38: Can Mold Be Causing Your Crohn's or Colitis (IBD)?

Mold can create all sorts of autoimmune conditions, including IBD. We're going to walk through the symptoms of mold, how to test yourself and your home for mold, and how to remove it from your body.


TOPICS DISCUSSED:

• Facts you need to know about mold
• How it gets into your home and body
• The systems mold affects (immune, microbiome, hormones, neurological, etc.)
• Testing your home and yourself for mold
• What to do if you find mold in your home
• How to get mold out of your body safely

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Transcript

Josh Dech:
Mold infections contribute to Crohn's and colitis up to 90% of the time in the clients that I see in my practice. So the question has to be asked: is mold causing your IBD? Well, you're about to find out.

Because I'm going to show you what symptoms to look for to see if you have a mold problem. I'm going to show you how to test yourself and to test your home for mold. We're going to talk about what it looks like to detox from mold safely and, of course, what's required to reverse the damage that mold has already done to your body after this disease has now manifested.

Contrary to what your doctors told you, Crohn's and colitis are reversible. Now, I've helped hundreds of people reverse their bowel disease, and I'm here to help you do it too. Because inflammation always has a root cause. We just have to find it.

This is the Reversing Crohn's and Colitis Naturally podcast. Now, I do these live trainings in my Facebook group every single week and put the audios here for you to listen to. If you want to watch the video versions of these episodes, just click the links in the show notes to get access to our Facebook group and YouTube channel.

And for weekly updates, information, tips and tricks, you can sign up for our email list by clicking the link in the show notes below.

Now, if you don’t know me—my name is Josh Dech. I'm an IBD specialist, medical lecturer, and physicians consultant, as well as a scientific strategist and education director for the Root Cause for Crohn’s and Colitis organization. And today, I am showing you how to begin the process of healing from mold.

Here’s what we need to know. Mold affects up to 70% of all the homes in the USA specifically—but also North America. And most mold actually goes unseen.

Now, this can be because there's cheap building practices, all these eco-friendly materials which harbor mold. We see poor construction practices, which end up leading to things like—if you’ve driven past a construction site where there’s just wood laying in the dirt and there's rain on top of it—maybe there’s a tarp that’s half-ass covering it.

This is where the mold can get in immediately, down to the studs. So there’s poor construction, cheap materials, poor practices in lumber protection not being treated properly—which leads to mold.

The common understanding is that, “Well, an old home—a 1950s or early 1900s build—might have mold.” The truth is brand new homes are typically worse for mold than older homes. And so we have to understand that.

Mold's also a frequent underlying factor or cause of autoimmune disease. It can even mimic Lyme disease—or of course worsen Lyme if you have it—as well as bowel disease. So it can look like autoimmune diseases.

Mold is very easily inhaled. It's very easily absorbed through your skin. So if you're in mold remediation, if maybe there's mold in your air ducts and you don't know about it, you can be breathing it in—and then that mold actually trickles all throughout the house, gets into soft materials like clothing, couches, curtains, drapery—all that stuff—carpets.

And then you absorb it and puff it up all over again. And it gets in and can colonize. And so mold can colonize in your sinuses. It can colonize inside of your gut. And colonizing means it grows like fungus—like you see mold on a wall—it does it inside your body if we’re not careful.

And so HVAC and AC units are also hotspots for mold. And this will get, again, toxins and everything—because they’re being dispersed throughout the house like bloody confetti.

And especially if you're in an area that has high humidity—typically 50 to 60% humidity, especially for more than a few days—that’s gonna grow mold.

If you’re in a high humidity climate, like Florida—that’s basically the United States’ basement. It’s hot, it’s wet, and there’s a lot of mold there as well—as well as many other places.

So we gotta watch for humidity. So there’s some hot facts we gotta know about mold.

But what I want to talk to you is about what mold is doing to your gut. What symptoms it's going to be creating.

So I'm going to go through each system in your body—everything from the gut, to respiration, to cardiovascular. We're going to talk about inflammation, cellular health, hormones, neurological—all kinds of symptoms or systems in your body that can be affected. And some of the main symptoms to look for.

