Episode 91 - Does Mold Cause Disease with Daniel Roytas

Daniel Roytas, MHSc, BHSc is a Naturopath, Nutritionist and Remedial Massage Therapist with over 10 years clinical and educational experience. Daniel is founder and creator of Humanley, a podcast and a continuing professional education platform for allied health and complementary medicine practitioners. After working in clinical practice for over 10 years, he finds that many people are confused about what causes disease, how they can prevent it, and what they need to do to become well again.

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Transcript

Alicia Swamy: 0:06

Thank you everyone for joining us. I am Alicia Swamy. I'm here with my co host, Erik Johnson. And together we are Exposing Mold. Kealy's out today she's got some important stuff to take care of. But we're here with Daniel Ryotas from Humanley. Daniel Ryotas is from Australia. He has a podcast, blog, webinars, he does some really great education content on some fabulous health concepts and topics. And today, we wanted to invite him on because we have some diverging views on mold illness. And, Daniel, you have a cool webinar on your site that talks about mold and so you don't believe that mold is actually making people ill you have some other ideas, and we'd love to discuss that, if by chance.

Daniel Ryotas: 0:53

Yeah, sure. Well, just a matter of years ago, I to believed that mold caused disease and this is something that I taught at colleges and universities across Australia for over 10 years. And I practice this way, in my own clinic, as a naturopath and nutritionist and treating people supposedly with mold related illness for a very long time and some of your listeners may be aware about the floods that we had here in Australia along the east coast, earlier this year is quite devastating floods. And it affected the city that I live in and further north and south along the East coastline. But following those floods, there was a lot of talk in the media about mold related illness and it seemed to me like there was some pretty outlandish claims being made by the media and I thought it's, if I'm gonna keep teaching this stuff to people, I better be damn sure that what I'm teaching is correct. And I looked back through the evidence, and I changed my mind, I realized that there was probably something else going on making people ill and put it this way, I don't have a dog in the fight. It doesn't matter to me whether or not mold causes disease, or it does. I just looked at the evidence and basd my opinion on what I found. And I think for a lot of people with mold related illness, it can be very debilitating, and it can be very hard to treat and is that because we're barking up the wrong tree? Are we looking at the wrong thing? Are we are we blaming the wrong cause of the problem? And I think for me, it's very important that we look at this seriously, because I'm all about helping people. I'm all about getting people better and if what I'm saying is correct, then we have to rethink this approach about demonizing mold and going after mold.

Alicia Swamy: 2:51

So what do you think is happening then if it's not mold, causing illness, what is causing illness?

Daniel Ryotas: 2:59

Yeah, it's human beings of course. So we blame Mother Nature on everything. We blame the human body as a cause of disease. We blame Mother Nature, but we never blame humans and the stupid things that we do and the dangerous chemicals that we produce. So when I first started looking at this, I thought, right, how do we know that mold actually causes illness? And what we would need to do is look at any controlled experiments where mold or mold spores or mycotoxins have been exposed to a healthy animal or a healthy human, and to see whether or not they get sick and I looked for those experiments, and I couldn't find them. So I'm not saying that they don't exist. It's just that the papers that I've been looking for, to validate the claim that mold causes disease I wasn't able to find, but what I could find was an association between mold and damp and humid conditions in side buildings or houses or offices. And what I found was that building material, modern day building material contains 300-400 plus toxic chemicals. And when the conditions are damp, and humid, and the building materials compromised, it releases more toxic chemicals into the atmosphere than it otherwise would. And it just so happens that mold and fungi break down those toxic chemicals from really toxic chemicals into less toxic chemicals. So they're actually they're doing a cleanup job. And I did find control experiments where people had been exposed to these toxic chemicals being leached or aerosolized from building material into the air and when they inhale those toxic chemicals, Well, surprise, surprise, I found that the symptoms that they get are identical to what we say mold related illness is. So for example, like one of those toxic chemicals is formaldehyde and when gyprock or drywall or sheetrock becomes wet and damp, the amount of formaldehyde released from that is increased by over 1,000%. And already in most houses, the levels of formaldehyde in the rooms are almost above the acceptable levels. And if we're talking another 1,000% increase, that's quite a lot, it exceeds the acceptable limits. And when people have been exposed to aerosolized formaldehyde, they get upper respiratory tract systems and symptoms of the central nervous system, chronic fatigue like symptoms, chronic inflammatory type symptoms, and that's what I now think is probably going on, is that this there's this chronic exposure to toxic chemicals and the mold just so happens to be there cleaning up our mess.

Alicia Swamy: 5:54

Have you been made ill by mold?

Daniel Ryotas: 5:56

No, because I don't think mold causes illness.

Alicia Swamy: 6:00

Okay, so you've never had direct experience of being maybe in a mold, moldy building or a dam building as you guys call it and have been made ill that way or whatever. There was some sort of association but not so you're not a mold sick person, basically.

Daniel Ryotas: 6:15

No.

Alicia Swamy: 6:16

Okay. Okay. Um, so, you know, what's really interesting is that, you know, I was really passionate because I saw a post with a social media influencer and you know, she was basically saying what you were saying like mold doesn't cause illness. So I went and found some pretty interesting team of people out in Australia, Dr. Cameron Jones mycologist microbiologist who does say that mold does cause illness. Amy Skilton, naturopathic doctor who was also made mold sick, gone into a demented state, and also believes that mold, you know, can cause illness, Nicole Biljsma, who is also a naturopathic doctor, PhD researcher, and also has had 10 miscarriages because of a moldy building. So it's just it's interesting that there's this divergent view and we do often see this with people who have not been made sick by mold, that they don't believe it's real, or there's no association and so it's this situation is almost like you have to experience it to believe it, because it's so crazy. Right, Erik? I mean, what we go through as mold injured individuals, is unlike anything else, I believe. And so I'm just curious, you're saying that you looked in the literature, you're not finding anything. So there's a million research studies that show that mold does cause issues. And so I'm just curious, like, what databases are you looking into? We literally just had Dr. Cheryl Harding on who did mouse studies she received a grant from the NIH showed that inhalational Stachybotrys toxic black mold actually caused anxiety, depression, brain issues, even the non toxic spores, just the spore fragments, the skeletons caused illness and issues. And so I'm just curious, like, where are you getting your information to say that there is no correlation?

Daniel Ryotas: 8:07

Well, there is a correlation, there is an association. But I don't believe that it's a causal one. I haven't read the papers that you're describing there about your previous guest and I would be interested to read things. and the jury's not out for me, I'm always willing to reevaluate information as I come by it, but I have spent considerable time looking for this information. And there are experiments where mice have been exposed to so called mold spores or mycotoxins that have been aerosolized. But there's some significant issues with these experiments in my perspective that I've found. I don't know want me to talk about those issues that I see?

Alicia Swamy: 8:52

Yeah, we'd love to hear your perspective. I mean, we're just really open to hear what people think and believe, because it's just, it's really interesting to to learn more about different perspectives.

Daniel Ryotas: 9:04

Yeah and look, I'm not trying to detract or

Erik Johnson: 9:04

I don't think I've ever seen a question, mold belittle people suffering here or trivialize it. I understand that people are ill from being exposed to, like, in moldy and damp buildings, but is it really the mold? And as I said, there's many reasons why I don't think that's the case. But yeah, I did have a look at many of these experiments. And so I'm not the only one that saying this. Like, there's a considerable amount of literature out there, where people far smarter than me are looking at this and going well, there is no evidence to show that mold causes disease, but I did find these animal studies, and essentially, they're not exposing them in in a natural way. They're not creating, they're not growing the mold in a natural setting. They're actually creating an environment and growing mold in a way that purposefully allows or promotes the production of higher levels of mycotoxins by those fungal species. So the matter here,I'm trying to get my thoughts together here, it's still 5am. So, really what that means is, theorists claim that it was purely natural mold that was it's what the mold is eating that determines how toxic those mycotoxins are. And in these experiments where they exposed the mice to the mycotoxins, they put them in tubes, they restrain them, they often anesthetize them and they put little cone shaped devices over their snouts and blew mycotoxins which were grown in a laboratory under controlled conditions, where they gave them various different food sources, so that they would produce the most amount and the most toxic mycotoxins and then, um, blow that into the faces of mice that were restrained, and they've got some respiratory symptoms. And they said, well, that proves mold causes illness. But nowhere have I found an experiment that has put some mold that's naturally growing on a piece of building material, and then put it in a cage and exposed the mouse to it so it actually gets exposure in a doing this, it was always in combination with a chemical, setting or an environment, which is similar to what we'd see in nature or in our home. So that it's very hard to draw any conclusions from those types of papers because there are experiments where I've found that they've taken so called like gaseous gas from the 1800s or was growing on the wallpaper pathogenic mold, it's better at all different types of things, and in some instances, it produces a lot of mycotoxins. In and emitting trimethylarsene into the atmosphere just by other instances, it produces none. So it's dependent on the food source. So we can't blame the mold. It's not its fault. If it gets fed, poisonous material, and it starts to break it down, a byproduct of that is a micro toxin, right? So it's not the molds fault. If it was eating a tree or some breaking down dead animal or some some decaying organic matter, would it still produce the same effect? And I don't think anybody's looked at that. So does it reflect what's happening in nature and those animal studies in my opinion, don't. going on the arsenic, wallpaper, the green tinted wallpaper, and producing something that mold wouldn't normally do. So if you look at Dr. Shoemaker's books, or any of us who have been talking about mold for all these years, we always say that mold is breaking down some kind of human produced chemical, which is made more toxic. But of course, in order to find that you have to look at the mold. And since it's different chemicals it doesn't work to blend chemical, because it's going to be a different chemical, depending on what the mold can get ahold of. So you have to look at the mold, where it's making people sick, and then find out what it's feeding on.

