that in that particular context so micotoxins kill things we don’t want though and antibiotics kill things we do

 A little bit of a convenient uh naming convention there um so micotoxins are are specific to molds though um so unlike you know some toxins that are produced by mushrooms which are also within the same family um and then when it comes to neurotoxin neurotoxins are toxins that affect our neurological system right common symptoms of neurotoxins are cognitive impairment and uh locomotive disorder right difficulty with your limbs and things like that so you know neurotoxins are no joke we want to avoid those at all cost that makes a lot of sense all right so i want to take a step back because you you’re 23 years deep into this journey of understanding all things mold most of us are just not at that level let’s be honest i want to go back in time so you had some extreme issues growing up with your health can

 You talk to us about like what inspired you to really dive deep into understanding mold and like what happened in your life jason that brought you here well it’s a great question because obviously nobody uh really aspires one day to be a mold guy right i mean it’s just not like it’s not it’s not even my kids who think i’ve got a pretty cool job uh i don’t think that they aspire to be a mold expert right and back then when i got started in this there was no academic track for it even

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If that was the case this is often a career choice that is sort of maybe a second or third career for many people that are in this space because they were affected or someone that they love was affected and that and i’m no exception so when i was about four years old i lost a lot of weight in a three-weekperiod my parents took me to the pediatrician who said “you got to take him to children’s hospital this looks serious.” and so the initial diagnosis was cystic fibrosis which was a devastating diagnosis uh especially to my father who’ lost four of his cousins to cf before the age of 14 so it was literally something that my mom and dad had spoken about before they had kids it was a concern that they had uh because this is before there was any really reliable genetic testing along these lines and so um so they

 Spent the next six weeks crying while they waited for a second opinion which thankfully contradicted the first one i had asthma compounded by pneumonia and allergy tests revealed that i was allergic to every single thing that they tested me for so it was grass wheat corn eggs dogs cats cotton soybeans and i grew up on this little non-working farm outside of princeton new jersey surrounded by all those things in great abundance you know so i essentially lived on inhalers spent a lot of time outside you know there was something intuitive you know children are are good like this they they tend to know what’s good for them barring the reese’s peanut butter cups and and and the like but you know when it comes to when it comes to environment you know and and their intuition is pretty strong and so i spent most of my time out in the woods and that was back when kids were allowed to do that you know run around in the woods unsupervised i lived that like that until i

 Was 12 at which point my folks split up which was good for everyone involved moved out of that musty old farmhouse and suddenly all my symptoms disappeared and it wasn’t instant but it was in retrospect so abrupt that it should have been tied back to the building but there just wasn’t awareness about that stuff back then in fact my grandfather had grown out of his asthma at around the same time um and they just said it was spontaneous adolescent remission which is a fancy term for we have no idea what the hell happened there we uh you know just moved on in the world actually right after that my mom died in that same house she actually committed suicide which is relevant to the story and then a year after that i was diagnosed with lyme disease which as many of the people watching this who have had a mold problem or have had lyme

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Disease know that these are kissing cousins and that they exacerbate uh each other’s symptoms you know mold and lime together is a real doozy the combination of my mother’s premature uh departure and lyme disease forced me to drop out of high school which is a longer story uh for another day it led me to taking a job at the full-time hours at the gas station where i was already working part-time where i met a guy who recruited me to come for work firm on wall street and that was when i was 16 and within a year i had uh become the youngest licensed stock broker in history again another story for another podcast that guinness world record right there um yeah and uh and i did that for about nine years and one day woke up and just wasn’t having fun anymore and uh wanted to do something meaningful with my life so i went backpacking and while i was away i was in hawaii for a spell enjoying the freedom of just not having to be in front of that screen and reading a lot of local newspapers and one particular story had jumped out at me about a