There are multiple dozens of symptoms that can be a clear indicator of mold.

So let’s get into those.

The first one we’re going to look for that mold is going to affect, of course, is going to be your gut microbiome.

What is it doing to your microbiome?

Well first of all, it creates something called pleomorphing. It's just a fancy word that makes me sound smart—comes from ancient Greek. What it means is it’s changing the landscape or the architecture of your gut microbiome.

So if you have a really nice, healthy balance of gut microbes and they’re all looking really good, what happens when mold gets in there?

Jacks everything up. And it just creates crazy overgrowth.

You get overgrowth of fungus, you see an overgrowth of pathogenic—or bad guys—that are coming in. It wrecks your gut.

It also is going to start to break down the gut lining, or the integrity of the gut. And a leaky gut is one of the three pillars of autoimmune disease.

It’s going to disrupt all kinds of function and dysfunction. It’s going to create—it’s going to cause drainage issues, inflammation, and again causing fungus.

Mold is a fungus—but it’s going to cause other fungi as well, like candida, to overgrow.

You might find yourself with pseudomonas, klebsiella, citrobacter—nasty bacterial overgrowth. They’re called “opportunistic.” When they’re given an opportunity in a crazy wild home to overgrow—that’s what they do.

And that’s what’s happening inside of your gut. So mold messes up your gut microbiome. Big, big problem.

The next major thing we see mold creating for us is going to be a suppressed immune system.

What does it mean to suppress your immune system?

Well, it literally suppresses your body's ability to fight off infection. So you're actually more prone to infections, illnesses, viral infections, etc.

It can actually overactivate your immune system.

So it can actually take an immune system—which kind of like a teeter-totter is often well-balanced—and what it's going to do to that immune system is it's going to shift that balance and cause crazy increases or decreases in your immune responses. So it's no longer self-regulating.

You're going to end up having worsened allergies, asthma, bowel disease, rashes, hives—all kinds of like typical allergy-type symptoms as well. Histamine responses like MCAS or mast cell activation syndrome.

Maybe certain histamine foods like vinegars and probiotics cause you bloat—and that could be from mold, because it drives up oftentimes what's called this TH2 immune pathway, and it can increase your responses, leading to more trouble.

So you have to watch for that. If you have inflammation, it doesn’t have to just be respiratory inflammation like asthma—but you can have inflammation anywhere.

Allergy-type symptoms that are new, that maybe you didn’t have before—you’re like, “Weird, about a year or so before or after I got bowel disease, I started developing these weird allergies, sensitivities, stuffy, runny nose, sinus issues, etc., and now out of the blue it seems to come from nowhere.”

Well maybe it was mold that caused this whole cascade—causing your immune system to go out of whack.

The next thing that it does is we see chronic cases of inflammation.

Chronic inflammation is what you're experiencing already in IBD.
 Chronic inflammation is what IBD is—it's an imbalanced immune system that never got relaxed.

What does it do? Well, it actually increases inflammation in a lot of these areas that your body is actually working actively to try to fight.

And so what I'm writing on the board here is we've got certain inflammatory pathways and cytokine pathways. Just for the sake of this, we're going to call these:

Interleukin-6,
Interleukin-1 beta,
and TNF-alpha.

These are three primary inflammatory responses. If I’m not mistaken, they're driven up by stress. But drugs like Remicade and Humira suppress these same immune pathways.

When they're overactive, you have inflammation.

What does mold do? It causes inflammation in these same pathways.

You get stressed out? You're inflamed—same pathways.
 You get mold? Inflamed—same pathways.

Drugs are trying to suppress it. So if they're trying to suppress it, is it possible you're suppressing a reaction to mold?

Why not?

I see it as a main driver all the time.

It can lead to neurological inflammation, autoimmune conditions, chronic fatigue, and all kinds of stuff—especially under chronic inflammation.
What else is mold going to do to your body? How do you know if it's in there?

Well, let's look at it. Mold can create what's called mitochondrial dysfunction.

Mitochondria—if you think of them kind of like the battery house of a little cell—these are the big guys.
 We need these.

