Facilitated

26| Mold Illness: Mysterious Symptoms of Mycotoxin Exposure

• The Facility Denver • Episode 26

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Environmental toxins from water-damaged buildings and mold are often overlooked causes of multi-system symptoms that conventional medicine struggles to diagnose. We explore how mold exposure affects approximately 10-15% of the population who can't effectively eliminate mycotoxins due to genetic factors, leading to chronic inflammatory response syndrome.

• Mold illness affects multiple body systems simultaneously including brain, respiratory, digestive, skin and energy systems
• 30-40% of buildings have some form of mold, with 10-15% of people genetically unable to effectively clear mycotoxins
• Common symptoms include brain fog, chronic fatigue, migrating pain, respiratory issues, chemical sensitivities, and gallbladder problems
• Visual contrast sensitivity testing provides over 90% sensitivity for detecting mold-related illness
• Effective treatment requires a stepwise approach: remove exposure, establish foundations, then carefully implement detoxification
• Sinus infections often serve as reservoirs for mold, requiring specific testing and treatment for full recovery
• Air filtration systems like AirOasis can remove up to 99.995% of airborne mold when properly sized for rooms

Explore Urine Mycotoxin Testing through our Direct Order Labs Website. 

Don't accept "I'm just getting older" or "this is normal" as answers for chronic symptoms. Stay curious and find healthcare providers willing to investigate environmental factors as potential root causes of your health issues.


Want to take the next step with functional medicine? Learn more about our new patient process and lab testing at www.thefacilitydenver.com

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Stay curious, stay proactive, and we’ll catch you next time!

Mitchell:

Welcome to Facilitated, where we bring you real stories, strategies and science from the world of functional medicine. I'm Dr Mitchell Rasmussen, a functional medicine practitioner.

Kate:

And I'm Kate Daugherty, a certified nutritionist. We are the owners of the Facility, a functional medicine clinic here in Denver, Colorado.

Mitchell:

We help people improve their biology and get out of their own way. We help people improve their biology and get out of their own way. In my view, our work is about getting to know the person with the condition much more than it's about understanding which condition the person has. As I always say, diagnose the biology, not the disease.

Kate:

On this podcast we break down complex health topics, share real patient cases anonymized, of course and explore cutting-edge wellness strategies so you can make informed decisions about your health. Quick heads up before we dive in this podcast is for education and general information only. We're here to share insights, not to diagnose or treat. So if you're dealing with a health issue, chat with a qualified healthcare provider before making any changes. All right, let's get into it. Hello, this is Mitchell.

Mitchell:

How's it going? I wonder how good that sounds. Try it again.

Kate:

Hello, this is Mitchell.

Mitchell:

That's not bad.

Kate:

Sounds in my headphones like it's your voice.

Mitchell:

You gotta have more of a Wisconsin drawl.

Kate:

I forgot my bag.

Mitchell:

Bag, yeah, it's kind of weird when you hear your own voice back or when you hear someone impersonating your voice. I don't know which one I don't like more. Well, I'm excited about today.

Kate:

When are you not?

Mitchell:

That's true. Yeah, I enjoy this, kate, you get through it. I tolerate it yeah, you led the way last week, so I think today we'll share something that I like to talk about.

Kate:

Okay, what do you think about that? Great, what do you want to talk about?

Mitchell:

I want to talk about water damaged buildings and mold illnesses. Okay, you know, at this point my perspective is and again, context here we work with people who often have numerous symptoms across multiple body systems. They've done a standard medical workout, they've done their yearly physical with their baseline, you know kind of basic labs, and they've been told some combination of you're healthy, nothing's wrong, or your cholesterol is high, or you have high blood pressure. But the struggle in the conventional model is often a lack of zooming out and looking at the entirety of the connection of symptoms and since our foundation foundational belief is that everything is connected, we oftentimes meet people once they've already been told they're healthy but they feel terrible, right.

