Mold seems to be a growing problem, as more and more autoimmune or unexplainable symptoms are being linked to mold exposure.
Symptoms from mold exposure can wreck your life. My life drastically changed back in 2015 after working in a mold classroom for 4 months. I started having trouble breathing, low energy, reoccurring chest infections, skin peeling and swelling.
It took over a year for me to get back to normal.
Possible Symptoms from mold exposure:
- Respiratory issues, reoccurring sinus/chest infections
- Skin rashes, itching, redness, peeling
- Eye rashes, itching, irritation
- Chronic fatigue
- Brain fog or memory problems
- Difficulty concentrating
- Mood changes, anxiety, or irritability
- Sleep disturbances
- Muscle aches or joint pain
- Numbness or tingling
- Digestive complaints (nausea, diarrhea, abdominal discomfort)
- Frequent headaches or migraines
- Light sensitivity
- Dizziness or vertigo
- Ear pressure or ringing in the ears
- Increased sensitivity to smells or chemicals
If you suscept mold may be a cause of your health issues, the first step is to find out where the mold is:
Is it at your workplace, church or home?
And then confirm the presence of mold BEFORE you start ripping out walls and doing mold remediation.
This can be tricky, especially with your home.
A client of ours recently did this with their home and graciously agreed to share their experience with us.
Tests to Confirm Presence of Mold
Elisa: Do you have any recommendations of: what tests to do to confirm the presence of mold before having to rip out walls?
Client: We started with gravity plate testing from Immunolytics (I’ll include some guidance in the postscript)*, since we were experiencing suspicious health issues.
This gave us some idea of where the issue may be, and that the health issues were likely due to mold, but the plates were most helpful in confirming that we did have mold, but did not tell us exactly where or how best to handle the mold remediation.
We later learned from the mold inspector we brought in (more on that below) that gravity plate testing, while helpful, may only be the tip of the iceberg for what mold may be present in the environment (a limitation of gravity plates in general and what molds will, or not, culture on the plates); however, these plates are cheap compared to bringing in a well-qualified mold inspector (less than 20% of the cost of the mold inspector).
The results of the plate testing, and an inability for any contractor/tradesman we brought in to find the root cause, combined with Becky’s sudden worsening in mold toxicity symptoms lead us to using one of the IEPs listed on ISEAI’s website (these are self-reported IEPs and not endorsed by ISEAI, so mileage will likely vary among those listed).
The inspector we brought in was very thorough and was able to correctly identify the root cause of the active water leak and areas of water damage as well as ways our house does not “breathe” correctly to allow proper ventilation, among other issues that lead to the mold being able to thrive in our home. The initial inspection took several hours and cost ~$2,000. With this assessment the inspector was also able to provide a plan of action for how best to remediate the house and what we needed to do to make it less likely for the mold to reoccur. The reassessment, post-remediation, was a similar cost; and, thankfully, our home insurance covered these costs (although I do not believe that this is typical).
Once the source of the water damage is identified, it obviously needs to be appropriately corrected, but once that is done, depending on how long the problem has been going on, the house may need substantial cleaning to remediate.
We ended up “compromising” between the environmental hygienist and the remediation contractor on a partial condition two cleaning in order to get rid of the mold spores. We also decided to replace the HVAC system and clean what was not replaced (vacuum and fog), added proper ventilation in our attic space (it was built in improperly and did not ventilate correctly, which worsened our mold issues), replaced all the carpet in the home since it is practically impossible to clean properly (especially since we did not know how old the carpet was and what may have also happened prior to our ownership of the house), and crawlspace (there was much more done in the crawlspace, but we are going to skip all of that since it’s not applicable in this situation).
We washed every piece of cloth in the house possible with a detergent made to denature mold. We had all our furniture cleaned in the partial condition two cleaning, but opted to wait and see if we needed to replace the harder to clean items like our couch, mattresses, recliners, anything upholstered. So far, this has been sufficient for us to live without aggravating any of the health issues again.
The most important thing in this whole process is identifying trustworthy individuals/companies, and those tend to be hyper-local businesses. The majority of contractors and tradesmen I’ve met and talked with have no knowledge of mold, or, perhaps worse, highly inaccurate information, and thus practices, about handling mold.
A solid book resource is John C. Banta’s Mold Controlled, but it is on the longer side and not an easy read. (I only found this book after we completed the remediation and I had read Dr. Neil Nathan’s book Toxic [Expanded and Updated Edition], which as a side note I found to be a fascinating book.)
If you are purely looking to confirm if mold is present, mold plates may be sufficient to confirm mold is present; however, a qualified mold inspector would be the most thorough option. Said mold inspector should also have recommendations about who can properly remediate the mold in the home and what steps to take there.
*Postscript:
— Mold plate testing —
This is the gravity plate testing for mold (include the lab consult when ordering to get mold analysis):
https://immunolytics.com/Get as many plates as problems you think you may have, as well as one for wherever you spend the most time in your house (if not coinciding with an area you already thinking there may be a problem). If no problem areas suspected, suggest a plate for each major area of the house (living room area, playroom area, kitchen area, sleeping area, etc.).
Homeopathy to Deal with Mold Exposure
Once you are out of the mold, your symptoms may not improve. They could simply stay the same. This is where homeopathy comes in. (I won’t share remedies now, as that is a whole other blog post for the future.)
Mold creates inflammatory response in the body and often a detox pathway (or several) get overwhelmed and sometimes blocked.
If you have other autoimmune or more complex health issues, it is better to work with a homeopath as heavy metals, steroid use or past toxic exposures can keep the body from being able to detox the mold.
If you would like to hear more about Radiant Homeopathy and how we work, listen to our podcast with Sue Meyer.
Till next time,
Elisa
Disclaimer: I am not affiliated with any links in this post. Use at your own discretion. Do your own research. My client is sharing from his experience and Radiant Homeopathy, Elisa or Marisa Joulfaian is not responsible or liable in any way from the information shared here.