They create all kinds of types of energy for us, they help keep us running, they create our first-line energy, etc.
 Very, very important.

But here's what happens: mold actually blocks the production of ATP energy.

So your body cannot create the energy that it needs to get you to thrive.

It can lead to all kinds of issues like oxidative stress, brain fog, poor recovery, and memory issues,
weakness—like severe weakness sometimes—chronic fatigue.

Now again, it’s all on a spectrum of how bad these things can be,
 but that’s effectively what it does.

It creates low energy production, and all the things that come with it—brain fog, fatigue, weakness.

So that’s a bad thing. We always want to make sure that we are trying to clean this mold out of our system
 or get ourselves out of these environments.
The next thing that mold is going to cause issues with—we’ll run over this one pretty quickly—is hormones.

If you have estrogen dominance—too much estrogen—maybe around your menstrual cycle you're getting a lot of PMS,
breast tenderness, severe inflammation, anxiety, you're having issues...
This is what can be created from mold.

It can drop testosterone levels as well.
Cause thyroid dysfunction, all kinds of things—because mold.

We also see a lot of issues with neurological dysfunction.
Again, that comes with the chronic inflammation, but let’s talk about neurological.

This one goes deep.
 I've seen this a lot with people.

Neurological dysfunction—like brain fog, memory loss, loss of balance,
dizziness, ringing in the ears, mood swings like anxiety, or even panic attacks.

Because it drops your dopamine levels and decreases serotonin production—
also by messing up your gut, where those neurotransmitters are made,
but also the inflammation it can create in the brain.

Lots of issues that can be created from mold.

 Other things we’ll see is going to be dysregulated detox pathways,
which burdens your liver, burdens your kidneys,
impairs detoxification.

What else can mold do for you?

If you got issues with your sleep,
mold can actually decrease the production of melatonin.

So you're not going to sleep very well.
 You're going to find yourself not getting to a deep sleep.
You're going to find your cortisol dysregulated,
where like you're maybe waking up panicked or stressed,
or you're somebody who has trouble getting to sleep—
and then maybe you get to sleep and wake up 2 to 4 a.m.,
and then maybe it takes you a while to get going in the morning.

You have a spike of energy,
then an afternoon crash,
and a spike again at night time,
and you're doing this all the time.

That's cortisol.

So if you're not going to be sleeping really well,
 you're going to have insomnia,
you're going to be a light sleeper
or have chronic fatigue when your melatonin is not regulated properly.

And of course, you have inflammation—
that’s going to be respiratory.

So your lungs, your airways—
 asthma, bronchitis.

Maybe you're going to experience chronic congestion of the sinuses
or like a post-nasal drip that never goes away.

These can all be issues with mold.

You're going to find a depletion of a super powerful antioxidant called glutathione.

When you’re depleted here—
 big issue.

You start to collect more toxins in your system,
leads to chemical sensitivities,
poor tolerance of things like alcohol that your liver should be cleaning out but it’s not.

We can have cardiovascular issues as well.

So this might lead to frequent blood clots,
cold hands, cold feet,
poor oxygenation around your body that you might be experiencing as well.

And a lot of this also contributes to a lot of other main issues we have like
 poor nitric oxide production,
and all these things combined can cause issues like
dizziness, loss of balance, ringing in the ears, right?
Memory issues, along with neurological issues—they’re all connected.

So now that we know what your symptoms might look like,
we know 70% of US homes have them—

In fact, fun sidebar:
 Up to 40% of cases of asthma in the USA are attributed to mold.

Why aren’t we looking deeper into it for Crohn’s and colitis?

Well, here’s the thing—
 really, here’s another one,
 I’m just going to go sidebar.

Really good telltale sign that you might experience—
is going to be static shocks.

If you are somebody who frequently gets static shocks,
car, carpets, door knobs, cars, that type of stuff—
not like when it’s a bone-dry winter,
but just oddly, all the time—

Could be a mold issue.
So keep that in mind.

There’s always something to look for.

So here’s what we want to know—
 if you have any of these symptoms,
you might be worried about mold,
you’re worried that you might be having mold issues
that might be contributing to your IBD...