Daniel Ryotas: 13:21

Yeah, so I can use an analogy here. If I want to make some last week, I bought an ice cream machine, because I wanted to make some homemade raw milk, organic ice cream, and I did that was delicious. But when I ate the ice cream, it was really tasty because I put great ingredients in, if I get an ice cream making machine, and I put in cream and milk and some chocolate, and a bit of honey and whatever else it's going to make a beautiful ice cream. But if I replace the chocolate with cow poo, and then I eat the cow poo ice cream and I get sick, am I going to blame the ice cream making machine? So I see mold as the ice cream making machine is the ingredients that are coming in which determine the output of these mycotoxins and even then does the mycotoxin pose a threat in that setting where there's water damage to a human? And again, I can't find any evidence to show that it does. So. Yeah, it's very difficult for me to come around to that perspective, that mold causes illness.

Erik Johnson: 14:31

You've basically shifted the argument over to saying that our claims was that this is just purely natural mold and I don't recall anybody ever saying that. I don't know if you've heard of Dr. Jack Thrasher, Dr. Jack Duane Thrasher and a prominent immunotoxicologist, who was head of the Chemical Injury Information Network back in the 1990s and he was completely focused on chemicals. I mean, that was the organization Chemical Injury Information Network and when we proposed that mold, toxic mold could be a factor, they absolutely would have none of that. His primary culprit was formaldehyde. So it's exactly what you're proposing that there's mold in houses, and there's formaldehyde and you put the two together, and it's really bad. But his premise was that it really is the formaldehyde all by itself and the different types of molds there just by standards really have nothing to do with the true culprit, which is formaldehyde. And during Hurricane Katrina, there were a lot of FEMA trailers that were rushed down there to provide housing and they were loaded with cheap building materials, tons of formaldehyde. And these people in these trailers were getting sick. So he started a huge fuss over the formaldehyde. This became national news and the formaldehyde got the blame. Well, over time, Dr. Thrasher came to realize that the formaldehyde wasn't really making people sick, unless there was mold present. So he took more and more of an interest in mold and finally, he kind of dropped out of formaldehyde and became a mold expert. So he did a fair number of papers on the subject. And it's very difficult to put humans deliberately into an environment where you can test this. So we have to look at incidents where this has happened, and try to see what we can learn from it. And it turns out, it's just a couple of miles away from me, here in Truckee, there was an apartment complex that was built with the same kinds of cheap materials and people started getting sick, diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome couldn't recover even if they were removed from the building. So they wound up being classified as cases of classic chronic fatigue syndrome. In some cases, they wound up being treated with experimental antiviral drugs, and Ampligen an immune modulator it's being tried out on chronic fatigue syndrome. And these people were blaming the formaldehyde not attaching importance to the mold. Dr. Thrasher came in investigated this apartment complex found that the formaldehyde was elevated. But there again, the authorities are saying, but it's not enough to cause harm. It doesn't cause harm in other instances. So this really led people into blaming the formaldehyde trying to sue the apartment complex, which fell flat because they had no basis for it. So there again, people are getting sick, not getting any help. The focus on formaldehyde did them no good. Dr. Thrasher kind of backed out of the situation. So they hired a mold expert to come up and sure enough, he found toxic mold. There were plumbing leaks under the building and the pipes have been wrapped with the paperback insulation, and there's toxic mold growing all over these pipes. So this was removed. It was completely remade, remediated, and people stopped getting sick. So even though this was an official controlled study, we have a specific incident where formaldehyde got the blame. The top experts tested it. We're convinced that this was the fact. And yet, removal of the mold is what corrected the situation. And Dr. Thrasher became a extremely ardent mold believer after that, and put out all kinds of papers on the subject, and he passed away. But his papers are still online, and you can see how much importance he attached to toxic mold from then on.

Daniel Ryotas: 18:27

Yeah, I'd be interested to have a look at his papers. Formaldehyde, it's interesting that he changed his view on that. Formaldehyde is just one of the only a one of three or 400 chemicals, which we know are present in building material. There are other things that are aerosolized at the same time, when building material gets wet, like toluene, and benzene and these toxic chemicals. So there's a combination of exposure here. It's not just one chemical, we can't just test one chemical and go on wasn't enough, because there's so many of these other chemicals. And we know that when people are exposed to them in isolation or combination, that they cause illness. We have documented evidence from controlled trials. There

Erik Johnson: 19:09

Absolutely that we don't go the flame retardants in carpets. Polybrominated diphenyl ethers?

Daniel Ryotas: 19:15

Yeah.

Erik Johnson: 19:16

I mean, these are really toxic bad things. But strangely enough, I was involved in sick building incident where people were getting sick in a very specific part of the building. But it was all carpeted, and the carpet got the blame. But it didn't really make sense because people all through the rest of the building weren't getting sick. So come to find out there was toxic mold growing in the carpet in the specific area where people are getting sick. So yeah, I'm sure the flame retardant was a contributor. But without the mold, people simply weren't getting sick.

Daniel Ryotas: 19:50

Yeah and it's interesting because there's conflicting reports in the literature. There are instances where people like observational studies where people get sick when there's mold present, and that remediated, and the problem doesn't go away. There's also instances in the literature where people are getting sick living in damp, or water affected buildings or even working in them. And there's no mold, and people still get mold related illness. I've found papers, where it was like a school in Sweden, I think it was. And students were getting sick with so called mold related illness, they tested the air and the surfaces in the school, and they found that there was mold. And they said, Well, this must be the problem. So the students left the school and went somewhere else and now I'm continuing to remain ill. But when they went to their houses and tested their houses, they had mold present in their homes. But it turns out that the amount of mold in the students homes was less than what was in the school. So there's all of these conflicting sort of reports. There's also instances where people were getting sick with mold, so called mold related illness. The scientist went there and investigated, they didn't find any mold. They found water damage building material and when they remediated it, the problems went away. So it's, it can be very confusing, I think, for a lot of people. But the common factor, the common denominator there, out of all of these conflicting reports is that there's humidity and there's dampness. So we first and foremost, even dampness, damp air has been associated with illness and there's some like chemicals that can occur in the, in the air like nitrous oxide, nitric dioxide, I think is now sorry, my brain still hops. Yeah, sulfur dioxide. And when those chemicals come in contact with moisture, say our respiratory tract. We breathe them in, they get converted to nitric acid and sulfuric acid, and potentially has the capacity to cause respiratory issues. So there's all these confounding factors.

Erik Johnson: 22:04

Oh, yeah. Bacteria can put out hydrogen sulfide, which can drop people instantly?

Daniel Ryotas: 22:09

Yeah, it can produce a toxic waste product. But why is the bacteria producing that? It's you got to look at the environment. And that's what I'm saying. We have to look at the environment. And if we are saying that it is mold, then how do we account for these other toxins just naturally occurring in the air? Which obviously, when it's stagnant air, they can build up to higher levels? And we can inhale that chronically? How do we differentiate between the effect that the chemicals are causing being off gas from the building material from these chemicals in the air and from the mold? And I don't think anyone's ever done that either differentiated between what percentage of this illness is being contributed to by each of those things?

Erik Johnson: 22:56

lot of studies, there's not much evidence out there. Mostly what we got are a lot of sick people getting really horribly ill, and then getting to the point where they point specifically at what they believe the culprit is, and it turns out to be trichothecene producing toxic molds. Now, this happened in a hospital in Quebec City, Canada, where the medical professionals were getting sick. And at this time, in the 1980s, mid 1980s. The only study on Stachybotrys is T2 trichothecene producing molds, so that if you took people out of the environment, they would recover. So that became sort of the standard and get these people, these medical professionals in this hospital, they knew it was a sick building, but they didn't know what they took them out of the building, and about 20% of them did not recover. So this called for a little further study, and the culprit that showed up was Stachybotrys Chartarum, actually it was called Stacie Atra at the time, they changed the name just to keep things confusing, but that really brought attention to maybe there's something special about this toxic black mold, it's worth looking into. And over time, more and more examples showed up that when people fail to recover, there seem to be permanent damage from the special kinds of toxic black molds. So there you have a con founder because there's a lot of black molds out there, Aspergillus. And people remove themselves from Aspergillus and they typically recover. And even when it's Stachybotrys as you say it doesn't always make them sick. So there seems to be a combination of the Stachybotrys plus some environmental chemical, and the synergistic effect is what's doing the permanent damage. Like in the hospitals they use all kinds of solvents and cleaning fluids that are you know, these betadines, soaps that are very, very powerful. And a lot of people get sick just from that. So you combine that with a toxic mold and who knows what's happening. But our premise here is that because people are pointing at the toxic mold, we're not scientists, we're just people who got sick. And we're going, that's the stuff. It's making us ill. And when it gets removed, we do better and it turns out over and over again to be these toxic black molds, that we'd like to get more research into it because we believe that they are somehow causing chronic illness.

Daniel Ryotas: 25:33

Maybe one day, there will be a controlled trial that shows this and we can say for certain that it does. But what if it doesn't? What if it actually doesn't, and we're blaming the wrong thing, we're blaming, it's like walking into a supermarket, and we see an in aisle three, there's some spilled milk on the ground, and we see the checkout person now with a mop and bucket cleaning it up and we say, Oh, look, look how much mess this person made. But she didn't make the mess. She's just cleaning it up. So that's what I think the mold is doing is that to clean up the problem. And when you remove yourself from that situation, yes, you're removing yourself from mold, but you're also removing yourself from the toxic environment. When I've had a look at this, I found a paper, it was published in maybe 2007, I think from memory, I might be wrong. But they did expose healthy humans to aerosolized mold spores. And it was over like three days and I think they were inhaling like 600,000 mold spores for six minutes, like three times a day of three days, I think from memory, and none of them got sick. And that's the only controlled experiment in humans that I can find where people have been exposed to mold, and there was no disease resulting from that exposure. And I know people say, well, the exposure wasn't long enough. And there's all these reasons why it didn't cause illness. But if that's the case, how do we know? How do we know that the exposure wasn't long enough? Where's the data for that? And I guess that's all I'm really looking for is the data to back up that claim.

