Welcome to Exposing Mold, the podcast where I, Kealy Severson, Erik Johnson, and Alicia Swamy are exposing mold. Today we have the absolute honor and the pleasure to discuss mold and mycotoxins with Dr. Campbell.
Alicia Swamy:Thank you again Dr. Andrew Campbell for joining us today. Dr. Andrew Campbell is a medical clinician director, officer, advisor, medical consultant, editor in chief of several journals and research studies; and was recently selected as the "Top Medical Consultant of the Year for 2020" by the International Association of Top Professionals for his outstanding leadership, dedication, and commitment to the healthcare profession. Having over 35 years of professional experience as a renowned medical clinician, Dr. Campbell has certainly proved himself as an expert in the field of integrative health and traditional medicine. His areas of expertise include his treatments of 1000s of patients with complex medical conditions, from toxic exposures, specifically molds and mycotoxins, Lyme disease, pesticides, household solvents, silicone breast implants, industrial chemicals, allergies, immune diseases and deficiencies. Dr. Campbell's impressive repertoire of roles has included medical director of the medical center for immune and toxic disorders, medical consultant for Cyrex laboratories, medical advisor to Cell Systems Corporation, medical director at The Wellness Center, medical advisor for BCM, Direct medical advisor at Natural Health, and Physicians Exclusive. Recently, Dr. Campbell served as medical director of Mymycolab, a laboratory testing mycotoxins in blood serum, and he is the medical director for Xenex laboratory in Mexico. Aside from his successful career, Dr. Campbell has been a sought after lecturer, speaker, nationally, and internationally at medical conferences for over 25 years. He has published over 90 studies of his findings and peer reviewed medical journals and medical textbook chapters. As a highly regarded medical consultant, Dr. Campbell has become well known and been featured on a number of television shows which include 2020, the Montel Williams Show, and 24-hour Investigative news. He has been interviewed by ABC, CBS, and NBC and its affiliates throughout the United States. Looking back, Dr. Campbell attributes his success to his hard work ethic, his love for education and science, and to every skillful medical professional he's had the honor of working alongside throughout his entire career. When not working, he enjoys traveling and spending time with his family. For the future, he hopes to continue making breakthroughs in medicine and helping his patients achieve optimal health.
Kealy Severson:Dr. Campbell before we began recording you were explaining a really interesting scenario in Mexico, would you please just pick up right where you left off in explaining that?
Dr. Andrew Campbell:Sure, this is a dentist is 44 years old, and he developed lots of fatigue and then he became somewhat unsteady in his walking and lost muscle strength. And so he went to see neurologist after neurologist after neurologist. He got diagnosed first with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome when it got worse than it was Fibromyalgia. He went to see a geneticist who did the genetic testing for what is called Crisfield Jacob Syndrome, which is an autoimmune disorder that is fatal within one year. It causes your brain to become like a sponge full of holes. And the first symptom is dementia. You don't know where you are, who you are, or what you're doing. Well, this patient, I was asked to see him his family asked me to see him and he had no dementia whatsoever. He was sharp, etc. But he had trouble swallowing and speaking because that's part of the disease. So I did a mycotoxin serum blood analysis on him and he lit up like a Christmas tree. So I took him off all his medications, which were basically not doing very, very much anyway, and I put him on an antifungal, anti-mycotoxin program and four months later, he's much better, all his reflexes are back, he is able to swallow, he can now start words, whereas before he couldn't say anything at all, and he is really doing better and his family is delighted.
Kealy Severson:And you have like a study going on in Mexico on mold and mycotoxins.
Dr. Andrew Campbell:Yes. What we're doing, we're doing. We're actually doing more than one study. One study is on Autistic children and several studies from Tufts University School of Medicine have come out showing the link between Autism and exposure to molds and mycotoxins. So the best, the most accurate way I should say to measure that in people is to do a serum antibody test to mycotoxins and these children from 3 years old to 17 year olds that we see, all have Autism and mycotoxin antibodies. So having said that, instead of giving him, giving these children these drugs that affect their brain, and we don't know, if they take it for 5 years or 10 years. Well, what effect will it have when they're 40 or 30? Or 50? You know, we have no idea. So why give them these psychotropic strong drugs? When they barely help. They help control the behavior, nothing else. They don't cure anything. We put these kids on a program for molds and mycotoxins and what, what happens is they get better. And lo and behold, they go to the neurologist, to the original neurologist that's been treating them and the neurologist is shocked. And he says, "What did you give him this kid?" So it's very interesting. That's one study. The other study is on autoimmunity. In other words, autoimmune disease like Rheumatoid Arthritis, Lupus, Addison's disease, Multiple Sclerosis. And these disorders, if you do three things, find the cause, remove the cause, repair the damage, you've cured the patient. Which is not good for a lot of doctors because they don't have to keep coming back to get their prescriptions and blood tested. So and all of these patients have been diagnosed with other disease, diseases disorders, you know, because they all have fatigue, they all feel terrible, they all feel weak, their minds don't work, etc, etc. So there's several ongoing studies.