What do you do about it?

Well, let’s talk first of all about confirming some of this.
 How do we test for mold?

If you got mold, you’re gonna wanna know.
 I’m gonna wanna know.

How do we test?

Easy ways to do this—
 you can get a great little test. It’s called an ERMI—E-R-M-I.

Not terribly expensive in the grand scheme of things.
 You get them from a few places.

Immunolytics is a company—
I’m not affiliated, I just like them.
Amolytics,
Envirobiomics,
or TheDustTest.com.

Effectively what they’re doing is gathering dust from around your home—
that’s where mold settles—
and they’re gonna collect the dust, culture it, and say:

“Here’s how much mold you have.
 Whether it’s good, bad, Class 1—not a big deal.
 Class 5—move out immediately.”

So, you get some really easy dust testing done.
ERMI, or again, TheDustTest.com.

I like The Dust Test—
I actually just did an episode, I think it was #153,
with Michael Rubino.

He’s a celebrity mold specialist,
one of the top guys in North America,
if not the world.

He actually found and took the mold out of Gwyneth Paltrow’s bathroom,
works with A-list celebrities and athletes all over the place.
Brilliant dude.

He came up with The Dust Test.
It’s a form of an ERMI—if I understand correctly.
Don’t quote me on that,
but again—
Amolytics, Envirobiomics—200 to 300 bucks tops.
And you can test all the rooms in your home
and find out if you got mold or not.

Other things you can do as well?
 You can look up a mold dog.
DOG.
Dog—the animal.
They will sniff out your mold.

I’ve got clients, and I’m like,
“Dude, you’ve got mold in your home. I have no doubt about it.”
They’re like,
“Well, we’ll wait and see. We’ll try some other treatment first.”
I’m like,
“Okay, fine, if that’s what you want to do…”

We press and we press—
 “Look, you’re not getting any better. You’re chronically sick,
you’ve got all these issues, you’ve got allergies,
your immune system can’t keep up, you’ve got neurological issues,
you’re inflamed, you’re—whatever.”
It’s gonna be mold.

So they’ll buckle and finally test.

“Okay, I’m gonna test my home for mold.”
 And these things come up like crazy.

Now—
 the question might be asked:
 One client in particular had actually done a mold test in her home,
 and it came up crazy high.
Like Class 4.
“You guys should move out immediately.”

She’s like:
 “Dude, we just renovated the home.
It’s brand new. We checked already for mold, I think, prior—if I’m not mistaken.
But new renovation, new add-on—
we can’t afford to move. We’re not gonna move.
It’s our dream home.
We just re-mortgaged our house to build on an addition to the home—what am I gonna do?”

So what they did—
 they found high levels of mold through an ERMI test.
Then they went back and said,
“Okay, let’s see if we can find where it is specifically.
We don’t gotta tear the house down or move.”

They hired a mold dog to come in—
and it found the hot spots.

Go figure:
It was in the ventilation.

Now here’s the issue.
Ventilation systems spray air everywhere.
So those mycotoxins—that’s the mold toxin—
they get into everything.
Every soft surface,
every carpet,
every couch,
your clothing,
your curtains—you name it.

So it’s gotta be decontaminated.
It’s gonna cost them ten grand
to fully decontaminate the home
and clean out the HVAC and everything.

But at the end of the day, they were willing to do it
because she was sick,
her kids were all sick,
her husband was sick—
everyone was sick because they were living in a toxic home.

You cannot get better.
You can only get as much better as your environment will allow you.

If you’re in a moldy home,
let’s say you should get better this much—
all the way up—ten feet tall of better,
well, if you’re in a moldy home,
you can only go up two feet.
Or three or four feet based on your biology and how hard you’re working.

Right?
 It’s like trying to pour water on a fire while you’re pouring gasoline.

You can’t heal a broken leg if you walk on it every day.

Same concept.

If you’re continually re-entering a home
that is continually retoxifying your body,
and you’re getting mold everywhere,
you’re never going to heal.

So you have to—
A: look at remediating the home.
B: You have to look at moving.

Those are your options.

