Functional Medicine Reality Podcast

02. Mold, Health, And The Middle Ground

• Dr. Mark Su MD, Functional Medicine Practitioner for Health and Longevity • Season 1 • Episode 2

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Mold is a real issue, but the conversation around it has become increasingly extreme and overwhelming.

In this episode, I’m joined by Mike Schrantz, an indoor environmental professional and long-time colleague, for an honest, grounded discussion about mold, sick buildings, and how environmental health intersects with human health in the real world.

Together, we explore how fear-based, black-and-white thinking has caused unnecessary stress, financial strain, and confusion for many patients. We talk about why mold illness is legitimate, but rarely simple, and why balance matters more than absolutes.

In This Episode, We Discuss

  • Why mold-related illness is real, but not always binary
  • The difference between what is common and what is truly normal
  • Why “mold free” is often an unrealistic goal
  • The concept of normal fungal ecology
  • How geography, season, and lifestyle affect indoor environments
  • Why most homes do not require extreme remediation
  • The role of fear, stress, and overwhelm in chronic illness
  • How sequencing and realistic expectations support healing
  • Why progress matters more than perfection

Key Takeaway

Healing does not require eliminating every possible variable.
It requires thoughtful decisions, realistic expectations, and reducing the most meaningful sources of stress and exposure.

Mold exposure deserves respect, not panic.

Resources Mentioned

  • Mike Schrantz, Indoor Environmental Professional
    Environmental Analytics
    Podcast: IEP Radio
  • Clinical care resource mentioned in closing
    Rootseek
    www.rootseek.com

This conversation is part of an ongoing series focused on clarity, nuance, and helping people get better without unnecessary fear.

Let’s get real and get results.


Dr. Mark Su:

I'm Dr. Mark Su and welcome to the Functional Medicine Reality Podcast. Join me and our community weekly as we bring you unfiltered health from inflammation to longevity. Real stories, real people, real solutions. Experience real life health changes from both patients and practitioners, and learn how to turn cutting-edge information into real results in your own life so you can feel better, live longer, live healthier, and be confident and clear in your healthcare choices. Let's get real and get results. Hi everyone. Welcome again to the Functional Medicine Reality Podcast. Today is our first session in a recurring cycle where I'm more than honored and heartwarm to introduce everybody to Mike Schrantz. Mike is an IEP indoor environmental professional. And he is, as we like to say, or I like to say, so we've got in the house today, no pun intended, we've got a doctor of houses in Mike and a doctor of people in myself. And so this is in our kids' language these days, Mike. It's a collab, right? Oh, is that what it is? Okay. Uh I might be outdated. So if I'm already outdated, I'm sorry, I just cringe moment. Yeah. Yeah, that might have been a cringe moment, but I'm pretty sure they're still using the word collab. So it's like doctor of houses, ex doctor of people. So that's what we're doing here, right? Yeah. That's right, bra. That's what I'm here to watch at my house. Oh man, we're date. We're gonna date ourselves. Anymore if we get into language down the road, somebody's watching this recording, they'll be like, oh, that is so old. Maybe we'll throw in a couple here and there, but we'll have to be selective. Yeah. So Mike and I, we came up with this uh this plan and idea because uh we've so we've known each other for what do you say, Mike? Maybe five, is it?

 Mike Schrantz:

I don't think it's been six, maybe five years. Yeah, that feels about right. Maybe back in the inaugural 2019 ICI thing or just after that, something like that.

Dr. Mark Su:

Yeah. I might I you were on the board already. I came on the board there. So the International Society of Environmentally Acquired Illness, I-S-E-A-I.org. Mike was a charter member, a key piece, uh key individual and key peacekeeping presence to the organization at the start, from my perspective, anyway. And I know I'm not alone. So those very one of those people that I was like when I was somehow I I don't know why still invited to be on the board. I was a little intimidated. Uh I probably never told it to you. No, that's the first time, and how ironic it was a mutual feeling. Oh, really? No, because I'm everybody else there's got presences and branding and identity on this stuff. And uh so yeah, but you were always really easy to very approachable, like just uh magnetic, charismatic, as everyone else knows, and people will people on here will get to know. But yeah, you've always been really easy to chat with, and we've had a lot of real meaningful personal and professional conversations over the years. What's what we're looking to bring to the table going forward on a recurring cyclical rotational basis in this uh in the functional medicine reality podcast is an opportunity where Mike and I are gonna chat, not always, but very focusedly and predominantly on the topic of mold-related illness, mold illness, where he's a doctor of houses, I slash we are doctor of people. And it's an opportunity where the IEP and the human clinician are gonna chat about the that topic in particular in in context of how do we think these things through, coming at that problem from both ends of the spectrum for any given patient or a spectrum of patients. So we're on the board together with this organization. We have had many conversations professionally on how we interact and help patients or clients get better faster and how we navigate those decisions and complexities and challenges with the healthcare topic when it pertains to mold exposures in homes, businesses, et cetera. So, with that being said, Mike, let me let me let you do a self-intro because I wouldn't do it justice with your credentials and your background, professional experiences, et cetera.

 Mike Schrantz:

Sure. I'll take people on a quick ride here. I started with indoor air quality when I was 16 years old, working with a family-owned business for air conditioning. So I wasn't doing the work I'm doing today, but I was learning about the fundamentals of building science, airflow, pressure differentials, basically how things can move from one location in a home to another. I evolved, graduated high school, went through college. I actually got my degree originally in operations management at a at the business school at the University of Arizona, Eller College. And while I was doing that, I acquired some entry-level, eventually upper end accredited certifications, which means something in our industry requiring eight years of experience and all this other stuff, board review that really got me involved in the topic of indoor air quality. And what got me was I remember my mentor, my great uncle, who had passed away a number of years ago, we would go out to homes with complaints, because people may or may not know this, but whenever there's an odor or health complaint, a lot of people think it has something to do with the air conditioning system. So they would naturally call the air conditioning company up. And that led to my mentor creating an indoor air quality division, of which I was the mentor. We would go out and we would ultimately solve problems, answer questions that other people could not. And that was fascinating to me because I felt this sense of value of wow, we're making a real difference. That led me into the work I do today. Really got passionate. I was doing all sorts of work in scepters, commercial, industrial. I was working in hospitals, helping test out neurosurgial, neurological operating rooms, like things like of that nature. And one day I met a doctor in 2014 who said, Hey, I seen one of your reports from one of my patients, and it looks like you really do a thorough job. Introduced me to what you and I call this community, this functional diagnostic, naturopathic world of work dealing with patients who suffer from something that maybe conventional medicine might not address. Fell in love with it, got really deeply involved in that. And I'm over fast forward, I this is year 28 for me that I've been in the industry. I've been working with over 7,000 clients. It's been a privilege and very humbling. And that responsibility of where I'm at in my journey right now, Mark, is is really just speaking the truth and giving context to things. Because on the flip side of all this, is one of the issues is of course we're worried about exposure in homes and buildings. But there's so much overwhelm that I've really wanted to make it my focus in this chapter in my life, at least, to clear the air up, to no pun intended, to really just provide some peace of mind and comfort that we don't live in a world surrounded by plutonium, but we also it's that balance, right? It's that fulcrum of what's not taking it serious enough, but what's also being extreme.

Dr. Mark Su:

Yeah. You comment on a couple of things that you know it's I just affirm what I love about you. So one is we're we come from a similar fabric of we we love being of service and uh being of help to people, but it ultimately uh you touched on the word value, you know, just being of value to people and uh and then seeing them benefit right to whatever we can do as uh bring to the table in service to humanity. And yeah, the uh the integrity. I know something that you said, I'll just affirm also that a lot of what uh Mike and I share as uh as values are uh so our authenticity and integrity. Some way in some ways I think we and I we would agree that we hold our s we're we're our own worst critics internally, each of us individually. We hold ourselves to high standards, sometimes arguably unnecessarily or too high of standards. We're no different than anybody else. We're human, we've got a human nature, whether you want to call it human nature or uh sin nature, whatever the case may be. We're no different than anybody else, right? We don't we're not better than anybody else, but we hold ourselves to high standards and we uh we want that of ourselves and we have expectation that is a benefit to our clients and patients.

 Mike Schrantz:

Amen.