Kealy Severson:Do you find these patients tend to have residual environmental sensitivities? And what I mean by that, have to continue to avoid the toxins such as the mold triggers?
Dr. Andrew Campbell:Yes. And Dr. William Rea, the father of Multiple Chemical Sensitivity, who had the Environmental Health Center in Dallas, and he had a clinic in Tokyo and another one in London, passed away a couple summers ago. I met him in the early 90s, 30 years ago. And we collaborated together. I was in Houston, he was in Dallas and we used to see each other at conferences where he'd speak and I'd speak. And one of the things we discussed is the Multiple Chemical Sensitivity that remains in patients. Well, why does that remain? That remains because their immune system is like a glass. And when the glass is full to the top, to the brim, all you need is one little drop, and it will spill off. It's too much. They can't handle anymore. They can't go down certain aisles of the supermarket. They can't go into a major shopping mall because the big stores all have perfume sections and so on and so forth. They can't use certain shampoos or soaps. It affects their whole life and their whole lifestyle. So what you do there is, Dr. Rea did it by injections. And what I do is I boost up the immune system. In other words, empty the glass some. So once you do that, what happens to the patient, they get better, and they can suddenly tolerate some things because what the actual word that I sometimes use is intolerance. They're no longer tolerant. And Dr. Claudia Miller at the University of Texas in San Antonio has done a lot of studies and she wrote a book 30 years ago on the the intolerance to these odors and, and chemicals that surround our life. Look at any bottle of shampoo bottle or you know, what's in there? Just loads of chemicals. We're surrounded by chemicals.
Kealy Severson:Yeah, we actually just all read that book, or sorry, a book where everything that you're describing was discussed, including Claudia Miller and her expertise with chemical sensitivity. We've all been injured by mold, which you which you may know. And we all have residual chemical sensitivities. So we definitely see the connection and have experienced it. And I listened to some of your work last night, a podcast episode that you did and I thought it was fascinating that you offer blood tests for IGG and IGE for the mycotoxin panel. Now I know a lot the urine tests are considered invalidated testing. I guess I don't really know what that means, but maybe not used to formulate a proper diagnosis or not admissible in court to prove that you're sick. I just wonder, you know, is your IGG blood testing and IGE blood testing, where does that where does that fall in comparison to other mycotoxin testing for proving diagnoses and maybe for legal admissibility to prove illness?
Dr. Andrew Campbell:Urine is an excretion, just like stools are an excretion. And so there's two things, one the test is not for mycotoxins, the test is for metabolites of mycotoxins. So if all four of us at lunchtime, eat some asparagus with our food, for the rest of the day, the urine will smell like asparagus. That's asparagus metabolite. That's normal. That's a good thing. The body's functioning as it should. So, in foods, the US Department of Agriculture and the Department of Agriculture of most industrialized and Western countries, allow a small part per billion of mycotoxins and food. I like peanut butter. There's mycotoxins in peanut butter. Its parts per billion. And I once asked a PhD mathematician, explain to me what's a part per billion? I'm a visual, I need to see this. He said, take 100 football fields, cover them with one layer of golf balls, and take out one golf ball. That's one part per billion. Well, if you look at the test, they're all for 3,5,8,10 parts per billion. Well, it's from the food we eat. It's a good thing that it's coming out. It's too little for an immune reaction. Its parts per billion, it's not enough to cause anything. And it's just part of our diet today. Because it's in grains. It's in beans, coffee beans. So what you're measuring is the excretion of what is consumed. There is not enough in what you eat or drink to cause an immune reaction. Except, there's one study from Ghana, because they eat a lot of grain. It's a very poor country. They eat a lot of grain, and they don't have a good way of storing it. And it gets very contaminated with molds and mycotoxins. So it does cause a problem in that country. But not in the United States. So there's no real firm studies that show that this, these urine, these two urine tests, or three now, have any validity. And the government, CDC says you shouldn't use them for clinical diagnostic purposes.
