Health Starts at Home: The Missing Link in Your Healing Journey

What if the place you sleep, cook, and unwind is quietly keeping your body on high alert? We take a hard look at total stress load and how a home’s air, water, noise, materials, and even location can amplify or ease symptoms like fatigue, rashes, brain fog, and poor sleep. Our guest, wellness-focused realtor and practitioner Holly Mullen, traces her own health puzzle back to hidden mold in her childhood house, then explains why standard inspections miss the biggest issues—and how smarter testing and smarter building choices change the game.

We dig into the blind spots: why central-room air tests often fail, where mold hides in HVAC systems and fridge lines, and how “lumber yard mold” can get sealed into brand‑new construction. Holly shares practical buyer and builder strategies—clauses to inspect and reject wet framing, breathable storage for delivered lumber, and moisture checks before drywall closes the walls. We also go beyond mold to the everyday factors that drain resilience: chlorine and other compounds that vaporize in hot showers and tangle with thyroid receptors, clutter that pushes cortisol, and chronic city noise that fragments sleep even when you “get used to it.” Small design tweaks—interior wall insulation, quieter bedrooms, shoes‑off policies, better filters—add up.

The theme is empowerment without overwhelm. Instead of replacing everything at once, start where you’ll feel it most: filter shower water, swap the daily detergent or lotion, choose simpler ingredient lists, or improve one meal you eat every day. We share stories of rapid wins, from skin clearing after whole‑house filtration to cholesterol and blood pressure dropping with modest lifestyle shifts. For families with kids and pets, these changes are a head start toward a lighter “toxic bucket,” fewer future flares, and a calmer nervous system today.

Health starts where you live. If you’re ready to move from symptom-chasing to root-cause healing, press play, grab one actionable idea, and try it this week. If this conversation helps, subscribe, share with a friend, and leave a quick review—what’s the first home upgrade you’ll make?

Transcript

Why Everything Matters, Without Overwhelm

Holly Mullen 0:01

The most important thing, I think, to understand is that everything matters. That's important to understand, but the next important thing to understand is don't get overwhelmed. Your next favorite podcast starts now. Here's the Professor and Heather Ann.

Joe 0:25

Welcome to the Professor and Heather Anne. Although we don't have all the answers, we hope to encourage and excite you. We're here sharing our lives to help you make the most of the second half of your life.

Total Stress Load And Home Health

Heather Anne 0:38

We have a fantastic episode today. It is about understanding your total stress load and how your home influences your health. What if your health journey isn't just about your diet and your supplements and exercise? What if it's about your home?

Cleaning Swaps, Water, And Pets

Joe 0:59

So our guest will share her experiences navigating her own health crisis while unknowingly living in a moldy home. And she began connecting the dots between environment and physiology, and so what started as a functional nutrition evolved into something much deeper. So she'll explain why we can't fully heal in spaces that are stressing the nervous system every day.

Heather Anne 1:23

So one of the things that we talk about is I grew up in a home full of trauma. So over the years I have learned how that has played a lot in my health of the inflammation, the cortisol. We actually just got my labs back last month. And our nurse practitioner, when she looked at me and was like, your inflammation is like her face was just like is really high off the charts. So I know a lot of that has to do with just what my body has endured over the years and the stress level that I've had. But one of the things that we have been on a journey for is not just cleaning up our diet and exercising. Yoga has been a big thing for me and stress and everything. But I'm really been working on cleaning up the environment and our home. So cleaning out the different cleaners that we use. I no longer use bleach in uh clothes, in our in the laundry, I no longer use it to clean. I used to use it a lot when I uh would clean because I'd had to scrub everything, even with toothbrushes to get the house clean. Um so I've seen a difference in our home. I've seen a difference in uh even the animals with um the way we filter our water. Uh double filter. We double filter our water. Um, very mindful, because you don't think about it even with your pets, you don't think about the stuff, the the things that you're using to clean your house, your floors, your countertops, um, you know, even your showers and bathtubs and sinks and stuff, is that that affects even our animals because they're carrying that around on their paws, and then they're licking their paws. So that really helped me change my mindset about the chemicals that we're using and switching to non-chemical stuff. Are we perfect? No, but we're slowly getting there. And I think in today's world, more people are paying more attention to that. They're they they want to have not just be healthy, they're healthier themselves, but they want um to be their home to be healthy. One of the things that we do is um, and we'll be able to talk about with our guest in our next guest, is that we don't wear shoes in the house. That's a very big thing for me.

Joe 4:16

We demand of our guests that they take off their shoes.

Heather Anne 4:19

And that was a thing for you to have to learn to not wear your shoes. And you even asked me, well, why don't what's wrong with wearing your shoes in the house? Well, because you're bringing all that stuff from outside of your house into your house and contaminating your house with that, and again, especially if you have pets and children, that's being distributed through your house. So right.