Now, there is a third option,
which is less than ideal.
Let’s go through these together.

So what do we do
 if you’ve got mold in the home
and mold is toxifying you
and causing you issues with your health,
or contributing to your IBD?

I’m going to put them in order for you, okay?

Number one: Move.
This sucks.
This is never a fun conversation.
It’s your forever home,
your family home,
it’s expensive,
whatever your situation is—
maybe you gotta move.
I hate having the mold conversation,
but sometimes it’s gotta be had.

So if you have to move,
 you have to move.

The second one is going to be to remediate.

What does that mean?

You tear down.
It gets quartered off.
You need professionals,
because even a lot of professionals screw this up
and get toxins in the rest of the home.
I’ve seen that before.

But you need to tear down the wood or the drywall,
whatever it is—
repair the leaks,
the roof,
whatever’s causing the problem.

That’s where the mold’s coming in.
 It will forever be moldy until you fix,
remediate,
renovate—whatever kind of “R” word you want to do.

Okay, the next one—
if you say,
“Look, I can’t afford to remediate.”

I’m not saying cheap out.
If you can do it,
if you can afford it—do it.
If you're like,
“Ah, I’m going to Disney this year...”
Screw your vacation, dude—remediate your home instead, alright?

But there is kind of an in-between option,
which is like a “for now” thing.
This might help.
And this is going to be about taking care of the air quality.

How are we going to do that?

Well, if you’re like,
 “Look, I’m gonna move—but until I’m able,”
or “I’m going to remediate, but until I get a contractor in...”
Here are some things that we can do.

Now, this isn't saying bypass these options.
 These are going to be necessary 99.9% of the time.
Don’t assume you’re in the 0.1%.

Here’s what we can do:

We can start with some basics:

Open your windows.

One of the number one causes of human toxicity,
per the EPA,
is actually indoor recirculated air.
That’s in a standard home without mold,
let alone what’s already in there—
dust, chemicals, toxins, whatever.

So if you’ve got mold?
 Open the windows.
That’s the first thing.
Get as much fresh air through there as you possibly can.

f you know there is one room in particular—
like, I got three bathrooms in my house,
one of them is crazy moldy—
cool.

Close the door.
Plastic it off.
Just don’t go in there.

That’s a great temporary option for now, okay?
That’s middle ground.

Now, you can also know that HVAC and AC systems
are huge places for mold.

So what do we do?
 Let’s close up some of those AC units
or we’re going to close up some of those vents—
like your central air HVAC system.

Just close off the vents.
Put plastic up, tape it,
so air can’t get through—or as little as possible.

And here’s one we need to talk about—
 think about the cabinets in your bathroom, right?
If you look under the sink,
you’ve got those little cabinet doors?

Great, I’m an artist—yay.
Think of that little crack between the cabinet doors.

When you walk past it—
 that little slit?
There’s enough air to get through there
that it will spread mold toxins all over the place.

So we have to watch for that.
Any type of airflow can cause some kind of issue for you here, okay?

Second thing we can look at—
get filters.
Air filters or HEPA filters.

You can even get these on Amazon now.
I know AirDoctor is a good quality brand—
no affiliation, I just know they’re solid.

You can get these filters for your home.
Some people need multiple.

Maybe you even need a dehumidifier.

What’s a dehumidifier gonna do?
 Well, remember we talked about mold loving environments
 with over 50 to 60% humidity?
It thrives in that.

So, if you can take the humidity—
the moisture out of your air with a dehumidifier for your home,
it’s going to restrict the growth of mold.

Now here’s something else—
 and this one sounds super weird—
but turn off your Wi-Fi.

Yep.
 I know it sounds nuts,
 but Wi-Fi can cause mold to grow up to 500% faster.
500%!

If you’ve got Wi-Fi in your home—
 Number one: shut it off at night as often as you can.
Maybe throw a Faraday bag over it—
you can get one on Amazon.

Number two: hardwire your devices.
Get a wire—like an Ethernet cable.
Plug it into your computer, your modem.

Take down the Wi-Fi,
cut back on those EMFs.
Put your cell phone on airplane mode when you’re not using it or when you’re sleeping.

