Full Video and Transcript of Our Instagram LIVE With Dr. Martin Hart Answering Questions About Mold and Health

Note: The transcript below is a trimmed-down version of what you will see and hear in the above video from our Instagram Live with Dr. Martin Hart. We tried to eliminate any filler info and extraneous words to give you the “meat” of the information provided. All submitted questions have been bolded to help you skip ahead or to navigate to the subjects and information that interests you most. We hope you find Dr. Hart’s answers as helpful as we do. This talk is FULL of information. Grab a pad and pen, relax, learn, and enjoy!

Transcript

I want to introduce myself a little bit. I’m Doctor Martin Hart. I specialize in mold illness. I work with patients on a functional medicine and biological medicine basis–that’s my background. You can read my article on Sinusitis Wellness. They post that up for me. So, as we’re starting, I want to say thank you to Micro Balance number one, for making such great products that we love to use here in our clinic, but also for having me on tonight and for giving me a chance to chat with you guys and answer some of your questions. As we’re starting and getting going, let’s just first say that this talk is not meant to help you treat or diagnose mold illness. This is not a diagnostic setup. It’s for informational and educational purposes only.

Now we’ll jump in with those questions. Some people submitted questions ahead of time, and that’s what I’m going to start with tonight. So, let’s go with question number one.

What kind of testing do you normally do on your patients when you suspect mold?

This is a really great question. So the testing that I usually do when they come in, number 1 of 2 things: Number 1, I want to test their home to make sure to see if that’s where they’re getting a potential exposure. And so for that, a lot of times I’ll use plate testing. I’ll use the EC3 Mold Plates or I’ll use either the EMMA or ERMI to see what sort of mold and mycotoxins are present. And that’s what I do in the home. For the person, I’ll do a urine mycotoxin test. There’s a couple of great ones that are good, that measure the number of mycotoxins in the urine. There’s three or four out there that are really beneficial, and so we want to see: does the body hold mold toxins? And then you can get a little further and you can look at different biomarkers that are in the body. They’re not direct mold markers, but they’re typically elevated or decreased depending on what you’re looking at with mold. So that might be a blood test on something MSH which is a hormone out of the brain, melanocyte-stimulating hormone. You could look at VEGF, C3a, and C4a which are immune molecules that tell us about inflammation.

We could look at things like osmolarity, which is how hydrated are you. That’s a really easy one to do in the blood. You could look at ADH, antidiuretic hormone; another hormone from the brain that helps us maintain our water flow. So you can measure all these different things to see how is mold affecting your body, and so you can look at it directly with a mycotoxin test, or you can look at it through blood.

The way you do these tests is by typically working with a practitioner to do the body testing and the home tests you can order through the Micro Balance website. The plate testing and the EMMA are all available there. But if you want to test your body, you need to find a good, qualified practitioner who specializes in mold illness to help you. Those are really good intro ways to test and figure out, am I dealing with mold? So number one–test your environment, number two–test your body for mold toxins, and number three–you can test for biomarkers to see what’s going on, and that’s also a really good way to measure if inflammation going down during treatment–are the hormones balancing out or mold levels going down on my body.

Will you or what do you do to start treating someone who can’t leave their moldy environment yet?

This is big, because if you’re in mold, ideally, you want to get out. So, if you’re living in the mold, kind of step one of my processes, let’s test your environment, and if we can, let’s get you out of there, but sometimes you can’t leave, right? So what can you do? Well, number one, you want to start supporting your body right away. If you can bind up the mold toxins, you want to do that. Look at a good, healthy binder. You want to try to lower the inflammation, you want to make your internal environment as safe as possible and on the external environment, if you absolutely can’t leave, until it’s clean, there are a couple of good options. Number two–you’d want to change your air filters at least once a month. You want to get a really good air filter. You want to make sure it can filter down to less than .1 microns. A HEPA filter can filter down to less than point microns and get a lot of those mycotoxins up and bind them up in your body. With filters, you would want as many of those as you need to clean your living space. There are some that’ll clean a whole 1,200 square feet, for instance with one device. But if you got multiple levels, etcetera, you’re closing doors and trying to make some of the space safe. You want to have enough air purifiers in your home and air filters to clean that out. Number three, you want to start using mold-cleaning products. EC3 by Micro Balance are some great ones. All the way from sprays to wipe things down, laundry additives to clear them out of your clothes, to the foggers. Those are big too. I highly recommend people fog on a regular basis if they know they have mold in their environments.

So what do you do if you can’t leave your environment right away?

Number one, make your internal environment as safe as possible and bind the mold to lower inflammation. Then you would want to make the external environment as clean as possible. And I want to make sure I’m really careful because if you’ve got like tons of black mold that you’re seeing, do everything you can to find a way out. So, I just want to say, if you can get a way out of an environment that’s just super toxic, go.

If mold is in the HVAC system, you’d want to have it professionally cleaned. You’ve got to watch out for cross-contamination there and there are also some ways to fog your system. Those are possibilities to look at there.

Those of you renting may need to use some professionals for some of it. Typically, what I’ve had my patients and clients do is take the results of your mold test and potentially your urine test to your landlord, and oftentimes they will respect what you’re asking them to do. But you need to make sure they do a good job, not just wipe it up with some bleach. They need to make sure they’re actually cleaning it up, and a lot of times they will be receptive. Not all of them, though, unfortunately, but many of them will be receptive.

How do you use the EC3 products in your practice?