Novel Modern Stressors

Calm Homes, Clutter, And Anxiety

Joe 4:46

So um, I'm very much looking forward to hearing our guests talk about this experience with mold. I my my first wife and I, we um in 2007 we bought a condo, and uh right uh after the closing, we discovered that there was extensive, undisclosed mold damage um and which required $30,000 worth of remediation. They had to tear out the drywall and whatnot. And um, and they told us that some of the mold was, I think I'm remembering this right, something called black mold, which is like some of the most toxic mold. So I so we don't have the experience of actually living there because it all got remediated before we moved in, but you know, we we sort of we had to you know face this, you know, uh tremendous, you know, hassle and financial and legal hassle of getting this straightened out. Then from a professional point of view, so so I I study evolutionary psychology, and um, of course, stress is something that you know all animals, including human ancestors, have all had to deal with. There's a stress caused by hostile, well, hostile fellow humans, there's predators, there's illness and injury and lack of food and so forth. But those are all things which to one extent or another we've our ancestors became adapted to. What we face now are lots of novel, new kinds of stress that we're not so well adapted to, and that includes new kinds of toxins, it includes overcrowding. So you think about you know people living in a you know in an apartment in an apartment building where they're encountering strangers every day. And so, you know, these these are these are new kind new kinds of stress, and uh, and so it's you know it's a question as to whether you know how how we can how we can deal with these things, which we're not we're not evolved to to deal with.

Heather Anne 6:36

And I think you've had to learn since we've been together on how having a calm and for lack of better words, serene type home for myself, because that's where I recharge, that's where um I need it to be a clean environment, I need it to be you know organized and all of that in order for me to be able to come home and just relax from a stressful day, or be able to walk out of my home office and be able to relax. So uh you you've had to learn some different things.

Joe 7:19

To be quiet.

Heather Anne 7:23

Don't make a lot of noise. Uh but also just about the cleaning and everything.

Joe 7:28

That was so I and I suppose our I said I'm I'm confident our guests will talk more about this. One source of stress is clutter. So and and there's data showing that the more objects there are on the horizontal surfaces in a home, the more stressed people are.

Introducing Holly Molin

Childhood Home Mold And Lifelong Symptoms

Heather Anne 7:43

Yes. But um even your cupboards. And I know for me, it's even opening drawers and cupboards and different things, and if they're a mess, then uh it just makes me very anxious. Or I jump in and just start cleaning things right then and there. Something my children had to, my boys had to grow up with that I've been known to occasionally wake up at four o'clock in the morning and start cleaning the house because I just the environment that I needed to um uh have around me in order to just even be able to function. And these are little quirks and things that you've had to uh learn about. Yes. So I am very excited to welcome our next guest, Holly Molin, and I uh met about a year ago and um, if I may say, instantly became friends. We uh connected right away. Part of that, I'm sure, is because you are uh from California as well as the both of us. Um you are a wellness-focused realtor, a functioning health practitioner who helps people understand how their living environment directly impacts their nervous system, hormones, sleep, and uh long-term well-being. You host the Health Starts at Home podcast, currently studying building science and building biology, and you're on a mission to help people move from symptom chasing to symptom level healing. Welcome, Holly. So let's dive into that. That's a lot. So let's dive a little into that. Um, I I knew um about the health practitioner, but now you've taken it another direction about our homes and our environments. What you know, we mentioned that you had an issue with mold. What made you start looking more at um just homes and the environments that we have in our in our living spaces?

Holly Mullen 10:00

The transition from being a practitioner into real estate was actually inspired by a client, but it wasn't until I had my own experience where I was moving out of our home in California, and it was actually the home I grew up in. I moved back into my childhood home as an adult with my family. When we were moving out of that home to move here to Oklahoma, the new buyers were doing their buyer's inspection, and during that it was discovered that there was all sorts of mold in the home. And at that time, all these dots started connecting. I started having all these light bulb moments of symptoms I've had my whole life making sense. And part of me felt really dumb for not even figuring it out sooner, especially coming from the health space. It's like, why how did I not know this? But things like um chronic sinusitis my whole life, mysterious rashes, eczema, psoriasis, um neurological symptoms, um, mysterious weight gain, also crazy weight loss, but it's just very odd health symptoms my whole life. And they would come and go as I would come and go and move in and out of the home. And because I did move in and out a lot in my adult years after being a teenager. Um, but then I also started putting together timelines of all the different rentals I've lived in. And in California, we live on the coast, the marine layer. There's there's a lot of moisture, humidity, yes, and just moldy places. And so it it was that moving experience and understanding moldy home environments and putting together my timeline of health symptoms that really made things click for me. And then knowing friends that I've had that have had their lives completely devastated by mold, I'm fortunate that that wasn't me, but I've watched my friends go through it. Then I fully understood the damage that mold can do, all the ways in which it can show up, whether it's subtle in things that we think are just normal health challenges or chronic illness. Yeah, it's like, oh, it's just allergies, oh, it's just, oh, I just have sensitive skin. Things that we brush off that could really have a root cause to total devastation and debilitating health consequences. And so it was, it was more of like a hindsight experience for me, but it was then also something that was able to help me to really be a better practitioner for my clients going forward, also, because I could recognize things better from that point, also.