 Major mold problem that was actually occurring in a building right next to me it was the hilton kalia tower on aahu and wiki beach and had been shut down for a historic mold problem $50 million in total remediation costs and uh the gentleman who who was referenced in this article had developed adult onset asthma something i’d never heard of before as well as all these allergies that he had never had so it was like my life in reverse so a light bulb went on i called my father immediately from a pay phone which probably isn’t there anymore and asked him if he thought we had a mold problem at home and he just laughed at me he goes “of course we had mushrooms in the basement why do you ask?” so he was kind of dismissive about it and i asked him if he thought it me it was what might have made me sick and he’s like well couldn’t have helped you know typical 70s

Parent so to know my father is to love him so in that moment you know people talk about white light moments or like these epiphies and it was in that moment that i became fascinated not with mold per se but with the idea that the buildings that we live and work in can make you sick that was a really new big idea for me that idea has propelled me uh through to where we are today but i i came back from hawaii armed with a lot of curiosity started working in the remediation side of the business to earn while i learned a little uh quickly saw that these guys were doing really bad work in most cases leaving homes often worse than they found them so i decided that there was going to be more value for me to help sort of insulate consumers from the contractors through doing inspections

 And guiding the process and overseeing it sort of being a gatekeeper on the way in and a warden on the way out helping people understand this impact and while i’m learning i mean there was no training back then of any significance there was i was very self-taught i had to read building science manuals and it was a very much a labor of love and

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Still is we also pioneered the use of mold sniffing dogs which is a fun conversation to have as well my dog oreo and i did thousands of inspections together which is why we had all that beautiful press that you mentioned in my intro they were very generous everyone loves a rescued dog that’s used to fix sick homes you know especially when there’s little kids involved so the press ate that up and uh and that propelled us for a very long time our phone rang off the hook for a decade without any advertising and then in recent years i became frustrated with the fact that people who needed us the most couldn’t afford uh basic testing and so that’s what led to us creating the got mold test kit i’m really sorry about your loss with your mom that’s a hard one to go through in general but

 Especially when you’re in your formative years so i just my my heart goes out to you and your and your family so the lyme disease that’s really interesting and that’s lyme disease is actually what helped me like find you my husband has lyme disease and we didn’t know it was lime but it affects his ocular nerve and with situations heightened emotional stressful situations or exposure you mentioned the hilton tower and wiki we both travel a lot for work and uh we’re often in hotels consequently and with exposure knowingly or unknowingly you know in a hotel to a moldy environment it can kick off a reaction and for him it’s quite significant because he um can lose his vision it affects his ocular nerve and he can be down without sight for a day to a week it just depends and so it was a mystery nobody nobody could tell us what it was it took nearly four years to get to the bottom of it but uh

We have clarity now and understanding what that is we had to start to really look at every single thing that we were being exposed to in our life every single potential toxin and that included everywhere that we spent time in yeah i would say it’s only been about 24 months that i have been down i don’t know if it’s a a mold rabbit hole or a mold journey but trying to understand more about mold and all things mold and your experience you know in the built environment um my background is i i spent 20 years you know previous to doing c60 world i’d spent 20 years in commercial real estate so i was very familiar with the the built environment

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In and out of all sorts of different types of environments and so i think it’s really interesting one of the things that you said to me when we first connected which i did not understand cuz i was at the beginning of my mold journey it was around the the remediation process and specifically what can happen during remediation if somebody is not aware of what they’re doing so as we’re recording this it is january 2025 and you know within the last 6 months many people in the us have been affected by natural disasters specifically on the on the east coast with hurricanes hela and milton i imagine there’s a large amount of people right now who are working through not only like what are they going to do if their house is just gone but the folks who have extreme water damage this is a common problem for folks