Dr. Mark Su:

Yeah, and I think that's when you speak to part of a real focus point for us with these recurring sessions. Yeah, we're gonna focus on clinical stuff, especially with the uh health-related stuff, especially the mold illness topic, because that's an intersect of topic between the environment and the person, right? That's the big this is a really rare window of opportunity for people to see and experience how an IEP like yourself and a human clinician like myself, how we can collaborate and what those intersects are for the person with their specific health issues. But on a higher, on a greater level, you and I are also really minded about the fact that you just said, there's so much information out there right now, and it's just gonna magnify with AI and everything, right? Where I'm convicted, I shared this with you, that more and more our roles, individually, collectively, as practitioners, whether the whole environment or the person, I really believe we're gonna shift more into playing a greater, have having greater value in the role of guiding and counseling people to clear and create clarity and clear the noise from all the extra stuff going on that we're all like there's just complexity with all the information.

 Mike Schrantz:

That's 95% of my clients that come to me. You're right. Two quick points is it's a relationship. How many people who have health issues or struggles deal with the concept of the health of my body and the health of the building? Those are two major pieces. And being able to see Mark and I, hopefully today provide value and clarity on those things because so many people come to me and we end up spending the first 30 minutes deconstructing thoughts that were concluded or felt or heard. And there is good information, but how do you sift through that? You we still have polarization in our industry where some people would say, oh, absolutely, and we'll get into these topics another time, perhaps, but yeah, fog the home, don't fog the home and all these issues. So I'm I'm really thankful, Mark, for this opportunity to give clarity to the audience and back it up with science and logic where we need to to give those individuals who might be struggling. They're just dealing with this journey a clear path forward to that finish line of getting recovered and healing.

Dr. Mark Su:

Yeah. No, we're yeah, I love that. I love that. We're doing this, I'll admit up front, just we talked before jumping on here, like how much we wanted to script this out or not script it out, but we're both a little bit of the uh yeah, perfectionist mentality for both of us. Again, high expectations. Yeah, I might have preferred we inherently that we script it out a little bit more, but we decided, yeah, you know what? We're pretty good. We feel the magic in from client and patient feedback and just internally that things go pretty well when we uh have a framework of things, but we're not gonna over script this. So yeah, it's I like where this is going. And uh and I think this is what, but we are focused, we are honing in on these are the things, these are the values and the goals that we have underlying with the cyclical rotational piece of the podcast as a whole, where part of it is the health clinical part, but part of it also is the bigger picture of clear creating clarity within the noise and bringing value in that regard because we you and I both see both practitioners and patients and practitioners who are patients themselves going in all kinds of directions. And it's not a judgy thing. We're not here to judge anybody at all, but we just want people to feel better faster, get better faster, and not spend unnecessary time down rabbit holes because they were persuaded or misunderstood or misperceived, something they heard about, read about, whatever, or learned about through any avenue of social media podcasting or whatever else can may be the case, and waste their time and have lost, lost opportunity to just get better.

 Mike Schrantz:

Yep. Saving time, money, and energy for the patient is my ultimate goal.

Dr. Mark Su:

Yeah, for sure. So today, can we should we just uh shift in? Do it, let's get it raw. All right. So today we're gonna so we're focusing on this topic of we're just gonna jump right in to now we're gonna shift from high level to right into the weeds, all right, on one one focal topic just to start off with. We chose this topic just because it's something that you and I, Mike, we've talked about many times over many years, and uh there's a reason it's still a hot topic. And you said recently that it's still, it's even now, you said it's near and dear to your heart, it's forefront of your mind, even lately. For me, anytime there's a topic that runs the length of time, there's a reason for it. And so the topic here is when it comes to unhealthy environments, a sick building, specific we could say a moldy building, whether it's a home, business place, workplace, or whatever. When it comes to a moldy or unhealthy environment, okay, so I'm gonna say from a clinician's perspective for me, when I was learning this stuff years ago, there was a teaching, a community, there's a school thought, community of practitioners and/or IEPs or collectively, whereby you gotta get out of the moldy environment, right? If you want to get better, you gotta get out of the mold. That's like pretty much the common phrase, the common thing. And the evolution. So I'm just gonna set the stage and say this is the premise, and then we're gonna talk here. I'm gonna throw it back to you as to where are we at now in the shades of gray, if we start off with a more black and white paradigm, binary paradigm of saying you've got to get out of the mold environment, right? The term that we've heard many times is you need to be in a mold-free home or mold-free workplace or mold-free environment, et cetera. So yeah. And that black and white paradigm has, in my perspective, I'm pretty sure you I'm I know you would agree too, to whatever degree, it has become less black and white, it's become more gray. So here's the first question here's this. So, what do you think are the origins for that that more aggressive binary stance, if you will, that position on needing to really achieve that that highest standard of cleanliness to say it's got to be mold-free? Do you have any thoughts? I don't know that I have a thought, because you've been around that, especially on the obviously on the environmental side, you were in this world before I was. Where do you think do you have any thoughts on where the origins of that came from and how much of those principles' origins are still valid? Or what do you still cling on to now as still valid, but even if it's a little more gray than it was?

 Mike Schrantz:

Your point about it being black and white, where it started, mold's always been around, right? It's been here before we were here, arguably, depending on what your belief system is and other things. But what we noticed was an extremess. I've joked, you've heard me say this before back in the 50s and 60s. Grandpa would just say, quit being a sissy, suck it up, and deal with the moldy basement, or let's just put some bleach on it because if it's dead, it's not an issue. And there was a portion of the community that was like, wait a second, that the person's still sick, they're not getting better. And we didn't have terms like CIRS or biotoxin illness or other things like that to describe it decades ago. But there was this movement, and the movement was healthy. Majority of the movement, in my opinion, was healthy. The idea of saying, no, it was more than just spraying bleach on it or saying it's old, that yeah, that it is mold there, but it's been there for 15 years. We got away from that and we educated through science, through research, that dead or alive mold can still be an issue, an exposure issue. And that's all great. I think, and again, we all have our bias, and I try to really to Mark's point earlier about us trying to be authentic and be able to provide a source of trust and balance and reliability in our words, is that like many things in life, we went too far. And when I say we, I'm not necessarily referring to Mark and I, although I'm sure I've had my moments of flaw, is that now it was like we would use terms to like mold free was huge is still huge, and it especially was a trigger. This idea of people aren't getting it. We're hiring mold remediation companies to come in to remediate something, and they're still leaving mold here. So we're just going to lay it down and say mold free. And again, the concept of mold free was fine, except people didn't always understand what that meant. And they thought literally mold free. Am I talking about the mold that's on the drywall that you should leave it there? No, you get rid of that. And we'll dive into these sub-details later as the topics present themselves. But what was happening is that people would then test their homes for mold, no matter what the method of testing was, and it would come back with normal backgrounds. See, we live on Earth, right? And so we have, we're breathing in as we're speaking, mold spores, mold fragments, mycotoxins from the outside. And what I mean to say to you is that we're gonna have a little bit of background mold. It's not going to be, by some people's definitions, mold free. And so moving forward, I think what happened is in the grays, we started to see a trending in the last, I'm gonna say in the last 10 years, you could argue either side of that number, but we started to see an aggressive nature. We had some of the pioneering doctors in the world, one of them, which is in here in Arizona, love this individual. But one of the things that always got me is he would tell clients, if you found any count of stacky, uh kind of a the Tom Cruise celebrity mold, everyone may know Stachybatris or know it by it being black toxic, that if you found any amount in the home, it meant you had a problem and you quote unquote had to get out of that moldy home. Two things real quick on that. First of all, that triggered many people, the limbic system, other things that came up where they were starting to freak out, because what they didn't realize is that, yeah, that one Stachybottrus 4 that you found in any kind of mold sample did show up, but maybe that's background. It's normal and it's normal background from the outdoors and nothing that you have to worry about. Our community today seems to be, when I say our portions of our community seem to be extreme. There's like this blind momentum to teach people, to educate people. This is, and this is the healthy side of the community. There's people that do things for more nefarious reasons. Mold is gold is a term. And, but in the healthy side, do it to the extremist, where it's not reflecting an outcome that you can achieve in your home because you live on earth. And so, my, as I say, as I'll land the airplane here, is where I'm seeing it now as people going too far. We're having people, when it comes to contents, throw everything away without any context. Just one comment, people that are selling their homes because of one sample without understanding how to interpret it, people getting going bankrupt, getting divorced. And that I have an issue with because that is not a science-backed led decision in the cases, many of the cases I deal with. It's fear-based.