What Makes A Healthy Home Location

Heather Anne 13:20

So, what about taking what you've learned now and taking it into the real estate field? This is this is something that you know, I'm a mortgage lender. It is something that still isn't really talked about in our industry about having a healthy home. You you purchase a home or you build a home and you have inspections and they run through this typical list, it's pages and pages, but uh that inspector's really not uh telling you certain things, or they're just here's a list and they're just checking it off. What are kind of some of the things that uh people need to be looking at, looking specifically for when they're doing home inspections?

Holly Mullen 14:08

Well, that could be a very long answer, and really the the best answer is it depends on the person and what's important to them. In your pre-conversation before we started talking, you guys hit on so many things from trauma to like personal relationships to chemicals in the home, to not wearing shoes, to um mold and pets and everything, like there are all these things that go into what makes a healthy home. So all that could be something, but it could also be where the location of the home is, whether it's near cell towers, or if you're in an apartment building, or if you're in condos and you're near a bunch of other people that can contribute to people stress, but also all those individual Wi-Fi routers that you're getting more exposure to other people's internet and non-native electromagnetic fields. Um if you're positioned near freeways or highways and you're getting more air pollution, that is more heavy metal exposure that you're getting in through your windows and your doors. And if you're not taking off your shoes, that's more heavy metals and pollution that you're bringing into your home. Uh, golf courses, I know they're luxurious to live on, but they have high pesticide use, and that gets into the waterways up to six miles. There's all sorts of things that you can consider. So that's just the surroundings. And here in Oklahoma, we have a lot of oil production, so we have registered polluters and super fun sites and brown fields.

Heather Anne 16:03

So this part of the state that we live in, Oklahoma is broken up in this is green country, this is this, this is that. I moved from Central California, which is heavy agriculture, and um did never had any problems. I came from an area where valley fever was a common thing. And but never had any issues or anything with allergies or anything like that until I moved here. And it just took a couple of years, and all of a sudden I started having sinus problems and everything. So that that just proof your environment can make a huge difference for the way you feel as well.

Inspections, Codes, And Mold Testing Limits

Holly Mullen 16:42

Yes. So there's the location, there's all sorts of things to consider. When it comes to a home inspection, you can also look at the mechanics of a home. Um, I think the biggest thing here when it comes to home inspections is the presence of mold. Um, we do live in a humid client climate here. There aren't a lot of regulations when it comes to building, when it comes to HVAC systems, um, really when it comes to anything, we are in the Wild West. Uh so codes and regulations aren't really what they are in coming from a state like California, where everything is very highly regulated. Uh and so it just kind of depends on what is important to the person who is looking for a home. And and then how closely we are investigating things.

Joe 17:45

So is there much value to tests of the air inside a home for the presence of mold? Or is that will that not tell you much? Do you actually have to like go into the walls?

Mold Dogs And Growing Awareness

Holly Mullen 17:56

There's different things you can do, yes and no. So we do have some inspectors that will do an air test. However, not all air tests are created equal. So there's one where you can just come and they put a little thing in the middle of the room, they measure the air, they measure outside, and they compare mold spores in the air. Because we always have mold spores in it. So it's part of our environment. Um, and then they compare, okay, what's outside and what's inside, and is that normal? The problem with that is mold spores are heavy. So when they're in when it's in the home, they're not normally just floating around, they settle in the dust. And not all mold is visible and just out floating in our air. It is hidden, it is in wall cavities, it is in the HVAC system. And so, unless you're coming in and aggravating those things, unless you're fluffing up the carpet, unless you're turning on your um oven exhaust and opening doors and creating airflow and vent suction to where you're pulling out air from your wall cavities, where in your living space, that is what you would have in a day-to-day experience. You would be getting that. You're not getting that just from someone putting a scope in the middle of your living room for a minute and getting that. But also, what people are reacting to, let's say you do have a mold sensitivity and there is a mold pro hidden mold problem in a home, sometimes people aren't reacting to the mold itself, the mold spores, they're reacting to the mycotoxins, which is what mold spores are putting off. And so the short answer is they're not always accurate. A mold, an air test. They do have other types of air testing that are more sensitive that would tell exactly what kind of particulates are in the air and stuff, but that is a much longer process. It can be more invasive with like a boroscope. You're going into the walls. And I've been to those inspections, they take hours because they're going through every part of the home.

Heather Anne 20:25

And now, because one of the things that you're starting to talk about is there is here in Oklahoma, which there more than likely is in other states, and we know more and likely in California, they have mold dogs. Yes. So these dogs are trained to detect mold. Yeah. So if it's in the floors or in the your heat and heat and air unit in the walls and everything, they're able to, you know, I guess like drug-sniffing dogs be able to go and be like, okay, right here. I there's something right here. So I know a lot of people are gonna think, oh, this is, you know, new age, we're just trying to make up things and, you know, uh come up with more inspections for homeowners and different things like that. But as a whole, we're all starting to become more aware. Yes. Um, you know, let's face it, if we were having this conversation 10 years ago, um, you know, maybe not in California, but here in Oklahoma, people would just kind of roll their eyes. Why should people be more aware of what's in their home?