So here in our clinic, number one, I wanted a very simple way that I could have someone test their home, a very low barrier of entry, right? You know, sometimes mold testing can range anywhere from $350 to a few $1,000 to have those professionally done, and that can be overwhelming. And initially, when I was requesting patients do those sorts of things, I would get so much pushback. They would deny the possibility of there being mold in their environment because they didn’t want to deal with both the stress of the situation and the economic cost. And so then, the mold plates are a fantastic way for us to test the environment right away, and they give a really good indication: Is there mold growing in my home now? It’s not perfect, but it’s pretty good. In fact, and you can go even further–each of those kits comes with like six mold plates. You can test tons of different rooms, so you might know, like in the bedrooms, they don’t grow much mold but in the basement, in the laundry room, grow tons. Okay. So, we can kind of narrow it down. We know where the mold problems are most likely, and so that’s number one. We go through a lot of the mold plates for that.

If you’re sick, you also need to test your work environment and test your car. That’s one that I started having patients test a lot more of is their vehicles. Some people’s vehicles are disgusting, and I don’t think it’s any fault of their own. It’s that just mold grows easily there. There’s so much fabric in there. There’s always the weather too. You know, you don’t think about leaving the window open and the rain, right? We expect it to grow in the house with leaks, but we don’t think about the rain coming into the car. For instance, when you left your window open all night during a rainstorm, that’s going to cause mold potentially. So, you can use those plates to test your car. You can test furniture; you can test rugs. So that’s the first way, and then the EC3 cleaning products are a major one. The laundry additive, the spray product to use to clean the environment. That’s going to be a big route when the dust comes in. You want to keep out all those mold spores, all those microbes.

Another one I want to talk about is the candles. If you can’t get out of a moldy environment yet, you want to use the EC3 candles because they do lower, they are third-party tested, and they lower mycotoxins in the air. You burn the candles. It’s kind of nice, with some ambiance, right? It lowers mycotoxin content in the air. We offer them for patients. If you’re traveling and you can’t tell if the hotel room potentially is going to have some mold or mycotoxins, bring a couple of candles and burn them with you while you’re there, so that’s going to be big.

Then the other way is the foggers, highly recommend the foggers for people to use, especially like, let’s say, I have some patients were very mold sensitive and their environments are pretty clean, like almost pristine. I still have them fog once a month or once a quarter to get it cleaned out. So that’s a great option. Alternatives to fogging or even after fogging, like somebody asked how ozone can help kill and reduce the mycotoxins and mold content. You have to vacuum afterward, wipe everything down and vacuum afterward, but it’s hitting it differently. I would do either fog or ozone right? They hit things differently, with different mechanisms of action.  You could do both at different times, not together.

We highly recommend at our practice foggers to people with the EC3 solution. It works great. Many, many patients tell me how much better they feel after they fog. I had one recently who was fogging on a regular basis and she’d feel good for a week and then the symptoms would come back! We used the plate testing to try to track what it was down. She still had some mold in her house that she hadn’t found before. It was under the counter, tops, I think, and so, if I recall correctly, we use the plates to help us narrow that down. You can keep testing, so treat, test, and then treat again. That’s a great way to do it.

A  lot of times we’ll have somebody put out like three plates. Okay, then some come back as moderately moldy. Now we think we know where it’s at. When then treat the area with the fogger. Clean everything really well right? Have the carpet cleaned and removed, and use all the EC3 solutions. Wipe everything down, fog everything, wait a couple of days, and retest to see if you did a good enough job.

The products and the foggers are also safe for people with MS, and what I’ve seen for some of those people, if they may be a little sensitive to the spray, they do really well if somebody else fogs and they go out of the house for a few hours. Lots of times, that works well for some of my most sensitive patients. Patients also seem to do okay with the laundry additive, if someone runs a load while they’re not in the house or in a separate room and then lets it settle before they enter that area. It seems to work out really really well for them.

Now Micro Balance does have the new electrostatic fogger that I’m really excited about because instead of just fogging, they’re actually charged particles coming out of the fogger which means they’re going to be attracted to surfaces, so they’re going to better surround it, they’re going to grab onto things and so it’s going to get deeper penetration and further coverage than the other fogger.

What if I have mold in the kitchen cabinets?

Spray with EC3 if you can’t get the cabinets removed. You want to keep wiping them down as much as possible, but at some point, you may want to see if you could like, if it’s growing in the wood or the material, if you could seal it some way and then when you cleaned at that point with the EC3 solution, you get, a better clean. If you could, you’d want to create a barrier and then clean it. All that said, this is not meant to treat or diagnose mold illness. It’s educational advice, not remediation advice. I’m a people mold illness specialist. Take this as for educational, informational aspect rather than like, “Hey, you need to actually do this.” But that’s what I’ve seen work for patients and clients. Seal it and then you can clean it easier. So that’s how we usually use the EC3 products in our practice.

When and how to use homeopathy in your practice?

Micro Balance also makes some different products like CellTropin, for instance. I find CellTropin is a great way to start healing the brain and the pituitary gland when you’re dealing with mold illness and mold toxicity. So I talked about how your brain secretes melanocyte-stimulating hormones. That’s really important for tanning and our skin health, but it’s also really important to balance our hormones and balance our immune system and mycotoxins suppress the pituitary. After an exposure, sometimes, even when detoxing, the pituitary doesn’t always necessarily just click back on. We’ve got to do something and I find CellTropin works very, very well in our practice. And so that’s a version of homeopathy to help reset that system.