Amie Skilton: 28:33

That's exactly the position Dr. Thrasher had back to the 1990s. Where are these all these toxic chemicals, these pesticides, these flame retardants, formaldehyde, all these horrible things, and he didn't want to accidentally blame an innocent bystander toxic mold. But if you adopt that attitude, that we should look at it because there's so many other things, then we never find out if there really is a toxic mold. And that's exactly what happened in the sick buildings, is all the chemicals got the blame and mold wasn't even on the radar and stayed off the radar because people wanted to be cautious about what they were looking into. And it wasn't until they finally encountered enough stories of people pointing at this mold that they looked a little further and found that certain types of toxic mold, they are so bad, that they do have the capacity to suppress immune function and leave you wide open to a cascade of secondary problems, chemical reactivities, infections, reactivated viruses, it's that cascade that does the damage. But to find it, you still have to look at the mold.

Daniel Ryotas: 29:41

Yeah and there needs to be controlled trial experiments done here to show this. And that's that's the sort of perspective that I'm coming from. I can't say for sure that it does or doesn't. All I can say is in those environments there's these toxic chemicals and they're known to cause illness and unfortunately, when we're looking at mold, and we blame it, there's this association here. And we, we see the mold growing, and people are ill. But there are other things going on. So this is my question is how do we? How do we know how much has been contributed by the chemicals? How much is being contributed by the toxic chemicals in the air like sulfur, sulfur dioxide? And how much do we know is being caused by the mold? Well, so far, like, from the research that I can find, there is nothing to show that exposure to mold or mold spores even is able to cause illness, but I can definitely find evidence for the contrary. So even if mold caused disease, even if it did that, would it still cause an issue? If it didn't have access to those toxic chemicals? If it didn't...

Amie Skilton: 30:55

For Stachybotrys, absolutely, yeah. In fact, what brought this to the attention of researchers is that moldy hay was making horses sick, and the people handling the hay were getting sick. So they knew that this was mold growing in a natural environment. This was before World War 2. So there wasn't any pesticides or flame retardants, or any modern chemicals involved. It was just the Stachybotrys plus the hay. So they knew it had this toxic capability. So I'm not saying that all molds are bad. Aspergillus is all around, it's all over the wood. It's kind of normal to have it in our environment. But we have evidence that there are certain types of mold that even in their natural state with no other chemicals involved, are still capable of causing this type of illness and these are the ones we focus on.

Daniel Ryotas: 31:47

Yeah, I think we have to be cautious using that word causes, because in order to show that something causes something else, we have to do an experiment where there's a dependent variable and an independent variable. And that's the only way that we can prove cause and effect. So just by doing an association study and seeing Oh, yes, that was mold there. We can't draw any firm conclusions from that it was a causal factor.

Amie Skilton: 32:13

I think we can. I mean, just as the veterinarians saw the horses getting sick. I mean, they didn't have to deliberately expose the horses to more mold and do an experiment, they could see this is what the horses are eating. This is the toxic mold. Toxic mold was causing the illnesses to the horses, so I think it's pretty safe to go ahead and say that.

Daniel Ryotas: 32:35

Yeah, I don't. To me, that wouldn't be enough.

Erik Johnson: 32:38

It's not really allowed to do toxic experiments on humans that kind of went out with the Nazis. And now that we know that this toxic mold, from animal studies, has these immunosuppressive and inflammatory capabilities, we can't really put humans in harm's way, by doing these kinds of experiments that generate the abstracts would validate it. So at this point, we still have to look at animal studies, we have to look at all the times when people did this experiment accidentally, by being in a moldy place, in a sick building, and then analyze what it was in that building that made people sick and get our information that way.

Daniel Ryotas: 33:21

Yeah, I hear what you're saying. They did an experiment in humans not so long ago. I just mentioned that they did it in 2007.

Erik Johnson: 33:30

Yeah, I'd like to see that because that was many years after it would have been unethical to perform that kind of experiment.

Daniel Ryotas: 33:36

That's right. So there is that data? And that's what makes me question, what's actually going on here. So because this is what I'm saying. There's so many confounding factors. There's like this big melting pot of stuff in and mixing it around and there's all these potential possibilities. So in order to tell which one is actually problem, we have to take out each of those individual components and assess it in a controlled environment to.

Erik Johnson: 34:03

In the study, do you remember which type of mold they were using?

Daniel Ryotas: 34:06

Yeah, it was, I can probably pull it up, there was a couple of different molds that are exposing people to and it was the so called pathogenic, a couple of pathogenic molds. Let me see here. I was also going to say, there's instances of people being exposed to these damp and humid conditions in rooms and not everybody gets sick. So only some people become ill and others don't. And there's various sort of hypotheses as to why that's the problem, or why people do and don't get sick in those instances. But this may be a case of toxic load. So people who have a very high toxic load or toxic burden, if they've been nutritionally deficient for a while or they've been exposed to very high levels of chemicals throughout their life in other situations. We know that those chemical was can build up in the body. And if you've already got a very high threshold or level in your system, and then you get exposed to mold in a damp, humid environment, it's like the cup that overflows, the 44 gallon gallon drum. Yeah, the 44 gallon drums already full, just below the brim and we come along and tip a cup of water on now it overflows and we go, Oh, that was the thing, that was the problem. And those people get sick. But people who haven't been exposed to these toxins to the same extent, have a lower total toxic burden or accumulation of toxins in their system, they get exposed to these things, and they don't become ill. So that would explain why we see people in some areas in these damp human environments becoming ill and others not. Rather than someone having a strong immune system or like having a genetic susceptibility or something to mold. Again, those things that I haven't seen any sort of evidence or proof of that.

Erik Johnson: 36:02

The studies in peer reviewed abstracts. Yeah, that's right. All we've got our anecdotal stories, we've got our experience, we've got examples where people have gotten sick in proximity to mold colonies, and people in distance did not. But according to our Institute's and the academic mind, that wasn't a controlled study. So it doesn't mean anything. But the one particular high school that I can recall, the flat top roof was generating huge ice dams and leaking, it got a loader to knock off the ice dams, and damage the outer wall of the school. So they didn't know it at the time but they created a leak. So water was pouring down the outer walls of this school. And the teachers in the school whose desk were directly next to this wall became chronically ill, they never did recover. And teachers at a distance, the same room did not. So of course, the teachers who didn't get sick, they thought they were milking the system, faking it, that they weren't really ill. When they tore up in that wall, they found a colony of Stachybotrys directly adjacent to these teacher's desk. So we have a model, if you believe in toxic mold, for how proximity plays such a large factor, that they could have got a dose that put them over the edge, and that people across the room did not. But this definitely didn't fit the rain barrel theory of the time, that toxic mold disperses evenly throughout a room. So everybody had the same dose, you could clearly see by the pattern of illness, that those who were closest got the sickest, those who either were at a distance, or realized that that room was making them mildly ill and got out, they didn't get sick at all.

Daniel Ryotas: 37:51

And that would also hold true for the chemical perspective as well. So the closer you are to a chemical source, and the further away you are, the more or less exposure that you have.

Amie Skilton: 38:03

So what they did is they focused so much on the rain barrel effect, and the idea that it was anything and everything, the sum total of lifestyle, poor dietary choices, possible drugs, that they never even bothered to look hard at the circumstance and realize, wow, if we just kept looking, we would have found a toxic substance right here, close to them, that has the immunological capacity to produce this type of illness. So we have to be aware of the toxic soup theory, derailing us from making new discoveries.

Daniel Ryotas: 38:38

Yeah, and I guess the thing is, if we do these investigations, where people fall ill, and then we test the environment, and we find something that we think is toxic. Well, that's not the final step. To prove whether or not there's a cause and effect relationship there, we have to take it one step further. And I see this quite often in the scientific papers, they say, we have sufficient evidence of association to prove causation. And I think, hang on a second, why is it that when we do this observation, we find this mold or whatever we think is causing the issue, we must then take it away, isolated away in a controlled setting, and then expose humans or animals to it and see if it causes an issue. Because if we've got these, say, chemicals, from the building material chemicals in the air, which is like the sulfur, sulfur dioxide and nitrogen dioxide, and the mold, wouldn't we want to evaluate each of those three things individually, and then work out which ones is actually the most positive or the most pathogenic? And what if mold was only responsible for 1% of the problem and the chemicals were responsible for 99%?

Erik Johnson: 39:57

As you say, weed need to look at the situation and take all the variables into account. So we make sure that nothing is overlooked. I mean, if chemicals are a strong component, this course we need to know. But you talk about isolating the agent for a possible study. Well, it turns out that Stachybotrys, the toxic molds. It's metabolically expensive to produce these secondary metabolites, these toxins, and they don't always do it. And they require very specific conditions and substrate in order to even produce a toxin. And when they first started stacking Cuadras, they removed it, they put it in a petri dish, and they grow it and found out that it wasn't toxic at all. So it needed to have the right all the right elements for it to grow and one more thing, it needed a competitor because if it doesn't sense, the presence of something that it doesn't like, it still doesn't produce toxins. It's called an allellopathic response. So the way the methods that they were using to try to study this, guaranteed that they never found anything. So they kind of had to go back to the example of, well, the horses are eating the hay, and they're getting sick, and we know this is happening. So we have to look at all the conditions under which this effect is resulting.

Daniel Ryotas: 41:16

Yeah, and I think that point that you made that it's the substrate that's important. Well, I would agree, it is the substrate, which is the most important thing. What is the mold growing on? What is its food source? If we grow it on something that doesn't have any of these toxic compounds, or glues, or chemicals, or solvents, or whatever? Do people still get ill?

Erik Johnson: 41:42

Typically, no, typically does not. As you said, they typically do not, the natural mold does not seem to be the culprit. So the combination with chemicals. But here's the interesting thing. Dr. Thrasher and I, we started going, okay, the chemical, it's just as important to have a chemical involved as it is the mold. But over time, when you see one particular mold like Stacybotrys caused illness, in conjunction with different chemicals, in one instance of flame retardant, and another pesticides, in another formaldehyde, you go wait, the common denominator was the mold. So that kind of throws it back into the ball into the court of the mold. What's it doing?