Holly Mullen 21:41

I think because we're not getting any healthier. You know, I think we're we're more and more bombarded by things in our environments that are making us sick, and more people are looking for answers and reasons. And I think the more we know, the more empowered we can be. And the truth is, probably most homes do have mold. Like mold is a part of our life, but it does not affect all of us the same or equally. And most people, it probably doesn't bother a lot of people. Or a lot of people are probably like me growing up, and they just have all these symptoms and don't have anything to attribute it to, but to the people that are devastatingly ill, it matters. And I think it matters to our kids, it matters to the future of people growing up.

Heather Anne 22:45

Our overall health.

Holly Mullen 22:46

It matters to our overall health. It does.

Heather Anne 22:48

We had an incident where we had a new house built by ex and I, and uh we moved in and everything was great, and we did our inspections and everything, and we were there on site, you know, making sure things were built correctly. There are some things we had them correct, um, different things like that. But it it took a year, well over a year, that I started noticing I started, you know, I was I was fortunate I didn't have a lot of problems with acne and stuff growing up, or even during pregnancies or anything like that. But it's like all of a sudden my face was breaking out, and it was like, okay, maybe it's the washer machine and it's not rinsing the clothing correctly and everything. So we get a new washer machine. Well, maybe it's this, maybe it's that. What it wound up being was the water. So everything improved and literally went away. My dry skin, uh, you know, my whole life, same thing. I just I've been sensitive. I have sensitive skin. I have to be careful what I put on it. But but no matter what I was doing, I was just having reaction after reaction. We wound up getting the whole house filter filterization for the home, and my skin cleared up. Everything was fine. We we lived in a small town here in um Oklahoma. And after we installed the system, we started, they started having you have to boil your water. We had this, we have this. We started noticing there was more issues with the water. But the thing that really fascinated me that I tell a lot of people about was we had two cats and a dog at the time, and one morning I woke in, I woke I got up and they were like standing at the water bowl that just had fresh water put into it, and they were lined up waiting to drink that water.

Holly Mullen 24:51

The clean water?

Hidden Mold In Filters And Ice Lines

Heather Anne 24:52

The clean water, and this was just like days after having the system and everything like that. And I just stood there and and the little cat got hers, and the dog just waited patiently for the cats. But it was the cutest thing, and I'm just going, oh my gosh. And I started noticing they're drinking more, not excessively drinking, but they were drinking the water a lot more, and so the impact it can have, just having clean water, um, can change your health.

Holly Mullen 25:24

Yeah.

Heather Anne 25:25

What are some other things that in your practice and the things that you're learning about healthy homes that you could share with our listeners?

New Builds, Wet Lumber, And Clauses

Holly Mullen 25:35

Actually, can we stay on water for a little bit? Because absolutely water is actually really good because most people think water is safe and clean because it means if you live in the United States, you live somewhere where you have water treatment and our water is cleaned and we can drink from the faucet, you know, it's not like an water. We we live in a country where we are conditioned to believe that if it's coming from our faucet and our sinks, then we are safe and clean. But there is nuance. There's nuance to everything. Our water treatment, and it depends on where you are because every municipality uses different treatments, chemical treatments, and things, but um let's just say like chlorine is one thing that we use to clean water. You're taking a hot shower, you're getting all the chemicals and all the treatments that they're using to make this clean water. All that is becoming, let's say you're taking a hot steamy shower that is now becoming vaporized. So you are essentially free basing now pharmaceutical drugs, all the other like drugs that are put into our water that do not get filtered out. Like you're getting the chemical treatments, but you're also getting things that don't get filtered out of our water. You're now inhaling that into your lungs. The chlorine, fluoride, the halogen type of drugs and chemicals, those directly compete with your um thyroid hormones, your thyroid receptors. How many women do you know have thyroid problems? It could be linked to any number of things, but nobody thinks that it could be linked to tap water and just bathing in their regular water, and it's just because chemicals in our normal tap water is taking over your thyroid receptor sites, and your thyroid hormones cannot get to where they need to go because your water is combating with it.

Heather Anne 28:00

Um which then interrupts sleep, which interrupts cortisol, which interrupts your hormone or your hormones and all different kinds of factors.

Holly Mullen 28:11

Everything there is a cascade effect to it. So it's like just something, and that's just one thing. That's just water.

Heather Anne 28:18

And then you combine that with the possibility of mold, the possibility of other environmental factors.

Holly Mullen 28:26

And you can have mold in your pipes. I had one client, their her water treatment system had all mold in it. Like they had their whole house tested. She was having symptoms of mold exposure. They had their whole house tested. They couldn't find it anywhere. She's like, no, our house is clean. Like we've we've tested, we've remediated, we can't find it anywhere. It was in the water filter. They were getting exposure, drinking through their water. Notorious mold harboring spaces, your water from your um refrigerator, that that line that goes from your sink to your fridge, that is notorious for always harboring mold. So if you're not cleaning that, flushing that, filtering that, um ice makers.