So what is homeopathy?

It’s high dilutions of different molecules. So in the CellTropin, there are some versions of pituitary, and so what it’s doing is it’s providing information. It’s kind of like an informational reset. Sometimes I call it a coach; it’s coaching the body on how to do these things that it has forgotten or stopped doing on its own.

What’s the best course for cellular healing after removing mold, bacterial infections, and Marcons?

So I’ll talk about that a little bit more. But if you’ve cleared the mold out, then what you also want to do at that point is you would want to do something like CellTropin to reset the actions of hormones. So CellTropin helps to reset the brain responses. We talked about ADH, an antidiuretic hormone. It plummets; it’s another one that mold lowers. Patients end up urinating all the time; they’re just peeing all the time. And they’re thirsty. It’s because their ADH isn’t holding on to the water, and so we need to reset that. So CellTropin is another great option to do that.

Other ways I use homeopathy is basically when I want to coax the body into doing something gentle. So when I want to have the body do something without having to be too harsh or someone who’s really sensitive, or if they’re having a hard time tolerating remedies and supplements, then I would have them do homeopathy. It’s going to be gentler. Its mechanisms are going to be more subtle, and more informational for the body, rather than direct action. And I find they work very, very well. The research does show that homeopathy, like the base of homeopathy, is different than just plain water. The way you make the homeopathic creates different types of informational fields, and so there’s some really good research on homeopathy I usually use, especially for detoxification, for resetting informational fields. When I’m trying to reset feedback loops, for instance from the brain to the pituitary gland. That’s a communication feedback loop. And homeopathy is a great way to reset that.

Is the alcohol percentage safe in CellTropin?

I have seen no issues with it and then if somebody does struggle with it, we just simply evaporate it out is what we do. So most folks don’t have a problem with the alcohol, but if they do struggle, maybe they do have MCAS or histamine intolerance, then we just evaporate it out. It’s really simple to evaporate this out. So let’s say, your dosage of CellTropin is two sprays, a couple of times a day. What you do is you take a cup of boiling water, put it in a teacup or tea mug, and then put your two sprays in that tea mug. Right in there with your water. Okay, got it in there. Then you let it sit until the water gets to room temperature and that allows it to evaporate off. It’s kind of like when you cook with alcohol, you’re cooking the alcohol off and then you just drink the tea water. At that point, it’s CellTropin water and that’s a great way to evaporate it out.

Homeopathics are a great way to work with kids too. So kids who maybe can’t do high dosages of things or can’t tolerate a lot of some substances, children, toddlers, babies all do great with homeopathy. It works fantastic. Now. What’s really neat is you can see it work in them. They have no idea what’s going on and they’re getting better. So it’s it’s really neat to see with them.

If I feel like I need to pee all of the time, but I don’t have a bladder infection, could that be mold?

That could be a lot of different things, but with mold, the mycotoxins are typically either affecting the membranes, like the bladder membranes, or they’re affecting the nerves. So both of those have to be cleared.

Frequent urination is a mold exposure side effect because of ADH, it lowers the antidiuretic hormone and sometimes it affects the aldosterone for the adrenal glands and it makes you urinate a bunch. So, for instance, for myself when I had some mold exposure, it made it really difficult to even exercise consistently. If I was to push it too far, I would cramp up all well. Why? Because I couldn’t keep myself hydrated. So clearing that out makes a huge difference and then resetting the brain afterward.

Can we start with CellTropin and homeopathy right away?

I don’t start with it and I’ll go over my process in a second. I don’t start with CellTropin. I usually start with a different route and I’ll explain why in a second.

Can mold cause smoker’s cough?

Well, at that point it wouldn’t be smoker’s cough, right? it would be a mold cough, but it sounds just like a smoker’s cough. You know a lot of common symptoms I see with mold and people having mold in the home, sinus congestion is an easy one. But chronic cough all the time, it’s also a big one. Chronic mucus all the time, a big one. And so it looks like you basically either have a cough or an upper respiratory infection. Bloody noses! Huge to me. If somebody’s like chronic congestion and bloody noses all the time, I’m like, we’ve got to test your house. We have to test it. If I’m trying to convince someone that there’s mold in their home, we test. I say something like, “Hey like, look, you know the plates, they’re $34 for the set of six. Let’s go test your house and see.” Sometimes it takes a little convincing to even get them to do that. But if you can show that there’s mold there, boom, I mean case closed. So, even if there’s just a mildew smell everywhere, you’ve got mold. I mean, no doubt.

Then you’ve got to navigate the next conversation of what to do about it, which could be some self-cleaning, and we do have a free guide to that on our website Keystone Total Health if it’s small. But if it’s major, next you do need to seek some professional help.

Can we start homeopathy while we’re working on cleaning up the mold?

That’s no problem, it just depends on what homeopathics you are using to do what. So this is a good segway into the next question.

What interventions have I seen work best for most people?

I’ve got a stepwise process I use. The first step is to test your environment and test yourself for mold. If it’s positive, remove yourself from the exposure as most as possible, and that might mean cleaning your environment, moving out for a little while whatever. Then two would be to slowly open your detoxification channels to clear the mold toxins and bind them up. So I use homeopathics for that phase as well. Sometimes they might be drainage remedies to help get the lymphatics draining to the liver, kidneys, colon, bladder, all draining right. So when we’re moving things, it’s got to drain from the cells into the blood. Then it’s got to drain from the lymphatics and blood into the liver and kidneys. Then from the liver and kidneys, its got to drain into the gallbladder, into the colon, or from the kidneys, into the bladder and urinate it out. And so those homeopathics can gently help to open up drainage. They can start to help get us moving and get those mycotoxins cleared out. You can also use homeopathy to help lower the inflammatory response and support a healthy inflammatory response to mold toxins.