 Who live in coastal areas it’s very serious and for those of us who don’t live in coastal areas but enjoy going to the beach maybe you’re going to an airbnb or or a hotel you don’t know necessarily what you’re going to run into and you don’t know what you’re going to expose yourself to around this time last year uh i i took a trip down to uruguay and i had rented an airbnb and i was really excited about it uh because it looked beautiful in the pictures but when i got there i could see mold on the ceiling and now this was right by the ocean i could see mold on the window seals i could see mold on the stairs so i did not stay there immediately i was in the house and i was like “this is not going to be a good outcome.” so uh we had to leave i would love it if you could talk a little bit about the built environment if

You could talk a little bit about why it’s important to engage somebody who actually understands how to deal with mold if you if you find out that you have it in your home and specifically i’m really curious about what kind of questions you need to be asking because not all contractors are the same let’s say you’ve gone through a um if you’ve gone through a natural disaster event whether that be a flood or a hurricane or a massive rainstorm and you’re dealing with your insurance company they’re likely going to give you hey you can use

 This contractor this contractor this person and they may or may not have that particular skill set that you’re going to talk about so where i’m trying to go with my line of questioning with you is specifically i want people to understand how to best protect themselves how to ask great questions um and and be an advocate for themselves as they try to repair their

Home or their or their environment after some type of moisture exposure sure so um every situation’s different there’s no sort of one-sizefits-all approach to to these things insurance jobs are very different than when you’re driving the ship to your point because they often do sort of dictate or at

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Least highly highly encourage you to use specific contractors which is sometime necessary because of the way insurance prices the the work so in other words if you bring in someone else it gets so convoluted and the way the insurance contractors work they’re much less expensive and that’s why the insurance companies use them but because of that they also take shortcuts and they’re they’re willing to go in and they’re often very poorly trained but they’re willing to go in and oftentimes tear stuff out without proper controls so the proper uh chain of events is that there’s a concern and that concern leads to an inspection ideally now often times people have a concern and then they’re looking for something that’s less expensive than an inspection that’s why people buy our test kit it’s like a pregnancy test kit right it doesn’t replace a doctor’s visit there you go um and so so the reason that we created 

That was so that people did have a cost-effective first step just to get a gut check you’ve had a water damage event it’s important that you don’t delay at all if you can get to a water damage event within the first 48 hours you will save yourself a world of hurt mold grows very quickly within 24 to 40 hours it will start to germinate according to the industry standard and according to the insurance industry at the 72-hour mark you have to treat everything that got wet and stayed wet as if it’s moldy whether it’s visibly moldy or not now at that point you will have the musty smell if you smell it you have it okay the musty smell is usually the first clue and as i mentioned before it’s also a health hazard and so it’s important that you take that message that that signal that chemical signal very seriously but when a water damage

 Event occurs and you can get to it within that 72-hour mark insurance will pay for the water damage restoration they will not pay for mold mold is is categorically excluded from all homeowners policies if you happen to have flood insurance likely they will pay for it if you are somebody who doesn’t live in an area where that’s coming with your policy and you didn’t ask about it because you never foresee that issue you might be in a situation where you’re paying out of pocket and so this is important you know for people to think about like would i ever need it you may yeah well even with flood insurance if the distinction is water damage and mold and so even though mold is the byproduct of water damage it’s actually regarded very differently because the remediation processes are very different and they cost a lot

 More there’s more protective equipment that’s necessary there’s engineering controls there’s different licensing requirements in states where licensing is required oftentimes there’s testing involved which makes the costs go up when it comes to uh mold so water damage is free or cheap to fix oftentimes weekend warriors will do that now if you’ve already had a water damage event you shouldn’t go ripping stuff out if in other words if you have a pre-existing problem if you’ve had this happen before and and water comes back don’t start ripping stuff out because you’ll contaminate everything but if this is the first time this has happened it’s not a bad thing to consider just tearing