Noise Stress And Adaptation

Heather Anne 29:14

We stopped using the ice maker. Yeah. That's one of the things we stopped using the ice maker. Yeah.

Joe 29:21

We're we're we're moving to a rural home where we'll have well water. Now I guess well water has its own problems, right?

Holly Mullen 29:29

But you can test it.

Joe 29:30

Yeah.

Holly Mullen 29:31

Yeah. But again, you'll want to get a filter, your home filter, you still want to filter it?

Heather Anne 29:36

In the building. So one of the things that I noticed on the last house that my ex and I built, um, we were one of the first ones, like kind of on the street. So we we were able to watch the other houses going up. And one of the things that's notorious with new builds that people don't think about is they the builders get through lumber, they have it dropped off, and they could possibly have a rainstorm, and then it's sitting out there in the rain and the mud and all of that stuff for a couple of days, a couple of weeks. Then they take that wood and use that to build the home. And there was this one particular house that we walked into, and you could just see the mold on the wood. And it was just like, do these people even know? Do they are they gonna realize that all that's going to be trapped into their walls once they come in and drywall that and paint it and make it all nice and pretty? Um, what is your recommendation for uh clients that you're helping and they're looking to build a new house? How do they help remedy that and make sure that that doesn't happen to a new house to a house that they build?

Holly Mullen 30:58

It happens all the time. They even call it it's just lumber yard mold. Um so clients who are building and want to make sure that they have clean lumber, they have certain clauses that we can write into the lumber delivery. And it's that when the lumber gets delivered, we have an inspection clause so we can make sure we're notified once it's delivered. We have an inspection window to go and inspect that lumber, and we can reject it and get it swapped out, and then also there's certain parameters for storing the lumber on site, it has to be off the ground, so it can't just be like in the mud, it has to be um elevated, yeah, and then um not just covered in tarp, so it's like sitting there getting all wet. It has to be um a certain type of coverage, so yes, we want it covered, but not so tight that it's not breathing. And then if it is raining during the build and before that it gets sealed, before the building envelope gets sealed, doing moisture testing to make sure it is properly dried out before the dry coming in and drying and sealing that lumber into your walls.

Heather Anne 32:22

Yes.

Joe 32:22

So I want to at a certain point I want to sort of zoom out and talk about the whole view of health that we've had in the society. But before before zooming out, I just one more kind of stress I want to talk about, and that's that's noise. So we we were in we were visiting New York City last June, and you know, it's very, very exciting. There's great you know entertainment and restaurants and whatnot, but we thought, I don't see how anyone lives here because all night, you know, there are sirens and and and and and car horns and so forth. And so, like, has what can you say about you know the effects of of noise on stress and and how how that can be so it become when you live in it, it just becomes part of the background, right?

Medical Model vs Root Causes

Holly Mullen 33:10

You don't notice it. It's the same for living next to an airport, or living in a home where your parents fight all the time, or living in any kind of a stressful environment where you have to learn how to turn it off. That doesn't mean that it's not affecting you. So people living in loud, noisy cities and it just becomes background noise, it might not bother them in the sense that they don't hear it, but that doesn't mean their body's not perceiving it.

Heather Anne 33:54

I find it interesting about the noise. Number one, I thought you were gonna because I have ADHD, and sometimes it's very noisy, and I have to be like, yeah, I need you to be quiet right now. Um I thought he was gonna say something about that.

Joe 34:10

Don't put the dishes away.

Heather Anne 34:11

That's a whole different topic. But um, I was um the the sound is fascinating, and again, a whole nother topic. I was making reservations. We're going to Chicago this summer, and I was making reservations for hotel, and it was the first time I had ever seen soundproof walls in the for the hotel that went that I wound up making the reservation for. So in Chicago is a very noisy city as well. I don't think as noisy as New York, but it's a very noisy city as well. That's right, that's it. That's it. Um but I think that just goes along with now hotels are having to state in their advertisement we have soundproof walls. So, you know, if I was making a reservation at two different hotels, and one I would probably stay at the soundproof place because I want to make sure I sleep and everything. So it's the same thing in our homes. We um when you're building a home, there's more things that you can do to make it more soundproof by adding more insulation and different things. Because one of the things when you build a home that a lot of people don't realize, they insulate those outside walls. They do not necessarily insulate the inside walls. So there's not a lot of insulation between your bedroom and the living room, or there's not a lot of insulation between, for example, and the last house that I built. Um, we requested that, and and the builder was like, Well, that's gonna cost you extra money. Okay, because here's the living room and the laundry room's right next door to it. I don't want to hear the laundry, or here's the living room and the bedroom's right behind this wall. I want to be able to be in my bedroom and not hear my kids watching TV in the next room. So is that something that's becoming more aware of as well? Is especially when you're building a home, and there are things you can do even if you have an older home to increase the inflation in your home. But is that something that you find that your clients are talking more about? And are you having more of this conversation with your clients?