If you can step to open up detoxification, then bind up the mold toxins. Binders are huge. If you’re in mold, you got to be binding. You might need to use a more gentle binder than others, but you’ve got to be binding the mold up. There are lots of options on that front and they do different actions. Different mycotoxins are bound by different binders, just generally, charcoal binds most of them. And it’s usually a little gentler than some of the other ones. You got to find which one works for you and which one works best. Working with a good practitioner helps especially if they can do some sort of biofeedback testing on you to pinpoint which one will work best for you, and at which time.

Step three is lower the inflammation and start supporting the body’s terrain. And so that’s kind of what I’m saying there when I’m talking about drainage, maybe supporting a little bit of general detoxification. We’re just maybe getting some minerals and electrolytes on board, just a very general supportive setup, but then also trying to directly lower the inflammation.

So one of the other terms for chronic mold illness would be chronic inflammatory response syndrome because every time you get exposed to mold you’re having an inflammatory response. So we want to lower that inflammatory response. One of the markers we used to look at that is complement C3a, and C4a, those are immune markers. Those are typically pretty elevated in folks with mold illness. So there are lots of different ways we could do that. We could use homeopathy, use herbal medicine, we might use some different supplementation. That’s anti-inflammatory, diet is going to be a big part of that. If you have mold illness, mold exposure, or chronic inflammatory response, you’ve got to get gluten out. You can measure anti-gliadin antibodies, which is basically is your body attacking gluten and having an inflammatory response. So you got to get that stuff out and so get gluten out of your diet. Typically it works well for a short period of time to go low carb if you’re dealing with mold because it helps lower that inflammation for a little while.

If infections are involved, then we need to support the body’s immune system next. That’s step four. A lot of times, MARCoNs and sinus infections come with mold exposure. What happens? We’re breathing in the mold, it’s irritating our sinuses, so the mucus membranes are more sensitive and it’s lowering our immune system. It lowers your immune response, and so now all of these opportunistic infections can settle in our sinuses. Some of them can be MARCONS, which is like antibiotic-resistant staph. I’ve seen strep. I’ve even seen E coli; you can even have just fungal overgrowth itself. Aspergillus, all sorts of different stuff, can grow and so we need to clear those infections out of the body.

Is there active mold growing in your body?

You could have a fungal overgrowth from being exposed to mold spores. We may need to clear that. I don’t do that early on unless it’s certain cases because we need to make sure you can detox it out first. That’s why step one is to get out of the mold. Step two is to open the detox channels. It isn’t until step four that you are usually dealing with infections.

You need to distinguish whether there is active fungal overgrowth. Then, are you dealing with mycotoxins? A mycotoxin test can help you to help you tell that. And then are you allergic to mold? You can have mold toxicity, mold infection, and mold allergy. You must address each one of them differently. Right, you have to address them specifically, and so there are different ways to do that. Using my seven steps addresses all of them, depending on what you’re dealing with. So, if infections are present, support the body’s immune system. Lowering inflammation is going to help with allergies, supporting the immune system’s going to help with large infections, etcetera. So, then you want to start dealing with specific issues caused by the mold. This may be something like SIBO at this point. This is when I might introduce something like CellTropin. I might be supporting directly, like repairing cell membrane function, repairing the brain, damaged intestinal membranes, whatever the direct issue the mold caused. We want to start supporting and handling that here. That would be step five. Step six is: you need to start retraining the brain and the limbic system. Mold causes inflammation of the brain and limbic system. It creates a constant threat environment, a constant potentiation of stress on the system. And so sometimes our threat response system in our body takes over and it exacerbates these responses. It exacerbates your symptoms because it’s going, this is dangerous. This is dangerous. This is dangerous and so it’s telling your body to have a big inflammatory response. It’s telling your body to try and get the toxins out. So, we need to retrain that so that our brain and body can have the appropriate response to the stimulus. We don’t want to have too little, and we don’t want to have too much. So, retraining the brain helps us meet in the middle.

There are various things I do for limbic retraining. I’ll make a custom program for people to brain retrain, maybe a variation of tapping or breathwork or maybe some mantra repetition, whatever works best. On that front, there are great systems out there, Gupta, DNRS to look at, but you need to retrain the brain and limbic system.

And then finally the last step, step seven, and this is when you’ve gone through the other steps, and sometimes the steps are circular, so we might not do, we might not just do layers. Do this one, then stop, do this one, then stop. Sometimes we got to keep doing them a little bit. So maybe you are able to lower your detox support while you’re focused on inflammation. But you want to build a mold tolerance. We want to get you the ability to go back out into the world again and not have to stress about being exposed to mold. Now look, if there’s mold going all over the ceiling somewhere, that’s not good for anyone. But there are small to moderate amounts of mold in the world that we want to be able to get exposed from and not have a total crash. So, for instance, in one patient I had with mold illness and Lyme disease, when she was exposed to mold it’d be a seizure, and then she’d be out for three days stuck in bed. Body pain and aches everywhere. A lot of times couldn’t walk and had to go in a wheelchair, after moderate, even low exposure. You can’t live a life like that. Now, she can go into moderately moldy environments, and she can be in there a few hours and have no problems. If she’s there for extended periods of time, she might start to get like a little bit of asthma and some congestion. Now, she just cleans it out. She does a procedure we put together for her. We created a protocol for if she had exposure, and then she’s good, so she’s built up that tolerance. We helped her build that mold tolerance again so she can live her life again and it’s not such a major exposure.