Daniel Ryotas: 42:26

Well, Mother Nature's only got several things that it can utilize, and microorganisms that it can utilize to clean up a toxic sludge pile. So it's got fungi, bacteria, that's really it. There's not a lot of other things that can break down these toxins, and Mother Nature

Amie Skilton: 42:46

Ultraviolet from the sun.

Daniel Ryotas: 42:48

well, yeah, ultra violet rays can degrade some of these compounds as well. But this is Mother Nature's cleanup crew. So just because there's all these toxins there and we see the mold there. Again, it doesn't mean that the mold causing the issue. The mold in my perspective is bio remediating the toxins. And we have also proven that in control experiments, mold is grown on building material with varying different degrees of toxins in it. And the mold growth and mold toxin production mycotoxin production is dependent on the chemicals in that substrate. So the if we took those chemicals away in the mold is not toxic, so the mold just being there in and of itself. And it doesn't cause an issue that shows and it's not the mold, and it's got everything to do with the environment, and what it's eating. And if that's the case, if we continue to say point the finger at the wrong thing. And we say it's the mold, it's the mold. And we never address the real elephant in the room, which I think is the exposure to these harmful chemicals. The problem is just going to remain there for people. So we're never going to address that true underlying factor.

Erik Johnson: 43:58

Well, if you blame all the chemicals, then you never discover the mold. Now this debate went on decades ago and the academic mind seems to always want to shift it over to the toxic soup theory, or that it's the chemical rather than the mold, that there was a pretty easy way for a hypersensitive person to determine this. And that was simply take a sample of the mold out to a pristine location and see if they could reproduce the effects. And so many people have done that now and are hypersensitive to the mold itself. And it's been tested. And they know what mold it is you can put it under the microscope, you can speciate it, you can find out what toxins it's producing and it is indeed the trichotheceneproducing molds. So we know that we can reproduce our illness without these chemicals involved just by the simple experiment of taking a sample but of course, doctors still recognize that because they didn't do the study.

Daniel Ryotas: 44:54

Yeah, have those papers been published anywhere because I'd be interested to have a look.

Erik Johnson: 44:58

It's been well published in blogs, and books, and people have done this experiment 1000s of times. So we published in the forms of writing about it, but to a doctor that's not peer reviewed, and it wasn't a controlled study. So it's meaningless.

Daniel Ryotas: 45:17

I'm sorry, Alicia.

Alicia Swamy: 45:20

But I'm just curious because people can get well in a remediated home, they'll find mold in their home, they'll remediate it, take the mold out, and some people will get well, right and but the toxins are all still there in the home, there's still the toxic materials in the building, and every so that's like the toxic thing, the chemicals like just don't hold up to for me, and for people who don't get well in that building or whatever, after the remediation, there is evidence, there is scientific research showing that mold is causing an immune system reprogramming effect, that now you are primed to this stuff that even minut exposure can put you over the edge into an inflammatory state. And that's why I feel like it's so important for professionals who teach others about molds, like if you didn't go through this and you're not a person that is hypersensitive, like it's hard for me to follow them because they don't really understand what's going on because there's so much minutiae in this illness, that it's insane. Like, it's hard to study, because as we know, and as other researchers have told us, number one, there's no grant funding for it, government doesn't want to put any money into it. Number two, you need to have a biological warfare type of setting laboratory in order to conduct these type of studies because T2 trichothecene mycotoxins are extremely toxic, and they have been used in biological warfare. So it's really kind of a sticky situation that we're in that patients are falling ill day after day. And if we continue working with physicians are people that are telling us that Oh, because it's not in peer reviewed literature, your illness does not exist and it's because of toxins. Well, if people remediating their homes of the mold, and they're getting better, there's still toxins around so was it really the toxins? Or was it really the mold? So it's these type of situations that we think about. And, again, Ryan, we really do appreciate your perspective and we appreciate you and your bravery for coming on today to provide your information because we at some level, we do have an agreement here, we do understand that, you know, we always talk about an effect, there's things going on in the environment, mold is processing our pollution, basically, and making harmful toxins that are toxic to us. But it's their form of detox, right? The microbes form of detox. So we need to figure out what's going on here. But what we do see patient report after patient report is people pointing out the molds. There's people like me, like Erik, there's a ton of people out there who can point and go into a room and say, mold is right there, you can go and speciate it and see that it's a T2 trichothecene producing mold. We had Amy Skilton on who is a naturopath from Australia, and she is one of those hypersensitive people. So if you want to go ahead and experiment with her, I would love for you guys to team up together and kind of figure out what's going on here because patient reporting versus what we see in the literature. It's not there yet. And so if we wait for science, to catch up to our realities, we're all going to be dropping dead here. So it's like we're trying to be proactive and be progressive here. And we do encourage, I mean, we're Exposing Mold is contacting the NIH, the CDC, the EPA, anyone who has any sort of clout, Stanford, OMF Foundation, we're telling everyone about this, like, look, this is what patients are reporting. And we would love for you to look into this. But for some reason, we're getting hit with an obstacle where I don't know if it's too expensive, or this is too much of a weird situation to look into. But, you know, I think the progression here I think really is going to be coming from the patient advocates. So groups like us who are investing into research into looking into these phenomenons I think are going to be the next step. I think people like you, Daniel, who are posing these questions, I hope that this is another measure of your institution where you're looking into this stuff, you're maybe doing your own research, I feel like we're so spearheaded and so just stuck by what governments can give for grants. But I feel like we really need to start doing these kind of grassroots type of research and studies to see what's going on, because there's so much weird stuff happening in the world today. And we're still focused on viruses. Right? It's like, why are we so focused on viruses, there's so much other crap going on that we really need to work into.

Daniel Ryotas: 49:40

Yeah, I hear what you're saying. So my question to that would be when they remediate the house or the mold? Are they also removing the source of the damp? And are they also removing the compromised building material? And if so, then we have confounding variables there and we need to be able to show which one of those variables was the actual underlying cause?

Erik Johnson: 50:06

There again, what covers that? One is that people realize that they're still sick in their house and they take contaminated possessions out with them to a new location and get sick. So they realized that there was something on their position that's so bad that it traveled with them, even without all the other stuff that's in the house. So by chasing that back to what specifically got on their possessions, we kept coming up with toxic mold over and over again.

Daniel Ryotas: 50:35

Now that could be anything on that thing.

Erik Johnson: 50:37

We're actually doing that experiment. It's just that it's not under a controlled environment, where an academic can write a paper on it.

Daniel Ryotas: 50:45

Yeah. I think it's important for us to think critically here about what's going on, because what we're seeing is this association, and the association we're using as proof of causation. And as I mentioned before, about the ice cream maker analogy, the mold to me is just the ice cream maker, it's not the thing, having the effect, it's just there a job to do a job, it's just there to clean up a mess. Like there are instances where they've grown mold on these toxic building materials. And they've measured the amounts of these toxic chemicals being aerosolized into the air and what they found is that there's a reduced release of toxins into the atmosphere. So the mold, we know that it uses formaldehyde and things as a fuel source. So if the mold doesn't have exposure to those chemicals, is the problem still a reality? If it's not, what that tells us is that the way we are building our homes, the construction material that we're using, is harmful. That's the underlying factor, it's potentially harmful to our health. And that highlights a deeper societal issue, which shows us that the houses that we're living in, are not conducive to good health. So we need to modify the way in which we're building our houses and how we're living. If we just blame the mold, we're going to continue living in these toxic houses, building with toxic building material, which we know causes illness in people. And I don't think anything will ever change. If we just go after the mold, which is the sort of the superficial layer. It's like the firemen at the at the house fire. Every house fire we see a fireman there. But do we say that it was the firemen who started the house fire. If we keep blaming the firemen and say fire the firemen, we don't need them anymore. They keep making all these fires, we're going to be in a bit of a bit of strife here.

Erik Johnson: 52:38

Just about everybody who goes through the Talksport experience does become chemically sensitive, and points at all kinds of chemicals. And if it tries from then on to reduce all chemical exposure, the air fresheners I mean hairspray, gasoline, people complain, but they were sick like that, until they were exposed to toxic mold, same as their house was exactly the same house. There was nothing weird about it. It didn't make anybody sick until the mold grew and that was the catalyst that made the difference. So what do you focus on the chemicals that didn't change? Or the mold that did?

Daniel Ryotas: 53:18

Yeah, and there are experimental experiments. I don't know if there's scientific just I think it's also important to make it known that just because something's published in a scientific journal doesn't mean that it's science. It needs to be an experiment and there's a specific procedure that must be followed to show that there's a cause and effect. So this is the scientific method. So the, if we just see something, we just observe something, and then we write about that and put it in a paper, it doesn't mean that it's scientific evidence. It's just epidemiological data. And from that, we would need to take that epidemiological data, and then do the other proper investigations, to establish a cause and effect. But there are instances where people have fallen ill the so called mold related illness, and the building biologists or the scientists or whoever have gone out to the home or the building, and they found water damage, but no mold, and the people were falling sick with these sort of mold related illnesses. So in the absence of mold, people are still falling sick with the same symptoms.

Erik Johnson: 54:23

Dr. Shoemaker has shifted his focus over to filamentous bacteria,actinomycetes and he says that these produce toxins as well. And this may be more of a problem than the mold, but still in order to find that, you what you you need a starting point. And that typically goes with people saying, Wow, I got some water damage, this mold grew. Will you look into it, please. And this is what are academics, our institutes are refusing to do saying, Well, you have no evidence. It's not in the literature. And there's no studies showing that what you say is proven fact. So how many more people do we need to get sick and pointed at the room? Before they keep looking at whatever it is the person is pointing at, and figure out what it is, instead of saying that, Well, it's not in our literature so therefore, there's nothing to look into.