Erik Johnson:Shoemaker had volunteers eat a whole bunch of peanut butter, and measure their inflammatory markers and saw no rise at all.
Dr. Andrew Campbell:Yeah, well, other doctors that I've spoken to, and I speak to doctors. As of yesterday, I'm no longer the medical director [of Mymycolab]. So I wanted to let you know that because it was getting too much. And it was interfering with my work with patients. So now they have someone else. So I'm now free to say what I want to say. And the test gets serum from every continent, I should say. You know, we get them from Australia and New Zealand, all of Europe, the Middle East, Africa, India, Ukraine, Finland. So the lab, as a result, I get to talk to doctors from all over the world. And I grew up and was educated in Switzerland, so I speak several languages, which is common in Europe. So it's great because I get to speak to them in German, French, Italian, Swedish, Arabic, Hungarian, etc.; besides English. They don't use the urine tests in Europe, and in these countries, in general, because they say they can't find evidence. And those countries are very evidence driven. So they need medical and scientific evidence that it works. And there is none. So I can tell you that the lab is doing two studies, one with the Washington University in St. Louis on mycotoxins and people and the other one is with the University of Helsinki in Finland because Finland is a very happy country according to world statistics. But it also has the highest rate in the world of Dementia. And now a recent study has shown this is because they spend a lot of time indoors. They have a very strong winter. You know, it's near St. Petersburg, Russia. And it's very cold so they're indoors and there's leaks and things that happen. And then there's snow that gets in through little cracks here and there. So they're now linking that to mycotoxins. So there's a study ongoing with that.
Alicia Swamy:Thank you, Dr. Campbell for all that information. You know, I was reading through those two articles that you sent over, the brain and the other one with children. You basically had stated in your article that, you know, doctors tend to negate this disease or any disorders caused by mold or mycotoxins. And why do you believe that's so?
Dr. Andrew Campbell:I speak to, because of, you know, I've written almost 97, I've published 97 studies. So the people in faculties will talk to me because I have that background. Otherwise they wouldn't bother, there is too many people calling them. And what they tell me is, they say, look, all the hype on the internet about molds and mycotoxins, we don't like that. Because it's just opinions. They don't back anything they say, with evidence. We need evidence that this works, or this doesn't work. One example is the HLA-DR test. Genetically, it's supposed to affect 25% of Americans, about 80 to 83 million people. Right? Yet, there is no textbook on it. They don't teach it in medical school. There's no organization on it. That's for 82, let's say 82 million Americans. Diabetes affects 33 million. But it's taught in every medical school in the world. There's organizations on Diabetes, there's medications for Diabetes, there's meetings on Diabetes, there's NIH grants on Diabetes. So why and then they say, Campbell, look at this stuff. It's Hocus Pocus, that doesn't exist. There is one disorder that it can be helpful in. And that's Allergic Bronchopulmonary Aspergillosis. When you have that, you're usually in the ICU on a respirator. So there's no validity. The other side, they say on treatment. They say that everybody's talking about binders. Use this binder for this mycotoxin, that binder for that mycotoxin. Can you show us one study in humans? There are no studies in humans. Yesterday, I spoke with a doctor who was formerly on the faculty of a medical school. Now he's in practice by himself. He says I noticed that some of my patients improve with binders and some don't. I said, the key thing that I learned from a wonderful gentleman, Dr. Will Rea, the father of Multiple Chemical Sensitivity, he always asked me, is it reproducible? So if you use a treatment method, and it works in some, but not in others, it's not reproducible. So why does everybody give binders when they don't work? I get about five emails a day, from doctors and patients who say I used this method, that method, this doctor, that doctor, here it is two years down the road, three years down the road, I still feel terrible. What should I do? I did the urine test five times. I've been on binders for two and a half years. I've done these things, nothing. I'm still sick and my wife is still sick, what should we do? And that's five a day, on an average. How many is that a month?
Kealy Severson:We frequent the online groups for toxic mold support and this is exactly what I observed too. I know that there's no one size fits all protocol for this thing. And I know that what they're doing isn't really serving them well. And I also have observed that because they're not really getting honest help from their primaries that they're pursuing for help. They're kind of forced to try to figure things out on their own. And so, so many of the very sick of us who are probably the least capable of thinking clearly and navigating our health are kind of forced to fend for ourselves on this thing.