Can mold smell like feces?

It can smell pretty terrible a lot of times. There might be other things in your sinuses too. Sometimes mold can grow with mycobacteria in your environment and other types of fungus that can create some pretty nasty, terrible smells.

Is an infrared sauna an effective addition to a mold treatment protocol?

Typically, I would start with far infrared. You don’t want to use too much near infrared all the time. You want to take breaks from that because of the effects on the body, but far infrared is a great way to detoxify, get drainage out, get the blood flowing, and all of those things that are affected. But you have a proper detox protocol in place before you start doing something like the infrared sauna, but it is a great way to open up the detox channels. It’s one we use heavily here in the clinic and use in our home. It’s one of the top things I recommend patients get for their home detox products.

How accurate are over-the-counter mold tests?

You know I can’t vouch for any kits except the ones I use, so I can’t vouch for the ones you get from Amazon. I can’t vouch for the ones you get at the hardware store. But I’ll tell you I’ve found I’ve done multiple types of mold testing and I’ve found that the EC3 plates are very accurate. They do a great job of telling if there is mold showing up. How does it correlate with other symptoms I’m having?

Is aspergillus what is known as black mold?

Different molds can be black, but typically when people talk about black mold, they’re talking about Stachybotrys, which is one of the most toxic forms of mold. Aspergillus is not Stachybotrys, they are different types. Aspergillus can be pretty nasty, though, and still creates a lot of old toxins. It can actually infect us as well, and typically from water damage.

Are black mold and the scent of cat urine connected?

It can be, but a lot of times the scent of cat urine means ammonia. Whatever the fungus is breaking down, it could be creating ammonia in the process, because molds break things down. They break things down, so whatever they’re breaking down could be producing that ammonia smell.

How do you know when you’re truly healed and mold free?

This is a great question. So, when you’re doing a treatment protocol like my seven steps, you’re testing your environment, opening up detox, you’re lowering inflammation, clearing infections, dealing with specific issues, you’re retraining the brain and you’re building more tolerance. Well, number one, you test. Are the mycotoxins going down in my urine? That’s a great indicator. Number two, you could do different neurological tests. The visual contrast screening is a great test. You can start to measure the different markers. Are the inflammatory markers in your blood going down? Are your hormones normalizing? Are they balancing out? Is your osmolarity improving? Like is your hydration improving, and then we can just look at symptoms. Are you symptomatically improving? That’s going to be huge. And then we do further testing like we do biofeedback muscle testing, things like that. You know, test, don’t guess. I don’t want to have people spend tons and tons and tons of money on testing. I like to home in on the tests that I think make the most sense so that they can focus on getting better. Test along the way to see what’s going on.

Should all people do antifungals if they’ve been exposed to mold?

Not everyone needs to do antifungals because you may not have fungal overgrowth. Antifungals kill the mold. For instance, Micro Balance offers CitriDrops Nasal Spray, a great way to clear fungus and other infections out of the sinuses and to support the immune system in doing so. At times I do recommend nasal sprays for a lot of people, especially when our tests, our thermography, and our biofeedback scans show chronic sinus infections, we’ll do nasal sprays. Also, anytime I find somebody has had mold exposure, I want them to use a nasal spray to clear it out. Okay, but do they need to clear everything with antifungal? No. If you don’t have fungal overgrowth, there’s not a ton of point to doing oral treatment or an antifungal if you don’t have fungal overgrowth. If you have mycotoxins but no fungal overgrowth, antifungals won’t do it. You just need to focus on detox, etcetera. So hopefully that’s helpful.

I had direct mold absorption through the skin. A year later I moved into a clean environment and did improve, but now I have alopecia. Will this also eventually improve?

I’ve dealt with it, Alopecia Areata, when I had a big mold exposure. I got bald spots in my beard. Somebody asked me once, “Did you shave a bald spot in your beard?” It’s called alopecia Areata. It’s actually the mold essentially cutting off blood supply to those areas. It’s affecting blood flow and it’s also creating an autoimmune-type reaction. Essentially, at least that’s what I found.

Make sure you’re detoxing the mold, but the key on that front is you have to actually deal with the inflammation, and you have to deal with the immune response to the mold. Okay, that’s been my experience there, and then the hair grows back. A couple of things you can do brush the area quite a bit. Get a lot of blood flow in there. Just use a hairbrush and brush the area. Get a lot of blood flow to those areas. But you got to make sure you’re working on the mold and addressing the immune side-effects by lowering the inflammation, etcetera.

What do I think of the Shoemaker Protocol?

He’s a pioneer in this field. He’s great, just like everybody who helped create Micro Balance. He’s got the protocol he sees has worked. I don’t agree with all of his medication recommendations. I find that a lot of times, they’re hard to tolerate or they don’t test well, they cause other effects. But overall, his protocol makes sense. I go about it slightly differently, in a slightly different order, but his protocol makes sense. He’s a pioneer in the field. He’s great.

Is there a brand of homeopathics I recommend?