Start Small: One Swap At A Time

Holly Mullen 36:42

Yeah, I just call it it's it's more of a conscious build, right? It's there's building to code and there's building to comfort, and there's building to a level of standards of living that people want. And it's not it's not luxury anymore. It is more of this, no, I want this certain quality of life, and I want this certain quality of living that isn't just the basic, I'm doing this to code, and this is the bare minimum. It's a it's a raising the bar on the expectations. But kind of going back to what you said though about the noise and like that stress, I just kind of want to touch on that a little bit. But there's these interesting studies that you might find, and I don't know, I can't quote them off the top of my head, but if you take someone that is used to living in a stressful environment where there is noise stress or just a stressful environment and take them out, when that stress is the baseline and they're now in a new environment, they have trouble adapting. So they that they kind of go and create their own stress. So it's like when they go from stress to calm, they don't do well in calm. So you'll find that people that then create their own chaos because they can't function in the in the calm.

Joe 38:08

I think we never in in the film Annie Hall or the Woody Allen character. You know, he's lives in New York and then but then he's he's out in in in you know some rural part of New England. And he's like, it's too quiet here. I can't sleep.

Heather Anne 38:22

And I actually had that problem when we first moved from California, and we moved from, you know, Central California, where we I've I lived in Los Angeles for quite a few years, but you know, I came from a smaller town. But even when we moved here to Tulsa, it was just like it's too quiet. It's I can't I can't sleep because it's too quiet. And then we've moved out to more rural Oklahoma, and it's the same thing. And and I'm actually a little worried because now we're moving even more rural.

Joe 38:53

Very quiet.

Heather Anne 38:54

We will not have any houses next door to us or anything like that, and it's a very um quiet road that we're going to be living on. So uh so I find it interesting to bring that because it's like, am I going to be able to sleep? Because it's going to be too quiet.

Holly Mullen 39:12

Yeah, like parents putting on like white noise or sound machines for babies, so they're not easily woken. It's like kind of that's just setting the standards for creating low-level stress.

Heather Anne 39:28

I didn't think about that. I used to be able to vacuum when my older son was asleep. I could go vacuum in the house, it didn't bother him or anything. I thought that that was pretty cool, but now I look back at it going, that was not good at all.

Holly Mullen 39:41

It can be, but not when that's like the constant. It's like, okay, that's fine if the vacuum's turning on once in a while. But if you have to have a noise machine on, if you have to have the TV on to be able to sleep, then you you've got some unfortunate. Then I'll be calling myself out here. If you're a procrastinator, if you have to wait to the last minute to get things done because you can only complete a task when you feel that stress, it's like that's a trauma response because you grew up in an environment where you only feel that stress and you need that to get things done. Yeah, that's like that could be a whole other conversation. But, anyways, we're derailing.

Heather Anne 40:16

I can confess to that too. It's the same thing for me. If you give me weeks to do it, it'll be like, yeah, I'll get it done. But if it's like this has to be done, like in the next one.

Holly Mullen 40:24

My body knows stress, and that's where the comfort is. Very much so.

Tiny Changes, Big Health Wins

Joe 40:30

So um now we can zoom out. So and I just want to start this with a just a little anecdote about myself, where this is, I don't know, maybe 10 or 15 years ago, I had this itch, this itchy rashes, you know, all over. And I went to a doctor and explained this, and you know, he asked a couple questions, but the the obvious, the the sort of the you know, the go-to thing where the doctor said, okay, give you some steroids. Because you have this inflammation, that'll that'll cut down the inflammation. And so, you know, I went through the whole course of steroids, and then of course the itching came right back. And so, but I think like this is sort of emblematic of like the what the standard American, well, maybe not just American, it's probably throughout the developed world, um, medical model is, you know, so you've got some symptom, we'll give you a drug for it. And so I just I wonder if you could say a little bit about how sort of growing skepticism that people have of that model of medical care and and what is a better alternative.

Holly Mullen 41:31

Yeah, I think I think our healthcare system isn't wrong. I think it's really good for acute care like that, right? It cleared up your rash.

Joe 41:44

Okay. But it ended, it turned out it was a it was an artificial sweetener, Splenda. That was I did some research online, and there's a small percentage of people who are sensitive to this. And after I cut out the Splenda, then it went away.

Holly Mullen 41:55

Okay.

Joe 41:55

But the Chris doctor hadn't no role in me. I had to come up with that myself on the internet. Okay.

Heather Anne 42:01

So I think what it is is is that yes, our we're not here to knock our medical establishment or anything. It's great, and we need it, and we need our doctors and everything. But I think, you know, from our ancestors, from our you know, our grandparents on, they always looked for what's the cause, what's alternative, what's you know, how can we clear this up? And I just think we've become so complacent to going to the doctor, here it is, clear it up. But the not finding out, not asking the questions, even your doctor's not asking you questions. And I think people are finally just like, wait a minute, hold on. Yeah. What really is causing this? How can I get, you know, is it something in my environment? Is it something I'm eating? Is it something in my home that's causing these issues? Yeah.