Dr. Andrew Campbell:Yes. And I mean, I hear tragedies everyday because I make it a point to answer everybody's email. And when somebody asks to talk to me, I do it. You know, here's a mother, single mother, three kids, struggling financially, feeling terrible. Her kids are sick, she's afraid to take them to the doctor because she's afraid she'll lose the job she has on waiting on tables, the little income she gets. And she lives in a moldy apartment. And how do you help those people? So I hear these things every day. And a lot of times, I'll just say, look, do an antibody testing on all four of you. You won't be charged. Why? Because you got to help people. We're here to help people. Every one of us, if we can help other people, other people will help us to in return. We'll all live happier and better lives, right? I mean, it's logic. And of course, then I hear that people who live in very large homes and can afford this and that and the other, but they all feel terrible. And you're correct in that there's no protocol, because everybody's immune system is unique and different. So I have patients, mom, dad, four kids, all under the age of 15, each one has a different treatment. And mom and dad will look at me and say, well, why? Why is it different? And I explain it to them. So I have a, I don't know, I think it's a 16-page questionnaire, all new patients have to fill out because I want to make sure there isn't anything else. Do they live on a golf course? Are they affected by pesticides? Do they live next to a field where planes come and spray? Or do they live near an intersection of two major highways? You know, all those things affect our immune system and one of the things you've got to do, the first rule of toxicology is get the patient away from the toxin or get the toxin away from the patient. If not, no treatment, there is no treatment, that's gonna help you. Pretend it's radiation, pretend it's pesticides, pretend it's mercury. Those are all toxins, like mycotoxins. And one problem that I see a lot is doctors don't understand. And I'm not talking about clinicians. I'm talking about that whole group of people that treat and are called experts in treating molds and have all kinds of nice websites about it. We have microbiology and medicine, which
deals with four things:viruses, bacteria, parasites and pathogenic fungi. We have toxicology that deals with
toxins:mercury, pesticides, lead, mycotoxins, etc. The immune reaction is different for this or that. It's not the same for a toxin as for an infectious agent. What happens if you catch a bacteria? You take an antibiotic and 10 days it's over. A mycotoxin, take mercury instead of mycotoxins. Mercury. Can you get that out in 10 days? No, it takes much longer to get rid of a toxin than a pathogen. So these so called people who think they really know what they're treating have no idea on the difference in immunology between pathogens and toxins.
Kealy Severson:It's actually really interesting that you said that, because I've noticed a lot of these symptoms with mold illness, they try to blame on viruses. And I've even wondered, can they tell the difference between virus damage and fungal damage, because it seems like they're getting it all mixed up? And that's an interesting point you just made.
Dr. Andrew Campbell:Well, a virus, and all of us have had at one time or another in our lives, either in childhood, adolescence, or adulthood. The first thing you feel is fever. Why? Because you have macrophages that signal the immune system, we're under attack. The immune system releases cytokines. Cytokines produce an elevation in temperature, it's part of the normal reaction of the immune system, and then you feel terrible, etc, etc, etc. And the onset is quick and sudden. In fungi, which is also a pathogen, because it's a living thing. It has cell walls, etc. Toxins don't have cell walls, don't breath, they're not alive. Mercury is not alive, they're just groups of molecules. These infectious agents create a very quick, very rapid reaction. If you deal with another type it's a slower reaction. You move into a new apartmen,t a new home or whatever and it takes maybe a month or two, where you say gee, you know, this is something. I am not feeling well. It's not like you wake up one morning saying, oh, I think I got the flu. So it's much more subtle and that's makes it worse. And take any toxins, lead, or mercury, or arsenic; remember the arsenic and old lace? Things like that. But you know, it takes a longer time. Rat poison does the same thing. You don't die the same day you're given rat poison. You give a little bit every day, every day, and after about two or three months you die.
Erik Johnson:If mold has always been around. Why is it such a shock to doctors, friends, families, society? It seems like nobody's ever seen this before.