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Out wet wallboard while it’s wet if you can’t get contractors especially in a in a in a situation where there’s a widespread flood and and the building has been deemed safe and you know all that’s not a bad idea sometimes to remove that stuff because if the 72-hour mark again it becomes a mold issue and then insurance either caps the claim or sometimes just denies it fully and then your cash pay now you got to get the guys in moon suits the whole thing changes you’re it’s disruptive you often have to move out of the house a perfect mold remediation project done that way takes a month between the testing and the inspections and the and the testing at the end it’s important that you run towards it now if you don’t have the luxury of being able to identify a moisture problem within the first 72 hours which is the

Vast majority of cases most people don’t know that they’ve got a mold problem you know the windows been leaking or you know they’ve got something going on in a wall or there’s just high humidity because ventilation whatever the case may be if you’ve got mold in your house and it’s not tied to a water event that you can you know get to quickly then there’s a whole different conversation really it’s important to consider getting an inspection done because the inspector is not paid by the pound do you know what i mean by that inspectors are paid for their time and advice they’re paid for their experience really and their job is really to to identify the where it is and where it isn’t so that it can be surgically removed you know if you bring in a contractor to do that inspection they’re paid by the pound right the

 Bigger the project the bigger the paycheck for them and so the last thing you want to do is is let them be the ones who dictate how much gets removed and then certainly you want to have accountability because contractors will do much better work if they know they’re being tested right no one ever studies for a test they’re not going to take and so contractors who aren’t going to be where there’s no accountability will run rough shot it’s just the way it is and so it’s human nature especially in the mold industry where it’s just filled with opportunists so basically the ideal the ideal situation is you get inspector they come in they do the they

 Identify delineate see where it starts where it ends they figure out where the moisture problem is and that’s new maruno by the way in all cases a mold problem is a moisture problem this is the most important thing i’m going to say today a mold problem is a moisture problem mold isn’t actually the problem the moisture is the problem the mold is the symptom in fact the mold is giving you a signal something’s wrong right the mold tells you that something’s wrong and it

 Usually shows up in as an odor or a symptom and that’s the clue that your building is sick when buildings get sick people get sick when buildings heal people heal there’s a symbiotic relationship there when the inspector does their job and this is very important they will provide you with awritten report you ask about what questions should be asked right what  will i get for my inspection well you’re going to get you’re not just going to get a lab report if you just get a lab report you’ve been ripped off you need to get a full written report with a

Scope of work a detailed stepbystep process for what needs to be repaired and that’s first the first thing in remediation is to fix the water the root of the root word of remediation is

 Remedy what are we remedying we’re remedying a moisture problem and then uh and then they will figure out what areas need to be removed sheetrock insulation carpet padding porous materials that that have support mold growth need to be removed notice i didn’t say anything about killing right there’s no need to to attack the mold we’re going to remove so they’re going to identify what things need to be removed and then what areas need to be cleaned now you may be removing mold moldy wallboard from one room but if you do proper testing you may find that the mold has already contaminated the whole house so

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The whole house may need to be cleaned not fogged not sprayed not not sanitized

Right these are all things that relate to bacterial issues where you have sewage and things like that mold doesn’t need that mold needs to be removed and then the mess that that it made needs to be cleaned and so an inspector will walk you through that process that process by the way is also it’s codified in a book called the iic cs as in standard 520 this is the bible of the mold industry anyone who you hire to do an inspection or remediation you should ask them what standards they follow if they tell you the new york city anybody buy this book it’s it is as dense as marble you don’t want to buy it or read it uh it’s it’s industry speak yes you can buy it it’s behind a pay it’s like you know hundred bucks and and i know

 People who have bought it i know lay people who have bought it and remediated themselves and why so somebody does can like can we get it on amazon uh i think you have to go to icrc.org uh to get it okay um we might try to pop that down here just for those of us that want to go deep into it there’s like five people maybe but we’ll just maybe we’ll put it right here yeah i think i think irc s520 and the and irc.org um are worth pointing to because they are they are sort of the last vestage of common sense in the industry honestly okay they’re the touchstone they’re the they’re the things that we always point back to it’s a it’s the only consensus accepted standard that exists in our space now there’s a water damage standard