Mitchell:

So this is why I say it's mold until proven otherwise.

Mitchell:

Because number one, probably 30 to 40 percent of buildings have some type of mold and there's between 10 and 15 percent of us with a certain genetic makeup in something called the hla gene.

Mitchell:

That makes it very difficult in order to have the body purge said mold and essentially what happens is this individual becomes overburdened with this environmental toxicant or series of toxicants, like we see sometimes, or there's five to eight different types of mycotoxins in someone's body or driving immune responses in their immunoglobulins. So these individuals again, the 10 to 15 percent that are exposed in 30 to 40 percent of buildings, can truly not get over them unless you influence the internal environment. So for me, because it's so common and overlooked now where we're at in practice, it's one of the first things I think about that you must prove to me that you don't have it. You see that every day and the symptoms are random and wide-reaching. The exposures are numerous and if that's something going on with you and we can work to help your body move past it, pretty much every single symptom that you have generally is on the board to get better. What do you think?

Kate:

Okay, how do we prove it?

Mitchell:

Well, that's the hard thing, right? Because there's not just one process. In my opinion, when we're thinking about mold illness, the term that Dr Richie Shoemaker coined is SIRS chronic inflammatory response syndrome and if you're asking the question do I have mold? Then it's worth diving into. So the first thing I always do is take an environmental assessment, which we've talked about on a previous episode. Do you have known water damage where you live or, as we've seen a lot recently, where you work? Do you feel certain histamine-related symptoms in certain environments and you don't feel them in others?

Kate:

Do you feel better when you leave, when you're on vacation, when you're out of the home or, in the case of the work, do you feel better when you're working from home and not at the office?

Mitchell:

And what's interesting is I recently did a family vacation in Sarasota, florida, after a hurricane and I could tell when we got in the house that it was damp. It was a very clean house but specifically in the room I was staying in and I actually left that vacation with a sore throat for about two weeks afterward and mucus production, because I live in a new build with eight air purifiers. I frequently take things like glutathione to support my antioxidant status. So I generally do pretty well, but I noticed when I went to a new environment I had symptoms which I found interesting and it took a couple of weeks for me to get over it.

Mitchell:

When I think about mold toxicity, it's not diagn diagnosing. This is not a one and done step or test, and that's because this affects multiple systems through multiple body systems. You know it's going to present in so many different ways. There's, there's typically some type of chronic pain or inflammation and it could be in almost any area of your body. You know, we do know there's several common symptoms, but I can't stress enough that if this is an issue for you, it will likely express completely differently individual to individual. Or maybe one person and a child have chronic symptoms and other people in the house don't. And that speaks to the genetic variability with how the body can move to detoxify these mycotoxins, which I find interesting. So when I think about criteria for thinking if this is something going on with you, first thing, is there a history of exposure to a water damage building? Is there a leak? Was there? We recently had a couple. They were remodeling and it rained and it went into multiple rooms in their home and they had to actually get out for a while and have environmental remediation. Do you have these specific symptoms that I'll say a few of today that will affect again multiple body systems? There can be some specific lab abnormalities or physical exam findings. When I think about physical exam, I think about presentation on the skin being caused by the stress response that's driving bronchoconstriction or constriction within actual nasal passages. And then again, if we go through treatment, does this person start to get better? Here's like a sidebar.

Mitchell:

If you have chronic recurrent strep throat, truly I want you to look into is there a biofilm? Is there an upper respiratory nasal sinus microbiome problem? Or do you have mold illness? We know and we see this frequently. If you get chronic recurrent strep throat, there's a much higher chance that there is a mold issue going on within your body than it's just a chronic bacterial infection, and it kind of goes back to that ancient battle between pathogens, you know, trying to essentially live and set up shop within a within an organism, and we see this between bacterial issues in the throat and chronic mold exposure. So that's something to consider. So as part of a history that I will take, regardless of what you come in with, we'll analyze multiple systems at the top.