Dr. Mark Su:

Yeah, so I'm gonna I'm gonna back, I'm gonna provide low context as I, you know, I've talked before, jumping on here, this awareness that we don't know who's uh who's listening in here per se. So for those uh for those of us who are listening in on this or uh are practitioners or whatever who are unfortunately familiar to too familiar veterans, I like to call it, of this topic with of mold illness. All right. If you know the term CIRS, if you know the term mycotoxins even, yeah, likely you've been around it and um we feel for you because you're you're a person who we can predict is suffering quite a lot. You've got a lot of symptomatology, chronic this, chronic that, could be numbness tingling, could be brain fog, fatigue. You and I could come up with a list of 30 items long within 30 seconds, right? Pain, disability, all kinds of stuff. And it can get really extreme. And then we got people who probably are there's probably some people listening here also who they don't really have as much background on what we're talking about. So just a couple of bullet points would be number one, yeah, there is legitimacy. We won't go into detail here today, but certainly, but there's legitimacy to sick buildings causing people health issues, right? There in conventional medicine, there is officially that term called the sick building syndrome. You know it uh better than I do. It's a legal term in as well. In fact, it's mostly in the occupational health arena within the clinician side. It's not something that primary care people deal with. They're gonna refer someone out. I don't even know how you'd really refer to, I just know it's in the occupational health arena. Sometimes you have to find somebody in a hospital setting or you work. For enough big enough company than someone HR who can point you in that direction. Nonetheless, it's not all non-conventional medicine, certainly. It's not like alternative medicine or woo-woo or whatever. Okay. So it's a thing. Some people are sick from the sick building. And then it's a variable, it's a very there's variability as to how sick people can get for a lot of reasons we won't get into today. And then there's also variability as to what m consists of that sickness of the building and therefore how the person might respond to it. And yes, I've met too many people, too many families where somebody's sick, someone else is not. And commonly for you and I, again for another time, why are why is it more common that women are more symptomatic than men or have chronic complexity of illness more often than men? We can point to conventional medicine. We know factually that autoimmunity is much greater in female than females than males as well, physiological females versus male. Part of it is the hormonal piece. We won't get into all that. But there's legitimacy to all of this. It just may not be mainstream and real common, familiar to everybody. But with that being said, I'm just highlighting what you commented on is that, yeah, the extreme the extremes, right? Whether personal life, professional life with what you and I do, political life, just across the board, it feels like the world is moving towards more polar extremes, right? Yeah. It's hard to be in the gray in the middle.

 Mike Schrantz:

Yeah, it feels like politics, and just as a quick 30-second insert into where you're going or where I think you're going, is that I have CIRS. And that means I have a susceptibility to exposure to certain things, including the environmental, like mold. And this is not, in case it's needed for some of those that are listening, this is not a plight of your it's all in your head. If you go on my own podcast, you'll see it's quite the opposite. It's about being a cheerleader for the balance because we have too many cheerleaders that balance the idea, the push of mold's a concern. We get that. There's natural healthy. I work with people that are having mold exposures on a regular basis who have very legitimate issues. I'm talking to the subset of people that maybe can resonate with the idea of this just feels too much, or they lack understanding and clarity that might help them justify remediating or cleaning something more. So it's speaking to that population because there's no doubt that there's sick building syndrome was coined in the commercial sectors when people were getting sick in offices and they couldn't figure it out. So they couldn't say it's due to mole. They say something in the building making them sick. It's a syndrome and that sort of thing. And that does stick for those individuals. These are the individuals that I'm focusing on right now are the ones that find themselves getting a little bit of analysis, paralysis, a little bit of overwhelm, but happy to acknowledge the other folks as well.

Dr. Mark Su:

Yeah. And stemming off of that, I'm thinking back to the comment you made where some of that context is that you and I both know that people who are sicker are understandably more desperate, especially, and then if they've been really sick for a longer period of time, they have waves of desperation, if you will, because who doesn't want to feel better, right? That's natural and understandable. So unfortunately, there's we we'd like to believe it's not the case, but it is, and we can flush this out on a lot of different levels over the future, future podcasts and otherwise. But yeah, whether on the clinician side or the environmental inspection and or remediation side, there are, yeah, there's some, there can be more extreme responses by the practitioners on either on either side of the equation and recommendations made that may not be so for me just saying they may it may not be completely wrong in a recommendation, but it's exaggerated and unnecessary, and there's a bias of revenue generation, right? It's a business thing. So you comment on the mold is gold phrase. And if I recall, that's the sort of remediator world where that gets around a lot.

 Mike Schrantz:

Yeah, exactly. It used to be asbestos, and now the focus is mold as a good way to make a lot of money. Not to say that every company out there leads with the dollar sign, worships the money, but that is an issue and it's an elephant in the room that comes up.

Dr. Mark Su:

Yeah, and so I I think back to when we started this at the very start, at the very beginning of this uh session where you said, yeah, trust is that's something that you and I hold as a very high commodity. We expect that of ourselves. We expect to present, keep ourselves accountable first, and then check ourselves, and then also present with with a trustworthiness, because I don't know, there's I would say the visa commercial, that's there's that's priceless. We may not always be right.

 Mike Schrantz:

No, there may not be a right and wrong every time, but even when you're talking like because we're trying to be so fair and and rec recognize the different subsets of what a person might be either practicing or experiencing. Listen, I we know clinicians that are spot on. Yeah, you're right. That look like they're having mold exposure. And thank you so much for bringing that to the IEP's attention. Let's see what we can do to help these folks out. There's also what we've noticed are trends of some clinicians who are learning, they have good intentions, but they don't really know and they blame the house on their the lack of the patient's recovery when maybe the modality of treatment not might not have been the appropriate thing. This to say it's yet one more thing, because when I was a kid, when my doctor told me I was healthy or had an issue, I believed that doctor. And so there's that issue of influence. But again, a lot of things that in the weeds that we're gonna sort through.

Dr. Mark Su:

So let me just jump into you, I alluded to earlier to that you said, hey, uh, this is still the forefront of my mind issue just of late. So let me just throw out why don't you give us a couple examples of let me think. Yeah, could can you give us some real life examples? We're not trying to throw other people on the bus, right? Uh we're gonna we're gonna work through this dynamic of we're not here to cast judgment or throw shade at people. At the same time, our priority and advocacy is first and foremost to the clients slash patients. And if that means that some people are gonna get upset or take us the wrong way or whatever, who are colleagues, it's not our intention, but we're looking out for the patients and clients first and foremost. Number one. So you're you said several times, uh it's been more than a year even, and again, I'm sure this is still going on. So you update me and tell us right now. You and I both know, and it's not necessarily with bad intention, as you just alluded to, that there are practitioners who of whatever scope of practice, okay, all kinds of different kinds of practitioners who might or have outright said to someone, you just test abnormal in with this regard in this regard or that regard. Sometimes it's a very simple, focal one test, might be it's a collection of tests. You need to move now. You've given me that example. You just alluded to it. Can you give us just a few examples of the spectrum of experiences you have as an inspector, where you have a client come to you or refer to you, or whatever the case may be, you connect with them, you don't perhaps you don't know the practitioner, et cetera, but you're having to, as you say, deconstruct and walk people back because there's gonna be some people, as you said, who they're so desperate, or as we talked about, they're so desperate. They've read about stuff, they've heard stuff online, podcasts, blogs, whatever else, and they believe that to heart. Oh my God, oh my god, oh my God, I'm living in a coffin, I'm gonna die, et cetera, et cetera. Thank you. And then you got other people who, you know, no doubt, especially when it's in the same family, and they're like, hey, how can you be that sick? I feel fine. Like, how could it be that we're there's no way our home is that bad or if bad at all, this is a crap, this is full crap. Because I feel fine. This is in your head.

 Mike Schrantz:

And I've heard stronger words, but very true.

Dr. Mark Su:

There you go. Yeah, yeah. Get why don't you give us a couple examples of what you deal with where the bottom line is you're having to deconstruct, and there's it's painting the picture of the binary paradigm of you gotta move now, you gotta throw all your stuff away, and why it's still an issue now, even after all these years.

 Mike Schrantz:

Sure. The one that speaks me the most, and again, I feel free to insert qualifiers as needed, Mark, but is the topic of let's just set the stage, we'll do it in bullet point. Patients feeling sick, patient goes to the doctor, does initial rights up, and then have them do some sort of a test, like, for example, a urinary mycotoxin test. There's different viewpoints on the use and value of the urinary mycotoxins. I think that I've seen actually some good use with trending data, but I also have seen, in my opinion, observation and uh listening to other clinicians who do it or understand it, that it can be misused and abused.