Take down the EMFs—
 take down the Wi-Fi.
 Because it causes mold to grow like crazy.

Now, the other option we can look at—
 instead of ripping down your entire home—
is maybe you strategically renovate
piece by piece.

So—
 bathroom’s the moldiest?
 Cool.
 We’re gonna start there.

Maybe it’s gonna cost you $10K,
maybe less, depending who you hire.
(Hot tip: don’t shop mold remediation on Craigslist, okay?)
But you can get that mold remediated one room at a time.
And even that will help take care of the total load of mold in your home.

So just start with the worst offender,
and work your way through.

Now—
 we’ve dealt with our home.
 We’ve dealt with our environment.
We’ve decided to either
move,
remediate,
or throw a Band-Aid on it in the meantime
before we can do one of the first two.

And that’s okay.

But now the question becomes:
 what do we do about the mold inside your body?

Because even if you fix the house,
 the mold doesn’t just magically leave your system.

So the question now is,
what do we do about the mold in your system?
There’s a couple of phases here.

Phase one —
 we remove the source.
Right? We've already talked about that.
Remediation, fresh air, closing off vents —
whatever you had to do,
you’ve taken care of the environment.

Now comes phase two —
 we remove the mold from the body.
And this is where we start talking about binding.

What does that mean?
 It literally means you bind the mold.
You capture it, you collect it,
and you help escort it out of the system —
preferably through the stool.

Some binders will actually trade ions —
they’ll say,
"Hey, liver! I’ll swap you this magnesium for that nasty mycotoxin. Cool? Cool."
And out it goes.

Of goodies—there's lots of them out there. Things like humic and fulvic acid, charcoal, chlorella, zeolite, bentonite clay, certain probiotics like lactobacillus species or specifically Saccharomyces boulardii. These are great probiotics that can bind onto mold.

However—big, bold, capital, underline with an asterisk on it—seek professional help. If you bind too much, too quickly, you can throw yourself in the hospital. You can get very, very sick. Do not address mold without at least consulting a professional.

I'm not saying you need to work with one for two, three years—it can sometimes take adults to detoxify, kids are pretty quick—but it can take a long time. I'm saying get over the hump, get over the bulk of it. Seek a professional.

It involves—yes—removing and binding it. It involves proper drainage support. Remember we talked about it compromises your toxic load—your liver and your kidneys. These are going to be junked up. They're going to need support.

They can also create what's called biofilms. Mold can cause biofilms. If mold is causing films to build up within your body or in your bowel or in wherever it is—those biofilms need to be broken up. But those biofilms are like a thick layer, and all these toxins are actually held inside these biofilms.

What happens when you burst these open? Well, they go everywhere—into your blood, your lymphatic, etc. Triggers immune responses. Now you're inflamed. Back in a flare. Back in the hospital. We have to be careful with that.

It's going to require a bit of immune control—because remember—mold is already imbalancing your immune system. What we need to do is regulate this as we're detoxing, as we're cleaning your system out. We have to regulate the immune system. There's a lot of layers to it.

And then we also have to—as a fifth layer—is going to be reverse the damage done.

Mold—we talk about what it does. It creates neuroinflammation, chronic inflammation, immune imbalances, pleomorphing—where it changes the landscape of your gut bacteria causing overgrowth. Causes leaky gut. Damages gut lining. This damage has to then be reversed.

So if you go to just arbitrarily take a bunch of binders—you can make yourself very, very sick. So we want to be very careful with that.

On the other hand—seek a professional. If you're worried about mold, we can get you testing. You can test your home and you can test yourself through something called like an OAT—or an organic acid test. Can detect some strains of mold.

Or go and get a mycotoxin test. Some of the labs that we use—most need a practitioner—but they'll detect up to 36 strains of mold as determined to be the most toxic or harmful for the EPA.

Great example is—why is this important?

I had a 5-year-old boy—he’s now six—we’ve been working with. When he came in to see us with his mom—severe ulcerative colitis. Bleeding from the bowel. Doctor said, "It’s genetic. Take these drugs for life." I said, "Bullshit."