Well, for sure I use Micro Balance and the other ones just vary, and I do make some by hand. I do some hand dilutions; I am trained in homeopathy and so I do some hand dilutions. The biggest thing is you just want them to be a reputable company and you want them to be a clean product. So that’s the biggest thing.

What’s a good binder for gastritis?

It depends on what’s causing the gastritis. A lot of different binders cause different effects. Clay is going to bind certain things. Charcoal is going to bind other things, but charcoal and clay are traditional remedies for gastrointestinal issues. But it just depends on what’s causing your gastritis. You want to look at things that are going to soothe the tract and bind up what you’re dealing with, especially if it’s fungal-related. You want to make sure you’re binding up the right mycotoxins.

What about clay as a binder?

Different types of clay make for good binders. Some different binders I use are activated charcoal, carbonized bamboo, humic and folic acids, which is also known as bioactive carbons. I’ll use saccharomyces boulardii. Even some different things like colostrum and IgG powder can be good binders. Beta sterols, fibers, and pectin, are all going to be great binders in that front bentonite clay. You’ve got to realize each one binds up different mycotoxins and so you might have to alternate. You might have to rotate, and a lot of times that does best for people–rotating. Maybe a month on this one, a month on the other one, or three days a week on one, 3 days a week on the other.

Have I seen Hashimoto’s reverse after removing the mold from the body?

I’ve seen a lot of things get reversed. I’ve seen dementia reverse when we cleared mold out of the brain. I’ve seen different gastrointestinal diseases reverse. Hashimoto’s is an autoimmune condition. I’ve even seen Lyme disease get better with minimal treatment once the immune system kicks back on.

What is the best time of day to take a binder?

Whenever you can get it in. That’s number one. We want to be practical, but you’ve got to understand detox. Mold goes through the liver and then it goes into your gallbladder, which releases bile. Bile is both a toxin dump and it digests our fats for us. So, when is it going to be released? It’s going to be released during meals. So, when you eat and you start chewing, the food hits your stomach. Your stomach triggers your gallbladder to release the bile in your intestines. So, if you take the binder before you eat, the binders in your intestines, and then it can bind up, the bile, and with it comes the mold toxins. So, if I had it perfect, you should take your binders before meals. That would be best.

How do you clean a house after remediation? What should you throw away? Who can you get to do the cleaning?

There’s lots of different cleaning remediation companies out there, maybe even some potential,  just straight cleaning services, that specialize in mold. You want to make sure they have a mold background and, more so, a mold illness background. So, it’s not just is the house good or not, but is the house safe or not. At that point you want to make sure you are using a HEPA filter on your vacuum, using an air filter, it’s got to be a good HEPA air filter. You’re changing filters on a regular basis too. You’re also getting some Micro Balance cleaning products—the spray, and the laundry additive, so that you are consistently lowering the mycotoxin load. Hopefully, whoever remediated your house used air scrubbers, used reverse airflow, wiped, and created plastic barriers. I hope they did that.

For throwing away and keeping, test. Number one, if you’ve got fabric things, test with the EC3 Mold Plates; that’s what I would do. But number two, anything with fabric is going to be harder to clean. You know that’s just anything porous. Something wood with a coating, it’s going to be easier to keep than a fabric piece of furniture, and then metal is going to be easier. So, you’ve got to think about where the mold could get into and stick. Use some plates and test and see what you can clean and what you can get rid of, and there’s some different charts out there that have a different experience that you can reference to see what you can clean.

What do you use for nasal congestion?

CitriDrops. Micro Balance makes a great nasal spray that tests well for a lot of patients. You can do different sprays with essential oils or different types of nanoparticle silver are great options on that front and things I use often. Sometimes I’ll tailor something like it might start with a base of like CitriDrops and then test and add a few things like essential oils to it–whatever tests best for the patient. Do something like that, but those are some great.

How do I work with you? I’d like to get some screening done for my toddler.

Keystone Total Health dot com is a great place to look. There is a link to use to book a consultation with me, and you can read some of the blogs. You can also check out the blogs they write on Sinusitis Wellness. You can reach out over Instagram as well.

How do you rid MARCoNs from the sinuses?

You got to deal with it directly. Number one, clear the mold out of the body, so the immune system is turned back on. Supporting the immune system is number two. Number three is to have the body clear it directly with nasal sprays. You’ve got to do them [nasal sprays].

Have you seen elevated liver enzymes in people who have had mold exposure?

For sure, especially when they’re poor detoxifiers, it’s going to raise liver enzymes, no doubt.

Is a little mold in a home, harmful? I need to know if I need to get rid of everything.

So, on the EC3 Plates, they give you little scale. A couple of spores are probably not a huge deal. If I saw a couple of spores, I’d say, “Let me get some air filters and do some fogging occasionally. Then you can check the levels. How many spores? Is the spore count growing? If you don’t know if you need to get rid of things, test. Test it out.

If you can’t clear the mold smell, or can’t clear out the mold counts, well, that’s when you need to get rid of everything. Sometimes people will air it out for a week or a month in the garage. Bring it back in. Do you react to it? Do have an inflammatory response? Then, it’s got to go.

What to do about hypersensitivity, and wheezing? I’ve been dealing with CIRS and have vision issues as well.