Dr. Mark Su:

And the example would be And I'm gonna just real quick, I'm gonna qualify for people who aren't familiar with it. Thank you. This is not a lab that is conventionally available. Yeah, this is a specialty lab, and you and I are familiar with this. This is a very hot topic among our communities, whether IEPs or human practitioners. But briefly said, this is a urine testing for fungal toxins or mycotoxins is the term.

 Mike Schrantz:

Yeah.

Dr. Mark Su:

And uh there's a lot of debate around it. We're not gonna get into it, but it's not available by your conventional practitioners.

 Mike Schrantz:

Yeah, thank you for that. Absolutely true. So you go to the specialist, they do the analysis or have you take the do the sample, and then they get the results back. And the lab comes back with results that indicate that you're elevated. You have more than what the lab, and maybe the opinion of the clinician feels is elevated, more than normal, more than background levels that you would normally have through, say, dieting, or rather, food that you eat that might have background levels, normal environmental, and drum roll, possibly from exposure to the building that has mold in it, producing mycotoxins. They take that single data point, and maybe with a few other things, they're feeling fatigued and they're feeling brain fog, and they'll tell the client you have a major mold problem, you have a significant one, and until you get out of that moldy situation, you won't recover. And right there is enough to paralyze a majority of the people that I work with. Maybe it's biased, but I like to think that I'm open-minded to the concept that it makes sense that would be paralyzing because they didn't tell you that you won the lottery. They're implying that your home, which is a major investment, it's where your roots of your family are for many people. It's where you grew up, it's where your kids go to school, that it's a problem. And nothing about that seems like it's okay, I'll just take one button or apply one chemical in my house, which we don't recommend holistically, but we can get into that another time. I bet it'll be better. It's a much more complicated. So then what happens is they're feeling overwhelmed because their clinician told them in the way that I said or something similar, that they have this problem. It's very factual based. It felt black and white. And then they'll either do some sort of do-it-yourself mold testing or hire a professional, NIEP, to come in and do it. And there's different sorts of examples, but I'm going to pick one that's very convenient. We can elaborate from there, Mark. Is they'll do some initial DIY sampling because maybe the disgruntled husband thinks this is all foo-foo, and the results will come back with mold on it, not knowing that might be normal background, they'll then start to become more worried and then start getting into the topics of do I have to throw away my contents? We only have so much money. What if we have a super effect? Right. It's a snowball effect.

Dr. Mark Su:

And they're reading stuff online and no judgment, but they're reading and learning stuff online along the way to reinforce those thoughts.

 Mike Schrantz:

The biggest issue that I had personally along this same topic is that when I was diagnosed, I did a gene test that looked at gene expression. And the most upregulated gene in my that they looked at was the gene that they associate with PTSD. And you'd think somebody like me would be so well prepared and have many resources, which is true. But unfortunately, a lot of those resources are some of the kinds of examples we're offering today. Longer story shorter, yeah, it's snowball effects, and then their mind goes crazy, and then they go, God, I'm gonna do my own research. God help you if you're a Google expert, because when you go online, you can find the worst of any scenario. Look up what causes headaches. It could just be you're dehydrated, it could be you have a brain tumor. And I remember my experience and I've heard the experiences of thousands of people, and it's very much in alignment with, yeah, my mind went to the worry of the brain tumor, as one example of a thousand of anything or mold, like, oh, you can't replace things, which is a subtopic of what we're gonna be hitting on today. So that is a classic example where I think that the industry is doing it wrong. There, there we're lacking context where we what's going to lead this evolution is not us. It's gonna be the patients, because more and more patients are asking questions that 10 years ago they didn't even know how to ask. They just assumed it. But this nonetheless, there still is a general trend of this extremeness. And I could go on with that example, Mark, about what that continues to snowball to look like. But usually what it ends up being is a defeated patient, somebody who feels overwhelmed that there's no way out. And I'm not a doctor, but I learned I listen and learn from a lot, including yourself. And what I have learned is that stress on your body, at times I wonder, Mark, if it's more has more negative effects to your overall health than the diagnosis except the susceptibility itself.

Dr. Mark Su:

Yeah. And I was just also thinking, connecting to a previous talking point we just had, was I gotta imagine that if a patient has a strong relationship and trust in whatever practitioner it is, when that practitioner says something like you just threw out, like you've got mold, you've got to move now, that patient's it's it that impression is gonna be much deeper and more sustaining than if I don't really give credibility to as a patient to that practitioner. So in a lot of and unfortunate, it's just a comment of mindfulness for us that for those of us as practitioners, us or our colleagues, et cetera, who value trust, we have to be even more mindful about what we are saying to people and being keep our keeping ourselves in check. If it's if we're that convicted, hey, we're that convicted. We're not, we're not, we wouldn't propose like you hold back or whatnot. But if we're not totally sure, we got to be careful about the extreme comments that we might make.

 Mike Schrantz:

Yeah. We've seen two scenarios too, where it one scenario along those same lines is a lot of the clinicians that I've listened to, and we have I have the privilege of being in positions where I have access to this type of conversation, is that they're putting a lot of weight and trust in the lab's analysis and interpretation itself. And again, we can save it for another topic, but there's questions about the validity of the sampling. Not to say that there's no validity, please don't hear me saying that, but just to say that is it so much that clinician can provide that level of confidence that you do have a major problem when we see a lot of issues. The other issue, too, just real quick, is there might be some people listening right now, Mark, where they're like, okay, yeah, I feel you. Um, I've been getting this little bit of overwhelm, was diagnosed with this, or had this marker that was collected, this measurement of my body, whether it was urine or something else. And then they hire an IEP. And then the IEP comes out, and this is a really a challenging situation for the patient and the clinicians, is that there's those folks that the IEPs that play doctor, they'll make comments about what they're finding. And I'm talking about a specific subset right now. Not every IEP is like this, but there's a certain subset that they'll make it sound horrible. It's like, how can you say that with the information that you've collected? You're you we know of people, for example, that are asking clients to tear down all of their exterior walls because of an experience that they had and they're making assumptions.

Dr. Mark Su:

And if it costs just to clarify, you're saying you're bringing up examples where an IEP is talking about test results that they conducted on an environment, and then you're saying sometimes it's carried out a little bit.

 Mike Schrantz:

Yeah, the snowball effect continues, and I'll say, and in addition to what you just clarified, because that's correct, is they'll also comment on the clinical stuff.

Dr. Mark Su:

They'll say that's what I was trying to, that's why I was I just wanted to delineate what you're talking about there. But okay, it goes both ways.

 Mike Schrantz:

Yeah, so it goes both ways. And so it's just, I guess you said at best it's the snowball effect. It's like all this momentum creates, and you mean with analogies, creates this mold monster. It creates this thing that may very well be bigger than what you're actually dealing with to a point that is significant. It's not tomatoes, it's the difference between you may have an issue or you may not have an issue, or a subset of that would be you have a major issue when really you had an issue that needed to be addressed so you could help recover better and quicker, but not as bad as you nearly thought it was.

Dr. Mark Su:

Yeah. I'm as I'm just listening to what we're talking about here, and I'm putting myself in the shoe of someone who's doesn't know or doesn't have the experiences that we have, especially as a patient, but perhaps as a practitioner too. So we start out by saying, hey, look, mold illness and health challenges resulting from a sick building of whatever sort is legit. Okay, we agree to that. That's a premise. That's not questionable. There could be variability as to how much who gets affected, but health issues from a sick building is legit. Then we say, okay, breaking down the black and white, okay, it doesn't mean it's the end game, or it's like you're destined for X, Y, and Z, or that you have to have a completely mold-free environment, or you're doomed. So now we're saying it's not that black and white. There's a lot of gray in between. And then we just threw out that, oh, some of the variables on the grays, what makes it shades of gray, is who's providing the information, right? Is it someone out of scope of practice? Is it out of line? We'll dare say, okay. Again, we're not judging people, but it that's legit to say I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna talk about what's a good, better decision for cancer treatments. That's out of my wheelhouse. All right. So whether it's a practitioner of a human practitioner making too much comment about a home environment or an IEP making perhaps too much comment about the human test results. We as practitioners, I think you and I would agree, we would put down a gauntlet to say a call to action to us as colleagues and our colleagues is let's tighten up where we've gotten loose on being out of our lanes. Um, let it be a sound.