 There’s a mold remediation standard and then there’s an inspection standard coming out which my friend john laatera is is the chair of and so eventually we’ll have the whole thing codified so that you’ll be able to just say look just look at the book you know it’s very important that you ask what standards they follow with an inspector you want to also find out what kind of testing they do if they’re doing tests like which is a dust test that’s always high uh i would be highly suspicious if they’re using swabs that’s also suspicious because they’re always high you really want someone who’s got an objective view on this that doesn’t also have a relationship with the contractor so you want to ask them do you do remediation

 Also if they say yes that’s a no-go do you have any financial relationship with your contractor yeah most people won’t admit that but that’s a very important question because it’s got to be a point blank answer no god forbid it goes to discovery you can find that out later you know what i mean so um ultimately uh the key is that they need to be independent they need to provide a written report that that that details exactly what work needs to be done including clearance criteria which means how do you know that a project is done and so that needs to be detailed out exactly what you know whether it’s uh air air quality surfaces uh combination thereof obviously visual you have to make sure the moisture problem has been corrected so

The hiring the inspector part people want to skip over that because they just want to immediately go right to remediation but that would be like immediately scheduling heart surgery because you’ve got high cholesterol right like you need a workup you need to figure out what the extent of this problem is what kind of surgeries you need you know fools rush in um when it comes to selecting a remediation contractor you’re going to want to make sure that they follow the iicrcs520 but that’s it’s the most important thing you’re going to want to make sure that they are willing to submit themselves to thirdparty testing this is key if they’re not willing to submit themselves to third-party testing that means that they’re not willing to be accountable and they need to be willing to agree to the clearance criteria that’s provided

 In the report that was generated by the inspector so this may sound like a lot but you know what happens when people don’t follow this process they get taken to the cleaners and or they end up with a with a situation where the the walls get ripped open a small contained problem in one room suddenly contaminates the whole house and it goes from a $5,000 or $10,000 project to $35,000 project everybody’s sick you’re displaced these are the nightmare stories you hear about and that’s because people hurry up and they rush through this process this is a big deal you know and it needs to be done thoughtfully for people that end up having mold exposure knowingly or unknowingly what are some of the 

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Negative health outcomes or events that you’ve seen in your industry with people coming to you like what do you know about what’s happening to people’s health you know the list is so long and this is one of the tricky parts about diagnosing mold related illness it’s a lot like lime in the sense that it shows up in so many different ways right the way mold affects people is through allergic reactions through toxic reactions inflammatory responses and through infection okay so allergies are obvious right so you’re going to have you know upper respiratory stuff sinusitis asthma which is by the way also inflammatory so it’s a little bit of both uh as well as things like hives itchy eyes you know i will when i walk into a moldy building these days by the way an absent absent my chronic exposure um as a child i am no 

Longer allergic to anything i don’t test positive for anything and i haven’t had to use an inhaler since i moved out of that house so you know so that’s the optimistic story for people they need to know that this is not necessarily a cross that you need to bear for the rest of your life the allergies are sort of the the the typical response that most people attribute to uh mold exposure inflammatory responses are are probably the most insidious of them um the inflammatory and the toxic responses oftentimes are confused with each other and oftentimes coexist in fact the allergic inflammatory and toxic responses often coexist um and so that’s what makes it really really challenging and so the inflammatory responses

Often show up as your autoimmune disease flare up right uh it shows up as puffiness and lethargy or and you know uh cognitive impairment is a big deal right so uh headaches nausea dizziness fatigue difficulty concentrating that can both be a toxic or an inflammatory response um and so you you start getting into you know any symptom that you can name you can pretty much tag mold on it as either a cause or aggravator that’s not to say that it’s the underlying causer of all these things is to say that it is a you should consider it as a potential underlying cause or at the very least sort of the straw that breaks the camel’s back