Daniel Ryotas: 55:14

Yeah. And I certainly think that there needs to be more investigation done and if there was some evidence to show that this was the fact, then I just go with where the evidence leads me, I, as I said, I don't have a dog in this fight. And I just want the best for my patients, and I want the best for people's health, and I want the truth. That's really what I'm what I'm after. And the literature that I've looked at as it stands, it doesn't show that effect. So I think, for us to move forward, you're right, we do need to have these additional experiments done. But until such time, I wouldn't feel comfortable saying the mold is, excuse me the cause of illness. We have this and I think we've already agreed on this point, we have this common denominating factor, which is the dampness and the toxins. And we know that these, both of these things cause illness. So again, for us to then say it's definitely the mold, I wouldn't feel comfortable saying that because if someone said to me.

Erik Johnson: 56:16

A way to get comfortable about it, and it's very simple, we do a mold hiatus. It's an experiment where we take somebody who's sick, and they don't feel they can recover, and we have them go out to a pristine location with none of their possessions, and then experimentally, bring some of their stuff to wherever they are, and find out if it makes them sick. If it does, then you need to trace that back and find out what got on that stuff. And a lot of people become so hypersensitive, after doing this experiment, when they go back to the house, they go, Wow, it wasn't just the whole house equally. Here's this particular place, it's made me sick. And they point right at it, they go to the spot, and they pointed out, and of course you hire a mold inspector and they go, Okay, we found a dozen different types of molds there, a few of which are toxin producers and that's about as far as we get with this. But we do know, by this experiment, which is so easy to do that it's a driving factor in symptomology and from a layman's point of view, that qualifies as being causative.

Daniel Ryotas: 57:19

But it's not, it's not assessing an independent variable.

Erik Johnson: 57:23

It's going as far as we can, narrowing it down to whatever is in that colony. And so far, it looks like we've got a few species of toxic molds that are very consistent in reproducing this effect.

Daniel Ryotas: 57:35

But that could be anything on that object that you're taking away. There could be 1000s of things on it.

Erik Johnson: 57:41

Not that we set up the experiment so that we limit the variables.

Daniel Ryotas: 57:45

Well, maybe another experiment that could be done. And I'm not going to do any of these experiments. I mean, it's not, it's not where I'm going to be heading with my life, and my career. So I'm not going to be doing these experiments. But I think an experiment that could be done is to put some healthy animals in a enclosure with some of this mold, say you put it in a petri dish, and you put it in the corner of the room. Or maybe we grow mold on different substrates. And we put healthy animals in each of these cages or these enclosures and see in what circumstances do they become sick. And this will help us to identify and eliminate certain things that may or may not cause illness and help us to get a better understanding. But until such time as those experiments have been done, as I said, I wouldn't feel comfortable making a claim that something causes something else, when I don't have any proof for that. And, you know, this kind of it feels like a case of mistaken identity to me. We're wrongfully attributing blame to the mold. And just by saying that I'm again, not saying that people aren't getting sick, when there is an environment that is conducive to mold growth. But in those situations where there's mold growing, as I've already stated, there's many other factors, which we already know cause illness. So it's very important that we establish which one of those things is the driving factor. And I don't know who's going to do those experiments or when they're going to be done, but I'll certainly be keeping a close eye on the literature as it progresses forward.

Erik Johnson: 59:28

After 35 years of requests, and having doctors declined to perform these experiments, we can't really afford to wait. So what we advise is for people to do this mold sabbatical or mold hiatus, do the experiment for themselves, make their own determination. If you had a mold colony grow and you feel that you can point directly at it, take a sample of it, find out what it is. Take that sample to a pristine location, see if it can reproduce your symptoms. might not be good enough for doctors. But at least if you do this experiment, you can find out for yourself in a compelling manner, it will allow you to make some educated decisions on what you want to do about it.

Daniel Ryotas: 1:00:11

So, like, the other thing is, we need to know how If mold does cause illness, how much exposure? Like is it the mold spores or is it the mycotoxins? How much exposure is actually required to become ill? Because what I've read is that people get can inhale up to 10 billion mold spores a day just by living in their natural environment. So if we're already inhaling 10 billion spores a day, and not all of us are walking around with mold related illness. Why is that the case? Why can we be exposed to these things on an ongoing daily basis, and it's not cause an issue. That's another thing for me when I think about determining cause and effect.

Erik Johnson: 1:00:52

I can tell you what the theory was back in 1985, there was a flu going around, it was spreading across the United States, a really nasty Asian type of flu and the people who got sick in these buildings, they had a reactivation of this flu, this virus. So it was a combination of cytokine storm, from this horrible influenza, plus the exposure that did some kind of permanent damage. So if somebody in the same room didn't catch the flu, maybe they could withstand that exposure. But if you put the flu together with the toxic mold exposure, even in a very short period of time, because we know people who actually went into a building, and were sick within hours or days, that it didn't take much. But you know, as you say, this is what needs study.

Daniel Ryotas: 1:01:37

Yeah, it does. And they're just an example of why establishing cause and effect is so important, before we blame something as the cause without the evidence. Once upon a time, we thought that scurvy was a contagious illness. So sailors would be on ships, and they would be falling sick one after another with the exact same symptoms. And in the literature, it was said that this is a contagious virus or illness that spreads throughout the ship. So without the relevant control experiments, where we could evaluate certain individual things and assess them on their individual merits, we would never have discovered that the underlying cause of scurvy was vitamin C deficiency. And this holds true for anything where we say there's cause and effect, we have to be able to show and prove that. So maybe I'll ask you, Erik, like, how can we know that one thing causes another thing? How do we ever come to that conclusion? What's the process and the method to be able to say that and draw those conclusions?

Erik Johnson: 1:02:40

Well, if you analyze the circumstances under which people got sick, it's kind of self evident. But there once you've been hyper sensitized, is this particular mold, a driving force in your illness? There again, take a sample about to a pristine location and find out. So as far as the scurvy goes, Yeah, in fact, they even thought that it might have something to do with being on dry land being on dirt. So sailors would actually jump off the ship and eat a mouthful of dirt. So they tried out all kinds of things. They did their own experiments, and not all of them worked. And so, you know, if we hadn't done these experiments, if we hadn't had a lot of people very interested in solving this problem, it wouldn't have gotten solved. So what what do you look at when you're trying to solve scurvy? So yeah, we think it's a contagious illness. So let's look really hard at the circumstances under which people get this disease. And that's what we're doing in sick buildings. It's like not all the ships, you know, it's not all the houses, it's some of them. What's different? What are people eating? What are people not eating? what chemicals are present? What grew that wasn't there before?

Daniel Ryotas: 1:03:49

Yeah. Yeah, I think, for me, personally, all I can see in the literature is that there's associations, and that and I have looked at many papers, and the only papers where they say, We know that mold is the cause is just based on observation. And, like, that's anti scientific. Like, if we're really honest with ourselves.

Erik Johnson: 1:04:11

All science begins with observation. That's your starting point. That's not anti science. That's the beginning of the process.

Daniel Ryotas: 1:04:17

That's right. But to say that it's a cause without doing the due diligence and doing those experiments and jumping the gun and it's like blaming, it would be like, going to the scene of a crime, and seeing some detectives there, say the murder and then blaming the detectives as the murders, because we haven't done the proper investigations to prove cause and effect, but we're saying that there's a cause. So we're attributing blame without the sufficient evidence.

Erik Johnson: 1:04:48

Well, it's true that the institute's or academics or doctors aren't really doing the experiments that would be compelling to them. But patients are doing the experiments every day, every time mold grows in their building, they get sick from it. They're the experiment from what they do in response to it, either getting out or remediating lets them know whether it was a driving force in their illness in a cause and effect manner. So we feel very comfortable in saying, yeah, the mold grew. It caused my illness. I cleaned up the mold, it went away. So let's study the mold, because that's what caused the whole problem.

Daniel Ryotas: 1:05:25

Yeah, as I've said, where there's mold, where those those toxic molds there's those toxic chemicals, so again, how do we know it's not those?

Erik Johnson: 1:05:33

Well because of the exclusions when you have Stachybotrys grow in a bunch of different buildings and none of these buildings have any chemical in common, then that leaves the common denominator of the mold. And it turns out that Stachybotrys can grow very nicely and eucalyptus, and people have become ill just out in a natural setting. Now, Eucalyptus is kind of weird in the United States. So when somebody gets sick from Eucalyptus, that catches our attention, and there again, we found Stachybotrys certain species loves, loves the rotting bark of eucalyptus and as far as we can tell, there's no chemicals around.

Daniel Ryotas: 1:06:10

Yeah, I would be very interested to see where that's being shown because if it's an outdoor setting, and there's wind and things and lots of other variables and factors, like how are people? Are they like standing this far away from the eucalyptus tree and inhaling? Or like, how does that work?

Erik Johnson: 1:06:31

Just walking through a grove, a hypersensitive person can feel it?

Daniel Ryotas: 1:06:34

Yeah, okay. Yeah.

Erik Johnson: 1:06:36

Now I realized this isn't compelling to a doctor. But you know, we can afford to wait the rest of our lives. While they say we've got no proof. We've got no evidence, you've only got associations and none of this can be put to the test anyway, because we can't expose humans to controlled studies.

Daniel Ryotas: 1:06:55

Erik, what's your perspective on dampness? Do you think that that has a direct correlation with illness?

Erik Johnson: 1:07:03

Absolutely not. I'm not afraid of saunas. I don't worry about taking a shower. I've never had a problem near a swimming pool. I've been in humid climates, damp, never had any effect on me unless there was a toxic mold present. So I believe what's happening with the humidity is something about the chemical processes in the atmosphere is making the mold more bioavailable and instead of looking for why this particular human environment is making somebody sick, they blame the humidity and you know that all the humidity of the world can't be doing this, because there's a lot of humid places, and everybody would be sick.