 Mike Schrantz:

Right. Let it be a sound bite in case we have to refer to it again for those that don't hear what we're trying to say. Mold exposure, moldy buildings is a legitimate thing. I I know firsthand what that's like. I moved into a house that had four different remediation areas that we had to deal with. It's not that. There's plenty of cheerleaders, people who voice and talk and support that concern, me being one of them. What we don't see is what we're talking about. Oh, sure, there's people out there that do it. We know of a few colleagues that are in the same line of general thinking that we both have, but it's it's that call to action of saying, hey, the community is evolving. We are evolving in what we know and don't know about certain modalities of assessing a home, of assessing the body, determining what might be going on to a left to a certain level, and that you, the individual, the professional, the clinician, are making claims that are not in alignment with that, and that you're you need to check yourself. And because I guarantee you there's at least one person listening that has had that experience, and more than likely it's a majority of people who've gone through this.

Dr. Mark Su:

Yeah. Yeah. And then secondly, just taking off from there, secondly, as a patient, we're perhaps advocating that just be aware that there are a lot of variables in the equation that eventually distill into a recommendation for X, Y, and Z. And if as a patient, no matter if you're familiar with this or you're not, if a recommendation is being proposed with without mindfulness, and that's I know that's subjective, right? But without taking into account enough factors. Something feels off. It's too rush, right? Yeah. We could say that. If a recommendation is being made, whether it's by a human practitioner or a building practitioner, or ChatGBT, been getting a few of those lately, by the way. Or ChatGPT, there you go. Yeah, it that's great. Thanks for throwing that in there. AI, Chat GPT, whatever it is, if the if a conclusion is being made seemingly too what's what I'm the word I'm looking for, not urgently, but rashly, abruptly, that's worth ask stepping back and disallowing ourselves, keeping ourselves, limiting ourselves from attaching emotionally and mentally too strongly to that because those first impressions can be hard to undo. Yeah. I think that's what you refer to that.

 Mike Schrantz:

Yeah. So it's spot on. Spot on. It's just about, and it's not about going to your clinician on your follow-up visit and going, listen here, clinician, I got some words for you. It's about being mindful yourself for the different audiences, right? For the patient, that's who I'm talking to right now. It's being open-minded. And also as you're learning, as you'll learn more through this podcast, is getting proper education and questions that you might consider asking to help reinforce or raise the level of confidence that what the call to action is that the clinician is making to you makes sense. It checks out. But I'll just clarify one of a thousand things. Unless you are an outlier to the curve of what we normally see, most homes are not a burn it down. Most homes are not a throw all your contents out.

Dr. Mark Su:

I appreciate that because where I was going to go next was because I think I think you wrestle with this on some level too. But speaking for myself, it's easy for me to just get stuck in, oh, everything is a case-by-case basis. Because one of the difficulties with this arena in healthcare is there aren't more established standards. A lot of that is we just don't have enough information. A lot of that is there hasn't been enough research in this stuff, right? Or data provided. And a lot of that's because there hasn't been enough funding of interest on one level or another to do that kind of those kinds of studies of whatnot. So we're left to our own devices, right? And before I keep thinking to myself to say this, so let me say it now. One of the things I love most about Mike, so I'm speaking to the audience here, and I say this to patients all the time, right? And this is it's just that I consider, I've said this to you before, not news to you. You are, in my, to my awareness, you are the most networked IEP I know, right? And that's not a negative on anybody else. You spend a lot of effort, a lot of time creating relationships and keeping your foot in multiple different types of communities that have different schools of thought. This community, this is their thinking about mold issues. This community, that there's some overlap, but it's not the same. And that's not that's a very difficult place to be because as humans, it's a lot easier just to say, this is what I know and this is what I'm gonna do, and just keep it within my lane so I don't have to like think through everything as a new problem every single time. So you straddle this fence and you just are just you just are who you are. So people like you. You're a giver, you share, you collaborate, and so you have an awareness. I tell people, don't you don't take it the wrong way. I say, I don't know that he knows more than everybody. I don't know that he's smarter than everybody. I just know he has a greater awareness of the entire landscape than anyone else I know. So he brings more to the table with how to think through problems. All right. It's up to you as to how you how do you create a balance for yourself to keep sustaining that professional work. But so in the end, the complexity of it all is if I'm in a patient, I'm going like, okay, what's the answer here? What's the algorithm or what's the what's the process? How do I, how do I make decisions? And so you just threw out. So let's start with one extreme, one extreme side of the spectrum. That is most homes don't need the statistically, most homes don't need that extreme response that you just threw out. That you gotta burn it down, tear it down to the studs, throw everything out. If you statistically, it's unlikely you fit that bill. Some people might, but statistically, it's unlikely, right? Yeah. Okay. So now this is the hard question. So going back to like how much when how much is enough? Quinn is enough. Okay. And I don't know that we're gonna come up with an answer today, but I'm gonna dare to throw it out there for us to dialogue here. Assuming it's not, uh assuming a given case, a patient, a home, whatever in front of us right now is not in that extreme setting where it is a burn it down, tear down to the studs, etc. Yeah. How are you, what's your like bullet point, top three thoughts on current thinking or where you think we're going as a body of practitioners collectively, as to how do we determine when a enough is enough for cleaning?

 Mike Schrantz:

Sure. Oh. Okay. First thing I'll say, and then we'll go from here is the goal for virtually everyone, whether they're susceptible or not, is to achieve a status of what we call in our industry normal fungal ecology. NFE, normal fungal ecology.

Dr. Mark Su:

First time I heard that term, by the way. Thanks. The acronym, the acronym.

 Mike Schrantz:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I'm I probably should just say it out anyway because no one's gonna normal fungal ecology on the East Coast, like where you live, is going to look different in your home. Normal meaning what you would have, to clarify, to be what you'd normally have in your house from outside influence, outdoor influence. Your normal fungal ecology is gonna look different than my normal fungal ecology in Arizona. It's going to look different in your home in the winter versus the summer. It's going to look different in your home if you have carpeting versus a hard flooring. It's going to look different in your home if you have pets and active lifestyles versus a set more sedentary lifestyle and so forth and so on. But our goal is normal fungal ecology. And to the patient's concern is what's our action level. I hear you. Trust me, I was desperate for that.

Dr. Mark Su:

And to qualify that, when you say normal fungal ecology, uh just to clarify, that's as opposed to being mold-free.

 Mike Schrantz:

Oh, sure.

Dr. Mark Su:

Thank you. Because when you say normal fungal ecology, what you're saying is we're trying to establish just what's more baseline or an acceptable, non-inflammatory provoking environment of level fungus.

 Mike Schrantz:

And your yes, and that last point you made about the inflammatory piece is something I want to segue with you on. Normal fungal ecology is not saying it's normal to have mold growing in your HVAC system. That's not normal fungal ecology. That's an elevated level. It's normal to have mold in your crawl space. That's not might be normal, might be typical, but that's not necessarily considered to be a normal fungal ecology, especially. If that's I I love what you just said right there.

Dr. Mark Su:

Because I get patients ask me all the time, is that normal? Is that normal? And I always back, I commonly back up. Do you mean normal or do you mean common? Yeah, common. Yeah. Common is not normal. Yeah. Yeah. And that's what we see, by the way. And that's not necessarily common normal. Right.