We checked him out. Turns out it was a mold infection. He had 16 strains of highly toxic mold in his body. The mold was in the home. It was a brand new build—3 years old. They couldn’t see it. It was right down to the studs. They had to strip the entire home back to nothing—even sandblast—I think they used baking soda to blast all the mold off the studs before completely rebuilding and renovating their home from next to nothing.

Very expensive. Very time-consuming. But it had to be done. Because their kid was sick. Mom was sick. The other two kids were sick—with PANS or PANDAS, neurological issues. Dad was sick. The whole home—everybody was getting sick from mold.

And this is what we have to do.

So here’s what I’m going to say to you—if you’re worried about having a mold issue, you’re worried about what to do about it—seek a professional.

And here’s how you can do that. If you’re on YouTube or you’re listening on the podcast, check the links below. There’s a link there that you can actually—you can click to book a call with me and my team to see: is it a mold problem? What can we do? What do you need? What’s going to be required to get you the help you need to detox and remove this from your body safely—safely being the operative word here.

You can put yourself in the hospital. You can make yourself worse. You can go into a flare—drive what might not be autoimmune IBD into autoimmunity if not done properly under professional supervision. So be very, very careful when you guys are dealing with this.

We’re going to reach out, talk, to see what we can figure out. Is it a mold infection for you for sure? What does it look like to remove it? And can we help? That’s all it is—it’s a conversation. How can we help?

We’ve helped hundreds of people. We’re pushing 400 different cases of Crohn’s, colitis, fully reversed. Mold is a big problem. Is it a problem for you?

Now this is the time to go into questions. Let’s take a look and see what we got.

Charmaine had asked, “How do you determine if mold is your root cause and how do you get rid of it?”

Great question, Charmaine. How to know mold is your root cause?

Number one—symptoms. Symptoms and history tell us a ton. I had a gentleman come in, 21 years old. And he came in, his symptoms—he had neurological, he had a bunch of just little things. We talked about some respiratory stuff. His history lined up.

He was perfectly healthy, 21 years old. Started a new job and he was working in HVAC. Two months—three months in, he got IBS. Having been previously healthy. Three months after that—diagnosed with ulcerative colitis with blood in his bowel.

His doctor said, “Yup, it’s genetic. It’s because you’re Jewish. Jewish people get it more. Happens around this age, teens to 20s. Nothing we can do. Here’s mesalamine, take it for life.”

And he went, “This doesn’t make sense. How did this disease come out of nowhere? What do I need to do?”

He came in, I said, “Look…” Turns out the job in HVAC is where he got it from. Didn’t wear his PPE, and he got a mold infection.

Very, very common issue. Ochratoxin—a very nasty, cancerous, inflammatory toxin. Took us ten weeks to get it out of his system. He was symptom-free. Another couple of months to be sure—but after ten weeks, his symptoms were gone.

His doctor said, “Yup, you’re going to be on it for life.” And guess what—he’s still Jewish. Had nothing to do with—(laughs) I feel like Jim Carrey—statistics!—it had nothing to do with his ethnicity. It was all to do with the infection.

It just took 15 minutes of history.

So we can check your symptoms. We can check your history. Or—you can do a urine test, which can run between four and five hundred bucks.

So I suggest talking to me, because it’s free.

Mary—it was her son we’re actually talking about—she’s been very vocal about it. Huge advocate. She says:

“If you’re moving, test the home first.”

This is great advice. This is sage advice from a woman who tested fourteen different homes. They went out. They moved out of their home immediately, got a trailer. Dad and their boy slept in there. He was getting better very quickly.

Whole to-do. But anyway, they were looking to move to a new home—fourteen homes they tested before they found one—maybe fifteen homes—before they found one that had low enough levels of mold to be acceptable. To not create illness and disease.

So we have to check for these. Have to, have to, have to.
Joyce asks:

“How do we feel about the petri dish mold test?”

That’s an ERMI. You can just gather it up in a petri dish or a Ziploc bag and send it in. Those are great tests.

I would stick to the Envirobiomics, Immunolytics, or The Dust Test. They’re tried, tested, and true. I trust them. My clients trust them. So those are great.