All of those things, vision issues, chronic inflammatory response, hypersensitivity, and something like asthmatic wheezing or allergy wheezing could all be caused by mold. So, you would follow the steps. But what are the steps? If you’re living in it, try to get out of it or limit your exposure. Start detoxifying number two. Lower your inflammation. Support your immune system. Deal with the specific effects of mold exposure. Retrain your brain. If you’re dealing with mold illness, retraining your brain is a major step you need to work on, and building a mold tolerance, and rebalancing your immune system so that you can create a mold tolerance. That’s how I would deal with those things.

Have I seen patients with ALS improve after treating mold?

ALS is a biggie, a neurodegenerative disease. I have worked with a lot of patients with ALS. Here is what I’ve seen, if you’re supporting the body, especially if you’re supporting those seven steps that I showed you, I have seen them improve. I’ve seen those cases get a lot of functionality back. I would never say treating mold cures ALS directly. But I’m supporting the body. The body is amazing. It’s got the innate intelligence, and wisdom inside that knows what to do. So, you support the body. I’ve seen those people get strength back, energy back, fewer vesiculations, slowed progression, all those sorts of things. So, if you’re dealing with the cause and mold is one of the causes, then I’ve seen those cases improve and I’ve worked with those cases directly. Part of the issue, for them, was neurotoxins from mold.

Are topical steroids, along with basic Rogaine a good remedy from the dermatologist for alopecia?

You know there are some toxic effects that could happen. Maybe the toxic effects could be minable. But you got to ask: are you dealing with the root cause now? Maybe those things on the back end might be helpful. I would say, in the long run, steroids are going to suppress your immune system and so a lot of times what I’ll test for with alopecia is that they’ve got topical fungus. There’s a fungus growing on the scalp. So, you need to deal with that directly. If you just suppress it with the steroid, you’re just going to drive it in deeper. It’s gone to remain a constant problem. But those could be some short-term solutions and so use them appropriately. Recognize the risk-benefit ratio and then decide from there.

Will binders bind nutrients if taken before meals?

Depends on the binder. Certain binders do bind nutrients, some don’t. It’s not going to have such a binding effect that you’re going to create a massive deficiency, but you take them half an hour before your meal, and then it has time to bypass the stomach so it can sit intestine. Then, when you start eating, your stomach closes right at the bottom of your stomach closes and becomes a sack, and so the binders already passed through it, and then the food gets digested. And so, you’re basically beating the chase. Binder then nutrients, so take it half an hour beforehand but don’t stress yourself out. Don’t drive yourself crazy trying to make that perfect.

Is Propolis nasal spray effective?

It’s good for helping clear infections. I’ve never found it to be enough alone, just at least for mold illness. Okay, but it’s good for, viruses and bacteria and stuff like that.

Could mold illness cause vertigo and dizziness?

No doubt. I’ve seen it all the time could cause Postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTS), which can cause low blood pressure, and dizziness. It can affect the brain; it can affect the upper cervical apparatus. So, for sure, I can see mold cause dizziness.

How long can someone hold on to mold?

I’ve seen them hold on to it for years. If they’re poor detoxifiers or if they have the HLA gene—they call it the dreaded mold gene. You can hold on to it for years. If you’re not dealing with it directly, or if you don’t know you have it.

What additional recommendations do you give to those who have the mold gene and are affected by mold?

Same thing. They follow the seven steps that I was talking about earlier. Remember the gal I mentioned who would have mold exposure, a seizure, then have to have three days in bed, or in a wheelchair, and now she can be exposed to mild to moderate amounts of mold for certain periods of time and be okay. You support the body. You clear the mold toxicity out, lower the inflammation, balance out to support the specific effects, retrain the brain and rebuild the mold tolerance. Now look, if you have the HLA gene, you’re still going to be more susceptible than other people to mold illness, so you probably need to be more careful. What we did for her is we built an exposure protocol. You know mild exposure, maybe no big deal. Don’t worry about it. Moderate to large exposure, we’re rinsing the sinuses out; we’re binding up the toxins. We’re doing that for maybe three days, but, in general, and this is a good time for me to address this, overall, I don’t like cookie-cutter approaches. You’re not going to get the same protocol from me overall. I’ve got to have basic protocols to give everyone. But the general idea is to find out what’s going on with you and deal with what shows up. What do I find? Then I deal with that specifically. So, if you have the HLA gene, then what else is showing up? Which gene do you have? What else is bogging you down? Detoxification capabilities are not gone, they’re just low functioning. So, we just need to support the detox organs and figure out what else is there.

Do you retain your brain with psychological therapy?

I mean therapy could be helpful right, and I would never say what I’m doing is psychological counseling. But I am supporting psychological health; I’m supporting neurological function. So, whether that’s with tapping, whether that’s with parts work, whether that’s with mantra work, affirmations, different brain or functional neurology, retraining exercises. But therapy can help, especially if you’re dealing with trauma. Trauma is going to make your body more reactive to everything, and look, we are a mind-body apparatus. The mind and the emotions and the body all work together. You cannot separate them out. Get that out of your head. You can’t separate them out. So, if we’re doing something psychologically healthy, it’s supporting the body being healthy, and if we’re supporting the body being healthy, we’re supporting the psychology being so. If you have a lot of traumas in your background or complex PTSD, especially at that point there, it would be really helpful because you would lower those trauma episodes which is going to create more psychological health, which is going to create more brain health, and then more body health. So, people with PTSD tend to have more inflammatory reactions, more hypersensitive reactions to like things like this.

Any suggestions for continued irritated eyes, or dark circles under the eyes?