 Mike Schrantz:

Exactly. And there's a there's another irony within that conversation about how you would think places like more humid, hot, like people like Louisiana, Georgia, Florida, all of these coastal areas that you would think there would just be ripe with talented professionals who really understand exposure. But what we have found is just a quick digress, is more actually they're more accepting of it being normal and accepting that as this is what we're going to do. We're not going to recommend any relocation to that. It's just because it's a challenging environment. But back to the topic, I think the issue with normal fungal ecology is that it's not down to a spore. Like I joke with my, if anybody listening has worked with me before, they might have heard me say, it's not like me know that 14 spores of a certain mold is fine for you, and 15 spores, your arm's going to fall off. To illustrate a hyperbole, if you will, but to illustrate this example that it's not that exacting, nor should you feel like your body needs to have that level of exacting, because as inflammation can be affected by many things, including stress. And maybe on a Monday, you're fine with the current level. And on a Tuesday, during your struggle to recover, you might have some symptomatic reaction, not to play doctor, but just we understand that there's so the question then becomes you say, What's the goal? What's the expectation? How do we know how much to clean? If we can clean, is we it does become a little bit of a case-by-case, in so much that it's, let's talk about what we know about your home. And there's some people that we work with that have done no mode sampling, no idea of what the environment looks like. And they don't have that extreme outlier of burn it down. That's just a normal home with maybe a few water stains here and there, maybe a small water leak. Maybe there's even one area underneath the kitchen sink cabinet that's got some mold on the bottom shelf, but nothing that would warrant an extreme, meaning you have to throw it all away. There's no way that you can salvage the cabinet. The sofa that's in the living room right next to your kitchen, it's porous and it's thin contaminated, which is a maybe a topic we can get into. And there's these assumptions that are made. And when you listen to the assumptions, which I hope we have opportunities to dive into a bit, they're not based off of science. They're based off of either qualitative observations, like it's there or it's not there, and understanding that, Mark, let me say this one thing. So I always tell people this isn't it interesting how if, because some people might be going, my clinician, my chat GBT search, my friend told me that if I find stack on a sofa, like not growth, but like a spore that's settled, it's a problem. I can't salvage it. And I find this such an interesting topic because if stacky botris or any mold, there's hundreds, thousands of mold, but we're just picking on it because it's the celebrity mole, lands on either one of our t-shirts from the outdoor influence. We don't think twice about it. You go throughout your day, you're launder your shirt, whether you have a diagnosis or an illness or not. But the second that spore was something that grew or rather was produced in the home, a lot of people in our community treat it like it's plutonium, in so much that now you don't try to clean your shirt, you have to throw it away. So you can pull me back into the type conversation that we're having. But our ultimate goal is normal fungal ecology. And some of that's having reference to what would be normal in this home. So, yeah, that's the tough question, right? Is well, how do we define normal? Yeah. You said outdoor. One one way, one way, real quick to define that is what is your outdoor environment? There is more to it, as you well know, but one place to start is what do your outdoor concentrations look like? What's out there?

Dr. Mark Su:

Yeah. So for me, so I'm gonna throw this out as a proposition as to, okay, I'm putting myself, I'm challenging myself, right? So I'm throwing these questions to you. They're not, they're hard questions, right? You and I both know. I don't know if there are answers to this. Okay. So I'm saying, okay, to be fair to you, Mark, if I'm asking myself that question from the human clinician side anyway, what's my answer going to be? If a patient's asking me, I'm here on this, this is informative, but what's the action point? How do you, if there's no standards and there's no way to gauge and there's no reference point to say what's normal or not, and you're telling me, hey, okay, yeah, I could gauge based on the outside, but hey, Mike, you just said what's normal outside or inside in my home, the same home, between the fall and the summer, and versus the winter might even differ within the same calendar year, what's normal? Okay, so I'm gonna, if I ask myself that, and so for I'll propose this to you, you edit for me. If I said, look, I just lost my train of thought there, just briefly. If I said to my, if I respond to a patient asking that question, I said, okay, so for me, this is how I approach it with patients, all right, is we're not, I'm not asking, I'm not trying to ask too much of a patient to be the doctor, or if you will, and I don't the practitioner, to the human practitioner. I'm not asking the patient to suddenly be an expert and be able to weigh in on that level of experience and familiarity of information, et cetera. But the truth of the matter is there's some, there's a good number of unknowns and yet to be learned topics here, but we're not, we don't want to wait 10 years before better, five to 10 years before more information is established so that we can make better choices. We got to make this choice now because you're suffering. You're having symptoms. Okay. So we're gonna make the best decisions we can. Yeah. Some of those decisions are gonna come down to one, the resources. Okay. All right, I'll say top two decision makers for me. Number one, and not in rank order, one is resources. I've had patients who tell me, and I don't know their, I don't know their financial status, right? I might have some some, so they they might have alluded to it here and there, but I don't know the details. But if they're telling me if I see our local IEP or they give me a report, if they tell me we got to redo the central air, we gotta tear down two walls in the basement, we gotta take out a wall up there, like we're doing it. All right. Yeah, it's money, but uh, but health is wealth, right? Another phrase out there, and uh we're gonna we're gonna do it. And look, they may not, I'm not holding to it, holding them to it, holding them to the fire. If they don't actually do it all, but they do 80% of it, then whatever, it's their choice. But that's the initial thought. Okay. They feel like they have enough resources to intend to take a more proactive approach. If someone's doesn't have as much resources, I think for me, in context of what you just described here, and again, I think we're on the same page that, you know, this what's what burned me with this question, what the burning fire with this question about how when is enough enough is that I heard and was taught all this stuff about you've got to get out of mold, you got to clean up. And I'm not thinking it's like literally mold-free, but we're saying it's got to be a drastic change. But I saw patients in my early professional learning and training with this topic, I saw patients get better who didn't have their environment changed, right? They didn't have the resources, they're in a upside-down mortgage, they're in a lease, they couldn't get their landlord due, blah, blah, blah. They were too tired or didn't have the bandwidth to take action or just hadn't got around to it. But we treated them and they felt better. And we'd always say, hey, look, you there's a there might be a cap to how much better you can be, but we don't know where that cap is per se. It's just, I just don't know. The bottom line for me was it's not so binary black and white, like you have to get out, or it needs to be 9% mold free. So we don't know the answer. But if you had the resources and you want to be proactive, I would support it. Yeah. But if you don't have the resources, it's not like a deal breaker. It's not the end of the world. And we just don't know where you're gonna land. So now we're just gonna do what we can and we'll see where you land. Is that how does that sit for you?

 Mike Schrantz:

Yeah, first of all, holistically, I agree. One thing that I wrote down that you just said was cap to how well you can be, alluding to the idea of if you only have so much time, money, and energy to address maybe a known identified source of contamination in the home. It's a it becomes a game of triage. And I'm comfortable having this conversation with you. I have my own flaws. And one of the things I worry about is someone will hear this whole podcast and then they'll, but they'll just focus on this one sound boy about it I'm about to bring up. And then that'll be like politics sometimes, how they'll just find the worst point that someone made for the sake of it. So I want to be clear that's my insecurity disclaimer. Is yeah, then we triage many of the clients I work with, okay, you can't remediate the crawl space. Understood. Let's try to seal it off then. That will cost a tenth, if less, of the cost of that. Oh, we can't do that either. And we really can just afford, we rent a home, so we can we can't even do much. The landlord has us stuck on a two-year lease and blah, blah, blah. And bottom line is I want to create as much of a sanctuary with these limitations. As soon as we figure out what those actually are, because one of the things that makes me as effective as I am is the trust earned to dive into their story because are can they afford it or or is it a legitimate thing? Because ultimately, source removal is the number one directive, no matter really what industry you're in. There are some people that don't necessarily even do that, but source removal has always been the SOP standard operating procedure is to remove that source. When you can't do it, then it becomes an issue of can we take the bedroom that you spend most of your time in and improve the indoor air quality, environmental quality in there by cleaning it, by cleaning the air, that sort of a thing. But I don't think you're wrong to your point. I think the reality of it is that through all of it, there's not a guarantee. I tell people not to motivate them because it might not be that motivating, is that you can spend $200,000 in sampling. You're not getting a guarantee that it's going to be enough for you because you have to be a DNA whisperer of your health and be able to go, oh, 13 spores is fine for you during the wintertime and 17 spores for you is okay in the summertime. And this is real talk. The goal that you know how you said we're just gonna point in a direction and maybe you're capped with the recovery. That's I know that's an uncomfortable statement in certain communities because they don't want you to graduate your health from an F to a C. They want you to graduate from an F to an A. Yeah. And I think we all can agree that that is the ultimate goal, but the reality of it is that it's not a perfect utopian world and that you might be an individual where you're at in your journey, you're able to markedly improve your environment and your health with proper treatment, but not necessarily have that textbook poster of what proper remediation, full remediation, full small particle cleaning might need. And there's a, I got to say to that point, Mark, I work with many clients where that is their deal. I'm fortunate when I get to work with individuals that have the income that say, I have the income, my health is more important. Short term, it might feel like an influx in the cost to remediate, but long term, I'm gonna spend way more money on treating myself if I don't address this. So you got to think about the short term, not to you, Mark, but to the audience. Short-term and long-term component to this, we just don't know. Now, some people have said, Mike, I hear you. We know that the goal is normal fungal ecology. We know that's a moving target and really it's a byproduct of where you live. If you live in the woods of North Carolina, your normal fungal ecology is going to look different in your home than it is in Tucson, Arizona, where I reside. But that once we achieve that result, it's not uncommon that we might work with the client to further improve the environment that you might say it's better than normal fungal ecology by way of concentration, the amount of outdoor influence. We're even lowering it now so that you have a better chance to be resilient during your fluctuations of treatment on your road to recovery.