Mitchell:

When I think about brain, first thing I think of is executive cognition issues, is their brain fog, word recall problems, mood dysregulation. That doesn't seem related to diet or sleep and things like that. Do I see systemic inflammatory signals, chronic gut problems, chronic upper respiratory infections, things like that. When I think about gi specifically, something you might not think of is a metallic taste in the mouth, what yeah, we see this frequently with mold exposure. We will see nausea and vomiting, bloating, abdominal pain, diarrhea, believe it or not, you might be excessively thirsty and excessively urinating, and if I have someone come in with those symptoms and we rule out diabetes, the first thing I start to think about is this could be mold. So prove to me. Otherwise, we even see this with bile reflux.

Mitchell:

From a vision perspective and this goes into one of my first screening exams I will ask you do you have blurry vision? Do you get irritated eyes? Are they itchy and red? Do you have light sensitivity or do you tear up a lot? We know that mycotoxin related issues will affect the visual system, so much so that we found a test called an online visual contrast sensitivity screen. It's $15. It takes you five to ten minutes and it has over a 90 sensitivity. When you fail the test for a mold related illness, that's how key the visual system is when it comes to mold exposure.

Mitchell:

From an energy perspective, you'll typically have some serious chronic fatigue, hormonal imbalances. It's a grab grab bag term, but it's kind of like when you have a million things but no one thing fits. That's when we think environmental illness. Again, as I mentioned, with the brain we're thinking anxiety, depression, irritability, stuff like that. Do you have pain that migrates? Do you have muscle pain in your pecs or in your hamstrings, in your low back, and it doesn't seem related to the workout you did the day before? That is a clear indication to me that there could be an environmental illness going on. Morning stiffness, joint pain. Do you get this shocking, this lightning bolt pain? These are things that people describe to us. In your body that, to me, screams mold. You get sharp pain in your eyes, headaches. When you walk around carpet and you touch light switches, you get a static electric shock.

Kate:

Not infrequently, but every single time.

Mitchell:

Yeah, we recently had someone. It was kind of a slam dunk. He said oh yeah, I have to touch a doorway before I hit my kid's light switch Every time I go in their room because I will shock myself on the light switch. From the nervous system, we're thinking about dizziness, poor balance, poor coordination, vertigo even. Do you have numbness and tingling? Is your skin very sensitive to light touch? And then a big one for me again, if we've ruled out certain things like a thyroid issue, do you struggle with regulating your body temperature? Are you very hot in warm environments? Are you very cold in cold environments? And you have normal thyroid function?

Mitchell:

Well, let's investigate this mold piece a little bit more. So that's from thinking about your nervous system, in the respiratory system, chronic cough, sore throat, runny nose, sinus issues, chronic congestion in the sinuses. And then, if that's the case, are you hacking loogies every morning in the shower? Are you, when you blow your nose, is there blood tinged mucus? That's a very specific question that I will ask you. We'll know that the dryness up in the respiratory passages that can lead to this tinging of blood is commonly associated with mold exposure. And this space, to me, the upper respiratory system, is key. We have seen time and again people come in. They've done massive, you know, functional workouts, they did a urine test for mycotoxins or you know blood testing for immune responses to mold IgG and IgE but nobody worked up their sinuses.

Mitchell:

Your sinus cavity is a warm, dark, moist, hollow space where extracellular organisms can set up shop and create mucus, create chronic inflammation and, because of how mold functions, it has these what are called evasion strategies where it will actually bleb and change its form and also emit certain chemicals. That makes it very difficult for the immune system to properly eradicate them. Those are called those pathogen evasion strategies. So a common thing I'll have to stop here with somebody and really work up the sinus cavity and we even see this.