Dr. Andrew Campbell:I think one, is I will say that sometimes it's a shock within families. I talk to people in a family and they say no one else in my family believes me. My spouse doesn't believe me. My parents don't believe me. They all think I'm nuts. They all think I should go see a Psychiatrist. And the same thing for doctors. They go to doctor, to doctor, to doctor. I went to medical school like most doctors and I did, I initially did a surgical training. And then I went and did immunology and toxicology. So I can tell you that this is not looked at very well. It's not studied that well. Why? In the United States, healthcare is driven by two major or three major players. One is the hospital groups, which now own doctors practices, etc. Second, is the pharmaceutical industry. And the third is the insurance industry. Why does our health care cost per person so much more? I'm half Swiss. My family, the rest of my brothers, my nephews and nieces live in Switzerland. You can still get a house call. Why? I know, you can say, well, because it's so small, it's a small country. You're right. We have lakes that are bigger than Switzerland. But the point is, is that it costs a fifth of what it costs us. So when you have these three big groups, how much do you think it takes for a doctor to diagnose a patient if they have a fungal and mycotoxin disease? My average time with a new patient is anywhere from two to three hours. You think an insurance company is going to reimburse that? Heck, no. But, if I stick a tube down your stomach and do an endoscopy, which takes maybe five to eight minutes, I get paid a $1,000. So it's an economic thing.
Erik Johnson:When Ruth Etzel and Dorr Dearborn had an outbreak of infant pulmonary hemosiderosis or pulmonary hemorrhage, in 1994. And unveiled the toxic black mold, Stachybotrys. It came as a complete surprise to people and made newspaper headlines. And doctors across the country were amazed at this dreaded toxic mold that they'd never heard about before. Can you talk about the history of Stachybotrys and why we hadn't heard about it prior to 1994?
Dr. Andrew Campbell:Actually, the first proof of it was in an apartment in Prague in the 1800s, where the wallpaper had peeled away and on the back of it was this mold, black mold. They didn't know what else to call it. It looked black, it's actually a very dark, oily green. But that's besides the point. The point is, is that we tend to not pay attention to it. If you have a home that's moldy, and it's your home, it's not rented and you tell the insurance company, I have mold in the home, what do you think your home insurer is going to do? Not much, get Servpro or one of these companies to come out. Do you know what it takes to be able to do that, inspect the home etc.? It's a weekend course. You know, you go on a Saturday, Sunday, then you take a test, then you get a card and you're now an expert in detecting mold. Well, the EPA says that 50% of mold, you cannot see. It's in between walls, it's in the attic, it's in crawl spaces, it's in basements. It's in the air conditioning ducts. 50%. And when they do this test in a room, that doesn't test for what's in the attic, or basement, or the other parts of the house. So there's a lot of unknown because in the United States, neither the discovery, how to discover where mold is, or how much there is in the home, or the remediation of a home, is regulated. It's unregulated. And there is no standard. So if you have a home, or an apartment or whatever condominium, and you call five different companies, you're going to get five different bids, five different prices, five different products they are going to use to remediate with. So how do we help people, the public? And why do doctors not recognize this? What doctor wants to spend two hours and get reimbursed maybe 120 bucks. When he can see in that same amount of time, 4 patients, or 5 patients with Diabetes, or High Blood Pressure and get reimbursed right away and no questions, no copies of records. As they get the check right away. My father taught me that whoever pays you, you are working for them. Who pays medical doctors in the United States? Insurance companies. They work for insurance companies. If you don't have a code for a mycotoxin, you're not going to get paid. If you don't have the right code for fungus, you're not gonna get paid. Yeah, you can charge the patient. So there's a lot of political, socioeconomical things that are involved inthis whole thing. You have behind you a chart and it says maybe indistinguishable from Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. In the late 80s, I opened a center in Houston, the chronic, basically CFS center, it was in'88. And I saw patients from all over Houston. That's what opened, started to make me think there's something else here. Okay. Later, what happened is that I noticed I had a lot of women coming in. All ages, all sizes, etc., who had the same kind of fatigue, and migraines, and strange, etc. And this is before computers. So I'd stay in my office late at night going through the chart saying, what did they have in common? Turned out they had breast implants in common. So then I started calling other doctors, because back then it was MaBell. And if you call the town next to you it was a long distance charge. But I called around and found some doctors in California, Cleveland Clinic, and other places that had noticed the same thing. So we published a study on breast implants. I have 25 studies on breast implants alone, published studies, they're in PubMed. What happened? They had these ladies, eventually got explanted, but they didn't improve that much. Improved, maybe 20, 25%. So there was something else there. I found a guy in Montreal, Canada, a PhD, that studies medical implantable devices that have failed: knee implants, chin implants, TMJ implants, breast implants. And I invited him to Houston. You know, he speaks French. I did all my education and Rosanna, Switzerland, which is the French part of Switzerland so my first language is French, not English. And so we got along great. And he said, well, what happens is, these implants are full of molds. And I said, how do you get a mold in an implant? Silicone is like saying, wine. It doesn't say if it's white wine, red wine, Riesling, Cabernet, Merlo, Chardonnay. It's just you know, there's silicone that you use around your windows and all kinds of things. So the chemical used in implants is dimethyl polysiloxane. I said, How does a mold get into an implant? He says it's during the manufacturing process. And he had it all laid out because that's what his specialty as a PhD, finding out what went wrong. Well, after many publications, I got invited to give a presentation at the National Institutes of Health and six months later, they shut down the production of breast implants based on all the evidence we had shown. We showed that it reduces a cell and the immune system called NK cell natural killer cells, which are the main cells that attack tumors or cancer cells. They're still talking about how these breast implants can cause certain kinds of cancer in women. We showed that in the early '90s, 30 years ago.