Dr. Mark Su:

Yeah, so like staged or stepped sequenced approach, right? Yes, which great. I love that because we think about that a lot and within the routine practice, especially, but in my office as well. Like it's yeah, no, it doesn't need to be black and white, like zero to sixty in three seconds. We can break this down into steps. And that's for the, as you say, the limbic system, that whole mind-body connection and the sort of overwhelm, the anxiety around it all, the PTSD for in some cases, it's a lot gentler and easier to think about things step by step instead of like, how do I get from here to here overnight?

 Mike Schrantz:

And that is overwhelming. When people get served up this issue of health of their body and health of their home, it's the equivalent, if you bear with the example, of trying to eat an elephant in one go. And it's like many times part of that deconstruction that you mentioned earlier that I practice with people of their what their thoughts are, expectations, is that we break it down into digestible bites, because arguably, and maybe you could validate this claim or observation, is that person's health probably didn't get to where they're at overnight. And so it might take some time to get back to where you were. Good news is there's a lot of treatment modalities that will probably get you to the finish line that you want to achieve. But to say that you can take one pill, to say that you can do one red light therapy, and I'm joking, I have no context of where red light therapy might play in treatment or recovery, and then the next day you're gonna feel 100% is a fantasy that I wanted, but in my particular case of treatment and recovery was not the case. It took me a number of months to get me back to where I needed to be.

Dr. Mark Su:

Yeah. And I think tagging on what you're saying, we're not, we're clearly not saying, oh, you don't need to clean your environment as an extreme statement. That's not, yeah. We're not saying that more clean it doesn't matter than less clean. We're not saying that. We're saying it's not a binary black and white game-changing deal breaker if you don't go full out. And we're also saying you can get there. You may not necessarily have the ability, much less need to do it all in one step. And you don't need to attack it all at once. You could it could be done in parts. So you could we could say, yeah, you need to it would be ideal to be mold free. Maybe we say that it's ideal to be mold free, or not mold free. It's ideal to be as clean as can be, normal fungal ecology, or even better. Yeah, yet it can be. Done over time. Yeah. So if you have the resources to do it now, great. If you have the resources to do it all in one false swoop, great. If you don't, it's not a deal breaker. You can get better along the way. It'll just take a little more time. And let's just set our expectations proper.

 Mike Schrantz:

Yeah. And to your point, yes, said, is it goes back to the overwhelm, goes back to the expectation, the anxiety, the worry, all of it, the analysis, paralysis. Is that God help you if you go online and listen to sources that are not necessarily realistic on what we've been talking about would make you feel like if you don't hire a professional and spend $20,000 to $40,000 to environmentally clean your home and your contents, that you quote unquote won't get better. I have news for you. There are plenty of people that have cleaned their house themselves or hired a molly maids type of cleaning service, if you will, or friends, colleagues to clean at a small fraction of that number, a very digestible number, and seen significant improvements from their pre- and post sampling or assessment of the home. They don't know that though, because they go on, some folks go online and just feel this need that this is such a thing that I can't do it myself. Or I'm trying to keep us honoring on our topic. But there's even other side topics that just further enforces that false assumption, including dealing with mycotoxins and how they can and can't affect you and what they are and aren't as a threat in the environment, short-term versus long term. There's so much information that's not out there or not rather not being, because it's out there, not being expressed that much. And it just leads to that overwhelm. And it doesn't need to be that.

Dr. Mark Su:

Yeah. And then I'll back up and finish off the for me, then the second decision-making factor for me with patients is it's, and that's just I can't decide this for them. And that is just how proactive or aggressive do you want to be? So maybe this is a little bit rank order number one is if you don't have the resources to be aggressive and this topic, then that's an automatic rate limiting barrier. But if you have the resources, then if you're a person who, as I like to say, like you're the more the engineer type, you want to know I want to do one thing at a time and figure out how that affects me and watch over time. And if you're methodical like that and you want to do one step at a time, then that's one thing. Like I, who am I to say you got to do it all at one time? Because we're not talking about it's not an overnight, you're gonna die. Okay, or you're not, it's not gonna lead to a heart attack or cancer. And we know some of these, not to be, we're not flaming anybody here, but we know some of these fungal toxins are carcinogenic or can be carcinogenic, but this is we call this a chronic illness for a reason. There are some dangers, but overall, statistically speaking, this is a this is a this is not a uh an acute you're gonna end issue for most people. Yeah. You and I both know some people who they're sick enough involving mold illness that they end up in the ER we currently or have some acute issues, no doubt. But for the as a breadth, as a diversity spectrum of patients and clients who are wrestling with mold illness in a sick building, most people are gonna have some degree of time to work through it. That's the thing that we have to be mindful about as practitioners to help support patients where they're at within their means and within their sort of makeup of philosophy and their healthcare decision making that is just inherent to their personal individual profile as to how aggressive they want to be. If we really believe, so I'll throw this out there as a qualifier, if we really believe someone's really at that much danger or it's they're more likely one of those extreme cases, like this is a tear down project, home, okay, then it behooves it, it's it behooves us to state it as such that, hey, uh, and I've had that case, I'm sure you have too. Hey, we could take this a little step by step, but it's so bad, I'm not sure how much difference it's gonna make if you only take one and two steps instead of eight.

 Mike Schrantz:

Yeah. Wait, I've had the pro privilege to your point, like where do we if you have the funds, how I was gonna say aggressive, really what I want to say is assertive, how proactive maybe. There's some like reactive to what's there, and then what can I do? And then we're gonna add better filtration to the home and all these things. What happens in my experience when you are one of those types of patients is that you minimize the unknowns, right? Because what you're talking about, Mark, is this idea of how can we sequence it when we have to not marginalize, but do it in a more digestible way that meets the capabilities of the patient. And but yet there's more variables. We'll just see what it is. And that's not a it's going to be better, it's more of a we'll see how it is. And technically you can say that no matter what treatment, because chronic illness is complicated. It doesn't have a test code for many things to help easily diagnose you. It's multi-it's usually multifactorial and those sorts of things. Here's my point is when somebody has the funds to do it, and I'm not talking about excessive, because me personally, I have issues with companies that offer extremeness for what seems to be no other than a financial gain for themselves. But when it's appropriate, the more that you address, the more variables you remove from the equation of uncertainty. Sure.

Dr. Mark Su:

Yep.

 Mike Schrantz:

And that's what the push is to do it the right way. It's not a guarantee. And trust me, for those of you listening, darn it, I could spend a hundred grand on my nice home and not have a guarantee. And the answer is you're absolutely right. But you're also that same position if you spent 10,000 or you did whatever. What you clearly are doing is removing the direct threat that started your interaction with the IEP and the clinician in the first place, which was mold exposure. If you're worried about mold exposure and you've removed mold sources in your home and that's your primary place of occupancy, because there's other side effects like how's your workplace and things of that nature, then you've lowered those very you've removed as many variables as possible. So it's the convenience of being able to remove as many variables as possible to give you more clarity on your journey of treatment and recovery.