Mitchell:

Chronic sinus mold infestation or even chronic staph infections within the upper respiratory tract in certain individuals will lead to more or be associated with more GI issues. I always say hollow space, immunology kind of functions together. If you have chronic GI issues, you're more likely to have chronic urinary tract issues or chronic upper respiratory issues. And the reason I say we stop here is because if, if we don't solve for the sinuses, I don't know if we're ever going to adequately purge and get rid of this, because it's such a dense amount of tissue up in that area that can be chronically impeded from healing. It's going to drive systemic inflammation and you see that a lot right. How am I doing so far? Working my way down so far, so good.

Mitchell:

Yeah, let's keep thinking about this, so common, you know, and when you, when we fill out an intake or we send somebody an, there's hundreds of potential things that they can click, and the more you click, the more well. Number one, I feel bad for you because I know you haven't gotten anywhere with your primary care provider. But number two, I start to think what, environmentally is driving this. This person's eating well, they're exercising, they have positive relationships, screams to me environmental illness. Let's say you get inebriated quickly or you get hung over quickly from alcohol. You are very sensitive and you get a headache. With synthetic fragrances you can't walk down the laundry detergent aisle at Target or candles bother you, they cause nausea, they cause headaches, they make your skin red, you get this histaminic reaction.

Mitchell:

The way I look at that is that could be a bunch of different things, but as it relates to mold, essentially filling up the cup of how much your body can tolerate your allostasis, your ability to manage the load of your environment without getting symptoms, if you have little things like a glass of wine or a smell from a candle or a Glade plug-in or someone's perfume that trick you over into symptoms, clearly your body is being burdened by something you know, symptoms come out when nutrients are low, stress is high and there's more burden from the environment than your internal systems can handle. So anybody telling you detox is not real, I believe, has missed the boat. Exposure to microplastics and heavy metals from brake dust and in our water supply and in medications and in our soil, and the stress that we have and the the bills and social media, you know, making us highly alert or anxious and all of these things, like we don't have a program for that. We are really good at getting rid of bacteria and viruses and ancient things that have been around for a long time, but the mere volume of load of things that we're exposed to every day makes it much harder to adequately detoxify.

Mitchell:

So whenever we talk about detoxification it's not about, you know, take some prunes and poop a lot. It's about supporting the four main detox pathways. We've got the lungs and breathing. We've got the kidneys and urinating. We've got the liver and the gut pooping and we've got the skin through sweating and if we're not doing those things regularly we might get backed up with things. Is that fair? Detox is an actual thing when indicated. That is very necessary to do, but this is when we think about the order of operations.

Kate:

We don't just jump straight into detox. We have to well, first of all remove the exposure. That's always step one. It's the hardest, hardest one, but it's probably the most critical. And I say it's the hardest because sometimes that can mean an extreme change. It could mean a whole home remediation. It can mean moving. It could mean a high expense, but it matters if you're going to continue to expose yourself. You can only do so much from the other side exactly, yeah, and we've.

Mitchell:

I mean, in the last six months we've probably had five cases of people who either had to go live in a separate home, they had to go up to the mountains and hide away while their home got remediated. They had to get a hotel we just had a family. They were actually kind of the best attitude about it rent an Airbnb for the fall to be able to just get out. And you know, in the way this woman said what she said, she was like well actually, and they're amazing people, but we're excited, we're trying to get a new kitchen out of this. I'm like I love your spirit, you know, because this is a stressful time. But you know, and you're coming in with all these symptoms and as we're starting to do this investigation and unwind things and work on your health specifically, you're noticing you're already getting better and now you start to be curious about what other level of health can I have for my children, my husband in this house and myself. So it kind of becomes self-evident for a lot of people. But, yeah, I mean, you've got to remove yourself from the environment.

Mitchell:

A few other things that I think about after the sensitivity to chemicals and smells and things like that will be chronic skin rashes, dryness or sensitivity to products.