Erik Johnson:I assume you must have corresponded with Dr. Vincent Marinkovich?
Dr. Andrew Campbell:Yeah. So the other part of that is, that's how I got into molds and mycotoxins because what I did with these women is I gave them an antifungal, Itraconozole, and all of a sudden they all got better. And they thank me. They came from, I saw women from all over, of course, I saw a lot from the main body of Hollywood. And then I had to find for them plastic surgeons. They're all taught how to put them in, they're not taught how to remove them. So you have to take into consideration the image a woman has of herself. It's not just a surgical procedure. It's a self perception. So I have to find plastic surgeons that knew how to leave a woman looking like a woman, not just some guy downtown who's a good plastic surgeon, that's fine, too. But you have to find somebody that could really do this. And who understood the whole process of them getting sick because if you take out an implant that has mold in it, you sure don't want to have any leaking during the surgical procedure. So then after healing a lot of women, then I started getting, you helped my mom, my sister, my grandmother, my aunt, my neighbor, etc. Can you help me we have mold in the home?
Kealy Severson:Can I offer a really interesting insight. I'm not sure Dr. Campbell, if you are aware that Erik Johnson is actually one of the very original prototypes for Chronic Fatigue Syndrome when the 1988 Holmes definition of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome was made.
Dr. Andrew Campbell:Yeah, I remember back in '85, you know Incline Village, that whole thing about Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and Epstein-Barr Virus, and the CDC getting involved and setting a criteria back in, I think it was '86. That's a long time ago. I don't know if you know this, but the guy who developed the Epstein-Barr antibody test made quite a bit of money at that time. And so he decided to open up another company because otherwise he get taxed. And then he opened a company called Usana, which is a kind of an MLM for vitamins.
Erik Johnson:I was asking about Dr. Vincent Marinkovich because he was an associate professor at Stanford, and Stanford has been completely resistant to studying mold and mycotoxins for all these years, and remain so. I know you did a presentation down in Mountain View, just a few miles away from Stanford and have you ever approached them? Or did they tried to talk to you about it?
Dr. Andrew Campbell:No.
Erik Johnson:Well, as Kealy said, I'm an Incline Village survivor and I was selected to be the first prototype for the Holmes definition of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. And at the time, I refused to participate because they were completely fixated on viruses, and wouldn't look into the mold. So there were three sick schools, and a casino. All of them were moldy, and all the clusters of chronic illness were in these moldy buildings. And when I explained it, this would be a diversion from the virus that Dr. Cheney wanted to look into. He said, that doesn't matter, because researchers will come and when they investigate the syndrome, then they'll talk to you and you can tell them about the mold. They can work it out. And the remarkable thing is that, to this day, 35 years later, not a single Chronic Fatigue Syndrome researcher has ever come back to find out about the toxic mold.
Dr. Andrew Campbell:There was a doctor, she was at the University of Miami way back then I forgot her name.
Erik Johnson:Dr. Nancy Klimas.
Dr. Andrew Campbell:Yes, Nancy. Yes, Nancy Klimas. Very good. It's nice to talk to somebody who remembers all these things from years ago. And you know, she just couldn't get any more money for her lab. That was it.
Kealy Severson:Were they kind of like choking people's funding to avoid research on this?
Dr. Andrew Campbell:Well, I think, of course, it's a very touchy political situation, money, money talks in different tongues. And when you have issues that A, affect health insurance companies, B, affect insurance companies that insure homes. You're talking about the big players. I remember one, one person saying that insurance companies have more money than God. And by the way, I'm going to run for King in the next elections and I'm going to take all the money away from insurance companies and give it back to the people and retire on an island.
Kealy Severson:We'll call you King Campbell.