Daniel Ryotas: 1:07:41

Yeah. So now if we take the humidity or the dampness, and we have an enclosed, basically airtight room with very little airflow, and there's stagnant air there, and we know that that humidity and that dampness causes the crystallization of harmful chemicals into the air. Would that not indicate that the contributing underlying factor was the change in the humidity and the moisture content of the inside that room?

Erik Johnson: 1:08:12

Well, you have to find out what chemical is present. Dr. Thrasher, when he analyzed this housing complex and was blaming formaldehyde. He explained that formaldehyde releases exponentially geometrically with increasing temperature, it doesn't just double with an increased temperature, it's geometric. So for every 10 degrees of increase in the warmth of a room, the amount of formaldehyde you're exposed to, would go up multiple times, not just double, but many more times. So as a result, he was having everybody keep their windows open in the dead of winter, and trying to reduce the effect of temperature on the formaldehyde exposure. And that did nothing. So in a way it is the lack of results from the experiment helps convince people maybe we need to look somewhere else. You know, Dr. Thrasher doesn't quite have a handle on this. So they bailed out of the chemical theory and when with the mold guy, and it turned out to be mold.

Daniel Ryotas: 1:09:13

Yeah, I just find it interesting that we, we blame Mother Nature for what I believe are our mistakes. Yeah, we're blaming Mother Nature.

Erik Johnson: 1:09:23

Oh, I never played natural mold. My story is in Dr. Shoemaker's books, Mold Warrior's and Surviving Mold and I was blaming flame retardants.

Daniel Ryotas: 1:09:33

Can we just go on that point? So if natural mold doesn't cause disease, and pathogenic mold does, why? What makes the some mold pathogenic and other molds not? Well, was it born that way?

Erik Johnson: 1:09:46

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Not all molds are created equal and the trichothecene producers are extremely potent. That's why they've been used as biological warfare agents. But why is mold doing this now? My initial theory was that it was processing chemicals into super toxins. But it wasn't just one particular chemical. Over time, the variety of exposures the combinations of various chemicals suggested that mold has some what of a window opener effect. It opens up a vulnerability that wouldn't otherwise exist, for reasons unknown and maybe that extends to other types of molds, that in combination with a chemical, it's just plain bad. But because the Stachybotrys has powerful toxins of its own accord, and this was the one people pointed out more often, it seemed to be the easiest way to find answers, look at the most egregious example.

Daniel Ryotas: 1:10:43

So another question, Erik, as well for you is, so these trichothecene producing toxins, are they dependent? Is their production dependent on any other factors? Or does the mold just grow and it just produces these toxin willy nilly just produces it without any other variable present?

Erik Johnson: 1:11:04

It needs cellulose. Mold can grow on various types of substrates, but if it doesn't have cellulose, it can't produce toxins.

Daniel Ryotas: 1:11:15

Can it produce more toxins in certain situations than others?

Erik Johnson: 1:11:18

Oh, absolutely. Yeah.

Daniel Ryotas: 1:11:20

And so what would some of those situations be like, well, in what instance would have produced more or less?

Erik Johnson: 1:11:27

Well, the more water the more toxins. They found that if they grow it in marginal conditions, where it just barely gets enough water, it may look like it's growing a healthy mold colony, but that wasn't quite enough to produce the most powerful toxins.

Daniel Ryotas: 1:11:39

Yeah, so the reasons why I'm asking this question is because I have found a paper where they exposed animals to mycotoxins, but the way that they expose it was that they grew so called pathogenic mold in a petri dish, and gave it they grew it on different culture mediums, and depending on the culture medium that they grew it on would depend or determine the amount of mycotoxins being produced, like in some instances, like one pathogenic mold, depending on what it was fed would produce, say, upwards of 300 milligrams per liter of these mycotoxins and if you slightly changed the growth medium, it would produce basically none.

Erik Johnson: 1:12:22

Yeah, that's right, people are selling these petri dishes to test your house for mold and it turns out Stachybotrys doesn't like normal agar growth medium. It grows on cornmeal. To stimulate the maximum toxin production, and really find out what this particular Stachybotrys could do. They couldn't use a normal petri dish.

Daniel Ryotas: 1:12:44

Yeah. So what they've done in these experiments is that they've found out which growth medium, which ingredients or food, the mold produces the most the most mycotoxins in, and then they, I believe that took make the combination. Yeah, they take those mycotoxins and forms like a crystalline substance and then what they do is they mix it with ethanol, to aerosolize it and then spray it into the face of a mouse and the mouse gets sick. And they say, well, that's proof that the mycotoxin causes illness. But if they used another culture medium, and took that same mycotoxin and sprayed it into the face of the mouse, it wouldn't get sick. So the mycotoxin toxicity is dependent on the growth medium and the food that the mold is eating. So that would highlight, that it's not the mold.

Erik Johnson: 1:13:43

And it's not just that, but the way they did the experiment messed up the normal conditions, that a natural colony in a normal setting would affect people. These gutation droplets, it's like sap, the toxin comes out in like a sticky sap that it's very crystal, and it dries out and it shatters. And these crystal and fragments of get into the air, and their size and shape determines whether they can penetrate your lungs. So if you mess with the experiment, by digging with that in any way, you've got invalid results, you haven't reproduced what's normally happening.

Daniel Ryotas: 1:14:21

That's right. So in these instances where they are producing these toxic mycotoxins, they're essentially manipulating the experiment in such a way so that it produces the mycotoxin.

Erik Johnson: 1:14:33

Where that it fails to become bioavailable, because they didn't disperse it in a natural way.

Daniel Ryotas: 1:14:39

That's right.

Erik Johnson: 1:14:40

So we believe that when these quotation droplets break down, the crystallization process, turns them into ultra fine particle form. And that's a critical part of what Cheryl Harding has discovered is that part of the structure is just as important as the toxin itself. So when these components break down, is how they are delivered. That's just as important as the toxin.

Daniel Ryotas: 1:15:04

Yeah, I just find it interesting. Like I feel like I'm so I'm so close to you understanding my point that it's really what I'm basically saying is my premise is that it's not the mold, that it's the environment that it's growing in. So and we know that we can modify the so called toxicity of mold, depending on where and how it grows. So it's that ice cream maker analogy again.

Erik Johnson: 1:15:29

We're saying mold in the same sense that people with yellow fever and malaria saying, look at the mosquitoes. That sounds kind of crazy, because obviously, the resulting disease is not being eaten by mosquitoes. But in order to find it, you had to look at the vector, and it appears to him in our situation, toxic mold is acting as a toxin and a vector.

Daniel Ryotas: 1:18:28

So there was a paper that you may or may not be aware of that I found, just trying to find the paper might take me a while. So I've got a whole presentation here that I've given previously, you know, I've got all the references there, but I found this paper and they basically said that in order like mycotoxins, they say, don't aerosolize. So there needs to be something that carries them from the mold if the mycotoxin does cause illness, that needs to be carried from the mold to the host. It doesn't just aerosolize from the mold and go into the air and then we breathe in it, or we're exposed to it. So it needs to be taken from the mold spores, or by the mold spores from the mold to the host. And this paper that I found, they said that the amount of mold spores that they find in water damaged buildings aren't enough for sufficient exposure to mycotoxins to induce illness.

Erik Johnson: 1:19:39

Yeah, that's a holdover back from the days when they thought that the toxins were totally contained within the spores. And that would be the source of exposure, whether or not you have airborne spores. Well, that didn't fit people's illness because they didn't find as you say, sufficient volume of spores to cause some kind of illness but people are getting sick anyway. So then they discovered the gutation droplets, which by the way, are just the purified sap, the purified toxin, so there's no DNA. So the PCR methods that they're using to detect molds are missing the fragments, these microparticle fragments, which are floating all around and making people sick, because their extremely small size gives them the ability to bypass our lungs defenses and get into the blood and brain. So Dr. David Straus found that when he concentrated toxins, and by ignoring spore measurements, or even fragments, measurements, but what he could measure by concentrating all the air within a volume, say a room, concentrating to the point where they could measure it, he found that indeed, these toxins were present in the air. So part of what's going on is, they're missing the way these toxins are in the environment, but they don't have the methods that will enable them to detect them. And the fact that in their microparticle size, they're not obeying like a piece of dust, it's going to be trapped in your lungs and stopped, your protection has been defeated by its ultra small size. So it's getting directly into the blood, stimulating the microglia in the brain. And once you've got your T cells and your B cells, your immune systems system primed for an overall response to this toxin, it's no longer a matter of dosage that point on, it's like a peanut reactivity, microscopic amounts, few molecules will set this cascade in motion.

Daniel Ryotas: 1:21:30

And like, whereas that being shown?

Erik Johnson: 1:21:34

It's being shown by the anecdotal evidence of massive brain inflammation in people in moldy buildings. Now, as far as the methods of being able to show a direct exposure, and as a result, they can't do that necause that would involve putting humans into harm's way. So they won't.

Daniel Ryotas: 1:21:54

Can you do it with an animal?

Erik Johnson: 1:21:55

I don't know if this has been done with animals yet. I believe that Cheryl Harding did. I think that's kind of what she was getting at, when she was talking about her animal model shows that it is resulting in this kind of illness.

Daniel Ryotas: 1:22:08

And I'd have to look at that experiment that she's done to see how was the mold grown because you're talking about these droplets? Is their toxicity dependent on the growth medium of the mold?

Erik Johnson: 1:22:23

Yes.

Alicia Swamy: 1:22:24

Erik, didn't Cheryl Harding derive her samples from Dorr Dearborn, from the homes in Cleveland?

Erik Johnson: 1:22:33

She said she got samples, but I don't know if she actually use those in her testing.

Alicia Swamy: 1:22:39

Got it. Yeah, because I was curious to know, too, like, she said that Dearborn had provided her samples from the Cleveland incident deaths.