Holly Mullen 42:54

And I think there, I mean, there's a lot of flaws with our system. Like, yes, there, it's great in saying, I have this problem, okay, here, here's this, we can fix it. But the problem is the way things are set up, where doctors don't have time with people, right? Because people do want to come in, say, this is my problem and get a solution and leave. A lot of people don't want to sit down and run through their entire health history and fix it. Doctors don't have time to do that. Our doctors are set up so that they're so specialized they know one system and not the other system. But the problem is, is our body is not just a collection of systems, you know, it's it's all one and it all works together, and one thing doesn't work in isolation.

Heather Anne 43:44

And our bodies change.

Holly Mullen 43:46

Our bodies change.

Heather Anne 43:48

We are babies and children, and we go through puberty and our hormones, and then, you know, especially for women, where we're finally talking about women's health and how we Been neglected for years and years. You know, people women my age, um, not necessarily your age, but women my age are finally like, enough is enough. I want to know why I'm feeling this way. I want to know how I can feel better, and I'm tired, literally and figuratively, of feeling this way. I'm not sleepy, and I'm tired of just feeling horrible all the time. What are some takeaways that we can give our listeners to help them improve their health, their environment right now, today? What are some things that, as a health practitioner, as a real estate agent that's taking this into your business and helping your clients, what are some things that we can information we can give our listeners to?

Protecting Kids And Pets

Holly Mullen 44:53

I think the most important thing I think to understand is that everything matters. That's important to understand. But the next important thing to understand is don't get overwhelmed. Because those two things go hand in hand. It's like once you realize that everything from the water in your shower to the air in your home, to also, yes, the food that you eat and the thoughts that you're thinking are all playing a part in your health, it is powerful and also very overwhelming. So a lot of times the first thing people do is freak out and do nothing.

Heather Anne 45:43

Because it's overwhelming. Because I will say personally, for us, once you start reading those labels, it becomes almost where you're just frozen because it's like, okay, so now I have to spend more money to get these things out of my home. But what are the right things? Because you read this, you read that, and everything else in between. Um, you know, for us it really did. I had already started on the chemicals and stuff for a couple of years, but really just even the food. Just, you know, I went to Trader Joe's and picked up something, uh hummus, and was like, well, what are these other ingredients in this hummus? Okay, well, you know what I'm gonna do? I'm just gonna put that back. Let me read this label over here. Oh, it says chickpeas and olive oil and salt and pepper. Okay, I'm going to eat this. So it's the same even with laundry detergents and all of that stuff. What are just some how can we not be frozen? How what are some tips that we can give listeners that don't become overwhelmed? Just do one thing at a time.

Holly Mullen 47:01

And that is the best thing, is the one thing at a time. And what I would do with clients, because this is, I mean, this is what I did for years. It's people exactly like this, where they're saying, I need to make changes, I don't know what to do, and I don't know where to start, everything's gonna kill me, so why bother? Right? And so many people have that mindset of why bother because it's too overwhelming. So if you can just start with one meal, it doesn't have to be your whole entire pantry, it doesn't have to be your whole life, you can start with one meal. And if you like breakfast the best, if you like dinner the best, if you like lunch the best, I don't care. Pick one meal and make that the healthiest meal you can. Or if you want to start with water, make the water in your home the best water it can be. Choose one thing and start there. Um, when it comes to products in your home, the easiest and best thing to do is as soon as you run out of one thing, don't replace it with that same toxic thing. Just make a swap.

Heather Anne 48:19

You don't have to go and get rid of everything and things that you already have.

Holly Mullen 48:24

Yeah, just do it one at a time. One thing at a time. Um, or if you want to just do one bulk shopping thing, replace the things that you use every day. The things that you're putting on your skin every day, or using most common every day, your laundry detergent, your dish soap, your hand soap, your body lotion, our women, our personal care products, the things that we are coming into contact with every day, those impact your hormones, your weight, your mood more than what you're eating. Um, and I wish more women understood that the chemicals that we come into contact with affect us more than the other things.

Heather Anne 49:14

One of the things that I change we changed out about a year ago, believe it or not, was our toilet paper. So I was not to get too personal, but I was noticing after a few after a while, it's just like, man, this is something's going on. I don't know what it is. And yes, I'm postmenopausal and all that stuff, so that's a whole nother we've already talked about that. Um, but I just started doing research and everything. And if you read what's in our toilet paper, even, and that is, you know, touching the most private parts of yourself, um, we switched to bamboo, bamboo toilet paper. And at first I thought, I think you were just kind of like, okay, let's try it. And uh symptoms went away. Never had any problems, or I haven't had any problems or anything since. Um, so even just something simple like that, you just changing out your toilet paper for your family can make a huge difference for your health.