Dark circles under the eyes a lot of times are going to mean mold exposure. You’re probably still getting exposed. Blood sugar issues are you don’t have enough antioxidants. You’ve got too much free radical damage. Continually irritated eyes tell me that your mucous membranes need healing. Are you hydrated enough? You might be drinking enough water, but we can look at the mold effects on ADH to see if you are retaining your water or osmolarity. Do your cells retain moisture? So, we’re looking at those things. We might need to repair your cellular membranes and mucus brains, so we might not look at things like phospholipids, COQ10, vitamins, things like that, collagen, and special fatty acids. So, are we repairing the cellular membranes? These cellular membranes can be irritated by mold, toxins, and fungi. And so, if we haven’t repaired them, even if we’re out of the exposure, that might not solve the problem. So, get out of the exposure, detox it out, and repair the effects.

We just got to mold and all three of my children got a rash after we left. Is this related to the mold? Why would it come after we left the moldy environment?

Because you’re no longer getting exposed, and the body says now I can finally deal with it so it might be having an immune effect. The immune system might be kicking back on and creating an immune effect, or you might not be detoxing enough. We’ve got to make sure you’re detoxing it well. So, on that front, the skin, there are four ways to get toxins out of the body: we can poop them out, we can pee them out, we can breathe them out, or they come out through our skin. And so, if we’re having trouble removing the toxins, a lot of times, rashes, acne, pimples, and blisters occur; it’s a detox reaction. It could also be a histamine inflammatory reaction, but it’s one of the main ways to detox. If you know that is happening, they’re probably not detoxing it out well enough, and you need to help them detox it out.

Can mold exposure cause eye floaters?

Yes, it can cause floaters. Anything that is going to inflame the optic nerves, vitreous fluid, etcetera. I also find Lyme toxins, bacterial infections, and parasites all cause floaters, but yeah, mold exposure can definitely cause floaters.

Do you need to throw away books and pillows?

I’m a total bibliophile. I love books. We have so many books in our house. Sometimes you do, though. With paper, it’s porous, and so what you do is you take it out of the environment, you can treat it, you can fog it, you can ozone it. You try to let it air out and then you see how you react to it. But you definitely want to give it a chance to air out. With pillows usually, you can try washing them in some of the laundry additive from EC3. But, a lot of times, pillows got to go.

Can you detox from the mold while pregnant?

You’d want to be really slow and gentle. I would highly, highly, highly recommend, and this is for educational purposes only, but finding a binder that you tolerate really well so that you’re binding up as much as you can and you’re just being really slow and gentle because you don’t want to drive anything out of your cells that are stable. So, at that point I would say mostly on that, that when I have pregnant patients like that, I’m looking at, let’s stabilize the body, get you out of the exposure and focus on binding it up. I don’t want to drive too much out. I just want to clear the cream off the top, so like when we cook or whatever, the cream rises to the top. I’m not going down looking for it. You just want to clear it off as it comes up, bind it out and just gently clear it off because you want to protect that baby at all costs. A lot of times toxic women will feel better when they’re pregnant. Unfortunately, it’s because the baby gets toxins. So, you want to support clearing that cream off the top as much as you can. It’s doable. I want to make sure I’m giving you some hope and some optimism. It’s doable and you can protect that baby. Just make sure you’re focusing on support, lowering inflammation, and clearing the toxins as they show up, not digging them out.

Any way to clean a bed?

It’s tough right, it is tough to clean a bed. I would essentially do this: Vacuum it, and fog the snot out of it, especially with the electrostatic fogger from Micro Balance. Fog the snot out of it, let it dry, HEPA vacuum, and fog it again. Do that a few times, and then I would seal it under a mattress cover. That’s what I would do.

Can you pass mold toxins on to your children?

If you were pregnant and you had a bunch of mycotoxins, that baby might pick up some of those mycotoxins. When you’re pregnant, they can pick up heavy metal, they can pick up other toxins for sure. If you have, like a fungal infection, they could potentially pick that up during the birth or whatever too as well. The big one too is they just may pick up your genetic mold susceptibility.

I want to make sure I say this because a lot of mammas get, they get really guilty and shameful. They feel like they poisoned their kids, or made their kids sick. That’s not up to you. I have no doubt you’re doing the best you can. Take that burden on yourself and when you discover it, you just do the best you can, and that makes you a good mamma. Don’t take that on to yourself.

Is there any help for a car that got cross-contaminated? We had it detailed with ozone and I still react to the car.

Deep, deep, clean. HEPA vacuum and fog the snot out of it. Fog, fog, fog, fog, fog. I would get all the nooks and crannies. Fog as best you can and then repeat. That’s what I would do in the car.

Can you clean photographs?

Those are tough. Put them in sleeves, Ziploc bags, whatever. Plaster them up. That way you can still look at them. You can still go through them, and you can do that to papers and things like that. Ziplock baggies, put them in sleeves, trap, seal it in, and if you’re going to be around it, you know you’re going to go through a whole box of photographs and maybe get exposed, wear a respirator N95 mask to help protect yourself as best you can.

Guys thank you so much for hanging out with me today. Thank you to the Micro Balance team for having me on. I hope this was helpful. I’ll save the video at the end so you can recap it later so you can check Micro Balance out on Instagram @MicrobalanceHealth. You can check me, and my team out @Keystone_Total_Health. You can look us up on that front. I’m Doctor Martin, so glad to get to chat with you tonight. Share this if you’ve found it useful. Continue commenting and you all take care.

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