 And that’s often what it is right so the most common thing we see is that someone’s doing okay or they think they’re doing okay because their idea of their baseline health is actually lower than it should be and then they end up with an exposure and suddenly you know the wheels come off the bus and they blame the mold but they’ve already had other stuff going on and it just brings out the latent symptom profile that has been simmering beneath the surface again that’s a lime will do that too but mold is really tricky along these lines and

Then for people that have really you know compromised immune systems and by the way mold can compromise your immune system to make you susceptible to infections but also people that already have like cancer hiv a recent organ transplant things like that those people are highly susceptible to fungal infections in their respiratory tract and in some cases on their skin um but but generally speaking uh you know the most common symptoms are the ones that i that i listed earlier and it’s tricky stuff the the best test is often to get out of the building for a little while if you notice that when you leave the building uh for any length of time sometimes it’s a matter of hours sometimes it’s a matter of days and you feel better that’s a big red flag that’s almost a dead giveaway that you’ve got something going on in the

 Home something brewing you’re home and you’re just chronically not feeling good but then you go and visit a relative or you go on a trip and you feel amazing but then when you go back home you’re sick again you should pay attention is mold a problem for pets ah well you know it’s actually something we talk about uh quite a bit so babies little kids pets they breathe a lot more than we do um babies breathe up to a hundred,000 times a day yeah it’s a very quick uh respiration cycle and so babies that are exposed to air pollution have five times

The exposure than the adults in the same room so a baby and an adult in the same room

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Breathing the same air actually has five times the exposure per pound of body

Weight they’re much more susceptible to these things plus they’ve got a developing immune system where every breath they take every breath you take by the way is a learning experience so your immune system is learning from the spores and the pollen and the particles that that come into your lungs little hormetic stressors when a a baby is getting this it’s learning that this is normal and sometimes it’s too much and it will start to develop severe allergies and inflammatory conditions and things like that and so you know babies exposed to the musty smell have twice the risk of developing asthma later in life so it’s a big deal is the second leading predictor of asthma in childhood behind maternal smoking mold exposure in early age so it’s a big deal dogs and babies also have this this

Unusual sort of uh similarity in the sense that they are on the ground and they are closer to where these particles spores settle out they’re stirring these things up and they’re in close proximity to what we call a reservoir which is where these things tend to settle out and concentrate in addition to breathing them in and having this incredible multiplier on exposure they also have something called incidental ingestion where they it gets on their hands and

Then they lick it pets and and babies uh can ingest upwards of a 100 milligrams a day of household dust which contains all sorts of stuff in addition to mold including all the little

 Paint particles all these really nasty sort of chemical bits that you don’t want your baby or your puppy uh eating and so that’s an important point though you should keep your house clean of those things hepailters hepacu that’s what that stuff is really all about hepa filters and hepa vacuums are not so much to keep your house free of mold spores more broadly that you should use those to reduce the chemical load in your home in the sense of these these little flexcks of building shed particles from carpet uh all of these things all condense into into household dust flame retardants you name it so removing those things is beyond mold it’s it’s really for general health for our listeners if you’re watching on youtube i’m going to pop up a video regarding c60 and chemical exposure right here so if you want to dive into

 More chemical exposure i’m going to share a little link right here check that out so jason this is just fascinating so i want to shift gears just a little bit cuz i know we’re running short on time i could talk to you all day so we’ll probably have to do a few of these episodes there’s so much to learn with your expertise i’m just i’m blown away i want to go back to the pregnancy test okay if we have a suspicion you know or we’re just curious maybe we don’t even have a suspicion we’re just like “hey i want to know does my home have mold in it can you tell us a little bit about about your kit and what you’ve created here?” because this is a simple fast effective way relatively affordable that people could use to get to the bottom of of their curiosity and their question and then