Holly Mullen 50:19

And it is small changes can make the biggest difference. And I think that is one thing a lot of people don't realize is that little changes can be significant. They seem insignificant, but they truly can be significant. I had a client once, it was a gentleman, an older gentleman, and he came to me because he had high cholesterol. Oh, this is kind of goes to one thing about um our medical system. A lot of times doctors are just looking at labs and just looking at numbers, and they only want to just address the numbers instead of saying, why do you have high cholesterol? So, anyways, they wanted to put him on drugs. He did not want to take statins. He's like, Let me try to address this with diet. So, cholesterol, we actually need cholesterol. Cholesterol's good for us. It's our we need it for our brains, we need it for hormones, it's great. When it's high, it's usually a protective mechanism. The body's trying to protect us from oxidative stress, um, toxins, pollutions. Something's going on in the body. Anyways, this gentleman came to me. All we did was make a simple change in his diet. He was a delivery man, he delivered bread to bakeries, and he would sample his product a lot. All we did was cut back on how much he was sampling. And so he didn't have to give up carbs. No one wants to give up bread. But he cut back and he lost a good amount of weight, like 20 or 30 pounds, within three months, and his cholesterol dropped so much, just by cutting down his inflammation, regulating his blood sugar, losing weight, he went down in cholesterol. So it's that's just an example of one small change. One small change.

Heather Anne 52:23

And that's exactly what happened to me was uh I had was going through a lot of stress, and my doctor's like, your blood pressure's starting to get up. Um, you know, we probably need to put you on medication. And I'm like, I'm I'm not going on medication. Let's find out the reason. I have a very extremely high stress um business. I my marriage is failing, you know, give me some time, just give me three months, start going to yoga, going to the gym, working out more, and came back and he was like, Wow, that just seemed we don't have to put you on any medication. So that one little change made a difference from me going on medication and not. Um, but I do want to address that. I think that, especially for us, that one little small change that we made with the toilet paper, then with the chemicals, with changing our laundry detergent to making more homemade stuff, to making our own coffee creamers at home instead of buying the things at the store that has all the chemicals and stuff in it. It just seems to snowball after a while because you start realizing you're starting to feel better. Okay, if I made this one change, um, I I changed the toilet paper, now I changed the laundry detergent, now we're reading labels that I think it just kind of does start to snowball for you when you start the more you start feeling better, the more changes that you do want to take. So I agree 100% that one small change can make a huge difference.

Holly Mullen 54:00

And if it makes a difference for you as an adult, like I just want to talk to people who might have young kids, right? As adults, we start having symptoms, ailments, illnesses. But if we have the opportunity now to maybe prevent our children from growing up and having those things, because if we can start making changes now and eliminating their exposure as kids, think of our children as little buckets, right? And we're in our homes and we're choosing all these products, and instead of choosing products and chemicals or products with that are full of chemicals, we're choosing products with less chemicals and food with less chemicals, and building materials with less chemicals, then we're not filling up our kids' buckets as much. So by the time they're adults, they're not overflowing with body burden, and they're not having the same ailments that we're having as adults, to where they're now having to eliminate things and having to figure out how to make all these changes because they've already maybe grown up with it.

Heather Anne 55:22

So maybe just that small change could be a generational thing, exactly.

Holly Mullen 55:29

It's the ripple effect, and that I mean, everyone wants to know how do we change the world? How do we have a healthier future? That's how.

Heather Anne 55:37

One person at a time. Yes. You start with yourself, start with your family, and then you can take that out even further. Because you then you have friends over to your house, and it's like, oh, well, well, what's this product? What's this, or what's this that you're eating, or how did you make this? Then you're able to share with more people and they're able to make more change.

Holly Mullen 55:59

And our kids, our pets, we we got a great example in the beginning when you're talking about our pets. Our pets, our small kids, they interact with their environments differently than we do as adults. Yeah, our pets are walking around, they're licking their feet. So are our kids. And they actually and they even absorb things more rapidly. Um, their bodies and their heart rates, they breathe faster, their hearts pump more. So they're taking things in more, they're pumping it through their bodies faster, they're interacting with their environments more thoroughly than we are. So we mop the floor, we wipe the counters. We're not running around all over the floors like kids are. So they're getting more exposure. Um, and so it matters more.

Key Takeaways And Closing

Heather Anne 56:49

Holly, thank you. This is even another conversation that we can continue because there's so much information out there, and I really think more and more people are really taking a look at their environment and how they can change, uh, how they can make their homes healthier, how we can make ourselves healthier, definitely our children and even our pets. We really appreciate you being here, sharing all your insight and experiences with us. Um, for those listening, we will have a link of your information so that um you can know more about Holly's background, her podcast, um, and uh social media. We'll have all that information out there for you.

Joe 57:32

In the show notes, yes. In the show notes, yes.

Heather Anne 57:35

Okay. Well, thank you. Thank you so much for having me. We appreciate it. So the biggest takeaway from today's episode is health isn't just about what you eat or um work out, it's about where you live and sleep and how you recover, it's about your environment. Um, it's about shifting from chasing symptoms to understanding our systems and how we can make those small changes. And just even making one change can make a world of difference for your health. So um please subscribe and support our podcast. We have many more exciting discussions coming up, including guests. We uh can't wait to take you along for new episodes.

Joe 58:21

So join us every tweet, my friends. You're sure to give us a mile from lessons learned in this time. Professor M.

Heather Anne 58:30

Heather Matter and the United States.