Erik Johnson: 1:22:47

Yeah, I know that she got materials from it. But I don't know if that actually went into any particular experiment. Now, our point of view is that people are getting sick at such an incredible rate from this exposure, that while we understand the necessity of science to be cautious, at the same time, this is a little too cautious when so many people are reproducing this experiment over and over again. And there's something about the methods of science that haven't caught up to our experience in being able to detect it, and convey this to the academic mind.

Daniel Ryotas: 1:23:22

So Erik, we're sort of on the same page that the toxicity of that toxin being produced is dependent on the growth medium. Yeah. Are we in agreement with that?

Erik Johnson: 1:23:34

Yea.

Daniel Ryotas: 1:23:35

So if I had a house that grew mold, but the growth medium say the walls were made of something else, right, and there wasn't a toxin being produced, but the mold was still there, and I'm not sick, that shows that the mold didn't cause the illness, right? Just the mere presence of the mold wasn't the causative factor.

Erik Johnson: 1:23:58

Absolutely.

Daniel Ryotas: 1:23:59

Right.

Erik Johnson: 1:23:59

There have been many examples of Stachybotrys that didn't cause illness. We just did an interview with a British inspector Jeff Charlton and he talked about a building that was loaded with Stachybotrys and it didn't seem to be making anybody sick.

Daniel Ryotas: 1:24:15

So then the reason why it would make people sick is dependent on the growth medium.

Erik Johnson: 1:24:23

Yep.

Daniel Ryotas: 1:24:23

That's exactly what I'm saying.

Erik Johnson: 1:24:24

You're right.

Daniel Ryotas: 1:24:25

That's exactly what I'm saying is it's the growth medium. Let's call that is the causative factor. And rather than blaming the mold, because you just gave an example there of the mold being present, so we could go and remediate that mold, and it's not going to have any beneficial outcome. But if someone was living in that environment, and they got sick, but it wasn't the mold, there's something else making them ill so we could, if someone was in that situation, they would point to the mold, right and say, Oh, it was definitely the mold that made me sick. So how do we know in instances where people said I had mold, that it wasn't a situation as you just described.

Erik Johnson: 1:25:01

We have to study it. But remember, growth medium also means water. So stuff can come in on the water and feed the mold and we're talking about all kinds of potential interactions there.

Daniel Ryotas: 1:25:13

Yeah.

Erik Johnson: 1:25:13

But in order to find it, we have to get our foot in the door by saying, there's the mold that it's making us sick, now let's study what chemicals are present, what's in the water that's feeding this mold, why it's doing this? And we can't get past this blockade that people going, we have no evidence showing that mold is capable of causing this kind of illness.

Daniel Ryotas: 1:25:34

Yeah. So I mean, to say that mold would cause illness, it would have to do it in every single situation, if we're going well, then that means.

Erik Johnson: 1:25:45

Any pathogen. There are even people who are resistant to HIV. So no, you can't argue that it must make everybody sick in every situation, because there's virtually no illness in science that adheres to that standard.

Daniel Ryotas: 1:26:02

So if we say, asked someone to stand in a busy highway, and they got hit by a car, they would get hurt, right? Would there be a situation where someone gets hit by a car speeding on a freeway, and they don't become hurt? Like, I don't think that that would ever occur. So we would say that in that situation, getting hit by a speeding car, causes massive trauma. But if there were instances where people were walking out into a highway and getting hit by speeding cars, and they weren't getting hurt, well, why? Why are those people not getting hurt?

Erik Johnson: 1:26:38

They dodged the bullet, the car didn't hit him. Stachybotrys is a protein synthesis inhibitor, it shuts off cellular machinery, which is vital to your function. So I mean, it's very important that your cells need to go through mitosis divide, reproduce, like more new healthy cells. And if they can't do that, eventually, you're going to wind up with a problem and these type of trichothecenes, that's exactly what they do. Now, if you have a slight inhibition, protein synthesis, that in and of itself isn't going to result in a disease, but it will definitely leave you open to all kinds of other things. So maybe your immune system got derailed and then you started having a problem with other chemicals, other infections, and viruses. And we know that the protein synthesis of trichothecenes and atranones takes place in a test tube. So it probably would qualify as something that would affect everybody who's exposed because in the test tube, it certainly does.

Daniel Ryotas: 1:27:35

Yeah, I also have many issues with test tube and in vitro experiments, because they don't really reflect what's going on in reality.

Erik Johnson: 1:27:47

No they don't but if it's just off protein synthesis every time, then you've got a good indication that it's actually capable of doing it.

Daniel Ryotas: 1:27:55

But have they shown this in a living animal where they've exposed it to mold in a natural setting that is the same as what you would find in nature somewhere in someone's house?

Erik Johnson: 1:28:07

Obviously, it's not the same experiment is doing in a test tube. But when we find the same immunological shutdown, the same low natural killer cell function, and the same protein synthesis inhibition in people who are in moldy buildings, we can kind of guess that well it's the same mechanism in the body that's happening in the test tube, and it's in response to this particular agent, we can connect the dots here.

Daniel Ryotas: 1:28:32

Yeah, I hear what you're saying. But yeah, when I hear words like guessing and association, like for me, it's not enough. I need to see evidence of causation. And that's how we prove things in the world. Like it would be saying, we see rain, and we know that people get wet when it rains. And I don't claim that people don't get wet when it rains. But someone might say, well, the rain is caused by I don't know, unicorns in the sky, urinating everywhere. And I'll say, Well, I don't believe that because I've never seen a unicorn. I've never seen rain being formed that way. But they keep telling me that it is without any proof. That's why it's very difficult for me to believe something. If I can't see a cause and effect being shown somewhere. I think it's really important for people to be able to understand that association are seeing and effect the rain doesn't prove the cause.

Erik Johnson: 1:29:36

Well, that's where the academic mind is held the line for the last 35 years. People get sick and they find this toxic mold and so far, no amount of anecdotal stories seems to be sufficient to get them to say it's all anecdotal. It's just an association all you've got are stories in the newspaper.

Daniel Ryotas: 1:29:57

So what would you say to that? One control trial that I did find where they were unable to make people Ill, like they're they're the types of trials and experiments that we do need. So what if more of those were done and they found the same results?

Erik Johnson: 1:30:11

Well, I'd have to analyze their methods. I think that the way they did the experiment altered the result wasn't a natural normal experiment, the way that Dr.

Amie Skilton: 1:30:19

Which are dependent on the substrate and Straus did, by just taking a roomful of Stachybotrys and concentrating the toxins. I mean, that's what you need to do to find out that yes, the substances there. This is the stuff that's consistent with the illness and we find that these gutation droplets, these microfragments, they are present, they are at least theoretically capable of penetrating through the lungs because of their very small size. what it's eating. It's dependent on its food source.

Erik Johnson: 1:30:50

And that too, yeah. And as far as the associated chemicals, yeah, you have to take that into account, too, because I have no doubt that the formaldehyde was playing a role in the sickness of the people in this housing complex. But it's really curious that the newspaper reporter who came to do the story, she just walked up to the location, and became ill, she didn't even go in, she just went to the manager's office where she was doing an interview with some of the people who are made sick by this place. And just as she approached this location, she's reported symptoms. Well, this wasn't consistent with the formaldehyde, not by her standards, not by anybody else. But it's very consistent with mold, because it gets out into the air and something about the combination of the wafting fumes, these VOCs from chemicals, in combination with the mold, causes hypersensitive people to complain like this all the time.

Daniel Ryotas: 1:31:43

Even if we can show that those chemicals by themselves have the exact same effect

Erik Johnson: 1:31:49

Dr. Thrasher was unable to do. So that's why he abandoned formaldehyde and moved into mold.

Daniel Ryotas: 1:31:53

Yeah, but I have actual experiments where they've exposed people to these things in controlled settings. And they, before it was these so called mold, witness symptoms.

Erik Johnson: 1:32:05

That's why he was so convinced of his chemical hypothesis because under those conditions of high exposure, it does cause illness. So as far as he was concerned, cause effect. Problem solved. That was his thesis. It wasn't until he saw the exclusion of people who didn't fit his model, that he realized he needed to open his mind and keep looking for something else.

Daniel Ryotas: 1:32:28

And there's, as you mentioned before, there's times where mold is present, and people don't get sick. So that puts a hole in the theory and to show that something caught like say.

Erik Johnson: 1:32:39

There's times when Stachybotrys can be producing every toxin that it's capable of producing, and it doesn't make people sick. And apparently, we have very good defenses against spores. It's a macro molecule, it's large, our lungs are designed to catch and trap and remove macromolecules. That wasn't the problem has to be in the microfragment form or doesn't get into the blood. So there again, to the mind of a scientist, as far as they were concerned, case closed, our complaints were disproven. But if you look a little bit deeper, and look for another mechanism, then it shows up. Yes, it's very possible.

Daniel Ryotas: 1:33:16

Yeah, look, I'd have to look at these things that you're talking about. So if you can send them to me, I'd be happy to read them. But I wouldn't be very surprised if it shows cause and effect, because if it did, I probably wouldn't be having this conversation with you guys.

Erik Johnson: 1:33:31

How many people need to complain of an association before you go, maybe we need to take a deeper look at this?

Daniel Ryotas: 1:33:37

That's right. And we definitely need to, we need to take a deeper look. And until such time as we've taken that deeper look, as I've already mentioned, I wouldn't be confident or comfortable saying that the mold is the court because I'd be jumping the gun and I would hate to be pointing my finger at something that I have no proof of being the cause for and then in a year's time a paper comes out and proves me wrong. And then I have to recant everything I've said. So I'm watching and waiting until I make my mind up about that. I don't want to wrongly accuse mold, as I wouldn't want to wrongly accuse someone in real life of committing a crime that they may not have committed. I doubt the right evidence. I don't want to jump the gun.

Erik Johnson: 1:34:22

Well, there's times when you kind of have to take that step and jump the gun or you don't make new discoveries. You just stay trapped defending the old literature.