Mitchell:

This is a personal anecdote, but I was living in an apartment a couple years ago that I knew had mold. I could kind of smell it, even with all my air purifiers In my bedroom. I eventually started waking up with a patch of eczema on my wrist and I went home. What really sealed it for me is I went back to Wisconsin for two weeks over Christmas and it completely went away and I was eating pizza on New Year's and you know, eating things that typically were my eczema triggers, but that did not trigger me. What happened was about four days after I got back to my apartment in January, patch of skin flared back up again and then, once we moved into a new build now I have not had that once it's been since february it's gone um. So for me, a big time signal was actually a lot of static electric shocks, no sensitivity to smells or chemicals, occasional headaches, but then the big one was the skin irritation and dryness and it was unexplained with other changes.

Kate:

Yeah, exactly?

Mitchell:

we'll even see. Are you frequently waking up through the night with night sweats again? Are you constantly having this urgency to pee? Do you have appetite swings? Can you not lose weight? Are you doing a cgm and eating really well and exercising, but you have stubborn weight loss. That's a common symptom of this excess toxicity from an environmental illness. And then, when I think about kids, I'm thinking do you have chronic ear infections? Do you have chronic throat, upper respiratory infections, asthma, irritability, adhd, things like that? You might as well investigate it. Mainstream medicine a lot of the options beyond, things like cognitive you might as well investigate it. You know. Mainstream medicine, a lot of the options beyond, like things like cognitive behavioral therapy. Are amphetamine and amphetamine derivatives for ADHD? You know the FDA clears Adderall in young children. You know, without a proper investigation, we're just oh, it's your genetics. It's like well, maybe John is bored and he's coming home to a moldy home and he's eating processed food. Maybe that's why he has ADHD. I don't think it's an amphetamine deficiency.

Kate:

Okay, that's a whole other soapbox. Let's focus here.

Mitchell:

But at the very least it warrants an investigation. So first, like I said, we go through all these symptoms and it's funny because most people are like this is a random set of questions you're asking me. You're going from my throat to how do I react to alcohol? What's my skin like? To my gut, to my vision, to my energy, to my metabolic health, and it's like, well, yeah, every system is impacted. You know, and we use a few different companies when we actually test people, and what I love is a lot of these companies will show body charts with positives and negatives and they'll show which systems are impacted by which type of mycotoxin. And that really rains home to people where it's like oh, all of these symptoms could be made worse because of this environmental exposure. So if you have a lot of those, first thing we're going to do, as Kate said, check our surroundings. Am I currently in a water damaged building? Is it my work? Is it my home? Is it my office? Is it my kitchen? Is there specific rooms?

Mitchell:

You know we can now hire, I mean Hertz, ermi and Hertzie there's so many different companies that can test. We can actually have you start with cheap home mold plates to see what's airborne. You can send samples of carpet and you know. Look all around and there's so many companies now that can come in and test your home to see if that's an issue. That's definitely the first place to start is are there water intrusions in the house? Is there a leaky basement, ceiling, windows? Maybe you had a flood Check some of these obvious areas for signs of mold first, and then, if let's say it's hidden deeper and you don't see it or smell it, that's when you should get a home inspection.

Mitchell:

Let's say you find it but you can't get out of the home. That's not feasible, absolutely, in my opinion. You must get adequate air filtration systems. There are now numerous companies that we work with. Can I mention the one I love? I actually was recently exposed to a Jasper. I don't know much about it yet, but it's expensive, so maybe it's good.

Mitchell:

The one that we love is the AeroAce system. We work with them because they're so effective. It goes beyond true HEPA filtration down to a micro HEPA level, such efficient filtration that there's been independent studies showing up to I think it's a 99.995% of airborne mold can be removed if the filter is big enough for the room, within 15 minutes. And because these are hundreds of dollars. I typically tell someone have it, follow them, you know. Put it in the bedroom 15 minutes before bed. Bring it to your home office during the day If you're working from home. Get one for kids' rooms.