Roshanet asks:

“Which one do you prefer between the ERMI, Dust Test, and Immunolytics? Any limitations in the test worth knowing?”

Not really. They all kind of do the same thing. They collect dust from around the home. The ones to avoid are the air tests—where they set up something like a tripod in the middle of the room, it sucks in the air, and says, “Oh, you do or don’t have mold.” Not very helpful.

The reason for that is mold collects a lot of dust. Mold is on the walls. It’s going to collect what’s ambient in the air, but it’s going to be elsewhere. So don’t worry about that so much.

A dust test, Immunolytics, Envirobiomics, ERMI—all the same stuff. I’m cool with that. I don’t really care which one you take. I think they’re all going to be equivalent as far as I’m concerned.

Now, one more time while we're going through this—I want you guys to know: there is help. You don't have to do this by yourself. If you're unsure if you're having an issue with mold, just ask me.

Comment—if you're on Facebook, comment the word “solution.” We're gonna have a conversation and say, “Hey, is it mold? Is it not? Here's what you can do about it. And can we help?”

If we can't help, don't worry about it. I'll send you to somebody who can.
 But if we can—getting help for your IBD and finally reversing this disease—is one word away.

Another question here from Roshan says:
 “Any thoughts about mold in the fridge? It’s unavoidable as it’ll appear sooner or later.”

It shouldn’t be unavoidable. It shouldn't be. If you're having mold recurring in the fridge, check your condenser.
There might be a water leak somewhere else, and that condenser, as it's sucking in air, is probably putting mold in your fridge.

So it's a condenser issue.

Check behind the fridge. Is there mold on the floor? On the wall behind the fridge? It's sucking spores into your fridge. It’s putting mold into the fridge itself, 'cause those spores then are gonna be on your food every time you open—

(dog noises)
That's my—come here Callie.
You guys, you're gonna meet the menace here.

She’s biting my microphone.

Every time that fridge door opens, you're gonna have an issue with mold. It's gonna get into your food, you're gonna ingest it, it's gonna colonize in your gut.

So check the area around the fridge and see if there's mold in your condenser.

We have a question over there?

Audience:
No, I had a comment.

Josh:
What's the comment?

Audience:
If you're building a new home, do not get a fridge with an ice dispenser or a water dispenser.

Josh:
Hot tip—if you're getting a new home, and getting a new fridge, and a new appliance—do not get one with an ice dispenser or a water dispenser. Yeah. Don’t get one of those automatic ones built in. They are huge collectors of mold.

In fact, you ever seen things like—you go to McDonald's or you go to like a fast food restaurant—the pop that comes out of those dispensers?
 Huge problems for mold.

I'd be willing to bet you'd find really toxic levels of mold—minimum 50%, if not more—of fast food restaurants across the country in their pop dispensers, or their water dispensers. They're gnarly.

Their ice dispensers. Even sometimes the milkshake machine. I've seen videos—again, you can fake anything—but I’ve seen videos of maggots in those bloody machines. And that's up to the franchisee who's running it to actually clean those things.

If they don't have the time, don't have the labor, they forget—whatever—it's gonna be toxic, you're gonna be getting sick.

So just get a distiller, man. That's what we got.
We take tap water, throw it through the distiller, and it gets our water out for us.

Thanks so much for being here.
 We're gonna see you next time.

One of my favorite things to hear as an IBD specialist is something along the lines of:
 “I learned more from you in 15 minutes than from my doctor in 15 years.”

And if this—for the first time—is really starting to click and it's starting to make sense, you're going:

"Wait a minute. This might be reversible. I think there's more that I can do. This condition came out of nowhere. It happened to me out of the blue. I was healthy for 10, 20, 30, 40 years—and suddenly I wasn't. And you're telling me there's no cause?"

If you're understanding finally that there is a cause, that something is driving this—I want to invite you to check the link in the show notes below. Send me an email, ask a question. See if a program is the right fit for you.

Because I promise you:
 This doesn't have to be a lifelong sentence.
You're not doomed to this.
And IBD can be reversed.