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I’m assuming through your company that you probably offer some resources and information like that so i want to i want to get into that because speaking about my own life it has been um a very important thing to understand and to explore as it relates to attempting to help my husband move into remission with his lyme disease and you you’re someone who also struggles with lime so why don’t you just talk a little bit about that and then i’d also if you don’t mind help us understand why lime and mold kind of go hand in hand well first of all you know people often ask me “when should i use your test kit?” and i always say “if you see something smell something or feel something do something right?” so if you see a moisture condition uh condensation staining discoloration trim pulling away from walls any sign of a dampness that’s a red flag that’s worthy of taking a next step if you smell that musty smell dead giveaway if you feel something and especially if it gets better when you leave the building that’s dead giveaway but more recently this notion comes to mind which is that 35% of the united states population suffers from some sort of chronic

 Systemic inflammation and that number is probably very low and nobody knows exactly what’s going on there you know we got a lot of reasons why we would be inflamed but 47% of homes have a molder moisture problem of significance according to lawrence

Berkeley labs 47% i mean that’s a huge number right so the question is how much of those 35% that have chronic systemic inflammation are actually suffering from some sort of mold issue that they’re not aware of and so a lot of our listeners right now right probably right so they may not see something or smell something but they may feel something and they may not know that they’re feeling this right they may be blaming it on whatever and taking a

 Bunch of aspirin or you know bromelain if they’re a little in on the naturopathic side of things but my point is that if you have anything that’s going on in your life when you feel disregulated and emotional dysregulation is a common symptom too mold rage is real this is a call to arms in a way because you know everyone’s going to get a colonoscopy at some point whether you like it or not and so you might consider testing your house as one of those unpleasant realities uh as a check the box kind of a thing you know protect your family protect your health no it’s better to have peace of mind and know for sure that you’re not that you’re not

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Breathing in high high mold spore counts but in some cases you might be surprised and uh and if that’s the case the quicker you get to it the better off you will be because mold does one thing better than anything else it grows and the longer it grows the bigger it gets the bigger it gets the more expensive it is to remove so the quicker you get to it the better off you are so now how does the test kit work if you hired a professional to come out and test your house they’d come out and they’d do an inspection they’d look around and at the end depending upon what they found or didn’t find they would recommend air sampling in most cases the air sampling uses a cassette known as a spore trap these round engineered

Cassettes capture microscopic particles air is drawn through these now a professional has a expensive thousand calibrated pump that pulls the air through what we did was we figured out how to make one for a whole lot less and so these cassettes fit directly onto the pump they run for 5 minutes when you’re done you put the the seals back on and it goes back and a prepaid return mailer which goes to our lab partner which is euroins the number one lab in the world and they do the analysis and you’ll get your results within three business days and as you can attest because you’ve seen our reports you get a beautiful color-coded very easy to understand red green yellow orange red interpretation right it’s a very simple report on the cover page the second page has all the lab data again color-coded so you can understand exactly what’s going on and where and then the third page has uh links to different resources

 How to hire an a mold inspector where to find the qualified inspectors and remediators in your area uh as well as some other self- assessment tools and a link to our ebook which we

 Get rave reviews about this is a about 46 pages of inspection checklists and faqs that guides people through their early mold awareness to help them avoid many of the potholes and pitfalls in fact many of the things we talked about with regards to how to hire an inspector and a remediator areincluded in that ebook so that’s a link on every single one of our reports we have one two and three room kits and uh once you buy a kit you get the pump and you get to keep the pump and then you can buy refills which are $50 less so one room kits are $1.99 all lab fees and shipping included nothing else to purchase or pay for uh two room is $2.49 and a three room is $2.99 and as i mentioned the refills are $50 less each rapid fire question because we’re about to wrap this up mold and lime why do they go hand

 In hand number one uh mold and lime uh trigger cytoine uh storms if you have that happening uh from two different assaults it’s like having two tractor trailers going down a one lane road right it’s very very painful for the person who’s experiencing this and al also mold and lime both can trigger cell danger response um and so what you end up with is essentially uh you know this is why fatigue is the most one of the most common symptoms of mold and lime so you end up losing all of your mitochondria stop producing energy and they go into into cellular defense mode um and so when that happens uh nothing