Dr. Andrew Campbell:Haha. No, I'm just going door to door for a week, redistribute wealth a little bit. I'm joking, of course. But the point being is that there was a lab at Texas Tech University that did a lot of studies on molds and mycotoxins and they shut it down; published studies really good, well done, very good references, the whole thing. If you read some of my, my studies I have, I make it a point to put on many, many references, not just five or 10.
Erik Johnson:David Straus of Texas focused on Stachybotrys in particular.
Dr. Andrew Campbell:Yes.
Erik Johnson:And that's been my main mold of interest, because that was the very mold that we found in the clusters of the illness that Chronic Fatigue Syndrome was based on.
Dr. Andrew Campbell:There was a textbook that came out in 2004, published by Elsevier, the medical publisher, and the whole textbook was volume 55, Advances in Microbiology, and there's chapter I wrote on it on the immunological, neurological effects, but there were all kinds of articles that included Stachybotrys in there, etc. And, yes, Texas Tech came out, I mean, they actually measured Stachybotrys in the air. Can you imagine that?Wow.
Erik Johnson:Yea, that's bad.
Dr. Andrew Campbell:And it's one of the mycotoxins, the mycotoxins made by Stachybotrys is one of the tests that Mymycolab does, because it affects people hugely.
Kealy Severson:Can we just touch on this one second, what you guys just kind of glossed over which might not be on the radar of the the listener? Because what you guys just kind of pointed out is that Stacybotrys doesn't really show up on air tests or frequently, and if it does, it's probably pretty bad.
Dr. Andrew Campbell:Yes.
Kealy Severson:Can talk more about testing limitations like this, Dr. Campbell?
Dr. Andrew Campbell:Well, as Erik can tell you, Stachybotrys is kind of a heavy mold, and so other molds grow on top of it. And so when you're looking for something, you find the other one, the lighter one, but you don't get what's underneath it, which contains the Stachybotrys. Also it's important to note here is one mold does not make one mycotoxin. A mold can make several mycotoxins and a mycotoxin can come from several different molds. So it's not a one to one. But Stachybotrys certainly is very important. Undoubtedly.
Erik Johnson:The point of interest about the development of the Chronic Fatigue Syndrome by Dr. Gary Holmes, is that when they were asked, when the CDC and researchers were asked to look into mold, there was nothing in the literature. The first peer reviewed paper on tricothecene mycotoxins wasn't entered until the next year. So the answer is, you have no proof, mold is just an analogy. And once they entered it into their definition that we had no evidence, it sort of became cemented. And from then on, any time we tried to present evidence to them that there was toxic mold present in the clusters of the mystery illness. They said, you have no proof, we didn't do a study on it.
Alicia Swamy:Dr. Campbell, from when you started working on mycotoxins and treating people to present day, have you seen an increase in these toxic mold cases?
Dr. Andrew Campbell:What I've seen an increase in, is poor tests, unproven treatments, unproven testing. Which what that does is prolong the recuperation of the patient. Like just a little bit ago, there's no one size fits all. You've got to individualize it. You've got to give the right dosage. You give the same thing to a 20 year old woman that weighs 110 pounds, as you do to a 55 year old male who weighs 250 pounds? Well, if it's a protocol, it's a protocol. It's like a recipe for spaghetti sauce. You give the same thing to everybody. But you can't do that in humans. We're all different. We're all unique. So what I've seen in the last 30 years, is more, more confusion, and also less publications. I mean, between the mid 1990s to the mid 2000s, there were a lot of publications in the medical literature about molds and mycotoxins. Then all of a sudden, it quit. It just kind of slowed down and stopped. And all these experts don't publish anything. They just are really good at putting things up on their websites and things but, they've never published a thing. They don't have any evidence. And what they say is not reproducible.
Erik Johnson:Yeah, in order to make my case with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome researchers, I simply took people diagnosed, that carried a Chronic Fatigue Syndrome diagnosis to the very buildings that were making people sick during the mystery illness, and they all had severe reactions.
Dr. Andrew Campbell:And plus today, we use medications that suppress the immune system more and more. We have medication, people are given steroids, people get catherized for heart problems. People get endoscopy. People get treated for cancer. People get implanted with stents, all these invasive procedures can cause more fungi to come into people. We also have an issue with climate change, for those of us who believe in climate change. And now we're seeing more hurricanes, more flooding, more everywhere in the world, and that's into public buildings, that's into businesses, that's into schools, and that's into dwellings where people live. This creates even more issues with mold. So on the side of medicine, we have more causes of invasive things that are molds. And then on this side of climate change. We have where we are surrounding our environment has more molds, and both of them make mycotoxins.