Mitchell:

I mean, that's a very first-line approach. That's much easier than getting out of your house. So that'll be the first thing is, if I can't leave, we need very effective air filtration. The second step I'll do, beyond the investigation in the home and the symptoms, will be an online, as I said earlier, an online visual contrast sensitivity screening. If you have a lot of these symptoms and we know you've been exposed, this will give you feedback immediately. It'll correlate your symptoms and your vision sensitivity to this potential impairment due to this chronic inflammatory syndrome. It's actually just looking at the neurological function of your vision that we see deficient in those with a mold illness. Let's say you fail. That. That's when we can go a couple of different ways. We could do Complicated testing.

Kate:

To speciate.

Mitchell:

Speciate. See the level that is coming into you. We can see you urinating out mycotoxins. But my issue with urinary mycotoxin testing is foods can have molds and coffee and so many things, but does that speak to an immune inflammatory reaction from the mold? And that's where sometimes we'll go a step deeper into immunoglobulin testing towards certain species of mold. We just had a fella came back with stachyboitris. He had a urine mycotoxin to show it and then he had igg and ige reactions to black mold and knew where the exposure was, and so for him that data really helped him Like okay, this is so imperative for my children and my partner and it became a much bigger issue.

Mitchell:

But a lot of times, you know, I always say I can't just treat that, I need to do blood work right. I want to make sure that your liver is working adequately, that we've got control of methylation, I've got adequate thyroid hormone function. You know a lot of these individuals. Their other systems will start to shut down. They'll become suboptimal thyroid function, maybe like a subclinical hypothyroid. That's actually manifesting not as poor thyroid output but poor conversion in the body right. So that's where a full thyroid panel is so important. In these cases let's see not only how well you produce thyroid hormone, but what are you turning it into? Are you turning it into active form or into storage form?

Mitchell:

We know anything driving stress on the body environmentally will change that conversion of thyroid hormone and this can be one of the reasons why you're struggling to lose that last 10 pounds. Same thing with nutrient levels. I need to make sure that we are not profoundly vitamin D deficient if we're going to go in and start pushing these metabolites through your system. Are you constipipated? If you're constipated, I'm not going to start with pushing toxins right. We've got to get you pooping first. Which comes into the parasympathetic nervous system? Comes into hydration fiber. What's your magnesium status? Everyone's getting their red blood cell magnesium tested. You know there's so many things to help improve upon first before we just start pushing people.

Kate:

Yeah, you're really hinting at the stepwise approach of we have to have all of these foundations in place before we jump into a mold protocol, detox protocol. There's so much more first before we get to that.

Mitchell:

Because what's the H word that everyone's so familiar with, that happens to them if we don't do it that way? H?

Kate:

e double hockey sticks herxamer.

Mitchell:

You know they'll say, oh, I'm herxing, I'm herxing, I'm having these die-off reactions. Well, maybe your system is so ramped up and slowed down that as you start to create these, uh, these corpses of dead and dying material within your body, these pathogens, if you don't have an adequate program to move them along, they'll probably trigger you to feel horrible more headaches, more brain fog, nausea, flu-like symptoms, you know all sorts of things like that. So, yeah, the order of operations to me is imperative. Let's work on foundation and typically, I mean it depends on your age. But you start to see a pattern with me where it's like oh, you're a healthy 40-year-old triathlete, we can probably do a few weeks of other things and then we'll get right into it. Are you already sauna-ing and exercising? Okay, we're going to speed things along a little bit.

Kate:

I'm glad you threw in that supportive therapy in there, because there are some lifestyle things the sauna, the sweating, the hydration to ensure that as we ramp up this detox we are opening up all those pathways.

Mitchell:

And in a lot of these people we actually have to slow them down. You know, we figure out, you know max heart rates and we keep them at maybe a 60% to 70%. We've really got to bridle their output because I don't want to be driving this chronic adrenaline response, because these individuals are already living in that response. If they're dealing with this. They have the loss of hope, they've got the compounding of symptoms, they've got the fear of the future. You know they haven't gotten any answers. So they're living in this adrenaline, dopaminergic internet searching cycle trying to find answers. So you know, less is more for a lot of these people. We've got to simplify, slow down, clear out the environment, get oxidation under control right, we typically do. You know high dose things like glutathione, vitamin C, ergothionine, selenium, basic antioxidant support first, and then we will start to really ramp things up.