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Nothing works well your cells stop communicating with each other the ion channels close down and it becomes very difficult for all of your systems to to work properly um and so those are the two big reasons there’s all sorts of other things with the hypothalamus pituitary axis issue there’s lots of different sort of um more complex reasons why these things are sort of a double whammy but for the sake of our listeners and for the for the sake of brevity um really what it comes down to is that it’s a double whammy and like i said you’re you’re pushing too much stuff down one tube if you will yeah so if you’ve got mold exposure uh or you’re dealing with one of these other kind of chronic diseases that are affected or can

Be triggered by mold uh you’re likely also experiencing some fatigue some sluggish energy and that’s kind of where c60 and got mold.com kind of come together hand inand to work together in a synergistic manner i know you’ve had a chance to try some for a while i don’t know what your favorite is but maybe you want to give us 10 seconds on kind of your experience so far what you’ve noticed as someone who’s struggled with mold who currently is dealing with lime and has had you know chronic allergies throughout your life yeah and i also happen to have a a three-year-old and a 5-year-old so energy is you know you’re bus and 

You’re not and an entrepreneur so um yeah so so energy is something that uh and i’m also struggling right now as i mentioned before we hit record with caffeine withdrawal i’m two weeks into you know a caffeine fast and so i’m so proud of you no thank you um i’ll take all the encouragement and support i can get c60 for me is fast first i take the avocado uh version of it and i also love my gummies uh my sugar-free gummies i’m a sugar-free guy like many of my favorite supplements i notice it more when i don’t take it so as a result um you know what i find is that i tend to find the most benefit in the afternoon um because i do get a little bit of a boost it i also don’t always have time to eat and so the gummies will will be you know a meager substitute for a for a meal or a snack but they seem to really you know hold me over which is kind of remarkable um in fact i mentioned this to before we hit record but i 

Was grabbing those by the handful at a4m at at the conference in december because you know it’s just too busy to eat so i i find that i’ve got better mental clarity i find that uh that my energy is great and stable um and i will take your advice to start taking this with uh some of my other supplements to accelerate uh absorption assimilation so yeah overall i’m i’m a big fan i’m pretty selective about my supplements i’m not the kind of guy that has you know 50

Supplements i’m not dave asprey but i do have a regimen and uh and i’m reluctant to add new

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Things to it and this is one that i’m proud to uh to have and also that uh i will be a uh you know i think an avid user for a very long time to come thank you well i appreciate that we have a special treat for you uh this is a a time-sensitive offer though and we’re going to put all the information in the show notes but jason is um having a uh a mold summit and so if you’re interested in learning more about mold in 2025 the summit is going to be between february 21st and february 23rd and we are going to pop that information in the show notes uh below for you guys and jason anything else you’d like to say because i know you got to jump i really appreciate your time and all of your wisdom and i definitely want to reconnect soon to further explore this topic of mold absolutely i would say that if anybody wants to uh

 To dig in a little bit more you can go to gotold.com/c60alth um and there you’ll find uh that ebook that i mentioned uh as well as a 10% discount coupon uh for uh anyone who wants to purchase in fact i believe we’ll have this be a 20% coupon for uh a week after the show airs um and then we’ll we’ll drop it back down to the standard 10% but that that coupon code is c60 for anyone who’s interested and then of course if anybody ever has any questions about mold you go to got mold.com uh we have a contact field at the bottom i don’t answer all the questions but i do see them all and we’re pretty vigilant about about answering those quickly 

We’re here to help amazing jason thank you so much for the work the work that you’re doing in the world to help us all stay healthy and uh live a mold-free life i really appreciate you and your your contribution to humanity and to all of our beloved pets on the planet thank you so much and i’ll look forward to speaking with you again soon thanks for having me