Erik Johnson:I was gonna say that back in the 1980s, Dr. Nancy Klimas was not on board with the mold concept. In fact, she kind of scoffed at it. And she did a study on Broward Cou ty, Florida, Chronic Fatigue Syn rome patients after Hur icane Andrew and concluded tha their illness exacerbation was due to fear of hurricanes, wa hurricane stress.
Dr. Andrew Campbell:Yeah.
Erik Johnson:I contacted her patients. They said, what are you talking about? It was just high wind and some water leaks. We just had a lot of mold. She was absolutely rejecting the connection. I've gone around with Dr. Nancy Klimas for many years about this. And it wasn't until 2016 after reading Julie Rehmeyer's book, Through the ShadowLands, that Dr. Klimas finally admitted that mycotoxins were a definite factor in the Chronic Fatigue Syndrome patients. But this didn't lead to any follow up, or any researchers attempting to make the connection.
Alicia Swamy:Yeah, in your article, Dr. Campbell, you talk about this being the great masquerader you know, or the World Health Organization, categorizing mold illness as the great masquerader. And it's concerning for a lot of people and especially like, people like us who have suffered through it. Can you offer maybe some bit of advice or some bit of hope for those out there that are listening that are trying to get through this?
Dr. Andrew Campbell:Well, I think I as a medical doctor, as a physician, I have to give everybody hope for getting better. That's the first thing we need us as human beings. Yes, you feel awful. Yes, you feel terrible, but there is hope. We can help and do something about it. The second thing is, I see patients with autoimmune diseases every day, rheumatoid arthritis, lupus that's affected their renal function, Addison's disease, Crisfield Jacob Syndrome, etc. All these are autoimmunities. There's over 100 autoimmune disorders. Well, when antibodies to mycotoxins can form what are called AdOx. And these bind to human tissue, and when they bind to human tissue, they can trigger an autoimmune reaction. The key here is don't treat this as an autoimmune disease, treat this as being caused by mycotoxins, and lo and behold, your autoimmune thyroiditis will go away. Your Addison's will go away. I have a I have a 23 year old with MS, he was barely able to get up from a chair and walk across the room because he was having trouble coordination and weakness, etc. He has full reflexes, now. He's exercising. He couldn't dream of doing that. He has a job. He's, he's functioning, he's a happier person. So first thing is always give people hope.
Erik Johnson:I'd like to make a point about the great masquerader because you spoke earlier about mycotoxins shutting off natural killer cell function, which is one of the most important parts of your immune system, your first line of defense. And rather than look for specific set of symptoms, it's important for people to understand that if your immune system is shut off, just about anything can happen.
Dr. Andrew Campbell:Yeah, yeah.
Erik Johnson:So the main thing to look for, in my opinion, is that any infection you have any problem you have, it's going to surprise doctors because it's going to be worse than they expect for whatever it is that they identify. So anytime you have the signs of failing immune system, be sure to look for the great masquerader, the mycotoxins.
Dr. Andrew Campbell:Well, I can't claim that name. It's, it's the name that was given by the World Health Organization to mycotoxins. The great masquerader of the century, because it masquerades as other diseases.
Alicia Swamy:Well, thank you so much, Dr. Campbell. Was there anything else that you wanted to talk about today, before we sign off, we're just trying to be mindful of your time here.
Dr. Andrew Campbell:No, just to let your listeners know that there's hope, that you can treat this, that you can get rid of it, and you can lead a normal life.
Alicia Swamy:Thank you so much. That is probably one of the best pieces that we can hear today because a lot of people are living in a very, very fragile, hopeless state. Just knowing that it is treatable, is relieving. You know, very, very relieving. And, again, thank you so much. Well, thank you everyone, for listening today, we had the pleasure of Dr. Andrew Campbell coming on the show to talk about the links between mycotoxins and Autism and Crisfield Jacob syndrome. And he also provided some really important information about testing, and how just the country is dealing with mold illness at this time. So if you like our content, please, please go ahead and subscribe to our podcast channels. Check us out on YouTube. We don't really promote there but if you'd like o see our faces, go on YouTube nd check out our recorded essions. And if you can, please heck out our GoFundMe and atreon pages to go ahead and onate to keep this podcast unning. Thank you again and e'll see you next time.