Dr. Mark Su:

Yeah. No, and said I 100% agree. Yeah. And that's where for me it's going to come down to again, cost or slash time, especially cost, and then what resonates most for the person as to how assertive or passive are they. And for me, if the person's really passive, they probably weren't in this position to begin with, because they were not likely to have pursued it. But yeah, it's just matching expectations. Yeah. And I'll throw out one last thing. I don't know if you and I have ever talked about this on the on our own, but uh the conversation I also have tagging on what you just said is that if hypothetically, if someone doesn't even feel that much differently, as you said, not number one, okay, so we've it wasn't without benefit. Okay, if you've cleaned your environment, but you're still wrestling with symptoms, it could be still related to mold illness issues. And we just now need to clean up you, having put a barrier and reduced your exposure, but we still need to treat you, okay? But also, even if we find, hey, we've treated you too, and on paper, like you're a lot cleaner with the mold issues. But as you said, there's a lot of other reasons people could be fatigued, brain fogged, have pain, right? Numbness tingling, passing out, pots, blah, blah, blah. Okay, we can we've reduced or eliminated, nearly eliminated, effectively eliminated that topic variable, we move on. Or we've done something else alongside, we're gonna still focus more on that topic now or move on to another topic, whatever. So we've reduced variables. I will further that and say, we're talking about sick patients, but at the same regard, I'm personally convicted, in principle, no doubt, that even someone who doesn't have symptoms when it comes to aging, longevity, and those people, even if they don't have symptoms now, you've now, we've now reduced the likelihood or we've changed the trajectory of their health future by taking that variable out where they aren't apt to develop those problems that they very plausibly would have developed over time with symptomatology of the same sort as someone else in their family members. Maybe they just didn't have the symptoms now, but they would over time. And then, secondly, even aside from that, I'm absolutely convicted that effectively it's anti-aging work. I might dare, I'll dare say that. And that was actually like the take-home message in the presentation in the conference last fall that we've talked about. Effectively, even on paper, reducing inflammatory provocation through this mold illness, uh, these mold and mold toxins, uh, fungal toxins, et cetera, I argue is still anti-aging work because we're reducing the burden on our immune systems, regardless of whether we have symptoms or not. Any thoughts on that?

 Mike Schrantz:

No, agreed. Uh more as a student learning, but it resonates with the same sorts of is there ever such a thing as healthy inflammation versus excessive? What's the normal what's the body's design to handle some of these sorts of exposures? But at the end of the day, if you're taxing your body nonstop, is there going to be something if you drink, if you're a hard drinker, is that going to have downstream effects in five years, 10 years, 30 years, or whatever? Same concept with environmental exposure. So there is a general agreement with that. Good analogy. And I'm one thing that you did say too, I I want to talk about it because I'd love to hear your thoughts on it too, is I get this a lot, which is on the topic of, okay, I cleaned, and there's an expectation, certainly a desire. And I know firsthand what that desire feels like of I want to see every day I get better. It's not a roller coaster ride. And you've seen me earlier, we did the whole thing where it's your road to recovery is up here, and that's our everyone's goal. And on the road to your recovery, it's not a straight line where every day's always better. It might look like this. And there's things that we know from the health perspective that would explain, okay, that's normal. Your body's adjusting. There's you're going to have off days. And maybe there's things about that journey on the way up that we don't know. I think what I've seen happen is, I know I've seen happen. I just don't know how true it is, is they'll say, Oh, there it is. Did the remediation, did the cleaning, did the testing. I felt good on Monday and Tuesday, woke up on Wednesday, felt bad, there's still a mold problem. And that sort of attachment to something that quit is so overwhelming to the patient that if they're my worry is that if they follow their symptomology on a day-to-day basis and make rash, yeah, mindful, not mindful, but significant decisions that could make things worse.

Dr. Mark Su:

Yeah, over overcompensating, overcompensating. The pendulum swing.

 Mike Schrantz:

Yeah. Oh, this is a trend. And let's figure it out. Because you, I'm glad that you popped the topic first, but there's a lot that we don't know. And God knows I wish we could say this is what's happening. And if you eat an olive and a piece of ham, you will get better. If you stay away from this bedroom, if you add this filter, I guarantee you you're going to have nothing but upward, onward improvement. We don't know. But what we know is the ballpark we play in. We might know not exactly every position of your health and what it is, but at least we're in the ballpark. And an example of that would be we know that if you have a mold exposure, our goal is to remove you from the mold exposure. We hope that through proper remediation, proper assessment, proper cleaning, that you're going to remove that variable from the ballpark and thus lower those variables. And that has been a very satisfying thing. I hope in 10 years we're able to be more exacting than that. But that is one of the limitations that we deal with in your industry and in my industry from the IEP standpoint is nothing is a guarantee. And God knows I wish that was the case. But the good news of all of it is that there's way more success stories than the reported negative stuff that we commonly see people post. We know the issue that people are more inclined to post and mention and share stories that are negative. There are plenty of positive stories. And I think that's another issue, Mark, that we see is just people are just taking it all in. They're getting overwhelmed. And it's not that. And these conversations that we're having now and that we're going to have in the future, I hope, will provide the proper light and proper hope for people who otherwise have experiencing the latter.

Dr. Mark Su:

Yeah. No said, yeah, we've gone a while. What do you say? I think we can uh this is a good this seems like a good stopping point.

 Mike Schrantz:

Yeah. It was a lot. An hour goes by quick, doesn't it?

Dr. Mark Su:

It's reflecting a live time here. We've talked about a lot. These are not new topics for you and I, right? I don't know that we've there was not a single, I don't think there was a single base topic we talked about today that's new to you and I. But as we have carved the space here for me, as we've carved the space to flesh it out in more detail, it's really uh not only just stimulating but and energizing, but I've it's been educational, but also reinforcing for me. And uh it's interesting to reflect on the niche details and the minutiae of decision-making matters that we've unearthed in our conversations, which is the point of care interface matters between a practitioner and patient, right? And I think for me, I'm just summarizing that our goal with this podcast isn't just to do another podcast, right? Because as you said, there's, as we've said, there's tons of information out there. We don't need to add to the jungle of noise out there. Our goal is one of our primary goals is to go deeper, bring more value. That's what you and I are about. Bring more value by getting into some of these minutiae issues that aren't so much what we are familiar with or aware of or hear in the space of podcasts, seminars, webinars, online, this and that, education, this and that, because the content is one thing. The application of the content is another thing. And a lot of that application comes down to being having more clarity about what matters or what doesn't matter among all the jungle noise, and specifically what might matter more to me as an individual, as a patient or a practitioner with the patients I tend to see versus another individual as a patient or another practitioner who sees a different type of set of patients.

 Mike Schrantz:

As was proven out when we had our pregame talk before the started our podcast, the authentic nature of what we of what was to be was that we ended up talking about a foundation, the very foundation that you just described, this idea of, yeah, I want to get into topics about how do we clean these contents and one's enough. I want to get into the topics of mycotoxins more because there's so much good information that will probably be game-changing, dare I say life-changing for some individuals in a positive way, want to dive into it, but realizing that if you don't have that foundation of concepts that we just went through today, it might make understanding why we're saying what we're saying a little bit more tricky or confusing. I'm glad we laid the groundwork down for that and can't wait to bring up some of these more niche topics that we're seeing coming up on a regular basis.

Dr. Mark Su:

So it's awesome. I'm sure that as we you and I individually and together reflect on some of the finer points of what we talked about, or just snippets here and there. I'm pretty sure we've opened up a few many ideas and points of conversation for the futures. Yeah. This for me anyway, this was this is an awesome first step. And uh yeah, we did jump right into a a more in-the-weeds topic about cleaning the home. When is enough? But uh this is awesome. Thanks for sharing your time, your expertise, your energy, your presence, your integrity, your value. You yeah, I love you, and you you do you bring great service and um value to humanity, to the uh to the communities, the both the practitioners as colleagues of both sides of the coin, human practitioners, house environmental practitioners, as well as your clients. Um so yeah, I'm definitely with you. Looking forward to uh where we go from here with uh subsequent topics, both especially mold illness related and otherwise.

 Mike Schrantz:

Yeah, I appreciate this platform, Mark, and the opportunity to educate and give back. Really gonna get excited here. Can't wait for the next one where we dive into some of these more hot topics.

Dr. Mark Su:

Yeah. So thanks. We're gonna end this here. Thanks for everyone checking in. And uh yeah, we'll love we'll look forward to the next one. For everyone as a qualifier here, the proverbial sort of liability statement that uh nothing in this discussion is to be taken as personal medical advice for anyone other than other than referring folks back to any practitioners that you might be working with. If you don't have a practitioner of whatever sort, whether it's uh a human practitioner or an IEB practitioner, Mike is has his own business, environmental analytics. He has his own I podcast called IEP Radio. You can reach him through those means. And uh for those who are uh could use additional support, help on the clinical side, what it might be a second opinion, might be a first opinion. You ever never worked with somebody who deals with either mold illnesses issues or in the non-conventional realm. But as as you already know by now, this podcast is affiliated with a an online virtual practice that services the the entire country at large virtually. Rootseekhealth.com is the website. Uh we're the uh the practice, the team and I uh it would be more than a privilege to be of service and support to you if uh if the shoe fits. So yeah, all right. Thanks, Mike. We'll talk next time.

 Mike Schrantz:

Thank you, brother. We'll see you then.