Daniel Ryotas: 1:34:32

But you maintain that you have that theory you have that perspective. And then the next step in that process is to do the experiment to prove the hypothesis. And to my understanding, those experiments haven't been done yet. We're still in that sort of observation phase, that epidemiological phase, where we're witnessing or observing certain phenomenon.

Erik Johnson: 1:34:54

Yeah, well, let me tell you about another little trick about Stachybotrys that they assume that you can expect a chemical inflammatory response neuro inflammatory response. That's the type of chemicals that these trichothecenes are. They expected an overt neurological effect. So they fixated on that and they completely overlooked. the immune suppressing factors the protein synthesis, once they finally realized that not all Stachybotrys was resulting even even when it's clearly present, not resulting in illness, they did take a deeper look at it. And they found out that Stachybotrys has an evil twin. It's completely identical, morphologically, you cannot tell the difference under a microscope, there's no way to identify this thing. It's only by genetics. But what this evil twin does, it's called Stachybotrys Chlorohanata, it produces purely immunosuppressive compounds with none of the neuro inflammatory ones. So there wasn't the warning, there wasn't the effect that they were looking for. Instead, all you get is pure immune suppression. So that would result in cancers, in reactivated viruses, but no neurological illness. So this was completely overlooked for many years, because of the way they approached Stachybotrys. They anticipated they were looking for a specific neurological, neuro inflammatory effect, and it was the way they went about looking for a specific thing that blinded them that Stachybotrys was also doing something else. So there's times when you have to back up, go to the drawing board, and go if people are getting sick in unusual way, and we can't find any other common denominator but this, this is what we really need to focus on.

Daniel Ryotas: 1:36:43

Yeah, but there are other common denominators.

Erik Johnson: 1:36:46

For our purposes, when we talk about mold illness, once we narrow it down, we find a few specific culprits that really stand out for their incredible effects.

Daniel Ryotas: 1:36:58

But how is that if we don't like how have you come to that conclusion because we've already said that the presence of those toxic chemicals, we know cause a problem. So where has it been shown? Where have you differentiated between the effects of both of those things, and shown which one causes what, what effect in the body?

Erik Johnson: 1:37:19

Well, we haven't got a scientific study that use mass spectrometers to create a perfect environment and a stainless steel chamber and expose humans to known toxic molds that had these particular properties and these particular chemicals, because ethically, we can't do that. But what we can do, as laypeople, we can do this, we can go, there are people who got sick in the presence of this particular mold, and we know what it is, because we've identified it, we can send it to a laboratory, and they can identify it for us. So we've got people getting sick, consistently from this particular mold. And as far as we can tell, there's nothing else in common. There's no other chemical that has to be going along with this. It seems to work in conjunction with different chemicals. It doesn't matter whether it's pesticide or flame retardant, or anything. But they kept showing up as a common denominator.

Alicia Swamy: 1:38:19

Yeah and the problem with the whole chemical rap thing it's like, so if chemicals were the problem, then why isn't everyone in every city, sick or dead? I mean, because we're constantly around chemicals. We're constantly around, God knows what in our environment, right? Every built environment, every road, every vehicle, everything is completely artificial, then why isn't everyone sick if it's the chemicals? So it's like, in terms of the housing situation we've talked to so many people globally, where this issue is growing. And in every region, the built environment is completely different, completely different materials, whether it's, you know, in Saudi Arabia, we have some reports of their stone and mud homes. Like that's, that's a natural built environment, right? That's, that's made out of Mother Nature. Why is this mold showing up here? What's going on? So, I think, going round and round with technicality isn't really going to help people I think, if you're going to be selling webinars and classes and teaching about this, and you're positioning yourself as a mold expert, for people out there, you know, if you don't believe this is a real phenomenon, you can easily go buy sheet rock at your local Home Depot or whatever store that you have in your region, put some water in there and grow Stachybotrys and expose yourself and see what happens to your own self. I mean, if this is what it takes, in order for people to be believed, because so many people are falling ill, and the more that we go round and round with this technicality like oh, you know, it's not the mold, but well if the mold is interacting with our chemical environment, and there's some synergism going on here, and it's creating some sort of toxicity, then yeah, mold is playing a part in the issue in people's illnesses. So, for me, it's just, I don't have the luxury with my own health, to sit and wait for scientists to tell me and validate what's going on with me. Like I have to take extreme measures and that's what I had to do. And that's what Erik had to do. That's what so many people have to do because we have this issue with researchers and scientists and doctors going round and round and saying, Well, this is not plausible. Well, this is not in the literature. So it's not real. We don't have that luxury in our health, we want to live, like we have to go to these extreme measures, and figure out what's going on. And when something affects your life, so much to the core, that it completely changes your life, you become an expert in that subject, you start figuring out common denominators, you start seeing what's going on. So again, if someone is going to position themselves, and teaching classes and webinars and all this stuff, and you haven't experienced this, it's hard for me to get on board with them or believe them because there is a whole other phenomenon happening, that can actually easily be reproduced by your own self. Like if you don't think Stachybotrys says a thing, well, go get some, again, some sheet rock, wet it and sniff it, or bring it around your family and we can see what happens. I mean, we don't need to sit here and wait for studies because that are never going to show up because obviously there's no grant money in this for whatever reason, I don't know if it's going to expose some sort of industries, some sort of chemical, you know, it's like, there's so much political crap and all of this mess that I think is really hindering a lot of progress and a lot of proof in this. So it's like, if you don't believe it, then do your own experiments, figure it out on your own, I would highly suggest against it. But if you really want to become a believer, then put yourself in a position where someone who has been made injured by mold has been. So I mean, you know, again, the whole chemical thing, we live in a completely artificial world, and not everyone is dropping dead. So it's kind of hard to, for me to attribute that. But what I want to get to here is, so how are you helping your patient base? What are you telling your clients? What are you advising them when they point to mold in their home? Are you telling them it's not mold?

Daniel Ryotas: 1:42:20

Yeah, it's not mold. It's a chronic, ongoing chemical exposure. This is toxicity. This is an accumulation of toxins and I also just want to just say, in regards to your point there, Alicia, is the research that say a cancer scientist or researcher does any less valid because they've never experienced cancer?

Alicia Swamy: 1:42:44

Absolutely not. But we're in a whole realm and a whole new ballgame here, where we're getting patient report after patient reports of people falling ill and they're pointing to a specific type of mold to sit here and say that we don't have the research backing it up, we're leading people to their deaths, and that it's actually pretty negligent. You know, for some reason, people like to look to their superiors for answers. But at this point, it's very clear that there's a lot of people that do not believe what's going on. And if someone can sit here and walk into your room and point and say, this is bothering me, I'm going to believe myself and my intuition, then someone telling me trying to give me a technical jargon run around that. Technically, that's not the problem. It's the chemicals, but chemicals are everywhere. So then what do I do? Right? Again, at the end of the day, people's lives are at stake and we're in the running and we're in the game of helping people and saving their lives. And if Erik has been in this for 35 years, and has done every experiment has worked with every expert in the business of this, and what we're seeing with our patient base is saying, Hey, go and leave your home and then see what's going on and we see time and time again that oh, yeah, you know, there's something going on in my home. And it's this particular species of mold that is making me Ill now I'm hypersensitive, I think we need to give some validity to that. And not just oh, because it's not in the literature. It's not real. Right. And so I think that's really just the point here. I do agree with you that, you know, there is something going on in the environment, we've done so much stuff to our environment, we've completely polluted our environments, right? I mean, it's like everything is toxic these days. So we just need to see what's going on what are these microbes doing? Maybe what the microbes are doing is their own form of self protection, and that self protection is just harming us. Right? And so we're not trying to sit here and demonize every microbe but we're just sitting here and saying, Okay, if this is causing problems, and all you have to do is just stay away from it. I mean, there's no harm in that, right. I mean, it's not a crazy thing to say or advise or to tell people to do. And once people get to that point of immune system reprogramming, it's like you're forever in the situation where you have to avoid certain environments so that way you can stay healthy. So, again, Daniel, we do appreciate you it's been two hours. Such a great conversation. We love to having you on and we'd love to have you on again in the future if you're up for it. But if anyone wanted to work with you, or buy your webinars, classes, listen to your podcasts, where can they find you?

Daniel Ryotas: 1:45:20

They can go to humanely.com. I appreciate you letting me come on and share my perspective here. And I hope that when people hear this, they don't take my word for it. I hope that they go and research themselves and they read widely, and they make up their own decision because if we are wrongly attributing the cause here, and we're barking up the wrong tree, people aren't going to get to the bottom of the problem, and they're not going to get the answers that they deserve. And yes, certainly in my clinic, I have helped people with this. And I haven't taken the approach of trying to get rid of the mold, or these types of things. It's more focused around supporting the entire body and supporting the organs of elimination, and making sure people have the right nutrition, and addressing various other aspects of their diet and lifestyle, so that their body can heal itself. I don't go after one certain thing. And yeah, it's not a hunt for mold when I'm dealing with patients. So yeah, and people get better. The body has an amazing capacity to heal itself from anything, I believe. It just needs to be given some specific things that are essential to life, and then we get out of the way and let the body do the rest. So yeah, thank you very much for the opportunity to come and speak to you. I really appreciate it.

Alicia Swamy: 1:46:46

Yes, we definitely 100% agree on that. Avoidance is a big proponent of what we preach. We don't push any pills or any special diets or supplements. We do agree that the body has the ability to heal itself once it has the proper environment. So again, Daniel, we do appreciate you Erik, thanks for being such a sport. You too. We're going head to head and I really do appreciate open dialogue. This is what we need more. See, I we're not that scary, right, Daniel?

Daniel Ryotas: 1:47:12

Oh, I wasn't scared at all.

Alicia Swamy: 1:47:13

We're not that scary. I feel like people are scared of us because we're a little fringe. We really try to push people off the edge here to think about mold and just environmental illness in general in a different scope. So thanks again and everyone listening, we'll see you next time.