Mitchell:

There's a saying that chris shade, the you know the phd that started quicksilver that I look I do so much education from but he said where toxin, where bile flows, toxins go the gallbladder and the liver. Bile production is often impeded big time with mold exposure. So here you go. If you get right upper abdominal pain after eating fatty foods or your right shoulder blade aches or it hurts between your shoulder blades and you're fair-skinned and you're flatulent and you're holding on to extra fat and you're in a fertile age. Maybe before they rip your gallbladder out, you should be worked up for mold, because we see this even on ultrasounds Sludge in a gallbladder associated with mold exposure. It gets better when you work on not just bile thinning directly, but working on why the bile is so sludgy to start with, and mold is a common driver of that.

Kate:

It's not the only driver.

Mitchell:

Of course there's so many factors, but that's something that you should work out, because I've never met a patient who had their gallbladder removed who's happy they had it. Have you? I'm sure they're out there because we're working through this with some people right now. I mean the pain I've never had a gallstone that I know of. Maybe I'm just so tough and I have and I doubt it kind of sensitive, um, you know I can't blame you at all, but I think you you are owed more from the people you're seeking help from to not just hack out an organ because it's irritated and inflamed.

Mitchell:

Let's think about why this might be happening. If you're willing to give yourself a little bit of time but that's my plea to you is, if you can tolerate and push through this, if you do have gallbladder issues like, at least investigate it, because you have that gallbladder taken out, you're going to have gi issues that you're going to have to manage the rest of your life and it's tiring for most people. So that's my plea to you If you have gallbladder issues, consider mold, yeah, and then treatment. I mean, what would you say? It depends for every person. It's a little bit different.

Kate:

Yeah, but the slow long-term expectations just because of all the layering of things. So the stepwise approach it just does. It takes a little bit longer, but we do it the right way.

Mitchell:

Yeah, and a big thing for us is things like binders. And a big thing for us is things like binders. Sometimes we can refer you somewhere else to get things like cholestyramine, which can be really helpful, but oftentimes we don't see a need for. And then my big thing again just to reiterate is work on the sinus passage. You know we do a lot of upper sinus microbiome testing. We can send your it's essentially like a little COVID swab that you can send to a lab in Massachusetts and they'll analyze the sinus nasal microbiome. They'll look for biofilm, They'll grow it out for 30 days and see if there's mycotoxins or mold.

Mitchell:

And if they're up there, your body is essentially a mycotoxin-producing factory, essentially a mycotoxin producing factory. And if we just start really pounding, sweating and antioxidants and liver support and gallbladder support and gut and all that kind of stuff, without addressing that thing up in your face, we're not going to get all the way there. And we've seen it. We've had people fail that kind of care and then a 10 minute history on the sinuses shows us that that's our path forward. So you've got to account for the hollow spaces. How do we bring?

Kate:

it home.

Mitchell:

Kate, I just went off for 30 minutes.

Kate:

Yep, I let you take the lead.

Mitchell:

I mean pay attention, ask questions, questions, stay curious, yeah, and don't, and don't accept I'm just getting older or I just had a kid, or don't accept these answers for yourself that someone might give to you, just because they simply don't have the understanding, the time or the experience to be able to adequately work out, because things don't just generally happen in the body for no reason. So that's my plea to you is, if this is where you're at, stay, like you said, kate, stay curious, ask more questions and find somebody willing to be curious enough to take you serious, willing to be curious enough to take you serious.

Kate:

For more about what we do at the facility, check out our website, wwwthefacilitydenvercom. You can also follow us on Instagram at the Facility Denver for extra tips behind the scenes, fun and updates on new episodes. Thanks for listening. Now go facilitate your own health and we'll see you next time.